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^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^

Presented by" ^T'i'Sy'i O rVR. . S'V VO r\ cf .

The Xej"fo"7' ^«52-l933,
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THE GOSPEL FOR
AN AGE OF DOUBT

■H|2)^^°

THE GOSPEL FOR
AN AGE OF DOUBT

HENRY VAN DYKE

D.D. (PRINCETON, HARVARD, YALE) , LL.D. (UNION) "V^ -^( / fC-' '

PASTOR OF THE BRICK CHURCH IN NEW YORK

MAY 24 iij,

SIXTH EDITION REVISED
WITH A NEW PREFACE

" But if any speak not concern i77g Jesus Christ,
J look upon them as tombstones and sepulchres
of the dead, on which are written only the
na?nes of men."

St. Ignatius, Epist. ad Phil.

Neiu gork
THE MACMTLTAN COMPANY

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1898

Set up and electrotyped September, 1896. Reprinted December,
1896; January, October, 1897; September, 1898.

Xortoooti iprrss

J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE

TO THE SIXTH EDITION

Two years have passed since this book was
first printed. A new edition is now prepared
for popuhar use by leaving out the appendix
and making the volume smaller.

In writing a new preface, I am glad of the
opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to
the many friends who have given the book a
welcome in different parts of the world, and liave
translated its message into other languages. 1
wish to acknowledge also the benefit received
from those intelligent critics who have pointed
out some of its faults and shortcomings, and
to make some brief reply to those other critics
who have misconceived its purpose and misrep-
resented its meaning. But most of all I would
like to say a word to make the spirit and aim
of the book more clear, and so to bring it into
touch with the personal life of those into whose
hands it may fall.

It was w^ritten in the form of a course of
lectures on preaching, on the '' Lyman Beecher

xiv Preface

Foundation," and delivered before the divinity
students of Yale University. But the aim of
these lectures was not to teach the art of making
sermons. It was to accentuate the truth that
the question, What to preach, comes first, and the
question, How to preach, comes afterwards. A
man must have a distinct message, clear and
luminous to his own soul, — a message which
comes to him with a joyful sense of newness
and demands utterance, — he must feel the liv-
ing fitness of this precise message to the needs
of the world, before he can learn to deliver
it with freedom and power.

The study of theology as a science is a very
important study. The training of men in the
art of preaching is a very valuable discipline.
But the vital experience of faith is deeper and
broader than the theories of theology. The
art of preaching is worth little unless it serves
to enrich and ennoble the larger art of living.
Religion is the secret of this larger art of liv-
ing. And the power of religion to inspire and
guide men to purer, stronger, happier, more
beautiful lives, does not depend upon the modes
and forms in which it is preached, but simply
upon the concrete gospel, the good news about
God and tlie world, which it brings into their
hearts.

Preface xv

The audience in the Yale chapel appealed to
me less as students of theology, than as young
men with a life to live and a work to do in the
modern world, in the present age. Around
them I felt the pressure of those great, myste-
rious forces which are silently changing the
current of human thought and the face of
human society. Behind them I saw the wider
circle of the young men and women of the new
generation, the children of this age, born into
the turmoil and confusion, the intellectual stress
and storm, of a period of transition. It was to
this wider circle that I really wanted to speak,
through the divinity students who composed
the immediate audience. I wanted to tell the
men who were studying for the ministry that
they must not let themselves be educated out
of sympathy with the modern world; that they
must understand the trials and difficulties of
the present age in order to serve it effectively;
that they must keep in touch with living men
and women, outside of the circle of faith as
well as within it, if they wished to help them.

But more than this. I wanted to show that
there is a message of religion especially fitted
to meet the needs of our times. There is an
aspect of Christianity which comes to the world
to-day as glad tidings. There is a newness in

xvi Preface

the old gospel which shines out like a sunrise
upon the darkness and despondency that over-
shadow so much of modern life. This aspect
of Christianity centres in the person of Jesus
Christ, as the human life of God. This new-
ness of the gospel lies in believing in Him as a
real man, in whose sonship the Fatherhood of
God is revealed and made certain to all men.
And the power of this message to enrich and
ennoble life lies in the fact that those who
receive it are set free from a threefold bond-
age : first, from the heavy tliought that they
are creatures of necessity whose actions and
destiny are determined by heredity and en-
vironment ; second, from the haunting fear that
the world is governed by blind chance or brute
force ; and third, from the curse of sin, which
is selfishness. To see Christ as the true Son of
God and the brother of all men, is to be sure
that the soul is free, and that God is good, and
that the end of life is noble service.

This is the message that I wanted to deliver
in this book, as the true gospel for an age of
doubt.

The title has been misunderstood by some of
the critics who have read it, apparently without
going any further into the book. They have

Preface xvll

taken it as if it were an arraignment of the
present age for irreligion and infidelity. They
have resented it as if it were a confession of
tlie decline of Christianity. They have found
fault with the writer for a want of sympathy
with the intellectual perplexities of the men
and women of to-day, and a lack of insight into
their spiritual life and moral purposes.

It seems strange that any one should make
such a criticism. The answer to it may be
found in the first chapter, where I have tried
to draw the distinction between doubt and
infidelity. But in order that there may be no
room for mistake, I will say what I mean again,
and yet more clearly.

In calling the present "an age of doubt," I
do not mean that it is the only age in which
doubt has been prevalent, nor that doubt is the
only characteristic of the age. I mean simply
that it is one of those periods of human history
in which the sudden expansion of knowledge
and the breaking-up of ancient moulds of
thought have produced a profound and wide-
spread feeling of uncertainty in regard to the
subject of religion. The remarkable achieve-
ments of the critical method as applied to
philosophy, history, and literature, have led
men to ask Avhether it may not be applied in

xviii Preface

the same way to theology, and to take it for
granted that the result must be destructive.
The difficulty of adjusting the new discoveries
of science to the established forms of theo-
logical doctrine, has produced in some reluctant
and irritable minds a disposition to resent all
scientific research, and to denounce it as atheis-
tic. But in a far greater number of minds it
has begotten a misgiving, that if religion needs
to defend itself by denying facts it must stand
on a very insecure foundation. There is a
large class of people, thoughtful, earnest, sin-
cere, w^ho live under the shadow of this
misgiving. They want religion. They are
attracted by its spiritual ideals, by its moral
inspiration. But they hesitate to accept it,
at least in its Christian form, for fear that
it may not be reasonable. The questioning
temper holds possession of their minds. Their
attitude toward religious things is interroga-
tive. The secular spirit insensibly gains do-
minion over their thoughts and feelings.
They grow weary of asking questions which
seem to find no answer. The influence of the
great mass of popular literature in which
religion is practically ignored, tends to foster
the impression that it is a subject in regard to
which certainty is neither necessary nor attain-

Preface xix

able. The existence of God, the reality of
the soul, the prospect of immortality, — these
appear like insoluble problems to many of the
children of this age. They are troubled and
depressed and impoverished by the Avant of
faith, but they accept indecision as the only
rational attitude, and try to do the best that
they can without believing in

" The truths that never can be proved."

This is what I mean by an age of doubt.
Who that knows the young men and women of
to-day, can deny that multitudes of the very
best of them are feeling the influence of this
kind of doubt, and suffering under it? Who
can fail to see that in many ways this kind of
doubt is an evidence of spiritual sincerity, of
moral earnestness, of a desire to be true to the
truth at all costs ? Who can forget that the
sadness, the despondency, the pessimism of
many of those who have surrendered faith at
the call of what they conceived to be an intel-
lectual duty, is in itself a proof that religion is
necessary to complete human life and make the
world endurable ?

This is a doubting age. But it is not there-
fore an age to be despised or despaired of. It
is a hopeful age, an earnest age, an age of gen-

XX Preface

erous feeling and noble action. What it needs
is a clear answer to its doubt, and a poAverful
remedy for its sadness. This ans^Ye^ and this
remedy are found in the person of Jesus Christ.
His life is a fact which cannot be explained
without God. His character is a standing
proof of the reality of the spiritual world. A
universe of matter and force could never have
produced such a person. His teaching is a
direct witness to things which are unseen and
eternal. Those who will receive it shall find
His words a fountain of living waters springing
up Avithin them unto everlasting life.

It is not to be supposed tliat any one can write
or speak so as to make everybody perceive and
accept this truth. All human preaching comes
far short of the fulness of the gospel. Even
Avhile Christ was on earth there were many who
doubted, and held fast to their doubts. But T
am sure that the most helpful, the most con-
vincing message for a doubtful age is that
which centres in His person, and seeks to make
Him evident as the final and immutable revela-
tion of God.

Tliat is what this book tries to do. It is in
fact nothing more than an endeavour to prove
these two things: Christ is a real person;
Christ is God manifest in the flesh.

Preface xxi

But it differs from otlier arguments for the
Divinity of Christ in at least one point. It
accepts without reserve or qualification the per-
fect humanity of Christ. The cliapter in which
this view of the person of Jesus is expressed
has been criticised as dangerous. I cannot
alter it, because it represents my most profound
convictions. To me it seems not dangerous,
but safe, — far more safe, indeed, than any
other view, because it corresponds more closely
w4th the facts. The life which Christ lived on
earth was a veritable human life. The person
who lived it Avas the Son of God. But in order
to live that human life He had to become man,
not in a dramatic sense, but actually and en-
tirely. There were not two wills and two
minds working within the person of Jesus.
The mind that was in Christ was a single mind,
and His will was the expression of an undi-
vided personality. He was subject to igno-
rance, to limitation, to weakness, to temptation,
even as we are. The only point of difference
between Him and us is that we sin, but He
sinned not. The Godhood that was in Him
was such as manhood is capable of receiving.
There is no evidence in His life or in His
character of the omniscience and omnipresence
and onniipotence that would have separated

xxii Preface

Him from us. His existence among men was
simply the human life of God.

It seems to me that this is the view of Christ
Avhich is given in the New Testament. I have
tried to express it clearly, because it opens the
way to the dissolving of many doubts, and
makes His Divinity at once easier to be be-
lieved, in and more precious in its significance.
And if it does this for one reader who has
been troubled by unbelief in the Divinity of
Christ, if it shows one seeker after God how to
find Him in the man Christ Jesus, the chief
purpose of the book will be accomplished.

The same considerations and desires have
controlled my treatment of the doctrines of fore-
ordination, sovereignty, and election. There
has been no intention to enter into theological
controversy. Indeed, if I had intended to do
this, the report of tlie critics upon the result
would fill me with curious confusion. For
they seem to be unable to decide upon which
side of the controversy the book is to l)e
reckoned. One of them calls it '' a violent and
unfair attack upon Calvinism " ; another says
that "it presents the doctrines of the West-
minster Confession so winningly that they are
accepted almost before they are recognized."

Preface xxiii

The compliment and the reproach are alike
undeserved. In point of fact I was not think-
ing at all of Calvinism or of the Westminster
Confession, but only of the New Testament,
and of how directly it meets the wants of our
age with the liberating teachings of Christ.
Nothing has been more effective in begetting
and increasing doubts than the idea that
Christian doctrine required us to believe that
all events, good and evil, were foreordained by
God, and that some men were eternally chosen
to be saved, without regard to their faith or
works, while all the rest were left to inevitable
destruction. There is no trace of such an idea
in the mind of Christ. On the contrary. He is
the great liberator of men from the bondage of
fatalism, and His invitation to all the weary
and heavy-laden to come unto Him is a divine
assurance that whosoever will may have ever-
lasting life.

After years of doubt and iuAvard conflict I
have arrived at great peace and comfort in the
unreserved acceptance of these teachings of
Jesus. I do not believe that all things that
happen are determined beforehand. The soul
is free. The evil that men do is all their own;
God has not foreordained it. His only pre-
destination is to good, and if men will accept

xxiv Preface

their divine destiny, God will help them to fulfu
it. Election is not the arbitrary choice of a
few to receive blessings from which the many
are excluded. It is the selection of certain
races and men to receive great privileges to fit
them for the service of all mankind in the
divine kingdom. This is m}^ faith in regard to
these questions. I have made no secret of it.
The recent agitation concerning ministerial
honour in creed subscription seemed to require
that it should be frankly confessed. If such a
faith were inconsistent with any ecclesiastical
obligations, I should be prompt to renounce
them. But it is evident that there is no incon-
sistency. A man may hold this faith and
preach it, as a loyal Christian, in the fellow-
ship of the Presbyterian Church.

It remains only to add a word of explanation
in regard to a criticism of this book which goes
deeper than any of those of which I have
spoken. A Avriter, for whose opinion I have
great respect, has said that the volume does
not give due place and proportion to the truth
of the Atonement ; that it fails to set forth
Christ as " the Lamb of Ood which taketh
away the sin of the world."

If this were altogether true, 1 should be very

Preface xxv

sorry. 1 certainly believe that Christ is the
only Saviour of sinners ; that He died to re-
deem men from tlie curse of sin, and that the
attractioii of His cross is most potent upon the
human heart. I have tried to say this very
distinctly in the second chapter and at the
close of the fourth chapter.

But that the criticism is partly true I must
admit. The Atonement does not appear in its
due place and proportion in this book. It
would not have been possible without pro-
longing the volume to a much greater length
and turning aside from the purpose for which
it was written. It was not intended to be a
complete statement of Christian truth. It was
meant only to present that aspect of the gospel
which seemed to be especially adapted to the
wants of an age of doubt. I was thinking of
the men and women whose minds are confused
and troubled by modern speculations, Avho are
oppressed by the intellectual difficulties of
belief, who feel the benumbing influence of the
secular spirit, and who stand sadly in doubt in
regard to the reality of the whole spiritual life.
I wanted to say something to help them, some-
thing to make it easier for them to believe in
Christ, and, through Christ, in God.

I know very well that it is not enough for

xxvi Preface

men to be delivered from doubt. They need
also to be saved from sin. But before this can
have any meaning to them they must begin to
believe in a Divine Being and in their own
spiritual relationship to Him. What does sin
mean to a man Avho doubts whether there is a
personal God, and thinks that his soul may be
only a name for a certain secretion of the gray
matter in his brain, and has no sure expectation
of a life beyond death ? What he needs first
of all is a gospel which will bring him news of
a real spiritual world, a gospel whose simplicity
and directness and personal force will make the
first adventure of faith possible. It was of
such men as this that I was thinking, when
this book was written.

I know very well that the book is incom-
plete. It touches only one aspect of the great-
est of all subjects. It needs a sequel, to make
it harmonize more fully with the truth as it
is in Jesus, and to bring it into touch with
another side of the need of humanity. Very
soon, I hope to be permitted to follow this
volume on " The Gospel for an Age of Doubt,"
with another, on " The Gospel for a World of
Sin."

"Thui.e," York Harbour,

July 10th, 18'J8.

CONTENTS

lECTTJRB
I.

An Age of Doubt ....

PAGE

11.

The Gospel of a Person

. 41

III.

The Unveiling of the Father

. 81

:v.

The Human Life of God

. 123

The Source of Authority .

. 167

YI.

Liberty

. 203

VII.

Sovereignty

. 245

VIII.

Service

. 281

Index

. 319

AN AGE OF DOUBT

" Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith !
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of ' Yes ' and ' No,'
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songiess egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail'd ' Mirage ' ! "
— Tennyson, The Ancient Sage.

AN AGE OF DOUBT

There is one point in wliicli all men resem- The person-
ble each other : it is that they are all different. «J.«f''«^^'«'^

•^ of the age.

But their differences are not fixed and immuta-
ble. They are variable and progressive. Types
of character survive or perish, like the forms
of animal life. Some predominate ; others are
subordinated.

Thus it comes to pass that underneath all
the diversities of individual life, we may dis-
cern, not with the clearness of a portrait, but
with the vague outlines of a composite photo-
graph, the features of a Zeitgeist, a spirit of
the time. Generations differ almost as much
as the men who compose them. There is a
personal equation in every age.

To know this is a necessity for the preacher.
Even as the physician must apprehend tlie idio-
syncrasy of his patient, and the teacher must
recognize the quality of his pupil, so must the
preacher be in touch with his age.
3

Literature
as an index
of life.

4 An Age of Doubt

In endeavouring to arrive at this knowledge,
contact with the world is of the first conse-
quence. For one who desires to make men and
women what they ought to be, nothing can
take the place of an acquaintance with men
and women as they are. It seems to me that
one of the best means of obtaining this ac-
quaintance is through literature, — not that
highly specialized and more or less technical
variety of literature which is produced ex-
pressly for certain classes of readers, but liter-
ature in the broader sense, as it appeals to
cultivated and intelligent people in general,
including contemporary history and criticism,
poetry and fiction, popular' philosophy and di-
luted science. This kind of literature is the
efflorescence of the Zeitgeist. It is at once a
product, and a cause, of the temperament of
the age. In it we see not only what certain
men have written by way of comment on the
movement of the times, but also what a great
many men are reading while they move. It
expresses, and it creates, a sjjirit, an attitude
of mind. '' I do not imagine," saj^s a keen
observer, " that I am announcing an altogether
novel truth in affirming that literature is one of
the elements of the ethical life, — the most im-
portant perhaps ; for in the decline, more and

An Age of 'Doubt 5

more evident, of traditional and local influences,
the book is taking its place as tlie great ini-
tiator."!

For this reason I believe that a course in The vaine
modern novels and poetry miofht \Yell be made ^-^ ^^»«'*"'

i- J f^ reading.

a part of every scheme of preparation for the
ministry. The preacher who does not know
what his people are reading does not know his
people. He will miss tlie significance of tlie
current talk of society, and even of the daily
comments of the newspapers, which are in fact
only a cheap substitute for conversation, unless
he has the key to it in the tone of popular
literature. It is from this source that I have
drawn many of the illustrations for this lecture.
If they appear unfamiliar or out of place in a
theological seminary, I can only say that they
seem to me none the less, but perhaps the more,
significant and valuable o]i that account. For
I think that one of the causes by which, as
John Foster wrote seventy years ago, " Evan-
gelical Religion has been rendered unaccepta-
ble to persons of cultivated taste," ^ has been
a certain ill-disguised contempt on the part of

1 Paul Bourget, Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,
Paris, 1895.

2 John Foster, Essays, " On the Aversion of Men of Taste
to Evangelical Religion," p. 188.

6 Ail Age of Doubt

persons of orthodox opinions for what they
are pleased to call, "mere belles-lettres.^' And
though I do not fancy that there is any sym-
pathy with that frame of mind in this place,
yet the occasion seems opportune for saying
in a definite way that the preacher who wishes
to speak to this age must read many books in
order that he may be in a position to make the
best use of what Sir Walter Scott called '' the
one Book." He must keep himself in touch
with modern life by studying modern litera-
ture, which is one of its essential factors.

A douhting Ag goon as we step out of the theological cir-
cle into the broad field of general reading we
see that we are living in an age of doubt.

I do not mean to say that tliis is the only

feature in the physiognomy of the age. It

I has many other aspects, from any one of whicli

! we might pick a name. From the material

\ side, we might call it an age of progress ;

\ from the intellectual side, an age of science ;

from the medical side, an age of hysteria ; from

the political side, an age of democracy; from

the commercial side, an age of advertisement ;

from the social side, an age of publicomania.

An Age of Doubt *?

But looking at it from the spiritual side, wliicli
is the preacher's point of view, and considering
that interior life to which every proclamation
of a gospel must be addressed, beyond a doubt
it stands confessed as a doubting age.

There is a profound and wide-spread un- rne ques-
settlement of soul in regard to fundamental ^^'^!^[y
truths of religion, and also in regard to the
nature and existence of the so-called spiritual
faculties by Avhich alone these truths can be
perceived. In its popular manifestations, this
unsettlement takes the form of uncertainty
rather than of denial, of unbelief rather than
of disbelief, of general scepticism rather than
of specific infidelity. The questioning spirit
is abroad, moving on the face of the waters,
seeking rest and finding none.

It is not merely that particular doctrines,
such as the inspiration of the Bible, or the
future punishment of the Avicked, are attacked
and denied. The preacher who concentrates
his attention at these points will fail to realize
the gravity of the situation. It is not that a
spirit of bitter and mocking atheism, such as
Bishop Butler described at tlie close of the
last century, has led people of discernment
to set up religion '^as a principal subject of

8 An Age of Loiiht

mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of re-
prisal for its liaving so long interrupted the
pleasures of the world." ^ The preacher who
takes that view of the case noAv will be at
least fifty years too late. He will fail to
understand the serious and pathetic temper of
the age.
Respectful The questioning spirit of to-day is severe

but not bitter, restless but not frivolous ; it
takes itself very seriously and applies its meth-
ods of criticism, of analysis, of dissolution,
with a sad courtesy of demeanour, to the deep-
est and most vital truths of religion, the being
of God, the reality of the soul, the possibility
of a future life. Everywhere it comes and
everywhere it asks for a reason, in the shape
of a positive and scientific demonstration.
When one is given, it asks for another, and
when anotlier is given, it asks for the reason
of the reason. The laws of evidence, the prin-
ciples of judgment, the witness of history, the
testimony of consciousness, — all are called in
question. The ansAvers which have been given
by religion to the most difficult and pressing
problems of man's inner life are declared to
be unsatisfactory and without foundation. The

J Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Beligion (London, Bell
& Daldy, 1858). "Advertisement," p. xxiv.

An Age of Doubt 9

question remains unsolved. Is it insoluble?
The age stands in doubt. Its coat-of-arms is
an interrogation point rampant, above three
bishops dormant, and its motto is Query?

Causes of
scepticism.

If we inquire the cause of this general scep-
ticism in regard to religion, the common answer
from all sides would probably attribute it to
the progress of science. I do not feel satisfied
with this answer. At least I should wisli to
qualify it in such a way as to give it a very
different meaning from that which is implied in
the current phrase '' the conflict between science
and religion."

Science, in itself considered, the orderly and Science not

hostile to

reasoned knowledge of the phenomenal universe religion.
of things and events, ought not to be, and has
not been, hostile to religion, simply because it
does not, and cannot, enter into the same sphere.
The great advance which has been made in the
observation and classification of sensible facts,
and in the induction of so-called general laws
under which those facts may be arranged for pur-
poses of study, has not even touched the two
questions upon the answer to which the reality
£md nature of religion depend : first, the pos-

10 An Age of Doubt

sible existence of other facts wliich phj^sical
science cannot observe and classif}^ ; and sec-
ond, the probable exphmation of these facts.
The task of What has happened is just this. The field in
'c/i miffed, but wliicli faith has to work has been altered, and
enlarged. it seems to me enormousl}^ broadened. But
the work remains the same. The question is
whether faith has enough vital energy to face
and accomplish it. For example, the material
out of which to construct an argument from
the evidences of final cause in nature has been
incalculably increased by the discoveries of the
last fifty years in regard to natural selection
and the origin of species. The observant wan-
derer in the field of nature to-day no longer
stumbles upon Dr. Paley's old-fashioned, open-
faced, turnip-shaped Avatcli lying on the ground.
He finds, instead, an intricate and self-adjusting
chronometer, capable not only of marking time
with accuracy, but also of evolving by its own
operation another more perfect and delicate
instrument, with qualities and powers which
adapt themselves to their surroundings and so
advance forever. The idea of final cause has
not been touched. Only tlie region which it
must illuminate has been vastly enlarged. It
remains to be seen whether faith can supply
the illuminating power. Already Ave have the

An Age of Doubt 11

promise of an answer in many books, by mas-
ters of science and philosophy, who show that
the theory of evolntion demands for its com-
pletion the recognition of the spiritual nature
of man and the belief in an intelligent and per-
sonal God.

The spread of scepticism is often attributed ^''^^ erpan-
to the growth of our conception of the physical knowledge.
magnitude of the universe. The bewildering
numbers and distances of the stars, the gigan-
tic masses of matter in motion, and the tremen-
dous sweep of the forces which drive our tiny
earth along like a grain of dust in an orderly
whirlwind, are supposed to have overwhelmed
and stunned the power of spiritual belief in
man. The account seems to me incorrect and
unconvincing. I observe that precisely the
same argument was used by Job and Isaiah
and the Psalmists to lead to a conclusion of
faith. The striking disproportion between
the littleness of man and the greatness of the
stars was to them a demonstration of the ne-
cessity of religion to solve the equation. They
saw in the heavens the glory of God. And if
man to-day knows vastly more of the heavens,
does not that put him in position to receive a
larger and loftier vision of the glory ?

A7i Age of Doubt

Devout men
of pure sci-
ence.

The arro-
gance of
sciencs
falsehj so-
called.

We observe, moreover, that it is just in those
departments of science where the knowledge of
the magnitude and splendid order of the physi-
cal universe is most clear and exact, namely, in
astronomy and mathematics, that we find the
most illustrious men of science wdio have not
been sceptics but sincere and steadfast believ-
ers in the Christian religion. Kepler and
Newton were men of faith. The most brill-
iant galaxy of mathematicians ever assembled
at one time and place was at tlie University of
Cambridge in the latter half of this century.
Of these " Sir W. Thomson, Sir George Stokes,
Professors Tait, Adams, Clerk-Maxwell, and
Cayley — not to mention a number of lesser
lights, such as Routh, Todhunter, Ferrers, etc.
— were all avowed Christians." ^ Surely it
needs no further proof to show tliat the pur-
suit of pure science does not necessarily tend
to scepticism.

No, we must look more closely and distin-
guish more clearly in order to discover in the
scientific activities of the age a cause of the
prevailing doubt. And if we do this I think
Ave shall find it in the fallacy of that kind of
science Avhicli mistakes itself for omniscience.

1 George John Bomanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., Thonghts
on Belie/ion (Chicago, 1895), p. 147.

An Age of Doubt 13

" What we see is the pretence of certain sci-
ences to represent in themselves all hnman
knowledge. And as outside of knowledge
there is no longer, in the eyes of science thus
curtailed, any means for man to come in con-
tact with the realities, we see the pretence
advanced by some that all reality and all life
should be reduced to tliat which they have ver-
ified. Outside of this there are only dreams
and illusions. This is indeed too much. It is
no longer science, but scientific absolutism. "^

" The history of the natural sciences," said
Du Bois-Reymond in 1877, " is the veritable
history of mankind." '^The world," saj^s an-
other, " is made of atoms and ether, and there
is no room for ghosts." M. Berthelot in the
preface to his Origines de Valehimie^ modestly
claims that " the world to-day is witliout mys-
teries " ; meaning thereby, I suppose, that
there is nothing in existence, from the crys-
tallization of a diamond to the character of a
saint, which cannot be investigated and ex-
plained by means of a crucible, a blow-f)ipe, a
microscope, and a few other tools.

This is simply begging the question of a Animmense
spiritual world in the negative. It is an im- (assumption.

1 Charles Wagner, Yoiitli, translated from the French by-
Ernest Redwood (New York, 1893), p. 28,

14 All Age of Doubt

mense and stupefying assumption. It is a
claim to solve the problems of the inner life
by suppressing them. This claim is not in any
sense necessary to the existence of science, nor
to any degree supported by the work which
it has actually accomplished. But it is made
with a calm assurance which imposes power-
fully upon the popular mind ; and, being made
in the name of science, it carries Avith it an
appearance of authority borrowed from the
great service which science has rendered to
humanity by its discoveries in the sphere o.
the visible.
Results of The result of this petitio i^rinclpii in the

minds of those who accept it fully and carry
it out to its logical conclusion, is a definite
system of metaphysical negation Avhich goes
under the various names of Naturalism, Posi-
tivism, Empiricism, and Agnosticism. Its re-
sult in tlie minds of those who accept it
partially and provisionally, but lack the abil-
ity or the inclination to formulate it, is the
development of a sceptical temper. Its result
in the miiuls of those avIio are unconsciously
affected by it, through those profound instincts
of sympathy and involuntary imitation which
influence all men, is an attitude, — more or
less sincere, more or less consistent and con-

this assump-
tion.

An Age of Doubt 15

tinuous, — an attitude of doubt. The spirit
of the age tacitly divides all the various
beliefs which are held among men into two
classes. Those which are supported by sci-
entific proof must be accepted. Those which
are not thus supported either must be re-
jected, or may safely and properly be disre-
garded as matters of no consequence.

Ill

Now this general scepticism, in all its The mirror
shades and degrees, from the most clear, self- ^-^ ^^^^^^.tur^

^ ' and the

conscious, and aggressive, to the most vague, shadow of
diffused, and deprecatory, is reflected in the '^^^"^^•
productions of current literature. Never was
literary art more perfect, more accomplished,
more versatile and successful than in the pres-
ent age. Never have its laAvs been more widely
understood and its fascinations more potently
exercised. Never has it evoked more magical
and charming forms to float above an abyss
of disenchantment and nothingness.

In the lay sermons and essays of Huxley
and Tyndall and Frederic Harrison and W. K.
Clifford, scepticism appears militant and trencli-
ant. These knights-errant of Doubting Castle
are brilliantly equipped as men of war ; and

16 An Age of Doubt

even when they fall foul of each other, as the}'
often do, the ground of the conflict is an accu-
sation of infidelity to the principles of unbelief,
and its object is to drive the adversary back
into a more complete and consistent negation.

Over the fragmentary but majestic life-
philosophies of Carlyle and Emerson, lying
in the disarray of stones hewn for a temple
yet unbuilt, imaginative scepticism hangs like,
a cloud. Over Carlyle, it is the shadow of
a noonday tempest, full of darkness and tu-
mult and muttering thunder. Over Emerson,
it floats like a cumulus of evening vapours,
luminous and beautiful, alluringly transfigured

"In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun." ^

In the vivid and picturesque historical
studies of Renan and Fronde, scepticism is
at once ironical and idealistic, destructive and
dogmatic. In the penetrative and intelligent
critiques of Scherer and ]\Iorley, it adheres
witli proud but illogicrd persistence to the
ethical consequences of the faith with whicli
logic has broken : like a son disinherited, but
resolved to maintain the riglit of possession
by the strong arm.

1 ghelley, " Ode to a Skylark."

An Age of Bouht 1?

In the novels of unflinching and unblushing Fiction
naturalism, — like those of Zola and Maupassant -^^^^"^y*
and the later works of Thomas Hardy, scepticism
speaks with a harsh and menacing accent of the
emptiness of all life and the futility of all
endeavour. In the psychological romances of
Flaubert and Bourget and Spielhagen, George
Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, it holds the
mirror up to human nature to disclose a face
darkened with inconsolable regret for lost
dreams. Far apart as Madame Bovary and
Oosmopolis^ Prohlematische Naturen and Middle-
march and Robert Elsmere may be in many of
their features, do they not wear the same ex-
pression, — the cureless melancholy of disil-
lusion ?

Fiction in its more superficial form, dealing
only with the manners and customs of the so-
cial drama, and relying for its interest mainly
upon local colour and the charm of incident
narrated with vivacity and grace, betrays its
scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard
of the part which religion plays in real life.
In how many of the lighter novels of the day
do we find any recognition, even between the
lines, of the influence which the idea of God or
its absence, the practice of prayer or its neg-

spondent.

18 An Age of JJoubt

lect, actually exercise upon the character and
conduct of men ? Take, for exam^jle, Trilhy^'^ as
the type of a clever book carelessly Avritten for
the thoughtless public of a passing moment. It
is incredibly credulous in regard to the dramatic
possibilities of hypnotism. It is pitifully in-
adequate in its concejjtion of the actual poten-
cies of religion ; and it uses Christianity chiefly
as a subject for caricature in the style of the
illustrated newspapers, Avhich are called comic.
Poetrtj de- Poctry has always been the most direct and

intimate utterance of the human heart. And
it is in poetry that we hear to-day the voice
of scepticism most clearly, ''making abundant
music around an elementary nihilism, now
stripped naked." ^ Listen to its sonorous chant-
ings as they come from France in the verse of
Leconte de Lisle, celebrating the sombre ritual
of human automata before the altar of the un-
known and almighty tyrant, who agitates them
endlessly for his own amusement. Listen to
its delicate and decadent lyrics, as Charles
Baudelaire sings his defeat in life and his
thirst for annihilation.

*'Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte,
L'Espoir dont I'eperon attisait ton ardeur

'^ George Du Maurier, TrlVnj (Harpers, 1895).

2 Paul Desjardins, Le Devoir Present (Taris, 18'.)2), p. 05.

An Age of Doubt 19

Ne veut plus t'enfourcher. Couche toi sans pudeur,
Vieux cheval dont le pied a chaque obstacle butte.

Resigiie-toi, mou coeur, dors ton sommeil de brute.

Et le Temps m'engioutit minute par minute
Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur :
Je contemple d'en haut le globe en sa rondeur
Et je n'y cherche plus I'abri d'une caliute !

Avalanche, veux tu m'emporter dans ta chute?" i

Turn to England and hear its musical con-
fession in the cool, sad, melodious tones of
jNIatthew Arnold, no enemy of faith, but her
disenchanted lover.

*' Forgive me, masters of the mind,
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearned, so much resigned —
I come not here to be your foe ;
I seek these anchorites not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth ;

Not as their friend, or child, I speak

But as on some far northern strand,

Thinking of his own gods, a Greek,

In pity and mournful awe might stand

Before a fallen Runic stone, —

For both were faiths, and both are gone." 2

There is a poem by Tennyson (who never
broke with faith, though he felt the strain of

1 Charles Baudelaire, Flaws du Mai (Paris, 1888), p. 205.
" Le gout du N^ant."

2 Matthew Arnold, Poems (New York, Macniillan, 1878),
p. 337. " Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse."

20 An Age of t)ouht

doubt), in wliicli he describes with iiiteiiJ^e
dramatic sympathy the finality of scepticism
in the human souh It is called "Despair."
A picture of There is another poem, called "Sea Dreams,"
doubt. ill which he gives a vision of the rising tide of

doubt as it threatens to undermine and over-
whelm the beliefs of the past. The woman is
telling- her husband the dream which came to
her in tlie night as she Avatched by their sick
child.

" But round the North, a hght,
A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay,
And ever in it a low musical note
Sweird up and died ; and, as it swell'd, a ridge
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still
Grew with the growing note, and when the note
Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs
Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that
Living within the belt) whereby she saw
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,
But huge cathedral fronts of every age,
Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see,
One after one f and then the great ridge drew,
Lessening to the lessening music, back.
And passed into the belt and sw^ell'd again
Slowly to music : ever when it broke
The statues, king, or saint, or founder, fell ;
Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left
Came men and women in dark clusters round,
Some crying, ' Set them u}) ! they shall not fall ! *
And others, ' Let them lie, for they have fall'n.'
And still they strove and wrangled: . . .
. . . and ever as their shrieks

An Age of Douht 21

Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave
Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd
Broke, mixt with awful light, and showM their eyes
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away
The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone,
To the waste deeps together." i

It was but a dream, dispelled from the mind The pity oj
of her to whom it came in the night-watches '^'
by the crying of her little child, and soon for-
gotten in the sweet reality of human love.
Only a dream, but how many souls have felt
the vague sadness, the haunting, helpless pity
and fear of a like vision, looking out upon the
landscape of man's inner life, and seeing the
ancient landmarks slowly melted or swiftly
swept away, the shrines of memory shaken
and removed, the fair images of immortal de-
sire and aspiration dissolving and disappearing
in the onward waves, silently creeping, or surg-
ing with mysterious and inarticulate music out
of the waste deej) of doubt, —

" The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." ^

Who can think of the sharp . anguish and dull
grief that have fallen upon innumerable hearts
through the loss of their most precious faiths ;

1 Tennyson's Poetical Works (Macmillan, 1890), p. 138.

2 Matthew Arnold, "To Marguerite." Foems (Macmil-
lan, 1878), p. 184.

22 An Age of Douht

who can think of the gray, formless, ever-mov-
ing, yet immovable flood of mordant gloom that
has covered so many once bright and fertile
fields of human hope and endeavour, so many
once secure and peaceful homes of human trust
and confidence, — who can tliink of these things,
even though his own standpoint be still un-
touched, his own faith-dwelling founded upon
an untrembling rock far above the tide, with-
out a sorrowful perturbation of spirit and a
deep, inward sense of compassionate distress
and dread ? We stand upon the shore, but we
stand beside the sea. And we look out upon
it, as Emile Littre sadly wrote, ^ like the women
of Troy, whom the Roman poet ^^ictured gaz-
ing at its mighty currents and engulfing Avaves:

" Pontum adsjjectabant Jiejites."

Sympathy It is with no careless and exaggerating hand,

■ it is in no unsympathetic and condemning spirit,
that I have tried to draw this picture of the
sceptical age in which we live. Its faults, its
perils, are mine and yours. The preacher who
assumes a supercilious and damnatory attitude

1 ^mile Littr^, Conservation., Bevohition. Positivisme,
Bemarqnes, p. 430.

An Age of Doubt 23

towards the doubts of the present time can do
little to relieve, and may do much to increase
them. If we desire to be true ministers to a
doubting age, we must put ourselves in the posi-
tion of Maurice, who said, " I wisli to confess
the sins of the time as my own.''^ So far as
current scepticism has its source in evil, it flows
from faults of which we all partake, — tiie pride
of intellect, the haste of judgment, the prefer-
ence of the seen to tlie unseen, the impatience
of ignorance, the vain demand of perfection in
the finite comprehension of the infinite, and the
disloyalty of reason to conscience.

But indeed this is not the point of view from Lessons of
which we speak. This lecture is not an indict- ,^^^'',*^^''''"^"
ment. It is a diagnosis. Doubt, as we are
thinking of it, is not a crime, but a malad}^
And if we are to have any hope or power of
staying its progress and healing its ravages, we
must not only be sympathetic in our understand-
ing of it, but we must also look through it,
earnestly and patiently, to see whether there
are not some favourable symptoms, some signs
of enduring vitality, some promises of returning
health and strength in the spirit of the age.

Of these it seems to me that there are three,

1 The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice (New York,
Scribuers, 1884), vol. ii., p. 235.

An Age of Doiiht

Pessimism.

Cheerful
scepticism
almost ex-
tinct.

SO evident and so important, that we ought not
to overlook them. First, the acknowledged
discontent and pain of unbelief ; second, the
practical recoil of some of the finest minds
from the void of absolute scepticism ; third,
the persistent desire of many doubting spirits
to serve mankind by love, self-sacrifice, and
ethical endeavour. In other words, I would
read the lesson of encouragement in the suffer-
ings of doubt, in the doubts of doubt, and in
the splendid moral inconsistencies of doubt.

Begin, then, with pain, which is not only a
warning of disease, but also a sign of life. The
pessimism which goes hand in hand with scep-
ticism in this nineteentli century is a cry of
suffering. The closely reasoned philosophies of
Schopenhauer and Hartmann, with their prem-
isses of misery and conclusions of despair, are
only the scientific statement of a widely diffused
sentiment of dissatisfaction and despondency in
regard to life.^ Their spread, like that of some
apparently new disease, is due to the fact that
they give a name to something from which men
have long suffered.

It seemed at one time as if the course of
modern scepticism was to be free from sadness,
a ])ainless malady. At the beginning of the
1 James Sully, Pessimism, pp. 2, 3.

An Age of Doubt 25

centuiy the tone of infidelity was jubilant and
triumphant. Percy Bysshe Shelley walked into
the inn at Montanvert and wrote his name in
the visitors' book, adding " democrat, philan-
thropist, atheist,*' — as if it were a record of
victory and a title of glory. This cheerful
type of scepticism still survives, here and tliere,
in a few men who insist that the process of dis-
enchantment is pleasant and jo^^ous, and that
the optimism which belonged to faitli may re-
main while the faith itself disappears. It is
like the smile of the famous cat, in the child's
story-book, Avhich broadened and brightened
while the cat faded, until finally the animal was
gone and nothing but the grin was left.

But for the most part modern doubt shows a The sorroiv
sad and pain-drawn face, heavy with grief and ^ -^jl^^^''
dark with apprehension. There is an illustra-
tion of this cliange in the life of George Eliot.
In her girlhood she passed suddenly, by an un-
conditional surrender, out of a warm faith in
Evangelical Christianity into the coldest kind
of rational scepticism. She w^rites of tlie dull,
and now forgotten, book which wrouglit this
change, Charles Hennell's Inquiry concerning
the Origin of Christianity^ with strange and al-
most fantastic merriment: "Mr. Hennell ouglit
to be one of the happiest of men that he has

26 An Age of Doubt

done such a life's work. I am sure if I had
written such a book I shoukl be invulnerable
to all the arrows of all the gods and goddesses.
The book is full of wit to me. It gives me that
exquisite kind of laughter which comes from
the gratification of the reasoning faculties. "^
But the arrows which she despised struck
home, ere life was ended, to her own heart.

" I remember," Avrites Mr. F. W. H. Myers,
"how at Cambridge I walked with her once
in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an even-
ing of rainy May, and she, stirred somewhat
beyond her wont, and taking as her text
the three words which have been used so
often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men,
— the words God, Immortality, Duty, — pro-
nounced, with terrible earnestness, how in-
conceivable was tlie first, how unbelievable
was the second, and how peremptory and abso-
lute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner
accents affirmed the sovereignty of imper-
sonal and unrecompensing law. I listened and
night fell ; her grave, majestic countenance
turned towards me like a Sibyl's in the gloom ;
it was as though she withdrew from my grasp,
one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and

1 George ElioVs Life, as related in her Letters (New York,
Harpers), vol. i., p. 119.

An Age of Doubt 27

left me the third scroll only, awful with in-
evitable fate." 1

An inevitable fate, seen through the gloom The sad as-
of falling night, — that indeed is the aspect of P''^""^'^'-^''-
life which the literature of doubt displays to
us. A gray shadow of melancholy spreads
over the questioning, uncertain, disillusioned
age ; languid sighs of weariness breathe from
its salons and palaces. Bitter discontent mut-
ters in its workshops and tenements. "Never,
I believe," says Paul Desjardins, " have men
been more universally sad than in the present
time." And then he adds, with keen insight,
" (3ur misery lies in feeling that we are less
men than we were sixty years ago." ^ Human
ife has been unspeakably impoverished and
narrowed by the loss of faith. Comedy has
become tragic, and tragedy has grown mean
and sordid. 3 Men have lost the sound of a
Divine voice in the story of their existence
and learned to listen to it as

"a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing."

1 R. H. Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought
(London, Macmillan, 1887), p. 262.

2 Le Devoir Present, pp. 17, 19.

3 See the plays of Ibsea : Ghosts, A DolVs House, The
Wild Duck, etc.

ness of man.

28 An Age of Doubt

Love itself, the great purifier and eniiobler, has
been transformed in the subtle analysis of sex-
ual passion, from the sea-born Venus, pure and
radiant with immortal youth, to a dirt-engen-
dered goddess, concealing her secret ugliness
with illusory and artificial charms, and presid-
ing with malignant power over the lower cur-
rents of man's being, — a veritable Cloacina of
human life.^
The mean- The thought of '' the grandeur and misery
of man," as Pascal conceived it, was painful
but elevating. The conception of the insig-
nificance and misery of man as scepticism pre-
sents it, is painful and dispiriting. Born of
blind force and unconscious matter, quickened
by some mysterious cruelty to a consciousness
of his own origin and a foreboding of his inex-
plicable and fruitless destiny, he " drees his
weird," between two fathomless abysses of
gloom, as one who is indeed weary and heavy-
laden. The music with which he accompanies
his march towards the blank and dismal bourn,
rolls and clashes through the literature of every
land with deep and mournful discords, as if
man had at last invented that strange organ of

1 Bourget, Psychologie Contemporaine, pp, 5, 8.

An Age of Doubt 29

expression which a satirist has called " the Mis-
eropho7i.'' ^

'' This philosophy," says Stendhal, comment- The nausea
ing upon the last reflections of his hero in Hoxige
et Noi7\ " was perhaps true, but it was of such a
nature as to make one long for death." And
then the critic from whom I have quoted these
words, adds his own commentary. " Do you
perceive, at the close of this work, the most
complete which the author has left, the break-
ing of the tragic dawn of pessimism ? It rises,
this dawn of blood and tears, and, like the clear-
ness of a new-born day, it overspreads with
crimson hues the loftiest spirits of our age,
those whose thoughts are at the summit, those
to whom the eyes of the men of to-morrow lift
themselves, — religiously. I am come in this
series of psychological studies to the fifth and
last of the personages whom I propose to ana-
lyze. I have examined a poet, Baudelaire ; a
historian, Renan ; a romancer, Flaubert ; a
philosopher, Taine ; I have just examined one
of these composite artists in whom the critic
and the imaginative writer are closely united ;
and I have found in these five Frenchmen of

1 Anton Bettelheim, article in CosmopoUs, January, 189G.

30 All Age of Doubt

such importance, the same philosophy of dis-
gust with the universal nothingness."^

If we turn to Russia, which has given us
some of the most brilliant and influential,
though undisciplined, writers of modern fic-
tion, do we not hear, in an accent harsher
and more formidable, the same conclusions,
the same cries of nausea over the inextricable
confusion and vain efforts of human life? If
we turn to England, do we not see the same
cloud of melancholy, less threatening, less
angry, but no less dark, rising from the
chasm which doubt has made between man's
inner life and the world as scientific posi-
tivism pictures it? How mournful is the
voice in which W. K. Clifford proclaims,
" The Great Companion is dead I " How dark
with silent, passionate grief is that lonely
wood in which " Robert Elsmere " feels him-
self going blind to the dearest visions of his
former faith. ^ How black the air in which
" Jude the Obscure " breathes out the last
throbbings of his insurgent heart in curses
upon his sordid and desperate fate ! ^ Let a

1 Paul Bourget, Psychologie Contemporaine, p. 321.

2 Mrs. Humphry Ward, Bohert Elsmere (Macmillan,
1888), vol. ii. , chap, xxvi,

8 Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Harpers, 1896).

An Age of Doubt 31

poet, with that sublime insight of genius
which endures even amid the ruins created
by its own destructive passion, speak the
last word of doubt, — the epitaph of The
City of Dreadful Night. The portentous fig-
ure of " Melancholia " sits enthroned above her
vast metropolis.

" The moving Moon and stars from east to west
Circle before her in the sea of air ;
Shadows and gleams glide round lier solemn rest.
Her subjects often gaze up to her there :
The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,
The weak, new terrors ; all, renewed assurance
And confirmation of the old despair." ^

But why despair, unless indeed because Painf/ivef.

an arrju-
ment of

man, in his very nature 'and inmost essence,
is framed for an immortal hope ? No other hope
creature is filled with disgust and anger by
the mere recognition of its own environment
and the realization of its ow^n destiny. This
strange issue of a purely physical evolution
in a profound revolt against itself is incred-
ibly miraculous. Can a vast universe of atoms
and ether, unfolding out of darkness into dark-
ness, produce at some point in its progress,
and that point apparently the highest, a feel-
ing of profound disappointment with its par-

1 James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, xxi. 12.

32 An Age of Doubt

tially discovered processes and resentful grief
at its dimly foreseen end? To believe this
would require a monstrous credulity ! Athe-
ism does not touch this difficulty. Agnosti-
cism evades it. There are but two solutions
which really face the facts. One is the black,
unspeakable creed that the source of all things
is an unknown, mocking, malignant Power,
whose last and most cruel jest is tlie misery
of disenchanted man.^ The other is the hope-
ful creed that the very pain which man suffers
when his spiritual nature is denied, is proof
that it exists, and part of the discipline by
which a truthful, loving God would lead man
to Himself. Let the world judge which is
the more reasonable Jaith. But for our part,
while we cling to the creed of hope, let us
not fail to '' cleave ever to the sunnier side
of doubt," and see in the very shadow that
it casts the evidence of a light behind and
above it. Let us learn the meaning of that
noble word of St. Augustine : Thou hast made
us for Thi/self and unquiet is our heart until it
rests in Thee.

1 "It must have been an ill-advised God, who could fall
upon uo better amusement than the transforming of Himself
into such a hungry world as this, which is utterly miserable and
worse than none at all." — David Friedrich Strauss, quoted
in The British Quarterly Bevieiv, January, 1877, p. 146.

An Age of Doubt 33

Yes, the inquietude of the heart which Therenais^
doubt has robbed of its faith in God, is an ^"'^^^^/

' faith.

evidence that scepticism is a mahidy, not a
normal state. The sadness of our times under
the pressure of positive disbelief and negative
uncertainty has in it the promise and potency
of a return to health and happiness. Already
we can see, if we look with clear eyes, the
signs of what I have dared to call "the re-
action out of the heart of a doubting age
towards the Christianity of Christ and the
faith in Immortal Love."^

Pagan poets, full of melancholy beauty and
vague regret for lost ideals, poets of decadence
and despondence, the age has born, to sing its
grief and gloom. But its two great singers,
Tennyson and Browning, strike a clearer note
of returning faith and hope. " They resume
the quest, and do not pause until they find
Him whom they seek."^ Pessimists like Hart-
mann work back unconsciously, from the vague
remoteness of pantheism, far in the direction,
at least, of a theistic view of the universe.
His later books — Religionsphilosophie and

1 The Poetry of Tennyson (New York, Scribners, 1889),
p. xiii.

2 Vida D. Scudder, The Life of the Spirit in the Modern
English Poets (Houghton, Mikin, & Co., 1895), p. 333.

34 An Age of Douht

Selhstersetzung des Christenthums — breathe a
different si^irit from his Philosophie des Un-
hewussten} One of the most cautious of our
younger students of philosophy has noted with
care, in a recent article, the indications that
'Hhe era of doubt is drawing to a close." ^ A
statesman, like Signor Crispi, does not hesitate
to cut loose from his former atheistic connec-
tions and declare that "the belief in God is
the fundamental basis of the healthy life of
the people, while atheism puts in it the germ
of an irreparable decay." The French critic,
M. Edouard Rod, declares that " only religion
can regulate at the same time human thought
and human action." ^ Mr. Benjamin Kidd,
from the side of English sociology, assures
us that "since man became a social creature,
the development of his intellectual character
has become subordinate to the development
of his religious character," and concludes that
religion affords the only permanent sanction
for progress.'^ A famous biologist, Romanes,

1 James Orr, The Christian Vieio of God and the World
(New York, Kaiidolpli, 1893), pp. 456, 457.

2 The Methodist lieview, January, 1896. "The Keturn
to Faith," by Prof. A. C. Armstrong, Jr.

3 Edouard Hod, Les Idees Morales du Temps Present
(Paris, 1894), p. 304.

4 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution (London, 1894),
p. 245.

An Age of Doubt 35

who once professed the most absolute rejec-
tion of revealed, and the most unqualified
scepticism of natural, religion, thinks his way
soberly back from the painful void to a posi-
tion Avliere he confesses that " it is reasonable
to be a Christian believer," and dies in the
full communion of the church of Jesus. ^

All along the line, we see men who once
thought it necessary or desirable to abandon
forever the soul's abode of faith in the unseen,
returning by many and devious Avays from the
far country of doubt, driven by homesickness
and hunger to seek some path which shall at
least bring them in sight of a Father's house.

And meanwhile we hear the conscience, the The indomi-
ethical instinct of mankind, asserting itself
with splendid courage and patience, even in
those Avho have as yet found no sure ground
for it to stand upon. There is a sublime con-
tradiction between the positivist's view of man
as "the hero of a lamentable drama played in
an obscure corner of the universe, in virtue of
blind laws, before an indifferent nature, and
with annihilation for its denouement," ^ and the
doctrine that it is his supreme duty to sacrifice
himself for the good of humanity. Yet many

^ Thoughts on Beligion, p. 196.

2 Madame L. Ackermann, Ma Vie (Paris, 1885), p. xviii.

table con-
science.

crusade in
FrcDice.

36 An Age of Doubt

of the sceptical thinkers of the age do not
stumble at tlie contradiction. Tliey hold fast
to love and justice and moral enthusiasm even
though they suspect that they themselves are
the products of a nature wldch is blind and
dumb and heartless and stupid. Never have
the obligations of self-restraint, and helpful-
ness, and equity, and universal brotherhood
been preached more fervently than by some of
the English agnostics.
The neio In France a new crusade has risen ; a cru-

sade which seeks to gather into its hosts men
of all creeds and men of none, and which pro-
claims as its object the recovery of the sacred
places of man's spiritual life, the holy land in
which virtue shines forever by its own light,
and the higher impulses of our nature are in-
spired, invincible, and immortal. On its ban-
ner M. Paul Desjardins writes the word of
Tolstoi, '•'•Ilfaut avow une dine; it is necessary
to hav^e a soul," and declares that the crusaders
will follow it wherever it leads them. " For
my part," he cries, " I shall not blush certainly
to acknowledge as sole master the Chris^
preached by the doctors. I shall not recoil if
my premisses force me to believe, at last, as
Pascal believed." ^

1 Le Devoir Present, 45.

An Age of Doubt 37

In our own land such a crusade does not yet The new

crusade i
America.

appear to be necessary. The disintegration of ^''"^"^^^ ^^

faith under the secret processes of general
scepticism has not yet gone far enough to make
the peril of religion evident, or to cause a new
marshalling of hosts to recover and defend the
forsaken shrines of man's spiritual life. When
the process Avhich is now subtly working in so
many departments of our literature has gone
farther, it may be needful to call for such a
crusade. If so, I believe it will come. I be-
lieve that the leaders of thought, the artists,
the poets of tlie future, when they stand face
to face with the manifest results of negation
and disillusion, which really destroy the very
sphere in which alone art and poetry can live,
will rise to meet the peril, and proclaim anew
with one voice the watchword, " It is necessary
to have a soul! And though a man gain the
whole world, if his soul is lost, it shall profit
him nothing." But meanwhile, before the fol-
loAving of the errors of France in literature and
art has led us to that point of spiritual impov-
erishment where we must imitate tlie organized
and avowed effort to recover that which has
been lost, we see a new crusade of another
kind: a powerful movement of moral enthu-
siasm, of self-sacrifice, of altruism, even among

38 An Age of Doubt

those who profess to be out of sympathy with
Christianity, which is a sign of promise, be-
cause it reveals a force that cries out for faith,
and for Christian faith, to guide and direct it.
Never was there a time when the fine aspira-
tions of the young manhood and young woman-
hood of our country needed a more inspiring
and direct Christian leadership. The indica-
tions of this need lie open to our sight on every
side. Here is a company of refined and edu-
cated people going down to make a college set-
tlement among the poor and ignorant, to help
them and lift them up. They declare that it is
not a religious movement, that there is to be
no preaching connected with it, that the only
faith which it is to embody is faith in human-
ity. They choose a leader who has only that
faith. But they find, under his guidance, that
the movement will not move, that the work
cannot be done, that it faints and fails l)ecause
it lacks the spring of moral inspiration which
can come only from a divine and spiritual
faith. And they are forced to seek a new
leader who, although he is not a preacher, yet
carries within his lieart that power of religious
conviction, that force of devotion to the will of
God, that faith in the living and supreme
Christ, which is in fact the centre of Christian-

An Age of Doubt 39

ity. All around the circle of human doubt
and despair, where men and women are going
out to enlighten and uplift and comfort and
strengthen their fellow-men under the perjjlex-
ities and burdens of life, we hear the cry for a
gospel which shall be divine, and therefore
sovereign and unquestionable and sure and vic-
torious. All through the noblest aspirations
and efforts and hopes of our age of doubt, we
feel the longing, and we hear the demand, for
a new inspiration of Christian faith.

These are the signs of the times. Surely we The signs of
must take note of them, surely we must labour
and pray to understand their true significance,
if we are to say anything to our fellow -men
which shall be Avorth our saying and their
hearing.

Renan made a strange remark not long be-
fore his death : '' I fear that the Avork of the
Twentieth Century will consist in taking out
of the waste-basket a multitude of excellent
ideas which the Nineteenth Century has heed-
lessly thrown into it." The sceptic's fear is
the believer's hope. Once more the fields are
white unto the harvest. The time is ripe ;
ripe in the sorrow of scepticism, ripe in the
return of aspiration, ripe in the enthusiasm of

t?ie times.

40 An Age of Doubt

humanity, for a i-enaissance of the spiritual
life.

Already the horizon brightens with the tokens
of this renaissance. There is a new interest in
religion as the most living of all topics. There
is a ncAv sense of its vital meaning for the w^hole
life of man. There is a new^ determination to
apply it all around the circle of human respon-
sibilities and test its value everywhere. There
is a new cry for a Christ who shall fulfil the
hopes of all the ages. There is a new love
waiting for Him, a new devotion ready to fol-
low His call. Doubt, in its nobler aspect, —
honest, unwilling, morally earnest doubt, — has
been a John the Baptist to prepare the way for
His coming. The men of to-day are saying, as
certain Greeks said to apostles of old, " Sirs, we
would see Jesus." The disciple who can lead
the questioning spirits to Him, is the man who
has tlu' (io.spel for an Age of Doubt.

THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON

Subtlest thought shall fail and Tiearning falter,
Churches change, forms perish, systems go,

But our human needs, they will not alter,
Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow.

Yea, Amen ! O changeless One, Thou only,

Art life's guide and spiritual goal,
Thou the Light across the dark vale lonely, —

Thou the eternal haven of the soul.

— John Campbell Shairp.

THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON

The prevalence and the quality of modern How shall

doubt, with its discontent and sadness, its
self-misgivings and reactions, its moral incon-
sistencies and fine enthusiasms, bring the
preacher who is alive and in earnest, face to
face with the most important question of his
life. What can I do, what ought I to do, as
a preacher, to meet the strange, urgent, com-
plicated needs of such a time as this?

First of all, as a man. — and every preacher
ought to be a man, though not every man is
bound to be a preacher — as a man. it is nec-
essary to lead a clean, upright, steadfast, use-
ful life, purged from all insincerity, and lifted
above all selfishness, and especially above that
form of religious selfishness which is the beset-
ting peril of those who feel themselves rich in
faith in the midst of a generation that has been
made poor by unbelief. Never has there been a
time when character and conduct counted for
43

we serve the
present age?

The Gospel of a Person

more than they do to-da}'. A life on a high
level, yet full of helpful, healing sympathy
for all life on its lowest levels, is the first debt
which we owe to our fellow-men in this age.

But beyond this, is there not something per-
sonal and specific which the conditions of the
present demand from us, as men who have not
only the common duty of living, but also the
peculiar vocation of speaking directly and con-
stantly to the inner life of our brothers ? We
want some distinct and definite message, which
is to be clearly formed in our thought and feel-
ing and utterance, as the central, guiding, domi-
nating force in all our efforts to realize the fine
aspiration of the old hymn :

" To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfil, —
Oh, may it all my powers engage
To do my Master's will ! "

Now the moment we look at the problem in
this light, Ave see that there are various lines
of activity open to us, and along all of these
lines men are making promises and prophecies
of usefulness and success. The cures Avhich
are suggested for the malady of the age are
many and diverse. Of some of them we need
speak only in passing, to recognize that for
us, at least, they are unsuitable.

The G-ospel of a Person 45

HeiT Max Nordan, for example, in his Reaction to

curious and chaotic book, Der/etferafion, diag-
noses the sickness of modern times as the
result, not of a loss of faith, but of a fatal
increase of nervous irritability pioduced by
the strain of an intricate civilization. He
declares that the malady must run its course,
but tliat in time it will be healed by the re-
storative force of '' misoneism, that instinctive,
invincible aversion to progress and its difficul-
ties that Lombroso has studied so much and to
which he has given this name."^

The name is certainly not a pretty one, nor
do I think that, after the first feeling of pleas-
ure in learning to pronounce a newly imported
word has passed, the contemplation of its
meaning will afford us any profound sense of
satisfaction or hope. The picture of mankind
as a magnified Jemmy Button, returning from
his temporary residence in England to his na-
tive Terra del Fuego^ and flinging away his
gloves and patent-leather shoes, to relapse into
a peaceful and contented barbarism, is not in-
spiring. Who is there that would care to do-
vote his life to the hastening of such a result?
Who but the veriest quack, himself affected by
the hysteria of the age, would think of curing
1 Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York, 1895), p. 642.

barbarism.

46 The Gospel of a Person

the convulsions of St. Vitus' dance in an over-
strained humanity by throwing the patient into
the stupor of typhoid fever ?
Psychical Another and very different method of deal-

ing with the malady of the times is suggested
by those Avho believe that Science itself, in the
immense future advance which is predicted for
it, will supply the antidote for the scepticism
which has accompanied its previous course.
New discoveries will be made which will sup-
port the proposition : II faut avoir une dme.
New arguments will be constructed which will
give us a scientific demonstration of the un-
seen universe and the future life. It is in
this spirit that Mr. F. AV. H. Myers calls at-
tention to the phenomena of mesmerism and
hypnotism and telepathy, and suggests that
the need of the age is a more cordial and
general interest in the investigations of the
Society of Psychical Research. ^ I do not
think, for one, that these investigations are
to be slighted or despised. They may be of
great value. But it is difficult to believe that
this is the source to which the preacher is to
look either for his inspiration or his message.
For, in the first place, it is highly improbable
that science is about to make any such aston-

^ Science and A Future Life (Macmillan, 1893), pp. 34, 44.

The Gospel of a Person 47

ishing advance, either in methods or results,
as some men anticipate. The best authorities
admit this, and warn us that there are "limi-
tations in the nature of the universe which
must circumscribe the achievements of specu-
lative research."^ Mr. Myers himself makes
the same admission, and says that so far as
our discoveries are confined to the physical
side of things, there is no ground whatever
for sanguine hope. Moreover, in the second
place, whatever work may be done in this di-
rection must be accomplished, not by preachers,
but by scientists. The average preacher has
no particular vocation, and no adequate qual-
ification, for the task. Neither by tempera-
ment nor by training is he fitted to judge
of these matters. Now and then you will find
a rare exception ; but as a rule nothing could
be of less value than the scientific sermons of
preachers who have only a bowing acquaint-
ance with science. If the cure of modern
scepticism is to be accomplished by the further
progress of physical investigation, at least we
must confess that this enterprise is not for us.

But there are two other ways of deal-
ing with current doubt which demand closer
attention. (3ne of tliem is tlie philosophic

1 C. H. Pearson, Xational Life and Character (Macmillan,
1893), p. 291.

48 The G-ospel of a Person

Thorough- method of a reductio ad ahsurdum. The logic

goliir/
rationalism.

of rationalism is applied to its own premisses
in order to show that they are unfounded and
unverifiable. The result of this attack, as it
has been made with a relentless and masterly
hand by Mr. Arthur James Balfour in his
Defence of Philosophic Doid)t^ is to exhibit the
startling fact that ''the universe as repre-
sented to us by science is wholly unimaginable,
and that our conception of it is what in The-
ology would be termed purely anthropomor-
phic." ^ The evidence for the existence of a
world composed of atoms and ether is no
more conclusive, tlie account which science
gives of their nature and qualities is no more
coherent, than the evidence and account which
faith gives of a world created by a personal
God and inhabited by immortal souls. Pure
asfnosticism is thus forced into the service of
Christianity and used to destroy all a priori
objections to it. Giant Doubt is brought low
by turning his own weapons against himself,
even as Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, slew the
Egyptian "with his own spear." ^

The "value of this service of philosophy is

1 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (Macmillan, 1879),
pp. 284, 285, 287-289.

2 1 Chron. xi. 23.

The Gospel of a Person 49

considerable. The Christian preacher ought
not to be ignorant of its actual results, for
they are such as to encourage him in preserv-
ing his independence against the tyrannous
claims of positivism ; nor unfamiliar with its
methods, for they are fitted to train and disci-
pline his mind by hard exercise and exact work.
But it must be remembered that only a mighty
man of valour, one who, like Benaiah, ranks
above the host, and above the thirty captains of
the host, can hope to play a leading part in this
enterprise of ''carrying the war into Africa."
It must be remembered also that the reduction
of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far
short of the establishment of religious faith as
a verity. Grateful for all that philosophy can
do, and is doing, to clear the way, the preacher
must have a principle, an impulse, a line of
action which will carry him beyond the nega-
tive result of making unbelief doubtful, to the
positive result of making belief credible.

At this point our attention is called to an- Theological
other way of dealing with current scepticism, -^^^ *• "' ^^""
— the dogmatic method, which relies for the
defence of faith upon the construction of a
complete and consistent system of doctrine in
regard to God and man, the present world and
the future life. Faith, in other words, is to

50 The Grospel of a Person

be established by fortification, surrounded and
entrenched with banquette and parapet, scarp
and ditch and counterscarp of iron-worded
proof, defended on every side by solid syllo-
gisms, and impregnable against all assaults of
unbelief. It is foolish not to recognize the
great work which has been done along this line
by wise and strong men in the past. Those
who affect to despise it and make light of it,
are simply ignorant of some of the loftiest
achievements of the human intellect. The
works of Augustine and Anselm and Thomas
Aquinas, of John Calvin and Richard Hooker
and John Owen, of Ralph Cudworth and
William Chillingworth, of Richard Baxter and
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler, of Jonathan
Edwards and Charles Hodge and W. G. T.
Shedd, are massive works. They impose a
sense of wonder upon every thoughtful ob-
server.
Changed But concerning the attempt to conquer mod-

ern doubt by a system of dogmatic theology,
certain things must be remembered. The con-
ditions of warfare change from age to age.
The vast fortresses of solid stone Avhose posses-
sion was once regarded as the security of
nations, are not ranked so high as they were
a hundred years ago. The earthwork, the

The G-ospel of a Person 51

rifled cannon, the iron-clad ship, the torpedo,
have wrought great changes. Deductive logic
is just as strong as it ever was, but somehow or
other men are not as much impressed by it.
Induction is the method of to-day: and that is
a subtle, evasive, mobile method. It cannot
be shut in by a ring of fortresses. Already
the dogmatic systems in which the inductive
method is ignored or subordinated (whether
made long ago, or constructed yesterday on
ancient models) are out of date. They are
good for the men Avho are within them, but
on the outside world they have no more effect
than Windsor Castle would have in prolocting
England from a foreign invasion.

We feel sure that theology, in time, mu:;t The/uture
and will vindicate its claim to be considered as ^ ^^ ^'^^
an essential factor in the intellectual life of
man, by adapting itself to the changed condi-
tions, and producing even mightier works by
the new methods than those which it produced
by the old. Already we see the promise of a
renaissance of dogmatics in such books as Mul-
ford's The Republic of Grod, Harris' The Self-
Revelation of (rod, Orr's The Christian View of
God and the World, and Fairbairn's The Place
of Christ in Modern Theology. But we must
remember that even those who anticipate and

52 The G-ospel of a Person

Great things predict this reconstruction of the old truth on
theTewthe- ^^^® ^^^^ luiQ'S, most enthusiastically, recognize
ologian. that it must be a long and difficult tast, and
that the man who is to be a master-builder
must have a magnificent equipment. How ex-
hilarating at the first sight, but at the second
sight how overwhelming and discouraging, are
the demands of the age upon him who would
fain be an epoch-making theologian, as they are
stated, for example, in Mr. Balfour's Founda-
tions of Belief, or in Dr. George A. Gordon's
inspiring book The Qhrist of To-day. Truly it
appears that such a man must realize the sup-
position of St. Paul : he must speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have the
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge. Who is sufficient for these
things? It will take a long time for the best
of us to learn all this. Perhaps the most of us
may never go so far. Meantime, whether we
are labouring towards that goal, or despairing
of it, we need something divinely simple and
divinely true that we can preach at once, di-
rectly, joyfully, fervently to the heart of the age.
A view of the world, a Welt-anschaimng, is de-
sirable, perhaps in the long run necessary, for
the mind of man ; but there is another thing

The G-ospel of a Person 53

which is more desirable and of prior necessit}', ^ starting-
and that is a standpoint of practical conviction ^^-J)^ •g^^;^^
from which to obtain such a view. It may be first neces-
but a foothold, only a single point of contact, *^ ^"
but we must have it, and it must be solid as a
fact. A complete and consistent theology is a
consummation most devoutly to be wished for ;
but before it can come there must be some-
thing else, — a living, active power of faith in
the soul. This power, as we believe, already
exists in every human being. But there is
only one thing tliat can awaken it and call it
into action, and that is a gospel^ a message
clear as light, which in its very essence is a
force to quicken and stir the soul.

We look out upon the world and we see that Preaching
some men have had such a gospel without be-
ing in any sense finished and systematic theo-
logians. St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John
had it. St. Chrysostom and St. Francis of
Assisi and Savonarola had it. John Wesley
and George Whitfield had it. In different ages
and under different conditions these preachers
had the primal message which moves men to
believe. And in our own age, under our own
conditions, a like message has been proclaimed
with power. Pere Lacordaire preached such a
message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in

64 The G-ospel of a Person

St. Paul's, to listening thousands. Bishop
Brooks made it thrill like a celestial music
through the young manhood of America; and
Dwight L. ^Nloody has spoken it with vigorous
directness in every great city that knows the
English tongue. In many things, in ecclesias-
tical relation, in theological statement, in dress,
in manner, in language, these preachers are
unlike. One thing only is the same in all of
them, and that is the source of their power.
Their central message, the core of their preach-
ing, is the piercing, moving, personal gospel
of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Sav-
iour of mankind. This, in its simplest form ;
this, in its clearest expression ; this presenta-
tion of a person to persons in order that they
may first know, and then love and trust and
follow Him — this is pre-eminently the gospel
for an age of doubt.

The Gospel The adaptation of our central message, thus
conceived and thus expressed, to meet the
peculiar needs of a time of general scepticism,
is the theme of this lecture. 1 do not say that
this is the whole of Christianity. I do not say
that when the preacher has delivered this mes-
sage in this form he has fulfilled all of his

The Gospel of a Person 55

duties. He may have to bear testimony against
errors of thought and vices of conduct ; he is
certainly bound to give encouragement and
guidance to new efforts of virtue and new en-
terprises of benevolence in every field. But
his first and greatest duty, the discharge of
which is to give him influence over doubting
hearts and strength for all his other work, is
simply to preach Christ.

This gospel meets the needs of the present The gospel
time because it is the gospel of a fact. ^-^ ajact.

Personality is a fact. Indeed we may say
that it is the aboriginal fact ; the source of all
perception ; the starting-point of all thought ;
the informing and moulding principle of all
language. ^' All human observation implies
that the mind, the ' I,' is a thing in itself, a
fixed point in a world of change, of which world
of change its^own organs form a part. It is the
same, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It
was what it is, when its organs were of a dif-
ferent shape and consisted of different matter
from their present shape and matter. It will
be what it is, when they have gone through
other changes."^

1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Frater-
nity. Quoted by Huttoii, Contemporary Thought, I., p. 114.

66 The Crospel of a Person

Personality This fact of a rational, free, conscious, persist-
dation. ^nt self is the foundation of all sensation and

of all reflection; it is the basis of physics as well
as of metaphysics. By contrast it gives us our
first notion of matter ; by resistance, our first
notion of force ; by operation, our first notion
of causality. It is a necessary assumption even
in the philosophies of agnosticism, positivism,
and materialism. They cannot move a step
without it.

" They reckon ill who leave me out."

To deny personality is to deny the possibility
of any kind of knowledge and reduce the uni-
verse to a blank. ^

Moreover, it is not only true that the recogni-
tion of our own personality lies at the root of
perception and reasoning. It is also true that
contact Avith other personalities, conscious, in-
telligent, free, and persistent like ourselves, is
the gateway through wliich we reach the reality
of all external things. To a solitary mind the
outward world may be only a dream. But the
moment two minds come into contact and com-
munication, it becomes at least a permanent
possibility of sensation. \\y comparison and
contrast with tiie sensations and cxpv^riences of

1 Alfred Williams Momerie, Personality, the Beginning
and End of Metaphysics (Blackwood, 1889), pp. 23, 132.

The G-ospel of a Person 57

others, we verify our own. If it were not for
this the whole universe would dissolve around
us like the baseless fabric of a vision. The
subtle analysis of modern science, transforming
the apparently solid elements into invisible
atoms, and these atoms into vortex rings in
the impalpable and immeasurable ether, throws
us back, more and more, upon personality, sub-
jective and objective, as the only thing that
remains sure and immutable.

Persons, then, are the most real and substan- Persons are
tial objects of our knowledge. They touch us ^^^ ^^^^^'
at more points, they affect us in more ways and
with greater intensity, they fit more closely into
the faculties and powers of our own being, than
anything else in the universe. A person who
has influenced us or our fellow-men leaves a
more profound, positive, permanent, and real
impression than any other fact whatsoever.
We live as persons in a world of persons, far
more truly than we live in a world of phenomena
or laws or ideas.

Now, in an age that is characterized, as some
German writer has said, by " a hunger for facts,''
the gospel of a person, if it is rightly appre-
hended and preached, ought to have peculiar
power because it is a factual gospel. We can
come to those who are under the benumbing

58 The Gospel of a Person

spell of universal doubt and say : Here is a
fact, a personality, real and imperishable. It is
not merely a doctrine that was believed in Pales-
tine eighteen hundred years ago. It is some
one who was born and lived among men. It is
not merely a theory of God and the soul and
the future life that sprang up in the East in the
first century and has strangely spread itself
over the world. This religion is historical in
every sense of the word, as the actual fulfilment
of an ancient hope, and the starting-point of a
new life.
The reality Xhe person of Jesus Christ stands solid in the
history of man. He is indeed more substantial,
more abiding, in human apprehension, than any
form of matter, or any mode of force. The
conceptions of earth and air and fire and water
change and melt around Him, as the clouds
melt and change around an everlasting moan-
tain peak. All attempts to resolve Him into
a myth, a legend, an idea, — and hundreds of
such attempts have been made, — have drifted
over the enduring reality of His character and
left not a rack behind. (The result of all criti-
cism, the final verdict of enlightened common-
sense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a
person as men could not have imagined if they

The Gospel of a Person 59

would, and would not have imagined if they
could. He is neither Greek myth, nor Hebrew
legend. The artist capable of fashioning Him
did not exist, nor could he have found the
materials. A non-existent Christianity did not
spring out of the air and create a Christ. A
real Christ appeared in the world and created
Christianity. This is what we mean by the
gospel of a fact.

And here we come at once into sight of the The gospel
second quality of this gospel which is pecul-
iarly fitted to meet the needs of a doubting age.

If it be true that a person is a fact, it is no
less true that a person is a force. Tlie world
moves by personality. All the great currents
of history have flowed from persons. Organi-
zation is powerful ; but no organization has
ever accomplished anything until a person has
stood at the centre of it and filled it with his
thought, Avith his life. Truth is mighty and
must prevail. But it never does prevail actu-
ally until it gets itself embodied, incarnated, in
a personality. Christianity has an organiza-
tion. Christianity has a doctrine. But the
force of Christianity, that which made it move

60 The G-ospel of a Person

and lent it power to move the world, is the Per-
son at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the
organization and reality to the doctrine. All
the abstract truths of Christianity might have
come into the world in another form, — nay,
the substance of these truths did actually come
into the world, dimly and partially through the
fragmentary religions of the nations, more
clearly and with increasing, prophetic light
through the inspired Scriptures of the He-
brews ; but still the world would not stir, still
the truth could not make itself felt as a univer-
sal force in the life of humanity until

"The Word had breath, and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds,
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought." ^

I think we must get back, in our conception of

Christianity and in our preaching of it, to this

primary position. The fount and origin of its

power was, and continued to be, and still is, the

Person Christ.

(Jhristivas This was the secret of His ministry. He

ffospei. Himself was the central word of His own

preaching. He offered Himself to the world

as the solution of its difficulties and the source

1 Tennyson, In Memoriatny xxxvi.

The G-ospel of a Person 61

of a new life. He asked men simply to be-
lieve in Him, to love Him, to follow Him. He
called the self-righteous to humble themselves
to His correction, the sinful to confide in His
forgiveness, the doubting to trust His assur-
ance, and the believing to accept His guid-
ance into fuller light. ^ To those who became
His disciples He gave doctrine and instruction
in many things. But to those who Avere not
yet His disciples, to the world. He offered first
of all Himself, not a doctrine, not a plan of
life, but a living Person. This was the sub-
stance of His first sermon when He stood up
in the synagogue at Nazareth and having read
from the Book of Isaiah the prophecy of the
Great Liberator, declared unto the people
" This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your
ears." 2 This was the attraction of His univer-
sal invitation, " Come unto Me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden and I will give
you rest."^ This was the heart of His sum-
mary of His completed work when He said, " I,
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
men unto Me."*

1 Henry Latham, Pastor Pastorum (New York, James
Pott & Co., 1891), pp. 273-275,

2 St. Luke iv. 16-21,

3 St. Matt. xi. 28.

4 St. John xii. 32,

62 The G-o.^pel of a Person

We are not considering, at this moment, the
tremendons implications of snch a personal
self-assertion, unparalleled, I believe, in the
founder of any other religion. We pass by
for the present that famous and inevitable
alternative, Aut Ohrisfus Beus, aut liomo non
bonus est. The point, now, is simply this.
As a matter of history, setting aside all ques-
tion of the divine inspiration and authority
of the Gospels, taking them merely as a
trustworthy report of a certain sequence of
events,^ it is plain that the force which started
the religion of Jesus was the person Jesus.
Christ w^as His own Christianity. Christ was
the core of His own gospel.

Read on through the other books of the New
Testament, the Acts and the Epistles, and you
will see that tliey are just the record of the
operation of this force in life and literature.
It was this that sent the apostles out into the

1 The evidence for the historic trustworthiness of the
Gospels may be found summed up in its modern form in Dr.
Sahnon's Introduction to the New Testament, fourth edition
(New York, Young & Co., 1889); in Bishop Liglitfoot's Es-
says on ''Siqjernatural Religion'' (Macmillan, 1889); in
Beyschlag's Neiv Testament Theology (Edinburgh, T. «& T.
Clark, 1895), pp. 29-31, 210-221 of volume i. ; and in Prof-
George V. Fisher's Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be-
lief (Scribners, 1883).

The Gospel of a Person 63

world, reluctantly and hesitatingly at first, then
joyfully and triumphantly, like men driven by
an irresistible impulse. It Avas the manifesta-
tion of Christ that converted them,^ the love
of Christ that constrained them,^ the power of
Christ that impelled them.^ He was their
certainty* and their strength.^ He was their
peace ^ and their hope.'^ For Christ they la-
boured and suffered ; ^ in Christ they gloried ; ^
for Christ's sake they lived and died.^^ i'litjy
felt and they declared that the life that was in
them was His life.^i They were confident that
they could do all things through Christ which
strengthened them.^^ xhe offices of the Church
— apostle, bishop, deacon, evangelist, — call
them by what names you will — were simply
forms of service to Him as Master ; ^^ the
doctrines of the Church were simply unfold-
ings of what she had received from Him as
Teacher ; ^^ the worship of the Church, as dis •
tinguished from that of the Jewish Synagogue
and the Heathen Temple, was the adoration
of Christ as Lord.^^

Now it was precisely this relation of the

1 Gal. i. 16. 6 Eph. ii. 14. " Gal. ii. 20.

2 2 Cor. V. 14. ' Col. i. 27. 12 phQ. iy. 13.

3 2 Cor. xii. 9. « Phil. iii. 8-10. i3 Eph. iv. 8-12.
*2Tim. i. 12. ^ Gal. vi. 14. " 1 Cor. xi. 1, 23 ; xv. 8.
s 2 Tim. ii. 1. 10 2 Cor. iv. 5, 11. i^ phil.ii.ll; 1 Cor. xii. 3.

The Gospel of a Person

early Cliurcli, in her organization and doctrine
and worship, to the person Christ, held fast
in her memory as identical with the real Jesus
who was born in Bethlehem and crucified on
Calvary, conceived in her faith as still living
and present with His disciples, — it was this
personal animation of the Church by Christ
that gave her influence over men. Contrary
to all human probability, against the prejudice
of the Hebrews who abhorred the name of a
crucified man, against the prejudice of the
Greeks and Romans who despised the name
of a common Jew, she made her Avay, not by
concealing, but by exalting and glorifying, the
name of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it seems as if
her career of conquest Avas actually delayed
until that name was taken up and written upon
her banners. It was in Antioch, where the
disciples were first called Christians,^ tliat the
missionary enterprise of the Church began, and
it was from that centre, with that title, that
she went out to her triumph.

The name of Christ was magical ; not as a
secret and unintelligible incantation, but as
the sign of a real person, know^n and loved.
It enlightened and healed and quickened the
heart of an age which, like our own, was dark
1 Acts xi. 26 ; xiii. 1-3.

TJie Gospel of a Person 65

and. sorrowful and heavy with douht. It was
the charm Avhich drew men to Christianity out
of the abstractions of philosophy,^ and the con-
fusions of idolatry darkened Avith a tliousand
personifications but empty of all true person-
ality. The music of that name rang through
all the temple of the Church, and to its har-
monies her walls were builded. The acknow-
ledgment of that name was the mark of Christian
discipleship. To confess that "Jesus is the
Christ " was the way to enter the Church. The
symbolism of that name was the mark of Chris-
tian worship. The central rites of the Church
were baptism into Christ and communion with
Christ. Fidelity to His name was the crown
of Christian martyrdom. Unnumbered multi-
tudes of men and women and children went
down to death because they would not deny
the Christ. Whatever the early Church
was and did, beyond a doubt her character
and her activity were but the resultant of
the personal influence that flowed from Jesus
Christ.2

When we 'urn to follow the liistory of Chris-
tianity thro^Jigh the later centuries down to the

1 See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, cliap. viii.

2 George B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology (New York,
Scribners, 1892), pp. 321-323.

The Gospel of a Person

Thepersonai present time, we see that the same thing is
true. The temporal power of the Bishop of
Home doubtless grew out of the union of the
Church with the Empire. The immense wealth
and secular authority of ecclesiastics may be
traced to social and political causes. But the
inward, vitalizing, self-propagating power of
Christianity as a religion has always come from
the person of Jesus who stands at the heart of
it. The attraction of its hymns and psalms and
spiritual songs, the beauty of its holy days and
solemn ceremonies, were derived from Him
^^'ho is the central figure in praise and prayer.
The renaissance of Christian Art sprang from
the desire to picture to the imagination the
visible, adorable form and face of Him whom
speculative theology had so often concealed or
obscured. The penetrating and abiding fra-
grance of Christian literature resides in those
books, like The Imitation of Christy in which the
sweetness of His character is embalmed forever.
The potency of Christian preaching comes from,
and is measured by, the clearness of the light
which it throws upon the personality of Jesus.
Read the roll of those in every age whom the
world has acknowledged as the best Christians,
kings arid warriors and philosophers, martyrs
and heroes and labourers in every noble cause,

The Gospel of a Person 67

the purest and the highest of mankind, and you
will see that the test by which they are judged,
the mark by which they are recognized, is
likeness and loyalty to the personal Christ.
Then turn to the work which the Church is
doing to-day in the lowest and darkest fields
of human life, among the submerged classes of
our great cities, among the sunken races of
heathendom, and you cannot deny that the
force of that work to enlighten and uplift, still
depends upon the simplicity and reality with
which it reveals the person of Jesus to the
hearts of men. Christianity as a missionary
religion would be fatally crippled if you took
out of it the familiar story of Jesus and His
love.

"Mr. Darwin," says Admiral Sir James Sulli- The testi-

. . mony of a

van, " had often expressed to me his conviction doubter.
that it was utterly useless to send missionaries
to such a set of savages as the Fuegians, proba-
bly the very lowest of the human race. I had
always replied that I did not believe any human
beings existed too low to comprehend the sim-
ple message of the Gospel of Christ. After
many years he wrote to me that the recent
account of the mission showed that he had been
wrong and I right . . . and he requested me
to forward to the Society an enclosed cheque

The Gospel of a Person

for X5, as a testimony of his interest in theii
good work." ^

Observe, we are not constructing an argu-
ment. We are only tracing a force, — the
force that flows from the person of Jesus Christ.
The more closely, the more powerfully we can
feel it in ourselves and in others, the more confi-
dently we can come to a doubting age and say :
Here is this force, intense, persistent, far-
reaching. It has moved all kinds of men,
from the highest to the lowest. What do you
make of it ? What will you do with it ? Is
it not the only thing that can lift and move
you out of your doubt ? For scepticism is
just the inertia of the soul which stands
poised between contrary and mutually destruc-
tive theories. From that state of impotence
there is but one deliverance, and that is by
force, the force of life embodied in a person.

But the force which proceeds from the person
of Jesus is not mere power, blind and purpose-
less. It moves always in a certain direction.
It has a quality in it which produces certain

1 Alfred Barry, Some Lights of Science on the Faith
(London, Longmans, 1892), p. 116.

The Gospel of a Person 69

results. And one of these results is an im-
mediate and overwhelming sense of the reality
and nearness of spiritual things. This is the
third point of adaptation in the gospel of the
personal Christ to tlie needs of a sceptical age.
It carries with itself an evidence of things not
seen, a substance of things hoped for.

An aura of wonder and mystery surrounded ^('^ mustery
Jesus of Nazareth in His earthly life. All who
came in contact with Him felt it ; in love, if
they desired to believe ; in repulsion, if they
hated to believe. In His presence, faith in the
invisible, in the soul, in the future life, in
(jod, revived and unfolded with new bloom
and colour. In His presence hypocrisy was
silenced and afraid, but sincere piety found a
voice and prayed. This effluence of His char-
acter breathes from the Avhole record of His
life. It was not merely what He said to men
about the eternal verities that convinced them.
It was something in Himself, an atmosphere
surrounding Him, and a silent radiance shining
from Him, tliat made it easier for them to
l)elieve in their own spiritual nature and in
tlie Divine existence and presence. He drew
out of their fallen and neglected hearts, by
some celestial attraction, spontaneous, gentle,
irresistible, a new efflorescence of faith and

70 The Gospel of a Person

hope and love. Where He came a spiritual
springtide flowed over the landscape of the
inner life. Blossoms appeared in the earth
and the time for the singing of birds was come.
The effect of Faith was not imposed on doubting hearts

His pres-

ence. hy an external and mechanical process. It

grew in the warmth that streamed from Him.
It was not merely that men were at their best
in His company, except, indeed, those who
were at their worst through sullen resistance
and malignant alarm at His power. It was
tliat men were conscious of something far bet-
ter than their best, a transcendent force, an
influence from the immeasurable heights above
them. And to withstand it they must sink
below themselves, make new falsehoods and
new negations to bind them down, grapple
themselves more closely to the base, the
earthly, the sensual. But if they yielded to
that influence, it lifted and moved their
thoughts inevitably upward. It was not
merely what He told them of His own sight
of spiritual things. It was what they saw
reflected in His face and form of that loftier,
wider outlook. He was like one standing on a
high peak, reporting of the sunrise to men in
the dark valley. They heard His words. But
they saw also upon His countenance the glow

The Gospel of a Person 71

of dawn, and dazzling all about Him the
incommunicable splendours of a new day.

This was the effect of the personality of
Jesus, as He stood amid the shadows and un-
certainties of human life ; an effect strangely
overlooked and ignored, often even beclouded
and hidden, in much that has been written
about Him by theologians and historians. I
do not dream that I can put it into words.
But I know that it can be felt as a reality in
the Gospels. And I turn back to one who saw
Him face to face, one who touched His hand
and leaned upon His bosom, for the expression
of the soul-uplifting, faith-begetting Avonder of
the person of Christ : The Word was made flesh
and divelt among us, and ive beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only-hegotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth?-

Nor has this effect vanished from the world ^'^e i),flu-
with the removal of the bodily presence of picture.
Jesus. It has perpetuated itself by its own
vital power, increasing rather than diminish-
ing. It still flows from the picture of His life
which is preserved in the Gospels, from the
image of His character as it is formed in the
minds of men. Eliminate, if you please, what
is called the miraculous element. Make what

1 St. John i. 14.

72 The Gospel of a Person

allowance you will for the entlinsiasm and
unguarded utterance of His disciples. There
still remains that enthusiasm itself to be reck-
oned with, an enthusiasm which was kindled
by Him alone. There still remains the figure
of the person of Christ, who never can be
expressed in terms of matter and force, who
never can be explained by natural and histori-
cal causes, who carries us by His own inherent
mystery into the presence of the spiritual, the
divine, the supernatural.

Something of this spiritual light, I will ad-
mit, — nay, I will maintain with joyous and
firm conviction, — comes from every human
personality, even the lowliest, in so far as it
refuses to be summed up in terms of sense
perception, in so far as it gives evidence, by
its affections and hopes and fears, of ele-
ments in man that are not of the dust. But
in Christ tliis light is transcendent and unique,
because He manifestly surpasses the ordinary
attainments of humanity, because He cannot
be accounted for by the laAVS of heredity
and environment. The more closely we apply
these, laws, the more clearly He shines out
above them.^

"The learned men of our day," says M.
1 J. S. Mill, Essays on Iteliyion^ p. 253.

The Gospel of a Persoyi 73

Pierre Loti in his latest book, La Galilee^
"have endeavoured to find a liuman explica-
tion of His mission, but they have not yet
reached it. . . . Around Him, none the less,
there still glows a radiance of beams wliich
cannot be compi-chended." ^

Historically He appears alone, as no great Christ

1 1 1 r • solitary.

man lias ever appeared beiore or since.
Heroes, teachers, and leaders of men have
always been seen as central stars in larger
constellations, surrounded by lesser but kin-
dred lights. Plato shines in conjunction with
Socrates and Aristotle; Cfcsar with Pompey and
Crassus ; Luther with Melanchthon and Cal-
vin ; Shakespeare Avith Beaumont and Fletcher
and Ben Jonson ; Napoleon surrounded with
his brilliant staff of marshals and diplomats ;
Wordsworth among the mild glories of the
Lake poets. In every case, if you search the
neighbourhood of a great name, you will find
not a blank sky, but an encircling galaxy.
But Jesus Christ stands in an immense sol-
itude. Among the prophets who predicted
Him, among the apostles who testified of
Him, there is none worthy to be compared or
conjoined Avith Him. It is as if the heavens
were sAvept bare of stars ; and suddenly, un-
1 Pierre Loti, La Galilee (Paris, 1895), p. 93.

74 The G-ospel of a Person

expected, iiiiaecompanied, the light of lights
appears alone, in supreme isolation.

Nor is there anything in His antecedents,
in His surroundings, to explain His appear-
ance and radiance. There was nothing in the
soil of the sordid and narrow Jewish race
to produce such an embodiment of pure and
universal love.^ There was nothing in the
atmosphere of that corrupt and sensual age
to beget or foster such a character of stainless
and complete virtue. Nor was His own life,
— I say it reverently, — judged by purely hu-
man and natural laws, calculated to result in
such an evident perfection as all men have
wonderingly recognized in Him. The high-
est type of human piety, the excellence of a
beautiful soul, has never been reached among
men without repentance and self-abasement.
But Jesus never repented, never abased Him-
self in shame and sorrow before God, never
asked for pardon and mercy. Alone, among
His followers who kneel at His command to
confess their unworthiness and implore for-
giveness. He stands upright and lifts a cloud-
less face to heaven in the inexplicable glory

i Amory H. Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems
(New York, Macmillan, 1895), p. 266.

The Gospel of a Person 75

of piety without penitence. Moral perfection
of this kind is not only Avithout a parallel ;
it is also without an approach. Men have
never attained to it, and there is no way for
them to climb thither. We can only look up
to that perfection, serene, sinless, unsurpassable,
and feel that here we are in sight of something
which cannot be expressed except by saying
that it is the glory of eternal spirit embodied
in a person.

But the force which resides in the person The gospel
of Jesus is not exhausted in the production
of this profound impression of its own spirit-
ual and transcendent nature. It goes beyond
this result of a vivid sense of the reality
of the unseen. It has in itself a purifying,
cleansing power, a delivering, uplifting, sanc-
tifying power. The Gospel of Christ is the
gospel of a person who saves men from sin.
And herein it comes very close to the heart
of a doubting age.

The great and wonderful fact of this expe-
rience, which can neither be questioned nor
fully explained, is not involved in the theo-
logical speculations which have gathered about

The Gos]jel of a Person

it. The person of Jesus stands out clear
and simple as a powerful Saviour of sinful
men and women. In His presence, the publi-
can and the harlot felt their hearts dissolve
with I know not what unutterable rapture
of forgiveness. At His word, the heavy-
laden were mysteriously loosed from the
imponderable burden of past transgression „
He suffered with sinners, and even while
He suffered He delivered them from the
sharpest of all pains, — the pain of conscious
and unpardoned evil. He died for sinners,
according to His own word ; and ever since,
His cross has been the sign of rescue for
humanity. Whatever may be the nature
of that sublime transaction upon Calvary ;
whatever the name by wliich men call it, —
Atonement, Sacrifice, Redemption, Propitia-
tion ; whatever relations it may have to the
eternal moral law and to tlie Divine right-
eousness,— its relation to the liuman lieart is
luminous and l)eautiful. It does take away
sin. Kneeling at that holy altar, the soul at
once remembers most vividly, and confesses
most humbly, and loses most entirely, all her
guilt. A sense of profound, unutterable relief,
a sacred quietude, diffuses itself through all
the recesses of the troubled spirit. Looking

The Gospel of a Person 11

Linto Christ crucified, we receive an assurance
of sin forgiven, which goes deeper than thought
can fathom, and far deeper than words can
measure.

"We may not know, we cannot tell
What pains He had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

"He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good ;
That we might go at last to heaven.
Saved by His precious blood."

This is not theory, this is not philosophy,
tliis is not theology^) It is veritable fact. 1'he
person Jesus, living with men, dying for men^
has actually brought this gift of pardon for
the past and hope for the future, into the heart
of mankind. And from pure love of Him — e
love which is first of all and most of all a sense
of gratitude for this immeasurable service —
have blossomed, often out of the very abysses of
sin and degradation, the saintliest and sublimest
lives that the world has ever seen.

Now this, as I know from my own experience,
is the gospel for doubting men, and for an age
of doubt ; the gospel of a Person wlio is a fact

78 The Ciospel of a Person

and a force, an evidence of the unseen, and a
Saviour from sin. Can we preach it ? Will we
preach it? Then one thing is necessary for
us, a thing which might not be necessary,
perhaps, if our message were of another kind.

All knowledge, of the world, of human na-
ture, of books, will be helpful and tributary ;
all gifts, of clear thought, of powerful speech,
of prudent action, will be valuable and should
be cultivated ; but one thing will be abso-
lutely and forever indispensable.
To know If we are to preach Christ Ave must know

throne Christ, and know Him in such a sense that we

thing need- can say with St. Paul that we are determined
■ not to know anything save Jesus Christ and

Him crucified. 1 We must study Him in the
record of His life until His character is more
real and vivid to us than that of brother or
friend. We must imagine Him with ardent
soul, until His figure glows before our inward
sight, and His words sound in our ears as a
living voice. We must love with His love, and
sorrow with His grief, and rejoice with His joy,
and offer ourselves with His sacrifice, so truly,
so intensely that we can say, as St. Paul said,
that we are crucified by His cross and risen in
His resurrection. 2 We must trace the power
1 1 Cor. ii. 2. 2 Qal. ii. 20.

The Gospel of a Persoii 79

of His life in the lives of our fellow-men, fol-
lowing" and realizing His triumphs in souls
redeemed and sins forgiven, until we know
the rapture that tlirilled the breast of a St.
Bernard, a St. Francis, a Thomas a Kempis, a
Samuel Rutherford, a Robert McCheyne ; the
chivalrous loyalty that animated a Henry Have-
lock, a Charles Kingsley, a Frederick Robert-
son, a Charles Gordon ; the deep devotion that
strengthened a David Brainerd, a Henry Mar-
tyn, a Coleridge Patteson. We must become
the brothers of these men througli brotherhood
with Christ. We must kindle our hearts in
communion with Him, by meditation, by prayer,
and by service, which is the best kind of
prayer. No day must pass in which we do not
do something distinctly in Jesus' name, for
Jesus' sake. We must go Avhere He would go
if He were on earth. We must try to do what
He Avould do if He were still among men.
And so, by our failure as well as by our effort,
by the very contrast between our incomplete-
ness and His perfection, the image of our Com-
panion and our saving Lord will grow radiant
and distinct within us. We shall know that
potent attraction which His person has exer-
cised upon the hearts of men, and feel in
our breast that overmastering sense of loyalty

80 The Gospel of a Person

to Him, which alone can draw us to follow
Him through life and death.

" If Jesus Christ is a man, —
And only a man, — I say
That of all mankind T cleave to Him,
And to Him will I cleave alway.

"If Jesus Christ is a God, —
And the only God, — I swear
I will follow Him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air."^

1 Richard Watson Gilder, " Song of a Heathen, sojourmng
in Galilee, a.d. 32."

Ill

THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER

He, who from the Father forth was sent,

Came the true Light, light to our hearts to bring;

The Word of God, — the telling of His thought;

The Light of God, — the making visible;

The far-transcending glory brought

In human form with man to dwell ;

The dazzling gone — the power not less

To show, irradiate, and bless ;

The gathering of the primal rays divine.

Informing Chaos to a pure sunshine ! "

— George MacDonald.

Ill

THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER

In the famous fifteenth chapter of The De- ^ sceptic's
dine and Fall of the Roman Umpire, the author, ^ll^Jlrgf^dof
who was but a superficial sceptic though a Christian-
profound historian, introduces an acci)unt of ^ ^'
the rise and spread of the Christian Religion.
He attributes its remarkable triumph over the
established religions of the earth to a series of
causes which he ironically describes as sec-
ondary, and uniformly treats as primary. He
exhibits them as in themselves sufficient to
explain the peculiarly favourable reception of
the Christian faith in the world, and sets aside
the question of a possible divine origin as
unnecessary. With serene self-satisfaction he
traces the rapid growth of the Christian Church
to the five following causes : I. The Zeal of
the Ch'istians, derived from the Jews, — but
purified from that narrow and unsocial spirit
which, instead of inviting, had deterred the
Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses.
83

Tlte UnveiUny of the Father

II. The Doctrine of a Future Life, improved
by every additional circumstance which could
give weight and efficacy to that important
truth. III. The Miraculous Powers ascribed
to the primitive Church. IV. The Pure and
Austere Morals of the Christians. Y. TJie
Union and Discipline of the Christian Hepublic,
which gradually formed an increasing and in-
dependent state in the lieart of the Roman
empire.^

Now this is a very fair, we may even say a
brilliant, example of the kind of work which
was done by the shallow and complacent scep-
ticism of a century ago. But the moment Ave
subject it to the more searching analysis of the
scepticism of the present age, it dissolves into
a thin and incoherent absurdity. For it is
evident that, so far from giving an explanation
of the growth of Christianity, Gibbon is simpl}^
describing some of the phenomena which ac-
companied tliat growth. Wliat, for example,
is " tlie zeal of the Christians " but an unillu-
minating name for a contagious and irresistible
enthusiasm Avhich spread through the world
in connection with faith in Christ ? What is

1 Edward Gibbon, Esq., A History of the Decline and
Fall of the Boman Empire (Loudon, John Murray, 8tli
Edition, 1854), vol. ii., p. 152.

The Unveiling of the Father 85

" the union and discipline of the Christian re-
public " but a description, without explanation,
of tlie organic unfolding of a new, myste-
rious principle of felloAvship. These alleged
" causes," more closely examined, are in fact
the very things that require to be accounted
for. Instead of clearing up the mystery, they
increase it.

By a singular fatality of language, the seep- The"ex-
tical historian has embodied in the statement ^^^^^^ ^^ ^g
of his position the demonstration of its insuf- explained.
ficiency. In each of his causes, and in the
relation that subsists between them, he has
practically suggested a difftculty which de-
mands another and a higher solution of the
whole problem. Examine his words carefully.

By what means, human or divine, was the Questions
zeal of the Christians ' purified from the narrow ^^^^^^j ^^^
and unsocial spirit of the Jews ' ? The natural answer.
liistory of sects and schisms teaches us that
their invariable tendency is to intensify rather
tlian to eliminate bigotry and exclusiveness.
Through what influence was the doctrine of a
future life 'improved by every additional cir-
cumstance that could give it Aveight and effi-
cacy ' ? The inevitable course of its human
development under the guidance of abstract
philosophy has been towards vagueness, cold-

86 The UnvelUnri of the Father

ness, and uncertainty; under the guidance of
concrete superstition, towards puerility and
crass sensualism. On what grounds Avere mir-
aculous powers ascribed to the early Church ?
They must have been ascribed truly or falsely.
If truly, tliere must have been some basis of
fact for them to rest upon. If falsely, the
Cliristians themselves were either ignorant,
or cognizant, of the falsehood. Take the
former supposition, and you present yourself
with the inexplicable theory that what Pliny
the Younger called superstitio prava iimnodica^
and imagined would be easily and certainly ex-
tirpated, was able to hold its own against all
the assaults of learning and philosophy. Take
the latter supposition, and you are forced to the
incredible assumption that a conscious decep-
tion was the fountain of highest and strongest
moral force that the world has ever felt.^
HoAV then did the " pure and austere morals of
the Christians " come into existence ? From a
lie, or from a truth? If from a truth, what
was the nature of that truth, in Avhat form Avas
it expressed, and how did it win credence ?

1 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship, sect. ii. : "A false
man found a religion ? Why, a false man cannot even build
a brick house ! If he do not know and follow truly the
properties of mortar, burnt clay, and what else he works in,
it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish heap."

The tlnveiUng of the Father 87

And, finally, liow did ''the Christian republic"
succeed in maintaining and increasing itself as
an independent state in the heart of the Roman
empire ? Every other attempt to do this par-
ticular thing, by secret philosophic doctrine, or
by open political organization, failed, and was
violently crushed by imperial power, or silently
dissolved and absorbed by imperial statesman-
ship. How was it that this one invisible fel-
lowship, this one visible organization, lived,
and spread, and stood out at last, serene, com-
plete, and magnificent, Avlien the time-worn
ruins of the empire crumbled around it?

The answer to these questions is found in the The answer
person of Christ. This is not a matter of choice. *^ Ghnst.
It is a matter of necessity. For if He was, as
all candid observers will admit, the originator
and animator of Christianity, then to stop short
of Him in our inquiry as to the causes of its
existence and progress is to stop half-way, as
if one should account for the flow of the Nile,
after the fashion of the ancient geographers, by
attributing it to the melting of the snows on
the jNIountains of the ^Nloon, instead of tracing
it to its great fountain in the Albert Nyanza.

Christ stands above and behind the Church,
and all these secondary causes which have been

88 The Unveiling of the Father

Christ, the enumerated to account for her growth and
Christian- po^ver flow directly from Him. He it was who
^iy- purified and humanized the zeal of Christians,

so that they emerged from the narrowest of
races to preach the broadest and most universal
of all relio"ions. He it was who cleared and
enlarged their view of immortality, so that it
became at once important and efficacious, the
only doctrine of a future life that has exercised
a direct and uplifting influence upon the pres-
ent life. He it was who endowed the Church
with whatever powers she possessed. He it was
who cleansed and ennobled her moral ideals and
gave her the only pattern and rule of virtue
which has been universally acknowledged as
self -consistent, satisfactory, and supreme. He
it Avas who cemented lier union and strength-
ened lier discipline to such an indestructible sol-
idarity, that the tie which bound the individual
soul to Him was regarded as superior to all
earthly relations, and the fellowship which that
common tie created, surpassed and survived all
fellowships of race, of culture, of nationality.

These are simj)le historical facts. In stating
them we make no assumptions and propound
no tlieories. It is not necessary to take any-
thing for granted or to adopt any particular
theological or philosophical system, in order to

The TJnveAling of the Father 89

see clearly and beyond the possibility of mis-
take that all the force and influence of Chris-
tianity in the world have, as a matter of fact,
flowed directly from Jesus Christ and from the
faith which He has inspired in the hearts of men.

The one question of supreme importance, Who, then,
then, if we would understand Avhat Christian- *^ ^*^^
ity really means, is, Who is this person who
stands at the centre of it and fills it with life
and strength? What did the first Christians
see in Him that made them believe in Him so
absolutely and implicitly and gave them power
to do such mighty works? What has the
church seen in Him through the ages that has
bound her to Him as her living Lord and Mas-
ter ? And what are we to see in Him if He is
to be in deed and in truth the theme of our
gospel? What think ye of Christ?

This question, you see, is vital and inevitable. ^^''^ ^^^wi-
If we are to have a Christianity which is real j^^^
and historical, we must get into line with his-
tory. If we are to have behind us the power
which comes from actual achievements of our
gospel in the world, we must understand the
relation which it has always held to the person
of Christ. If we are to be in any sense the
followers of the first Christians, and to share the
joy and peace and power of their religion, we

The Unveiling of the Father

The historic
unsioer.

must take the view which the}^ took, of Jesus
of Nazareth.

Now, the object of this lecture may be stated
in a single sentence. It is to show that the
first Christians saw, and that the Church has
always seen, in Jesus Christ a real incarnation
of God ; a true and personal unveiling of the
Father ; God in Christ, reconciling the world
unto Himself. In other words, not only must
we find in Jesus Christ tlie centre of Christian-
it3% but we must also behold an actual divinity
as the centre of life in Jesus Christ.

Christ's
(Jodhood
slowly re-
vealed.

AVe are not to suppose that faith in Christ
began with a clear and definite conception of
His divinity. On the contrary, it is evident
from the Avhole gospel record tliat the idea that
Christ was divine gradually developed and un-
folded in the minds of those who knew and
loved and trusted Him. The idea of an incar-
nation was foreign to the Hebrew mind. There
Avas no race in the world that held so strongly
to the thouglit that God was solitary, unsearch-
able, and incommunicable. They believed that
even His true name could not be pronounced
by human lips, and that it was impossible for

process of
faith.

Tlie Unveiling of the Father 91

human ejes really to behold His glory. And
the very strength of this ancestral faith of
theirs, standing as it must have done directly
in the way of belief in an incarnation, is an evi-
dence of the tremendous power and unquestion-
able reality of the experience which forced the
disciples, by slow degrees, to believe firmly and
unhesitatingly in the divinity of Christ.

The process by which this result was accom- The gradual
plished lies open to our thought in the New
Testament. We must go back to the point in-
dicated in the second lecture. It was the im-
pression made upon the disciples by Clirist's
own manifestation of Himself, His character,
His actions, and His words, evidently consistent
and unique, which led them at last to see in
Him the object of divine faith and worship.
He was not a mere man. That was evident and
undeniable. He was higher than men ; holier
than men ; He possessed an excellence and a
power which made them feel in His presence
that He was more than they were. What then
was He ? There were but two directions in
which their faith could move. The alternative
was sharply set before the disciples on that
memorable day at Csesarea Philippi, when Christ
asked them first, ''AVhom do men say that I, the
Son of man, am ? " and then, '' But whom say ye

The Unveiling of the Father

The new
line of Chris-
tian belief.

What it
meant to he
the Christ.

that I am ? " There were but two lines open to
them. One was the line of popular superstition,
which led them back into the past to see in
Christ only the ghost of John the Baptist, or
Elias, or one of the prophets come to life again.
The other was the new line of Christian faith
which led them forward to see in Jesus " the
Christ, the Son of the living God." ^

New ? Of course it was new ! It had to be
new, in order to fit the facts, which were such
as had never been seen before. And just be-
cause it was so new it had to unfold itself by
degrees to the fulness of conscious apprehension
of all that it involved.

It is evident that the disciples did not know
at first what was meant by the Christhood,
the Messiahship, the fulfilment of all ancient
prophecy and sacred ritual in Jesus. But they
learned the lesson as they kept company Avith
Him. They heard Him speak with an author-
ity which none of the prophets had ever claimed.
Recognizing a divine inspiration in the Old
Testament Scriptures, He distinctly set Him-
self above them as the bringer of a new and
better revelation. He accomplished, interpreted,
and revised them. ^ Ye have heard how it hath
been said by them of old time " — by Avhom ?
1 St. Matt. xvi. 13-16.

The Unveiling of the Father 93

By the lawgivers and prophets and psalmists
whom Christ recognized as His own forernn-
ners and foretellers. " But I say unto you,
love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
and pray for them that despitefully use you/' ^

Suppose that this were all ; suppose that the Ayiew power
Sermon on the Mount were the whole of tlie

New Testament, what should we behold in it ?
Not merely the amazing revelation of a morality
more pure and perfect than any other the human
heart has conceived, proceeding from the lips
of an unlearned Nazarene peasant of the first
century, but the absolutely overwhelming sight
jf a believing Hebrew placing Himself above
the rule of His own faith, a humble teacher
asserting supreme authority over all human
conduct, a moral reformer discarding all other
foundations, and saying, " Every one that hear-
eth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I
will liken him unto a wise man which built his
house upon a rock."^ Nine and forty times, in
the brief and fragmentary record of the dis-
courses of Jesus, recurs this solemn phrase
with which He authenticates the truth: Verily^
I say unto you. And every time that tlie dis-
ciples heard it they must have gotten a new
idea of what it meant to be the Christ.

J St. Matt. V. 43, 44, 2 St. Matt. vii. 24.

truth.

The Unveiling of the Father

A new
rdation to
humanity.

' Think also of the significance which the
favourite Messianic title used by Jesus to de-
SL'iibe Himself must have had to their minds.
He called Himself "the Son of man.''^ Why?
Was it because He was merely human? If
that was all, surely it would not need to
be asserted and emphasized again and again.
Imagine any other man, the highest and the
holiest, insisting upon the reality of his human
life, dwelling upon it, repeating the assertion
of it over and over. But this title was, in fact,
the claim to a peculiar and supreme relation to
the human race. Christ was not a son of man,
but the Son of man, one who, in the luminous
words of Irenaius, recapitulavit in se ipso longam
hominum expositionem.^ And as such He as-
sumed on earth and in His prevision of heaven
a position Avhich no mere man could rightly
take. " The Son of man hath power on earth
to forgive sins.'*^ ''The Son of man is Lord
also of the Sabbath." ^ ''When the Son of
man shall come in His glory, and all the holy

1 In St. Matthew, 30 times ; in St. Luke, 25 times ; in
St. Mark, 14 times.

- Irenseus, Adv. Ilcer., iii. 18. 1 : "He summed up in
himself the long unfolding of humanity." The Syriac ver-
sion of this passage is equally beautiful and significant;
" He commenced afresh the long line of men."

^ St. Matt. ix. 6. ■* St. Mark ii. 28,

Tlie Unve'dlng of the Father 95

angels Avith Tlim, then shall He sit upon the
throne of His glory ; and before Him shall be
gathered all nations, and He shall separate
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth
the sheep from the goats." ^

Consider what this implied. It was a decla- ^ supreme

fation that Jesus expected, and was willing, to j^id^l^f/^
ake into His own hands the task of discrimi- world.
mating between the good and the bad in the
unsearchable confusions and complexities of
the human heart, and of determinino:, without
hesitation, without misgiving, without redress,
the final destinies of the untold myriads of
men ; " an office," it has been well said, " in-
volving such spiritual insight, such discern-
ment of the thoughts and intents of the heart
of each one of the millions at His feet, such
awful, unshared supremacy in the moral world,
that the imagination recoils in sheer agony
from the task of seriously contemplating the
assumption of these duties by any created in-
telligence." ^ When the disciples heard their
Master declare that He would fulfil this office
of Judge of the World, they must have begun
to feel what it meant to be the Christ.

1 St. Matt. XXV. 31, 32.

2 H. P. Liddoii, The Divinity of Our Lord (London,
1885), p. 176.

96 The Unveiling of the Father

What it ;N'or do I suppose that they realized at first

The Son of tlie fiill intention of that second phrase in
frofi. which their view of Jesus Avas expressed. The

Son of the living God^ — that also was an idea
to be gradually apprehended and unfolded.
And think what light must have fallen upon
it from the conduct of Jesus as they followed
Him from day to day. The more closely they
knew Him, the more deeply they felt His sin-
less purity and sovereign virtue. There was a
certainty, an independence, a freedom from all
effort and from all restraint in His goodness,
such as no other good man has ever shown.
He had the deepest knowledge of the evil of
sin, yet no shadow or stain of it fell upon His
own soul. He was on terms of closest inti-
macy— an intimacy such as no saint ever
dared to assume — with God. He conversed
with the Father in a friendship which was
utterly without fear or regret or misgiving.
Now Avhen the disciples saw this, it must have
put them upon deep thoughts, and the guidance
to these thoughts was given by Christ's own
words about Himself. He put Himself side by
side with the Divine activity. " My Father
worketh hitherto and I work."^ The Jews
who heard Him say tliis, sought to kill Him,
1 St. John V. 17.

Ch7'ist'sow)i
words.

The Unveiling of the Patlier 97

because He had not only broken the Sabbath,
but said also that God was His Father, making
Himself equal with God. And if the Jews
thought this, what did His own disciples think?
He claimed a Divine origin and mission : "I
came forth from the Father ; " ^ " My Father
sent me. " ^ He claimed a Divine knowledge and
fellowship : '' No man knoweth the Father save
the Son;"^ "O righteous P^ather, the world
hath not known Tliee, but I have known
Thee.''"^ He claimed to unveil the Father's
being in Himself : '' He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father. I am in the Father and the
Father in me."^

To what conclusion must such conduct and The

inevitable

such words as these lead the disciples in their conclusion.
interpretation of the true meaning of the title
*' the Son of God " ? A conclusion wdiich Jesus
Himself, if He was as wise and good as all men
admit, must inevitably have foreseen. A con-
clusion which He Himself, if He had been only
a holy man, better than His disciples but of
the same nature, would certainly have guarded
against and prevented at any cost. A con-
clusion which is expressed in the attitude of

i St. John xvi. 28. ^ gt. Matt. xi. 27.

2 St. John xii. 49. ■* St. John xvii. 25.

5 St. John xiv. 9, 11.

The disci-
ples believed
that Christ
ivas Divine.

98 T/te Unveiling of the Father

Thomas, kneeling at the feet of Christ and
crying, ^'My Lord and my God.^i ^ conclu-
sion which is finally and definitively embodied
in the action of the apostles going out into the
world to disciple all nations, and to baptize
them " into the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. "^

There cannot be any question as to the state
of mind which this action implied. It was the
deep conviction, not necessarily reasoned out
and formulated, but lying at the very root of
conduct, that Jesus Christ the Son was the un-
veiling of His Father God, and that the Holy
Spirit wlio came upon the disciples was the
Spirit of the Father and the Son. The part
which the resurrection played in the clarifying
and confirming of this conviction was impor-
tant. But we must not misunderstand the
meaning of the resurrection. It w\as not in
any sense a new and different revelation of
God, imagined or actually received. Whatever
the form in which Jesus appeared to the dis-
ciples during the forty days that followed His
death. He was recognized as the same Jesus ;
and the one effect of Mis appearance was
1 St. John XX. 28. - St. Matt, xxviii. 11).

The Unveiling of the Father 99

simply to confirm and deepen the truth of what
He had said and done while He was with them.
And with this confirmation the truth took shape
and substance as an active and enduring power
in human faith and life and Avorship.

There is no more room for doubt that the
early Christians saw in Christ a personal un-
veiling of God, than that the friends and fol-
lowers of Abraham Lincoln regarded him as a
good and loyal American citizen of the white
race. And even if we could find no direct and
definite statement of either of these views, the
CA'idence that men held them could be clearly
and certainly read in the facts of history.

Divine lionours were paid to Christ in the The early
primitive Church. The first common prayer y^orsMpved
of the disciples, when they were assembled to Christ.
choose an apostle in the place of the traitor
Judas, was addressed to Christ. ^ The Chris-
tians were distinguished both from the Jews
and from the heathen as those who called upon
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. ^ The dying
martyr Stephen showed what was meant by this
phrase in his prayer, " Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit/'^ Saul of Tarsus, when he was con-

^' Acts i. 24. See Alford in loc.
2 Acts ix. 21 ; 1 Cor. i. 2.
8 Acts vii. 59.

100 The Unveiling of the Father

vinced by that strange experience on the road
to Damascus that Jesus was not an impostor,
but the Christ, at once addressed Him in
prayer, '' Lord, what wilt thou have me to
do?"^ And Ananias, who received Saul into
the Church, asked guidance and direction from
the same Lord.^ Peter baptized the multi-
tudes on the day of Pentecost in the name of
Jesus Christ.^ John wrote of prayer to the
Son of God as a familiar ground of confidence
in Christian experience.* The apostolic bene-
diction was : " The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you all."^ The
whole current of adoration and devotion in the
New Testament leads up naturally and without
surprise to the magnificent words of St. Paul,
in which he speaks of " Christ, who is over all,
God blessed forever."^

It should be frankly recognized that the first
Christians assigned a certain subordination to
the Son in relation to the Father ; but it must
be admitted with equal candour that this sub-
ordination was not in any sense a separation,

1 Acts ix. C. 2 Acts ix. 13. » Acts ii. 38.

4 I John V. 13-15. 5 2 Cor. xiii. 14.

6 Rom. ix. 5. Cf. Stevens, The Pmiline Theology, p. 201,
for a succinct statement of the grounds on which this inter-
pretation of the text is preferred.

The Unveiling of the Father 101

and that it really implied and involved a unity
between them whicli made it possible and nat-
ural and inevitable for the disciples to pay an
adoration to the Son with the Father, which, if
it had been offered to, or claimed by, the great-
est and best of the apostles, would have been
instantly repudiated by the whole Church as
not only absurd but radically blasphemous.

It is an easy matter to trace the worship of
Christ in the later development of Christianity.
There are two sources of evidence : the Chris-
tian hymns and liturgies ; the heathen attacks
and the apologies which they evoked.

The earliest hymns of the Greek Church, the The testi-
" Thanksgiving at lamplighting," '' Shepherd of ^hy^^^s.
tender youth," " The Bridegroom cometh," the
''Hymn to Christ after Silence," celebrate the
praise of the Lord Jesus. Syriac poetry, through
its great poet, Ephrem Syrus, takes up the same
strain of adoration to the Son of God, and its
undying music may still be heard among the
mountains of Armenia where the unspeakable
Turk is exterminating a whole race for loyalty
to the name of Christ. Latin hymnody, from
its earliest origin in translations from the Greek
like the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum,
through its splendid unfolding in the poetry
of Hilary of Poictiers, Ambrose of Milan, and

102 The Unveiling of the Father

Gregory the Great, to its sweet culmination in
the two Bernards, him of Clairvaux and him of
Climy, repeats the same burden :

" O Jesus, Thou the glory art
Of angel worlds above ;
Thy name is music to my heart,
Enchanting it with love."

In every land and language, in German, in
French, in English, the most precious and
potent melodies of the Church are fragrant Avith
the name of Christ.
The testi- The early liturgies bear the same testimony

earhj litur- ^o the pre-cmineuce of the Lord Jesus in the
fi'ies- doxologies and supplications of Christian faith.

The Apostolical Constitutions,^ the liturgy of
St. James,2 tlie liturgy of St. Mark,^ the liturgy
of St. Adieus and St. Maris,* unquestionably
preserve the spirit of the early Christian wor^
ship; and they all are witnesses to the fact that
the Christians praj^ed directly to Christ. In-
deed, it lies upon the very surface of history
that the growth of Christianity, as manifested

1 Apost. Const., Book VIII., chap. vii.

2 The Divine Liturgy of St. James, iii. : " Sovereign
Lord Jesus Christ, () Word of God," etc,

3 The Divine Liturgi/ of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist
Mark, v., xxii., etc.

4 Liturgy of the Blessed Apostles, composed by St. Adceiis
and St. Maris, xiv.

The Unveiling of the Father 103

ill a sjDreading worship, was not simply the in-
crease of those who were willing to adore God
on the authority of Christ. It was distinctly
and essentially the diffusion of an inward force
which impelled men to blend the name of Christ
with the name of God in their prayers, and to
worship the Son Avith the Father. The beauti-
ful Praj^er of St. Chrysostom, which closes the
Litany and the Morning and Evening Prayers
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, is addressed
to Christ, " who dost promise that when two or
three are gathered together in Thy name. Thou
wilt grant their requests."^ There is not in
the world to-day a single great liturgy, Greek,
Roman, Armenian, French, German, Scotch, or
English, which does not contain ascriptions of
divine glory, and petitions for divine grace,
addressed to Jesus Christ.

Heathen writers of very early date assure us The testis
that this was the practice of Christians from /Ig^JJ^p'J^.
the beginning. The younger Pliny reported
to the Emperor Trajan that the people called
Christians were accustomed to assemble before
daybreak and " sing a hymn of praise respon-
sively to Christ, as it were to God."^ In the

1 St. Matt, xviii. 20.

- A.D. 112. See the chapter on "Pliny's Report and
Trajan's Rescript " in Ramsay, The Church in the Roman
Empire (New York, Putnam, 1893), pp. 196 ff.

Christians
despised for
worshipping

104 The Unveiling of the Father

public trials that followed there ^yas never any
denial of this statement. It was admitted alike
by those who apostatized under the pressure of
persecution and by those who remained faithful
to the name of Christ. The Emperor Hadrian
wrote to Servian that of the population of Alex-
andria ''some worshipped Serapis, and others
Christ." Lucian, the pagan satirist, says in
his biography of Peregrinus Proteus : " The
Christians are still worshipping that great man
who was crucified in Palestine." ^

In all the apologies for the Christian religion
which were put forth during the persecutions
Christ. under Hadrian, and his successors Antoninus

Pius and Marcus Aurelius, there was no at-
tempt to refute the universal charge that the
Christians worshipped Christ. ^ As if to con-
firm this evidence by one of those indications
which are all the more significant because they
are so slight and so clearly unpremeditated,
there still exists a rude caricature, scratched
by some careless hand upon the walls of the

1 Luciani Samosatensis Opera. (Ed. Leipsic, 1829), Tomus
iv., p. 173.

2 The First Apology of Justin Martyr., chap. xiii. : " Our
teacher of these things is Jesus Christ ; and that we reason-
ably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the
true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and
the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove."

The Unveiling of the Father 105

Palatine Palace in Rome not later than the
beginning of the third century, representing a
human figure with an ass's head hanging upon
a cross, while a man stands before it in the
attitude of worsliip. Underneath is this ill-
spelled inscription, —

" Alexamenos adore his God." ^

Thus the songs and prayers of believers, the
accusations of persecutors, the sneers of seep
tics, and the coarse jests of mockers all join
in proving beyond a doubt that the primitive
Christians paid divine honour to the Lord
Jesus. I do not see how any man can be in
touch with Christianity as a living form of
worship in the world, unless he knows the
reality and appreciates the force of this un-
questionable fact.

Ill

Nor will it be possible to understand the Christ was
intellectual and moral teachings of the Chris-
tian religion, as they are recorded in the New
Testament, unless we put ourselves at the focal
point from which, as a matter of history, these
teachings were first conceived and then un-

1 Das Spott- Crucifix der Bomischen Kaiser Paldste, Fer-
dinand Becker (Gera, 1876). Das Spott-Crucifix vom Pala-
tini Franz Xaver Kraus (Freiburg, 1872),

a nevj
theology.

106 The Unveiling of the Father

folded. Tnid point was the vision of an un-
veiling of the being and mind of God in
Christ. It was not merely that Jesas said
certain things about God which men had not
known, or had forgotten. It was that they
saw in the coming of Christ a personal revela-
tion of the Divine Being. And this revelation
touched and transformed every possible sphere
of thought and feeling in regard to the prob-
lems of religion. The personality of God was
made distinct and luminous, not only by the
recognition of an eternal Fatherhood in His
nature, but by the light of the knowledge of
His glory sliining in the face of a person.^
The righteousness of God was disclosed in a
new aspect by the thought that He had sent
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
for sin to condemn sin in the flesli.^ The good-
ness of God was confirmed and made sufficient
for all possible human needs by the conviction
that He who spared not His own Son, but freely
delivered Him up for us all, would also with
Him freely give us all things.^ The saving
will and power of God were apprehended
through the vision of Him in Christ reconcil-
ing the world to Himself.^ The everlasting

1 2 Cor. iv. 6. 2 Rom. viii. 3.

8 Rom. viii. ;J2. ^ 2 Cor. v. 19.

God 10 as

The Unveiling of the Father 107

and inseparable love of God became the sure
ground of hope only when it was seen em-
bodied in Christ Jesus our Lord.^ The true
meaning of filial obedience to God and of
union with God was interpreted in the light
of conformity to the image of His Son.- And
the immense significance of immortality was
comprehended in the possession of a life hid
with Christ in God.^

Now the window through which men caught
sight of these truths was, and could have been, ^chHst.^^'^^
nothiuQ^ else than faith in a real incarnation
of God in Christ. The personal, moral, sym-
pathetic view of God which distinguished the
early Church was seen only through that open-
ing.^ She saw the Divine Being beaming with
a new radiance, she saw the wide landscape of
human duty and destiny illuminated and trans-
figured, she saw a new heaven and a new earth,
when she saw in Christ all the fulness of the
Godliead dwelling bodily. And it was in the

1 Rom. viii. 89. 2 Rom. viii. 29. ^ Col. iii. 3.

4 First Epistle of St. Clement, chap, xxxvi. : "By Him
we look up to the heights of heaven. By Him we behold,
as in a glass, His immaculate and most excellent visage. By
Him are the eyes of our heart opened. By Him our foolish
and darkened understanding blossoms up anew towards the
light." Bp. Lightfoot's Edition. (Macmillan, 1890.)

108 The Unveiling of the Father

strength and enthusiasm of this vision, that she
concentrated all her moral and intellectual en-
ergies on the one point of keeping that window
open, and maintaining against direct assault
and secret dissolution the real and personal
Deity of Christ.

Christian J am careful to put the statement in this

ffrew around fo^m bccausc I believe that it alone corresponds
the Deity of with the facts, and because it is only by get-
ting our minds into this position that we can
hope to understand the course, the meaning,
and the force of Christian doctrine. The early
Christians looked at God through Christ : they
did not look at Christ through a preconceived
idea and a logical definition of God. The true
development of tlieology, to put the matter
plainly, was not abstract, it was personal
and practical. The doctrine of the Trinity
came into being to meet an imperious neces-
sity. That necessity was the defence of the
actual worship) of Christ, the actual trust in
Christ as the Unveiler of the Father, which
already existed at the heart of Christianity.
It was recognized instinctively that the loss
of this trust, the silencing of this worship,

The Unveiling of the Father 109

meant the death of Christianity by heart-fail-
ure. Every speculation which threatened this
result, every theory of human nature or of
divine nature which seemed to separate the
personality of Christ from the personality of
God, was regarded by the Church as dangerous
and hostile. P^very attempted statement of
theological dogma which appeared to obscure
or to imperil the reality and the eternal valid-
ity of the unveiling of the Father in the Son,
was resented, and a counter statement of theo-
logical dogma was framed to meet it. This
was the intellectual conflict of Christianity in
the first centuries : a struggle for life centring
about the actual Deity of Christ.

As we trace the progress of this conflict, ^^^^ conflict

with heresy
its Vital importance emerges more and more

clearly. Often, I suppose, we cannot help feel-
ing a sense of sympathy with the earnest pur-
pose and the personal character of those men
who were called heretics. Often we are con-
scious of a certain distrust for the meta-
physical and exegetical arguments, and of a
grave repugnance for the physical and politi-
cal methods, which were used by the orthodox
to enforce their definitions. Athanasius was
not an altogether lovely person. Some of the
early Church Councils were almost as disor-

110 The Unveiliyig of the Father

derly and reckless as some of the regiments that
have fought in various wars to defend the cause
of human liberty and justice. But the question
is not one of the manner of defence or attack.
It is a question of the reality and significance of
the cause attacked and defended. And here we
see that Athanasius with all his faults v/as on
the right side, and Arius with all his virtues
was on the wrong side. Through all the con-
fusion of metaphysical disj^ute about the exact
meaning of substance and subsistence, nature
and personality, ideal existence and real exist-
ence,— terms wdiich, as I conceive them, must
change their significance as the methods of
human philosophy change, and must always
represent imperfectly a mystery which is for
us unsearchable and indefinable, — through all
this confusion one fact shines out clear and dis-
The Palla- tinct. The unveiling of the Father in Christ
was, and continued to be, and still is, the
Palladium of Christianity. All who have sur-
rendered it, for whatever reason, have been
dispersed and scattered. All who have de-
fended it, in whatever method, have been held
fast in the unity of the faith and of the know-
ledge of the Son of God.^

1 Eph. iv. 13.

dium of
Christian-
ity.

The Unveiling of the Father 111

This point of view must condition the atti- Thedoc-
tude of our minds towards the doctrine of the Trinity con-
Trinity. No Christian man can be hostile or st-uctedto
indifferent to it when he remembers its history, j^'^^^y ^j
It may have been too much elaborated by minds <^^^"'i«^-
over-curious in metaphysical distinctions. It
may have been put in a position of undue pre-
eminence by theologians whose energies were
all absorbed in its construction and in the con-
templation of the work of their own reason in
the service of Christianity. But in spite of all
excesses and errors, it stands as an enduring
monument of the loyalty of the faith to its cen-
tral conviction. In all its forms, from the
sharply tri-personal Trinity of Athanasius, to
the essentially tri-modal Trinity of Augustine,
the great service which it has rendered is not
abstract nor philosophical. It is practical.
It has protected the conviction that the real
nature of God is revealed in Christ ; it has jus-
tified the consciousness that the Spirit of Christ,
animating the Christian life, is the Spirit of
God ; it has preserved the sense of real com-
munion with God in Christ which is the nerve
of Christian worship.

And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is not the
gospel, nor is it the foundation of the gospel.
It cannot be preached as a saving message to the

112 The Unveiling of the Father

souls of men, except in that form in which we find
it in Phillips Brooks' noble Sermon for Trinity
Sunday^ and Dr. George A. Gordon's powerful
discourse on The Trinity the Ground of Humanity,
It is the effort to apprehend a relation of the
Being of God to the conscious experience of
man ; a truth exhibited in the course of revela-
tion and recognized in its mysterious unfolding
both before and after all efforts to symbolize
it in theological language ; in brief, it is the
reaching out of the human mind, conscious of
its limitations and conditions, towards a vision
and worship of the Father in the Son through
the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not
the Palladium. It is the defence. I will con-
fess that in its broad outlines it seems to me
necessary and satisfactory. I will confess that
no other answer to the profound questions
which inevitably arise out of the contact be-
tween the idea of God, and the experience of
real life in all its manifoldness, appears to me
half 80 reasonable or complete as that which
asserts that " the various fundamental forms of
society on the earth, the essential relationships
of humanity, have their Archetype, their Eter-
nal Pattern and Causal Source, in the nature of
the Infinite." 1 I will confess that tlie form of
1 Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 101.

TJie Unveiling of the Father 113

this answer which contemplates the existence
of these eternal relationship's in the Divine
nature as most clearly and positively personal,
is more conclusive to my mind than any other.
But if other men think otherwise on this point,
we are not therefore divided from each other,
or from the Christian faith. The question is
one of metaphysics. It is not a question of re-
ligion. All modes of defining the Trinity as a
doctrine must be kept subordinate to the pur-
pose for which it exists. All attempts to ex-
press it are valuable only in so far as they help
us to keep in view the unveiling of the Divine
nature which centres in Him who was mani-
fested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen
of angels, preached among the nations, believed
on in the world, received up in glory. ^

Now wherein is a message like this, the gos- The gospel

of the
Incarnation

pel of a personal unveiling of God in the per-
son of Christ, adapted to the needs of the adapted
present age? ^^^'«^'-

1. It seems to me first of all that the course
of modern thought has prepared the way for it
by destroying the a priori objections to the In-
1 1 Tim. iii. 16.

^4: The Unveiling of the Father

carnation. Shallow.iignqsticism makes two as-
sumptions which are contradictory. It assumes
that man is unable to attain to the knowledge
of God ; and tliat it is impossible for God to
reveal Himself to man. But if we cannot
know Him, how can we know that He cannot
reveal Himself? This would be in effect the
most intimate kind of knoAvledge. To take it
for granted that an Incarnation of God is im-
possible or incredible is to profess a most per-
fect and exclusive understanding of the Divine
nature. "At one time," says Mr. Romanes,
" it seemed to me impossible that any proposi-
tion, verbally intelligible as such, could be
more violently absurd than that of the Incarna-
tion. Now I see that this standpoint is wholly
irrational. ... ' But the Incarnation is op-
posed to common sense.' No doubt : utterly
so ; but so it ought to be if true. Common
sense is merely a rough register of common
experience. But the Incarnation, if it ever
took place, whatever else it may have been,
was not a common event. ' But it is deroga-
tory to God to become man.' How do you
know? Besides, Christ was not an ordinary
man. Both negative criticism and the positive
effects of His life prove this ; while if we for a
moment adopt the Christian point of view for

points
towards it.

The Unveiling of the Father 115

the sake of argument, the whole raison d'etre
of mankind is bound up in Him. Lastly, there
are considerations per contra^ rendering an In-
carnation antecedently probable." ^

2. Now these considerations to which Ro-
manes alludes are not foreign to the intellect-
ual atmospliere of our age ; they are native to
it ; they are in fact the offspring of the times,
born of the spirit which now leads the best
thoughts of men.

The whole doctrine of development, as it is Evolution
conceived by the deepest and clearest minds,
looks forward to the discovery of an Incarna-
tion which shall be at once the crown and the
completion of the process of natural evolution.
If nature is an orderly and progressive mani-
festation of an Unseen Power ; if each succes-
sive step in this manifestation realizes and
exhibits something higher and more perfect,
to which all that has gone before has pointed,
and in which the potentialities of all previous
developments are not only summed up, but
raised to a new power ; if the mechanical struct-
ure of inorganic substances contains a proph-
ecy (only to be interpreted after the event) of
organic life, and organic life is a basis for in-
stinct and the elementary processes of intellect,
1 Thoughts on Beligion., p. 186.

116

The Unveiling of the Father

Personality
the final
revelation.

and the rude forms of thought and feeling in
the lower animals foreshadow the unfolding of
reflective reason and moral consciousness in
man, — then surely this reflective reason and
this moral consciousness, in themselves con-
fessedly imperfect, must be only the founda-
tion for a fuller and more perfect manifestation
of that Unseen Power out of whose depths
all preceding manifestations have come forth.
And if the universal verdict of human science
and philosophy is correct in assundng that the
lower must precede the higher, and that or-
ganic life is above inorganic life, and that rea-
son is above instinct, and that virtue is above
automatic action, then it is to be expected that
the complete manifestation of that Unseen
Power which makes for Reason and Righteous-
ness will neither be omitted nor intruded before
its time. It cannot come too soon, without vi-
olating the order of evolution. It cannot fail
to come, without destroying the significance of
evolution.

But in what form can it come except in one
Avhich at once sums up all that has gone before
it, and advances to a new level ? If the uni-
verse contains an unveiling of the might, and
wisdom, and reasonableness, and righteousness,
of its Primal Cause, then certainly it must con-

The Unveiling of the Father 117

tain at last an unveiling of His personality.
This is the only thing that remains to be
added. This is the only thing that embraces
all the rest and raises it to a new power. The
highest category known to onr minds is that
of self-conscious life. Without the conception
of a personal (xod, man's view of the universe
must remain forever incomplete, incoherent,
and unreasonable. Without the revelation of
a personal God, the process of evolution as the
unfolding of the real secret of the universe
must remain unfinished and futile. Philosophy
as well as religion pushes us forward to this
conclusion. Personality is the ultimate reality.
Personality must be the final revelation. But
a person can be unveiled only in a personal
form. Therefore all the presumptions of rea-
son are in favour of an Incarnation of the
Deity, not outside of nature, but in nature, to
consummate and crown that visible evolution
whereby the invisible things of Him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen. And
all the processes of intelligence are satisfied,
and rest and repose in the conviction that
the Word, which was in the beginning with
God and which was God and by whom all
things were made, finally became flesh and
dwelt among us, revealing His glory, the glory

118

The Unveiling of the Father

The gospel
of the

Incarnation
is histori-
cally con-
sistent.

as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth.^

3. Moreover, this view of Christ is adapted
to the present age because it is historically con-
sistent. We have seen that it underlies the
very existence and growth of the Christian
Church. The testimony of eighteen centuries
to the impossibility of explaining the person-
ality of Christ on humanitarian grounds is in
itself an evidence of His divinity.

Lincoln was right when he said : " You can
fool some of the people all of the time, and all
of the people some of the time, but you can-
not fool all of the people all of the time." A
thousand attempts to account for the life of
Christ without admitting His divinity have
been made. Not one of them has succeeded
in winning the assent and approbation of any
great mass of men for any great length of
time. They have hardly survived the lives of
those who have invented them. Each new
naturalistic theory of Christ has discredited
and demolished its predecessors. And if any
one of them is alive and finds credence to-day,
it is only because it is the latest, and it is but

1 See Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of Christianity
(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1894), "Christ is not the prod-
uct of evolution, but the producer," pp. 240-242,

The Unveiliyig of the Father 119

waiting for its successor (as the theory of
Socinus waited for the theory of Strauss, and
the theory of Strauss for the theory of Renan)
to be its judge and destroj^er.

Meantime historic Christianity, whicli l)e- The impre!,.
holds God incarnate in Christ, stands as a rock of Chn's-
around which the tides of opinion ebb and How, tianity.
The Church has changed in some things, but
not in this. It has modified, enlarged, dimin-
ished, or abandoned some articles of faitli, but
not this. If it be an error, it is such an error
as the world has never seen anywhere else ;
for it has not only stood firm through the
fiercest and most persistent storm of criticism
that has ever been directed against any human
opinion, but it has also been the foundation of
the strongest and saintliest lives that humanity
has ever known. If it be a truth, it must be
for every Christian preacher the central truth.
For it is certain that this age of ours, with
its ruthless critical spirit, with its keen histori-
cal sense, will never respect the intelligence,
though it may acknowledge the good inten-
tions, of a man who professes to s})eak in the
name of Christianity without proclaiming, as
the core of his message, the Divine Christ.

4. And this gospel meets the need of our
times because it is the satisfaction of humanity.

120

The Unveiling of the Father

The incar-
nation
satisfies the
human
heart.

More urgent and painful even than the ques-
tions of the intellect in regard to the being and
nature of God, are the misgivings of the heart
in regard to His relations to us. If He is that
remote and inaccessible Sovereign

" Who sees with equal eyes, as Lord of all,
A hero perisli or a sparrow fall,"

what possible answer can we find in Him to
the longings and desires of our souls for a
Divine love ? what possible support can we find
in Him for our struggles against outward
temptation and indwelling evil ? what possible
sympatliy can we find in Him for our hopes
and aspirations and upward strivings, out of
the quicksands of heredity and environment,
towards liberty and light ? The religion of
the Incarnation is the only one that brings us
near to Him, assures us of our kinship with
Him, and of His infinite, practical, helpful love
for us. This faith alone bridges the chasm
that divides the eternal self-existent Spirit
from our finite, despondent, earthbound souls.
This faith alone gives us any knowledge of the
things that we most need to know about Him.
Deism is like a message written in an inscruta-
ble hieroglyph which conveys no clear meaning
to the mind. Theism is like a message which
is intelligible to the intellect, but unsatisfac-

The Unveiling of the Father 121

tory to the heart, because it has no personal
address and no signature. Christianity is a per-
sonal message, signed by the hand of a Father,
and conveyed to us by the hand of the Son.

The comparison is imperfect. It falls far Christ is
short of the truth. In Christianity the mes- J^ ^^
senger is the message. The love which sent
and the love which delivered it are the same.
Christ is Immanuel, God with us. The gospel
of the Incarnation does not profess to remove
all intellectual perplexities in regard to the
existence of God and our own souls. It pro-
fesses simply to establish such a conscious re-
lation between our souls and God that our
ethical needs shall be satisfied at once ; and
thus it shall be infinitely easier, either to dis-
solve, or to endure, our intellectual perplexi-
ties. This relation is possible only in Christ.
And it is possible in Him only when we receive
Him as the unveiling of the Father. This re-
quires an act of faith. But it is a faith which
is simpler in its form, more natural in its
method, and more profound in its spiritual re-
sults than any other. For in the last analysis
it is just an act of personal confidence in a
person. And this does not demand perfect
knowledge, but absolute trust.

122 The Unveiling of the Father

The Deity of To imagine that we can adapt onr preaching
^t^rengtho/ ^^ ^^^^ ^S^ ^^ doubt by weakening, concealing,
our gospel, or abandoning the truth of the Deity of Christ
is to mistake the great need of our times. It
is to seek to commend our gospel by taking
away from it the chief thing that men really
want, — an assurance of sympathy and kinship
with God. " One of the great marks of the
youth of to-day," says Ernest Lavisse, — ''I
speak of thinking youth, — is a longing for the
Divine." 1 This longing is to be met not by
slighting, but by emphasizing, not by clouding,
but by clarifying, not by withdrawing, but by
advancing, the true Deity of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let us take up the words of the ancient
creed : " We believe in one Lord Jesus Christy
the Son of God, only -begotten of the Father, that
is of the substance of the Father, G-od of God,
Light of Light, very God of God, begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father :
by Whom all things were made which are in
heaven and earth: Who, for us men and for our
salvation, came doivn, and was iricarnate, and was
made man, and suffered, and rose the third day,
and ascended into the heavens, and shall come
to judge the quick and the dead.'"^

1 Ernest Lavisse, La Generation de 1890.
'^ Symbolum Nicaenum, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol.
ii. (Harpers, 1882).

THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD

" Behold Him now where He comes !

Not the Christ of our subtle creeds,

But the light of our hearts, of our homes,

Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs ;

The brother of want and blame,

The lover of women and men,

With a love that puts to shame

All passions of mortal ken.

******
*' Ah no, thou life of the heart,

Never shalt thou depart !

Not till the leaven of God

Shall lighten each human clod;

Not till the world shall climb

To thy height serene, sublime,

Shall the Christ who enters our door

Pass to return no more."

— Richard Watson Gilder,
The Passing of Christ.

THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD

Nearly fifty years ago, Horace Bushnell, ^ff^^^at

.,(,... , . truth in

the most mystical of logicians, or the most logi- eclipse.
cal of mystics, delivered before Yale University
a magnificent discourse upon The Divinity of
Christ. In that fine work of genius, wrought
out of darkness and light, mystery and clear-
ness, like an intricate carving of ebony and
gold, I find these words : " Christ is in such
a sense God, or God manifested, that the un-
known term of His nature, that which we are
most in doubt of, and about which we are least
capable of any positive affirmation, is the
human." ^

This sentence, it seems to me, is not of light,
but of darkness. It does not represent that
illuminating and harmonious kind of truth
which comes directly from the divine revelation
of Christ. It belongs rather to that obscured

1 Horace Bushnell, God in Christ (New York, Scribners,
1887), p. 123.

125

126

The Hmnan Life of G-od

Theolofjy
has lost
sight of
Christ's
hnmanitij.

and discordant manner of presenting truth
which is the consequence of studying it too
much at second-hand and too little at first-
hand, too much in the speculations and reason-
ings of men and too little in the facts of life
wherein it was first manifested. Whatever
may be said of this sentence as a statement of
the result of dogmatic theology, — and in this
sense I, for one, do not question its accuracy,
— when we consider its plain meaning as an
expression of Christian experience and faith,
one thing is clear : It is utterly out of touch
with the experience and faith of the first dis-
ciples. It is in sharp and striking discord
with the consciousness of the primitive Church.
For if there is anything in regard to which the
New Testament makes positive and undoubting
affirmation, it is the complete, genuine, and
veritable humanity of Christ. If there is any
fact which stands out luminous and distinct
in the experience of the early Christians, it is
that they saw in Christ, not merely a myste-
rious manifestation of the Divine in a form cal-
culated to beget new doubts, and under con-
ditions which must remain, inscrutable and
incomprehensible, but something utterly differ-
ent. They saw the mystery reduced to terms
of simplicity, the revelation levelled to the

The Human Life of G-od 127

direct apprehension of man, the unveiling of
the Father under conditions which were so
familiar that they dissolved doubts and diffi-
culties. They saw in Christ the human life
of God.

The object of this lecture is, first, to trace How shall
very briefly the way in which this view of ^ L^'f'J ? ^^
Christ has been beclouded so that His human-
ity has appeared doubtful and less capable of
positive affirmation ; second, to show how the
primitive view of His person and life may be,
and in the history of Christian faith often has
been, recovered and restored to its pristine
brilliancy and beauty ; and third, to try to
express, though but imperfectly, the meaning
and importance of this view for the present
age.

Definition is dangerous. Necessary it may Obscuration
be ; useful it undoubtedly is ; but our recogni- y-/^^^"^' ^^'
tion of these qualities ought not to make us
forget or deny the peril which the process cer-
tainly involves. And this is the nature of the
danger : the definition has an inherent ten-
dency to substitute itself for the thing defined.
The terms in which a fact is expressed creep
into the place of the fact itself. The reality is

128

The Human Life of God

An illustra-
tion from
the history
of Art.

removed insensibly to a remote distance behind
the verbal symbols which represent it. The
way of access to it is blocked, and its influ-
ence is restricted by the forms of expression
invented to define it.

I do not know where we can find a more vivid
illustration of this process than that which is
given, in many ways, in the history of art. The
first effort of the artist is to represent something
that he has seen or imagined. Oat of this
effort and the work which it produces, grow
certain methods and habits of representing
landscape and architecture and the human
figure. Out of these habits grow rules and
formulas, not only for the hand but also for the
eye. On these formulas schools are founded.
In these schools the example of masters comes
to have an authority which overshadows and
limits the vision of facts as well as the repre-
sentation of them. The Japanese artists, of
certain schools, actually reproduce that infan-
tile condition of sight in which all things
appear flat, in a single plane, Avithout perspec-
tive. The Giotteschi of Italy carried their
disregard of anatomy to such a point that
johits and articulations vanished from the
human figure.

The Human Life of God 129

Now this same process of limitation by for- R^presenta-
mill as may be observed, on the ideal side, in (J^^J
the course of religious art. The first pictures
of Christ, traced in colour upon the walls of
the Catacombs, or carved in stone upon the sar-
cophagi of the Christian dead, do not give us
indeed tlie very earliest conception of Him ; for
the Christian art of the first two centuries, if it
ever existed, has long since perished. But that
Avhich remains, dating from the third and fourth
centuries, bears witness to an idea of the Christ
Avhich was simple and natural and humane.
He appears as a figure of youthful beauty and
graciousness ; the good Shepherd Ijearing a
lamb upon His shoulders ; the true Orpheus
drawing all creatures and souls by the charm
of His amiable music. ^ These are only sym-
bolic representations, yet they evidence a con-
ception of Him which was still in touch with
the facts. A little later we find an effort to
conceive and dejDict Him with more realism.
His face appears in pictures which resemble
the description given in the spurious Epistle
of Lentulus : " A man of dignified presence,
with dark hair parted in the middle and
flowing down, after the custom of the Naza-

1 So in the paintings from the Catacombs of S. Agnese
and S. Callisto.

130 The Human Life of God

renes, over both shoulders ; His brow clear
and pure ; His unfurrowed face of pleasant
aspect and medium complexion ; His mouth
and nose faultless ; His short, light beard
parted in the middle ; His eyes bright and
lustrous."^
Tradition ^ But whcn wc pass on to the creations of so-

iiptv I tip ^

Christian Called Byzantine art, we find ourselves face to
^''^- face with an utterly different view of the Christ.

His countenance now stares out in glittering
mosaic from the walls of great churches, huge,
dark, threatening, a dreadful and forbidding
face. The fixed and formal lines are repeated
and deepened by artist after artist. Every feat-
ure of naturalness is obliterated ; every feature
that seemed to express awfulness is exagger-
ated and emphasized. The wide-set eyes, the
long narrow countenance, the stern, inflexible
mouth, — in this ocular definition the man
Christ Jesus has vanished, and we see only the
immense, immutable, and terrible Pantokrator,
who cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities. 2

When we turn to the intellectual life of the
Church out of which this type of art grew, we

1 This is the imago Christi which we see in the painting
from the Catacomb of S. Ponziano.

2 Tliis type was shown in the mosaic in the Cliurcli of St.
Paul outside tlie walls, near Rome, hitely destroyed by tire.

The Human Life of God 131

see there the process explained. The early Dogmas
Greek Fathers, like Trenyeus, went directly to ^-g^^ ^y
the Holy Scriptures for their view of the per- Chinst.
son of Christ, and frankly accepted all the
features of the living, lovely portrait there dis-
closed. They recognized without reserve the
reality of Christ's human growth in w^isdom and
stature and in favour with God and men ; the
actual limitations of Christ's human knowledge
as expressed in the questions that He asked and
in His profession of ignorance in regard to the
time of His second advent ; the intimacy of His
sympathy with us in temptation, suffering, and
deatii. But with the development of theological
definition this direct view of Christ was modified,
obscured, and at last totally eclipsed. Instead of
looking at God through His revelation in Christ,
the Fathers began to look at Christ through a
more and more abstract, precise, and inflexible
statement of the metaphysical idea of God. It
became necessary to harmonize the Scripture
record of the life of Jesus with the theories of
the divine nature set forth in the decrees of
councils and defined with amazing particularity
in the writings of theologians. In the effort to
accomplish this, two main lines of thought were
followed. One line abandoned the belief in

132 The ilummi Life of Grod

The hiding Christ's real and complete humanity, and re-
IfJesiis^^ duced His human life to a tenuous and filmy
apparition. The other line distinguished be-
tween His humanity and His Divinity in such
a way as to divide Him into two halves, either
of which appears virtually complete without
the other, and both of which are united, not in
a single and sincere personality, but in an out-
ward manifestation and a concealed life, cover-
ing in some mysterious way a double centre of
existence. It is only fair to say that the ex-
treme results of these two lines of thought were
condemned by the Church in the heresies of
Doketism and Apollinarianism, Eutychianism
and Nestorianism. But it is equally fair to say
that the influence of these theories was by no
means checked nor extirpated. They continued
to make themselves felt powerfully and perni-
ciously ; now in the direction of dissolving
the humanity of Christ into a mere cloud
enveloping His Deity ; and again in the
direction of dividing and destroying the
unity of His person in the defniitions of His
dual nature.
Bending the It is not neccssary, nor would it be possible,
deiiniiions. f^^' ^^ ^^ tracc tliis proccss in detail through all
its complexities and self-contradictions. It
will be enough to give two or three specimens

The Human Life of God 133

of the kind of work to which it led in dealing
with two essential features of the picture of
Christ which is given to us in the Gospels : His
human limitation of knowledge, and His human
growth in wisdom, stature, and grace. Both
limitation and growth are unexempt conditions
of manhood. Both are unquestionably attrib-
uted to Clmst in the New Testament. Both
are explicitly denied by theologians. Ephrem
Syrus, commenting upon the Diatessaron of
Tatian, says : '' Christ, though He knew the
moment of His advent, yet that they might not
ask Him any more about it, said, I hiow it not.''^
Chrysostom, in his explanation of St. Matthew
xxiv. 36, paraphrases Christ's words in this
extraordinary fashion : " For if thou seek after
the day and the hour thou shalt not hear them
of me, saith He ; but if of times and preludes,
I will tell thee all exactly. For that indeed
I am not ignorant of it^ I have shown by many
things. — I lead thee to the very vestibule ;
and if 1 do not open unto thee the doors, this
also I do for your good."^ John of Damascus,
defending the orthodox faith, declares that,

1 Evang. Concordant. Expos. (Aucher and Moesinger,
Venice, 1876), p. 16.

2 St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew,
Ixxvii. 2. The Nicene Fathers (New York, Christian Litera-
ture Co., 1888), vol. X.

134 The Human Life of G-od

" Christ is said to advance in wisdom and
stature and grace, because He grows in fact in
stature, and through His growth in stature
brings out into exhibition the wisdom which
already existed in Him. ... But those who
say that He really grew in wisdom and grace as
receiving increase in these, deny that the flesh
was united to the word from the first moment
of its existence."^ Peter Lombard does not
explicitly adopt, but quotes with evident ap-
proval, the opinion that the person of the eter-
nal Word put on a human body and soul as a
robe, in order that He might appear suitably to
the eyes of mortals, yet in Himself He was not
changed by this incarnation, but remained one
and the same, immutable. ^

A very full and clear exhibition of the dark-
ness and unreality in which the patristic and
mediaeval theologians involved the person of
Christ may be found in Professor A. B. Bruce's
great book on The Humiliation of Christ,^ and
in Canon Charles Gore's two admirable vol-
umes on The Incarnation^'^ from which I have

1 John Damascene, De Fide Orthod., Lib. iii. chap. xxii.

2 Peter Lombard, Sentt., Book iii., Dist. vi. § G.

3 Prof. Alexander Bahnain Bruce, The Humiliation of
Christ (New York, Armstrongs, 1887).

4 Canon Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God^
Bampton Lectures, 1891 (New York, Scribners, 1891). Dis-

The Human Life of Crod 135

taken some illustrations after verifying them.
Professor Bruce sums up the matter by saying :
" The effect, though not the design, of theories
of Christ's person has been to a large extent to
obscure some of these elementary truths, —
the unity of the person, or the reality of the
humanity, or the divinity dwelling within the
man, or the voluntariness and ethical value of
the state of the humiliation. That is, certain-
ties have been sacrificed for uncertainties, facts
for hypotheses, faith for speculation." ^

Canon Gore, in his Bampton Lectures, ^^^^ej/ian-

hood of

adroitly uses the Jesuit theologian De Lugo as jesus van-
a man of straw through whom he may safely **^^*'
and vigorously attack the false conceptions of
Christ's person which are still current, and to a
considerable degree dominant, in dogmatic the-
ology. He says that De Lugo depicts a Christ
"who, if He was, as far as His body is con-
cerned, in a condition of growth, was, as re-
gards His soul and intellect, from the first
moment and throughout His life in full enjoy-
ment of the beatific vision. Externally a way-
farer, a viator, inwardly He was throughout
a comprehensor, He had already attained. . . .
It is denied that He can be strictly called

sertations on Subjects connected with the Incarnation (New
York, Scribuers, 1895). i The Hiimiliation of Christ, p. 192.

136 The Human Life of aod

' the servant of God ' even as man, in spite of the
direct use of that expression in the Acts of the
Apostles. He is spoken of at tlie institution of
the Eucharist as offering sacrifice to His own
Godhead."!
Modern ex- Canon Gore condemns this picture by De
false Chris- I^ugo as in striking contradiction to that which
toiogy. w^Q New Testament presents. But the point

which I wish to make clear and distinct, is that,
in spite of this contradiction, the picture has
not been frankly and finally discarded in Chris-
tian theology. It still exercises an obscuring
and perverting influence upon the vision of
Christ. It still produces, by imitation, repre-
sentations of Him in which definitions dominate
facts, and formulas hide or obliterate realities.
We do not need to go back to the seventeenth
century, nor abroad to the Jesuits, for our ex-
amples. We may turn to Archdeacon Wilber-
force's book on The Incarnation^ and find him
representing the body of Clirist as miraculous
in its freedom from sickness, its power over
animals, its exemption from the necessity of
death, and its inherent power of communicat-
ing life to others.'^ In regard to the mind of

1 The Incarnation, p. 164.

2 Archdeacon Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Incarna-
tion (New York, Young, 1885), pp. 60-65.

The Hummi Life of aocl 137

Christ, he says that '^smce it would be impious
to suppose that our Lord had pretended an
ignorance which He did not experience, we
are led to the conclusion [astonishing conclu-
sion !] that what He partook, as man, was
not actual ignorance, but such deficiency in
the means of arriving at truth as belongs to
mankind/'^ We may turn to the Dogmatic
Theology of Dr. W. G. T. Shedd and read:
"Jesus Christ as a theanthropic person was A double
constituted of a divine nature and a human ^^^^
nature. The divine nature had its OAvn form
of experience, like the mind in an ordinary
human person ; and the human nature had its
own form of experience, like the body in a com-
mon man. The experiences of the divine nature
were as diverse from those of the human nature
as those of the human mind are from those of
the human body. Yet there was but one per-
son who was the subject-ego of both of these
experiences. At the very time when Christ
was conscious of weariness and thirst by the
well of Samaria, He also Avas conscious that He
was the eternal and only-begotten Son of God,
the second person in the Trinity. This is proved
b}' His words to the Samaritan woman : ' Who-
soever drinketh of the water that I shall give
1 Ibid., p. 71.

138 The Human Life of God

him shall never thirst ; but the water that I
shall give him shall be in him a well of water
springing up into everlasting life. I that speak
unto thee am the Messiah.' The first-mentioned
consciousness of fatigue and thirst came through
the human nature in His person ; the second-
mentioned consciousness of omnipotence and
supremacy came through the divine nature in
His person. If He had not had a human nature,
He could not have had the former consciousness;
and if He had not had a divine nature. He could
not have had the latter. Because He had both
natures in one person, He could have both."^
We may turn to Canon Liddon's magnificent
work on The Biviyiity of our Lord and find him
writing : *' Christ's Manhood is not of Itself an
individual being ; It is not a seat and centre of
personality ; It has no conceivable existence
apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word
in becoming Incarnate called It into being and
made It His Own. It is a vesture which He has
folded around His person ; It is an instrument
through which He places Himself in contact with
men and whereby He acts upon humanity." ^

1 W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (New York, Scrib-
ners, 1888), vol. ii., pp. 307, 308.

2 H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, Bampton Lectures, 1866 (London, Rivingtons,
11th edition, 1885), p. 262.

The Human Life of God 139

And so, if we accept this picture of Christ, The human
the manhood of Jesus fades, retreats, grows ^^^^
dim and shadowy. It wavers like a veil. It
dissolves like mist. It descends again mys-
terious and impenetrable, illusory and imper-
sonal, to envelop Him whom we love and adore
in its strange and unfamiliar folds. We grope
after Him, but we can touch nothing but the
hem of His mystic robe. We long for Him,
but He approaches us, and comes into contact
with us, only tlxrough an instrument. He is
not what He seems. The Son of God behind
that veil is beyond our reach. The Son of
man, whom human eyes beheld and human
hands touched, is not the real, living, veritable
Saviour, but only the form, the garment, of an
inscrutable life. And if, in our dire confusion,
our reasoning faith still succeeds in holding
fast to the Eternal Logos, our confiding faith is
maimed and robbed by the loss of that true,
near, personal, loving, sympathizing Jesus, who
was born of a woman, suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He is
gone from us, as certainly as if the Pharisees
had spoken truth when they said that His dis-
ciples came by night and stole Him away. The
thing of which we are most in doubt, and
about which we are least capable of any positive

140

The Human Life of God

affirmation, as Dr. Bashnell said, is the human-
ity of Christ. We are left with a perfectly
orthodox doctrine of two natures, but we no
longer have a clear and simple gospel of One
Person to preach to doubting men.

The 10 or-
ship of the
Virgin
Mary.

The cry of But the heart of Christendom has never

a human rested content with this distant, vague, uncer-

Saviour. tain view of the real manhood of our Lord.

There has always been a protest against it.

There has always been an effort to escape from

it.

We can see a strange and indirect but
indubitable evidence of this deep inward dis-
satisfaction, in the rise and growth of an im-
passioned devotion to the human mother of
Jesus. The worship of the Virgin Mary was
a reprisal for the obscuration of the humanity
of her Son. In the thought of her true
womanly tenderness and affection, her real and
unquestionable sorrows, her simple and familiar
joys, her intimate, genuine, unfailing sympathy
with all that makes our mortal life a bitter,
blessed reality to us, the souls of the lowly and
the lonely found that peace and consolation

The Human Life of God 141

which they could no longer find in the con-
templation of the distant Second Person of the
Trinity through the telescope of theology.
That which Jesus Himself was to John and
Peter, to the household of Bethany, to the
penitent publican, and to the woman which
Avas a sinner, Mary became to the baffled and
confused faith of a later age, — an approachable
mediator of the divine mercy, a helper who
could really understand and feel the need of
those who cried for help, a warm and living
image of the Eternal Sympathy in flesh and
blood. In the light of mediaeval dogmatics
Mariolatry appears not without its justifica-
tion. And for my part, I should not Avish to be
bound to the Christology of Peter Lombard
and Thomas Aquinas, without finding the com-
pensation which their followers found in per-
sonal devotion and confidential trust, flowing
instinctively and irresistibly towards the blessed
Virgin.

But, after all, this was only a substitute for The search
the real thing. It gave to faith the image of
a lovely and adorable humanity in closest union
with God ; but it did not give back the old
vision of the human life of God. And so
through all the ages we see men turning, now
in solitary thought, now in great companies, to

142 The Human Life of G-od

seek that vision. The renaissance of Christian
art, with its beautiful pictures of the infancy of
Jesus, with its piercing and pathetic representa-
tions of the sufferings of Jesus, bears witness
to the eagerness of that search. The revivals
of Christian life, seen in such diverse yet cog-
nate forms as the rise of the " Poor Men of
Lyons " and the foundation of the " Brother-
hood of St. Francis " are evidences of the same
movement back to Christ. Peter Waldo outside
of the Church, and Francis of Assisi within the
Church, were awakened by the same vision of
Jesus, " a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief," and were inspired by the same desire to
make His real human life the pattern of all piety
The spirit and the example of all goodness. The Refor-
mation, which was at once and equally an intel-
lectual and a spiritual protest against the arro-
gance of current theology and the coldness of
religious life, supplies no better watchword to
express its great motive than the saying of
Erasmus : " I could wish that those frigid subt-
leties either were completely cut off, or were
not the only things that the theologians held as
certain, and that the Christ pure and simi^le 7night
he implanted deep within the minds of men.^'^

1 Erasmus, quoted in Gore, Dissertations^ etc., p. 180,
Epistle 207.

oftheRefor
mation

The Human Life of God 143

Modern Biblical scholarship, with its splendid
apparatus of linguistic and historical learning,
proceeding in part, at first, from a sceptical im-
pulse, has developed in our generation, either
through the conversion of sceptics in the process
of research, or through the awakening of be-
lievers to the necessities of their faith, into a
reverent and eager quest for the historic Christ,
the Jesus of the Gospels, the Lord of the primi-
tive Church, that we may see Him as the first
Christians saw Him, in the integrity of His per-
son and the sincerity of His life, and receive from "Back to
Him what they received, — a faith that dissolved
doubts and an inspiration that conquered diffi-
culties. Back to the New Testament of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, — back to the
facts that lie behind the definitions, back to
the Person who embodies the truth, back to the
record and reflection of that which the apostles
"heard, and saw with their eyes, and looked
upon, and their hands handled of the word of
life," — this, and this only, is the way that leads
us within sight of

" the heaven-drawn picture
Of Christ, the hving Word."

Now it is a marvellous thing, and one for
which we can never be grateful enough, that

144 The Human Life of Grod

when we come to the New Testament in this
spirit, we find in it exactly what we need ; not an
abstract formula, not a collection of definitions,
but the graphic reflection of a Person seen
from a fourfold point of view, and the simple
record of manifold human experience under the
direct and dominant influence of that Person.
And the one fact that emerges clear and tri-
umphant from the reflection and the record, is
that the writers of the New Testament never
were in doubt of the human nature of Christ
and never hesitated to make the most positive
affirmations in regard to it,

The Christ of the Gospels is bone of our
bone, flesh of our flesh, mind of our mind,
heart of our heart. He is in subjection to
His parents as a child. He grows to man-
hood. His character is unfolded and perfected
by discipline. He labours for daily bread, and
prays for Divine grace. He hungers, and
thirsts, and sleeps, and rejoices, and weeps.
He is anointed with the Spirit for His minis-
try. He is tempted. He is lonely and dis-
appointed. He asks for information. He
confesses ignorance. He interprets the facts
of nature and life with a prophetic insight.
But He makes no new disclosure of the secrets
of omniscience. There is no hint nor indica-

The Human Life of Crod 145

tion that He is leading a double life, reigning
consciously as God while He is suffering appar-
ently as man. His personality is simple and
indivisible. The glory of what He is and does,
lies not only in its perfection, but in the hard
conditions of its accomplishment. Superhuman
in His origin, as the only-begotten Son of God ;
superhuman in His office and work, as the re-
vealer of the Father and the redeemer of man-
kind ; in His earthly existence the Christ of the
Gospels enters without reserve and without de-
ception into all the conditions and limitations
Avhich are necessary to give to the world, once
and forever, the human life of God.

When we turn to the Epistles to see how ^^^ Christ
this view of Christ was affected by the recog- Epistles.
nition of His divine glory and power as one
who had been raised to the right hand of God
and made head over all things to the Church,
two things strike us with tremendous force.
First, the identity of His person was not lost,
nor the continuity of His being broken : the
exalted Christ is none other than "this same
Jesus." ^ Second, the reality and absoluteness
of His humiliation are emphasized as the ground
and cause of His exaltation.

How vividly these two things come out, for
1 Acts i. 11.

146 The Human Life of Giod

example^ in the writings of St. Paul. It has
been well said that " the Christ whom Paul had
seen was the risen Christ, and the conception
of Him in His glorified character is the one
which rules his thoughts and forms the start-
ing-point of his teaching." ^ Corresponding to
this present glory, Paul assumes an eternally
pre-existent glory of Christ as the image of
the invisible God, the medium and end of crea-
tion.^ Now it is of this Person, divinely glori-
ous in the j)ast as the One who is before all
things and in whom all things consist,^ divinely
glorious in the present as the One who is far
above every name that is named, not only in
this world but in that which is to come,* —
it is of this Person that Paul writes, in words
so strong that they touch the very border of
the impossible : " For our sakes. He beggared
Himself that we through His beggary might
be enriched."^ And again: "He, existing in
the form of God, did not consider an equal
state with God a thing to be selfishly grasped
and held, but emptied Himself and took the
form of a slave, being made in the likeness of
man."^ These powerful expressions, "self-

1 Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 206.

2 Col. i. 16. 3 Col. i. 17. 4 Eph. i. 21.
^ 2 Cor. viii. 9. e pijii. ii. o^ 7.

The Human Life of Grod 147

beggary," "self-emptying," seem to be directly
designed to break up the conventional moulds
in which dogmatic theology has attempted to
cast the truth and let it harden. They bring
back a vital warmth and motion into the facts
of the Incarnation. Once more it glows and
flows. Once more we see that it is not a mere
exhibition of being but a process of becoming.
The idea of self-beggary mightily overflows
the mere statement that a human nature was
added and united to the divine nature ; for
that would have been no impoverishment but
an enrichment. The idea of self -emptying The
shatters the narrow dogma that the Son of
God suffered no change in Himself when He
became man. It was a change so absolute, so
immense, that it can only be compared with
the vicissitude from fulness to emptiness. He
laid aside the existence-form of God, in order
that He might take the existence-form of man.
Whatever right He had to an equal state of
glory with God, that right He did not cling
to, but surrendered, in order that He might
become a servant. And upon this real self-
emptying there followed a real self-humilia-
tion, wherein, being found in fashion as a man.
He became obedient unto death, even the death

148 The Human Life of God

of the cross. ^ It was on account of this, —
and by " this " we must understand the entire
actual operation of the self-denying, self-hum-
bling, self-sacrificing mind of Christ, — it was
for this reason, St. Paul declares, that '' God
highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the
name which is above every name."^ And I
know not how to interpret such language
with any reality of intelligence, unless it
means that the present glory of the Son of
God is in some true sense tlie result of His
having become man and so fulfilled the will
of God.
The Epistle This view, which St. Paul condenses into a
brotherhood. Single pregnant "wherefore," is expanded in
the Epistle to the Hebrews. The object of
this Epistle is to show the superiority of the
priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, which are
substantial and enduring, to the priesthood and
sacrifice of the old dispensation, which were
shadowy and transient. But the method which
the writer follows is not to deny, but to assert
the verity of Christ's humanity. Without this
He could not be the true priest nor offer the
true sacrifice. ''In all things it behoved Him
to be made like unto His brethren. "^ " For we
have not an high priest which cannot be touched
1 Phil. ii. 8. 2 Phil. ii. 9. 3 jieb. ii. 17.

of conde-
scension.

The Humayi Life of Qod 149

witli tlie feeling of our infirmities : but was in
all j)oints tempted like as we are, yet without
sin." ^ " Though He were a Son, yet learned
He obedience by the things which He suffered,
and being made perfect, He became the author
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey
Him."'^ This complete incarnation, this thor- The gioi-y
ough trial under human conditions, this perfect
discipline of obedience through suffering, was a
humiliation. But it was in no sense a degrada-
tion. On the contrary, it was a crowning of
Christ with glory and honour in order that He
might taste death for every man. "For it be-
came Him, for whom are all things, and by
Avhom are all things, in bringing many sons to
glory, to make the captain of their salvation
perfect through suffering." ^ If the Epistle to
the Hebrews teaches anything, it certainly
teaches this. The humanity of Jesus was not
the veiling but the unveiling of the divine
glory. The limitations, temptations, and suffer-
ings of manhood were the conditions under
which alone Christ could accomplish the great-
est work of the Deity, — the redemption of a
sinful race. The seat of the divine revelation
and the centre of the divine atonement was and
is the human life of God.

1 Heb. iv. 16. 2 Heb. v. 8, 9. s Heb. ii. 9, 10.

160

The Human Life of Crod

III

A summa}^
of conclu-
sions.

Current
theology
at fault.

11 a man
theories
not to he
insisted
upon.

Here, then, we may pause for a moment and
try to sum up the conclusions to which the New
Testament leads us in regard to the person of
Christ.

I am sincerely anxious not to be misunder-
stood. On the one hand, I would not conceal
for a moment my conviction that current theol-
ogy has failed, very often and very largely, to
do justice to the meaning of the Incarnation on
the human side, and that we must go back to
the image of Jesus Christ as it is reflected in the
Gospels to purify, and refresh, and simplify
our faith. We should not vsuffer any reverence
for ancient definitions of doctrine, however well
founded, nor any fear of incurring reproach and
mistrust as innovators, to deter us from that
necessary and loyal return to the reality of tlie
Person in whom our creed centres and on whom
it rests. To find Jesus anew, to see Him again,
as if for the first time, in the wondrous glory
of His humility, is the secret of the revival of
Christianity in every age. This is not innova-
tion ; it is renovation.

On the other hand, we have no right and we
ought to have no inclination to insist exclusively
upon any particular theory as the only possible

The Human Life of Grod 151

explanation of the facts of the Incarnation.
Every earnest and thoughtful man must feel
that these facts are so deep and mysterious that
the plummet of human reason cannot sound
their ultimate recesses. With all our thinking
upon this subject, there must ever mingle a con-
sciousness of insufficiency and a confession of
ignorance. But with this confession of igno-
rance there must go also a clear recognition of
those portions of the truth which are unques-
tionably revealed in the New Testament. Three
things are there made plain to faith.

1. God is so closely related to man, and the Three vital
likeness of God in man is so real, that the Di-
vine Logos is able to descend l)y a free act of
self-determining love into tlie lower estate of
liuman existence, and liiimbly Himself to the
conditions of manhood without losing His per-
sonal identity.

2. The essence of the Gospel is its declara-
tion of the fact that this act of condescension,
of self-humiliation, actually has been performed,
and that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God
who has taken upon Him the existence-form of
a servant, and lived a truly human life, and
been obedient even unto death, in order to re-
veal to the world the saving love of God.

162 The Human Life of God

3. The distinctive attributes of personality
in Christ (self-consciousness and self-deter-
mination) are not dual, as of two persons,
the one divine and the other human, co-exist-
ing side by side in a double life, but individual,
and manifested as the life of one person. That
person is the Son of God, who laid aside the
glory which He had with the Father, and emp-
tied Himself, and so became the Son of man ;
and on account of this humiliation God hath
highly exalted Him and crowned Him with
glory and honour as the God-man forever.
These points These are the points which are vital to the
reality of the Gospel of the Incarnation. All
theories which make these points clear, safe-
guard the truth in its integrity and in its rec-
onciling power. The question of the method
of the divine humiliation and the human exal-
tation of Christ, lies beyond these points. It
is not necessary to insist upon any particular
form of its solution. Indeed, it may well be
that the profundity of the question, the inher-
ent mystery of the facts of life and personality
with which it deals, and the limitations of
human thought and language, preclude the
possibility of a complete and final answer at
present. It must be frankly acknowledged
that none of the solutions which have been pro-

de fended.

The Human Life of God 153

f)ounded hitherto are free from serious perplex-
ities. But it must be recognized with equal
frankness that the theories which have been
put forward in modern times, with new earnest-
ness and power, by men of unquestionable loy-
alty to the Christianity of the New Testament,
who have sought to find a clear and positive
meaning for the great word ICenosis, which
St. Paul uses to describe the self-emptying of
Christ in the Incarnation, — theories which
have been stigmatized as kenotic^ as if the name
were enough to mark them as unorthodox, —
are so far from being heretical that they have
the rare merit of conserving and emphasizing a
truth of surpassing value, undoubtedly taught
in the Bible, and too much neglected, if not
practically denied, during many centuries of
theological speculation. It may be, as Julius
Mliller held, that the distinctive attributes of V(^rious

. methods of

personality are, abstractly considered, identical safe-guard-
in God and man, so that, by the divine self-
limitation in the Incarnation, they are actually
unified, like two circles which have a common
centre. 1 It may be, as Dr. Fairbairn holds,
that the Son of God, being the eternal repre-

1 For this statement of Miiller's view, which he gave in
his lectures, I am indebted to Dr. George P. Fisher, who was
one of his hearers.

ing them.

154 The Human Life of God

sentative of the filial relationship within the
Godhead, the symbol of the created within the
uncreated, needed but to surrender the form
and status of the uncreated Son in order to
assume, by the same act, the form and status
which man as the created Son was intended to
realize.^ It may be, as Godet holds, that the
Incarnation was by deprivation, and that the
Eternal Word renounced His divine mode of
being, and entered into life, without omnisci-
ence, omnipresence, or omnipotence, as an un-
conscious babe. 2 It matters little in what form
of words we try to express the transcendent
truth. But it matters much, it is supremely
important for the integrity of our Gospel and
for its influence upon the heart of this doubting
age, that we should liold fast to the fact that
the life of Jesus of Nazareth is simply and
sincerely the human life of God.

The time is at hand when this simple and
profound view of Christ, which beholds in Him
the God-man in whom Deity is self-limited
and humbled in order that humanity may be
divinely exalted and perfected, must break
through the clouds which have obscured it, and
become the leading light of religion and theol-

1 The Place of Christ in Afodern Theology, p. 476.

2 Godet, Commentary on John i. 14.

The Human Life of G-od 155

ogy. The life of Christ needs to be restudied
and rewritten under this luminous guidance, in
absolute and unhesitating loyalty to the facts
as they lie before our eyes in the Gospels. ^ The
doctrine of Christ's person needs to be recon-
structed and restated in this light. It must
include, as the creed of Chalcedon included,
not only the truth of a Homoousia — a sameness
of nature and experience — with God, which
the past has vindicated ; but also the equal
truth of a Homoousia with man, which the fut-
ure is to unfold as the universality of Christ's
manhood is exhibited through His progressive
triumphs among all the races of men and all
the modes of human life. The humanity of the
incarnate Christ must stand out as clear, as pos-

1 "No action of our Saviour's earthly life, from Bethlehem
to Calvary, exhibits divinity. He appears first as a helpless
habe in the manger. He is subject to His parents. As the
child grows, He w^axes strong in spirit and increases in wis-
dom. Such an increase in wisdom implies increase in know-
ledge, and less knowledge or greater ignorance to-day than
to-morrow. Omniscience could not have been exercised by
the Jesus who was growing in wisdom. If any say here, as
we usually do, that the humanity grew but the divinity was
omniscient, let us ask if there were two persons in Jesus.
This Nestorianism is practically the creed of the present day
with the Reformed Churches, They have gone over to a
virtual duplication of the person of Christ." — Howard
Crosby, The True Humanity of Christ (New York, Ran-
dolph, 1880).

156 The Human Life of God

itive, as indubitable, as His Deity. Nay, more,
it must stand where the New Testament puts
it, in the foreground of faith. For it is only in
this humanity that we can truly find the Son of
God who loved us and gave Himself for us.
The old How Urgent and pressing are the needs of

definitions i • i

inadequate, o^^' o^n age which call US to this work! How
far behind us, how effete and inadequate, are
the terms and illustrations which were used in
former ages to express the results of human
thought in regard to the person of Christ !
Recall, for instance, that fine similitude of the
heated sword which the Lutheran theologians
borrowed from the Fathers to explain the
union of the divine with the human in Christ!
To them it was satisfactory because they re-
garded heat as one substance and iron as
another substance. In their view the divine
nature penetrated and pervaded the human
nature as the caloric fluid was supposed to per-
meate a mass of metal. But in our world the
caloric fluid does not exist. Heat is not a sub-
stance, but a mode of motion in substances.
In the light of modern science the old simili-
tude fades into a meaningless comparison of
things which cannot be compared.

We cannot accept the scholastic terminology
of " natures " and '• subsistences " in the final

The Huma7i Life of God 157

and absolute sense in which it was once em-
ployed. The philosophy of realism, which
ascribed an objective existence to universals
apart from individuals, is not the philosophy of
to-day. Its language is not only foreign, but
dead. The philosophy of being and not-being
has opened to receive the philosophy of becom-
ing ; and, in so doing, it has been utterly trans-
formed.

Life is now the regnant idea ; personality its Life is the
utmost expression. It is in the facts of life, ^^g^"^
its secret potencies, its mysterious limitations
in germ and seed, its magnificent unfoldings in
the process of development that we must seek
our comparisons for the Incarnation. And the
very search will bring us face to face with the
conviction that life in all its manifestations
transcends analysis without ceasing to be the
object of knowledge.

In the living world the boundaries of imagi- ^^'^ ^"'^^

. life but can-

nation are not coterminous with the limits of ^ot define it.

apprehension. We know many facts and

forms of life whose modes of becoming we

cannot imagine. It is just as impossible for

us to conceive how the life of the oak, root and

trunk and branch and leaf, form and colour

and massive strength, is all folded in the tiny,

colourless, unshaped seed, as it is to conceive

158

The Human Life of God

how the life of God is embodied in the man
Christ Jesus. But the difficulty of conceiving
the manner of this infolding, this embodiment,
does not destroy for us the reality of the life.
Indeed, if we could explain it entirely, if we
could trace it perfectly as in a diagram, if we
could observe it completely, as in one of those
beautiful models of flowers which a skilful
artist 1 has recently made to illustrate his lect-
ures on botany, we should know that it was not
life, but only a picture of it. The picture is
useful, but it is not vital. The metaphor has
its value, but it falls far short of the truth.
Self-heggary and self -emptying are but "words
thrown out towards " an unimaginable but not
unreasonable manifestation of the Divine Love
as life. The reality to which they point us is
the Son of God descending to live under all
the conditions and limitations of energy and
consciousness which are proper to the Son of
man : the Word made flesh and dwelling among
us, like unto His brethren in all things.

The import- j^ would be hard to overestimate the signifi-

ance of this /. i • • i. i

view for the cancc of this vicw lor the present age, and the
present age. importance of setting it forth as a living truth
1 William Hamilton Gibson.

The Humayi Life of God 159

in the language of to-day. It is the only view
which gives us any ground of reality for our
faith in the kinship of man with God. If the
Son of God, who is the image of the Father, by
laying aside the outward prerogatives of His
divine mode of existence, actually becomes
human, then, and only then, the divine image
in which man was created is no mere figure of
speech, but a substantial likeness of spiritual
being. There is a true fellowship between
our souls and our Father in heaven. Virtue
is not a vain dream, but a definite striving
towards His perfection. Revelation is not a
deception, but a message from Him who knows
all to those who know only a part. Prayer is
not an empty form, but a real communion.

" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit
can meet :
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet."i

This view of the spiritual relation of man to The Unship

^ -. -T -I 1 *• 1 i-- • of man to

God cannot possibly have any foundation m g^^
fact, deep enough and strong enough to with-
stand the sweeping floods of scepticism, unless
it builds upon the rock of a veritable Incarna-
tion. The discoveries of modern science, en-
larging enormously our conceptions of the
1 Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism.

160 The Humayi Life of God

physical universe, have not only put man (as
we said in the first lecture) in a position to
receive a larger and loftier vision of the glory
of God, but they have made such a vision in-
dispensable. And they have emphasized, with
overwhelming force, the form in which that
vision must come in order to meet our needs
and strengthen faith for its immense task. If
we are not to be utterly belittled and crushed
by the contemplation of the vast mass of matter
and the tremendous play of force by which we
are surrounded ; if we are still to hold that the
vital is greater than the mechanical, the moral
than the material, the sjDiritual than the physi-
cal ; if we are to maintain the old position of
all noble and self-revering thought, that " man
is greater than the universe," — there is nothing
that can so profoundly confirm and establish
us, there is nothing that can so surely protect
and save us from ''the distorting influences of
our own discoveries," as the revelation of the
Supreme Being in an unmistakably vital, moral,
spiritual, and human form.
The true Such a revelation at once rectifies, purifies,

view of God. . p

and elevates our view of God Himself. For if
the Son of God can surrender omnipresence,
omniscience, and omnipotence without destroy-
ing His personal identity, then the central

The Human Life of Q-od 161

Essence of the Deity is neither infinite wisdom
nor infinite power, but perfect holiness and
perfect goodness. And so from the very
h:)west valley of humiliation we catch clear
sight of the very loftiest summit of theology,
the serene and shining truth that God is Love.

In the light of this truth we behold also the The supreme
highest perfection of man and the path which ^^^^g
leads to it. Love is the fulfilling of the law,
and the supreme pattern of love is the example
of Christ. And whether we look at it from
the divine side as the supreme self-sacrifice of
God, or from the human side as the complete
obedience of man, everything depends upon the
genuineness and sincerity of this example. Un-
less the Son of God truly became man, the Li-
carnation cannot be, as Bishop Westcott calls
it, "a revelation of human duties." What
strength could we draw from His victory over
temptation if He was not exposed as we are
to the assaults of evil ? What consolation
could we draw from His patience if He was
not a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief ? " Jesus Christ," says one of the greatest
of French theologians, " is not the Son of God
hidden in the Son of man retaining all the
attributes of Divinity in a latent state. This

162 The Human Life of God

would be to admit an irreducible duality which
would make the unity of His person vanish
and withdraw Him from the normal conditions
of human life. His obedience would become
illusory, and His example would be without
application to our race. No, when the Word
became flesh, He humbled Himself, He put off
His glory, being rich He made Himself poor,
and became as one of us, only without sin, that
He might pass through the moral conflict with
all the risks of freedom." ^ When we see Him
thus, we know what it means to follow Him
and to be like Him.
The value of Finally, the whole value of the Atonement,

the atone- .,. . ^ „

,nen<. 11^ its reconciling mnuence on the heart oi man,

in its exhibition of the heart of God, depends
upon the actuality of the Incarnation. If He
who died on Calvary was a mere theophany,
like the angel of Jehovah who appeared to
Abraham, then His death was merely a dra-
matic spectacle. The body of Jesus was broken,

God suffers but God was not touched. But if the Father
truly spared not His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us all, then the Father also suf-
fered by sympathy, making an invisible sacri-
fice, an infinite surrender of love for our sakes.

1 De Pressens6, Jesus-Christ (Paris, 1865), Book I., chap.
v., p. 254.

with and for
us.

The Human Life of (rod 168

Then the Son also suffered, making a visible
sacrifice, and pouring out His soul unto death
to redeem us from the fear of death and the
power of sin. And this becomes real to our
faith and potent upon our souls only when we
see the human life of God, agonizing in the
garden, tortured in the judgment-hall, and ex-
piring upon the cross. Then we can say

" Oh Love Divine ! that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear."

Then we can look up to a God who is not im-
passible, as the speculations of men have falsely
represented Him, but passible, and therefore
full of infinite capacities of pure sorrow and
saving sympathy. Then the dumb and sullen
resentment which rises in noble minds at the
thought of a Universe in which there is so ^^^^^ ^^ ^;J
much helpless pain and hopeless grief, created thought of
by an immovable Being who has never felt r,athy. ^
and can never feel either pain or grief, — that
sense of moral repulsion from the idea of an
unsuffering and unsympathetic Creator which
is, and always has been, the deepest, darkest
spring of doubt, fades away, and we behold a
God who became human in order that He
might bear, though innocent and undeserving,
all our pains and all our griefs.

l64 Tlie Human Life of Crod

Thejnding ^pj ^l ^ j^^ believe in the human life

of the

human of God can stand before the doubting age, as

David stood before the disillusioned, downcast,

despondent Hebrew king, in Robert Browning's

splendid poem of " Saul." The word, sought in

vain among the glories of nature, among the

joys of human intercourse, the word of faith

and hope and love and life, comes to us, leaps

upon us, flashes through us.

" See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the
wishes fall through.

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor
to enrich,

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — know-
ing which,

I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through
me now !

Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst
Thou — so wilt Thou!

So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost
crown —

And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor
down

One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no
breath.

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue
with death !

As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almiglity be
proved

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being be-
loved !

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall
stand the most weak.

The Human Life of Crod 165

'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh,

that I seek
In the Godhead ! 1 seek and I find it. O Saul, it

shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like

to me.
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand

like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee!

See the Christ stand I "

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

" But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labour writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, —
"What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect.
What rumour, tattled by an enemy.
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, —
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ ? "

— Sidney Lanier, The Crystal.

command-
ment.

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Preach Christ, is the apostolic watchword The new
that rings to-day, with all the force and charm
of a new commandment, through the heart of
a Church, which has felt, more deeply than it
has yet confessed, the age-pervading chill of
a winter of doubt and discontent. The very-
entrance of that mystic and reviving word has
already brought a glow of enthusiasm into the
Christian life, and caused new blossoms of hope
and love, manifold and beautiful activities of
help and healing, to appear in the earth. It
seems as if some fresh and secret tide of vital-
ity were flowing through the veins of Christen-
dom, and breaking everywhere towards the
light in deeds of charity and enterprises of
mercy. Hospitals, asylums, red cross societies,
rescue missions, salvation armies, spring into
existence as if by magic. Never has there
been a time when Christian men have tried to
169

170 The Source of Authority

The new ^^ ^o mueli fur their fellow-men in the name
'''""'^^' and for the sake of Christ. Never has there
been a time when they have recognized so
clearly and fully that there was so much yet
to be done. It is an age of secular doubt, as
many other ages have been. But it is also an
age of Christian beneficence, as hardly any
other age has been. And this beneficence is
not self-satisfied and complacent. It is self-
reproachful, and, in its best expressions, nobly
discontented with all that has been accom-
plished hitherto. It seeks, not always wisely,
but Avith splendid eagerness, for jDlans which
shall lead beyond the relief, to the prevention
of human suffering. It aims to bring about
not only the immediate mitigation, but also the
ultimate abolition, of war. It demands that
cliarit}" sludl be translated into the terms of
national, as well as of individual life. It will
not be satisfied until in some real and palpable
sense the kingdom of this world is become the
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.^
Christ is the Now this renewal, this splendid expansion of
Christian activities, evident by many signs to
all thouglitful observers, depends for its power
and permanence upon the setting forth of
Christ, vividly, personally, practically, as the
1 Rev. xi. 15.

fountain.

The Source of Autliority 171

pattern of all virtue and the Trince of Peace
among men. The sense of absolute confidence
in Him as the perfect example of goodness, and
of thorough loyalty to Him as the j\1 aster of
noble life, is the hidden reservoir of moral
force. The organized charities of Christendom
are the distributing system. Not more instant
and more complete would be the water-famine
on ^Manhattan Island if the great dam among
the Croton hills were broken and all the lakes
and streams dried u[), than the drought that
would fall upon the beneficence of the world if
there Avere a sudden break in the reservoir of
love and loyalty in Christian hearts to their
moral Master, or a stoppage of the myriad and
multiform feeders which keep it full by preach-
ing Christ.

But in all this renewal and expansion of what The peril of

' ^ r-^^ • ■ • practical

is well and proudly called practical Christianity, Christianity
there is, if I mistake not, a danger, or at least
a serious possibility, of loss. The life of man
is not only practical, it is also intellectual. His
relations to his fellow-men are important, but
his relation to truth is no less important. He
cannot help acting ; neither can he help tliink-
ing. When his thinking is divorced from his
acting, when he has one standard for truth and
a different standard for conduct, he is like a

172 The Source of Authority

house divided againi^t itself. If the Christian-
ity of to-day, by dwelling exclusively or too
much on the ethical side of the Gospel as a
beautiful and beneficent rule of conduct illus-
trated by a perfect Example, tends to ignore the
intellectual necessities of man and fails to real-
ize that it has a message to deliver in the realm
of truth as well as in the realm of righteous-
ness, it will not and it cannot meet the deepest
wants of tlie present age. Indeed, it may even
aggravate those wants and make them more
painful. It may seem to give assent, by
silence, to the desperate assumption of scepti-
cism that the unseen Avorld is unknown and
unknowable, even to the most perfect of men.
It may foster the sad feeling that the reality of
religion is beyond our reach and that we must
content ourselves with the convenient dreams
of virtue. It may preach, in effect, a Christ
whose character and conduct are to be accej^ted
as infallil)le, but wdiose thoughts and convic-
tions in regard to God and the soul and the
future life are mere fallacies and illusions.
What fhes Preach Christ, if it is to be a true. watchword

to preach ^^^' ^'^i* ministry to the present age, must be
(JhriHt? cleaicd and vivified and expanded in our con-
sciousness. We must know what we mean by
it. and we must try to know what we ought to

The Source of Authority 173

mean. We must ask ourselves again and again
whether the thing that we do mean is always
quite, or even approximately, the thing that we
ought to mean when we use this precious and
powerful phrase. It was commonly employed,
say fifty j^ears ago, to describe by way of dis-
tinction a presentation of Jesus wliich dwelt
chiefl}^ or entirely upon His death as the vicari-
ous sacrifice for sin. It is frequently employed
now as if it meant little or nothing more than
the graphic description of Clu-ist\s life and
actions as the supreme type of virtue and love.
But surely to preach Christ exclusively in either
of these ways is to divide Him. It is not enough
to have a Christocentric theology. It is not
enough to have a Christocentric morality. We
must not only put Him at the centre; but we
must also draw the circumference so that it
shall embrace the whole of human life.

If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh A gospel /or

. the whole

away the sin of the world,-^ He is also tiie true ^^^.^j^ ^j-
Light Avhich lighteth every man that cometh human no.
into the world. ^ If He is the fulfilment of all
dim prophecies of good, He is also the head and
source of a new unfolding of spiritual vision.
If He is the way and the life. He is also the
truth. 3 If He is immortal love, regenerating
1 St. John i. 29. '^ St. John i. 9. ^ st. John xiv. 6,

174

The Source of Authority

the affections, He is also immortal wisdom re-
organizing tlie tliouglits, and immortal power
strengthening the wills, of men. If His heart
is to be the norm of our feeling, His mind is
to be the norm of our thinking. If He is the
herald and founder of a new and celestial
dominion upon earth, He is also the source of
authority in the kingdom of heaven.

Tlip king-
dom of
heaven the
keynote of
(.'hrisVs
teachiufj.

The idea of the kingdom of heaven, as an act-
ual reign of God over living men, in which all
ancient anticipations of good are accomplished
and a new state of virtue and blessedness is es-
tablished on earth, was foremost and dominant
in the teaching of Jesus. ^ It was the keynote
of His ministry. Everything that He said,
everything that He did, was in harmony with
this master thought.

It is passing strange to see how often and
liow utterly this keynote has been changed in
the variations which men have woven about the

1 The word " kingdom " is used in the Gospels more than
a liundred times to express the new condition of human life
which Christ came to announce and establish. In St.
Matthew's Gospel the favourite phrase is "the kingdom of
heaven." St. Mark and St. Luke use "the kingdom of
God."

The Source of Authority 175

original theme of Christianity ; and how far False inter-
we are, even 3^et, from hearing it clearly, and ^^^^"^^^^^^•
sounding it with dominant fulness, in the
music of religion. At times the kingdom of
heaven has been identified with the visible
church as an outAvard embodiment of power in
the Avorld. And surely this interpretation is
far enough away from the thought of Christ,
who taught expressly that the kingdom was
invisible and inward. At other times men have
removed their conception from the present to
the future, and looked for its realization in the
life of the redeemed after death, or in the second
coming of Christ to reign in millennial glory.
And surely this interpretation is equally remote
from Christ's teaching, at the very outset of His
ministry and all through its course, that the
kingdom of heaven was at hand, that it had
already come near to men, and was lying all
around them, close to them, pressing upon them
from every side so that many were already en-
tering into it and dwelling within it.

The unreality and incompleteness of these The idea
two opposite interpretations of the kingdom
produced their natural results. The idea fell
out of its true place in Christian thought. It
became obscure, subordinate, and was finally

176 Tlte Source of Autliority

almost obliterated. No further illustration of
this statement is necessary than that which
may be obtained by consulting one of the most
popular aids to the study of the Bible : Talbot's
Analysis, revised by the Rev. Nathaniel West,
and again revised by the Rev. Dr. Roswell D.
Hitchcock, and set forth under the title of A
Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible; or^ the
Whole Bible arranged in Subjects.^ In the in-
dex to this work there is but one solitary
reference to the kingdom of God. When we
turn to look at it, Ave find eleven verses, under
the heading of " The Millennium ; the Growth of
the Kingdom of God." The kingdom of heaven
is dismissed with a general reference to the
Parables. To any one who is really familiar
with his New Testament, the insufficiency of
such a treatment of one of its controlling ideas
must appear evident and surprising.
The idon But it may be said that in very recent times

there lias been an intense revival of interest in
tliis idea and an immense amount of good work
(h»n(' in the study and explication of it. This
is true and it should be gratefully recognized.
Such books as those which Dr. James S. Cand-
lisli and Professor A. B. Bruce have written

1 Wilmore\s New Analytical Reference Bible (New York,
J891).

hoffins to he
restored

The Source of AutJiority 177

upon " The Kingdom of God," are most valua-
ble gifts to Christian literature.^ And yet I
will frankly confess that these books, and others
like them, seem to me rather to point the way
than to reach the goal. The fulness of the
conception of the kingdom of heaven is not
yet restored in current theology. Its regnancy
in all spheres of human life is not yet com-
pletely rounded. There is still a great deal
of Avork to be done in this direction by the
Christian thinker and the Christian preacher.
The vision of the kingdom is obscured, the
proclamation of the kingdom is weakened, be-
cause it is still presented too exclusively as
a kingdom of grace, and not with equal em-
phasis as a kingdom of truth : it is set up too
partially as a standard for the character and
conduct of men, and not with equal clearness
as a standard for their thoughts and convic-
tions.

One reason of this one-sidedness, it seems to it must he

T . 1 ^ 1 1 ^ ' lA j_ ^ Studied in

me, lies m the lact that we have hitherto been all/our
looking almost entirely to the first three Gos- Gospels.
pels as the source of our knowledge of the true

1 The Kingdom of God, Biblically and Historically Con-
sidered, James S. Candlish (Edinburgh, Clarks, 1884). The
Kingdom of God, or Christ's Teaching according to the
Synoptical Gospels, Alexander Balmain Bruce (New York,
Scribners, 1889).

178 The Source of Authority

meaning of the kingdom of heaven. But the
Fourth Gospel, if indeed it be, as the best
modern schoLars say it is, "the most faithful
image and memorial of Jesus that any man
could produce," must be no less important, no
less signilicant in the light which it throws
upon this controlling idea of His mind. And
when we turn to study it with this aim in view,
we find at once that it gives us what we need.
It completes and rounds out the record of the
three other Gospels. It answers the ques-
tions which they suggest. It keeps the prom-
ises which they seem to make to our faith.
And it is only when Ave take the fourfold
narrative in its entirety that we begin to catch
sight of the satisfying and convincing fulness
of tlie idea of the kingdom of heaven.
The kincj- xiils idea underlies the whole Gospel accord-

St. John. I'^to to St. John. It IS no less fundamental, no
less necessary here than it is in the Synoptic
Gospels. It is presented in different forms,
because the type of the writer's mind and the
purpose of his book are different. But it is
the same idea. And this presentation of it is
essential to its completeness.

In the Synoptics we have the conditions of
entrance into the kingdom, a child-like spirit,^
1 St. Matt, xviii. 3.

The Source of Authority 179

faith,^ repentance,^ and obedience. ^ In St. John Compared
we have the spiritual birth by which alone ^syrlopUcs.
those requisites are made possible.* In the
Synoptics we have the laws of tlie kingdom.^
In St. John we have the new life in which
alone those laws can be fulfilled.^ In the
Synoptics we have the parables and pictures
of the kingdom." In St. John we have the
inmost sense of those parables, spoken directly
to the soul, in words of which Christ Himself
says ''they are spirit, and they are life."^ In
the Synoptics we have the new order of liuman
society in the imitation by the disciples of
Christ's obedience to the will of God.^ In St.
John we have the organizing principle of that
new order in Christ's revelation of Himself to
the disciples as the way, the truth, and the
life.^^ In the Synoptics we have the supremacy
of Christ's example over men's hearts. In St.
John we have the supremacy of Christ's teach-
ings over men's minds.

Of course, I do not mean to say that either

1 St. Matt. ix. 22 ; St. Mark ^ st. Matt, xiii., xxi., xxv.;

X. 52. St. Luke xiii., xvii., xix.,

2 St. Luke xiii. 3. etc.

3 St. Matt. V. 20. 8 St. John vi. 03; viii. 12-51.

4 St. John iii. 5. 9 St. Matt. xii. 50.
^ The Sermon on the Mount. ^" St. John xiv. 6.

6 St. John vi. 22-05.

180 The Source of Authority

Both views of these aspects of the kingdom is confined ex-
neces^ary. ^.^^gjyg^y ^^ ^\^q source in which it is most fully
and clearly exliibited.^ But this is what I
mean. The Synoptics give us the first and
simplest description of the nature of the king-
dom. St. John gives us the fullest and clear-
est revelation of the mind of the King. We
cannot understand the former without the lat-
ter. Wc cannot enter into the full meaning
of the initial proclamation of Jesus, when He
walked beside the Sea of Galilee crying " The
kingdom of heaven has come near," ^ unless Ave
go on with Him to the judgment-hall, and hear
Him give His final answer to Pilate : '^ Thou
sayest that I am a King ; to this end have I
been born, and to this end am I come into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth ; every one that is of the truth heareth
my voice." ^

When we stand at this point, when we ac-
cept this declaration as the key to unlock and
open the inmost meaning of the manifestation
of tlie Father in the human life of the Son, we

' See Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 185, on the personal
claim of Christ in the Synoptics. See R. F. Horton, The
Teaching of Jesus (New York, 1896), pp. 219-233, on relation
between Synoptic doctrine of the kingdom and Johaunine
doctrine of eternal life.

2 St. Matt. iv. 17. 3 St. John xviu. 37.

The Source of Autliority 181

begin to apprehend the inexhaustible scope and The king-
significance of our call to preach Christ to an ^^ ^^.,,ii ^^.^ J
age of doubt. It is a gospel not only for the fjrace.
affections, but also for the intellect. It takes
up His words as well as His works and makes
them vital in the lives of men. It conceives
and proclaims the kingdom of heaven as some-
thing more than " the reign of divine love ex-
ercised by God in His grace over human hearts
believing in His love and constrained thereby
to yield Him grateful affection and devoted
service."^ It is also the reign of divine truth
exercised through a faithful witness over the
minds of men who subnut to His guidance and
are led by Him into inward peace and unity of
thouo-ht. And the source of authoritv in this
kingdom of heaven, which is equally a realm of
truth and a realm of grace, is Jesus the Christ,
whose doctrine, as well as His example, is ulti-
mate and supreme.

Let us observe in passing that we have pre- The Kin<:< -.•

. . 1 « teacher.

cisely the same basis to rest upon m our preach-
ing of the doctrine of Jesus as in our preaching
of His character and life. If historical criticism
1 Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 4(3.

182 The Source of Authority

gives us good reason to believe, as all candid
inquirers now admit, that the four Gosj^els con-
tain a veritable picture of an actual personage
who once lived on earth, there is equally good
reason to believe that they have preserved for
us a trustworthy account of His teaching in its
sul)stauce and spirit. If we can justly claim
The doctrine tj^^t His character is so perfect and transcen-
dent that no man of that age, however gifted or
learned, and least of all such men as the writers
of the New Testament, could possibly have in-
vented it ; we can make the same claim, with
equal justice, for the body of doctrine which
is attributed to Christ. In its coherence, its
clarity, its sublimity, and its universality it
altogether surpasses the mental abilities and
the religious insight of the writers of the four
Gospels. Indeed, it is frankly confessed that
the disciples of Jesus were so far from being
able to invent His doctrine, that they actually
misunderstood and misinterpreted many of its
truths when they first heard them. It was
contrary to their prejudices and expectations.
They did not put it into His mouth. He re-
vealed it to their minds. Their faith in it
rested upon His personal authority. And it
was only as they kept company with Him
and followed Him, receiving His word into

The Source of Authority 18B

their souls and translating it into their lives,
that it became to them luminous and satisfy-
ing and convincing.

We are entitled, or rather we are compelled, ^*» objective
to regard the teaching of Jesus as an objective ^^" ^ ^'
fact just as much as His life and character.
The record of it bears on its face the over-
whelming evidence of verity. All the results
of literary criticism are squarely against the
supposition that such a doctrine as that which
is presented to us under His name in the four
Gospels, could ever have been pieced together
out of the thoughts and imaginations of widely
separated and divergent minds, and attributed
to an unknown and perhaps mythical Master.
It is not a mosaic ; it is a living unity. It is
not a creation of faith ; it is the creator of faith.
The hypothesis that four men agreed, or hap-
pened, to gather together out of the Hebrew
prophets, and the heathen philosophers, and the
mysterious and inexplicable inner conscious-
ness of the new-born Christian churches, cer-
tain beautiful ideas in regard to God and the
soul and the future life, and ascribe tliem to
Jesus, utterly breaks down at the touch of real-
ity. The central, unif3dng, formative quality
of the teaching of Christ is the one thing that

184 The Source of Authority

is most evident in the record. It is empha-
sized by all the phenomena of growth, of vital
development, of deepening power, which may
be traced from the sermon in the synagogue
at Nazareth to the discourse in the upper room
at Jerusalem. It shines out unmistakably
through all the living variety of impressions
which it made upon various minds, and
through all the consequent many-sidedness of
the report which is given of it. Not more
certainly did the character of Christ inspire
and unite the lives of His followers than
His doctrine illuminated and controlled their
beliefs. The onl}^ view which meets the facts
is that Jesus really lived, and really taught,
thus and so, as He is presented to us in the
(lospels.
The form of This brings us at once to the most important
le recon . fgr^^^^g jj^ j^\^q record of His teaching. It is not
given to us in the form of an abstract system,
a treatise on theology, or a summary of doc-
trine, written down by the hand of Jesus. He
Himself made no record of His words. Only
once do we see Him writing, — in the beautiful
episode which a later tradition has added to the
eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Histori-
cal or not, the incident is profoundly sugges-
tive. For Jesus wrote not with a pen upon

The Source of Authority 185

enduring parchment, nor with a stylus upon
imperishable brass :

" He stooped
And wrote upon the unrecording ground." ^

He would not leave even a single line of manu-
script where His followers could preserve it
with literal reverence and worship it as a
sacred relic. He chose to inscribe His teach-
ing upon no other leaves than those which are
folded within the human soul. He chose to
trust His words to the faithful keeping of
memory and love ; and He said of them, Avith
sublime confidence, that they should never pass
away.^ He chose that the truth which He
declared and the life which He lived should
never be divided, but that they sliould go down
together through the ages.

And this is precisely what has come to pass, inseparable
The Church in past asfes has often been inclined -^7'" ^^'*

^ '^ character.

to abstract the doctrines of Christianity concern-
ing the person and work of Christ from their
union with His human life, and to condense
them into a purely formal system of dogma for
the intellect. The Church in the present age
shows at least a tendency to separate the image

1 Katrina Trask, "A Night and Morning in Jerusalem"
(Hm-per's Magazine, April, 1896).

2 St. Mark xiii. 31.

186 The Source of Authority

of Jesus from the truths which He taught, and
hold Him up to men merely as an ideal of holi-
ness and goodness. But the one barrier that
stands firm against both these false tendencies
is the marvellous narrative of the Gospels, in
which the life and the doctrine of Christ are
woven together, one and inseparable, like a
robe without seam.
Words and How cau Avc Understand His grace, unless we
eachothe7.^ acccpt His truth ? How can we appreciate His
truth, unless Ave receive His grace ? At every
step, His action is interpreted and explained by
His words. He trusts in Providence, and He
commands His disciples to trust, not merely be-
cause submissive confidence is a beautiful and
happy thing, but because He knows and declares
that God is reall}^ a Father, worthy to be trusted.^
He prays, secretly and openly; secretly because
He is sure that God hears Him always, and
openly because He would fain give this as-
surance to others.2 He seeks the sinful and
the lost, not merely because such a ministry is
lovely and gracious, but because He knows and
declares that it is the will of God, and that
there is more joy in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just

1 St. Matt. vi. 25-30. 2 gt. John xi. 41, 42.

The Source of Authority 187

men that need no repentance.^ He cares for
the bodies of men and He relieves their wants,
but He cares infinitely more for their souls and
He teaches them to care more, because He
knows that the soul is capable of immortality
and more precious than all that this world can
give. 2 He moves willingly and obediently to
the cross, not because it is inevitable, not be-
cause resignation is the crown of virtue, but
because He knows and declares that this is the
sacrifice appointed for Him as the Christ, the
laying down of His life as a ransom for many,
the lifting up by which He is to draw all men
unto Himself.^ He goes down into death with
unshaken courage, not because it is a fine thing
to be brave, but because He knows and declares
that He is returning to the Father and that He
will bring those wdio love Him to be with Him
where He is forever.*

Now these are declarations of great truths. The doctrine
If we deny them, if we make them uncertain, iasisofiUs
the life which was built upon them has no conduct.
meaning, no substance, no power in it. It be-
comes a splendid illusion, a heroic mistake.

1 St. Luke XV. 7.

2 St. John vi. 27; St. Mark viii. 36, 37.

» St. Mark ix 12 ; St. Matt. xx. 28 ; St. John xii. 32.
* St. John xiv. 1-3.

188 The Source of Authority

But if we accept them, then, and only then,
that life becomes the rock of our confidence,
the substance of things hoped for and the evi-
dence of things not seen.^ For it was on the
knowledge of these things that Jesus actually
founded His own character and His conduct.
It was by believing thus and so, and by living
up to His belief, that He was made perfect.
And it was by teaching His disciples to believe
thus and so that He would bind them to follow
His example and inspire them to share His life.
" Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a Avise man
which built his house upon a rock."^ "Now
ye are clean through the word which I have
spoken unto you." "If ye abide in me, and
my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye
will and it shall be done unto you."^

1 " Nicht das Leben Jesu an sich in seinem geschichtlichen
Verlaufe, sondern die Aiiffassung der religiosen Bedeutung
desselben, auf welche die alteste N. T. liche Verkundigung
ruht, bildet den Ausgangspunkt fur die biblische Theologie.
Diese Auffassung war aber zunachst bedingt durch die Lelire
Jesu, sofern dieselbe die autlientische Erlauterung liber die
Bedeutung seiner Person und seiner Erscheinung gab, und
daher muss eine Darstellung dieser Lehre den grundlegenden
Abschnitt der biblischen Theologie bilden." — Berxhard
Weiss, Lehrhuch der Biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testa-
ments (2te Auflage, Berlin, 1873), p. 31.

2 St. Matt. vii. 24. 3 gt. John xv. 3, 7.

The Source of Authority 189

The importance which Christ ascribed to The
His words as the authoritative revehition of "^.''/l,^''!'f.

oj Christ s

unseen verities to the coiifused and darkened teachiw).
minds of men, cannot be denied or overlooked
by any one who reads the Gospels candidly and
intelligently. It is true, indeed, that He ex-
pressly disclaimed the idea that His doctrine
was created, or invented, or even discovered by
Himself. He said, "My doctrine is not mine
but His that sent me," ^ " All things that 1
have heard of my Father I have made known
unto you." 2 But it is equally true that He
claimed an absolute infallibility for the mes-
sage which was revealed in Him, committed
unto Him, and delivered by Him. This claim
is made with equal force in the Synoptics and
in St. John. " No one knoweth who the Son
is, save the Father ; and Avho the Father is,
save the Son, and he to Avhomsoever the Son
Avilleth to reveal Him."^ " We speak that we
do know, and bear witness of tliat we have
seen."^ This is not the language that an
honest and conscientious teacher would use to
describe his religious opinions or his spiritual

1 St. John vii. IG. 3 gt. Luke x. 22.

2 St. John XV. 15. ■* St. John iii. 11.

original.

190 The Source of Authority

hopes. The wisest and the best of men have
always hesitated to assume this tone of cer-
tainty in regard to their deepest reflections
upon the mysteries of being. But from first
to last this tone marks the teaching of Jesus.
" They were astonished at His teaching ; for
He taught them as having authority, and not
as the scribes."^
It «•>«• It is evident that He intended to speak thus.

For nothing is more striking in the manner of
His teaching than the absence of all reliance
upon corroborative testimony or traditional
support.^ He did not seek to defend His posi-
tions with a formidable array of great names.
He did not make a long catena of quotations
from learned sources. He gave out His doc-
trine from the depth of His own consciousness
as a flower breathes perfume, fresh, pure, origi-
nal, and convincing. He certainly felt a Divine
inspiration in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.
The law and the prophets conveyed to Him the

1 St. Mark i. 22.

2 " Avec une certitude sereine, qui iie semble pas terrestre,
il disait ces choses. II chantait, comme aucun propli^te
n'avait su le faire, le chant des revoirs ^ternels qui a berc^
pendant des si6cles les souffrances et les agonies. Et ce
chant-1^, voici que de nos jours, au triste d^clin des temps,
les liomines sc meiireiit de ne plus Pentendre." — Pierre
LoTi, La (hdiU'e (Paris, 1896), p. 94.

The Source of Authority 191

word of God. He used them on certain occa-
sions to repel the assaults of evil, as in the temp-
tation in the wilderness. He used them on other
occasions to convince and convict the Scribes
and Pharisees out of their own Scriptures.
But He never rested upon them as the sole and
sufficient basis of His doctrine. He was not a
commentator on trutlis already revealed. He ^^^mj

revelation

was a revealer ot new truth. His teaching was
not the exposition ; it was the text. And this
higher revelation not only fulfilled, but also
surpassed, the old ; replacing the temporal by
the eternal, the figurative by the factual, the
literal, by the spiritual, the imperfect by the
perfect. How often Jesus quoted from the Old
Testament in order to show that it was al-
ready old and insufficient ; that its forms of
speech and riiles of conduct Avere like tlie husk
of the seed which must be shattered by the
emergence of the living germ. His doctrine
was in fact a moral and intellectual day-
break for the Avorld. He did far more than
supply a novel system of conduction for an
ancient light. He sent forth from Himself a
new illumination, transcending all that had
gone before, as the sunrise overfloods the pale
glimmering of the morning star set like a
beacon of promise upon the coast of dawn.

192 The Source of Authority

He did not rely upon reasoning for the proof
of His doctrine. He put no trust in the com-
pulsion of logic, in the keenness of dialectics.
We look in vain among His words for an
exhibition of the ''evidences of Christianity."
He did not endeavour to demonstrate the ex-
istence of God or the immortality of the soul.
What He said was meant to be its own evi-
dence. His method was not apologetic ; it
was declaratory.

" He argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest."

The result of this is marvellous and magnifi-
cent. His teaching is cleared and disentangled
from all that is temporary and transient in
human thought. If He had reasoned with
men, it must have been done upon the prem-
isses and in the forms of philosophy current
in that age. Otherwise He could not have
reached their intelligence, His reasoning would
have been of none effect. But because He
passed by all these processes and left them on
one side while His doctrine moved simply, di-
rectly, and majestically to the heart of the truth,
it comes to us to-day free and unencumbered
by any of those theories of physical science, of
psychology, of political economy, which the
growth of knowledge has changed, discredited,

The Source of Authority 193

or discarded. His teaching is neither ancient Itisuni-
nor modern, neither deductive nor inductive, ^^^^^ '
neither Jewish nor Greek. It is universal,
enduring, valid for all minds and for all times.
There are no more difficulties in the Avay of
accepting it now than there were when it was
first delivered. It fits the spiritual needs of
the nineteenth, as closely as it fitted the
spiritual needs of the first, century. It car-
ries the same attractions, the same credentials
in the Western Hemisphere as it carried in
the Eastern. It stands out as clearly from all
the later, as it did from all the earlier, philoso-
phies. It finds the soul as inevitably to-day
as it did at first. And the men of this age
who hear Christ can only say, as His disciples
said long ago, " Lord, to whom shall we go ?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.'* ^

And yet how few are those words, compared -^< « small
. , ," c 1 TT in compass.

With the utterances oi other teachers. How
small in compass is the doctrine of Jesus as it
has come doAvn to us. Eighty pages of a duo-
decimo book will hold all of His recorded dis-
courses and the story of His life. Other words
He must have spoken while He was on earth,
but I doubt not that they moved within the
same circle. For even in the present record
1 St. John vi. G8.

194 The Source of Aiitliority

we find the same truths recurring again and
again, expressed in different language, arranged
in different sequence, as the evangelists re-
trace, each from his own point of view, the
memory of the things which Jesus taught to
the multitudes and to His disciples. The lit-
erature of the world holds no other doctrine
so limited in bulk, so limitless in meaning.

The teaching of Christ differs from that of
all other masters in its fontal quality. It is
comprised in a little space, but it has an infi-
nite fulness. Its utterance is closely bounded,
but its significance is inexhaustible. The
sacred books of other religions, the commen-
taries and expositions on the Christian religion,
spread before us a vast and intricate expanse,
like lakes of truth mixed with error, stretch-
ing away into the distance, arm after arm,
bay after bay, until we despair of being able
even to explore their coasts and trace their
windings. When we come back to Christ, we
find, not an inland sea of doctrine, but a clear
fountain of living water, springing up into
everlasting life.

Calm, pure, unfatliomable, it is never clouded
and it never fails. The inspiration of other
teachers rises and falls like an intermittent
spring. To-day it is brimming full; to-mor-

The Source of Authority 195

row it is empty and dry. But the truth that
flows from Jesus is constant and unvarying.
The Spirit always rests upon Him. The
Father is always with I Tim. Out of the deep
serenity of His soul, as from some secret vale
of peace high among the eternal hills, the vital
spring of truth wells up forever, and forever
the crystal stream runs down to refresh and
revive the souls of men.

New meanings come out of the teaching of Always
Jesus in every land and in every age. New
stars are mirrored in its depths. New flowers
blossom on its banks. New fields of love are
fertilized by its waters. It is not that each
succeeding century and race adds something of
its own to the doctrine of Christ. It is that
each finds in that source something which was
meant to become its own, and so to satisfy its
deepest needs. The old questions are repeated
in new words, and the new answer comes in the
old words. ^ The truth as it is in Jesus does
not have to be changed and adapted to fit it for
a world-Avide missionary enterprise. It needs
only to be purified from the things that men

1 "Socrates asked questions wliich his disciples tried to
answer ; Jesus provoked His disciples to ask questions which
He answered." — James Stalker, Imago Christi (New York,
Armstrongs, 1889), p. 270.

idicitti that
is in Christ

196 The Source of Authority/

Lave mingled witli it, restored to the simplicity
that is in Christ, and it proves itself as fresh, as
satisfying, as life-bestowing to the thirsty soul
in America or in the islands of the sea, as it did
in Galilee or on the hillsides of Judea.
The Sim- Wlieii wc ask oursclvcs why it is that the

doctrine of the Master has this enduring, self-
renewing, fontal character, I think we must
find the answer in the fact that it simply bears
witness, witli a directness and inevitableness
altogether unparalleled, to the actual existence
of a spiritual world corresponding to the spirit-
ual faculties and aspirations of men. It does
not turn aside to discuss metaphysical problems
or theological subtleties. The distinction be-
tween the natural and the supernatural does not
even appear in the teaching of Jesus. There
may, or there may not, be such a distinction.
If there is, He at least does not think it impor-
tant enough to speak of it. The one thing of
whicli He wishes to make men sure is that the
same God who sends His sunshine and His rain
upon the evil and upon the good, the same God
whose bounty feeds the birds of the air and
clothes the lilies of the field with beauty, hears
in secret the prayers of the penitent and believ-
ing and rewards them openly. The question
of t lie how and the where of the life after death

The Source of Authority 197

is not even touched in the teaching of Jesus.
It matters little. The one thing that He de-
clares with unfaltering certainty is the reality
of that life. The one thing that He presses
home upon the minds of men Avith calm inten-
sity is the danger of losing it through sin and
unbelief. The one thing that He tenderly and
urgently pleads with them to do, is to make
sure of its immortal blessedness through faith
and love and obedience to Him. And so, at
every point, He passes by the non-essential to
touch the essential, He disregards the passing
curiosity to satisfy the real anxiety, He neglects
the shadows to reveal the substance of the
unseen world.

Teaching like this is the only kind of teach- Words of
ing that will always renew itself, ahvays have
something more to bestow upon us. It cannot
grow obsolete. It cannot be drained of its sig-
nificance. It is like life. Nay, it is life, and it
gives life.

Let us understand, then, that if our Christi- Loyalty to
anity is to satisfy our whole nature, if it is to tg„(.itiii'/.
have its real and full meaning, and power to
bring in the kingdom of heaven, it must in-
clude this element. We must be as loyal to

198 The Source of AutJiority

the teaching of Jesus as we are to His example.
We must count no pains too great to spend
upon the study of that teaching as it lies in
the records, and no effort too severe to make
in order that it may be restored in its integ-
rity and entirety, rounded and harmonized,
within the very centre of our minds. And
then we must preach it, simply, sincerely, cer-
tainly, as the only doctrine Avhich can lead
men out of the intellectual anarchy of doubt
into the peaceful realm of truth.
The age This is what the age is looking and longing

authoritij. ^^r. It cau find no joy in the kingdom of
heaven unless it finds there a source of author-
ity for the mind as well as for the heart. Au-
thority is what the sociologist demands, in order
that he may have a sure basis for the precepts
of altruism. Authority is what the philosopher
seeks, in order that he may have a fixed point
of departure and certain limits of speculation.
Authority is what the poet craves, as he clings
to

" The truths that never can be proved,

Until we close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul." i

Men are crying lo here ! and lo there ! We
nuist find the source of authority in an in-

^ Tennyson, In Memoriam.

"^' authority.

The Source of Author ity 199

errant Book, or in an enlightened reason, or
in an infallible Church, or perhaps in all three ;
as if there could be three sources of one author-
ity, or as if a channel could ever be rightly
called a source! Let us not hesitate to pass
through this confusion of tongues and of ideas,
serene and untroubled, with the message of a
more excellent Avay.

Christ is the Light of all Scripture. Christ t'hnst is the
is the Master of holy reason. Christ is tlie "''"^^^'"^
sole Lord and Life of the true Church. By
His word Ave test all doctrines, conclusions,
and commands. (3n His Avord Ave build all
faith. This is the source of authority in the
kingdom of heaA^en. Let us neither forget
nor hesitate to appeal to it always Avith un-
trembling certainty and positiA^e conviction.
If Christ did not knoAv and preach the truth,
then there is no truth that can be knoAvn or
preached. Unless Ave are sure of this, Ave
Avould better go out of business entirely. It
is inconceiA^able that the loftiest character in
history should be the most mistaken man that
<iA^er thought about the real basis and meaning
of life. It is incredible that the noblest life
in the Avorld should be founded upon a faith
that was vain. It is impossible that a supreme
devotion and a real likeness to Christ should

tm^k, to learn
His creed

20 0 The Source of Authority

have been produced and perpetuated in the
world without a veritable apprehension of that
Avhich He knew and taught concerning God
and man.
(jur great To have tliis apprehension clearly formed

within us must be our ardent and joyful intel-
lectual endeavour. We are not to rest content
with the study of single words and separate
phrases. The limitations of language, the con-
ditions of transmission, will always expose us
to error if we follow that course. The truth
as it is in Jesus does not lie in fragments, but in
the rounded whole. We must get back to
the unity and integrity of the thoughts of
Jesus, the creed of Christ. The broad outline
of His vision of things human and divine, the
central verities which appear firm and un-
changeable in all the reports of His teaching,
the point of view from which He discerned
and interpreted the mystery of life, — that is
what we must seek. And when we find it,
we must take our stand there as men who feel
the solid ground beneath their feet. Illustra-
tions and confirmations we may gather from
science and history and philosophy. But the
rock of certainty is the mind of Jesus, ex-
pressed in His living words and in His speak-

The Source of Authority 201

ing life. Beyond tins we need not and we
cannot go. Here is the ultimatum. This is
the truth, we say to men, because Jesus knew
it, and said it, and lived it.

But one thing we may not, we dare not, for- We must
get. The condition of apprehending, and how ^t^^j^Zwins
much more of preaching, the truth revealed by doctrine.
Christ is that we abide in Him. The word of
Jesus in the mind of one who does not do the
will of Jesus, lies like seed-corn in a mummy's
hand. It is only by dwelling Avith Him and
receiving His character. His personality so
profoundly, so vitally that it shall be with us
as if, in His own words, we had partaken of
His flesh and His blood, as if His sacred
humanity had been interwoven with the very -
fibres of our heart and pulsed with secret power
in all our veins, — it is thus only that we can
be enabled to see His teaching as it is, and set
it forth with luminous conviction to the souls
of men.

And if ever we ourselves become afraid of Return to
our own task, and shrink from it ; if the scep-
ticism of our age appalls us and chills us to the
very marroAV ; if we question whether a gospel
so simple, so absolute, as that which is com-
mitted to us can find acceptance in such a
world, at such a time as this, — be sure it is

202 The Source of Authority

because we have gotten out of fellowship with
Him who is our Peace and our Hope, our Light
and our Strength. A Christless man can never
preach Christ. We have been anxious and
troubled about many things, and have forgot-
ten the one thing needful. Peace we must have
before we can have power. Let us straight-
way return, in prayer, in meditation, in trust,
in faithful simple-hearted obedience, to Him
who is the only centre of Peace because He is
the only source of authority.

" I have a life in Christ to live,

But ere I live it must I wait
Till learning can clear answer give

Of this and that book's date ?
I have a life in Christ to live,

I have a death in Christ to die ; —
And must I wait till science give

All doubts a full reply?

Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt

Is raging wildly round about.

Questioning of life and death and sin,

Let me but creep within

Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet

Take but the lowest seat,

And hear Thine awful voice repeat

In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet,

Come unto Me and rest ;

Believe Me, and be blest." ^

^ John Carxipbell Shairp.

LIBERTY

" But, perfect in every part,

Has the potter's moulded shape
Leap of man's quickened heart,

Throe of his thought's escape.
Stings of his soul which dart

" Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
She climbs from the calm and clear

Through turbidity all between

From the known to the unknown here.

Heaven's ' Shall be,' from Earth's ' Has been '?

" Then life is — to wake and not sleep.

Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep

Things perfected, more or less,
To the heaven's height, far and steep,

" Where, amid what strifes and storms

May wait the adventurous quest,
Power is Love — transports, transforms

AVho aspired from worst to best,
Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms.' "

— Robert Browning, Reverie.

LIBERTY
There are three i3oints at which tlie teacli- Three great

iiig of Jesus comes into closest contact with tlie
needs of the present age. Three problems of
profound difficulty are pressing to-day upon all
thoughtful men: the psychological problem of
the freedom of the Avill; the theological prob-
lem of the actual relation of God to the uni-
verse ; and the moral problem of man's duty
to his fellow-men in a world of inequality.
Out of the depths of these problems dark and
multitudinous doubts are forever rising, like
the clouds of smoke and steam which issue from
the labouring bosom of Vesuvius, while sub-
terranean thunder is muttering and rolling
underneath. Most of the intellectual perplex-
ities and practical perils of our times come
directly from these questions, to Avhich modern
scepticism gives an answer of despair, or at
best only a dubious and uncertain reply.

But the gospel of Christ, rightly appre-
hended and interpreted, offers us a solution

pi'ohlems.

206

lAherty

crty, sover-
eif/nty, and
service.

Three great of these problems which is full of light and
hope and moral certainty. There is a breath
of the Spirit in His teaching, pure and strong,
pouring like a clean wind out of heaven, to
scoff away the obscuring vapours, and reveal the
changeless verities and glories of the spiritual
landscape. Three truths emerge in His doc-
trine, and stand out clear and sharp as moun-
tain peaks against the blue : the truth of
human liberty, the truth of Divine sovereignty,
and the truth of universal service. Of these
three truths we must never lose sight, if our
thinking is to be in accordance with the mind
of Jesus. To these three truths we must bear
witness, unhesitatingly, faithfully, and joy-
fully, if our preaching is to be a gospel for
this age of doubt.

No one who has looked steadily upon the
face of modern life as it is reflected in popular
literature can doubt that it is '' sicklied o'er "
with the dark shadow of fatalism. It is evident
in the writings of the learned and in the scrib-
blings of the ignorant. Everywhere there is a
tendency to explain the whole life of man as
tlie product of heredity and environment. The
student of physiology, tracing the strange and

Liberty 207

subtle correspondence between the processes of
consciousness and the clianges and movements
of the nervous system, makes the enormous
assumption that the correspondence amounts to
identity. All the hopes and fears, all the affec-
tions and aspirations, which glorify this mortal
life, are in their last analysis the result of cer-
tain puckerings and tintinnabulations of the
gray matter of the nerves. The actions which
flow from them are as necessary as the fall of
an apple when the stem is broken. The caress
which a mother gives to her child, and the blow
with which a murderer strikes his victim dead,
are equally automatic and inevitable. They are
the motions of delicately constructed puppets,
and the triumph of modern investigation is the
discovery of the string which moves them and
the forces which pull it.

It is true that many of the teachers who steer Materialism

T T , ^ l^ • 1 disavovjed

US, more or less openly, towards tJns conclu- ^^^ taunht.
sion are careful to disavow the idea that they
are teaching materialism. The name is highly
unpopular at the present moment, and there
is hardly one of the men of science of to-day
who has not protested with indignation that
no one should dare to call him a materialist.
They have devised subtle theories of some-
thing called "mhid-stuff" which they hold.

208 Liberty

"svith W. K. Clifford, "is the reality which we
perceive as matter." They distinguish, with
Huxley, between matter and force, and a third
thing which they call consciousness and which
they admit cannot conceivably be a modifi-
cation of either of the first two things ; but
they go on to say that " what we call the
operations of the mind are -functions of the
brain, and the materials of consciousness are
products of cerebral activity." ^ In short, they
give a materialistic explanation of the origin
and processes of thought, and then protect
themselves against the imputation of being
materialists, by solemnly averring that they
have not the slightest idea of what matter
really is, nor the slightest intention of sug-
gesting that it has any resemblance to the
so-called mental operations which are prob-
ably produced by one of its own forms of
activity.
licsponsibii- A scheme like this certainly has no room for

ill/ crowded

f,^i_ rree-wiU or personal responsibility. It makes

a man's character and action entirely depen-
dent upon the amount and quality of nervous
energy that has been transmitted to him by his
ancestors and developed by the circumstances
of his life. He lives, as Professor Tyndall
1 T. II. Iluxloy, ill The Fortnightly lieview, vol. xL, 793.

Liherty 209

says, in a realm of " physical and moral neces-
sity," — though why he should be at pains to
say "moral," I can hardly conceive. One ad-
jective would serve as well as two, when they
both mean the same thing. It requires but
a little exercise of this nervous energy on our
part, in the form of imagination, to trace it back
to its previous form of heat stored up in cer-
tain hundredweights of food and appropriated
by digestion. From this point our cerebral
activity skips lightly and altogether without
volition along the various lines of animal and
vegetable life, of chemical and physical trans-
formations of energ}^, until we arrive at the
idea of the sun. From this idea a certain un-
controllable change in the gray substance of
our brain produces the further notion that
the arrangement of certain quantities of mat-
ter and force Avhich took place in some in-
explicable way long before the birth of the
solar system was really the thing that settled
the question whether you and I shoukl prefer
telling the truth to lying, — if we do. Indeed,
there never has been any question at all about
it; it was fixed from the beginning. We have
no more responsi])ility for it than we have for
the colour of our eyes or the shape of our
noses.

:210 Liberty

*' Thoughts I have found a brief and explicit statement
tomaton." ^^ ^lie position to which this method of think-
ing forces those who follow it, in an article
ironically entitled " Thoughts of a Human Au-
tomaton" in a recent English periodical. ^

'^ I am an automaton — a puppet dangling on
my distinctive wire, Avliich Fate holds with an
unrelaxing grip. I am not different, nor do I
feel differently, from my fellow-men, but my
eyes refuse to blink away the truth, which is,
that I am an automatic machine, a piece of
clockwork wound up to go for an allotted time,
smoothly or otherwise, as the efficiency of the
machinery may determine. Free-will is a myth
invented by man to satisfy his emotions, not
his reason. I feel as if I were free, as if I were
responsible for my thoughts and actions, just
as a ]3erson under the influence of hypnotism
believes he is free to do as he j^leases. But he
is not ; nor am I. If it were once possible for
a rational being to question this fact, the dis-
coveries of Darwin must have set his doubts at
rest. . . .

"What is crime? A crime is an action
tlireatened by the law with punishment, says
Kant; and freedom of action or free-will

1 Henry Beauchainp, in The Fortnightly Review, English
edition, Marcli, 1892.

Liberty 211

is a legally necessary condition of crime. But
the law of heredity conclusively demonstrates
that free-will and freedom of action stand in
the category of lively imaginings. Therefore
crime, as the law understands it, is non-existent,
since no imputability can be recognized Avhen a
man is not responsible for his actions. There-
fore tlie law is not justified in inflicting pun-
ishment. . . .

" Briefly to conclude. Religion can no more
mix with science than oil with water. Science
acknowledges no necessity for the existence of
religion, and finally severs the bonds between
morality and religion. Morality, altogether
independent of religion, is entirely based upon
self-interest. The suj)posed connection between
religion and morality is an illusion most per-
nicious to the general welfare and advance
of mankind. Religion, as a superfluity, should
be excluded from all educational institutions.
Its place will be su]3plied by the creed of scien-
tific philosophy — Determinism. The primary
principle of Determinism, namely, that a human
being is an automaton, and therefore not respon-
sible for his thoughts or his acts, taken together
with its corollaries, more than suflices for every
intellectual need hitherto provided for by re-
ligion. For the two great factors in the value

212 Liberty

of religion are its ethics and its sedative prop-
erties, and in both these uses Determinism
displays overwhelming intellectual superiority.
Its ethics are more universal and its consolation
more assured ; for they both rest on irrefraga-
ble scientific truth. The Determinist is con-
sequently never harassed by doubts — the Rock
of Ages is fragile compared with the adaman-
tine foundation of his creed."
The creed of This curious claim of an automaton to have
a " creed " Avould be deliciously humorous, if
it were not so unutterably sad, and so detest-
ably dangerous. For though, as a matter of
fact, there are few men who will make, even
under an assumed name, such a candid con-
fession of faith in their own moral non-entity
as that wdiich we have just read, there are many
men who are, consciously or unconsciously,
preaching the same black creed of Necessity
in the subtle forms of literary art, and multi-
tudes who are silently accepting it as gospel
truth. Fatalism broods over modern fiction
and the modern drama like a huge, shapeless
spectre; and its influence is felt in all the
judgments and conceptions and unspoken but
clearly revealed sentiments of a society which
finds its chief intellectual pabulum in novels
and plays.

Liherty 213

Here is the famous French realist, Zola, of ''The

Human
Beast.*'

whose books it is said that enough have been
sold to build a pile as high as the Eiffel tower.
He writes a novel called La Bete Humaine^ in
which he shows how unswervingly the lines of
evil run through the plan of life. He describes
seven inevitable murders, occurring within eigh-
teen months in close connection with a certain
fated house, and closes his book with the descrip-
tion of a railway train, crowded with soldiers,
dragged by an engine whose driver has been
killed, dashing at headlong speed into the mid-
night. The train is the world ; we are the
freight ; fate is the track ; death is the dark-
ness ; God is tlie engineer, — Avho is dead.

Here is the leader of the Dutch Sensitivists, ''Footsteps
T . ^ 1 • -.1 1 «/ Fate:'

Louis Couperus, who writes a romance called

Noodlot^ " Destiny ^^^ in which four human lives
are tangled together in an inextricable and hor-
rible coil. One of his characters pauses for an
instant in the shameful career to wliich he is
impelled. " He threw himself back in his chair,
still feebly wringing his hands, and the tears
trickled again and again down his cheeks. He
saw his own cowardice take shape before him.
He stared into its frightened eyes, and he did
not condemn it. For he was as fate had made

Ghosts.

Tho small
fatalists.

214 Liberty

him. He was a craven, and he could not heip
it. Men called such an one as he a coward ; it
was but a word. Why coward, or simple and
brave, or good and noble ? It was all a matter
of convention, of accepted meaning ; the whole
world was mere convention, a concept, an illu-
sion of the brain. There was notliing real at
all _ nothing ! " i

Here is the Norse dramatist, Ibsen, — -the
new Shakespeare by the grace of heredity. He
writes a drama of life which he calls Grhosts,
and shows how every player is haunted by dead
ancestors who look through his eyes, speak in
his words, and act in his deeds. Echoes of
spent passion, shreds and patches of worn-out
sin, rags and tatters of the past, — that is the
stuff of Avhich life is fabricated, like a piece of
shoddy cloth, in the great mill of circumstance
which stands on the banks of the river of time
and turns out the shabby lives of men and
women.

Nor is this view of life confined to the great
fcjreign masters of realism. It pervades almost
all the minor schools of fiction ; it diffuses it-
self insensibly through the work of the feeble
and fatuous imitators. A keen and wholesome

1 Louis Couperus, The Footsteps of Fate (New York,
Appletons), p. 05,

Liberty 2ir)

critic of our own literature, i\Ir. Cliarles Dudley
Warner, put his finger ui)()ii the fact when he
wrote : " It has come about that the novels and
stories wliich are to fill our leisure hours and
cheer us in this vale of tears have become what
we call tragic. It is not easy to define what
tragedy is, but the term is applied in modern
fiction to scenes and characters that come to
ruin from no particular fault of their own, —
not even when the characters break most of the
ten commandments, — but by an unappeasable
fate that dogs and tliAvarts them. This is the
romance of fatality, and if it is tragedy, it is
the tragedy of fatalism."

It is not possible that such a theory of ex-
istence should prevail without bringing sadness Melancholy
and heaviness into the hearts of men. The "^^"^■^"^'^^*-
modern melancholy of which w^e spoke in the
first lecture is largely the result of this gen-
eral sense of a godless predestination. It is
Calvinism with the bottom knocked out. It
robs life of all interest, of all joy, of all en-
thusiasm. AVas it morphine that drove Guy de
Maupassant, the most brilliant of the younger
French novelists, to insanity ? Or was it his
philosophy that drOve him to morphine as a
refuge from the despair and ugliness of exist-

216 Liberty

ence ? Pessimism exudes from fatalism like
sepia from tlie cuttlefish. What could be
more dispiriting tlian to doubt the reality of
all effort, to deny the possibility of self-con-
quest and triumpli over circumstances, to find
heroism an illusion and virtue a dream? What
could break the spring of life more completely
than to feel that our feet are tangled in a net
whose meshes were woven for us by our ances-
tors, and for them by tailless apes, and for them
by gilled amphibians, and for them by gliding
worms, and for them by ciliated larvae, and for
them by amcebse, and for them by God does
not know what ? It does not help the case
in the least to do as some theologians have
tried to do and bring back into the theor}^ by
the aid of certain misconstrued and very
much overworked passages of Scripture, the
idea of a supreme Deity who has constructed
the loom and devised the pattern of the net
and decreed the weaving of every loop. The
chain of Fate is not inade less heavy by fasten-
ing the end of it to the distant throne of an
omnipotent and impassive Creator. If our
false sense of freedom comes from such a Be-
ing, who is Himself free, it is all the more a
cruel and bitter enigma. If moral responsi-

fatalism.

Liberty 217

bility has been imposed upon us by the same
hand which has bound us to an inalteral)le
destiny, it is all the more a crushing and mis-
erable fraud. To baptize fatalism witli a Baptized
Christian name does not cliange its nature.
To hold fast to the metaphysical conception of
God while accepting Heredity and Environment
as His only and infallible prophets is simply to
add a new ethical horror to the dismal delusion
of life, and to fall back into the pessimism of
Omar Khayyam.

" We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes, that come and go
Round with this Sun-ilhimined Lantern, held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

" Impotent Pieces of the (xame He phiys
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

" The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.

" And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help — for it
As impotently rolls as you or L"!

1 Buhdiyat of Omar Khayydm. Rendered into English
verse by Edward Fitzgerald, with an accDnipauimeut of draw-
ings by Elihu Vedder (Boston, 1884), stanzas 72, 7o, 75, 70.

218 Liberty

Is determin- This is the solution which modern positivism,
ismproie . ^j^^.j^^gj^g^l ^j, unchristenecl, offers for the prob-
lem of the freedom of the will. Before we
turn to consider the verj^ different answer
which Christ gives to the same question, let
us stay for a moment to ask whether this
current and popular solution is of the nature
of a demonstration, or of the nature of a doubt.
Is it so clearly proven that science forces us
to accept determinism ? Or is it an unveri-
liable assumption, which is made under tlie
influence of a general scepticism in regard to
spiritual realities, and which leaves out of
view quite as many and quite as important
facts as those which it professes to explain?
Are we compelled to admit it ; or is it only one
of two alternatives, neither of which is scientifi-
cally demonstrable, so that the choice between
them must rest upon other considerations ?

I do not hesitate to say tliat the whole weight
of sober and sane criticism inclines to the lat-
ter conclusion. Determinism has not yet been
established either by physiological, psychologi-
cal, or metaphysical argument.
rininnnphy 'Hic couimou assumptiou that the abstract
"'^■' ""■ reasoning of Jonathan Edwards against the

Liberty 219

liberty of the will lias never been and cannoc
be refuted, is based upon ignorance of the facts.
An American philosopher, ^Ir. Rowland Haz-
ard, has answered it with great clearness and
force. Professor George P. Fisher says : " The
fundamental point of Mr. Hazard's criticism
of Edwards is full}^ established. It must l)e
allowed that his confutation of that conception
of the Avill which underlies the reasoning of the
great theologian is sound and conclusive."^

The support which modern science is sup- Science s(h/s
posed to give to the theory of determinism
turns out, upon closer examination, to be alto-
gether illusor3^ The soundest and most care-
ful investigators utterly decline to commit
themselves to that metaphysical dogma, or to
bind out science as a maid-of-all-work in the
service of fatalistic theology.

The most distinguished of living English Free-will a
scientists recently said : " The influence of „„>ac/e.
animal or vegetable life on matter is intinitely
beyond the range of any scientific inquiry
hitherto entered on. Its power of directing
the motions of moving particles, in the demon-
strated daily miracle of our human free-w ill, ^and

1 Rowland Hazard, Freedom of Mind in Willing (Boston,
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889). Introduction by George P.
Fisher, p. xxxi.

220 Liberty

in the growth of generation after generation of
plants from a single seed, are infinitely dif-
ferent from any possible resnlt of the fortui-
tons concourse of atoms. The real phenomena
of life infinitely transcend human science." ^
The theory that consciousness is a function of
the brain breaks down completely when it
attempts to explain the phenomena of sleep.
Why should all the other functions of the
body be carried on without fatigue and with-
out interruption while this alone demands rest
and admits of intervals of cessation ? If con-
sciousness is a function of nerve-matter, sleep
abolishes it. How does it come back again
without losing the sense of personal identity?
Thought is Is it couccivable that the highest character,
the loftiest genius, is purely an intermittent
secretion of certain nerve-cells, and that dur-
ing the hours of sleep, embracing one-third of
its entire history, it is absolutely non-existent ?
''Function," says an eminent neurologist, "is
a physiological term, and it is, I submit, im-
proper to speak of states of consciousness as
being functions of the brain. ... It is not
the mind, but the physical basis of mind, which
is a product of physical evolution. It is the

' Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), in The FoHm(/htly
Jieview, March, 18U2.

II '>t a secre
(ion.

Liberty 221

organ of mind, not the mind of itself, wliicli
being an evolution out of the rest of the body
is representative of it.''^

The fact that the brain is a double organ, — The bruin
that there are really two brains, only one of [llZind
which is used, — cannot be explained on the
theory that consciousness is merely the result
of the vibration of nerve filaments, as the music
of the ^olian harp is the result of the pas-
sage of the wind over its strings. A distin-
guished physiologist has cleverly shown that if
this were the case a double brain would mean
a double amount of thought, just as tAvice the
number of strings would mean twice the quan-
tity of music. 2 But the fact that this is not so,
points clearly to the hypothesis that the brain
is not an JEolian harp helplessly vibrating
under external impulses, but a double organ
with tw^o sets of keys, and the mind is like the
player who can use either one of them to make
the music. And this corresponds closely with
our own sense of the process. For we are
conscious not only of passive thoughts and

1 Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, " Lecture on the Comparative
Study of Diseases of the Nervous System " (British Medical
Journal, August 17, 1889).

2 Dr. William H. Thomson, Materialism and Modern
Physiology of the Nervous System (New York, Putnams,
1892), pp. 83 ff.

222 Liberty

feelings, evoked within ns by external canses,
Ijut also of thoughts and feelings voluntarily
directed and combined, woven together in crea-
tive harmonies, and moving under the guidance
of chosen ideals towards a symphonic complete-
ness. Even the sense of discord and conflict
which often rises Avithin us is an evidence that
there is a player as well as an instrument. For
it is inconceivable that an Jj^olian harp, ill-
strung, should dislike its own bad music, and
endeavour, or think that it could endeavour, to
make a better, sweeter sound.

Heredity is undoubtedly a real and power-
ful force. It supplies the outfit of life. But
does it determine the use which we shall make
of it ? The very extension of the doctrine
by the investigations of science dissolves this
narrow and absolute conclusion. We inherit
from thousands, from hundreds of thousands,
of ancestors. The blood of man}' families and
tribes and races is mingled in our veins.
What is it that decides which of these many
lines Ave shall folloAv ? It must be either blind
chance or free choice. All the phenomena of
society, all the facts of consciousness, are in
fa \- our of the latter supposition. We see men
wliose lieritage is of the lowest and the worst,
working their way up, by sheer strength of

Liberty 228

moral choice and effort, to a higher pUuie.

We see men whose heritage is of the loftiest

and the best, declining

"tliro' acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still," i

to the very depths of infamy. It is true that
a man cannot bring out of himself anything
that is not already there. But it is true also,
by virtue of heredity, that there are many
potential men in every man, and which of them
is to emerge, he chooses for himself by a thou-
sand silent moral preferences ; by yielding or
by resisting; by the cowardice and corruption,
or by the courage and purification of his own
free-will.

Even those who write of liuman life from a Moral juda-
professedly naturalistic standpoint cannot p-et "'^^^'^

^ 'J i o assume

rid of this conviction. Take Zola, for example, liberty.
If he were consistent, he would speak with
equal and impassive coldness of all his charac-
ters, tangled together in the inextricable toils
of heredity. I>ut he cannot help letting his
hatred and contem})t for the selfish, the luxu-
rious, the vicious, express itself in the very
accent with whicli he describes them. He
cannot help showing his admiration and affec-

1 Tennyson's poem, Will.

224 Liberty

tion for those who, like Benise and Doctor
Fascah and Clotilde, rise out of the infamy
which envek)ps the family Rougon-Macqiiart.
Virtue and vice may be scientifically treated
as if they were merely natural products like
sugar and vitriol ; but when we come to talk
of them from a human and humane standpoint,
there is something within us which demands
that we shall recognize a merit in being virt-
uous, and a shame in being vicious, — qualities
which can never belong to mere secretions,
whether of plants or of nerves, — qualities
which have no possible meaning unless there
is a free-will in man, capable of choosing be-
tween the evil and the good.
The testi- Now that a free-will is possible, modern psy-

nuxieni oliology assures us, as the result of its latest re-
],!<ijr.hoi<jgy. searches. It does not attempt to demonstrate
the existence of such a power by physiological
investigation. It confesses that this demon-
stration is impossible w^ith our present know-
ledge. But it declares with equal candour that
tlie contrary attempt to show that the sense of
freedom is a delusion, is inconclusive. " The
last Avord of psychology here," says Professor
William James, ''is ignorance, for the forces
engaged are too delicate and numerous to be
followed in detaiL" He points out the ex-

Liherty 225

tremely reckless and inconsequent niiture of
the reasoning by which the determinists seek
to make mere analogies drawn from the course
of rivers, and reflex actions, and other material
phenomena, serve as proofs that the Avill is a
mechanical effect. He exposes the bold as-
sumption by which they ignore tlie testimony
of consciousness in the presence of feeling and
effort. He shows that the utmost whicli any
argument for determinism can do is to present
a possible hypothesis, which a man who lias
already determined to hold fast to the idea
that the whole universe is one chain of inevi-
table causation may accept if he likes. But
meanwhile the other alternative stands equally
open. The moral arguments all point in that
direction. The only course, in such a situa- Free-will is
tion, is voluntary choice. "For scepticism it-
self, if systematic, is also voluntary choice. If,
meanwhile, the will be indetermined, it would
seem only fitting that the belief in its inde-
termination should b^ voluntarily chosen from
amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's
first deed should be to affirm itself. . . .
Thus not only our morality but our religion,
so far as the latter is deliberate, depends on
the effort wliich we can make. * Will you or
ivonH you have it so f is the most pi-obing

possible.

226 Liberty

question Ave are ever asked : we are asked it
every hour of the da}^, and about the largest
as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as
well as the most practical, things. We answer
hy consents or non-consents^ and not by words.
What wonder if these dumb responses should
seem our deepest organs of communication
with the nature of things I What wonder if
the effort demanded by them should be the
measure of our worth as men ! What wonder
if the amount Avhich we accord of it be the
one strictly underived and original contribu-
tion which we make to the world ! " ^

Christ says Here, then, modern science, careful, exact,
real. ^ ^^ reverent, as distinguished from modern scep-
ticism, leaves us before the two doors. And
here Christ comes to us, calling us to enter
through the door of liberty into the pathway of
eternal life. "Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be
opened unto you." 2 ''If any man willeth to
do His will, he shall know of the teaching. "^

1 William James, Psychology, vol. ii., p. 579.
'^ St. Matt. vii. 7.
8 St. John vii. 17.

Liberty 227

Tlie whole life and ministry of Jesus is a ^^^ ^^f*^ ^f

1 • p ^ c -t TT- Jesus, a

revelation oi moral ireedom. His entrance reveiationoj
into the world was voluntary. His continu- P'^^-^^ii^-
ance in human life was voluntaiy. His death
was voluntary. At the first crisis of His life
He chose to go about His Father's business.
In the temptation He chose to resist the allure-
ments of the Evil One. On the Avay to the
cross He chose not to call on God for the
deliverance which He knew would come in
answer to His call. He was, indeed, fulfilling
an appointed task, treading the path which
had been marked out for the feet of the
Christ ; but He Avas fulfilling the task freely ;
He was walking in liberty because He loved
to do the will of God. The triumph of His
virtue lay in the freedom of His choice.

There was a singular propriety in the text of The preach-

TT. r> ITT rj 11^- ing of Jesus,

His first public discourse. It was a declaration ^ gospel of
of liberty, as well as of grace. It was an eman- ^i^^^'tu-
cipation proclamation as well as a gospel of com-
fort and help. ^' The spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because He anointed me to preach good
tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to pro-
claim release to the captives, and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that
are crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of

sees taught
Fate.

228 Liberty

the Lord."^ And what was the oppressive
bondage from which He prochiimed release?
Was it not the tyranny of a false doctrine of
necessity over the minds of men, as well as the
enslaving influence of sin over their inert and
hopeless wills ?
The Phari- Here Avere the scribes and Pharisees teach-
ino' that the whole world was divided into
two classes, — the chosen and the not-chosen, the
rio-hteous for whom salvation was secure what-
ever they might do, and the sinners for whom
salvation was impossible whatever they might
do. Here were the outcast, the lost, the neg-
lected, shut out, by no choice of their own, but
by their birth, by the occupations in which
they were engaged, by their ignorance, by the
very conditions of their life, from all part in
the kingdom of heaven as the scribes and
Pharisees conceived it ; not only the harlots
and the publicans, but also Am Haarez^ ''the
people of the land," with whom it was not fit-
ting tliat a righteous person should have any
dealings; 2 miserable souls, bound by inheri-
tance to a desperate and unhallowed fate. Here
came Jesus, taking His way directly to these
lost ones, these outsiders, and telling them that
all this doctrine of inevitable doom was a chain
1 St. Luke iv. 18. - Brace, Kingdom of God, 145.

Liberty 229

of lies, breaking the imaginary fetters from Jesus tavc/ht
their souls and assuring them by His lirst
word that they were free, even though they
were ignorant of it. "Repent," He cried, "for
the kingdom of heaven has approached unto
you."i "Except ye be converted and become
as little children, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven. "^ And what is tlie signili-
cance of these words, "repentance" and "con-
version,"— their real significance, I mean, not
that which has been read into them by centuries
of false and formal theology? They are not
passive and involuntary words ; they do not rest
upon the idea of qualifications which may or
may not be in the possession of those to whom
Christ speaks. They are active words, — words
of inward movement and exertion. " Repent "
means change your mind; make that simple
effort of the soul for internal change which
is the ultimate act of the free will , ^ put forth

1 St. Matt. iv. 17.

2 St. Matt, xviii. 3.

3 " Every intelligent being, capable of conceiving of higher
ethical conditions than he has j-et attained, has in his own
moral nature for the exercise of his creative powers an inti-
nite sphere, within which ... he is the supreme disposer.
... A man who does not want to be pure and noble, may yet
begin one step lower in the scale of moral advancement, with
the wish to want to be pure and noble ; and, here comnieuc-
ing the cultivation of his moral nature, ascend from this lower

230 Liberty

that power of fixed attention to the new motive

which is the central essence of liberty and the

creative force of the soul.^ "Be converted,"

as Christ spoke the word, is not passive ; it

expresses an action exercised by the soul within

itself ; it means simply " turn around " ; set

yourself in a new relation to God, to truth, to

Faith is yirtue. The name of this relation is faith.
free.

'' Believe " is Christ's great word. It is the
'•'open sesame''^ of the kingdom. "Believe in
God, believe also in Me.'' ^ " He that belie veth
hath everlasting life." ^ "All things are possible
to him that believeth." ^ But it is never spoken
of as a mere intellectual opinion, or emotional
experience, an irresistible conviction wrought
by external evidence in the mind, or bestowed
without effort upon the soul. The Bible never
says that faith is a gift. There is a voluntary
element in it. It is something to be done by
the exercise of an inward power. It is a com-
ing of the soul to Christ ; it is a following of the

point, through the want to be pure and noble, to the free effort
to gratify this want." — Rowland Hazard, Freedom oj
Mind in Willing, "Of Effort for Internal Change" (Bos-
ton, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889), chap. xiv.

1 "The essential achievement of the will when it is most
• voluntary,' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast
before the mind." — Jamks, Psychology, vol. ii., p. fiOl.

2 8t. John xiv. 1. 3 gf joim vi. 47. ^ St. Mark ix. 23.

Liberty 231

soul after Him ; it is the first step in a long
course of spiritual activit3\ It is a deed. The
disciples said unto Christ, "What must Ave do
that we may work the works of God ? " Jesus
answered, "This is the Avork of God, that ye
believe on Him Avhom He hath sent." ^

Now there is not a hint in all the teaching of All may
Jesus that this first act of freedom is impossible *^ ^^^^'
for any soul to whom He speaks. He has no
idea of an eternal predestination binding some to
belief and others to unbelief, a secret decree in-
cluding certain men in the kingdom and exclud-
ing others from all possibility of entering into it.
It is true that He says, " No man can come unto
Me except the Father draAV him "; ^ but what He
means by this drawing He tells us in the par-
able of the Lost Son, where it is the simple
knowledge of the Father's abundant love that
draws the prodigal back from the far country
of sin; 3 and in the parable of the Publican in
the Temple, * where it is the sense of the Divine
mercy and forgiveness that makes the outcast
man cry, "God, be merciful to me a sinner."
There is prevenient grace in the doctrine of
Jesus. But the grace is there. It has already
come. All that man has to do is to meet it, to

1 St. John vi. 28, 29. » St. Luke xv.

2 St. John vi. 44. * St. Luke xviii. 10-14.

232

Liberty

Christ is
God's call
to faith.

No predesti-
nation to
death.

put himself into the upward swing of it, that it
may lift and help him heavenward.

A calling and a choosing by God are neces-
sary before any man can be saved. But Jesus
does not speak of this choosing and calling as
eternal. Christ Himself is the call, and all
who answer it are chosen. '' If any man thirst,
let him come unto Me and drink." ^ " Him that
cometh unto Me I will in nowise cast out.''^
The heavenly invitation is set forth in all its
generosity and sincerity in the story of the
Marriage P'east.^ The bidding went out into
the highways and hedges, to the bad and to the
good; and all who heard and accepted it were
welcome. And if a single guest was turned
away, it was only because his own conduct
showed that he had not really taken the invi-
tation honestly and accepted willingly all that
was provided for him.

There is not a single word in all that Jesus
said to suggest any other reason than this for
the exclusion of a single person from the bless-
ings of the kingdom. " Ye icill not come unto
Me that ye might have life.'"* ''How often
would I have gathered thy children together
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under

1 St. John vii. 37.

2 St. John vi. T.

3 St. Matt. xxii. 1-14.
^ St. John V. 40.

Liberty 233

her wings, and ye would not.'''^ There is not
one statement that anything else but mercy
and grace has been eternally prepared by God
for any human soul. In tliat awful parable of
judgment which discloses the convincing picture
of the final separation of the evil from the
good, Christ says distinctly that the joy of
the blessed has been prepared for them from
the foundation of the world, but of the punish-
ment of the cursed, He says with equal dis-
tinctness that it was not prepared for them,
but for the devil and his angels. ^ No one is
ever lost because lie cannot do good, but only
because he will not do what he can.

Christ recognizes the undoubted trutli wliicli Christ on
lies in the doctrine of heredity ; but Pie ex-
poses, and almost ridicules, the false and
fatal extremes to which men think it out.
To the Jews, who claimed that because they
were Abraham's seed they must be free, He
shoAved that they were in bondage to their
own sins. They had cliosen to break away
from the heredity of faith and rigliteousness,
and Avere no longer the true children of Abra-
ham. They had become the children of the
devil, because they had '' willed to do his
works." 2 lie said to His disciples wlio took

iSt. Matt, xxiii. 87. ^st. Matt. xxv. :U-41.
3 St. Jolm viii. 3:3-47.

The iveak-
ness of viun.

234 Liberty.

up the cant of the day about hereditary sin and
punishment, asked Avhether the blind man or
his parents had sinned that he was born blind,
" Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,
but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him." ^ The true inheritance, the
deepest inheritance which Jesus recognizes in
the human race, is an inheritance from God ;
a nature made in the Divine image, spiritual,
free, responsible, and capable, though so sadly
marred, though so far astray, of returning to
communion with the Heavenly Father.

Undoubtedly Christ perceived and taught
the immense difficulty of being good ; the in-
firmity which long centuries of sin has wrought
into the very fibres of the soul; the awful
and almost inaccessible height of true holi-
ness ; the enormous obstacles which lie in the
way of attaining it. The gate is strait, and
we must agonize to enter in by it. The
road is steep, and we must toil to climb it.
"J low hardly shall they that have riches enter
into the kingdom of God." 2 And yet "the
kingdom of heaven suft'ereth violence, and men
of violence take it by force. "^ There is an
effort which succeeds even in this greatest
of all endeavours, not in its own strength,

1 8t. John ix. 3. 2 gt. Mark x. 23.

8 St. Matt. xi. 12.

Liberty 235

but because it is sure of a Divine assistance. T/w (/race
"With man it is impossible, but not with "■' ^"''"
God."i To the human will, enfeebled and
corrupted, so that it is like a sick man, barely
able to turn Jiimself U[)on his couch, and look
and long and cry for help, three great sources
of strength are always open and accessible.

The first is prayer. "Men ought always to ^'-ayer.
pray, and not to faint." ^ How sweet and
serene is the voice that rings through the vain
disputations and doubtful wranglings of the
scribes and Pharisees, and calls every sinful
soul to pray ! Pray I you may not be able to
realize your ow'n ideal, but you can ask (iod
to help you hold fast to it and struggle towards
it. Pray !

" More things are wrought by prayer
Tliaii this world dreams of." ^

Pray ! For God is not deaf, nor sleeping, nor
gone upon a journey ; He has not bound you
to an inexorable fate and bound Himself not to
interfere with it. Pray ! The liberty of your
o^vn soul, and the liberty of God Hinisi'lf, dwells
in that word ; for when you stretch your feeble
hand to Him, a Divine hand will meet it, and

1 St. Mark x. 27. 2 st. Luke xviii. 1.

3 Tennyson, llie Passimj of Arthur.

Spirit.

Christ our
Helper.

236 Liberty

break your fetters, and lift you out of darkness
and death into life and light.
The Holy The second source of strength is the Holy

Spirit. It is inconceivable, morally impossible,
that there should be such a Spirit, and yet that
His influence should be withheld from those
who need and implore it. '' If ye then, being
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that
ask Him."i

The third source of strength is Christ Him-
self. Does the sense of past guilt stand in the
way of future effort ? He says, '' I have power
on earth to forgive sins." ^ Does the soul feel
dead and hopeless under the burden of evil
habits ? He says, " I came that they may have
life, and may have it abundantly." ^ Do the
works of a true and vital righteousness seem
far beyond our power? He says, ''Without Me
ye can do nothing ; " ^ but, " Lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the Avorld." ^ " He
that believeth on ^le, the works that I do shall
he do also, and greater works than these shall he
do, because I go unto the Father."^ The whole

1 St. Luke xi. 13. * St. John xv. 5.

2 St. Mark ii. 10. 6 st. Matt, xxviii. 20.

3 St. John X. 10. 6 St. John xiv. 12.

Lihertij 237

life of Christ is summed iij) in tlie words, " liut
as many as received llim, to them gave lie power
to become the sons of God." ^

But this receiving, Ave need to rememl)er and The way of
assert again and again, is not a i)assive thing. '^''^'^''''""'■^•
It is an action of the soul, the opening of a door
within the heart, the Avelcoming of a heavenly
master. God does not save men as a watch-
maker who repairs and sets a watch, but as a
King Avho recalls his servants to their duty, as
a Father who makes new revelations of His love
to draw His lost children back to Himself. The
dogmas of the schools in regard to the working
out of what they call the scheme of redemption
sound like the creak and rattle of some vast
machine. The doctrine of Christ is like the
soft breath of spring, evoking the songs of birds
and the unfolding of new life. No fiery chariot
of grace swoops down to snatch men to glor}'.
But a living ^Messenger comes forth from God
to ask men to turn and walk back with Him to
their soul's home. The invitation itself is a
guarantee of the power to accept it. With au-
thority Christ commanded the Avinds and the sea
and they obeyed Him. But with gracious plead-
ing He invited the hearts of men, and those that
were willing gladly heard and followed Him.
1 St. John i. 12.

238

Liberty

God helps
those icho
help them-
selves.

Christus
Liberator.

^*lf any man ivills to come after Me," i — that is
the prelude of His message. He offers a leader-
ship to men who can follow, a mastership to
men who can obey. Out of this first movement
He promises to guide and direct the whole de-
velopment of the new life, — not a passive life
of retirement, of ascetic meditation, of reflec-
tion upon secret truth, — but an active life of
service, of warfare against evil in the world, a
life which translates truth into conduct.

Contrast the religion of Jesus in this respect
with the Oriental religions, and with those
forms of Christianity which have borrowed the
garments of Buddha and speak with the accent
of Mahomet. They despise and slight per-
sonality. Christ respects and emphasizes it.
They aim to reduce and evaporate responsi-
bility. Christ aims to deepen and increase
it. They point forward to a blank Nirvana
in which the individual is lost and absorbed,
or a Paradise in Avhich he is forever lapped in
sensual ease and pleasure. Christ speaks of
the perfecting of the individual through the
Divine communion and service on earth, and
liis entrance in heaven upon a new stage of
tlie same communion, the same service, —
" not in a blessed idleness, but in an exalted

1 St. Matt. xvi. 24.

Liberty 239

kingly work and activity/' And the entrance
to this kingdom on earth, the continuance in
its reahn of liberty, the attainment of its final
glory, are all through an act of the will. The
freedom which originated in God is only to l)e
preserved by returning to God and abiding in
Him.

" Our wills are ours, we know not how ;
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." ^

That is the teaching of Jesus. That is the
truth which, when it comes to men, makes
them and keeps them free.

It is impossible that we should be faithful The age

- needs this

preachers of Christ to the present age, unless message.
we preach this truth. There may have been
ages in which it was important to dwell upon
other sides and aspects of the manifold reality
of the spiritual world. But to-day this is the
important side ; this is the aspect whicli de-
mands a clear recognition and an unfaltering
proclamation by those who mean to be true to
Christ and loyal to the needs of humanity. I
do not believe that there is a single passage in
the Old Testament which contradicts Christ's
1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, Prooni.

240 Liberty

doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. But
if there were such a passage, I would leave it
forever alone, as belonging to that knowledge
which was in part, and which was done away
when that which was perfect had come. I do
not believe that there is a single word in the
writings of St. Paul which stands against this
doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. I
cut loose from the false interpretations which
men have read into his words. I take the
light of Christ's teaching in my hand, and I
go back to interpret by tliat light the teach-
ings of the great Epistle to the Romans with
its glorious revelation of '^ the mystery which
hath been kept in silence through times eter-
nal, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures
of the prophets, according to the commandment
of the eternal God, is made known unto all
the nations unto obedience of faith.'' ^ I hear
again the cry of the struggling, labouring, con-
quering apostle : '' To toill is present with 7ne,
but to do that Avhich is good is not. ... O
wretched man that 1 am, who shall deliver me
out of the body of this death? I thank God
through Christ Jesus our Lord ;'"^ and I know
that St. Paul also was a believer in the free-
dom of the will, and that he received this
1 Rom. xvi. 26. 2 i^om. vii. 18, 24, 25.

Liheriy 241

gospel and the power to fulfil it, through tlie
proclamation of libert}' in Jesus Clirist.

"This matter of free-will," wrote one of the Fr'^^-ii-m
most orthodox of theologians, but a few years quesUan.'^'^
before his death, "underlies everything. If
you bring it to question, it is infinitely more
tJian Calvinism. ... I believe in Calvinisui,
and I say that free-will stands before Calvin-
ism. Everything is gone if free-will is gone ;
the moral system is gone, if free-will is gone ;
you cannot escape except by Materialism on
the one hand or by Pantheism on the other.
Hold hard therefore to the doctrine of free-
will."!

Yes, and we may say more than tliis. Not
only is the moral system gone, but the great
attraction of Christ is gone, the power of His
gospel to liberate men is gone, if free-will is
gone.

The age has hypnotized itself. It is drift- The aye has

"^ T ^ T T 1 • r hypnotized

ing steadily towards fatalism. It denies tree- i^^^if
dom, and therefore it is not free. It is in
bondage to its own doubt. It is enslaved by
its own denial. If there is such a thing as
liberty, it can only be developed, as everything
else has been developed, by action, by exercise.

1 A, A. Hodj^e, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes
(Philadelphia, 1887), p. 184.

242

lAherty

Life is self-change to meet environment. Lib-
erty is self-exertion to unfold the soul. The
law of natural selection is that those who use
a faculty shall expand it, but those who use it
not shall lose it. Religion is life, and it must
grow under the laws of life. Faith is simply
the assertion of spiritual freedom ; it is the
first adventure of the soul. Make that ad-
venture towards God, make that adventure
towards Christ, and the soul will know that it
is alive. So it enters upon that upward course
which leads through the liberty of the sons of
God to the height of heaven.

" Where love is an unerring light
And joy its own security." ^

This is the truth with which we are to go
out a-gospelling in this age of doubt. We are
to tell men that though much has been deter-
mined for them by causes beyond their control,
— their circumstances, their talents, their facul-
ties, — one thing has not been determined, and
that is what they will do with them. Much has
been ordained before their birth, — their nation-
ality, their family, their station in life, — but
one thing has not been ordained, and that is
whether they are to move from this starting-
1 Wordsworth, Ode to Duty.

Liberty 243

point towards life or towards death. They
may be like men sunken in a nightmare dream
of helplessness, muttering in their sleep, "If I
am to be saved, I shall be saved ; if I am to be
lost, I shall be lost," — but we must cry to them
with the voice of the Spirit : '' Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light."

VII

SOVEREIGNTY

" I say to thee, do tliou repeat
To the first man thou iiia3^est meet
In lane, highway, or open street —

" That lie and we and all men move
Under a canopy of love,
As broad as the blue sky above ;

*' That doubt and trouble, fear and j^ain
And anguish, all are shadows vain.
That death itself shall not remain ;

" That weary deserts w^e may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread.
Through dark ways underground be led;

" Yet if we will one Guide obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest w^ay,
Shall issue out in heavenly day ;

" And we, on divers shores now cast,
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father's house at last."

KiCHAIJD ClIENEVIX ThENCH,

The Kingdom of God.

science.

VII

SOVEREIGNTY

The questions about the world Avhich science ^''^ ^o""-
consiclers and answers, all have to do with 1"/.!!/'
secondary causes. Beyond that sphere she does
not need to go, and within that sphere her wis-
dom is sufficient. We come to her like curious
children. We "want to see the wheels go
round." We want to know what the wheels
are made of. She tells us, and there she stops.
All that we have a right to ask of her is that
she shall be true to facts, and that she shall
confine herself to them. When the astronomer
Laplace was reproached for not mentioning God
in his treatise on the dynamics of the solar
system, he answered, "I had no need of that
hypothesis." And this reply was just, as Mr.
John Fiske has pointed out, because " in order
to give a specific explanation of any single
group of phenomena, it would not do to ap-
peal to divine action, which is equally the
source of all phenomena."^

1 Christian Literature, January, 1896, "The Everlasting
Reality of Religion," p. 300.

247

248 Sovereignty

The great But the moment we take tliis reasonable

Veytnd^^ ^^ ^^^^ modest position (and it is a great pity
them. that theology has not been more ready to take

it), we perceive that curiosity in regard to
single groups of phenomena by no means satis-
fies or exhausts the activity of the questioning
spirit in man. There is a deeper curiosity in
regard to the relation of these single groups
of phenomena to each other, and to ourselves,
and to the possibility of a meaning, a purpose,
an end, underlying all things and all theii
workings. Out of this deeper curiosity rise
the questions which are most urgent and vital
— questions which, when we consider them ab
stractly, are philosophical, and condition the
unity of our intellectual life ; but when we con-
sider them personally, they are religious, and
upon their answer our spiritual peace and moral
action absolutely depend. How are we to think
about the things that we know ? What are we
to believe in regard to the things that sciences
tells us we cannot know, but which we stil!
feel are necessary conditions of all intelligent
and right conduct ? Is there an invisible wniiy
beneath all the visible diversity of phenomena?
What is the nature of that unity, personal oi
impersonal, conscious or unconscious? Is there
anything behind the mechanical working of

tioji of
sovereignty.

Sovereignty 249

the world, now so wonderfully explained, which
corresponds to what there is in us wlien we
make and use a machine or an instrument,
when we plant and cultivate a garden, or when
we select and train a noble race of animals?
Is there a final cause towards whicli things
work together, and a supreme power which
guides them to that end?

This is the question of sovereignty. We The ques
can no more help asking it than we can help
thinking.

We are in the world like voyagers on a ship.
We inquire what the ship is made of; and
science tells us, — iron and wood. .Vud wliat
makes it float ? The buoyancy of the air which
it contains. And what makes it go? Steam.
And what makes the steam? The heat of the
furnace. Then, if we are sufficiently inter-
ested, science takes us down into the engine-
room, and shows us all the condensers and
pistons and cranks and wheels, more fully than
they have ever been shown before ; and we are
amazed and profoundly grateful. We come up
again into the light of day. We look into the
overarching heaven, the home of sunshine and
storm, the deep mother of light and darkness.
We look out upon the great and wide sea,
full of mystery and terror. New questionings

Doubt

ii'isicers,

X.).

250 Sovereigyity

j[asthe spring to our lips. Where is the ship going?

Zarttainf ^^ there a captain on board ? Does he know,
does he care, what is to become of it? Is he
wise, is he faithful, is he a good captain ? Can
he direct the vessel through tempests and dan-
gers? Can he tell us how to work with him,
how to act in times of peril and perplexity?
Can we be sure of him, can we trust liim ?

Now to this questioning, scepticism gives a
repl}' of desperate uncertainty ; and positivism
answers with a stern and sullen. No ! The
world is a derelict vessel, and we are master-
less and lost mariners. This answer has been
expressed by a French poet in powerful and
pathetic verse.

" Jouet de I'ouragan, qui I'eniporte et le mene,
Enconibre de tresors et d'agres submerges,
Ce navire perdu, mais c'est le nef humaiiie,
Et nous sommes les r.aufrages.

•' L'equipage affole manoeuvre en vain dans I'ombre;
L'fipouvaiite est a bord, le Desespoir, le Deuil;
Assise au gouvernail, la Fatalite sombre
Le dirige vers un ecueil."i

But Christ gives a very different answer.
It seems as if His very words Avere chosen to
contradict this view of life as a helpless, hope-

1 L. Ackerman, Ma Vie, Poesies, etc. (Paris, 1885), " Le
Cri,'' p. 180.

Sovereignty 251

less voyage, and humanity as a sliipwrecked Christ
race. For what is it that He says to His y^^^"'"^''
disciples as they look out upon the mystery of
existence ?

" Seek not what ye shall eat, and what ye
shall drink, neither be ye as a ship that is tossed
on the ivaves of a tempestuous sea {/ni] /xerecopi-
^eaOe), for your Father knoweth that ye have
need of these things." ^

The vessel is not driving masterless over the
ocean. The Captain is on board. He is God.
He is also our Father. For all who trust and
serve Him, it is a sure voyage, a certain port,
a safe harbour.

The doctrine of the presence and sovereignty The

c r^ t • TT- 11' r ii ■ sovereiffuty

01 (jrod in His world, m one lorm or another, is ^j- qq,j
essential to the validity of any reasoning which
attempts to go beyond the mere appearance of
things. Without it we find ourselves, as one
has well said, " put to permanent intellectual
confusion." Without it the world lies before
us, as Pope wrote in the first draft of liis Essay
on Man^ —

** A mighty maze, and all without a plan."

1 St. Luke xii. 29.

252

Sovereignty

Christ's
view of it.

Contrasted
icith other
vieics.

And if we follow the poet in that cold j^hilo-
sophical deism which led him to revise his fa-
mous line so that it now reads

" A mighty maze, but not without a plan," ^
Ave are still in the dark, still confused and
hopeless, unless Ave go further and learn enougli
of Him Avho made the plan, to trust Him even
w^hen we cannot perfectly understand His Avork-
ing, and to confide absolutely in ''His most
holy, wise, and powerful preserving and govern-
ing all His creatures and all their actions." ^

This is Avhat Christ gives us : a Adew of God
in His Avorld which requires faith to accept it,
but which Avlien it is accepted, satisfies the rea-
son and the heart better than any other view,
clears away many of the intellectual and moral
difficulties Avhich beset us, and becomes the in-
Avard source not of doubt and distress, but of
certainty and peace.

This is not true, Ave must admit, of some of
the forms in which the doctrine of divine soa^-
ereignty has been preached in Christ's name.
They have often disregarded the facts of nat-
ure. They have often outraged the moral
instincts of humanity. They have created
new obstacles to faitli. They have driven men

1 Pope's Essay on Man, part i., line 6.
'^ The Shorter Catechism, question xi.

Sovereignty 253

back in dumb resentment to believe in the
positivist's ''sombre Fatality," rather than in
an absentee (Jod who has foreordained, by one
and the same decree, all the evil and all the
good, all the sorrow and shame and suffering
that are in the world.

Not so with Christ's teaching. It is sane
and sweet. It allays resentment and begets
serenity. It gives a reconciling, harmonizing,
atoning view of God's sovereignty. And if
Ave can see it clearly and 23reach it faithfully,
it will be to-day, as it was in His day, one of
the great attractions of the gospel for an age
of doubt.

Christ's doctrine of the divine sovereignty ChHsVs
was both old and new. It Avas old because it
recognized the truth, uttered so magniticently
by prophets and psalmists, of God's right and
poAver to rule the universe Avhich He has
made. ''Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
CA^er."! "The Lord hath prepared His throne
in the heavens and His kingdom ruleth over
all."^ "He doeth according to His Avill in the
army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of
the earth : and none can stay His hand, or say
unto Him, What doest Thou? "^
1 Psalm xlv. 6. 2 psalm ciii. 19. -^ Daniel iv. 35.

and nexo.

254 Sovereignty

A simpler But Clirist's cloctriiie Avas new because it

revealed the presence of the sovereign God in
the physical universe more simply, more natu-
rally, more intimately, than it had ever been
revealed before. How gentle, how plain, how
mildly luminous, is the language in which
Jesus expresses this truth, compared with the
flashing, rolling speech of the prophets I He
uses the words of common life, transfigured
Avith emotion, — the language of 13^10, rather
than of epic, poetry.

God in His The manifestations of divine power in the
Old Testament appear chiefly as mighty works,
exceptional forthputtings of supernal force.
It seems sometimes as if they came from a
distance ; as if God had withdrawn from the
world and had been called back to it by the
peril and the cry of His people. But Clirist
would teach us to feel that He has never gone
away for an instant. He is always here.
Nothing tliat happens is hidden from Him.
Nor does He hide Himself from any avIio
would behold Him. We may see Him every
day, in the feeding of the birds, in tlie blos-
soming of the flowers,

<' And every wayside bush aflame with God."

In all the processes of nature He is present
and sovereign.

Sovereignty 255

This view of tlie relation of God to the nia- '^''*<^ <Uvine

terial world is not external and mechanical.
It is inward and vital. God has not made the
world and wound it up and left it to run l)y
itself. He is in it, as really as a man is in the
house that he inhabits, and all the potencies
that move and animate it Hoav directly from
Him. The Jews thought tliat (lod liad fahri-
cated the universe in six days and sat down lo
rest on the seventh, laying aside His work as
a clock-maker Avould put down a linislied
clock. But Christ said, "My Fatlier worketh
until now, and I work." ^ Creation is not
ended, it is going on all the time. ycsler(Lay
Avas a creative day ; and so is to-day ; and so
to-morrow will be. The divine thought is
still Aveaving its beautiful garment on the
roaring loom of Time.

But God's activity in the Avorld is not ca-
pricious or disorderly. No one Avas more sen-
sitive than Jesus to "the rhythmic element
in nature, — the floAv of rivers, the procession
of stars, the antiphony of day and niglit, tlie
silent but inviolate order of the seasons." ^ Jt
Avas He Avho expressed the law of growtli :

1 St. John V. 17.

2 H. W. Mabie, Essays on Nature and Culture (New York,
1896), p. 295.

immanence.

The divine
orderliness.

256 Sovereignty

"first the blade, then the ear, and after that
the full corn in the ear/'^ It was He Avho
suggested the analogy of natural law in the
spiritual world, appl3'ing the figure of gernn-
nation to His own death and resurrection :
" Except a corn of wheat fall into tlie ground
and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit. "^ Xhe parables
which He used to describe the kingdom of
heaven Avere drawn from nature and based on
law. It was like "leaven which a woman
took and hid in three measures of meal until
the whole was leavened," or "like a grain of
mustard seed, Avhich a man took and sowed
in his field ; which indeed is the least of all
seeds, but Avhen it is grown it is the greatest
among herbs." ^ He taught His disciples to
look upon the regular and steadfast ordinances
of nature as the proof that their Heavenly
Father was mindful of them and would take
care of them. You will not find any such su-
perfluous phrase as " special Providence " in the
teaching of Jesus. His thought was of a gen-
eral and universal Providence, wide enough
and deep enough to embrace the wants of all
creatures and provide for them. God's chil-

1 St. Mark iv. 28. 2 gt. John xii. 24.
3 St. Matt. xiii. 32, 33.

Sovereignty 2o7

dren were not to trust in miracles and marvels
for their daily bread ; tliey were not to l)e
always looking and calling for the extraordi-
nary, — manna from the sky, water from the
riven rock. They were to rest rather upon
the course of nature in quiet coniidence, and
work with it in cheerful joy, knowing that
He Avho clothes the grass of the field will much
more clothe them,^ — and by the same power
working in the same way.

Yet Jesus did not think of God as having Miracles not
exhausted all possible modes of His activity J'"^",'/,!^
in those which are familiar to us. His pres-
ence in the world is of such a personal kind
that it necessarily brings with it the power of
direct, personal, infinitely varied action. Out
of this power spring those strange signs and
wondrous works which we call miracles. Jesus
never said that they were against nature. He
never even said that they were supernatural.
He claimed only that they were proofs of a
divine mission, because they Avere such works
as could only come from God. They were
signs, just as all uncommon and extraordinary Sh/n^ »f
acts are signs. But signs ot what/ ur per-
sonality, of that power of choice in modes of

1 St. Matt. vi. 30.

God through
law

'•It)'^ Sovereignty

action wliicli is the essential attribute of a
free spirit. They Avere Avr ought in order
that men miglit believe, not in order that
they might be astonished; and just as truly
in order that they might believe in the order
of nature as in the Person who upholds it by
His presence.
The reign of ^* An energy," says i\lr. Ruskin, "may be
natural without being normal, and divine
without being constant." Jesus did not teach
the reign of laAV. He taught the reign of God
through law. And in order that men might
be sure that the law did not bind God like a
chain, but freely expressed His sovereign will,
it was given unto Jesus to show men those
rare works, unique and transcendent, like
strokes of genius, which reveal, as if by flashes
of light, tlie true relation between the sover-
eign God and tlie universe which He is mak-
ing and ruling.

It is always to this personal God that Jesus
would direct the thoughts and confident affec-
tions of men. How is it possible for any one to
miss His meaning, and translate it into some-
thing entirely different, as Matthew Arnold
does in his misinterpretation of what he calls
"the secret of Jesus" ? It is not merely the joy

TIte secret
of Jesus.

in a

Sovereignty 259

and peace of self-renunciation that Jesns sets
forth to His disciples. It is the inward qui- 7'/"^<
etude and rest of self-surrender to a loving 7,\^^/,pJf' ^
Father who is also the Mighty God. And it
is not from the sense of His resistless power,
but from the consciousness of His love, of
His Fatherhood, that peace comes. " Yea,
Father, for so it Avas well-pleasing in Tliy
sight." ^ '' Father, all things are possible unto
Thee ; remove this cup from ^le : howbeit
not what I Avill, but wdiat Thou wilt."'^
" Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit."^
This is the secret of Jesus. He does not teach
bare sovereignty to Avliicli we must yield be-
cause it is irresistible. He teaches sover-
eignty of a certain kind, — the sovereignty
of a Father, who is as much better, as He is
more powerful, than all earthly parents or
rulers, and who will never forsake His world,
nor suffer His children to slip from His mighty
hand.

But sovereignty of this kind necessarily im-
plies distinctions in the manner of its exercise.
It cannot possibly be conceived of in terms of

1 St. Matt. xi. 26. 2 st. Mark xiv. 30. 3 St. Luke xxiii. 46

260

Sovereignty

The highest
kind of
sovereignty
discrimi-
nates.

A loioer
kind of
sovereignty
mechanical.

any single force or confined to any one mode of
operation. It must be flexible and discriminat-
ing. It must include within itself as many
forms of rule as there are forms of being under
its dominion. What, for example, should we
say of a king who had but one way of dealing
with all his subjects, young and old, Avise and
ignorant, loj'al and disloyal, and who treated
his servants under precisely the same condi-
tions as his horses and his chariots ? Or what
should we say of a father who attempted to reg-
ulate and rule his children without reference to
their character, and who made no distinction
between them and the furniture of his house ?
Yet this, in effect, is the theory of the divine
sovereignty which has frequently been set forth
by theologians as if it were the only one which
did justice to the glory of God.

'* The will of God," according to this theory,
" is the irresistible force. It is the source of
all things, all persons, all events. From it they
all proceed, under it they all act, by an invari-
able necessity. This will lias already deter-
mined from all eternity everything that comes
to pass. Every character in the world, like
every rock and every plant, is just what God
willed it to be. Everything that happens, hap-
pens because Ylv willed it and precisely as He

Soverei'i/itt// 261

willed it. The life of mankind is far from
being in any sense a voyage, an adventure, a
probation. It is simply the process of printing
a history which has already been Avritten and
set in type down to the last letter. The great
press is in motion. Our souls are the blank
pages. On one is printed a foreordained prayer.
On another a foreordained blasphemy. Death
is the folding knife. Judgment is the act of
binding, in which the fair pages will be pre-
served and the foul pages rejected and buruLMl.
The sovereignty of God is exercised in seeing
that the book goes through the press exactly as
it was written, without the addition or sub-
traction of a single syllable of the foreordained
text."

But surely, even if this theory were true and The lower
could be proved, it is not of a nature to give glorious
aid and comfort to those who are zealous for
the glory of God. It does not really exalt and
magnify the divine sovereignty, but narrows
and degrades it. It does not call for tlie per-
fect wisdom and unlimited resources of a potent
Ruler able to meet emergencies, to overcome
oppositions, to guide and direct intelligent and
free subjects like Himself, and to conduct a
high enterprise, through all the difficulties tliat
may arise, to a successful end. It calls for

262 Sovereignty

qualities of a lower kind and a strictly limited
scope ; the exact knowledge and the applied
strenofth of a skilful machinist ; not the broad
intelligence, the swift genius, the inexhaustible
patience, and the triumphant personal influ-
ence of a great Captain, a Master and Lord of
men.
Which kind It is conceivable, of course, that God might
chosen? have chosen to create a universe in which His
sovereignty should be exercised in this one un-
varying line of foreordained necessity. Being
supreme. He has both the right and the power
to make such a sphere, or spheres, for the rev-
elation of His attributes as may please Him.
But it is not liumanly conceivable that He
should have made this particular choice which
is ascribed to Him for His own glory. If He
had chosen this kind of a universe, so far as we
can see, it must have lowered and hidden His
glory. It must have left Him with a field in
which the highest qualities of personality could
not possibly be exercised. It must have made
all subsequent choice, and all approval or
disapproval, and all truly moral government
impossible. The existence of rewards and pun-
ishments, the sense of merit or demerit among
the creatures of such a world, would be inex-
plicable. Nay more, it would be a cruel delu-

Sovereignty 263

sion, which, since it must come like everything-
else, according to this theor}^ from the will of
the Maker, Avould reflect a dark shadow of dis-
credit upon His moral character. To claim
that this sense of responsibility, like all other
parts of the system, may be a necessity, a legal
fiction which is essential to the working of a
scheme far above our comprehension and there-
fore above our judgment, makes it more awful,
but not more admirable. If there is any valid-
ity whatever in our moral instincts, we need not
hesitate to say, that from our present i)oiut of
view, which is for us the only one attainable,
this theory of the absolute and unconditional
sovereignty of God, exercised by one law of
necessity over all creatures, is so far from Ijeing
for God's glory that it is apparently for His
shame and dishonour.

As a matter of fact, it has been, and still is, ^^^^ '^^•^'"

ml ties of

the most fertile mother of doubts. "A uni- absoiufi.'<m.
verse in which all the power was on the side of
the creator, and all the morality on the side of
creation, Avould be one compared with which
the universe of naturalism would shim' out as a
paradise indeed." ^ The idea of an irresponsible
God ruling by an eternal and inflexible fiat
over responsible men, is a moral nightmare,
1 Foundations of Belief, p. 32G.

264 Sovereignity

under which liumanity groans, and from which
it struggles to awake, even though it should
have to open its eyes upon the blank darkness
of an unsearchable night. Between the un-
knoAvable God of agnosticism and the unlov-
able God of absolutism, there is indeed little
to choose. But the choice, such as it is, lies
on the side of agnosticism. It is unspeak-
ably better to doubt God's personality. His
supremacy. His very being, than it is to
doubt His eternal goodness and His moral
integrity.
Jesus de- But the teaching of Jesus is designed and

livers us

from them, ^ttcd to deliver us, if we will accept it, from
both of these doubts. He reveals a God who
is not only Lord of all, but who exercises His
sovereignty in discretion, in justice, and in
love. He does not look upon all His creatures
with the same eyes. He discriminates. He
distinguishes. He has regard to their differ-
ences of nature and character. The human
soul is of more value to Him than many spar-
rows.^ How much is a man better than a
sheep ? 2 By so much as he is more like God,
spiritual, free, responsible, immortal. These
qualities, which God Himself has created, God
Himself respects. Every word of Jesus takes it
1 St. Matt. X. 31. 2 St. Matt. xii. 12.

Sovereignty 265

for granted that God is not an infinite Auto- (^'^d is a
crat, a hard master, reaping where He has not •^"" "'^'•''^'''•
sown, and gathering where He has not strewed,
but a fair and equitable Lord, who takes into
consideration all the conditions of His subjects
and renders unto all their dues. The forces of
nature obey His will inevitabl}^ and for them
there is neither praise nor blame. Tlie souls
of men are invited to love Him, and com-
manded to serve Him, but they are left free to
choose Avhether they will obey or disobey, and
upon their choice the approval and blessing of
God depend.

Who can question for a moment that this is The divine
the view of the divine sovereignty which un- ^^/"mL'Jefr
derlies all the parables of Christ ? The omnip- «" action.
otence which He teaches is not sheer, absolute,
unconditioned. It is a self-restrained power.
It is able to limit itself, to act in such a way
and under such conditions as God chooses to
create. If He could not do this. He would not
be truly omnipotent. If there were but one
method in which He could manifest His will,
and that the method of necessity, He would be
forever shut out from personal relations, wliicli
can only exist where there are different wills,
capable of agreement or disagreemeut, of co-
operation or conflict, of harmony or discord.

266 Sovereignty

Jesus believed and taught that God has actu-
all}^ chosen to limit the autocratic exercises of
His sovereignty by creating beings who have
the power of yielding to His will or of resist-
ing it.
Th- origin p^-^^^ from this resistance flow all the evil,

of' erU not

in God. 3,11 the sorrow, all the misery oi the world.

God does not ordain sin. God does not even
permit sin, in the sense that He allows it to
exist witliout opposition and condemnation on
His part. It may be a necessary feature of
a world of free choice and moral probation.
Jesus seems to imply as much when He says
"It must needs be that offences come." But
He adds at once, " Woe unto that man by whom
the offence cometh."^ That man is not doing
the will of God. He is a rebel, a traitor, an
apostate. Sin is a perversion of the heart from
its true purpose just as blindness is a perver-
sion of the eye from its true f unction. ^ When
the tares appear in the field, Christ does not
leave us to suppose for a moment that they
were planted by the same hand that sowed the
good seed. He says, " An enemy hath done
this."^ Satan, who is the embodiment of evil
and the leader of all wlio are opposed to God,

1 St. Matt, xviii. 7. 2 gt. Luke xi. 34-36.

3 St. Matt. xiii. 28.

Sovereignty 267

is the great enemy, the adversary not only of
souls, but also of the Divine will.

Turn for a moment to the narrative of the ^'^^^ ^^ ^^'e
temptation of Christ. i He was led up by the ^Jmy^f ""
Spirit into the wilderness to be temi)ted of
the devil. But did the same Spirit lead the
devil ? Was Satan acting under the divine
sovereignty in the same sense, in the same way,
that Jesus was? Set aside, if you will, the
question of the personality of the evil une.
There was a suggestion of evil l)efore the mind
of Jesus. Did that suggestion come from tlie
same source as the liol}^ strength that resisted it,
— the all-creating, all-controlling will of God?
Can the same fountain send forth sweet and
bitter Avaters? Why then should the one be
called cursed and the other blessed? Such a
view simply obliterates all moral distinctions.
It completely undermines and ruins the sig-
nificance of Christ's life as a free obedience to
the w^ill of God, and it utterly paralyzes His
gospel as a divine call to men to enter freely
into the same obedience.

Jesus teaches very distinctly that there are Two sphn-es
two spheres in which the sovereignty ot God sovercUintii.
is exercised, — in heaven and on earth. ^ These

1 St. Matt. iv. 1-11.

2 Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, vol. i., pp. 84,85.

268

Sovereignty

Triumphant
in heaven.

Militant
on earth.

Divine

omni-

ii"Aence.

two spheres are not conceived locally but spirit-
ually. They are realms in which tlie power of
God is working under different conditions. In
heaven the Divine will is unopposed, and there-
fore the empire of heaven is peace and holiness
and unbroken love. On earth the Divine will
is opposed and resisted, and therefore earth is
a scene of conflict and sin and discord. For
this reason the kingdom of heaven must come
to earth, it must win its way, it must strive
with the kingdom of darkness and overcome it.
God's sovereignt}^ in heaven is triumphant.
God's sovereignty on earth is militant, in order
that it may triumph, — and triumph not in uni-
versal destruction, but in the salvation of all
who will submit to it and embrace it and work
with it, — triumph not by bare force, as gravi-
tation triumphs over stones, but by holy love,
as fatherly wisdom and affection triumph over
the reluctance and rebellion of wayward chil-
dren.

It must be admitted frankly that this view
of Divine sovereignty does not seem to be
consistent with the theory of absolute divine
foreknowledge of all volitions and all events.
This has been urged as a fatal objection against
it. But the objection cannot be pressed because

Sovereignty 269

it lies in a region where our ignorance is so
great that dogmatism is, to say tlie least, unbe-
coming. There may be some way of reconcil-
ing the self -limitation of God's omnipotence
with the certainty of His foreknowledge, Avhich
is beyond the reach of our logic. Hut whether
there be any such reconciliation or not, one
thing is clear : we have not the right to make
a logical statement of our ignorance of one
divine attribute a reason for refusing to accept,
frankly and sincerely, Christ's revelation of
the mode in Avhich another divine attribute is
exercised.

God knows everything. But when we say Forcknov-
that, we mean simply that He knows everv- '''•'/-' ^""■''"
thing which can be the object of knowledge, the facts.
He knows all things as they are. He does not
know them as they are not. The very perfec-
tion of His knowledge consists in its exact
correspondence Avith the nature of its object.
If an event is certain, fixed, and foreorchiined,
then God knows it as certain, fixed, and fore
ordained. If it is contingent upon tlie free, self-
determining, preferential action of a human will,
then God knows that it is contingent, for He
Himself has foreordained that it should be so.

God waits to hear whether His children will ^'"^ "'"''^•
call upon Him in their distress; and if the^'

270

Sovereignty

call, He hears and helps them. If Jesus teaches
anything, He teaches that prayer really in-
fluences the purpose and action of God.

God waits to see whether His husbandmen
will return to Him the fruits of His vineyard ;
whether they will receive and honour the mes-
sengers Avhom He sends unto them ; and if they
are rejected. He sends other messengers ; and
last of all He sends His Son, saying, "It may be
they will reverence him." ^ But when this last
mayhe does not come to pass, then judgment
falls upon the wicked husbandmen, not because
they have fulfilled the secret will of the King,
but because they have rebelled against Him.

This conception of God in His world, not as
the mere spectator of the fulfilment of His
own immutabls decrees, but as the Lord of
Hosts, presiding over the great scene of con-
flict between good and evil in the souls of
men who can only attain to real holiness
through real liberty, and warring mightily on
the side of good in order that it may win the
victory, infinitely exalts and glorifies Him.
We see Him in the teaching of Jesus, as the
High Captain of the armies of love, working
salvation in the midst of the earth, pleading
Avith men to accept His mercy, warning them
1 St. Luke XX. 13.

Sovereignty 271

to escape from His judgments, sustaining the

good in their goodness, overthrowing the

wicked in their wickedness, bringing light

out of darkness and triumph out of defeat,

amid all strifes and storms maintaining His

kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy

in the Holy Ghost. His sovereignty embraces Sovereignty

human liberty as the ocean surrounds an island. /-Jlg,!/,'^^*

His sovereignty upholds liuman liberty as the

air upholds a flying bird. His sovereignty

defends human liberty as the authority of a

true king defends the liberty of his subjects,

— nay, rather, as the authority of a father
tenderly and patiently respects and protects
the spiritual freedom of his children in order
that they may learn to love and obey him
gladly and of their own accord. For this is
the end of God's sovereignty : that His king-
dom may come ; that His Avill may be done
on earth, — not as it is done in the circling
of the stars or in the blossoming of flowers,

— but as it is done in heaven, where created
spirits freely strike the notes that blend in
perfect harmony with the music of the Divine
Spirit, where

" Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

272

Sovereignty

But does not the acknowledgment that God
has thus limited the operation of His sover-
eignty on earth by conditioning His actions
upon the character and conduct of other beings
than Himself, throw us back into confusion and
uncertainty? Does it not make the course of
the world insecure and the end of all things
doubtful?

It would do so if it Avere not for the other
truth which Jesus reveals with equal clearness,
that God is in the world guiding, ruling, and
directing it, and that He has kept the suprem-
acy in His own hands. His presence is the
talisman of creation. He is the master of the
ship ; His hand is on the helm ; and whether
the sailors obey or mutiny, He will guide the
vessel to her appointed haven.

The power of evil is a finite, transient, self-
destroying power. It disintegrates, it dies, it
passes away with the enfeeblement and de-
struction of the soul that yields to it. But
the power of goodness is eternal and incor-
ruptible, because it is of God. Satan is the
prince of this world, but his might is limited
to tlie perverted and enslaved wills that sub-
mit to him. He is not the ruler of nature.

Sovereignty 273

God is the master of winds and waves and
earth and stars. The great battalions are on
His side and under His control. If for one
instant the cause of Christ were in real dan-
ger, He could summon celestial hosts without
number to His assistance. ^ But because He
kncAV this, He knew also that His cause was
never in danger. He knew that His kingdom
was an everlasting kingdom. He knew that
He had already overcome the world.

How" serene and splendid are the words with ''odt/te
which He reassures His disciples, again and J,'','^^./'
again! ''Fear not! Care not! Be not a/Li-
ious! 0 thoii of little faith, wherefore dicht thou
doubt f Have faith in Crod ! Upon this rock
will I build my church and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it ! Fear not, little flock, for
it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom ! '' How glorious is the vision of that
kingdom which Jesus unfolds as He looks for-
ward to the new birth of earth and heaven in
the perfect fulfilment of the pui-pose of God !
How absolute is the confidence wdth wliicli He
rests upon God's power to work out all that
may be needed to bring about that blessed
consummation. The unwavering faith of Jesus
in the permanence and world-Avide dilTnsioii and
1 St. Matt. xxvi. 53.

274 Sovereignty

ultimate triumph of His kingdom of truth and
holiness and love, is not the least — some-
times I think it is the greatest — evidence
of His divinity and charm of His gospel.
The inftpira- Communicated by His divine influence to the
heroism. hearts of His disciples, this faith has been a
force of incalculable potency and inspiration in
the lives of men. The noblest deeds of hero-
ism and self-sacrifice and liberation have been
wrought in the strength of it. The greatest
conquests over self and sin, the supreme vic-
tories of righteousness and love and peace in
human hearts, have been won through this faith.
Deus vult — God wills it ! — is the war-cry that
rouses the human will to its highest endeavour.
The secret Here is a man struggling against evil, long-

ing and striving to rise to high and holy life.
And if he is alone in the struggle, what assur-
ance has he, what promise or hope of success ?
He may fail, he may perish. But Avhen the
great truth flashes into his heart that God is
with him in the fight, that God is "not will-
ing that any should perish but that all should
come to repentance," 1 that God is the captain
of his salvation and the leader of his soul,
— then he is emancipated, then he triumphs,
then he is joined to the Invincible. He cries
1 2 Pet. iii. 9.

of courafje.

Sovereignty 275

with Paul, " If God is for us, who is against
us?"i

Here is a saint called to endure sharp and The
heavy trials, to drink the bitter waters of
affliction, to pass through the fires of pain, to
go down into the dark valley of the shadow.
Alone, it would be impossible ; human patience
could not endure it, hunuxn courage could nut
face it, human wisdom could not solve the niys-
tery of goodness called to suffer. But with
God, believing that He is sovereign, and tliat
He is love, — how different it is ! Now you
shall see the wondrous spectacle of a frail, gen-
tle, mortal soul, strengthened by simple sub-
mission to God's will, persecuted but not for-
saken, cast doAvn but not destroyed, trembling
but victorious. Sucli a soul cries : '' The will
of God be done. It cannot be His will that I
should lose my faith. It cannot be His will
tliat I should deny Him. It cannot be His
Avill that I should be lost, for He is good, He is
my King, my Father, He will save me. It
may be His will that I should suffer trial for
the purif3-ing of my faith, for a more perfect
fellowship with Christ, for a better reward in
heaven. Even so, Father, for so it seemetli
good in Thy sight. "

1 Rom. viii. 31.

strength of
endurance.

God in
history.

276 Sovereignty

"I welcome all Thy sovereign will,
For all that will is love ;
And when I know not what Thou dost,
I wait the light above."

How radiant and magnificent is that truth
as it appears in the history of the Church. The
people of God have often been persecuted and
oppressed, yet God has been on their side, and
no weapon that has been formed against them
has prospered. Here is Philip of Spain send-
ing his great Armada to crush the Reformed
Church of England and destroy religious lib-
erty in the cradle. Like a huge flock of vul-
tures with outspread wings and fierce talons
and harsh innumerable cries of menace, that
most terrific company of war-ships that ever
darkened air and sea swoops towards its prey.
But the wrath of God meets it on the ocean,
and drives disorder tlirough its serried ranks ;
the swift little ships of England pierce it, and
break its wings, and riddle it with terror ; its
onset is changed to flight, and as it flies, the angry
blasts of heaven and the wild waves of wrath
catch it again, and whirl it away, and scatter
on a hundred rocky shores and lonely beaches
the wrecks and fragments of the lost Armada.
How often has that wondrous history been
repeated ! How often has God proved His

Gud.

Sovereignty 277

sovereignty by preserving and rescuing iind
delivering His people from overwhelming
perils ! Even when it has seemed to ])e other-
Avise, even when the Church has ajjpeared for-
saken and helpless, when the billows of perse-
cution have rolled fathom-deep above her head,
when avalanches of falsehood have l)uried the
truth out of sight, it has onl}- been for a time,
and the end has been the victory ot" the de-
feated. The blood of the martyrs has l)een
the seed of the Church. The boastful shouts of Truth and
error have been the advertisement of the silent
truth. Error has had kings and generals,
philosophers and orators, empires and armies ;
truth has had God. Error has had swords and
spears, ships and cannons, fortresses and dun-
geons, racks and fires ; truth has had God.
God and one make a majority. Unless the
Church doubts, she cannot fear. Unless the
Church denies, she cannot despair. In the dark-
est days, when the confusion seems greatest,
the conflict most unequal, she can look out on
the great battle-field and cry

'* History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and

the Word ;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the

throne, —

The victory
is sure.

The final

coiisununa-

tion.

278 Sovereignty

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim

unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above

His own." ^

But is it for the Church alone, is it not for
the whole world that this truth of God's sov-
ereignty shines ? To our eyes the conflict of
life and death, of good and evil, seems to be
undecided, and we think it may be perpetual.
The dust blinds us ; the uproar bewilders us ;
as far as our sight can pierce we see nothing
but the rolling strife, — sin always in arms
against holiness, the created will always resist-
ing and defying the creator. But Christ sees that
the conflict is decided, though it is still in prog-
ress. Christ sees that the victory is won,
though it is not yet manifest. On the hill of
the cross the captain of salvation met the cap-
tain of sin and conquered him. Calvary is
victory. Through death Christ hath overcome
him that had the power of death, that is the
devil. 2 Satan has received his mortal wound ;
and if he still fights more fiercely, it is because
he knoweth that he hath but a short time.^ The
day is coming when he must perish ; the day is
coming when sin and strife shall be no more ;

1 James llussell Lowell, The Present Crisis.

2 Heb. ii. U. » Rev. xii. 12.

Sovereignty 279

the day is coming when Christ shall put all
enemies under His feet^ and shout above the
grave of death, "O tliou enemy, destructions
are come to a perpetual end " ; the day is com-
ing when the great ship of the world, guided
by the liand of the Son of God, sliall tloat out
of the clouds and storms, out of the shadows
and conflicts, into the perfect light of love, and
God shall be all in all. The tide that bears the
w^orld to that glorious end is the sovereignty
of God.

O mighty river, strong, eternal Will,
In which the streams of human good and ill
Are onward swept, conflicting, to the sea, —
The world is safe because it floats in Thee.

1 1 Cor. XV. 25-28.

VIII
SERVICE

" Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Xot light them for themselves ; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues ; nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor —
Both thanks and use."

— Measure for Measure.

VIII

SERVICE

That strange and searching genius, Nathaniel This uneven
Hawthorne, in one of his spiritual phantasies
has imagined a new Adam and Eve coming to
the earth after a Day of Doom has swept away
the whole of mankind, leaving their works and
abodes and inventions, — all that bears witness
to the present condition of humanity, — un-
touched and silently eloquent. The represent-
atives of a new race enter with wonder and
dismay the forsaken heritage of the old. They
pass through the streets of a depopulated city.
The sharp contrast between the splendour of
one habitation and the squalor of another, fills
them with distressed astonishment. They are
painfully amazed at the unmistakable signs of
inequality in the conditions of men. They are
troubled and overwhelmed by the evidence of
the great and miserable fact that one portion
of earth's lost inhabitants was rich and com-
fortable and full of ease, while the multitude
283

284 Service

was poor and weary and heavy-laden with
toil.i
The sense of This feeling of sorrowful perplexity over the
fife'Tbie- unevenness and apparent injustice of human
qnality. life, which the prose poet puts into the heart
of his new Adam and Eve, is really but a reflec-
tion from the tender and pitiful depths of his
own. Who is there that has not sometimes
felt it rising within his own breast, — this pro-
found sentiment of inward trouble and grief,
this feeling of spiritual discord and wondering
repugnance at the sight of a world in which the
good things of life are so unequally distributed,
in which at the very outset of existence, before
the factor of personal merit or demerit, the
element of work and wages, enters into the
problem at all, so much is given to one man
and so little to another man that they seem to
be forever separated and set at enmity with
each other by the unfairness with which they
are treated ?
The sympa- This Sentiment has been strangely deepened
and intensified in the nineteenth century by
innumerable causes, until it has become one of
the most marked characteristics of the present
age. Never before have men felt the sorrows

1 Hawthorne's Works, Riverside I^dition, 1884 ; Mosses
from an Old 3Ianse, p. 297.

(hy of the

Service 285

and hardships of their fellow-men so widely, so
keenly, so constantly as to-day. In one sense
this is the honour and glory of our age. It is
an evidence of quickened moral sensibilit3% a
revival or renewal of the noblest capacities of
our human nature.

But in another sense it is tlie greatest peril a n»bie
of our age. For it has been seized by the spirit ^J^'ento
of scepticism and transformed into an ally of ^nafincss.
annihilating doubt. It has been used as an
argument against the possibility of discovering
a moral order in such a "hungry, ill-condi-
tioned world" as this. Man's inhumanity to
man has been employed to prove God's indiffer-
ence or injustice to man. The feeling of sor-
row and perplexity has been aggravated by
Avild and whirling words into a passion of
resentment against the present conditions of
life. Rash and sweeping schemes for their
total destruction have been proclaimed as a new
gospel. Christianity has been first claimed as
a supporter of these schemes, and then de-
nounced and repudiated as the chief obstacle
to their success. The cry goes up that the
whole world is out of joint. " Everything is
wrong and crooked and unfair : the race of
man has been deceived and maltreated and
oppressed by the creation of sucli an order of

What shall
we do?

286 Service

life as the present. If God created it, so much
the worse for God. But it is almost certain
that He did not create it, almost certain that
there is no God. The world of inequality is
man's mistake. There is but one thing to do,
and that is to break it all up, at once and
utterly, and begin anew. Create a new world
if possible. If not, then let the old wreck sink
and be blotted out, for it is worse, infinitely
worse, than the blank desolation of an uncon-
scious chaos."

This cry of anger and despair rings to-
day in the ears of all earnest and thoughtful
men and women. The element of sincerity,
of truth, of justice, that thrills unmistakably
through its strange, fierce music, stirs our
hearts to the core. We are filled Avith per-
turbation and distress and deep anxiety to
know the right and to do it, to understand the
meaning of this exceeding great and bitter cry,
and the duty to which it calls us. Is it indeed
the utterance of true equity and wisdom ? Is
it the voice of a new Adam, appearing after so
many ages of delusion, with open ej^es to con-
demn tlie old world, and with ruthless hand to
break it in pieces ? Must we welcome him and
hearken to him and believe in him, as the true
judge and regenerator and leader of mankind ?

Service 287

The very form of the question points the Christ's
way to the only Master who can answer it. «^«"''«'; «'"'

•^ / examjne.

Hawthorne's picture of the second Adam was
a poetic dream. But tlie Apostle Paul uses the
same figure to reveal a historic truth. "The
first man Adam became a living soul. The last
Adam became a life-giving spirit, llowbeit
that is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual.
The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the
second man is of heaven." ^ The new Adam
has already come upon the earth, eighteen cen-
turies ago. He was called Jesus. With pure
and perfect heart He entered into the world,
not desolate and depopulate, but thronged with
the myriads of toiling, suffering men. With
clear eyes He looked upon their different con-
ditions, their manifold inequalities, their out-
ward and inward joys and sorrows. With
steadfast heart He set Himself to the divine
task of beginning a new humanity and inaugu-
rating the kingdom of heaven on earth.

He did not strive nor cry, neither Avas His His caim-
voice heard in the streets. ^ He did not protest ",^*^/|^"'
against the moral government of the universe,
because one man was rich and anotlier poor,
one strong and another weak, one happy and
1 1 Cor. XV. 45-47. - St. Matt. xii. 19.

288 Service

another wretched, one good and another evil.
He did not say that God must be unjust be-
cause He has given, in things spiritual as well
as in things temporal, much to one and little
to another. He did not teach His followers
that the only way to help the world was to
rebel against this order, and refuse to submit
to it, and denounce it, and light against it.
He did not even proclaim a social and j^olitical
revolution. He was the most peaceful, orderly,
obedient, loyal citizen of all that subject land of
Palestine ; rendering unto Ciesar the things
that were Ceesar's, discharging every duty of
His lowly lot with cheerful fidelity, and labour-
ing patiently for His daily bread.
He knows He was not blind, nor dull of heart to feel

the secret. ^^le troubles of life. The problem of inequality
lay wide open before Him. But it did not
agitate nor distract Him. He neither raved
nor despaired. He was serene and sane.

" He saw Hfe clearly and He saw it whole."

He looked through the problem to its true
solution. He knew the secret which justifies
the ways of God to man. He knew the secret
by which an eternal harmony is to be brought
into the apparent discords of life. He knew
the secret by which men living in an unequal

Service 289

world, and accepting its inequality as the con-
dition of their present existence, can still be-
come partakers of a perfect, peaceful equity,
and citizens of an invisible, imperishable city
of God. That secret was none other than the
highest, holiest doctrine of Jesus, the divine
truth of election to service.

Before we set our hearts to take in the Christ's
meaning and the fulness of this truth, let us 9o-v^ei/or

. the present

try to get them in tune for it by listening to world.
some of the other teachings of Jesus which are
meant to quiet and steady us in the contempla-
tion of the unevenness of human existence.

And first of all He reminds us that our real
happiness in this world does not depend upon
our outward condition, but upon our inward
state. '' The life is more than meat and the
bod}^ than raiment." ^ ''A man's life consist-
eth not in the abundance of the things which
he possesseth."2 ^i^q j.^j^j Qf ^yealth is not the
empire of peace. Joy is not bounded on the
north by poverty, on the east by obscurity, on
the west by simplicity, and on the south by
servitude. It runs far over these borders on

1 St. Matt. vi. 25. - St. Luke xii. lu.

290 Service

every side. The lowliest, plainest, narrowest
life may be the sweetest. Most of the disciples
of Jesus were peasants, but they were as happy,
as contented, even in this world, as if they had
been princes. There was more gladness and
singleness of heart in that frugal breakfast of
broiled fish and bread beside the boats on the
shore of the sea of Tiberias,^ than in the
splendid feast in the house of Simon the Phari-
see. Life has its compensations and its com-
forts for all estates. Work means health.
Obscurity means freedom. The best pleasures
are those that are most widely diffused.
The secret of I do uot mean to say that Jesus overlooked
the bitter hardships of toil under bad masters,
under false and cruel and oppressive laws. I
do not mean to say that He would not have
been full of pity and indignation at the sight
of the crushed and crippled state of great mul-
titudes of human beings in our modern cities.
But I am sure that He teaches us to believe
that the real source of human misery is not in
poverty, but in a bad heart; that envy is not a
virtue, but a vice ; that life is a great gift to all
who will receive it cheerfully and contentedly,
even in a world where its material things are
unevenly distributed ; and that the true beati-

1 St. John xxi. 1-13.

happiness.

Service 291

tades are not monopolies reserved for the few,
but blessings within the reach of all, and glori-
ously independent of all outward contrasts in the
lives of men. Indeed it seems as if He would
go even beyond this, and remind us that some
of these blessings could not be ours except in a
w^orld of contrast and temporal inequality. Of
the eight beatitudes which Jesus Himself pro-
nounced, four at least, — the blessing of the
mourners, and of the meek, and of the mer-
ciful, and of the peace-makers, — imply the
existence of differences and degrees among
men ; and one — the blessing of those who are
persecuted for righteousness' sake — is only
possible in a world where evil is sometimes
actually more powerful and prosperous than
good.

I have not been able to find a single word of The compen-
Christ that looks forward to a time in which ^..^
there shall be no more inequalities on earth, no
more rich and poor, no more masters and ser-
vants, no more wise men, and no more babes.
But there are many words of His that pierce
with mild and gracious light through all these
outward distinctions to reveal the truth that
this kind of inequality is superficial and illusory,
that the babes rejoice in beholding those mys-
teries which are hidden from the wise and pru-

earth.

292 Service

dent, that servants are often nobler and more
free than their masters, that the poor may
have treasures laid up in heaven which are
beyond all earthly reckoning, and that this is
the true wealth which brings contentment and
peace.
Peace on It is a great mistake to suppose that Jesus

preached a gospel which was melancholy and
depressing for those who received it in this
world. It is a great mistake to suppose that
He taught men that they must resign them-
selves to earthly misery and make the journey
of life as a weary and mournful pilgrimage.
He came to cheer and brighten the hearts of
all who would accept His guidance and tread
the path of virtue with courage and fidelity and
hope. He came to give us rest in the midst of
toil, and that refreshment which only comes
from weariness in a good cause. He came to
tell us not to despair of happiness, but to re-
member that the only way to reach it on earth
is to seek first usefulness, first the kingdom of
God, and then the other things shall be added.
He that loseth his life for Christ's sake shall
not lose it but find it,^ — find it in deep inward
contentment,

" And vital feelings of delight,"
1 St. Matt. X. 39.

Service 293

which make up the true and incomparable joy
of living.

Jesus does not differ from other masters in Thr sccrrt
that He teaches us to scorn earthly felicity. ''^^''^''^''''"'
The divine difference is that He teaches us how-
to attain earthly felicity, under all circum-
stances, in prosperity and in adversity, in sick-
ness and in health, in solitude and in society,
by taking His yoke upon us, and doing the
will of God, and so finding rest unto our souls.
That is the debt which every child of God owes
not only to God, but also to his own soul, —
to find the real joy of living.

" Joy is a duty," — so with golden lore Joy is a

The Hebrew rabbis taught in days of yore. duty.

And happy human hearts heard in their speech
Almost the highest wisdom man can reach.

But one bright peak still rises far above,

And there the Master stands whose name is Love,

Saying to those whom heavy tasks employ

" Life is divine when duty is a joy."

The second point in the teaching of Jesus The icorui
which is meant to rectify our views of the un- ^^^^g*
evenness of the world, is His doctrine of a future
life, — not a different life, but the same life mov-
ing on under new conditions and to new issues.
This world is not all. There is anotlier world, a
better age, a more perfect state of being, in wliich

294 Service

the sorrows and losses of those who now suffer
unjustly will be compensated, and in which —
let us not hesitate to say it as calmly and as
firmly as Jesus said it — those who have un-
justly and selfishly enjoyed their good things
in this Avorld will suffer in their turn. It is
the fashion nowadays to sneer at such teaching
as this; to call it " other- worldliness " ; to
declare that it has no real power to strengthen
or uplift the hearts of men. Jesus did not
think so. Jesus made much of it. Jesus
pressed home upon the hearts of men the con-
solations and warnings of immortality. He
showed the miserable failure of the man who
filled his barns and lost his empty soul.^ He
bade His disciples, when they suffered and were
persecuted for righteousness' sake, " rejoice and
be exceeding glad, for great is your reward
in heaven. "2
The errors Let US not impoverish our gospel by flinging

of' time call . £ - ^ - • x. ^^ •

for th" away, in our fancied superiority, tins precious

baiwceof truth. It is impossible to justify the present

c.e? ni y. fragmentary existence of man if we look at it

and speak of it as the whole of his life. Earth

has mysteries which naught but heaven can

explain. Earth has sorrows whicli naught but

heaven can heal. Yes, and earth has evils,

1 St. Luke xii. 16-21. 2 st. Matt. v. 12.

Service 295

black and secret offences of man against man,
false and foul treasons against the love of God,
crimes which take a base advantage of His pa-
tience and long-suffering and hide themselves
like poisonous serpents in the shelter of the
very laws which He has made for tlie good of
the world, sins all entangled with the present
structure of society and beyond the reach of
human law, undiscoverable iniquities, unpardon-
able and unpunishable cruelties, — which naught
but hell can disclose and consume. The errors
of time call for the balance of eternity. Pa-
tient labour, patient endurance, patient resig-
nation in this present life shall be greatly
rewarded in the life to come. Now is the day
of toil and trial ; but the pay-day will surely
dawn. Much of the best that is done in this
world receives no earthly wages. Those to
whom it is done, — the poor, the maimed, the
lame, the blind, — " they cannot recompense
thee ; but thou shalt be recompensed at the
resurrection of the just."^

Thus Jesus teaches ; and He shows us that This un-
the present order of inequalit}^ so far from ^q^I'^\,/{J^_
being an obstacle to this result, is tlie very tionforthe
means by which it is to be accomplished. The
discipline of this uneven life is the education
1 St. Luke xiv. 14.

296 Service

by Avhich alone \yq can be prepared for the
heavenly life. Jesus does not present Himself
as a rectifier of life's unequal conditions of
outward fortune. He distinctly refuses this
office. " Man, who made me a judge or a
divider over you?"^ Jesus does not preach an
equality which is synonymous with life on a
Fraternity dead level. He does not preach equality at
equality. ^11- He preachcs fraternity. And frater-
nity implies differences, — older and younger,
stronger and weaker, higher and lower. The
elder brother is the heir; all that the father
has is his ; but his sin lies in holding fast
to his inheritance selfishly, in shutting out
his younger brother, in forgetting and deny-
ing that he is a brother at all.^ The distinc-
tions of life are not meant to obscure, but to
reveal and to beautify its best virtues. Out of
dependence spring the sweet blossoms of grati-
tude and loyalty. Out of mastership flow the
refreshing streams of forbearance and justice
and mercy. The apostle tells us that the love
of money is a root of all kinds of evil.^
But Christ shows us the deeper truth that
the right use of money is a means of all
kinds of good. " It is more blessed to give

1 St. Luke xii. 14. 2 st. Luke xv. 25-32.
2 1 Tim. vi. 10.

Service 297

than to receive. "1 P2very gift of Providence
to us is an opportunity and therefore a re-
sponsibility, and the blessing does not come
with the gift until we recognize the responsi-
bility, and use the opportunit}^ The maninion
of unrighteousness can oiily be destroyed by
a process of transformation which transmutes
it into the pure gold of the celestial treasury. ^
The name of that process is charit3\ And the
translation of that name is wise and holy
love.

Let us try to think distinctly. It is said Chrittianity
nowadays that Christianity means communism,
and that it is the dut}^ of all Christians to
give away everything that they possess. It
is strange that Christ never proclaimed this
duty except to one man, and that man was not
a Christian.^ Of course it must be admitted
at once that this would l)e the duty of all
Christians if it could be shown that it would
be for the real ci'ood of their fellow-men. But
this never has been shown. On the contrary,
communism lias always turned out badl}'. It
was tried in Jerusalem, in a limited way, when
the early Christians sold all that they had and
made a common purse ; but it led, in less

I Acts XX. u.J. ' St. Luke xvi. 19,

3 St. Mark x. L>1.

and Com-
7nunism.

298 " Service

than ten 3'ears, to confusion and strife, and
sank the Jerusalem church into a condition
of pauperism and dependence upon the other
churches, which had avoided the well-meant
but dangerous experiment. It was tried in
France, under atheistic auspices, and its fruit
was wide-spread misery and injustice. It was
tried to some degree in England, under a sys-
tem of poor laws which were based upon the
idea that every man had a right to eat whether
he would work or not, and it resulted in such
disorder and demoralization that it had to be
discarded as a menace to society.
Love thy There is nothing in the teachings of Christ

neuji oui ^yi^i(3i^ would make us blind to these plain

as ivisely . ^

and well as lessous of history. On the contrary. He de-
^^^ sires and commands us to discover and do that

which Avill really bless and help our fellow-
men. " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy-
self," ^ — the same kind of love, the same in-
ward regard for the higher ends and aims of
life, which is the saving grace of the indi-
vidual soul, is to be the saving grace of so-
ciety. And what kind of love is that? It
is a wise and holy love, a love which puts
character first and comfort second, a love which
seeks to purify and bless and uplift the whole
1 St. Matt. xxii. 39.

Service 299

man. Such a love may be shown b}- withhold-
ing as truly as by bestowing. False charity
pampers self and pauperizes others. True char-
ity educates self by helping others. Tlie so-
called Christian who never gives is a false
Christian. The Cliristian who gives carelessly,
blindly, indiscriminately, however generously,
is a very imperfect Christian. The Christian
who gives thouglitfully, seriously, fraternally,
bending his best powers to the accomplishment
of a real benefaction of his fellow-men, bestow-
ing himself Avith his gift, is in the true and
only way of the following of Jesus.

Preach this truth. Preach it liome to the Evenj in-h-i
hearts of men, without fear or favour for rich
or poor. Preach it home to your own heart
so close that it shall save you from the min-
ister's besetting sins of spiritual selfishness and
cant. Tell the Lady Bountiful that she is not
called to discard her ladyhood, but to give her-
self with all her refinements, with all her ac-
complishments, with all that has been given to
her of sweetness and light, to the ennobling
service of humanity. Tell the Mercliant-Prince
that he is not called to abandon his i)lace of
influence and power, but to fill it in a princely
spirit, to be a true friend and father to all wlio
are dependent upon him, to make his i)r()sper-

letjo is i( cull
to service.

300 Service

ity a fountain of blessing to his fellow-raen, to
be a faithful steward of Almighty God. And
then let us tell ourselves, as members of the
so-called ^' educated classes," to whom God has
given even greater gifts than those of rank and
riches, — privileges of knowledge, opportunities
of culture, free access to the stored-up wisdom
of the ages, — let us tell ourselves with un-
flinching fidelity that God will hold us to a
strict account for all these things. If our salt
loses its savour it shall be trodden under foot
of men. If our culture separates us from hu-
manity we shall be cast into the outer darkness.
Our light must shine or be shamefully extin-
guished. Every faculty and every gift we
possess must be honestly and entirely conse-
crated to the service of man, in Christ's name
and for Christ's sake. This is the gospel for
the present age, and for every age. This is
Social re- the way in which the kingdom of heaven is to
be established on earth. This is the way in
which the inequality of this mortal life is to
be transfigured and irradiated with a divine
equity. " What we look for, work for, pray
for, as believers, is a nation where class shall
be bound to class by the fullest participation
in the treasure of the one life ; where the mem-

f/eneration.

Service 301

bers of each group of workers sliall lind in their
work the development of their character and
the consecration of their powers : where the
highest ambition of men shall be to be leaders
of their own class, so using their special powers
without waste and following the common tradi-
tions to noble issues : where each citizen shall
know, and be strengthened by the knowledge,
that he labours not for himself only, nor for
his family, nor for his country, but for GOD."i

Thus far the teaching of Christ leads us with incquaiitu

clear serenity in our understanding of the dif- ^^ia^riT'

ferences among men in the distribution of the

goods of this present world. But the deeper

problem still remains untouched. There is an

apparent inequality in the bestowal of spiritual

blessings. In the life of the soul also, it seems

that much is given to one and little to another.

Some men are born very close to the kingdom

of heaven and powerfully drawn by unseen

hands to enter its happy precincts. Other men

are born far away from the gates of light, and

it looks to us as if all the influences of their life

w^ere hindrances rather than helps to holiness.

1 B. F. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, The Incarnation
and Common Life (London, Macmillan, 1893), p. 8?.

302

Service

The doctrine
of election.

The search-
ing question.

False '
ansioers.

There is an undeniable contrast in the religious
world which can only be interpreted as a divine
foreordination, — that is to say, an act by which
some men are set before others, given the pre-
cedence, offered an earlier and apparently an
easier opportunity of spiritual life. If God is
sovereign, this act, by which the means of grace
are unevenly dispensed, must be the result of a
divine choice.

The formal recognition of this choice is the
doctrine of election. It is an inevitable doc-
trine. It is founded upon facts which admit
of no denial. And it brings every thoughtful
and earnest soul face to face with the question
of questions, upon the answer to which the
nature and reality of religion depend.

Is God arbitrary, is God partial, is God unjust ?
Does He bless some of His children and leave
the rest under an irremediable curse without a
single reason which can be exhibited to human
faith and justified in perfect love ? In the last
and highest realm of life, the realm of the spirit,
does He make it more blessed to receive than
to give, and exercise His sovereignty in favour-
itism, and establish heaven as a kingdom of
infinite and eternal and inexplicable inequality ?

It is an idle thing to answer this question by
an appeal to God's absolute right to dispose of

Service 303

all His creatures as He will. For the very Anarbi-

essence of true religion is the faith that He is ^'""''^ ^'"'"

such a God that He wills to dispose of all His

creatures wisely and fairly and in perfect love.

And the very essence of a true revelation, as

the message which calls religion into being, is

that it makes God's wisdom and fairness and

love manifest, and so hel^DS us to understand

and adore and trust Him, not only for ourselves

but for the wliole world.

It is an idle thing to answer this (|uesti(iii l)v >i'i?r/-espo>^

^ r~i ^ • ^ ' sihle God.

saying that God is under no obligation to be
good to everybody, and therefore that He may
be good to whomsoever He pleases. The idea
of an irresponsible God is a moral mockery.
Poisonous doubt exhales from it as malaria from
a swamp. To teach that all men are God's
debtors, and that therefore it is right for Him
to remit the debt of one man, and to exact the
penalty from another to the last farthing, is to
teach what is logically true and morally false.
Our hearts recoil from such a doctrine. If
God has made us, and made us spiritual
paupers, utterly incapable of anything good,
we are not His debtors. Jesus teaches us that
God asks of us only to give as freely as we have
received.^ He demands only tliat which lie
■ 1 St. Matt. X. 8.

;04

Service

A God
lohose glory
is not
goodness.

IJlection
perverted in
human
theology.

Himself has made us able to pay. And He
forgives like the good master in the parable,
with a free pardon Avhich needs but the con-
fession of helplessness and poverty to call it
forth. 1

It is an idle thing to answer this question by
an appeal to ignorance, and to say that God
elects some men to be saved and leaves the rest
of mankind to be lost simply for His own un-
searchable and inexplicable glory ! For God's
glory, as revealed by religion, is identical with
His goodness. Faith, true and joyful and up-
lifting faith, answers only to a gospel which
makes that identity more clear and luminous,
and shows that the divine election in the realm
of grace is perfectly consistent with that wide
and deep love wherewith God so loved the
whole world that He sent His only begotten
Son that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish but have everlasting life.

Now it is because men have forgotten this
that they have found no answer, or a false and
misleading answer, to the problem of inequality
in the spiritual world. It is because they have
torn the doctrine of election from its roots in
the divine love, and petrified it with unholy
logic, that it has lost its beauty, its perfume,
I St, Matt, xviii. 27.

Service 305

its power of fruitfulness to everlasting life.

We must go back from the dead skeleton as it

is preserved in the museum of theology to the

living plant as it blossoms in the field of the

Bible. We must go back of Jonathan Edwards,

and back of John Calvin, and back of Augustine,

to St. Paul, and see huw, under his hiind, all

the mj'sterioQS facts of election as they are

unfolded in human history, break into flower

at last in the splendid faith that ''God hath

shut up all unto disobedience that He might

have mercy upon all." ^ We must go still

farther back, to Christ, and learn from Him

that election is simply the way in which God

uses His chosen ones to bless the world, —

the divine process by which the good seed is

sown and scattered far and wide and the

heavenly harvest multiplied a thousand-fold.

" I elected you," He says to His disciples and

to us, " I elected you, and appointed you, that

ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit

should abide. "2

Christ's doctrine of election is a living, C'lirist's doc-
trine of
fragrant, fruitful doctrine. It is the most election to

beautiful thing in Christianity. It is tlie very 'fervice.
core and substance of the gospel, translated

1 Romans xi. 32.

2 St. John XV. 10.

306

Service

Christ as
the elect
servant.

Th'- disciple
must he as
his Lord.

from the heart of God into the life of man. It
is the divine law of service in spiritual things.
It is the supreme truth in the revelation of an
all-glorious love ; the truth that God chooses
men not to be saved alone, but to be saved by
saving others, and that the greatest in the king-
dom of heaven is he who is most truly the
servant of all.

Is not this true of Christ Himself ? He is
the great example of what it means to be elect.
He is the beloved Son in wdiom the Father
is well pleased. And He says " Behold, I am
in the midst of you as he that serveth."^ Ser-
vice was the joy and crown of His life. Service
was the refreshment and the strength of His
soul, the angel's food, the " meat to eat " of
which His disciples did not know.^

Was not this the lesson that He was always
teaching them by j)ractice and by precept, that
they must be like Him if they would belong
to Him, that they must share His service if
they would share His election ! '' I have ap-
peared unto thee for this purpose," He said
to Saul, " to make thee a servant (^vTrrjpeTijv, a
rower in the ship), and a witness both of those
things which thou hast seen and of the things

1 St. Luke xxii. 27.

2 St. John iv. 32.

Service 307

in the which 1 will appear unto thee."^ The
vision of Christ is the call to service. And if
Paul had not boon obedient to tht; heavenly
vision could Saul have made his calling and
election sure? But he answered it with a noble
faith. "It pleased God to reveal His son in
me in order that I might preach lit in amorKj
the nations."" Henceforward, wherever lie
might be, among his friends in Cilicia, in the
dungeon at Philippi, on the doomed vessel
drifting across the storm-tossed Adriatic, in
the loneliness of his Roman prison, this was
the one object of his life, to be a faitliful ser-
vant of Christ, and therefore, as Christ was, a
faithful servant of mankind. ^

How can we interpret Christ's parables, witli- Parables of
out this truth? The parables of tlie Pounds P^^^'^^'^_

Jl ana .service.

and the Talents are both pictures of election
to service. They both exhibit the sovereignty
of God in distributing His gifts ; they both
turn upon the idea of man's accounta])ility for
receiving and using them; and they botli declare
that the reward will be proportioned to fidel-
ity in serving. The nature and meaning of
tliis is ex2)lained by Christ in His great descrij)-
tion of the judgment, wliich immediately fol-
lows the parable of the Talents in St. ]\Iatt]iew's
1 Acts xxvi. 16. 2 Gal. i. 16. » 2 Cor. iv. 5.

308 Servi

vice

Service, the

dom

Gospel.^ Many of those who have known Him
will be rejected at last because they have not
served their fellow-men. Many of those who
have not known Him will be accepted because
they have ministered lovingly, though igno-
rantly, to the wants and sorrows of the world.
Service is the key-note of the heavenly king-
the king- dom, and he who will not strike that note shall
have no part in the music. The King in the
parable of the Wedding Feast ^ chose and called
his servants, not to sit down at ease in the
palace, but to go out into the highways and
bid every one that they met, to come to the
marriage. And if one of those servants had
refused or betrayed his mission, if he had neg-
lected his Master's business, and sat down on
the steps of the palace or walked pleasantly in
the garden until the supper was ready, do you
suppose that he would have found a place or a
welcome at the feast? His soul would have
stood naked and ashamed without the wedding-
garment of love. For this is the nature of
God's kingdom, that a selfish religion abso-
lutely unfits a man from entering or enjoying
it. Its gate is so strangely strait that a man
cannot pass througli it if he desires and tries

1 St. Matt. XXV. 31-46.

2 St. Matt. xxii. 1-13.

Service 309

to conie alone ; but if he will bring others with
him, it is wide enough and to spare.

Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul,
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal ;
While he who walks in love may wander far.
Yet God will hring- him where the blessed are.

IIow wonderfully all this comes out in the Theprai/er
great intercessory prayer of Christ at the last ^-^^^j
supper.^ That prayer is the last and highest
utterance of the love wherewith Christ, liaving
loved His own which were in the world, loved
them unto the end. He prays for His chosen
ones : " I pray for them : I pray not for the
w^orld but for those whom Thou hast given Me."
'^ Holy Father, keep them in Thy name wliich
Thou hast given Me, that they may be one even
as We are. For their sakes I consecrate Myself,
that they themselves also may be consecrated
in truth. Neither for these only do I pray, but
for them also that believe on Me through their
word ; tliat they may all be one, even as 'i'hou.
Father, art in Me, and I in Tliee, that tlicy also
may be in Us ; that the world may ])elieve that
Thou didst send Me." How the prayer rises,
like some celestial music, througli all tlie inter-
woven notes of different fellowships, the fellow-
ship of the Father with the Son, the fellowship
1 St. John xvii.

Christ's
ideal.

310 Service

of the Master with the disciples, the fello^^Bp
of the disciples with each other, until at last it
strikes the grand chord of universal love. Not
for the world Christ prays, but for the disciples
in the world, in order that they may pray for
the world, and serve the world, and draw the
world to faith in Him. And so, in truth, while
He prays thus for His disciples. He does pray
for the whole world. Circle beyond circle, orb
beyond orb, like waves upon water, like light
from the sun, the prayer, the faith, the conse-
crating power spread from that upper room
until they embrace all mankind in the sweep of
the divine intercession. The special, personal,
elective love of Christ for His own is not
exclusive ; it is magnificently and illimitaljly
inclusive. He loved His disciples into loving
their fellow-men. He lifted them into union
with God ; but He did not lift them out of
union with the world ; and every tie that
bound them to humanity, every friendship,
every fellowship, every link of human inter-
course, was to be a channel for the grace of
God that bringeth salvation, that it might
appear to all men.^

This is Christ's ideal : a radiating gospel :
a kingdom of overflowing, conquering love ; a
1 Titus ii. 11.

Service 311

church that is elected to be a means of blessing-
to tlie human race. This ideal is tlie very
nerve of Christian missions, at lionu' and
abroad, the effort to preach tlie nospcl lo every
creature, not merely because the world needs
to receive it, but because the C'hureli will be
rejected and lost unless she gives it. 'Tis not
so much a question for us Avlietlier anv of our
fellow-men can be saved without Christianity.
The question is whether we can be saved if we
are willing to keep our Christianity to our-
selves. And the answ^er is, No ! The only
religion that can really do anything for me, is
the religion that makes me want to do some-
thing for you. The missionary enterprise is
not the Church's afterthought. It is Clirist's
forethought. It is not secondary and optional.
It is primary and vital. Christ has put it into
the very heart of His gospel. We cannot
really see Him, or know Him, or love Him,
unless we see and know and love His ideal for
us, the ideal which is embodied in the law of
election to service.

For this reason the spirit of missions lias Missiomt

, , ,, . , • c • essentitil to

always been the saving and puriiymg jiowcr ^7„.,-„^,„„.
of the Christian brotherhood. Whenever and ity-
wherever this ideal has shined clear and stronir.

812 Service

it has revealed the figure of the Christ more
simply and more brightly to His disciples, and
guided their feet more closely in the way of
peace and joy and love.
Missions In the first century it was the spirit of for-

the eurii- eign missious that saved the Church from the
church. bondage of Jewish formalisjn. Paul and his

companions could not live without telling the
world that Clirist Jesus came to seek and save
the lost — lost nations as well as lost souls.
The heat of that desire burned up the fetters
of bigotry like ropes of straw. The gospel
could not be preached to all men as a form of
Judaism. But the gospel must be preached to
all men. Therefore it could not be a form of
Judaism. The argument was irresistible. It
was the missionary spirit that made the Eman-
cipation Proclamation of Christianity.
Missions In the dark ages the heart of religion was

kept beating by tlie missionary zeal and efforts
of such men as St. Patrick, and St. Augustine,
and Columba and Aiden, and Boniface, and
Anskar, who brought the gospel to our own
fierce ancestors in the northern parts of Europe
and wild islands of the sea. In the middle
ages it was the men who founded the great
missionary orders, St. Francis and St. Dominic,
who did most to revive the faith and purify

keep the
gospel pure.

Service 813

the life of the Church. And wlien the Refor-
mation had lost its first high impulse, and
sunken into the slough of dogmatism ; when
the Protestant churches had l)econR' entangled
in political rivalries and theological controver-
sies, while the hosts of philosophic intidelity
and practical godlessness were sweeping in
apparent triumph over Europe and America,
it was the spirit of foreign missions tliat
sounded the reveille to the Christian world,
and lit the signal fire of a new era — an era of
simpler creed, more militant hope, and hroadcr
love — an era of the Christianity of (lirist.
The desire of preaching the gospel to every
creature has drawn the Church back from liei-
bewilderments and sophistications ek)ser to the
simplicity that is in Christ, and so closer to that
divine ideal of Christian unity in which all
believers shall be one in Him. You cannot
preach a complicated gospel, an abstract gos-
pel, to ever}' creature. You cannot preach a
gospel that is cast in an infiexil)le mould of
thought, like Calvinism, or Arminianism, oi-
Lutheranism, to every creature. It will not
fit. But the gospel, tlie only gos[)el which is
divine, must be preaclied to every creature.
Therefore, these moulds and foi-ms cannot l»e an
essential part of it. And so we work our way

One mes-
sar/e and
viany ways

314 Service

back out of the tangle of human speculations
to^var{l that pure, clear, living message which
Paul carried over from Asia to Europe, the
good iiCAvs that God is in Christ, reconciling
the Avorld to Himself.

This is the gospel for an age of doubt, and
for all ages wherein men sin and suffer, question
of preach- ^nd despair, thirst after righteousness and long
for heaven. There are a thousand ways of
preaching it, with lij^s and lives, in words and
deeds ; and all of them are good, provided only
the preacher sets his whole manhood earnestly
and loyally to his great task of bringing home
the truth as it is in Jesus to the needs of his
brother-men. The forms of Christian preach-
ing are manifold. The spirit is one and the
same. New illustrations and arguments and
applications must be found for every age and
every race. But the truth to be illuminated
and applied is as changeless as Jesus Christ
Himself, in whose words it is uttered and in
whose life it is incarnate, once and forever.
The types of pulpit eloquence are as different
as the characters and languages of men. But
all of them are vain and worthless as sound-
ing brass and tinkling cymbals, unless they
speak directly and personally and joyfully
of that divine love which is revealed in

f/ospel.

Service 315

Christ in order that all who will lielieve in
it may be saved from doubt and sin and self-
ishness in the everlasting kingdom of the lov-
ing God.

This is the gospel which began to shine The only
through the shadows of this earth at Bethlehem,
Avhere the Son of God became the child of Mar}-,
and Avas manifested in perfect splendour on
Calvary, where the Good Shepherd laid down
His life for the sheep. For eighteen centuries
this simple, personal, consistent gospel has been
the leading light of the best desires and liopes
and efforts of humanity. It is the one bright
star that shines, serene and steady, through the
confusion of our perplexed, struggling, doubting
age. He who sees that star, sees God. He
who follows that star, shall never perish. It has
daw*ned upon my heart so clearly and so con-
vincingly that the one thing I have cared and
tried to do in these lectures is to make it plain
that this is the essence of Christianity, the only
gospel that is worth preaching in all Avays to
all men, that Jesus Christ is God who loves us
in order that we may learn to love one anotlier.
But if I have failed to make this view of reli-
gion clear, if an imperfect utterance has be-
clouded and obscured the message, at least let
this last word be plain, at least let nothing hide

The last
loord.

316 Service

from your soul or from mine, this supreme,
saving truth of election to service.

The vision of God in Christ is the greatest

gift in the world. It binds those who receive

it to the highest and most consecrated life. To

behold that vision is to be one of God's elect.

But the result of that election depends upon

the giving of ourselves to serve the world for

Jesus' sake. Noblesse oblige.

Believers Let US not miss the meaning of Christianity

th2 servants ^^ ^^ comes to US and claims us. We are

of God's love choscn, we are called, not to die and be saved,

to the vjhole

ivorid. but to live and save others. Ihe promise ot

Christ is a task and a reward. For us there is
a place in the army of God, a mansion in the
heaven of peace, a crown in the hall of victory.
But whether we shall fill that place and dwell
in that mansion and wear that crown, depends
upon our willingness to deny ourselves and take
up our cross and follow Jesus. Whatever our
birthright and descent, whatever our name
and profession, whatever our knowledge of
Christian doctrine and our performance of
Christian worship may be, — when the great
host is gathered in the City of God, with
tattered flags and banners glorious in their
bloodstained folds, with armour dinted and
swords worn in the conflict, with wounds which

Service 317

tell of courage and patient endurance and
deathless loyalty, — when the celestial knight-
hood is assembled at the Round Table of the
King, our name will be unspoken, our crown
will hang above an empty chair, and our place
will be given to another, unless we accept now,
with sincere hearts, the only gospel which can
deliver us from the inertia of doubt and the
selfishness of sin. We must enter into life by
giving ourselves to tlie personal Christ who un-
veils the love of the Father in a Human Life,
and calls us with Divine Authority to submit
our Liberty to God's Sovereignty in blessed
and immortal Service to our fellow-men for
Christ's sake.

VERBUM DEL

THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING, 1893.

By ROBERT F. HORTON, M.A.

Price $1.50.

" His intensely sensitive spirit makes him eager to be in flu* highest
degree helpful to the faith and holy living of the people of his time, lie
knows well the thoughts, the questionings, the doubts, the longings, of
the immense number of thoughtful ]ieople who are in danger of tum-
bling over some mistaken idea or unfounded prejudice before getting at
the truth." — The Advance.

" Such a book is not alone for the young theological student. It con-
tains a revelation for every preacher, every layman, every understanding
mind." — 7Vie A'a/Ji's Horn.

" The author opens a fresh field." — Boston Traveler.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION.

By BENJAMIN KIDD.

NEW EDITION, REVISED, WITH A NEW PREFACE

Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price $1.50.

" It is a study of the whole development of humanity in a new light,
and it is sustamed and strong and fresh throughout. ... It is a pro-
found work which invites the attention of our ablest minds, and which
will reward those who give it their careful and best thought. It marks
out new lines of study, and is written in that calm and resolute tone
which secures the confidence of the reader. It is undoubtedly the al)lest
book on social development that has been published for a long time."—
Boston Herald.

"Those who wish to follow the Bishop of Durham's advice to his
clergy — 'to think over the questions of socialism, to discuss them with
one another reverently and patiently, but not to improvise hasty judg-
ments ' — will find a most admirable introduction in Mr. Kidd's book
on social evolution. It is this because it not merely contains a compre-
hensive view of the very wide field of human progress, but is packed
with suggestive thoughts for interpreting it aright. . . . We hope that
the same clear and well-balanced judgment that has given us this help-
ful essay will not stay here, but give us further guidance as to the prin-
ciples which ought to govern right thinking on this the question of the
day. We heartily commend this really valuable study to every student
of the perplexing problems of socialism." — The Churchman.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

Outlines of Social Theology

WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE, D.D.,

President of Bowdoin College and Professor of Mental and
Moral Philosophy.

i2mo. Cloth. $1.50.

" It is a work of much power, and cannot fail to attract much
attention."

" President Hyde does not aim to upset established religion, only to
point out how the article we now have may be improved on its social
side, as to which there will be no dispute that it is wofully lacking. His
argument is sound and sensible, and his book deserves to be widely
read." — Philadelphia Evetmig Bulletin.

" President Hyde has given us a stimulating restatement of old truth;
a new starting-point for religious thought; an admirable example of
the modern passion for reality. No man who is endeavoring to work
his way through a traditional theology into the heart of Christian thought
can afford to miss reading this work. The work is carefully done with
much labor and precision." — Booh Review.

"The book is divided into three parts — theological, anthropological,
and sociological. It is clearly written and does not fail in interest from
cover to cover." — Louisville Commercial Joiumal.

"This work is a most encouraging sign of the times." — Metaphysi-
cal Magazine.

" Expressing a great truth with novel force." — Christiati Advocate.

"A fresh and vital exposition — one hardly knows whether to admire
more the sentiment or the expression. The author's gift of literary
utterance, his fine feeling, and lofty purpose seem never to fail him." —
Congregationalist.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

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