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THE 
GOSPEL   AND    HUMAN   NEEDS 


K   •<^ 


^^^"" 

"V 


THE  GOSPEL 
AND  HUMAN  NEEDS 

BEING  THE  HULSEAN  LECTURES 

DELIVERED   BEFORE  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF 

CAMBRIDGE,  1908-9 

WITH    ADDITIONS 


BY 

JOHN  NEVILLE  FIGGIS,  Litt.D. 

OP  THE  COMMUNITY  OF  THE  RESURRECTION 


LONGMANS,    GREEN    AND    CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK.   BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1909 

All  rights  reserved 


FRATRIBVS 
IN  .  DOMO  .  RESVRRECTIONIS  •  DOMINI 

DEGENTIBVS 

HAS  •  PRIMITIAS  •  VOCATIONIS  •  SVAE 

HVMILLIME 

DEDICAT 

SOCIVS  •  NVPER  .  RECEPTVS 


PREFACE 

Not  long  since  a  friend  said  to  me  that  miracles 
which  had  once  been  a  support  to  faith  were  now 
a  stumbling-block.  I  made  the  reply  that  that 
stage  was  at  an  end,  and  that  once  more  they 
were  becoming  a  help,  were  indeed  of  the  essence  of 
revelation.  The  following  lectures  are  an  attempt 
to  explicate  that  dictum.  For  I  began  to  see 
that  it  is  precisely  that  characteristic  of  miracles, 
which  makes  them  so  sore  a  difficulty  to  minds 
with  the  bias  of  "  naturalism,"  which  endears  them 
to  men  and  women  who  are  concerned  rather  with 
life  than  theories  about  life.  Moreover,  it  became 
clear  to  me  that  what  is  true  of  the  miraculous  is 
no  less  true  of  other  elements  in  the  faith,  of  its 
mysteries  to  the  intellect,  of  its  sacraments  material, 
yet  suprarational,  of  its  emphasis  on  concrete  facts, 
of  its  good  tidings  to  the  sinner.  And  so  in  these 
four  lectures  I  have  tried  to  set  forth  a  little  of 
that  distinction  and  romance,  that  extra-ordinari- 


VUl  PREFACE 

ness  of  this  "  given "  revelation,  which  at  this 
moment  men  need  especially  to  recognise. 

To  some  this  intransigcance  of  tone  will  be  re- 
pellent. Nor  do  I  deny  the  uses  of  more  conciliatory 
methods  any  more  than  I  would  question  the  worth 
of  the  doctrines  of  Divine  Immanence  and  Reason, 
of  which  lately  we  have  heard  not  a  little.  Only  at 
this  moment  it  seems  to  me  that  we  do  not  need 
any  more  to  emphasise  these  things. 

The  accent  ought  to  be  not  on  the  likeness,  but 
on  the  difference  of  Christianity  from  its  rivals, 
whether  philosophic  or  ethical  or  religious.  After 
all,  we  are  Christians  not  because  our  faith  resembles 
that  of  other  men,  but  because  it  does  not.  We 
shall  but  confuse  our  minds  if  we  harp  on  the 
superficial  resemblances,  real  though  they  may  be. 
If  the  differences  were  not  important  it  were  wiser 
to  combine  with  the  great  mass  of  the  religious- 
minded,  and  sink  or  minimise  all  the  strangeness, 
the  unique  charm  of  the  Gospel,  the  things  that  are 
at  once  its  appeal  and  its  shame. 

For  it  is  just  that  strangeness,  that  conquering 
charm,  which  men  are  feeling  just  now,  and  for 
whose  lack  they  are  crying  out  for  other  refuges 
— culture,  philosophy,  fancy-religions,  or  what  not. 


PREFACE  IX 

As  I  conceive  it,  the  human  spirit,  in  its  eternal 
Grail-quest,  has  entered  on  a  new  path.  It  has 
turned  from  the  middle-aged  prose  of  the  nineteenth 
century  once  more  to  the  poetry  of  the  child. 

From  the  selva  oscura  of  mechanical  systems, 
materialist  or  intellectual,  it  is  willing  to  be  led 
once  more  as  a  Pilgrim  even  from  the  tortures  of 
the  Inferno  up  the  mountain  of  purification  till  it 
sees  once  more  the  rose  of  glory  and  the  dance  of 
saints.  On  all  sides  comes  forth  the  cry  for  life, 
newness,  joy,  romance ;  on  all  hands  we  have  the 
evidence  that  men  are  bored  with  the  loud-voiced 
assurances  of  scientific  iconoclasm,  and  find  it  very 
fatiguing  to  breathe  the  rarified  air  of  idealist 
philosophers  with  their  merely  provisional  use  for 
religion.  That  siren-song  which  charmed  men  a 
generation  back,  as  it  allured  them  to  peace  and 
rest  of  spirit  in  scientific  inquiry  or  idealist  systems 
of  benevolence,  has  changed  for  us  its  note ;  and  it 
sounds  to  our  ears  only  as  the  dirge  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  with  its  prosaic  and  complacent 
heterodoxy,  or  its  thin  and  weary  intellectualism. 

Alike  in  our  ears  and  in  that  of  our  adversaries 
there  rings  the  call  of  a  new  world,  the  thrill  of  a 
real  joy  and  pain.     It  is  because  the  newness  is  most 


X  PREFACE 

new,  the  joy  and  the  pain  most  real  and  actual  in  the 
light  that  shone  once  over  Bethlehem  and  yet  shines 
in  men's  hearts,  that  I  have  written  as  I  have. 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  in  one  of  the  most  impressive  of 
his  many  helpful  and  impressive  utterances,  made 
Undershaft  declare  that  we  have  had  enough  of 
shams,  and  must  at  last  demand  a  religion  that  fits 
the  facts.  I  agree.  It  is  because  Christianity  fits 
the  facts,  and  helps  us  to  live  as  real  beings  in 
a  real  world,  and  not  as  the  puppets  of  fate 
or  even  as  the  dreamers  of  an  earthly  Paradise, 
that  it  will  outlast  all  the  systems  of  criticism, 
philosophy,  or  morals,  which  arise  one  after  another, 
plausible  and  dazzling  in  one  decade,  and  disappear 
in  the  next,  futile  as  "  snows  of  yesteryear." 

I  do  not  write  this  for  want  of  feeling  the  force 
of  opposite  views.  There  is  hardly  a  difficulty  here 
touched  which  has  not  at  times  threatened  to  over- 
whelm the  writer ;  indeed  they  do  still.  Any  lack 
of  sympathy  which  the  hostile  may  discern  is  to  be 
attributed  to  the  enemy  being  felt  withm  no  less 
than  without.  In  respect  of  one  point,  much  dis- 
cussed of  late,  a  personal  experience  is  better  than 
a  volume  of  argument.  Difficult  as  may  be  the 
belief  in   the    miraculous   birth   of    our    Lord,  and 


PREFACE  XI 

plausible  as  are  the  attacks  upon  it,  I  have  found 
as  a  fact,  that  if  we  attempt  to  live  with  that 
doctrine  cut  off  from  the  faith,  it  is  all  up  with 
Christianity.  For  the  birth  does  not  fall  alone ; 
it  carries  with  it  the  whole  supernatural  structure, 
and  in  the  long  run,  if  one  allows  the  tendencies 
their  full  force  will  leave  one  face  to  face  with  an 
evolutionary  pantheism,  which,  as  Disraeli  once  dis- 
cerned, is  but  atheism  in  domino.  It  takes  a  long 
time  to  see  what  is  the  effect  of  certain  principles 
when  logically  carried  out ;  and  many  of  us  never 
do  see  it.  When  one  does  see  it,  one  learns  the 
danger  of  dealing  piecemeal  with  the  great  fact  of 
Christianity,  and  perhaps  in  time  we  may  learn 
how  this  very  miracle,  so  "  otiose  "  as  some  think  it, 
bears  with  it  some  assurance  of  the  breadth  and 
mystery  of  being. 

In  reference  to  certain  criticisms  of  the  second 
lecture,  I  would  say  that  we  shall  use  our  minds 
to  most  purpose  when  we  realise  our  limits,  and 
that  I  nowhere  even  hinted  that  we  ought  not 
to  use  them.  To  those  who  wish  to  trust  the 
intellect,  I  would  say  by  all  means  trust  it  abso- 
lutely ;  on  no  account  confuse  yourself  with  any 
assumptions    drawn   from    act   or    emotion ;    be   as 


Xll  PREFACE 

honestly  ascetic  in  your  intellectualism  as  you 
claim  to  be,  don't  be  afraid,  as  most  men  are,  of 
being  too  severe.  And  then  its  impotence  will 
soon  reveal  itself,  and  you  will  be  driven,  if  not 
to  Christianity,  at  least  to  some  form  of  that  pure 
agnosticism  which  Romanes  found  the  best  prepara- 
tion therefor ;  or  else  its  final  result  will  be  manifest 
in  some  sceptical  pessimism,  from  which,  not  the 
intellect  revolving  on  its  own  axis,  but  life  with  its 
realities  of  choice  and  love,  will  alone  recall  you. 

I  am  grateful  to  the  Rev.  E.  K.  Talbot  for  his 
kind  help  in  revising  the  proof  sheets. 

Also,  I  cannot  close  this  preface  without  thank- 
ing all  those  known  and  unknown  to  me,  whether 
in  Cambridge  or  here  or  in  many  other  places, 
who  prayed  about  these  lectures  and  for  the  man 
who  spoke  them. 

Tht  addition  of  sermons  and  appendix  may  serve 
to  ilhcstrate  points  in  the  lectures.  They  are  reprinted, 
hy  Jdnd  permission  of  the  proprietors,  from  "  The 
Guardian "  and  "  The  Church  Times." 


CONTENTS 


HULSEAN   LECTURES 

PAGE 

I.  REVELATION 1-26 

A.  Statement  of  Problem. 

Is  there  a  revelation  ? — Meaning  of  intellectual  unrest  of 
our  day — Age  is  an  age  of  faith — Struggle  between 
different  religions,  no  longer  between  religion  and 
unbelief ;  consequent  bitterness — Idealism  not  neces- 
sarily Christian — Pantheism.  Ethical  Differences — Non- 
Christians  are  ceasing  to  admire  character  of  Christ. 
Nietzsche  —  Influence  of  comparative  mythology — 
Need  of  realising  distinctness  of  Christianity. 


B.  Purpose  op  Lectures, 

Practical  more  than  speculative — Personal — Fact  of  diffi- 
culties met  by  fact  of  Christ ;  better  off  than  in 
eighteenth  century — Moral  issue  in  faith — Involves 
courage  ;  assures  us  of  freedom — Theoretic  difficulties 
are  strongest  practical  attractions  of  Christianity. 
Miracles  —  Of  late  pushed  aside  ;  belief  in  them 
essential ;  otherwise  man  is  the  sport  of  natural  laws ; 
God  is  enslaved  to  world — Miracles  harder  of  belief, 
but  more  essential  than  in  the  past.  Man  asks  to 
escape  from  natural  forces ;  cosmic  emotion  not  suffi- 
cient;  needs   love  and   freedom — Christianity   alone 

gives  men  right  to  be  children. 

xiii 


XIV  CONTENTS 

PAOE 

II.  MYSTERY 27-55 

Christianity  not  Myaterious  ;  expression  of  eighteenth-cen- 
tury rationalism — Christianity  as  old  as  the  Creation — 
Books  now  forgotten — Yet  similar  movement  to-day — 
Various  forms  of  "  new  theology  " — All  start  with  same 
object  to  accommodate  the  Gospel  to  fashionable 
philosophies — All  spring  from  same  notion  of  rational- 
istic certitude — Impossibility  of  intellectualism — The 
Gospel  not  primarily  for  culture,  though  it  stimulates 
thereto — Mistakes  of  apologists :  in  seeking  (a)  logical 
demonstration  ;  (6)  historical  certitude  ;  (c)  relying  on 
"  idealism  " — Difficulties  of  intellectualist  position — 
Bergson — Need  of  mystery  ;  its  presence  in  all  actual 
life  ;  acknowledged  by  "  the  plain  man  "  ;  essence  of 
religious  sense  ;  Christ  takes  this  sense  for  granted — 
Futility  of  attempting  to  conciliate  adversaries — We 
must  invite  their  contempt — Does  not  the  NewTheology 
proceed  on  a  false  assumption  ? — Man's  personality 
deeper  than  reasoning  ;  crises  of  life — his  social  nature ; 
English  education  ;  opportunity  of  English  Church — 
Errors  of  intellectualism  iu  religion  :  (a)  Scholasticism  ; 
(b)  Transubstantiation  ;  (c)  Scheme  of  salvation — Kant 
and  Spencer — Agnosticism — Mystery  and  authority — 
Religion  is  the  spirit  of  romance — Summary — Nature 
of  faith. 


III.  THE  HISTOEIC  CHRIST 56-91 

Modernist  divorce  between  Christ  of  history  and  Christ 
of  faith — Causes  of  depreciation  of  historical  religion. 

A.  Historical  Evidence. 

Certitude  impossible — Presuppositions — In  what  sense  is 
resurrection  certain  ? — Church  is  supreme  historical 
document  —  Individual  experience  —  Criticism  and 
devotion — "  Interpret  the  Bible  as  you  would  interpret 
any  other  book  " — A  false  ideal. 


CONTENTS  XV 

PAGE 

B.  Difficulties  of  Histobical  Keliqion — 

Spring  not  from  miraculous  but  from  actual  and  concrete ; 
enhanced  by  neglect  of  Eucharist — The  thinker  wants 
a  world  of  his  own  fancies  ;  hardness  of  fact — Life 
concrete  for  most  men,  who  are  not  speculators. 

1.  Historic  Christ  and  Church,  are  "given" — Foundation  of 

authority  ;  repulsive  to  subjective  idealists  ;  common 
man  needs  something  outside  himself  —  Creighton  : 
"  Life  can  only  be  explained  by  a  life." 

2.  How  attach  so  much  value  to  one  period  of  past — 

Dangers  of  opposite  view — If  nothing  be  for  its  own 
sake  but  progress  to  unknown  goal ;  all  life  reduced 
to  chaos — Value  of  particular  moments  in  life,  in  art, 
in  history — Christian  revelation  does  but  express  this 
— Man  demands  to  be  more  than  a  link  in  a  chain. 

3.  The  Incarnation  too  little  for  God  —  But  this  is  very 

source  of  appealing  tenderness  of  Gospel — Mr.  Dickin- 
son criticised — We  can  call  God  "  by  a  pet  name  "  ; 
this  is  inalienable  charm,  and  marks  the  distinction 
of  Christian  devotion. 


IV.  FORGIVENESS 92-119 

Sin  ;  upsets  thinker's  scheme  of  harmonising  universe  ;  in 
consequence  he  is  apt  to  deny  it  or  minimise  it — But 
actual  facts  point  to  great  disorder  in  the  world — 
Views  of  new  theologians  about  sin — Sin  is  centre 
of  controversy,  and  proves  futility  of  much  argument ; 
cannot  convert  those  without  it — What  is  deliver- 
ance of  religious  sense  7  —  Quotation  from  William 
James — Speakers'  personal  confession — Without  re- 
demption religion  is  a  mockery — Yet  forgiveness  is 
pronounced :  (a)  impossible  ;  (6)  immoral — If  this  is 
so,  this  world  is  hell  for  most — Value  of  redemption 
in  exact  proportion  to  sense  of  its  diflSculty  —  Its 
"  universality "  its  attraction  ;  it  shows  love  beyond 
all  law. 


XVI  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Conclusion. — These  lectures  have  sought  to  show  how  diffi- 
culties in  theory  are  attractions  in  fact — This  is  not 
decisive  —  It  shows  how  Gospel  maintains  its  hold; 
does  not  prove  its  truth — Exactly,  but  it  does  seem 
to  indicate  the  futility  of  the  "  new  theology  "  ;  "  man 
is  a  religious  animal "  ;  and  no  religion  can  endure 
which  does  not  answer  to  the  demands  of  the  religious 
consciousness — Moreover  the  difficulties  are  themselves 
a  support  to  men  filled  with  a  sense  of  mystery  in  all 
life — Credo  quia  impossibUe 


OTHER   SERMONS 

A  PLEA  FOR  OTHER-WORLDLINESS  ...        120 

Preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge,  Nov. 
10,  1907. 

THE  NEED  OF  AUTHORITY  IN  THE  CHURCH        136 
Preached  in  Exeter  Cathedral,  June  28,  1908. 

NOT  PEACE  BUT  A  SWORD 145 

Preached  befoi'e  the  Cambridge  University  Church 
Society,  May  15,  1908. 

LITTLE  CHILDREN 155 

Preached  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  Sept.  27,  1908. 


APPENDIX 

The  New  Theology  and  Bishop  Butler.        .        .        161 
Notes  to  Hulsean  Lectures 172 


THE     GOSPEL     AND 
HUMAN    NEEDS 

I.— REVELATION 

*'  Blessed  be  the  Lord  God  of  Israel,  for  He  hath  visited  and 
redeemed  His  people." — St.  Luke  i.  68. 

Has  He  ?  That  is  the  question  Ave  are  all  asking. 
The  trouble  in  men's  minds  assumes  protean  forms, 
and  is  concerned  about  different  points  of  detail.  It 
may  spend  itself  on  speculative  problems,  such  as 
those  raised  by  conceiving  the  final  reality  as  Per- 
sonal, and  that  Person  as  a  loving  Father  in  a  world 
so  fraught  with  evil,  or  that  Divine  Nature  as  a 
threefold  union.  It  may  be  occupied  in  sifting  the 
grain  from  the  chaff  in  the  canonical  Scriptures,  or 
in  trying  to  reach  certainty  in  regard  to  the  story 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  It  may  be  disturbed  by  the 
problem  of  adjusting  theories  of  orderly  develop- 
ment with  any  doctrine  of  the  Fall  or  indeed  of  Sin 
— the  supreme  discontinuity.  But  at  bottom  of  it 
all  is  the  same  question,  "  Hath  God  spoken  to  us 
by  His  Son  ?     Were  the  heavens  ever  opened  and  a 

A 


2  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

glimpse  of  the  world  beyond  vouchsafed  to  men's 
wondering  eyes  ?     Is  it  or  is  it  not  the  case  that 

'  A  voice  which  man  can  trust 
Has  murmured  from  the  narrow  house '  ?  " 

That  is  what  we  seek  to  know.  That,  no  more 
and  no  less.  And  the  answer  is  everything — in  our 
lives. 

I  apprehend  it  would  be  true  to  say,  that  Harnack's 
small  book  on  the  essence  of  Christianity  was  epoch- 
making.  Ever  since  it  appeared  men  have  been 
asking  with  fresh  urgency,  "  What  think  ye  of 
Christ  ? "  They  have  realised  more  than  ever  the 
choice  that  lay  before  them,  between  the  natural  and 
the  supernatural  theory  of  the  most  potent  person- 
ality in  history.  It  may  well  be,  as  many  tell  us,  that 
they  are  but  lightly  touched  by  the  small  points  of 
dogma,  and  have  grown  a  little  tired  of  theologians 
contending.  But  about  that  which  underlies  these 
debates  they  are  by  no  means  apathetic.  With  more 
passion  than  ever  they  ask  for  guidance.  With 
eager  insistence,  before  unknown,  the  reflecting  mind 
is  putting  the  question,  "Was  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
different  from  other  men  in  kind  ?  Are  we  right  to 
worship  the  Virgin-born  as  God  ? "  Scorn  as  they 
may  the  distinctions  of  the  schools  and  academic 
Christology,  they  cannot,  even  if  they  would,  forbear 
the   query,  "Was   the   life  of  Jesus  in  any  unique 


EEVELATION  3 

sense  an  outbreak  from  the  other  world,  and  an 
evidence  of  its  reality  ?  Or  was  it  but  a  phase  in 
that  Avhich  I  have  heard  called  in  the  pulpit  'the 
harmonious  religious  development  of  mankind '  ? " 
In  brief,  is  Christianity  merely  an  episode,  gracious 
indeed  and  noble,  yet  only  an  episode  in  the  w^orld's 
history,  to  be  transcended  inevitably  with  the  pro- 
gress of  culture  ?  Or  is  it  the  revelation  of  God,  not 
one  cult  merely  among  others,  but  veritably  super- 
natural religion  ? 

The  question  comes  with  renewed  poignancy  to 
our  generation.  We  live  in  a  new  age,  to  whose  eyes 
"  the  Victorian  era "  has  become  an  historical  ex- 
pression. Proud  and  conscious  of  its  youth,  the 
twentieth  century  refuses  to  echo  the  catchwords 
of  its  elders  and  flames  into  buoyant  life.  As  one 
writer  says,  "a  kind  of  Dionysiac  rage  of  life"  ^  has  hold 
•  of  men.  Imperious  and  resistless  they  seek  for  that 
sense  of  freedom  and  power,  of  victory  and  joy,  which 
Christians  find  only  in  One  who  said,  "  I  have  come 
that  they  might  have  life,  and  that  they  might  have 
it  more  abundantly,"  and,  "  these  things  have  I  said 
unto  you,  that  your  joy  may  be  full."  With  postu- 
lates such  as  this,  the  instinct,  that — 

"  The  world  means  intensely  and  means  good," 

the  age  is  naturally  one  of  faith,  of  positive  affirma- 
tions, as  the  age  just  past  was  one  of  doubt  and 


4  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

hesitancy.  This  is  indeed,  jxir  excellence,  the  age  of 
faith,  or  rather  faiths.  Men  have  come  at  length  to 
see  that  their  directing  ideals,  alike  in  thought  and 
action,  are  based  upon  certain  presuppositions,  which 
themselves  are  beyond  proof,  and  involve  therefore 
an  act  of  faith  for  those  who  live  by  them.2  Now, 
Christianity  offers  itself  as  a  working  hypothesis  for 
life — one  among  many — and  as  such  it  must  be 
appraised  by  men  and  women  who  have  to  live.  As 
a  working  hypothesis  we  claim  that  it  embraces  all 
the  facts,  as  no  other  does,  and  that  alone  it  gives 
enduring  meaning  to  ideals  and  values  which  are 
ineradicable  in  our  souls.  In  this  view  the  struggle 
for  the  Christian  faith  has  a  little  changed  its 
character.  In  the  last  generation  it  was  primarily 
a  conflict  between  faith  and  unbelief  or  between 
a  materialist  and  a  spiritual  theory  or  between 
idealists  and  agnostics.  Now  it  has  become  a 
struggle  for  one  form  of  religion  against  others.  In 
the  nineteenth  century  men  accepted  the  dilemma 
propounded  by  Butler,  and  acted  on  the  belief  that 
there  is  no  halfway  house  between  Christianity  and 
a  negative  or  at  best  a  suspensory  position.  The 
object  of  the  struggle  all  that  time  was  to  secure 
some  spiritual  interpretation  of  the  universe.  Quite 
commonly  it  Avas  assumed  that  Christianity  of  one 
sort  or  another  was  the  obvious  expression  of  that 
view.     If  a  man  gave   up   agnostic   or   materialist 


REVELATION  5 

opinions,  he  most  likely  would  proclaim  himself  a 
Christian.  This  might  take  place  in  more  than  one 
way.  If  his  difficulties  had  been  purely  specula- 
tive, a  man  who  had  surmounted  the  obstacles 
to  belief  in  God  would  take  the  farther  leap  into 
orthodoxy  without  more  ado,  finding  the  Church  in 
possession  and  deeming  it  the  most  natural  as  well 
as  the  noblest  expression  of  the  religious  instinct. 
Or  he  might  treat  the  dogmas  of  the  faith  and  even 
its  historical  facts  as  mainly  symbolic,  useful  for 
the  vulgar.  He  would  thus  label  himself  as  Christian, 
and  accommodate  by  methods  "made  in  Germany" 
its  special  doctrines  with  the  demands  of  true  philo- 
sophy. 

On  the  other  hand,  finding  Christianity  full  of 
difficulties,  both  historical  and  speculative,  he  might 
at  once  range  himself  on  the  opposite  side,  and  sur- 
render all  hope  of  a  theistic  or  indeed  of  any  solution 
of  the  puzzle  of  life. 

Now,  however,  all  this  is  changed ;  and  it  is 
gradually  coming  to  be  recognised  that  man  is  a 
religious  animal;  and  the  contest  is  no  longer  one 
for  any  creed  against  no  creed,  but  of  one  creed 
against  many  rivals.  All  our  most  influential  adver- 
saries are  now  religions — very  queer  religions  some- 
times. Even  among  non-Christians  the  purely 
negative  standpoint  is  far  less  common  than  it  was. 
In  a  famous  lecture  at  the  end  of  the  last  century 


6  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

Huxley  argued  that  all  the  higher  life  of  men  rested 
upon  postulates  which  were  not  the  result  of  natural 
evolution  and  were  avowedly  directed  to  counteract 
it.^  Even  Herbert  Spencer's  agnosticism — or  semi- 
theism,  as  it  has  been  called — proposed  to  keep  alive 
that  consciousness  of  mystery  which  he  regards  as 
the  essence  of  religion,  and  is  the  opposite  of  mere 
naturalism,  and  his  personal  attitude  became  more 
sympathetic  in  his  later  years."*  Then  and  now 
Positivists,  like  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  were  as  em- 
phatic as  any  Christian  in  condemning  the  blank- 
ness  of  mere  materialism.^ 

At  this  moment  the  most  influential  of  professing 
non-Christian  writers  are  trying  to  give  to  man  the 
positive  values  of  faith,  without  its  theistic  impli- 
cations. Even  when  they  deny  the  fact,  they  are 
posing  as  makers  of  religion.  This  is  the  case  with 
the  socialism  of  men  so  different  as  Mr.  Wells  and 
Mr.  Blatchford ;  and  still  more  Avith  those  disciples 
of  Nietzsche,  daily  more  articulate  and  contemptuous, 
who  make  a  god  out  of  the  will  to  live.  Mr,  Bernard 
Shaw,  with  his  doctrine  of  life-force — more  emphati- 
cally Mr.  John  Davidson,  the  poet,  with  his  deifica- 
tion of  power  and  gospel  of  the  ether — make  at  least 
an  endeavour  to  give  to  men  what  they  call  a  "  satis- 
fied imagination "  ;  ^  and,  like  Nietzsche,  the  latter 
stands  in  spite  of  himself  for  the  spiritual  freedom 
of  man.     Stronger  evidence  comes  from  Cambridge. 


BEVELATION  7 

A  writer  well  known  to  many  here  has  tried  to  show 
that  even  agnostics  ought  not  to  be  content  with 
mere  negation;  and  should  in  some  way  strive  to 
preserve  the  springs  of  consolation  and  joy,  even  if 
needful  by  elaborating  a  new  mythology.'^ 

Nothing  would  be  less  akin  to  the  militant  ration- 
alism of  aggressive  unbelief  than  a  passage  like  the 
following  :  "  Faith  in  some  form  or  other  seems  to  be 
almost  a  necessary  condition,  if  not  of  life,  yet  of  the 
most  fruitful  and  noble  life.  .  .  .  Most  men,  I  think, 
are  significant,  and  find  and  make  life  significant,  in 
proportion  to  their  faith."  ^ 

In  one  way  or  another  the  age  is  an  age  of  religion, 
and  the  question  for  men  to-day  is  not  whether  they 
will  have  any  religion  or  none,  but  whether  they 
will  have  the  Christian  religion  or  something  else. 
This  adds  at  once  to  the  bitterness  of  the  conflict 
and  to  its  importance.  It  seems  like  to  lose  the 
genial  courtesy,  the  gentlemanly  languor  which 
characterised  the  disputants  in  the  days  of  "  the  New 
Republic."  There  is  more  fire  and  more  contempt 
in  those  who  reject  our  standards,  now  that  they 
can  envisage  their  own  as  in  some  sort  a  matter  of 
faith.  The  struggle  betAveen  natural  and  super- 
natural religion  will  be  more  protean  and  unceasing 
and  less  sympathetic  and  chivalric  than  was  that 
between  agnostics  and  Christians.  It  is  not  worth 
much  trouble  to  fight  hard  for  a  man  who  really  is 


8  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

in  doubt ;  it  is  worth  a  great  deal  if  he  is  certain  that 
he  is  right  and  his  adversaries  are  either  knaves  or 
fools — unless  they  are  both.  No  longer  do  we  listen 
to  the  wistful  regret  of  "  Dover  Beach  "  : — 

"  The  Sea  of  Faith 
Was  once  too  at  the  full,  and  round  earth's  shore 
Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furled  ; 
Now  I  only  hear 

Its  melancholy  long  withdrawing  roar 
Retreating  to  the  breath 
Of  the  night  wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear 
And  naked  shingles  of  the  world." 

Instead  of  this  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  modern 
poets  writes : — 

"  To  purge  the  world  of  Christianity, 
The  sacrifice  of  every  human  life 
That  now  enjoys  or  nauseates  the  sun 
Wo'J.d  not  be  too  exorbitant  a  price  !  " 

and  again  : — 

"  We  mean  by  war  all  that  war  ever  meant. 
Destruction's  ministers,  Death's  freemen,  Lust's 
Exponents,  daily  like  a  blood  red  dawn 
In  flames  and  crimson  seas  we  shall  advance 
Against  the  ancient  immaterial  reign 
Of  Spirit,  and  our  watchword  shall  be  still, 
Get  thee  behind  me,  God — I  follow  Mammon."  ' 

In  the  last  generation  men  were  unable  to  take 
"  Jesus  as  Lord,"  and  they  were  sad.  Now  they  are 
choosing  other  masters,  and  are  glad.  There  is  a 
world  of  difference. 


REVELATION  9 

Moreover,  shining  examples  afford  evidence  that 
idealism,  so  far  from  inevitably  leading  on  to  Christ, 
does  not  always  lead  men  even  to  theistic  belief.^"  And 
facts  are  against  the  soundness  of  Butler's  dilemma. 
Life  in  the  Christian  Church  implies  certain  truths 
and  raises  certain  problems  with  which  theism  as 
such  is  not  troubled.  The  charm  of  Christianity  is 
in  proportion  to  these  additional  difficulties ;  and 
those  who  will  not  pay  the  price,  but  are  yet  in- 
curably religious,  are  turning  with  renewed  attrac- 
tion to  forms  of  what  may  be  called  natural  religion. 
Pantheism,  more  or  less  thinly  veiled,  is  not  open 
to  the  attacks  on  Supernaturalism ;  and  to  souls 
lacking  in  any  feeling  of  sin,  it  offers  a  certain 
satisfaction,  appealing  to  that  sense  of  awe  and 
wonder  and  desire  of  mystical  union  with  the 
Eternal,  which  is  always  a  large  element  of  re- 
ligious feeling.^i 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  great  common  ground  of 
ethical  values  has  vanished.  In  the  last  age,  attacks 
might  be  made  on  the  Creed,  or  the  lives  of  Christians, 
or  on  the  influence  of  the  Church,  but  one  figure 
maintained  its  solitary  and  appealing  supremacy. 
John  Stuart  Mill  expressed  feelings  all  but  universal 
when  he  said  that  we  could  hardly  have  a  higher 
aim  than  that  Christ  should  approve  our  lives ;  and 
indeed  the  attraction  of  Jesus  seemed  almost  to 
increase  with  men's  disbelief  in  all  its  non-human 


10  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

elements.     So  thinking  unbelievers  felt  like  the  poet 
Avho  watched  the  dawn  of  faith : — 

"  Oh  !  had  I  lived  in  that  great  day, 
How  had  its  glory  new 
Filled  earth  and  heaven  and  caught  away 
My  ravished  spirit  too. 

No  thoughts  that  to  the  world  belong 

Had  stood  against  the  wave 
Of  love,  that  flowed  so  deep  and  strong 

From  Christ's  then  open  grave. 

No  cloister  floor  of  humid  stone 

Had  been  too  cold  for  me, 
For  me  no  eastern  desert  lone 

Had  been  too  far  to  flee. 

No  lonely  life  had  passed  too  slow, 

Whilst  I  could  hourly  scan 
Upon  his  Cross  with  head  sunk  low, 

That  nailed,  thorn-crowned  Man." 

To  men  so  feeling,  it  could  only  be  with  a  passion 
of  regret  that  they  came  to  believe  it  was  but  a 
dream  long  ago  and  far  away,  and  settled  down  in 
stern  denial  to  a  Christless  world. 

"  While  we  believed  on  earth  he  went, 
And  open  stood  his  grave, 
Men  called  from  chamber,  church,  and  tent. 
And  Christ  was  by  to  save. 

Now  he  is  dead :  far  hence  he  lies 

In  the  lorn  Syrian  town. 
And  on  his  head  with  shining  eyes 

The  Syrian  stars  look  down. 

Ah  !  o'er  that  silent  sacred  land 

Of  sun  and  arid  stone. 
And  crumbling  wall  and  sultry  sand 

Sounds  now  one  word  alone ; 


REVELATION  H 

*  Unduped  of  fancy,  henceforth  Man 

Must  labour  ! — must  resign 
His  all  too  human  creeds,  and  scan 

Simply  the  way  divine  i '  "  12 


That  condition  no  longer  endures.  Differences  of 
creed  have  at  length  revealed  a  yawning  chasm 
between  our  moral  ideals.  Apologists  of  those  days 
were  scorned  as  narrow-minded  for  venturing  the 
view  that  Christian  ethics  were  bound  up  with 
Christian  dogma,  and  that  Avith  the  decay  of  the 
one  the  other  could  not  long  maintain  its  hold. 
What  they  said,  however,  has  come  true;  and  can 
be  proved  in  the  triumphant  jeers  of  our  adver- 
saries. The  irruption  of  Nietzsche,  that  strange 
comet  in  the  serene  heaven  of  philosophy,  has  meant 
a  revolution.  The  new  ethics  discards  the  notion 
of  love,  ridicules  sacrifice  and  pity,  and  pours  a 
virulence  of  scornful  hatred  upon  Christ  Himself. 
Christian  purity,  Christian  sympathy  and  humility, 
Christian  gentleness  and  even  courtesy  are  set  at 
naught  by  the  ncAv  apostles  of  the  will  to  power,  and 
a  saturnalia  of  selfish  pride  is  set  up  as  our  ideal 
in  such  a  passage  as  that  I  quoted ;  and  many  who 
would  be  shocked  at  the  words  are  no  less  scornful 
of  our  moral  aims.^^ 

The  question,  "Do  you  admire  Christ?"  comes 
before  "Do  you  believe  Him?"  One  erudite  and 
not  unsympathetic  investigator  gravely  shatters  the 


12  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

claims  of  orthodoxy  because  the  system  could  not 
find  room  for  such  men  as  Goethe  and  Bismarck.^'* 
So  that  the  claim  to  judge  a  religion  by  its  ideal 
of  character,  not  merely  its  doctrine,  is  by  no  means 
a  dodge  of  apologists  at  bay.  Personally,  I  find  my 
belief  in  the  Christian  faith  immensely  strengthened 
by  its  incompatibility  with  the  ideals  of  Bismarck; 
and  do  not  see  even  in  Goethe  an  inspiring  substitute 
for  Christ. 

Comparative  mythology  has  widened  and  intensi- 
fied the  problem.  Now  that  religion  is  recognised 
as  a  universal  function  of  the  race,  it  is  being  scien- 
tifically observed  and  analysed  all  the  world  over, 
while  the  religious  aspects  of  ancient  cultures  are 
studied  with  growing  sympathy.  We  cannot  now 
echo  the  vaunt  of  St.  Augustine  about  the  virtues 
of  the  pagan  world  being  splendida  vitia ;  or  treat 
Mahomet  as  merely  a  false  prophet.  Nor  can  we 
deny  the  immense  amount  of  interaction  between  the 
religion  of  Israel  and  other  earlier  systems.  Above 
all,  the  knowledge  of  Mithraic  worship  in  the  Roman 
Empire  has  revealed  the  striking  interdependence 
of  the  Christian  Church  and  other  cults.  So  in 
ever-widening  circles,  away  from  the  debates  of  the 
scholars,  the  question  comes  with  increasing  force :  ^^ 
Is  there  anything  unique  in  the  Christian  faith? 
Is  it  more  than  a  phase  of  culture,  perhaps  the  best 
hitherto,  but  now  ripe  to  rottenness,  and  ready  to 


REVELATION  13 

pass  into  something  better  ?  Must  we  take  the  line 
of  a  merely  historical  sympathy  and  regard  the 
Church  as  but  an  item  in  an  age-long  process,  still 
far  from  its  goal — or  is  she  "  the  heir  of  all  the  ages," 
having  in  her  treasure-house  things  new  and  old, 
and  Avorthy  of  all  the  deeper  reverence  because  in 
her  liturgies,  her  temples,  and  her  creeds  she  does 
but  express  the  garnered  experience  of  all  human 
life  and  every  religious  system  ?  ^^ 

On  all  these  grounds  it  behoves  us  to-day  to  ask 
ourselves  once  more  the  question,  What  do  we  mean 
by  speaking  of  the  Gospel  as  a  revelation  ?  We  are 
compelled  to  try  to  realise  afresh  the  distinctive 
nature  of  the  Christian  life  in  presence  of  forms  of 
worship  that  are  either  non-Christian  or  only  partly 
so,  as  upholding  a  very  definite  ideal  of  character, 
which  is  its  own  and  will  not  flourish  in  any  other 
soil,  and  as  a  society,  a  peculiar  people — making  part 
of  human  progress  and  yet  having  God's  especial 
life — a  religion  at  once  historical  and  absolute. 

To  this  place  and  this  oflSce  the  topic  is  fit  though 
hard.  The  unique  satisfaction  to  the  needs  of  man 
afforded  by  life  in  the  Christian  Church  at  once 
appals  and  commands  one  who  stands  where  so  many 
noble  and  gracious  spirits  have  given  in  days  gone  by 
their  witness;  and  testified  the  truth  that  here  at 
least  (as  I  heard  in  this  pulpit)  "  Faith  is  not  afraid 
to  reason,  and  reason  is  not  ashamed  to  adore."  ^'     It 


14  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

is  laid  down  as  the  duty  of  the  Hulsean  preacher  to 
"defend  revealed  religion";  and  it  is  of  Christian 
faith  as  revealed  that  we  are  now  to  think — that 
faith  by  which  we  see  the  world  as  a  society  of  free, 
created,  and  immortal  spirits,  a  world  of  real  chances 
and  incalculable  catastrophes,  a  world  of  broken  har- 
monies, of  pain  and  sin ;  withal  its  Maker  known  to 
us  as  Father  and  Friend,  His  love  flashing  out  in 
the  most  astounding  marvels,  the  Incarnation  and 
Death  of  the  One-begotten — whose  rising  is  less  a 
wonder  than  His  dying  if  He  be  who  He  is — who  by 
His  Cross  redeems  us  now,  and  in  His  body  the 
Church  gives  us  in  Baptism  and  the  Eucharist  the 
very  spirit  and  essence  of  eternal  life.  This  world 
with  God  its  blazing  fact,  and  prayer  and  faith  real 
forces  stronger  than  the  armies  of  evil,  though  quite 
congruous  to  common  sense  and  our  inner  life,  is 
incongruous  with  any  mechanical  system,  whether 
of  forces  or  ideas,  or  with  an  Absolute  which  is  un- 
revealable  even  in  symbol.  Above  all,  this  world  in 
which  God  cares  for  us,  and  we  can  be  '•'  in  love  with 
God,"  is  not  to  be  reconciled  with  any  of  the  myriad 
forms  of  pantheism.  Pantheism  and  Christianity,  it 
has  been  well  said,  are  the  two  views  of  life  which 
between  them  divide  the  allegiance  of  men ;  and  that 
thought  may  help  us  in  making  the  great  choice.^^ 

The  choice,  be  it  observed,  is  not  speculative  so 
much  as  practical.     It  is  not  whether  I  am  to  hold 


REVELATION  15 

in  theory  a  set  of  propositions — but  whether  I  may 
go  on  kneeling  in  prayer  and  confession,  reciting 
the  Creed  in  worship,  and  receiving  God  in  His 
own  sacrament.  We  might  put  it  in  one  phrase, 
Is  the  Eucharist  a  sham  or  reality  ?  for  that  service 
includes  every  element  and  unites  them  in  har- 
monious praise.  Thus  in  "  this  great  argument," 
which  to-day  reverberates  through  Europe,  it  is  not 
an  academic  thesis,  the  amusement  of  intellectuals, 
but  the  faith  of  the  millions  that  is  at  stake — the 
faith  of  the  worker  and  the  soldier,  the  redemption 
of  the  harlot  and  the  rake,  the  hope  of  all  who  suffer, 
the  joy  of  all  who  die :  is  He  real  or  a  phantom, 
this  Lord  of  ours  ? 

And  if  for  this  faith  I  stand  to-day,  I  ask  you  to 
believe  that  it  is  not  to  make  vain  show,  or  to  shatter 
in  argument  a  disdained  opponent.  To  others  faith 
is  the  bright  serenity  of  unclouded  vision ;  to  me  it  is 
the  angel  of  an  agony,  the  boon  of  daily  and  hourly 
conflict.  In  these  years  as  God's  priest  I  have  felt 
the  pressure  of  crowding  doubts,  and  learned  in 
bitterness  that  to  give  up  agnostic  views  may  yet 
leave  one  far  from  the  Kingdom  of  God — farther, 
save  by  His  grace,  than  ever  before.  I  would  ask  in 
humbleness  your  prayers,  both  young  and  old,  that 
neither  to  me  nor  others  these  words  be  vain. 

I  would  add  that  these  lectures  make  no  claim  to 
specialist  research.     They  do  but  express  the  way  in 


16  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

which  to  one  man  alive  "  to  the  currents  of  troubled 
thought "  the  truth  of  the  Cross  shines  out  and 
what  seems  a  hindrance  has  been  made  a  help. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  idle  to  deny  the  fact  or  the 
pressure  of  difficulties.  The  knowledge  of  them  is 
more  widely  diffused,  the  burden  more  acutely  felt, 
than  it  has  probably  ever  been  before.  Yet  the 
Church  fighting  with  other  religions  is  at  least  no 
worse  off  than  it  was  in  the  first  and  second  centuries 
when  it  was  on  the  eve  of  its  greatest  triumphs, 
though  opposed  by  all  the  powers  of  this  world, 
"  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  the  lust  of  the  eye,  and  the 
pride  of  life,"  organised  and  triumphant  as  they 
never  were  before  or  since,  by  hostile  w^orships  in 
possession,  and  by  modes  of  thought  untouched  by 
Christian  living.  Nor  again  is  the  general  atmos- 
phere among  cultivated  men  one  whit  more  un- 
favourable than  in  the  eighteenth  century  when 
Butler  prefaced  his  "  Analogy  "  with  the  well-known 
words  :  "  It  is  come  to  be  taken  for  granted  by  many 
persons,  that  Christianity  is  not  so  much  as  a  subject 
of  inquiry ;  but  that  it  is  now  at  length  discovered  to 
be  fictitious.  And  accordingly  they  treat  it  as  if  in 
the  present  age  this  were  an  agreed  point  among  all 
people  of  discernment ;  and  nothing  remained  but  to 
set  it  up  as  a  principal  subject  of  mirth  and  ridicule, 
as  it  were  by  way  of  reprisals,  for  its  having  so  long 
interrupted  the  pleasures  of  the  world." 


REVELATION  17 

Since  those  days,  when  men  regarded  the  Church 
as  the  figment  of  priests,  and  looked  for  its  disappear- 
ance as  the  great  AufJddrung  should  spread,  the 
faith  has  made  conquests  that  even  to  believers 
would  have  seemed  barely  credible,  and  cast  ten  thou- 
sand times  its  strange  spell  over  the  heart  of  man.  For 
although  to  us — "  upon  whom  the  ends  of  the  world 
are  come  " — many  things  seem  hard  that  were  easy 
to  our  fathers,  we  have  over  them  this  great  advan- 
tage. The  Church  goes  on.  Assailed  it  has  been  on 
all  sides  and  on  every  ground,  attacked  by  some 
because  she  is  other-worldly,  by  others  because  she 
is  not ;  accused  in  one  breath  of  an  insane  altruism 
and  in  the  next  of  unworthy  egotism ;  its  title-deeds 
torn  up,  its  facts  disputed,  its  influence  denied !  Its 
adversaries  have  demolished  it  a  thousand  times  in 
argument  and  pronounced  the  Christian  Church  a 
dead  thing,  and  cried  to  carry  out  the  corpse,  for 
all  was  over  but  the  shouting.  And  they  have  be- 
taken themselves  to  shouting,  only  to  find  when  it 
was  over  that  the  slain  hydra  had  raised  a  new 
head,  and  all  was  to  do  again.  It  is  so  easy,  so 
very  easy,  to  disprove  the  Christian  religion — to 
one's  own  satisfaction ;  but  it  has  not  yet  proved 
possible  to  destroy  it.  The  volume  of  Christian 
experience  goes  on  increasing — its  call  to  the  indivi- 
dual soul  is  never  quite  unregarded.  In  the  darkest 
days    there    are    thousands — some    of    them    even 

B 


18  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

educated — to  whom  Christ  is  the  one  rock,  the  Cross 
the  one  hope,  and  the  Church  the  abiding  home  for 
weak  and  sin-stained  souls. 

None  the  less  the  difficulties  are  there — or  rather 
here.  They  attack  those  within  no  less  than  those 
without.  Nor  may  we  glibly  attribute  them  to 
moral  turpitude.  All  of  us  know,  perhaps  among 
our  own  friends,  men  better  and  more  devoted 
than  ourselves  who  yet  in  no  wise  worship  "Jesus 
as  Lord." 

Nevertheless,  it  is,  I  believe,  a  spiritual  rather 
than  an  intellectual  force  that  is  needed  to  over- 
come the  obstacles ;  and  that  is  the  very  meaning 
of  the  appeal  to  faith  (without  which  Jesus  could 
not  do  mighty  works)  as  the  basis  of  our  life. 
Faith  like  all  trust  is  an  act  of  the  will,  which 
decides  to  take  risks;  and  so  whenever  it  is  tried, 
it  must  involve  courage.  It  is  want  of  pluck,  the 
desire  of  clinging  to  the  bank,  of  moving  no  farther 
than  we  can  see  that  makes  our  intellectual  diffi- 
culties insuperable. 

Consider  what  courage,  ordinary  courage,  actually 
does.  It  does  not  do  away  with  obstacles  or  remove 
pain  or  danger,  indeed  it  often  increases  them ;  if 
there  were  no  hunting,  no  football,  there  would  be 
fewer  broken  collar-bones  or  injured  knees.  What 
a  brave  man  does  is  to  accept,  even  invite,  pain  of 
one  sort  or  another,  and  turn  it  into  joy  and  strength. 


REVELATION  19 

He  acts  on  the  principle  of  him  whose  advice  to  his 
son  going  to  school  was  expressed  in  the  lines : — 

"  God  gave  man  pain  for  friend, 
And  death  for  surest  hope  of  life."  ^* 

Seventy-five  per  cent,  of  education  consists  in  learn- 
ing, either  in  physical  or  mental  life,  that  we  are  to 
face  risks,  not  shun  them,  and  that  so  faced  they  are 
the  condition  of  a  richer  and  happier  life.  Courage 
may  not  be  the  one  virtue,  as  a  recent  writer  pro- 
claims, but  it  is  a  very  real  grace ;  it  embraces  a 
wider  scope  than  is  often  supposed,  and  carries  us 
on  from  the  simplest  acts  to  the  heights  of  sacrifice 
and  faith.  It  is  nothing  short  of  amazing  how  many 
have  learned  its  lesson  in  outward  life,  yet  fail  to  see 
how  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  that  "  dying  to  live " 
which  is  the  philosophy  of  the  Cross.  And  the 
dying  must  be  real ;  if  there  were  no  effort,  no 
fatigue,  no  bruises,  no  accidents,  there  could  be 
none  of  the  joy  of  courage.  So  in  regard  to  re- 
ligion, if  there  Avere  no  difficulties  or  perplexities, 
if  belief  were  a  mathematical  certitude,  there  could 
be  none  of  that  "  personal  trust  in  a  person,"  none 
of  that  dan  of  victory  and  freedom  which  belongs 
to  faith.  It  is  not  by  ignoring  our  difficulties  or 
treating  them  as  unreal,  that  we  can  have  the  joy 
of  faith ;  but  by  finding  in  them  the  secret  of  our 
power.  Our  apologetic  grows  out  of  the  very  heart 
of  our  trouble.     The  attraction  of  the  Christian  life 


20  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

to  living  men  and  women  with  hopes  and  struggles 
and  sins  is  just  in  those  very  points  which  it  is 
hardest  to  justify  in  pure  theory.  It  is  not  in  spite 
of  these  difficulties,  but  because  of  them — or  rather 
of  the  truth  which  arouses  them — that  faith  has  its 
value  for  men,  who  have  to  live.  Because  it  claims 
to  be  not  merely  part  of  a  historical  process  (though 
of  course  it  is  that),  but 

"  The  finger  of  God,  a  flash  of  the  will  that  can 
Existent  behind  all  laws,  that  made  them  and  lo  I  they  are." 

that  revelation  is  so  uplifting  to  man  bowed  down 
with  the  sense  of  his  own  impotence,  with  the  awful 
vastness  and  rigidity  of  natural  law,  and  longing 
above  everything  to  be  assured  of  his  freedom ;  it 
is  because  it  tells  of  mysteries,  which  no  ingenuity 
of  reasoning  can  grasp,  that  it  enthralls  a  nature 
wondering  in  reverence  at  the  strangeness  of  itself ; 
because  God  lived  on  earth  as  a  growing  lad  and  a 
common  man,  the  common  man  finds  so  close  to 
him  this  tender  and  appealing  love.  Lastly,  it  is 
because  Christ  upon  the  Cross  has  won  for  us  an 
impossible  pardon,  a  deliverance  unhoped  from  sin 
and  the  diseased  will  that  the  worst  and  weakest 
can  hail  him  as  Saviour  and  Friend. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  consider  in  the  light  of  this 
principle  the  idea  of  the  miraculous.  It  has  been 
our  tendency  of  late  to  put  this  in  the  background.'^'^ 


REVELATION  21 

Dominated  by  sonorous  commonplaces  about  irre- 
vocable law  and  iron  uniformity,  most  of  us  find  or 
did  find  grave  difficulty  to  faith  in  the  miraculous. 
All  the  alleged  instances  we  strive  to  reduce  into 
conformity  with  natural  order.  It  is  with  reluctance 
that  we  admit  any  as  actual,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
we  know  that  the  idea  is  bound  up  with  a  special 
revelation  of  what  otherwise  man  could  not  know. 

It  is  true  that  the  difficulty  lies  deeper.  Miracles 
are  but  the  expression  of  God's  freedom ;  the  truth 
that  He  is  above  and  not  merely  within  the  order 
of  nature.  Disbelief  in  them  really  leads  on  to 
pantheism.  Displaying  this  truth  of  God's  liberty 
and  personality  they  arouse  no  deeper  speculative 
difficulties  than  does  the  common  daily  fact  of 
human  free-will — perhaps  even  less.  No  reasoning 
has  solved  that  problem  or  reconciled  the  deliver- 
ance of  consciousness  Avith  a  belief  in  the  uniformity 
of  nature,  if  that  belief  be  extended  into  an  entire 
philosophy  of  things.  On  the  other  hand,  no  deter- 
minism, "  hard  or  soft,"  can  be  reconciled  with  the 
psychology  of  repentance,  or  with  our  sense  of  personal 
activity,  for  this  view  postulates  the  many,  the  other 
absorbs  everything  into  the  one.  If  we  have  once 
surmounted  the  cardinal  crux  of  human  freedom, 
there  is  no  real  ground  for  boggling  over  miracles.^i 

But  with  the  increasing  pressure  of  this  notion 
of  iron  law,  there  is  an  increasing  sense  of  the  need 


22  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

of  a  power  above  it.  Instead  of  being  a  drag  upon 
faith,  the  miraculous,  or  the  idea  of  revelation,  or 
whatever  you  choose  to  call  it,  is  once  more  be- 
ginning to  be  a  pillar  of  it.  Without  it  we  cannot 
consistently  retain  the  notion  of  freedom,  which  is 
essential  to  our  moral  life.  Miracles  were  easy  of 
credit  in  days  when  personal  agency  was  detected 
throughout  nature,  and  the  physical  world  was  not 
conceived  as  an  orderly  whole.  Belief  was  easy 
then,  but  it  was  also  superfluous;  for  the  miracle 
was  simply  a  fact,  like  any  other  fact  of  daily  life, 
and  conveyed  none  but  a  particular  lesson.  Nowa- 
days the  belief  is  not  easy,  but  it  is  essential ;  unless 
we  .are  to  be  deprived  of  all  faith  in  our  own  spiritual 
being,  and  driven  to  view  the  world  as  a  vast  system, 
which  may  perhaps  be  a  living  whole,  but  without 
any  place  for  personalities,  and  with  our  own  loves 
and  fears,  our  sin  or  sanctity  mere  illusions,  a  sort 
of  phosphorescent  by-product  of  the  outer  world. 
The  iron  law  of  physical  sequences  is  always  Avith 
us  ;  the  pressure  of  the  world,  environment,  heredity, 
is  patent  and  appalling;  what  is  a  mere  theory  to 
the  student  is  the  most  constant  and  oppressive  of 
facts  to  the  plain  man.  It  is  just  this  very  thing 
he  wants  to  escape  from.  It  is  only  miracle,  revela- 
tion, that  can  assure  him  that  behind  all  this  net- 
work of  material  forces  there  is  a  living  will ; 
while  God  manifest  in  Christ  displays  that  will  as 


REVELATION  23 

Love.  That  is  all  he  wants.  That  gives  him  a 
refuge,  a  home  for  the  soul,  whose  deepest  emotion 
and  noblest  desires  may  now  be  satisfied.  Just  as  a 
man  of  business  or  toil  needs  a  home  with  all  its 
pieties,  if  his  higher  nature  is  not  to  be  starved,  so 
man  "  who  goeth  forth  to  his  work  and  to  his  labour 
until  the  evening  "  and  is  ever  confronted  by  natural 
law,  demands  the  assurance  of  spiritual  freedom,  of 
the  living  reality  of  Love  and  Peace.  Such  an  assur- 
ance is  not  now  possible  if  there  be  no  revelation 
which  may  prevent  all  his  highest  thought  from 
"  fading  into  the  light  of  common  day,"  and  being 
withered  by  the  chill  of  rigid  natural  forces.  Miracles, 
in  fact,  give  men  just  that  thrill,  that  sense  of  ex- 
hilaration aud  freedom  which  all  of  us  experience 
in  any  conspicuous  act  of  heroism.  Colonel  Picquart 
apparently  ruining  his  career  to  defend  Dreyfus ;  a 
schoolboy  saving  another  from  drowning,  have  the 
same  lesson.  They  show  that  man  is  not  the  slave 
of  circumstance.  Here,  we  say,  is  an  act  which 
breaks  the  chain  of  environment,  which  rises  above 
the  outward,  and  uplifts  us  with  a  sense  of  our  own 
freedom — to  go  and  do  likewise.  This  is  its  appeal. 
So  with  revelation. 

Vain,  indeed,  and  a  mockery  it  is  to  tell  a  man 
broken  with  trouble  or  a  woman  who  has  lost  child 
or  friend,  that  he  should  bow  before  the  majesty 
of  law,  and  worship   the   changeless  harmonies  of 


24  THE   GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

nature.  What  to  him  is  cosmic  emotion  ?  It  is  that 
very  bitterness  he  seeks  to  throw  oft".  It  is  the 
universe  Avhich  crushes  him.  He  wants  to  be  free 
from  it.  Is  there  nothing  behind  the  curtain  ? 
Have  the  gates  for  ever  closed  behind  the  dear 
one  ?  Is  there  indeed  no  voice  or  any  that  answers, 
no  feeUng  behind  these  cold  resistless  laws,  beyond 
the  stars  in  the  courses  that  never  alter?  Is  it 
really  all  ?  That  is  what  he  asks.  Like  the  hero 
in  "  Maud,"  who  has  been 

"  Brought  to  understand 
A  sad  astrology,  the  boundless  plan 
That  makes  you  tyrants  in  your  iron  skies, 
Innumerable,  pitiless,  passionless  eyes, 
Cold  fires,  yet  with  power  to  burn  and  brand 
His  nothingness  into  man," 

he  can  only  be  helped  in  the  same  way — by  love. 

"  But  now  shine  on,  and  what  care  I, 
Who  in  this  stormy  gulf  have  found  a  pearl 
The  counter-charm  of  space  and  hollow  sky, 
And  do  accept  my  madness,  and  would  die 
To  save  from  some  slight  shame  one  simple  girl." 

It  is  Love  not  Law  that  is  the  hope — half 
smothered  and  inarticulate — of  all  who  live  and 
suffer  ;  and  this  we  only  know  by  the  crash  of  Christ's 
coming  to  earth  and  showing  once  for  all  the  real 
s'pletideur  de  Dieu — so  often  misconceived.  For 
while  miracles  show  that  God  has  a  freedom  like  to 
man,  and  can  make  nature  an  instrument  of  spirit, 


REVELATION  25 

Jesus  Christ's  birth  and  His  death  and  rising  again 
for  us  have  shown  the  one  immutably  rigid  law  of 
things — to  be  the  fact  of  God's  love.  That  which  in 
its  idea  is  free  and  gracious,  and  exhaustless  in  its 
riches,  is  the  one  principle, 

"  The  light  whose  smile  kindles  the  universe," 

that  and  no  other.  And  if  that  be,  if  God's  love 
be  the  truth  of  all,  bereavement  and  pain,  disaster  and 
gloom,  though  hard,  may  yet  be  borne  ;  and  hope  is 
once  more  possible. 

That  truth  can  come  only  from  a  revealed  faith ; 
for  it  cannot  by  any  reasoning  be  extracted  from  the 
natural  order. 

In  an  age  like  this,  when  the  scientific  knowledge 
of  the  natural  world  and  our  power  to  use  it  have 
increased  so  marvellously,  we  need  some  bulwark  to 
guard  us  against  being  lost  in  the  sea  of  naturalism : 
the  danger  is  great  lest  we  take  the  part  for  a  whole, 
lest  we  extend  into  a  general  theory  of  things  con- 
ceptions useful,  as  a  partial  description  of  the  out- 
ward phenomena,  conceived  in  abstraction,  but  not 
an  account  of  life  or  ourselves.^"^  Such  a  bulwark 
is  afforded  by  the  idea  of  the  miraculous  and 
its  content  in  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ.  This 
alone  can  save  us  from  confusing  God  with  the 
creation  which  is  His  will.  This  alone  can  point 
to  a  way  of  escape,  to  a  sure  refuge  from  the  iron 


26  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

chain  of  cause  and  effect.  For  this  alone  assures  us 
that  we  are  not  items  in  a  series,  cogs  in  a  great 
machine ;  but  free  spirits  living  in  society,  the  chil- 
dren of  one  like  unto  us,  in  so  far  that  we  may  love 
Him  and  speak  to  Him  ;  and  caring  so  much  that  God 
Himself  died  to  save  us.  God  revealed  in  Christ  is 
the  one  truth,  which  gives  to  tired  men  and  women 
the  right — the  right  to  be  as  little  children,  with  the 
child's  freshness  of  delight  and  trust. 

"  That  is  all  we  know  on  earth,  and  all  we  need  to  know." 


IT. —MYSTERY 

"  The  Light  shineth  in  the  darkness."— St.  John  i.  5. 

"Christianity  not  Mysterious"  is  the  title  of  c\ 
book  once  famous.  Descartes  and  his  philosophy 
dominated  men's  minds  —  even  to  some  extent 
Fenelon's — in  the  later  seventeenth  and  the  early 
eighteenth  century.  Clearness  and  logical  consist- 
ency were  idols.  Men  had  a  naif  faith  in  the  indi- 
vidual reason,  and  were  resolute  to  credit  nothing 
that  could  not  be  demonstrated ;  nor  had  they 
any  notion  that  words  were  inadequate  to  express 
reality. 

These  notions  governed  the  minds  of  orthodox 
and  deists  alike.  It  was  natural  that  men  should 
seek  to  accommodate  the  Gospel  to  theory,  and, 
under  the  guise  of  defence,  should  minimise  the 
element  of  mystery  in  the  life  of  the  Church  no 
less  than  in  human  society,  and  should  repudiate 
all  authority — even  where  they  were  orthodox  treat- 
ing the  Christian  faith  as  merely  a  code  of  morals 
with  special  sanctions. 

Toland's   able  work  is   perhaps  less  unorthodox 

27 


28  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

than  is  commonly  supposed,  only  because  there 
are  no  wonders  at  all  to  him.  He  asserts  dis- 
tinctly that  nature  has  no  mysteries,  that  faith 
is  based  entirely  upon  ratiocination — for  it  never 
occurred  to  these  men  to  criticise  reason — and  that 
Church  authority  is  a  figment.^ 

He  goes  on  to  adopt  a  line  of  argument  at  present 
very  popular,  that  Christ's  doctrine  was  corrupted 
from  its  primitive  simplicity  by  the  infusion  of  Greek 
metaphysics  and  pagan  culture,  and  in  this  way  pro- 
duced the  historic  Church  and  Creeds. 

Another  book  of  the  same  epoch,  Matthew  Tindal's 
"  Christianity  as  Old  as  the  Creation,"  of  which  only 
the  drst  volume  was  ever  published,  elaborated  the 
thesis  that  the  Christian  faith  was  natural  religion, 
differing  merely  in  its  mode  of  promulgation.  If 
this  be  so,  any  deviation  from  natural  religion  in 
the  existing  presentment  of  Christianity  must  be  at 
best  superfluous,  at  worst  a  degradation  due  to  the 
interest  and  cunning  of  priests. 

These  books  are  now  buried  in  libraries ;  nor  is  it 
probable  that  they  will  ever  be  republished.  Their 
hard,  unimaginative  philistinism,  their  lack  of  his- 
torical sympathy  and  religious  awe,  would  render 
them  repellent  to  many  whose  fundamental  aims 
are  not  different. ^ 

Not  different !  Are  we  not  to-day  in  face  of  a 
movement  in  all  essentials  the  same  as  that  of  the 


MYSTERY  29 

sentimental  rationalism  of  the  eighteenth  century  ? 
There  is  the  same  effort  to  strip  the  Catholic  faith 
of  everything  that  is  perplexing  to  the  understand- 
ing, to  interpret  the  life  of  the  historic  Church 
with  reference  to  categories  fashionable  at  the 
moment. 

The  modes  of  thought  of  the  eighteenth  century 
Avere  different  from  those  now  dominant.  In  those 
days  came  the  deistic  and  latitudinarian  divines  or 
philosophers,  Locke  and  Hoadly  and  their  congeners, 
with  a  loud  appeal  to  clear  the  mind  of  cant,  to  purify 
religion  by  divorcing  it  from  ecclesiasticism  (i.e.  from 
its  social  and  communal  expression),  to  interpret 
Christianity  apart  from  the  inventions  of  a  corrupt 
and  self-seeking  hierarchy,  purging  it  of  miracle  and 
mystery,  and  turning  the  most  gracious  and  beauti- 
ful, the  most  tender  and  appealing  of  all  God's  gifts 
to  man  into  a  rational  morality,  open  to  the  com- 
prehension of  L'hommc  inoyen  sensuel.  As  for 
the  "  dim  common  populations,"  they  might  go  on 
believing  what  suited  them,  until  such  time  as 
enlightenment  had  spread  to  them  also. 

It  is  a  similar  phenomenon  we  witness  to-day. 
All  around  us  we  see  new  theologies,^  up-to-date 
catechisms,^  common-sense  religions,^  re-births,^  re- 
statements, some  profound,  some  a  little  crude,  all 
rather  depressing.  From  London  and  New  York 
and  Birmingham,  not   to  speak  of  the   Continent, 


30  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

books  pour   from   the  press  which  are  all  dh-ected 
by  the  same  bias. 

We  are  to  learn  the  permanent  value  of  Christian 
faith  by  stripping  it  of  every  wonder  and  every 
mystery.  We  are  to  reject  the  strange  birth  as 
materialistic,  the  physical  resurrection  as  unscien- 
tific, sacramental  grace  as  magical — above  all,  the 
deity  of  our  Lord  disappears  in  a  cloud  of  phrases ; 
and  all  the  Churches  are  invited  to  join  in  a  caput 
mortuuni  of  pious  sentiment  and  pantheistic  emotion. 
In  brief,  Ave  are  to  capitulate  to  the  enemy  on  every 
controverted  point  except  the  general  need  of  reli- 
gion and  prayer,  and  then  to  trust  to  the  God  of 
philosophy  to  come  down  "  from  the  machine  "  and 
save  from  the  wrecks  of  ecclesiasticism  just  enough 
to  suit  men  of  parts  and  of  polish,  while  throwing 
to  the  wolves  the  poor  man's  God,  who  wrought 
wonders  and  rose  from  the  tomb. 

This  tendency  is  to  be  observed  from  within  no 
less  than  without  the  Church.  One  priest  of  the 
English  Church,  who  wrote  volumes  to  prove  New- 
man dishonest  (unlike  Kingsley  waiting  till  death 
made  reply  impossible),  has  proudly  elaborated  a 
Christianity  relieved  entirely  of  the  supernatural ; 
and  other  instances  are  obvious.^ 

Moreover  the  same  bias  is  tempting  all  of  us. 
Indeed,  unless  God's  revelation  be  compulsory — 
and  ex  hypothesi  it  is  not — it  must  be  possible  to 


MYSTERY  31 

view  it  from  a  rationalistic  standpoint.  The  temp- 
tation to  a  purely  humanitarian  view  of  Christ  is 
constant  and  universal.  It  is  very  easy  for  any 
of  us  to  fall  into  the  snare,  and  seek  to  bring  the 
Gospel  down  to  the  level  of  our  transitory  concep- 
tions, instead  of  viewing  them  in  the  light  of  the 
Cross.  The  danger  is  there ;  we  cannot  avoid  it ; 
but  we  may  protect  ourselves  against  it  by  prayer 
and  effort. 

The  Apostles  themselves  needed  education  before 
they  learnt  the  folly  of  tying  their  Lord  down  to 
current  political  notions  about  the  Messiah.  So  in 
all  ages  disciples  will  be  liable  to  fall  into  a  similar 
error,  and  to  minimise  the  greatness  and  "pecu- 
liarity "  of  the  Gospel,  thus  making  it  the  reflection 
of  our  thinking,  instead  of  the  revelation  of  God's 
life. 

In  practice  we  accept  the  facts  of  life,  however 
mysterious,  and  try  to  deal  with  them  even  where 
we  cannot  fit  them  into  theory.  In  religion  it 
seems  often  simpler  to  deny  the  mystery  and  to 
make  the  abstract  understanding  the  measure  of 
all  things.  That  is  what  they  did  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  That  is  what  we  are  asked  to  do  to-day. 
True,  where  our  fathers  thought  of  God  as  a 
far  potentate,  we  prate  of  the  divine  immanence, 
as  though  the  words  were  a  sort  of  mystic  incanta- 
tion; and  speak  with  bated  breath  of  orderly  and 


32  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

continuous  change,  as  though  the  intellectual 
difficulty  sprang  not  from  the  idea  of  identity  in 
change,  but  from  the  time  it  takes  to  accomplish 
itself.  8 

But  now,  as  then,  there  is  the  same  hostility  to  the 
notion  of  revelation,  and  even  greater  antagonism  to 
miracles;  Avhich  it  is  beginning  to  call  wrong  and 
not  merely  irrational  to  credit.  These  writers  are 
indeed  a  little  more  humble  as  they  appear  far  more 
earnest  than  those  of  the  eighteenth  century.  They 
aTo  less  clear  and  hard  in  their  outlines.  In  words 
they  accept  mystery  and  the  suprarational,  and  rise 
into  lyrical  raptures  over  the  universe.  But  this 
is  only  words.  The  moment  mystery  becomes  con- 
crete in  Christ  or  His  Cross  or  the  Eucharist  their 
injured  intelligence  revolts  and  they  loudly  pro- 
test in  the  name  of  rationality  and  common  sense. 
All  this  too  in  the  name  of  Christ.  I  am  not 
now  speaking  of  agnostics,  but  of  men  who  believe 
themselves  possessed  with  the  sense  of  the  religious 
needs  of  men  and  their  intellectual  propensities. 
Finding  in  orthodox  Christianity  great  difficulties, 
they  purpose,  by  what  seem  to  them  changes  of  de- 
tail, to  make  it  once  more  acceptable  to  the  culti- 
vated intelligence.  Thus  they  are  in  their  ov\'n  view 
apologists.  They  look  for  a  great  revival.  Once 
more  will  the  Church  go  forth  conquering  and  to 
conquer,  purged  of  its  grosser  elements,  the  relics 


MYSTERY  33 

of  pagan  and  oriental  error,  refined  to  the  modern 
taste,  relieved  of  its  ignorant  love  of  marvels,  its 
feminine  submission  to  priests,  and  its  really  rather 
vulgar  preoccupation  with  sin  and  matters  which 
decent  people  do  not  think  about. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  Christian  Church  does 
not  exist  for  the  benefit  of  decent  people;  her 
primary  concern  is  with  those  who  are  not.  It  w^as 
the  poor  who  had  the  Gospel  preached  to  them.  We 
preach  Christ  crucified,  to  the  Jews  a  stumbling- 
block,  to  the  Greeks  foolishness.  This  is  as  true 
to-day  as  when  St.  Paul  wrote  the  words. 

Moreover  it  is  a  test  of  truth. 

Yow  cannot  search  for  religion  merely  from  the  side 
of  intellectual  inquiry  and  arrive  at  a  Christian 
result.  It  is  impossible.  For  the  intellect  demands 
necessity,  and  freedom  is  the  postulate  of  the 
Gospel.  If  Christianity  is  the  marvel  it  claims  to 
be,  to  those  who  fail  to  recognise  this  Christians 
are  bound  to  seem  fools.  If  we  do  not,  it  is  either 
because  they  are  more  Christian  than  they  know, 
or  because  we  are  less  Christian  than  we  imagine; 
and  it  is  far  more  probable  that  we  have  uncon- 
sciously surrendered  to  their  assumptions  than  that 
they  are  coming  nearer  to  us. 

It  is  true  that  the  Christian  Church  has  done 
more  to  make  life  more  beautiful  and  gracious, 
more  to  stimulate  men's  minds,  more  infinitely  to 

C 


34  THE   GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

inspire  artists  and  poets,  than  any  other  cause  in 
history. 

For  Christ  alone  gives  enduring  meaning  to  these 
values  without  which  work  is  vain,  and  unlocks  the 
treasure-house  of  love,  that  is  joy,  which  is  the  soul 
of  art.  Yet  it  is  not  to  culture,  as  such,  that  the 
Gospel  ever  can  or  ever  does  address  itself;  but  to 
the  common  heart  of  common  men  and  women,  on 
fire  with  life  and  love,  torn  with  struggle  and  loss 
and  sin,  and  appalled  by  death.  What  is  the  use 
of  judging  Christ  by  standards  He  does  not  profess 
to  satisfy  ?  Quite  plainly  He  declared  that  unless 
a  man  were  willing  to  enter  the  Kingdom  as  a  little 
child  he  could  not  belong  to  it.  It  will  not  be 
Christ's  Kingdom,  but  something  else  which  will 
result,  if  you  transform  the  Church  into  an  institu- 
tion whicJi  might  be  agreeable  for  a  university  ex- 
tension meeting,  but  has  no  fields  where  children 
may  play,  and  is  too  respectable  for  the  poor. 

For  these  can  readily  embrace  the  love  of  a  Father 
in  heaven,  of  His  Son  who  died  to  save  them,  and  of 
a  Spirit  who  helps  and  understands  them.  Would 
they  feel  at  home  in  that  adult  religion  now  de- 
manded, or  find  themselves  at  all  in  a  sentimental 
altruism,  spiced  with  pious  phrases,  decked  out  in 
a  half-scientific,  half-philosophic  terminology,  which 
may  be  a  comfort  to  those  who  use  it,  but  to  us  is 
colourless   and  dispiriting.^     Others  may  exhibit  a 


MYSTERY  35 

real  reverence  for  the  human  figure  of  Jesus,  and 
admire — with  a  certain  patronage — His  selfless  and 
gentle  spirit.  But  they  denude  the  story  of  all  that 
makes  it  unique,  and  treat  the  Church,  not  as  a 
society  wherein  His  Spirit  dwells,  but  as  a  human 
institution,  mainly  bad.  Thus  they  eliminate  Christ 
first  from  the  other  world  and  then  from  this ;  while 
bidding  us  admire  a  few  isolated  moments  and 
phrases  in  the  Gospels,  they  plume  themselves  on 
having  secured  a  form  of  Christianity  in  which,  if 
the  intelligent  can  find  few  objections,  the  "plain 
man  "  discovers  fewer  charms. 

The  truth  is  that  apologists  are  constantly  tempted 
to  concede  the  claims  of  their  adversaries  by  arguing 
upon  their  assumptions,  and  these  assumptions  are 
inherently  opposed  to  the  Christian  faith,  as  re- 
vealed and  supernatural.  If  that  faith  be  what  it 
claims,  its  defenders  have  only  one  course  open 
to  them.  They  must  help  man's  eyes  to  see  the 
King  in  His  beauty ;  must  set  forth  the  grace  of 
Christian  truth  as  the  veritable  splendour  of  God; 
and  show  that  it  is  more  congruous  with  life,  as 
it  is  lived,  than  is  any  proffered  substitute.  I 
think  that  since  the  time  of  Descartes,  the  process 
I  am  condemning  has  been  specially  dominant. 

For  a  long  time  men  attempted  to  establish  the 
being  of  God  by  irresistible  arguments,  the  only 
deity  thus  attainable  being  a  creation  of  the  reason. 


36  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

God,  if  He  exists,  is  not  the  conclusion  of  an  argu- 
ment but  the  most  stupendous  of  facts.  This, 
however,  has  long  been  abandoned  except  among 
professed  scholastics ;  Butler's  maxim  that  "  pro- 
bability is  the  guide  of  life"  made  a  revolution. 
Since  then,  however,  there  is  a  somewhat  analo- 
gous danger  in  the  attempt  to  secure  irrefragable 
historical  certitude.  But  the  evidence  for  such  facts 
as  our  Lord's  birth  and  resurrection  cannot  be 
appraised  apart  from  our  pre-suppositions.  There 
is  therefore  no  prospect  of  any  real  agreement 
among  scholars  upon  the  root  facts  of  which  the 
creeds  are  the  expression. 

With  some  a  different  line  is  proposed.  Idealism 
in  various  forms  displays  the  inadequacy  of  mere 
rationalism,  and  develops  what  its  adherents  regard 
as  unanswerable  arguments  for  the  spiritual  nature  of 
reality.  A  firm  basis  in  reflection  is  thus  believed  to 
exist  for  theistic  belief,  and  it  is  anticipated  that  these 
benefits  will  soon  be  universal  Avhen  philosophic 
training  is  extended  to  all.  This  is  a  great  act  of 
faith,  for  neither  the  past  nor  the  present  position 
of  philosophic  controversies  observed  as  facts  afford 
much  ground  for  any  hope  of  general  agreement. 
This  temper  often  brings  with  it  a  refusal  to  consider 
as  vital  any  belief  not  in  this  way  acceptable  to  the 
philosopher,  and  develops  the  tendency  to  trans- 
mute religion  into  philosophy.     It  is  often  hostile  or 


MYSTERY  37 

apathetic  to  all  the  historical  elements  in  Chris- 
tianity, and  though  quite  compatible  with  orthodox 
belief,  tends  to  treat  religion  mainly  as  a  system  of 
ideas,  a  luxury  for  the  study  rather  than  the  lord 
of  life  and  death.  All  these  methods  spring  from 
the  same  error — the  desire  to  do  away  with  the 
element  of  risk  in  faith,  and  a  dislike  of  what  is 
unfathomable  to  the  intelligence.  To  all  the  forms 
of  the  new  theology  there  is  one  common  assumption 
— a  naif  faith  in  the  intellect  of  man. 

This  faith  is  not  only  improbable  but  is  contra- 
dicted daily  by  the  facts  of  life.  If  we  were  able  by 
thinking  to  plumb  the  secrets  of  things,  it  is  clear 
that  no  revelation  is  needed,  nor  could  there  be  any 
place  in  religion  for  mystery,  which  in  its  very  notion 
is  something  unfathomable.  On  this  view  it  would  be 
true,  as  Browning  said  in  irony  that  there  is  now  a 
higher  tribunal  than  God,  the  educated  man.io  and 
the  Christian  religion  must  be  made  subject  entirely 
to  our  intelligence,  and  shorn  of  all  elements  which 
transcend  it. 

But  is  this  the  case  ?  Is  the  abstract  understand- 
ing so  completely  master  of  life  that  we  can  afford 
to  dismiss  without  further  ado  all  those  apparent 
facts  which  seek  to  elude  or  transcend  its  categories  ? 
Is  it  not  rather  the  case  that  every  single  fact  of  real 
life  lies  beyond  us,  and  the  problem  is  solved  only 
by  living  ? 


38  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

All  nature  may  be  movement,  but  does  any  one 
really  understand  motion  or  change  ?  We  are  told 
that  science  has  not  yet  explained  one  single  fact, 
and  in  the  simplest  things  in  outward  life  we  find 
a  mystery  unfathomable.  ^^  It  is  but  the  universal 
experience  which  is  summed  up  by  the  poet : — 

"  Slight  as  thou  art,  thou  art  enough  to  hide, 
Like  all  created  things,  secrets  from  me, 
And  stand  a  barrier  to  eternity. 
And  I,  how  can  I  praise  thee  well  and  wide 
From  where  I  dwell  upon  the  hither  side, 
Thou  little  veil  for  so  great  mystery 
When  shall  I  penetrate  all  things  and  thee 
And  then  look  back  ?     For  this  I  must  abide, 
Till  thou  shalt  grow  and  fold  and  be  unfurled 
Literally  between  me  and  the  world. 
Then  I  shall  drink  within  beneath  a  spring 
And  from  a  poet's  side  shall  read  his  book. 
Oh  !  daisy  mine,  what  will  it  be  to  look 
From  God's  side  even  of  such  a  simple  thing  7  "  i^ 

But  even  though  this  were  not  the  case,  and  the 
outer  world  were  quite  within  our  intelligence,  it  is 
the  inward  life  that  is  the  real,  and  that  is  always  a 
mystery,  and  speaks  of  something  beyond.  Bergson, 
the  supremely  acute  observer  of  this  life  declares,  after 
minute  and  positive  examination,  that  the  intellect  is 
by  its  nature  incapable  of  comprehending  life  (and  he 
gives  the  ground,  as  none  else  before  him  has  done). " 
This  is  the  instinctive  deliverance  of  every  man  and 
every  boy,  of  all  Avho  have  loved,  or  suffered,  or 
chosen,  however  it  may  be  obscured  by  the  obsession 


MYSTERY  39 

of  scientific  uniformity  or  rational  categories.  The 
partial,  relatively  superficial,  character  of  intellectual 
processes  is  revealed  in  a  flash  at  the  crises  of  life. 
To  one  who  is  straining  eyes  through  the  gates  of 
death  for  his  friend  who  has  passed  beyond  them,  how 
unreal  seem  all  studious  delights!  What  a  futile 
mockery  in  the  face  of  fact  are  all  men's  specula- 
tive projections  of  reality.  We  may  dwell  at  other 
times  in  an  abstract  world  and  make  ourselves 
happy  with  conceptions.  But  life  crashes  in  with 
"  its  wonder,  its  beauty,  and  its  terror  " — our  house  of 
cards  trembles ;  and  we  are  kicked  as  it  were  from  the 
rational  to  the  real,  from  the  surface  to  the  depths. 

Religion  has  been  described  as  living  with  the 
deepest  depths  of  being  ;  its  raison  d'etre  is  the  sense 
of  mystery.  ^^  All  its  rites  do  but  give  form  and 
body  to  the  instinct  that  things  are  greater  than  we 
know ;  that  Ave  cannot  grasp  in  our  minds  the  real 
things  of  life ;  that  there  is  an  everlasting  beyond  in 
ourselves,  as  in  God.  Mystery  is,  in  fact,  no  less 
needful  than  miracle  in  our  world  of  thought  to-day. 
The  one  saves  us  from  a  world  of  cast  iron;  the 
other  from  that  profounder  slavery  of  the  mind  to 
its  own  creations,  from  that  superstition  of  the  logical 
process,  which  is  willing  in  its  blindness  to  treat  the 
real  life  of  struggle  and  hope  and  joy  as  mere 
illusion,  if  only  at  the  cost  it  may  preserve  its 
self-consistency.     This  is  to  make  an  idol  out  of  an 


40  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

instrument.  The  perfection  of  theoretic  harmony  is 
dearly  bought  if  Hfe  be  the  price  we  are  to  pay  for  it. 

Mystery,  which  it  is  sought  to  eliminate  from 
the  creed,  is  of  its  very  essence ;  for  the  creed  is  a 
"  symbol "  in  its  old  name,  the  expression  partial  and 
inadequate  of  something  greater — life.  Man's  sense 
of  the  greatness  of  things,  of  the  profound  wonder 
in  his  daily  life,  is  too  deep  to  be  eradicated  by 
any  dialectic  cleverness,  and  is  proof  against  all  the 
ridicule  of  philosophers. 

It  is  this  sense  so  deep  and  universal  that  makes 
the  laity  so  conservative,  for  the  theologian  may  be 
tempted  to  construe  the  creed  mainly  as  speculation ; 
to  the  layman  it  is  life.  It  embodies  to  him  his 
instinct  of  the  greatness  of  things,  and  the  profound 
wonder  of  his  daily  life.  And  thus  he  is  cool  and 
unregarding  of  all  the  merriment  discovered  by 
theorists  in  the  speculative  difficulties  of  his  faith. 
Demonstrate  to  your  heart's  content  the  contradic- 
tions of  the  Divine  Personality,  of  a  Triune  God, 
of  the  Incarnation,  and  he  is  undismayed.  He  is 
not  concerned  to  explain  his  creed;  his  business 
is  with  living,  and  he  discerns  no  real  relation 
between  your  fine-drawn  theories  and  life  as  he 
knows  it.  Confuse,  if  you  like,  the  Christian  God 
with  the  Absolute  of  philosophy,  and  then  use  this 
confusion  to  argue  that  God  is  either  not  good  or 
not  almighty,  and  he  is  no  more   perplexed  than 


MYSTERY  41 

by  so  many  conundrums,  quite  unanswerable  and 
equally  childisb.^^  He  knows  that  the  threads  of 
life  pass  out  beyond  him  ;  that  "  talking's  puzzling 
work " ;  and  he  resents  your  efforts  "  to  pluck  the 
heart  out  of  his  mystery."  His  mystery;  that  is 
the  very  root  of  the  religious  sense,  and  those  who 
attempt  to  tamper  with  creeds  on  that  ground,  and 
on  that  ground  alone,  are  doomed  to  failure.  For 
Christ  appeals  to  men  who  have  this  sense ;  and  He 
takes  it  for  granted. 

No  reasoning  can  affect  those  who  have  it  not. 
We  cannot  by  modifying  the  faith  make  it  one  whit 
more  acceptable  to  the  thorough-going  unbeliever. 
Despise  us  he  does  and  will ;  all  the  more  if  he  sees 
that  Ave  are  afraid  of  him.  I  think  that  one  ground 
of  the  respect  which  infidels  have  for  the  Roman 
Church  is  that  they  feel  that  here  is  a  set  of  men 
who  brave  all  their  taunts  and  do  not  budge  an  inch  ; 
for  whom  the  tyrannous  rhetoric  of  naturalism  or 
rationalism  is  scatheless  as  the  idle  air.  Fools  of 
course  they  are,  but  so  are  all  Christians ;  they  are 
neither  the  better  nor  the  worse  for  that;  but  at 
least  they  have  the  courage  of  their  stupidity,  and 
do  not  attempt  to  whittle  away  their  faith  and 
"  meditate  emasculate  Immanence."  Now  we  are 
tempted  to  do  this ;  for  we  do  not  like  it  being  said 
that  no  candid  and  intelligent  man  can  be  a  Chris- 
tian.16    We  ought  to  like  it,  or  at  least  to  bear  it. 


42  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

To  be  scorned  as  fools  is  the  one  way  in  which  those 
who  work  with  their  minds  can  say  with  truth  that 
"  Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall  revile  you  and  say 
all  manner  of  evil  against  you  falsely  for  My  sake." 
It  is  the  offence  of  the  Cross,  and  we  may  not  shrink 
from  it.  You  cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon  with 
the  mind  any  more  than  with  the  heart.  Somewhere 
there  comes  the  choice  between  worshipping  God  and 
idolising  your  own  mind.  You  connot  escape  the 
choice  ;  and  you  must  stake  your  all  upon  the  leap. 

"  He  either  fears  his  fate  too  much, 
Or  his  deserts  are  small, 
Who  dares  not  put  it  to  the  touch, 
To  gain  or  lose  it  all." 

Idle  it  is  and  waste  of  breath  to  argue  with  men 
like  the  author  of  "  The  Churches  and  Modern 
Thought,"  or  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson.^'  Their  outlook 
is  anti-Christian  to  start  with.  The  rose  of  Dante 
with  the  Saints  of  Christ  is  to  them  as  ugly  and 
unmeaning  as  the  harmonies  of  Whistler  to  a  jury 
of  bagmen,  or  the  Fioretti  to  the  late  Mr.  Samuel 
Smiles.  There  is  no  common  ground  between  us 
and  a  man  who  could  read  the  New  Testament  and 
then  pronounce  that  "  some  of  the  sayings  of  Jesus 
display  a  relatively  high  moral  standard."  ^^  He 
is  indeed  a  strength  to  one's  OAvn  faith,  for  in 
his  extreme  cleverness  and  logical  consistency  he 
shows  us  the  true  meaning  of  ideas,  which  others 


MYSTERY  43 

deck  in  more  favourable  colours.  There  can  be 
no  question  of  satisfying  such  men,  or  inducing 
them  to  think  better  of  us,  or  say  that  we  are  less 
ignorant  than  other  Christians.  Their  contempt  is 
the  only  boon  we  can  ask  of  them. 

Far  in  truth  from  these  vulgarities  are  the  men 
who  in  the  name  of  Christ  demand  a  revolution  in 
the  Church ;  but  are  they  not,  and  we  also,  in  danger 
of  being  hypnotised  by  notions,  which  such  writers 
carry  to  their  conclusion  ?  Is  not  this  the  case  alike 
with  that  obsession  of  natural  uniformity  of  which 
we  spoke  last  week,  and  with  that  dream  of  rational- 
istic certitude  which  we  are  considering  to-day  ?  and 
does  not  each  of  them  do  violence  to  the  religious 
consciousness  ? 

Taking  the  religious  sense  as  a  given  fact,  are  we 
right  in  supposing  that  a  religion  without  mystery 
would  satisfy  its  needs  ?  Are  not  those  very  mys- 
teries, which  are  most  repugnant  to  the  rationalist, 
the  very  elements  which  make  the  faith  so  great  ?  I 
take  one  instance — the  cardinal  one — the  Eucharist. 
Believe  it  or  not,  you  cannot  deny  that  no  other  rite 
has  gathered  round  it  such  tenderness  of  devotion, 
or  stimulated  so  deeply  man's  sense  of  God's  near- 
ness and  love ;  nor  will  it  bo  disputed  that  here  is 
mystery  enshrined  in  the  actual  and  the  concrete 
— not  far  off,  but  in  the  daily  life.  For  this  reason 
the  Eucharist  is  inevitably  the  first  object  of  dislike 


44  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

to  the  rationalistic  temper,  and  offends  men  who  will 
accept  other  and  less  immediate  mysteries.  Yet 
Europe,  since  Wyclif,  affords  ample  evidence  that 
where  this  mystery  is  ignored  or  denied,  religious 
life — except  for  spurts  of  individual  piety  and 
mysticism — becomes  chill  and  commonplace,  and  in 
time  the  other  supernatural  aspects  are  also  seen 
to  vanish,  as  in  Germany  and  Geneva.^^ 

Does  it  not  then  appear  a  rash  undertaking  to 
reconstitute  the  Christian  Church  by  excising  all 
its  most  wonderful  elements  ?  Are  not  the  accom- 
plished and  respectable  persons  who  preach  the 
crusade  a  little  muddle-headed,  if  we  may  be  par- 
doned the  word  ?  Is  not  even  an  eminent  man  like 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  making  a  blunder,  and  mistaking 
futile  concessions  to  an  implacable  foe  for  defence 
of  that  religion  which  he  loves  so  dearly  ?  The  aim 
is  to  strengthen  the  ark  of  the  Church ;  the  danger 
is  (as  Carlyle  once  said  of  a  similar  effort)  that  we 
are  boring  holes  in  the  bottom.  Truly  it  would  be 
pitiful,  if  while  we  are  overthrowing  the  cargo  to 
lighten  the  ship,  we  should  lose  the  rudder  too,  and 
drive  it  on  the  rocks.  Before  we  turn  the  house  of 
our  God  into  a  glorified  Polytechnic  Institute,  it  were 
well  to  pause  and  ask  ourselves  whether  the  age-long 
instincts  of  humanity  are  to  go  for  nothing ;  whether 
the  love  and  devotion  which  gather  round  the  Cross 
have  not  some  deeper  root  than  stupidity  or  fear. 


MYSTERY  45 

I  think  there  is  such  a  root ;  it  lies  far  down,  and 
ineradicable  within  us.  It  is  man's  own  conscious- 
ness that  is  the  abiding  home  of  mystery,  and  ofters 
resistless  front  to  all  the  thrust  of  dialectical  attack. 
Dominated  by  the  daily  pressure  of  the  outward,  or 
by  the  intellectualist  fantasy,  we  forget  to  ask  our- 
selves what  is  most  vital.  Is  not  the  reality  of  life 
to  us  all,  neither  sense  nor  intellectual  process,  but 
that  dark  inner  world — that  twilight  of  reflection — 
in  which  we  grope  and  wonder  from  day  to  day, 
fighting  with  devils  whose  name  is  legion,  whose 
bewildered  gloom  is  lit  by  strange  lights  of  love 
and  pain,  and  transforms  itself  a  hundred  times 
an  hour  ?  Love  and  pain  and  death,  but  above  all 
things  chance  and  choice  are  present  for  us  all ;  they 
are  the  most  real  things  in  life ;  "  divine  anarchists," 
they  baffle  all  efforts  to  sum  the  series  of  being, 
and  defy  prediction.  These  are  the  things  we  really 
know,  and  all  else  is  secondary  and  subordinate,  or 
partial  and  abstract.  It  is  in  the  "  abysmal  depths 
of  personality"  that  we  find  the  final  and  fatal  foe 
of  mere  intellectualism. 

But  this  sense  is  not  developed  in  isolation.  It 
is  home  and  school,  social  and  communal  life,  which 
reveal  man  to  himself,  and  show  him  at  once  his 
littleness  and  greatness,  his  powers  of  sacrifice  and 
joy,  his  need  of  sympathy  and  love.  The  idol  of 
self-sufficient   individualism   is    the   danger    of    all 


46  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

rationalism,  and  it  is  destroyed  only  by  life  in 
society  and  by  the  need  of  love.  Love  is  the  mystery 
of  man's  nature  no  less  than  of  God's ;  nothing  else 
inspires  the  whole  being,  just  because  we  cannot 
reach  its  end.  The  man  who  loves  will  never  weep 
that  he  has  no  more  worlds  to  conquer,  for  love 
knows  neither  end  to  its  sacrifice  nor  bounds  to 
its  desire.  In  the  words  of  a  great  living  writer: 
"  Mysteries  which  have  no  direct  ethical  value  bear 
most  directly  on  Love,  which  ever  seeks  a  certain 
infinity  and  hiddenness  in  the  object  of  its  life.  A 
thoroughly  comprehensible  personality  would  have 
no  attraction  for  us;  it  would  afford  no  scope  for 
the  unitive  effort  in  which  Love  consists.  There 
must  always  be  a  beyond,  a  new  territory  to  conquer, 
a  new  difference  to  overcome.  ...  It  is  neither  what 
we  seem  to  understand  about  God,  that  feeds  our 
Love ;  nor  the  fact  that  He  is  definitely  beyond  our 
understanding",  but  the  fact  that  man  can  ever  pro- 
gress in  knowledge  and  love,  and  always  with  a 
sense  of  an  infinite  '  beyond.'  It  is  at  the  margin 
where  the  conquering  light  meets  the  receding  dark- 
ness that  love  finds  its  inspiration.  To  the  savage 
He  is  but  the  biggest  and  strongest  of  men ;  to  the 
rationalist  He  is  but  the  most  intelligent  and  moral ; 
to  Faith  He  is  the  hidden  Infinite  of  which  these  are 
but  the  finite  symbols."  ^^ 

Now  rationalism  in  all  its  forms  is  directly  con- 


MYSTERY  47 

trary  to  the  instinct  expressed  in  these  words.  It 
tends  to  destroy  the  spirit  of  awe  which  is  of  the 
essence  of  religion,  and  it  is  assisted  by  certain  other 
characteristics  of  our  time,  its  want  of  quiet  and 
control,  its  habit  of  mistaking  mere  instruction  for 
education,  and  information  for  culture.  These  ten- 
dencies, though  powerful  just  now,  are  at  bottom 
alien  from  the  English  mind,  whose  rooted  dislike  of 
theory  is  based  on  the  sense  that  "  reality  is  richer 
than  thought " ;  and  that  action  is  the  true  life. 
Doubtless  our  sense  "  that  we  can  muddle  through  " 
has  its  dangers,  and  indifference  and  folly  are  partly 
responsible  for  the  Englishman's  refusal  to  think 
things  out.  But  when  this  is  not  exaggerated,  and 
the  due  rights  of  the  intellect  are  recognised,  this 
very  genius  for  action  gives  to  the  English  mind 
the  best  opportunity  of  making  progress;  it  is  not 
speculation  that  is  the  danger,  but  speculation 
merely  for  its  own  sake  and  apart  from  action.  The 
English  vagueness  which  some  condemn  springs 
largely  from  this  sense,  that  the  springs  of  life  are 
deeper  than  all  reasoning,  and  are  to  be  found  in  the 
power  to  act  and  love,  in  those  primal  instincts  and 
unconquerable  emotions  which  cannot  be  reduced  to 
formula.  And  this,  when  coupled  ivith  real  intellectual 
activity,  produces  the  noblest  results ;  for  it  combines 
the  respect  for  tradition  and  authority  with  the  ardour 
of  inquiry,  which  preserves  it  alike  against  rashness 


48  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

and  stagnation.  In  the  present  problem  the  office 
of  mediating  between  new  and  old  may  not  unfitly 
repose  upon  that  Church  whose  genius  is  displayed 
in  the  serene  and  gracious  intelligence  of  Hooker, 
in  the  glowing  thought  of  Westcott,  in  the  wise 
refusal  of  Butler  to  require  demonstration  in  the 
matters  of  life  where  "  probability  is  the  guide." 
It  is  the  temper  fostered  by  our  school  and  college 
systems,  whatever  their  defects.  Perhaps  we  do  not 
always  apply  their  results  to  the  sphere  of  religion ; 
although  the  deep  reverence  for  the  mysteries  of  the 
faith  which  can  be  found  still  among  many  of  our 
educated  classes  in  a  higher  degree  than  on  the 
Continent  is  at  least  a  partial  consequence.  I 
imagine  that,  however  little  devout  he  may  be,  the 
attitude  of  the  English  officer  or  professional  man 
would  be  much  less  hostile  to  the  Faith  than  it 
is  in  France. 

It  is  partly  due  to  this  cause.  We  learn,  whatever 
else  we  do  not  learn,  at  school  and  college,  the  in- 
calculable worth  of  traditions,  of  reverence,  of  obed- 
ience ;  and  the  way  in  which  the  spirit  of  corporate 
life  alone  develops  our  manhood.  We  learn,  or  may 
learn,  the  futility  of  mere  individualism,  and  the 
abstract  and  partial  character  of  purely  intellectual 
processes ;  we  can  see  their  value,  but  we  do  not  as 
a  rule  tend  to  overrate  them — although  other  causes 
may  make  us  do  so. 


MYSTERY  49 

There  are  many  faults  in  our  education,  but  it 
has  lessons  for  higher  and  more  important  matters, 
both  social  and  religious,  than  we  are  always  ready 
to  discern;  above  all  things  it  is  congruous  with 
that  sense  of  the  mystery  of  things,  and  the  value 
of  action,  and  the  need  of  authority — that  is,  the 
social  development  of  personality — which  are  the 
real  foes  to  the  aridity  of  pure  rationalism. 

I  think  we  can  find  in  this  temper  part  at  least 
of  the  hostility  to  scholasticism  and  certain  other 
aspects  of  Roman  belief.  We  resent  its  hard  out- 
lines, its  clear  distinctions,  its  arrogance  of  certitude ; 
while  its  attempt  to  secure  an  intellectually  coercive 
proof  of  God's  being  strikes  us  as  both  ineffectual 
and  unattractive.  It  is  not  valid;  and  if  it  were 
valid,  it  would  destroy  the  very  belief  it  proves,  and 
it  would  make  God  inferior  to  our  intelligence. 

So  with  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation.  It  is 
not  to  the  truth  therein  enshrined  that  the  Eng- 
lish mind  objects,  but  to  the  attempt  to  rationalise 
a  mystery.  The  same  feature  was  prominent  in  the 
revolt  of  the  last  century  against  the  cruder  forms 
of  "  the  scheme  of  salvation,"  as  it  used  to  be  called. 
Men  did  not  so  much  object  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  Atonement,  but  they  shrank  from  the  familiar 
and  almost  vulgar  way  in  which  coarse  analogies 
were  pressed,  and  attempts  were  made  to  measure 
a  profound  and  glorious  mystery  by  line  and  rule. 

D 


50  THE   GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

Now  indeed  the  reaction  has  gone  too  far;  and, 
while  making  due  reserves  against  any  behef  in 
the  absokito  value  of  formulae,  or  words,  we  need 
to  emphasise  those  vital  truths  of  which  all  these 
doctrines  are  the  inadequate  symbols. 

It  all  comes  to  this.  The  plain  man's  readiness  to 
accept  the  mysteries  of  God's  grace  rests  at  once  on 
his  ignorance  and  his  knowledge.  He  feels  that  in 
all  things  there  is  mystery,  and  that  what  is  the 
constant  factor  of  his  inner  being  is  somehow  part  of 
the  stuff  of  the  universe.  He  places  no  reliance  at 
all  upon  the  optimistic  faith  of  men  who,  like  Du 
Bois  Reymond,  look  forAvard  to  the  day  when 
the  world  can  be  reduced  to  a  mathematical  for- 
mula ;  or  in  the  more  common  assertion  that  the 
whole  of  being  is  penetrable  to  thought ;  for  even 
the  delight  in  a  poem  or  a  piece  of  music  can  prove 
the  contrary .^^  He  knows  that,  though  you  may 
explain  the  world,  he  remains  inexplicable  to  himself. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  feels  that  there  must  be  reality 
in  that  love  and  joy  and  willing  resolve  which  are 
the  deepest  and  most  real  things  in  his  life.  The 
Christian  faith  asserts  this  truth  at  once  of  the 
mystery  of  things,  of  the  eternity  of  love,  of  the  in- 
finite worth  of  choice,  as  does  no  other  creed.  And 
this  is  its  warrant. 

To  such  an  one  belief  in  God  is  not  dependent 
upon  formal  proof;  like  his  own  existence,  it  is  a 


MYSTERY  51 

postulate,  not  a  conclusion.  Indeed,  if  God  be,  as 
we  say,  a  loving  Father,  it  is  clear  that  our  know- 
ledge of  Him  cannot  rest  on  a  basis  of  reasoning ; 
or  it  would  be  unlike  our  perception  of  any  other 
personal  relation. 

We  cannot,  indeed,  too  deeply  take  to  heart  the 
lesson  impressed  from  without  by  Kant  and  even 
Herbert  Spencer,  and  from  within  by  Pascal  and 
Newman — that  we  cannot  find  God  merely  by  the 
understanding,  that  there  is  no  coercive  proof  of 
His  being,  and  that  all  our  terms  to  express  Him 
are  but  symbols  and  figures.  No  longer  do  men 
attach  absolute  value  to  what  are  merely  inade- 
quate formulae,  or  waste  energy  over  rational  proofs. 
These  things  are  regulative,  the  best  possible;  they 
do  but  suggest,  they  cannot  comprehend,  that  awful 
splendour  of  holiness  which  is  far  beyond  word  and 
thought,  and  like  all  personal  differences  can  only 
be  bridged  by  love  and  faithful  souls.  We  might, 
indeed,  grant  nearly  all  that  a  reverent  agnostic  could 
demand — if  only  he  would  let  us  go  on  to  say  that 
"God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  to  Himself." 
What  more  He  is  we  know  not ;  it  is  enough  that 
He  is  "  our  Father "  and  sent  His  Son  to  live  and 
die  for  us. 

It  is  obvious — and  our  adversaries  admit  it — that 
the  sense  of  mystery,  of  the  limits  of  the  individual 
reason,  of  Church  authority,  all  alike  reveal  the  need 


52  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

of  resting  in  the  community,  and  finding  in  the 
traditions,  the  rites,  and  the  regulative  powers  of 
the  Church  a  value  which  would  not  be  warranted 
if  we  could  make  our  faith  by  ourselves,  or  if  the 
Church  were  a  merely  voluntary  association  which 
Christians  were  free  to  join  or  not  as  they  pleased. 

It  will  be  said  that  this  or  any  notions  of 
authority  may  give  the  rein  to  credulity,  and  is 
the  mother  of  all  the  tyrannies.  But  the  abuse  of 
a  principle  does  not  destroy  its  use.  Authority 
alike  in  Church  and  State  has  real  rights,  which 
misuse  does  not  abrogate ;  and  the  ground  of  it  all 
rests  on  the  fact  that  it  is  "not  good  for  man  to 
be  alone."  We  are  bidden  to  beware  of  superstition, 
and  Newman's  example  is  quoted  as  a  warnmg. 
This  example  has  no  terrors.  Apart  from  his  per- 
version (which  is  not  here  relevant),  since  Pascal  and 
perhaps  Butler  no  single  man  has  done  such  service 
to  true  religion ;  and  that  by  his  life-long  hostility 
to  "liberalism"  in  religion,  by  his  sense  of  the 
mystery  of  things,  of  the  limits  of  logical  method,  and 
of  the  primary  facts  of  God  and  the  individual.  -- 

Is  it  seriously  a  blind  credulity  that  you  can  call 
the  danger  of  to-day,  whatever  class  or  circle  you 
consider  ?  Is  it  not  rather  a  wilful  superstition  of 
unbelief  ?  Doubtless  credulity  is  a  bad  thing  no  less 
than  unbelief.  But  why  are  we  to  suppose  that  there 
is  more  risk  in  believing  too  much  than  too  little  ? 


MYSTERY  53 

Which  is  the  more  compatible  with  humble 
penitence,  and  what  is  any  religion  without  it  ?  Is 
there  any  one  here  to-day  who  would  not  choose  to 
be  an  ignorant  peasant  kneeling  at  the  foot  of  the 
crucifix  and  crying,  "  God  be  merciful  to  me  a 
sinner,"  rather  than  the  accomplished  dilettante,  who 
thanks  God  that  he  is  critical  and  cultivated,  not  as 
other  Christians  are,  or  even  as  the  parish  clergy  ? 
At  least  we  know  enough  to  condemn  the  second  ; 
do  we  know  enough  to  blame  the  first  ? 

For,  indeed,  man  is  all  mystery  to  himself,  and  in 
his  heart  are  the  undying  springs  of  romance,  of 
that  strangeness  and  joy  in  the  heroic  which  strives 
ever  to  reach  beyond.  "  To  find  God,"  as  has  been 
said,  "is  the  true  romance  of  every  soul."  Our 
adversaries  tell  us  in  scorn  that  Christianity  is  in- 
curably romantic — thank  God  it  is;  the  great,  the 
supreme  adventure,  and  beside  it  all  others  seem 
dull  and  mean. 

The  Christian's  sense  of  mystery  encompassing, 
his  faith  in  the  ever  fresh  love  of  God,  of  the  reality 
(that  is),  the  creative  newness  of  our  personal  life, 
have  made  earth  a  place  of  vision  and  revealed  the 
smile  behind  the  tears  of  men.  This  spirit  it  is 
which  fills  the  Church  with  grace  no  less  than  truth, 
which  gives  to  Christian  saintliness  its  rare  aroma, 
which  finds  form  in  the  arches  of  Rouen  or  the 
mosaics  of  St.  Mark's,  which  flames  into  legends 


54  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

like  the  Quest  of  the  Sangreal  or  paintings  like 
the  Adoration  of  the  Lamb.  This  above  all  in  its 
mingling  of  tenderness  and  aAve  invests  with  such 
winning  appeal  that  worship,  the  true  Divine 
Liturgy,  wherein  earth  and  heaven  are  united, 
and  the  Lord  of  all  things  once  more  veils  His 
glory  to  dwell  with  sinful  men. 

We  have  seen  that  resolute  and  widespread 
attempts  are  bemg  made  now,  as  at  other  times  in 
the  history  of  the  Church,  to  reduce  Christianity 
to  a  religion  purely  rational  and  non-mysterious. 
The  attempts  differ  in  form  with  the  fashionable 
tendencies  of  the  moment;  but  whether  they  be 
made  by  Gnostics  or  Arians,  by  Abelard  or  Socinus, 
or  by  adherents  of  the  New  Theology,  their  aim 
is  unchanged.  The  argument  is  always  an  appeal 
to  the  rational  understanding  to  set  aside  those 
elements  in  the  faith  which  run  counter  to  current 
prejudices.  The  hope  is  to  satisfy  the  non-religious 
mind  ;  and  in  this  aim  its  assumptions  are  borrowed 
— assumptions  antagonistic  to  mystery. 

This  argument,  however,  has  no  weight  for  the 
religious  sense.  For  the  sense  of  mystery  lies  at  the 
root  of  that  consciousness ;  and,  although  individual 
difficulties  remain  for  discussion,  the  system  as  a 
whole  gains  incomparably  by  those  very  elements 
which  invite  attack. 


MYSTERY  55 

Let  us  then  not  be  afraid  of  assaults,  which  from 
the  nature  of  the  case  the  Christian  Church  must 
endure.  Prayer  alone  is  a  supreme  mystery;  so 
long  as  that  be  retained  it  is  vain  to  quarrel  with 
the  faith  because  it  tells  of  regions  beyond  thought. 
A  Christianity  not  mysterious  would  not,  indeed, 
be  so  open  to  attack  as  the  Catholic  Church,  but 
neither  would  it  be  worth  defence. 

Faith  without  risk,  without  uncertainty,  without 
difficulty,  would  not  be  faith  but  sight.  Religion 
does  not  end  in  wonder — but  it  begins  there.  A 
religion  without  wonder  Avould  be  no  religion  at  all. 

Take  from  the  Christian  faith  its  mystery  and 
strangeness,  and  see  what  is  left.  Is  the  creed  when 
"  trimmed  and  stripped  of  all  that  touches  the  skies  " 
a  beautiful  or  even  a  helpful  thing  ?  Is  not  the 
life  and  faith  of  the  Church  a  living  whole  which 
we  cannot  mutilate  any  more  than  you  could  pre- 
serve the  charms  of  the  Primavera  or  the  Venus 
de  Milo,  after  you  had  torn  the  canvas  or  broken 
the  statue.-^  Leave  out,  if  you  must,  the  mysterious 
birth,  the  availing  death,  the  empty  tomb,  and  the 
sacramental  presence,  and  what  would  you  have 
left  ?  Would  it  be  very  much  to  live  by  ?  Would 
it  be  anything  at  all  to  die  for  ?  2* 


III.— THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST 

"  The  Word  was  made  Flesh,"— St.  John  i.  14. 

In  a  moment  of  irony  Huxley  once  prophesied  that 
a  time  would  come  when  apologists  would  be  telling 
Christians  to  hold  fast  to  their  faith,  quite  apart 
from  the  irrelevant  question  whether  or  no  there 
were  any  facts  to  confirm  it  ■  ^  That  prophecy  has 
come  true.  On  all  sides  we  are  being  instructed 
that  faith  in  the  Gospel  is  at  bottom  adherence 
to  certain  general  principles  of  conduct  and  belief 
in  a  spiritual  universe;  but  that  it  is  vulgar  and 
superfluous  to  chain  that  belief  to  the  historicity  of 
any  actual  occurrences. 

One  defender  of  Modernism  says:  "If  the  faith 
of  Christendom  in  an  eternal,  present,  and  living 
Christ  could  be  overthrown  by  the  historical  proof 
that  his  body  was  never  raised,  its  foundation  would 
always  contain  an  element  of  uncertainty."  ^ 

In  II  Programiina  dei  Modernisti  there  are  one 
or  two  sentences  of  a  similar  kind.  They  declare 
that  for  faith  it  is  of  no  importance  whether  or  no 
historical  investigation  can  justify  the  salient  facts 

66 


I'HE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  57 

alleged  of  our  Lord.^  M.  Loisy  says  much  the  same 
in  his  distinction  between  truth  of  faith  and  truth 
of  fact,  especially  as  that  has  been  glossed  by  his 
subsequent  utterances.*  Even  in  England  divines 
of  the  Church  are  found  asserting  that  the  evidence 
for  the  miraculous  is  of  so  indeterminate  a  nature 
that  we  cannot  use  it  as  a  foundation  of  any  doc- 
trine ;  ^  while  others  seem  to  assert  that  the  religious 
value  of  the  resurrection  is  independent  of  belief 
in  its  actual  occurrence.'' 

In  all  this  there  is  nothing  strange.  To  minds  of 
the  purely  reflective  cast  religion  is  always  largely 
a  matter  of  ideas ;  and  the  historical  elements  will 
detain  their  attention  but  little,  even  if  they  credit 
them.  Such  men  inevitably  tend  to  treat  faith  as 
a  thing  of  subjective  values  and  ideal  dreams,  re- 
moved so  far  as  may  be  from  the  unromantic  prose 
of  common  life.  Men  to  whom  "action  is  always  a 
little  vulgar "  will  place  their  religion,  if  they  have 
one,  in  a  region  of  imagination  or  speculative  har- 
monies where  the  steel  of  fact  cannot  touch  it. 

These  tendencies  are  reinforced  from  many  sides 
to-day.  Hegel  set  men  disentangling  the  kernel  of 
idea  in  Christianity  from  the  external  husk  of  his- 
torical facts  and  institutions.  Ritschl  had  perhaps 
a  yet  more  potent  influence  in  the  like  direction. 
He  did  not,  perhaps,  himself  deny  or  even  depre- 
ciate the  importance  of  the  historical  foundations 


58  THE    GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

of  the  faith  ;  but  the  stress  he  laid  on  the  judgment 
of  value,  as  opposed  to  the  judgment  of  fact,  on 
all  the  subjective  elements  in  religion  has  led  many 
of  his  disciples,  and  some  who  are  not  consciously 
his  disciples,  to  emphasise  the  ideal  and  symbolic 
aspects  of  Christianity,  and  to  ignore,  or  even  to 
disbelieve,  its  historical  foundations.' 

A  like  result  has  come  from  the  reaction  against 
literalism.  We  have  learnt  how  untenable  is  any 
theory  of  inspiration  which  asserts  the  factual  accu- 
racy of  stories  like  that  of  Adam  and  the  Serpent. 
allegorical  poems  like  the  book  of  Job,  narratives 
like  those  of  Balaam  or  Daniel.  When  every  one 
was  maintaining  that  whether  or  no  these  stories 
were  true,  the  Christian  faith  was  unaffected,  it  was 
not  surprising  that  some  should  go  on  to  declare 
that  historical  criticism  is  in  its  nature  irrelevant, 
and  that  in  all  essentials  Christianity  would  remain 
untouched  even  though  the  stories  of  the  birth  and 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  were  dismissed  as  symbolic 
rather  than  actual. 

If  religion  were  a  thing  of  personal  fancy,  this 
might  be  the  case.  Some  few  might  be  so  rarely 
gifted  with  imagination  or  mystical  emotion  that 
their  sense  of  God's  nearness  would  undergo  no 
serious  change,  even  though  they  believed  M.  Loisy 
when  he  says  that  our  Lord  was  not  born  of  the 
blessed    Virgin;    that    he   did   not    work   miracles, 


THE    HISTORIC    CHRIST  59 

save  a  few  cures ;  and  that,  so  far  from  rising 
from  the  empty  tomb,  he  Avas  never  buried  by 
St.  Joseph  of  Arimathea  at  all,  but  was  thrown 
casually  into  a  ditch.^  But  this  attitude  is  out  of 
the  question  for  the  great  mass  of  men.  Christian 
faith  does  not  rest  upon  history  by  itself,  for  its  most 
compelling  arguments  are  the  lives  of  the  saints  and 
our  own  experience.  But  it  is  so  bound  up  with  the 
events  of  at  least  one  period  of  actual  history  that 
if  you  destroy  men's  belief  in  the  substantial  accuracy 
of  the  one,  you  will  not  long  retain  even  the  name  of 
the  other.^ 

Apart  from  the  portrait  of  Jesus,  it  is  idle  to  talk 
of  the  Christian  religion ;  and  whatever  details  in  that 
portrait  may  be  irrelevant,  the  main  impression  of  a 
being  at  once  natural  and  supernatural,  unique  in  his 
origin,  in  his  action,  and  in  his  rising  from  the  tomb 
is  inseparable  from  the  portrait.  And  most  men  are 
like  children  asking  of  a  story-teller  "  Is  it  true  ? " 
Convince  them  in  regard  to  the  story  of  Jesus  that 
it  is  not  true,  but  only  a  symbol  of  the  religious 
aspirations  of  ages,  and  men  will  repudiate  either 
in  scorn  or  sorrow  the  claims  of  the  Church  to  be 
the  home  of  the  soul,  and  seek  for  themselves  some 
other  refuge.  The  New  Temple  may  be  grander  or 
nearer,  more  beautiful  or  uglier  than  the  Christian 
Church,  but  it  will  not  be  the  Christian  Church ;  it 
will  be  something  else. 


60  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

The  thesis  of  the  creeds  that  God  entered  this 
world  in  the  life  of  an  actual  person  places  the 
record  of  that  life  before  us  as  a  piece  of  history 
and  subjects  our  belief  to  the  laws  of  evidence. 
The  attraction  of  the  view  which  we  have  been 
considering  lies  in  its  removal  of  the  whole  ques- 
tion out  of  this  sphere,  and  in  making  historical 
criticism  irrelevant.  But  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  case  this  is  impossible,  unless  we  divorce  the 
Christ-notion  from  that  of  Jesus,  making  Christ 
but  a  name  for  religious  experience.  AVe  cannot, 
however  difficult,  separate  a  rational  belief  in  Chris- 
tianity from  the  careful  investigation  of  its  early 
records.  The  century  now  past  has  been  greatly 
busied  in  this  matter,  and  I  need  not  here  do 
more  than  refer  to  the  work  of  the  scholars  who 
made  Cambridge  famous  in  European  learning,  and 
the  more  recent  Hulsean  lecturers  who  have  de- 
fended the  historical  worth  of  the  Gospels  and  the 
Acts.  From  the  crucible  of  severe  investigation  to 
which  the  New  Testament  has  been  subjected  two 
facts  appear  to  issue  with  some  certainty.  Nothing 
in  that  investigation  has  resulted  which  hinders  the 
sound  scholar  from  Nicene  Christianity  apart  from 
other  hostile  'preswppositions.  Details  may  here  and 
there  be  modified,  but  the  decision  of  men  like 
Westcott  and  Hort  in  the  past;  of  men  like  Dr. 
Sanday    and    Dean    of    Westminster    or    our    own 


THE    HISTORIC    CHRIST  61 

Regius  Professor  in  the  present,  is  in  this  respect 
quite  unequivocal. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  abundantly  clear  from  the 
mere  observation  of  facts  that  historical  criticism  of 
itself  and  alone  is  not  sufficient  to  induce  certainty 
in  the  minds  of  those  who,  on  other  grounds,  assume 
the  impossibility  of  the  miraculous.^'' 

From  the  very  nature  of  historical  evidence  this 
must  be  the  case.  Evidence  of  alleged  facts  is 
never  demonstrative ;  that  is,  the  contrary  is  always 
thinkable,  and  we  are  at  liberty  to  explain  the 
evidence  on  that  view  without  contradicting  any 
of  the  laws  of  thought.  From  this  it  follows  tl^at 
it  is  only  for  men  of  very  open  minds,  or  in  matters 
of  everyday  reference,  that  evidence  of  facts  will 
seem  to  be  conclusive :  and  this  condition  ex  hypo- 
thesi  does  not  hold  in  the  case  of  the  cardinal  facts 
about  Christ's  life.  The  reception  given  in  modern 
times  by  minds  biassed  in  the  mechanical  direction 
to  the  evidence  of  hypnotism  and  thought  trans- 
ference is  a  cardinal  instance  of  this. 

All  belief  in  alleged  historical  facts  depends  partly 
on  the  actual  evidence,  partly  on  a  presupposition 
that  the  facts  are  not  in  themselves  and  under 
certain  conditions  improbable — i.e.  on  a  faith  in  a 
certain  order  of  things,  with  which  such  facts  are 
congruous.  In  the  case  of  ordinary  events  we  ignore 
these  presuppositions  because  they  are  common  to 


62  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

every  one  outside  n  lunatic  asylum ;  though  even 
here  we  have  exceptions  which  prove  the  rule.  But 
in  the  case  of  miraculous  or  very  abnormal  occur- 
rences the  consensus  a  priori  as  to  what  is  likely 
does  not  exist  and  never  will  exist,  so  far  as  I  can 
see ;  and  hence  the  evidence  alone  is  not  and  never 
can  be  sufficient  to  convince  every  one  that  such 
events  have  occurred,  and  we  do  wrong  in  expecting 
a  degree  of  certainty  which,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  is  unattainable.  The  more  abnormal  or  unique 
any  event  is  the  larger  part  must  be  played  in  the 
belief  by  our  sense  of  its  being  likely;  and  the 
greater  divergences  of  opinion  must  therefore  exist 
as  to  the  value  or  origin  of  the  evidence.  I  think, 
therefore,  that  they  greatly  err  who  hope  to  found 
the  Christian  religion  on  a  certain  basis  by  pure 
historical  inquiry,  isolated  from  other  considerations : 
and  such  a  conviction  if  carried  out  will  infallibly 
lead  to  the  circle  of  belief  being  confined  to  those 
events,  which  being  of  a  normal  though  perhaps 
unusual  type  do  not  require  to  establish  their  credit 
by  any  further  presuppositions  about  the  world  than 
those  drawn  from  everyday  experience  by  thinking 
men.  Though  even  here,  as  all  literary  criticism, 
especially  modern  German  scholarship,  demonstrates, 
the  merely  academic  and  abstract  conception  of 
human  nature  is  apt  to  narrow  unduly  men's  notion 
of  what  is  possible.^^ 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  63 

I  have  heard  that  an  eminent  historian  considers 
that  our  Lord's  resurrection  is  a  fact  of  history  as 
certain  as  the  death  of  Julius  Csesar.  With  all 
respect  I  submit  that  this  view  is  untenable  and 
is  disproved  by  the  very  large  number  of  instructed 
persons  who  disbelieve  in  the  one,  Avhile  of  the  other 
there  is  practically  no  doubt  whatever.  Belief  in 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  cannot  be  possible,  apart 
from  certain  presuppositions  as  to  what  the  world 
means  or  may  mean,  which  enables  a  man  to  view 
the  evidence  sympathetically.  Otherwise  some  form 
of  the  vision-theory  or  self-hypnotism  is  an  obvious 
way  of  overcoming  the  difficulty  without  impugning 
the  veracity  of  the  narrators.  If  you  study  history 
with  the  presupposition  of  M.  Seignobos,  that  since 
miracles  do  not  happen  the  evidence  for  them  must 
be  ruled  out  beforehand,  it  is  a  foregone  conclusion 
that  you  will  not  find  any  convincing  evidence  of 
the  miracles  of  our  Lord,  nor  of  those  of  the  Church, 
and  that  you  will  set  down  all  ansAvers  to  prayer  to 
coincidence  or  mere  suggestion. ^^  On  the  other 
hand,  to  a  Christian  believer  who  has  both  examined 
and  approved  the  evidence  and  has  appropriated  to 
himself  the  presence  of  the  living  Christ  in  the 
Church  and  the  Eucharist,  the  resurrection  may 
seem  a  fact  infinitely  more  certain  than  an  event 
like  the  death  of  Julius  Caesar,  which  strikes  him 
as  merely  external  fact. 


64  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

Indeed  nothing  is  clearer  than  that  all  the  results 
of  historical  investigation  tend  to  confirm  the  view, 
that  of  all  extraordinary  facts  the  belief,  and  of  all 
ordinary  facts  the  interpretation  and  the  causal  con- 
nections, i.e.  of  all  history  as  a  fruitful  study,  depends 
on  our  presuppositions  at  least  as  much  as  on  the 
documentary  evidence.  Even  Lord  Morley  declares 
that  the  "  historian  can  only  approach  the  cupboard 
•with  his  bunch  of  keys  in  his  hand."  ^^ 

Here,  again,  another  consideration  meets  us.  Part 
of  the  evidence  for  any  fact  is  not  the  narrative  of 
the  witness,  but  the  knowledge  of  its  results.  For  the 
witness  may  be  a  bad  narrator  or  self-deceived,  even 
if  he  is  not  interested.  And  we  cannot  isolate  the 
inquiry  into  our  Lord's  rising  from  the  tomb,  and 
discuss  it  apart  from  the  actual  alleged  effects  of 
that  risen  life.  The  Church  is  the  supreme  historical 
document ;  and  it  is  mere  folly  to  leave  it  out  of 
account.  We  have  to  explain  on  the  naturalistic 
hypothesis,  not  only  the  statement  that  the  events 
occurred,  but  the  actual  observed  results  of  belief  in 
their  occurrence.  I  do  not  say  that  they  cannot  be 
explained  on  that  hypothesis  ;  as  a  fact  they  are,  and 
will  continue  to  be  so  explained  by  men  with  a 
strongly  naturalistic  bias.  But  to  me  that  explana- 
tion seems  unnatural  and  forced,  and  if  carried  to  its 
consequences  absurd. 

As  Creighton  said,  "  The  presuppositions  of  the 


THE    HISTORIC   CHRIST  65 

critical  mind  need  examination,  no  less  than  those 
of  the  orthodox " ;  ^^  and  in  discussing  any  theory 
about  the  documents  as  narratives  of  the  early 
Church,  we  need  to  ask  ourselves  what  are  the 
assumptions,  often  unconscious,  in  the  writer's  mind 
which  have  gone  to  the  making  of  that  theory  ? 
Above  all  things,  there  is  the  assumption,  so  common 
that  it  is  often  unexpressed,  that  Christianity  is 
merely  an  episode,  a  phase  of  social  progress,  and 
that  its  so-called  supernatural  elements  are  merely 
the  ideal  dreams  of  an  undeveloped  culture.  You 
can  make  this  assumption,  if  you  will ;  and  if  you 
have  no  religious  experience  of  your  own  to  con- 
tradict it,  it  is  probable  that  it  will  seem  to  you  well 
founded.  Only  be  sure  what  it  is  you  are  doing ; 
and  let  your  method  carry  you  to  its  due  results. 
Do  not  take  it  by  halves. 

The  New  Testament  and  the  Church  are  so  deeply 
saturated  with  supernaturalism  that  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  narratives  on  a  purely  naturalistic 
basis  is  not  really  possible,  provided  you  admit  the 
historicity  of  Jesus.  It  seems  to  me,  as  Dr.  Foakes 
Jackson  says,  far  more  reasonable  to  carry  your 
position  to  its  consequences  and  declare  with  Mr.  J. 
M.  Robertson  against  this,  than  it  is  to  cut  and  carve 
the  portrait  in  the  Gospels,  and  proclaim  your  belief 
in  a  purely  human  Christ.^^  At  the  same  time  this 
method,  thoroughgoing  enough,  is  self-destructive. 

E 


66  THE    GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

Mr.  Robertson's  book,  "Pagan  Christs, "  in  which 
this  theory  is  developed,  will  seem  eminently 
plausible  to  those  who  are  unaware  of  the  multi- 
plicity of  critical  theories,  and  the  ingenuity  with 
which  they  are  all  defended ;  and  have  no  deep 
inward  experience  to  fall  back  upon.^^ 

For  that  is  the  final  point ;  criticism  must  always 
be  in  part  devotional,  if  it  is  to  lead  to  sound  results 
for  the  religious  mind  (and  here  as  elsewhere  we 
take  that  for  granted).  We  cannot  divorce  our 
inquiries  either  from  what  the  Church  has  shown 
itself  in  the  lives  of  the  saints  or  from  what  Christ  is 
to  ourselves.  "Interpret  the  Bible  as  you  would  inter- 
pret any  other  book,"  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  a  truism, 
is  a  maxim  futile  and  impossible.  Nobody  does. 
Nobody  can.  The  Bible  has  entered  so  much  into 
the  fibre  of  Christendom,  it  is  so  deeply  inwoven  with 
our  thought  and  imagination,  that  we  can  no  more 
treat  it  like  any  other  book  than  we  here  can  think 
or  act  as  though  our  schools  or  colleges  had  not  part 
in  making  us  what  we  are.  Civilisation,  in  its  ideals, 
its  hopes,  its  morals,  is  largely  what  the  Bible  has 
made  it ;  and  one  cannot  effectively  stand  apart  from 
all  those  influences  which  have  gone  to  produce  the 
Avorld  in  which  we  live, 

Hegel  used  to  say  that  a  man  could  no  more  get 
out  of  his  own  age  than  he  could  jump  out  of  his 
skin.     If  this  be  true  of  the  fashions  of  thought  and 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  &7 

feeling  that  change  so  quickly,  still  more  is  the 
maxim  true  of  any  attempt  to  take  the  Bible  purely 
apart  from  the  society  of  which  it  was  the  outcome ; 
from  that  whole  course  of  development  in  which  it 
has  been  so  potent  a  factor.  The  Bible  will  never 
look  the  same  to  a  man  within  and  a  man  without 
the  Church,  and  neither  can  see  it  with  quite  the 
same  merely  critical  interest  that  he  Avould  bring 
to  bear  on  the  Nihelungenlied.  Our  criticism  can 
only  be  undenominational  by  becoming  either  non- 
Christian  or  nugatory.  You  can  establish  nothing 
that  way  except  the  matters  which  from  the  reli- 
gious standpoint  are  least  important.  As  Pro- 
fessor Burkitt  said  at  the  Pan-Anglican  Congress, 
"  It  is  vain  to  study  the  Bible  apart  from  the  living 
Church."  " 

Let  our  criticism  be  honest  and  sincere ;  but  do  not 
let  us,  whether  Christians  or  non-Christians,  imagine 
that  we  really  approach  the  subject  with  minds  un- 
biassed and  empty,  i.e.  with  no  minds  at  all.  Let 
us  get  clear  our  own  assumptions,  as  to  belief  in  God, 
the  value  of  the  Church,  or  personal  experience  of 
Christ :  let  us  try  to  unmask  the  assumptions  of  our 
opponents,  and  above  all  beware  of  accepting  on 
their  assumptions  results  which  are  valid  on  no 
other  condition. 

But,  if  after  all  inquiry,  we  find  ourselves  unable 
to  retain  beliefs  so  dear,  it  would  be  wiser,  though 


68  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

less  agreeable,  to  "  face  the  music,"  and  to  give  up 
the  name  of  a  faith  which  has  no  other  basis  than 
our  own  aspirations.  "Things  are  what  they  are, 
and  their  consequences  will  be  what  they  will  be; 
why  then  should  we  wish  to  be  deceived  ? "  If  we 
are  convinced  that  Jesus  was  not  unique  in  His 
birth,  His  acts,  His  words,  in  His  death,  and  Avhat 
followed  death,  but  was  born  and  lived  and  died 
merely  a  man  of  noble  virtue  and  a  holiness  sup- 
remely gracious,  then  for  heaven's  sake  let  us  say 
so.  In  the  long  run  we  shall  conquer  our  doubts 
best  if  we  follow  without  flinching  where  they  lead. 
Our  dangers  to-day  are  a  faith  blind  to  its  terrific 
meaning,  and  a  doubt  that  dares  not  look  itself 
in  the  face.  Let  us  have  done  alike  with  faith 
disguised  and  an  unbelief  decorated.  If  we  cannot 
believe  our  faith,  let  us  at  least  believe  our  doubts 
and  act  on  the  belief. 

What  makes  the  supreme  difficulty  about  the 
historic  Christ  is  also  the  ground  of  His  unique 
appeal — His  implication  with  earthly  life,  God  self- 
revealing  under  human  conditions,  in  an  actual 
historical  person,  subject  to  the  limits  and  con- 
ditions of  a  particular  race  at  a  particular  epoch. 
This  to  many  is  the  crux — the  projection  of  God 
into  the  outside  world  in  history,  in  the  life  of 
Jesus,  in  His  body  the  Church,  and  His  approach 
to  man  in  visible  sacraments.     It  does  seem  hard. 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  69 

Those  for  whom  life  means  largely  reflection  are 
tempted  to  make  their  religion  a  matter  of  ideals 
and  personal  fancies ;  and  they  resent  the  harsh- 
ness of  external  facts.  Observe,  it  is  not  so  much 
the  miraculous,  not  perhaps  at  all  the  mysterious, 
but  the  actual  that  makes  the  trouble  here.  The 
religion  is  real  enough;  but  as  Newman  said  of 
his  ideal  gentleman,  "  his  religion  is  one  of  ima- 
gination and  sentiment;  it  is  the  embodiment  of 
those  ideas  of  the  sublime,  majestic,  and  beautiful, 
without  which  there  can  be  no  large  philosophy."  ^^ 

Now  Jesus  Christ,  the  Church,  the  sacraments,  are 
hard  facts,  at  first  sight  purely  external;  and  fact 
seems  prosaic  to  men  who  live  in  a  realm  of  dream 
and  speculation,  untroubled  by  the  more  urgent 
temptations.  Such  is  the  happy  and  sheltered  lot 
of  many  of  us  in  an  Arcadian  peace  of  high  pur- 
suits and  congenial  society.  Each  of  us  here  has 
more  or  less  to  encounter  this  temptation — living 
for  the  most  part  in  a  world  of  refined  debate, 
saved  by  education  and  circumstance  from  the 
spectacle  of  the  grosser  sins,  enjoying  the  varied 
convenience  of  a  high  civilisation,  seen  on  its  least 
seamy  side — we  are  all  inclined  to  turn  our  faith 
into  a  private  philosophy  or  a  personal  mysticism  ; 
to  resent  the  stress  laid  by  less  fortunate  Christians 
on  mere  fact,  and  to  find  almost  insuperable  the 
obstacles  real  and  grave  to  belief  in  that  concrete 


70  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

and  particular  gift  of  God  in  Jesus  and  that  unique 
worth  of  one  moment  which  is  to  the  plain  man 
of  the  essence  of  his  faith.  For  I  take  it  that  to 
the  plain  man  the  one  sure  basis  is  in  fact ;  in 
the  belief  (to  avoid  theological  terms)  that  some- 
thing passing  strange  did  as  a  fact  take  place  in 
Syria  Avhen  Tiberius  was  head  of  the  Roman  world 
and  Pontius  Pilate  was  procurator  of  Judsea. 

But  it  is  just  this  leap  into  the  concrete  that  is 
so  hard  to  many  of  us  to-day,  and  no  one  has  felt 
this  more  strongly  than  the  speaker.  God's  revela- 
tion in  Christ  means  this,  if  it  means  anything ;  and 
yet  to  all  of  us  who  live  largely  in  the  realm  of 
thought  and  inner  feeling,  it  seems  almost  vulgar ; 
and  to  those  with  any  strong  mystical  sense  of  union 
with  a  living  power  it  seems  quite  needless  even  if 
true.  In  this  state  of  mind  it  is  just  as  hard  to 
credit  as  of  any  real  value  the  circumcision  or 
the  cleansing  of  the  Temple,  as  the  transfiguration 
or  the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand.  They  are 
facts  outside  of  us;  they  may  have  happened,  but 
as  mysteries  embodying  truths  of  vital  significance 
we  cannot  understand  them ;  they  are  far  oif  and 
finished.  This  tendency  has,  moreover,  been  in- 
creased by  the  habit  of  Protestants  of  ignoring  or 
neglecting  the  continued  presence  of  Christ's  Spirit 
in  the  Church  and  the  sacraments,  which  makes 
these  past  events  a  part  of  the  living  present,  and 


THE    HISTORIC    CHRIST  71 

guards  against  that  sense  of  remoteness  which  to 
the  mind  athirst  for  God  here  and  now  is  so  dis- 
tressing. This  doctrine  has  been  indeed  to  some 
sort  arrested  by  the  Evangelical  notion  of  mystical 
union ;  but  that  is  apt  to  be  individual,  while  the 
Church  and  the  sacraments  are  social  and  com- 
munal. It  may  indeed  be  doubted  whether  even 
those  who  have  held  high  sacramental  doctrine  do 
not  in  some  cases  rather  over-emphasise  its  indi- 
vidual side,  as  a  gift  to  each  personally;  and  the 
discontinuance  in  so  many  churches  of  the  Eucharist 
as  the  great  corporate  act  of  praise  has  rather  tended 
to  emphasise  this  view.  It  is  only  as  we  see  this 
restored  as  a  social,  not  merely  individual  act, 
the  praise  of  God  in  all  its  splendour,  that  Ave  are 
likely  to  correct  an  evil  so  widespread.  Still  it  will 
always  remain  a  difficulty  to  those  who  by  cir- 
cumstance and  temperament  find  their  religion 
adequately  represented  by  their  own  inward  sense 
of  union  Avith  God  or  by  a  set  of  ideal  principles. 
The  concrete  story  of  Jesus,  the  actual  society  of 
Christians,  the  immediate  grace  of  the  sacraments, 
as  partly  a  gift  from  Avithout,  Avill  seem  to  such, 
if  not  false,  at  least  superfluous,  not  fuller  and 
richer  but  emptier  than  our  dreams  of  eternal 
righteousness.  For  the  concrete  must  partake  of 
the  limitations  of  this  actual  Avorld,  and  that  is 
the  meaning  of  the  Incarnation.     The  teaching  of 


72  THE   GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

children  is  perhaps  the  best  corrective  of  this  state 
of  mind.  I  have  learnt  more  apologetic  from  cate- 
chising children  than  from  many  books.  For  that 
brings  our  religion  at  once  from  the  speculative  to 
the  concrete,  and  shows  us  the  danger  of  turning 
the  faith  into  a  philosophy,  and  placing  abstractions 
instead  of  the  richness  and  colour  of  real  life. 

It  is  indeed  the  absence  of  this  sense  that  the 
child  is  a  part  of  the  Church  that  is  the  great 
strength  of  the  undenominational  principle,  and 
makes  men  willing  to  treat  a  few  ethical  principles 
as  a  substitute  for  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  the 
Christian  Church ;  or  at  best  to  turn  the  faith  into 
a  set  of  propositions,  which  can  be  acquired  in  isola- 
tion, and  have  no  organic  interconnection. 

Ever  since  the  sixteenth  century  this  tendency 
has  been  at  work,  and  we  have  seen  many  forms 
taken  by  the  desire  to  make  of  religion  something 
mainly  experimental  and  inward,  and  to  cut  it  off 
from  the  limitations  of  outer  fact,  or  the  vulgarity 
of  institutional  life.  In  the  pietistic  form,  belief  in 
Christ  and  the  Atonement,  and  the  sense  of  union 
with  Him,  is  still  strong,  and  exhibits  itself  in  many 
saints,  in  the  spiritual  ardours  and  austere  morality 
of  Puritanism  at  its  best.  But  it  despises  the 
Church  as  carnal  and  full  of  sinners,  and  dislikes 
the  sacraments  as  gross  and  material,  degrading  to 
God's  majesty  and  to  man's   freedom.     This  view, 


THE    HISTORIC   CHRIST  73 

however,  retains  a  strong  sense  of  the  authority  of 
some  religious  community.  A  little  further  we  find 
this  denied,  all  forms  of  priestly  authority  are  re- 
sented, as  interfermg  with  individual  freedom,  an 
attempt  to  come  between  God  and  the  soul.  Finally 
we  reach  the  modern  form,  when  an  attempt  is 
made  to  take  the  leading  ideas  of  Christianity  quite 
out  of  their  historical  setting,  and  Christ  becomes 
a  name  for  religious  experience.  We  see  on  all 
sides  the  conception  of  religion,  subjective  and 
manufactured,  differing  greatly  according  to  tem- 
perament, but  uniform  in  scorn  of  the  common 
faith  and  practice  of  Christendom. 

Now  it  appears  to  me  that  the  principle  Avhich 
we  have  seen  exhibited  in  regard  to  the  miraculous 
and  mysterious  elements  in  our  faith  is  still  more 
clearly  true  in  this  matter  of  its  historical  character. 
Dreams  and  golden  fancies,  individual  and  personal 
ideals,  speculations  and  abstract  principles,  are  the 
privilege  of  the  few.  To  them  religion  may  be 
made  up  largely  of  such  elements.  To  the  great 
majority,  however,  life  is  above  all  things  concrete ; 
they  are  not  greatly  interested  in  thought;  but  of 
their  relations  with  other  men,  of  their  weakness  and 
insecurity  and  of  their  own  inner  struggles  they  are 
acutely  conscious.  In  a  faith  which  is  above  all 
else  "  personal  trust  in  a  person "  who  once  lived 
upon  earth,  in  a  society  which  co-ordinates  their 


74  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

highest  aims  and  directs  them  by  its  authority  in 
the  outward  given  grace  of  sacramental  Hfe,  they 
find  that  strength  and  support,  that  sense  of 
anchorage,  of  being  at  home,  of  having  something 
like  themselves  to  cling  to,  which  no  philosophy 
and  no  religion  merely  individualist  could  give 
them,  llie  claim  of  the  Gospel  is  not  so  much  to 
solve  iwohlems  as  to  come  near  to  human  lives.  It 
is  to  man,  as  he  lives  and  works,  as  he  fights  and 
sins,  as  he  loves  and  hopes,  as  he  feels  the  need  of 
outside  support  to  sustain  him  in  his  weakness,  of 
Love  from  Beyond  to  console  him  in  his  gloom, 
of  social  institutions  and  environments  to  prevent 
his  spirit  being  crushed  by  the  world  or  throttled 
by  comfort,  that  the  Christ  appeals.  To  everyday 
men  and  women,  with  the  pettiness  and  stains  of 
sordid  vulgar  life,  but  also  with  the  tenderness  and 
heroism  never  far  from  any  lover,  never  unknown  to 
parent  or  child,  to  these  it  is  that  the  Christian 
Church  makes  its  appeal,  resting  on  definite  facts 
issuing  in  clear  statements,  and  ministering  gifts 
real  but  supernatural. 

Making  abstraction  for  the  moment  of  its  alleged 
miraculous  character,  let  us  take  into  account  the 
ways  in  which  faith  in  the  historic  Christ  at  once 
ministers  to  the  needs  of  the  common  religious  con- 
sciousness and  awakens  inevitable  criticism. 

(1)    First    of    all,    here    is    something    "given." 


THE    HISTORIC   CHRIST  75 

Without  question,  if  Jesus  be  the  Word  made  flesh, 
and  His  Spirit  be  continued  in  the  Church  and  com- 
municated in  the  sacraments,  we  are  participating 
in  a  benefit,  in  theological  language,  a  grace,  which 
comes  to  us  from  without,  which  is  not  due  to  our 
own  moral  effort  or  intellectual  zeal,  which  could 
not  have  come  Avithout  a  special  act  of  God's  will 
intending  to  reveal  Himself  in  a  unique  way,  apart 
from  His  revelation  in  the  world  and  our  own  con- 
sciousness. It  is  true  that  both  sides  are  needed; 
God  does  not  do  all  the  work.  The  gifts  of  grace 
can  never  avail  to  our  healmg  unless  by  our  own 
act  and  deed  we  appropriate  them.  Nor  can  we 
worship  that  life  which  reveals  Him,  without  the 
use  of  mind,  no  less  than  will.  The  simplest  creed 
involves  all  sorts  of  implications,  which  it  is  for 
the  intellect  to  develop.  Nevertheless  it  remains 
true  that  if  Jesus,  His  life  and  death,  as  interpreted 
and  expressed  by  the  society  which  He  founded,  are 
to  us  of  any  final  worth,  it  is  just  because  He  is 
something  given  to  us,  something  we  could  not  have 
done  or  discovered  for  ourselves.  With  this  notion 
of  the  given  goes  that  of  Church  authority.  We 
cannot  accept  Jesus  as  Lord  without  surrendering 
the  claim  to  be  our  own  masters  or  even  to  follow 
merely  the  inner  light. 

This  will  always  constitute  a  difficulty  for  certain 
minds.    Those  for  whom  religion  is  largely  a  matter 


76  THE   GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

of  thought  and  inner  aspiration  find  something  re- 
pulsive in  the  notion  of  external  authority,  in  the 
fixity  of  a  faith  bound  to  a  definite  person  and 
forms.  They  object,  too,  to  what  seems  distant, 
to  the  worship  of  one  who  lived  so  long  ago.  It 
is  true,  as  we  said,  that  this  distance  is  done  away 
in  the  Church  and  the  sacraments,  which  embody 
Christ  in  a  living  society,  and  bring  Him  close  to  us 
in  the  Eucharist.  But  to  such  men  this  also  seems 
distant,  as  being  external,  material,  not  spiritual ;  if 
they  remain  Christian  they  will  incline  to  some 
form  of  mysticism  or  Quakerism,  which  assures  the 
soul  of  immediate  union  with  God,  and  does  away 
with  all  instruments;  grace  without  the  means  of 
grace. 

But  with  the  common  man  this  is  not  the  case. 
It  is  this  sense  of  an  outside  power  to  relieve  his 
weakness  and  to  reassure  his  trembling  faith  which 
he  needs  above  all  else,  and  finds  in  the  historic 
Church.  By  bitter  experience  he  knows  that  without 
help  given  he  is  powerless  to  bring  his  life  into  har- 
mony with  his  aims,  and  to  introduce  order  into  the 
chaos  of  his  passions  and  desires.  Besides  he  wants  to 
feel  at  home,  to  have  something  to  catch  hold  of;  this 
want  is  to  him  supplied  by  the  actual  story  of  Jesus 
upon  earth,  and  the  visible  institutions  and  ordi- 
nances which  express  His  life.  Above  all  things  it 
is  in  God  revealed  as  man  that  he  finds  a  religion 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  77 

to  understand.  Persons  we  are  and  in  personal  in- 
tercourse our  life  is  passed ;  so  far  from  Christian 
dogma  being  unintelligible  to  children  or  ignorant 
people,  the  Gospel  is  the  simplest  and  easiest  of 
all  religious  systems  for  the  plain  man,  if  we  avoid 
technical  terms.  Everybody  who  has  experience 
in  teaching  the  young  knows  this  as  a  fact,  if  he 
compares  the  simple  facts  and  dogmas  of  the 
Church  with  any  speculative  ideas  he  might  be 
inclined  to  make  a  substitute. 

The  Gospel  with  its  story  of  Jesus,  and  the  Church 
as  the  family  of  His  love,  do  but  carry  to  its  highest 
all  that  world  of  uplifting  joy  revealed  to  us  through 
human  love  and  society.  The  sense  of  personal  de- 
pendence it  inculcates  is  entirely  in  accord  with  our 
life,  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  overlaid  by  the  fallacious 
individualism  which  is  the  result  of  sophisticated 
culture  and  artificial  economic  privilege.  It  may 
be  that  the  Gospel,  with  its  claim  to  give  us  a 
home  in  the  Church,  a  food  in  the  sacraments,  a 
friend  and  saviour  in 

"Jesus  who  lived  above  the  sky 
Came  down  to  be  a  man  and  die," 

seems  hard  of  credit  to  those  who,  neglecting  the 
circumstances  which  have  made  them  critical  and 
independent,  start  arguing  from  their  own  minds 
in   a   high   state   of  culture;    but   to   the   mass   of 


78  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

struggling  men  and  women,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
religious,  this  is  not  the  case.  In  the  story  of 
Jesus,  in  the  life  of  His  Church,  in  the  power  of 
sacraments,  they  find  truths  precisely  germane  to 
their  own  experience,  and  are  helped  to  organise 
it  more  fruitfully.  As  Creighton  put  it  in  letters 
which  will  ever  remain  among  the  classics  of 
apologetic : — 

"Life  can  only  be  explained  by  a  life;  and  I  see 
in  Jesus  that  life  of  which  all  other  life  is  but  a 
partial  reflex."  ^^ 

"  Relationships  founded  on  a  sense  of  lasting  affec- 
tion are  the  sole  realities  of  life.  This  is  obvious. 
It  is  the  burden  of  all  literature;  it  leads  straight 
on  to  Christ.  Faith  is  personal  trust  in  a  person. 
Christianity  does  not  call  upon  me  to  commit 
myself  to  something  contrary  to  my  experience. 
It  asks  me  to  discover  its  law  already  written  in 
the  Avorld.  In  Christ  all  becomes  plain.  In  my 
relationship  towards  Him  all  my  other  relation- 
ships find  their  meaning  and  reality." -° 

Two  main  objections  there  are  which  in  the  pre- 
sent age  the  historical  revelation  of  God  in  Christ 
arouses  in  nearly  all  minds  :  (a)  that  it  is  historical, 
fixing  our  thoughts  on  one  particular  period  long 
past ;  (6)  that  it  is  concrete,  and  professes  to  find 
the  Eternal  Spirit  in  a  particular  personage.  Let 
us  take  them  in  order. 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  79 

(2)  Dominated  by  the  notion  of  continuous  upward 
growth,  men  find  it  increasingly  difficult  to  attach 
absolute  value  to  a  series  of  events  which  took  place 
nearly  two  thousand  years  ago.  They  are  willing  more 
than  ever  to  see  in  Christianity  a  very  fruitful  phase 
of  spiritual  progress ;  they  can  discern  in  it  some 
of  the  noblest  purposes  and  finest  characters  in 
history.  But  intellectually,  morally,  and  spiritually 
the  world  has  greatly  changed  since  the  days  of 
Herod  the  King,  when  Jesus  was  born  in  Bethlehem 
of  Judeea.  Our  whole  world,  inner  more  than  outer, 
is  larger  and  more  complex  than  it  was  to  them,  or 
so  far  as  we  can  judge,  to  Him.  Is  it  not  a  mockery 
to  ask  us  in  the  twentieth  century  to  bow  in  worship 
to  this  obscure  teacher,  who  betrayed  no  knowledge 
of  art,  who  was  unconscious  even  of  the  thought  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  showed  no  acquaintance  with 
sociology  and  politics  ?  The  substance  of  a  recent 
article  in  the  Hibhert  Joiornal  puts  nakedly  and 
brutally  a  thought  that  in  less  repulsive  form  has 
probably  occurred  to  most  of  us.^i  The  world  looks 
forward  not  backward.  Is  not  to  turn  our  eyes  to 
the  past  in  the  way  Christianity  bids  us  to  narrow 
our  outlook  ?  This  feeling  seems  bound  up  with 
the  historic  sense,  the  faith  in  the  world  as  de- 
veloping. Yet  here  again  the  appeal  is  from  theory 
to  facts — facts  personal,  historical,  artistic. 

The  sense  of  life  as  continuous  change  contains 


80  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

truth,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth.  If  it  were, 
we  should  not  be  able  to  attach  any  worth  or 
meaning  to  special  moments  in  our  lives,  or  indeed 
to  ourselves  at  all,  as  persons.  All  would  merge 
itself,  decisive  events,  passions,  personalities,  into 
one  endless  stream  of  process  and  there  would  be 
no  foothold.  If  you  really  carry  this  notion  to 
its  conclusion  (allowing  no  contrary  facts),  you  are 
left  with  the  sense  that  nothing  happens  at  all, 
that  there  are  no  classical  moments  in  history  or 
in  art  or  in  individual  life.-^  We  are  lost  in  the 
ceaseless  flux;  we  contemplate  everything,  includ- 
ing ourselves,  as  one  whole,  in  such  a  way  that 
no  part  has  any  significance  for  itself,  but  only 
as  passing  into  something  else.  The  individual 
pictures  himself  the  passive  resultant  of  outside 
forces,  a  wind-driven  straw.  It  is  only  the  reality 
of  our  inner  life  that  prevents  us  seeing  this  to 
be  the  logical  issue  of  all  theories  which  make 
of  life  process  and  nothing  else.  In  our  own  life 
we  know,  and  act  on  the  knowledge,  that  each  of 
us  is  in  some  way  an  end  in  himself,  not  a  mere 
cog  of  a  machine.  In  words  that  have  become 
classical  Walter  Pater  expressed  this  feeling  of  the 
impotence  and  insignificance  of  experience  seen 
under  this  category : — 

"  This  at  least  of  flamelike  our  life  has ;  that  it  is 
but  the  concurrence  for  a  moment  of  forces  parting 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  81 

sooner  or  later  on  their  ways."  .  .  .  "To  such  a 
tremulous  wisp  constantly  reforming  itself  on  the 
stream  to  a  single  sharp  impression  with  a  sense  in 
it,  a  relic  more  or  less  fleeting  of  such  moments  gone 
by,  what  is  real  in  our  life  fines  itself  down.  It  is 
with  this  movement,  with  this  passage  and  dissolution 
of  impressions,  images,  sensations,  that  analysis  leaves 
off — that  continual  vanishing  away,  that  strange 
perpetual  weaving  and  unweaving  of  ourselves."  ^^ 

To  all  this  talk  of  ceaseless  development  there  is 
only  one  answer,  the  appeal  to  fact.  The  most  real 
and  pertinent  truth  of  our  life  is  the  actual  worth 
of  the  present.  Difficult  though  it  be  to  conceive 
or  to  justify  to  the  critical  intelligence,  it  is  the 
present  reality  of  our  existence  expressed  in  our 
own  sense  of  choice  and  freedom,  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  which  is  our  guiding  star.  Without 
it  our  experience  might  be  more  logical,  but  it 
would  cease  to  be  experience.  This  alone  makes 
virtue  possible  or  even  thought  real,  while  in  respect 
of  pleasure  the  reality  of  the  moment  is  proved  by 
every  postponement  of  all  future  goods,  even  self- 
interest,  to  some  transient  and  guilty  gratification. 
We  may  prate  as  we  please  of  the  present  having 
no  reality,  being  merely  the  product  of  the  past  and 
the  parent  of  an  inevitable  future.  If  it  were  this, 
no  more  and  no  less,  we  must  surrender  as  illusions 
all  that  consciousness,  acute  in  times  of  crisis,  of  the 


82  THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

absolute  worth  of  the  here  and  now;  the  reality  of 
what  we  experience  at  this  definite  moment.  The 
shining  evidence  of  this  Ues  in  the  great  moments  of 
our  own  life,  or  in  the  supreme  and  classical  examples 
of  art. 

To  all  of  us  there  are  times,  days,  of  such  tran- 
scendent, normative  worth,  that  we  fall  prostrate, 
crying — 

"  Verweile  doch,  du  bist  so  schon ; " 

or  in  the  words  of  the  English  poet  who  has  done 
most  to  express  this  truth,  we  cry — 

"  That  eternity  shall  affirm  the  conception  of  an  hour."  2* 

This  value  of  monumental  moments,  this  feeling 
before  some  work  of  beauty  that  here  at  last  is 
something  finished,  done  for  ever,  that  time  and 
chance  have  no  power  upon  the  idea  thus  embodied, 
is  inseparable  from  the  sense  of  all  greatness  in  art 
and  life,  and  is  clearly  subversive  of  that  notion  of 
progress  incessant  and  unretarded,  of  which  we  spoke. 
It  is  a  thing  in  itself,  a  possession  for  ever  that  we 
value  in  the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles,  the  tombs  of  the 
Medici  or  the  Sainte-Chapelle,  not  a  mere  phase  in 
illustration  of  culture-history.  Our  very  notion  of 
what  is  classical,  raised  by  its  own  worth  above  debate, 
the  thing  of  beauty  which  is  in  itself  "  the  joy  for 
ever,"  shows  how  the  moment  we  take  to  comparing 
values  we  are  driven  to  this  feeling  of  there  being 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  83 

crises,  moments  whose  significance  is  something 
quite  different  from  that  ascribed  to  them  as  mere 
items  in  the  historical  series. 

Now  all  this  is  but  carried  to  its  highest  power 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  worth  of  Jesus  to  man,  the 
unique  value  of  His  earthly  life,  for  instance,  the 
moment  when  hanging  on  the  cross  He  used  the 
words,  "  It  is  finished."  ^^ 

By  asserting  the  eternal  value  of  that  moment 
in  the  life  of  men  it  redeems  us  from  the  sense 
of  nothingness  and  impotence  which  the  spectacle 
of  the  changing  world  is  bound  to  awaken.  It 
does  for  us  as  persons  in  history  what  miracles  do 
for  us  as  bodies  in  nature.  By  asserting  the  reality 
of  life  in  the  present,  the  value  of  moments,  it  saves 
us  from  the  terrible  grip  of  fate  which  men  are 
always  in  fear  of.  For  it  is  no  new  thing,  this 
sense  of  being  caught  in  a  machine,  though  recent 
tendencies  perhaps  enhance  it.  It  needs  no  science 
to  see  the  link  betAveen  present  and  past;  the 
Juggernaut  of  fate  is  oppressive  to  the  primitive 
no  less  than  to  the  modern  mind. 

What  man  needs,  what  as  a  religious  and  moral 
being  he  demands,  is  to  be  assured  that  there  is 
something  more  than  this  linking  of  moment  to 
moment,  of  act  to  act,  in  a  chain  whose  ends  he 
does  not  see.  Is  it,  he  cries,  that  his  inner  life  is 
all  an  illusion  ?     Is  the  agon}'-  of  choice,  the  rapture 


84  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

of  achieved  resolve,  the  peace  of  love,  the  vivid 
hues  of  beauty,  the  loneliness  of  pain  all  a  sham, 
"a  tale  of  little  meaning  though  the  Avords  are 
strong : "  and  himself  the  centre  of  it  all  but  a 
stone  in  an  eddy?  Or  are  his  moments  gifts  of 
God,  real  in  their  worth  and  meaning,  transient 
in  time,  but  eternal  in  mystery  and  value  ?  This 
great  spectacle  of  the  Cross,  this  act  done  as  theo- 
logians tell  us,  "  alike  in  time  and  eternity,"  is  the 
supreme  assurance  that  the  thoughts  of  our  hearts 
are  not  all  vain,  it  confirms  the  deliverance  both  of 
individual  life,  so  sorely  striving  and  deeply  feeling, 
and  of  artistic  beauty,  so  frail  and  yet  so  enduring. 
At  this  day,  when  external  and  mechanical  theories 
seem  to  dominate  our  thought  and  life,  and  express 
themselves  clearly  even  in  economic  relations,  there 
is  the  danger  that  all  the  "living  interests  and 
hopes  and  achievements"  of  man  will  be  seen  but 
as  items  in  a  series,  and  denuded  of  their  worth 
for  personal  beings.  Here  as  elsewhere  life  is  too 
strong  for  theory.  Man  knows  that  his  agony  and 
his  joy  are  real  and  vital.  This  knowledge  is 
deepened  by  belief  in  the  value  of  the  historic 
Christ,  the  doctrine  that  His  life,  though  lived  in 
Palestine,  is  of  absolute  value ;  that  the  moment 
of  His  death  was  decisive,  classical,  in  heaven  no 
less  than  on  earth. 

But  this  is  not  all.     There  is  another  and  deeper 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  85 

objection  to  belief  in  the  eternal  worth  of  Jesus  as 
God's  revealing  Himself.  It  is,  I  suppose,  the  supreme 
and  peremptory  crux  in  the  Incarnation.  Though 
congruous  with  the  last  this  difficulty  is  not  quite  the 
same.  It  is  possible  to  overcome  the  difficulty  of 
attaching  such  value  to  a  special  moment  and  yet 
remain  staggered  at  the  claim  that  Jesus  was  God. 
We  are  asked  to  believe  that  in  one,  who  was  for  a 
time  a  helpless  child  and  then  lived  as  a  small  Jew 
tradesman,  there  dwelt  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead 
bodily.  Is  it  seriously  to  be  thought  of?  Can  we 
credit  that  the  abiding  Spirit  which  sustains  the  world, 
which  directs  the  course  of  human  and  even  celestial 
life,  should  express  Himself  in  a  fashion  so  riotously 
insignificant  ?  Think  what  it  means.  That  infant  at 
Bethlehem,  God,  the  centre  of  all  our  worship,  the 
source  of  all  our  being,  the  meaning  of  all  our 
thought.  Is  it  not  "a  thing  imagination  boggles 
at "  ?  It  does.  We  shall  do  well  to  picture  our- 
selves the  claim  of  Christ  in  all  its  naked  terror 
before  we  give  ourselves  to  adore  "  the  splendour 
of  God,"  more  dazzling  in  the  manger,  the  shop, 
or  the  cross,  than  when  shining  amid  the  armies  of 
heaven. 

It  is  this  central  paradox  of  the  Gospel  which 
gives  it  at  once  its  charm  for  the  common  heart  and 
its  perplexity  to  the  speculative  thinker.  If  we 
work  it  out,  it  will  be  found  that  the  God  of  the 


86  THE   GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN   NEEDS 

latter  is  never  more  than  an  abstraction.  We  have 
in  fact  to  choose  between  an  abstract  God,  a  necessity 
of  thought,  and  God  concrete  in  Jesus.  All  the 
divisions  come  at  last  to  that.  We  have  to  make 
up  our  mind,  as  between  some  form  of  "cosmic 
emotion"  and  the  sublime  madness  of  the  faith, 
which  bids  us  worship  a  babe,  a  carpenter,  and  a 
criminal. 

And  yet  it  is  just  this  which  wins  us.  For  we 
need  no  Christ  to  assure  of  God's  greatness.  The 
universe  may  be  a  mistake,  but  if  it  is,  it  is  a  very 
great  mistake.  Cosmic  emotion  is  obvious  enough, 
and  comes  to  all  in  certain  moods.  It  may  be,  as 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  says,  but  a  poor  religion ;  but 
it  is  a  religion,  and  it  is  open  to  all.^*^  It  does  not 
need  knowledge  or  culture  to  discern  how  sublime  is 
the  order  in  which  we  are  placed ;  or  to  find  in  the 
grandeur  of  things,  despite  if  not  because  of  its 
cruelty,  an  uplifting  thought  which  may  shame  our 
pettiness  and  lead  to  a  stoical  patience.  "  God  is 
great,"  the  cry  of  the  Moslems,  is  a  truth  Avhich 
needed  no  supernatural  being  to  teach  men. 

That  God  is  little,  that  is  the  truth  which  Jesus 
taught  man,  and  we  find  at  once  so  tender  and  so 
perplexing.  It  is  of  the  nature  of  love  to  be  infinitely 
minute,  as  well  as  soaring  in  its  imagination,  and  this 
nature  is  shown  us  by  Christ.  All  His  most  appealing 
qualities  reveal  this  aspect ;  the  heart  of  Christendom 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  87 

has  gone  out  to  the  story  of  Bethlehem  and  the 
manger,  of  the  shepherds,  and  the  wise  men ;  to  the 
blessing  of  the  children,  the  words  about  the  sparrows 
and  the  lilies.  This  is  what  gives  to  Christian  devo- 
tion its  distinctive,  poignant  note,  so  different  in  its 
simple  gaiety  from  the  honour  paid  to  the  First 
Cause,  or  the  Absolute,  or  the  Necessary  Being, 
the  Summum  Bonum.  The  mother  and  the  child, 
the  helpless  sufferer  on  the  cross,  the  "  gentle  Jesus  " 
of  the  hymn — these  are  images  that  come  close  to 
the  toiling  and  wayworn,  the  disinherited  and  the 
ineffectual;  sometimes  perhaps  to  the  neglect  of 
austerer  truths.  It  is  not  God  in  His  power  and 
majesty,  the  pride  of  Deity,  which  was  revealed  in 
Jesus,  but  in  deed  and  truth  God  in  His  humilia- 
tion, scorned,  spat  upon,  dying,  that  has  been 
the  force  which  changed  the  world  more  than  all 
the  armies  of  all  the  emperors.  And  even  to  this 
day  and  by  the  confession  of  our  adversaries,  "'tis 
Christendom's  the  matter  with  the  world."  And  not 
Csesar  nor  Napoleon,  not  Plato  nor  Bacon,  counts  as 
a  fact  in  the  life  of  to-day  for  a  tithe  or  a  thousandth 
part  of  that  eighteen  months'  ministry  of  the  pro- 
vincial carpenter.  Admit  His  claims  or  not  as  you 
please,  but  in  His  case  it  is  a  mere  matter  of  obser- 
vation that  "  God  hath  chosen  the  foolish  things  of 
the  world  to  confound  the  things  which  are  wise,  the 
weak  things  of  the  world  to  confound  the  things 


88  THE    GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

which  are  mighty,  and  base  things  of  the  world  and 
things  which  are  despised  hath  God  chosen,  yea  and 
things  which  are  not,  to  bring  to  nought  things 
which  are." 

Like  all  the  real  things  of  life  this  truth  is  hard  to 
fathom ;  yet  it  is  the  case  that  the  revelation  of  the 
manger  and  the  Cross  has  given  to  men  that  which 
elsewhere  they  seek  in  vain.  It  may  be  easier  for  the 
Church  to  believe  in  God  as  the  moral  governor  of 
the  universe,  or  the  immanent  Spirit,  or  the  un- 
changing idea — but  to  the  despairing  conscience^ 
to  the  worldling  satiate  with  pleasure  and  seeking 
rest,  all  this  is  words  and  emptiness.  But  tell  him 
of  the  tender  love  which  gave  its  only  begotten 
Son,  speak  to  him  of  the  child  of  Nazareth,  and 
at  once,  if  he  can  trust  you,  his  heart  leaps  up. 

"  'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength  that  I  cry  for, 
My  flesh  that  I  seek  in  the  Godhead." 

The  vision  of  God's  greatness  is  ever  with  us  to 
appal  and  oppress,  and  we  withdraw  trembling  from 
His  glory.  Show  us  the  vision  of  His  littleness  and 
weakness,  love  self-emptying  and  suffering,  and  we 
can  cry  in  the  old  hymn — 

"  Jesu,  Lover  of  my  soul, 
Let  me  to  Thy  bosom  fly." 

One  who  contemplates  the  faith  from  a  superior 
standpoint  dismisses  these  words  in  the  phrases : 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  89 

"The  Power  which  made  the  stars  and  the  tiger 
to  be  addressed  by  a  pet  name  !  Need  I  say  more  ? 
Can  I  say  less  ? "  2' 

Certainly  not.  In  these  words  and  this  rather 
obvious  comment  lies  the  whole  distinction  between 
the  Christian  attitude  and  its  opposite.  God  does 
allow  us  to  address  him  by  a  pet  name,  if  you  must 
have  the  phrase.-^  He  is  as  ui  the  old  English 
mystical  writer,  "full-homely  and  full-courteous." 
That  nearness  and  tenderness,  that  "embrace  of  a 
personal  loving-kindness  "  it  is  which  Jesus  came  to 
reveal  to  man  on  God's  side,  and  make  possible  on 
his  own.  It  is  this  intimacy  with  God  for  which  the 
Gospel  stands  and  will  stand,  without  which  it  would 
lose  its  meaning  and  sink  perhaps  nearly  to  the 
level  of  the  substitutes  for  it  suggested  by  the  same 
writer. 

It  is  this  tender  and  delicate  love,  which  has 
flamed  into  myriad  forms  of  devotion,  some  wise, 
some  unwise,  which  has  found  the  world's  greatest 
gifts  of  art  in  painting  that  ever-new  and  ever- 
old  theme  of  the  Madonna  and  Child,  the  Wise 
Men  and  the  Shepherds,  the  Agony,  and  the  Cruci- 
fixion; this  which  breathes  through  the  whole  of 
Christian  mystical  writing, making  "The  Imitation"  or 
"Grace  Abounding"  or  "The  Confessions  "  so  different 
from  the  reflections  of  Marcus  Antoninus  or  Epictetus ; 
Avhich  invests  with  its  childlike  and  incommunicable 


90  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

grace  the  frescoes  of  Fra  Angelico  and  Giotto,  and 
gives  their  distinctive  charm  to  men  like  St.  Francis 
or  Damien  or  Dolling,  and  adds  depth  to  the  force 
of  natures  like  Hildebrand  or  Dominic,  like  Luther 
or  Wesley. 

This  sense  of  greatness  greater  in  the  little  than 
in  the  sublime,  of  the  nearness  of  that  which  in 
other  systems  is  far  off,  this  presence  here  and 
now  of  the  Eternal  Spirit,  embodied  in  Jesus  or 
veiled  in  symbol  in  the  Eucharist,  gives  its  peculiar 
distinction  to  all  Christian  thought  and  emotion.  It 
is  because  the  historical  Jesus  can  mean  this,  and 
came  to  say  it  and  prove  it  in  His  life,  that  of  His 
Incarnation  we  "need  say  no  more,  Ave  can  say  no 
less,"  than  that  He  is  God,  "  God  of  God,  Light  of 
Light,  Very  God  of  Very  God,"  one  being  with 
the  Father;  that  we  may  ourselves  share  a  little 
in  that  life,  and  follow  with  faltering  steps  the  road 
to  Gethsemane.  This  truth,  if  Ave  combine  it  Avith 
that  of  the  sacramental  presence  and  the  living 
Church,  removes  alike  the  danger  of  the  far-off 
potentate  of  Deism  and  the  merely  immanent  prin- 
ciple of  Pantheism,  For  it  reveals  God  as  distinct 
from  the  Avorld  and  yet  mingling  Avith  it ;  "  far  off  but 
ever  nigh  " ;  for  Avhose  dAvelling  the  heaven  and  the 
heaven  of  heavens  are  not  too  great,  and  the  heart  of 
the  child  or  the  sinner  is  not  too  little  or  too  mean. 

It  is  because  Ave  have  this  value  in  the   actual 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  91 

historical  person,  Jesus  of  Nazareth  the  carpenter, 
that  in  spite  of  all  the  difficulties  and  they  are 
very  real,  we  know  that  we  are  on  the  side  of 
the  victorious  forces  of  the  world ;  and  in  this  sign, 
the  sign  of  Bethlehem  and  the  Star,  we  shall  con- 
quer. It  is  that  little  child  that  shall  lead  us ; 
that  poor  tradesman  is  Avorth  all  other  teachers ; 
that  dying  criminal  redeems.  Provided  only  we 
trust  Him,  not  our  own  fancies;  prayer,  not  our 
own  cleverness ;  and  even  in  His  defence  rely  on 
His  grace,  not  our  own  skill,  then  we  shall  find 
this  strength  in  ourselves  enlightening,  arresting, 
driving,  and  daily  will  love  lead  to  union  and 
union  to  more  love,  until  the  veil  shall  be  rent 
and  the  spirit  be  at  last  at  home  in  a  rest  which 
not  the  devil  and  all  his  angels  may  violate. 

"  Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ  ? 
Shall  tribulation,  or  distress,  or  persecution,  or 
famine,  or  nakedness,  or  peril,  or  sword  ?  Nay,  in 
all  these  things  we  are  more  than  conquerors 
through  Him  that  loved  us.  For  I  am  persuaded 
that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  prin- 
cipalities, nor  powers,  nor  things  present,  nor  things 
to  come,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other  crea- 
ture shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
God,  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord." 


IV.— FORGIVENESS 

"  If  we  say  that  we  have  no  sin,  we  deceive  ourselves,  and  the 
truth  is  not  in  us  ;  but  if  we  confess  our  sins  He  is  faithful  and  just 
to  forgive  us  our  sins  and  to  cleanse  us  from  all  unrighteousness." — 
1  St.  John  i.  8,  9. 

Sin  is  not  merely  a  tragedy  to  the  individual.  It 
is  a  nuisance  to  the  systematic  thinker.  It  destroys 
the  idea  of  a  single  self-consistent  order  harmoni- 
ously developing  under  unalterable  laws,  and  dis- 
plays an  incoherent  world. 

Suffering  creates  a  somewhat  different  problem. 
However  many  the  difficulties  it  raises,  we  cannot 
but  discern  in  practice  the  vast  utility  of  pain.  And 
this  quite  apart  from  its  alleged  refining  influence, 
which  is  by  no  means  necessary  or  universal.  But 
many  of  the  virtues  are  to  us  unthinkable  apart 
from  suffering.  Without  pain  there  can  be  no 
courage,  and  no  sacrifice,  nor  any  of  the  graces 
and  delights  bound  up  therewith.  Through  all 
life  there  runs  the  lesson  of  the  Cross;  I  must 
lose  my  life  to  save  it.  In  a  world  in  which  we  are 
to  be  trained  to  virtue  through  freedom  and  love 
is  the  highest  virtue,  suffering,  alike  to  resist 
temptation  and  to  embody  the  giving-ness  of  love, 

92 


FORGIVENESS  93 

is  inevitable.^  With  sin,  however,  the  case  seems 
different. 

Repentance,  or  at  least  remorse,  is  an  ineradicable 
instinct.  And  remorse  involves  the  sense  that 
what  has  happened  ought  not;  and  need  not,  to 
have  happened. 

If  we  transfer  our  gaze  from  our  own  inner  life 
and  that  of  the  world  at  large,  and  contemplate 
the  spectacle  of  a  world  of  free  spirits,  chaotic  and 
awry  through  this  contradiction,  we  find  it  ugly 
and  upsetting.  Picture  to  yourself  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  the  millions  alive  at  this  moment ; 
and  is  it  not  disorder,  misery,  a  feeling  that 
things  are  wrong,  and  they  are  wrong,  that  is  most 
general  ?  It  is  not  the  superficial  harmony,  but 
the  profound  inner  contradiction  of  men's  souls 
that  is  the  reality  of  the  living  world;  the  whole 
"  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain  until 
now."  Taken  from  the  psychological,  not  natu- 
ralistic, standpoint,  it  is  not  disorder,  but  even  the 
modicum  of  order  that  is  the  miracle.  Truth  of 
actual  present  fact,  of  men's  inner  mind  and  feeling, 
is  the  truth  of  "  a  land  without  any  order." 

It  is  an  act  of  faith,  at  bottom  of  faith  in  God, 
to  see  in  all  this  chaos  of  conflicting  Avills,  and 
the  will  itself  divided  and  diseased,  a  process  that 
makes  in  the  long  run  for  harmony.  Yet  this  is 
the  assumption  of  the  rationalist  and  the  Christian 


94  THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

alike;  only  the  Christian  religion  asserts  that  the 
harmony  is  slowly  being  wrought  out  through  the 
love  of  God,  and  requires  the  miracle  of  Christ's 
death  on  the  Cross  to  effect  it.  The  rationalist 
assumes  that  the  order  is  here  and  now  and  always 
has  been;  and  since  facts  Avithout  and  within  are 
so  strongly  against  it,  he  is  forced  to  adopt  the 
policy  of  the  ostrich  and  to  say  "so  much  the 
worse  for  the  facts," 

They  tell  us  that  evil  is  but  the  idea  realising 
itself  by  opposition,  positing  its  own  negativity. 
Sin  is  a  moment  soon  to  be  transcended  in  the 
progress  to  a  higher  unity.  Or,  adapting  a  different 
method,  that  it  is  a  survival  from  the  animal  stage 
gradually  and  inevitably  working  itself  out ;  or  that 
it  is  a  morbid  illusion  based  on  a  fallacious  belief 
in  freedom  and  fostered  by  priests;  or  that  it 
carries  its  own  forgiveness  provided  we  eschew  a 
mawkish  penitence  and  stand  upright  before  God ; 
or  else  that,  though  small  in  volume,  sin  is  essen- 
tially unpardonable,  and  that  to  talk  of  atonement 
is  moonshine. 

Such  views  are  commonplace  nowadays.  Nearly 
all  those  who  propound  some  one  of  the  newer  forms 
of  Christianity,  in  spite  of  all  other  divergences  agree 
in  this — they  belittle  the  Christian  doctrine  of  sin. 
Thus  one  of  the  latest,  Mr.  Algernon  Sidney  Crapsey, 
expresses  himself:  "The  man  of  the  new  dogmatic 


FORGIVENESS  95 

will  not  look  upon  himself  as  of  necessity  and 
essentially  a  sinner.  He  will  not  believe  that  he 
is  impotent  to  keep  the  true  law  of  his  own  being. 
.  .  .  The  man  of  the  new  dogmatic  will  not  only 
observe  all  good  laws ;  he  will  love  them.  He  will 
not  lie  nor  cheat  nor  steal,  because  he  hates  lying, 
cheating,  and  stealing.  Such  an  one  will  not  be 
guilty  of  fornication  or  adultery,  because  these  sins 
are  repugnant  to  his  soul.  Until  they  are  hateful 
to  him  he  is  not  a  man  of  the  new  dogmatic.  .  .  . 
The  old  dogmatic  erred  in  laying  the  great  stress 
of  its  preaching  upon  the  fact  of  sin."  ^ 

Even  Horace  knew  more  of  human  nature  than 
this  complacent  preacher  of  the  facility  of  righteous- 
ness. 

Another  more  eminent  teacher,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge, 
declares  that :  "  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  higher  man 
of  to-day  is  not  worrying  about  his  sins  at  all,  still 
less  about  their  punishment ;  his  mission,  if  he  is 
good  for  anything,  is  to  be  up  and  domg."  ^ 

In  opposition  to  St.  John,  who  declares  sin  to  be  law- 
lessness, the  author  of  "  The  Creed  of  Christ "  asserts 
that  "  sin  so  far  as  it  is  illegality  and  nothing  more 
is  not  sin  " ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  "  moral  iniquity 
is  both  too  real  to  be  cancelled  and  too  serious  to 
be  ignored."'*  .  .  .  "  If  we  retain  our  power  of  loving, 
we  shall  be  able  to  outgrow  and  live  down  our  sins, 
we  shall  be  able  to  prove  that  our  sins  were  no  sins, 


96  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

that  they  did  us  no  lasting  moral  harm."  Mr.  R.  J. 
Campbell,  who  pursues  to  extremes  the  thought 
that  sin  is  selfishness,  refuses  to  see  any  "  sin  except 
in  offences  against  the  altruistic  principle,  Sin 
against  God  is  sin  against  the  common  life."  This 
Avould  deny  the  sinful  character  of  much  impurity 
in  thought  and  act,  and  puts  the  welfare  of  the  race 
in  place  of  the  Eternal  God.  It  is  in  fact  a  purely 
socialistic  ethic  quite  different  from  Christianity, 
which  is  in  the  true  sense  individualist.  In  this 
view,  since  all  religion  is  altruism,  the  altruistic  sen- 
timent is  the  only  atonement.  "This  love  force, 
this  intense  loyalty  to  Jesus,  was  and  still  is  the 
redeeming  thing  in  the  life  of  mankind.  There 
is  not  and  never  has  been  any  other  Atonement. 
It  is  but  a  step  from  sinner  to  Saviour.  To  cease 
to  be  a  sinner  is  perforce  to  be  a  Saviour.  To  escape 
from  the  dominion  of  selfishness  is  forthwith  to 
become  a  poAver  in  the  hand  of  God  for  the  uplifting 
and  ingathering  of  mankind  in  Himself;  this  is  the 
Atonement."  ^ 

Finally,  Mr.  Lowes  Dickenson  declares:  "The 
sense  of  sin  is  the  centre  of  all  Christian  ethics. 
Now  this,  I  believe,  is  an  attitude  becoming  increas- 
ingly unreal  to  most  serious  men.  Christianity 
insists  upon  the  essential  weakness  of  man.  It 
allows  him  no  strength,  save  what  is  derived  from 
somewhere  else,  from  Jesus  Christ."  ^ 


FORGIVENESS  97 

These  illustrations  occur  in  writings  designed  to 
advocate  religion  and  (with  one  exception)  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  They  are  not  the  language  of  men  pro- 
fessing a  naturalistic  or  non-religious  view  of  things. 

If  the  views  therein  adumbrated  be  true,  it  is 
clear  that  Christianity  as  a  religion  of  deliverance 
is  a  thing  of  the  past.  It  becomes  a  sort  of  spiri- 
tualised method  of  social  amelioration.  Sin  is 
indeed  the  centre  of  the  controversy ;  Christianity 
appeals  and  professedly  appeals  to  those  only  who 
are  full  of  it.  "  I  came  not  to  call  the  righteous 
but  sinners  to  repentance."  The  Gospel  may  make 
a  few  into  saints ;  it  is  a  gift  to  all  because  they 
are  sinners.  Now  the  sense  of  sin  is  so  personal 
and  inward  a  fact  that  it  is  idle  to  think  of  con- 
vincing by  argument  any  one  who  is  without  it. 
Such  an  attempt  is  like  trying  to  make  a  man  in 
love  by  mathematics.  It  is  only  by  ignoring  the 
emphasis  laid  upon  sin  that  we  can  for  a  moment 
deem  it  possible  to  convert  our  adversaries  by  con- 
troversy. This  is  a  condition  which  is  too  often 
absent  from  the  minds  of  apologists  with  the  result 
that  their  work  is  ineffectual. 

Controversy  may  sometimes  reassure  Christians 
assailed  by  many  perplexities.  It  may  help  to 
determine  men  on  the  brink  of  faith  to  take  the 
final  plunge.  It  may  now  and  then  cause  fair- 
minded  unbelievers  to  look  at  facts  they  had  left 

G 


98  THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

out  of  account.  Or  it  may  insinuate  here  and  there 
a  seed  which  after  experience  may  render  fruitful. 
But  it  is  vain  and  even  silly  to  expect  to  convince 
men  of  the  need  of  a  Saviour  who  are  as  yet  un- 
troubled by  conscience. 

But  since  the  Gospel  addresses  itself  to  the  re- 
ligious needs  of  men,  it  is  worth  while  to  interrogate 
the  religious  consciousness  and  to  ask  whether  as 
a  matter  of  fact  the  writers  we  are  discussing  are 
not  mistaken  as  to  its  deliverance.  Do  the  utter- 
ances of  religious  men  in  all  ages  give  countenance 
to  this  claim,  that  religion  does  not  imply  a  sense 
of  sin  or  implies  it  in  a  very  much  slighter  degree 
than  we  have  been  apt  to  think  ?  No  one  indeed 
denies  that  many  Christians  do  not  feel  it  acutely 
at  all  times  and  that  their  contrition  is  very  per- 
functory; and  the  language  too  often  used  about 
the  obvious  way  of  Confession  tends  to  confirm  this 
laxity.  Nothing  is  more  cruel  than  the  way  in 
which,  from  a  standpoint  of  cultured  superiority,  some 
divines  despise  and  depreciate  what  is  to  many  of 
us  the  only  reasonable  hope  of  overcoming  temp- 
tation— sacramental  confession.'  But  is  this  laxity 
the  mark  of  good  Christians  or  even  of  the  most 
religious  non-Christians  ?  Do  we,  as  a  fact,  find  that 
the  higher  we  go  in  the  scale  of  religious  insight 
the  less  and  less  place  do  we  find  for  sin  and  the 
need  of  forgiveness  ? 


FORGIVENESS  99 

To  ask  such  a  question  is  to  answer  it.  The 
evidence  of  the  saints  in  all  ages  is  at  one  on 
this  point.  The  words  of  St.  Paul,  "sinners  of 
whom  I  am  chief,"  are  not  the  mock  modesty  of 
a  popular  preacher ;  they  are  the  deep  and  poig- 
nant cry  of  the  God-stricken  soul  in  every  age ; 
so  genuine  that  at  times  we  deem  them  morbid. 
Morbid  or  not,  they  are  the  actual  utterance  of 
the  inmost  being  of  men  so  diverse  as  St.  Augustine, 
Pascal,  Bishop  Andrewes,  Pusey,  Bunyan.  Even  in 
other  and  less  perfect  religions  there  is  the  same 
deliverance — the  feeling  that  man  is  weak  and  by 
his  own  doing  comes  short ;  that  there  is  something 
out  of  joint  in  the  world ;  and  that  he  cannot  of 
himself  heal  the  breach.  In  this  respect  the  study 
not  only  of  the  Christian  Church  but  of  the  whole 
religious  history  of  the  world,  speaks  with  an  accu- 
mulation of  force.  In  all  the  elaborate  ritual  of  early 
sacrifice  and  purgation,  in  Mithraic  and  Neo-Pla- 
tonic  mysteries,  even  in  the  pessimism  of  the  East 
or  of  Schopenhauer,^  there  is  a  sense  sometimes 
deep,  sometimes  superficial,  of  the  unworthiness  of 
man,  of  the  "awryness"  of  the  world  and  its  need 
of  redemption.  This  sense  varies  greatly  in  form  and 
even  in  its  relation  to  God  or  His  existence,  and  in 
the  practical  conclusions  which  it  inculcates,  but  in 
every  case  mingle  notions  fundamentally  the  same, 
that  we  have  all  sinned  and  come  short  of  the  glory 


100         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

of  God.  And  if  indeed  God  be  love,  this  must  be 
the  case ;  the  first  sense  of  the  lover  is  his  own  un- 
worthiness.  Whether  Lite  or  early  in  life,  whether 
dim  or  dazzling,  comes  the  vision  of  the  "  first  and 
only  Fair,"  there  comes  this  other  in  its  train,  this 
sense  of  the  gulf  between  what  we  are  and  what  we 
might  be. 

Even  apart  from  this  inner  torture  of  contradic- 
tion and  weakness  we  see  or  know  enough  of  the 
appalling  ravages  wrought  in  the  world  by  drink 
and  lust  and  avarice  to  realise  that  something  is 
wrong ;  and  no  sober  judgment  can  attribute  them 
entirely  to  circumstance ;  and  if  it  were  there  must 
be  something  very  wrong  in  circumstance — some 
breach  in  the  universe.  It  is  the  highly  specialised 
departmental  nature  of  modern  life  that — abstract- 
ing personal  causes — makes  so  many  blind  to-day 
to  the  outer  or  inner  meaning  of  sin.  A  high  per- 
sonal standard,  a  sheltered  life  spent  in  manifold 
activities,  intellectual  and  beneficent,  aloof  from 
the  mass  of  men,  inevitably  tends  to  diminish  the 
emphasis  of  sin,  and  with  it  the  need  of  religion. 

If,  however,  we  consider  the  world  so  far  as  it 
finds  vent  in  the  religious  consciousness,  then  we 
cannot  fail  to  conclude,  in  the  words  of  an  observer 
not  of  our  faith,  that :  "  There  is  a  certain  deliverance 
in  which  religions  all  appear  to  meet : — 

"  (1)  An  uneasiness. 


FORGIVENESS  101 

"(2)  A  solution. 

"  (1)  The  uneasiness  reduced  to  its  simplest  terms 
is  a  sense  that  there  is  something  wrong  about  us 
as  we  naturally  stand. 

"  (2)  The  solution  is  that  we  are  saved  from 
the  wrongness  by  making  proper  connection  with 
the  higher  powers."  ** 

This  dictum  is  not  the  utterance  of  a  fanatical 
friar.  It  breathes  none  of  that  atmosphere  of 
abasement  which  inspires  the  Miserere  or  the  De 
Profundis,  and  strikes  so  harshly  on  the  cultivated 
ear  in  revivalists.  It  is  the  conclusion  drawn  from 
an  array  of  observed  facts  by  a  student  of  psychology, 
with  no  other  interest  than  stating  what  these  facts 
imply.  Yet  it  is  to  be  noted  that  that  conclusion  is 
diametrically  opposed  to  the  case  of  the  new  theo- 
logians as  we  saw  it;  that  it  confirms  that  sense 
of  a  world  in  need  of  redemption  to  which  the 
Gospel  makes  its  appeal. 

Moreover  this  sense  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
origin  of  this  corruption,  so  poignant  and  tragic 
in  its  consequences.  It  is  not  for  our  purpose 
material  whether  or  no  this  sinful  tendency  be 
due  to  the  fault  and  corruption  of  Adam,  or  the 
willing  acceptance  of  certain  animal  passions  that 
have  come  up  through  the  course  of  evolution. 

The  question  is,  Is  it  there  this  sense  of  sin? 
not,   How   did    it    get    there  ?      Do    we    as    a    fact 


102         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

experience  this  sense  of  guilt,  of  weakness,  of  a 
diseased  will ;  and  are  we  most  conscious  of  it 
Avhen  we  are  most  conscious  of  the  call  to  the 
higher  life  ?  And  to  answer  this,  each  of  us  can 
only  appeal  to  his  own  consciousness ;  he  can  go 
no  further.  St.  Paul  had  to  go  to  himself  for  his 
evidence:  "We  know  that  the  Law  is  spiritual,  but 
I  am  carnal,  sold  under  sin.  For  that  which  I 
do,  I  allow  not ;  what  I  would,  that  do  I  not ; 
but  what  I  hate  that  do  I.  .  .  .  To  will  is  present 
with  me,  but  how  to  perform  that  which  is  good 
I  find  not;  for  the  good  that  I  would  I  do  not, 
but  the  evil  which  I  would  not,  that  I  do.  .  .  . 
Oh,  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver 
me  from  the  body  of  this  death ! "  ^° 

Either  these  words  awaken  an  echo  in  our  hearts, 
or  they  do  not.  They  may  seem  to  represent  our 
own  deep  and  constant  experience ;  or  we  may  feel 
ourselves  members  of  that  fortunate  band  who  can 
say  with  a  different  teacher,  "  the  higher  man  of 
to-day  is  not  Avorrying  about  his  sins;  he  wants  to 
be  up  and  doing." 

It  is  only  if  St.  Paul's  Avords  represent  the  facts 
that  the  Gospel  has  any  foothold  in  my  soul. 

For  myself  I  find  them  true,  and  the  other  not 
true  to  my  inner  life.  It  is  that  very  "  AVorrying " 
about  sin  Avhich  I  cannot  escape  that  obstructs  all 
my  desires  to  be  up  and  doing  and  blights  even  my 


FORGIVENESS  103 

highest  and  purest  thoughts.  Doubtless  I  might 
be  happier,  could  I  feel  myself  a  man  of  the  new 
dogmatic,  not  "  essentially  a  sinner  "  !  But  I  cannot. 
I  cannot  help  it ;  I  have  this  burden,  like  Christian 
in  the  story,  and  I  cannot  roll  it  off  except  at  the 
foot  of  the  Cross.  Miserable  and  well-nigh  hopeless 
in  face  of  the  future  I  have  to  live.  Taught  by  oft- 
recurring  failures  to  distrust  my  best  resolves,  and 
finding  sincerest  love  and  all  the  hardest  sacrifices 
vain,  stained  with  the  past,  frightened  in  face  of 
the  tempter,  aware  how  easy  it  is  to  yield  and  what 
little  rest  he  gives,  tortured  with  lustful  passions, 
a  prey  to  pride  and  malice,  contemptible  even  more 
than  odious  in  my  weakness,  divided  in  my  inmost 
being,  torn  every  hour  between  God  and  the  devil, 
to  whom  shall  I  go  ?  What  must  I  do  to  be  saved  ? 
Alas  !  I  know  that  I  can  do  nothing.  I  have  no  quid 
pro  quo  to  offer  God,  and  cannot  win  my  pardon  by 
any  virtue  or  gift ;  I  am  naked,  beaten,  prostrate. 

"  Nothing  in  my  hand  I  bring, 
Simply  to  Thy  Cross  I  cling  : 
Naked  come  to  Thee  for  dress  ; 
Helpless  look  to  Thee  for  grace  ; 
Foul  I  to  the  fountain  fly  ; 
Wash  me,  Saviour,  or  I  die." 

What  is  true  of  myself  cannot  be  false  of  many 
others — though  I  hope  not  of  all  even  here.  To  all 
so  feeling,  the  facile  optimism  of  the  new  theology 
is   sheer  unreality.     How   are  we  to  approach  the 


104         THE   C40SPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

drunkard  or  the  harlot,  and  many  sinners  neither 
drunkards  nor  harlots,  yet  deeply  conscious  of  their 
"  soul's  tragedy "  ?  Are  we  to  tell  them  that  "  the 
deeper  sins  never  are  forgiven,"  or  that  they  are  to 
forget  all  about  it,  and  be  up  and  doing.  How 
can  they  with  this  open  wound  ?  Until  the  sickness 
of  the  soul  is  healed,  the  call  to  be  up  and  doing 
is  futile  and  irrelevant.  It  may  indeed  be  the  truth 
that  there  is  no  forgiveness ;  that  man  is  the  sport  of 
a  mocking  fairy  who  gives  him  a  sinful  nature  and 
offers  no  help  to  overcome  its  irresistible  allurements. 
But  if  this  indeed  be  the  case,  if  the  story  of 
redeeming  love  is  a  lie,  then  for  many  of  us  our 
whole  life  is  in  ruins.  Even  the  highest  and  noblest 
of  truths  but  add  insult  to  injury  and  change  torture 
into  madness.  Religion  without  deliverance,  though 
it  may  appeal  to  a  few  favoured  and  noble  spirits,  is 
no  hope,  no  treasure  to  me.  I  and  such  as  I  could 
in  that  case  only  say  of  the  Incarnate  Lord,  "  I  shall 
see  Him  but  not  now;  I  shall  behold  Him  but  not 
nigh." 

Preach  to  the  stricken  sinner  every  truth  of  which 
Ave  have  hitherto  been  speaking,  and  apart  from 
redemption  you  will  but  deepen  his  gloom.  Tell 
him  that  God  has  revealed  the  other  world  as  by 
a  flash,  that  He  is  a  Spirit,  not  tied  down  to  the 
sensible  universe,  that  death  does  not  close  all.  He 
will  answer,  "  So  much  the  worse  for  me  unless  3'ou 


FORGIVENESS  105 

can  rid  ine  of  the  barrier  which  divides  me  from 
God  and  leaves  me  lonely."  Tell  him  again  that  in 
the  mystery  revealed  he  can  find  things  analogous 
to  the  mysteries  of  our  own  life,  so  strange  and  real ; 
that  our  vague  dreams  of  a  world  vaster  than  our 
own  petty  interests  have  their  roots  in  reality;  and 
he  will  say,  "  Perhaps :  it  sounds  beautiful,  but  that 
world  so  bright  and  gay  of  prayer  and  praise  and 
work  is  not  for  me.  Tell  it  to  my  friends,  if  you 
will  be  kind.  Bid  them  keep  the  innocence  I  have 
lost.  I  am  not  one  of  those  pure  in  heart  who  shall 
see  God.  The  land  that  is  very  far  off  is  eternally 
far  from  me;  I  am  stuck  in  the  mire,  and  every 
struggle  I  make  to  get  free  only  plunges  me  deeper." 
Go  further,  and  tell  him  how,  not  away  and  above, 
but  here  upon  earth  One  came  and  lived  the  life  of 
God,  and  showed  as  child,  as  youth,  as  man  what 
true  Hfe  is ;  how  not  as  a  poetic  dream,  or  an  idea 
of  thought,  but  as  life  personal  and  human,  God 
revealed  Himself;  you  will  but  increase  his  despair, 
and  deepen  the  sense  of  dividing  guilt.  "What  is 
your  Christ-God  to  me,  or  Mary,  the  most  blessed 
among  Avomen  ?  They  are  come  with  a  curse.  Take 
away  this  image  of  perfect  love,  of  "a  joy  in  which  I 
may  not  rejoice,  a  glory  I  shall  not  find."  I  cannot 
share  this  holiness  which  makes  my  guilt  blacker. 
Depart  from  me,  for  I  am  a  sinful  man,  0  Lord." 
Such  and  so  despairing  would  be  the  thoughts  of 


106         THE    GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

any  sinful  man  or  woman,  if  the  Gospel  in  all  its 
beauty  and  wonder  came  before  him,  and  no  place  for 
pardon  and  deliverance  were  seen. 

And  yet  we  are  told  that  forgiveness  is  against 
the  nature  of  things,  and  that  it  is  immoral  to  expect 
it.  It  is  true  that  we  see  it  daily  among  lovers 
or  in  families,  in  all  personal  relations.  But  that 
mere  human  fact  is  ignored.  And  pardon,  where  it 
is  not  said  to  be  a  matter  of  course,  costing  nothing, 
is  pronounced  beyond  even  God's  power  to  grant. 
The  assumption  on  which  this  notion  rests  is 
that  the  world  is  made  up  of  forces  interacting  with 
mechanical  necessity  and  not  of  free  spirits.  Forgive- 
ness is  impossible  unless  God  be  free,  and  not  the 
slave  of  His  own  laws.  The  iron  uniformity  of 
nature,  the  unalterable  bonds  of  cause  and  effect  are 
insuperable  difficulties  to  those  who  look  only 
without.  "  The  new  dogmatic  teaches  that  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  the  forgiveness  of  sins ;  the 
law  of  consequences  forbids  such  a  thing."  ^^  A 
great  novelist  and  thinker  of  the  past  generation, 
George  Eliot,  made  this  belief  that  forgiveness  is 
unthinkable  the  centre  of  all  her  teaching.^- 

Cause  is  followed  by  consequence,  character  is 
built  up  slowly  from  irrevocable  acts;  and  unless 
there  is  in  personality  some  inner  spring  of  freedom 
the  hope  of  redemption  seems  an  absurdity;  while 
in  some  cases  the  almost  mechanical  operation  of 


FORGIVENESS  107 

the  grosser  sins,  like  intemperance,  seems  to  confirm 
this  view.  It  is  only  our  inward  consciousness  of  the 
power  of  love,  and  the  actual  fact  of  human  forgive- 
ness and  its  regenerating  influence,  that  acts  as  a 
bar  to  such  an  argument.  But  those  who  stifle  this 
sense  or  ignore  it  urge  that  to  preach  this  doctrine 
of  pardon  and  recovery  is  to  mock  men  with  an 
illusion.  That  it  is,  further,  dangerous,  for  the  know- 
ledge of  a  possible  forgiveness  leads  to  lax  morality ; 
although  the  Psalmist  of  old  declared,  "  there  is 
forgiveness  with  thee,  therefore  thou  mayest  be 
feared." 

If  this  be  true,  then  it  is  not  over  the  gates 
of  hell  but  the  threshold  of  birth  that  the  motto 
should  be  carved  : — 

"  Abandon  hope  all  ye  who  enter  here," 

for  earth  is  the  place  where  repentance  is  im- 
possible. Sinfulness  is  a  universal  fact,  and  if  there 
be  no  pardon,  we  shall  all,  or  most  of  us,  sink 
lower  in  the  scale  of  being,  and  morality  and  law 
will  be  saved  at  the  expense  of  the  damnation  of 
the  race. 

For  what  they  tell  us  is  not  so  much  that  forgive- 
ness is  impossible  as  that  it  is  immoral.  It  is  indeed 
remarkable  how  all  the  principal  objections  are 
now  urged  from  the  ethical  rather  than  the  in- 
tellectual side.     Non-intellectual  presuppositions  are 


108         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

by  no  means  the  monopoly  of  the  Christian.  It  is 
immoral  and  superstitious  even  to  hope  for  miracles 
instead  of  resting  in  the  natural  order ;  immoral  and 
obscurantist  to  desire  mystery  and  withdraw  from 
the  cold  abstractions  of  rationalism;  immoral  and 
childish  to  worship  in  the  stable,  and  offer  gifts  to  a 
babe;  but  above  all  things  it  is  immoral,  the  proof 
of  a  mean  and  coward  spirit,  to  seek  for  forgiveness, 
fit  only  for  children.  Precisely.  We  are  children, 
and  cannot  and  will  not  be  satisfied  without  a  child's 
pardon.  Like  children  or  beggars  we  refuse  to  take 
no  for  an  answer.  "  Forgiveness  is  a  beggar's  refuge ; 
we  must  pay  our  debts,"  says  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 
Exactly.  I  am  a  beggar;  I  cannot  pay  my  debts, 
and  never  shall  be  able;  and  I  will  knock  at  the 
doors  of  God's  House  until  He  grants  me  pardon. 
For  "  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  suffers  violence  and 
the  violent  take  it  by  force." 

It  is  because  I  know  forgiveness  is  so  hard,  and  is 
opposed  to  strict  justice,  that  I  need  it  so  terribly, 
I  do  not  need  your  talk  of  nature's  inevitable 
sequences  to  show  me  that  pardon  is  a  difficult 
thing,  or  that  any  but  God  can  make  those  whose 
sins  are  as  scarlet  as  white  as  wool.  That  is  clearer 
than  the  sun  at  noonday :  it  is  precisely  that  Avhich 
weighs  upon  me.  It  is  the  impossible  in  forgiveness 
that  makes  its  beauty  and  gives  wonder  to  the 
good  tidings  of  the  Cross.     Like  you,  I  can  hardly 


FORGIVENESS  109 

credit  it,  this  strange  gift  of  pardon  and  reunion. 
But  I  do  credit  it;  it  is  my  one  hope.  It  is,  as 
you  tell  me  and  we  say  in  common  speech,  too  good 
to  be  true  that  on  me,  me  stained  and  broken,  me 
weak  and  contemptible,  not  on  my  respectable  neigh- 
bours this  great  gift  has  come,  and  I  am  allowed  to  feel 
I  am  forgiven,  at  one  with  my  Father,  that  peace  of 
God  is  "  mine,  mine,  for  ever  and  ever  mine." 

With  this  pardon  in  my  heart,  all  penalty  in  this 
life  I  willingly  and  gladly  undergo,  indeed  I  would 
rather.  Once  assure  me  of  forgiveness  and  that 
the  past  is  no  more,  and  that  victory  may  one 
day  be  mine,  and  I  care  not  what  outward  punish- 
ment there  be.  I  can  dance  lighthearted  through 
the  rough  places,  and  like  Paul  and  Silas  sing 
hymns  in  prison. 

That  is  the  answer  in  actual  fact  of  the  shriven 
penitent.  Many  are  the  forms  it  takes.  Some  to 
us  seem  vulgar.  But  whether  the  Hallelujah  of 
the  Salvationist,  or  the  cry  of  the  Methodist,  or 
the  voice  of  him  Avho  speaks  to  you  now,  all  are 
one,  all  exultant  and  in  tune  with  the  angels, 
in  whose  presence  "there  is  more  joy  over  one 
sinner  that  repenteth  than  over  ninety  and  nine 
righteous  persons  who  need  no  repentance." 

The  joy  of  the  redeemed  is  in  proportion  to 
that  difficulty  of  redemption  told  us  in  pompous 
commonplaces  by  those  who  can  see  its  hardness. 


110         THE    GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

but  forget  that  what  is  impossible  to  men  is  possible 
to  God,  and  turn  their  eyes  away  from  that  figure 
on  the  Cross,  which  bids  men  learn  the  depth  alike 
of  the  needed  sacrifice  and  the  love  which  under- 
took it.  Christians  assert  no  less  strongly  than 
their  adversaries  that  "  no  man  can  deliver  his 
brother  or  make  agreement  unto  God  for  him ; 
for  it  cost  more  to  redeem  their  souls,  so  that  he 
must  let  that  alone  for  ever."  They  Avould  not 
rate  the  Cross  so  high,  and  place  what  seems  to 
many  so  excessive  a  value  on  the  death  of  Christ, 
if  they  did  not  feel  that  the  forgiveness  thereby 
wrought  is  just  the  one  boon  on  earth  that  God 
Himself  could  only  offer  at  a  sacrifice  within  His 
own  Being. 

So  again  with  its  alleged  immorality.  Whether 
or  no  pardon  is  against  justice,  or  vicarious  death 
an  outrage,  if  only  the  fact  is  true  we  who  have 
the  gift  will  not  trouble  greatly  over  its  so-called 
immorality.  After  all,  this  sacrifice  of  Christ  does 
but  carry  to  its  highest  power  that  law  of  unselfish 
service  which  illumines  all  our  life,  while  forgive- 
ness is  a  fact  of  daily  life,  potent  in  influence. 
Nor  again  are  we  at  this  place  and  time  contend- 
ing for  any  one  theory  of  the  Atonement,  but  for 
the  fact  and  reality  of  forgiveness. 

The  forms  in  which  past  ages  have  expressed 
their  sense  of  the  gift  are  neither  satisfactory  nor 


FORGIVENESS  111 

authoritative.  Yet  even  the  most  grotesque  testify- 
to  the  extreme  value  of  the  truth  such  explanations 
were  designed  to  guarantee,  and  to  the  real  sense 
in  which  forgiveness  is  so  hard  that  it  needs  the 
miracle  of  a  dying  God  to  accomplish.  It  were 
better  to  accept  the  crudest  and  most  forensic 
doctrine  of  substitution  rather  than  surrender  the 
truth  it  is  intended  to  set  forth.  Yet  in  the 
alleged  immorality  of  pardon  there  lurks  a  pro- 
found truth,  the  truth  that  love  is  above  all  codes, 
and  God's  mercy  goes  beyond  man's  deserts.  What 
Christians  mean  when  they  use  the  words — 

"  Just  as  I  am — without  one  plea, 
But  that  Thy  blood  was  shed  for  me, 
And  that  Thou  bid'st  me  come  to  Thee, 
O  Lamb  of  God,  I  come," 

is  but  the  counterpart  of  what  our  adversaries 
mean  when  they  tell  us  the  Atonement  is  immoral. 
It  would  he  iinmoral  if  it  were  not  true.  That  is, 
it  affords  the  same  revelation  of  love  as  above  all 
law  as  that  we  find  in  a  child's  or  friend's  or  lover's 
pardon,  and  indeed  in  all  self-sacrifice.  It  springs 
from  no  merit,  nothing  done.  Like  all  the  beauties 
and  graces  of  life  it  is  based,  not  on  necessity  or 
justice,  but  is  an  unbought  gift  of  that  heart  of 
the  Eternal  that  is  "most  wonderfully  kind."  For 
the  world  of  spirits  lives  on  the  rich  generosity  of 
God.     And  of  all  its  instances  none  is  comparable 


112         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

to  that  of  pardon;  none  so  dear  and  wonderful  as 
that  grace  of  forgiveness  for  which  His  Son  once 
died  upon  the  Cross,  that  men,  the  worst  and  the 
weakest,  might  live  unto  Him  for  ever. 

"  Eternal  Light !  Eternal  Light  I 

How  pure  the  soul  must  be, 
When  placed  within  Thy  searching  sight, 
It  shrinks  not,  but  with  calm  delight 

Can  live,  and  look  on  Thee  I 

The  spirits  that  surround  Thy  throne 

May  bear  the  burning  bliss  ; 
But  that  is  surely  theirs  alone. 
Since  they  have  never,  never  known 

A  fallen  world  like  this. 

Oh  !  how  shall  I,  whose  native  sphere 

Is  dark,  whose  mind  is  dim. 
Before  the  Ineffable  appear. 
And  on  my  naked  spirit  bear 

That  uncreated  beam  ? 

There  is  a  way  for  man  to  rise 

To  that  sublime  abode  : 
An  offering  and  a  sacrifice, 
A  Holy  Spirit's  energies. 

An  Advocate  with  God. 

These,  these  prepare  us  for  the  sight 

Of  Holiness  above ; 
The  sons  of  ignorance  and  night 
May  dwell  in  the  Eternal  Light ! 

Through  the  Eternal  Love."'' 

In  these  four  instances — and  doubtless  they  might 
be  multiplied — we  have  seen  how  the  Gospel  rests 


FORGIVENESS  113 

for  its  attractiveness  on  these  very  characteristics 
which,  as  compared  with  other  religious  systems,  are 
most  potent  in  arousing  hostility,  and  involve  us  in 
genuine  difficulties,  perhaps  insuperable,  so  long  as 
we  approach  the  problem  from  a  merely  critical 
standpoint.  The  notion  of  revelation  and  miracle 
is  of  necessity  repugnant  to  those  who  make  of  the 
uniformity  of  nature  an  idol  instead  of  an  instru- 
ment, a  law  to  govern  God  instead  of  His  creation. 
But  it  is  precisely  because  the  miraculous  exhibits 
the  truth  of  God,  as  not  Himself  entangled  in  the 
endless  chain  of  natural  causes,  that  it  has  so  uplift- 
ing and  exhilarating  a  force. 

Further,  the  notion  of  mystery  in  religion,  the 
claim  to  be  beyond  reason,  the  speculative  difficulties 
inherent  in  the  Personal  and  Trinitarian  doctrine  of 
God,  or  in  the  Sacramental  Presence,  are  repugnant  to 
the  rationalist  temper,  with  its  hatred  of  the  incom- 
prehensible, its  worship  of  clearness  and  logical  con- 
sistency. Yet  they  come  home  to  the  religious  sense, 
conscious  of  the  vastness  of  the  order  of  the  world, 
and  feeling  instinctively  that  the  threads  even  of  this 
life  pass  far  out  beyond  our  understanding.  Thus 
what  is  given  as  difficulty  is  proved  to  be  a  help. 

The  idealist  temper  again  finds  infinite  difficulties 
with  little  corresponding  advantage  in  the  notion  of 
a  particular  historical  manifestation  of  God,  and  in 
the  fixing  as  of  a  special  and  unique  importance  on 

H 


114         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

one  moment  in  the  shifting  kaleidoscope  of  human 
life.  But  to  the  plain  man  mere  ideal  principles 
or  a  system  made  by  the  mind,  however  well 
grounded  in  reason  or  noljle  in  aim,  will  always 
appear  a  little  fanciful,  divorced  from  reality.  It 
is  the  concrete,  the  particular,  the  personal,  that 
alone  appeals  to  him,  and  he  feels  safe,  anchored, 
at  home  with  God,  Who  can  manifest  Himself  in 
the  flesh,  and  can  cling  with  hope  and  love  to  the 
gracious  figure  of  the  Carpenter,  Avho  went  about 
doing  good  and  spake  as  never  man  spake. 

Lastly,  we  have  seen  to-day  how  the  very  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  forgiveness,  its  seeming  rever- 
sion of  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  its  hyper-moral 
removal  from  a  man's  shoulders  of  a  burden  he  has 
himself  placed  there,  must  always  arouse  doubt  in 
the  minds  of  those  to  whom  a  uniform  scheme  is  the 
sine  qua  non  of  thought,  who  clamour  for  a  world 
in  which  there  shall  be  no  discontinuity,  that  is,  a 
mechanism.  Yet  these  very  difficulties,  the  hard- 
ness of  pardon,  the  knowledge  that  it  is  undeserved, 
are  what  endear  the  Cross  to  the  mind  of  the  sinner, 
whose  sense  of  the  might  of  his  past  sins  and  their 
binding  nature  is  deeper  in  its  misery  than  that  of 
any  theorist;  and  on  that  very  ground  he  is  more 
passionately  concerned  in  their  removal. 

Moreover,  we  have  seen  in  practical  life  very 
similar  incongruities  to  those  offered  by  the  Gospel ; 


FORGIVENESS  115 

and  we  found  that  they  are  resolved  not  by  thinking 
but  by  action.  The  difficulty  of  miracles  is  only  one 
aspect  of  the  difficulty  of  freedom.  Formidable  from 
the  speculative  standpoint,  in  the  practical  world  it 
is  not  found  at  all.  Nobody  refrains  from  judging 
or  stimulating  others  for  all  the  determinists  that 
ever  proved  the  self  a  nullity.  Mystery  and  con- 
tradiction can  be  discerned  in  our  simplest  and  most 
ordinary  notions.  We  are  not  merely  unable  to  ex- 
plain life  or  personality,  but  change  and  motion  are 
beyond  all  grasp.  Yet  we  cannot  eradicate  these 
expressions  of  the  fact  that  we  are  alive  in  a  living 
world.  So  they  are  quite  congruous  with  a  religion 
which  is  no  less  difficult  theoretically  to  comprehend, 
and  equally  possible  to  make  use  of  in  practice. 
Further,  the  objection  found  to  the  unique  value 
of  our  Lord's  life  on  earth  is  of  a  similar  order 
with  the  difficulty  on  purely  evolutionary  doctrine 
of  reconciling  our  instinctive  sense  of  the  value  and 
meaning  of  decisive  moments  in  our  own  life  with 
the  conception  of  that  life  as  ceaselessly  developing. 
The  objection  to  a  historical  religion,  as  concerned 
with  the  particular,  will  be  found  to  lie  with  equal 
force  against  any  system  which  gives  reality  to  the 
individual  life.  Those  who  find  the  one  insuperable 
ought  in  consistency  to  take  the  oriental  view  of 
human  life  as  but  a  bubble  in  the  air,  a  mirage  in 
the  ever-changing  maya,  soon  to  disappear  into  the 


116         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

maw  of  the  Absolute.  The  difficulties  incident  to 
the  notion  of  sin  and  forgiveness  are  incident  no 
less  to  the  life  of  man  in  society  and  are  resolved 
in  the  same  way.  Nothing  is  easier  than  to  prove 
it  impossible  to  pardon  an  injury.  Yet  nothing  is 
easier,  if  the  will  be  once  turned,  than  to  do  it. 
The  difficulty  is  only  theoretic,  and  rests  on  the 
assumption  that  love  is  not  above  law.  With  that 
assumption  removed,  the  problem  disappears,  and 
Christianity  asks  no  other  condition. 

Doubtless  it  may  be  said  that  these  considerations 
are  not  decisive.  They  render  it  easier  to  understand 
how  Christianity  arose  and  still  maintains  its  power, 
still  they  leave  the  difficulties  of  the  mind  unsolved. 
We  are  being  invited  to  accept  the  Gospel  upon 
faith.  We  are,  therefore,  free  to  reject  it  as  un- 
certain, and  have  no  more  warrant  than  before  for 
believing  in  Christianity  merely  because  it  can  be 
shown  to  be  attractive  to  persons  in  particular  cir- 
cumstances, mostly  without  developed  culture.  I 
do  not  deny  it.  But  so  far  as  the  Gospel  appeals 
to  men  at  all,  it  appeals  to  them  as  religious ;  it 
makes  no  attempt  to  appeal  to  the  non-religious, 
if  there  be  such.  Although  the  considerations  we 
have  discussed  do  not  perhaps  tend  to  make  Chris- 
tian faith  any  more  acceptable  or  perhaps  probable  to 
those  who  are  without  religious  feeling,  they  ought 
surely  to  be  of  weight  with  the  numerous  persons 


FORGIVENESS  117 

who  are  devoutly  religious,  yet  non-Christian;  or 
Christian  and  genuinely  perplexed ;  or  Christian  in 
sentiment  but  anxious,  as  they  say,  to  lighten  the 
ship  of  dogmas  which  are  at  once  superfluous  and 
self-contradictory.  For  they  seem  to  show  that  as 
against  other  systems  the  Christian  faith  meets  the 
common  religious  needs  of  man,  and  includes  more 
facts;  and  that  its  difficulties  spring  from  this  very" 
cause,  that  it  is  first  of  all  a  revelation  of  life  and 
joy,  and  not  like  some  mere  abstract  system  of 
thought,  which  is  only  unanswerable  in  that  it  starts 
from  assumptions  artificially  limited.  "  Scepticism," 
it  has  been  well  said,  "  narrows  the  real  problem."  ^^ 
But  the  Gospel  takes  facts  as  they  are  and  includes 
them  all.  No  explanation  of  life  that  has  yet  been 
offered  but  is  fruitful  of  difficulties  and  inconsis- 
tencies. What  the  final  explanation  in  its  fulness 
may  be  we  know  not,  nor  are  like  to  know.  But 
it  is  reasonable  to  accept  that  system  which  comes 
closest  to  the  facts  and  refuses  to  burk  them. 
Scientific  method  and  theories  are  admittedly  ab- 
stract and  partial,  and  can  never  give  more  than 
a  skeleton  of  reality,  the  Gospel  with  its  revelation 
of  God  in  human  life  and  a  living  society  is  above 
all  things  concrete ;  and  in  its  doctrine  of  :^_Qedom, 
of  sin  and  forgiveness  it  includes  what  no  other 
system  has  yet  adequately  done,  that  mixture  of 
strangeness  and  chaos,  which  is  before  our  eyes  in 


118         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

actual  human  life  as  it  is  and  is  only  to  be  fitted 
in  to  the  doctrines  of  a  uniform  world  by  stripping 
facts  of  all  their  meaning.  As  Sidgwick  used  to 
say,  "  We  are  forced  to  admit  that  the  world  is  an 
odd  place."  It  is  because  we  are  so  impossible  to 
ourselves  that  we  need  an  impossible  God ;  because 
we  are  so  full  at  once  of  doubt  and  belief,  of  courage 
and  timidity,  that  faith  with  its  venture  has  so 
golden  a  guerdon ;  because  we  are  to  ourselves  and 
in  our  dealings  with  men  so  strange  and  mysterious, 
that  a  mystery  at  the  heart  of  things  can  alone 
satisfy  us;  because  we  are  living  spirits  we  need  a 
living  God,  and  find  our  needs  met  in  Christ  and 
His  Church  ;  because  we  are  always  children,  that  we 
need  one  who  can  show  the  great  in  the  little,  and 
meet  with  wonder  and  delight  the  Christmas  gift 
of  the  Manger-Child ;  finally,  because  we  are  so  pro- 
foundly tortured  wdth  sin  and  temptation,  so  miserable 
in  our  guilt  and  impotence,  that  we  need  a  pardon 
which  it  required  God's  dying  to  accomplish,  and 
can  rest  secure  in  the  victory  of  the  Cross. 

The  presence  of  these  theoretical  difliculties  and 
apparent  inconsistencies,  so  far  from  being  an  argu- 
ment against  the  truth  of  the  Gospel,  is  to  some  of 
us  a  help  to  its  acceptance.  Uncertain  and  per- 
plexed as  we  are  about  many  things,  and  divided 
between  countless  opposing  views,  of  one  thing  we 
feel  convinced,  that  our  life  is  infinitely  wonderful ; 


FORGIVENESS  119 

that  the  world  in  which  we  are  placed  is  strange 
and  weird  beyond  all  romancers'  dreams ;  and  that  in 
all  we  do  and  think,  all  we  admire  and  love,  there  is 
an  element  beyond  comprehension ;  that  the  realities 
of  life,  of  joy  and  suffering,  of  courage  and  sacrifice, 
even  of  sin  and  penitence,  are  mysteries  of  so  pro- 
found and  awful  a  nature,  that  they  are  thrown  into 
relief,  rather  than  interpreted  by  that  small  element 
that  is  clearly  articulate  and  consistent.  To  us  the 
facts,  the  daily  and  hourly  facts  are  the  supreme, 
the  unfathomable  problem.  These  facts  we  find 
included  and  transfigured  in  the  Gospel,  and  we 
welcome  it  with  responding  joy.  Credo  quia  im- 
jpossihile. 


A    PLEA    FOR    OTHER- 
WORLDLINESS ' 

"  My  Kingdom  is  not  of  this  world."— Sx.  John  xviii.  36. 

It  is  time  that  defenders  of  the  Christian  faith  gave 
up  apologising  for  it.  If  Christians  are  to  conquer 
it  will  be  in  the  sign  of  the  Cross ;  not  by  adopting 
the  principles  of  their  adversaries,  but  by  the  com- 
pelling audacity  with  which  they  display  their  own. 
I  desire  to-day  to  examine  the  charge  often  brought 
against  the  Church  of  being  other-worldly.  That 
charge  is  true.  But  it  is  our  glory,  not  our  shame. 
There  is  a  sense,  of  course,  in  which  the  Church 
ought  to  be  this-worldly.  This  sense,  however,  is  so 
obvious,  and  is  emphasised  so  much  just  now,  that 
it  is  perhaps  more  profitable  to  dwell  for  a  little 
upon  the  other  aspect  of  the  truth — provided  we 
bear  in  mind  that  it  is  only  an  aspect. 

The  reproach  of  other-worldliness  is  inevitable.  It 
is  natural  for  writers  like  George  Eliot  or  Cotter 
Morison,  whose  horizon  is  limited  by  death,  to  be 
distressed,  when   they  see   some   of  the   best  men 

1  Preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge,  Nov.  10,  1907. 

120 


A   PLEA   FOR   OTHER- WORLDLINESS       121 

occupied  in  matters  which  appear,  and  must  appear, 
to  them  as  futile,  in  prayer  which  they  must  deem 
elaborate  triviality,  or  in  preaching  a  repentance 
which  is  only  by  fits  and  starts  socially  beneficent. 
It  is  not,  of  course,  the  worse  but  the  better  Chris- 
tians whom  altruists  grudge  to  the  service  of  God. 
They  are  glad  enough  for  the  Church  to  occupy 
ecclesiastics  like  Antonelli  or  Manning;  or  perse- 
cutors like  Laud  or  Calvin,  like  Knox  or  Torque- 
mada ;  statesmen  like  Innocent  III.,  or  Wolsey,  or 
Julius  II. ;  or  self-seekers  like  Warburton  or  Hoadly, 
whose  heroic  attempt  to  serve  God  and  Mammon  is 
imitated  in  everything  but  success  by  two- thirds  of 
the  Christian  world  in  every  age.  It  is  not  for  their 
sakes  that  this  cry  is  raised.  But  it  is  saints  like 
St.  Francis,  thinkers  like  St.  Thomas,  prophets  like 
St.  Catharine,  mystics  like  St.  Teresa,  teachers  like 
Fenelon  or  NeAvman,  whose  life  offers  so  lamentable 
a  spectacle.  For  taken  at  their  highest  they  left  a 
root  of  harm,  and  shifted  on  to  a  side  track  the 
thoughts  and  the  hopes  and  the  activities  of  men. 
Instead  of  preaching  practical  benevolence,  glorify- 
ing work  for  its  own  sake,  they  ministered  to  idle 
dreams ;  instead  of  denouncing  social  injustice  and 
denouncing  nothing  else  ;  instead,  that  is,  of  treating 
suffering  as  the  one  supreme  evil,  they  have  wasted 
their  own  powers  and  those  of  others  in  gazing  at 
a  mirage ;  in  striving  for  peace  of  mind,  they  have 


122         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

often  been  indifferent  to  comfort  of  the  body,  have 
at  times  actually  belauded  pain  as  a  means  of  im- 
provement, and  in  the  very  abnegation  which  they 
taught,  have  sought  a  vision  of  a  Kingdom  of  the 
other  Avorld  rather  than  effective  reality  in  the 
amelioration  of  this.  To  make  up  for  the  lack  of 
good  prose  in  the  world  they  have  given  it  in- 
different poetry;  and  added  to  human  misery  by 
so  doing. 

The  fact  is  true.  For  the  Cross  rather  consecrates 
suffering  than  diminishes  it.  Our  Lord  came  "not 
to  send  peace  on  earth  but  a  sword."  Christians  will 
always  be  "  dreamers."  If  the  Church  ever  becomes 
really  efficient,  its  days  as  a  spiritual  power  would 
be  at  an  end.  Those  who  desire  the  Church  to  be 
"forceful"  in  the  American  sense  ought  to  imitate 
the  methods  of  that  Company  of  Jesus,  in  which 
practical  efficiency  has  been  carried  to  a  point  with- 
out parallel  in  history,  and  of  whose  success  we  have 
recent  illustration. 

On  the  other  hand,  "  other-worldliness  "  may  mean 
this-worldliness  of  the  worst  kind.  You  may  talk  of 
the  value  of  treasure  in  heaven  when  you  merely 
mean  that  you  do  not  desire  to  be  disturbed  in  the 
enjoyment  of  your  treasure  on  earth.  It  is  mere 
hypocrisy  to  say  that  suffering  is  a  means  of  grace, 
and  that  comfort  does  not  matter,  when  you  mean 
that  it  does  matter  to  you,  and  does  not  to  those 


A   PLEA   FOR   OTHER-WORLDLINESS        123 

who  have  to  endure  the  results  of  your  selfishness. 
If  our  critics  force  us  to  the  question,  how  far  the 
Cross  is  anything  real  to  us,  or  how  we  fulfil  the 
duty  of  brotherhood,  we  ought  only  to  thank  them 
in  deep  penitence. 

Still,  though  the  reproach  may  be  true  in  detail, 
taken  as  a  whole  it  has  no  grounds.  Christianity  is 
other-worldly.  It  is  not  merely  a  system  of  thought, 
or  a  moral  code,  or  a  philanthropy,  or  a  romance,  or 
all  of  these  added  together,  that  render  it  a  mystery 
so  "  rich  and  strange."  It  is  something  unique.  It 
attracts  alike  and  repels  men  because  it  is  itself,  and 
not  anything  else.  Alike  in  basis  and  nature,  in 
motive  and  method,  in  ideal  and  result,  the  Chris- 
tian faith  differs  from  all  its  rivals  far  more  than 
it  resembles  them.  This  is  the  very  reason  why  it 
always  eludes  and  yet  evokes  their  criticism.  From 
the  non-Christian  standpoint  we  are  bound  to  appear 
irrational,  quixotic,  futile,  silly.  If  we  do  not  appear 
so,  it  is  because  we  have  lowered  the  flag  and  are 
striving  to  fight  the  world  with  its  own  weapons — a 
course  which  nothing  could  redeem  from  insincerity 
save  its  inherent  stupidity.  For  the  children  of  this 
world  are,  in  their  generation,  wiser — very  much 
wiser — than  the  children  of  light. 

Christianity  is  not  in  its  basis  of  this  world.  It  is 
no  mere  system  of  thought  based  upon  reflection. 
It  is  a  life  rooted  in   faith.    Thus  a  supernatural 


124         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

grace,  a  gift  from  beyond,  is  its  foundation  ;  for  faith 
is  more  than  an  intellectual  conviction.  It  is,  of 
course,  arguable  that  we  are  under  a  delusion  in 
claiming  this  high  prerogative ;  it  is  not  arguable 
that  having  made  the  claim,  we  are  free  to  discuss 
the  creed,  as  though  it  rested  on  some  foundation 
other  than  faith,  such  as  reasoning  or  historical 
criticism,  although  it  may  gain  support  from  both. 
The  creed  may  well  find  illumination  in  many 
different  philosophies,  which  will  vary  with  the 
temper  of  the  time  and  with  the  temperament  of  the 
individual.  But  it  can  never  be  identified  with  any 
one  of  them  without  ceasing  to  be  itself. 

An  illustration  of  this  is  an  obvious  topic  to-day. 
The  recent  Papal  Encyclical  is  far  more  obscur- 
antist in  what  it  affirms  than  in  what  it  denies.  If 
Modernism  means  all  that  that  amazing  document 
declares  it  to  mean,  it  is  as  a  system  non-Christian. 
Complete  severance  between  the  Christ  of  fact  and 
the  Christ  of  faith  would,  in  the  long  run,  be 
destructive  of  belief  in  either.  But  when  the  Pope 
goes  on  to  identify  the  Christian  faith  with  a  par- 
ticular philosophy,  he  is  giving  the  case  into  the 
hands  of  those  whom  he  attacks.  Were  it  true  that 
Christian  faith  is  an  intellectual  system  reached  by 
investigation,  men  can  hardly  be  blamed  if  they  select 
their  system  from  the  twentieth  rather  than  the 
thirteenth  century,  especially  when  they  have  the 


A   PLEA    FOR   OTHER- WORLDLTNESS        125 

terrific  triumphs  of  modern  science  for  compurgators. 
In  fact,  if  tlie  Pope  were  right  in  his  underlying 
theory,  the  Modernists  could  hardly  be  wrong  in 
their  philosophic  system.  The  value  of  this  instance 
to  us  lies  in  its  reminder  that  Christianity  does  not 
profess  to  make  appeal  except  to  faith,  and  that  we 
shall  only  cover  ourselves  with  ridicule  if  we  ignore 
the  other-worldly  basis  of  the  creed. 

What  is  true  of  the  basis  is  also  true  of  the  nature 
of  the  faith.  As  a  recent  writer  of  great  power,  Dr. 
Bussell,  in  his  Bampton  Lectures,  has  pointed  out, 
the  appeal  of  the  miracle  of  redemption  is  so  en- 
thralling, just  because  it  comes  from  the  other  world. 
Men  are  crying  for  a  w^ay  of  escape,  for  freedom,  for 
something  beyond  the  iron  law  of  natural  uniformity. 
It  is  the  very  quality  which  wins  the  attack  of  those 
who  do  not  make  this  cry  which  wins  disciples.  Were 
it,  as  some  ask,  to  be  bereft  of  this  "  unworldly," 
irrational  character,  then  it  would  no  longer  be 
worth  either  attack  or  adhesion.  It  would  be  like 
Cleopatra,  "  withered  by  age  and  staled  by  custom." 
Men  neither  love  nor  hate  what  has  become  a  centre 
of  indifference.  To-day,  at  least,  there  are  abundant 
signs  that  Christianity  may  be  mocked  and  assailed, 
but  remains  the  most  interesting  and  vivid  of 
human  facts.  Surely  it  would  be  a  pity  if,  while  we 
endeavoured  to  make  the  mystery  intelligible,  we 
should  only  succeed  in  rendering  the  wonder — dull. 


126         THE    GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  motive  of  practical  acti- 
vity lies  for  the  Christian  in  the  other  Avorld.  I 
think  we  have  lost  something  by  our  disuse  of  the 
terms  dear  to  our  forefathers,  pilgrimage  and  pro- 
bation. Doubtless,  we  can  overdo  this  and  treat  the 
truth  that  we  are  pilgrims  in  this  life  on  the  way  to 
another  in  such  a  one-sided  Avay  as  to  neglect  the 
real  joy  of  life  here  and  now.  And  instead  of  the 
old  words  we  ought  surely  to  sing : — 

"I'm  not  a  stranger  here, 
Heaven  is  my  home," 

for  both  are  true.  We  should  learn  to  see  in  the 
beauty  and  gladness  of  earth,  not  enemies  to  be 
shunned,  but  evidence  and  hope  of  "  the  glory  that 
shall  be  revealed  in  us ! " 

The  true  proportions  can  be  seen  by  an  instance. 
Youth  is  a  time  of  preparing.  But  it  would  be  a 
very  poor  boyhood  that  was  spent  in  thinking  only 
of  the  future.  Perhaps,  indeed,  the  reason  why  the 
intellectual  results  of  public  school  education  are  so 
inferior  to  the  bodily  is  just  this  fact.  In  regard  to 
bodily  training  the  youth  soon  learns  its  value,  not 
merely  for  the  future,  but  for  the  moment.  In  re- 
gard to  mental  training,  too  often  the  only  thought 
for  a  future  profession  is  made  a  stimulus.  We 
might,  perhaps,  get  more  results  if  we  could  make 
him  see  that  intellectual  activity  makes  everything 
else  (games  included)  more  interesting  and  joyful 


A    PLEA    FOR    OTHER-WORLDLINESS        127 

here  and  now.  At  the  same  time,  nobody  treats 
youth  as  though  it  were  anything  but  a  part  of  an 
episode  in  life.  So  with  the  Christian.  This  life  is 
only  an  episode  in  a  career  whose  grandeur  we  can 
but  dimly  imagine.  All  our  values  must  be  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  men  who  treat  it  as  a  whole. 

Still  more  is  this  the  case  with  social  ideals. 
The  Christian,  like  the  non-Christian  philanthropist, 
is  appalled  at  the  vast  spectacle  of  ugliness  and 
tyranny  which  is  the  modern  notion  of  civilisation. 
But  such  changes  he  demands,  he  demands  because 
man  is  primarily  an  other-worldly  bemg,  and  existing 
arrangements  tend  to  turn  him  from  his  true  end, 
not  because  suffering  is  for  him  the  supreme  evil  or 
social  amelioration  the  one  ideal  aim.  As  an  acute 
modern  critic  hinted  when  he  called  himself  a 
voluptuary,  the  doctrine  of  the  Cross  is  the  very 
antipodes  of  the  non-Christian  view  of  physical 
suffering.  Very  often,  too,  the  Christian  pays  less 
attention  to  such  matters  than  reformers  approve. 
This  is  inevitable.  It  is  not  his  first  business,  which 
is  to  seek  "  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteous- 
ness." The  duty,  however  arduous,  of  making  earth 
a  fairer  place  to  dwell  in,  yields  in  stringency  to  that 
of  helping  men  to  see  what  is  harder  still,  that  they 
have  not  long  to  dwell  here,  that  how  they  live  is 
more  important  than  what  they  live  on. 

The  truth  is  that  the  social  millennium,  if  it  were 


128         THE    GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

once  attained,  would  merely  afford  a  more  salient 
proof  of  the  gulf  that  divides  the  Christian  from  his 
non-Christian  fellow-worker.     Juster  distribution  of 
wealth,   more   widely  diffused   culture,   and    lasting 
international   peace,  might   diminish  external  evils, 
but  apart  from  faith  could  effect  no  redemption  of 
human   nature.     The  true  function  of  the  Church 
will  be  discerned,  and  its  supreme  task  will  begin, 
when  men  are  tempted  by  contentment  to  apathy 
and  by  universal  education  to  unbelief.     Every  im- 
provement in  the  means  of  life,  whether  intellectual 
or   physical,  brings  with   it   a  development  of  the 
substitutes  for  religion,  and  the  acquiescence  in  these 
substitutes  by  numbers  of  men  who,  less  educated 
or  less   comfortable,  would   have   been   submissive, 
exemplary   Christians.     This   is,   indeed,  no   reason 
why  Christians  should  not  forward  such  improvement 
by  every  means  in  their  power.     But  it  is  a  reason  to 
prevent  them  imagining  that  their  task  will  be  done 
when  its  difficulties  are  only  beginning,  or  that  the 
reality  of  the  other  world,  the  sense  of  sin,  and  the 
romance  of  sacrifice  will  more  readily  appeal  to  the 
majority  when  there  is  less  on  earth  of  which  they 
can  complain,  or  because  the  grosser  tyrannies  and 
more  palpable  vices  are  no  longer  obvious.     A  world 
wherein  everybody  is  respectable  might  very  well  be 
a  world  wherein  no  one  is  religious. 

The  real  task  of  the  Church  in  the  future  will 


A    PLEA    FOR    OTHER-WORLDLINESS        129 

neither  be  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  to  the  ill- 
equipped  nor  the  redemption  of  the  ultra-luxurious, 
but  the  awakening  of  the  vision  of  God  in  a  world 
rationally  cultivated  and  enjoying  moderate  though 
not  excessive  comfort. 

The  means,  moreover,  even  to  this  end  are  different 
for  the  Christian  from  what  they  are  to  the  world 
without.  As  a  citizen  the  Christian  has  his  own 
views,  and  seeks  to  promote  them  in  the  ordinary 
way  by  legislation  in  a  society  which  is  not,  and 
in  one  sense  ought  not  to  be  anything  but,  hetero- 
geneous in  religion.  But  as  Churchmen,  Christians 
are  bound  by  other  sanctions.  And  I  doubt  whether 
any  external  force  could  produce  any  effect  at  all 
comparable  to  that  of  the  private  lives  of  Christians, 
if  they  really  believed  what  they  say  they  believe ; 
and  felt  as  their  Master  in  His  amazed  inquiry,  that 
it  was  simply  not  worth  while  scrambling  for  the 
means  of  ostentation  when  they  already  possess  the 
food  and  raiment  with  which  they  are  bidden  to 
be  content.  For  it  is,  surely,  not  the  struggle  for 
existence,  but  the  making  haste  to  be  rich  and  the 
practice  of  idleness,  as  a  profession,  that  is  the  cause 
of  the  specitically  modern  social  evils.  And,  if  the 
Christian  were  as  other-worldly  and  careless  as  his 
Master,  and  would  learn  to  stop  when  he  had  enough, 
and  not  make  the  world's  opinion  the  standard  of 
comfort,  the  diminution  in  the  causes  of  economic 

I 


130         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

wrong  would  be  far  greater  than  would  be  effected 
by  mere  legislation.  The  gaiety  of  the  nations  owed 
more  to  the  mediaeval  habit  of  keeping  saints'  days, 
than  it  is  ever  likely  to  do  to  legislative  bank  holi- 
days. We  are  scarcely  in  danger  to-day  of  the 
undue  reverence  for  the  character  of  Mary.  If  we 
were,  even  Martha  might  find  her  task  greatly 
simplified. 

This  leads  us  on.  Whatever  Christianity  means 
or  does  not  mean,  it  means  prayer.  Prayer  is 
as  necessary  to  the  spiritual  as  breathing  to  the 
natural  life.  And  yet  to  the  non-Christian  it  is 
bound  to  seem  unwarrantable  trifling,  waste  of 
energy,  to  be  tolerated,  if  at  all,  as  a  form  of  re- 
creation, an  added  spaciousness  to  life.  There  is 
no  gulf  comparable  to  that  which  divides  the  man 
who  prays  from  the  man  who  does  not  pray.  Yet 
many  Christians  have  so  far  yielded  to  the  pressure 
of  their  adversaries  that  they  seem  to  regard  prayer 
as  little  more  than  a  necessary  evil,  the  sine  qud 
non  indeed  of  Christianity,  but  no  real  part  of  it,  the 
dull  though  inevitable  prelude  to  genuine  activity. 
And  yet  "prayer  is  work"  is  a  truer  maxim  than 
its  customary  converse.  In  the  end  the  most 
important  part  of  our  lives  will  prove  to  have  been 
neither  our  thoughts,  nor  our  deeds,  but  our  prayers. 
In  the  long  run,  says  Bishop  Creighton,  one  learns 
that  the  only  thing  we  can  do  for  others  is  to  pray 


A   PLEA   FOR   OTHER-WORLDLINESS        131 

for  them.     And  may  God  forgive  those  of  iis  who 
have  neglected  this  duty. 

Prayer  is  perhaps  the  most  shining  instance  of 
the  truth  that  other-worldliness  is  the  very  essence 
of  the  Christian  life.  I  am  not  here  asserting  that 
Christians  are  better  or  wiser  than  other  men — very 
often  they  are  neither  the  one  nor  the  other — but 
they  are  different.  This  is  even  truer  of  the  ideal 
and  the  resulting  character.  Above  all  this,  the 
Christian  is  gay.  Was  there  ever  a  more  uncon- 
ventionally joyful  spirit  than  St.  Paul,  or  any 
schoolboy  so  playful  as  St.  Francis  ?  Not  peace  nor 
unison,  not  joy,  not  strength  nor  earnestness  is  the 
cachet  of  the  Christian,  but  gaiety.  He  is  ever 
shocking  worldly  men,  strenuous  moralists,  by  some 
play  of  the  spirit  which  seems  sacrilegious.  This 
gaiety  is  other-worldly  in  origin — it  comes  from  the 
love  of  One  unseen ;  it  is  grounded  on  the  belief  that 
nothing  really  matters  if  all  things  work  together 
for  good  to  them  that  love  God,  and  it  is  nurtured 
by  the  daily  denial  and  sacrifice  which  is  the  in- 
evitable and  invariable  consequence  of  love.  There 
is  no  true  love,  earthly  or  heavenly,  which  does  not 
issue  in  sacrifice  and  giving.  And  the  suffering  in- 
herent is  its  glory  and  its  crown,  and  the  Cross  its 
symbol.  It  is  this  eternal  romanticism,  this  paradox 
of  the  Crucifix,  that  makes  Christians  incompre- 
hensible to  every  one  else — now  as  ever,  to  the  Jews 


132         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

a  stumbling-block,  to  the  Greeks  foolishness.  Like 
the  poet  Avhose  heart  dances  with  the  daffodils  the 
Christian  delights  in  the  world  of  things  and  events 
with  a  sense  of  their  inner  glory  that  seems  all  but 
blasphemous  to  the  serious  moralist  and  the  educated 
worldling,  who  associate  gaiety  with  the  frivolous, 
and  are  staggered  by  a  religion  so  light-hearted  and 
full  of  colour,  so  passionate  and  reckless. 

Yes.  In  all  these  things,  in  its  ground  which 
is  faith,  its  motive  which  is  eternity,  its  method 
which  is  prayer,  its  ideal  which  is  gladness,  does 
the  other-worldliness  of  the  Christian  life  display 
itself  as  a  "  gazing-stock."  And  we  have  to  choose. 
Either  our  ideals  are  to  be  of  this  world  or  not. 
No  passing  resemblance  and  no  ingenuity  of  reasoning 
can  avail  to  save  us.  The  choice  is  forced  upon  us 
by  the  very  fact  of  our  being.  Hard  though  it  be 
to  take  whichever  side  we  do  take,  let  us  not  delude 
ourselves  with  the  pleasant  fiction  that  we  can  take 
both  sides  or  take  neither. 

My  brothers,  for  some  of  you  at  this  time  the 
choice  is  beginning  to  be  realised  as  it  had  not 
before.  Upon  you  especially,  Avho  have  but  entered 
upon  the  glories  of  this  place  with  its  rich  traditions 
and  the  splendour  of  its  hopes,  there  has  just  dawned 
"  the  vision  of  the  world,  and  all  the  wonder  that 
may  be."  What  form  shall  that  vision  take  ?  To 
some  it  will  come  as  the  harmony  of  bodily  powers, 


A    PLEA    FOR   OTHER-WORLDLINESS        133 

the  progress  in  health  and  joy  of  the  outward  life, 
and  the  gifts  of  character  it  brings  in  its  train.  To 
some  will  dawn  the  vision  of  the  human  spirit, 
as  disciplined  by  a  hundred  generations  of  culture, 
the  ministry  of  beauty  with  the  rest  it  tells  of  in 
the  glories  of  earth  and  the  imagination  of  man. 
Some  will  be  held  by  the  austere  but  enthralling 
charm  of  knowledge,  with  the  hope  of  correcting  the 
shallow  frivolity  of  current  opinions,  and  adding 
something  real  to  the  heritage  of  thought.  To  some 
will  come  the  dream  of  duty  done  for  country  or 
profession,  in  careers  truly  liberal.  Others  will  be 
caught  by  the  heroism  of  service,  the  selfless  aim 
of  brightening  the  lives  of  the  disinherited,  and 
of  giving  to  "  the  dim  common  populations  "  a  little 
— it  can  be  but  a  little — of  those  myriad  boons  alike 
of  gladness  and  opportunity  showered  upon  us  here. 
All  these  aims  are  worthy ;  and  in  their  due 
degree  appealing.  But  in  themselves  they  are  not 
enough,  and  must,  if  taken  alone,  ere  long  reveal 
their  hollowness.  Even  the  life  of  this  world  cannot 
wisely  be  spent  without  thought  of  the  other.  Out- 
ward exercise,  clean  and  courageous  living,  are  good  ; 
but  soon,  too  soon,  men  learn  that  they  are  but  a 
part,  and  that  a  small  one,  of  human  life.  Culture 
in  every  form  is  high  and  noble,  but  only  if  it  points 
beyond.  For  it  turns  either  to  a  selfish  and  fastidious 
cynicism,  or  to  a  despairing  emptiness,  unless  earthly 


134         THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

beauty  and  poetic  passion  are  seen  as  the  symbols  of 
the  "  altogether  lovely."  Erudition  for  its  own  sake 
arouses  ere  long  the  cry,  To  Avhat  purpose  was 
this  waste  ?  Even  discovery  and  the  certainties 
of  science,  the  sequences  of  unalterable  law,  only 
generate  their  own  extinction,  the  desire  for  escape, 
the  cry  for  deliverance,  Avhich  finds  no  answer  but  in 
Christ.  Social  and  philanthropic  ideals  seem  for  a 
time  to  drag  out  of  a  man  more  than  was  in  him, 
and  endow  the  self  with  a  life  beyond  life;  but  so 
long  as  he  looks  no  farther  he  finds  them  pall,  and 
the  question  is  forced  upon  him.  Are  men  any 
better  or  happier  for  all  my  striving  ?  And  if  they 
are,  what  does  it  matter  ?  Where  does  it  lead  ? 
The  aims  of  this  world  taken  at  their  highest  and 
purged  of  all  that  is  base,  or  ugly,  or  selfish,  leave 
us  at  the  last  unsatisfied,  and  crying,  "  Is  this 
the  end,  is  this  the  end  ? "  For  in  these  things 
alone  there  is — 

"  Neither  joy  nor  love  nor  light, 
Nor  certainty  nor  peace  nor  hope  for  pain, 
And  wo  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain, 
Swept  with  confused  alarm  of  struggle  and  fight, 
Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night." 

It  is  God  we  are  seeking  for;  the  other  world, 
which  alone  can  give  reality  to  this,  alone  can  invest 
duty  with  enduring  meaning,  can  find  for  beneficence 
a  certain  value,  for  knowledge  an  ordered  place,  and 


A    PLEA    FOR   OTHER- WORLDLINESS        135 

flash  upon  the  shows  of  earthly  beauty  some  hint  at 
least  of  the  eternal  loveliness.  Men  bid  us  limit 
our  aims  and  hopes  to  this  life,  and  turn  from 
the  dazzling  mirage  of  the  other.  Our  answer  is 
that  we  cannot.  We  may  try,  try  hard,  try — as  a 
race — for  generations,  for  centuries;  but  we  cannot 
do  it.     God  is  calling  us. 

In  all  ages  He  calls  men  to  their  home.  More 
than  ever  are  the  signs  of  His  call  apparent  in 
the  restless,  childish,  pathetically  eager  world  in 
which  we  live.  "  For  here  we  have  no  continuing 
city,  but  we  seek  one  to  come."  It  is  not  so  much 
impious  or  sinful  to  seek  to  chain  to  earth  beings 
bom  to  give  gladness  to  angels,  or  to  treat  as  things 
of  this  world  only  spirits  who  may  be  the  friends 
of  God,  as  it  is  futile.  It  is  impossible.  It  may 
not  be.  "  For  God  created  man  to  be  immortal,  and 
made  him  an  image  of  His  own  eternity." 


THE   NEED   OF   AUTHORITY   IN 
THE  CHURCH^ 

"Feed  My  sheep."— St.  John  xxi. 

We  enter  this  evening  upon  the  Festival  of  St. 
Peter,  the  apostle  to  Avhom  this  cathedral  church 
is  dedicated.  It  is  not  unfitting  that  the  place 
which  has  been  so  intimately  associated  with  the 
fortunes  of  the  English  Church,  which  breathes  in 
the  dignity  of  its  venerable  aisles  the  very  spirit 
of  our  national  Christianity,  should  own  as  patron 
that  chosen  and  pre-eminent  apostle  to  whom  was 
first  given  the  great  commission  to  teach  and  to 
rule.  At  such  a  moment  and  in  such  a  year  as 
this — with  the  echoes  of  the  great  congress  still 
in  our  ears — it  seems  a  duty,  and  indeed  almost 
a  necessity,  that  we  should  strive  to  gather  up  and 
crystallise  our  notions  of  authority,  and  to  express 
that  mingling  of  liberty  with  order  which  a  great 
prelate  once  declared  to  be  the  distinctive  note  of 
our  branch  of  the  Church  Catholic. 

For  the  words  of  my  text  have  proved  the  centre 

^  Preached  in  Exeter  Cathedral,  June  28,  1908. 
136 


NEED  OF  AUTHORITY  IN  THE  CHURCH   137 

of  many  conflicts,  and  they  are  still  employed  to 
justify  the  claims  of  the  Roman  Patriarch  to  be 
absolute  monarch  of  all  Christians.  At  this  stage, 
however,  and  in  this  place,  it  can  hardly  be  need- 
ful to  repudiate  afresh  those  notions  of  illimitable, 
inalienable  dominion  in  the  Church,  of  political 
supremacy  over  the  State,  or  of  doctrinal  infalli- 
bility, of  which  the  world  has  heard  already  too  much. 
At  least  I  shall  not  to-night  re-argue  that  old  cause. 
It  is  enough  that  we  are  here.  We  stand  as  a 
Church  to  witness  that  Romanism  is  not  Catholicity, 
that  the  absorption  of  all  power  by  one  person  is  the 
worst  form  of  individualism,  that  national  and  par- 
ticular Churches  are  no  mere  accidents,  but  have  as 
Churches  a  place  in  the  Avhole  body ;  that  they  have 
a  distinct  and  real  life,  or  as  we  say  now,  a  mind  and 
a  will  of  their  own,  though  always  as  sharing  with 
others  the  order,  the  creed,  and  the  sacraments 
common  to  all.  We  stand,  in  brief,  for  the  social 
and  federal  idea  in  the  Church  against  a  doctrine 
which  is  as  autocratic  as  a  Caliphate,  and  (in  the 
long  run)  as  subjective  as  that  of  Luther  or  Calvin. 
That  is  the  issue  between  England  and  Rome,  between 
the  Catholic  view  and  the  Ultramontane.  Attempts 
are  many  to  explain  away  this  conception,  and  in  some 
form  or  other  to  deny  the  reality  and  meaning  of  our 
English  heritage.  But  they  will  not  endure.  For 
the  forces  of  life  are  against  them,  the  traditions  and 


138         THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

history  of  the  English  nation  as  well  as  the  Church 
will  interpose  an  impassable  barrier ;  Englishmen  may 
conceivably  recognise  too  little,  they  will  never  re- 
cognise too  much,  of  the  claims  and  powers  of  other 
branches  of  the  Church.  The  individuality  of  our 
Church  is  a  real  thing,  and  we  are  not  likely  to  lose 
it  so  long  as  the  Church  exists. 

But  it  is  the  individuality  of  a  Church  or  com- 
munity that  is  ours,  not  the  unregulated  freedom 
of  mere  personal  caprice.  We  stand,  as  I  said, 
against  the  tyranny,  theoretic  even  more  than 
practical,  of  Rome,  but  we  stand  no  less  strongly, 
no  less  distinctly,  against  the  anarchy  and  indis- 
cipline of  a  merely  subjective  religion.  It  has  been 
said  that  an  Englishman  always  realises  himself  as 
member  of  a  group,  school,  or  college,  a  regiment 
or  a  union,  a  sect  or  a  party,  while  the  French- 
man (except  his  membership  of  the  State)  is  rather 
seen  as  a  separate  isolated  individual.  This  is  true. 
But  it  is  a  truth  which  needs  emphasising  a  great 
deal  more  than  is  always  the  case  in  regard  to  our 
Churchmanship.  No  more  in  our  religion  than  in 
any  other  part  of  life  (indeed  a  great  deal  less)  can 
we  live  to  ourselves  alone.  We  are  members  of 
a  society,  a  fellowship ;  to  that  society  we  owe 
allegiance,  and  it  has  over  us — so  long  as  we 
remain  its  members — authority,  power.  We  can 
leave  it  if  we  please,  but  if  we  do  not,  we  are  not 


NEED  OF  AUTHORITY  IN  THE  CHURCH   139 

at  our  own  pleasure  as  to  obeying  its  rules  or 
sharing  its  faith. 

Because  we  deny  the  authority  of  the  Pope  in 
its  developed  form,  we  are  not  therefore  to  deny  all 
authority  in  the  Church,  or  to  suppose  that  to  the 
enlightened  modern  man  the  claims  of  his  Church 
shall  mean  little  in  doctrine  and  nothing  in  dis- 
cipline, save  and  in  so  far  as  he  finds  it  more 
convenient  to  worship  in  company  with  his  fellows. 
Yet  this  is  the  clamour  of  the  hour.  "  To  us  eccle- 
siastical discipline  has  ceased  to  be  even  an  im- 
pertinence," says  one  writer  with  a  sneer.  "  The 
religions  of  authority  are  decaying,  to  be  supplanted 
inevitably  by  the  religion  of  the  spirit,"  says  an- 
other. Books  pour  from  the  presses  of  England 
and  America  which  reiterate  this  notion.  Differing 
in  many  things  they  commonly  agree  in  this,  that 
the  writers  repudiate  the  Church  and  the  creeds, 
and  tell  us  each  his  own  view — not  of  what  the 
Christian  faith  is,  but  of  what  he  would  like  it  to  be. 

They  would  be  right  if  all  they  meant  were  that 
faith  is  given  for  life  rather  than  theorising,  that 
God's  revelation  teaches  us  of  ourselves  no  less  than 
of  Him,  that,  so  far  from  being  alien  and  external, 
or  merely  imposed,  it  finds  its  verification  in  our 
most  inward  experience ;  for  "  in  Him  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being."  Religion  is  essentially 
personal.    The  appeal  of  the  Crucified  comes  with 


140         THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

fresh  poignancy  to  every  sinner.  The  hope  of  the 
Resurrection  uphfts  with  new  joy  every  sufferer. 

But  far  more  than  this  is  claimed  by  writers  of 
the  school  or  schools  I  am  discussing.  They  would 
treat  creeds  and  Churches  as  at  best  utilities,  at 
worst  encumbrances,  Man's  intercourse  with  God, 
it  is  said,  is  direct.  All  the  elaborate  sj^stem  of 
doctrine  and  ritual  and  sacraments,  all  the  parapher- 
nalia of  ecclesiasticism,  are  indeed  paraphernalia; 
they  arc  nothing  compared  with  the  immediate 
vision  of  God  or  with  the  knowledge  given  us  by 
reason  and  conscience.  So  far  as  the  vision  is  im- 
mediate and  the  knowledge  direct  this  maybe  true. 
But  reasoning  is  not  an  immediate  process ;  and  for 
most  of  us  knowledge  of  God  does,  as  a  fact  (not 
as  theory),  come  mediated  by  friend  and  teacher, 
through  family  and  Church,  through  human  love 
and  earthly  agonies,  we  "  mount  and  that  hardly  to 
eternal  life."  As  somebody  said,  it  would  be  truer 
to  assert  that  all  things  and  persons  are  mediators 
— schoolmasters — to  lead  men  to  God,  than  that 
none  are.  Otherwise  it  could  make  little  difference 
whether  we  had  heard  of  the  name  of  Jesus  or  no. 

The  claim  of  the  Church  to  authority  rests  upon 
tAvo  principles  —  the  social  nature  of  man  and  the 
lordship  of  Christ.  As  Christians  we  are  disciples, 
pupils,  learners,  and  we  owe  loyalty  to  our  teacher; 
and  we  are  also  Churchmen,  members  of  a  fellowship. 


NEED  OF  AUTHORITY  IN  THE  CHURCH   141 

inheritors  of  a  kingdom,  and  owe  allegiance  to  the 
great  community  whose  life  we  share.  Through  the 
Church  we  become  "  heirs  of  all  the  ages,"  and  enter 
into  the  whole  religious  experience  of  the  race.  To 
attempt  to  do  without  it,  to  throw  it  off  as  useless, 
is  as  idle  and  as  wrong:  as  it  is  to  hide  our  talent  in 
a  napkin,  and  leave  men  unenriched  by  the  special 
gifts  of  our  day  and  generation.  It  would  be  analo- 
gous in  politics  for  an  Englishman  to  strive  to  forget 
the  story  of  his  race  and  start  as  though  he  were  a 
Kamschatkan.  We  cannot,  if  we  would,  repudiate 
the  past ;  we  ought  not,  though  we  might,  leave  our 
heritage  untransformed — rather,  like  a  wise  house- 
holder, we  shall  bring  forth  from  our  treasure-house 
things  new  and  old. 

Christianity  is  in  its  essence  social.  Whatever 
else  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  means,  it  means 
this — that  God  is  Himself  a  fellowship ;  and  we.  His 
Church  on  earth,  are  to  express,  as  best  we  may, 
that  divine  harmony.  If  God  is  love  and  we  ought 
also  to  love  one  another,  society — i.e.  a  Church — is 
of  the  very  foundation  of  our  religion,  and  society 
implies  authority,  submitting  ourselves  one  to 
another  with  mutual  forbearance,  distinctions  be- 
tween "some  prophets,  some  apostles,  some  pastors 
and  teachers."  Read  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  the 
Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  Peter,  the  Apocalypse  of 
St.  John,  our  Lord's  own  words  about  the  kingdom, 


142         THE    GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

and  you  will  see  how  impossible  is  the  notion  of 
religion  as  a  purely  personal  and  private  thing,  how 
it  is  intertwined  with  notions  of  common  life,  common 
faith,  common  worship — ay,  with  government  and 
subjection.  If  then  Christianity  be  a  society,  if  its 
end  is  to  endure,  and  its  meaning  not  to  be 
obliterated  it  must  have  within  it  organs  and  officers, 
must  issue  rule  and  discipline,  must  formulate  its 
basis  of  union  in  belief.  The  claim  to  dispense  with 
authority  in  religion  is  at  bottom  the  self-assertion 
of  personal  pride,  of  the  self-centred  and  self-suffi- 
cient individual,  too  often  the  ideal  of  modern  culture, 
whose  gift  seems  rather  to  make  a  critic  than  a  man. 
But  this  is  not  all.  Those  who  repudiate  all 
Church  authority  cannot  in  the  long  run  maintain 
that  of  Christ.  It  is  futile  to  declare  that  by  our 
own  unaided  reflection  on  life  or  by  a  sort  of  intuition 
— this  is  apparently  the  means — Ave  can  arrive  at  the 
wonder  of  the  Incarnation  or  at  the  tenderness  of 
the  Atonement.  We  cannot.  But  we  can,  if  we 
will,  eviscerate  the  miracle  of  its  wonder ;  we  can 
attenuate  the  Atonement  into  some  merely  natural 
process  if  we  apply  our  ingenuity  to  such  an  end ; 
though  the  ideas  have  to  be  "  given  "  before  we  can 
reduce  even  the  value  of  the  gift.  More  than  this ; 
contemptuous  of  all  Church  authority — i.e.  of  the 
accumulated  wisdom  of  the  saints  and  sages  of  God 
— we  are  certain  to  be  critical  of  Christ ;  we  shall 


NEED  OF  AUTHORITY  IN  THE  CHURCH   143 

agree  with  Him  when  we  like,  and  disagree  when  He 
is  difficult.  We  shall  degrade  Him  from  our  Master 
into  a  servant;  we  shall  sit  in  judgment  on  His 
teaching,  sift  His  acts  and  words,  and  ignore  His 
claims — for  they  are  claims — to  rule. 

There  is  no  way  out  of  the  dilemma.  You  cannot 
accept  Christ  as  Master  and  be  as  though  you  had 
not  accepted  Him.  You  must  think  differently,  will 
differently,  act  (or  at  least  try  to  act)  differently — 
because  He  is  your  Lord.  How  often  we  use  these 
words  as  though  they  meant  a  title  and  not  a  claim. 
In  brief,  you  surrender  to  the  principle  of  authority 
the  moment  you  say  "Jesus  is  Lord,"  and  nothing 
can  make  you  your  OAvn  master  after  that. 

True,  this  lordship  brings  the  truest  freedom,  and 
in  the  long  run  is  expressive  of  your  inner  self. 
But  it  does  not  seem  so  at  the  time  any  more  than 
the  first  term  at  school  reveals  the  freedom  which 
will  be  yours  when  you  have  learnt  the  fruits  of 
its  discipline,  or  than  the  first  trial  to  take  an  oar 
in  a  boat  seems  natural  or  easy.  It  is  only  by  trust- 
ing the  "  coach,"  whether  in  boats  or  learning,  that 
you  learn  in  time  what  freedom  of  muscle  or  brain 
can  mean ;  only  by  submitting  yourself  to  the 
common  life,  which  is  your  inheritance,  to  family 
or  school  training,  can  you  become  in  time  "free 
of  the  fellowship."  Even  so  it  is  only  by  humility, 
by  submitting,  by  hailing  Christ  as  Master,  by  accept- 


144         THE   GOSrEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

ing  our  own  limitations  and  weakness  and  recognis- 
ing the  wisdom  and  grace  committed  to  the  great 
society  we  call  the  Church — so,  and  only  so,  after 
struggle  and  agony,  can  we  enter  at  last  into  the 
"  glorious  liberty  of  the  children  of  God." 


NOT  PEACE   BUT  A   SWORD  ^ 

"  I  came  not  to  send  peace,  but  a  sword."— St.  Matt.  x.  34-. 

Not  peace  but  a  sword.  What  words  from  Him, 
the  meek  and  gentle !  How  shocked  His  hearers 
must  have  been — Jesus  was  always  shocking  people. 
They  had  witnessed  His  daily  kindness,  His  rare 
and  beautiful  courtesy.  They  had  seen  Him  bless 
little  children,  taking  them  into  His  arms.  They 
had  seen  His  wonderful  cures,  had  nearly  all  of 
them,  doubtless,  had  some  kindred  or  friend  helped 
by  Him ;  tenderness  and  sympathy  and  quiet  love 
they  could  all  discern.  But  where  was  the  sword 
in  the  gracious  words  and  acts  ?  Where  was  there 
a  word  of  severity  or  strife — unless  quite  occa- 
sionally when  the  Pharisees  provoked  Him,  or 
some  hardness  of  the  selfish  rich  stung  Him  into 
denunciation  ?  He  was  not  even  as  John  the 
Baptist,  an  ascetic,  severe  and  aloof.  He  did  not 
disdain  the  common  haunts  of  men ;  He  could  take 
part  in  their  social  pleasures,  eating  and  drinking 
like  any  one  else.     As  they  saw  Him  going  about 

^  Preached  at  Cambridge  before  the  University  Church  Society, 

May  15,  1908, 

145  ^ 


146         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

doing  good,  and  felt  how  sweetly  attuned  His 
nature  was  to  God,  they  must  have  expected  great 
miracles  of  concord  to  be  Avrought  by  His  help. 
That  influence,  they  thought,  would  bring  peace 
where  there  had  been  strife,  joy  for  pain,  the 
garment  of  praise  for  the  spirit  of  heaviness. 

So  they  hoped.  And  then  how  all  this  is  dashed 
by  these  words — not  -peace  hut  a  sword.  I  am  not 
set  to  unite  but  to  divide ;  to  emphasise  the  dif- 
ference between  those  who  follow  my  call  and 
those  who  do  not.  And  so  it  proved.  The  faith 
of  Christ,  if  it  has  added  immeasurably  to  our 
stores  of  love  and  devotion,  has  also  deepened  the 
fires  of  hatred,  and  made  selfishness  more  deliberate. 
Even  inside  His  own  fold,  what  bitter  and  piercing 
hatred  has  come  from  mere  differences  of  view — 
far  deeper  and  sharper  cutting  than  any  before. 
We  witness  in  history,  not  only  the  patience  of 
martyrs,  but  the  strength  of  persecutors;  greater 
saints  and  lives  of  wonder  and  love,  but  also 
worse  sins  and  far  uglier.  It  is  a  common  taunt 
against  Christians  that  their  belief  in  the  Prince 
of  Peace  has  manifested  itself  in  innumerable  and 
bloody  wars,  that  more  divisions  have  been  aroused 
concerning  the  "name  of  our  salvation"  than  for 
any  other  watchword.  Christ  came  to  preach  for- 
giveness and  peace,  and  His  saints  have  led  men 
to  battle.    This  taunt  is  true.     Nor  can  we  answer 


NOT    PEACE    BUT    A    SWORD  147 

it  entirely  in  the  commonplace  retort.  Men  say 
that  it  is  because  Christ's  teaching  has  been  so 
strangely  misconceived,  because  under  His  name 
men  have  often  disguised  their  own  Avorst  passions, 
hatred,  and  cruelty,  and  pride  of  race.  All  this 
may  be  and  has  been;  but  it  gives  but  a  partial 
answer. 

The  truth  is  that  Christ's  call,  being  more  abso- 
lute, more  enthralling  than  any  other  worship  or 
service,  makes  more  difference  than  any  other,  digs 
deeper  lines  of  division.  Inevitably  and  naturally 
it  means  a  greater  effort  to  acknowledge  the  call; 
a  more  vivid  and  piercing  discipline  to  pursue 
it;  a  standard  of  belief  and  action,  distinct  and 
separating. 

If  Jesus  be  what  He  is  said  to  be;  if  the  Car- 
penter of  Nazareth  is  not  merely  the  teacher  and 
friend  of  man,  but  the  Only-begotten  Son  of  God ; 
if  by  a  sacrifice  unique  and  inexplicable  He  has 
cleansed  us  from  the  guilt  and  power  of  sin;  if 
that  Cross  is  to  be  our  ideal  and  our  glory,  not 
our  burden  and  our  shame,  then  we  as  Christians 
are  moving  in  a  different  world  from  our  fellow- 
men.  We  have  before  us  a  faith  and  an  aim  like 
others,  in  that  they,  too,  have  faiths  and  aims,  but 
far  more  unlike  than  like  them.  And  we  must 
be  as  strangers  and  sojourners  among  those  who 
do   not  bow  their  knee   to  that  lone  Figure  with 


148         THE   GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

its  strange  piercing  crown.  Nor  shall  we  hear  that 
compelling  call,  and  not  be  as  though  we  heard  not, 
without  cost  and  sacrifice,  without  bitterness  and 
agony.  Our  own  hearts,  too,  will  be  pierced  by  a 
sword. 

I  want  for  a  little  to  draw  your  thoughts  to  one 
or  two  ways  in  which  this  truth  exhibits  itself. 
First  of  all,  the  truth  holds  for  the  intellectual 
sphere,  Christ's  claims  are  tremendous  and  start- 
ling. They  cannot  be  reconciled  with  any  ordinary 
standards  or  methods.  Many  elements  doubtless 
combine  to  make  a  Christian;  but  faith — burning, 
living  faith — is  the  one  indispensable  basis.  When 
He  was  upon  earth,  He  always  demanded  faith 
before  He  could  effect  anything.  We  are  told 
that  in  one  place  "  He  did  not  many  mighty  works 
there  because  of  their  unbelief."  As  our  adver- 
saries never  tire  of  telling  us,  His  Risen  Body 
appeared  to  none  but  believers.  Christ  comes  to 
us  demanding  that  we  shall  believe,  I  don't  say 
without  evidence  or  against  it,  but  upon  evidence 
that  is  not  conclusive  apart  from  faith ;  that  He, 
the  Babe  of  Bethlehem,  is  very  God ;  so  that,  as 
one  adversary  puts  it,  people  make  a  pet  name 
of  Him  who  made  the  stars  and  the  tiger;  that 
He  was  born  in  a  strange  way ;  and  after  living 
for  a  time,  as  any  ordinary  boy  or  young  man, 
startled  his  countr3''raen  with  a  series  of  unheard- 


NOT    PEACE    BUT    A    SWORD  149 

of  wonders ;  was  executed  by  an  ecclesiastical  cabal ; 
rose  again  by  a  process  of  which  we  know  nothing ; 
that  He  still  lives  as  man,  no  less  than  as  God, 
and  in  the  sacrament  of  His  ordaining  gives  us 
His  flesh  to  eat  and  His  blood  to  drink  in  a 
mystery,  wonderful  and  unspeakable. 

NoAv,  whether  this  be  true  or  false,  no  ingenuity 
can  make  it  merely  one  religion  a  Uttle  better  than 
many  others,  but  essentially  the  same.  Still  less  can 
it  be  sophisticated  into  a  mere  system  of  philosophy. 
The  faith  of  Christ  is  a  thing  unique  and  strange. 
At  all  times — and  at  no  time  more  than  the  present 
— we  are  being  tempted  to  do  this,  tempted  to  try 
and  treat  Christianity  as  fundamentally  the  same  as 
other  systems,  worked  out  by  other  methods,  resting 
on  other  foundations.  In  truth,  it  is  the  resem- 
blances that  are  superficial ;  the  differences  are 
vital.  Somebody  has  said.  Any  one  can  believe 
that  Jesus  was  a  god — what  is  so  hard  to  credit 
is  that  He  who  hung  upon  the  cross  was  the 
God.  That  is  what  you  are  asked  as  Christians  to 
believe. 

And  it  is  the  sword,  glittering  but  fearful.  It 
must  cut  your  life  away  from  the  standards  of  this 
world,  aw^ay  from  its  thought  and  its  measures,  no 
less  than  its  aims  and  hopes.  Hard  and  bitter  is 
the  separation;  and  you  will  be  parted  from  many 
great    and   noble    men,    some    perhaps    your    own 


150         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

teachers,   who   can  accept  about   Jesus   everything 
but  the   one   thing  needful.     The  Christian  faith, 
if  accepted,  drives  a  wedge  between  its  own  adhe- 
rents and  the  disciples  of  every  other  philosophy 
or  religion,   however   lofty   or   soaring.     And   they 
will   not  see   this;   they    will   tell  you   that   really 
your    views    and    theirs    are   the   same   thing,   and 
only   differ  in   words,   which,  if   only  you   were  a 
little  more  highly  trained,  you  would  understand. 
Even   among  Christ's   nominal   servants,  there  are 
many   who   think   a   little   goodAvill   is   all   that   is 
needed  to  bridge  the  gulf — a  little  amiability  and 
mutual  explanation,  a  more  careful  use  of  phrases, 
would   soon   accommodate  Christianity  to  fashion- 
able modes  of  speaking  and  thinking,  and  destroy 
all   causes   of  provocation.     So   they   would.      But 
they  would  destroy  also  its  one  inalienable  attrac- 
tion; that  of  being  the  romance  among  religions — 
a  wonder,  and  a  beauty,  and  a  terror — no  dull  and 
drab  system  of  thought,  no  mere  symbolic  idealism. 
The  same  thing  is  true  in  practice.    Jesus  came, 
as  has  been  said,  to  effect  a  "  transvaluation  of  all 
values "  ;   to  make   all  things  new — a  new   heaven 
and  a  new  earth.     The  pupils  of  Jesus  have  learnt 
to  put   a   different  price   upon   all   the   wares   this 
world  can  offer.    Above  all.  He  teaches  us  to  put 
a  different  value  on  ourselves  and  our  own  lives. 
He   teaches   us   to   value   as  little   or   nothing   the 


NOT    PEACE   BUT    A    SWORD  151 

goods  of  this  world ;  what  shall  it  profit  a  man 
if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul  ? 
He  tells  us  that  if  we  will  not  take  up  the  Cross 
we  cannot  be  His  disciples.  Self-denial  is  not  an 
accident,  unfashionable,  but  inevitable,  but  the  very 
essence  of  His  service.  It  is  a  mockery  to  say  we 
can  live  as  though  this  were  true  and  be  as  other 
men  are,  save  for  a  few  unimportant  differences 
Even  the  most  earnest  of  our  adversaries  are  be- 
ginning to  deride  Christian  chastity — a  hard  thing 
enough — a  veritable  sword  (as  you  Avell  know) — even 
to  those  who  know  it  is  God's  will — impossible  to 
those  who  do  not. 

More  than  this,  Christ  demands  a  humility  which 
is  foolishness  to  the  world.  A  life  of  penitence,  of 
confessing  our  sins,  of  childlike  trust  and  childlike 
simplicity  is  the  very  antipodes  of  what  the  modern 
man  seems  to  desire.  More  than  ever  is  Christian 
humility  anathema  to  the  world.  More  than  ever 
are  men  preferring  "  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  the  lust 
of  the  eyes,  the  pride  of  life "  not  merely  as 
pleasant  and  convenient  in  practice,  but  veritably 
as  Gods  to  worship.  Be  yourself,  they  tell  us ;  be 
a  man.  Have  done  with  the  vain  image  of  re- 
nunciation and  agony  with  a  penitence  fit  only 
for  priests  and  women. 

"  With  this  futile  message  to  a  beaten  race 
Under  the  heel  of  Rome." 


152         THE    C40SPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

Or  again — 

"  By  Thy  Name  that  in  hell-fire  was  written  and  burned  at  the 

point  of  the  sword, 
Thou  art  broken,  0  Lord,  Thou  art  broken.  Thy  death  is  upon 

Thee,  0  Lord. 
And  the  love-song  of  earth  as  Thou  diest  resounds  through  the 

wind  of  her  wings. 
Glory  to  man  in  the  highest,  man  is  the  master  of  things." 

Men  have,  for  the  most  part,  done  Avith  lamenting 
their  lost  faith.  Sentimental  tears  over  the  happy' 
simple  Christendom  of  their  fathers  are  a  thing  of 
the  past.  They  are  proclaiming  now  their  contempt 
of  Christ's  character,  and  their  disgust  at  the  very 
name  of  love. 

Scorn  and  hatred,  difference  and  division,  must  be 
more  than  ever  our  lot,  if  we  would  be  the  followers 
of  Christ  in  these  days.  Conventional  religion  and 
polite  unbelief  are  gone  for  ever.  You  cannot  live 
as  comfortably  if  you  are  a  Christian,  as  if  you  are 
not — so  do  not  try.  Penitence  alone  is  a  sword  to 
pierce  the  heart.  Nothing  bUnds  to  faults  like  selfish- 
ness. Worldliness,  in  all  its  forms,  is  like  a  cushion 
round  the  soul,  but  Christ  arises  to  help  us  to  know 
ourselves.  "  The  word  of  God  is  sharper  than  a  two- 
edged  sword  piercing,  and  the  dividing  asunder  of 
soul  and  spirit,  of  joints  and  marrow,  and  a  discerner 
of  the  thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart."  If  you 
want  a  comfortable  and  pleasing  existence,  don't,  I 
beg  of  you,  don't  try  to  be  a  Christian. 


NOT    PEACE    BUT    A    SWORD  153 

For  we  must  face  the  facts,  and  not  shirk  them. 
Christ  did  come  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword. 
There  is  no  use  our  trying  to  live  or  think,  as 
though  it  made  only  a  superficial  difference  whether 
we  call  ourselves  Christians  or  no.  If  you  serve 
Christ,  He  will  be  content  with  nothing  less  than 
the  whole  of  you.  The  service  means  taking  up 
the  Cross;  being  hard  where  others  find  it  easy, 
being  regarded  by  some  as  unintelligent,  by  others 
as  bigoted,  by  others  as  uncharitable — for  Christ's 
lordship  is  intolerant.  We  are  His  sworn  men  to 
owe  Him  "life  and  limb  and  earthly"  worship  and 
service  against  all  other  lords ;  and  we  cannot  reduce 
our  faith  into  mere  commonplace  morals  or  respect- 
able citizenship.  Whatever  Christianity  is,  or  is 
not,  it  is  not  commonplace  or  respectable,  and  good 
sense  always  condemns  it.  It  is  not  to  pleasant 
days,  and  well-fashioned  lives,  and  sheltered  peace 
that  Christ  summons  you,  but  tears  and  the  splen- 
dour of  sacrifice,  and  the  height  and  depth  of  lives 
lived  in  warfare,  a  world  of  wonder  and  of  joy,  but 
of  anguish  and  agony.  Riot  paints  a  city  red, 
religion  dyes  the  whole  world  purple. 

Let  us  live,  then,  as  Christ's  servants  under  no 
delusive  dreams — for  life  will  not  be  easier,  but 
harder,  infinitely  harder  if  you  are  to  be  His 
soldiers  against  sin,  the  world,  and  the  devil.  Em- 
brace if  you  will  the  banner  of  Love,  Love  flaming, 


154         THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

intolerant,  revolution  incarnate.  Follow  Christ  to 
joy  and  to  worship,  to  exultation  and  to  agony. 
But  never  for  an  hour  or  an  instant,  never  forget 
— it  is  not  peace,  but  a  sword  that  you  bear  and 
wield. 


LITTLE  CHILDREN^ 

"  Except  ye  be  converted,  and  become  as  little  children,  ye  shall 
not  enter  into  the  kingdom." — St.  Matt,  xviii.  3. 

Well  as  we  knoAv  these  words,  we  do  not  know 
them  well  enough.  Yet  the  call  to  be  children  is 
Christ's  supreme  call.  Failure  to  meet  it  was  the 
cardinal  sin  of  the  respectable  religious  people  of 
that  day.  It  was  because  they  would  not  bow  them- 
selves, could  not  be  anything  but  grown  men  before 
God,  that  He  told  them  that  many  should  come  from 
the  east  and  the  west  and  sit  down  with  Abraham  and 
Isaac  and  Jacob,  and  the  children  of  the  kingdom  be 
left  in  darkness  without.  The  offence  of  the  Cross 
lies  just  in  this — its  simplicity.  It  is  not  because 
the  faith  is  hard  that  men  despise  it,  but  because 
it  is  easy.  It  is  hard,  but  believers  feel  most  of 
that.  What  repels  people  is  its  direct  appeal — its 
command  to  us  to  shake  off  the  paraphernalia  of 
sophistry  with  which  we  love  to  envelop  our  life. 

One  critic  attacks  us  for  worshipping  the  symbol 
of  an  execution,  for  making  a  Cross  the  crisis  of  all 
history.    How  silly  to  make  of  that  vulgar  occurrence 

1  Preached  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  Sept.  27,  1908, 

155 


156         THE   GOSPEL   AND   HUMAN   NEEDS 

— the  murder  of  a  harmless  prophet — the  one  great 
fact,  the  supreme  gift  of  God  to  men !  We  shall 
never,  he  tells  us,  make  Christianity  modern  and 
effective  until  we  get  rid  of  this  ridiculous  emphasis 
on  the  Crucifixion  and  put  the  Cross  in  its  proper 
place.  And  so  throughout.  Hoav  trivial  the  sprink- 
ling of  unconscious  babies  with  a  little  water !  And 
there,  men  are  asked  to  believe,  begins  the  spiritual 
life.  HoAV  slight  a  bond  it  is  to  receive  in  common 
a  little  bread  and  wine !  Yet  we  are  to  say  that  in 
that  sacrament  God  gives  us  Himself,  and  we  are  in 
touch  with  the  heart  of  things.  How  supremely 
ridiculous !  The  great  God,  "  Who  made  the  stars 
and  the  tiger,"  can  never  be  working  in  so  mean 
a  fashion.  Sacramental  doctrine  is  pretty  and 
useful  for  children — but  that  is  all.  That  is  all. 
We  are  children  where  God  is  concerned.  We  do 
not  need  Christ  to  teach  us  the  majesty  of  things, 
and  the  sublimities  of  the  starry  heavens.  All  can 
admire  the  splendour  of  the  sunset  on  the  rose- 
crowned  hills,  or  bow  before  the  glory  of  a  Shake- 
speare or  a  Newton.  But  Christ  alone  can  consecrate 
the  trivial  and  give  distinction  to  commonplace 
things.  Not  the  greatness  of  the  great,  but  the 
greatness  of  the  little — the  Avorth  of  the  lily  and 
the  manger,  the  infinite  value  of  the  poor  and 
the  publican;  that  is  the  message  of  Jesus,  His 
message  and  our  hope. 


LITTLE    CHILDREN  157 

For  it  is  we,  the  poor  and  sinful,  to  whom  He  does 
such  honour,  calHng  us  friends,  and  raising  us  to 
His  level.  Raising,  but  on  one  condition.  First,  we 
must  be  lowered.  Even  Eternal  Love  must  "stoop 
to  conquer."  We  must  repent,  and  be  like  children. 
How  easy  and  simple  it  is  for  a  child  to  repent — 
how  bitter  for  us !  The  truth  is  we  are  afraid — 
afraid  to  repent  lest  love  and  faith  should  carry 
us  we  know  not  where.  We  cover  ourselves  with 
many  wrappings  of  position,  calling,  philosophy,  just 
because  we  are  cowards,  and  dare  not  face  our- 
selves. Half  the  problems  we  think  so  dark,  half  the 
difficulties  we  multiply  so  proudly,  take  their  origin 
in  this.  We  dare  not  be  alone.  "  I  was  afraid  and 
hid  myself,  because  I  was  naked." 

And  yet  the  natural  line  is  that  of  Christ — to 
feel  sorry  like  a  child,  humble  like  a  small  school- 
boy who  knows  he  is  at  the  bottom.  This  is  all 
we  can  do,  when  the  facts  stream  in  upon  us.  This, 
above  all  else,  divides  us  from  the  world.  We  do, 
they  do  not,  think  repentance  and  humility  a  duty. 
Our  enemies  tell  us  that  we  are  not  better  than  they 
are,  and  often  worse.  Alas !  we  know  it.  It  is  be- 
cause we  are  bad  that  we  want  to  touch  the  hem 
of  His  garment,  not  because  we  are  good.  Many 
Avho  do  not  own  Christ's  call  overtop  us  in  courage 
and  perseverance.  We  wish  we  were  like  them,  but 
we  are  not.    We  have  no  power  of  ourselves  to  help 


158         THE    GOSPEL    AND   HUMAN    NEEDS 

ourselves,  and  cannot  get  on  at  all  but  by  God's 
grace.  And  even  then  we  move  slowly,  and  fall 
so  often.  Again  and  again  we  must  kneel  in  peni- 
tence, and  weep  like  St.  Peter,  Yet  this,  more  than 
anything  else,  makes  us  what  we  are — weak  and 
untrustworthy,  but  real  and  affectionate  children 
of  God.  We  do — and  others  do  not — feel  the  duty 
of  being  humble  and  confessing  our  faults  like 
children.  And  like  them,  we  are  not  to  trouble 
at  the  contempt  of  others,  or  when  they  laugh  at 
us.  They  do  laugh.  The  man  who  cries  Abba 
Father,  who  bows  his  head  in  confession,  has  a 
different  ideal  from  those  who  do  not,  and  to  such 
ho  seems  absurd  and  w^eak,  below  the  dignity  of 
educated  modern  man.  Quite  right.  There  is 
something  wrong  about  your  religion  when  the 
world  does  not  think  it  silly. 

But  though  it  begins  with  humbled  grief,  re- 
pentance does  not  end  there.  The  child  who  says 
he  is  sorry  always  adds,  I'll  try  and  never  do  it 
again.  That  faith  in  the  future,  even  more  than 
the  grief,  is  the  note  of  the  Christian.  He  believes, 
the  world  does  not  believe,  that  with  God's  help 
he  may  become  better.  For  a  certain  number  of 
years,  say  twenty-five,  we  take  it  for  granted  that 
not  only  mentally  but  morally  and  spiritually  a 
boy  or  man  may  change.  After  that  we  label  them, 
put  their  characters  into  pigeon-holes,  and  expect 


LITTLE   CHILDREN  159 

our  rough  classifications  to  be  eternal.  But  Christ 
teaches  the  opposite  of  all  this — the  whole  sacra- 
mental system  of  the  Church  implies  a  belief  in  real 
progress,  in  genuine  power  of  amendment.  The 
world  laughs  at  this  optimism,  and  we  too  find  it 
hard  to  credit,  unless  of  set  will  we  remain  of  the 
child's  mind  with  faith  undimmed  by  the  clouds 
of  appearance. 

That  is  the  essence  of  it  all.  For  the  child's  re- 
pentance and  the  child's  amendment  we  need  the 
inexhaustible  faith  of  childhood,  its  infinite  and 
inalienable  romance.  The  faith  of  a  Christian,  that 
faith  we  have  agreed  to  call  child-like,  is  at  once 
the  crown  and  the  basis  of  all  his  efforts,  their  goal 
and  their  starting-point.  It  is  the  inward  "peace 
at  home"  amid  the  outer  conflicts  of  will  and  cir- 
cumstance. That  which  springs  up  naturally  in 
human  childhood  is  for  us  the  supreme  gift,  a 
grace  to  be  sought  with  prayer — this  faith,  that 
is  at  the  root  of  the  careless  gladness  of  children, 
and  of  the  ease  and  buoyancy  of  saints  like 
St.  Francis — this  faith,  so  uplifting,  so  hard  to  win, 
yet  so  essential.  For  without  it  where  are  we  ? 
Whether  we  look  at  the  prospects  of  the  Church 
or  our  own  life,  probability,  rational  calculation, 
common  sense  are  all  ranged  on  the  cynic's  side. 

People  talk  of  the  Church  in  danger — the  Church 
is  always  in  danger :  the  miracle  is  not  in  her  weak- 


160         THE    GOSPEL    AND    HUMAN    NEEDS 

ness,  but  in  her  existence.  The  betting  is  always 
in  favour  of  the  devil.  It  was  not  human  chance, 
but  God's  grace,  that  gave  to  the  early  Church  its 
victory  over  the  most  imposing  civilisation  and  the 
strongest  government  the  world  has  known.  It  is 
only  as  we  throw  ourselves  on  God  that  we  shall 
certainly  conquer — for  "  of  ourselves  we  have  no 
power  to  help  ourselves."  Yet  Avith  that  aid  victory 
is  not  merely  likely,  but  certain.  "For  God  hath 
chosen  the  foolish  things  of  the  world  to  confound 
the  wise ;  and  God  hath  chosen  the  weak  things  of 
the  world  to  confound  the  things  which  are  mighty ; 
and  base  things  of  the  world,  and  things  which  are 
despised,  hath  God  chosen,  yea,  and  things  which 
are  not,  to  bring  to  nought  things  that  are;  that 
no  flesh  should  glory  in  His  presence." 


APPENDIX 

THE   NEW   THEOLOGY   AND 
BISHOP   BUTLERS 

The  apparition  of  the  New  Theology  is  interesting 
in  various  aspects,  and  I  do  not  think  that  it  can 
be  dismissed  with  contempt.  The  arrogance  and 
superficial  smartness  of  Mr.  Campbell's  well-adver- 
tised work,  doubtless,  conduce  to  this  view,  and  lead 
to  our  imagining  that  there  is  "  nothing  in  the  move- 
ment," but  this  is  greatly  to  misconceive  the  situa- 
tion, and  to  underrate  the  importance  of  certain 
permanent  tendencies  in  the  human  mind. 

The  New  Theology  is  really  but  a  recrudescence 
of  "  natural  religion "  in  a  Christianised  form,  ex- 
pressed under  the  conditions  of  pantheistic  rather 
than  deistic  assumptions.  As  such  it  is  certain, 
whether  within  the  Church  or  without,  to  exercise  a 
powerful  attraction  upon  the  minds  of  the  cultivated 
or  semi-cultivated  "  masses,"  for  it  will  never  appeal 
to   the  uneducated   or  to  the  multitude.     But  we 

1  The  Church  Times,  Sept.  27,  1907. 

,161  j^ 


162  APPENDIX 

have  to  face  the  fact  that  there  exists,  and  has  ex- 
isted for  a  long  while,  a  very  large  class  of  people, 
removed  by  position  and  training  from  the  grosser 
evils  of  life,  of  which  they  know  only  by  hearsay, 
interested  in  religious  topics  and  desirous  of  finding 
some  ideal  with  which  they  can  square  their  intel- 
lectual convictions  or  assumptions.  Indeed,  for  two 
hundred  years  the  great  discussion  between  Chris- 
tianity and  its  opponents  has  been  carried  on  within 
this  charmed  circle.  Nearly  all  apologists  make  the 
assumption  that  their  opponents  are  equally  disin- 
terested with  themselves,  and  equally  certain  of  the 
main  dictates  of  conscience,  if  not  of  creed.  Conse- 
quently, the  condition  sine  qua  non  for  Christianity, 
man's  need  of  redemption,  is  apt  to  be  ignored  or 
thrust  aside  by  apologists,  except  the  vulgar  sort 
who  argue  that  unbelief  is  never  the  result  of  any- 
thing but  moral  turpitude.  Granted,  however,  the 
hypothesis  that  the  grosser  sins  are  not  actually 
in  question,  and  that  men  in  general  desire  a  high 
ethical  standard,  the  attraction  of  natural  religion 
in  some  form  or  other  Avill  always  be  irresistible  for 
many,  perhaps  the  majority,  of  cultivated  men.  To 
them  the  claims  of  a  human  Christ  are  quite  suffi- 
cient, and  the  belief  in  a  noble  aim  will  in  their  vieAV 
speedily  eradicate  the  relics  of  sin,  which  are  besides 
being  removed  by  the  general  course  of  progress. 
An    evolutionary    philosophy,    masquerading    as    a 


NEW   THEOLOGY   AND   BISHOP   BUTLER      163 

spiritual  religion,  gives  them  all  they  feel  the  need 
of,  while  on  the  intellectualist  assumptions  the  objec- 
tions to  the  Christian  faith  must  always  appear  very 
nearly  insuperable.  At  least  they  make  it  easier  to 
"  interpret "  than  to  accept  the  creeds.  It  is  only 
the  individual's  passionate  insistence  that  he  tnust 
be  redeemed,  that  carries  him  beyond  the  ordinary 
assumptions  of  idealism,  to  a  belief  in  a  personal 
Saviour,  in  the  Church,  the  Cross,  and  the  Sacra- 
ments. "  I  am  not  come  to  call  the  righteous,  but 
sinners  to  repentance,"  is  a  maxim  to  be  remem- 
bered by  the  apologist,  no  less  than  by  the  mission 
preacher.  Unfortunately  the  academic  atmosphere 
which  surrounds  the  former  is  apt  to  make  him 
forget  what  his  comparatively  despised  practical 
brother  has  had  burnt  in  upon  him  by  his  daily 
work.  (A  notable  exception  is  Dr.  Bussell's  recent 
Bampton  Lectures.) 

Here,  however,  what  I  desire  more  especially  to 
insist  upon  is  the  interest  of  the  new  movement  in 
showing  us  the  inadequacy  of  the  famous  argument 
of  the  "  Analogy."  It  is  generally  supposed  that  as 
an  arguonentum  ad  hominem  the  "  Analogy  "  is  irre- 
fragable. Butler's  thesis  was  that  probable  evidence 
was  all  that  could  be  expected  in  favour  of  a  religion  ; 
and  that  this  was  sufficient.  In  this  he  probably 
did  permanent  work,  although  it  is  work  Avhich 
constantly  needs  renewing ;  for  people  in  Avhom  the 


164  APPENDIX 

intellectuiilist  attitude  is  strongly  marked  arc  always 
demanding  more  in  the  way  of  external  evidence 
than  can  possibly  be  secured ;  and  are  at  this 
moment  striving  to  substitute  a  purely  outward 
historical  certitude  for  faith.  They  have  given  up 
the  old  idea  of  demonstrating  Christianity,  but  much 
of  modern  criticism  seems  to  proceed  from  the 
notion  that  it  will  sometime  be  possible  to  get  all 
educated  men  to  accept  the  same  account  of  the 
Gospel  narratives,  apart  from  their  i:)1iilo8ophic  and 
religious  preposfiessions ;  and  this  will  never  be  the 
case,  in  dealing  with  professedly  abnormal  narratives, 
even  if  it  be  so  (though  that  is  very  doubtful)  in 
other  cases. 

Butler,  as  is  well  known,  went  on  to  argue  that  the 
natural  religion  of  the  Deists  was  equally  open  to 
objection  with  Christianity ;  and  that  either  they 
must  go  back  or  go  forAvard.  Roughly  speaking,  his 
dilemma  was  accepted  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  the  majority  of  educated  men  Avere  either 
Christians  or  agnostics,  and  attempted  no  longer  to 
dwell  in  a  half-way  house.  Now  it  is  the  Aveak  point 
of  this  position,  accepted,  be  it  remembered,  by  the 
foes  no  less  than  the  friends  of  orthodoxy,  that  is 
the  real  ground  of  the  attack  made  upon  our 
position  in  favour  of  a  transformed  edition  of 
"Christianity  not  Mysterious."  Butler  A\'as  quite 
right  in  urging  that  mystery  Avas  inherent  in  our 


NEW    THEOLOGY    AND    BISHOP    BUTLER       165 

experience  and  that  Christianity  did  not  introduce 
it ;  that  natural  religion  did  not  remove  it ;  and  that 
many  of  the  difficulties  which  disturbed  the  Christian 
were  found  in  an  equal  or  increased  degree  in  the 
system  of  the  Deists.  I  am  not  sure  that  Butler's 
own  language  goes  further  than  this,  but  in  the 
general  interpretation  he  has  been  thought  to  mean 
more.  His  book  is  taken  alike  by  friends  and  foes 
as  an  argument  to  show  that  the  difficulties  of 
natural  religion  are  not  merely  the  same  as  those  of 
nature,  but  the  same  as  those  of  "  revelation,"  and 
that  nobody  who  has  found  it  possible  to  accept  the 
one  ought  to  have  any  reasonable  trouble  about 
receiving  the  other.  Now  this  is  not  the  case.  And 
the  fact  that  it  is  not  the  case  is  the  great  leverage 
of  the  new  theology.  Whether  or  no  natural  re- 
ligion in  the  form  proposed  is  really  more  easily 
capable  of  something  like  demonstration  than  Chris- 
tianity, I  will  not  inquire.  Personally,  I  think  that 
it  is  not,  and  that  it  rests  on  an  equally  unsupported 
series  of  assumptions — the  assumption  that  the 
world  is  that  of  modern  scientific  inquiry.  But  I 
am  sure  that  the  difficulties  of  revealed  religion  are 
different  in  many  cases  from  those  of  natural  reli- 
gion ;  that  the  grounds  which  make  those  plausible 
make  the  other  improbable ;  and  that  neither  in 
degree  nor  in  kind  are  the  two  conceptions  of  life  at 
all  parallel.    For  instance,  both  the  charm  and  the 


166  APPENDIX 

Stumbling-block  of  the  Christian  faith  is  that  it 
worships  a  definite  historical  person — One  whose 
actions  upon  earth  were  subject  to  the  same  methods 
of  appraisement  as  those  of  any  other  carpenter.  (It 
is  amazing  how  the  modern  "  snob  "  will  go  to  church 
and  ignore  this  fundamental  fact.)  Secondly,  Chris- 
tianity by  its  whole  idea  consecrates  a  particular 
moment  in  past  time,  the  moment  (shall  we  say  ?)  of 
the  Resurrection;  and  is  thus  radically  opposed  to 
the  assumption  of  the  progressive  evolutionist  that 
everything  is  always  moving  on,  though  to  what  end 
he  does  not  know.  Our  faith  finds,  in  fact,  an 
eternal  meaning  in  the  particular,  the  isolated,  and 
the  exceptional.  Natural  religion  dwells  in  a  world 
of  abstractions  and  ideas,  and  owes  its  strength  to 
this  very  fact;  it  appeals  to  those  persons  to  whom 
"conceptions"  are  everything  and  persons  little  or 
nothing.  It  lives  and  breathes  in  an  atmosphere 
of  notions.  Again,  natural  religion  treats  the  world 
as  a  "  closed  circle,"  abhors  the  thought  of  the 
"  miraculous,"  and  harps  upon  the  unity  of  Being, 
riding  roughshod  with  the  Juggernaut-car  of  uni- 
versal notions  over  the  intimate,  the  individual,  over 
the  suffering  and  the  sad  and  the  sin-stricken. 

The  Christian  faith  does  just  the  opposite  of  all 
this.  It  has  the  nrwldrag  of  miracles,  exceptions, 
revelations,  hard  to  reconcile  with  the  notion  of  a 
mechanical  universe,  and  the  majesty  of  law.     But  it 


NEW    THEOLOGY    AND    BISHOP    BUTLER       167 

also  has  its  advantages.  It  appeals  to  tlie  average 
man's  desire  for  "some  voice  that  we  could  trust" 
to  "murmur  from  the  narrow  house."  It  ministers, 
not  to  the  love  of  law,  but  to  the  hatred  of  an  iron 
uniformity;  to  the  desire  of  the  spirit  of  man  to 
be  raised  above  the  apparently  inextricable  web  of 
causes  and  effects  in  nature,  to  that  passion  for  "  the 
Beyond"  which  is  too  deep  and  permanent  ever  to 
be  eradicated  by  materialism  or  even  utterly  de- 
graded by  superstition.  Natural  religion  is  primarily 
a  philosophy  and  deals  in  ideas.  The  Christian  faith 
is  primarily  a  living  trust  and  is  essentially  bound 
up  with  the  concrete.  Sacramental  doctrine — often 
ignored  or  thrust  aside  by  the  apologist  as  only 
concerned  with  the  internal  content  of  the  religion — 
is,  in  fact,  the  differentia,  by  which  its  whole  system 
may  be  discerned.  Indeed,  one  main  reason  why 
sacramental  doctrine  has  been,  par  excellence,  the 
stumbling-block  of  the  rationalists  is,  that  it  con- 
tains in  solution  nearly  all  those  elements  in  reli- 
gion which  the  modern  world  finds  it  hardest  to 
assimilate. 

The  Sacramental  System  stands  for  a  belief  in 
the  concrete  presentment  of  eternal  truth;  for  its 
embodiment  in  ritual  and  cult  as  in  one  form  vital 
to  man's  religious  life ;  for  the  lasting  significance  of 
a  moment  in  human  history,  the  death  of  Jesus  upon 
the  Cross;  for  the  consecration  of  suffering  as  the 


168  APPENDIX 

highest  expression  of  love;  for  the  socially  authori- 
tative nature  of  religion ;  for  the  depth  of  sin,  the 
reality  of  forgiveness,  the  possibility  of  redemption ; 
for  the  union  of  God  and  man  through  Him,  who  is 
both  "  very  God  of  very  God,"  and  yet  "  man  of  the 
substance  of  his  mother." 

Now  it  is  just  these  conceptions  which  are  the 
supreme  difficulty  to  the  minds  of  men  enraptured 
with  the  miracles  of  modern  science  and  enthralled 
by  the  siren-song  of  evolutionary  philosophy.  Such 
minds  will  accept  an  immanent  God,  provided 
nothing  is  said  to  disentangle  Him  from  His  works ! 
they  can  bow  before  the  majesty  of  eternal  law  and 
strive  for  some  harmony  of  emotion  which  may 
bridge  the  gulf  between  themselves  and  the  universal 
mind ;  they  may  even  go  the  length  of  saying,  "  Our 
Father,""  and,  of  recognising  the  duties  of  human 
brotherhood,  may  strive  for  noble  and  disinterested 
service;  this  ideal,  they  think,  is  sufficient  to  drive 
out  the  relics  of  sin,  and  they  can  "  move  upward 
working  out  the  beast,"  not  without  effort  indeed, 
but  with  no  need  of  supernatural  assistance ;  and 
the  theology  of  "grace"  is  to  them  not  so  much 
false  as  superfluous.  In  some  degree  this  is  true 
for  men  with  happy  temperaments  and  cultivated 
interests  and  sheltered  lives.  But  for  the  toiUng 
masses,  for  the  profligate,  the  luxurious,  and  the 
scoundrel;   for  those  Avho   are   ruined   by  pleasure. 


NEW   THEOLOGY    AND    BISHOP   BUTLER      169 

and  those  who  ruin  themselves  in  the  effort  to 
acquire  the  means  of  it,  no  such  rosewater  creed 
can  ever  be  a  gospel.  It  is  useless  to  talk  to  the 
drunkard  or  the  harlot,  to  the  man  enslaved  either 
by  passion  or  greed,  of  the  upward  progress  of  the 
race  and  the  gradual  amelioration  of  life — useless, 
even  if  it  were  true  to  the  facts,  which  it  is  not. 
Either  he  will  not  listen,  or  if  he  is  in  a  mood  to 
listen — in  other  words,  under  conviction  of  sin — it  is 
redemption,  atonement,  miraculous  grace,  that  he 
cries  for,  and  repudiates  the  abstractions  of  idealism 
as  the  stone  offered  for  bread. 

What  I  want  here  to  point  out  is  that  the  kind  of 
difficulty  to  which  natural  religion  is  subject  is  not 
the  same  as  that  under  which  Christianity  labours ; 
and  that  the  kind  of  appeal  it  makes  is  also  different. 
Our  faith  is  something  sui  generis,  more  akin,  indeed, 
to  other  "institutional"  religions,  which,  at  least, 
have  ministered  to  great  masses  of  men,  than  to 
this  comfortable  philosophy  of  coteries.  The  "new 
theology "  is  a  sort  of  university  extensionist's  re- 
ligion. Our  faith,  even  if  it  were  false,  is  something 
bigger  than  that.  The  ordinary  assumption  since 
Butler  is  that  everybody  who  is  not  an  agnostic 
ought  to  find  no  difficulty  at  all  in  passing  from 
Theism  to  Christianity;  and  that  there  are  no  real 
difficulties  that  are  not  common  to  both.  That 
some  such  difficulties — e.g.  those  of  freedom  and  a 


170 


APPENDIX 


spiritual  world — are  common  to  both,  I  do  not  deny. 
But  I  do  emphatically  deny  that  our  faith  has  no 
greater  difficulties,  or  that  it  has  not  correspondingly 
greater  advantages,  than  that  system  which  bids 
fair  to  be  its  rival.  There  are  all  the  difficulties 
connected  with  its  historical  character.  To  the 
mind  fed  on  universal  notions,  it  seems  degrading 
to  pin  so  much  faith  to  a  particular  life  on  earth, 
even  apart  from  any  question  of  the  miraculous.  A 
great  deal  of  modern  critical  prepossessions  start 
from  the  claim  of  Christianity,  not  so  much  to  be 
miraculous  as  to  be  actual.  Then  there  is,  of 
course,  the  perennial  difficulty  of  miracles.  Their 
old  evidential  value  may  be  gone;  though  I  think 
too  much  ought  not  to  be  conceded  here.  To  the 
average  man  in  the  street,  not  to  the  learned,  the 
miraculous  is  the  assurance  that  there  is  a  "  beyond," 
that  man  is  not  bound  hopelessly  to  the  iron  rule 
of  nature.  So  with  forgiveness.  This  is  always  the 
crux  of  the  philosopher,  and  the  consolation  of  the 
vulgar.  The  reason  being  that,  to  the  philosopher 
sin  is  a  sort  of  growing  pain  which  man  will  soon 
transcend ;  to  the  vulgar  it  is  a  daily  agony,  an 
everlasting  tragedy,  the  torment  and  the  centre  of 
his  moral  life.  I  need  not  go  on.  This  paper  is 
merely  meant  to  indicate  and  suggest.  What  seems 
to  the  writer  increasingly  important  is  this.  Do  not 
let  us  make  too  much  of  the  argument  from  analogy. 


NEW    THEOLOGY    AND    BISHOP    BUTLER       171 

It  is  useful,  but  in  no  sense  adequate.  Do  not  let  us 
imagine  that  if  you  can  make  the  agnostic  a  theist, 
there  is  no  valid  intellectual  ground  for  his  re- 
maining a  theist.  There  are  plenty  of  such  grounds, 
and  they  are  intellectually  quite  respectable.  Do  not 
let  us  underrate  the  significance  of  this  recrudescence 
of  natural  religion.  (Of  course  I  am  using  this  term 
in  the  old  sense,  not  in  that  given  to  it  in  his  admir- 
able essay  by  Father  Tyrrell.)  It  appeals  to  argu- 
ments and  to  temperaments  very  common,  and 
likely  to  become  commoner  among  the  more  or  less 
cultivated  members  of  society. 

It  is  not,  in  fact,  by  any  argument  from  analogy 
that  men  can  make  the  leap  over  the  tremendous 
gulf  which  divides  Christianity  from  its  rivals. 
There  is  one  argument,  and  one  alone,  which  has  the 
force  to  carry  reflecting  minds  on  so  far  and  perilous 
a  journey — that  argument  is  the  personal  need  of 
redemption,  the  refusal  of  the  sinful  soul  to  be  put 
off  with  anything  short  of  forgiveness.  Redemption 
is  the  supreme  miracle  of  all ;  if  that  can  be  accepted, 
nobody  will  really  think  it  worth  while  to  "  boggle  " 
over  the  details  of  a  system  which  must  be  super- 
natural, if  it  be  not  a  mockery. 


NOTES 


I.— REVELATION 

(1.)  A.  L.  Lilley,  "Modernism,"  p.  242. 

(2.)  G.  Bussell,  "Christian  Theology  and  Social  Progress," 
pp.  75-76,  also  p.  281. 

"  It  has  been  maintained  in  them  that  the  present  age  is  the 
real  '  age  of  Faith,'  because  the  function  of  reason  has  been 
reduced  to  a  registry  of  phenomena,  because  no  single  tenet  of 
the  scantiest  theology  or  of  the  most  attenuated  moral  code 
remains  at  the  present  moment  unshaken.  Let  it  be  clearly 
understood,  and  let  men  face  the  issue  honestly,  that  the 
doctrine  of  purposive  creation  and  moral  plan  in  the  world, 
the  very  definition  and  use  of  'virtue,'  the  justification  of 
unselfishness  (otherwise  aimless),  stand  on  no  different  level  to 
the  particular  dogmas  of  Christianity.'' 

Again,  p.  289  :  "  The  '  Ages  of  Faith  '  in  reality  began  with 
the  Reformation.  The  emphasis  on  belief  has  been  ever  since 
growing  more  intense.  The  discord  of  faith  and  facts — facts 
political,  socialj  domestic,  scientific — has  never  before  been  so 
acute.  And  yet  the  world  walks  still  or  tries  to  walk  by  faith 
and  not  yet  by  sight.  .  .  .  Examine  what  you  will  of  the  tenets 
of  reforming  propaganda,  in  one  and  all  you  will  find  the 
scientific  view  of  man  and  society  conveniently  forgotten  and 
obscured,  whenever  that  comes  into  conflict  with  the  *  dim 
mythologic  postulates '  of  man's  freedom  and  worth ; — which 
must  still  animate  the  eloquence  or  the  appeal  of  secularism." 

(3.)  "  Social  progress  means  a  checking  of  the  cosmic  process 

at  every  step  and  the  substitution  for  it  of  another  which  may 

172 


REVELATION  173 

be  called  'the  ethical  process.'" — Romanes  Lecture,  1893: 
"  Evolution  and  Ethics." 

The  position  adopted  by  Huxley  is,  of  course,  the  exact 
opposite  of  that  of  Nietzsche,  "  the  only  man  perhaps  who 
rigidly  applied  logic  to  life  "  (Bussell,  p.  317).  It  is,  indeed, 
asserted  by  some  that  Huxley  painted  too  dark  a  picture,  and 
that  evolution  develops  the  altruistic  qualities  no  less  than  the 
egoistic — as  was  argued  by  the  late  Henry  Drummond  in  "The 
Ascent  of  Man."  On  such  a  point  the  unscientific  can  offer  no 
opinion  ;  but,  in  any  case,  Huxley's  lecture  remains  a  noble 
protest  in  favour  of  human  against  merely  naturalistic  ethics, 
and  against  the  innumerable  forms  of  pantheism,  which  shut 
their  eyes  to  facts  and  assert,  in  the  ironical  words  of  Mr. 
Bradley :  "  The  world  is  the  best  possible  of  worlds  and  every- 
thing in  it  is  a  necessary  evil."  Of  Pope's  famous  line,  the  ethics 
of  pantheism — 

"  One  truth  is  clear,  whatever  is  is  right," 

Huxley  says  :  "  Its  fittest  place  would  be  as  an  inscription 
in  letters  of  mud  over  the  portal  of  some  stye  of  Epicurus  " 
(p.  25). 

(4.)  It  is  called  "  semi-theism  "  by  Dr.  Caldecott  in  his  "  Philo- 
sophy of  Religion." 

There  are  evidences  in  "  The  Autobiography  "  that  Spencer's 
position  towards  the  Church  became  far  more  understanding 
towards  the  close  of  life.  On  the  other  hand,  his  attitude  to 
the  classics  and  to  art  as  such  are  an  illuminating  instance 
of  what  is  the  logical  result  of  rationalism,  if  it  be  applied 
remorselessly  to  the  whole  of  life. 

(5.)  Of.  Frederic  Harrison,  "  The  Creed  of  a  Layman." 

"  We  must  give  human  nature  its  fair  chance  and  accept  what 
it  demands  ;  and  if  human  nature  call  out  for  Religion,  religion 
it  must  have  "  (p.  219). 

Again  :  "  How  will  free  thought  teach  discipline  to  the  young 
and  self-restraint  to  the  wild?  What  sustenance  will  the 
imaginative  and  the  devotional  nature  receive  from  the 
principle  of  free  inquiry  ?     Human  nature  is  not  a  thing  so 


174  NOTES 

docile  and  intellectual  that  it  can  be  tamed  by  fine  thoughts, 
nor  is  society  amenable  to  pure  ideas  "  (p.  224). 

This  book  and  others  since  published,  "  The  Philosophy  of 
Common  Sense,"  afford  illuminating  and  pathetic  evidence 
of  the  need  of  a  religion  in  human  nature  so  strong  that  it 
attempts  to  make  one  with  the  sorry  basis  of  mere  humanity. 
But  in  the  assertion  oft  repeated  of  man's  real  freedom,  of 
the  inadequacy  of  the  intellect  to  save  him  from  moral  ruin 
and  the  futility  of  mere  analysis  to  satisfy  the  soul,  which 
lives  by  "  admiration,  hope,  and  love,"  Mr.  Harrison  has  few 
equals. 

(6.)  John    Davidson,  in    Epilogue    to   "  Mammon    and    his 
Message,"  pp.  171-173. 

"What  we  require  is  a  renewal  of  Imagination.  .  .  .  There 
cannot  be  a  rise  of  Rationalism.  There  was  only  a  decay  of 
Imagination.  .  .  .  Rationalism  evacuated  the  old  form  and 
substance  of  Imagination  and  rested  there  wondering  what 
had  happened.  One  thing  had  happened  ;  the  world  had  come 
to  an  end  for  the  Rationalists.  By  Imagination  men  live. 
Surgery  has  found  out  that,  unlike  the  holothure,  man  can  get 
along  without  a  stomach  ;  but  Art  knows  very  well,  that 
the  world  comes  to  an  end  when  it  is  purged  of  Imagination. 
Rationalism  was  only  a  stage  in  the  process.  For  the  old 
conception  of  a  created  Universe,  with  a  fall  of  man,  an 
Atonement,  and  a  Heaven  and  Hell,  the  form  and  substance 
of  the  Imagination  of  Christendom,  Rationalism  had  no  sub- 
stitute. Science  was  not  ready ;  but  how  can  poetry  wait  ? 
Science  is  synonymous  with  patience  ;  poetry  is  impatience 
incarnate.  If  you  take  away  the  symbol  of  the  Universe,  in 
which  since  the  Christian  era  began,  poetry  and  all  great  art 
lived  and  had  their  being,  I  for  one  decline  to  continue  the 
eviscerated  Life  in  Death  of  Rationalism.  I  devour,  digest, 
and  assimilate  the  Universe  ;  make  for  myself  in  my  Testa- 
ments and  Tragedies  a  new  form  and  substance  of  Imagina- 
tion; and  by  poetic  power  certify  the  semi-certitndes  of  science." 

If  this  be  not  an  appeal  to  faith  of  a  sort,  it  would  be  hard 
to  know  what  is.     Mr.  Davidson's  views  are  never  disguised 


REVELATION  175 

and  can  be  read  at  large  in  "  The  Triumph  of  Mammon,"  "  The 
Testament  of  John  Davidson,"  besides  the  work  from  which 
this  quotation  is  derived.  He  stands  as  a  reviewer  stated  not 
long  since  for  the  newness  and  gloi-y  of  life,  the  breach  with 
the  past,  the  unconquerable  audacities  of  the  human  spirit ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  his  contempt  for  Christianity  and 
desire  to  shatter  every  relic  of  it,  and  to  abolish  every  form  of 
culture,  including  wit  and  humour,  are  so  loudly,  not  to  say 
blatantly,  expressed,  that  they  are  likely  to  be  innocuous. 

(7.)  G.  Lowes  Dickinson  in  the  Hihhert  Journal,  April  1908. 

(8.)  G.  Lowes  Dickinson,  "  Keligion :  A  Criticism  and  a 
Forecast,"  p.  90. 

Cf.  also  the  following  passage,  p.  93 :  "  Faith  is  the  sense  and 
the  call  of  the  open  horizon.  If  we  abstract  it  from  the  forms 
in  which  we  clothe  it,  from  the  specific  beliefs  which  are,  as 
it  were,  its  projection  into  our  intelligence,  it  presents  itself 
as  the  spring  of  our  whole  life,  including  our  intellectual  life. 
It  is  the  impulse  to  grow  and  expand;  and  just  because  it  is 
that,  it  has  itself  no  form,  but  may  assume  any  form.  It  is  a 
taper  burning  now  bright,  now  dim,  and  changing  colour  and 
substance  with  every  change  in  the  stuff  it  consumes.  The 
frailest  thing  we  know,  it  is  also  the  least  perishable,  for  it  is  a 
tongue  of  the  central  fire  that  burns  at  the  heart  of  the  world." 

On  page  70,  Mr.  Dickinson  discusses  the  relative  value  of 
Christianity  and  paganism  as  symbolised  by  their  architecture. 
I  think  he  is  quite  right  in  taking  the  two  forms  Gothic  and 
classical  as  expressive  of  the  two  religions,  though  I  do  not, 
of  course,  accept  his  strange  account  of  the  beauty  of  a 
cathedral,  where  he  apparently  sees  nothing  but  gloom  in 
stained-glass.  Without  in  any  way  subscribing  to  the  heresies 
of  the  Gothic  revival,  with  its  depreciation  of  every  other  form, 
I  do  think  it  true  to  say  that  the  attraction  and  meaning  of 
Christian  faith  was  never  more  fitly  enshrined,  and  would 
willingly  take  the  other  horn  of  the  dilemma  which  Mr, 
Dickinson  offers. 

(9.)  John  Davidson,  "Mammon  and  his  Message,"  pp.  103, 
135, 


176  NOTES 

(10.)  E.g.  Dr.  M'Taggart,  Mr.  Bradley,  and  Mr.  A.  E. 
Taylor.  Of.  an  intorosting  article  on  "Absolutism  and 
Religion,"  by  Dr.  Schiller,  in  "Studies  in  llunaanisra." 

In  addition  to  this,  fashions  in  philosophy  are  very  variable, 
and  to  tie  Christianity  down  to  a  particular  phase  of  idealism,  as 
some  would  do,  is  an  extremely  dangerous  policy.  It  must  be 
evident  that  the  idealist  position  or  positions  has  nothing  like 
the  strength  to-day  which  it  had  in  the  palmy  days  of  T.  H. 
Green  and  his  followers.  Evidence  of  this  can  be  found  not 
merely  in  the  apparition  of  pragmatism,  but  still  more  in  writings 
like  those  of  Bergson,  or  Messrs.  Moore  and  Russell,  or  such 
an  essay  as  the  opening  one  in  Professor  Pigou's  new  book. 

(11.)  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  in  his  article,  "Pantheism, 
Cosmic  Emotion,"  states  and  rejects  the  claims  of  pantheism, 
which  ever  since  the  great  vogue  of  Hegel  has  more  or  less 
dazzled  the  Western  mind. 

Pantheism  in  the  widest  sense  is  become  the  "  great  halting- 
place  between  the  devotion  to  God  and  the  devotion  to 
Humanity"  ("Creed  of  a  Layman,"  p.  19G). 

lie  sees  that  the  real  question  is  between  a  belief  in  per- 
sonality and  its  denial. 

"  If  the  starry  night  is  beautiful,  it  may  be  nothing  to  the 
smile  of  a  child.  One  speech  of  Prometheus  or  of  Hamlet  or 
Faust  teaches  more  than  ten  thousand  sunsets  "  (p.  200).  His 
view  is  essentially  practical.  "  The  main  daily  business  of 
Religion  is  to  improve  daily  life,  not  to  answer  certain  intel- 
lectual puzzles."  "The  weak  side  of  the  oflSicial  Christianity 
after  all  is  not  so  much  its  alienation  from  science,  its  mystical 
creed,  or  its  conventional  formulas,  as  the  palpable  fact  that 
nineteen  hundred  years  have  passed  since  the  death  of  Christ, 
and  the  Gospel  has  been  preached  by  millions  of  priests,  and  yet 
in  spite  of  it  the  practical  order  of  society  is  so  cruelly  hard 
.  .  .  that  it  still  is  a  world  for  tlie  strong."  This  is  to  ignore 
the  fact  well  pointed  out  by  Dr.  Inge  that  Christianity  is 
"  still  a  very  young  religion." 

He  sees,  however,  the  true  source  of  religion,  and  the  danger 
of  making  a  god  of  nature. 


<  REVELATION  177 

"  There  lies  in  the  heart  of  the  poorest  and  meanest  child  a 
force  that  cannot  be  even  stated  in  terms  of  the  deepest  philo- 
sophy of  the  physical  universe.  ...  If  we  are  to  seek  the 
sources  of  religion  in  the  rushing  firmament  of  suns,  or  in  the 
withering  waifs  and  strays  of  humanity  who  are  yielding  up 
their  last  breath  in  mutual  trust  and  love,  we  shall  have  to 
look  for  it  in  [these  latter] "  (p.  214).  It  is  strange  that  the 
writer  should  not  see  how  all  these  aspirations  are  satisfied 
in  the  Incarnation. 

(12.)  Matthew  Arnold,  "  Obermann  Once  More." 

(13.)  For  evidence  of  this,  see  the  writings  of  Mr.  Dickinson 
2xissim.  His  review  of  Oscar  Wilde's  De  Profundis,  published  in 
Hie  Independent  Review,  is  peculiarly  illuminating. 

See  also  Mr.  Bradley  on  "Social  Surgery"  ;  and  Mr.  A.  E. 
Taylor  on  "The  Problem  of  Conduct."  The  subject  is  dis- 
cussed by  Professor  Sorley  in  "Recent  Tendencies  in  English 
Ethics." 

(14.)  Bousset,  "  What  is  Religion  ?  "  (pp.  274-277). 

After  an  inspiring  description  first  of  Goethe,  then  of 
Bismarck,  the  author  goes  on  : — 

"  Christianity  in  its  essential  idea,  dominant  up  to  the 
present,  is  based  on  a  fundamental  conception  utterly  opposed 
to  the  ideal  of  life,  which  has  just  been  described.  ...  In  the 
centre  of  religion  is  placed  the  consciousness  of  sin,  and  the 
consolation  of  freedom  from  sin  and  guilt.  ...  If  we  accept  in  its 
entirety  this  conception,  if,  that  is,  we  take  from  modern  life  its 
very  essence  and  force  it  to  self-renunciation,  we  shall  have 
absolutely  to  cast  on  one  side  such  complete  and  great  figures 
as  those  of  Goethe  and  Bismarck."  If  this  frank  recognition  of 
the  facts  were  more  fully  realised  by  orthodox  Christians, 
perhaps  we  should  see  less  of  the  essays  to  strengthen  the 
faith  by  accommodating  it  to  a  spirit  fundamentally  its 
adversary.     But  as  Mr.  Davidson  well  says  : — 

"  The  inbred  fault  and  meanness  of  the  time 
In  art,  in  thought,  in  polity,  in  trade 
I  charge  directly  to  the  ruined  will 

M 


178  NOTES 

That  neither  takes  nor  leaves  the  Omnipotent 
Creator,  the  Immortal  soul  of  man, 
Heaven,  Hell,  the  Cross  of  Christ,  and  all  that  once 
Was  great  in  Christendom,  when  God  meant  Ood." 

— Mammon  and  his  Message,  p.  50. 

(15.)  See  the  use  made  of  this  by  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  in 
*'  Pagan  Christs,"  and  on  the  general  topic  Robert  Blatch- 
ford,  "  God  and  My  Neighbour."  The  strongest  point  in  this 
very  able  and  honest  book  is  its  insistence  on  this  historical 
argument,  and  also  the  use  it  makes  of  certain  statements  in 
Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer's  "Golden  Bough." 

(16.)  This  position  is  admirably  set  forth  by  Mr.  Tyrrell  in 
the  first  essay  in  "Through  Scylla  and  Charybdis":  "Reflections 
on  Catholicism." 

(17.)  In  a  sermon  bj'  Dr.  Alexander,  Archbishop  of  Armagh. 

(18.)  T.  T.  Hunger,  "The  Freedom  of  Faith." 

(19.)  Henry  Newbolt. 

(20.)  Dr.  Illiugworth,  in  his  "Reason  and  Revelation," 
p.  163,  says  that  "  mii'acles  cannot  be  for  us  what  they  were 
for  those  to  whom  they  first  occurred."  Doubtless,  but  that 
is  because  they  are  tnore  to  us  than  to  them,  not  because  they 
are  less. 

On  this  question  of  the  value  of  the  miraculous,  see  an 
interesting  article  by  Father  Kelly,  S.S.M.,  on  "Revelation 
and  Religious  Ideas,"  in  the  Church  Qiunieiiy,  .Januarj'  1909. 

"  Law  is  coextensive  with  Nature,  and  there  is  therefore  no 
way  in  which  a  Revelation  of  that  which  transcends  Nature  can 
be  given  within  the  natural  sphere,  except  by  transcending  the 
law  by  which  the  natural  is  normally  bound.  Miracles  in  this 
sense  do  not  guarantee  or  authenticate,  they  actually  constitute 
the  Revelation,  exactly  as  it  is  his  talking  '  freely '  outside  the 
strict  terms  of  the  official  programme  which  reveals  the  man 
behind  the  official  "  (p.  334). 

The  whole  article  is  most  valuable.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  it 
is  only  with  the  growth  of  the  sense  of  law  in  nature  that  this 
esstntiid  need  of  miracle  becomes  evident. 


MYSTERY  179 

(21.)  The  notion  of  freedom  at  once  upsets  the  idea  of  a 
universe  perfectly  "given,"  and  predictable.  Moreover,  the 
actions  of  a  free  being  such  as  a  man  would  seem  miraculous  to 
anything  in  the  purely  mechanical  order,  such  as  a  stone,  could 
we  conceive  it  endowed  with  consciousness.  The  idea  of  the 
miraculous  does  not  do  more  than  apply  to  God  what  every  one 
who  believes  in  freedom  applies  to  man  in  regard  to  his  use  of 
the  natural  order. 

On  the  whole  question  of  freedom,  cf.  James  in  "  The  Will  to 
Believe";  Schiller,  "Freedom"  in  "Humanism,"  pp.  391  sriq.;  and 
above  all,  Bergson,  Les  Dontices  iimmkliates  de  la  Conscience,  chap, 
iii.  I  think  M.  Bergson  does  not  quite  adequately  discuss  the 
phenomena  of  remorse  in  the  actor  ;  he  seems  to  treat  it  only 
from  the  spectator's  standpoint. 

See  also  Margaret  Benson,  "  The  Venture  of  Rational  Faith" ; 
W.  H.  Mallock,  "  Religion  as  a  Credible  Doctrine  on  the 
Practical  Basis  of  Belief "  ;  and  Professor  Pigou's  valuable 
essay  in  his  volume  on  "  Theism."  On  Bergson's  view  that 
free  acts  are  of  rare  occurrence,  cf.  a  popular  exposition  of 
the  same  truth  by  R.  H.  Hutton  on  "  The  Limits  of  Free- 
will," in  his  "Aspects  of  Scientific  and  Religious  Thought," 
pp.  353  sqq. 

(22.)  Cf.  Bergson,  U Evolution  Creatrice,  and  Ward,  "Natu- 
ralism and  Agnosticism." 


II.— MYSTERY 

(1.)  "Christianity  not  Mysterious." 

"  They  trifle  then  exceedingly  and  discover  a  mighty  scarcity 
of  better  arguments,  who  defend  their  mysteries  by  this  pitiful 
shift  of  drawing  inferences  from  what  is  unknown  to  what  is 
known,  of  insisting  upon  adequate  Ideas  ;  except  they  will 
agree,  as  some  do,  to  call  every  spire  of  grass,  sitting  and 
standing,  fish  or  flesh,  profound  mysteries"  (p.  79). 

"  All  faith  now  in  the  world  is  (of  this  last  sort,  and  by  con- 


180  NOTES 

sequence)  entirely  built  upon  ratiocination.  The  last  sort  is 
acquiescing  in  the  words  and  writings  of  those  to  whom  we 
believe  God  has  spoken." 

(2.)  It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  works  seem  not  even  plaus- 
ible to  us  to-day,  and  even  to  many  unbelievers  would  seem 
more  deficient  in  grasp  of  reality  than  the  faith  they  attack. 
Being  only  one  particular  fashion,  they  have  no  interest  for  an 
age  in  which  that  fashion  no  longer  rules.  There  is  every 
reason  for  supposing  that  the  "New  Theology"  will  prove 
equally  ephemeral. 

(3.)  "The  New  Theology,"  by  R.  J.  Campbell. 

(4.)  "The  Substance  of  Faith  allied  with  Science,"  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge. 

(5.)  "  Common-sense  in  Religion,"  by  Martin  R.  Smith. 

(6.)  "The  Re-birth  of  Religion,"  by  A.  S.  Crapsey. 

(7.)  E.  A.  Abbott,  "The  Kernel  and  the  Husk";  his  works 
on  Newman  are  "  Philomythus,"  " Newmanianism,"  and  "The 
Anglican  Life  of  Cardinal  Newman,"  2  vols. 

(8.)  See.  especially  Bradley,  "Appearance  and  Reality." 
Whatever  be  the  defects  of  Mr.  Bradley's  system,  "  our 
absolute,"  as  he  calls  it,  he  has  certainly  done  great  service  in 
showing  the  difficulties  inherent  in  the  commonest  notions. 

(9.)  "The  Creed  of  Christ."  In  this  author's  view  the 
Christianity  of  the  Creeds  takes  for  granted  that  man  is 
...  a  naughty  child. 

"The  morality  that  is  based  on  obedience,  though  suitable  for 
children  and  for  childlike  souls,  is  fatal  to  soul-groivth  in  its  higher 
stages  "  (p.  142). 

The  whole  chapter  is  expressive  of  hostility  to  the  childlike 
ideal,  which  is  of  the  essence  of  the  religion  of  Jesus ;  and  is  a 
very  interesting  piece  of  self-expression. 

(10.)  Browning,  "The  Ring  and  the  Book." 

"  The  Pope : 

'  There's  a  new  tribunal  now 

Higher  than  God's,  the  educated  man's.'  " 

(11.)  Hoffding,  "Philosophy  of  Religion." 


MYSTERY  181 

"It  is  personality  which  in  the  world  of  our  experience 
invests  all  other  things  with  value  "  (p.  279). 

"  The  fundamental  axioms  of  science  can  never  be  strictly 
proved.  They  appear  as  fundamental  hypotheses,  as  principles 
which  guide  our  searchings  and  inquiries  by  directing  us  how 
to  ask  and  how  to  state  our  problems  "  (p.  245). 

"  Our  knowledge  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  any  personal  being 
partakes  of  the  nature  of  faith  rather  than  of  knowledge" 
(p.  145). 

"  Experience  will  always  retain  the  stamp  of  individual 
personality  ;  '  common  experience '  is  more  or  less  an  illusion, 
because,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  different  individuals  interpret  and 
apply  this  'common "  experience  each  in  his  own  way  "  (p.  105). 

"  The  intellectual  interest  prompts  us  to  conceive  existence 
as  a  great  immeasurable  system  of  causal  groups  and  causal 
series  ;  the  religious  interest  moves  us  to  a  conception  of  being, 
as  the  home,  as  the  development  and  conservation  of  value  " 
(p.  93).  In  other  words,  the  intellectual  instinct  drives  us  to 
make  of  the  universe  a  single  system,  which  in  the  long  run 
means  a  mechanism — the  religious  instinct  lays  stress  on 
personal  forces,  and  meanings,  a  world  of  freedom,  of  the  many 
— it  is  the  struggle  between  the  Pantheistic  and  the  personal 
conceptions  of  life. 

"  Mysticism  joins  hands  with  critical  philosophy  which  asserts 
that  our  ideas  are  not  adequate  to  express  that  which  exists 
outside  the  form  of  our  limited  experience  "  (p.  81). 

"  Evex'y  particular  individuality  is  a  little  world  "  (p.  40). 

"  The  given  is  never  ended,  new  experiences  are  always  ap- 
pearing which  demand  a  new  determination  of  our  concepts  " 
(p.  39)^. 

"  Every  individual  is  holy  as  a  centre  of  value  and  as  a  centre 
of  experience  "  (p.  298). 

"  Scientifically  regarded,  personality  is  the  last — perhaps  in- 
soluble— riddle,  the  concluding  point  dimly  discerned  in  the 
distance.  For  scientific  thought  is  itself  a  spiritual  activity, 
which  can  only  be  exercised  by  a  person — and  the  last  riddle 
would  remain  unsolved,  even  if  science  could  explain  everything 


182  NOTES 

else  so  long  as  it  did  not  explain  its  own  ultimate  presup- 
position. .  .  .  But  in  life  peAonality  is  the  first ;  it  is  that 
which  supports  all — even  science,  and  which  impresses  its  seal 
on  all  things "  (p.  317).  It  is  this  contrast  which  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  opposition  between  religion  and  science,  or  to  be 
more  accurate  between  the  personal  and  the  rationalist  stand- 
point— an  opposition  which  is  real  and  is  not,  as  some  apologists 
seem  to  imagine,  merely  transient  and  apparent.  It  is,  of 
course,  to  be  resolved  by  recognising  with  Bergson  the  abstract 
and  partial  character  of  scientific  inquiry.  The  trouble  comes 
not  from  natural  science,  but  from  the  scientific  philosophy  of 
the  universe. 

"  No  one  can  ever  prove  that  the  genesis  of  the  valuable  in 
the  world  is  due  to  an  accident  "  (p.  340). 

"  A  too  anxious  adherence  to  experience  is  apt  to  dull  our 
sight  and  blunt  our  instinct  for  new  possibilities ;  this  holds 
good  in  the  practical  equally  as  in  the  theoretical  sphere. 
Heart  and  courage  make  many  things  possible  which  would 
otherwise  never  be  realised,  at  any  rate  in  the  case  of  some 
individuals.  Here,  again,  W.  James's  thesis  that  there  are  cases 
where  faith  creates  its  own  verification  holds  good  *'  (p.  340). 

"  It  may  be  that  poetry  is  a  more  perfect  expression  of  the 
highest  than  any  scientific  concept  could  ever  be  "  (p.  376). 

"  The  last  word  must  lie  with  the  principle  of  personality  " 
(p.  381). 

I  quote  these  passages  as  illustrations  of  the  lecture,  not 
because  I  accept  the  main  views  of  the  author,  with  his  pre- 
ference of  Greek  to  Christian  ethics. 

(12.)  Alice  Meynell,  "Poems." 

(13.)  Bergson,  UEvohdion  Creatrice,  p.  179. 

(14.)  This  phrase  is  that  of  Mr.  W.  G.  Williams  in  "  Newman, 
Pascal,  Loisy  and  the  Catholic  Church." 

(15.)  M'Taggart,  "  Some  Problems  of  Eeligion." 

(16.)  Dickinson  in  the  Hibbert  Journal. 

(17.)  "  The  Churches  and  Modern  Thought,"  by  Philip  Vivian. 
"A  History  of  Free-thought,"  by  J.  M.  Robertson. 

(18.)  J.  M.  Robertson. 


MYSTERY  183 

(19.)  It  must  be  admitted  that  this  argument  is  less  strong 
to-day  than  it  appeared  some  years  back.  We  are  now  witness- 
ing, not  merely  in  the  Church  of  Rome,  the  claim,  as  Dr.  Gore 
has  described  it,  "  to  hold  a  very  high  sacramental  doctrine  com- 
bined with  extreme  dogmatic  weakness  at  the  centre."  Still, 
that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  we  can  see  historically  how 
the  weakening  of  the  hold  on  the  sacraments  leads  in  the 
long  run  through  subjectivism  to  the  surrender  of  the  creeds  ; 
though  it  takes  centuries  to  work  out  the  immanent  logic 
of  Zwinglianism,  and  the  very  strong  personal  and  mystical 
religion  of  many  Puritans  has  been  for  a  long  while  an  eft'ective 
barrier  against  the  tendency.  No  one  could  rate  more  highly 
the  value  of  this  mystical  and  personal  element  in  religion 
than  the  writer.  But  it  ought  not  to  exist  alone,  and  needs  to 
be  balanced  by  the  other  factors  of  religion,  a  truth  admirably 
expounded  by  Baron  von  Hugel  in  his  new  book  on  "  The 
Mystical  Element  in  Religion." 

(20.)  Tyrrell,  Lex  Orandi. 

Cf.,  also  on  the  subject  of  this  lecture,  p.  18 :  "Compared  with 
this  invisible  spiritual  world,  that  of  physical  Nature  is  mere 
shadow.  For  nothing  can  be  more  real  to  me  than  myself. 
Self  is  the  very  test  and  measure  of  all  reality.  .  .  .  Further- 
more it  is  in  willing,  acting,  and  originating  that  we  recognise 
our  selfhood  or  reality.  .  .  .  We  are  most  real,  when  we  are 
most  free,  conscious,  and  energetic." 

(21.)  Bergson  quotes  this  statement  of  Du  Bois-Reymond, 
L' Evolution  Creatrice,  p.  41. 

Mr,  Wells  sums  up  in  a  lucid  and  concise  form  much  of 
Bergson's  system,  e.g.  ("First  and  last  Things,"  p.  25):  — 

"  The  human  mind  has  to  hold  a  thing  still  for  a  moment 
before  it  can  think  it.  It  arrests  the  present  moment  for  its 
struggle  as  Joshua  stopped  the  sun.  It  cannot  contemplate 
things  continuously,  and  so  it  has  to  resort  to  a  series  of  static 
snapshots.  It  has  to  kill  motion  in  order  to  study  it,  as  a 
naturalist  kills  and  pins  out  a  butterfly  in  order  to  study  life. 

"  You  see  the  mind  is  really  pigeon-holed  and  discontinuous  in 
two  respects  :  in  respect  to  time  and  in  respect  to  classification, 


184  NOTES 

whereas  one  has  a  strong  persuasion  that  the  world  of  fact 
is  unbounded  or  continuous." 

(22.)  Newman's  theory  of  belief  is  propounded  in  his 
"Grammar  of  Assent,"  its  essential  characteristic  being  that 
real  belief  is  a  function  of  the  whoki  personality  and  not 
merely  of  the  ratiocinative  faculty. 

(23.)  The  slight  mutilation  of  the  statue  is  of  no  importance, 
as  the  imagination  can  readily  fill  up  the  missing  lines,  and  it 
may  be  taken  as  symbolic  of  that  transformation  in  regard  to 
certain  details  which  our  view  of  Jewish  history  has  undergone 
in  the  last  generation  without  any  way  impairing  the  main  lines 
of  Christian  doctrine. 

(24.)  Besides  writers  mentioned  in  the  lecture,  see  also,  on 
the  general  topic  of  this  lectui-e,  Balfour's  "Foundations  of 
Belief"  and  "Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,"  the  chapter  in 
Dr.  Illingworth's  "  Reason  and  Revelation,"  "  Christianity  an 
Appeal  to  our  Entire  Personality  ; "  also  cf.  p.  209 : — 

"  Rational  certainty  ...  is  only  possible  in  the  case  of  an 
abstract  subject  matter,  while  the  kind  of  knowledge  which 
deais  with  human  experience  in  the  concrete,  with  life  as  it  is 
lived,  never  admits  of  exact  exposition  or  logical  demonstra- 
tion ; "  and  cf.  the  following  letter  from  Creighton  ("  Life,"  ii. 
p.  253)  :— 

"  There  can  be  no  convincing  proof  of  anything  that  affects 
our  inner  character.  What  '  convincing  proof '  have  you  that 
your  wife  loves  or  your  child  ?  Yet  you  believe  it ;  and  that 
belief  is  more  real  to  you  than  anything  that  you  know  or  can 
prove.  Religion  must  be  a  matter  of  belief  not  proof.  It 
depends  on  a  consciousness  of  the  relation  between  our  soul 
and  God.  Immortality  depends  on  the  knowledge  of  the 
meaning  of  our  soul's  life,  which  we  obtain  from  looking  at  it 
in  the  light  of  God.  The  more  we  find  our  soul,  the  more 
readily  do  we  see  God  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Look 
back  upon  your  own  life,  your  growth,  the  traces  of  Providence, 
the  presence  of  God's  love.  Do  you  think  that  all  this  wonder- 
ful process  can  come  to  an  abrupt  end  ? 

"  All  purely  intellectual  positions  break  down.    They  go  so  far 


THE   HISTORIC    CHRIST  185 

and  no  further.  They  are  heset  by  limitations.  .  .  .  We  are 
clear  by  missing  out  half  the  elements  involved.  It  is  not 
vague  emotion  when  we  grapple  with  immensity,  and  there  is 
immensity  in  every  human  soul.  Its  progress  is  marvellous 
and  inexplicable.  The  simplest  soul  is  full  of  amazing  problems. 
Try  to  explain  yourself  as  you  can,  there  is  a  vast  residuum 
which  you  cannot  turn  into  shape.  How  is  all  this  to  be  dealt 
with  ?  I  answer  only  by  conscious  communion  with  a  Person 
who  is  Life  and  Truth  "  (ii.  p.  409). 


III.— THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST 

(1.)  Nineteenth  Century,  July  1890,  p.  22.  "The  lights  of 
science  and  the  lights  of  the  faith." 

"  No  longer  in  contact  with  fact  of  any  kind.  Faith  stands 
now  for  ever  proudly  inaccessible  to  the  attacks  of  the  infidel." 

(2.)  H.  C.  Corrance  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  and  After, 
February  1908. 

The  writer  continues  :  "  But  the  idea  of  such  a  possibility 
is  based  upon  a  false  view  of  the  nature  of  faith,  which  is  really 
not  concerned  with  the  phenomenal  except  as  a  basis  for  the 
ideal.  Its  true  home  is  in  the  ideal,  the  supersensuous,  the 
unseen.  Its  object  is  not  in  time  but  in  eternity,  not  in  the 
finite  but  in  the  infinite,  not  in  appearances  but  in  reality.  It 
uses  these  relativities  only  as  a  means  of  passing  through  them 
to  the  absolute. 

(3.)  11  Program/ma  dei  Modei-nisti. 

"Importo  poco  alia  fede  di  sapere  se  la  critica  puo  o  no 
accertare  la  nascita  verginale,  i  miracoli  clamorosi,  in  fine 
la  risurrezione  del  Redentore ;  se  riesce  o  no  ad  attribuire  al 
Cristo  I'annuncio  di  alcuni  dogmi,  e  la  fondazione  della  Chidsa. 
Quel  fatti  sfuggono  per  il  loro  carattere  iperfenomenico  alle 
prese  della  critica  spermientale  e  storica  ;  e  questi  ultimi  essa 
non  li  dimostra." 

(4.)  This  is  most  obvious  from  M.  Loisy's  two  latest  books. 
Simples  E^Jlexiotis  and  Quelques  Lettres. 

M  2 


186  NOTES 

(f).)  Dr.  Rashdall  at  the  Liverpool  Church  Congress. 

(6.)  Canon  Hensley  Henson,  in  "  The  Value  of  the  Bible,'* 
Sermons  xiii  and  xiv,  Cf.  also  the  same  writer  in  "  Sincerity 
and  Subscription." 

(7.)  See  on  this  point  an  interesting  essay  by  Dr.  Garvie  on 
"  The  Ritschlian  Theology,"  more  especially  p.  222  ;  but  com- 
pare also  Orr,  "The  Ritschlian  Theology  and  The  Evan- 
gelical Faith." 

(8.)  Quelques  Lettres,  pp.  93,  94, 

(9.)  Miss  Benson,  in  her  admirable  book,  "The  Venture  of 
Rational  Faith,"  puts  the  exact  relation  of  historical  inquiry 
to  the  whole  of  Christian  evidence. 

"  There  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  believing 
in  a  religion  which  is  bound  up  with  certain  historical  facts, 
and  believing  in  that  religion  on  the  ground  alone  of  the 
historical  evidence  for  the  facts  "  (p.  136). 

"  Historical  evidence  in  the  narrower  sense  is  not  enough  to 
prove  miracles,  but  neither  is  it  enough  to  prove  any  funda- 
mental Christian  position.  .  .  . 

"  What  we  want  to  ask  with  regard  to  historical  records,  when 
we  regard  them  as  contributing  to  the  proof  of  fundamental 
Christian  doctrine,  is  not  altogether  are  '  they  adequate '  ? 
but  rather  are  they  suitable  ?  not  '  do  they  amount  to  demon- 
strative proof  ? '  but  do  they  go  as  far  as  any  such  proof  can 
go?"  (p.  139). 

"  There  is  a  growing  body  of  people  which  is  beginning  to  hold 
the  converse  view  :  that  counting,  classification,  measurement, 
the  whole  fabric  of  mathematics,  is  subjective  and  untrue  to  the 
world  of  fact,  and  that  the  uniqueness  of  individuals  is  the 
objective  truth  "  (Wells,  op.  cit.,  p.  34). 

"  Man,  thinking  man  suffers  from  intellectual  over-confidence 
and  a  vain  belief  in  the-  universal  validity  of  reasoning  "  (p.  42). 

The  position  is  well  summed  up  by  Westcott  ("  Gospel  of 
Life,"  p.  304)  :— 

"  Miracles  and  prophecies  considered  separately  and  in  detail 
are  not  the  proper  proof  of  Christianity,  but  as  parts  of  the 
whole  testimony  of  experience  they  have  an  effective  power. 


THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST  187 

Historical  testimony  originates  and  commends  a  religion  but  it 
does  not  establish  it.  Therefore  I  say  the  confirmation  of  the 
Gospel  is  as  '  complete  as  life  can  give,'  for  in  the  end  we  must 
make  our  appeal  to  life,  life  as  a  whole.  We  were  made  for  action, 
made  to  gain  a  character,  made,  in  the  words  of  the  Bible,  to 
grow  into  the  likeness  of  God.  The  final  influence  of  opinions 
there  upon  the  conduct  of  life  may  be  taken  generally  as  a  test 
of  their  truth  for  us.  We  are  so  constituted  as  to  recognise  the 
truth  which  we  cannot  discover,  and  life  seals  the  confession  of 
the  soul." 

(10.)  On  the  need  of  presupposition  in  historical  inquiry,  see 
Dr.  lUingworth,  "  Reason  and  Revelation,"  chap,  v.,  and  also 
Miss  Benson's  book  already  cited,  chap.  viii.  p.  93. 

"The  demand  for  an  unprejudiced  witness  is  strangely  un- 
historical.  It  is  the  demand  for  one  who  has  the  perspicacity 
to  see  the  weighty  bearing  of  obscure  facts  without  the  sym- 
pathetic or  imaginative  nature  which  could  be  influenced  by 
them.  One  part  of  the  evidence  of  Christianity,  on  the  contrary, 
is  that  the  writers  are  "  prejudiced."  It  is  because  of  the 
inherent  conviction  of  the  story  recorded  that  the  witnesses 
cannot  be  unprejudiced." 

(11.)  Eg.  the  habit  of  bracketing  lines  in  classical  authors  as 
spurious  on  purely  subjective  grounds  has,  it  is  said,  grown 
to  a  quite  extraordinary  degree  among  certain  continental 
critics.  An  instance  of  the  way  in  which  prepossessions  aflect 
minds  on  a  similar  level  of  culture,  and  even  contemporaries, 
might  be  taken  from  the  two  books  on  Jeanne  d'Arc  produced 
respectively  by  the  sceptic  M.  Anatole  France  and  by  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang. 

(12.)  Langlois  and  Seignobos,  "Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  History,"  pp.  206-208. 

"  The  observations  whose  results  are  contained  in  historical 
documents  are  never  of  equal  value  with  those  of  contemporary 
scientists.  We  have  already  shown  why.  The  indirect  method 
of  history  is  always  inferior  to  the  direct  method  of  the 
science  of  observation.  If  its  results  do  not  harmonise  with 
theirs  it  is  history  which  must  give  way."    In  other  words,  the 


188  NOTES 

very  possibility  of  the  miraculous  is  ruled  out  of  court  because 
it  does  not  happen  to  be  in  agreement  with  the  opinion  current 
at  the  moment  among  scientific  men.  It  is  difficult  after  this 
to  blame  any  apologist  for  straining  the  evidence  so  as  to 
support  a  preconceived  opinion. 

(13.)  Miscellanies.     Fourth  Series,  p.  229. 

"Talk  of  history  being  a  science  ns  loudly  as  ever  we  like, 
the  writer  of  it  will  continue  to  approach  his  chests  of  archives 
with  the  bunch  of  keys  in  his  hand."  The  passage  is  a  criticism 
of  Professor  Bury's  inaugural  lecture,  and  the  whole  of  these 
three  pafcs,  227-230,  are  well  worth  reading  in  this  connection. 
They  express  the  need  of  the  personal  element  in  the  historian 
with  moderation  and  truth. 

(14.)  "Life." 

"  It  is  an  impossible  claim  to  take  up  a  detached,  impartial, 
outside  attitude  to  any  subject  which  is  intimately  connected 
with  individual  life.  ...  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the 
preconceptions  of  the  critical  mind  need  examination  just  as 
much  as  the  preconceptions  of  the  credulous  mind.  Human 
morality  would  disappear  before  the  treatment  which  is  some- 
times dealt  to  revealed  religion." 

(15.)  Dr.  Foakes- Jackson's  essay  in  "Cambridge  Theological 
Essays,"  p.  518,  and  the  note  there. 

(16.)  Mr.  Robertson,  who  denies  the  historicity  of  Jesus, 
finds  himself  driven  by  parity  of  reasoning  to  question  that  of 
Buddha  and  even  of  Montanus.  His  book  illustrates  the  ex- 
treme danger  to  any  sane  view  of  history  in  ignoring  tradition 
as  a  source  of  knowledge  comparable  with  the  documents. 

Cf.  Creighton,  "Life,"  i.  216  :  "A  case  can,  of  course,  be  made 
out  always  about  anything  ;  and  I  always  feel  that  one  set  of 
arguments  is  as  good  as  another.  The  real  question  is  the 
nature  of  evidence.  Once  abolish  tradition,  and  I  am  free  to 
confess  that  one  theory  is  as  good  as  another.  How  does  one 
know  that  there  was  such  a  man  as  Julius  Ci«sar  ?  A  little 
ingenuity  could  prove  his  books  to  be  forgeries  and  himself  a 
myth.  I  really  only  believe  it  because  it  is  the  traditional  belief 
of  mankind  since  his  day  to  this.     About  any  historic  event  or 


THE    HISTORIC   CHRIST  189 

the  origin  of  any  institution  I  could  produce  an  equal  nebulous- 
ness  as  does  the  tract,  if  I  assumed  that  everything  that 
everybody  before  me  had  said  was  necessarily  mistaken  because 
it  had  been  said  or  believed.  I  mean  to  say  that  the  primary 
position  assumed  in  that  tract  [A  Quaker  Tract]  that  every- 
body was  deluded  till  the  year  1680  or  something  of  that  sort, 
that  the  words  on  which  they  relied  were  capable  of  other  mean- 
ings, that  they  had  stupidly  gone  on  doing  something  on  the 
supposition  that  Christ  meant  it,  when  He  didn't,  I  would 
never  be  prepared  to  allow — it  would  reduce  all  human  know- 
ledge to  arbitrariness.  .  .  , 

"  Without  outward  helps  to  spiritualise  life,  I  am  afraid  that  I 
for  one  am  too  feeble  to  get  on.  The  writer  of  the  tract  says 
that  the  frame  of  mind  of  the  recipient  of  the  Lord's  Supper 
is  the  important  thing,  not  the  reception.  But  without  the 
opportunity  of  the  reception  is  one  sure  of  getting  the  frame 
of  mind." 

(17.)  ''Report  of  Pan-Anglican  Congress."  The  gist  of  Pro- 
fessor Burkitt's  speech  appears  to  be  an  expansion  of  the 
dictum  that  the  Bible  is  "  not  a  revelation  but  the  record  of  a 
revelation."  The  purely  critical  and  intellectual  study  of  the 
Bible  is  indeed  recommended  but  not  as  a  substitute  for 
devotion,  which  is  to  be  stimulated  by  the  "still  living 
Church."  The  speech  is  indicative  of  that  divorce  between 
devotion  and  criticism  which  is  the  result  of  the  Bibliolatry  of 
the  past  and  of  the  Protestant  habit  of  isolating  the  Bible 
from  its  milieu.    Against  this  tendency  the  speaker  is  in  reaction. 

(18.)  "Idea  of  a  University,"  p.  210. 

(19.)  Creighton's  "Life,"  ii.  p.  408. 

(20.)  Ibid.,  ii.,  p.  212. 

These  letters  are  also  printed  in  the  smaller  book,  "  Counsels 
for  the  Young,"  pp.  86-91  and  p.  118. 

{2\.)  Hibhert  Journal,  Saxmnxy^  1909:  "Jesus  or  Christ,"  by 
Rev.  R.  Roberts,  Congregational  minister. 

22.)    This    argument    is    excellently    put    by    Mr.    G.   K. 
Chesterton  in  "  Orthodoxy,"  pp.  58,  59. 

"  If  evolution  simply  means  that  a  positive  thing  called  an 


190  NOTES 

ape  turned  very  slowly  into  a  positive  thing  called  a  man, 
then  it  is  stingless  for  the  most  orthodox  ;  for  a  personal 
God  might  just  as  well  do  things  slowly  as  quickly,  especially  if, 
like  the  Christian  God,  He  were  outside  time.  But  if  it  means 
anything  more,  it  means  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  ape 
to  change,  and  no  such  thing  as  a  man  for  him  to  change  into. 
It  means  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  thing.  At  best  there 
is  only  one  thing,  and  that  is  ix  flux  of  everything  and  any- 
thing. This  is  an  attack  not  upon  the  faith,  but  upon  the 
mind.  I  cannot  think,  if  there  are  no  things  to  think  about. 
You  cannot  think  if  you  are  not  separate  from  the  subject 
of  thought." 

This  position  is  obviously  directly  contrary  to  that  Hegelian 
and  neo-Hegelian  Pantheism,  which  does  resolve  the  universe 
into  a  flux  in  the  way  described. 

(23.)  "The  Renaissance,"  Epilogue. 

(24.)  Browning,  "  Abt  Vogler." 

There  is  an  admirable  statement  of  this  side  of  Browning, 
his  emphasis  on  monumental  moments,  in  Pater's  essay  on 
Winckelmann,  "Renaissance,"  p.  205:  "His  poetry  is  pre-emi- 
nently the  poetry  of  situations.  The  characters  themselves  are 
always  of  secondary  importance  ;  often  they  are  characters  in 
themselves  of  little  interest.  They  seem  to  come  to  him  by 
strange  accidents  from  the  ends  of  the  world.  His  gift  is 
shown  by  the  way  in  which  he  accepts  such  a  character,  and 
throws  it  into  some  situation,  or  apprehends  it  in  some  deli- 
cate pause  of  life,  in  which  for  a  moment  it  becomes  ideal." 

(25.)  Bergson's  theory  of  the  reality  of  time  overcomes  the 
difliculty  raised  about  conceiving  it  as  a  series  of  infinitesimal 
moments. 

(26.)  See  the  article  in  "  The  Creed  of  a  Layman  "  on  this 
topic. 

(27.)  G.  Lowes  Dickinson  in  Hibbert  Journal,  May  1909. 

(28.)  Of  course  the  phrase  "  pet  name  "  is  not  really  a  fair 
description,  but  even  this  expresses  a  truth  greater  than  the 
objection.  It  is  not  merely  in  hymns,  but  in  books  like  "  The 
Imitation,"  or  "  The  Revelations  of  Divine   Love,"  or  poems 


FORGIVENESS  191 

like  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven  "  that  the  notion  of  the  Divine 
Lover  can  be  found,  and  it  is  universal  in  Christian  devotion, 
and  all  the  mystics. 

On  the  "  romantic"  character  of  Christianity,  see  Chesterton's 
"Orthodoxy,"  chap.  viii. ;  also  article  in  the  Hihhert  Journal, 
July  1908,  by  S.  G.  Dunn ;  cf.  also  Dr.  Barry's  "  Newman,"  vfhioh 
shows  the  relation  between  the  Oxford  movement  and  the 
Romantic  revival ;  and  Wilde's  De  Profundis.  It  is  the  burden, 
also,  of  many  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  attacks. 


IV.— FORGIVENESS 

(1.)  I  do  not  say  that  this  solves  the  problem  of  suffering 
wholly,  as  that  we  may  not  have  to  admit  the  theory  of  an  evil 
agency,  as  developed  in  that  most  suggestive  book  "  Evil  and 
Evolution." 

(2.)  Crapsey,  "The  Re-birth  of  Religion,"  p.  240. 

(3.)  "  Man  and  the  Universe,"  p.  220. 

(4.)  "The  Creed  of  Christ,"  pp.  153,  155. 

(5.)  "The  New  Theology,"  pp.  146,  167. 

(6.)  The  article  in  the  Hihhert  Journal,  already  quoted. 

(7.)  Cf.  William  James,  "  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience," 
p.  462. 

"  Not  nearly  as  widespread  as  sacrifice,  it  corresponds  to  a 
more  inward  and  moral  stage  of  sentiment.  It  is  part  of  the 
general  system  of  purgation  and  cleansing  which  one  feels 
oneself  in  need  of  in  order  to  be  in  right  relations  to  one's 
deity.  For  him  who  confesses  shams  are  over  and  realities 
have  begun  ;  he  has  exteriorised  liis  rottenness.  If  he  has  not 
actually  got  rid  of  it,  he  at  least  no  longer  smears  it  over  with 
a  hypocritical  show  of  virtue — he  lives  at  least  upon  a  basis  of 
veracity.  The  complete  decay  of  the  practice  of  confession 
in  Anslo-Saxon  communities  is  a  little  hard  to  account  for. 
Reaction  against  popery  is,  of  course,  the  historic  explanation, 
for  in  popery  confession  went  with  penances  and  absolution 


192  NOTES 

and  other  inadmissible  practices.  Ihit  on  the  side  of  the  sinner 
himself  it  seems  as  if  the  need  ought  to  have  been  too  great  to  accept 
so  summary  a  refusal  of  its  satisfaction.  One  would  think  that  in 
more  men  the  shell  of  secrecy  would  have  had  to  open,  the 
pent-in  abscess  to  burst  and  gain  relief,  even  though  the  ear  that 
heard  the  confession  wei-e  unworthy.  The  Catholic  Church,  for 
obvious  utilitarian  reasons,  has  substituted  auricular  confession 
to  one  priest  for  the  more  radical  act  of  public  confession.  We 
English-speaking  Protestants,  in  the  general  self-reliance  and 
unsociability  of  our  nature,  seem  to  find  it  enough,  if  we  take 
God  alone  into  our  confidence." 

(8).  Of  course  "  sacrifice  "  in  ancient  religions  embodies  many 
kinds  of  religious  aspiration,  and  its  purgative,  expiatory 
element  is  not  always  in  the  foreground,  but  recent  research 
seems  to  emphasise  this  element  in  every  kind  of  "mystery." 

(9.)  William  James,  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experience," 
p.  508. 

(10.)  Rom.  vii. 

(11.)  Crapsey,  "  Re-birth  of  Religion,"  p.  247. 

(12.)  On  this  point  see  Acton's  essay  on  George  Eliot  in 
"  Historical  Essays  and  Studies,"  p.  284. 

"  The  doctrine  that  neither  contrition  nor  sacrifice  can  ap- 
pease Xemesis  or  avert  the  consequences  of  our  wrong-doing 
from  ourseWes  or  others,  filled  a  very  large  space  indeed  in 
her  scheme  of  life  and  literature.  From  the  bare  diagram  of 
Brother  Jacob  to  the  profound  and  finished  picture  of '  Middle- 
march,'  retribution  is  the  constant  theme  and  motive  of  her 
art.  It  helped  to  determine  her  religious  attitude,  for  it  is 
only  partly  true  that  want  of  evidence  was  her  only  objection 
to  Christianity.  She  was  firmly  persuaded  that  the  postpone- 
ment of  the  reckoning  blunts  the  edge  of  remorse,  and  that 
repentance,  which  ought  to  be  submission  to  just  punishment, 
proved  by  the  test  of  confession,  means  more  commonlj-  the 
endeavour  to  elude  it.  She  thought  that  the  world  would 
be  infinitely  better  and  happier  if  men  could  be  made  to  feel 
that  there  is  no  escape  from  the  inexorable  law  that  we  reap 
what  we  have  sown." 


FORGIVENESS  193 

(13.)  This  beautiful  though  comparatively  little  known  hymn 
is  by  a  famous  Congregationalist  of  the  last  generation,  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Binney. 

(14.)  Creighton's  "  Life,"  vol.  ii.  p.  408  :— 

"  Scepticism  narrows  the  real  problem,  refuses  to  face  the 
actual  facts,  substitutes  energy  in  reforming  the  world  for 
power  to  deal  with  it  as  it  is.  I  can  sympathise  with  all  that 
it  has  to  say  and  all  that  it  tries  to  do  :  but  there  is  so  much 
beyond." 


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