How much is left of the old doctrines?

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HOW MUCH IS LEFT OF ^HE OLD DOCTRINES?

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HOW MUCH IS LEFT OF
THE OLD DOCTEINES?

% 25oDfe for tlje ^to$\t

BY

WASHINGTON GLADDEN

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIX AND COMPANY

(Ct)E 0itJcr»iDe l^resfg, Cambribge

1899

:bt77

.GrS

TWO COPIES RECEIVED.

Library of CongretS|
Offic« of tht

N0V1818Q9

Register of Copyrlghtik

48593

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SECOND COPY.

T

£ PEEFACE

This Httle book, like " Who Wrote the Bible ? "
is not for the scholars, but for the people. No
claim to special theological or scientific knowledge
can be set up by the writer ; he has only sought to
bring together the terms of the theological equa-
tion as they are understood by many well-instructed
men of the present day. The need of cancellation
is made apparent by such a restatement : we get
rid of fractions, and secure a more intelligible
theory of religion.

It will be evident to the reader that these chap-
ters have been submitted to the test of popular
presentation. Their direct and familiar style is
not the result of literary artifice ; they are the
words of a man speaking face to face with his fel-
low men. Sometimes, as on pages 57 and 58, the
illustrations are drawn from the immediate sur-
roundings, and would lose all their force if the
circumstances were not permitted to appear. No
apology is therefore made for letting these words
go forth in this colloquial form ; the purpose which

IT PREFACE

they are intended to fulfill wonld not be secured
by Hterary reconstruction.

In tiying to state the substance of what is be-
lieyed at the present day it has been necessary to
make many quotations ; these are part of the ail-
ment, generally the besfc part of it, and I have
inoorpoiated them in the text where they belong,
instead of segregating tiiem iu appendices or foot-
notes.

First Coy.sREGAXiO'Ai Chusch,

Co-LZTSBTs, Ohio. Oetnber 25, 18991

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. Belief in God 1

II. How THE Worlds were Made ... 28

III. What is the Supernatural ? . . . .46

IV. What is the Bible ? 65

V. Is THERE A Personal Devil ? . . . .84

VI. What do we Inherit ? 112

VII. The Doctrine of the Trinity . . . . 133

VIII. The Word made Flesh 157

IX. How Christ saves Men 174

X. Predestination 196

XI. Conversion 2l9

XII. The Meaning of Baptism .... 240

XIII. The Significance of the Lord's Supper . . 260

XIV. The Hope of Immortality .... 280
XV. The Thought of Heaven 301

WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD
DOCTRINES ?

BELIEF IN GOD

The time has come for some of us who call our-
selves Christians to take an inventory of the be-
liefs of which we find ourselves in possession. The-
ological labels we are constrained to decline until
the meaning of some of them is better defined.
Orthodox we know that we are not, if that implies
subscription to creeds framed in the sixteenth cen-
tury; and if Liberalism is mainly criticism and
denial, or if, as is widely assumed, it signifies de-
fiance of all wholesome restraints and conventions,
then we are not Liberals. But we still profess
and call ourselves Christians ; and we need to
make clear to our own minds just what this in-
volves, so far as concerns the intellectual life. We
may be misunderstood by those to whom the wear-
ing of the aforesaid labels is a matter of great
importance, but that need not disturb us if we only
understand ourselves.

The main question before us implies that

2 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

changes have been taking place in the old doc-
trines ; that portions of them are obsolete or
obsolescent; that in form and content they are
different now from what once they were. This
implication will at once be challenged. Doctrines
that are true, it will be said, cannot be mutable ;
they must be as true for one generation as for
another. A creed that is constantly reshaped must
be a compend of error. But shall we say that
the vine which has now of branches and of clusters
fivefold more than it had five years ago is not a
true vine ; or that the gray-bearded sage who thirty
years ago was a man in his stalwart prime, and
thirty years before that a ruddy-faced youth, just
passing out of adolescence, and twenty years be-
fore that a helpless infant in his mother's arms is
not a true man ? Is not every living thing con-
stantly changing, not only its form, but its sub-
stance ? If Christian doctrine is a living thing, it
must be undergoing changes.

Christian doctrine consists of the opinions and
beliefs of men concerning God and his kingdom.
As the generations pass, and men learn more about
themselves and the world in which they live and
the works of God in the world, their point of view
changes, and their doctrines are modified by their
growing knowledge.

" Nay, but," some wise man will say, " Christian
doctrine is all drawn from the Bible, and the Bible
does not change ; the truth is all there ; all we have
to do is to interpret it rightly, and then we have

BELIEF IN GOD 3

the everlasting and unchangeable truth." That
statement is not quite correct, for our doctrines, if
they are true and complete, are drawn from other
sources as well as from the Bible. They are drawn
also from our knowledge of ourselves, and of the
world in which we live. But, even admitting all
this, it is still true that the enlargement of our
knowledge, and the change in our point of view,
lead us to interpret the Bible differently. We do
not take the same view of the Bible itself that once
we took ; it is quite impossible that we should.
We have studied it more carefully, we have gone
to the Bible itself to find out what kind of book
it is, and the Bible has plainly told us that it is not
the kind of book that we once thought it to be.
It is a better book, a far more useful book, but it
is a different book. And therefore, because our
view of the book has changed, and our methods of
interpreting it have changed, our doctrines, even
in their Biblical elements, must have undergone
considerable change.

One who accepts the Bible as authority should
look for changes in theology. One whole book of
the New Testament, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
is devoted to the description of a great doctrinal
evolution. The writer shows how the Christian
dispensation had been substituted for the Jewish
dispensation ; how an old theology had given place
to a new theology. "For if that first covenant
had been faultless," he says, " then should no place
have been sought for the second. ... In that he

4 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

saith a new covenant, lie hath made the first old.
Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready
to vanish away."-^

In God's progressive revelation of himself to the
^vorld there is always that which decayeth and
waxeth old, and is ready to vanish away. The
revelation is always through life, and this is the
process of life. " Dying, and behold we live " is
a biological law. It is only by the waste and
destruction of old tissues that new tissues are
formed.

And yet, although our bodies change in form
and size and appearance, and although the mate-
rials of which they are composed are constantly
changing, they are the same bodies ; the principle
of identity is there ; there is a continuity of life
and experience which is a fact no less positive than
the fact of perennial change. And in like man-
ner the writer to the Hebrews shows that the es-
sential truth of that old covenant survives, under*
changed forms, in the new. This is what, as I
trust, we shall find in these studies. " We have
kept," says Dr. Sabatier, " and still repeat the
dogmas of early times ; but we pour into them un-
consciously a new meaning. The terms do not
change, but the ideas and their interpretation are
renewed with each generation. This is particu-
larly the work of the theologian. We spend our
time, consciously or unconsciously, in putting new
wine into old bottles. There is not a single dogma

^ Heb. viii.

BELIEF IX GOD 5

dating from two or three centuries back whicli is
repeated with the same meaning as in its origina-
tion. We still speak of the inspiration of the pro-
phets and of the apostles, of atonement, of the
Trinity, of the divinity of Christ, of miracles ; but,
whether in a o-reater or a less deo:ree, we under-
stand them differently from our fathers. The river
Hows on, even when the waters are apparently stag-
nant at the surface. But the elasticity of words
and formulas has a limit. There comes a time
when the new wine causes the old bottles to break,
and when it becomes necessary for the church to
make new vessels to receive it. Then new words
appear in languages and new dogmas in theology.
It is thus that the dogmas of justification by faith
and of universal priesthood came into prominence
in the sixteenth century. Xew dogmas, do we call
them? Eather, we should say, old ones rising
aofain with new enero-v.'' ^

" How much is left of the old doctrines ? " is
the question we are asking. Our study will show
us that though the phrases which we use are modi-
fied, and some of the conceptions are altered, the
substance of the old truth remains.

What do we mean by the old doctrines '? I shall
not go back very far : I shall consider only the
doctrines that were generally believed in our evan-
gelical churches in England and America from
fifty to one hundred years ago. in days which some
of us can well remember. Within the last half of
^ The Vitality of Christian Dogmas, pp. 4S-4o.

6 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

this century some important changes have been
taking place. It was in 1838 that the New School
Presbyterians in America separated from the Old
School ; it was in 1831 that McLeod Campbell
was excommunicated from the Scottish church ; it
was in 1850-51, that Dr. Horace Bushnell, in Hart-
ford, was on trial for heresy ; it was in 1859 that
Darwin's " Origin of Species " was published ; and
the rapid movement of thought in the theological
and in the scientific world since those days has re-
sulted in the modifications of belief which we are
now to consider.

The first question before us concerns the central
doctrine of theology, — the doctrine of God. Has
that doctrine essentially changed during the last
half of this century ? Are our beliefs about God
the same beliefs that were generally held fifty
years ago ?

There are those among us who will say very
positively that the old doctrine of God has become
antiquated ; that intelligent men no longer accept
the theory of the existence of such a Being as our
fathers believed in and worshiped. Some of them
will recall the rather contemptuous use by Matthew
Arnold of the common definition of God, " a per-
sonal First Cause that thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe," and of
his reiterated statement that this definition cannot
possibly be verified. Some of them will remember
the many arguments of Mr. Herbert Spencer, which

BELIEF IN GOD 7

maintain that although there may be such a God
as this, we do not and cannot know anything about
him ; that if he exists he is unknowable.

What we do know, say some of these philo-
sophers, is the existence of a nniverse, a mighty
aggregation of forces, marvelously coordinated and
cooperating for the production of the results we
see about us ; a Cosmos, or Universal Order, which
we cannot help regarding with wonder and awe,
toward which our deepest feelings must be akin
to those of worship. Some of these sturdy doubters
and deniers seem to understand that this very feel-
ing of awe and worship of which man can never
rid himself must signify something. So Strauss
insisted that those who, with him, had thrown away
the old theology had still a religion ; that before
this mighty Cosmos itself they still bowed down
with reverence. And truly, if a man will take
time to think — to get into his mind some concep-
tion of the universe in which he lives — he will be
forced to wonder and to worship. " This Uni-
verse," cries Carlyle, " what could the wild man
know of it ; what can we yet know ? That it is a
Force, and thousandfold complexity of Forces ; a
Force which is not ive. That is aU ; it is not we,
it is altogether different from us. Force, Force,
everywhere Force ; we ourselves a mysterious Force
in the centre of that. There is not a leaf rotting
on the highway but has Force in it ; how else could
it rot? Nay, surely, to the atheistic thinker, if
such an one were possible, it must be a miracle

8 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

too, this huge, illimitable whirlwind of force which
envelops us here ; never resting whirlwind, high
as Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it ? God's
creation, the religious people answer; it is the
Almighty God's. Atheistic science babbles poorly
of it with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and
what not ; as if it were a poor dead thing, to be
bottled up in Ley den jars and sold over counters ;
but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he
will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a
living thing — ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing ;
towards which the best attitude for us, after never
so much science, is awe, devout prostration and
humility of soul ; worship, if not in words, then in
silence." ^

So much all serious minds must confess when
some glimpses of the majesty and the wonder of
this universe are vouchsafed them. Worship they
must and will ; that impulse is human ; to stifle it
is to belie our nature.

But what is it that we worship ? Is it Force,
indeed? Is there anything in any manifestation
of physical energy that calls for the kind of feel-
ing which we name worship ? There is energy in
a grain of gunpowder, in a can of dynamite, in the
steam rushing into the cylinder, in the current
speeding from the dynamo ; is anything there that
inspires a single throb of worshipful feeling ?
Multiply force of this kind even to infinity;
would it awaken in you any emotions of reveren-
^ On Heroes, p. 242, Uniyersal Edition.

BELIEF IN GOD 9

tial love ? No ; I am sure that we are not and
cannot be worshipers of mere force.

Nor is The All of Things an object of worship.
A mere aggregation does not awaken in us rever-
ence. If things do not in themselves appeal to our
veneration, no accumulation of them could do so.
Quantity is not worshipful. Neither the addition
table nor the multiplication table can be used to
stimulate devotion.

There are those who think that they reverence
The All — who call themselves Pantheists ; but if
they do so it is by investing The All with personal
or spiritual qualities. Thus Strauss declares that
he worships the Cosmos because " order and law,
reason and goodness ^^^ are the soul of it. But how
reason and goodness can exist apart from person-
ality Strauss has never explained to us.

Another very brave unbeliever confesses and
maintains that those who have rejected the doc-
trine of an intelligent and beneficent Creator of
the world are obliged to hold on to the very same
truth, under their belief in a " reasonable tendency
in the universe," and their " faith in the reality of
the good." Neither science nor virtue can exist,
he says, unless we believe both these things : that
the universe is reasonable, and that goodness is
the fundamental reality. " Now is not this," he
asks, "in essence just the same condition of life
as that represented by the doctrine of the benefi-
cent and intelligent Creator and Governor of the
world ? " It is, I answer, the very same thing.

10 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

For reasonableness and goodness are not physical
but psychical qualities ; you cannot, if you try ever
so hard, conceive of them as belonging to things or
to systems of things ; they belong to persons ; and
thus the fundamental assumption, on which all sci-
ence and all morality rest, is identical with the old
doctrine of God.

The fundamental premise of science is that Na-
ture is rational ; that every phenomenon admits of
a rational explanation. That would seem to be
only another way of saying that the Source of Na-
ture is a Eeason akin to our own. The spread of
knowledge must bring us into closer acquaintance
with this eternal Eeason.

The author of the Book of Daniel points onward
to a day when many should run to and fro, and
knowledge should be increased. We seem to be
living in the morning of that day. The spread of
intelligence upon the earth since the discovery of
America and the invention of movable types is
marvelous. Within the memory of most of us the
opportunities of education have been greatly ex-
tended. Multitudes who once did scarcely more
than vegetate are now learning to think. It is a
tremendous peril to which the world exposes itself
when it sets so many people to thinking, but we
have risked it and must make the best of it. The
changes which are taking place in our beliefs about
God are due to the fact that a great many people
are thinking about things visible and invisible,
trying to understand them and to make them agree
with one another.

BELIEF IN GOD 11

Men have, indeed, always been thinking about
the world in which they live ; they have known
something, and have speculated much and won-
dered more, about its physical features, its plains,
mountains, rivers, seas, the clouds in its skies, the
sun that lights it by day, and the moon and stars
that are its lamps by night. The shepherd on the
lonely Mesopotamian pastures, the sailor in his
frail boat crossing the inland sea or coasting along
the ocean's shore, had many thoughts about this
world and its surroundings, about the shape and
size of it, and the physical forces which bear rule
upon it. But modern thought about the world is
quite unlike that ancient w^ay of thinking.

In the first place, modern thought apprehends,
in some measure, the fact of a universe, which is a
word the meaning of which none of the philoso-
phers of ancient times could have comprehended.
Our common apprehension of these things is one
that would have overwhelmed wdth bewilderment
and confusion Herodotus or Aristotle. The thought
which was common to the great thinkers of the
ancient time, and to the men w4io wrote the Bible,
was that this earth was the central and stable plat-
form of the Creation, above which various meteor-
ological phenomena appeared, these being created
and set in motion wholly for the service and con-
venience of man. Dante's cosmogony was a sam-
ple of the explanations which ancient thought had
given to the phenomena of the earth and the hea-
vens. " With the advent of the Copernican astron-

12 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

orny," says Mr. Fiske, "tlie funnel-shaped Inferno,
the steep mountain of Purgatory, crowned with its
terrestrial paradise, and those concentric spheres
of Heaven wherein beatified saints held weird and
subtle converse, aU went their way to the limbo
prepared for the childlike fancies of untaught
minds, whither Hades and Valhalla had gone be-
fore them. In our day it is hard to realize the
startling effect of the discovery that man does not
dwell at the centre of things, but is the denizen of
an obscure and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite
invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming
suns that make up our galaxy." ^ Modern thought
about the extent and vastness of the universe in
which we live thus seems to differ by the diameter
of immensity from the thought of the olden time.
The world in which the ancients supposed them-
selves to be living, as compared with the universe
in which we know ourselves to be living, was as a
drop of water to the ocean.

In the second place modern thought differs from
the thought of a former time not less radically
respecting the manner in which the universe has
come into being. The older thought regarded cre-
ation as a mechanical process ; things were made
outright, as a watchmaker makes a watch. The
Creator first called into being the matter of which
the world is composed, and then took it and shaped
it into the various forms which we now see about
us; heaping up the mountains and scooping out
^ The Destiny of Man, pp. 14, 15.

BELIEF IN GOD 13

the valleys by the fiat of his might; shaping the
crystals by an act of volition ; creating, by the
exertion of direct power, the manifold species of
living things, just as they now exist, and endowing
them with reproductive power, so that each should
perpetuate its kind ; making, in the morning of the
creation, the pine and the oak and the elm and
the maple, the rose and the lily and the apple and
the pear, and all the rest of the plants ; the horse
and the ox and the elephant and the wolf and the
zebra and the giraffe and the dog and the sheep,
and all the rest of the mammals ; the eagle and the
robin and the raven, and all the rest of the birds ;
the pickerel and the trout and the minnow, and all
the rest of the fishes ; the bee and the wasp and
the butterfly, and all the rest of the insects ; mak-
ing all the tribes of living creatures, just as we
have them now, stocking the earth and the air and
the waters with living inhabitants by one stu-
pendous act of creative power ; so that there were
just as many kinds, and just the same kinds, of
living things upon the earth when the earth was a
week old as there are to-day, — more, probably, for
there are certainly some skeletons and fossils in
our museums which represent races that are no
longer in existence. This is, for substance, the
thought about the manner in which the world and
its inhabitants came into being which was enter-
tained by thinkers and philosophers until a very
recent date. The modern world is not thinking
along this line respecting the origin of the world

14 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

and the life upon its surface. The beliefs about
the method of creation which were held when I
was a boy by nearly all intelligent men are not
held to-day by any intelligent man. It is now
known as well as anything can be known that the
earth assumed its present form as the result of
forces acting through long aeons, whose action we
can observe and measure ; how the rocks were
formed, how the mountains were heaped up, how
the valleys were scooped out, we know as well as
we know how the Brooklyn Bridge was built ; and
we know that the work was going on for hundreds
of thousands of years. We know that the various
tribes of life have passed through many changes of
form and function ; that for ages on ages, these
changes have been going on, the forms of life
gradually rising from the lower to the higher. The
record is written in the rocks, and no man of intel-
ligence can contradict it. The progress of life is
from the simple to the complex, from the more
generalized to the more specific ; and there is
plenty of evidence of the transformation of one
species into another. This is the way things have
come to be what they are ; they are linked together
genetically; what has taken place in nature was
not the offhand manufacture of all created things,
but their gradual becoming.

This way of thinking about things has become
very nearly universal. We all assume, whenever
we begin to study any subject in science, in history,
in archaeology, in sociology, that one thing natu-

BELIEF IN GOD 15

rally grows out of anotlier ; that the life of one
generation is closely connected with the life of the
generations that have preceded it ; that languages,
customs, laws, institutions, are products of develop-
ment. It is this mighty thought about the genetic
relations of things that has taken possession of the
mind of the world. It is before this thousfht that
the modern Christian is standing, — in a rather
solicitous state of mind. What can he do with it ?
Does it not contradict many of the doctrines which
he has regarded as essential to faith ? Does it not
assail the authority of the Bible ? Does it not
overthrow the entire Christian system ? So some
people are telling him, — some, I regret to say,
who ought to be in better business. And it is true
that if the authority of the Bible stands or falls
with its scientific inerrancy, then the Bible can no
longer be regarded as authority ; and that if to be
a Christian it is necessary to believe that the world
and all thinsfs therein were created out of nothino^
and given their present forms in 144 hours, no
intelligent man can be a Christian any longer.

But I, for one, am going, in spite of both Mr.
Ino-ersoll and Mr. Moodv, to believe a little lousier
yet that the Bible is worth a great deal to man-
kind, after you have fully recognized the fact that
it is not an authority in geology and astronomy ;
and that one may be a Christian without denying
any of the well established facts of modern science.
I am going to maintain that the intelligent Chris-
tian may stand in the presence of modern thought,

16 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

and accept everything that has been proved by-
science or history or criticism, and not be fright-
ened at all by any of it ; firmly believing that the
great verities of the Christian faith will still re-
main untouched.

There are those to whom the doctrine of Evolu-
tion seems atheistic ; they think that it banishes
God from the universe. But the atheism is not in
evolution ; it is in the man who insists on putting
an atheistic interpretation upon it. The fool can
always say in his heart, " There is no God ; " he said
it long before Darwin ; he said it with a persistent
emphasis in the days when the old deistic concep-
tion was current of a God who manufactured a
universe out of hand and stocked it with forces
and wound it up and set it running, — in the days
when the conception of an orderly progress in the
creation had scarcely dawned upon the human
mind. It may be that some people can more easily
believe in a God who only now and then visits this
world to interfere in a miraculous way with the
working of the laws which he has ordained; for
myself I find it easier to believe in one who is
present in all the forces of nature, revealing him-
self not so convincingly by occasional interruptions
of the order as by the order itself.

The truth is that modern thought is conducting
us to a belief in God which comes far nearer to
knowledge of him than any of the intellectual pro-
cesses of the past ever carried us ; and that it is
along the paths which Evolution has opened to us

BELIEF IN GOD 17

that we are drawing near to God. The first dis-
cussions of this doctrine excited much alarm ; it
seemed to many that it banished God from his uni-
verse. The fear was puerile. The child who looks
upon an automatic toy may imagine that it is self-
moved,; the mature mind knows that there is a
hidden force that moves it. Mr. Darwin's theory
of the origin of species was an explanation of the
method of creation ; it did not attempt to account
for the existence of those primal forces and ten-
dencies under whose action and interaction this
work of development went on. Under that theory
it was still necessary to say, " In the beginning,
God." The last words of this first great treatise,
" The Origin of Species,*' must not be forgotten :
" There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
several powers, having been originally breathed by
the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that
while this planet has gone cycling on according to
the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a begin-
ning endless forms most beautiful and most won-
derful have been and are being evolved."

It is true, however, that while students have
been busy upon the minutiae of evolution — study-
ing fishes' fins and birds' wings and horses' toes —
the larger implications of the subject have been
much neglected ; and there have been a good many
among them who could not see the woods for the
trees. Specialization is apt to develop a provin-
cial mind ; the specialist knows his own province,
but is skeptical about the existence of others, and

18 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

has no knowledge of larger relations. But since
the appearance of Mr. Darwin's essay time enough
has now elapsed to enable some of the philosophers
of evolution to take a comprehensive view of all
the facts; and as the returns begin to come in
from the whole field, some things plainly appear
which at first were dimly seen.

It would be interesting, if there were time, to
glance at some of the conclusions with reference to
the truth of theism which have been reached in
recent years, by eminent scientific men who are
not theologians, and who have approached the sub-
ject from the scientific side.

One of the most striking of these testimonies
was that of George John Romanes, the eminent
psychologist and zo'ologist, whose book, written
twenty years ago, and entitled " A Candid Exami-
nation of Theism by Physicus," is the strongest
attack that I have ever read upon the ordinary
proofs _ of the divine existence. Mr. Romanes,
much against his own inclination, had convinced,
himself that the evolutionary doctrines had demol-
ished all those proofs, and in a most pathetic con-
fession he declared that the faith in which his soul
had reposed from his childhood was gone forever.
But Mr. Romanes kept thinking, and, gradually,
some of the larger implications of the subject be-
gan to appear to him. He was compelled to revise
the arguments by which he had, as he supposed,
demolished theism, and at length to acknowledge
that they were fallacious, and that evolution had

BELIEF IN GOD 19

strengthened rather than weakened our reasons for
believing in God.

Our own John Fiske was regarded by Mr. Dar-
win as the ablest exponent of evolution upon this
continent. Mr. Darwin paid Mr. Fiske the com-
pliment of saying that he was the clearest writer
on philosophical subjects that he had ever read.
In the earlier years of his evolutionary studies Mr.
Fiske was reserved in the expression of his opin-
ions respecting the theological bearings of evolu-
tion. But in recent years, since he has had time
to assemble and organize the results of his inves-
tigations, his utterances have been increasing in
clearness and positiveness. Those two little books,
" The Destiny of Man " and " The Idea of God,"
have been a veritable evangel to many groping
minds. And that other small volume, lately pub-
lished, " Through Nature to God," is much more
important than anything he has hitherto said.

In the report which I am now trying to bring to
you upon the latest phases of theism, I can do
you no greater service than to give you, briefly,
and largely in my own words, an outline of the
argument of the concluding essay of this book on
" The Everlasting Reality of Religion."

The argument starts with the Spencerian defini-
tion of life as " the continuous adjustment of inner
relations to outer relations." " The most funda-
mental characteristic of living things," says Mr.
Fiske, "is their response to external stimuli. If
you come upon a dog lying by the roadside and

20 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

are in doubt whether he is alive, you poke him with
a stick. If you get no response, you presently
think that it is a dead dog. So, if a tree fails to
put forth leaves it is an indication of death. Pour
water on a drooping plant and it shows its life by
rearing its head ; this is the result of a continuous
adjustment of relations within the plant to relations
existing outside of it. . . . All life upon the globe,
whether physical or psychical, represents continued
adjustment of inner to outer relations." ^ '

The lungs and the atmosphere are fitted for
each other ; the stimulus of the vital air from with-
out, received by the lungs within, is the momen-
tary and constant condition of life. The food of
the gardens and the fields is adapted to our diges-
tive organs, and our organs are adjusted to the
stimulus of the food, and the adjustment must be
continuous. A striking instance of this biological
adjustment is the evolution of the eye. In Mr.
Fiske's words, " there was first a concentration of
pigment grains in a particular dermal sac, making
that spot particularly sensitive to the light ; then
came, by slow degrees, the heightened translucence,
the convexity of surface, the refracting humors, and
the multiplication of nerve vesicles arranging them-
selves as retinal rods. And what was the result
of all this for the creature in whom organs of vision
were thus developed ? There was an immense ex-
tension of the range, complexity, and definiteness
of the adjustment of inner relations to outer rela-
1 Through Nature to God, pp. 178-180.

BELIEF IN GOD 21

tlons. In other words there was an immense in-
crease of life. Then came into existence, more-
over, for those with eyes to see it, a mighty visible
world that for sightless creatures had been virtually
non-existent." ^

The organs of touch and taste and hearing have
been developed in precisely the same way. In all
these cases we clearly see how the forms of the life
within have been shaped to receive the gifts of the
world without. The evolution of the eye, as we
see it going on, is a process of preparation for the
great revelation that is to be made, by and by, of
the visual glory of the universe. It is because
there are waiting outside skies and fields and flow-
ers and gems, wonders of form and color, faces
beautiful with the light of a deathless love, that
the eye is slowly rounded into form. It is be-
cause the sound of many waters, and the caroling
of birds, and the music of mighty symphonies, and
the thrilling tones of loving voices are seeking to
reveal themselves to the waiting soul, that the ear
is formed for hearing. Nay, it is in and by the
very action of the elements without that these fac-
ulties within are summoned into being. It is the
light softly playing on those sensitive pigments
that assembles the tissues by which the eye is
formed. It is by the waves of sound gently beat-
ing upon the rudimentary ear, and saying, " Let
us come in, and bring our music with us ! " that
the ear has been created. The age-long process by

1 Through Nature to God, p. 184,

22 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

which each of these organs has been shaped is a
clear witness to the reality of some wondrous gift
that is coming into the life by means of it. We
know when we see such an organ growing that
there is some precious commerce on the ocean of
existence for which it is to be the port of entry.
The existence of such an organ or faculty is the
sien of some vital correlation between the life
within and the world without.

Take this fundamental law of the evolution of
life, and apply it to the life of humanity. From
the dawn of love in human life, the impulse to wor-
ship, to pray, to believe in an unseen world has
found constant expression. Eeligion is one of the
great factors of human history. And the religious
life of the race, Mr. Fiske tells us, has always in-
volved these three elements : belief in a quasi-
human God, in a future life, and in some relation
between conduct here and happiness Hereafter. By
a quasi-human God is meant a God between whom
and ourselves there can be relations of knowledge
and affection ; whose kinsmen we are ; who knows
us and loves us. " As a matter of history," says
Mr, Fiske, " the existence of a quasi-human God
has always been an assumption, or postulate. It is
something which men have all along taken for
granted. It probably never occurred to any one to
try to prove the existence of such a God until it
was doubted ; and doubts on that subject are very
modern. Omitting from the count a few score in-
genious philosophers, it may be said that aU man-

BELIEF IX GOD 23

kind — the wisest and the simplest — have taken
for granted the existence of a Deity, or deities, of
a psychical nature more or less similar to that of
humanity. . . . Such a postulate has formed a part
of all human thinking from primitive ages down to
the present time." ^

Here, then, is the fact of religion. And what
are the dimensions of this fact? "Xone can deny,"
says Mr. Fiske, " that it is the largest and most
ubiquitous , fact connected with the existence of
mankind upon the earth." ^ The greatest fact of
human history — the most influential fact — is
this universal belief in an unseen world and in a
God who is the Father of our spirits. It is this
fact, ivMch evolution, through countless ages, has
been producing . The same process of development
by which the eye and the ear were formed has
evolved this universal human tendency to reach
out toward an unseen world, to feel after God. if
haply we may find him.

If, now% this universal hunger for a God whom
we can know and love, this hunger which evolu-
tion has taken so many centuries to develop, is a
huno^er which there is nothino^ in the universe to
satisfy; if the spiritual eye has been developed,
through ages of human experience, that it may
gaze upon vacancy, fixing its piteous appeal upon
the blackness of darkness forever, then all that is
fundamental in the philosophy of evolution is dis-
credited and set at naught.

1 Through Nature to God, pp. 163, 164. 2 Xbi^^ p. 159.

24 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

" If the relation thus established," says Mr.
Fiske, "in the morning twilight of Man's existence,
between the Human Soul and a world invisible and
immaterial, is a relation of which only the subjec-
tive term is real and the objective term is non-
existent, then I say it is something utterly without
precedent in the whole history of creation. All
the analogies of evolution, so far as we have been
able to decipher it, are overwhelming against any
such supposition. . . . All the analogies of nature
fairly shout against the assumption of such a
breach of continuity between the evolution of man
and all previous evolution. So far as our know-
ledge of nature goes, the whole momentum of it
carries us onward to the conclusion that the Un-
seen World as the objective term in a relation of
fundamental importance that has coexisted with
the whole career of Mankind, has a real existence ;
and it is but following out the analogy to regard
the unseen world as the theatre where the ethical
process is destined to reach its full consumma-
tion." 1

These final words of this strong thinker put to
silence, as with the blast of a mighty trumpet, the
small cavils of a generation of sciolists : —

" The lesson of evolution is that through all
these weary ages the human soul has not been
cherishing in Religion a delusive phantom ; but, in
spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling,
it has been rising to the recognition of its essential

1 Page 91.

BELIEF IN GOD 25

kinship with the ever-living God. Of all the im-
plications of the doctrine of evolution with regard
to Man, I believe the very deepest and strongest
to be that which asserts the everlasting reality of
religion." ^

Here we may rest our argument. I am sure
that we have found some reason for believing that
whatever may have happened to the other doctrines
of religion, the foundation of it all standeth sure.

Have there been no changes, then, in our doc-
trine of God ? Yes, there have been many changes.

In the first place, the arguments which men used
to employ to prove the existence of God are not
now relied on so much as they used to be ; science
has greatly weakened the force of some of them ;
but it has given us in their stead that broader
argument which we have just been considering.

In the second place, our view of the character of
God has greatly changed. We do not think and
say the same things about Him that we used to
think and say. We do not try to explain all his
thoughts and feelings and purposes so much as we
used to do. We have more perfectly learned what
the Psalmist meant when he said, " Clouds and
darkness are round about Him." We know that
Infinite Being must contain depths that the plum-
met of our understanding cannot fathom.

One hundred years ago, even fifty years ago,
men had very definite statements to make about
God's moral government. They thought that they
understood it all perfectly ; they seemed to think

1 Page 191.

26 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

that it was substantially like one of our political
governments, and was founded on just the same
kind of expediencies as those on which our govern-
ments rest. What would be politic for an earthly
ruler, they argued, God must do. Out of that
conception a great many notions sprung which
were altogether crude and unworthy. The doc-
trines of retribution, the doctrines of forgiveness,
which rested on this forensic conception, have
largely passed away.

But while many of the childish and inadequate
notions about God are disappearing from human
thought, belief in Him as our Heavenly Father,
as the Infinite Love which is behind all law, has
not been shaken in the minds of reasonable men.
There never was an hour when so many men could
say from the heart, " I believe in God, the Father
Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth ; " there
was never an hour when this belief was bulwarked
by such an accumulation of scientific knowledge.
It is a very shallow philosophy which imagines that
the one subject in which human beings have al-
ways been more deeply interested than in any other
can be dismissed, as mere superstition, by the wave
of an orator's hand ; or that men are likely, very
soon, in the presence of this majestic universe, to
cease to wonder or to worship before the Power
that has called it into existence. For one, I firmly
believe that modern thought is laboriously build-
ing up a foundation for our faith far more firm
and broad than that on which men rested their souls
in what were known as the ages of faith.

BELIEF IN GOD 27

The arguments which men were using fifty years
ago to prove the existence of God all embodied
profound truth, but in the light of modern science
they need restatement. In an ordaining council
I once heard the question put to a young man
whose mind was alive with the movement of the
time, what he thought about Paley's argument for
theism. " Oh, it was all very well for its day,"
he answered ; " it called attention to some indica-
tions of purpose in the creation ; but the proofs of
purpose which have been shown us since by such
writers as Darwin and Tyndal, and Huxley throw
all that exhibit into the shade." The venerable
examiners looked at one another in blank amaze-
ment. They understood not the saying, but the
candidate had told them the exact truth. The tele-
ology of modern science is far more cogent than
that of Paley's generation.

It may be doubted whether we shall ever have
scientific demonstration of the existence of God.
God is a spirit, and our deepest knowledge of Him
must be spiritual rather than scientific. But the
more complete is our scientific knowledge the
stronger will be the probability of the existence of
God. Surely if God is in his world, He must be
revealing himself to us in all its laws and forces,
and therefore all ordered knowledge of the world
must be bringing Him nearer to our thought, and
every science must be tributary to that great uni-
fying revelation wherein faith and knowledge are
no longer twain, but one.

II

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE

In the preceding chapter we considered the rela-
tion of Evolution to the belief in God, showing how
the old theistic arguments have been modified and
strengthened by the discovery that creation is the
result, not of an instantaneous fiat, but of a contin-
uous process. Inasmuch as the changes which have
taken place within the past fifty years in our theo-
logical statements have mainly resulted from the
prevalence of evolutionary theories, it may be well
to examine a little more fully the significance of
the doctrine of Evolution. In the first chapter of
John's Gospel we find a doctrine of origins whose
philosophy is not yet antiquated : "In the begin-
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the
beginning with God. All things were made
through him, and without him was not anything
made that hath been made." " Word " in the
Greek is Logos ; it has a double signification : it
means both thought and expression, the idea and
its symbol. The Greeks, therefore, came to use
Logos as primarily denoting the eternal Reason,
and secondarily the utterance or manifestation of

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 29

that Reason. Of course thought must exist before
expression. When, therefore, we are told that in
the beginning was the Word, the truth is brought
before us that the universe originated in thought ;
that the foundation of it all is in the eternal Rea-
son. And this is the constant assumption of modern
science. Science could not proceed a single step
but for the belief that that which it is investio:atin2:
is intelligible ; that it is possible to understand it ;
that it is grounded upon reason ; that an intelli-
gence, similar to our intelligence, has established
the order and law which it expects to find in
every process. The universe is reasonable ; it is
in harmony with reason ; it can be made intelligi-
ble to reason ; it must have originated in the eternal
Reason. This, I say, is the fundamental postulate
of all scientific investigation ; any scientific man
stultifies himself if he denies it ; it is no more pos-
sible to get away from it than it is to get away
from your shadow ; and the whole mighty accumu-
lation of scientific knowledge is one harmonious
and unanimous testimony to the truth that the uni-
verse is intelligible. How it could be intelligible
if it had not originated in Intelligence I defy any
man to explain.

If, therefore, any one supposes that evolution
has undermined the doctrine of an intelligent Au-
thor of the Universe, he cannot too soon rid him-
self of that notion. There are those, no doubt,
who imagine that evolution has somehow supplanted
God ; that there is some kind of an abstraction or

30 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

apparatus called evolution, which has neither mind
nor will, which originated planlessly, which works
on in an haphazard way, and which by an infinite
series of hits and misses has brought forth the uni-
verse as it now exists. There are scientific men
with an anti-theological bias so strong that they
are often inclined to use language which squints in
this atheistic direction. But sound thinking gives
no room, for any such conceptions. As I have said
in the preceding chapter, there never was a time
when the belief in creative intelligence had so
much proof to support it as it has to-day. The
doctrine of evolution, instead of weakening the
faith in God of all those who have studied it pro-
foundly, has given to many of them their strongest
reasons for believing in an all-wise God.

What, then, is the doctrine of evolution ? The
word signifies unfolding, or opening out. The un-
rolling of a map is an evolution. The opening of
a flower bud is an evolution. The term would
therefore itself appear to suggest some previous
process of thought or activity. What is unfolded
must first have been enfolded ; what is unrolled
must first have been rolled. Evolution implies in-
volution. The process which we are watching must
have been prepared for beforehand. But without
putting any stress on this mere verbal argument,
let us ask what evolution means in the large sense
of the word, — the sense in which it is most fre-
quently used.

" To the scientific world," says the professor of

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 31

biology in Wooster University, " evolution is a uni-
versal law of nature, whereby the existing order of
things in the visible universe as viewed by man,
including man himself, has come into its present
state of existence through the interaction of certain
forces operating in the direction of a progressive
change from some unknown primitive condition of
things. To the Christian the same thought might
be expressed by saying that evolution is the divine
mode of creation, whereby God has wrought out
the existing order of things through the continu-
ous operation of his creative power." These two
dejfinitions, as I understand them, are only different
ways of expressing the same truth.

The real question is whether the world as we see
it to-day, with the different kinds of animals and
plants upon, it was created in the beginning just as
it now is, or substantially as it now is, making
allowance for such changes as man himself has
wrought ; or whether only a few forms of life were
originally created, and whether these forms, by
virtue of the forces with which they were endowed,
and by their action upon one another, and the
reaction of their environment upon them, have
brought forth, in a long series of gTadual changes,
the multitudinous forms of life that now appear.
Was it true that in the morning of the creation,
when the world came forth from the fiat of the
Creator, the same plants and the same animals
existed upon the earth as those which now exist ;
that the pine and the oak and the beech and the

32 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

birch and the rose and the myrtle and the daisy
and the goldenrod and the wheat and the maize
and all the rest of the plants which we now have
were then in the Garden of Eden ; and that the
animals which we now know, or at least the wild
animals and birds and fishes and insects, were of
the same orders and species as those which now
exist upon the earth ? Gr, if perchance the exist-
ing kinds of plants and animals were not all
created then, in their present forms, have they
been created outright since, in successive periods,
and placed upon the earth ?

In answering this question one or two facts come
at once into clear light. It is certain that the
earth itself is a very different planet from what
it was in the beginning. Evidences of changes,
mighty changes, through which it has been passing,
abound on every hand. I presume that there are
still many persons who are in the habit of conceiv-
ing that the world as we see it to-day is substan-
tially the same as it has always been ; that the Crea-
tor, at the beginning, mapped out the continents
and the oceans and the gulfs and the straits and
the islands ; that it was the Creator's finger that
literally drew the course of the Euphrates and the
Nile and the Amazon and the Mississippi, from
their sources to the sea ; that it was the Creator's
hand that heaped up the mountains and the little
hills and scooped out the valleys ; that laid the
masonry of the gigantic cliffs of the Yosemite and
the Lauterbrunnen Thai; that manufactured the

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 33

coal and stowed it away under the hills of the
Hocking valley and the Appalachian chain. Of
course it is true that all this has been done by the
Creator's power ; but the notion to which I refer
is that these features of the earth took their pre-
sent form as the immediate result of a creative
fiat. And I dare say that there are many good
people to whom the denial of this theory would
seem a dangerous kind of skepticism. But it is
certainly a fact which no fairly intelligent person
can question that the present form of the earth is
the result of a long series of physical changes.
" It probably existed," says the professor whom I
have already quoted, " for millions of years as a
separate planet, before water condensed upon its
surface, and it is clearly demonstrated that it has
existed for other millions of years since that time.
During this period there has been in operation
a constant process of progressive change, whereby,
through the operation of natural agencies, such as
water, atmosphere, heat and cold, and chemical
affinity, the surface of the earth has been differen-
tiated from a barren expanse of uniform character
to the present varied features of land and water,
continents and islands, lakes and rivers, forests
and prairies, and beneath the surface, rocks and
metals, coal and gas, and so on throughout the
long list of natural products fitted for the use of
man, — one of the most striking evidences of har-
monious design, and yet so conclusively shown to
have come into its present form through the opera-

34 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

tion of the law of progressive change that no intel-
ligent person would venture to affirm that it was
all created by an omnipotent fiat in the form in
which we now find it. The very agencies that
have wrought it all out may be readily observed
to-day under our very eyes continuing the process.
If any one doubts, for example, that the coal beds
represent a gradual accumulation of vegetation, let
him go to the mouth of the Mississippi and see the
process in operation. If any one doubts that such
vast accumulations of rock as the Trenton lime-
stone under our very feet have been built up from
the secretions of aniuial life, involving necessarily
an untold lapse of time, let him go to the islands
of the Pacific and examine the process where it is
now open to his observation. In short, any one
who studies carefully and in detail the teachings
of geology must be convinced that the earth has
come into its present condition through a gradual
process of progressive changes ; in other words,
that it has been created by evolution, from a rela-
tively primitive condition."

That the world itself was made in this way we
do positively know ; does not this furnish us some
pretty good reasons for believing that the tribes
which inhabit the earth have come into being in
the same way ? When we find such a stupendous
illustration as this of the Creator's method, is it not
reasonable to suppose that all his work of creation
is done upon the same plan ?

But the earth itself contains, in the close-locked

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 35

archives of its rocky crust, other and even more
conchisive evidences. I said that the question
before us really is whether the species now exist-
ing were created, in their present forms, in the
beginning. That, as I well remember, was the
view which was presented to me in my boyhood ; I
learned to believe that all the living things round
about me were called into existence by the fiat of
the Creator, in their present forms ; and that every
form of life to which existence was given in the
birth-morning of the creation was still li\'ing upon
the earth. But the record in the rocks makes it
plain that thousands upon thousands of species
once existed which no longer exist, and gives us
the strono^est reasons for believino' that most of the
forms now existing are of comparatively recent
origin. It is as plain as anything can be that con-
stant changes in the forms of living beings have
been taking place through all the age-long record
of the earth. And it is easy for us to trace the
history of some, at least, of the forms now existing,
and to show how they have been modified from age
to age. The fossil remains of plants and animals
in the rocks exhibit to us, as Professor Mateer has
told us, the following facts : —

" 1. The species of animals and plants now
living have only existed upon the earth for a com-
paratively short time, geologically speaking.

" 2. While the earliest records of life upon the
earth have probably all been obliterated, yet the
earliest that have been preserved in fossil remains

36 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

are all lower in grade of organization than their
related forms now living.

" 3. There has gradually taken place all through
the geological ages a constant extinction of old
species and a constant appearance of new.

" 4. The new species thus constantly appearing
usually mark an advance over the older species
preceding them.

" These are the facts. What is their signifi-
cance ? They indicate a progressive change, and
therefore suggest the presence of an organic evolu-
tion."

The cumulative proof of this great process is, of
course, too vast to be even hinted at in this brief
discourse. Not only the fossils in the rocks, but
the distribution of living species over the earth
gives evidence of this, and comparative anatomy,
which shows us the close resemblances of living
creatures, and the minute gradations by which dif-
ferent species shade into each other, indicating
that the higher may have grown out of the lower,
adds its testimony. Most striking of all is the evi-
dence from embryology, in that prenatal history
of man of which the Psalmist knew very little, but
of which he spoke very reverently, as we all ought
to speak : —

" I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am fearfully and won-
derfully made.

Wonderful are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right
well.

My frame was not hidden from thee

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 37

When I was made in secret

And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Thine eyes did see my imperfect substance,

And in thy book were all my members written,

Which day by day were fashioned

When as yet there was none of them."

Every living creature, from the lowest to the
highest, begins its existence as a single, undiffer-
entiated cell. The mighty elm, whose branches
shadow an acre, was at first only a little winged
seed, a single germ, which fell into the ground, and
then began the process of evolution which brought
forth the majestic tree. The stateliest and the most
powerful of the animals was, in the beginning, a
single undifferentiated cell, and the same thing
is equally true of man. Says Professor Drum-
mond : —

" The embryo of the future man begins life, like
the primitive savage, in a one-roomed hut, a single
simple cell. This cell is round and nearly micro-
scopic in size. When fully formed it measures
only one tenth of a line in diameter, and with the
naked eye can be discerned as a very fine point.
An outer covering, transparent as glass, surrounds
this little sphere, and in the interior, embedded in
protoplasm, lies a bright globular spot. In form,
in size, in composition, there is no apparent differ-
ence between this human cell and that of any
other mammal. The dog, the elephant, the lion,
the ape, and a thousand others begin their widely
different lives in a house the same as man's. At

3S WHAT IS L£FT OF THE OLD DOCTKTXES ?

an earlier stage, indeed, before it has taken on its
pellucid coveriDg. this cell has afl&nities still more
astonishing. For at that remote period the earlier
forms of all living things, both plant and animal,
are one. It is one of the most astounding facts of
modem science that the first embryonic abodes of
moss and fern and pine, of shark and crab and
coral polyp, of lizard, leopard, monkey, and man
are so exactly similar that the highest powers of
mind and microscope fail to trace the smallest dis-
tinction between them." ^

But the most astonishing fact is that each of
these forms of animal life, as it is developed from
the cell, takes on, one after another, the different
forms of the lower orders. There are stages in
the dcTelopment of a man when he cannot be dis-
tinguished from a worm, other stages when his
structure is identical with that of the fish : others
when you cannot distinguish him from a reptile
like the frog, others when he takes the form of a
bird, and so on ; in the rapidly passing stages of
his earlier history he is identified in shape, and
apparently in substance, with one after another of
his humbler fellow creatures. *' In man, as in the
fish," says Professor Kingsley, ** the heart is at
first two-chambered : then it becomes three-cham-
bered, as in the lower reptiles, and later it devel-
ops the four-chambered condition, which it retains
through life. In the blood vessels are the same
gUl arteries as in the frog or shark, running in the
1 21c AsceM of Man. p. 62.

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 39

same direction and uniting to form the same dorsal
aorta. There is the same tendency to form gill
slits upon the side of the neck, and in exactly the
same manner, as outgrowths from the throat to-
ward the external skin. Later the blood vessels
change ; the gill slits close up, all except the first,
which persists as the Eustachian tube, connecting
the throat with the inner ear. After a time the
distinctively mammalian features become more
prominent, and then comes a time when no one can
decide between two embryos which is that of a dog
and which that of man. Later the two can be dis-
tinguished, but still that of man and that of a mon-
key show no differences, that of man presents so
many monkey-like features." ^ These facts of the
embryonic history of man are as well established
as any facts in science. And when we consider
them well, and couple them with what we know of
the slow and gradual processes by which the earth
has been formed, and with what we have learned
from the fossils in the rocks respecting the pro-
gressive changes in the tribes of living creatures, it
certainly does not seem incredible that the method
of creation has been the method of evolution ; that
the different orders of living beings are genetically
related; that the higher have sprung from the
lower ; that all things that have life are our fellow
creatures by the strongest of all bonds.

There are very few geologists, and still fewer
biologists, who to-day dispute this great fact of

^ Johnson's Ci/cloptedia, art. "Evolution."

40 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTKINES ?

evolution. There are a few, but they do not re-
present the great body of scientific students. In
truth this conception, that all things " consist," to
use Paul's phrase, that the present is the child of
the past, that genetic relations are to be looked for
everywhere, has come to rule all our thinking ; the
evolutionary idea, the evolutionary logic, finds ex-
pression in all our serious conversation ; we are all
evolutionists in the habit of our minds, even when
we are not aware of it. " Great scientific discov-
eries," says a very orthodox theologian, " are not
merely new facts to be assimilated ; they involve
new ways of looking at things. And this has been
primarily the case with the law of evolution,
which, once observed, has rapidly extended to
every department of thought and history, and
altered our attitude towards all knowledge. Or-
ganisms, nations, languages, institutions, customs,
creeds, have all come to be regarded in the light of
their development, and we feel that to understand
what a thing really is, we must examine how it
came to be. Evolution is in the air. It is the
category of the age ; a ' partus temporig,' a neces-
sary consequence of our wider field of comparison.
We cannot place ourselves outside it, or limit the
scope of its operation." ^

The question about evolution which has been

most hotly disputed respects not the fact, but the

mode. Mr. Darwin undertook to show us not only

that it is in progress, but how it goes forward,

^ J. R. lUingworth, in Lux Mundi, p. 151.

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 41

what is the law of its operation. His theory of
natural selection, which I cannot now stop to ex-
plain, has been challenged by many naturalists.
Undoubtedly it explains much ; but it does not
explain everything. And when the scientific peo-
ple undertake to tell us what it is that has wrought
all these wonders, and precisely how it works, they
sometimes get beyond their depth. There is very
likely to be more in earth, as well as in heaven,
than their philosophy finds room for. They do
not succeed in explaining the beginnings of life ;
the wisest of them do not try. Mr. Darwin as-
sumes that life was here, in the world, in a few
simple forms, at the beginning ; he assumes that
the Creator breathed life into these forms ; he only
tries to show how the life thus originated has been
multiplied and modified. Respecting this process
there is much that we do not know. But one or
two things seem to be evident.

The first is that these original germs, out of
which so much has come, must have been endowed
with wonderful potencies and powers. When we
see what a marvel of majesty and beauty can come
forth from the minute germ of the acorn or the
maple seed, we get a slight impression of the poten-
tialities of life. The evolution reveals the miracle
of the involution. Creation is far more wonderful
when we think of all this manifold life of the world
as having been originally packed away in a few
simple forms, to be drawn forth thence in the slow
progress of the ages, than when we imagine each of

42 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

the forms we know as having been bidden into
existence by an infinite fiat.

But there is something more in this process than
the potentialities that the germs contain. The
forces of life are there in the germs ; but all theo-
ries of evolution agree that the changes which
take place in them are largel}^ influenced by the
environment. It is what surrounds these growing
things and acts upon them that largely shapes
their development. It is this feature of the evo-
lutionary doctrine which has been regarded, I sup-
pose, as especially materialistic and dangerous.
If the action and reaction of the environment
upon the life accounted for nearly everything,
there seemed to be little room left for a control-
ling purpose. But a deeper thought disposes of
this misgiving. What is this environment ? What
is the one word that describes this all encompass-
ing Power which encircles every living thing ? We
say that it is Nature, but it is truer to say that it
is God. It is a natural world, in every force of
which God is immanent. He who endowed these
germs with their marvelous potencies surrounds
them also with an environment in every part of
which He is always present. It is this idea of an
immanent God which makes the doctrine of evo-
lution not only rational, but sublimely religious.
And it is modern science which has forced upon
us this conception. " The one absolutely impossi-
ble conception of God in the present day," says a
modern theologian, " is that which represents Him

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 43

as an occasional visitor. Science had pushed the
deist's God farther and farther away, and at the
moment when it seemed that He would be thrust
out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under
the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It
has conferred upon philosophy and religion an
inestimable benefit by showing us that we must
choose between two alternatives. Either God is
everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere.
He cannot be here and not there. He cannot del-
egate his power to demigods called ' second causes.'
In nature everything must be his work or nothing.
We must frankly return to the Christian view of
direct divine agency, the immanence of divine
power in nature from end to end, the belief^ in a
God in whom not only we, but all things have their
being, or we must banish Him altogether. It seems
as if, in the providence of God, the mission of
modern science was to bring home to our unmeta-
physical ways of thinking the great truth of the
divine immanence in creation, which is not less
essential to the Christian idea of God than to a
philosophical view of nature." ^

Consider these facts. Modern science has made
it impossible to think of the universe except as
a revelation of intelligence. Its fundamental as-
sumption is, that underlying everything, at the
foundation of all existences, isjthought, is reason.

Modern science does not know how life began,
but it shows us life developing from a few pri-
1 Lux Mundi, pp. 97, 98.

44 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

mary germs, into the order and beauty and gran-
deur of this marvelous world. Who stocked these
germs with such miraculous powers, who packed
into them the potencies that have unfolded into
the life that now fills forest and field and air and
ocean, that builds our houses and throngs our
cities, science does not try to tell; it puts the
mighty fact before us and leaves us to interpret it.

But when science tells us that these living things
have been shaped and fashioned in their growth by
their environment, we cannot help pausing to think
what that Environment is ; and if the doctrine of
the divine omnipresence is true, we certainly would
not wish to deny what science affirms. If sur-
rounding every one of these growing lives there is
an Environment, in every atom, in every force of
which the mighty God, the Lord, the Creator of
the ends of the earth, resides and works, and if all
these changes are the results of the direct action of
his wisdom and his power, the doctrine of evolu-
tion is a most impressive demonstration of the pre-
sence of God in the world. Let me close with a
word of John Fiske, who is, perhaps, the most
intelligent American expounder of this theory : —

"The doctrine of Evolution, which affects our
thought about all things, brings before us with viv-
idness the conception of an ever-present God, not
an absentee God, who once manufactured a cosmic
machine cajDable of running itself except for a
little jog or poke here and there in the shape of
a special providence. The doctrine of Evolution

HOW THE WORLDS WERE MADE 45

destroys the conception of the world as a machine.
It makes God our constant refuge and support,
and Nature his true revelation ; and when all its
religious implications shall have been set forth, it
will be seen to be the most potent ally that Chris-
tianity has ever had in elevating mankind."

ni

WHAT IS THE SUPERXATTRAL ?

The chief stumbling-block of reason in these
days is found in the conception of the supernatu-
ral. If that could be got rid of, the way of belief
would be made smooth for many feet.

The researches of science have succeeded in es-
tablishing on so firm a foundation the doctrine of
the imiversality and immutability of law, that there
seems to be no room left in the universe for the
supernatural or the miraculous. A writer in the
" Westminster Review," several years ago, used
this language : " Anti-supernaturalism is the final,
irreversible sentence of scientific philosophy, and
the real dogmatist and hypothesis-maker is the
theologian. That the world is governed by fixed
laws is the first article in the creed of science, and
to disbelieve whatever is at variance with those
uniform laws, whatever contradicts a complete in-
duction, is an imperative intellectual duty. A par-
ticular miracle is credible to him alone who already
believes in supernatural agency. Its credibility
rests on an assumption, the assumption of such
agency. But our most comprehensive scientific
experience has detected no such agency. There

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 47

is no miracle in nature ; there is no evidence of
any miracle-working agency in nature ; there is no
fact in nature to justify the expectation of mira-
cle." 1

Special attention may be called to this manifesto
as a good sample of what modern science is not.
Modern science does not make dogmatic state-
ments of this kind. It does not say of any propo-
sition, " This is the final, irreversible sentence of
scientific philosophy." It only says, So far as the
facts have been collected and compared they bear
this interpretation. To assume that no more facts
can be collected, that no new light can be thrown
upon the subject, that the case is forever closed,
is in the last degree unscientific. With John Rob-
inson, of Ley den, the pastor of the church that
landed on Plymouth Rock, science always expects
more light to break forth from God's works as
well as from God's word, and is always ready to
welcome it. There is considerable of this kind of
dogmatism — sometimes, as in this case, outspoken,
sometimes latent and implicit — in the utterances
of men who speak as the oracles of science. There
is far less of it than there was twenty years ago,
for the fact is plainer than once it was that the
scientific spirit is a spirit of reverence ; but when-
ever we fall in with it we ought to remember that
men who talk in this dogmatic tone are not, in any
true sense of the word, scientific men ; the spirit

1 Quoted by James Freeman Clarke, in Orthodoxy : its Truths
and Errors^ p. 81.

48 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

which speaks through their lips is the spirit of the
old theology, masquerading in the garb of science.

Disputes of this character arise largely, however,
from a failure to agree upon definitions. What is
the sui>ernatural ? What is a miracle ? If these
preliminary questions can be satisfactorily an-
swered, many of the debates will come to an end
at once. Xot all of them, but many of them. For
there are radical differences of theory ; there are
theologians on the one side and philosophers on
the other with whom I cannot agree, and who cer-
tainly cannot agree with one another. The more
clearly their several views are expressed, the more
irreconcilable will seem to be their antagonism. It
is not possible to do away with all differences of
opinion. But the number of differences would be
considerably reduced if the contending parties
would agree upon their definitions.

" That the world is governed by fixed laws,"
says the authority I have quoted, " is the first arti-
cle in the creed of science.'* What is meant by fixed
laws ? Is it meant that everything which is now-
taking place has always been taking place and will
always continue to take place ? That is not true.
The sun is rising and setting now every twenty-
four hours : but it has not always been rising and
setting, and nobody can prove that it will always
rise and set. Indeed, no careful student of astron-
omy pretends to believe that it always will.
" What is the history of Nature," asks Professor
Fisher, " but a record of perpetual changes, — new

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 49

beings, new phenomena, and new collocations of
phenomena presenting themselves on the scene ?
To this extent, our expectation that the future will
be like the past is subject to qualification." ^

It is true that we do expect that the same
antecedents will be followed by the same conse-
quents. We believe that water will solidify next
year as it does this year at 32° Fahrenheit, and that
it will become vapor at our altitude at 212°. We
believe that the specific gravity of silver will con-
tinue, through the centuries, to be greater than
that of aluminum. But this is, in truth, not know-
ledge ; it is faith, — what Professor Huxley calls
" the great act of faith " that every student of sci-
ence is compelled to exercise, and on which all his
investigations are founded. He believes that like
antecedents will be followed by like consequents.
He believes in a reign of law. That these laws are
so fixed that they can never be altered is, however,
a piece of dogmatism upon which he does not ven-
ture.

Of one thing, however, the student of science
feels very sure, and that is that there is a reason
for everything ; that there is no process and no
event which cannot be rationally explained. The
universe is reasonable — this is the foundation of
science. But this is a very different thing from
saying that all which takes place in the world is
the product of an unalterable mechanism. The
acts of a wise man are rational and can be ration-

1 Faith and nationalism, p. 138.

50 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

ally explained ; it does not follow that lie is a mere
machine, and can never act in any other way than
the way in which he does act. When Mr. Huxley
says that " the progress of science has in all ages
meant and now means more than ever the exten-
sion of the province of what we call matter and
causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment
from all regions of human thought of what we call
spirit and spontaneity,"^ he makes a statement
which probably expresses the bent of his own
mind, but which does not express the real ten-
dencies of scientific thought in these last days.
The truth is that there is just now a strong move-
ment of mind toward the recognition of the fact
that the spiritual side of life is quite as well worth
study as the physical side.

With these preliminary cautions against an anti-
theological bias which is not any more rational or
scientific than the theological bias of the church-
man, let us come directly to the questions before
us.

What, then, is a miracle ? The common notion
is that it is a violation of or a deviation from the
laws of nature. Here is the law of gravitation.
Some force, whose nature we do not at all under-
stand, but whose action we can measure, pulls this
book which I hold in my hand downward toward
the centre of the earth. If the action of this force
should be interrupted or susjDended, so that the
book had no weight, but remained motionless in

1 Quoted by Bascom in The New Theology, p. 65.

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 51

the air, with no support under it, and no other nat-
ural force counteracting the force of gravitation,
that wouhl be a miracle. But this definition of
a miracle is not biblical ; we are not told in the
Bible that natural laws are ever violated or sus-
pended. The biblical term for miracle is either
"wonder" or " sign." The events called mira-
cles are described as wonderful works, and as
signs which indicate the presence of God. But
many things are wonderful which are not unnatu-
ral. They are wonderful to us because they are
unusual, or because we do not understand the mode
of their operation. They may be a sign to us of
the presence of some one with knowledge or power
that we do not possess. The old church fathers
explained miracles as being in harmony with na-
ture, not as violations of nature. Origen assumed
the existence in nature of a higher, ideal, divine
order of which the miracle was the expression.
And Augustine says expressly that " a miracle is
not contrary to nature, but to what we know of
nature." Augustine conceives of nature as wholly
under the control of God, and argues that " what-
ever is done by Him who appoints all natural order
and measure and proportion must be natural in
every case."

There may be elements and forces in nature
with which we are not familiar. Nothing is much
nearer to us than the air we breathe, and the phy-
sicists have very confidently assumed that they
knew all about it; it contained so much oxygen

52 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

and so much nitrogen, with infinitesimal amounts
of carbon dioxid, ammonia, ozone, and organic
matter ; but recently a new substance, never before
heard of or dreamed of, has been detected in the
air ; " argon," the chemists call it. Just what it
is good for nobody seems to know ;" it seems to be
a kind of sleeping partner, the unemployed con-
tingent in the atmospheric society. That is the
meaning of the Greek name they have given it,
argon^ — the idler. It is quite possible that the
chemists have wronged him, and that we shall yet
find out that he is a very busy fellow after all. I
summon him here, however, only in support of my
contention that we may have a great deal yet to
learn about the most common elements and forces ;
and that much which seems to us miraculous may
be only the employment of unfamiliar powers.

Many of the things that ?vre the merest common-
places to us would seem miracles to a South Sea
Islander. Those people from Dahomey in the
Midway Plaisance at the Columbian Exposition
were seeing wonders and signs every day of their
stay in this country.

Not only by our knowledge of natural forces do
we learn to perform mighty works which appear
miraculous to those of lower intelligence, there
seems also to be a degree of power which the mind
exerts over the body, a supremacy of the intellect-
ual or the spiritual over the material, to which men
are capable of attaining, and by means of which
many wonderful things are done. The power of

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 53

the mind to influence bodily conditions is very
great, and the contagion of courage and hope and
determination can be communicated from one mind
to another. Indeed, I am not at all sure that
health, abounding vitality, is not in some degree
contagious. It seems to me that virtue does some-
times go out of a thoroughly healthy nurse into the
body of an enfeebled patient. That there is such
a thing as a physical communication of vigor may
be all fancy ; the effect may all be wrought by the
invigoration of the mind of the patient. But
these experiences, concerning which there will be
no dispute, may throw some light on what are
called miracles of healing. That one who was per-
fectly whole, in body and in mind, and whose sym-
pathetic identification with his ' f ellowmen was also
perfect, might heal many diseases, by the com-
munication of his own life, I can easily believe.
That Jesus Christ was able to do such work as
this does not seem to me, in view of what I believe
him to have been, an incredible thing. It is what
I should expect him to do. But this kind of work
was not done by any violation of nature ; it was
done by the completion and perfection of nature ;
it was the realization of that word of his which
every day gathers larger meaning, " I came not to
destroy, but to fulfill."

I can say all this without crediting the prepos-
terous theories of Christian Science or the fairy
tales of faith cure. These stories generally bear
upon their face the marks of absurdity. Such

54 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

powers will never be exercised, except by people
who are elevated physically, mentally, and spirit-
ually to a very high estate of being; and such
people will not be vaunting these powers, or adver-
tising themselves in the newspapers, or turning
their exceptional gifts into a means of revenue ;
and when they open their mouths to speak to us
they will have something to say that is not the
quintessence of absurdity.

To miracles, then, considered simply as wonder-
ful works, as the action upon nature of higher in-
telligences, or as the employment of agencies or
laws with which we are not familiar, there can be
no scientific or philosophical objection. The man
who says, " There can be no intelligence possessing
a knowledge of nature that I do not possess," or,
" There can be no natural laws or processes with
which I am not familiar," does not speak with the
humility of science.

But the idea of the supernatural, it is objected,
contradicts the fundamental assumptions of sci-
ence, and therefore there is an overwhelming pre-
sumption against it. Dr. Bascom, who does not
sympathize with this objection, has nevertheless
stated it very clearly : —

" The scientific tendency, later in its develop-
ment, leads us to magnify the natural, and, in its
extreme expression, to exclude with it the super-
natural. The terms of exact knowledge lie chiefly
in physical things and events, bound together as
causes and effects. The extension of these rela-

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 55

tions is the expansion of determinate thought, and
all the successes of the past century urge us to
complete the work by giving full sweep to the
ruling idea. This movement has for the moment
gathered great momentum, and those who wish to
put any restraints upon it, or supplement it by
earlier forms of inquiry, are easily pushed aside,
or looked upon as having scant claims even to this
courtesy.

" While there have been many secondary points
of discussion between religion and science, points
at which science has been more frequently in the
right, the real difficulty of reconciliation between
the two methods of thought is found in this very
thing, the supernatural. Science has an instinc-
tive disrelish for the supernatural, as something in
whose presence its own methods are of no avail,
something from whose presence there goes forth
an obscuring, chilling mist of uncertainty, that
brings inquiry speedily to an end. The super-
natural, instead of being an essential term in a
higher order, is felt to be a loss of all order in
chaos and confusion. The controversy, therefore,
between science and religion, our knowledge of the
physical w^orld and our knowledge of the spiritual
world, can only be settled by a just definition of
the natural and the supernatural, and by a deter-
mination of their dependence on each other." ^

What then is meant by the natural ? The term
describes, in the first place, all objects, events, pro-
1 The New Theology, pp. 75, 76.

56 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

cesses, phenomena, which are related to each other
as causes and effects. " It covers," says Dr. Bas-
com, "all things and events which are interlocked
by causal relations, — phenomena that are settled
in their form and order of procedure. Every
purely physical occurrence is completely condi-
tioned by coexistent and antecedent circumstances,
and it is these fixed dependencies which constitute
its nature. However variable this nature may
seem to be, the appearance is deceptive, for all
results are perfectly defined by the energies in-
volved." ^ This is the common signification of the
natural, as contrasted with the supernatural. It
describes all those forces which are covered by the
law of the conservation of energy. The natural
realm, as the scientific mind conceives it, is the
realm that is governed by laws. These laws are
not all physical ; there are certain laws of mind,
also ; laws of association, laws of resemblance, laws
of thought. It is too much to say that these
mental laws are all fixed and invariable. But
there is, beyond all question, a certain order in
our thinking ; and we can often discover the gene-
sis of our thoughts. Some of the operations of the
mind, as well as those of the body and of the phy-
sical world, come under the control of law.

But is it true that everything that happens in
this world is the outcome of these unchangeable
laws? When we say that the world is governed
by fixed laws, do we mean that these laws explain

The New Theology, p. 77.

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 57

every event that takes place ? If we do mean any
such thing as that, we are talking nonsense. I
will show you, now, an event that cannot be ex-
plained by reference to any natural laws. Here is
an electric light, by my side upon this desk. It is
burning now ; the process is going on under natu-
ral law, — a law which I will not stop to explain.
It is sufficient to say that whenever you have the
same conditions which are present here, the same
wires, the same carbon filaments, the same adjust-
ments, the same electric currents, you will have
the same light. So far, the whole process is under
fixed law. But is there any fixed law which deter-
mines just how long this light is going to burn,
and just when it is going to stop burning? No,
there is not. I think that it will stop burning now
within a very few seconds ; but no law is going to
stop it. I am going to stop it. There ! What
natural law was it that determined when that lamp
should cease to glow ? It was my free will that
put it out. I might have put it out several sec-
onds sooner, or several seconds later, or I might
have chosen not to put it out at all. Now I pro-
pose to light it again. If everything which hap-
pens in this world is controlled by fixed, unchange-
able laws, then the moment at which I shall light
it is fixed, and can be predicted by one who knows
all the forces at work. Is there any scientist in
this room, any scientist in this universe, no matter
how much he knows about electrical currents, and
incandescent lamps, and nervous tissues, and mus-

58 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

cular contractions, who can predict the second at
which that lamp will be lighted? I think not.
It will be lighted when I get ready to light it.
The work will all be done under fixed laws, under
the laws of electricity, and the laws of muscular
contraction, and the laws of the transmission of
nervous energy from the brain to the fingers ; the
action of the lamp is under fixed law; the action
of my body is under fixed law ; but the power that
sets these natural forces in operation, that starts
the nerve currents in motion from my brain to my
fingers, and that thus moves the muscles of my fin-
gers, and turns the switch and kindles the light, is
the power of a free personality which acts upon
this chain of natural causation, initiating new
movements, making new combinations, bringing to
pass many things which these fixed laws of them-
selves would never compass. It was a supernatu-
ral power which extinguished and relighted that
lamp. Every free personality is a supernatural
power. It is not under fixed law. It is over fixed
law, and uses fixed law, in myriads of ways, to
accomplish its own intelligent purposes.

Thought is a supernatural process. There are
trains of ideas passing through my mind, by the
laws of association ; but I can command this pro-
cession to halt ; I can take one of these ideas, and
fasten my attention upon it, and think of it as long
as I will, and then dismiss it, and call another.
The perfectly healthy mind has power over its
own trains of thought ; it is only the enfeebled or

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATUKAL ? 59

diseased mind that is dominated by fancies which
it cannot dismiss. The power of thinking is the
power of a free personality which is not driven by
mental visions, but marshals and combines them
in an order of its own choosing.

It is involved also in what has been said that
choice is a supernatural act. The very word im-
plies this. Choice which was governed by fixed
law would be a contradiction in terms. In the
realization of his choices, man often finds himself
unable to counteract natural laws, but the choices
themselves are supernatural. " Having, thus, free-
dom and the power of causation," says Dr. Mark
Hopkins, " there is a sense in which man is the
image of God as a creator. Place a being thus
free, having the power of causation, and with in-
telligence, in the midst of a fixed order of things,
so that he can foreknow what the consequences of
his acts will be, and it is plain that he can pur-
posely create or cause to be a future that, but for
him, would not have been. Feeble as is this image
of the creative power of God, it yet indicates for
man a place in this universe higher than that of
suns and stars. He is not wholly as the driftwood
on the stream or the atom in the whirlwind, atom
though he be, but he has a will that goes for some-
thino' in that which is to be." ^

Love in its highest manifestations is super-
natural. The love which came to us under fixed
law we should not highly value. The kindness

1 The Scriptural Idea of God, p. 72.

60 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

that is constrained, the devotion that is compul-
sory, are not the expressions of love. Love is,
indeed, the fulfilling of law : but when all law is
fulfilled, its impulse is not exhausted ; it is still
able to do exceeding abundantly above all that law
can ask or think. Its very characteristic is that it
knows no limits or definitions. Space and time do
not condition it ; its range is boundless, its life is
eternal.

These are the attributes of a free personality, —
thought, choice, love. Wherever you find these,
you find something that is not under fixed law ; it
is simply absurd to think of any of them as under
the dominion of fixed law. In your own soul are
thought and choice and love. You cannot, without
stultifying yourself, say that you do not believe in
the supernatural. You yourself are a supernatural
being ; every hour of your life you are employing
supernatural powers.

This search of man for the supernatural, and
his skepticism concerning it, is much like the search
of the fishes for the sea and of the birds for the
air : the supernatural is the very element in which
his manhood lives and moves and has its being;
the spirit that exists in the image of God the crea-
tor of the universe could hardly be other than
supernatural.

We find very few persons in these days who are
ready to confess themselves atheists, though we find
many who are troubled with doubts about the
supernatural. Some devout and reverent minds

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 61

confess to such uncertainties. Might I address to
such persons one or two simple questions ? You
believe in God. Is not God supernatural ? Has
the Author of the universe no power over the uni-
verse ? Is He imprisoned in the order which He
has himself established ? Can you conceive of Him
as no more than the personification of Fate ? You
know that you are a free personality ? If He is
unfree, is not the creature possessed of attributes
nobler than the Creator ? It seems to me that we,
as free moral beings, would stultify ourselves if
we tried to worship a being who was not himself a
free personality.

That God is a supernatural Power will hardly
be questioned, I dare say, by any of us. But we
saw, in the last chapter, that God is immanent
in nature. " God dwelleth within all things, and
without all things, above all things, and beneath
all things," said Gregory the Great. " The imme-
diate operation of the Creator is closer to every-
thing than the operation of any secondary cause,"
said Thomas Aquinas. The doctrine of the imma-
nence of God is no new-fangled notion ; it has been
held by great thinners in all the ages. Now if
this supernatural Power — this Being who, in the
words of Athanasius, " contains all things, but is
contained by none " — is present in every atom and
every force of the whole creation, then Nature her-
self, in her inmost being, in the deepest secrets of
her life, is supernatural.

" Below the realm of mechanical necessity," says

62 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

Professor Bowne, " there is a realm of ends which
condition and control that necessity. Here nature
is fluid. Here are the roots of nature. Here
nature appears, not as an independent something,
but as a flowing forth of divine energy. It has no
laws of its own which oppose a bar to the divine
purpose, but all its laws and all its ongoings are
but the expression of that purpose. . . . Nature
is no independent power over against God, which
must first be conquered before it can be modified ;
it is only the divine purpose flowing forth into
realization. The constancy of nature, also, must
be viewed as founded not in some mysterious neces-
sity, but solely in the constancy of the divine pur-
poses. We do not, then, regard the supernatural
in its ordinary workings as breaking through phe-
nomenal laws, or through the chain of mechanical
necessity which is supposed to rule in nature; but
we regard it as founding and maintaining that
necessity by which the phenomenal order is real-
ized. . . . We teach no breaks in the phenomenal
order, or in the mechanism of nature, but rather
that that mechanism, in all its phases, is pliant to
the divine purpose, and is but ^n expression of the
divine purpose." ^

No mere analogy can set forth the truth of the
relation of the Creator to the creation ; but the
relation of the mind to the body may give us some
dim suggestion of what it may be. My mind re-
sides in and controls at every instant all parts of
1 Studies in Theism, pp. 315-317.

WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL? 63

my body, and is yet confined not within its mem-
bers, but ranges free through space and time. So
the divine Intelligence abides in and reveals itself
through the whole of nature, and yet is not con-
tained in nature, nor identified with it ; for it is
not only in all and through all, it is also over all.
The immanent God is also the transcendent God.
He is the Power that energizes nature, He is also
the Father of our spirits.

It is not, then, in miracle that God is most
clearly manifested ; He comes closest to us in the
deeper meanings of the commonest facts of our
lives. In the air we breathe, in the daily bread
that nourishes our bodies, in the sunshine that
warms us, in the blossoms that smile upon us, —
not less, perhaps, in the frosts and blasts and rude
resistances of nature that call out our energies and
discipline our wills. He momently reveals himself
to all who have the mind of the Spirit. " Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
They have not far to look. For every day and
everywhere —

" The Lord is in his Holy Place,

In all things near and far,
Shekinah of the snowflake, He,

And g-lory of the star,
And secret of the April wind

That stirs the field to flowers,
Whose little tahernacles rise

To hold him through the hours."

This discussion may have enabled us to see the
truth of what Dr. Bascom has said : — ■

64 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

" The natural and the supernatural are different
sides of the same thing, the earthward side and
the heavenward side, the outer and the inner side.
When we walk in the light of our intuitions and
affections, we are most touched by a sense of the
divine Presence ; when we take counsel and put
our hands to work shrewdly on the things about us,
we are most impressed by law, by stubborn condi-
tions, by the slowly yielding material into which
human and divine thoughts transform themselves.
God and man, if they are to meet in activity at all,
and the overshadowing attributes of the one feed,
without engulfing, the feeble faculties of the other,
must find a middle term which shall be the hidino;
of the divine Presence on the one side, and the
drawing out of human powers on the other side.
Nature is such a middle term. God here meets us,
makes terms with us, gives us our lessons, and
assigns us our tasks." ^

Let us meet Him here with, docile minds, with
reverent hearts ; let us sit at his feet and listen to
his words ; let us take his yoke upon us and learn
of Him ; for his Spirit waits to guide us into all
truth ; and to know Him aright is life eternal.
1 The New Theology, p. 90.

IV

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?

We have a letter of Paul the Apostle to a young
man in whom he was deeply interested, who had
been his traveling companion and assistant in the
ministry, and had shared with him the hardships
and the harvests of his arduous campaigns, in
which are these words : —

"Abide thou in the things which thou hast
learned and hast been assured of, knowing of
whom thou hast learned them ; and that from a
babe thou hast known the sacred writings which
are able to make thee wise unto salvation through
faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture
inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous-
ness ; that the man of God may be complete, fur-
nished completely unto every good work." ^

This is good counsel for young men in these
days, and for those no longer young. In our
hands, as in Timothy's, there are sacred writings
which we have known from our infancy, and
which are able, if we rightly use them, to make
us wise unto salvation. The sacred writings which
1 2 Tim. iii. 14-17.

66 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRESES?

are familiar to US are not identical with those
upon which Timothj had been brought np: we
haTe some books that he had not, and it is pro-
bable that he had some abont which we have
not mnch knowledge, in which, at any rate, we
have not been instmeted. This Teiy letter to
Timothy, for example, which has been to us, all
our lives, a sacred writing, was not so regarded,
I dare say, by the young man who receired it. It
was just a letter to him from his great friend,
Paul the Apostle ; that he Tery highly valued it,
there can be no doubt ; that he received the words
of Paul as one who was under divine guidance is
altogether probable ; but he did not imagine that
this letter would by and by be bound up with those
other sacred writings, long familiar to him, to be-
come a part of a Bible for the human race. There
is no evidence that these epistles of PauL or any
other of the Xew Testament writings, were re-
garded as sacred scriptures on their first appear-
ance. They were carefully preserved by those
who received them, and in the course of fifty or
siity years they b^an to be collected and quoted
as possessing a sacred character ; but the earliest
Christian fathers do not refer to them : when they
speak of sacred scriptures it is always to the Jew-
ish scriptures that they are referring. It was of
these Jewish scriptures, of course, that Paol is
here speaking. Timothy could not have been in-
structed in the Xew Testament scriptures, for in
his childhood not one of them was in existence:

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 67

and those of them that were in existence when
Paul wrote this letter to him had not come to be
considered as sacred writings.

But I said that Timothy probably had certain
writings, regarded as sacred, which we have not.
Undoubtedly Timothy possessed the Septuagint
version of the Old Testament. It was this version
which was chiefly used by our Lord and his apos-
tles. We know this, because their quotations from
the Old Testament are almost always taken directly
from this Old Greek Bible. Out of thirty-seven
quotations made by our Lord from the ancient
writings, all but three are cited word for word
from the Septuagint. Now this Septuagint con-
tained, along with the books of our Old Testa-
ment, those other books which we have separated
from it, under the title of the Apocrypha. There
is evidence in the epistles that these writings
were familiar to their authors, for there are quite
a number of unmistakable allusions to them. Tim-
othy had, then, less Bible than we have in one
part, and more than we have in another. Since
Timothy's day not a little has been added to
the canon of sacred scripture, and not a little has
been taken away, by Protestants, at least. But
we must bear in mind that whatever Paul says, in
this passage, about the sacred writings as a whole,
must be interpreted as referring to the collection
which Timothy had in his hands. Does Paul mean
to say that these writings are all inspired of God,
and therefore infallible? Does he make this state-

68 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

ment concerning tlie story of Susanna, and Bel and
the Dragon, and Tobit, and the rest? Manifestly
that would be putting upon his words a very doubt-
ful construction. We shall be obliged to use his
(counsel to Timothy with some caution. What can
he mean when he says, as the old version makes
him say, " All scripture is given by inspiration of
God " ? The answer is that he does not say any
such thing. The new version, from which I have
quoted, correctly reports him. What he says is
that every scripture which is insjjired of God is
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness. Instead of attrib-
uting inspiration to all those scriptures which
Timothy had in his hands, he simply said that
every inspired scripture was profitable reading.
There is even a hint in these words that they are
not of equal value ; that the quality of inspiration
may be lacking to some of them. When this text
is quoted as a sweeping statement that the whole
of the Old Testament is infallibly inspired, it is
grossly misinterpreted. Explained in this way it
proves, as we have seen, a great deal too much.

Nevertheless it is true that Paul does refer to
the scriptures in Timothy's hands, and that he
does strongly commend them to him as the sources
of wisdom and inspiration. If Paul's language
concerning them is much less sweeping and ex-
travagant than it is generally supposed to be, it is
still cordial and positive. It does not forbid us to
use our common sense in judging these old scrip-

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 69

tures, but it does most earnestly counsel us to use
them, and bids us expect to find in them the illu-
mination of our thought and the invigoration of our
manhood. They may not be infallible, but they
are able to make us wise unto salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus.

I wish that I could get from all readers of this
chapter the same open-minded, sympathetic, rever-
ent treatment of the Bible that Paul expected from
Timothy. But in order that this may be, it is ne-
cessary that their minds should be cleared of mis-
conceptions and illusions. The Bible as it is can
" do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think;" but in order that it may render to
us its highest and best service we must take it for
what it is, and not entertain any false notions
about it. The old English theologian who is
known to history as " the judicious Hooker " gives
us this word of caution : " As incredible praises
given to men do often abate and impair the credit
of the deserved commendation, so we must like-
wise take great heed lest by attributing to Scrip-
ture more than it can have, the incredibility of
that do cause even those things which it hath
abundantly to be less reverently esteemed." ^ Ex-
aggerated and false ideas of the Bible are sure
to breed infidelity in inquisitive and independent
minds. When, by impartial investigation, men
convince themselves that the Bible is not such a
book as it has been represented to be, their natural
^ Works, Book II., chap, viii. 7.

70 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

impulse is to regard it as a fraud and to cast it
aside altogether. I think that this is the precise
history of a very large proportion of those who
have rejected Christianity. The sin and the crime
of drivinof men from the doors of the church are to
be charged very largely upon the religious teach-
ers who, with the light of this decade blazing all
around them, continue to make statements about
the Bible which a very little careful study of the
Bible itself will prove to be untrue.

In view of all this erroneous and highly mis-
chievous teaching, it is necessary to begin by clear-
ing the ground. The first thing that we need to
learn is what the Bible is not.

It is not an infallible book. Where men got
the idea that it is infallible we may not be sure ;
certain it is that they did not get it from the Bible
itself. No such claim can be found anywhere upon
the pages of the Bible. Not one of the writers
asserts his own infallibility.

Probably the theory of inerrancy is founded on
what is called an a 'priori argument. Men said :
"The Bible is the Book of God. If God gives
us a book, it must be infallible. That is to be as-
sumed beforehand. For God is omniscient ; He can
make no mistakes, and therefore we know that He
could permit no mistakes to find their way into his
Book."

Now this way of determining beforehand what
God will do is rather venturesome. A good many
years ago, a certain very famous Bishop Butler,

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 71

who wrote a book that has since been famous,
entitled " An Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Kevealed, to the Constitution and Course of Na-
ture," gave us a very strong demonstration of the
danger of reasoning in this way. For there were
those in his day who were contending that a reve-
lation from God must be universal, — that it could
not be given to one tribe or nation, but must be
bestowed upon all men alike ; also that there could
be in such a revelation nothing obscure or diffi-
cult of interpretation ; that it must be plain to the
apprehension of all men. And if you will stop to
think about it you will at once see that you have
precisely as much right to make these affirmations
beforehand, as you have to say beforehand that
the Bible as God's book must be infallible. It
would appear to be reasonable to say that if God
is the universal Father, He must give to all his
children the same gifts of light and knowledge ;
and that if He sends them a message it will be a
message which they can interpret without any un-
certainty as to its meaning. And yet we know
that the Bible — our Bible — was not given to all
the tribes of earth, but only to one obscure people ;
and that it is not so clear in its meaning but that
men find much difficulty in understanding it. But,
as Bishop Butler goes on to show, we find exactly
the same state of things existing in Nature and
in Providence. We could just as well have argued
beforehand that the universal Father would give
all his children equal portions of natural light and

72 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

knowledge ; and that the Book of Nature would
be writ so plain that the unlearned could under-
stand it at a glance. Nature is from God ; might
we not say that it must therefore be perfect in all
its parts, and holy in all its works ? This argu-
ment is, of course, addressed to devout men who
believe that God is the author of nature. And I
ask them whether the assumption that the Bible
must be infallible because God is omniscient is not
precisely equivalent to the assumption that nature
must be flawless and sinless because God is all
powerful and all benevolent ? The truth is that
the methods which the divine wisdom has adopted
for the education of the world are not always such
as we should have looked for. His ways are not
our ways. And instead of determining beforehand
that the Bible, because it is God's book, must be
so and so, and then warping the words of the
Bible to fit our preconceived theories, it is better
for us to go directly to the Bible itself and find
out what it is. If we discover in its pages errors
and contradictions, that fact need no more convince
us that it has not come from Him than the discov-
ery of cruelty and misery in nature convinces us
that it has not come from Him.

The truth is that the Bible is not only God's
book, it is also man's book. A human element is
mingled with the divine on every one of its pages.
We have the treasure, as Paul says, in earthen
vessels. The truth of God must be expressed in
the words of men. So far as it is conveyed in

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 73

human language, it must be poured into the moulds
which men have fashioned for it. It is needless to
say that these moulds will often be found inade-
quate to contain the full divine idea. Any one can
see that this must be so. The idea that the mind
of God can be infallibly expressed in the words of
men is on the face of it preposterous. There must
be more or less of imperfection and incompleteness
in such a revelation. It may be sufficient to show
us, in a general way, the great truths that it is
needful for us to know, but it cannot be literally
or verbally infallible.

I will not stop long to point out the errors of the
Bible. Let it be sufficient to say that the Bible is
not scientifically infallible. " Thus, for example,"
says Professor Kirkpatrick, " the narrative of crea-
tion in the first chapter of Genesis, while it pre-
sents a most remarkable counterpart to the discov-
eries of science, cannot be said to tally precisely
with the records written on the rocks, so far at any
rate as they have been read at present." More
than this can be said on both sides of the ques-
tion. Not only does this record fail to tally pre-
cisely with our scientific knowledge, but several
features of the narrative distinctly disagree with
what we know of the orioin of thino^s. This on
the one side. But on the other side it is true that
these first chapters of Genesis give us the founda-
tions of all our scientific knowledge ; they teach us
that the universe is one ; they bring before us " one
God, one law, one element ; " they reveal to us the

74 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

supremacy of the Creator over tlie creation ; they
help us to see that creation is progressive ; they
show us man as the crown of the creation, — the
whole finding its completion in Him ; they give us
the grand optimistic conception which is the motive
power of modern progress, that all things are work-
ing together for good ; that there is —

" One far-off divine event
To -wliich the whole creation moves."

How much science is indebted, how much progress
is indebted, to the presence in this first chapter of
Genesis of these great constructive ideas, we shall
probably never know, until we have the long leisure
of eternity in which to study the philosophy of
history. In the midst of certain misconceptions
respecting geological and astronomical laws, these
great spiritual and ethical facts stand out clear as
the sunlight. I believe that this truth is God-
given ; that the reason why the men who wrote
these words were so sublimely right in their treat-
ment of these very highest themes was that God
had come into their lives.

The Bible is not historically infallible. On the
whole the history is veracious. The recent discov-
eries of old inscriptions in the ruins of Nineveh
and Babylon have wonderfully confirmed a great
many of the historical statements of the Old Tes-
tament, but they have also contradicted a few of
them and proved them to be inaccurate. What is
much more conclusive, there are quite a number
of instances in which the Bible contradicts itself,

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 75

statements in one book conflicting with statements
in another book, and utterly refusing, after all the
twisting and quibbling of the commentators, to be
reconciled. There is no honest way of dealing
with a good many of these discrepant statements
but to admit that one or the other must be wrong.

There are also errors not a few which have crept
into the text through the carelessness of copyists.
Some pairs of Hebrew letters closely resemble each
other; the scribe who mistook one for the other
might change a word radically, and give to the
sentence an entirely different turn. There are
scores of such errors as these.

And there are other imperfections even more
serious. As the divine thought must find expres-
sion in human words, so the divine goodness must
find expression in human lives. The lives of men
at best but imperfectly reflect the divine goodness.
The moral natures of men are often so undevel-
oped that you cannot make them comprehend the
rio'hteousness and love of God. And therefore the
revelation given by God to half savage men must
needs be morally imperfect. They are given as
much as they can receive, and as their natures are
gradually purified and enlarged they are given
more. Thus the revelation must needs be morally
progressive ; its early stages must contain com-
mands or permissions that express a partial moral-
ity ; men will be directed to do some things that
their children's children, in later generations, would
be forbidden to do. Jesus tells us that some of

76 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

the commandments and laws of the early Hebrews
were given to them because of the hardness of
their hearts ; he himself quotes some of these old
laws — prefaced, in the Old Testament scriptures,
by a " Thus saith the Lord " — and distinctly sets
them aside as no longer binding. Now we must
never forget that if the Bible is a revelation at all
it is a progressive revelation ; and that the teaching
which was adequate for the earlier stages is alto-
gether inadequate to the moral needs of the present
day.

Such are a few of the evidences that the trea-
sure of divine revelation is conveyed to us in an
earthen vessel ; that the word of God is mediated
through the minds and the lips of imperfect men.
That Moses and Samuel and David and Jeremiah
and James and John and Paul are imperfect men
we know very well ; they do not hide from us their
imperfections ; their misconceptions, their faults of
character, are distinctly revealed to us ; yet they
were men of God, messengers of God, every one
of them ; and they have something to say to us to
which we ought to give diligent heed. We have
not the slightest reason for supposing that the
words which they wrote were any more infallible
than their characters or their actions; but as there
is not one of them to whom, if he were alive to-day,
we would not confidently go for counsel respecting
the good life, so there is not one of them whose
written words are not profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous-
ness.

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 77

But I can imagine that some one maybe saying,
" If all this is true, then the Bible is no more than
any other book." No ; that does not follow. Be-
tween the two statements, " literally and verbally
infallible " and " no more than any other book,"
there is a long distance, and one can be far from
the first without being anywhere near the second.
It is the defect of a certain variety of untrained
intellect, that it can think of only two statements
which can be made about any question, the one of
which shall be the exact antithesis of the other.
Persons of this order of mind always instantly
assume that if you are not a prohibitionist you
must be a rumseller or in the secret pay of the
rumsellers ; that if you do not believe in the West-
minster Confession you must be a blatant infidel ;
or that if you are not willing to engage in the per-
secution of Roman Catholics you are undoubtedly
a Jesuit yourself. There is a vast amount of this
kind of logic abroad in the world ; it is the logic
of a childish intellect ; I trust that most of those
who are reading this are too well educated to be
influenced by it. One may refuse to accept the
traditional view of the Bible and still be very far
from saying that it is no more to him than any
other book.

Other books there are, the Bibles of other races,
of which I could never speak but with the utmost
respect. That God has revealed some portion of
his truth to great teachers of other religions I do
profoundly believe. " I cannot bring myself,"

78 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

says a distinguished Protestant theologian of Eng-
land, — "I cannot bring myself, and there is no-
thing in the history of Christianity to compel me
to bring myself, to divide religions absolutely
into true and false. From the first days of Chris-
tian teaching down to our own, there has not been
wantinof a succession of men who have seen and
rejoiced in the elements of good in creeds which
we have not subscribed. Take a phenomenon like
the Oracle at Delphi ; take that most touching
account which Plato gives of the Sat/xoVtoi/ of Soc-
rates ; take the teaching of Gautama (Buddha) ;
analyze the character of Mahomet ; shall we say
that there is no spark of heaven in all these ? As-
suredly there are sparks from heaven ; assuredly
there are seeds of the divine word (o-Trep/xara tov
Aoyos) ; assuredly there were, as Justin Martyr
recognized, ' Christians before Christ ; ' assuredly
even now there are ' heathen who are not hea-
then,'— '' 7iot my people^ who shall be called ^ my
people,'^ and ' not beloved ' who shall be called
\ beloved. ' '' I do not mean to forget these, nor
to fail to thank God devoutly for all of his truth
that He has made known to them. Nor do I hesi-
tate to recognize the quality of inspiration in many
great and good books of the present day. And
yet to me the Bible is not like any other book ; it
stands in a class by itself, apart from and above
all other books, worthy of a reverence and a love
which I can give to no other book. There are
more reasons than one why this is so ; let me name
one or two.

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 79

When I travel backward over the course of
modern history, and trace to their source those
ideas and those influences of our modern civiliza-
tion which are most beautiful, most powerful, most
benign, I find them leading me back to a great
Character, a unique Personality, who was living in
Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago. Phi-
losophize as I will, make due account as I must of
all the physical and the political forces that have
been in motion through this period, it still remains
true that the ideas and the sentiments and the
influences which emanated directly from Jesus of
Nazareth have had more to do with all that is best
in modern history than all other forces put to-
gether. Do not take my word for this. Some of
you know what Mr. Benjamin Kidd says about it,
but I will not quote him. Let me call instead, as
my witness, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet of Oxford, one
of the keenest-witted men now living, and a man
who is connected with the religious radicals of
England. The address from which I shall quote
was delivered before one of the Ethical Societies
of London, a society which rejects the name of
Christian : —

" It is true and cannot but be true, because the
religion is the man, that Christianity was fitted to
become and has become the definite and specific
expression of the character of those races which
down to the present day have been the history-
making races of the world.

" The spirit of Christendom then — parodied by

80 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

its doctrines, but always animating its life — and
the modern spirit are on the whole convertible
terms ; and when we speak of culture, humanity,
civilization, as indicating moral aims and duties,
we use these terms in the sense practically defined
for us by the mind of Christendom. . . . The spirit
of Christendom is, on the one hand, the motor force
of human progress, and on the other hand the fun-
damental impulse of the new departure at the time
of the Christian era." ^

The spirit of Christendom is, assuredly, the
spirit of Christ. All that is most distinctive and
most beneficent and most glorious in the life of the
world to-day is vitally related to him.

Now here is a book that tells me all that I know
about this Jesus of Nazareth, about his life, his
teachings, his death ; a book which shows me the
streams of regenerating influence beginning to flow
out, through the lives that he vitalized, from the
little land of Palestine to the other nations ; which
reveals to me his star of empire taking its way
westward, over the glad mountain tops of Syria
and Asia Minor, through the classic lands of
Greece, to the seven hills of the Eternal City, — a
path of light that widens and glows through the
centuries, and that shall shine more and more, till
the earth shall be filled with his glory. And when
I take up that Book which contains the record of
this Life and study it carefully, I find that through
all the earlier history which it records, through all

^ The Civilization of Christendom, pp. 71-73.

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 81

the crude and semi-savage periods of patriarclis
and judges and the turbulent times of kings and
prophets, there run converging lines of prophecy
and promise which culminate in him. Certain it
is that this Jesus is, more than any other, the cen-
tral figure, the central force, of modern history.
And here is the Book which tells me what I know
about him. Is there any other book which has,
which can have, for me a value to be compared
with that which I must set upon this Book? It
seems to me that no man can claim to be fairly
intelligent who does not diligently study this
Book and find out for himself what the ideas and
the influences are which are regenerating the
world.

But this Book has another and a deeper interest
for me than that which is merely historical or sci-
entific. It shows me the forces that are regenerat-
ing the world, but it tells me also some things that
I greatly need to know about myself. The spirit
that speaks through it bears witness to my spirit
that I have many needs which things seen and tem-
poral do not supply.

I need forgiveness. I have been disloyal to the
impulses which summon me to seek the highest
good, and I know that behind those impulses is
Some One, to whom in spirit I am kindred, who
has a right to command me. That sense of un-
worthiness is not easily placated ; how can I find
peace ?

I need strength. The infirm will, the wavering

82 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

mind, are my constant bane and torment ; how can
I find power ?

I need wisdom. The way of life is dim and
devious ; the questions that I must solve are per-
plexing : how shall I find the light ?

I need hope and courage. Often I am sore
bestead ; the foes are many ; the helpers few and
cowardly ; my heart sinks within me ; who will lift
up my head ?

I need comfort. Dark days come ; great griefs
lay their heavy hands upon me ; voices that my
heart stood still to hear are silent forever ; I stand
in the gathering mist alone and dumb ; who will
help me bear my burden ? I need the assurance
of life eternal. In my path, also, waits the Shadow
feared of men. Not many days hence I shall meet
him and I shall not say him nay. The realities of
the life beyond — who can tell me about them ?

These are, surely, the deepest needs of my life.
Who can supply them ? Where can I find the an-
swer to all these questions ? I believe that I find
them answered in this Book more fully, more per-
fectly, more convincingly, than anywhere else in the
world. I believe that He in whom the promise
and the prophecy of this Book culminate, and who
is called, and rightly called, the Prince of Life
and the Light of the World, has a clear and satisfy-
ing answer to give to all these questions. And if
you and I go to the Book with these questions up-
permost in our thought, not to cavil, nor to criti-
cise, but wishing for peace and power and wisdom

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 83

and courage and comfort and promise of the life to
come, with open mind receiving the influences it is
fitted to impart, — we shall find, what countless
millions have found, that it is able to make us wise
unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ
Jesus.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL?

The question of this chapter would undoubtedly
have been answered by any old Hebrew, of the
days before the exile, by an emphatic negative.
He knew of no such personality. Neither Abra-
ham, nor Moses, nor Samuel, nor David, nor
Isaiah, nor Jeremiah, nor any of the earlier pro-
phets had ever heard of such a potentate. We
infer that he was unknown to all these worthies
because none of them mentions him. Devil with
the definite article, as signifying the Prince of
Darkness, does not occur in the Old Testament.
" Devils," in the plural, is found four times in the
old version of the Hebrew scriptures. In two of
these cases it is a palpable and ridiculous mistrans-
lation ; the new version properly renders the
Hebrew word " he-goats." The reference is to the
unlawful worship of that animal. In the other
two cases the new version substitutes " demons,"
so that we may say that the word devil is not found
in the new version of the Old Testament.

Satan, however, is mentioned in four places. In
one of them, the one hundred and ninth Psalm, the
new version substitutes '' adversary." It is one of

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 85

those imprecatory psalms, in whicli the writer is
wishing all sorts of harm to his enemy ; and he
hopes that he may be brought to a speedy trial
with a wicked judge over him, and an adversary
or accuser at his right hand. The Hebrew word
Satan means adversary ; and of course the psalm-
ist's reference here is to some accusing man and
not to any evil spirit.

In the twenty-first chapter of First Chronicles
we are told that Satan provoked David to number
Israel. In the Second Book of Samuel we have a
much earlier account of the same transaction, in
which it is said that the Lord himself, being angry
with Israel, instigated David to do this thing.
The Book of the prophet Zechariah mentions Satan
as an enemy or accuser of the good priest Joshua,
and in the Book of Job he is also introduced as the
accuser of the chief personage of that drama.

Respecting the Chronicles and the Book of Zech-
ariah, we know that they were written after the
exile ; and it is not impossible that Job belongs
to the same period. If we were sure of this, we
should have a very clear account of the origin of
the belief in Satan so far as the Hebrews are con-
cerned. The fact being that no reference to such
an evil potentate is found in any of the writings
preceding the exile, and that the people among
whom they were sojourning during the exile pos-
sessed a very highly developed religious faith, in
which the existence of an evil deity was a cardinal
doctrine, it seems clear that the Hebrews borrowed

86 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

from the Persians their belief in such a personage.
It is probable, however, that some elements of a
dark superstition did find entrance to their minds
in the early days ; and that those two references to
demons, to which I have alluded, indicate their
fear of some mysterious powers, inhabiting waste
places, and threatening their peace. The mono-
theism of the old Hebrews was, however, of so posi-
tive a character, that no room was found in their
minds for any rival deity, bad or good. The Satan
of the Book of Job, whatever date we may give
the book, is not the prince of a hostile dominion ;
he is one of the sons of God ; apparently he is a
sort of prosecuting attorney whose business it is to
find out evil deeds and report them. Naturally he
takes a pessimistic view of human character, but
the view appears to be purely professional. The
evil which he inflicts on Job is permitted by Jeho-
vah, as a test of Job's integrity. There is nothing
in the character of Satan as it appears in this book
to suggest the gigantic and malignant personality
of the later theology.

The Serpent which tempted Eve has been popu-
larly identified with Satan or the devil, but there
is not one word in the narrative which susfo^ests
any such thing. He is simply called a serpent ; he
is said to have been one of the beasts of the field,
the most cunning of them all. The only scriptural
warrant for the belief that the tempter of Eve was
the devil, in the form of a serpent, is found in two
places in the Apocalypse, when " that old Serpent,

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 87

the devil and Satan " is mentioned. Xo reference
is made to Eve or lier temptation ; it is only by a
doubtful inference that the Serpent of Eden can
be identified with the one mentioned in the Apoca-
lypse. And it is perfectly certain that the writer
of the narrative in Genesis did not intend to de-
scribe, under the designation of the Serpent, any
such personage as the later theology has created
and named Apollyon or Beelzebub. That person-
age, I say, was not known nor imagined by any of
the Hebrew prophets, kings, or lawgivers, before
the Babylonian exile. But when the people came
back from that exile they brought with them the
germs of a demonology which mightily affected
their after belief. Here we see some traces of
that aherglauhe whose invasion Matthew Arnold
traces in the religion of Israel.

The Dualism of the Persians and the Medians
which the Jews thus borrowed would well repay a
careful study ; I have time only to allude to it.
Rawlinson tells us that the original Zoroastrianism,
like the original form of the Jews' religion, was
not dualistic. The Persians first believed in " a
single great Intelligence, Ahuro-Mazdao, the high-
est object of adoration, the true Creator, preserver,
and governor of the universe. This is its great
glory. It sets before the soul a single Being as the
source of all good and the proper object of the
highest worship." ^ But the Persians began to try
to account for the evils in the world ; they let their
^ Five Great Monarchies^ iii. 96.

88 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

imagination work upon this problem. " They see,"
says Rawlinson, " everywhere a struggle between
right and wrong, truth and falsehood, purity and
impurity ; apparently they are blind to the evi-
dence of harmony and agreement in the universe,
discerning nothing anywhere but strife, conflict,
antagonism. Nor is this all. They go a step fur-
ther, and personify the two parties to the struggle.
One is a ' white ' or holy ' spirit,' and the other a
dark spirit (angro-mainyus). But this personi-
fication is merely poetical or metaphorical. The
' white s]3irit 'is not Ahura-Mazda, and the ' dark
spirit ' is not a hostile intelligence. Both resolve
themselves on examination into mere figures of
speech, phantoms of poetic imagery, abstract no-
tions, clothed by language with an apparent, not
a real personality.

" It was natural that, as time went on. Dualism
should develop itself out of the primitive Zoro-
astrianism. Language exercises a tyranny over
thought, and abstractions in the ancient world were
ever becoming persons. The Iranian mind, more-
over, had been struck, when it first turned to con-
template the world, with a certain antagonism ;
and, having once entered the track, it would be
compelled to go on, and seek to discover the origin
of the antagonism, the cause or causes to which it
was to be ascribed. Evil seemed most easily ac-
counted for by the supposition of an evil Person ;
and the continuance of an equal struggle, without
advantage to either side, which was what the Ira-

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 89

nians thought they beheld in the world that lay-
around them, appeared to them to imply the equal-
ity of that evil Person with the Being whom they
rightly regarded as the author of all good. Thus
Dualism had its birth. The Iranians came to be-
lieve in the existence of two coeternal and coequal
persons, between whom there had been from all
eternity a perpetual and never-ceasing conflict, and
between whom the same conflict would continue to
rage through all coming time." ^

It was thus that the belief in Angro-Mainyus,
or Ahriman, — the black spirit, — was developed
among this ancient people. And the Persian the-
ology thenceforward set these two potentates of good
and evil over against each other in an eternal con-
flict. " Whatever good work Ahura-Mazda in his
benevolence creates, Angro-Mainyus steps forward
to mar and blast it. If Ahura-Mazda forms a ' de-
licious spot ' in a world previously desert and un-
inhabitable, to become the first home of his favor-
ites, Angro-Mainyus ruins it by sending into it a
poisonous serpent, and at the same time rendering
the climate one of the bitterest severity. If Ahura-
Mazda provides, instead of this blasted region, ' the
second best of regions and countries,' Angro-
Mainyus sends there the curse of murrain, fatal to
all cattle. In every land which Ahura-Mazda cre-
ates for his worshipers, Angro-Mainyus immedi-
ately assigns some plague or other. War, ravages,
sickness, fever, poverty, hail, earthquakes, buzzing

1 Five Great Monarchies, iii. 105, 106.

90 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

insects, poisonous plants, unbelief, witchcraft, and
other inexpiable sins are introduced by him into
the various happy regions created without any such
draw^backs by the good spirit ; and a world which
should have been ' very good ' is by these means
converted into a scene of trial and suffering." ^

It is evident, now, I think, whence came the mighty
Prince and Potentate of Evil who has had so large
a part to play in later Jewish and Christian theo-
logy. We have tracked him to his lair. The rela-
tion between these Persians and the Israelites, while
the latter dwelt among them, was very close and
sympathetic ; the Israelites absorbed from them
the idea of a Kingdom of Evil arrayed against the
Kingdom of Jehovah, and it became a part of their
system of belief. They modified it, however, very
materially. Their Satan never became so power-
ful a personage as the Persian Angro-Mainyus. His
dominion was always inferior and his power greatly
limited. Yet he was able to do a great deal of mis-
chief in the world : and they conceived of him as
the sovereign of a bad realm, whose messengers
and emissaries were always at work tormenting hu-
man beings and exercising their diabolical power
in many injurious ways. Such was the common
belief of the Jews when our Lord was on the earth.
His relation to this belief we wiU consider a little
later ; we are only trying now to trace its historical
development among the Jews. Having adopted
this new Potentate into their pantheon, the Jewish

1 Five Great Monarchies, iii. 107, 108.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 91

theologians had to account for him. Who was he,
and how came he into this state of hostility to the
good God ? They finally made out that he was a
fallen angel. There is not a word in the old Tes-
tament or in the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles
or the Epistles about this : the first hint of it, and it
is very slight, is in the twelfth chapter of the Re-
velation, where we read of a war in heaven between
Michael and his angels, on the one hand, and the
dragon, otherwise the old serpent, sometimes called
the Devil and Satan, and his angels on the other ;
the result of which was the defeat of the dragon
and his followers, who were cast out of heaven, and
fell to the earth. This apocalyptical writing, whose
language is confessedly highly symbolical, fur-
nishes all the biography of the Devil that the Bible
contains. The biblical materials for a history of
the Devil are, it must be owned, extremely meagre.
But there were a number of apocryphal writings,
appearing about this time, in which the informa-
tion is more specific. And whatever may have
been believed by the apostles concerning this Prince
of Darkness, the early church soon began to de-
velop the doctrine of the Devil, and it was not
many centuries before an elaborate system of belief
concerning him had been evolved from the imagi-
nations of Christian teachers. " Holding firmly,"
says one authority, " to the belief of a Satanic
Kingdom of darkness opposed to Christ's Kingdom
of light, the majority of the early Christians as-
cribed all evil, physical as well as moral, to the

92 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

Devil and liis demons, — failures of the crop, steril-
ity, pestilence, murrain among cattle, mental mala-
dies, persecutions of the Christians, individual vices,
heresies, astrology, philosophy, and finally the whole
body of heathenism, with its mythology and reli-
gious worship. The heathen gods were believed to
be conquered by the work of Christ, but not to be
wholly powerless ; they sank down into demons,
and so a part of their mythology passed into the
doctrine of the Devil."

Thus the Satanic cult, if we may so describe it,
was thoroughly planted in Christian theology.
Strong tendencies appeared, like those of the Gnos-
tics and the Manichseans, to a dualism as unqual-
ified as that of the Parsees, in which the Kingdom
of Evil was made coeternal with the Kingdom of
Good ; but these tendencies were resisted ; Satan
was not admitted to be equal in power with the
Lord God ; his kingdom was not from everlasting
to everlasting ; defeat and final overthrow were in
store for him ; but for the present he was a tremen-
dous fact, and a large part of the time and thought
of the church was expended in tracing and sub-
verting diabolic agencies. " The whole world,"
says Mr. Lecky, " was divided between the King-
dom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. The
persecuted church represented the first, the perse-
cuting world the second. In every scoff that was
directed against their creed, in every edict that
menaced their persons, in every interest that opposed
their progress, they perceived the direct and imme-

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 93

diate action of tlie Devil. They found a great and
ancient religion subsisting around tliem. Its gor-
geous rites, its traditions, its priests, and its mira-
cles had preoccupied the public mind, and pre-
sented what seemed at first an insuperable barrier
to their mission. In this religion they saw the
especial workmanship of the Devil, and their
strong predisposition to interpret every event by a
miraculous standard persuaded them that all its
boasted prodigies were real. Nor did they find any
difficulty in explaining them. The world they
believed to be full of malignant demons who had
in aU ages persecuted and deluded mankind." ^

It is terrible to read of the extent to which, for
many centuries, the thought of the church was per-
vaded by these conceptions of diabolic agency. A
large share of natural phenomena was attributed to
the Devil : he was supposed to assume the forms
of all kinds of animals ; the pig grunting at you
by the roadside, the toad hopping across your path,
the blackbird chattering at you from the thicket,
the beetle booming into your room after the lamp
was'lighted, were very probably shapes of the Devil.
All human forms, from the priest in his cassock to
the gallant with his sword, from the wizened
granddame to the blooming maiden, he could eas-
ily assume ; any traveling companion who joined
you in a solitary walk was very likely the Devil ;
all lonely places were haunted by him ; even in the
crowded streets he moved undetected, and in the
1 History of Rationalism in Europe, chap. i.

94 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

homes of men he took up his abode. During sev-
eral of the middle centuries, from the fifth to the
twelfth, the sense of his presence was scarcely
absent from the minds of the devout ; but in that
happy time, Mr. Lecky tells us, although there
had never been a day " in which the sense of Sa-
tanic power was more profound and universal,"
the counteracting superstition, connected with the
efficacy of certain magical rites, was also so strong
that not much distress was felt on this account.
" It was firmly believed that the arch-fiend was
forever hovering about the Christian, but it was
also believed that the sign of the cross, or a few
drops of holy water, or the name of Mary, could
put him to an immediate and ignominious flight." ^
There was, however, even then, a dark belief that
all the terrible natural phenomena — earthquakes,
thunderstorms, hailstorms, pestilences, famines —
were produced by the Devil ; even when the Pil-
grim Fathers settled in Plymouth, they attributed
the severe thunderstorms, to which they were un-
accustomed, to the wrath of the Devil at their inva-
sion of his territory. The Black Death which
slew so many victims during the Middle Ages was
universally believed to be a diabolic visitation.

Then it came to be believed that these disasters
were often due to the intervention of men who had
put themselves into the power of the Devil, and so
arose the horrible belief in witchcraft and sorcery
which for many generations came near to being
^ History of Rationalism in Europe, chap. i.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 95

a demoniac possession of those who believed it.
Cruel and terrible was this superstition ; in every
community were those who were said to have sold
themselves to the Devil, and to be the willing in-
struments of his malignity. Thus was let loose,
all round the world, a truly hellish suspicion ; any
slight mental or nervous peculiarity exposed its
possessor to this deadly accusation ; personal jeal-
ousies and enmities seized upon this superstition
for a weapon, and the fiery zeal of a religionism
that had no doubt whatever of the reality and per-
vasiveness of the Satanic kingdom found vent in
a reigTi of terror that lasted for centuries. We
often hear of the Salem witchcraft and its victims,
and I dare say there are many who conceive that
our New England ancestors were singular in their
subjection to this craze. Doubtless we all regret
that the men of Massachusetts Bay were not supe-
rior to this mania, but if they had been, they would
have been wholly exceptional in their generation.
In our colonies twenty-seven persons in all suffered
death as witches ; in Europe they were put to death
by thousands. " The zeal of the ecclesiastics,"
says Mr. Lecky, "in stimulating the persecution,
was unflagging. It was displayed alike in Ger-
many, France, Spain, Italy, Flanders, Sweden,
England, Scotland, and Ireland. An old writer
who cordially approved of the rigor tells us that
in the Province of Como alone eight or ten inquisi-
tors were constantly employed ; and he adds that
in one year the number of persons they condemned

96 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

amounted to a thousand, and that during several
of the succeeding years the victims seldom fell
below one hundred." ^ I must give you one more
sketch from the pen of Professor Burr of Cornell
University: "The Eeformation for a little while
distracted men's minds, but with its first lull, at
the middle of the sixteenth century, the persecu-
tion burst forth with redoubled furj in all Chris-
tian lands. Catholic and Protestant alike, to rage
for more than a century, and then smoulder to our
own day. The figures given for the total number
of its victims are merest guesswork, and those for
many local persecutions are scarcely more reliable ;
but they are as likely to be below as above the
truth. We have the names of hundreds who per-
ished in single jurisdictions within the space of two
or three years : and the records thus preserved are
but chance fragments. A single Lorraine judge
boasted of having sentenced nine hundred, and he
was still in the midst of his activity. If the per-
secution knew fiercer epidemics in Catholic coun-
tries it was more chronic in Protestant. Nor was
it mainly old women who suffered. Such might be
accused first, but the witch was always tortured
into naming her accomplices, and she generally
named those whom she hated or envied. Eiches,
learning, beauty, goodness were often so many
titles to death. ' There are still,' wrote the Chan-
cellor of the Bishop of Wiirzburg to a friend in
1629, ' four hundred in the city, high and low, of
^ History of Nationalism in Europe, cliap. i.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 97

every rank and sex, nay, even clerics, so strongly
accused that they may be arrested at any hour.
Some out of all offices and faculties must be ex-
ecuted ; clerics, electoral counselors and electors,
city officials, court assessors, several of whom your
Grace knows. There are law students to be ar-
rested. The Prince-Bishop has over forty students
who are soon to be pastors ; among them thirteen
or fourteen are said to be witches. A few days
ago a dean was arrested ; two others who were
summoned have fled. The notary of our church
consistory, a very learned man, was yesterday ar-
rested and put to the torture. In a word, a third
part of the city is surely involved. The richest,
most attractive, most prominent of the clergy are
already executed. A week ago a maiden of nine-
teen was put to death, of whom it is everywhere
said that she was the fairest in the whole city, and
was held by everybody a girl of singular modesty
and purity. She will be followed by seven or
eight others, of the best and most winsome. There
are children of three and four years, to the num-
ber of three hundred, who are said to have had
intercourse with the Devil. I have seen put to
death childx'en of seven, promising students of ten,
twelve, fourteen, and fifteen. Of the nobler — but
I cannot and must not write more of this misery.
There are persons of yet higher rank whom you
know and would marvel to hear of.' Such, to
quote but a single document, was the scope of the
witch persecution." ^

1 Johnson's Cydopcedia, art. " Witchcraft."

98 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

To the yoke of this horrible superstition all the
greatest and best of mankind bent their necks.
Luther's belief in the Devil and in witchcraft was
unhesitating. As for the witches, he had no mercy
on them. " Spare none of them," he cried ; " I
would burn them all." The question respecting
the certainty of detecting them did not trouble his
mind ; it was easy enough, of course, to tell who
was a witch and who was not. As to the existence
of the Devil, Luther was just as certain as he was
of his own existence. He had met him more than
once, and had had lively conversations with him.
"Early this morning," he writes in his diary,
" when I awoke the fiend came and began disput-
ing with me. ' Thou art a great sinner,' said he.
I replied, ' Canst thou not tell me something new,
Satan ? ' " It is evident that in repartee his Satanic
Majesty was no match for Martin. Even when it
came to inkstands his answer was ready. One
day as he was going to begin his studies he heard
a noise which he at once explained as proceeding
from the adversary, and he writes : "As I found
he was about to begin again I gathered together
my books and got into bed. Another time in the
night I heard him above my cell walking in the
cloister, but as I knew it was the Devil I paid no
attention to him and went to sleep."

Do not imagine that it was the church and the
clergy who were solely responsible for this super-
stition ; the greatest jurists, publicists, scholars,
statesmen all passionately defended it. " Thomas

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 99

Aquinas," says Lecky, " was probably the ablest
writer of the eighteenth century, and he assures us
that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of the
Devil ; that the Devil can transport men at his
pleasure through the air, and that he can transform
them into any shape. Gerson, the Chancellor of
the University of Paris and, as many think, the
author of ' The Imitation,' is justly regarded as
one of the master intellects of his age; and he,
too, wrote in defense of the belief. Bodin was
unquestionably the most original political philoso-
pher who had arisen since Machiavelli, and he
devoted all his learning and acuteness to crushing
the rising skepticism on the subject of witches." ^
The most cruel law for the punishment of witches
passed by the English Parliament was enacted
when Coke was attorney general and Bacon was
a member of Parliament; the Commission which
reported it included twelve Bishops. Sir Thomas
Browne, one of the liberals of that day, and one of
the most genial and cultivated gentlemen of his-
tory, wrote in the " Religio Medici," " I have ever
believed and do now know that there are witches ;
they that deny them . . . -are a sort, not of in-
fidels, but of atheists." In 1664 two women were
hung in Suffolk under a sentence of Sir Matthew
Hale, whose charge to the jury declared that the
reality of witchcraft could not be questioned;
" for, first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much ;
and, secondly, the wisdom of all nations had pro-

1 Hist. Bationalism, chap. i.

100 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

vided laws against sucli persons, which is an argu-
ment of their confidence of such a crime."

Such, then, is a most meagre sketch of the pre-
valence of the dark belief in the kingdom of Satan.
The earth has been visited by few scourges more
dire. The cruelty and perfidy, the malice and
suspicion which it engendered, the destruction and
misery which it caused, are almost too fearful for
credence. If we know beliefs, as we know men,
by their fruits, — and there is no other test, — this
belief in a Satanic kingdom must be adjudged to
be most qyH and accursed.

Can we say that it has disappeared from the
Christian church ? That would be too strong a
statement. It is clear, however, that the place
which it occupies in the thoughts of Christians is
not what it was three hundred years ago. The belief
in witchcraft has practically vanished from civili-
zation. The last witch was burned in Scotland in
1722 ; and although, as late as 1773, " the divines
of the Associated Presbytery " passed a resolution
declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring
the popular skepticism concerning it ; and although
John Wesley, a little more than one hundred years
ago, said that those who doubted witchcraft were
tainted with infidelity, and that if this belief was
overthrown Christianity would go with it, it seems
to be true that witchcraft is dead, and that Chris-
tianity is still very much alive.

Some sort of belief in a personal Devil is still
common, I suppose, among Orthodox Christians.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 101

It can hardly be said to be an article of faith : this
it has never been. None of the three great creeds
of the church — the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene
Creed, or the Athanasian Creed — makes mention
of the Devil ; he is referred to incidentally, in some
of the great Protestant confessions, but I do not
remember that any of them have undertaken to
define him, or to formulate any belief concerning
him. The brief survey which we have given of
the part that the belief has played in the history
of the church enables us, however, to state, in a
general way, what the popular conception of Satan
has been.

The Orthodox belief has regarded him as the
sovereign of a vast, world-wide dominion of evil
spirits, who are banded together, under him, to do
his bad behests. These spirits and their great
Prince have but one purpose, to hurt and harass
and ruin men, body and soul. Their home is
hell; but under the orders of their great Prince
they are sent forth to range free through the earth,
tempting human beings and seeking to draw them
down to the place of eternal torment.

All these evil spirits have great power over na-
ture, — power to work miracles, it would seem ; to
transport themselves instantaneously from place to
place, and to assume manifold forms. But the
prince of them all, the personal Devil, of the popu-
lar theology, must be practically omnipotent. He
produces earthquakes, plagues, famines, hurricanes,
eclipses ; his miraculous control of natural forces is

102 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

practically unlimited. And he must also be omni-
present. At one and the same instant he is tempt-
ing men in every quarter of the globe ; his diaboli-
cal intelligence is in immediate contact with the
minds of men everywhere. I am sure that this is
distinctly implied in the popular belief concerning
him. Unless Satan is actually omnipresent, his
influence over the minds of human beings cannot
be what it is popularly supposed to be. If he can
only be in one place at a time, and must pass, no
matter with what rapidity, from one place to an-
other in pursuit of his malignant purposes, it is
but an infinitesimal fraction of any generation that
he can by any possibility reach in the course of its
life. That would not at all answer the popular
demand upon him for " pernicious activity." No-
thing less than omnipresence, and nothing less than
omniscience, could possibly equip Satan for the
kind of work which he is generally believed to be
doing.

Do we believe in the existence of such a king-
dom of evil, with such a potentate as this at the
head of it ?

Most of us will say at once that the belief once
entertained in the power of the Devil over the
forces of nature can no longer be justified : it is
not, we shall all admit, credible that earthquakes
and eclipses and pestilences are caused by him.
We know something of the causes of these phe-
nomena. But there are still a good many per-
sons, I suppose, who believe him to possess a great

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 103

deal of power, and to be performing a great deal of
mischief in the world in many mysterious ways.

To all such, let me suggest that these concep-
tions about him ought, if possible, to be less vague.
If there is such a Prince of Evil, we ought to know
more about him ; we ought to be able to tell, more
definitely, what is his power and what are his lim-
itations. We do not want to be ascribing to him
attributes that make him a deity scarcely subordi-
nate to God himself, unless they really belong to
him. And those who esteem it important that
belief in the existence of this Prince of Darkness
should be maintained, are bound, I think, to tell
us very definitely just how much we are to believe
about him.

For my own part I am quite free to say that I
do not believe in the existence of any such organ-
ized kingdom of evil spirits, ruled by a great Prince
or Potentate, and set in deadly array against the
Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. If you
mean by a personal Devil a gigantic evil intelli-
gence whose sole purpose in the universe is the
destruction of men's souls, and who commands vast
armies of evil spirits in an age-long warfare upon
human virtue and human happiness, then I say I
do not believe in a personal Devil. The concep-
tion of such a personage, so far as this age is con-
cerned, is largely taken from Paradise Lost. I
suppose that the conceptions of Satan which pre-
vail in our Protestant churches have nearly all been
drawn from this source. It is weU to remember

104 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

that Paradise Lost is a great work of the imagina-
tion. Milton's picture of this stupendous Prince of
Darkness is not a good foundation of theological
belief.

.1 do not believe in the existence of such a king-
dom, with such a ruler, because it is morally and
psychologically impossible that it should exist.
Unrelieved and absolute evil cannot organize it-
self into a kingdom. Its very principle is division
and disintegration. Its essence is anarchy. " Sin
is lawlessness," says the apostle. The mightiest
intellect that ever existed could not hold together
for- one week such an aggregation of absolute self-
ishness. Every one of his minions would be per-
petually conspiring against him, and against all
the rest.

What is more, the whole effect of evil upon the
intellect is benumbing, deadening. Selfishness
weakens a man's mental grasp and narrows his
range of vision. A politician who is nothing but
a selfish schemer always becomes less astute as he
grows older. He is morally sure, before he dies,
to make some stupendous blunder which even a
tyro would have avoided. The history of our poli-
tics furnishes many instances of such intellectual
failure on the part of men who were known to be
utterly selfish, but supposed to be preternaturally
shrewd. If, then, Satan had been for so many cen-
turies devoted to such pursuits as are ascribed to
him, he would, unless God had set aside in his
behalf the natural working of his own laws, have

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 105

been an absolute idiot long before tbis, and so
would all bis angels. If tbe Devil is one of God's
creatures, tbe law under wbicb be was cr-eated
must be tbe law of love. Tliat is tbe law of bis
being, tbe organic law of bis spirit. His sin is
only disobedience to tbat law. Disobedience to
tbat law, in any part of tbis universe, brings after
it, as tbe natural effect, intellectual as well as
moral deterioration, weakness, — tbe diminution of
being. Tbe operation of tbat law absolutely forbids
and makes absurd tbe existence of any sucb gigan-
tic Prince of Darkness as Milton bas painted.
Tbe Bible rigbtly calls tbe sinner tbe fool;. and
tbe longer be sins tbe greater fool be is. If
tbere is a Devil, one wbo bas sinned longer and
more persistently tban any otber of God's crea-
tures, be must be tbe greatest fool in tbe universe,
and we need not be at all afraid of bim.

In tbe second place I do not believe in tbe exist-
ence of sucb a gigantic world dominion of evil
spirits witb sucb a ruler, because I believe all tbat
Jesus Cbrist bas taugbt us to believe concerning tbe
Heavenly Fatber. Tbat tbe InjQnite Power bebind
all law is infinite compassion and infinite belpful-
ness is tbe first article in my creed, and witb tbis
everytbing else must agree. If there is a good
God, be bas not let loose in tbe world sucb a
migbty bost of malignant spirits, witb sucb a gi-
gantic malefactor at tbe bead of tbem, to prey
upon tbe souls of bis children.

In tbe tbird place I do not accept tbis tbeory,

106 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

because history shows us what horrible effects it
produces in human society where it is generally
and firmly believed. Restore the belief in Satan
to the rank and importance that it held in the
minds of men in the sixteenth century, and you
will have all the atrocities of that dark day re-
peated. A belief cannot be true which works such
devastation in the moral lives of men.

Is there, then, no sense in which we may use this
word, so long upon trembling human lips? Is
there no true conception to which we may properly
or usefully apply this name ? There is, I an-
swer, if only we do it intelligently. The word is
one that I often use, and I think I know what I
mean by it. It is simply the aggregate spiritual
wickedness of the world, personified. " Satan, or
the devil, taken in the singular," says Dr. Bushnell,
" is not the name of any particular person, neither
is it a personation of temptation or impersonal
evil, as many think ; for there is really no such
thing as impersonal evil in the sense of moral evil ;
but the name is a name that generalizes bad per-
sons or spirits, with their bad thoughts and char-
acters, many in one. That there is any single one
of them who, by distinction or preeminence, is
called Satan or devil is wholly improbable. The
name is one taken up by the imagination to desig-
nate or embody, in a conception the mind can most
easily wield, the all or total of bad minds and
powers." ^ The demon in the New Testament story

^ Nature and the Supernatural, p. 135.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 107

told the truth when he said, " My name is Legion,
for we are many." Just so " Mammon " is per-
sonified in the Scriptures as a ruler of this world.
He is materialism hypostatized. Just so " The
Man of Sin " and " Antichrist " are personified
in the New Testament and the personal pronouns
are applied to them. Doubtless the terms describe
no historical individual, but groups or assemblages
of hostile minds and influences. Just so in the
Book of Proverbs " Wisdom " is personified, and
represented as a beautiful matron who seeks by her
motherly influence to lead the children of men into
the paths of life. Such personifications, by which
abstract truths are put into concrete form and vast
spiritual tendencies are grouped by the imagination
under one symbolic term, are very useful in our
common speech. To speak of the sum of moral
evil in the universe as the Devil is a convenient and
intelligible locution. In this sense it is the Devil
that tempts us, that ensnares us, that poisons our
thoughts, that lies in wait for our souls. And it
is well for us to gather up the evil of the world into
one conception, and set ourselves sternly against
the whole of it. Familiar and colloquial though
our use of the term may be,' symbolical though we
know it is, it is very significant. Thomas Carlyle
was entertaining no superstitious ideas about a per-
sonal Devil, but he had a most clear and wholesome
idea in his mind when he wrote to his brother
John : " One has to learn the hard lesson of mar-
tyrdom, and that he has arrived in the earth not

108 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

to receive, but to give. Let him, then, be ready
to spend and be spent for God's cause ; let him, as
he needs must, set his face like a flint against all
dishonesty and indolence and puffery and quackery
and malice and delusion whereof earth is full ; and
once for all flatly refuse to do the devil's work in
this which is God's earth, let the issue be simply
what it may. ' I must live, sir,' say many ; to
which I answer, ' No, sir, you need not live ; if
your body cannot be kept together without selling
your soul, then let the body fall asunder and the
soul be unsold.' In brief. Jack, defy the devil in
all his figures, and spit upon him ; he cannot hurt

Doubtless the Devil, used in this sense, will have
different meanings for different men ; but to every
man it means all the evil that assails him ; all the
influences that tend to undermine his integrity, to
lower his moral standards, to poison his thoughts,
to make him swerve from the path of manliness
and purity.

Is it in this sense, you want to know, that the word
devil is used in the New Testament ? Sometimes
it is, no doubt. For the Oriental mind personifies
much more than does the Western mind. Never-
theless I do not question, as I have already said,
that the people of Judea in the New Testament
times — the majority of them — did believe in a
great kingdom of evil spirits, with Beelzebub, the
Prince of the Devils, as its ruler. Jesus found this

1 Froude's Carlyle, ii. 197.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 109

conception in the minds of the people, and he did
not antagonize it, but accommodated his teachings
to it. At least this is the impression given by the
gospel narratives. Assuming that he is correctly
reported, I find it difficult to explain all his rela-
tion to this question. The story of the temptation
does not trouble me, for this is clearly an allegory.
It is not likely that Jesus was literally carried
through the air by the devil from the wilderness to
Jerusalem and set upon a pinnacle of the temple ;
and it is not possible that he should have been
taken to any literal mountain from the top of
which all the kingdoms of the earth can be literally
seen ; for no such mountain exists, or could exist
upon the earth. The transaction must have been
purely spiritual ; it is a dramatic description of a
conflict in the spirit of Jesus, as the corporate self-
ishness of the world presents itself to him in the
three most universal and powerful forms of appe-
tite, vanity, and ambition. There is no difficulty
in understanding this narrative. But some of the
reported words and deeds of Jesus in connection
with this subject I do not wholly understand.
What he tells us, however, about the Father and
his kingdom of righteousness and peace I do under-
stand, and I build my faith on that. I know that
this was the main thing that Jesus came to teach ;
I know that he came to show us the Father ; I
know that the God whom he reveals to us is the
Good Shepherd, who follows the estray into the
wilderness to bring him back, rejoicing more over

110 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

the sheep that was lost and found again than over
the ninety and nine that went not astray ; the
prodigal's father, who meets the returning wan-
derer a long way off ; the gracious Benefactor, who
maketh his sun to shine on the evil and the good
and sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust.
Whatever conflicts with this conception of the hea-
venly Father and his kingdom on the earth, I can
find no room for in my theology. If there seems
to be in the teaching of Jesus himself an element
which I cannot reconcile with this, I think that I
honor him by passing it by, and waiting for the
time to come when I may understand him better.
It is the spirit of Jesus, as I do firmly believe, —
the spirit of Jesus abiding in the world, and grad-
ually taking possession of the thoughts of men,
that is banishing this dreadful dogma from the
earth. Many things against which he lifted up
no word of protest, which he silently assumed,
have been banished from among men by the power
of his spirit. Slavery was here, in its worst form,
before his very face ; he never condemned it, but
he created a moral atmosphere in which it could
not live. Polygamy he never forbade, but he made
it impossible. And though the demonology of his
time was assumed by him, as was slavery and po-
lygamy, he has brought into the world a conception
of God and of his kingdom which, when once the
world is able to receive it, will make an end of all
this dismal doctrine. Perhaps it was a glimpse of
this triumph over the Kingdom of Night that he

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL ? Ill

saw when he exclaimed : " I beheld Satan as light-
ning fall from heaven." May God speed the day
when all these spectral kingdoms of superstition
and darkness shall disappear in the brightness of
the glory of Him who comes to lead the world
into the knowledge of God !

VI

WHAT DO WE mHERIT?

" What mean ye," is the protest of Jehovah by
the month of the old prophet, " that ye nse this
proverb in the land of Israel, saying, The fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth
are set on edge ? As I live, saith the Lord God,
ye shall not have occasion to use this proverb any
more in Israel." It would have been well for the
interests of a sound theology if no occasion had
been found to use the proverb outside of Israel.
For, in truth, the very substance of this proverb,
which the prophet denounces as heathenish, has
been wrought into theology in Hippo and in Hei-
delberg, in Geneva and in Dordrecht, in London
and in Boston, and has mightily influenced the
creeds and the prayers of many centuries. That
the children's teeth are set on edge because the
fathers have eaten sour grapes is a proverbial ex-
pression of the doctrine that sin is hereditary ; that
the guilt of ancestors is bequeathed to their de-
scendants ; that one generation may be justly pun-
ished for the misdeeds of former generations. This
has been, since the days of Augustine, the ortho-
dox doctrine, accepted by the great body of reli-

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 113

gious teachers, Protestant and Catholic. It has
been stated variously ; the manner in which this
guilt is transmitted from generation to generation
has been a subject of much controversy ; but the
great majority of Christian teachers have main-
tained that in some way the guilt of Adam's sin is
transmitted to his descendants ; that they are justly
punishable for what he did. The Roman Catholic
Church clearly teaches that we are punished for
Adam's sin, but the punishment consists in the loss
of original holiness, rather than in the infliction of
suffering. However, the case stands so that every
infant comes into the world under the curse pro-
nounced on Adam, and liable at its first breath to
be consigned to everlasting separation from Ood.
Baptism implants in the soul of this child the germ
of grace, so that if it dies after baptism it is saved.
If, however, an infant dies before baptism, the
Catholic theology gives us no reason to hope for its
future blessedness. It will not, indeed, suffer the
torments of hell ; it is consigned to that limbus
infantum, of which Dante tells us in the fourth
canto of the Inferno. This is the abode of those
of whom Virgil says : —

*' That they sinned not ; and if they merit had,
'T is not enough, because they had not baptism,
Which is the portal o£ the Faith thou boldest :
And if they were before Christianity,
In the right manner they adored not God ;
And among such as these am I myself.
For such defects and not for other guilt,
Lost are we, and are only so far punished
That without hope, we live on in desire."

114 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

Punishment enough, one would say, — through all
eternity to cherish hopeless desires. This is the
fate to which the orthodox Catholic theology still
consigns unbaptized children. Much the same is
true of High Anglicanism. So much emphasis is
placed by that school upon the efficacy of sacra-
ments, that the reception of baptism by the infant
appears to be a clear condition of salvation.
When the due performance of that rite has been
omitted, the curse of the law appears to rest upon
the little children.

With all the churches of the Puritans, Congre-
gationalists, and Presbyterians, there was no ques-
tion about the inheritance of the curse pronounced
on Adam. That was the foundation of orthodoxy.
Our first parents " being the root of all mankind,"
says the Westminster Confession, " the guilt of
their sin was imputed, and the same death in sin
and corrupted nature conveyed to all their poster-
ity, descending from them by ordinary generation.
. . . Every sin both original and actual, being
a transgression of the righteous law of God, and
contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring
guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over
to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so
made subject to death with all miseries, spiritual,
temporal, and eternal." ^

No statement can be clearer than this, that every
infant comes into the world under the curse of
Adam's sin. Nor is there, by this creed, any such

1 Westminster Confession^ chap. vL

WHAT DO WE mHERIT? 115

provision for canceling this curse by baptism, as
the Roman Catholic doctrine affords. The doc-
trine of election comes in here to assure us that
elect infants will be saved, even if they are not
baptized ; and that non-elect infants will be damned,
no matter how promptly we may baptize them.

This brief recital will indicate the extent to which
this doctrine of the inheritance of sin has shaped
theology. There have been, indeed, in all the ages
those who protested against it ; since the sixteenth
century the Arminians, among whom Wesleyans
and Methodists of all names are to be reckoned,
have stoutly denied it ; but it still remains true
that up to this day the great majority of Chris-
tians, Catholic and Protestant, retain in their
creeds the idea that the guilt of Adam's sin is
bequeathed to his descendants.

That a great many of those who assent to these
creeds have ceased to believe them, I have no
doubt, but they still remain as the doctrinal sym-
bols of the bodies holding them.

That such a belief could have intrenched itself in
our theology and held sway over the minds of men
for so many centuries is evidence of the rudi-
mentary and unclear ethical conceptions prevailing
in men's minds. The moral sense must be imper-
fectly developed which cannot see, on the least
reflection, that guilt cannot be inherited. That I
can be held responsible for the sins of my ances-
tors, and be deserving of punishment for what they
have done, is a proposition that conflicts with the

116 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

foundations of morality. Guilt is absolutely per-
sonal ; the word connotes moral responsibility for
unlawful conduct ; and moral responsibility belongs
to individuals, and can no more be transferred
from one to another than the act of breathing can
be performed by one person for another, or the
sensation of cold be experienced by one person
for another. My child can no more be guilty or
deserving of punishment for my sin than he can
see with my eyes or feel with my nerves.

It is a little strange that the indignant protest
of this old prophet was not oftener heard in the
days when this doctrine of imputation and in-
herited sin was taught and defended: "Yet say
ye, Why ? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the
father ? When the son hath done that which is
lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes and
hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul
that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear
the iniquit}^ of the father, neither shall the father
bear the iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of
the righteous shall be upon him, and the wicked-
ness of the wicked shall be upon him."

This is the everlasting truth ; and any theologi-
cal dogma which conflicts with it is false and mis-
chievous. The doctrines that held us responsible
for the sin of Adam, and deserving of punishment
because of his offense, do not any longer command
the credence of thoughtful men. If anybody pro-
fesses to believe in inherited guilt, he at once
makes it evident that he uses the word in a Pick-

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 117

wickian sense ; he explains it all away so that it
means something very different from what the term
ordinarily conveys. Of the old doctrine of original
sin, as taught and believed by our grandfathers,
very little, thank God, is left. It was just what
Ezekiel calls it, — a heathenish doctrine ; it imputed
to God the most monstrous injustice ; to many in-
genuous minds it was a grave impediment to faith.

But how about heredity, you are asking? Is
there no truth in heredity ? There is, I answer, a
tremendous truth ; and it is this with which the
theologians have been fumbling. They saw the
facts of heredity ; they took the popular and poetic
statements of the Scriptures concerning them, as
scientific formulae, and out of these made up their
dogmas. But they read neither the facts nor the
Scriptures correctly, and therefore their dogma
became a horrible accusation against the divine
justice.

What is heredity? "It is that biological law,"
answers Ribot, " by which all beings endowed with
life tend to repeat themselves in their descendants ;
it is for the species what personal identity is for
the individual. By it a groundwork remains un-
changed amid incessant variation ; by it Nature
ever copies and imitates herself." ^ " It is that pro-
perty of an organism," says Weissman, " by which
its peculiar nature is transmitted to its descend-
ants." 2 " Each child," says Dr. Bradford, " not
only is related to the whole race as a species, but

1 Heredity^ p. 1, ^ Essays on Heredity, p. 71.

118 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

is in a peculiar sense the offspring of individuals,
bearing within him signs of his parentage, not only
in his bodily organism, but also, with equal clear-
ness, in his mental and spiritual constitution." ^

.The first great outstanding fact of heredity is
the fact of species. We will not dispute about the
definition of species ; we all know that in all the
world of living things " like produces like." Oaks
grow from acorns and not from chestnuts ; lions
are the offspring of lions, eagles of eagles, fish of
fish, insects of insects, human beings of human be-
ings. Even race peculiarities are inherited ; the
child of pure Aryan parents never has the phy-
sical or mental peculiarities of the African or the
Mongolian ; the greyhound does not give birth to
the mastiff, nor the short horn to the Jersey, nor
the Percheron to the Hambletonian.

More significant still is the transmission of per-
sonal and family traits. The physical resemblance
of children to their parents is the common fact ;
often this resemblance is obvious to all observers ;
sometimes it is extremely subtle, consisting less of
featurely similitude than of evanescent shades o£
expression. In this case it is, however, mainly a
matter of character. Family resemblances of this
sort are often far more quickly observed by strangers
than by kinsmen. Oftentimes a physical trait will be
handed down for generations, like the aquiline nose
of the Bourbons, or the " Batcheler eye " which
Mr. Whittier inherited.

1 Heredity and Christian Problems, p. 3.

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 119

Special mental traits and aptitudes are also fre-
quently transmitted. Galton's investigations im-
pressively show us this fact. JEschylus had eight
kinsmen who were poets. Coleridge was the first
of a literary line. Thomas Arnold of Rugby was
the father of Matthew Arnold and the grandfather
of Mrs. Humphry Ward. In music the illustra-
tions are many. Says Dr. Bradford : —

" Andrea Amati was only the most illustrious
member of a family of violinists at Cremona ;
Mozart's father was a violinist ; Beethoven was the
son of a tenor singer ; and Mendelssohn was of
a musical family. The Bachs supply perhaps the
most distinguished instance of mental heredity on
record. The family began in 1550, and lasted
through eight generations to the year 1800. Dur-
ing a period of nearly two hundred years it pro-
duced a number of artists of the first rank. Its
head was Weit Bach, a baker of Presburg, who
used to seek relaxation from labor in music and
song. He had two sons who commenced the un-
broken line of musicians of the same name that,
for nearly two centuries, may be said to have over-
run Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia. They
were all organists or church singers. When they
had become too numerous to live near each other,
and the members of the family were scattered
abroad, they resolved to meet once a year, on a
stated day, with a view to keeping up a sort of
patriarchal bond of union. This custom was con-
tinued until nearly the middle of the eighteenth

120 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

century, and very often there gathered together
more than one hundred persons bearing the name
of Bach, men, women, and children. In this family
are mentioned twenty-nine eminent musicians." ^

Doubtless in some of these cases the influence of
environment as well as of heredity must be con-
sidered ; a child who inherited no exceptional mu-
sical talent, but who was born into such a musical
atmosphere and surrounded with such associations
as those of the Bach family, would be likely to be-
come a good musician. Nevertheless the fact of
inheritance, in all these cases, is established beyond
cavil. Intellectual tendencies and aptitudes are
handed down from generation to generation.

There is a great dispute, just now, among the
evolutionists, as to how much is transmitted. The
new school of Darwinians, under the lead of Pro-
fessor Weissmann, maintain that acquired charac-
teristics are not transmitted ; that the parents may
hand down to their children peculiarities which
were theirs at birth, but do not bequeath any habits
which they may have formed or any special quali-
ties which they may have acquired. I cannot go
into that discussion here ; the principal facts of
heredity with which I have to deal are admitted by
both parties.

Are moral traits and qualities transmitted ? Do
our children inherit our virtues and our vices?
This is the question which most deeply concerns us
now.

1 Heredity and Christian Problems, p. 39.

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 121

There seems to be plenty of evidence that tenden-
cies to physical disease are transmitted. A child
of consumptive parents is predisposed to consump-
tion. Nervous disorders are still more likely to be
inherited. One authority says that half the cases of
insanity in France amongst the higher classes, and
one third of those amongst the lower classes, have
been inherited from parents or ancestors. The
close connection between physical and moral disor-
ders might indicate that if the former are inherited
the latter also must be. But it is just here that we
need to be very careful about our facts and our phi-
losophy. Disease, disorder, infirmity, both of body
and of mind, may be transmitted to offspring, and
thus the children may be born with predispositions
to vice and wrong-doing ; but this involves no guilt
nor demerit ; the inheritors are in no wise respon-
sible for what they have inherited ; neither good
men nor a just God can blame them for their mis-
fortune ; the vices of their parents or ancestors do
not become theirs until by their own free consent
and practice they make them theirs.

The question whether intemperance is inherited
is discussed by the doctors. Some of them say
that there is no such thing as inheriting an appe-
tite ; others, like one writer in the " Psychological
Journal," tell us that "the most startling problem
connected with intemperance is that not only does
it affect the health, morals, and intelligence of the
offspring of its votaries, but that they also inherit
the fatal tendency and/ee^ a craving for the very

122 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

heverages which have acted as poisons on their sys-
tem from the commencement of their heingT ^ This
inheritance of a specific appetite may or may not
be common ; but there is no doubt that the chil-
dren of drunkards do inherit from their parents a
neurotic diathesis which predisposes them to intem-
perance. The nerves and the stomach are in a con-
dition which calls for some artificial stimulant, and
thus the children are easily led into the slippery
path by which their parents went down to doom. In
the words of Ribot : " The passion known as dip-
somania or alcoholism is so frequently transmitted
that all are agreed in considering its heredity as
the rule. Not, however, that the passion for drink
is always transmitted in that identical form, for it
often degenerates into mania, idiocy, and hallucina-
tion. Conversely, insanity in the parents may be-
come alcoholism in the descendants." ^ Some such
dreadful entail of morbid tendencies is almost sure
to pass to the drunkard's children. Yet here is a
fact which I have observed : the drunkard's chil-
dren often live sober lives, while his children's
children follow in his footsteps. This may be due
to the fact that heredity sometimes skips a genera-
tion, but it is more probably the result of purely
moral causes. The children of the drunkard suf-
fer so bitterly from their father's fault that their
grief and shame counteract the hereditary tendenc}^,
and make them shun the fatal indulgence. Their

1 Quoted by Elam, A Physician's Problems, p. 40.

2 Heredity, p. 85.

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 123

children, inheriting the same tendency and having
no such object lesson before their eyes, and no such
moral influence deterring them, are drawn unawares
into the ways of death.

Precisely as intemperance is transmitted, so also
is pauperism and crime. The infirmities and ten-
dencies out of which pauperism and crime naturally
spring are transmitted by criminals and paupers to
their offspring. That terrible little book of Dr.
Dugdale's entitled " The Jukes," traces the pro-
geny of one unhappy girl through several genera-
tions. It shows that of the 700 descendants of this
woman whose cases were examined, 280 became
paupers after reaching maturity. Only 22 of the
700 had acquired any property, and eight of these
lost it all ; 76 were known to have been convicted of
crimes and punished, while as many more were un-
doubtedly following criminal courses. More than
52 per cent of the females of this line followed lives
of shame, and twenty-three and a half per cent
of the children were illegitimate. Blood tells ; and
no kind of blood has, a more impressive story to
tell than this kind.

The vices and -excesses of people of this class,
their irregular habits, and their imperfect alimen-
tation result in transmitting to their progeny con-
stitutions undervitalized and tending to still further
degeneration. Children of such parentage easily
become paupers. Indolence is constitutional with
them. We hear of persons who were born tired ; it
is something more than a pleasantry. " If any law,"

124 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

says Dr. Bradford, " is well established, it is the law
of heredity as manifested in the transmission of
qualities and tendencies that lead to vice, pauper-
ism, and crime. Indeed, much of pauperism is only
one manifestation, and much of vice is largely the
outcome of physical disease, the hereditary nature
of which we have already discovered. A large
proportion of the dangerous classes have received
from a vicious ancestry qualities and tendencies
which with their environment they are almost pow-
erless to resist. That which is the heritage of in-
temperate and licentious parents, a weakened vital
state which almost destroys ambition and makes
labor seem impossible, society denounces as laziness
But we are always at first what others make us."

Such is a brief exhibit of some of the salient
facts of heredity, facts that most deeply concern
every one of us. For there is not one of us here who
has not inherited some infirmities and tendencies to
evil, who does not find in his nature some weakness
or bias, for which he is indebted to those whose life is
in his veins. And there are many among us who
have thus come into the possession of a vast estate
of evil tendency, whose disabilities and predispo-
sitions to vice and crime are a fearful load.

To say that they are to blame for this — that
they are under the wrath and curse of God, on
account of the misdoing of their parents or of any
of their ancestors, from Adam down — is to say
a horrible thing ; it comes perilously near to blas-
phemy. They deserve, instead of wrath, the ten-

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 125

derest pity of God and of all good men ; and they
do not fail to receive it. The Psalmist says that
like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord
pitieth them that fear him. Not only them that
fear Him, but them that are farthest from Him ;
that are weakest and most depraved in nature ;
that come into life with the heaviest encumbrance
of frailty and evil tendency. If there are any of
his children whom the Heavenly Father loves bet-
ter than the rest or more tenderly longs to help,
they are these. Unless all that Jesus Christ has
told us about the Heavenly Father is untrue, this
is in his heart.

What shall we say, then, about this power of
hereditary evil over the lives of men ? Is it irre-
sistible ? That is a question in which some of us
have a deep interest. Some of us are conscious
that we are bearing about in our lives a bad
legacy ; its evil impulsions and its crippling re-
straints trouble us continually. That we are not
to blame for what we have inherited, we know ;
we are only to blame for the added strength that
we have given to these bad elements by yielding
to them and cherishing them. But are we help-
less under their impulse ? Is it impossible for us
to resist and overcome them ?

Candidly, let me say, I do not think that we are
helpless ; I believe that it is possible for us to
resist and overcome. And this faith of mine rests,
first and last, on the one great fact which is funda-
mental in ail my thinking, that there is a God, and

126 AVHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

that his name is Love. If reason and goodness are
the heart of the universe, then God has not per-
mitted any evil force which we cannot overcome to
get possession of your life or mine. It may take
a hard battle, but there is nothing better for any
man than a good fight. And if God is good He
has not sent a foe against us that by his grace
we may not conquer.

And this faith of mine is supported, too, by
facts innumerable. I believe that men can resist
and overcome the strongest influences of heredity
because I have seen them do it, over and over
again. I have seen scores and hundreds of men
and women, with all sorts of bad blood in their
veins, stand up against the inbred sin and fight it
and conquer it, and win glorious manhood and
w^omanhood in the struggle. That very fact of
which we spoke a few moments since, that the chil-
dren of drunken parents often resist hereditary
tendencies while their children to whom the same
influences are transmitted, in weaker form, suc-
cumb to them, shows what can be done when the
moral nature is roused to resist the evil.

Two or three things any man can do, when he
finds himself under such a burden.

First, he can wish and determine to get free from
it. He can highly resolve that nothing that he can
do to cast it off shall be left undone.

Second, he can put himself into associations and
under influences which will help him in this fight.
He can choose for himself a better environment.

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 127

And this brings in a fact of mighty import to
which I can hardly do more than allude. Envi-
ronment is certainly no less important a fact than
heredity. The inherited tendencies within us are
no more powerful in shaping our ends than are the
circumstances and influences round about us. The
best-born child, if brought up in the slums, is
likely to be contaminated and ruined ; the child
that is born in the slums and is adopted in infancy
into a perfect Christian home is likely to grow up
into virtue. This is not always so ; for we have
seen fair flowers blossoming in the gutter, and
have found, to our sorrow, that the most salutary
education sometimes fails to eliminate an ancestral
taint. And yet, the main fact is that a good envi-
ronment will prevail over a bad heredity. Dr.
Bradford's well-weighed words probably express
the truth : " Where there is no organic defect, as
in insanity or idiocy, environment is the stronger
force." "The experience," he says, "of such or-
ganizations as the Children's Aid Society, which
seeks to save children by placing them in new and
better conditions, points to the same conclusion ; it
is all favorable to the theory that environment will
modify heredity, and when given a fair chance has
power to redeem it."

Here, then, is a force of which any victim of a
bad heredity may avail himself ; he may take him-
self out of vile associations ; he may surround
himself with influences that will stimulate and
strengthen his better purposes, his nobler powers.

128 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

And this brings us to the one thing which he
must not fail to do. He must recognize the fact
that the greatest of all the forces that are working
for his salvation is this very force of heredity.
Heredity ! We have been talking of it as a tre-
mendous fact, and it is ; we have been thinking
of it, perhaps, as if it were a fact of significance
purely malign, and it is not. There are two sides
to heredity. Is the tendency to sin the only thing
that we inherit ? Not unless God is a fiend. No,
no ; goodness, purity, truth, honor, fidelity, — or
the natural qualities from which these spring, — are
also handed down from father to son ; the pure
stream of benign influence flows on from genera-
tion to generation ; and while the evil tendency is
apt to be noisiest and most obtrusive, the good is
there, far more vital, far more persistent, than the
evil. The worst man you know, in whose veins is
flowing blood that a bad heredity and a bad envi-
ronment have been conspiring to taint, has still in
him many germs of good influence, — sentiments,
impulses, wishes, that will spring to life if he will
give them a chance to live. To discern these ele-
ments of good in his own nature, to rejoice in
them, to believe that in them his real self is mani-
fested, to cherish them as his dearest possessions —
this is what every man must learn to do. These are
the signs that God is working in him to will and
to work of his good pleasure.

For what, after all, my brother, is the deepest
fact about this heredity which has so sorely trou-

WHAT DO WE INHERIT?? 129

bled you ? What is your parentage ? Whose
child are you ? Is not God your Father ? Are
you not made in his image ? Is it not his nature
that you have inherited ? And in spite of all that
you have done, and of all that has been done by
your progenitors to mar and defile the divinity
within you, it is there still, the deepest, the most
central fact, connected with your history. Doubt-
less your life may have been such as utterly to belie
that glorious truth, even to hide it from your own
eyes ; but it is the truth nevertheless, and there is
no other truth that means so much to you.

This, I say, is the fundamental truth about he-
redity. Instead of being a millstone about your
neck it ought to be the anchor of your soul, sure
and steadfast. No matter how low you may have
fallen, no matter what the disabilities and evil ten-
dencies of your life may be, God is your Father,
his life is in you, his power is working to save you.
Sin may abound in you, but unto you, yea in you,
his grace, if you will only receive it, shall much
more abound.

This is the gospel, the glorious gospel of the
blessed God, the good news that Jesus came to
bring. Let every struggling soul, weighed down
by inherited tendencies to sin, crying, with Paul,
" O wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death ? " lay hold on this
hope set before him in the gospel !

Let us rise, for one moment, before we separate,
to a point of view at which we can comprehend the

130 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

action of these forces whicli we are considering in
the education of tlie race.

The central fact of heredity is God. No one
can believe anything else who believes in God at
all. It is a mighty power working out his designs.
Evil as well as good is transmitted, because of the
organic unity of humanity ; because the genera-
tions must be sharers of one another's woes and
weaknesses, if they are also to be sharers in one
another's joys and triumphs. The discipline by
which alone character is perfected must involve
partnership in suffering as well as in blessedness.
But God is in his world, always working along
these lines of inheritance. Can any sane man be-
lieve that he is on the side of evil tendency ? No ;
the evil is in its very nature temporary ; it cancels
itself ; the good has in it the life of eternity. The
old promise of the decalogue shows us a glimpse
of the truth. " I the Lord thy God am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon
their children unto the third and fourth generations
of them that hate me, and showing mercy 2into
thousands of generations [this is the right ti-ans-
lation] of them that love me and keep my com-
mandments." The evil entail dies out after a few
generations, the grace of God lives and grows for
a thousand generations. And thus in this very
law of heredity is lodged the power that is yet to
redeem the race.

" But there is that other fact of environment,"
you are saying. Yes, thank God. For what, in

WHAT DO WE INHERIT? 131

the largest sense, is the environment? It is God's
universe ; it is God. It is the world whose very
foundations were laid in a grand redemptive pur-
pose. It is the world whose elemental energies, in
the morning of the creation, were baptized in the
name of the Christ whose love, before all worlds,
was the very heart of God. For he is " the first-
born of all creation ; for in him were all things
created in the heavens and upon the earth. . . .
All things have been created through him, and
unto him ; and he is before all things, and in him
all things consist." This is the environment of
humanity upon the earth. This is the mighty, all-
enfolding power which, with its slow and silent
pressure, through the unhasting centuries, is work-
ing out the great designs of sovereign love.

Heredity and environment are the master words
of our new science of life. I thank thee, evolu-
tionist, for teaching me these words ! For what is
heredity? It is God, working in us. And what
is environment ? It is God, working round about
us.

These are the larger truths which the unfolding
thought of these latter days is bringing into clearer
light. What a new gospel it is, and what a mighty
hope it holds, for all who work for the triumph of
truth and purity and peace upon the earth ! How
sure it makes us feel that

" life shall on and upward go :
The eternal step of progress beats

To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats."

132 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

How evident it is that the dreaded eTolution, which
was to undermine our faith, has. in the words of
Drummond, '* ushered a new hope into the world."
For just as soon as we are able to understand her
Toiees we shall know that ** the supreme message
of Science to this age is that all nature is on the
side of the man who tries to rise." And all natore
is but the rcTelation of God.

And this, O church of God, fumbling so long
with your metaphysical refinements and your scho-
lastic dogmas, is the real gospel of the Son of God,
which, if you will only receive it, will give yon
strength to vnn the world. For the heavens above
you, breaking forth into song, and the earth round
about you. growing conscious of the presence of its
Maker, are crying unto you, and saying, "Arise
and shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of
the Lord is risen upon thee ! ''

Til

THE DOCTEDv'E OF THE TEESTTY

The doctrine of the Trinity is not explicitly
taiiglit in any single passage ui Holy Scripture : it
is inferred from these .^-:rip:ares rather than for-
mulated by them. This is not. however, any con-
clusive disproof of the doctrine, for the doctrinal
formularies of the Scriptures are few or none.
Most theological propositions are gathered by
induction from the biblical teachiuas. The last
commission of the Master to his disciples is as
strong an intimation of the truth which this doc-
trine involves as can be ly-inl in r^.:e Xew Testa-
ment. Disciples are to be buL'tiz^d "into the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost.'' This implies a threefoldness in the divin-
ity to whom this consecrating' oath oi bav'tism is
spoken. The threefoldness is n^:'i dc-nncd : per-
haps the abstinence from definition is here a mark
of superhuman vr^nora. But those who heard
these words sp^k^n. airer the confession of their
faith at the font or by the riverside, must have
gained some ncttion of a certain threeness in the
Being to vrhom they had confessed their allegiance.
From these and many other words of Scripture the

IM WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

thouglit of the church in the first three centuries
very easily and naturally drew the theological
statements of the doctrine of the Trinity.

In the form in which these statements have come
down to us they are encumbered with insoluble
difficulties. The doctrine of the Trinity, in the
terms in which I was first taught to express it,
is a barrier to reason and a stumbling-block to
faith. It is only by shutting the eye of the under-
standing that one can accept it. The old state-
ment was that there are three Persons in the God-
head, and the word Person was supposed to be the
essential word ; one must speak that word out
clearly or one was a heretic. The emphasis put
upon this word had the effect to make the three-
ness very distinct and the unity very indistinct.
" I went one day," says one of the characters in a
most helpful little book, " to our old minister, Dr.
Sandy, who used to preach on it now and then.
' How,' said I, ' can three persons be one God ? '
He replied that the three are indeed persons, as
distinct from each other as Peter, James, and John,
but that they were, notwithstanding, one in the
unity of a common divine nature, as Peter, James,
and John are one in the unity of a common human
nature." ^ This is the popular conception, and it is
purely tritheistic. It is no slander to say that a
great many Christians in America have believed
in three gods. Thus Jonathan Edwards, in his
famous " Observations upon the Trinity," con-

1 Gloria Patri, by J. M. Whiton, p. 15.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 135

stantly applies the pronouns of the third person
plural to the persons of the Trinity ; he speaks
always of " them ; " he tells with a great deal of
minuteness what " they " have covenanted and
agreed with one another that " they " will do in
the work of redemption. There is a subordination
among them, he says, which " must be conceived
of as in some respect established by mutual free
agreement whereby the Persons of the Trinity, of
their own will, have as it were formed themselves
into a society for carrying on the great design of
glorifying the Deity and communicating its full-
ness." And again : " Nothing is more plain from
Scripture than that the Father chooses the Person
that shall be the Redeemer, and appoints him ;
and that the Son has his authority in his office
wholly from Him ; which makes it evident that
the economy by which the Father is Head of the
Trinity is prior to the covenant of redemption.
For He acts as such in the very making of that
covenant, in choosing the Person of the Redeemer
to be covenanted with about that work. The Fa-
ther is the Head of the Trinity, and is invested
with a right to act as such, before the Son is in-
vested with the office of a mediator. Because the
Father, in the exercise of his Headship, invests
the Son with that office. By which it is evident,
that that establishment by which the Father is in-
vested with his character as the Head of the Trin-
ity, precedes that which invests the Son with his
character of mediator ; and therefore precedes the

136 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

covenant of redemption ; which is the establishment
that invests the Son with that character. If the
Son were invested with the office of a mediator by
the same establishment and agreement of the Per-
sons of the Trinity by which the Father is invested
with power to act as Head of the Trinity, then
the Father could not be said to elect and appoint
the Son to his office of mediator, and invest Him
with authority for it, any more than the Son elects
and invests the Father with his character of Head
of the Trinity ; or any more than the Holy Ghost
elects both the Son and the Father to their several
ceconomical offices ; and the Son would receive his
powers to be a mediator no more from the Father
than from the Holy Ghost. Because in this scheme
it is supposed that prior to the covenant of Re-
demption, all the Persons act as upon a level, and
each Person, by one common agreement in that
covenant of redemption, is invested with his proper
office ; the Father with that of Head, the Son with
that of Mediator, the Spirit with that of common
emissary and consummatour of the designs of the
other two." ^

I have made a liberal extract, because it is well
for us to get the full flavor of that old Trinitarian-
ism which was nothing more or less than tritheism.
The conception of the Trinity which Jonathan
Edwards held, and which has been held by hun-
dreds of thousands of devout men, is that of a

1 Observations concerning the Scripture (Economy of the Trinity,
pp. 30-32.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 137

triumvirate of independent deities who enter into
covenants and contracts with one another, who es-
tablish among themselves an order of precedence,
and parcel out the work of redemption according
to an economy of their own with which this theolo-
gian appears to be strangely familiar. Of course
the unity of the Godhead was always asserted by
theologians of this class ; they kept saying that
there was but one God ; but the unity was little
more than a barren phrase, in their conception of
it ; the over-mastering and all inclusive idea was
the threeness. So in all their doctrinal exposi-
tions, in their theories of the Atonement, in their
explanation of the mediatorial work of Christ, this
tritheistic conception dominated everything. This
was not true of the first three or four centuries ;
the Greek theologians who first wrought out this
doctrine of the Trinity were great thinkers, and
they carefully kept themselves out of these verbal
snares ; but it is true of the legal and mechanical
theology which has prevailed in the Reformed
churches for the last three centuries. It is not
the doctrine of the great church creeds; neither
the Apostles' Creed nor the Nicene Creed gives
any footing to these tritheistic conceptions ; they
were developed in the attempts of the later Re-
formers to work out, under forensic analogies, a
logical " plan of salvation."

This tritheism results, as I have said, from the
emphasis placed on the word Person in the defini-
tion of Trinity. For although there have always

138 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

been various definitions by which the word was
partially explained away, it has never been possible
to vacate the word of its natural signification, and
its implications have constantly vitiated not only
the conceptions of the common people, but also the
speculations of the theologians. For this word
person cannot be used, in familiar speech, without
conveying the two ideas of consciousness and will.
You cannot think of a person without ascribing to
him in your thought both self-consciousness and
will. Now to say that there are in the Godhead
three consciousnesses and three wills is to say that
there are three gods. I hope that it is not hereti-
cal to deny that there are three gods — to insist,
with old Israel, that the Lord our God is one Lord.
Therefore the revolt of the older Unitarianism
against a doctrine of the Trinity which practically
denied the unity of God was justifi^ed ; the protest
was in the interest of sound thinking and sound
morality. Let me give you authority on this sub-
ject which will hardly be questioned — the word
of Mr. Joseph Cook.

" Have there not been teachers who have held
that there are three wills in God ? Yes. Have
there not been in New England intelligent Chris-
tians who have worshiped three beings in their
imagination, although in their thoughts they have
asserted that God is one ? I fear that there have
been, and that there are yet. . . . Are we to regard
those as well-educated Christians who in thoughts
of God are constantly thinking of our Lord as if

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 139

he were at this hour in Gethsemane, or on the
Mount of Olives, or walking on the shore of Gali-
lee ; and of the Father as among the constellations ;
and of the Spirit as shed down on us from the in-
finite spaces : three wills, three intellects, three sets
of affections ? You may regard such Christians
tenderly ; but for one, I regard them tenderly
enough to wish that they might be both more bibli-
cal and more scientific." " I had rather, my
friends, go back to the Bosphorus, where I stood a
few months ago, and worship with that emperor
who lately slit his veins and went hence by suicide,
than to be in name only an orthodox believer, or
in theory to hold that there is but one God, but in
imagination to worship three gods. . . . T affirm
that I had rather go back to that shore of the azure
water which connects the Black Sea with the Med-
iterranean, and omitting the leprosy of Moham-
medanism, take for my religion pure Theism, than
to hold that there are three gods with three wills,
three sets of affections, three intellects, three con-
sciences, and thus to deny the assurances of both
scriptural and scientific truth, and make of myself
the beginning of a polytheist, though calling my-
self orthodox." ^

I think that Mr. Cook bears needlessly hard on
Jonathan Edwards and all the rest of the good
people who have been entangled in these tritheis-
tic mazes ; their hearts were right though their
heads were puzzled, and I, for my part, would take

1 Transcendentalism, chap, xi.

140 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

my chances with them a great deal sooner than
with the worshipers on the banks of the Bosphorus.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cook is quite right in contend-
ing that any doctrine which loosens the hold of
men on the great central truth of the divine unity
is misleading and dangerous. I am sure that .the
reverence which is due to God has been weakened,
sadly weakened, by these tritheistic confusions.

Still, here are the words, the great commission of
our Lord and Master : " Go ye therefore and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost.''"' .Are these words meaningless ? I
believe that they are full of divine significance. I
believe that they convey to us a truth which no
man can afford to neglect, a truth which lies at
the basis of all sound thinking in philosophy and
religion. It seems to me incredible that a belief
which has been held by the vast majority of Chris-
tians for eighteen centuries should not rest on a
solid substratum of truth. The forms in which
this truth has found expression may have been gro-
tesque and inadequate, but the truth is there ; men
have been feeling after it, though they could not
find words to define it. We shall not be able to
define it. These themes that touch the infinite do
not lend themselves to the phrases of our formal
logic. Far less is said than is left unsaid when our
weightiest word has been spoken ; but if we look
steadfastly away for a little while toward the
depths of infinite Being, it ma}^ be possible to find

4

THE DOCTKINE OF THE TRINITY 141

a point or two of light. Of course I am not speak-
ing at this time to those who have no faith, but to
those who believe in God, and who seek to know
and obey Him.

To all those who believe in, God and worship
Him, the primary truth about Him is that his name
is Love. That his crowning attribute is goodness,
not power, is the foundation of faith. Science we
know, and law we know ; but the deepest thing in
the universe is love. Of all forms of Christian
faith this is the postulate. What God is now He
has been from all eternity. From everlasting to
everlasting, his essential nature is the same. If
love is the central element in his being to-day, it
must always have been so. But there must have
been a time when the created universe was not.
In that dateless eternity God was love. But whom
was there to love ? Was it self-love that consumed
his infinite energies ? The thought is horrible,
almost blasphemous. No ; if from the beginning
God was love, from the beginning there must have
been in his very nature some kind of manifoldness
or otherness, which could give scope to his affec-
tions. This gives us no hint of threeness in the
divine nature ; it only shows us that we must make
room in our conceptions for something other than
a solitary inhabitant of eternity.

To all Christian worshipers God is the " Father
in heaven." Nor can we imagine that this name
expresses any recent addition to his attributes.
Fatherhood belongs to the essence of his being.

142 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

It is not a function that He has taken on for tem-
porary purposes. Not only is He the Eternal Ruler,
He is also the Eternal Father. But as there can be
no son without a father, so there can be no father
without a son. 'X^Q Eternal Father implies the
Eternal Son. What all this signifies, I do not try
to tell ; I shall not imitate Jonathan Edwards in
his dissertation upon the " CEconomy of the Trin-
ity; " but it is certain that the word which sums
up all our highest thoughts of God implies the dis-
tinction which underlies the doctrine of the Trin-
ity. Of course these words are used symbolically ;
but what is it that they symbolize ? If man is
made in the image of God there must be something
in the nature of God to which these terms corre-
spond. The terms " Fatherhood " and " Sonship,'*
says Dr. Fairbairn, " represent love as native to
God and as eternal as God. For Him it never
began to be, for this is the meaning of the Eternal
Sonship. The love of man has a potential before
it has an actual being . . . but the love of God
had always an actual^ never a potential being, for
only so could it be perfect love. . . . Man can
never know a father's affection unless he be a
father, or woman a mother's love unless she be a
mother. The capacity may be there, but only the
capacity, the aptitude to be, not the actual being.
But the Godhead means that as Fatherhood and
Sonship have been eternal, so also has the love.
. . . Hence creation did not mean for God the
beginning of love, or even any exercise of it." ^
1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 410.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 143

We are beginning, in these days, to understand
that no man can be a man alone. It is only in the
right relations with others that he realizes himself.
And if man is made in the image of God, there
must be some such ethical relation as this in God
himself. He cannot be a solitary monad, an infi-
nite Ego, sitting apart and speechless through all
eternity. " The Creator," says Fairbairn, " is the
archetype even more than the architect of the cre-
ation ; the Godhead is, as it were, the idea and
model after which it is built. He who is according
to his essence a society makes a social universe."

Going a little deeper than this into the mysteries
of being, we find a foundation in necessary thought
for that threefoldness which is involved in the doc-
trine of the Trinity.

What are the elements of Knowledge? How
much do I surely know ? In the first place I know
myself. I know the operations of my own mind,
the facts of self-consciousness. I know that I am
I ; that I have certain thoughts, certain feelings,
certain purposes ; that certain pleasures and pains
are part of my experience ; that these successions
of thought and feeling and will are bound together
in the unity of a conscious personality.

In the second place I know that there is a world
outside of myself. Forms and colors and sounds
and pressures and flavors of all kinds report them-
selves in my experience, and signify to me the pre-
sence of existences all about me with which I am
strangely related. The business of life is learning

144 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

to distlnguisli and classify and reason about these
experiences, and to comprehend the objects and
the forces which they bring before my thought.
Between myself and the world outside of myself
the distinction is clear and sharp ; the " me " and
the "not me" are the opposite poles of thought.
But the more I know about this world outside of
myself, the clearer it becomes that it is one world,
that a principle of unity binds all its phenomena
together, that all these marvelous varieties of being
" are but parts of one stupendous whole." One
law of gravitation controls every particle of mat-
ter in all these worlds ; one law of the conservation
of energy explains all these permutations and trans-
formations of force. It is a Universe — that is the
fundamental fact.

And now, when I begin to study a little more
carefully the relations between the " me " and the
" not me," — between myself and the universe out-
side of myself, — some very curious facts at once
come to light. The sharp distinction, the contra-
riety, between the world of thought within and the
world of being without is all the while asserting
itself ; but, on the other hand, the harmony be-
tween the thinking mind and the objects of thought
is marvelous. For the awakening of the powers
of the mind itself is due, no doubt, to the action
of stimuli from the outside world upon the senses.
We come to ourselves, to the knowledge of our
own powers, only through the mediumship of things
outside of ourselves. The light which the baby

THE DOCTEINE OF THE TRINITY 145

sees, the surfaces which he touches, the flavors
which he tastes arouse his perceptive faculties, and
set his mind at work. From the child's first con-
scious moment, the things that are round about
him constantly appeal to him through every ave-
nue of sense ; all manner of sights and sounds and
odors are striking upon his senses and stirring up
his intellect. This is by no means saying that all
knowledge comes through the senses ; it is only
saying that through the senses come the stimuli by
which the mind is awakened.

" The baby, new to eartb and sky

What time his tender palm is pressed
Against the arches of the breast
Has never thought that ' this is I ; '

" But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me '
And finds ' I am not what I see
And other than the things I touch ; *

" So rounds he to a separate mind

From whence clear memory may begin,
As through the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined."

But not only do we find ourselves through our
contact with the world outside of ourselves, it is
also true that we find in ourselves the interpreta-
tion of that outside world. The laws of space and
time, of cause and effect, of identity and resem-
blance, of number and quantity, are purely ideal ;
they belong to the furniture of our own minds ; and
yet that world outside of us is utterly meaningless

146 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

and unintelligible until we have brought it under
the light of these ideas. We talk about the laws
of nature, but these laws only express the corre-
spondence of the facts of nature to the regulative
ideas of our own reason. It is this correspondence
which is the marvelous fact. The categories of
reason supply the principles by which all this out-
side world can be perfectly explained. We take
this lamp of reason and walk with it firmly and
fearlessly through every part of the universe ; the
world within is a perfect mirror of the world with-
out.

" All our life, then," says Dr. Edward Caird,
" moves between these two terms which are essen-
tially distinct from and even opposed to each other.
Yet, though thus set in an antagonism which can
never cease, because with its ceasing the whole
nature of both would be subverted, they are also
essentially related, nor could either of them be
conceived to exist without the other ; the conscious-
ness of the one, we might even say, is inseparably
the consciousness of its relation to the other. We
know the object only as we bring it back to the
unity of the self ; we know the subject only as we
realize it in the object." ^

And now comes an inference of mighty signifi-
cance, which I shall let Dr. Caird draw for you at
length because no words of my own could express
it so clearly : " These two ideas, between which
our whole life of thought and action is contained,
^ The Evolution of Eeligion, p. 65.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 147

and from one to the other of which it is continually
moving, point back to a third idea which embraces
them both, and which in turn constitutes their limit
and ultimate condition. For when we have two
terms, which are thus essentially distinguished and
essentially related, which we are obliged to con-
trast and oppose to each other, seeing that they
have neither of them any meaning except as oppo-
site counterparts of each other, and which we are
equally obliged to U7iite, seeing that the whole con-
tent of each is just its movement toward the other,
we are necessarily driven to think of these two
terms as the manifestation or realization of a third
term, which is higher than either. . . . Each of
them presupposes the other, and therefore neither
of them can be regarded as producing the other.
Hence, we are compelled to think of them both as
rooted in a still higher principle, which is at once
the source of their relatively independent existence
and the all-embracing unity that limits their inde-
pendence. This principle, therefore, may be im-
aged as a crystal sphere that holds them together,
and which, through its very transparency, is apt to
escape our notice, yet which must always be there
as the condition and limit of their operation. To
put it more directly, the idea of an absolute unity
— which transcends all the oppositions of finitude,
and especially the last opposition which includes
all others, the opposition of subject and object — is
the ultimate presupposition of our consciousness,
. . . The idea of God, therefore, — meaning by

148 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

that, in the first instance, only the idea of an abso-
lute principle of unity which binds in one ' all think-
ing things, all objects of all thought,' which is at
once the source of being to all things that are, and
of knowing to all beings that know, — is an essen-
tial principle, or rather the ultimate essential prin-
ciple of our intelligence, a principle which must
manifest itself in the life of every rational creature.
Every creature who is capable of the consciousness
of an objective world and of the consciousness of
a self is capable also of the consciousness of God.
Or, to sum up the whole matter in one word, every
rational being as such is a religious being." ^

Here is a truth from which you can no more
escape than you can escape from your shadow.
By this I do not mean that all human beings
have come to a realization of this truth ; there are
some human beings who cannot count twenty ;
multitudes to whom the simplest of mathematical
laws are utterly unknown ; but if you should take
these people from the wilds of Patagx)nia, and put
them into a primary school, and explain to them
the words in which these laws are conveyed, and
show them these relations of numbers and quantity,
they could no more deny or doubt them than they
could deny or doubt their own existence. A man
can escape from his shadow by going into the dark ;
if he comes under the light of the sun the shadow
is there. A man may be so mentally undisci-
plined that he does not recognize the ideas of which
^ The Evolution of Beligion, pp. 66-68.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 149

we have been speaking, but let him learn the use
of his reason, let him reflect upon his own mental
processes, and he will know that they are necessary
ideas. When he knows himself, when he knows
the world of phenomena outside of himself, when
he becomes conscious of the fact that the world
within and the world without are set over against
each other in the sharpest discrimination, and yet
that they are so essentially related to each other
that neither has any life or order or significance
without the other, then he must, if he is a rational
being, be forced to the conclusion that above these
correlated existences there must be a Power by
whom their correlation is ordained, a Being from
whom they both proceed, a Unity in which they
cohere. There is nothing in mathematics more
certain than this.

Have we not here, in these fundamental laws of
the mind itself, a suggestion of that threefoldness
which men are trying to comprehend when they
attempt to state the doctrine of the Trinity ?

There is a Spirit that witnesseth to our spirits
that we are the children of God.

There is a Universe without, a marvelous Crea-
tion, from which the everlasting power and divinity
shine forth. Of this Creation, man, who is made
in the image of God, is the crown ; of this humanity,
Jesus, the Christ of Nazareth, is the consummation,
the completion, — Son of man and Son of God.
In him, Paul says, all things come to a Head ; he

150 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

is the explanation of the Creation ; in him all
things consist.

There is a Living God, above all this Universe,
the Infinite and Eternal Power, from whom all
things proceed ; whose thought gives it unity,
v^^hose love is the soul of its order and the spring
of its beneficence ; a Being whom no man hath
seen nor can see, but whose existence is the pre-
supposition of all coherent thought.

The Absolute and Eternal God, Source of all
being, dwelling in light unapproachable ;

The Manifested God, revealed to us in Nature
and in History — especially and most perfectly in
the Incarnation, which is the consummation of Na-
ture and the goal of History ;

The Indwelling God, who reveals himself in our
thought, who speaks in our consciences, whose in-
spiration is the motive power of all our best en-
deavors.

Are not these three ideas necessarily implied in
all our thought upon these highest themes ?

"The Trinity of the Living God," says Dr.
Whiton, " must be a Trinity in His life. And this,
according to the scriptural idea of God . . . must
include these three terms: the Transcendent Di-
vine Life that is above the world, the Immanent
Divine Life that is universal through the world
and perfected in the Christ, and the Individualized
Divine Life that is begotten in each separate con-
sciousness and conscience." ^

1 Gloria Patri, p. 103,

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 151

" There is one God and Father of all," says
Paul the Apostle, " who is over all, and through
all, and in all."

So far as this, it seems to me, we can go upon
very firm ground. So much as this is contained in
the necessary implications of coherent thought.
We know all this, not by anybody's testimony, but
by observing the operations of our own minds.
And we have here the essential . truth upon which
the doctrine of the Trinity is based. We have
paused, we shall always do well to pause, at a long
distance from that scholastic doctrine which de-
scribes and defines three separate personalities co-
operating in the work of redemption ; those ven-
turesome philosophizings lead to very dangerous
errors. But there is an essential threefoldness in
the revelation to us of the divine Being ; and we
must hold firmly to all these three terms if we wish
to think sanely about God. He who believes only
in an Absolute and Eternal Being, back of all phe-
nomena, becomes an Agnostic Deist, with a faith
as pale and cold as moonlight; there is no vital
warmth for the soul in such a theory. He who
believes only in the God manifested in Nature and
History becomes a Pantheist ; with him moral dis-
tinctions are confounded, and the personality of
man as well as the personality of God are hope-
lessly obscured. He who believes only in the God
who is revealed to him in his own consciousness is
liable to drift into a barren rationalism or a blind
fanaticism. The solar light is the blending of

152 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

three primary rays ; in the white light of noon we
may not be conscious of the red, the green, or the
violet, but they are aU. there ; if either were want-
ing we could not see the world as it is ; those who
look through red or green or violet glasses do not
see true. So though we may not think of the
threeness when we think of God, those distinctions
lie there, implicit in our thought, and clear and
steady reflection will bring them all to light.

These studies may make it appear that this doc-
trine of the Trinity is not, after all, to be dismissed
as a mere relic of superstition. The old scholastic
refinements concerning it are grotesque enough, no
doubt, but there is a mighty truth underlying it.
That there are depths here which the plummet of
our reason fails to sound is evident enough ; who
by searching can find out God ?

" Holy and infinite ! viewless ! eternal !

Veiled in the glory that none can sustain,
None comprehendeth thy being supernal
Nor can the heaven of heavens contain.

" Holy and infinite ! limitless, boundless,

All thy perfections and powers and praise!
Ocean of mystery ! awful and soundless

All thine unsearchable judgments and ways ! "

Verily we ought to walk reverently and with veiled
faces in the presence of these mysteries of being.
But I trust that we can see that when the glorious
company of the apostles and the noble .army of
martyrs and the holy church throughout the world
lift their united voice worshiping Father, Son, and

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 153

Holy Ghost, it is not whoUy an incoherent cry, but
may be, in the minds of those who have thought
most deeply, the utterance of a profoundly rational
faith.

I have not yet mentioned my own deepest reason
for believing this doctrine. That is the testimony
of experience. I have found that I need to know
God under all these characters, — that each of
these forms of revelation meets a special want of
my mind and heart. For the satisfaction of my
reason, for the confirmation of my faith, I need to
know him as the Eternal Father and Creator, the
Power behind all phienomena, the great First
Cause from whom the universe proceeds.

For the satisfaction of my heart's deepest crav-
ings, I must also know him as Immanuel, God with
us, the divinity revealed in the terms of humanity,
the Elder Brother whose sympathy with me is per-
fect, who stands by my side, my companion, my
yoke-fellow, the sharer of my toil and my pain. A
God who could not thus be manifested to me in
the essential elements of humanity I could never
love nor trust.

I need, also, to believe in a God who is able to
hold fellowship and communion with me in my
thoughts and hopes and wishes ; one who can com-
municate his truth and his love and his strength
and his calmness to me in the very centres of my
spiritual being ; with whom I can talk when my
eyes are shut and my lips are closed, — who can
inspire me to think clearly, to wish loftily, to strive

154 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

nobly ; who can be with me always, in an instant,
when my heart cries out for Him, to strengthen me
for the conflict or the suffering of the hour.

In all these ways I need to know Him who is my
unseen and almighty Friend ; I do not know how
the deepest needs of my soul could be satisfied if
I were deprived of either of these revelations of
God. And while I am far from wishing to set up
any dogmatic formula of the contents of the divine
nature to which other men's thoughts must con-
form, I am glad that this threefold revelation of
God is here in the Bible. I believe that all men
who live any genuine religious life — all men of
faith and prayer — really find God in all these
ways that I have mentioned. Their logic may
discard the doctrine of the Trinity, but in their
life they lay hold of the vital truth which under-
lies that doctrine. As proof of this let me quote
from the " Harvard University Hymn-Book " three
hymns by eminent Unitarians, in which these
three aspects of Christian experience are beauti-
fully set forth : —

The first is by the Eev. Samuel Longfellow,
brother of the more famous poet : —

" God of the earth, the sky, the sea,
Maker of all above, below,
Creation lives and moves in thee,

Thy present life through all doth flow.

" Thy love is in the sunshine's glow,
Thy life is in the quickening air ;
When lightnings flash and storm-winds blow,
There is thy power, thy law is there.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 155

" We feel thy calm at evening's hour,
Thy grandeur in the march of night,
And when the morning breaks in power,
We hear thy word, ' Let there be Ught.' "

The second is by Theodore Parker : —

" 0 Thou great Friend to all the sons of men.
Who once appeared in humblest guise below,
Sin to rebuke, to break the captive's chain,

To call thy brethren forth from want and woe, —

" Thee would I sing : thy truth is still the light

Which guides the nations, groping on their way ;
Stumbling and falling in disastrous night,
Yet hoping ever for the perfect day.

" Yes ; thou art still the life : thou art the way

The holiest know, — light, life, and way of heaven ;
And they who dearest hope and deepest pray.
Toil by the light, life, way that thou hast given."

The last is by Nathaniel L. Frothingham, once
professor in Harvard University and long minister
of the First Church in Boston : —

*' 0 God, whose presence glows in all
Within, around us, and above,
Thy word we bless, thy name we call.
Whose word is truth, whose name is love.

" That truth be with the heart believed
Of all who seek this sacred place.
With power proclaimed, in peace received,
Our spirit's light, thy Spirit's grace.

" That love its holy influence pour

To keep us meek and make us free.
And throw its blinding influence more
Round each with all and all with thee.

156 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

" Send down its angel to our side,
Send in its calm upon the breast ;
For we would know no other gnide,
And we can need no other rest."

There is no orthodox Christian who cannot pour
out his whole heart in these Unitarian praises of
Father, Son, and Spirit. And no Unitarian who
sings these hymns should be too swift to deny that
a great truth underlies the doctrine of the Trin-
ity. When we philosophize and argue we often
fall apart, but when we sing and pray we come
together. Logic di^ades us, but love unites us.
Let us argue less and worship more ; so shall we
come, in the unity of the spirit, into the bonds of
peace.

VIII

THE WOKD MADE FLESH

The subjects whicli we have studied together
are not easy subjects to understand ; every one of
them brings before us some of the deep mysteries
of existence. But they are questions which no
thoughtful man can help asking, questions to which,
if we would have rest for our minds, we must be
able to give some sort of intelligent answer. It is
not well for us to be dogmatic and intolerant of
opinions which do not accord with our own ; but
the effort to form some reasonable theory of our
relation to that world of reality which lies back of
all sensible phenomena is one that no right-minded
man can be excused from making. We know —
in our best moments we are deeply conscious —
that we are not the creatures of a day ; that our
natures have their roots in realities which lie be-
neath the surface of things ; that our lives are fed
by fountains beyond the reach of our senses. And
we are not less sure that motives which spring from
a world unseen and eternal give to human charac-
ter its deepest significance. Not to be profoundly
interested in these questions is to renounce our
birthright as men, and to descend to the level of
the foxes and the swine.

158 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

We are now to study a Character who claimed
to have exceptional knowledge of that unseen
world. Whether this claim is established I will
not now stop to inquire. But no one can dispute
the rank of Jesus of Nazareth as a character in
history. That a name has been given him above
every name is not a question for discussion. Over
the nations which have been making history dur-
ing the past fifteen centuries he has held an un-
questioned supremacy. His followers now far out-
number in the world's population the adherents of
any other form of faith, and the place which they
occupy in the life of the world, in the march of
civilization, is the foremost place. The problem
which this Jesus presents to human thought is the
most profound, the most interesting, that human
thought has ever entertained. About him and his
gospel and his kingdom more books have been
written than about any other subject that has en-
gaged the minds of men. Nor is there, even in this
scientific age, any abatement of this interest ; the
production of literature bearing upon his life and
teachings was never greater than at this moment.
Let me read to you at length, from the pen of Dr.
Fairbairn, a well-weighed estimate of the place
which he occupies in human history : —

" He has left the mark of his hand on every
generation of civilized men that has lived since he
lived, and it would not be science to find him every-
where and never to ask what he was aud what he
did. Persons are the most potent factors of pro-

THE WORD MADE FLESH 159

gress and change in history ; and the greatest Per-
son known to it is the one who has been the most
powerful factor of ordered progress. Who this is
does not lie open to dispute. Jesus Christ is a
name that represents the most wonderful story and
the profoundest problem on the field of history, —
the one because the other. There is no romance so
marvelous as the most prosaic version of his his-
tory. The Son of a despised and hated people,
meanly born, humbly bred, without letters, without
opportunity, unbefriended, never, save for one brief
and fatal moment, the idol of the crowd, opposed
by the rich, resisted by the religious and the
learned, persecuted unto death by the priests, de-
stined to a life as short as it was obscure, issuing
from his obscurity only to meet a death of unpitied
infamy, he yet, by means of his very sufferings
and his cross, enters upon a throne such as no
monarch ever filled, and a dominion such as no
Caesar ever exercised. He leads captive the civi-
lized peoples ; they accept his words as law, though
they confess it a law higher than human nature
likes to obey ; they build him churches, they wor-
ship him, they praise him in songs, interpret him
in philosophies and theologies ; they deeply love,
they madly hate, for his sake. It was a new thing
in the history of the world ; for though this humble
life was written and stood vivid before the eye and
imagination of men, nay, because it veritably did
so stand, they honored, loved, served him as no
ancient deity had been honored, loved, or served.

160 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTKINES?

AYe may say, indeed, he was the first being who
had realized for man the idea of the divine ; he
proved his Godhead by making God become a
credible, conceived, real Being to man. And all
this was due to no temporary passion, to no tran-
sient madness, such as now and then overtakes
peoples as well as persons. It has been the most
permanent thing in the history of mind ; no other
belief has had so continuous and invariable a his-
tory. ... Out of the story, when viewed in re-
lation to the course of human development, rises
for philosophy the problem. Can he, so mean in
life, so illustrious in history, stand where he does
by chance ? Can he, who of all persons is the
most necessary to the orderly and progressive
course of history, be but the fortuitous result of a
chapter of accidents ? " ^

When the question is put in this way I am sure
that we shall all admit that it is entitled to re-
spectful consideration. Such a phenomenon as is
presented by the life and influence of Jesus Christ
requires explanation. I do not know that we shall
be able to explain it, but I am sure that we shall
not be willing to assign to it a trivial or inadequate
cause.

The question which at once confronts us when
we begin to speak of Jesus Christ is the question.
Was he human or divine ? The question generally
assumes that an antithesis is presented : that if he
was human he was not divine, and that if he was
1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 6-8.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 161

divine he was not human. The irresistible propen-
sity of the semi-educated mind to put all truth of
life and being into two sharply discriminated cate-
gories, and to affirm one of these and deny the
other, comes out again in the treatment of this
question. With many people everything is either
up or down, either right or left, either long or short,
either black or white, either sweet or sour ; be-
tween these opposite poles of thought their minds
find no resting-place ; and the thought of a higher
unity in which contrasted truths are reconciled has
never dawned upon them. Such minds think that
when Jesus Christ is spoken of one must be able
to affirm instantly that he is either human or
divine. It is true that the orthodox church dogma
affirms that in him two natures are combined in
one person, that he is both God and man ; but this
conception is feebly held by the great majority ;
those who have believed him to be divine have con-
sidered his humanity to be rather a semblance than
a reality ; and those who have held him to be hu-
man have regarded his divinity as figurative rather
than literal.

I must confess that the theological formula of
two natures in one person conveys to my mind no
clear meaning. And I greatly doubt whether
there are two kinds of natures in the spiritual
world, — a divine nature and a human nature.
When Dr. Whiton says that " the moral and spir-
itual element, which is the essential core of human-
ity^ must be identical in nature with the moral and

162 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

spiritual essence of Deity, else we could have no
certainty that righteousness in man is the same
kind of thing that it is in God," ^ I am quite un-
able to find any flaw in the statement ; it seems to
me indubitable. That man is another kind of a be-
ing from God — a being with a different and con-
trasted nature — is not, I hope, the truth. I have
always supposed that the statement that we are
the children of God, that we are made in his image,
was to be accepted as substantial verity. If so,
then there is no need of mechanically welding to-
gether two natures in the person of Christ. He
had his own nature ; and though he took on him
the outward form and fashion of a man, there was
no need of any assumption of a nature foreign to
himself. If he possessed the divine nature he pos-
sessed the human nature, for the two are essen-
tially one. Was he more divine than you and I ?
Yes ; because he was far more broadly and grandly
human than we are, because humanity in him was
lifted up and glorified.

I trust that our study of the supernatural may
have helped us a little in getting hold of this truth.
In that discussion we saw that the natural and the
supernatural are only different sides of the same
thing ; that God resides in and manifests himself
through every existence and every force of nature ;
that nature itself, in the depths of its being, is all
supernatural. " Whatever strides science may
make in time to come," says Mr. lUingworth, " to-

1 Gloria Patri, p. 55.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 163

wards decomposing atoms and forces into simpler
and yet simpler elements, those elements will still
have issued from a secret laboratory into which
science cannot enter ; and the human mind will be
as far as ever from knowing what they really are.
. . . Science may resolve the complicated life of
the material universe into a few elementary forces,
light, heat, and electricity, and these, perhaps, into
modifications of some simpler energy ; but of the
origin of energy it knows no more than did the
Greeks of old. Theology asserts that in the begin-
ning was the Word, and in Him was life, the life of
all things created ; in other words, that He is the
source of all that energy whose persistent, irresist-
ible versatility of action is forever at work mould-
ing and clothing and peopling worlds." ^

Against this fundamental statement of theology,
science has not one single word to say ; the con-
ception gives unity and coherency to all her rea-
sonings ; and every one of her discoveries makes the
central truth of theology more sublimely probable.
The whole result of science, as the writer whom I
was just quoting goes on to say, is " in perfect har-
mony with our Christian creed, that all things were
made by the Eternal Reason ; but, more than this,
it illustrates and is illustrated by the further doc-
trine of his indwelling presence in the things of his
creation, rendering each of them at once a revela-
tion and a prophecy, a thing of beauty and finished
workmanship, worthy to exist for its own sake, and
1 Lux Mundi, pp. 156, 157.

164 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

yet a step to higher purj^oses, an instrument for
grander work.

" ' God tastes an infinite joy,
In infinite ways — one everlasting bliss,
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds ; in whom is life for evermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes ; where dwells enjoyment, there is He :
With still a flying point of bliss remote,
A happiness in store afar, a sphere
Of distant glory in full view.' " ^

If, now, we are able to grasp the fact that Nature
herself is in all her origins, in all her central
forces, supernatural, we shall not find it difficult
to understand that humanity, in its essential na-
ture, is divine ; that he who is perfect man is, by
that fact, the perfect revelation of God to man.
That Jesus Christ was the perfect Man, the ideal
Man, is scarcely disputed by candid and reverent
students of history. As such, he must be the man-
ifestation of God. Does not this i^hilosophy offer
some adequate account of the rank that he has
taken among men, and the dominion which he has
exercised over them ?

The one thing we need to do is to rid ourselves
of the disjunctive notion of the semi-educated mind,
that the natural and the supernatural, earth and
heaven, man and God, are antithetical terms ; that
the one term of each of these couplets represents
nothing that the other is and all that the other is
not. When you ask me whether Christ was divine
1 Lux Mundi, p. 159.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 165

or human it is a little like asking me whether
the capacity of a room is due to its length or its
width. No matter how long it may be, if it has
not some width it will have no capacity ; and no
matter how wide it may be, if it has not some
length it will have no capacity. Both dimensions
must be represented in any conceivable area. And
the element which we call human, as well as the
element which we call divine, must be represented
in any spiritual being with whom it is possible for
us to hold communion. They are different phases
of the same sublime fact.

The incarnation of the Son of God is not, then,
and cannot be any unnatural event, any inter-
ruption or dislocation of the natural order. When
Christ said, I came not to destroy, but to fulfill the
law, his words had a deeper meaning than any of
his disciples were able to comprehend. He is the
fulfillment and completion of nature, and human
nature, not less than of the Jewish ritual. He
brings to perfect expression the Word which was
in the beginning, and to which nature has given,
in the increasing purpose of the ages, an inarticu-
late voice.

God has been abiding in the world and manifest-
ing himself through the world ever since the morn-
ing of the creation. The universe is, in the deep-
est sense, the Word of God, the revelation of his
being. The heavens declare his glory. Day unto
day uttereth speech concerning Him, and night
unto night showeth knowledge. " The invisible

166 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

things of God," says Paul, " since the creation are
perceived through the things that are made." All
the order of the Universe, the order revealed in the
sublime harmonies of the solar system, and in the
arrangement of leaves on the branches and of atoms
in" the molecules, is the expression of mind. We
know this, because it is all severely and precisely
mathematical ; and what can mathematics be, if it
is not the revelation of mind ? It is in the king-
doms of life, however, that the presence of God is
most clearly manifest ; for here is a subtle force
which defies all the analytic skill of the physicists.
And at the summit of the kingdoms of life stands
man. Evolution shows us the process by which
the immanent God, working unweariedly in nature,
has brought forth this heir of the ages, and has
prepared him by a marvelous discipline to receive
the highest truth, and to share in the glory of the
Father.

" For thou hast made him but little lower than God,

And crownest him with glory and honor,

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands,

Thou hast put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen,

Yea, and the beasts of the field ;

The fowl of the air and the fish of the sea,

Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas."

With the appearance of man we see the work
of creation approaching its goal. The organism,
through long stages of growth and improvement, is
at last fitted for the inbreathing of self-conscious
life, and the life is there ready to be imparted.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 167

Every stage of this development has witnessed the
communication of some higher revelation of God ;
till at length the spirit, made in the image of God
himself, is tabernacled in the flesh. Man is no
more a creature, nor a servant, but a son. He is
made in the image of the Father ; he is intelligent,
conscious, free ; God has endowed him with his
own spiritual attributes ; he is fitted for commun-
ion and fellowship with God.

If, now, God is immanent in the creation, it is
evident that the signs of his presence must be most
clear in humanity, which is the crown of the crea-
tion. In humanity God must be most distinctly
manifested. And this is, beyond all question, the
scriptural idea, and the idea which has always
guided the thought of the Christian church.

But the question arises. How much of God is
thus revealed in nature and in humanity? His
power, his wisdom, his patience, his beauty, in
some sense also his beneficence, have been found in
nature by devout students ; but it has often been
supposed that his mercy and forgivingness are not
there revealed ; that for the knowledge of these
we must go to the Bible. But the Bible itself is
our warrant for denying this doctrine. The mercy
that endureth forever must have been known be-
fore men learned to write. And Paul tells us that
not only God, but the Christ of God is immanent
in the creation ; that those divine attributes of pity
and clemency and mercy which Jesus reveals in
his life and death are part of the groundwork of

168 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTEINES ?

nature, the very roots out of which the whole life
of the world has grown ; so that the Word, which
Christ himself was, was indeed in the beginning
with God, and all things were made through him —
came into being, as it were, through the channels
of. Christliness.^ Thus the agelong process of evo-
lution has been steadily developing in the creation
the Christly elements, — the elements of love and
self-sacrifice ; and men in all lands have seen the
Christ in nature and in human nature, and have
known that God was merciful and gracious, and
have trusted in Him and found peace and salva-
tion.

The advent of the Son of man is then no sudden
break in the order of nature, but the culmination
and completion of the revelation of God. As Dr.
Dale, the great English Congregational theologian
has written, Christ's incarnation is not "an iso-
lated and abnormal wonder. It was God's witness
to the true and ideal relation of all men to God."
Or as another says, " The historic hour when the
Word became flesh, we call by preeminence the
Incarnation, since in Christ the Divine Word finds
fullest utterance. But it is no detached event ; it
is the issue of an eternal process of utterance, the
Word ' whose goings forth,' as Micah said, ' have
been from everlasting.' Still it is true that to
Christ suiwemely belongs the name of Son which
includes all the life that is begotten of God. He
is the beloved and unique representative of this
1 Col. i. 15-17.

THE \yORD MADE FLESH 169

universal sonship ; '■ the firstborn ,' as Paul said,
'q/* all creation.' Worthiest to bear the name of
the Son of God in a preeminent but not exclusive
right is he. Xot only has he revealed to orphaned
men their partnership with him in the life and love
of the All Father. His peerless distinction as the
Son is that in him shine at their brightest those
moral glories which belong to the very crown of
Deity." i

What need was there of this fidler manifesta-
tion ?

What need was there that the century plant,
long years growing, loDg years maturing, hold-
ing all the while the secret of its life in its
heart, should come at length to perfect flower ?
The life of the plant in bloom is the same life
that was in the plant through the slow years of
its growth, but who would have known its real na-
ture if it had not, in the fullness of time, lifted u])
to the light that erect and towering scape, and
flimg to the breeze its mighty profusion of bloom ?

What need was there in the loag summer twi-
lio^ht that the sun should rise ? The lioht that first
touched with ivory fingers the eastern horizon, be-
fore the birds awoke, — the light that slowly grew,
from the faintest dawn, until shapes and colors
slowly disclosed themselves, and the drij^ping
leaves and the freshly bathed flowers stood waiting
for the glory to be revealed, — was the light of the
sun, none other ; why, if we have some glimmer of
1 Gloria Patri, p. 92.

170 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

that light, by which in the gloaming we may grope
along our path, should there be any need on earth
of the sun's rejoicing ray ?

I think that my questions answer yours. There
is always need that life shall complete itself. It is
the one supremely needful thing. The moral im-
perative springs directly out of that need. As one
has said, " The evident end of any being is to 6e,
according to the nature given to him. If the rose
does not blossom, if the bee does not fly and gather
honey, we say they have not fulfilled their desti-
nies." That need is a part of the very nature of
things. Humanity, as truly as the century plant,
needs to come to perfect flower. Such a need is
inherent in itself, as the highest type of being in
the creation.

But there is a deeper need here, to the under-
standing of which we do not attain by studying the
life of the plant. The century plant has in itself
its own impulse to complete its life ; but its pro-
gress toward perfection may be greatly assisted.
If the gardener knows the nature of this plant,
knows what it is in its perfection, he knows how to
work and how to wait for that perfection. Unless
he does know this, his labor of cultivation may be
misdirected, may be abandoned before the plant
has come to flower. The ideal of the plant must
be before his mind in order that his treatment of
it may be intelligent.

Now every man has in himself this double life.
He is both plant and gardener. He has a nature

THE WORD MADE FLESH 171

to be developed and perfected ; he has an intelli-
gence and a will by which this perfection is to be
secured. Therefore he must know what human
perfection is, in order that his work to secure it
may be wisely directed. He must see humanity in
perfect flower, in order that he may comprehend
his own humanity in its completeness. If the evi-
dent " end of any being is to be," how evident is
the necessity that any being to whom, in some
large measure, its own destiny is committed, should
be able to conjugate, in all its moods and tenses,
that great verb to he; how evident the necessity
that every man should somehow have before him,
for his guidance, the figure of the perfect man !

Man is always an idealist. He is not merely
impelled, as the plant is, by forces which he can-
not resist ; he is led and allured by visions that go
before him and that beckon him on. All his real
gains are made by his voluntary pursuit of the
ideals thus presented to his choice. It is not by
what he is driven to do that he wins perfection, but
by what he aims to do, and strives to do. Herein
resides the very secret of his manhood. And hence
arises the need that there should be clearly revealed
and manifested to him the end at which he ought
to aim, the perfection for which he is bound to
strive.

It was needful, therefore, that the life should be
manifested; that the Word should become flesh
and dwell among us, that we might behold his
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the

172 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

Father, fuU of grace and truth. The advent of
the Son of man had relations to the world's sin
and the world's need of which we shall treat in
another chapter. His work in the world was con-
ditioned by the world's suffering and woe. But if
the shadow of sin had never fallen upon this
planet, that perfect manifestation of the divine
humanity which he was would surely have been
made to men. The Word which was spoken in
the beo'innino- and which, under its threefold si"'-
nificance of Law and Life and Love, had been
finding faint and incoherent utterance through the
ages, must at length have come to such clear artic-
ulation as it found in the life of Him who was, in
a measure that no other of mortals could claim to
be, both Son of man and Son of God.

Let us gather up the strands of this discus-
sion : —

1. God is in his world, and has been since the
morning of the Creation, visible there to the pure in
heart. The immanent God is the Life of all life.

2. Christ is in his world, and has been since the
morning of the Creation. The Word was in the
beginning with God. All things were made
throuo'h him : all thino-s that live have in them-

o - o

selves the elements of Christliness. Love and self-
sacrifice are at the very heart of nature.

3. This Word of God, the Word of sympathy,
of mercy, of forgivingness, has been struggling into
speech from the beginning ; many have dimly un-
derstood it, and found salvation by trusting in it.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 173

4. In tlie fullness of time, in Jesus of Nazareth
the Word was made flesh. In him, for the first
and only time in history, the Word of God found
clear and perfect articulate expression. He was
the ideal man, the consummation and the crown of
humanity, and therefore he was the manifestation
of God.

" Deep strike tliy roots, 0 heavenly Vine,
Within our earthly sod,
Most human, and yet most divine,
The flower of man and God."

HOW CHEIST SAVES MEN

The doctrine of the Atonement is generally-
regarded as the central doctrine of the evangelical
system, and a brief sketch of the history of this
doctrine would be instructive to those who imagine
that orthodoxy, in the words of Vincent of Lerins,
is that which has been believed "always, every-
where, and by all." This idea of the immutability
of Christian doctrine will scarcely survive even
a cursory reading of any history of dogma. The
forms through which belief has passed are many
and various. Evolution may lack credentials in
the kingdoms of physical life, but here in theology
its reign is undisputed. All the great facts v/ith
which the Darwinian theory makes us familiar —
variation, hereditary transmission, natural (in this
case spiritual) selection, and the survival of the
fittest — stand out in the clearest light on this field
of dogmatics.

The tendency to produce multitudinous varieties
of belief on all these subjects is always present;
these beliefs at once come into conflict and there
is a struggle for life among them ; those survive
which are most in harmony with their environ-

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 175

ment. The great fact is, moreover, that the en-
vironment is the Christian consciousness of the
church, which is more and more pervaded by
the spirit of Christ. The spiritual progress of the
kingdom of God is carried forward in the realm
of the affections ; the gentleness and patience and
purity of Christ are communicated from life to life ;
the parable of the leaven is in constant course of
verification. It is thus that the world grows bet-
ter, and the theories of the thinkers, subjected to
the acceptance of this purified Christian conscious-
ness, are constantly modified for the better ; their
crudities and immoralities are gradually winnowed
away ; loftier conceptions, worthier ideals, find ex-
pression in them. Every century drops some forms
of dogmatic statement, because they have become
repugnant to the moral sense of the people, or in-
credible to their wider intellectual vision. This is
the process which a stupid conservatism vainly
seeks to arrest. It is common to hear modifica-
tions of this nature attributed to satanic agency ;
the truth being that these are proofs of the living
presence of God in his church and in his world.
It is what He has been doing in the hearts and the
lives of men that has made these changes necessary.
The history of the doctrine of the Atonement will
make this plain.

In the first two or three centuries there was but
little theorizing about the work of Christ. Those
old Fathers recognized Christ as a Saviour ; they
trusted him, and followed him, and found the way

176 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

to peace and strength by a living fellowship with
him. As to the explanation of all this they did
not seem to care. Irenaeus, who taught in the last
half of the second century, says that through sin
man had become alienated from God, and that
Christ became man in order to reunite God and
man. The theoretical fabric in this teaching is
slio:ht. Christ redeems us and reconciles us to
God, but just how he does not try to tell. He
does, however, use the word " ransom," — a word
which was destined in the next thousand years to
play a large part in the development of the theory
of the Atonement. So far as the early church had
a theory of the work of Christ, this theory of ran-
som was most widely accepted as the explanation.
There were those who criticised it as morally un-
sound, but their objections did not prevail.

The theory is based on a word which Jesus used
once, when he said, " The Son of man came not to
be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his
life a ransom for many ; " and which Paul used
once, when he spoke of Jesus as having given him-
self as "a ransom for all" (1 Tim. ii. 6). The
words "redeem" and " redemption " do, however,
convey the same idea, and they are found fre-
quently in the New Testament. A ransom is a
sum of money paid to a captor for the release of a
captive or prisoner. He who pays the ransom is
called the redeemer; the act is redemption. When
Christ, or the blood of Christ, began to be spoken
of as a ransom, those who wished to understand the

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 177

meaning of the words they were using began to ask
to whom this ransom was paid, and who paid it.
The answer, whicli was first spoken rather hesitat-
ingly, but afterward came to be affirmed with con-
fidence, was that the ransom was given to Satan,
and that it was paid him by God, for the release
of the human race from bondage to the Prince of
Evil. The theory was that man by the fall had
passed under the power of the devil. The devil
had thus gained a legal right to humanity, a right
which God himself was bound to resjDect. To dis-
possess him of his captives a ransom must be paid.
Satan accepted the person of Christ as the ransom,
and thus lost his claim upon the race. As formu-
lated in the fourth century by Gregory of Nyssa,
Hagenbach thus summarizes it : " Men have become
slaves of the devil by sin. Jesus offered himself to
the devil as the ransom which should release all
others. The crafty devil assented because he cared
more for this one Jesus, so much superior to them,
than for all the rest. But notwithstanding his
craft he was deceived, since he could not retain
Jesus in his power. It was, as it were, a deception

on the part of God (^a-rrdTr) rtg eo-rt rpoirov nva) that

Jesus veiled his divine nature, which the devil would
have feared, by means of his humanity, and thus
deceived the devil by the appearance of flesh. But
Gregory allows such a deception according to the
lex talionis ; the devil had first deceived men, for
the purpose of seducing them ; but the design of
God in deceiving the devil was a good one, viz., to

178 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

redeem mankind. Gregory's argument looks very
mucli like the well-known maxim that 'the end
justifies the means.' This dramatic representation
of the subject includes, however, that other more
profound idea, carried out with much ingenuity in
many of the wondrous legends of the Middle Ages,
that the devil, notwithstanding his subtilty, is at
last outwitted by the wisdom of God, and appears
in the comparison as a stupid devil." ^

That, by the way, is a very profound truth. It
is the beginning of wisdom to believe that the devil
is a fool, that is to say, that concentrated selfish-
ness and malice is the essence of stupidity. So far
these old theologians were right. But what a con-
ception is this of the work of salvation! What
kind of moral sense had the men who could con-
ceive of God as entering into a transaction of this
sort ? What kind of a deity is this who is reduced
to the necessity of playing a sharp trick to get the
advantage of the devil ? The figures used by these
theologians are so grotesque that it is difficult to
quote them without incurring the charge of treat-
ing sacred themes with levity. But it is needful
that we should know through what phases of human
misconception and moral confusion this truth of
the Atonement has passed. One of the favorite
figures was that of the fish-hook. The divine
nature of Christ was the hook ; his human nature
— his flesh — was the bait ; Satan bit at the bait
without seeing the hook. Peter Lombard prefers

1 History of Doctrine, § 134.

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 179

the figure of a trap, of which the flesh was the bait.
The general conception is that Satan was in some
way outwitted in the transaction. This man Christ
Jesus was undermining his kingdom ; he must get
possession of him as his archenemy ; to secure him
he was willing to let go his legal claim on the race,
and when he had secured him he could not hold
him ; he could torture and kill his body, but the
divine nature escaped his clutches, and rose from
the dead to lead the emancipated race out of its
bondage.

Origen varies this interpretation by explaining
the escape of Christ from the power of the devil as
a moral rather than a miraculous transaction. It
was not because his divinity overpowered the ad-
versary that he got free ; it was because his nature
was Love, and the devil could not endure the pre-
sence of a benevolent spirit and was glad to let him
go. Some of the later Fathers explain the Atone-
ment, not as a ransom, but as a combat between
Christ and Belial, in which the latter was worsted
and compelled to surrender his prey. This is not,
in their conception, a merely figurative battle, but
a real duel, in which the Son of God was victorious
over the Prince of this world.

For fully a thousand years this idea of the Atone-
ment as consisting in the rescue of the human race
from the dominion of the devil, either by outwitting
or overpowering him, was the prevailing theory in
the church. There were men who did not wholly
accept it, men to whom its moral crudity was

180 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

repulsive ; but the great majority of devout people
knew no other explanation of the work of Christ,
and to call in question this account of his mission
exposed one to the gravest suspicions of heresy.
When Abelard, in the twelfth century, ventured
to question whether the devil really had any rights
in the human race, and whether any such transac-
tion as this for their release ever took place, that
great hero of the faith, St. Bernard, declared that a
man who disputed a doctrine so essential as this
should not be reasoned with, but chastised with
rods.

Nevertheless, the explanation gradually became
incredible. As men's ideas of justice and honor
and probity were elevated and purified, it became
evident that the relations and motives and prac-
tices ascribed to God in these theories were impos-
sible. The explanation ceased to explain. It in-
volved the whole subject in darkness rather than
light.

Other explanations were attempted. Chief
among these was that of Anselm. In this theory
the devil wholly disappears ; the figure of ransom
is dropped, and the figure of debt takes its place.
Obedience is the honor which man owes to God ;
the disobedience of the race has involved human-
kind in hopeless debt. For past sin present obedi-
ence cannot atone ; how can that debt be cleared
away ? Christ as the God man perfectly obeys the
law ; to that he was bound. But his sinless death
was not due ; no obligation required that of him ;

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 181

and by giving his life lie wrought a great work of
supererogation and accumulated a fund of surplus
merit, infinite in amount, out of which he pays
the debts of all believers. This is known as the
commercial theory. In Anselm's exposition it is
somewhat less bald than in my abbreviated state-
ment, yet in its best form it is a dismal travesty
of the great fact which it seeks to explain. How
can one moral being, by unmerited suffering, accu-
mulate a fund of virtue out of which the moral ob-
ligations of other moral beings can be discharged ?
Moral obligations cannot be transferred from one
to another after this manner. Yet this theory
lingers in some of our hymns, and still vitiates
much of our thinking on this transcendent theme.

Following this came the purely legal conception,
— the theory of a legal or penal substitution.
The penalty of sin is death ; all men have sinned
and are exposed to the penalty ; Christ volun-
tarily endures the penalty, in our stead, and thus
secures our salvation. This theory made room for
Universalism. The original Universalists argued
that sin could not be punished twice ; and that
since Christ bore the penalty for all, all must go
free. That seems a logical inference. The later
Universalists, I need not say, have based their
belief in the final salvation of all men upon other
reasonings than these.

There has always been difficulty in explaining
this theory. To begin with, the transfer of pen-
alty is essentially unjust and unmoral. That the

182 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

substitute consents does not acquit the judge of
injustice. Governments can tolerate no sucli trans-
actions. Moreover, we are told that the penalty of
sin is death. What kind of death ? All kinds
of death, the answer is ; everj'thing that the word
means, — physical, spiritual, and eternal death.
Did Christ suffer all these ? Yes, said some of
the old theologians. They would follow their logic.
His body died on the cross ; he was separated
from God and left in utter spiritual darkness ; he
suffered the literal pains of hell in his soul. Lu-
ther said that Christ became, for our sakes, a thief,
a murderer, an adulterer, and took the whole pen-
alty of the law upon himself.

But from this horrible doctrine men began to
revolt. That Christ could have actually endured
the penalty of our sins was incredible. Part
of the penalty of sin — the bitterest part of it —
is remorse : could he have felt remorse ? In what
sense could the pains of hell have been inflicted
on him ? There never was a moment when his
thought was not pure, when his conscience was
not clear, when his heart was not full of love to
every creature. Can such a spirit suffer the pains
of hell ? The real penalty of sin is spiritual death,
and that means depraved appetites, unbridled pas-
sions, groveling animalism, rampant selfishness,
disinterested malice. This is the condition which
sin bringeth forth when it is finished. Is it not
monstrous to say that Jesus Christ ever experi-
enced anything like this ? If he did not, then it

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 183

is absurd to say that he suffered the penalty of sin:
This theory, in its turn, became incredible. Men
saw that all moral standards were confounded and
perverted by saying that Christ endured the pen-
alty of the law as our substitute. It was not the
penalty of the law ; it could not have been, they
said ; it must have been something else ; what
was it ?

To this the great Dutch jurist, Grotius, made
reply in what has since been known as the gov-
ernmental theory, that the sufferings inflicted on
Christ were not penal, but illustrative. They are
intended as an impressive exhibition of God's
hatred of sin. To the spectacle of the cross God
seems to be pointing all sinners, saying to them,
" Thus ought you to suffer. This Being does not
deserve to suffer, and his sufferings do not signify
any wrath on my part ; but he has consented to
endure them, and I am inflicting them upon him,
in the presence of the universe, in order that all
may see how greatly I abhor sin."

This theory was meant to relieve the imputation
upon the justice of God involved in the theory of
penal substitution. To some minds it still affords
such relief. But there are many who have ceased
to find any satisfaction in it. If it is not unmoral,
it is essentially unreal — even theatrical. To treat
one who is not a sinner as though he were a sinner,
in order that sinners may see how they ought to be
treated, does not seem to comport with the dignity
and directness of the divine administration. To

184 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTFJNES ?

many miDds this explanation lias ceased to be
credible.

For myself I must say that all these attempts to
interpret the work of Christ by judicial and foren-
sic and governmental analogies seem to me very
lame and impotent. Governmental figures may be
used in dealing with them, if only we remember
that they are figures, and do not proceed to harden
them into theories. The apostles use these figures ;
aspects of the work of salvation may be shadowed
forth by them. But when we attempt to make
philosophical formularies out of them we are as far
astray as one would be who undertook to deduce
the anatomy of a skylark from Shelley's poem.
In truth the ethical and spiritual values with which
we are concerned in trying to tell what Christ has
done for men can never be expressed in terms of
human jurisprudence. When we reason from what
such human rulers as we know think it expedient
for them to do in dealing with offenders, to what
the Infinite Wisdom and Love will do in reclaimino^
his wandering children we are not going on firm
ground. Many things are authorized by legisla-
tures and done by courts and magistrates which
the Eternal Justice could never tolerate. In all our
criminal courts, for example, penalty may be com-
muted with money. There are many offenses for
which the rich man goes free, while the poor man
goes to jail. He who possesses or can borrow the
money to pay his fine walks abroad ; he who has
neither purse nor friend must submit to the treat-

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 185

ment of a malefactor. This whole institution of
fines is utterly and abominably unjust, albeit we
call it justice. The day will come when we shall
abolish all such iniquities, and when the rich man
will be compelled to take the same kind of pun-
ishment that the poor man must endure. But
such ethical anomalies still appear in our jurisj)ru-
dence ; and it is precisely upon conditions of this
sort that some of the forensic theories of the Atone-
ment are founded. We ought to be admonished
that such analogies will lead us astray.

Indeed, it should be said that all the recent mas-
ters in theological science have abandoned these
governmental theories as inadequate. I have been
looking over Professor Fisher's abstracts of the
teaching of such great evangelical theologians as
Nitzsch and Rothe and Julius Miiller, and I can-
not find that any of them teach that the sufferings
of Christ were judicially inflicted upon him by the
Father, for the vindication of justice or the confir-
mation of government. To show how greatly the
view of the church has changed, let me quote a few
words from the last Professor of Systematic The-
ology in Andover, Professor George Harris : —

" The doctrine which has undergone the greatest
modification from purely ethical influences is the
doctrine of redemption from sin. Until recently
the usual representations of atonement were justly
open to the charge of immorality. Even now such
representations continue to be made to a consider-
able degree. The moral sense is shocked at some

186 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

of the reasons given for atonement. The imputa-
tion of our sins to Christ has been so stated that it
seemed as if all regard for righteousness had been
overlooked. The penal suffering of Christ was
regarded as the philosophy of atonement. It was
believed that God laid on Christ the penalty of our
sins, or a suffering equivalent to that penalty.
The atonement was represented as an arrangement
satisfactory to God, but incomprehensible to us.
The fact that character and its consequences can-
not be transferred from one person to another was
contradicted by the theory that Christ suffered
what we otherwise should have suffered. . . . The
love of Christ making its great way to men at the
cost of suffering is the motive which leads men to
repentance, but has been represented as the motive
which induces God to forgive. This disappearing
theory fails to satisfy because it is immoral, be-
cause it places salvation Somewhere else than in
character, because it converts the sympathy and
love of Christ into legal fictions, because it places
the ethical demands of justice above the ethical
necessities of love. It is, indeed, through the self-
sacrifice of Christ that we are recovered from self-
ishness to goodness and love. He bore our sins.
He suffered on account of our sins. He brings us
back to God, for he reveals God to us in his real
character. But that is very different from mercan-
tile or forensic transference of the penalty of sin
from one person to another. When the doctrine of
atonement is traced through its successive phases,

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 187

as a ransotn paid to the devil, as the satisfaction of
justice, as the vindication of divine government,
and finally as the great motive power which trans-
forms character, it is seen that there has been a
progressive moral evolution. The doctrine of re-
demption through sacrifice remains, but is no longer
made to rest on an unethical philosophy.'' ^

It is evident that not much is left of the theories
of the Atonement which the church has fabricated
through the centuries. But the fact may remain
though the theories pass. There have been a
good many theories of light since the days of Par-
menides of Elea, most of which have gone into the
junk-pile of the discarded philosophies : but the
light of heaven is just as blessed a reality to-day
as it was when the Magians worshiped it upon
the Persian hills, and the poets praised its beauty
on the sunny plains of ancient Greece. And it is
well to remember that while doctrines change their
forms, just as the natural forces do, the essential
truth which they embody endures from generation
to generation. There are many transformations of
spiritual and moral energy, as they appear in the
intellectual world, but there is also a conservation
of energy. The people who witness the transfor-
mation of the mode often imagine that they are
witnessing an extinction of the force, and go away
shouting that Christianity is dead. No man is apt
to be more utterly oblivious of the great facts
of evolution than your rampant religious radical.
1 Moral Evolution, pp. 407, 408.

188 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

His notion is that progress consists in an intermin-
able series of blottings out and fresh beginnings ;
the manner in which one thing grows out of an-
other, in which life and thought are conserved by
changes of form and transmitted from one genera-
tion to another and from one institution to another,
he is totally incapable of conceiving. The last
man to understand the doctrine of evolution ap-
pears to be the religious teacher who assumes that
he has a monopoly of liberalism.

The forms of the doctrine of the Atonement have
greatly changed, no doubt ; but under these forms
precious and immutable truths abide. I cannot at
this time enter into the interpretation of the Scrip-
ture texts which have been supposed to teach the
doctrine of expiation ; but one principle of inter-
pretation may be suggested which will throw light
on many of them. There is a common mode of
speech by which our own feelings are attributed to
objects outside of ourselves ; as when we speak of a
cheerful room, meaning that there is something in
the appearance of the room which makes us feel
cheerful; or when we speak of a dizzy height,
meaning that we are dizzy when we stand upon it.
The objective is thus often put for the subjective.
What is in our own feeling, we transfer to the object
which excites it. There is the common phenomenon
of parallax, also, by which the heavens seem to
move, when it is we who are moving. The star
that was over our right shoulder a little while ago
is now over our left shoulder; it seems to have

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 189

moved through a large arc ; but the truth is that
there has been a turning in our road. So men
naturally ascribe to God changes that have taken
place in themselves. They were disobedient and
had the consciousness of alienation from Him ; they
are now in filial relations with Him, and it is natu-
ral for them to think that the frown upon his face
has changed into a smile, that wrath has turned to
love. But the change is not in Him ; it is in them-
selves. They may speak of his anger being ap-
peased, because that describes their own feeling.
The relation has changed, but the change is in
them. And the Scriptures often take up this natu-
ral and popular way of speaking, and represent
God as being angry and having his anger turned
away. Such expressions must be taken for just
what they are worth, as the natural and familiar
forms of human speech, not as scientific statements
of the truth about God.

What is it, then, that Jesus Christ has done for
us men and our salvation ?

First he has revealed God to us. Whatever else
we may say about him, this must be admitted by
all who have any faith in his words, in what he
said about himself, that he was the revelation or
manifestation of the living God to men. He said
of himself what no other sane man has ever said,
" I and my Father are one." He came to show us
the Father. " He that hath seen me," he said,
" hath seen the Father." What he says and does
and suffers represents to us the divine thought and

190 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

feeling respecting our sins, our needs, and our de-
stinies.

This revelation which is made in the person of
Jesus Christ brings God very near to us. We see
this Son of God entering into all our human ex-
periences, toiling, hungering, thirsting, rejoicing,
weeping ; we hear him calling himself the Son of
man, and it is borne into our minds that the chasm
which our thought had made between divinity and
humanity does not exist > that we are, indeed, what
Jesus always calls us, the children of our Father in
heaven.

This identification of himself with us is such a
revelation of God's love for us as never could have
been made in any other way. For it involves con-
stant suffering and sacrifice, — self-sacrificCo And
the only convincing manifestation of love is that
which is revealed in self-sacrifice. " Surely he
hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."
We cannot doubt his sympathy with us, his com-
passion for us. Such a revelation of love is fitted
to overcome the enmity and alienation of the human
heart, and to bring men back to God in contrition
and trust.

But the sufferings of Christ reveal something
more than the love of God for men, they reveal
also his hatred of sin. For in order that men may
be saved, it is needful not only that they be enabled
to understand God's love for them, but also that
they be taught to share his wrath against the sin
which is destroying them. To human beings in

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 191

their present environment these two experiences
are essential to salvation, — love of the good and
hatred o£ the evil. I cannot save myself unless I
hate the wrong in myself as cordially as I love the
right. I cannot save my fellow man unless I have
the same wrath against the evil that is destroying
him. In order that we may be restored to commun-
ion with a holy God we must recoil from the sin
which He abhors as cordially as we draw nigh to
the purity and truth which He loves. Jesus Christ,
as the manifestation of God, brings this truth home
to the hearts of men with saving power. This sub-
ject is so vast that we cannot, within the limits of
one short chapter, get a,nything more than a glimpse
of it. An illustration used by Dr. J. M. Whiton
may suggest the truth : —

"We see a loving wife, cleaving to her drunken
husband to save him at all cpst to herself. She
might be comfortable in her father's house, but she
makes herself the redeeming partner of a squalid
life whose evil temper she bears, whose polluted
breath she breathes, while she feels in every fibre of
her suffering spirit the woe and shame. Through
this vicarious suffering perhaps she accomplishes
her redeeming work, rouses the torpid conscience
to conviction, repentance, reparation. What is it
then which educates and energizes his conscience ?
The evil consequences of his sin, not to him, hut to
her. It is her vicarious sacrifice, not in his stead,
but in his place, luith him, as well as for him, that
gives his conscience the just estimate of his sin, and

192 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

clothes it with power to break the accursed chain.
Thus Christ ' hore our sins^^ in fellowship with us,
not in substitution for us. The vicarious suffering
which we in various ways bear with and for one
another, he bore for all sinners as their redeeming
partner in the retributive evils of their sin, to rouse,
teach, energize conscience to an invincible hatred
of it and a victorious struggle with it. But this
is not the propitiation of conscience ; rather is it
preparatory thereto.

" For when we contemplate our sin with a thor-
oughly awakened conscience, what truly contrite
spirit is there who does not feel, with the tender-
hearted and penitent child, that he cannot he sorry
enough f There is not only the overt act of sin to
be condemned. There is also the evil root of it in
the evil dispositions and habits which the overt sin
has fostered. There is more sin within us than
shows at any moment. Our feelings seem too dull.
Our confessions seem too weak. AVe crave a power
of expression we do not find within us, to bind upon
our sin the burden of condemnation it deserves in
the judgment of the Father we have grieved and
offended.

" Consider now the case of him whom the long-
snffering constancy of conjugal devotion has awak-
ened from drunken dreams, and reclaimed from
sottish squalor, and rehabilitated in sober man-
hood. It is not enough for him to pour upon his
vices merel}^ Ms oicn detestation. He longs to
condemn his sin with such execration as only an

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 193

unstained virtue can cherish for it. Such hatred
of it as only she can feel whose purity has for his
sake endured contact with its pollution he fain
would borrow from her and share with her. Put-
ting himself into her place he endeavors to think
her thought, to feel her feeling about it. Nor does
he feel that in her view he has made the atonement
of an adequate repentance until, in the full accord
of their mutual love and moral sympathy, her abhor-
rence of his sin has become his own. Then at last
he is satisfied because she is satisfied. And if he
should say, How can I ever make amends? she
would reply. You have made all the amends I ever
sought. You are at one with me. I am satisfied to
see you abhor your sin as I abhor it. Thus is she
his propitiation. Thus we may approach the con-
ception of that propitiation in conscience which is
the atoning work of Christ."

This is only a fragment, an outline, I know, of
that great work of spiritual revelation, and recon-
ciliation, and renovation which is wrought out for
us and in us in the life and the sufferings of Him
who came to show us the Father and to save us
from our sins. But it may help us to see that
there is something more in this work of Christ than
the mere exhibition of pity for us. The abhorrence
of the sin that curses us is not less clearly shown.
It was this that broke his heart in Gethsemane.
No being less pure than Jesus could have felt as
he felt the onset of the world's selfishness and
madness, then rushing upon him to destroy him,

194 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

simply because lie was unselfish and sane. He
could not but have been overwhelmed with abhor-
rence of the terrible outbreak of the sin of the
world which he was there confronting. Yet he
loved the men who were seeking his life, and
longed to save them. It was this struggle between
the suffering of a pure spirit on account of sin and
the love that cannot let the sinner go which wrung
from him the bloody sweat of the garden. This
was the true divine propitiation, — the reconcil-
iation through suffering of holiness with love.
And it is by bringing us into the same mind with
himself ; by filling us with his own abhorrence of
sin ; by bringing us to look upon the selfishness
and animalism of our own lives with his eyes, and
to recoil from them as he recoiled from them, that
he saves us. " The world's unrighteousness," says
the great German theologian Carl Immanuel Nitzsch,
" spends itself upon the Holy and Righteous One,
completes and exhausts itself. He endures it, in
the glory of his innocence, in order by his spirit
to punish it upon us. Only as the power and possi-
bility of an actual release from sin, of our d3'ing
with Him and rising in a new life, does he suffer
death in our place and make himself an offering to
God. Only thus is he a ransom for many. It is
in the depths of his sympathy and in the endeavor
for the world's salvation that he bears the penalty
of its sin."i

Here are elements with which we must reckon

^ Quoted by Fisher, Hist. Christian Doctrine, p. 516.

HOW CHRIST SAVES MEN 195

in all our dealings with the evil in ourselves, in all
our efforts to save others. Gethsemane is the
warning against an easy, good-natured theory of
moral evil. We must not go about telling our-
selves that we are pretty good fellows after all, and
that God is so infinitely benevolent that He does
not greatly care about our meannesses and iniqui-
ties. No ! We must see our sin as Christ sees it ;
we must hate it as he hated it. Dr. Lyman Abbott
is right when he says : " We shall never enter into
the mystery of redemption unless we enter in some
measure into these two experiences of wrath and
pity and into the mystery of their reconciliation,
. . . The Old Theology has grievously erred in
personifying these two experiences, in attributing
all the hate and wrath to the Father and all the
pity and compassion to the Son. But the New
Theology will still more grievously err if it leaves
either the wrath or the pity out of its estimate of
the divine nature, or fails to see and teach that
reconciliation is the reconciliation of a great pity
with a great wrath, the issue of which is a great
mercy and a great redemption." ^

1 The Theology of an Evolutionist^ p. 121.

PREDESTINATION

Probably no other doctrine of theology has oc-
cupied so large a place in the thought of the mod-
ern church as that which we are now to consider.
What with affirming it and denying it, modifying
it and explaining it, trying to believe it and trying
to disbelieve it, finding comfort in it and falling
into despair" in view of it, a great many millions
of believers have spent a large share of their intel-
lectual energy. There have always been those who
believed it and defended it, and there have always
been those who rejected it and assailed it as an
impediment to faith and a libel on the divine char-
acter.

Very early in the history of the church the theo-
logians began to wrestle with it ; the words of tlie
Apostle Paul, in the Epistles to the Romans and
the Ephesians, seemed to affirm the doctrine of pre-
destination, and the Fathers, in their exposition of
his writings, were compelled to consider the ques-
tion how far the predeterminations of the Creator
affect the characters and the destiny of his crea-
tures. Most of these earlier Fathers reasonably
took these statements of Paul merely as strong

PREDESTINATION 197

affirmations of the doctrine of divine providence.
The Greek teachers generally insist upon the free-
dom of the human will as the foundation of virtue,
and make that the foundation of theology. It is
the simple truth that during the first three centu-
ries the notion that the destiny of all men is fixed
before the creation by a divine decree scarcely
found place in the teachings of the church. Calvin
himself acknowledges this ; he can only explain
it by the assumption that the minds of these early
Fathers were not properly illuminated.

It was not until the beginning of the fifth cen-
tury that Augustine, the great Latin theologian,
gave to the doctrine of predestination its dogmatic
form. The doctrine was of course organically
connected with the doctrine of original sin, — the
doctrine that the whole human race sinned in
Adam, and are guilty and punishable with him,
having no power to repent, and being doomed,
unless God shall intervene, to endless misery.
Augustine shrank from saying, what some in later
years were bold to say, that God decreed the sin of
Adam ; he only said that God permitted it. But
the notion that God had bound Adam and all his
posterity together indissolubly, so that the guilt of
the ancestor is inherited and shared by all his de-
scendants, he does teach in the most unequivocal
manner. If Adam was not predestined to sin, all
his posterity were predestined to be partakers of
the guilt of his sin, and of the moral weakness
and inability to all good which it entailed. Out of

198 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

this mass of depravity, God determined, from all
eternity, that He would save some. " Before the
foundation of the world," Augustine sa} s, " God
chose us in Christ, predestinating us to the adop-
tion of sons ; not because He saw that we icould be
pure and sinless, but that we might be. Moreover,
He did this according to the pleasure of his will,
that no man might glory in his own will, but rather
in God's will." ^ The number of the elect, he says,
is fixed and certain, so that it can neither be in-
creased nor diminished by anything that man can
do. These are Augustine's words ; Hagenbach
summarizes his teaching thus : " God, in conse-
quence of an eternal decree, and without any refer-
ence to the future conduct of man, has elected
some out of the corrupt mass to become vessels
of his mercy (vasa misericord ice^, and left the
rest, as vessels of his wrath (vasa irce)^ to a just
condemnation. Augustine called the former ^^re-
destiiiatio^ the latter rcprohatio.'''' ^

The doctrine of Augustine was sharply attacked
by Pelagius, who asserted the freedom of the will
and denied the imputation of Adam's sin to his
posterity. But Pelagius went as far astray in that
direction as Augustine had gone in the other ; for
he practically denied the facts of heredity, and so
understated the need of divine help in overcoming
sin as to make man practicall}^ independent of his
Maker. With all its exaggerations, Augustine's

1 De Fred. Sanctorum, 37 (C. 18).

2 Hist, of Doctrine, § 113.

PKEDESTINATION 199

theory came nearer to the facts of human experi-
ence than did that of Pelagius ; and if either of
the two theories must prevail, it was better that
that of Augustine should have the ascendency.
His view it was, in the main, which was carried
over by the Western church. There was much
dissent, and there were many controversies, but the
Augustinian theology remained the standard of
Orthodoxy until the time of the Reformation.

Luther was not always logical, and he often
gives utterance to in.consistent views. Indeed, we
might say of him, as of many others, that his in-
consistencies are often the best part of his teaching.
But he was, nevertheless, a strenuous predestina-
tionist ; no one has ever more vehemently asserted
the absolute despotism of the divine will. " In his
battle with Erasmus," says Professor Fisher, " Lu-
ther affirmed in almost reckless language the im-
potence of the human will. God's agency was
asserted to be the universal cause. His will was
declared to be subject to no law, but to be the
foundation of right. Predestination was declared
to be unconditional, and to include as its objects
the lost as well as the saved. ' By this thunder-
bolt,' he said, ' free will is laid low and utterly
crushed.' " ^

Calvin is not less positive ; indeed, he is much
more consistently rigid in his enforcement of the
dogma. " According to Calvin," says Professor
Fisher, " God has determined by an eternal decree

1 Hist, of Christian Doctrine, p. 292.

200 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

' what He would have to become of every individ-
ual of mankind.' Eternal life is foreordained for
some, and eternal damnation for others. 'Every-
one is created for one or the other of these ends.'
God has once for all determined ' whom He would
admit to salvation and whom He would condemn
to destruction.' Prescience does not explain the
hardening of heart which includes an intervention
of God, beyond mere foreknowledge. It takes
place first by the withdrawal of God's spirit, and
secondly by the employment of Satan, the minister
of his wrath, to influence their mind and their ef-
forts. To inquire into the reasons of the divine
will is idle ; for ' there is nothing gTcater or higher
than the will of God.' It ' is the cause of every-
thing that exists.' " ^

Edwards also affirmed this doctrine with the
strongest emphasis. He held that the sovereignty
of God is absolute, that every choice of man is de-
creed by God. God is the only cause. Everything
that is done is done by Him.

The doctrine of predestination known to the
modern church receives its clearest expression in
the great "Westminster Assembly's Confession and
catechisms, which are still the standards of doctrine
of the Presbyterian Church. The same Confession
was adopted by assemblies of the Congregation -
alists of England and of the United States; and
while Congregationalism does not admit any au-
thoritative creed as binding on all the churches,

^ Hist, of Christian Doctrine, p. 300.

PREDESTINATION 201

this one was recognized, until a recent date, by
most Congregationalists as expressing the sub-
stance of Christian doctrine. One hundred years
ago it would have been hard to find a Congrega-
tional minister who would have dissented from the
teaching of his creed respecting predestination ;
even in my boyhood there were few who did not
heartily believe it.

This Confession begins by asserting that God
from all eternity, " by the most wise and holy coun-
sel of his own wiU, did freely and unchangeably
ordain whatsoever comes to pass ; yet so as thereby
neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence
offered to the will of the creature, nor is the liberty
or contingency of second causes taken away, but
rather established." ^ If this seems like a contra-
diction in terms, we must not too sharply censure
it, for doubtless the subject is one respecting
which it is not easy to preserve logical consistency.
The inconsistencies of this Confession are the best
part of it. Unfortunately, when the theologians
went on to define exactly what this doctrine means
they used language which makes all these asser-
tions of freedom utterly meaningless and even pre-
posterous. For example : —

" By the decree of God, for the manifestation of
bis glory, some men and angels are predestinated
unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to
everlasting death.

" These angels and men, thus predestinated and

1 Chap. iii.

202 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably
designed ; and their number is so certain and defi-
nite that it cannot be either increased or dimin-
ished." 1

The next article strenuously denies that this
election was based on any foresight of good in those
thus chosen ; it was a perfectly arbitrary decree.

Such is, for substance, the doctrine of predesti-
nation as it has been held and taught in the Chris-
tian church for fifteen centuries. Two or three
implications of the doctrine deserve our considera-
tion.

The first is the fate of the non-elect infants. For
predestinism, in the days of its vigor, never stam-
mered in its assertion of the fact that among those
passed by and left to perish were multitudes of in-
fants. This is logicall}^ involved in the doctrine.
The belief that all infants dying, in infancy are
saved can no more be reconciled with this doctrine
of unconditional predestination than light can be
reconciled with darkness. It is true that those who
now profess to believe in the doctrine of election do
almost all believe that infants dying in infancy are
saved ; but they trample all their logic under foot
when they thus make room for the children. And
this relenting of the old theology is but recent. I
have heard Presbyterian ministers and Congrega-
tional ministers deny that anybody ever believed in
the damnation of any infants : but one must blush
for the ignorance of the theologian who makes such
1 Chap. iii.

PREDESTINATION 203

a statement. How obstinately he must have shut
his eyes to the facts that blaze upon the pages of
the history of doctrine ! Augustine clearly taught
that some infants were sent to perdition ; he lays it
down as a postulate in one of his arguments ; it
does not need to be proved, it can be assumed as
undoubted. Calvin taught it in the most unmis-
takable terms, over and over. "I ask again," he
says, " how it is that the fall of Adam involves so
many nations with their infant children in eternal
death without remedy, unless that so it seemed
meet to God." iVll the heathen, and all their in-
fant children, were consigned by the decrees of God
to perdition. This was one of the foundation stones
of the Calvinistic doctrine.

Not long after Calvin's day there was a revolt in
the Low Countries against the Calvinistic doctrine,
led by Jacob Arminius ; the Remonstrants, as they
were called, were the founders of that theological
school which has been most vigorously represented
by Wesley and the Methodists. It was they who
began to deny this doctrine of unconditional pre-
destination, and along with it the doctrine of in-
fant damnation. To check this revolt, the Synod
of Dort was called in 1618 ; and the predestination-
ists of all the European countries came together to
agree upon a manifesto by which their doctrine
should be cleared and confirmed. Much was said
in that synod about the infants ; and while it was
agreed that many infants are saved, either by the
divine decree, ov by their covenant relation with

201 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

godly parents, I cannot find that any theologian
of that synod expressed his belief in the salvation
of all infants.

Zwingli, the great Swiss reformer, had before
this day avowed that faith ; but Zwingli was some-
thing of a heretic ; his hopes for the little children
were not shared by many of his brethren.

The Westminster Assembly's Confession deals
with the subject in a manner inferential, but un-
mistakable. " Elect infants," it affirms, " dying in
infancy are regenerated and saved by the operation
of the Spirit." The implication is that there are
non-elect infants who die in infancy and who are
not saved. Many attempts have been made to ex-
plain away this language, but no man who does not
wish to proclaim his ignorance should engage in
such an enterprise. If you want to know what
those divines thought about this subject read their
writings. They have put themselves on record in
many treatises and sermons, in which they unfalter-
ingly deny that all infants will be saved. Indeed,
it was a cardinal point of doctrine with every one
of them that all the infants of the heathen dying
in infancy went to eternal perdition. William
Twisse, the prolocutor or president of the Assem-
bly, says : " Many thousands, even all the infants
of Turkes and Sarazens dying in original sin are
tormented in hell fire." Many others of the lead-
ers of the Assembly, even of the committee which
reported this article, are equally explicit. Profes-
sor Briggs says: "We are able to say that the

PREDESTINATION 205

Westminster divines were unanimous on this ques-
tion of the salvation of elect mfants only. We
have examined the greater part of the writings of
the Westminster divines, and have not been able
to find any different opinion from the extracts we
have given. The Presbyterian churches have de-
parted from their standards on this question, and it
is simple honesty to acknowledge it. We are at
liberty to amend the Confession, but we have no
right to distort it and to pervert its grammatical
and historical meaning." ^

It is rather curious, I think, that any one who
professes to believe in the doctrine of unconditional
predestination as applied to adults should hesitate
to believe in the damnation of infants. For it is
the very substance of the doctrine that every adult
individual of the non-elect was a damned infant
the moment he drew his first breath. He came
into the world with this curse upon him. He was
one of that fixed number of the reprobate which
can neither be increased nor diminished by any-
thing that men or angels can do. It was never for
one moment possible for him to escape from the
doom which had been determined for him from all
eternity. The most merciful thing that coidd pos-
sibly happen to him, therefore, would be to send
him straight to hell from his mother's arms. For
it is by all these theologians admitted that the sin-
ner waxes worse the older he grows, and that the
more he sins the heavier will be his penalty. If
1 Whither? p. 134.

206 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

this infant lives to maturity or old age, he will
only heap up wrath against the day of wrath ; the
sooner he is removed from the earth the lighter will
be the weight of his everlasting torment. The
non-elect who are sent to hell in their infancy are
the most mercifully treated of all the non-elect.

The certain perdition of all the heathen is also,
as several of these citations have shown, a distinct
corollary of this doctrine of predestination as it
has been preached and believed in past centuries.
The AYestminster Confession most emphatically
denies that " men not professing the Christian reli-
gion can be saved in an}^ other way whatsoever, be
they never so diligent to frame their lives accord-
ing to the light of nature, and the law of that reli-
gion they do profess ; " and it passionately declares
that " to assert and maintain that they may is very
pernicious and to be detested."

Let us see, now, if we can fairly and calmly
state this doctrine of unconditional election and
reprobation, which has been taught by so many
of the great theologians ; which has been believed
by hundreds of millions of devout men, by some of
the greatest and best men that have lived in the
world, and which stands to-day uncontradicted and
unqualified in the creeds of some of the great reli-
gious denominations.

1. In the counsels of eternity God determined
to create man and subject him to temptation under
which it was probable that he would fall. Some
of the theologians say that God decreed the sin ;

PREDESTINATION 207

others shrink from this and declare that the decree
is concerned with what followed the fall, not with
what preceded it.

2. It is certain, however, that such a relation
was established between our first parent and his
offspring that if he should fall, the moral taint of
his sin and the guilt of it would be transmitted
to all his progeny; so that every one of them
would come into life " utterly indisposed, disabled,
and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined
to all evil," — so that from the hour of his birth
every human being would be helpless to save him-
self, and would be " bound over to the wrath of
God and curse of the law and so made subject to
death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and
eternal."

3. From eternity, before the worlds were created,
God determined that he would select from this
weltering mass of moral inability and misery a cer-
tain fixed and definite number whom he would
save. To this number, from the moment when the
decree was formed, not one name could be added,
and from it not one could be subtracted. The
exact population of heaven and of hell was fixed
long before the foundation of the world.

4. Those thus chosen were selected by a purely
arbitrary choice, a choice w4iich had absolutely
nothing to do with their prospective merit or
demerit.

5. Those not thus chosen were, from all eternity,
foredoomed to eternal misery. " The rest of man-

208 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

kind," says the Confession, " God was pleased, ac-
cording to the unsearchable counsel of his own will,
whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He
pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over
his creatures, to pass hj^ and to ordain them to
dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of
his glorious justice."

6. Just what proportion of the race is elected
and saved, and what proportion is reprobated and
consigned to eternal torment, we do not know ; but
the great Confession tells us plainly that all the
heathen and all their offspring are lost, and these,
up to the present day, constitute an overwhelming
majority of the race. If what the Larger Catechism
tells us is true, that " they who, having never heard
the gospel, know not Jesus Christ and believe not
in him cannot be saved, be they never so diligent to
frame their lives according to the light of nature
or the law of that religion they profess," there
must be hundreds of billions of souls in hell to-
day. And the population of that place must be
growing, pretty rapidly. Something like fifteen
hundred millions of human beings are living on
this planet ; of these perhaps fifty millions die
every year; not one fourth of them have heard
the gospel or know of Jesus Christ ; from thirty
to forty millions every year must, if this doctrine
is true, go down to that pit. What a population
must swarm to-day in that vast land of eternal
night! For history, as we are forced to read it
to-day, carries back the period during which our

PREDESTINATION 209

race has inhabited the planet far beyond the six
thousand years of the old conjectural chronology ;
one hundred thousand years, some of the thinkers
say, is a more probable term. " The countless
silent centuries that lie behind recorded history,"
says Dr. Gordon, " are to-day one of the most
touching, fascinating, and bewildering objects of
thought. They have at last risen from their long
sleep, they have finally found recognition." ^ Of
course all these, if we are to accept the implicit
and unqualified statements of these old confessions,
have been consigned to hopeless and endless mis-
ery. Well may we cry with Whittier : —

*' O the generations old
Over whom no church-bells tolled ;
Christless, lifting up blind eyes
To the silence of the skies !
For the innumerable dead
Is my soul disquieted.

" Where be now those silent hosts ?
Where the camping ground of ghosts ?
Where the spectral conscripts led
To the white tents of the dead ?
What strange shore or chartless sea,
Holds the awful mystery ? "

Finally, we are told that all this is done by the
Creator, to illustrate his " glorious justice " which
men are bound to praise. These uncounted bil-
lions of the non-elect now in eternal torment were
brought into being by Him; they had no option
about being born ; it was his creative fiat that gave
1 The Christ of To-Bay, p. 13.

210 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

them life. They came into being under a constitu-
tion which He had foreordained, and by means of
which every one of them from the moment of his
birth was foredoomed to a life of sin in this world
and an eternity of misery. It was not for any-
thing that they had done that they were born sin-
ners, and found themselves in helpless bondage to
a bad heredity ; it was not for anything that they
had done or failed to do that they were passed by
and left to perish in that misery ; but it is all done
to the praise of his glorious justice !

And this is the Being who by many devout men
has been called God, and worshiped !

Is this doctrine of unconditional election and re-
probation believed to-day ? I do not think that it
is believed by fairly educated Christian men of
any denomination. It would be difficult to find
any Protestant who would confess his belief that
any infant, whether of heathen or Christian parent-
age, is sent to endless punishment on account of
Adam's sin ; and the men are growing scarce who
will admit the truth of the doctrine that no hea-
then who has not heard of Christ can possibly be
saved. The salvation of all infants dying in in-
fancy is almost universally believed by Protestant
Christians. But that admission pulverizes the pre-
destinarian logic. For if the unconditional damna-
tion of non-elect infants is unjust, the uncondi-
tional damnation of non-elect adults is, as I have
already shown, ten times more unjust. And there-
fore this system of thought has not and cannot

PREDESTINATION 211

have any real hold upon the thought of the race.
The moral sense of mankind is in rebellion against
it. The churches which retain it in their confes-
sions have simply moved away from it. The kind
of Calvinism which is held and taught by most
Presbyterian ministers to-day is no more the Cal-
vinism of Calvin than the astronomy which is
taught in our colleges to-day is the astronomy of
Ptolemy. It is based on the righteousness or the
love of God and not upon his sovereignty. The
central idea of Angustinianism and Calvinism as
philosophies of the universe is force. The central
idea of all the theology that is taught to-day is
righteousness. The fundamental explanation of
everything under this predestinarian conception
was God's will. The fundamental explanation
now is God's character. The old theology was un-
moral. The new theology — and by the new the-
ology I mean that which is preached not only in
Congregational pulpits, but in Presbyterian pulpits
and Baptist pulpits, — in all the pulpits from which
Calvinism was once preached — is substantially a
moral theology.

Let me give you a few sentences from a recent
book of Dr. Henry Van Dyke of New York. Dr.
Van Dyke is the son of a man who was a leader of
the Old School wing of the Presbyterian Church ; he
is himself a graduate of Princeton and a Doctor of
Divinity by decoration of that ancient stronghold
of orthodoxy ; he was lately the pastor of one of
the most conservative Old School Presbyterian

212 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

churches in New York city. Listen to him and
see whether he believes in the Calvinism of Calvin :

" The Bible never says that faith is a gift.
There is a voluntary element in it. It is some-
thing to he done by the exercise of an inward
power. It is a coming of the soul to Christ ; it is
a following of the soul after him ; it is the first
step in a long course of spiritual activity. . . .
Now there is not a hint in all the teaching of Jesus
that this first act of freedom is impossible for
any soul to whom he speaks. He has no idea of
an eternal predestination binding some to belief
and others to unbelief, a secret decree including
certain men in the kingdom and excluding others
from it."

" I do not believe that there is a single passage
in the Old Testament which contradicts Christ's
doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. But if
there were such a passage I would leave it forever
alone as belonging to that knowledge w^iich was in
part, and which was done away when that which
was perfect had come."

" If there is any validity whatever in our moral
instincts, we need not hesitate to say that from
our present point of view, which is for us the only
one attainable, this theory of the absolute and un-
conditional sovereignty of God exercised by one
law of necessity over all creatures is so far from
being for God's glory that it is apparently for his
shame and dishonor. As a matter of fact it has
been, and still is, the most fertile mother of doubts.

PKEDESTINATION 213

. . . The idea of an irresponsible God ruling by
an eternal and inflexible ^a^ over responsible men
is a moral nightmare, under which humanity
groans, and from which it struggles to awake, even
though it should have to open its eyes upon the
blank darkness of an unsearchable night. Be-
tween the unknowable God of agnosticism and the
unlovable God of absolutism there is indeed little
to choose. But the choice, such as it is, lies on the
side of agnosticism. It is unspeakably better to
doubt God's personality, his supremacy, his very
being, than it is to doubt his eternal goodness and
his moral integrity." ^

That is the kind of doctrine which is heard to-
day in the strong, leading Presbyterian pulpits of
this country, — and even stronger and braver teach-
ing than this is heard in most of the Presbyterian
pulpits of Scotland. How much is left in it of the
old doctrine of unconditional predestination I will
let you tell.

The whole grim, ghastly, appalling fabrication is
built upon a deification of will. The central ele-
ment of personality, men said, is the will. God's
will must, then, be the foundation of theology.
Take the principle of will, make it omnipotent and
absolute, subordinate to it every other element of
character, then deduce your theology from that
principle, and you will have the Augustinian Cal-
vinism.

The craving for a simplification of religious

1 The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, p. 263.

214 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

theory — the search for a single principle by which
everything can be explained — contributed to the
supremacy^ of this doctrine. It does wonderfully
simplify the confusions of life to make a single
force, like the will of God, account for everything.
But simplicity is sometimes sought at too great a
cost ; we attain unto it by ignoring about half the
phenomena with which we have to deal.

Indeed, I think that the last word of philosophy
threatens to put this determinism out of court.
For it is the scientific people who have lately been
preaching predestination most diligently. There
is a stiff sort of materialistic philosophy which is
just as fatalistic as Augustine or Calvin ever was.
" It professes," says William James, " that those
parts of the universe already laid down absolutely
appoint and decree what the other parts shall be.
The future has no ambiguous possibilities hid in
its womb ; the part we call the present is compati-
ble with only one totality. Any other future com-
plement than the one fixed from eternity is impos-
sible. The whole is in each and every part, and
welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an
iron block, in which there can be no equivocation
or shadow of turning.

" ' With earth's first clay, they did the last man knead,
And there of the last harvest sowed the seed,
And the first morning' of creation wrote
What the last dawn of reckoning shall read.' " ^

To the philosophic reply to this fatalism I can give

1 The Will to Believe, p. 150.

PREDESTINATION 215

no space in this chapter ; let it suffice to say that
the answer given by Professor James in the volume
just quoted seems to me adequate.

With most of us the testimony of consciousness
is probably sufficient. None of us can have any
clearer evidence than that of our own conscious-
ness, and there is none of us who is not every
hour conscious of freedom, — absolutely sure that
he has the power to do many things which he
leaves undone, and to leave undone that which
he is doing. The world is full of possibilities
with which our choices connect themselves ; we
know that many paiths open before us every day,
and that there is vast difference between what we
are and what we might have been. The modern
scientific determinism, like the old religious pre-
destinism. is the creation of a stark logic which
ignores fully half of the facts of life. The most
distinguished of living English scientists recently
spoke of " the demonstrated daily miracle of our
human free will," as one of the undoubted facts
which science could not explain but must assume.

It must, however, be said that this grim doctrine
has done some good work in the world. There was
never a hurricane or a flood which did not bring
some blessings to mankind. Systems, like men,
have what the French call the defects of their
qualities : the best systems have their injurious
influences, and the worst ones have beneficent in-
fluences.

It cannot be denied that Calvinism has strength-

216 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRIXES?

ened the defenses of civil liberty. It has always
been the enemy of absolutism in the state. It
always stands up for the indiN-idual against hierar-
chies and tyi^annies. '* This man is in the hands
of God,"' it says : " let him alone I AYho art
thou that jndgest another man's servant ? To his
owD master he standeth or falleth.'* In fact, Cal-
vinism made God such a tremendous tyrant that it
was simply compelled to deny and resist all earthly
tyrannies. And this has been, historically, a mat-
ter of immense consequence to the civilization of
Eui'ope and America.

Doubtless, also, in the development of the in-
dividual character, it has often wrought out the
beautiful results of humility and trust in the divine
ix)wer. This could not have been gained without
emphasizing other attributes of God than that
which Calvinism makes central : but the sense of
dependence on God which it cultivates is a source
of strength to all who fully experience it.

Take the case of Augustine. His theology really
sprung from his exj^erience. When his logic got
to work upon it. it made a horrible idol out of it ;
but in its origin it was human and reasonable. It
was his deep exjierience of his own weakness and
sinfidness and need that led bim to exalt the di-
vine efficiency. His philosophy is only a logical
overstatement, which amounts to a caricature, of
a profound fact. But the fact is there — the human
need, the divine bounty. Grace is not what Au-
gustine figiu'ed it, — a vast, all-compelling euergy,

PREDESTINATION 217

which overbears and submerges and sweeps away
the human personality in its resistless onset ; it is
rather the helper of our infirmities, the prompter
of our better thoughts, the quickening influence
that reinforces all that is best in us and makes iis
strong to achieve and overcome. We are saved by
grace, and grace is help. The greatest fact in the
creation of God is a fact of which this old philoso-
phy never gained any adequate conception, — it is
the creation of a free human personality. By the
side of that, all the wonders of astronomy and phy-
sics sink into insignificance. Explain it we cannot,
but here is the fact. The one wonderful thing, as
Tennyson says, is, —

" Not matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main miracle that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world."

Having endowed man with freedom, God respects
the work of his hands — let me rather say the off-
spring of his love ; and force is forever laid aside
in appeals to this personality. The claims of rea-
son, the impulses of affection, the dictates of right-
eousness, are the only powers that can rightly con-
trol his action. He is made for virtue, and there
is no virtue where there is constraint. The kind
of compulsion which the irresistible grace of the
old theology assumed is a moral absurdity. Grace
is help ; and every human soul needs help, and
must have it ; there is no salvation without it.
That is the real truth for which the Old Calvinism
stood, the truth which it distorted, by its exaggera-

218 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

tions, until it made of God not an almighty Helper,
but an almighty Tyrant. God's sovereignty is not
the sovereignty of force, of will ; it is the sover-
eignty of reason, of affection. " His sovereignty,"
says Dr. Van Dyke, " embraces human liberty as
the ocean surrounds an island. His sovereignty
upholds human liberty as the air upholds a flying
bird. His sovereignty defends human liberty as
the authority of a true king defends the liberty of
his subjects, — nay, rather as the authority of a
father tenderly and patiently respects and protects
the spiritual freedom of his children, in order that
they may learn to love and obey him gladly and of
their own accord. For this is the end of God's
sovereignty : that his kingdom may come ; that
his will may be done on earth, — not as it is done
in the circling of the stars or in the blossoming of
flowers, but as it is done in heaven, where created
spirits freely strike the notes that blend in perfect
harmony with the music of the divine spirit." ^
1 The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, p. 271.

XI

CONVERSION

The fact of degeneration is not disputed. That
a man may change from good to bad and from bad
to worse is universally admitted, and volumes are
filled with scientific reports upon this process of
deterioration. To most persons this is all that
heredity means ; it connotes the transmission of
evil traits and tendencies and their downward pull
upon the lives by which they are inherited. That
easy grade to Avernus has been well surveyed ; we
know every furlong of it. The popular theology,
with its doctrine of total depravity, has accustomed
us, in our study of man, to look for evil and only
evil, and that continually ; we expect to see him
sinking deeper and deeper into vice and moral
helplessness. And science, in its study of morbid
conditions, has put a great deal of emphasis on the
same tendencies. "Degeneration," says Professor
Harris, " is a stock word of evolution. There is,
then, no occasion for surprise, if reversion and
degeneration appear in the development of the
human species. Their absence would be surpris-
ing. There is human as well as plant and animal
degeneracy. Max Nordau borrowed the title of

220 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

his book from evolution. As plants and animals
have diseases which are abnormal, and which im-
pair or destroy the normal type, so there is moral
disease which invades and corrupts the ideal char-
acter. Wiiethcr avoidable or not is a question
that pertains to personality. Whether actual or
not is a question which does not even arise." ^

What is the nature of this moral degeneration
which all of us have witnessed, which some of us,
no doubt, have experienced ? Is it an unconscious
change ? Is the man wholly passive in the pro-
cess ? If you expose the human body to a malari-
ous climate, it becomes gradually tainted by this
malarious influence ; its organs are impaired, its
vigor is reduced, its functions are diseased. But,
in all this, the body is unconscious and passive ; it
suffers this injury without contributing to it ; the
influence is insidious, but it is an external influ-
ence ; the physical degeneration is wrought upon
the body by a force acting from without. Is it
the same with the character ? Can that be changed
for the worse unconsciously and without a strug-
gle? I do not think so. I am aware that bad
moral influences are very insidious, about as subtle
as the malaria itself, and that a man who is sur-
rounded with selfishness and impurity and mean-
ness is often very insensibly led along the down-
ward way by the pressure of the environing evil ;
and 3^et I do not think that it is quite possible for
any man to deteriorate without knowing it, without

^ Moral Evolution, p. 274.

CONVERSION 221

having a hand in it. For every human being has
some sort of ideal. That makes him a man. He
is not merely a thing, pushed along in his devel-
opment by forces acting upon him ; he is a per-
son ; he is a power ; and always there is lifted uj)
before him some concej^tion of the man he ought
to be. There is no sane human being who does
not see such a vision beckoning him, and who does
not feel that he ought to follow it. The concep-
tion of what manhood means may be very crude
and defective, but it is there in his mind, and it
lays its authority upon him. He cannot help judg-
ing himself, all the while, by this standard. When=
ever he takes a bad step downward he knows that
he is departing from his ideal ; he knows that he
is unfaithful to the light which he has ; he knows
that that which is lower is getting the mastery in
him over that which is higher. His Dr. Jekyll is
losing and his Mr. Hyde is gaining control. With
Paul he says, " The good which I would that I do
not, but the evil which I would not that I practice."
With the old Eomans he cries, "Video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor." All literature, all lan-
guage, is full of the records of this struggle of the
sinking soul which is worsted by the bad environ-
ment and the bad inheritance and driven further
and further away from its own ideal. The point
to be noted is that it is more or less of a struggle ;
that there is always some sense of defeat, and of
blame and shame on account of it. The man does
not blame himself for the evil influences that^sur-

222 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

round him, and lie need not blame himself for any
bad heredity, but he does blame himself for not hav-
ing more sturdily resisted these malign influences.
It is not wholly a matter of pressure upon him, and
he knows it. His own choices or failures to
choose ; his own surrenders to the evil when he
might have fought, and if worst were, died fighting
— these are elements in the process which he can-
not hide from himself. He has contributed to his
own downfall. He has been unfaithful to his own
ideals. Doubtless the ideals have been dimmed
and lowered by this very infidelity, so that they do
not command him now as once they did, but there
is still and always a disparity between what he
knows he ought to be and what he is. All this is
involved in every instance of the deterioration of
character. It is something more than a biological
or organic degeneration. It is a spiritual degen-
eration. There is something behind all these in-
stincts and impulses and appetites and tendencies
which judges them all by a standard of its own and
says, " I ought ; I have sinned ; I am to blame."
That something is weakened and degraded in this
process of moral degeneration.

Degeneration is a fact. Nobody denies it. It
is one of the most firmly established facts in the
history of the race.

But how about regeneration ? Is that an impos-
sibility ? Is it true that a man may change from
good to bad and from bad to worse, but that he
cannot change from bad to good and from good to

C0X\T:RSI0N 223

better ? Is there no sncli thing as stopping in the
downward career, and struggling upward to purer
air and better footing ? There are many, in these
days, who seem to answer this question very posi-
tively in the negative. They are inclined to deny
that there can be any such change of character as
that which is described under the terms conversion
and regeneration. Dr. James Freeman Clarke,
one of the most emineot of the Unitarian minis-
ters, says : "'It is quite common, among Liberal
Christians, to doubt the reality or deny the impor=
tance of such changes altogetlier. T\'ith them the
Christian life consists, not in change, but in pro°
gress. In the Christian course. Orthodoxy lays the
chief stress on the commencement ; Liberal Chris-
tianity on the progress. The one wishes you to
begin the journey without seeming to care whether
you go forward ; the other urges you to go for-
ward, without inquiring whether you have begun
to o'O.'" ^ It ouo-ht to be understood that Dr. Clarke
thinks both these answers imperfect, but what we
are now concerned with is his testimony that there
are mam^ of those with whom he is associated who
" doubt the reality or deny the importance " of the
change known as conversion or regeneration. Such
doubts and denials are very common in circles still
further removed from the sympathies and activities
of the church.

Xor can we wonder that skepticism has arisen
respecting the reality of such changes. Those who

1 Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, p. 175.

224 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

watch the conduct of the multitudes who are an-
nually reported as having* passed through these
changes, in connection with the churches, may well
indulge this doubt. For it is a melancholy fact
that out of the thousands who every winter are
counted as converts, the great majority appear to
fall back very soon into their old ways. No very
clear change in their motives, tempers, purposes,
seems to have taken place. The experience appears
to have had more to do with their emotions than
with their principles of action or their habits of
life. And it must be owned that, in the teaching
and administration of all the churches, much more
emphasis has generally been put upon certain emo-
tional accompaniments of conversion than upon
the change of character. In the first twenty-five
years of my life I passed through a great many
^revivals ; from my eighth year onward, I was in-
tensely interested in them : I know as well as any
human being can know what kinds of experiences
and effects were emphasized in the preaching and
the revival methods of at least three different de-
nominations ; and it is the simple truth that the
main interest of these meetings was in the emo-
tional effects produced by them. If a man was
sorely depressed in his feelings for a season, and if
that depression gave way to a feeling of exhilara-
tion or elation, it was deemed a clear case of con-
version. The whole machinery of the revival was
managed with a view to producing these two states
of feeling. The success of the revival largely de-

CONVERSION 225

pended on the power of the revivalist to play upon
the feelings of his hearers.

Now I am far from wishing that religion should
be divorced from emotion, or from denying that
even such methods as these do often result in deep
and lasting changes of character ; but I say that
the tendency of much of what has been known as
revivalism has been to exalt the emotional elements
of the change unduly, and quite to neglect the
proper direction of the intellect, the conscience,
and the will ; and therefore a large proportion of
those swept into the churches on these tides of feel-
ing are like the seed sown in the rocky places
which has no deepness of earth to root in, and
which, when the sun is up, withers away. Our
towns and cities are full of these people. Of
the adult Protestants in America, who are now
wholly outside of all church influences, I dare say
that it would be found, if the facts were known,
that a very large majority have been through such
an experience as this, in connection with some re-
vival. Many of them are now incorrigible skep-
tics concerning this change which men call conver-
sion. They will tell you that they have been
through it themselves, and they know that there is
nothing in it.

All such facts, and it must be owned that there
are too many of them, furnish basis for the doubt
and denial with which we are dealing. They do
undoubtedly justify us in admitting that there is
much which goes by the name of conversion and

226 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

regeneration which is spurious and unreaL But it
is not easy to prove a negative of the sort we are
considering. One could easily show that ninety-
nine hundredths of all the ornaments and objects
that look like gold are not gold, — that they are
brass or pinchbeck or gilded ware. But that does
not prove that there is no such thing as gold ", it
rather goes to show that there must be such a
thing and that it is a very precious thing.

Let us go back to the question. Degeneration,
we said, is an undoubted fact. Is it, then, credible
that there can be no such thing as regeneration ?
Is the downward path the only one open to human
souls ? Is the universe so ordered that a man may
freely go toward ruin, but cannot turn from that
path and set his face toward the perfection of his
manhood ? That would be the utterance of the
dismalest kind of pessimism. The fact that man
can deteriorate is a fact that sometimes calls loud
for explanation ; but if you should couple with
that the belief that improvement is impossible, that
there is no turning back from the downward road,
the stars would be blotted from the sky. No
right-minded man would want to live in such a
world as that.

The first reason, then, for believing that it is
possible for men to turn from the ways of death to
the ways of life is found in our faith that there is
a God and that He is good. This is the starting-
point of all our thinking, and it is the one truth, as
we saw in our first lecture, which rests on the firm-

CONVERSION 227

est foundations. If there is a God who knows and
loves ns, the ways of life must be open to our feet
as well as the ways of death.

The second reason for believing it is that all lit-
erature and all language assume the possibility of
such a change in the direction of human conduct.
The Bible, which, whatever else may be said about
it, is by all reasonable men admitted to be the su-
preme manual of human conduct, asserts or implies
on every page that men may cease to do evil and
learn to do well. There is no great epic in the
world's literature which does not rest on this as-
sumption. The common speech of men always and
everywhere bears witness to it.

The third reason for believing it is that we have
seen the thing taking place. We have seen men,
under the influence of the highest motives, with
the expression of trust in God and prayer to Him,
turning from evil courses and beginning lives of
faith and virtue. Some of us have the record of
scores and hundreds of such cases ; we have seen
the better life, thus consciously begun, go on with-
out interruption till the day of death.

The fourth reason for believing it is the witness
of consciousness. We know that we have the
power to choose the better life and to struggle
toward it. Even if we are crippled by heredity
and borne down by a hostile environment, we can
turn our faces upstream and swim against the cur-
rent. The voice that bids us cast away our trans-
gressions and make ourselves a new heart and a

228 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

new spirit, to turn ourselves and live, is a voice
that speaks with authority. Every man knows
when he hears it that he ought to obey it ; and be-
cause he ought therefore he can. It is not neces-
sary to carry the case beyond the court of con-
science. Every one who reads this, and who knows
that he is suffering moral degeneration, knows also
that he ought to stop in that downward career and
go the other way.

The change involves the reenthronement of the
ideal. The resolve which expresses it is simply
this : *' What I ought to be I will be." Instead
of weakly surrendering to the baser impulses, the
man resolves that the law of his mind, — the ideal,
— and not the law in his members, shall rule his
life. In fact, it is simply a struggle to regain lost
manhood and womanhood. Degeneratiou has been
<roino: on ; the character has fallen awav from the
manly or womanly type ; the determination is to
stop this process of waste and destruction, to re-
cover what has been lost, to rebuild what is falling
into decay.

Doubtless, when this becomes a serious purpose,
the question will soon arise what manner of man
I ought to be. If the ideal has been dimmed by
disobedience we desire to have its beauty restored.
There is no use in aiming at anything below the
best. The ideal must be perfection. We may
Dot reach it, but we must aim at nothing below it.
" Be ye therefore perfect," is the only command
that is ever heard by the awakened moral nature

CONVERSION 229

turning away from the evil. To accept any lower
standard is to stultify conscience and make failure
certain. Suppose the draughtsman should say,
" I will not try to make this straight line perfectly
straight, or this circle perfectly round ; " suppose
the builder should say, "I will not try to build
this wall or this column perfectly perpendicular."
Doubtless there will be imperfections in all this
work if the workman do his best ; but perfection
is the only thing he can try for. It is just so with
character. The man who knows that he has been
sinking below himself feels that there is no salva-
tion for him except as he rises above himself.
And no man can lift himself by taking hold of
himself. He must take hold of something above
him. His own imperfections afford him neither
pattern nor inspiration. He must lay hold on the
infinite perfection.

Thus it is that it becomes the logical, rational,
natural thing for the man who turns from the
downward path to turn to God. Any man who
believes in God must turn to God when he turns
from sin. In the far country, his first sane thought
is of his Father's house, and his first right word is,
" I will arise and go to my Father." For any man
who believes in God, turning from wrong and turn-
ing to God are one and the same thing. " For
any man who believes in God," I say ; but of
course I mean any man who believes in the God
that you and I have been taught to believe in.
There are gods many and lords many ; the God of

230 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

whom from our childhood we have been taught is
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is from Him that we have learned what we
know about God ; it is the conception that He has
given us which arises in our thought whenever we
begin to think of that infinite perfection which
lays its commands upon us. " Be ye therefore
perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect."
He is one who loves us all, even the unthankful
and the evil ; who meets the returning prodigal a
long way off ; who follows the wanderer into the
wilderness and brings him home. It is our belief
that the Infinite Perfection is Infinite Compas-
sion which makes it possible to repent and return
from our evil ways. And we have been made to
believe this by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the
scientific, the historical fact, as Professor Harris
has told us : " Only one answer can be given to
the question how the belief in God's character was
created. It came from Jesus ; and it was from the
life even more than from the words of Jesus. . . .
All that came to the surface in expression, words
spoken, deeds done, endurance of indignities, brav-
ing of ignominious death, — all welled up out of
his consciousness of God the Father living in him,
speaking and working through him, shining out in
the relation of Fatherhood and Sonship. This is
how the belief in God's Fatherhood came to the
world. He vitalized it, just by being in the world
and living out that life of unbroken union with the
Father. Looking abroad we are confused. Look-

CONVERSION 231

ing at him we see God in tlie character of love.
The Fatherhood of God, with all it involves, with
the faith and hope it inspires, was given to the
belief of men in that personality whose life was
rooted in God and whose teaching, service, suffer-
ing, and triumph expressed the very character of
God. As Jesus is in character so God is. All
this has implications concerning the person of
Christ which need not now be considered. But
Jesus did make men believe that God is a good
and loving Father, who welcomes them, however
bad they may have been, when they return to
him with penitence and trust as little children.
Jesus is the point of connection between men and
God. The divine life flashes through him, becomes
visible in his perfect humanity, and thrills into
the life of men. With one hand he clasps the
hand of man ; with the other he clasps the hand of
God, and transmits the life of God to man." ^

Mark you, I am not saying that no man ever
found his way to the Father except through Jesus
Christ : in every nation devout and penitent souls
find Him, and trust in Him ; I am only saying that
for you and me Jesus Christ has been the revealer,
the mediator. Our conceptions of God have come
through him. Others, I do not doubt, may have
seen the glories of the great Salon Carre in the
Louvre by rushlight, or torchlight, or lamplight ;
I know that I saw them by sunlight, and I doubt if
there can be any better light in which to see them.

1 M(yral Evolution, p. 314.

232 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

And you and I, whether we know it or not, whether
we wish it or not, have learned what we know about
God through Jesus Christ. It is through Him
that we have been made to believe in the divine
compassion, and are filled with the hopes of divine
help and succor when we turn from our evil ways.

I have used the two words, conversion and re-
generation, interchangeably, as if they meant the
same thing. I have done so because in our expe-
rience there is no possibility of distinguishing them.
Conversion, if we must make a distinction, signifies
that part of the cliange which has to do with our
own conscious purposes and choices. Regeneration
describes the divine influences which act upon us,
softening our hearts, awakening our consciences,
arousing our nobler feelings. When the Prodigal
sat there musing in the fields, and the thought of
his home and his father was borne into his heart,
and he saw how willful and foolish he had been,
the work of regeneration was going on within him ;
and when he said, " I wiU arise and go unto my
father," that was conversion.

Which of these is first in the order of grace? I
suppose that regeneration must be, because God is
first in everything ; He is the Author of all life ; it
is in Him that we live and move and have our
being. But in the order of experience there is
neither first nor last. No man is regenerated till
his own will has responded to the divine influence ;
no man can be converted without the aid of the
divine spirit any more than he can see without

CONVERSION 233

light or breathe without air. Which is the first
condition of fire, fuel or flame ? It is difficult to
see how there can be fire without somethins^ to
burn, or how the fuel can burn until the flame or
the spark is brought to it. Each is conditional for
the other.

But the action of this divine Spirit, which re-
stores our souls, which gently leads us back from
our wanderings into the ways of life, is silent and
subtle and manifold in its workings. It is the
Spirit of life ; and life has just as many ways
of coming to light, just as many types and forms
and manifestations in the spiritual world, as in the
physical world. Some people think that the pro-
cess of conversion is a stereotyped routine ; that
there is a mill to go through, and that everybody
must go in at the hopper and come out at the
shoot ; that unless you have had the regulation
experience your conversion is not genuine. There
are many to whom it is incredible that any man
should begin to live a new life without going
through a course at the mourners' bench. Yet
Jesus says that the influence of the Spirit upon the
human soul is like the summer wind, whicli " blow-
eth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence
it Cometh nor whither it goeth," — subtle, myste-
rious, unobserved in its silent approaches. By a
thousand different avenues it finds its way into our
lives. Something makes us serious and thought-
ful ; the shadow of a divine discontent falls gently
upon the landscape of our thought ; the unworthi-

234 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

ness of our aims, the poverty of our gains begin to
trouble us ; visions of a larger and nobler life pass
before us, beckoning and calling. Such thoughts
may come as we muse alone at the eventide, look-
ing away to the fading light in the western sky
and to the steadfast stars above us. They may
come to us as we walk the prowded streets and scan
the eager faces, and think how many are seeking
the good of life and how few there be that find it.
They may come to us in some moment of defeat,
when we are suddenly made aware of pov/ers wasted
and ambitions gone astray. They may come to us
— these heavenly visitants — in the hour of be-
reavement : —

" With silence only as their benediction,
God's ang'els come,
Where in the shadow of a deep affliction
The sonl sits dumb."

But most often, I think, the new desires for better
life are kindled in us by the touch upon our lives
of some nature purer and better than our own,
which reproves us, and charms us, and inspires us
with new hope. The divine Spirit may reveal the
Christ to us in many ways, but most of us have ,
seen him first in some good man or woman. The
life is the light of men — always was, and ever
shall be. There is regenerating power in holy hu-
man lives. This is the way God means to convey
his grace, by living epistles, from parent to child,
from teacher to pupil, from lover to lover, from
friend to friend. There is a subtle energy in high

CONVERSION 235

spiritual character, the effluence of which is deeply
felt by all who come within its sphere. The great
poets have all felt this, none more deeply than
Browning. His poetry says everywhere. Professor
Corson tells us, " that through conversion, through
wheeling into a new centre its spiritual system, the
soul attains to saving truth." Perhaps the most
striking instance of this in Browning's poetry is
shown us in the character of Caponsacchi, in " The
Ring and the Book." This gay young priest,
with none too keen a conscience, and with all his
thoughts of life and conduct perverted by the low
standards of his brother ecclesiastics, is brought
into close touch with Pompilia, the whitest, purest,
womanliest soul in all fiction, and the regenerating
effect of her life upon his is one of the most beauti-
ful incidents in literature. The story, as Capon-
sacchi himself tells it, " admits us," as Corson says,
" to the very heart of Browning's poetry, — admits
us to the great Idea . . . which no other poet . . .
has brouo'ht out with the same deOTee of distinct-
ness, — the great Idea which may be variously
characterized as that of soul-kindling, soul-quicken-
ing, adjustment of soul-attitude, regeneration, con-
version, through personality.^''^ Pompilia had
laid her commands on this stranger, calling him as
a true knight of God to deliver her ; she had
greatly trusted and honored him ; the subtle en-
ergy of her pure soul had struck through and trans-
figured his, and he passed from her presence into
1 Introduction to Browning's Poetry, p. 59.

236 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

newness of life. Thus he tells the judges what
happened : —

*' ' Thought ? ' nay, Sirs, what shall follow was not thought ;
I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard.
I have stood before, gone round a serious thing.
Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close,
As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.
God and man, and what duty I owe both, —
I dare to say I have confronted these
In thought : but no such faculty helped here.
I pat forth no thought, — powerless, all that night
I paced the city : it was the first Spring.
By the invasion I lay passive to,
In rushed new things, the old were rapt away ;
Alike abolished — the imprisonment
Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world
That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn the ground)
Soar to the sky, — die well and you do that.

" Sirs, I obeyed. Obedience was too strange, —

This new thing that had been struck into me

By the look o' the lady, — to dare disobey

The first authoritative word. 'T was God's.

I had been lifted to the level of her.

Could take such sounds into my sense. I said
' We too are cognizant o' the Master now ;

She it is bids me bow the head ; how true,

I am a priest ! I see the function here ;

I thought the other way self-sacrifice :

This is the true, seals up the perfect sum.

I pay it, sit down, silently obey.' "

From this hour the man is changed ; he makes
you see and feel that old things had passed away ;
that all things had become new ; the work had
been wrought in him by the transforming power of
a high and pure personality.

CONVERSION 237

Browning is not, you see, afraid of spiritual
crises. He believes in them. He thinks that no
better thing can happen to a man than to be
roused, startled, shaken out of himself by some
great experience. So he sings : —

" Oh, we 're sunk enoug-h here, God kuows !

But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure though seldom, are denied us.

When the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,

And apprise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way,

To its triumph or undoing,

" There are flashes struck from midnights.

There are fire-flames noondays kindle.
Whereby piled-up honors perish,

Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle,
While just this or that poor impulse,

Which for once had play unstifled,
Seems the sole work of a lifetime,

That away the rest have trifled." ^

It is in these critical hours of our experience that
new conceptions of the meaning of life come to us,
and we are renewed in the spirit of our minds.

Such is the verdict of a great master of the lore
of the spirit. " With Mr. Browning," says Ed-
ward Dowden, " the moments are most glorious . . .
in which a resolution that changes the current of life
has been taken in reliance upon that insight which
vivid emotion bestows; and those periods of our
history are charged most fully with moral purpose

1 Cristina.

238 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

which take their direction from moments such as
these."

If these things are so, it is not only true that
there is such a thing as conversion, but it is prob-
able that it is a much more common thing, a much
more homely and reasonable thing, than we have
sometimes supposed. It is not only in the sanctu-
ary and before the altar that this great experience
comes to us. It may come even to the infant, ly-
ing on its mother's breast, and looking into her
face. By the mother's holy love, the child's soul
may be transfigured, its tendencies to selfishness
and animalism checked, its better impulses rein-
forced. More is done. Dr. Bushnell says, " to fix
the moral and religious character of children be-
fore the age of language than after." The shrine
at which most true conversions occur is the mo-
ther's knee. But there are numberless other ex-
periences in which the same transforming in:^uence
falls upon the life, and changes the current of its
thoughts and purposes, arresting the processes of
moral decay, and turning the soul toward the firm
choice of its own ideal. I am fain to believe that a
great many men and women, whose names are not
written on the rolls of the churches, have known
the substance of this change which we call conver-
sion, and are following the leadings of God's spirit
toward the goal of perfect manhood and woman-
hood.

Yet I am equally convinced that there are many
men and women who have not as yet passed

CONVERSION 239

through it, and to whom it is the one thing needful.
Some of them are members of the church and some
are not. But the one thing that seems clear con-
cerning them is that degeneration is the word that
best describes them. They are becoming less truth-
ful, less honorable, less pure, less kind, more reck-
less, more self-indulgent, more absorbed in things
of the earth. They are going in this downward
road against the protest of their own better na-
tures, against the strivings of the Spirit of God.
What they need is conversion. Culture will never
do ; they must stop short in the road they are
traveling and go the other way. They must re-
enthrone the ideal to which they have so long been
disobedient. They must highly resolve that hence-
forth the law of the mind, and not the law of the
members, shall bear rule in their lives, that by
God's grace they will become the men and women
that they ought: to be. They went down by sur-
rendering, they must go up by fighting. They
must call on Him who has kindled this desire in
their hearts to help them in realizing it. And
they must put themselves into an environment that
will feed and stimulate the better elements of their
lives instead of the baser ones. For all who will
do this there is life and hope and the promise of
victory.

XII

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM

" What is the use of the sacraments ? " is the
question now before us.

A sacrament — sacramentum — in the Roman
usage sometimes signified the oath taken by sol-
diers at the time of their first enlistment, and some-
times a sum of money deposited as security with a
court by a suitor in entering upon litigation. The
unsuccessful litigant forfeited this deposit to " sa-
cred uses." This was the word which, in the West-
ern Church, was applied to certain ceremonials of
religion. It 73 not easy to connect the Latin word
with the Christian rite ; perhaps the notion of a
vow or pledge was in the minds of those who first
spoke of these ceremonies as sacraments. The
word is not in the New Testament ; I am not sure
at what date the Christians first began to use it.

In the Greek provinces this word was not used.
^''Mysterioii " was the name which the Greek
Fathers applied to these solemnities. That word
denoted any secret which had been revealed, and
especially the secret religious ceremonies practiced
in the worship of the gods of Greece. Thus, in
the earlier days, the Greek Christians described as

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 241

mysteries what the Latins then knew, and we now
know, as the sacraments.

In the early church it would appear that but
two of these rites possessed a sacramental charac-
ter ; as the ecclesiasticism developed itself, others
were added until no less than seven sacraments
were recognized, — baptism, confirmation, the eu-
charist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and
matrimony. The Reformation reduced the number
of sacraments to the original two observed by the
apostolic churches, baptism and the Lord's Supper.
The twenty-fifth of the English Articles of Reli-
gion says : " There are two sacraments ordained of
Christ our Lord in the gospel, that is to say. Bap-
tism and the Supper of the Lord. Those five
commonly called sacraments, that is to say. Con-
firmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Ex-
treme Unction, are not to be counted as sacraments
of the gospel, being such as have grown partly out
of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are
states of life allowed in the Scriptures, but yet
have not like nature of sacraments with Baptism
and the Lord's Supper, for that they have not any
visible sign or ceremony ordained of God." This
is a fair statement of the attitude of the Reformed
Churches toward this question of the number of
sacraments. We are speaking for the Reformed
Churches, and are considering therefore only those
which they recognize.

The origin of baptism, to which at the present
time we shall confine our study, is not altogether

242 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

clear. That it was adopted from the first as the
initial rite, by which men were received into the
Christian society, is not doubted. This initiation
was accompanied by the application of water, in
some way, to the person. But this ceremony was
not invented for the Christian community. It was
borrowed or adapted from something that had
previously existed. This is almost the universal
fact. The forms of ecclesiastical usage, the forms
of ritual, are rarely manufactured out of whole
cloth ; like political and social usages and forms
they are generally taken over from previous sys-
tems and altered somewhat to suit present needs.
These ceremonial usages are largely the product of
evolutionary forces, growths whose beginnings we
can find in the earliest ages and often connected
with crude ideas and barbarous lives.

" Curious minds," says Professor Allen, " may
seek to antedate the origin of these venerable rites,
carrying it back into pre-Christian ages, even to
savage customs before the beginning of history.
But we must learn to outgrow the fallacy that the
origin of a custom neutralizes its validity ; for cer-
tainly no cruder, grosser origin could be demon-
strated than is now set forth by the scientific prin-
ciple of evolution for the origin and descent of
man. If Jews or heathens can be shown to have
anticipated such rites as these it only confirms their
significance. We have got beyond the old apolo-
getic which sought to prove that Christianity in
its doctrines or ethics or practice was something

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 243

entirely new to the world. Its coincidences with
older religions or older ethical systems are so many
fresh illustrations of its truth." ^

The immediate historical connection of Christian
baptism is with the baptism of John the forerun-
ner. John's baptism was primarily a baptism of
repentance ; it signified the putting away of the
old sins, and the cleansing of the life ; but it must
have meant more than this, or Jesus would not
have submitted to it. It must have possessed a
social as well as an individual significance. I think
that it denoted the formation of a new society to
which by this simple ceremonial men were admit-
ted. Probably the meaning of it was that the whole
people had become so defiled and perverted in
thought and life that a new Israel, a spiritual
Israel, must be called forth and consecrated, and
this was the form of admission into the new society,
the kingdom of heaven. The baptism of Jesus
was his initiation into this new society, of which he
was indeed the head, but of which he would also
be a member, identified with his brethren, and not
separate from them. So that Christian baptism is
thus really a continuation of John's baptism, a de-
velopment out of it, carrying over the same central
idea and adding to it other and higher concep-
tions.

We are expressly told that our Lord himself
never baptized. His disciples were attached to him
by no ceremonies or formalities whatever. Yet
1 Christian Institutions, p. 400.

244 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

v»^hen, in Jerusalem, on and after Pentecost, ad-
herents were added to the Christian community,
baptism was administered to them. That was the
ceremony by which they signified their intention of
being known as his followers. The apostles pro-
claimed this as requisite for enrollment in the new
commnnity.

This initiatory rite involved two ideas : (1) The
candidates were baptized " in the name of Jesus
Christ." This implied a confession of faith in him
as the Messiah and a vow of loyalty to him. His
name was named upon them ; they owned that
thej'- were his men ; they wore his favors ; they
wished to be counted among his followers. Bap-
tism was the sacramental oath of their enlistment
in his service. (2) They were also baptized " for
the remission of sins." This was quite in keeping
with all the Jewish ideas connected with the rites of
purification. Such a symbolical cleansing from past
offenses was part of their own ritual. Doubtless
the one great sin from which baptism on the day
of Pentecost signified the absolution was the sin
of putting to death the Messiah. But doubtless,
also, they understood that with this sin they must
seek to be cleansed from all their other transgres-
sions,— to turn over a new leaf, and begin life
afresh. This is that appeal of a good conscience,
which Peter says that baptism is ; the application
to the body of pure water signified the desire to
be " cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and
the spirit," and the faith that those who thus iden-

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 245

tified themselves in heart and life with Jesus
Christ would obtain from him the inspiration and
help by which they should gain this inward purity.

Several interesting facts come to light as we
study the customs of the early Christians in the
light of all the new learning. The exploration of
documents and monuments has made some thinsfs
plain wMch were formerly in doubt. There seems
to be little question that the Christians of the ear-
liest times usually baptized by immersion. There
was no hard and fast rule about it, but that mode
was preferred. The references to the ordinance in
the earliest writers bear this interpretation. One
of the best and most authoritative sources is that
little book entitled " The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles," which was discovered and published only
a few years ago. This book was written as early as
the middle of the second century, not more than
fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, and
it gives a clear account of the observances of the
Christians of that time, in the form of specific di-
rections to the churches and their ministers. Its
words about ba23tism are as follows : —

." Now concerning baptism, thus baptize ye : hav-
ing first uttered all these things [having repeated
the rules of conduct by which Christians must gov-
ern their lives] baptize into the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in
running water. But if thou hast not running
water, baptize in other water ; and if thou canst
not in cold, then in warm. But if thou hast neither,

246 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

pour water upon the head thrice, into the name of
Father and Son and Spirit."

This makes it clear that the preference of these
early Christians was for baptism by immersion in
a river ; the use of a baptistery or tank would not
have seemed good to them, though it would have
been allowed if no stream were accessible ; and
so would the method of affusion when that was
more convenient. The decisive fact is that the
mode ivas not imperative ; any reverent applica-
tion of water to the body answered the require-
ments of these sensible believers. Naturally, as
men's conceptions became broader and more spir-
itual, less and less emphasis would be placed on
that which was merely outward. The question
of the mode became more and more a question of
indifferency. The further general adoption of
affusion resulted from putting less emphasis on
the external form.

. It is also probable that the baptism of infants
was unknown in the days of the apostles. The
supposed references to infant baptism in the New
Testament are dubious, and the arguments which
seek to show that it must have taken the place
of the Jewish rite of circumcision are far from con-
clusive. There is not a hint of it in the " Teach-
ing of the Twelve Apostles." " It is possible,"
says Professor Allen, " that infant baptism was
practiced to some extent from the first, or even
that it was administered by the apostles. But
there is no demonstrative evidence on this point to

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 247

which we can appeal. That the prevailing custom
in the early church was adult baptism is admitted.
Evidence that a change was taking place is abun-
dant in the third century." ^ " Even among Chris-
tian households," says Dean Stanley, "the in-
stances of Chrysostom, Gregory, Nazianzen, Basil,
Ephrem of Edessa, Augustine, Ambrose, are
decisive proofs that [the baptism of infants] was
not only not obligatory, but not usual. All these
distinguished personages had Christian parents,
and yet were not baptized until they reached matu-
rity."2

By many persons this admission will be regarded
as decisive evidence that the practice of infant
baptism is not warranted in the modern church.
But this is not clear, ^e are doing a great many
things to-day that those Christians of the first cen-
turies never dreamed of doing : we ought to have
a much larger conception of the meaning of Chris-
tianity than they ever had. Perhaps the admis-
sion of children to baptism may be due to a higher
and truer view of the Christian society than was
vouchsafed to them.

We must not, however, deny that some supersti-
tious and unworthy reasons were mingled with the
higher and nobler ones in bringing about this
chanofe. In truth the little children have had a
great deal to do, in one way and another, with the
development of our theology and our ethics ; our

1 Christian Institutions, p. 406.

2 Christian Institutions, p. 24.

248 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTEIXES?

relation to them Las brought out some of the worst
as well as some of the best traits of human nature,
and some of the darkest as well as some of the
brightest phases of siDeculative thought.

During these early Christian centuries infanti-
cide was fearfully prevalent throughout the Eoman
empire, and it is at least possible that the belief
in the damnation of infants was strengthened by a
Christian instinct which strove to suppress this
horrible crime. The Christian who reproved his
heathen neighbor for putting his little child to
death would naturally magnify the injury to the
child by emphasizing the misery to which it was
consigned after death. And this deepening sense
of possible peril to the little children may well
have led to the practice of infant baptism. Doubt-
less, too, the gradual growth of the belief in the
saving efficacy of baj^tism had much to do with
the introduction of the baptism of infants. Augus-
tine it was who, by his tremendous logic, forced
both these beliefs upon the church. That infants
were doomed to eternal death for Adam's sin and
that baptism is indispensable to salvation were
ideas with which he darkened the mind of the Chris-
tian church for a thousand 3'ears and more. Un-
der the spell of this horrible doctrine parents has-
tened to present their children at the font. This
was not indeed any guarantee of their salvation ;
for Augustine's dreadful decree of predestination
still huno^ its black shadow over them. Xo infant
could be saved who was not baptized ; but it was

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 249

far from being true that all baptized infants were
saved. God's electing grace never went outside
the visible church to save any one, infant or adult ;
his range of choice was strictly limited to those
inside the church ; all outside were reprobate,
whether or no ; among the baptized, he exercised
his sovereign prerogative, and saved such of them
as He was pleased to save. Children might not be
saved if they were baptized, but could not be unless
they were baptized. It was the prevalence of this
belief that made infant baptism universal in the
church after the middle of the fifth century.

Augustine's doctrine of predestination was con-
siderably modified by the Catholic theologians in
later years ; but his doctrine that baptism is in-
dispensable to salvation has held its ground in the
Eomau Catholic Church to this day. It is not now
believed by good Catholics that unbaptized infants
dying in infancy are tormented in hell fire ; they
are consigned to an abode of comparative comfort ;
but they are forever excluded from the presence of
God. And the belief of the extreme High Church
party in the Anglican Church is, I believe, sub-
stantially the same.

All this is very melancholy. To believe that the
Father in heaven can permit the little ones who
are taken out of this world before they come to
vears of discretion to be forever exiled from his
presence because of the neglect or the ignorance of
their parents, — because no consecrating drops of
water have fallen upon their foreheads, — is to take

250 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

a strange view of his character. And so far as the
prevalence of a belief like this has tended to bring
about the change from the adult baptism of the
apostolic days to the infant baptism of later days,
we may deplore the means, whatever we may say
of the end.

It is, however, true that God often makes the
wrath of man to praise Him ; and the modern prac-
tice may be a good one, even though the paths
which have led to it are dark and tortuous. Most
of those who in these days present their children
at the font for baptism do so, not because they
have any fear that the omission of the rite will con-
sign their children to perdition, but for other and
far worthier reasons. And I suppose that even
while the black spectre of infant damnation was
filling the minds of believers with terror, there was
growing in the church a larger conception of the
relation of men to one another and to God, which
made way for the admission of the children to the
rights and privileges of the Christian church.

" Adult baptism," says Professor Allen, " stood
for the principle of individualism, demanding in-
telligence as the condition of repentance and faith
and the personal vow of obedience as the ground
of its proper administration. But the social aim
of the chui'ch, looking to the welfare of all, taking
men in their collective capacity as a whole, the
need for an institution representing the solidarity of
the Christian world in its common hopes and fears
— this necessity influenced the transition from

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 251

adult to infant baptism. The principle of individ-
ualism, the characteristic of the church of the first
three centuries, was passing into desuetude. The
church had a work to do for the people which they
could not do for themselves. The obligation of
humanity to the church became universal. It was
to become no longer a question of ' joining the
church,' as the expression goes ; the union of indi-
viduals no longer created the church. The world
of man was henceforth to be created within the
church ; infants from their birth were to be re-
ceived into its fold. The transition at least bore
witness to the faith that all men were capable of
receiving a divine nurture, and that education is
the divine method of evoking the image of God in
man." ^

It is this idea of the solidarity of the generations
which finds expression in the ordinance of infant
baptism. It is the idea that families ought to be
Christian, and not individuals merely ; that there
is an organic social bond which Christianity should
recognize and sanctify. It is the idea that the
Christian community is one in which the whole
household should be included ; that it is not a so-
ciety which takes in parents and leaves out their
little children.

In the Society of Friends every one born of par-
ents belonging to the Society is a birthright mem-
ber. That is the idea which lies at the foundation
of infant baptism, though it has not been so frankly

1 Christian Institutions, p. 407.

252 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

avowed as it ought to have been. Is it not true
that the children of Christian parents should have
a birthright membership in the Christian commu-
nity, — in the kingdom of heaven ? Are they not
heirs of the kingdom? And should not the fact
of their inheritance be solemnly recognized and
declared ?

The state recognizes and affirms the fact that
our children are organically connected with it.
That parents should be members of the common-
wealth while their children are aliens would be an
intolerable conception. The children are not called
on to perform all the duties of citizenship until they
have attained to a certain age ; but the rights and
privileges of citizenship are theirs from the moment
of their birth. The youngest infant of either sex
in this city is just as much a citizen of Ohio and
of the United States as is Governor Bushnell or
President McKinley. The state is thus, in every
theory of her constitution, in the whole practice
of her administration, the mother of all the chil-
dren born within her jurisdiction. Shall the church
be less motherly than the state ?

This, I say, is the real belief which underlies the
modern practice of infant baptism. It is the belief
that the constitution of the Christian common-
wealth ought to be such that children should be
recognized as forming a part of it. For I do
not think that there is any intelligible theory of
infant baptism which does not recognize the bap-
tized children as members of the Christian Society,

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 253

just as truly members as the children are citizens
of the commonwealth ; not yet fully entered into
all the obligations of membership, but fully en-
titled to all the privileges of membership. It is
well that they should be called upon, when they
are old enough to understand what it means, to
come forward and assume for themselves these
obligations ; but let them feel from their earliest
childhood that they are not outside the fellowship
of the church, but within its sheltering arms and
under its nurturing care.

Three theories of infant baptism are now held
and taught : —

The first is that of the Roman Catholics and
High Anglicans, that baptism regenerates the soul ;
that in the rite of baptism a spiritual change is
wrought, by which original sin is purged away,
and a Christian character is imparted. I will not
dwell on this theory, for it is not likely that any of
us are inclined to believe it.

The second is the theory of the Reformed
Churches generally that infant baptism is the seal
of a covenant made by God with believers only ; a
promise that He will be their God and their chil-
dren's God. In baptism, it is supposed, believers
ratify that covenant and claim that promise, and
the children of the covenant are thus placed in a
more favorable condition and may expect a greater
measure of God's favor than other children not
thus consecrated. The ordinance, that is to say,
while it does not secure their regeneration, does

254 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

make some change in the relation which they sus-
tain to God.

I cannot bring myself to the acceptance of this
theory. I cannot believe that God cares any more
for the baptized children than for the unbaptized ;
nor that this act of its parents and the church
changes in any way his fatherly relation to anjr
little child.

The third theory assumes that the fact of the
diviue Fatherhood is a universal fact ; that every
child who is born into this world is God's child
when he is born. This is the fact which Jesus
came to reveal, — the one fundamental truth of
the Christian religion. All that any man needs to
do in order to secure his own salvation and to fulfill
his destiny is to accept that fact and conform his
conduct to it. To be filial and obedient children
of our Father in heaven is to fulfill all righteous-
ness. Now the rite of baptism simply declares
this fact of the Fatherhood of God, and solemnly
bears witness that this child is his child ; putting
upon him the name of the Father and the Son and
the Hol}^ Ghost ; publicly numbering him as one
of that great family which comprehends every fa-
therhood on earth and in heaven. The rite does
not make this child God's child ; it simply recog-
nizes and declares the fact. It does not change
God's relation to the child in any wise ; it only
joyfully confesses the relation which we believe to
exist between God and this child. I do not know
that I can more clearly present the true signifi-

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 255

cance of infant baptism, according to this view,
than by quoting the words which are spoken to
parents when they bring their children to my own
church to be baptized : —

"In presenting these children for baptism you
confess your faith in the imiversal Fatherhood of
Him who said, 'All souls are mine,' and in the tender
care and the redeeming love of Him who said, ' Of
such is the Kino-dom of heaven.' You brinof them
to Him that they may be baptized into His name,
and declared to be His children. You j^romise to
teach them, among the earliest lessons of their
lives, that they are His children ; that they owe to
Him the love of their hearts and the service of their
lives : that the beo-innino- of wisdom is to trust Him

o o

and obey Him. And you solemnly covenant with
Him to-day, that not only by the teaching of jouv
lips, but by the holy influence of consecrated lives
you will seek to reveal to them the mighty grace
which is able to save us from our sins, to comfort
us in our sorrows, and to bring us home to God.
Do you thus promise ? "

Thus the rite is intended to express and declare
the universal Fatherhood of God ; the child's rela-
tion to Him is the fact which it emphasizes. It
does not create this fact ; it simply confesses and
declares it. The child's relation to God is not
changed by baptism ; but the parents and the
church unite to acknowledge this relation, and pro-
mise to teach the child to accept it for himself.
The salvation of the child is not assured bv it : for

256 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

though he is one of God's children, he may be dis-
obedient and rebellious. The responsibility of the
parent to bring him up in the fear and love of God
is not created by this rite, for it existed before ;
but it is confessed by the parent, and witnessed by
the church. And the church, in whose name this
is done, does thus assume for itself a responsibility
for the child whose name is thus written upon her
roll, to surround him with good influences and seek
to guide his feet into the way of life.

Thus, to my mind, the rite of infant bajDtism is
the simple and sublime testimony to the most mo-
mentous fact which the human mind can entertain,
that every human beino- is a child of the eternal
Father, made to love Him, and know Him, and trust
in Him, fitted for communion with Him. Doubt-
less these children of ours inherit from us and from
those who have gone before us many infirmities
and evil tendencies ; doubtless there are eyil dispo-
sitions in them that will require the regenerating
grace of God ; but after all the one thing that
makes them precious is their inheritance of the
divine nature ; they are God's children in a deeper
sense even than they are our children : his image
is stamped on them, and they are made to grow up
in his love and in his likeness. If this is true it is
the one truth which means more than every other ;
the one truth which we ought to keep before our
own minds and before the minds of our children in
all our training of them ; and the rite which ex-
presses this great truth respecting the divine par-

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 257

entage of our cliildren and the destiny to which
God's love is calling them is one which, I think,
ought to appeal to the heart of every Christian
parent.

** In each such little child,*' says Dean Stanley,
" our Saviour saw, and we may see, the promise of
a glorious future. In those little hands folded in
unconscious repose, in those bright eyes first awak-
ening to the outer world, in that soft forehead un-
furrowed by the ruffle of care or sin, He saw, and
we may see, the undeveloped rudimental instru-
ments of the labor and intelligence and energy of
a whole life. And not only so, — not only in hope,
but in actual reality, does the blessing on little
children, whether as expressed in the gospel story
or as implied in infant baptism, acknowledge the
excellency and value of the childlike soul. Xot
once only in his life, but again and again he held
them up to his disciples as the best corrective of
the ambitions and passions of mankind." ^

If such is the significance of baptism when ad-
ministered to an infant, what does it signify when
administered to an adult ? Pundamentally the
same thing. What the child's parents declare re-
specting their child, the man declares for himself.
He has come to recognize the solemn and momen-
tous fact that he is God's child, and he wishes to
confess that fact and enroll himself as a member
of the household of faith. I do not know that
anything is involved in adult baptism which is not

1 Christian Institutions, p. 27.

258 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

expressed when you say that the man baptized ac-
knowledges and seeks to realize his filial relation to
his Father in heaven. Doubtless this must imply
penitence for past unfilial conduct, trust in the
divine forgiveness, and the wish and purpose to
seek the divine inspiration and help in living a
better life. And doubtless also in confessing the
universal Fatherhood, he must acknowledge the
human brotherhood, and seek to put himself into
brotherly relations with all men. It is all summed
up when we say that the man who intelligently
seeks Christian baptism simply expresses by that
rite his acceptance of the truth of the divine Fa-
therhood and the human brotherhood as revealed
to the world by Jesus Christ, and his wish and
purpose to follow Jesus Christ in conforming his
life to the great truths thus revealed.

But what is the use of the baptism? What
value has the mere act of sprinkling water upon
the forehead, with the pronunciation of a certain,
form of words ?

Of course this external rite possesses no inherent
efficacy. It is purely symbolic. But symbols have
their uses. Some of us care but little for them ;
to others they signify much. There is a ring on
somebody's finger that is not worth very much
as an article of merchandise, but that no money
would buy because of what it symbolizes. There
are faded flowers somewhere that you would not
willingly part with ; they tell you something that
you like to hear. There are buttons, badges, that

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 259

some of us wear — slight things, but very signifi-
cant. There is that flag flying from the dome over
yonder. AVhat is it ? A piece of weather-beaten
bunting ? It is a symbol, — the symbol of our na-
tionality. Is it not a silly thing, a childish thing,
for a great nation to have such a symbol ? Would
we not all be just as loyal, just as patriotic, without
it ? No. That flag has a great deal to do in edu-
cating, deepening, intensifying, the national feeling
of the American people. Human beings are so
made that their thought is awakened, their imagi-
nation kindled, their affection called forth by the
use of symbols. The Founder of our faith knew
men ; He knew that a simple symbolic rite, like
baptism, would be of gTeat service in gathering his
followers and building his kingdom. It has been
of immense value in all the past, and it will be in
all the future. It is destined to mean a great deal
more in the future than it has ever meant in the
past. When all the superstitions and heathenish
notions that have fastened upon it shall be stripped
away ; when it is no longer associated in men's
minds with anything like magic ; when it is under-
stood simply as the symbol of membership in that
great household of faith and love of which the Fa-
ther in heaven is the Head and Jesus Christ is the
Elder Brother, the number of those who claim it
for themselves and for their children will increase
and multiply, until the glad confession of the uni-
versal Fatherhood shall bring to the world the
thousand years of peace.

XIII

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD's SUPPER

The history of the sacrament of the Lord's Sup-
per is well worth studying. It would be interest-
ing, if it were possible to go into it carefully, to
present in picturesque detail the changes which
have taken place in the theory and in the adminis-
tration of this rite from the earliest ages to the
latest times and throughout the length and breadth
of Christendom. That would make a lively story.
The notions entertained have been so manifold and
curious, the usages followed so quaint and various,
that the narrative would afford a great deal of di-
version and not a little instruction. One is hardly
prepared to estimate rightly the forms and institu-
tions of our common Christianity until he has
traced their development through all its historical
stages. It is, however, but a few glimpses that we
shall get of this remarkable evolution ; those who
desire a graphic account of it will find it in Dean
Stanley's volume entitled " Christian Institutions."

We have the story of the first celebration of the
Supper in each of the first three Gospels ; the nar-
rative in John tells us of a last Supper of our Lord
with the twelve, but gives no hint of any emblem-

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 261

atic or sacramental character. In Mark's Gospel
we read that the Master and his disciples partook
of the passover feast together in an upper chamber
in Jerusalem ; " and as they were eating, he took
bread, and when he had blessed he brake it and
gave to them, and said. Take ye ; this is my body.
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks
he gave to them, and they all drank of it. And
he said unto them. This is my blood of the cove-
nant which is shed for many." Matthew adds to
this last phrase the words " unto remission of sins."
Luke adds the injunction, " This do in remem-
brance of me." It is a little strange that Mat-
thew and Mark both omit this memorial feature.
Neither of the first two Gospels gives us any hint
of any future observance of the Supper. In the
First Epistle to the Corinthians Paul, in a more
elaborate account of the first Supper, represents
the Lord as thrice repeating the idea that the sup-
per was to be eaten in remembrance of him, " to
show forth the Lord's death until he come." Un-
doubtedly Luke, who was a traveling companion
of Paul, reflects in his Gospel Paul's understand-
ing of the ordinance.

As to the manner of its first observance we have
ample sources of information. Stanley's descrip-
tion brings the scene clearly before us : —

" It was the evening feast, of which every Jew-
ish household partook on the night, as it might be,
before or after the Passover. They were collected
together, the Master and his twelve disciples, in

262 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

one of tlie large upper rooms above the open court
of the inn or caravanserai to which they had been
guided. The couches or mats were spread round
the room, as in all Eastern houses ; and on those
the guests lay reclined, three on each couch, ac-
cording to the custom derived from the universal
usage of the Greek or Roman world. The ancient
Jewish usage of eating the Passover standing had
given w^ay, and a symbolical meaning was given to
what w^as in fact a more social fashion, that they
might lie there like kings, with the ease becoming
free men.

" There they lay, the Lord in the midst, next to
him the beloved disciple, and next to him the eldest,
Peter. Of the position of the others we know no-
thing. There was placed on the table, in front of
the guests, one, two, perhaps four cups or rather
bowls. There is at Genoa a bowl w^hich professes
to be the original chalice, — a mere fancy, no doubt,
— but probably representing the original shape.
This bowl was filled with wine mixed up wath wa-
ter. The wine of old times was always mixed with
water. . . . Beside the cup was one or more of the
large thin Passover calies of unleavened bread,
such as may still, at the Paschal season, be seen in
all Jewish houses. It is this of which the outw^ard
form has been preserved in the thin round wafer
which is used in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran
churches. It was the recollection of the unleav-
ened bread of the Israelites when they left Eg}^3t.
As the wine was mixed with water, so the bread

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 2G3

was probably served up with fish. The two always
went together. We see examples of it in the ear-
lier meals in the Gospel, and so doubtless it was in
this last. Close beside this cake was another re-
collection of the Passover, — a thick sop, which
was supposed to be like the Egyptian clay and in
which the fragments of the Paschal cake were
dipped. Round the table, leaning on each other's
breasts, reclining on those couches, were the twelve
disciples and their Master. From mouth to mouth
passed to and fro the eager inquiry and the startled
look when they heard that one of them should be-
tray him. Across the table and from side to side
were shot the earnest questions from Peter, from
Jude, from Thomas, from Philip. In each face
might have been traced the character of each re-
ceiving a different impression from what he saw
and heard — and in the midst of all this the ma-
jestic, sorrowful countenance of the Master of the
Feast as he drew toward him the several cups and
the thin transparent cake, and pronounced over
each the Jewish blessing with those few words
which have become immortal." ^

Such was the scene in the upper chamber. It
was the same night in which he was betrayed —
the last night of his life on the earth. Is it any
wonder that the incidents of this Supper made a
deep impression upon his disciples ? Even if he
had laid no commands on them, it Avould have been
very natural for them to commemorate in some

1 Christian Institutions, pp. 35, 36.

264 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

way an event so full of tender significance. And
it seems clear tliat some snch commemoration was
observed by them very soon after his death. The
character of this observance was not, however, at
the beginning anything like what we now know as
the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It began in an
institution known as the Agape or Love-Feast.
The disciples were wont, in the earliest days, to
come together, as many of them as could every
evening, for their ordinary evening meal. Very
strong was the feeling among them that they were
one family ; they made that fact manifest in all
their social relations. That there was a thoroughly
organized communism may be doubted, but the
spirit was there that made all things common.
When there were too many of them to meet in one
assembly they came together evening after evening
in little groups, — neighborhood sociables, we might
almost call them, — and had their supper together.
Always at these suppers the broken bread and the
common cup commemorated the crucified and risen
Lord. Every such social supper was a Lord's
Supper. The distinction between the sacred and
the secular was obliterated. There was no special
sacramental service, such as we now celebrate.

Paul gives us, in his first letter to the Corinthi-
ans, the reason why the service which we now re-
gard as sacramental was separated from the social
feast. Abuses had crept into this common obser-
vance. The disciples were hardly spiritual enough
to keep this celebration up to the high-water mark

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 265

at which it originated. They began to use it as an
occasion of feasting ; and instead of emphasizing
the common life of the brotherhood, it gave oppor-
tunity for selfish greediness and coarse disregard
for the feelings and the rights of others. Those
who came early ate up all the provision, even gor-
ging themselves, so that those who came late had
nothing left. This state of things Paul sharply
reproves. "When therefore ye assemble your-
selves together," he says, " it is not possible to eat
the Lord's Supper ; for in your eating each one
taketh before other his own supper ; and one is
hungry and another is drunken. What? have ye
not houses to eat and to drink in ? or despise ye
the church of God and put to shame them that
have not ? What shall I say unto you ? Shall I
praise you in this ? I praise you not. . . . Where-
fore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat,
wait one for another. If any man is hungry let
him eat at home, that your coming together be not
unto judgment." ^

For such reasons the sacramental and the social
gatherings gradually fell apart, and while the love-
feasts were maintained for several centuries — in
some portions of the church longer than in other
portions — the Lord's Supper was finally separated
from them, and became a strictly religious cere-
mony, gradually taking upon itself a character
quite different from that which was given to it in
the apostolic days. Some of these changes will be
indicated in the briefest manner.

1 1 Cor. xi.

266 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

The posture of the disciples at the first supper
was, as we have seen, a reclining posture. No-
where in the world is this form now observed. In
some cnurches the communicants receive the sacra-
ment standing, in some sitting, in some kneeling ;
while the Pope, for his part, because of a long dis-
pute as to what his attitude should be, has appar-
ently adopted one which is slightly ambiguous, and
leans upon his chair in such a way as to make it
difficult for onlookers to determine whether he is
sitting or standing. If form or mode is an essential
element of a sacrament, I see not why the form
or mode is not as important in the one sacrament
as in the other ; and if the example of our Lord
and his apostles is to be strictly followed, nobody
in the world is properly observing the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper. I presume that we shall ad-
mit that the posture is not a vital matter ; that the
sacrament may be just as profitably administered
in another mode than that followed by our Lord
and the twelve, — to those who are standing, or
kneeling, or sitting, as religiously as to those who
are lying down.

The time of the observance has also been
changed, nearly or quite universally. It was ori-
ginally, as we have seen, coupled with the evening
meal ; and the name of the Supper still clings
to it in our usage — still more closely in the Ger-
man name of Abendmahl. In the second century,
however, for various prudential reasons it was
changed to an early morning hour ; and now

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 267

tliroLighout the world this is the ordinary obser-
vance. Some of those who make most of it put
great emphasis on the necessity of early commun-
ion, and think that it is not properly adminis-
tered at any other time of the day.

The form of the bread in the ancient church was
•that of flat circular cakes, such as we may see in
Jewish homes about Easter time. Some of the
churches, stickling for small things, have tried to
preserve this form. But " it is evident," as Dean
Stanley says, " that the Roman and Lutheran
churches, by adhering to the literal form of the old
institution, have lost its meaning; and the Reformed
churches, whilst certainly departing from the origi-
nal form, have preserved the meaning. The bread
of common life, which was in the first three centu-
ries represented by the thin unleavened cake, is
now represented by the ordinary loaf." ^

Both bread and wine were originally given to all
the communicants. For certain reasons the cup
was withheld from the laity, during the Middle
Ages, and the dispute over this question between
Catholics and Reformers resulted in bloody wars.
In this quarrel neither side can be wholly justified.
The withholding of the cup from the laity was the
result of a fear lest the consecrated wine, which
had been transformed into the blood of the Re-
deemer, might be spilled on the ground. That
seems to us a superstitious fear. But the Catholic
doctrine was that the real presence of the Saviour

1 Christian Institutions, p. 53.

268 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

was in either of the consecrated elements ; and that
a communicant who had partaken of one of them
had received aU the grace that the sacrament could
impart. This was, in effect, saying that the effi-
cacy of the sacrament was not dependent on the
material elements, which was, in one sense, a
broader and more spiritual view than that of the-
Reformers. " When the Bohemian Utraquists,"
says Dean Stanley, " fought with desperate energy
to recover the use of the cup, they were in one sense
doubtless fighting the cause of the laity against the
clergy, of old Catholic latitude against modern Ro-
man restrictions. But with that obliquity of pur-
pose which sometimes characterizes the fiercest
ecclesiastical struggles, the Roman Church, on the
other hand, was fighting the battle of an enlarged
and liberal view of the sacraments against a fanat-
ical insistence on the necessity of a detailed con-
formity to ancient usage." ^

There was small reason, however, for sympathy
for either party. The superstition of the one side
matched the narrowness of the other. The Bohe-
mian reformers won a temporary victory, and car-
ried the communion cup on a pole, as the banner
of their triumphant legions ; but their triumph was
of short duration ; the thing they had fought for
was not worth winning, and they soon relapsed into
abject conformity to the old ritual.

Later Reformers, however, restored the use of
the cup ; the Roman Catholic Church alone with-

^ Christian Institutions, p. 104.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 269

holds it from the laity. In the Greek Church the
bread and wine are mingled, and administered to
communicants with a spoon.

One usage in connection with the Lord's Sup-
per was universal in the ancient church, and per-
sisted until the thirteenth century, but has now
nearly disappeared from Christendom. This was
the holy kiss, the kiss of peace — which is fre-
quently enjoined in the Epistles. At the moment
when the words of the service known as the " Sur-
sum Corda " were spoken, —

" Lift up your hearts !
We lift them up unto the Lord," ^

the whole congregation exchanged this salutation.
" Sometimes," says Stanley, " the men kissed the
men ; sometimes the women the women ; sometimes
it was without distinction." It was, I believe,
finally decreed that kissing should be restricted to
those of the same sex. In the thirteenth century
this observance was greatly modified. A small
tablet of wood, called the pax or pax board, on
which was engraved some scriptural scene or sym-
bol, was introduced into the service ; this was
kissed by the officiating priest at the proper time,
then handed by the acolytes to the other clergy to
be kissed by them, and then passed through the
congregation for the same purpose. The kiss of
peace had been the symbol of fraternity ; the kiss-
ing of the pax was the symbol of a symbol. This
wooden substitute does not seem to have been very
popular, and soon fell into desuetude.

270 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

Among the Coptic Christians the kiss of peace
is still part of the communion service. " Travel-
ers now living," says Dean Stanley, " have had
their faces stroked and been kissed by the Coptic
priest, in the cathedral at Cairo, whilst at the same
moment everybody was kissing everybody else
throughout the church. Had any primitive Chris-
tians been told that the time would come when
this, the very sign of brotherhood and sisterhood,
would be absolutely proscribed in the Christian
church, they would have thought that this must be
the sign of unprecedented persecution or unprece-
dented unbelief. It is impossible to imagine the
omission of any act more sacred, more significant,
more necessary (according to the view which then
prevailed), to the edification of the service." ^ In
the Western church, one small Scottish sect, the
Glassites or Sandemanians, — to which, by the
way, the illustrious Faraday belonged, — still ob-
serves this rite. This sect also keeps the ancient
love-feast and practices feet-washing, like the Tun-
kers of America.

About the same time that infant baptism began
to be practiced, the administration of the com-
munion to infants was also introduced into the
early church. Doubtless the same idea at that
time underlay both usages, — the idea that the
sacrament possessed some inherent or magical
power. Baptism regenerated the child ; the Lord's
Supper also imparted spiritual life and vigor to

^ Christian Institutions, p. 03.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 271
him. The infant in both cases was unconscious :

the sacrament produced its effect upon him with-
out any cooperation of his intelligence or his will.
It is what is called an opus operatiim ; it did its
work upon the soul in just the same way that food
or medicine does its work upon the body. I do not
quite understand why infant communion has been
abandoned in the Roman Catholic Church ; the
Greek Church still practices it. Those who believe
that infant baptism signifies the parents' belief in
the universal Fatherhood of God, and is the enroll-
ment of the child by name in that household of
faith to which by birth he belongs, have good rea-
son for continuing this practice, although they may
not believe that any change whatever is made by
it in the character of the child ; but infant com-
munion could not of course be practiced unless it
were believed that the rite possesses some inhe-
rent power of changing the child's nature. If it
does possess that power, there is no good reason
why it should not be administered to infants as
well as to adults.

The Supper, as observed by the first disciples,
was, as we have seen, a simple evening meal, at
which the bread as broken by our Lord, and the wine
as poured forth by him, reminded the partakers of
his human life among them, and his death of self-
sacrifice for them. But when the Lord's Supper
was separated from the love-feast and erected into
a special ecclesiastical service, other and higher
meanings began to be attributed to it. " As early

272 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

as tlie second century," says one authority, " Justin
Martyr and Irenaeus advance the opinion that the
mere bread and wine became, in the Eucharist, some-
thing higher, — the earthly something heavenly, —
without, however, ceasing to be bread and wine.
Though these views were opposed by some emi-
nent individual Christian teachers, . . . yet, both
among the people and in the ritual of the church,
more particularly after the fourth century, the
miraculous or supernatural view of the Lord's
Supper gained ground. After the third century
the office of presenting the bread and wine came
to be confined to the ministers or priests. This
practice arose from, and in turn strengthened, the
notion which was gaining ground, that in this act
of presentation by the priest a sacrifice similar to
that once offered up in the death of Christ, though
bloodless, was ever anew presented to God. This
still deepened the feeling of mysterious significance
and importance with which the rite of the Lord's
Supper was viewed, and led to that gradually
increasing splendor of celebration which, under
Gregory the Great (590), took the form of the
mass."

Out of this gradually grew the doctrine of tran-
substantiation, — the belief that under the hands
of the consecrating priest the bread and wine of
the sacrament become the actual body and blood of
Christ. This is the doctrine to-day of both the
Roman and the Greek Catholic churches.

At the time of the Reformation this doctrine

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 273

furnished one of the battle-grounds of the Reform-
ers, who not only rejected the Eoman Catholic
doctrine, but differed widely among themselves.

Luther, for his part, was rather conservative in
his views of this sacrament. He rejected transub-
stantiation, but substituted for it what the theo-
logians call coTi-substantiation, what he called im-
panation. He denied that the bread and wine of
the sacrament do themselves become the body and
blood of Christ; but he maintained that the real
body and blood of Christ are actually there, where
the bread and wine are, in, with, and under it. The
bread and wine are still bread and wine ; no magi-
cal change has passed upon them ; but just as the
divine nature of Christ was present with his human
nature, so the real body and blood of Christ are
present with the bread and the wine.

Zwingli, on the other hand, maintained that the
rite was purely symbolic ; that the words of the
Lord, "This is my body," "This is my blood,"
meant only, " This represents my body and my
blood " — that the service was simply commemo-
rative.

Calvin undertook to maintain a view midway
between these two, — that the bread and wine are
in themselves mere symbols ; but that at the mo-
ment of partaking of them the faithful are brought
into a real spiritual union with Christ and receive
divine grace immediately from him ; that the sup-
'per is a medium through which grace is imparted
to the believing soul.

274 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

Such are the three principal explanations of the
nature of this sacrament. In the Koman Catholic
view, a miraculous or supernatural transformation
of the substance of the bread and wine into the
body and blood of Christ takes place when the ele-
ments are consecrated ; and thus the priest offers
upon the altar a real sacrifice — the unbloody sac-
rifice— to God, by which his favor is secured.
These miraculously transformed elements also pos-
sess in themselves efficacy, by which the moral and
spiritual health and strength of those partaking of
them is increased. The question respecting the
attitude of the recipient is one with which the
Roman Catholic theologians do not always deal
satisfactorily. But I think that I may say that
the Catholic doctrine teaches that any baptized
person who is not in mortal sin receives some bene-
fit from the sacrament if he simply does not resist
its influence ; if he is acquiescent when he partakes
of it. The sacrament, by an energy of grace which
is inherent in it, will impart benefit to him if he
does not counteract it by his will. Of course it
is taught that the more perfectly responsive he is
to its action, the more good it will do him; but
even to those who are passively acquiescent it will
communicate some grace. There is an efficacious
power in the sacrament itself which does not de-
pend on the exercise of faith by the recipient.

I do not state this theory to controvert it : for it
is probable that few of my readers believe in the
miracle of the mass, or regard the sacrament as pos-

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 275

sessing any such inherent power to change charac-
ter ; though there are those among our Episcopal
brethren whose theory of the efficacy of the sacra-
ments approximates to the Eoman Catholic theory.

To most of us the sacrament is a symbolical
rather than a literal transaction ; a memorial and
not a miracle ; supernatural only as everything
spiritual is supernatural.

Let us see if we can state, with some carefulness,
just what this sacrament does signify to you and
me.

In the first place, it is a memorial of One very
dear to us, — One to whom we owe more than to
any one else who has ever lived upon the earth.
We think it well to cherish the memory of great
benefactors ; surely here is One who has done more
for this world than any other born of woman. It
was Theodore Parker who apostrophized him in
the words : " O thou Great Friend to all the sons
of men ! " I am speaking as a student of history
when I say that the life and death of Jesus Christ
have meant more for good to this world than
any other event which has happened upon this
planet. It must be well for us to recall, now and
then, with some care and seriousness, an event like
this and to spend a little time in reflecting upon it.

The question of the frequency of such obser-
vances is one of expediency. I own that I find my-
self rather inclining, of late years, to the Scottish
idea that a less frequent observance woidd be more
salutary. If we had the sacrament three times

276 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

a year instead of six, — on the first of February,
the first of June, and the first of October, say, —
and then admitted members not merely on com-
munion Sundays, but on the first Sunday of every
month, — my belief is that we should gain more
than we should lose in impression and benefit
from the celebration.

This is, however, a subordinate matter. The
value of such a commemorative service to any one
who rightly uses it cannot, I think, be questioned.
It must be profitable for us to recall, as we sit be-
fore this table, the life of this Great Friend of
ours, the words of wisdom and gentleness that he
spoke, the great truths that he made plain to us,
the gracious ministry of help and healing and sym-
pathy to which his life was given, the patience
with which he bore the spite and scorn and violence
of the brutal men whom he sought to bless, the
unresisting meekness with which he went to death,
conquering hate by enduring it, and winning in his
death the contrite love of the men who slew him.
To spend an hour, now and then, in simply recall-
ing all that we know about him, in meditating
upon this character, in comparing our own habitual
thinking and living with this standard, must be a
profitable exercise for every one of us.

Besides, there is a certain relation to ourselves
which this suffering life sustains which we must
not ignore. We are contemplating a vicarious sac-
rifice — not a vicarious punishment, which is a very
different thing. The sacrifice which a mother

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 277

makes for her child is a vicarious sacrifice ; she
suffers for him, on his behalf, but she is not pun-
ished in his stead. The central fact of the Incar-
nation is the identification of Christ with human-
ity. The Son of God he was, in the highest sense,
and he was also the Son of man. All that he did
and suffered was for us men, not penally in our
stead, but vicariously in our behalf. It was his
great love for humankind that made him do what
he did and bear what he endured ; we are, whether
we acknowledge him or not, the beneficiaries of his
self-sacrificing love. The world we live in is a
vastly different world from what it would have
been if he had not lived and died in it ; and it
must be impossible for us to reflect on all this with-
out being touched with a sense of our deep indebt-
edness to him.

But there is something more than memory, some-
thing deeper than gratitude, in the heart of him
who worthily observes this ordinance. When it is
all that it ought to be, it becomes — what we com-
monly call it — a communion^ — Kotvwvta. And a
communion is simply a fellowship. The deepest
purpose of the sacrament is not only to help us to
think about him, and to be grateful to him, but
also to bring us into vital, spiritual fellowship with
him, so that we shall have his mind in us, and be
partakers of his nature ; so that his life shall be
reproduced in our lives, and we shall in some mea-
sure learn to see the world with his eyes, to. think
as he thought, and to feel as he felt, and to act as

278 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

lie acted. This is the real significance of the sym-
bolism of the Supper. The bread and wine repre-
sent the body and the blood of Christ ; his body is
his personality, and the blood is the vital element
of it, which is love. Now just as the bread and
the wine of which we partake are taken up by the
organs of digestion and assimilation, and become
part of ourselves, bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh, so by our thought and our love the spiritual
elements of Christ's personality, his thought and
his love, become part of us ; we become partakers
of his life, of his nature. There is nothing miracu-
lous about this ; it is precisely the same thing that
happens to us when we are brought into living sym-
pathy with any strong, wise, loving human spirit.
Something of his strength and wisdom and love
passes into our spirits, and becomes part of our-
selves. And precisely thus in our communion with
the spiritual Christ do we become partakers of his
life.

" Christ is present in the elements," says Presi-
dent Hyde, " just as the writer of a letter is pre-
sent in the writing. The reading of the letter is
the reception of the writer's mind and heart. We
receive Christ in the bread and wine just as we re-
ceive a friend when we clasp his hand. All com-
munion between persons must be by symbols. As
Professor Dewey says in his ' Psychology,' ' The
first step in the communication of a fact of individ-
ual consciousness is changing it from a psychical
fact to a physical fact. It must be expressed

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 279

through nou-conscious media, the appearance of
the face or the use of sounds. These are purely
externah The next step is for some other individ-
ual to translate this expression or these sounds
into his own consciousness. He must make them
part of himself before he knows what they are.
One individual never knows directly what is in the
self of another ; he knows it only so far as he is
able to reproduce it in his own self.'

" Jesus in instituting the Lord's Supper has
simply made universal the communication of his
sacrificial love. He has made the bread and wine
forever, and to all who receive it, the symbol of the
life he lived and the death he suffered in love to
all mankind. In itself, it is mere bread and wine.
Translated by the intelligent and devout recipient
into terms of the love and sacrifice it is intended
to express, it becomes the bread of life and the wine
of love to as many as receive it in this faith. Be-
ing an objective institution, coming at stated times
and places, it is independent of the wayward
caprice, the fickle mood, the listless mind of the
individual. And so it calls us back from our
worldliness, deepens our penitence, quickens our
love, and intensifies our consecration ; and, above
all, identifies us with the great company of our
fellow Christians, as no mere subjective devotion
and private prayer could ever do." ^

1 Outlines of Social Theology, pp. 194-196.

XIV

THE HOPE OF DUMORTALITY

" If a man die," said Job mournfully, " shall lie
live again ? " It is the question of the ages. Who
can confidently answer it ? What assurance have
we of the fullness of life beyond the grave ? As
for Job he had none. His question implies a neg-
ative answer. Doubtless he believed in some dim,
shadowy, slumberous existence beyond the grave,
but it was nothing that we could call life. The
conception of the ancient Hebrews was substan-
tially the same as that of the Homeric poems.
" Homer," says Dr. Gordon, " contemplates death
as a calamity ; with him, life after death is a help-
less existence in the regions of murky gloom." In
the Odyssey, Homer tells us of the visit of Odys-
seus to the underworld and of his sorrow as he
greeted there the " strengthless dead " whom he
had known in life. Agamemnon came forth to
meet Odysseus ; he knew him instantly, " and he
cried aloud, and let the big tears fall, and stretched
forth his hand eagerly to grasp me. But no, there
was no strength nor vigor left, such as was once
within his supple limbs. I wept to see him, and I
pitied him from my heart." " Mock not at death,"

THE HOPE OF IMMOKTALITY 281

says the spirit of Achilles to Odysseus. " Better
to be the hireling of a stranger, and serve a man
of mean estate whose living is small, than be the
ruler over all these dead and gone." The Hebrew-
poet puts the case more tersely when he says : " A
living dog is better than a dead lion." These an-
cients held to some continuance of being after
death, but it was only the ghostly simulacrum of
life for which they looked.

You may be thinking of those often quoted words
of Job : " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and
that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth,
and though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in my flesh shall I see God." It is doubtful
whether there is another text in the Bible which
has been worse misused than this one. Transla-
tors have read their own meanings into it, instead
of trying to reproduce the thought of Job. Job
has been grossly accused by his three friends :
they have insisted that his calamities are punish-
ments inflicted upon him by the Judge of all the
earth, for his own evil deeds ; he knows that this
cannot be, and he declares that his Vindicator will
by and by appear, and do him justice ; even though
his skin be destroyed, yet from his flesh he will see
God, his Vindicator, who will stand on his side and
acquit him of these accusations. That is the whole
of it ; there is no suggestion here of a resurrection
of the body, or the continuance of being after death
in a bodily form. We do not go back to those
dark days for evidences of the life to come. The

282 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

conceptions on which our own belief rests were not
then fully formed in the minds of men. The ex-
pectation of immortality has been, in large mea-
sure, the product of a moral evolution. The basis
of this expectation is far broader and far deeper
now than it was two thousand years ago.

Yet it ought to be said at the outset that we
have no scientific demonstration of immortality.
No future event can be scientifically demonstrated.
All the astronomers and physicists on earth cannot
prove that the sun will rise to-morrow morning.
The future, to the scientific man as well as to the
religious man, is the domain of faith, not of know-
ledge. I cannot undertake to furnish any man
with proof drawn from mathematical or physical
science that there is life for him beyond the grave.
So far as our reasoning faculties are concerned, the
life to come can be to us nothing more than a ra-
tional probability. And this probability will not
rest on any single line of evidence, but on consid-
erations drawn from many different groups of facts
and experiences. The cable of that anchor of hope
by which our hearts are held to the life everlasting
is braided of many strands. I shall try to bring
before your thought some of the elements which
are woven into this great expectation.

And first it may be well to say negatively that
although physical science can give us no proof of
immortality it is equally impotent to furnish any
disproof of it. We know, indeed, that the mind, in
the present state of existence, uses the body as its

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 283

medium of communication with the outside world ;
we do not know that the mind may not be sepa-
rated from this body, and may not find other in-
struments and organs. Certain nervous changes
always take place in the human body when the hu-
man mind is thinking, but these nervous changes
are not thought, any more than the mechanical
motion of my hand when I write is a process of
thinking. " We may succeed," says Professor
Ferrier, " in determining the exact nature of the
molecular changes which occur in the brain cells
when a sensation is experienced ; but this will not
bring us one whit nearer the explanation of the ul-
timate nature of that which constitutes the sensa-
tion. The one is objective and the other subjec-
tive ; and neither can be expressed in terms of the
other. W,e cannot say that they are identical, or
even that the one passes into the other, but only,
as Lay cock expresses it, that they are correlated."
But while biological and chemical science can
neither prove nor disprove the separate existence
of the soul, and its continuance after the death of
the body, there are certain large considerations,
drawn from the philosophy of evolution, which lend
great strength to that belief. I quoted largely, in
the first chapter, from Mr. Fiske's recent remark-
able essay on " The Everlasting Keality of Eeli-
gion," to show that the elements of religion had
been evolved in the upward movement of the race ;
that these elements of religion are universal con-
stituents of human nature ; and that it is just as

284 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

unpMlosopliical and preposterous, according to the
doctrine of evolution, that such organs of faith
should be developed in human beings, without any-
corresponding spiritual realities with which they
could be coordinated, as it would be to suppose that
the eye could have been developed where there was
no light, or the ear where there was no sound. The
existence of these spiritual faculties in man, as the
outcome of evolution, is proof that there is a spirit-
ual world with which they are coordinated.

N'ow Mr. Fiske tells us that one of the elements
of religion which is essential and universal is the
belief in the continuance, in some form, of the hu-
man soul after death. " The savage custom of
burying utensils and trinkets for the use of the de-
parted enables us," he says, " to trace it back into
the glacial period. We may safely say that for
more than a hundred thousand years mankind have
regarded themselves as personally interested in
two worlds, — the physical world which daily greets
our waking senses, and another world, compara-
tively dim and vaguely outlined, with which the
psychical side of humanity is more closely con-
nected. This belief in the Unseen World seems
to be coextensive with theism ; the animism of the
lowest savage includes both. No race or tribe of
men has ever been found destitute of belief in a
ghost world. Now a ghost world implies a per-
sonal continuance of human beings after death,
and it also implies identity of nature between the
ghosts of man and the indwelling spirits of sun,

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 285

wind, and flood. It is chiefly because these ideas
are so closely interwoven in savage thought that it
is often so difficult to discriminate between fetich-
ism and animism. These savage ideas are of
course extremely crude in their symbolism. With
the gradual civilization of human thinking the re-
finement in the conception of the Deity is paral-
leled by the refinement in the conception of the
Other World. From Valhalla to Dante's Paradise
what an immeasurable distance the modern mind
has traveled !

" In our modern monotheism the assumption of
kinship between God and the human soul is the
assumption that there is in man a psychical ele-
ment, identical in nature with that which is eter-
nal. Belief in a quasi-human God and belief in
the soul's immortality thus appear in their origin
and development, as in their ultimate significance,
to be inseparably connected. They are part and
parcel of one and the same efflorescence of the hu-
man mind." ^

This argument rests, as you see, upon the integ-
rity of what you may call Nature, — if you choose
so to name it. Nature, let us say, has been at
work for a good many hundred thousand years, in
producing man. It has fitted him with certain
powers and aptitudes, and these always correspond
to the conditions of his environment. It has de-
veloped the eye, and there is the light which puts
him into visual relations with surrounding objects.
1 Through Nature to God, pp. 160, 170.

286 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

It has developed the ear, and the waves of sound
bring him messages from the outside world. It
has endowed him with the great mathematical con-
ceptions, — the ideas of number and form, — and
every existence that he finds in the space that sur-
rounds him repeats to him these ideas, and verifies
to him the thought that is native to his mind. The
world without corresponds to the soul within. If
this is the method of Nature, then faculties as
deep-seated, as persistent, as universal as the reli-
gious faculties must have something corresponding
to them in the universe. If the mathematical fac-
ulty implies a mathematical world, why does not
the spiritual faculty imply a spiritual world? The
reality of all these other correspondences argues
the reality of religion.

For, as Mr. Fiske told us in the first chapter,
these religious faculties are entitled to rank among
the very highest in our nature. " One aspect of
the fact," he says, " not to be lightly passed over is
that religion, thus ushered upon the scene coeval
with the birth of humanity, has played such a
dominant part in the subsequent evolution of hu-
man society that what history would be without it
is quite beyond our imagination. As to the di-
mensions of this cardinal fact there thus can be no
question. None can deny that it is the largest and
most ubiquitous fact connected with the existence
of mankind upon the earth." ^

That Nature for a thousand aeons should have
1 Through Nature to God, pp. 188, 189.

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 287

employed herself in awakening, refining, enlarging,
strengthening, the religious impulses in the soul of
man, when there were no objective facts toward
which these impulses could be directed, is not, I
think, to the philosophic mind, a credible supposi-
tion. Our faith in the integrity of the universe is
our warrant for believing that the primary concep-
tions of religion are everlasting realities. And
these indispensable elements of religion are, in the
words of Mr. Fiske, " first, belief in Deity as quasi-
human ; secondly, belief in an Unseen World in
which human beings continue to exist after death ;
thirdl}^, recognition of the ethical aspects of human
life as related in a special and intimate sense to
this Unseen World. These three elements are
alike indispensable. If any one of the three be
taken away the remnant cannot properly be called
a religion." ^

It may be said — it is often said by those who
imagine that they are thus getting rid of spiritual
realities — that the faculties of man are the result
of natural forces working upon him ; that the eye,
for example, was produced by the action of the
light upon some sensitive surface ; that the light
playing upon the pigment stirred it, assembled
and organized its tissues, and thus, during ages of
transmitted and slowly developed visual powers,
created the wonderful organ which we call the eye.
But it would seem, to begin with, that there must
have been in that sensitive pigment some capacity
1 Through Nature to God, pp. 174, 175.

288 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

and some tendency to respond to the action of the
light. The sunshine awakens and develops the
plant germ, but the germ was there to awaken.
The light may well have been the agency through
which the eye was developed, but the preparation
of the living tissues for the action of the light was
not, probably, neglected. And the same thing is
true of the religious faculties. It is not only true
that their existence argues a spiritual realm with
which they are in communion, it is also true that
they exist because of the direct action of the powers
of that spiritual realm upon the human intelligence.
It is no more true that the bodily eye is the effect
of the action of the light upon sensitive physical
tissues than that the spiritual vision, by which we
discern God, has been quickened and developed by
the direct action of the spirit of God upon our
spirits. For God is light, and in Him is no dark-
ness at all ; and it is in his light that we see light.
The idea of God in the soul of man is the response
to direct impressions of God made upon the
soul itself. " Reality," says Dr. Gordon, " casts
its own image in the mind, and God, as Eeality,
has shadowed himself in the soul. There is no ad-
equate account of God other than the fact of God.
Similarly with duty it is an ultimate fact ; there is
no complete explanation of it short of its recogni-
tion as the effect in man's spirit of moral law. The
idea of immortality belongs with those of God and
duty. It comes spontaneously because of a per-
ceived invisible and spiritual order to which the

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 289

soul belono^s. There is an instinctive feelinsf of
kinship between that order and the human spirit.
Upon the human spirit that order makes the im-
pression that its home is eternal in the heavens." ^
The presence of these feelings in the human
soul is thus accounted for by the strict application
of the evolutionary philosophy. They must, ac-
cording to this philosophy, have arisen from the
action and reaction of the soul of man and its en-
vironment ; and the whole logic of evolution goes
to establish the fact that God and the spiritual
world are the commanding facts in the environ-
ment of the human intelligence.

Another argument from analogy rests on the great
scientific doctrine of the persistence of force. It is
assumed as the foundation of all scientific reasoning,
and is proved by a wide induction of facts, that no
force is lost ; that forms of energy are simply trans-
formed in the physical and chemical changes. Mo-
tion is changed into heat, and heat into light and elec-
tricity ; and the chemical changes that take place
in the processes of life and death are simply trans-
formations of energy. The food that we take into
the system is transformed into blood and tissue and
nervous force ; and the death of the body is a sim-
ple redistribution of these chemical elements. To
the physical world nothing is lost by this redistri-
bution. Every particle of force in the body enters
into other combinations and goes on with its work.
" Evolution teaches us," says one writer, " that no

1 The Witness to Immortality, p. 26.

290 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

force can be destroyed : it can only be transmitted."
If this is true of tbe physical forces, how about
the spiritual forces ? The force that manifests
itself as reason, will, conscience, affection — is not
that a real force ? That it can be resolved into
atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon is believed,
"I think, by very few scientific men at the present
day. It belongs to a different series, and there is
no evidence whatever that the two pass into each
other. What then becomes, at death, of the force
which manifests itself as reason, will, conscience,
affection ? Does that come to an abrupt termina-
tion ? Is Nature careful to carry over the forces of
the physical series, while she drops the forces of
the spiritual series? Does she give to the lower
part of man's nature the power of continuance, while
she denies it to the higher? Is chemical affinity
a more precious thing in the universe than spiritual
affection ? Must atoms endure while spirits decay ?

Another and more familiar argument is drawn
from the conception which evolution gives us of the
final cause of its own great processes. It does not
seem to justify itself to our reason, unless it pro-
mises us an endless future for the human race. Let
me quote a few words from Dr. Gordon's clear re-
statement of this argument : —

" Man is Nature's highest product, and he is a
product of inconceivable cost. Toward him Nature
has been looking forward from a past indefinitely
remote. When she was concerned chiefly with the
dance of atoms, with the play of the primitive fiery

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 291

mist, she had the thought of him in her great heart ;
when she was elaborating worlds, setting the solar
system on high, forming this planet of onrs, and
preparing it for life, man was still her darling idea,
and in the vast procession of life from the barely
to the highly organized, he was never for one mo-
ment ont of sight. The evolntion, rnnning through
countless ages, in innumerable forms, at a cost of
energy and suffering inconceivably great, was all
the while aspiring to manhood. The whole crea-
tion groaned and travailed in pain until the mani-
festation of the sons of God. Man is Nature's last
and costliest work. The flower of being is intelli-
gence and love. The outcome of evolution through
self-seeking is a form of being that confronts self-
seeking as no longer an indispensable friend, but a
disastrous embarrassment, that begins through self-
sacrifice a yet more stupendous evolution. Can it
be that this last and finest product of Nature, this
result of intelligence and love aimed at from the
beo'innino' and reached at a cost immeasurable,
shall not be conserved in growing beauty and
power forever ? Physical evolution finds its goal in
man, and the process that hereupon begins finds its
end in the complete realization of his ethical and
spiritual nature." ^

This is the argument, and to some minds it will

have great force. For every order of creatures

below man there is something higher and nobler

toward which to reach upward. Evolution has

1 The Witness to Immortality, p. 20.

292 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

been conducting this agelong progress from moUusk
up to man. " From cosmic dust," says Dr. Hun-
ger, " man has become a true person. What now ?
The end of the demiurgic strife reached, its methods
cease. Steps lead up to the apex of the pyramid.
What remains ? What, indeed, but flight, if he be
found to have wings ? Or does he stand for a mo-
ment on the summit, exulting in his emergence
from nature, only to fall back into the dust at its
base ? There is a reason why the reptile should
become a mammal : it is more life. Is there no
like reason for man ? Shall he not have more life ?
If not, then to be a reptile is better than to be a
man, for it can be more than itself ; and man, in-
stead of being the head of nature, goes to its foot.
The dream of pessimism becomes a reality, justify-
ing the remark of Schopenhauer that consciousness
is the mistake and malady of nature. If man be-
comes no more than he is, the whole process of gain
and advance by which he has become what he is
turns on itself and reverses its order. The benevo-
lent purpose, seen at every stage till it yields to the
next, stops its action, dies out, and goes no farther.
The ever-swelling bubble of existence, that has
grown and distended till it reflects the light of hea-
ven in all its glorious tints, bursts on the instant
into nothingness." ^

The impossibility of entertaining such a pessi-
mistic view of the whole history of life on the
earth drives us to the conclusion that the crown of
1 The Appeal to Life, p. 269.

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 293

life is immortality All the reasons which I have
produced for believing in the continuance of life be-
yond the grave have been drawn from the doctrine
of evolution, and the modern scientific theories
closely connected with it. Fifty j^ears ago no such
reasonings as these could have occurred to any
Christian thinker. I know not how they may have
impressed other minds ; to my own they come home
with great power. So far as I have a reasoned
theory of the existence of God and of the future
life, it rests, very largely, on the truth brought to
light by the evolutionary philosophy. All who will
take pains to find out what are the larger implica-
tions of this philosophy will, like Mr. John Fiske,
find their faith in the everlasting reality of religion
deepened and confirmed.

Many other lines of argument might be fol-
lowed ; I must content myself with alluding to two
or three considerations only.

The testimony of Jesus Christ is to me a word
of authority. Above all who have lived on this
planet he was surely Master of the lore of the
spirit. His insight into character, his revelation
of man to himself, and of God to man, show him
to have had a knowledge of the deep things such
as no other teacher has possessed. Just as I would
take the word of Edison or Tesla about the laws
of electricity, just as I would take the word of
Peirce on a question of mathematics, or of Gray on
a question of botany, certainly, with not less confi-
dence, would I take the word of Jesus Christ upon

294 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

any great question of tlie spirit. And liis word is
always clear and positive and unhesitating. " We
speak that we do know," he says, " and testify that
we have seen." There is with him no arsrument to
prove the life to come ; it is assumed as one of the
indubitable certainties. Nay, our Lord domesti-
cates it, as it were ; he brings it right home to our
every-day experience ; his word is not immortality
— that seems something future, and far away ; he
calls it eternal life. It begins here, he tells us ;
we may be living it now. There is a kind of life
that in its very nature is deathless ; it goes on by
its own momentum. This is the life that he is liv-
ing. They who share his life have the witness in
themselves ; for them there is no death. The testi-
mony of Jesus is to me a great and solemn assur-
ance, and I rest m}^ soul upon it without fear.

The other sure foundation for this belief is in
the truth which Jesus cleared and lifted into the
light, — the truth that the Eternal God is our Fa-
ther. This, as we have seen, is one of the three
gTeat realities of religion ; but this is first and
greatest of them all. On this everything that
makes life dear and beautiful finally depends. If
this is true all is weU ; life is sweet and death is
gain. If God 's in his heaven, all 's right with the
world — with all the worlds. If God is good, if
God is our Father, the life unending is our sure
portion. Faith in Him is guarantee to us that our
highest hopes and purest aspirations will not mock
us ; that we shall not " be cast as rubbish to the

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 295

void " when the curtain falls upon the last scene
of all that ends this strange, eventful history. The
hunger of the heart for more life, and fuller, is the
deepest craving that we know, and in the noblest
souls it is the strongest. Who of us has ap-
proached the goal of his aspiration ? Who does
not feel in his most exalted moments the poverty
of his attainments, the incompleteness of his life.
So little do we know, so vast is the chasm between
what we have meant to be and what we are, that if
death were the end of it all our sense of the failure
of life would come down upon us with crushing
weight. Yet this very consciousness of incom-
pleteness, this outreaching of the soul for more life,
and fuller, is proof of immortality, if God is good.
This is Kant's great argument. " Be perfect," is
the mighty voice that through every soul forever
reverberates. But for us perfection can only be
reached by endless progress toward an endlessly
receding goal. Therefore man must have eternity
as the field of his moral development. No smaller
opportunity is large enough for his powers. The
moral ideal in the soul, the categorical imperative
of duty, are the outfit for a life unending. Be-
cause God is good it must be that we can be what
we know we ought to be. And that means more
days than were ever given to any man upon this
earth.

Every man, at his best, has the consciousness
not only of incompleteness, but of unexhausted
powers. As we draw toward the end of life our

296 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

conception of the vastness of the work opening be-
fore us, of the multitude of the things that we
might do if there were only time, constantly en-
larges. The word of the Master begins to be in-
telligible : " I have a baptism to be baptized with,
and how am I straitened till it be accomplished."
We are just getting ready to work, just begin-
ning to feel the pressure of the great motives of
life, when the evening shadows fall, and the day's
work is done. If this is the end, existence is a
mockery ; if God is good, those whose deepest de-
sire is to glorify Him will have another day.

But there is a profounder truth than this. It is
not only true that an Infinite Father must give to
the children of his love the opportunity of realizing
the impulses that He has planted in their souls and
of doing the work that He is calling them to do, it
is also true that if the life of God, which is the life
of love, is the inspiration of our lives, we have in
ourselves the foretaste of immortality. " God is
love," says the great apostle ; " and he that abideth
in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him."
To such a life as that, what change can come but
that which leads from strength to strength, from
glory to glory ? And every one of us whose heart
is the home of a pure affection knows something
of what this means. For love, as Dr. Hunger
says, " cannot tolerate the thought of its own end.
It has but one word, — forever. Its language is.
There is no death." This is the thought which
glorifies Tennyson's " In Memoriam." As Dr.

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 297

Gordon says, " The poem as a prophecy of immor-
tality has its foundations in fact, the fact of love
and its quality. ... It is in a very large sense a
poem of the reason, a vital movement of thought
through all difficulties into the conviction that God
is love and that love is imperishable." ^

Thus we have separated by our thought, that we
might unite them again by our larger reason, the
strands that form the cable by which the anchor
of the soul is held to that within the veil. Each
of these considerations seems to me very strong',
all of them together form an argument of faith
on which our souls may repose. Our confidence
in the integrity of Nature and in the persistence
of spiritual forces ; our belief that evolution does
not bring us up to the summits of existence, there
to plunge us back again into nonentity ; our trust
in the testimony of Jesus, to whom is given the
word of eternal life ; our faith in the fidelity of
God, who will not mock us by setting before us an
impossible ideal, — all join to confirm our expec-
tation of life beyond the grave. It is an ennobling
confidence. In the days of darkness, in the hours
when the burdens are heavy and the combat is
fierce, it lifts up the head and lightens the heart.
It is sometimes said to be a selfish faith, — this
faith in the life everlasting. But I see not how
the triumph of love can be the gain of selfishness.
And the man who has the faith most firmly planted
in his heart is the man whose life is rooted and
1 The Witness to Immortality, pp. 125, 126.

298 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

grounded in love. One may have some intellectual
reasons for believing in it, but that strong expecta-
tion of it which fills the heart with assurance is the
possession of those only who have something better
than selfish ends to live for. " Men who have re-
nounced their individual happiness," says Count
Tolstoi, " never doubt their immortality. Christ
knew that he would continue to live after death
because he had already entered into the true life
which cannot cease. He lived even then in the rayfc,
of that other centre of life toward which he was ad-
vancing, and he saw them reflected on those who
stood around him. And this every man who re-
nounces his own good beholds ; he passes in this
life into a new relation with the world for which
there is no death, and this experience gives him an
immovable faith in the stability, immortality, and
eternal growth of life." And here is the whole
secret of this vitalizing faith. If you live the kind
of life that ought to last, you will find it easy to
believe in life eternal ; if you live the kind of life
that ought to perish, you must not expect that any
of the proofs of future existence will bring any
strong assurance to your soul.

To every one of us, as the days of our years
pass swiftly, as a tale that is told, and the friends
of our hearts one by one go on before us into the
world of the unseen, this expectation of the life
to come ought to grow stronger and clearer. It
may be a jubilant hope, like that of the buoyant
Browning, who, in his very last verses, hailed with

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 299

a shout of triumph the portals before which so
many tremble : —

" At the midnig-lit in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where — by death, fools think, imprisoned —
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,

— Pity me ?

" Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken !
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly ?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless did I drivel,

— Being — who ?

" One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break.
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would tri-
umph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

" No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer.
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
' Strive and thrive ! ' cry ' Speed, — fight on, fare ever
There as here ! ' "

Or it may be that the assurance will come to us
in that serener and more peaceful mood of Tenny-
son's last poem : —

" Sunset and evening star.

And one clear call for me ;
And may there be no moaning of the bar

When I put out to sea ;
But such a tide as moving seems asleep.

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home !

300 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

" Twilig-lit and eTening bell,

And after that the dark ;
And may there be no sadness of farewell

When I embark :
For though from out our bourne of time and place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar."

But whether we come to the end of life exultant, as
the winner reaches the goal, or whether with hands
folded on the quiet breast we drift upon the out-
going tide to the shoreless ocean, let U3 trust that
in all our hearts there may abide the hope that can-
not fail, and the peace that passeth knowledge !

XV

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN

The principle of contrast has been overworked
in religious philosophy. The relativity of know-
ledge implies that we have no comprehension of
anything except as we compare it with something
else, and unlikeness strikes crude minds m_ore for-
cibly than likeness. Cold is more easily distin-
guished from heat than different degrees of cold or
heat are distinguished from each other. Our more
juvenile conceptions are apt to array themselves
in antitheses : white, black ; long, short ; quick,
slow ; high, low ; hard, soft ; good, bad. The child
generally assumes that everything is either white
or black, and that everybody is either good or
bad. And there are children of a larger growth
who carry this habit of contrast into all their think-
ing, and put most of the individuals and the groups
of whom they think into antithetical categories, —
as saint, sinner ; patriot, traitor ; Protestant, Cath-
olic ; orthodox, infidel ; Republican, Democrat, —
with the notion that these stand over against each
other in definite antagonisms ; that everybody must
be the one or the other, and that all which can be
affirmed of the one can be denied of the other.

302 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

There is a kind of philosophy of history which
makes use of this method ; which assumes that the
forces which make for progress are conflicting
forces ; that one period of time comes to a crisis
and ends with a crash, and is then succeeded by
another period in which powers exactly ojDposed to
■ those formerly prevailing bear rule. The theory
of history which is based on this conception is a
theory of catastrophes and cataclysms ; the leading
idea is contrast rather than continuity, conquest and
not progress. Such a historian would be inclined
to regard the Christian dispensation as the antithe-
sis of the Jewish dispensation, and the American
government as the antithesis of the English gov-
ernment. But there is another theory of the uni-
verse with which our minds are becoming more
and more familiar, — namely, that the deepest law
of life is a law of unfolding rather than of antago-
nism, of continuity more than of contrast. Each
period of time, according to this theory, has its
roots in the period which preceded it ; history is
not a succession of breaks and weldings, but an or-
derly progress. One who accepts this theory can
easily believe what Christ said about the relation
of the kingdom which he came to found to the
Jewish economy which had preceded it, — that the
one is simply the continuation and completion of
the other. " Think not, that I am come to destroy
the law and the prophets ; I am not come to de-
stroy, but to fulfill." To such a thinker, American
institutions will appear to be as closely connected

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 303

with English institutions as the stem is with the
root.

This conception, which helps to unify the whole
of life, which binds the past and the future to-
gether in a genetic relation, will greatly help us in
answering our question, " What do we know about
heaven?" The prevalent notion has been, no
doubt, that heaven is the antithesis of earth. That
thought has held comfort for many troubled and
weary souls. In the midst of persecution and
trials, it has always been reassuring for men to
look away to the land beyond the grave and to say,
" When we shall have reached that good place
these miseries will no more overtake us." Thus,
setting the safety and the purity and the blessed-
ness of heaven over against the danger and the sin
and the sorrow of earth, it was natural enough that
men should extend the contrast to every other fea-
ture of the two conditions, and learn to think of
heaven as in all respects the antithesis of earth.
But this is not, probably, the main truth about it.
Panl couples the life that now is and that which is
to come as if they were all of a piece ; the same
qualities of character give us both ; both grow
from the same root ; the one is but the completion
of the other. And this, we may assume, is the
true conception. When the first heaven and the
first earth shall have passed away from the sight
of any of us, and we find ourselves under a new
heaven and in a new earth, I am fain to believe
that it will not seem to us a strange place at all.

304 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

It is pleasant for me to think that the life to come
will not greatly differ in its characteristic features
from the life that now is.

Let us speak, first of those elements of the hea-
venly life that are known to us, proceeding thus,
by the true method of science, from the known to
the unknown. I once heard a preacher tell a vast
audience that no one knew anything about heaven
except what the Bible tells him. The truth is that
unless a man knows something about heaven that
neither the Bible nor any other book can tell him,
he will never find heaven, even though he take the
wings of the morning, and range through space for
ages. The substance of heaven, the heart of it all,
is within us ; and we do not need to cry, " Lo here !
or lo there ! " pointing to promises in a book or
to portents in the sky. That which is central and
essential in life for every human being is charac-
ter. The moral and spiritual elements make up
the perfection of being in all worlds. Whether
a man is in heaven, or not, depends, first of all, on
what the man is. It is not the scenery, or the sur-
roundings, that makes heaven ; it is the spiritual
harmony within. The waves of our common air
often bear to us sweet strains of the music of the
land to which we go : —

" We bless thee for thy peace, 0 Lord,
Deep as the unfathomed sea,
Which falls like sunshine on the road
Of those who trust in thee.

*' That peace which suffers and is strong,
Trusts where it cannot see,

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 305

Deems not the trial way too long,
But leaves the end with thee ;

*' That peace which flows serene and deep,
A river in the soul,
Whose banks a living verdure keep,
God's sunshine o'er the whole."

In words like these, we feel upon our foreheads the
very breath that ripples the river of the water of
life.

" My God, I thank thee who hast made
The earth so bright,
So full of splendor and of joy,

Beauty and light ;
So many glorious things are here
Noble and right.

" I thank thee, too, that Thou hast made

Joy to abound ;
So many gentle thoughts and deeds

Circling us round ;
That in the darkest spot of earth

Some love is found.

" I thank thee. Lord, that thou hast kept
The best in store ;
I have enough, yet not too much

To long for more, —
A yearning for a deeper peace
Not known before."

He who can speak such words truly has no need to
climb to the heights, or fly to the far countries, in
search of his heaven ; the substance of it is already
in his possession.

What the essential elements of the heavenly life
will be we know perfectly. The truth and the
trust, the purity and the peace, the abounding love

^

306 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

and the unselfisli joy, which make life worth living
here will be integral principles of life in all worlds
so long as humanity reflects the image of the
divine.

We are not, then, drawing wholly on our imagi-
nation when we speak of the life to come. One who
can measure a small arc of a curve whose sweep is
billions of miles in extent, can picture the whole of
it ; he knows as well the direction it will take on
the other side of Uranus as on this side. And one
who knows what are the essential elements of moral
and spiritual perfection in this world knows what
is the substance of heaven.

But we often think of the form and manner of
that life, the scenery and costume of it, and wish
that we might know how it will look, how it will
seem. Doubtless all of us do, sometimes, picture
to ourselves the life of that country. We can
hardly help doing so. Some that are very dear to
us are dwelling there, and our imagination will
follow them and frame the landscapes through
which they are moving, the skies that bend over
them, the tasks that employ them. The bare out-
line of such a picture I am going to sketch for you.
And I ask you to remember that it is only an im-
agination. I do not say that the manner of the
heavenly life is what I shall represent it to be ; I
only say, perhaps it is ; it may be ; this is the way
I like to think it is. If any of you have a concep-
tion that better satisfies your thought hold on to
that ; I only offer you mine to think of in the hope

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 307

that it may make heaven seem to some of you more
human and more homelike.

For this is my deepest thought about it : it will
be home. That principle of continuity which
guides all our thinking makes this highly probable.
It will not be a foreign land ; it will be the home-
land.

I can imagine no heaven brighter than this
world would be if sin and its consequences were
abolished. And I always think of the form in
which men will appear in heaven as being not un-
like that in which they appear on earth. No form
more beautiful is within the range of my imagi-
nation than the physical ideal of humanity. The
" human form divine," the poets call it, and that,
I suppose, is the literal truth. The archetype is
divine. The sculptor never tries to conceive of
anything more shapely or more fair than this ; he
would realize his highest ambition if he could re-
produce the type of beauty which the human form,
in its manifold incarnations, suggests to us.

These two conceptions fit each other. If the
world to come is to be in its scenery and its out-
ward features similar to the world in which we live,
such bodies as we now possess will seem to be
adapted to it ; and if, on the other hand, bodies
similar to these should be ours in the other world,
we might naturally expect the environment of that
life to be similar to the environment of this life.

Is there any reason why the bodies we inhabit in
the world to come should not be similar to those we

308 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

inhabit here ? That they will be free from the de-
formity and the corruptibility of our mortal bodies
we may indeed believe, but in form and substance
why may they not be like these bodies ?

Some one answers that Paul promises us spirit-
ual bodies in the life to come. But what is a spir-
itual body ? The phrase, according to ordinary
definitions, is a contradiction in terms, if it is un-
derstood as describing the substance of the glorified
body. Spirit and body are antithetical terms : a
spirit is an incorporeal existence. If the words of
Paul are taken ontologically they are, therefore,
destitute of meaning ; it is like speaking of a white
blackbird or an ascending declivity. Paul does
not, probably, mean to say that our heavenly bodies
will be made of immaterial material. I suppose
that he must mean by a spiritual body a body that
is perfectly under the control of the spirit ; a body
that is a fit organ for the spirit, that does not re-
fract the light of God when it shines into the soul,
but is a perfect medium for its transmission ; a
body that not only for purposes of 'impression, but
also for purposes of expression, is the servant of the
spirit. These earthly bodies often clog and ham-
per the spirit : their fleshly appetites fight against
its aspirations ; their infirmities paralyze its endea-
vors ; but the bodies which we shall inhabit in the
life to come will more perfectly answer the needs
of the higher nature, and will aid instead of imped-
ing the spirit's growth. This is why we call them
spiritual bodies.

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 309

But another is reQiinded of these words of Paul :
" Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kinodoni of
God." Certainly not this flesh and blood, — not the
materials which constitute these bodies : the physi-
cal substances of which they are composed are re-
turned to the earth and the air. The notion that the
identical matter of the physical organism which
we leave behind for burial is to be reanimated is
distinctly repudiated by Paul, and physiological sci-
ence makes it impossible and absurd.

What then, you may ask, do we mean by the
resurrection of the body ? The question cannot
be answered with any dogmatic assurance : I can
only give what seems to me a possible explanation.

The human body, like every other physical or-
ganism, seems to be the product of a living princi-
ple which chemical analysis does not isolate. There
is something behind these chemical laws that com-
mands them. We know very little about this ; we
call it life : it is the builder that silently and with
divine skill marshals the bioplasts and shapes the
organism. Death is simply the abandonment by
this silent builder of the materials upon which he
has been at work. But there is no reason for be-
lieving that he dies ; and what we call the resur-
rection of the body may be only the calling of this
builder up to a higher sphere, where, out of en-
during and incorruptible material, he constructs
another tabernacle for the spirit, and thus, we who
are unclothed of this mortal covering, are clothed
upon with our house which is from heaven. But

310 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

if it shall be tlie same life principle which shall re-
construct our bodies there, then it is certain that
their general type and pattern will be like those
that we inhabit here. If the organizing principle
is the same, the organism must at least be similar.

Certain reasonings confirm, in my thought, this
. expectation.

A large part of the education we receive in this
world is in and through the bodily senses. From
the moment when the infant begins to measure dis-
tances by putting forth his hand to grasp a candle
that he cannot reach, to the last day of the old
man's life, when his practiced eye scans the coun-
tenances of the watchers by his bedside to discern
if he can their judgment concerning his fate, there
is a constant accumulation of knowledge and disci-
pline which have come into the soul through the
portals of sense. Not only are new truths thus con-
tinually revealed to the mind, but the mind is also
steadily acquiring new skill in the use of these or-
gans. Our senses are nice instruments, which dur-
ing the whole of our life we are learning to operate ;
and the degree of expertness which is thus acquired
would be marvelous if it were not so common.
How accurately, for example, do we learn at length
to use the sense of touch ; how perfectly do we dis-
cern shapes and surfaces and textures with our eyes
closed. So with all the senses. We spend our
years in learning to use them, and the proficiency
we gain is wonderful. We marvel at the brilliant
Paderewski when we see his swift fingers dance so

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 311

fairily up and down the keyboard. What wonder-
ful mastery, we exclaim, of a wonderful instrument !
But we do not often reflect that upon an instru-
ment far more delicate, the human body, we have
all learned to perform far more wonderful feats of
skill. You are listening to Paderewski : and your
ear catches and individualizes and records every
one of those rapidly uttered notes, forms them into
musical phrases, detects and delights in the harmo-
nies into which they are woven, presents, momently,
to your thought, this marvelous complex of sweet
sounds. And how manifold are the impressions
hourly brought to your mind through this one
avenue of sense ! The whisper of the breeze, the
rustle of the leaves, the buzz of the insect, the chirp
of the sparrow, the scream of the jay, the whistle
of the distant locomotive, the click of the horse's
hoofs and the rattle of wheels on the pavement, the
shout of the children, the murmur of conversation
in the next room, the ripple of the gas flame on the
hearth — how quickly and surely do you distin-
guish these impressions made upon the ear by
the vibrations of the air ; how accurately, for the
most part, do you judge of the distance and direc-
tion from which these sounds have come ! All the
senses, as I have said, are trained to a similar nicety
and precision of action. We are not apt to count
this as part of our education, because the most
of it is gained unconsciously ; but it is really a
large and highly important portion of the best edu-
cation.

312 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

Not only are we constantly adding to our skill
in the use of the bodily senses, but they have
played a large part in the formation of our char-
acters. Most of our experiences of joy or grief, of
pleasure or pain, are ministered to us through our
senses. The mind is addressed, the emotions are
awakened, the will is influenced, by impressions
that come to us through the eye, the ear, the touch,
the taste : temptations assail us through these ave-
nues ; the training of our intellect, our judgment,
our power of choice, our power of resistance, has to
do, continually, with our senses. In short, it may be
said that all our knowledge is colored through and
through with sense impressions ; that all our moral
and spiritual character has been built up out of ex-
periences in which sensation is a large ingredient.

Now if the bodies we inhabit in the other world
were unlike these, all the j)roficiency which we
have gained in the use of the organs of sense would
be worthless. Is it reasonable to suppose that the
Creator would give us these tools to use, and keep
us using them for a lifetime, and then when we
had fairly gained the mastery of them would take
them from us and set us to work with new ones ?
And when we find the elements of sensation mingled
with all our accumulations of knowledge and ex-
perience and character, — woven through and
through the whole of it, and no more separable
from it than the w^arp is separable from the web,
— how utterly inconceivable it is that we should be
placed after death in conditions of life to which all

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 313

these elements of knowledge and character would
be wholly irrelevant. It is much more reasonable
to suppose that we shall have in the other life bod-
ily organisms with which our spirits will be famil-
iar, to the uses of which they are accustomed, tlian
that we shall be placed in tabernacles all new and
strange to us. I prefer to think that death will
make no serious break in the continuity of our ex-
perience ; that we shall take up the thread of exist-
ence on the other side as we lay it down on this
side : and that while the tone of life will be height-
ened and its flavor sweetened, yet the ways of life
will seem familiar ; the place will not be strange ; the
new vesture of the spirit will not appear novel or
unwonted. It may be something as one who comes
back from a journey and finds his home improved
and beautified, — many discomforts gone, the
cramped rooms enlarged, the unsightliness put
away, everything arranged as he had often wished
to have it, yet still the same home, with the same
dear associations, — the same hearth to sit by, the
same windows to look out of, all the old quiet com-
forts left, all the old appointments calling him back
to the old ways of living.

If, now, the form of our appearing in the world
to come is similar to that which is vouchsafed us
here, then it seems highly probable that the sur-
roundings of life in that world will not be unlike
those of the present life. External nature is fitted
to our needs in this world. Man and his environ-
ment were made for each other. Correlation is the

314 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

word that expresses the connection between man
and the physical realm ; and that law will hold
good, no doubt, in the other world.

It will not surprise me, then, when I awake in
that land of which we think so much, but of whose
scenery we know so little, if I find myself in a
country not greatly different from that which I
have learned to love. If we have bodies like these,
then landscapes like these we here look upon —
hill and valley, forest and field, meadow and river,
verdure and blossoms, sunny skies and smiling
fields, all these freed from every scar of the spoiler,
wearing no hint of decay or changef ulness — will
be pleasanter to our eyes and more instructive
to our minds than any other scenes we could im-
agine. .

No poem about heaven was ever written that
took stronger hold of the hearts of men than that
one of Dr. Watts, beginning, " There is a land of
pure delight." The instincts of humanity respond
that if it is not a truthful picture of the heavenly
world it is one that may well be true : —

" There everlasting spring" abides

And never withering flowers, —
Death like a narrow sea divides

This heavenly land from ours.
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood.

Stand drest in living green,
So to the Jews old Canaan stood

While Jordan rolled between."

Into this strain the hymnists often fall. Thus
sings our own Dr. Ray Palmer : —

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 315

" Are there brig-lit happy fields

Where naught that blooms shall die,
Where each new scene fresh pleasure yields

And healthful breezes sigh ?
Are there celestial streams

Where living' waters glide
With murmurs sweet as angel dreams,

And flowery banks beside ? "

And to him answers Thomas Olivers across the
waves of a stormy sea and the snows of more than
a hundred winters : —

" The goodly land I see

With peace and plenty blest,
A land of sacred liberty

And endless rest ;
. There milk and honey flow.
And oil and wine abound,
And trees of life forever grow
With mercy crowned."

And this singer's note, carried back by the retreat-
ing years, is echoed by David Dickson, who more
than a century before him sung the praises of his
" Mother dear, Jerusalem ! "

" Right through thy streets with pleasing sound

The flood of life doth flow,
And on the banks on either side

The trees of life do grow ;
These trees each month yield ripened fruit,

Forevermore they spring ;
And all the nations of the earth

To thee their honors bring."

And again, from a day far down the centuries,
seven hundred years ago, the saintly Bernard of
Cluny began this song that the world has not yet
ceased to sing : —

316 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES ?

" 0 fields that know no sorrow,
O state that fears no strife,
O princely bowers, 0 land of flowers,
0 realm and home of life ! "

This is poetry, you say, and poetry proves nothing.
I am not sure of that. On a subject of this sort
the poets are better authorities than the exegetes
and the logicians. They can tell us something
about the native and ineradicable instincts of the
human heart. And those of ys who believe in a
good God believe that these instincts were divinely
implanted and do not universally crave that which
God does not mean to give.

If, now, the scenery of heaven be something like
what these poets have imagined, — if field and
wood and valley and hill and river and lakelet are
to meet our vision, when we awaken in the life to
come, — then it seems not irrational that this scen-
ery will be inhabited and beautified by all kinds of
animated existence. How lonely and forsaken would
such a world as* ours appear if man were its only
inhabitant 1 How desolate would the forests be if
there were no song-birds to fill them with melody,
no squirrels chattering among the boughs, no crick-
ets chirping under the leaves ! How vacant would
the landscape seem if there were no cattle feeding
upon the plains, no lambs skipping upon the hill-
side, no signs anywhere of happy animal life !

These fellow creatures of ours have their place
in this world as well as w^e. We are fond of as-
suming that the world was made for us, and in the

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 317

highest sense it is true ; but there is plenty of evi-
dence that it was made for them also, and that we
without them could not be made perfect. The en-
vironment is fitted to their wants as well as to
ours ; they make up an important part of the
happy harmony of nature, and I am not able to
understand how their part can be spared from the
symphony of life in the new heaven and the new
earth.

There is a passage in the Epistle to the Romans
in which Paul pictures the whole creation as sharing
with man in the sorrow and misery due to his sin,
and as looking forward with eager expectation to the
consummation of the redemptive work, because, as
he says, *' the creation also shall be delivered from
the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty
of the sons of God." The sympathy and identifi-
cation of nature with man in this world point on-
ward to a continuance of the same relations in the
world to come. He who thought external nature
worth redeeming, with man, from the curse of sin
would probably think it fit to be the environment
of our life in all the ages of the future.

There is another consideration which to my
mind has some force. The study of Nature has
always been to man, and is becoming more and
more to the best men, a source of the highest in-
struction and the deepest inspiration. Unsurveyed
realms of truth are yet hidden from us in na-
ture, waiting for us to come and explore their mar-
velous treasures. Here is a fountain of knowledge

318 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

that is, to our largest comprehension, apparently-
inexhaustible. And the truth which we thus seek
in nature is God's truth. It is his thoughts that
we find expressed in crystal and fossil, in tendril
and tissue ; it is his truth that we have all been
pondering and collating and trying to organize into
systems. It does not seem reasonable to me that
when we pass onward to the life beyond, the book
out of which the Creator has permitted us to gather
so many of his wonderful thoughts is to be forever
closed to us ; that the secrets of nature which we
have burned to know shall be forever sealed up.
It is rather probable that with illuminated minds
and unwearied powers we shall be permitted to
carr}'^ forward these investigations, — to penetrate
more and more deeply into these hidden stores of
wisdom. And if we are to study natural history,
we must live among natural objects.

Such are some of the ways of thinking about
the unknown future life which to my own mind
have become natural and habitual. Much of all
this is an inference, more or less legitimate, from
that law of continuity which has come to rule in all
the serious thinking of this generation. Y^et I do
not hide from myself the fact that it is largely
the vision of what may be rather than the affirma-
tion of what is or must be. All I can say is that
a conception like this makes the future life seem to
me more real and more alluring than any other
which I can frame. Believing, as I do, that the
glory of going on is part of our high calling as the

THE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN 319

sons of God, I like to think of how it will be in that
Unknown Country toward whose borders time is
swiftly bearing us all. You could ask me many
questions about it all which I could not answer ;
you could point out to me, no doubt, anomalies and
improbabilities in the conception I have shown you.
But it is not a matter for dogmatism or controversy.
Something like this the manner of the life to come
may be. That is all I can say about it. If to any
of you these thoughts bring heaven nearer, and
take something of the dread from the darkened
way that leads to it, I shall have done all that I
hoped to do.

One inference from all this reasoning is so obvi-
ous that I scarcely need mention it. If heaven is
anything like this, the doubt of the recognition and
reunion of those who have loved one another here
cannot disturb us. Individuality will not be lost
in this transition. Our own will be their own dear
selves. They may have grown fairer and lovelier,
but the essential elements of personality will be
preserved ; all the dear familiar traits and ways by
which we knew them here we shall find in them
there ; they will be ours at once and forever. Nay,
they are ours even now. Let us never speak of
them as though they were not. We are parted
from them a little space — who can tell how far ?
a little time — who knows how long ? But they
belong to us as much as ever they did. Love is
ownership. Love is not dead. Love gave them
to us ; love knit our souls with theirs. Is death

320 WHAT IS LEFT OF THE OLD DOCTRINES?

mightier than love ? Nay, verily ; for He whose
name is Love hath conquered death. God gave to
us these friends of ours. Is not every good and
perfect gift from above ?

" God lent tliefn and took them, you sigh :
Nay, there let me break with your pain ;

God 's generous in giving-, say I :

And the thing that he gives, I deny
That he ever can take back again."

Therefore, because He is good, and because his
power is equal to his goodness, we believe that
when we pass beyond the veil we shall soon find
those who now, for a little while, are beyond our
sight. The Infinite Love knows where they are
and knows how much we need them, and his hand
will quickly conduct us to the homes where they
abide, to the places that they have made ready for
us. Therefore from our hearts to them, and from
their hearts to us, let sweet thoughts come and go
like angels ascending and descending, weaving the
web of hopes and imaginings between the life that
now is and the life that is to come, and making the
common joys of time the prelude and the promise
of the life unending.

" The good that we work for is hard to win,
But our labor and worship are woven in
To our marvelous web with the beauty we see,
Unfolding from blossom and star and tree.
That widens and lengthens and stretches above
Out into the deeps of Invisible Love.
O spirits dear, who have vanished from sight,
You are only hid in a splendor of light
That is as the dazzling soul of the sun ;

i

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