The scientific study of theology

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W. L. PAIGE COX, M.A.,

vicAK OF ST. Peter's, rock ferry,

AUTHOR OF "present-day COUNSKLS."

Hontion :

SKEFFINGTON & SON. 163, PICCADILLY, W.
1893.

TO

MY MOTHER,

TO WHOSE INTELLECTUAL SYMPATHY

I HAVE ALL MY LIFE BEEN INESTIMABLY INDEBTED,

THIS BOOK IS,

WITH MUCH GRATITUDE AND DEEP AFFECTION,

INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. PAGE

Why Theology should be Studied exactly as the other

Sciences are Studied ... ... ... ... ... i

CHAPTER n.
The Scientific Study of the Nature of God ... ... 36

CHAPTER HI.
The Scientific Study of the Question of the Future Life 65

CHAPTER IV.
The Scientific Study of the Miracles of the New

Testament ... ... ... ... ... •• 86

CHAPTER V.
The Scientific Study of the Nature and Principles of
Worship ... ... ... .., ... ... .. 121

CHAPTER VI.
Worship (Continued) ... ... ... ... ... ... 140

The Holy Land as the Theatre of Revelation ... ... 171

ndpTa doKijjLci^eTe '
TO KoXoi/ Karex^ere.

" Ce que je demande c'est que nous nous souvenions que, si
nous cherchions la verite religieuse, c'est pour mieux adorer et
pour mieux obeir. Je comprends qu'avant de I'avoir reconnue,
nous I'examinions en juges, mais le jour ou nous la possedons,
il faut nous incliner devant elle." — Bersier.

7S:f)t Sbdmtific StuHg of ^l&eolosa^

CHAPTER I.

WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY
AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED.

HERE is nothing of such profound importance
to man as to know what his rehgious behefs
should be. There is no subject about which
it so much behoves him to acquire, as far as he can,
clear and correct ideas. Yet there is no department of
knowledge which is beset with so many difficulties, in
regard to which there have been so many differences of
opinion, and in the study of which even by the most
thoughtful, the most learned, and the most honest of
men, there is so great a liability to error. Probably at
no period of history were differences of opinion respect-
ing the subject matter of religious belief so strongly
marked as at present, and never in the Christian
Church was there such great uncertainty among so
many persons with respect to one or other of the old
Articles of the Christian Faith.

This is traceable to several causes, among the chief

A

2 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

of which, are (i) the remarkable discoveries that have
been made during the present century in every branch
of physical science — discoveries v^hich are apparently
irreconcilable with much that has hitherto been taught
on the authority of Divine Revelation ; (2) the applica-
tion of a minute and rigorous criticism to the reputed
authorship, the language, and the subject matter of the
different books of the Bible, and (3) the fuller and
more accurate knowledge that has recently been
acquired respecting ancient history and literature and
the principal religions of the world. All this has tended
to throw an intensely searching light of criticism on
those doctrines of the Christian Religion which have
hitherto been unhesitatingly accepted by the majority,
and has set many thoughtful persons to question
seriously their claims to belief.

Moreover, the indubitable truths which have been
arrived at by modern research have been discovered
mainly by the inductive method of reasoning. It is by
the patient examination of facts that Darwin and others
have made their great achievements in science. The
modern scientific spirit is a spirit of patient watchful-
ness in the face of unknown truth, it does not permit
the enquirer to make a priori assumptions, and then
force facts to fit in with these ; it rather prompts him
to observe and experiment, and from the results of his
observations and experiments to deduce general laws.
That this is the right method of enquiring into the secrets
of Nature, is proved by the unprecedented success which
has followed upon its general adoption. Practically, the

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 3

book of Nature was sealed to man till he commenced
to peruse it in this way, and thus not only has our age
witnessed numerous discoveries in every branch of
physical science, but new sciences have arisen, and a
vast increase of knowledge has been obtained in other
departments of research, such as history, literature,
archaeology, philology, and even ethics and metaphysics.
All cultivated persons are now trained to reason by
this scientific method, as it has come to be called ;
they instinctively form generalisations from particular
instances, instead of prejudging the results of research
by a priori assumptions, and they fail to see how objective
truth in any branch of knowledge can be accurately
learnt in any other way. Hence the disturbance of
faith which has been remarked upon is not due only to
the apparent collision between the doctrines of religion
and the truths of science, but also, and perhaps chiefly,
to the fact that the doctrines of religion are supposed
to lie for the most part outside the scope of a strictly
scientific enquiry, so that the method of reasoning which
has proved triumphant all along the line of investigation
into the works of God in Nature, is set on one side
when the subject of study is that department of truth
which is called distinctively religious.

The real question at issue between ordinary teachers
of dogmatic theology and those who differ from them is
the question of how religious truth is to be ascertained.
Are matters of religious belief to be subjected to the
same treatment as all other matters into which enquiry
is made ? Is the method which has been found so

4 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

marvellously successful in tracing out the truth in
respect to matters scientific and historical, and in
making surer the limits of truth and falsehood, or at
any rate of probability or improbability, in matters
relating to conduct and the operations of the human
mind — is this method to be rejected in the investigation
of such matters as the existence of God, His nature,
and His will, and the way in which, and the extent to
which, men can know Him ? About the propriety of
following the scientific method in some departments
of theological research there is no question. All the
best linguistic criticism of the New Testament, in which
some English scholars have obtained such creditable
success, has been conducted strictly on the lines of
scientific enquiry. Ought we, or ought we not, to apply
the same method of enquiry in every respect to every
part of the Bible, not only to its words but to its com-
position, to its history, to the events it relates and to
the doctrines it enunciates ? Again, if the Bible ought
to be read in the same way as we all acknowledge the
book of Nature and the book of secular history should
be read, can any satisfactory reason be shewn why
those formularies in which the opinions of the Church
in different ages have been expressed, should not be
verified by the same method, or at any rate be subjected
to the same test ? This is the main question at issue
between theologians and other scholars, and until it is
settled, there is no probability of any general agree-
ment being arrived at amongst thoughtful and cultivated
persons with respect to the subject matter of religious

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 5

belief. As it is at present, very many writers on
theology, while affirming theology to be a science,
study it and teach it in a different manner from that
in which every other science is studied and taught.
They lay down beforehand certain axiomatic proposi-
tions and deduce their principal doctrines from these,
with the result that many of those to whom they
address themselves, not assenting to their propositions,
look with disfavour upon their doctrines. On the
other hand, not a few thinkers who have been trained
in the strictly scientific school have examined the
doctrines of theology by the scientific method as
they have believed, and have arrived at conclusions
at variance with those of the theologians, and in
some respects altogether subversive of religious
belief.

Hitherto, for example, it has been the general
practice of theologians to rest the truth of what is
called revealed religion on some authority, the authority
of the Bible or the Church, or both ; and men have
been required to believe the doctrines of the Christian
religion on one or other of those authorities as being an
infallible declaration of the mind of God. Now it is
just this deference to an infallible authority, however
sacred it may be in name, that reasonable men in these
days are not prepared to pay. They find it contrary
to the analogy of Nature that there should be any
divinely certificated complete and final repository and
guarantee of truth, and they are not prepared to assent
to the assumption that an exception might be looked

6 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

for in the case of religious truth. Even supposing that
it is of greater importance to men to be rightly informed
concerning religious truth than any other kind of truth,
it by no means follows from that that it would be in
accordance with the Divine plan to provide for men an
infallible guide to such truth. And, moreover, even if
it were probably in accordance with the Divine will for
men to be provided with an infallible guide to religious
truth, it is not at all within the limits of our powers to
assume beforehand that that infallible guide would take
this form or that. We have not more ability to fore-
cast the action of God in any particular case, than we
have to forecast the action of men, and the difficulty of
doing the latter is proverbial. I may know a man so
well as to be fairly sure how, that is, from what motives,
he will act under certain circumstances, whether
generously or ungenerously, prudently or imprudently ;
but that is a different thing from my being able to fore-
tell precisely what he will do. The characters of men
are so complex, and their particular actions are
determined by such a variety of causes, that it is
seldom that I would venture to say that my friend
would do exactly this or that. In proportion as my
friend was wiser and better informed than I, my con-
jecture as to his probable conduct would be liable to
be erroneous. Now, if there is this impossibility of
assuming safely beforehand what any man would do
under particular circumstances, how plainly impossible
it must be to forecast with perfect certainty what God
would do under particular circumstances, how probably

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 7

different would be His plan of action from what we
might conceive it would be !

The prejudice, therefore, against any a priori assump-
tion as to the provision by God of some infallible
authority upon which men might base their belief of
religious truth is well grounded in reason. It is con-
firmed by experience. There are at least two such
assumptions serving as the foundations of different
systems of thought among Christians, and the instability
of the structure in each case has proved the insufficiency
of the foundation.

The Evangelical Protestant has assumed in the past
that God would impart certainty to men concerning
His truth by giving them an infallible book, a book every
word of which was to be read as dictated by God, and
every statement in which was stamped with His
authority. Recent events must have clearly proved to
the most intelligent and open-minded of this school
that the Bible is not such a book as they supposed it
was, and that there was no warranty in fact for the
assumption on which they based its verbal infallibihty.
It was a very plausible theory this, it seemed to indicate
a very natural way for the communication of religious
truth to men, it represented God as doing just what we
might have expected He would do, but God's ways are
not our ways, as we often have painful reason to know.

The assumption of the directly opposite school of
Christians is that God would make known to men the
certainty of the truth concerning Himself by means of
a Society miraculously preserved from error. It is

8 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

hardly necessary to point out that here we are in^he
region of pure conjecture, and that there is not a
particle of solid ground on which to base the likelihood
of the institution of an infallible Church. The whole
Romanist position has been so brilliantly and con-
clusively dealt with by Professor Salmon in his work
on the Infallibility of the Church, that it is sufficient to
refer to that work for a refutation of it. The chapter
on " The Blunders of the Infallible Guide," would of
itself satisfy any candid mind as to the baseless
character of the Roman claims. Inasmuch, however,
as an appeal is made to argument for the support of
these claims, and they are represented as resting on the
authority of certain texts of Scripture, it is worth while
just to glance at those texts in order to see how faulty
is the chain of reasoning constructed out of them.
The chief text is, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build My Church."* This is a verse found in
only one of the Synoptic Gospels, and, in the judgment
of some textual critics, is of doubtful authenticity.
Nevertheless it is the foundation upon which the whole
Biblical argument for the infallibility of the Roman
Church is made to stand, as follows — " The Church of
Rome was founded by St. Peter," (an assertion of which
absolutely no proof can be given, nay, which is directly
contrary to the fact : St. Peter may have visited Rome,
but he certainly did not found the Church there, it was
in existence some time before he first set foot in Italy)
** therefore it is the Church of which Christ spoke."
*St. Matt. xvi. i8.

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 9

(A manifest non sequitur.) " Moreover, the Church "
(narrowed to mean the Roman Church) " is of Divine
institution, therefore it is infallible." (Another non
sequitur. " The powers that be are ordained of God,"
but whoever yet believed that they were infallible ?)
But the Church has a guarantee of its infaUibility in
the texts — " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the
end of the world:"* and, ** When He, the Spirit of
Truth, is come. He will guide you into all truth." t
Yet how can it be proved that the ''you" in these texts
refers not to the general body of Christians who are
partakers of the Spirit of Truth, but only to the clergy,
or rather to the bishops with the Pope at their head ;
and how can it be shewn that the presence of Christ
with His Church is not consistent with the existence of
evil within it, and that the promise of guidance into all
truth — a gradual process necessarily — implies also the
preservation meanwhile from all error ? It is difficult
to see in such reasoning as this a serious attempt to
prop up the monstrous assumption, that one fallible
man, assisted by a number of other fallible men, can
produce absolutely accurate statements of rehgious
truth.

As little can the position taken up formerly by the
Gallican Church, and maintained in substance now by
some members of the Church of England, be deemed
satisfactory. In this School the belief in the infallibility
of the Church is retained, only the infallibility is attri-
buted to the whole Church and not simply to the Roman

*St. Matt, xxviii. 20. f St. John xvi. 13.

10 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

branch of it. Considering: that the whole Church has
been hopelessly divided since the first few centuries
of the Christian era, the reference to the infallible
authority of the Church can only be made with respect
to opinions that were held in common by the Fathers
of the early Church and to those that were defined in
the Creeds.

The unsatisfactory character of this position is
demonstrated by the extravagance of the assumption
that underlies it, that the Church of the first few
centuries was in possession of a gift which has been
practically denied to the Church since— an assumption
which, as a Roman Catholic controversialist has put it,*
really amounts to this, ''that the Holy Ghost has failed
of His mission during two-thirds of the lifetime of the
Church which He was by Divine promise to lead into
all truth." Christ's promise to His Church in that
view can only be read to mean, '" You shall not be led
into all truth, you shall not advance further than to
what was attained in such and such a century." More-
over, it is quite impossible to shew that the saintly
writers of the early Church, much as they may have
been illuminated by the Spirit of Truth, were not never-
theless subject to the intellectual limitations of their
day. We know for certain that they believed and
taught as truths of religion, doctrines such as that of
the six days' Creation and the rotation of the sun round
the earth, which are now acknowledged to be erroneous,
so that if infallible accuracy is to be attributed to such

* Quoted by Salmon. 2nd Ed. p. 27S

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 11

opinions concerning religious truth as were held by all
the early Fathers alike, infallible accuracy ought to be
attributed also on the same ground to many exploded
errors.

The fact is, there has been a very considerable
increase of human learning and of critical power since
the early days of Christianity, and it is inevitable that
the result of this should be to alter men's views as to
the way in which the truths of religion are to be under-
stood. The Church of this age must be in some points
wiser than the Church of the Age of the Councils,
though on other points it may be not so wise ; and
directly that is conceded the Gallican theory of infalli-
bility at once breaks down. According to that theory
it is maintained that when once the majority of
Christians have agreed in a conclusion, that conclusion
must never afterwards be called in question. " But
why not," as Dr. Salmon asks, '' if the Church has in
the meantime become wiser ? If God, without injustice
and without danger to men's souls, can leave many of
His people for a considerable time imperfectly informed
and even in erroneous opinion as to certain doctrines,
what improbability is there that He may have left a
whole generation imperfectly or erroneously informed
on the same subject, and reserved the perception of the
complete truth for their successors ? " *

The full stress of the infallible authority of the
Church is laid of course on the three Creeds, which
are now taught by some to be verbally infallible in the

* Ibid, page 177.

12 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

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way that the Bible was formerly taught to be verbally
infallible, so that the rejection of the Creeds is now
represented to be " a greater bar to Christian fellow-
ship than the rejection of the New Testament itself."
There can be no question that the Nicene Creed,
having been drawn up by a majority of the Bishops
of the Christian Church in the fourth century, has
remarkable claims upon the reverential attention of
all students of theology, and, as will be pointed out
later on, there are good reasons for believing on
other grounds that all the articles that compose it are
substantially true. But to believe implicitly in the
absolute verbal accuracy of the Nicene Creed on the
ground of the infallible authority of the Church is
really to rest one's faith on the proposition, that the
Christians of the fourth century were possessed of a
power of defining the truths of religion which was
never possessed before and has never been possessed
since, a proposition of which no proof can be given,
and which is indeed utterly improbable. It may be
urged that the authority of the Church in favour of
the Creeds gains in weight from the fact of their having
been assented to by the majority of Christians in every
age of the Church since ; but it is clear that they have
been assented to on the ground of the belief that those
who composed them were divinely preserved from
error. Christians of subsequent ages have been un-
willing to set their private judgment against the
supposed infaUible authority of the compilers of the
Creeds.

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 13

If it is said further that, after all, the compilers of the
Creeds merely put together what they found in the
Bible and added to it nothing new, the answer is
obvious. The terminology which they used was in
itself for the most part new, supplied by the philosophy
of the day, and it was no slight change to embed the
truths of reHgion in a framework extraneous to the first
form of Christianity. From this point of view, there-
fore, the assertion of the verbal infallibility of the
Creeds really amounts to the assertion that the
philosophy of the fourth century was exactly fitted
to provide a perfect mould of expression for the theo-
logical truths contained in the Bible; yet it is surely not
self-evident why the philosophy of the fourth century
had an advantage in that respect over the more
developed and, in many respects, improved philosophy
of our own time.

For these and similar reasons the doctrine of ** diffu-
sive " Church infaUibility, as it is called, is as unsatis-
factory a basis for a Christian to rest his faith upon
as the doctrine of the infaUibility of the Roman branch
of the Church.*

Involved as he is in such hopeless perplexity when
he listens to what the different schools of Christian
thought have to say to him respecting the proper basis
of his religious belief, it is not surprising that the man
of modern culture should find himself strengthened in

* It may be worth while to point out that this is not to say that
there is not an authority of the Church. It is the assumption of the
mfallibility of the Church in one form or another that has been found
to be improbable, or at any rate useless for practical purposes.

14 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

his prejudice against any and every a priori assumption
as to how God would certify His truth to men. What
we have seen of late, therefore, in some quarters is the
absolute rejection of every theory of Biblical inspiration
and of Church authority, and the subjection of all
religious questions to the freest investigation. The
result has been a wide-spread scepticism concerning
many articles of the Christian Faith. It has been
represented either that they have been tried in the
ordinary balances of truth and have been found wanting,
or that they are without the range of scientific enquiry,
so that nothing can with surety be known of them.

Now, apart from all controversy, those articles of
the Christian Faith which plainly represent the actual
teaching of Christ, and which would be regarded as
fundamental by all Christians, and as distinctive of
Christianity by all non-Christians, have been the
religious mainstay of many thousands of conscientious
and thoughtful persons. It can scarcely be denied that
hitherto they have inspired the purest morality that has
been exhibited on earth, and have afforded the greatest
possible encouragement and consolation in labour and
sorrow to those who have heartily believed them.
Their known practical effect makes it exceedingly
improbable that they are in substance false. So that
there may be many, who, while sharing the prevalent
dissatisfaction with exclusive appeals to authority,
whether Biblical or Ecclesiastical, feel nevertheless
that the process of reasoning is defective, by which
it is contended that the fundamental articles of the

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 15

Christian Faith have been shewn to be unworthy of
belief. Those who have enquired into them with
this result in the name of scientific truth have
professed and have thought themselves to have been
guided by the scientific method, but it can be shewn
that in several particulars they have departed somewhat
from those principles which as a rule they undeviatingly
adhere to in the study of other branches of knowledge.
They have made imperfect inductions by rejecting cer-
tain classes of facts which should not be left out of
account in the study of theology, they have arbitrarily
refused to allow that any other faculty of man than the
reasoning faculty can render any assistance towards the
discovery or verification of religious truth, they have
paid little or no attention to the enlightening power
of personal goodness as an aid to the perception of a
certain class of truths, and they have made affirmations
in the name of science which are demonstrably untrue
and unsupported by the evidence of experience.

Instances of such imperfect inductions and un-
grounded affirmations will be given later. Meanwhile
it may be suggested that the best hope of a final agree-
ment about the subject matter of religious belief is to
be looked for in the adoption by all of a common method
of enquiry. At present the theologian depends for the
demonstration of his conclusions on one style of argu-
ment, and his opponent on another, with the result
that there is a hopeless misunderstanding between
them. That misunderstanding will certainly continue
until they find some common ground upon which

16 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

to base their reasoning, and such common ground
can only be found in the agreement to study theology
scientifically, in other words, to deal with theology
in the same way that every other science has
come to be dealt with. Till that is done, not only
will theologians stand apart from a large number
of students of science, notably of biological and
anthropological science, appealing to them in vain
for the acceptance of their dogmas, but they will
continue to fail of the support of the many who ac-
cept the demonstrated facts of science, and who are
not nevertheless out of sympathy with the aims of
Christian teachers, though they reject some of their
dogmas. This is a circumstance that ought to
very profoundly impress the Christian theologian,
that there is a deeply rooted prejudice against
theology in the minds of many thoughtful and cul-
tivated persons, who yet avow themselves Christians.
Among not only the special students of science,
but the poets, the litterateurs, and the ethical
writers of the present day, dogmatic theology is
held in but slight estimation. The present style of
apologetics may avail somewhat to strengthen the faith
of those who acquired their religious opinions apart
from the evolution view of the origin of Nature, or who,
though generally well-informed, are not fully aware of
the extent to which modern discoveries appear to tell
against the truth of certain beliefs ; but as a means of
persuading those whose minds are saturated with
modern ideas it is useless. An immense amount of

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 17

labour and ingenuity in the sphere of Christian
apologetics is simply wasted, because it is ineffectual
as a means of removing the objections to theology as
it is commonly taught, which are entertained by the
leaders of modern thought, whose opinions are certain
to gain more and more acceptance with the reading
pubhc, and through it with all classes of the community.
Theologians have then nothing to lose, and probably a
great deal to gain, by coming down from their high
standpoint of authority and of a priori reasoning, and
boldly submitting the premisses upon which their argu-
ments are constructed to the test of the inductive
method, in the confidence that, as their doctrines are
true, the truth of them will be made not the less but
the more apparent, when they are investigated by a
method which is acceptable to those whom they wish
to convince.

Yet it may be objected that it is an impossibility for
theology to be placed on a level with the other sciences,
since the class of things with which theology deals are
not capable of being subjected to scientific scrutiny in
the sense in which this is true of the objects of outward
Nature. The same objection was till recently supposed
to hold good with reference to mental and moral science ;
but John Stuart Mill has disposed of it by a chain of
reasoning which, mutatis mutandis, may well be applied
to the case of theology. He has shewn "^^ that any facts
are fitted in themselves to be a subject of science which
follow one another according to constant laws, although

*A System of Logic ^ Book VI.
B

18 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

those laws may not have been discovered, nor even be
discoverable by our existing resources. As yet the
state of mental and moral science may not be as satis-
factory as might be desired, yet none can deny that
by the use of the scientific method of enquiry a great
deal has of late been ascertained and a great deal is
likely to be still further ascertained in the future
respecting the mental nature of man and the laws
relating to human conduct. The affinity between
theology and ethics, for example, is so close, and the
difficulties which beset the study of either science are
so similar, that it is not easy to see why the one science
is capable of being placed on an inductive footing and
not the other.

Yet it may be argued, that, after all, mental and moral
science only relates to man while theology relates to
God, and that, therefore, though men may best dis-
cover by observation and generalisation what is true
in regard to human affairs, the method must be
ineffectual when applied to the things of God, which
are necessarily beyond the scope of ordinary obser-
vation. What, for example, could a scientist learn in
the ordinary way about the doctrine of the Trinity ?
Nay, what can be learnt for certain by the scien-
tific method about the very existence of God ? Have
not some scientists told us that they have *' swept
the heavens with their telescopes, and found no
God ? "

The objection is one which shews how great is the
difficulty of obtaining exact knowledge about the things

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 19

of God — greater by far than the difficulty of obtaining
exact knowle(]ge about the nature of man, and how
necessary it is that all the conditions of successful
enquiry concerning the nature of God should be com-
plied with, but it holds good for no more than that.
It never has been a dogma of theology that man
cannot " receive the things of the Spirit of God," but
only the natural man. Theology deals with a class of
facts which are only discernible and appreciable by
those whose intelligence is illuminated by purity
of heart. By a strict process of inductive reasoning
the theologian can shew that the *' things of the
Spirit of God " are to be " spiritually judged." In
other words, a strong presumption amounting to
positive proof can be made out in favour of the reality
of certain propositions which are held to be true
with a consensus of certitude by men of the very
highest spiritual type. It can be shewn that certain
facts concerning the nature and will of God are only
ascertainable in the first instance by those in whom
high intellect is combined with high character, as
though the fullest development of a man's mental and
moral powers had the effect of opening to him sources
of knowledge to which men of less mental and spiritual
elevation cannot pent^trate. It has been represented
hitherto that knowledge so obtained has been acquired
by the process of " revelation," i.e., by the unveiling by
God to chosen men of truths concerning Himself which
common men are not able or worthy to perceive.
Whether the term " revelation " fitly expresses the facts

20 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

of the case will be a matter for subsequent enquiry.
It is sufficient now to point out that even if the term is
rightly used, if religious knowledge is actually acquired
by special communication from God, it is quite possible
nevertheless for the truths of religion to be made the
subject of inductive enquiry. Even if it were proved
that the highest truths are " revealed " there would be
every necessity that it should be ascertained exactly
what truths are revealed. Even if it were admitted
that human knowledge concerning the essential subject
matter of religious belief has an extra-ordinary source,
yet, inasmuch as men are the instruments by whom
this knowledge is conveyed to men, and inasmuch as it
has to be conveyed to others by means of speech or
writing, it is most demonstrably requisite that the
scientific method of reasoning should be employed,
in order to distinguish what is pure religious truth
from what is not, to eliminate from the statements
of the recipient of Revelation those portions which
bear the impress of his imperfections, and to discover
everywhere the permanent elements of religion beneath
the forms in which they are transitorily clothed, so
that it may be discerned what is rightly the subject
matter of religious belief, and what has usurped its
place.

It is on matters of this kind that the gravest mistakes
have been made both by theologians and their oppo-
nents, and there is no possibility of either arriving at
correct conclusions, and so coming to agree with one
another, until they both adopt a strictly scientific

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 21

method of investigatingthe problems with which theology
deals. If they do meet on this common ground, sooner
or later they will arrive at the same results. It may
be later rather than sooner. Even now, for example,
though the theory of evolution has been before the
world for upwards of thirty years, there is by no means
perfect agreement among biologists as to the process
by which different species are produced and perpetuated.
It was the opinion of Darwin, and is still that of many,
that natural selection is the chief, but not the only,
cause of organic evolution, while Mr. Wallace and
others believe that natural selection is the sole and only
principle which has been concerned in the develop-
ment both of life and of mind from the amoeba to the
ape. Still, inasmuch as both the school of Darwin and
that of Wallace are working by precisely the same
method of investigation, and submit their conclusions
to precisely the same kind of proof, there can be little
doubt but that eventually they will arrive at the same
opinion. Similarly there is every probability that
an agreement will be arrived at respecting various
doctrines of theology which are now in dispute, when
once a common method of investigating them has been
adopted ; only, from the greater difficulty of research
into theological truth, and the greater complexity of
the subject, the time when there will be an agreement
as to results is likely to be more distant.

It seems therefore worth while to attempt to lay
down one or two principles which should be generally
assented to and acted upon in the investigation of the

22 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

subject matter of religious belief. Discarding all arbi-
trary assumptions as to the exclusive claims of any-
kind of authority, and rejecting on the other hand the
unscientific prejudgment of different religious questions,
it ought to be possible for students of religious truth to
arrive at something like a consensus of opinion on such
points as the following.

I. The statements of the Bible concerning scien-
tific matters are to be treated in exactly the same
way as similar statements in all other books are treated.
There is no preponderant weight to be attached to the
authority of any ancient book, however sacred, or to
the opinions of any class of men, however honest and
wise, with respect to matters of scientific fact. The
truth or falsehood of all such assertions is to be deter-
mined by a comparison of them with the certain results
of scientific research, carried on strictly according to
the inductive method of reasoning. If, for example, it
is conclusively proved by this method that the different
forms of animal and vegetable life were not produced in
six days, then it is certain that the first chapter of
Genesis does not give a scientifically accurate account
of the origin of species. If, again, it can be demon-
stratively shewn that such a thing as the stoppage of
the rotation of the earth upon its axis for a period of
some hours has never taken place within historic times,
then it must be allowed by all that the quotation from
the Book of Jasher inserted in the tenth Chapter of
Joshua (which quotation, by the way, implies the belief
of the author that the sun moved round the earth), does

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 23

not relate a scientific fact. Of course it may be urged
by some, that, seeing that all things are possible
with God, it is quite possible that He may have
wrought such a stupendous miracle on behalf of a
people that He had a special regard for, as to stop the
rotation of the earth in order that that favoured people
might win a victory over another people. But that
objection is not to the point. It would not be seriously
questioned by any that all things are possible with God.
The question at issue betv/een those who beheve, and
those who do not believe, that the quotation from the
Book of Jasher exactly describes an objective fact, is not
a question as to whether God coidd make the " sun to
stand still," but as to whether He ever did such a
thing. And the evidence against the alleged occur-
rence is simply overwhelming. Not only is it not
written in the records of the solar system, as science
can trace them, but it is clean contrary to all reason-
able probability. The authority of a very ancient book
written in days when there was no truly scientific
knowledge of the order of Nature, and even the
authority of thousands of good men who have firmly
believed in the story since, have no weight whatever in
deciding such a matter. There can be no possibility of
any substantial agreement between the theologian and
the scientist until it is conceded by the former that the
statements of the Bible concerning matters of physical
science are to be subjected to the ordinary scientific
method of proof. The utmost that the theologian can
require is, that in testing the truth of such statements,

24 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

the scientific method shall be properly used, and that
no conclusions shall be drawn with regard to the
truth or falsehood of the narrative of an alleged miracle
till all the factors have been weighed by means of
which such an occurrence might possibly have taken
place. It will need a separate chapter to discuss this
point, but meanwhile it may be stated that the result
of a proper application of the scientific method to the
examination of the alleged miracles of the Bible will
not be to disprove all the reports of such occurrences,
but to give a different explanation of some of them.

II. A second principle that must be assented to by
students of religious literature in order that they may
pursue their investigations upon common ground is,
that questions of literary and historical criticism must
be freed from the embargo of authority. There must be
no limit to the employment in the study of the Bible of
those methods of criticism which have been applied
with such fruitful results to other ancient literatures.
The student of the Old and New Testaments must not
be debarred from certain lines of investigation by any a
priori assumption as to the inspiration of Holy Scripture
or the authorship of certain books. It must be permis-
sible to him to deal freely with one and all of the books of
the Bible. He must be authorized to try and discover
whether the five books commonly attributed to Moses
form a consecutive narrative written by one man, or
whether they are a compilation of materials composed
at different periods and with different theological and
ethical characteristics. He must be allowed to deter-

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 25

mine, if he can, by internal or external evidence, how
many, or if any, of the Psalms were written by David,
whether the Book of Isaiah is, or is not, entirely from
the hand of the prophet who was contemporary with
Hezekiah, and whether in the rendering of certain
passages of the Bible the reading of the Septuagint or
of the Hebrew text is to be preferred. Moreover, he
must be considered at liberty to test the historical
statements of the Bible by comparing them with the
contemporary records of other nations. In short, the
Biblical critic must have a free hand, it being only
understood that his criticism must be honest and fair.
It must be carried on and its results stated with a
regard for the supreme reverence in which the books of
the Bible have ever been held, and with a sincere desire
to elucidate the truth which they contain. Above all
things, the critic must take care that by emulating the
humility, the good faith, and the personal holiness of
the sacred writers, as they are rightly called, he may be
qualified to apprehend their full meaning, and to sympa-
thize with their general aims, it being an indispensable
canon of Biblical study, as stated by the author of the
Imitation of Christ that ''each part of Scripture is to be
read with the same spirit wherewith it was written."
Undoubtedly some free critics of the Bible have failed
in this, and in consequence they have not only arrived
at erroneous results in their critical researches, but
they have excited a just prejudice against themselves
on the part of those who from mistaken reverence have
deprecated the free and full criticism of the Bible.

26 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

It must be added that no criticism of the Bible can
be satisfactory or lead to true results, unless a due
deference is paid to the opinions current nearest to the
time when the Bible was composed, and to the
authority of Biblical scholars in the past. There is
no deference due to the kind of authority by which it
was imposed by a decree of the Council of Trent* on
the members of the Roman Church that they should
believe that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by
St. Paul ; but there is a certain weight to be attached
to the fact that at that period there was a widespread
opinion among scholars of the Roman Church in favour
of the Pauline authorship of that Epistle. Similarly,
the modern critic of the Bible cannot do his work in a
trul}^ scientific spirit unless he pays a proper regard to
the interpretations and the critical statements to be
found in the writing of the early Christian Fathers and
of the best scholars in each branch of the Church since.

III. A third principle that must be accepted by all
students of theology, if there is to be any substantial
agreement between them, is the following : — That in
the investigation of the subject matter of religious
belief very high authority is to be attached to the
opinions of men of the most approved wisdom and
the most conspicuous purity of life. Religious truth,
or what has passed for such, has always been brought
to light, not by mere students and philosophers, but by
men who have had a peculiar power of discerning it.

* " Testameati Novi .... quatuordecim Epistolae Pauli Apostoli,
ad Romanos, &c ad Hebraeos."

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 27

It has not been reasoned out, as is the case with most
other kinds of truths, but " seen." Whether this power
of "vision," which has always been supposed to
characterize those who have added to or purified the
knowledge of rehgious truth, is in part explicable as
an abnormal facility for reasoning correctly concerning
the deep things of Nature and of human life, may be a
debatable question. On the whole, however, there
seems good reason for thinking that the word ''seeing"
rather than the word " reasoning " best describes what
actually takes place when a man acquires what has
been wont to be called a '' revelation." There are
certain states of consciousness in which truths hitherto
unknown are perceived as by a flash of inward light,
just as objects in Nature are suddenly revealed to the
outward eye by the light of the sun when it falls upon
them, and it seems as reasonable to associate the
authorship of the one kind of illumination as of the
other, with the Ultimate Source of all things. At any
rate, in every case the absolutely essential condition
of obtaining such fresh knowledge of religious truth
has always been a detachment from selfish and ignoble
aims and a desire to be taught by a Power outside one's
self, and those who have laid claim to the possession of
new religious truth have always asserted that they have
not found it out for themselves, but that it has been
"revealed " to them. Thus they have established a strong
presumption in favour of the opinion that religious
truth is in the first instance conveyed to men not by
the ordinary processes of knowledge but in some way

28 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

unknown to us, which cannot be more accurately
described than by the name of " revelation." Dealing
with the facts as we find them, we are bound to
acknowledge that some men have exhibited an excep-
tional power of ascertaining religious truth, and we
cannot fail to observe that there is an inseparable
connection between what we are fain to call religious
insight and holiness of life. That the facts so con-
veyed to us are facts, is attested by their adaptability
to explain the mysteries of life and to guide conduct.
They are accepted as true because they are verified in
a most conclusive manner by the experience of thousands.
And whatever may or may not be known exactly as to
how they were first apprehended, it is thus rendered
absolutely certain that those who did first apprehend
them were possessed of a power of discerning religious
truth which ordinary men do not possess, and that,
therefore, their authority is entitled to the utmost weight
when enquiry is made into any of the matters about
which they have made pronouncements.

IV. It must next be agreed that affirmations concern-
ing what is said to have been " revealed," definitions
of doctrine, may be legitimately examined, in order
that it may be ascertained whether or not they have
been correctly argued out, and that even the original
products of what is alleged to be revelation are
to be tested, as far as possible, by their agreement or
disagreement with the indubitable truths which have
been brought to light since they were first delivered.
The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, is not to be

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 29

considered beyond the scope of criticism because it
has been affirmed by General Councils and has been
assented to by a majority of Christians in every age
smce. It must be recognized as quite reasonably
permissible to go behind the Creeds, and to investigate
whether or not they accurately embody what is taught
in the Bible concerning the Divine Nature. It goes
without saying that all the theological opinions, whether
set forth in the Creeds or not, which men have pro-
fessed to have derived from the Bible, concerning such
matters as the efficacy of the death of Christ, the
nature of the Resurrection, and the future state, must
be considered to be credible or not according as they
accurately represent the teaching of the Bible, or as
they are conformable, when such conformity is possible
and may be sought for, with the testimony of science
and history, and as they lie within the region of
reasonable probability.

Further than this, even the theological teaching of
the Bible in every part of it must be held to be a legiti-
mate subject of criticism. Such doctrines as the
Fatherhood of God, the Divinity of Christ, and the
existence and influence of spiritual beings, are to be
examined with reference to the teachings of science (in
the broadest sense — not physical science only) and
experience, so that it may be ascertained whether there
is a reasonable basis for belief in them. It must be
understood, however, that the collective opinion of the
wise and good in the past must be considered to have a
distinct though by no means an infallible authority, on

30 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

similar grounds to those laid down in the previous
section, in determining the truth in respect to those
doctrines.

V. It must also be admitted by all serious and fair-
minded students of theology that faith is a legitimate
factor in the building up of a personal belief in those
doctrines of religion which when tested by reason are
seen only to lie in the region of the probable. When
the choice is put before a man of accepting one of two
opposite opinions, neither of which is demonstratively
certain, but one of which must be true, and when it is
inevitable that he should accept one or the other, it
must be acknowledged that it is a reasonable and right
thing for him to decide in favour of that which his
interest and his better feelings alike incline him to prefer.

VI. All questions relating to religious rites and cere-
monies, Church government, and the like, must be
finally decided by the test of propriety and utility, and
the best criterion of this propriety and utility is afforded
by the opinions and customs of Christians since the
foundation of the Church, justified as they are, or the
reverse, by the verdict of history. The authority of the
Church has most weight in matters of ritual and morals,
as it rests on such an enormous mass of observed facts
and experience in human nature; but the authority of
the Church, which is properly the authority of Christian
opinion and custom, must not be limited in time or
space : the Church whose authority is to be quoted is
post-Reformation as well as pre-Reformation, and it is
co-extensive with the Christian world. It is evident

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 31

that an opinion or custom universally prevalent at one
period of history loses a certain proportion of the
weight of authority in its favour when it has been
forcibly protested against at another period."^' In this
view it will be seen that there is not universal author-
ity— Catholic authority in the proper sense of the word —
in favour of episcopacy, because since the Reformation
it has not prevailed in every quarter of the Christian
world ; but there is a preponderance of Christian
opinion and custom in favour of it. Similarly, there
is a preponderance of authority in favour of the arrange-
ment of the Christian year in the Church of England, as
a method of commemorating the chief events in the life
of Christ and securing the remembrance of the chief
articles of Christian belief.

VII. It is of supreme importance that it should be
noted by all, that an earnest desire to seek information
in every quarter from which knowledge concerning
religious truth can be acquired, and a resolute intention
to free oneself from every possible tinge of prejudice,
and to cultivate a hearty willingness to discover and
duly appreciate truth in whatever form it is to be met
with, is indispensably necessary to the successful study
of theology. The science of God and the science of
human conduct in reference to God must have rela-
tion to every science which deals with the works of
God and the nature and history of man. The pro-
fessed theologian cannot, without running the risk of

*This is in accordance with the Vincentian rule, — "quod seynper, quod
ubique, quod ah om^iibus."

32 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

very serious error, allow himself to be ignorant of the
results of the latest research in all the principal depart-
ments of science— astronomy, geology, biology, anthro-
pology, and archaeology. It is particularly needful
that he should be accurately informed concerning the
origin and development of religious ideas throughout
the world, the history of ecclesiastical institutions, and
the evolution of morality, as these matters are treated
by those who have made a special study of them.

He is not properly equipped for the service of the
" Queen of Sciences " who has not endeavoured to
qualify himself for the task by the acquisition of a
diversified culture. Still less can theological truth be
thoroughly grasped without the most sacred care for
accuracy in the study of the subjects which are
regarded as belonging to the special province of
theology, such as the literary and textual criticism of
the Bible, Church history, and Christian literature. Just
as no professed theologian can be regarded as properly
furnished for his work without possessing a knowledge
of all that the scientists can teach him that bears upon
the subject of his study, so no person who has been
careful to acquire the general culture of the day can be
held competent to pronounce judgment on the work of
the theologian until he has acquainted himself with all
the facts which have shaped the opinions that have
formed themselves in the theologian's mind. And none,
whatever be the nature and degree of his culture and
attainments, can arrive at an accurate perception of
particular religious truths or a sense of their value

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 33

and importance without the experience gained by teach-
ing them to others, or observing the effects either in the
way of reproof or encouragement or consolation that
they are apt to produce upon men and women of every
type of character and intelHgence in common Hfe.*

The right study and judgment of rehgious questions
demands then a varied knowledge of science, of history,
and of the nature of men, as well as of specially rehgious
literature. Still more imperatively does it require a
moral preparation which can only be effected by the
earnest and continued effort to live in the performance
of what is loving and true. A great deal of the bigotry
on the one hand and the intemperate scepticism on the
other that are rife at the present day are due to the
neglect of this primary condition of successful theolog-
ical study, not simply to ignorance of truths which are
complimentary to others which are clearly perceived,
but to want of fairness, want of candour, and an insin-
cere attachment of the cause of truth for its own sake.
It may be quite true, as Hooker has remarked,! that
" by the bitter strife which riseth oftentimes from small
differences of religious belief, and is by so much always

*Perhaps the ideal training for a theologian is to study in a University
where all the arts and sciences are taught up to date, to pass through a
divinity school, and afterwards to engage in parochial work. This was
the training of the greatest of English philosophical theologians,
Richard Hooker.

" It was a saying of Dr. Arnold, certainly no disparager of intellect,
that no student could continue long in a healthy religious state unless
his heart was kept tender by mingling with children, or by frequent
intercourse with the poor and suffering."

— ^J. C. Shairp. Culture ajid Religion. Ed. 1884, p. 90.

t Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V., Ch. i. 3.
C

34 WHY THEOLOGY SHOULD BE STUDIED EXACTLY

greater as the matter is of more importance, we see a
general agreement in the secret opinion of men, that
every man ought to embrace the rehgion which is true,
and to shun, as hurtful, whatsoever dissenteth from it;"
but it is equally true that *' in any controversy the
instant we feel angry we have already ceased striving
for truth only, and begun striving for ourselves." No
doubt the immense issues dependent on the truths of
theology, and on the right presentation of them, seem
to justify the student of theology in his indignant
protests against what he judges to be false, and
certainly justify him in his censure of those who treat
the science with levity or in a spirit of wilful perversity.
And yet only too easily does the personal and even
selfish element enter into his indignation. He is
contending for doctrines that, as he judges, are of
great value to the race, but which are also very
precious to himself, and that not simply because his
present peace and his highest hopes are, as he supposes,
bound up with them, but because they are his doctrines,
adopted by him, it may be, after much toil and struggle
of head and heart, or because they are the doctrines
of the religious society to which he is attached and
in whose honour or dishonour he indirectly shares.
Thus his zeal for truth is apt to become very largely a
zeal for his own interests and his own credit. From
such a bias likely to lead to heated defence of one's
own opinions, it is exceeding difficult to free one's-self,
and yet if the simple willingness to discover truth,
and the simple belief in the excellence and the power

AS THE OTHER SCIENCES ARE STUDIED. 35

of truth however brought to light, were, as it should be,
the prime motive of the theological student, as it is,
say, of the enlightened student of geology, the theologian
would be as calm in dealing with those who differ
from him as the geologist. The geologist, indeed, can-
not claim moral superiorit}^ over the theologian on the
score of the relative calmness with which he deals with
his science, for no such important issues to himself or
to others are dependent on the accuracy of his opinions.
Nevertheless, until theological questions come to be
discussed on either side with the same absence of
acrimony which characterises the discussion of matters
that are dealt with in the other sciences, it cannot be
said that theology is being studied in a truly scientific
spirit or in a way that is likely to lead to satisfactory
and permanent results.

In the succeeding chapters an attempt will be made
to show what conclusions are likely to be arrived at by
an application of the scientific method to the investi-
gation of some of the articles of Christian belief that are
most controverted at the present day.

CHAPTER 11.

GOD.

N endeavouring to deal in a strictly scientific
way with the subject that lies at the foun-
dation of theology, viz., the existence and
nature of God, it will be convenient first to review the
data which contribute to our knowledge of God, and
then to compare the results to which they lead us with
what has hitherto been the Christian doctrine on the
subject.

We may start from a fact which may be assumed to
be acknowledged by all who are entitled to speak with
authority on matters scientific or rehgious, and which
may be stated in the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
" We are obliged," he says, " to regard every phenom-
enon as a manifestation of some Power by which we
are acted upon ; .... we are unable to think of limits
to the presence of this Power ;*.... the certainty
that it exists is the certainty towards which intelli-
gence has from the first been progressing."! And
again, " One truth must grow ever clearer — the truth
that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere
manifested, to which we can neither find nor conceive

* First Principles. Ed. 1890, p. 99. -j- Page 108.

GOD. 37

either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which
become the more mysterious the more they are thought
about, there will remain the one absolute certainty,
that we are ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal
Energy, from which all things proceed." * This then is
the first unquestionable fact that we have to take into
account in setting theology on a scientific basis, that
there is "an Inscrutable Power manifested to us
through all phenomena, an Infinite and Eternal Energy,
from which all things proceed." There is no need to
dilate on this proposition by way of proof or explana-
tion. None is concerned to deny it, the orthodox
theologian as little as the student of science : it cannot
be denied.

It is equally certain that, to utilize the phrase of
another writer f who stands without the orthodox
camp, there is in the world " a stream of tendency
that makes for righteousness." There is no fact which
is more capable of scientific verification than this, that all
our actions are followed by certain consequences which
are exactly proportioned to the nature of those actions.
It is quite true, as Mr. Herbert Spencer says, | that
"to mentally represent even a single series of those
consequences, as it stretches out into the remote
future, requires a rare power of imagination ; and to
estimate their consequences in their totality requires a
grasp of thought possessed by none." Still that there
are such consequences proceeding from every action,

* Ecclesiastical Institutions. Ed. 1885, p. 843.
t Matthew Arnold. JFiVsf Principles, p. 117.

38 GOD.

whether good or bad, is evident to any cultured mind.
The subject has been dealt with by recent writers,*
who may be referred to as furnishing details and
illustrations of it, which could not be supplied here
without serious digression from the main argument.
As an incontrovertible fact we may couple it with that
which has been previously mentioned, and say that the
actions of men bring about good and bad consequences
"through the established order of the Power that
manifests itself through all phenomena."

But these consequences are moral and of the nature
of rewards and punishments. Men who do good
actions experience good consequences from those
actions, and men who do bad actions are visited with
evil consequences. True, the good and evil conse-
quences are by no means in every case perceived by
those who are affected by them, nor even by others;
3^et on the whole it is evident to any ordinary observer
that the message entrusted to the prophet of old was a
true one : " Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be
well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their
doings. Woe unto the wicked ! it shall be ill with
him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him."t

But we can legitimately go a step further than this.
It is capable of genuine scientific proof on the lines
laid down in the previous chapter, that the discipline
of human life, carried on by means of the good and bad

* Emerson : Essay on Compensation, and F. W. Robertson : Sermons,
Vol. I. No. 14. See also Bishop Butler: Analogy. Pt. I. Chap. 2.
t Isaiah iii. 10, 11.

GOD. 39

consequences which follow upon the actions of men, is
wholly of a beneficial character to those who submit to
it in a penitent, humble, and patient spirit. That men
of generally pure life often bear unmerited pains, and
have almost an equal share with others of the suffering
that is due to natural causes, is of course a truism. But
the general consent of the good is that such pains and
sufferings do not work them any real harm, that on the
contrary they tend to promote their highest well-being.
No doubt there will always be a considerable number of
persons who will demur to this optimistic view of the
function of pain. They will neither concede that pain
in their case has, or could have had, such good effects,
nor will they allow that it has such good effects on
others ; or, if they do make any acknowledgment of
this kind, they will not suffer the possible beneficial
effects of pain to counteract in their minds the depres-
sion produced in them by the contemplation of the
immense amount of suffering with which human life is
charged. Yet, on the whole, the testimony of the
thoughtful and pure-minded in favour of the bene-
ficial character of the discipline to which man is sub-
jected in respect of the good and bad consequences
which proceed from his actions is strong and clear.
We look for such testimony not simply in Christian
quarters ; we find it in the sacred literature of the
East, in Greek philosophy, and in Roman Stoicism.
Still it is Christianity that has raised its voice loudest
in assertion of the blessed results of pain. It has
actually called upon men to rejoice " when they have

40 GOD.

fallen into divers trials." It has afforded numerous
examples of men, who, instead of shirking pain, have
rather courted it, and have exhibited to the v^orld a
marvellous spectacle not merely of courageous and
• uncomplaining submission, but of joy in the midst of
suffering. Nay more, it has boldly taught that the
highest development of character is impossible without
the discipline of pain. It has represented its ideal
character, as being subject to the necessity of being
made " perfect through sufferings."

We have arrived now at this point. There is a
Power behind phenomena with which we are forced to
associate the maintenance of a system of law con-
trolling human life, the tendency of which is to purify
the characters of those who cheerfully submit to it, and
to promote the highest well-being of the wise and good.
Now, if we desire to describe exactly the nature of this
discipline of life, we can only speak of it as parental.
It corresponds precisely to the way in which every
prudent and conscientious parent tries to order the
education of his child. He corrects the child when he
has done wrong, encourages him when he has done
right, endeavours to be always evenly just in dealing
with him, and is not deterred by the fears or entreaties
of the child from causing him to undergo present
inconvenience in order that he may be spared future
pain. The aim he sets before himself is the proper
formation of the child's character, and he postpones
every other consideration in the interest of the child to
that. Very few parents, indeed, realise this aim : so

GOD. 41

distressed are the majority of parents at the thought of
their children suffering, even though temporarily, in
mind or body, that they frequently refrain from
administering that treatment to their children which
is called for in their highest interests. But no such
softness is ever discernible in the discipline of life
which is carried on in accordance with the immutable
law of consequences. It is wholly and in all par-
ticulars calculated to perfect character. True, the
many, even the majority are not appreciably benefited
by it ; but none the less does the truth stand, that
thus, and thus only, can those who desire to be
better than they are, be morally improved. There are
failures under this universal discipline of man — the
failures outnumber the successes ; but yet the system is,
so far as we can conceive, the best possible ; and
though in equity and regularity it far transcends what
any earthly parent has ever done for a child, it can only
be represented in terms adapted to our experience as
parental ; — it is the ideal which in our imperfect efforts
after the moral education of our children we seek to
keep in view.

If the discipline of human life, contrived and ordered
by the Invisible Power, is of a paternal character, we
are fain to regard that Power with feelings similar
to those with which we regard an earthly father,
and it is natural and reasonable therefore to speak
of the Fatherhood of God. Do we thereby ascribe
personality to God ? On strictly scientific grounds it
is not apparent that we are justified in doing so. The

42 GOD.

knowledge of God which we possess is not sufficient to
empower us to make any affirmations about His essen-
tial nature. We can make inferences, legitimate
inferences, concerning the purpose which underlies
the government of human life ; and finding that that
government makes for righteousness we can attribute
moral qualities to the Author of that government —
justice, love, and so forth — ^just as we can deduce the
moral character of a man from his actions. But we
have no data for making any positive statements about
the essential nature of God. One thing, however, is
incontestably certain, that His nature is in every
respect higher than that of man. It cannot on any
supposition be lower. If personality is a necessary attri-
bute of the highest being, as it certainly differentiates
man from the lower animals, then something at least
as high as personality must be attributed to God. It
is quite inconceivable that man, with his lofty attri-
butes of consciousness, intelligence, and will, can be
the product of an utterly insensate and unintelligent
Power working blindly towards unknown results.
There must be in the Inscrutable Power at least all the
capacity which exhibits itself in man through conscious-
ness, intelligence, and will ; though it is quite possible,
as Mr. Herbert Spencer has argued,* that there is " a
mode of being as much transcending intelligence and

*First Principles, page 109.

Cf. Principal Shairp, Culture and Religion ; — " It is because moral law
is but a condensed expression for the energy of, shall I say, a Higher
Personality, or something greater, more loving, more all-encompassing than
personality, that it comes home to us with the power it does."

GOD. 43

will, as these transcend mechanical motion." There
is no occasion, then, to cling to all that is implied
in the phrase, " personality " in order to maintain
the dignity and perfection of the Invisible Power.
For aught we know, there may be something higher
than personality ; and a due regard for a purely scien-
tific method of reasoning must restrain us from dogma-
tizing in this, as in other matters, about what we do
not know.

None the less, however, is it true, that the Unknown
Power must remain for us a Being with whom we can
have no satisfactory religious relations, except we
accustom ourselves to think of Him in terms of per-
sonality. We may stand in awe of an Inscrutable
Power, and will and strive not to sin, lest we should
bring upon ourselves the consequences, of self-reproach
and pain and loss, which are attached unerringly by
that Power to wrong-doing. But prayer is impossible
except we address ourselves to Some One — a Father ;
and without prayer, religion cannot be. In order that
our belief in a Supreme Power may afford to us the
fullest possible incentive and ability to do right, and
consolation under bereavement and suffering, we must
pray ; and that we may pray, we must approach the
Invisible Power as we would a brother man in
this respect that we must compel ourselves to think
of Him as a Person. We must go through all the
forms of thanking Him for our past blessings, of
confessing to Him our past sins, and of seeking
His guidance and help in the future. Without prayer,

44 GOD.

in the sense in which the wisest and holiest of
Christians have chiefly understood it* as meditative
converse with the Invisible Power, we cannot achieve
the best pos'sible to us in right doing. The various
graces of the highest character can only flourish in an
atmosphere of prayer. Would we be truly humble and
modest from day to day, we must reflect day by day
that we are merely the recipients of the bounty of the
Invisible Power, we must recall the various benefits we
have received, and return thanks for them. Would
we have a proper sense of the meanness, the hateful-
ness, and the mischievousness of sin, we must call to
mind our various acts of sin, and reflect that they are
acts of rebellion against the righteous laws of a Being
Who has subjected us to a discipline which is wholly
paternal. Would we prepare ourselves for future
action in such a way that we may do under particular
circumstances what is wisest and best, we must seek
with all our heart and mind to know what is in
accordance with the Will (as we should say, speaking
of an earthly personage), of Him in Whom we live, and
move, and have our being. And when trouble, or

* " We do not use the word prayer {oraison) solely as the petition for
some good thing, poured out before God by the faithful, as St. Basil
defines it, but rather according to St. Bonaventura, who says that
prayer (or meditation), generally speaking, includes all the contem-
plative acts ; or St. Gregory Nyssen, who taught that prayer is inter-
course of the soul with God ; or St. Chrysostom, who calls it a parley
with the Majesty of God; or lastly, St. Augustine and St. Damascene,
who say that prayer is an uplifting of the mind to God " — St. Francis
de Sales. 0/ the Love of God (translated by H. L. Sidney Lear), p. 176.

"Prayer is an exercise of holy thoughts."— Bishop Wilson. Sacra
Pnvata.

GOD. 45

sorrow, or weakness comes upon us, we must, if we
would bear it in the best possible spirit, reflect that it
has happened to us in accordance with that Will, and
that what that Will ordains or permits cannot event-
ually do harm to those who submit to it with patience
and resignation.

It can thus be scientifically proved that there has
been a solid substratum of fact underlying the doctrine
of the Christian Church concerning the Fatherhood of
God, the Divine Providence, and the efficacy of prayer.
With each belief, however, certain opinions have been
associated which cannot be verified scientifically, and
which have arisen from the abuse of that anthropomor-
phism which man cannot entirely avoid in his thoughts
concerning the Infinite Power. Although it was by a
correct instinct that men learnt to think of the dis-
cipline of human life by the Supreme Power as paternal,
yet they naturally and almost inevitably in an earlier
day fell into the mistake of believing that God's action
towards men was in every respect like that of an earthly
father, except that He never acted unwisely or sinfully.
Without going back to the times when it was thought
that God actually ''repented," "was wroth," etc., it was
till quite recently the general belief among Christians that
God was such a Being that He changed His disposition
towards certain persons, and exerted Himself specially
either on their behalf or against them. We know now
that His laws operate upon every part of human life with
undeviating regularity. We have no reason to believe
that they are ever interrupted by the special and

46 GOD.

extraordinary action of God Himself. In fact, all the
evidence we have points the other way. Still, the
effects produced upon men by their own actions are
such as to make them feel as though God were acting
under the influence of certain passions excited by
them. When they do wrong, and are reproved for
it by their own consciences, it seems as though
God were angry with them ; when they contravene
the moral laws, and lose their health, or their fortunes,
or the respect and affection of their friends, it seems
as though God Himself were interposing to punish
them ; when they neglect penitence and prayer, it
seems as though God were withdrawing His favour
from them ; when they confess their faults, and ask
for pardon, it seems as though God were forgiving
them ; and when they busy themselves in some
occupation which is plainly in conformity with the
Divine laws, or engage themselves in devout medi-
tation on some of the ways in which the benevolence
of God is displayed, it seems as though He were smiling
upon them, and visiting them with His approbation.
We have no authority, as has been said, for thinking
that God does change towards us in any such way.
It may be so, but we have no ground for thinking it.
We stand on a more solid foundation when we con-
ceive of Him (to use a familiar simile) as remaining
ever the same, like the sun which at all times shines
with undimmed lustre beyond the clouds, that by their
presence or absence made the day dark or bright for
us. Scientifically, then, we have no justification for

GOD. 47

thinking that God is, in respect of the method by
which He maintains the discipHne of human life, "such
an one as ourselves ; " yet it is difficult for us to express
to ourselves the nature of the experiences of which we
are conscious when we act in accordance with or in
disobedience to His laws, without saying that God
smiles upon us, punishes us, or visits us with His dis-
pleasure. We have, indeed, experiences which make
it seem as if we had excited these feelings in the
Supreme Power ; but they are produced in us by the
orderly operation of the Divine laws, and it is only
through that orderly operation, so far as we can ascer-
tain the facts, and not through any special interferences
on God's part, that the disposition of God towards us
at any time is revealed.

Thus the doctrine of the special providence of God,
as hitherto generally taught in the Christian Church,
seems not to be in accordance with the teaching of
science. The facts, as has been frequently said, all
point to the uninterrupted operation of the Divine laws.
Yet it did stand in men's minds for an indisputable
truth, viz : — that every single one of their actions
entailed corresponding consequences under the disci-
pline of life carried on by the immutable laws of God,
just as though a special interposition had on each occa-
sion been made on their behalf by God. In a word, a
scientific observation of the laws which govern human
life has taught us that God exercises that influence for
the good of men by means of His unchangeable laws,
which He was formerly thought to exercise by the

48 GOD.

special acts of His providence. So that the Christian
loses nothing by giving up his literal belief in that
doctrine. He rather acquires thereby an increased
reason for adoring a God Who does in His majestic
unchangeableness what He was formerly thought to
do after the fashion of men by repeated efforts of will.

A scientific observation of the facts has also given us
a higher conception of the agency of God with respect
to prayer. Formerly, in contravention of the frequent
warnings in the Bible of the inefficacy of the kind of
prayer that is not in accordance with the " Divine
Will," men thought of prayer chiefly as an instrument
for obtaining the fulfilment of their own wishes ; and,
moreover, they conceived that, when they asked God
to do something for them, the effect was that the
orderly operation of the laws of God was interrupted
on their behalf. We know now that the operation of
the laws of God is never interrupted, even by prayer,
and that many requests that men may make are in
consequence quite outside the region of prayer. We
are no longer able to think of prayer as a kind of force
which runs athwart and interrupts the other forces
which operate in Nature and on human life, though
there is much ground for thinking that it is a force
which may take its place among other forces in pro-
ducing even physical results. At any rate there are
some remarkable incidents narrated in the Bible and
of more recent occurrence which justify that supposi-
tion. There is a ring of scientific truth about the
familiar lines,

GOD. 49

" More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of." *

Yet we have more definite evidence as to the sub-
jective than the objective effect of prayer ; and that is
the effect of pra3^er to which the greatest prominence is
given in the Bible, and to which the lives of the Saints
bear the most conspicuous witness. None can pray-
without feeling the better for it, and none can ask for
any moral or spiritual benefit without receiving it.
Indeed, it is plainly a law of the religious life that our
moral and spiritual attainments are in proportion to
our devout wishes expressed in prayer, and moreover
that the character of our religious life will correspond
to the character of our prayers. For example, if we
intermingle intercessions with our requests on our own
behalf, we shall habitually think of and act for the
benefit of others as well as ourselves ; if we address
thanksgivings to God as well as petitions we shall
be nourished in a cheerful and unselfish religion ; if we
accustom ourselves to recall and confess our faults we
shall increase in humility, and so forth. All those
precepts in the New Testament relating to prayer, such
as "Ask and it shall be given you, etc.," " In nothing
be anxious, but in everything by prayer and suppli-
cation let your requests be made known unto God,"
are shown to be absolutely correct from the certain
results which follow when they are acted upon. Still
it has to be remembered that they are necessarily

* Lord Tennyson, The Paising of Arthur.
D

60 GOD.

couched in anthropomorphic language, for how could
we find other terms in which to express the nature and
operation of prayer ? We may not take them to
imply that God is moved to extraordinary efforts of
will by our words, any more than by our actions.
Even the parable of the Unjust Judge, which appears
to give the most anthropomorphic representation of
God to be found in the Gospels, cannot be read as
conveying any true lesson except it be taken to teach
that patient persistence in prayer is absolutely necessary
to its producing a full and proper effect. We cannot
rightly think of God as personally acted upon by
importunity like the judge in the parable, nor, indeed,
is it stated that He is. The thing emphasized in the
parable is the importunity of the widow. Our impor-
tunity must be such, and it will have its reward, though
the answer it produces will be in accordance with the
orderly operation of law ; and it will not come as the
extraordinary action of a God Who is moved to exert
Himself on our behalf on account of His being wearied
by our prayers. As Bishop Wilson has said, ** Impor-
tunity makes no change in God, but it creates in us
such dispositions as make us fit to receive our
petitions."

The result at which we have arrived is, that the an-
thropomorphic terms which are used to describe God's
agency with respect to the discipline of human life and
the effect of prayer express substantial truths, though
they have hitherto been commonly understood too
literally, and been associated with certain erroneous or

GOD. 61

at any rate doubtful conceptions concerning the method
of the Divine operations.

But we cannot associate the thought of God only
with the phenomena that present themselves to our
senses in the material world, and with the discipline of
human life. The most remarkable by far of the exis-
tences in Nature of which we have any knowledge is
man. Physically, indeed, we may class him with the
lower animals in reference to his formation and preserva-
tion by the Supreme Power ; but there is something in
man which sharply differentiates him from the brutes,
and, moreover, which compels us to entertain other
thoughts concerning God than those which are suggested
to us by the two classes of facts already mentioned,
that is to say, those pertaining to the existence and
history of the universe, and to the discipline of human
life. The most sublime things by far with which we
have any acquaintance are the virtues, exhibited in the
lives of the best of men, — ^justice, love, humility, purity,
and so forth. These graces of character are not only
unspeakably beautiful in themselves as subjects of
contemplation, but they are most powerful forces,
though immaterial, exerting an immense influence upon
human life, adding intensely to its pleasures, and
furthering immeasurably the advancement of the race.
Whether or not, or how, they have been gradually
evolved during the long ages in which man has lived in
social intercourse with his fellows, this is not the place
to discuss. Anyhow, they now present themselves to
us as a class of things of which cognisance must be

62 GOD.

taken when we are considering our relation to the
Supreme Power. If it is true to speak of that Power
as " the Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all
things proceed," then these graces of human character
must have proceeded ultimately from that source. It
is beside the point to argue that the vices of human
character must on the same ground have proceeded from
the same source ; for it can be definitely shown that the
vices are of distinctly human origination, and can only
be associated with the thought of God's authorship
in so far as they are the product of that capability
of spontaneous action with which man has been
endowed by God. In this respect they stand by them-
selves, and are not to be compared even with similar
actions wrought unthinkingly and without the exercise
of choice by the brutes. The virtues are not of human
origination in the same sense as the vices, and more-
over they cannot be classed with the vices in relation
to our experience of the operations of the Supreme
Power, inasmuch as the vices exhibit in themselves
nothing superior to the other kinds of phenomena of
which we have experience, and which have been
already referred to. The virtues belong to a higher
order of things than any of these, and therefore they
unavoidably suggest to our minds other and higher
thoughts concerning "the Power by which we are
acted upon." Now, if we are justified, as the accred-
ited exponents of Science not only allow but affirm,
in regarding all phenomena as a manifestation of that
Power, if we have a warranty therefore for inferring

GOD. 63

that there must be in that Power something at least as
high as wh'it we call personality in man, something at
least as high as consciousness, intellect, and will, then
by the same reasoning it is demonstrable that there
must be in God something at least as high as what in
man we call a just, loving, pure, humble, and self-
sacrificing character. In a word, the Supreme Power
must be not only just, loving, etc., but must possess
those virtues in the highest degree, and be, as we say,
perfect.

There is thus opened to us a kind of knowledge con-
cerning God other than that which we derive from the
study of Nature and the contemplation of the course of
human affairs. We learn of God from the nature of
man, as well as from the environment in which man is
placed, and from the consequences which proceed from
his actions. But it is not from all men that this testi-
mony arises. Some men exhibit in their conduct so
little that is amiable or admirable that they add
nothing to what Nature of itself teaches us concerning
God. It is only men of a purer type who present to
our view in their lives and characters a set of pheno-
mena which afford a new manifestation of the Invisible
Power. And of these One, by common consent of all,
has so realized in Himself all the highest possibilities
of goodness, has so exhibited in His life all the virtues
in their fullest development, that in Him as in no one
else we see the full moral nature of God revealed.
Through Him we have learnt that God is not only all-
powerful and just, but is merciful, humble, and self-

64 GOD.

sacrificing. There may be phenomena which seem to
conflict with this moral estimate of the Infinite Power,
yet, in His inmost nature He must be what Christ
exhibited Himself to be, else there are things in the
universe which are of higher and purer quality than the
source from which they proceed.

We arrive then by a strictly scientific process of
reasoning at the truth, that the Supreme Power is
revealed in morally perfect humanity, as well as in
Nature and through the discipline of human life.
There is that in God which corresponds exactly to the
moral character of good men, and especially of Jesus
Christ ; and the nature of which that character
was the exhibition is of direct Divine authorship.
This is the truth which the Christian Church has
hitherto proclaimed in its doctrine of the Divinity of
Christ. It is a doctrine which has come down to us
expressed in the terms supplied by the Greek phil-
osophy which was current in the age of the Councils.
It is possible that in the increase of wisdom and know-
ledge a more perfect expression of that doctrine may
hereafter be arrived at. At any rate, in no satisfactory
way can it be argued that the decisions of the majori-
ties at certain councils have such weight as to be con-
sidered by succeeding ages in every respect infallible.
It is an assumption that is wholly untenable in a
scientific light that the Christian bishops of the fourth
and fifth centuries were possessed of a faculty for
defining theological truth which has never since been
possessed by Christians. If men now are able to make

GOD. 55

more exact statements of astronomical and geological
truth than it was possible to make in ancient times, so
it is only likely that more exact definitions of theo-
logical truth may be made in the future. Meanwhile,
however, it can be shown that there is a substantial
basis of truth in all those affirmations concerning the
nature of Christ which are contained in the Creeds.
If some of the articles of the QiUcunqiic Vult seem to us
now to transcend the region of the scientifically ascer-
tainable and to be excessively precise, if the religious
sense in these days shrinks from that boldness of
metaphysical speculation concerning the Divine Nature,
which was considered by the makers of the Creeds and
by the theologians of the past to be a pious and proper
exercise of the understanding, if we now believe that the
mischief arising from the compulsion of all Christians
to assent to elaborately constructed dogmas is likely to
be greater than that of allowing a larger liberty of belief
to all, yet we cannot on reflection but acknowledge the
present value, when they are rightly understood, of
those expressions in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds
in which Jesus Christ is spoken of as the " Son of
God," "begotten not made," "being of one substance
with the Father," " by Whom all things were made."
It may be, and indeed it unquestionably is the fact,
that these expressions are cast in a mould furnished
by the conceptions concerning the method of the
Divine revelation, which were current in the earlier
centuries of our era ; it may be that a term which des-
cribes the method of human generation can only by a

56 GOD.

figure of speech represent the origination of that nature
which was manifested to the world in the wisdom and
transcendent lovableness and purity of Christ ; it may
be that the statement that Jesus Christ was the agent
of the Invisible Power in making the world is a state-
ment which, however true, in its literal signification is
capable of no historical or scientific verification, and
therefore cannot be brought into a parallel line with
other articles of the Christian faith for which a sub-
stantial historical or scientific groundwork can be found ;
yet it would be difficult to frame other definitions which
would serve better to express to the generality of men
and women what is necessary to a right faith respecting
the manifestation of the Supreme Power which is made
in perfect human character as it is exhibited in Christ,
respecting the Divine authorship of that higher nature
in Christ of which His perfect character was the expres-
sion, and respecting the utter wisdom, benevolence, and
mercifulness with which the operations of the Supreme
Power have ever been carried on.

No doubt erroneous opinions have in the course of
the centuries encrusted the popular belief concerning
the manifestation of the Supreme Power in Jesus
Christ and the mediatorial functions which Christ
has fulfilled between God and man. For example, the
idea of the sacrifice of an innocent victim to appease
the outraged feelings of a heavenly Father angered by
sin, is notably a survival from an age when a grossly
ignorant conception was current concerning the nature
of the deity. Still there is a profound truth under-

GOD. 57

lying the popular doctrine of the Atonement, viz., that
Christ in voluntarily devoting Himself to death to
attest the truth of His teaching concerning God, and
to attract men to give heed to it, acted in accordance
with the general law, that it is only by self-sacrifice
that men can convey substantial benefit to others. For
the purposes of practical religion we cannot afford to
lose sight of, or to obscure, that view of the efficacy of
the death of Christ, which He Himself has set forth in
the words, ''I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto
Me; " nor can we in any way diminish the significance
of Christ's mediatorial function in representing God to
men, and giving to them the highest conception of the
beauty and holiness of His character.

There is yet another way in which on reflection we
are compelled to regard the " Infinite and Eternal
Energy from which all things proceed." We are all
consciously acted upon by inward impulses inclining
us towards the love and pursuit of what is good and
pure and true. When we do wrong we are inwardly
reproved for it, when we do right we are inwardly com-
mended. When two courses of action are open to us,
and we are not certain which is right to take, we have
only to reflect awhile in attention to the voice which
speaks within us, and if the question be not too complex,
our doubt is infallibly removed. Not only are we
conscious of such experiences in ourselves, but we note
them in others, and we find that they are shared in a
greater or less degree by all our fellow-creatures. We
have our own private predilections, tastes, prejudices,

58 GOD.

sympathies, and antipathies, which seem to belong to
our very selves ; but these inward monitions of goodness
are the same in others as in ourselves. When they are
kept free from intermixture with impulses which arise
from the different dispositions of different individuals,
they are found to be identical in all men, so that they
appear to stand, so to speak, altogether outside the
region of self.

Now, on the supposition that " every phenomenon
is a manifestation of some Power by which we are
acted on," we are forced to hold that we ourselves,
and all other men, are in the totality of our complex
natures separately beings through whom a manifestation
of the Supreme Power is made. We are each, as it has
been well expressed,"^' delegated parts of God, endowed
as men with certain peculiar powers, but yet presenting
the same kind of manifestation of God as that which is
afforded by other objects in the universe. But a quite
distinct manifestation of God is made within us by
those inward moral and spiritual monitions which are
not peculiar to ourselves, but are shared by others, and
are the same in them as in us. As to the way in which
those monitions have come to operate within us it is
foreign to our present argument to enquire. The only
fact with which we have now to deal in connection
with them is, that man, and especially civilized man as
he is constituted at present, is acted upon by these
monitions ; and this being so, and God being the
*' Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things

* Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 35.

GOD. 59

proceed," they cannot but be regarded as affording a
separate kind of manifestation of God, a manifestation
that is markedly distinct from that which is afforded
by us as personal beings with each his own private
individuaUty. It is impossible then to avoid arriving
at the conclusion, that, as the Supreme Power of the
universe is manifested in and through the phenomena
of the material universe, in which we may include our-
selves, as well as, in and through morally perfect
humanity, so He is manifested in and through those
moral and spiritual impulses which act more or less
upon all men outside the region of their own personahty.
This is the truth that has hitherto been witnessed to
the world in the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
In respect to this doctrine, again, it will be noted that
mistakes have arisen from a too anthropomorphic view
of the nature and actions of God, from a too literal
interpretation of certain phrases of the New Testament,
and from the excessive tendency to systematize and
define, which have characterized the theology of the
past. The teaching of the Christian Church concerning
God the Holy Spirit has suffered perhaps more injury
than the other branches of its doctrine concerning God
from the adoption of the word " person " to express
the different aspects of the Divine nature, corresponding
to the different manifestations of God which were first
denoted by the Greek word vnoaTaa-is. It has been asso-
ciated with limited conceptions as to the times and
methods in which this manifestation has been made
among men, it has tended to maintain an erroneous

60 GOD.

opinion of the nature of the composition of the sacred
literature of Christianity, to the detriment of its
authority at the present day, and it has seriously
discredited in comparison those contributions to moral
'and rehgious truth which are furnished by the poet, the
scientist, the artist, the historian, and especially by the
student of religion who endeavours to give expression
to the new thoughts of God which he believes he has
acquired from the very source of truth itself.

Still, while noticing what may be called the popular
abuse of the doctrine of the Christian Church concern-
ing the Holy Spirit of God, and while recognizing that
some of the articles of the Creed, in which it is
expressed, appear now to trench too much upon ground
that is beyond the possibility of accurate definition, yet,
as in the case of the other articles of the Creed, it is
needful for us to bear in mind that these each indicate
an aspect of the manifestation of the Infinite Power,
which it is important to keep in view, as for instance,
that the new intimations of religious truth which are
made known to the world by gifted men are not of
their own origination, but of Divine suggestion, and
that the Supreme Power is to be thought of and adored
by men in reference to the influence He directly exerts
upon their thoughts and feelings, as well as to the other
manifestations of His power and energy, — truths which
are enshrined in the statements that '' He spake by the
Prophets," and that " together with the Father and the
Son He is worshipped and glorified."

By the process of reasoning we have thus far carried

GOD. 61

on we are led to the recognition of a triple manifesta-
tion of God, in nature and the laws of nature, in per-
fect humanity, and in the higher impulses which act
upon men. Whether there are other manifestations
of God which may be distinguished from these,
we cannot tell. Constituted as we are at present,
our consciousness cannot transcend these limits, while
any conception of God which falls short of them is
necessarily imperfect and so far erroneous. The
Christian Church has done invaluable service in
popularizing this truth of the triple manifestation
of God by means of its doctrine of the Trinity in
Unity. No doubt, the terms in which the doctrine
has been expressed have been inadequate and mis-
leading to many, as those who first framed it foresaw.*
The use of the word *' person," which, as has been
already remarked, by no means exactly represents
the Greek vTroo-raa-is, and which conveys to us now a
meaning somewhat different even from that of the
Latin word persona, has tended to maintain in the
popular mind a tendency towards tritheism, or what
has been styled, not without foundation, a belief
in the Deity as a triad of ** non-natural men."
There may be reasons for regretting with Calvin
that the word " Trinity," a non-biblical word, and
a word that does not appear even in the Nicene
Creed, should have been adopted into the Christian

* " When we deal with words that require some training to under-
stand them, different people take them in senses not only different but
absolutely opposed to each other." — Athanasius, De Sententia Dionys. i8.

62 GOD.

doctrine of God ; yet when we consider how inadequate
are the resources of language for expressing Divine
truth, it is difficult to see how in the past any more
suitable words could have been chosen ; though now, as
we have had so much experience of the abuse of them, it
is most necessary for it to be made known that they
but very imperfectly express, as skilled theologians *
allow, the mysterious verities, which human language
at the best can only indicate and not define.

When we consider how repugnant to sound reason
and common sense is the popular view of the Trinity
in Unity even yet, when we remember in what an
audaciously irrational way the relations between the
Three Persons of the Godhead are still sometimes
spoken of, and in what intricate verbal subtilties the
popular preaching of the subject has tended uselessly
to entangle the mind, it is not surprising that many
thoughtful men should now be inclined towards Unitar-
ianism rather than Trinitarianism as the more accurate
doctrine concerning the nature of God. Still it should

♦"It may be unmeaning not only to number the Supreme Being
with other beings, but to subject Him to number in regard to His own
intrinsic characteristics. That is, to apply arithmetical notions to Hira
may be as unphilosophical as it is profane. Though he is at once Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, the word " Trinity " belongs to those notions of
Him which are forced on us by the necessity of our finite concep-
tions."— J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent, 4th ed. p. 47.

'*It was only with an expressed apology for the imperfection of
human language that the Church spoke of the Divine Three, as Three
Persons at all. But ' we have no celestial language,' and the word is
the only one which will express what Christ's language implies about
Himself, the Father, and the Spirit. Only while we use it, it must be
understood to express mutual inclusion not mutual exclusion." — C.
Gore, Lux Mundi, p. 336.

GOD. 63

be remembered that Unitarianism is just as much a
dogmatic system as Trinitarianism is. Definition always
implies the exclusion of something, and when we define
the Divine nature as a Unity, we exclude the idea of its
diversity — a much more serious dogmatic error than
any that can result from the popular misapprehension
of the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. Already we see
the effect of this error in the too exclusive attention
which cultivated minds are giving to the manifestation
of God which is presented in the phenomena of Nature,
and the growing neglect of that witness to the merci-
fulness and lovableness of God which is derived from
the contemplation of perfect humanity as it is exhibited
in Jesus Christ, and from the best impulses that act
upon individual men. If Trinitarianism as a dogmatic
system is to be supplanted by a Unitarianism that shall
be rigidly consistent with its title, then there will prevail
among men an inferior conception of the character of
the Infinite Power and a correspondingly inferior con-
ception of the highest standard of human duty. Love
will have a less substantial sanction among the virtues
than justice, and men will be borne back to a pre-
Christian system of morality, of which the dominant
principle will be the promotion of the advancement of
the type without regard to the claims of the individual.
No, the doctrine concerning God which is to be the
foundation of the morality of the future cannot be
Unitarianism. In its conception of the Divine nature
the world in the last eighteen centuries has not been
going backward. The majority of Christians cannot

64 GOD.

have been nourishing themselves on a doctrine con-
cerning God which is at the heart a He.* However
inadequate we may now find the verbal expression of
that doctrine, it is impossible to believe that in its
substance it is erroneous. It is from the ranks of those
who have held it that have been produced the noblest
characters with which this world has been blessed.
And from the very fear lest that great succession of
the saints should be interrupted we shall be wise not to
part with the venerable symbols of the faith by which
they lived, till we can find some more perfect way of
expressing the truths which underlie them.

* " No thought that ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man
but was an honest insight into God's truth on man's part, and has an
essential truth in it which endures through all changes, an everlasting
possession for us all." — Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, Lecture IV.

CHAPTER III.

THE FUTURE LIFE

|NE of the foremost of the problems with which
rehgion is concerned, is that of the future
state of the individual man. Christianity
has progressed more by virtue of its doctrine of immor-
tality than of any of its other doctrines. It has taught
it positively as a revelation ; but, as a revelation merely,
it will not be accepted by those who have been trained
in the modern school or reasoning. It particularly
behoves us then to view the doctrine, as far as possible,
in a strictly scientific light, so that it may be discovered
whether there is or is not reasonable ground for
believing it.

Now, the first thing to be noted in reference to this
subject is, that the sciences which relate to man in his
physical condition can tell us nothing positively as to
his prospect of continuing to live after the decay of his
body. It is a subject which lies outside their scope.
They have to do v/ith phenomena which are bounded
by death, and the students of those sciences have no
data for carrying their investigations further : they are
in possession of no facts, which would authorize them
to make any definite pronouncement for or against the

THE FUTURE LIFE,

future life of man. They may argue that when a man
dies he appears to come to an end just as a beast or a
plant, and therefore the probability is that like a beast
or a plant he actually ceases to be. But neither the
beast nor the plant perishes utterly. They are resolved at
death into their constituent elements. In the case of
the beasts especially, it is conceivable that the sentient
life which they possessed is not destroyed, any more
than the particles of matter in which they were
embodied. Like those particles of matter it may
undergo a transformation merely, though we cannot
conceive of what sort it may be. Anyhow, it is impos-
sible to prove that there is no life after death possible
to the brutes. Similarly, it is impossible to prove that
the life of man after death does not undergo transforma-
tion rather than destruction.

The probability that this is so is much stronger in the
case of man than of the brute, for man is far more than
a sentient animal with but imperfectly developed reason-
ing faculties: he is possessed of extraordinary volitional,
emotional, intellectual, and moral powers : he is capable
of unlimited ascension in the scale of moral character.
Though subject to similar laws in the physical sphere
with the brutes, he partakes of an entirely different
order of experiences in the moral sphere, and has a
moral growth or decay just as he has a physical growth
or decay. Now, if in respect of the life which pertains
to him physically, it is impossible to say of man that he
perishes utterly at death, still less can that be affirmed
of him in respect to that other kind of life which he

THE FUTURE LIFE. 67

seems to live in relation to the moral phenomena of
which he is the subject. Nay, it may even be argued,
that seeing that the law of the conversation of energy
operates everywhere in Nature, it is impossible that the
highest kind of energy of which we have any experience,
viz., that which is exhibited in the developed emotional,
volitional, intellectual, and especially moral life of man,
can be the solitary exceptions to that law, — and that
therefore it is utterly improbable that man is destruc-
tible by death.

However this may be, the one thing indisputable is,
that physical and biological science can affirm or deny
nothing with respect to the future life of man; and
those who are most proficient in those sciences are
quite ready to acknowledge this. Science, then, as the
term is generally used, leaves the question open. Our
ordinary method of arriving at positive knowledge
fails us here. All we can learn by means of it is, that
man may, or may not, continue to live after the disso-
lution of his body into its constituent elements.

But this is a question which, as regards its bearing
on the religious thought and the moral conduct of each
individual, cannot be treated as an open one. A man
may apparently take up a perfectly reasonable position
when he says, " I cannot tell whether or not there is a
future state. I am necessarily an Agnostic on that
subject, because there are no scientific data to go
upon." But in the conduct of life he cannot help
acting on one supposition or the other, and practically
it will be found that to doubt the future life is to ignore

68 THE FUTURE LIFE.

it altogether in its relation to conduct. No man can
build a solid structure on an uncertain foundation, and
it is impossible for us to order our moral conduct
according to ideals which can only have their justi-
fication and consummation in a life beyond the grave,
if we have no positive opinion as to whether or not
there is such a life at all. The consequence is, that
the standard of morality that we necessarily keep in
view, if we leave the question of the future life an open
one in our minds, is a standard based on the negative
of the question. At least we may be fairly certain
about what is calculated to procure our well-being in
this life, such as it is. The rewards and punishments
attached to good and bad conduct here are fixed and
determinate after their kind, and they afford a sub-
stantial basis for moral action of a certain sort. We
know positively that such and such courses of action
are judicious and politic in relation to our present mode
of existence, and therefore, if we hold ourselves to be
utterly ignorant of whether there is another life, we
will shape our actions according to what we do
know and with no reference to what we do not
know. Yet in doing this we may make a great
mistake. If there should happen to be a future life
after all, it might prove eventually that in some
important respects we had lived our earthly lives
wrongly; so that it is in the highest degree injudicious
to order our conduct entirely in accordance with the
supposition that we perish utterly at death.

Moreover, it is not only injudicious thus to prac-

THE FUTURE LIFE.

tically assume the negative of a profoundly important
question, but it is in the highest degree unscientific to do
so. There is hardly any fault greater from the scien-
tific point of view than to decide without reflection in
favour of one of two alternative opinions. Now, in
this case, one opinion or the other must be true, and,
therefore, it is a matter of grave importance as regards
the right conduct of life that we should consider
whether there may not be some other kind of evidence
available on the subject, different from that which is
supplied by the physical sciences. That there is such
evidence will be shown later ; but it will be worth while
first to consider which of the two opinions as to man's
prospect of life after the dissolution of the body it would
be most advantageous to us to discover to be true, or, in
the possible absence of sufficient evidence, to assume to
be true, seeing that we must for practical purposes
build on the supposition of the truth of one or the
other.

Now, on this point there can be little doubt or con-
troversy. Almost all those who are qualified to form a
right judgment on the subject would say unhesitatingly,
that it would be better for men, as regards their happi-
ness as well as their moral conduct, to be able to look
forward to another life as the continuation and com-
pletion of this than to repose in the opinion that they
perish utterly when the breath leaves their bodies.
Even granting that men can keep themselves pure, and
live nobly laborious and self-sacrificing lives without
having any hope of a future life, it is very doubtful

70 THE FUTURE LIFE.

whether they could rise to the full height of their
various capabilities for good, unless they were sus-
tained and stimulated by the thought of possible
spheres of usefulness open to them hereafter. Self-
culture for its own sake, apart from the effect it might
have on one's own present condition and that of others,
would, without such a prospect, fail of its highest
encouragement. Moreover, it is only the purest minds
and those most richly endowed by Nature who would
be capable of strenuous and self-abnegating endeavour
in the use of their powers. The vast majority could
hardly be expected to rise above the ideal of getting as
much enjoyment, and that chiefly of a sensual kind, out of
this life as possible. Their motto would practically be,
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

The effect on the happiness of the race of a general
disbelief in a future life would be still more disastrous.
To hold that our loved relations and friends who have
gone from us, have departed into nothingness, to have
no hope that all our highest and purest aspirations will
eventually be satisfied, that all the wrong done in this
world will eventually be righted, that all the untoward
circumstances suffered without their fault by so many
thousands of our fellow-creatures will be compensated
to their good, that everyone will some time or other be
exactly rewarded according to his works, and that
infinite Mercy, as well as infinite Justice will hereafter
be visited upon every living thing — to have no such
hopes as these is to be deprived of that which is needed,
not only to furnish the best incentives to our moral

THE FUTURE LIFE. 71

action, but to preserve us from the deadening belief
that the Universe is but the sport of a mahgn chance,
that human Hfe is a prolonged deceit, and that conscious-
ness is the saddest of all accidents in the evolution of
sentient things.

" My own dim life should teach me this.
That life shall live for evermore,
Else Earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is."*

It is impossible to resist this conclusion. The only
logical attitude of man towards the present constitution
of things, when the possibility of a future life is
negatived, is pessimism. And pessimism, whether it
be true or false, is the saddest and darkest philosophy
of life that anyone can feel constrained to adopt.

On the other hand, it is a fact which none will care
to dispute, that the gain to human happiness as well as
human goodness, from a belief in a future life has been
immense. How else could the world have been afforded
so many examples of men and women afflicted with dire
infirmities and oppressed with many poignant cares,
who were yet in a constant condition of humble
contentment and cheerfulness ? How else could we
have heard of so many persons endowed with the same
evil passions as others, and with the same natural
desires for self-gratification and self-glory, renouncing
all thought of earthly pleasure, and living what may
well be called crucified lives on behalf of their fcUow-

* Tennyson, hi Memoriavi.

72 THE FUTURE LIFE.

creatures ? How else could the lofty graces of love,
and courtesy, and reverence, and self-denial have
blossomed so nobly in so many lowly hearts ? It cannot
be denied that by far the highest attainments in conduct
• and disposition from the dawn of history to the present
hour are to be associated with a vivid belief in the
continuance of man's life beyond the grave. It is not
a little significant that hitherto the purest moral teach-
ing even in non-Christian quarters has always been
enunciated by those who have been believers in God
and a future life ; while such hves of unapproached
sanctity as have been nourished in the Christian Church
have been lived only by men who, without meriting the
epithet of other-worldly, have regarded the things of
the life to come as the most substantial, nay, the only
realities.

It seems, then, as though there were an inseparable
connection between the belief in immortality and the
possibility of well-being and goodness of the highest
kind, so that, when we compare the two opinions as to
man's prospects in the future in regard to their effect
on human happiness and conduct, there is no doubt as
to which it would be wise to prefer, if the probability
in favour of each were otherwise equal, and we were
forced in the absence of a preponderance of evidence on
either side, to choose between the two.

But it cannot truly be said that the probabilities in
favour of each opinion are equal. It is difficult to think
that a behef that has hitherto been so widely spread,
that indeed has been almost universal amonsr the

THE FUTURE LIFE. 73

highest races, and that has had such an excellent moral
effect upon the world can have been wholly false.
Mr. Herbert Spencer has laid great stress on the
witness to the substantial truth of a belief which is
afforded by the fact of its having been universally held ;
and upon that argument in part he has founded his
doctrine of the Inscrutable Power manifested behind
phenomena. The same argument may be applied as
exactly to the doctrine of a future life. It may be that
that belief had an ignoble beginning, just as had the
developed belief in God. Yet Mr. Herbert Spencer
has shewn how at the outset there was a germ of truth
contained in the primitive conception of God, and by
precisely similar reasoning it can be shown that there
may have been originally a germ of truth in the crude
belief of our ancestors respecting the continued existence
of their departed friends.

But whatever weight may be attached to the argument
from the universality of the belief in a future life, there
can be little question as to the reasonableness which it
gains from the fact of its having been held by the wisest
and best men whom the world has seen. It is note-
worthy that not a single poet who has a true title to be
called great has ever been a disbeliever in immortality.
Without going back to distant times and mentioning
such names as those of Homer and the Greek drama-
tists, and Dante, or even Shakspeare and Milton, who
all lived in days when the belief was scarcely called in
question, it is sufficient to refer to Tennyson and
Browning in England, Victor Hugo in France, and

74 THE FUTURE LIFE.

Goethe in Germany, as men of profoundly original
thought who have keenly felt the new intellectual
influences of our own time, and have yet not simply
retained their belief in a future life as a pious opinion
'in which they were brought up, but have proclaimed it
as an important particular of the truth which they have
discerned for themselves and have felt constrained to
publish to the world. Indeed, hardly a single instance
can be quoted of any man of remarkable genius in any
age who has doubted that there was a higher destiny
in store for the human race than any that can possibly
be fulfilled on earth. Even in a state of society which
was pervaded by a rapidly spreading scepticism, Cicero,
not the most admirable in every respect of the great
men of his time, yet deserving nevertheless of the
epithet conferred upon him by Byron of " Rome's
least mortal mind," could say, — " Somehow or other
there clings to one's mind an assurance of a life to come,
else who would be so foolish as to cleave to this life
with its manifold toils and perils ? "

Now men like these, especially the poets whose names
have been mentioned, cannot be said to carry no greater
weight with them than others, when they speak on this
momentous though deeply mysterious subject. We
concede to the poets a power, exceeding that possessed
by other men, of discovering and telling forth what
is true in relation to human life and the deeper problems
of Nature. A man becomes really great as a poet in
proportion to the way in which he brings to light truths
that are hidden from common men ; and his greatness

THE FUTURE LIFE. 75

is still further demonstrated in the course of years
when it is found that the truths he enunciated were
truths not only in relation to the circumstances of his
own country and his own time, but truths for every
country and for all time. In whatever way the greater
poets arrive at such truths, and none has yet succeeded
in tracking the courses of thought in a poet's mind, we
cannot but discern and acknowledge that they have
some extraordinary means of access to the very sources
of truth, and, therefore, whenever they pronounce
themselves positively even on subjects about which by
ordinary processes of reasoning there is no possibility
of our arriving at certain knowledge, they are entitled
to be listened to with respectful and even docile attention.
Still more may this be claimed for those who are
gifted with an extraordinary power of discovering what
is true in relation to conduct and morals. There is
nothing nearly so wonderful in the history of human
thought as the production of the ethical system of
Christianity. That system not only stands before any
other system of morals that has yet been enunciated,
but the wisdom of its Founder in respect to His power
of discerning moral truth is acknowledged by all
competent authorities to be unerring. No single flaw
in His moral teaching or in His life has ever yet been
demonstrated, and none of the wisest and purest-
minded of those who have lived since His time have
ever dreamt of improving upon it. It is a system of
morals so perfect indeed that it has been thought too
high for common men ; yet that only helps to prove the

76 THE FUTURE LIFE.

unrivalled power which Christ exhibited in providing
principles of conduct which should suffice for the very
highest intellectual and moral capacities in the most
advanced stage of development of the race. Now, one
*of the essential principles of Christ's teaching was, that
what we call death makes no interruption to the life of
man. He did not even use the word death in the
signification in which we use it, but spoke of those who
had departed this life, as though they were merely
asleep. The only time He ever argued on the subject
was when He was pressed by the Sadducees with a
quibbling question respecting the resurrection. He
then, speaking of the patriarchs who had been dead
hundreds of years before, used the expression that they
were still ''living unto God," for ''all live unto Him."
That is, to the Supreme Power of the universe there is
no such thing as the death of man in the sense in which
we speak of it. He takes no cognizance of the change
that is deemed so all-important by us. On other
occasions Christ treated the fact of man's continuance
of life after the dissolution of his body as so natural
and patent that He never argued in favour of it, but
spoke of it as a self-evident truth, or declared it in
language similar to that which He used when He
enunciated moral truth. In fact, His teaching con-
cerning the future life was bound up indissolubly with
His teaching concerning the right principles of conduct.
None can live that highest kind of life, the principles of
which are set forth in the Sermon on the Mount, except
he hold the doctrine which is associated with it. And

THE FUTURE LIFE. 77

as a matter of fact, as has already been remarked, those
who have reached the highest attainment in character
through the power with which Christianity has furnished
them, are those who have most nearly shared Christ's
view of the sleep-like character of death.

Now the argument which applies to the value of the
testimony concerning immortality which is given by the
poets applies with double force to the kind of testimony
given by Christ. If we cannot trace exactly the process
by which the great poets arrive at the truths which
they utter, and which lapse of time only tends to
confirm, still less can we conceive exactly by what
means such an unerring knowledge of moral truth was
acquired by the young Jew, who, living a life of simple
labour in a now remote age, uttered treasures of
wisdom which the highest and purest minds, quickened
by the accumulated intellectual resources of many
centuries, are not able fully to fathom and comprehend,
let alone to appraise at their full value. That He was
able in some way in which other men have not been
able to get at the very sources of truth, those persons
will be among the readiest to acknowledge who are
averse to any superhuman theory of Christ's origin and
nature. They cannot, any more than others, deny
that He " spake as never man spake " concerning
moral truth, and acknowledging this, and noticing also
that He spake with the same confidence concerning
man's existence hereafter, and that His teaching on the
two subjects was of one piece, they cannot well avoid
arriving at the conclusion, that moral truth and the

78 THE FUTURE LIFE.

truth concerning the future destiny of man are in some
way or another connected, and that He Who spake with
an authority that cannot but be admitted on the one
subject, must be allowed to speak with equal authority
on the other.

This is what devout Christians in all ages have
believed. They have found Jesus worthy of implicit
trust when He told them how to regulate their lives,
and they have judged Him therefore worthy to be
believed when He spoke to them also of the " life
eternal." In accepting His word on both these subjects
and in acting according to it, they have found literally
'* a peace which the world cannot give." They have
aspired and endeavoured to "do the will of God," as
He declared it ; and "through the hope set before them"
they have found the necessary power to do it, and so
there has to come to them the blessed assurance that
they were not only doing but believing what was true.
Not the least part of the satisfaction which the disciples
of Christ have derived from accepting all His teaching
in its fulness is, that they have felt an internal witness
of its truth in both particulars. They have been
impelled towards the ethical teaching of Christ by those
pure monitions felt within them, yet distinguishable
from their own personal and selfish inclinations, which
they were accustomed to think of, and, as we have seen,
rightly, as a distinct manifestation within them of the
Supreme Power ; they have found that they were
impelled by the same monitions towards the acceptance
of Christ's teaching concerning the life to come, for

THE FUTURE LIFE. 79

they have felt themselves urged as a duty to attribute
good motives and intentions to God, just as to one
another ; and perceiving that it was impossible to think
of Him as good, if He allowed death to be the utter
annihilation of the existence of good men and to be the
utter termination of all pure human love and lofty human
aspiration, they have deemed themselves inwardly moved
by God Himself to believe Christ's doctrine of the
future life. That doctrine had thus its confirmation
from the voice of God within them, and so it appeared
not only that it was true, but that it came in the first
instance from the fount of truth — from God Himself,
and that Christ in giving utterance to it was, as He
said, but the mouthpiece of God.

This apparent Divine origin of the doctrine of the
future life has been always regarded by Christians as
the most important evidence of its truth. They have
supposed it to have been learnt by direct communi-
cation from God by the method which has been
already referred to as that of revelation. Now Jesus
stands alone among all those who have been the
instruments for communicating moral and religious
truth to others, in this respect, that His knowledge
on this subject was, so far as men have been able
to discover since, as unerring as it was profound.
Hence it was held that He spoke the very mind of God,
and thus must have been related to God in a peculiar
way in which ordinary men are not — the relationship
being defined in the later dogmas of the Church. We
have already referred to the question as to whether or

80 THE FUTURE LIFE.

not those dogmas are entitled to be regarded as giving
an infallibly accurate description of the nature of Christ
and of God. However this may be, there can be no
doubt that a peculiar and an unprecedented authority
attaches to the pronouncements of Jesus on moral and
religious truth, — so much so that His mere word in
favour of any doctrine is of the nature of positive proof
of it, and we are justified in accepting with implicit
trust in their truth even such statements of His as pass
our powers of comprehension.

It cannot be said then that we have absolutely no
evidence in favour of the future life. On the contrary
there is evidence, which to those who weigh it rightly
has very substantial value. True, it is not exactly
evidence of a kind that amounts to a positive demon-
stration. It cannot make any and all men certain of
the future life, in a way in which they can be made
certain of a historical fact or of a truth of mathematics.
Still it is deserving of the name of scientific evidence
nevertheless, for it is based on facts and phenomena
which are capable of scientific analysis, and it can
make the future life at least in a very high degree
probable, so as, coupled with other considerations, to
reasonably incline us to treat it as a certainty.

This then is what it appears wise for us to do. When
we reflect that for the conduct of life we are unable to
leave the question of the future life an open one, but
are compelled to choose between the one alternative and
the other ; when we take note of the fact that the
highest happiness and the greatest possibility of the

THE FUTURE LIFE. 81

goodness of the race are bound up with the belief
of the future hfe ; and when we remember further
that that behef has not only been held by the wisest
and best of men, but has been suggested to them by
what they have had reason to regard as the very Spirit
of God within them ; then, on the triple ground of
reason, duty, and expediency, it seems right that we
should reject utterly the thought of our extinction at
death, and determine once for all to live our lives as
those who have an infinite future before them.

In making this resolution to treat the probability of
the future life as a certainty, we need by no means
pledge ourselves to accept the opinions concerning the
future state which have been, or are, popularly held ;
nor need we bind ourselves to shape our conceptions of
what will take place hereafter by the literal phraseology
of the Bible. It is only too probable that any definite
speculation concerning the conditions of man's life in
another state of being will be wide of the mark, as we
have no faculties for accurately figuring to ourselves
things of which we have absolutely no experience. We
may dismiss from our minds therefore any obligation to
conform our ideas of what will take place hereafter to
the doctrine of endless material punishment for all
who have departed this life without being believers in
Christ, as held by the Evangelical Protestant, or to the
doctrine of purgatory as held by the Roman Catholic.
One thing is absolutely certain, that any kind of specu-
lation concerning the future state is fundamentally
wrong, in which it is implied that things will happen

F

82 THE FUTURE LIFE.

to men which are plainly not in accordance with
infinite Justice and Love. If, moreover, it be urged
that material thin^^s are spoken of in the descriptions of
the Judgment and of Heaven and Hell in the New
Testament, it must be explained that expressions of
this sort can only rightly serve to denote the fact, that
there will be a visitation upon men in the next life of
the consequences of their actions in this, and that the
good will be recompensed and the bad punished
according to their works. How this will be done we
cannot conceive, and need not know ; it is sufficient
that we convince ourselves that it will be done.

More than this none can tell us, not even Christ. He
Himself acknowledged His ignorance of the circum-
stances of the Judgment, notably of the time of it.*
Prophecy, the utterance of what it is the design of the
Supreme Power to effect in the future, does not and
cannot deal with details. Whenever the attempt has
been made by prophecy, or by others on behalf of
prophecy, it has signally failed. It is only moral and
religious knowledge, not natural and historical, that is
communicated to us through the agency of the Divine
Spirit, and the intimation of the future life that Jesus
was the means of communicating to men, and that is
confirmed by a testimony within us, is entirely of that
character. It assures us that there is a future in store
for men beyond physical death, because the vindication
of the Divine Justice and Benevolence requires it.
More than that it does not tell us, and it is amply

* St. Mark xiii. 32.

THE FUTURE LIFE.

sufficient for the sustentation of our hopes and the
regulation of our conduct. It is true that numerous
intricate problems suggest themselves to our minds
when the thought of our future existence is before us ;
but long centuries of idle and useless speculation on the
subject ought at least to have taught us the vanity of
attempting to solve such problems ; and that deeper
sense of reverence towards the Inscrutable Power which
science is imparting to us ought to make us see the
propriety of not indulging an audacious curiosity which
cannot be satisfied, and of rather contenting ourselves
with the assurance that everything will happen here-
after in accordance with the dictates of a wisdom, in
comparison with which the highest imaginations of man
are but folly. We need not then attempt to form the
slightest definite conception as to what our future
existence will be like, except that it will be personal
and self-conscious, as of that there seems the very
strongest moral probability.*

*" Without thought, without love, without reverence, without will,
without objects (and none but personal beings can have these), what
remains to fill the phrase 'highest life'? (quoting Schleiermacher).
Psychologically, there can be no greater descent than the steps from
the personal to the impersonal." — Martineau, A Study of ReligioUy
Vol. II., p. 368.

"That each who seems a separate whole.

Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Re-merging in the general soul,

Is faith as vague as all unsweet :

Eternal form shall still divide

The eternal soul from all beside ;
And I shall know him when we meet."

Tennyson, In Memoriatn, XLVII.

84 THE FUTURE LIFE.

If we do but school ourselves to believe that v^e and
the whole race will still continue to be dealt with in a
manner that is divinely paternal, we shall be acting in
a much more becoming way, and in a way that will
bring far more satisfaction to ourselves, than if we
follow in the speculative footsteps of the past.

Our hope of the future, if it is thus framed, may be
vague, but it will wholly suffice for the moral purpose
which it is its function to serve. Even a vague hope
may serve to entirely uplift a man and induce him to
achieve the best he is capable of. There is a profound
perception of this truth manifested in the description
given by ^Eschylus of the way in which Prometheus, or
Forethought, roused the dejected spirit of primitive
man to achieve his destiny on earth —

nP. 6ur}T0vs y €7rav(xa fxr) TrpobepKecrdaL fxopou.
XO. TO TTolou evpoiv rrja-de (^apiiaKov vocrov ;
nP. TV(f)\as iv avTols eX/rtdas KarccKKra.

" Blind " hopes of the possibilities that lay before them
as the end of their toil and self-discipline were sufficient
to rouse men to the activity which enabled them at first
to fulfil their part of replenishing the earth and subdu-
ing it ; "blind" hopes of what he may in time effect
furnish the stimulus which incites the young man to
brace up his energies and prepare himself by strenuous
labour for the earnest struggle of his maturer years;
and " blind " hopes of gain to be won for science and
good to be achieved for the race have hitherto proved
all-sufficient to sustain the scientist and the philan-

THE FUTURE LIFE. 85

thropist in the arduous and prolonged tasks which they
have voluntarily undertaken. Let us but set before
ourselves " blind," through real and substantial, hopes
of a future which awaits us in the state of existence
upon which we shall enter at death, and we shall find
that they are amply sufficient to cheer and gladden us
throughout the vicissitudes of this life of much toil and
sorrow, to keep us ever in a state of contented trust
that all is right in the constitution of the universe, and
to spur us on so to use all our gifts, whether religious,
moral, intellectual, or physical in the service of the
Infinite Power and in accordance with His eternal laws,
that as we increase in age and experience we shall
increase in manifold capacity for good, and in fitness
for a higher and happier sphere of activity in the ages
to come.

CHAPTER IV.

MIRACLES.

HE two beliefs for which a scientific basis has
been found in the two preceding chapters
are quite sufficient in themselves to be the
groundwork and mainstay of our personal religion.
Indeed, when we analyse the motives and hopes which
inspire our noblest thought and action, and nerve and
comfort us best in trial, we find that they are all wrapt
up in the belief in God and in a future hfe. Still there
are other matters of religious interest about which we
are naturally anxious to have, if possible, clear ideas,
although they cannot be regarded as of equal importance
with those already discussed. In particular, the subject
of miracles is one which presses seriously now on the
thought of those who are desirous of knowing what
ought to be believed respecting the records of the life
of Christ and the early history of the Church.

It is plain that important issues depend on the
accuracy or otherwise of the representation of Jesus
Christ which is given in the New Testament ; yet the
significance of the miracles attributed to Christ can by
no means be regarded now in the same light as that in
which it was till recently set forth by the apologists of

MIRACLES. 87

the Christian religion. It can no longer be believed
that " miracles are necessary to attest the truth of a
revelation " in the sense in which that proposition has
hitherto been maintained. We do not feel that we have
a ri^(ht to expect that, when anyone tells us anything
fresh about religion or morals, he should enforce the
credibility of his statements by performing some
marvels in the material sphere. Moral truth and
religious truth are to be proved, just as truth of
physical science is to be proved, by observation and
experiment and, when necessary, by correct logical
argument. A new '* revelation " is like a new scien-
tific theory. A man promulgates a new doctrine in
morals or theology, just as an observer of facts in
nature promulgates a new doctrine concerning the
correlation of those facts. We do not expect the
scientist to prove his theory by working miracles,
neither should we expect the prophet. It is by a
strange oversight of the caution repeatedly given on
the subject by Jesus Himself, that defenders of His
religion have so unduly pressed the evidential value of
His miracles. Without by any means conveying that
His miracles had no significance, He repeatedly shrank,
so we are told, from performing them as mere " signs."
He openly condemned the state of mind of those
who would not believe *' except they saw signs and
wonders,""' and indeed He went so far as to say, " An
evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign."t
The mischief resulting from this kind of defence of

* St. John iv. 48. t St. Matthew xii. 39.

MIRACLES.

Christianity is evidenced by the scepticism concerning
moral and religious truth which it has produced. Very
many persons, having been led to believe that *' miracles
are the proper proof of a revelation," and that, there-
fore, the truth of Christianity is inextricably bound up
with the authenticity of the miracles attributed to
Christ, when they have seen reason to doubt those
miracles or some of them, have doubted also the truth of
the religious and moral teaching of Christ.

As a matter of fact, there is no such connection
between the miracles attributed to Christ and His
teaching. The reports of the miracles of Christ might
be in many particulars erroneous, and yet the ethical
and religious statements of the Gospels be absolutely
sound. These latter are proved by a different kind of
evidence from the former, by the knowledge that is
gained from a study of the different manifestations of
religion in every quarter and every age, by the assent
which they have received from the best and wisest of
men, by the way in which, when they have been acted
upon, they have transformed the lives of sinners, and
by the testimony to their goodness and truth which we
feel within ourselves.

It is quite possible that the Evangelists may have
given a transcript of a religious and ethical teaching
which is fundamentally true, though the representation
they have given of the life of Jesus we may judge to be
in some particulars improbable. Certainly a belief in
the soundness of the moral and religious teaching
attributed to Christ does not by any means involve a

MIRA CLES.

belief in the literal accuracy of all that is related about
Him. A man may truly be said to be a believer in
Christianity who is nevertheless in doubt about certain
of the recorded miracles, or indeed all of them ; and
even if he is wrong in doubting the miracles, his error
cannot be said to be a moral and religious one. It is
a moral and religious thing to believe in the moral and
religious teaching of Christ, but it is not necessarily a
moral and religious thing to believe in the miracles
attributed to Christ. On the contrary, a man may be
led to doubt the miracles from what is from his point of
view actually a moral and religious motive, because
when he honestly investigates them they seem to
him to be untrue, and because he feels that he can-
not and should not believe what is untrue.

The question of the authenticity of the miracles
attributed to Christ must then be dissociated from the
question of the truth of His religion. Still it is a ques-
tion which has an importance of its own, and that not
a small one, in regard to the light which the right
answer to it throws on the nature of the personahty of
Christ. On that ground the Gospel miracles demand
our most careful investigation, and it much behoves us
to endeavour to ascertain whether or not they are true,
or, if not all, at any rate which of them are true.

On the threshold of such an enquiry, however, we
are met with an obstacle that seems entirely to bar our
progress, viz., the total denial of the possibihty of the
miraculous. ** Miracles do not happen," we are told
very positively by some who profess to speak in the

90 MIRACLES.

name of modern culture/'' It is an assertion which
has obtained a wide pubhcity, and has been accepted
imphcitly by a large number of persons. On the
strength of it the Hfe of Christ has been re-written
by various writers, who have, each after his own
pecuhar fashion, ehminated from it the miraculous
element, and have given to the world representations
of the nature of Christ markedly different from that
which is given in the Gospels.

Now such a proposition, notwithstanding the apparent
weight of authority with which it is uttered, requires a
great deal of enforcement before it can command the
full assent even of those who have been trained to
think in the most modern style. Prima facie it is
calculated to excite suspicion and opposition from its
very positive and dogmatic form. If there is any one
thing that we have had more forcibly impressed upon
us than any other by the progress of science in the
present century it is the need of caution in affirma-
tion. The scientific spirit is essentially a spirit of
dogmatic reserve ; and it may be doubted whether
any person of acknowledged authority in the scientific
world of to-day would care to risk his reputation by
stating outright that miracles do not happen, using the
the word to cover all the occurrences narrated in the
Bible which are commonly spoken of as miraculous.
He might hold a very strong private opinion about the
credibility of any accounts of miraculous occurrences

*The author of the phrase is Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma,
Ed. 1883, Preface.

MIRACLES. 91

that have yet reached us, but he would probably
hesitate long before he would say that miracles could
not happen, have never happened, or even do not
happen now^.

But besides being unscientific in form, there is a
certain vagueness of meaning about this proposition.
Though in the present tense, it does not appear at first
sight whether it relates to the past and the future as
well as to the present. The phrase " miracles do
not happen " may easily be read to mean that they
could not happen and have never happened. We
shall, however, deal more fairly with the author of it
if we take it in an exactly literal sense. Then the
argument will be, "We never hear of authentic
miracles now, therefore there never have been any, and
therefore the so-called miracles of the New Testament
could not have happened." The argument is a
plausible one, but it cannot be convincing till two
objections to it have been met. The first is suggested
by the familiar Protestant doctrine, that the period in
which Christ appeared was a period favourable for the
production of miracles, but that shortly after His dis-
appearance those favourable conditions ceased, or for
an express purpose were removed. Whatever his-
torical and critical ground there may be for this
doctrine, it is at least logically consequent. If the
commencement of the Christian era was marked by a
new phrase of spiritual development, it is not irrational
to suppose that that period may have witnessed
extraordinary physical occurrences accompanying the

92 MIRACLES.

spiritual. It is a fact of considerable significance also
that the extraordinary production of religious truth by
the method previously discussed under the name of
revelation has hitherto taken place for the most part in
the East, and it is those particularly who are men-
tioned as the recipients of fresh revelations that are
represented as being possessed of miraculous powers.

The person, then, who maintains that, because
miracles do not happen now, therefore they have
never happened at all, puts himself under the obliga-
tion of proving, that the conditions under which
miracles are said to have been wrought in the East
more than eighteen hundred years ago by men of
exceptional spiritual endowment are exactly paralleled
in Europe at the present day.

The other current doctrine about miracles suggests
the second objection to the denial of the miracles of the
New Testament. The Romanist argues that we have no
ground for saying that miracles happened in the Christ-
ian Church up to a certain indefinite date, and after that
date ceased. Instead, therefore, of waiting to controvert
the conclusion of those who deny the miracles of the
New Testament, he boldly challenges the premiss, that
miracles do not happen now. He says that, on the
contrary, miracles do happen, and have happened
from the days when the New Testament was com-
pleted down to our own time. Is he right or wrong
in saying this ? He is wrong surely in so far as he
accepts the so-called ecclesiastical miracles without
discrimination, and is ready to assert a supernatural

MIRACLES.

cause for occurrences which are plainly contrived by
ordinary means in order to impress the vulgar, or
v^hich are natural events invested with a supernatural
character by honest though uncritical historians. A
glance at some of the miraculous stories of the Middle
Ages may well serve to cast suspicion on any and all of
the miracles of which the Romanist maintains there
has been a continuous succession down to the present
day. And yet it is impossible to study these and
similar stories in a candid and judicial spirit, without
being persuaded that there is a substantial residuum of
fact in some of them, and that they afford, for example,
instances of cures which have been effected by methods
of which we have no ordinary experience. Making all
deductions for uncritical or even unfaithful narrative,
there can be little doubt but that in the alleged miracles
of modern times we are brought face to face with very
remarkable phenomena, only explicable on the suppo-
sition that they are due to exceptional action of mind
over body, or, in the case of an interchange of influence,
of mind over mind.

This is rendered all the more probable, because
recent experiments in connection with hypnotism and
telepathy have been attended with results, which appear
to prove conclusively that certain diseases may be
cured by other than ordinary medical means ; and
there is much likelihood, that in the not distant future
a more exact and comprehensive study of certain
psychological facts will furnish us with some remarkable
discoveries concerning the possibilities of personal

94 MIRACLES.

influence of a kind of which we have as yet Httle
definite knowledge.

These are considerations which should make us
strongly disinclined to assent to the proposition that
*' miracles " never occur now ; and whatever weight we
attach to them, they place an insurmountable difficulty
in the way of our making a clean sweep of all the so-
called miracles in the New Testament. Even though
some of those miracles seem incapable of being classed
with any modern case of healing of the kind that has
just been alluded to, and are vastly more difficult to
imagine as real occurrences, yet while we do find
among the recorded works of Christ some cures of
sickness, which are apparently similar to what we have
heard of in recent years, we are absolutely unable to
deny the possibility of the miraculous in the life of
Christ. More than that, a careful investigation of
different so-called miracles of this class may not only
serve to convince us of their truth, but may logically
incline us towards a belief in the possibihty of some of
the more difficult ones.

Now, when we analyse the miracles interspersed
throughout the Gospels, we find that they are capable
of being arranged in four or five different classes.
There are, first, the miracles related in connection
with the birth and infancy of Jesus, miracles in which
He is not represented as having a personal agency.
Such are the angelic messages, the conception by the
Holy Ghost, the Star in the East, etc. Against these
it is urged that similar miraculous stories are related

MIRACLES. 95

in connection with other remarkable births, and they
are therefore put down as legends which the pious
imagination of the early Christians wove round the
story of the Saviour's infancy. We may set this class
of miracles aside for the present. Without conceding
their falsehood, it must be maintained that the demon-
stration of their falsehood would not in the slightest
degree affect the authenticity of others. It is necessary
to insist upon this at the outset, for some people seem
incapable of dissociating the miraculous stories related
about Christ from those in which He is represented as
the direct agent. In reality they are quite distinct, and
depend for their verification upon evidence of a different
character. Instead of rejecting these at once, and from
their manifest spuriousness deducing the impossibility
of all the other miracles, the proper plan surely is, to
examine first those miracles which are ascribed to the
action of Christ Himself, and then to proceed to investi-
gate the evidence, documentary and other, which can
be adduced in favour of the marvels which are said to
have taken place at His birth. The result of the first
investigation will have a very practical influence on
the manner in which we shall be disposed to approach
the second.

The next class of Gospel miracles that may be
named is that which comprises occurrences, that
might or might not be correctly explained, as natural
events described in a supernatural way or with super-
natural accessories. Among these we may include parts
of the story of the Temptation, such as, " The devil

96 MIRACLES.

taketh Him up into the Holy city, and setteth Him
on a pinnacle of the Temple," in which it has been
suggested that we may find traces of a supernatural
colouring given to an actual struggle fought out by
Jesus in solitude. The descent of the Holy Dove
upon Christ at His Baptism may also be, as some old
commentators have thought, a miraculous description
of some natural circumstance that coincided with
Christ's "going up out of the water." We have no
data for disproving such explanations of various
occurrences described in the Bible as miraculous, and
it is not a matter of importance that they should be
disproved, except we would maintain what it is needless
and indeed impossible to maintain, that the writers of
the Gospels were supernaturally preserved from every
possible form of error, whether critical or historical,
in their narratives. The most implicit faith in the
genuineness and honesty of the Evangelists is quite
compatible with the opinion, that they may have some-
times given a supernatural character to occurrences
which, had they happened in our day, would have been
differently described.

A very striking instance of how such a mistake might
have been made by an Evangelist is furnished in the
fifth chapter of St. John's Gospel. A description is
there given of a famous medicinal pool called Bethesda.
This pool has been identified on very good grounds
with an intermittent spring now called the Fountain of
the Virgin, which bubbles up at irregular intervals
sometimes two or three times a day, and sometimes in

MIRACLES. 97

summer once in two or three days. When these
disturbances of the water mentioned in the Gospel
took place, the medicinal properties of the pool were at
their highest, and though there is nothing in the
narrative to warrant the supposition that any person
who bathed in the water was at once, as it were,
miraculously cured, there is no doubt that the repeated
use of such an intermittent and gaseous spring, as
modern exp^^rience testifies, was likely to produce most
beneficial results. In the then, state of scientific know-
ledge the nature of medicinal springs was not under-
stood, and it is not surprising therefore that such
effects as those produced at the pool of Bethesda
should have been attributed to supernatural agency.
Accordingly the Jews conceived that an Angel went
down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled
the water. It was a pious and beautiful imagination,
although manifestly to us it involves the error of
assigning to a more remote and mysterious cause what
is easily explained by a nearer and simpler one. The
legend is recorded in the fourth verse of John v. in the
Authorised Version, but has been expunged by the
Revisers, as the verse is wanting in the majority of the
best MSS., and contains internal evidences of its
spuriousness. There is no doubt, however, that it was
incorporated into other texts of the Gospel at a very
early date. Now, it may be argued that the acknow-
ledged spuriousness of the verse tends to acquit the
the author of this Gospel of the liability to such an
error as it exemplifies, but on the other hand the fact

G

98 MIR A CLES.

that a story so manifestly legendary was thus early
embodied in the text of the New Testament by those
who lived nearest to the Evangelists and most
reverentially preserved their works, is strong evidence
of the habit of thought with regard to the miraculous
that prevailed in the earliest days of Christianity.
It is only likely then that those who put together
the first records of the life of Christ should have
shared this habit of thought. We have no authority
for affirming that, unlike all their contemporaries,
they were possessed of such critical powers as
we have but lately acquired from our accumulated
knowledge of historical and scientific facts ; and it is but
reasonable to suppose, that certain occurrences recorded
in the New Testament as having been brought about
by supernatural agency, may have happened in strict
accordance with natural law.

When, however, we apply ourselves to a careful
investigation of another class of miracles, those imme-
diately ascribed to the agency of Christ Himself, we
cannot suppose the same reason for questioning the
literal accuracy of the Gospel narratives. We simply
cannot satisfactorily conceive of such occurrences as
happening at all except in the way they are described.
There is nothing in our ordinary experience which gives
us the slightest clue as to how they could have taken
place otherwise. If we do not accept the explanation
given of them in the Gospels, we are forced to account
for their appearance in their narrative by one of two
expedients, which to the unprejudiced mind involve

MIRACLES. 99

infinitely greater difficulties than that of accepting
them for what they are stated to be. Either they were
*' thaumaturgic frauds " practised by Christ in order to
impose upon the common people, *' a concession," as
Renan has put it, " forced from him by a passing
necessity," or else they are mere inventions of the
sacred writers. The first supposition, to those who
have studied the character of Christ reverently and
sympathetically, is absolutely untenable. Some may
think He could have stooped to a long continued course
of imposition, but those who have tried for long to
know Christ are wholly convinced that He could not
have done such a thing ; and, whatever perplexity the
miraculous may suggest to them, it would be infinitely
easier to them to believe that He actually wrought
miracles than that He only pretended to do so.

But the miracles ascribed to Christ may be inven-
tions of the early Christians. It was in exact accord-
ance with the taste and fashion of the age, that those
who applied themselves to relate the story of One for
whom they laid claims to divine origin should weave
into that story a whole cycle of miracles. This is
Strauss's assertion, and he has framed a theory to fit
in with it. His theory is, that the earliest Jewish
Christians came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah,
that they had been brought up from childhood in the
belief that the Messiah was to have certain distin-
guishing marks, that then stories circulated among
them purporting to show how Jesus actually did all
that, according to their notions. He ought to have

100 MIRACLES.

done, and that these stories, bein^^: in perfect accord-
ance with their preconceived notions, when once
started were readily beheved in, and in simple faith
passed on from one to another, until in process of time
they came to be recorded in the Gospels.

Now even if this theory were thouf::ht to be in some
respects probable, if it were felt that there was a likeli-
hood that the Jewish Christians might be inclined to
attribute to Jesus some things which they had been
brought up to believe as characteristic of the Messiah,
in no way would this opinion satisfactorily account for
the miracles purporting to be wrought by His personal
agency. To imagine that all these stories are mere
fabrications, gradually pieced together after our Lord's
disappearance, is to endow the first Christians with
gifts of invention which far transcend any powers of the
human mind which have ever been exhibited before or
since. For perfection of form, for dramatic accuracy,
and for beauty of parabolic teaching, there would be
nothing at all approaching them in the literature of
fiction. We must put those untutored fishermen,
slaves, artisans, and tradesmen, far above our Homers
and Shakespeares, and acknowledge that in the narra-
tives attributed to the Evangelists we possess the
loftiest achievements of the imagination which have
ever been attained. This of course is absurd. It is
quite unthinkable that all the stories of the miracles of
Christ, being such as they are, could have originated
in the brains of those who wrote them down. The
argument that other cycles of miracles in other remark-

MIRACLES. 101

able lives had their origin in this way simply does not
fit the case at all. The two kinds of narratives cannot
be even compared together. When v^e read the Gospel
according to St. Matthew, say, after Bede's Ecclesias-
tical History, not to mention the apocryphal lives of
Christ, we recognize the difference at once. However
much we may be inclined to suspect the accuracy of
a narrative which deals in miracle, whatever natural
repugnance we may feel to the acceptance of the possi-
bility of the miraculous, the fabrication theory of all
the miracles attributed to Christ is infinitely more
unthinkable than that those miracles actually happened.
The best way surely to form an opinion as to their
truth or falsehood is to approach the study of the text
of the Gospels with a mind as free as possible from a
bias either way. In a literary question so controverted
internal evidence is of great value, and even if we
cannot wholly rid ourselves of a prejudice against the
miraculous, it is at least only fair that we should
examine some of these stories related about Christ to
see whether it may not be likely after all that they
carry their own explanation with them. Not to go
further afield let us take the incident narrated directly
after the mention of the pool of Bethesda in St. John v.
The Authorised Version afforded us an instance of a
natural occurrence explained supernaturally — a fabri-
cated miracle. In the following verses there is related
what purports to be the cure by Jesus of the paralytic,
who was unable to get himself conveyed to the pool
when the water was ''troubled." '* When Jesus saw

102 MIRACLES.

him lying, and knew that he had been now a long
time in that case, He saith unto him, Wouldest thou
be made whole ? The sick man answered Him, Sir,
I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me
into the pool : but while I am coming, another steppeth
down before me. Jesus saith unto him. Arise, take up
thy bed, and walk. And straightway the man was
made whole, and took up his bed and walked."* Now
is this miracle explicable by any of the theories we
have been considering ? Was it an imposition practised
by Christ on the paralytic and the bystanders ? Did
He pretend to heal the man and satisfy both him and
the others that he was healed ? Was it a conjuring
trick by which He made this helpless cripple appear to
take up his bed and walk ? That surely is quite out of
the question. Well then is it a fabricated incident ?
Did no such thing happen at all ? Was there no
paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, and did Christ
exercise no influence over such a man ? There may
be those who can fancy this ; but on grounds of pure
literary criticism there is no better reason for cutting
out this part of the fifth chapter of St. John than there
is for getting rid of the rest of the book. It may be
left to the common sense of any ordinary reader to
determine whether we have any justification for saying
that something of the sort described by the Evangelist
did not actually take place. There remains then only
the supposition that we may have here a natural event
described in a supernatural way. A paralytic was

*St. John V. 6-9.

MIRA CLES. 103

healed and took up his bed and walked. How could
this have happened, supposing the cure to be authentic ?
What natural or ordinary process may be postulated
to account for it ? Supposing the man was cured,
what room is there for exaggeration in the account
given of his cure ? Positively none. We are thus
driven finally to ask ourselves the question, Did
Christ actuadly heal the man in the way described by
the Evangelist ? Was it so that the man looked up to
this wondrous Presence, fell under the influence of
His mysterious personal power, and when the command
came to him sudden, sharp, irresistible, " Take up thy
bed and walk," he could not choose but obey ? Was
it an instance of a commanding mind acting on another
mind in such a way as thereby to make a decrepit body
do its will ? We have had no experience in these later
days of any occurrence exactly resembling this. But
why should we therefore say that it could not have
happened ? That mind can exercise an extraordinary
influence over mind we have sufficient proofs. That
the mind can force the body to do what no ordinary
medical skill can, is equally certain. Why then may
we not reasonably suppose that Jesus may have healed
the paralytic in the manner described by the Evangelist ?
Nay, when we weigh all the evidence for and against
the historical truth of the story, do we not find that
this is the easiest assumption by which it can be
accounted for ; does it not do less violence to the
imagination than any other ?

A circumstance that favours this comparison between

104 MIRACLES.

the method in which Christ wrought His wonderful
cures, and our experience of the power of mind over
body, is the frequent mention in such narratives of the
estabHshment of a suitable mental communication
between Christ and the patient, prior to the consum-
mation of the cure. In the case that has already been
cited, it is left to be understood from the man's
bearing towards Christ that he was capable of being
brought under the healing spell. But in many other
cases it is pointedly mentioned that such and such a
person had " faith to be healed." The absence of such
faith, it is more than once hinted, made it impossible
that Christ could work His marvellous cures, — the
*' faith," be it understood, indicating not merely the
readiness to submit the will, the temperamental
aptitude for being a " subject," to use the phraseology
of mesmerism or spiritualism, but, more especially, a
moral qualification, there always being a mysterious
connection in the cures wrought by Christ between
the remission of moral guilt and the release from
physical infirmity. Thus, in the account of the visit
to Nazareth it is said, **And He could there do no
mighty work, save that He laid His hands upon a few
sick folk, and healed them. And He marvelled because
of their unbelief." *

So far there is nothing of a distinctively supernatural

character that we have noted in Christ's miracles of

healing, nothing that appears like a violent interference

with the laws of nature, which is the old-fashioned and

*St. Mark vi. 5, 6.

MIRACLES. 105

Still perhaps common notion of the miraculous. On
the contrary we have traced various points of similarity
between these events described as miraculous, and
events of exceptional though natural occurrence now ;
for the force exerted by mind over body cannot be
called supernatural. Though we know so little about
it, it acts, or may be conceived to act, in complete
accordance with natural law. And it is to be particu-
larly observed that all Christ's miracles of healing are
of such a character that they can be conceived as
having been effected in a natural though extraordinary
way. For example, we never hear of His restoring an
amputated limb or doing anything like a creative work.
Such cures as are attributed to Him are by no means
of a sort to excite justly the antagonism of medical
science. They are all conceivable to those who can
imagine that Christ may have possessed to a remarkable
degree a curative force capable of acting on the springs
of life in a diseased person.

The whole matter then hinges on the question,
whether Christ may be reasonably supposed to have
possessed such a power. The only way to form a
proper judgment on that point is to find out as exactly
as possible what sort of a person He was. And for
that purpose it is necessary that we should make a close
and impartial investigation of His recorded words.
First of all, there is the necessity of ascertaining as
correctly as possible what Christ actually did say, and
then His words, all of them, not a few, should be
patiently and reverentially read and re-read till they

106 MIRACLES.

reveal their secret about the nature of Him Who spoke
them. Above all, we must approach the study with an
unprejudiced mind. If we take up the Gospel with a
determined conviction that miracles do not happen, we
shall see in them what we have eyes to see and nothing
more— a Christ Who does not differ very remarkably
from other good men and moral teachers. But if we
set the thought of the possibility or impossibility of the
miraculous aside for the time being, endeavouring to
keep an open mind on the question, then we shall be in
a position to judge whether Christ was such a very
remarkable personage in other respects that He might
well be supposed capable of doing the '' mighty works "
that have been attributed to Him.

After all, it is the words of Christ that exhibit most
convincingly what sort of a person He was. It is by
His words that, on His own acknowledgment, His
personal claims must chiefly be tested. The intrinsic
superiority of such a kind of evidence is manifest,
especially in an age when intricate matters of history
and criticism beset the recognition of the authenticity
of His signs. It is an evidence, moreover, which appeals
to the whole man, to the highest part of man, his
conscience and his moral emotions as well as to his
intellect. Yet it is not a kind of evidence that can
be dealt with offhand. It cannot be passed in review
and decided upon by the immediate effect which it
produces. The words of Christ must above all things,
so He taught, be tested by their application to the life
of the person who studies them. If we would know

MIRACLES. 107

the greatness of them, the wonder of them, we must
act upon them. Christ expressly declared that it was
only by a continuous practice of His teaching that men
could judge precisely about Him and them. *' If ye
abide in My words, ye shall know the truth."* Hence
it is beyond reasonable dispute, that, until a man has
diligently studied the words of Christ, and reverently
and obediently endeavoured day by day to fit his life to
these words, he is not qualified to pronounce finally
about what Christ actually was, and what He could or
could not do. If this important matter of the credi-
bility of the Gospel miracles is to be satisfactorily
decided, it is indispensable, according to all the rules
of just and candid criticism, that the conditions should
be fulfilled, by which only, on Christ's repeated and
emphatic declaration, the nature of His personality can
be apprehended. It must therefore be required, that
everyone who desires to have his opinion regarded
concerning the capabilities of Christ, shall be able to
say that he has tried for a sufiicient length of time to
adapt his life entirely to the teaching of Christ, that he
has set before himself only the hopes and aims that
Christ recommended, that he has earnestly and
perseveringly endeavoured to act upon those most
original and distinctive sayings, " Lay not up for your-
selves treasures upon earth, but lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven," " Be not anxious for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, etc.," " Seek ye first
the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness," ''Ask and

* St. John viii. 31, 32.

108 MIRACLES.

it shall be given you : seek and ye shall find : knock and
it shall be opened unto you," " He that findeth his life
shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake
shall find it." When a man has experimented on the
words of Christ by acting thus for a while on his theory
of human life and of the highest good, then, and not
till then, has he a right to be listened to with deference,
when he expresses an opinion as to whether Christ was
or was not such a remarkable personage, that He might
well be supposed capable of healing a paralytic by an
authoritative word.

The fact is, if Christ possessed any power that was
distinctively original, extraordinary, miraculous, it was
His power over men's spirits, their wills, their conduct,
and their characters. It is to be regretted that we
have been accustomed to apply this term miraculous,
meaning something beyond ordinary experience, only to
that kind of influence which Christ exerted over men's
bodies. In realit}^, there are other w^orks attributed
to Him, which nobody has called in question, and
yet which, to those who have had much to do with
moral education, are at least equally marvellous.
How hard it is to reclaim one intemperate person from
his besetting vice, to win back one covetous and dis-
honest person to ways of honesty and self-denial !
There are many who argue, that, after a character
has once become firmly set, it is impossible to change
it ; and it must be admitted that so few are the
instances of radical changes for the better taking
place in men of middle or advanced age, that there

MIRACLES. 109

is just as much ground for saying that matured
characters cannot be changed, as that " miracles do
not happen." In fact, a complete change of character
effected in a moment of time, an instantaneous con-
version, is a miracle, as much as a sudden arrestation
of disease. We hear of instantaneous conversions,
just as we hear of modern miracles, and we are
sceptical whenever we hear of them : for most of the
cases of the sort that we have been able to test have
been found to be not authentic. Yet we read of
instantaneous conversions in the hfe of Christ, and
they are not supposed to present any great difficulty ;
nobody has taken pains to deny them, and indeed it
is quite conceded that Christ was able to bring them
about. Yet how can we reasonably accept this class of
works attributed to Him and not the other ? Christ
Himself saw no distinction of difficulty between them.
" Whether is easier," He asked, '' to say, Thy sins are
forgiven thee ; or to say. Arise and walk ? " Whether
is easier, to free a man from his sinfulness of soul, or
from his disease of body? We cannot say that the
former is the easier. And therefore, if we are con-
strained to believe that Christ succeeded in performing
miracles of healing over men's souls, we cannot
reasonably dispute His power of working miracles
on their bodies. What a remarkable exhibition of
power was it that He made when He encountered
Zacchgeus ! What a miraculous influence He exerted
over that man, when He forced hirn to say in the truest
language of repentance, " Behold, Lord, the half of my

110 MIRACLES.

goods I give to the poor : and if I have wrongfully
exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold ! " Have
we any reason for thinking that such a manifestation
of power was less remarkable than that which produced
the result on the paralytic that " straightway the man
was made whole, and took up his bed and walked " ?
It is really only our ignorance of the laws of mental
and spiritual influence that makes us hesitate at all
about attributing to Christ the ability to work the one
kind of miracles as easily as the other. When, how-
ever, we have felt constrained to acknowledge the
possession by Christ of such a power, then not only
will that hesitation vanish, but we shall feel that the
extraordinary thing would have been had He not exerted
any miraculous influence over diseases of the body,
such as He exerted over diseases of the mind. The
so-called miracles of the Gospel will then fall into
their proper place and have their distinctive evidential
value, not as demonstrating a fortiori that He Who
had thus power to cure the body has power to save the
soul, but as affording a secondary testimony that He,
Who can yet by Hislife-giving words turn a sinner into
a saint, showed Himself while on earth to be in every
respect the remarkable personage that we should have
expected Him to have been, that He had power over all
manifestations of life whether of soul or body.

After what has been said, it will be needless to
examine further into the different classes of miracles of
healing attributed to Christ, and to notice His various
methods of dealing with different persons who were

MIRACLES. Ill

afflicted with disease ; how some He touched, hke the
lepers, as though He thereby communicated His healing
"virtue" to them ; how of some He required evidences
of *' faith;" and how some He healed, who from their
pecuhar crcumstances were unable to give any such
evidences. When once we are convinced that He
possessed such a power of heahng, it matters httle to
our recognition of the authenticity of these different
records how He exercised it. One and all are equally
probable.

But we read of other acts attributed to Him which
are of a very different kind. He is not simply repre-
sented as giving sight to the blind and making the lame
to walk, but as causing a legion of devils to pass into
a herd of swine, as stilling a tempest, as multiplying
loaves, as blasting a fig-tree, and as restoring the dead
to life. In dealing with this class of miracles, we can
hardly feel ourselves to be on ground so critically safe,
as when we are dealing with the preceding. We
cannot be so sure, that the Evangelists, in relating some
of these, may not have been led to give a supernatural
colouring to occurrences that happened in a natural
way. For example, the herd of swine might have been
seized with a panic. Instead of Christ intervening to
procure their destruction, we can imagine that the
shrieks of the maniacs, whom He restored to their right
minds, might have had the effect of terrifying the swine,
and driving them wildly over the brow of the cliff.
Such an accompaniment of a notable work of healing,
when it came to be related afterwards, might easily

112 MIRACLES.

have been quoted as affording additional evidence of
the manifestation of power which Christ then made.

But the same sort of explanation can hardly be
suggested to account for the narrative of the blasting
of the fig-tree, and of the raising of Lazarus. Both
accounts are too circumstantial to be so treated, and
when they are read with special reference to the
explanation which Christ Himself gave of them, and to
the teaching which He founded upon them, it becomes
exceedingly difficult to imagine how they could have
been manufactured, or described miraculously by a
mistake. They force us back on to the question,
whether the Christ, Who gave such evidences of an
unexampled power over the whole moral and physical
nature of man, could not have found it possible even to
restore life to a body from which it seemed to have
departed, as well as to arrest the flow of hfe in a plant.
True, these two miracles are far more difficult to
imagine as possible than any of the ordinary works
of healing. There is a marked difference between
increasing the vitaHty which already exists in a body,
and restoring a vitality which apparently has left it.
But though we have absolutely no experience of such
a restoration of vitality, yet when we have formed such
a conception of the unique power of Christ, as we
cannot fail to derive from a proper study of His
teaching and influence, it ceases to be difficult to
imagine that He could actually have brought the dead
to life. At any rate, let the narrative of the raising of
Lazarus be carefully and reverentially studied after the

MIRACLES. 113

endeavour has been made to obtain a right picture in
the mind of the true Christ of the Gospels, and it will
be easier to believe that He actually wrought the
miracle, than that a narrative so dramatically perfect
and so simply truthful in appearance can be other than
the record of a real event. The blasting of the fig-tree
again is a wonder-work of so great magnitude that the
narration of it may well excite in us the surprise that
the event as recorded is said to have awakened in the
minds of those who witnessed it ; but we have no right
to deny the possibility of it till we have experienced to
the full the potency of the force by means of which
Christ is said to have explained the occurrence. ''And
when the disciples saw it they marvelled, saying, How
did the fig-tree immediately wither away ? And Jesus
answered and said unto them, Verily, I say unto you,
If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall not only do
what is done to the fig-tree, but even if ye shall say
unto this mountain, Be thou taken up, and cast into
the sea, it shall be done ; and all things whatsoever ye
shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. ""^^ What
is faith ? What cannot faith do ? — such faith as,
according to the acknowledgment of Carlyle,has done all
the good that has ever been done on the earth. Faith,
like that of the saints, is, we know certainly, the most
powerful factor in the moral world; why should it not
have power in the natural world as well ? This will-
force of man which acts perceptibly on his fellows,
when it is intensified by a realization of the Infinite
* St. Matthew xxi. 20-22.
H

114 MIRACLES.

Invisible Being, and strengthened by a conscious com-
munication with and dependence on that Being, why
should it not be able to operate on those other
forces which also emanate from the Infinite Being ? At
least we must confess that no one has ever given
such evidence of a conscious communication with the
Unseen as Jesus Christ, and therefore, till we have had
experience of a power of faith equal to that which He
exhibited, we cannot, even when viewing the matter in
the dryest light of science, deny that He could have
caused a fig-tree to wither away.

It is perhaps because in these later days we have
less knowledge of the power of faith, and fewer and
feebler exhibitions of it are given to the world, that we
find such great difficulty in understanding how it can
'' move mountains." Perchance, in the future, we may
be witnesses of incontestable operations of faith,
similar to, if feebler than, those attributed to Christ;
and then we shall be in a better position to pass a
judgment concerning the mightiest and the most
wonderful of the works which He is said to have
performed.

Meanwhile, it is for those who profess to adhere
closely to the most correctly scientific method in the
investigation of truth to guard themselves from making
any dogmatic assertions as to the impossibility of such
occurrences. If there is wanting in favour of many of
them such evidence as should rightly convince any
scientifically trained mind, at least they cannot be
disproved; while some of them, such as those works

MIRACLES. 115

that have been more particularly referred to, have
been rendered by recent collateral evidence in the
highest degree probable. Until we are in possession of
more adequate data for sifting the claims to belief of
the other miracles attributed to Christ, it behoves
everyone to maintain at least an open mind with
respect to them.

Especially is this the case with respect to the greatest
of all the miracles, that of the Resurrection. It cannot
be rightly claimed in favour of that miracle that the
evidence for it, strong though it may be, is sufficient
to manifestly overpower the weighty arguments that
may be urged against it ; still less can it be rightly
maintained that the rejection of that evidence as
insufficient argues moral obliquity on the part of the
doubter. The question of the verbal accuracy of
the account of Christ's Resurrection which is given
in the Gospels, is a question of historical fact, to be
decided as all other such questions are decided, by
evidence.* If the evidence for the miracle as recorded

* Of course it may be argued— it is argued, we know, by the old
school of Christian apologists — that, because Jesus Christ is " God,"
therefore it is easy to believe that He rose again, indeed it would be
strange if He had not risen again. That may be so, but it is an
argument which has no scientific weight, for it is based on a statement
which is not self-evident, and therefore it can carry no conviction to a
scientifically trained mind. It is not in accordance with the method of
reasoning which proceeds from the known to the unknown, and conse-
quently it has not even been alluded to in the text. It is worth while
remarking, by the way, that the argument has no Scriptural authority.
Christ did not teach His divinity to the multitude, nor did His
disciples induce their converts to believe that He rose again, by first
making them believe in His divinity. The Resurrection was then as
now merely a question of evidence.

116 MIRACLES.

is such as not to satisfy, or give certainty to, an honest
enquirer, then no fault can be found with him on that
account.

Any attempt to sift that evidence would be quite

beyond the scope of the present work. It is doubtful

whether it could be sifted now in such a way as to

present a conclusion, that all honest and properly

qualified enquirers would be compelled to agree with

entirely. Certainly, no review of the evidence has

been made as yet, that is calculated to give entire

satisfaction to persons who are anxious to find out

the bare truth of the matter, irrespective of any

theories as to the antecedent probability or improba-

biUty of the miraculous. The existing " Lives " of

Christ are for the most part written either with such

a bias against the miraculous, or with such a leaning

towards the verbal infallibility of the Evangelists, that

they cannot carry absolute conviction to a really

impartial mind. Whether a succeeding generation

may be afforded the boon of a re-reading of the Gospel

narrative, in the composition of which the reverence

for spiritual truth which characterizes the Englishman

will be happily blende-1 with the patience and open-

mindedness in investigating historical truth that

characterizes the German, with a result that will be

satisfactory to all, it is useless to speculate, though

it may be hoped.

For the present there need be little, if any, loss from
the difficulty which some feel to decide for themselves
as to whether Christ did actually rise again in the

MIRACLES. 117

manner in which He is said in the Gospels to have
risen. Whatever result a correct criticism of the
details there narrated may lead to, of this there can be
no doLibt to any who hold the behefs set forth in the
two preceding chapters, that Jesus still lives. He did
" rise again," though we may not be sure how. The
whole weight of the argument for the immortality of man
in general tells in favour of the indestructibility of that
life. Christ could not have utterly perished on Calvary.
The purest and noblest career that this earth has ever
been the scene of could not have been cut off finally
by that brutal Jewish mob. We dare not think it, for
if we do, we reject all hope of our own continuance of
life after death, and all belief m a just, not to speak of
a loving, God ; nay we are convicted to ourselves of sin
if we think it, for we falsify and reject that very witness
within us which comes, as we are fain to believe, from
God Himself, and which tells us that He could not have
"left that Holy One to see corruption." We dare not
and cannot think it ; nor have any thorough believers
in the religion of Christ ever dared or been able to
think it. The testimony of the Christian Church in
favour of the Resurrection of Christ has always been
confident and clear. It could not have been otherwise.
Doubtless it has been mixed up hitherto, rightly or
wrongly, with an implicit reliance on the accuracy of
the verbal details of the Gospel story; but that has
been, properly speaking, an accident of the belief; its
substance has been suppHed by the deep conviction
which all true Christians have felt, that it was God's

118 MIRACLES.

will that Christ should rise again, or, more accurately,
should continue to live after He " gave up the ghost "
on Calvary.

Nay, that beUef of the Church is a powerful witness
of the fact of the " Resurrection," in addition to that
which our own faith in God supplies. It is unquestion-
able that it has exercised an incalculably strengthening
and sanctifying influence upon those who have held it,
and has been a mighty factor for good to the world at
large. Christians would have hitherto done little or
nothing to ameliorate the world, if they had not
believed in a '' Risen Lord." Is it conceivable that
that belief has been at heart a lie, that a conviction so
deeply rooted in the minds of good men, and so fruit-
ful in good results, can have been but a delusion
continued through the centuries up till now ? Not so :
the so-called authority of the Church has weight in this
matter ; it has weight like that which pertains to the
authority of our own consciences, for it is but the
expression of the voice of God conveying the same
testimony to a number of individual men. It may not
be quoted as infallibly deciding points of historical
detail, which do not fall within the province of spiritual
communication ; but as testimony to a religious fact it
is a valuable enforcement of the testimony which is
supplied by our own inward monitions of what is right
and true.

It is thus then, that we may and should think of
the Founder of the Christian Religion, as One Who
" liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore." We

MIRACLES. 119

need not attempt or even desire to penetrate the
mystery, that for many hangs over the records of the
Resurrection and Ascension. Whether those records
are hterally accurate or not, is not indeed a matter of
intrinsic importance to us. We may be content to be
as ignorant on the subject as we are necessarily content
to be ignorant of the nature of our own translation to
that life after death, which we believe is in store for us.
If we cannot feel quite certain that we have an absolutely
reliable report of the manner of Christ's Resurrection,
at any rate we can believe '' from our hearts " that God
hath raised Him from the dead.* If we cannot pene-
trate the cloud that obscured Him from the view of
His first disciples when He was " taken from them,"
and if we cannot adapt our thought exactly to the
anthropomorphic language in which He is spoken
of, as now '' seated at the right hand of God the
Father Almighty," we can yet assuredly think of
Him as truly " ascended " to that place or state of
blessedness to which we hope to be translated
hereafter, and as partaking in that place or state of
the highest exaltation to which perfect humanity
can attain.

It is such a thought of Jesus Christ that makes
Him not only the ** Author" but the "Finisher" of
our faith ; not only the Light and Guide of our
rehgious life ; but our Forerunner, Example, and
Companion in those experiences which we must pass
through, if we are to attain that blessedness which we

* Romans x. 9.

120 MIRACLES.

believe is His now."* It is by believing in Him as
One Who " died and rose again," that we are enabled
truly to " die to sin and to rise again unto righteous-
ness; " and it is by looking up to Him as One Who
has " ascended into the heavens," that we may find the
impulse and the power even now " in heart and mind
thither to ascend, and with Him to continually dwell."

* Cf. Pascal— " C'est un des grands principes du Christianisme que
tout ce qui est arrive a Jesus-Christ doit se passer dans I'ame at dans
le corps de chaque Chretien."

CHAPTER V.

WORSHIP.

fTk^JORSHIP is the first part of religion. As soon
E^yi^H as primitive man became conscious of the
igiff^^l existence of some power or powers outside
himself, which aroused in him feehngs of awe and
dependence, he was actuated by the impulse to acknow-
ledge the relation in which he stood to those powers
by presenting to them gifts, or addressing them in
words, with the object of propitiating them. Since
then it has always been understood that the first duty
of man towards the gods, or towards God, is that of
worship, the acknowledgment of their or His worth-ship.
Indeed, by all in early days worship was regarded as
the whole of religion, and by very many even now, if
we may judge from their actions, it is still so regarded ;
so deeply implanted in human nature is the tendency,
as Bishop Butler has phrased it, to " place the stress
of religion anywhere rather than upon virtue." Worship
is not of course by any means the whole of religion.
Virtue or obedience to God is an essential part of it,
even more essential than worship, we mi^ht say, if it
were conceivable that there could be obedience to God
without any recognition of His worth-ship or claims to

122 WORSHIP.

obedience. Still worship is the first part of religion,
even when religion has reached the most advanced
state ; and, therefore, after a scientific investigation has
been made of the facts relating to the nature of God
and the methods by which His will is made known to
men, the next question that suggests itself for similar
investigation is, "What is the scientific basis of
worship ?

It stands to reason that men's notions concerning
worship will correspond very closely to their notions
concerning God. The way in which they will acknow-
ledge His worth-ship will depend on their conception
of what His worth-ship is. The lower the thoughts
they have of God the lower and meaner will be the
kind of worship they will offer Him ; and any advance
in the idea of God will be necessarily accompanied by
a corresponding advance in the idea of worship. We
note frequent illustrations of this in the history of the
development of religion that is given in the Old Testa-
ment. The God of Noah was conceived to be a spirit-
ualized man, with human, and indeed very fleshly, habits
and appetites. Therefore it was supposed that He was
gratified with the sweet savour of the cooked meat
that was offered to Him in sacrifice. The God of the
prophets, the God of Isaiah and Jeremiah, was far
superior in every respect to this early object of worship.
He was no longer the invisible man, powerful and
dreaded, who attached himself to different individuals
and furthered their fortunes, no longer even the tribal
God of Israel Who delighted in victory and the blood

WORSHIP. 123

of the slain, He was essentially a spiritual beinj:^ with
advanced moral attributes, Who cared not for " burnt
offerings," but desired the sacrifice of " a broken and a
contrite heart."

Even in the history of the Christian Church there
are striking illustrations to be noted of the close
relation between degraded and trivial forms of worship
and a low apprehension of theological truth. Thus we
find prevailing extensively in the Greek Church, and
among the most ignorant in the Roman Church, the
belief that God is pleased when men go on pilgrimages
to sacred places, or offer candles to be burnt at His
altars. Very evidently such a belief is a natural out-
come of a conception of the Divine nature not much
superior to that which was held by those, who thought
that God was such an One that He delighted in the
sweet savour of a sacrifice, and was pleased when men
made vows to do Him honour. But even in more
enlightened Christian circles there lingers a conception
of worship which is demonstrably erroneous. If in
such circles the right kind of worship, for the most
part, is offered to God, it is offered not unfrequently
with a wrong notion of the reasons why it should be
offered, and that, of course, because a wrong notion is
entertained of the Divine character. It is supposed,
for example, that God delights in prayers and praises,
just as He was formerly supposed to delight in burnt
offerings and sacrifices, and that He is pleased to be
told how good He is, just as formerly He was supposed
to be pleased with the odour of a roasted kid or lamb.

124 WORSHIP.

In a word, if He has not now a fleshly appetite for
dainty food, He has an appetite, and a very human one
in the lowest sense, for praise.

That opinion is still held probably by a very large
number of Christians, who are otherwise exceedingly
well-informed, and it affords a proof of the curious
survival down to the present time of the conception of
God which prevailed among the Jews in the time of
Christ. That conception had its origin in the compari-
son of God to the autocratic sovereigns with whom
the ancient, and especially the Eastern world, was so
famihar. In trying to compass the vast thought of an
Almighty Ruler of all, men in those days unconsciously,
and indeed unavoidably, likened Him in their minds to
those earthly sovereigns who afforded them their highest
experience of power and dominion. He seemed to
them to resemble those sovereigns in being absolute in
His rule, and in being able to exercise all authority
throughout His kingdom of the world. Like an
earthly potentate He — to quote the language of one of
them, Nebuchadnezzar, to whom such language very
naturally occurred — *' did according to His will in the
army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth ;
so that none could stay His hand or say unto Him,
* What doest thou ? ' "* Men in those days approached
an earthly sovereign in much the same way that they
approached the Almighty God, viz., with prostrations
and all the gestures of reverence ; and indeed the paral-
lelism went so far that divine honours were not unfre-

* Daniel iv. 35.

WORSHIP. 125

quently paid to the earthly ruler, to the " Great King"
or the Caesar.

It is not surprising, therefore, that men should have
conceived that the Almighty God was Uke an earthly
ruler in this, that He desired and delighted in the
homage of His subjects, and that He, as naturally as
did a Nebuchadnezzar or a Nero, looked for praise and
all the outward signs of submission to His authority.
Now, natural and even perhaps inevitable as it was in
those days to entertain such a thought concerning the
Divine Being, it is nevertheless strange that that
thought should have lingered so long, and should be
still so extensively entertained even at the present day.
For it is plainly contradictory to Christ's teaching con-
cerning God. Christians have always held that the
character of Christ was the Divine character exhibited
in a human life ; they have believed that Christ
*' revealed " God in a way in which He is not clearly
revealed in Nature, by showing that He is merciful,
loving, and compassionate ; yet, strange to say, hitherto
they have very generally hesitated to attribute to God
what is perhaps the most conspicuous feature in the
character of Christ, viz.. His humility. Christ said of
Himself, " Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in
heart," '-^^ and men have so learnt of Him ; but though
He also said, " I and My Father are one" — in ''heart "
as in other things — they have not learnt of God the
Father that He is " meek and lowly." They have con-
tinued, with a quite remarkable blindness, to regard

* St. Matthew xi. 29.

126 WORSHIP.

Him as inferior in this respect not only to Christ, but
to good men who themselves are manifestly inferior to
Christ, for they have conceived of Him as delighting
in the praises of His greatness and goodness which are
sent up weekly from thousands of lips ; whereas it is the
distinguishing mark of all good men that they do not
like to have their goodness openly acknowledged, and
feel abashed and ashamed when they are praised.

Plainly, therefore, if it was a true conclusion that we
arrived at," that we learn of the Invisible Power from
the testimony that is derived from the highest and
noblest of His works — man, as well as from our own
inward intimations of what is good and true, we cannot
but recognize that it is an error, and a gross one, to
conceive of Him as delighting in praise.

It may be added, that what we learn concerning
God from the study of Nature tends to fortify us in
this judgment. If there is one thing more than
another that modern writers on physical science have
insisted upon, it is the way in which God hides Himself
behind His works. Their investigations have not, as
we have seen, tended to remove God from the universe.
On the contrary, the ablest exponents of the evolution
philosophy have maintained, in language that has been
quoted, that He is the only, the ultimate Reality. Yet
in the same breath they have passionately affirmed, that
His nature is most mysterious, that though traces of
His energy are everywhere visible. Himself we cannot
see, and even cannot know. They have gone too far in

* Chapter II,

WORSHIP. 127

affirming this ; they have attached excessive, even ex-
clusive, importance to the kind of knowledge concerning
God which is derived from the study of Nature ; they
have failed to see a revelation of God in perfect humanity,
as well as in the rational universe. Still their testimony
to the mysteriousness of the Invisible Power is true
and valuable. It suggests a conception of God which
exactly harmonises with the thought of His absolute
humility as it is revealed in Jesus Christ. Had He
been the haughty arrogant potentate that men were
wont to think Him, we might conjecture that He would
have ensured, that His power and dignity would have
been so plainly manifested to men, that they would have
been constrained to offer Him ever} where the adulation
and the avowals of submission in which He took delight.
As it is, we cannot but think of Him as One Who
delights more in giving than in receiving, Who willingly
hides Himself behind His works, and Who takes cease-
less pleasure in diffusing His power. His love. His
sweetness, and His beauty over all, upon all, and
through all, without regard to any recognition that may
be made of His bounty — a truth, indeed, that is affirmed
in the words of Jesus, " He maketh His sun to rise on
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just,
and on the unjust."

If it be true that we have no ground for conceiving
that God desires our praise, the question may be asked,
Why then should we offer Him our praise at all ? The
answer is an obvious one. For the same reason that
we express gratitude to one another. If any person of

128 WORSHIP.

our acquaintance were continually loading us with
benefits, whether we deserved them at his hands or
not, if he were incessantly exerting himself on our
behalf in such a way as to lighten and gladden our
whole lives, and yet desired no return at our hands,
should we therefore accept all his favours as a matter
of course, and make no acknowledgment of our obliga-
tion to him ? We should think ourselves inexpressibly
mean if we did so. And so we might well think it a
mean thing for us to enjoy the blessings that we daily
receive from the Invisible Supreme Power, and not to
shew in a proper way our sense of His goodness and of
our dependence on Him. Nay, just as right-thinking
men are all the more eager to thank those who do
good to them " hoping for nothing in return," so ought
we, in conceiving of God as the infinitely Humble
Being, to be all the more eager to offer Him the praise
that is His due.

This then is the basis of the obligation of worship.
It is founded not on the arrogant demands of a God
Who is less rather than more humble than the best of
men, but on what it is reasonable and proper for us
to spontaneously offer Him, in acknowledgment of the
benefits that we receive at His hands. Even though He
does not ask us to thank Him for His benefits, it
eminently becomes us to do so. Nay, in this aspect of
it as a voluntary expression of our sense of God's good-
ness and of our dependence on Him, worship is seen to
be most emphatically due from us to God. As it is
expressed in the preface to the Ter Sanctus in the

WORSHIP. 129

Communion Office, " It is very meet, right, and our
bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all
places, give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father,
Almighty, Everlasting God."

It is very important thus to establish firmly the prin-
ciple upon which the obligation of worship rests, for it
is only by attention to this principle that we shall avoid
mistaking the kind of worship that we should offer.
Manifestly our conception of the right method of wor-
shipping God will not be the same, if we deem that He
desires and demands our praise for His own satisfaction,
as it will be if we regard it as a spontaneous offering on
our part, becoming to us though not required by Him.
Viewing worship in this latter light we cannot imagine
for a moment that the form of our worship can be any-
thing but secondary. The essence of worship consists
in feeling, in the inward sense of the Divine worth-ship ;
and the expression of that feeling, the acknowledgment
of the Divine worth-ship, cannot be rightly regarded as
identifiable with any particular form of vocal utterance
or of personal attitude or gesture. We need words and
bodily signs to express our feelings to one another, but
we do not need words or signs of any description to
express our feelings to God. "God is a Spirit, and they
that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth," '•'' is the great saying of Jesus, in which He laid
down once for all the essential principle of true worship ;
and acting strictly on that principle v/e may be offering
the highest worship of which we are capable, when we are

* St. John iv. 24.

I

130 WORSHIP.

holding solitary converse with God, as Christ frequently
did on some lonely height, and when not a single artic-
ulate word rises to the lips, but our spirits are for the
time being bowed before the Infinite Spirit in utter
humility and rapt adoration. At such a time we feel that
words are useless as vehicles of thought. We have passed
into a region in which language is but a cumbersome
expedient," needful in our communication with one
another, but a very stumbling-block in the way of our
unbaring our souls before the Unseen, yet All-seeing,
the Incomprehensible, yet All-comprehending Power.
Unhappy are they who have never had experience
of such worship in spirit and in truth; misguided,

*Cf. Coleridge, The Pains of Sleep : —
" Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips on bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation.
No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
Only a sense of supplication ;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere
Eternal strength and wisdom are."

Cf. also Wordsworth, The Excursion, Bk. I. : —
" In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him ; it was blessedness and love! "

WORSHIP. 131

painfully and wofully misguided, are they who do not
look upon it as the very ideal worship, which, in
the spiritual development of the race, we must desire
and expect that men in increasing numbers will be
capable of; and which we must ever keep in view in
making those temporary arrangements for the outward
expression of worship, which our own infirmities and
the infirmities of others render necessary.

For, constituted as we are, certain forms of worship
are necessary to elicit and give expression to in the minds
of most, if not of all, the worship which is wholly
spiritual and true. Some, indeed, who have grasped
and hold firmly by the essential nature of worship as
consisting of that which no words or forms can fully or
sufficiently express, may be impatient of any plea even
for the temporary use of words or forms. They may
argue that God Himself does not value any vocal or
visible expression, as such, of a spirit of gratitude and
devotion to Him. They may refer to what we have
seen is taught by the humility of good men concerning
the Divine attitude towards praise, and may contend
that the only expression of a sense of His goodness
which God values, as a mere expression, apart from the
feeling which He can discern without any formal
exhibition of it, is that of devoted willing obedience to
His commands. They may recall, that an earthly
father cares far less for his child to tell him how
good he is, than for him to do what he bids him ;
and they may maintain, that men can never so
adequately express their sense of God's goodness, as

132 WORSHIP.

when they "give up themselves to His service, and
walk before Him in holiness and righteousness all their
days." This would be an absolutely sound contention,
for it would be founded not only on what appeals to us
as thoroughly reasonable and true, but on the authority
of such sayings as, "Thou desirest no sacrifice, else
would I give it Thee ; Thou delightest not in
burnt offerings," '■'' and " Not everyone that saith unto
Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
Heaven ; but he that doeth the Will of My Father
which is in Heaven." t

Still, it is dangerous to fail to perceive, or to put out
of mind, that even if it be only required by human
infirmity, the formal and outward expression of worship
is indispensably necessary to us all, inasmuch as we all
are compassed with infirmity. Even if God does not
value it for itself alone, we cannot do without it. It is
only by the use of fixed times and seasons of prayer
that we shall be kept up to the habit of prayer and
praise at all, and it is only by placing ourselves in the
attitude of prayer and praise, and using words expressive
of our sense of obligation and dependence, that we shall
for the most part feel gratitude and a desire for further
Divine help. Words and sounds and sights are impor-
tant instruments in stirring our emotions and moving
the springs of resolve within us ; and though on special
occasions we can dispense with them, feehng them to
be only an encumbrance and a distraction, yet on
ordinary occasions, when we cannot rise unaided to the

♦Psalm li. i6. f St. Matthew vii. 21.

WORSHIP. 133

pure and lofty height of adoration, or would be for-
getful or even indisposed to make the attempt, the
use of such external aids is a quite indispensable means
of moving us and enabling us to offer that worship to
the Infinite Spirit which is spiritual and true. We
can indeed conceive of men being so entirely spiritually-
minded, that for them forms are of no service and no
necessity. A Moses or a Paul, we might judge, would
hardly suffer if he were deprived of any opportunity of
entering a house of prayer, or of expressing his sense
of the worth-ship of the Infinite Power by word or
sign. Such a man might be trusted to make use of
the Universe as a temple, and to let Nature's marks of
time, the dawn, and noon, and sunset, be his only out-
ward mementos of prayer and praise ; yet anyone else,
however gifted, who was of less spiritual endowment,
might possibly be risking the very existence of his God-
ward life, if he from a sense of self-dependence were
to renounce the use of those props, which all the saints
of all time have hitherto found needful to support the
structure of their personal religion.

It may be, it certainly is, true, that God for His own
sake does not enjoin us to worship Him with external
forms ; yet if for our sakes those forms be necessary,
we may well say to ourselves, that then for our sakes
God does enjoin them upon us, and it is a failure of
duty to God to neglect them, or such of them at any
rate as have been found helpful to us in the past, or
have been shewn by the experience of others to be
likely to help us. We may not be brought into bondage

134 WORSHIP.

to any of them. The spiritual man has a right to assert
his perfect freedom in respect to the use of particular
forms of worship, and may reject those that are
unserviceable to him, except in so far as his rejection
of them will prove injurious to others. Whatever
positive injunctions any self-governing branch of the
Church or particular community of Christians may
have laid down with respect to the use of forms of
worship, the Christian man can boldly claim his
freedom from the moral obligation to observe those
injunctions, if they are not, and cannot, be made help-
ful to himself personally. By the rule of the Christian
faith, declared in the New Testament with an insistence
that cannot be mistaken, and with an authority that no
collective body of Christians can override, every man
who deserves to be called a Christian can claim
absolute immunity from the obligation to observe
any set of ordinances of human institution, which are
intended to assist him in worshipping God. The
Church to which he belongs can counsel him to observe
such ordinances, but it has no moral power to compel
him. For in the New Testament it is declared in
unmistakeable terms and with frequent iteration that
the spiritual man is free ; the only responsibility that rests
upon him with respect to that freedom is, that he is to
use it not " for a cloke of wickedness, but as a bond-
servant of God." *

It has often been noticed that Jesus Christ never in
any words that have come down to us, enjoined public

* I Peter ii. i6 (R.V.)

WORSHIP. 135

worship upon His followers. What He did insist upon
emphatically was the necessity of private prayer, and
that in terms which seem to convey that He regarded
it as the chief and best means of holding communication
with " our Father which is in secret." It is the utter
absence of distraction in private prayer, secured by the
" door closed " even to the dearest of friends and
nearest of sympathizers, that gives it this pre-eminence
among the means of realizing the Unseen. Still there
are advantages attaching to public prayer over and
above that one in which it is inferior as a devotional
habit to private prayer. When men meet together
for the purpose of worshipping God, even if by their
company with one another they somewhat distract
one another from a purely spiritual vision of God, they
nevertheless render one another effectual assistance
towards realizing their common relationship to God,
their common dependence on God, and their common
duty to God, and so the important element of brother-
hness is imported into those feelings of which worship
is an expression. A man who worships God only in
solitude may succeed in sustaining in himself an abiding
sense of God's power and goodness, and of his own
dependence on and duty to God ; but he is not so likely
to acquire a brotherly feeHng towards his fellowmen,
and to be inspired to co-operate with them in brotherly
work, as if in addition to his private worship he
habituates himself to worship on stated occasions in
company with others. We cannot achieve the best
good possible to us without reference to our fellowmen.

136 WORSHIP.

We can only act and feel as God's children should act
and feel, in proportion as we regard one another as
brothers and sisters, and share one another's highest
thoughts and feelings ; so that it is eminently becoming
to us to unite at stated times in the endeavour to recall
our obligations to our common Father, and to give
expression to our common desires to live in harmony
with His will. Moreover, we cannot but feel, that such
desires gain in purity and intensity by their being felt
in common and jointly uttered ; and, therefore, taking
into consideration the wa}' in which public worship
enables us to realize our kinship with one another,
and our duty to one another, as well as the additional
strength and efficacy it gives to our common wishes
for good, we cannot fail to see that there is this
special blessing attaching to it, that it tends to promote
a Christlike spirit among us — in fulfilment of Christ's
saying, " Where two or three are gathered together
in My name, there am I in the midst of them."*

It is on this ground of the way in which it suggests
and promotes a solidarity among men in worship and
life that the obligation of public worship mainly rests.
The first thing to be thought of, of course, in worship,
whether public or private, is what is due to God in
respect of the recognition and acknowledgment of His
worth-ship ; but that which is peculiar to public as
distinguished from private worship is the element of
brotherliness that enters into it. It is a source of
mutual help and comfort to those who take part in it ;

* St. Matthew xviii. 20.

WORSHIP. 137

and therefore it is that in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Christian people are urged to maintain the practice, in
these words, " Let us consider one another to provoke
unto love, and to good works, not forsaking the
assembhng of ourselves together, as the manner of
some is, but exhorting (or comforting) one another."""

Besides, the public worship of God is a standing
witness to the world of man's duty towards God.
There can be little doubt that, if there were no such
thing as public worship, if men never met together for
the purpose of conjointly praising and praying to God,
then the very thought of man's dependence on a Power
outside himself, and of the obligation upon him of the
performance of a higher order of duties than those
entailed by the necessity of obeying the civil law and of
rendering one's-self agreeable to one's neighbours,
would not be awakened in, or at any rate kept in
remembrance by, the majority of mankind. So
generally has this been understood, and so abundantly
has it been confirmed by universal experience, that
public worship in some form or other has been an
institution in every religion.

When these benefits accruing from the practice of
public praise and prayer are kept in view, it is diffi-
cult to dispute the saying of Bishop Butler, that *'the
external worship of God is a moral duty, though no
particular mode of it be so." f Yet the external worship
of God can only be a moral obligation upon us in so far
as that worship is calculated, if rightly participated in,

♦Hebrews x. 24, 25. f Analogy of Religion, Part II., Chapter i.

138 WORSHIP.

to be of benefit to ourselves and to others. If the only
kind of worship in which we can join, as for example
when we are in a foreign country, is conducted in a
manner that is unfamiliar to us and with rites that are
grossly superstitious, and if in such a case our absence
from worship would not be likely to set a harmful
example to others, the duty of external worship cannot
be said to be for the time being incumbent upon us.

The case is different when we are in our own country,
and among persons whose views on religious subjects
are very similar to our own, and who are likely to be
more directly affected by our example. It is quite
possible, of course, even at home, that we may not
find any method of worship practised that is exactly
adapted to our taste, or even that is incontestably
rational and pure. Still, although we are not morally
bound, as Bishop Butler says, to any particular form,
we cannot easily exonerate ourselves from the duty to
use some form — the best that is attainable by us ; even
though it is not our conception of the best possible.
We may not favour by our countenance, if we can help
it, the grossly erroneous worship of God ; but it is
better for us to take part in some kind of worship,
which is not the best possible, and which is somewhat
charged with superstition, than to live our religious
lives apart from our brethren, and so run the very
certain risk of becoming Pharisees in our fancied and
asserted intellectual superiority to the rest of those
who worship the Infinite Power ; and of becoming also
unloving towards them, through the loss of that stimulus

WORSHIP. 139

to brotherly feeling and conduct which is afforded by
the joint worship of a common Father. Besides, it
will be very readily conjectured by those unthinking
persons upon whom the obligations of religion sit very
lightly, that if we absent ourselves from public worship,
our absence is due not to our dissatisfaction with the
forms of worship which are in use among our neigh-
bours, but to total indifference to the duty of recognizing
and acknowledging our dependence on the Infinite
Power.

CHAPTER VI.

WORSHIP (Continued).

F there are such cogent reasons, as have been
suggested in the last chapter, for pressing
upon all men the duty of public worship, it
is evident that a very grave responsibility rests upon
those who have to do with the arrangement and
conduct of public worship, to see that it is devised
and carried out in a way that is exactly calculated
to further the ends which it is intended to subserve.
It should be their care that nothing should be done
in worship that is not in accordance with the highest
truth ascertainable concerning the Divine nature, or
that is likely to give reasonable offence to those who
have approached most nearly to the intellectual and
spiritual state, in which the ideal worship in spirit
and in truth without the aid of form is possible.

In order to ascertain what is the manner and what
are the forms of worship most likely to assist men to
conjointly feel and express the worth-ship of God,
regard must be had to what has apparently been
proved to be beneficial by its use among the largest
number of Christians and for the largest period of
time. What may be called the authority of the

WORSHIP. 141

Church on these matters must be within reason
deferred to. There is naturally a presumption in
favour of forms that have been widely used from
ancient times, over such as have only been recently
adopted and that among isolated bodies of Christians.
Still, it is quite possible, as we have abundant reason
to know, and as has always been acknowledged by
theologians,* that even the whole Church may err
for a time, as well as particular branches of it : and
therefore what may with some reason be called the
authority of the Universal Church on matters of
ritual and Church order has need to be carefully
tested as to its right to claim our obedience. The
practice of the Universal Church, or rather of the
majority of Christians, for there are few practices in
worship that are common to the whole Church, may
suggest the form ; but when the form is thus suggested,
careful enquiry must be made as to whether it is in
accordance with the right principles of worship, and
whether it is likely to prove serviceable to the particular
persons for whose use it is intended.!

To apply this rule in a few instances. It is evident
in the first place that, if men and women are to meet

* See Vincentii Lirinensis Commonitoriiim Cap. iii., and Article XIX.

f This point is strangely overlooked by some modern writers on
Worship. E.g., the practical suggestiveness of some of Freeman's
observations in his learned and valuable work on The Principles of
Divine Service is frequently much impaired by his inattention to it ;
as for example when he expresses his opinion (Vol. I. Conclusion.)
in favour of the increase of the number of Psalms to be sung at the
daily services, evidently without considering whether such a change
would be advantageous to the average worshipper.

142 WORSHIP.

together for public worship, they must provide for
themselves some buildings in which they may worship.
It may be said to be a practice of the Universal Church
thus to provide and set apart certain buildings for the
purpose of public worship. Circumstances may render
it unavoidable occasionally, that worship should be
conducted in places used at other times for other
purposes ; but, generally speaking, whenever it is
possible, Christians of every school of thought prefer
to worship in buildings which are used for no other
purpose. Some Christians, indeed, are wont to meet
together in their places of worship for other than
distinctively religious purposes ; and they do this not
only for the sake of convenience, but also because
they feel that there is cause for fear lest, in devoting a
building exclusively to the purpose of worship, men and
women should come to specially localize the presence
of God in such a building, and deem that it is sacred
as a Divine temple in a different sense from that in
which the whole Universe is sacred. There is cause
for such a fear, and ignorant and thoughtless people
have made such a mistake. Nevertheless, the mischief
arising from the mistake has never been very great,
and it can always be guarded against by right instruc-
tion ; while there are weighty arguments to be urged in
favour of the practice of the majority of Christians of
separating their places of worship from all common
uses. They can plead the authority of Jesus on their
side ; for the propriety of consecrating certain buildings
to the sole purpose of worshipping God is reasonably

WORSHIP. 143

deducible from His saying in cleansing the temple,
" My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye
have made it a den of thieves.'"*

Besides, it is a matter of common experience, that
we are very much under the governance of the law of
the association of ideas ; the same sights and sounds
always tend to suggest to us the same thoughts and
feelings ; and if a building is only used for the purpose
of worship, and is always associated in our minds
with that purpose, then, whenever we enter it, the
thought of worship is likely to occur to us, and thus
the building itself becomes an aid to devotion.

To some minds, and those not the lowest, a mountain
summit, a vernal wood, a pastoral landscape, a sunlit
stretch of ocean may be more immediately suggestive
of worship than the most impressive building erected
by man. But even such persons cannot but make a
distinction, as regards the effect produced upon them,
between a structure used for the common purposes of
human life and one which is used as a house of
prayer ; and therefore for the benefit of all it is
desirable to give a consecrated character to our places
of worship, and to adapt them in the best manner
possible to promote in those who use them such
thoughts and feelings towards God as are of the essence
of true prayer and praise.

Of course a great deal as regards the suitability of a
building for worship — apart from the circumstance of its
being reserved for that purpose only — will depend on the

*St. Matt. xxi. 13.

144 WORSHIP.

style of its architecture and the way in which it is fitted
up. That some styles of architecture lend themselves
better than others to a devotional effect is obvious, as
it is also obvious that different modes of worship find
each their own appropriate expression in stone, the
the massive gloomy temples of the ancient Egyptians
adapting themselves to the mysterious and sombre
rites that characterized the worship of that people,
the roomy and elaborately decorated cathedrals of
Italy to the gorgeous spectacular displays which are
a conspicuous feature in Roman worship, and the
chaste and severe beauty of our English Gothic
Cathedrals to the sober yet stately ritual of the
English Church. Just as the kind of worship offered
varies with the conception of the Divine nature, so the
building varies with the worship ; and, just as different
kinds of worship are superior or inferior to one another
in proportion to the relative superiority or inferiority
of the conception of the Divine nature to which they
correspond, so there must be a relative scale of styles
of religious architecture more or less fitted to the
worship which is wholly spiritual and true. That the
English Gothic is the best that has been devised
hitherto, it is perhaps natural that we English should
think ; but except we believe that the mediaeval mode
of worship or the modern purified mediaeval is
absolutely the best and not to be improved upon, no
matter what further advance may be made in the
knowledge of God, we cannot think that the Gothic
style of architecture is absolutely the best attainable,

WORSHIP. 145

and that some other style still better adapted to the
right worship of God may not yet be invented.*

It would of course be useless to expect that, even in
the case of a general advance in the knowledge of God,
all men everywhere should come to prefer exactly the
same style of building for public worship. Even
among those who have a common faith there are
differences of taste and temperament, which lead
them to prefer each a more or less ornate kind of
building in which to worship ; and it may be safe to
say that, generally speaking, what each prefers is best
for each. It is easy to understand how a Venetian of
the Fourteenth Century should prefer a San Marco with
its almost bewildering artistic wealth to the plain white-
washed building that would have most readily com-
mended itself as a place of worship to a Covenanter
of the Seventeenth Century. The one lived under a
sunny sky in a city of most romantic beauty, and had
reached a very high stage of asthetic culture, while the
other had passed his days amid the fogs and on the
bare hills of Scotland, and had no culture but what
he derived from the repeated study of the literature
of a people like the Hebrews by whom art was
never held in relatively high repute. The Venetian
would have been shocked by the conventicle ; it
would have contrasted so grimly with what he saw
in nature,

* See Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (Book V.. chapter 2) for
some excellent observations on the relation of different styles of
ecclesiastical architecture to different systems of faith and worship.

146 WORSHIP.

*' The beauty and the wonder and the power,
The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,"*

and would have been so repellent to his artistic sensi-
bilities, that within it he could not have realized the
Unseen, he could not have used it as a place of worship
at all ; while the Covenanter, from his wholly different
climatic and local experiences and deficient artistic
education, would have regarded the Church of San
Marco as a fit abode for the Scarlet Woman, only by an
abominable blasphemy to be designated a house of God.
It is impossible then to lay down any hard and fast
rule as to how a building intended to be used for the
purpose of worship should be fitted up. The only or
chief thing to be kept in view is, that it should be of the
style best adapted to the taste of the particular people
for whose use it is intended. Generally speaking, a
more ornate style will be preferred by the people of
Southern Europe and a simpler style by those of
Northern Europe. It is very evident, for example,
that the rich decorations of the Churches of Italy,
Spain, and a part of France, are better suited to the
sensuous and emotional temperament of the Latin races
than would be the comparative severity of our Northern
Churches. And this throws a good deal of light on
the fact that has frequently been remarked upon, that
the Reformation was eagerly embraced by the Teutonic
races, and made but small headway among the races
who speak languages derived from the Latin. The
movement in favour of the simplification of ritual

♦Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi.

WORSHIP. 147

touched no sympathetic chord in the Latin races ;
on the contrary it was a movement that was objec-
tionable to their taste ; while the warm support of
the movement in Germany, England, and Scandinavia
was in one aspect of it a reaction against the
enforced imposition upon the races of the North of a
style of worship which, though suited to the Southern
races, was not suited to them.

Still it is quite possible even in the North for a taste
to be developed for the more elaborate decoration of
places of worship. There are several points of affinity
between a composite race Hke the English, and the
warm-blooded races of the South ; and increasing
contact with those races will tend to bring about an
increase of sympathy with them. There can be no
question that the greater famiharity of English people
with the great Churches of Southern Europe is having
the effect of modifying the opinion of very many in
this country with regard to the propriety of beautifying
the buildings that are set apart for the purpose of
worship. Besides, there has been a marked and general
increase of asthetic culture in England in the present
century, and this has tended to make very many people
dissatisfied with the plain and often comfortless appear-
ance that our Churches used generally to present ; it
has produced the feeling that worship should not
necessarily be associated with what is cold, and bare,
and unsightly, and it has created a demand for a style
of Church decoration and furniture correspondent as
regards the particulars of comfort and artistic propriety

148 WORSHIP.

to what has become common in the appointments of
the home.

It cannot be maintained that this demand is a mis-
placed one, or at variance with the essential principles
of spiritual and true worship. If the great Temple of
the Universe is beautiful, and exhibits all forms and
types of beauty, then it is certainly right that any
building intended by man to serve as a place of worship
should be beautiful too. Indeed, the more truly beau-
tiful it is, the better will it serve as a place of worship,
and lift up the mind to Him Who, in the language of
His ancient worshippers, is '' The Altogether Lovely."
There is a great deal of ugliness of man's origination
in the neighbourhood of the habitations of man, and
the better a Church is adapted to make us forget for a
time that ugliness, and to set before us only what is
beautiful in form and colour, the more shall we be
assisted to worship God as we ought, and to derive
from our worship of Him that refreshment of all our
higher powers that we seek. There can be no mistake
made in the devotion of the best of our artistic acquisi-
tions to the construction and embellishment of our
Churches. What we do for our dwelling-houses, at
least we should do for the places in which we meet
together for the highest occupation possible to us. It
was a right feeling which prompted David to reproach
himself in that he " dwelt in an house of cedars while
the ark of the covenant of the Lord remained under
curtains."* There is a manifest falseness in the religion

* I Chron. xvii. i.

WORSHIP. 149

which will permit a man to lavish his thousands on
the decoration of his home, and give but niggardly for
the decoration of the building which is designated the
House of God. If it is a true saying that the " beau-
tiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps more," then
hardly any expenditure of treasure on a " House of
God," after due provision has been made for the sick
and needy, can be deemed excessive. There need be
no limits to what is done in that direction so long as
mere richness as distinguished from general beauty of
effect is not aimed at. If only we copy Nature, and
keep its standards of beauty in view, adapting the
decoration of our Churches to the measure of wealth
in colour that we are familiar with in our own climate
and country, we cannot go wrong. Our greatest care
must be to be true to Nature, to make use of no designs
that are not in accordance with the principles of form
that we find in Nature, and, while carefully emulating
the spiritual truth and purity of the work done by
the great masters of past ages, not to imitate their
necessarily imperfect technique, by reproducing the
stilted attitudes for the human figure and the errors
of perspective that are noticeable in the stained
glass windows and the fresco paintings of our ancient
Churches. Modern art, when exercised for religious
purposes, must not be restrained by a mistaken con-
servatism from giving to worship the best that it is
in its power to bestow. We must make our Churches
and all their appointments as truthfully and therefore
as perfectly beautiful as we can, yet all the while

150 WORSHIP.

remembering that this beauty is bat a means to an
end, and that God is not honoured by it, if it is so
lavish or so inappropriate as to distract us from
realizing His Presence, or if, from whatever cause, the
effect it produces upon us cannot be made to harmonize
with those thoughts of God, of His power, His wisdom,
His majesty. His love, and His beauty, which we ought
to entertain when we desire to express our sense of His
worth-ship.

The authority of the Church, the authority of collec-
tive Christian opinion past and present, thus appears
to guide us safely in prescribing the setting apart of
special buildings for the worship of God, and their
seemly and in the truest sense artistic embellishment,
always considering the end which they are intended to
serve. We may expect further that that authority
will be deserving of deference on the subject of the
arrangements for worship made within such conse-
crated buildings. For example, up to the last genera-
tion it was usual for the pulpit to be the chief feature
in the places of worship belonging to the Church of
England. It occupied a central position at the end of
the nave, often entirely hiding the Holy Table from the
view of those seated in the body of the Church. Now
there has been a reversion in almost all Churches to
the practice that prevailed before the Reformation of
putting the pulpit in a comparatively unobtrusive
position on one side of the Chancel, so as to leave an
uninterrupted view of the Holy Table. There can be
little disposition on the part of thoughtful and fair-

WORSHIP. 151

minded people to dispute the propriety of this arrange-
ment. It puts the ordinance of preaching in its right
place among the functions of worship, and emphasizes
the importance of that act of worship which is regarded
by Christians as being the chief of all because it was so
explicitly prescribed by Jesus Christ, and because, even
more than the eloquent exhortations of man, it tends,
when we fitly take part in it, to bring us into direct
spiritual Communion with God in Christ.

It is an arrangement, moreover, that may be said to
be primitive in its institution, as the Holy Table in our
Churches is placed in the same relative position as the
ark containing the sacred rolls of the Law and Prophets
in the Jewish synagogues, which doubtless furnished the
model of the earliest Christian places of worship ; and it
was adopted in all the earliest Churches of which
accounts are preserved to us."^' Besides, it is endorsed
by the use of a considerable section of the Protestants
of Germany and of Scandinavia, as well as of the whole of
the Greek and Roman Churches, the Holy Table being
always a conspicuous object at the end of their places
of worship ; so that those who argue for the propriety
of making the pulpit the most conspicuous feature in
the Church can only quote in their favour the practice
of the non-episcopalian Christians in English speaking
countries and the Calvinists on the Continent, in
opposition to that of all the rest of Christendom past
and present.

It cannot be said, however, that anything like the

* See Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church, Book Vlll., Chap. 3.

152 WORSHIP.

same weight of authority can be adduced on behalf of a
fashion that prevailed in the English Church before
the Reformation, and that has of late been revived.
Very many of those w^ho have interested themselves in
the more artistic adornment of our Churches, and the
restoration in outward sign of the Holy Communion to
the chief place among acts of worship, have associated
with those reforms the propriety of the wearing of a
gorgeous dress by the clergy during the time of the
celebration of the Holy Communion and on other
important occasions. The practice of the Catholic or
Universal Church has been made the authority for the
one alteration as for the other; but they by no
means stand on the same footing. In no true sense
can the wearing of gorgeous vestments by the clergy
be regarded as a Catholic practice. It was not the
practice, so far as we can ascertain, in the first two or
three centuries, and in all probability it was one of the
innovations upon primitive usage which came from the
quarter of Paganism. No practice was more resolutely
repudiated at the Reformation;* and its revival now is
one of the most serious departures from the principles
which the most enlightened of the Reformers were
actuated by. One of the principal arguments quoted
for its revival is that it is an evidence of the continuity
of the Enghsh Church and of her status as a true
branch of the Catholic Church, her clergy dressing now

*The ambiguity of the "Ornaments Rubric" cannot be quoted
against this statement. In practice the use of gorgeous vestments was
in time everywhere rejected in the Church of England, except in the rare
cases where the cope continued to be worn, as in Cathedral Churches.

WORSHIP. 153

as they were wont to do before the Reformation. Now,
only the unreflecting can deny that a good deal of
significance is to be attached to the effect of dress, and
the continuity and rightful status of the Church of
England it is desirable to assert and maintain; but
whether the continuity of the Church can be best pro-
claimed by the donning by the clergy of the now
unaccustomed and outlandish garb that was worn by
their predecessors in the Middle Ages is another matter.
It is likely that more persons will be annoyed or simply
amused by seeing the clergy so arrayed than will be
edified by the teaching that the spectacle is intended to
convey. If the continuity of the Church of England is
a fact, the fact can be published in the ordinary way,
and the proofs of it; and men will not need to be
reminded of it by means of chasubles and other antique
articles of dress. Men are not prone to doubt that the
House of Commons, often as it has been reformed, is the
same House as that which was the Lower Assembly of
the Legislature in the reign of King John, even though
its chief functionaries no longer wear pointed shoes or
chain mail. The testimony of history puts the point
beyond all doubt to educated minds. Why may not
history of itself, when it is properly related, do the same
for the continuity of the Church ?

But it is also argued that, inasmuch as the Holy
Communion is the chief service of the Church, the clergy
who officiate at the service ought to wear a distinctive
dress in order to indicate that it is so. The ar<;ument
is an unsubstantial one. If men are rightly instructed

154 WORSHIP.

about the Holy Communion, if they rightly endeavour
to recall, when taking part in it, what it is intended to
commemorate and the good it is calculated to convey,
they will succeed in the endeavour, no matter how the
clergy are dressed. And even if there were some weight
in the argument, at least it does not follow that the
dress need be gorgeous as well as distinctive. There
can be no harm in the clergy wearing a distinctive dress
on stated occasions ; but if the passages in the New
Testament bearing on the status of the Ministry, and
pointing out the absence of self-assertion that should
characterize all the followers of Christ, are deserving of
obedient attention, then it must be positively wrong for
the clergy to attire themselves in the fine clothes which
they are bidden to condemn in others. How can a
Minister of Christ get up in the pulpit and quote those
admonitions about the " outward adorning of wearing
of gold, and of putting on of apparel," =^^ when he himself
often ministers in the Church in gorgeous raiment ?
True, a man may wear such raiment in the lowliest
spirit, as many of the Saints have done. Still, it is
certain that Jesus Christ never wore any dress but that of
the peasants of Palestine. It would be impossible to
imagine the Jesus Who '' made Himself of no reputation,
and took upon Him the form of a servant," Who washed
His disciples' feet, and had not where to lay His head,
arraying Himself in gorgeous attire ; neither could those
Apostles have done so who have left us such uncom-
promising precepts on the subject of dress. Now the

* I Peter iii. 3.

WORSHIP. 155

servant is not greater than his Lord. What Jesus and
His Apostles would have shrunk from doing, the clergy
of the present day assuredly may not do. True, they
may quote the example of the Jewish High Priest ; but
the Jewish Priest was the minister of a religion that
belonged to an earlier stage of development than the
Christian ; and, after all, the Christian Minister is not
a successor of the Jewish Priest, but of Christ and His
Apostles, and of the elders and deacons of the early
Christian Church.

With respect to all questions relating to the expression
of praise and prayer in public worship there can be no
serious difficulty of arriving at a right judgment, when
attention is paid to the principles of worship set forth
by Jesus Christ, as they have already been reviewed.
That praise should precede prayer, and that prayer
should be offered as an act of homage to God, a
recognition and a memorial of God, before it is used as
an instrument for the enumeration and satisfaction of
our personal want^, is plainly taught in the construction
of the Lord's Prayer. The practice of the majority of
Christians from primitive times illustrates how this
principle should be kept in view in the arrangement of
a set form of prayer for common use. The English
liturgy, founded as it is on ancient models and composed
to a great extent of ancient materials, furnishes an
irreproachable example of the order in which the
thoughts which we ought to entertain with respect to
the Divine Being should be successively evoked in
worship, in the confession of sin, followed by praise and

166 WORSHIP.

thanksgiving, and then supplications and intercessions.
The question as to whether the use of forms of prayer
is preferable to extemporary prayer in worship has so
often been argued that it will not be dwelt upon here.
Speaking generally, there is a predominant weight of
argument and of authority in favour of the use of forms
of prayer almost exclusively, though it must be acknow-
ledged that on certain occasions and for certain classes
of persons extemporary prayer may with advantage and
perfect propriety be used to further the ends of united
worship. Forms of prayer may be for certain purposes
too general and too inelastic, while there is always the
danger of their becoming in some respects antiquated
and so far unreal. These defects, however, can always
be remedied by the introduction into a liturgy of special
prayers and thanksgivings for special occasions, and by
the elimination from it of modes of expression and
subjects of petition which are unsuited to modern
worship. The periodical revision of a liturgy, difficult
for various extraneous reasons though it be, and as in
fairness it ought to be recognized by all to be, is essential
to its fullest usefulness. For example, prayers drawn
up in one century for the Divine guidance of the rulers
of the State, ought to be altered in a later century, when
power has come to be differently distributed between
the different orders of rulers. When matters like this
are attended to, the comprehensiveness as well as
accuracy and dignity of statement of a great liturgy,
make it vastly superior as a means of calling forth and
expressing the devout feelings of a congregation to

WORSHIP. 157

the necessarily much more imperfect extemporaneous
utterances of even the most talented and devout
minister.

An important thing to be kept in view in the regu-
lation of public prayer according to the essential
principles of worship is, that it should be adapted to
retain the interest of those who take part in it. For
that purpose it should be as void as possible of
repetitions, and should not run to an undue length.
A form of prayer, hovvever admirable it may be in
language and style, is but a means to an end — the
expression of the devout feelings of those who use it ;
the form is made for man and not man for the form ;
and therefore if in some parts of it words and phrases
are repeated so often that the mind cannot readily
follow them, then it so far defeats its end instead of
furthering it. The frequency of the use of the Lord's
Prayer and of prayers for the Sovereign in the services
of the English Church, especially when two or three
of those services are taken together, and the reiteration
of petitions for Divine grace and mercy at the con-
clusion of the Litany are instances in point. Of course
it may be argued, that no liturgy can be so framed as to
call forth and sustain the interest of those who worship,
unless they set their minds intently to the task of
following it, and the most concise form of prayer might
often be listened to with intermittent attention. That
is perfectly true. Still there should be no provocatives
to inattention like undue repetitions in a forin of prayer,
and it must always be remembered that the greater

158 WORSHIP.

number of persons who pray in public will with the
best intentions be subject to the average human infirm-
ities, and what might be adapted to a few earnest
persons of saintly mind will not be adapted to them.
The best attainable form of prayer, therefore, for public
use will have this merit among others, that it will be
that best calculated in point of precision and concise-
ness to maintain without interruption a devout train
of thought in the mind of the average worshipper.

Much of what has been said with respect to the style
of composition of a form of prayer, as regards the effect
it is calculated to produce on those for whose benefit it
is provided, will apply also to the way in which it is
recited or sung. The most exceptionally composed
liturgy can be so mutilated, and even desecrated, by bad
reading, that it may be a positive hindrance to worship
to listen to it, and it may be so tediously recited as to
cause weariness, however short it may be. It is indeed
a matter of extreme importance that such provision as
is possible should be made for the careful, distinct,
intelligent, and devout reading of a liturgy, whenever it
is used. Elocution becomes an art of primary importance
when upon it is made to depend the devotional effect
produced by a liturgy on the largest number of those who
join in it. The man who, having taken pains to make
himself proficient in the art, endeavours on all occasions
when he reads a form of prayer to express the exact
sense of what he reads, and to read it in a frame of
mind adapted to its sacred import, renders a most
valuable service to religion ; for the tones and the style

WORSHIP. 159

in which he speaks are calculated in the highest degree
to promote for the time being in his hearers a sense of
God's worth-ship, and a desire to offer to Him their praises
and prayers in sincerity and truth. It would be well if all
those who have to officiate at public worship were to
take care to prepare themselves beforehand for their
responsible task by recollecting the aim and purpose of
it, and by bearing in mind that the sacred words they
have to repeat will have no value as a memorial
before God unless they express the devout feehngs
of those who are taking part in the service, and that, in
order that that result may be accomplished, they must
be said in a tone and manner calculated to evoke and
sustain the lively interest of those on whose behalf they
are uttered. It is not by any means sufficient to
remember that the words are to be spoken in the
presence of God ; it is just as necessary to remember
that they are to be spoken in the presence of man.

In the regulation of the use of music in pubKc worship
the same attention needs to be paid to the tastes and
capacities of a congregation. The question of whether
and how far prayers as well as praises should be sung,
is one which has reference only to the effect which is
likely to be produced on the feelings of the worshippers.
If it is calculated to solemnize those feelings and assist
devotion by harmonizing the joint utterances, without
at the same time diminishing the fervour of them, it is
not only permissible but good. It never can be rightly
maintained, however, that a musical recitation of a
liturgy is essential to its proper performance as a

160 WORSHIP.

memorial before God. It is a derogation from the
character of the Divine Being to hold or teach, that He,
being such as He is, the Infinite Being, superior in
every way to the limitations of our human nature, can
be pleased with the melody of sound so much as to
regard it as a necessary accompaniment of the proper
recognition by man of His goodness and power. That
all sensuous beauty in the universe, whether of sound
or form or colour, is pleasing to the Eternal Mind by
Whom the universe is governed and sustained is only to
be supposed ; but that beauty of sound could enter at
all into comparison in His judgment with the moral
beauty of those feelings of gratitude and awe and love
which comprise what we call adoration and thanks-
giving as expressed by man — the highest and most
perfect of all the creatures of God that are known to
us — is a thought that it would be folly to entertain.
Music, and the best of it, ought unquestionably to be
adapted on occasion to the purpose of worship, even
on the ground that when we express our feelings
towards God by means of sounds it is becoming that
we should express them in the best manner possible to
us. Still, it is almost solely, if not altogether, with
respect to the effect it has in eliciting devotional
feeling in a congregation that music is of value in the
worship of God. That music operates very powerfully
on the feelings is known to all, and therefore the utmost
resources of music may well be employed for the
purpose of eliciting and expressing man's sense of the
Divine power and goodness. There is always the fear,

WORSHIP. 161

however, when music has come to be much employed
in the service of the Church, that the fact may be lost
sight of that it is a means to an end. Too often it has
been forced on those who do not highly appreciate it,
and to whom it is not and cannot be made a real aid to
devotion ; while for others it has been used on certain
occasions in excessive abundance, so as to produce
mental and physical fatigue. Most important is it,
therefore, that the musical rendering of praises and
prayers, like the ordinary reading of them, should be
done always in remembrance of, and with reference to,
the effect it is likely to produce on a congregation.
That arrangement of Church music is the best which is
not merely the most consistent with the highest canons
of the musical art, but is adapted as exactly as possible
to the musical capacity of those whose praises and
prayers it is intended to evoke and express, and to their
powers of attention and of physical endurance.

The right regulation of the use of music for the
purpose of public worship is a matter of great moment
at the present time. The much-increased use of music
in places of worship, encouraged and furthered as it
has been by the manifest approbation of those for
whom it has been provided, has tended to produce in
unthinking minds the opinion, that the mere listening
to the utterance by a trained body of singers of sacred
words set to sacred music is in itself worship ; and
** services," so called, of that sort have come to be
attended by not a few, just as sacrifices were formerly
attended, the vocal and instrumental music taking the

L

162 WORSHIP.

place of the sacrificial victim as the medium for pro-
pitiating the Divine Being. It is well then that, to
prevent such a flagrantly superstitious abuse of a great
gift of God, it should be clearly and emphatically
taught, that there can be no value at all in a musical
" service," however beautiful it may be, except in so far
as it is calculated to fill the hearts of those who listen
to it with the feelings which it is proper for them to
entertain towards God with reference to the special
circumstances under which the service is held.

There are numerous other questions relating to the
conduct of public worship which are capable of easy
settlement when reference is thus made to the meaning
of public worship and the conditions of its reality as
a mode of promoting spiritual communion between
man and God. It is through inattention to these
things that so many ill-advised practices have been
introduced into Christian worship in different parts of
the world, and that so much embittered controversy
has arisen over matters of intrinsically trivial importance.
Over and over again insistence has been laid on certain
customs as though they were absolutely essential to
true worship, when a moment's unprejudiced reflection,
it would have been thought, would have shown how
groundless was such insistence. For example, there
are very many Christians, some even in England, who
think and teach, that to receive the Holy Communion
after partaking of ordinary food on the same day is an
abuse of that sacred ordinance. An opinion like this
not only does violence to history and reason, but

WORSHIP. 163

asperses the character of the Divine Being ; for how
could He be worthy of adoration if He could be
supposed capable of being affected by such things ?
As a matter of fact, the celebration of the Holy Com-
munion in the earliest times always followed on the
Agape, or Love Feast, and indeed the Sacrament was
first instituted " after supper." There were good
reasons, no doubt, for afterwards altering the time of
the celebration to early morning instead of the evening,
and there are good reasons now for inviting Christians
to partake of the Sacrament in the first part of the
day. Moreover, it is a quite justifiable counsel to
those who are young and strong that they should let
the first occupation of the day be that of attendance
at the Sacrament, and the first food of the day be that
of the sacred feast ; but in face of the testimony of
history as to the original practice of receiving the
Holy Communion directly after a meal, it is unwarrant-
able to contend that under no circumstances should
food be taken before communicating. Here again, if
the end and aim of the service had been kept in view,
no mistake of this sort would have arisen. The Holy
Communion is celebrated primarily in order that we
may bring to remembrance the sacrifice of the death
of Christ and the benefits that we receive thereby, and
that in partaking of the consecrated Bread and Wine
we may partake spiritually of the Body and Blood of
Christ, that is to say, be spiritually nourished on the
Spirit of Christ. Now, in order that we may derive
full benefit from the service, it is necessary that we

164 WORSHIP.

should attend to it with the full power of our minds ;
and the more healthy the condition our brains are in
the better shall we be able to exercise that power. It
is evident, therefore, that, if we go to the service with
our brains in a state of exhaustion from hunger, we
shall not only not be able to give our full minds to
the service, but have to wrestle all the while with
those tendencies to irritability and mental restlessness
which we experience when our brains are in an ill-
nourished state. It is not good to go to the Lord's
Table in a state of repletion, but it is equally bad, as
regards the character of the memorial we shall offer,
and the effect the service is likely to have upon us, to
go in a state of exhaustion. St. Paul's injunction,"
" If any man is hungry let him eat at home," applies
equally to such a case as to that of those who were
wont to desecrate the Holy Communion by using it
as a common meal; and the prohibition to take food
before communicating, transgressing as it does the
principle laid down in this injunction, is an instance of
the mistakes that men will make when they are not
careful to keep in mind the meaning and purposes of
the ordinances of rehgion.

The same may be said of some other matters relating
to the performance of what has always been regarded
as the highest act of worship in the Christian Church.
It is quite distressing to note how devout and learned
men have painfully exercised their minds about certain
forms of prayer or praise, or certain ceremonial acts, in

* I Cor. xi. 34.

WORSHIP. 166

the celebration of the Holy Communion, as though
upon the use of these depended the " validity " of the
Sacrament, as the phrase is, which can only properly
mean its value as a devout commemoration of Jesus
Christ, and as a means of spiritual nourishment to
those who partake of it. That all things in public
worship should be done ''decently and in order,"* is
on every ground desirable and right, and that, for the
determination of what is of most propriety in the
conduct of worship, the practice of the majority of
Christians from the beginning of Christendom should
be generally referred to, is most reasonable, as has
been already argued. It cannot be said, considering
the importance attaching even to small matters with
respect to the securing of a decent and orderly per-
formance of public worship, that certain so-called
innovations in worship in the Church of England
during the last half century have not been rightly
contended for. Still, it has been a cause for grave
regret that so little discrimination should have been
shown between what is important and what is unimpor-
tant in worship, and that the peace of the Church
should have been interrupted for the sake of the
introduction of things which in themselves could be
neither specially acceptable to God nor edifying to man,
in apparent forgetfulness of the essential principles of
the religion which was founded by Jesus Christ.

Attention to those principles must convince any
unprejudiced person that the extra elaboration of

* I Cor. xiv. 40.

166 WORSHIP.

worship is on the whole a retrogressive thing. To
contrive means in public worship of influencing men
through the senses of sight and hearing is, as we have
seen, a necessary accommodation to the nature of man ;
but to multiply such means inordinately is to intro-
duce an element of great danger into public worship,
inasmuch as it tends to make it more the performance
of a number of outward acts than a means of uplifting
the thoughts and feelings to God. Too great a com-
plexity of ritual is only too likely to defeat the main
object of Christian worship, by keeping men's minds
enslaved to sensual things, instead of assisting them
to enjoy rightly that spiritual liberty which is the
priceless heritage of the disciples of Christ.''' The
paraphernalia of worship are legitimate and truly useful
only so far as they are reasonably consistent with
Christ's teaching concerning God and the way He is to
be approached in prayer and praise by man ; and the
worship of the future, in so far as it will be progressive
in the best sense and not retrogressive, will tend to

* Note on this head the judicious words of the preface "Of Cere-
monies" in the Prayer Book: — " What would St. Augustine have said
if he had seen the ceremonies of late days used among us ; whereunto
the multitude used in his time was not to be compared ? This our
excessive multitude of ceremonies was so great, and many of them so
dark, that they did more confound and darken than declare and set
forth Christ's benefits unto us. And besides this, Christ's Gospel is not
a Ceremonial Law (as much of Moses' Law was) but it is a religion to
serve God, not in bondage of the figure or shadow, but in the freedom
of the spirit; being content only with those ceremonies which do
serve to a decent order and godly discipline, and such as be apt to stir
up the dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty to God, by
some notable and special signification, whereby he might be edified."

WORSHIP. 167

emphasize that teaching by associating with itself more
and more simple though not less dignified and beautiful
forms.

That the organization of the public worship of God
will take such a direction in future, after the present
reaction towards elaborate traditional forms has spent
itself, there is good ground to hope. It is impossible
but that the scientific spirit, which is so markedly
leavening the thoughts of all classes in the civilized
world, will more and more assert itself in the judg-
ments which men will form on matters theological and
ecclesiastical, as well as those relating to common life.
It may thus be expected, that the manifest inconsistency
between the over minute and precise attention to petty
details in worship, and the utter spirituality of the
worship which Christ prescribed, will become in time
a matter of common notoriety, and men will in
increasing numbers be nourished in the belief, that to
hold frequent communion in spirit with the Infinite
Ruler of all, and to live in dependence on His power
and goodness and in obedience to His laws, are the
only absolutely indispensable conditions of rendering to
Him that worship which is His due.

^ppenutx.

^ppeutrtx.

THE HOLY LAND AS THE THEATRE OF REVELATION*

Judges xviii. 9.
"We have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good."

T is only relatively that Palestine could ever have
deserved the name in the ordinary sense of being
a very good land. Its scenery is impressive, but
not by any means equal in beauty to that of many
parts of the British Isles. Its soil is fertile, but only in patches
between the hills, and in the lowlands of the Jordan Valley and
the Western plain. It is no more than a Westmoreland or a
Carnarvonshire for productiveness. Yet in contrast with the
deserts, terrible for their deathly sameness and sterility, that
surround it, it merits all the terms of praise that are lavished
upon it in the Bible; it is indeed "a land of wheat, and barley,
and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates," '•' a land that
floweth with milk and honey," "a land of mountains and
plains, which drinketh water of the rain of heaven."

Too often those who have visited the Holy Land give
unduly disparaging accounts of its scenery and resources, and
too often those who read these accounts, and who look at
photographic views of the country, acquire the impression that

*This Sermon was preached after the Author's return from a visit to the
Holy Land. Although in it will be found the repetition of part of what has
been already said about Revelation, it is inserted in the expectation that
it will throw some additional light on a subject of which it is difficult, yet
most important, to obtain a clear view.

172 APPENDIX.

the glowing descriptions of the Bible are overcharged. When,
however, it is remembered that it is the only well-watered
country, with the exception of the artificially irrigated Egypt,
in a tract of many thousands of square miles of sterile rock and
plain, there is no cause for surprise that those who first entered
it from the wilderness of the South should have given the
report of it that it was very good.

But though the Holy Land is surpassed by many other
countries in those features of beauty and productiveness which
suggest that epithet in the ordinary sense, it deserves it in
another sense to a degree far beyond any other country on the
face of the globe. If it is relatively a good land in respect of
its power to nourish man's body with food, and to delight his
artistic sensibiHties with beauty, it is absolutely the best of all
lands in its adaptability to further the development of the
spiritual life of man. If it cannot, and never could, be made
to bring forth such abundant harvests as the neighbouring
Egypt, if it has not sufficient grace and grandeur of appearance
to make it a Switzerland or a Norway, it nevertheless has the
distinction above all other lands of being the one best suited to
the requirements of the spiritual nature of man, and the one in
which it is easiest for man to hold converse with God, and to
receive from God the revelation of His mind and will.

God, we know, does not do things by accident, any more than
He acts from caprice, and if one land has been the scene of all
the highest communications of His will to man, it is not because
He arbitrarily and without reason chose to have it so, but
because that land was specially adapted to fit men for receiving
those teachings which God reveals unto us by His Spirit. The
circumstance which in history gives its unique interest to
Palestine is, that time after time God spoke to the spirits of
men there, and that with a higher message than He communi-

APPENDIX. 173

cated to others elsewhere. We may not deny, of course, that
He spoke to others elsewhere. He spoke to Sakya Mouni in
India, to Zoroaster in Persia, to Socrates in Greece; but to
neither of these three did He speak as He spoke to Him Whom
we call His Son. The Light of India, and the Light of
Persia, and the Light of Greece pale in the Light of the World.
And, moreover, in the land which we rightly distinguish as
Holy there was a succession of prophets, each as regards his
insight into spiritual truth in advance of the most enlightened
men of other countries, culminating in Him Who is "the very
effulgence of the glory and the express image of the substance "
of the Invisible God.

It is a fact of considerable significance that all the greater
religions — that is to say, the religions that have had the greatest
sway — have had their origin in the East. Europe with all its
advantages has never been the cradle of a new faith, though it
has been the best nursery of the chief of all. The common
explanation of this would be, that the genius of the European
races, though admirably adapted to the origination and culture
of the various arts and sciences, is not suited to the reception at
first hand of those truths which are communicated to men by
the process which we call revelation. Doubtless this is true as
far as it goes. It is impossible not to mark a fundamental
difference between the temperament and cast of thought of the
Eastern and Western races, as regards their way of apprehending
religious truth. All the Eastern races — meaning those of
India, Persia, Syria, Arabia, and North Africa — are by nature
profoundly religious. Religion in them is a natural growth and
not an acquisition from the outside. It shapes all their thoughts,
it colours all their language, it is part and parcel of all their
outer life. They are not half ashamed of it, and fearful to
make any public exhibition of it, as are most Europeans. Tiiey

174 APPENDIX.

say their prayers in public ; they salute their friends in God's
Name ; they more often mention that Name than any other.
No doubt their religion is frequently indistinguishable from the
grossest superstition, and they are credulous in respect to the
supernatural to a degree which at every turn excites the
wonderment, and sometimes the contempt, of the far more
critically-minded European. Still the fact remains, that the
people of the East are fundamentally religious, in the sense that
they live day by day in vivid consciousness of the Unseen.

Now, instructed as we are to associate differences of national
character with differences of climate and country, we are not
disposed to stop at the apprehension of the fact that the
Eastern races are more naturally religious than the Western, as
though it were a fact about which nothing more was to be said.
We are moved to draw from it the legitimate and necessary
inference, that the climatic and physical characteristics of the
East are more favourable than those of the West to the
cultivation of the religious instinct in man. ' What those climatic
and physical characteristics are, it is worth our while carefully
to note, in order that we may endeavour to make up for
the want of them, or learn to use them duly when they are
available.

Taking notice first of climate, we have to remark, that to the
East and South of tlie Mediterranean the warmth and evenness
of the temperature are such, that the wants of the body are
reduced to a minimum ; the inhabitants of those regions can
subsist on less food than we, and do not need so much clothing
to protect them from the severity of the weather. The
simplest food, and that always of the same kind, suffices for
them ; while all the year round they can wear the one description
of clothing, and that has come to be a uniform, unchanged in
shape or colour, so that they need to give far less thought than

APPENDIX. 175

we to "what they shall eat, and wherewithal they shall be
clothed." Moreover, they are not required by the exigencies
of the climate to take the extra precautions against cold and
damp that we are. They do not need the same elaborate
dwellings, with the same number and variety of rooms in them,
that we do, inasmuch as they have no cause to spend so much
of their time in their homes and under cover. Indeed, at
certain seasons of the year it is no hardship to them to sleep
under the open heavens, as David did in his youth, and as Jesus
frequently did. It was more a mark of the poverty than of
the severity of our Lord's life, that "He had not where to lay
His head."

Now there is a triple advantage arising from these peculiarities
of Oriental life. They obviate the impediments to the develop-
ment of the spiritual nature which result from the necessity of
paying engrossing attention to the wants of the body ; they
allow of more leisure for religious meditation, and "the wisdom
of the learned man " — of the spiritually learned man, as of
others — "cometh with the opportunity of leisure;" while they
make men much more familiar with Nature in all her aspects,
and more susceptible of the influences of Nature, and so bring
them more nearly in contact with the Invisible Spirit, in Whom
all things animate and inanimate have their being.

Of course, it cannot be said of the Oriental races generally,
that they use their climatic advantages to the utmost benefit of
their spiritual nature. They are not by any means now in the
van of religious thought ; on the contrary, their religious beliefs
are far less pure than those of the Western races, and their
moral practice is on the whole distinctly inferior. They have
degenerated from what their forefathers were, chiefly owing to
political causes, and are as much behind the Christians of
Western Europe in respect of their religious beliefs, as their

176 APPENDIX.

forefathers were in advance of the Celts and Teutons of the
early days of the Christian Era.

Still the faith of the Teutonic and Celtic races, if we may make
bold to say that it is now the purest in the world, is after all only
a borrowed faith, a faith that had its origin in the East ; and
the present religious degeneracy of the Oriental races cannot
affect the deductions to be drawn from the fact, that the great
religions that now hold sway over so many millions of human
beings all had their origin in the East.

It may be, that the modern dwellers in the East are not
availing themselves for the purposes of the religious life, as
others have done in the past, of the unique climatic and other
natural advantages of the region which they inhabit. Still, that
should not cause us to forget, that it is only by using such
advantages to the full, that men have hitherto attained to the
privilege of being recipients of previously unknown truth by
the process which we call revelation.

How that has come about, a moment's reflection on the
nature of revelation will shew. Revelation means, of course,
unveiling — the making clear what before was invisible, or seen
only doubtfully as through a veil. Now by men as they are
ordinarily circumstanced God is not perceived. God's Spirit
lies all around us, permeating all we see; yet we are unaware
of the fact in our ordinary state. Even though we live and
move and have our being in God, we may not be conscious of
His nearness to us, and of our dependence on Him. There is
only one way in which we can apprehend Him, and that is
by our spirits coming in contact with His. Thus and thus
only can the highest truth concerning God be made known to
men. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered
into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for
them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by

APPENDIX. 177

His Spirit." It is a most mysterious saying, but this much, at
any rate, of ils meaning is clear, that it is not by the exercise
of the lower faculties of sight, or hearing, or reason, or
imagination, that we can discover the " things of God," but
only by what cannot be otherwise described than as the inter-
communion of our spirits with God. The highest truth
concerning God cannot be arrived at by the same processes
by which other kinds of knowledge are acquired. It must be
" seen " as it were with an inward eye. We must be placed in
such a condition both of inward preparation and outward
circumstance, that our powers of spiritual perception may be
made sensible of those Divine influences which abound every-
where for those who are capable of apprehending them. So
it is that all those who have proclaimed fresh truth concerning
God in times past have acquired it. They have gone out
"into the wilderness," or on to the hills, where nothing has
interfered to prevent their realization of the all-pervading
presence of God. They have there divested themselves of all
but the most needful cares for the body ; they have closed
their eyes to earthly sights and their ears to earthly sounds;
they have for the time being renounced the ever obtrusive
thought of their own personality ; they have been in such a
condition that whether they were in the body or out of the
body they could not tell ; they have been conscious of nothing
but God and His works ; and then it is that, as thty have said
and believed, God has whispered His secrets to their hearts,
filled their souls with His peace, and dismissed them afterwards
to their task of acting as His messengers to men, with their
faces irradiated, like that of Moses, with the glory of God,
and their memories stored, like that of Paul, with " unspeak-
able " words, that it was not lawful or possible for them to utter.
So absolutely necessary is it that these conditions of entire

M

178 APPENDIX.

isolation in the presence of Nature, and entire deliverance from
all pressing needs of the body, should be fulfilled, not for a
short space only but for a protracted period, if men are to be
capable of holding such close communion with God, that we
can well understand how it is only in the East, where life can
be made so simple, that men have hitherto been able to receive
fresh " revelations " of religious truth."*

But other than merely climatic conditions are needful to
render those, who thus hold communion with the Infinite Spirit,
capable of receiving God's truth in its due proportions, and in
all its magnificent universality. How is it that Buddhism as a
religion is so inferior to Christianity, so limited in its adaptability
to the manifold wants of mankind, so defective in its repre-
sentation of the dignity of human life and the lovableness of
the Great Author of all ? Surely one reason, and an important
one is, that he, or rather they, who wrought it out, holy-minded
men, as we are fain to say, had their powers of vision straitened
by the limitations of the land in which they lived and of the
society to which they belonged. It was a land, for the most
part, flat, and tame, and bare, remote from the mysterious and
vivifying influences of the sea ; a land of frequently intense heat,
and often refusing its products to the teeming millions that
thronged it ; a land darkened by the despotism of its rulers and
saddened by the misery of the vast majority of its inhabitants.
What wonder then that the most spiritual men in such a land
were able only to declare to their fellows a creed whose

*This and the preceding paragraph must not be read to imply that there has
been no "revelation" at all communicated to men since the early days of
Christianity. The point insisted upon is, that no new truth, of which the
germ at any rate is not to be found in the New Testament, has been discovered
since. Poets, such as Wordsworth and Tennyson, are rightly spoken of as
prophets ; but their utterances have coincided with, and put into modern
expression, not added to, what is to be read in the Bible.

APPENDIX. 179

dominant note was pessimism, a creed that, like Christianity
indeed, enjoined self-renunciation, but held out no crown, if it
be a crown, but that of annihilation to those who bore the Cross ?

We have only to contrast Buddhism with Christianity, in order
to see how all the features in Christianity, that make it the one
religion for men, correspond to the unique characteristics of the
Holy Land, as a theatre for a perfect revelation. In the
diversity of the structure and scenery of the Holy Land,
composed as it is of plain, and hill, and spring, and brook,
and shore of the sea, we see the counterpart of the Divine
adaptability of the Bible to the diversified wants and tempera-
ments of all the people on the face of the globe ; in the storms
and earthquakes to which it is subject we see the suggestion of
the just presentation in the Bible of the severer aspect of the
character of God ; in its lonely mountains we trace the symbols
of the awful majesty and eternal self-existence of the Divine
Being ; in its fertile plains we see the tokens of His goodness
and mercy ; while the comparative tameness of the general
character of its scenery tends to enhance its fitness as the cradle
of a religion " which was destined to have no home on earth,
least of all in its own birth-place, which has attained its full
dimensions only in proportion as it has travelled further from its
original source,"* which is founded on the doctrine that, albeit
some lands more than others may be suited to the unveiling of
God's truth, yet the service and worship of God suggested by
such knowledge is independent of climate and latitude, for He
is a Spirit, and they that worship Him are required only to fulfil
the conditions of worshipping Him in spirit and in truth.

Thus it is, as we can partly see, that the highest knowledge
that we have of God has come to us from the Holy Land.

Two brief practical reflections will give a profitable conclusion
*Sta.n\ey, Sinai and Palesting, ed. 1881, p. 156.

180 APPENDIX.

to our study of this subject. The first is, that if we would
approach as nearly as we can to the condition in which it is
possible for the spirit of man to come consciously into contact
with the Spirit of God, we must be careful not to let the wants
and desires of the body have a too engrossing share of our time
and of our thought ; we must not impair our powers of spiritual
perception by making ourselves too dependent on material
comforts and luxuries ; we must remember that we cannot
pamper our bodies except at the expense of our souls ; plain
living and high thinking are inseparable.

Our second reflection is, that though we cannot, owing to the
conditions of our life in a northern latitude, spend whole nights
in the open air in prayer to God, we can "enter each into his
chamber and shut the door," and there have such real though
transient glimpses of the King in His beauty, that the radiance
of them will long remain with us to purify and gladden our
lives, and to inspire us with the desire to see Him eventually
as He is, in all the glory and perfection of His nature.

By the same Author.

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