The supernatural in Christianity, with special reference to statements in the recent Gifford lectures

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THE SUPERNATURAL

IN

CHRISTIANITY

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB
FOR

T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.

LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.

NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

TORONTO: THE WILLARD TRACT DEPOSITORY.

The

Supernatural in Christianity

* * * •
* - .1

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO STATEMENTS

IN THE RECENT

GIFFORD LECTURES/, ': \'<U

BY 4

PRINCIPAL RAINY, D.D. ^
PROFESSOR J, ORR, D.D.

AND

PROFESSOR MARCUS DODS, D.D.

With Prefatory Statement by
PROFESSOR A. H. CHARTERIS, D.D

Second Edition

EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET

1894

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CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFATORY STATEMENT vii

By A. H. CHARTERIS, D.D.,

Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University
of Edinburgh.

I. INTRODUCTORY— THE ISSUES AT STAKE .

By ROBERT RAINY, D.D.,

Principal, and Professor of Church History, New
College, Edinburgh.

II. CAN PROFESSOR PFLEIDERER'S VIEW JUSTIFY

ITSELF?. . . . . . .35

By JAMES ORR, D.D.,

Professor of Church History, United Presbyterian
College, Edinburgh.

III. THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE GOSPELS . . 71

By MARCUS DODS, D.D.,

Professor of Exegetical Theology, New College,
Edinburgh.

:^329C

T'

EXPLANATORY NOTE

Dr. Pfleiderer's double Course of twenty Lectures, "Philosophy
and Development of Religion," ended on the 27th February.
The three Lectures which follow were delivered on 5th, 8th,
and 13th of March. Professor Charteris, who was prevented, ad
he explains, from taking part in the Course as a Lecturer, was
kind enough to take the chair at the first Lecture ; and his
opening remarks constitute the Prefatory Statement.

PKEFATOKY STATEMENT 1

Inasmuch as the kindly despotism of my medical
advisers has absolutely forbidden me to deliver one of
the Lectures of this Course, I ask permission of the
audience — I have already received that of the Lec-
turer — to say a few words before calling on Principal
Rainy to begin his Lecture.

Though this Course is occasioned by the recent Gifford
Lectures of Professor Pfleiderer, there is neither inten-
tion nor need of beginning a personal conflict between
present Lecturers and him. The mere fact that as yet
many only know Dr. Pfleiderer's views from newspaper
summaries, prevents a thorough discussion of them.
That may come by and by in detail. Enough is known
to make theologians aware of the general purpose and
tendency of those views, as every biblical student has
long been familiar with them in his published books. He
is well known to be a follower of Ferdinand Christian
Baur, making a gallant attempt to revive in Germany
his great master's theories against the now predominant
theology of RitschL There will, I am quite sure, be
no attempt on the part of any Lecturer to belittle or

1 Being the remarks made by me as Chairman on the occasion of
Dr. Rainy 's Lecture. — A. H. C.

vii

viii Prefatory Statement

disparage the conscientious convictions of Dr. Pfleid-
erer, or the remarkable literary ability with which he
presents those convictions. In the sparkle of his
style he resembles and rivals Eenan, while in apprecia-
tion of the spiritual longings of men he leaves the
brilliant, but superficial, Frenchman far behind. Nay,
I will go further, and say for myself that he has
demanded of the Christian Church in our day some
functions and duties which we, who believe in the
Bedeemer's Incarnation and Eesurrection, may well
set ourselves with new purpose to fulfil and dis-
charge.

But there seems to many of us to be a call to say,
at the earliest possible moment,, with all possible
personal respect for the Lecturer, that we object to
many things clearly stated in those GifFord Lectures.
Perhaps I may be allowed to speak for myself, and say
that I object to the Lecturer's presupposition that the
Incarnation is to be disbelieved because it is not accord-
ing to his conception of history, founded on our
experience. Further, I object to his assumption that
all the more marvellous incidents in the Gospel history
of Jesus Christ are of later invention than the others.
I object to his extraordinary assertion that St. Paul
believed in a merely spiritual Eesurrection of Jesus
.Christ. I object to his almost as extraordinary asser-
tion in regard to Baur's view of the Fourth Gospel,
that " all further investigations have always only contri-
\ buted anew to confirm it in the main " (Lecture II.).
1 1 believe it is not difficult to show that Baur's account

Prefatory Statement ix

of the origin and date of the Fourth Gospel has been\
proved to be historically inaccurate and critically and
philosophically impossible ; that the Gospel is explicitly
quoted and undeniably founded upon forty or fifty
years before Baur allowed that it was written ;
and that not one of Baur's followers, not even Dr.
Pfleiderer himself, ventures to maintain Baur's date.
Objection may well be taken to the Lecturer's attempt
to borrow all the ethics of the Christian revelation,
and to appropriate all its highest hopes, and to make
them parts of a speculative system which I know not
whether to call Deism or Pantheism, which seems to
deny any revelation except what may be found in
gathering the lessons of history and science, and yet
speaks of God as " the loving Father whose nature it
is to communicate Himself to His children " (Lecture
XIIL). We cannot recognise the faith in which our
fathers fell asleep in this system which, as I understand
it, leaves no place for expectant prayer, and no hope of
a resurrection, and makes no admission that life and
immortality are brought to light through the gospel.

Therefore I, for one, am glad that some men have
come forward to protest, in name of the Christian
Church in Scotland, against this attack upon their
faith. I know that some, whose opinions I value,
shake their heads and say that there is danger of these
Lectures begun to-night adding to the Gifford Lecturer's
prestige, and, as they say, fanning the flame ; but there
is a danger, on the other hand, of men's faith being
weakened if no one amongst us dares to take up the

x Prefatory Statement

gage of battle which has been publicly thrown down.
And as to prestige, it is not easy to add to what the
Gifford Lecturer has received as the invited guest of
the University. It is needful that some trained theo-
logians should assure the Christian public that they
have long been familiar with the system which the
eloquent Berlin professor represents, and that they
believe it has lost its power in its native country, as it
will lose its power in Scotland when it is understood.
I should think that every member of the Senatus
which appointed him was surprised when he interpreted
his commission as giving him a right to attack the
Bible, for that appointment has lent importance — I
trust only a temporary importance — to those views in
the eyes of unlearned and generous youth. I hope
steps may be taken by the Senatus to prevent any
future Lecturer on Natural Theology — which is the
apparent subject that Lord Gifford's rather puzzled
bequest points to — from making an attack on the
records of the Christian faith ; and I hope and expect
that these Lectures here will meanwhile somewhat
counteract the attack which has been made. I venture,
in your name, to express by anticipation my gratitude
to the Lecturers for accepting the invitation to interrupt
their ordinary work so far as to come here and take
part in this special Course.

A. H. Chabteris, D.D.

\ \'.x.*-vA-«-j

THE ISSUES AT STAKE

By PRINCIPAL RAINY, D.D.

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THE ISSUES AT STAKE

I am not here to prefer a complaint against Dr,
Pfleiderer. Those who heard his Lectures have pro-
bably received the same impression which readers
have gathered from his published works, viz., that he
is a sincere and serious thinker, and is entitled to be
met respectfully by those who differ from him most
widely. But I wish to point out the singular
position in which we find ourselves, if the constitution
of the Gifford Lecture is correctly interpreted by some
of the recent Lecturers. It was understood that the
foundation deed authorised the discussion of Theism
on grounds of Natural Reason, excluding arguments
from, or urged in favour of, Supernatural Revelation.
But, according to the view now proceeded on, a
Gifford Lecturer may apply himself to argue down
the supernatural aspects or elements of Christianity,
on the ground that he holds Christianity to be a
non-miraculous product of human reason; while no
Lecturer shall have leave to argue for the things
believed among us, because that would be to assert
i

2 The Supernatural in Christianity

supernatural revelation, which is excluded by the
deed. The interpretation of the deed is no business
of mine, and recent Lecturers may possibly be right
in their construction of it. But if so, I venture to
express my doubt whether Lord Gifford intended to
produce this state of things ; and still more, my doubt
whether the Universities, in accepting the administra-
tion of the Lecture, anticipated that the deed would
prove susceptible of this interpretation. At all events,
it is time to point out that, as far as we know at
present, we have a conspicuous and highly -paid
system of Lectures at all our Universities, under
which it is open to attack the faith of the Christian
Church deliberately, energetically, and in detail, while
so far as this Lecture is concerned the defence of that
faith is gagged. And by the faith of the Christian
Church in this connection I mean the main articles of
the Apostles' Creed.

Now this at all events justifies, if justification is
heeded, a statement on the other side. And at the
same time, as far as I am concerned, it limits the
field which I feel called upon to traverse. In many
Lectures Dr. Pfleiderer surveyed the course of the
history of religion, and discussed the general principles
which it is reasonable to apply to each of its successive
stages. He said much that was learned, suggestive,
and impressive— much that most of us will agree with,
and not a little also from which many of us dissent.
But that would not have led us to start Lectures to
controvert him. It is when he comes into collision

Dr. Pfleiderer s Position 3

with the Christianity of the Gospels and the Epistles
that I, at least, find myself concerned to make a
counter - statement. As I have said, he may be
within his right in making the attack : I am certainly
within mine in asking leave to meet it.

This brings us to the matter in hand. The business
of an Introductory Lecture is to survey the field.
And the first thing I take note of is the general
attitude towards Christianity taken by Dr. Pfleiderer.
There is no need, and one can have no wish, to mis*
represent it.

Dr. Pfleiderer believes the world and man to be so
constituted that germs of religious truth have always
existed. Religious impressions grow into the minds
of men, and they are gradually purified in the furnace
of history. Then, from advanced stages like ours, a
reasonable criticism can distinguish the elements that
have been thrown together. It can separate what has
been permanent and valid from what has been tern*
porary and fanciful. It can recognise in the former
something that abides the trial of reason, and should
be looked on, therefore, as sanctioned by the Supreme
Reason. He therefore strongly asserts what is called
Natural Religion,— only, with him, it is not a fixed
quantity, as it used sometimes to be represented ; rather,
it grows into being by a gradual discernment of prin*
ciples, and clears itself by gradual disentanglement
from impurities. In this process, which stretches through
the whole history of the world, the influence of great
religious personalities — men of exceptional force and

4 The Supernatural in Christianity

depth and warmth — counts, of course, for a great deal.
Generally, Dr. Pfleiderer's thinking on all this repro-
duces, with modifications, the ideas of Lessing's famous
tract upon the Education of the Human Race.

Now, Dr. Pfleiderer has accepted the view that
Christian religion must resign the claim to stand upon
special revelation, or to be attended with miraculous
sanctions. It remains, therefore, that it must be
explained from the same principles, the same sources,
as other religions. But yet; on this ground, he wants
to make the most of Christianity. Accordingly, if he
bases himself on philosophy, it is still a spiritualistic
philosophy, not a mechanical materialism. And, from
the point of view which it supplies, Dr. Pfleiderer
claims to be the friend and advocate of Christianity,
only — an enlightened friend. He wants to show us
the Christianity we can still have on these terms ; he
wants to show us it may still be valuable ; and he
means this quite sincerely.

His point of view is given. But, from his point of
view, he pleads for his right to stand in the Christian
succession, to enjoy the Christian inheritance, and to
breathe the Christian air. He emphasises the great-
ness of Christianity, at all events, as a fact or order of
facts in the religious history of man. For some
Christian thoughts and principles — especially the trust
in the divine Fatherhood and the duty and privilege
of merging our private will in the moral ends of the
universe, which express God's supreme purpose — he
asserts permanent worth : they are ever to be guarded

Advocates a Sifted Christianity 5

as part of the moral and religious heritage of man.
And the outlines of the wonderful life of Christ, in
which these principles were first suitably singled out
and emphasised, are dear to him because invaluable to
the race. In short, when Christianity is sifted by criti-
cism, on the footing that it is the most perfect form
which the religion of human reason has yet assumed,
he believes it to retain all its elements of strength and
goodness ; and for Christianity so sifted he is an ardent
and eloquent advocate.

And, indeed, more than this may be said. Nothing
strikes one more than the illustrations every day met
with of the singular strength of the Gospels, and of
the image of Christ there set before us. Men start
with theories that lead to negative conclusions. But
if they are at the same time at all desirous to do
justice to Christianity and to Christ, the object that/
rises before them begins to overpower them.

Schleiermacher refused to admit the supernatural ;
and yet the Christ of his system is really supernatural
to all intents and purposes, and brings an element of
the supernatural with Him wherever he comes. And
Pfleiderer (who will not think I do him injustice
when I say that nobody would put him in the same
rank with Schleiermacher), after laying down his
thesis that Christ is not, and could not be, more than
a remarkable religious genius, marking a most memor-
able stage in the history of human thought and
action, — from which one must conclude that not the
man but the principles which He illustrated and

6 the Supernatural in Christianity

signalised make the essential and permanent worth of
Christianity, — when he goes on to his theology, is found
calmly laying down careful statements of the offices of
Christ — Prophet, Priest, and King — and of His redemp-
tion, satisfaction, substitution, and so on. 1 Of course,
all these are carefully explained and qualified so as to
retain only a certain vague impressiveness. But why
on his principles, are they there at all ? Because
Christ is so strong. He must be allowed to fill the
religion which He founded.

But Christianity claims to be a supernatural religion,
and it has always claimed it, — not in some sense in
which every religion is supernatural, but in a sense
peculiar to itself. It has always claimed it. There
is not an hour of its history for which the contrary
could be established. Farther, it works and it always
has worked as a supernatural religion ; in that faith
it has fought its battles, endured its trials, and brought
forth its fruits. Here men have felt, God has spoken,
and has come and has made Himself, finally, ours.
With this denied, some men and some circles of men
— especially for the first generation or two — may
carry on the tradition of much Christian goodness or
Christian fragrance ; but in general, and on the large
scale, such religion fades along the lines of religious
dilettantism into a final religious nullity. On Dr.
Pfleiderer's principles, great parts of Christianity drop
away ; and those that are left are transformed.

Great parts drop away. The Incarnation is dis-

1 GrundHw, sec. 117 f»

What Falls away J

carded. What witnesses to us the personality of God
as no argument and no metaphysic ever can; what
expresses conclusively the reach of God's thinking of
us and caring for us ; what stands as the unanswer-
able assurance that God so loves the world, that
behind all the mystery of being is a heart seeking us
and rejoicing to do us good,— ^is to be dropped. What
appeals to us as the condescension and grace of the
Son of God, vanishes. Redemption, too, passes away.
Jesus Christ is a redeemer in the same sense as
every one is a redeemer who exhibits in his own life
principles which, if adopted, might tend to retrieve
other lives. Christ, fits a divine Friend, the object of
a present trust, who has Himself overcome death, and
lives to make us victorious, is gone. For He is dead;
and He never rose again ; the Syrian stars look down
upon His grave. All faiths that depend upon an
authoritative declaration of God's mind through Christ,
all divine promises made sure in Him, all power in
Christ to comfort, to succour, and to save, have to
be resigned. To show how much is lost would be to
recite half the pages of the New Testament.

When all this is given up, then we turn to go our
way, making what we can of inferences about God
from the system of His world, which, to various
persons, have seemed acceptable. They have their
value. In particular, a wise and good man called
Jesus, who lived long ago, is said to ha've had wonder-
ful thoughts on this subject. Of these we shall do
well to take advantage. His thoughts cannot be

8 The Supernatural in Christianity

absolutely trusted, indeed ; for, according to all
accounts, He had some ideas about the importance or
significance of His own personality, which appear to
have been exaggerated and groundless.

But aho the elemeuts of Christianity which
in a certain sense are left, are transformed. For
.fiQme are left^ There is, in general, the example of
Christ ; there are some great thoughts, — the Christian
conception of the Fatherhood of God, of the true ideal

: of human duty. Yes ; but not as faiths set forth for
our comfort and guidance, emphasised for us to trust by
one divinely charged with our welfare. They remain,
but disassociated from the light and the heat derived
from God's gift of His Son, and from the grace of the

^ Son's incarnation and His death.

Now this brings us to the point. Christianity has
always claimed to be the divine supernatural religion,
in virtue of the unique Person and mission of its
Founder. But those whom Dr. Pfleiderer represents
rely on a philosophy of the world and of man. That
philosophy is to determine the right view of Chris-
tianity, the wise and worthy way of looking at it.
Accordingly, the Lecturer surveyed the progress of the
schools of thought. In particular, he adverted to the
way of thinking that was reckoned authentic in last
century, which goes now among Germans by the name
of the Vulgar Rationalism. That rationalism accepted
and inculcated certain ideas, superficial enough, about
God, virtue, and immortality. These they regarded
as having been from the beginning, and these they

Progress of Philosophic Theories g

considered must be to the end, the rational basis of
human religion. Those ideas, therefore, afforded a
standard by which all religions of all ages should be
tried; and everything in Christianity that went beyond
this was dismissed, or was explained away. This
rationalism, in short, gloried in a poor scheme of
thought, and despised whatever did not correspond
with it. By and by dissatisfaction with this declared
itself, beginning with Kant, who was a rationalist in
religion, but also a severe and resolute thinker. New
systems of thought supervened, which far more fully
recognised and strove to theorise the wonder and the
glory of the world, and the destiny of man as a being
capable of duty and of religious aspiration. Those
systems did much more justice to Christianity than
the older rationalism bad done. It began to be felt
and owned that Christianity embodied profound
thoughts about the relations of God and man, and
about the right ideal of human life. Those were
thoughts which Christianity bad emphasised in a way
peculiar to itself ; yet they were thoughts which reason,
on due consideration, must approve, and which the
world could not dispense with. Any worthy system
of moral and religious truth must take them up into
itself as permanent good, and must credit Christianity
as the religion which had secured a due place for them
in the minds of men.

But these systems, at least as Dr. Pfleiderer and his
friends expound them, found no place for the super-
natural, nor for any view of Christ that made Him

i o The Supernatural in Christianity

really unique and exceptional Christianity was to count
for far more with the representatives of philosophy than
it did in last century. But it should do so on condition
that it took its place as only a happy birth, in a
favouring hour, of the labouring reason of man, — upon
the same basis and amenable to the same criteria as
the fruits of human reason generally.

Philosophy, then, had set itself so far to do justice to
Christianity, but found no means to admit for it the
character which itself claimed. That is a fact which
may be very unfortunate for Christianity ; or possibly it
may turn out a little unfortunate for philosophy itself.
But when we are called upon to accept this as the
criterion by which we shall be assured what in Chris-
tianity we are still to own, and what we may dismiss
as not central or essential, one can hardly help
remembering that there are philosophies and philo-
sophies; and also that the time in which this
philosophy shall be supposed to have established its
infallibility is somewhat short, — being really, at most,
the time from Kant to Hegel. For Dr. Pfleiderers
philosophy is revised Hegelianism. And in this
department Hegelianism turns on one great thought,
viz., that all history — and for one thing in particular the
history of human religions (wilful and fortuitous as it
may seem) — is after all a reasoned process, by which the
Eternal Spirit is ripening— through all apparent con-
fusions — the gradual disclosure of His own thought, —
the thought which is the inner and immanent reason
of the world. That is Hegelianism, for our present

Revised Hegelianism i i

purpose. And, having used the phrase "revised
Hegelianism," I may say that the revision stands
mainly in this. Hegel's God, or Eternal Spirit, was
conceived to reach His own thought, or certainly was
conceived to unfold it, only through the formal dialectic
process of the intellect ; that abstract order of steps is
conceived to guide and control the history which is the
history of the world, and is also all we have for the
history of God. But the revised conception admits
other principles to deepen and enrich the thought of God
and His working as disclosed in history. And whereas
Hegel's thinking was accused of being merely pan-
theistic, Pfleiderer follows a line of thought that seems
to imply a divine Personality, working consciously for
ends at which His providence aims. Whether this is
or is not consistent with some of his own positions, it
is welcome, at all events, as worthy in itself, and
notably in harmony with Christianity. For the rest,
Pfleiderer, who was a student of Baur's, stands very
much in his view of religion and of Christianity
where Baur stood when he died, more than thirty
years ago.

There is a great deal in this Hegelianism that is
very remarkable and very suggestive.* No doubt it
marked a signal step in the history of thought. ' As it
reckoned with the history of the race, — including its
Religions, — Hegelianism was on a track which was
surely fruitful, in recognising God at the heart of the
universe, or pervading its processes, as a principle
of progress* So Hegelianism set its face towards the

1 2 The Supernatural in Christianity

idea of development, which since then has become
so dominant in the thought of the age. In connection
with that principle of development, we all have, or
ought to have, learned and gained much. For the
present it is accepted, by all but all, as the key-prin-
ciple which is to explain everything. And indeed
there seems to be hardly any other way to test a
valuable new principle than to try it in every lock
without exception^ By and by its limits will be
found ; and after a while it will be antiquated, and
newer methods will intoxicate the world. Meanwhile
it represents a real gain to human thinking. &irf*j£w

Philosophy says, then : Let us assume an order of
the world (with God at the heart of it), which order is
to proceed by steps of process that are in some high
sense necessary — dictated by the nature of the case or
by the nature of God — necessary, even if human wills
play their part in them. Let us assume this, and see
how the world can then explain itself. Let us refuse
to have the ideal process perplexed by the hypothesis
of any divine interpositions or interferences, — aside
from the law of the process. These interferences have
been often suggested by superstition, and they are
easily believed by superstition; let us waive them
aside ; and, I repeat, let us see how the order of the
world will explain itself.

Then, of course, as other religions and their
founders appear under the general rubric of the
religious capacities of man, so Jesus Christ can
be no more than one. of those personalities. He may

No really Supernatural Element 1 3

be the most remarkable. Some one must be. But
He is essentially one of those who have attained,
within the human laws of intellectual and moral life,
to wonderful insight, and to a style of life which
their fellows felt to be impressively true and good.
Hence in Him, as in the case of some of them, — but
in His case more perhaps than in any other, — some
religious truths and aspirations, that always were
and will be true and valid, — germs of which were
always in the nature of man and in the nature of the
case, — shone out vividly to Him and shone out vividly
through Him. The world is conscious of them
now in a way which it will never cease to trace up
to Him.

This man left remarkable effects, as good men do ;
«nd wonderful things were asserted of Him. But our
theory (so this philosophy speaks) will account for as
much of this as one is bound to recognise. It will
account for the grand thoughts, — some, at any rate —
about God and life. And then, as to every apparent
evidence of more, there must be some mistake about it.
More is inadmissible. To admit more is to burst up
from the bottom, as Pfleiderer somewhere says, the
foundations of our thinking ; for we are thinking out
a divine method which works out an eternal process,
just because the process is worthy to be worked out,
and therefore is owned to be unworthy if it requires
to be disturbed. Any apparent evidence, therefore,
pointing in this direction, must be explained away.
In thus separating elements which in Christianity

1 4 The Supernatural in Christianity

have been combined,— maintaining some and dropping
others, — we may be assured that we are only disr
tinguishing the kernel from the husk.

I am far from denying that in liistorical Christianity
it is well to distinguish the vital from the accidental,
the more essential from the less. ; Bub I cannot but
ask whether this philosophy, which cannot make room
for the supernatural in Christianity, supplies, after all,
a reliable criterion, We all know it is a temptation
which lies in the nature of philosophies, to trust to
single principles, and to refuse to contemplate ex-
ceptions. Here is this manifold and mysterious world
of ours, with Christianity seated in the heart of its
noblest history. Eevised Hegelianism says : " I will
open the door and admit what can pass as an elevated
form of natural religion, but what claims to be gospel
revelation or to involve special interposition— no.
Shut the door." Well, but what a long procession
of philosophies have passed down the stream of
time! They have had meritorious lives, but they
are ghosts now. They had their share of truth, but
they failed to solve the mystery of the world. Has
revised Hegelianism solved its own problems ? Is it
not also upon the march like the rest ? \ Will no day
come when those departed forms of thought — even the
vulgar rationalism itself — shall hail its advent among
them, saying, " Art thou also become one of us — art
thou become weak as we ? " Eevised Hegelianism has
no right to dictate. The business of a philosophy is to
recognise what can establish a right to be recognised.

Alleged Incongruity 15

If its principles disable it in any case from doing so,
they must be widened.

In the scheme of the Lecturer it is plain that
much turns on the alleged incongruity of super-
natural Christianity. A system of the world which
is to proceed mainly by development and growth,
ought not to be interfered with by an Incarnation,
and by a revealing process leading up to an Incarna-
tion. That, Dr. Pfleiderer says, is to undo the scheme
of thought from the bottom. We are here, then, in
presence of the question, whether a worthy con-
ception of the world can embrace the biblical
conception of the Incarnation, preluded and pre-
pared by the Jewish history which leads up to it.
It is a question on which perhaps our best thoughts,
on either side, are not conclusive. But I see no
reason why they should not be given. It depends
on the ends which God may reasonably be conceived
to provide for. And as Dr. Pfleiderer does not
question the personal character of God as one who
contemplates ends, and by due means accomplishes
them, we are not embarrassed by any necessity of
debate upon that point.

We assume, then, that man's nature, having a
religious capacity, was destined to development, under
the discipline of life and experience. That was, we
know, to be in practice perplexed and marred by the
spiritual state of men ; but if not always progressive,
it was at least to admit of progress. The persuasions
of men about God were to be gathered, if we look to

j 6 The Supernatural in Christianity

the prevailing aspects of human religions, not from
perpetual interferences and oracles, but from the un-
folding of the nature of man in the midst of the
process of the world, — both the evolution of man, and
the process of the world proceeding on principles
which imply a stable order. Under these conditions,
as a matter of fact, the history of the mass of the race
went on, whatever ground we take about primitive
revelations. Under these conditions, so far, human
religion has had its history. Human religion proved,
indeed, extremely prone to expect and believe all kinds
of supernatural agencies. But, in the more remarkable
examples of it, the tendency, as time went on, was to
grow into a more adequate sense of the laws of nature
and of the laws of mind. Men felt more and more
the pressure of the stable order. They learned so far
that God was not such an one as themselves, and that
the awful majesty of His will was not liable to be
warped, on all occasions, to the wantonness of theirs.
In the same proportion also they learned to feel as
though Godr — at least the highest God — was more
remote* or more hidden, than in earlier days had been
supposed, — far above, out of sight. And one knows,
the fluctuations of opinion and belief which have
ensued.

All that being supposed, I ask, first, Is it beyond
belief that it might be in the design of God to make a
worthy manifestation of Himself, which should be per-
sonal, — that is to say, should vividly bring out God in
the unity and concentration which belongs to per-

Revelation of Divine Personality 1 7

sonality — personality with intellectual and moral
features, with personal mind and will. That might
not be well, for it might lead to inevitable miscon-
struction, unless accompanied and prepared by the
great impression of the order of the world. And yet
this last also might surely be defective if it stood
alone. For in it God is manifested, as it were, on
impersonal lines ; and even if reason and conscience
augur a personality behind the veil, it is vaguely,
and with an unsatisfied sense of distance and dimness
and doubt. Certainly, also, this is what the human
heart has always craved for, when mythic fancies gave
way before the advance of thought or under the strain
of suffering, and when man felt himself face to face
with the inexorable movement of the mighty world.
" that I could find Thee." If God is in some high and
intense sense personal, — in possession of His own
thought and character and will, — is there no need that
somehow at some stage His revelation should take
personal character? And if so, let us not deceive
ourselves. Personality expresses itself not by eternaf
processes, but by individual words and deeds. If there
be personality in God at all, it means that He who is
behind me and beneath me and above me, who besets
me everywhere, who is in all nature, — the source of
forces, the measure of laws, the orderer of events, —
can also, can, as person with person, stand face to face
with me on the platform of His own world, to speak v
and to be answered. But can He do it worthily f
Can He do it, so as to complete, without fatally perplex-

1 8 The Supernatural in Christianity

iiig, the inanifestation of Himself ? I point for answer
to Jesus Christ Through Jewish religion, which
developed in singular combination the consciousness of
God's majesty with that of His watchfulness over
men, we reach Jesus Christ. Whatever view you :
take of the theology of His Person, no doubt His own
religion gave Him out as the singular manifestation
and expression of God. And, no doubt of it, it is this
that has decisively carried home to human minds the
impression of the Divine personality, associated with
worthy impressions of His mind and will This, in
fact, has done it. Has it done wrong to the manifesta-
tion of God, given through the great universe in which
He is immanent, working evermore ? Do we not
rather feel that this form of lowly and gracious man-
hood enables us to harmonise both sides of the mani-
festation, each enriching each. True, many a Christian
has halted in one-sided thoughts of God, — all our
thoughts of God come short. Nevertheless, the mani-
festation itself is worthy in its completeness. It
would be incomplete without the presence which con-
fronts each of us in the pages of the gospel. For in
some world — here or hereafter — I, the personal man,
rightfully desire to find the personal God. In some
world ; but why not in this world ?

I say again, secondly, is it beyond belief that it may
be in the design of God to bestow upon men in con-
nection with religion — and most fitly in connection
With the special manifestation just described — that
form of evidence and assurance which arises when

Miracles as Evidential 1 9

tokens of God's special working in the outward history
are associated with the inward evidence appealing to
reason and conscience? This is the question of
Christian miracles. I suppose I need not explain that
I am not concerned with any question about vagrant
marvels scattered fortuitously up and down the world.
I deal with those which associate themselves with the
revelation in Christ. Here I deal with matter on
which modern prejudice is strong, I will grant, not
unnaturally strong. I may be allowed, therefore, a
few minutes to explain myself upon it. I am not
going to thresh out the dry straw about laws of nature
and that sort of thing, which, happily for the present, I
feel that I can let alone.

In asserting the supernatural in Christianity in
any form, and especially in this form, I do it with
a very lively sense indeed of the difficulty, the tempta-
tion or excuse for doubt and suspense, which arises
to many minds from the consideration of the masses
of superstition related to the asserted supernatural,
which have filled the history of the world. Men
have been notoriously prone to assert rashly and to
believe greedily in this department; in fact, there
seems to be almost nothing some people will not
believe. There has been such a complete proof of
the disastrous and misleading influence exerted by
all this, that a certain sceptical caution in relation
to it is. certainly, beyond all question, an element in
sane thinking. There are whole categories of the
marvellous, which we every day of our lives dismiss

20 The Supernatural in Christianity

without a thought ; we are not going to waste time in
examining them, because we perceive at a glance what
tribe they are of. They bear on their face the stamp
of outlaws of reason. I still think that even this
mass of now incredible assertion — some of it non-
Christian and much of it Christian — raises the ques-
tion, whether behind all the folly and poor thoughts
of God and His ways thus manifested, there is not
here the working of a craving which might have
legitimate expression, and might find a divine re-
sponse ? But, at all events, as I have no hesitation at
all in maintaining that the supernatural view of
Christ, instead of being something to be shut out as
incredible, is a congruous and necessary element of
the spiritual life of men, so also I maintain the fit-
ness of the miraculous in the manifestation of God
through Christ. And my present point is that, a
priori, it should not be judged unsuitable to God.

I admit with Pfleiderer, and I may add with Dr„
Martineau, that the most appropriate, the most spiritual
evidence — that, therefore, which may be regarded as
most fundamental, constant, and vital — is the intrinsic
reasonableness and divineness of the truth believed
and embraced. Therefore spiritual Christianity has
always laid great stress on the witness of the Spirit,
as that in which a man may supremely and finally
rest. There is such a thing as a perception, that in
truths and facts God and I meet. And in this line
Dr. Martineau has eloquently taught us, that the
divine voice in the conscience of each man is the true

Practical Difficulties for Faith 1 1

revelation, and for each man the only one, — because,
whatever gifted persons may have seen or experienced
more than I, their report is no evidence to me, till
countersigned by the oracle within myself. Well,
whether that be true or not, the peculiar place and
worth of this inner evidence is granted. And I have
great sympathy with those who, under certain diffi-
culties, say, " Well, let me, at all events, take the un-
deniable facts about Christ and His teaching ; let me
take them at their worth as facts, and make what I
can of them, and, at all events, do no less than justice
to them as they stand." I believe that often along
that line a mode of feeling and of thought establishes
itself, in which the peculiar and supernatural signifi-
cance of Christ is really felt ; and His appearance in the
world assumes its own decisive place. I only claim that
such a mood should not be hindered from expanding
farther. But then I am dealing with a theory which
does not bar expansion, which finds it necessary to
argue down both the essential elements and the proper
tokens of Christ's peculiarity. I say, then, that the
inner evidence I have spoken of is by no means
always so clear and conclusive in practice. It is not
true that every man is a prophet, who in these matters
can confidently say, " Thus saith the Lord."

The man, although he knows that such evidence is
desirable, and perhaps believes it to be attainable, yet
finds it hard to be sure of the accents of the divine
will. He may be dubious as to the range of truth he
ought to receive ; he may find it difficult to separate

2 2 The Supernatural in Christianity

that to which the authentic evidence applies from that
which is mixed up with it in his own way of think*
ing. He may find his own confusions intensified by
the confusions in other minds. For men's minds are
confused, — obtuse and dull, — bewildered by the various
voices that make themselves heard within us. This
cannot be questioned. The existence and personal

' v character of God, providence, prayer, immortality,.

J are all of them debatable and debated. Many, also,.

w who have no wish to debate these articles, are yet un-
fixed and changeable in their thoughts about them.
The question returns : How do I know that I am not

"'misled by feelings and by wishes, that I am not mis-

/ taking the interpretation of nature and conscience ?
Moreover, the soul is dull, and cannot well trust its
own estimate of the worth of what it does believe,
That may be true, it may be good ; but is it able to
bear the weight if I throw my life upon it, and make
it my guiding principle, the light of all my seeing ?
It is here that the concurrence of the outward and
the inward has a peculiar effect of assurance. It is
a token that God is inviting to trust, is calling for
faith. The divine within me and the non-divine are

"inextricably mixed, perhaps; but the finger of God
without is wholly independent of me. God will not
give me such tokens on all occasions, nor on many.
But He may have given them to the world in connec-
tion with the mission of His Son. Further, in any
such personal manifestation of God as I spoke of, the
point in hand is not only the validity of unchanging

Miracles congruous to Christ ' 23

. truths, but the significance of this present interposi-
tion, — the worth of this person, Jesus Christ. Now,
His worth lies indeed in His fulness of grace and
truth, — -it lies first in what He is. But there may be
much human uncertainty and insensibility, which
receives its needed succour in the mighty works which
showed that God was with Him.

In this view it is very often overlooked that a
.purpose of great value is secured by the mighty works
of the Gospels, quite antecedently to all discussion of
the evidence in detail ; and, indeed, the discussion of
that evidence in detail, however fitting, has a great
deal less to do with Christian faith than readers of
books on the subject might be led to suppose. At
least I judge so by my own case. As I have said
that the central evidence is that which opens in
the truth itself, so I hold that the life, works, and
teaching of Christ— the total Personality taken, if you
will, apart from miracles — establish the unique and
exceptional character of the Man. I find the super-
natural there. As they grow upon the mind, they
establish for Christ a place not with other men, but
far different. As Charles Lamb said : " If Shakespeare
came into the room just now, we would all rise up ;
but if He came in, we would all kneel down." Never
man spake like this Man. Truly this is the Son of
God. Yes ; but my own conclusions in such matters
are so hard to trust. Am I perhaps deceiving myself
in some fond idolatry — was this, after all, not a man
as other men, but one whose coming made the great

24 The Supernatural in Christianity

epoch of the world, one whom God calls me to trust
and follow ? Could He be deceived Himself about His
own powers and mission and claims ? If the decisive
'manifestation of God was here, were there no
N tokens of it ? Now I find that, as He stood in
the line of a great preparation going before, so
from the outset He claimed that works which man
cannot do betokened His exceptional relation to God.
The sick were healed, the dead were raised, the sea
was stilled. This is what I need. It is a congruous
part of that whole, of which our Lord's personal worth
is the greater part, but of which this part too is the
fitting complement. It comes home to me as a con-
sistent and credible whole.

I have one more point in this line, which needs the
least illustration just because it is the most obvious
and important. If great sin and need were to mark
the history of the human race, shall it be judged
unsuitable on the part of God to make manifestation
and expression of Himself, in such a sort that here we
should find divine remedy proportioned to our need,—
personal friendship for the lost, redemption, love that
saves? On the other view, it is true, indeed, that
great personalities are rising and falling in the history
of our race, — religious personalities among the rest, —
who diversify our experience for better or worse. But
on that view there is no interruption of the silence of
God. He is present, — on reflection, He may be presumed
to be present, — but there is no movement, save the even
thrill of His great existence for ever on the spiritual

Development and Immanence 2 5

natures in contact with it : no incarnation, no atone-
ment, no great promises, no covenant ordered in all
things and sure. Not on these terms did Christianity
conceive its message. Not under these conditions did
the great sayings fill with their immortal meaning:
" Hereby perceive we the love of God." " We have
believed the love that God hath to us. God is love."

On lines of thought like these a great deal could be
saicL They have been adduced, not at present as
evidence, but as pleas for keeping the mind open to
evidence in favour of biblical Christianity. If the
mind be kept open, the evidence will pour in by many
avenues. The central conviction is one, but it will
thrill into our being along many a line of evidence
and many a chain of impressions.

The doctrine of development, then, as we see, is
the engine by which Christianity is to be reduced to
the same principle with earlier forms of religion. But
there is no need for us to take an attitude of suspicion
towards the doctrine of development, though we
contest a particular application of it. Nothing is more^
remarkable in Christianity than the way in which it /
articulates itself into the process of the developing I
world, takes up that process into itself, and submits I
itself to the principle of growth and progress. We
have learned much of this ; we are willing to learn
more ; but not so as to forget that God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself.

Now, as development is the engine by which Chris-
tianity in principle is levelled down,so the doctrine of the

:l

26 The Supernatural in Christianity

Divine Immanence is that by means of which it is after-
wards to be levelled up again. For while Dr. Pfleiderer
wants to disenchant Christianity of the miraculous and
of the true supernatural, he wants at the same time to
glorify the Christianity he retains. Christianity is still
to figure as something eminent, extraordinary, beneficent.
It is to be only a birth of human reason, but then reason
has resources which enable it to rise as high as there is
any need for. Indeed, as the next Lecturer will show,
Dr. Pfleiderer claims for his Christianity gifts and
attainments that are not consistent with his philosophy.
Now the doctrine of Divine Immanence is the means
by which he conveys the impression that this feat is
possible. Christianity must be conceived to take origin
and to abide within the order of the world, but
then immanence belongs to the order of the world.
So here, it is implied, we have divine influence, which
may impel men to any height of mental or moral
attainment that can reasonably be claimed. On this
principle all that the world has seen of great and good
can be accounted for, and yet can be kept within the
limits of philosophical theory. Immanence can replace,
for instance, the Incarnation, and leave us with no loss
of anything substantial.

But we have already seen how much is lost. And
I am persuaded that the impression that any important
help is to be found in this quarter depends upon con-
fused thinking.

The doctrine of the Divine Immanence means that
we ought not to think of God as setting up a universe,

What to be ascribed to God as Immanent 27

endowing it with certain forces under certain laws,
and then standing by, as it were, to see it work as of
itself. Some such view it is usual to ascribe to the
rationalists of last century, and also to some schools of
Christian theology. At all events, immanence is the
opposite of all that. The doctrine contemplates God
as most inwardly present to His creatures, working
all in all. This doctrine has been strongly pressed by
philosophers during, this century, including those in
whose genealogy Dr. Pfleiderer stands, and they have
done so sometimes in the form of Pantheism, identify*
ing the life of G.od with the life of the universe. But
this is not to be imputed to Dr. Pfleiderer, who
welcomes the thought of God as personal — as having
moral and intellectual features, and conscious designs
towards which the. universe tends — eternally, as Dr»
Pfleiderer thinks, without beginning or end. Whether
or no this doctrine of Divine Immanence can be finally
settled on philosophical grounds, I willingly accept it
on Scripture grounds, in so far as it teaches that " in
Him we live and move and have our being." All that
I feel concerned about is that this should not be held
to be all that is to be said about God, or about His
relation to His universe.

But supposing God confessed to be immanent, the
question still remains : What range of meaning belongs
to the phrase, and what range of action is allowed to
God under it ? Here, then, let it be remembered
what this notion is set against, according to the
philosophy of which it is a part. On the one hand, it

28 The Supernatural in Christianity

is set against the notion of a world that goes on by
itself, with God, as it were, on the outside, looking at
it. But, on the other hand, it is set against the notion
of everything miraculous. That is, it is set against
ie notion of any action of God in the world that is
not at the same time the action of the creatures, and
of "the creatures according to their own nature, under
their'own laws, and subject to all the conditions in
'{ which tfrfcy are placed at the time. God must confine
Himself stri<5tly to that ; for if He goes beyond it,
however secretly or gently, He is out into the region
of the miraculous, which is prohibited. In short, His
presence is only, after all, the philosophical explana-
tion of the forces of nature, including of course the
forces and capacities of human souls. Those are the
facts of which we have cognisance. Certain views of
the structure of the world lead thinkers to postulate
God as the common ground of the existence of these
facts with their forces and laws. Their life is con-
ceived to refer itself back to His life. But, then,
. He is not supposed in any case to add anything im-
'* mediately, exceptionally, or of Himself; for that
would be supernatural interposition, and the thought
'• of it would burst up the true system from the bottom.
The forces and capacities of all creatures are con-
ceived to be invested with a new dignity and in-
terest, when they are viewed in their relation to
the divine sustaining and vitalising power. But
then they are not therefore to be supposed to re-
ceive a new inspiration, or to be carried beyond

Immanence within Limits 29

themselves. For what the divine immanence does is
to sustain them as they are, as in themselves they
were meant to be.

The immanence of God, assumed and granted, does
nothing to shed new light on the world of nature or
man, nor are the difficulties which have always beset
natural theology in the least alleviated by it. For
example, in this presence of His, God upholds all forces
and tendencies, alike the conservative and the destruct-
ive. He is immanent in the serpent and the tiger, as
much as in the dove and in the lamb. And, in regard
to man, He maintains our powers when we are using
them well, and when we are using them ill,— both
alike as far as the doctrine of immanence is concerned,
— not less truly immanent in us in the time of our
errors and our sins, than at any other time.

It is true, indeed, that however we err, or however
we sin, man is so made — man's life is so conditioned
— that the great constants of truth and duty come
into view, and they claim to be regarded and embraced.
It is a sound conclusion that those great elements,
which thus maintain their ground amid the fluctuations
and infirmities of our minds and wills, have a divine
authority and reveal the divine character. That con-
clusion is sound, whether the doctrine of immanence, or
any other doctrine consistent with faith in God, is
embraced. But the divine immanence guarantees
nothing beyond the known lines and limits of creature
natures. In particular, it cannot ever guarantee us
in any particular case against mixed experiences of

30 The Supernatural in Christianity

true and false, right and wrong. After we have
adopted the doctrine of Divine Immanence as
before, the question as to what is possible to human
nature has to be settled from our own consciousness
and from the experience of the race.

All this applies to the case of Christ. The doctrine
of Immanence supplies no fountain of revelation, and
offers no guarantee against mixtures or errors. Im-
manence could not produce sinlessness; for that
would be the proper supernatural. Immanence leaves
the creature within his limits. Never could it justify
a man in saying, "I am the way, and the truth,
and the life." To carry the creature beyond itself,
Ho clothe it with authority, to guarantee it against
'error or sin, may be very possible to God, — I believe
,it. But it is a belief that contemplates the miraculous,
jand does not limit God to development.

I shall be sorry if I am thought to cherish a
grudging spirit towards any who, unable in their
present mental atmosphere to receive the miraculous
and the supernatural as these appear in Christianity,
still strive to hold on, and do hold on, to the im-
pression derived from Christ as at least an incom-
parable Personality and an incomparable Teacher.
The truth is, I regard the position of many such
persons with a very peculiar feeling of respect. I
believe that not unfrequently their position represents
moral qualities not easily overrated And while I
must think it symptomatic also of something that is
defective and one-sided, I am far from counting

God in Christ 31

myself qualified to be their censor. But I must
express my belief that in the long-run, and for the
mass of men, the position is untenable. Christianity
does not hold men first by its ethical depth. It holds
men because God is in it; because it is felt that
once God in Christ has taken His self -revealing place
in the midst of the world, calling men to judgment
and to mercy. In Christ He has done it : " whereof
He has given assurance to all men, in that He has
raised Him from the dead."

n

CAN PKOFESSOR PFLEIDERER'8 VIEW

JUSTIFY ITSELF?

By PROFESSOR JAMES ORE, D.D.

• i

II

CAN PEOFESSOE PFLEIDEEEE'S VIEW

JUSTIFY ITSELF?

The task entrusted to me this evening is that of
surveying, and endeavouring to estimate on its merits,
the theory of religion presented to us by Professor
Pfleiderer with much persuasiveness, and in the name
of the highest theological science, in his recent Gifford
Lectures, and propounded by him as a substitute for,
or rather, as he would phrase it, the truth and kernel
of, supernatural Christianity. I need not say that in
any criticism I feel called upon to make on this
theory, nothing is intended personal or disrespectful
to the distinguished Lecturer himself. Professor
Pfleiderer's great abilities, and his remarkable breadth
of historical knowledge and philosophical culture, are
ungrudgingly admitted, and perhaps those of us who
have most to do with these things would be the first
to acknowledge, in its own place, our indebtedness to
him in many respects. All the same, it is impossible
not to recognise that these Lectures, delivered by a
thinker deservedly of such high repute, and under the
aegis of one of our great Scottish Universities, striking

25

36 The Supernatural in Christianity

as they do directly at the foundations of historical
Christianity, and tearing rip by the roots with
unsparing hand much that we have been accustomed,
at least, to regard as most vital to our faith, consti-
tute a challenge to the Christian Church which it
cannot ignore. I do not think the Church will shrink
from taking up the gauntlet thus thrown down to
it ; at least, I am sure it need not. The challenge in
itself is not a new one. It has been heard before,
and supernatural Christianity survives. To those
acquainted with Professor Pfleiderer's works, the
views enunciated in the Gifford Lectures came in no
sense as a surprise. They have been before the world
any time for the last dozen years; and they have been
discussed in Germany any time for the last forty or
fifty years. What is more important, they have not
found acceptance there, or at least have not been able
to hold the field. Indeed, the most remarkable thing
to my mind in connection with these Lectures is,
that it is precisely at the time when, as Professor
Pfieiderer frankly acknowledges in a recent published
utterance, 1 the tide has receded from the school he
represents in Germany, and a reaction has set in in
the direction of belief in a positive historical revela-
tion in Christ — for this is the meaning of the
dominant Eitschlian movement in that country — he
should be found enunciating these views in Scotland
as a new gospel, and should be hailed by many as the
prophet of a new age ! I do not, however, wish to

1 Introduction to Grundriss, 1893.

Essence of the Theory $7

make too much of this. Professor Pfleiderer's theories,
old or new, are entitled to be tried on their own
merits. He has stated his views to us ably,
reverently, undisguisedly ; has put them before us in
logically-reasoned form; and he is entitled to his
answer. I have no desire to play with details on the
surface of the system. What I would wish to do is
to get as soon as possible to the heart of things, and
deal with this theory in its fundamental presupposi-
tions. I would take this new philosophy of Chris-
tianity, not on its weakest and worst side, if there is
anything about it which can be so characterised, but
on its highest and best side, and would ask whether
the root out of which it is supposed to grow is
capable of sustaining it ; whether this rejection of the
supernatural has a justification in the postulates and
principles of Professor Pfleiderer's own system; and
whether the religious convictions and moral idealism
he retains do not require us to admit more than
he allows.

Let us look, then, at this theory of Professor
Pfleiderer's — try to get to the essence of it. We have
seen from the Lectures he has given us how everything
of a supernatural or miraculous nature in the narra-
tives of the Gospels goes overboard ; how the divine
facts in the history of our Eedeemer, on the confession
of which every great historical Church in Christendom
up to the present hour, including Professor Pfleiderer's
own, is founded, are relegated to the realms of myth
and fiction — are interpreted as the fruit of "ideal

38 The Supernatural in Christianity

figurative invention." The question which starts up
in every mind in the light of this treatment is:
When these foundations are knocked away, as Pro-
fessor Pfleiderer helps so vigorously in knocking them,
will the Christian Church, or will Christianity itself
in any form, survive, save as a pleasing (or, as some
may choose to think it, a baleful) dream and illusion
of the past ? Giving up supernatural Christianity,
are we, with so many in our age, to take the plunge
into Agnosticism or Nihilism or Pessimism ? This is
far from being Professor Pfleiderer's opinion. He is
never weary of assuring us that, if his theories are
accepted, religion, so far from being destroyed, will be
placed upon a firmer basis than ever. It is only the
accidents, the excrescences, the drapery and embellish-
ments of religious idea* that disappear : the essence,
the kernel, the rational, imperishable truth of the
matter remains, — and what could any reasonable mind
wish more ? A wonder-working word, as we shall see,
is this "kernel" in Professor Pfleiderer's system; a
veritable enchanter's wand by which the most magical
transformations are accomplished ! By its aid nothing
vital is to perish. The Church is to go on ; Christianity
is to go on, though in a purified form ; faith in God
and in the moral goal of history is to go on ; labour
for the Kingdom of God is to go on. Now, what I
want to know is, whether this is a rational or tenable
expectation ? I want to know whether, in giving up
these supernatural aspects of Christianity, under
pretence of keeping everything, we are not really

What of the Future ? 39

parting with all ? I believe for myself that we are,
and I think that nine-tenths of those who agree with
Professor Pfleiderer in his rejection of the principle of
the supernatural, and who are gleeful over his supposed
demolition of the historical groundworks of Chris-
tianity, are probably of the same opinion. We cannot
forget that this kind of language has been heard
before. There was a time when Strauss also wrote :
" But we have no fear that we should lose Christ by
being obliged to give up a considerable part of what
has hitherto been called the Christian Creed ! He will
remain to all of us the more surely, the less anxiously
we cling to doctrines and opinions that might tempt
our reason to forsake Him. But if Christ remains to
us, and if He remains to us as the highest we know,
and are capable of imagining, within the sphere of
religion, as the Person without whose presence in the
mind no perfect piety is possible, we may fairly say
that in Him do we still possess the sum and substance
of the Christian faith." l But at a later period, in his ^
Old Faith and the New, Strauss faced the question,
" Are we still Christians ? " with a bolder look, and gave
it an uncompromising answer, "No." We want to
know whether it may not be the same here.

The difficulty, I imagine, which most people will
feel in dealing with Professor Pfleiderer is, that there
is so much in his religious philosophy which is in
itself good and true,— which has a Christian appear-
ance, or at least a Christian sound, — and to which the

1 Colloquies (Eng. Trans.), p. 67.

4b The Supernatural in Christianity

Christian believer can cordially assent. The denial of
the miraculous in Christianity by a bold naturalism
we can readily understand, but here is something of a
subtler order which does not fit in with any of our
accepted categories. Huxley we know, and Spencer
we know ; but here is a thinker, not less pronounced
in his anti-supernaturalism than they, who clothes his
ideas in Christian garb, who uses continually the
Christian dialect, who professes to be giving us the
very essence and truth of the Christian religion, —
what are we to make of him ? Professor Pfleiderer
himself would not admit that his theory is fairly
described as a denial of the supernatural. His system,
he will tell you, is saturated with the idea of the
supernatural. He believes in a supernatural basis of
the world — God ; in a supernatural government of the
world, or, what is held to be the same thing, a divine
teleological system of the world ; in a divine purpose
and goal in history ; in the peculiar place of Israel in
the religious development ; in Jesus as the bearer of
the principle of the absolute religion ; in the victory
of good over evil, and the ultimate triumph of the
Kingdom of God on earth. 1 Still less would Professor
Pfleiderer admit that he is fairly described as denying
revelation. It is the last thing in the world, he will
tell you, he would think of doing. All religion rests
on revelation. The foundation of his whole religious
philosophy is the idea of God as self-revealing. The
religious history of mankind is the history of revela-

1 Lectures V., VI., IX., X. (First Course) ; II. (Second Course), etc.

Supernatural but not Miraculous 4 1

tion. 1 Yet underneath all this, as we are compelled
to confess when we get to the bottom of his meaning,
— the limits of my Lecture will not allow me to put
too fine a point on it, — there lies nothing but the most
naked rationalism. The world may rest on a supexPj
natural basis, but it is a supernatural which expresses 1
itself only in the natural, never beyond it. Miracle,
in the strict sense, he tells us again and again, is
impossible; nothing ever happens, or can happen,
outside the eternally established natural order ; of any
transcendence, or overstepping of the limits of that
order, whether in nature or in the human mind, it is
not permitted to the enlightened theologian to speak. 3
With this accords the idea of revelation. That
which, on the divine side, is viewed as revelation, is,
on the human side, simply the natural development of
man's spirit — the working out of the original potenti-
alities and capacities of his nature in contact with
the world and with history. 3 Everything is there,
like a coiled-up spring, in man's constitution from
the beginning, waiting only the touch of external
events to cause it to unfold itself. This I take to be
the peculiarity of Professor Pfleiderer's system — its
combination of Christian elements and a high moral
and religious idealism with an essentially naturalistic
or rationalistic view of the world; and it is the^
legitimacy of this combination I am to test. The

1 Lectures V., VI. (First Course), etc.

3 Lecture I. (Second Course).

8 Cf. Philosophy of Religion (Eng. Trans.), iv. pp. 70, 72, 75, 78.

42 The Supernatural in Christianity

difficulty is not in dealing with either of these con-
ceptions separately. We can perfectly understand a
man who maintains his faith in God, in His love, in
a providential government of the world, in progressive
revelation, and in an ultimate triumph of the Kingdom
of God, in connection with a general supernatural view
of the world • and we can understand the agnostic or
the avowed naturalist who rejects the supernatural
altogether, and with it sweeps aside this whole load
of theological conceptions which Professor Pfleiderer
would carry with him. The peculiarity in Professor
Pfleiderer's philosophy is its attempt at the combina-
tion of these two commonly opposed sides. I do not
doubt that Professor Pfleiderer has made a synthesis
of these two sides which satisfies his own spirit ; the
question is, whether it is one which will hold good for
the mass of men, or can permanently justify itself at
the bar of reason ; whether a religious optimism can
maintain itself on this footing ; or whether we are not
brought back to the alternative of either going over
wholly to the side of Christianity, with its super-
natural basis, or else of accepting a view of the world
from which the supernatural is entirely excluded, and
surrendering the hopes and idealisms which spring from
faith in God and revelation ? It is this peculiarity in
Professor Pfleiderer's system which is, as I regard it,
at once its strength and its weakness. It is its
strength, for it falls in with a prepossession of the
times, fostered by many causes, adverse to the recogni-
tion of the supernatural, and creating a desire for just

A Midway Position Untenable 43

such a combination as is here attempted. Even from
the evangelical side I can conceive that many, finding
so much that seems to them morally elevated and
genuinely Christian in Professor Pfleiderer's teaching,
hearing him speak, as they constantly do, of the love
of God and revelation and salvation and the com-
munication of the Holy Spirit, may think, " Well, if
this is not supernatural Christianity, it is at any rate
a very good substitute for it, and we can get on very
well without the other." But it is also its weakness ;
for this middle position of Professor Pfleiderer's can-
not long satisfy either the Christian believer or the
sceptic. The former will ask, with perfect justice; "\
whether these high religious convictions of Professor '
Pfleiderer's would ever have been his, or can be
sustained, apart from the faith in supernatural revela-
tion from which they have sprung ; and the sceptic
will ask whether, renouncing such revelation, he has .
any right to retain the fruit which grew upon its
tree ? This is a question we must now inquire into
further.

It is the anti-supernaturalism of Professor Pfleid-
erer's system which is its chief attraction in many
eyes, and with it, accordingly, I must begin. Nothing,
we are told, can be allowed to have a place in the
system of the world outside the natural order. Not
only is it so, says Professor Pfleiderer, but it must be
so. It is impossible to think rationally or worthily of
God otherwise. A miracle is excluded on metaphysical
and on moral grounds ; and it is further, we are told,

44 The Supernatural in Christianity

excluded on scientific grounds. 1 This, e.g., is Professor
Pfleiderer's objection, or one of his objections, to
Augustine. The Christian salvation stood with him
in mere opposition to nature, and could only come to
it from without through a miracle. 2 I cannot help
remarking in passing that Professor Pfleiderer is not
always quite fair to his supernaturalistic opponents
in his statements of their views. He exalts distinc-
tions into contrasts, and throws them into an abrupt
and forbidding form which those whom he criticises
would not accept No Christian (and least of all
Augustine) holds that because salvation comes to
humanity from a source above nature, therefore it is
" in mere opposition " to nature. Bather is it held
to be in deepest congruity with nature, — that which
redeems, restores, sanctifies, and perfects it. The same
exaggeration is seen in Professor Pfleiderer's treatment
of the idea of revelation, and indeed of the super-
natural generally. A view which refuses to recognise
the all-sufficiency of nature is invariably represented
as in harsh opposition to nature, and as taking no
account of psychological or other natural conditions. 8

1 Cf. Philosophy of Religion, pp. 88, 89.

2 Lecture IX. (Second Course).

8 Thus the alternative is represented as lying between a view of
revelation which resolves it into a purely psychological product (with
God certainly as the ultimate creative ground) and "an entirely
divine operation, not indebted to the assistance, nor subject to the
conditions of the human mind." — Philosophy of Religion, iv. p. 66.
So miracles are " isolated exceptions of a lawless divine freedom," and
are held to involve a view of God as "in general unliving, inactive,
and not free," — an activity which "shows itself alive by way of
exception merely." — Ibid. p. 88, etc.

The Possibility of Miracle 45

It is this anti-supernaturalism which is the key of the
position in Professor Pfleiderer s, as in all similar
systems. It marks the contrast between two concep-
tions of the world and of Christianity fundamentally
distinct, and incapable of being reconciled. Here, then,
the issue must specially be faced.

There must be nothing, we are told, outside of the
natural order. But why must? I can conceive of
some views of the nature of God and His relations
to the world which would necessitate this conclusion.
A Spinozistic view of God, e.g., in which everything
proceeds necessarily from the Divine Substance; a
Hegelian view of God, in which nature and spirit
are again but the logical unfolding of the Immanent
Season of the universe ; a Deistical view of God, such
as that described by Professor Pfleiderer in words
quoted from Goethe — " What were a God which only
gave the> world a push from without, or let it spin
round His finger ? " 1 Such views of God of necessity
exclude miracle; but none of these is Professor
Pfleiderer's view of God, though he puts himself in
the rational succession to Spinoza and Hegel, and
serves himself heir to their denials of miracle, drawn
from such different premises. Professor Pfleiderer is
a theist. The God he believes in is a God of love and
power and wisdom — a personal God, not to be identi-
fied with the natural order, but distinguishing Himself
as a knowing, willing person from the totality of His
manifestations in the universe. 2 With such a concep-

1 Lecture IX. (First Course). 2 Lecture V. (First Course).

46 The Supernatural in Christianity

tion of God as that, however it may be on the view of
a Spinoza or Hegel or Spencer, the denial of the
possibility of miracle on metaphysical grounds is
plainly incompetent. Not less illegitimate is the
assertion of the & priori scientific impossibility of
miracle. Professor Huxley and J. S. Mill are probably
as good authorities on science as Professor Pfleiderer,
and both of them tell us that there is no scientific
impossibility in miracle — it is purely and solely a
question of evidence. 1 Nor is the denial tenable on
Professor Pfleiderer's own theory. God, as I under-
stand it, on Professor Pfleiderer's view, is Himself the
ultimate law of all connection of phenomena in the
universe, and the immanent and efficient cause of its
changes. No laws of nature, no secondary causes,
interpose themselves between the universe and Him.
He is Himself the ever-flowing fountain of all life and
power ; His presence, love, and will are through and
over all. 2

Yes, but from this very doctrine of the immanence
of God a new objection arises. Miracle may be
possible to God, but is it worthy of Him ? Is it not
a far higher conception of God to think of Him as
immanent in His universe, working along the lines of
an eternally-ordained order, and never needing, as He
can never desire, to depart from it ? Is it not a
reflection either on the wisdom or on the power of

1 Huxley's Controverted Questions, pp. 258, 259 ; Mill's Logic,
Bk. iii. chap. 25.

2 Lecture Y. (First Course).

Miracle and the Divine Immanence 47

God, a reflection 011 the perfection of the order He
has established, to suppose that all the ends He had
in view in His creation cannot be accomplished through
it — that it needs to be tampered and interfered with
to bring out yet higher and exceptional ends ? Is it
not enough, to quote Goethe again, to say, " I look
for a God who moves the world from within, who
fosters nature in Himself, Himself in nature ; so that
naught that in Him lives and moves and has its
being ever misses the force of His Spirit ; " and is
it not a kind of sacrilege, a desecration of this con-
ception, to imagine that God ever needs to depart
from this sublime path which His own infinite wisdom
has eternally marked out for its manifestation ? I
desire to state this objection as strongly as I can, for
it is here that the argument against miracle is at its
best, I wish, at the same time, I could be clearer
than I am as to what place after all Professor
Pfleiderer leaves in his scheme for something that to
the, uninitiated mind looks very like " miracle." He
often enough uses laDguage which, strictly interpreted,
would imply the appearance of something absolutely
new, springing creatively from the immanent divine
source, though prepared for by previous stages of
development. Such a new beginning, for example,
was the appearance of life upon the earth, which, he
appears to contend, in opposition to those who would
extend the Darwinian theory of development to include
this phenomenon, cannot be explained out of pre-

48 The Supernatural in Christianity

existing physical causes. 1 But this is what in ordinary
parlance would he called a miracle; indeed, in this
sense, every higher stage of nature (vital, sentient,
rational) is a miracle to the stages below it. Language
of the same kind is frequently used in speaking of
"revelation," — giving his expressions often a quite,
supernaturalistic look, — though this is taken back
again by saying that every so-called revelation, if we
could only see into its depths, would be found to be
perfectly psychologically mediated, £& to be only a
stage or phase of the natural development of the
spirit. 2 To take but one more instance, readers of
Professor Pfleiderer must often feel edified by the
earnest, almost warmly evangelical, references to the
" Holy Spirit " which abound in his writings, — to His
teaching, guiding, sanctifying influence, — but the glow
is rather chilled when we find this "Holy Spirit"
elsewhere rationalistically explained as simply "the
arrival of the divine reason (which is our own reason)
at supremacy in our hearts." 3 I take it, then, that
anything which looks like the admission of the
miraculous in Professor Pfleiderer's system is to be
interpreted in harmony with a curious phrase of his
own in one of his works, when speaking of the
transactions of Pentecost, — " miraculous, no doubt,

1 Lecture IX. (First Course).

8 Cf. Philosophy of Ileligion, iv. pp. 70-78 ; Q-rundriss, p. 20. It
must be observed that on all subjects touching the border-line of the
natural and supernatural, Professor Pfleiderer's language is exceedingly
loose and vague.

8 Ibid, iii. pp. 304-5.

Nature and Personality 49

but not an absolutely supernatural miracle ; " l and
that his real view is, as I indicated, one of unbroken
natural causation, a causal order outside of which no
operation of Deity ever takes place. It is a fair
demand, then, when we are asked why this purely
immanent action of God in nature and in the
activities of the human spirit does not satisfy us, why
we contend for something more as both worthy of God
and necessary for the fulfilment of His purposes ? I
shall try to give some reasons, arguing the matter less
on abstract grounds than on the basis of ideas and
principles furnished by Professor Pfleiderer's own system.
And the first reason I would give why a purely
immanent action of God within the limits of the
natural order is not regarded by us as intellectually,
morally, or religiously satisfying, is this, — that the
end of the natural order itself is something higher
than a mere natural order, namely, a realm of free,
personal spirits, in which the law is not that of
impersonally mediated manifestations, but the direct
personal intercourse of love. Professor Pfleiderer is
the last who can reject this premiss of my argument,
for the idea is one on which he himself is continually
insisting. Nature is a means to humanity. The end
of the natural development is the spiritual being man;
the end of the historical development, that for which
both nature and history are constituted, is the King-
dom of God. 2 But see what this means. We are

2

UrchristentJium, p. 14.
Lectures V., VI. (First Course).

50 The Stipernatural in Christianity

ourselves parts of nature, yet in a very true sense we
are above nature — higher than nature. We have the
attribute of personality which nature has not, and
through this attribute can enter into relations with
each other which are impossible to nature ; we have
modes of revelation to one another of which nature
knows nothing. We can form societies, spheres of
reciprocal love and communion; can hold personal
converse with each other ; can act and react on each
other by the continual interchange of thought and
sentiment. We communicate with each other, not
merely by dumb show, or through some system of
automatic arrangements which go on unvaryingly from
day to day, but behind which we ourselves are never
visible, — which would be no satisfaction to the life of
personality (imagine it in the arrangements of a
household, or of a father with his children), — but by
direct articulate speech, through personal word and
look and deed, through all those subtle media by
which the contents of one soul are poured into another.
This is because, on the basis of nature, there has been
reared a kingdom of personality. Is it, then, to be
held that this direct personal form of communion is
possible to. every class of finite spirits, but is only not
possible to, or cannot take place with, the Spirit of
spirits, — who, be it remembered,in Professor Pfleiderer's
yiew, as in our own, is a Personality, full of love,
fatherhood, and the desire of self-communication ? I
do not ask what is possible with other conceptions of
God, but can we hold this conception, and yet consist-

The Reality of Divine Communion 5 1

ently deny the possibility, need, and suitableness of
supernatural revelation? The strangest thing of all
is, that Professor Pfleiderer himself affirms the actuality
of communion between the human and divine spirits
in as strong a form as can be desired. I quote only
one passage : " Why should it be less possible," he [
says, " for God to enter into a loving fellowship with \
us, than for men to do so with each other ? I should \
be inclined to think that He is even more capable of
doing so. For as no man can altogether read the
soul of another, so no man can altogether live in the
soul of another; hence all our human love is and
remains imperfect. But if we are shut off from one
another by the limits of individuality, in relation to
God it is not so : to Him our hearts are as open
as each man's heart is to himself; He sees through
and through them, and He desires to live in them, and
to fill them with His own sacred energy and blessed-
ness." x Verily, why not ? But will any one say that
when you have thus affirmed a perfect loving fellow- ;
ship of God with the soul, analogous to that into *
which human things enter with each other, the line
is not already crossed between the natural and the]
supernatural ? or will any one say why, if the gates
of intercourse are thus open between the soul and
God, He should not enter into them, and give to man ^1
a better light and aid than he can find in his own J
dim gropings after Him ? Why must God speak with H -
man only through these dumb symbols of nature, or j

1 Philosophy of Beligion, vol. iii. p. 305.

5 2 The Supernatural in Christianity

through the inarticulate longings and aspirations of

his spirit, to which no personal response is ever given,

and not through a " a more sure word " such as Plato

of old longed for, and these ancient Hebrew prophets

believed themselves to possess, and we Christians are

assured that we have in a yet diviner form in Jesus

Christ — the Word made flesh ? There is nothing here

which is not worthy of God, needed by man, consonant

with the nature of things, and in accordance with the

laws of the human spirit Once grant, what lies in

^Professor Pfleiderer's own philosophy, that spirit is

\ higher than nature, consciousness than unconsciousness,

(personality than impersonality, and that the goal of

I all God's workings and leadings alike in nature and

j history is the realisation in humanity of a kingdom of

• love, 1 — the production of a kingdom of free, personal

, spirits, bound together by love, and finding their highest

good in fellowship with Himself, — and some direct,

.immediate, articulate word of God to man is the

most natural and probable thing imaginable.

I have given one answer to the question why we
cannot rest satisfied with a view of God which con-
fines His activity purely within the bounds of the
natural order. I shall now give another. It is this :
If the goal of the divine purposes in nature and
history be the bringing in of that Kingdom of God
on earth of which Professor Pfleiderer speaks, 2 there is
needed for the attainment of this goal a better know-

1 Lecture VI. (First Course).

8 Lectures VI. and IX. (First Course).

Philosophy and Theism 53

ledge of God than is possible on the hypothesis of
immanent development. Professor Pfleiderer thinks
it quite easy — nay natural and inevitable — that,
given time and circumstances, the spirit of man
should unfold from its depths just such a knowledge
and certainty of God as we now have in the Christian
gospel. He will analyse the process, trace the steps
of the ascent, and put the whole result before you
— on paper. Yes, on paper; but does the actual
history of mankind justify him in this view ? Grant
that the Christian idea of God, once we have got it,
can be shown to be in deepest accord with reason,
and to furnish the true key to the purpose of God in
history, — though this to many will be a very huge
assumption, — has human reason found it so easy in
practice to make a synthesis of these elements for
itself, and to construct a conception of God adequate
to the religious necessity ? I do not think the history
of philosophy or of religion will bear us out in saying
that it has. Will any one read the history of the
higher speculative systems, either ancient or modern,
and say that their trend has been naturally and
necessarily in the direction of that conception of a
living, loving, personal God, which Professor Pfleiderer,
with the Christianity from which he has borrowed it,
affirms to be the only true one ? Is the tendency of
our philosophies of the Absolute not quite in the
opposite direction — away from the idea of personality ? '
Does the study of science any more than of philo-
sophy necessarily beget in men's minds this profound

54 The Supernatural in Christianity

faith in God as the ground at once of the moral ideal
and of the natural order ? I fear we have only to look
to the Agnosticism of many of our leading men of
science to get too conclusive an answer. No, so far as
/ history enables us to judge of the powers of reason, or
\ of the soul's intuitions, to rise to a clear, assured, con-
'* sistent, adequate conception of God, — of His character,
I will, love, and purpose in the world, — it is not a
denial of, but an eloquent plea for, the necessity of a
' supernatural revelation. Nor is this to be wondered
I at. Each thinker had flashes, gleams, fitful appre-
hensions of this or the other side of the truth, — saw,
guessed, imagined, something of the ways of Him whom
Plato said it was hard to find, and when He was found,
impossible to make known to all, — but not the efforts
of any single mind, or of all together, could so combine
these scattered rays of truth, so purify them from
what was erroneous, or supply remaining defects, that
the full and true theistic conception was the result.
Still less could they bring the soul into living relation
and communion with the Being thus dimly sketched
by the intellect.

But there is another side of this subject from which
perhaps it may be more profitably approached. This
knowledge of God which is now in the world, and of
which Professor Pfleiderer avails himself, has come to
us in a very different way than through philosophical
speculation. It is an heritage to us from the people
of Israel, and above all from Jesus Christ. How,
then, are we to explain this God - consciousness of

The God-Consciousness of Israel 55

Israel, — this clearness, certainty, and power of their
convictions of the being, government, and holy, loving
purpose of the one living and true God, — the un-
shaken faith of psalmists and prophets in His righteous-
ness and goodness, and their triumphant confidence in
the future of His kingdom? We know how they
themselves explained it, but let that pass for the
moment. To Professor Pfleiderer it is but the highest
example of what the spirit of man can attain to in the
evolving of its innate religious endowment. But is
this reasonable ? Professor Pfleiderer is by no means
of the opinion of another Gifford Lecturer, at present
discoursing in a neighbouring city, who thinks that the
Old Testament has been an unfortunate inheritance for
Christianity. He does very considerable justice to the
uniqueness and moral elevation and purity and far-
sighted vision of the religion of Israel, 1 though that
religion is even more unique and organically one in its
development from patriarchal promise, through law
and prophecy, to its ripened fruit in Jesus Christ, than
he, with his naturalistic presuppositions, can allow.
" In fact," he says, " if a religious revelation is to be \
found anywhere, it is certainly to be found in the spirit j
of the Hebrew prophets, who knew that God was I
the soul of the morally good. . . . Israel knew such a
purpose of history, viz., the realisation of a kingdom of
God, of a human fellowship and community, correspond-
ing to the holy will of God, and thus did they become
the path-finders and leaders of our race upon its toil-

1 Lecture VI. (First Course) ; II, (Second Course).

56 The Supernatural in Christianity

some way to the moral ideal of humanity." 1 Yes, but is
their path-finding intellectually comprehensible, except
through that factor of supernatural revelation to which
they themselves unhesitatingly referred it ? Try the
matter by Professor Pfleiderer's own account of the
origin of the idea of God. There are, it appears, two
roots of the idea of God, — the rational impulse and the
moral ideal. 2 Israel did not get its idea of God from
rational and philosophical speculation,— that is clear.
There remains the path of the moral ideal. But the
mind in the forming of any of its ideals needs materials
to work upon, — it does not act in vacuo, — and the
materials at Israel's disposal here were nature and
history. Did Israel, then, get its idea of God from
nature ? To the inspired seers nature indeed was
full of the presence of God, — a perpetual revelation
;of His wisdom, power, and goodness; but every
/ one sees that they interpret nature through the
j idea of God which they bring to it, rather than reach
God through the appearances of nature. When science
comes to nature without this presupposition of God in
its heart, it is often a far different account it has to
give of it. There remains history, experience, the
visible course of God's providence. Did Israel get its
idea of God from these ? Now, history does indeed
reveal God, — i3 an unfolding of His plan and purpose ;
but will any one say that in the course of events
as they actually fall out around us, — in this strange

1 Lecture VI. (First Course).
a Lecture IV. (First Course).

The Faith of the Prophets 5 7

riddle of a life of ours, as we are so often compelled
to regard it, — this plan of God is so clearly and un-
ambiguously revealed that the most gifted mind could
infallibly read in it God's purpose for the world, or
raise out of it that unfailing confidence of His wisdom,
righteousness, and all -compassionating mercy which
we find in the Hebrew prophets ? Given the Christian
key to history, and we can perhaps spell out the
meaning of God's purpose in parts of it ; but how
dark and confused, how enigmatical, tangled, and per-
plexed, how often a torturing problem to faith, does
the larger portion of it still remain ? Optimist and
pessimist alike find grounds for their theories in
history, according to the attitude of mind with which
they approach it. It is here also less the action of
history upon the mind which creates the faith, than
the faith in God which determines how we shall read
the history. And this is conspicuously evident in
Israel It is not when events are going well in their
nation, but precisely in those periods of darkness and
disaster, when God's providence is most adverse, and
to the eye of sense His purposes are breaking down in
utter failure, — it is then that the faith of these
prophets seems to draw new vigour from misfortune,
and plumes its wings for flight to yet unreached
heights of confidence and hope ! It is neither from
nature nor from history, therefore, that Israel derives
its idea of God. If it is the ideal that does it, it
must be an ideal unlike every other we have known, —
one, namely, which has power to lift itself up in

58 The Supernatural in Christianity

its own naked strength clean above and out of its
environment, and sustain itself • at this triumphant
height of confidence, not only without anything
objective to stay on, but in face of the most adverse
appearances, — which works, as I have said, in vacuo.
And this, I take it, is an inadmissible hypothesis. It
was a far different account which Israel itself had to
give of its faith and hope in God. They believed,
this people of Israel, in a God who had revealed Him-
self to them, not in Professor Pfleiderer's sense, but in
lloving, saving deeds in their history, in which His
j presence, power, and grace had been unequivocally
\ manifested ; who had given them His sure word on
which to hope ; and who had opened to them by His
Spirit visions and hopes of a future salvation, and a
universal triumph of righteousness, which they knew
He would not allow to fail. And why should we not
accept this account as the truest and most reasonable,
— as, indeed, it is the only one which will perfectly
explain the facts ? If the end of all God's guidance
in nature and providence is, as Professor Pfleiderer
says, the realisation of this Kingdom of God in
humanity, 1 and if man is designed to be a co-worker
with God in bringing in that kingdom, why should
God not give to him that knowledge of Himself and
of His will which is needful to enable him to enter
intelligently into His purposes, and to co-operate with
. Him consciously and effectively ; instead of using him
only as an unconscious instrument of His plans, and

. l Lectures VI., IX. (First Course).

Sin demands a Revelation 59

leaving him to his hlind gropings after a Divinity )
whom haply he may. never find ? It will at least
hardly be disputed that a far higher class of results
are conceivable as reached on a system in which man
knows something of the ends he is pursuing, and freely
devotes himself to the realisation of these ends (the
hypothesis of supernatural revelation), than on another
in which he has no such knowledge, but is left to the
dim and uncertain light afforded by his natural reason
and conscience.

There is yet another answer which might be given
to this question, why we cannot- be satisfied with a
merely natural revelation of God, but it was touched
on by the learned Principal in his opening Lecture,
and I shall dismiss it with a few words here. It is
that drawn from the fact of sin. Whatever know-
ledge of God we may suppose to be possible to man
if his faculties were pure and entire, and his conscience
an unsullied mirror reflecting the divine, it is surely
obvious that the case is altered when it is recognised
— as on any hypothesis it must be — that his mind is
darkened and beclouded, and his will held in bondage,
by sin. Did my limits permit, I might raise the
question whether Professor Pfleiderer's account of
the genesis and nature of sin does not evacuate that
which we so name of its essential evil, and rob it of
its awfulness and tragicalness under the government of
God, by representing it as a part of man's original
constitution and necessary stage in his development ; x

1 Lecture VII. (First Course).

6o The Supernatural in Christianity

but at least he recognises the fact of universal sin and
guilt, and does homage to the Christian idea of Redemp-
tion, by granting that salvation from sin in some sense
is necessary. When, however, we come to inquire
what this salvation from sin is, we find, in accordance
with the genius of the whole system, that it is some-
thing which man has to accomplish entirely in and on
himself. 1 The true Saviour is not Jesus, — though He
remains as a motive, — but the ideal man within our-
selves, our own reason or better self. The mystical
conception of Redemption, as Professor Pfleiderer
expresses it, is changed into the corresponding ethical
conception of education. 2 The sinner is saved through
faith in the ideal. The doctrine is simply that of
Kant in his Religion mthin the Limits of Mere
Reason, given to the world now fully a century ago,
— salvation through return to the better self, the new
man suffering vicariously for the sins of the old, etc. 8
It is very much as if a man were summoned to take
himself by his own waistband, and lift himself up out
of his sin and misery, — and this is called Redemption ;
nay, is supposed to be the " kernel " of that doctrine
of salvation by grace which is founded on the
absolute inability of the sinner to help himself, and
on the need of a divine, supernatural interposition on
his behalf. Now, I submit that all experience is with
me when I say that the power of sin is not to be
broken in this way in the heart and life of the sinner.

1 Cf. Philosophy of Religion, iv. pp. 126-132.
8 Lecture VIII. (First Course). » Ibid.

Seeming and Real Redemption 6 1

In Professor Pfleiderer's system there is no place for
forgiveness, in any proper sense of that word. There
is no act of God in forgiving ; no change in His
thoughts or dispositions towards the sinner. The
sinner was formerly alienated from the ideal of his
being ; he has now come back to his true self ; the
whole drama is internal to his own spirit. For a change
like this, perhaps, no supernatural revelation is needed,
beyond, at least, an illuminative one; but for such a
salvation as I daresay most of us feel that we require, — a
true forgiveness, a real regeneration, a sanctifying power
brought to bear upon us from without ourselves, — there
is needed very much more: an actual redemptive
interposition of God in human history, provision for
the obliteration of guilt, the work of a divine, living
Spirit, — in short, a great moral dynamic such as the
Christian gospel yields, but for which Professor
Pfleiderer's system, however clamant might be the
necessity, affords no room.

These last remarks are already the answer to
another line of defence of Professor Pfleiderer's anti-
supernaturalistic conception of Christianity which
might plausibly be attempted, and may possibly have
occurred to your own thoughts. " Granted," it may
be said, " that there is a doubt as to how these ideas
have arisen, need that trouble us ? However originally
obtained, whether by natural or supernatural means,
these ideas of the Christian system are in the world
now, and are not likely soon again to be parted with.
The Christian idea of the fatherly love of God ; the

6i The Supernatural in Christianity

moral idealism of Jesus; the thought of a Kingdom of
God for which all are to labour ; the ethical view of
Redemption as a dying to the old self that we may live
to the new, — are not these sufficient to constitute the
basis of a very elevated form of religion for mankind,
to which all questions of supernatural or non-super-
natural origin are indifferent ? " This brings us back
to the point from which the present Lecture started.
Purged of all supernatural elements, how long
/would this quasi-Christianity of Professor Pfleiderer be
' likely to maintain itself ? I cannot say that I regard
its prospects as very bright. Professor Pfleiderer
thinks that he is able to establish these views of his
on God and the ethical purpose of the world on
philosophic grounds. But we have only to look at
the variety of opinion in the philosophic systems
around us, — at the Agnosticism, the Materialism, the
Pessimism of the day, not to speak of the diversity of
view even in the higher idealistic schools, — to see how
far Professor Pfleiderer is from being likely to gain
general acceptance for his metaphysical foundation ;
while, for the workaday jnass .of mankind, his
philosophical reasons are as good as non-existent, —
they produce no effect on their minds whatever. But
were the foundations even stronger than they are,
there are other glaring defects and weaknesses of the
system which would still prove fatal to it. In its
heart lies the great essential contradiction of a God
who is conceived of as living, loving, personal, yet who
never enters into real relations of revelation and fellow-

The Non-Miraculous Christ 63

ship with His creatures ; who, having the power to make >
Himself known to them in direct, immediate ways, and t
to bless them with His friendship, help, and grace* •
never does so. This system, standing fixed within the
limits of natural law, brings no aid to those whose
need can only be met by supernatural remedy. It
cannot be preached as a gospel to the sick in heart
and sin-laden, for it has in it no power to pardon, re-
new, or save. It speaks of the Kingdom of God, but
it has no means to realise it. The theory lies under
the fatal defect that it will not work. It has no force
to make it go.

All these difficulties in Professor Pfleiderer's system,
I would now observe in closing, reach their acutest
stage when we come to deal with Jesus Christ. That
Professor Pfleiderer is filled with the sincerest
reverence for Jesus, and the highest admiration for
His character; that he exalts Him, ethically,
spiritually, religiously, to the highest pinnacle of
eminence compatible with his principles; nay, that
he sometimes strains his principles almost to break-
ing point in the attempt to do Him yet greater
honour, — this must be evident to every reader of
his works. Professor Pfleiderer's face is not away
from, but towards, the grace and truth that are in
Jesus Christ. Yet, with all this exaltation of Jesus,
it is not difficult to see that Jesus is for him, so far \
as historical reality is concerned, little else than a
figure to hang his idealisations upon. He is a great
religious genius, it is true, but still within the limits

64 The Supernatural in Christianity

of the merely natural. He has a young, fresh heart ;
is filled with a child-like love- of God ; has a wonder-
ful charm and sweetness as a preacher of the Kingdom
of God ; is the nearest approach to the ideal which
history can show. 1 But He is not the 'perfect ideal ;
He is not sinless. This would be to take a magical
view of His character ; would be to acknowledge Him
as miraculous; and miracle is the one thing which
cannot be admitted. 2 For the same reason, He did
not work real miracles in His ministry ; and when He
died His history on earth was ended. There was no
Kesurrection. But there happened something which
took the place of a Resurrection for the Christian
Church. The stricken disciples, after the first blow,
pluck up courage, and begin to think their Master is
with them again. Then Peter has a vision, — sees a
bright light, or something of the sort, and fancies it
is Jesus; and, by a mysterious telepathy, his faith
affects the Twelve, and they have visions; and the
women have visions ; and the five hundred brethren
at once have visions; and, last of all, Paul has a
vision. Out of these visions grew faith in the
Resurrection, the Ascension, the Godhead, the Incar-
nation, the Atonement of Christ, — the whole scheme
of Christian theology. 8 Paul is peculiarly the creator
of this theology, and his scheme — though ingenuity
can do wonderful things in extracting " kernels "

1 Lecture III. (Second Coarse).

2 Lecture I. (Second Coavae); cf. Philosophy ofJReligion, i. p. 339.
8 Lecture IV. (Second Course) ; cf. his Urchristenthum, pp. 1-25.

" Picture- Language" and the Sceptic 65

from it 1 — is mainly a scheme in the air! But treat
these illusions tenderly. Professor Pfleiderer is very
angry with the Eitschlians for laying violent hands on
what he calls the " picture-language " of the Church, 2
i.e., the dogmas of the Miraculous Conception, Eesurrec-
tion, and the like. Let all be carefully preserved.
Let the Church be maintained, with its institutions,
its sacraments, its festivals, — its Christmas, and
Epiphany, and Easter, and Whitsuntide ; let the
old prayers be recited, the old hymns be sung, the
old Scripture lessons be read, the old service be gone
through. The philosopher knows its meaning, and it
edifies the people. Ah, but there are others to reckon
with ! The sceptic comes along, who has long since
parted with all this theological make-believe, — a
Strauss or a Hartmann, — and he draws aside the veil,
and points the finger $X> this which is going on, and
says, " What mockery ! " " In all ages," says Hart-
mann, " there has been one common mark of the
Christian religion — belief in Christ. .... But the
liberal Protestant cannot believe in Christ as either
Luther, or Thomas Aquinas, or John, or Paul, or Peter,
believed in Christ, and least of all as Jesus believed
in Himself, for He believed Himself to be the Christ
— the Messiah." 3 And is the sceptic not right ?

Must we then give up all in which we have hitherto
believed ? Most certainly not, if only we are willing

1 Lecture V. (Second Course).

8 Introduction to Grundriss (1893).

8 Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums, pp. 54, 55.

5

66 The Supernatural in Christianity

to fulfil the simple condition of allowing Christian
ideas and beliefs to grow upon their own root, and do
not attempt to put this artificial, non-natural meaning
upon them, and force them into a frame of anti-
supernaturalism with which they can never agree.
Go back to these Gospels again, — you will find a very
different Jesus in them from Him whom Professor
Pfleiderer has pictured. Professor Pfleiderer tells us
that Jesus was no enthusiast, yet he acknowledges
that He believed in His Messiahship, and in His own
future return to judge the world. 1 Think of One who,
without fanaticism, claimed to be the Judge of the
world — the arbiter of the everlasting destinies of
mankind, and ask by what standard you are to
measure Him ? Think of One who speaks habitually
of Himself as " Son of Man " and " Son of God/' who
founds the Kingdom of God, who gives the law for a
new dispensation, who arrogates to Himself the power
on earth to forgive sins, who dispenses the Holy Ghost,
who ascribes an expiatory virtue to His death, who
predicts His Eesurrection iand return in glory ! This is
no simple, trustful, religious genius, preaching a sweet
gospel of the love of God to the multitudes of Galilee,
but One vastly greater. I read these Gospels, and
find in them the most wonderful impress of historical
reality. But if the Christ of these Gospels was an
historical Person, He made claims, He did works, He
spoke from a consciousness of unity with God, He
asserted an authority, He wielded prerogatives, which

1 Lecture III. (Second Course).

The Faith which Overcomes 67

you cannot fit into a merely human — least of all
naturalistic — frame. To the life and death of such an
One as Jesus Himself claimed to be, the Eesurrection
was a natural sequel, — indeed, is implied in His own
announcements of a return after death. And it is
faith in such a Divine Christ, — One who liveth and
was dead, and, behold, is alive for evermore, — not
faith in a mere moral ideal, which is the victory that
overcomes the world. 1 I do not pursue this subject
further, but leave the discussion of the historical
evidence to one more competent to deal with it than
I am.

1 1 John v. 4, 5 ; Rev. i. 18. I have not had opportunity to refer to
the remarkable silence on the hope of immortality in the Lectures, but
the fact is surely one full of significance. Can the Christian hope be
dissociated from the promise — "Because I live, ye shall live also"
(John xiv. 19) ?

*

*

Ill

/ THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE

GOSPELS

By PROFESSOR MARCUS DODS, D.D.

Ill
THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE GOSPELS

Ik the first Lecture of this Course the ground was
cleared of some of the difficulties most commonly
alleged against the admission of the supernatural ; its
reasonableness and congruity were urged; and the
genealogy and general character of Professor Pfleiderer's
scheme were indicated. The second Lecture exposed
the inconsistencies of that scheme, and of the philo-
sophy which so largely enters into it. It is my humbler
function to exhibit the unsatisfactory character of the
Gospel criticism which is an essential part or necessary
adjunct of this form of anti-supernaturalism. I am
not called to estimate the value of miracle, to discuss
its necessity, or to determine whether we can have a
religion without it, and what kind of religion that
must be ; I am not even to bring forward what might
be adduced as positive evidence in favour of the
miracles which lie at the foundation of Christianity : I
am merely to show the incompetence of that mode of
disposing of the miraculous which is adopted by
Professor Pfleiderer under the guise of criticism. But
if I must call you down from those heights of philo-

71

72 The Supernatural in Christianity

sophy to which you have been carried, and invite you
to accompany me on lower levels and in more
pedestrian style, I have yet the advantage of being
able to lay before you issues, that are sharply defined
and easily apprehended.

Let me once again remind you that the question
in debate is the all-important one : What is Christ ?
What is the truth about Him ; how is He to be
accounted for ; and what lies at the root of His
influence ? Is He a supernatural interpolation in the
history of our race, or is He the natural product of
antecedent persons and conditions ? Did He begin to
be when born in Judea, or did He come from a
previous existence ? Is He human, precisely as other
men are human, or has He a unique relationship to
the Father and to the Unseen ? Is Christ merely the
best of men, or is He the same who was with God and
was God, and by whom God made the worlds ?

To answer these questions, one naturally turns to
the Gospels. These narratives profess to give us an
account of what Jesus was and did and said in His
life on earth. Cannot we, then, at once settle all
debate by referring to these documents ? No, says the
theory in question, you cannot ; because it is axiomatic
that all miracle is impossible, and the Gospels are full
of miracle. In the words of Professor Pfleiderer : "To
investigate a history means to trace up the connections
of its causes and effects and to make it intelligible to
the understanding. This presupposes that in what
once happened there existed such a connection of

Exclusion of Miracle 73

causes and effects as is analogous to our general
experience and to what happens among men, and is
therefore intelligible to our understanding." This
postulate is an essential part of the philosophy ex-
pounded by Professor Pfleiderer. It cannot admit the
miraculous. One miracle explodes the whole system.

Now, unquestionably, any construction of Christianity
which can dispense with miracle has a primd facie
recommendation. Matthew Arnold stands by no
means alone when he says : " There is nothing one
would more desire for a person or a document one
greatly values, than to make them independent of
miracles." The smaller the claim, the larger will be )
the number who admit it. Possibly; possibly, also,
even religion may be so cheapened as to make it worth-
less. A religion without miracle may turn out to be
a religion without God. Take Christ, we are told, as
the revealer of God, and let miracles go. But we '
may reasonably ask in reply, How has Christ revealed
to us a God present with us, tender and helpful?
How, but by and in those very miracles in which
divine compassion and divine help were manifested ? .
Is it not precisely the miracles of Christ even /
more than His teaching, and as much as His death, (
which have imprinted indelibly on the heart of J
Christendom the impression of God's love ?

Neither is it quite as easy as it seems * to dismiss
miracle. For at once the question emerges, and a
most troublesome question it has proved itself to be,
What is to be done with the Gospels ? Here are four

74 The Supernatural in Christianity

narratives, indisputably written by truthful writers;

and yet it is imperative to get rid of a large part of

what they tell. How is it to be done ? Observe that,

/ starting from the postulate that miracle is impossible,

! criticism is impossible. The form of examining the

i

/ records may be gone through, but the conclusion is
( foregone. No school of sound criticism can arise on
a basis of presuppositions so enormous. The problem
of criticism so-called, becomes the problem of finding
the most feasible mode of accounting for the presence
of the supernatural in the Gospels. No matter what
violence is done to the Gospels in the process, it is
imperative to form a theory of their origin which shall
account for the presence of the miraculous without
requiring us to accept it.

It is to this point I am asked to speak. I have
nothing to say directly of the underlying philosophy
— I am relieved from the extremely difficult task of
measuring the probable results of accepting or denying
this philosophy; but I have to call your attention
to this: that the philosophy under consideration
necessarily carries with it a certain explanation of
the Gospels, and if this explanation is demonstrably
erroneous, then plainly the philosophy itself must be
reconsidered.

In testing the worth of Professor Pfleiderer's criti-
cism of the Gospels, it will be convenient first of all to
consider the theory by which he accounts for the
presence of the miraculous, then to examine his
account of the crowning miracle, the Eesurrection

Strauss revives in Pfleiderer 75

of Christ, and, if time allows, to adduce some con-
siderations which corroborate the historicity of the
narrative as it stands.

On learning Professor Pfleiderer's theory of the origin
of the Gospels, the first feeling is one of disappointment.
Has criticism, then, actually not moved for sixty
years f This is precisely nothing more nor less than
the theory of Strauss, given to the world so long ago,
and which was thought to have been slain and buried
a generation ago. May not conservative criticism be
excused if it exclaim, " This is John whom I be-
headed." In the battle of Inkermann, after every
repulse of the Eussians, mass after mass of grey-
coated obedience and fearlessness was hurled against
the British position, but with no new disposition of
force, and no more adequate conception of the require-
ments of the attack. They did not know when they
were defeated. So in these reiterated critical assaults"
without the slightest change of tactics, one sees stub-
bornness, gallantry, but also some bluntness of percep-
tion. " This is not war/' we are tempted to say^

However, the fact is that the two most influential
living critics in Germany at this hour, Holtzmann and
Pfleiderer, merely reproduce the theory of Strauss, and
certainly have added nothing of any consequence to
his fascinatingly lucid and persuasive presentation
of the case. This theory accounts for the large
admixture of the miraculous in the Gospels by the
familiar fact that there always grow up round the
figure of popular favourites incredible stories of

76 The Supernatural in Christianity

wonderful feats, marvellous escapes, and so forth.
The influence of this tendency in the human mind
had been quite perceptible in the early history of
Greece and Eome, and traditional stories had been
discounted and allowance made for the inevitable
incursion of the marvellous. The history of Jesus
was singularly liable to the influence of this myth-
forming propensity, because already in the Old Testa-
ment there abounded foreshadowings of what the
Messiah was to be, and the Jewish people cherished
in their minds an ideal to which the history must be
conformed. Those who had not known the actual
Jesus would necessarily ascribe to Him all that they
had expected the Messiah to be and to do. They would
unconsciously argue : " Such and such things must have
happened to the Messiah — Jesus was the Messiah :
therefore, such and such things happened to Him."
The Messiah was to be greater than Moses ; and as
Moses had given the people manna, Jesus must be
represented as feeding the hungry miraculously.
Elisha raised the dead; Jesus therefore must also
raise the dead. Jesus must have gathered up and
surpassed in His own life and deeds everything that
the ancient prophets had done and experienced. This
\ weaving of a garland for the popular hero was not the
work of premeditating deceit or of cunning invention :
it was the inevitable growth of the feeling of the
community.

Another influence was also at work. This influence
Strauss exhibits in the following words ; " Conceive a

Mythical Theory of the Gospels 77

-recently-established community, revering its founder
with all the more enthusiasm on his unexpected and
tragic removal from his work ; a community impreg-
nated with a mass of new ideas, which were destined
to transform the world; a community of Orientals,
chiefly unlearned people, who therefore could not
appropriate and express those ideas in the abstract
conceptional forms of the understanding, but only as
symbols and stories in the concrete fashion of the
imagination. When all this is remembered, one can
perceive that, under these circumstances, there must
necessarily have arisen what actually did arise, viz., a
series of sacred narratives fitted to bring visibly before
the mind the whole mass of new ideas started by
Jesus, and of old ones applied to Him, cast in the
form of particular incidents in His life." According
to this theory, it is the idea not the related fact that
is true. The eternal truths of Christianity are
embodied by the popular imagination in concrete
incidents and actions. The reported resurrection of
Christ was the rendering visible to the imagination,
and sealing on the mind, of the great truth that man
lives by dying. The narrative of the turning of water
into wine, to continue the festivity of the wedding
feasts at Cana, was merely a way of saying that, the
watery forms of Judaism were to be changed into the
strengthening wine of spiritual religion by Jesus.
Thus, although the fact disappears, the idea, the
eternal truth abides. And it is only the idea which
is of any acccount.

78 The Supernatural in Christianity

The difficulties in the way of accepting this theory
are enormous. First, It proceeds upon the idea that
the Messiah was expected to be a worker of miracles,
and therefore after the death of Jesus miracles were
freely ascribed to Him. But if during His life Jesus
had wrought no miracles, how did He come to be
acknowledged as the Messiah by persons who looked
for a miracle-working Messiah ? How was it possible
that men who were so persuaded the Messiah would
work miracles that they invented them for Him, should
recognise as the Messiah a person who wrought none ?
If without miracles the first step could be taken, and
they could be induced to believe in Him as the
Messiah, why could not the easier subsequent steps be
taken without the ascription of miracles ? Something
originated the idea that He was a supernatural person,
what was it ?

Second, It is not denied that Jesus Himself claimed
to work miracles. This admission seems to me fatal
. to the theory. To say that He was compelled to work
miracles against His inclination, is nothing to the
point. To say that He professed to work miracles, but
did not, is inadmissible. Whether a supernatural
person or not, He was sane and He was honest. But to
admit that He claimed to work miracles, and to main-
tain that He could not and did not, is to reduce the
purest, truest Being we know to the level of the
common charlatan. His own claim seems to me to
settle the question.

Third,The mythical theory must have been elaborated

Difficulties of the Mythical Theory 79

in forgetfulness of one of the most important factors in
the origin of Christianity — the Apostle Paul The
miracles ascribed to Jesus are accounted for by the
hero-worship of His followers : how are the miracles of
Paul accounted for? A mythical theory is here
impossible. If one is determined to exclude the
miraculous, he must have the hardihood to maintain
that Paul was again and again mistaken as to what
was happening under his own observation and in his
own experience. That, of course, does not deter those
whose postulate is the impossibility of. the miraculous ;
but it should deter them from advancing the mythical
theory to account for the appearance of the miraculous
in primitive records, — for here are records, the Epistles
of Paul, to which the theory cannot be applied.

Fourth, The fourth difficulty which prevents our
acceptance of this theory is that, admittedly, the
formation of myths requires some time. Thus Strauss
himself says : " It would most unquestionably be an
argument of decisive weight in favour of the credibility
of the biblical history, could it indeed be shown that
it was written by eye-witnesses or even by persons
nearly contemporaneous with the events narrated." *
If it can be shown that the Gospels faithfully embody
the primitive tradition, the observation and conviction
f of eye-witnesses, and that they are not the reflection of
the thoughts and fancies of the second generation,
then this theory falls to the ground. Hence the
efforts constantly put forth to bring the Gospels down

1 Life of Jesus, p. 55.

80 The Supernatural in Christianity

to a late date, and to deny to them the authority
attaching to the reports of eye-witnesses. It is usually
represented by this school of critics, that until the
year 70 the story of the life of Jesus was not written
down, but was at the mercy of oral tradition. But,
notoriously, oral tradition not only preserves, it creates :
each person that tells the story tries to tell it in a
sharper and more impressive form. And thus, as time
goes on, the story, in proportion to its popularity,
becomes distorted, and its last state is irreconcilable
with its original

It is essential, therefore, that we know the facts
regarding the origin of the Gospels. Are they, as
represented, the embodiment of an oral tradition which,
for a full generation at least, had been at the mercy of
popular fancy ? If this description can apply to any
of our Gospels, it must be to Luke's. Now, Luke has
fortunately given us a few words of preface, in which
he himself tells us something of his opportunities for
arriving at the historical truth. In this preface he
implies that he himself had not been an eye-witness of
what he records. But are we therefore to conclude
that he merely gathered together the current oral
tradition, and that therefore we have little or no
security for the truth of his narration ? Are we
to think of Luke as a youth of twenty or thirty years
of age, sitting down in the year 80 or thereby to com-
pile, partly from uncertified documents, partly from
current and popular stories, what we now accept as the
Third Gospel ? That certainly is the impression left

Origin of the Gospels 8 1

on the mind by the representations given by critics of
this school. But this is far from correct. Luke was
one of the most intimate of the companions of Paul —
the trusted, faithful, confidential friend of the men of the
first generation, and himself born certainly before the
year 30, probably before 20, and possibly much earlier.
He shows that he quite understood the value of the
testimony of eye-witnesses by the manner in which he
speaks of it ; he shows that he was aware that care-

1 fulness and accurate investigation were requisite in
narrating events which he himself had not witnessed ;
he tells us that he had carefully investigated all he
narrates, and he narrates it to impart assurance to
Theophilus. The accuracy of Luke is confirmed year
after year, by the discovery of inscriptions and of local
peculiarities by which his narrative in the Acts can be
checked, and it is now maintained by all who know
the subject at first hand that he is an accurate
historian.

One feature of this Gospel cannot escape observa-
tion. A full third of it, from the ninth to the \
eighteenth chapter, is a solid block of narrative not '
found in the other Gospels. This section of the Gospel
contains several of the most beautiful of our Lord's
parables and sayings, which, by their form as well as
their substance, are self-authenticating. So genuine a
record is this, that, not without plausibility, it has been
supposed to be the work of one who accompanied our
Lord at this period of His ministry. But embedded

in this genuine narrative are accounts of miracle. I
6

82 The Supernatural in Christianity

own to a feeling of disingenuousness if I proposie to
accept the one part of the narrative and reject the
other.

Further, an examination of the Third Gospel reveals
the fact that the writer made use not only of oral
tradition but of written material. Is it an incredible
supposition that some at least of the "many" nar-
ratives already in circulation were ten y^ars older
than Luke's own Gospel ? But if that is not only
credible, but most probable, then we are taken back to
a period when a considerable number of the con-
temporaries of Jesus were still alive and indeed in
their prime, and well able to contradict or to corroborate
accounts of what had taken place under their own:
observation.

Criticism is not as yet in a position to declare with
certainty the date of Luke's Gospel. Lower than the
year 80 a.d. it can scarcely be brought, but the latest
German criticism of the Gospel, published two or
three months ago (Hahn), maintains that it was
written by a contemporary of our Lord. And indeed
it is as open to any one to suppose it was written in
the year 60 as in the year 80. The second work of
the author, the Book of Acts, terminates abruptly, and
the obvious and simple reason for that abrupt termina-
tion is that, when the book was written, there was no
more to tell, that he had written it up to date ; in
other words, that he was writing in the year 63 or
64. No other reason has been assigned for its abrupt
close. Strauss follows the easier course of saying,

Composition of the Third Gospel 83

" The breaking off of Acts might have been the result of
many other causes." But he mentions none.

It is, therefore, a misrepresentation to say or to
imply that the Third Gospel is the mere embodiment
of an oral tradition which has been for a generation
at the mercy of popular fancy. It is the work of a
man who more than fulfils Strauss's requirement of
being " nearly contemporary," of a man who was the
companion of eye-witnesses, and who, as a careful
historian, knew the value of first-hand testimony.
That such a book, so composed, may have admitted
embellishments .is likely enough ; that everything here
narrated occurred precisely as it stands it might be
hazardous to maintain : but that it is little more than
a mass of myths is incredible.

In the present state of criticism, it is impossible to
speak with certainty of the origin of the First Gospel.
That the apostle by whose name it is still called had
something to do with its composition is tolerably
certain, but it is also certain that it passed through
more hands than his before it reached its present
form. Certainly we cannot accept all that we find in
Matthew's Gospel as the testimony of Matthew, i.e. of
an eye-witness. If criticism can prove anything, it
can prove that much that is in this Gospel was not
written by an eye-witness. At the same time, critics
who have an instinctive taste for style, such as Eenan,
admit frankly that the sayings of Jesus recorded in
this Gospel bear upon them irresistible marks of
authenticity. But many of these sayings affirm the

84 The Supernatural in Christianity

miraculous, and arise out of discussions regarding the
miracles wrought by Jesus. We have, therefore, in
this Gospel incontrovertible evidence that Jesus Him-
self believed that miracles could be wrought and were
wrought by Himself. Through these sayings we are
brought into the very presence of Jesus Himself,
and we find that both He and His contemporaries,
friends and foes, believed that He worked miracles.
No room is found for a mythical theory, for a theory
which says that the belief that the Messiah must have
wrought miracles grew up in the second generation,
and the Gospels reflect that belief. That belief
existed in the first generation.

But have we not in the Fourth Gospel precisely
the testimony demanded — the testimony of one who
lived on familiar terms with Jesus, who was with Him
from day to day during His ministry, who saw all
that He did, who had liberty to question Him about
all that He did, and who at length records for behoof
of others the incidents and sayings which had produced
in himself the conviction that Jesus was the Christ,
the Son of God ? This is denied, and of course must
be denied, by critics who are resolved to exclude the
miraculous. If the Fourth Gospel is from the hand
of John, the apostle and friend of Jesus, then what
Strauss calls a decisive weight is thrown into the
scale of historicity. Deliberate falsification is out of
the question, and is not suggested ; ignorance plainly
cannot be pleaded, and is not pleaded. The easier
course is chosen, and it is affirmed that this Gospel is

Authorship of the Fourth Gospel 85

not from the hand of that one only person to whom
it was ever ascribed in early times. Of course no one
now-a-days has so little regard to his reputation as to
ascribe it, as Baur did, to the year 170. That is no
longer possible. Every find of primitive literature
which has recently been made is a nail in the coffin
of these late dates, and forms one more link more
certainly binding this Gospel to the first century.
The current of criticism has set in strongly during
recent years towards the Johannine authorship. Still,
undaunted by the fact that the Gospel is quoted as
early as the year 125, Professor Pfleiderer bravely
holds the last post, and declares that the Gospel was
written about 140. But, one would say, a man of
learning and judgment, who knows all that has been
urged on the other side, must have some substantial
reason for declaring against the general voice. What
is his reason ? His reason is, that the governing
ideas of the Gospel belong to a system of thought
which only came into vogue in the third decade of
the second century. " In order to estimate correctly
the true value of this Gospel, we should not seek in
it a historical work, which it did not at all mean to
be, but it was a didactic way of writing which had
invested its theological thoughts in the form of a
life of Jesus." " The material of the evangelic tradi-
tion was only used to the extent that it was usable
for the didactic purpose of the theologian John ; the
discourses of the synoptic Jesus were completely re-
placed by dogmatic treatises which would have been

86 The Supernatural in Christianity

as incomprehensible for the companions of Jesus and
for His time and people as they were, in fact,
intelligible and useful for the apologetic theology of
the second century. Generally it was the experiences,
feelings, and interests of the Church of his time which
the evangelist saw typified in the life of Jesus." This
is as nearly as possible the reverse of the truth.
This Gospel could not have been written in the second
century. It is saturated with the atmosphere, the
thought, the mental movement of the first age.

Now, of course, this method of criticism is sound :
that is to say, it is the task of criticism to show the
relevancy of the contents of any document to the
thought of the age to which it belongs. A document
that claims to belong to the year 1750, and speaks
of the independence of the United States, is thereby
condemned as spurious. A scientific treatise claiming
to belong to the sixteenth century is recognised as a
forgery belonging to a much later age, if it speaks of the
origin of man, of heredity and of evolution, in terms
which have only come into vogue in our own day.
The question is: Does John speak in a language more
appropriate to the second century than to the first ?
Is his mind occupied with the ideas, controversies,
prospects of the first or of the second century ? Two
main subjects occupied the thoughts of Christian
people in the second century, the relation of the State
to Christianity, and the relation of Christianity to the
current Gnostic philosophy. The Apologies which
remain from that period, those of Justin, Aristides,

Literature of the Second Century 87

Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, being addressed to
heathen rulers or inquirers, are of an entirely different
character from the Fourth Gospel. This Gospel was
also an Apology, but in its framework and conception,
its contents and its language, it is as far removed as
well could be from the typical second century Apology.
None of the later apologists attempts a life of
Christ, or puts into His mouth discourses not
found in the canonical Gospels ; they fill their pages
with explanations of Christian belief and Christian
practice, and they defend Christians against the mis-
conceptions and calumnies current among the heathen
populace. One glance at them is enough to show
that they could not have been written in the earliest
period. Already the Christians are so numerous as to
have attracted the attention of the State ; the Church
has become fixed in its creed and in its practices.
Already it has a history. Place the Fourth Gospel in
the midst of that literature, and the incongruity is at
once apparent. The dullest critic must perceive at
once that this Gospel belongs to a different class of
literature, springs out of another atmosphere.

But there were other writers in the second century
besides the apologists. There were semi-Christian
Gnostics, continually spinning out of their brain
philosophies more or less related to Christianity.
These writers produced works of a very different
character from the Apologies, but with as little
resemblance to the Fourth Gospel. They use the
material furnished by the Gospels, and hereby prove

88 The Supernatural in Christianity

themselves to belong to an age lower than the primitive.
But with one of these, according to Professor Pfleiderer,
the Fourth Gospel holds an obvious relationship. It
is Basilides who is selected for the honour of inspiring
the writer of the Fourth Gospel. It is from Basilides
he borrows his dualistic opposition of light and dark-
ness, God and the devil. Occasionally, too, the errors
of Basilides are aimed at in the Gospel. John, e.g.,
departs from the synoptic tradition, and makes no
mention of Simon bearing the cross. Why is this
significant omission made ? According to this lynx-
eyed German criticism, it was made because Basilides
held that Simon not only bore the cross but suffered
in place of Jesus, while Jesus, in the form of Simon,
stood by and laughed at His enemies. But, concludes
Professor Pfleiderer, since the Basilidian gnosis only
emerged in the third decade of the second century,
the Gospel cannot well have been written before the
fourth decade.

Unfortunately for this theory, Basilides did not
hold the docetic view of Christ's person ; the story of
Simon had no place in the theory of Basilides, 1 who
explicitly admitted, unlike some other gnostics, that
the sufferings of Christ were real and indeed necessary.
And, still more unfortunately, instead of the Fourth
Gospel being indebted to Basilides, Basilides quotes
the Fourth Gospel, — quotes not words of our Lord,

1 Irenseus and Tertullian, it is true, sot to mention Epiphanius,
ascribe this belief to Basilides, but the much fuller and more accurate
account of Hippolytus, which is confirmed by Clement of Alexandria,
excludes it.

The Fourth Gospel belongs to First Century 89

which might have been handed down by tradition,
but quotes from the prologue written by the evangelist
himself. Instead, therefore, of the Fourth Gospel being
subsequent to Basilides, and belonging to the year 140,
it must have been earlier than he, that is, earlier than
the year 125, and therefore close upon, if not within,
the first century. Indeed, as Basilides certainly be-
longed to the third generation after Christ, that is, as
he certainly knew men and learned from men who
had themselves known Christ, it may reasonably be
concluded that he would not have quoted from an
unauthorised, fictitious Gospel, which had come into
existence in his own time.

Evidence of a similar kind has so rapidly multiplied
during recent years, that even the most cautious and
reluctant of critics have been compelled to push back
the date of the Fourth Gospel, until now it is wholly
exceptional for any one to deny that it may quite
well have originated during the lifetime of the
Apostle John. No scholar of the past or present
generation has been so familiar with the literature of
the second century as the late Bishop Lightfoot But
he is decidedly of opinion that this Gospel is from the
hand of the apostle. Professor Sanday has spent
many laborious years in investigating with the most
unbiassed of judgments, and the most thoroughly
scholarly equipment, everything connected with the
origin of the Gospels ; he now stands alone, whether
in Germany or in England, as an authority on this
subject : it is his carefully-formed conviction that the

90 The Supernatural in Christianity

Gospel is no reflection of second century ideas, and
could not by any possibility be such. 1 Add to this,
that the writer of the Gospel himself declares that he
was an eye-witness of what he relates : " He that saw
it hath borne record, and his record is true, and he
knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe."

Besides all this, there are what may be called
watermarks in the Gospel itself, which witness to its
being a careful record of facts. It is maintained that
the Gospel is not a history but a doctrinal treatise in
the form of a history, and that the doctrine it is
intended to expound and inculcate is the doctrine of
the Logos, or the Word of God. Is it not strange,
then, that the writer never once puts this designation
into the lips of our Lord Himself, although manifestly
this would have given an authority to His teaching
which it does not otherwise possess? Again, why
does he give the number of the fishes taken in the
miraculous draught ? Not, certainly, for any of the
absurd reasons of symbolism suggested by com-
mentators, but simply because he was a fisherman,
who must always count his take, and can never after
forget it ot abstain from mentioning it. In the other
Gospels the same marks of historicity exist. The
favourite title by which our Lord designates Himself
is, " the Son of Man" ; but this is a title never used by
His followers, and entirely displaced by the title " the
Christ " in the succeeding generation. Again, why, if
not from a regard to fact, do the Gospels put in the

1 Similarly Harnack.

Inadequacy of Mythical Theory 91

mouth of the demoniacs a designation of our Lord not
in common use, and represent them as calling Him
" Son of the Most High God " ? Instances of a similar
kind, which demonstrate that the Gospels are trust-
worthy records, may be multiplied ad libitum.

The theory, then, that the Gospels are rather the
reflection of the ideas of the second and third
generations after Christ, than trustworthy records, of
what He actually said and did, finds no support in
what is known of the origin, date, and composition of
the narratives. The attempt to loosen faith in what
they report by attributing to them a late date, and an
admission of much that is entirely fanciful, will be
abandoned by any one who for a while turns from
philosophical presuppositions and studies questions of
criticism. We have, at least, one Gospel from the
hand of an eye-witness, who, knowing the difficulty of
finding credence for the strange things he relates,
emphatically declares that he saw what he records.
To reject such testimony is to put ourselves out of
court altogether, and to lose hold of all sound guiding
principles of criticism. In another Gospel, as is
admitted by critics of all schools, there are embedded
reports of our Lord's sayings written down by one
who heard them, and in these reports it is again and
again implied that our Lord and His contemporaries
believed He wrought miracles. In the Gospel of
Mark, again, we have the stories Peter used to tell, as
his friend Mark used to hear and interpret them.
And in Lukes Gospel we have, from the hand of one

92 The Supernatural in Christianity

who has elsewhere proved himself a careful historian,
and who had been the companion of those who knew
our Lord, a digest of His works and words, compiled
from their reports and from written records. In all
these competent authorities for the history of Christ
the miraculous is freely narrated. If these accounts
are untrue, it is strange that of such a life we should
not have one true narrative. That each is accurate
in every detail we have no concern to maintain ; that
all are inaccurate, in what they consider the core of the
history, it is impossible to believe. That the trans-
mission of the story in an unwritten form should
occasion considerable divergence in details of time,
place, and circumstance, was to be expected ; but that
the entire complexion and most striking characteristic
of the life should suffer such change as to become an
entirely different thing, is simply not credible. That
myth should be absolutely excluded, and that no one
of the incidents narrated is touched by it, may be an
extreme position to assume ; but that the bulk of the
narrative, or any considerable portion of it, is mythical,
has certainly not been made out ; and this method of
accounting for the appearance of the miraculous may
be dismissed as incompetent

It may, however, be said that even granting that
the Gospels are in the main trustworthy, admitting
that they faithfully depict Christ's character, yet,
when they give us accounts of miracles, we must
draw the line at that point, and decline to follow
them, because not even the evidence of trustworthy

Huxley on Impossibility 93

men can impart credibility to the miraculous. It is
here where cautious critics at present entrench
themselves. Professor Huxley, e.g., will not affirm the
impossibility, but only the incredibility of miracles.
Recently he has made a remarkable statement to this
effect : " Strictly speaking," he says, " I am unaware
of anything that has a right to the title of an
< impossibility,' except a contradiction in terms. There
are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A
' round square/ a ' present past/ ' two parallel lines
that intersect/ are impossibilities, because the ideas
denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect, are
contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects,
square, past, parallel. But walking on water, or
turniDg water into wine, or procreation without male
intervention, or raising the dead, are plainly not
' impossibilities ' in this sense." It might, he thinks,
be otherwise if our present knowledge of nature
exhausted the possibilities of nature, but it is, he
says, " sufficiently obvious, not only that we are at the
beginning of our knowledge of nature, instead of
having arrived at the end of it, but that the limita-
tions of our faculties are such that we never can be in
a position to set bounds to the possibilities of nature."
And I own I cannot see why Professor Pfleiderer, or
any one else who holds a Theistic as distinguished
from a Pantheistic philosophy, is constrained to hold, or
can even consistently hold, the impossibility of miracle.
But Professor Huxley holds as strongly as Professor
Pfleiderer the incredibility of the miraculous. And

94 The Supernatural in Christianity

with his accustomed perspicuity, if scarcely with his
wonted sagacity, he puts the whole argument in a
nutshell, when he asks if any testimony would make
it credible that a centaur had been seen trotting down
Eegent Street. Now this illustration brings out with
precision the weakness of this position.

For (1) the centaur is itself a monstrosity. The
miracles of the New Testament are all on the plane
of nature. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick,
raising the dead, — all these are removals of obstruc-
tions which hinder nature from being the expression
of God's goodwill to man. They are hints of an ideal
state which nature will one day reach, accelerations of
her slower processes. So far from the truth is
Matthew Arnold's dictum, that "from the moment
that the comparative history of all miracles is a
conception entertained and a study admitted, the
conclusion is certain, that the reign of the Bible
miracles is doomed." So far is this from the truth,
that it is when you bring the miracles of Jesus into
comparison with the prodigies and portents of Greece
and Eome, that you more clearly than ever discern
the finger of God, and detect, perhaps for the first
time, the essential and distinctive character of the
works of Christ as truly revealing the God of the
nature we know.

(2) But, secondly and especially, the centaur is an
isolated phenomenon \ proceeding from nothing, going
no whither, accomplishing nothing, signifying nothing,
meaningless, irrelevant, incredible. The fact that a

Are Miracles Incredible ? 95

man of Huxley's sagacity should compare such an
appearance to the miracles of the New Testament is-
another warning to us to examine for ourselves,
another demonstration that able men may often be.
satisfied with but touching the surface of a subject.
The miracles of the New Testament were wrought by
a unique Person, by one who actually revealed God
and altered the world's conception of God ; they were
wrought as a part of that revelation, and they have
actually enabled men to think of God as merciful ;
they appear as the natural outcome of a manifesta-
tion, which had been prepared for and expected
through a long course of years. Between miracles
so embedded in the supernatural, so significant, so
congruous to the circumstances, . and trailing such a
history behind them, — and a centaur trotting down
Regent Street, where is the analogy ?

But it is precisely here where all assaults on the
credibility of the Christian miracles fail. The very
strongest evidence in their favour is their congruity
with the Person who wrought them, and with the
revelation in connection with which they were
wrought ; and this evidence is regularly left out of
account. In this respect, Matthew Arnold, who com-
pares them with the marvels recorded in Grecian
history, is as superficial as Huxley. Of course we
should find it difficult to believe in the resurrection
of Julius Csesar or of Trajan; but given a unique
person, a person already miraculous in His sinlessness,
and on whose resurrection the hope of the world de-

96 The Supernatural in Christianity

pended, and I find the incredibility immeasurably
diminished. Is it nothing in favour of the miracles,
that they were wrought for the accomplishment of
the greatest end that is to be served in this world?
Does it make them no more credible, that they were
relevant, significant, congruous, necessary ? The mir-
acles are Christ's miracles, and that makes precisely
all the difference.

But let us test the trustworthiness of the Gospel
narrative at its critical point. Each of the Gospels
tells us that after Jesus had been crucified, and His
actual death certified to Pilate, He was buried, but that,
after lying in the tomb two nights and a day, He rose
again, and was seen alive by many of His disciples, and
on several occasions. This, it is said, is incredible.
It is possible that He may have healed persons
afflicted with certain forms of nervous disease, much
may be believed of the impression He made by His per-
sonality, but that He appeared in a bodily form after
death is not to be believed. It is not doubted that His
followers thought they saw Him alive after He had
been buried, nor is it doubted that it was this belief
of theirs which carried their drooping faith in His
Messiahship, and produced the Christian Church. It
is admitted that the faith, the ideas, the institutions
of the Christian people, the faith which has brought the
most healthy influence the world has known, was based
on the Eesurrection. If the Eesurrection is a delusion,
then we must accept the consequence that what has
been best in human history is the result of a mistake.

Belief in the L ords Resurrection 9 7

That the disciples supposed they had seen the risen
Lord is admitted. It is admitted that " the astonish-
ing revolution, from the deep depression and utter
hopelessness of the disciples at the death of Jesus, to
the strong faith and enthusiasm with which they
proclaimed Him as the Messiah in the succeeding
Pentecost, would be inexplicable, unless something
extraordinarily encouraging had taken place, — some-
thing, in fact, which had convinced them of His
Eesurrection. But that this cause of conviction was
precisely a real appearance of the risen Jesus — that,
indeed, it was necessarily an external event at all —
is by no means proved."

Now, we may at once put aside some explanations
of this belief which were current sixty years ago, — as
that Jesus was never truly dead, but, being taken down
from the cross in a swoon, the unguents of burial
healed and revived Him. We may trust the Boman
soldier for knowing what a coup de grace was; and
we may also suppose that a pallid, almost dead,
scarcely recovered body, could not be mistaken by
the disciples for a risen, glorified Lord. Such ex-
planations have been put out of court by advanced
critics, because they are glaringly insufficient, and
damage their cause.

But also we may put out of court the discrepancies
in the Gospel accounts of the appearance of Jesus after
His Eesurrection. These discrepancies have been harped
upon to an extraordinary extent. What do they
amount to ? Do they discredit the narrative, so that
7

98 T/ie Supernatural in Christianity

we cannot accept their testimony to the fact of the
Resurrection ? On these terms we can have no history
at all. It is impossible to reconcile the discrepant
accounts we have of the signal given by Nelson at
Trafalgar, or of the time at which the battle began.
Are we therefore to conclude that there was no signal
and no battle ? The conclusion is monstrous, and can
only be drawn by those whose views of inspiration
require that they should reconcile every discrepancy.
The accounts vary in many particulars, but as to the
central fact that the Lord had risen, and had been
seen over and over again, there is no variation, and
such variations as there are, are merely such as exist
in all similar accounts of one and the same event by
different authors.

The disciples, then, believed they had seen the Lord
risen ; but the Lord had not risen — whence the belief ?
Stated in its most plausible form, the theory is that
the disciples, who before the Lord's death had believed
Him to be the Messiah, found themselves after His
death compelled to solve the contradiction between
the ultimate fate of Jesus and their earlier opinion of
Him. This they did by turning to the Old Testament
Scriptures, and applying to the Messiah whatever was
said about the man of God being bowed down even
to death. But when once they could think of the
Messiah suffering ignominy in death, they recognised
that, through death, He had but passed to Messianic
glory. But how could He fail, out of this glory in
which He now lived, to give tidings of Himself to His

Vision-theory of the Belief 99

followers ? And what more natural, when they read
the Scriptures, and found their hearts burn within
them as they gave them this Messianic interpretation,
than to conceive of this as the actual presence of
Christ conversing with them ? And how conceivable
is it that in individuals, especially women, these im-
pressions were heightened, in a purely subjective
manner, into actual vision. 1

This, then, is the theory which is supposed to account
for the belief in the Eesurrection, and for the foundation
of the Church. A few excited people, especially women,
thought they saw, because they wished to see, the
Lord. The belief created the Eesurrection, not the Re-
surrection the belief. The theory fails at every point.

1. Take the narration of the Fourth Gospel. What
convinced the writer of that Gospel that there had
been a Eesurrection ? Not an appearance of the Lord
to an eagerly expectant disciple, — not an appearance
of the Lord at all to any one, but an examination of a
tomb by matter-of-fact fishermen. Peter and John
were convinced, by the very simple method of entering
the tomb and finding it empty. They had not as yet
seen anything which they could mistake for their
Master ; neither had their informant, Mary Magdalene.
She was so little expecting a Eesurrection, that when
she saw the stone rolled away she merely supposed
the body had been removed to be disposed of else-
where. They were certainly excited when they ran
out to the sepulchre, but their excitement did not -,

1 So Strauss. \

ioo The Supernatural in Christianity

create a vision of their risen Lord, All that they saw
was an empty tomb and deliberately folded grave-clothes.
Here, then, the vision-theory utterly fails. One or two
persons, in a peculiarly excitable state, might suppose
they had seen a figure they very much desired to see,
but how the belief that the tomb was empty could be
merely imagined by men who actually entered it,
passes comprehension.

2. If the belief in the Resurrection was a delusion,
why was it not exposed at the time ? Hundreds of
persons must have visited the sepulchre during the
succeeding weeks. The apostles affirmed the Resurrec-
tion when they were brought before the Sanhedrim. Why

/ did not the authorities at once explode this nascent
I sect and dangerous heresy, by exposing the delusion on
\ which it was based ? Nothing was easier, if the body
of Jesus still lay in the tomb. Nothing was more
desirable or more desired. Is it credible that with
the means of quelling all disturbance and resistance
of their authority, with the means of justifying their
own conduct in the eyes of the people, the Sanhedrim
should not have used the opportunity which the
affirmation of a Resurrection put in their hands, and
at once and for ever have crushed this delusion ?

3. Although the vision-theory might explain how
one or two people believed in the Resurrection, it is
wholly inadequate to explain the belief of the entire
body of disciples. It implies that in a couple of days

. the belief of those who knew the Lord underwent an
s : : entire change ; that there was not among them one

The Vision-theory Inadequate ioi

hard-headed person who could distinguish v fact from
fancy; and that in the most important of cau&$'and
in a cause which imperilled their own' litfefc, * they
jauntily proceeded upon the delusion, and were never
thrown back on the fact. For it is remarkable that
the witness of the apostles was unanimous and con-
stant to the end. And yet this was all delusion.
These are the miracles, these are the incredibilities
which attach to this theory of the Gospel narrative.

It is, no doubt, possible that one or two persons
who were anxiously awaiting the Resurrection of Jesus
might persuade themselves that a sudden gleam of
sunshine or a passing figure was the looked-for person.
But what sane person, in a matter of such moment,
would accept that as proof, and not take further steps
to reach surer ground of belief? Besides, what we
have here to explain is how not one but several
persons, not together but in different places and at
different times, not all in one mood of mind but in
various moods, came to believe they had seen the risen
Lord. He was recognised, not by persons who ex-
pected to see Him alive, but by women who went to
anoint Him dead ; not by credulous persons, but by
men who would not believe till they had gone to and
into the sepulchre ; not by persons so enthusiastic and
creative of their own belief as to mistake any appear-
ance for Him they knew, but so slow to believe, so
scornfully incredulous of Resurrection, so resolutely
sceptical, and so keenly alive to the fear of being
deluded, that they vowed nothing would satisfy them

• • • • •

• • •

••• ••

• • •
• • ••

io2 Thfi Supernatural in Christianity

.: • •; : •: " -

.1: ••*.•".. &u£ theHfcslrbf touch and sight. It was a belief pro-

•..•••: .4 u ^d jiofcby: one doubtful and momentary appearance,
V :\ ."b\rt # by-repearted and prolonged appearances to those
who had every opportunity of applying what tests
they pleased to ascertain its reality.

It has been maintained by Strauss and his successors,
that the vision-theory receives strong confirmation from
the manner in which Paul speaks of the appearances
of Christ. In 1 Corinthians xv. he enumerates
the appearances of Christ after His Eesurrection, and
closes the enumeration by recording the fact that to
him also had been granted a manifestation of the
risen Lord. But, argue Strauss and Pfleiderer, when
he places all the earlier appearances in one and the
same line with that which he himself experienced, he
implies that they were similar in form to that closing
manifestation. But the manifestation to Paul was not
a bodily but a spiritual manifestation. The apostle
was convinced that he perceived a revelation of the
heavenly spirit-nature of Christ, in the form of a
luminous appearance. Therefore, " beyond all contra-
diction," says Pfleiderer, Paul thought of the appear-
ances to the first disciples as appearances not of a
risen body but of the heavenly Spirit of Christ. 1

Admitting that Paul considered that the appear-
ance to him was of the same nature as the appearance
to the rest, we precisely reverse the conclusion.
Pfleiderer's argument is : All these appearances were
of one kind ; but the appearance to Paul was purely

1 Urchristenthum, p. 6.

PauFs Belief in the Resurrection 103

spiritual, therefore those to the first disciples were
spiritual also. According to the evidence, the argument
should stand : All these appearances were of one kind ;
but the appearance to Paul was of a risen body, there-
fore what the first disciples also saw was a risen body.
That Paul believed he saw the Lord in His risen
body, is easily proved. In the passage to which allu-
sion is made, and in which Paul enumerates these
appearances, his purpose is to prove not the continued
spiritual existence of the Christian, but his bodily
resurrection ; and only a reference to the bodily Resur-
rection of our Lord would have been relevant; (2)
Besides, why mention His burial, unless it was His
bodily Resurrection he had in view ? His gospel, he
says, was that Christ died, and was buried and rose
again. Clearly it was a Resurrection of that which
was buried that he had in view. (3) In arguing
(1 Cor. ix. 1) that he was an apostle, he claims to
have "seen Jesus Christ our Lord." The principal
apostolic function was to witness to the Resurrection
of Christ, and in order to discharge this function it
was requisite that the apostle should, with his own
eyes, have seen the risen Lord. (4) In several parts
of his writings Paul lets us see that he considered the
body to be an essential part of human nature, that
redemption is not complete until the body shares with
the spirit in the renewing and perfecting work of
Christ's Spirit (vide Rom. viii. 23; Phil. iii. 10-21),
and that our Lord Himself only became perfect as our
Head, and the quickener of spiritual life in us, when

1 04 The Supernatural in Christianity

His body rose from the grave (Rom. i. 4 ; Col. L 18).
It is quite incredible that Paul should have conceived
of the glorified Messiah as a disembodied spirit. In
this case he could not have spoken of Him as the
Head or Life-source of the Church, the First-born of
the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-
eminence ; nor could he have called Him " the first-
fruits of them that slept." Neither expression has any
meaning unless we suppose that Paul understood that by
His Resurrection our Lord had been declared the Son
of God with power, having completed the curriculum of
human experience, and perfect in body as in spirit.

But the more difficult question remains : Is Paul's
belief that he saw the Lord proof that Jesus had risen
from the dead ? From Paul's belief that he saw
Jesus, can we infer that he did actually see Him ?
This conclusion is rejected as incompetent by such
critics as Renan, Weizsacker, and Pfleiderer. They
construe the incident of Paul's conversion in some
such way as this : Paul's mind was deeply exercised
with the question whether Jesus was the Messiah or
not. The glorified face of Stephen, as he saw the Son
of Man waiting to receive him, haunted his spirit.
Some of Paul's own relatives were Christians, and he
knew from their conduct, as well as from the bearing
of the apostles and others, that some extraordinary
spiritual influence was breathing through Jewish
society. A righteousness higher and deeper than that
of the law was being produced in the very men he
knew ; and . with one accord they referred this new

The Conversion of Paul 105

life to Jesus Christ. The passages of Scripture which
they cited to prove that the Messiah must suffer,
gradually found entrance into his mind. To his great
alarm, he found his conviction that Jesus was a deceiver
gradually loosening. He struggled, he kicked against
the goad that was driving him into the Christian
camp. He sought to drown conviction by plunging
into fresh persecutions, and silencing the voices that
tormented him. In pursuit of this purpose he obtained
commission to follow the Christians to Damascus ; but
the quiet of the journey was too much for him. As
he drew near the city, the debate that had been,
consciously or unconsciously, agitating him reached a
crisis. The credibility of the Christian testimony
flashed upon him; his spirit was illumined with a
blaze of light, which seemed to flow from the risen
body of the Lord. The vision was a projection from
his own mind, it was the embodiment of his own
slowly-won conviction that Jesus was risen and was
therefore the Messiah. In a word, the vision was the
result, not the cause of his conversion.

Such a construction of the incident is only weakened
by Pfleiderer's introduction of epilepsy, or by Kenan's
allusion to the fatigue of the journey. If Paul was
an epileptic, then he had often had fits before, and
must have known what to make of any visions so
induced. Besides, the visions of epileptics are of a
different character. The " epileptic " idea should be
cancelled.

Such a construction of the vision is certainly

106 The Supernatural in Christianity

plausible ; and it is possible to account for Paul's
conversion in this manner, while yet it is believed
that it was due to a Divine guidance of his mind and
the influence of Christ's Spirit. But the immediate
question is, not whether such a construction is possible
and is consistent with belief in Christ, but whether it
is correct.

Now there are several difficulties in the way of
its acceptance : — First, on each of the three occasions
on which the incident is related — and two of these
are reports of Paul's own account — it is explicitly
stated that not only Paul was affected by the vision,
but also those that were with him. Their terror could
not be the result of a process of conviction in their
own mind, but only of some external manifestation.
Second, had this vision stood alone, one would have
been greatly inclined to listen to an interpretation of
the scene which would seem to reduce its miraculous
character. But it is only one of several manifestations
of the risen Lord. It does not stand alone. And
unless we reject all the accounts we have of our Lord
appearing to the disciples, walking with them and
talking with them, we cannot reject Paul's account.

But no doubt the question ultimately is: What
weight are we to give to Paul's testimony ? Are we
lightly to put it aside as that of a nervous, excitable,
probably epileptic individual ? That is impossible.
He had visions frequently, it is said. Yes ; and the
common-sense way in which he puts himself on his
guard against being carried away by such things

PauFs Testimony to be accepted 107

reflects a strong light on his sobriety of mind. In
fact, no quality is more striking in Paul than his
entire and perfect sanity. On every occasion when
coolness, self-command, promptitude, physical and
mental fitness were required, these qualities were
forthcoming. Living in a state of society in which
old ideas were being subverted, and speculations and
proposals of every variety were rife, his was the one
clear and steady judgment and firm hand that brought
the ship of the Church through the turmoil and
hazard. In ordinary circumstances, one would accept
the account such a man would give of his own change
of mind. He understood the influences usually
moving men. His knowledge of men was wide,
practical, and accurate; and if any one quality is
discernible in his writings, it is a fearless frankness ;
and he never had but one account to give of his
conversion. He always maintained that he believed
Jesus was the Messiah, because he had seen Him
risen. He carried this belief through every kind of
circumstance that could compel him to test the reality
of it. He proclaimed it at once in Damascus, where
there were men to put him right if he was wrong.
He quietly reflected upon it for nearly three years in
Arabia, undisturbed and unexcited. Years made no
impression upon the brightness of that vision, nor upon
the depth of the conviction it had wrought in him.
He checked excitement in others, he rebuked the
tendency to be puffed up with visions and revelations ;
but not once did he apologise for his own conversion.

108 The Supernatural in Christianity

He threw away brilliant prospects, and accepted a life
of hardship, danger, and suffering, so sure was he of
the foundation on which he was building. He felt no
need of comparing notes with the older apostles and
the rest who had seen Jesus after His Resurrection :
his own vision was enough for him. He felt no fear
in returning to Jerusalem, where the facts were
known. I must say, I do not see how a mind so
sensitive to all reasonable appeal, so apprehensive of
truth, so quick to see the point of an argument, could
have withstood all that Gamaliel and his friends must
have plied him with, had he not gone over the ground
again and again in his own mind, and been quite sure
of his standing. Had they been able to prove to him
that Christ was not risen, had they been able to
dispel the illusion of a risen Christ, and to show him
that his vision was a dream of his own mind, no man,
I do believe, would have been quicker to see and to
own the point of what they urged than Paul.

But though all this went for nothing, the strongest
argument, the most convincing proof remains. There
remains that which drew to Christ His earliest,
most convinced, and steadfast followers, — His own per-
sonality. It is in Him that we meet the highest we
know. In His person, speaking human language,
mingling freely in human society, the world saw that
which permanently raised its idea of God. Seeing
Christ, it was God men saw, and saw Him to be more
and better than they had thought. But for any ma
to plan and carry through what might seem to be an

■1

Sinlessness of Jesus 109

incarnation of God, would prove itself to be an im- \
possible audacity. To begin as a human child, to
carry this idea through boyhood and youth, to exhibit
a life congruous to this idea amidst all the tempta-
tions, excitements, and exigencies of manhood, is
so impossible, that any one who attempted it would
betray, in constant failure, that he had both inade-
quately conceived the part and could only inadequately
play it. Inconsistency, extravagance, grotesque as-
sumption, unjustified claims and unfulfilled pretensions,
would betray the would-be incarnate one at every
point. But in Jesus there is no such betrayal. In
the judgment of generation after generation of godly
souls, He has perfectly fulfilled the part. God is
revealed in Him, and our hope of knowing God better
is our hope of knowing Christ better.

For to escape from the admission of the super-
natural at this point, by denying the sinlessness of
Jesus, is a sorry shift. He says to us, as to His
contemporaries, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin ?"
And this is the marvellous thing, that He, who by His
own purity most clearly detected the faintest taint 6t
evil, should Himself claim to be absolutely untainted.
All other testimony fades before this. We have the.
honest Peter frankly owning that his Master was nob-
as other men. We have Pilate washing his hands to
clear himself of the guilt of condemning the innocent.
We have Judas, who had marked Him with the
keenest scrutiny, and who would have welcomed any
excuse for betraying Him, sinking under his awful

.» •>

t

no The Supernatural in Christianity

guilt, unable to recall one act which might help to
justify him. We have his own brother James, who
himself was reverenced by all Jews as James the
Righteous, and who had grown up with Him through
all His boyhood and early manhood — we have this man,
who judged by the severest standard, and with whom
nothing was a claim to homage which did not come in
righteousness, and who knew Jesus with the intimacy
of a brother, speaking of Him as the Lawgiver and
Judge of men. But more than all, we have the voice
of Jesus Himself. The holier any one is, the more
clearly does he see his own shortcomings ; but with
Jesus there is no sense of sin, no penitence, no prayer
for forgiveness, no need of a Eedeemer. This is
the crowning, or, it should rather be said, the funda-
mental miracle — a miracl$ continuous, innate, and
inseparable from His own person ; a miracle unique,
separating Him indubitably from all other men, and
which makes all other miracles congruous and credible.
Is a miracle in the spiritual world less, or is it greater,
than a miracle in the physical ? Which is the more
divine, the turning water into wine, or the perfection
of character that is impervious to sinful thought or
desire? The one thing is as unexampled as the
other, as truly beyond experience.

What, then, are we to make of this sustained
spiritual miracle, inseparable from the person of
Jesus? Here is one who stands alone in the history
of mankind, who has also introduced and maintained
a new life and the highest conceivable type of

Miracle of Christ's Person 1 1 1

humanity. By His three years of manifestation, He
lifted the world once for all out of darkness into light,
and has become the source of life eternal to the race.
This, at any rate, is certain, that it is in His person
we most surely find God. It is here God speaks to
us most plainly, manifests Himself most indubitably.
Whatever difficulties remain concerning Christ's Per-
son, concerning the nature of God and His relation
to the world and to Christ, it remains certain that
in Him we meet God, and a God whom we can
reverence, worship, and serve. Where the intellect
gropes, stumbles, and falters, conscience leads straight
on. Great harm may be done by misconceiving the
Person of Christ ; but the greatest harm, and the only
unmitigated harm, is done when we deny that some-
how God is in Him, and in Him most of all.

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