LIBRARY
lUijrllffr (Collrgr
TORONTO
Shelf No. J&T ||6I
Register No IV
j
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
AND OTHER QUESTIONS
I WHY DOES NOT GOD
I INTERVENE ?
AND OTHER QUESTIONS
BY
FRANK BALLARD
D.D., M.A., B.Sc. (LOND.), F.R.M.S., ETC.
AUTHOR OF
THE MIRACLES OF UNBELIEF," " HAECKEL S MONISM FALSE," "THEOMONISM
TRUE," " THE TRUE GOD," " CHRISTIAN ESSENTIALS," " DOES IT MATTER
WHAT A MAN BELIEVES? " " NEW THEOLOGY," " GUILTY A
REPLY TO NOT GUILTY," " " THE PEOPLE S RELIGIOUS
DIFFICULTIES," " EDDYISM A DELUSION
AND A SNARE," " DETERMINISM FALSE
AND TRUE," ETC.
SECOND EDITION
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
1(0!
o (> i o
TO MY SON
ROBERTSON BALLARD
WITH THE PRAYER
THAT HE MAY PROVE WORTHY OF HIS
GREAT NAMESAKE :
AND MAY BE TRUE TO THE PRINCIPLES
OUTLINED IN THESE PAGES
PREFACE
THE questions considered in this volume are but a
few out of the unnumbered host which have always
exercised men s minds in regard to religion. Some
of them are very ancient, others more modern, all
are such as may be met with anywhere and every
where to-day. They all demand fair if not fresh
consideration in the light of our present knowledge.
No one needs to be told that Christian faith does not
consist merely in answered questions. But very
many who are comfortably housed in the Churches
do need to be reminded that questions of all kinds
are agitating, if not preventing, Christian belief, to
an extent never before known in Christian history.
And for the three plain reasons, that there are more
questioners ; there is more ability as well as more
liberty to question ; and there is much more both
around and within us all which drives men to ques
tion what has hitherto been generally accepted.
The ipse dixit of the priest no longer counts for any-
VI
PREFACE
thing. Even the authority of the Church is set aside,
or set at nought. Both these former methods of
silencing inquiry have had their day and ceased to
be. The modern world is coming back in religion
to the standpoint of the greatest Rationalist who
ever lived, whose claim to be heard and obeyed was
"Yea, and why even of yourselves, judge ye not
what is right?" Whatever may be the value of
intuition, simple trust, spiritual experience, upon
the method endorsed by that question of Jesus, and
upon no other whatever, turns the future of religion
for humanity.
"What is right," is confessedly a great and com
plex matter, requiring for its valid consideration all
that can be learnt from history, science, philosophy,
criticism, and practical life. No one age can settle
it for another. Even if adequate answers to all our
questionings could be fully supplied to-day, they
would not necessarily suffice for the next genera
tion. It is indeed not the fact of the answer, but the
act of answering which contributes most really to
moral character, alike in a man and for an age. It
is worse than useless for believers in these days to
lament the passing of the "ages of faith," when no
questions were asked, and no one was put upon his
mettle to answer them. The cry for the recurrence
PREFACE vii
of such a time is childish without being childlike ;
for childhood, we know well, flourishes best in a
veritable atmosphere of questions. The sigh for a
bygone unquestioning spiritual placidity, which
shall have no difficulties and feel no doubts, but
simply walk with sweet content "in the old paths," is
as unworthy as futile. It is as impracticable as to
desire that this our island shall not be broken up by
railways, or everywhere intersected by roads and
by-roads, but remain in the natural simplicity which
the ancient Britons knew. Such a land might suit
the naturalist and please the antiquarian, but modern
populations could not live upon it.
There is, after all, something better than the
sweet simplicity of an unquestioning faith, viz. the
ideal which the Apostle to whom Christianity owes
most set before the Corinthians " Stand fast in the
faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all you do
be done in love." A child in arms is truly a beauti
ful sight, but woe to the race if its babes do not
grow into something better and stronger. A man
who merits the name should be able and willing
rather to carry others, than be himself everlastingly
carried. So, in our day, the great need of Church
and world alike is not more " children " of God for
there is a sadly real sense in which we have too
viii PREFACE
many such already. It is rather men and women of
God who are needed ; able first to stand alone,
and then to help others ; evading no honest ques
tion ; denying no facts ; shirking no real diffi
culty ; neglecting no plain duty ; shunning no
rightful burden. But these cannot be grown
upon mere doxologies. They are never developed
by the complacent reiteration of pious platitudes.
Their souls have to be braced by cold winds of
difficulty, and their minds kept alert by shocks of
questioning. Fightings without and fears within
constitute the atmosphere in which their strength is
gained. Anguished perplexity of mind and bitter
disappointment at heart are found in the Geth-
semane through which they have to pass, before
honest doubt can issue in strong and potent faith.
Yet these are they who, more than any others, are
now wanted for the hastening of that better day
which any real Gospel must promise humanity.
A day, that is, when the Father s will shall be done
on earth as it is in Heaven, by giving every human
child at least a chance to make this life worth hav
ing, and thence another life worth hoping for.
On the great themes specified, the following pages
are merely suggestive. Exhaustive treatment of any
one of them would require the whole volume to
PREFACE ix
itself. Some little repetition of main points has been
unavoidable, in order to make each section complete
in itself. It is hoped that this will not demand
large apology. The various discussions do not pro
fess to be theological, though theology cannot be
excluded. They are not even original, for indebted
ness to others runs through the whole. Should it
be asked, as well it may, what then is the use of
another book on such well-worn themes, if it is
neither original nor exhaustive, the humble rejoinder
must be that suggestion may be helpful where com
plete solution is impossible. Every such sugges
tion, made in good faith, is at least a contribution
to the growth of the truth which is increasingly
needed in order to bring about the greatest blessing
of the greatest number.
Dr. W. N. Clarke has well said in his recent vol
ume on "The Christian Doctrine of God " a work
to which no greater praise can be accorded than to
say that it is on a level with his former " Outline of
Christian Theology " l " The moral question of God
and the world will always remain more or less
1 With deepest regret I learn, as these pages are passing through
the press, that this noble Christian teacher has passed from our
human midst. If my poor words shall serve no other purpose than
to direct others to the study of his invaluable works, as specified, I
shall be sufficiently rewarded.
b
x PREFACE
a mystery to men. Short solutions of it have
abounded. But they are too short and easy." No
such vain hope as a "short and easy" solution is
here contemplated. It will more than suffice if only
some few fellow-questioners are helped, and fellow-
workers enheartened ; whilst honest doubt is frankly
met, and the unbelief which does not want to believe
is ruled out of account. The most accomplished
theologian is but a feeble groper amidst overwhelm
ing immensities, and according to the degree of his
intellectual honesty he will acknowledge in the end,
So runs my dream, but what am I ?
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
Those who most sincerely believe that Jesus Christ
is in very deed the much-longed-for "Light of the
world," will most truly learn from Him genuine
humility amid their rejoicing, and boundless charity
along with their well-grounded hope.
FRANK BALLARD.
HARROGATE, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? .... 3
CHAPTER II
DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN CONTRADICT THE LOVE OF
GOD? . . . .31
CHAPTER III
WHAT is THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? . . . . 67
CHAPTER IV
WHAT is IT TO BE SAVED? 95
CHAPTER V
HOW DOES THE BlBLE STAND TO-DAY? . . . I2Q
xi
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING THE MODERN APPRECIA
TION OF THE BIBLE? 163
CHAPTER VII
Is THERE ANY HEREAFTER ? . . . . -199
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT is THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 227
CHAPTER IX
WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES WORTH TO THE
MODERN WORLD? . . . . . 2 59
CHAPTER X
WHAT is THE REVIVAL MOST NEEDED IN CHRISTEN
DOM ? 305
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
" I remember God and am disquieted." PSALM LXXVII. 3.
" Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself." ISAIAH XLV. 15.
" Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died."
JOHN xi. 37.
" My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? "
MATT. xxvu. 46.
" These five years have been years of the most ruthless oppression. A
Russian of the Russians, M. Stolypin has assailed every one of the minor
races of the empire. The destruction of the Finnish Constitution is but
one instance, though the most conspicuous and offensive. In Russia
itself, however, as the revolution subsided, the repression became more
fierce. The field courts-martial were kept hard at work, and every day
some score of people were hanged within twenty-four hours of a mock
trial. Hosts of men and women were sent to Siberia and Arctic Russia by
mere administrative order without trial, and without even a knowledge of
their offence. Not merely students and intellectuals, but workmen and
peasants were dispatched to a living grave, simply because they were
suspected of disturbing opinion. The prisons were full to overflowing,
and their inmates huddled in the corridors and passages were swept away
by disease. In 1909 the gaols of Russia, constructed to hold only 170,000,
contained more than 180,000 people." " DAILY NEWS."
" Without being a sceptic or an agnostic, one may feel that there are
questions in the world which never will be answered on this side of the
grave, perhaps not on the other. It was the saying of an old Greek, in
the very dawn of thought, that men would meet with many surprises when
they were dead. Perhaps one will be the recollection that, when we were
here, we thought the ways of Almighty God so easy to argue about."
DEAN CHURCH.
" Science seems to me to teach, in the highest and strongest manner, the
great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire sur
render to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be pre
pared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and
to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
T. H. HUXLEY, " Life and Letters ".
CHAPTER I
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
IT is not so long since, at one of our largest railway
stations, a father in a paroxysm of rage, flung his
child before the wheels of an incoming train, with
the ghastly result that all four limbs had to be
amputated in the discharge of the surgeons sacred
duty of preserving life. Whether it would not have
been more humane to let the poor little life ebb out
under an anaesthetic, may here be left an open
question. The unutterable horror of the tragedy
remains appalling beyond tears, wicked beyond in
vective. Yet to say that it is harrowing, is far from
the whole truth. It is much worse. It is typical.
It is but a gruesome pointer to all those other
tragedies of earth which equal it in ghastly quality,
whilst in quantity they are incalculable. Who of us
dare face them in all their horrible reality ? Can
we be surprised that the unbeliever, possessed full
often of quite as keen a mind and tender a heart as
the believer, should ask with sincere insistence,
Where was the God of love to permit such fiendish
cruelty to be wrought upon a helpless child ?
"Would you," he demands, " if you are a father,
allow one of your children so to treat another ?"
Then further, whilst our tongues are tied by sad
dened perplexity, he bids us not forget all the rest.
As if we ever could ! Who in days when news
papers live by circulating with utmost haste all earth s
most dreadful happenings needs reminding of the
tragedies that stand out in such lurid pre-eminence?
4 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
How can we dismiss from thought the recent burn
ing of the vessel on an American lake, wherein
hundreds of Sunday School children perished who
were assembled under the very assurance that God
loved them every one ? Or is that great country
ever likely to forget how some of its noblest men
have died ? Why indeed, they may be forgiven for
asking, did not God intervene to turn aside the
bullet that ended the noble work of Abraham
Lincoln ; or why not protect the scarcely less lofty
patriotism of Garfield and McKinley ? Or, if we
go a little farther back in the history of another
land, and dare to think of Cawnpore, is there an
Englishman living who does not shudder at mention
of that name, or who would not certainly have given
himself and all he had to have averted its indescrib
able hell of woe ? Yet it cannot be denied that the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, in the name of the
Christian religion, was even worse. Whilst as re
gards the quantity and quality of human suffering
brought about by man s inhumanity to man, even
that dire event pales before the recollection of the
bloody persecutions, again and again renewed, by
which pagan Rome sought to destroy early Chris
tianity. As for the immeasurable horrors of the
wars which have made earth s fairest fields into a
revolting slaughter-house, nothing need be said,
because nothing can be said that even approaches to
the truth. It was most nearly summed up in a word
by one of the greatest generals, when he declared
with awful simplicity "war is hell".
When all that is here suggested is honestly faced,
even for the briefest moment, we cannot wonder
that one of the most thoughtful writers on religion
in modern light, should speak of the dire total as
constituting " the great objection " to Christian be
lief. " Broadly stated," he says only too truly, " the
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 5
objection is that this world which we know, is a very
hard world in which to believe in the good God
whom the Christian doctrine sets forth as the one
God of all. Experience cries out against the belief.
Facts condemn it." J Of a truth it is easy enough in
human life to play the gnat or the butterfly, as it is in
the world of mind to be content with the "topmost
froth of thought," and in religion to be an " incor
rigible optimist " by looking persistently only on the
sunny side of things. But quotations are not needed
to remind us that prophets, and seers, and psalmists,
and apostles, have shown a truer and therefore
nobler spirit. They have " faced the spectres of the
mind " without flinching, and have laid them with
open not with blinded eyes. When everything is
said, the chief virtue of all is honesty. Be it bright
or dark, truth is that which must be faced, if man
hood, let alone religion, is to be maintained. No
man can be honest in face of the plain facts of human
existence without being, sometimes at least, shocked
beyond expression, and staggered almost to over
whelming.
The problems involved are, indeed, in a very real
sense, worse for the believer than for the unbeliever.
What did the Psalmist mean when he groaned aloud
" I remember God, and am disquieted " ? The
general tenor of religion, even in his day, was rather
that one should be quieted by the thought of a God
who would take care of the righteous and punish the
wicked. Yet the Psalmist did but voice the heart-
wrung cry of myriads since, whose worst difficulties
have arisen from their belief in God. It is the re
membrance of God which constitutes the very core
of the tragic problem. For as a modern theolo
gian has well put it " Between freedom and fate,
1 Dr. W. N. Clarke, " The Christian Doctrine of God," p. 431.
6 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
between a personal God and blind chance, between
faith in prayer and trust to luck, we are bound to
choose. Only the short-sighted and superficial mind
can find a resting-place between these two opinions."
Plainly, if chance and luck rule the universe, there
can be no shock or difficulty concerning anything
that happens. For the unexpected is in such case
necessarily the expected. But faith in God inevit
ably brings an expectation of its own. Belief in
the Divine Fatherhood cannot but compel the ex
pectation that God will behave towards men as a
father should. Our own fatherhood ever begets
such an expectation from our children. If a father
be walking with his child beside a river, and the
little one fall in, every man with a heart would ex
pect the father to plunge in to the rescue. Refusal
would be pronounced inhuman. Still further, if by
holding the child s hand the father could prevent the
falling in altogether, should we not all expect him
so to do ?
Yet what do we find in actual human life ? On
the one hand, from the Christian standpoint, we have
Christ s own emphatic assurance " the very hairs of
your head are all numbered " an unmistakably far-
reaching figure of speech. On the other hand, we
are surrounded, buffeted, staggered, overwhelmed,
with such palpable contradictions to this assurance,
that we are left practically shorn of its comfort, and
sometimes hopelessly wrecked on rocks of doubt and
difficulty. The famous autobiography of Mr. John
Stuart Mill does but express the dread nemesis of
faith which has happened to very many, from con
templation of the actual facts of human existence.
It cannot be denied that these facts exhibit instances
in which every reasonable expectation of what
omnipotent love would do, both to prevent evil and
to ensure good, appears to be contradicted. It is
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 7
equally certain that this apparent contradiction must
and does weigh upon the minds and hearts of men.
The Psalms are our witness how keenly those who
believed in God felt it in olden time. It is small
wonder that in our day the broader outlook, along
with the intensified sensitiveness of advanced civil
ization, should cause the modern man to lose heart
of hope and make shipwreck of faith, in face of th(
world-wide problem of pain and evil.
What then can be said from the standpoint of be
lief, in unevasive answer to the plain question Wh}
does not God intervene to prevent the evil and bring
to pass the good ? At least something must be said.
" No presentation of the Christian doctrine of God
can be satisfactory, that does not consider the great
objection," truly writes Dr. Clarke. For men of
mind who are warranted in demanding reasons for
faith, as well as for those who do not wear their
hearts upon their sleeve but are none the less troubled
within, some answer must be found, if belief in a
Heavenly Father is to remain as the distinctive Good
News of the Christian religion.
The first step towards any such answer is the
sharp differentiation in thought of the problem of
evil from the practically inseparable mystery of pain.
It is quite impossible to disentangle them in daily
life, or to keep them long apart in earnest scrutiny.
But in order to clear the way for certain great con
sequences, we may and we must always distinguish
between the suffering which involves, and that which
does not involve, the human will. The former may,
in general, be termed evil, the latter, pain. Evil, to
be evil, must be what is known as " moral evil " ;
i.e. it must and does involve the action of a will dis
tinct from the divine will, free enough to act inde
pendently of and contrary to the divine. Only such
definite action, consciously contrary to known right,
8 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
can constitute evil as distinct from pain. Unmea
sured confusion of thought and speech is continually
caused by failing to maintain this distinction.
The question may indeed be asked, why an omni
potent and all-loving God does not intervene in regard
to both. But the answers which are warranted by
reason and faith are in each case so different, that
it is really necessary first to confine attention to the
former, as being so much the greater that the latter
becomes small by comparison. The problem of evil
is, in fact, doubly greater than the mystery of pain.
For even if men are irreligious enough to care only
for the latter, on philanthropic lines, it must be
affirmed, roundly but with tragic truth, that seven-
tenths of the suffering of humanity is due to moral
evil. Eliminate this, and earth would be almost a
Paradise. But until theism is proved irrational, the
yet deeper mystery remains as to how benevolent
Omnipotence can create or permit the existence of
beings capable of thwarting its own unmistakable
purposes. "We cannot assert," says a modern
thinker, "in the same breath, the reality of evil and
the fact of creation by an omnipotent and benevolent
being." 1 Whether we can assert it or not, two
things are clear. Evil is here in our midst ; and the
only God worth thinking of is One who is omnipo
tent, omniscient, and benevolent. What we are
driven then to ask is Why such a Being, if He ex
ists, does not intervene to prevent all the welter of
human woe which has been known in the past, is
ever continuing in the present, and shows little sign
of diminishing for the future, through the wrongful
exercise of the marvellous powers with which man
has been endowed.
(i) If succinctness could be sufficiently clear, the
1 Mr. St. George Stock, " Hibbert Journal," July, 1904.
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 9
question why, in such cases, does not God intervene,
may be answered in a word. Because He cannot.
We may say it with bated breath, for reverence s
sake ; none the less it is the plain even if it be the
awful truth. In cases beyond all enumeration it is
the only explanation, alike of the misery of men and
the sorrow of God. Unbelief, confessedly, is not con
cerned with the latter. But Christian theism is ;
and can never afford to leave it out of account.
Jesus wept, we are told, as He looked upon Jeru
salem. Unless His tears were maudlin mockery,
they signified not only His sorrow but His impotence.
"How often would I, and ye would not." If, then,
He truly represents to men the Fatherhood of God,
divine impotence and divine sorrow in face of most
human woe, are equally real and inseparable. And
the reason of both is in the simple fact that men are
men. Men, not marionettes ; persons, not things ;
human beings, as distinct from animals. How men
have become such, does not here concern us. Evolu
tion, as the method of creation, no more affects the
reality of human free agency, than the undoubted
derivation of each individual from a foetus in embryo
affects the intelligence of the reader of these pages.
Nor is it at all required at this juncture, that we
should enter into the intricacies of what is known
as the " free will controversy ". Our own conscious
ness is sufficient witness that, in Mr. Mallock s words,
"The individual spirit, though evolved from universal
spirit, and dependent on it, nevertheless possesses
an autonomous moral will of its own ". Then the
" crux of theism " as he also puts it is to show " that
the universal spirit, though producing individual
spirits under conditions seemingly incompatible with
anything but the misery of most of them, is never
theless consumed with an equal love for all V
1 " Hibbert Journal," April, 1905.
io WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
Such a statement of the case is indeed pitifully
one-sided, and so far false. But for the moment we
may accept the " seemingly " as sufficient pretext for
such assumption. We then face all that is real in
" the misery of most " men, with the plain assertion
that it constitutes no "crux " at all. For it is always
in spite of, not because of, the " equal love for all "
which Christian theism assumes. No emphasis
can be sufficient to put upon this distinction. Allow
ing for the imperfection of inevitable anthropomorph
isms, it is enough to say that the helplessness of
God is the real and valid explanation of His non
intervention in most human misery. The usual and
hackneyed reference to omnipotence is altogether ir
relevant. For it never was, is, or will be, the part of
omnipotence to attempt the unthinkable. Granted
that men are sufficiently free to be moral, i.e. to know
right from wrong, and be capable of doing either,
and it ceases to be in the power of omnipotence to
prevent the doing of wrong, just as truly as to com
pel the doing of right. For compelled right is as
unthinkable as a prevented free being. Either sug
gestion involves flat contradiction in terms. It is
open to any genuine thinker to ask why moral beings
should be created. But it is not open to him, or any
one possessed of reason, to demand that a moral
being should be " restrained " from evil, for that
would be tantamount to insisting that a round should
at the same time be square.
Take but one common instance out of the terrible
mass. Mr. W. E. Gladstone was no blatant temper
ance orator, but he declared before the highest court
in this land, with a full sense of his responsibility
upon him, that "greater calamities are inflicted upon
mankind by intemperance, than by the three great
historical scourges, war, pestilence, and famine ".
Well might he add that this fact is "the measure of
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 11
our discredit and disgrace ". But where discredit
and disgrace apply, divine intervention is ruled out
of thought. Disgrace can only attach to a free agent.
And a free agent cannot be compelled. If a man
wills to fling away body and soul, life and love, for
drink, or lust, or greed, God could only preventively
intervene by destroying his manhood. But such
intervention would be sheer self-contradiction on
His part, and this human reason can never have any
right to expect from the Divine nature.
(2) If the above be true, logically no further ex
planation is called for. If God cannot intervene to
prevent human evil with its consequent suffering,
without contradicting Himself, no rational thought
can insist upon that. But the very fact that it is so,
merits further consideration. To a really troubled
mind, such a plea might savour too much of a logic-
chopping subterfuge. It might also be suggested
that even if the will of a moral being cannot be con
strained, yet after the exercise of that will, loving
omnipotence might intervene to prevent the dire
consequences which naturally follow upon evil voli
tion. Could not God who, we say, is immanent in
all nature, have caused the poor child to have fallen
out of the reach of the engine s pitiless wheels ? In
view of Abraham Lincoln s nobility of character
and devotion to justice, could not God easily have
deflected the murderer s bullet ? Could He not have
smitten the butchers of Cawnpore with paralysis ?
Could He not have repeated on behalf of the inno
cent Christians thrown to Nero s lions, what is said
to have happened in the case of Daniel ? In a word,
could He not always intervene between a wicked
will and its natural results of unmerited suffering ?
Could He not have rescued Jesus from Calvary ?
To all which, the honest unevasive answer must
be Yes, He could. There is nothing unthinkable
12 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
in such intervention. Even if every such interfer
ence with the natural consequences of human voli
tion definitely involved a miracle, it is only a belated
science which talks now about the impossibility of
the miraculous. The question in this case ceases to
be what omnipotence could do, and becomes rather
what omniscient benevolence should do.
Two things at least are clear on the threshold of
any rational reply : (i) That we are living under a
regime of law. (ii) That, on the whole, the laws
which hem us in on every side are working for our
good. These are plain facts which require no argu
ment in their support The laws of nature if they
are laws at all and not mere casual sequences are
the manifestations of the will of an all-immanent
God. That He is also transcendent enough to be
able to counteract them, should He see good reason
to do so, may be conceded. But to ordain for high
and holy purpose that such and such results should
follow such and such conduct, and then intervene
perpetually to prevent those very results, would
again be unmistakable self-contradiction on His
part, which may, as such, be dismissed from thought.
God who is always expressing Himself in laws
cannot rationally be called upon to exhibit Himself
by contradicting those laws. Whether there may
ever be special cases such as "miracles " in which
He may, in ways unknown to us, overrule what we
know as ordinary natural law, for a transcendental
purpose, may here be left an open question. Such
exceptions could only confirm the benevolence of
the rule for all humanity, that we should be under
law, not chaos, nor caprice. For laws are so de
signed and may so be known, appreciated, and
obeyed, as to ensure the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. But government by ceaseless
interferences could yield no rule of conduct, no
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 13
guarantee of good from virtuous living, any more
than warning of ill from the pursuit of vice. Such
conditions might constitute an environment suited
to the lower animals, but could never conduce to
the advancement of moral beings. If human life is
to be made worth living, certainly if there is to be
any prospect whatever of upward evolution, nothing-
is more needed than the solemn reminder of the
reality and resistlessness of those natural laws
which serve all men to the uttermost when they
obey, but ruthlessly punish when they disobey. It
is absolutely necessary for our very existence, and
even more so for our highest well-being, that we
should understand, and if need be learn through
suffering, that in this universe there is a mightier
Will than ours. And that this Will is as righteous
as powerful, as awful as benevolent, and can no
more be trifled with than turned from its purposes
of love towards us. God does not, therefore, inter
vene between us and the consequences of our voli
tions, because there is something for our whole race,
better than intervention, and that is moral govern
ment.
(3) It is only under moral government from
which, as the all-prevailing rule, intervention is
excluded, that the most noble and most precious
element in our being can be developed, viz. the
possibility of moral character. On a smaller scale,
which is none the less true for being homely, we
see it without room for doubt. Why does not
every father intervene to prevent his boy at school
from being punished when he has done wrong ?
We need not pause to ask whether any wise and
benevolent schoolmaster would tolerate such inter
vention. Would any true father desire it? We
know that he would not. And we know why.
Any intervention between wrongdoing and its
14 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
consequence, would practically reduce right to a
level with wrong. In so doing it would annihilate
the educational value of the school for all connected
with it, besides making character impossible for the
individual boy. To call such an intervention, there
fore, love, would be but to blaspheme. It would be
hate, not love ; and would bring no blessing, but a
curse. There ought to be no question that the
noblest element in human nature is the possibility
of making moral character. This of necessity in
volves the possibility of doing wrong no less than
right. Whence it cannot but follow that the only
way of keeping a moral being from the wrong and
training for the right, is to attach penalty which
cannot be avoided to the former, and reward which
cannot be mistaken to the latter. What may be in
other worlds, we neither know nor need to know.
In this world, human nature being what it is, the
truth is too plain to call for discussion, that only by
means of a moral law which first bids us not be
deceived "God is not mocked, whatever a man
sows that will he also reap " and then carries
itself out in unprevented and unpreventable penalty
when violated, can there be any such upward
evolution of character as will lift and keep humanity
above brutality.
(4) The fullest appreciation of this principle is
perhaps only derived from taking large views of
human affairs, and surveying on a broad scale the
issues involved. That is really the lesson of the
whole Bible, more especially the Old Testament,
when rightly understood But there are object
lessons in overwhelming abundance to substantiate
it every day we live. The popular notion that a
world entirely devoid of pain, and without any
possibility of evil, would be a great improvement
upon this of which we form part, is but a superficial
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 15
and childish delusion. Its utmost result would be
a world full of non-moral animals. These might,
indeed, after their fashion, be happy ; but a century
of such happiness would not deserve to be compared
with one hour of the moral triumph which is pos
sible to every true man.
It is often said, with much emphasis, that moral
evil is a vast and insoluble mystery. But there are
good reasons for affirming that it is not, after all,
so great as it seems. The question is ultimately
simple, viz. is a race of moral beings higher, nobler,
worthier, or not, than a non-moral race ? If not,
there is nothing left to discuss. But if it be, then
the possibility of morals must involve the liberty to
do wrong as well as right. Prof. Huxley s well-
known offer, "The only freedom I care about is the
freedom to do right, the freedom to do wrong I am
ready to part with on the cheapest terms to any one
who will take it of me " would be sheer self-con
tradiction if it were serious, as the erudite Professor
well knew. If, then, to justify real benevolence,
divine intervention to prevent the natural conse
quences of wrongdoing were required in any one
case, it would be equally so in all. But if in all,
there is an end of moral government, together with
all its possibilities of character-development in the
education of a race.
The modern Eddyism which so unwarrantably
calls itself "Christian Science," would settle every
difficulty by a very simple formula. "God is all;
and God is good ; therefore all is good. Therefore,
of course, there is no evil." It would be difficult to
frame a more misleading statement, or to say which
is the more false, the premiss or the conclusion. Each
is hopelessly wrecked upon the rock of fact. As
suredly honest observation makes us know, with
only too tragic sureness, that there is evil in this
1 6 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
world. And undeniable experience also asserts that
God is not "all," so long as I am I. For God is not
I, any more than I am God. Yet further ; the true
assertion that God is good, carries with it no warrant
whatever for avowing that goodness towards hu
manity means always the prevention of suffering.
Personal experience, no less than world-wide and
age-long observation, shows unmistakably that suf
fering may not only accompany but even be the
means of the highest and noblest moral character.
(5) But the very largest scale on which the prob
lem of divine non-intervention can be viewed in
this world, is far from large enough to do justice to
the truth. The solidarity of this little planet of ours
with the whole solar system is not more surely an
axiom of science, than it is a principle of Christian
philosophy that our moral history is bound up with
that of the universe at large. There is no small
danger of a far too narrow terrestrial provincialism,
when we set ourselves to think of the vast problems
of divine government. If God be God the only
God worth thinking of, according to Christian
theism He is the same throughout the hundred
million suns to which astronomy points, whose dis
tances from us make our reason reel, as in our earthly
midst. The moral law which rests ultimately on
His holy will, must be everywhere and evermore the
same, whatever enlargements or modifications of
natural law may be possible under conditions un
known to us. This world s order, therefore, alone,
can never give us the truly complete view of the
divine government. That which seems to us in the
dim light of this terrestrial speck a contradiction to
divine benevolence, may well, in fuller light of the
universe of suns, be seen to be a necessary part of
a larger order as far beyond our present powers to
apprehend, let alone criticize, as the complicated
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 17
extent of some vast modern business is beyond those
of its owner s little child. The very least that can
be said, on rational equally with religious grounds,
is that in this case suspense of judgment must ever
befit us, rather than hasty and sweeping condem
nation. The old seer s words take on to-day an
emphasis of which he never dreamed " Lo these
are but the outskirts of His ways ; and how small a
whisper do we hear of Him. But the thunder of
His power who can understand."
(6) In the end, however, it must be frankly ac
knowledged that the question why does not God
intervene to prevent wrongdoing or its conse
quences, becomes an individual problem. We talk
of crowds, and masses, and the race, but from the
standpoint of sin and suffering there are no such
things. A sinning crowd is as unthinkable as a
suffering race. For good or ill, for weal or woe, it
is irresistibly appointed to human beings to live
apart. To each man, each woman, each child, there
is a world of self-consciousness as absolutely distinct
from all other as real in itself. The planets that
compose our solar system are not more discrete,
than is the whole experience of a father from that
of his child, or of a friend from that of his friend.
Husband and wife, brother and sister, lover and
beloved, may embody the very closest of earthly
relationships. But they are separate units of con
sciousness which never fuse, nor ever really enter
into each other s world. " Every heart knoweth its
own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not
with its joys." Never were truer words uttered
either by poet or philosopher. It is here that all
questions relating to the interposition or non-inter
position of providence find us most keenly. It is
here that " the providence of interventions " comforts
us one moment, only to crush us the next. But as
i8 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
we all know that painful experience is likely to be
more intensely felt and longer remembered than
pleasurable, it is the more necessary to point out
that besides the acknowledged inexplicableness of
some individual cases, there is a real element of
inspiration even in the providence of non-interven
tions. At first glance it may well seam otherwise.
The truth that " God is no respecter of persons,"
has a tragically bewildering side to it. In well-
chosen words the late Dr. W. N. Clarke thus
expressed it :
" Endeavours to interpret life as under a pro
vidence of interventions do not satisfy the hope
that has been built upon them. It does not
prove to be true that occurrences can be relied
upon to accord with the character of those whom
they affect. Taking the world through, one
man is not safer than another from lightning or
disease, except as intelligent precaution renders
him so. Both the equalities and the inequal
ities of life refuse to be classified in terms of
moral character. Many a heart has been well-
nigh broken in coming to the point of making
the acknowledgment, but at last it has to be
acknowledged that the doctrine of a protective
and punitive providence does not correspond to
the facts of life. Nothing but the most flagrant
injustice is the result, if we attempt to explain
the misfortunes of life as punitive. The theory
does not work."
The classical comment upon this true protest is,
of course, the book of Job. But no commentary is
needed, for we all see it and feel it. Jesus Himself
acknowledged it in regard to those " on whom the
tower in Siloam fell," as well as the Galileans who
were Pilate s victims. It is staggering, overwhelm-
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 19
ing beyond all expression, to remember that each and
every wife and mother in Cawnpore s awful hell of
carnage, possessed an individual separate conscious
ness of suffering which could not possibly be assigned
as punishment for wrong. To call to mind the inno
cence of every man and woman and child savagely
despatched in St. Bartholomew s infernal slaughter,
to say nothing of other religious persecutions, blinds
our eyes and crushes our hearts.
Yet if for a moment we can waive the horror of it
all, nothing whatever is left to disprove the counter
truth to that enunciated above. If God be no re
specter of persons, it is only and truly because He
is the respecter of all persons. Upon this Jesus put
His utmost emphasis, making it as weighty as pos
sible by comparison with sheep, and sparrows, and
lilies. The providence of non-interventions which
seems so cruelly to ignore the preciousness of the in
dividuality of the few in whom we are interested, is
really all the time solemnly affirming the preciousness
of individuality throughout the human race. For
the laws which govern human lives without excep
tions or interference, are all of them the expression
of the care of God for every one. In that care, so
far as natural laws are concerned, the pauper has an
equal share with the king; the life and health of
every child in the slums is as much an object of
solicitude, on the part of an all-immanent God, as
that of any prince. Were it not for the interference
of human selfishness, all there is in the laws of
nature that makes for health and happiness, would
always be at the service of every ignorant rustic, as
utterly as of the most accomplished man of science.
Thus, whilst providence by interposition would re
spect the few, government by law respects all. The
magnanimity of God is always in evidence, as Jesus
said, in the sun which shines "on the evil as well as
20 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
on the good," and the rain which falls alike "on the
just and on the unjust ". Human individuality is
thus impartially consecrated by the laws which treat
all men alike ; whilst occasional intervention would
but spoil some at the expense of all the rest. But
as favouritism in a family tends to discord and de
pression, whilst the love which treats all with equal
favour, in so doing puts highest value upon each, so
under moral government by means of natural law,
has every man, simply as man, the right to think of
himself, apart from any other, as the genuine object
of divine sympathy and loving solicitude.
Yet who does not know that it is one thing in our
calmer, painless moments, to think carefully and
logically, whilst it is quite another thing when un
expected tragedy shocks us into feeling deeply and
bitterly. It is only too true in regard to the doctrine
of an intervening Providence that "if we have
found a case that seems perfectly to prove the doc
trine, the next hour may bring us one that just as
clearly disproves it ". For every sincere and
sensitive mind there are still, as there always have
been, cases of individual innocent suffering, unde
served calamity, premature death of such as were
undoubtedly most needed with the perpetuation
of the lives of useless imbeciles or healthy villains
which bring us to the same verge of despair as
the Psalmist, when he cried "As for me, my feet
were almost gone, my steps had well-nigh slipped ". x
The contradiction to all that sincere belief had led us
to expect has been so apparently ruthless, that we
have felt again the ancient anguish "Will the Lord
cast off for ever ? Is His mercy clean gone for ever ?
Doth His promise fail for evermore ? Hath God
forgotten to be gracious ? " No Christian man or
1 Cf. the whole of Psalm LXXill.
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 21
woman has probably lived to middle age without
becoming closely acquainted with instances of in
dividual pain and loss, calamity and trouble, suffer
ing and death, for which no honest explanation
whatever on moral lines could be suggested. Time
is often the only healer of such mysteries. They
baffle all our thought, and make our tenderest words
of sympathy seem mockery. In such darkness that
can be felt, many of these life tragedies must be left.
Here and now we can do nothing with them, save
imitate the wisest part of the attempt which Job s
friends made to comfort him, when "they sat down
with him upon the ground seven days and seven
nights, and none spake a word to him, for they saw
that his grief was very great ".
Lest, however, we should be tempted, like Job s
poor overwrought wife, out of the frailty of our
nature to give utterance to bitter and foolish words,
we must remind ourselves that even in these cases,
where the mystery of triumphant wrong or innocent
suffering seems utterly inexplicable, it is far too
soon for us to pronounce final judgment. There is
always a double future to be faced, alike for the
individual and for the race. However dramatic the
representation of the close of Job s ordeal may be,
when we are told that " the Lord blessed the latter
end of Job more than his beginning," it points
vividly to the undeniable truth that, in myriads of
cases, calamity which at the time it seemed as if God
ought for sheer pity s sake to have averted, has
become the starting-point of a greatly needed redemp
tion. The accompanying suffering has issued in a
new life, with a nobler character, whose influence
for good has been measureless. Untold numbers of
men and women have come to trace their real en
noblement back to a painful fall. No mystery of un-
prevented wrong or unrewarded right simply begins
22 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
and ends with its occurrence. Wise parents do
many things to their children which to the dawning
intelligence must seem to be the very opposite of
love, but no explanation is then possible. Only later
years can show that it was real love which adminis
tered bitter medicine, refused too many sweets, took
away dangerous toys, imposed difficult tasks, and
actually sent away from home joys and comforts to
the plain fare and hard discipline of a boarding
school. So, on the larger scale of ordinary human
life, myriads of men have lived to echo Charles
Kingsley s words of sympathy to his friend concern
ing his own " early Gethsemane ". " I have already
been through that ordeal which seems to threaten
you, and my experience may be valuable to you.
God knows how valuable it was to me, and that I
rank that period of misery as the most priceless
passage of my whole existence."
Even in those tragedies where death, violent or
premature, puts an end to all things human, Christ
ian philosophy does not permit us to lose all hope,
or falter in the assurance that
The love of God is broader
Than the measures of man s mind ;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
The passing together into the unseen, of the murderer
and his victim, the sweet young life to which our
hearts so desperately cling, with some hoary villain
whom we cannot but be glad to miss, does not
mean that they are all simply lost in oblivion, or
indiscriminately engulfed in a moral chaos.
" God changes never. In that unseen realm
of life He is for ever the same as here, or rather,
to express the eternal truth more worthily, in
this little world He is the same that He for ever is
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 23
in the infinite realms of being the lover of souls
and the enemy of sin. We are not able to trace
out our hopes to their fulfilment, or our fears to
their extinction, but as Christians we are
entitled to leave the problem of evil in the hands
of God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
trusting Him that wherever sin has abounded,
grace will much more abound." J
As to the myriads for such they are to whom
the old pathetic saying applies, "Whom the gods
love die young," whether the half-hidden pagan
suggestion that the "love" consists in what they
here escape, be more or less true, the Christian as
surance is that they do but pass from a chilly dawn
to a brighter noon, that the loss is ours not theirs.
When our oft crude and childish notions of heaven
are dismissed to their deserved oblivion, there re
mains a prospect of life so much more rich and full
than this, as to warrant entirely the optimism of the
Apostle when, out of the midst of sufferings which
God did not intervene to prevent or lessen, he wrote
to his fellow-sufferers and fellow-candidates for
martyrdom : " I am utterly convinced that the suffer
ings of this present time are not worthy to be com
pared with the glory which shall be revealed in our
case ". With such an assurance, resting as it does
upon Christ s own yet deeper, tenderer, all-compre
hensive words, we must, as well we may, be con
tent, until, in the light that never was on sea or land,
we see no longer " in a mirror and are puzzled," but
face to face.
Even now, when on the broadest scale, dismissing
alike the far far future and our nearest circles of
relationship, we think of mankind at large and the
present conflict twixt good and ill which seems so
1 Dr. W. N. Clarke, " Christian Doctrine of God," p. 462.
24 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
tragic, there is no ground whatever for fear that
Armageddon may issue in Pandemonium. Rather
is there every reason for endorsing a conditional
optimism. All the woes and wrongs of our modern
civilization cannot suppress the conviction that
humanity is evolving upwards and working out the
beast. The suggestion of evolution is, indeed, vast
and complex, in the moral even more than in the
physical realm. To appreciate it is to appreciate a
landscape rather than a blade of grass. We must
learn not only to take large views, but to be patient
in so doing. The results most to be desired cannot
possibly come in a day. If, as our men of science
tell us, it took a hundred millions of years, or more,
to prepare this terrestrial ball for human residence,
what are a few thousand years as the school-time of
the wondrous yet perverse creature who finally
emerged from the preceding animalhood, into a
moral liberty which omnipotence itself cannot compel
to take the upward way ?
This at least on the smaller scale we know, that
no one short and easy lesson, learned at school, will
ever make a lad a scholar, or a gentleman. Such a
result can only be brought to pass through the sum
total of all the pains that all his lessons, then
and their after-continuance have ever cost him ;
and the teacher who determined to save his pupils
from all such pains, would be their greatest enemy.
Rather, because he respects and loves them, he does
not intervene to mitigate their tasks, or prevent
their punishments, or rid them of conflict, for in
the conflicts and the difficulties and the discipline
is disguised their greatest benediction. So on the
world scale, that the divine method of non-inter
vention is neither a failure nor evidence that God
has forgotten humanity, may surely be proved even
now by appeal to fact. For whatever be the future s
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 25
promise of better things, already, beyond all con
troversy, the mystery of good, in the moral no less
than in the non-moral realm, is immeasurably greater
than the mystery of evil. To this every civilized
country bears abundant witness, and the rapidity
with which the whole world is becoming cosmo
politan promises an end ere long to all the bygone
miseries of savagery. All bright estimates of the
future are, of course, definitely conditional. The
certainty is that the better day, when sin, and shame,
and war, and strife, and cruelty, and poverty will
cease, will not be brought to pass by a providence
of special interventions, but by that co-operation of
man with God wherein natural law is recognized as
His voice, and obeyed as the assurance of His loving
kindness. The exhortation of an Apostle to the
Philippians of old comes thus to bear an ever-
widening significance, nor can all the science and
philosophy of to-day combine to utter a word of
greater wisdom or more actual comfort "Work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it
is God who is working in you both to will and to
work for His good pleasure".
When all has been thought and said upon the
complex problems here considered, the final note
must be one of tender sympathy no less than of
patient hope. There are so many cases in which
the great world-conflict is lost in the distance,
blotted out of vision by some keen personal sorrow,
or bereavement, or disappointment, or suffering, or
calamity, which becomes greatest of all through
being nearest. " Lord if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died " is a typical outcry from many
a baffled mind and troubled heart. " My brother,"
in such a case, becomes more than all humanity.
Argue as we may, we cannot stifle the soul s pathetic
murmuring " If God were a loving Father, would
26 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
He have allowed that enemy to do me this uncalled-
for injury ? that friend whom I loved and trusted to
the uttermost, to turn upon me with cruel treachery?
Why did He not rebuke the pitiless fever in which
our darling was burnt to death ? Why not prevent
the miserable accident that robbed a whole family
of its breadwinner and broke a true and tender
woman s heart ? Oh ! who will answer for us these
wails that never cease ? And echo answers, who ?
Well may modern agnosticism ask, by the mouth
of an able representative "Is there no consolation
in religion or philosophy to support us in the day
of trial and in the hour of death ? " But the reply
is as hopeless as honest " Alas, if we take away the
promises of Christianity, there is none at all". 1 Philip s
pathetic plea has gathered unmeasured intensity
through the intervening ages. " Lord, show us the
Father and it suffices us." To that there is one,
though only one valid reply. " Have I been so long
time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me ?
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." To
the doctrine and example of Jesus the human mind
and heart are driven back, when all other solace
fails. And worthily so, for never on earth has there
been such a personality, never such a doctrine, never
such a tragedy, never such a triumph, as His.
The quibble to-day about the historicity of Jesus,
is childish, in face of facts. It does not merit the
serious and crushing replies which it has called
forth. The only question that really calls for answer
is as to the significance of Jesus for a perplexed and
sorrowing humanity. Amid the glare of the modern
knowledge to which nothing is sacred, with all the
burden of our world-cares upon us, and with our
secret heart-sorrows gnawing within, we yet have
1 Mrs. F. Peter?en, " Hibbert Journal," April, 1908. Italics hers.
WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE? 27
His assurance concerning the Fatherhood " If it
were not so I would have told you " and His ex
ample. They are blessed for whom His words
suffice. But for all others this at least is true, that
if there were eve?; a case in which the human mind
and heart unite to affirm that God ought to have
intervened, to prevent the world s worst murder, it
was at Calvary. Yet from out that darkness there
issued humanity s bitterest cry " My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ? " And to that cry
there came no answering miracle of deliverance.
The soldier executioners were not smitten with
paralysis ; the reviling scribes and Pharisees were
not stricken dumb. God did not intervene. If He
had done, what would have been the condition of
the world to-day ? We cannot tell. But this we
know, from the lips of noble unbelief as emphatically
as from the hearts of believers, that that non-inter
vention has been the world s greatest benediction.
No failure of the Christian Church, from the begin
ning until now, can alter the fact that the cross of
Jesus Christ has been and still is the mightiest in
fluence for the highest good amongst the most potent
nations on earth. His ideal and His example abide,
whatever becomes of shibboleths and organizations.
To Him, after the bitter pain freely borne for love s
sake, there came the peace that passes understanding
"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit".
And from such peace He passed on to the triumph
of that actual resurrection which is, after all the
hopes and fears of the ages and all the anxious
probings and peerings of present-day science, our
surest guarantee and worthiest pledge that death is
but the gate of life.
We have all to face life as we find it. At any
moment there may break upon any of us an avalanche
of unexpected tragedy. At some moment, whether
28 WHY DOES NOT GOD INTERVENE?
late or soon, there must come the hour when the
strongest will bow in helplessness at the call of death.
Christianity holds out no promise of miraculous
deliverance from either. The Gospel does not bid
us expect that God will intervene. " It is enough
for the servant that he be as his Lord." To the
most sincere and devoted disciple there may come
the time when all other hope and comfort are gone,
and only Christ is left. But " ONLY " ? Was it not
one who had manfully endured all the mystery of
non-prevented suffering, and faced without flinching
the certainty of martyrdom, with neither hope nor
prayer for divine intervention, who deliberately de
clared that "in all these things tribulation, anguish,
persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword we
are more than conquerors through Him that loved
us". It was no mere gush of pious exaltation. It
was a true word, whose truth remains and will re
main until earth s last tragedy is over, and all the
shadows of our present life are lost in the light of
the Eternal Love.
DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN DISPROVE
THE LOVE OF GOD?
" The notions of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest
have been too commonly taken to mean that life in the animal world is
one tragic series of ruthless single combats ; that every man s hand was
and ever must be against the hand of every man , and every beast s tooth
and claw against the tooth and claw of every beast. But if we read
Darwin s Descent of Man and Prince Kropotkin s Mutual Aid among
Animals and Winwood Reade s Martyrdom of Man and Wallace s
Darwinism and World of Life we shall find that the law of natural
selection does not favour any such horrible conclusion."
Mr. R. BLATCHFORD, "Not Guilty," p. 41.
" The ideal of evolution is thus no gladiator s show, but an Eden ; and
though competition can never be wholly eliminated the line of progress
is no straight line but at most an asymptote it is much for our pure
natural history to see no longer struggle but love, as creation s final law."
" Evolution," by Profs. J. A. THOMSON and P. GEDDES.
" Our whole tendency to transfer our sensations of pain to all other
animals is grossly misleading. The probability is that there is as great a
gap between man and the lower animals in sensitiveness to pain, as there
is in their intellectual and moral faculties. The widespread idea of
the cruelty of nature is almost wholly imaginary. It rests on the false
assumption that the sensations of the lower animals are necessarily equal
to our own, and takes no account whatever of these fundamental principles
of evolution which almost all the critics profess to accept. Hence the
ludicrously exaggerated view adopted by men of eminence and usually of
such calm judgment, like Huxley a view almost as far removed from
fact or science as the purely imaginary and humanitarian dogma of the
poet
The poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies .
Whatever the giant may feel, if the theory of evolution is true, the poor
beetle certainly feels an almost irreducible minimum of pain probably
none at all." Dr. A. R. WALLACE, " The World of Life ".
" The pleasures of each generation evaporate in air ; it is their pains
that increase the spiritual momentum of the world."
Dr. ILLINGWORTH, in "Lux Mundi".
" The doubts of many as to the origin of pain are not unreasonable, but
a full consideration of the whole subject will show clearly that the gain
far outweighs the loss. On the sensitiveness of animals to pain, depends
their very existence. To drown a pain, to obtund the parts so that no
pain is felt, is to throw away the warning which the pain has given."
"The Lancet."
" I cannot tell you what is the meaning of a scheme far beyond human
comprehension. But I know it is safe to trust in my sweetheart Nature,
and feel certain she will never mislead those who do."
Mr. M. BLATCHFORD in the " Clarion ".
CHAPTER II
DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN DISPROVE
THE LOVE OF GOD ?
OF all objections brought against Christian faith,
those which are based upon the mystery of pain
have ever been the most popular and most effective.
Nothing is so easy as to conjure up instances of
tragedy from history, from nature, from personal
observation. Nothing is so potent as an appeal to
the feelings by means of the imagination. It is the
first outcry of the tyro in his anti-Christian declama
tion. It is the last sigh of the man of science or of
letters, who pathetically declares that he would be
lieve if he could. It is. almost everywhere, an ever-
troubling perplexity to thoughtful believers. " I am
only one " says an eminent and genial Professor
of Biblical exegesis in a Christian College "out of
many, for whom the problem of pain constitutes the
most powerful objection to a theism adequate to our
deepest needs. This is of all problems the most
baffling to many who wish to accept a theistic view
of the universe. Even sin and death are mysteries
less oppressive and impenetrable. If sin is a darker
evil, pain is the more obscure." 1 Nothing would be
easier than to fill whole pages with lurid extracts
from the writings of unbelievers, who have vied
with each other in heaping denunciations upon the
1 Prof. A. S. Peake, M.A., D.D., "The Problem of Suffering in
the Old Testament," p. 137.
32 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
Christian doctrine of Providence and a Heavenly
Father. l
Most of these, we may readily own, are sincere,
and they are so far true as to find only too real an
echo in many a Christian heart ; whilst they must
generally be accepted as, at least, pointers to a prob
lem of the utmost gravity. As such they may be
welcomed ; for a fool s paradise is assuredly no part
of the Christian ideal. The way of blind-eyed,
shallow-hearted, sentimental optimism, is for ever
barred to the genuine believer. Rather is he bidden
to "prove all things," and only "hold fast that which is
good," with " whatsoever things are true ". Whilst,
therefore, we do not hesitate to acknowledge the
seriousness of the difficulty suggested, and make
here no pretence of finally disposing of it, we may
yet show cause for protest against the sweeping
assumptions and wholesale assertions of not a few
anti-Christian writers and orators. They have no
monopoly of truth, any more than of sensitiveness
or sincerity. The question of this section which
they so oracularly answer in the affirmative, we
venture, with equal candour and vigour, to answer
in the negative. Whether the Christian believer
can solve all the harrowing perplexities which attach
1 Perhaps one may suffice for many. Says Richard Jefferies,
" How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that
all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end? It is
the most utter falsehood and a crime against the human race.
Human suffering is so great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly
write of it. The whole and the worst the worst pessimist can say, is far
beneath the least particle of the truth, so immense is the misery of man."
Whilst as to the animal world even Huxley usually a calm and
judicial observer on one occasion so far allowed his unscientific im
agination to run away with him as to write, " Since thousands of
times a minute, were our ears only sharp enough, we should hear the
sighs and groans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of
hell, the world cannot be governed by what we call benevolence ".
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 33
to individual cases or not, he is warranted by facts
in his affirmation that the mystery of pain does not
contradict, let alone disprove, the love of God as re
vealed in Jesus Christ.
In brief preliminary summary it is well to point
out that good and thoughtful men of all religions,
and in all ages, have felt the seriousness of the ques
tions involved. Nothing can really be added by
modern expletives, to the simple-minded but deep-
hearted expressions in which the ancient Psalmists
clothed their bewilderment at the prosperity of the
wicked and the calamities of the righteous. Nor can
the exaggerated plaints of a Jefferies and a Huxley
combined, do more justice to life s tragic side than
the tender yet dignified acknowledgment of the
Apostle Paul, "We know that the whole of creation
is groaning together as in the pains of childbirth until
this hour ". Christian theism feels the painfulness of
pain, and sees the seeming contradiction to universal
benevolence in the scheme of things, quite as
honestly and tenderly as the most cynical agnosti
cism or raucous secularism.
Moreover, Christian thinkers have ever faced the
problems alleged with quite as much knowledge and
candour as any anti-Christian propaganda can show.
Their acquaintance with facts and employment of
principles have been quite as scientific and philoso
phical as unbelief has ever displayed. Nor is it
enough to say that their conclusions have been de
finitely more encouraging in the present, and hopeful
for the future. It is rather, in plain truth, a question
of all or none. Whatever may yet be the demands
upon our faith and patience, in face of the dark prob
lems of our present existence, if the Christian solu
tion be shown to be untrustworthy, there is no other.
Nothing in that case is left us but old Omar Khay
yam s pessimism :
3
34 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing ;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.
What, without asking, hither hurried whence ?
And, without asking, whither hurried hence !
Another and another Cup to drown
The Memory of this impertinence !
Orphans of nothing, sports of chance, puppets of
necessity, marionettes of circumstance, coming no
whence and going no whither, yet possessed as in
alienably as uselessly of faculties which cannot but
cause us to feel, and ceaselessly demand to know
such we must deem ourselves to be, if the Christian
hope is denied us. Of man in that case it must be
for ever true that he is
A monster, then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime
That tear each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
In face of such an alternative, the human heart may
well demand sufficient reason before consenting, at
the behest of unbelief, to jettison its present comfort
and future hope.
The supreme doctrine of Christianity is un
doubtedly the love of the Divine Fatherhood. With
that love, real, impartial, universal, eternal, the
Christian religion stands or falls. It does not pro
fess to be a deduction from nature, but a revelation
in Jesus Christ. Much confusion sometimes arises
and much energy, both of attack and of defence, is
wasted, from the ignoring or forgetting of this plain
principle. We shall presently see that nature is not
the mere charnel house, or bloody shambles, that
anti-Christian sensationalists are so fond of denounc
ing. We must indeed, if we are to be true to realities,
make no less strong affirmation to the contrary.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 35
How far in the light of competent modern know
ledge we ought to go, may surely be stated with
fairness in the language of a well-known and highly
esteemed surgeon, not long passed away, who com
bined with ample scientific knowledge and vast ac
quaintance with human suffering, what he himself
termed " emancipation from all Christian creeds," and
so, for twenty years, pursued an unbiassed quest in
the history and conditions of human development.
The unequivocal testimony, then, of the late Sir
Henry Thompson, which at the end of his prolonged
research he found himself compelled to utter, is
this :
" I was now assured by evidence which I
could not resist, that all which man with his
limited knowledge and experience has learned
to regard as due to Supreme Power and Wisdom,
although immeasurably beyond his comprehen
sion, is also associated with the exercise of an
absolutely beneficent influence over all living
things, of every grade, which exist within its
range.
" And the result of my labour has at least
brought me its own reward, by conferring eman
cipation from the fetters of all the creeds, and
unshakable confidence in the Power, the Wis
dom and the Beneficence which pervade and
rule the Universe." 1
Such a testimony, from such a source, is in itself
sufficient answer to most of the diatribes against
nature which are so sensationally paraded by unbe
lief. It covers all the ground of Mr. J. S. Mill s
famous indictment, in his autobiography and his
" Essays on Religion " ; whilst it comes from an ob
server whose whole life-work entitled him to speak
1 " The Unknown God," p. 85.
36 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
on such matters with much more authority. It may,
therefore, avail to set us free from the glamour of
popular appeals under this head.
But it does not amount to as much as the Psalmist s
conviction " The Lord is good to all, and His tender
mercies are over all His works " " Like as a Father
pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear
Him ". Still less does it convey the assurance of
the actuality of the divine Fatherhood, concerning
which Jesus speaks so unequivocally, "Are not
two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of
them shall fall on the ground without your Father.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear not therefore ; ye are of more value than many
sparrows." Such words are a true summary of His
whole doctrine, and the figurative phrases in which
it is conveyed only emphasize the unmistakableness
of his assurance.
The question of questions thus becomes Can we
accept finally such an assurance from Him as ever
lastingly true? Or is it hopelessly contradicted before
our eyes, in that realm of daily fact from which no
one of us can escape ? Atheism, secularism, pessim
ism, agnosticism, and all other anti-Christian cults,
combine to affirm the latter. Their main thesis is
that nature, including human history on evolution
ary lines, does so utterly and hopelessly contradict
Christ that we can no longer believe Him. Their
conclusion is that "There is no Heavenly Father
watching tenderly over us His children. He is but
the baseless shadow of a wistful human dream." 1
Modern agnosticism sometimes tries to halt between
two opinions, but practically endorses this verdict
whilst professing to keep an open mind. Christian
theism, however, does not hesitate to reject their
1 R. Blatchford, " God and My Neighbour," p. 79.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 37
melancholy conclusions. All unashamed in spite of,
or rather by reason of, our utmost modern know
ledge, it affirms that nature, fairly interpreted, not
only does not contradict Christ, but actually en
courages us to trust His teaching where it can itself
no longer speak definitely. After listening patiently
to the sweeping denunciations and bitter invectives
which characterize most of the utterances of unbelief
in this regard, theism deliberately formulates a four
fold reply. It objects to these objections that, taken
as a whole, (i) They are grossly indiscriminate, and
thus guilty of misleading exaggeration ; (2) that they
most unfairly ignore important and decisive modi
fications ; (3) that they exhibit inexcusable one-
sidedness ; (4) that they give no fair heed to the
valid grounds for Christian faith. Full consideration
of any one of these would require a volume. Such
a summary, however, as must here suffice, may have
suggestive, even if not conclusive value.
i. The indiscriminateness which leads to gross
exaggeration is twofold. The moral element in the
whole case is confused with the non-moral, and the
animal is identified with the human. The result is
a misrepresentation as unwarranted in the one case
as untrue to fact in the other.
Of the inexcusable confusion between non-moral
pain and moral evil, we will take two brief specimens,
one popular, the other academic. The author of
"God and My Neighbour," writes, that "If God
were a God of love, He would not choose to create
a world in which hate and pain should have a place.
Why does He permit evil and pain to continue ? "
This thoughtless simplicity, by which " hate " and
"evil" are classified as of the same order with
" pain," may do very well for cheap journalism, but
is altogether unworthy of any serious teacher. To
the same effect, however, Prof. Haeckel writes :
38 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
" We read daily in our journals of accidents
and crimes of all kinds which cause the unex
pected death of happy human beings. Every
year we read with horror the statistics of the
thousands of deaths from shipwreck and railway
accidents, earthquakes and landslips, wars
and epidemics. And then we are asked to be
lieve in a loving Providence that has decreed
the death of these poor mortals. Simple
children and dull believers may soothe them
selves with such phrases. They no longer
impose on educated people in the twentieth
century, who prefer a full and fearless know
ledge of the truth." 1
Such sentiments are an almost invariable concomi
tant of anti-Christian writing. But the philosophy
is as poor as the tone is contemptuous. " Accidents
and crimes," " wars and epidemics," are roughly
flung together as if of the same significance ; when
even a child can see that under no circumstances
whatever can an " accident " be a " crime," and that
" wars " are due to an altogether different cause
from " epidemics ". The object of such recklessness
on Prof. Haeckel s part is plainly to work in the
word " decreed," which is at once a false and ques
tion-begging term. The Christian doctrine of Pro
vidence does not for a moment concede that God has
1 "The Wonders of Life," p. 46. One of the pitiful features of
modern unbelief is its apparent inability to keep from sneering at
those who differ from it. Thus, on another occasion, the same
Professor says, " The beautiful dream of God s goodness and wisdom
in nature, to which we listened as children so devoutly fifty years ago,
no longer finds credit now at least amongst educated people who
think " (" Confession of Faith," p. 74 ). One would have thought
that Sir Henry Thompson, not to mention the host of other be
lievers, was quite as well " educated " as Professor Haeckel. But
such contemptuous bitterness is by no means confined to this writer.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 39
"decreed the deaths" of the victims of crime and
war. These are moral actions for which the doers
of them are responsible. Even if it were true that
all non-moral suffering came from such a decree, it
ought in the name of intellectual honesty to be
always kept entirely distinct from the suffering and
misery which are due directly to human wrong-do
ing. As intimated in the preceding section, such
honestly thoughtful discrimination would relieve
Providence of the responsibility for some seven-
tenths of all human woe. Such a significant con
clusion may conflict with the intention of these
anti-Christian indictments, but it is nevertheless
true, and ought therefore to be recognized.
2. Another source of confusion, quite as common
and misleading in its exaggerated misrepresentation,
is the way in which the suffering of the animal world
in general is put on a level with human suffering,
estimated in human terms, and measured according
to human sensitiveness. Waiving for a moment the
general though unpardonable one-sidedness of the
usual tirade against nature, the point to be here ob
served is that by far the greater part of the sensa
tional pictures drawn to discredit the Christian
doctrine of a Heavenly Father on the ground of
animal suffering, is pure bathos with no scientific
warrant whatever. The paragraph from " God and
My Neighbour " given below, 1 is a fair specimen. It
1 " Nature is red in beak and claw. On land and in sea, the
animal creation chase and maim and slay and devour each other.
The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful
gnat. The ichneumon fly lays its eggs under the skin of the cater
pillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar s blood.
They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar alive.
A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush creeping-
things ; there is a busy ant or a blazoned beetle with its back broken,
writhing in the dust unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant pool and
the laughing child, its mother s darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria.
40 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
is taken from a chapter of five pages, in which the
writer settles the whole age-long difficulty to his
own complete satisfaction. But apart from the ab
surd entomology which credits the ant and beetle
with a back that can be broken, the whole suggestion
is as false as sensationalism can make it. Human
sensitiveness, in a word, is recklessly attributed to
creatures which are no more capable of it than this
writer is of the experience of a Mahatma. All such
terms as "terror," " devour alive," "writhing," etc.,
have no real application whatever to the creatures in
question. One might with much more reason attri
bute the nervous tremors of a delicate English lady
to a North American Indian, or a " nerveless
Chinee". 1
A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption and a beautiful city is a heap
of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And
the Heavenly Father who is love, has power to save, and makes no
sign. Is it not so ? "
This writer s own answer to his own question is given at the com
mencement of this section. It may also be interesting to note his
brother s reply in the columns of the same " Clarion ". " What
does this charge of cruelty amount to ? Simply that everything lives
upon something else. Beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, even
man himself. In short, we live upon life, which is the only thing
nature has to offer us. These natural modes of gaining a living do
not shock me, or dismay me, or put me out of conceit with my
divinity. I only know that Nature is overwhelming in her power
and transcendently beautiful ; and that she is the source of all life,
and health and joy. No ; I cannot tell you what is the meaning
of a scheme far beyond human apprehension. But I know it is
safe to trust in my sweetheart Nature, and feel certain she will
never mislead those who do."
1 Dr. A. R. Wallace mentions the case of some Australian tribes
where the man who is found guilty of a crime "appears before the
chief of the tribe, holds out his leg, and one after another the
members of the offended family walk up, each sticks in his spear,
draws it out, and retires. When all have done so, the leg is a mass
of torn flesh and skin and blood, but the sufferer has stood still
without shrinking during the whole operation. He is very soon as
well as ever, except for a badly scarred leg " (" The World of
Life," p. 379). Chinese callousness to suffering also is proverbial.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 41
With much more truth than popular arraignments
of nature exhibit, the thoughtful author of " Evil
and Evolution," points out " how difficult it is to say
what are really criteria in the matter of the suffer
ings of animals ".
"The convulsive struggles that animals make
cannot be regarded as any criterion of the pain
they are suffering, nor does the mere existence
of nerves appear to be altogether reliable. The
sting of a wasp is to a human being one of the
keenest sensations. But a badger, which is an
animal tolerably well endowed with nerves,
will dig out a nest of wasps and eat as many of
them as he can catch, quite indifferent to their
stings. Frogs and toads will also swallow
wasps whenever they get the chance." 1
In regard, however, to the generally prevalent
notion that the animal world is to quote Schopen
hauer s phrase "a cockpit of tortured and suffering
beings," two observers of nature, at all events, ought
to weigh with modern men, viz. Charles Darwin
and Alfred Russel Wallace. If these authorities
are not competent to judge, we may truly say that
no one is. Prof. Haeckel s phrase runs, " The
raging war of interests in human society is only a
feeble picture of the unceasing and terrible war of
existence which reigns throughout the whole of the
living world ". But what does Darwin say of this
" unceasing and terrible war" ? At the close of his
chapter on the "struggle for existence," he thus
writes :
"When we reflect on this struggle, we may
console ourselves with the full belief that the
war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is
1 P. 13-
42 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
felt, that death is generally prompt, and that
the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy, survive
and multiply."
To the same subject, in his book on " Darwinism,"
Dr. Wallace refers thus :
" We have a horror of all violent and sudden
death, because we think of the life full of pro
mise cut short, of hopes and expectations un
fulfilled, and of the grief of mourning relatives.
But all this is quite out of place in the case of
animals, for whom a violent and sudden death
is in every way the best. Thus the poet s
picture of
Nature red in tooth and claw
With ravine
is a picture the evil of which is read into it by
our imaginations, the reality being made up of
full and happy lives, usually terminated by the
quickest and least painful of deaths."
Referring more especially to Prof. Huxley s sensa
tional indictment, Dr. Wallace says :
" There is good reason to believe that all this is
greatly exaggerated, that the supposed torments
and miseries of animals have little real existence,
but are the reflection of the imagined sensations
of cultivated men and women in similar circum
stances, and that the amount of actual suffering
caused by the struggle for existence amongst
animals, is altogether insignificant." l
1 " Darwinism," pp. 37, 40. As these estimates were written
twenty years ago, it may be of interest to note the same eminent
authority s opinion in his latest work " The World of Life " :
" In this category of painless or almost painless animals, I think
we may place almost all aquatic animals up to fishes, all the vast
hordes of insects, probably all mollusca and worms, thus reducing
the sphere of pain to a minimum throughout all the earlier geological
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 43
The well-known naturalist, Mr. E. Kay Robinson,
in his remarkable book "The Religion of Nature"
started his special investigation thus :
" For more than a score of years the problem
of the apparent cruelty of the world was daily
on my mind. Nature in almost all its details
seemed to undermine the very basis of religion ;
the seeming atrocities which are common
places in nature are often almost too horrid to
be described in print". . . " but gradually I came
to see the very truth, and now I find nature to
be the bed-rock of true religion."
His deliberate, reasoned, fact-supported conclusion
is that " There is no cruelty or suffering in nature,
except where it exists in the thoughts of men ".
Whether such a conclusion appears to be credible to
ordinary observers or not, there is overwhelming
evidence to warrant Dr. Wallace s judgement that :
"On the whole, then, we conclude that the
popular idea of the struggle for existence entail-
ages, and very largely even now. We may be sure that all the
earlier forms of life possessed the minimum of sensation required for
the purposes of their short existence, and that anything approaching to
what we term pain, was unknown to them " (p. 375).
As to the elaborate contrivances for shedding blood or causing
pain that are seen throughout nature, the vicious-looking teeth and
claws of the cat tribe, etc., etc., on which such stress is often laid :
"The idea that all these weapons exist for the purpose of shedding
blood, or giving pain, is wholly illusory. As a matter of fact their
effect is wholly beneficial, even to the sufferers, inasmuch as they
tend to the diminution of pain " (p. 377).
Referring to the degree to which civilized man is increasingly ex
posed to perils of which animals know nothing, he adds : " Against
this vast ever-present network of dangers, together with the ever-
present danger of consuming fire, man is warned and protected by
an ever-increasing sensibility to pain, a horror at the very sight of
wounds and blood ; and it is this specially developed sensibility that
we most illogically transfer to the animal world, in our wholly ex
aggerated and often quite mistaken views as to the cruelty of
nature " (p. 379).
44 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
ing misery and pain on the animal world, is the
very reverse of the truth. What it really brings
about is the maximum of life, and of the enjoy
ment of life with the minimum of suffering and
pain."
With such testimony, from such sources, we are
warranted in dismissing almost the whole of the
usual laboured indictment of nature on the ground
of cruelty in the animal world, from further consid
eration. It does not justify the anti-Christian use
made of it. It does not contradict the love of a God
whose "tender mercies are over all His works".
(3) It was noted above that the opposition to
Christian faith under this head is quite unfair, in
ignoring very important modifications of the indict
ment, which ought to be taken into full account.
These are, the manifest mortal and moral elements
in human nature. We may freely acknowledge that
the mystery of pain only really or seriously begins
when, leaving the animal world, we address our
attention to the human realm. But we are certainly
entitled to demand a fair definition of what the
human actually connotes. Are physical immortality,
and non-morality, necessary constituents of human
nature? Surely the true reply is Certainly not.
But both of these lie as latent assumptions in the
usual denials of the love of God on the ground of
human suffering.
(i) As to the first : " Killing," says Mr. J. S. Mill,
"the most criminal act recognized by human laws,
Nature does once to every human being that lives ".
From which the inference, apparently intended, is
that nature is criminal because men die. It is a
strangely false position, for an avowed logician.
For, as Mr. Wallace points out, "Without death and
reproduction, there could have been no progressive
development of the organic world ". There must be
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 45
some perversity in objecting to a method of nature
to which we owe our very existence. 1 With the
old theology which attributed human mortality to
the literal historic accuracy of the opening chapters
of Genesis, we are no longer concerned. In the fact
endorsed by science and history as well as observa
tion, that by their very constitution " it is appointed
unto men once to die," there is no ground whatever
for calling in question the love of a Heavenly Father
for his human children.
(ii) Attention has already been called to the indis-
criminateness of the unbelief which confuses the
moral with the non-moral in its reckless allegations
against Divine Providence. But the emphasis of
repetition is here necessary, in order to clear away
once and for all the greatest misrepresentation of
the whole case.
Prof. Haeckel asks, in his usual style :
" How can this all-loving God answer for the
immeasurable sum of want and misery and pain
and unhappiness which He sees accumulated
before Him every year, in the lives and families
of States, cities, and hospitals ? "
But there is no more real reason why God should
1 Prof. Peake has well stated the case thus. " Still less can
death be called an evil. This is obviously true as it affects the race.
No death would soon mean no birth. Those in possession would
prevent new comers from trenching on their domain. Thus life with
its blessings would be confined to the few, instead of being distributed
to many swiftly succeeding generations. In such a world progress
would be inconceivably difficult, the dead weight of custom would
crush all aspirations to reform. Even if fresh lives came into it, what
could they do pitted against the tyranny of tradition backed by
power and the timidity of experience ? Far better that death should
remove the men callous to abuse and hostile to reform, and that men
of warmer impulses, higher ideals, more generous enthusiasm, should
fill their place. And even for the individual, death is in itself no un
happy fate " (" Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament," p. 138).
46 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
" answer for " all this, than that Prof. Haeckel him
self should answer for all the misery in his native
city. There is no more unwarranted petitio quces-
tionis in all philosophy, than this wholesale assump
tion of Divine responsibility for everything, without
discrimination. It is altogether useless to keep on
repeating, as popular unbelief does, 1 that " If God is
responsible for man s existence, God is responsible
for man s acts ". For it is a sheer contradiction in
terms which only the wilfully blind can refuse to see.
The creature who is not responsible, is not a man at
all, but a machine a thing. The only conceivable
ground for Divine responsibility in his case would be
that he does not act at all ; any more than the pen
acts with which these words are written. There is
no need here to go farther into the " Free will " con
troversy. 2 Unbelief has no right whatever to assume
that men are but marionettes. Yet this is what is
continually done by so-called " Rationalism," in order
to charge upon God the sum total of human woe.
Thus a book issued for the " Rationalist Press As
sociation," says to the general reader
"Whether your creed is, that of the most
rigid Calvinist or the most generous optimist,
in either case, and apart from all subsidiary
questions of sin and salvation, you have back
of the whole complication the one supreme inde
pendent omnipotent will, purposing and plan
ning the whole thing, not only in its vast outlines,
but in all the minutiae of its detail conceiving
and arranging every enormity, every abortion,
every pain, every weird and wicked thing, as
1 In Mr. Blatchford s " God and My Neighbour," it is printed
in italics four times in as many pages.
2 The whole matter is fully faced in modern light, in my volume
" Determinism False and True " (C. Kelly).
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 47
surely as every beauty, every glory, every glad
ness, inspiration, or perfection."
No falser statement could be perpetrated in print.
The mischief is that it falls, with others of its kind,
into the hands of the young and uneducated, and
serves the purpose of making the mystery of pain to
be so black in its enormity as to crush out, if possible,
all Christian belief. But any one who writes about
the " subsidiary question of sin, "in dealing with the
human mystery of pain, only shows that he has pre
judged and misjudged the whole question from the
beginning, by an unwarrantable assumption. How
unwarrantable, apart from philosophic argument, is
manifest from the fact that there is no single place,
or condition, in civilized or indeed human society,
where this "deterministic" irresponsibility on the
part of men and women is, or can be, practised.
Dr. F. R. Tennant has put more truth in this
regard into one sentence, than is found in whole
libraries of Determinism. 1 " Responsibility for the
possibility of moral evil, and for the opportunities
for its realization, lies with God ; responsibility
for the actuality of moral evil lies with man." 5
Christian philosophy does not desire in the least to
shrink from the suggestion of the true Divine re
sponsibility here outlined. But it protests with all
possible earnestness, against the falsity of the whole
sale charges brought against Divine Providence, by
means of dragging down human nature to the level of
the brute, or even lower, and enunciating the dogma
of moral irresponsibility. A few more words from
Dr. Tennant should suffice to decide the matter for
all who have an open mind :
1 For the justification of this term, I must refer the reader to the
volume on the subject, specified above.
2 " The Origin and Propagation of Sin," p. 122,
48 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
" Had evolution stopped short at the stage of
lower animal life, and not proceeded until
human experience appeared, there would have
been indeed no sin ; but there would also have
been no possibility of moral good ; no room
for a revelation of the love and holiness of God.
And unless we are prepared to maintain that
the non-existence of persons, a world of mere
things or of conscious automatons, is the
highest ideal of a universe which man can con
ceive, we have no right to deny that the present
world, with all its sin and misery, is compatible
with the love of a righteous God. If the notion
of a moral being incapable of evil be a contra
diction which even omnipotence cannot realize,
then the establishment of the possibility of sin,
so far from being inconsistent with the love and
holiness of God, is unquestionably its most
adequate and indispensable expression." 1
It follows that the only way in which the custom
ary sweeping indictments of the love of God in
human affairs can be justified, is by the degradation
of man. But as, even according to Mr. J. S. Mill s
declaration, "it is better to be a man dissatisfied than
a pig satisfied," so the self-respect of ordinary human
ity will agree that it is better to be a man in pain, than
a brute in peace. There is something for men and
women, after all, better, higher, nobler, than mere
painlessness, 2 and that is moral character.
But the possibility of moral character which
crowns man with glory and honour, at the same
1 op. cit. p. 139.
2 Mr. J. H. Peile, in his most valuable Bampton Lectures for
1907, has truly said hereupon, "The belief that pain is the one real
evil infects much of our social and philanthropic effort to-day,
and is a chief obstacle to the acceptance of real Christianity but
short of Christianity, reason and experience teach us better things "
(p. 64).
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 49
time relieves God of responsibility for by far the
greater part of human woe. It is immeasurably
more against His will than against ours. Human
capacity and responsibility necessarily go hand in
hand. But for that capacity, in the words of a pro
nounced evolutionist
" We should have been the denizens of a
world of puppets, where neither morality nor
religion could have found place or meaning.
The mystery of evil remains indeed a mystery
still, but it is no longer a harsh dissonance such
as greeted the poet s ears when the doors of
hell were thrown open ; for we see that this
mystery belongs among the profound harmonies
of God s creation." x
4. When the moral element is eliminated from
the usual objections to the Fatherly goodness of
God, we may classify the remaining human suffer
ing for which man is sometimes not responsible,
under the three heads of premature death, disease,
and calamity.
(i) The first of these confessedly constitutes a
real problem of sorrow and perplexity for every
thoughtful mind and every tender heart. We do
not say, as virulently as Prof. Haeckel concerning
the early death of Heinrich Hertz, that
" Like the premature death of Spinoza,
Raphael, Schubert, and many other great men,
it is one of those brutal facts of human history
which are enough of themselves to destroy the
untenable myth of a wise Providence and an
all-loving Father in Heaven."
But if we shrink from the "brutal" confidence with
which such a dogma of unbelief is -enunciated, it
1 Mr. J. Fiske, "Through Nature to God," p. 56.
4
50 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
must be owned that the removal of many of the best
young lives, with the perpetuation of many of the
worst, has always constituted a severe problem for
faith, from the days of the Psalmist until now.
The protest of Christian faith, however, remains
valid, viz. that, to employ Haeckel s terminology,
the "thanatism " which affirms that death ends all,
is certainly not proven, and modern science gives it
no more warrant than human instinct. 1 God, free
dom, and immortality are inseparable. The Chris
tian faith which here sometimes trusts in the dark
to the love of a Heavenly Father, does so on the dis
tinct understanding that this life is not the only
realm of relationship to Him. In such a connexion
"premature" loses it significance. It applies only
to the present life. To us who are bereft, the loss
may indeed be real beyond repair. But until the
Christian promise of the future is proved to be im
possible, there is no sufficient reason in such loss for
denying the Divine love which, if real, is also eternal,
(ii) As to the prevalence of disease, whilst nothing
is easier than to conjure up harrowing facts which
cannot be denied, nothing also is falser than to write
and speak as if there were no other side to it. We
must all acknowledge that the painful mystery, in
many individual cases of extreme suffering, is, to us,
insoluble. The utter indiscriminateness, moreover,
with which disease sometimes appears to be distri
buted, taking no account whatever of moral char
acter or spiritual elevation, together with the
apparently useless intensity of the suffering which
accompanies some forms of disease, dumbfound us
with dire perplexity. Yet this is just the case in
which the anti-Christian mood which calls itself
1 For further discussion I must be content to refer the reader to
the chapter on " Immortality " in my " Haeckel s Monism False".
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 51
" Rationalism " should be most true to its avowed
principles. It describes itself thus :
" Rationalism may be defined as the mental
attitude which unreservedly accepts the supre
macy of reason, and aims at establishing a
system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by
experience, and independent of all arbitrary
assumption or authority."
Such a definition will admirably suit Christian
philosophy. In the present case, all that is asked is
that the " Rationalistic " objector to Divine Provid
ence should be true to his principles. But this is
precisely what he is not. Instead of the supremacy
of reason, we are bidden acknowledge the suprem
acy of emotion. Judgement "according to appear
ance," not just judgement, is the method adopted.
Would it be any more just than wise in estimating
the position of a business man, to make the most of
all his debts, and take no heed at all of his assets ?
Yet that is exactly what unbelief does in the great,
grave, and complicated matter before us. It can
never see the wood for the trees. It demands that
everything dark, painful, mysterious, shall be cast
into the scale against the love of God, but will not
heed any suggestion that mitigations, explanations,
compensations, illuminations, should be cast into the
other scale on behalf of Providential care. Such a
method is really absurd to the point of immorality.
As matter of plain and undeniable fact, there is
not only a real but an enormous " other side ". In
deed, when all is fairly and fully set forth, in a
detail which is impossible here, the relation of the
dark side to the bright may in sober truthfulness be
likened to that of the light and heat of the sun as
compared with the darkness of its spots. Then
" Rationalism " calls upon us to dwell intensely on
52 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
the latter, but studiously avoid noticing the former!
Whether this be a rational proceeding, common
sense, apart altogether from religion, may be left to
judge. Many items in the case merit elaboration,
but they can here only be suggested.
(i) Be the mystery of disease what it may, the
greater portion of it is more or less directly traceable
not to nature, but to man s interference with nature.
Thus Sir E. Ray Lankester tells us, in his Romanes
Lecture on " Nature and Man," that
" It is a remarkable thing that the adjustment
of organisms to their surroundings is so severely
complete in nature, apart from man, that diseases
are unknown as constant and normal phenomena
under those conditions. It seems to be a legiti
mate view that every disease to which animals,
and probably plants also, are liable, excepting
as a transient and very exceptional occurrence,
is due to man s interference." 1
And if we pass on to the consideration of the diseases
which especially afflict humanity, and bethink our
selves of epidemics, as well as of the consumption,
scrofula, syphilis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., which
may be regarded as chronic epidemics, we are told
that if men chose
" By the unstinted application of known
methods of investigation and consequent con
trolling action, all epidemic disease could be
abolished within so short a period as fifty years.
It is merely a question of the employment of
the means at our command. . . .
"This malady and the use of alcohol as a
beverage, are together responsible for more than
half the disease and early death of the mature
population of Europe. . . . And now the complete
p. 28.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 53
suppression of this dire enemy of humanity is
as plain and certain a piece of work to be at
once accomplished as is the building of an iron
clad. But it will not be done for many years,
because of the ignorance and unbelief of those
who alone can act for the community in such
matters." 1
It may be answered why should there be such
diseases at all to require stamping out ? The reply
must be another question with unmeasured signi
ficance why should there be any drink, or lust, or
greed, or dirt, or selfishness, to cause them ? It is
not enough to say that these are instances of man s
interference with the order of nature. The supple
mentary truth is that this order of nature is the ex
pression, as Sir Henry Thompson averred, of a
Divine benevolence which is always working for the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. The
pain, therefore, which follows upon its violation, is
but a protest and a warning which together em
phasize the benevolence.
(ii) Another item persistently overlooked by the
arraigners of Divine goodness, is writ large before
our eyes whenever we choose to read it, in the
limitation put to possibilities of pain through the
physical uniformity of the species. Were we but
the offspring of chance, or of almighty malignity,
nothing would be more easily conceivable than a
world full of beings so utterly unlike that no simil
arity of structure would obtain between millions.
In that case, whilst the possibilities of disease would
be unbounded, the opportunities of relieving or heal
ing them by human skill would be annihilated. The
laws of physiology are the necessary condition of
all medical science, whilst therapeutics depend
PP- 3>3!-
54 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
absolutely for their value upon the wondrous ana
logies between human bodies, which enable the
skilled physician, through wide experience, to be
come the sufferer s friend in need.
(iii) But behind all such skill, whether medical or
surgical, there is always something else without
which neither would avail. This is the measureless
Mystery of Good which it is almost sacrilege to dis
miss in a couple of sentences. But two terms may
serve as pointers to a boundless field.
What " phagocytosis " means scientifically, must
be left to a technical lecture on that theme. But
what it means practically was lucidly explained by
Sir Frederick Treves whose authority will hardly
be questioned a short time since, in an address
to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. " He
claimed," says the report,
" that the popular view of disease as a calamity
was altogether erroneous, for its phenomena or
symptoms were marked by a purpose, and that
purpose was beneficent The processes of
disease aimed not at the destruction of life but
at the saving of it. If it were not for disease,
in the popular sense, human life would soon be
extinct. He who grumbled about a cold, was
finding fault with the measures of relief to which
he owed his life."
Again, what does the surgeon mean when he looks
favourably upon a wound with the remark that it
will probably heal by " first intention " ? Only this,
that the indescribably wondrous microcosm of the
body is so constructed that so long as a man has
not poisoned it with alcohol, or nicotine, or aught of
the kind the moment any injury happens to it, that
moment it begins to repair itself. Were it not for
such prompt, ceaseless and effective self-repair, no
reader of these pages would be alive at this hour.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 55
(iv) Yet is there something still more remarkable,
and as a mystery of good absolutely insoluble, which,
because it is the most wonderful of all, receives from
most men least attention of all. We hear, ad
nauseam, of the mystery of pain, but how is it that
scarcely any one makes mention of the mystery of
painlessness ? It is the more unfair, as well as
amazing, because the former, whatever stress be
laid upon it, is verily a trifle compared with the
latter. Here is an indescribably complex organism,
with some thirty trillions \_sic\ of anatomical elements
all living and working together to constitute it.
Health means the perfect balance of all these, in
such fashion that they all support each other with
an energetic solidarity elsewhere unparalleled. Dis
ease means that some few out of this colossal host
get out of hand for there is an unmistakable unified
government of the total organism and so make the
mischief we call disease. The accompanying pain
is but the reminder, and generally speaking, the
measure of the mischief. In a moment we will ap
preciate this. Here, mark the almost incredible fact
that those who profess to adore the supremacy of
reason, deem it reasonable to ignore, as nothing
worthy of notice, the condition when thirty trillions
of living items are so working together in painless
harmony as to make human life a joy and power.
But when a comparatively small fraction of them go
wrong, that constitutes sufficient ground for indict
ing the Author of nature as lacking in benevolence !
The unfairness of unbelief in this respect is only
equalled by its credulity in others. Meanwhile, as
a matter of positive fact, everywhere and always, in
every respect, in every age, in every family no less
than in every nation, and in the immeasurable
majority of individual men and women, the mystery
of good is as manifestly greater than the mystery of
56 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
ill, as the human body itself is than any one of its
component parts. If, then, God is debited with the
latter, assuredly He should also be credited with the
former. Such fairness in reasoning may not answer
all our questions, but it will suffice to silence the
gibes of unbelief, and contribute something real and
great towards good grounds for genuine belief.
5. The same principles apply to the human
woes associated with natural phenomena such as
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, famines, accidents,
epidemics. When the human or moral element is
eliminated from these, however harrowing to sheer
feeling certain known cases may be, calm judgement
cannot rationally regard them as contradictions to
the general reality of benevolence in nature. The
main mitigations which would bear careful elabora
tion are such as these.
Earthquakes are terrible in themselves, but they
are not the mere centres of Titanic malignity that
they are often made out to be. There are very real
modifications of such indictment, (a) All those who
are thereby killed would have died naturally in the
course of a few years. The mere fact, therefore, of
their death, does not come i"nto the account. () As
to the manner of death, its painfulness is grossly
exaggerated. Most of them would have suffered
more in the ordinary way of human disease, than
in the overwhelming eruption or convulsion. In
numberless cases there is no suffering at all. 1
(c) None of the sufferers were compelled by Divine
Providence to go and live in a district known to be
1 Did space permit, hundreds of instances might be quoted show
ing that in accidents, just as in the case of seizure by wild animals,
there is a natural and merciful process of nervous inhibition which
acts as a perfect anaesthetic. In a little book entitled " Is Nature
Cruel ? " by J. C. Hirst (Jas. Clarke), many wen-authenticated instances
are cited which afford reliable answer to the lurid sensationalism
usually expended on this theme.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 57
liable to such occurrences. Yet even after an earth
quake, as in Calabria, or Sicily, or San Francisco,
no sooner is the convulsion past than fresh buildings
are erected on the same spot, in defiance of all
warnings as to what is there possible, (d) Even
then, great part of the suffering is due to human
selfishness and carelessness in building. 1 This cer
tainly ought not to be charged to Divine Providence ;
any more than numberless "accidents " which have
plainly happened through culpable human neglect.
(e) The only ground on which such occurrences
could legitimately come into an indictment of Divine
goodness, would be that they formed part of a
general scheme which was working for human ill.
But this is exactly the opposite of the truth. They
are all necessary parts of a scheme which is working
for the greatest good of the greatest number. Science
is perfectly clear upon that point. 2 (/) The demand
that there should never be any such occurrence,
1 The Japanese committee of experts sent to investigate the San
Francisco earthquake, reported by Dr. Nakamura, Professor of
Architecture at Tokio University, that " dishonest mortar a corrupt
agglomeration of sea-sand and lime was responsible for nearly all
of the earthquake damage in San Francisco ".
2 The testimony of Prof. Judd in his volume on " Volcanoes "
(" International Scientific Series ") ought to suffice in this regard.
He writes : " Terrible and overwhelming as these phenomena are,
such sudden and violent manifestations of the subterranean energy
must not be regarded as the only or the chief of their effects. The
internal forces continually at work within the earth s crust, perform
a series of most important functions in connection with the economy
of the globe ; and were the actions of those forces to die out, our
planet would soon cease to be fit for the habitation of living beings.
... By the admirable balancing of the external and internal forces
of our own globe, the conditions necessary to animal and vegetable
existence are almost constantly maintained, and those interruptions
of such conditions produced by hurricanes and floods, by volcanic
outbursts and earthquakes, may safely be regarded as the insignificant
accidents of what is on the whole a very perfectly working piece of
machinery."
58 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
therefore, as an earthquake, is not only a demand
for miraculous interference which is most inconsist
ent on the part of unbelief, but also for that which,
according to expert scientific testimony, would only
result in depopulating the earth. It is at least better
that a few mortals should be sufferers, than that the
whole race should perish.
The very worst that can be truly said, then, in
regard to these phenomena, however we confess
them to be tragic in their effect upon limited num
bers of our fellow creatures, is, in Dr. Tennant s
words, 1 that they " are but the inevitable by-products
of the self-same course of Nature which on the
whole ministers to life and health ". Unbelief must
be very hard pressed to find in such a residuum a
reason for the bitter invectives so often hurled at
the present scheme of things. Mr. J. Fiske had no
reputation for " orthodoxy," but his summary is both
true and weighty.
" To say that the ways of Providence are in
scrutable, is still something more than an idle
platitude, and there is still room for the belief
that, could we raise the veil that enshrouds
eternal truth, we should see that behind nature s
cruellest works there are secret springs of
divinest tenderness and love." 2
But this is far from being the whole case. Human
suffering may always be divided into two categories,
that which we can prevent or heal, and that which
we cannot. There is no little room for plain speech
in regard to both of these.
(i) As to the former, the instinct within us which
shrinks from pain and rejoices in health, is both
natural and divine. On the broadest plane it must
1 " Origin and Propagation of Sin," p. 135.
2 " Through Nature to God," p. 46.
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 59
be affirmed that disease is not the will of God, and
that Chas. Kingsley was warranted in his avowal,
" I will no more say that God made me sick, than
that he made me a sinner ". Therein he did but echo
the Master who " went about healing all manner of
sickness and disease amongst the people ". The
sneer of unbelief that when the unquestionable
physical and ethical value of pain itself is recognized,
we thereby welcome it for its own sake, is altogether
uncalled for. As a matter of fact, those who most
utterly believe in the moral and spiritual value of
pain, as part of a divinely benevolent scheme, are
the foremost workers in all efforts to relieve and
prevent suffering.
(ii) Moreover, in regard to that which at present
we cannot either wholly prevent, or always heal,
there is much to be truly said which should check
the diatribes of scepticism, and in no small measure
reassure the Christian heart.
(1) Even on the low level of physical existence, as
pointed out above by Sir Frederick Treves, pain is
life s preservative. It is nature s warning bell, and
tells us of the injury or danger which, if not heeded,
would result in the destruction of the whole body.
It were small gain to any man if on a cold winter s
night he could put his feet into the fire without
feeling any harm, and then presently find himself
painlessly devoid of feet.
(2) It is equally true that pain is often a moral
protest and check. Moral evil is great enough in
this poor world as it is. What it would be if there
were no preventive or retributive checks through
pain, who can say ? Dr. Gant, as an expert ob
server, may well hereupon express his testimony
"With relation, therefore, to both body and
soul, suffering is not a curse but a blessing in
disguise. The transgression of moral law is
60 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
productive of the larger proportion of human
suffering in the body ; and although when
traceable to this source pain may be regarded
as the punishment of evil doing, it is only a
wholesome correction in infinite mercy for the
maintenance of both body and soul alive." 1
(3) Certainly also pain has been the chief intel
lectual educator of mankind. Had man been created
as incapable of pain as some would-be philan
thropists demand, he would yet have been in the
condition of the primeval savage. Or may be lower,
for even the savage learnt the use of fire, which he
would never have done had he not been sensitive
to the painfulness of cold. If civilization is at all
better than savagery, it is because pain has whipped
up the mind of man to levels above the brute. As
it is, even now, all attempts to educate an ordinary
child without the infliction of pain of any kind,
would be abortive. One might, indeed, with real
truth, go much farther, and say that some of the
noblest enrichments of higher realms of thought
have been the result of suffering. There is ample
testimony that the heritage of intellectual profit
which has come to us from such teachers as Dante,
Darwin, Tennyson, F. W. Robertson, and R. L.
Stevenson, etc., would never have been what it is
but for the suffering which seemed to hinder but
really made them what they were.
(4) When it comes to lofty character in general,
the result is still nobler and more unquestionable.
1 " The Mystery of Suffering," by Dr. F. J. Gant, F.R.C.S., whose
competence to speak may be best expressed in his own words : " Hav
ing been actively engaged in the relief of human suffering for a
period of forty-five years, during thirty-seven of which I was a
hospital surgeon, it has been my lot to witness more of the turmoils
and distress in the body and soul of man than any other sphere of
experience in relation to mankind could have offered for contem
plation ".
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 61
(a) On the broad scale no sentence can be more true
than that of Dr. Illingworth "The pleasures of
each generation evaporate in air ; it is their pains
that increase the spiritual momentum of the world ". l
And by the side of it the palpable folly of those who
sigh for a perfectly painless world in which " health
should be made catching instead of disease," becomes
manifest. We should in such case exchange a world
of noble endeavour for the pitiful delights of an
enormous creche, a mere bipedal reproduction and
perpetuation of the unmoral monsters of the Creta
ceous period. () It must also be remembered that
all the vilest and cruellest deeds on record have been
and are yet perpetrated by healthy men and women.
Nero and Charles Peace had perfectly sound bodies ;
whilst some, if not most, of the sweetest and nob
lest actions that lift humanity highest above brutal
levels, have been and are yet done by invalids.
(c) Even amongst ordinary and respectable society,
it may be truly remarked that the hardest and least
admirable of characters are to be found amongst
those who never know ache or pain, whose example,
if generally followed, would resolve mankind into a
mere mob of isolated selfish units. On the other
hand, (cf) the sympathy which bespeaks the tenderest
and divinest fellowship, and the solidarity which
connotes human brotherhood, are evoked by suffer
ing and not by enjoyment. It is " fellow-feeling "
in sorrow that "makes us wondrous kind," not
perpetual painlessness or sensational gratification.
Even amongst the opponents of the Christian view
of Providence, we cannot but see that the best parts
of their nature are those developed by the very pains
and miseries that they so vehemently denounce.
The writer of " God and My Neighbour," who so
vigorously asserts that " in face of a knowledge of
1 "Lux Mundi," p. 124.
62 DOES THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
life and the world, we cannot reasonably believe in
a Heavenly Father," and shows himself only ridi
culous as a world-making philosopher, yet in actual
dealing with the dark and pitiful side of life, be
comes a noble incarnation of chivalry and pity, of
tenderness and unselfishness. These assuredly
make manhood more divine than all the muscle of a
Sandow, or the money-making cleverness of a
Vanderbilt, or the brain of a Haeckel, or the power
of a Napoleon, or the sensual self-gratification of a
Nero. Mr. Hall Caine has only spoken the truth in
saying that
" If in the darkness of the mystery of suffer
ing we do not see the Divine face, we ought at
least to see the lamp of human virtue. Take
suffering out of the world, and what is left of
heroism, and patience, and self-sacrifice ? "
Enough has been said to show that, even on natural
lines, the darkness of the mystery of suffering ought
not to prevent our seeing the Divine face with at
least sufficient clearness to save us from pessimism
and despair. When we are modest enough to re
member the limitations of our faculties, and appreci
ate the fact that there is not one single riddle of the
universe which science is able to solve, it should
cease to trouble us that we cannot explain to our
own satisfaction all that happens in the course of
nature to such marvellously complex beings as our
selves. 1 There is certainly nothing in such failure
1 Sir Oliver Lodge, commenting upon the pessimistic quatrain of
Omar Khayyam
Ah Love, could thou and I with Fate conspire,
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart s desire ?
well says, " The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions. If
DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD? 63
to forbid our listening to the world s greatest and
best Teacher, when He gives us, on the warrant of
His own character and life and example, a more
comforting assurance and a larger hope than all the
best in nature warrants. The total validity of His
claims to reveal to humanity the actual and eternal
Fatherhood, may be discussed elsewhere. This, at
least, we know ; that in Him the mystery of pain
found its bitterest core ; and in Him also submissive
trust in the eclipsed Fatherhood was exhibited to
the uttermost. The two absolutely unmistakable
features of His message to men are, the actual and
unlimited love of the Father, and the assurance that
this our present life is not the only realm of its
operation. His triumph over death, with all that
followed, is the pledge of the reliability of His good
tidings.
It would, indeed, be a very serious shock to faith
if it could be unequivocally shown that Nature,
which He ever regarded as the Father s handiwork,
contradicted what He thus taught. But we have
seen that it is not so. It is true we have no all-
sufficing explanation of life s darker side. The
amount, and intensity, and distribution of suffering
often bewilder and sadden us. But when exaggera
tion and confusion, sensationalism and misrepre
sentation, have been cleared away : when with calm
discernment, even though through tearful eyes, we
survey the whole case fairly, we find so much com
fort intermingled with the sorrow, so much good in
the ill, so much light coming with the darkness, that
our revolt of heart yields to deeper conviction of
mind. Sorrow, suffering, disappointment, calamity,
early deaths, remain the tragedies we have always
we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to
shatter it to bits and then remould it, we should hail it as better and
more satisfying than any of our random imaginings."
64 DOES PAIN DISPROVE THE LOVE OF GOD?
felt them to be. But we are driven, in spite of our
selves, to own that there is another side. These
contradictions of what is after all our lower self,
tend ever to develop the higher. They urge us to
" move upward, working out the beast," to put away
childish things, and lay claim to a nobler destiny.
Manhood fighting with Giant Despair in the valley
of the shadow of death, is beyond all question some
thing worthier, higher, nobler, than the sleekest
beast that finds nothing to do or bear but wallow in
the mud and bask in the sunshine. Nature s laws are
confessedly severe. But they so serve us when we
obey them, as to leave no honest mind in doubt that
they are our friends, not our foes. They ever dis
close, when we are not too blinded with passion or
folly to see it, a " power not ourselves that makes
for righteousness ". They become, indeed, to echo
Paul s words in a wider sense, " our schoolmaster
to bring us to Christ ".
In a word, the true map of this our present state
of being, is not a black ground with some streaks
of white upon it, but a white ground with streaks
of black. There may well come moments when
the problems of pain bewilder us by their intensity
and extent. But then a gentle hand is laid upon
our tear-dimmed eyes, and a voice that carries in
itself its own trustworthiness whispers " Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Believe in God; believe also in Me." It is such
a voice certainly which the human heart most longs,
most needs, to hear. And when all nature s lessons
have been patiently learned, they do not drive us
away from, but rather bid us turn to, the only One
who in mortal speech has ever dared to say " I
am the light of the world Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest ".
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
" God is spirit."
" God is light."
" God is love."
" Our God is a consuming fire."
" There are some who say that God is unfeeling Law, while the
Christians tell us that God is love ; there again I think that science has
decided something. At first sight the witness of science is all for rigid
law, and there are many who look no further ; yet the right conclusion is
not that love is not behind, but that if there be love, it must be perfect love.
We cannot believe now in a love divine which wavers and changes, and has
moods and tempers. Clear the word of all that weakens and debases that
loving self-surrender of the noblest of mortals, and you will see more and
more clearly that the awful sternness of Nature is no greater and may well
be no other than the sternness of perfect love in doing its work of love.
If Nature wavered, this would prove that God is at any rate not perfect
love." Dr. GWATKIN, " The Knowledge of God ".
" With relation, therefore, to both body and soul, suffering is not a
curse but a blessing in disguise.
" The transgression of moral law is productive of the larger proportion
of human suffering in the body ; and although when traceable to this
source, pain may be regarded as the punishment of evil doing, it is only
a wholesome correction in infinite mercy for the maintenance of both body
and soul alive."
Dr. F. C. GANT, F.R.C.S., " The Mystery of Suffering ".
" No believer in the good God imagines that the impartial order of this
world expresses the whole of Him. If He seems to hide Himself in
indifference behind the impersonal order, Christian doctrine denies the
indifference. It declares that whether we discern Him or not, He is
there, the indwelling God, dealing with men in the realm of a spiritual
existence that ranks above the order that seems impersonal ; caring for all,
doing the work of an invisible friend, uttering Himself in every instructive
voice, communicating with every living soul, providing for destinies as yet
unseen. If His creatures seem wronged by the impartial working of His
universe, still the deeper truth is that in Him they live and move and have
their being, and His tender mercies are over all His works."
Dr. W. N. CLARKE, " The Christian Doctrine of God ".
CHAPTER III
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
THE considerations which follow in this section take
theism for granted. They will be meaningless for
atheists, profitless for agnostics. But it is more than
possible that agnosticism may result from unworthy
thoughts of God, no less than through the usually
alleged impossibility of knowing anything reliable
concerning Him. In times when the mind is en
larged by the teachings of science, and the heart
made more tender through world-wide acquaintance
with the struggles of human life, there cannot but be
a revolt from the narrow, petty, harsh, and cruel
conceptions of Deity which satisfied some former
theologians. Even the Bible, if taken on the old
lines, and treated as one homogeneous whole of
verbal inspiration, lends itself to a frightful travesty
of truth. Representations of God are thrust upon
the modern mind which are not only in themselves
unwarranted and unworthy, but supply all too effec
tive material for iconoclasm like that of Mr. Brad-
laugh during the closing periods of the nineteenth
century, and Mr. Blatchford at the commencement of
the twentieth. Says the latter :
" As for the biblical God, Jahweh or Jehovah,
I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He
was not all wise, nor all powerful, nor omni
present, that He was not merciful nor just, but
that on the contrary He was fickle, jealous, dis
honourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous and
cruel. And yet in the inspired Book, in the
68 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
Holy Bible, this awful creature is still enshrined
as God the Father Almighty." :
Language such as this, or even more severe, can
not be truly said to be without any justification.
Only too many instances might be given from some
pulpits, from not a little out-door preaching, and
from not a few " Gospel " publications in the form of
tracts, booklets, etc., which by their lack of dis
crimination between the Old Testament and the New,
and their refusal to treat the Bible rationally, open
the door wide for such comments as the foregoing.
The one thing certain is that the modern mind
will not tolerate such an ideal. The book just
quoted speaks in truculent fashion of "Jehovah the
adopted Heavenly Father of Christianity ". If that
were true, Christianity would be doomed. The
writer ought to know that it is not true. But un
fortunately many of his readers who know no better
will take it from him as true, and be correspondingly
alienated from everything Christian.
This is precisely what is happening in a vastly
greater number of cases than most of the Churches,
with their superficial appeals for optimism, are
aware. But there are, happily, many wiser, truer
and nobler conceptions of God to be found in the
Christian teaching of to-day. Sometimes, however,
as is customary in human affairs, these go to an
opposite extreme, equally unwarranted and un
worthy. From a God of savagery they pass to one
of softness. From the hardness and harshness of
an ancient tribal deity, they turn to a magnified
modern man given over to laissez-faire.
Meanwhile the truth abides firm that the founda
tion of all religion is the thought of God, in some
form or another. All religion that merits the name
1 " God and My Neighbour," pp. 47, 56.
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 69
may be said to involve three things, an object of
worship, an ideal of service, and a bond of obligation.
But it is plain that both these latter depend for their
nature upon the first. It is the conception of God
which determines ultimately the total content and
influence of any religion. " Like priest like people,"
is not more true than " like God like priest ". This is
the sure ground of the claim on behalf of Christianity
that it is the noblest of all faiths, viz. because it has
the purest, loftiest, worthiest conception of God as its
basis. In this conception to put it in simplest brev
ity there are four elements reality, personality,
incomprehensibility, fatherhood. Of these, reality
is a necessity of thought for which no apology need
be made. Incomprehensibility is a general as well as
necessary acknowledgment which calls for no ex
position. But the two remaining features of Deity,
according to Christian faith, do require all the
emphasis that careful and honest thought can give
them. There cannot be greater or more important
matters for consideration in the whole realm of
religion, than the actuality and the quality of the
Divine Personality.
The former of these, we all know, is assumed
throughout the whole Bible. This is done so
simply, so naturally, so invariably, that the ordinary
Bible reader thinks nothing of it. Much in the
same way as the sailor notes the position of a certain
star and thinks no more about it. It is a star, and
it is there. That is enough. To explain that every
such star is a sun, and is millions of millions of
miles away, is as unnecessary information for his
purpose as probably unwelcome. Yet it is abso
lutely necessary that some one should notice these
further facts and their significance ; or else the whole
realm of modern science would become a chaos. It
is no less true that whatever becomes of pragmatists,
70 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
learned or unlearned, there must be a philosophy of
religion ; and so far as the Christian religion is con
cerned, its unequivocal starting point, as well as its
unmistakable basis, is the personality of God. It is
not, however, incumbent upon us here to plunge
into abysmal depths of metaphysics such as would
befit a philosophical treatise. In homelier yet no less
careful summary it must suffice to say that neither
philosophy nor science can put a veto on such a
thought of God. Speaking for the latter, Sir Oliver
Lodge has recently said with pertinent truth :
" People sometimes seek to deny such attri
butes as are connoted by the word personality
in the Godhead they say it is a human concep
tion. Certainly it is a human conception ; it is
through humanity that it has been revealed.
Why seek to deny it ? God transcends per
sonality, objectors say. By all means ; trans
cends all our conceptions infinitely, transcends
every revelation which has ever been vouch
safed ; but the revelations are true as far as
they go, for all that." T
George Eliot s objection that an infinite personal
ity is an absurdity, because so utterly incompre
hensible by us, is sufficiently met by the reply that
our own personality is equally incomprehensible.
But for that reason to pronounce it unreal, would
be irrational, seeing that the very pronunciation
would prove it real. Only a person can form and
utter a deliberate judgment. But what " I am I >f
means, no one has yet been able, or is ever likely
to be able, to say.
Again, Prof. Haeckel s crude assertion that " the
notion of a personal God has been rendered quite
untenable by the recent advances of monistic science "
1 " Hibbert Journal," July, 1911, p. 703.
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 71
may be dismissed as quite contrary to fact, just as
his further definition of personality is quite contrary
to philosophy. " We can never recognize in God,"
he says, "a personal being, or, in other words, an
individual of limited extension in space, or even of
human form." Such an attempt to beg the whole
question by limiting all personality to human beings,
is unworthy of a serious teacher. The well-known
words of one of Germany s most eminent philoso
phers sum up the whole case, so far as philosophy
is concerned, much more truly. In his Microcosms
Herman Lotze wrote :
" In point of fact we have little ground for
speaking of the personality of finite beings. It
is an ideal, and like all that is ideal belongs un
conditionally only to the infinite. Perfect per
sonality is in God only ; to all finite minds there
is allotted but a pale copy thereof; the finite-
ness of the finite is not a producing condition
of this personality but a limit and hindrance of
its development." 1
Here, therefore, we assume the reality of the
Divine personality. Being ourselves undeniable
though inexplicable units of thought, feeling, and
will, we cannot possibly credit the Author of our
being with less capacity than ourselves. To such
an attitude, the words of our eminent scientist
apply-
1 " So too," says the late Prof. Bowne in his able work on Theism,
" we must reverse the common speculative dogma and declare that
proper personality is possible only to the Absolute. The very ob
jections urged against the personality of the Absolute show the in
completeness of human personality. The absolute knowledge and
self-possession which are necessary to perfect personality, can be
found only in the absolute and infinite being upon whom all things
depend. Of this, our finite personality can never be more than the
feeblest and faintest image " (p. 167).
72 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
" Let us not be discouraged by simplicity.
Real things are simple. Human conceptions
are not altogether misleading. Our view of
the universe is a partial one, but not an untrue
one. The Christian idea of God is a genuine
representation of reality." 1
But the greatest question of all yet remains. If
God be personal, what is the character of His per
sonality ? A person, we know too well, may be
wicked as well as good, cruel as well as tender.
Personality, indeed, is the source not only of all
that is best on earth, but also of all that is worst.
Our dearest friend must be a person. But a person
may be also our deadliest enemy. To say that such a
one is a person, is to say nothing, until the character
of his personality is made known. Is he a monster
or a father? a Nero, or a St. Francis? This is
precisely, and above all else, what we want to know
concerning God, when it is once granted that He is
both real and personal.
It cannot be said too plainly, in these days, that
herein the Old Testament is not for us a sufficient
guide. There are great and grave difficulties as
sociated with it which cannot honestly be ignored.
If Christ had simply endorsed its conceptions, Chris
tianity would never have come into existence. Nor
can Christianity now be maintained without His
modifications, corrections, and enlargements, of the
Old Testament thought of God. How far He was
from simply endorsing all that is recorded in Deuter
onomy, or Judges, or Kings, with a " Thus saith the
Lord " attached to it, His own words bear abundant
witness. He offered no proof of the Divine existence,
and He unhesitatingly accepted the assumption of the
Divine personality which permeates the whole collec-
1 Sir Oliver Lodge, " Hibbert Journal," July, 191 1, p. 716.
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 73
tion of Jewish scriptures. But He did much more.
Everywhere and always He insisted on the Father
hood of God, with a firmness, a clearness and a full
ness which had never been approached before, and
have never been equalled, let alone surpassed, since.
We may bear in faithful memory all the associations
of the " Golden Bough " ; all the partial visions of
poets outside Judaism like Aratus, whom Paul did
not hesitate to quote ; and even all the loftier as
well as more wistful expressions of prophets and
psalmists amidst the chosen people. Yet it remains
not merely true but the most irrefragable of truths,
that for an unmistakable and full-orbed conception
of God as the universal and eternal Father, human
ity is indebted to Jesus Christ as to no other prophet,
or seer, or poet, or teacher, that it has ever known.
This is, indeed, His most vivid and indisputable
claim to originality. For His unfolding of the Divine
Fatherhood is such as to rule out all comparison
with other gropings and findings, whilst it anticipates
all questions which might otherwise arise out of the
imperfection of our human ideal. It may certainly
be hoped that in our human midst fatherhood still
ranks high, as a synonym for all that is good and
noble and gracious. But we cannot forget that
there are many types of fatherhood amongst the
nations, and some much more severe than tender,
much more stern than kind. Christ s own words
could, on occasion, be very strong in condemnation ;
and it would be dishonest as well as useless to at
tempt to conceal from ourselves or from each other,
the severe side of the many utterances of the Apostles
who spoke in His name. So that there is room for
most careful as well as thankful appreciation of the
true message of the Christian Gospel hereupon.
That a real father should be loved by his children, we
all agree. But should he also be feared ? The general
74 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
conception, supported by practical family life, is that
the mother is loved and the father feared. Is that
as it should be, and is that the clue to our under
standing and appreciation of the Fatherhood of God?
The Christian appeal must, of course, be to the
New Testament. But not to a merely mechanical
catena of texts. The only satisfactory appeal is to
a full and fair induction from the whole, in the light
of that honest scrutiny to which both Christ Himself
and the Apostles ever urged their hearers.
One unmistakable truth then emerges, viz. that
throughout the whole of the New Testament there
is no possible divorce between love and fear, as the
rightful attitude of the human heart towards God.
"Behold, therefore," says the Apostle Paul, "the
goodness and severity of God." With that all-com
prehensive ideal, Christ s delineation of the Father
hood always and entirely agrees. When, therefore,
amidst the modern unrest, we shrink equally from
the extremes of bygone thoughtless attribution to
God of the passions of men depicted in certain por
tions of the Old Testament, and the modern easy
going indifference which would make Him a mere
lotus-eater amongst Olympian gods, it is to this
unification of love and fear that we must turn, for
such a conception of God as will commend Chris
tianity to the sincere thought of to-day. If indeed
the Christian faith is to come unscathed out of the
critical crucible, and become, as its adherents desire,
the world-religion of the twentieth century, a larger,
worthier thought of God is as indispensable as is
the rising of the sun if night is to be turned into
day.
In hope that a plain answer to the question of
this section may be some contribution towards such
a conception, the whole case may here be sum
marized under five distinctive truths. These will
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 75
differ greatly from the " five points " of former
Calvinism, but the difference will be the measure
at once of their truthfulness and their significance.
I. In God as revealed by Jesus Christ, there is
absolutely nothing to fear except His love.
II. All the wrath, anger, severity, attributed to
God in the Gospel, are but the expression of His
love in presence of evil.
III. In the presence of evil, all love that is love
must become fearful, just in the degree that it is
real.
IV. This severe side of love Divine is real enough
and fearful enough to move all human nature to
stand in awe of it.
V. There is always one, and only one, way of
escape from the severity of the love of God, and that
is by turning back to His love s tenderness.
All real preaching of the Gospel consists in making
this five-fold truth clear to human hearts, and force
ful in human lives. In such a commission, when all
that it includes is apprehended, there is programme
enough to occupy every Christian church and every
individual believer.
I. There is absolutely nothing in God to fear,
except His love. That is the great main unmistak
able message of the Gospel of Christ to mankind.
In the New Testament references to the Divine
nature by which, for the Christian mind, the worth
of all the Old Testament allusions must ever be
tested there are many adjectives employed to
signify qualities, but only four emphatic substantival
assertions. " God is spirit " ; " God is love " ; " God
is light " ; " God is a consuming fire ". Of these the
first two may be termed literal, and the latter two
figurative. But there is a closer relationship be
tween them which is worthy of regard. All love, to
be love, must be spiritual. To represent God as the
76 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
Spirit of Love is to exhibit in the form at once most
simple, sublime, and tender, what may reverently
be called the bright aspect of His nature. To say
that God is light, is a figure which at first glance
seems also only bright. But our modern knowledge
tells us with unmistakable emphasis that the light
which is the life of the physically higher and
worthier, is the death of the low and the unworthy.
Against the noxious microbes which we now
know are our deadliest enemies in body, sunshine
is a mightier defender, because a more potent
destroyer of such disease-bringing foes, than all the
medicines and disinfectants of science put together.
In this for us most merciful sense, the light is
also a consuming fire. These two, therefore, may
well be employed to represent the sterner aspects
of the Divine character.
There are in the New Testament, as already
acknowledged, many references to God which are
at first glance nothing less than terrible. The
closing portion, popularly known as "Revelations,"
has not only become a critical problem, but has all
too plentifully supplied the uncritical with material
for well-meant but luridly false thoughts concerning
God s dealings with men. Yet it must be owned
that unless this book be given up altogether, there
are representations of the Divine character which
are unmistakably awe-inspiring. The Apostles
also, alike in their preaching and in their letters,
unequivocally refer to Divine " wrath," both here
and hereafter. Whilst Jesus himself, besides simi
larly severe references on various occasions, sums
up this aspect of the Father s nature in a single
solemn sentence. " I will warn you whom ye shall
fear : Fear Him, who after He has killed, has power
to cast into Gehenna: yes, I say to you, Fear Him." 1
1 Luke xn. 5.
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 77
For our present purpose of brief exposition, how
ever, the vivid words of the writer to the Hebrews
will sum up all these, and give us a statement than
which nothing can be stronger l or more truly repre
sentative of all that is fearful in the Divine nature.
Cut away from its context, as, alas, too many similar
utterances of the New Testament generally are, the
truth that " God is a consuming fire " would be
terrifying indeed, and might make the Divine Father
hood to be but an object of dread. But on fair and
rational treatment, as part of a whole, it assumes a
very different aspect. How far from suggesting mere
terror was the intention of the writer, may be clearly
seen from two plain facts. First, that this is the very
chapter which, of all the New Testament writings,
speaks most fully and unequivocally of the tender
love of the " Father of spirits ". Then, also, from v. 1 8
to 23, we have vividly set forth the contrast between
the severity of the Old Covenant under Moses, and
the New Covenant of which Jesus is the mediator.
Thus we are free to look unflinchingly into the
heart of a phrase which so significantly summarizes
the fearful aspect of the Fatherhood of God.
To speak generally, " consuming fire " seems a
suggestion full of terror and horror to us, because of
our physical sensitiveness to the pain of any small
burn, and our human helplessness in presence of
great conflagrations which destroy property and
homes and lives. But any such dreadful connota
tion of the phrase is expressly excluded here by the
context. Whether a consuming fire is to be a
horror or a benediction, depends always and alto
gether upon what it consumes. If it be true that
1 Matt. xxv. 31-46 is not forgotten here, but its significance
has been so much distorted and abused in building up a doctrine of
eternal punishment with which it has nothing to do, that it is best
not to refer to it unless there be space for fair and full exposition.
78 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
God is love, plainly the only " consuming fire " which
truly represents Him, must be incandescent love.
Can we not then judge from our own small but real
experiences, what love consumes when it is burn
ing with intensity ? At least this is certain beyond
all doubt, that it never consumes the loved one. If,
then, there be any truth in the oft-repeated words
that " God so loved the world that he gave His only
begotten son " for its redemption, no fire from Him,
or in Him, can ever consume those whom He so
loves. As surely as the fearful fire in the hottest of
our furnaces wherein gold is purified, never con
sumes the gold but only separates it from the dross,
so is the love of the Father, even in its most fearful
manifestation, working always for human ennoble
ment, never for human destruction.
It may, however, be thought that if God be God,
enshrined in all the awfulness with which our modern
knowledge invests him, he must be fearful because
illimitable in power and majesty. And it is over
whelmingly true as Sir Oliver Lodge has well
reminded the world of science at the close of his
Romanes Lecture on the nature of matter that the
physical universe is more than sufficient, when we
carefully consider it, " to elicit feelings of reverent
awe and adoration ". But before power, even omni
potent power, is rightly an object of fear, surely it
is necessary to know whether it is for us or against
us. Now, if the message of Jesus merits any regard
at all, this is settled for evermore. His whole Gos
pel is in one word " Emmanuel ". For those who
think of Christ as in any sense " the Truth," all ques
tion here is at an end. " God is for us," not against
us. He " is the Saviour of all men," asserts the
Apostle. The very least that such a word can mean
is that whatever there is of might, and majesty, and
power, and awfulness, in the Divine nature, it is all
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 79
and always on the side of poor humanity. A little
child taken into the engine-room of one of our modern
mammoth liners, might well be terror-stricken at the
display of immeasurable force, and exclaim " What
fearful engines ! " But the very fearfulness becomes
a source of gladness when it is made plain that every
throb of that ponderous crank, every revolution of
that fearful shaft, brings all on board happily on
their way, and promises every little one to take him
safely home. With no less assurance does the Christ
of the Gospels give us to understand that all things
are so surely working together for our good, that
all the awfulness of a law-governed universe is for,
and not against us. The huge steam-hammer in our
iron works which at one moment can smash a mass
of metal with such tremendous force, and then in
skilled hands come down upon an egg without crack
ing it, is but a poor illustration of the infinite power
which directs the swing of suns and comets in their
vast orbits, and yet is said by Jesus to be so tenderly
solicitous for our human welfare that the very hairs
of our head are numbered
II. What, then, it may be asked, becomes of all
the " anger," and " wrath," and " severity," which
are so unmistakably attributed, even by Jesus Him
self, as well as the Apostles, to the Divine nature ?
That they are echoes, though modified and mellowed,
of Old Testament utterances, is too plain to need
reiteration. If there is much in the Jewish scrip
tures which the Christian mind cannot but disown,
there is also much which it must accept and endorse.
Are, then, all the strong assertions concerning the
" wrath " of God, His " anger " against sin, with all
the solemn warnings and threatened judgements in
regard to evil-doing, to be minimized, discounted to
trifles, dismissed to forgetfulness ? Assuredly not.
Neither the Master Himself, nor any one of His
8o WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
servants, gives us any warrant for such procedure.
But what we do learn, in " the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," is a
fuller apprehension from His standpoint than ancient
prophet or seer or psalmist could ever give their
fellows, that the " anger " of God is always and only
the expression of His love in the presence of evil.
The poet s phrase " all s love and yet all s law "
has imprinted itself deeply on the modern mind
But it is even more true in the reverse. " All s law
and yet all s love." That, at least, with unmeasured
emphasis, is the message of Christ s Gospel to mortal
men. The most common and for that very reason
the most forceful illustration of this in our daily
life, has been sufficiently referred to on a previous
page. The laws of nature, in all their fearful resist-
lessness, are love to us so long as we obey them.
It is we ourselves who turn their goodness into
severity, by our neglect or disobedience. They are
only crushing when we are rebellious. And their
general working together for the good of humanity,
is so marked as to warrant the inference that the
very severity of the punishment, when men set
nature s laws at defiance, is intended to teach them
that they are turning away from good to ill, and are
making fearful foes of the very forces which would
be their best friends. Physical illustrations of moral
truths are necessarily incomplete, but we may well
mark how the water which generally serves us so well
in its life-sustaining properties, turns to generally
unhelpful if not death-dealing ice in presence of cold.
Yet is every threatening iceberg, all the time, poten
tially water. So does the whole Bible teach us, but
more especially the message of Jesus, that the love
of God, however real and tender, is hardened into
anger and becomes fearful when it is met by moral
evil, or treated with rebellion s cold disdain. None
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 81
the less is the very wrath of God, always and only,
potential love.
The Old Testament gives us a vivid and typi
cal instance in the opening words of Isaiah, as Dr.
G. A. Smith forcefully points out. " Because of all
books the Bible is the only one which interprets con
science as the love of God, so is it the only one that
can combine His pardon with His reproach, and as
Isaiah does in a single verse, proclaim His free for
giveness as the conclusion of His bitter quarrel.
Come, let us bring our reasoning to a close saith
the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet they
shall be white as snow ; though they be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool. " 1 Then, if we turn
to the severest chapter in the New Testament,
Matt. XXIIL, we find that even there the fearful
denunciations of wrong melt away at the end into
heart-breaking tenderness of lamentation over the
wrong-doers. " How often would I have gathered
thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would not." So,
always, be the consuming fire as fearful as it may,
the anger of God, according to the Gospel of Jesus,
is ever and only incandescent love.
III. This turning of love divine into severity under
special conditions, is not caprice but holy principle ;
for in the presence of evil all love that is love, must
become fearful just in proportion as it is real. If,
as the Gospel of Jesus would have us understand,
the love of God is the most real of all love, then,
when faced by moral evil, must it become in intensest
degree a consuming fire of anger. Yet, may this
word "anger," and its correlative, "wrath," be alto
gether misleading. It is the misfortune of human
speech, and a sinister testimony to the presence
1 "Commentary on Isaiah," Vol. I, p. 13.
6
82 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
of moral evil in our human midst, that no one of
these terms is really accurate when applied to God.
Divine anger differs from human anger as distinctly
as the knife of the surgeon, in his skilled hands and
with his tender intention, differs from the dagger-
thrust of the assassin. Anger in a man towards his
fellow, inevitably connotes more or less of the spite
which desires revenge for some fancied or real wrong,
in the infliction of pain upon the offender. But there
is no more of this element in the Divine anger than
coal in a diamond though both are carbon. The
wrath of God does not desire to inflict pain upon
the sinner, any more than a good and tender-hearted
father wishes to inflict punishment upon a disobedi
ent child. If, indeed, pain is associated with the
Divine anger, there are always two distinctive
features inseparable from such " wrath ". The ex
press object of the pain is not the pleasure of the
inflicter, but the good of the sufferer. And further
more, he who inflicts the pain always suffers with
the offender on whom it falls. Both these traits are
found in the dealing of good fathers with wayward
children.
Some time ago in a northern city, no small indig
nation was aroused in regard to a father a well-
known Free Church minister whose child, in spite
of many warnings, persisted in playing with fire.
As a final lesson and punishment in one, the father
lit a match and deliberately with it burned the child s
finger until a blister came. This was said by not a
few to be "cruel," "barbarous," "shameful," and the
like. But in that same city, in one week, two children
were burned to death from the very folly against
which this father sought effectually to warn his child.
When the sentimentalism of his denouncers is put
iside, the principles of such an action are as worthy
as plain. It is certain that nothing but the child s
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 83
good was intended. It is no less sure that the father
suffered in the infliction of the pain quite as much
as the child. Whether the warning was effective
or not, through all the after years, is irrelevant.
It was assuredly most likely to be, and with that
the father s responsibility and opportunity of influ
ence ended. On the world scale of humanity, such
principles are even more true and applicable. " As I
live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death
of the wicked, but would rather that he should turn
from his wickedness and live." In regard to the
chosen people, can anything be at once more pathetic
and fearful than the prophet s record
" In all their affliction He was afflicted, and
the angel of His presence saved them ; in His
love and in His pity He redeemed them ; and He
bare them and carried them all the days of old.
But they rebelled and grieved His holy spirit ;
therefore He was turned to be their enemy and
Himself fought against them. For from of old
men have not heard, neither hath the eye seen,
a God beside thee, who worketh for him that
waiteth for him." 1
Or, again, to learn on the smaller scale of our own
affections how love must sometimes hate, mark the
young man starting business life with all fair promise
of success and happiness, his father s joy, his mother s
pride. But presently boon companions lure him to
looseness, gambling, drink ; so that the promising
career is blighted, and instead of worthy character
developing like a noble edifice, there are only the
revolting relics of what might have been. Could
the father s love become anything else than a con
suming fire towards the evils that have ruined his
loved one ? What does the mother feel when the
1 Is. LXIII. 9, 10 ; LXIV. 4.
84 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
home is invaded by the dreaded fever, and she sees
her darlings go down one by one in its fell clutch ?
Does not her love for them become consuming hate
for the disease, even such that she would do any
thing in her power to stamp its curse out of the earth ?
That, on the immeasurable scale, is the true and only
meaning of the anger of God love made fearful
by evil. How tenderly and vehemently the prophets
expressed this, is too plain to call for prolonged
quotation. "O do not this abominable thing that I
hate " is the summary of the word that came to
Jeremiah. But the reason of the hate is made as
unmistakable as the anger which is " poured forth ".
The anger of God is but love s hate of the evil that
is ruining the loved one. In the light of the New
Testament, which is as much fiercer against evil as
tenderer towards those who do it, the principle is
illuminated to the uttermost. As the Father of men,
God so hates evil because He so loves us ; and
there is in the Divine nature no other anger than
that which embodies the heartache of His own pro
test against the evil which alienates from Him His
earthly children.
IV. Certainly all that can be expressed in words,
no less than all that we see in facts, goes to show
that the Divine anger is in itself a terrible reality.
The solemn warning of Jesus, " Yes, I say to you,
fear Him " should avail to prevent any man from
thinking either that love can be trifled with, or that
the hate into which evil transforms it is a light
matter. That can never be. The two elements in
the case can never be either separated or confused.
The anger is indeed love transformed, but the
transformation is real. The anger, though free from
anything like human malice, is terrible in its actu
ality. There is overwhelming reason for saying
" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 85
living God ". How frightful are some of the bodily
results of sin, perhaps medical men and Christian
ministers, together with those actually engaged in
philanthropic work, only know. If all the disease
that is due to moral evil were eliminated from
humanity s experience, there would be scarcely any
vocation at all for doctors.
But this is by no means the whole result of sin,
any more than in a well-regulated family the banish
ment of a disobedient child from the table at a meal,
would be the whole effect of persistent wrongdoing.
Human nature is undeniably complex, and may
suffer far more in mind and heart than in bod} .
Who would not rather endure bodily pain, than know
the anguish of what we call a broken heart ? No
form of physical suffering is dreaded so much as the
loss of one s reason. All experience testifies that it
is in the highest realms of our being that we are
capable of most loss and suffering. It is here that
what we are obliged by the poverty of our language
to term the " anger " of God, comes upon men most
terribly. The pain and loss which ensue from sin-
in addition to all possible bodily result do not con
sist in something inflicted from without, as a school
master may find it necessary to cane a refractory boy,
but of self-caused alienation from the source of all
that is best and highest, all that would therefore
develop the highest and best within us.
The whole significance of this cannot be ex
pressed in words, but enough can be realized suffi
ciently in our ordinary circles of home and friends
and society, to illustrate the horror of that Divine
anger which involves the impossibility of com
munion with the highest. One hears that pulpits
no longer resound with the former direful echoes
of "hell," and "damnation," and "eternal torment,"
etc., and it is, or ought to be, true ; for there is
86 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
nothing in all the Greek Testament that answers
to these verbal malignities as used in modern
speech. It cannot be too plainly said that no Chris
tian preacher has any right in the name of the
Gospel of Jesus to talk in these days about " dam
nation," or " torment," or aught else of the kind.
Lurid figures from the book of " Revelation " have
no more truth or warrant when they are quoted
in isolation from their context as literal threats
for all men, than the Christian hope of the future
is to be regarded as residence in a stone-built city,
paved with metal, where the only happiness would
be to sit linen-clothed in a ring and wave branches
of trees for ever and ever. But on the other hand,
the strange thing is that some others should allow
themselves to imagine that a figurative expression
is weaker than a literal one. Surely the opposite
is the case. When we say that a man is as hard
as a nail, or as keen as a razor, etc., we mean
more, not less, than if we should simply pronounce
him very hard or keen. To plead against being
kept in suspense is intelligible enough ; but a protest
against being kept on the tenter-hooks, is not only
equally intelligible but more emphatic. Figures of
speech come in, we must own, to help us when
ordinary language fails. Thus to say that there is
no hell of physical torment, here or hereafter, no
lake of fire and brimstone, no place of bodily torture
at all such as Dante s gruesome imagination con
ceived, does not diminish, let alone destroy, the
terribleness of the severity with which the love of
God burns and must for ever burn against evil, until
the evil is consumed.
In a word, the greater the horror of the Divine
anger, the greater the love it proves. For it is all
on our behalf. Were it only for His own sake, we
must reverently acknowledge, God could afford to
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 87
treat evil as the veriest trifle. Here, the remem
brance of the universe as we now know it but the
writers of the New Testament did not, becomes
unspeakably impressive. This whole world of
humanity which seems to us so large, is but a speck
in the solar system ; whilst this itself is but a speck in
the surrounding space which holds countless millions
of greater suns, at distances that defy all our powers
of apprehension. What if this little world of ours
were filled with Neros could it affect the majesty
of the only and awful God ? It would no more
touch Him than the storm-tossed spray of the ocean
can avail to extinguish the sun. Elihu s strong
words in the ancient poem become manifold stronger
in the light of our modern knowledge :
" If thou hast sinned, what doest thou against Him ?
And if thy transgressions be multiplied what doest thou unto Him ?
If thou be righteous, what givest thou Him ?
Or what receiveth He at thy hand ?
Thy wickedness may hurt a man such as thou art,
And thy righteousness may profit a son of man." 1
It is indeed a far far cry from the gods of Olympus
in their callous isolation, to the Heavenly Father
who commissions Jesus "His only begotten Son"
to say to men " If God so clothe the grass of the
field, how much more will He clothe you ! " Such
words, if they mean anything at all, mean love in
expressible. It is for a love s sake which transcends
all earth s language to express, that God " cannot
look upon sin with allowance ". No one who loves
can look on unmoved at that which injures the loved
one. No parent can be indifferent to a disease
which grips and threatens to ruin a child. The
compassion with which Jesus always looked upon
lepers, was but a pointer to the Divine compassion
1 Job xxxv.
88 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
which pities the sinner so much as to hate the
sin and visit it with anger. The love of God can
have no mercy upon that which threatens degra
dation and destruction to the loved. What pity
can the skilled and tender-hearted surgeon show to
the cancer which is eating away his patient s life ?
" Behold then the goodness and severity of God."
Did He not love men, He might treat their evil with
indifference, and let them sink unhelped, unwarned,
unpunished, into everlasting moral degradation.
But because His love is real, and not mere religious
fiction, therefore He must and does hate the evil,
and will visit it with anger so long as it remains
evil
Whilst life and thought and being last
Or immortality endures.
V. If all this be true, there is one great corollary.
From the real, righteous, terrible anger of God
towards evil in men, there is always one and only
one way of escape. When Jesus said in this con
nexion " I am the way no man cometh unto the
Father but by Me " it was no overwrought imagina
tion of a religious enthusiast. We may know it to
be simple reality, independent of critical scrutiny,
by means of the experimental test which He him
self proposes. " If any man is willing to do His will
who sent me, he shall know of the teaching whether
it be from God, or whether I speak from myself."
The teaching is, that as it is our own known moral
evil which turns the love of God to anger, so again
is it our repentance from the evil, our being willing
to do His will, which turns the anger back to love.
How and why it should be so, may be left to theo
logians to discuss. The plain, wholesome, saving
truth for every child of man, is that it is so. " He who
would flee from God, must flee to Him." That is the
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 89
Gospel in a word. A Gospel made possible, indeed,
as well as gracious, by Jesus Christ ; veritable " good
tidings," about which there neither need be nor
ought to be any complication whatever. For the
all-embracing proclamation to mankind is, without
any respect of persons, that God is always and for
ever for us, not against us. For all men, and for every
man ; now, and for evermore. All the severest con
demnations and most solemn warnings against sin,
in all its kinds and degrees, are not against us, but
against the wrong to which we commit ourselves
and for which we are responsible. The responsi
bility comes naturally and necessarily from all self-
committal to wrong on the part of a morally free
being. Hence it is practically impossible to separate
the man from the evil he does, with its consequences.
The man must suffer, even though the Divine anger
is directed not against him but against his deed. 1
All the terrible utterances of holy Divine anger are
not against the prodigal, but against his leaving his
father s home on folly bent ; as also against his being
content with harlots and swine husks in a far country,
where hunger and shame take the place of the home
and the father s love. His pain and his heart bitter
ness were his best friends, in that they brought him
to himself, and pointed him back to the home where
love and honour were waiting for him.
1 When certain popular writers say, " We determinists do not
denounce men, we denounce acts," two notes must be made, (i)
Morally and practically it is impossible to isolate a man from his
doings. A man who acts is responsible for the action. No act
ever did itself or is conceivable apart from an actor. (2) The
thought-distinction between the man and his act is but the old
Christian distinction between the sinner and his sin. It is his,
because he is himself in doing it. But he is not his act. His moral
freedom makes him responsible for the wrong done, but leaves un
touched the distinction between himself and the deed. Thus may
God " hate the sin, and yet the sinner love ". As in John vn. 53,
viii. u, etc.
90 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
Thus the New Testament doctrine of " Karma "
exceeds, both in severity and tenderness, those sug
gestions from the East which are in some quarters
now introduced to the West as new and superior to
the Christian Gospel. For according to the teaching
of Jesus, love Divine permits no trifling with evil,
and offers no hope, either now or hereafter, for any
man who knowingly persists in it. Because God is
love, therefore the warning " be not deceived, God is
not mocked ". Love cannot be mocked at any time.
It is too severe. " Whatever a man sows, that will he
also reap." Only love declares, as neither Buddhism
nor Theosophy can do, that through the knowledge
of Jesus Christ, the sowing of repentance and trust
in Him yield a harvest of forgiveness and of blessed
hope which is as real in its reaping as the harvest
of ill-doing. " He who sows to his lower self will
of that self reap corruption." But also " He who sows
to the spirit," i.e. who turns from the evil to the good,
"will reap eternal life". To appreciate which fully,
we must bear in mind Christ s other word "This
is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only
true God, and Him whom Thou hast sent ".
It is thus the love of God which is most to be
feared. Now and hereafter, the real terror of the
Gospel is the helplessness of God. That is, the love
that cannot but hate because it is love. It is no real
limit to omnipotence when we remind ourselves that
God cannot deny Himself. The love that cannot
welcome any sinner into communion with itself so
long as he clings to his evil, is all the more real love
for the refusal. Even our lower natures may teach
us this lesson, if we heed them. For, as a painless
body would soon be a dead body for want of the
friendly though often severe warning of pain
whence it follows that pain is to us an even better
friend than pleasure so is it in the higher realm of
WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR? 91
our moral and spiritual being. The wrath of God
is really the love that will not let men drift pleasantly
and unrebuked to ruin. So that if, here and now,
any man persists in evil that would blight and blast
his life, it is love that hedges his way with thorns,
seeks to stop him by punishment, blocks his down
ward path with disease, strives to make him turn to
good by warnings of worse to follow no less than
by invitations to blessing upon repentance.
Then, finally, if death find him unrepentant ; if, as
Jesus said, he dies "in his sins," carrying with him
his degraded self on into eternity, it is love which
will pursue him still with terrors and with punish
ments, self-inflicted truly but no less real or fearful,
and will never let him escape until God only
knows when or how, and the words of Jesus do not
tell us he turns from the evil that degrades him, to
the love that is yearning over him and waiting with
love s untiring patience. If love could make love,
if goodness could compel goodness, if the love of
God could coerce into turning from evil the moral
creatures He has made, then would the dark problem
of the future be simplified indeed ; for all men
would be saved. But there is no real simplicity or
comfort in the unthinkable. -Omnipotence cannot
compel a free being. The whole episode of this
world s peopling with moral beings is not " an
experiment without risk of failure " as one good
man has printed. For if there be no " risk," there
is no experiment. If there be an "experiment,"
failure must be as possible as success. But the
Christian problem of the hereafter is not what God
will do, or men will do. It is what God cannot do
and what men can do. Holy love cannot welcome
evil into communion with itself. Can the person
ality which has here perennially persisted in evil,
hereafter turn from it to good ? We know not.
92 WHAT IS THERE IN GOD TO FEAR?
But this we do know, that he cannot be forced there
to. The last vision, therefore, which the Gospel of
Jesus gives us of the persistently impenitent, is that
of the waiting, yearning, helplessness of love divine.
Beyond that, we cannot seek. It is not needful for
ourselves or others that we should. It is enough
to get our minds to see, and our hearts to feel now,
henceforth, and for ever that there is nothing in God
to fear except His love. That love, on behalf of our
highest good, can be most fearful. And that that very
love is waiting for the decision of our every moment,
to say whether it shall bless us with the pain that
warns us of our evil and its consequences ; or with
the inspiration, in our struggle for the highest, that
always thrilled the heart of Christianity s greatest
advocate " What then shall we say to these things ?
If God is for us, who is against us ? "
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
" Character is fate." NOVALIS.
" Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a law-making power.
Love is dutiful in thought and deed. And as the lover of his country is
free from the temptation to treason, so is he who loves Christ secure from
the temptation to injure any human being, whether it be himself or another.
He is indeed much more than this. He is bound and he is eager to benefit
and bless to the utmost of his power, all that bear his Master s nature,
and that not merely with the good gifts of the earth, but with whatever
cherishes and trains best the Christ within them."
Prof. SEELEY in " Ecce Homo ".
" In general terms it is hard to resist the conclusion that Episcopacy
is radically and fundamentally unchristian. The very conception of a
Prince, even of a Dignitary, of the Church, is repugnant to the genius of
Christianity. How you can have a Prelacy without having adulation and
obsequiousness, with their inevitable effects upon all save the most
towering and select natures, one fails to see. Between the figure of a
Prince of the Church, and the figure of the lowly Founder of Christianity,
what an abyss yawns ! " W. F. OSBORNE, " The Faith of a Layman ".
" If any man will come after Me, let him ignore himself and take up his
cross and follow Me. If Christ was what St. John tells us, the manifesta
tion of the Divine Word, then He has a right to make that claim upon us ;
not otherwise. And if it has been found, as it has been found over and
over again, that in experience the people who answer the demand receive
the promise, then the historic Christ must be the Christ of St. John s
theology." W. TEMPLE, " The Faith and Modern Thought ".
" The personal factor in religion ; practically for you and me no other
factor counts. A thousand poets have written on love, but you will learn
more of love in the kiss of a little child, in the pressure of a kind hand, in
the soft glance of loyal and tender eyes, than you will in reading all the
exquisite and all the true things written about love since the world began.
It is so with Christ. Christianity is meaningless to you, till you feel the
contact of the soul with Christ.
The love of Jesus what it is,
None but His loved ones know. "
W. J. DAWSON, " The Divine Challenge ".
95
CHAPTER IV
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
ONE of the greatest hindrances to the true triumph
and beneficent influence of Christianity in the world
has always been, and yet is, the misunderstanding
or misrepresentation of its principal watchwords.
To say nothing about popular notions concerning
the being and nature of God, the inspiration of the
Bible, and the person of Christ, which may be seen
to be untrue and mischievous just in the degree in
which they are honestly scrutinized, such all-signifi
cant terms as " salvation," " faith, " holiness,"
"heaven," are all more or less the subjects of con
fusion, misrepresentation, and often direct contra
diction. In many cases they are travestied rather
than taught, and made repulsive rather than attrac
tive by their very advocates. Hence it happens
that when the plain man is asked what any one of
them means, in the majority of cases he neither
knows nor cares. Unfortunately also he is able to
plead that the churches are by no means agreed,
even in these main matters. Sometimes they are
in direct opposition ; whilst not a little that passes
as " Gospel preaching " consists in the reiteration of
well-worn platitudes which will not bear a moment s
serious examination. As for clear and unanimous
teaching, even on the most important and necessary
themes, the average pulpit seems to be the last place
in the world where one may expect to find it.
All this applies only too truly to the first of the
great religious terms mentioned above. "Salva-
96 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
tion " is yet, after all the Christian centuries, an
uncertain, ill-defined, unreal, uninviting conception,
and is presented to the world by the churches in
terms that are far from harmonious. If, however,
we leave other crucial Christian watchwords for the
moment out of account, so long as the New Testa
ment is regarded as authoritative, of one thing there
can be no possible doubt, viz. that from the very
beginning to the end of the Christian Gospel, the
greatest need of humanity and the very purpose of
Christ s whole mission, are declared to be "salva
tion". But the words "saved" and "salvation"
have, alas ! long since become hackneyed and
hollow in common usage. They are such common
places in religious parlance as to be too often devoid
of all real significance, like a honeycomb out of which
all the honey has been squeezed. It is tragically
true that throughout Christendom they have to an
unmeasured extent become mere vocables without
significance, sounds without sense, symbols without
any answering reality if not mere battle-cries
between conflicting sects. Small wonder, therefore,
that outside the comparatively small circle of Church
membership, the modern world ignores them in
practice as utterly as the newspapers do in type.
Yet the New Testament is so full of the teach
ing which these terms summarize, that with them
Christianity stands or falls. Unless there can be
found and shown some real, weighty, comprehensive,
attractive, abiding significance in "salvation," the
whole Christian religion is but an age-long delusion,
if not also a world-wide snare. Not only has the ex
hibition of such significance in these terms been the
privilege and responsibility of Christendom through
all the centuries passed, but it is most certainly the
supreme need of the hour for the greater populations
of modern Europe to say nothing here of the East
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 97
if Christianity is to be in coming years anything
more than a bankrupt faith. The outlook from the
standpoint of the churches is, at the very least,
serious. Refreshingly true and sensible, as against
the ceaseless reiterations of superficial optimism in
some quarters, are the words of a recent Bampton
lecturer, whose whole plea merits the earnest con
sideration of every sincere thinker of to-day.
"When we look frankly at the present state
of Christianity from these three points, its
alleged origin, its actual merits as a rule of life,
and its effect upon individuals, we are forced to
confess that its influence upon mankind at large
is, and has been, strangely disproportionate alike
to its high claims and to the reasonable expecta
tion of those who saw its beginnings. And if
we take a more than historical interest in that
disproportion, if we still believe that here and
not elsewhere lies the hope of the world, we
cannot sit content ; we are forced to seek, so
far as we may, causes and remedies." 1
What then says this same calm, kindly, careful
observer, in regard to the causes which he rightly
suggests we must seek?
" It cannot, I think, be questioned that the
striking contrast between the lives of Christians
and the rules which they profess to accept, is
the great religious difficulty of the present day.
The attitude of the people to the churches to
day is not determined by Higher Criticism or
questions of Ceremonial, but by the unsatis
factory lives of professing Christians." 2
But can any man be a "professing" Christian without
professing to be in some sense "saved"? Are not
1 "Bampton Lectures," 1907, by J. H. F. Peile, p. 14,
2 ibid. p. 6, 17.
7
98 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
all who are definitely associated with Christian
churches, such as ceaselessly seek, and surely in
some measure find, " salvation " ? Where, then,
does the " unsatisfactory " element come in ? Shall
we listen once more to this modern Christian
prophet ?
" Now it is a hard saying, but a wholesome
one, that the great majority of" professedly
Christian "mankind have for centuries done
everything with the moral rule of the Gospel
except obey it. They have read it aloud in
their churches and their homes ; they have
enshrined it in a magnificent system of worship ;
they have glossed and commented it, till it bears
a suspicious resemblance to the code which they
find most profitable and convenient ; they have
shaped and trimmed it to fit into a corner of an
otherwise pagan existence." l
If this witness is true, no other explanation is neces
sary for the "apparent failure of Christianity as a
general rule of life and conduct ". 2 Its raison d etre
is gone. It is in this world to save men, arid the men
who accept it are not saved. There is no need of
further appeal. Questions of criticismand ceremonial
are so secondary as to be irrelevant. If in the realm
of bodily health a new system of therapeutics were
loudly lauded as being superior to all other, and yet
those who adopted it were no more preserved from
illness, no more surely or quickly cured of disease
than those who rejected it, there would be no need
of a Royal Commission to examine its claims. Com
mon sense would suffice. It does also suffice for the
1 "Bampton Lectures," 1907, by J. H. F. Peile, p. 21.
2 The full title of the Bampton Lectures referred to is " The
Reproach of the Gospel an Inquiry into the Apparent Failure of
Christianity as a General Rule of Life and Conduct, with Special
Reference to the Present Time ".
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 99
modern critic of religion, who is quite within his rights
when he asks that those who accept a faith which
has " salvation " for its very pith and marrow, should
show by unmistakable signs what it is to be " saved ".
It being undeniable that vast numbers associated
with Christian Churches do not manifest any tokens
of being really " saved," no inquiry can be more ap
propriate than to ask once more, why not? Is the
apparent Christian failure due to perversity, or to
misunderstanding ? Is the non-attractiveness of the
Christian ideal to outsiders, a natural result of their
superior intelligence and moral perception ? Or have
they too failed to do justice to something which
merited both their appreciation and allegiance ? We
may leave these questions unanswered and yet ac
knowledge the plain fact that with all the preaching,
and teaching, and singing, and praying, which con
stitute the staple methods of the churches, there is yet
a lamentable confusion in the popular mind as to what
it is all about. The majority of our fellow-country
men are not only outside the churches, but increas
ingly content to remain there. For the indifference
which this attitude betokens, there must be some
cause, or causes. The lamentable certainty is that
they do not see any necessity for the " salvation " of
which Christianity so insistently speaks. Where
upon the question must arise, is it truly and fairly put
before them? It is evidently impossible to answer
this in the affirmative, so long as there are such con
flicting voices issuing from the various folds into
which the Christian flock is divided. The world of
ordinary men and women will never be impressed
with the advantage, let alone necessity, of " salva
tion," by a multitude of discordant shibboleths
proceeding from as many differing sects.
Yet the resulting confusion cannot be laid to the
charge of Christ, or His Apostles. The mistakes
ioo WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
which permit Christian dissension and misrepresen
tations thus to alienate the people, arise doubtless
from the various ways of interpreting the New Testa
ment. So much must be granted in favour of the
Romish plea for an infallible interpreter, even when
the authority of our Christian Scriptures is acknow
ledged as final. But of all branches of the uni
versal Church, Rome should be the last to assume
infallibility. A moment s glance at its history com
pels us to dismiss such a claim, as peremptorily as
charitably, for evermore. There is but one human
way of arriving at the truth, viz. patient persistence
in seeking it, with never-failing readiness to acknow
ledge errors when they are shown to be such, and
endeavour to make further progress by correcting
them. That is exactly what is required of the
Christian Churches of this day, in not a few respects ;
and one may say, with little hesitation, most of all as
regards the question before us. It is useless to lay
stress upon names, or creeds, or organizations.
Whether men who profess Christianity are Anglicans
or Romanists, whether they belong to the High
Church, or Low Church, or Free Church section of
Christendom, is a small matter. They are all alike
pledged to offer mankind some sort of "salvation ".
They are bound to assert that men need to be "saved".
In days of ever-growing liberty and intelligence, the
immediate response to such appeals cannot but be a
double inquiry. The men of the world want to know
from the Christian Church with increasing insist
ence first, what it really is to be saved ; and then,
whether those who so strongly affirm its necessity
do themselves embody its actuality. These are the
main questions upon which the future of Christianity
turns, and must turn, amongst millions of men who
have neither the time nor the disposition to be
critics or pietists.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 101
The latter and practical half of this pressing
double question we may well postpone. It is by
far the more difficult of the two queries, despite the
fact that so many think themselves qualified to pass
sweeping judgments. Wholesale condemnations,
whether of churches or individuals, on the ground
of inconsistency, are as a rule as unwarranted as
severe. As estimates of true or false salvation, they
are worth about as much as an opinion concerning
the characters of the inmates of a house, from the
size and shape and colour of its doors and windows.
It is true that only by means of social or external
relationships can we form any estimate at all con
cerning a man s personal character. But there is an
inner world as well as an outer for every moral
being, and this has certainly to come into the account.
Hence He who at one time pointed out that a " tree
may be known by its fruits," at another said with
equal emphasis "judge not, that ye be not judged ".
It must suffice here to attempt once more to ap
preciate and state in language which may be " un-
derstanded of the people," the essential truths which
are condensed into the word "salvation ". In spite
of all the utterances, wise and foolish, true and false,
which have been and yet are put before men on this
theme, its unmeasured importance from every point
of view is manifest enough to justify any endeavour
to clear away confusion and correct mistake, for the
benefit of both Church and world.
For the great assumptions which underlie all
serious thought about the Christian ideal of salva
tion, no apology need here be made. It were un
reasonable, even if space permitted, to demand
proof of everything on one occasion. Some accepted
axioms must precede all reasoning. Nothing can
be said about salvation in the Christian sense with
out postulating the being of God, the moral nature
102 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
of man, the reality of sin, and the personal work of
Jesus Christ. Elsewhere, these are legitimate sub
jects for discussion. But the New Testament terms
which are so significant and illuminating for our
present purpose, take all these for granted, as we
also must do now. In such procedure, however, it
may be well to affirm that there is no need for
apology. There is nothing in our modern knowledge
to forbid our making these assumptions. The Chris
tian ideal, whatever it is, is not a castle in the air.
Rather it is rock-based on fact and philosophy in five
fold fashion.
1. It recognizes God as half revealed and half
concealed in nature, but further and fully revealed,
so far as our powers of apprehension go, in Jesus
Christ. From Him comes the great foundation truth
that God is not only the Creator but the Father of
all men. This involves, of course, not only the
reality of the Divine personality, in the completest
significance of that term, but also such loftiness of
character as exceeds all our best conceptions of
fatherhood and motherhood combined. That some
modern thinkers, both able and sincere, cannot accept
this view, need not be ignored ; but the whole case,
as up to the present time, has been sufficiently set
forth elsewhere to permit its rational assumption
here. 1
2. Again as to human nature. In spite of the
verdict of our own consciousness which nothing can
gainsay, the trend of much philosophical thought is
in the direction of the theory which falsely calls
itself " Determinism ". 2 What such a conception
1 For fuller statement I must be content to refer to my other
volumes " Theomonism True," and " The True God," in which the
whole modern situation is fairly faced.
2 For full justification of this statement see my volume " Deter
minism False and True ". (C. Kelly.)
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 103
logically leads to has been only too clearly expressed
in the words of its popular and academic advocates. 1
Here, again, without entering into the well-known
controversy, we may adopt the summary of one of
our ablest scientists. Says Sir Oliver Lodge :
" The modern superstition about the universe
is that being suffused with law and order it
contains nothing personal, nothing indetermin
ate, nothing unforeseen ; that there is no room
for the free activity of intelligent beings, that
everything is mechanically determined ; so that
given the velocity and acceleration and position
of every atom at any instant, the whole future
could be unravelled by sufficient mathematical
power. Why not assume, what is manifestly
the truth, that free will exists, and has to be
reckoned with ; that the universe is not a
machine subject to outside forces but a living-
organism with initiations of its own ; and that
the laws which govern it, though they include
mechanical and physical and chemical laws, are
not limited to these, but involve other and
higher laws, abstractions which may some day
be formulated perhaps for life, and mind, and
spirit." 2
3. From such an attitude, and from it alone, follows
1 For the former, fair specimens are Mr. Blatchford s published
assertions that " The actions of a man s will are as mathematically
fixed at his birth, as are the motions of a planet in its orbit. . . . No
man can under any circumstances be justly blamed for anything he
may say or do. No man is answerable for his own acts," etc. For
the latter, the words of Prof. Hamon, of the New University of
Brussels " We ought no more to consider a man who acts respon
sible, for he is as much an automaton as a tiger or a rock. General
irresponsibility, such is scientific truth ! " Whilst Prof. McTaggart,
speaking from his Cambridge chair, says " Determinists maintain
that our volitions are as completely determined as all other events ".
2 " Hibbert Journal," July, 191 1, p. 704.
104 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
the reality, and indeed the very possibility, of sin, as
Christianly assumed. 1 It is quite irrelevant to rail
against the word " sin ". Whatever standard be
adopted, wrong-doing or moral evil involves free
action, that is real choice, real volition, which is the
ever-present condition of sin. Whence it follows that
sin, to be sin, is never merely negative, but always
in some degree positive. In the Christian view, it is
essentially the violation of one or both of the two
great commands as formulated by Jesus Christ.
4. Such reality and positiveness of sin, or moral
wrong, cannot be without consequence. As displayed
in physical fact, it is the cause of seven-tenths of the
misery of mankind. The tragic list of possible moral
evils specified by the Apostle Paul in his letter to
the Galatians, 2 is only too true in actuality and fearful
in result. To banish these all from the practice of
humanity, would be to turn this world of suffering
and sorrow almost into Paradise. But when the
higher nature of man is taken into account, the
physical consequence of sin is less serious than the
moral and spiritual. In the degree in which the
Fatjherhood of God is real, sin becomes a treble in
jury. First, to the Father s heart ; secondly, to the
Father s law, which is no less law for being love ;
thirdly, to the child who thus alienates himself from
the source of his being and his highest possibility of
good. The strong terms employed throughout the
Bible to convey the direful consequences of sin, such
as "death," "ruin," "loss," "destruction," etc., be
come in the light of history, observation, and experi
ence, none too strong, to express what has followed,
1 The popular statement, as in Mr. Blatchford s book " God and
My Neighbour," is, " Man being only what God made him, and
having only the powers God gave him, could not sin against God,
any more than a steam engine can sin against the engineer who de
signed and built it ". (Italics his.)
2 v. 19.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 105
does follow, and must follow, when by the myriad and
through succeeding generations, men repeat the sin
of David, or Esau or Cain in the Old Testament, or
scorn the two great commands of Jesus in the New.
Those who deny the Christian doctrine of sin, have
still on their hands the whole actuality of human
misery-producing wrong to explain. Both the facts
and their issues remain in all their gruesome
enormity.
5. It goes without saying that the Christian ideal
of salvation assumes the historicity and unique
personality of Jesus Christ, with all that is involved
in His doctrine, works, character, death, and resur
rection. How far the variations of opinion concern
ing Him affect the meaning of being saved through
Him, we may proceed to inquire. But this remains
unshaken and unequivocal, that Jesus, the real man,
the prophet of Galilee, the teacher and healer who
was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and believed to
have risen from the dead, is the final source of all
that Christianity understands by " salvation ". The
New Testament summary is succinctly expressed
for ever in Peter s words " And in none other is
there salvation ; for neither is there any other name
under heaven that is given amongst men, wherein we
must be saved ". It cannot, of course, be denied or
forgotten that in our time, even more than during
the theological conflicts of the first four Christian
centuries, there is unrest and uncertainty concerning
the nature of Christ s personality. But if we rule
out as unworthy of regard the vapourings of doubt
as to his historicity, we have left still the unshakable
Christian dogma that, in some sense or other,
" salvation " consists in the knowledge and disciple-
ship of Jesus Christ.
6. There is yet one more assumption which can
not be omitted. Whether we know much or little
106 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
concerning what awaits us when our mortal strength
is spent, it is an absolute Christian axiom that death
does not end all. There is a hereafter which comes
just as really as the present into the purview of
" salvation ". If, in accordance with the modern
mood, we insist that the Kingdom of Heaven, which
is Christ s own synonym for being saved, may be
and must be in some measure realized here and now,
there must be no hesitation whatever in adding
so long as the New Testament is deemed worthy
of regard that Christian salvation contemplates
measurelessly more than this present state of being.
It credits man with immortality, no less plainly than
with moral responsibility.
These assumptions are confessedly vast, but they
are indispensable. Questions relating to them must
be settled elsewhere. Only with these in hand can
we proceed with any attempt to set forth clearly what
the Christian Church has to offer the modern world
in its reiterated appeal to men to come and be saved.
Unfortunately, every such attempt must begin with
negations. So many and so different are the inter
pretations of "salvation" which emanate from the
various divisions of Christendom claiming authority
to teach, that the average man may well be forgiven
both bewilderment and hesitation. For it is a mani
fest certainty that they cannot all be true. Of two
direct contradictories, one must be wrong. Here,
therefore, is where teacher and learner must divide
between them the responsibility for decision. No
Church can rationally claim infallibility. No man
can reasonably ask for it. The only Apostolical
Succession worthy of regard on New Testament
lines or indeed contemplated by its writers is
that which obeys the exhortation of Paul and of John,
"Prove all things, hold fast that which is good".
" Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 107
spirits whether they be of God, because many false
prophets are gone out into the world ".
Many professing Christians whose sincerity and
intelligence must not be called in question, will not
endorse the negatives following which we feel com
pelled to posit. For such attitude they take their
own responsibility, even as we do for stating them.
The final appeal, as above reiterated, must be to the
words of Christ and His Apostles which have come
down to us in our Christian Scriptures. With their
authority we cannot but define and formulate the
following denials, in order to clear the way for
valid assertions.
(1) The popular notion of being " saved " has been
all too long and yet is only too commonly that of
" going to heaven ". This has been unwisely fostered
by numberless hymns, especially where it ought to
have been least emphasized, viz. amongst young-
people and children, or the poor and ignorant. But
according to Jesus Himself these are just those to
whom most of all salvation should be represented
as present deliverance, and all the future after death
regarded as the consequence, not the essence, of
being saved here and now. "Good tidings to the
poor ; release to the captives ; recovery of sight to
the blind ; liberty for the oppressed ; the acceptable
year of the Lord " ; these were the unmistakable
items concerning which Jesus said to His hearers at
Nazareth, "To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled
in your ears V
(2) Salvation, as Jesus and His Apostles contem
plated it, has neither need nor room for priesthood
in any form, and is not dependent upon any sacra
ment, under any kind of administration whatever.
Apostles, evangelists, pastors, teachers, elders, dea
cons, all are acknowledged as Gospel witnesses
1 Luke iv. 16-22.
1 08 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
and helpers, but no priests are called for. The very
word for " priest " is never once found in the New
Testament, in any Christian connexion. The author
ity and sanctity of the two sacraments is always
auxiliary, never essential. No man is ever repre
sented as being saved by sacrament, but only helped
in the process of his salvation.
(3) Again, being saved is never to be confounded
with the holding of an accurate creed. As a matter
of fact, no creed ever has been or is wholly accurate.
All creeds and all theologies are but human at
tempts to formulate truth. No number of "divines"
assembled in any Council or Conference, can ever
confer infallibility, or even accuracy, on their decrees.
The history of the great early Christian Councils is
anything but assuring. Their results were no more
faultless or final than their temper was worthy.
The far-reaching consequences of the Council of
Trent are not one whit more true for being potent.
To-day, " orthodox " Churches have no more warrant
for their orthodoxy than a certain amount of agree
ment between men whose sincerity and ability is no
guarantee whatever against mistake. So it comes
to pass that all creeds without exception have been
and are being modified. But the salvation which
the New Testament contemplates, is independent
of such accuracy. A Romanist, an Anglican, a Uni
tarian, a Methodist, a Baptist, a Sweden borgian, may
all know it ; even though such knowledge may differ
in fullness and potency.
(4) Whence also it follows that being saved does
not consist in formal attachment to any Church.
There are probably still some few left who are found
to say that outside the community to which they
belong, there is little or no hope hereafter for any
others. But they are no longer taken seriously, and
need not be considered. When, indeed, educated
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 109
men like Lord Halifax and some others, quote Jesus
as saying that " there shall be one fold and one
shepherd," they are false preachers without excuse.
Not only because they know that the version
of 1611 is wrong as to the meaning of the Greek
word Trofavr), and the Revised Version is right in its
correction ; but because the very same verse which
they misquote distinctly affirms that to the mind of
Christ there were "other sheep," in other folds,
which were dear to Him and part of His one flock.
It would be difficult to find a notion more flagrantly
contradictory to Christian salvation than the bigotry
with which, alas ! in past and present alike, some
sections of the Christian Church have contemned
and anathematized other sections.
(5) One delusion concerning salvation which for
a long long time held vast numbers in its miserable
clutch, has happily so far disappeared as to need no
more than mere mention. The supposition of an
41 eternal decree " on the part of God, whereby some
were 4< elected to be saved," and the rest "doomed
to be damned," was from its inception to its dismissal
little less than infernal. The fact that it arose from
a sincere desire to maintain the Divine sovereignty,
did nothing to lessen the horribleness of the cruel
injustice which it attributed to Him whom Jesus
unequivocally declared to be the Father of all men.
"Predestination" did as gross wrong to the Scrip
tures it professed to interpret, as to the character
of God in the eyes of humanity. From such a theo
logical monstrosity the nineteenth century has set
men free for evermore. Predestination and salva
tion are incommensurable.
(6) Coming nearer to the thought of our own day,
we find another double confusion rife. Salvation is
taken to be the same as conversion ; and conversion
is identified with reversion. Both these errors are
i io WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
as costly as misleading. The latter especially. The
parable of "the prodigal son " has in some respects
been greatly over-preached, and the character of the
elder brother so misrepresented in numberless ser
mons, that the prevalent impression has been one of
admiration, if not emulation, towards the one who
disgraced and degraded himself, whilst scorn and
contumely have been poured upon the son who
was faithful to his father and his duty. So have
young people been almost led to believe that to be
really right they must first go sadly wrong. The
words of Jesus to Nicodemus, again, have not seldom
been so twisted into meanings which He never in
tended, that the general inference has obtained, as
an evangelical doctrine, that in order to be in the
Christian sense "saved," there must be some great
change, some catastrophic revulsion like that which
brought the wanderer back to his father, or trans
formed Saul the persecutor into Paul the Apostle.
But all such inferences are quite unwarranted.
Such cases as that of Timothy " my beloved child "
who was brought up "in the nurture and admoni
tion of the Lord," and never wandered away at all,
but maintained the " unfeigned faith " that was in his
mother and grandmother, are entirely overlooked.
As is also the Apostle Paul s distinct assertion that
the children of believers are " holy," l or as Dr. Wey-
mouth renders it "in reality have a place among
God s people". In all such cases, "conversion"
if the term must be preserved at all, though there is
no reason why it should, the use of it in the older
version is quite misleading means not reversion,
but realization. And by how much prevention is
better than cure, and a window that has been pre
served entire better than one which has been broken
and then mended, by so much is that awakening of
1 1 Cor. vn. 14.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED ? 1 1 1
the soul which most deserves to be called "the new
birth," better than the remorseful turning back of
any prodigal, or the piecing together of any frag
ments of human " broken earthenware ".
(7) If the Episcopal Churches have erred in repre
senting salvation as being something done ab extra
by sacerdotal authority in sacraments, the Free
Churches have not done much better in the almost
universal stress which they have laid on suddenness
as a necessary element in salvation. Nothing is
more common in evangelical communities than to
hear that so many were "saved" on such an occa
sion ; and to the same effect are multiplied testimonies
from numberless sincere individuals during every
special " mission ". Strictly, or rather carefully,
speaking, they are never true. No man ever was,
is, or will be, in the Christian sense "saved " at any
one moment. For Christian salvation is not an act
but a process. It is not a birth but a life. It is not
a special creation but an evolution. There may, on
the occasions specified, be many sincere and valid
beginnings, when through personal trust a penitent
may enter into heart-communion with the Father.
But that no more constitutes salvation, than a boy s
entry into a good school constitutes education. The
new birth, whether by realization or reversion, may
truly take place at a given moment in a human soul,
but as life involves a great deal more than being
born, so does salvation mean much more than a new
beginning through penitence and faith. Conversion,
however genuine, is by far the lesser not the greater
part of salvation.
There are more reasons than ever as the world
grows older and civilization becomes more complex
and artificial, why all emphasis should be laid on the
unmistakable truth that salvation is a character pro
cess and not an emotional convulsion, an attitude and
ii2 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
not an act. It were well worth while to urge the
reading of the Revised Version, both in public and in
private, if only for the sake of the one phrase, " being
saved," which it rightly introduces at the end of the
second chapter of the Acts, and the beginning of
Paul s first letter to the Corinthians. 1 It is no longer
necessary to protest against the Calvinistic doctrine
of " once in grace always in grace ". The thought
of salvation as some kind of magical change wrought
at once and for ever at a given moment, has happily
been dismissed with other well-intended mistakes.
But it is necessary to say very plainly indeed that
there is no one stereotyped way of salvation, any
more than there is one exact contour of a human
face. Human constitutions, circumstances, and char
acters, differ as greatly as men s faces ; and the ex
perience of salvation, as the late Dr. Maclaren once
wisely said, is like water poured into a vessel, it
takes the shape of that vessel, whatever it may be.
It may begin with a shock of revulsion, if preceded
by definite depravity. Or it may come to pass as
gently and as surely as the young shoot becomes a
sapling, and the sapling grows into a tree.
(8) Last, but not least, is it necessary to make un
mistakably plain that to be saved in the truly Chris
tian sense, is not, as one would think from many
Gospel exhortations, to "become a child of God".
For that would imply that the unsaved are not chil
dren of God ; which would flatly contradict the most
definite teaching both of Christ Himself and of the
Apostles. When an accredited and popular preacher
of the Gospel is publicly reported, in these days, as
having printed that " I do not know of a more
damnable doctrine than that which is so popular in
some great pulpits of the land to-day, known as the
1 Acts n. 47 ; i Cor. I. 18.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 113
Fatherhood of God " l it becomes necessary to say
with the utmost possible plainness and emphasis,
that this "damnable" doctrine is most certainly that
of the whole New Testament. Nothing can possibly
be more clear than Christ s representation of God
as Father of all men, utterly irrespective, as He Him
self declared, 2 of their status or character. All the
picked passages to the seeming contrary which have
been too often alleged, admit of, nay call for, a true
and sufficient explanation on exactly the same prin
ciples as are applied to the great saying of Paul to
Timothy that " God is the Saviour of all men, speci
ally of them that believe ". So, according to the
Gospel of Jesus, is God the Father of all men, and
the special sense in which His Fatherhood applies
to them that believe, consists in their recognition,
appreciation, and reciprocation of that relationship.
The call of the Church, therefore, to all men to " come
to Jesus " and be " saved," is not a call to become
the children of God, for they are all that already,
whether obedient or disobedient. It is rather the
reminder of their true nature and dignity, with all
the consequences of duty, opportunity, responsibility,
and sin, that flow from it. Apart from this special
human relationship, unmistakably set forth in the
opening poetry of Genesis, there could be no thought
of sin. Without this, men would be but two-footed
animals ; and mere animals cannot sin. They are
not made as men are, "after the Divine image ;
they are not great enough to be the children of God.
Sin is the Esau-like scorn of His light and love.
Having thus briefly, but it is hoped plainly, set
aside the possible and popular misconceptions which
1 In the " Christian World " newspaper, from a volume by Dr.
Len Broughton.
2 Matt. v. 43-8.
ii4 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVMD?
have more or less obscured the true Gospel intention
of salvation, the way is open to attempt at least a
summary of those positive elements in this great
Christian ideal, which constitute its unspeakable
significance, as veritable "good tidings," for all
nations no less than for every man.
(i) The first unmistakable feature of Christian
salvation is that in any and every form it is the re
ception of something a boon, a love-token, a bene
diction, a revelation from the true and only God of
all. As a mere concatenation of religious words, this,
of course, amounts to little or nothing. But when
rational and reverent thought makes as awful as real
the being of God, then the assurance of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ that
" This awful God is ours
Our Father and our Friend "
becomes glad tidings beyond expression. Then,
the very familiar words " God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes in Him should not perish but have eternal
life " throw a still more penetrating, solemn and
tender light upon the meaning of salvation. If men
were all they should be, and might be, the assurance
of the Divine Fatherhood would be unmitigated bliss.
But the allegory of Genesis is fearfully true. As
Adam sought to hide himself under a sense of guilt,
so does the sense of sin make the holy Fatherhood
of God a source of fear and aversion, rather than
joyful expectation. Such a sense of sin is a general
human fact though manifested in many different
ways and is only too really warranted. Where it.
is least acknowledged, there is most reason to feel it.
Civilized spiritual inertia may be quite as unworthy
as criminal offence. Even as in any real home the
father s or mother s heart would be as truly grieved
by one child s selfish sulking, as by another child s
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 115
wilful disobedience. Indeed there can be no greater
sin against love than to ignore it. But Christ s as
surance is that the Father s love is love in spite of
ill, in any degree. The "mystery of the Gospel"
is that human sin has become the occasion of the
greatest conceivable expression of that love. Jesus
is for all men the pledge of a Divine welcome which
promises not only forgiveness to all men, but com
munion. Until that pledge is dishonoured ; until
the being of God is disproved ; until His Fatherhood
is shown to be but pious fiction ; no conceivable bene
diction could be so great as that which invites men,
for sheer love s sake, into conscious, ennobling
fellowship with the Most High.
(2) But every gift requires a receiver, and recep
tion is an act of choice. The receiver must exercise
volition no less than the giver. Hence into the
truth concerning Christian salvation, there must
enter the element of human responsibility and free
agency. No marionette, no automaton, can in any
Gospel sense be " saved ". In the very nature of
things God can no more save men without them
selves, than they can save themselves without Him.
Repentance and trust, love and obedience, are moral
qualities which God cannot make for men, or put
in them if He would ; and for their own sake would
not if He could. For this human exercise of will is
an absolutely essential part of being saved, in any
Christian sense. The phrase "salvation by faith,"
has come greatly into use since Reformation times.
But it is only possible in a very modified sense. As
an antithesis to Jewish legalism, or Romish sacer
dotalism, it may still bear good significance. But
the words of Paul usually quoted in this connexion,
do not bear the stress laid upon them. They really
refer only to the beginning, not to the full-orbed
experience of salvation.
ii6 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
It may be contrary to Protestant and evangeli
cal tradition to speak of "salvation by works," but
it is, as a summarized ideal, much more in accord
with the purport of the whole Gospel than " salva
tion by faith ". For it is doubly true. So far as
penitent trust is concerned, Jesus said definitely, in
answer to the inquiry " What must we do to work
the works of God?" "This is the work of God,
that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent". But
it is after that personal effort and decision, that
there comes the greater part of " being saved," even
all that Jesus Himself included in His strong words,
" Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord but
he that doeth the will of My Father which is in
Heaven ". The same truth is conveyed in His tender
exhortation on the eve of his final trial, recorded for
us in the fifteenth chapter of John. All that is there
included is as truly the greater part of salvation, as
the growth from babyhood to maturity is greater
than simply being born. For salvation, to be real,
must always involve co-operation of the Divine with
the human ; and this co-operation can never be
better expressed than in Paul s well-known words
to the Corinthians : " Working together with Him,
we intreat also that ye receive not the grace of God
in vain ".
(3) The result of such definite and conscious re
ception, cannot but be an altered attitude of mind
and heart both towards God and man. As sin
involves not merely the absence of good but the
presence of positive ill, in actual volition, so does
salvation signify not merely the being saved from
something, but to something. The usual expression
of this in religious parlance, is from sin to holiness,
or from the guilt and power of sin. But it seems to
need simplifying and putting into homelier speech, if
it is to be invested with reality.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 117
(i) As to God, the result is that obedience to the
first great command becomes not only possible, but
equally actual and blessed. The change here is
from alienation to communion, from fear to love.
The Fatherhood of God becomes no longer a doctrine,
but an experience ; not a mere religious dogma, but
a real stay for the mind and comfort for the heart.
The thought of God, so far from being one of dread
or fear, becomes one of such ceaseless inspiration as
is most forcefully conveyed in the Psalmist s lan
guage "All my springs are in Thee ".
(ii) As to man, and the second great command,
that too comes to be much less a law than an oppor
tunity ; no longer a mere duty but a joy. Salvation
becomes the synonym for the diminution and sub
jugation of the selfishness which clings to human
nature from its brute ancestry. Whence a genuine
brotherhood emerges, which, if universally realized,
would turn all earth s Armageddons into Paradise,
and render our modern Dreadnoughts and Super-
Dreadnoughts as unnecessary as revolvers at a
Christmas party. Equally on the small scale of an
individual heart, or a single home, and the large
scale of international relationships, it would mean
the passing from the dark and dreadful list of
actualities condensed in Paul s " works of the flesh " l
into the gracious and noble possibilities of the " fruit
of the spirit". 2 Whether an incarnation of such a
Psalm of love as he addressed to the Corinthians, 3 or
his ideal of Christian discipleship written to the
Romans, 4 would not bring more deep and lasting
good to humanity than the brute superiority of
Nietzsche s philosophy, or the doctrine that hero
ism is found only on the battle-field, ought not, one
J Gal. v. 19. 2 Gal. v. 22.
3 1 Cor. xiii. 4 Rom. XII.
ii8 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
would think, to be a matter of doubt ; unless we are
all to revert to the non-moral animalism of the jungle,
(iii) Especially is it manifest that in all its social
implications, salvation was never so much needed
as to-day. For, as Mr. Peile has well said " If we
could learn and teach these two lessons of the
Fatherhood of God, to care for others, and put away
over-care for ourselves ; a good many of our econo
mic problems would be solved by ceasing to exist ". 1
And even so severe a critic of the Christian Churches
as the editor of the " Clarion " says that
"Altruism, which is the embodiment of the
command, Love thy neighbour as thyself,
seems to have originated in the teachings of
Christ " ; and " is at any rate in this country fast
becoming the most powerful impulse in social
evolution. Altruism, indeed, is more important
than Socialism itself. Given universal love of
man for man, and we should have something
better than Socialism itself."
Such special salvation on the large scale is, we
know, regarded by many as impracticable a mere
counsel of perfection. But the only truth in such de
spair is that the large result must ever develop from
small beginnings. If each man were, in Christ s
sense, "saved," sociology would take care of itself.
This is sufficiently corroborated by the writer just
quoted when, referring to his fear of a German in
vasion, he exclaims " If only we were all Socialists,
or all Christians ; but we are not ". All genuine
altruism must begin with holy egoism ; even as the
second command itself begins at the end. Such
worthy self-appreciation finds its most real warrant
1 " Bampton Lectures," 1907, p. 97.
2 " Altruism," by R. Blatchford, pp. 3, 6.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 119
and fullest scope in recognition and reciprocation of
the Divine Fatherhood learned of Jesus Christ.
Thence it develops into the limitless and practical
brotherhood which He both enforced and illustrated.
(4) The true though succinct summary, then, of
all the foregoing, is that salvation is character. In
fuller statement, it is the development of Christian
character. " Being saved " signifies the process of
that development, through the grace of God work
ing in co-operation with the human will, by means
of life s practical discipline. Its three distinctive
marks, as Christian character distinguished from
ordinary or moral character are its excess, its ex
tent, its method of maintenance. Each of these is
a large theme which one despairs of putting into a
few sentences. Here, scarcely more can be said
than that they are all absolutely essential to Chris
tian reality.
(i) As to its excess, probably the greatest practi
cal error in Christendom to-day is the comfortable
convention that ordinary good character is Christian.
Yet the doctrine of Jesus is quite unmistakably to
the contrary. " Unless your goodness exceeds that
of the Scribes and Pharisees " who were the re
ligiously good people of their day, not by any means
all hypocrites "you will certainly not enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven." The last three words con
stitute a true synonym for salvation. But it is con
ditioned by the searching question which followed.
"If you love those who love you, do not even the
tax-gatherers the same ? If you are kind and
courteous to your brothers only, what extra do you
do ? " l It is the excess of goodness in the Christian
character which alone constitutes it Christian. As
Prof. Seeley truly put it : " This higher-toned good-
1 Matt. V. 47 : TL irepia-a-bv
120 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
ness which we call holiness ". The Church as well
as the world shrinks from the latter word, but with
out it as expressing the betterness of Christian
character beyond all other there is no real salva
tion, and no valid Christianity. 1
(ii) It is and may well be only too true that men
in general are rather repelled than attracted by
both words, " salvation " and " holiness," by reason
of the cartoons, if not monstrosities, which have
been presented to the world too often in their name.
Even to this hour they are associated with a pious
subjectivity which is as narrow, if not as repulsive,
as the traits of character described by Prof. Seeley,
in the paragraph preceding that whence his above-
quoted phrase is taken. 2 Modern writers who are
unfriendly to Christianity sometimes vie with one
another in pouring scorn on the impracticability 3
1 When Prof. J. E, McTaggart, in an address before the " Here
tics " Society at Cambridge, says : " The men who believe, for example,
in God, or immortality, or optimism, seem to be neither better nor
worse morally than those who disbelieve in them," such a deliver
ance only obtains regard from the position of the speaker. The
intended inference is that men s " zeal for virtue does not vary
according to their views on religious matters ". It is but another
instance of the " lie which is half a truth," which is, as Tennyson says,
" a harder matter to fight ". Whatever becomes of men s " views,"
nothing in history, or observation, or experience, is surer than that
their religious convictions do most markedly affect their zeal for virtue.
The judgement that they are neither better nor worse, is based indeed
upon what " seems " much more than upon what is. Even the
seeming, however, points to a real degree of Christian failure from
Christ s ideal : " Let your light so shine before men that they may see ".
But though this failure may be true of the average, there are
myriads of individual examples to the contrary ; as is fully acknow
ledged by Prof. Seeley in the last paragraph of his remarkable chapter
on the Enthusiasm of Humanity (" Ecce Homo," cheap ed. p. 59).
2 Cf. " Ecce Homo," cheap ed. p. 58.
3 Thus Mr. Blatchford, in his anti-Christian polemic, writes
" Holiness ! for shame, the word is obnoxious. It has stood so long
for craven fear, for exotistical [sic] inebriation, for selfish retirement
from the trials and buffets and dirty work of the world." Which is
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 121
of true holiness. But the New Testament is so
utterly unmistakable in regard to its all-practical and
all-comprehensive nature, that they are altogether
without excuse. Quotation is quite unnecessary.
From beginning to end of Gospels and Epistles
alike, the representation of Christian character, as
embodying salvation, is that it must be practical just
in the degree that it is spiritual. When due allow
ance is made for the differing circumstances of the
first and the twentieth centuries, it is equally clear
that in these days the practical becomes the social.
The Kingdom of Heaven on which Jesus insisted,
can never stand for less than the greatest blessing
of the greatest number, with all this life s possi
bilities of good and without respect of persons.
That is how salvation, consistently developed on its
own lines, according to the present day environment,
leads on naturally and necessarily to Christian
Socialism.
(5) Thus, last but by no means least, there emerges
the final and future significance of being saved. It
cannot be denied that in the days that are gone,
Christian teachers without number have ignored the
making of Heaven here, in their strong desire to
emphasize the Heaven hereafter. They were un
doubtedly wrong, and Christendom is doing well to
unlearn their doctrine. But there is no small danger,
thanks to the perversity of human nature, that one
extreme should be adopted instead of another. In
pleading, however rightly, that spiritual salvation
must mean also social regeneration, the solid reality
and transcendent greatness of the promise concern
ing the hereafter can never be overlooked, and
ought never to be underrated.
This much we know, that death is certain, and
just as false a representation as to say that the Socialism which he
advocates stands for free love, tyranny, and anarchy.
122 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
apart from the assurance of Jesus, all is dark, un
certain, and nebulous. It is indeed exceedingly
interesting, to say no more, when a modern man of
science as eminent as Sir Oliver Lodge does not
shrink from printing the following :
" How are we to get evidence in favour of
such an apparently gratuitous hypothesis, as the
existence of myriads on the other side ? Well,
speaking for myself, and with full and cautious
responsibility, I have to state that as an outcome
of my investigations into psychical matters, I
have at length, and quite gradually, become
convinced, after more than twenty years of
study, not only that persistent individual ex
istence is a fact, but that occasional communica
tion across the chasm with difficulty and
under definite conditions is possible." l
But when this, and all else of the same kind of
testimony, is taken at its best and utmost, what is
it? Just a crumb of comfort for those who shrink
from annihilation. Better than Haeckel s hopeless
" thanatism," certainly ; but scarcely more than that. 2
There is no approach to the tender simplicity yet
immeasurable comfort of Christ s assurance : " Let
1 " Hibbert Journal," July, 19 1 1, p. 709.
* Unless we also adopt the further suggestions of the same
authority : " Let us learn by the testimony of experience either our
own or that of others that those who have been still are ; that they
care for us and help us ; that they too are progressing and learning
and working and hoping ; that there are grades of existence,
stretching upward and upward to all eternity ; and that God Him
self, through His agents and messengers is continually striving and
working and planning so as to bring this creation of His through its
preparatory labor and pain, and lead it on to an existence higher and
better than anything we have ever known" (loc. cit., p. 716). But
this is evidently only the scientific imagination applied to Christian
data. Psychical science, per se, holds out no such roseate pros
pect.
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 123
not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid ".
"In my Father s house" i.e. of course, in modern
speech, in the whole universe of God " there are
many stages of rest and progress." What will be
come of the unsaved, need not here concern us.
For those who are being saved, such a hope as this
involves is at once sufficient and reliable. The
method of such a non-material existence need not
trouble any one. For every line of this page that is
thoughtfully read, includes a mystery quite as utterly
beyond science as any resurrection body. What
we are sure of now, in spite of all our ignorances,
is that salvation, in the Christian sense, means
peace and gladness, nobility and philanthropy, in
ever-developing character. Such character requires
personality for its realization. The promise of the
Gospel concerning Heaven which admits of being
turned into warning against a correspondingly real
Hell is that such potent personality as now char
acterizes each of us, shall not crumble into nothing
at the touch of death, but shall continue to develop,
helped much rather than hindered by the great
change. As it is character which after all constitutes
earth s most real heaven, so the salvation which has
its essence in Christian character promises not only
the non-destruction but the enlargement of that
heaven, together with the assurance of its endless
continuity. It is true that we cannot grasp the end
lessness, but we can appreciate the continuity, and
that for the present is enough.
In a final word, therefore, to be saved, according
to the Christian ideal, is to find in the love of God,
as incarnate in Jesus Christ, sufficient ground for
that conviction of sin which is the hall-mark of our
moral nature ; relief, through His forgiveness, from
the sting of conscience ; power to overcome moral
evil, and prove the privilege of closest communion
124 WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?
with the highest and holiest. Such salvation, because
it means transformation and ennoblement of char
acter in the individual, in being true to itself, cannot
but spread throughout the whole special environ
ment. Such regeneration by means of character, is
the only hope of the future for human society,
whatever social or economic schemes be adopted. 1
Thus the "being saved," on Christian principles,
would turn human life into an unmeasured benedic
tion for all, without respect of persons. This ought
to constitute sufficient justification before all men
here and now. But besides that, it becomes also the
pledge of the worth and reliability of a hope beyond
the grave, such as normal human nature craves.
Undoubtedly^ Tennyson was right that
Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life, not death, for which we pant :
More life, and fuller, that I want.
Such yearning becomes intense, just in proportion as
this present existence has been made sweet and
precious and noble by personal devotion to the
highest. It is to this worthiest human longing that
Christian salvation more utterly responds, than any
other dream or scheme. When, therefore, all that
1 Thus Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, speaking as a Socialist, in
addressing a gathering of men, speaks as plainly as truly : " I say
here as one who is in politics, as one who has felt the difficulty of
deciding what is the right course to adopt in affairs of government
I candidly confess to you that I can see no hope for the people, for
the future, unless we can appeal to the character of the people, unless
first of all character is established like a bulwark in our midst. It
alone is the refuge and protection of those of us who have to stand
for Democracy and fight its uphill fights often with some who
should be our followers lagging behind " (Address at the Men s
Meeting, Leysian Mission, London).
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 125
it stands for day by day is also taken into fair and
full account, the very least that can be said of so
great salvation is that it is " worthy of all accep
tation ". When genuinely accepted and truly acted
on, it brings, indeed, such "glad tidings of great joy
for all people," as ought to be received with gratitude
and enthusiasm by every rational being.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
" This much is certain, thnt there are two highly strategic exercises of
the Church to which the ordinary man who goes to church pays practi
cally no attention. One is the public reading of the Scriptures, and the
other is the public prayer of the minister. Let us drop fictions in a matter
of such tremendous importance, and face facts. The fact is that virtually
none listens. Let the accent of genuine conviction fall on men s ears and
they are bound to listen. They cannot help being arrested, because the
simple fact is that the heart of man is eternally hungry."
W. F. OSBORNE, " The Faith of a Layman ".
" Seeing thus the remarkable place which the Bible occupies in modern
life, the highest significance at once attaches to the fact that the general
view of the Bible hitherto prevailing is undergoing a great change in these
days. Light from various quarters has been thrown upon its pages,
researches in the ancient lands connected with its origin have been made,
and studies in the historic circumstances attending its production and
transmission have been patiently prosecuted ; all contributing to render
the Bible a much richer book for us than it could possibly have been for
our forefathers. But it is also a different book, in the sense of bearing a
different nature."
Dr. W. C. SELLECK, " The New Appreciation of the Bible ".
" This dogma of Biblical infallibility is perhaps the supreme illustration
of the power of the mind to believe not only in the absence but in direct
defiance of all evidence. It claims for the Bible what the Bible nowhere
claims for itself; and it has furnished scepticism with its most damaging
weapons against religion.
" It is this idolatry of the letter which led so great a man as Wesley to
endorse the direction of Exodus xxn. 18 Thou shall not suffer a witch
to live with the remark I would have no compassion on these witches
I would burn them all. The giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving
up the Bible. " Dr. J. WARSCHAUER, " What is the Bible ? "
" This lower conception of the work of the inspiring Spirit, this sup
position of a dictated book, every statement of which must needs be
historically and scientifically accurate, has gradually fastened itself on
the minds of Englishmen since the middle of the seventeenth century,
notwithstanding the silent protest of the Church of England and the open
protest of such spiritual reformers as the early Quakers. It is this con
ception which, as knowledge has increased, has produced so grave a
perplexity that many men have closed the Old Testament altogether ;
and to vast multitudes, unless some help is offered them, it will presently
become a sealed book."
Dr. J. A. ROBINSON, " Some Thoughts on Inspiration ".
" What inspiration is, must be learned from what it does. We must
not determine the character of the books from the inspiration, but must
rather determine the nature of the inspiration from the books."
Prof. B. BOWNE.
129
CHAPTER V.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
ANY attempt to sum up in few words the whole truth
concerning the Bible in modern light, involves over
whelming difficulties. Such encyclopaedic know
ledge is required, together with undaunted courage,
that it seems positively immodest to take it in hand.
Yet it is unquestionably as advantageous as neces
sary that from time to time progress should be re
ported in what must be termed the new and true
appreciation of the Bible, as distinct from what has
hitherto obtained, more especially since the time of
the Reformation. How potent as well as sincere
this latter has been, must be estimated from the
two great certainties, beyond all question, which
lift the Bible out of comparison with any other
sacred writings of religion known to humanity. The
extent to which it has been translated into the
varying languages of mankind, and circulated
throughout the world, is utterly unparalleled. So
too is the literature which has grown up in con
nexion with it. The flood of books, indeed, upon
the Bible, not only exceeds those issued upon any
other subject, but appears to grow greater year by
year as modern knowledge increases, and, in the form
of criticism, claims to examine every portion of both
Old and New Testaments with relentless scrutiny.
It is a human axiom that every question has two
sides, and with what rancorous vehemence this was
illustrated in the theological conflicts of the first four
Christian centuries, Church history tells us only too
9
130 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
plainly. But although we have happily evolved
beyond the physical violence of those times, and
neither the cruel persecution of Diocletian nor the
murderous Inquisition is to be any longer feared,
yet there are still two sides in regard to the Bible,
even amongst Christian believers, which are as pro
nounced as strong words and unmeasured acrimony
can make them.
We may here pass by as unworthy of serious re
gard the militant minority who can see in the Bible
only an object of ruthless and often scurrilous at
tack. 1 Such an attitude is sufficiently summed up
and rebuked by Prof. Huxley, as an acute and im
partial observer, when he says
" It appears to me that if there is anybody
more objectionable than the orthodox Bibliol
ater, it is the heterodox Philistine, who can
discover in a literature which in some respects
has no superior, nothing but a subject for scoffing
and an occasion for the display of his conceited
ignorance of the debt he owes to former
generations." 2
The two camps into which ignoring, as here we
must, shades of differing opinion Christendom is
1 Thus the author of " God and My Neighbour," who professes to
be intelligent and high-minded, sums up his appreciation of the " Holy
Bible " as a " volume of fables and errors collected thousands of
years ago by superstitious priests and prophets of Palestine and
Egypt and Assyria an incongruous and contradictory collection of
tribal traditions and ancient fables written by men of genius and
imagination ". This, however, is mildness itself, compared with the
indiscriminate abuse published under the auspices of Secularism. One
booklet openly confesses to have " mutilated several Bibles " by cutting
them to pieces with a penknife, in order to pick out instances of " con
tradictions, absurdities, immoralities, and obscenities " and then print
them side by side, absolutely regardless of any context or connexion,
as specimens of Bible teaching.
2 " Essays on Controverted Questions," Prologue, p. 51.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ? 131
now divided over the Bible, are equally strong and
sincere in their convictions, though far from being
equally well-informed. On the one hand there is a
deep, genuine, undefined and indefinable, but tenaci
ous and indeed unshakable clinging to the Bible,
as it appears in the "Authorized " Version, which is
not over-estimated by Mr. Allanson Picton when
he says
"To this reverent affection of whole peoples
for the Bible, there is absolutely no parallel and
no analogy elsewhere. For reasons far other
than those imagined by our fathers, the Bible
has found a place in the heart, soul, conscience,
and affections of common men and women of
the West, such as no Veda, nor Zend Avesta,
nor Chinese classics, nor Koran, ever had a
chance of attaining." l
In our own country, tradition, patriotism, custom,
sincerity, and dear old associations, have combined
with ignorance to make any attempt to correlate the
various portions of the Old and New Testaments
with modern knowledge, the most difficult task in the
whole purview of Christianity. Indeed, up to quite
recent years, any suggestion that the older views
must be modified, could only be made at the peril of
a public teacher s reputation for " soundness," and
with certain risk to his practical prospects amongst
Christian Churches. Nor has such an attitude
by any means ceased. There are vast numbers
in the " Low " section of the Anglican Church, as
well as amongst the Evangelical Free Churches,
whose watchword is " Hands off the old Book ". By
which is connoted a blind, dogged belief, as firm as
undefined, that the whole Bible, just as it stands, is
1 " Man and the Bible," p. 2.
132 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
the "Word of God," in a sense which necessarily
involves the equal and verbal inspiration of all its
parts.
Strong, however, as is this persuasion often
quite beyond any reasonable appeal truth is yet
stronger, and is gradually but surely making its
way. Books are appearing, sometimes from unex
pected quarters, and pulpit utterances are multiply
ing, which show unmistakably that a new era of
thought and feeling is dawning. And this not only
for experts in the realm of Biblical scholarship, but
for the common people, who may always be trusted
to hear gladly when truth is put before them on a
reasonable basis and in intelligible language.
The tercentenary of the Revision of the English
Bible in 1611 was made a great event of last year;
and no Christian can fail to appreciate the vast and
noble service which that version, commonly but
not accurately termed the "Authorized," has ren
dered. There is, however, some real danger lest
the multiplication of pulpit eulogies and platform
admiration, together with Royal presentations and
newspaper articles, should blind us, by the very
glow of their appreciation, to important facts which
in these days have to be faced. Popularity is
generally not far from superficiality, and a great
wave of sentiment is not always and necessarily
pure advantage. There are, after all, certain present-
day facts which must be reckoned with, and out of
any intelligent and honest appreciation of these,
there must emerge a situation in regard to the Bible
which has had no previous parallel. The complexity
of the case, in all that has to be unlearned as well as
learned, increases rather than diminishes the serious
ness with which it is pressing upon the Christian
churches of this generation.
Succinctly stated, without any attempt at the
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 133
justification which could easily be supplied, the main
features of the Biblical position to-day are as
follows.
i. In proportion to the population, the Bible is
less read to-day than ever. It is quite true that the
rise and progress of criticism have led a minority
to study the Scriptures more closely, but as to the
majority of the forty-five millions of these realms,
the contrast between what we find to-day and what
J. R. Green tells us of the England of Elizabeth, is
immeasurable :
" England became the people of a book, and
that book was the Bible. It was as yet the one
English book which was familiar to every
Englishman ; it was read at churches and read
at home, and everywhere its words as they fell
on ears which custom had not deadened to their
force and beauty, kindled a startling enthusi
asm."
The great decline in general Bible reading has
been timidly acknowledged in most of the speeches
and writings which have accompanied the ter
centenary celebrations, but not with such outspoken
honesty as the facts of the case demand. The exist
ence of several organizations like the International
Bible Reading Association, whilst enlisting many in
a somewhat superficial undertaking, does not affect
the modern world to any appreciable extent. For
this growing neglect of the Bible, which only those
can fail to see who are wilfully blind, there are plain
and sufficient reasons.
(i) Bibles have become so common, so easy of
access, so cheap to buy, that in accordance with the
tendencies of human nature, familiarity has bred
contempt to no small extent. When the only Bible
in a parish was chained to the desk in the church,
134 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
or when, later, the purchase of a Bible meant, even
for the well-to-do, considerable effort and sacrifice,
it was a natural consequence that much store was
set upon the volume, and its study was deemed a
privilege. But now that the New Testament, well
printed, may be bought for a penny, and the whole
Bible for a few coppers, the inevitable result is that
that which costs little is accounted worth little, and
the volume which every one may carry conveniently
in his pocket and study when he will, is appreciated
no more than the air the farmer breathes as he walks,
or the ground on which football crowds disport them
selves.
(ii) Furthermore, the whole mental world is
altered through the enormous development of litera
ture of all kinds. "No history," says Mr. Green,
"no romance, no poetry, save the little-known verse
of Chaucer, existed for any practical purpose in the
English tongue, when the Bible was ordered to be
set up in churches." The change from such an in
tellectual atmosphere to that of to-day, with book
shops swarming everywhere, ever cheaper editions
of the world s best literary productions multiplying
continually, and our railway bookstalls groaning
under the growing mass of ephemeral and super
ficial publications, is simply beyond expression.
The Bible is crowded out.
(iii) Such result is all the more inevitable when to
the flood of literature is added the whirl of modern
business. For those whom the law prescribes an
eight hours day of work and no more, there may be
some possibility of leisure, but he must be a pious
optimist indeed who can imagine that the artisan
class thus indicated spend any appreciable part of
that leisure in Bible reading. As for the middle
classes, who really constitute the business portion of
the community, any one acquainted at first hand
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 135
with modern business or commercial methods,
knows that there is less and less opportunity each
decade to spend time in Bible study. And even
where some opportunity might be secured, the prob
abilities are that the inevitable expenditure of
energy in toil, or of nerve and brain in worry,
leaves little disposition for any but such light and
attractive reading as certainly the Bible does not
offer.
(iv) There is, moreover, a widespread practical
notion, none the less influential for being nebulous,
that in the ordinary walks of life without casting
any slur upon the accepted Christian estimate of the
Bible all that one needs to know has been secured
at school, or is to be obtained by frequenting a
" place of worship " and listening to the " lessons "
there publicly read. As a matter of fact, concerning
which there is no doubt whatever, for thousands
even of respectable church-goers, this is all the Bible
study that is attempted from January to December.
It is natural, though from the Christian standpoint
lamentable, that as a consequence, the actual ignor
ance of the average church attendant in regard to the
Bible, beyond a few familiar phrases, is unbounded.
(v) Last, though not least, as an explanation for
present-day popular ignoring of the Bible, comes that
indefinable but most potent reality known as " the
modern atmosphere ". The fact that four-fifths of
the people are outside all the churches, together
with the steadily persistent decline in church mem
bership, cannot but have some general cause. We
call it indifference to religion. That, however, only
removes the cause a step further back, and leaves us
with the inquiry as to why the modern man should
be so indifferent. The full answer must be post
poned. Here it must be frankly acknowledged that
the mass of our fellow-men do not feel their need of
1 36 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ?
religion in general, or of Christianity in particular,
and with such laissez-faire comes naturally an indis
position to trouble about the Bible at all. The most
convenient and apparently satisfactory position, is a
neutral half-way house between a militant minority
who attack it, and the religious minority who revere
it. When all allowance, therefore, is made for the
quiet and unostentatious appreciative reading of the
Bible still pursued by very many, and for the good
work accomplished by Bible classes of all kinds, the
outstanding fact still remains that this country, which
some three centuries ago was the land of one book,
now contains millions of men and women who never
take it in hand. They are either completely content
with such confused memories of it as may abide
from childhood, or quite satisfied to ignore it alto
gether. Of the great bulk of the modern population
of these realms this is true. As for other nations in
Europe, or America, they certainly exhibit no con
trast hereto. The truth is, undoubtedly, that they
show decidedly less, not greater, disposition to treat
the Bible as a daily companion.
2. The next noteworthy fact is that the Bible
cannot now be read as it formerly was. It is utterly
useless, even if it were wise and worthy, to ignore
the immense advance in knowledge of all kinds
which has taken place during the three centuries that
have elapsed since the version of 161 1 appeared. It
is equally vain to assume or pretend that our modern
acquaintance with science and history and criticism
does not, or need not, affect the appreciation of the
Bible. One might as well say that the rising of the
sun, with its scattering of gloom and fog, has no
effect upon our appreciation of a landscape. Full
well we know how wonderfully the methods and
results of science have improved since its students
ceased to construct theories first and then endeavour
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ? 1 37
to make facts square with them. Now the facts come
first, and all inferences or theories must bend to
them. In history, moreover, numbers of unexpected
discoveries, harvested by increasing diligence and
accuracy, have prevented misrepresentation and
done away with mere imagination. But all this must
also apply, and does apply, to the Bible. It is no
longer permissible, even if it were desirable, for
men to construct a theory either in the interest of
belief or unbelief 1 as to what a Bible should be.
The business of the honest student is to do with
the Bible what men of science have done and are
doing with nature, viz. examine patiently and im
partially the actual facts presented to them.
No man has any right to come to the Bible with
a predetermined doctrine as to what he must and
shall find there, either to confirm or to disprove some
theory of inspiration. When it is said that the
Bible comes to us with a history and associations
which prevent our dealing with it as with other
books, the plain reply is that such a suggestion cuts
both ways. If the Bible has been in many cases an
impulse for righteousness, it has also been the
cause of the cruel murder of thousands of innocent
women as witches, and of untold horrors in slavery,
to say nothing of its influence in religious wars.
If it has been and is the solace of myriads of sufferers,
and the inspiration of countless numbers of noble
characters, as also the well-spring of domestic
purity and happiness, the counter truth cannot be
denied, viz. that it has been used as the source of
the most narrow-minded bigotry, and the ground
1 Thus one opponent of all things Christian writes hereupon
" What would one naturally expect in a revelation by God to man ?
If the Bible is the word of God, the Bible will be perfect. If the
Bible is not perfect, it cannot be the word of a God who is perfect "
wherein the logic is as poor as the method is unscientific.
1 38 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ?
of the most bloody religious persecutions. Both
these usages of this book cannot be warranted.
If our modern minds and hearts revolt, as they must,
from the dark side of the record, it is then altogether
pertinent to remark that all these unworthy and
indefensible results of Bible study came from refus
ing what the sincere thought of to-day demands, i.e.
that the Bible should be treated as any other book,
with fair and full scrutiny, and with application of
the same methods of investigation which have been
proved trustworthy in all other realms of study.
The criticism, whether " higher " or " lower," which
is by some Christians even yet so much feared or
so vehemently denounced, is nothing more or less
than an honest attempt to do this. It has been well
said that " He who is afraid of science, does not be
lieve in God ". But such a true aphorism has wider
application. There is certainly equal ground for
saying that he who is afraid of criticism does not
believe in truth. If Christianity requires for its
foundation either more or less than truth, it is not
only doomed but well doomed.
From the modern careful and thorough-going
examination of the Bible, certain results of greatest
importance cannot but follow. These can, of course,
only be summarized here, but they are amply de
monstrated elsewhere, and may therefore be stated
with confidence, just as they must for the truth s
sake be recorded without equivocation.
(i) The Bible cannot, without qualification, be
truthfully called the " Word of God ". The fact that
this name is so often applied to it even by many
modern preachers and teachers of ability, does not
affect the plain reasons why such an appellation is
unwarranted. If it could always be explained that
such a title is only a general term, really meaning
no more than that the Hebrew Scriptures contain a
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 139
progressive revelation of the Divine nature which
culminates in the doctrine of Jesus in the New Testa
ment, then little harm would be done. As it is,
however, the ceaseless and careless reiteration of
this phrase does double mischief. It plays into the
hands of the bitterest foes of the Bible, who desire
nothing so much as that it should be indiscriminately
called by this name. For they can then immedi
ately produce, in sinister triumph, passages from the
Old Testament which not only flatly contradict
Christ s teaching, but shock our noblest instincts
and run counter to the plainest morality. If these
were in any sense the word of God, the Christian
religion, as one of its opponents affirms, would not
last a year. But scarcely less harm is wrought
amongst believers by the same indiscriminateness.
For it is thus that the most dreadful and unchristian
things have been said and done, simply because,
being in the Bible no matter where they have
been regarded as part of "the word of God," and
therefore binding upon all men for all time. The
extent to which this is carried in the name of evan
gelical religion, is only too well illustrated just now
in a volume which boasts of having been issued to
the number of 50,000, and specifically declares con
cerning the whole Bible as " the word of God "
that
" It bases its claim to acceptance entirely upon
the oft-repeated declaration Thus saith Jeho
vah ."
Whereas, in spite of this writer s italics, the Bible
never does anything of the kind. There is no one
single occurrence of the quoted phrase which re
fers to the Bible at all, as any one can see who
looks with open eyes. Yet in spite of the plainest
facts, this writer, who boasts his superior Christian
140 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
devotion, goes on representing unfortunately only
too many others
"The very nature of the Book requires that
if we be logical we either accept it because the
mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it, or that we
cast it aside as the greatest of all human im
postures." l
It is truly difficult to speak with patience of such
declarations in the name of the Christian belief.
Not only because of the utter falsity for certainly
" the mouth of Jehovah " has never said anything
whatever as to the nature of the Bible but because
of the unwarrantable dilemma suggested and the
inevitably mischievous effect of it.
(ii) It will be noticed also that special emphasis
is laid upon " The Book " with a capital letter. So
again, " This Book makes extraordinary claims and
demands upon men ". As a matter of fact, it does
not do so at all. But for the moment it is the char
acterization of the Bible as "The Book," or more
often still as "The Book of books," which calls for
notice. The seeming truth of such a title is but
superficial compensation for the real harm wrought
by its thoughtless employment. A recent writer,
who is by no means given to extremes, and speaks
from the evangelical standpoint, says truly here
upon
" We have here to deal with the extraordin
ary perversity and unfairness so common in our
day, of treating the Scriptures as if the whole
collection were only one book. Of all the un
fair devices for weakening the evidences of
Christianity this is perhaps the very worst.
And it is surprising that so many good Chris
tians allow and encourage it sometimes demand
1 " The World and Its God," by Philip Mauro.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 141
it. So great is the mischief arising from this,
that it would almost seem a pity that even for
convenience the sixty-six or more books which
form our Bible are so constantly bound together
in one volume." a
It would be easy enough to illustrate what this
writer truly calls the "monstrous injustice" of this
practice. But the harm accruing from it is too
manifold to be here set out in detail. Suffice it to
say that whoever first rendered the old words ra
ftiftKut as a feminine singular, instead of a neuter
plural, whether he knew what he was doing or not,
inflicted immeasurable loss on the Christian Church,
and paved the way for costly error. "The Bible,"
as we now unalterably term it, is not a book at all,
but a collection of books which is only inadequately
termed a " Divine library ". It is really a human
literature, shot through with Divine influences.
But a literature necessarily consists of many kinds
of writing, and extends over many generations of
human life, thus representing many greatly differing
conditions of thought and environment. All these
varying elements, which common sense no less than
common honesty demands should be fairly con
sidered in estimating any writings, have been and
yet are by myriads of Bible readers entirely ignored.
They prefer to remain under the spell of a genuine
" Bibliolatry " which refuses to see in the "Book of
books " anything other than an entirely Divine pro
duction in one volume. This is then to be received
as such with an unquestioning simplicity, the proper
term for which is childish credulity.
Dr. Warschauer well asks, in his excellent volume
recently published
1 Dr. J. Monro Gibson, " The Inspiration and Authority of Holy
Scripture," p. 204.
142 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
" Is it reasonable that we should read the
poetry of the Bible as if it were prose, the
philosophy as though it were legislation, the
vision as though it were history ? It is the in
finite variety of the Bible that constitutes one
of the secrets of its charm for quite apart from
its Divine appeal its contents are as many-sided
as humanity itself; yet a mechanical and undis-
criminating theory of Scripture has placed all
these contents on one and the same level, for
no better reason than that they all form part of
the same volume." 1
(iii) The " level " here mentioned is, however, a
literary level. There is for all Christian interests a
more important moral and spiritual level to be con
sidered. The lamentable fact is that even yet, after,
say, half a century of discriminating teaching in not
a few influential quarters, the greater number of
ordinary Christian people, adherents and members
of Churches alike, persist in treating the varying
portions of the sacred literature gathered together in
the Bible as all alike equally inspired, equally pre
cious, equally authoritative. It is nothing less than
amazing how this gross and harmful misrepresenta
tion is countenanced by good and able men who can
not but know better. To take only one instance out
of a host, here is a volume by a writer whose general
ability and scholarship no one will question, issued
under the title " The Bible under Trial ". The many
excellencies of the work may be freely acknowledged.
Yet how does its commission open ? Thus,
" I would fain speak a word to remove the
disquietude under which many labour as if
Christianity and God s word were at length
about to be engulfed in the encroaching waves
"What is the Bible?" p. 25.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 143
of scepticism. No such consequence as this
is going to follow. The word of the Lord,
the Psalm says, is tried. Again, The words
of the Lord are pure words ; as silver tried in a
furnace on the earth, purified seven times .
The Bible least of all need shrink from this
ordeal of trial, nor does it."
Here, once more, we see that without any quali
fication the Bible is declared to be "God s word,"
and certain picked utterances from one portion of it,
are not only made to apply to the whole collection
of writings in both the Old and New Testaments
which is manifestly impossible but the whole
heterogeneous contents of both Hebrew and Chris
tian Scriptures are taken en bloc, as sufficiently de
scribed by the affirmation that "God s word has
been a tried word in all ages " ! It is simply impos
sible to estimate the loss and mischief which accrue
to the Christian Church and to the kingdom of
Christ amongst men, from this utterly untrue, un
warranted, and superficial lumping together of writ
ings immeasurably different in every respect, under
a plea that they were each and all integral parts of
"God s word". The results have, in very deed,
been calamitous and irremediable. To it have been
due the fearful conceptions of God which have been
so saddled upon Christianity as to drive numbers of
thoughtful men into utter unbelief; to it must be
attributed the ghastly horrors that defile Church
history, perpetrated by sincere believers ; from it
were drawn the polygamous sanctions of Mormonism,
no less than the opposition of Christian bishops in
the House of Lords to marriage with a deceased
wife s sister ; to it must be traced, in general, by far
the greater part of those popular misconceptions of
Christian truth and duty which still so seriously
hinder the progress of Christ s true Gospel in our
144 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
modern world. The bondage of the Levitical law of
"commandments contained in ordinances," from
which all the genius and devotion of Paul scarcely
availed to save the early Church, has been repeated
since the Reformation in a mechanical theory of
Biblical inspiration which demanded equal apprecia
tion, reverence, and obedience, for all parts of the
Bible alike, and so sought to bind on the Christian
conscience a yoke which neither our Puritan fathers
nor we are able to bear. It can, therefore, never be
said too plainly that for the Christian believer, the
Old Testament is always and only of such value as
Christ puts upon it, and that all its vastly varying
portions must be tested for acceptance or rejection
by His canons of truth, and by the spirit which we
learn from Him.
(iv) At the root of the costly errors which repre
sented the Bible as one book equally binding in all
its parts, lay the great foundation mistake known as
" verbal inspiration ". Although discarded now by
all the more thoughtful in the Churches, it is by no
means wholly defunct. In sporadic fashion it is
continually reappearing. As when quite recently the
well-known London pastor of an influential church
openly claimed that " all his success had been due
to his acceptance of the Bible as verbally inspired,
the veritable word of God, just as it stands," i.e. in
the version of 1611. To this school also belong all
those and they are by no means few who repeat
on every possible occasion that they believe in " the
whole Bible from back to back," and refer to the
higher criticism as " The indiscreet nonsense talked
by prominent insiders to whom human nature and
the wisdom of man are more reliable than the Book
which is itself the word of the living God ". 1 Such
1 The writer of this sentence also affirms that " the allegory and
picture theories of Genesis are so much clever nonsense. There is
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 145
deliverances would be only pitiful if they were not
also influential, and that amongst the young and un
educated who most need true guidance in these times
of unrest. It must, however, be said with all possible
plainness and emphasis that this is not true guidance.
The theory of inspiration which involves that
"every book, chapter, paragraph, verse, sent
ence, clause, phrase and word, are the direct
gift of God to the children of men, and the
whole Bible is the veritable word of God so that
all portions of it are of equal value and authority
and whoever denies any single part of it, virtu
ally denies it entirely, while whoever accepts
any part of it, is under obligation to accept
it all "
may be the view which has dominated the theolog} r
of Protestantism for the last three centuries, and
still practically prevails throughout the rank and
file of the Evangelical Churches. Nevertheless, it
is so demonstrably untrue, and fraught with im
measurable harm, that it must be earnestly opposed
by every one who believes in the sacredness oi
truth, and desires the better appreciation of the Bible,
(v) The same must be said in regard to the twin
fallacy which is practically inseparable from the pre
ceding, viz. that which is known as the " inerrancy "
of the Bible. One wonders how such a notion could
ever be promulgated amongst people permitted to
no trace of any such thing as evolution in God s creation. Hence
we believe that the Genesis account of creation and the fall of mar
will be held closely to the hearts of multitudes when Darwin s
doctrine has been consigned to the limbo of exploded scientific
fallacies." That such utterances can come from the pen of a well-
known and highly popular Wesleyan minister, who is doing his utmost
to enforce them throughout the country, shows how great is still the
need for rational teaching on this important theme in modern Chris
tian Churches.
10
146 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
read this religious literature for themselves. But
when once a theory has hold of the popular mind,
it seems to be invulnerable. This particular doctrine
of complete " Biblical infallibility " is so especially
open to disproof, that the tenacity with which it has
been maintained and the timid hesitation with which
the contrary is now beginning to be admitted by the
average Christian, are truly amazing. It were a
thankless and unnecessary task, impossible here, to
enumerate in detail the unmistakable errors, and
contradictions, and discrepancies, as well as definite
mistakes in history, and statements utterly irrecon
cilable with science, to say nothing of gross exaggera
tions in numbers and conceptions of God and morality
for ever impossible to the Christian mind, which are
found in the Old Testament. In themselves they
are quite harmless. A real and reasonable appre
ciation of the Scriptures is no more disturbed by
them, than is a man s enjoyment of a summer s day
by the knowledge that there are real spots on the
sun. On the other hand, no Christian mistake what
ever has given such opportunity to opponents as
this. It is so easy to get the sincere but uninstructed
believer to pledge his faith to the infallibility of the
" Book of books," and then adduce a crop of small
errors as a triumphant nemesis. Happily the truth
in this respect is spreading, in spite of the vehement
appeals of those who call themselves members of a
" Bible League," and mean so well whilst they do
so ill.
All these five items combine to show that the
Bible cannot to-day be read as it has hitherto been
by multitudes of devout believers. To very many
this will seem sad loss, and it will be difficult to
show them that it is most real gain.
3. Although it is not necessary here to describe
in detail the kinds and degrees of definite modern
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 147
attacks upon the Bible, it must be remembered that
there are such ; and they are by no means so unin-
fluential as Christian Churches comfortably assume.
It is true that the former virulence which character
ized the onslaughts of Thomas Paine, Charles Brad-
laugh, and Colonel Ingersoll, has largely disappeared,
thanks to the " criticism " which has shown that their
attacks were misdirected. But relics of the old spirit
sometimes appear, and where the former theories of
inspiration are maintained, they are still as mis
chievous as unanswerable. As a rule, however, the
worst that they can be now said to accomplish, is to
help to make the bulk of the people content without
considering the Bible at all.
4. No one can question that as in many other
respects, so in regard to the Bible, we are passing
through times of transition. It is as vain to deny as
useless to resist the tendencies to change which are
working in modern thought everywhere. On the
whole they are making for genuine progress. But
during any period of transition, especially in religion,
some amount of confusion, not to say panic, is in
evitable. All that can be done is to persist patiently
in maintaining ascertained truth against what is
mostly, if not merely, traditional. So far as the
Bible is concerned, the people of these realms are
to-day certainly far removed from the "people of
one book " who lived in the time of Cromwell. But
Puritan England was by no means Paradise. Our
Puritan forefathers, however noble in many respects,
were assuredly not perfect. They misunderstood
the Bible as greatly as they revered it. Under the
influence of their theology with its cast-iron theory
of inspiration, they attempted what was not only in
itself impossible but was directly and emphatically
forbidden by Christ Himself, viz. to put the Old
Covenant on a level with the New, and make the
148 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
ideals, customs, laws of the Pentateuch to be abiding
institutions for all generations of humanity. The
disastrous extent of their failure may be fairly esti
mated from the reaction which swept through the
country with the return of Charles the Second.
For all its good qualities, Puritanism was a hard
and bitter yoke, even for one country during a short
period. For mankind at large, in perpetuity, it would
be simply intolerable. And not only naturally but
divinely so. For it was a mistake, and mistakes are
as contrary to the will of God as to the weal of man.
Seventeenth century believers were indeed reverent
enough and sincere enough. But neither reverence
nor sincerity, nor both combined, are sufficient as
exponents of the truth in general, and certainly not
of the Bible in particular. That element is lacking
upon which Paul, in the very midst of his fervour and
devotion, laid such stress "What is it then, I will
pray with the spirit, I will pray with the understand
ing also in the Church I had rather speak five
words with my understanding, than ten thousand
words in an unknown tongue ". The duty and privi
lege of modern Christianity is to supply the element
of understanding which the Puritans lacked. In
regard to the matter before us, their lack was inevit
able. In the absence of the knowledge which could
only come to us after three centuries of investigation,
their convictions were strong enough so strong
that we have by no means shaken them off yet. But
they were not true ; and the time for their modifica
tion or removal has come. The period of transition
is on us. All such periods are times of difficulty,
when there is even more need of patience than of
zeal. When men s minds are unsettled through the
changing of long-established notions ; when convic
tions which have been as dear as strong are seen to
be mistaken ; when beliefs which were deemed
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 149
absolutely and for ever beyond question are openly
and emphatically denied ; it is inevitable that con
fusion should arise, and with the confusion comes
fear, and out of the fear grows bitterness. At such
a time and in the midst of such surroundings, pious
platitudes are useless. To suppose that the modern
seething sea of questionings will be lulled into peace
by whispering over it a few words from the Old
Testament which have no connexion with it what
ever, and declaring that "the river of God is full of
water," 1 is sheer fatuity. It was Christ Himself
who rebuked His contemporaries for not discerning
the signs of their times. It is He, not any "pessi
mist" or "alarmist," who bids us be "wise as
serpents " no less than sincere as doves.
Such a maxim truly applies to everything, but
here we are concerned only with the Bible. It is
as certain that the old appreciation is passing away
as it is that the new appreciation is not yet really
come. But it is coming; in spite of all the opposi
tion of believers and the maledictions of unbelievers.
What ought to be and what might be throughout
the churches, has been recently well expressed by
a veteran Christian teacher of deservedly world
wide reputation, whose modest volume " Sixty
Years with the Bible " ought to be carefully
studied by all schools of Christian thinkers. Only
a summarising sentence can be given here :
" In the history I have found the new light
making much intelligible that was once confused,
and much credible that was once hard to be
lieve. Thus the modern method has come to
me not mainly as a perplexing thing, though of
1 This is what was actually done at the Wesleyan Conference of
1911, when a member of it pointed out the urgent need for frankly
facing the whole modern situation.
150 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ?
course it has brought perplexity now and then,
but far more as a means of light and help." l
If, however, similar testimony from an equally well-
known preacher in this country be desired, Dr.
Monro Gibson s words are to the same effect. Re
ferring to his becoming acquainted with critical
views of the Old Testament, he says
" It was in this way that I came out of the
comparative darkness into better light ; and it
is in the hope that I may help some others into
the same clear and unclouded conviction of the
inspiration and authority of the sacred Scrip
tures, that I try in this book to show the im
mense gains which have come from the frank
recognition of all the facts before us, instead of
first settling our theory and then trying to
force the facts to fit into it." :
5. Such an attitude, at once reasonable, reverent,
true to facts, well warranted in principle, and bene
ficial in result, is however too good to be true at
present either for the bulk of believers or for most
unbelievers. As Dr. W. N. Clarke further re
marks
" The chief danger about the Bible at present,
is that on the one hand it will be studied too
much in the mere spirit of criticism, without
regard to its religious value, and on the other
that the timidity of Christian people on critical
grounds will prevent them from holding that
religious value in its true rank and place." 3
The general situation to-day is that believers are
afraid of the results of modern knowledge. Thus
1 "Sixty Years with the Bible," p. 184.
3 " The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture," p. 9.
3 p. 254.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 151
they are partly shaken in their estimate of the Bible,
and partly disposed to cling blindly to it or fight
for it irrespective of what is true ; whilst unbelievers
are giving themselves to proleptic boastings that
now, at last, the Bible is being dethroned from its
place in the affections of the Church and its hold
upon the mind of the world. There is thus no
small danger of its being increasingly ignored. It
is certainly less read at home by ordinary Christians.
It is less employed in day schools ; whence also
there is every probability that clerical bigotry will
eventually drive it out altogether. In Sunday-
schools it is very little taught at best, because of
the limits of time. In many cases that little is both
badly taught, and mistakenly. Speaking as carefully
as generally, and when all allowance has been made
for some excellent institutions for Bible reading,
the world of to-day, even in Great Britain, has less
time, less felt need, less disposition to pay serious
attention to the Bible, than ever before since it was
an open book in our language. It may be easy for
some religious optimists to dispute this estimate.
But they do not and cannot alter the facts of daily
life upon which it is only too surely based.
6. There is no fear that the Bible will wholly lose
its influence. But it is doing so to some real ex
tent at present. For a while, at least, the unsettling
process must go on, though how long it will be loss
rather than gain, will be for Christian Churches and
their teachers to decide. Meanwhile, there is the
danger of loss both real and great to the present
generation. For when all the attacks upon Chris
tianity " through the sides of Judaism " have spent
themselves, and all the harsh indictments and coarse
diatribes of some opponents have been uttered,
there yet remains the witness of history, of ex
perience, and of observation, as to the influence of
152 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
the Bible for good upon men and nations alike.
The deliberate and impartial words of Mr. J. R.
Green, in his well-known history, bearing upon
this, deserve to be remembered :
" But far greater than its effect upon literature
or social phrase, was the effect of the Bible on
the character of the people at large. Elizabeth
might silence or tune the pulpits, but it was
impossible for her to silence or tune the great
preachers of justice, and mercy, and truth, who
spoke from the Book which she had again
opened for her people. The whole moral
effect which is produced nowadays by the
religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the
lecture, the missionary report, the sermon, was
then produced by the Bible alone. And its
effect in this way, however dispassionately we
examine it, was simply amazing. The whole
temper of the nation was changed. A new
conception of life and of man superseded the
old. A new moral and religious impulse spread
through every class." 1
To an extent that cannot be measured, that effect
yet remains. There has certainly been a minority,
alert, vigorous, implacable, who have denied this
good effect, and in strongest language have sought
to discredit the Bible altogether. 2 But when all
1 V Short History of England," p. 449.
2 As it may be well for the ordinary reader to have a specimen of
the kind of estimate which is now more than ever before circulated
by means of the cheap press, take the following : " I hold a high
opinion of the literary quality of some parts of the Old Testament ;
but I seriously think that the loss of the first fourteen books would
be a distinct gain to the world. Count up the terrible losses in the
many religious wars of the world, add in all the massacres, the
martyrdoms, the tortures for religion s sake ; put to the sum the
long tale of witchcraft murders ; remember what slavery has been ;
and then ask yourselves whether the Book of books deserves all the
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ? 153
such opposition is fairly faced, there is nothing in
it to warrant any fear that the influence of the Bible
is drawing to a close. All that it signifies is that a
new appreciation, based on a better understanding
of this whole sacred literature, is demanded. To
such, sooner or later, modern Christian Churches
will certainly have to come. Sincerity in believing
the Bible "just as it stands" to be "the word of
God," is nothing to the point. For Mussulmans
with equal sincerity so regard their Koran ; Budd
hists their Tripitaka ; Mormons the golden plates of
Joe Smith ; and Eddyists the weird conglomeration
known as "Science and Health with a key to the
Scriptures ". Nor is old association sufficient plea
for rejecting the new knowledge. Peter had to
learn that lesson, before he could avow that God
had taught him " not to call any man common or un
clean ". The Bereans are pronounced " more noble,"
because for the truth s sake they set old associa
tions at defiance. 1 If long-established convictions
are to be held as even stronger than old associations,
we have Paul s solemn declaration before Agrippa, 2
that for the sake of new truth he had given up his
eulogy that has been laid upon it. I believe that to-day all manner
of evil passions are fostered, and all the finer motions of the human
spirit are retarded by the habit of reading those savage old books of
the Jews as the word of God. I do not think the Bible in its present
form is a fit book to place in the hands of children, and it is
certainly not a fit book to send out for the salvation of savage and
ignorant people." It is easy for the average complacent believer to
regard this kind of print with pious horror, but he ought to face two
facts. First, that it is multiplying to an extent of which ordinary
Church members know nothing. Secondly, that there is some truth
in it which cannot in these days be any longer hushed up. For an
excellent specimen as to how the Old Testament ought to be and
may be set before our young people, see " Old Testament Stories
in Modern Light A Bible Guide for the Young," by T. Rhondda
Williams (Jas. Clarke). On such lines, and on no other, will the
Bible teaching of the future have to proceed.
1 Acts xvn. ii. z Acts xxvi. 9.
154 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
earliest and strongest beliefs. Thus we are reminded
that so long as reason lasts and any belief at all is
worth holding, the crucial question as to Scripture
is that propounded to the eunuch by Philip
" Understandest thou what thou readest ? " With
out understanding, the Bible becomes merely the
fetish of the Bibliolater.
7. Meanwhile the main features of the situation
which have now to be faced by all professing Chris
tians are as follows :
(i) All that is of force in the current objections to
the Bible, is due to the mistaken handling of it by
its friends. Far too long it has been interpreted in
a way that is quite unnatural, unwarranted, untrue.
Proper inquiry into the times and circumstances of
each writer has been forbidden. The actual facts of
the case have been ignored. Commands that were
temporary and precepts that were only adapted to
special surroundings, have been exalted into world
wide and eternal obligations. Standards of morality
fitted only for a fraction of mankind in a low grade
of civilization, have been proclaimed universal and
abiding. Passages of Scripture, and even sentences,
have been wrenched from their contexts, invested
with meanings they never contained, and held up as
unlimited threats or promises for all men during all
time. It is small wonder that modern intelligence
should turn upon such methods with indignation,
or that the truly Christian spirit should demand to be
set free from such irrational bondage. The tyranny
of preconceived theories of inspiration, whether
verbal or plenary, has been as bad as other tyrannies,
and fraught with corresponding evil consequences.
But it has had its day, and must now throughout the
Churches cease to be. The enemies of the Bible must
be given to understand that this their favourite and
almost only effective weapon, is henceforth moribund.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ? 155
(ii) One of the greatest marvels in religious history
is that in spite of all the mistaken and mischievous
views concerning the Bible, and all the calamitous
efforts of its friends to perpetuate them, its influence
on the whole has been so markedly for good, not
only at the period described by Mr. Green, but dur
ing succeeding generations and throughout the
world. To substantiate so favourable a verdict the
witness of its eager devotees is not required. The
most impartial critics will suffice for appeal. The
testimonies of Ruskin, Huxley, Carlyle, Matthew
Arnold, Heine, and a host of others, have been so
often quoted that it would be misused space to re
peat them here. They are in themselves more than
sufficient answer to the popular gibes which a
cheapened press is ever seeking to disseminate. Of
such efforts Huxley s estimate quoted above, is as
well warranted as it is outspoken.
(iii) But when the truth of a progressive revela
tion "the gradual evolution of the idea of God
amongst the Jews from a lower to a higher concep
tion " x is acknowledged and appreciated, " rational
ist " attacks lose their last appearance of reason.
Indeed the Bible then becomes, as a manifestly faith
ful record, all the more valuable because of the very
things in it which its hostile critics have so often
singled out for denunciation. It is no longer taken
to be a homogeneous volume, equal in all its parts
and equally applicable to all times and nations, but
the history of a process of revelation varying as
much on a larger scale, and as necessarily, as the
education of a child varies, and containing inevitably
some elements which must in later times be laid
aside, whilst others may remain.
If this principle is clearly understood and un
hesitatingly applied, there need be no fear of the
1 " God and My Neighbour," by R. Blatchford, p. 73.
156 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
Bible s becoming an obsolete book, a mere religious
curiosity for the museum or library. Rather is it
true as Dr. Garvie has recently said :
" Not only is the older view of the Bible intel
lectually impossible for the modern mind, but
even if it could be held it would not offer what
faith to-day needs. Not a creed, or a code, or
a ritual, ev?n though all alleged to be divinely
dictated, can relieve the soul s distress ; but a
history that discloses God s guiding hand and
advancing purpose ; a personality so sure of
God that his faith does not fail in the darkness
and desolation of life and death, and an experi
ence of a present salvation from sin, weakness
and the fear of death. These alone inspire cer
tainty and victory."
(iv) When the Bible is thus fairly treated ; when
the mistakes of preceding theologians are corrected ;
in a word when the Old Testament is viewed always
and only in the light of the New; its brighter parts
become all the more wonderful and precious, whilst
the darker are left out of concern as calling no more
for our judgement than our imitation. On this sub
ject Mr. V. F. Storr has well said that
" Christians from the earliest times have of
course believed that the Old Testament revela
tion was preparatory for that in the New, but
it has been given to this age to bring out more
plainly the relation between the two, and to
view the whole movement from beginning to
end as the gradual unfolding of a magnificent
Divine plan. In the light of this conception of
development, the revelation recorded in the
Bible glows with fresh significance." 1
1 "The Inspiration of the Bible," p. 21.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY? 157
It can never be said too plainly that to the modern
Christian mind the Old Testament is always neither
more nor less than Jesus makes it, in all that relates
alike to God and man.
His revelation is the true and final guide, both to
our own Christian conception of God and to our esti
mate of all the representations of God which are
found in the Jewish Scriptures. Where these latter
clash with the former, they must be dismissed as
archaisms, without hesitation. 1 They are but human
mistakes, natural then, inexcusable now. Whether it
be the slaughter of the Canaanites, the political mass
acres of kings, or any other occasion in which " Thus
saith the Lord " occurs, the only question for the
Christian is, does this reference to God harmon
ize with Christ s revelation of the Divine Father
hood ? If it does not, then it is but a pitiful human
error. " It cannot be that God has changed His
moral character. He cannot have approved of deceit
and cruelty in Old Testament times, while condemn
ing them in New Testament times. God changes
not. It is men s thoughts about God which change."
Such errors were pardonable under their circum
stances, for they knew no better. For us they would
be unpardonable, seeing that we have learned of
Jesus Christ.
1 " In much that I used to suppose I must receive as true of God,
I now read the record and effect of what people thought of God a
difference that goes to the very bottom of the matter " (Dr. W. N.
Clarke, " Sixty Years, etc.," p. 232). So too Mr. V. F. Storr (" The
Inspiration of the Bible," p. 21) : "When the Bible records a com
mand from God to massacre the Canaanites, we cannot believe that
God actually gave such a command . We say that the men of that
time were misled. They attributed to God a command which was
really due to their own imperfect notion of God. The theory of
plenary inspiration cannot satisfactorily deal with these moral diffi
culties of the Old Testament. The theory of a progressive revelation,
and of an inspiration so interpreted, can deal with them."
* V. F. Storr, "The Inspiration of the Bible," p. 21.
158 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ?
So too in regard to the characters of men. It is
well to face frankly what in this regard militates
against the appreciation of the Bible by the modern
mind. Take one popular specimen. After a chapter
of rancorous and one-sided exaggeration for even
Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, and Samson, and
David, had their good points a well-known anti-
Christian journalist writes thus :
" Now it is not necessary for me to harp upon
the conduct of these men of God ; what I want
to point out is that these cruel and ignorant
savages have been saddled upon the Christian
religion as heroes and as models. I only wish
to show that these favourites of God were not
admirable characters, and that therefore the
Bible cannot be a Divine revelation. As for
animus, I do not believe any of these men ever
existed." l
It were easy to show how uncritical as well as
illogical, are all such representations. But they
catch the popular eye and are often effective. For
which reason their falsity needs exposure. If men
were not blinded by prejudice they could not but
see that Christ s words dismiss for ever the notion
that these, or any other Old Testament heroes, are
"models" for Christian believers. Jesus never
allowed any other than Himself as a model for His
disciples. " I have given you an example that you
should do as I have done to you " was His all-
comprehensive word. To that ideal all that the
Apostles ever said, or did, or wrote, always referred.
To assert that the Bible cannot be a Divine revela
tion because it contains an honest history of imper
fect men, is so transparently absurd as to need really
no refutation. Yet it must be confessed that many
1 " God and My Neighbour," pp. 64, 65.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY ? 1 59
Christian teachers, in pulpits and schools and books,
have laid Christianity open to such criticism, in
making far too much of some of these Old Testament
characters, and have drawn lessons of imitation
which should certainly have been lessons of contrast.
This, however, is but a human mistake which, with
many others, is being slowly but surely corrected,
as the minds of believers are freed from false theories
of inspiration and encouraged to look with open eyes
upon the facts recorded, so as to estimate them
from the standard of Jesus Christ. Once again Dr.
W. N. Clarke s deliberate judgement, after his sixty
years study, deserves to be repeated :
" I now see clearly and gratefully how broad
is the contrast between the Christian thought
of God and much that stands in the Old Testa
ment; how broad is the contrast too between
the best in the Old Testament and much that
stands beside it there. This contrast it is my
duty to note and my privilege to keep in memory.
In dealing with the Bible I am as free to call
black black as I am to call white white ; and I
am delivered from the too familiar temptation to
call black white for the glory of God. Thus,
difficulty with the Bible on account of these
moral contrasts is entirely gone, and can never
return to trouble me." 1
On the whole, therefore, it may be truthfully
affirmed that when the Bible is relieved of the
burdens which its past and present friends put upon
it, and viewed as it ought to be in the light of the
new and better Covenant which comes to humanity
in the person and work of Jesus Christ, it will neither
need apology nor be in any danger of contempt.
Instead of being ignored, it will become at once more
1 P- 233-
160 HOW DOES THE BIBLE STAND TO-DAY?
interesting and influential than ever before. In the
degree in which it becomes in the new light " under-
standed of the people," instead of being a kind of
religious fetish, it will be read afresh with attention
which will require no forcing, and will meet with
growing practical appreciation. Furthermore, in
full view of all the knowledge of the Scriptures of
other religions which have only recently become the
possession of modern students, it may be said with
out hesitation, that there is no collection of sacred
writings on earth which so merits earnest scrutiny
and devout acceptance, as this wonderful religious
literature which we call the Bible. Like Christianity
itself, it is emerging from the clouds in which sincere
but mistaken piety has all too long enveloped it,
with every promise of that clearer light and greater
warmth which this century needs. Its true ap
preciation, like the rising of the sun on a foggy
morning, will avail to rid us of mediaeval ignorance
and ecclesiastical bigotry, no less than of the
naturalistic conceit and materialistic scorn for life s
real value which threaten with their blight our
modern world. " If we are willing " rightly says an
expert modern teacher "to pay the price, we shall
discover in the Bible, and in the life in God of
which the Bible is witness, the pearl of great price
which with abounding joy we can claim as our
own." Then the ancient seer s words, in the light
of the teaching of Jesus, become incandescent with
a significance beyond his farthest and highest vision :
" The law of Thy mouth is better unto me than
thousands of gold and silver ".
ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING THE
MODERN APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE?
" Whoever was the first dogmatist to make the terms " the Bible " and
" the word of God " synonymous, rendered to the cause of truth and re
ligion an immense disservice. The phrase in that sense has no shadow of
scriptural authority. It occurs from three to four hundred times in the Old
Testament and about a hundred times in the New ; and in not one of
all those instances is it applied to the Scriptures. The formula of the
Reformation in its best days, like that of the Church of England, was not
Scripture is the word of God but Scripture contains the word of
God ." DEAN FARRAR, " History of Interpretation ".
" Criticism is not a hostile force hovering round the march of the
Christian Church, picking off all loosely attached followers and galling the
main body ; it is rather the highly trained corps of scouts and skirmishers
thrown out on all sides to ascertain in what direction it is > safe and possible
for the Church to advance."
Dr. MARCUS DODS, " The Bible : its XDrigin and Nature ".
" It is strange and lamentable that people who profess to regard the
Bible as God s own word should be so little anxious to find out what God
did say that they persistently cling to an antiquated translation although
a better one has been available for a generation. It is specially to be re
gretted that the tercentenary of the so-called Authorized Version has
been used to give a new lease of life to a version which constituted an
immense advance in 1611, but is unmistakably inferior to the one issued in
1881-1886. The year 1929 will see the centenary of Stephenson s Rocket ;
but no one will propose to celebrate the occasion by attaching exact
replicas of that famous engine to our express trains the tendency will be
rather to emphasise the progress made in the intervening century."
Dr. J. WARSCHAUER, " What is the Bible ? "
" The Churches have hardly faced this problem of the Bible in modern
light, even yet ; nevertheless the time is at hand when it will have to be
faced with candour and thoroughness, for the capacity of the human mind
for harbouring contradictory notions side by side without suspecting the
contradiction, is after all, not unlimited. Increasing numbers year by
year grow aware of the discrepancy between some pronouncements of Scrip
ture and the teachings they receive in the fields of secular knowledge ;
with results that are often deplorable and even tragic. The Churches and
the Sunday schools will have to take up a far more courageous position
in regard to this matter than they have done so far. It is the product of
antiquated teaching, such as is still given in so many Sunday schools, who
becomes the ready victim of the Rationalist propaganda."
Dr. J. WARSCHAUER, " What is the Bible? "
CHAPTER VI
ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING THE
MODERN APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE?
To such an inquiry only a very hesitating answer
can honestly be given. If the Unitarian and some
few Congregational Churches be excepted, the follow
ing estimate, which forms the opening page of a
valuable little book by a well-known Congregational
minister, is only too true of the bulk of the Evangeli
cal Churches throughout these realms :
" The Bible needs neither our apology nor
our eulogy ; it only ,ieeds to be understood.
And it is not understood. Despite the publica
tion of excellent expositions of the conclusions
of competent scholars, despite the fact that in
the centres of sound learning these conclusions
form the basis of instruction, the ignorance of
the Christian public is almost undisturbed, and
the majority of professional teachers of the
Bible speak as if nothing had happened to inter
fere with the traditional assumption that all our
Scriptures are equally inspired, authoritative,
and infallible." 1
The recent tercentenary year of the English
version of 1611, has afforded a splendid opportunity
for the worthy and impressive recommendation of
the Bible to the modern mind, but it is to be feared
that little will come of it in the direction most needed.
1 " The Value of the Old Testament," by Bernard J. Snell (Jas.
Clarke & Co.).
1 64 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
Nothing is easier than to multiply eulogies in print,
and make mass meetings ring with popular ap
plause ; but the permanent utility of such efforts is
very small for the present generation. What is
really wanted is a plain and reliable statement of
the main principles upon which alone the Bible can
be urged upon the attention of the modern world,
together with the unanimous adoption of those prin
ciples in the regular teaching of the Churches. With
out both of these, the Bible will count for less and
less in the life of the age, and will at the most remain
the religious manual of the minority rather than the
revered treasure of the majority. How far it is, even
now, from being to all Englishmen what the Koran is
to all Mussulmans, is manifest enough. Whilst there
are many and various reasons for this difference,
one of the greatest, if not actually the greatest, is to
be found in the well-meant but utterly useless per
sistence on the part of vast numbers of Christians-
teachers and people alike to maintain what they
call " Our grand old Book " on the unchanged lines
of the last three centuries. The general tone in
which the Bible is continually referred to in many
religious periodicals, for instance, is such an exhibi
tion of determined ignoring of all modern increase
of knowledge and clearer apprehension of principles,
as to make one almost despair for the future ; whilst
any attempt to suggest a wiser and truer course, will
certainly be met only with denunciations. Dr. Selleck
is but too well warranted in his attitude of con
cern :
" I believe then that the gravest danger to be
feared from Biblical criticism to-day is, not that
the acceptance of its teachings will undermine
the faith of devout souls, but that the rejection
of its well-established results, together with an
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 165
attitude of unfriendliness towards all its work,
will do the Christian Church incalculable harm,
through the alienation of vast numbers of
thoughtful inquiring people."
That what this writer deprecates is taking place
to a serious extent, any impartial observer cannot
but see. Yet is it naturally a mental process which
takes place so quietly, and is so little likely to be
mentioned, that there can be no doubt as to the
reality of the effect being greater than the appear
ance. What is to be the general result, rests between
Christian teachers and the people to whom they
minister. The main features of the present situation
seem to be as follows :
i. It cannot be too plainly said that every oc
cupant of a Christian pulpit in these days, ought to
know something more about the Bible than the
traditions in which he has been brought up. There
is no other realm of life in which the knowledge and
practice of a century ago would suffice. There is no
shadow of reason why in the highest realm of all,
ignorance and obscurantism should prevail. A
recent Bampton Lecturer, far removed from rash
statement and uncharity, but as examining chaplain
to a bishop having special opportunities for know
ledge, has spoken seriously hereupon :
" Perhaps the greatest cause which makes us
unprofitable servants to-day is ignorance. The
English clergy was once called the wonder of
the world for its learning ; but compared with
the lay folk it is a learned clergy no longer.
But there are two things every clergyman must
know if he is to be a minister of Christ his
Bible and his people. As a Church we must
use intelligent criticism and sincere exegesis,
if we are to understand what is the word of God
1 66 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
and be listened to by educated people. As in
dividuals we need perhaps more that deep and
exact knowledge of the sacred text which I
think is very rare among candidates for Orders,
but is worth more than all other learning for
purposes of teaching and devotion. There is so
much to read, so much to learn nowadays, that
it is hard to get such a knowledge of the Bible.
Yet we must get it." l
Judging, as one must, from the way in which the
Bible is read and expounded in public by the average
preacher, the people are not likely to be greatly in
structed. The perfunctory reading of the " lessons "
from the Old Version without note or comment
often with an unnatural ecclesiastical monotone
becomes in unnumbered cases nothing more than a
meaningless custom, to which not one in a hundred
of the audience pays any genuine or intelligent heed.
But bad reading and false exegesis have their roots
in poor understanding. And the lack of real under
standing is due to unwillingness to spend the time and
pains which are confessedly necessary, if the modern
Christian teacher is to fulfil his duty. It is so
lamentably easy to ignore all that is difficult, and
then take refuge in the equally hackneyed and untrue
insinuation that the critics are so divided amongst
themselves that no good can come from noticing
them. Yet take only such a mild statement as this
from a thoroughly orthodox source :
" Historical criticism has proved with over
whelming force that some of the older views as
to the way in which the sacred books were
written, were altogether defective. It has taken
away the picture of the nation of Israel starting
on its career endowed by Moses with a com-
1 " Bampton Lectures," 1907, by J. H. F. Peile.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 167
pletely developed system of laws adequate for
all the needs of the future. Instead of that, it
has shown that like the laws of other peoples
the laws of Israel grew with the life of the
nation and were supplied to meet each successive
demand as it arose. Corresponding to the
three main codes of law which it discovers in
the Pentateuch, it is able to point to the three
periods of history during which these codes
were active.
" In their broad outlines the results of modern
criticism have secured the allegiance of nearly
all the scholars of all the Protestant Churches
and seem to be impregnable. The task of the
future will be much more to interpret than dis
prove these results."
Such a cautious and gentle estimate may well be
taken as the very minimum of educated apprecia
tion of the Bible to-day, upon which all the Churches
should be truly and heartily in agreement. Yet
apart from the usually hesitant attitude of most
evangelical occupants of pulpits, and of course re
vival and Mission preachers, we find another minister
of the very same Church as the lecturer just quoted,
who does not shrink from printing and teaching
as reckless a general misrepresentation as this
"The people are not told how often the
higher criticism has proved to be the higher
conceit, and the higher ignorance; how often
its declarations have been falsified by subse
quent investigations and explorations; how
completely its criticism is at its best hypothetical
and based upon assumptions instead of upon the
documentary evidence of manuscripts ; how
1 " Fernley Lecture for 1910," by W. J. Moulton, M.A., Tutor,
Headingley College, Leeds, pp. xi-xviii.
168 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
easily a lot of its theories about the Elohistic
and Jehovistic parts of Genesis can be explained ;
nor how often and utterly these so-called critics
disagree among themselves." 1
Nor is there any question that such sentiments still
pass for special piety amongst vast numbers in the
Churches. In by no means few cases, this attitude
goes so far as not merely to ignore the Revised
Version, but to prohibit its reading in public.
2. Thus it comes to pass that there is yet need
for no little courage on the part of such teachers as
know and appreciate the truth in modern light, when
they desire to impart it to their congregations. Dr.
Forsyth has well said that
"There is no more difficult position to-day,
nor one which evokes less sympathy, than that
of the minister who has to stand between the
world of modern knowledge on the one hand,
and the world of traditional religion on the
other, and mediate between them."
But it is also true, as the same competent authority
goes on to say, that
"The question of belief is becoming a much
more serious question for the Free Churches
than the question of their public work or social
sympathies. What the Church seems to require
most at the moment, is less an army of scholars
engaged upon research work upon origins, than
a growing body of men at once disciplined to
scientific sympathies by a proper education in
its schools, secured there also in a theology of
experimental faith, and at the same time pro
vided with the art of public teaching and en-
1 " The Churches and the Present Outlook," by Rev. T. Waugh,
P- 35-
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 169
dowed with the sympathy and tact which win
the trust of the evangelical public." 1
So long as the Churches are supplied with certain
kinds of religious literature under the guise of
special devotion, it will be immeasurably difficult for
an honest and instructed Christian teacher to tell the
truth that so much needs to be known about the
Bible. Thus the work referred to in the previous
section, published by a highly respected firm in
London, and obtaining a large circulation, makes the
following statements for the benefit of devout
Christians :
" It can now be asserted upon the authority
of the most eminent men of science that not a
single fact stands in contradiction to the creation
story of Genesis. . . . The important fact which
Mr. Spencer and his disciples failed to note is
that the operation of the law of evolution is
rigidly limited to the circle of the activities of
the descendants of Adam. Within that circle
everything, without exception, is subject to
evolutionary changes. Outside of it there is
not a trace of such changes. In a word, the
area of the operation of the law of evolution
coincides absolutely with the area of the con
sequence of man s departure from the will of
God as described in Genesis in. Evolution is
but the law of the career of fallen man. . . . Man
then for the first time set himself to do what he
has been prone to do ever since, namely to
question and pass judgment upon the expediency
of a Divine commandment. He became, in a
word, a higher critic, that is to say, a man who
assumes to criticize the word of God."
1 " The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture," by J. M.
Gibson, pp. x, xi, xvii.
-"The World and its God," by Philip Mauro, pp. 15, 21, 33.
1 70 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
This is a specimen of much more of the kind which
is not only repeated in other books and booklets,
but endorsed as the real truth by thousands of Chris
tians who are as sincere as they are ill-informed.
They are apparently altogether blind to the fact that
they are giving modern Bible haters exactly the op
portunity which is desired, for bringing the Bible into
contempt. They are also equally unaware that their
own attitude constitutes as real criticism as that
which they ignorantly condemn. The sole but
significant difference is that they refuse to face the
facts which those whom they denounce set before
them.
Happily, however, light is breaking in spite of all
the well-intended efforts to prevent it. Slowly but
surely, intelligent honesty is becoming recognized as
the essential element in all genuine piety. But it
is even yet a sure way to popularity in the Evan
gelical Churches, to declaim about " clinging to the
old Book," and believing in the Bible " from back
to back". It is no less certain that the most care
ful, sincere, and thoughtful endeavour to lead an
ordinary congregation to something truer, deeper,
and better than ancient tradition or venerable
custom, will be, by a majority, received with thank
less coldness, if not bitterly opposed as dangerous
heresy. Under these circumstances the Christian
teacher of to-day will do well to call to mind the
attitude adopted by Peter and John when similarly
obliged to contravene established religious usages
" Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken
unto you rather than unto God, judge ye ". There
is good reason to believe that the number is increas
ing of those who without any trace of scorn for the
old, are none the less firmly devoted to the true, and
therefore appreciative of the new, as one such
says :
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 171
" Let the truth be told. There is nothing to
hide. Pious evasion of the truth has landed us
in the deplorable position, which is being widely
recognized, that the tendency of men is away
from our Churches because they think that there
counsel has been darkened, and because they
affirm that there they are not sure of hearing the
honest truth honestly uttered."
3. As to how much of the new understanding of
the Bible may be or should be introduced into ordin
ary Christian pulpits or public services, no definite
rule can be wisely laid down, so much depends upon
the man and the environment. But we have the
very highest injunction to be "wise as serpents"
and to " prove all things ". Certainly nothing can
excuse entire ignoring of modern knowledge, or
faithless fear in acknowledging what is now shown
to be true. A coward has no place in the Christian
ministry. Even if it be not the preacher s wise
1 " The Value of the Old Testament," by B. J. Snell, p. 16. To
this may be added the words of a well-known conservative scholar
of the Anglican Church which worthily summarize the whole situa
tion. In his valuable little booklet entitled " Some Thoughts on
Inspiration," Dr. J. A. R. Robinson says : " We answer, then, in
the spirit of humility and reverence, that instead of using the Gospels
to foreclose inquiry, we must use the results of inquiry to interpret
the Gospels. Once again, therefore, in the name of truth, we hold
open the door. Let inquiry proceed ; the light shall help us, as we
reverently welcome and use it. We shall not accept every new hypo
thesis as bringing the light of truth. We shall test the hypotheses
with a rigorous scrutiny ; or if we cannot test them ourselves, we
shall wait until others whom we can trust have tested them. We
shall accept for our guidance the considered verdict of the ablest and
most devout of the scholars of the Christian Church. We shall ask
them to be honest, fearless, and grave, well weighing their responsi
bility to guide those who cannot undertake the inquiry for themselves."
It is difficult to speak too highly of the little work (sixpence, Long
mans) from which these words are taken. Compared with some
other issues on this theme, it is as refreshing as a breath of pure air
after the hot stuffiness of a crowded assembly.
i;2 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
course, as a rule, to deal with this whole matter
directly and categorically from the pulpit, it is always
both possible and his solemn duty to impart what
is true, as against what is untrue, in his references
to Scripture narratives, biographies, didactic prin
ciples, and special passages. The very least that
can be expected from him is so far as he can get
to know it the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth.
Any summary, at once adequate and brief, of what
this involves in regard to the Bible in modern light,
is of course impossible here. By way of suggestion,
however, the following may be mentioned as con
stituting a minimum of what may be expected from
"every scribe well trained for the Kingdom of
Heaven " 1 in these days.
Assuming that at the present time the English
Bible is in all his hearers hands, he must not
shrink from pointing out that the appreciation of
the version generally but inaccurately called the
"Authorized" Version, may be overdone. No one
questions its excellence, and indeed, for the time
when it was made, its wonderfulness. But when
all the changes have been rung upon the accustomed
phrases, as to its being a " well of English undefiled,"
"a marvel of classical English," "an embodiment of
perfect rhythm," etc., etc., it has to be recognized
that this revision was no more flawless than the
fifteen, or more, others which preceded it. The
errors and failings in it were neither few nor trifling.
In many cases most serious and fundamental matters
of Christian doctrine are involved ; whilst in number
less other instances its archaisms, as compared with
the speech of to-day, are most misleading. The Re
vised Version is not perfect, any more than its prede-
1 Matt. xm. 52, Weymouth.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 173
cessor ; but it is so marked an improvement, in the
accuracy of crucial passages and the general fidelity
with which the original is represented to the modern
average reader, that it and it alone, for the present,
ought to be used in all religious services and Sunday
schools throughout the country. In America the
Standard Edition may well be preferred. But in
this country it will for some time be best to keep to
the Revised for public use, whilst recommending all
ordinary English readers who desire the truth, to
supplement it by Dr. Weymouth s "New Testa
ment in Modern Speech," or the "Twentieth Cen
tury New Testament," so as to get as near as possible
to what Evangelists and Apostles actually wrote.
There ought also to be no hesitation in affirming
that the Bible should be approached as any other
book, with an open mind, and not with predeter
mination to find in it all the conventions of orthodoxy.
Its composite character should always be recognized,
and the notion of treating all its many and varied
parts as of equal value and authority, should be dis
tinctly set aside. The importance of taking into
account always the special circumstances connected
with each writing can scarcely be exaggerated, and
to this end it is certainly part of the teacher s duty
to acquaint both himself and his people with the best
modern helps from the hands of competent scholars.
Happily there need be no difficulty about this, thanks
to the ever-cheapening press. 1 In any and every
case, whether it be called " criticism " or anything
else, honest inquiry must be welcomed. If there
should happen some such shock as came to good
Bishop Colenso when the Zulu put the question
to him "Bishop, what about Exodus xxi. 20?"-
it will be gain, in any instance, to lose a wrong
1 At the close of this section a brief list of specially useful works
in this regard will be found.
174 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
conception. The words found in the first issue of the
" Minutes of the Wesleyan Conference " express
the only genuine Christian attitude
"What are we afraid of? Of overturning
our first principles ? If they are false, the sooner
they are overturned the better. If they are
true, they will bear the strictest investigation."
The great emerging certainty will be that neither
any one Christian doctrine, nor any true understand
ing and appreciation of the Bible itself, can be derived
from a few picked passages which in their unwar
ranted isolation from their context have been called
" proof texts ". There is always and only one royal
road, viz. the careful, thorough, patient, study of the
whole connexion in every case, together with intelli
gent comparison of the results so obtained.
Doubtless this will seem a "large order," alike to
many in the pulpit and the pew. But it ought not
to be to any a mere counsel of despair. It embodies
only the same principles as are applied to every
other serious business or study in these days. There
is no reason whatever why the modern teacher of re
ligion should be permitted to go on contenting himself
with such methods, superficial, half-instructed, out-
of-date, as would not be tolerated in any other pro
fession. It has been well and truly said that " If it
is heresy to think ahead of one^s time, is it not heresy
to think behind one s time ? " l
4. It cannot be denied nor can one be surprised,
1 " Sixty Years with the Bible," Dr. W. N. Clarke, p. 182 where
the author adds, " Thus the case opened to me when the claims of
the higher criticism were first presented. I have never seen it in
any other light, and for many years I have not talked as if Moses
wrote the Pentateuch, or the book of Isaiah had but one author, or
Job and Jonah were historical. On these points and various others
I am sure ; naturally there are some on which I am waiting for
certainty, and hold only provisional conclusions."
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 175
that in view of all the facts, and of what is said about
them by some enemies of the Bible and not a few of
its avowed friends, there should be found amongst
vast numbers of ordinary believers, a genuine fear,
sometimes not far from panic, that the modern view
of the Bible is going to rob them of the comfort and
inspiration and hope which they have undoubtedly
found in it on the old lines of belief. It would be
as vain as dishonest to pretend that there is no such
loss. It is in some respects as real as inevitable.
It were easy enough to reply that it is no loss to lose
a shilling and find a sovereign. If, indeed, such
finding followed immediately upon the losing, there
would be no room for tears. But in the present
case it is not always so. Moreover, whilst the old
appreciation of the Bible came as an easy inheritance,
the new has to be earned ; and before that is accom
plished there is undoubtedly some real room for
lamentation. When the old is going or gone, and
the new has not yet been discerned, it is no wonder
that the sense of loss seems sometimes overwhelm
ing. The old simplicity and directness which took
every comforting sentence that was found anywhere,
just as it stood, as the veritable "word of God";
the former unquestioning sense of absolute reliability,
to the last detail, which was perfectly content to re
gard every statement as beyond doubt so long as it
was in the Bible ; the long-established feeling of
reverence which applied " Thus saith the Lord " to
every command and every ideal without regard to
context ; the comforting sense of sufficiency which
permitted hosts of sincere believers to be literally
men of one book ; the hitherto accepted sharp-cut
definition of inspiration, which seemed to make
everything so clear and so sure for evermore ; above
all, the unreasoning but most potent sense of old
association which so charged familiar words with
176 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
tender memories, making the charm of Elizabethan
English to be almost heavenly music through the
recollections of childhood, and still more sacred as
having lingered on the lips of loved ones lost ; the
thought of losing or even lessening all this, may well,
to unsophisticated souls, seem overwhelming. The
whole situation is, undoubtedly, one which will re
quire the utmost wisdom and tenderness for many
a year to come.
But the words of Christ Himself, as reported in
the fourth Gospel, unmistakably summarize His
whole message " Ye shall know the truth, and the
truth shall make you free ". Nothing more, nothing
less, than "whatsoever things are true" as Paul
loyally put it, will avail as the basis of the Kingdom
of Heaven. " Whatsoever things were written afore
time were written for our learning, that we, through
patience, and comfort of the Scriptures, might have
hope." That satisfies all the need for definition and
yields a sufficient principle of guidance. When, in
deed, it is pointed out that the Bible is not an inspired
book, but a collection of the writings and utterances
of men who were inspired in greatly varying degrees,
and that such inspiration itself admits of no exact
definition, many believers become impatient and de
claim vehemently against such impious " hair split
ting ". But such an estimate is true, all the same.
And that is the main matter, by the side of which
all else is trifling. Any faith which requires untruth
in its foundations, is doomed to perish.
5. Happily, it is not difficult to show in regard to
the Bible, wherever patience obtains, that the gain
from steadily pursuing the truth, at all cost, is im
measurably greater than the loss. It is doubly so,
being both negative and positive ; and no religious
lesson whatever is of greater import in these days.
The negative gain consists in relief from an incubus
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 177
of difficulty which had become simply intolerable.
How great was the need for such relief, every teacher
of a senior Bible class knows well, to say nothing of
the everywhere-felt though not always expressed
mental troubles of intelligent Christian Church
members. Dr. J. A. Robinson has truly summarized
the situation in the little booklet above mentioned :
" This lower conception of the work of the
inspiring Spirit, this supposition of a dictated
book every statement of which must needs be
historically and scientifically accurate, has gradu
ally fastened itself on the minds of Englishmen
since the middle of the seventeenth century,
notwithstanding the silent protest of the Church
of England and the open protest of such spiritual
reformers as the early Quakers. It is this con
ception which, as knowledge has increased, has
produced so grave a perplexity that many men
have closed the Old Testament altogether, and
to vast multitudes, unless some help is offered
them, it will presently become a sealed book." l
The matters which tend thus to seal the Old Testa
ment, are so familiar as scarcely to need statement.
The view of the first eleven chapters of Genesis as
literal and exact history ; the persistent representa
tion of the first chapter as in perfect harmony with
modern science ; the often-occurring revolting ac
companiments of the phrase "Thus saith the Lord " ;
the frightful things directly attributed to God which
give such a lurid opportunity for opponents to revile
His character ; the standard of morals which satis
fied the ancient Jews but repels and disgusts both
Jews and Christians to-day; the simple narration of
most stupendous occurrences such as the speaking
ass of Balaam, the floating iron, the standing still of
1 " Some Thoughts on Inspiration," p. 39.
T2
1 78 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
the sun and moon at Joshua s prayer, the slaughter of
forty-two children for mocking Elisha, etc., etc. ; the
representation of the drama of Job and the parable
of Jonah as necessarily exact history ; all these, with
many other things arising out of the current theory
of inspiration, had become such real and great
stumbling-blocks to Christian faith, that either they
or it must certainly be given up. They were alike
inevitable and intolerable. But they are so no
longer. Whether the new and better understanding
of the Bible be called the " Higher Criticism," or
aught else, matters nothing. It is the truth which sets
us free from error ; and no loss on earth is so great
gain as the loss of error. For the full statement of
this, reference must be made to other excellent works
which are now so accessible that it is any man s
own fault, be he believer or unbeliever, if he does
not see the truth and know it to be such. 1 From
the veteran teacher already more than once referred
to, the following extract also merits special regard ;
though the whole book whence these words were
taken ought rather to be studied by any and every
one who is obsessed with the notion that modern
knowledge, honestly applied to the Bible, means the
loss of its spiritual influence or the destruction of
Christian faith.
" Thus by all my studies I was pledged to
this new form of study which they called the
Higher Criticism. How it has been misunder
stood ! Well I remember the solemnity with
1 Mr. Storr in his little booklet above mentioned, has specially
summarized much in little " How is it that Jael was praised for
treachery ; or that the Israelites were commanded by God to mass
acre hosts of innocent and defenceless Canaanites ? It cannot be
that God has changed His moral character. It is men s thoughts
about God which change " ("The Inspiration of the Bible," p. 21).
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 179
which a minister said in my hearing The
higher criticism is not higher, morally .
" No one ever said that it was. But it is
legitimate morally, and necessary to the under
standing of the Bible. Late in the eighties I
read the statement that the Higher Criticism
had already relieved us of more than half of the
moral difficulties of the Old Testament. I
thought it true and have never doubted it.
Indeed, more is true. The Higher Criticism re
moves the cause of the deepest of those diffi
culties, for it shows us that Christians need not
attribute to the God of Christ all the acts and
passions that Israelites attributed to the God
of Israel, or approve the moral judgments that
were recorded in days of inferior light.
" I commend this experience of mine to the
many Christians who have been led to suppose
that the higher criticism can be nothing else
than a weapon of unbelief. For me it has
made the Bible to be far more consistently
a Christian book than it had ever been before,
and has placed it in my hands more ready for
all Christians use. In my progress towards
the restful attitude concerning the Bible which
I now hold, I thankfully recognize the Higher
Criticism as one of the most valuable of helps." l
Should it be said, as it well may be, this is all
very well in regard to the Old Testament, but what
will become of the New Testament upon the same
principles, there need be no hesitancy in reply.
The gain through loss will be just as real ; the nega-
1 " Sixty Years with the Bible," pp. 179, 183, 184, 188, 192.
The somewhat frequent and lengthy references to this work are given
on purpose to direct special attention to it, as being one of the most
valuable and timely issues from the modern religious press.
i8o ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
tive relief is both as necessary and as timely. Re
lief from the compulsory acceptance of every miracle
just as related ; from the persistent application
of isolated proof-texts as the sufficient foundation of
Christian doctrine ; from a total Paulinism in all those
details which were inseparable from the Apostle s
training and times ; from the costly delusions as to
the cataclysmic ushering in of the Millennium, which
not only possessed the early Christians but have pro-
fitlessly troubled vast numbers of modern disciples,
through calculations from cryptic figures in the
enigmatic books of Daniel and Revelation. From
these, and other cognate errors, modern Christianity
must be relieved if it is to endure, let alone to
develop.
In regard to the whole Bible, it is scarcely too
much to say, that when it is thus viewed in the sober
light of our latest knowledge, there are no Biblical
difficulties left. It is lamentable indeed to think how
tragically those who sincerely maintain the old
conceptions of plenary inspiration, play into the hands
of all such writers as are represented by the flood
of sixpenny reprints issued from the " Rationalist
Press Association ". 1 It is high time that this
utterly unnecessary and unwarranted giving away
of the Christian positions ceased. Nothing so pleases
those who wish to " smash the churches," as to get
a simple and sincere believer to pledge himself to
the old "all or none" theory of inspiration. Dr.
1 On this head Mr. G. Jackson in his instructive book " Studies
in the Old Testament," well says, " How much longer one wonders
is this kind of thing to last ? How much longer will our friends the
literalists be content to fetch and carry for the Goliaths of rational
ism ? Does it never make them uneasy when they see that it is
they who provide the grist for the sceptic s mill, that it is out of their
arguments and their interpretations that some of faith s most in
veterate foes are forging their deadliest weapons against the religion
of Christ?" (p. 144).
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 181
Monro Gibson has only expressed the truth in say
ing that
"There are multitudes of good earnest souls
who do love the light, but have been forced
into unbelief by the cruel demand that they
must either accept every word of the Bible as
coming direct from God, or reject the whole.
They are too conscientious to say that they can
accept every word ; so the only alternative left
to them is to be done with it altogether." ]
From such a cruel dilemma they are happily delivered
by the principles of an honest and valid criticism.
The summary of the negative gain suggested by
Mr. Rhondda Williams in his timely little brochure
entitled "Shall We Understand the Bible?" is thus
entirely warranted :
" The fact is that the criticism much abused
by the ignorant, and sometimes made the subject
of poor jokes by men who have only touched its
fringes with incompetent fingers, has effected
the resurrection of the Bible into modern life.
With the old theory, in face of rising modern
science, nothing could have saved the Bible from
falling into disuse. It would have been put
upon the shelf as a discredited book. But
criticism has shown it to be a well of living
water, a literature teeming with points of vital
interest for man."
But the positive gains from the newer and truer
appreciation of the Bible, are even more distinct and
precious. What criticism has taken away of in
fallible detail, it has more than given back in reliable
1 "Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture," p. 201. See
also Dr. Sanday s valuable Bampton Lectures on Inspiration,
pp. 428-431.
8 p. 80. Published by A. & C. Black.
182 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
bulk. The times and circumstances and authorship
of all the sixty-six portions of this wonderful litera
ture, are more clearly apprehended now than ever
before. Such knowledge is an unmeasured help,
not hindrance, to their right understanding and deep
appreciation. As regards the Old Testament, words
can scarcely express the difference between the old
stereotyped view which yet largely obtains of a
volume Divinely written in chronological order as
we now know it, every part of it binding upon the
human conscience for evermore, and the newer,
truer understanding of it as the record of the gradual
development in the minds of men, according to their
capacity, of the knowledge of God and of themselves,
along with ever-heightening ideals of conduct, char
acter and destiny. This difference can only be
appreciated when the present order in which the
Old Testament portions are bound up in our English
Bibles is set aside, and an arrangement adopted
which accords with the facts of history. 1 But the
effect may truly be likened to turning a plain photo
graph into a kinematograph ; or to the restoration
of some old ruined castle, and peopling it with its
former residents in all the varied activities of their
daily life.
As to the New Testament, it is well indeed that
1 See a most helpful little booklet by Mr. C. H. Robinson, en
titled " Human Nature a Revelation of the Divine " (Longmans,
sixpence, p. 24) where the author well asks, " Why could not a Bible
be published by some recognized authority in which the different
portions should be arranged according to the order of their com
position, as agreed upon by a consensus of more moderate critics ?
If the Old Testament were made to begin with Amos, and to end
with the books of Chronicles or Daniel, and if some indication were
given in the text of the Pentateuch to suggest its composite origin,
the English reader would find the Book as a whole far more easy to
understand than it is at present." A good specimen of such attempt
will be found in " The Old Testament Narrative Separated Out,"
by A. D. Sheffield (Constable, six shillings).
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 183
its whole contents should be cast into the crucible ;
for only so could this generation possibly be assured
of the substantial reliability of its most important
parts. Even if that should mean the casting of
a shadow of hesitation on the date and authorship
of some of the minor portions, it would be unmistak
able gain. For it is upon the former that the
foundations of the Christian faith undoubtedly rest.
Thus, in regard to the first three or Synoptic Gospels,
and the four greater letters of the Apostle Paul, we
are more sure to-day of their genuineness and
authenticity than the Church has ever been before. 1
Even as to the Fourth Gospel which is still under
discussion, whilst it cannot be concealed that the
general consensus of scholarship is rather against
than for the Apostolic authorship, 2 how far this is
from being a necessary loss to faith may be stated
in the words of one who holds that " the Fourth
1 This is not the occasion for a critical review in detail, but the
following may be taken as a fair and reliable statement of modern
findings as to dates. For the Gospels, Matthew A.D. 70-90, Mark
60-70, Luke 75-85, John 90-110. Whilst as to Paul s four letters,
to Rome, Corinth and Galatia, they were written, almost beyond
doubt, between A.D. 56 and 58. It is, however, pertinent to add that
the very latest publication by Prof. Harnack is to the effect that not
only was Luke genuinely the author of both the Gospel bearing his
name and the Acts, but that they were both written before the fall
of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and whilst Paul was still alive. When all
that this involves is appreciated, and correlated with the other re
liable results of modern criticism, it may be truly said that through
its help the foundations of Christian belief are now established as
firmly as history could reasonably be expected to make them.
3 Yet it must by no means be considered as a closed question.
Not only have we the deliberate conclusion after most elaborate
discussion of the erudite Principal of Manchester College, Oxford
(Dr. J. Drummond, an acknowledged Johannine expert) on behalf
of the traditional authorship, but the last word on the matter is the
emphatic pronouncement of Sir W. M. Ramsay, who ascribes the
Fourth Gospel to " the personal knowledge, wide experience, intellect,
character, and power, of John the Disciple ".
184 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
Evangelist remains for us the great Unknown of
the New Testament ".
" Thus he is not the chronicler but the in
spired interpreter of Christ, and has given us
not a supplement to but an indispensable com
mentary on the earlier Gospels ; and while we
would not miss what Mark and Luke have
taught us concerning the Saviour s earthly
life, His sayings and doings, yet without this,
the spiritual Gospel, our knowledge of Christ,
of God, would be immeasurably less." 1
As regards those portions of the New Testament
about which criticism is undecided, it must never
be forgotten that provisional conclusions, accepted
as such for the truth s sake, are far worthier from
the Christian standpoint than traditional dogmatisms,
however venerable, which are blindly held without
concern as to their truth or untruth.
Much more, however, might be truly said as to
the actual gain, for all purposes of Christian faith, from
the new as against the old appreciation of the Bible.
It is not enough to affirm that it becomes a new
Book. Its wonderfulness as a collection of religious
literature only appears when it ceases to be in the
old homogeneous sense the " Word of God ". In a
volume directly derived from Deity, supposing it to
be such, there would be nothing to marvel at. It
would not indeed be so much an object of awe as
any living creature. The marvel of the Bible only
emerges when in the very humanness of this litera
ture which is so unquestionable to honest scrutiny,
1 " What is the Bible ? " by Dr. Warschauer (Jas. Clarke & Co.).
Not only is this volume a most valuable summary, for the average
reader, of the modern situation in regard to the Bible as a whole,
but in this particular case of the Fourth Gospel the real gain accruing
from the thoroughness of careful scrutiny in face of traditional loss
is succinctly expressed onipp. 230-32.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 185
we find really the inworking of the Divine. In
regard to the Old Testament, with its thirty-nine
portions, proceeding from some forty or more dif
ferent writers, under all kinds of circumstances, and
spread over at least seven or eight centuries, we
have to account for the wondrous result expressed
by so impartial a critic as Matthew Arnold :
" God was to Israel neither an assumption
nor a metaphysical idea. He was the power not
ourselves that makes for righteousness. Why
should we study the Bible ? Why will not
other books do as well ? Why ? Because this
power is revealed in Israel and the Bible and
not by other teachers and books. That is, there
is infinitely more of Him there, He is plainer
and easier to come at, and incomparably more
impressive." l
To which may be truly added what Mr. Snell has
affirmed, viz. that "it is not too much to say that
just as the principle of evolution has made natural
history intelligible, so the Higher Criticism is mak
ing the history and literature of the Hebrew people
intelligible ".
But it is on the same principles of critical under
standing that the insufficiency of the Old Testament,
as a world message for all time, becomes manifest,
and, by contrast, the supremacy of Christ and the
sufficiency of His Gospel are brought into relief.
"The law," as the Apostle puts it, "was our
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." In coming to
Him, the Christian Church learns what alone it can
give to the world as the standard of moral values
whereby human conduct and character are to be
worthily estimated, whether in the Old Testament
or in the daily newspaper. There were heroes and
1 " Literature and Dogma," cheap edition, pp. 96, 98.
1 86 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
villains of old as there are villains and heroes to-day,
but for the goodness exhibited, say, in the Psalms,
or the badness portrayed with such lurid honesty in
portions of the Pentateuch, just as for the nobility or
wickedness around us now, the new appreciation of
the Bible provides us with a better test than Ithu-
riel s spear, when it points to Christ alone as "The
Way, the Truth, and the Life ".
O Lord and Master of us all,
Whate er our name or sign :
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine.
Nor is that all. What more is brought home to
Christian faith positively by criticism " the new sit
uation of great interest and importance ; the com
ing method, destined to be characteristic of a period
in the history of Biblical science " l cannot be satis
factorily stated in few words. We have noted that
for the modern Christian who is "coveting earnestly
the best gift " of " understanding," and is open-
minded as the Bereans to learn from any truth-
bringing source, the loss of some of his "favourite
passages," in the old sense, is more than compensated
by the solidity of greater gains. The living reality
of the great facts upon which ulimately his faith
must rest, is now guaranteed to him as never before.
So validly established are the main records of those
facts, that he can afford to look with undisturbed
equanimity, if not with pity, upon the mythical and
mythological suggestions which continue sporadically
to arise. If there be strong assertions from strange
quarters as to the "collapse of historical Chris
tianity " 2 he can now, as never before, treat them
1 Dr. W. N. Clarke, " Sixty Years, etc.," p. 173.
2 As when the writer of a pamphlet under this title, who has
become a lecturer to the same effect and contributor to the " R.P.A.
Annual," persists in calling himself the " Rev. " R. Roberts.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 187
with patience, because he knows both that in the
New Testament his feet are on the rock, and that
the rock is not in the air.
But beyond this, in escaping from the well-meant
but none the less real bondage of sharply defined
theories and dogmatic definitions of inspiration, he
enters upon an unprecedented perception and ap
preciation of the continuity of the influence of the
Divine Spirit who moved the workers and inspired
the writers of old. Bezaleel is brought down into
common life to-day, and Pentecost ceases to be a
thaumaturgic flash, becoming rather the gracious
dawning of a day which has been and is ever growing
brighter. Inspiration is quite as possible and may
be just as real now, as ever during the first Christian
century. If a confirmatory "passage" be desired,
criticism gives us the assurance we need, without
limitation, in removing the last two words of the
familiar rendering of John in. 34 and telling the
Church of every age whilst the world shall last, that
" He whom God hath sent speaks the words of God ;
for He gives not the spirit by measure ".
The same correction of mistake indeed comes thus
to pass in regard to the New Testament, as with the
Lord s Prayer. All too long and too often have
those simple but deep and significant sentences been
repeated as if they were so complete and all-com
prehensive that their utterance was meant to cover
the whole needs of all humanity for all ages. Yet
Christ Himself gave no warrant for any such notion.
Indeed, by implication, He teaches exactly the con
trary. He said distinctly "after this manner" pray
ye ; thus giving not a model prayer to be repeated,
but a pattern of prayer to follow. The truest ap
preciation therefore, of His lesson, is not in repeating
the words as often as we do, but in putting the
same naturalness, and humility, and reality, into our
i88 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
own communings with God. So in regard to the
New Testament. Instead of its being a closed
system of spiritual truth never to be altered, never
lessened, never increased, 1 it is but the initial stage
of that real inspiration of all true disciples which
Jesus Himself unequivocally promised ; and pro
mised without any intimation that it was to be
restricted to the little band of bewildered men to
whom He said "When He the Spirit of truth is
come, He shall abide with you for ever . . . He shall
take of Mine, and shall show it unto you". If we
read with greatest profit, and account really in
spired, the writings of the Apostle who was not
included in that group ; so to the end of time will
there be others, as there have been during all the
ages past, who, according to their souls development
and communion with their Master, will speak living
truth to their respective generations. Well says
Dr. W. N. Clarke :
" I was right in holding the Bible as a unique
Book, uniquely precious ; but when one thinks
of the living God, near to His human creatures
and the same for evermore, it cannot be that
He has given men no word of revelation from
Himself since it was finished. To know God
as Jesus has revealed Him, is to know better
than that."
To "pass from the using of the Bible in the light
of its statements, to using it in the light of its
1 Of all the pitiful misconceptions to which traditional notions
lead the average believer, perhaps no one is more common than
the practice of quoting the words in the concluding chapter of
Revelation as applying to the whole Bible " If any man shall add
unto . . . shall take away from . . . the words of the book of this pro
phecy, etc." Whereas it is a mere accident of canonical arrangement
which puts them in this position. To apply them to all that precedes
between the covers of the Bible, is simple dishonesty.
2 " Sixty Years, etc.," p. 149.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 189
principles " is to pass from the mental feebleness
of childhood to the strength and liberty of manhood.
For all who experience such development, the Bible
becomes doubly precious. It is not only a record
of religious history on which in all essential matters
we may rely for our instruction, but it is a reminder
of the Divine immanence from which we may draw
unending inspiration. It means and teaches not
only that God was in Jesus revealing Himself to the
first Christians, but that he has been ever since, and
still is, revealing Himself, through the Spirit of
Whom Jesus spoke, to every individual who
cherishes an open mind and cultivates a pure heart.
The New Testament thus becomes at once the only
true interpreter of the Old Covenant, and the unmis
takable pointer to the perpetuation of the New.
The progressive revelation of God which makes
itself manifest throughout the older writings, does
not cease when we have appreciated Gospels and
Epistles. The mission of Jesus embraces no longer
a nation, but the whole world of humanity. It in
vites not a priesthood, but every child of man, into
communion and co-operation with God Himself.
6. But the real and abiding gains which thus accrue
from turning upon the Bible the fierce yet necessary
light of modern knowledge, are much more consider
able than can be expressed in a few words. They
must be seen and known, to be appreciated.
" What the Bible teaches through its large
revealing, may be something different from what
it says in its various statements. Certainly
what it teaches in this large way is different
from what it says in some of its statements. In
my later years I have had to look beyond the
sayings to the teaching." l
1 Dr. W. N. Clarke, " Sixty Years, etc.," p. 247.
190 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
What Dr. Clarke thus avows for himself, ought to
be the inspiring experience of every fully developed
Christian. It is the "treasure hid in a field" which
every honest and diligent student finds as his reward.
But whether the re\vard be less or more ; whether
the patience brings the comfort sooner or later ; in a
word, let the consequences be what they may, the
Christian Church is pledged only and wholly to
what is true. The whole truth is not yet known
concerning all the contents of this wondrous litera
ture. But what is known points with no wavering
hand to the conviction that both extremes in regard
to it are false. It is neither a flawless, infallible,
all-comprehensive, final oracle ; nor is it an ordinary
collection of religious writings coming into existence
at the mere whim of superstitious men, and collected
together by the mere hap of events. As for the latter
alternative, it was Max Miiller who said with scholarly
impartiality, " If you would know the superiority
of your Bible, compare it with the other sacred books
of the East ". Whilst as to the former, the position
for which in his day Dr. Momerie was persecuted
by his co-religionists, is now, beyond all doubt that
merits regard, acknowledged to be the true attitude
for every impartial thinker :
"To most people there seems no middle
course between worshipping the Bible as a
fetish, and regarding it with contempt. But
there is a middle course, and as usual the middle
course is the right course. I propose to show
you that the Bible, though not infallible, is none
the less inspired." l
Such rational treatment of the Bible is the only true
treatment, therefore it alone is the Christian method ;
it alone is alike worthy of God and man ; it alone
1 " Essays on the Bible," p. 1 1 1.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 191
will survive the tests of passing time and growing
knowledge ; it alone will help the coming of the
Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.
7. Yet it must never be forgotten that the final
and supreme question of all is a practical one.
Amidst all our modern growth of knowledge and the
state of flux which inevitably follows, in the realm of
religion as in all other realms, the one great matter
which the Christian Church has to bear in mind above
everything else, is that the ultimate test of its whole
position is found in life and character. That is to
say, the worth of the Bible, both to the Church and
to the world of men, turns not upon any theory of
inspiration nor any result of criticism, not indeed
upon anything in or about the Bible itself, but upon
the use made of it by those who profess to regard it
as Divinely inspired. What, in a word, is the effect
upon conduct and character, of the belief that this
collection of writings differs from all others in the
speciality of its inspiration and the weight of its
authority ? That question is still, as it has always
been, at once the final test and the greatest difficulty.
It is, however, a clear-minded, tender-hearted, wholly
sympathetic observer who feels bound in these days
to give his deliberate judgement thus :
" It cannot, I think, be questioned that the
striking contrast between the lives of Christians
and the rules which they profess to accept is the
great religious difficulty of the present day. . . .
The same defect which made men resolve to
reform Christianity in the sixteenth century,
makes them condemn or reject it in the
twentieth ; and that defect is its supposed
ineffectiveness as a guide and motive of con
duct. The attitude of the people to the Churches
to-day is not determined by higher criticism
192 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
or questions of ceremonial though indifference
is probably confirmed by the way we manage
these controversies but by the unsatisfactory
lives of professing Christians." 1
It is no less false than futile to dismiss this pro
test on the ground that it is pessimistic. The facts
to which appeal is here made are not lessened, let
alone made void, by the usual wave of the optimistic
hand. Nine-tenths of the people of this " Christian "
country never read the Bible at all, now. If the
remaining tenth is sincerely and strongly persuaded
that this volume is in any real sense the " word of
God," then the justification of their belief will have
to be expressed in deeds, not words ; in lives, not in
books ; in conduct and character, not in eulogies of
the " Authorized " Version, or eloquent appeals on
behalf of the Bible Society. The final and only
sufficing proof of inspiration for each man s own
soul must be that a right understanding of the Scrip
tures inspires him to all that he knows to be best
and purest, noblest and divinest. But only the
exhibition of that inspiration in corresponding
character whether on the part of a man, a church,
or a nation will avail as a witness to the modern
world of humanity. It is in this age quite useless
for the Churches to emphasize dogmas concerning
inspiration, unless there be a level of character
superior to that maintained by those to whom in
spiration is a fiction. So long, therefore, as there
is in the public services of Christian Churches,
mechanical routine, superstitious formalism, mean
ingless verbosity ; and in the private lives of Chris
tians, selfishness and pride, pettiness and caste,
narrow-mindedness and bigotry ; it will be to the
modern world only a sham and a mockery to multi-
1 " Bampton Lectures for 1907," J. H. F. Peile, pp. 6, 17.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 193
ply references to the Bible as " the living Word of
God"; or expatiate upon the grand style and "ex
quisite English " of "the good old Book" of 1611;
or drop sinister hints and multiply denunciations
concerning the dangers of the Higher Criticism.
Ruskin s words ma} be brusque, but his vision
was clear-sighted when he wrote to a class of re
ligionists by no means yet extinct :
"You women of England are all shrieking
with one voice, you and your clergymen to
gether, because you hear of your Bible being
attacked. If you chose to obey your Bibles,
you would not mind who attacked them. It is
just because you never fulfil a single downright
precept of the Book, that you are so careful
about its credit; and just because you do not
care to obey its whole words, that you are so
careful about the letter of them. The Bible
tells you to dress plainly, and you are mad for
finery ; the Bible tells you to have pity on the
poor, and you crush them under your carriage
wheels ; the Bible tells you to do justice, and
you do not know nor care to know what the
Bible word justice means. Do but learn what
so much of God s truth as that comes to and
then this critical study of the Bible this attack
on the Bible as you wrongly call it will cause
you no further anxiety."
When all is written or said hereupon, the only
valid and final proof for the modern world that the
Christian s Bible is really divinely inspired, is a
community of inspired men and women. What the
Bible, therefore, needs to-day is neither eulogy nor
apology ; but the witness of those who from a right
understanding of it, embody its spiritual principles
in their lives, and, as living epistles known and read
13
194 ARE THE CHURCHES HELPING
of all men, incarnate in all their dealings with their
fellows, its worthiest precepts and loftiest ideals.
The greatest need of all for the modern appreciation
of the Bible, is the answer to Spitta s prayer through
out all the Churches :
Lord, endue thy word from Heaven
With such light, and love, and power,
That in us its silent leaven
May work on from hour to hour.
Give us grace to bear our witness
To the truths we have embraced ;
And let others both their sweetness
And their quickening virtue taste.
BOOKS ILLUSTRATIVE OF TWO PRECEDING SECTIONS.
Inspiration (Bampton Lecture for 1903), by Dr. W. Sanday. Long
mans. 75. od.
The Bible : Its Meaning and Supremacy, by the late Dean Farrar.
Longmans. 6s.
The Bible : Its Origin and Nature, by Dr. Marcus Dods. T. & T.
Clark. 45. 6d.
Inspiration and the Bible, by Dr. R. F. Horton. Fisher Unwin.
35. 6d.
The Bible and its Inspiration, by Dr. G. S. Barrett. Jarrold. 2s.
Genesis The Century Bible, by Dr. W. H. Bennet. T. & E. Jack.
2s. 6d.
Shall we understand the Bible? by T. R. Williams. A. & C.
Black, is.
An Introduction to the Scriptures The Temple Bible by the Bishop
of Ripon. Dent & Co. is.
Gain or Loss ? by B. J. Snell. Jas. Clarke, is.
The Higher Criticism Three Papers, by Drs. C. S. Driver and
A. Kirkpatrick. Hodder & Stoughton. is.
Some Thoughts on Inspiration, by Dr. J. A. Robinson. Long
mans. 6d.
Evolution and the Holy Scriptures, by Dr. J. M. Wilson. S.P.C.K.
6d.
Problems of Religion and Science, by Dr. J. M. Wilson. Mac-
millan. 6d.
The Story of the Beginning, by Mrs. F. Green. Wells, Gardner, gd.
Clarion Fallacies, by Dr. F. Ballard. Hodder & Stoughton. is.
Holy Scripture and Criticism, by Dr. H. Ryle. Macmillan. 45. 6d.
THE APPRECIATION OF THE BIBLE? 195
The Century Bible separate vols., by various Authors. T. Jack.
2S. 6d.
The New Testament in Modern Speech, by Dr. Weymouth. J.
Clarke. 2s. 6d.
The New Appreciation of the Bible, by Dr. Selleck. Fisher Un-
win. 6s.
Sixty Years with the Bible, by Dr. W. N. Clarke. T. & T. Clark.
43. 6d.
The Witness of Israel, by W. J. Moulton. C. Kelly. 35. 6d.
The Law and the Prophets, by Dr. Westphal. Macmillan. 8s. 6d.
The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture, by Dr. M. Gibson.
T. Law. as. 6d.
Biblical Criticism and Modern Thought, by Dr. W. Jordan. T. & T.
Clark. 7s. 6d.
Early Traditions of Genesis, by Dr. A. R. Gordon. T. & T. Clark.
7s. 6d.
Studies in the Old Testament, by G. Jackson. C. Kelly. 35. 6d.
Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, by Dr.
G. A. Smith. Hodder & Stoughton. 6s.
The Bible in Modern Light (Part III of The People s Religious Diffi
culties), by Dr. F. Ballard. C. Kelly. 6d.
Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church, by J. E.
McFadyen. Hodder & Stoughton. 6s.
The Old Testament and Modern Research, by J. R. Cohu. J. Parker.
35. 6d.
The Gospels and Modern Research, by J. R. Cohu. J. Parker.
43. 6d.
The Value of the Old Testament, by B. J. Snell. Jas. Clarke.
2s. 6d.
The Inspiration of the Bible, by V. J. Storr. Simpkin. 6d.
Human Nature a Revelation of the Divine in the Old Testament.
C. H. Robinson. Longmans. 6d.
Evolution and the Fall, by Dr. F. J. Hall. Longmans. 5s.
The Use of the Scriptures in Theology, Dr. W. N. Clarke. T. & T.
Clark. 35. 6d.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
" Twenty-five years ago I had a rude awakening from my agnosticism
and materialism. I was down from the university with my parents for
the long vacation. I slept soundly, but awoke suddenly with a vision oi
my father crossing an iron bridge to which he alone had access, and in
front of him, partially obscured, was a gap some four feet wide; but he
walked on regardless of the danger. I jumped up, dressed, found my
father was out, and went for his assistant. He accompanied me to the
only bridge that answered the description, two miles up the river. We
were just in time to stop my father, who was calmly walking to destruc
tion. I mention the bare facts. They do not prove man s immortality,
but they do establish the existence of some unseen power, intelligent and
endowed with knowledge transcending mortals, and able to impart that
knowledge. The subject was a healthy undergraduate, not at all dreamy,
with all the impudent contempt of youth for anything bordering upon the
occult." " Is Death the End ? " By a well-known writer.
" I am, for all personal purposes, convinced of the persistence of human
existence beyond bodily death, and though I am unable to justify that
belief in the full and complete manner, yet it is a belief which has been
produced by scientific evidence that is based upon facts and experience."
Sir OLIVER LODGE.
" I must say that to my own mind the survival after death has such
strong evidence from so many sides, as to be entirely convincing, and
much above the evidence required in a court of law."
Principal GRAHAM, " Dalton Hall ".
" When I look over the whole field of the phenomena, and consider the
suppositions that must be made to escape spiritism, which not only one
aspect of the case, but every incidental feature of it strengthens, I see no
reason except the suspicion of my neighbours for withholding assent."
Prof. HYSLOP.
" Let us take the case of Mrs. Piper, who again and again has given
astounding examples of communications from some unseen source, the
only possible explanation of which is that they are from the departed
spirit. The question of fraud in her case naturally was raised, and it was
carefully considered by a committee of astute men. Their unanimous
opinion was that no system of fraud could account for the phenomena.
That vigorous critic Mr. Podmore, said The theory of fraud could not
be stretched sufficiently to cover the case. The real proof that fraud is
not the explanation, lies in the nature of the revelations actually made ."
" Is Death the End ? " By a well-known writer.
" The investigation and testing of the facts has disproved, on experi
mental grounds, the supposition that the existence of mind depends on the
mechanism of nerve and brain, as physiological science understands those
terms.
" No ; the more love grows, the more it feels it can grow ; the more
knowledge grows, the more cleanly we hear deeps calling unto deeps wait
ing to be known. In short the meaning and purpose of man s intellectual
and moral endowments are on a scale immeasurably larger than the needs
of this brief life demand." S. H. MELLONE, M.A., D.Sc.
199
CHAPTER VII
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
THE three subjects which have probably interested
and perplexed the human mind more than any other,
are God, freedom, and immortality. So much, indeed,
has been spoken and written concerning them, that
it seems impossible to suggest anything fresh or
final. At successive epochs men of unusual gifts
have made more or less impressive contributions to
their apprehension. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Paul,
Origen, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Kant, Lotze,
Edwards, and a host of others, down to the late
Prof. W. James, spent themselves freely on these
high themes. Yet for the majority of men they
still remain amongst the uncertainties. Just now,
those who are most anxious to escape the thraldom
of a naturalism which is virtually materialism, are
looking to Profs. Eucken of Germany and Bergson
of France. If for this country the name of Dr. A. R.
Wallace, or Sir Oliver Lodge, is added, we have
a modern spiritual prophet for each of the three
greatest nations of the world. The very least that
can be said about their protests, is that they are
timely. They voice the fact that an unmistakable
reaction has set in against the aggressive material
ism of the last century, and this reaction bids fair
to continue and develop, in spite of the flood of
cheap reprints, and translations of Haeckel, which
the Rationalist Press Association has poured over
this country during the last few years.
If, however, this reaction be called " spiritual," it
200 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
must be with a connotation differing from the usual
Christian significance of that term. From the
Christian standpoint the scientific rebound from
matter to force, or energy, leaves much to be de
sired. But patience may well prevail, seeing that,
as represented by creeds and churches, Christianity
itself is undergoing such modifications as have never
been conceived before. It is plain beyond all con
troversy, that much in the name of Christian re
ligion has to be unlearned, and much to be learned.
That a "new theology," in some sober sense, has -to
be wrought out, every honest and intelligent student
knows well. What changes are now taking place
and will yet come to pass in so-called " orthodoxy,"
we need not here consider. It is enough to affirm
that whatever influence upon Christian belief may
be exercised by historical and critical studies, the
three main elements above named will always re
main as immovable foundations. Christianity with
out God, freedom, and immortality, is unthinkable.
Canon Henson has well said that it is useless to
preach the Gospel, unless we can postulate theism
and moral responsibility. But he might as truly
have added, that even if we could assume these
without question which to-day assuredly we can
not no Gospel could justify its name to men unless
it held out unmistakable promise of good in a life to
come, as well as in the life that now is.
The modern religious situation is so complex, and
the atmosphere such a veritable Babel of opinions,
that any attempt at a truthful summary is specially
difficult. From the point of view of Christian
ethics, no less than of theology, the three God,
freedom, and immortality are inseparable. But in
the interests of clear thought each may and must
be considered apart from the others. Dismissing,
therefore, the two former, brief but valid answers to
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 201
the following inquiries may be of service as stepping
stones to conviction in the swirl of modern currents
of thought. What do we mean by immortality ?
What is truly to be said on its behalf? What may
be said against it ? What is the resultant attitude
of science and philosophy at the present time ?
What is the contribution of theism ? What is the
weight and worth of all that is pertinent concerning
Jesus Christ ? What is the ultimate position of
modern Christian belief? These are the queries
which must be faced, and which cannot but bring
in their wake some practical inferences.
What do we mean by immortality ?
Ordinary reference to a "hereafter," even by
thoughtful people, is always more or less ambigu
ous. The main question involved may be stated in
a variety of ways. Is man merely mortal ? Is man
immortal? Is death the end of all? Has man an
immortal soul? Is man a never-dying soul ? Some
of these forms of inquiry will not bear scrutiny, and
on the whole it is, perhaps, best, as Dr. McTaggart
suggests, to adopt the simple but comprehensive
question Are men immortal ? Even this, however,
really contains two queries which it is most import
ant to distinguish. Does the human self survive
death ? Does it continue to exist for ever by reason
of its very nature ? Undoubtedly, in general par
lance, our word " immortality " stands for an affirm
ation of both of these. But the second by no means
follows necessarily from the first. Nor is the
Christian Church by any means unanimous con
cerning it, for whilst one theologian of eminence
says that :
" Man is immortal, i.e. the human personal
ity is undying. The spirit is the person, and
202 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
what is here affirmed is that the human spirit,
with its essential powers in which it resembles
God, is destined to live on endlessly. A human
being will never cease to be a human being : " l
another in equally high repute writes that
"The doctrine of the immortality of the soul,
i.e. the essential and endless permanence of all
human souls, so prominent in the teaching of
Plato, has no place in the teaching of Christ
and His Apostles." 1
It is not here our task to enter upon the discussion
of this difference, beyond pointing out that any real
conception of literal eternity, or duration for ever,
is impossible to mortal minds. Certainly the usual
Greek word ai/coi/to? does not connote it. Nor, in our
own language, is " eternal " by any means the
synonym for " everlasting ". The former term is
indeed primarily qualitative, not quantitative, and no
greater mistake has been made in the whole history
of New Testament exegesis, than to explain or refer
to the word " eternal " as simply meaning lasting for
ever. The attempt to grasp and define the condi
tions of absolute eternity, is no more necessary, for
Christian thought than possible to the human mind.
All we can do is all we need do, viz. apprehend the
actuality of persistence. From the standpoint of
scientific research Sir Oliver Lodge indeed asserts
that " a really existent thing can never perish, but
only change its form". Whether the human spirit,
or self, or soul, comes into the category of existent
things, may be open to question. But the general
statement is both pertinent and sufficient.
" If all that really exists, in the highest sense,
is immortal, we have only to ask whether our
J Dr. W. N. Clarke, "Outline of Christian Theology," p. 192.
"The Immortality of the Soul," Dr. J. A. Beet, p. 36.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 203
personality, our character, our self, is sufficiently
individual, sufficiently characteristic, sufficiently
developed, in a word sufficiently real for if it
is, there can then be no doubt of its real con
tinuance. It may return, indeed in some sense
to the central store, but not without identity ;
its individual character will be preserved." 1
The question of questions, therefore, leaving
aside the possibilities of an infinite future, is whether
the event of death puts a final end to our existence
as persons. And apart from the philosophical sug
gestion just quoted, the unequivocal and unmistak
able answer of Christian faith is No. Its conviction
is that whatever moral qualities or consequences be
involved, man who is man is here and now a person ;
and his personality endures when the physical organ
ism through which it is now known, alike to himself
and others, is dissolved by death. Death, then, so
far from being the end of all, is but the true begin
ning of a new and larger life whose end is beyond
our conception.
On natural grounds what is to be said for such
a belief?
The following items of answer merit, of course,
much more extended development than is here pos
sible. Yet a brief summary has its advantages in
enabling us more clearly to apprehend their total
united force.
i. The instinctive clinging to life which distin
guishes all living creatures, is much more signifi
cant in man than in any other animals, even the
highest vertebrates. Amongst lower or less highly
organized creatures, the dread of death is probably
nothing more than reflex action through heredity.
1 " Man and the Universe," Sir Oliver Lodge, p. 178.
204 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
But in man it is a definitely thoughtful clinging to
existence, which is based equally upon conviction
and desire. It is easy to say that there is nothing
but the desire to warrant the conviction. But that
is neither the whole truth, nor is the desire to be
lightly dismissed as superficial sentimentality. It is
far too real, too universal, too deep, too strong, to
be airily set aside as insignificant. When we read
that we are
Not only cunning casts in clay :
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me ? I would not stay.
the protest is not to be contemned because it is
poetry. Reality is by no means confined to mathe
matics and statistics. Mr. Fiske affirms with reason
that "The faith in immortal life is the great poetic
achievement of the human mind ; it is all-pervasive ".
Nor is there any exaggeration in his further avowal
that
"The destruction of this sublime poetic con
ception would be like depriving a planet of its
atmosphere ; it would leave nothing but a moral
desert, as cold and dead as the savage surface
of the moon." 1
It must be confessed that one meets occasionally
with men and women who talk as if extinction would
be a boon. But it can hardly be said that such in
dividuals have exhibited the best type of living, even
here and now. Certainly, they do not speak for the
rest of humanity, else the proportion of suicides
instead of being a trifle, would be an enormous
majority. In this respect it is much more than
probable that the candid confession of Prof. Huxley,
1 " Life Everlasting," p. 18.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 205
in his letter to Mr. J. Morley, is what the average
man feels dimly and the best men and women ever
feel most strongly. Said he
" It is a curious thing that I find my dislike
to the thought of extinction increasing as I get
older, and nearer the goal. It flashes across
me at all sorts of times with a kind of horror,
that in 1900 I shall probably know no more of
what is going on, than I did in 1800. I had
sooner be in hell a good deal at any rate in
one of the upper circles where the climate and
company are not too trying." l
2. The conviction as something more than mere
longing that man does not wholly die at death,
has not only been practically universal, so that one
may truly say " belief in a future life is a vital part
of the experience of mankind," but it has been most
earnestly held and taught by many of the greatest
minds, both ancient and modern. The teachings of
Socrates and Plato hereupon, are too well known to
need statement. Shakespeare is also too familiar to
call for quotation. But not every one knows that
Goethe, Germany s greatest intellect, expressed
himself so strongly :
" At the age of seventy-five one must of
course think sometimes of death. But the
thought never gives me the least uneasiness,
for I am fully convinced that our spirit is a
being of a nature quite indestructible, and that
its activity continues from eternity to eternity."
Volumes could be filled with such testimonies.
They do not amount to a proof of immortality ; but
they do show that if it is a delusion, it is a colossal
one.
1 " Life and Letters," Vol. II, p. 67.
206 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
3. Leaving poetry and intuition, so as to give
full heed to modern science, it must be plainly
affirmed that inasmuch as we do not know what life
is, we cannot possibly know what its opposite, death,
is or does. All that the most exact modern science
permits us to say about life, is, that it is " the power
which directs the movements of bioplasm ". Or, in
Sir Oliver Lodge s deliberate words of affirmation,
" Life is something outside the scheme of mechanics,
outside the categories of matter and energy, though
it can nevertheless control or direct material forces "- 1
Even Prof. Haeckel has to admit that " structures
are not the efficient causes of the life process, but
products of it ". That being so, and all we know of
death being that it is the cessation of life, we have
not advanced a step beyond the position of the
writers of "The Unseen Universe," some thirty
years ago, when they affirmed that "none of us
know anything whatever about death ". In such
case, there is plainly no warrant whatever for affirm
ing that it is necessarily the end of the existence of
the individual.
4. The assertion of materialism, or Haeckel s
monism, that the human self, or soul, or ego, is
nothing more than a development from the body, the
product of complex organization, the "function of the
phronema," will not bear scientific scrutiny. Of
personality we may and must say that it is the bed
rock, or ultimate reality, of human existence. But
no subtlety of speech, or thought, can make this self
to be a material entity, or derive its reality from the
material brain. James Mill was quite warranted in
the declaration that no man has any right to say
that he has seen his brother when he meets him in
the street. He has seen a body, a material form,
1 " Life and Matter," cheap edition, p. 78.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 207
and nothing more. But there is something more,
or else one body would never be aware of the exist
ence of another body. In short, the human self,
or spirit, or personality, is both real and spiritual,
as distinct from material. Seeing, then, that all we
know about death is that it is the dissolution of the
body, there is no warrant whatever for assuming
that it is also the destruction of the soul. One might
as well insist that the destruction of Kubelik s violin
would involve the annihilation of Kubelik.
5. Some years ago, when materialism was in its
heyday, Dr. Joseph Cook of Boston openly de
clared
" Show me by physiological argument that the
soul is an agent external to the mechanism of
the nervous system, and you have proved that
the relation of the soul to the body is that of
a harper to a harp, or a rower to a boat. And
in showing that, you have removed, I affirm,
not only a great but the greatest obstacle to the
belief in immortality."
Such an affirmation is more fully justified now
than it was then. For more exact physiological
research, confirmed by psychology and metaphysics,
has made more clear and sure than ever the basis of
Dr. Cook s assertion. The last word of expert
physiology is to this effect :
" We have definitely concluded, then, that the
facts both of brain anatomy and of brain
physiology, indicate that this organ of the
personality is never more than its instrument,
whilst the personality itself is as different and
as separate from it, as the violinist is separate
from and not the product of his violin." l
1 " Brain and Personality," Dr. W. H. Thomson, p. 234.
208 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
All we know of death is that it is the dissolution
and disintegration of the body, including the brain.
But that no argument whatever can be drawn from
such physical dissolution to the cessation of the per
sonality, is manifest from a twofold consideration.
We know not only that the brain is not the mind,
or self; but that there is no apprehensible con
nexion at all between the brain and the mind. The
ultimate finding of psychological physiology is what
is termed " psycho-physical parallelism ". l But this
distinctly acknowledges two separate series of pheno
mena, mental and physical, material and immaterial,
running on lines as parallel indeed, but also as
separate, as two trains on distinct lines of metal.
The reader of these words is thus performing every
moment, a veritable miracle of transformation, before
which science is absolutely dumb. For all that is
presented to his vision is a series of black marks on
white paper whereby another series of molecular
vibrations is set up in his cerebral cortex. But
these vibrations are no more ideas than the moon
is. It is the thinking self which transforms such
material shakes into immaterial thoughts. In so
doing it is as distinct from the apparatus of optic
nerves and cerebral convolutions, as the manipulator
of the " monotype " printing machine is from that
upon which he operates. Nay, more so. For the con
nexion between the manipulator and the monotype
is both causal and demonstrable. But neither of
these can be affirmed of the relation between mole
cular vibration in the cerebral cortex, and the per
ception of ideas or formation of resolutions. The
destruction of the brain is, therefore, no more proof
of the end of the self, than the destruction of the
monotype would mean that the operator was dead.
1 See Dr. Stout s " Manual of Psychology," chap. in. " Body and
Mind ".
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 209
6. If human existence is to have any meaning
above and beyond the mere fact of physical exist
ence, it seems impossible to regard the present life
as final ; its incompleteness is at once so manifest
and so tragic. It is hard, indeed, as Mr. Fiske says,
to believe that nature will put us to "permanent
intellectual confusion " by trampling upon all that is
best within men, as of no account, or casting as
" rubbish to the void " all that distinguishes man s
nature from that of the beasts below him. When
one thinks of human nature s wondrous scope, and
estimates it, as in this case we are bound to do, by
its best specimens, it is surely impossible to think
that its capacities shall have no further chance of
developing than the few years of life on this earth
afford. As Principal Caird put it :
" Man s intellectual and moral endowments
are on a scale immeasurably larger than the
needs of this brief life demand, or than is re
quired for any attainments in knowledge and
goodness which even the noblest and best of
men reach in their earthly existence ; and there
fore we can only account for the disproportion
by the conception of a future life in which these
endowments shall find adequate scope and
employment." l
One might as well be asked to believe that a
magnificent organ, with a hundred stops, was erected
just to play on it the Old Hundredth with one finger,
as to think that man s possibilities of self-realization
are exhausted in this little mortal life. The reason
undoubtedly why many well-known words of Tenny
son s noblest poem have been so often quoted, is
that they so truly express, with tender strength, the
1 " Fundamental Ideas of Christianity," II. p. 263.
210 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
most inextinguishable and surely the noblest long
ing of humanity :
The wish that of the living whole,
No life shall fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have,
The likest God within the soul ?
From the standpoint of nature alone how can
less be said than this :
And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
And built him fanes of fruitless prayer.
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the true, the just ;
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills,
No more ? A monster then, a dream,
A discord ; dragons of the prime,
That tear each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
7. Nor is this quenchless yearning to be loftily
dismissed by " thanatists," on the ground that it is
" only poetry ". Poetry can on occasion be an iron
hand in a velvet glove. It is very far from being a
synonym for feebleness. In the present case, its
light is rather intensified than dimmed when we
turn to modern science. The latest expression of
this, we know, is in the word evolution. But if any
thing be beyond controversy in the vast realm of
thought which this term suggests, surely it is that
(i) evolution stands for an immeasurably long pro
cess upwards, in the sense of advancing from the
simpler to the more complex, from the lower to the
higher. And (ii), that the highest, crowning result
of that process is not only human nature, but human
nature at its best. So far, then, as we now know, the
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 211
end is the true and only explanation of the begin
ning. But is this the end of all ? In Mr. Fiske s
words, as a pronounced evolutionist :
"The question then is reduced to this: are
man s highest spiritual qualities into the pro
duction of which all this creative energy has
gone, to disappear with the rest ? Has all this
work been done for nothing ? Is it all epheme
ral, all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades ?
On such a view, the riddle of the universe be
comes a riddle without a meaning. The more
thoroughly we comprehend that process of
evolution by which all things have come to be
what they are, the more we are likely to feel
that to deny the everlasting permanence of the
spiritual element in man, is to rob the whole
process of its meaning." l
If human individuality perishes at death, then the
whole race in a few years few as geologic time
goes will be reduced to a clutched soap bubble ;
and the entire process of development, from the
primordial nebulosity to Shakespeare, Gladstone,
Jesus Christ, will have counted for no more than the
striking of a match to light a city arab s pilfered
cigarette. In such case naturalism and pessimism
are one.
8. When proof is demanded, prior to any belief
in immortality, it is only necessary to apprehend the
full significance of the term, to see how unreason
able is such an expectation. Mere continuity of
existence is by no means all that is intended, but
manifestly, by how much a future after death may be
expected to exceed the experience of a life " cribbed,
cabined, and confined " as this is by bodily limita
tions, by so much is it naturally impossible to pre-
1 " Man s Destiny," pp. 114, 115.
212 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
sent any clear conception, let alone demonstration
of it. The caterpillar might as reasonably be asked
for proof of its future wings, as human thought for
demonstration of a larger non-cerebral existence.
But on such impossibility, to found an argument
against the reality of any such existence would be
tantamount to affirming that no winged insect could
ever possibly come from a crawling caterpillar. Un
less we had seen it, who could have believed it ? But
when we have seen that the wonderful and beautiful
dragon-fly, with its four and twenty thousand eyes
and gauzy, iridescent, flashing wings, has emerged
from its unpromising larval condition through de
velopment under water in the mud, it does not use
up much faith to regard death as but the introduction
of man the immeasurably higher creature to a
correspondingly broader, brighter, stage of existence.
We may at least say, with some confidence, that the
great principle of evolution not only prevents our
being content to think that for man death ends all,
but encourages the hope that beyond the purview of
science there are possibilities of a further post
mortem existence, as much nobler than the human
present as humanity itself is than the lower evolu
tionary stages through which it has already passed.
9. At the same time it is by no means irrelevant
or unworthy that some regard should be paid to
certain apparent proofs that, at all events, death is
not the end of the individual existence. The case is
well put, with an admixture of caution and candour,
by Dr. McTaggart :
"Now the death of the body is by far the
strongest reason that we have for doubting the
self s immortality. And if the appearance of
ghosts could prove that this reason had no
weight, they would have removed the greatest
difficulty in the way of the belief. Much of the
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 213
evidence offered on this subject is doubtless
utterly untrustworthy. But there is a good
deal which investigation has failed to break
down. And there is much to be said in support
of the view that after all deductions have been
made for fraud, error, and coincidence, there is
still a sufficient residuum to justify the belief that
such apparitions are in some cases due to the
action of the dead man whose body they re
present." 1
From such a quarter this verdict is so significant,
that it may well be taken as the minimum which is con
sistent with the facts, when they are fairly scrutinized.
10. But inasmuch as the same writer still hesi
tates to accept the evidence, and only ventures upon
the hope that " investigation may give us more
evidence incompatible with any theory except that
of survival," it would seem that the time has come
definitely to claim that such evidence is now forth
coming, on the ground of the thorough, patient,
persistent, investigations of the Society for Psychical
Research, during the last twenty years. Inasmuch
as such testimony is yet open to hasty and super
ficial, if not contemptuous, dismissal by those who
have never looked into it, the following deliberate
utterances from those who have, may be of service to
the truth. Sir Oliver Lodge, after modestly expres
sing a truly scientific experience thus
" It so happens that I have been engaged for
over forty years in mathematical and physical
science, and for more than half that period in
exploration into unusual psychical development
as opportunity arose ; and I have thus been led
to certain tentative conclusions respecting per
missible ways of regarding the universe "
1 " Some Dogmas of Religion," p. 106.
214 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
gives his deliberate judgement, as already quoted
above, 1
" I have at length, quite gradually, become con
vinced, after more than twenty years of study,
not only that persistent individual existence is
a fact, but that occasional communication across
the chasm with difficulty and under definite
conditions is possible."
If any better qualified expert in such studies could
be found, possibly it might be Dr. Hodgson, well-
known for his exposure of the Blavatsky frauds in
India. Yet Prof. Barrett tells us concerning him
that
" Dr. Hodgson began his investigation of
Mrs. Piper s trance utterances as a thorough
sceptic. But after many years of unremitting
and critical investigation, testing one hypothesis
after another, he was finally driven to the con
clusion that the chief communicators are verit
ably the personalities they claim to be, and that
they have survived the change which we call
death. Dr. Hodgson s opinion, it may be added,
is now shared by many other able inquirers who
have made a searching and impartial investiga
tion of the evidence which has accumulated since
his death." 2
Other witnesses, however, might be called, of such
character and in such abundance 3 that it is not too
See p. 122.
3 " Psychical Research," by W. F. Barrett, F.R.S. (Williams and
Norgate). This little volume is an admirable summary which merits
the attention of every earnest thinker.
The literature of the subject is indeed immense, but it may suffice
here to mention two only in addition to the above, viz. "Is Death
the End ? " by a well-known writer who preserves his anonymity
(F. Griffiths) and " New Light on Immortality," by E. Fournier
d Albe (Longmans). In regard to such works nothing is easier than
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 215
much to say, with all Sir Oliver s caution and de
liberation, that Dr. McTaggart s caveat has been
met, and " evidence incompatible with any theory
except that of survival," is indubitably to hand. In
one plain word, materialism, including " thanatism,"
is for ever exploded by fact. Death is proved, at the
very least, not to be the end of all for human beings.
What has science or philosophy to say against
human immortality ?
i. Dr. McTaggart remarks truly that the strongest
reason for questioning the immortality of the self,
is the death of the body. This is the difficulty
which has to be frankly faced. As he points out,
there are three questions to be answered, (i) Is
my present self an activity of my body ? (ii) Is my
present body an essential condition of the existence
of myself? (iii) Is there any reason for thinking
that my self does not share the transitory character
of the material phenomena around me ?
Elaborate discussion will be found elsewhere in
justification of the plain replies which must sum
marily, though truthfully, here be given to these
crucial questions. As to the first ; my self is not an
activity of my body. In regard to the second ; all
that the facts of the case support is, that " while the
self has or dwells in a body, that *body is essentially
for the orthodox reviewer (as in the "British Weekly ") to write : " Non
tali auxilio, the Christian believer may say, as he reads. His faith
in eternal life and glory will find allies, let us hope, in another en
vironment than that of extinguished gas and blue magnesium lights."
But such a sneer is as unworthy as it is ignorantly unfair. On such
lines, Christianity would never have even begun to be. To all such
reviewers any fair-minded student may commend the example of the
Bereans, and the Apostolic maxim " whatsoever things are true,
take them all into account ". Psychical research is no more a mere
matter of " blue magnesium lights," than Christianity is a concoction
of ecclesiastical miracles.
216 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
connected with the self s mental life ". As to the
third ; the difference between the self and the matter
with which it is connected, whether more or less
intimately, is so great as to preclude all analogy,
let alone comparison. In such a case, the material
and the immaterial are incommensurable, and no
conclusion from the transitoriness of the former can
be drawn to that of the latter.
2. There need be no hesitation, therefore, in dis
missing as unworthy of regard, the confident dogmat
isms of the Haeckelian school, of which the following
are typical specimens :
"The belief in the immortality of the human
soul is a dogma which is in hopeless contradic
tion with the most solid empirical truths of
modern science. . . . We have to say the same of
athanatism as of theism, both are creations of
poetic mysticism and of transcendental faith, not
of rational science. 1 . . . Modern psychology, phy
siology, ontogeny, phylogeny rigorously refuse
an inch of ground for athanatism. Modern
science has not taught us a single fact that
points to the existence of an immaterial world.
. . . Comparative anatomy and physiology have
shown that the mind of man is a function of
the brain and his will is not free, and that his
soul, absolutely bound up with its material organ,
passes away at death like the souls of other mam
mals. All that comes within the range of our
knowledge, is a part of the material world." 2
All these bold assertions are demonstrably false. 3
They would not indeed be worth quoting for denial,
were it not for the fact that their dogmatic reiteration
1 " Riddle of the Universe," cheap edition, pp. 72, 75.
2 " Wonders of Life," pp. 1 13, 454.
3 See for reasons, my " Haeckel s Monism False," ch. vi.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 217
still gives them vogue amongst a large number of
people in our midst, who, not knowing better, accept
strong assertion as argument. "Modern Science"
teaches nothing of the kind.
3. The strongest apparent argument that material
istic science can bring against the post-mortem per
sistence of the self, is, that " throughout the animal
kingdom we never see sensation, perception, instinct,
volition, reasoning, or any of the phenomena which
we distinguish as mental, manifested, except in con
nexion with nerve matter arranged in systems of
various degrees of complexity". 1 It is true. But
what does it all amount to, when soberly considered ?
Again in Mr. Fiske s words, "Nothing. Absolutely
nothing. It not only fails to disprove the validity
of the belief, but it does not raise even the slightest
prima facie presumption against it." At most it can
only apply to the present, whereas it is the future
with which we are herein concerned. But even that
cannot now be conceded. For telepathy has defin-
1 When Haeckel s eager translator asserts in this case that " there
is exact correspondence between brain action and soul life "
(" Haeckel s Critics Answered," p. 63) he manifestly concedes the ab
solute distinction between the two. " Soul life " is thus a reality in
itself, for there can only be " correspondence " between entities.
The dissolution of one of these is no proof whatever of the destruc
tion of the other. But how hardly pressed such advocates are, may
be gathered from what follows : " This correspondence is the same
as we find in the case of the heart and its function, the stomach
and digestion, or the lungs and respiration ". For full exposition of
this hackneyed fallacy, see Dr. Stout s " Manual of Psychology,"
chap. in. But the merest tyro can see the falsity of the suggested
analogy. Heart and lungs produce motion, stomach manufactures
digested food ; therefore brain manufactures consciousness, thought,
emotion, will ! Of a truth Mr. Fiske may well say that " the
materialistic assumption that there is no thought and feeling in the
absence of a cerebrum, and that the life of the soul accordingly ends
with the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal assumption
known to the history of philosophy ".
218 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
itely shown that it is not always true, even for the
present.
4. But, say some as if it were so relevant as to
be conclusive "When does the immortal soul of
the individual come into existence ? " The query
is really so irrelevant as to be not worth answering.
The fact that no physiology or psychology can en
able us to fix a momentary birth for the individual
self or soul, no more affects its after-death persist
ence, than the corresponding fact that no moment
can be specified as the beginning of self-consciousness,
lessens the actuality of my knowledge at this moment
that I am I.
5. But we are further assured that the " corre
spondence between brain action and soul life is just
the same in man as in the ape or the dog ". If the
self in man is undying, why not also in all animals ?
The answer may be plain and direct. The statement
that "soul life " in man and beast is "just the same,"
is false. It is nothing of the kind. Prof. Haeckel s
suggestion that any one who keeps a fine dog "will
have to admit that it has just as valid a claim to im
mortality as man himself," is so utterly contrary to
fact, that any one who will may be called upon to
try the experiment. 1 The more thoroughly it is done,
the more immeasurable becomes the difference. Mr.
Fiske s strong summary is the truth :
" It is not too much to say that the difference
between man and all other living creatures, in
respect of teachableness, progressiveness, and
individuality of character, surpasses all other
differences of kind that are known to exist in
the universe." 2
1 As I have done for many years.
2 " Man s Destiny," p. 57. The whole little book should be read
by way of appreciating this estimate.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 219
When, therefore, it is affirmed that " if belief in im
mortality is to be anything more than a despairing
trust, it must appeal to the presence in man of some
unique power and promise," 1 the challenge may be
most unhesitatingly taken up. For if there be one
thing which, next to our own consciousness, is in
dubitable, certainly it is that, so far as we know
anything about the universe, man is inexpressibly
and unapproachably unique, alike in power and in
promise, throughout the whole realm of nature.
6. In spite of all arguments, however, says Dr.
McTaggart, the idea that the self cannot be immortal,
continually returns to us. May be. " Yet," he adds,
" I think that reasons for the belief in immortality
may be found, of such strength that they should pre
vail over all difficulties." A thoughtful mind will
echo this conclusion all the more earnestly for re
membering how difficult it would have been a century
ago to believe in some things which now no one can
deny. Had it been told to Nelson, for instance, that
he might in case of need summon to his side ships
from across the ocean by wireless message from his
masthead, it would have seemed an idle tale in very
deed. " Monstrous," " absurd," " impossible," would
not have been deemed too strong epithets to employ.
Some years later, when railways were initiated, it
was proclaimed impossible that any locomotive could
ever safely draw a train at twenty miles an hour.
What has happened since then? Overwhelmingly
enough, in all realms of modern knowledge, to prove
that " Believing where we cannot prove " is often
much more than trustful poetry ; it is valid science. 2
What, then, is the resultant conviction from the
1 " Haeckel s Critics Answered," p. 61.
2 " Some Dogmas, etc.," pp. no, 1 1 1.
220 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
pros and cons of science and philosophy in regard to
human immortality ?
It is useful sometimes to summarize a position in
plain statement, leaving for other occasions the usual
buttressing of assertion with argument. So here,
with a full sense of responsibility, the following
affirmations may be made in the fiercest light of our
present-day knowledge.
(1) The oracular omniscience which characterizes
some of the opposition to a belief in immortality,
may be dismissed without hesitation as irrational.
When we are told that
" The world has grown into a universe to-day,
and from end to end of it comes only the whisper
of death. Man now sees in the universe at large
no shadow of support for that promise of un
ending life he has entertained so long "-
it is almost impossible in courteous language to char
acterize faithfully such audacious rhodomontade. It
is simply untrue, and there we may leave it.
(2) As in all other matters, so here, " our know
ledge is a drop, our ignorance a sea ". Says Mr. R. B.
Arnold, " A being small enough to swim up the blood
vessels of our brains, could never have the faintest
conception that the atomic activities around him,
when totalized, are mind ". In very deed he could
not ; because no number or quantity of " atomic
activities " ever yet made " mind " when added to
gether. Nor ever will. But the infinitesimal being
here supposed, would only be on a par with our
modern iconoclast, if he roundly declared that " from
end to end " of the vascular system around him,
came only the whisper of mindlessness.
(3) Ignorance of method, or detail, as to a future
after death, can never be a final barrier to belief,
1 " Haeckel s Critics Answered," p. 61.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 221
because it applies equally to present experience
which cannot be denied. Mr. Herbert Spencer
truly said "You cannot take up any problem in
physics without being quickly led to some metaphy
sical problem which you can neither solve nor
evade ".
(4) But some things we do know. We know that
thought is not a function of brain. It is indeed an
accomplished expert who tells us that the more we
study the anatomy of the brain cortex, the less we
can believe that its cells have anything to do with
the mental processes, beyond serving as agents of
transmission. 1 The dogmatic assertion, therefore,
that the life of the soul ends with the body, when
no known physical connexion whatever exists be
tween them, is but an unwarranted and intolerable
assumption.
(5) Whilst it is true that the accepted theory of
psycho-physical parallelism does not prove the con
tinuity of the self s existence after death, it does at
least insist that the door of possibility shall be left
open. It takes away the only objection to belief in
such continuity which could be fatal and final.
(6) From the standpoint of evolution, "there is
no more philosophical difficulty in man s acquiring
immortal life, than in his acquiring the erect posture
or the faculty of articulate speech ". 2
(7) Endlessness of existence no more needs proof
than admits of it. What may be in store for the
human self beyond death, or what may then threaten
its continuity, we cannot conceive. All we know is
that death seems to put an end to human individu
ality. The question of questions for us is whether
such seeming amounts to reality.
1 Dr. Alexander Hill, late Master of Downing College, Cambridge.
2 Mr. J. Fiske, " Life Everlasting," p. 85.
222 IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER?
(8) It is not too soon, nor too much, to claim that
that question is answered, as above indicated. The
evidence of direct psychical research, herein, is at
once valuable and sufficient. Enough has been
demonstrated to give the coup de grace to material
ism, and put an end to its blatant dogmatism for
evermore. Telepathy is a fact. As such, it blows
to the moons of Jupiter the tyrannic fallacies which
have appeared to block the way to any hope for the
hereafter. Plain fact, no less than physiological
psychology, shows that the brain is not the mind, 1
and thought is not the automatic " function of the
phronema ". 2
(9) In a word, " athanatism " is proved by facts.
But athanatism is not enough to satisfy the human
mind or heart. As Prof. Barrett well says in his
admirable summary of the results of psychical re
search :
" But does the evidence afford us proof of
immortality ? Obviously it cannot ; nor can
any investigations yield scientific proof of that
larger, higher and enduring life which we de
sire and mean by immortality. Our own
limitations, in fact, make it impossible for the
evidence to convey the assurance that we are
communicating with what is best and noblest
in those who have passed into the unseen." 3
(10) It is something, however, and a very great
and valuable something, to find that modern science
does not forbid our listening for other voices that
may speak more clearly and fully to our hearts.
It not only imposes no veto upon our longing for
reunion with those that have gone before, and has
1 As " Not Guilty," by Mr. R. Blatchford, affirms, p. 95.
2 As asserted by Prof. Haeckel, and his translator.
3 pp. 245, 246.
IS THERE ANY HEREAFTER? 223
nothing to say against our normal shrinking from
annihilation, but it dismisses as unwarrantable and
pessimistic conceit, all talk about only "a whisper
of death " coming "from end to end of the universe ".
It unmistakably holds open the door of hope to
other and more enheartening possibilities. The
poet s protest is thus amply justified :
My own dim life shall teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore.
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is.
WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
IMMORTALITY?
" Our conception of immortality has filtered down to us through the
dark ages. It is still tainted by their narrowness of outlook, their lack of
scientific knowledge, their opposition of the natural to the supernatural,
and we can hardly be surprised that it fails to satisfy or to attract a genera
tion before which such amazing vistas of the universe have opened out.
" Mark has it -to be cast into hell where their worm dieth not . True ;
at the same time it is wholly misleading, and even absurd, to take such
sayings of our Lord as these and presume to define their meaning apart
from His whole revelation. We cannot understand the significance of
any part of Christ s teaching, if we isolate it." E. MARIE CAILLARD.
" Nearly all the higher views of future existence assume a much
greater effect of Divine ruling in the next world than in this. God is
more visible, more approachable, more supreme there than here. For
this, again, we have no warrant of any kind. A world outside of God is
unthinkable. It would simply be another God, and there is no room for
two universal centres in a thinkable universe."
E. FOURNIER D ALBE, " New Light on Immortality".
"The Bible does not teach expressly the natural i immortality of the
soul in the sense in which -philosophers have sought to demonstrate it,
but neither does it teach that only those who believe in Christ survive
death. There is solemn warning to the wicked of a penalty which awaits
them in the future life. The view of man which is distinctive of Chris
tianity, the worth which it assigns to him, the solicitude on his behalf
which it ascribes to God, all suggest that even in the sinner death does
not end all, but that the moral and religious development here begun is
completed in the hereafter." Dr. GARVIE, " Christian Life and Belief".
" Since departing souls are carrying evil into the unseen world, we
cannot fail to see that in that world the question of God s victory over
evil must be wrought out. God changes never. In that unseen realm of
life He is the same as here ; or rather in this little world He is the same
that He for ever is in the infinite realm of being the lover of souls and
the hater of sin."
Dr. W. N. CLARKE, " The Christian Doctrine of God ".
" Hymns are responsible for a great deal of our foolish ideas on religion.
Those who undertake work in this department should strive to make our
hymnody a little more sensible, and a little more poetic.
" Now what has brought about this foolish idea of death as a long
sleep until a far-off resurrection day ? Chiefly two things. First, an
unthinking interpretation of the word sleep as applied to death by our
Lord ; and secondly, the idea of a far-off day of judgement a great world
assize. The idea is quite unthinkable.
" To be quite fair, it must be sorrowfully admitted that Protestantism
has presented pictures of Hell, not perhaps so awful in a material sense,
but with that exception as awful as those of Rome. The marvel is that
Christianity should have survived such cruel and awful misrepresentations.
But they have made its progress in the world immensely slower, and what
is still worse, they have to multitudes shadowed the fair face of a God de
clared by His Son to be love itself."
W. GARRETT HORDER, " The Other World ".
227
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
IMMORTALITY?
IT is well indeed that the sweeping dogmatisms of
materialism should be rebuked by modern science,
and it is gain for evermore if valid evidence is to
hand no matter whence that the dead are not
lost, but only gone before. But the craving of the
human mind and heart is so natural and so insistent
for further knowledge on this great theme, that when
science and philosophy have had their say, religion
also may well be called upon for its verdict. In
general, it may be assumed that religion is pledged to
immortality. For whilst Islam is as uncompromis
ing as sensuous in its post-mortem promise, Bud
dhism strenuously insists that its Nirvana is not
annihilation, and Hinduism is quite content with its
transmigrations, in which attitude it is vividly fol
lowed by modern Theosophy. We shall, however,
concern ourselves here only with the Christian
religion, as being, at least nominally, that of the
Western world. Considerable stress has been laid in
the preceding section probably more than those
who have not studied the subject will appreciate
on the ultimate findings of the Society for Psychical
Research. But it is equally important not to over
rate, any more than underrate, its witness. Prof.
Barrett s conclusion to his useful summary already
mentioned, is at once true and suggestive :
" In fine, psychical research, though it may
strengthen the foundations cannot take the place
228 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
of religion, using in its widest sense that much-
abused word. For, after all, it deals with the
external, though it be in an unseen world ; and
its chief value lies in the fulfilment of its work
whereby it reveals to us the inadequacy of the
external, either here or hereafter, to satisfy the
life of the soul. The physical order is not the
spiritual order, but a stepping stone in the ascent
of the soul to its own self-apprehension, its con
scious sharing in the eternal Divine life."
So that we may come back once more to the truth
that God, freedom, and immortality are inseparable,
and ask afresh what is the bearing of the two former
upon the latter ?
1. From the Christian standpoint unquestionably,
both theism and moral responsibility are, as has been
stated, postulates. How definitely these point on
to a life to come, needs no labour of words to show.
The most remarkable position in modern philosophy
was undoubtedly that of Kant, who did not shrink
from basing his argument for the very being of God
upon the assumption that immortality was an inevit
able postulate of the pure practical reason. To him
the summttm boniun of human life was the complete
accordance of the mind with the perfect moral law.
This, however, implied an eternal progression which
could only be possible in a literal eternity. But the
necessary condition of the possibility of such an
eternal progression is the existence of an adequate
cause, i.e. of God. It is easier to disregard this
argument than to disprove it ; but we are here only
concerned to mark well the inseparability of the
three great factors which constitute the very essence
of Christianity.
2. For theism, as a genuine necessity of thought,
no apology need be offered. Such superficial dog
matisms as that of Prof. Haeckel, that "an unpre-
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 229
judiced study of natural phenomena reveals the
futility of the theistic idea " ; and of his English re
presentative, that "God has now shrunk into an
intangible cosmic principle," may be as lightly
dismissed as they are assuredly unwarranted. It
will suffice to say with Mr. A. J. Balfour :
"The ordered system of phenomena asks for
a cause. Our knowledge of that system is
inexplicable unless we assume for it a rational
Author. Under this head, at least, there should
be no conflict between science and religion."
Accepting, as now we must, evolution as the Divine
method of creation, its bearing upon the question of
immortality is manifest and impressive.
The wider teleology which it involves means, as
Huxley so plainly pointed out, not less but more of
design on the part of the Creator, and warrants our
utmost appreciation of it. But in so doing it becomes
unquestionable that the explanation of the beginning-
is in the end ; just as surely as an architect s plans
are explained and justified by the noble edifice which
results from following them. So is man the explan
ation of protoplasm, not protoplasm of man. If, then,
man, as the veritable incarnation and embodiment
of the great Creator s intention, ends absolutely in
nothing, not only is the impersonal process of
evolution a self-contradictory enigma, but the sublime
Personal Author of the age-long process is made to
act with a futility which, amongst men, would only
be attributed to an imbecile. Hence Mr. Fiske says
truly, from the standpoint of theism :
" He who regards man as the consummate
fruition of creative energy, and the chief object
of Divine care, is almost irresistibly driven to
the belief that the soul s career is not completed
with the present life upon the earth. For my
230 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
own part, therefore, I believe in the immortality
of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept
the demonstrable truths of science, but as a
supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of
God s work." 1
Well, therefore, does the same author ask "Are
we to regard the Creator s work as like that of a
child who builds houses out of blocks, just for the
pleasure of knocking them down ? " Surely the
conception of Mephistopheles, as told to Faust, is too
ghastly to be true :
" And man gave God thanks for the strength
that had enabled him to forego even the joys
that were possible. And God smiled ; and
when he saw that man had become perfect in
renunciation and worship, he sent another sun
through the sky which crashed into man s sun
and all returned again to nebula. Yes, God
murmured, it was a good play ; I will have it
performed again.
Rather must we fall back upon the witness of an
Agnostic as candid as Huxley, who in his " Life and
Letters," definitely declares
" I am no optimist, but I have the firmest
belief that the Divine government (if we may
use such a phrase to express the sum of the
customs of matter) is wholly just. The absolute
justice of the system of things is as clear to me
as any scientific fact."
It cannot be other than just to fulfil a Divinely im
planted expectation. It would be more than unjust
to cause such a development of humanity as must
lead to desires, affections, longings, more deep and
1 " The Destiny of Man," pp. 1 1 1, 1 16.
2 " Life and Letters," vol. I, p. 236.
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 231
strong and high and tender than any preceding
animal could ever share, only to consummate them
with annihilation. As Emerson said :
"The Creator keeps His word with us all.
What I have seen teaches me to trust the
Creator for what I have not seen. Will you,
with vast pains and care, educate your children
to produce a masterpiece, and then shoot them
down ? "
3. Certainly this reference to the relation of
parent and child is entirely warranted from the
Christian standpoint. Christian theism unmistak
ably involves the reality of the Divine and universal
Fatherhood. The only possible objection to this is
that it is too good to be true. Assuming that this
has been sufficiently considered in the preceding
sections, if God be, as Christian theism asserts, a
Heavenly Father, it is simply impossible for us to
think of Him as content to watch an eternal funeral
the passing into nothingness of untold generations of
His children. If man here is a worthy object of love
Divine, his annihilation by the law of a God of love
is inconceivable. If me eternal purpose of the Father
has through measureless ages brought to pass his
creation, his total destruction by death could not but
be a frustration and contradiction of that purpose
such as no earthly father would tolerate. When a
human father brings up a child with ceaseless love and
pains from babyhood to manhood or womanhood, and
then disease or accident ends the promising career,
it is universally regarded as a calamity which is only
tolerable because resistless. If God be God, and
also in any sense a Father, we cannot think of Him
as either unwilling or unable to prevent such irre
parable loss on the larger scale.
4. But more than that. From our human stand-
232 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
point, no less than from the Divine, if the Father
hood of God be anything more than a pious and
pitiful fiction, there must be some other sphere than
this present life for the manifestation not merely of
the justice but of the loving sympathy which are
inseparable from fatherhood. Beyond question the
greatest difficulty to many thoughtful and sincere
minds, in regard to the Christian doctrine of Divine
Fatherhood, is found in the gross inequalities between
the capacities and opportunities, the joys and sorrows,
the luxury and penury, the unmerited happiness or
unhappiness of human beings. Unless a man can
satisfy his mind with the muddled shifts of " rein
carnation," as urged by Theosophy, he is bound to
ask that somehow, somewhere, in some way, a more
fair and impartial scheme of things shall be inaugur
ated. The story of Dives and Lazarus may be but
metaphorical, none the less it involves such eternal
principles of justice and sympathy as cannot possibly
be ignored, if any Divine government, let alone
Fatherhood, is to be maintained. " Son, remember
that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things
and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now, here,
he is being comforted, and thou art in anguish."
What they deserve who in this life have had every
boon it can offer, and squandered it all in brutal self
ishness, may be beyond our judgement. But our
hearts refuse to be silenced when we cry out against
the undeserved pangs of myriads of helpless sufferers
who, through no fault of their own, have been
" damned into the world " to start with, and thence
forward have never had a chance to make life, in
any noble human sense, worth living. That there
are myriads such, even in modern civilization, can
not, alas ! be questioned.
If a mere mindless energy, working through chance
or blind "necessity," rules the universe well, there
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 233
is no more to be said. Confusion is only what
might be expected. But Divine Fatherhood cannot
contemplate such a moral chaos with indifference.
Whatever becomes of our theologies, or our conven
tions, these unfortunates must all have their share
in good if not here, then hereafter. They cannot
be permitted by a God whose "love is as great as
His power," to be born with human capacities for
enjoyment no less than for suffering, only to endure
anguish and then cease to be. Such blighted human
beings would be blots for ever upon the love of God, if
there were no other existence in which the compen
sation provided for Lazarus came also to every
innocent sufferer. Such assured compensation
hereafter is, indeed, no excuse whatever for moral
laissez-faire here and now. Nor does it involve any
warrant whatever for diminishing our present efforts
towards justice and sympathy to the uttermost.
But when these fail through no fault of ours, it is
unspeakable comfort to know that all is not over.
Those whom we would have helped and could not,
have not plunged headforemost into the " vacant jaws
of darkness," but have gone to "Abraham s bosom ".
Such a figure may be taken to signify at least a
blended fatherhood and motherhood more tender
and sufficing than any known here on earth.
5. Yet another call upon the Divine Fatherhood
must be made, so long as its reality is assumed. It
must have some relation to the unnumbered hosts of
the deaths which we cannot but call "premature,"
whether they occur in childhood or adolescence. We
have seen how Prof. Haeckel waxes very bitter here ; L
and certainly, if this little life were indeed demon
strated to be all, the suggested Nemesis of faith would
be difficult to avoid. But the writer wilfully forgets
i See p. 49.
234 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
that the faith at which he sneers, which dares to
speak of a Heavenly Father here, insists just as
plainly and earnestly that this life is not the only
sphere of His operation. There is thus no fairness
in the indictment which separates the two realms, and
utterly ignores the greater. Christian belief does
not, cannot, profess to find the full manifestation of
the Divine Fatherhood in this present stage of being.
Christ s own words are homely indeed, but they are
as unmistakable as unfathomable when justice is
done them.
Alas ! that a figure of speech marred by archaic
English still minifies and stultifies, for very many,
the surest and tenderest word of comfort ever
spoken to sorrowing human hearts :
" Let not your heart be troubled ! Trust in
God ; trust also in Me. In My Father s house
are many resting-places. If it were not so I
would have told you."
How long religious obscurantism will cling to the
now utterly misleading word " mansions," as in the
version of 1611 wrongly called "Authorized" no
one can say. But the hindrance of it is immeasur
able, just where the modern mind and heart most
need sane suggestions of genuine comfort. As
suredly there is no such comfort as the Christian
mind craves, in the suggestion of an endless series of
" mansions " considering the present-day signifi
cance of that term. What the heart cries out for is
restored communion, perpetuation of love, continua
tion of unselfish service all of which legitimately
come into the assurance of Jesus, but are blocked
out of thought by the repellent archaism to which so
many yet appear to be devoutly attached.
We do not need the gibes of unbelief to remind
us of the heart-breaking mysteries of those deaths
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 235
where everything worth considering calls for more,
many more, of such human lives as are thus ended.
Here is one typical case, taken from a journal issued
whilst these pages are being written.
"A terribly tragic occurrence took place at Old
Trafford on the zoth of November. On the
bridge which crosses the Ship Canal, Dr. W. P.
Marshall and his wife were walking at the same
time that a large motor wagon was crossing.
Dr. Marshall stopped for a moment to notice
something passing in the canal below, and at
that moment the wagon, by reason of the greasy
condition of the roadway, skidded and pinned
the doctor against the side of the bridge. His
injuries were so terrible that he died at Salford
Hospital on Monday last. The deceased was
the son of Rev. Dr. Marshall, Principal of the
Baptist College, Manchester, and six months
ago married Miss E. Marshall of Bolton. The
latter belongs to one of the oldest and most
respected families of the Bridge Street Circuit,
and has been brought up at Fletcher Street
Chapel."
Before such a tragedy of grief and loss, our hearts
stand appalled, and words are useless. It is small
comfort in very deed, to know of many other in
stances of equal mystery and sorrow. Their name
is legion.
Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
Whether we think of such inexplicable tragedies
as the foregoing, or the even more pathetic deaths of
myriads of loved little ones, it is simply impossible
to believe in the love of a heavenly Father for us
His children, if all these, younger or older, who
have been the very embodiments of all that is
236 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
Divinest in human nature, are but to pass as worth
less trifles into the everlasting dark. If we too,
following them with hearts over-charged, sharing
the grief that can only spring from love, have no
prospect but to be pushed on in turn into oblivion,
then not only were it better not to be, but the
despair of unbelief which regards the Divine Father
hood as but " the baseless shadow 7 of a wistful human
dream," would be justified. If God be our Father,
death cannot be the destruction of our loved ones, nor
the charnel-house of all our tenderest, noblest hopes.
6. It will not be of avail here to refer to the testi
mony of the Bible generally, for the double reason
that (i) it could only be authoritative for those who
accept its inspiration ; and that (ii) the Old Testament
throws but little light, and that only uncertainly,
upon any life beyond the grave. In the earlier
periods of Jewish history, as reflected in our Canon,
there was no conception of or reference to eternity
at all. A dim hope that it was well with the right
eous, and ill with the wicked, in a shadow-land
that was called Sheol, was almost all. True, in
some of the Psalms there are hints of brighter hopes.
Whether these can be traced back to Persian, or
Egyptian, or Accadian influences, is irrelevant. Be
fore the time of the Maccabees, the whole case may
be truly summed up in the words of Dr. Salmond,
to the effect that the Old Testament " caught but
occasional flashes of the light of an after life V In
the Apocrypha we first meet those more definite
and larger views and hopes which prepare the way
for the unmistakable attitude of Christ Himself.
7. So long as the New Testament is held in
any regard, its testimony, as embodying that of
Christ and His Apostles, is unequivocal and final.
1 For an excellent summary of the case, see Book Second in his
" Christian Doctrine of Immortality ".
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 237
(i) The teaching of Jesus as to the life after death
is, indeed, neither academic nor theological. But it
is unquestionably real and unmistakable. No proof
is offered ; no detail is given ; no curious questions
are answered. But the actuality of another state of
being after death, in definite moral continuity with
this present, is never for a moment left in un
certainty. However greatly sections of the Christian
Church may have differed, or may yet differ, as to
eschatology, no one of them has ever questioned
the reality of that after-death continuity of person
ality which Jesus everywhere and always assumed.
For the non-Christian world, of course, such teach
ing may not be final ; but all Christendom, assuredly,
will refuse herein to believe Him to have been either
deceiver or deceived.
(ii) His character, moreover, becomes a witness
in itself. No notice need be taken of the insignifi
cant minority, even in the ranks of unbelief, of those
who have attempted to belittle or besmirch that
character. He of whom Strauss wrote that "noth
ing can be added to the moral intuition which Jesus
Christ has left us," and concerning whom also Mr.
John Stuart Mill declared that even an unbeliever
could not " find a better rule of virtue, than to en
deavour so to live that Christ would approve his
life," will lose nothing in the estimate of all who are
worth considering, by the occasional gibes of a
vulgar journalism, or the sneers of some of the
coarser representatives of Secularism. His character
remains and will ever remain where Mr. Lecky, the
eminent "rationalist," put it. 1
1 The words have been so often quoted as scarcely to need re
petition. In briefest statement, lest any reader should have missed
it : " It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal
character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has
inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love has been not
238 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
In Him, therefore, the incredibility of a Divinely
directed but self-frustrated evolution, reaches its
unanswerable climax. If it be self-contradictory,
even on naturalistic lines, that evolution as a process
of the ages should culminate in a creature of man s
calibre, and then allow him to become extinct; it is
far more incredible that God, who is in the fullest
sense the Father of mankind, should express that
relationship in an evolutionary purpose which
finds its highest and noblest end in a Goethe, or a
Shakespeare, or a Gladstone, or a Kelvin, and then
suffer these personalities, with all the mystery of
their unmeasured potency, to be smitten into ex
tinction by death. But most of all does it become
impossible to believe, that He who was in a supreme
and unique sense " Son of man " and " Son of God,"
the moral and spiritual flower of all the ages, could
be permitted by a God of wisdom, love, and power,
to pass out of being as totally and irrevocably as
to quote Haeckel s simile "the fly of a summer s
day, the microscopic infusorium, or the smallest
bacillus ". The living Christ is in Himself, now
and for evermore, the pledge that death is not the
human terminus.
(iii) But the yet stronger and final appeal of the
Christian hope of immortality is to fact. Whether
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was
a purely " spiritual " event, which left the mangled
body to moulder in a Syrian grave ; or whether it
was so far " physical " as to involve a transformation
from the body of his humiliation into a real and
glorious though spiritual body, may be left here un-
only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its
practice, and has exercised so deep an influence, that it may be truly
said that the simple record of three short years of active life, has
done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions
of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists " ;
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 239
decided as irrelevant. The question of questions is
did Jesus the Crucified, as a matter of fact, pass on
through death into that larger life which He had
not only Himself anticipated but definitely promised
to those about Him, as the crowning proof of the
truthfulness of His whole mission? The Christian
answer is, that He did. The validity of the proofs
of His reappearing after death, must be discussed
elsewhere. 1 Here we are warranted in assuming
the fact, and appreciating the consequence. What
this greatest of human events has done, and done
for evermore, is, in Dr. Salmond s words " It has
translated a guess, a dream, a longing, a probability,
into a certainty ". It is no mere religious sentiment,
but a rational and scientific inference, which is em
bodied in Gellert s well-known hymn :
Jesus lives thy terrors now,
Can, O death, no more appal us ;
Jesus lives by this we know,
Thou, O grave, can st not enthral us.
The certainty, which is the final rock of our refuge
from waves of doubt concerning death s effect, is
that it was not the end of His personality. No
more, then, has it been for those who have gone
before. Nor will it be so for ourselves. By that
assurance, Christianity stands or falls.
(iv) All this, i.e. the unhesitating acceptance of
the unshakable reality and the unmeasured con
sequence of the resurrection of Jesus, was unequi
vocally endorsed by all the Apostles, and universally
1 On a theme so important it may be well to mention the follow
ing works as being not merely up to date, but sufficient to convince
all who are open to conviction : "The Resurrection of our Lord,"
Prof. Milligan (Macmillan) ; " Our Lord s Resurrection," W. Sparrow-
Simpson ; also by the same author, " The Resurrection and
Modern Thought" (both Longmans); "The Resurrection of
Jesus," Dr. Jas. Orr (Hodder and Stoughton) ; " Studies in the
Resurrection," C. H. Robinson (Longmans).
240 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
accepted as true, by all the earliest as well as later
Christian believers. There were many heresies
and divisions in those days, far more than enough
to exhibit independence of opinion, and guarantee
utter absence of collusion, as between the Churches.
But there is no recorded heresy hereupon, because
there was no other belief. As to the future, there
was in those days room for doubt and mistake. Con
cerning the promised coming of their Lord, the first
disciples had much to unlearn. But the very eager
ness of the belief which led to their mistake, was de
rived from the certainty of their conviction that Jesus
was living, not dead ; that He had conquered death,
and was alive for evermore. Since that time, even
until now, believers have gone on meddling with
the future which Jesus so plainly bade them let
alone. Prophecies without number have been
issued, even more false and foolish than those of
the first century. But the very pity with which
the instructed Christian or non-Christian dismisses
them, is a witness to the unbroken continuity and
unquestioned assurance of the universal Christian
belief in, and hope from, the actuality of the resur
rection of Jesus who was crucified. Not merely,
therefore, on the authority of His teaching, nor on the
unimpeachableness of His character, did their hopes
then rest, but on the certainty, made sure by His
appearings, that He had passed through death un
harmed to fulfil His word "I go to prepare a place
for you ".
Concerning such a hope there has never been, and
it is quite safe to say that there never will be, any
division in Christendom. There is no risk in affirm
ing that it is the most numerously and deeply held
religious conviction in the whole history of humanity. 1
1 As to the often heard loose talk about the numerical superiority
of Buddhism, which is altogether untrue, see " Haeckel s Monism
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 241
If, then, this whole belief were but the delusion that
modern Naturalism would have us think, it would be
at once the most enormous and most pitiful of all that
have ever afflicted mankind. But there is no sufficient
reason for so regarding it. What we know as the
fifteenth chapter of Paul s first letter to the Cor
inthians, remains at once the most unmistakable and
noble expression of the Christian hope. When all
that it involves considering the time and circum
stances of its writing is taken into account, it is
also a sure pledge of the universal confidence of the
Christians of the middle of the very first century,
that they had " not followed cunningly devised
fables," in believing that Jesus was risen from the
dead, never more to die. That inspiring conviction,
all the conflicts of the dark ages never lessened, let
alone destroyed. The fierce light of our modern
knowledge, so far from quenching such a belief, or
extinguishing such a hope, is tending more and more
to confirm it. Whether we accept, or not, the exact
statement of the late F. W. H. Myers, he was at least
an impartial and thorough investigator, who speaks
for no little modern psychology, quite as truly as
Eucken or Bergson for latest philosophy.
" I venture now on a bold saying ; for I pre
dict that in consequence of the new evidence,
all reasonable men a century hence, will believe
the resurrection of Christ, whereas in default of
the new evidence, no reasonable man a century
hence would have believed it."
One may doubt the latter clause here, without in
validating the former. In any case his other sum
mary remains true :
False," pp. 543-5 ; also "Clarion Fallacies," p. 174. Christianity
lays no stress upon numbers, but it is time for the truth s sake that
this misrepresentation ceased.
16
242 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
"On a basis of observed facts, Christianity,
the youngest of the great types of religion, does
assuredly rest. Assuredly those facts so far as
tradition has made them known to us, do tend
to prove the superhuman character of its
Founder, and His triumph over death ; and thus
the existence and influence of a spiritual world
where men s true citizenship lies. These ideas,
by common consent, lay at the origin of the
faith." l
8. It may be well now to summarize the es
sentials of modern Christian belief, in regard to that
life after death concerning the reality of which it
permits no doubt.
(i) No phase of Christian doctrine needed, or has
undergone, more recent reform, than that generally
known as "eschatology ". The change which has
quietly but unmistakably come to pass during the
last fifty years, is indeed immeasurable. No amount
of respect for our forefathers must be allowed to
prevent our recognizing their mistakes. It is human
to err, and assuredly theology has no more been
exempt from that principle than science. It is not
too much to say and there are very weighty reasons
in these days for saying it that the doctrines which
were formerly accepted and preached in regard to
the world to come, illustrated the very worst faults
of which theology is capable. They were rigidly
built upon a false rock the theory of verbal inspira
tion ; and were most elaborately constructed upon
a false principle the method of exegesis by means
of isolated proof-texts, picked and used without re
gard to context. Hence assertions were made, and
dogmas formulated, which practically assumed both
omniscience and infallibility. So that in the name
1 " Human Personality," Vol. II, pp. 286, 288.
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 243
of evangelical religion, horrors of ill and unrealities
of good were not only set before men as the very
soul of the Gospel of Jesus, but were most positively
made the very tests of a standing or falling universal
Church.
How markedly that note has ceased to be sounded,
almost every pulpit in the land now bears witness.
Not even a Spurgeon would be tolerated to-day, if
he ventured to repeat some of the things in print
which have appeared with his name attached.
Traces, indeed, of the same spirit are, not unnatur
ally, still to be found. Thus an able and eminent
theologian writes quite recently, that in thinking and
teaching concerning the great hereafter "We have
no right to go beyond the plain and abundant teach
ing of the sacred Book. To do so is perilous in the
extreme." But this "plain" and "abundant," is
exactly what, hereupon, " the teaching of the sacred
Book " is not. It is certainly not plain ; for the very
writer of these words was thereupon indicted for
heresy by his own Church. On behalf of what he
held to be the truth, he set himself directly to face
and contradict what numbers of men, quite as able
and sincere, have insisted that the Bible definitely
teaches. How can the teachings of Scripture be
deemed "plain," in view of all the differences of
opinion, " heresies " as they have been termed, which
devoted and scholarly Christian men have held in
regard to them ? Nor can they any more truly be
pronounced "abundant," seeing that in the Old
Testament there is next to nothing definite; that
the Apocrypha speaks only dimly of anything beyond
the assurance of personal continuity ; whilst as to
the New Testament, when difficult and uncertain
" passages " are withdrawn, there is really very little
left to determine any opinion as to those exact de
tails upon which former theologies laid such stress.
244 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
Hereupon, Dr. Salmond has done well to emphasize
what has been all too generally ignored :
"The Christian doctrine has also made the
contribution of reserve, where reserve has been
most needful and most salutary, the contribution
of silence where the conjectures of men have
been least restrained and of smallest profit for
the practical conduct of life." 1
It has been in the past not merely "perilous," but
mischievous in the extreme, to write and preach as
if the whole counsels of eternity had been com
pressed into a few texts of Scripture and a few
strong figures of speech. Especially when these
latter were generally made to be misrepresentations,
by treating them as literal, and even physical, de
lineations. Instead, therefore, of its being a down
grade sign of "heterodoxy," the fact that Christian
teachers now speak with bated breath where their
predecessors shouted with certainty, and are even
silent sometimes where formerly men had most to
say, is one of the surest indications of the apprehen
sion of reality. The greater modesty of modern
belief is a pledge of the deepening, not the enfeebling,
of conviction.
(ii) Modern Christian faith in regard to things
unseen, is increasingly disposed to act upon the
Apostolic ideal "Whatsoever things are true "-
" Prove all things, hold fast that which is good ".
Whether light comes from science or philosophy,
from Spiritism or Theosophy, from apparitions or
telepathy, matters not, so long as it is light. It does
not follow herefrom that the Christian who takes
the New Testament as his standard is necessarily
blind or bigoted, narrow or one-eyed, because he
does not fall in at once with every modern sugges-
1 " Christian Doctrine of Immortality," p. 466.
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 245
tion. The earnestness and sincerity of many en
thusiasts for the new cults with which this age is so
liberally supplied, may be conceded. But such an
acknowledgment demands a similar concession from
those to whom it is granted. Because the Christian
believer in real and blessed immortality does not
find it possible to accept, say, Dr. McTaggart s
views upon pre-existence ; or to regard as reasonable
Mrs. Besant s fourteen " reasons " for reincarnation ;
or to take en bloc all the alleged instances of " spirit
manifestations " ; it is not necessarily to be inferred
that he is lacking either in intelligence or honesty.
"Let every man," well said the Apostle Paul, "be
fully convinced in his own mind." All that need
here be affirmed is that whilst there may be room for
discussion in each of these three directions, genuine
Christian faith is independent of any one of them.
Until Christian theism is shown to be irrational, it
is not necessary to assume an individual s existence
without beginning, in order to predicate his continu
ance without end. All theories of reincarnation are
wrecked hopelessly upon the hard fact that there is
no conscious, and therefore no personal, continuity.
The confused and incoherent mass of alleged "spirit
revelations " yield little more of what is reliable, than
pitchblende does of radium. Even that residue is
useless for anything more than objective demonstra
tion of the simple fact, that death does not end all for
human beings.
(iii) Christian belief can never be content either
with the bare objectivity of actual personal continu
ity, such as, on the whole, Sir Oliver Lodge with
many others now considers demonstrated ; or with
the ambiguities and puerilities which, for the most
part, characterize spiritistic " revelations " to say
nothing about the undeniable amount of delusion
and fraud which has accompanied them. On the
246 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
other hand, for all purposes of Christian faith, there
is no real reason or need that Scripture teachings
should be both "plain and abundant," in the theo
logical sense. They are plain enough and abundant
enough to yield main principles of comfort, hope,
and duty. With these, in our present state of being,
we may well be content. Some wise words of Prof.
Eucken are here most pertinent :
" From a too great troubling about the future
we are, however, especially protected, if we keep
clearly in view our complete ignorance of its
character. Kant concludes his critique of the
practical reason with these words Thus what
the study of nature and of man teaches us suf
ficiently elsewhere may well be true here also,
that the unsearchable wisdom by which we
exist is not less worthy of admiration in what
it has denied than in what it has granted ." 1
9. When the whole testimony of the New Testa
ment, with all that it includes, is taken soberly and
thoughtfully, we have all that is necessary for the
development of loftiest personal character, and the
encouragement of the noblest hopes. The following
may stand as a suggestive summary.
(i) Real, conscious, unmistakable, personal con
tinuity, is everywhere and always assumed as be
yond question. Whatever may inevitably be obscure
beyond the grave, there is no kind or degree of
obscurity about the certainty that I shall be I, as
surely as I am now ; and shall know myself to be
such as I have been here. This may be more than
enough for the vicious man, but it is the best of good
news to every one who here has given his utmost for
the highest.
(ii) The retention unchanged, in passing through
1 " tfibbert Journal," July, 1908, p. 851.
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 247
death, of the moral character here wrought out, is
unequivocally asserted. As such, it is at once the
most solemn warning for the bad, and the most
potent inspiration for the good. Nothing can exceed
the bliss or woe of the plain principle " God is not
mocked, whatever a man sows, that will he also
reap " as applied to the perpetuation of personality,
when death has done all it can to human beings.
(iii) Here we know ourselves not only as finite
spirits, but as inseparably associated with and de
pendent on bodies which constitute most real limita
tions. The connexion which here so inexplicably
but resistlessly exists between soul and body, death
dissolves. No more ; but no less. Such dissolution
must bring with it freedom from our present limita
tions, whatever others may abide. By so much
therefore, will the life to come be larger than the
life that now is. That cannot but involve a wider
scope and larger potency, upward for the worthy,
downward for the unworthy. Such changes may
truly be, as Eucken and Kant have hinted, quite
inexpressible in the thought or speech of earth.
But that is no argument against their reality. Ac
cording to valid moral principles the paradox is true
that personal continuance cannot be mere continu
ance. For the personality necessarily carries with
it the accumulated result of its present working.
The momentum of character here developed, is that
which starts the larger upward or downward growth
hereafter.
(iv) Such self-created impulse for higher good, or
baser ill, will be the true and only " day of judge
ment," as asserted in well-known words of the
New Testament. 1
1 Say, for instance, the second chapter of Romans, or the fifth
of Galatians. etc.
248 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
The notion of a universal simultaneous assize,
when all those who have ever dwelt upon this planet
will be assembled in some incalculably huge mass, is
as childish and unnecessary as it is utterly inconceiv
able when seriously contemplated. It has popularly
resulted from the unthinking application of two
vicious principles of interpretation which no adult
mind can for a moment tolerate. First, the dealing
with pictures and figures of speech as literal prose ;
and secondly, the attempt, as futile as well-intended,
to express timeless spiritual realities in concrete
terms of the time-measured present. The " day of
judgement " has no more to do with a specific time-
limited spectacular convulsion, than the " day of
trouble" which the Psalmist met with prayer; or
the " day " which was ever on the lips of the prophets
as the promise of deliverance ; or the " day " of Christ
which He said Abraham had foreseen. Here, indeed,
without quotation, we may affirm that the teaching
of Scripture is plain and abundant ; but its sober and
sensible, as well as solemn, intimations, have been
sacrificed to superficial exposition and popular sen
sationalism. When these are unlearned, it will be
seen that there is no need whatever to borrow from
Buddhism, or any other source, a doctrine of Karma
which shall embody perfect justice. For the Chris
tian law of Karma is quite as real and impressive,
though not so frigid and ruthless, as all the threaten-
ings of the East. The Christian hereafter holds no
" fate " for any man, save that which he here makes
for himself. And if he goes on to make it more dire
beyond the grave than here, it will be, according to
Christ s principles, not because there is no mercy for
him, but because he will not seek, nor therefore find,
the mercy that always waits for every man so long
as God is God.
(v) More than this, all we are permitted by the
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 249
combined utterance and silence of the Christian
Scriptures to hold for true, is the inevitable con
sequence of retained moral personality, viz. the
reality and activity of thought, feeling, will. Such
retention necessarily includes those powers of choice
which can never, in the nature of things, be absent
from a moral being. It also implies all those actual
ities of communion which, in regard to loved ones
gone before, our hearts so strenuously demand. But
it leaves unanswered most of the questions which so
irrepressibly spring up in every mind that seriously
contemplates the future. " Lord, will there be few
saved ? " asked the disciples. But the Master did
not answer the query. Nor is it answered for us ;
any more than the cognate questions as to whether
there will be greater or less opportunities of falling
or rising ; whether such permanence of evil char
acter can here be attained as must make all hope of
turning to the good unthinkable ; whether in the
end
. . . good shall fall
At last far off at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
All these and kindred queries, however sincerely
and reverently propounded, belong to the category
of " unspeakable things " such as Paul may, or may
not, have distantly seen in the recorded vision
which he was not permitted to repeat. This only
we know, that all dogmatism as to the finality of
human destiny is as unwarranted and unwarrantable
as it is unnecessary to Christian truth, or love, or
comfort, or duty. " The Father hath committed all
judgement to the Son." There we must be content,
and ought to be more than content, to leave it.
Whenever theology assumes omniscience, it falsifies
itself.
10. A few practical inferences from all the fore-
250 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
going seem to be called for. The paradox is true,
again, that modern Christian faith is growing at
once more certain and more uncertain. There is,
in regard to the great hereafter towards which we
are all helplessly drifting day by day, more certainty
than ever in all that we really need to know, more
uncertainty in all that is not necessary.
(i) The normal, healthy hope that death does not
end all, that individuality is retained, that moral
character is not lost, that communion with loved ones
already gone, is in store for us these are to-day
more certain than ever. Modern Agnosticism cannot
deny them without denying itself, so that its chilly
aloofness counts for nothing. Those who boast that
they do not know, should be the last to protest
against those who affirm that, in any degree, they
do know. For the good man this in itself is enough.
Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong
Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she ;
Give her the glory of going on and still to be.
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just ;
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky ;
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
(ii) The uncertainty as to future judgement, or the
ultimate fate of each individual, which no theology
can ever relieve, should make all real Christians
at once more careful, more charitable, more hopeful,
as to the vast host of whom they know little or
nothing. Also, more tenderly earnest towards all
those who seem to be content with evil, by reason
of what we know must be the dire results of per
sistence in wrong-doing. This is more than suf
ficient as motive for the utmost zeal in Christian
effort, without any thought, let alone reiteration, of
the harsh and often ghastly threatenings which used
to be called "Gospel appeals ".
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 251
(iii) In regard to the bright side of the after-death
condition "the state of the blessed dead" as it is
termed there is greater need than ever before that
the Christian hope should be expressed truly and
worthily, as well as earnestly, whether in sermons,
hymns, prayers, writings, or elsewhere. At present,
there is far too often no small opportunity for op
ponents to contemn and deride the whole prospect.
Prof. Tyndall s words have an even greater force
now than when he uttered them, that "Theologians
must liberate and refine their conceptions ; or must
be prepared for the rejection of them by thoughtful
minds ". As regards the matter before us, Flugge
wrote most pertinently that " Assuredly the Chris
tian belief in a future state is capable of and urgently
needs elevation, if it is to be regarded as anything
more than a popular mythus, and to possess any
interest or attraction for cultivated men ". This is,
one must honestly acknowledge, but a mild putting
of the case. Alas ! in numberless instances, the
" Heaven " to come has been but a thoughtless
agglomeration of sensational childishness, utterly
intolerable as soon as really contemplated.
For this lamentable marring of the noble and
blessed Christiai hope, there have been and yet are
two main sources, (i) the perversion of the New
Testament ; and (ii) the publication of popular
hymns. As to the former : language which is mani
festly and highly figurative has been taken with a
crass literalness unworthy of a schoolboy. Especially
in regard to the portion which happens to come last,
in our arrangement of the Canon of the Christian
Scriptures. It is indeed little less than a calamity
that the book of " Revelation " does come last in the
New Testament as we have it, so gross and mischiev
ous have been the inferences drawn from it. In
general, its poetry has been treated as prose ; its
252 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
figures as concrete physical realities ; its contempo
rary references have been twisted into predictions ;
and the whole interpretation divorced alike from
sound exegesis and from common sense. This kind
of treatment has naturally resulted in such a repre
sentation of Heaven and Hell, following upon an
utterly impossible "day of judgement," that it has
sometimes become difficult to say which prospect is
the more repulsive, the bright or the dark, to edu
cated minds in this century. A ridiculous Heaven,
and an incredible Hell, have been only too vividly
and too often proclaimed in the name of the Gospel
of Jesus. It is high time, indeed, that such double
travesty ceased.
But it will not cease until there is a thorough
purging of the hymns employed in Christian
services, and found even in some of the best Hymn
Books. It would be a thankless task to enumerate
such productions, but it is not too much to say that
modern Christianity would gain immensely if half of
the hymns referring to the future life were burnt.
The other half would then call for careful revision.
The notion that tender poetry, and expression of
the deepest, worthiest, longing of the purest hearts,
must be accompanied by false science, stupid realism,
and coarse sensationalism, is, mercifully, altogether
false. Especially is this need of revision true in
regard to children. When all allowance is made
for the imaginative age, it is much rather cruelty
and danger than benediction, to store their memories
with crude falsities which will later on have to be
all unlearned, if they are to remain Christian. It is
in general only a mawkish and morbid pietism which
multiplies for little ones on life s threshold, hymns
about dying. Even if there be genuine need for a
few, in view of the many early deaths, at least these
should be free from monstrosities which may peril-
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 253
ously lead astray the vivid imaginations of child
hood.
The supreme and final influence of the truly
Christian conception of the life to come must be
practical. The time has happily gone by when it
was deemed a mark of deep devotion to sing such
selfish doggerel as sometimes then obtained, e.g.
Nothing is worth a thought beneath,
But how I may escape the death,
That never never dies ;
How make my own election sure,
And when I fail on earth, secure
A mansion in the skies.
The good tidings of Jesus for mankind are becoming
better understood in these days than they have ever
been before. "The Son of God is come" said
John " and hath given us an understanding. " Those
who have been taught of Him look for, work for,
hope for, pray for, a Kingdom of Heaven which is
equally real on both sides of the grave. The Heaven
that shall be, can only be a development of the
Heaven that may be, ought to be, and in some
measure already is, here and now. Assuredly it
must be said, in regard to the two Heavens which
Christ s Gospel contemplates, that he who does not
appreciate both, does justice to neither.
The all-embracing, all-comprehensive truth is
that, whether here or hereafter, Heaven is character,
and Hell is character. There is no other heaven,
no other hell, in the universe of God, than the
development of the character each personality is
now actually making. Death cannot save the real
sinner from the consequences of the bad ; cannot rob
the true saint of the reward of the good. For the
wilfully bad character there waits a worse Inferno
than Dante s, viz. the continuance and growth of
itself. Whether that growth will or can ever be
254 WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN
reversed, belongs to the hidden mysteries of eternity,
which are far too many, too great, too deep, too
complex, too difficult, for any human solution. All
we know is all we need to know. There is a Hell
and it will be Hell.
For the pure and noble character, no matter in
how many grades existing, there waits a better
Heaven than any poet s Paradiso, even the main
tenance and growth of those unmeasured capacities
for good which here are little more than embryonic.
Then will be the development, beyond our ter
restrial conception, of all that was here dimly guessed
at as a " subliminal consciousness " through com
munion with the better-known Source of all good,
and with kindred spirits who are ceaselessly becom
ing greater and worthier under the same ennobling
influences.
Thus the main elements of the Christian hope of
immortality are three. Personality, without which
nothing is anything ; God, the Source of all good, as
revealed in Jesus Christ, without communion with
Whom eternity would be only an empty Nirvana ;
unlimited love-communion with others, compared
with which the loves of earth are but fitful mixtures
of flash and shadow. To the worthy blending of
these three, no thought-limit whatever can be set
by human science, or philosophy, or theology. The
glorious possibilities of the future are boundless.
They are no more necessarily a mirage, than the
loftiest human character is a mirage when viewed
from the standpoint of the new-born babe. If,
therefore, in the words of the noblest poem here
upon ever conceived, there be as there is un
measured comfort in a negation
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust,
Thou madest man, he knows not why ;
He thinks he was not made to die ;
And Thou hast made him ; Thou art just
DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY? 255
there is still more to console and enhearten, amidst
life s burdens, sorrows and conflicts, in the positive
assurance of the Christian Gospel. This answers
to our deepest yearnings, and is confirmed by all the
truth of which Jesus Christ is pledge for evermore.
That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul
Is faith as vague as all unsweet :
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside ;
And I shall know him when we meet ;
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other s good ;
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth ?
Here, then, abides for every true believer, a three
fold inspiration the comfort of faith, the patience of
hope, the assurance of love which is growing ever
clearer and stronger, in spite of all the obscurantism
of the friends, or virulence of the foes, of Christianity.
In the degree in which the modern mind is set free
from past delusions from the theological fictions of
a long post mortem sleep, or an " Intermediate state " ;
from the unwarranted and impossible notion of a far
distant " day " for the spectacular holding of some
mammoth human assize ; from the gruesome and
revolting representations of a Hell of everlasting
torment ; as well as from the uninviting prospect of
a vapid, childish, pietistic Heaven it may reasonably
be hoped that this inspiration will become more real,
more widespread, more precious, more potent, for
every succeeding generation of mankind. Then may
it well be said : " Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has
begotten us anew to an ever-living hope, through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ".
WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD?
" The abuses and corruptions of the Church, however gross, are no
argument against the utility of the institution, unless they can be shown
to be inseparable from it. But however inveterate, most of them are
strictly accidental. The root of all evil in the Church is the imagination
that it exists for any other purpose than to foster virtue ; or can be pros
perous except so far as it does this. If the Church has failed, let us re
form it ; but we can ill afford to sever the strongest and most sacred tie
that binds men to each other." Prof. SEELEY, " Ecce Homo ".
" If it were proposed to invent some special system in which covetous-
ness would be deliberately fostered and intensified in human nature, what
system could be devised which would excel our own for this purpose ?
Competitive commerce exalts selfishness to the dignity of a moral principle.
It pits men against one another in a gladiatorial game in which there is
no mercy, and in which ninety per cent of the combatants finally strew
the arena. It makes Ishmaels of our best men, and teaches them that
their hand must be against every man, since every man s hand is against
them. It makes men who are the gentlest and kindliest friends and
neighbours, relentless taskmasters in their shops and stores, who will
drain the strength of their men and pay their female employees wages on
which no girl can live without supplementing them in some way."
Prof. RAUSCHENBUSCH, " Christianity and the Social Crisis".
" Public opinion in this land invariably responds to the call of the
united Churches. As their power is great, so is their responsibility. I do
not agree with the view that the Church is concerned only with spiritual
things. Those who take that view reflect on the career of their Master.
What then is the function of the Church in reference to social evils? It
is not to engage in party brawls. It is not to urge or advocate any special
measures. It is to create an atmosphere in which the rulers of this
country not only can engage in reforming these evils, but in which it will
be impossible for them not to do so." Mr. LLOYD GEORGE at Cardiff.
" To any one who knows the sluggishness of humanity to good, the
impregnable entrenchments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of
time needed from one mile-stone of progress to the next, the task of setting
up a Christian social order in this modern world of ours, seems like a fair
and futile dream. Yet in fact it is not one tithe as hopeless as when Jesus
set out to do it."
Prof. RAUSCHENBUSCH, " Christianity and the Social Crisis ".
259
CHAPTER IX
WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD?
THE words of Christ recorded in the "Sermon on
the Mount " give a plain and sufficient answer to
this question which is indeed becoming a common
query on modern lips. If it could be demonstrated
that both in doctrine and in fact Christian Churches
do truly fulfil this ideal " ye are the salt of the earth ;
ye are the light of the world " then the inquiry which
here we face would be answered before it were formu
lated. Alas ! even if the cy nical criticism of Churches
which has now become so fashionable in many
quarters be disregarded, it would be a quixotic task
to show that they can actually claim to be all that these
great monosyllables imply. The words addressed to
the representatives of the Seven Churches at the
commencement of the last section of our New Testa
ment, may be only too truly said to be as appropriate
to-day as nineteen centuries ago. " Let all who have
ears, give heed to what the Spirit is saying to the
Churches." Had they only done so, how different
would have been the record of Church history and
the whole condition of modern Christendom. Un
fortunately no portion of the Bible has been more
misunderstood and misapplied, than that in which
this stirring appeal is found. It may, indeed, be
pleaded that this section of the New Testament
known so long as "the Revelation of St. John the
Divine" is a strange and puzzling production,
affording ample opportunity for every one enamoured
260 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
of bizarre theories to find here their justification. To
go no further back than Luther, we know how con
fidently Rome identified him with the anti-Christ ;
and how vigorously Protestantism responded by
demonstrating that the Scarlet Woman was none
other than Rome herself. In our own times, Mil-
lenarians of all grades have made it a complete
manual of pious calculations for immediate Arma-
geddons and cataclysmic Advents. The complete
solution of its many problems may be pronounced
impossible, 1 but its spiritual and ethical principles are
in perfect accord with the rest of the Christian
Scriptures.
The Letters to the Seven Churches forcibly
illustrate this. Circumstances have greatly altered
since the age in which they were written. We
live in a vastly different world from that which
surrounded those Churches. Two things, however,
stand out vividly. We are our own witnesses that
the cruel persecution then raging, with the further
onslaughts expected which doubtless called forth
this cryptic writing as a message intended to en-
hearten believers during the fiery ordeal really did
nothing to hinder, let alone destroy, the Christian
faith. We also see that the main truth conveyed by
these strong yet tender appeals viz. that the greatest
danger to the Churches was from within, not from
without has been confirmed through all the ages,
and is now more manifest than ever.
As plain matter of fact, tragic but true, Chris
tianity s deadliest enemies have always been its
avowed friends. Amidst our own present educa
tional problems we see that if the Bible is driven
1 A very useful and sensible as well as scholarly little volume on
this difficult portion of the New Testament has just been issued by
Mr. C. A. Scott, in the " Century Bible," which ordinary readers,
no less than preachers and teachers, would do well to study.
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 261
wholly out of elementary day schools, it will not be
by means of militant Atheism or Secularism, but by
the very clericalism which professes to believe in its
inspiration. Even so in generations past, the un-
Christian elements within the Church including the
hostile relations between various sections of it have
ever wrought more harm and hindrance to the
Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus came to establish
on earth, than all the anti-Christian opposition from
without. It was the avowed friends of Christianity
who, as Bishop Westcott says, poisoned the Church
in the fourth century with the worldliness which it
has never since wholly been able to exorcise. It was
the professed friends of Christianity, who, in later
times, blasted its history and influence with never-
to-be-forgotten abominations of cruelty and horror
in the Romish Inquisition and St. Bartholomew s
massacre. Too well we know that there were not
wanting Protestant analogues. The religious bar
renness and prevalent animalism of the eighteenth
century in this land, were not due to the energy of
unbelief, but to the hollowness of belief.
We are beginning the twentieth century, it may
be said, under better auspices. Which is happily
true. But it affords no ground whatever for easy
going optimism. Whilst the Churches have cer
tainly been growing in numbers, the population has
been increasing still more rapidly. The very de
velopments of science and literature which have
helped to purify and enlarge Christian conceptions,
are now proclaiming themselves independent of any
Christian sanctions at all. Moreover, the wonderful
cheapening of all issues from the modern press has
put into the hands of militant unbelief such a weapon
of offence as they have never had before ; and fullest
advantage has been and is being taken of it to
assault everything Christian with a virulent effective-
262 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
ness hitherto unparalleled. From all which it comes
to pass that Christianity is to-day in an utterly un
precedented condition. It is equally better and
worse than ever before. There are in our modern
midst more and better Christians than the world
has ever seen. But there is at the same time a
larger proportion than ever of our fellow-men even
in this country, to say nothing of the Continent, or
America who treat religion in general with in
difference, and Christianity in particular as if it were
but a doubtful or optional trifle. Church Con
gresses and Free Church Conferences are no
doubt pleasant social gatherings, and hopeful signs
of the times, but they have not been able to prevent
either repeated decreases in Church membership,
or dwindling attendances at public worship. They
do, indeed, little or nothing <to alter the fact that
four-fifths of the population of this most Christian
country in the world, are outside all the Churches ;
whilst the modern atmosphere is tending more and
more every year to increase such a proportion.
How serious is the modern situation in these re
spects has recently been pointed out by the Bampton
Lecturer already mentioned, who cannot be accused
of pessimistic bias, but who chose as his theme " The
Reproach of the Gospel," and has justified it in
pages which lose none of their weighty significance
for being moderate and refined.
If it be asked Why such a title for avowedly
Christian deliverances? let us listen again more
carefully to his estimate, as given on a previous
page :
"When we look frankly at the present state
of Christianity from these three points, its
alleged origin, its actual merits as a rule of life,
and its effect upon individuals, we are forced
to confess that its influence on mankind at large
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 263
is and has been strangely disproportionate alike
to its high claims, and to the reasonable expecta
tions of those who saw its beginnings." l
This is a very mild statement of facts which are
in these days often put with ruthless bluntness.
The Christian Church, we are told, is actually failing
whilst it seems to succeed. New churches are being
built, certainly, in goodly numbers, but as many old
ones are left empty. Even as churches spring up
in new suburban neighbourhoods, the masses of the
people in all our great cities are being more and
more alienated from worship, let alone membership,
by social problems, whilst the better-educated
classes are rendered hesitating or indifferent by
critical difficulties. And all this, after nineteen
centuries of opportunity, in the most Christian
country in the world. Is it possible for any truly
Christian mind to survey such a condition of affairs
with equanimity ? There may yet be some avowed
believers found to echo the sentiment of which a
well-known American divine recently delivered him
self, in a leading religious journal " I thank God
that the Church is not commissioned to save the
world ". But they are surely few who will join in
such a thanksgiving. For it inevitably raises the
question What then are churches for ? As the
Lecturer just quoted says, the plain issue must be
faced "whether Christ intended His Church to be
universal, or to be but a limited body of believers
saved out of a lost world ". This latter Calvinistic
suggestion the ultimate significance of which is an
elect few who cannot but be saved, and a vast
majority decreed to eternal ruin has mercifully
become repulsive and intolerable to the Christian
conscience.
1 Rev. J. H. F. Peile, " Bampton Lectures for 1907," p. 14.
264 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
Had it been the purpose of Christianity merely
to save, in another world, a few out of the wreck of
this world, it might certainly claim to have suc
ceeded. But it would in such case proclaim itself
to be of little or no avail for the solution of the
human problems of the twentieth century ; though
these, after all, only differ in quantity from those
which Jesus Himself so unflinchingly confronted in
the first century. Such an avowal of limitation as
the above-quoted thanksgiving involves, is utterly
at variance with the whole teaching of Christ, and
with the foundation principles of Christianity. If it
be true at all that " God is love," then that love
must embrace all humanity, without respect of
persons. Whether we can apprehend all the age
long world-wide workings of that love or not, the
plain duty of the Christian Church is to bring
home to the very utmost of its power, this greatest
of all messages to the heart of the race. Mr. Peile,
indeed, hints at the coming of a new movement in
modern life and thought which will " if Christianized,
make the world Christian ". Then like an honest
writer, he bethinks himself of what he has said, and
adds :
"To make the world Christian! The words
imply a revolution so tremendous that the mere
naming of it moves experience to an incredulous
smile and makes enthusiasm itself falter. And
yet it is the task which our Lord laid upon His
disciples, the task in which all Christians, lay
or cleric, man or woman, are solemnly pledged
to take their part."
How far the modern world is from being Chris
tian, or " all who profess and call themselves Chris
tians " from taking " their part " towards making it
so, may be left to the honest verdict of any intellig
ent observer.
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 265
It cannot, of course, be denied that a great deal has
been accomplished and is yet being done in our day
by the Christian Church. Besides all the results
tabulated in history when fairly estimated : Chris
tianity represents in our modern midst an unparal
leled and incalculable expenditure of time, energy,
money, devotion, spent upon highest and worthiest
purposes. No one can honestly call this in question. 2
Nor is there any real ground whatever for doubting
either that it will continue or that it will increase.
The great matter now to be estimated is the worth
and extent, the quality and quantity, of its general in
fluence upon the modern world. What has humanity
gained or lost, during the centuries of the Christian
era, from the existence and work of the Church in
1 It is so notoriously the custom of anti-Christian writers to lay
all stress on the dark side of Church history, as if there were no
other, that it is correspondingly refreshing to find a " Rationalist "
of Lord Morley s calibre administering a well-deserved rebuke to
this untruthful one-sidedness. " We get very wearied of the per
sistent identification of the Church throughout the dark ages with
fraud and imposture and self-seeking, when we have once learned
what is undoubtedly the most important principle in the study of
those times, viz. that it was the Churchmen who kept alive the
flickering light of civilization amid the raging storms of uncontrolled
passion and violence."
2 Thus the latest and most effective popular opponent writes :
" The Christians have virtual command of all the churches, uni
versities and schools. They have the countenance and support of
the thrones, Parliaments, Cabinets, and aristocracies of the world,
and they have behind them the nominal support of the world s
newspaper press. They have behind them the traditions of eighteen
centuries. They have formidable allies in the shape of whole
schools of philosophy and whole libraries of eloquence and learning.
They have the zealous service and unswerving credence of millions
of honest and worthy, citizens ; and they are defended by solid
ramparts of prejudice and sentiment and obstinate old custom "
(" God and My Neighbour," R. Blatchford, p. 149). Even when
some discount is deducted from such an estimate, it is a large con
fession, considering the state of affairs contemplated by the book
of Revelation.
266 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
all its branches ? What is the worth to the modern
world of all the public worship and private devotion,
the labour and the sacrifice, the measureless ex
penditure of mind and heart, which are increasingly
associated with the Christian faith ? Suppose that
its opponents could be obliged l by the wholesale
fulfilment of their wish, in the destruction of all the
churches and their influence, would the effect be
unmeasured loss, or gain ?
In an} 7 case this is a great question. In this
country, at all events, if not also in Europe, the total
destruction of Christian Churches would mean no
thing less than a different world. As Sir John
Seeley wrote in his famous " Ecce Homo " :
" It is idle for any virtue that springs up in
the neighbourhood of the Christian Church
to claim to be independent of it. Christian
influences are in the air ; our very conception
of virtue is Christian ; the tone, the habits of
sentiment and language in short, all the
associations of virtue have been furnished by
the discipline of the Christian Church. ... It is
the only institution which is distinctively and
deliberately virtue-making, and the one which
inherits the most complete ideal of virtue."
Coming from such a source, this estimate cannot
be pronounced ecclesiastically biassed. Its substan
tial truth may be assumed. In face of it, much of
the cheap abuse of the Churches in these days is
seen to be unworthy of notice. When, however,
the assertion is roundly made that " Christianity
does not make men lead better lives than others lead
1 "The churches must be smashed." R. Blatchford.
" One of the greatest social needs of our time, is to sweep away
the whole tottering structure of conventional religion and worship."
Mr. Jos. McCabe.
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 267
who are not Christians " we must have patience
with the superficial tirade of anti-Christian journal
ism, for the sake of the valid principle of comparison
which such an allegation embodies. It is, indeed,
not only a challenge which modern Christianity can
in no way evade, but also a true echo to well-known
and emphatic words of Christ Himself, such as can
neither be forgotten nor ignored.
Out of a fair, full, and steady survey of the whole
situation, one clear certainty emerges. Whether it
finds expression in the reckless virulence of popular
journals or the academic utterances of a university
Professor, the conclusion is the same. It is made
plain by the facts of daily life ; emphasized in the
enormous growth of modern populations ; thrown
up into lurid relief by the pressure of social problems.
It is accentuated by the advance of science, the
development of criticism, the increase of theological
unrest. The religious status quo is doomed. Chris
tianity, as represented by the Churches, will have to
be either mended or ended. The crucible into which
modern religion is being cast, as we advance into
the present century, is such as the world has never
before known ; and only that which is true to the
uttermost, whether intellectually or morally, scien
tifically or spiritually, will stand the test. The
worth of the Church to the world must no doubt
ultimately depend upon the worth of the individual
believer to the Church. But before the latter can be
made matter for personal appeal, the former must be
clearly set forth as a true and worthy ideal. The
homely but searching question What are Churches
for ? is thus simply inevitable. Until it is frankly
faced, and unequivocally answered, there is no
standard whereby any member of a Christian
Church may test his own worth or worthlessness ;
nor is there any rational ground of appeal for the
268 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
appreciation and maintenance of Christianity as a
factor in the progress of humanity.
Leaving elaboration in detail to the volumes, or
libraries, which may be necessary, the required
answer to the pressing question can be stated with
definite succinctness and with comprehensive brevity.
Prof. Burkitt summed up the whole situation most
truly when, a short time since, he wrote that
" The Christian Church to-day is in the posi
tion that Crosby Hall occupied a few years ago,
and if it is to be preserved, it must convince men
that it provides what they cannot do without."
No statement can be more pertinent, or more sure.
It corresponds both to the facts of our day and the
principles of the Gospel. If Christian Churches are
veritably " the salt of the earth and the light of the
world," then humanity will never let them go. For
they are, in such case, unmistakable and irresistible
necessities. If they are other or less than this, then
they will be swallowed up slowly may be, but
surely in the advancing tide of a civilization which
finds that it can do without them. On what plain
lines can the challenge of such a situation be met ?
On these. The immeasurable worth to mankind of
the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ, as represented
by the various sections which compose it the " many
members in one body," or many folds in " one flock "
is fourfold. It relates with unmistakable distinct
ness to God ; to man ; to the whole of this life ; and
to a life to come. More fully expressed, this means
that Christian Churches exist in order that they may
bear unique, unequivocal, and ceaseless witness, to
four great principles of truth. These are so im
portant and comprehensive that all other interests
are small by comparison. Men can no more " do
without " them, in view of human nature s needs,
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 269
capacities, and hopes, than the boy who would be
come a noble man can do without the discipline of
education.
These great principles, the enforcement and illus
tration of which constitute the very raison d etre of
the Christian Church, are (i) The actuality of God,
and the significance of His relation to the world as
revealed in Jesus Christ. (2) The ennobling effect
of the knowledge of this relation upon human char
acter. (3) The consequent larger effect for good of
this ideal of character upon human society in general.
(4) The final issue of the whole human episode now
being enacted upon this planet, alike as regards the
individual and the race. These four manifestly de
serve far more thorough discussion than can be ac
corded them here. But our purpose will be served
if we look them earnestly, even though briefly, in the
face.
Whatever else may be said to characterize this
age, it is undeniable that greater numbers than ever
are hungry for the truth, in regard to themselves,
their fellows, and the universe. Only it must be the
truth, and not mere tradition. It must accord with
reason, and not simply reiterate ecclesiastical dogma.
It must be the veritable bread of life, and not theo
logical stones. Life s supreme issues are not decided
now, nor ever again will be, by authoritative pro
nouncements of either priest or Church. Such
methods of settlement in human affairs have had
their day and ceased to be. But if these four can be
secured ; the highest truth ; the noblest character ;
the broadest sympathy ; the largest hope ; they will
constitute more than sufficient reason for the con
tinuance of the existence and work of Christian
Churches. Of all men who deserve the name, out
side the Churches, it may be boldly said that they
cannot do without these. And to all inside, the
270 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
words of the writer of our Second Epistle of Peter
will apply with far more force in the twentieth
century than in the second " If these things are
yours and abound, they make you to be neither in
dolent nor unfruitful, with respect to the true know
ledge of our Lord Jesus Christ ". With all modest
deliberateness, but with earnest and unhesitating
emphasis it must be said, that upon the degree in
which those who belong to the Churches are or are
not faithful to the high commission these four great
principles imply, depends not only the value of
Christianity to the world of this day, but the
certainty of its continuance or decay during the
century before us. Let us, therefore, restate them
as clearly as is possible in few words.
i. The highest truth. Christian Churches are
witnesses for the Christ of the Gospels, and for the
whole content of His meaning when He assured
the disciples that through Him they would find the
"pearl of great price". "Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth will make you free." The Christian
claim is that in Him, and in all He said, and did, and
was, are to be found valid answers to such questions
as only men, of all creatures on earth, can ask, but
which they are constrained to ask by reason of their
very powers of thought and capacity of nature. To
no other creature on earth than man, is "truth"
anything at all. But although there may yet be
many Pilates in civilization, the normal man who
has left savagery behind, can never ask with scorn
" What is truth ? " It may be taken as a genuine
sign of the upward evolution of the race, that all
truth is in our day increasingly precious, even to the
average man. For the Christian Church, unless it
be utterly corrupt, the truth must ever be the
treasure beyond all compare. "Whatsoever things
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 271
are true cherish the thought of these things " as
enunciated by Paul, 1 is and must always be the veri
table Magna Charta of Christian liberty of mind and
heart. Such an ideal not only sets the genuine
believer for ever free from all ecclesiastical bondage,
but binds upon him the duty of fullest appreciation
of all that science and art and literature can teach
him. But "whatsoever " is a wider term than any
one of these, or all of them combined. It contem
plates the possibility of another realm of truth, be
yond and above all the information and inspiration
that may be derived from these ordinary human
sources. It suggests, indeed, that by very means
of their help there comes to pass both the need
and the opportunity for something higher and still
more precious.
That which is true concerning man, can never be
fully appreciated without also a knowledge of the
truth concerning God. Human nature remains an
insoluble problem until it is surveyed in " the light
that never was on sea or land," i.e. plainly to use the
language of one of the most significant utterances of
the whole New Testament " the light of the know
ledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ ".
As the universe without the thought of God is un
thinkable, so that we do not believe in God because
we may but because we must ; so is man, an in
finitesimal but real speck in the universe, as inex
plicable without God, and withal as helpless, as the
fish without the ocean. The mind of man which in
all its mystery is at least a pragmatic certainty, can
no more find rest in its ceaseless investigation of
phenomena without God, than the dove sent forth
from Noah s ark could settle until it returned to its
refuge. And the poor little lark pitifully confined
1 Phil. iv. 8.
272 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
in its narrow cage, does not more restlessly preen
its wings and pine for the celestial blue, than the
heart of humanity for some real knowledge of and
communion with the Great Unknown to whom, or
to which, man feels himself related. The history of
the evolution of religion upon which so much modern
stress is laid, abundantly testifies to this, in pathetic
and pitiful as well as often tragic and lurid fashion.
"The golden bough " and "The dying god," with
all the weird and staggering rituals they connote,
are but specimens of the poor blind groping of an
evolving humanity for something measurelessly
higher, stronger, more helpful than themselves.
In our own modern environment greatest things
have become small through familiarity. God as
our Heavenly Father, man as the moral heir of
immortality, Christ as the Divine-human Redeemer,
the Bible with its estimate of sin and ideal of holi
ness, are to the majority of our fellow-countrymen
to-day mere trite commonplaces. To increasing
numbers they are all but verbal trifles ; to others
sheer delusion. The estimate of our Bampton Lec
turer is only too true to fact :
"Not only the Church but Christianity it
self and all supernatural religion are called in
question, or dismissed as not worth calling in
question. On one hand we have a compara
tively small force of active and articulate hos
tility, which has its value as a stimulus to closer
thought and more energetic work. On the
other we are oppressed by the dead weight of
spiritual inertia, a widespread and profound in
difference to dogma as the guide and motive of
action." l
J . 18.
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 273
Amidst all this modern complication, the outstand
ing certainty is that whatever may be worthy, in
difference is unworthy. Whoever may be right, the
belittler of the issues is wrong. The themes for
thought and interests at stake are, beyond all con
troversy, great. They can only be small as a star
is small, to a thoughtless eye. The untaught country
swain may deem Sirius a trifle compared with the
moon. But even the child, as now educated, knows
better. When with the eye of scientific scrutiny we
draw near to that far-off point of light, we are over
whelmed to find that whilst our own sun is five
hundred times greater than all the planets which
encircle it put together, Sirius is equal to some
sixty of our suns. So much may distance and un
thinking familiarity deceive us. It is no less true
that amidst the whole whirl of present-day civilisa
tion, our thronging business, our social problems, the
discoveries of science, and the fascinations of litera
ture, the great principles for which Christian
Churches stand eclipse all these clamorous interests
both in significance and in value to humanity. It
is not a rhapsodical phrase but a sober truth, that on
their acceptance or rejection turns the future of our
race.
That such an assertion will in some quarters
provoke a cynical smile, and in others a storm of
dissent, goes without saying. But neither smile
nor frown avails to alter the fact that the truth con
cerning God, and the Bible, and Jesus Christ, when
all the ideals, duties, comforts, hopes, and inspira
tions which follow from it are considered is fraught
with immeasurable consequences alike for indi
viduals, nations, and the race. Even if there were
no fairer aspect of the case than is afforded by the
usual cynical criticism of religious history, it would
still be true that from all the recorded or alleged
18
274 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
mischiefs which have in the past been associated
with the Christian Church, we and our children
need to be preserved. No one can deny the actual
ity and costliness of the many faults and failures
which have in past centuries blighted Church history.
They have afforded only too ample scope for the
sneerer. But this is not the whole case. Only
wilful and perverse ignorance can pretend that it is
a fair representation of what Christianity has meant
to western humanity, during these eighteen cen
turies. Our above-quoted Regius Professor of
history at Cambridge, whose ability and impartiality
are beyond question, affirms distinctly, after the
very frankest acknowledgment of Christian im
perfections :
"All this may be conceded without conceding
for a moment that the world can do without
Christ and His Church. If a high and complete
morality often exists outside the Church, it
does not often exist independent of it. The
atmosphere of Europe has been saturated for
some fifteen centuries with Christian principles,
and however far the rebellion against the Church
may have spread, it may still be called the
moral university of the world, not merely the
greatest but the only great school of virtue
existing." 1
But the main matter for consideration here is not
how far the Christian Church has been true or false
to its high commission. It may be conceded freely
that even yet the greatest need of Christendom is
that Christians should be converted to Christianity.
The real question is as to the worth, for the men
and women of this and the coming age, of all those
deep convictions, high ideals, unmeasured comforts,
1 " Eece Homo," cheap edition, p. vii.
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 275
duties, hopes, inspirations, which are inseparable
from the doctrine of God as given to men accord
ing to the whole New Testament record in and
by Jesus Christ.
The value for humanity of the knowledge of God,
must of course depend upon the character attributed
to Him by any religion. It goes without saying
that the Christian Church is pledged to the Divine
Fatherhood, 1 which, as an actual truth, comes directly
and unequivocally from Christ alone. Other re
ligions and religious teachers have given hints of
such a conception, but they were little more, even
in the Old Testament, than wistful longings wherein
the thought was begotten by the wish. None other
than Jesus has ever said, with a dignified simplicity
which rules out for ever all notion of fanatic en
thusiasm " He that hath seen Me, hath seen the
Father ". That is the world s greatest utterance ;
and its worth to humanity is so unquestionable and
immeasurable, that only one query is left concerning
it, viz. is it true ? or is it too good to be true ? To
give a firm, clear, reliable answer to this, is the first
great work and worth of the Christian Church.
Beside this, all else is trifling. Compared with
this assertion including all that flows from it all
ecclesiastical systems, creeds, forms of government,
dignities, ceremonies, conventions, are as the small
dust of the balance. It cannot, indeed, be honestly
denied that the true doctrine of God has suffered
1 There are, it must be confessed, occasional utterances to the
contrary, as hinted on a previous page (112). "It is marvellous
indeed that in these days there should still be found any in the Free
Churches who think that they are honouring the Gospel and paying
highest regard to the New Testament, by employing a few picked
passages, irrespective of their context, to contravene the unmistak
able doctrine of Jesus, and so mutilate the very soul and substance
of His whole message to humanity ". But such belated Calvinism
is happily only held now by an insignificant minority, who may
be neglected in a general statement like that above.
2;6 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
sadly at the hands of its professed exponents. Its
actual distortion, through the intervention of ec-
clesiasticism and false theology, has been and some
times yet is lamentable in the extreme. Probably
most of the modern recoil from the Churches finds
here its ultimate cause. But it need not be so. Any
form of Church government may be a channel for
the communication of the supreme truth which as
sures mankind of the actual and eternal love of the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. A good
illustration occurs in the noble volume by Mr. Peile
to which reference has so often been made. As ex
amining chaplain to a bishop he expresses manfully
his own conviction :
" I am a firm believer in the Sacrament of
Holy Orders. I deliberately call it a sacrament as
being neither a magical ceremony nor merely a
decent form with no particular meaning. I
would not abate or change one word of our
Ordination service, for I hold that God has
given to the Church authority to delegate to
the priest and the bishop spiritual functions
which no man can rightly discharge unless he
be duly ordained thereto."
Many of us could not herein follow him, because
we find no place for either priest or historic epis
copate, in the constitution of Christ s Kingdom upon
earth. But we rejoice to know that from his stand
point such a Christian teacher can say, and does
say, as heartily as any Nonconformist :
"There is nothing but a belief in the Father
hood of God and the Oneness of men with Him
and in Him, that can make us think of others and
treat them as brethren, seeing our good in their
good. . . . If we could learn and teach these two
lessons of the Fatherhood of God, to care for
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 277
others, and to put away over care for ourselves ;
a good many of our economic problems would
be solved by ceasing to exist." 1
From the true appreciation of the Divine Father
hood as here hinted, there cannot but flow conse
quences of highest import to all human society.
This brings us to the consideration of the value of
Christian ethics. To elaborate this would require
a treatise. 2 For our purpose here, it will be suffi
cient and convenient to summarize the Christian
claim in the well-chosen words of one who ought
not to be wholly forgotten. The late esteemed and
erudite Professor of Latin at Owens College, Man
chester, wrote :
"Not only because the system of Christian
ethics transcends all others in purity, but be
cause this perfect purity is reached by a scien
tific method of development, is based upon a
sure foundation, and has shown itself by far
the most powerful help that the world has
known for its regeneration, do we claim for it
an origin directly and immediately Divine.
" We are able to assert, in spite of the protest
that misconceptions have raised against such a
tenet, that one characteristic which distinguishes
Christian from pagan ethics, is their unblem
ished perfection and completeness. Christianity
supplies to man in every condition of life prin
ciples which were calculated to mould and
fashion him into a model of all that his heart
has recognized as purest and best. And where
the application of these principles might have
1 " Bampton Lectures," 1907, pp. 97, 186.
2 Such as, say, Dr. Newman Smyth s "Christian Ethics," in
the International Theological Library, published by Messrs. T. and
T. Clark.
2/8 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
been doubtful, or likely to be mistaken, it has
supplemented them by specific precepts." l
Here, again, the only possible reply to the as
sertion of the value of such an ethical standard and
stimulus for humanity, is to deny that it is true.
This may of course be done, even as to-day anything
and everything Christian is, in some quarters,
denied. But the denial is sufficiently met elsewhere,
to permit the claim to be here maintained that,
speaking generally, nothing is fraught with such
great importance to the well-being of humanity as
the great truths and principles for which the
Christian Churches stand.
As these pages are written from the standpoint of
a liberal Evangelicalism, it is pertinent to remark
that the contribution of the Evangelical Churches to
the true appreciation and application of the doctrines
and ideals of Christianity, as the embodiment of the
highest truth that can concern men, has been both
vast and permanent. It were easy, of course, to
point out their failures, especially in insisting too
often on a rigid narrowness of theological interpreta
tion, and in the assumption of credal finality. Even
yet it cannot be denied that the pious imagination
largely prevails that all the truth about God, and
Christ, and the Bible, and human nature, has been
made out ; so that, in regard to the essentials of
Christian faith, nothing remains for us but to echo
the convictions of our fathers. But such a delusion
grows less and less operative every year. In the
light of to-day all those great assumptions upon
which Church work and worship depend, require
increasingly to be both purified and justified. Such
a process of theological evolution is happily taking
1 " The Light of the World," by Prof. A. S. Wilkins a valuable
little volume unfortunately now out of print, pp. 146, 180.
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 279
place, as resistlessly as gradually, to the unmeasured
benediction of all concerned.
Whilst, however, the fierce light of our modern
knowledge pierces all theologies through and through,
it yet leaves the world of inquiring minds largely in
the dark as regards the very subjects which it
criticises. Hence there is more need than ever that
in the very highest sense the Churches should be " the
light of the world," no less than pragmatically, "the
salt of the earth ". Preachers are now called upon
to be teachers, and hearers learners, as never before.
True, there are many in pulpits who cannot teach, as
there are also in pews who will not learn. But these,
however sincere, must be regarded as invalids, and
must neither be allowed to rule, nor taken as satis
factory types of Christian belief. If the New Testa
ment is at all to be regarded, the Churches are just
as really schools for moral and spiritual truth, as
day-schools and universities are for science and
literature. The vastness of such a commission may
well give modern believers pause ; but nothing can
revoke it, or lessen it, or make it trifling. It is easy to
say as did a prominent preacher in the metropolis
recently that "an ounce of witness is worth a ton
of argument, and one pulse of the love-life is more
than equal to a whole shelf full of dry-as-dust Chris
tian apologetics ". But, however well meant, such
talk may be very misleading. Who invented the
hideous term " apologetics " we may neither know
nor care. But it is a libel on Christ Himself and on
all the New Testament, to insinuate that reasons for
faith must be " dry as dust " and that all required
to-day is emotional "witness," altogether indepen
dent of argument. Every fanatic delivers his witness
with fervour. To pit emotion against reason, in the
name of Christian devotion, is a counsel of delusion.
What is needed more than ever, in our day, is the
280 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
ceaseless blending of both. For, as the late Mr.
Aubrey L. Moore truly said, " The human mind
craves to be both religious and rational, and he who
is not both, is neither ".
The ceaseless pains and care, the study and devo
tion, the humility and earnestness, which are hereby
demanded from every Christian Church, i.e. from all
its officers and members alike, may well be pro
nounced measureless. But as these are in some
degree needed for all noble endeavour, it is only
natural that they should be most required for the
highest of all purposes. Let the truths of science,
and art, and literature, and philosophy, and politics,
be deemed as important as their devotees insist; it
yet remains true that nothing can ultimately be of
such import to mankind as the truth or falsity of
all that is connoted in the Christian phrase " Eternal
life ". The Church exists, therefore, in order to
make clear and effective for the world at large that
which, hereupon, it knows and proves to be true.
2. The noblest character.
Such an aim as that just specified, can never be
attained by the mere teaching of theology, however
accurate and exalted. "Eternal life" "that they
should know Thee, the only true God and Jesus
Christ whom thou hast sent " can never be ex
hibited, let alone proved, to mankind by creeds, or
schemes, or systems, of any kind. Character alone
can either represent or justify such ideals of duty,
and inspirations towards their attainment, as are in
separable from the great Christian assumptions.
Who can fail to see that the ruthless criticism and
uncompromising opposition of our time will never
be appeased, let alone silenced, by words alone ?
We are bluntly asked by popular unbelief:
WORTH TO THE MODERN WORLD? 281
" Are there no good, nor happy, nor worthy
men and women to-day outside the pale of
the Christian Churches ? Amongst the eight
hundred millions of human beings who do not
know or do not follow Christ, are there none
as happy and as worthy ias any who follow
Him?" 1
The only effective reply must be an appeal to Chris
tian character. Is that character, on the average,
higher, or not higher, than the non-Christian ? Still
further, as regards individuals, the inquiry is pressed
home :
" You speak of the spiritual value of your
religion. What can it give you more than
.Socrates or Buddha possessed ? These men
had wisdom, courage, morality, fortitude, love,
mercy. Can you find in all the world to-day
two men as wise, as good, as gentle, as happy ?
Yet these men died centuries before Christ was
born."
Such questions can in these days neither be pre
vented nor evaded. Nor is there any Christian
reason why they should be. For they are neither
more nor less than an echo of Christ s own words
" If ye love them that love you, what reward have
ye ? Do not even the publicans the same ? And
if ye salute your brethren only, what extra do
ye ? Do not even the Gentiles the same ? " This
" extra " which is at once the most literally ac
curate rendering of the word attributed to Christ
by the Evangelist, and the most distinctive feature
of His ethical law constitutes the practical sine qua
non of Christianity.
The greatest pragmatic heresy of popular religion
1 " God and My Neighbour," p. 172.
282 WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
in our midst, is that Christian character and good
character are one and the same. But the words of
Jesus are as unmistakable to the contrary as the
protest 
