LITERATURE & DOGMA
' O quam magna multitudo dulcedinis Ttue, Domtm, quam abscondisti
timentibus Te!' Psalm, xxx. 20.
'La tendance a I'ordre ne peut-elle /aire une par tie essentielle de nos
inclinatio)ts , de notre instinct, comme la tendattce a la conservation, a la
reproduction ? ' Senancour.
'And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet
understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, it must be in the same
way as natural knowledge is come at: by the continuance and progress of
learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing
and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked
and disregarded by the generality of the world. Nor is it at all incredible
that a book, which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should
contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena and
the same faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries in
natural knowledge have beeiv^taade in the present and last age, were equally
in the possession of mankind several thousand years before.'
Butler.
LITERATURE & DOGMA
AN ESSAY
TOWARDS A BETTER APPREHENSION OF THE BIBLE
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L.
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1873
[The right of translatioK is resented)
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2008 with funding from
' IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/dogmaeliteratureOOarnorich
PREFACE.
An inevitable revolution, of which we all recognise the
beginnings and signs, but which has already spread, per-
haps, farther than most of us think, is befalling the religion
in which we have been brought up. In those countries
where religion has been most loved, this revolution will
be felt the most keenly ; felt through all its stages and in
all its incidents. In no country will it be more felt than
in England. This cannot be otherwise ; it cannot be but
that the revolution should come, and that it should be
here felt passionately, profoundly, painfully ; but no one
is on that account in the least dispensed from the utmost
duty of considerateness and caution. There is no surer
proof of a narrow and ill-instructed mind, than to think
and uphold that what a man takes to be the truth on
religious matters is always to be proclaimed. Our truth
on these matters, and likewise the error of others, is
vi PREFACE.
something so relative, that the good or harm likely to be
done by speaking ought always to be taken into account.
'I keep silence at many things,' says Goethe, 'for I
would not mislead men, and am well content if others
can find satisfaction in what gives me offence.' The man
who believes that his truth on religious matters is so abso-
lutely the truth, that say it when, and where, and to whom
he will, he cannot but do good with it, is in our day
almost always a man whose truth is half blunder, and
wholly useless.
To be convinced, therefore, that our current theology
is false, is not necessarily a reason for publishing that
conviction. The theology may be false, and yet one may
do more harm in attacking it than by keeping silence and
waiting. To judge rightly the time and its conditions is
the great thing ; there is a time, as the Preacher says,
to speak, and a time to keep silence. If the present
time is a time to speak, there must be a reason why it
is so.
And there is a reason ; and it is this. Clergymen and
ministers of religion are full of lamentations over what
they call the spread of scepticism, and because of the little
hold which religion now has on the masses of the people,
— the lapsed masses j as some writers call them. Practical
PREFACE.
hold on them it never, perhaps, had very much, but they
did not question its truth, and they held it in consider-
able awe ; as the best of them raised themselves up out
of a merely animal life, religion attracted and engaged
them. But now they seem to have hardly any awe of it
at all, and they freely question its truth ; and many of
the most successful, energetic, and ingenious of the artisan
class, who are steady and rise, are now found either of
themselves rejecting the Bible altogether, or following
teachers who tell them the Bible is an exploded super-
stition. Let me quote from the letter of a working-
man, — a man, himself, of no common intelligence and
temper, — a passage that sets this forth very clearly.
' Despite the efforts of the churches,' he says, * the
speculations of the day are working their way down
among the people, many of whom are asking for the
reason and authority for the things they have been
taught to believe. Questions of this kind, too, mostly
reach them through doubtful channels; and owing to
this, and to their lack of culture, a discovery of im-
perfection and fallibility in the Bible leads to its
contemptuous rejection as a great priestly imposture.
And thus those among the working class who eschew the
teachings of the orthodox, slide off towards, not the late
viii PREFACE.
Mr. Maurice, nor yet Professor Huxley, but towards
Mr. Bradlaugh.'
Despite tJte efforts of the churches^ the writer tells us, this
contemptuous rejection of the Bible happens. And we re-
gret the rejection as much as the clergy and ministers of
religion do. There may be many others who do not
regret it, but we do ; all that the churches can say about
the importance of the Bible and its religion, we concur
in. And it is the religion of the Bible that is pro-
fessedly in question with all the churches, when they
talk of religion and lament its prospects. With Catholics
as well as Protestants, and with all the sects of Pro-
testantism, this is so ; and from the nature of the case
it must be so. What the religion of the Bible is, how
it is to be got at, they may not agree ; but that it is
the religion of the Bible for which they contend, they
all aver. *The Bible,' says Dr. Newman, 'is the re-
cord of the whole revealed faith ; so far all parties agree.'
Now, this religion of the Bible we say they cannot value
more than we do. If we hesitate to adopt strictly their
language about its fl!//-importance, that is only because we
take an uncommonly large view of human perfection, and
say, speaking strictly, that there go to this certain things,
— art, for instance, and science, which the Bible hardly
PREFACE.
meddles with. The difference between us and them,
however, is more a difference of theoretical statement
than of practical conclusion; speaking practically, and
looking at the very large part of human life engaged by
the Bible, at the comparatively small part unengaged
by it, we are quite willing, like the churches, to call
the Bible and its religion ^//-important.
And yet with all this agreement both in words and in
things, when we behold the clergy and ministers of reli-
gion lament the neglect of religion and aspire to restore it,
how must one feel that to restore religion as they under-
stand it, to re-inthrone the Bible as explained by our cur-
rent theology, whether learned or popular, is absolutely
and for ever impossible ! — as impossible as to restore the
predominance of the feudal system, or of the belief in
witches. Let us admit that the Bible cannot possibly f
die; but then the churches cannot even conceive the
Bible without the gloss they at present put upon it, and .
this gloss, as certainly, cannot possibly live. And it is
not a gloss which one church or sect puts upon the
Bible and another does not ; it is the gloss they all put
upon it, and call the substratum of belief common to all
Christian churches, and largely shared with them, even,
by natural religion. It is this so-called axiomatic basis
PREFACE.
which must go, and it supports all the rest ; and if the
Bible were really inseparable from this and depended
upon it, then Mr. Bradlaugh would have his way and the
Bible would go too ; for this basis is inevitably doomed.
For whatever is to stand must rest upon something which
is verifiable, not unverifiable. Now, the assumption with
which all the churches and sects set out, that there is * a
great Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent
Governor of the universe,' and that from him the Bible
derives its authority, can never be verified.
Those who ' ask for the reason and authority for the
things they have been taught to believe,' as the people,
we are told, are now doing, will begin at the beginning.
Rude and hard reasoners as they are, they will never
consent to admit, as a self-evident axiom, the preliminary
assumption with which the churches start. But this pre-
liminary assumption governs everything which in our
current theology follows it ; and it is certain, therefore,
that the people will not receive our current theology.
So, if they are to receive the Bible, we must find for the
Bible some other basis than that which the churches
assign to it, a verifiable basis and not an assumption ; and
this, again, will govern everything which comes after.
This new religion of the Bible the people may receive ;
PREFACE,
the version now current of the religion of the Bible they
never will receive.
Here, then, is the problem : to find, for the Bible, a
basis in something which can be verified, instead of in
something which has to be assumed. So true and pro-
phetic are Vinet's words : * We must,' he said, * make it
our business to bring forward the rational side of Chris-
tianity, and to show that for thinkers, too, it has a right
to be an authority.' Yes, and the problem we have stated
must be the first stage in the business ; with this unsolved,
all other religious discussion is idle trifling.
This is why Dissent, as a religious movement of our
day, would be almost droll, if it were not, from the tempers
and actions it excites, so extremely irreligious. But what
is to be said for men, aspiring to deal with the cause
religion, who either cannot see that what the people now
require is a religion of the Bible quite different from that
which any of the churches or sects supply ; or who, seeing
this, spend their energies in fiercely battling as to whether
the Church shall be connected with the nation in its col-
lective and corporate character or no ? The question, at
the present juncture, is in itself so absolutely unimportant !
The thing is, to recast religion. If this is done, the new re-
ligion will be the national one; if it is not done, separating
"I
of
PREFACE.
the nation in its collective and corporate character from
religion, will not do it. It is as if men's minds were much
unsettled about mineralogy, and the teachers of it were at
variance, and no teacher was convincing, and many people,
therefore, were disposed to throw the study of mineralogy
overboard altogether. What would naturally be the first
business for every friend of the study ? Surely to estab-
lish on sure grounds the value of the study, and to
put- its claims in a new light where they could no longer
be denied. But if he acted as our Dissenters act in
religion, what would he do ? Give himself, heart and
soul, to a furious crusade against keeping the Government
School of Mines.
But meanwhile there is now an end to all fear of
doing harm by gainsaying the received theology of the
churches and sects. For this theology is itself now a
hindrance to the Bible rather than a help ; nay, to
abandon it, to put some other construction on the Bible
than this theology puts, to find some other basis for the
Bible than this theology finds, is indispensable, if we
would have the Bible reach the people. And this is the
aim of the following essay : to show that, when we come
to put the right construction on the Bible, we give to the
Bible a real experimental basis, and keep on this basis
PREFACE.
^ throughout; instead of any basis of unverifiable assump-
tion to start with, followed by a string of other unveri-
fiable assumptions of the Hke kind, such as the received
theology necessitates.
And this aim we cannot seek without coming in sight of
another aim, too, which we have often and often pointed
out, and tried to recommend: culture^ the acquainting
ourselves with the best that has been known and said
in the world, and thus with the history of the human
spirit. One cannot go far in the attempt to bring in, ,
for the Bible, a right construction, without seeing how
necessary is something of culture to its being admitted and
used. The correspondent we have above quoted notices
how the lack of culture disposes the people to conclude
at once, from any imperfection or fallibility in the Bible,
that it is a priestly imposture. To a large extent,, this is !
the fault not of the people's want of culture, but of the ;
priests and theologians, who for centuries have kept as- ;
suring the people that perfect and infallible the Bible is. i
Still, even without this confusion added by his theological I
instructors, the homo unius libri, the man of no range in i
his reading, must almost inevitably misunderstand the ;
Bible, cannot treat it largely enough, must be inclined to I
treat it all alike, and to press every word.
idv PREFACE.
For, on the one hand, he has not enough experience of
the way in which men have thought and spoken, to feel
what the Bible- writers are about ; to read between the lines,
to discern where he ought to rest with his whole weight, and
where he ought to pass lightly. On the other hand, the
void and hunger in his mind, from want of aliment, almost
irresistibly impels him to fill it by taking literally and
amplifying certain data which he finds in the Bible,
whether they ought to be so dealt with or no. Our
mechanical and materialising theology, with its insane
licence of affirmation about God, its insane licence of
affirmation about a future state, is really the result of the
poverty and inanition of our minds. It is because we
cannot trace God in history that we stay the craving of
our minds with a fancy-account of him, made up by
putting scattered expressions of the Bible together, and
taking them literally ; it is because we have such a scanty
sense of the life of humanity, that we proceed in the like
manner in our scheme of a future state. He that cannot
watch the God of the Bible, and the salvation of the Bible, -
gradually and on an immense scale discovering them-
selves and becomings will insist on seeing them ready made,
and in such precise and reduced dimensions as may suit
his narrow mind.
PREFACE.
To understand that the language of the Bible is
fluid, passing, and literary, not rigid, fixed, and scien-
tific, is the first step towards a right understanding of the
Bible. But to take this very first step, some experience
of how men have thought and expressed themselves, and
some flexibility of spirit, are necessary; and this is culture.
Much fruit may be got out of the Bible without it, and
with those narrow and materialised schemes of God and
a future state which we have mentioned ; that we do not
deny, but it is not the important point at present. The
important point is, that the diffusion everywhere of
some notion of the habits of the experimental sciences,
— habits falling in, too, very well with the hard and
positive character of the life of 'the people,' — the point is,
that this difiusion does lead * the people ' to ask for the
ground and authority for these precise schemes of God
and a future state which are presented to them, and to
see clearly and scornfully the failure to give it. The
failure to give it is inevitable, because given it cannot be ;
but whereas in the training, life, and sentiment of the
educated classes there is much to make them disguise the
failure to themselves and not insist upon it, in the training, i
life, and sentiment of the people there is nothing. So
that, as far as the people are concerned, the old tra-
xvi PREFACE.
ditional scheme of the Bible is gone ; while neither they
nor the so-called educated classes have yet anything
to put in its place.
And thus we come back to our old remedy of culture,
— knowing the best that has been thought and known in
the world ; which turns out to be, in another shape,
and in particular relation to the Bible : gettifig the
? power, through reading, to estimate the proportion and
relation in what we read. If we read but a very little,
we naturally want to press it all ; if we read a great
deal, we are wiUing not to press the whole of what we
read, and we learn what ought to be pressed and what
not. Now this is really the very foundation of any sane
criticism. We have told the Dissenters that their ' spirit
of watchful jealousy' is wholly destructive and exclusive of
the spirit of Christianity. They answer us, that St. Paul
talks of 'a godly jealousy,' and that Christ uses severe
invectives against the Scribes and Pharisees. The Dis-
senters conclude, therefore, that their jealousy is Christian.
And so, too, as to the frank, unvarnished language of
Mr. Miall at home, Mr. Miall speaking out of the abun-
dance of his heart as a Dissenter to Dissenters, before
he draped himself philosophically for the House of Com-
mons and the world in his garment of blazing principles,
PREFACE.
as messenger and minister of the sublime truth, that the
best way to get religion known and honoured is to
abolish all national recognition of it. 'A State Church I '
cries the real Mr. Miall; 'have people never pondered
upon the practical meaning of that word ? have they
never looked into that dark, polluted inner chamber of
which it is the door ? have they never caught a glimpse
of the loathsome things that live and crawl and gender
there ? ' This, I say, the Dissenters think Christian, be-
cause covered by Christ's use of invective.
Now, there can be no doubt whatever, that in his invec-
tives against the Scribes and Pharisees Christ abandoned
the mild, uncontentious, winning, inward mode of working
(He shall not strive nor cry!) which was his true charac-
teristic, and in which his charm and power lay ; and that
there was no chance at all of his gaining by such invectives
the persons at whom they were launched. The same may
be said of the cases where St. Paul lets loose his * godly
jealousy/ and employs objurgation instead of the mild-
ness which was Christ's means, and which Paul, — though
himself no special adept at it, — nevertheless appreciated so
worthily, and so earnestly extols. St. Paul certainly had
no chance of convincing those whom he calls ' dogs,' the
a
xviii PREFACE,
* concision,' utterers of * profane and vain babblings,' by-
such a manner of dealing with therii.
What may, indeed, fairly be said is, that the Pharisees
against whom Jesus denounced his woes, or the Judaisers
against whom Paul fulminated, were people whom there
could be no hope of gaining ; and that not their conver-
sion, but a strong impression on the faithful who read or
heard, was the thing aimed at, and very rightly aimed at.
And so far, at any rate, as Christ's use of invective
against the Pharisees is concerned, this may be quite true;
but what a criticism is that, which can gather hence any
general defence of jealousy and objurgation as Christian,
or any particular defence of them as we see the Dissenters
and Mr. Miall using them ! For, in the first place, such
weapons can have no defence at all except as employed
against individuals who are past hope, or against insti-
tutions which are palpably monstrosities ; they can • have
none as employed against institutions containing at least
half a great nation, and therefore a multitude of individuals
good as well as bad. And therefore we see that Christ
never dreamed of assaihng the Jewish Church; all he
cared for was to transform it, by transforming as many
as were transformable of the individuals composing it.
In the second place, when such means of action have
PREFACE, xix
a defence, they are defensible although violations of
Christ's established rule of working, never commend-
able as exemplifications of it. Mildness and sweet
reasonableness is the one established rule for Chris-
tian working, and no other rule has it or can it
have. But, using the Bible in the mechanical and help-
less way in which one uses it when one has hardly any
other book, men fail to see this, clear as it is. And they
do really come to imagine that the Dissenters' ' spirit of
watchful jealousy,' may be a Christian temper ; or that a
movement like Mr. Miall's crusade against the Church
of England may be a Christian work. And it is in this
way that Christianity gets discredited.
Now, simple as it is, it is not half enough understood, \
this reason for culture : namely, that to read to good
purpose we must read a great deal, and be content not
to use a great deal of what we read. We shall never be
content not to use the whole, or nearly the whole, of what
we read, unless we read a great deal. Yet things are
on such a scale, and progress is so gradual, and what
one man can do is so bounded, that the moment we press
the whole of what any writer says, we fall into error. He
touches a great deal ; the thing to know is where he is
all himself and his best self, where he shows his power,
a 2
XX PREFACE.
where he goes to the heart of the matter, where he gives
lis Avhat no other man gives us, or gives us so well.
In his valuable Church History^ Dr. Stoughton says of
Hooker : * The Puritan principle of the authority and
unchangeableness of a revealed Church polity Hooker sub-
stantially admits. Although this deep thinker sometimes
talks perilously of altering Christ's laws, he says : " In the
matter of external discipline itself, we do not deny but
there are some things whereto the Church is bound till
the world's end." ' Dr. Stoughton does not see that to
use his Hooker in this way is entirely fallacious ; Hooker,
this 'deep thinker,' as Dr. Stoughton tmly calls him, one of
the four great names of the English Church, is great by
having, signally and above others, or before others and
when others had not, the sense, in religion, of history^ of
historic development. So Butler is great by having the
sense of philosophy, Barrow by having that of morals,
Wilson that of practical Christianity. But if Hooker
spoke, as he did, of Church history like a historian, and
exploded the Puritan figment, due to a defective historic
sense, of a revealed Church polity, a Scriptural Church
order, — if Hooker did this, this was so new that he could
not possibly do it without reservations, limitations, apo-
logies ; he could not help saying : * We do not deny there
PREFACE. • xxi
may be some external things whereto the Church is
eternally bound.' But he is truly himself, he is the great
Hooker, the man from whom Ave learn, when he shatters
the Puritan error, not when he uses the language of
compliment and ceremony after shattering it.
In like manner that eloquent orator, Mr. Liddon,
looking about him for authorities which commend the
Athanasian Creed, finds Hooker commendmg it, and
quotes him as an authority. This, again, is to make a
use of Hooker which has no soundness in it. Hooker's
greatness is that he gives the real method of criticism
for Church dogma, the historic method. Church dogma
is not written in black and white in the Bible, he says ;
it has to be collected from it; it is, as we now say,
a development from it. This and that dogma, says
Hooker, *are in Scripture nowhere to be found by
express literal mention, only deduced they are out of
Scripture by collection.' And he assigns the one right
criterion for determining whether a dogma is justly de-
duced, and what Scripture means, and what is its true
character : the criterion of reasoii. He assigns this with
splendid boldness: ' It is not the word of God itself,' says
he, 'which doth, or possibly can, assure us that we
do well to think it his word j ' no, it is reason, much-
• PREFACE.
reviled reason. Surely this is enough to expect a
sixteenth-century divine to give us in theology, — the very
method of true science ! without expecting him to make
the full application of it, without expecting him to say
that the Church dogmas of his time, the dogma of the
Athanasian Creed among the rest, which were not
seriously in question yet, on which the Time-Spirit had
not then turned his light, \\qxq. false developments; with-
out wondering at his saying, that t/iey were developments
' the necessity whereof is by none denied ! ' This is aU
that Hooker's warranty of the Athanasian Creed really
comes to, or can come to. To fix the method by which
the Creed must finally be judged was the main issue for
him ; to judge the creed by that method was a side issue,
whereon he never really entered nor could enter, but
treated the thing as already settled. Therefore Hooker
is no real authority in favour of the Athanasian Creed ;
though we might think he was if we read him without
discrimination. And to read him with discrimination,
culture is necessary.
Luther, again, Mr. Liddon cites as a witness on the
question of the Athanasian Creed ; and he might as well
cite him as a witness on the question of the origin of
species. Luther's greatness is in his revival of the sense
PREFACE,
xxm
of conscience and personal responsibility, and in the fresh
vigorous power which this sense, joined to his robust
mother- wit, gave him in using the Bible. He had enough
to do in attacking Romish developments from the Bible,
which by their practical side were evidently, to a plain
moral sense and a plain mother-wit, /^^/j-^r developments,
without attacking speculative dogma, which had no visible
connexion with practice, which had all antiquity in its
favour, on which, as we say, the Time-Spirit had not
then turned his light, .of which, — so Luther might say, like
Hooker, — * the necessity is by none denied.' All this high
speculative dogma he could not but affirm, and the more
emphatically the more he questioned lower practical
dogma. But his affirmation of it is not one of those
things we can use ; and whoever reads in the folios of
Luther's works without passing lightly over very much,
and, amongst it, over this, reads there ill. And without
culture, without the use of so many books that he can
afford not to over-use and mis-use one^ ill a man is likely
to read there.
We can hardly urge this topic too much, of so great a
practical importance is it, and above all at the present
time. To be able to control what one reads by means
of the tact coming, in a clear and fair mind, from a wide
PREFACE.
experience, was never perhaps so necessary as in the
England of our own day, and in theology, and in what
concerns the Bible. To get the facts, the data, in all matters
of science, but notably in theology and Biblical learning,
one goes to Germany. Germany, and it is her high
honour, has searched out the facts and exhibited them.
And without knowledge of the facts, no clearness or
fairness of mind can in any study do anything; this
cannot be laid down too rigidly. Now, English religion
does not know the facts of its study, and has to go to
Germany for them; this is half apparent to English
religion even now, and it will become more and more
apparent. And so overwhelming is the advantage given
by knowing the facts of a study, that a student who comes
to a man who knows them is tempted to put himself into
his hands altogether ; and this we in general see English
students do, when they have recourse to the theologians
of Germany. They put themselves altogether into their
hands, and take all that they give them, conclusions as
well as facts.
But they ought not to use them in this manner ; for
a man may have the facts and yet be unable to draw the
right conclusions from them. In general, he may want
power ; as one may say of Dr. Strauss, for instance, that
PREFACE, xxY
to what is unsolid iii the New Testament he applies tlie
historic method ably enough, but that to deal with the
reality which is still left in the New Testament, requires
a larger, richer, deeper, more imaginative mind than his.
But perhaps the quality specially needed for drawing the
right conclusion from the facts, when one has got them,
is best called perception, delicacy of perception. And
this no man can have who is a mere specialist, who has
not what we call culture in addition to the knowledge of
his particular study ; and many theologians, in Germany
as well as elsewhere, are specialists. And even when we
have added culture to special knowledge, a good fortune,
a natural tact, a perception, must go with our culture, to
make our criticism sure. And here is what renders criti-
cism so large a thing : namely, that learning alone is not
enough, one must have perception too. ' I, wisdom, dwell
with subtlety^ says the Wise Man; and, taking subtlety
in a good sense, this is most true. After we have ac-
quainted ourselves with the best that has been known in
the world, after we have got all the facts of our special
study, fineness and delicacy of perception to deal with
the facts is still required, and is, even, the principal thing
of all.
And in this the Gemian mind, if one may speak in
xxvi PREFACE.
such a general way, does seem to be somewhat want-
ing. In the German mind, as in the German lan-
guage, there does seem to be something splay ^ something
blunt-edged, unhandy and infelicitous, — some want of
quick, fine, sure perception, which tends to balance the
great superiority of the Germans in knowledge, and in
the disposition to deal impartially with knowledge. For
impartial they are, as well as learned ; and this is a signal
merit. While M. Barthelemy St.-Hilaire cannot trans-
late Aristotle without dragging in his pompous and
false platitudes in glorification of the French gospel of
the Rights of Man, while one English historian writes
history to extol the Whigs and another to execrate the
Church, German workers proceed in a more philo-
sophical fashion. Still, in quickness and delicacy of per-
ception they do seem to come short.
Of course in a man of genius this delicacy and dexterity
of perception is much less lacking ; but even in Germans
of genius there seems some lack of it. Goethe, for instance,
has less of it, one must surely own, than the great men of
other nations whom alone one can cite as his literary com-
peers : Shakspeare, Voltaire, Macchiavel, Cicero, Plato.
Or, to go a little lower down, compare Bentley as a critic
with Hermann; — Bentley treating Menander with Her-
PREFACE. xxvii
mann treating ^schylus. Both are on ground favourable
to them ; both know thoroughly, one may say, the facts
of their case ; yet such is the difference between them,
somehow, in dexterousness and sureness of perception,
that the gifted English scholar is wrong hardly ever,
whereas the gifted German scholar is \vrong very often.
And then every learned Gernian is not gifted, is not a man
of genius. Whether it be, as we have elsewhere speculated,^
from race; or whether this quickness and sureness of
perception comes, rather, from a long practical conver-
sance wth great affairs, and only those nations which have
at any time had a practical lead of the civilised world, the
Greeks, the Romans, the Italians, the French, the English,
can have it ; and the Germans have till now had no such
practical lead, though now they have got it, and may
now, therefore, acquire the practical dexterity of percep-
tion ; — however this may be, the thing is so, and a
learned Gennan has by no means, in general, a line
and practically sure perception in proportion to his
learning. Give a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman,
the same knowledge of the facts, and you could, in
general, trust his perception more than you can the
German's. This, I say, shows how large a thing criticism
^ On the Study of Celtic Literature^ p. 97.
xxviii PREFACE.
is j since even of those from whom we take what we
now in theology most want, knowledge of the facts of our
study, and to whom therefore we are, and ought to be,
under deep obligations, even of them we must not take
too much, or take anything like all that they offer ; but
we must take much and leave much, and must have ex-
perience enough to know what to take and what to leave.
And without culture we cannot have this experience ;
although it is true that even culture itself, without good
fortune and tact, will not fully give it. Still, our best and
only chance of it is through means of culture.
But it is for the Bible itself that this discriminative
experience, so necessary in all our theological studies, is
most needed. And to our popular religion it is especi-
ally difficult ; because we have been trained to regard the
Bible, not as a book whose parts have varying degrees of
value, but as the Jews came to regard their Scriptures, as
a sort of talisman given down to us out of Heaven, with
all its parts equipollent. And yet there was a time when
Jews knew well the vast difference there is between books
like Esther, Chronicles, or Daniel, and books Hke Genesis
or Isaiah ; there was a time when Christians knew well
the vast difference between the First Epistle of Peter
and his so-called Second Epistle, or between the Epistle
PREFACE.
to the Hebrews, and the Epistles to the Romans or the
Corinthians. This, indeed, is what makes the reHgious
watchword of the British and Foreign School Society :
The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible I so
ingeniously (one must say it) absurd; it is treating
the Bible as Mahometans treat the Koran, as if it were
a talisman all of one piece, and with all its sentences
equipollent.
Yet the very expressions. Canon of Scripture, Canonical
Books, recall a time when degrees of value were still felt,
and all parts of the Bible did not stand on the same
footing, and were not taken equally. There was a time
when books were read as part of the Bible which are
in no Bible now ; there was a time when books, which are
in every Bible now, were by many disallowed as genuine
parts of the Bible. St. Athanasius rejected the Book of
Esther, and the Greek Christianity of the East repelled
the Apocalypse, and the Latin Christianity of the West
repelled the Epistle to the Hebrews. And a true critical
sense of relative value lay at the bottom of all these
rejections. No one rejected Isaiah or the Epistle to the
Romans ; the books rejected were such books as those
which we now print as the Apocrypha, or as the book of
Esther, or the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the so-called
XXX PREFACE.
Epistle of Jude, or the so-called Second Epistle of St.
Peter, or the two short Epistles following the main Epistle
attributed to St. John, or the Apocalypse.
Now, whatever value one may assign to these works,
no sound critic would rate their intrinsic worth as high
as that of the great undisputed books of the Bible.
And so far from their finally getting where they are
after a thorough trial of their claims, and with indis-
putable propriety, they got placed by the force of cir-
cumstances, by chance or by routine, rather than on
their merits. Indeed, by merit alone the Book of
Esther could have now no right to be in our Canon
while Ecclesiasticus is not, nor the Epistle of Jude and
the Second Epistle of Peter rather than the Epistle of
Clement. But the whole discussion died out, not because
the matter was sifted and settled and a perfect Canon of
Scripture deliberately formed ; it died out as mediaeval
ignorance deepened, and because there was no longer
knowledge or criticism enough left in the world to keep
such a discussion alive.
And so things went on till the Renascence, when criti-
cism came to life again. But the Church had now long
since adopted the Vulgate, and her authority was con-
cerned in maintaining what she had adopted. Luther and
PREFACE.
Calvin, on the other hand, recurred to the old true notion
of a difference in rank and genuineness among the Bible
books. For they both of them insisted on the criterion
of internal evidence for Scripture: * the witness of the Spirit.*
How freely Luther used this criterion, we may see by
reading in the old editions of his Bible his prefaces, which
in succeeding editions have long ceased to appear ; whether
he used it aright we do not now inquire, but he used it
freely. Taunted, however, by Rome with their divisions,
their want of a fixed authority like the Church, Protes-
tants were driven to make the Bible this fixed authority;
nd so the Bible came to be regarded as a thing all of
a piece, endued with talismanic virtues. It came to be
regarded as something different from anything it had
originally ever been, or primitive times had ever imagined
it to be. And Protestants did practically in this way
use the Bible more irrationally than Rome practically ever
used it ; for Rome had her hypothesis of the Churcli
Catholic endued with talismanic virtues, and did not want
a talismanic Bible too. All this has made a discrimi-
nating use of the Bible-documents very difficult in our
country \ yet without it a sound criticism of the Bible is
impossible, and even, as we say, the very word Caiion^
the Canon of Scripture^ points to such a use.
PREFACE.
But, indeed, there is hardly any great thing perverted
by men, which does not in some sort thus indicate its own
perversion. The idea of the infallible Church Catholic
itself, as we have elsewhere said,^ is an idea the most fatal
of all possible ideas to the concrete so-called infallible
Church of Rome, such as we see it. The infallible Church
Catholic is, really, the prophetic soul of the wide world
dreaitiiiig ofi things to come; the whole race, in its onward
progress, developing truth more complete than the parcel
of truth any momentary individual can seize. Nay, even
that amiable old pessimist in St. Peter's Chair, whose
allocutions we read and call them impotent and vain, —
the Pope himself is, in his idea, the very Time-Spirit
taking flesh, the incarnate ' Zeit-Geist ' ! O man, how
true are thine instincts, how over-hasty thine interpreta-
tions of them !
But to return. Difficult, certainly, is the right reading
of the Bible, and true culture, too, is difficult. For true
culture implies not only knowledge, but right tact and
delicacy of judgment, forming themselves by knowledge ;
without this tact it is not true culture. Difficult, how-
ever, as culture is, it is necessary. For, after ail, the Bible
is not a talisman, to be taken and used literally; neither
* St. Paul and Protcstantisju, p. 156.
PREFACE. xxxiii
is any existing Church a talisman, whatever pretensions
of the sort it may make, for giving the right inter-
pretation of the Bible. Only true culture can give us
this ; so that if conduct is, as it is, inextricably bound up
with the Bible and the right interpretation of it, then
the importance of culture becomes unspeakable. For if
conduct is necessary (and there is nothing so necessary),
culture is necessary.
And the poor require it as much as the rich ; and at
present their education, even when they get education,
gives them hardly anything of it. Yet hardly less of it,
perhaps, than the education of the rich gives to the rich.
For when we say that culture is : To know the best that
has been thought and said in the world, we imply that, for
culture, a system directly tending to this end is necessary
in our reading. Now, there is no such system yet present j .
to guide the reading of the rich, any more than of the poor, i
Such a system is hardly even thought of; a man who \
wants it must make it for himself. And our reading
being so without purpose as it is, nothing can be truer than
what Butler says, that really, in general, no part of our
time is more idly spent than the time spent in reading.
Still, culture is indispensably necessary, and culture is
reading; but reading with a purpose to guide it, and
b
y
xxxiv PREFACE.
with system. He does a good work who does anything
to help this ; indeed, it is the one essential service now to
be rendered to education. And the plea, that this or
that man has no time for culture, will varjish as soon as
we desire culture so much that we begin to examine
seriously our present use of our time. It has often been
said, and cannot be said too often : Give to any man
all the time that he now wastes, not only on his vices
(when he has them), but on useless business, weari-
some or deteriorating amusements, trivial letter-writing,
random reading, and he will have plenty of time for
culture. ' Die Zeit ist nnejidlich lang^ says Goethe ; and
so it really is. Some of us waste all of it, most of us
waste much ; but all of us waste some.
CONTENTS.
Introduction i
I. Religion Given lo
II. Aderglaube Invading . . . .61
III. Religion New-given . . . -79
IV. The Proof from Prophecy . . .107
V. The Proof from Miracles . . .116
VI. The New Testament Record . .149
VII. The Testimony of Jesus to Himself . 181
VIII. The Early Witnesses .... 249
xxxvi CONTENTS,
CHAPTER j-AGE
IX. ABERGLAUBE"BjE.-l-ii^KDmG . . .274
X. Our 'Masses' and the Bible . . 310
XI. The True Greatness of the Old Tes-
tament 338
XII. The True Greatness of Christl-^nity 363
Conclusion 381
LITERATURE and DOGMA,
INTRODUCTION.
Mr. Disraeli, treating Hellenic things with the scornful
negligence natural to a Hebrew, said the other day in a
well-known book that our aristocratic class, the polite
flower of the nation, were truly Hellenic in this respect
among others, — that they cared nothing for letters and
never read Now, there seems to be here some inac-
curacy, if we take our standard of what is Hellenic from
Hellas at its highest pitch of development ; for the latest
historian of Greece, Dr. Curtius, tells us that in the Athens
of Pericles * reading was universally diffused ;' and again,
that ' what more than anything distinguishes the Greeks
from the barbarians of ancient and modern times, is the
idea of a culture comprehending body and soul in an
equal measure.' And we have ourselves called our aris-
^ B
LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
tocratic class barbarians^ which is the contrary of
Hellenes, from this very reason : because, with all their
fine, fresh appearance, their open-air life, and their love
for field-sports, for reading and thinking they have in
general no turn. But no doubt Mr. Disraeli was thinking
of the primitive Hellenes of north-western Greece, from
among whom the Dorians of Peloponnesus originally
came, but who themselves remained in their old seats
and did not migrate and develop like their more famous
brethren ; and of these primitive Hellenes, of Greeks like
the Chaonians and Molossians, it is probably a very
just account to give, that they lived in the open air, loved
field-sports, and never read. And, explained in this way,
Mr. Disraeli's parallel of our aristocratic class with what
he somewhat misleadingly calls the old Hellenic race,
appears ingenious and sound ; to those lusty northerners,
the Molossian or Chaonian Greeks, — Greeks untouched
by the development which contra-distinguishes the Hel-
lene from the barbarian, — our aristocratic class, as he ex-
hibits it, has a strong resemblance. At any rate, this
class, — which from its great possessions, its beauty and
attractiveness, the admiration felt for it by the Philistines
or middle- class, its actual power in the nation, and the
still more considerable destinies to which its politeness,
in Mr. Carlyle's opinion, entitles it, cannot but attract our
INTRODUCTION.
notice pre-eminently, — shows at present a great and
genuine disregard for letters.
And perhaps, if there is any other body of men which
strikes one, even after looking at our aristocratic class, as
being in the sunshine, as exercising great attraction, as
being admired by the Philistines or middle-class, and as
having before it a future still more brilliant than its
present, it is the friends of physical science. Now, their
revolt against the tyranny of letters is notorious; to
deprive letters of the too great place they have hitherto
filled in men's estimation, and to substitute other studies
for these, is the object of a sort of crusade with a body
of people important in itself, but still more important
because of the gifted leaders who march at its head.
Religion has always hitherto been a great power in
England; and on this account, perhaps, whatever humilia-
tions may be in store for religion in the future, the friends
of physical science will not object to our saying, that,
after them and the aristocracy, the leaders of the religious
world fill a prominent place in the public eye even now,
and one cannot help noticing what their opinions and
likings are. And it is curious how the feeling of the
chief people in the religious world, too, seems to be just
now against mere letters, which they slight as the vague
and inexact instrument of shallow essayists and magazine-
B2
LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
writers ; and in favour of dogma, of a scientific and exact
presentment of religious things, instead of a literary pre-
sentment of them. * Dogmatic theology,' says the
Guardian, speaking of our existing dogmatic theology,
— * Dogmatic theology, that is, precision and definiteness
of religious thought.' ' Maudlin sentimentalism,' says the
Dean of Norwich, ' with its miserable disparagements of
any definite doctrine; a nerveless religion, without the
sinew and bone of doctrine.' The distinguished Chan-
cellor of the University of Oxford thought it needful to
tell us on a public occasion lately, that * religion is no
more to be severed from dogma than light from the sun.'
Every one, again, remembers the Bishops of Winchester
and Gloucester making in Convocation the other day
their remarkable effort ' to do something,' as they said,
* for the honour of Our Lord's Godhead,' and to mark
their sense of ' that infinite separation for time and for
eternity which is involved in rejecting the Godhead of
the Eternal Son.' In the same way : ' To no teaching,'
says one champion of dogma, *can the appellation of
Christian be truly given which does not involve the idea
of a Personal God.' Another lays like stress on correct
ideas about the Personality of the Holy Ghost ' Our
Lord unquestionably,' says a third, * annexes eternal life
to a right knowledge of the Godhead,' — that is, to a right
INTRODUCTION.
speculative, dogmatic knowledge of it. A fourth appeals
to history and human nature for proof that ' an undog-
matic Church can no more satisfy the hunger of the soul,
than a snowball, painted to look like fruit, would stay the
hunger of the stomach.' And all these friends of theo-
logical science are, like the friends of physical science,
though from another cause, severe upon letters. At-
tempts made at a literary treatment of religious history
and ideas they call ' a subverting of the faith once de-
livered to the saints;' those who make them they speak
of as * those who have made shipwreck of the faith;' and
when they talk of 'the poison openly disseminated by
infidels,' and describe the 'progress of infidelity,' which
more and more, according to their account, ' denies God,
rejects Christ, and lets loose every human passion,'
though they have the audaciousness of physical science
most in their eye, yet they have a direct aim, too, at the
looseness and dangerous temerity of letters.
Keeping in remembrance the Scriptural comment on
the young man who had great possessions, to be able to
work a change of mind in our aristocratic class we never
have pretended, we never shall pretend. But to the
friends of physical science and to the friends of dogma
we do feel emboldened, after giving our best considera-
tion to the matter, to say a few words on behalf of letters,
'6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
and in deprecation of the slight which, on different
grounds, they both put upon them.
But particularly to the friends of dogma do we wish to
insist on the case for letters, because of the great issues
which seem to us to be here involved. Therefore we
shall take leave, in spite of modern fashions, still to treat
theology with so much respect as to give her the first
place ; and with the subject of the present volume, * lite-
rature and dogma,' we shall make our beginning.
2.
It is clear that dogmatists love religion ; — for else why
do they occupy themselves with it so much, and make it,
most of them, the business, even the professional business,
of their lives ? — and clearly religion seeks man's salvation.
How distressing, therefore, must it be to them, to think
that ' salvation is unquestionably annexed to a right know-
ledge of the Godhead,' and that a right knowledge of the
Godhead depends upon reasoning, for which so many
\ people have not much aptitude ; and upon reasoning from
1 ideas, or terms, such as substance, identity, causation,
j design, about which there is endless disagreement ! It is
true, a right knowledge of geometry also depends upon
reasoning, and many people never get it ; but then, in the
first place, salvation is not annexed to a right knowledge
INTRODUCTION,
of geometry ; and in the second, the ideas, or terms, such
zs> pointy line J angle, from which we reason in geometry,
are terms about which there is no ambiguity or disagree-
ment. But as to the demonstrations and terms of theology
we cannot comfort ourselves in this manner. How must
this thought mar the Archbishop of York's enjoyment of
such a solemnity as that in which, to uphold and renovate
religion, he lectured lately to Lord Harrowby, Dean
Payne Smith, and other kindred souls, upon the theory I
of causation ! And what a consolation to us, who are so
perpetually being taunted with our known inaptitude for
abstruse reasoning, if we can find that for this great
concern of religion, at any rate, abstruse reasoning does
not seem to be the appointed help, and that as good or
better a help, — for, indeed, there can hardly, to judge by
the present state of things, be a worse, — may be some-
thing which is in an ordinary man's power !
For the good of letters is, that they require no extraor-
dinary acuteness such as is required to handle the theory
of causation like the Archbishop of York, or the doctrine
of the Godhead of the Eternal Son like the Bishops of
Winchester and Gloucester. The good of letters may be
had without skill in arguing, or that formidable logical
apparatus, not unlike a guillotine, which Professor Huxley
speaks of somewhere as the young man's best companion ;
LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
— and so it would be, no doubt, if all wisdom were come
at by hard reasoning ; in that case, all who could not
manage this apparatus (and only a few picked craftsmen
can manage it) would be in a pitiable condition.
But the valuable thing in letters, — that is, in the ac-
I quainting oneself with the best which has been thought
] and said in the world, — is, as we have often remarked,
the judgment which forms itself insensibly in a fair mind
; along with fresh knowledge ; and this judgment almost
\ anyone with a fair mind, who will but trouble himself to
I try and make acquaintance with the best which has be^a
thought and uttered in the world, may, if he is lucky,
hope to attain to. For this judgment comes almost of
itself ; and what it displaces it displaces easily and natu-
rally, and without any turmoil of controversial reasonings.
' The thing comes to look differently to us, as we look at
1 it by the light of fresh knowledge. We are not beaten
j from our old opinion by logic, we are not driven off our
ground ; — our ground itself changes with us.
I Far more of our mistakes come from want of fresh
knowledge than from want of correct reasoning; and,
therefore, letters meet a greater want in us than does
logic. The idea of a triangle is a definite and ascertained
thing, and to deduce the properties of a triangle from it
is an affair of reasoning. There are heads unapt for this
INTRODUCTION.
sort of work, and some of the blundering to be found in
the world is from this cause. But how far more of the
blundering to be found in the world comes from people
fancying that some idea is a definite and ascertained
thing, like the idea of a triangle, when it is not ; and pro-
ceeding to deduce properties from it, and to do battle
about them, when their first start was a mistake ! And
how liable are people with a talent for hard, abstruse
reasoning, to be tempted to this mistake ! And what
can clear up such a mistake except a wide and familiar
acquaintance with the human spirit and its productions,
showing how ideas and terms arose, and what is their
character? and this is letters and history, not logic
So that minds with small aptitude for abstruse reason-
ing may yet, through letters, gain some hold on sound
judgment and useful knowledge, and may even clear up
blunders committed, out of their very excess of talent, by
the athletes of logic
lo LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
CHAPTER I.
RELIGION GIVEN.
We have said elsewhere * how much it has contributed
to the misunderstanding of St Paul, that terms like grace,
new birth, justification, — ^which he used in a fluid and
passing way, as men use terms in common discourse or in
eloquence and poetry, to describe approximately, but
only approximately, what they have present before their
mind, but do not profess that their mind does or can grasp
exactly or adequately, — that such terms people have
blunderingly taken in a fixed and rigid manner, as if they
were symbols with as definite and fully grasped a meaning
as the names line or angle, and proceeded to use them on
this supposition ; terms, in short, which with St. Paul
are literary terms, theologians have employed as if they
were scientific terms.
But if one desires to deal with this mistake thoroughly,
one must observe it in that supreme, term with which
* Culture and Anarchy, p. 178.
RELIGION GIVEN. ii
religion is filled, — the term God. The seemingly incu-
rable ambiguity in the mode of employing this word is at
the root of all our religious differences and difficulties.
People use it as if it stood for a perfectly definite and
ascertained idea, from which we might, without more
ado, extract propositions and draw inferences, just as we
should from any other definite and ascertained idea. For
instance, I open a book which controverts what its
author thinks dangerous views about religion, and I read:
* Our sense of morality tells us so-and-so ; our sense of
God, on the other hand, tells us so-and-so.* And again,
* the impulse in man to seek God ' is distinguished, as if
the distinction were self-evident and explained itself, from
*the impulse in man to seek his highest perfection.' Now,
morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite
and ascertained idea : — the idea of human conduct regu-
lated in a certain manner. Everybody, again, under-
stands distinctly enough what is meant by man's perfec-
tion : — his reaching the best which his powers and cir-
cumstances allow him to reach. And the word * God ' is
used, in connection with both these words. Morality and
Perfection, as if it stood for just as definite and ascer-
tained an idea as they do ; an idea drawn from experi-
ence, just as the ideas are which they stand for; an idea
about which every one was agreed, and from which we
12 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
might proceed to argue and to make inferences, with the
certainty that, as in the case of morality and perfection,
the basis on which we were going everyone knew and
granted. But, in truth, the word ' God ' is used in most
cases, — not by the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester,
but by mankind in general, — as by no means a term of
science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and
eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, at a not fully
grasped object of the speaker's consciousness, — a literary
term, in short ; and mankind mean different things by it
as their consciousness differs.
The first question, then, is, how people are using the
word, whether in this literary way, or in the scientific
way of the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester. The
second question is, what, supposing them to use the term
as one of poetry and eloquence, and to import into it,
therefore, a great deal of their own individual feelings and
character, is yet the common substratum of idea on which,
in using it, they all rest. For this will then be, so far as
they are concerned, the scientific sense of the word, the
sense in which we can use it for purposes of argument
and inference without ambiguity. Is this substratufti, at
any rate, coincident with the scientific idea of the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester ? — will then be the
question.
RELIGION GIVEN. 13
Strictly and formally the word *God,' we now learn from
the philologists, means, like its kindred Aryan words TheoSy
DeuSy and Deia^ simply brilliant. In a certain narrow
way, therefore, this is the one exact and scientific sense
of the word. It was long thought to mean good, and so
Luther took it to mean the best that man knows or can
know \ and in this sense, as a matter of fact and history,
mankind constantly use the word. But then there is also
the scientific sense held by theologians, deduced from the
ideas of substance, identity, causation, design, and so on;
but taught, they say, or at least implied in the Bible, and
on which all the Bible rests. According to this scientific
sense of theology, God is a person, the great first cause,
the moral and intelligent governor of the universe ; Jesus
Christ consubstantial with him ; and the Holy Ghost a
person proceeding from the other two. This is the sense
for which, or for portions of which, the Bishops of Win-
chester and Gloucester are so zealous to do some-
thing.
Other people, however, who fail to perceive the force of
such a deduction from the abstract ideas above mentioned,
who indeed think it quite hollow, but who are told that
this sense is in the Bible, and that they must receive it
if they receive the Bible, conclude that in that case they
had better receive neither the one nor the other. Some-
14 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
thing of this sort it was, no doubt, which made Professor
Huxley tell the London School Board lately, that 'if these
islands had no religion at all, it would not enter into his
mind to introduce the religious idea by the agency of the
Bible.* Of such people there are now a great many; and
indeed there could hardly, for those who value the Bible,
be a greater example of the sacrifices one is sometimes
called upon to make for the truth, than to find that,
for the truth as held by the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester, if it is the truth, one must sacrifice the alle-
giance of so many people to the Bible.
But surely, if there be anything with which metaphysics
have nothing to do, and where a plain man, without skill
to walk in the arduous paths of abstruse reasoning, may
yet find himself at home, it is religion. For the object
of religion is conduct ; and conduct is really, however
men may overlay it with philosophical disquisitions, the
simplest thing in the world. That is to say, it is the
simplest thing in the world as far as understanding is con-
cerned j as regards doing, it is the hardest thing in the
world. Here is the difficulty, — to do what we very well
know ought to be done ; and instead of facing this, men
have searched out another with which they occupy them-
selves by preference, — the origin of what is called the
moral sense, the genesis and physiology of conscience,
RELIGION GIVEN. 15
and so on. No one denies that here, too, is difficulty, or
that the difficulty is a proper object for the human
faculties to be exercised upon ; but the difficulty here is
speculative. It is not the difficulty of religion, which is
a practical one ; and it often tends to divert the attention
from this. Yet surely the difficulty of religion is great
enough by itself, if men would but consider it, to satisfy
the most voracious appetite for difficulties. It extends to
rightness in the whole range of what we call conduct \ in
three-fourths, therefore, at the very lowest computation,
of human life. The only doubt is whether we ought not
to make the range of conduct wider still, and to say it is
four-fifths of human life, or five-sixths. But it is better to
be under the mark than over it ; so let us be content
with reckoning conduct as three-fourths of human life.
And to recognise in what way conduct is this, let us
eschew all school-terms, like moral sense, and volitional,
and altruistic, which philosophers employ, and let us
help ourselves by the most palpable and plain examples.
When the rich man in the Bible parable says ; * Soul,
thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; take
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry ! ' — those goods
which he thus assigns as the stuffwith which human life is
mainly concerned (and so in practice it really is), — those
goods and our dealings with them, — our taking our ease,
i6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
eating, drinking, being merry, — are the matter of conduct^
the range where it is exercised- Eating, drinking, ease,
pleasure, money, the intercourse of the sexes, the giving
free swing to one's temper and instincts, — these are the
matters with which conduct is concerned, and with which
all mankind know and feel it to be concerned.
Or when Protagoras points out of what things we are,
from childhood till we die, being taught and admonished,
and says (but it is lamentable that here we have not at
hand Mr. Jowett, who so excellently introduces the en-
chanter Plato and his personages, but must use our own
words) : * From the time he can understand what is said to
him, nurse and mother, and teacher, and father too, are
bending their efforts to this end, — to make the child ^<?^</;
teaching and showing him, as to everything he has to do
or say, how this is right and that not right, and this is
honourable and that vile, and this is holy and that unholy,
and this do and that do not ; ' — Protagoras, also, when he
says this, bears his testimony to the scope and nature of
conduct^ tells us what conduct is. Or, once more, when
Monsieur Littre (and we hope to make our peace with
the Comtists by quoting an author of theirs in preference
to those authors whom all the British public is now
reading and quoting), — when Monsieur Littre, in a most
ingenious essay on the origin of morals, traces up, better,
RELIGION GIVEN. 17
perhaps, than any one else, all our impulses into two
elementary instincts, the instinct of self-preservation and
the reproductive instinct, — then we take his theory and
we say, that all the impulses which can be conceived as
derivable from the instinct of self-preservation in us and
the reproductive instinct, these terms being applied in
their ordinary sense, are the matter of conduct. It is
evident this includes, to say no more, every impulse
relating to temper, every impulse relating to sensuaUty ;
and we all know how much that is.
How we deal with these impulses is the matter of
conduct^ — how we obey, regulate, or restrain them; — that,
and nothing else. Not whether M. Littr^'s theory is
true or false ; for whether it be true or false, there the
impulses confessedly now are, and the business of con-
duct is to deal with them. But it is evident, if conduct
deals with these, both how important a thing conduct is,
and how simple a thing. Important, because it covers
so large a portion of human life, and the portion common
to all sorts of people ; simple, because, though there
needs perpetual admonition to form conduct, the
admonition is needed, not .to determine what we ought
to do, but to make us do it.
And as to this simpUcity, all moralists are agreed.
*■ Let any plain honest man,' says Bishop Butler, * before
c
i8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
he engages in any course of action ' (he means action of
the very kind we call conduct), * ask himself : Is this I am
going about right or is it wrong ? is it good or is it evil ?
I do not in the least doubt but that this question would
be answered agreeably to truth and virtue by almost any
fair man in almost any circumstance.^ And Bishop
Wilson says : * Look up to God ' (by which he means
just this, consult your conscience,) ' at all times, and he
will, as in a glass, discover what is fit to be done.' And
the Preacher's well-known sentence is exactly to the
same effect : * God made man upright ; but they have
sought out many inventions,' — or, as it more correctly is,
* many abstruse reasonings.^ Let us hold fast to this, and
we shall find we have a stay by the help of which even
poor weak men, with no pretensions to be athletes, may
stand firmly.
And so, when we are asked, what is the object of
religion ? — let us reply : Conduct. And when we are asked
further, what is conduct ? — let us answer : Three-fourths of
life.
2.
And certainly we need not go far about to prove that
conduct, or * righteousness,' which is the object of religion,
is in a special manner the object of Bible religion. The
word * righteousness ' is the master-word of the Old
RELIGION GIVEN. 19
\
Testament. Keep judgme?it a jid do righteousness / Cease
to do evil, learn to do well f these words being taken in
their plainest sense of conduct ; Offer the sacrifice^ not
of victims and ceremonies, as the way of the world in
religion then was, but : Offer the sacrifice of righ-
teousmss I The great concern of the New Testament
is likewise righteousness, but righteousness reached
through particular means, righteousness by the power of
Christ. A sentence which sums up the New Testament,
and assigns the ground whereon the Christian Church
stands, is, as we have elsewhere said,^ this : Let every one
that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity ! If
we are to take a sentence which in like manner sums up
the Old Testament, such a sentence is this : O ye that
love the Eternal, see that ye hate the thing which is evil! to
him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the
salvation of God.
But instantly there will be raised the objection that
this is morality, not religion ; morality, ethics, conduct,
being by many people, and above all by theologians,
carefully contra-distinguished from religion, which is sup-
posed in some special way to be connected with proposi-
tions about the Godhead of the Eternal Son, like those
* St. Paul and Protestantism^ p. 159.
02
2(x UTERATURE AND DOGMA,
for which the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester
•want to do something, or propositions about the person-
ality of God, or about election or justification. Religion,
liowever, means simply either a binding to righteousness,
or else a serious attending to righteousness and dwelling
«upon it ; which of these two it most nearly means,
depends upon the view we take of the word's derivation ;
but it means one of them, and they are really much the
same. And the antithesis between ethical and religious is
thus quite a false one. Ethical means pi'adical^ it relates
to practice or conduct passing mto habit or disposition.
Religious also means practical^ but practical in a still
higher degree ; and the right antithesis to both ethical
and religious, is the same as the right antithesis to
practical : namely, theoretical.
Now, the propositions of the Bishops of Winchester
and Gloucester are theoretical, and they therefore are
veiy properly opposed to propositions which are moral
or ethical ; but they are with equal propriety opposed to
propositions which are religious. They differ in kind
from what is religious, while what is ethical agrees in
kind with it. But is there, therefore, no difference between
what is ethical, or morality, and religion ? There is a
difference ; a difference of degree. Religion, if we fol-
low the intention of human thought and human language
RELIGION GIVEN,
in the use of the word, is ethics heightened, enkindM,
ht up by feeling ; the passage from moraHty to- religion is
made, when to morality is applied emotion. And the
true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality^ but
uwrality touched by emotion. And this new elevation and
inspiration of morality is well marked by the word
* righteousness.' Conduct is the word of common life,
morality is the word of philosophical disquisition,
righteousness is the word of religion.
Some people, indeed, are for calling all high thought
and feeling by the name of religion ; according to that
saying of Goethe : * He who has art and science, has
also religion.' But let us use words as mankind gjenerally
use them. We may call art and science touched by
emotion religion^ if we will ; as we may make the instinct
of self-preservation, into which M. Littr^ t-aces up all our
private affections, include the perfecting ourselves by the
study of what is beautiful in art ; and the reproductive
instinct, into which he traces up all our social affections,
include the perfecting mankind by political science.
But men have not yet got to that stage, \vhen we think
much of either their private or their social affections at
all, except as exercising themselves in conduct ; neither
do we yet think of religion as otherwise exercising itself.
When mankind speak of religion, they have before
22 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
their mind an activity engaged, not with the whole
of life, but with that three-fourths of life which is conduct.
This is wide enough range for one word, surely ; but at
any rate, let us at present limit ourselves as mankind do.
And if some one now asks : But what is this applica-
tion of emotion to morality, and by what marks may we
know it ? — we can quite easily satisfy him ; not, indeed,
by any disquisition of our owti, but in a much better way,
by examples. 'By the dispensation of Providence to
mankind,' says Quintilian, 'goodness gives men most
pleasure.' ^ That is morality. ' The path of the just is as
the shining light which shineth more and more unto the
perfect day.' That is morality touched with emotion, or
religion, ' Hold off from sensuality,' says Cicero ; ' for,
if you have given yourself up to it, you will find yourself
unable to think of anything else.' ^ That is morality.
* Blessed are the pure in heart,' says Jesus; 'for they shall
see God,' That is religion. * We all want to live honest-
ly, but cannot,' says the Greek maxim -maker. ^ That
is morality. ' O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death ! ' says St. Paul. That is
* Dedit hoc Providentia hominibus munus, ut honesta magis
juvarent.
' Sis a venereis amoribus aversus ; quibus si te dedideris, non
aliud quidquam possis cogitare quam illud quod diligis.
* Qi\o,u^v KaAdJs Crjv nduT^s, aAA' ov SwdixeQa.
RELIGION GIVEN. 23
_j
religion. ' Would thou wertof as good conversation in deed
as in word ! ' is morality.^ * Not every one that saith unto
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven,
but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in
Heaven ! ' is religion. * Live as you were meant to live ! '
is morality.^ * Lay hold on eternal life ! ' is religion.
Or we may take the contrast within the bounds of
the Bible itself. 'Love not sleep, lest thou come to
poverty,' is morality ; ' My meat is to do the will of him
that sent me, and to finish his work,' is religion. Or we
may even observe a third stage between these two stages,
which shows to us the transition from one to the other.
* If thou givest thy soul the desires that please her, she
will make thee a laughing-stock to thine enemies;' — that
is morality. * He that resisteth pleasure crowneth his
life ; '—that is morality with the tone heightened, passing,
or trying to pass, into religion. ' Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; ' — there the passage
is made, and we have religion. Our religious examples
are here all taken from the Bible, and from the Bible such
examples can best be taken, but we might also find them
elsewhere. * Oh that my lot might lead me in the path
of holy innocence of thought and deed, the path which
august laws ordain, laws which in the highest heaven had
' Ei6' l^aQa, aucppwi/ tpya rois \6yois iaa. '^ Zr^aov /coto (pvaiy.
24 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
their birth, neither did the race of mortal man beget them,
nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep ; the power of
God is mighty in them, and groweth not old ! ' That is
from Sophocles, but it is as much religion as any of the
things which we have quoted as religious. Like them, it
is not the mere enjoining of conduct, but it is this en-
joining touched, strengthened, and almost transformed
by the addition of feeling.
So what is meant by the application of emotion to
morality has now, it is to be hoped, been made clear. The
next question will, I suppose, be : But how does one get
the application made ? Why, how does one get to feel
much about any matter whatever ? By dwelling upon it,
by stapng our thoughts upon it, by having it perpetually in
our mind. The very words mind, memory, remain, come,
probably, all from the same root, from the notion of
staying, attending. Possibly even the word man comes
from the same ; so entirely does the idea of humanity,
of intelligence, of looking before and after, of raising
oneself out of the flux of things, rest upon the idea of
steadying oneself, concentrating oneself, making order in
the chaos of one's impressions, by attending to one impres-
sion rather than the other. The rules of conduct, of
morality, were themselves, philosophers suppose, reached
in this way j — the notion of a whole self as opposed to a
RELIGION GIVEN. 25
partial self, a best self to an inferior, to a momentary self a
permanent self requiring the restraint of impulses a man
would naturally have indulged ; — because, by attending \o
his life, man found it had a scope beyond the wants of the
present moment. Suppose it was so ; then the first man
who, as * a being,' comparatively, * of a large discourse,
looking before and after,' controlled the native, instanta-
neous, mechanical impulses of the instinct of self-preser
vation, controlled the native, instantaneous, mechanical
impulses of the reproductive instinct, had morality re-
vealed to him.
But there is a long way from this to that habitual
dwelling on the rules thus reached, that constant turning
them over in the mind, that near and lively experimental
sense of their beneficence, which communicates emotion to
our thought of them, and thus incalculably heightens their
power. And the more mankind attended to the claims
of that part of our nature which does not belong to con-
duct, properly so called, or to morality (and we have seen
that, after all, about one-fourth of our nature is in this
case), the more they would have distractions to take off
their thoughts from those moral conclusions which all
races of men, one may say, seem to have reached, and to
prevent these moral concltisions fi-om being quickened by
emotion, and thus becoming religious.
26 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Only with one people, — the people from whom we get
the Bible, — these distractions did not happen.
The Old Testament, I suppose nobody will deny, is filled
with the word and thought of righteousness. ' In the
way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof
is no death ; ' ' Righteousness tendeth to life ; ' * The
wicked man troubleth his own flesh ; ' ' The way of trans-
gressors is hard ; ' — nobody will deny that those texts
may stand for the fundamental and ever-recurring idea of
the Old Testament. No people ever felt so strongly as
the people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people,
that conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest
concern ; no people ever felt so strongly that succeeding,
going right, hitting the mark in this great concern, was
the way of peace, the highest possible satisfaction. ' He
that keepeth the law, happy is he ; its ways are ways of
pleasantness, and all its paths are peace ; if thou hadst
walked in its ways, thou shouldst have dwelt in peace for
ever! ' Jeshurun, one of the ideal names of their race, is
the upright ; Israel, the other and greater, is the wrestler
with God, he w^ho has known the contention and strain
it costs to stand upright. That mysterious personage, by
whom their history first touches the hill of Sion, is Mel-
RELIGION GIVEN. 27
chisedek, the righteous king ; their holy city, Jerusalem,
is the foundation, or vision, or inheritance, of that which
righteousness achieves,— /^^^r^. The law of righteous-
ness was such an object of attention to them, that its
words were to * be in their heart, and thou shalt teach
them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest
by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou
risest up.' To keep them ever in mind, they wore them,
went about with them, made talismans of them : ' Bind
them upon thy fingers, bind them about thy neck ; write
them upon the table of thine heart ! ' ' Take fast hold of
her,' they said of the doctrine of conduct, or righteous-
ness, '• let her not go ! keep her, for she is thy life!'
People who thus spoke of righteousness could not but
have had their minds long and deeply engaged with it ;
much more than the generality of mankind, who have
nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the notion of
morals or conduct. And, if they were so deeply attentive
to it, one thing could not fail to strike them. It is this :
the very great part in righteousness which belongs, we
may say, to not ourselves. In the first place, we did not
make ourselves, or our nature, or conduct as tlie object of
three-fourths of that nature ; we did not provide that
happiness should follow conduct, as it undeniably does ;
28 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
that the sense of succeeding, going right, hitting the
mark, in conduct, should give satisfaction, and a very high
satisfaction, just as really as the sense of doing well in
his work gives pleasure to a poet or painter, or accom-
plishing what he tries gives pleasure to a man who is
learning to ride or shoot ; or as satisfying his hunger, also,
gives pleasure to a man who is hungry.
All this we did not make \ and, in the next place, our
dealing with it at all, when it is made, is not wholly, or
even nearly wholly, in our power. Our conduct is
capable, irrespective of what we can ourselves certainly
answer for, of almost infinitely different degrees of force
and energy in the performance of it, of lucidity and
vividness in the perception of it, of fulness in the satis-
faction from it ; and these degrees may vary from day
to day, and quite incalculably. Facilities and felicities, —
whence do they come? suggestions and stimulations, —
where do they tend ? hardly a day passes but we have
some experience of them. And so Henry More was
led to say ' that there was something about us that knew
better, often, what we would be at than we ourselves.*
For instance : everyone can understand how health and
freedom from pain may give energy for conduct, and
how a neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it ; it does not
depend on ourselves, indeed, whether we have the
RELIGION GIVEN, 29
neuralgia or not, but we can understand its impairing
our spirit. But the strange thing is, that with the same
neuralgia we may find ourselves one day without spirit
and energy for conduct, and another day with them. So
that we may most truly say : * Left to ourselves, we sink
and perish ; visited, we lift up our heads and live.' ^ And
we may well give ourselves, in grateful and devout self-
surrender, to that by which we are thus visited. So much
is there incalculable, so much that belongs to not ourselves ^
in conduct ; and the more we attend to conduct, and the
more we value it, the more we shall feel this.
The not ourselves^ which is in us and in the world round
us, has almost everywhere, as far as we can see, struck
the minds of men as they awoke to consciousness, and
has inspired them with awe. Everyone knows how the
mighty natural objects which most took their regards
became the objects to which this awe addressed itself.
Our very word God is a reminiscence of these times, when
men invoked * The Brilliant on high,' sublime hoc candens
quod invocent omnes Joveni, as the power representing to
them that which transcended the limits of their narrow
selves, and that by which they lived and moved and had
their being. Everyone knows of what differences of ope-
ration men's dealing with this power has in different
* Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero erigimur et vivimus.
30 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
places and times shown itself capable ; how here they
have been moved by the not ourselves to a cruel terror,
there to a timid religiosity, there again to a play of imagina-
tion ; almost always, however, connecting with it, by some
string or other, conduct.
But we are not writing a history of religion ; we are
only tracing its effect on the language of the men from
whom we get the Bible. At the time they produced those
documents which give to the Old Testament its power
and true character, the not ourselves which weighed upon
the mind of Israel, and enaged its awe, was the not our-
selves by which we get the sense for righteousness and
whence we find the help to do right. This conception was
indubitably what lay at the bottom of that remarkable
change which, under Moses, at a certain stage of their
religious history, befell their mode of naming God ; this
was what they intended in that name, which we wrongly
convey either without translation, hy Jehovah, which gives
us the notion of a mere mythological deity, or by a wrong
translation. Lord, which gives us the notion of a magnified
and non-natural man. The name they used was : The
Eternal.
Philosophers dispute whether moral ideas, as they call
them, the simplest ideas of conduct and righteousness
which now seem instinctive, did not all grow, were not
RELIGION GIVEN.
once inchoate, embryo, dubious, unformed ; that may
have been so; the question is an interesting one for
science. But the interesting question for conduct is
whether those ideas are unformed or formed 7i(mi ; they
are formed now, and they were formed when the Hebrews
named the power, out of themselves, which pressed
upon their spirit : The Eternal. Probably the life of
Abraham, the friend of Gody however imperfectly the Bible
traditions by themselves convey it to us, was a decisive
step forwards in the development of these ideas of righ-
teousness. Probably this was the moment when such
ideas became fixed and solid for the Hebrew people, and
marked it permanently off from all others who had not
made the same step. But long before the first beginnings
of recorded history, long before the oldest word of Bible
literature, these ideas must have been at work; we know it
by the result, although they may have for a long while
been but rudimentary. In Israel's earliest history and
earliest literature, under the name of Eloah, Elohim, The
Mighty, there may have lain and matured, there did lie
and mature, ideas of God more as a moral power, more
as a power connected above everything with conduct
and righteousness, than were entertained by other races ;
not only can we judge by the result that this must have
been so, but we can see that it was so. Still their name,
32 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
The Mighty^ does not in itself involve any true and deep
religious ideas, any more than our name, The Brillia?it.
With The Eternal it is otherwise. For what did they
mean by the Eternal; the Eternal what 7 The Eternal
cause ? Alas, these poor people were not Archbishops of
York. They meant the Eternal righteous, who loveth
righteousness. They had dwelt upon the thought of con-
duct and right and wrong, till the not ourselves which
is in us and around us, became to them adorable
eminently and altogether as a power which makes for
righteousness \ which makes for it unchangeably and
eternally, and is therefore called The Eternal.
There is not a particle of metaphysics in their use of
this name, any more than in their conception of the 7iot
ourselves to which they attached it. Both came to them,
not from abstruse reasoning, but from experience, and
from experience in the plain region of conduct. Theolo-
gians with metaphysical heads render Israel's Eternal by
the self -existent, and Israel's not ourselves by the absolute,
and attribute to Israel their own subtleties. According
to them, Israel had his head full of the necessity of a first
cause, and therefore said, The Eterjial \ as, again, they
imagine him looking out into the world, noting every-
where the marks of design and adaptation to his wants,
and reasoning out and inferring thence the fatherhood of
^RELIGION GIVEN. 33
God. All these fancies come from an excessive turn for
reasoning, and a neglect of observing men's actual course
of thinking and way of using words. Israel, at this stage
when The Eternal was revealed to him, inferred nothing,
reasoned out nothing ; he felt and experienced. When
he begins to speculate, in the schools of Rabbinism, he
quickly shows how much less native talent than the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester he has for this
perilous business.
Happily, when the Eternal was revealed to him, he had
not yet begun to speculate. He personified, indeed, his
Eternal, for he was strongly moved, and an orator and
poet. Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is, says
Goethe, and so man tends always to represent everything
under his own figure. In poetry and eloquence man may
and must follow this tendency, but in science it often
leads him astray. Israel, however, did not scientifically
predicate personality of God ; he would not even have
had a notion what was meant by it. He called him the
maker of all things, who gives drink to all out of his plea-
sures as out of a river ; but he was led to this by no
theory of a first cause. The grandeur of the spectacle
given by the world, the grandeur of the sense of its all
being not ourselves, being above and beyond ourselves
and immeasurably dwarfing us, a man of imagination
34 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
instinctively personifies as a single mighty living and
productive power; as Goethe tells us that the words
which rose naturally to his lips, when he stood on the top
of the Brocken, were : ' Lord, what is man, that thou
mindest him, or the son of man, that thou makest account
of him ? ' But Israel's confessing and extolling of this
power came not even from his imaginative feeling, but
came first from his gratitude for righteousness. To one
who knows what conduct is, it is a joy to be alive ; the
not ourselves, which by revealing to us righteousness
makes our happiness, adds to the boon this glorious
world to be righteous in.
That is the notion at the bottom of the Hebrew's praise
of a Creator; and if we attend, we can see this quite clearly.
Wisdom and understanding mean, for Israel, ' the fear of
the Eternal-, ' and the fear of the Eternal means for him ' to
depart from evil,' righteousness. Righteousness, order, con-
duct, is for him the essence of TheEter?ial, and the source of
all man's happiness ; and it is only as a further and natural
working of this essence that he conceives creation. ' The
fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom; and to depart from
evil, that is understanding ! Happy is the man that
findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding !
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and
happy is every one that retaineth her. The Eternal by
RELIGION GIVEN. 35
wisdom hath fo'unded the earthy by understanding hath he
established the heavens ; ' — and so the Bible writer passes
into the account of creation. It all comes to him from
the idea of righteousness.
And it is the same with all the language our Hebrew
speaker uses. God is a father, because the power in and
around us which makes for righteousness is indeed best
described by the name of this authoritative but yet tender
and protecting relation. So, too, with the intense fear
and abhorrence of idolatry. Conduct, righteousness, is,
above all, an inward motion and rule \ no sensible forms
can represent it, or help us to it ; such attempts at repre-
sentation can only distract us from it. So, too, with the
sense of the oneness of God. * Hear, O Israel ! The
Lord our God is one Lord,* People think that in this
unity of God, — this monotheistic idea, as they call it, —
they have certainly got metaphysics at last. It is nothing
of the kind. The monotheistic idea of Israel is simply
seriousness. There are, indeed, many aspects of the not
ourselves ; but Israel regarded one aspect of it only, that
by which it makes for righteousness. He had the advan-
tage, to be sure, that with this aspect three-fourths of
human life is concerned. But there are other aspects
which may be taken. ' Frail and striving mortality,' says
the elder Pliny, in a noble passage, ' mindful of its own-
D 2
36 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
weakness, has distinguished these aspects severally, so as
for each man to be able to attach himself to the divine
by this or that part, according as he has most need.'
That is an apology for polytheism, as answering to man's
many-sidedness. But Israel felt that being thus many-
sided degenerated into an imaginative play, and bewildered
what Israel recognised as our sole religious consciousness,
— the consciousness of right. ' I^et thine eyelids look
right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee 3
turn not to the right hand nor to the left ; remove thy
foot from evil ! '
Does not Ovid say,^ in excuse for the immorality of his
verses, that the sight and mention of the gods themselves,
— the rulers of human life, — often raised immoral thoughts ?
and so the sight and mention of all aspects of the not
ourselves must Yet how tempting are many of these
aspects ! Even at this time of day, the grave authorities
of the University of Cambridge are so struck by one of
them, that of pleasure, life and fecundity, — of the hominum
divomque vohiptas, alma Ve?tus, — that they set it publicly
up as an object for their scholars to fix their minds upon,
» Tristia, ii. 287.
Quis locus est templis augustior ? hasc quoque vitet
In culpam si qua est ingeniosa suam.
See the whole passage.
RELIGION GIVEN. 37
and to compose verses in honour of. That is all very well
at present ; but with this natural bent in the authorities of
the University of Cambridge, and in the Indo-European
race to which they belong, where would they be now if it
had not been for Israel, and the stern check which Israel
put upon the glorification and divinisation of this natural
bent of mankind, this attractive aspect of the not ourselves ?
Perhaps going in procession, Vice-Chancellor, bedels,
masters, scholars, and all, in spite of their Professor of
Moral Philosophy, to the temple of Aphrodite ! Nay,
and very likely Mr. Birks himself, his brows crowned with
myrtle and scarcely a shade of melancholy on his counte-
nance, would have been going along with them ! It is
Israel and his seriousness that have saved the authorities of
the University of Cambridge from carrying their divinisation
of pleasure to these lengths, or from making more of it, in-
deed, than a mere passing intellectual play; and even this
play Israel would have beheld with displeasure, saying :
O turn away mine eyes lest they behold vanity^ but quicken
Thou me in thy law I So earnestly and exclusively were
Israel's regards bent on one aspect of the not ourselves : its
aspect as a power making for conduct, righteousness.
Israel's Eternal was the Eternal which says : ^ To depart
from evil, that is understanding ! ' * Be ye holy^ for I am
holy !' Now, as righteousness is but a heightened conduct,
38 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
so holiness is but a heightened righteousness ; a more
finished, entire, and awe-filled righteousness. It was such
a righteousness which was Israel's ideal ; and therefore
it was that Israel said, not indeed what our Bibles make
him say, but this : ' Hear, O Israel ! The Eternal is our
God, The Eternal alone.^
And in spite of his turn for personification, his want of
a clear boundary line between poetry and science, his
inaptitude to express even abstract notions by other than
highly concrete terms, — in spite of these scientific disad-
vantages, or rather, perhaps, because of them, because he
had no talent for abstruse reasoning to lead him astray, —
the spirit and tongue of Israel kept a propriety, a reserve,
a sense of the inadequacy of language in conveying man's
ideas of God, which contrast strongly with the licence of
affirmation in our Western theology. * The high and
holy One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy,' is
far more proper and felicitous language, than, * the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe,' just because it
far less attempts to be precise, but keeps to the language
of poetry and does not essay the language of science.
As he had developed his idea of God from personal ex-
perience, Israel knew what we, who have developed our
idea from his words about it, so often are ignorant of :
that his words were but thrown out at a vast object of
RELIGION GIVEN. 39
consciousness, which he could not fully grasp, and which
he apprehended clearly by one point alone, — that it made
for the great concern of life, conduct. How little we know
of it besides, how impenetrable is the course of its ways
with us, how we are baffled in our attempts to name and
describe it, how, when we personify it and call it * the
moral and intelligent Governor of the universe,' we pre-
sently find it not to be a person as man conceives of
person, nor moral as man conceives of moral, nor intelli-
gent as man conceives of intelligent, nor a governor as
man conceives of governors, — all this, which scientific
theology loses sight of, Israel, who had but poetry and
eloquence, and no system, and who did not mind con-
tradicting himself, knew. *Is it any pleasure to the
Almighty, that thou art righteous ? ' What a blow to our
ideal of that magnified and non-natural man, * the moral
and intelligent Governor ! ' Say what we can about God,
say our best, we have yet, Israel knew, to add instantly :
* Lo, these are parts of his ways ; btU how little aportioti
is heard of him ! * Yes, indeed, Israel remembered that,
far better than our bishops do. * Canst thou by searching
find out God ; canst thou find out the perfection of the
Almighty? It is more high than heaven, what canst
thou do ? deeper than hell, what canst thou know ? '
Will it be said, experience might also have shown to
40 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
Israel a not ourselves which did not make for his happiness,
but rather made against it, baffled his claims to it? But
no man, as we have elsewhere remarked, who simply
follows his own consciousness, is aware of any claims^ any
rights, whatever; 1 what he gets of good makes him thank-
ful, what he gets of ill seems to him natural. It is true,
the not ourselves of which he is thankfully conscious he
inevitably speaks of and speaks to as a man; for '■man never
knows how anthropomorphic he is.'' As time proceeds,
imagination and reasoning keep working upon this sub-
structure, and build from it a magnified and non-natural
man. Attention is then drawn, afterwards, to causes out-
side ourselves which seem to make for sin and suffering;
and then either these causes have to be reconciled by
some highly ingenious scheme with the magnified and
non-natural man's power, or a second magnified and non-
natural man has to be supposed, who pulls the contrary
way to the first. So arise Satan and his angels. But all
this is secondary, and comes much later; Israel, the
founder of our religion, did not begin with this. He
began with experience. He knew from thankful expe-
i rience the not ourselves which makes for righteousness,
. and knew how little we know about God besides.
* Culture ana Anarchy, p. 214,
RELIGION GIVEN. 41
4-
The language of the Bible, then, is literary, not scien-
tific language ; language thrown out at an object of con-
sciousness not fully grasped, which inspired emotion.
Evidently, if the object be one not fully to be grasped,
and one to inspire emotion, the language of figure and
feeling ^vill satisfy us better about it, will cover more of
what we seek to express, than the language of literal fact
and science ; the language of science about it will be
below what we feel to be the truth.
The question however has arisen and confronts us :
what was the scientific basis of fact for this conscious-
ness. When we have once satisfied ourselves both as to
the tentative, poetic way in which the Bible personages
used language, and also as to their having no pretensions
to metaphysics at all, let us, therefore, when there is
this question raised as to the scientific account of what
they had before their minds, be content with a very
unpretending answer. And in this way such a phrase
as that which we have formerly used concerning God,
and have been much blamed for using, — the phrase,
namely, that, ' for science, God is simply the stream of
tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their bei?ig,' —
may be allowed, and even prove useful. Certainly it
42 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
is inadequate ; certainly it is a less proper phrase than,
for instance : ' Clouds and darkness are round about him,
righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his seat.' ^
But then it is, in however humble a degree and with how-
ever narrow a reach, a scientific definition, which the
other is not. The phrase, ' A Personal First Cause, the
moral and intelligent Governor of the universe,' has also,
when applied to God, the character, no doubt, of a scien-
tific definition ; but then it goes far beyond what is ad-
mittedly certain and verifiable, which is what we mean by
scientific. It attempts far too much ; if we want here,
as we do want, to have what is admittedly certain and
verifiable, we must content ourselves with very little. No
one will say, that it is admittedly certain and verifiable,
that there is a personal first cause, the moral and intelli-
gent governor of the universe, whom we may call God if
we will. But that all things seem to us to have what we
call a law of their being, and to tend to fulfil it, is certain
' Jt has been urged that if this personifying mode of expression
is more proper and adequate, it must also be more scientifically-
exact. But surely it must on reflexion appear that this is by no
means so. Wordsworth calls the earth ' the mighty mother of
mankind,' and the geographers call her ' an oblate spheroid ; '
Wordsworth's expression is more proper and adequate to convey
what men feel about the earth, but it is not therefore the more
scientifically exact.
RELIGION GIVEN. 43
and admitted ; though whether we will call this God or
not, is a matter of choice. Suppose, however, we call it
God, we then give the name of God to a certain and
admitted reality ; this, at least, is an advantage.
And the notion does, in fact, enter into the term God,
in men's common use of it. To please God, to serve
God, to obey God's will, does mean to follow a law of
things which is found in conscience, and wl|ich is an in-
dication, irrespective of our arbitrary wish and fancy, of
what we ought to do. There is, then, a real power which
makes for righteousness ; and it is the greatest of realities
for us. When Paul says, our business is ' to serve the
spirit of God,' ' to serve the living and true God ; ' and
when Epictetus says : 'What do I want? — to acquaint
myself with the true order of things, and comply with it,'
they both mean, so far, the same, in that they both mean
we should obey a tendency, which is not ourselves but
which appears in our consciousness, by which things fulfil
the real law of their being.
It is true, the not ourselves, by which things fulfil the
real law of their being, extends a great deal beyond that
sphere where alone we usually think of it. That is, a
man may disserve God, disobey indications not of our
own making but which appear, if we attend, in our con-
sciousness,— he may disobey, I say, such indications of
44 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
the real law of our being in other spheres besides the
sphere of conduct. He does disobey them, when he sings
a hymn like : My Jesus to know, and feel his blood flow,
or, indeed, like nine-tenths of our hymns, or when he
frames and maintains a blundering and miserable con-
stitution of society, as well as when he commits some
plain breach of the moral law. That is, he may disobey
them in art j^nd science as well as in conduct. But he
attends, and the generality of men attend, only to the
indications of a true law of our being as to conduct ; and
hardly at all to indications, though they as really exist, of
a true law of our being on its aesthetic and intelligential
side. The reason is, that the moral side, though not
more real, is so much larger ; taking in, as we have said,
at least three-fourths of life. Now, the indications on this
moral side of that tendency, not of our making, by which
things fulfil the law of their being, we do very much mean
to denote and to sum up when we speak of the will of
God, pleasing God, servif7g God. Let us keep firm footing
on this basis of plain fact, narrow though it may be.
To feel that one is fulfilling in any way the law of one's
being, that one is succeeding and hitting the mark, brings
us, we know, happiness ; to feel this in regard to so great
a thing as conduct, brings, of course, happiness propor-
tionate to the thing's greatness. We have already had
RELIGION GIVEN. 45
Quintilian's witness, how right conduct gives joy. Who
could value knowledge more than Goethe ? but he marks
it as being without question a lesser source of joy than
conduct; conduct he ranks with health as beyond all
compare primary. ' Nothing, after health and virtue^ he
says, *can give so much satisfaction as learning and
knowing.' Nay, and Bishop Butler, at the view of the
happiness from conduct, breaks free from all that hesitancy
and depression which so commonly hangs on his mas-
terly thinking. * Self-love, methinks, should be alarmed !
May she not pass over greater pleasures than those she is
so wholly taken up with ? ' And Bishop Wilson, always
hitting the right nail on the head in matters of this sort,
remarks that, ' if it were not for the practical difficulties
attending it, virtue would hardly be distinguishable from a
kvid of sensuality.^ The practical difficulties are indeed
exceeding great j plain as is the course, and high the
prize, v/e all find ourselves daily led to say with the
Imitation : * Would that for one single day we had lived
in this world as we ought ! ' Yet the course is so evi
dently plain, and the prize so high, that the same Imita-
tion cries out presently : * If a man would but take notice,
what peace he brings himself, and what joy to others,
merely by managing himself right ! ' And for such happi-
ness, since certainly we ourselves did not make it, we
46 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
instinctively feel grateful ; according to that remark of one
of the wholesomest and truest of moralists, Barrow : * He
is not a man, who doth not delight to make some returns
thither whence he hath found great kindness.' And this
sense of gratitude, again, is itself an addition to our
happiness ! So strong, altogether, is the witness and sanc-
tion happiness gives to going right in conduct, to fulfilling,
so far as conduct is concerned, the law indicated to us of
our being ; and there can be no sanction to compare, for
force, with the strong sanction of happiness, if it is true
what Bishop Butler, who is here but the mouthpiece of
humanity itself, says so irresistibly : ' It is manifest that
nothing can be of consequence to mankind, or any crea-
ture, but happiness/
And now let us see how exactly Israel's perceptions
about God follow and confirm this simple line, which we
have here reached quite independently. First ; ' It is
joy to the just to do judgment.' Then : ' It becometh
well the just to be thankful.^ Finally : ' K pleasant thing
it is to be thankful.' What can be simpler than this, and
at the same time more solid .? But again : ' There is
nothing sweeter than to take heed unto the commandments
of the Eternal.' And then: 'Thou art my portion, O
Eternal! at midnight will I rise \o give thanks unto thee
because of thy righteous judgments.' And lastly : '' O
RELIGION GIVEN. 47
I
praise the Eternal^ for it is a good thing to sing praises
unto our God T Why, these are the very same pro-
positions as the others, only with a power and depth
of emotion added ! Emotion has been applied to
morality.
God is here really, at bottom, a deeply moved way of
saying conduct or righteousness. ' Trust in God ' is trust
in the law of conduct ; * delight in the EternaP is, in a
deeply moved way of expression, the happiness we all feel
to spring from conduct. Attending to conduct, to judg-
ment, makes the attender feel that it is joy to do it;
attending to it more still, makes him feel that it is the
commandment of the Eternal, and that the joy got
from it is joy got from fulfilling the commandment
of the Eternal. The thankfulness for this joy is
thankfulness to the Eternal ; and to the Eternal, again,
is due that further joy which comes from this thank-
fulness. * The fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom ; and
to depart from evil, that is understanding.' ^ The fear
of the EternaV and ' To depart from eviP here mean, and
are put to mean, and by the very laws of Hebrew
composition which make the second phrase in a parallel-
ism repeat the first in other words, they must mean, just
the same thing. Yet what man of soul, after he had once
risen to feel that to depart from evil was to walk in awful
48 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
observance of an enduring clue, within us and without us,
which leads to happiness, but would prefer to say, instead
of ' to depart from evil,' * the fear of the Eternal ? '
Henceforth, then, Israel transferred to this Eternal all
his obligations. Instead of saying : 'Whoso keepeth the
commandment keepeth his own soul,' he rather said, ' My
soul, wait thou still upon God^ for of him cometh my sal-
vation ! ' Instead of saying : ' Bind them (the laws of
righteousness) continually upon thine heart, and tie them
about thy neck ! ' he rather said, ' Have I not remembered
Thee on my bed, and thought of Thee when I was
waking? ' The obligation of a grateful and devout self-
surrender to the Eternal replaced all sense of obligation
to one's own better self, one's own permanent welfare.
The moralist's rule : ' Take thought for your permanent,
not your momentary, well-being,' became now : * Honour
the Eternal) not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine
own pleasure, nor speaking thine own. words ! ' That is,
with Israel religion replaced morality.
It is true, out of the humble yet divine ground of
attention to conduct, of care for what in conduct is right
and wrong, grew morality and religion both; but, from the
time the soul felt the motive of religion, it dropped and
could not but drop the other. And the motive of doing
right, to a sincere soul, is now really no longer his own
RELIGION GIVEN. 49
welfare, but to please God; and it bewilders his con
sciousness if you tell him that he does right out of self-
love. So that as we have said that the first man who, as
' a being of a large discourse, looking before and after,'
controlled the blind momentary impulses of the instinct
of self-preservation, controlled the blind momentary im-
pulses of the sexual instinct, had morality revealed to
him ; so in like manner we may say, that the first man
who was thrilled with gratitude devotion and awe at the
sense of joy and peace, not of his own making, which
followed the exercise of this self-control, had religion re-
vealed to him. And, for us at least, this man was Israel.
And here, as we have already pointed out the falseness
of the common antithesis between ethical and religious,
let us anticipate the objection that the religion now
spoken of is but natural religion, by pointing out the
falseness of the common antithesis, also, between natural
and revealed. For that in us which is really natural is,
in truth, revealed. We awake to the consciousness of it, we
are aware of it coming forth in our mind ; but we feel that
we did not make it, that it is discovered to us, that it is
what it is whether we will or no. If we are little concerned
about it, we say -it is natural \ if much, we say it is re-
vealed. But the difference between the t\vo is not one of
kind, only of degree. The real antithesis, to natural and
E
so LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
revealed alike, is invented^ artificial. Religion springing out
of an experience of the power, the grandeur, the necessity
of righteousness, is revealed religion, whether we find it
in Sophocles or Isaiah ; * the will of mortal men did not
beget it, neither shall oblivion ever put it to sleep.' A
system of theological notions about personality, essence,
existence, consubstantiality, is artificial religion, and is the
proper opposite to revealed-, since it is a religion which
comes forth in no one's consciousness, but is invented by
the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, and person-
ages of their stamp, — able men with uncommon talents
for abstruse reasoning. This rehgion is in no sense re-
vealed, just because it is in no sense natural ; and revealed
religion is properly so named, just in proportion as it is in
a pre-eminent degree natural.
The religion of the Bible, therefore, is well said to be
revealed^ because the great natuial truth, that '•Righteous-
ness tendeth to life,' is seized and exhibited there with
such incomparable force and efficacy. All, or very nearly
all, the nations of mankind have recognised the import-
ance of conduct, and have attributed to it a natural obli-
gation. They, however, looked at conduct, not as some-
thing full of happiness and joy, but as something one
could not manage to do without. But : ' Zion heard of
it and rejoiced, and the daughters of Judah were glad,
RELIGION GIVEN.
because of thy judgments O Eternal ! ' Happiness is our
being's end and aim, and no one has ever come near
Israel in feeling, and in making others feel, that to
righteousness belongs happiness ! The prodigies and the
marvellous of Bible-religion are common to it with all
religions ; the love of righteousness, in this eminency, is
its own.
The real germ of religious consciousness, therefore,
out of which sprang Israel's name for God, to which the
records of his history adapted themselves, and which
came to be clothed upon, in time, with a mighty growth
of poetry and tradition, was a consciousness of the not
ourselves which makes for righteousness. And the way to
convince oneself of this is by studying their literature
with a fair mind, and with the tact which letters, surely,
alone can give. For the thing turns upon understanding
the manner in which men have thought, their way of
using words, and what they mean by them. And if to
know letters is to know the best that has been thought
and uttered in the world, then by knowing letters we become
acquainted not only with the history, but also with the
scope and powers, of the instruments men employ in
thinking and speaking. And this is just what is sought for.
52 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
And with the sort of experience thus gained, objections,
as we have said, will be found not so much to be refuted
by logical reasoning as to fall of themselves. Is it ob-
jected : * Why, if the Hebrews of the Bible had thus emi
nently the sense for righteousness, does it not equally dis-
tinguish the Jews now ? ' But does not experience show
us, how entirely a change of circumstances may change a
people's character ; and have the modern Jews lost more
of what distinguished their ancestors, or even so much,
as the modern Greeks of what distinguished theirs?
Where is now, among the Greeks, the dignity of life of
Pericles, the dignity of thought and of art of Phidias and
Plato? Is it objected, that the Jews' God was not the
enduring power that makes for righteousness, but only
their tribal God, who gave them the victory in the battle
and plagued them that hated them? But how, then,
comes their literature to be full of such things as : ' Shew
me thy ways, O Eternal, and teach me thy paths ; let itu
tegrity and uprightness preserve me, for I put my trust in
thee ! if I incline unto wickedness with my heart, the
Eternal will not hear me, for they who do no wickedness
walk in his ways.' From the sense that with men thus
guided and going right in goodness it could not but
be well, that their leaf could not wither, and that
whatsoever they did must prosper, would naturally
RELIGION GIVEN. 53
come the sense that in their wars with an enemy the
enemy should be put to confusion and they should
triumph. But how, out of the mere sense that their
enemy should be put to confusion and they should
triumph, could the desire for goodness come ? Is it ob-
jected, that *the law of the Lord' was a positive traditionary
code to them, standing as a mechanical rule which held
them in awe ? that their *fear of the Lord' was superstitious
dread of an assumed magnified and non-natural man?
But why, then, are they always saying : * Teach me thy
law, open mine eyes, make me to understand wisdom
secretly I ' if all the law they were thinking of stood stark
and fixed before their eyes already ? And what could they
mean by : * I will ioz'e thee, O Eternal, my strength ! ' if
the fear they meant was not the awe-filled observance
from deep attachment, but a servile terror ? Is it ob-
jected, that their conception of righteousness was a narrow
and rigid one, centring mainly in what they called Judg-
ment : ' Hate the evil and love the good, and establish
judgment in the gate ! ' so that ' evil,' for them, did not
take in all faults whatever of heart and conduct, but meant
chiefly oppression, graspingness, a violent mendacious
tongue, insolent and riotous excess? True ; their concep-
tion of righteousness was much of this kind, and it was
narrow. But whoever sincerely attends to conduct, along
54 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
however limited a line, is on his way to bring under the
eye of conscience all conduct whatever ; and already, in
the Old Testament, the somewhat monotonous inculcation
of the social virtues of judgment and justice is con-
tinually broken through by deeper movements of personal
religion. Every time that the words contrition or humility
drop from the lips of prophet or psalmist, Christianity
appears. Is it objected, finally, that even their own
narrow conception of righteousness this people could not
follow, but were perpetually oppressive, grasping, slander-
ous, sensual ? Why, the very interest and importance of
their witness to righteousness lies in their having felt so
deeply the necessity of what they were so little able to ac-
complish ! They had the strongest impulses in the world
to violence and excess, the keenest pleasure in gratifying
these impulses. And yet they had such a sense of the
natural necessary connexion between conduct and
happiness, that they kept always saying, in spite of them-
selves : To him that ordereth his conversation right shall
be shown the salvation of God I
Now manifestly this sense of theirs has a double force
for the rest of mankind, — an evidential force and a prac-
tical force. Its evidential force is in keeping in men's
view, by the example of the signal apparition in one
branch of our race of the sense for conduct and righ-
RELIGION GIVEN. 55
teousness, the reality and naturalness of that sense.
Clearly, unless a sense or endowment of human nature,
however in itself real and beneficent, has some signal
representative among mankind, it tends to be pressed
upon by other senses and endowments, to suffer from its
own want of energy, and to be more and more pushed
out of sight. Any one, for instance, who will go to the
Potteries, and will look at the tawdry, glaring, ill-pro-
portioned ware which is being made there for certain
American and colonial markets, will easily convince him-
self how, in our people and kindred, the sense for the
arts of design, though it is certainly planted in human
nature, might dwindle and sink to almost nothing, if it
were not for the witness borne to this sense, and the pro-
test offered against its extinction, by the brilliant aesthetic
endowment and artistic work of ancient Greece. And
one cannot look out over the world without seeing that
the same sort of thing might very well befall conduct,
too, if it were not for the signal witness borne by Israel.
Then there is the practical force of their example ; and
this is even more important. Everyone knows, how
those who want to cultivate any sense or endowment in
themselves must be habitually conversant with the works
of people who have been eminent for that sense, must
study them, catch inspiration from them; only in this
56 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
way, indeed, can progress be made. And as long as the
world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteous-
ness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people
who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing
and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel
has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and
a force they could find nowhere else. As well imagine a
man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the
help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense
for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and
Shakspeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cul-
tivating it by the help of the Bible ! And this sense, in
the satisfying of which we come naturally to the Bible,
is a sense which the generaHty of men have far more
decidedly than they have the sense for art or for science ;
at any rate, whether we have it decidedly or no, it is the
sense which has to do with thiee-fourths of human life.
This does truly constitute for Israel a most extraordi-
nary distinction. In spite of all which in them and their
character is unattractive, nay, repellent ; — in spite of their
shortcomings even in righteousness itself and their in-
significance in everything else, — this petty, unsuccessful,
unamiable people, without politics, without science, with-
out art, without charm, deserve their great place in the
world's regard, and are likely to have it greater, as the
RELIGION GIVEN. 57
world goes on, rather than less. It is secured to them
by the facts of human nature, and by the unalterable
constitution of things. * God has given commandment
to bless, and he hath blessed, and we cannot reverse
it ! He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and he hath not
seen perverseness in Israel ; the Eternal, his God, is
with him ! '
Any one does a good deed who removes stumbling-
blocks out of the way of feeling and profiting by the
witness left by this people. And so, instead of making
our Hebrew speakers mean, in their use of the word
God, a scientific affirmation which never entered into
their heads, and about which many will dispute, let us
content ourselves with making them mean, as matter of
scientific fact and experience, what they really did mean
as such, and what is unchallengeable. Let us put into
their * Eternal ' and * God ' no more science than they
did : — the m during p(nver, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness. They meant more by these names, but
they meant this ; and what they meant more they could
not grasp fully, but this they grasped fully. The sense
which this will give us for their words is at least solid ; so
that we may find it of use as a guide to steady us, and to
give us a constant clue in following what they say.
And is it so unworthy ? It is true, unless we can fill it
58 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
with as much feeling as they did, the mere possessing it
will not carry us far. But matters are not much mended
by taking their language of approximative figure and
using it for the language of scientific definition ; or by
crediting them with our own dubious science, deduced
from metaphysical ideas which they never had. A better
way than this, surely, is to take their fact of experience,
to keep it steadily for our basis in using their language,
and to see whether from using their language with the
ground of this real and firm sense to it, as they them-
selves did, somewhat of their feeKng, too, may not grow
upon us. At least we shall know what we are saying ;
and that what we are saying is triie^ however inadequate.
. But is this confessed inadequateness of our speech,
I concerning that, which we will not call by the negative
I name of the unknown and unknowable, but rather by
I the name of the unexplored and the inexpressible, and
of which the Hebrews themselves said : It is more high
I than heaveft, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what
ca7ist thou know ? — is this reservedness of affirmation
about God less worthy of him, than the astounding par-
ticularity and licence of affirmation of our dogmatists, as
if he were a man in the next street ? Nay, and nearly
all the difficulties which torment theology, — as the
RELIGION GIVEN, 59
reconciling God's justice with his mercy, and so on, —
come from this Hcence and particularity; theologians
having precisely, as it would often seem, built up a wall
first, in order afterwards to run their own heads against it.
This, we say, is what comes of too much talent for ab-
stract reasoning. One cannot help seeing the theory of
causation and such things, where one should only see a
far simpler matter : the power, the grandeur, the neces-
sity of righteousness. To be sure, a perception of these is
at the bottom of popular religion, underneath all the ex-
travagances theologians have taught people to utter, and
makes the whole value of it. For the sake of this true
practical perception one might be quite content to leave
at rest a matter where practice, after all, is everything,
and theory nothing. Only, when religion is called in
question because of the extravagances of theology being
passed off as religion, one disengages and helps religion
by showing their utter delusiveness. They arose out of
the talents of able men for reasoning, • and their want
(not through lack of talent, for the thing needs none ;
it needs only time, trouble, good fortune, and a fair mind ;
but through their being taken up with their reasoning
power), — their want of literary experience. Unluckily, the
sphere where they show their talents is one for literary
6o LITERATURE' AND DOGMA.
experience rather than for reasoning. And this at the very-
outset, in the dealings of theologians with that starting-
point of our religion, — the experience of Israel as set forth
in the Old Testament, — has produced, we have seen, great
confusion. Naturally, as we shall hereafter see, the con-
fusion becomes worse confounded as they proceed.
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 6i
CHAPTER II. . :
ABERGLAUBE INVADING
When people ask for our attention because of what has
passed, they say, ' in the Council of the Trinity,' and been
promulgated, for our direction, by *a Personal First
Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the uni-
verse,' it is certainly open to any man to refuse to hear
them, on the plea that the very thing they start with they
have no means of proving. And we see that many do so
refuse their attention ; and that the breach there is, for
instance, between popular religion and what is called
science^ comes from this cause. But it is altogether dif-
ferent when people ask for our attention on the strength
of this other first principle : ' To righteousness belongs
happiness ; ' or this : ' There is an enduring power, not
ourselves, which makes fdr righteousness.' The more we
meditate on this starting-ground of theirs, the more we
shall find that there is solidity in it, and the more we shall
be incUned to go along with them, and to see what they
can make of it.
62
LITERATURE AND DC
And herein is the advantage of giving
restricted, sense to the Bible phrases : *
the law, happy is he ! ' and, ' Whos
Eternal, happy is he ! ' By tradition, ^
tion, the Hebrews, no doubt, came to
this plain sense to these phrases ; but
and experimental sense they attached tc
they attached originally; and in attachir
sure ground of fact, where we can a
Their words, we shall find, taken in this
a new force for us, and an indisputable i
while accustoming ourselves to use them
bring out this force and to see how :
though it be, and unpretending as it m
very substitution of the word Eternal fo:
is something gained in this direction. 1
has less of particularity and palpability
tion, but what it does affirm is real and ^
Let us fix firmly in our minds, with th
sense to the words we employ, the coi
which was ever present to the spirit of th(
In the way of righteousness is life, and
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 63
righteous is an everlasting foundation ; — here is the ground
idea. Yet there are continual momentary suggestions
which make for gratifying our apparent self, for un-
righteousness ; nevertheless, what makes for our real self,
for righteousness, is lasting, and holds good in the end.
Therefore : Trust in the Eternal with all thine heart, and
lean not unto thine own understanding ; there is no wisdom,
nor understanding, nor counsel against the Eternal ; there
is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the e?ia
thereof are the ways of death; there are many dances in a
man's heart, nevertheless the counsel of the Eter7ial, that
shall stand. To follow this counsel of the Eternal is the
only true wisdom and understanding : The fear of the
Eternal, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is
understanding. It is also happiness : Blessed is every one
thatfeareth the Eternal, that walketh in his ways ; happy
shall he be, and it shall be well with him! O taste and
see how gracious the Eternal is f blessed is the man that
trusteth in him. Blessed is the man whose delight is ifi the
laiv of the Etel'nal; his leaf shall not wither, and whatso-
ever he doeth, it shall prosper. And the more a man walks
in this way of righteousness, the more he feels himself
borne by a power not his own : Not by might and not by
power, but by my spirit, saith the Eternal. O Eter?ial, I
know that the way of man is not in himself! all things
■V
64 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
come of thee; in thy light do we see light; the preparation
of the heart in man is from the Eternal. The Eternal
order eth a good man's goings and making his way accept-
able to himself But man feels, too, how far he comes
from fulfiUing or even from fully perceiving this true
law of his being, these indications of the Eternal, the
way of righteousness. He says, and must say \ I am a
stranger upon earthy O, hide not thy comma?idments from
me / Efiternot into Judgment with thy sen.) ant, O Eternal,
for in thy sight shall no man living be Justified/ Never-
theless, as a man holds on to practise as well as he can,
and avoids, at any rate, ' presumptuous sins,' courses he
can clearly see to be wrong, films fall away from his
eyes, the indications of the Eternal come out more and
more fully, we are cleansed from faults which were
hitherto secret to us : Exainine me, O God, and prove
me, try out my reins and my heart ; look well if there be
any way of wickedness in 7?ie, and lead me i?i the way
everlasting ! O cleanse thou me from my secret faults !
thou hast proved my heart, thou hast visited me in the
flight, thou hast tried me and shall find nothing. And
the more we thus get to keep innocency, the more
we wonderfully find joy and peace : O how plcTitiftd is
thy goodness which thou hast laid up for the7n that fear
thee! Thou shall hide thetn in the secret of thy presefice
fro7n the provokijig of men. Thou wilt show me the path
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 65
of life^ in thy presence is the fulness of Joy ^ at thy right hand
there are pleasures for evermore. More and more this
dwelling on the joy and peace from righteousness, and on
the power which makes for righteousness, becomes a man's
consolation and refuge : Thou art my hiding-place^ thou
shall preserve me from trouble; if 7Jiy delight had not
been in thy law, I should have perished in my trouble.
When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God; a
refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat I • O
set me up upon the rock that is higher than 1 1 The
name of the Eternal is as a stro?ig tower, the righteous
runneth into it and is safe. And the more we experience
this shelter, the more we come to feel that it is protecting
even to tenderness : Like as a father pitieth his own
children, even so is the Eternal merciful unto them that
fear him. Nay, every other support, we at last find,
every other attachment may fail us, this alone fails not :
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should
not have compassion on the son of her womb ? Yea, thi
may forget, yet will I not forget thee !
All this, we say, rests originally upon the simple but
solid experience : * Conduct brings happiness^ or, ' Righte-
ousness tendeth to life: And, by making it again rest
there, we bring out in a new but most real and sure way
its truth and its power.
F
66 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
For it has not always continued to rest there, and in
popular religion now, as we manifestly see, it rests there
no longer. It is worth while to follow the way in which
this change gradually happened, and the thing ceased to
rest there. Israel's original perception was true : Right-
eousness tendeth to life! The workers of righteousness
have a covenant with the Eternal^ that their work shall
be blessed and blessing, and shall endure for ever. But
what apparent contradictions was this true original per-
ception destined to meet with ; what vast delays, at any
rate, were to be interposed before its truth could become
manifest ! And how instructively the successive docu-
ments of the Bible, which popular religion treats as if it
were all of one piece one time and one mind, bring out
the effect on Israel of these delays and contradictions !
What a distance between the eighteenth Psalm and the
eighty-ninth, between the Book of Proverbs and the Book
of Ecclesiastes ! A time some thousand years before
Christ,* the golden age of Israel, is the date to which the
eighteenth Psalm and the chief part of the Book of
Proverbs belong ; this is the time in which the sense of
the necessary connexion between righteousness and
happiness appears with its full simpHcity and force. The
righteous shall be recompensed in the earthy much more tJie
wicked and t/ie sinner! is the constant burden of the Book
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 67
of Proverbs. And David, in the eighteenth Psabn, ex-
presses his conviction of the intimate dependence pf
happiness upon conduct, in terms which, though they are
not without a certain crudity, are yet far more edifying in
their truth and naturalness than those morbid senti-
mentalities of Protestantism about man's natural vileness
and Christ's imputed righteousness, to which they are
diametrically opposed. 'I have kept the ways of the
Eternal,' he says ; * I was also upright before him, and I
kept myself from mine iniquity; therefore hath the
Eternal rewarded me according to my righteousness,
according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recom-
pensed me j great prosperity showeth he unto his king,
and showeth loving-kindness unto David his anointed,
and unto his seed for evermore.' That may be called
the classic passage for that covena?it Israel always thinks
and speaks of, as made by God with his servant David,
Israel's second founder. Arid this covenant was but a
renewal of the covenant made with Israel's first founder,
God's servant Abraham, that righteousness shall inherit a
blessing, and that in his seed all nations of the earth shall
be blessed.
But what a change in the eighty-ninth Psalm, a few
hundred years later! * Eternal, where are thy former
loving-kindnesses which thou swarest unto David ? thou
F 2
68 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
—* —
hast abhorred and forsaken thine anointed, thou hast
nude void the covenant ; O remember how short my time
is r * The righteous shall be recompaised i7i the earth I '
the speaker means ; * my death is near, and death ends
all ; where, Eternal, is thy promise ? '
Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward travail to
which, in the six hundred years that followed the age of
David and Solomon, the many and rude shocks befalling
Israel's fundamental idea, Righteousness tendeth to life a?id
he that pur suet h evil pursueth it to his 0W7i death, gave
occasion. 'Wherefore do the wicked live,' asks Job,
' become old, yea, are mighty in power ? Their houses
are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them ? '
Job himself is righteous, and yet: 'On mine eyelids is
the shadow of death, not for any injustice in mine hands.'
All through the Book of Job, the question how this can
be is over and over again asked and never answered;
inadequate solutions are offered and repelled, but an
adequate solution is never reached. The only solution
reached is that of silence before the insoluble : ' I will
lay mine hand upon my mouth.' The two perceptions
arQ left confronting one another like Kantian antinomies.
' The earth is given unto the hand of the wicked! ' and
yet : ' The council of the wicked is far from me, God
i-ewardeth hi?n, and he shall know it! ' And this last, the
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 69
-— + —
original perception, remains indestructible. The Book
of Ecclesiastes, again, has been called sceptical, epicu-
rean ; it is certainly without the glow and hope which
animate the Bible in general. It belongs, probably, to the
latter half of the fifth century before Christ, to the time of
Nehemiah and Malachi, with difficulties pressing the newly
restored Jewish community on all sides, with a Persian
governor lording it in Jerusalem, with resources light
and taxes heavy, with the cancer of poverty eating into the
mass of the people, with the rich estranged from the poor
and from the national traditions, with the priesthood
slack insincere and worthless. Composed under such
circumstances, thebook has been said, and with justice, to
breathe resignation at the grave of Israel; its author sees
* the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter,
and on the side of their oppressors there was power;
wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more
than the living which are yet alive.' He sees * all things
come alike to all, there is one event to the righteous and to
the wicked.' Attempts at a philosophic indifference appear,
at a sceptical suspension of judgment, at an easy ne quid
nimis : ' Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself
overwise ! why shouldst thou . destroy thyself? ' Vain
attempts, even at a moment which favoured them ! shows
of scepticism, vanishing as soon as uttered before the in-
70 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
tractable conseientiousness of Israel ! For the Preacher
makes answer against himself: ' Though a sinner do evil
a hundred times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I
know that it shall be well with them that fear God ; but
it shall not be well with the wicked, because he feareth
not before God.' The Preacher's contemporary, too,
Malachi, felt the pressure of the same circumstances, had
the same occasions of despondency. All around him
people were saying : ' Every one that doeth evil is good
in the sight of the Eternal, and he delighteth in them;
where is the God of judgment ? it is vain to serve God,
and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance ? '
What a change from the clear certitude of the golden
age : ' As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more ;
but the righteous is an everlasting foundation ! ' But
yet, with all the certitude of this happier past, Malachi
answers on behalf of the Eternal : ' Unto you that fear
my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing
in his wings ! '
Many* there were, no doubt, who had lost all living
sense that the promises were made to righteousness ; who
took them mechanically, as made to them and sure to
them because they were the seed of Abraham, because
they were, in St. Paul's words : ' Israelites, to whom
pertain the adoption and the glory and the covenants and
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 71
the giving of the law and the service of God, and whose
are the fathers.' These people were perplexed and
indignant when the privileged seed became unprosperous ;
and they looked for some great change to be wrought in
the fallen fortunes of Israel, wrought miraculously and
mechanically. And they were, no doubt, the great
majority, and of the mass of Jewish expectation about
the future they stamped the character. With them, how-
ever, our interest does not for the present lie ; it lies with
the prophets and those whom the prophets represent
It lies with the continued depositaries of the original
revelation to Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life ; who saw
clearly enough that the promises were to righteousness, and
that what tendeth to life was not the seed of Abraham
taken in itself, but righteousness. With this minority, and
with its noble representatives the prophets, our present
interest lies; and the development of their conviction
about righteousness is what it here imports us to trace.
An indestructible faith that the righteous is an everlasting
foundation they had ; yet they too, as we have seen, could
not but notice, as time went on, many things which seemed
apparently to contradict this their belief. In private life,
there was the frequent prosperity of the sinner. In the
life of nations, there was the rise and power of the great
unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen, the unsuccessfulness
72 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
of Israel; though Israel was undoubtedly, as compared
with the heathen, the depositary and upholder of the
idea of righteousness. Therefore prophets and righteous
men also, like the unspiritual crowd, could not but look
ardently to the future, to some great change and redress
in store.
At the same time, although their experience, that the
righteous were often afflicted and the wicked often
prosperous, could not but perplex pious Hebrews ; although
their conscience felt, and could not but feel, that, com-
pared with the other nations with whom they came in
contact, they themselves and their fathers had a concern
for righteousness, and an unremitting sense of its necessity,
which put them in covenant with the Eternal who makes
for righteousness, and which rendered the triumph of
other nations over them a triumph of people who cared
little for righteousness over people who cared for it much,
and a cause of perplexity, therefore, to men's trust in the
Eternal, — though their conscience told them this, yet of
their own shortcomings and perversities it told them
louder still, and that their sins had in truth been enough
to break their covenant with the Eternal a thousand
times over, and to bring justly upon them all the miseries
they suffered. To enable them to meet the terrible day,
when the Eternal would avenge him of his enemies and
. ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 73
make up his jewels, they themselves needed, they knew,
the voice of a second Elijah, a change of the inner man,
repentance.
2.
And then, with Malachi's testimony on its lips to the
truth of Israel's ruling idea. Righteousness tcndeth to life!
died prophecy. For four hundred years the mind of
Israel revolved those wonderful utterances, which, on the
ear of even those who only half understand them, and
who do not at all believe them, strike with such strange,
incomparable power, — the promises of prophecy. For
four hundred years, through defeat and humiliation, the
Hebrew race pondered those magnificent assurances that
^ the EternaVs arm is not shortened,' that ^righteousness
shall be for ever,' and that the future would prove this,
even if the present did not. ' The Eternal fainteth not,
neither is weary ; he giveth power to the faint. They
that wait on the Eternal shall renew their strength ; the
redeemed of the Eternal shall return and com.e with
singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their
head ; they shall repair the old wastes, the desolations of
many generations ; and I, the Eternal, will make an
everlasting covenant with them. The Eternal shall be
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning
74 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
shall be ended ; the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and
kings to the brightness of thy rising, and my righteousness
shall be for ever, and my salvation shall not be
abolished ! '
The prophets themselves, speaking when the ruin
of their country was impending, or soon after it had
happened, had had in prospect the actual restoration of
Jerusalem, the submission of the nations around, and the
empire of David and Solomon renewed. But as time
went on, and Israel's return from captivity and resettlement
of Jerusalem by no means answered his glowing anticipa-
tions from them, these anticipations had more and more
a construction put upon them which set at defiance the
unworthiness and infelicities of the actual present, which
filled up what prophecy left, in outline, and which
embraced the world. The Hebrew Amos, of the eighth
century before Christ, promises to his hearers a recovery
from their ruin in which they shall possess the remnant of
Edo7n \ the Greek or Aramaic Amos of the Christian era,
whose words St. James produces in the Conference at
Jerusalem, promises a recovery for Israel in which the
residue of men shall seek the Etertial. This is but a
specimen of what went forward on a large scale. The
redeemer, whom the unknown prophet of the captivity
foretold to Zion, has, a few hundred years later, for
ABERGLAUBE INVADING, 75
the writer whom we call Daniel and for his con-
temporaries, become the miraculous agent of Israel's new
restoration, the heaven-sent executor of the Eternal's judg-
ment, and the bringer-in of the kingdom of righteousness ;
the Messiah, in short, of our popwlar religion. ' One like
the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came
to the Ancient of Days, and there was given him dominion
and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and
languages should serve him ; and the kingdom and
dominion shall be given to the people of the saints of the
Most High.' An impartial criticism will hardly find
in the Old Testament writers before the times of the
Maccabees (and certainly not in the passages usually
quoted to prove it) the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul or of the resuirection of the dead. But by the time
of the Maccabees, when this passage of the Book of
Daniel was written, in the second century before Christ,
the Jews have undoubtedly become familiar, not indeed
with the idea of the immortality of the soul as philosophers
like Plato conceived it, but with the notion of a resurrec-
tion of the dead to take their trial for acceptance or
rejection in the Messiah's judgment and kingdom.
To this has swelled Israel's original and fruitful thesis :
— Righteousfiess tendeth to life! as the 7uhirlwind passeth,
so is the wicked no more^ but the righteous is an everlasting
76 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
foundation! The phantasmagories of more prodigal and
wild imaginations have mingled with the work of Israel's
austere spirit ; Babylon, Persia, Egypt, even Greece, have
left their trace there ; but the unchangeable substmcture
remains, and on that substructure is everything built
which comes after.
In one sense, the lofty Messianic ideas of ' the day of
the Eternal's coming,' 'the consolation of Israel,' the
restitution of all things,' are even more important than
the solid but humbler idea. Righteousness tendeth to life !
out of which they arose \ in another sense they are much
less important. They are more important, because they
are the development of this idea and prove its strength.
It might have been crushed and baffled by the falsification
events seemed to delight in giving it; that instead of
being crushed and baffled, it took this magnificent flight,
shows its innate power. And they also in a wonderful
manner attract emotion to the ideas of conduct and
morality, attract it to them and combine it with them.
On the other hand, the idea that righteousness te?tdeth to
life has a firm, experimental ground, which the Messianic
ideas have not. And the day comes when the possession
of such a ground is invaluable.
That the spirit of man should entertain hopes and
anticipations, beyond what it actually know^s and can
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 77
verify, is quite natural. Human life could not have the
scope, and depth, and progress it has, were this otherwise.
It is natural, too, to make these hopes and anticipations
give in their turn support to the simple and humble
experience which was their original ground. Israel,
therefore, who originally followed righteousness because
he felt that it tended to life, might naturally come at last
to follow it because it would enable him to stand before
the Son of Man at his coming, and to share in the
triumph of the saints.
But this later belief* has not the same character as
the belief which it is thus set to confirm. It is a kind of
fairy-tale, which a man tells himself, which no one,
we grant, can prove impossible to turn out true, but
which no one, also, can prove certain to turn out true.
It is exactly what is expressed by the German word ' Aber-
glaube,* extra-beliefs belief beyond what is certain and
verifiable. Our word ' superstition ' had by its derivation
this same meaning, but it has come to be used in a merely
bad sense, and to mean a childish and craven religiosity.
With the tjerman word it is not so ; therefore Goethe
can say with propriety and truth : ' Aberglaube is the
poetry of life, — der Aberglaube ist die Poesie dcs Lebens'
It is so ; extra-beliefs that which we hope, augur, imagine,
is the poetry of life, and has the rights of poetry. But it
7S LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
is not science ; and yet it tends always to imagine itself
science, to substitute itself for science, to make itself the
ground of the very science out of which it has grown.
The Messianic ideas, w^hich were the poetry of life to
Israel in the age when Christ came, did this ; and it is
the more important to mark that they did it, because
similar ideas have so signally done the same thing in
popular Christianity-
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 79
CHAPTER IIL
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN.
Jesus Christ was undoubtedly the very last sort of
Messiah whom the Jews expected. Christian theologians
say confidently that the characters of humility, obscure-
ness, and depression, were commonly attributed to the
Jewish Messiah ; and even Bishop Butler, in general the
most severely exact of writers, gives countenance to this
error. What is true is, that we find these characters at-
tributed to some one by the prophets ; that we attribute
them to Christ ; that Christ is for us the Messiah, and
that Christ they suit But for the prophets themselves,
and for the Jews who heard and read them, these cha-
racters of lowliness and depression belonged to God's chas-
tened servant, the idealised Israel. When Israel had been
purged and renewed by these, the Messiah was to appear ;
but with glory and power for his attributes, not humility
and weakness. It is impossible to resist acknowledging
this, if we read the Bible to find from it what those who
8d literature and DOGMA.
wrote it really intended to think and say, and not to put
in it what we wish them to have thought and said. To
find in Jesus the genuine Jewish Messiah, the Messiah
of Daniel, one Hke the Son of Man coming with the clouds
of heaven and having universal dominion given him,
must certainly, to a Jew, have been extremely difficult.
Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly in the Old Testa-
ment the germ of Christianity. In developing this germ
lay the future of righteousness itself, of Israel's primary
and immortal concern ; and the incomparable greatness
of the religion founded by Christ comes from his having
developed it. He is not the Messiah to whom the hopes
of his nation pointed ; and yet Christendom with perfect
justice has made him the Messiah, because he alone took,
when his nation was on another and a false tack, a way
obscurely indicated in the Old Testament, and the one
possible and successful way, for the accomplishment of
the Messiah's function : — to bri?ig in everlasting righteous-
ness. Let us see how this was.
Religion in the Old Testament is a matter of national
and social conduct mainly. First, it consists in devotion
to Israel's God, the Eternal who loveth righteousness, and
of separation from other nations whose concern for
righteousness was less fervent, of abhorrence of their
idolatries which were sure to bewilder and diminish this
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN,
I
fervent concern. Secondly, it consists in doing justice,
hating all wrong, robbery, and oppression, abstaining
from insolence, lying, and slandering. The Jews' polity,
their theocracy, was of such immense importance, be-
cause religion, when conceived as having its existence
in these national and social duties mainly, requires
a polity to put itself forth in ; and the Jews' polity
was adapted to such a religion. But this religion, as it
developed itself, was by no means entirely worthy of the
intuition out of which it had grown. We have seen how,
in its intuition of God, — of that not ourselves of which all
mankind form some conception or other, — as the Eternal
that makes for righteousness^ the Hebrew race found the
revelation needed to breathe emotion into the laws of
morality, and to make morality religion. This revelation
is the capital fact of the Old Testament, and the source
of its grandeur and power. But it is evident that this
revelation lost, as time went on, its nearness and clear-
ness ; and that for the mass of the Hebrews their God
came to be a mere magnified and non-natural man, like
the God of our popular religion now, who has commanded
certain courses of conduct and attached certain sanctions
to them.
And though prophets and righteous men, among the
Hebrews, might preserve always the immediate and truer
G
82 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
af)prehension of their God as the Eternal who jnakes for
righteousness, they in vain tried to communicate this ap-
prehension to the mass of their countrymen. They had,
indeed, a special difficulty to contend with in communi-
cating it ; and the difficulty was this. Those courses of
conduct, which Israel's intuition of the Eternal had
originally touched with emotion and made religion, lay
chiefly, we have seen, in the line of national and social
duties. By reason of the stage of their own growth and
the world's, at which this revelation found the Hebrews,
the thing could not well be otherwise. And national
and social duties are peculiarly capable of a mechanical,
exterior performance, in which the heart has no share.
One may observe rites and ceremonies, hate idolatry,
abstain from murder and theft and false witness, and yet
have one's inward thoughts bad, callous, and disordered.
Then even the admitted duties themselves come to be
iU-discharged or set at nought, because the emotion
which was the -only certain security for their good dis-
charge is wanting. The very power of religion, as we
have seen, lies in its bringing emotion to bear on our rules
of conduct, and thus making us care for them so much,
consider them so deeply and reverentially, that we sur-
mount the great practical difficulty of acting in obedience
to them, and follow them heartily and easily. Therefore
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN, 83
the Israelites, when they lost their primary intuition and
the deep feeling which went with it, were perpetually-
idolatrous, slack or niggardly in the service of Jehovah,
violators of judgment and justice.
The prophets perpetually reminded their nation of the
superiority of judgment and justice to any exterior cere-
mony like sacrifice. But judgment and justice them-
selves, as Israel in general conceived them, have some-
thing exterior in them ; now, what was wanted was more
*
inwardness^ more feeling. This was given by adding
mercy and humbleness to judgment and justice. Mercy
and humbleness are something inward, they are affections
of the heart. And even in the Proverbs these appear :
' The merciful man doeth good to his own soul ; ' * He
that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he ; ' * Honour
shall uphold the humble in spirit ; ' ' When pride cometh,
shame cometh, but with the lowly is wisdom.' So that
Micah asked his nation : ' What doth the Eternal require
of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy^ and to walk
humbly with thy God ? ' — adding mercy and humility to
the old judgment and justice. But a further develop-
ment is given to humbleness, when the second Isaiah adds
contrition to it : ' I ' (the Eternal) ' dwell with him that is
of a cotitrite and humble spirit ; ' or when the Psalmist
G 2
84 LITERATURE AND DOGMA
says, * The sacrifices of God are a brokeji spirit ; a broken
and a contrite hearty O God, thou wilt not despise ! '
This is personal religion \ religion consisting in the
inward feeling and disposition of the individual himself,
rather than in the performancce of outward acts towards
religion or society. It is the essence of Christianity, it is
what the Jews needed, it is the line in which their religion
was ripe for development ; — and it appears in the Old
Testament. Still, in the Old Testament it by no means
comes out fully. The leaning, there, is to make religion
social rather than personal, an affair of duties rather than
of dispositions. Soon after the very words we have just
quoted from him, the second Isaiah adds : * If thou take
away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth
of the finger and speaking vanity, and if thou draw out
thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then
shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as
the noon-day, and the Eternal shall guide thee continu-
ally and make fat thy bones.' This stands, or at least
appears to stand, as a full description of righteousness ;
and as such, it is unsatisfying.
2.
What was wanted, then, was a fuller description of
righteousness. Now, it is clear that righteousness, the
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN.
central object of Israel's concern, was the central
object of Christ's concern also. Of the development
and cardinal points of his teaching we shall have to
speak more at length by-and-by; all we have to do
here is to pass them in a. rapid preliminary review.
Israel had said : ' To him that ordereth his conversation
right shall be shown the salvation of God.' And Christ
said : * Except your righteousness exceed the righteous-
ness of the Scribes and Pharisees,'— that is, of the very
people who then passed for caring most about righteous-
ness and practising it most rigidly, — ' ye shall in no wise
enter into the kingdom of heaven.' But righteousness
had by Christ's time lost, in great measure, the mighty
impulse which emotion gives ; and in losing this, had lost
also the mighty sanction which happiness gives. * The
whole head was sick and the whole heart faint;' the
glad and immediate sense of being in the right way, in
the way of peace, was gone ; the sense of being wrong
and astray, of sin, and of helplessness under sin, was op-
pressive. The thing was, by giving a fuller idea of right-
eousness, to reapply emotion to it, and by thus reapplying
emotion, to disperse the feeling of being amiss and help-
less, to give the sense of being right and effective ; to
restore, in short, to righteousness the sanction of happi-
ness.
86 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
But this could only be done by attending to -that
inward world of feelings and dispositions which Judaism
had too much neglected. The first need, therefore, for
Israel at that time, was to make religion cease to be
mainly a national and social matter, and become mainly
a personal matter. ' Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first
the inside of the cup, that the outside may be clean also ! '
— this was the very ground-principle in Christ's teaching.
Instead of attending so much to your outward acts,
attend, he said, first of all to your inward thoughts, to
the state of your heart and feelings. This doctrine has
perhaps been overstrained and misapplied by certain
people since ; but it was the lesson which at that time
was above all needed. It is a great progress beyond
even that advanced maxim of pious Jews : ' To do justice
and judgment is more acceptable than sacrifice.' For to
do justice and judgment is still, as we have remarked,
something external, and may leave the feelings un-
touched, uncleared, and dead j what was wanted was to
plough up, clear, and quicken the feelings themselves.
And this is what Christ did.
'■ My son, give me thy heart f^ says the teacher of right-
eousness in the golden age of Israel. And when Israel
had the Eternal revealed to him, and founded our religion,
he gave his heart. But the time came when this direct
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 87
vision ceased, and Israel's religion was a mere affair of
tradition, and of doctrines and rules received from with-
out. Then it might be truly said of this professed servant
of the Eternal : * This people honour me with their lips,
but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear
toward me is taught by the precept of men.' With little
or no power of distinguishing between what was rule of
ceremonial and what was rule of conduct, they followed
the prescriptions of their religion with a servile and sullen
mind, * precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little
and there a little,' and no end to it all. What a change
since the days when it \\2SJoy to the just to do judgment !
The prophets saw clearly enough the evil, nay, they even
could point to the springs which must be touched in
order to work a cure ; but they could not press these
springs steadily enough or skilfully enough to work the
cure themselves.
Christ's new and different way of putting tilings was
the secret of his succeeding where the prophets could
not. And this new way he had of putting things is what
is indicated by the expression epieikeia, best rendered^ as
we have elsewhere said,^ by these two words, — ' sweet
reasonableness.' For that which is epieikes is that which
' St. Paul and Protestantism^ p. xix.
88 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
has an air of truth and likelihood; and that which has an
air of truth and likelihood is prepossessing. Now, never
were utterances concerning conduct and righteousness, —
Israel's master-concern, and the master-topic of the New
Testament as well as of the Old, — which so carried with
them an air of consummate truth and likelihood as
Christ's did ; and never, therefore, were axiy utterances
so irresistibly prepossessing. He put things in such a
way that his hearer was led to take each rule or fact of
conduct by its inward side, its effect on the heart and
character ; then the reason of the thing, the meaning of
what had been mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon
him. He could distinguish between what was only
ceremony, and what was conduct ; and the hardest rule of
conduct came to appear to him infinitely reasonable and
natural, and therefore infinitely prepossessing. To find
his own soul, his true and permanent self, became set up
in man's view as his chief concern, as the secret of hap-
piness ; and so it really is. ' How is a man advantaged
if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of himself 1''
was the searching question which Jesus made men ask
themselves. A return upon themselves, and a conse-
quent intuition of the truth and reason of the thing in
question, gave men for right action the clearness, spirit,
energy, happiness, they had lost.
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 89
This power of returning upon themselves, and seeing
by a flash the truth and reason of things, his disciples
learnt of Christ. They learnt too, from observing him
and his example, much which without, perhaps, any
conscious process of being apprehended in its reason,
was discerned instinctively to be true and life-giving as
soon as it was recommended in Christ's words and illus-
trated by Christ's example. Two lessons in particular
they learnt in this way, and added them to the great
lesson of self-examination and an appeal to the inner
man, with which they started. ' Whoever will come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and
follow me!' was one of the two; ^ Learn of me that I am
mild and lowly in hearty and ye shall find rest unto your
souls r was the other. Christ made his followers first
look within and examine themselves ; he made them feel
that they had a best and real self as opposed to their
ordinary and apparent one, and that their happiness
depended on saving this best self from being overborne.
And then, by recommending, and still more by himself
exemplifying in his own practice, by the exhibition in
himself with the most prepossessing pureness, clearness,
and beauty, of the two qualities by which our ordinary
self is indeed most essentially counteracted, self-renounce-
ment and mildness^ he made his followers feel that in
90 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
these qualities lay the secret of their best self; that ta at-
tain them was in the highest degree requisite and natural,
and that a man's whole happiness depended upon it.
Self-examination, self- renouncement, and mildness,
were, therefore, the great means by which Christ renewed
righteousness and religion. All these means are indi-
cated in the Old Testament : God requireth truth in the
inward parts ; Not doing thine own ways, nor finding
thine own pleasure; Before honour is humility. But how
far more strongly are they forced upon the attention in
the New Testament, and set up clearly as the central
mark for our endeavours ! Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse
first the inside of the cup that the outside may be clean also!
Whoever will come after me, let him renounce himself and
take up his cross daily and follow me I Learn of me that
L am mild and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto
your souls I So that, although personal religion is clearly
present in the Old Testament, nevertheless these injunc-
tions of the New Testament effect so much more for the
extrication and establishment of personal religion than
the general exhortations in the Old to offer the sacrifice of
righteousness, to do judgment, that, comparatively with the
Old, the New Testament may be said to have really
founded inward and personal religion. While the Old
Testament says : Attend to conduct ! the New Testament
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 91
says : Attend to the feelings and dispositions whence conduct
proceeds I And as attending to conduct had very much
degenerated into deadness and formality, attending to
the springs of conduct was a revelation, a revival of intui-
tive and fresh perceptions, a touching of morals with
emotion, a discovering of religion, similar to that which
had been effected when Israel, struck with the abiding
power, not of man's causing, which makes for righteous-
ness, and filled with joy and awe by it, had in the old
days named God the Eternal. Man came under a new
dispensation, and made with God a second covenant.
To rivet the attention on the indications of personal
religion furnished by the Old Testament; to take the
humble, inward, and suffering * servant of God ' of the
prophets, and to elevate this as the Messiah, the seed of
Abraham and David, in whom all nations should be
blessed, whose throne should be as the days of heaven,
who should redeem his people and restore the kingdom
to Israel, — was a work of the highest originality. It can-
not, as we have seen, be said, that by the suffering Servant
of God and by the triumphant Messiah, the prophets
themselves meant one and the same person. But Ian-
92 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
guage of hope and aspiration, such as theirs, is in its very-
nature malleable. Criticism may and must determine
what the original speakers seem to have directly meant ;
but the very nature of their language justifies a7iy power-
ful and fruitful application of it, and every such applica-
tion may be said, in the words of popular religion, to
have been lodged there from the first by the spirit of
God. Certainly it was a somewhat violent exegetical
proceeding, to fuse together into one personage Daniel's
Son of Man coming with the clouds of Heaven, the first
Isaiah's ' Branch out of the root of Jesse,' who should
smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and reign in
glory, peace, and righteousness, and the second Isaiah's
meek and afflicted Servant of God, who was charged with
the precious message of a golden future; — to fuse to-
gether in one these three by no means identical person-
ages, to add to them the sacrificial lamb of the passover
and of the temple-service which was constantly before a
Jew's eyes, to add, besides, the Prophet like to himself
whom Moses promised to the children of Israel, to add,
further, the Holy One of Israel the Redeemer, who for
the prophets was the Eternal himself; and to say, that
the combination thence resulting was the Messiah or
Christ whom all the prophets meant and predicted, and
that Jesus was this Messiah. To us, who have been
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 93
fashioned by a theology whose set purpose is to efface all
the difficulties in such a combination, and to make it
received easily and unhesitatingly, it may appear natural ;
in itself, and with the elements of which it is composed
viewed singly and impartially, it cannot but be pro-
nounced violent.
But the elements in question have their chief use and
value, we repeat, not as objects of criticism ; they belong
of right to whoever can best possess himself of them for
practice and edification. Of the Messiah coming in the
clouds, of the Branch of Jesse smiting the earth with
the rod of his mouth, slaying the wicked with his breath,
and re-establishing in unexampled splendour David's
kingdom, nothing could be made. With such a Messiah
fining men's thoughts and hopes, the real defects of
Israel still remained, because these chiefly proceeded
from Israel's making his religion too much a national and
social affair, too little a personal affair. But a Messiah
who did not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and
afflicted without opening his mouth, who worked obscurely
and patiently, yet failed not nor was discouraged until
his doctrine made its way and transformed the world, —
this was the Messiah whom Israel needed, and in whom
the lost greatness of Israel could be restored and culmi-
nate. For the true greatness of Israel was righteousness ;
94 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
and only by an inward personal religion could the sense
revive of what righteousness really was, — revive in Israel
and bear fruit for the world.
Instead, then, of ' the Root of David who should set
up an ensign for the nations and assemble the outcasts of
Israel,' Christ took from prophecy and made pre-eminent
*the Servant whom man despiseth and the people ab-
horreth,' but '■ who bringeth good tidings, who publisheth
peace, publisheth salvation.' And instead of saying like
the prophets : ' This people must mend, this nation must
do so and so, Israel must follow such and such ways,'
Christ took the individual Israelite by himself apart,
made him listen for the voice of his conscience, and said
to him in effect : ' If every one would mend one^ we
should have a new world.' So vital for the Jews was this
change of character in their religion, that the Old Testa-
ment abounds, as we have said, in pointings and ap-
proximations to it • and most truly might Christ say to
his followers, that many prophets and kings had desired,
though unavailingly, to see the things which his disciples
saw and heard.
The desire felt by pious Israelites for some new aspect
of religion such as Christ presented, is, undoubtedly, the
best proof of its timeliness and salutariness. Perhaps
New Testament witnesses to the workings of this desire
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 95
may be received with suspicion, as having arisen after the
event and when the new ideal of Christ had become es-
tablished. Othenvise, John the Baptist's characterisation
of the Messiah as ' the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sins of the world, and the bold Messianic turn given
in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew to the prophecy
there quoted from the forty-second chapter of Isaiah,
would be evidence of the highest importance. 'A bruised
reed breaketh he not,' says Isaiah of the meek servant
and messenger of God, * and a glimmering wick quench-
eth he not ; he declareth judgment with truth ; far lands
wait for his doctrine.' 'A bruised reed shall he not
break,' runs the passage in St. Matthew, 'and smoking
flax shall he not quench, until he send forth judgtnent
unto victory : in his name shall the Gentiles trust.' The
words, until he sefid forth judgment unto victory^ words
giving a clear Messianic stamp to the personage de-
scribed, are neither in the original Hebrew nor in the
Greek of the Septuagint ; — where did the Gospel-writer
find them ? If, as is possible, they were in some version
of Isaiah then extant, they prove in a striking way the
existence and strength of the aspiration which Christ
satisfied by transforming the old popular ideal of the
Messiah. But there is in any case proof of the existence
of such an aspiration, since a Jewish commentator, con-
96 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
temporary, probably, with the Christian era but not
himself a Christian, assigns to the prophecy a Messianic
intention. And, indeed, the rendering of the final words,
in his name shall the Gentiles trusty which is in the Greek
of the Septuagint as well as in that of St. Matthew, shows,
perhaps, a similar leaning in the Jews of Alexandria
some two centuries before Christ.
Signs there are then, without doubt, of others trying to
identify the Messiah of popular hope, — the triumphant
Root of David, the mystic Son of Man, — with an ideal of
meekness, inwardness, patience, and self-denial ; and well
might reformers try to effect this identification, for the
true line of Israel's progress lay through it ! . But not he
who tries makes an epoch, but he who effects ; and the
identification which was needed Jesus effected. Hence-
forth the true Israelite was, undoubtedly, he who allied
himself with this identification ; who perceived its incom-
parable fruitfulness, its continuance of the real tradition
of Israel, its correspondence with the ruling idea of the
Hebrew spirit : Through right eous7iess to happitiess I or, in
Bible words : To him that ordereth his conversation right
shall be shown the salvation of God. That the Jewish
nation at large, and its rulers, refused to accept the iden-
tification, shows simply that want of power to penetrate
through wraps and appearances to the essence of things.
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 9',
which the majority of mankind always display. The
national and social character of their theocracy was every
thing to the Jews, and they could see no blessings in a
revolution which annulled it
It has often been remarked, that the Puritans are like
the Jews of the Old Testament ; and Mr. Froude think?
he defends the Puritans by saying that they, like the Jew .
of the Old Testament, had their hearts set on a theocracy
on a fashioning of politics and society to suit the govern
ment of God. How strange that he does not perceive
that he thus passes, and with justice, the gravest con
demnation on the Puritans as followers of Christ 1 At the
Christian era the time had passed, in religion, for out-
ward constructions of this kind, and for all care about
establishing or abolishing them. The time had come foi
inwardness and self-reconstruction, — a time to last till the
self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It was the error of
the Jews that they did not perceive this ; and the error ol
the Jews the Puritans, without the Jews' excuse, faithfully
repeated. And the blunder of both had the same cause, —
a want of tact to perceive what is really most wanted foi
the attainment of their own professed ideal, the reign
of right eousfiess.
When Jesus appeared, his disciples were those who did
7iot make this blunder. They were, in general, simple
H
98 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
souls, without pretensions which Christ's new religious
ideal cut short, or self-consequence which it mortified;
and any Israelite who was, on the one hand, not warped
by personal pretensions and self-consequence, and on the
other, not dull of feeling and gross of life like the common
multitude, might well be open to the spell which, after
all, was the great confirmation of Christ's religion, as it was
the great -confirmation of the original religion of Israel, —
the spell of its happiness. . ' 'Bt.giad, O ye righteous, and
rejoicem the Eternal,^ the old and lost prerogative of Israel,
Christianity offered to make again a living and true word
to him.
4.
For we have already remarked, how it is the great
achievement of the Israel of the Old Testament, happiness
being mankind's confessed end and aim, to have more
than anyone else felt, and more than anyone else suc-
ceeded in making others feel, that to righteousness belongs
happifiess. Now, it will be denied by no one that Christ,
in his turn, was eminently characterised by professing to
bring, and by being felt to bring, happiness. All the
words that belong to his mission, — gospel^ kingdom of God,
saviour J grace, peace, living water, bread of life, — are brim-
ful of promise and of joy. ' I am come,' he said, * that ye
might have life, and that ye might have it more abun-
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 99
dantly ; ' ' Come to me, and ye shall find rest unto your
souls ; ' 'I speak, that my disciples may have my joy
fulfilled in themselves.^ That the operation, professed and
actual, of this * son of peace ' was to replace his followers
in * the way of peace,' no one can question ; the only
matter of dispute can be ho7v he replaced them there.
Now, that we may see this more clearly, let us return
for a moment to what we said of conduct^ — of conduct,
which we found to be three-fourths, at least, of human
life, and the object with which religion is concerned.
We said of conduct, that it is the simplest thing in
the world as far as knowledge is concerned, but the
hardest thing in the world as far as doing is concerned.
We added that going rights succeeding, in the manage-
ment of this vast concern, gave naturally the liveliest
possible sense of satisfaction and happiness; that at-
tefiding to it was naturally the secret of success, that
atiachmetit makes us attend, and that whatever, therefore,
made us love to attend to it must inspire us with gratitude.
We found the central point of the religion of the Old
Testament in Israel's keen perception of a power, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness and disposes us
to attend to it, and in his energy of grateful self-surrender
to this ^ower. Let us take, to guide ourselves in the
New Testament, the help of the clue furnished by all this.
loo LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
First, as to the extreme simplicity of the matter con-
cerned ; a matter sophisticated, overlaid, and hidden in a
thousand ways. The artless, unschooled perception of a
child is, Christ says, the right organ for apprehending it :
* Whosoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a
little child, cannot enter therein.' And yet it is so diffi-
cult of attainment that it seems we cannot attain it of our-
selves : '■ No man can come to me unless it be given him
of the Father.' The things to be done are so simple and
necessary that the doctrine about them proves itself as
soon as we do them : ' Whoever will do God's will, shall
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.' Only it is
indispensable to do them ; speculating and professing are
absolutely useless, here, without doifig : ' Why call ye me,
Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say ? ' The
great and learned people, the masters in Israel, have their
authoritative version of what righteousness and the will
of God is, of what the ideal for the Jewish nation is, of
the correct way to interpret the prophets. But : ' Judge
not according to the appearance, but judge righteous
judgment ;' ' beware of insincerity ; ' ' God sees the /leart;
what comes from wit/tin, that defiles us.' The new cove-
nant, the New Testainejit, consists in the rule of this very
inwardness, in a state of things when God ' puts his law
in the inward parts and writes it in the heart,' in conscience
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. loi
being made the test. You can see, Jesus says, you can see
the leading religionists of the Jewish nation, with the
current notions about righteousness, God's will, and the
meaning of prophecy, you can see them saying and not
doing, full of fierce temper, pride, and sensuality ;— this
shows they can be but blind guides for you. The saviour
of Israel is he who makes Israel use his conscience simply
and sincerely, who makes him change and sweeten his
temper, conquer and annul his sensuality. The prophets
all point to such a saviour, and he is the Messiah, and
the promised happiness to Israel is in him and in his reign.
He is, in the exalted language of prophecy, the holy one
of God, the son of God, the beloved of God, the anointed
of God, the son of man in an eminent and unique sense,
the Messiah and Christ ; in plainer language, he is ' a
man who tells you the truth which he has heard of God;*
who came not of himself and speaks not of himself, but
who ' came forth from God,' — from the original God of
Israel's worship, the God of righteousness, and of happi-
ness joined to righteousness, — ' and is come to you.'
Israel is perpetually talking of God and calling him
his Father, and ' everyone,' says Christ, * who hears the
Father comes to me, for I know Him, and know His will,
and utter His word.' God's will and word, in the Old
Testament, was righteousness ; in the New Testament, it
I02 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
is righteousness explained to have its essence in iniiiard-
ness, mildness, and self -renouncement. This is, in sub-
stance, the word of Christ which he who hears 'shall
never see death ; ' of which he who follows it ' shall know
by experience whether it be of God.'
But as the Israel of the Old Testament did not say or
feel that he followed righteousness by his own power, or
out of self-interest and self-love, but said and felt that he
followed it in thankful self- surrender to * the Eternal who
loveth righteousness,' and that 'the Eternal ordereth a
good man's going and maketh his way acceptable to Himself^
— so, in the restoration effected by Jesus, the motive
which is of force is not the moral motive that inwardness,
mildness, and self-renouncement make for man's happi-
ness, but a far stronger motive, full of ardent affection
and gratitude, and which, though it really has its ground
and confirmation in the fact that inwardness, mildness,
and self-renouncement do make for man's happiness, yet
keeps no consciousness of this as its ground. For it finds
a far surer ground in personal devotjon to Christ, who
brought the doctrine to his disciples and made a passage
for it into their hearts ; in believing that Christ is come
from God, following Christ, loving Christ. And, in the
happiness which thus believing in him, following him,
and loving him gives, it finds the mightiest of sanc-
tions.
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN, 103
And thus was the great doctrine of the Old Testament,
To righteousness belongs happiness! made a tnie and
potent word again. Christ was the Messiah to restore
the all things of Israel, — righteousness, and happiness
with righteousness ; to bring light and recovery after
long days of darkness and ruin, and to make good the
belief written on Israel's heart : The righteous is an ever-
lasting foundation ! But we have seen how in the hopes
of the nation and in the promises of prophecy this true
and vital beUef of Israel was mixed with a quantity of
what we have called Aberglaube or extra-belief, adding all
manner of shape and circumstance to the original thought.
The kingdom of David and Solomon was to be restored
on a grander scale, the enemies of Israel were to lick
the dust, kings were to bring gifts ; there was to be the
Son of Man coming in the clouds, judgment given to the
saints of the Most High, and an eternal reign of the
saints afterwards.
Now, most of this has a poetical value, some of it has a
moral value. All of it is, in truth, a testimony to the
strength of Israel's idea of righteousness. For the order
of its growth is, as we have seen, this : ' To righteousness
belongs happiness I— \hh sure rule is often broken in the
I04 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
state of things which now is ; there must, therefore, be
in store for us, in the future, a state of things where it will
hold good.' But none of it has a scientific value, a
certitude arising from proof and experience. And indeed
it cannot have this, for it professes to be an anticipa-
tion of a state of things not yet actually experienced.
But human nature is such, that the mind easily dwells
on an anticipation of this kind until we come to forget
the order in which it arose, place it first when it is by rights
second, and make it support that by which it is in truth
supported. And so there came to be many Israelites, —
most likely they were the great majority of their nation, —
who supposed that righteousness was to be followed, not
out of thankful self-surrender to ' the Eternal who loveth
righteousness,' but because the Ancient of Days was
coming before long, and judgment was to be given to
the saints and they were to possess the kingdom, and
from the kingdom those who did not follow righteousness
would be excluded. From this way of conceiving reli-
gion came naturally the religious condition of the Jews as
Christ at his coming found it ; and from which, by his
new and living way of presenting the Messiah, he sought
to extricate the whole nation, and did extricate his
disciples. He did extricate these, in that he fixed their
thoughts upon himself and upon an ideal of inwardness.
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 105
mildness, and self-renouncement, instead of a phantas-
magory of outward grandeur and self-assertion. But at
the same time the whole train of extra-belief, or Aberglaube,
which had attached itself to Israel's old creed : The
righteous is an ez'erlasfifig foundation ! transferred itself
to the new creed brought by Christ : / am the door ! by
vie if any man enter in^ he shall be saved ! And there arose,
accordingly, a new Aberglaube like the old. The mild,
inward, self-renouncing and sacrificed Servant of the
Eternal, the new and better Messiah, was yet, before the
present generation passed, to come on the clouds of
heaven in power and glory, like the Messiah of Daniel,
to gather by trumpet-call his elect from the four winds,
and to set his apostles on twelve thrones judging the
twelve tribes of Israel. The motive of Christianity, —
which was, in truth, that pure souls ' knew the voice ' of
Jesus as sheep know the voice of their shepherd, and
felt after seeing and hearing him that his doctxine and
ideal was what they wanted, that he was 'indeed the
saviour of the world,'— this simple motive became a mixed
motive, adding to its first contents a vast extra-belief oi a
phantasmagorical Advent of Christ, a resurrection and
judgment, Christ's adherents glorified, his rejectors
punished everlastingly.
And when the generation, for which this Advent was
io6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
first fixed, had passed away without it, Christians dis-
covered by a process of criticism common enough in
popular theology, but by which, as Bishop Butler says of
a like kind of process, ' anything may be made out of
anything,' — they discovered that the Advent had never
really been fixed for that first generation, but that it was
foretold, and certainly in store, for a later time. So the
Aberglaube was perpetuated, placed out of reach of all
practical test, and made stronger than ever. With the
multitude, this Aberglaube or extra-belief inevitably came
soon to surpass the original conviction in attractiveness
and seeming certitude. The future and the miraculous
engaged the chief attention of Christians ; and, in accor-
dance with this strain of thought, they more and more
rested the proof of Christianity, not on its internal
evidence, but on prediction and miracle.
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 107
CHAPTER IV.
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY.
' Abergla ube is the poetry of life.' That men should,
by help of their imagination, take short cuts to what
they ardently desire, whether the triumph of Israel or
the triumph of Christianity, should tell themselves fairy-
tales about it, should make these fairy-tales the basis for
what is far more sure and soHd than the fairy-tales, the
desire itself, — all this has in it, we repeat, nothing which
is not natural, nothing blameable. Nay, the region of
our hopes and presentiments extends, as we have also
said, far beyond the region of what we can know with
certainty. What we reach by hope and presentiment
may yet be tnie, and he would be a narrow reasoner who
denied, for instance, all validity to the idea of immor-
tality, because this idea rests on presentiment mainly,
and does not admit of certain demonstration. In reli-
gion, above all, extra-belief \% in itself no matter, assuredly,
for blame. The object of religion is conduct; and if a
io8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
man helps himself in his conduct by taking an
object of hope and presentiment as if it were an
object of certainty, he may even be said to gain thereby
an advantage.
And yet there is always a drawback to a man's advan-
tage in thus treating, in religion and conduct, what is
extra-beHef, and not certain, as if it were matter of cer-
tainty, and in making it his ground of action ; — he pays
for it. The time comes when he discovers that it is not
certain ; and then the whole certainty of religion seems
discredited, and the basis of conduct gone. This danger
attends the reliance on prediction and miracle as evi-
dences of Christianity. They have been attacked as a
part of the ' cheat ' or ' imposture ' of religion and of
Christianity. For us, religion is the solidest of realities,
and Christianity the greatest and happiest stroke ever yet
made for human perfection. Prediction and miracle were
attributed to it as its supports, because of its grandeur,
and because of the awe and admiration which it inspired.
Generations of men have helped themselves to hold firmer
to it, helped themselves in conduct, by the aid of these
supports. ' Miracles /r^z^^,' men have said and thought,
* that the order of physical nature is not fate, nor a mere
material constitution of things, but the subject of a free,
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 109
omnipotent Master. Prophecy fulfilled proves that neither
fate nor man are masters of the world.' ^
And to take prophecy first. ' The conditions,' it is
said, ' which form the true conclusive standard of a pro-
phetic inspiration are these : That the prediction be
known to have been promulgated before the event ; that
the event be such as could not have been foreseen, when
it was predicted, by any effort of human reason ; and that
the event and the prediction correspond together in a
clear accomplishment There are prophecies in Scripture
answering to the standard of an absolute proof. Their
publication, their fulfilment, their supernatural prescience,
are all fully ascertained.' ^ On this sort of ground men
came to rest the proof of Christianity.
2.
Now, it may be said, indeed, that a prediction fulfilled,
an exhibition of supernatural prescience, proves nothing
for or against the truth and necessity of conduct and
righteousness. But it must be allowed, notwithstanding,
that while human nature is what it is, the mass of men are
likely to listen more to a teacher of righteousness, if he
accompanies his teaching by an exhibition of supernatural
* Davison's Discourses on Prophecy \ Discourse ii. Part 2.
* Discourses ix. and xii.
110 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
prescience. And what were called the * signal predictions'
concerning the Christ of popular theology, as they stand
in our Bibles, had and have undoubtedly a look of super-
natural prescience. The employment of capital letters,
and other aids, such as the constant use of the future
tense, naturally and innocently adopted by interpreters
who were profoundly convinced that Christianity needed
these express predictions and that they must be in the
Bible, enhanced, certainly, this look ; but the look, even
without these aids, was sufficiently striking.
That Jacob on his death-bed should two thousand years
before Christ have ' been enabled,' as the phrase is, to fore-
tell to his son Judah that '■ the sceptre shall not depart from
Judah until Shiloh (or the Messiah) come, and to him shall
the gathering of the people be, Vc7^j- seem, when the expla-
nation is put with it that the Jewish kingdom lasted till
the Christian era and then perished, a miracle of predic-
tion in favour of our current Christian theology. That
Jeremiah should have ' been enabled ' to foretell, in the
name of Jehovah : ' The days come when I will raise to
David a righteous Branch ; in his days Judah shall be
saved, and Israel shall dwell safely ; and this is the name
whereby he shall be called, the lord our righteous-
ness ! ' — does seem a wonder of prediction in favour of
that tenet of the Godhead of the Eternal Son, for which
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. m
the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious
to do something. For unquestionably Jehovah is often
spoken of as the saviour of Judah and Israel : * All
flesh shall know that I the Eternal am thy saviour and
thy redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob ; ' and in the pro-
phecy given above as Jeremiah's, the Branch of David is
clearly identified with Jehovah. Again, that David should
say : ' The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right
hand until I make thy foes thy footstool,' — does seem a
prodigy of prediction to the same effect. That he should
say : ' Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and so ye perish,'
does seem a supernaturally prescient assertion of the
Eternal Sonship. And so long as these prophecies stand
as they are here given, they no doubt bring to Christianity
all the support (and with the mass of mankind this is by
no means inconsiderable) which it can derive from the
display of supernatural prescience.
But who will dispute that it more and more becomes
known that these prophecies cannot stand as we have
here given them ? Manifestly, it more and more becomes
known, that the passage from Genesis, with its mysterious
Shiloh and the gathering of the people to him, is rightly
to be rendered as follows : * The pre-eminence shall
not depart from Judah so long as the people resort to
Shiloh (the national sanctuary before Jerusalem was
112 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
won) ; and the nations (the heathen Canaanites) shall obey
him.^ We here purposely leave out of sight any such
consideration as that our actual books of the Old Testa-
ment came first together through the piety of the
house of Judah, and when the destiny of Judah was
already traced ; and that to say roundly : ' Jacob was
enabled to foretell : The sceptre shall not depart from
Judah/ as if we were speaking of a prophecy preached
and published by Dr. Gumming, is wholly inadmissible.
For this consideration is of force, indeed, but it is a con-
sideration drawn from the rules of literary history and
criticism, and not likely to have weight with the mass of
mankind. Palpable error and mistranslation are what will
have weight with them.
And what, then, will they say as they come to know
(and do not and must not more and more of them come
to know it every day?) that Jeremiah's supposed signal
identification of Christ with the God of Israel : * I will
raise to David a righteous Branch, and this is the name
whereby he shall be called, the lord our right-
eousness,' runs really : ' T will raise to David a righteous
branch ; in his days Judah shall be saved and Israel
shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby they
shall call themselves : The Eternal is our righteousness ! '
The prophecy thus becomes simply one of the many
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 113
promises of a successor to David under whom the Hebrew
people should trust in the Eternal and follow righteous-
ness ; just as the prophecy from Genesis is one of the many
prophecies of the enduring continuance of the greatness
of Judah. ' The Lord said unto my Lord/ in like manner —
will not people be startled when they find that it ought
to run instead : ' The Eternal said unto my lord the king,*
— a simple promise of victory to a prince of God's chosen
people ? — and that : * Kiss the Son,' is in reality, ' Be
warned,' or, ' be instructed ; ' ' lay hold/ according to the
Septuagint, * on instruction ' ?
3-
Leslie, in his once famous Short and Easy Method with
the Deists., speaks of the impugners of the current
evidences of Christianity as men who consider the
Scripture histories and the Christian religion ' cheats and
impositions of cunning and designing men upon the
credulity of simple people.' Collins, and the whole
array of writers at whom Leslie aims this, greatly need to
be re-surveyed from the point of view of our own age.
Nevertheless, we may grant that some of them, at any
rate, conduct their attacks on the current evidences for
Christianity in such a manner as to give the notion that
in their opinion Christianity itself, and religion, is a cheat
I
114 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
and an imposture. But how far more prone will the
mass of .mankind be to hearken to this opinion, if they
have been kept intent on predictions such as those of
wliich we have given specimens ; if they have been kept
full of the great importance of this narrow line of mechani-
cal evidence, and then suddenly find that this line of evi-
dence gives way at all points ? It can hardly be gainsaid,
that, to a delicate and penetrating criticism, it has long
been manifest that the chief literal fulfilment by Christ of
things said by the prophets, was the fulfilment such as
would naturally be given by one who nourished his
spirit on the prophets and on living and acting their
words. The great prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah
are, critics can now see, not strictly predictions at all ; .
and predictions which are strictly meant as such, like those
in the Book of Daniel, are an embarrassment to the Bible
rather than a main element of it. The * Zeit-Geist,' and
the mere spread of what is called ailightenmejit^ superficial
and barren as this often is, will inevitably, before long,
make this conviction of criticism a popular opinion held
far and wide. And then, what will be their case, who
have been so long and sedulously taught to rely on super-
natural predictions as a mainstay ?
The same must be said of miracles. The substitution
of some other proof of Christianity for this accustomed
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 115
proof is now to be desired most by those who most
think Christianity of importance. That old friend of
ours on whom we have formerly commented,^ who
insists upon it that Christianity is and shall be nothing
else but this, * that Christ promised Paradise to the
saint and threatened the worldly man with hell-fire, and
proved his power to promise and. threaten by rising from
the dead and ascending into heaven,' is certainly not the
guide whom lovers of Christianity, if they could discern
what it is that he really expects and aims at, and what it
is which they themselves really desire, would think it
wise to follow.
But the subject of miracles is a very great one ; it
includes within itself, indeed, the whole question about
* supernatural prescience.' which meets us when we deal
with prophecy. And this great subject requires, in order
that we may deal with it properly, some little recapitulation
of our original design in this essay, and of the circum-
stances in which the cause of religion and of the Bible
seems to be at this moment placed*
* St. Paul and Protestantism^ p. 157.
I 2
ii6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
CHAPTER V.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES.
We have seen that some new treatment or other the
religion of the Bible certainly seems to require, for it is
attacked on all sides, and the theologians are not so
successful as one might wish in defending it. One critic
says, that if these islands had no religion at all it would
not enter into his mind to introduce the religious and
ethical idea by the agency of the Bible ; another, that
though certain commonplaces are common to all systems
of morality, yet the Bible way of enunciating these com-
monplaces no longer suits us. And we may rest assured,
he adds, that by saying what we think in some other,
more congenial, language, we shall really be taking the
shortest road to discovering the new doctrines which will
satisfy at once our reason and our imaginatioru Another
critic goes farther still, and calls Bible-religion not only
destitute of a modem and congenial way of stating its
commonplaces of morality, but a defacer and disfigurer
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 117
of moral treasures which were once in better keeping. The
more one studies, the more, says he, one is convinced, that
the rehgion which calls itself revealed contains, in the way
of what is good, nothing which is not the incoherent and
ill-digested residue of the wisdom of the ancients. To
the same effect the Duke of Somerset, — who has been
affording lately proof to the world that our aristocratic
class are not, as has been said, inaccessible to ideas and
merely polite, but that they are familiar, on the contrary,
with modem criticism of the most advanced kind, — the
Duke of Somerset finds very much to be dissatisfied with
in the Bible and its teaching ; although the soul, he says,
has (outside the Bible, apparently) one unassailable for-
tress to which she may retire, — faith in God.
All this seems to threaten to push Bible-religion from
the place it has long held in our affections. And even
what the most modern criticism of all sometimes does, to
save it and set it up again, can hardly be called very
flattering to it. For whereas the Hebrew race imagined
that to them were committed the oracles of God, and
that their God, * the Eternal who loveth righteousness,'
was the God to whom every knee should bow and every
tongue swear, there now comes Monsieui: Emile Burnouf,
the accomplished son of a gifted father, and will prove to
ii8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
us in a thick volume ^ that the oracles of God were not
committed to a Semitic race at all, but tothe Aryan; that
the true God is not Israel's God at all, but is 'the idea of
the absolute ' which Israel could never properly master.
This ' sacred theory of the Aryas,' it seems, passed into
Palestine from Persia and India, and got possession of
the founder of Christianity and of his greatest apostles
St. Paul and St. John ; becoming more perfect, and
returning more and more to its true character of a
' transcendent metaphysic,' as the doctors of the Christian
Church developed it. So that we Christians, who are
Aryas, may have the satisfaction of thinking that ' the
religion of Christ has not come to us from the Semites,'
and that ' it is in the hymns of the Veda and not in the
Bible that we are to look for the primordial source of
our religion.' The theory of Christ is accordingly the
theory of the Vedic Agni, ox fire ; the Incarnation repre-
sents the Vedic solemnity of the production of fire^
symbol of force of every kind, of all movement, life, and
thought; the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit is the
Vedic Trinity of Sun, Fire, and Wind ; and God, finally,
is * a cosmic unity.'
Such speculations almost take away the breath of a
mere man of letters. What one is inclined to say of
* La Science des Religions \ Paris, 1872.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 119
them is this : Undoubtedly these exploits of the Ar)'an
genius are gratifying to us members of the Aryan race.
The God of the Hebrews, M. Bumouf says expressly,
*was not a cosmic unity;' the religion of the Hebrews
* had 7iot that transcendent metaphysic which the genius
of the Aryas requires ; ' and, ' in passing from the Aryan
race to the inferior races, religion underwent a deteriora-
tion due to the physical and moral constitution of these
races/ For religion, it must be remembered, is, in
M. Bumouf's view, fundamentally a science ; * a meta-
physical conception, a theory, a synthetic explanation of
the universe.' Now * the perfect Arya is capable of a
great deal of science; the Semite is inferior to him.' As
Aryas or Aryans, then, we ought to be pleased at having
vindicated the greatness of our race, and having not
borrowed a Semitic religion, but transformed it by im-
porting our own metaphysics into it.
And this seems to harmonise very well with what the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester say about * doing
something for the honour of Our Lord's Godhead,' and
about 'the infinite separation for time and for eternity
which is involved in rejecting the Godhead of the Eternal
Son, Very God of Very God, Light of Light ; ' and also
with the Athanasian Creed generally, and with what the
clergy write to the Guardian about 'eternal life being
I20 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
unquestionably annexed to a right knowledge of the
Godhead/ For all these have in view high science and
metaphysics, worthy of the Aryas. But to Bible-religion,
in the plain sense of the word, it is not flattering ; for
it throws overboard almost entirely the Old Testament,
and makes the essence of the New to consist in an esoteric
doctrine not very visible there, but more fully developed
outside of it. The metaphysical element is made the
fundamental element in religion ; but * the Bible books,
especially the more ancient of them, are destitute of
metaphysics, and consequently of method and classifica-
tion in their ideas.' Israel, therefore, instead of being a
light of the Gentiles and a salvation to the ends of the
earth, falls to a place in the world's religious history
behind the Arya. He is dismissed as ranking anthropo-
logically between the Aryas and the yellow men ; as
having frizzled hair, thick lips, small calves, flat feet,
and belonging, above all, to those 'occipital races' whose
brain cannot grow after the age of sixteen ; whereas the
brain of a theological Arya, such as one of our bishops,
may go on growing all his life.
But we, who think that the Old Testament leads surely
up to the New, who believe that, indeed, ' salvation is of
the Jews,' and that, for what concerns conduct or righteous-
ness (that is, far what concerns three-fourths of human
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 121
life), they and their documents can no more be neglected
by whoever would make proficiency in it, than Greece can
be neglected by anyone who would make proficiency in
art, or Newton's discoveries by whoever would compre-
hend the world's physical laws, — we are naturally not
satisfied with this treatment of Israel and the Bible. And
admitting that Israel shows no talent for metaphysics, we
say that his religious greatness is just this, that he does
not found religion on metaphysics, but on moral experience,
which is a much simpler matter ; and that, ever since the
apparition of Israel and the Bible, religion is no longer
what, according to M. Burnouf, to our Aryan forefathers
in the valley of the Oxus it was, — and what perhaps it
really was, to thetrty — a metaphysical theory, but is what
Israel has made it.
And what Israel made, and how he made it, we seek
to show from the Bible itself. Thus we hope to
win for the Bible and its religion, which seem to us so
indispensable to the world, an access to many of those
who now neglect them. For there is this to be said against
M. Burnoufs metaphysics : no one can allege that the
Bible has failed to win access for want of metaphysics
being applied to it. Metaphysics are just what all our
theology runs up into, and our bishops, as we have seen,
are here particularly strong. But we have seen that the
122 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
making religion into metaphysics is the weakening of
religion ; now M. Burnouf makes religion into metaphysics
more than ever. Yet evidently the metaphysical method
lacks power for laying hold on people, and compelling
them to receive the Bible from it ; it is felt to be incon-
clusive as thus employed, and its inconclusiveness tells
against the Bible. This is the case with the metaphysics
of our bishops, and it will be the same with M. Burnouf s
new metaphysics also. They will be found, we fear, to
have an inconclusiveness in their recommendation of
Christianity. To very many persons, indeed to the great
majority, such a method, in such a matter, must be in-
conclusive.
Therefore we would not allow ourselves to start with
any metaphysical conception at all, not with the mono-
theistic idea, as it is styled, any more than with the
pantheistic idea; and, indeed, we are quite sure that
Israel himself began with nothing of the kind. The idea
of God, as it is given us in the Bible, rests, we say, not
on a metaphysical conception of the necessity of certain
deductions from our ideas of cause, existence, identity,
and the like ; but on a moral perception of a rule of con-
duct not of our own making, into which we are born,
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 123
and which exists whether we will or no ; of awe at its
grandeur and necessity, and of gratitude at its beneficence.
This is the great original revelation made to Israel, this is
his * Eternal/
Man^ however, as Goethe says, never knows how
anthropomorphic he is. Israel described his Eternal in
the language of poetry and emotion, and could not thus
describe him but with the character of a man. Scientifi-
cally he never attempted to describe him at all. But
still the Eternal was ever at last reducible, for Israel, to
the reality of experience out of which the revelation
sprang ; he was ' the righteous Eternal who loveth
righteousness.' They who 'seek the Eternal,' and they
who * follow after righteousness,' were identical ; just as,
conversely, they who *fear the Eternal,* and they who
* depart from evil,' were identical. Above all : 'He that
feareth the Eternal happy is he ; ' 'it is joy to the just to
do judgment;' 'righteousness tendeth to /z/Jr;' 'the
righteous is an everlastifig foundation.^
But, as time went on, facts seemed, we saw, to con-
tradict this fundamental belief, to refute this faith in the
Eternal ; material forces prevailed, and God appeared, as
they say, to be on the side of the big battalions. The
great unrighteous kingdoms of the world, kingdoms which
cared far less than Israel for righteousness, and for the
124 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Eternal who makgs for righteousness, overpowered Israel.
Prophecy assured him that the triumph of the Eternal's
cause and people was certain : Behold, the EternaVs hand
is not shortened, that it cannot save. The triumph was
but adjourned through Israel's own sins : Your iniquities
have separated between you and your God. Prophecy-
directed his thoughts to the future, and promised to him
a new everlasting kingdom under a heaven-sent leader.
The characters of this kingdom and leader were more
spiritualised by one prophet, more materialised by
another. As time went on, in the last centuries before
our era, they became increasingly turbid and phantasma-
gorical. In addition to his original experimental belief
in the almighty Eternal who makes for righteousness,
Israel had now a vast Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief,
not experimental, in an approaching kingdom of the
saints, to be established by an Anointed, a Messiah, 'one
like the Son of Man,' commissioned from the Ancient of
Days and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Jesus came, calling himself the Messiah, the Son of
Man, the Son of God ; and the question is, what is the
true meaning of these assertions of his, and of all his
teaching ? It is the same question we had about the Old
Testament. Is the language scientific, or, as we say, lite-
rary ; — that is, the language of poetry and emotion, ap-
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 125
proximative language, thrown out, as it were, at certain
great objects which the human mind augurs and feels
after, but not language accurately defining them? Po-
pular religion says, we know, that the language is scien-
tific; that the God of the Old Testament is a great
Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves (for this too,
it seems, we ought to have added), the moral and intelli-
gent Governor of the universe. Learned religion, the
metaphysical theology of our bishops, proves or confirms
this by abstruse reasoning from our ideas of cause, de-
sign, existence, identity, and so on. Popular religion
rests it altogether on miracles.
The God of Israel, for popular religion, is a magnified
and non-natural man who has really worked stupendous
miracles, whereas the Gods of the heathen were vainly
imagined to be able to work them, but could not, and
had therefore no real existence- Of this God, Jesus for
popular religion is the Son. He came to appease God's
wrath against sinful men by the sacrifice of himself; and
he proved his Sonship by a course of stupendous miracles,
and by the wonderful accomplishment in him of the super-
natural Messianic predictions of prophecy. Here, again,
learned rehgion elucidates and developes the relation of
the Son to the Father by a copious exhibition of meta-
physics ; but for popular religion the relationship, and the
126 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
authority of Jesus which derives from it, is altogether
established by miracle.
Now, we have seen that our bishops and their meta-
physics are so little convincing, that many people throw
the Bible quite aside and will not attend to it, because
they are given to understand that the metaphysics go
necessarily along with it, and that one cannot be taken
without the other. So far, then, the talents of the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, and their zeal to
do something for the honour of the Eternal Son's God-
head, may be said to be actual obstacles to the receiving
and studying of the Bible. But the same may now be
also said of the popular theology which rests the Bible's
authority and the Christian religion on miracle. To a
great many persons this is tantamount to stopping their
use of the Bible and of the Christian religion ; for they
have made up their minds that what is popularly called
miracle never really happens nor can happen, and that
the belief in it arises out of ignorance, fraud, or mistake.
To these persons we restore the use of the Bible, if,
while showing them that the Bible-language is not scien-
tific, but the language of common speech or of poetry
and eloquence, approximative language thrown out at
certain great objects of consciousness which it does not
pretend to define fully, we convince them at the same
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 127
time that this language deals with facts of experience
most momentous and real.
We have sought to do this for the language of the Old
Testament first, and we now seek to do it for that of the
New. Our attempt, therefore, has in view those who
now throw the Bible aside, not those who receive it on
the ground supplied either by popular theology or by
metaphysical theology. For persons of this kind, what
we say neither will have, nor seeks to have, any con-
straining force at all; only it is rendered necessary by the
want of constraining force, for others than themselves, in
their own theology. How little constraining force meta-
physical dogma has, we all see. And we have shown, too,
how the proof from the fulfilment in Christ of a number
of definite, detailed predictions, supposed to have been
made with supernatural prescience about him long be-
forehand, is losing, and seems likely more and more to
lose, its constraining force. It is found that the predic-
tions and their fulfilment are not what they are said to be.
Now we come to miracles^ more specially so called ;
and we have to see whether the constraining force of this
proof, too, must not be admitted to be far less than it
used to be, and whether some other source of authority
for the Bible is not much to be desired.
128 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
That miracles, when fully believed, are felt by men in
general to be a source of authority, it is absurd to deny.
One may say, indeed : Suppose I could change the pen
with which I write this into a pen-wiper, I should not
thus make what I write any the truer or more convincing.
That may be so in reality, but the mass of mankind feel
differently. In the judgment of the mass of mankind,
could I visibly and undeniably change the pen with which
I write this into a pen-wii>er, not only would this which
I write acquire a claim to be held perfectly true and con-
vincing, but I should even be entitled to affirm, and to
be believed in affirming, propositions the most palpably
.at war with common fact and experience. It is almost
impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human
mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for
miracles as evidence j or the extent to which religion,
and religion of a true and admirable kind, has been, and
is still, held in connexion with a reliance upon miracles.
This reliance will long outlast the reliance on the super-
natural prescience of prophecy, for it is not exposed to
the same tests. To pick Scripture miracles one by one
to pieces is an odious and repulsive task ; it is also an
unprofitable one, for whatever we may think of the
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES, 129
affirmative demonstrations of them, a negative demonstra-
tion of them is, from the circumstances of the case, im-
possible. And yet the human mind is assuredly passing
away, however slowly, from this hold of reliance also ;
and those who make it their stay will more and more find
it fail them, will be more and more disturbed, shaken,
distressed, and bewildered.
For it is what we call the Time-Spirit that is sapping
the proof from miracles, — it is the '■ Zeit-Geist ' itself.
Whether we attack them, or whether we defend them-,
does not much matter ; the human mind, as its experience
widens, is turning away from them. And for this reason :
it sees, as its experience widens, how they arise. It sees
that, under certain circumstances, they always do arise ;
and that they have not more solidity in one case than
another. Under certain circumstances, wherever men
are found, there is, as Shakspeare says : —
No natiiral exhalation in the sky,
No scape of nature, no distemper'd day,
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause.
And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.
Imposture is so far from being the general rule in these
cases, that it is the rare exception. Signs and wonders
K
130 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
men's minds will have, and they create them honestly and
naturally; yet not so but that we can see how they
<:reated them.
Roman Catholics fancy that Bible miracles and the
miracles of their Church form a class by themselves ; Pro-
testants fancy that Bible miracles, alone, form a class by
themselves. This was eminently the posture of mind o^the
late Archbishop Whately : — to hold that all other miracles
would turn out to be impostures, or capable of a natural
explanation, but that Bible miracles would stand sifting
by a London special jury or by a committee of scientific
men. No acuteness can save such notions, as our know-
ledge widens, from being seen to be mere extravagances,
and the Protestant notion is doomed to an earlier ruin
than the Catholic. For the CathoHc notion admits
miracles in the mass ; the Protestant notion invites to a
criticism by which it must finally itself perish. When
Stephen was martyred, he looked up into heaven and saw
the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand
of God. That, says the Protestant, is solid fact. At the
martyrdom of St. Fructuosus, Babylas and Mygdone, the
Christian servants of the Roman governor, saw the
heavens open, and the saint and his deacon Eulogius
::arried up on high with crowns on their heads. That
is, says the Protestant, imposture or else illusion. St.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 131
Paul hears on his way to Damascus the voice of Jesus
say to him : * Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? *
That, again, is solid fact. The companion of St. Thomas
Aquinas hears a voice from the crucifix say to the pray-
ing saint : ' Thou hast written well of me, Thomas ; what
recompense dost thou desire?' That, again, is impos-
ture or else illusion. Why? It is impossible to find any
criterion by which one of these incidents may establish
its claim to a solidity which we refiise to the others.
One of two things must be made out in order to place
either the Bible miracles alone, or the Bible miracles and
the miracles of the Catholic Church with them, in a class
by themselves. Either they must be shown to have
arisen in a time eminently unfavourable to such a process
as Shakspeare describes, to amplification and the pro-
duction of legend ; or they must be shown to be recorded
in documents of an eminently historical mode of birth
and publication. But surely it is manifest that the Bible
miracles fulfil neither of these conditions. It was said
that the waters of the Pamphylian Sea miraculously
opened a passage for the army of Alexander the Great
Admiral Beaufort, however, tells us that, * though there
are no tides in this part of the Mediterranean, a consider-
able depression of the sea is caused by long-continued
north winds, and Alexander, taking advantage of such a
K 2
132 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
moment, may have dashed on without impediment;'*
and we accept the explanation as a matter of coilrse.
But the waters of the Red Sea are said to have miracu-
lously opened a passage for the children of Israel ; and
we insist on the literal truth of this story, and reject
natural explanations as monstrous. Yet the time and
circumstances of the flight from Egypt were a thousand
times more favourable to the rise of some natural inci-
dent into a miracle, than the age of Alexander. Th6y
were a time and circumstances of less broad daylight.
It was said, again, that during the battle of Leuctra the
gates of the Heracleum at Thebes suddenly opened, and
the armour of Hercules vanished from the temple, to
enable the god to take part with the Thebans in the
battle. Probably there was some real circumstance, how-
ever slight, which gave a foundation for the story. But
this is the most we think of saying in its favour; the
literal story it never even occurs to one of us to believe.
But that the walls of Jericho literally fell down at the
sound of the trumpets of Joshua, we are asked to believe,
told that it is impious to disbeheve it. Yet which place
and time were most likely to generate a miraculous story
with ease, — Hellas and the days of Epaminondas, or
Palestine and the days of Joshua ? And of documentary
* Beaufort's Aarawawa, p. Ii6.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 133
records, which are the most historical in their way of
being generated and propagated, which the most favour-
able for the admission of legend and miracle of all kinds,
— the Old Testament narratives with their incubation of
centuries, and the New Testament narratives with their
incubation of a century (and tradition active all the
while), or the narratives, say, of Herodotus or Plutarch ?
None of them are what we call critical. Experience of \
the history of the human mind, and of men's habits of ?
seeing, sifting, and relating, convinces us that the mira-
i
culous stories of Herodotus or Plutarch do grow out of
the process described by Shakspeare. But we shall find
ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later, to extend the
same rule to all miraculous stories ; nay, the considera-
tions which apply in other cases, apply, we shall most
surely discover, with even greater force in the case of
Bible miracles.
This being so, there is nothing one would more desire
for a person or document one greatly values, than to
make them independent of miracles. And with regard
to the Old Testament we have done this ; for we have
shown that the essential matter in the Old Testament is
the revelation to Israel of the immeasurable grandeur,
134 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
the eternal necessity, the priceless blessing of that with
which not less than three-fourths of human life is indeed
concerned, — righteousness. And it makes no difference
to the preciousness of this revelation, whether we believe
that the Red Sea miraculously opened a passage to the
Israelites, and the walls of Jericho miraculously fell down
at the blast of Joshua's trumpet, or that these stories arose
in the same way as other stories of the kind. In the
New Testament the essential thing is the revelation of
Christ. For this too, then, if one values it, one's great
wish must in like manner be to make it independent of
miracle; if miracle is a stay which one perceives, as
more and more we are all coming to perceive it, to be
not solid.
Now, it may look at first sight a strange thing to say,
but it is a truth which we will make abundantly clear
as we go on, that one of the very best helps to prepare a
way for the revelation of Christ, is to convince oneself of
the liability to mistake in his reporters. Our popular
theology imagines that the Old Testament writers were
miraculously inspired, and could make no mistakes ; that
the New Testament writers were miraculously inspired,
and could make no mistakes ; and that there this mira-
culous inspiration stopped, and all writers on religion
have been liable to make mistakes ever since. It is as it
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES, 135;
a hand had been put out of the sky presenting us with the |
Bible, and the rules of criticism which apply to other
books did not apply to the Bible. Now, the fatal thing
for this fancy is, that its owners stab it to the heart the
moment they use any palliation or explaining away, how-
ever small, of the literal words of the Bible ; and some
they always use. For instance, it is said in the eigh-
teenth Psalm, that a consuming fire went out of the
mouth of God, so that coals were kindled at it. The
veriest literalist will cry out : Every one knows that this
is not to be taken literally ! The truth is, even he knows
that this is not to be taken literally ; but others know
that a great deal more is not to be taken literally. He
knows very little; but, as far as his little knowledge goes,
he gives up his theory, which is, of course, palpably
hollow. For indeed it is only by applying to the Bible
his criticism^ such as it is, that any man makes out that
criticism does not apply to the Bible.
But suppose that the Bible itself put forth (which it
does not) this theory, and made its own value all depend
on the truth of it, then the result would be, at the best,
not firmer conviction, but utter puzzle and bewilderment
Contradictions would meet us, and we should have no
means of escape from them. There would grow up an
irresistible sense that the belief in miracles was due to
136 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
man's want of experience, to his ignorance, agitation, and
helplessness ; and yet we should have a book, which we
felt to be precious, purporting to be put out of the sky,
to be full of miracles, and to depend for all its value upon
their being true. Then it is that the cry, imposture I would
more and more, in spite of all we could do, gather strength,
and the book be thrown aside more and more. But when
we convince ourselves that, in the New Testament as in
the Old, what is given us is words thrown out at an
immense reality, not fully or half fully grasped by the
writer, but, even thus, able to affect us with indescribable
force ; when we convince ourselves that, as in the Old
Testament we have Israel's inadequate yet inexhaustibly
fruitful testimony to the Eternal that makes for righteous-
ness^ so we have in the New Testament a report in-
adequate, indeed, but the only report we have and
therefore priceless, by men, some more able and clear,
others less able and clear, but all full of the influences of
their time and condition, partakers of some of its simple
or its learned ignorance, — inevitably, in fine, expecting
miracles and demanding them, — a report, I say, by
these men of that immense reality not fully or half fully
grasped by them, the mind of Christ ; — then we shall
be drawn to the Gospels with a new zest and as by a
fresh spell. We shall throw ourselves upon their nar-
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 137
ratives with an ardour answering to the value of the
pearl of great price they hold, and to the difficulty of
reaching it.
So, to profit fully by the New Testament, the first
thing to be done is to make it perfectly clear to oneself
that its reporters both could err and did err. For a plain
person, an incident in the report of St. Paul's conversion,
— which comes into our minds the more naturally as this
incident has been turned against something we have our-
selves said, ^— would, one would think, be enough. We
had spoken of the notion that St. Paul's miraculous vision
at his conversion proved the truth of his doctrine. We
related a vision which converted Sampson Staniforth, one
of the early Methodists ; and we said that just so much
proving force, and no more, as Sampson Staniforth's
vision had to confirm the truth of anything he might after-
wards teach, St. Paul's vision had to establish his subse-
quent doctrine. It was eagerly rejoined that Staniforth's
vision was but a fancy of his own, whereas the reality of
Paul's was proved by his companions hearing the voice
that spoke to him. And so in one place of the Acts we
are told they did ; but in another place of the Acts we are
told by Paul himself just the contrary : that his com-
* St. Paul and Protestantism^ p. 54.
138 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
panions did not hear the voice that spoke to him. Need
we say that the two statements have been * reconciled ' ?
They have, over and over again ; but by one of those pro-
cesses which are the opprobrium of our Bible criticism,
and by which, as Bishop Butler says, anything can be made
to mean anything. There is between the two statements
a contradiction as clear as can be. The contradiction
proves nothing against the good faith of the reporter, and
St. Paul undoubtedly had his vision ; he had it as Sampson
Staniforth had his. What the contradiction proves is, the
incurable looseness with which the circumstances of what
is called and thought a miracle are related ; and that this
looseness the Bible relaters of a miracle exhibit, just like
other people. And the moral is, what an unsure stay,
then, must miracles be !
But, after all, that there is here any contradiction or
mistake, some do deny ; so let us choose a case where
the mistake is quite undeniably clear. Such a case we
find in the confident expectation and assertion, on the
part of the New Testament writers, of the approaching
end of the world. Even this mistake people try to explain
away ; but it is so palpable that no words can cloud our
perception of it. The time is short. The Lord is at hand.
The end of all things is at hand. Little children^ it is
the final time. The Lord's coming is at hand; behold
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 139
the judge stajiddh before the door J * Nothing can really
obscure the evidence furnished by such sayings as these.
When Paul told the Thessalonians that they and he,
at the approaching coming of Christ, should have their
turn after, not before, the faithful dead : * For the Lord
himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and
the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air,' — when he said
this, St. Paul was simply mistaken in his notion of
what was going to happen. This is as clear as an)rthing
can be.
And not only were the New Testament writers thus de-
monstrably liable to commit, like other men, mistakes in
fact; they were also demonstrably liable to commit mis-
takes in argument As before, let us take a case which will
be manifest and palpable to every one. St. Paul, arguing
to the Galatians that salvation was not by the Jewish law
but by Jesus Christ, proves his point from the promise to
Abraham having been made to him and his seed^ not seeds.
The words are not, he says, ' to seeds, as of many, but as
» I. Cor. vii. 29 ; Philipp. iv. 5 ; I. Pet. iv. 7 ; I. John ii. 18 ;
James v. 8, 9. We have here the express declarations of St. Paul,
St, Peter, St. John, and St. James.
I40 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
of one ; to thy seed^ which is Christ.' Now, as to the
point to be proved, we all agree with St. Paul ; but his
argument is that of a Jewish Rabbi, and is clearly both
fanciful and false. The writer in Genesis never intended
to draw any distinction between one of Abraham's seed,
and Abraham's seed in general. And even if he had ex-
pressly meant, what Paul says he did not mean, Abraham's
seed in general, he would still have said seed^ and not seeds.
This is a good instance to take, because the Apostle's
substantial doctrine is here not at all concerned. As to
the root of the matter in question, we are all at one with
St. Paul. But it is evident how he could, like the rest of
us, bring a quite false argument in support of a quite true
thesis.
And the use of prophecy by the writers of the New
Testament furnishes really, almost at every turn, instances
of false argument of the same kind. Habit makes us so
lend ourselves to their way of speaking, that nothing checks
us ; but, the moment we begin to attend, we perceive
how much there is that ought to check us. Take the
famous allegation of the parted clothes but lot-assigned
coat of Christ as fulfilment of the supposed prophecy in
the Psalms : 'They parted my garments among them,
and for my vesture did tliey cast lots.' The words of the
Psalm are taken to mean contrast, when they do in truth
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 141
mean identity. According to the rules of Hebrew poetry,
for my vesture they did cast lots is merely a repetition, in
different words, of they parted my garments among them^
not an antithesis to it. The alleged * prophecy ' is, there-
fore, due to a dealing with the Psalmist's words which is
arbitrary and erroneous. So, again, to call the words, a
bone of him shall not be brokefi^ a prophecy of Christ,
fulfilled by his legs not being broken on the cross, is
evidently, the moment one considers it, a playing with
words which nowadays we should account childish. For
what do the words, taken, as alone words can rationally
be taken, along with their context, really prophesy ? The
entire safety of the righteous, not his death. Many are
the troubles of the righteous^ but the Eternal deliver eth him
out of all; he keepeth all his bones^ so that not one of
the?n is broken. Worse words, therefore, could hardly
have been chosen from the Old Testament to apply in
that connexion where they come ; for they are really contra-
dicted by the death of Christ, not fulfilled by it.
It is true, this verbal and unintelligent use of Scripture
is just what was to be expected from the circumstances
of the New Testament writers. It was inevitable for them ;
it was the sort of trifling which then, in common Jewish
theology, passed for grave argument and made a serious
impression, as it has in common Christian theology ever
142 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
since. But this does not make it the less really trifling ;
or hinder one nowadays seeing it to be trifling, directly we
examine it. The mistake made will strike some people
more forcibly in one of the cases cited, some in another,
but in one or another of the cases the mistake will be
visible to everybody.
Now, this recognition of the liability of the New Testa-
ment writers to make mistakes, both of fact and of argu-
ment, will certainly, as we have said, more and more gain
strength, and spread wider and wider. The futility of
their mode of demonstration from prophecy, of which we
have just given examples, will be more and more felt.
The fallibility of that demonstration from miracles to
which they and all about them attached such prepon-
derating weight, which made the disciples of Jesus believe
in him, which made the people believe in him, will be
more and more recognised.
Reverence for all, who, in those first dubious days of
Christianity, chose the better part, and resolutely cast in
their lot with ' The despised and rejected of men ' ! Grati-
tude to all, who, while the tradition was yet fresh, helped
by their writings to preserve and set clear the precious
record of the words and life of Jesus ! And honour,
eternal honour, to the great and profound quaHties of soul
and mind which some of these writers display ! But the
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 143
writers are admirable for what they are, not for what, by the
nature of things, they could not be. It was superiority
enough in them to attach themselves firmly to Jesus ; to
feel to the bottom of their hearts that power of his words
which alone held permanently, — held when the miracles, in
which the multitude believed as well as they, failed to hold.
The good faith of the Bible writers is above all question ;
it speaks for itself; and the very same criticism, which
shows us the defects of their exegesis and of their demon-
strations from miracles, establishes their good faith. But
this could not, and did not, prevent them from arguing in
the methods by which everyone around them argued, and
from expecting miracles where everybody else expected
them.
In one respect alone have the miracles recorded by
them a more real ground than the mass of miracles of
which we have the relation. Medical science has never
gauged, — never, perhaps, enough set itself to gauge, — the
intimate connexion between moral fault and disease. To
what extent, or in how many cases, what is called illness
is due to moral springs having been used amiss, whether
by being over-used or by not being used sufficiently, we
hardly at all know, and we too little inquire. Certainly
it is due to this very much more than we commonly think ;
and the more it is due to this, the more do moral thera-
144 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
peutics rise in possibility and importance.^ The bringer
of light and happiness, the calmer and pacifier or invigb-
rator and stimulator, is one of the chiefest of doctors.
Such a doctor was Jesus ; such an operator, by an effica-
cious and real though little observed and little employed
agency, upon what we, in the language of popular super-
stition, call the unclean spirits, but which are to be desig-
nated more literally and more correctly as the uncleared,
unpurified spirits^ which came raging and madding before
him. This his own language shows, if we know how to
read it. ' What does it matter whether I say, Thy sins
are forgiven thee I or whether I say. Arise and walk ? '
And again : ' Thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a
worse thing befall thee' His reporters, we must remember,
are men who saw thaumaturgy in all that Jesus did, and
who saw in all sickness and disaster visitations from God,
and they bend his language accordingly. But indica-
tions enough remain to show the line of the Master, his
perception of the large part of moral cause in many kinds
of disease, and his method of addressing to this part
his cure.
It would never have done, indeed, to have men pro-
* Consult the Charmides of Plato (chap, v.) for a remarkable
account of the theory of such a treatment, attributed by Socrates to
Zamolxis, the god-king of the Thracians.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 145
nouncing right and left that this and that was a judgment,
and how, and for what, and on whom ; and so, when the
disciples, seeing an afflicted person, asked whether this
man had done sin or his parents, Jesus checked them and
said : ' Neither the one nor the other, but that the works
of God might be made manifest in him.' Not the less
clear is his own belief in the moral root of much physical
disease, and in moral therapeutics ; and it is important
to note well the branch of miracles where this belief
comes in. For the action of Jesus in these cases, how-
ever it may be amplified in the reports, was real ; but it
is not, therefore, as popular religion fancies, thaumaturgy,
— it is not what people are fond of calling the super-
natural^ but what is better called the fton-naturai. It
is, on the contrary, like the grace of Raphael, or the
grand style of Phidias, eminently natural ; but it is above
common low-pitched nature ; it is a line of nature not yet
mastered or followed out
Its significance as a guarantee of the authenticity of
Christ's mission is trivial, however, compared with the
guarantee furnished by his sayings. Its importance is in
its, necessary effect upon the beholders and reporters.
This element of what was really wonderful, unprecedented
and unaccountable, they had actually before them ; and
we may estimate how it must have helped and seemed
L
\
146 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
to sanction that tendency which in any case would have
carried them, circumstanced as they were, to find all the
performances and career of Jesus miraculous.
But, except for this, the miracles related in the Gospels
will appear to us more and more, the more our experience
and knowledge increases, to have but the same ground
which is common to all miracles, the ground indicated by
Shakspeare ; to have been generated under the same kind
of conditions as other miracles, and to follow the same
laws. When once the ' Zeit-Geist ' has made us entertain
the notion of this, a thousand things in the manner of
relating will strike us which never struck us before, and
will make us wonder how we could ever have thought
differently. Discrepancies which we now labour with
such honest pains and by such astonishing methods to
explain away, — the voice at Paul's conversion, heard by
the bystanders according to one account, not heard by
them according to another ; the Holy Dove at Christ's
baptism, visible to John the Baptist in one narrative, in two
others to Jesus himself, in another, finally, to all the people
as well j the single blind man in one relation, growing
into two blind men in another; the speaking with tongues,
according to St. Paul a sound without meaning, accord-
ing to the Acts an intelligent and intelligible utterance,
— all this will be felt to require really no explanation
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 147
at all, to explain itself, to be natural to the whole class of
incidents to which these miracles belong, and the inevit-
able result of the looseness with which the stories ctf them
arise and are propagated.
And the more the miraculousness of the story deepens,
as after the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of
the incidents become loose and floating, the more does
the very air and aspect of things seem to tell us we are in
wonderland. Jesus after his resurrection not known by |
Mary Magdalene, taken by her for the gardener; not j
known by the two disciples going with him to Emmaus \
and at supper with him there; not known by his most
intimate apostles on the borders of the Sea of Galilee ; —
and presently, out of these vague beginnings, the recog-
nitions getting asserted, then the ocular demonstrations,
the supreme commissions, the ascension; — one hardly
knows which of the two to call the most evident here,
the perfect simplicity and good faith of the narrators,
or the plainness with which they themselves really say
to us : Behold a legend growing under your eyes /
And suggestions of this sort, with respect to the whole
miraculous side of the New Testament, will meet us at
every turn ; we do but give a sample of thenL It is
neither our wish nor our design to accumulate them, to
marshal them, to insist upon them, to make their force
L2
148 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
felt. Let those who desire to keep them at arms' length
continue to do so, if they can, and go on placing' the
sanction of the Christian religion in its miracles. Our
point is, that the objections to miracles do, and more and
more will, without insistance, without attack, without
controversy, make their own force felt ; and that the sanc-
tion of Christianity, if Christianity is not to be lost along
with its miracles, must be found elsewhere.
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 149
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD.
Now, then, will be perceived the bearing and gravity
of what we some little way back said, that the more we
convince ourselves of the liability of the New Testament
writers to mistake, the more we really bring out the
greatness and worth of the New Testament. For the
New Testament exists to reveal Jesus, not to establish
the immunity of its writers from error. Jesus himself
is not a New Testament writer; he is the object of
description and comment to the New Testament ^\Titers.
As the Old Testament speaks about the Eternal and
bears an invaluable witness to him, without yet ever ade-
quately in words defining and expressing him ; so, and
even yet more, do the New Testament writers speak
about Jesus and give a priceless record of him, without
adequately and accurately comprehending him.
They are altogether on another plane from Jesus, and
their mistakes are not his. It is not Jesus himself who
ISO LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
relates his own miracles to us ; who tells us of his own
apparitions after his death; who alleges his crucifixion
and sufferings as a fulfilment of the prophecy : The
Eternal keepeth all the bones of the righteous so that not
one of thei7i is broken; who proves salvation to be by
Christ alone, from the promise to Abraham being made
to seed in the singular number, not the plural. If,
therefore, the human mind is now drawing away from
reliance on miracles, coming to perceive' the community
of character which pervades them all, to understand
their natural laws, so to speak, — their loose mode of
origination and their untmstworthiness, — and is inclined
rather to distrust the dealer in them than to pin its
faith upon him ; then it is good for the authority of Jesus,
that his reporters are evidently liable to ignorance and
error. He is reported to deal in miracles, to be above all a
thaumaturgist. But the more his reporters were intellec-
tually men of their nation and time, and of its current
beliefs, — the more, that is, they were open to mistakes, —
the more certain they were to impute miracles to a won-
derful and half-understood personage like Jesus, whether
he would or no. He himself may, at the same time,
have had quite other notions as to what he was doing and
intending.
Again, the mistake of imagining that the world was to
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 151
end, as St. Paul announces, within the lifetime of the first
Christian generation, is now palpable. The reporters of
Jesus make him announcing just the same thing : * This
generation shall not pass away till they shall see the Son of
Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory,
and then shall he send his angels and gather his elect
from the four winds.' Popular theology can put a plain
satisfactory sense upon this, but, as usual, through that
process described by Butler by which anytiiing can be
made to mean anything ; and from this sort of process the
human mind is beginning to shrink. A more plausible
theology will say that the words are an accommodation ;
that the speaker lends himself to tlie fancies and expecta-
tions of his hearers. A good deal of such accommoda-
tion there is in this and other sayings of Jesus ; but
accommodation to the full extent here supposed would
surely have been impossible. To suppose it, is most violent
and unsatisfactory. Either, then, the words were, like St.
Paul's announcement, a mistake, or they are not really
the very words Jesus said, just as he said them. That
is, the reporters have given them a turn, however slight,
a tone and a colour, to make them comply with a
fixed idea in their own minds, which they unfeignedly be-
lieved was a fixed idea with Jesus also. Now, tlie more
we regard the reporters of Jesus as men liable to err, full
152 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
of the turbid Jewish fancies about ' the grand consumma-
tion ' which were then current, the easier we can under-
stand these men inevitably putting their own eschatology
into the mouth of Jesus, when they had to report his
discourse about the kingdom of God and the troubles in
store for the Jewish nation, and the less need have we to
make Jesus a co-partner in their eschatology.
Again, the futility of such demonstrations from pro-
phecy as those of which we have given e'xamples, and
generally of all that Jewish exegesis, based on a mere
unintelligent catching at the letter of the Old Testament,
isolated from its context and real meaning, of which the
New Testament writers give us so much, begins to discon-
cert attentive readers of the Bible more and more, and to
be felt by them as an embarrassment to the cause of Jesus,
not a support. Well, then, it is good for the authority of
Jesus, that those who establish it by arguments of this
sort should be clearly men o^" their race and time, not
above its futile methods of reasoning and demonstration.
The more they were this, and the more they were sure to
mix up much futile logic and exegesis with their presenta-
tion of Jesus, the less is Jesus himself responsible for such
logic and exegesis, or at all dependent upon it. He may
himself have rated such argumentation at precisely its
true value, and have based his mission and authority
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 153
upon no grounds but solid ones. Whether he did so or
not, his hearers and reporters were sure to base it on
their own fantastic grounds also, and to credit Jesus with
doing the same.
In short, the more we conceive Jesus as almost as
much over the heads of his disciples and reporters as he
is over the heads of the mass of so-called Christians now,
the more we see his disciples to have been, as they were,
men raised by a truer moral susceptiveness above their
countrymen, but in intellectual conceptions and habits
much on a par with them, all the more do we make
room, so to speak, for Jesus to be inconceivably great
and wonderful ; as wonderful as anything his reporters
imagined him to be, though in a different manner.
2.
We make room for him to be this, and through the
inadequate reporting of his followers there breaks and
shines, and will more and more break and shine the
more the matter is examined, abundant evidence that he
was this. It is most remarkable, and the best proof of
the simplicity, seriousness, and good faith which inter-
course with Christ inspired, that witnesses with a fixed
prepossession, and having no doubt at all as to the
154 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
interpretation to be put on Christ's acts and career, should
yet admit so much of what makes against themselves and
their own power of interpreting. For them, it was a thing
beyond all doubt that by miracles Christ manifested forth
his glory and induced the faithful to believe in him ; yet
what checks to this paramount and all-governing belief of
theirs do they report from Christ himself! Everybody
will be able to recall such checks, although he may never
yet have been accustomed to consider their full signifi-
cance. Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe !
— as much as to say : * Believe on right grounds you can-
not, and you must needs believe on wrong ! ' And again :
* Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in
me ; or else believe for the very works' sake I ' — as much as
to say : * Acknowledge me on the ground of my healing
and restoring acts being miraculous, if you must; but it is
not the right ground.' No, not the right ground ; and
when Nicodemus came and would put conversion on this
ground (' We know that thou art a teacher come from
God, for no one can do the miracles that thoii doest except
God be with him '), Jesus rejoined : * Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, except a man be born from above, he cannot see
the kingdom of God ! ' thus tacitly changing his disciple's
ground and correcting him. Even distress and impatience
at this false ground being taken is visible sometimes :
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 155
* Jesus groaned in his spirit and said, Why doth this
generation ask for a sign ? Verily I say unto you, there
shall no sign be given to this generation ! ' Who does not
see what double and treble importance these checks of
Jesus to the reliance on miracles gain, from their being
reported by those who relied on miracles devoudy ? Who
does not see what a clue they oifer as to the real mind of
Jesus ? To convey at all to such hearers of him that there
was any objection to miracles, his own sense of the
objection must have been profound ; and to get them, who
neither shared nor understood it, to repeat it a few
times, he must have repeated it many times.
Take, again, the eschatology of the disciples, their
notion of final things and of the approaching great judg-
ment and end of the world. This consisted mainly in a
literal appropriation of the apocalyptic pictures of the
book of Daniel and the book of Enoch, and a transference
of them to Christ and his kingdom. It is not surprising,
certainly, that men with the mental range of their time, and
with so little flexibility of thought, that, when Jesus told
them to beware of * the leaven of the Pharisees,' or when
he called himself ' the bread of life ' and said, He that
eateth me shall live by me ! they stuck hopelessly fast in the
literal meaning of the words, and were accordingly puzzled
or else offended by them, — it is not surprising that these
156 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
men should have been incapable of dealing in a large
spirit with the prophecies of Daniel, that they should have
applied them to Christ narrowly and literally, and should
therefore have conceived his kingdom unintelligently.
This is not remarkable ; what is remarkable is, that they
should themselves supply us with their Master's blame
of their too literal criticism, his famous sentence : * The
kingdom of God is within you ! ' Such an account of the
kingdom of God has more right, even if recorded only
once, to pass with us for Christ's own account, than the
common materialising accounts, if repeated twenty times;
for it was manifestly quite foreign to the disciples' own
notions, and they could never have invented it. Evidence
of the same kind, again, evidence borne by the reporters
themselves against their own power of rightly under-
standing what Christ, on this topic of the kingdom of
God and its coming, meant to say, is Christ's warning to
his apostles, that the subject of final things was one where
they were all out of their depth : ' // is not for you to
know the times and the seasons which the Father hath
put in his own power.'
So, too, with the use of prophecy and of the Old Testa-
ment generally. A very small experience of Jewish
exegesis will convince us that, in the disciples, their
catching at the letter of the Scriptures, and mistaking this
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 157
play with words for serious argument, was nothing extra-
ordinary. The extraordinary thing is that Jesus, even in
the report of these critics, uses Scripture in a totally
different manner ; he wields it as an instrument of which
he truly possesses the use. Either he puts prophecy into
act, and by the startling point thus made he engages the
popular imagination on his side, makes the popular fami-
liarity with prophecy serve him ; as when he rides into
Jerusalem on an ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and
sellers. Or else he applies Scripture in what is called * a
superior spirit,' to make it yield to narrow-minded hearers
a lesson of wisdom ; as, for instance, to rebuke a supersti-
tious observance of the Sabbath he employs the incident
of David's taking the shewbread. His reporters, in short,
are the servants of the Scripture-letter, Jesus is its
master ; and it is from the very men, who were servants
to it themselves, that we learn that he was master of it.
How signal, therefore, must this mastery have been ! how
eminendy and strikingly different from the treatment
knowTi and practised by the disciples themselves !
Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the rule was, un-
doubtedly, that men * believed on Jesus when they saw the
miracles which he did.' Miracles were in these reporters'
eyes, beyond question, the evidence of the Christian reli
gion. And yet these same reporters indicate another and
IS8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
a totally different evidence offered for the Christian
religion by Jesus himself. Every one that heareth and
learneth from the Father cometh unto me. As the Father
hath taught me, so I speak; he that is of God heareth the
words of God; if God was your Father, ye would have
loved me f This is inward evidence, direct evidence.
From that previous knowledge of God, as * the Eternal
that loveth righteousness,' which Israel possessed, the
hearers of Jesus could and should have concluded irresis-
tibly, when they heard his words, that he came from God.
Now, miracles are outward evidence, indirect evidence,
not conclusive in this fashion. To walk on the sea can-
not really prove a man to proceed from the Eternal that
loveth righteousness ; although undoubtedly, as we have
said, a man who walks on the sea will be able to make
the mass of mankind believe about him anything he
chooses to say. But there is, after all, no necessary
connexion between walking on the sea and proceeding
from the Eternal that loveth righteousness. Jesus pro-
pounds, on the other hand, an evidence of which the
whole force lies in the necessary connexion between the
proving matter and the power that makes for righteous-
ness. This is his evidence for the Christian religion.
His disciples experienced the evidence, indeed. Peter's
answer to the question 'Will ye also go away?' — ^To
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 159
whom should we go? thou hast the words of eternal lifeP
proves it. But experiencing a thing is very different from
understanding and possessing it. The evidence, which
the disciples were conscious of understanding and possess-
ing, was the evidence from miracles. And yet, in their
report^ Jesus is plainly showuito us insisting on a different
evidence, an internal one. The character of the reporters
gives to this indication a paramount importance. That
they should indicate this internal evidence once, as the
evidence on which Jesus insisted, is more significant, we
repeat, than their indicating, twenty times, the evidence
from miracles as the evidence naturally convincing to
mankind and recommended, as they thought, by Jesus.
The notion of the one evidence they would have of them-
selves ; the notion of the other they could only get from a
superior mind. This mind must have been full of it to
make them feel it at all ; and their exhibition of it, even
then, must of necessity be inadequate and broken.
But is it possible to over-rate the value of the ground
thus gained for showing the riches of the New Testament
to those, who, sick of the popular arguments from
prophecy, sick of the popular arguments from miracles^
are for casting the New Testament aside altogether ? The
book contains all that we know of a wonderful spirit, far
above the heads of his reporters, still farther above the
i6o LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
head of our popular theology, which has added its own
misunderstanding of the reporters to the reporters' mis-
understanding of Jesus. And it was quite inevitable that
anything so superior and so profound should be im-
perfectly understood by those amongst whom it first
appeared, and for a very loiiig time afterwards ; and that it
should come at last gradually to stand out clearer only by
time, — Time^ as the Greek maxim says, the wisest of all
things, for he is the unfaili?ig discoverer.
Yet, however much is discovered, the object of our
scrutiny must still be beyond us, must still transcend our
adequate knowledge, if for no other reason, because of the
character of the first and only records of him. But in the
view now taken we have, — even at the point to which we
have already come, — at least a wonderful figure transcend-
ing his time, transcending his disciples, attaching them but
transcending them ; in very much that he uttered going
far above their heads, treating Scripture and prophecy like
a master while they treated it like children, resting his
doctrine on internal evidence while they rested it on
miracles; and yet, by his incomparable lucidity and
penetrativeness, planting his profound veins of thought
in their memory along with their own notions and pre-
possessions, to come out all mixed up together, but still
distinguishable one day and separable ;— and leaving
his word thus to bear fruit for the future.
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. i6i
Surely to follow and extract these veins of true ore is a
wise man's business ; not to let them lie neglected and
unused, because the beds where they are found are not all
of the same quality with them. The beds are invaluable
because they contain the ore ; and, though the search for
it in them is undoubtedly a grave and difficult quest, yet
it is not a quest of the elaborate and endless kind that it
will at first, perhaps, be fancied to be. It is a quest with
this for its governing idea : Jesus was over the heads of
his reporters ; what, therefore, in the report of him ^ is Jesus,
and what is the reporters ?
Now, this excludes as unessential much of the criticism
which is bestowed on the New Testament, and gives a
sure point of view for the remainder. And what it
excludes is those questions as to the exact date, the real
authorship, the first publication, the rank of priority, of
the Gospels ; — questions which have a great attraction for
critics, which are in themselves good to be entertained,
which lead to much close and fruitful observation of the
texts, and in which very high ingenuity may be shown and
very great plausibility reached, but not more; — they
cannot be really settled, the data are insufficient. And
for our purpose they are not essential. Neither is it
M
i62 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
essential for our purpose to get at the very primitive text
of the New Testament writers, deeply interesting and
deeply important as this is. The changes that have
befallen the text show, no doubt, the constant tendency
of popular Christianity to add to the element of theurgy
and thaumaturgy, to increase and develope it. To clear
the text of these, will show the New Testament writers to
have been less preoccupied with this tendency, and is, so
far, very instructive. But it will not, by re-establishing
the real words of the writers, 'necessarily give the real
truth as to Christ's religion ; because to the writers them-
selves this religion was, in a considerable degree certainly,
a theurgy and a thaumaturgy, although not in the
mechanical and extravagant way that it is in our present
popular theology.
For instance ; the famous text of the three heavenly
witnesses is an imposture, and an extravagant one. It
shows us, no doubt, theologians like the Bishop of
Gloucester already at work, — men with more metaphysics
than literary tact, full of the Aryan genius, of the notion
that religion is a metaphysical conception ; anxious to do
something for the thesis of ' the Godhead of the Eternal
Son,' or of * the blessed truth that the God of the universe
is a person/ — or as the Bishop of Gloucester writes it,
'person,' — and so on. But something of the same
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 163
intention is unquestionably visible, — never, indeed, in
Jesus, but in the author of the Fourth Gospel. Much of
the conversation with Nicodemus is a proof of it ; the
46th verse of the 6th chaper is a signal proof of it. One
can there almost see the author, after recording Christ's
words : Every one that heareth and learneth of the Father
Cometh unto tne^ take alarm at the notion that this looks
too downright and natural, and, sincerely persuaded
that he *did something' for the honour of Jesus by
making him more abstract, bring in and put into the
mouth of Jesus the 46th verse : Not that any one hath seen
the Father^ except he that is from Gody he hath seen the
Father. This verse has neither rhyme nor reason where
it stands in Christ's discourse, it jars with the words which
precede and follow, and is in quite another vein from
them. Yet it is the author's own, it is no interpolation.
Again ; Socinians lay much stress on the probability that
in the first words of St. Mark's Gospel: *The beginning of
the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,' the Son of
God is an interpolation. And, no doubt, if the words are
an interpolation, this shows that the desire to prove the
dogma of Christ's Godhead was not so painfully ever-
present to the writer of the Second Gospel as it became to
later theologians. But it shows no more ; it does not
show that he had the least doubt about Jesus being the
M 2
i64 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Son of God. Ten verses later, in an undisputed passage,
he calls him so.
Again, in the last chapter of the same Gospel, all that
follows the eighth verse, — all the account of Christ's resur-
rection and ascension, — is probably an addition by a later
hand. But the resurrection is plainly indicated in the
first eight verses ; and that the writer of the Second
Gospel stops after the eighth verse, proves rather that he
was writing briefly than that he did not believe in the
resurrection and ascension as much as, for instance, the
writer of the Third Gospel; unless indeed, there are
other signs (for example, in his way of relating such an
incident as the Transfiguration) to show that he was
suspicious of the preternatural. But there are none ; and
he plainly was not, and could not have been.
Again; it seems impossible that the very primitive
original of the First Gospel should have made Jesus say,
that ' the sign of Jonas ' consisted in his being three days
and three nights in the whale's belly, as the Son of Man
was to be a like time in the heart of the earth. It spoils
the argument, and in another place the argument is given
simply and rightly. Jonas was a sign to the Jews, because
the Ninevites repented at his preaching and a greater
than Jonas stood now preaching to the Jews. But
whether the words are genuine (and there seems no
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 165
evidence to the contrary) in that particular place or not,
to get rid of them brings us really but a very little way,
when it is plain that their argument is exactly one which
the evangelists would be disposed to use, and to think
that Jesus meant to use. For so they make him to have
said, for instance : Destroy this temple, and in three days
I will raise it up ! in prediction of his own death and
resurrection.
In short, to know accurately the history of our docu-
ments is impossible, and even if it were possible, we
should yet not know accurately what Jesus said and did ;
for his reporters were incapable of rendering it, he was so
much above them. This is the important thing to get
clearly fixed in our minds. And the more it becomes
established to us, the more we shall see the futility of what
is called rationalism, and the rationalistic treatment of the
New Testament ; — of the endeavour, that is, to reduce all
the supernatural in it to real events, much resembling
what is related, which have got a little magnified and
coloured by being seen through the eyes of men having
certain prepossessions, but may easily be brought back to
their true proportions and made historical and reasonable.
A famous specimen of this kind of treatment is Schleier-
macher's fancy of the death on the cross having been a
swoon, and the resurrection of Jesus a recovery from
,i66 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
this swoon. Victorious indeed, whatever may be in
other ways his own shortcomings, is Dr. Strauss's demo-
lition of this error of Schleiermacher's ! Like the rational-
istic treatment of Scripture throughout, it makes far
more difficulties than it solves, and rests on too narrow a
conception of the history of the human mind, and of its
diversities of operation and production. It puts ourselves
in the original disciples' place, imagines the original disci-
ples to have been men rational in our sense and way, and
then explains their record as it might be made explicable
if it were ours. And it may safely be said that in this
fashion it is 7iot explicable. Imaginations so little creative
and with so substantial a framework of fact for each of
their wonderful stories as this theory assumes, would never
have created so much as they did ; at least, they could
not have done so and retained their manifest simplicity
and good faith. They must have fallen, we in like case
should fall, into arrangement and artifice.
But the original disciples were 7iot men rational in our
sense and way. The realwonderfulness of Jesus, and their
belief in him, being given, they needed no such full and
parallel body of fact for each miracle as we suppose.
Some hint and help of fact, undoubtedly, there always
was, and we naturally seek to explore it. Sometimes our
guesses may be right, sometimes wrong, but we can never
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 167
be siire^ the range of possibility is so wide ; and we may
easily make them too elaborate. Shakspeare's explanation
is far the soundest : —
No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scape of nature, no distemper' d day,
No common wind, no customed event.
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs.
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.
And it must be remembered, moreover, that of none
of these recorders have we, probably, the very original
record. The record, when we first get it, has passed
through at least half a century, or more, of oral tradition,
and through more than one written account. Miraculous
incidents swell and grow apace ; they are just the elements
of a tradition that swell and grow most. These incidents,
therefore, in the history of Jesus, the preternatural things
he did, the preternatural things that befell him, are just
the parts of the record which are least solid. Beyond
the historic oudines of the life of Jesus, — his Galilean
origin, his preaching in Galilee, his preaching in Jerusa-
lem, his crucifixion, — much the firmest element in the
record is his words. Happily it is of these that he him-
self said : 'The words that I speak unto you, they are
spirit and they are life.' But in reading them, we have
i68 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
still to bear in mind our governing idea, that they are
words of one inadequately comprehended by his hearers,
men though these be of pureness of heart, discernment
to know and love the good, perfect uprightness of
intention, faithful simplicity.
What they will have reported best, probably, is dis-
course where there was the framework of a story and its
application to guide them, — discourse such as the parables.
Instructive and beautiful as the parables are, however,
they have not the importance of the direct teaching of
Jesus. But in his direct teaching we are on the surest
ground in single sentences, which have their ineffaceable
and unforgettable stamp ; My yoke is kindly and my bur-
den light ; — Many are called, few chosen; — They that are
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; — No man
having put his hand to the plough, and lookiftg back, is Jit
for the kingdom of God. The longer trains of discourse,
and many sayings in immediate connexion with miracles,
present much more difficulty. Probably there are very
few sayings attributed to Jesus which do not contain what
he on some occasion actually said, or much of what he
actually said. But the connexion, the juncture, is plainly
often missed ; things are put out of their true place and
order. Failure of memory would occasionally cause
this with any reporters j failure of comprehension would
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 169
with the reporters of Jesus frequently cause it. The
surrounding tradition insensibly biases them, their love
of miracles biases them, their eschatology biases them.
All these three exercise an attraction on words of Jesus,
and draw them into occasions, placings, and turns, which
are not exactly theirs. The one safe guide to the extri-
cation and right reception of what comes from Jesus is the
internal evidence. And wherever we find what enforces
this evidence or builds upon it, there we may be especially
sure that we are on the trace of Jesus ; because turn or
bias in this .direction the disciples were more likely to
omit from his discourse than to import into it, they were
themselves so wholly preoccupied with the evidence from
miracles.
4.
This is what gives such eminency and value to the
Fourth Gospel. The confident certainty with which
Professor ^wald settles the authorship of this gospel,
and assigns it to St. John, is an exhibition of that
learned man's weakness. To settle the authorship is
impossible, the data are insufficient ; but from what
data we have, to believe that the Gospel is St. John's is
extremely difficult. But, on the other hand, the stress
which Professor Ewald. following Luther, lays on this
I70 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
gospel, the value he attributes to it, is an exhibition of
his power, — of his deep, sure feeling, and true insight, in
the essential matters of religious history; and of his
superiority, here, to the best of his rivals, Baur, Dr. Strauss,
M, Renan. ' The true evangelical bread,' says Dr. Strauss,
' Christians have always gone to the three first gospels for ! '
But what then means this sentence of Luther, who stands
as such a good, though favourable, representative of ordi-
nary Christianity : ' John's gospel is the one proper chief-
gospel, and far to be preferred to the three others'?
Again, M. Renan, often so ingenious as well as eloquent,
says that the narrative and incidents in the Fourth Gospel
are probably in the main historical, the discourses in-
vented ! Reverse the proposition, and it would be more
plausible ! The narrative, so meagre, and skipping so
unaccountably backwards and forwards between Galilee
and Jerusalem, might well bethought, not indeed invented,
but a matter of infinitely little care and attention to
the writer of the gospel, a mere slight framework in
which to set the doctrine and discourses of Jesus. The
doctrine and discourses of Jesus, on the other hand,
cannot in the main be the writer's, because in the main
they are clearly out of his reach.
The Fourth Gospel delights the heart of M. Burnouf.
For its writer shows, M. Burnouf thinks, signal traces
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. i-ji
of the Aryan genius, has much to favour the notion that
religion is a metaphysical conception, and was perhaps
even capable, with time, of reaching the grand truth that
God is a cosmic unity. And undoubtedly the writer of
the Fourth Gospel seems to have come in contact, in
Asia or Egypt, with Aryan metaphysics whether from
India or Greece ; and to have had this advantage, what-
ever it was, in writing his gospel. But who, that has
eyes to read,, cannot see the difference between the
places in his gospel, such as the introduction, where the
writer speaks in his own person, and the places where
Jesus himself speaks? The moment Jesus speaks, the
metaphysical apparatus falls away, the simple intuition
takes its place ; and wherever in the discourse of Jesus
the metaphysical apparatus is intruded, it jars with the
context, breaks the unity of the discourse, impairs the
thought, and comes evidently from the writer, not Jesus.
It may seem strange and incredible to M. Burnouf
that metaphysics should not always confer the supe-
riority upon their possessor \ but such is the case.
Who, again, cannot understand that the philCfeophical
acquirements of the author of the Fourth Gospel, like the
rabbinical training and intellectual activity of Paul, though
they may have sometimes led each of them astray, must
yet have given each of them a range of thought, and an
172 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
enlarged mental horizon, enabling them to perceive and
follow ideas of Jesus which escaped the ken of the more
scantily endowed authors of the synoptical gospels ?
Plato sophisticates somewhat the genuine Socrates ; but
it is very doubtful whether the culture and mental energy
of Plato did not give him a more adequate vision of the
true Socrates than Xenophon had. It proves nothing
for the superiority of the first three gospels that their
authors are without the logic of Paul and the metaphysics
of John (by this commonly-received name let us for
shortness' sake call the author of the Fourth Gospel),
and that Jesus also was without them. Jesus was without
them because he was above them; the authors of the
synoptical gospels because they were (we say it without
any disrespect) below them. Therefore, the author of the
Fourth Gospel, by the very characters which make him
inferior to Jesus, was made superior to the three synop-
tics, and better able than they to seize and reproduce
the higher teaching of Jesus.
Does it follow, then, that his picture of Christ's
teaching' can have been his own invention ? By no
means ; since it is as plainly over his head (at that time
of day it could not have been otherwise) as it is over
theirs ? He deals in miracles as confidingly as they
do, while unconsciously indicating, far more than they
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 173
do, that the evidence of miracles is superseded. In
those two great chapters, the fifth and sixth, where
Jesus deals with the topics of life, death, and judgment,
and with his thesis : He that eateih me shall live by me /
invaluable and full of light as is what is given, the escha-
tology and the materialising conceptions of the wTiter do
yet evidently intervene, as they did with all the disciples,
as they did with the Jews in general, to hinder a per-
fectly faithful mirroring of the thought of Jesus. We
have already remarked how his metaphysical acquirements
intervene in like manner. In the discourse with Nicodemus
in the third chapter, from the thirteenth verse to the end,
phrases and expressions of Jesus of the highest worth are
scattered ; but they are manifestly set in a short theo-
logical lecture interposed by the writer himself, a lecture
which is, as a whole, without vital connexion with the
genuine discourse of Jesus, and needing only to be
carefully studied side by • side with this for its dispa-
rateness to become apparent
But a failure of right understanding, which will be
visible to every one, occurs with this writer in his
seventh chapter. Jesus, with a reference to words of
the prophet Zechariah, says : * He that believeth on
me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow
rivers of living water.' The thought is plain ; it belongs
174 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
to the same order as that of the saying, ' If any thirsty
let him come unto me and drink ; ' or of the words
to the woman of Samaria, ' If thou hadst known the
gift of God, and who it is that talketh with thee, thou
wouldst have asked of him and he would have given
thee living water.' It means that a man, receiving
Jesus, finds a source of refreshment for himself and be-
comes a source of refreshment for others ; and it means
this generally, without any limitation to a special time.
But the reporter explains : ' Now this he said concerning
the Spirit {Piieuma) which they who believed on him
should receive; for Fneumay^s.?, not yet, because Jesus was
not yet glorified.' A clearer instance of a narrow and
mechanical interpretation of a great and free thought can
hardly be imagined; and the words of Jesus himself
enable us here to control the inadequacy of the interpre-
tation, and to make it palpable.
So that the superior point of view in the Fourth
Gospel, the more spiritual treatment of things, the in-
sistance on internal evidence, not external, cannot, we
say, be the writer's, for they are above him ; and while
his gifts and acquirements are such as to make him report
them, they are not such as to enable him to originate
them. The great evidential line of this gospel : ' You
are always talking about God, and about your founder
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 175
Abraham, the father of God's faithful people ; here is a
man who says nothing of his own head, who tells you the
truth, as he has learnt it of God ; if you were really of
God you would hear the words of God ! if you were
really Abraham's children you would follow the truth like
Abraham !' — this simple but profound line, sending Israel
back to amend its conventional, barren notions of God, of
righteousness, and of the founders of its religion, leading it
to explore them afresh, to sound them deeper, to gather
from them a new revelation and a new life, was, we say,
at once too simple and too profound for the author of
the Fourth Gospel to have invented. Our endless grati-
tude is due to him, however, for having caught and
preserved so much of it. And our business is to keep
hold of the clue he has thus given us, and to use it as
well as possible.
Truly, then, some one will exclaim, we may say with
the Imitation : * Magna ars est scire conversari cum Jesu !^
And so it is. To extract from his reporters the true Jesus
entire, is even impossible ; to extract him in considerable
part is one of the greatest conceivable tasks of criticism.
And it is vain to use that favourite argument of popular
theology that man could never have been left by Provi-
176 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
dence in difficulty and obscurity about a matter of so
much importance to him. For the cardinal rule of our
present inquiry is that rule of Newton's : Hypotheses non
Jingo ; and this argument of popular theology rests on its
eternal hypothesis of a magnified and non-natural man at
the head of mankind's and the world's affairs. And a
further answer is, that, as to the argument itself, even if we
allowed the hypothesis, yet the course of things, so far as
we can see, is not so ; they do not proceed in this fashion.
Because a man has frequently to make sea-passages, he
is not gifted with an immunity from sea-sickness ; because
a thing is of the highest interest and importance to know,
it is not, therefore, easy to know ; on the contrary, in
general, in proportion to its magnitude it is difficult and
requires time.
But the right commentary on the sentence of the Imi-
tation is given by the Imitation itself in the sentence
following : ' Esto humilis et pacificus, et erit tecum Jesus /'
What men could take at the hands of Jesus, what they
could use, what could save them, he made as clear as
light, and Christians have never been able, even if they
would, to miss seeing it. No, never ; but still they have
super-added to it a vast Aberglaube, an after or extra-
belief of their own ; and the Aberglaube has pushed on
one side, for very many, the saving doctrine of Jesus, has
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 177
hindered attention from being riveted on this and on its
line of growth and working, has nearly effaced it, has
developed all sorts of faults contrary to it. This Aber-
glaube has sprung out of a false criticism of the literary
records in which the doctrine is conveyed; what is
called ' orthodox divinity ' is, in fact, an immense literary
misapprehension. Having caused the saving doctrines
enshrined in these records to be neglected, and credited
the records with existing for the sake of its own Aber-
giaube, this blunder now threatens to cause the records
themselves to be neglected by all those (and their numbers
are fast increasing) whom its own Aberglaube fills with
impatience and aversion. Therefore it is needful to show
the line of growth of this Aberglaube, and its delusiveness;
to show anew, and with more detail than we have ad-
mitted hitherto, the line of growth of Christ's doctrine,
and the far-reaching sanctions, the inexhaustible attrac-
tiveness, the grace and truth, with which he invested if.
But the doctrine itself is essentially simple ; and what is
difficult, — the literary criticism of the documents con-
taining the doctrine, — is not the doctrine.
This literary criticism, however, is extremely difficult.
It calls into play the highest requisites for the study of
letters ; — great and wide acquaintance with the history of
the human mind, knowledge of the manner in which, men
N
178 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
have thought, their way of using words and what they
mean by them, deHcacy of perception and quick tact, and,
besides all these, a favourable moment and the ' Zeit-
Geist.' And yet every one among us criticises the
Bible, and thinks it is of the essence of the Bible that
it can be thus criticised with success ! And the Four
Gospels, the part of the Bible to which this sort of
criticism is most appHed and most confidently, are just
the part which for literary criticism is infinitely the
hardest, however simple they may look, and however
simple the saving doctrine they contain really is. For
Prophets and Epistlers speak for themselves; but in
the Four Gospels reporters are speaking for Jesus, who
is far above them.
Now, we all know what the literary criticism of the
mass of mankind is. To be worth anything, literary and
scientific criticism require, both of them, the finest heads
and the most sure tact ; and they require, besides, that the
world and the world's experience shall have come some
considerable way. Now, since this last condition has
been fulfilled, the finest heads for letters and science, the
surest tact for these, have turned themselves in general
to other regions of work than criticism of the Bible, this
region being occupied already in such force of numbers
and hands, if not of heads, and there being so many
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD.
179
annoyances and even dangers in freely approaching it.
As our Reformers were to Shakspeare and Bacon in tact
for letters and science, or as Luther, even, was to Goethe
in this respect, such almost has on the whole been, since
the Renascence, the general proportion in rate of power
for criticism between those who have given themselves to
secular letters and science, and those who have given
themselves to interpreting the Bible, and who, in con-
junction with the popular interpretation of it both tra-
ditional and contemporary, have made what is called
' orthodox theology.' It is as if some simple and saving
doctrines, essential for men to know, were enshrined in
Shakspeare's Hamlet or Newton's Principia (though the
Gospels are really a far more complex and difficult object
of criticism than either) ; and a host of second-rate critics,
and official critics, and what is called ' the popular mind '
as well, threw themselves upon Hamlet and the Principia
with the notion that they could and should extract from
these documents, and impose on us for our belief, not
only the saving doctrines enshrined there, but also the
right literary and scientific criticism of the entire docu-
ments. A pretty mess they would make of it ! and just
this sort of mess is our so-called orthodox theology. And
its professors are nevertheless bold, over-weening, and even
abusive, in maintaining their criticism against all ques-
N 2
i8o LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
tioners ; although really, if one thinks seriously of it, it
was a kind of impertinence in such professors to attempt
any such criticism at all.
Happily, the faith which saves is attached to the
saving doctrines in the Bible, which are very simple ; not
to its literary and scientific criticism, which is very hard.
And no man is to be called * infidel ' for his bad literary
and scientific criticism of the Bible ; but if he were, how
dreadful would the state of our orthodox theologians be !
They themselves freely fling about this word infidel at all
those who reject their literary and scientific criticism,
which we see to be quite false. It would be but just to
mete to them with their own measure, and to condemn
them by their own rule ; and, when they air their unsound
criticism in public, to say indignantly : The Bishop of
So-and-so^ the Dean of So-and-so^ and other infidel lecturers
of the present day ! or: That rampant i?ifidel, the Arch-
I deacon of So-and-so^ i7i his recent letter on the Athanasian
Creed! or : * The Rock,' ' The Church Times,' and the rest
of the infidel press ! or : The torrent of infidelity which pours
every Sunday from our pulpits I Just it would be, and
by no means inurbane ; but hardly, perhaps, Christian.
Therefore we will not permit ourselves to say it ; but it is
only kind to point out, in passing, to these loud and rash
people to what they expose themselves, at the hands of
adversaries less scmpulous than we are.
TESTIMONY Ol^ JESUS TO HIMSELF. i8i
CHAPTER VIL
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF.
We have said, — and it cannot be repeated too often, — that
what is called orthodox theology is, in fact, an immense
misunderstanding of the Bible, due to the junction of a
talent for abstruse reasoning with much literary inex-
perience. It cannot be repeated too often ; because our
dogmatic friends seem to imagine that the truth of their
dogma is conceded on all hands, and that the only
objection is to the harsh or over-rigid way in which it is
put. Dr. Pusey and the Church Review assume that
what the Athanasian Creed, for instance, does, is * to
take up the admitted facts of Christian faith, and arrange
them sentence after sentence ; ' and then they ask us
why we should be so squeamish about * letting the Prayer
Book contain once, at least, the statement that Christian
faith is necessary to salvation.' Others talk of the
contest going on between * definite religion,' ' religion with
the sinew and bone of doctrine,' and * indefinite religion,'
i82 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
' nerveless religion,' ' vague, negative and cloudy reli-
gion;' and Lord Salisbury, as we have seen, declares that
' religion is no more to be severed from dogma than light
from the sun.'
To be sure, to make this maxim of Lord Salisbury's go
on all fours, it ought to be : * Religion is no more to be
severed from the truth of religioii than light from the sun.'
And dogma and the truth of religion are not exactly syno-
nyms ; dogma means, not necessarily a true doctrine, but
merely a doctrine or system of doctrine determined^ decreed^
and received. Lord Salisbury, however, takes it as in this
case another word for truths and so do the other speakers.
And they accordingly represent their opponents as either
secret enemies of the truth of religion, men who are, as
the Rock says in a Biblical figure addressed to the Dean
of Westminster, ' the degenerate plant of a strange vine
bringing forth the grapes of Sodom and the clusters of
Gomorrah ;' or, at best, as amiable, soft-headed people,
afraid of clear thought and plain speech, and requiring
with their light a very unnecessary dose of sweetness.
We, however, try to keep our love of sweetness within
reasonable bounds; and the Rock will hardly call us
a Gomorrah vine, when we agree to say heartily after it, as
we do, that ' Christian faith is necessary to salvation.' But
what is Christian faith ? Is it the ' admitted facts taken
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 183
up and arranged, sentence after sentence, in the Atha-
nasian Creed?' Are these facts admitted} — the whole
question is here. So far from these facts being admitted^
or from the enumeration of them being the enumeration
oi the facts of the Christian faith ^ we say that they are de-
ductions from the Bible of matters which are not the real
matters of Christian faith at all ; and that, moreover, they
are false deductions from the Bible, blunders arising from
a want of skill and experience in dealing with a very
complex literary problem.
Therefore we can honestly tell our dogmatic friends,
that we agree with them in disliking an indefinite
religion, in preferring a definite one. Our quarrel with
them is, not that they define religion, but tliat they
define it so abominably. And to the eloquent and
impetuous Chancellor of Oxford, who cannot away with
a hazy amiability in religious matters, and brandishes
before us his dogma, not vague, he says, but precise :
— ' Precise enough,' we answer, ' precisely wrong ! ' And
having thus, we hope, put ourselves right with our
adversaries as to the real question between us and
them, we will proceed with our endeavour to free the
Bible, — by showing that it is not metaphysics but lite-
rature, by following it continuously and by interpreting it
naturally, — to free the Bible from the serious dangers
i84 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
with which their advocacy threatens it. For when the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester talk of 'doing
something for the Godhead of the Eternal Son/ they are
doing nothing, we say, for the Bible, they are endanger-
ing it. For their notions about the Godhead of the
Eternal Son, and what it is, cannot possibly stand ; and
yet these notions they have drawn, they tell us, from the
Bible, they impute them to the Bible. But they have
drawn them wrongly, and the Bible is to be made an-
swerable for no such doctrine. And we have now come
to that point where we may see, clearer than we were in a
position to see before, what is rightly to be drawn from
the Bible on this matter, and what the doctrine of Jesus
himself about his own Godhead really is.
Following the Bible continuously and interpreting it
naturally, we saw the people of * the Eternal that loveth
righteousness,' and that ' blesseth the man that putteth his
trust in Him,' we saw Israel, confounded and perplexed
by the misfortunes of God's people and the success of
the unrighteous world, construct a vast Aberglaube, an
after or extra-belief, according to which there should
come about, in no distant future, a grand and wonderful
change. God should send his Messiah, judge the world,
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 185
punish the wicked, and restore the kingdom to Israel. For
Israel's original revelation and intuition had been : Tke
Eternal loveth righteousness ; to him that ordereth his con-
versation right shall be shown the salvation of God. And
the natural corollary from this was : As the whirlwind
passeth^ so is the wicked no more ; but the righteous is
an everlasting foundation.
Both the revelation and the corollary from it were
true ; but the virtue of both, for Israel, turned upon
knowing what righteousness and righteous meant. And
this indispensable intuition Israel is always represented
as having once had, and with time in great measure lost
' Stand ye in the ways and see,' says Jeremiah, ' and ask
for the old paths ^ where is the good way, and walk therein,
and ye shall find rest for your souls.' The prophets may
be seen trying to re-awaken in Israel this intuition, by
inculcating inwardness, humbleness, sincerity. But the
mass of people naturally inclined to place righteousness
rather in something mechanically to be given or done, —
in being endowed with the character of God's chosen
people, or in punctually observing a law full of minute
observances. And the promises to righteousness they in
like manner construed as promises of things material :
a mighty Jewish kingdom, God's people reigning, the
heathen licking the dust.
1 86 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
This material conception of the promises to righteous-
ness fell in with the mechanical conception of righteous-
ness itself, and each heightened the hurtful ness of the
other. Between them both, a type of soul more and more
hard, impervious, and impracticable, was formed in
the Jewish people ; and the intuition, in which their
greatness began, died out more and more. There
still remained of it so much as this : that of all the
nations of the world they were the only one that felt
the all-importance of righteousness, and the eternity of
the promises made to it. But what righteousness really
was they knew not ; and their situation, when Christ
came, is admirably summed up in these two verses of
prophecy, which everyone who wishes for a clear sense of
the Jews' relations with Christ would do well to write as a
reminder on the blank page between the Old Testament
and the New : —
' Forasfnuch as this people draw near me with their
mouthy and with their lips do honour me^ but have removed
their heart far from me, and their fear towards ?ne is taught
by the precept of men;
< Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work
among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder;
for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, afidthe u?tder-
standiiig of their prudent men shall be hid.''
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 187
Meanwhile, the Jews were full of their Aberglaube, their
added or extra-belief in a Messianic advent, a great judg:
ment, a world-wide reign of the saints ; and it is well to
have distinctly before us the main texts which they had
gathered from the Old Testament in support of this
belief, and which were in everybody's mind and mouth.
They are all given us by the New Testament. Moses had
said : ' The Eternal thy God will raise up unto thee a
Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto
me ; unto him shall ye hearken.* In the Psalms it was
written : * The Eternal hath sworn a faithful oath unto
David : Of the fruit of thy body will I set upofi thy seat;
thy seed will I stablish for ever, a?id set up thy throne from
one generation to another' Isaiah had said : 'There shall
come forth a Rod out of the stem of Jesse and a Branch
shall grow out of his roots : and the Spirit of the Eternal
shall rest upon him, and he shall smite the earth with the
breath of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall
he slay the wicked.' Finally, Malachi, the last prophet, had
announced from God : ' Behold, I will send you Elijah
the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Eternal.'
These may stand, perhaps, as four fundamental texts
forming the ground for popular Jewish Aberglaube as it
developed itself ; and it will be seen of what large and
1 88 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
loose construction they admit But the ground-plan thus
given was filled out from later and inferior scriptures,
full of the spirit of the time, grandiose, but turbid and
phantasmagoric, such as the Book of Enoch and the
Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is in our Bibles ;
we can all verify there the elements which constituted,
when Christ came, the popular religious hope and
belief of the Jews. It may be hoped that we our-
selves, most of us, read other parts of the Bible far
more than the Book of Daniel \ but we know how, in
general, those who use the Bible most unintelligently
have a peculiar fondness for the apocalyptic and
phantasmagoric parts of it. The Book of Daniel gave
form and body to the Prophet of Moses, the seed of
David of the Psalms, the great and terrible day of
Malachi \ it enabled the popular imagination to see and
figure them. * A time of trouble such as never was since
there was a nation to that time ! The Ancient of
days did sit, whose garment was white as snow and
the hair of his head like the pure wool; his throne
was like the fiery flame; the judgment was set and
the books were opened. And behold, one like the
Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came
to the Ancient of days, and there was given him
dominion and glory, that all people, nations, and Ian-
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 189
guages should serve him ; his dominion is an ever-
lasting dominion which shall not pass away. And
judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and
the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.
At that time the people of God shall be delivered, every-
one that shall be found written in the book ; and many
of them that sleep in dust shall awake, some to ever-
lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.*
Other figures which laid hold on men's memories the
Book of Enoch supplied. It told how, in the great visi-
tation: 'They shall rise up to destroy one another,
neither shall a man acknowledge his friend and his
brother, nor the son his father and his mother ; ' how :
* Ye shall enter into the holes of the earth and into the
clefts of the rocks ; ' and how, finally, the proud rulers of
the world ' shall see the Son of Man sitting on the throne
of his glory.' The Book of Enoch described this Son of
Man, also, as ' The Son of Man, living with the Lord of
Spirits,' * The Elect One, whom the Lord of Spirits hath
gifted and glorified.' Both books gave him the name of
* Son of God ' and of ' Messiah.'
It was of all this that the heart of the Jews was full
when Christ came ; it was on this that their thoughts fed
and their hopes brooded. The old words, God, the
Eternal, the Father, the Redeemer, were perpetually in
I90 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
their mouths ; but in this connexion. The goal of their
lives was still, as of old, ' the salvation of God ; ' but this
was what they understood the salvation of God to be.
They had lost the intuition, and they had thrown them-
selves, heart and soul, upon an extra-behef, or Aber-
glaube.
3-
Now, if we describe the work of Christ by a short
expression which may give the clearest view of it, we
shall describe it thus: — that he came to restore the in-
tuition. He came, it is true, to save, and to give eternal
life \ but the way in which he did this was by restoring
the intuition.
This we have already touched upon in our third
chapter, for we there passed in brief review the teaching
of Jesus. But there the objection met us, that what at-
tested Christ was miracles, and the preternatural fulfil-
ment in him of certain minute predictions made about
him long before ; and that such is the teaching of Christ
himself and of the Bible. We had to pause and deal
with this objection; and now, as it disperses, we come
in full view of our old point again, — that what did attest
Christ was his restoratio?t of the intuition. He found
Israel all astray, with an endless talk about God, the law,
righteousness, the kingdom, everlasting life, — and no
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 191
real hold upon any one of them. Israel's old, sure proof
of being in the right way, — the sanction of joy and peace,
— was plainly wanting ; and this was a test which anybody
could at once apply. *0 Eternal, blessed is the man
that putteth his trust in thee,' was a corner-stone of
Israel's religion. Now, the Jewish people, however they
might talk about putting their trust in the Eternal, were
evidently, as they stood there before Jesus, not blessed
at all ; and they knew it themselves as well as he did.
* Great peace have they who love thy law,' was another
corner-stone. But the Jewish people had at that time
in its soul as little peace as it had joy and blessedness ;
it was seething with inward unrest, irritation, and trouble.
Yet the way of the Eternal was most indubitably a way
of peace and joy; so, if Israel felt no peace and no joy,
it could not be walking in the way of the Eternal. Here
we have the firm unchanging ground on which the opera-
tions of Jesus both began, and always proceeded.
And it is to be observed that Jesus by no means gave
a new, more precise, scientific definition of God, but
took up this term just as Israel used it, to stand for the
Eternal that loveth righteousness. If therefore this term
was, in Israel's use of it, not a term of science, but, as we
say, a term of common speech, of poetry and eloquence,
thrown out at a vast object of consciousness not fully
192 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
covered by it, so it was in Christ's use of it also. And if
the substratum of scientific affirmation in the term was,
with Israel, not the affirmation of ' a great Personal First
Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the uni-
verse,' but the affirmation of ' an enduring Power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness,' so it remained
with Christ likewise. He set going a great process of
searching and sifting, but this process had for its direct
object the idea of righteousness, and only touched the
idea of God through this, and not independently of this
and immediately. If the idea of righteousness was
changed, this implied, undoubtedly, a corresponding
change in the idea of the Power that makes for right-
eousness ; but in this manner only, and to this extent,
does the teaching of Jesus re-define the idea of God.
But search and sift and renew the idea of righteous-
ness Jesus did. And though the work of Jesus, like the
name of God, calls up in the believer a multitude of
emotions and associations far more than any brief defi-
nition can cover, yet, remembering Jeremy Taylor's
advice to avoid exhortations to get Christ, to he in Christ,
and to seek some more distinct and practical way of
speaking of him, we shall not do ill, perhaps, if we .sum-
marise to our own minds his work by saying, that he
restored the intuition of God through transforming the
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 193
idea of righteousness ; and that, to do this, he brought a
method^ and he brought a secret. And of those two great
words which fill such a place in his gospel, repefitance
and peace,— 2is we see that his Apostles, when they
preached his gospel, preached * Repefitance unto life ' and
^ Peace through Jesus Christ,' — of these two great words,
one, repentance, attaches itself, we shall find, to his method,
and the other, peace, to his secret.
There was no question between Jesus and the Jews
as to the object to aim at. ' If thou wouldst enter into
life, keep the commandments,' said Jesus. And Israel,
too, on his part, said : ' He that keepeth the com-
mandments keepeth his own soul,' But what com-
mandments ? The commandments of God ; about this,
too, there was no question. But : * Leaving the com-
mandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men ; ye
make the commandment of God of none effect by
your tradition \ ' said Jesus. Therefore the command-
ments which Israel followed were not the commandments
of God, by which a man keeps his own soul, enters into
life. And the practical proof of this was, that Israel
stood before the eyes of the world manifestly neither
joyful, nor blessed, nor at peace ; yet these characters of
joy, bliss, and peace, the following of the real command-
ments was confessed to give. So a rule, or method, was
o
194 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
wanted, by which to determine what the real command-
ments were.
And Jesus gave one : ''The things that come from within
4i mail's hearty they it is that defile him ! ' We have seen
what ^n immense matter conduct is ; — ^that it is three-
fourths -of life. We have seen how plain and simple a
matter it is, so far as knowledge is concerned. We have
seen how, moreover, philosophers are for referring all
■conduct to one or other of man''s two elementary instincts,
— the instinct of self-preservation and the reproductive
instinct ; it is the suggestions of one or other of these
instincts, they say, which call forth all cases in which there
is scope for exercising moraHty, or conduct. And this
does, we saw, cover the facts well enough. For we can
run up nearly all faults of conduct into two classes, —
faults of temper and faults of sensuality; to be referred,
all of them, to one or other of these two instincts.
Now Jesus not only says that things coming from
-within a man'^s heart defile him, he adds expressly what
these things that, coming from within a man, defile him,
are. And what he enumerates are the following : '■ Evil
thoughts, fornications, stealings, murders, adulteries, greed,
vices, fraud, dissoluteness, envy, evil-speaking, pride,
folly.' These fall into two groups : one, of faults of self-
assertion, graspingness and violence, all of which we may
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 195
call faults of temper ; and the other, of faults of sensuality.
And the two groups, between them, do for practical pur-
poses cover all the range of faults proceeding from these
two sources, and therefore all the range of conduct. So
the motions or impulses to faults of conduct^ were what
Jesus said the real commandments are concerned with.
And it was plain what such faults are; but, to make assur-
ance more sure, he, as we have seen, said what they are.
No outward observances were conduct, were that
keeping of the commandments, which was the keeping
of a man's own soul and made him enter into life. To
have the thoughts in order as to certain matters, was
conduct. This was the ' method * of Jesus : setting up a
great unceasing inward movement of attention and verifi-
cation in matters which are three-fourths of human life,
where to see true and to verify is not difficult, the diffi-
cult thing is to care and to attend. And the inducement
to attend was, because joy and peace, missed on every
other line, were to be reached on this.
* Keep judgment and do righteousness ! ' had not been
guidance enough. The Jews found themselves taking
* meats and drinks gnd divers washings ' for judgment ;
taking for righteousness * gifts and sacrifices which cannot
perfect the worshipper as to his conscience' (here is the
word of Jesus !) ; tithing mint, anise and cummin ; say-
02
196 LITERATURE A^D DOGMA.
ing to their parents, // is Corban ! evil-disposed, and not
at all blessed. But: 'As to all wherein what men com-
monly call conduct is exercised, — eating, drinking, ease,
pleasure, money, the intercourse of the sexes, the giving
full swing to one's tempers and instincts, — as to all this,
watch attentively what passes within you, that you may
obey the voice of conscience ! so you will keep God's
commandment and be blessed;' — this is the new and
much more exact guidance. ' The things that come from
within a man's heart, they defile him ! cleanse the inside
of the cup ! beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,
which is insincerity ! judge not after the appearance, but
judge righteous judgm.ent ! ' — this, we say, is the 'method'
of Jesus. To it belongs his use of that important word
which in the Greek is ' metanoia.' We translate it repen-
tance, a mourning and lamenting over one's sins; and
we translate it wrong. Of 'metanoia,' as Jesus used the
word, the lamenting one's sins was a small part; the main
part was something far more active and fruitful, the set-
ting up an immense new inward movement for obtaining
the rule of life. And ' metanoia,' accordingly, is : a
change of the inner man. ^
Mention and recommendation of this inwardness there
often was, we know, in prophet or psalmist ; but to make
mention of it was one thing, to erect it into a positive
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 197
method was another. Christianity has made it so
famihar, that to give any freshness to one's words about
it is now not easy ; but to its first recipients it was abun-
dantly fresh and novel. It was the introduction, in
morals and religion, of the famous know thyself of the
Greeks ; and this among a people deeply serious, but
also wedded to moral and religious routine, and singularly
devoid of flexibility and play of mind. For them it
was a revolution. Of course the hard thing is not to say,
Cleanse the inside of the cup, but to make people do it ;
in morals and religion, the man who is foUfided upon
rock is always, as Jesus said, the man who does^ never
the man who only hears. To say, Look within^ was
therefore not everything ; yet we none of us, probably,
enough feel the power which at first resided in the mere
saying of it, as Christ said it. And this is because his
words have become so trite to us, that we fail to see how
powerfully they were all adapted to call forth the new
habit of inwardness ; and if we want to see this, we must
for a time either re-translate his words for ourselves, or
paraphrase them. And not only the words he employed
but also the words he excited; the words which the effect
produced by him made men use about him. Just as it
is well to substitute Eternal for Lord, and the good
news for the gospel, so we must put new words in the
198 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
« ■ — ■
place of the now hackneyed repentance^ truth, grace, spirit,
if we wish at all to know how these words worked
originally. 'Metanoia' we have seen, is a change of
the inner man : repentance wito life was a life-giving
change of the inner man. ' Aletheia ' is not so well
rendered truth, which is often speculative only, as it is
reality ; ' charis ' is the boon of happiness. Instead, then,
of, ' Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,' let
us say: ^Happiness and reality came through Jesus
Christ ; ' instead of, ' To know the grace of God in truth,'
'To know the happiness of God in reality' Even if the
new rendering is not so literally correct as the old, not
permanently to be adopted, it will be of use to us for a
while to show us how the words worked.
Above all is this true in regard to the word spirit,
made so mechanical by popular religion, that it has
come to mean a person without a body, which is the
child's definition of a ghost. This word, specially
designed by Jesus to serve in restoring the intuition
and in bringing Israel's religion face to face with
Israel's inward consciousness, is rather influence : ' Ex-
cept a man be born of a new ififluence, he cannot
see the kingdom of God.' Instead of proclaiming what
the Bishop of Gloucester calls 'the blessed truth that
the God of the universe is a Person/ Jesus uttered
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 199
a warning for all time against this unprofitable jargon
by saying : ' God is an infltuncs^ and those who would
serve him must serve him not by any form of words or
rites, but by inward motion and in reality ! ' No ren-
dering can too strongly bring out the original bent to
inwardness and intuition in language of this kind, which
has now become almost formal to us.
Just the same bent appears in Christ's taking, as the
rule for a man's action in regard to another's conduct,,
simply and solely the effect on the actor's own character.
This is what is so striking in the story of the woman
taken in adultery : * Let him that is without fault cast
the first stone I afid they were all convicted by their con-
science.^ And who is without fault, and where is the
judge whom the conviction of conscience might not thus
paralyse ? Punishment, then, is impossible ; and, with
punishment, government and society ? But punishment
government and society are all of them after-inven-
tions, creations of man, and unintuitive. Jesus re-
garded simply what was primary, — the individual and
the intuition. And in truth if the individual and the
intuition are once reached, the after-inventions maybe
left to take care of themselves ; and if conscience ever
became enough of a power, there would be no offenders
to punish. This is the true line of religion ; it was the
200 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
line of Jesus. To work the renovation needed, he
concentrated his efforts upon a method of inwardness^
of taking counsel of consde?ice.
4.
But for this world of busy inward movement created
by the vieihod of Jesus, a rule of action was wanted ; and
this rule was found in his secret. It was the same of which
the Apostle Paul afterwards possessed himself with such
energy, and called ' the word of the cross,' ^ or, necrosis^
' dying.' The rule of action Paul gave was : ' Always
bearing about in the body tlie dying of the Lord Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest
in our body !' In the popular theurgy, these words are
comn[K)nly referred to what is called ' pleading the blood
of the covenant,' — relying on the death and merits of
■Christ, in pursuance -of the contract originally passed in
the Council of the Trinity, to satisfy God's wrath against
sinners and to redeem us. But they do really refer to
words of Jesus, often and often repeated, and of which
the following may very well stand as pre-eminently re-
presentative : ' He that loveth his life shall lose it, and
he that huteth his life in this world shall keep it imto
life eteriial. Whosoa'er would come after me, let him
' 'O A(^70j 6 ToO aravpou. — I Cor. i. 18.
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 201
renounce himself^ and take up his cross daily ^ and follow
me.'
These words, or words like them, were repeated again
and again, so that no reporter could miss them. No
reporter did miss them. We find them, as we find the
* method ' of conscience, in all the four Gospels. Per-
haps there is no maxim of Jesus that has such a
combined stress of evidence for it, and may be taken
as so eminently his. And no wonder ; for the maxim
contains his secret^ the secret by which, emphatically,
his gospel * brought life and immortality to light.' His
'method' directed the disciple's eye inward and set
his consciousness to work ; and the first thing his con-
sciousness told him was, that he had two selves
pulling him different ways. Till we attend, till the
method is set at work, it seems as if 'the wishes of the
flesh and of the current thoughts,' * were to be followed as
a matter of course ; as if an impulse to do a thing means
that we should do it. But when we attend, we find that
an impulse to do a thing is really in itself no reason
at all why we should do it ; because impulses proceed
from two sources, quite different, and of quite different
degrees of authority. St. Paul contrasts them as the in-
ward man, and the man in our members ;; the mind of the
' Td deA^/xaTa rqs capKhs /col juv diavoiwv. — Eph. ii. 3.
202 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
flesh, and the spiritual mind. Jesus contrasts them as life,
properly so named, and life in this world} And the
moment we seriously attend to conscience, to the sug-
gestions which concern practice and conduct, we can see
plainly enough from which source a suggestion comes,
and that the suggestions from one source are to over-
rule those from the other.
But this is a negative state of things, a reign of check
and constraint, a reign, merely, of morality. Jesus
changed it into what was positive and attractive, lighted
j it up, made it religion, by the idea of two lives. One of
I them, life properly so called, full of light, endurance,
felicity, in connexion with the higher and permanent self ;
and the other of them, life improperly so called, in
connexion with the lower and transient self The first
kind of life was already a cherished ideal with Israel
(' Thou wilt show me the path of life ! ') ; and a man
might be placed in it, Jesus said, by dying to the second.
For it is to be noted that our common expression, * deny
himself,' is an inadequate and misleading version of the
words used by Jesus. To deny one's self is commonly
i understood to mean that one refuses one's self something;
* The strict grammatical and logical connexion of the words eVr^J
k6(Thc{) rovTcf is with 6 fjLiauy, but the sense and effect is as given
above.
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 203
but what Jesus says is: *Let a man disown \(\m'i€ii^ re-
iiowice himself, die as regards his old self, and so live.
Himself^ the old man, the life in thisworld^ meant following
those * wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts '
which Jesus had, by his method, already put his disciples
in the way of sifting and scrutinising, and of trying by the
standard of conformity to conscience.
Thus, after putting him by his method in the way to
find what doing righteousness was, by his secret Jesus
put the disciple in the way of doing it. For the
breaking the sway of what is commonly called 07iis
self, ceasing our concern with it and leaving it to perish,
is not, he said, being thwarted or crossed, but living.
And the proof of this is. that it has the characters of
life in the highest degree, — the sense of going right,
hitting the mark, succeeding. That is, it has the cha-
racters oi happiness-, -and happiness is, for Israel, the
same thing as having the Eternal with us, seeing the sal-
vation of God. ' The tree,' as Jesus was always saying,
' is known by its fricits ' ; Jesus was to be received by
Israel as sent from God, because the secret of Jesus leads
to the salvation of God, which is what Israel most de-
sired. The word of the cross, in. short, turned out to be
at the same time the word of the kingdom.^ And to
' 'O \(J70$ T^s )8o(rt\€(as.— Matt. xiii. 19,
204 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
this experimental sanction of his secret, this sense it
gives of having the Eternal on our side and approving us,
Jesus appealed when he said of himself: ^Therefore doth
my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I
may take it again.' This, again, in our popular theurgy,
is materialised into the First Person of the Trinity
approving the Second, because he stands to the contract
already in the Council of the Trinity passed. But what
it really means is, that the joy of Jesus, of this ' Son
of peace,' the 'joy' he was so desirous that his disciples
should find 'fulfilled in themselves,' was due to his
having himself followed his own secret. And the great
counterpart to : A life-ghmig chaiige of the inner man, —
the promise : Peace through Jesus Christ ! — is peace
through this secret of his.
Now, the value of this rule that one should die to one's
apparent self, live to one's real self, depends upon
whether it is true. And true it certainly is ; — a profound
truth of what our scientific friends, who have a systematic
philosophy and a nomenclature to match, and who talk of
Egoism and Altruisin, would call, perhaps, psycho-physi-
ology. And we may trace men's experience affirming and
confirming it, from a very plain and level account of it
to an account almost as high and solemn as that of
Jesus. That an opposition there is, in all matter of what
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 205
we call conduct^ between a man's first impulses and what
he ultimately finds to be the real law of his being ; that a
man accomplishes his right fianction as a man, fulfils his
end, hits the mark, in giving effect to the real law of his
being ; and that happiness attends his thus hitting the
mark — all good observers report. No statement of this
general experience can be simpler or more faithful than
one given us by that great naturalist, Aristotle.^ ' In all
wholes made up of parts,' says he, ' there is a ruler and a
ruled ; throughout nature this is so ; we see it even in
things without life, they have their harmojiy or law. The
living being is composed of soul and body, whereof the
one is naturally ruler and the other ruled. Now what is
natural we are to learn from what fulfils the law of its
nature most, and not from what is depraved. So we
ought to take the man who has the best disposition of
body and soul ; and in him we shall find that this is so ;
for in people that are grievous both to others and to
themselves the body may often appear ruling the soul,
because such people a-e poor creatures and false to nature.'
And Aristotle goes on to distinguish between the body^
over which, he says, the rule of the soul is absolute,
and the movement of thought and desire^ over which
reason has, says he, * a constitutional rule,' in words which
» Politics^ i. 5.
2o6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
exactly recal St. Paul's phrase for our double enemy :
* the flesh and the cu7'reiit thoughts' So entirely are we
liere on ground of general experience. And if we go on
and take this maxim from Stobseus: 'All fine acquirement
implies a foregoing exercise of self-control \''^ or this
from the Latin poet : ' Ride your current self or it will
rule you ! bridle it in and chain it down ! ' ^ or this from
Goethe's autobiography : ' Everything cries out to us
that we must re?iou7ice ;' ^ or still more this from his
Faust'. 'Thou must go without , go without I that is the
everlasting song which every hour, all our life through,
hoarsely sings to us ! ' ^ — then we have testimony not only
to the necessity of this natural law of rule and suppression,
but also to the strain and labour and suffering which
attend it. But when we come a little further and take a
sentence like this of Plato : ' Of sufferings and pains
cometh help, for it is not possible by any other way to be
ridded of our iniquity ; '^ then we get a higher strain, a
* riaj/T^s KaXou KTT]ixaT05 tcdvos irpor\yiiTai 6 Kar' iyKpoLreiav.
2 . . . . Animum rege, qui nisi paret
Imperat ; hunc frcenis hunc tu compesce catenis.
' Alles ruft uns zu, dass wir entsagen sollen.
* Entbehren sollst du ! sollst entbehren !
Das ist der ewige Gesaiig,
Den unser ganzes Leben lang
Uns heiser jede Stunde singt.
^ Ai' aX'yrjdopuv Kol odvvwv yiyveTai r] uxpiAeiw ou yap ot6v re ^A.Aws
aSiKias a7roAAaTT€O-0at. — Go7'gias, c. 8l.
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 207
strain like St. Peter's : He tJiat hath suffered in the flesh
hath ceased from sin ; and we are brought to see, not only
the necessity of the law of rule and suppression, not only
the pain and sifferifig in it, but also its beneficence.
And this positive sense of beneficence, salutariness, and
hope, comes out yet more strongly when Wordsworth says
to Duty : * Nor know we anything so fair as is the smile
upon thy face ; ' or when Bishop Wilson says : ' They
that deny themselves will be sure to find their strength
increased, their aft'ections raised, and their inward peace
continually augmented ; ' and most of all, perhaps, when
we hear from Goethe : * Die and re-exist ! for so long as
this is not accomplished thou art but a troubled guest
upon an earth of gloom ! ' ^ . But this is evidently borrowed
from Jesus, and by one whose testimony is of the more
weight, because he certainly would not have become thus
a borrower from Jesus, unless the truth had compelled
him.
And never, certainly, was the joy which in self-
renouncement underlies tlie pain, so brought out, as when
Jesus boldly called the suppression of our first impulses
and current thoughts: life, real life, eternal life. So that
* Stirb und werde !
Denn, so lang du das nicht hast,
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde !
2o8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Jesus not oxs!iysaw this great necessary truth of there being,
as Aristotle says, in human nature a part to rule and a part
to be ruled ; he saw it so thoroughly^ that he saw through
the suffering at its surface to the joy at its centre, filled it
with promise and hope, and made it infinitely attractive.
As Israel, therefore, is * the people of righteousness,'
because, though others have perceived the importance of
righteousness, Israel, abo\^e everyone, perceived the hap-
piness of it ; so self-renouncement, the main factor in
conduct or righteousness, is *the secret of Jesus,' because,
though others have seen that it was necessary, Jesus,
above everyone, saw that it was peace, joy, life.
Now, we may observe, that even Aristotle (and it is a
mark of his greatness) does not, in the passage we have
quoted from him, begin with a complete system of psycho-
physiology, and show us where and how and why in this
system the rule of renouncement comes in, and draw out
for us definitively the law of our being towards which this
rule leads up. He says that the rule exists, that it is
ancillary to the law of our being, and that we are to study
the best men, in whom it most exists, to make us see
that it is thus ancillary. He here appeals throughout to
a verifying sense, such as we have said that everyone in
this great but plain matter of conduct really has ; he does
not appeal to a speculative theory of the system of things,
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 209
and deduce conclusions from it. And he shows his
greatness in this, because the law of our being is not
something which is already definitively known and can be
exhibited as part of a speculative theory of the system of
things ; it is something which discovers itself and becomes^
as we follow (among other things) the rule of renounce-
ment. What we can say with most certainty about the
law of our being is, that we find the rule of renouncement
lead sensibly up to it. In matters of practice and conduct
therefore, an experience, like this, is really a far safer
ground to insist on than any speculative theory of the
sjetem of things. And to a theory of such sort Jesus never
appeals. Here is what characterises his teaching, and
distinguishes him, for instance, from the author of the
Fourth Gospel. This author handles what we may call
theosophical speculation in a beautiful and impressive
manner ; his introduction is undoubtedly in a very noble
and profound strain. But it is theory) an intellectual
theory of the divine nature and the system of things,
which was then, and is still at present, utterly irreducible
to experience. And therefore it is impossible even to
conceive Jesus himself uttering the introduction to the
Fourth Gospel ; because theory Jesus never touches, but
bases himself invariably on experience. True, the expe-
rience must, for philosophy, have its place in a theory of
p
2IO LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
the system of human nature, when the theory is perfect ;
but the point is, that the experience is ripe, and soHd,
and to be used safely, long before the theory. And it
was the experience which Jesus always used.
Undoubtedly, however, attempts may not improperly
be made, even now, — by those, at least, who have a
talent for these matters, — to exhibit the experience, with
what leads to it and what derives from it, in a system
of psycho-physiology. And then, perhaps, it will be
found to be connected with other truths of psycho-
physiology, such as the unity of life, as it is called,
and the impersonality of reason. Only then it will be
philosophy, mental exercitation, and will concern us as
a matter of science, not of conduct. And, as the dis-
cipline of conduct is three-fourths of life, for our aesthetic
and intellectual disciplines, real as these are, there is
but one-fourth of life left ; and if we let art and science
divide this one-fourth fairly between them, they will
have just one -eighth of life each.
So the exhibition of the truth : ' He that loveth his life
shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal^ in its order and place as a truth
of psycho-physiology, concerns one-eighth of our life and
no more. But Jesus, we say, exhibited nothing for the
benefit of this one-eighth of us ; this is what distinguishes
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 211
him from all moralists and philosophers, and even from
the greatest of his own disciples. How he reached a
doctrine we cannot say ; but he always exhibited it as an
intuition and a practical rule, and a practical rule which,
if adopted, would have the force of an intuition for its
adopter also. This is why none of his doctrines are
of the character of that favourite doctrine of the Bishop
of Gloucester, * the blessed truth that the God of the
universe is a Person ; ' because this doctrine is incapable
of application as a practical rule, and can never come
to have the force of an intuition. But what we call the
secret of Jesus : * He that loveth his life shall lose it,
and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life etemaly was a truth of which he could say : * It
is so ; try it yourself and you will see it is so, by the sense
of livings of going right, hitting the mark, succeeding,
which you will get'
And the same with the commandment, ' Love one an-
other^' which is the positive side of the commandment,
* Renounce thyself^ and, like this, can be drawn out as a
truth of pyscho-physiology. Jesus exhibited it as an in-
tuition and a practical rule ; and as what, by being prac-
tised, would, through giving happiness, prove its own truth
as a rule of life. This, we say, is of the very essence
of his secret of self-renouncement, as of his method of
p 2
212 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
inwardness; — that its truth will be found to commend
itself by happmess, to prove itself by happiness. And of
the secret more especially is this true ; and as we have
said, that though there gathers round the word * God '
very much besides, yet we shall in general, in reading the
Bible, get the surest hold on the word * God ' by giving it
the sense of the Eternal Power, not ourselves, which makes
for righteousness, so we shall get the best hold on many
expressions of Jesus by referring them, though they in-
clude more, yet primarily and pointedly to his ' secret,'
and to the happiness which this contained. Bread of
life, living water, these are, in general, Jesus, Jesus in
his whole being and in his total effect ; but in especial
they are Jesus as offering his secret. And when Jesus
says : * He that eateth me shall live by me ! ' we shall
understand the words best if we think of his secret.
And so again with the famous words to the woman by
the well in Samaria : ' Whosoever drinketh of this water
shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water
that I shall give him shall be in him a fount of water
springing up unto everlasting life.' These words, how are
we to take them, so as to reach their meaning best ?
What distinctly is this 'water that I shall give him ' ?
Jesus himself and his word, no doubt ; yet so we come
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 213
but to that very notion, which Jeremy Taylor warns
us against as vague, of gettifjg Christ. The Bishop of
Gloucester will tell us, perhaps, that it is ' the blessed truth
that the Creator of the universe is a Person,' or the doc-
trine of the consubstantiality of the Eternal Son. But
surely it would be a strong figure of speech to say of these
doctrines, that a man, after receiving them, could never
again feel thirsty ! See, on the contrary, "how the words suit
the secret : ' He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eter-
nal.' This ' secret of Jesus,' as we call it, will be found
applicable to all the thousand problems which the exer-
cise of conduct daily offers ; it alone can solve them all
happily, and may indeed be called ' a fount of water
springing up unto everlasting life.' And, in general,
wherever the words /i/e and cteath are used by Jesus, we
shall do well to have his ' secret ' at hand ; for in his
thoughts, on these occasions, it is never far off.
And now, too, we can see why it is a mistake, and may
lead to much error, to exhibit any series of maxims, like
those of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and
formula into which Christianity may be run up. Maxims of
this kind are but applications of the method and the secret
of Jesus ; and the method and secret are capable of yet
an infinite number more of such applications. Christianity
214 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
is a source 'j no one supply of water and refreshment that
comes from it can be called the sum of Christianity.
5-
A method oi inwardness, a secret of self-renouncement; —
but can any statement of what Jesus brought be com-
plete, which does not take in his mildness ? To the repre-
sentative texts already given there is certainly to be
added this other : ' Learn of me that L am mild and lowly
in heart, and ye shall find rest u7ito your souls I ' Shall
we attach mildness to the method, because, without it, a
clear and limpid view inwards is impossible ? Or shall
we attach it to the secret ? — the dying to faults of temper is
a part, certainly, of dying to one's ordinary self, one's lifeiii
this world. Mildness, however, is rather an element in
which, in Jesus, both method and secret worked ; the
medium through which both the method and the secret
were exhibited. We may think of it as perfectly illus-
trated and exemplified in his answer to the foolish ques-
tion, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? — when,
taking a little child and setting him in the midst, he said :
'Whosoever receives the kingdom of God as a little child,
the same is the greatest in it.' Here are both inward
appraisal and self-renouncement; but what is most admir-
able is the 'sweet reasonableness,' the exquisite, mild
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 215
winning felicity, with which the renouncement and the in-
ward appraisal are applied and conveyed. And the con-
junction of the three in Jesus, — the method of inwardness,
and the secret of self-renouncement, working in and
through this element of mildness,— produced the total
impression of his ' epieikeia,' or sweet reasonableness ; a \
total impression ineffable and indescribable for the dis-
ciples, as also it was irresistible for them, but at which their
descriptive words, words like this ^ sweet reasonableness^ and
like ^full of grace and truths are thrown out and aimed.
And this total stamp of * grace and truth,' this exquisite
conjunction and balance, in an element of mildness, of
a method of inwardness perfectly handled and a self-
renouncement perfectly kept, was found in Jesus alone.
Yet what is the method of inwardness, and the secret of self-
renouncement, without the sure balance of Jesus, without
his epieikeia ? Much, but very far indeed from what he
showed or what he meant ; they come to be used blindly,
used mechanically, used amiss, and lead to the strangest
aberrations. St. Simeon Stylites on his column, Lacor-
daire flogging himself on his death-bed, are what the
secret by itself produces. The method by itself gives us
our political Dissenter, pluming himself on some irrational
' conscientious objections,' and not knowing that with
conscience he has done nothing until he has got to the
2i6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
bottom of conscience, and made it tell him right. There-
fore the disciples of Christ were not told to believe in' his
method, or to beUeve in his secret, but to believe in
him ; they were not told to follow the method or to
follow the secret, but they were told : ^ Follow me ! '
It was only by fixing their heart and mind on him that
they could learn to use the method and secret right ;
by ^feeding on him,' by, as he often said, ' remaining in
him.'
But this is just what Israel had been told to do
as regards the Eternal himself ' I have set the Eternal
always before me ;^ 'Mine eyes are ever toward t\\Q Eternal ;'
' The Eternal is the strmgth of my life; ' ' Wait, I say,
on the Eternal ! ' Now, then, let us go back again for a
little to Israel, and to Israel's beUef.
6.
We have seen how the Jews, at the coming of Christ,
had their thoughts full of a grand and turbid phantasma-
gory; — a vision of God judging the world, sending his
Messiah on the clouds of heaven, taking vengeance on
nis enemies, restoring the kingdom to Israel. And we
marked the line of texts which this expectation followed :
from the ' Prophet ' of Moses to the victorious ' Rod out
of the stem of Jesse ' of Isaiah, and thence to tlie
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, in
* Messiah,' the * Son of Man,' the ' Son of God,' of the
Book of Daniel.
But there was afwther line of texts pointing to a ser-
vant and emissary of God, besides the line pointing to
the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the princely and con-
quering Root of David. It stood written : * Behold my
servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul
delighteth ! I have put my spirit upon him ; he shall
declare judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive
nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets ;
he shall declare judgment with truth. He shall not fail
nor be discouraged, until he set judgment in the earth ;
far lands wait for his law.' Who is this ?
And again : * He was despised, and we esteemed him
not; but he was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for our iniquities. All we like sheep were
gone astray, we were turned every one to his own
way; and the Eternal hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all. And he made his grave with the wicked,
although he had done no violence ; yet it pleased
the Eternal to bruise him. When Thou hast made
his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he
shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Eternal
shall prosper in his hand ; he shall see of the travail
of his soul and shall be satisfied ! ' Who, again, is this ?
2i8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Is it the 'Prophet' Hke great Moses? Is it the brilliant
* Branch ' out of the root of Jesse, smiting the earth with
the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his
lips slaying the wicked? with his dominion from
the one sea to the other, all things falling down before
him, all nations serving him; with his seed to en-
dure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven ?
This Branch it was, whom Israel identified with the
Messiah coming in the clouds of heaven to give the
kingdom to the saints of the Most High, with the Son
of Man sitting on the throne of his glory. Was the
afflicted and lowly servant at the same time the Branch,
and therefore the Messiah, the Son of God, and the bringer
of the kingdom ? Israel never identified them. Here and
there he made guesses and snatches at the truth; momen-
tary elevations of it there were, faint approaches towards
connecting the two ideals, isolated tentatives; but the
Jewish people at large had never grasped the idea of
the identification, and it had never been so presented
to them that they could grasp it.
And, as we have already said, it was an extraordinary
novelty, although the profound and the only true solu-
tion of Israel's wonderful history, when this identifi-
cation was by Jesus boldly made. ' A little while,' the
Jews were saying, 'and the God of heaven shall set up
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 219
a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.^ ^ — * Nay/
answered Jesus, * the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of
God is at hand! change the inner man^ and believe the good
news!' — 'But,' said the Jews, *■ Elias must first come.'
Jesus replied : * EHcls is come already ! John the Baptist,
my precursor, who preached a change of the inner man
as I do.' — ' But there shall be a time of trouble^' the Jews
urged, * such as never was since there was a nation to that
time; abomination and desolation; a fiery stream issuing
from before the throne of the Ancient of days ; 07ie like the
Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven /' * Jesus
beheld the fierce and impracticable people before him,
with their inevitable future : ' Fear not,' he answered
mournfully, * where the carcase is, there will the eagles be
gathered together! soon enough you will have the affliction
such as was not from the beginning of the world to this
time, the Son of Man coming, Jerusalem encompassed
with armies, abomination and desolation, not one stone
of the Temple left on another.' — ^^ut the judgment shall
sit!' said the Jews, * and at that time the people shall be
delivered, every one that shall be found written in the
book ! ' — To the outward crisis, or world-judgment of
Jerusalem's ruin, shall correspond, Jesus answered, an
inward judgment, the new crisis of conscience. * The
> Dan. ii. 44. » Dan. xii. i, 11 ; vii. 10, 13.
220 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
hour ' is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God; and they who hear shall live.
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice; the
word that I speak, the same shall judge Yiim.'' — 'But the
righteous,' the Jews said, ^ shall awake to everlasting life P
— ' If a man keep my word,' answered Jesus, ^he shall
never see death ; but it shall be in him a fount of water,
springing up unto everlasting life.^ — ' But God's Messiah,'
finally rejoined the Jews, 'shall smite the earth with the
breath of his mouth I his thro?ie shall endure for ever, and
his dominion shall be from the one sea to the other ;
the Gentiles shall be give?i to him I — ' Ye know not what
spirit ye are of,' said Jesus : 'He is mild, and lowly in
heart ; he must suffer many things and be rejected of his
generation. Except a corn oiy^Yi^dX fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth
much fruit; and /, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men unto me.' Then, turning to the disciples : ' Fear
not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom ! And other sheep I have, not of this
fold ! they also shall be brought; and there shall be one
fold, one shepherd.'
By a line like this did Jesus identify the two ideals, —
the ideal of popular Aberglaube and his own. And this
is why the phrases of the popular Aberglaube come so
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 221
often from his lips ; he was for ever translating it into
the sense of the higher ideal, the only sense in which it
had truth and grandeur. It was hopeless that the Jews
should go along with him. The best of his disciples
went along with him but imperfectly, and popular
Christianity has fallen far behind the best of his disciples.
The hour is comings and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of Man, and they who hear shall live ^ —
this saying could not lift the Jews out of their Aber-
glaube into the ideal of Jesus, with its new meaning for
the words life and death. But neither has it lifted popu-
lar Christianity, which out of this and other like sayings
has fashioned for itself an Aberglaube precisely corre-
sponding to that of the Jews.
Yet Jesus could not but use the dominant phrases of
the Jewish religion, if he was to talk to the Jewish people
about religion at all. And we have now seen that he
did use them, and how. And this leads us further, and
explains his way of using such words as the Christy the
Son of Man^ the Son of God. For, as the Jews were
always talking about the Messiah, so they were always
talking, we know, about God. And they believed in God's
Messiah after their notion of him, because they believed
in God after their notion oi him ;— but both notions were
wrong. All their aspirations were now turned towards the
il
222 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
Messiah; whoever would do them good, must first change
their ideal of the Messiah. But their ideal of God's
Messiah depended upon their notion of God. This notion
was now false, like their ideal of the Messiah ; but once
it had been true, or, at least, true comparatively ; — once
Israel had had the intuition of God, as the Eternal that
loveih righteousness. And the intuition had never been so
lost but that it was capable of being revived. To change
their dangerous and misleading ideal of God's Messiah,
therefore, and to make the Jews believe in the true
Messiah, could only be accomplished by bringing them
back to a truer notion of God and his righteousness. By
this it could, perhaps, be accomplished, but by this only.
And this is what Jesus sought to do. He sought to
do it in the way we have seen, by his ' method ' and
his ' secret' First, by his ' method ' of a change of the
inner man : — * Do not be all abroad, do not he in the
air,' ^ he said to his nation ; * you look for the kingdom of
God ; the kingdom of God is the reign of righteousness,
God's will done by all mankind ; well, then, seek the king-
dom of God ! the kingdom of God is within you.' And, next,
by his * secret ' of peace : — ' Renounce thyself , and take up
thy cross daily and follow me. He that loveth his life shall
lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal.' And the revolution thus made was so
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 223
immense, that the least in this new kingdom of heaven,
this realm of the * method * and the * secret,' was greater,
Jesus said, than one who, like John the Baptist, was even
greatest in the old realm of Jewish religion. And those
who obeyed the gospel of this new kingdom came to the
light ; they ha,d joy ; they entered into/<?^^ ; they ceased
to thirsty the word became in them a fount of water
springing up unto everlasting life. But these were the
admitted tests of righteousness, of obeying the voice of
the Eternal who loveth righteousness. * There ariseth
light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in
heart ; he that feareth the Eternal, happy is he ! '
Now, the special value of the Fourth Gospel is, not that
it exhibits the method and secret of Jesus, — for all the
Gospels exhibit them, — but that it exhibits the establish-
ment of them by means of Israel's own idea of God,
cleared and re-awakened. The argument is : * You are
always talking about God, God's word, righteousness;
always saying that God is your Father, and will send
his Messiah for your salvation. Well, he who receives
me shows that he talks about God with a knowledge of
what he is saying ; he sets to his seal that God is true.
He who is of God heareth the words of God; every one
that heareth and learneth of the Father cometh unto me;
my doctrine is not mine but his that sent me, and ye have
not his word abiding in you^ because, whom he hath sent.
224 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
him ye believe not ; if any one will do God's will he shall
know of the doctrine^ whether it be of God' This, there-
fore, is what Jesus said : — ' I, whose message of salvation
is : If a man keep my word he shall neuer see death ! am
sent of God ; because he, who obeys my saying : Renounce
thyself and follow me! shall feel that he truly lives, and
that he is following, therefore, Israel's God of whom it is
said : Thou wilt show me the path of life.^
The doctrine therefore is double: — Re?iounce thyself
the secret of Jesus, involving a foregoing exercise of his
method; and, Follow me, who am sent from God! That
is the favourite expression: Sent from God ; * The Father
hath sent me, God hath sent me.' Now this identified
Jesus and his salvation with the Messiah whom, with
his salvation, the Jews were expecting. For his dis-
ciples, therefore, and for Christendom after them, Jesus
was and is the Christ. This, we say, his disciples, and
Christendom after them, have comprehended and ac-
cepted : his identification of himself with the Messiah.
On the other hand, his fruitful and profound harmonisa-
tion of the two ideals, — the mild and suffering Servant
of God, and the Anointed Prince smiting the earth
with the breath of his mouth and giving the king-
dom to the saints, — was not understood and accepted.
Nevertheless, the turbid Aberglaube, with which the Jews
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 225
had surrounded this latter ideal, was by the disciples
of Jesus borrowed, and transferred wholesale to Christ and
Chrisf s future advent.
Meanwhile, as with the word God, so with the word
Christ ; Jesus did not give any scientific definition of it, —
such as, for instance, that Christ was the Logos. He took
the word Christ as the Jews used it, as he took the word
God as the Jews used it ; and as he amended their
notion of God, the Eter?ial who loveth righteousntss, by
showing what righfeousfiess really was, so he amended
their notion of the Messiah, the chosen bringer of God^s
salvation, by showing what salvation really was. And
though his own application of terms to designate him-
self is not a matter where we can perfectly tmst his
reporters (as it is clear, for instance, that the writer of the
Fourth Gospel was more metaphysical than Jesus him-
self),^ yet there is no difficulty in sup{X)sing him to have
applied to himself each and all of the terms which the
Jews in any way used to describe the Messiah, — Messiah
or Christ, God's Chosen or Beloved or Consecrated or
* It is to be remembered, too, that whereas Jesus spoke in Ara-
maic, the most concrete and unmetaphysical of languages, he is
reported in Greek, the most metaphysical. What, in the mouth of
Jesus, was the word which comes to us as novoyevfis [only-begotten) ?
And yet, in the Greek record, this word is not, like only-begotten
in our translation, reserved for Christ; see Luke, ix. 38.
Q
226 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Glorified One, the Son of God, the Son of Man ; because
his concern, as we have said, was with his countrymen's
idea of salvation, not with their terms for designating
the bringer of it. But the simplest term, the term which
gives least opening into theosophy, — Son of Man, — he
certainly preferred. So, too, he loved the simple expres-
sions, ' God settt me,' ' The Father hath sent me ; ' and he
chose so often to say, in a general manner, * I am ffe,^
rather than to say positively, ' I am Christ.''
And evidently this mode of speaking struck his
hearers. We find the Jews saying : How long dost thou
make us to doubt ? if thou be Christ, tell us plainly I '
And even then Jesus does not answer point-blank, but
prefers to say: 'I have told you, and ye believe not.*
Yet this does not imply that he had the least doubt
or hesitation in naming himself the Messiah, the Son of
God; but only that his concern was, as we have said,
with God's righteousness and Christ's salvation, and that
he avoided all use of the names God, and Christ, which
might give an opening into mere theosophical specula-
tion. And this is shown, moreover, by the largeness and
freedom. — almost, one may say, indifference, — of his
treatment of both names ; as names, in using which, his
hearers were always in danger of going off into a theo-
sophy that did them no good and had better occupy
them as little as possible, *• I a7id my FatJur are one/*
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 227
he would say at one time ; and ' My Father is greater
than IP at another. When the Jews were offended at his
calling himself the Son of God, he quotes Scripture to
show that even mere men were in Scripture called Gods ;
and for you, he says, who go by the letter of Scripture,
surely this is sanction enough for calling anyone, whom
God sends, the Son of God ! He did not at all mean, that
the Messiah was a son of God merely in the sense in
which any great man might be so called ; but he meant
that these questions of theosophy were useless for his
hearers, and that they puzzled themselves with them in
vain. All they were concerned with was, that he was
the Messiah they expected, sent to them with salvation
from God.
It is the same when Jesus says : * Before Abraham was,
I am ! ' He was baffling his countrymen's theosophy,
showing them how little his doctrine was meant to offer a
field for it. ' Life,' he means, * the life of him who lays
down his life that he may take it again, is not what you
suppose ; your notions of everlasting life are all false, and
with your present notions you cannot discuss theology
with me ; follow me ! ' So, again, to the Jews in the rut
of their traditional theology, and haggling about the Son
of David ; — ^Jesus, they insisted, could not be the Christ,
because the Christ was the Son of David. Jesus answers
228 LITERATURE AND DOGMA
them by the objection that in the Psalms (and the Scrip-
ture cannot be broken !) David calls the Christ his Lord;
and ''if he call him Lord, how is he then his son?'
The argument as a serious argument is perfectly futile ;
the King of Israel is going out to war, and what the
Psalmist really sings is : ' The Eternal saith unto the
king's majesty, Thou shalt conquer f St. Peter in the
Acts gravely uses the same verse to prove Jesus to be
Christ : ' God,' says he, ' tells my Lord, Sit thou upon 7ny
right hand f Yet David never went up into heaven.'
And this is exactly of a piece with St. Paul's proving salva-
tion to be by Christ alone, from seed^ in the promise to
Abraham, being in the singular not the plural. It is
merely false criticism of the Old Testament, such as the
Jews were full of, and of which the Apostles retained
far too much. But the Jews we7'e full of it, and there-
fore the objection of Jesus was just such an objection as
the Jews would tliink weighty. He used it as he might
have used a crux about personality or consubstantiality
with the Bishops of Winchester or Gloucester; — to baffle
and put to rout their false dogmatic theology, to disen-
chant them with it and make them cast it aside and come
simply to him. ' See,' he says to the Jewish doctors,
'what a mess you make of it with your learning, and
evidences, and orthodox theology; with the wisdom of
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 229
your wise men and the understanding of your prudent
men / You can do nothing with them, your arms break in
your hands ; fling the rubbish away, and throw yourselves
upon my method and secret, — upon vie ! Belirje that
the Father hath setit nie ; he that rcceiveth me receiveth
Him that sent me. If any man unli do His willj he shall
know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I have
i7ivefited it I '
And no grand performance or discovery of a man's
own to bring him thus to joy and peace, but an
attachment/ the influence of One fuU of grace and truth !
An influence, which we feel we know not how, and
which subdues us we know not when ; which, like the
wind, blows where it lists, passes here, and does not
pass there ! Once more, then, we come to that lOot
and ground of religion, that element of awe and gratitude
which fills religion with emotion, and makes it other and
greater than morality, — the not ourselves. We did not
make the order of conduct, or provide that happiness
should belong to it, or dispose our hearts to it. The
preparation of the heart in man is, as Israel said, from
the Eternal! We did not make the ' grace and truth' of
Jesus, provide that happiness should belong to feeling
them, and dispose our hearts to feel them. No man can
come to me, as Jesus said, except the Father which sent me
230 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
draw him! So the revelation of Christ in the New
Testament, like the revelation of the God of Israel in the
Old, is the revelation of ' the Eternal, not ourselves^
which makes for righteousness.' It is like it, and has
the same power of religion in it.
7-
Now, then, we see what the doctrine, I came forth from
God, really means. We see how far it has any likeness
with that doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son,
for which our two bishops are so anxious to ' do some-
thing.' We see how far the pseudo-scientific language of
our creeds, about persons, and substance, and godhead, and
co-equal, and co-eternal, and created, and begotten, and
proceeding, has anything at all to do with what Jesus
said or meant. We see how impossible it is that one
should concede to our clerical friends what they assume
to be beyond dispute : — that the so-called Athanasian
Greed 'takes the facts of Christian doctrine, and just
arranges them sentence after sentence.' We see how wide
of the mark is that philosophical clergyman, who writes
to "the Guardian that ' Our Lord unquestionably annexes
eternal life to a right knowledge of the Godhead,' in
imagining, that when Jesus said : ' This is life eternal, to
know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 231
thou hast sent,' Jesus had in view anything at all like the
* facts * which the Athanasian Creed ' arranges, sentence
after sentence.' But we see more than this. We see
how much a very common use of the word, faiihy which
gives rise to false notions like that of this clergyman,
needs amending.
For it is constantly assumed that there is an opposi-
tion between faith and reason ; and that those, whom
Christ calls to believe in him, he calls to receive a doctrine
puzzling to the reason, but which, if adopted, will gradu-
ally become clear. It is obvious how well this notion of
faith suits the recommenders of such doctrine as that
which the Athanasian Creed 'arranges, sentence after
sentence,' which is certainly very puzzling to the reason.
But this is of the essence of faith, it is said : — to take on
trust what perplexes the reason. Only adopt the doctrine
which perplexes the reason, be a Christian, and after-
wards ' you shall know of the doctrine whether it be of
God.' And with this is connected what is so often said
in the Bible about ' receiving the kingdom of God as a
little child,' about 'babes seeing what is hidden from
the wise and prudent.' The unlettered believer is, in
fact, — according to this version of what the Bible means
to say, — represented in the Bible as a better judge about
a thing which perplexes the reason than the philoso-
232 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
pher. And this explains the disdain with which the
possessors of gospel-truth^ as it is called, are apt to treat
art, and literature, and science. These happy men are
supposed to have, by faith, a certainty in matters per-
plexing in the highest degree to the reason, which the
vaunted exercise of the reason can never attain to. And
as with faith in Christ, so with faith in God : it is taking
on trust something perplexing to the reason. Texts like :
They that seek the Eternal understand all things^ and : I am
7viser tJian the aged because I keep Thy commandments^
mean, that we are better off and see clearer than men
of study and experience, if, in spite of its puzzling the
reason, we accept in faith, and they do not, some truth
like the Bishop of Gloucester's ' blessed truth that the
God of the universe is a Person.'
No one has more insisted on this opposition between
faith and reason than a writer whom we can never name
but with respect, — Dr. Newman. ' The moral trial
involved in faith,' he says, ' lies in the submission of the
reason to external realities partially disclosed.' And
again : ' Faith is, in its very nature, the acceptance of
what our reason cannot reach, simply and absolutely upon
testimony.' But surely faith is, in its very nature (with
all respect be it spoken ! ), nothing of the kind ; else how
could Christ say to the Jews : ' If I tell you the truth.
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 233
why do ye not believe me ? ' Surely this implies that
faith, instead of being a submission of the reason to what
puzzles it, is rather a recognition of what is perfectly
clear, if we will attend to it. We cannot always attend,
all of us ; and here is the not ourselves in the matter, ' the
grace of God.' But attention, cleaving, attaching ofieself
fast to what is undeniably true, — this is what the faith of
Scripture, ' in its very nature,' is ; and not the submission
of the reason to what puzzles it, or the acceptance, simply
and absolutely upon testimony, of what our reason cannot
reach. And all that the Bible says of bringing to nought
the wisdom of the wise, and of receiving the kingdom of
God as a little child, has nothing whatever to do with the
believer's acceptance of some dogma that perplexes the
reason ; it is aimed at those who sophisticate a very simple
thing, religion, by importing into it a so-called science with
which it has nothing to do. Jewish theological learning,
the system of divinity of the Jewish hierarchy, who did
not know how simple a thing righteousness really was,
and who, when simple souls saw it in Christ and were
drawn to it, cried out, ' This people that knoweth not the
law are cursed I it was at these, and at whatever re-
sembles these, that Christ aimed the words about receiv-
ing the kingdom of God as a little child.
And the 'marvellous work and wonder' about the
234 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
saving truth which the simple receive is, not that, being
difficult to the reason, it is yet got hold of by the un-
lettered and not by the wise ; but that, being so simple, it
should yet be so immense, important, indispensable ;
and that, being so immense, important, indispensable,
it should yet so often be followed by quite unlettered
people and neglected by such very clever ones. They
are attending to other things, — things which do task the
reason and intelligence, and in which the unlettered have
no skill and no voice ; these things however are, at most,
only one-fourth of life. And this absurdity, for such it
really is, we see every day ; — people attending to the diffi-
cult science of matters where the plain practice they quite
let slip. How many people will be now busy with Mr.
Darwin's new book, so admirably ingenious, on the natural
history of the emotions, who yet are always using their
own emotions in the worst possible manner ! They are
eager to know how their emotions arose, how these came
\ to express themselves as they do ; yet there the emotions
now are, and have for a long time been, and the first thing
for any sane man is, to make a proper use of them, and to
know how to make a proper use is not difficult ; — but all
this we never think of, but investigate zealously how
they arose ! Such persons are just like those learned
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 235
inquirers the Cynic laughed at, who were so busy about
the strayings of Ulysses, so inattentive to their own.
And Israel's greatness was that he was so impatient of
trifling of this kind, of being busy with one-fourth of life
while the three-fourths, conduct, was forgotten. And Israel
boldly said : * They that seek the Eternal understand all
things y ' that is, they are occupied with conduct, right-
eousness, which truly is, as we have seen, at least three-
fourths of life, and which Israel thought the whole of it. •
They have a hold on three-fourths of life, while it may
be that their great, clever, and accomplished neighbours
have a hold on only one-fourth, or part of one-fourth, of
life. Which is the solid and sensible man, which under-
stands most, which lives most? Compare a Methodist
day-labourer with some dissolute, gifted, brilliant grandee,
who thinks nothing of him ! — but the first deals suc-
cessfully with nearly the whole of hfe, while the second
is all abroad in it. Compare some simple and pious
monk, at Rome, with one of those frivolous men of
taste whom we have all seen there ! — each knows no-
thing of what interests the other \ but which is the more
vital concern for a man : conduct, or arts and antiquities ?
Nay, and however false his science and Biblical criti-
cism, the believer who applies the method and secret of
Jesus has a width of range and sureness of foothold in
236 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
life, which even the best scientific and literary critic of the
Bible, who applies them not, is without ; because the first
is right in what affects three-fourths of life, and the
second in what affects but one- fourth, or even but one-
eighth. Each has a secret of which the other, who has
no experience of it, does not know the value ; but the
value of the learned man's secret is ridiculously least.
This, I say, is the very glory and marvel of the
religion of the true Israel, and what makes this religion,
as Jesus called it, ' the good news to the poor ; ' that it
covers nearly the whole of life, and yet is so simple.
The only right contrast, therefore, to set up between
faith and reason is, not that faith grasps what is too hard
for reason, but that reason does not, like faith, attend to
what is at once so great and so simple. The difficulty
about faith is, to attend to what is very simple and very
important, but liable to be pushed by more showy or
tempting matters out of sight ; the marvel about faith is,
that what is so simple should be so all-sufficing, so neces-
sary, and so ofte7t neglected. And faith is neither the
submission of the reason, nor is it the acceptance, simply
and absolutely upon testimony, of what reason cannot
reach. Faith is : the being able to cleave to a potver of good-
ness appealing to our higher and real self, ?tot to our lower
and apparent self.
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 237
8.
So we see how unlike is Christ's own doctrine of his
being the Son of God to the difficult doctrine of the
Godhead of the Eternal Son, as the Athanasian Creed
* arranges it, sentence after sentence,' and in the form in
which our bishops want to ' do something ' for it ; as unlike
as the original revelation to Israel of the Eternal that loveth
righteousness is to * the blessed doctrine that the God of the
universe is a Person.' And we see how the clergymen
who write to the Guardian deceive themselves, when they
imagine that it is to these doctrines of our bishops that
Christ 'unquestionably attaches eternal life,' and how
they are led into this error by having more of turn for
abstruse reasoning than of literary experience. They are
not conversant enough with the many different ways in
which men think and speak, so as to be able to distinguish
rightly between them, and to perceive that the Bible is
literature ; and that its words are used, like the words of
common life and of poetry and eloquence, approximately,
and not like the terms of science, adequately.
And if they fall into mistakes about words applied to
the Father and the Son, by thus making them scientific,
how much more do they fall into mistakes when they
extend this treatment to words applied to the Holy Spirit.
238 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
We have seen how the word Fneuma, just by reason of
its inward and infinite character, was much employed
by Jesus for his method of inwardness and of deliverance
from binding traditions and formulas; and how, since
Ifoly Ghost has become to us a formula, just as God
and righteou57iess were to the Jews, to get the force of
Christ's use of the word * Pneuma,' we ought to re-
translate the word for ourselves, and to call it, for a time
I at any rate, rather influence^ intuition^ or some such name.
For it was thus that Jesus himself used it When Jesus
was going away, above all, and his disciples were to be
thrown on themselves and left to use his method of
inwardness more deeply and thoroughly, not ha\'ing
him to go to, — then they would find, he said, a new power
come to their help ; a power of insight such as they
had never had before, and which was none of their
making, but came from God as Jesus did, and said nothing
of itself, but only what God said or Jesus said ; a * Para-
clete,' or reinforcement working in aid of God and
Jesus : ^ven the Spirit of Truth. While Jesus was with
them, the disciples had lived in contact with aletheia,
or reality ; and they were promised now an intuition of
reality within themselves.
Now, will it be beHeved that the Athanasian Creed,
and our bishops, and the clergymen who write to the
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 239
Guardian^ and dogmatic theology in general, should
have imagined that Christ here meant to convey to
us the 'blessed doctrine' that this Spirit of truth,
too, * is a Person ' ? The force of metaphysical talent
out-running literary experience could really, we say,
no further go ! The Muse, who visited Hesiod when
he was tending his sheep on the side of Helicon, and
* breathed into him a divine voice, and taught him
the things to come and the former things,' might every
bit as well be made, with much display of meta-
physical apparatus, *a Person.' The influence which
visited Hesiod was a real one ; — that is as much meta-
physics as we can without error, in a case of this sort,
apply. Whoever applies more, falls into absurdity.
The * Spuit of truth,' indeed, which rejoiced the wise
poet of Ascra, was the Muse of art and science, the
Muse of the gifted few, the Muse who brings to the
ingenious and learned among mankind * a forgetful-
ness,' as Hesiod sings, ' of evils and a truce from cares.'
It was the same Muse, no doubt, who visits the Bishop of
Gloucester when he sits in his palace, meditating on per-
sonality, or sometimes perhaps, in his lighter hours, on
political economy. The Paraclete that Jesus promised,
on the other hand, was the Muse of righteousness ; the
Muse of the workday, care-crossed, toil-stained millions
240 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
of men, — the Muse of humanity. To all who live, for
all that concerns three-fourths of life, this divine Muse
offers 'a forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares.'
That is why it is far more real, and far greater, than the
Muse of Hesiod ; not from any metaphysical personality.
9-
But the whole centre of gravity of the Christian
religion, in the popular as well as in the so-called orthodox
notion of it, is placed in Christ's having, by his death
in satisfaction for man's sins, performed the contract
originally passed in the Council of the Trinity, and having
thus enabled the magnified and non-natural Man in
heaven, who is the God of theology and of the multitude
alike, to consider his justice satisfied, and to allow his
mercy to go forth on all who heartily believe that Christ
has paid their debt for them. Now we have seen how that
whole structure of materialising mythology, which the
Bible is supposed to dehver, and in which this conception
of the Atonement^ as it is called, holds the central place,
drops away and disappears as the Bible comes to be
better known. The true centre ot gravity of the
Christian religion is in the method and the secret of Jesus,
approximating, in their application, ever closer to the
epieikeia^ the sweet reasonableness and unerring sureness,
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 241
of Jesus himself. And as the method of Jesus led up
to his secret, and his secret was dying to ' the life in this
world ' and living to 'the eternal life,' both his method and
his secret, therefore, culminated in his * perfecting ' on
the cross, which he foresaw and foretold.
The miracle of the corporeal resurrection ruled the
minds of those who have reported Christ's sayings for us ;
and their report, how he foretold his death, cannot
always be entirely accepted. One of them alleges him
to have foretold it by pointing to his body and saying :
Destroy this temple^ and in three days I 7vill raise it up !
Now, this is certainly an instance of the retrospective
pressure exercised on words of Jesus by the established
belief in the resurrection. He had said of the Temple
at Jerusalem : There shall not be left of it one stone upon
another. He had said of himself and this much-
reverenced Temple : There standeth here One greater than
the Temple. He had said he should be put to death,
and the death of the worst malefactors, crucifixion.
He had said that this should happen after he had worked
but a little while longer : / do cures to-day and to-?norro7U,
and the third day I shall be perfected. Nothing more was
needed. The miraculous prediction concerning ' the temple
of his body ' was ready to the miracle-writer's hand !
R
242 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Jesus had said : Destroy this temple and in three days I
will raise it up I
In sayings of this kind, the internal evidence is all-
important. Now, the sure clue of internal evidence
to follow, in tracing any words of Jesus about his death
and rising again, is the clue given by the ideal of the
stricken Servant of God in the fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah. This ideal, as we have seen, Jesus had adopted
and elevated as the true ideal of Israel's Saviour ; he
had corrected by it the favourite popular ideals he
found regnant. And, in this ideal of the stricken Servant
of God, the notion of sacrifice is, that this lover of
righteousness falls because of a state of iniquity and
wickedness which he had no share in making, and as the
only remedy for it. The notion of redemption is, that by
endurance to the end and by his death crowning his life,
he establishes all seekers after good in their allegiance to
good, enables them to follow it and to reach true life
through it. Finally, the notion of resurrection is, that his
death makes an epoch of victory for him and his cause,
which thenceforward live and reign indestructibly. He
had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth ;
he was bruised for our iniquities^ the Eterjial hath laid on
him the iniquity of us ^11 y — there is the sacrifice. With
his stripes we are healed; — there is the redemption.
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 243
But : When Thou hast made his soul a?t offering for sin,
he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, afid the
pleasure of the Eternal shall prosper in his hand ; — there,
at the end of it all, is the resurrection.
And just these stages we shall find again in Jesus. A
Which of you cofivicteth me of sin ? he asked the Jews ; ''
nevertheless : The Son of Man must suffer many things
and be rejected of this generation ; the Son of Man must
be lifted up ; — there is the sacrifice. Except a graift of
corn fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; the
Son of Man came to give Ms life a ranson for many ; —
there is the redemption. But : If the grain of corn die,
it bringeth forth miuh fruit; I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men tmto me; if I go not away
the Spirit of truth will not come unto you, but if I depart
I will send Mm unto you, ojid when he is come he will
convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment ; "^ \
— there, there is the resurrection and triumph \
The use by Jesus ctf the words life and death must on
no account, however, be limited to this his crucifixion
and after-triumph, though in these, no doubt, his dying
and living culminated. Yet both here, and always in his
use of them, they are to be referred to his secret : ' He
thzt loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in
this world shall keep it tmto life eternal; renounce thyself^
244 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
afid take up thy cross daily ^ and follow Me ! ' Long before
his signal Crucifixion Jesus had died, by taking up daily
that cross which his disciples, after his daily example,
were to take up also. * Therefore doth my Father love
me,' he says, * because I lay down my life that I may take
it again.^ He had risen to life long before his crowning
Resurrection, risen to life in what he calls ' i?iy joy^
which he desired to see fulfilled in his disciples also ;
' my Joy J to have kept my Father's commandment and
abide in his love/
Nay, and there is no more powerful testimony to Christ's
real use of the words life and death, than a famous text,
borrowed from Jewish Aberglaube^ which popular Chris-
tianity has wrested in support of its tenet of a physical
resurrection at the Messiah's second advent. Whatever
we may think of the narrative of the raising of Lazarus,
we need have no difficulty in believing that Jesus really
did say to the brother or sister of a dead disciple : ' Thy
brother shall rise again ! ' and that the mourner replied : ' I
know that he shall rise again at the resurrection of the last
day.' For the answer which follows has the certain
stamp of Jesus : '' I avi the resurrection and the life; he
that believeth o?i me, though he die, shall live, a7id whoso-
ever liveth and believeth on me shall nroer die.'' Now,
Martha believed already in the resurrection of Jewish
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 245
and Christian Aberglaube^ — the resurrection according to
the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch, the resurrection
of the last day, when ' they that sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to
shame and everlasting contempt.' But Jesus corrects her
Aberglaube^ by telling her that her brother is not dead at
all ; and his words, out of which the story of the
miracle very likely grew, do really make the miracle quite
unnecessary. * He that has believed on me and had my
secret,' says Jesus, ' though his body die to the life of
this world, still lives ; for such an one had died to the life
of this world already, and found true life, life out of
himself, life in the Eternal that loveth righteousness, by
doing so.'
Just in the same way, again, in his promise to see his
disciples again after his crucifixion and to take up his
abode with them, Jesus corrects, for those who have eyes
to read, he corrects in the clearest and most decisive way,
those very errors with which our common material
conceptions of life and death have made us invest his
death and resurrection. * Yet a little while,' he says,
* and the world seetli me no more ; but ye see me,
because I live, and ye shall live too. He that hath my
commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
me ; and him that loveth me I will love, and will manifest
246 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
myself to him' Jude naturally objects : ' How is it that
thou wilt manifest thyself to us and not to the world ? '
And Jesus answers : ' If a man love me, he will keep
my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come
unto him and make our abode with him ; he that loveth
me not, keepeth not my word.' Therefore the manifesta-
tion of himself he speaks of is nothing external and
materiaL It is, — like the manifestation of God to him
that ordereth his conversation right, the internal life and
joy in keeping the commandments, — it is the life for the
disciples of Christ, in and with Christ, in keeping the
commandmeftts of God ; those commandments, which had
at last in their true scope been made known to them,
through Christ's method and through his secret.
lO.
Thus, then, did Jesus seek to transform the immense
materialising Aherglaube into which the religion of Israel
had fallen, and to spiritualise it at all points ; while in his
method and secret he supplied a sure basis for practice.
But to follow him entirely there was needed an epieikeia,
an unfailing sweetness and an unerring perception, like his
own. It was much if his disciples got firm hold on his
method and his secret ; and if they transmitted fragments
enough of his lofty spiritualism, to make it in the fulness
TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 247
of time discernible, and to make it at once and from
the first in a large degree serviceable. Who can read
in the Gospels the comments preserved to us, both of
disciples and of others, on what he said, and not feel
that Jesus must have known, while he nevertheless
persevered in saying them, how things like : * The bread
which 1 will give is my flesh for the life of the world^ or :
* / will not leave you comfortless^ I 7vill come unto yoUy
would be misapprehended by those who heard them ?
But, indeed, Jesus himself tells us that he knew and
foresaw this. With the promise of the Spirit of truth
which should, after his departure, work in his disciples first,
then in the world, and which should convince the world
of sin of righteousness and of judgment, and finally
transform it, we are all familiar. But how little we remark
the impressive words, uttered to the crowd around him
only a little while before, and of far wider application than
the reporter imagined : ^ Yet a little while is the light with
you; walk while ye have the light y lest the darkfiess overtake
you unawares /' The real application cannot have been to
the unconverted only ; — a call to the unconverted to make
haste because their chance of conversion would soon, with
Christ's departure, be gone ; no, converts came in far
thicker after Christ's departure than in his life. The words
are for the converted also ; it is as if Jesus foresaw the want
248 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
of his sweet reasonableness which he could not leave, to
help his method and his secret which he could leave ; —
as if he foresaw his words misconstrued, his rising to
eternal life turned into a physical miracle, the advent of
the Spirit of truth turned into a scene of thaumaturgy,
Peter proving his Master's Messiahship from a Psalm
that does not prove it, the great Apostle of the Gentiles
word-splitting like a pedantic Rabbi, the most beautiful
soul among his own reporters saddling him with meta-
physics;— foresaw the growth of creeds, the growth of
dogma, and so, through all the confusion worse con-
founded of councils, schoolmen, and confessions of faith,
down to our own twin Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester bent on * doing something ' for the honour of
the Godhead of the Eternal Son !
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 249
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EARLY WITNESSES.
Our object in this essay has never been to argue
against miracles. Even with Lourdes and La Salette
before our eyes, we may yet say that miracles are
doomed ; they will drop out, like fairies or witchcraft,
from among the matters which serious people believe.
Our one object is to save the revelation in the Bible from
being made solidary, as our Comtist friends say, with
miracles ; from being attended to or held cheap just in
proportion as miracles are attended to or are held cheap.
In hke manner, nay far more, our object is not, and
never can be, to pick holes in the apostles and reporters
of Jesus. But much which they say cannot stand ; our one
object is to hinder people from making Jesus solidary
with this, and with his reporters' and apostles' character
for infallibility. To this extent, and to this only, we are
brought at moments into collision with miracles, into
collision with the disciples of Jesus and with the writers
250 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
of the New Testament. We have to show that, the
men being what and when and whence they were, the
miracles would certainly grow up for them around and
in the wake of Jesus,
• How did Christ's words : * / will see you again^ I go to
prepare a place for youP grow into the legend, — so beautiful,
and round which have for centuries gathered such sacred
feelings and aspirations, yet a legend, — of his corporeal
resuiTection and ascension ? How ? Why, Herod's
first words, when after the execution of John the Baptist
he heard of Jesus, were : ' It is John the Baptist ; he is
risen from the dead 1^ In such an atmosphere of beHef
were the disciples living, when their loss of Jesus, the
greatest loss that ever befel men, happened. All his dis-
couric, when he was with them, had run on life and
death, — apparent death, enduring life ; and how many are
the stories of the survivors, in an atmosphere of belief
like that of those Palestine times, refusing to believe in
the death of a head even far less precious to them, full
of reports of his reappearance in this place and that
p]ace, feeding themselves on the promise of his trium-
phant return! How many thousands at this moment,
in Persia, refuse to credit the death of the Bab, their Gate
of life, executed some years ago ! assert that he will
return, that he has been seen, that they have seen him !
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 251
But the reporters of Jesus were not as others ; they
were infalHble ? So infallible, that they report themselves,
when Jesus reappeared, after all his labours to transform
and spiritualise for them the old Jewish ideal,— they
report themselves to have met him with the inquiry :
Lo?'d^ wilt thou at this time restore the kiiigdofti to
Israel I But the Holy Ghost had not then been given ?
And after the Holy Ghost was given, we find them
with one voice asserting that in the Hfetime of that
generation should come Christ's second advent and
the end of the world ; Peter falling back into Judaism,
so that Paul had to withstand him to the face because
he was to be blamed, and Paul himself proving sal-
vation to be by Jesus, from seed^ in the promise to
Abraham, being used in the singular ! That it is im-
possible the disciples of Jesus should have been, alone
of all the disciples in the world, infallible, that it is begging
the question to say they were infallible, need not be made
out ; it is conspicuous, on the face of their own showing
of themselves, that they Were not infallible. And well it
is that it should be so ; for this favourite Protestant
doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible writers, inherited,
indeed, from the Fathers along with that of the infalli-
bility of the Church, but kept and extolled by Protestants
as the true single anchor to ride at, whereas the other
252 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
was rotten, — this doctrine involves Christianity in dangers
quite as serious as its discarded rival does.
But it was not for nothing that the Apostles had lived
with Jesus ; or even, in the case of a great religious spirit
like Paul, lived in his time, lived in his country, had
his presence and words near and fresh to them. And, un-
true and dangerous as is the popular Protestant doctrine
of the plenary inspiration of the Apostles, making them
infaUible, and vouchsafed no more to anyone after the
apostles were gone, yet it rests on a true perception of
the vast distance which separates them from after-writers
on Christianity, from the Fathers as from Luther and
Calvin, all alike. This they owe to their contact with
Jesus ; or, in Paul's case, to their nearness to him. The
impression of him was too fresh and vivid, his method and
secret still had too firmly the prominence he had given
them, the atmosphere of his sweet reasonableness still hung
round his disciples too much, to permit of the deep con-
fusions and misunderstandings of after-times. There is
no pleasure in proving that the Apostles sometimes made
mistakes ; but to trace in the Apostles the reproduction
of the method and secret of Jesus, is one of the most
delightful of tasks. And since to show such reproduction
of Jesus in his followers throws light on what we have
said of Jesus himself, and confirms it, we will permit
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 253
ourselves to do this very briefly. And we will show it,
first and above all, in the case of the three great witnesses
to him in the New Testament, — Peter, Paul, and the writer
who is called, properly or improperly, St. John.
To begin with St. Peter. The First Epistle of St. Peter
commends itself almost as certainly as the genuine work
of the author whose name it bears, as the Second Epistle
bespeaks itself the contrary. And, except for the one strange
passage about the spirits in prison and Noah's flood, at
the end of the third chapter, — where the meaning which,
was in the writer's mind is probably now irrecoverable for
us, — there is shed overthis whole production more, perhaps,
of the epieikeia, or what we call the sweet reasonableness,
of Christ, than over any other epistle we possess. Very
much this is due to its simplicity, to the unambitious
nature of its topics and of its treatment of them ; because,
clearly, the application of prophecy, the adjustment of
the old ideal of Israel to the new, the management of
the ideas of life and death, of justification, and the like, —
in all of which the epieikeia of Christ himself shone forth
so matchlessly, — are much harder to treat with the winning '
simplicity and limpid intuitiveness which make the charm
of epieikeia, than conduct itself is.
254 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
And conduct is what this epistle is concerned with,
almost from the first line to the last. ^Yqmx good conver-
sation in Christ ; ' 'As He who called you is holy^ be ye
also holy in all your conversatmi •/ — this is the head and
front of the matter with the writer. Holiness is but, as
we have said, a deep and finished righteousness. And
the method for it is the method of Jesus:— the inward
man awakened, conscience. ' Born again through the
word of God that liveth and abideth ; ^ * The hidden
man of the heart ; ' * Having a good conscience ; ' — again and
again this word * conscience,^ so strange to the Old
Testament, appears. And the two great groups of faults
which, in a rough way, do suflFiciently comprehend all
conduct, are again, as they were by Jesus, marked as the
matter to be dealt with : — faults of temper and faults of
sensuality. ' Not conformed to the former h/sfs of your
time of ignorance ; ' ' The time past may suffice us to
have wrought the will of the Gentiles, having walked
in dissoluteness, lusts, excess of i^ine, revelliftgs ; ' * Abstain
iion\ fleshly lusts, which war against the soul ; * ' Be tem-
perate, be sober ; ' — this is for faults of sensuality. * Putting
a'vvay all malice, and all deceit, and ifisincerifies, and
envies, and all evil- speakings ' j ' Be ^ one vmid, feel with
one another, love as brethren ' j * Be tender-hearted, hu7nble-
minded ; ' ' The incorruptible of that mild and quiet spirit
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 255
which is, in the sight of God, of great price ; ' — this is
for the faults of temper.
So far the * method ' of Jesus ; and now for his * secret '
of self-renouncement, of dying to our apparent self,
to our life ift this world. * Even though ye siiffer for
righteousness, happy are ye T ' For to suffering ye are
called^ because Christ also suffered for our sakes, leaving
us an ensample that we should follow his steps ; ' ' As
Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with
the same mind, for he that suffers in the flesh is freed from
sin ; ' * Elected of God unto obedietice and sprinkling with
the blood of Christ' And nowhere does the joy^ which
with Christ is the great test and sanction of his method
and secret, come out fuller and stronger than in this
epistle. ' But ye are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a peculiar people, to tell forth the excellences
of Him who called you out of darkness into his mai'vel-
lous light r
The belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ, and
the expectation of his second Advent in the life-time of
the generation then hving, are signal supports to the
writer's mind. But our popular notion of the Atonement^
— Christ's death represented as a satisfaction of God's
offended justice, — does not yet appear. The governing
idea of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, adopted by Jesus
2S6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
himself, is still faithfully preserved. Christ died for his
people 'to redeem them, from their vain conversation
delivered by tradition ; ' Christ suffered, ' in order that we,
dying to sins, might live to righteousness.'
3-
Next we come to St. Paul ; but elsewhere * we have
spoken so fully of St. Paul's theology that we shall be
very brief here. Need we say that righteousness is its
ground-thought, — real righteousness discerned to be such
by means of a change of the inner man ? ' Circumcision
is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping
of the commandments of God.^ Righteousness is the
end and aim. Then, in the words : ' I exercise myself
to have a conscience void of offeftce towards God and
men continually,' we find ourselves in the method of
Jesus. *Let every man prove by experience his own
work, and then shall he have r t]o\cmg i7i hi^nself alone
and not in another ; ' ' Prove all things by experience,
keep what is good ; ' * Ff'ove by experience what things are
excellent ; ' ' Able to prove by expei'ience what is that good
and perfect and acceptable will of God.' All this points
to inward appraisal, the method of inwardness, the indi-
vidual conscience. ' Jesus has given a new faculty of judg-
ing things, light : ' All things that are convicted as wrong
* See St Paul and Frotestantis7n.
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 257
are shown to be what they really are by the light; for what-
ever shows things to be what they really are, is light.
Wherefore he saith : Awake thou that sleepest, and arise
from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light f ^ This is
the new power of the method of Jesus, of conscience.
And no one has so well described as St. Paul the
working of conscience as first set going by Christianity.
* Commending ourselves, by the manifesting of the
reality, to every human conscience I ' * The hidden things
of a man's heart are made manifest,' he says; 'all
that he hears convicts him, sifts him to the bottom;
he falls on his face and worships, declaring that God
is indeed here ! ' Nor does St. Paul fail to specify
again and again the matter wherewith conscience deals :
— ''the works of the flesh' as he calls them; 'fornica-
tion, uncleanness, dissoluteness, idol-worship, witch-
craft, hatreds, strife, jealousy, angers, contentions,
divisions, sects, envies, drunkenness, revellings, and such
like.' They are manifest, says he, and so they are; for
they roughly cover what all the Corinthians, to whom he
wrote, understood by conduct, — the whole body of faults
connected with our two great primary instincts, faults
' Eph. V. 13, 14. The Epistle to the Ephesians cannot well be
altogether Paul's, but it is full of Pauline things, and this is certainly
among them.
258 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
of temper and faults of sensuality. Elsewhere, to the
Colossians, he even seems to follow, — but still in an in-
formal, approximative manner, such as one uses when one
speaks of matters so familiar that to be precise is pedan-
tic,— he even seems to actually follow this division, and
to throw faults of conduct into two groups which nearly
correspond to it. Finally, to the works of the flesh,
which are thus evidently conduct wrongs he opposes the
fruits of the Spirit, which are as evidently conduct right :
' Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,
mildness, self-control.' By following the inward method
of Jesus, he tells us, we perceive that here is the subject-
matter of righteousness, that this is what keeping the com-
mandments of God really is.
But that the ' secret ' of Jesus was applied to this
subject-matter by Paul, who can doubt, when that secret
is the very heart of Paul's theology, and he came to view
the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ altogether in
connexion with it? We would ask the student of the
Pauline theology to read again now, by the light of
what we have in this essay said of the teaching of Jesus,
what we have elsewhere said of Paul's theology.* At
present we will quote as Paul's witness to the secret of
Jesus but these three texts, so strong and plain that they
* St. Paul and Protestantism. Part ii.
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 259
may well stand as the great signal-marks to it : * I am cru-
dfied with Christ ; ' * If ye die with him, ye shall also live
with him ; ' * Always bearing about in the body the dying
of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be
manifested in our body/ TJie word of the cross^ as he
calls it, is his pole-star. By the method and example of
Jesus he has become aware of a new principle of choosing
and refusing, of going after things and retiring from them.
This principle acts always in view of a new creature, the
higher or real self, agreeing with the ' will of God,' con-
flicting with the lower or apparent self, or the wishes of the
flesh and of the current thoughts. With this new principle,
a man's great aim is now * to put off, as regards our former
way of life, the old man thai perishes by compliance with
the misleading lusts ;^ and to put on the new mafi, that
after God is created in righteousness. And the secret for
this is, says Paul, being crucified with Christ, or, being co7i-
formed to Chrisfs death, or, always bearing about in the
body the dying of Jesus. Paul told his converts he was * in
travail of them till Christ be fashioned in them,'— the
entire Christ, with his method, secret, and sweet reason-
ableness ; but the great stress is laid on the * secret,' on
dying with him, because this was Christ's secret, because
' Tbv -KaXaCbv &v6p(i)iroif, Thv (pdeipSfievov Karh rots iiridvjjilas ttjs
avdrrji. — Eph. iv. 22.
S 2
.260 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
the heart of the matter is indeed here. And as we shall
do well to have the ' secret ' in our minds when Jesus
talks of ' the living water/ ' the bread of life,' so it is
of the possession of this same secret that Paul is specially
thinking, when he talks of * counting all things but loss
for the excellency of the hiowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord; ' or when he says : ' God forbid that I should
glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, wherein
the world is crucified unto me, and L unto the world ! '
And the evidence of joy which testifies to the salvation
there is in Jesus and in his secret, and the sense of ' not
ourselves ' which fills this joy with awe and gratitude,
and makes it religious to the core, who has rendered
them like Paul ? ' Rejoice evermore ! ' * Rejoice in the
Lord alway; again I say, rejoice!^ 'Sorrowful, yet
alway rejoicing!^ 'As the sufferings of Christ abound
with us, so through Christ abounds also the . consolation.'
' The unsearchable riches of Christ ! ' ' Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ ? ' • O the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! ' ' // is God
that worketh in you, both to will and to do, of his good
power.' ' He that glorieth, let him glory in the Eter?ial/'
All this is in Paul ; and there is, besides, the Aber-
glaube or extra-belief of the bodily resurrection, of Christ's
second advent during the life-time of men then living.
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 26 1
of the God * willing to show his wrath and to make his
power known with vessels of wrath fitted to destruction ; '
there is the Rabbinical logic, and the unsound use of
prophecy and of the Old Testament. For popular
theology the writings of Paul are a fatal rock ; because
they are the products of a mind that was constantly
growing, and because they affect the forms of logic and
science which a complete notional system adopts, while
their true character and force is that of an approximative
experience. So the mechanical theory of inspiration makes
strange work indeed with Paul's writings. They are, how-
ever, to those who can use them right, inexhaustible, not
only in their power of animation and edification, but also
in their illustration of the genuine doctrine of Jesus.
The author of the Fourth Gospel is undoubtedly the
author of the epistle which we call the First Epistle of
St. John y and we of course might expect that the epistle
should tally with the gospel. And so it does ; only it
upholds, one may say, in one most important matter, the
doctrine of Christ against the Fourth Gospel itself.
We have seen how the author of this gospel had a lean-
ing to metaphysics ; so that he delights M. Bumouf by
showing a quite Indo-European turn for making God into
262 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
a metaphysical source of things, such as is not unworthy,
perhaps, of being called a cosmic unity; and Jesus into the
Logos, necessarily related, by some lofty metaphysical law
or other, to this cosmic unity. But presently came the
Gnostics, still more full of the Aryan genius, and still
more admired by M. Burnouf ; full of religion's being a
hiowhig rather than a doing, a metaphysical conception
rather than righteousness. And, in fact, as we have
said already, it may well seem wonderful that so great
a thing as religion should be taken iip with so simple
a thing as conduct ; so that Christ says, that he who
receives the kingdom of God as a little child, — that
is, who simply receives it as concerned with this
simple matter, — the same is the greatest in that kingdom.
Christ does say so, however ; and no one who had lived
with him, and felt his influence, could doubt it. But the
Gnostics, who had not lived with him, did not think
so ; and they naturally imagined that a man who was
right about such grand things as the cosmic unity, and
Xht pleroma, and emanation, and personality, and con-
substantiality, and the like, must have true religion and
be the perfect man. And they naturally imagined, too,
that the Christ, the Saviour of the world, could not
have been anything so linmetaphysieal, so unworthy of
the cosmic unity, as a mere man with flesh and blood ;
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 263
and the Doceice, or Apparitionists, taught accordingly
that Jesus had been an apparition or phantom, not a man
at all. The writings of the Apostles can hardly be under-
stood unless we know that very often they are alluding
to these Gnostics and their writings, which had at the
time a great success.
Now, the author of the Fourth Gospel had a turn, as /
we have seen, for metaphysics. But a man, who had been ;
in vital contact with Jesus and aletheia^ knew what reality
was, the reality of Jesus, too well, to carry his play of meta-
physics into the domain of this. And by a sort of retribu-
tion, glorious indeed to the writer, still more glorious
to the power of Christ's word, the two great points of '
the document which we call the First Epistle of St. John
are these : Jesus Christ come in the flesh ! and. He that
doeth righteousness is righteous ! Jesus is no metaphysical
phantom, but a living man having to do with conduct.
Religion is no intellectualism, but righteousness. Here we ^
have the substratum as Jesus laid it : righteousness.
And we have also, the ' method ' of conscience, which
tells us what righteousness is, and how great it is, and that
it is indeed the substratum. * Ye have an unction from the
Holy One, and ye know all things ; the unction ye received
from him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one
should teach you, but as his unction teacheth you of all
264 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
things, and is true and is no lie, and as it teacheth you
ye will abide in it' * If our heart condemn us, God is
greater than our heart, and knoweth all things ; if our heart
condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.'
It is characteristic of this beautiful soul, that he does
not go into detail and give lists of faults. He has fixed
the method, conscience^ and the subject-matter of the
method, righteousness-, and that is enough. It is charac-
teristic, in like manner, that he states and restates the
* secret ' of Jesus by its positive and loveliest side. The
' method ' gives us lights and the ' secret ' gives us the
power of ' walking in the light ' ; and, ' If we walk in the
light, we have fellowship one with another^ For to live
by dying to our life in this world is to transfer the natural
love of life from the personal self to the impersonal self, —
the self that we share with all other men ; so that to die
to oneself is to love the brethren, and by this side is the
secret of Jesus always in our Epistle presented. ' Let us
love one another ! ' ' We know that we have passed from
death to life because we love the brethren.^
And it agrees with what we have seen in the Fourth
Gospel of his ear for Christ's profound er teaching, that
in this writer's Epistle, too, we find the proof of God,
of Christ, and of eternal life, made experimental, rested
on internal evidence. ' No man hath ever yet seen God ;
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 265
if we love one another, God dwelleth in us.' Therefore
we must not attempt to define God adequately, or in a
way that goes beyond our experience, — to say, like the
Bishop of Gloucester : God is a Person ! — but we define
God approximately, according to our actual experience of
him. And as Jesus had said of this infinite not ourselves^
' God is an inflicence^ so our Epistler says, * God is love'
And he says indifferently, * He that loveth is born of God,'
and, ' He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of
God,' because believing that Jesus is the Christ means,
mainly admitting the authority of his message or secret,
and his secret is : Love one another ! And God's evidence
for his Son is this : 'That God hath given to us eternal
life, and this life is in his Son.' That is : in righteousness
we have the sense of being truly alive, and through the
method, secret, and sweet reasonableness of Jesus, and
only through these, we get at righteousness.
As in the Fourth Gospel, and indeed in all the Gospels,
the /(cy which is the signal accompaniment of life is in this
Epistle strongly marked : ' These things write I unto
you, that your Joy may be full.' And the not ourselves^
that element wherein religion has its being : — * Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us ; we
love, because he first loved us ! ' As we did not make
the law of righteousness, so we did not, the writer means,
266 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
make ' the fulfilling of the law,' which is love ; it arises in
us from the way the not ourselves affects us.
In our Epistle, the Aberglaube of the approaching second
advent appears, of course, prominently ; not so that of
Christ's physical resurrection. On the other hand, there
are here launched phrases destined to rank one day as
foremost texts for the doctrine of the Atonement : * The
^/^^^ of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin;'' * He is the
propitiation for our sins.' No development is given to
them. How much in them is figure, how much is tenet or
the commencements of tenet, we cannot say ; but there
they are, they are launched, and the hint is given to
popular religion to materialise and blunder with.
5-
The Epistle of St. James and the Epistle to the
Hebrews, though not of equal importance with the docu-
ments we have been reviewing, suggest, nevertheless,
two or three remarks. The zeal of St. James for works,
carries us back to Christ's sentence : * If thou would st
enter into life, keep the commandments ! ' it is the voice of
the indestructible sense in the writer that with Jesus
righteousness was always the end and aim. The opposition
to St. Paul, of which so much has been said, does not
really exist ; with both Apostles the aim is identical,
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 267
righteousness. Only Paul observed righteousness to
be in danger from men using the Jewish law as a kind
of spell which they could conjure mechanically with,
and therefore he elevated the faith by which we get
hold of the * secret ' of Jesus, of the * doctrine of the
cross.' James, in his turn, observed righteousness being
in danger from men using faith, as it may easily be used,
as a spell or charm to conjure mechanically with ;
and therefore he elevated works, the being a doer, not an
idle hearer and talker. But his noble expression, ' If a
man offend in one point, he is guilty of all !' and his calling
the law which he had in view, 'the law of liberty^
proves sufficiently that in no unsound sense did he
elevate works, as Paul in no unsound sense elevated
faith.
The matter whereon the * secret ' of Jesus finds exer-
cise, ' the wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts,'
is well called by St. James : ' Omt pleasures which war in
our members.' And when he goes on and says : * Being
in with the world is being out with God ! ' * he has on his
lips, and in his thoughts too, the very words of the
secret : ' * He that hateth his life in this world shall keep
it unto life eternal.' For he means, not, as many readers
suppose : * He that stands well with the world stands ill
* 'H 4>»Afa ToC K6(Tfxov Ix^po rod Qeov iffriv. — James, iv. 4.
268 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
with God ; ' he means : ' He that is in with the pleasures
which war in our members, is out with God.'
But we must not dwell at length on this writer, in-
structive as he is, and ill as he has been often judged.
In fineness or richness of spiritual perception his
Epistle may be inferior to that of others ; without undue
disparagement of him we can own this. All the more
remarkable, as a testimony to what was chiefly striking
in Christ, is his signaUing and extolling that character in
Christianity into which fineness of perception enters
most : epieikeia. ' The wisdom from above,' says St.
James, *is sweetly reasonable.'
It is more difficult to limit ourselves in speaking of the
Epistle to the Hebrews. Almost alone in the Bible, it is,
like later theology, a notional work as distinguished from
an experimental work ; that is, instead of being found to run
up, at last, into an experience of the Eternal that makes
for righteousness, it will be found to run up into a notion
of Jesus being the Logos, wich the characters of the
Logos as they are stated, for instance, in Philo ; and of
this being proveable from Scripture and putting an end
to the old Jewish dispensation. And because of this
notional character, later theology has so much used the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and is really in great part built
on it. For later theology is notional, too ; the ground-
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 269
thesis of the Bishop of Gloucester, * the blessed truth
that the God of the Universe is a Person,' is just such a
notion as the ground-thesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
that Jesus is the Logos of Jewish- Alexandrian philosophy.
Religion has nothing really to do with either thesis, and
that is fortunate ; for neither thesis is demonstrable, and
the demonstrations attempted are often palpably hollow.
For instance, the whole of the first chapter of the Epistle
to the Hebrews is an allegation of text after text as
meaning Jesus, and as therefore establishing the writer's
thesis, not one of which texts does really mean Jesus.
The seventh chapter, again, is one tissue of clever, learned
trifling, such as we might have from the Bishop of
Gloucester, all based on the false assumption that * Thou
art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek ! ' was
really said to Jesus, whereas it was not.
Now, just because of this notional character, the
Epistle to the Hebrews could not have been Paul's.;
for Paul goes upon experience, not notion. And
such a work can never have the value and interest
of Paul's writings, for it is, in truth, all in the air. But
a man who puts a hollow notion as the basis of his
theology, may yet in treating it give us all kinds of real
and valuable experience ; of this we have abundant
examples in the wTitings of theologians. And so the
270 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Epistle to the Hebrews is full of beautiful things, and
things of real religious experience ; but they are indepen-
dent of the ground-thesis of the Epistle, their value has
another source than the value of the writer's main design,
and indeed is often marred by it. Their value is as
reminiscences of Jesus, and their witness to Jesus is the
more striking because of the medium where they appear.
To have survived and appear in such a medium
they must have been originally very strong.
The sense that in righteousness religion begins and
ends, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has not ;
like the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, he has
lost it. He talks of * not laying again the foundations,'
by which he means righteousness, but * going on
unto perfection,' by which he means such things as
the doctrine that Christ is, like the Logos of theosophy,
High Priest, and as the demonstration about Melchisedek.
All this is of the same order with the Bishop of
Gloucester's * blessed truth that the God of the universe
is a Person,' which he and his friends imagine to be
the marrow of religion^ whereas in truth it is not re-
ligion at all. But it is remarkable how frequently the
writer of our Epistle has the word of the 'method,'
conscience ; again and again it recurs with him ; nowhere
in the Bible does it appear, within equal limits of space,
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 271
so often. The word has evidently established itself and
become a power.
But most remarkable is the testimony of this writer
to the * secret.' His view of the sacrifice of Christ as
replacing the sacrifices of the Jewish law is all notional,
and is really quite independent of Christ's sacrifice
as the ' secret.' Yet the ' secret ' appears ; and in
phrases so striking and so much profounder than the
strain of this writer's argument, that one is tempted to
see in them a tradition of words, not otherwise preserved,
of Jesus himself. * It behoved God, in bringing many
sons to glory, to make the leader of their salvation
perfect through sufferifig.' Christ ^ learned obedience from
the things that he suffered, and being perfected, became
the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him!
Christ, like mankind, partook of flesh and blood, *in
order that by death he might deliver them who through
fear of death were all their life subject to bondage! This
is precisely the ' secret ; ' the pain and fear and gloom
of dying to our apparent self, to * the wishes of the
flesh and the current thoughts ' are so great, that only
Jesus and his ' secret,' lighting the process up with joy
by showing it to be really life not death, could overcome
them, and could enable mankind to overcome them.
In like manner the noble phrase, ^without shedding of
272 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Mood is no remission,' notional and unfruitful as is its
use in the connexion where our author employs it,
is in itself, perhaps, a reminiscence of actual words of
Jesus ; certainly it is a reminiscence of his ' secret.'
In itself it ranks with the beautiful and profound
phrase of St. Peter : '■He that suffers in the flesh hath
ceased from sin'
Finally, in the ardour for martyrdom which followed the
Christian Church a little later, in the passion for seeking
out this kind of death, courting it, provoking it by every
means discoverable, we shall not err if we believe that
here again is visible the trace of the ' secret.' Assuredly
many martyrs, in the temper with which they provoked
their death, were false to the epieikeia, the ' sweet reason-
ableness,' of Jesus, and laid themselves open to that sen-
tence of Paul, the sentence which will be the final verdict
of religious history on Puritanism also, Puritanism glorying
in its resistances : * Though I give my body to be burned,
and have not charity^ it profiteth me nothing.' And
there was nothing to command or advise the repetition,
upon every disciple, of the actual bodily execution of
Jesus. But Jesus had enjoined dyi7ig, taking up the
cross, the ^secret;'— a long inward travail, other, and
often much harder, than being once for all executed.
Paul still understood what Jesus meant by dying. But
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 273
the apostolic age passed ; and now the Christian com-
munity took the word hterally, and Christians vied
with each other which could run fastest to the place
of execution. The wonderful spectacle accelerated
Christianity's conquest of the world ; but it was already an
evidence of failure, in some sort, to follow the mind of
Jesus and the teaching of his greatest apostles. Yet a
little while is the light with you I walk while ye have
the lights lest the darkness overtake you unawares I
274 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
CHAPTER IX.
ABERGLA UBE RE-INVADING.
So spoke the men who had had the Light with them or
near them. Mistakes they made and could not but
make. But they still knew, that to believe Jesus to be the
Son of God, meant to receive and apply the method and
secret of Jesus; and therefore their word is the Christian's
greatest source of instruction and inspiration after the
word of Christ himself.
But miracles, and the crowning miracles of the Resur-
rection and Ascension to be followed by the second
Advent, were from the first firmly fixed as parts of the
disciples' belief ' Behold, he comet h with clouds; and
every eye shall see him, afid they also which pierced him,
and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of hifn I '
As time went on, and Christianit}'^ spread wider and
wider among the multitudes, and with less and less of
control from the personal influence of Jesus, Christianity
developed more and more its side of miracle and legend;
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 275
»
until to believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant to
believe the points of the legend : — his preternatural
conception and birth, his miracles, his descent into hell,
his bodily resurrection, his ascent into heaven, and his
future triumphant return to judgment And these and j
like matters are what popular religion drew forth from the
records of Jesus as the essentials of belief. These essen-
tials got embodied in a short formulary; and so the
creed which is called the Apostles' Creed came together.
It is not the apostles' creed, for it took more than
five hundred years to grow to maturity ; it was not
the creed of any single doctor or body of doctors, but
it was the sort of summary of Christianity which the
people, the Church at large, would naturally develope ;
it is the popular science of Christianity. Given the
alleged charge : * Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit,' and the candidate for baptism would naturally come
to have a profession of faith to make respecting that
whereinto he was baptized ; this profession of faith
would naturally become just such a summary as the
Apostles' Creed. It contains no mention of either the
* method' or the * secret,' it is occupied entirely with
external facts ; and it may be safely said, not only that
such a summary of religious faith could never have been
T 2
276 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
delivered by Jesus, but it could never have been adopted
as .adequate by any of his principal apostles, by Peter,
or Paul, or John. But it is, as w€ have said, the popular
science of Christianity.
As years proceeded, and the world came in to Chris-
tianity, and the world's educated people, and the educated
people's Aryan genius with its turn for making religion
a metaphysical conception, — and all this in a time of
declining criticism, a time when the possibiHty of true
scientific criticism, in any direction whatever, was lessen-
ing rather than increasing, — the popular science was too
rude to satisfy. Ingenious men took its terms and its
data, and applied to them not an historical criticism
showing how they arose, but abstruse metaphysical con-
ceptions. And so we have the so-called Nicene Creed,
which is the learned science of Christianity, as the Apos-
tles' Creed is the popular science.
And how this learned science is related to the Bible we
shall feel, if we compare the religious utterances of its
doctors with the religious utterances of the Bible ; — if,
for instance, we compare with the Psalms the Soliloquies
of St. Augustine, a truly great and religious man ; and this
man, not in school and controversy, but in religious soli-
loquy. St. Augustine prays : ' Holy Trinity, superadmir-
able Trinity, and superinenarrable, and superinscrutable,
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 277
and superinaccessible, superincomprehensible, superin-
telligible, superessential, superessentially surpassing all
sense, all reason, all intellect, all intelligence, all essence
of supercelestial minds ; which can neither be said, nor
thought, nor understood, nor known, even by the eyes of
angels ! ' And again, more practically, but still in the
same style : * O three co-equal and co-eternal Persons^
one and true God, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, who
by thyself inhabitest eternity and light inaccessible, who
hast founded the earth in thy power, and rulest the world
by thy prudence, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,
terrible and strong, just and merciful, admirable, laud-
able, amiable, one God, three persons, one essence,
power, wisdom, goodness, one and undivided Trinity,
open unto me that cry unto Thee the gates of righteous-
ness ! '
And now compare this with the Bible : — * Teach me
to do the thing that pleaseth thee, for thou art my God!
let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of righteous-
ness I That is Israel's way of praying ! that is how a
poor ill-endowed Semite, belonging to the occipital races,
unhelped by the Aryan genius and ignorant that religion
is a metaphysical conception, talks religion ! and we see
what a different thing he makes of it.
But, finally, the original Semite fell more and more
278 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
into the shade. The Aryas came to the front, the notion
of reh'gion being a metaphysical conception prevailed.
But the doctors differed in their metaphysics ; and the
doctors who conquered enshrined their victorious form of
metaphysics in a creed, the so-called Creed of St. Atha-
nasius, which is learned science like the Nicene Creed,
but learned science which has fought and got ruffled by
fighting, and is fiercely dictatorial now it has won ; —
learned science with a strong dash of violent and vindictive
te7nper. So we have the three creeds : the so-
called Apostles' Creed, popular science; the Nicene
Creed, learned science ; the Athanasian Creed, learned
science with a strong dash of temper. And the two
latter are founded on the first, taking its data just as they
stand, but dressing them metaphysically.
Now this first Creed is founded on a supposed final
charge from Jesus to his apostles : ' Go ye and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost ! ' it explains and expands what
Jesus here told his apostles to baptize the world into.
But we have already remarked the difference in character
between the narrative, in the Gospels, of what happened
before Christ's death and the narrative of what happened
after it. For all words of Jesus placed after his death,
the internal evidence becomes pre-eminently important.
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 279
He may well have said words attributed to him, but
not then. So the speech to Thomas : * Because thou hast
seen me thou hast believed ; blessed are they who have
not seen and yet have believed ! ' may quite well have been
a speech of Jesus uttered on some occasion during his life,
and then transferred to the story of the days after his
resurrection and made the centre of this incident of the
doubt of Thomas. On the other hand, again, the pro-
phecy of the details of Peter's death ^ is almost certainly
an addition after the event, because it is not the least in
the manner of Jesus ; what is in his manner, and what
he had indeed said, are the words given elsewhere :
* Whither I go thou canst not follow me now, but thou
shalt follow me afterwards.' So, too, it is extremely im-
probable that Jesus should have ever charged his apostles
to ' baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost.' There is no improbability
in his investing them with a very high commission.
He may perfectly well have said : ' Whosesoever sins ye
remit, they are remitted ; whosesoever sins ye retain, they
are retained.' But it is almost impossible he can have
given this charge to baptize in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; it is by far too syste-
matic, and what people are fond of calling an anachronism.
' John xxi. 18.
28o LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
It is not the least like what Jesus was in the habit of
saying, and it is just like what would be attributed to
him as baptism and its formula grew in importance.
The genuine charge of Jesus to his apostles was, almost
certainly : * As my Father sent me, even so send I you,'
and not this. So that our three creeds, and with them
the whole of our so-called orthodox theology, are founded
upon words which Jesus in all probability never uttered.
2.
We may leave all questions about the Church, its rise,
and its organisation, out of sight altogether. Much as
is made of them, they are comparatively unimportant.
Jesus never troubled himself with what are" called
Church matters at all ; his attention was fixed solely upon
the individual. His apostles did what was necessary, as
such matters came to require a practical notice and
arrangement ; but to the apostles, too, they were still
quite secondary. The Church grew into something quite
different from what they or Jesus had, or could have had,
any thought of. But this was of no importance in itself;
and how beHevers should organise their society as cir-
cumstances changed, circumstances themselves might very
well decide.
The one important question was and is, how believers
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 281
laid and kept hold on the revelations contained in the
Bible ; because for the sake of these it confessedly is, that
all churches exist. Even the apostles, we have seen, did
not lay hold on them perfectly. In their attachment to
miracles, in the prominence they gave to the crowning
miracles of Christ's physical resurrection and second
advent, they went aside from the saving doctrine of
Jesus themselves, and were sure, — which was worse, — to
make others go aside from it ten thousand times more.
But they were too near to Jesus not to have been able to
preserve the main lines of his teaching, and his way of
using words ; and they did, as we have shown, preserve
them.
But at their death the immediate remembrance of Jesus
faded away, and whatever Aberglaube the apostles them-
selves had had and sanctioned was left to work without
check ; and, at the same time, the world and society pre-
sented conditions constantly less and less favourable to
sane criticism. And it was then, and under these con-
ditions, that the dogma which is now called orthodox,
and which our dogmatic friends imagine to be purely a
methodical arrangement of the admitted facts of Chris-
tianity, grew up. We have shown from the thing itself,
by putting the dogma in comparison with the genuine
teaching of Jesus, how little it is this j but it is well to
282 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
make clear to oneself also (for one can) from the circum-
stances of the case, that it could not be this.
For dogmatic theology is, in fact, an attempt at both
literary and scientific criticism of the highest order ; and
the age which developed dogma had neither the resources
nor the faculty for such a criticism. It is idle to talk of the
theological instinct, the analogy of faith, as if by the mere
occupation with a limited subject-matter one could reach
the truth about it. It is as if one imagined that by the
mere study of Greek we could reach the truth about the
origin of Greek words, and dogmatise about them ; and
could appeal to our supposed possession, through our
labours, of the philological instinct, the analogy of lan-
guage, to make our dogmatism go down. In general such
an instinct, whether theological or philological, will mean
merely, that, having accustomed ourselves to look at things
through a glass of a certain colour, we see them always
of that colour. What the science of Bible criticism, like
all other science, needs, is a very wide experience from
comparative observation in many directions, and a very
.slowly acquired habit of mind. All studies have the
benefit of these guides, when they exist, and one isolated
study can never have the benefit of them by itself
There is a common order, a general level, an uniform
possibility, for these things. . As were the geography,
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. ^83
history, physiology, cosmology, of the men who developed
dogma, so was also their faculty for a scientific Bible-
criticism^ such as dogma pretends to be. Now, we know
what their geography, history, physiology, cosmology,
were.
And again, as one part of their scientific Bible-criticism,
so the rest. We have seen in the Bible-writers themselves
a quite uncritical use of the Old Testament and of pro-
phecy; now, does this become less in the authors of our
dogmatic theology, — a far more pretentious effort of criti-
cism than the Bible-writers ever made, — or does it become
greater ? It becomes a thousand times greater. Not only
are definite predictions found where they do not exist, — as,
for example, in Isaiah's / will restore thy judges as at the
firsts is found a definite foretelling of the Apostles, — but in
the whole Bible a secret allegorical sense is supposed,
higher than the natural sense; so that Jerome calls tracing
the natural sense an eating dust like the serpent, in
modum serpentis terram comedere. Therefore, for one
expounder, Isaiah's prophecy against Egypt : The Eternal
rideth upon a light cloudy and shall come into Egypt , is the
flight into Egypt of the Holy Family, and the light
cloud is the \argin-born body of Jesus ; for another. The
government shall be upon his shoulder^ is Christ's carrying
upon his shoulder the cross \ for another, The lion shall
284 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
eat straw like the ox, is the faithful and the wicked alike
receiving the body of Christ in the Eucharist.
These are the men, this is the critical faculty from
which our so-called orthodox* dogma proceeded ; the
worth of all the productions of such a critical faculty
is easy to estimate, for the worth is nearly uniform.
When the Rabbinical expounders interpret : Woe unto
them that lay field to field / as a prophetic curse on the
accumulation of Church property, or : Woe unto them that
rise up early in the morning that they may follow stro?ig
drink ! as a prediction of the profligacy of the Church
clergy, or : Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords
of vanity I as God's malediction on Church bells, we say
at once that such critics thus give their measure as
extractors of the true sense of the Bible. The m.oment
we think seriously and fairly, we must see that the
Patristic interpretations of prophecy give, in like manner,
their authors' measure as extractors of the true sense of
the Bible. Yet this is what the dogma of the Nicene
and Athanasian Creeds professes to be, and must be if it
is to be worth anything, — the true sense extracted from
the Bible; for ' the Bible is the record of the whole
revealed faith,' says Dr. Newman. But we see how im-
possible it is that this true sense the dogma of these
creeds should be.
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 285
Therefore it is, that it is useful to give signal instances
of the futility of patristic and mediaeval criticism ; not
to raise an idle laugh, but because our whole dogmatic
theology has a patristic and mediaeval source, and from
the nullity of the deliverances of this criticism, where
it can be brought manifestly to book, may be inferred
the nullity of its deHverances, where, from the im-
palpable and incognisable character of the subjects
treated, to bring it manifestly to book is impossible. In
the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of
Genesis, ' the greater light to rule the day ' is the priest -
hood j * the lesser light to rule the night,' borrowing its
beams from the greater, is the Holy Roman Empire.
When the disciples of Jesus produced two swords, and
Jesus said : * It is enough,' he meant, we are told,
the temporal and the spiritual power, and that both
were necessary and both at the disposal of the Church ;
but by saying afterwards to Peter, after he had cut off the
ear of Malchus : * Put up thy sword into the sheath,' he
meant that the Church was not to wield the temporal
power itself, but to employ the secular government to
wield it. Now, this is the very same force of criticism
which in the Athanasian Creed * arranged, sentence after
sentence,' that doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal
Son for which the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester
are so anxious to * do something.'
286 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
The Schoolmen themselves are but the same false
criticism developed, and clad in an apparatus of logic
and system. In that grand and immense repertory
founded by the Benedictines, the Histoire Litteraire
de la France^ we read, that in the theological faculty
of the University of Paris, the leading mediaeval university,
it was seriously discussed whether Jesus at his ascension
had his clothes on or not. If he had not, did he appear
before his apostles naked ? if he had, what became
of the clothes? J^/zj/r^z/i-/ everyone will say. ^ Yes,
but the very same criticism, only full-blown, which
produced : ' Neither confounding the Persons nor dividing
the Substance.' The very same criticism, which origi-
nally treated terms as scientific which were not scien-
tific ; which, instead of applying literary and historical
criticism to the data of popular Aberglaube, took
these data just as they stood and merely dressed
them scientifically.
Catholic dogma itself is true, urges, however. Dr.
Newman, because intelligent Catholics have dropped
errors and absurdities like the False Decretals or the
' Be it observed, however, that there is an honest scientific effort
in the Schoolmen, and that to this sort of thing one really does
come, when one really sets oneself to treat miracles literally and
exactly ; but most of us are content to leave them in a half light.
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 287
works of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite, but
have not dropped dogma. This is only saying that men
drop the more palpable blunder before the less palpable.
The adequate criticism of the Bible is extremely difficult,
and slowly does the * Zeit-Geist ' unveil it Meanwhile, j
of the premature and false criticism to which we are \
accustomed, we drop the evidently weak parts first ; we j
retain the rest, to drop it gradually and piece by piece as
it loosens and breaks up. But it is all of one order, and
in time it will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed's dam-
natory clauses only, but the whole Creed ; not this one
Creed only, but the three Creeds, — our whole received ,
application of science^ popular or learned, to the Bible, j
For it was an inadequate and false science, and could not, \
from the nature of the case, be otherwise.
3.
And now we see how much that clergyman deceives
himself, who writes to the Guardian'. 'The objectors
to the Athanasian Creed at any rate admit, that its doc-
trinal portions are truly the carefully distilled essence of
the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture on the deep
mysteries in question, — priceless discoveries made in that
field.' When one has travelled to the Athanasian Creed
along the gradual line of the historical development of
288 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Christianity, instead of living stationary all one's
life with this Creed blocking up the view, one is
really tempted to say, when one reads a deliverance
like that of this clergyman : Sanda simplicitas ! It is
just because the Athanasian Creed pretends to be., in
its doctrine, 'the carefully distilled essence of the scattered
intimations of Holy Scripture,' and is so very far fro?n it^
that it is worthless. It is ' the carefully distilled essence
of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture ' just as that
allegory of the two swords was. It is really a mixture, —
for true criticism, as it ripens, *it is even a grotesque
mixture, — of learned pseudo-science with popular Aber-
glaube.
But it cannot be too carefully borne in mind that the
real ' essence of Holy Scripture,' its saving truth, is no
such criticism at all as the so-called orthodox dogma
attempts, and attempts unsuccessfully. No, the real
essence of Scripture is a much simpler matter. It is,
for the Old Testament : To him that ordereth his con-
versation right shall be shown the salvation of God! — and,
for the New Testament : Follow Jesus I This is Bible
dogma, as opposed to the dogma of our formularies. On
this Bible dogma if Churches were founded, and to preach
this Bible dogma if ministers were ordained, Churches
and ministers would have all the dogma to which the
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 289
Bible attaches eternal life. Plain and precise enough
it is, in all conscience; with the advantage of being
precisely right, whereas the plain dogma of our formu-
laries is precisely wrong. And if any one finds it too
simple, let him remember that its hardness is practical,
not speculative ; it is a rule of conduct ; let him act it,
and he will find it hard enough. Ut mam per unum diem
bene essemus conversati in hoc mundo ! But as a matter
of knowledge it is very simple, it lies on the surface of
the Bible and cannot be missed.
And the holders of ecclesiastical dogma have always,
we must remember, held and professed this Bible
dogma too. Their ecclesiastical dogma may have pre-
vented their attending closely enough to the Bible dogma,
may have led them often to act false to it ; but
they have always held it. The method and the secret
of Jesus have been always prized. The Catholic Church
from the first held aloft the secret of Jesus ; the monastic
orders were founded, we may say, in homage to it.
And from time to time, through the course of ages,
there have arisen men who threw themselves on the
method and secret of Jesus with extraordinary force, with
intuitive sense that here was salvation ; and who really
cared for nothing else, though ecclesiastical dogma, too,
they professed to believe, and sincerely thought they did
u
^
290 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
believe, — but their heart was elsewhere. These are they
who * received the kingdom of God as a little child,' who
perceived how simple a thing Christianity was, though so
inexhaustible, and who are therefore ' the greatest in
the kingdom of God.' And they, not the theological
doctors, are the true lights of the Christian Church ;
not Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Butler, but the name-
less author of the Imitation^ Tauler, St. Francis of
Sales, Wilson of Sodor and Man. Yet not only these
men, but the whole body of Christian churches and sects
always, have all at least professed the method and
secret of Jesus, and to some extent used them. And when-
ever these were used, they have borne their natural fruits
of joy and life ; and this joy and this life have been
taken to flow from the ecclesiastical dogma held along
with them, and to sanction and prove it. And people,
meaning to praise the bridge which carried them over
from death to life, have taken this dogma for the bridge,
or part of the bridge, that carried them over, and have
eagerly praised it. Thus religion has been made to
stand on its apex instead of its base ; righteousness is
supported on ecclesiastical dogma, instead of ecclesias-
tical dogma being supported on righteousness.
But in the beginning it was not so. Because righteous-
ness is eternal, necessary, life-giving, therefore the mighty
' not ourselves which makes for righteousness ' was the
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 291
Eternal, Israel's God ; was all-powerful, all-merciful ;
sends his Messiah, elects his people, establishes his
kingdom, receives into everlasting habitations. But gra-
dually this petrifies, gradually it is added to more and
more ; until at last, because righteousness was originally
perceived to be eternal, necessary, life-giving, we find
ourselves * worshipping One God in Trinity and Trinity
in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing
the Substance.' And then the original order is re-
versed. Because there is One God in Trinity and
Trinity in Unity, who receives into everlasting habita-
tions, establishes his kingdom, elects his people, sends
his Messiah, is all-merciful, all-powerful, Israel's God,
the Eternal, — tha'efore righteousness is eternal, neces-
sary, life-giving. And shake the belief in the One God in
Trinity and Trinity in Unity, the belief in righteousness
is shaken, it is thought, also. Whereas righteousness
and the God of righteousness, the God of the Bible,
are in truth quite independent of the God of ecclesias-
tical dogma, the work of critics of the Bible, — critics un-
derstanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.
4'
Nor did the Reformation and Protestantism much mend
the work of these critics ; the time was not yet ripe for it
292 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Protestantism, nevertheless, was a strenuous and noble
effort at improvement ; for it was an effort of return to
the ' method ' of Jesus, — that leaven which never, since
he set it in the world, has ceased or can cease to work.
Catholicism, we have said, laid hold on the ' secret ' of
Jesus, and strenuously, however blindly, employed it;
this is the grandeur and the glory of Catholicism. In
ike manner Portestantism laid hold on his ' method,'
and strenuously, however blindly, employed it; and
herein is the greatness of Protestantism. The prelimi-
nary labour of inwardness and sincerity in the con-
science of each individual man, which was the method
of Jesus and his indispensable discipline for learning
to employ his secret aright, had fallen too much out
of view ; obedience had in a manner superseded it. Pro-
testantism drew it into light and prominence again ;
was even, one may say, over-absorbed by it, so as to
leave too much out of view the * secret.' This, if one
would be just both to CathoHcism and to Protestantism,
is the thing to bear in mind : Protestantism had hold of
Christ's * method ' of inwardness and sincerity, Catholi-
cism had hold of his ' secret ' of self-renouncement. The
chief word with Protestantism is the word of the method :
repentance, conversio7i ; the chief word with CathoHcism
is the word of the secret : peace, Joy.
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 293
And since, though the method and the secret are
equally indispensable, the secret may be said to have in
It more of practice and conduct, Catholicism may claim
perhaps to have more of religion. On the other hand,
Protestantism has more light; and, as the method of
inwardness and sincerity, once gained, is of general
application, and a power for all the purposes of life,
Protestantism, we can see, has been accompanied by
most prosperity. And here is the answer to Mr. Buckle's
famous parallel between Spain and Scotland, that parallel
which every one feels to be a sophism. Scotland has
had, to make her different from Spain, the ' method '
of Jesus ; and though, in theology, Scotland may have
turned it to no great account, she has found her account
in it in almost everything else. Catholicism, again, has had,
perhaps, most happiness. When one thinks of the bitter
and contentious temper of Puritanism, — temper being,
nevertheless, such a vast part of conduct^ — and then thinks
of St. Theresa and her sweetness, her never-sleeping hatred
of ' detraction,' one is tempted almost to say, that there
was more of Jesus in St. Theresa's little finger than in 1
John Knox's whole body. Protestantism has the method
of Jesus with his secret too much left out of mind,
Catholicism has his secret with his method too much left
out of mind ; neither has his unerring balance, his in-
294 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
tuition, his sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a
great truth, and get from it a great power.
And many of the reproaches cast by one on the
other are idle. If Catholicism is reproached with
being indifferent to much that is called civilisation,
it must be answered : So was Jesus. If Protestant-
ism, with its private judgment, is accused of open-
ing a wide field for individual fancies and mistakes,
it must be answered : So did Jesus when he introduced
his method. Private judgment, ' the fundamental and
insensate doctrine of Protestantism^ as Joseph de Maistre
calls it, is in truth but the necessary 'method,' the
eternally incumbent duty, imposed by Jesus himself,
when he said : * Judge not according to the appearance,
but judge righteous judgment.' ' Judge righteous judg-
ment' is, however, the duty imposed ; and the duty is not,
whatever many Protestants may seem to think, fulfilled if
the judgment be wrong. But the duty of inwardly judging
is the ^^TY entrance into the way and walk of Jesus.
Luther, then, made an inward verifying movement, the
individual conscience, once more the base of operations;
and he was right. But he did so to the following extent
only. When he found the priest coming between the
individual believer and his conscience, standing to him
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING, 295
in the stead of conscience, he pushed the priest aside and
brought the believer face to face with his conscience again.
This explains, of course, his battle against the sale of
indulgences and other abuses of the like kind ; but it
explains also his treatment of that cardinal point in the
Catholic religious system, the mass. He substituted for it,
as the cardinal point in the Protestant system, justification
by faith. The miracle of Christ's atoning sacrifice, satisfy-
ing God's wrath, and taking off the curse from mankind, is
the foundation both of the mass and of the famous Lutheran
tenet. But, in the mass, the priest makes the miracle over
again and applies its benefits to the believer. In the tenet
of justification, the believer is himself in contact with the
miracle of Christ's atonement, and applies Christ's merits
to himself The conscience is thus brought into direct
communication with Christ's saving act ; but this saving
act is still taken, — just as popular religion conceived it, and
as formal theology adopted it firom popular religion,— as a
miracle, the miracle of the Atonement. This popular and
imperfect conception of the sense of Christ's death, and
in general the whole inadequate criticism of the Bible
involved in the Creeds, underwent at the Reformation
no scrutiny and no change. Luther's actual applica-
tion, then, of the ' method ' of Jesus to the inner body
296 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
of dogma, developed as we have seen, which he found
regnant, proceeded no further than this.
And Justification by faith, our being saved by * giving
our hearty consent to Christ's atoning work on our be-
half,' by ' pleading simply the blood of the covenant,'
Luther made the essential matter not only of his own
religious system but of the entire New Testament. We
must be enabled, he said, and we are enabled, to distin-
guish among the books of the Bible those which are the
best; now, those are the best which show Christ, and teach
what would be enough for us to know, even if no other
parts of the Bible existed. And this ei^ajigelical element,
as it has been called, this fundatnental thought of the
Gospel, is, for Luther, our * being justified by the alone
merits of Christ.' This is the doctrine of 'passive or
Christian righteousness,' as Luther is fond of naming it,
which consists in Moing nothing, but simply knowing and
believing that Christ is gone to the Father and we see
him no more ; that he sits in Heaven at the right hand
of the Father, not as our judge, but made unto us by God
wisdom, righteousness, sanctifi cation, and redemption ; in
sum, that he is our high-priest, making intercession for us.'
Every one will recognise the consecrated watchwords of
Protestant theology.
Such is Luther's criticism of the New Testament, of
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 297
its fundamental thought ; and he picks out, as the kernel
and marrow of the New Testament, the Fourth Gospel
and the First Epistle by the author of this Gospel, St.
Paul's Epistles, — in especial those to the Romans, Gala-
tians, and Ephesians, — and the First Epistle of St. Peter.
Now, the common complaint against Luther is on the
score of his audacity in thus venturing to make a table
of precedence for the equally inspired books of the New
Testament. Yet in this he was quite right, and was but
following the method of Jesus, if the good news conveyed
in the whole New Testament is, as it is, something
definite, and all parts do not convey it equally. Where
he was wrong, was in his delineation of this fimdamental
thought of the New Testament, in his description of the
good news ; and few, probably, who have followed us
thus far, will have difficulty in admitting that he was
wrong here, and quite wrong. And this has been the
fault of Protestantism generally : not its presumption in
interpreting Scripture for itself, — for the Church inter-
preted it no better, and Jesus has thrown on each indi-
vidual the duty of interpreting it for himself, — but that it
has interpreted it wrongs and no better than the Church.
'• Calvinism has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion
and mendacity,' says Mr. Froude. This is a flourish of
rhetoric ; for the Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like the
298 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic dogma, a false
criticism of the Bible, an illusion. And the Calvinistic
and Lutheran doctrines both of them sin in the same
way; not by using a method which, after all, is the
method of Jesus, but by not using the method enough,
by not applying it to the Bible thoroughly, by keeping
too much of what the traditions of men chose to tell them.
5-
The time was not then ripe for doing more; and we, if
we can do more, have the fulness of time to thank for it,
not ourselves. Yet it needs all one's sense of the not
ourselves in these things, to make us understand how
doctrines, supposed to be the essence of the Bible by
great Catholics and by great Protestants, should ever
have been supposed to be so, and by such men.
To take that chief stronghold of ecclesiasticism and sa-
cerdotalism, the institution of the Eucharist. As Catholics
present it, it makes the Church indispensable, with all her
apparatus of an apostolical succession, an authorised
priesthood, a power of absolution. Yet, as Jesus founded
it, it is the most anti-ecclesiastical of institutions, pulve-
rising alike the historic churches in their beauty and the
dissenting sects in their unloveliness ;— it is the con-
secration of absolute individualism. ' This cup is the
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 299
new covenant in my blood which is shed for you.'
When Jesus so spoke, what did he mean, what was
in his mind? Undoubtedly these words of the pro-
phet Jeremiah: 'Behold the days come, saith the
Eternal, that I will make a nciv covenafit with the house
of Israel, not according to the covenant that I made
with their fathers, which covenant they brake; but
this shall be the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel : After those days, saith the Eternal, I
will put my law in their ifiward parts, and write it in
their hearts, and they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour and every man his brother, sa)dng : Know the
Eternal ! for they shall all know me^ from the least to the
greatest.' No more scribes, no more doctors, no more
priests ! the crowning act in the ' secret ' of Jesus seals at
the same time his * method,' — his method of pure inward-
ness, individual responsibiHty, personal religion.
Take, again, th^ Protestant doctrine of Justification ; of
trusting in the alone merits of Christ, pleading the Blood
of the Covenant, imputed righteousness. In our railway
stations are hung up, as everyone knows, sheets of Bible
texts to catch the passer's eye ; and very profitable admo-
nitions to him they in general are. It is said that the
thought of thus exhibiting them occurred to Dr. Marsh,
a venerable leader of the so-called Evangelical party in
3po LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
our Church, the party which specially clings to the
special Protestant doctrine of justification ; and that he
arranged the texts we daily see. And there is one which
we may all remember to have often seen. Dr. Marsh
asks the prophet Micah's question : ' Wherewith shall I
come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high
God ? ' and he answers it with one short sentence from the
Epistle to the Hebrews : * With the precious blood of
Christ.' This is precisely the popular Protestant notion
of the Gospel; and we are all so used to it that Dr.
Marsh's application of the text has probably surprised
no one. And yet, if one thinks of it, how astonishing
an application it is ! For even the Hebrew Micah, some
seven or eight centuries before Christ, had seen that this
sort of gospel, or good news, was none at all ; for even
he suggests this always popular notion of atoning blood
only to reject it, and ends : ' He hath showed thee, O
man, what is good ; and what doth the Eternal require
of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God ? ' So that the Hebrew Micah,
nearly three thousand years ago, under the old dispensa-
tion, was far in advance of this venerable and amiable
Coryphaeus of our Evangelical party now, under the
\
\ Christian dispensation !
Dr. Marsh and his school go wrong, it will be said.
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 301
through their false criticism of the New Testament, and
we have ourselves admitted that the perfect criticism of
the New Testament is extremely difficult. True, the/^-
fect criticism ; but not such an elementary criticism of
it as shows the gospel of Dr. Marsh and of our so-called
Evangelical Protestants to be a false one. For great as
their literary inexperience is, and unpractised as is their
tact for perceiving the manner in which men use
words and what they mean by them, one would think
they could understand such a plain caution against mis-
taking Christ's death for a miraculous atonement as St.
Paul has actually given them. For St. Paul, who so
admirably seized the secret of Jesus, who preached
Jesus Christ crucified in you, and who placed salvation in
being able to say I am crucified with Christ! — St. Paul
warns us clearly, that this word of the cross, as he calls it,
is so simple, being neither miracle nor metaphysics, that
it would be thought foolishness. The Jews want miracle,
he says, and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I preach
Christ crucified! — that is, the ' secret' of Jesus, as we call
it. The Jews want miracle! — ^that is a warning against
Dr. Marsh's doctrine, and against Evangelical Pro-
testantism's phantasmagories of the ' Contract in the
Council of the Trinity,' * the Atoning Blood,' and 'Im-
puted Righteousness.' The Greeks wa7it metaphysics ! —
302 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
that is a warning against the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester, with their Aryan genius (if so ill-sounding a
word as Aryan, spell it how one may, can ever be
properly applied to our bishops, and one ought not
rather to say Indo-European), dressing the popular doc-
trine out with fine speculations about the Godhead of
the Eternal Son, his Consubstantiality with the Father,
and so on. But we preach, says St. Paul, Christ cruci-
fied! to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular religion a stum-
bling-block, to the bishops and to learned religion foolish-
ness ; but to them that are called, Christ the power of
God and the wisdom of God. That is, we preach a doc-
trine, not thaumaturgical and not speculative, but prac-
tical and experimental ; a doctrine which has no meaning
except in positive application to conduct, but in this ap-
plication is inexhaustible.
So false, so astoundingly false (thus one is inclined to
say by the light which the 'Zeit-Geist' is beginning to hold
out over them) are both popular and learned science in
their criticism of the Bible. And for the learned science
one feels no tenderness, because it has gone wrong with
a great parade of exactitude and philosophy ; whereas all
it really did was to take the * magnified and non-natural
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 303
Man ' of popular religion as God, and to take Jesus as
his son, and then to state the relations between them
metaphysically. No difficulties suggested by the popular
science of religion has this learned science ever removed,
and it has created plenty of its own.
But for the popular science of religion one has,
or ought to have, an infinite tenderness. It is the spon-
taneous work of nature; it is the travail of the human
mind to adapt to its grasp and employment great ideas
of which it feels the attraction, but for which, except as
given to it by this travail, it would be immature. The
imperfect science of the Bible, formulated in the so-called
Apostles' Creed, was the only vehicle by which, to genera-
tion after generation of men, the method and secret of
Jesus could gain any access ; and in this sense we may
even call it, taking the point of view of popular theology,
Providential. And this rude criticism is full of poetry,
and in this poetry we have been all nursed. To call it,
as many of our philosophical Liberal friends are fond of
calling it, a * degrading superstition,' is as untrue as it is
a poor compliment to human nature, which produced
this criticism and used it. It is an Aberglaube, or extra-
belief and fairy-tale, produced by taking certain great
names and great promises too literally and materially;
but it is ?tot a degrading superstition.
304 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Protestants, on their part, have no difficulty in
calling the Catholic doctrine of the mass ' a degrading
superstition.' It is indeed a rude and blind criticism of
Christ's words : He that eateth me shall live by me. But
once admit the miracle of the ' atoning sacrifice,' once
move in this order of ideas, and what can be more
natural and beautiful than to imagine this miracle every
day repeated, Christ offered in thousands of places,
everywhere the believer enabled to enact the work
of redemption and unite himself with the . Body
whose sacrifice saves him ? And the effect of this belief
has been no more degrading than the belief itself. The
fourth book of the Imitation^ which treats of The Sacra-
ment of the Altar, is of later date and lesser merit
than the three books which precede it ; but it is worth
while to quote from this book a few words, for the sake
of the testimony they bear to the practical operation, in
many cases at any rate, of this belief. ' To us in our
weakness thou hast given, for the refreshment of mind
and body, thy sacred Body. The devout communicant
thou, my God, raisest from the depth of his own dejec-
tion to the hope of thy protection, and with a hitherto
unknown grace renewest him and enlightenest him
within ; so that they who at first, before this Communion,
had felt themselves distressed and affectionless, after the
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 305
refreshment of this meat and drink from heaven find
themselves changed to a new and better man. For this
most high and worthy Sacrament is the saving health of
soul and body, the medicine of ail spiritual languor ;
by it my vices are cured, my passions bridled, temptations
are conquered or diminished, a larger grace is infused, the
beginnings of virtue are made to grow, faith is confirmed,
hope strefigthened, and charity takes fire aud dilates into
flame.^ So little is the doctrine of the Mass to be called
a * degrading superstition,' either in its character or in its
working.
But it \s false! sternly breaks m the Evangelical Pro-
testant. O Evangelical Protestant, is thine own doc-
trine, then, so true? As the Romish doctrine of the
mass, the Real Presence, is a rude and blind criticism
of : He that eateth me shall live by me; so the Protestant
tenet of Justification, * pleading the Blood of the Cove-
nant,' is a rude and blind criticism of: The Son of Alan
came to give his life a ransom for many ; — it is a taking
of the words of Scripture literally and unintelligently.
And our friends, the philosophical Liberals, are not
slow to call this, too, a degrading superstition, just as
Protestants call the doctrine of the Mass a degrading
superstition. We say, on the contrary, that a degrading
superstition neither the one nor the other is. In im^
X
3o6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
agining a sort of infinitely magnified and improved Lord
Shaftesbury, with a race of vile offenders to deal with,
whom his natural goodness would incline him to let off,
only his sense of justice will not allow it ; then a
younger Lord Shaftesbury, on the scale of his father and
very dear to him, who might live in grandeur and splen-
dour if he liked, but who prefers to leave his home, to
go and live among the race of offenders, and to be put
to an ignominious death, on condition that his merits shall
be counted against their demerits, and that his father's
goodness shall be restrained no longer from taking effect,
but any offender shall be admitted to the benefit of it on
simply pleading the satisfaction made by the son ; — and
then, finally, a third Lord Shaftesbury, still on the same
high scale, who keeps very much in the background, and
works in a very occult manner, but very efficaciously
nevertheless, and who is busy in applying everywhere the
benefits of the son's satisfaction and the father's good-
ness ; — in an imagination, I say, such as this, there is
nothing degrading, and this is precisely the Protestant
story oi Justification. And how awe of the first Lord
Shaftesbury, gratitude and love towards the second, and
earnest co-operation with the third, may fill and rule
men's hearts so as to transform their conduct, we need
not go about to show, for we have all seen it with
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 307
our eyes. Therefore in the practical working of this
tenet there is nothing degrading; any more than
there is anything degrading in this tenet as an imagi-
native conception. And looking to the infinite import
tance of getting right conduct, — three-fourths of human life,
— established, and to the inevitable anthropomorphism
and extra-belief of men in dealing with ideas, one might
well hesitate to attack an anthropomorphism or an extra-
belief by which men helped themselves in conduct, merely
because an anthropomorphism or an extra-belief it is, so
long as it served its purpose, so long as it was firmly and
undoubtingly held, and almost universally prevailing.
But, after all, the question sooner or later arises in
respect to a matter taken for granted, like the Catholic
doctrine of the Mass or the Protestant doctrine of Justifi-
cation : Is it sure'i can what is here assumed be verified 'i
And this is the real objection both to the Catholic and
Protestant doctrine as a basis for conduct ; — not that it is
a degrading superstition, but that it is not sure, that it
assumes what cannot be verified.
For a long time this objection occurred to scarcely any-
body. And there are still, and for a long time yet there
will be, many to whom it does not occur. In particular, on
those ' devout women ' who in the history of religion
have at all times played a part in many respects so
3o8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
beautiful but in some respects so mischievous, — on
them, and on a certain number of men like them, it
has and can as yet have, so far as one can see, no effect
at all. Who that watches the energumens during the
celebration of the Communion at some Ritualistic church,
their gestures and behaviour, the floor of the church
strewn with what seem to be the dying and the dead,
progress to the altar almost barred by forms suddenly
dropping as if they were shot in battle, — who that ob-
serves this delighted adoption of vehement rites, till
yesterday unknown, adopted and practised now with all
that absence of tact, measure, and correct perception, all
that slowness to see when they are making themselves
ridiculous, which belongs to the people of our English
race, — who, I say, that sees this, can doubt, that for a not
small portion of the religious community, a difficulty
to the intelligence will for a long time yet be no difficulty
at all ? With their mental condition and habits, given a
story to which their religious emotions can attach them-
selves, and the famous Credo quia ineptum will hold
good with them stilL To think they know what passed
in the Council of the Trinity is not hard to them ; they
could easily think they even knew what were the hangings
of the Trinity's council-chamber.
Arbitrary and unsupported, however, as the story they
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 309
have taken up with may be, yet it puts them in connexion
with the Bible and the reHgion of the Bible,— that is,
with righteousness and with the method and secret of
Jesus. These are so clear in the Bible that no one wh
uses it can help seeing them there ; and of these they do
take for their use something, though on a wrong ground.
But these, so far as they are taken into use, are saving.
310 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
CHAPTER X.
OUR * MASSES ' AND THE BIBLE.
Many, however, and of a much stronger and more
important sort, there now are, who will not thus take
on trust the story which is made the ground for
putting ourselves in connexion with the Bible and
learning to use its rehgion ; be it the story of the divine
authority of the Church, as in Catholic countries, or — as
generally with us — the story of three Lord Shaftesburys
standing on its own merits. Is what this story asserts true,
they are beginning to ask; can it be verified? — since
experience proves, they add, that whatever for man is
true, man can verify. And certainly the fair}'-tale of the
three Lord Shaftesburys no man can verify. They find
this to be so, and then they say: The Bible takes for
granted this story and depends on the truth of it ; what,
then, can rational people have to do with the Bible ? So
they get rid, to be sure, of a false ground for using the
Bit^le, but they at the same time lose the Bible itself, and
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 311
the true religion of the Bible : righteousness, and the
method and secret of Jesus. And those who lose this
are the masses^ as they are called ; or rather they are what
is most strenuous, intelligent, and alive among the masses,
and what will give the direction for the rest to follow.
This is what everyone sees to constitute the special
moral feature of our times : the masses are losing the
Bible and its religion. At the Renascence, many culti-
vated wits lost it ; but the great solid mass of the common
people kept it, and brought the world back to it after a
start had seemed to be made in quite another direction.
But now it is the people which is getting detached
from the Bible ; the masses can no longer be relied on to
counteract what the cultivated wits are doing, and stub-
bornly to make clever men's extravagances and aberra-
tions, if about the Bible they commit them, of no avail.
When our philosophical Liberal friends say, that by uni-
versal suffrage, public meetings, Church-disestablishment,
marr}dng one's deceased wife's sister, secular schools, in-
dustrial development, man can very well live ; and that
if he studies the writings, say, of Mr. Herbert Spencer
into the bargain, he will be perfect, he will have
* in modem and congenial language the truisms com-
mon to all systems of morality,' and the Bible is be-
come quite old-fashioned and superfluous for him; — -
312 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
when our philosophical friends now say this, the masses,
far from checking them, are disposed to applaud them
to the echo. Yet assuredly, of conduct, which is more
than three-fourths of human life, the Bible, whatever
people may thus think and say, is the great inspirer ; so
that from the great inspirer of more than three -fourths
of human life the masses of our society seem now to
be cutting themselves off. This promises, certainly,
if it does not already constitute, a very unsettled con-
dition of things. And the cause of it lies in the Bible
i being made to depend on a story, or set of asserted
facts, which it is impossible to verify ; and which hard-
headed people, therefore, treat as either an imposture,
j or a fairy-tale that discredits all which is found in con-
nexion with it.
Now if we look attentively at the story, or set of
asserted but unverified and unverifiable facts, which we
have summarised in popular language above, and which
is alleged as the basis of the Bible, we shall find that the
difficulty really lies all in one point. The whole difficulty is
with the elder Lord Shaftesbury. If he could be verified,
the data we have are, possibly, enough to warrant our ad-
mitting the truth of the rest of the story. It is singular
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 313
how few people seem to see this, though it is really quite
clear. The Bible is supposed to assume a great Personal
First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intel-
ligent Governor of the Universe ; a sort of elder Lord
Shaftesbury, as we call him, infinitely magnified. This is
the God, also, of natural religion^ as people call it; and this
supposed certainty learned reasoners take, and render it
more certain still by considerations of causality, identity,
existence, and so on. These, however, are not found to
help the certainty much; but a certainty in itself the
great Personal First Cause, the God of both natural and
revealed religion, is supposed to be.
Then, to this given beginning all that the Bible de- J
livers has to fit itself on. And so arises the account I
of the God of the Old Testament, and of Christ and j
of the Holy Ghost, and of the incarnation and atone- j
ment, and of the sacraments, and of inspiration, and 1
of the church, and of eternal punishment and eternal
bliss, as theology presents them. But difficulties strike
people in this or that of these doctrines ; the incarnation
seems incredible to one, the vicarious atonement to
another, the real presence to a third, inspiration to a
fourth, eternal punishment to a fifth, and so on. And
they set to work to make religion more pure and rational,
as they suppose, by pointing out that this or that of these
314 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
doctrines is false, that it must be a mistake of theolo-
gians ; and by interpreting the Bible so as to show that
the doctrine is not really there. The Socinians are,
perhaps, the great people for this sort of partial and
local rationalising of religion ; for taking what here
and there on the surface seems to conflict most with
common sense, arguing that it cannot be in the Bible
and getting rid of it, and professing to have thus relieved
religion of its difficulties. And now, when there is much
loosening of authority and tradition, much impatience of
what conflicts with common sense, the Socinians are
beginning to give themselves out as the Church of the
Future.
But in all this there is in reality a good deal of what
we must call intellectual shallowness. For, granted that
there are things in a system which are puzzling, yet they
belong to a system; and it is childish to pick them out by
themselves and reproach them with error, when you leave
untouched the basis of the system where they occur, and
indeed admit it for sound yourself The Socinians are
very loud about the unreasonableness and unscriptufalness
of the common doctrine of the Atonement. But in the
Socinian Catechism it stands written : ' It is necessary for
salvation to know that God is ; and to know that God is,
is to be firmly persuaded that there exists in reality some
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 315
One, who has supreme dominion over all things.' Presently
afterwards it stands written, that among the testimonies
to Christ are, ' miracles very great and immense,' fniracula
admodum magna et imfumsa. Now, with the One Supreme
Governor, and miracles, given to start with, it may fairly be
urged that the construction put by common theology on
the Bible data, which we call the story of the three Lord
Shaftesburys, and in which the Atonement fills a pro-
minent place, is the natural and legitimate construction [
to put on them, and not unscriptural at all. Neither is
it unreasonable ; in a system of things where the Supreme
Governor and miracles, or even where the Supreme
Governor without miracles, are already given.
And this is Butler's great argument in the Analogy. You
all concede, he says to his deistical adversaries, a supreme
Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe ; this, you and I both agree, is the order of
nature. But you are offended at certain things in reve-
lation ; — that is, at things, Butler means, like the story of
the three Lord Shaftesburys as theology collects it from the
Bible. Well, I will show you, he says, that in your and
my admitted system of nature there are just as great diffi-
culties as in the system of revelation. And he does
show it ; and by adversaries such as his, who grant what
the Deist or Socinian grants, he never has been answered,
3^6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
he never can be answered. The spear of Butler's
reasoning will even follow and transfix the scientific
Duke of Somerset, who dislikes so much in the Bible, but
' retires into one unassailable fortress, — faith in God.^
The only question, perhaps, is whether Butler as
an Anglican bishop puts an adequate construction upon
what Bible-revelation, this basis of the Supreme Governor
being supposed, may be allowed to be ; whether Catholic
dogma is not the truer construction to put upon it. Dr.
Newman urges, fairly enough : Butler admits, analogy is in
some sort violated by the fact of revelation ; only, with the
precedent of natural religion given, we have to own that
the difficulties against revelation are not greater than
against this precedent, and therefore the admission of this
precedent of natural religion may well be taken to clear
them. And must we not go farther in the same way,
'',
; says Dr. Newman, and own that the precedent of reve-
' lation, too, may be taken to cover more than itself; and that
'■ as, the Supreme Governor being given, it is credible that
I the Incarnation is true, so, the Incarnation being true, it
\ is credible that God should not have left the world to
itself after Christ and his Apostles disappeared, but
should have lodged divine insight in the Church and its
I visible head ? So pleads Dr. Newman ; and if it be
said that facts are against the infallibility of the Church,
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 317
or that Scripture is against it, yet to wide, immense things,
like facts and Scripture, a turn may easily be given which
makes them favour it ; and so an endless field for dis-
cussion is opened, and no issue is possible. For once
launched on this line of hypothesis and inference, with a
Supreme Governor assumed, and the task thrown upon
us of making out what he means us to infer and what
we may suppose him to do and to intend, one of us
may infer one thing and another of us another, and
neither can possibly prove himself to be right or his
adversary to be wrong.
Only, there may come some one, who says that the
basis of all our inference, the Supreme Governor, is
not the order of nature, is an assumption, and not a
fact; and then, if this is so, our whole superstructure
falls to pieces like a house of cards. And this is just
what is happening at present. The masses, with
their rude practical instinct, go straight to the heart
of the matter. They are told there is* a great Per-
sonal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and
intelligent Author and Governor of the universe ;
and that the Bible and Bible-righteousness come to us
from him. Now, they do not begin by asking, with the
intelligent Socinian, whether the doctrine of the Atone-
ment is worthy of this moral and intelligent Ruler ; they
3i8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
begin by asking what proof we have of him at all.
Moreover, they require plain experimental proof, such as
that fire burns them if they touch it. If they are to
study and obey the Bible because it comes from the Per-
sonal First Cause who is Governor of the universe, they
require to be able to ascertain that there is this Governor,
just as they are able to ascertain that fire bums. And if
they cannot ascertain it, they will let the intelHgent Soci-
nian perorate about the Atonement if he likes, but they
themselves pitch the whole Bible to the winds.
Now, it is remarkable what a resting on mere probabi-
lities, or even on less than probabilities, the proof for
religion comes, in the hands of its great apologist, Butler,
to be, even after he has started with the assumption of
his moral and intelligent Governor. And no wonder;
for in the primary assumption itself there is and can
be nothing experimental and clearly known. So that of
Christianity, as Butler grounds it, the natural criticism
would really be in these words of his own : ' Suppositions
are not to be looked upon as true, because not incredible.'
However, Butler maintains that in matters of practice,
such as religion, this is not so ; in them it is prudent,
he says, to act on even a supposition, if it is not in-
credible. Even the doubting about religion implies, he
argues, that it may be true. Now, in matters of practice
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE, 319
we are bound in prudence to act upon what may be a
low degree of evidence ; yes, even though it be so low as
to leave the mind in very great doubt what is the truth.
Was there ever such a way of establishing righteous-
ness heard of? And suppose we tried this with rude,
hard, downright people, with the masses, who for what is
told them want a plain experimental proof, such as that
fire will bum you if you touch it. Whether in prudencfe
they ought to take the Bible and religion on a low degree
of evidence or not, it is quite certain that on this ground
they never will take them. And it is quite certain,
moreover, that never on this ground did Israel, from
whom we derive our religion, take it himself or recommend
it. ' He did not take it in prudence, because he found
at any rate a low degree of evidence for it ; he took it
in rapture, because he found for it an evidence irresistible.
But his own words are the best : * Thou, O Eternal, art
the thing that I long for, thou art my hope even from my
youth ; through thee have I been holden up ever since I
was bom ; there is nothing sweeter than to take heed unto
the commandments of the Etemal. The Etemal is my
stre?tgth, my heart hath tmsted in him and I am helped;
therefore my heart danceth for joy, and in my song will I
praise him.^ That is why Israel took his religion.
320 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
But if Israel spoke of the Eternal thus, it was, we say,
because he had a plain experimental proof of him. Cod
was to Israel neither an assumption nor a metaphysical
idea ; he was a power that can be verified as much as
the power of fire to burn or of bread to nourish : the
power ^ not ourselves^ that makes for righteousness. And
the greatness of Israel in religion, the reason why he is
said to have had religion revealed to him, to have been
entrusted with the oracles of God, is because he had in
such extraordinary force and vividness the perception of
this power. And he communicates it irresistibly because
he feels it irresistibly ; that is why the Bible is not as
other books that inculcate righteousness. Israel speaks
of his intuition as still feeling it to be an intuition, an
experience ; not as something which others have de-
livered to him, i^or yet as a piece of metaphysical notion-
building. Anthropomorphic he is, for all men are, and
especially men not endowed with the Aryan genius for
abstraction ; but he does not make arbitrary assertions
which can never be verified, like our popular religion, nor
is he ever pseudo-scientific, like our learned religion.
He is credited with the metaphysical ideas of the per-
sonality of God, of the unity of God, and of creation as
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 321
opposed to evolution ; ideas depending, the first two
of them, on notions of existence and of identity, the last
of them, on the notion of cause and design. But he is
credited with them falsely. All the countenance he gives
to the metaphysical idea of the personality of God is given
by his anthropomorphic language, in which, being a man
himself, he naturally speaks of the Power, with which he
is concerned, as a man also. So he says that Moses saw
God's hinder parts ; and he gives just as much coun-
tenance to the scientific assertion that God has hinder
parts, as to the scientific assertion of God's personality.
That is, he gives no countenance at all to either. As
to his asserting the unity of God the case is the same. He
would give, indeed, his heart and his worship to no mani-
festation of power, except the power which makes for
righteousness ; but he affords to the metaphysical idea of
the unity of God no more countenance than this, and this
is none at all. Then, lastly, as to the idea of creation. He
viewed, indeed, all order as depending on the supreme
order of righteousness, and all the fulness and beauty of
the world as a boon added to that holder of the greatest
of all boons already, the righteous ; this is as much
countenance as he gives to the famous argument from
design, or to the doctrine of creation as opposed to evolu-
tion. And it is none at all. .
Y
322 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Free as is his use of anthropomorphic language, Israel
■ has far too keen a sense of reality not to shrink, -when
A he comes anywhere near to the notion of exact speaking
/ about God, from affirmation, from professing to know a
whit more than he does know. * Lo, these are parts of
his ways,' he says of what he has experienced, * but how
little a portion is known of him /' And again : ' The secret
things belong unto the Eternal our God ; but the revealed
things belong unto us and to our children for ever : that
we may do all the words of this law.'' How different
from our licence of full and particular statement : *A
Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe ! ' Israel knew, of
the Eternal not ourselves, that it was ' a power that made
for righteousness.' This was revealed to Israel and his
children, and through them to the world ; all the rest
about the Eternal not ours eleves was this power's own secret.
And all Israel's language about this power, except that
it makes for righteousness, is approximate language, — the
language of poetry and eloquence, thrown out at a vast
object of our consciousness not fully apprehended by it,
but extending infinitely beyond it.
This, however, was ' a revealed thing,' Israel said, to hini
and to his children : ' the Eternal not ourselves that makes
for righteousness.' And now, then, let us go to the
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 323
masses with what Israel really did say, instead of what
our popular and our learned religion may choose to make
him say. Let us announce, not : ' There rules a great
Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe, and therefore
study your Bible and learn to obey this ! ' No ; but
let us announce : ' There rules an enduring Power, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness, and therefore
study your Bible and learn to obey this.' For if we
announce the other instead, and they reply : * First let
us verify that there rules a great Personal First Cause,
who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe,' — what are we to answer? we cannot
answer.
But if, on the other hand, they ask : * How are we to
verify that there rules an enduring Power, not ourselves,
which makes for righteousness ?' — we may answer at once :
* How? why, as you verify that fire burns, — by experience! .
It is so ; try it ! you can try it ; every case of conduct^ of
that which is more than three-fourths of your own life
and of the life of all mankind, will prove it to you. Dis-
believe it, and you will find out your mistake, as sure as, '
if you disbelieve that fire burns and put your hand into {
the fire, you will find out your mistake. Believe it,
Y 2
324 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
and you will find the benefit of it.' This is the first
experience.
But then they may go on, and say : ' Why, however, if
there is an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for
righteousness, should we study the Bible that we may
learn to obey him ? — will not other teachers or books do
as well ? ' And here again the answer is : *■ Why ? why,
because he 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. If you want to know
plastic art, you go to the Greeks ; if you want to know
science, you go to the Aryan genius. And why ? Because
they have the specialty for these things ; for making us
feel what they are and giving us an enthusiasm for them.
Well, and so have Israel and the Bible a specialty for
righteousness, for making us feel what it is and giving us
an enthusiasm for it. And here again it is experience
that we invoke : try it I Having convinced yourself that
there is an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for
righteousness, set yourself next to try to learn more about
this, and to feel an enthusiasm for this. And to this
end, take a course of the Bible first, and then a course of
Benjamin FrankHn, Horace Greeley, Jeremy Bentham, and
Mr. Herbert Spencer; see which has most effect, which
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 325
satisfies you most, which gives you most power. Why, the
Bible has such power for teaching righteousness, that even
to those who come to it with all sorts of false notions
about the God of the Bible, it yet teaches righteousness,
and fills them with the love of it ; how much more those
who come to it with a true notion about the God of
the Bible ! And this is the second experience.
4.
Now here, at the beginning of things, is the point, we
say, where to apply correction to our current theology, if we
are to bring the religion of the Bible home to the masses.
It is of no use beginning lower down, and amending this
or that ramification, such as the Atonement, or the Real
Presence, or Eternal Punishment, when the root from
which all springs is unsound. Those whom it most
concerns us to teach will never interest themselves at
all in our amended religion, so long as the whole thing
appears to them unsupported and in the air.
Yet that original conception of God, on which all
our religion is and must be grounded, has been very
little examined, and very few of the controversies which
arise in religion go near it. Religious people say solemnly,
as if we doubted it, that * he that cometh to God must
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
326 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
them that seek him \ ' and that * a man who preaches
that Jesus Christ is not God is virtually out of the pale
of Christian communion.' We entirely agree with them ;
but we want to know what they mean by God. Now on
this matter the state of their thoughts is, to say the
truth, extremely vague ; but what they really do at bottom
mean is, in general : TAe best one knows. And this is the
soundest definition they will ever attain ; yet scientifically
it is not a satisfying definition, for clearly the best ofie
knows differs for everybody. So they have to be more
precise ; and when they collect themselves a little, they
find that they mean by God a mag?iified and non-natural
man. But this, again, they can hardly say in so many
words ; therefore at last, when they are pressed, they col-
lect themselves all they can, and make a great effort, and
out they come with their piece of science : God is a great
Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and
intelligent Governor of the universe. But this piece of
science of theirs we wall have nothing to say to, for we
account it quite hollow ; and we say, and have shown (we
think), that the Bible, rightly read, will have nothing to
say to it either. Yet the whole pinch of the matter is
here ; and till we are agreed as to what we mean by God,
we can never, in discussing religious questions, understand
one another or discuss seriously. Yet, as we have said.
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 327
hardly any of the discussions which arise in religion turn
upon this cardinal point. This is what cannot but
strike one in that torrent of petitiones principii (for so
one really must call it) in the shape of theological letters
from clergymen, which pours itself every week in the
columns of the Guardian. They all employ the word
God with such extraordinary confidence ! as if * a great
Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe,' were a verifiable
fact given beyond all question ; and we had now only
to discuss what such a being would naturally think
about Church vestments and the use of the Athanasian
Creed. But everything people say, under these conditions,
is in truth quite in the air.
Even those who have treated Israel and his religion
the most philosophically, seem not to have enough con-
sidered, that so wonderful an effect must have had some
cause to account for it other than any they assign.
Professor Kuenen, whose excellent History of the Reli-
gion of Israel • ought to find an English translator,
suggests that the Hebrew religion was so unlike that
of other Semitic people because of the simple and
' De GodsdUnst van Israel tot den Ondergang van den Joodschen
^taat (The Religion of Israel till the Downfall of the Jewish State) ;
Haarlem.
328 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
austere life of the Beni- Israel as nomads of the desert ;
or because they did not, like other Semitic people,
put a feminine divinity alongside of their masculine
divinity, and thus open the way to all sorts of immoraUty.
But many other tribes have had the simple and austere
life of nomads of the desert, without its bringing them to
the religion of Israel. And, if the Hebrews did not put a
feminine divinity alongside of their masculine divinity
while other Semitic people did, surely there must have
been something to cause this difference ! and what we
want to know is this something.
And to this somethi?tg, I say, the * Zeit-Geist ' and
a prolonged and large experience of men's expressions,
and how they employ them, leads us. It was be-
cause while other people, in the operation of that
mighty 7iot ourselves which is in us and around us, saw
this thing and that thing and many things, Israel saw one
thing only : — that it made for conduct, for righteousness.
And it does ; and conduct is nearly the whole of human
life. And hence, therefore, the extraordinary reality and
power of Israel's God and of Israel's religion. And the
more we strictly limit ourselves, in attempting to give a
scientific account of God, to Israel's authentic intuition
of him, and say that he is ' the Eternal Power, not our-
selves, that makes for righteousness,' the more real and
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 329
profound will Israel's words about God become to us,
for we can then verify his words as we use them.
Eternal^ Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to
another 1 If we define the Eternal to ourselves, ' a great
Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe,' we can never
verify that this has from age to age been a refuge to men.
But if we define the Eternal^ * the enduring power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness,' then we can
know and feel the truth of what we say when we declare :
Eternal^ Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to
another ! For in all the history of man we can verify it
Righteousness has been salvation ; and to verify the God
of Israel in man's long history is the most animating, the
most exalting, and the most pure of delights. Blessed
is the nation whose God is the Eternal! is a text, indeed,
of which the world offers us the most inexhaustible and
the most marvellous illustration.
Nor is the change here proposed, in itself, any diflScult
or startling change in our habits of religious thought, but
a very simple one. However, simple as is this change
to be made high up and at the outset, it undeniably
governs everything farther down. Jesus is the Son of
God ; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth that proceeds
from God. What God 1 * A great Personal First Cause,
330 ' LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Gover-
nor of the universe' — to whom Jesus and the Holy-
Spirit are related in the way described in the Athanasian
Creed, so that the operations of the three together pro-
duce what the Westminster divines call * the Contract
passed in the Council of the Trinity,' and we, for plain-
ness, describe as the fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftes-
burys ? This is all in the air, but in the air it all hangs
together. There stand the Bible words ! how you con-
strue them, depends entirely on the definition of God
you start with. If Jesus is the Son of * a great Personal
First Cause,' then the words of the Bible, literally taken,
may well enough lend themselves to a story like that of
the three Lord Shaftesburys. The story can never be
verified ; but it may nevertheless be what the Bible
means to say, if the Bible have started, as theology
starts, with the * Great Personal First Cause.' And the
story may, when it comes to be examined, have many
minor difficulties, have things to baffle us, things to shock
us ; but still it may be what the Bible means to say.
However, the masses will get rid of all minor difficulties
in the simplest manner, by rejecting the Bible altogether
on account of the major difficulty, — its starting with an
assumption which cannot possibly be verified.
But suppose the Bible is discovered, when its expressions
OUR * MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 331
are rightly understood, to start with an assertion which
call be verified : the assertion, namely, not of ' a great
Personal First Cause,' but of ' an enduring Power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness.' Then by the
light of this discovery we read and understand all the
expressions that follow. Jesus comes forth from this en-
during Power that makes for righteousness, is sent by this
Power, is this Power's Son ; the Holy Spirit proceeds from
this same Power, and so on.
Now, from the innumerable minor difficulties that
attend the story of the three Lord Shaftesburys, this
right construction, put on what the Bible says of Jesus,
of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit, is free. But it is free
from the major difficulty also ; for it neither depends upon
what is unverifiable, nor is it unverifiable itself. That
Jesus is the Son of a great Personal First Cause is itself
unverifiable ; and that there is a great Personal First Cause
is unverifiable too. But that there is an enduring
power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, is
verifiable, as we have seen, by experience; and that
Jesus is the offspring of this power is verifiable from
experience also. For God is the author of righteous-
ness ; now, Jesus is the son of God because he gives the
method and secret by which alone is righteousness
possible. And that he does give this, we can verify,
332 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
again, from experience : it is so ! try, and you will find
it to be so. Try all the ways to righteousness you can
think of, and you will find that no way brings you to it
except the way of Jesus, but that this way does bring you
to it. And, therefore, as we found we could say to the
masses : ' Attempt to do without Israel's God that makes
for righteousness, and you will find out your mistake ! ' —
so we find we can now go on farther, and say : ^Attempt
to reach righteousness by any way except that of Jesus ^
and you will find out your mistake ! ' This is a thing
that can prove itself, if it is so ; and it will prove itself,
because it is so.
Thus we have the authority of both Old and New
Testament placed on just the same solid basis as the
authority of the injunction to take food and rest : namely,
that experience proves we cannot do without them. And
we have neglect of the Bible punished just as putting
one's hand into the fire is punished : namely, by finding
we are the worse for it. Only, to attend to this experience
about the Bible, needs more steadiness than to attend to
the momentary impressions of hunger, fatigue, and pain ;
therefore it is cdlXtdfaith^ and counted a virtue. But the
appeal is to experience in this case just as much as in
the other ; only to experience of a far deeper and greater
kind.
OUR * MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 333
5-
So there is no doubt that we get a much firmer, nay an
impregnable, ground for the Bible, and for recommending
it to the world, if we put the construction on it we pro-
pose. The only question is : Is this the right construc-
tion to put on it ? is it the construction which properly
belongs to the Bible ? And here, again, our appeal is to
the same test which we have employed throughout, the
only possible test for men to employ, — the test of reason
and experience. Given the Bible-documents, what, it is
inquired, is the right construction to put upon them ? Is
it the construction we propose ? or is it the construction
of the theologians, according to which the dogmas of the
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and so on, are
presupposed all through the Bible, are sometimes latent,
sometimes come more visibly to the surface, but are
always there ; and to them every word in the Bible has
reference, plain or figured ?
Now, the Bible does not and cannot tell us itself, in
black and white, what is the right construction to put
upon it ; we have to make this out. And the only possible
way to make it out, — for the dogmatists to make out
their construction, or for us to make out ours,— is by
reason and experience. * Even such as are readiest,' says
334 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
Hooker very well, * to cite for one thing five hundred
sentences of Scripture, what warrant have they that any
one of them doth mean the thing for which it is alleged ? '
They can have none, he replies, but reasoning and col-
lection j and to the same effect Butler says of reason,
that * it is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to
judge concerning anything^ even revelation itself.' Now
it is simply from experience of the human spirit and its
productions, from observing as widely as we can the man-
ner in which men have thought, their way of using words
and what they mean by them, and from reasoning upon
this observation and experience, that we conclude the
construction theologians put upon the Bible to be false,
and ours to be the truer one.
In the first place, from Israel's master-feeling, the feeling
for righteousness^ the predominant sense that men are, as
St. Paul says, ' created unto good works which God hath
prepared beforehand that we should walk in them,' we col-
lect the origin of Israel's conception of God, — of that mighty
not ourselves which more or less engages all men's atten-
tion,— as the Eternal Power that makes for righteousness.
This we do, because the more we come to know how ideas
and terms arise, and what is their character, the more this
explanation of Israel's use of the word 'God' seems the
true and natural one. Again, the construction we put
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE, 335
upon the doctrine and work of Jesus is collected in the
same way. From the data we have, and from comparison
of these data with what we have besides of the history of
ideas and expressions, this construction seems to us the
true and natural one. The Gospel narratives are just that
sort of account of such a work and teaching as the work
and teaching of Christ, according to our construction of
it, was, which would naturally have been given by de-
voted followers who did not fully understand it. And
understand it fully they then could not, it was so very
new, great, and profound ; only time gradually brings its
lines out more clear.
On the other hand, the theologians' notion of dogmas
presupposed in the Bible, and of a constant latent refer-
ence to them, we reject, because experience is against it.
The more we know of the history of ideas and expres-
sions, the more we are convinced that this account is not
and cannot be the true one ; that the theologians have
credited the Bible with this presupposition of dogmas and
this constant latent reference to them, but that they are
not really there. * The Fathers recognised^' says Dr. New-
man, * a certain . truth lying hid under the tenor of the
sacred text as a whole, and showing itself more or less in
this verse or that, as it might be. The Fathers might
have traditionary information of the general drift of the
336 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
inspired text which we have hot.' Bom into the world
twenty years later, and touched with the breath of the
* Zeit-Geist/ how would this exquisite and delicate genius
have been himself the first to feel the unsoundness of all
this ! that we have heard the like about other books
before, and that it always turns out to be not so, that the
right interpretation of a document, such as the Bible,
is not in this fashion. Homer's poetry was the Bible of
1 the Greeks, however strange a one ; and just in the same
way there grew up the notion of a mystical and inner
sense in the poetry of Homer, underlying the apparent
sense, but brought to light by the commentators; per-
haps, even, they might have traditionary information of
the drift of the Homeric poetry which we have not ; — who
\ knows? But, once for all, as our literary experience
I widens, this notion of a secret sense in Homer proves
to be a mere dream. So, too, is the notion of a secret
\ sense in the Bible, and of the Fathers' disengagement of it.
Demonstration in these matters is impossible ; it is a
maintainable thesis that the allegorising of the Fathers
is right, and that this is the true sense of the Bible. It
is a maintainable thesis that the theological dogmas of
the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, underUe
the whole Bible. It is a maintainable thesis, on the
other hand, that Jesus was himself immersed in the
OUR 'MASSES' AND THE BIBLE, 337
Aberglaube of his nation and time, and that his disciples
have reported him with absolute fidelity ; in this case we
should have, in our estimate of Jesus, to make deduc-
tions for his Aberglaube^ and to admire him for the in-
sight he displayed in spite of it. This thesis, we repeat,
or that thesis, or another thesis, is maintainable, as to the
construction to be put on such a document as the
Bible. Absolute demonstration is impossible, and the
only question is : Does experience, as it widens and '
deepens, make for this or that thesis, or make against it? i
And the great thing against any such thesis as either of the
two we have just mentioned is, that the more we know of
the history of the human spirit and its deliverances, the
more we have reason to think such a thesis improbable,
and it loses hold on our assent more and more. On the
other hand, the great thing, as we believe, in favour of
such a construction as we put upon the Bible is, that |
experience, as it increases, constantly confirms it ; and
that, though it cannot command assent, it will be found ^
to win assent more and more.
338 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
' CHAPTER XI.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Win assent in the end the new construction will, but not
at once ; and there will be a passage-time of confusion
first. It is not for nothing, as we have said, that people
take short cuts and tell themselves fairy tales, because the
immense scale of the history of * bringing in everlasting
righteousness ' is too much for their narrow minds. It is
not for nothing ; ih^jpay far it. It is not for nothing that
they found religion on prediction and miracle, guarantee
it by supernatural interventions and the coming of the Son
of Man in the clouds, consummate it by a banquet with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city shining with gold
and precious stones. They are like people who have
fed their minds on novels or their stomachs on opium j
the reality of things is flat and insipid to them, although it
is in truth far grander than the phantasmagorical world of
novels and opium. But it is long before the novel-reader
or opium-eater can rid himself of his bad habits, and
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 339
brace his nerves, and recover the tone of his mind enough
to see it. Distress and despair at the loss of his accus--
tomed stimulant are his first sensations.
Miracles, the mainstay of popular religion, are touched
by Ithuriel's spear. They are beginning to dissolve ; but
what are we to expect during the process ? Probably,
amongst many religious people, vehement efforts at reac-
tion, a recrudescence of superstition ; the passionate re-
solve to keep hold on what is slipping away from them by
giving up more and more the use of reason in religion, and
by resting more and more on authority. The Church of
Rome is the great upholder of authority as against reason
in religion ; and it will be strange if in the coming time of
transition the Church of Rome does not gain.
But for many more than those whom Rome attracts,
there will be an interval, between the time when men take
the religion of the Bible to be a thaumaturgy and the time
when they perceive it to be something different, in which
they will be prone to throw aside the religion of the Bible
altogether as a delusion. And this, again, will be mainly
the fault, — if fault that can be called which was an inevitable •
error, — of the religious people themselves, who, from the
time of the Apostles downwards, have insisted upon
it that religion shall be a thaumaturgy or nothing. P'or
very many, therefore, when it cannot be a thaumaturgy,
340 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
it will be nothing. And very likely there will come a
day when there will be less religion than even now ; for
the religion of the Bible is so simple and powerful that
even those who make the Bible a thaumaturgy get hold
of it, because they read the Bible ; but if men do not
read the Bible, they cannot get hold of it. And then will
be fulfilled the saying of the prophet Amos : ' Behold, the
days come, saith the Eternal, that I will send a famine in
the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Eternal ; and they shall
wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the
east they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the
Eternal, and shall not find it.'
Nevertheless, as after this mournful prophecy the herds-
man of Tekoah goes on to say : ''There shall yd not
the least grain of Israel fall to the earth I ^ To the
Bible men will return ; and why ? Because they cannot
do without it. Because happiness is our being's end
and aim, and happiness belongs to righteousness, and
righteousness is revealed in the Bible. For thia simple
reason men will return to the Bible, just as a man who
tried to give up food, thinking it was a vain thing and
be could do without it, would return to food ; or a man
who tried to give up sleep, thinking it was a vain thing
and he could do without it, would return to sleep. Then
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 341
there will come a time of reconstruction ; and then, per-
haps, will be the moment for labours like this essay of
ours to be found useful. For though every one must read
the Bible for himself, and the perfect criticism of it is an
immense matter, and it may be possible to go much
beyond what we here achieve or can achieve, yet the
method for reading the Bible we, as we hope and believe,
here give. And though, in this or that detail, the con-
struction we put upon the Bible may be wrong, yet the
main Hnes of the construction will be found, we hope
and believe, right ; and the reader who has the main lines
may easily amend the details for himself.
Meanwhile, to popular Christianity, from those who can
see its errors, is due an indulgence inexhaustible, except
where limits are required to it for the good of religion
itself. Two considerations make this indulgence right :
one is, that the language of the Bible being, — which is the
great point a sound criticism establishes against dogmatic
theology, — approximate not scientific, in all expressions of
religious feeling approximate language is lawful, and
indeed is all we can attain to. It cannot be adequate,
more or less proper it can be ; but, in general, approxi-
mate language consecrated by use and religious feeling
342 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
acquires therefrom a propriety of its own. That is the
first consideration. The second is, that on the * method '
and ' secret ' of Jesus popular Christianity in no contemp-
tible measure both can and does, as we have said, lay
hold, in spite of its inadequate criticism of the Bible.
Now, to lay hold on the method and secret of Jesus is a
very great thing ; an inadequate criticism of the Bible is
a comparatively small one.
Certainly this consideration should govern our way
of regarding many things in popular Christianity ; — its
missions, for instance. The non-Christian religions are
not to the wise man mere monsters; he knows they
have much good and truth in them. He knows that
Mahometanism, and Brahminism, and Buddhism, are not
what the missionaries call them ; and he knows, too, how
really unfit the missionaries are to cope with them. For
any one who weighs the matter well, the missionary in
clerical coat and gaiters whom one see in wood-cuts
preaching to a group of picturesque Orientals, is, from
the inadequacy of his criticism both of his hearers' reli-
gion and of his own, and his signal misunderstanding of
the very Volume he holds in his hand, a hardly less
grotesque object in his intellectual equipment for his
task than in his outward attire. Yet every one allows
that this strange figure carries something of what is called
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT, 343
European civilisation with him, and a good part of this
is due to Christianity. But even the Christianity itself
that he preaches, imbedded in a false theology though it
be, cannot but contain, in a greater or lesser measure as
it may happen, these three things : — the all-importance
of righteousness, the method of Jesus, the secret of
Jesus. No Christianity that is ever preached but manages
to carry something of these along with it.
And if it carries them to Mahometanism, the}' are
carried where of the all-importance of righteousness
there is a knowledge, but of the method and secret of
Jesus, by which alone is righteousness possible, hardly
any sense at all. If it carries them to Brahminism, they
are carried where of the all-importance of righteousness,
the foundation of the whole matter, there is a wholly
insufficient sense; and where religion is, above all, the
metaphysical conception, or metaphysical play, so dear to
the Aryan genius and to M. Emile Burnouf. If it carries
them to Buddhism, they are carried to a religion to be
saluted with respect, indeed ; for it has not only the sense
for righteousness, it has, even, it has the secret of Jesus.
But it employs the secret ill, because greatly wanting in
the method, because utterly wanting in the sweet reason-
ableness, the unerring balance, the epieikeia. Therefore,
to all whom it visits, the Christianity of our missions.
344 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
inadequate as may be its criticism of the Bible, brings
what may do them good. And if it brings the Bible
itself, it brings what may not only help the good
preached, but may also with time dissipate the erroneous
criticism which accompanies this and impairs it. All
this is to be said for popular religion ; and it all makes
in favour of treating popular religion tenderly, of sparing
it as much as possible, of trusting to time and indirect
means to transform it, rather than to sudden, violent
changes.
3-
Learned religion, however, the pseudo-science of dog-
matic theology, merits no such indulgence. It is a
separable accretion, which never had any business to be
attached to Christianity, never did it any good, and now
does it great harm, and thickens an hundred-fold the
religious confusion in which we live. Attempts to adopt
it, to put a new sense into it, to make it plausible, are
the most misspent labour in the world. Certainly
no religious reformer who tries it, or has tried it, will
find his work live.
Nothing is more common, indeed, than for religious
writers who have a strong sense of the genuine and moral
side of Christianity and much enlarge on the pre-eminence
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 345
of this, to put themselves right, as it were, with dogmatic
theology, by a passing sentence expressing profound
belief in its dogmas, though in discussing them, it is
implied, there is litde profit So Mr. Erskine of Lin-
lathen, that unwearying and much revered exponent of
the moral side of the Bible : ' It seems difficult,' he says,
' to conceive that any man should read through the New
Testament candidly and attentively, without being con-
vinced that the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to and
implied in every part of the system.' Even already many
readers of Mr. Erskine feel, when they come across such
a sentence as that, as if they had suddenly taken gravel or
sand into their mouth. Twenty years hence this feeling
will be far stronger ; the reader will drop the book, saying
that certainly it can avail him nothing. So, also, Bun sen
was fond of saying, putting some peculiar meaning of his
own into the words, that the whole of Christianity was
in the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Thus,
too, the Bishop of Exeter chooses to say that his
main objection to keeping the Athanasian Creed is, that
it endangers the doctrine of the Trinity, which is so
important. Mr. Maurice, again, that pure and devout
spirit, — of whom, however, the truth must at last be
said, that in theology he passed his life beating the
bush with deep emotion, and never starting the hare, —
346 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
Mr. Maurice declared that by reading between the lines
he saw in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Athanasian
Creed the altogether perfect expression of the Christian
faith.
But all this is mischievous as well as vain. It is vain,
because it is meant to conciliate the so-called orthodox,
and it does not conciliate them. Of his attachment to
the doctrine of the Trinity the Bishop of Exeter may
make what protestations he will, Archdeacon Denison
will still smell a rat in them ; and the time has passed
when Bunsen's Evangelical phrases could fascinate the
Evangelicals. Such language, however, does also actual
harm, because it proceeds from a misunderstanding and
prolongs it. For it may be well to read between the
lines of a man labouring with an experience he cannot
utter ; but to read between the lines of a notion-work is
absurd, for it is of the essence of a notion-work not to
need it. And the Athanasian Creed is a notion-work,
of which the fault is that its basis is a chimsera. It is an
application of the forms of Greek logic to a chimsera,
its own notion of the Trinity, a notion unestablished,
not resting on observation and experience, but assumed
to be given in Scripture, yet not really given there.
Indeed the very expression, the Trinity, jars with the
whole idea and character of Bible-religion ; but, lest
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 34/
the Socinian should be unduly elated at hearing this,
let us hasten to add that so too, and just as much, does
the expression, a great Ferso?ial First Cause.
Learned pseudo-science applied to the data of the
Bible is best called plainly what it is, — utter blunder;
criticism of the same order, and of which the furility
will one day be just as visible, as that criticism about the
two swords which we have quoted. To try to tinker
such criticism only makes matters worse ; the best
way is to throw it aside altogether, and forget it as fast as
possible. This is what the good of religion demands,
and what all the enemies of religion would most deprecate.
The hour for softening down, and explaining away, is
passed ; the whole false norion-work has to go. Mild
defences of it leave on the mind a sense of the
defender's hopeless inability to perceive our actual situa-
tion ; violent defences, such as Archdeacon Denison's,
read, alas ! only like * a tale told by an idiot ^ full of sound
and fury ^ signifying nothing'
But the great work to be done for the better time
which will arrive, and for the time of transition which will
precede it, is not a work of destruction, but to show that
the truth is really, as it is, incomparably higher, grander,
]a^
348 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
more wide and deep-reaching, than the Aberglaube and
false science which it displaces.
The propounders of 'The great Personal First
Cause, who thinks and loves,' are too modest when
they sometimes say, taking their lesson from the Bible,
that, after all, man can know next to nothing of the
Divine nature. They do themselves signal injustice ;
they themselves know a great deal, far too much.
They know so much, that they make of God a mag-
nified and non-natural man, a sort, as we have said,
of infinitely extended Lord Shaftesbury ; and when this
lead* them into difficulties, and they think to escape
these by saying that God's ways are not man's ways,
they do not suqceed in making their God cease to
i resemble a man, they only make him resemble a man
\ puzzled. But the truth is, that one may have a great
respect for Lord Shaftesbury, and yet be permitted, even
however much he be magnified, to imagine something
, far beyond him. And this is the good of such an
5 unpretending definition of God as ours : the Eternal
Power ^ not ourselves^ that makes for righteousness ; — it
leaves the infinite to the imagination, and to the gradual
efforts of countless ages of men, slowly feeling after more
\ of it and finding it. Ages and ages hence, no such
adequate definition of the infinite not ourselves will yet
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 349
be possible, as any sciolist of a theologian will now pre-
tend to rattle you off in a moment. But on one point of
the operation of this 7iot ourselves we are clear : that it
makes for conduct, righteousness. So far we know God,
that he is ' the Eternal that loveth righteousness ; ' and
the farther we go in righteousness, the more we shall
know him.
And as this true and authentic God of Israel is
far grander than the God of popular religion, so is
his real affirmation of himself in human affairs far
grander than that poor machinery of prediction and
miracle, by which popular religion imagines that he
affirms himself. The greatness of the scale on which
he operates makes it hard for men to follow him ; but
the greatness of the scale, too, makes the grandeur of the
operation. As the whirlwind passeth^ so is the wicked no
more; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation. And
again : They shall call Jerusalem the throm of the Eternal^
and all the nations shall be gathered unto it. ' Men are
impatient and for precipitating things,' says Butler ; and
Davison, whom on a former occasion we quoted to differ
from him, — Davison, not the least memorable of that Oriel
group, whose reputation I, above most people, am bound
to cherish, — says with a weighty and noble simplicity
worthy of Butler : ' Conscience and the present constitu-
350 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
tion of things are not corresponding terms; it is con-
science and the issue of things which go together.' It is
so ; and this is what makes the spectacle of human affairs
so edifying and so subUme. Give time enough for the
experience, and experimentally and demonstrably it is
rue, that * the path of the just is as the shining light which
shineth more and more unto the perfect day.' Only the
limits for the experience are wider than people think.
* Yet a little while, and the ungodly shall be clean gone ! '
but a little while according to the scope and working of
that mighty Power, to which a thousand years are as one
day. The world goes on, nations and men arrive and
depart, with varying fortune, as it appears, with time and
chance happening unto alL Look a little deeper, and
you will see that one strain runs through it all : nations
and men, whoever is shipwrecked, is shipwrecked on
conduct. It is the God of Israel steadily and irresistibly
asserting himself ; the Eternal that loveth righteousness.
In this sense we should read the Hebrew prophets.
They did not foresee and foretell curious coincidences,
but they foresaw and foretold this inevitable triumph of
righteousness- First, they foretold it for all the men
and nations of their own day, and especially for those
colossal unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen which
looked everlasting ; then, for all time. ' As th^ whirlwind
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT, 351
passeth, so is the wicked no more ; ' sooner or later it
is, it must be, so. Hebrew prophecy is never read aright
until it is read in this sense, which indeed of itself it
cries out for ; it is, as Davison, again, finely says, impa^
timt for the larger scope. How often, through the ages,
how often, even, by the Hebrew prophets themselves,
has some immediate visible interposition been looked
for ! * I beheld,' they make God say, ' and there was no
man, and I wondered that there was no intercessor,
therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me;
the day of vengeance is in mine heart, the year of my
redeemed is come.' O long delaying arm of might, will
the Eternal never put thee forth, to smite these who
go on as if righteousness mattered nothing ? There is
no need ; they are smitten. Down they come, one after
another ; Assyria falls, Babylon, Greece, Rome ; they all
fall for want of conduct^ righteousness. ' The heathen
make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved ; but God
hath-showed his voice, and the earth doth melt away.*
Nay, but Judaea itself, the Holy Lanti, the land of God's
Israel, falls too, and falls for want of rightfousness.
Yes, Israel's visible Jerusalem is in ruins ; and how
then shall men 'call Jerusalem the throne of the Eternal,
and all the nations shall be gathered unto it ? ' But the
true Israel was Israel the bringer-in and defender of
352 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
the idea of conduct, Israel the lifter-up to the nations of
the banner of righteousness ; the true Jerusalem was the
city of this ideal Israel. And this ideal Israel could
not and cannot perish, so long as his idea, righteous-
ness and its necessity, does not perish, but prevails.
Now, that it does prevail, the whole course of the world
proves, and the fall of the actual Israel is of itself witness.
Thus, therefore, the ideal Israel for ever lives and
prospers ; and its city is the city whereto all nations and
languages, after endless trials of everything else except
conduct, after incessantly attempting to do without
righteousness and failing, are slowly but surely gathered.
To this Israel are the promises, and to this Israel they
are fulfilled. ' The nation and kingdom that will not
serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be
utterly wasted.' It is so ; since all history is an accumula-
tion of experiences that what men and nations fall by is
want of conduct. To call it by this plain name is often
not amiss, for the thing is never more great than when
it is looked at in its simplicity and reality. Yet the
true name to touch the soul is the name Israel gave :
Righteousness. x\nd to Israel, as the representative of this
imperishable and saving idea of righteousness, all the
promises come true, and the language of none of them
is pitched too high. The Eternal, Israel says truly, is on
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 353
my side. * Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou handful
Israel; I will help thee, saith the Eternal. Behold, I
have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls
are continually before me. The Eternal hath chosen
Zion ; O pray for the peace of Jerusalem ! they shall
prosper that love thee. Men shall call Jerusalem t/u
throne of the Eternal^ and all the nations shall be gathered
unto it. And he will destroy in this mountain the face
of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that
is spread over all nations ; he will swallow up death in
victory. And it shall be said in that day : Lo, this is
our God ; this is the Eternal, we have waited for him,
we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.'
5-
And if Assyria and Babylon seem too remote, let us
look nearer home for testimonies to the inexhaustible
grandeur and significance of the Old Testament revelation,
according to that construction which we here put upon it
Every educated man loves Greece, owes gratitude to
Greece. Greece was the lifter-up to the nations of the
banner of art and science, as Israel was the lifter-up of
the banner of righteousness. Now, the world cannot do
without art and science. And the lifter-up of the banner
of art and science was naturally much occupied with
A A
354 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
them, and conduct was a homely plain matter; not
enough heed, therefore, was given by him to conduct.
But conduct, plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life,
while art and science are only two-eighths. And this
briUiant Greece perished for lack of attention enough
to conduct) for want of conduct, steadiness, character.
And there is this difference between Greece and Judaea :
both were custodians of a revelation and both perished \
but Greece perished of ^z^^r-fidelity to her revelation,
and Judaea perished of under-fidelity to hers. Nay, and
the victorious revelation now, even now, — in this age
when more of beauty and more of knowledge are so
much needed, and knowledge, at any rate, is so highly
esteemed, — the revelation which rules the world even
now, is not Greece's revelation, but Judaea's ; not the
pre-eminence of art and science, but the pre-eminence of
righteousness.
It reminds one of what is recorded of Abraham, before
the true inheritor of the promises, the humble and homely
Isaac, was bom. Abraham looked upon the audacious
and briUiant young Ishmael, and said appealingly to God :
* Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! ' But it can-
not be ; the promises are to conduct^ conduct only.
And so, again, we behold, long after Greece has perished,
a brilliant successor of Greece, the Renascence, present
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 355
herself with high hopes. The preachers of righteous-
ness, blunderers as they might be, have had it all their
own way, art and science have been forgotten, men's minds
have been enslaved, their bodies macerated. But the
gloomy, oppressive dream is now over : ' Let us return to
Nature !' And all the world salutes with pride and joy
the Renascence, and prays to Heaven : ' Oh that
Ishmael might live before thee ! ' Surely the future
belongs to this brilliant new-comer, with his animating
maxim : Let us return to Nature. Ah, what pitfalls are in
that word Nature! Let us return to art and science,
which are a part of Nature; yes. Let us return to a
proper conception of righteousness, to a true use of the
method and secret of Jesus, which have been all de-
naturalised; yes. But, 'Let us return to Nature \' —
do you mean that we are to give full swing to our in-
clinations, to throw the reins on the neck of our senses,
of those sirens whom Paul the Israelite called ' the de-
ceitful lusts,' and of following whom he said : ' Let no
man beguile you with vain words, for because of these
things Cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience ' ? Do you mean that co7iduct is not three-
fourths of life, and that the secret of Jesus has no use ?
And the Renascence did mean this, or half meant this ;
so disgusted was it with the cowled and tonsured Middle
AA2
356 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
Age. And it died of it, this brilliant Ishmael died of it !
it died of provoking a collision with the homely. Isaac,
righteousness. On the Continent came the Catholic
re-action; in England, as we have said- elsewhere, 'the
great middle class, the kernel of the nation, entered
the prison of Puritanism, and had the key turned upon
its spirit there for two hundred years.' After too much
glorification of art, science, and culture, too little ; after
Rabelais, George Fox.
France, again, how often and how impetuously for
France has the prayer gone up to Heaven : * Oh that Ish-
mael might live before thee ! ' It is not enough perceived
what it is which gives France her attractiveness for every-
body, her success, her repeated disasters. France is
Vhomme sensuel moyen, the average sensual man ; Paris is
the city of rhomme sensuel moyen. This has an attrac-
tion for all of us. We all have in us this homme se?isuel,
the man of the * wishes of the flesh and of the current
thoughts j ' but we develope him under checks and doubts,
and unsystematically and often grossly. France, on the
other hand, developes him confidently and harmoniously.
She makes the most of him, because she knows what she
is about and keeps in a mean, as her climate is in a mean,
and her situation. She does not develope him with mad-
ness, into a monstrosity, as the Italy of the Renascence did,
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT, 357
she developes him equably and systematically ; and hence
she does not shock people with him but attracts them,
she names herself the France of tact and measure, good
sense, logic. In a way, this is true. As she developes
the senses, the apparent self, all round, in good faith,
without misgivings, without violence ; she has much
reasonableness and clearness in all her notions and
arrangements; a sort of balance even in conduct; as much
art and science, and it is not a little, as goes with the
ideal of Vhomme sensuel moyen. And from her ideal of
the average sensual man France has deduced her famous
gospel of the Rights of Man, which she preaches with
such an infinite self-admiration. France takes 'the
wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts ' for a
man's rights ; and human happiness, and the perfection
of society, she places in everybody's being enabled to
gratify these wishes, to get these rights, as equally as
possible and as much as possible In Italy, as in ancient
Greece, the satisfying development of this ideal of the
average sensual man is broken by the imperious ideal of
art and science disparaging it ; in the Teutonic nations,
by the ideal of morality disparaging it. Still, whenever,
as often happens, the pursuers of these higher ideals are
a little weary of them or unsuccessful with them, they
turn with a sort of envy and admiration to the ideal set
358 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
up by France,— so positive, intelligible, and up to a certain
point satisfying. They are inclined to try it instead of
their own, though they can never bring themselves to try
it thoroughly, and therefore well. But this explains the
great attraction France exercises upon the world. All of
us feel, at some time or other in our lives, a hankering
after the French ideal, a disposition to try it More
particularly is this true of the Latin nations ; and there-
fore everywhere, among these nations, you see the old
indigenous type of city disappearing, and the type
of modern Paris, the city of Vhomme sensuel moym, re-
placing it. La Boheme, the ideal, free, pleasurable life of
Paris, is a kind of Paradise of Ishmaels. And all
this assent from every quarter, and the clearness and
apparent reasonableness of their ideal besides, fill the
French with a kind of ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost
fanatical for propagating what they call French civilisa-
tion everywhere, for establishing its predominance, and
their own predominance along with it, as of the people
entrusted with an oracle so showy and taking. Oh
that Ishmael might live before thee! Since everybody
has something which conspires with this Ishmael, his
success, again and again, seems to be certain ; again and
again he seems drawing near to a worldwide success, nay,
to have succeeded ; — but always, at this point, disaster
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 359
overtakes him, he signally breaks down. At this crowning
moment, when all seems triumphant with him, comes
what the Bible calls a crisis^ or judgment. Now is the
judgment of this world / now shall the prince of this world
be cast out I Cast out he is, and always must be, be-
cause his ideal, which is also that of France, however
she may have noble spirits who contend against it and
seek a better, is after all a false one. Plausible and
attractive as it may be, the constitution of things turns
out to be somehow or other against it. And why?
Because the free development of our senses all round,
of our apparent self, has to undergo a profound modifica-
tion from the law of our higher real self, the law o.
righteousness; because he, whose ideal is the develop-
ment of the senses all round, serves the senses, is a
servant. But : The servant abideth not in the house for
ever ; the son abideth for ever.
Is it possible to imagine grander testimony to the
truth of the revelation committed to Israel? What
miracle of making an iron axe-head float on water, what
successful prediction that a thing should happen just so
many years and months and days hence, could be really
half so impressive ?
36o LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
6.
So that the whole history of the world to this day is in
truth one continual establishing of the Old Testament
revelation \ *^ O ye that love the Eternal^ see that ye hate the
thing that is evil! to him that ordereth his conversation
rights shall be shown the salvation of God.' And whether
we consider this revelation in respect to human affairs at
large, or in respect to individual happiness, in either
case its importance is so immense, that the people to
whom it was given, and whose record is in the Bible,
deserve fully to be singled out as the Bible singles them.
* Behold, darkness doth cover the earth, and gross
darkness the nations : but the Eternal shall arise upon
iheey and his glory shall be seen upon thee ! ' For, while
other nations had the misleading idea that this or that,
other than righteousness, is saving, and it is not ;
that this or that, other than conduct, brings happiness,
and it does not ; Israel had the true idea that righteousness
is saving, that to conduct belongs happiness.
Nor let it be said that other nations, too, had at least
something of this idea. They had, but they were not
possessed with it \ and to feel it enough to make the world
feel it, it was necessary to be possessed with it. It is not
sufficient to have been visited by such an idea at times, to
GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 361
have had it forced occasionally on one's mind by the teach-
ing of experience. No; he that hath the bride is the bride-
groom; the idea belongs to him who has most loved it
Common prudence can say : Honesty is the best policy ;
morality can say : To conduct belongs happiness. But
Israel and the Bible are filled with religious joy, and rise
higher and say : ' Righteousness is salvation ! ' — and this
is what is inspiring. ' I have stuck unto thy testimonies.
Eternal, what love have I unto thy law ! all the day long
is my study in it. Thy testimonies have I claimed as mine
heritage forever^ and why? they are the very joy of my hearth
This is why the testimonies of righteousness are Israel's
heritage for ever, because they were the very joy of his
heart. Herein Israel stood alone, the friend and elect
of the Eternal. ' He showeth his word unto Jacobs his
statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt
so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge
of his laws.'
Poor Israel ! poor ancient people! It was revealed to
thee that righteousness is salvation ; the question, what
righteousness is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer of the
vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the things which
belong unto thy peace ! with that blindness thy solitary
pre-eminence ended, and the new Israel, made up out of
all nations and languages, took thy room. But, thy visit-
362 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
ation complete, thy temple in niins, thy reign over, thine
office done, thy children dispersed, thy teeth drawn, thy
shekels of gold and silver plundered, did there yet stay
with thee any remembrance of thy primitive intuition, sim-
ple and sublime, of the Eternal that loveth righteousness .?
Perhaps not ; the Talmudists were fully as well able to
efface it as the Fathers. But if there did, what punishment
can have been to thee like the punishment of watching the
performances of the Aiyan genius upon the foundation
which thou hadst given it ? — to behold this terrible and
triumphant philosopher, with his monotheistic idea and
his metaphysical Trinity, ' neither confounding the Persons
nor dividing the Substance ' ? Like the torture to a poet
to hear people laying down the law about poetry who
have not the sense what poetry is, — a sense with which
hg was born ! like the affliction to a man of science to
hear people talk of things as proved, who do not even
know what constitutes a fact ! From the Council of
Nicsea down to Convocation, and the Bishops of Win-
chester and Gloucester ' doing something ' for the God-
head of the Eternal Son, what must thou have had to
suffer 1
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 363
CHAPTER XII.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY.
No ; the mystery hidden from ages and generations, which
none of the rulers of this world knew, the mystery revealed
finally by Christ and rejected by the Jews, was not the
doctrine of the Trinity, nor anything speculative ; it was
the method and the secret of Jesus. Jesus did not change
the object for men, — righteousness ; he made clear what
it was, and that it was this : his method and his secret.
This was the mystery, and the Apostles had still the con-
sciousness that it was. To * learn Christ,' to ' be taught
the truth as it is in Jesus,' was not, with them, to acquire
certain tenets about One God in Trinity and Trinity in
Unity ; it was, to * be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and to put on the new man 7vhich after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness J And this exactly amounts
to the method and secret of Jesus.
For Catholic and for Protestant theology alike, this
consciousness, which the Apostles had still preserved,
364 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
was lost. For Catholic and Protestant theology alike,
the truth as it is in Jesus, the mystery revealed in Christ,
meant something totally different from his method and
secret. But they recognised, and indeed the thing was
so plain that they could not well miss it, they recognised
that on all Christians the method and secret of Jesus were
enjoined. So to this extent the method and secret of
Jesus were preached and had their effect. To this extent
true Christianity has been known, and to the extent
before stated it has been neglected. Now, as we say that
the truth and grandeur of the Old Testament most comes
out experimentally^ — that is, by the whole course of the
world establishing it, and confuting what is opposed to it,
— so it is with Christianity. Its grandeur and truth are far
most brought out experimentally ; and the thing is, to
make people see this.
But there is this difference between the religion of the
Old Testament and Christianity. Of the religion of the
Old Testament we can pretty well see to the end, we
can trace fully enough the experimental proof of it in
history. But of Christianity the future is as yet al-
most unknown. For that the world cannot get on with-
out righteousness we have the clear experience, and a
grand and admirable experience it is. But what the
world will become by the thorough use of that which is
really righteousness, the method and the secret and the
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY, 365
sweet reasonableness of Jesus, we have as yet hardly
any experience at all. Therefore we, who in this essay
limit ourselves to experience, shall speak here of Chris-
tianity and its greatness very soberly. Yet Christianity
is really all the grander for that very reason which makes
us speak about it in this sober manner, — that it has such
an immense development still before it, and that it has
as yet so little shown all it contains, all it can do. In-
deed, that Christianity has already done so much as it
has, is a witness to it ; and that it has not yet done more,
is a witness to it too. Let us observe how this is so.
2.
Few things are more melancholy than to observe Chris-
tian apologists taunting the Jews with the failure of He-
braism to fulfil the splendid promises of prophecy, and
Jewish apologists taunting Christendom with the failure
of Christianity to fulfil these. Neither has yet fulfilled
them, or could yet have fulfilled them. Certainly the
restoration by Cyrus, the Second Temple, the Maccabean
victories, are hardly more than the shadows of a fulfilment
of the magnificent words : ' The sons of them that
afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they
that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles
of thy feet ; thy gates shall not be shut day nor night,
that men may bring unto thee the treasures of the Gentiles
366 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
and that their kings may be brought.' The Christianisa-
tion of all the leading nations of the world is, it is said,
a much better fulfilment of that promise. Be it so.
Yet does Christendom, let us ask, offer more than a
shadow of the fulfilment of this : ' Violence shall no more
be heard in thy land ; the vile person shall no more be
called liberal, nor the churl bountiful ; thy people shall
be all righteous ; they shall all know me, from the least
to the greatest ; I will put my law in their inward parts,
and write it in their hearts ; the Eternal shall be thine
everlasting light and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended'? Manifestly it does not; yet the two promises
hang together, one of them is not truly fulfilled unless the
other is.
The promises were made to righteousness, with all which
the idea of righteousness involves ; and it involves
Christianity. They were made on the immediate pros-
pect of a small triumph for righteousness, the restoration
of the Jews after the captivity in Babylon ; but they are
not satisfied by that triumph. The prevalence of the pro-
fession of Christianity is a larger triumph ; yet in itself it
hardly satisfies them any better. What satisfies them is
the prevailing of that which righteousness really is, and
nothing else satisfies them. Now Christianity is that which
righteousness really is. Therefore, if something called
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 367
Christianity prevails, and yet the promises are not
satisfied, the inference is that this somethitig is not
that which righteousness really is, and therefore not
really Christianity. And as the course of the world is
perpetually establishing the pre-eminence of righteous-
ness, and confounding whatever denies this pre-eminence,
so, too, the course of the world is for ever establishing
what righteousness really is, — that is to say, true Chris-
tianity,—and confounding whatever pretends to be true
Christianity and is not
Now, just as the constitution of things turned out to
be against the great unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen
world, and against all the brilliant Ishmaels we have seen
since, so the constitution of things turns out to be against
all false presentations of Christianity, such as the theology
of the Fathers or Protestant theology. They do not work
successfully, they do not reach the aim, they do not bring
the world to the fruition of the promises made to righte-
ousness. And the reason is, because they substitute for
what is really righteousness sonjething else. Catholic
dogma or Lutheran justification by faith they substitute
for the method and secret of Jesus.
Nevertheless, as all Christian Churches do recommend
the method and the secret of Jesus, though not in the
right way or in the right eminency, still the world is made
368 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
acquainted with what righteousness really is, and the
doctrine produces some effect, although the full effect is
much thwarted and deadened by the false way in which the
doctrine is presented. Still the effect produced is great ;
for instance, the sum of individual happiness that has
been caused by Christianity is, anyone can see, enormous.
But let us take the effect of Christianity on the world.
And if we look at the thing closely, we shall find that
its effect has been this : Christianity has brought the
world, or at any rate all the leading part of the world,
to regard righteousness as only the Jews regarded it before
the coming of Christ. The world has accepted, so far as
profession goes, that original revelation made to Israel :
the pre-eminence of righteousness. The infinite truth
and attractiveness of the method and secret and cha-
racter of Jesus, however falsely surrounded, have pre-
vailed with the world so far as this. And this is an
immense gain, and a signal witness to Christianity. The
world does homage to the pre-eminence of righteousness ;
and here we have one of those fulfilments of prophecy
which are so true and so glorious. * Glorious things
I are spoken of thee, O City of God ! I will make men-
I tion of Rahab and Babylon as of them that know me !
t behold, the Philistines also, and Tyre, with the Ethio-
1 plans, — these were bom there! And of Zion it shall
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 369
be reported : This and that man was bom in her / — and
the Most High shall stablish her. The Eternal shall 1
count, when he writeth up the people : This man was
born there !^ That prophecy is at this present day
abundantly fulfilled. The world's chief nations have now
all come, we see, to reckon and profess themselves ad- ,
herents of the religion of Zion, the city oi righteousness.
But there remains the question : what righteousness
really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonable-
ness of Jesus. But the world does not see this ; for
it puts, as righteousness, something else first and this /
second. So that here, too, as to seeing what righteous- '
ness really is, the world now is just in the same position
in which the Jews, when Christ came, were. It is often 1
said : If Christ came now, his religion would be rejected.
And this is only another way of saying that the world
now, as the Jewish people formerly, has something
which thwarts and confuses its perception of what righte-
ousness really is. It is so ; and the thwarting cause i« I
the same now as then : — the dogmatic system current, the
so-called orthodox theology. This prevents now, as it 1
did then, that which righteousness really is, the method
and secret of Jesus, from being rightly received, from
operating fully, and from accomplishing its due effect.
So true is this, that we have only to look at our own
BB
370 LITERATURE AND DOGMA,
community to see the almost precise parallel, so far as
religion is concerned, to the state of things presented
in Judaea when Christ came. The multitudes are the
' same everyAvhere. The chief priests and elders of the
people and the scribes, are our bishops and dogmatists,
with their pseudo-science of learned theology blinding their
\ eyes, and always, — ^whenever simple souls are disposed to
think that the method and secret of Jesus is true religion,
and that the great Personal First Cause and the Godhead
of the Eternal Son have nothing to do with it, — eager to
cry out : This people that knoiveth 7iot the law are cicrsed!
\ The Pharisees, with their genuine concern for religion,
but total want of perception of what religion really is, and
by their temper, attitude, and aims doing their best to
make religion impossible, are the Protestant Dissenters.
The Sadducees are our friends the philosophical Liberals,
who believe neither in angel nor spirit but in Mr. Herbert
Spencer. Even the Roman governor has his close parallel
in our celebrated aristocracy, with its superficial good
sense and good nature, its thorough inaptitude for ideas,
its profound helplessness in presence of all great
spiritual movements. And the result is, that the splendid
promises to righteousness made by the Hebrew prophets,
claimed by the Jews as the property of Judaism, claimed
by us as the property of Christianity, are almost as ludi-
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 371
crously inapplicable to our religious state now, as to
theirs then.
And this, we say, is again a signal witness to Chris-
tianity. Christ came to reveal what righteousness,
to which the promises belong, really is; and so long
as this, though shown by Christ, is not seen by us, we
may call ourselves Christendom as much as we please,
the true character of a Christendom will be wanting to
us, because the great promises of prophecy will be still
mthout their fulfilment. Nothing will do, except righteous-
ness j and no other conception of righteousness will do,
except Christ's conception of it : — his method zxidi his secret.
3-
Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and the imposing
and impressive attestation of it, if we could but worthily
bring the thing out, is here: in that immense experi-
mental proof of the necessity of it, which the whole course
of the world has steadily accumulated, and indicates to us
as still continuing and extending. Men will not admit
assumptions, the popular legend they call a fairy-tale, the
metaphysical demonstrations do not demonstrate, nothing
but experimental proof will go down ; and here is an
experimental proof which never fails, and which at the
same time is infinitely grander, by the vastness of its
372 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
scale, the scope of its duration, the gravity of its results,
than the machinery of the popular fairy-tale. Walking on
the water, multiplying loaves, raising corpses, a heavenly
judge appearing with trumpets in the clouds while we
are yet alive, — what is this compared to the real expe-
rience offered as witness to us by Christianity? It is
like the difference between the grandeur of an extrava-
ganza and the grandeur of the sea or the sky, — immense
objects which dwarf us, but where we are in contact with
reality, and a reality of which we can slowly trace the
laws.
The more we trace the real law of Christianity's action,
the grander it will seem. Certainly in the Gospels there
is plenty of matter to call out our feelings, but perhaps this
has been somewhat over-used and mis-used, applied, as it
has been, chiefly so as to be subservient to what we call the
fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftesburys, — a story which
we do not deny to have, like other products of the popular
imagination, its pathos and power, but which we have seen
to be no solid foundation to rest our faith in the Bible on.
And perhaps, too, we do wrong, and inevitably fall into
what is artificial and unnatural, in labouring so much to
produce in ourselves, as the one impulse determining us
to use the method and secret of Jesus, that conscious
ardent sensation of personal love to him, which we
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 373
find the first generation of Christians feeHng and profess-
ing, and which was the natural motor for those who were
with him or near him, and, so to speak, touched him ;
and in making this our first object. At any rate, misem- I
ployed as this motor has often been, it might be well to \
forego or at least suspend its use for ourselves and others 'j
for a time, and to fix our minds exclusively on the J
recommendation given to the method and secret of Jesus 1 JM
by their being iruc^ and by the whole course of things r "^
proving this.
Now, just as the best recommendation of the oracle
committed to Israel, Righteousness is salvation^ is found
in our more and more discovering, in our own history and
in the whole history of the world, that it is so, so we shall
find it to be with the method and secret of Jesus. That
this is the righteousness which is salvation, that the
method and secret of Jesus, that is to say, conscience and
self-renouncement, are righteousness, bring about the
kingdom of God or the reign of righteousness, — this, which
is the Christian revelation and what Jesus came to estab-
lish, is best impressed, for the present at any rate, by
experiencing and showing again and again, in ourselves
and in the course of the world, that it is so ; that this is the
righteousness which is saving, and that there is none other.
Let us but well observe what comes, in ourselves or the
374 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
world, of trying any other, of not being convinced that
this is righteousness, and this only ; and we shall find
ourselves more and more, as by irresistible viewless hands,
caught and drawn towards the Christian revelation, and
made to desire more and more to serve it. No proof can
be so solid as this experimental proof; and none again,
can be so grand, so fitted to fill us with awe, admiration,
and gratitude ; so that feeling and emotion will now well
come in after it, though not before it. For the whole
course of human things is really, according to this ex-
perience, leading up to the fulfilment of Christ's promise
to his disciples : Fear not, little flock ! for it is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. And
thus that comes after all to be true, which St. Paul an-
nounced prematurely to the first generation of Christians :
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye
also appear with him in gloiy. And the author of the
Apocalypse, in fike manner, foretold: The ki?igdom of the
7vorld is become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ.
The kingdom of the Eternal the world is already become,
by its chief nations professing the religion of righteous-
ness. The kingdom of Christ the world will have to
become, it is on its way to become, because the profession
of righteousness, except as Christ interpreted righteous-
ness, is vain. We can see the process, we are ourselves
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 375
part of it, and can in our measure forward or keep back
its completion.
' When the prophet, indeed, says to Israel, on the point
of being restored by Cyrus : ' The iiation and kingdom that
will not serz'c thee shall perish I ' the promise, applied
literally, fails. But extended to that idea of righteousness,
of which Israel was the depositary and in which the real
life of Israel lay, the promise is true, and we can see it
steadily fulfilling itself In like manner, when the Apostle
says to the Colossians, instructed that the second advent
would come in their own generation : * When Christy who
is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with
him in glory / ' the promise, applied literally as the
Apostle meant it and the Colossians understood it, fails.
But divested of this Aberglaube or extra-belief, it is true ;
if indeed the world can be shown, — and it can, — to be
moving necessarily towards the triumph of that Christ
in whom the Colossian disciples lived, and whose triumph
is the triumph of all his disciples also.
4-
Let us keep hold of this same experimental process in
dealing with the promise of immortality ; although here,
if any^vhere, Aberglaube, extra-belief, hope, anticipation,
may well be permitted to come in. Still, what we need
376 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
for our foundation is not AberglaubCy but Glaube \ not
extra-belief in what is beyond the range of possible ex-
perience, but belief in what can and should be known to
be true.
By what futilities the demonstration of our immortality
may be attempted, is to be seen in Plato's Phcedo.
Man's natural desire for continuance, however little it
may be worth as a scientific proof of our immortahty,
is at least a proof a thousand times stronger than any
such demonstration. The want of solidity in such
argimient is so palpable, that one scarcely cares to
turn a steady regard upon it at all. But of the com-
mon Christian conception of immortality the want of
solidity is perhaps most conclusively shown by the im-
possibility of so framing it, as that it will at all support a
steady regard turned upon it. In our English popular
religion, for instance, the common conception of a future
state of bliss is that of the Vision of Mirza : ' Persons
dressed in glorious habits with garlands on their heads,
passing among the trees, lying down by the fountains, or
resting on beds of flowers, amid a confused harmony of
singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical
instruments.' Or, even, with many, it is that of a kind of
perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table
spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored,
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 377
hymnody incessant. * Poor fragments all of this low earth I '
Keble might well say. That this conception of immor-
tality cannot possibly be true we feel, the moment we
consider it seriously ; and yet who can devise any con-
ception of a future state of bliss which shall bear
close examination better?
Here, again, it is far best to take what is experimentally
true, and nothing else, as our foundation, and afterwards to
let hope and aspiration grow, if so it may be, out of this.
Israel had said : * In the way of righteousness is life, and
in the pathway thereof there is no death.' And by a kind
of short cut to the conclusion thus laid down, the Jews
constructed their fairy-tale of an advent, judgment, and
resurrection, as we find it in the Book of Daniel. Jesus
had said : ' If a man keep my word, he shall never see
death ; ' and by a kind of short cut to the conclusion
thus laid down. Christians constructed their fairy-tale of
the second advent, the resurrection of the body, the New
Jerusalem. But instead of fairy-tales, let us begin, at
least, with certainties.
And a certainty is the sense of life^ of being truly alive^
which accompanies righteousness. If this experimental
sense does not rise to be stronger in us, does not rise to
the sense of being inextinguishable, that is probably be-
cause our experience of righteousness is really so very
378 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
small ; and here we may well permit ourselves to trust
Jesus, whose practice and intuition both of them went, in
these matters, so far deeper than ours. At any rate, we
have in our experience this strong sense of life from
righteons7iess to start with ; capable of being developed,
apparently, by progress in righteousness into something
immeasurably stronger. Here is the true basis for all
religious aspiration after immortality. And it is an
experimental basis ; and therefore, as to grandeur, it is
again, when compared with the popular Aberglatibe,
grand with all the superior grandeur, on a subject of
the highest seriousness, of reality over fantasy.
At present, the fantasy hides the grandeur of the
reality. But when all the Ahe^-glauhe of the second
advent, with its signs in the sky, sounding trumpets and
opening graves, is cleared away, then and not till then
will come out the profound truth and grandeur of words
of Jesus like these : ' The hour is coming, when they that
are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of
Man ; and they that hear shall live'
5-
Finally, and above all. As, for the right inculcation of
righteousness, we need the inspiring words of Israel's love
for it, that is, we need the Bible ; so, for the right incul-
cation of the method and secret of Jesus, we need the
TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY, 2>79
epicikeia, the sweet reasonableness, of Jesus. That is, in
other words again, we need the Bible; for only through
the Bible-records of Jesus can we get at his epicikeia.
Even in these records, it is and can be presented but
imperfectly ; but only by reading and re-reading the Bible
can we get at it at all.
Now, greatly as the failure, from the stress laid upon
the pseudo-science of Church dogma, to lay enough stress
upon the method and secret of Jesus, has kept Chris-
tianity back from showing itself in its full power, it is
probable that the failure to apply to the method and
secret of Jesus, so far.as these have at any rate been used,
his sweet reasonableness or epieikcia, has kept it back
even more. And the infinite of the religion of Jesus, —
its immense capacity for ceaseless progress and farther
development, — Hes principally, perhaps, in the line of
extricating more and more his sweet reasonableness, and
applying it to his method and secret. For it is obvious
from experience how much our use of Christ's method
and secret requires to be guided and governed by his
cpieikeia ; indeed, without this, his method and secret
seem often of no use at all. The Flagellants imagined
that they were employing his secret ; and the Dissenters?
with their ' spirit of watchful jealousy,' imagine that they
are employing his method. To be sure, Mr. Bradlaugh
imagines that the method and the secret of Jesus, nay
;8o LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
and Jesus himself too, are all baneful, and that the
sooner we get rid of them all, the better. So far, then,
the Flagellants and the Dissenters are in advance of
Mr. Bradlaugh ; they value Christianity, and they profess
the method and secret of Jesus. But they employ them
so ill, that one is tempted to say they might nearly
as well be without them. And this is because they
are wholly without his sweet reasonableness, or epieikeia.
Now this can only be got, first, by knowing that it is in
the Bible, and looking for it there; and then, by
reading and re-reading the Gospels continually, until we
catch something of it.
This, again, is an experimental process. That the
epieikeia or sweet reasonableness of Jesus may be brought
to govern our use of his method and secret, and that it
can and will make our use of his method and secret
quite a different thing, is proved by our actually finding
this to be so when we try. So that the culmination of
Christian righteousness in the applying, to guide our
use of the method and secret of Jesus, his sweet rea-
sonableness or epieikeia, is proved from experience. We
end, therefore, as we began. For the whole series of
experiences, of which the survey is thus completed, rests,
primarily, upon one fundamental fact, — itself, also, a fact
of experience : the necessity of righteoicsness.
CONCLUSION. 381
CONCLUSION.
But now, after all we have been saying of the pre-
eminence of righteousness, we remember what we have
said formerly in praise of culture and of Hellenism, and
against too much Hebraism, too exclusive a pursuit of the
*one thing needful,' as people call it. And we cannot
help wondering whether we shall not be reproached with
inconsistency, and told that we ought at least to sing, as
the Greeks said, a palinode; and whether it may not
really be so, and we ought. And, certainly, if we had ever
said that Hellenism was three-fourths of human life, and
conduct or righteousness but one-fourth, a palinode, as
well as an unmusical man may, we would sing. But we
have never said it. In praising culture, we have never
denied that conduct, not culture, is three-fourths of
human life.
Only it certainly appears, when the thing is examined,
that conduct comes to have relations of a very close
kind with culture. And the reason seems to be given by
382 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
some words of our Bible, which though they may not be
exactly the right rendering of the original in that place,
yet in themselves they explain the connexion of culture
with conduct very well. ' I have seen the travail,' says
the Preacher, 'which God hath given to the sons of men
to be exercised in it ; he hath made everything beautiful
in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart.'
He hath set the world in their heart ! — that is why art and
science, and what we call culture, are necessary. They
may be only one-fourth of man's life, but they are there,
as well as the three-fourths which conduct occupies ; — * he
hath set the world in their heart.' And, really, the reason
which we hence gather for the close connexion between
culture and conduct, is so simple and natural that we are
almost ashamed to give it ; but we have offered so many
simple and natural explanations in place of the abstruse
ones which are current, that our hesitation is unreasonable.
Let us suggest then, that, having this one-fourth of
their nature concerned with art and science, men cannot
but somehow employ it. If they think that the three-
fourths of their nature concerned with conduct are the
whole of their nature, and that this is all they have to
attend to, still the neglected one-fourth is there, it fer-
ments, it breaks wildly out, it employs itself all at random
and amiss. And hence, no doubt, our hymns and our
CONCLUSION, 383
dogmatic theology. Of our hymns we here say nothing ;
but what is our dogmatic theology, except the mis-attri-
bution to the Bible,^the Book of conduct^ — of a science
and an abstruse metaphysic which is not there, because
our theologians have in themselves a faculty for science ?
for it makes one-eighth of them. But they do not employ
it on its proper objects ; so it invades the Bible, and
tries to make the Bible what it is not, and to put into it
what is not there. And this prevents their attending
enough to what is in the Bible, and makes them battle
for what is not in the Bible, but they have put it there ;
— battle for it in a manner clean contrary, often, to the
teaching of the Bible. So has arisen, for instance, all re-
ligious persecution. And thus, we say, has conduct itself
become impaired.
So that conduct is impaired by the want of science and \l\^^
culture ; and our theologians really suffer, not from having «
too much science, but from having too little. Whereas, if
they had turned their faculty for abstruse reasoning
towards the proper objects, and had given themselves,
besides, a wide and large acquaintance with the pro-
ductions of the human spirit and with men's way of
thinking and of using words, then, on the one hand,
they would not have been tempted to mis-employ on the
Bible their faculty for abstruse reasoning, for they would
384 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
have had plenty of other exercise for it ; and, on the other
hand, they would have escaped that literary inexperience,
which now makes them fancy that the Bible-language is
scientific and fit matter for the application of their powers
of abstruse reasoning to it, when it is no such thing.
Then they would have seen the fallacy of confounding the
obscurity attaching to the idea of God, — that vast not our-
selves which transcends us, — with the obscurity attaching
to the idea of their Trinity, a confused metaphysical specu-
lation which puzzles us. The one, they would have per-
ceived, is the obscurity of the immeasurable depth of air,
the other is the obscurity of a fog. And fog, they would
have known, has no proper place in our conceptions of
God ; since whatever our minds can possess of God they
know clearly, for no man, says Goethe, possesses what he
does not understand \ but they can possess of Him but a
very little. All this our dogmatic theologians would know,
if they had had more science and more literature. And
therefore, simple as the Bible and conduct are, still culture
seems to be required for them, — required to prevent our
mis-handling and sophisticating them.
2.
Culture, then, and literature are required, even in the
interest of religion itself, and when, taking nothing but
CONCLUSION. 385
eondtict into account, we make God, as Israel made
him, to be simply and solely ' the Etenial Power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness.^ But we are not
to forget, that, grand as this conception of Ciod is, and
well as it meets the wants of far the largest part of our
being, of three-fourths of it, yet there is one-fourth of our
being of which it does not strictly meet the wants, the
part which is concerned with art and science ; or, in
other words, with beauty and exact knowledge.
For the total man, therefore, the truer conception of
God is as * the Eternal Power, not ourselves, by which all
t/iifigs fulfil the law of their being;' by which, therefore,
we fulfil the law of our being so far as our being is aesthetic
and intellective, as well as so far as it is moral. And it is
evident, as we have before now remarked, that in this
wider sense God is displeased and disserved by many
things which cannot be said, except by putting a strain
upon words, to displease and disserve him as the God
of righteousness. He is displeased and disserved by
men uttering such doggerel hymns as : Sing glory , glor}\
glory to the great God Triune I and : Out of viy stony
griefs Bethels F II raise I and : My Jesus to kno^c, and feel
his blood flow, 'tis life everlasting, 'tis heaven below! or by
the Bishop of Gloucester uttering such pseudo-science as
his ^ blessed truth that the God of the universe is a person.'
c c
386 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
But it would be harsh to give, at present, this turn to
our employment of the phrases, pleasing God^ displeasing
God.
And yet, as man makes progress, we shall surely come
to this ; for, the clearer our conceptions in science and
art become, the more will they assimilate themselves
to the conceptions of duty in conduct, will become
practically stringent like rules of conduct, and will invite
the same sort of language in dealing with them. And so
far let us venture to poach on M. Emile Bumouf s manor,
and to talk about the Aryan genius, as to say, that the
love Ci{ science^ and the energy and honesty in the pursuit
of science, in the best of the Aryan races, do seem to
correspond in a remarkable way to the love of conduct^
and the energy and honesty in the pursuit of conduct^ in
the best of the Semitic. To treat science with the same
kind of seriousness as conduct, does seem, therefore, to ]}e
a not impossible thing for the Aryan genius to come to.
But for all this, however, man is hardly yet ripe. For
our race, as we see it now and as ourselves we form a part
of it, the true God is and must be pre-eminently the God
of the Bible, the Eternal who makes for righteonsness,
from whom Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit governs
the course of humanity. Only, we see that even for
apprehending this God of the Bible rightly and not
CONCLUSION. 387
wrongly, letters, which so many people disparage, and
what we call, in general, culture^ seem to be necessary.
And meanwhile, to prevent our at all pluming ourselves
on having apprehended what so much baffles our dog-
. matic friends (although indeed it is not so much we who
apprehend it as the ' Zeit-Geist ' who discovers it to us),
what a chastening and wholesome reflection for us it is,
that it is only to our natural inferiority to these ingenious
men that we are indebted for our advantage over them !
For while they were bom with talents for metaphysical spe-
culation and abstruse reasoning, we are so notoriously defi-
cient in everj'thing of that kind, that our adversaries often
taunt us with it, and have held us up to public ridicule as
being ' without a system of philosophy, based on principles
interdependent, subordinate and coherent.' And so we
were thrown on letters ; thrown upon reading this and
that, — which anybody can do, — and thus gradually getting
a notion of the history of the human mind, which enables
us (the 'Zeit-Geist' favouring) to correct in reading the
Bible some of the mistakes into which men of more meta-
physical talents than literary experience have fallen.
Cripples in like manner have been known, now and
then, to be cast by their very infirmity upon some mental
pursuit which has turned out happily for them ; and a
good fortune of this kind has perhaps been ours.
388 LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
But we do not forget that this good fortune we owe to
our weakness, and that the natural superiority remains
with our adversaries. And some day, perhaps, the nature
of God may be as well known as the nature of a cone
or a triangle ; and then the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester will deduce its properties with success, and
make their brilliant logical play about it,— rightly, instead
of, as now, wrongly; and will resume all their advantage.
But this will hardly be in our time ; so that the superiority
of this pair of distinguished metaphysicians will, never,
perhaps, after all, be of any real advantage to them, but
they will be deluded and be mocked by it until they die.
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