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           Title: New Evangelism and other Papers
      Creator(s): Drummond, Henry
     Print Basis: London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, Second Edition, 1899
          Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All;
      LC Call no: BR85.D75
     LC Subjects:

                  Christianity
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                               The New Evangelism

and other Papers by HENRY DRUMMOND,

  Author of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," "The Ideal Life," etc.

SECOND EDITION

LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON

27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1899

  NOTE

   WITH the exception of the article on "The Contribution of Science to
   Christianity," which appeared in The Expositor, none of the following
   papers were intended for publication, nor were they revised by the
   Author. In a few cases portions of the manuscript are missing, and such
   omissions are shown by asterisks.
     __________________________________________________________________

The New Evangelism: and its Relation to Cardinal Doctrines

    Paper read to Free Church Theological Society, Glasgow.

   IT is no small heroism in these times to deal with anything new. But
   this is a theological society; and I do not need to ask the protection
   of that name while I move for a little among lines of thought which may
   seem to verge on danger. One does not need to apologize for any inquiry
   made in a formative school of theology such as this; for in this
   atmosphere a seeker after truth is compelled to take up another than
   that provincial standpoint which elsewhere he is committed to.

   The question you will naturally ask at the outset is, What is the new
   Evangelism? Now that is a question that I cannot answer. I do not know
   what the new Evangelism is, and it is because I do not know that I
   write this paper. I write because I ought to know, and am trying to
   know. Many here, and all the most earnest minds of our Church, are
   anxiously asking this question, and each who has once asked it feels it
   to be one of the chief objects of his life to answer it.

   Preachers, finding that the things which stirred men's minds two
   centuries ago fail to do so now are compelled to ask themselves what
   this means. Do we need a new Evangelism, and if so, what? By the word
   Evangelism I do not mean to include merely, or even particularly,
   evangelistic work, evangelistic meetings, or what is comprehended under
   the general head of revivalism. I mean the methods of presenting
   Christian truth to men's minds in any form. By the new Evangelism, so
   far as mere definition is concerned, is meant the particular substance
   and form of evangel which is adapted to the present state of men's
   minds. The new Evangelism, in a word, is the Gospel for the Age. To
   notice the outcry against the mere mention of a Gospel for the Age is
   unnecessary here. What do we want with a new Gospel? Can the Gospel
   ever be old? might be asked elsewhere, for this is always cast in one's
   teeth when he raises those questions, as if by speaking of a new
   Evangelism he was depreciating the old Gospel. Of course we do not want
   a new evangel, we state that out at once; but an Evangelism is a
   different thing, and we do want that; we want that at the present hour,
   almost above any reform of our time.

   I. The need of a new Evangelism.

   There are two general considerations which seem to me to prove the need
   of a new Evangelism.

   The first is the threatened decline of vital religion under present
   methods of preaching. If the Gospel be the power of God unto salvation,
   we are entitled to believe that wherever it is presented to men's minds
   it will influence and impress them. If men are not influenced or
   impressed under preaching, the only alternatives are, either that the
   Gospel in substance is not the power of God unto salvation, or that the
   Gospel in form is not presented to them so as to reach them. Either the
   Gospel cannot save them, or the Gospel does not reach them. We, as
   Christians, are shut up to the latter. The Gospel is not reaching men.
   There are hundreds of churches where the Gospel is not reaching men.
   Every third minister one meets confesses that. The Church, as a whole,
   admits, for instance, that she is rapidly losing hold of young men as a
   class. What does that mean? It really means that the Gospel, as
   presented to them, has ceased to be a gospel; it is neither good nor
   new. It means that the active thinkers of a congregation, the most
   hopeful and eager, are failing to find anything there to meet their
   case. It is not simply that many of them object to religion naturally,
   which will always be the case, but that those who are looking for a
   religion do not find it. Many of ourselves know this by our own
   experience. How long did we not search; on what diverse ministries did
   we not wait; to what endless volumes did we not turn; before finding a
   message which our faith could grasp or conscience rest on, and at the
   same time our intelligence respect? "I like Christianity," said Hallam,
   the subject of Tennyson's "In Memoriam," "because it fits into all the
   folds of one's nature." How long was it before we found a form of
   Christianity which fitted into any of the folds of our nature? From the
   time they were Sabbath-school scholars onwards, it is the experience of
   thousands of young men that they find only misfit after misfit in the
   theological clothes in which they were asked to disguise themselves. If
   this has been the experience of men who were not simply passive (men
   who were not simply waiting until religion would, some day or somehow,
   seize hold of them), but who were searching for religion, what
   substance is there in the present form of it to captivate the ordinary
   run of men? Our present Evangelism, as mere matter of fact, is not
   meeting the wants of the age.

   In 1847 Dr. Chalmers found--and the statistics almost paralyzed
   him--that there were 30,000 people in Glasgow who did not go to church.
   Since then the Free Church has risen; Baptists, Independents,
   Morisonians, and Wesleyans, have poured their new life into the city.
   The most complete evangelistic organization in the kingdom, the
   Christian Union, has been at work. Have Chalmers' 30,000 been sensibly
   reduced? They have been increased exactly fivefold--out of-all
   proportion to the increase of the population. Excluding 100,000 Roman
   Catholics, there are at present 150,000 non-church-goers in the city.
   The aspect of affairs in the English towns is notoriously worse. To
   take a single case. The population of Sheffield is 240,000. It has 60
   churches. Allowing 1,000 sitters to each church there would only be
   accommodation for 60,000 people; not only, therefore, do 180,000 not go
   to church, but there is no accommodation for them if they were willing.
   What is the cause of this decline in vital religion? Why is the Gospel
   not reaching the Age? Because it is not the Gospel for the Age. It is
   the Gospel for a former Age. Because, in the form of it as used, the
   Gospel is neither good nor new. It does not fit into all the folds of
   men's being. It is not in itself bad--but it is a bad fit.

   The second general consideration is based, not on the effects of
   Evangelism, but on its nature. The very nature of truth demands from
   time to time a new Evangelism. At the opening of this college, we heard
   (Prof. Bruce's introductory lecture) that a Scotch divine at the
   Presbyterian Council in Philadelphia found himself rebuked for using
   the phrase, "Progress in Theology." Theology, he was eloquently
   reminded, was behind us. He was pointed to the Standards of his Church.
   There is no more unfortunate word in our Church's vocabulary than
   "Standard." A standard is a thing that stands. Theology is a thing that
   moves. There must be progress in everything, and more in theology than
   in anything, for the content of theology is larger and more expansive
   than the content of anything else. I do not say we are to give up the
   idea involved in the word Standard. We certainly never can. But
   standards must move. The sole condition of having them with us at any
   particular place or time is that they should move with us according to
   place or time. The word Standard, as applied to theology, is in some
   respects an unfortunate term. Buffon's Natural History was a standard.
   Linnaeus' Vegetable System was a standard. But they are not standards
   now. They were places for the mind of Science to rest on in its onward
   sweep through the centuries; but the perches are not needed there now,
   and they are vacant. These books stand like deserted inns on the
   roadside which gave hearty meals and shelter in their day, but which
   the race (with no disrespect to Linnaeus and Buffon) has long since
   passed. When the English fought Waterloo, they did not leave their
   standard at Bannockburn--they brought it up to Quatre Bras; and if our
   standard was made for Holland, or Rome, or Geneva, we must bring it up
   to Germany, and Paris, and the Highlands. But there is something deeper
   than progress in theology; there is progress in truth itself. "Truth is
   the daughter of Time." It is surely unnecessary to insist on this, for
   it is true of all kinds of truth, in the natural as well as the
   spiritual sphere. Nature is all before our eyes, as truth in the Bible
   is all before our eyes. But we do not see it all; every day we are
   seeing more. The firmament was not all mapped by astronomers at once.
   Since Calvin's time many a new star has been discovered. The stars were
   there before. Space was there before, but a new order is seen in it,
   new material for thought, new systems, especially a new perspective. To
   take another illustration: when we were children we could not
   understand how, if God made the world, He had made it so ugly; why
   everything in nature was brown, or dun, or green, and grey. Why was the
   sky not scarlet like the inside of our trumpet, or a good hearty blue,
   with unicorns on it like our drum? We thought, as we looked at the
   lichens and washed-out azure, that, by some oversight, God had
   forgotten to put the colour in. We know now why God did not put the
   colour in. We know that Nature wears the colour of the future. It is
   painted for the highest art. Vermilion is for the savage, blue with
   unicorns for the child, the neutral tints for the world's maturity--the
   developed taste. The colour was in Nature all along, but the world's
   eye was not full grown. The Greeks had almost no colour-sense at all;
   and if Mr. Ruskin sees what Homer did not see, it is not because it was
   not to be seen, but that the faculty was not developed.

   The higher art has grown; it sees in the colouring of Nature a beauty
   which must increase till the evolution of mind and eye pronounces and
   sees all perfect. It is so with Truth; the truth-sense, like the
   colour-sense, grows. Truth has her vermilion, and her high art olives
   and sage-greens. "When Solon was asked," says Plutarch, "if he had
   given the Athenians the best possible laws, he answered that they were
   as good as the people could then receive." When we were given our
   system of truth, it was as good as the people could receive--perhaps as
   good as their teachers could give. But we can receive more now; our
   taste demands sage-green, and we cannot live on vermilion. If it be
   objected that this argument renders the Bible itself effete, the answer
   is that the Bible is not a system. It is the firmament; its truth is
   without form, therefore without limit. It is a book of such boundless
   elasticity that the furthest growth of the truth-sense can never find
   its response outgrown. And it is in this elasticity that one finds a
   sanction for a new theology to be the basis of a new Evangelism. It
   encourages a new theology; the prospect and possibility of that is
   written in every epigram and paradox, in the absence of anything
   propositional or bound. The view we are to take, therefore, of the old
   theologies is not that they are false, but simply that they are old.
   Those who framed them did in their time just what we want to do in
   ours. The Reformation did not profess to create new truth; it was not a
   re-formation, but simply a restoration--a restoration of the first
   theology of the New Testament, as much of it as could then be seen. At
   the time, probably, it was a restoration, and had all the strength and
   grandeur of the first theology, with all its vividness and life.
   Probably it was suited to the wants of the time, and moved the hearts
   of preacher and people.

   We, too, can still preach it, but to some of us it has a hollow sound.
   If we would confess the honest truth, our words for it are rather those
   of respect than enthusiasm; we read it, hear it, study it, and preach
   it, but cannot honestly say that it kindles or moves us. When we wish
   to be kindled or moved, driven perhaps to prove whether we are capable
   of being kindled or moved, we leave the restoration and go back to that
   which was restored.

   Restoration can only retain its hold vitally and powerfully for a
   limited time. It is essentially an accommodation for a certain age. If
   that age has changed, it no longer accommodates me, it incommodes me.
   What was the new theology of the seventeenth century is the theology of
   the nineteenth century only on one condition--that the age has not
   grown. If it has, in the nature of things it no longer accommodates me.
   It is not bad, simply a bad fit. The then new theology, the very
   adaptation possibly that was needed, becomes now old doctrine, a mere
   old skull, an old skull with the juices dry. This is the source of what
   is called dry preaching. It is a once glorious truth disenchanted by
   time into a faded, juiceless form.

   Such then is the general effect of Time on Truth. As the serpent
   periodically casts its skin, so Truth. The number of times it has cast
   its skin marks the number of stages in its forward growth. Many of the
   shelves of our theological libraries are simply museums of the cast
   skin of Truth. The living organism has glided out of them to seek a
   roomier vestment. This is no disrespect, I repeat again, to the old
   theology. For the present vestiture in turn must take its place on the
   shelf. Nor does it imply that no beauty exists there, nor that to many
   some of the old doctrines may not prove even to-day a fountain of life.
   They do do so. Many volumes of theology have never been outgrown; many
   of the Puritans, for instance, have not only never been outgrown, but
   it is difficult to conceive how they can be. To take again the analogy
   from colour. The sage-green does not necessarily destroy the vermilion,
   though it renders many of its combinations old-fashioned. Some forms of
   truth in like manner may have reached their ultimate expression,
   certainly they may, though this is not so clear as that some have not.
   To sum up, the demand for a new theology, therefore, as the basis of a
   new Evangelism is founded upon the nature of Truth. It is not caprice,
   nor love of what is new. It is the necessity for what is new. It is in
   the nature of things.

   I have next to bring some more specific charges against the old
   theology--the old theology, that is to say, as represented in the
   ordinary preaching of the day. And lest I should be accused of
   caricaturing the doctrines in question, let me say that the rendering
   which follows represents the impression made as matter of fact by these
   doctrines upon myself. I do not implicate the whole Evangelism, nor do
   I speak directly for any one else; but I cannot more honestly
   illustrate the teaching of what was to me the current Evangelism--the
   pabulum, namely, supplied by the ordinary country pulpit, by the
   evangelist's address, by the Sabbath-school teacher, and in a limited
   sense by religious books and tracts--than by stating the sort of
   religious ideas which these fostered in myself. For convenience I
   select three as samples, taking them in theological order. I limit
   myself likewise to a very few sentences with regard to each, more
   particularly (1) as to the theological conception and (2) as to the
   ethical effect.

   (1) THE CONCEPTION OF GOD as fostered by the old Evangelism.

   The chief characteristic of the conception of God to me was its want of
   characteristic. The figure was too vague for any practical purpose. It
   was not a character. One could form no intelligent figure of God, for
   so far as it could be formed it was the God of the Old Testament. The
   Incarnation, i.e., contributed nothing. The Old Testament believer, I
   need not remind you, was very helpless as to a personal God. Each man,
   practically, had to make an image of God for himself. He was given a
   name, and a set of qualities--Holiness, Justice, Wisdom, and others,
   and out of this he had to make God. The consequence was that the great
   majority made it wrong, and worshipped they knew not what. One great
   purpose of the Incarnation was to change all this. It is to give us a
   new, defined, intelligible Figure of God. "The Son of God is come."
   said John, who saw most fully the meaning of the Word made Flesh--"The
   Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know
   him."

   The old Evangelism had little benefit here from the incarnation in this
   respect. It never got this understanding. God remained unchristianized
   in it. The Figure came no nearer. God remained Jehovah, the I AM that I
   AM. He was not God in Christ, God made intelligible by Christ, God made
   lovable by Christ, but God Eternal, Unchangeable, Invisible, therefore
   Unknowable; and in the nature of this cloud-God, the outstanding
   element was Vengeance --Anger, the ethical effect of which is obvious.
   A man's whole religion depends on his conception of God, so much so
   that to give a man religion in many cases is simply to correct his
   conception of God. But if man's natural conception of God, which is of
   a Being or of a Force opposed to him, a Being to be appeased, be not
   corrected, his religion will be a religion of Fear. God therefore was a
   God to be feared, an uncomfortable presence about one's life. He was
   always in court, either actually sitting in judgment or collecting
   material for the next case. He was the haunting presence of a great
   Recorder,


   "Who was writing now the story

   Of what little children do."

   The reiteration that God was Love did nothing to dispel this terrible
   illusion. We cannot love God because we are told, for Love is not made
   to order. We can believe God's love, but believing love is like looking
   at heat. We cannot respond to it. To excite love, we need a person, not
   a doctrine--a Father, not a deity. To be changed into the same image we
   must look at the glory of God, not in se, but in the face of Jesus. The
   old Evangelism was defective in not exhibiting God in the face of
   Jesus. It exhibited God in the nailed hands of Jesus; this is an aspect
   of God, an essential aspect, but not God. Next--

   (2) THE CONCEPTION OF CHRIST.

   If the conception of God was vague, the conception of Christ was worse.
   He was a theological person. His function was to adjust matters between
   the hostile kingdoms of heaven and earth.

   I do not acquit myself of blame here, and I hope no one else has an
   experience so shocking, but until well on in my college course, and
   after hearing hundreds of sermons and addresses on the Person and Work
   of Christ, the ruling idea left in my mind was that Christ was a mere
   convenience. He was the second person in the Trinity, existing for the
   sake of some logical or theological necessity, a doctrinal convenience.
   He was the creation of theology, and His function was purely
   utilitarian. This might have been theological, but it was not
   religious. Religion said, "Christ our Life." Theology said, "Christ our
   Logic."

   This is a painful confession, but it is far more painful to think of
   its basis. It is impossible to believe that in these sermons I was not
   presented with the true aspects of Christ's life and character. But it
   is also almost impossible to believe that these were insisted on with
   anything like the same frequency or reality as the aspect I have named.
   What moves an attentive mind in a sermon is its residual truth, not the
   complementary passages, not the squarings with other doctrines, but
   that truth on which the whole theme is strung, the vertebral column
   which, though hid, is the true pillar of the rest. Now the residuum to
   me--and it is surprising how unerringly this betrays itself and stands
   nakedly out from all mere words--was always this. Whatever other points
   were thrown in, whatever devout expressions were mixed with it,
   whatever appeals to the affections, this was the prominent half-truth,
   and therefore whole error.

   This is the explanation, I think, of the fact, now pretty well
   acknowledged, that the old theology made almost nothing of the humanity
   of Christ. In such a body of divinity clearly there was little room for
   so mundane a thing as humanity. The arrangements in which Christ played
   a part were looked at almost exclusively from the Divine and cosmical
   standpoint. The question was, how God could forgive sin, and yet
   justify the sinner; how God could do this and that, as if we had
   anything to do with it. Such a divinity necessarily wanted humanity,
   the humanity of man as well as the humanity of Christ. Man was a
   cypher, the mere theological unit, the x of doctrine (his character,
   his aims, his achievements, his influence, were neither here nor there)
   and an unknown quantity, one of the parties in the proposition. And it
   was not necessary for this theological unit to have a humanitarian
   Christ, except as to the mere identity of flesh, and this was requisite
   only to complete the theological proposition.

   The emphasis on the humanity of Christ, which, happily, has now crept
   into our best teaching, marks more distinctly perhaps than anything
   else the dawn of the new Evangelism. Still, it must be confessed that
   in influential quarters the revival of this doctrine is viewed even yet
   with no inconsiderable alarm The newer Lives of Christ, for instance,
   in which the humanity is conspicuously developed, are constantly
   assailed as Unitarian, and within the last fortnight a Life of Christ
   has been given to the world, from the preface to which one can almost
   gather that the author's object is to provide an antidote to the
   erroneous tendencies of these works.

   Men fail to see that it was God Himself who conceived this wonderful
   idea of a humanitarian Christ. When God does anything, He never does it
   by halves. When He made the Word flesh, when He made Jesus a Man, He
   made a Man, and it is just because He carried out His idea so perfectly
   that Unitarianism is possible. When we say Man, then let us mean Man.
   It is a mistaken scruple even to minimize His Humanity. In our zeal for
   the doctrines of the Atonement we are really robbing God of His
   doctrine of the Incarnation.

   (3) A third point to notice is, The old Evangelism in its CONCEPTION OF
   SALVATION, and of religion generally. The characteristic to notice here
   is that religion was not so much a question of character as of status.
   Man's standing in the sight of God was the great thing. Was he
   sheltered judicially behind Christ, or was he standing on his own
   merits? This is a vital question to ask, certainly, but the way in
   which legal status was put sanctioned the most erroneous notions as to
   religion and life. Salvation was a thing that came into force at death.
   It was not a thing for life. Good works, of course, were permitted, and
   even demanded, but they were never very clearly reconcilable with
   grace. The prime end of religion was to get off; the plan of salvation
   was an elaborate scheme for getting off; and after a man had faced that
   scheme, understood it, acquiesced in it, the one thing needful was
   secured. Life after that was simply a waiting until the plan should be
   executed by his death. What use life was, this one thing being
   adjusted, it were hard to say. It was not in the religious sphere at
   all. The world was to pass away, and the lust thereof, and all time
   given to it, all effort spent on it, was so much loss, like putting
   embroidery upon a shroud.

   When a preacher did speak of character, of the imitation of Christ, of
   self-denial, of righteousness, of truth and humility, the references
   theologically were not only not clear, but were generally introduced
   with an apology for enforcing them at all. Nine times out of ten, too,
   the preacher took them all back under the last head, where he spoke of
   man's inability and the necessity of the Holy Spirit. The ethical
   effect of even weakening the absolute connection between religion and
   morality is too obvious to be referred to, so I shall pass on.

   Having now given samples of the teaching of the old Evangelism, I need
   not take up the time to complete its circle of theology, for the
   doctrines indicated rule and colour all the rest. No doubt what has
   been said up till now is more or less commonplace to most of you, and
   (with regard to the more) I now proceed to attempt something more
   constructive, for which, however, all that has gone before has been a
   somewhat necessary preparation. In what follows I can only hope to
   indicate what dimly seem to me to be the lines upon which a new,
   intelligent, and living Evangelism must be built up.

   II. What I am most anxious to do here is to arrive at principles. I
   make no attempt to sketch portions of a detailed theology, such as one
   might wish to see taking the place of some of the old doctrines. That
   will all come in time; i.e., if it ought to come. It is the principles
   which are to guide us in constructing the new Evangelism that are the
   true difficulty. We have all our own opinion as to special points of
   contrast, and, as we think, of improvement; but what outstanding
   general truths are to regulate the movement as a whole? I fear I shall
   only have time to refer to two.

   (1) Perhaps the most important principle, in the first place, is that
   the new Evangelism must not be doctrinal. By this is not meant that it
   is to be independent of doctrine, but simply that its truths as
   conveyed to the people are not to be in the propositional form. With
   regard to doctrine, to avoid misconception, let me say at once we must
   recognise it as one of the three absolutely essential possessions of a
   Christian Church.

   The three outstanding departments of the Church's work are criticism,
   dogmatism, and Evangelism. Without the first there is no guarantee of
   truth, without the second there is no defence of truth, and without the
   third there is no propagation of truth. Criticism then, in a word,
   secures truth, dogmatism conserves it, and evangelism spreads it. Now,
   when it is said that preaching is not to be doctrinal, what is meant is
   this. When Evangelism wishes to receive truth, so as to expound it, it
   is to refer to criticism for information rather than to dogmatism. And
   when it gives out what it has received, it is neither to be critical in
   form, nor doctrinal.

   To deal with this in detail. When Evangelism wishes to receive truth in
   order to expound it, it is to refer to criticism for that truth rather
   than to dogmatism. This simply means that a man is to go to a reliable
   edition of the Bible for his truth, and not to theology.

   Why should he take this trouble? Does not theology give him Bible truth
   in accurate, convenient, and, moreover, in logical propositions? There
   it lies ready made to his hand, all cut and dry; why should he not use
   it? Just because it is all cut and dry. Just because it lies there
   ready made in accurate, convenient, and logical propositions. You
   cannot cut and dry truth. You cannot accept truth ready made without
   its ceasing to live as truth. And that is one of the reasons why the
   current Evangelism is dead.

   There is in reality no worse enemy under certain circumstances to a
   true Evangelism than a propositional theology, with the latter
   controlling the former by the authority of the Church. For one does not
   then receive the truth for himself; he accepts it bodily. He begins,
   set up by his Church with a stock in trade which has cost him nothing,
   and which, though it may serve him all his life, is just as much worth
   exactly as his belief in his Church. One effect of this is to relieve
   him of all personal responsibility. This possession of truth, moreover,
   thus lightly won, is given to him as infallible. There is nothing to
   add to it. It is a system. And to start a man in life with such a
   principle is a degradation. All through life, instead of working
   towards truth, he is working from it, or what he is told is it.

   An infallible standard is a temptation to a mechanical faith.
   Infallibility always paralyzes. It gives rest, but it is the rest of
   stagnation. Men make one great act of faith at the beginning of their
   lives--then have done with it for ever. All moral, intellectual, and
   spiritual effort is over; and a cheap theology ends in a cheap life. It
   is the same thing that makes men take refuge in the Church of Rome and
   in a set of dogmas. Infallibility meets the deepest desire of man, but
   meets it in the most fatal form. All desire is given to stimulate to
   action; much more this, the deepest,--the hunger after truth. Men deal
   with this desire in two ways. First, by Unbelief,--that crushes it by
   blind force; second, by Infallibility,--that lulls it to sleep by blind
   faith. The effect of a doctrinal theology is the effect of
   infallibility. The wholesale belief in a system, however grand it may
   be, grant even that it were infallible--the wholesale belief in this
   system as the starting point for a working Evangelism is not Faith,
   though it always gets that name. It is mere credulity. There is a vital
   difference between Faith and credulity. Realize what it fully amounts
   to, and you will see how much, besides this, there is in the religion
   of this country which falls before the distinction. There is no real
   religious value in this belief; for it is more belief in a Church than
   in truth. It is a comfortable, credulous rest upon authority, not a
   hard-earned, self-obtained personal possession Truth never becomes
   truth until it is earned. The moral responsibility here, besides, is
   nothing. The Westminster Divines are responsible, not I. And anything
   which destroys responsibility, or transfers it, cannot but be injurious
   in its moral tendency, and useless in itself.

   It may be objected, perhaps, that this statement of the paralysis,
   spiritual and mental, induced by infallibility applies also to the
   Bible. The answer is that though the Bible is infallible, the
   infallibility is not in such a form as to become a temptation. And that
   leads to a remark as to the contrast between the form of truth in the
   Bible and the form in theology. In theology, as we have seen, truth is
   propositional, tied up in neat parcels, systematized and arranged in
   logical order. In the Bible, truth is a fountain. There is an
   atmosphere here, an expansiveness, an infinity. Theology is essentially
   finite, and it only contains as much infinite truth as can be chained
   down by its finite words. The very point of it is, that it is defined,
   otherwise it is no use.

   To the practical question. There are few minds which can really take
   truth in this theological form. Truth is a thing to be slowly absorbed,
   not to be bolted whole. In this country we have been so accustomed to
   get and give our truth in the propositional form, that many
   congregations do not recognise it if stated in the ordinary language of
   life. But this is the only living language. And the failure to catch
   sight of the truth when clothed in this language means that it has not
   been comprehended before as a substance, but as a form.

   "Two or three days ago, I dined," says Lynch in "Letters to the
   Scattered," "with a little child whose mamma had prepared for him a
   very wholesome and delightful pudding. what is in it?' said the child.
   There's an egg in it,' said the mother. Where's the egg?' asked the
   child, after close and incredulous inspection. It is mixed with it,'
   she explained."

   "There are many grown men and women," adds Lynch, "that unless they see
   the very form of a doctrine will not believe they can have the
   nutriment of it. They ask, Where's the egg?' and if you say it is mixed
   with it--the doctrine of Atonement, or of Justification, or
   Sanctification--and was diffused through the whole of what was said,
   they shake their heads suspiciously. They will have nothing to do with
   such preaching, or such books, or such people."

   There is nothing truer, certainly, than that in this country people at
   once suspect adulteration if you do not present them with the actual
   egg, shell and all. But what I am trying to show is that this demand is
   a mistake, and defeats its own end. The truth is Nature never provides
   for man's wants in any direction, bodily, mental, or spiritual, in such
   a form as that he can simply accept her gifts automatically. She puts
   all the mechanical powers at his disposal, but he must make his lever.
   She gives him corn, but he must grind it. She prepares coal, but he
   must dig it; and even when she grows him apples and plums, ready-made
   fruits, he has at least to digest them, and in most cases he had better
   cook them. A law of nature like this, we are justified in carrying by
   analogy into the region of the spiritual. A man can no more assimilate
   truth in infallible lumps than he can corn. Though it be perfect,
   infallible, yet he has to do everything to it before he can use it.
   Corn is perfect, all the products of Nature are perfect, and perfection
   in Nature corresponds to infallibility in truth. But perfect though
   they are, few of the products of Nature are available as they stand. So
   with Truth. Man must separate, think, prepare, dissolve, digest, work,
   and most of these he must do for himself and within himself. If it be
   replied that this is exactly what theology does, I answer, it is
   exactly what it does not. It simply does what the greengrocer does when
   he arranges his apples and plums in the shop-windows. He may tell me a
   Magnum Bonum from a Victoria, or a Baldwin from a Newtown Pippin; but
   he does not help me to eat it. His information is useful, and for
   scientific horticulture absolutely essential. Should a sceptical
   pomologist deny that there was such a thing as a Baldwin or mistake it
   for a Newtown Pippin, we should be glad to refer the said pomologist to
   him. But if we were hungry, and an orchard were handy, we should not
   trouble him. This brings us back to the original proposition then, that
   the new Evangelism as a provision for the hunger of men's souls is not
   to be doctrinal. Their truth is to be given them, not in infallible
   lumps, but as a diffused nutriment. Truth is an orchard rather than a
   museum. Dogmatism will be very useful to us when scientific necessity
   makes us go to the museum. Criticism will be very useful in seeing that
   only fruit-bearers grow in the orchard and neither weeds nor poisonous
   sports. But truth in infallible propositional lumps is not natural,
   proper, assimilable food for the soul of man; and therefore a
   propositional theology is not the subject-matter of Evangelism.

   (2) So much for exposition of the nature of the truth with which
   Evangelism is concerned. The second principle to which we now turn
   refers to a matter of equal moment--the faculty which deals with truth.
   And I might sum up what is to be said under this head in this
   proposition--The leading Faculty of the new theology is not to be the
   Reason. The previous proposition deals with the form of truth. This is
   meant to elucidate the principle of arriving at truth. It is a deeper
   question, and strikes at a fundamental difference between the old and
   the new theology.

   The old theology was largely a product of reason. It was an elaborate,
   logical construction. The complaint against it is that, as a logical
   construction, it was arrived at by a faculty of the mind, and not by a
   faculty of the soul. On close scrutiny it turns out to be really
   nothing more nor less than rationalism.

   The doctrine of the Atonement, for instance, and the whole federal
   theology is an elaborate rationalism. The common way of presenting
   salvation is the most naked syllogism: "I believe. He that believeth
   hath everlasting life, therefore I have everlasting life." I do not
   pause to point out that a theology of this sort may be received by any
   one without any spiritual effect whatsoever being produced. It does not
   take a religious man to be a theologian; it simply takes a man with
   fair reasoning powers. This man happens to apply these powers to
   doctrinal subjects, but in no other sense than he might apply them to
   astronomy or physics. I knew a man, the author of a well-known orthodox
   theological work which has passed through a dozen editions, and lies on
   the shelves of all our libraries. I never knew that man to go to
   church, nor to give a farthing in charity, though he was a rich man,
   nor to give any sensible sign whatever that he had ever heard of
   Christianity. It is equally unnecessary to point out that if reason is
   the exclusive or primary faculty in theology, theology itself breaks
   down under rigid tests at almost every point. Its first principle, for
   example, that God is, contains a distinct contradiction, as has been
   repeatedly pointed out. Many philosophers, therefore, in being
   presented with theology as the expression of the Christian religion,
   have had no alternative but to become atheists. The reasoning faculty
   then cannot be the organ of the new Evangelism, for its conclusions are
   philosophically assailable. But I am not dealing here with philosophy,
   and it is not to be understood that I am using terms--Reason, for
   instance--in any particular philosophical sense. I am looking at the
   question exclusively from its practical side. And the question I ask
   myself is, "When I apprehend spiritual truth, what faculty do I
   employ?" When I say it is not the reason, I do not purposely make the
   distinction between the Understanding and the Reason, which Kant and
   his followers, for example, do in philosophy, and Coleridge in
   religion, making the Understanding the logical faculty and the Reason
   the intuitive faculty. I use the word in its ordinary working sense,
   meaning by it, if you like, the logical understanding of the writer's
   mind.

   What faculty do I employ, then, in apprehending spiritual truth? What
   is the primary faculty of the new Evangelism if it is not the Reason?
   Leaving philosophical distinctions aside again, I think it is the
   IMAGINATION. Overlook the awkwardness of this mere word, and ask
   yourself if this is not the organ of your mind which gives you a vision
   of truth. The subject-matter of the new Evangelism must be largely the
   words of Christ, the circle of ideas of Christ in their harmony, and
   especially in their perspective. Sit down for a moment and hear Him
   speak. Take almost any of His words. To what faculty do they appeal?
   Almost without exception to the Imagination. And this is the main thing
   I wish to say to-night. I do not merely refer to His parables, to His
   allusions to nature, to the miracles, to His endless symbolism--the
   comparisons between Himself and bread, water, vine, wine, shepherd,
   doctor, light, life, and a score of others. But all His most important
   sayings are put up in such form as to make it perfectly clear that they
   were deliberately designed for the Imagination.

   You cannot indeed really put up religious truth in any other form. You
   can put up facts, information, but God's truth will not go into a word.
   You must put it in an image. God Himself could not put truth in a word,
   therefore He made the Word flesh. There are few things less
   comprehended than this relation of truth to language.


   "Was stets und aller Orten

   Sich ewig jung erweist

   Ist in gebundnen Worten

   Ein ungebundner Geist."

   The purpose of revelation is to exhibit the mind of God--the
   ungebundner Geist. The vehicle is words, gebundnen Worten. What words?
   Words which are windows and not prisons. Words of the intellect cannot
   hold God--the finite cannot hold the infinite. But an image can. So God
   has made it possible for us by giving us an external world to make
   image-words. The external world is not a place to work in, or to feed
   in, but to see in. It is a world of images, the external everywhere
   revealing the eternal. The key to the external world is to look not at
   the things which are seen but in looking at the things which are seen
   to see through them to the things that are unseen. Look at the ocean.
   It is mere water--a thing which is seen; but look again, look through
   that which is seen, and you see the limitlessness of Eternity. Look at
   a river, another of God's images of the unseen. It is also water, but
   God has given it another form to image a different truth. There is
   Time, swift and silent. There is Life, irrevocable, passing. But the
   most singular truth of this, as suggested a moment ago, is the
   Incarnation. There was no word in the world's vocabulary for Himself.
   In Nature we had images of Time and Eternity. The seasons spoke of
   Change, the mountains of Stability. The home-life imaged Love. Law and
   Justice were in the civil system. The snow was Purity, the rain,
   Fertility. By using these metaphors we could realize feebly Time and
   Eternity, Stability and Change. But there was no image of Himself. So
   God made one. He gave a word in Flesh--a word in the Image-form. He
   gave the Man Christ Jesus the express image of His person This was the
   one image that was wanting in the image-vocabulary of truth, and the
   Incarnation supplied it.

   God had really supplied this image before, but man had spoilt it,
   disfigured it to such an extent that it was unrecognisable. God made
   man in His own image; that was a word made flesh. From its ruins man
   might have reconstructed an image of God, but the audacity of the
   attempt repelled him, and for centuries men had forgotten that the
   image of God was in themselves.

   How, then, do you characterize that irreverent elaboration of theology
   which attempts to show you in words what God has had to do in the slow
   unfolding of Himself in history, and by that final resort, when words
   were useless, of incarnating the Word, giving us the manifestation of a
   living God in a living Word. These doctrines stand apart. They are
   above words. It is a mockery for the Reason to define and formulate
   here, as if by heaping up words she could drive the truth into a corner
   and dispense it in phrases as required. It is just as clear as a simple
   question of rhetoric, that Christ's words were positively protected
   against the mere touch of reason. They were put up in such form in many
   cases as to challenge reason to make beginning, middle, or end of them.
   Try to reason out a parable. Try to read into it theology, as our
   forefathers often did; or dispensational truth, as certain erratic
   theologians do to-day, and it becomes either utterly contemptible or
   utterly unintelligible.

   You see a parable, you discern it; it enters your mind as an image, you
   image it, imagine it. I am the Bread of Life. With what faculty do we
   apprehend that? We look at it long and earnestly, and at first are
   utterly baffled by it. But as we look it grows more and more
   transparent, and we see through it. We do not understand it; if we were
   asked what we saw, we should be surprised at the difficulty we had in
   defining it. Some image rose out of the word Bread, became slowly
   living, sank into our soul, and vanished. The peculiarity of this
   expression is that it is not a simile. "I am like bread." Christ does
   not say that. I am bread--the thing itself. And that faculty, standing
   face to face with truth, draws aside the veil, or pierces it, seizes
   the living substance, absorbs it; and the soul is nourished.

   Besides the parable, the metaphor, and the metaphor which is no
   metaphor, Christ has two other favourite modes of expression. These are
   the axiom and the paradox. The axiom is the basis of certainty; the
   reason is inoperative without it, but it is not apprehended by reason.
   It is seen, not proved. Again, therefore, we are dealing with the
   Imagination. The paradox is the darkest of all figures. "He that loveth
   his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life shall find it."
   What can reason make of that? It is an utter blank; it absolutely
   repels reason. But for that very cause it is the richest mine for the
   imagination. It is not the darkest figure, but the lightest, because
   the rays come from exactly opposite sides, and meet as truth in the
   middle. The shell of words, once burst, reveals a whole world, in which
   the illuminated mind runs riot, and revels in the boundlessness of
   truth.

   Had the reason been able to sink its shaft, it might have brought up a
   nugget. Theology would have gained another proposition, another neat
   parcel, and there would have been the end of it. As it is, it is
   without end, limitless, infinite truth, incapable in that form of
   becoming uninteresting, unreal, included in a human phrase. It is this
   sense of depth about Christ's words which is the sure test of their
   truth. They shade off, every one, into the unknown, and the roots of
   the known are always in the unknown. Omnia exeunt in mysterium. Dogma
   is simply an attempt to undo this. It takes up the sublimest truth in
   its fingers with no more awe than an anatomist lifts a muscle with his
   forceps, turns it about, dissects it, determines the genus and species
   of the organism to which it belongs, and marks it down "described" for
   all future time. We know all about it--all about it. We see the whole
   thing quite clearly; it is as simple as the frog's muscle. The new
   Evangelism can never deal with truth in this way. It will never say
   that it sees quite clearly. It may remain ignorant, but it will never
   presume to say there is no darkness, no mystery, no unknown. It will
   sound truth, it will go fathoms further perhaps than the reason can go,
   but it will come back saying we have found no bottom. It is not all as
   clear as the old theology; it has that dimness of an older theology
   which sees through a glass darkly, which knows in part, and which,
   because it knows in part, knows the more certainly that it shall know
   hereafter.

   The want of apprehension of the quality of truth by-much of the
   propositional theology is in nothing better evidenced than by this
   mistake as to its quantity. It robbed it at once of the infinite and
   the supernatural. The soul-food was taken out of the truth, and the
   husks thrown to the intellect. As a faculty, then, the reason is not
   large enough to be the organ of Christianity. It has a very high and
   prominent place to play in Christianity, but prima facie it lacks the
   first and the second qualities of a religious faculty. The first of
   these qualities is that just mentioned, largeness and penetration. The
   second is universality. All men cannot reason, but all men can see. In
   the rudest savage and in the youngest child, the imagination is strong.
   And Christ addressed His religion to the most unlettered, to the
   youngest child. He boldly asserted that His religion was for the
   youngest child. He directly appealed again and again to the
   child-spirit. "Except ye become as a little child, ye shall in no wise
   enter into the kingdom of heaven." To object to this that Christ was
   speaking to the Oriental mind is of course beside the mark. Christ was
   not an Oriental speaking to the Oriental, He was the Son of Man
   speaking to man in the universal language of truth. I have already
   apologised for using this word Imagination, but I think I have made
   clear the idea. I am not concerned longer, therefore, about retaining
   it. I am not sure that it is the right word. You might perhaps prefer
   to call it faith or intuition, or the spirit of discernment, or a
   subjective idealism, but the name is of no moment. The idea I have
   tried to make clear is that this is the faculty which works with the
   eyes, as contrasted with reason, which works with the hands. The old
   theology manipulates truth, the new is to discern it. As preachers our
   aim must be, not to prove things, but to make men see things.

   This conclusion with regard to the faculty of the new Evangelism is
   derived simply from observation. It contains the crucial point of the
   whole question, and I have little more to say except in support of it.
   But I need scarcely remind those of you who are in any way conversant
   with German philosophy that distinctions closely corresponding to this
   have been drawn in philosophy, and long indeed before the German
   philosophers arose. The later form of this philosophy filtered into
   English literature early in this century, and at once awakened profound
   interest, and, it is fair to say, alarm. Through such men as Coleridge
   and the Hares it was easily traced to its source in Schelling and Kant.
   But that Schelling and Kant, Fichte and Hegel had differentiated this
   faculty, or something like this faculty, in the philosophical sphere,
   was against it. The new influence for the time was quenched. The
   unfortunate thing with the English neo-Platonists was that they paid
   too little attention to the practical aspects of truth. Had Coleridge
   done this, had Maurice and Hare done this more, we should have been
   farther on to-day with the new Evangelism. These men, and especially
   Coleridge, were far too transcendental in their metaphysics to be the
   prophets of the new Evangelism, but with many other errors they held
   the germ of a very great truth. With Coleridge the imagination was a
   synthesis of the reasoning power and the sensing power. His definition
   is "that reconciling and mediatory power, which, incorporating the
   reason in images of sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the
   senses, by the permanent and self-circling energies of the reason,
   gives birth to a system of symbols harmonious in themselves, and
   consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors." [1]
   Again he says [2] "the grounds of the real truth, the life, the
   substance, the hope, the love, in one word the faith, these are
   derivatives from the practical, moral, and spiritual nature and being
   of man."

   I do not stop to inquire here as to where Coleridge's version of "the
   Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" leads. The
   new Evangelism doubtless will have its apologetics when it exists. Nor
   do I enter upon the question as to how far this light exists in every
   man, or how far it is true that those only who are born again can see
   the kingdom of God. These are particular applications which may just
   now be passed over. But I should like to go on with the general subject
   by adding another quotation, this time from science, bearing upon the
   general subject.

   In I870 Professor Tyndall wrote an address entitled, "On the Scientific
   Use of the Imagination." The motto or text of this address is taken
   from a paper read before the Royal Society some years ago by its then
   president, Sir Benjamin Brodie. It says: "Physical investigation, more
   than anything besides, helps to teach us the actual value and right use
   of the imagination--that wondrous faculty which properly controlled by
   experience and reflection becomes the noblest attribute of man; the
   source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery to science,
   without the aid of which Newton would never have invented fluxions, nor
   Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have
   found another continent." Then Tyndall goes on to say: "We find
   ourselves gifted with the power of forming mental images of the
   ultra-sensible; and by this power, when duly chastened and controlled,
   we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses.
   There are Tories even in Science who regard Imagination as a faculty to
   be feared and avoided rather than employed." But "Imagination becomes
   the prime mover of the physical discoverer. Newton's passage from a
   falling apple to a falling moon was at the outset a leap of the
   Imagination. In Faraday the exercise of this faculty preceded all his
   experiments . . . . In fact, without this power our knowledge of Nature
   would be a mere tabulation of co-existences and sequences." If Tyndall
   claims so much for the scientific use of the Imagination, what may we
   not claim for the religious use of it? What is not possible to an
   Imagination guided by reason and illuminated, as we hold it may be, and
   is, by the Spirit of God? "Without this power," we might almost
   paraphrase from Tyndall, "our knowledge of religion must be, or is, a
   mere tabulation of co-existences and sequences." There is one preacher
   to whom, from his printed sermons, I have many times been much beholden
   and from whom I also quote a sentence. I do not stay to characterize
   the sermons of Horace Bushnell, but he has long been to me a
   representative man of the new Evangelism, although I knew nothing of
   him, of his life, of his methods of thought or work. But the other day
   he died, and his life was written. There I have found, to my great
   amazement, that Bushnell's method of looking at truth is defined by
   himself as an exercise of the Imagination. He has actually published an
   article, which appears in America bearing this title, "The Gospel a
   Gift to the Imagination." Permit me to quote a sentence or two from the
   biography. Bushnell is speaking in propria persona. "The Christian
   Gospel is pictorial. Its every line or lineament is traced in some
   image or metaphor, and no ingenuity can get it away from metaphor. No
   animal ever understood a metaphor. That belongs to man. . . . All the
   truths of religion are given by images, all God's revelation is made to
   the imagination, and all the rites, and services, and ceremonies of the
   olden times were only a preparation of draperies and figures for what
   was to come, the basis of words sometime to be used as metaphors of the
   Christian grace. Christ is God's last metaphor!' the express image of
   God's person! and when we have gotten all the metaphoric meanings of
   His life and death, all that is expressed and bodied in His person of
   God's saving help, and new-creating, sin-forgiving, reconciling love,
   the sooner we dismiss all speculations on the literalities of His
   incarnate miracles, His derivation, the composition of His person, His
   suffering, plainly transcendent as regards our possible understanding
   --the wiser we shall be in our discipleship. . . . If we try to make a
   science out of the altar metaphors, it will be no gospel that we make,
   but a poor dry jargon--(rather) a righteousness that makes nobody
   righteous, a justice satisfied by injustice, a mercy on the basis of
   pay, a penal deliverance that keeps on foot all the penal liabilities."
   One passage more. "There is no book in the world that contains so many
   repugnances or antagonistic forms of assertion as the Bible. Therefore,
   if any man please to play off his constructive logic upon it, he can
   easily show it up as the absurdest book in the world. But whosoever
   wants, on the other hand, really to behold, and receive all truth, and
   would have the truth-world overhang him as an empyrean of stars,
   complex, multitudinous, striving antagonistically, yet comprehended,
   height above height, and deep under deep in a boundless score of
   harmony--what man soever content with no small rote of logic and
   catechism, reaches with true hunger after this, and will offer himself
   to the many-sided forms of the Scripture with a perfectly ingenuous and
   receptive spirit, he shall find his nature flooded with senses,
   vastnesses and powers of truth such as it is even greatness to feel."

   Gentlemen, after the old Evangelism, this is a new world to live in.
   There is air here. Take the Gospel as a gift to the Imagination, and
   you are entered into a large place. It is like a conversion. We read
   the Bible before with a key. A lamp was put in our hands with which to
   search for truth--rather to search for Scripture proofs of a truth
   thrust down our throats. We were not told the Bible was the lamp. I
   once saw an hotel-keeper on a starlit night in autumn erect an electric
   light to show his guests Niagara. It never occurred to the creature
   that God's dim, mystic starlight was ten million times more brilliant
   to man's soul than ten million carbons. When will it occur to us that
   God's truth is Light--self-luminous; to be seen because self-luminous?
   When shall we understand that it has no speech nor language, that men
   are to come to the naked truth with their naked eyes, bringing no
   candle? The old theology was luminous once. But it is not now.
   "Election," says Froude in "Bunyan," "Election, conversion, day of
   grace, coming to Christ, have been pawed and fingered by unctuous hands
   for near two hundred years. The bloom is gone from the flower. The
   plumage, once shining with hues direct from Heaven, is soiled and
   bedraggled. The most solemn of all realities have been degraded into
   the passwords of technical theology." It is from this that we are to
   emancipate ourselves, and, God helping us, others. We have a Gospel in
   the new Evangelism which for a hundred years the world has been waiting
   for. We have a Gospel which those who even faintly see it thank God
   that they live, and live to preach it. But I am not quite done yet.
   What will be, what are, the main hindrances to the acceptance of the
   new Evangelism? They are mainly two.

   (1) Unspirituality and (2) Laziness.

   (1) All formal religions are efforts to escape spirituality. It matters
   not what the form is--ritual, idols or doctrine, the essence of all is
   the same--they are devices to escape spiritual worship. The carnal mind
   is enmity against God--hates any spiritual exercise or effort. This is
   at the bottom of the perpetuation of the old theology. There is nothing
   a man will not do to evade spirituality. Do we not all know moods in
   which we would rather walk twenty miles than take family worship? And
   there are moods in which men find it of all efforts least easy to come
   into contact with living truth. This is always difficult: to know His
   doctrine, a man must do the will of God. The supreme factor in arriving
   at spiritual knowledge is not theology, it is consecration. But for
   years and years--and it is one of the saddest truths in this world--a
   preacher may go on manipulating his theological forms without the
   slightest exercise of religion, unknown to himself, and unnoticed by
   his people.

   (2) The second obstacle is laziness. To make doctrinal sermons requires
   no effort. A man has simply to take down his Hodge, and there it is.
   Every Sabbath, though not formally expressed, he has the same heads.
   And the people understand it, or at least they understood it twenty
   years ago when he preached, and preached well and with real heart, in
   the bloom of his early ministry. But for years now he has been a mere
   mechanic, a repeater of phrases, a reproducer of Hodge. And the
   people--they too are spared all effort. They are delighted with their
   minister. He in these days preaches the Gospel.

   A caution may be necessary. In His exhaustless wisdom, in speaking on
   these subjects the Lord Jesus said: "No man having tasted the old wine
   straightway desireth new." We can speak of these things broadly to one
   another here, but we cannot with too much delicacy insinuate the new
   Evangelism upon the Church. The old is better, men say; and if any man
   really feels that it is better, I do not know that we should urge it
   upon him at all. There are many saints in our Churches, and if the old
   wine is really their life-blood, we can but wish them Godspeed with all
   humility. Younger men will come to us, too, when our wine is old and
   the sun has set upon our new theology; but to the many who are waiting
   for the dawn, and these are many, our evangel may perhaps bring some
   light and fulfil gladness and liberty.

   Least of all have we anything to do with wilfully destroying the old.
   Christ was never destructive in His methods. It was very exquisite
   tact, a true understanding of men and a delicate respect for them, that
   made Him say, "I came not to destroy but to fulfil."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] "Statesman's Manual," p. 229; vide Rigg, "Modern Anglican
   Theology," p. 15.

   [2] áids, p. 141.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Method of the New Theology, and some of its Applications

    Address delivered to Theological Society of F. C. College, Glasgow, Jan.,
    1892.

   I SHALL begin by congratulating you, and myself, on the free
   theological atmosphere in which it is the lot of this society to do its
   work. Never has there been fresher air in that dusty realm than there
   is to-day; and if we pay the price for our freedom in bewilderment or
   doubt, in the suspicion of our enemies, in the helplessness of our
   wisest friends to give us certainty, we have at least the sympathy of
   the best around us, and the stimulus of working in an age when theology
   is no longer stagnant, but the most living of all the sciences. Of what
   we seem to be leaving behind us we can speak without panic or regret.
   Much of what has been in faith or practice is visibly passing away. But
   there is little trace in this process of deliberate destruction; it
   resembles rather a natural decay. And it is the beauty of this change,
   and the guarantee of its wholesomeness, that it has worked without
   serious violence, that it has come, as all great kingdoms do, almost
   without observation.

   Though this may appear to us a crisis, it is well to remind ourselves
   that to true thought crisis is chronic. There is nothing superior about
   ourselves that we shall have the privilege of thinking in a new way
   about theology. It is the world that progresses. Modern thought is not
   a new thing in history, nor is it an unrelated thing. It is simply the
   growing fringe of the coral reef, the bit of land far out, in contact
   on the one hand with the unexplored sea--the bit of land far out in the
   ocean of unexplored truth--on the other with the territory just taken
   in, and the place, in short, where busy minds are making the additions
   to what other busy minds have built through the ages into the growing
   continent of knowledge. After all, it is only the old reef that we
   extend; it is on the past we build; and the man who ignores the
   continuity of the past, and attempts to raise an island of his own, may
   be sure that the world's lease of it will be very short. New ideas are,
   in the main, a new light on old ideas, and nothing is gained by a
   ruthless handling of the older gospel which our fathers held and
   taught, and which for the most part made them better men than their
   sons.

   But what is this newer theology, and what is the direction of the
   movement where changes and perturbations come home to us in such a
   society as this with so great an interest?

   To some the new theology is a re-arrangement of doctrines in a new
   order, a bringing of those into prominence which suit the need and
   temper of the age, and an allowing of others to sink into shadow
   because they are either distasteful to this generation or rest on a
   basis which it will not honour. We are told, for example, that the
   accent in the modern gospel is placed no longer upon faith, but rather
   upon love. We are told by others that what they see is the intricate
   theology of Paul beginning to give place to the simpler theology of
   John, or both being for the time forgotten in the still simpler
   Christianity of Christ. To others the change is from the great Latin
   conception of the Divine Sovereignty of Augustine and Calvin to the
   earlier Greek theology, with its emphasis on the immanence of Christ,
   or to its renaissance in the nineteenth century presentation of the
   incarnation, and the Fatherhood of God.

   But, important as these characterizations are, to contrast the
   subject-matter of the new and the old Evangelism is not enough. In a
   theological society we must get down to principles, and I wish in a
   word to state what seems to me the essential nature of this change, and
   to illustrate its practical value by plain examples.

   The real contrast between the new and the old theology is one of
   method. The way to make a sermon on the old lines, for example, was to
   take down Hodge, or by an earlier generation Owen, and see what the
   truth was, then to work from that--to proclaim what Hodge said, to
   expound, assert, reiterate, appeal in the name of Hodge and
   anathematise and excommunicate everybody who did not agree with Hodge.
   The new method declines to begin with Hodge, or Owen, or even Calvin.
   It does not work from truth, but towards truth. It aims not at
   asserting a dogma, but at unearthing a principle. With all respect to
   authors, it yet declines authority. These are two at least of its more
   obvious marks--it does not only allow, but insists on the right of
   private judgment, and it declines authority. These propositions mean
   practically the same thing, and so far from being novelties are of the
   first essence of Protestantism.

   It is only to re-assert these propositions in a different form to say
   that another characteristic of the new theology is its essential
   spirituality. We are accustomed to hear it opposed on spiritual
   grounds, but its spirituality is really its most outstanding feature,
   and as contrasted with some at least of the old theology it has the
   exclusive right to the name. The mark of the old theology was that it
   was made up of forms and propositions. Filled no doubt with spirit
   once, that spirit had in many instances wholly evaporated, and left men
   nothing to rest their souls on but a set of phrases.

   The task of the newer theology has been to pierce below these phrases
   and seek out the ethical truth which underlay them: and having found
   that, to set up the words and phrases round it once more if possible;
   and where not possible, to set up new phrases and a more modern
   expression. It is of course because men have been accustomed to these
   old forms that they fail to recognise the truth when clothed in other
   expression, and therefore raise the cry of heresy against all who take
   the more inward or spiritual view.

   Two classes in the community must of necessity, and always, oppose the
   new foundation--the Pharisee who is not able to see spirit for forms,
   and the lazy man who will not take the trouble to see spirit in form.
   It is always easier to assert truth than to examine it, to accept it
   ready made than to verify it for oneself, and we must always have a
   class who are guilty of these intellectual sins, who mistake credulity
   for faith and superstition for knowledge. The calm way in which these
   men assume that they are right and put all the rest of us on our
   defence is a miracle of effrontery, a miracle only exceeded in wonder
   by the tolerant way it is submitted to. I am not sure but that if
   Christ were among us He would not denounce the Pharisee as He did of
   old.

   But it is not enough to say that the new theological quest is a
   movement in the direction of spirituality. What is that spirituality?
   Is it a mere vagueness, a substitution of the shifting sand of the
   mysterious, and the undefined for the buttressed logic of the older
   doctrines? On the contrary, it is the most definite thing in the world.
   Instead of relaxing the hold on truth, the new method makes the grasp
   of the mind upon it a thousand times more certain. Instead of blurring
   the vision of unseen things, it renders them self-transparent; instead
   of making acceptance a matter of mere opinion, or of upbringing, or of
   tradition, it forces truth on the mind with a new authority--an
   authority never before to the same extent introduced into theological
   teaching. That authority is the authority of law. The basis--like the
   basis of all modern knowledge--of the coming theology is a scientific
   basis. It is a basis on great ethical principles. It is not a series of
   conceptions deduced from another central conception or grouped round a
   favoured doctrine of a favourite Divine--a Calvinism, a Lutheranism, an
   Arminianism, or any conceivable ism. It is a grouping round law,
   spiritual, moral, natural law, a structure reared on the eternal order
   of the world, and therefore natural, self-evident, self-sustaining and
   invulnerable.

   This method, dealing as it does with law and spirit, ignores nothing,
   denies nothing, and formally supplants nothing in the older
   subject-matter; but it tries to get deeper into the heart of it, and
   seeks a new life even in doctrines which seem to have long since
   petrified into stone. This was largely Christ's own method. He dealt
   with principles--His teaching was mainly excavation--the disinterring
   of hidden things, the bringing to light of the profound ethical
   principles hidden beneath Rabbinic subtleties and Pharisaic forms.

   The Reformation--Protestantism--these were large attempts in the same
   direction, and modern thought is the heir to this spirit. Being a
   process of growth, and not a series of operations upon specific
   theological positions, this method is in the best sense constructive.
   It can never destroy except empty forms. To be negative, to oppose or
   denounce time-honoured doctrines is poor work--poor work which
   unfortunately many minds and pens and pulpits are continually trying to
   do. The only legitimate way to destroy an old doctrine is Christ's way
   to fulfil it. Instead of busying themselves about its death and calling
   their congregations ostentatiously to attend the funeral, the new
   theology will invite them rather to witness anew the resurrection of
   the undying spirit still hidden beneath the worn-out body of its older
   form.

   As an illustration of what I mean, I propose to select one or two
   Christian doctrines which in their current forms have lost their power
   for thinking men, and try to show how these may live once more and play
   a powerful part in current teaching. One or two of the greatest
   Christian truths have already been so abundantly re-illuminated and
   re-spiritualised by modern literature and preaching that one need only
   name them. An admirable case is the doctrine of inspiration. It is idle
   to deny that the authority of the Bible was all but gone within this
   generation. The old view had become absolutely untenable, misleading
   and mischievous. But from the hands of reverent men who have studied
   the inward characters of these books, we have again got our Bible. The
   theory of development, the study of the Bible as a library of religious
   writings rather than as a book; the treatment of the writers as authors
   and not as pens; the mere discovery that religion has not come out of
   the Bible, but that the Bible has come out of religion: these
   announcements have not only destroyed with a breath a hundred infidel
   objections to Scripture, but opened up a world of new life and interest
   to Christian people.

   So thoroughly has the spiritual as opposed to the mechanical theory of
   inspiration imbued all recent teaching that the battle for Scotland at
   least may be said to be now won. If there is anything further to be
   said on the subject, indeed, it is to caution ourselves against going
   too far or being very positive.

   Modern criticism in this country, especially of the Old Testament, is
   not in a good way. The permission to embark upon it at all is sudden,
   and very few men are sufficiently equipped for a responsible
   reconstruction. Probably in Old Testament criticism there are not ten
   competent experts in the country, and these are all more or less
   disagreed, and what is more, afraid to announce their disagreements
   lest the others should turn and rend them. One of the greatest of these
   ten has just written an important book. I happen to know that it is
   being handed about among the nine for a review in a certain high-class
   theological monthly, and not a man of them will touch it.

   Hasty conclusions as to authorship or canonicity are as foreign to the
   scientific spirit as the old dogmatism. Guinness Rogers has well
   pointed out that in the far future, when English has become a dead
   language, almost no internal evidence would allow the literary critic
   to allocate the authorship of John Gilpin, e.g., to the melancholy
   recluse who wrote the Olney hymns; and in dealing with questions of
   Biblical authorship the minute scholarship of this day, based on
   favourite words and particular styles of thought, is often in danger of
   ignoring such broader facts as the versatility of human nature, the
   changing moods of thinkers, the contradictions which Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
   Hyde exhibit within the same man's soul at the same period, or at
   contrasted periods of his life of which history can keep no cognisance.

   This remark applies with even greater force to the subject-matter of
   the Books. We have treatises written, for instance, on the theology of
   Peter. Men talk of the Petrine conception of this and the Petrine
   presentation of that; they contrast the Petrine standpoint with the
   Pauline and the Johannine, and even go the length of fixing the
   proportion in which the various theological truths were held in the
   Petrine system. The absurdity of all this may be seen from a single
   fact. The entire Petrine remains that have come down to us and upon
   which all these elaborate structures are reared amount to a page or
   two, all that the apostle ever wrote or all that is left to us. They
   could be read to a congregation in exactly half the time that it would
   take a minister to deliver a half-hour's sermon. Think of the absurdity
   of judging a man's theology, or the proportion in which he held its
   various parts, by half a sermon, and you will never again hear the word
   Petrine without a smile. The men, and especially the Germans, who allow
   internal evidence--not seeing its excessive limitations--to be abused
   in this way are the true literalists, and their provincial analysis can
   only hinder the victory of a spiritual cause. If the new theology is
   the scientific spirit, that class of work is its stultification.

   But to pass on to another instance. The unearthing of the tremendous
   ethical principle underlying the atonement is now restoring that
   central doctrine to theology just when in its mechanical forms it was
   on the point of being discredited by every thinking mind. The Salvation
   Army preacher, it is true, still preaches it as a syllogism, and pays
   the penalty in the utter apathy or mystification of his hearers at
   least on that point. But no man who preaches the spirit of it, instead
   of the phrases of it, will lose his audience. The man who makes words,
   even Bible words, the substitute for thought, can never be understood
   of the common people at the present day. There is nothing the street
   preacher needs to be warned against with more earnestness than the
   mechanical preaching of the syllogisms of the atonement. One listens
   often and with admiration and respect to the powerful way the street
   preacher brings home the great facts of personal sin to the crowd
   around him, to his almost melting appeal for instant decision to this
   offer of salvation--nearly always in my experience glowing with real
   enthusiasm and backed with an almost contagious faith and hope. But
   when he tries at that point to answer the simple inquiry, How? when he
   stands face to face with the question of the drunkard leaning against
   the lamp-post, "What must I, the drunkard, standing here to-night in
   Argyle Street, do to be saved?" he takes refuge in some text or
   metaphor, a proposition, and passes on. What I complain of in Gospel
   addresses is that many have no Gospel in them, no tangible thing for a
   drowning man to really see and clutch. They break down at the very
   point where they ought to be most strong and luminous. To tell the
   average wife-beater to take shelter behind the blood or to hide himself
   in the cleft is to put him off with a phrase. I do not object to these
   metaphors, I believe in metaphors. I go the length of holding that you
   never get nearer to truth than in a metaphor; but you have not told
   this man the whole truth about your metaphor, nor have you touched his
   soul or his affections with what lies beneath that metaphor; and it
   falls upon his ear as a tale he has heard a thousand times before. It
   is not obstinacy that keeps this poor man from religion--it is pure
   bewilderment as to what in the world we are driving at. The new
   theology when it preaches the atonement will not be less loyal to that
   doctrine, but more. It will not take refuge in the poor excuse for
   slipshod preaching and unthought-out doctrines that we must wait for
   God's light to break. God's light breaks through some men's preaching,
   through some clear, honest, convincing statement of truth, and not
   occultly. Faith cometh by hearing, and if our plan of salvation is not
   telling upon our audience it is blasphemy to blame God's spirit. The
   blame lies in our own spirit and in our offering words instead of
   spirit, and in our neglect to spend time and thought, in trying to get
   down to the professed meaning and omnipotent dynamic of the law of
   Sacrifice.

   If a man has not something more to say about the atonement than the
   conventional phrases, let him be silent. By introducing from time to
   time he may earn the cheap reputation of being orthodox; but it is for
   him to consider whether that is an object for which his conscience will
   let him work. There are thousands of tender and conscientious souls now
   in our midst who cannot find that foothold on the conventional doctrine
   which they are led to believe their teachers have, and without which
   they feel themselves excommunicate from the work of the Church and the
   fold of Christ. If we see no further behind these words, let us say so,
   and not keep up this fraud, or preach these words, until we have sunk
   our spirits in them and can teach them with vital force and truth.

   * * * * *

   Gentlemen, I do not for a moment mean that we are to treat our
   congregations to dissertations on biology. Nature--human nature--are to
   be to us but discoveries of things as they are, the expression of
   principle, the theatre, on whose stupendous stage each can see with his
   own eyes the great laws act.

   And this leads me to a final statement. We have seen that the method of
   the new Evangelism is to deal with principles. The mental act by which
   we are to search for truth, truth being in this spiritual form, is not
   therefore to be so much the reason, but the imagination. We are to put
   up truth when we deliver truth to others, not in the propositional
   form, but in some visual form--some form in which it will be seen
   without any attempt to prove. Truth never really requires to be proved.
   The best you can do for a law is to exhibit it.

   Gentlemen, as a preparation for the work of the new Evangelism in which
   you are to spend your lives, I commend you to the study of the
   principles of the laws of God in nature, and in human nature: the
   development of that seeing power, as opposed to mere logic, which
   discerns the unseen through the seen. About the greatest thing a man
   can do, Ruskin tells us, is to see something, and tell others what he
   sees.

   The Gospel as Christ gave it was a gift to the seeing power in man. His
   speech was almost wholly addressed to the imagination, to the
   imagination in its true sense, and this, which is the highest language
   of science, is also the language of poetry and of the poetry of the
   soul, which is religion. Unless we can fill the new theology with what
   the soul sees and feels, and sees to be true and feels to be living, it
   will be as juiceless and inert as the old dogmatic.

   For it is only a living spirit of truth that can touch dead spirit, and
   the test of any theology is not that it is logically clear or even
   intellectually solid, but that it carries with it some sanctifying
   power.

   These examples of the rejuvenescence of old truths under the more
   spiritual treatment of an ethical theology are more or less obvious. I
   wish in the time that remains to apply the method a little more in
   detail to one particular department of theology, which is perhaps less
   intruded upon by modern teachers. The revolt of the moral sense of this
   country against the doctrine of a physical hell, and the appeal to a
   Judgment Day, has lately led to almost complete silence on the whole
   subject of eschatology. Is this great theme or any part of it --say the
   conception of a Day of Judgment--not capable of a deeper ethical
   treatment? If the Divine judgment upon sin lies in the natural law of
   heredity, may we not find among the laws of the moral world some larger
   and more universal principle of judgment which shall restore the appeal
   of these forgotten dogmas to their place in religious teaching? It is
   quite clear we must discuss this or remain silent. No man can now say
   such words to his people as these--I quote from no less an authority
   than Jonathan Edwards,--"The God that holds you over the pit of Hell,
   much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire,
   abhors you. It is nothing but His Hand that holds you from falling into
   the fire every moment; it is to be ascribed to nothing else that you
   did not go to Hell last night; and there is no other reason why you
   have not dropped into Hell since you arose in the morning. . . . There
   is nothing else to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment
   drop down into Hell." [3]

   That kind of thing is not over, though we may hear little of it.

   Many of you have seen some, at least, of the great classical pictures
   of the Last Judgment. Here [in the next chapter] is Ruskin's account of
   the greatest of them all, the Last Judgment of Tintoretto, which hangs
   on a well-known church wall in Venice, in full view of the
   congregation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [3] Guinness Rogers' "Present-Day Religion and Theology," p. 150.
     __________________________________________________________________

Survival of the Fittest

    Formed part of preceding address.

   PERHAPS the most weird picture in "Modern Painters" is the description
   of Tintoretto's "Last Judgment." Dante in poetry, Giotto, Orcagna, and
   Michael Angelo on canvas, have spent their imaginations on the
   unimaginable theme; but Tintoretto alone, says Mr. Ruskin, has grappled
   with this awful event in its verity: "Bat-like, out of the holes and
   caverns and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps
   heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl
   and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay
   clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed with the
   earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to Siloam
   Pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-home, hardly
   hearing the clangour of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet
   more, as they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the
   great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment
   seat: the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls,
   that drifts, and floats, and falls in the interminable, inevitable
   light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow,
   currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly,
   farther, and higher, and higher still, till the eye and the thought can
   follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the
   angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before
   the breath of their condemnation." [4] Such is the picture, "not
   typically nor symbolically," Mr. Ruskin tells us, "but as they may see
   it who shall not sleep, but be changed."

   That artist and critic have drunk in the spirit of their dreadful
   subject may be unquestioned. That pictures of the Last Judgment,
   whether with pen or pigment, serve a certain function, is also beyond
   dispute. To deny this would be to condemn the whole of sacred art. And
   to have the mute appeal of the great religious masterpieces silenced in
   the thronged galleries of Europe, where they have stood like beacons to
   the passing stream of life for centuries, would be a blow to
   Christianity. But it is no less true that to a class of minds the
   dramatic aspects of the Last Judgment appeal in vain. The material
   imagery, we are assured, the marshalling of the prisoners at the
   trumpet call, the Judge and the great White Throne, are presentations
   to an age which has passed away. The very tying-down of Judgment to a
   Day, the whole machinery of a human court "which meets, goes through
   its docket and adjourns," are out of harmony with the other ways of
   God; and whatever reality may underlie it, the conception, as it stands
   at present, is too gross and artificial to find acceptance with a
   scientific age.

   Many will wonder what science means by this fastidiousness. Some will
   quite fail even to enter into the state of mind which feels it, or
   which presumes to question the congruity or incongruity of what has
   been revealed. Nevertheless, this is a real difficulty. And, whatever
   be its genesis, we are compelled to recognise an attitude of mind which
   somehow disqualifies its possessor from being greatly influenced by
   such spectacular representations as have been named. Our feelings are a
   great mystery; the least definable are often those which sway us most.
   But to meet this state of mind, rather than to defend its
   reasonableness or ban its presumption, is the question before us. For
   the difficulty, after giving up a truth in one form, of winning it back
   in another is very great. And it is certainly true that for want of a
   connecting link between the popular doctrines of eschatology, and the
   facts and ways of nature and of the moral life, many who in this
   instance have repudiated the form have come to abandon the substance.
   To restore the substance and meaning of the idea of judgment by seeking
   to renovate the form is our object now. We are far from claiming that
   the form to be presented is the best, still less that it contains the
   whole of the substance. Truth has many forms, and the whole substance
   of this truth is, perhaps, not given as yet to man to know. But upon
   this, the most solemn thought that has ever been presented to the
   conscience of mankind, it is impossible that reason should be silent,
   or nature withhold its contribution from such a theme.

   We have hinted that the scientific difficulty in accepting the doctrine
   in its conventional form is one of standpoint. But the particular point
   of the objection is worth defining, and for a remarkable reason. What
   science really rebels at in the old doctrine is its externalness. It is
   outside nature, a foreign and unanticipated element, a breach of
   continuity. And what science would like to see is a universal
   principle, a principle, if possible, operating from within, bound up
   with nature itself, and involved in the general system of things. Now,
   such a claim coming from science is in every way astonishing and
   unexpected. For observe what it is. It is simply a demand upon religion
   for a further spirituality. It is really materialism that science
   objects to in the old doctrine--it objects to a material throne, and
   bar, and trumpet, to an external law, to a judgment from without rather
   than from within. The protest, in fact, is a rebuke to religion for the
   grossness of its conceptions, for its tardy abandonment of the letter,
   for the permanence it has given to provisional forms--in short, for its
   unspirituality.

   Nor is this the first instance in which science has called the
   attention of religion to this crude externaless in its ideas. In
   several well-known instances it has already imposed upon religion the
   useful task of remodelling its doctrines; and in each case the gain has
   been in the direction of greater inwardness, greater naturalness,
   greater spirituality. And the still more interesting fact remains to be
   noted, that it is generally science itself which supplies the material
   for the remodelled doctrine. As it destroys, it fulfils--the very
   discoveries which begat its doubt become, when rearranged and
   incorporated by religion, the materials for a firmer faith. For
   instance, the grossness and externalness of the old theory of a Six
   Days' Creation was once a serious stumbling-block to science. Students
   of nature were unaccustomed to find nature working in ways so abrupt;
   facts proving the slow development of the world had accumulated; the
   Divine-fiat hypothesis was challenged, and finally abandoned. And then
   out of these very facts grew the new and beautiful theory that Creation
   was not a stupendous and catastrophic operation performed from without,
   but a silent process acting from within. So, having destroyed the old
   conception, science itself contributed the new--a conception which it
   could not only intelligently accept, but which for religion also left
   everything more worthy of worship than before.

   Again, consider a case where the difficulty of believing an accepted
   theory is not physical but moral. Take the second commandment. The
   impression this law would leave on the early mind would certainly be
   that, in visiting the iniquities of fathers upon children, God weighed
   each case separately and administered special judgment upon cases of
   exceptional enormity. God administered punishment, that is to say, from
   without, by judicial enactments, augmenting or remitting sentence
   according to discretion. But instead of referring the enforcement of
   this commandment to an external court, we now see that execution of its
   sentences are transferred to the laws of nature. Instead of working
   from without, from above nature, it works, in ordinary circumstances at
   least, within it. It is, in fact, the ordinary law of heredity--the law
   of transmission from sire to son of the dispositions, tendencies,
   temptations, and diseases of the parent. Now, while losing nothing
   here, much is gained. The idea of judgment for sin is as much in the
   law as ever, the personality of the Judge is as before; but the seat of
   judgment has changed, and the mechanism of justice is replaced by the
   working of inherent laws. The very laws of nature have become "the
   hands of the living God."

   Now with these two examples before us of the change of emphasis from
   the external to the internal, may we not ask whether any parallel
   change is warranted in the case of the larger doctrine now in view?
   Should it not also have an inward ground, a discoverable law? Is it an
   operation from without, or a process from within? Is there no
   anticipation, in short, in nature of a final judgment? As it is not
   intended to deal here directly with the Scripture references, I will
   leave them with two remarks.

   1. The Scriptures are not explicit--are, in fact, very far from
   explicit. Let any one collate the various references to this
   subject--and they are very numerous--sift them with whatever care he
   likes, arrange them upon whatever principle he likes, or upon all known
   principles of interpretation up to the present time, and he will find
   them perplexing, and even contradictory. Here, if anywhere then, there
   is room for the New Testament to come in and seek out a basis of law.
   And I select the field as an illustration, simply because it is a
   remote one, and at the first blush most unpromising.

   2. That while Christ lays down, and especially in the parables of
   Judgment, the great ethical principles of eschatology, nearly all
   beyond that, in His teaching and in Paul's, has a purely Jewish or
   Rabbinic basis. No theme is more prominent in Jewish literature. The
   older portions of the book of Enoch, for example, contain constant
   allusions to a "Great Judgment," "the Day of the Great Judgment," "the
   Great Day of Judgment," "the Great Day," "the Day of Judgment," "the
   Righteous Judgment," and "the Last Judgment for all Eternity." The
   Sibylline books and the Apocalypses generally teem with detailed
   descriptions of such an event variously conceived of, variously dated,
   and for the most part having a political origin and significance. "Even
   the idea of a day' (according to Stanton) does not seem to have been
   originally taken from a judge holding court, but from a terrible
   triumphal conqueror executing vengeance in a day of battle and
   slaughter." [5]

   But to proceed. The position to be now taken up is not only the one
   which will be obvious on a little thought--that Judgment is not an act
   to be accomplished, an act sudden, spectacular, explosive, but a quiet
   process now and ever going on--but that that process is simply the
   operation of one of the widest and most familiar of the Laws of Nature.

   This law let me first bring forward in its simplicity as mere natural
   law; later on, we shall reach its ethical relations; and I must be
   pardoned for speaking here my own native tongue of Science rather than
   attempting a translation into ethics. The name of this law is the
   Survival of the Fittest. Eternal life under the last analysis is a
   question of the survival of the fittest. And Judgment is a question of
   natural selection. In spite of the constantly reiterated protest of
   popular theology that science and religion part company for ever over
   this law, in spite of the apparent objection that while in nature the
   prize is to the strong, and the weak go to the wall, in the kingdom of
   grace the bruised reed is not broken and the weary and heavy laden win;
   it is the most certain of truths that in nature and grace alike the law
   of the survival of the fittest holds. A moment's reflection will show
   that in thus contrasting the genius of nature and the genius of
   Christianity by way of objection, the word fitness is used in two
   totally different senses. In the one case it is employed in a
   biological, in the other in an ethical sense. When it is said that a
   fish survives in water because it is "fit" for it, all that is meant is
   that the organization of the fish is, in certain respects, adapted for
   this element. And when it is said that eternal life is a question of
   the survival of the fittest, what is implied is that it is a question
   of the survival of the adapted--of those who, by some means, have
   become specially fitted or equipped for living in this element. In
   this--the only possible scientific sense--it is literally and eternally
   true that the future state is a question of the survival of the
   fittest. The survival of the fittest means, then, only the survival of
   the adapted. It is not asserted, meantime, that the survival of the
   adapted means also the survival of the worthiest. Whether worthiness
   be, after all, the same thing as fitness will be referred to presently.
   But that no moral quality whatever is involved in the operation of this
   law is a point to be marked, for the basis of judgment for which we
   contend is one involved in the very constitution of the world.

   The essential thing in any organism in relation to its surroundings,
   the characteristic quality on which life depends, is adaptation to
   environment. If an organism is to survive in water, it must be adapted
   to the aquatic condition by the development of a water breathing
   faculty, a gill. If it is to change its surroundings so as to live in
   air--as actually happens during the life-history of the common frog--it
   must become adapted to correspond with the atmosphere by the
   development of an air-breathing apparatus, or lung. So if the highest
   organism is to be in correspondence with the Divine Environment, he
   must be adapted to it. He, the Christian, must have undergone some
   process of adaptation to environment--theologically called
   sanctification--in virtue of which he is able to correspond, to
   commune, with God. Only those so adapted can possibly exist in this
   element, even as those only equipped with gill can breathe in water, or
   those with lung in air. But this is simply to repeat once more that the
   adapted survive; that the fit survive; that they are "selected" to live
   by the possession of the required faculty.

   Suppose, now, to point the application, these varying degrees of
   adaptation to environment to be tested by actual experiment. A pool
   teeming with living organisms suddenly dries up. The vast majority of
   these organisms are adapted for an aquatic environment and for no
   other, and with the removal of this they perish. In terms of adaptation
   to environment they are judged. One or two, however, such as the
   water-newt, in addition to the special adaptation required for the
   liquid element possess the further power of corresponding with the
   earth and air in virtue of the possession of a lung. So long,
   therefore, as it can remain in correspondence with the earth and air,
   it lives. Suppose next some climatic change to occur, or some physical
   catastrophe such as the sudden eruption of a volcano, and that those
   who escaped from the water are no longer able to adapt themselves to
   this further change. In terms of environment they are judged. Suppose,
   however, that another organism, man, within the affected area was able
   to escape. His survival is due solely to the superior complexity of his
   organization. By his intelligence he foretold the calamity, and
   prepared for it, or with the aid of his inventions he swiftly withdrew
   to a safe distance. But suppose next, by a mightier catastrophe, the
   earth itself should collide with another star, and make his new
   environment again untenable. What is to become of him? It will depend
   on what correspondences remain, and on what environment still exists.
   But the old law holds He will go where he is fit for, and be in what is
   fit for him. If he has any correspondence with eternity, he will go on
   living in terms of these correspondences.

   He will go on living in terms of his correspondences--this is the point
   of it all. And this is natural selection; it is another way of saying
   that the fit to survive survive. And is there not here a principle of
   Judgment? The organisms in the drying pool, the water-newt upon the
   quaking land, the man at the world's collapse--each is allocated to his
   place according to his correspondences. No external act of choice takes
   place; there is an inherent claim to live, or an inherent necessity to
   die, in the organism itself This claim is founded on the fulfilment or
   non-fulfilment of an essential and imperative condition; it is a
   necessary consequence of the law of the survival of the fittest; it is
   not an arbitrary appointment or reward, it is the natural evolution of
   an organism in terms of its correspondences.

   Nature sits upon no far-off throne, like a capricious goddess,
   signalling which shall live and which shall die. But in the very inmost
   being of each she discloses a law of life or death. If an animal dies,
   its death is the natural culmination of its own past, of tendencies,
   proclivities, and processes already at work within; if it lives, its
   survival is the direct result of what it at the moment is. If death is,
   in such cases, in any sense a judgment, it is a judgment solely on
   unfitness. And if in dissolution the sentence of a judge is being
   carried out, it is not by an external operation, but by an inward
   process. And so with man. It is not necessary that he should be judged
   from without; he will be judged from within. He is his own judge.

   No witnesses need be called to give their evidence; the witnesses are
   himself. No gaolers need be told off to watch him; he cannot run away
   from himself. No external court need formulate the case against him;
   his own past has done it, his own past is it. No Judge need pronounce
   sentence at a Last Day; as he stands there to-day, he has sentenced
   himself,--as he stands there, he is prisoner, gaoler, court, witnesses,
   all in one, all the past collected and focussed in his present, all the
   present defining and determining the unknown, but not unanticipated,
   future. As in the past evolution of the earth the nebulous gases
   combined in the order of their affinities and arranged themselves in
   the order of their densities, so in the future evolution will each go
   to his own, living on in terms of his correspondences, in the order
   determined by his spiritual affinities.

   This principle of judgment pervades with its invisible presence the
   whole of nature. Every plant, insect, animal, man--man physical,
   mental, moral, spiritual--is daily and hourly on trial. This court is
   never opened and never closed. It is a vast, mysterious, self-acting
   organization, ramifying through the whole of nature, and without
   resistance or appeal, each living thing obeys its verdict.

   But, in the case of an organism, what is it that betrays the
   insufficiency of its correspondences? It is the presentation to it of
   the new environment. So long as the fish lives in the stream, it will
   neither feel nor exhibit any want of adaptation to other surroundings.
   But when the stream runs dry? So long as the swallow lives in the
   English climate, its joyful existence is complete. But when the English
   summer wanes and the chills of winter come? So long as man lives on in
   the environment of this present world, his correspondences, or some of
   them, are satisfied. But when this present world is done? Then is the
   great trial. Then is the sifting time. Then is the Judgment Day. Then
   his sufficiency or insufficiency is finally betrayed. In presence of
   the new environment--not by any book opened, word spoken, past
   recalled--in the mere presence of it, he is made manifest. This reflex
   influence of environment has been a commonplace with theology from the
   beginning. It is remarkable how full revelation is of this still future
   truth--remarkable also that, being a thing to come, nature should so
   anticipate and confirm it. No thought is more frequent or more solemn
   in the Biblical accounts of the last things than that at the appearing
   of Christ a mighty change will sweep over the moral world--a sudden
   revolution in men's opinions--a swift reversal of all human judgments.
   And this is not an unlooked-for crisis. It is the natural effect of the
   new environment--or of the sudden prominence of the new
   environment--upon organisms well or ill prepared to live in it. Hence
   it is not only that in this Presence the secrets of all hearts shall be
   revealed, nor that human lives projected against His will henceforth
   and evermore appear in colours black as hell. But it will be that vital
   relations will manifest themselves in the case of every man; his
   correspondences will continue, or come short. All that he is, the
   little that he is, all that he is fit for, all that he is not fit for,
   will be revealed. In terms of these, in himself, and at a glance, he
   will know whether he is to live or die. With his own eyes he will see
   the great gulf fixed; with his own reason he will see why it cannot be
   crossed

   "The appearing of Christ," says Van Oosterzee, "brings about separation
   (krisi) between the one who has the Son and the one who has Him not; or
   rather, the difference, already present, unseen, is in consequence of
   His coming and His work, brought to light. Thus the Christ becomes
   necessarily Judge, even where He desires to be Saviour." [6] And to the
   same effect Paul, "For we must all be made manifest before the
   Judgment-seat of Christ." This is that being "weighed in the balance"
   in which some shall be "found wanting." This is what Paul foresaw when
   he said, "We must all be made manifest before the Judgment-seat of
   Christ."

   This, again, is not peculiar to Christianity or to science, but
   universal law. The moment I go to a high-class concert, in the matter
   of musical taste I am judged. My musical soul, or soul-lessness, is
   instantly made manifest. The moment I enter a picture gallery I am
   judged. My correspondences are or are not. I am weighed in the
   balances. That day declares it.

   What man is what God is--these are the materials for the anticipation
   of judgment. They are in each man's hands, and in terms of them he can
   here and now decide. To no man, surely, is it ever given to draw aside
   the veil and forecast the future for another. Personal to the
   individual, the possession of the appropriate correspondences,--the
   adaptation to the Divine is truly known to oneself alone. And we are
   therefore warned by the New Testament: "Judge nothing before the time,
   until the Lord comes,' who both will bring to light the hidden things
   of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart." But so
   far from precluding a judgment of our own upon ourselves, the very
   inability of our neighbour, the impotence to help of those who know and
   love us best, the isolation and solitude in which we must settle this
   question of life and death, create a warrant for self-examination such
   as no serious man will allow himself to evade. "Examine yourselves,"
   says Paul, "whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." And
   again, "Make your calling and election sure."

   * * * *

   Mr. Darwin tells us that the object of natural selection--the object of
   the fittest surviving--is "the improvement of organisms." It is the
   means by which nature shows her appreciation, not of fitness alone, but
   of fitness in the direction of advancement. It is her splendid effort
   to ennoble life, to exalt and purify creation, to bring all organisms
   to an ever-increasing perfectness and complexity, to carry on the
   evolution of the world to higher and higher beauty, usefulness, and
   efficacy. How keen her desire to compass this great end, how enormous
   the value she sets on the result, may be feebly inferred from the
   terrible price she is prepared to pay for it. If nature is in earnest
   about one thing, it is quality. To this end all her labour tends; she
   works, and waits; she destroys, and re-creates. And surely nothing is
   more significant for religion, nothing could more eloquently express
   its own deepest aim for the world, than this mighty gravitation of all
   in nature towards fitness, wholeness, perfectness. Even Lamarck finds
   himself so impressed by the silent witnesses around him to the great
   ascent of life as to believe in "an innate and inevitable tendency
   towards perfection in all organic beings."

   But it is to the various eschatological theories of theology that its
   voice most distinctly speaks. Has Antinomianism no tacit following in
   the modern Church? Let those who have to meet this subtle and monstrous
   and unaccountable perversion explain the meaning and press home the
   necessity of adaptation to environment. Let it be shown that fitness to
   survive is tested, not by profession, but by experiment. How easily in
   the theological forms may faith be a correspondence, a communion, a
   living bond with a living Christ, or (it may be) a mere belief, a
   barren formula, a name to live. There is an ecclesiastical Christ and a
   living Christ; there is a historical Christ and a risen Christ; there
   is a theological Christ and a personal Christ. Is it not clear alike
   from reason from nature, and from revelation that only by
   contact--immediate, personal, living--with a living, present Christ the
   eternal life can be a root in the heart of man? We turn to yet another
   tendency of the time. More and more the doctrines of Universalism seem
   to spread.

   Where then, it may be asked, is mercy? The answer is--(1) It will be
   seen presently that the whole scheme is established only in mercy; but
   (2) even mercy has its laws. The object of mercy can never be to "save"
   the unfit, i.e. to save the unadapted, which is inconceivable and
   impossible. Mercy can make the unfit fit; it has a vast machinery for
   this one purpose. That is its work, its line, the only line it can
   take. To "fit" the unfit is a possibility, to "save" them being unfit,
   to sentence them unfit in either relation to a heaven or a hell is
   impossible. The only conceivable ways to save a fish tossed on the
   rocks by a billow are to suddenly supply it with a lung, which is
   impossible, or to turn it back into its own element. On similar
   principles the unfit in relation to God cannot be saved, the fit can by
   no possibility be lost.

   As the evangelist said of Emerson, "Emerson was one of the most
   beautiful souls I ever knew. There is something wrong with his
   machinery somewhere, but I do not know what it is, for I never heard it
   jar. He cannot be lost, for if he went to hell, the devil would not
   know what to do with him."

   * * * * *

   But we must shape this many-sided inquiry to a close.

   One other aspect of this Truth demands a passing notice before we
   close. Till now we have discussed the survival of the fittest only as
   it affects the individual. This is a small part of the truth. No law is
   of private interpretation. How calmly we, as individuals, appropriate
   the laws of God focussing all in our own little world--as if they were
   only for ourselves; as if they were not the parallel of latitude of a
   larger universe, the revelation of the method of God's whole purposes
   and government. What is each man but one little thread in the loom of
   God? The great wheels revolve, the shuttle flies, not for the thread
   but for the web; not for the web alone, but for the pattern on the web;
   not for the pattern on the web, but for One, the Designer, who makes
   loom and web and pattern for Himself. To know why the loom is there,
   and why the shuttle moves, and why the threads are in this place or in
   that, or why they are there at all, we must look beyond ourselves,
   discover if we may the hidden Workman's purpose, and see in the
   half-finished design the prophecy of some final harmony.

   Revelation is too prophetic of the End, and creation is too full of God
   and of His plans to leave man without a clue to the larger meanings of
   the natural laws. In the natural world the function of the law of the
   survival of the fittest is to produce fitness--to make a select world
   (a cosmos, beautiful, harmonious) perfect. So is it in the spiritual
   world. There its function will surely be to secure and guarantee the
   quality of the Kingdom of God.

   If it is necessary that there should be a heaven, it is necessary that
   it should be kept heavenly. This is that law which now and evermore
   keeps heaven pure. It has more than a personal application; it is a
   chief factor in the great evolution, one of the main instruments by
   which nature passes on to these nobler and nobler developments in which
   all changes, forces, and movements in nature appear to be culminating.
   So far as science can read the secret will and purpose of creation, it
   is this, that Nature is gravitating with infinite patience and sureness
   towards perfection.

   The object of the Law of the Survival of the fittest is to produce
   fitness. And this is the object of Judgment--to produce fitness here by
   the terror of its law hereafter, to separate the chaff from the wheat,
   yet not for the sake of punishing the chaff, only for the sake of
   preserving the wheat. This is the great law whose secret operations
   tend to make a select world. It is the guarantee of the quality of the
   Kingdom of God.

   Even now, in some poor way, we seem to see how God proceeds to secure
   His end. Our little world has had its own life-history. In the
   life-history of this one world we can dimly make out, not only the
   direction, but the method of progress, for every feature in its
   marvellous evolution is a further vision of things to come. Look into
   this past for a moment, observe God's way of producing earth from
   chaos, and say whether no clue lies here to that further evolution of
   heaven from earth.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [4] "Modern Painters," vol. ii. p. 183.

   [5] Stanton, "Jewish and Christian Messiah." Clark, Edinburgh, p. 136.

   [6] "Theology of the New Testament," Fourth ed., p. 348.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Third Kingdom

    [The introductory page of the MS., which is lost, doubtless contained a
    reference to a division into Inorganic or First Kingdom, Organic or Second,
    and Spiritual or Third.]

   I MAY be permitted to summarize briefly the teaching of the Sacred
   Books on the central subject of the Kingdom of God, and to point it, as
   occasion may offer, with reference to the present inquiry.

  THE KINGDOM OF GOD THE CENTRAL IDEA OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

   That God was preparing out of the Second Kingdom a people for Himself
   is the most prominent fact of ancient history. For centuries the
   children of Israel were so impressed with this belief that they dared
   not, like other nations, permit themselves even to own an earthly king.
   With Jehovah to defend their case, with the King of kings to define and
   carry out their cause, generation after generation held out against the
   temptation to create a human monarchy, and handed down unsoiled to the
   late age of the Captivity their theocratic faith. "The dominating
   thought of the Old Testament," to quote the words of Keim, "is that of
   the Kingdom of God upon earth. God is the God, the Lord, the King of
   the whole earth; but from among all the nations He has chosen Israel to
   be His peculiar possession, His servants, His people, His firstborn,
   His priestly kingdom. God is Israel's King, and rules as King. God
   fulfils His regal office by spiritually and physically bringing the
   nation into existence; by protecting, regulating, and guiding it with
   His blessings and His chastisements. He does all this, sometimes by His
   immediate presence, and sometimes through the agency of His inspired
   organs--lawgivers and generals, priests and prophets, and finally
   kings, who, in fact, are only viceroys. This kingdom has, however, its
   limits; the nations without do not obey, they make attacks upon the
   people of God, and the people of God sin against themselves and against
   their King." [7]

   How a thousand years before the birth of Christ the longing rose for
   the Kingdom of God in a more perfect form, for a Kingdom that should
   conquer and rule the nations and establish righteousness and peace on
   earth; how, fostered by the startling assurances of Daniel, the desire
   was kept alive through ages of oppression, and burned only the more
   clearly after prolonged disappointment; how centuries after the voice
   of prophecy was silent in their land, when the Forerunner raised his
   standard in the wilderness, the old hope, deeper still in their hearts
   than any thought of God or man, uttered itself again in an almost
   national response to the Baptist's message--these points have but to be
   named to convince us of the thrilling reality of the Kingdom of God to
   the ancient Jewish Church.

   To point out the development of the conception as we come down to New
   Testament times is all but superfluous. At the double risk of appearing
   to the world as an imitator of John, and to the Roman as sharing with
   the Baptist the responsibilities of political revolution, Jesus
   accepted the watchword of the hour and deliberately announced Himself
   as the King of the promised Kingdom. How He gathered about Him the
   first few subjects, and in the face of laughter and blasphemy assumed
   the Sovereignty of the miniature State, framing a Constitution for it
   as far-reaching and profound as if it were already a great nation, is a
   plain fact of history. And as one follows His life throughout, it is
   patent to the most casual reader of the Gospel narratives that His one
   idea was to found on earth the Kingdom of Heaven. In Matthew alone the
   expressions "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Kingdom of God" occur forty-five
   times; and generally the theme seems never to have been absent for a
   single hour from the thoughts of Jesus during His earthly ministry. "In
   the contemplation of the doctrine of the Lord," says Van Oosterzee,
   "according to the Synoptics, we must proceed from the
   foundation-thought by which, above all others, it is ruled. It is that
   of the Kingdom of God." So Reuss, "L'idee fondamentale, qui se
   reproduit a chaque instant dans l'enseignement de Jesus, est celle du
   royaume de Dieu." [8]

   Were an evolutionist asked to formulate the fundamental idea of nature,
   he would reply, in the light of all modern philosophy and science, The
   idea of the Kingdom. All nature, he would say, is gravitating towards a
   nobler order of things. The vision of the past presents man with a
   grand and harmonious picture of the Ascent of Life. Kingdom is seen to
   be rising above kingdom. And yet withal the apex of the pyramid is
   still concealed. The perfect is not yet come. The whole creation
   groaneth and travaileth, waiting for the redemption of the creature.
   Scarce less audible is the prophecy of nature than the voice of Old
   Testament Scripture as to the coming of the world's Redeemer. And
   Science, like the Forerunner of the Messiah, has prepared the way of
   the Lord.

  THE OBJECT OF THE THIRD KINGDOM

   What is the ultimate purpose of God in the further evolution of man can
   only be dimly discerned. With words, it is true, we can fill in
   logically the framework; of the future; but to the imagination, beyond
   a certain point, these words become colourless symbols of a reality
   which man in this life can never grasp. Still it is not denied us to
   see a little way into the Third Kingdom, and we may attempt at least a
   provisional answer to this question, What does the Kingdom of God
   propose to do for mankind?

   The form of the question which chiefly interests us in the present
   inquiry is, Does the Kingdom of God propose to do anything abnormal,
   extravagant, or unintelligible? Is it a new and unrelated effect that
   is to be wrought on the subjects of this Kingdom, or is it something
   still consistently in line with continuity? Certainly if it could be
   shown that the aim of the Third Kingdom was in harmony with all that
   has gone before, it would go a long way to remove any prejudice that
   may exist against it on the ground of what men call its unnaturalness
   and "other-worldliness."

   The simplest method of testing the naturalness of the object of the
   Third Kingdom is to refer to the aim of the Second. What is it that
   serious men propose to themselves as the object of life? Is there not
   something that all have willed to achieve--a summum bonum--a chief end
   of man? These, for ages, have been the questions of philosophy. The
   greatest and wisest among mankind have studied this problem. And it
   would be idle to deny that their labours have achieved at least a
   general result. Without referring to any of the specific plans of life
   proposed by different schools, it will sufficiently summarize the
   conclusion of all to say that the highest aims of mankind are connected
   with the moral development of the race. Whatever methods various
   philosophies have pointed out in order to attain this end, and whatever
   shades of difference exist as to the end itself, there is no debate as
   to this general result. There is no question likewise, and this is an
   important consideration, that the ideal of philosophy has never yet
   been reached. With greater or less hope some philosophic schools still
   expect a future success to justify the principles they teach; others
   found wanting after fair trial have already withdrawn from the field.
   Still a unanimous consensus among men that the highest development of
   the race is the summum bonum is a fact too significant to be ignored.
   And any new applicant for favour might be expected beforehand to enter
   the field with this same general aim in spite of the warnings of those
   who have failed. Any other aim would be unnatural.

   Now as a matter of fact the aim of Christianity, in its general
   direction, is the aim of all philosophy. Christianity fell naturally
   into the stream of evolution which was carrying the world through
   kingdom after kingdom to a high and perfect development. Its idea of
   development was immeasurably loftier than that of philosophy, and the
   means for carrying out the process were altogether different; but the
   goal in either case, though not the same, lay in the same general line.
   I have defined the aim of philosophy to be the moral development of the
   race. When it is said, however, that this is also the aim of
   Christianity we must attach a higher significance to the term moral.
   Morality is a word of the Second Kingdom. In the Third we look for its
   evolution. We shall still recognise the old quality, but it will really
   exist in a form so greatly developed that we may be justified in
   substituting for morality the word spirituality. At the same time it
   must again be repeated that the development of the spiritual from the
   natural man is not a case of simple evolution. The natural character
   does not simply grow better and better until a pitch of excellence is
   reached such as finally deserves the distinguishing name of
   spirituality. Spirituality and morality differ qualitatively as well as
   quantitatively. The natural development can never pass the barrier
   separating the Second from the Third Kingdom. The transition is
   secured, just as in the case of atoms passing from the First to the
   Second Kingdom, by means of something not inherent in the lower Kingdom
   but communicated ab extra.

   But while giving the fullest prominence to this cardinal fact that the
   spiritual is not a mere natural development of the natural, it is no
   less necessary to point out, although at first sight it seems a
   paradox, that the spiritual character is still a development of the
   natural. The first object of the Third Kingdom cannot, without
   misconception, be said to be the creating merely of a spiritual
   character. Its first work is to make what would be called a perfect
   natural character. It does not leave the Second Kingdom in a raw,
   unfinished state, and, regardless of the natural man, proceed to start
   afresh with a new set of organisms developing under a new regime. Its
   first business is to complete the old. It takes up a human life at the
   point where the natural world has left it and carries it on to
   perfection. There is, it is true, a new creature born within the
   natural man. And in this sense there is a new creation and a new
   departure. But the first work of the new nature is to operate on the
   old and do for it what it failed to do for itself. Thus the aim of the
   spiritual Kingdom in the first instance is to perfect the natural. The
   first object of Christianity is to make men. So far from being a
   dehumanizing process, it alone creates the true humanity. For the Third
   Kingdom alone possesses the true ideal, and alone contains the energies
   effectually to overpower those forces of sin which prevent men from
   ever becoming men.

   I purposely refrain from making more than the most meagre allusion to
   the aims of the spiritual world, for the subject does not come directly
   within the biological province. Words at all times fail, however, to
   express the magnificence of the scheme of Christianity. For the past
   its provision is so complete, for the present so wonderful, for the
   future so glorious that the more one exercises his mind upon the
   religion of Jesus Christ the more is he impressed with its wisdom,
   magnificence, and thorough practical adaptation to every need and wish
   of man. The whole conception of the Redemption of the world. the
   amazing series of events projected in order to it, the possibility
   opened to man of a pure life and a disinterested deed, the promise of
   having all the haunting problems of life and time, all the soul's deep
   difficulties concerning the universe and the eternal finally
   solved--these alone mark out the Third Kingdom as a creation of the
   Most High. Nothing could be more exquisite than the programme of
   Christianity penned by Isaiah centuries before the Founder of the
   Kingdom was born in Bethlehem. One would come


   "To preach good tidings to the meek;

   To bind up the broken-hearted;

   To proclaim liberty to the captives;

   To comfort all that mourn;

   To give unto them beauty for ashes,

   The oil of joy for mourning,

   The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;

   That they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the
   Lord,

   That He might be glorified." [9]

   Side by side with these words let him who would rate the claims of the
   Third Kingdom on his acceptance--unobtrusive claims which have always
   depended most on a mute appeal to their inherent dignity and
   grace--read the Sermon on the Mount. And if he would understand the
   aspirations of the Kingdom he will find the seven deepest thoughts of
   his own heart at its purest moments reflected in the seven petitions of
   the Lord's Prayer.

   If that programme is not a satire on the gospels of humanity, if these
   Beatitudes are not a fiction, if the Lord's Prayer is not the
   expression of a need that is rarely felt and never gratified, they have
   a claim upon mankind more vitally real than anything else in the world.
   If there be a Kingdom of God, that programme, that Sermon and that
   Prayer are worthy of it. And if they be but a dream, I know not how we
   shall account for such a dream.

   While the design of the Third Kingdom coincides somewhat with the
   purpose of Moral Philosophy, its apparatus and methods are widely
   different. And they are different mainly in respect of two things
   already mentioned. Christianity provides an ideal which is the highest
   possible, and equips the subjects of the Kingdom with powers in every
   way adequate to realize that ideal. The problems connected with the
   ideal will be referred to again, but the question of the powers of the
   spiritual Kingdom may now be dealt with under a separate head.

  THE POWERS OF THE THIRD KINGDOM

   The fundamental difference between the Second and Third Kingdoms
   consists in what, for want of a better name, may be called their
   Energies. The difference of phenomena entirely depends on this--the
   difference, for example, between morality and spirituality. Philosophy
   may easily borrow the ideal from Christianity; to some extent it may
   attempt to introduce its motive, but it utterly breaks down in the
   practical application. And it fails for want of the one thing which
   finally differentiates the Third Kingdom from the Second--Life.
   Discussing Christianity on the philosophical plane in a chapter of
   singular insight and beauty, "Ecce Homo," while insisting upon the
   difference between Christianity and Moral Philosophy, fails withal, as
   it seems to me, to recognise the infinite and radical distinction
   between them, owing to a disregard of this unique quality of Life.
   "Philosophers had drawn their pupils from the elite of humanity; but
   Christ finds His material among the worst and meanest, for He does not
   propose merely to make the good better, but the bad good. And what is
   His machinery? He says the first step towards good dispositions is for
   a man to form a strong personal attachment. Let him first be drawn out
   of himself. Next, let the object of that attachment be a person of
   striking and conspicuous goodness. To worship such a person will be the
   best exercise in virtue that he can have. Let him vow obedience in life
   and death to such a person; let him mix and live with others who have
   made the same vow. He will have ever before his eyes an ideal of what
   he may himself become. His heart will be stirred by new feelings, a new
   world will be gradually revealed to him, and, more than this, a new
   self within his old self will make its presence felt, and a change will
   pass over him which he will feel it most appropriate to call a new
   birth." [10] The fatal objection to this scheme is that it begins at
   the wrong end. Certain changes pass over a man's character; he forms a
   personal attachment, worships his ideal, learns obedience, and all this
   he will "feel it most appropriate" to call a new birth. Why not begin
   with the new birth? Why be guilty, even in appearance, of the
   scientific heresy of making Life the result of organization instead of
   the cause of it? The language used certainly lends itself at least to
   the supposition that the expression "new birth" is merely a
   metaphor--an "appropriate" term for the act after the result has
   appeared. And the criticism of "Ecce Homo" on Christianity in this
   respect is not exceptional, but representative. The Kingdom of Heaven
   is simply the "Society of Jesus," or "a religious-moral institution"
   (Van Oosterzee), or "a filial relation to God" (Hausrath).

   Now, the Kingdom of God is all this, but it is also a great deal more.
   From the philosophical standpoint no definitions, probably, could be
   more exact; none other even are possible. But there has been a
   universal failure to regard the whole subject, in the first instance,
   as a question of Biology. Even those theologies which have recognised
   most clearly the special factor of Life in Christianity have still felt
   themselves insensibly drawn to discuss the question ultimately in terms
   of philosophy. That it is susceptible of philosophic treatment is
   abundantly plain; but it cannot with too much emphasis be pointed out
   that, alike from the analogies of nature and from the explicit
   declarations of its Founder, the Third Kingdom must be treated
   primarily as a biological question. Christ affirmed that His first
   object in coming to men was to give them Life--more abundant Life. And
   that He meant literal Life, literal spiritual Life, is clear from the
   whole course of His teaching and acting. To impose a metaphorical
   meaning on the commonest word of the New Testament is to violate every
   canon of interpretation, and at the same time to charge the greatest of
   Teachers with persistently mystifying His hearers by an unusual use of
   so exact a vehicle for expressing definite thought as the Greek
   language, on the most momentous subject of which He ever spoke--a
   subject, indeed, of life or death to all whom He addressed. It is a
   canon of interpretation, says Alford, that "a figurative sense of words
   is never admissible except when required by the context." The context
   in most cases is not only directly unfavourable to the figurative
   meaning, but in innumerable cases Life is broadly contrasted with
   Death. In others, as in the discourse with Nicodemus, the language used
   makes it inconceivable that there, at least, the symbolical meaning is
   implied. "Ye must be born again," said Jesus to the Rabbi. And that the
   words were taken literally is apparent from the answer: "How can a man
   be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's
   womb and be born?" While undeceiving His pupil as to the acceptance of
   the term Life in its natural organic sense, Christ continues to insist
   withal that it is nevertheless Life--a deeper and spiritual Life, a
   Life mysteriously entering into the soul as by a breath from God.
   "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
   the Kingdom of God. . . . That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and
   that which is born of the spirit is spirit." [11]

   To pass from Christ's words to the teaching of the Apostles, we find
   that without exception they have accepted the term in its simple,
   literal sense. Reuss defines the Apostolic belief, as is his wont, with
   rigid impartiality when he discovers in the Apostles' conception of
   Life, first, "the idea of a real existence, an existence such as is
   proper to God and to the word; an imperishable existence--that is to
   say, not subject to the vicissitudes and imperfections of the finite
   world. This primary idea is repeatedly expressed, at least in a
   negative form; it leads to a doctrine of immortality, or, to speak more
   correctly, of life, far surpassing any that had been expressed in the
   formulas of the current philosophy or theology, and resting upon
   premises and conceptions altogether different. In fact, it can dispense
   both with the philosophical thesis of the immateriality or
   indestructibility of the human soul, and with the theological thesis of
   a miraculous corporeal reconstruction of our person: theses, the first
   of which is altogether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the
   second absolutely opposed to reason" Second, "the idea of life, as it
   is conceived in this system, implies the idea of a power, an operation,
   a communication, since this life no longer remains, so to speak, latent
   or passive in God and in the Word, but through them reaches the
   believer. It is not a neutral, somnolent thing; it is not a plant
   without fruit; it is a germ which is to find fullest development." [12]

   The sum of New Testament doctrine is that there is an immediate action
   of the Spirit of God on the souls of men. In the New Testament alone
   the Spirit is referred to nearly three hundred times. And the one word
   with which He is constantly associated is Power. If we are asked to
   define more clearly what is meant by this Power we hand over the
   difficulty to science. When science can define Life and Force we may
   hope for further clearness on the nature and action of the Spiritual
   Powers. At the same time we are forewarned that with our present
   faculties we can never pass far beyond the threshold of these hidden
   things. Their very power of evading the senses is the mysterious token
   of their spirituality. It is the test of the Spirit that thou canst not
   tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. If we could tell, if we
   could trace it naturally to its source, if we could account for its
   operations on ordinary principles, if we could define regeneration as
   the effect of moral persuasion, we should be dealing not with the
   Unknown but with the Known. It is from the analysis of natural
   religion, where the elements can all be rationally accounted for, that
   men derive their chief argument against the supernatural. But in
   analyzing spirituality the effort to detect the Living Spirit is as
   idle as to subject protoplasm to microscopic examination in the hope of
   discovering Life. When the Spiritual Life is discovered in the
   laboratory it will be time to give it up altogether. It may then say,
   as Socrates of his soul, "You can bury me--if you can catch me."

   While the Powers of the Third Kingdom evade analysis their Energy is
   not less real. The activities of the Third Person of the Trinity have
   always been described as dynamical. The Spirit is the executive of the
   Godhead, carrying out the sovereign Will by operations as irresistible
   as they are subtle. To this omnipotent agency are to be referred
   ultimately all changes which take place within the Kingdom of God on
   earth. This is the Source of Energy for the Third Kingdom. And long
   before the days of Dynamics, when the energies of the Second Kingdom
   were less understood than now are those of the Third, the schoolmen
   were wont to express their conception of the Divine Activity in Nature
   and in Grace by the actual use of the word physical. [13] Owen also in
   his classical work on the Holy Spirit repeatedly affirms the physical
   nature of the Spirit's operations, especially in the process of
   regeneration: "There is a real physical work, whereby He infuseth a
   gracious principle of spiritual life into all that are effectually
   converted and really regenerated, and without which there is no
   deliverance from the state of sin and death."

   Without agitating the time-honoured questions as to whether this
   Spiritual Power is mediate or immediate, whether it is resistible or
   irresistible, whether Spiritual Life is to be considered as part of it,
   or as the whole, or as none of it; without raising problems suggested
   by current scientific thought--as to whether there are any analogies
   between these and the ordinary energies of nature; whether, for
   instance, they are capable of Transformation, Conservation, or
   Dissipation--we may rather go on to inquire for the evidence of the
   spiritual operations themselves and for the results which ought to have
   followed. It will assist us, however, in understanding the evidence, as
   well as in defining the kind of result to be looked for, if we take one
   more backward glance at the two earlier Kingdoms. Suppose we take our
   stand for a moment on the confines of the Inorganic Kingdom. What order
   of phenomena will strike us first? Shall we see the Second Kingdom act
   on the First, and if so, in what particular way?

   As we take our first survey of the Inorganic Kingdom we seem to be
   surrounded by the dead. Every Atom obeys the law of inertia, or yields
   to simple changes induced by polar, molecular, or other forces. But
   presently, into this dead world, an unknown Power descends, feels
   about, seizes certain Atoms, and manipulates them in unprecedented
   ways. This mysterious Power is the Power of the Kingdom next in order
   above. To that Kingdom, indeed, the operations of Life, as facts of
   everyday occurrence, are not mysterious. But to the Atoms they are
   unintelligible and very wonderful. Here is one Atom raised from the
   dead. Here is another refusing to bend its will to the attraction of
   gravity A third, subject to crystalline forces from the beginning,
   suddenly defies them and takes its place as a part of the higher
   symmetry of a living organism. As their Fellow-Atoms observe these
   extraordinary changes, from time to time occurring around them, they
   have only one word which adequately describes them--they are Miracles.

   Taking our stand now on the confines of the Organic, shall we not be
   presented with the same strange spectacle? Once more we are surrounded
   by the dead. Once more a Power descends out of another Kingdom--a
   Kingdom just in order above--and manipulates Organisms in unprecedented
   ways. Here is one Organism raised from the dead. Here is another
   refusing to bend its will to the attraction of sin. A third, subject to
   deforming forces from the beginning, suddenly defies them, and assumes
   a high and noble spiritual symmetry. And as their Fellow-Organisms
   observe these changes, their word again is Miracle.

   This, then, is what meets us first at the portals of the Third
   Kingdom--Miracle. We find an order of phenomena strange and
   inexplicable to the lower Kingdom, but as normal within its own sphere
   as are the operations of Life in the Organic. As the powers of the
   Second Kingdom master the First, so the powers of the Third master the
   Second. But this is not what is usually called Miracle. Miracle is a
   much narrower thing--so very narrow a thing that up to this point we
   have scarcely even come in sight of it. To single out a few specific
   wonders authenticated by ancient documents, and to attach to them the
   epithet Miracle, is a limitation so monstrous and unwarranted that the
   protest against it cannot come too soon.

   The question of the miraculous is simply the general question of the
   Third Kingdom. To apply the word to certain acts of healing, to
   beneficent deeds of an abnormal character, or to deliverance from
   physical danger, want, or death, is to contemplate the reactions of the
   Spiritual Kingdom only on the lowest plane of the Organic and Inorganic
   Worlds. The outstanding miracles, on the contrary, are those effected
   on the moral and intellectual portions of the highest department of the
   Organic Kingdom--namely, on the life and character of the Natural Man.
   The attestation of Christianity is the Christian. Without taking this
   into account the supernatural changes wrought on the lower department
   are mere wizard-work. Miracle, from the standpoint of the Second
   Kingdom, is not alone objectionable as pure prodigy, but it amounts to
   an absolute breach of Continuity. The sceptical definitions of miracle
   from this standpoint are perfectly legitimate. Hume is loyal to nature
   when he affirms that "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature;
   and, as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws,
   the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as
   entire as any argument from experience that can possibly be imagined."
   Deliberately choosing the standpoint of the Second Kingdom, and
   absolutely rejecting the Third, Hume had no alternative. In his
   experience of the laws of nature, no variation ever occurred in the
   usual course of antecedent and consequent. Thus the question of miracle
   comes to this--there is either delusion, fraud, or a Third Kingdom; and
   if one rejects the last, his choice between the two former is
   immaterial.

   If, on the other hand, one accepts the Third Kingdom, the miraculous
   becomes not only credible but necessary The Third Kingdom would not be
   the Third Kingdom if it could not operate on the Kingdom beneath it in
   a way which to the Kingdoms below would seem miraculous. The Second
   Kingdom is the Second Kingdom because it can operate on the First in a
   way which to the First must seem miraculous. It is superior to the
   First in virtue of the superiority of its powers and the corresponding
   complexity of its organisms. In precisely the same way the Third rises
   superior to the Second.

   It is of much consequence to notice that it is not alone the forms of
   organisms which are found evolving in nature, but the powers or
   energies. There is a dynamical as well as a statical evolution. The
   First Kingdom is equipped with a certain set of powers, or possibly
   with one central energy capable of assuming varied forms. The Second,
   while inheriting all this plenishing of the Inorganic Earth, brings
   upon the scene the new and commanding powers of Life. But the powers of
   Life, however derived, however directed, are still feeble. The Organic
   is not always master. And it is not until the Higher Evolution is
   attained that the complement appears. Then the dominion is complete;
   that which is perfect is come; and both the First and Second Kingdoms
   are reigned over by the Third. Were there no domination of the Second
   by the Third, there had been no Third. And hence the naturalness of our
   Lord's appeal to miracle as the sign to the Second of the existence of
   the Third. If a plant wished to convince a mineral of the reality of
   the powers of the vegetable Kingdom--acting in the direction, let us
   say, of causing matter to rise in the air during the plant's growth in
   defiance of gravity--it would naturally point to specific cases where
   these powers had been exercised. The effect in the first instance upon
   the mineral would be to tempt it to reject the fact as contrary to
   experience, but as the evidence accumulated both in quantity and
   quality the doubt must gradually dissolve. A mineral, subject no longer
   to the inorganic forces which otherwise reign supreme throughout the
   Kingdom, bearing practical testimony to the reality and superiority of
   extra-inorganic powers, would certainly be a phenomenon of transcendent
   scientific significance. Attention would be gradually drawn to the
   possibility of the existence of a higher world, and as the facts were
   seen to be repeated, and as from different quarters evidence
   accumulated, all doubt upon the subject must gradually dissolve. But
   if, instead of fixing attention upon an isolated case here and there,
   one runs his eye over the boundary line dividing the Inorganic from the
   Organic, and finds the whole frontier abounding in similar activities,
   like the seaward margin of a coral reef fringed with the living
   polypes, he receives a new impression of their character and relations.
   He sees that these marvellous reactions are at that point no longer the
   exception but the rule. Miracle, in short, is the normal frontier
   phenomenon. Along the line of junction, again, between the Natural and
   the Spiritual a similar set of activities are carrying on their
   ceaseless work. Contemplated from the bottom of the Second Kingdom,
   where on an isolated group here and there these activities are
   operating on grosser material, the phenomena are exceptional,
   unintelligible, and miraculous. But on the frontier they are the normal
   actions of the Third Kingdom on the Second, demanded by Continuity,
   justified in the magnitude and gathering potency of their operations by
   Evolution and susceptible of the same kind of proof.

   That they are so little observed in the higher reaches is due to a
   peculiar law of their being. The Kingdom cometh without observation.
   But this is not true alone for the Kingdom of God. With infinite
   gentleness the Second Kingdom throws over the First its mysterious
   spell. With infinite delicacy its tentacles feel among the all but
   invisible atoms and build them up into higher forms, by unperceived and
   silent processes carrying on their growth. All the forces of the
   Inorganic world even are secret, silent forces. Gravity, the most
   ponderous of all, came down the ages with a step so noiseless that the
   world was old before an ear was quick enough to detect its footfall.
   And the Spiritual forces which carry on the processes to the further
   stage, re-creating the visible, acting through more and more attenuated
   forms of matter, become themselves more ethereal, the law in fact being
   that the various forces decrease in grossness as they increase in
   power.

   But in the first days of Christianity the invisibility of its forces
   formed a drawback to its development. If not essential, it was at least
   advisable that the outside world should become at once aware of its
   pretensions. And if the secret operations of the Spirit in regenerating
   men were then insufficient to attract attention, it became necessary
   for the manifestation to descend to what some might call a lower plane.
   The Spiritual, having power over the whole range of the Organic and
   Inorganic, might fitly exert an influence in a region where the miracle
   might be palpable, startling and unmistakable. It might be urged indeed
   that Virtue could not but go out of Jesus at whatever point He touched
   life; but at the same time this lower miracle was not due to the
   inadvertent overflow of a full vessel, but designed to strike men who
   could not rise to the perception of loftier manifestations. The number
   of occasions on which He made this concession, always of course with
   the higher purpose directly in view and apparent in the immediate
   result, was probably very much larger than the limited information we
   possess might lead us to suspect. The Evangelists hint that these
   interpolations of the Higher Powers, these suspensions of the ordinary
   course of nature in obedience to a higher law, occurred with great
   frequency. And although it is proper to notice the striking and
   suggestive fact of the extreme conservation of this power in the
   life-work of Jesus, it is equally necessary to bear in mind that He
   continually did works which no other man did, and periodically appealed
   to these as a ground why the members of the Natural Kingdom should
   accept the Spiritual.

   But there could be no greater mistake than to perpetuate the appeal to
   this rudimentary form of miracle as the continued attestation of
   Christianity. If miracle ceased with the first century, our faith, to a
   large extent, ceases with it, or at least most seriously suffers. What
   we have to point to now for the credentials of Christianity is not a
   first series of miracles but the series itself--the series which
   extends down to the present hour. To ignore this is to put ourselves in
   a position where belief has everything against it, human testimony
   notwithstanding. But if we begin with the phenomena which we see around
   us, or can see if we will, and argue backwards, step by step, coming
   slowly down to the time when the Miracle Himself was upon the stage, we
   reach a point where signs and wonders really appear to us as the
   inevitable. The denial of miracles accordingly, in the ordinary sense,
   is not the evidence of superior wisdom, but mainly of defective
   observation. Unless gravity had continued to act during the last two
   centuries we should, perhaps, have been justified in saying that Newton
   was mistaken when he saw the apple fall to the ground. How could such a
   thing happen? Is Newton to contradict "the universal experience of
   mankind"? Is his testimony to be accepted rather than that of Herschel
   or Faraday, who never saw such a thing happen? Is not such a violation
   of the laws of nature altogether incredible and inconceivable, even
   although the whole of Woolsthorpe were looking over the orchard wall
   when the apple fell?

   Now, if Christianity ceased to act with the first century, I do not see
   that we can argue for the miraculous. Unless we include the Third
   Kingdom in our conception a miracle is certainly a violation of the
   laws of nature. And if the Third Kingdom has passed away miracles may
   be interesting, but their occupation is gone--there is nothing for them
   to attest to me. On the other hand, if the Powers of the Third Kingdom
   are working around me now I am independent of them. I have the superior
   credential of the "greater works" which Christ's disciples were to do
   in His name.

   But I have said the denial of miracles is due mainly to defective
   observation--mainly, however, not wholly. The members of the Third
   Kingdom have something to answer for themselves here. They have failed
   to provide due materials for observation. Energy may be potential as
   well as kinetic. Were a visitant from a distant planet who had read
   "The Correlation of the Physical Forces" or Ganot's "Physics" to land
   on the coast of Labrador and demand of the Esquimaux to be shown the
   energies of electricity or the powers of steam, his credulity in his
   authorities would certainly be shaken. And even if he were informed by
   a passing Nordenskiold that many of the physical forces were available
   at Labrador, only the people had never utilized them, his bewilderment
   would not be lessened. Those who read the Christian's Book hear in like
   manner of faith to remove mountains, of love stronger than death, of
   limitless powers to be had for the asking of all the fulness of the
   Godhead placed at man's disposal. And when they turn to those who know
   this Book, who profess to believe it, who contribute themselves to the
   literature of the Third Kingdom, expanding and enforcing its ideas, and
   almost forcing them on men's attention, what do they see? Is it any
   satisfaction that a courteous Nordenskiold assures them that these
   forces are there withal, only the members of this frigid province at
   the moment do not happen to employ them? For does not the critic see
   multitudes of individuals met every week for the ostensible purpose of
   receiving these powers, down on their knees by the thousand crying for
   them to come? What is he to make of it? Is he dreaming or they? Or does
   the Kingdom come--but without observation? No; the Kingdom does not
   come. On the large scale it does not come. The splendid machinery of
   Christianity is standing still. The Church is paralyzed. When the
   Second Kingdom asks the Third for its credentials it remains silent. It
   has something to show in the past; it points sadly to the early
   centuries. But for the present nothing stirs; it is all as frozen as
   Labrador.

   So men tell us the spiritual energies are a myth--which is as
   inconclusive as the statement that the physical forces are myths where
   they are not utilized. The scepticism of the age nevertheless lies at
   the door of the Church. That there are individuals, and here and there
   churches, witnessing to the powers of the Third Kingdom is not to be
   gainsaid. No man who really desires to satisfy himself of the reality
   of the Spiritual World will seek in vain for a demonstration of the
   Spirit and of Power. But the appeal is not going forth to all the earth
   and arresting men by a testimony triumphant and irresistible. The Power
   that operated at Pentecost is no longer a mighty and awakening force.
   And even the ethical light which the subjects of the Third Kingdom were
   admonished to "let shine among men" is all but too dim to see.

   Now, whatever may be the state of matters at present within the Visible
   Church of the Third Kingdom, let us not blind ourselves to the
   unspeakably important fact that the Spiritual World contains forms of
   energy infinitely more powerful than those of the First and Second. It
   has never been sufficiently realized how much greater they are--how
   much greater they must be, even from analogy. One might almost speak of
   an Evolution of Energy going on as we rise from higher to higher
   Kingdoms. By this, of course, is not meant that the higher energy is in
   any sense evolved from the lower, but that the potency--whatever may be
   the source of the increment--is found gradually becoming stronger and
   stronger. As a matter of fact, while the energy within each Kingdom is
   constant, the organic powers are greater than the inorganic, the
   Spiritual than either. And the one thing requisite at once for the
   attestation of the Third Kingdom and the further evolution of the
   Second is that the subjects of the former should give heed once more to
   the offer of its King and Founder, "If ye, being evil, know how to give
   good gifts to your children, much more will your heavenly Father give
   the Holy Spirit to them that ask it."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] Keim's "Jesus of Nazara," vol. iii. p. 43.

   [8] See further Hausrath, "New Testament Times," vol. ii.; Keim, "Jesus
   of Nazara," vol. iii.; also Neander, Hess, and especially the earlier
   chapters of "Ecce Homo."

   [9] Isaiah lxi. 1-3.

   [10] "Ecce Homo," fourteenth edition, p. 92.

   [11] John iii.

   [12] Reuss, "History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age," vol.
   ii. p. 496.

   [13] Thus Turrettin, speaking of the gratiae efficacis motio: "Non est
   simpliciter physica, quia agitur de facultate morali, quae congruenter
   naturae suae moveri debet; nec simpliciter ethica, quasi Deus objective
   solum ageret, et leni suasione uteretur, quod pertendebant Pelagiani.
   Sed supernaturalis est et divina, quae transcendit omnia haec genera.
   Interim aliquid de ethico et physica participat, quia et potenter et
   suaviter, grate et invicte, operatur spiritus ad nostri conversionem.
   Ad modum physicum pertinet, quod Deus spiritu suo nos creat, regenerat,
   cor carneum dat, et efficienter habitus supernaturales fidei et
   charitatis nobis infundit. Ad moralem quod verbo docet, inclinat,
   suadet et rationibus variis tanquam vinculis amoris ad se trahit."
     __________________________________________________________________

The Problem of Foreign Missions

    Address delivered at the opening of the session in the Free Church College,
    Glasgow, in November 1890.

   IT has for a long time seemed to me that missionary facts, and the
   missionary problem generally, are susceptible of more special--may I
   say more scientific?--treatment than they usually receive; and the
   large size of the field which it has fallen to me to see is favourable
   to that methodical survey of the whole which is denied even to the
   missionary, for he represents but a single field.

   There are two ways in which men who offer their lives to their
   fellow-men may regard the world. They mean the same thing in the end,
   but you will not misunderstand me if I express the apparent distinction
   in the boldest terms. The first view is that the world is lost and must
   be saved; the second, that the world is sunken and must be raised.
   According to the first, the peoples of the world are looked upon as
   souls--souls to be redeemed; the second thinks of them rather as
   men--men to be perfected; or as nations--nations to be made righteous.
   The first deals with a sinner's status in the sight of God, the second
   with his character in the sight of men The first preaches mainly
   justification; the second mainly regeneration. The first is the
   standpoint of the popular evangelism; the second is the view of
   evolution.

   The danger of the first is to save the souls of men and there leave
   them; the danger of the second is to ignore the soul altogether. As I
   shall speak now from the last standpoint, I point out its danger at
   once, and meet it by adding to its watchword, evolution, the qualifying
   term, Christian. This alone takes account of the whole nature of man,
   of sin and guilt, of the future and of the past, and recognises the
   Christian facts and forces as alone adequate to deal with them. The
   advantage of speaking of "the Christian evolution of the world,"
   instead of, or, at least, as a change from, "the evangelization of the
   world," will appear as we go on. By making temporary use of the one
   standpoint, I do not exclude the other; and if I ignore it from this
   point onward, it is not because it is not legitimate, but simply
   because it is not the subject.

   Nothing ought to be kept more persistently before the mind of those who
   are open to serve the world as missionaries than the great complexity
   of the missionary problem; and nothing more strikes one who goes round
   the world than the amazing variety of work required and the almost
   radical differences among the various mission fields. In the popular
   conception the peoples of the world are roughly divided into black and
   white, or Christian and heathen, and the man who designates himself for
   the mission field makes a general choice, taking the first opening that
   comes, and considering but little in his decision that there are many
   shades of black, and innumerable kinds of heathen. But it is just as
   absurd for a man to choose in general terms "the foreign field" and go
   abroad to rescue heathen, as for a planter to go anywhere abroad in the
   hope of sowing general seed and producing general coffee. The planter
   soon finds out that there are many soils in the world, some suited to
   one crop and some to another; that seed must be put in for each
   particular crop in one way and not in another; that he requires
   particular implements in each case and not any implements, and that the
   time between sowing and reaping, and even between sowing and sprouting,
   is an always appreciable and very varying interval. The mission field
   has like distinctions. Some crops it is mere waste of time to try to
   plant in one place; the specialist's business is to find out what will
   grow there. Some crops will not and cannot come up in one year, or in
   ten years, or even in fifty years; it is the specialist's business to
   study scientifically the possibilities of growth, the limitations of
   growth, and the impossibilities of growth. It is irrational also for
   the missionary to carry the same message, or rather the same form of
   message, to every land, or to think that the thought which told to-day
   will tell tomorrow; he must rotate his crops as God through the
   centuries rotates the social soil on which they are to grow. To every
   land he must take, not the general list of agricultural implements
   furnished by his college, but one or two of special make which possibly
   his college has never heard of. Above all, when he reaches his field,
   his duty is to find out what God has grown there already, for there is
   no field in the world where the Great Husbandman has not sown
   something. Instead of uprooting his Maker's work and clearing the field
   of all the plants that found no place in his small European herbarium,
   he will rather water the growths already there and continue the work at
   the point where the Spirit of God is already moving. A hasty critic,
   when these sentences were spoken, construed them into a plea for
   building up Christianity upon heathenism. The words are "what God has
   sown there," and "where the Spirit of God is already moving." The
   missionary problem, in short, so far from being a mere saving of
   promiscuous souls with a few well-worn appliances, is a most complex
   question of Social Evolution.

   Let me illustrate the necessity of further specialization in regard to
   missions by reference to the three or four very different fields which
   I have just visited. As examples of what might be called a scientific
   classification of missions, one could scarcely pick any more typical
   than Australia, the South Sea Islands, China, and Japan. I include
   Australia among mission fields, and I might with it include both
   British Columbia and Manitoba, because none of these countries can
   provide as yet for its own evangelization.

   I. Australia. The missionary problem, or the mission churches problem,
   in these colonies is to deal with a civilized people undergoing
   abnormally rapid development. Australia is a case of prodigiously
   active growth in a few directions under most favourable natural
   conditions for nation-making. It is what a biologist would call an
   organic mass of the highest possible mobility, of almost perilous
   sensitiveness to prevailing impressions, with feeble safeguards to
   conserve its solid gains, and few boundary lines either to shape or
   limit other growths. The orderly progress here is complicated mainly by
   one thing,--a continuous accretion of outside elements,--due to
   immigration--which creates difficulties in assimilation. The chief
   problem of Christianity is to keep pace with the continuous growth; the
   immediate peril is that it may be wholly ignored in the pressure of
   competing growths.

   II. The South Sea Islands, of which the New Hebrides are a type, lie
   exactly at the opposite end of the scale. Growth, so far from being
   active, has not even begun. Here are no nations, scarcely even tribes.
   The first step in evolution, aggregation, has not yet taken place.
   These people are still at zero; they are the Amoebae of the human
   world. There is no complication here of unassimilated elements
   introduced by immigration, but a serious opposite difficulty--depletion
   due to emigration to other countries, and to other causes which vitally
   affect the whole future problem. As to religion here, the field is
   altogether open, for there is none at all.

   III. China. Midway between the South Sea Islands and the Australian
   colonies, this nation, as every one knows, is an instance of arrested
   development. On the fair way to become a higher vertebrate, it has
   stopped short at the crustacean. There are two complications: the
   amazing strength of the ekoskeleton--the external shell of custom and
   tradition, so hardened by the deposits of centuries as to make the
   evolutionist's demand for mobility, i.e. for capacity to change, almost
   non-existent. Secondly, which directly concerns Christianity, there is
   a very powerful religion already in possession. These two complications
   make the missionary problem in China one of the most delicate in the
   world.

   IV. If the South Sea Islands are the opposite of Australia, China, in
   turn, finds its almost perfect contrast in Japan. One with it in
   stagnation and isolation from external influences during three thousand
   years, almost within the last hour Japan has broken what Mr. Bagehot
   calls its "cake of custom," and so sudden and mature has already been
   its development that it is, at this moment, demanding from the Powers
   of Europe political recognition as one of the civilized nations of the
   world. This is an entirely different case from any of the preceding. It
   is the insect emerging from the chrysalis. From the Christian
   standpoint, the case is unique in history. Its own religion was
   abandoned a few years ago, and the country is at present looking for
   another.

   Even this rough classification will serve to show how far from simple
   the missionary question really is, how the problem varies from place to
   place, how different the equipment for each particular field, how wise
   the mind which should know where to strike in, how responsible the hand
   which would finger these subtle threads of human destiny, or move among
   the roots of national life, which God alone has tended in the past. To
   the Christian evolutionist these differences are educative. They mark
   different stages in the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, none of
   them in vain, all of them to be allowed for, some perhaps to be reset
   in the superstructure Christianity would build upon them.

   Suppose now the Churches had compiled a classification on some such
   lines of all the mission fields of the world, it would serve two
   practical purposes. In the first place, it would be the duty of the
   would-be missionary to go over that list, and select from it the exact
   kind of work to which he was most suited. In this way the missionary
   staff would be differentiated with more exactness than at present. Each
   man, also, having made his choice, would further equip himself along
   particular lines, and become a specialist at his work. In the second
   place, and what is just now of even more importance, it would make it
   possible for some men to be missionaries, and these among the best men
   entering the Universities, who see no room for themselves at present in
   the foreign field. Some men with such a review before them might see at
   once that there was no place for them in missionary work at all; but
   others, and, I believe, a larger number than have ever been attracted
   by this career, would find there something open to them--would find in
   a service which they had looked upon, perhaps, as somewhat limited and
   narrow something which, when looked upon in all its length and breadth,
   was large enough and rich enough in practical possibilities to make
   them offer to it the whole-hearted work of their lives. To-day,
   certainly, some of the best men do go to the foreign field; but the
   reason why more do not go is not indifference to its claims, but
   uncertainty as to whether they are exactly the type of men wanted,
   i.e., in plain language, uncertainty as to whether the cut of their
   theology quite qualifies them to be the successors of Carey or
   Williams. These men feel orthodox enough, of course, to be clergymen at
   home, but they have a secret sense that their views might be scarcely
   the thing on Eromanga The missionary theology--it is useless disguising
   it--is supposed to be a very special article, and a kind of theological
   modesty forbids some of our strongest men from considering it
   conceivable that they should ever aspire to be missionaries. Now this
   feeling is very real, but I am convinced that it is very
   ignorant--ignorant of the changed standpoint from which scores of our
   missionaries are even now doing their work, ignorant of the world's
   real needs, ignorant of the hospitality which they would receive from
   many at least of the officials of most of the Mission Boards. And yet
   these Boards are not wholly guiltless of having made it appear, or
   permitting it to continue understood, that only those of a certain type
   need look for welcome at their doors. I am not referring to any
   particular Church; but I do not think the mission committees of the
   world have ever worded an advertisement for men in language modern
   enough to include the class of whom I speak. I am not arguing for
   free-lances, or budding sceptics, or rationalists being turned loose on
   our mission fields. But for young men--and our colleges were never
   richer in them than at this moment--who combine with all modern culture
   the consecrated spirit and the Christ-like life; for men who are too
   honest to go under false pretences to a work which, though they be not
   yet specially enthusiastic for it, they are entirely willing to face,
   there ought to go forth a new and more charitable call. It ought at
   least to be understood that what qualifies to-day for the leading
   Churches at home ought not to disqualify for the work of Christ abroad,
   but that there is for Christian men of the highest originality and
   power a career in the foreign field at least as great and rational as
   that at home. Indeed, so far from such men feeling as if they were not
   wanted in the foreign field, or at the best that their presence there
   could but be tolerated by the Mission Boards, I am sure the committee
   at least of some Churches not only want these men to-day, but scarcely
   want anything else.

   First, always, in opening a new mission field comes the splendid work
   of the pioneer, the old missionary pioneer of the Sunday-school picture
   books, who stands with his Bible under the stereotyped palm tree,
   exhorting the crowd of impossible blacks. These we have had in most
   fields now, and their work must still and always continue. But next we
   have these same men in settled charges, founding congregations,
   planting schools, and carrying on the whole evangelical work of the
   Christian Church. But next, among these, and gathered from these, and
   in addition to these, we require a further class not wholly absorbed
   with specific charges, or ecclesiastical progress, or the inculcation
   of Western creeds, but whose outlook goes forth to the nation as a
   whole; men who in many ways not directly on the programme of the
   missionary society will help on its education, its morality, and its
   healthy progress in all that makes for righteousness. This man, besides
   being the missionary, is the Christian politician, the apostle of a new
   social order, the moulder and consolidator of the State. He places the
   accent, if such an extreme expression of a distinction may be allowed,
   not on the progress of a Church, but on the coming of the Kingdom of
   God. He is not the herald, but the prophet of the Cross.

   Of course every missionary who nowadays sets out for a foreign field
   acquires beforehand some general idea of the lie of things in the
   country to which he goes; but what is needed is more than a general
   idea. The Christianizing of a nation such as China or Japan is an
   intricate, ethical, philosophical and social as well as Christian
   problem; the serious taking of any new country indeed is not to be done
   by casual sharp-shooters bringing down their man or two here and there,
   but by a carefully thought out attack upon central points, or by
   patient siege, planned with all a military tactician's knowledge. We
   have at present, and, as already said, we shall always need, and they
   will always do their measure of good, devoted men of the sharp-shooter
   order who aim at single souls; but in addition to these the Kingdom of
   God needs men who work with a wider vision--men prepared by fulness of
   historical, ethnological, and sociological knowledge to become the
   statesmen of the Kingdom of God.

   Let me spend what time remains in briefly expanding the classification
   already given--partly to illustrate better what I mean, but especially
   to furnish a few materials to help those whose eyes, when they think of
   their future life, sometimes turn towards distant lands.

   I begin with the New Hebrides--mainly because least is known about
   them. The New Hebrides mission represents a class of missions differing
   so essentially from those of the third and fourth classes --China and
   Japan--that any one who was taught to regard it as a typical mission
   work would be completely misguided; and for some men at least a mission
   work of this order would be almost the last thing they would throw
   themselves into. For what are the real facts? The New Hebrides are a
   group of small islands, a few about the size of Arran, a very few
   others two or three times as large, the whole of no geographical
   importance. They are peopled by beings of the lowest human type to the
   number of probably not more than 50,000; so that they are of no
   political importance. This does not refer to the islands, but to the
   people. The islands themselves are of so great political importance at
   the present moment that the allegiance of Australia to England would
   tremble in the balance if there were any suspicion that the Home
   Government would hand them over to France. The population may be over
   or under that here stated. I have taken my figures from authorities on
   the spot, but any approximation to the numbers of inhabitants on these
   partially explored islands must be a guess. Whether we regard their
   quality or quantity, they can never play any appreciable part in the
   world's story; and the question which would immediately rise in the
   mind of the man who looked at the world from the standpoint of
   evolution would be the direct one: Is it really worth while sending
   twenty first-rate men to till this vineyard which can never contribute
   anything of importance to mankind? If it be replied, But is it proved
   that they will not? the answer is a sad one. A closer study of these
   islands shows that instead of increasing their population, these are
   dying fast. On the first which I visited, Aneityum, when the
   missionaries reached it, there were some thousands of inhabitants.
   To-day there is a bare four hundred of depressed and sickly souls. The
   children are swept away by the white man's epidemics almost as soon as
   they are born, and the missionaries tell you that the total doom of
   this island may be a matter of some score years. The very church which
   was built for the islanders in better days has had to be cut in two,
   and even the portioned half is now too large; and a small chapel is to
   be built to hold the remnant of this once noble flock. It is a dismal
   story, but it is more than likely that it will be repeated in time to a
   greater or less extent, not only throughout this group, but throughout
   the whole of the unchristianized South Sea Islands. At New Caledonia I
   found the depletion of population even more appalling; and though here
   and there an island may escape, the ultimate prospect is almost total
   obliteration. This being so, what man who entered the mission field
   from the standpoint from which I speak, what man who wished his work,
   however small, to contribute to the permanent evolution of the world,
   would choose the New Hebrides for his mission field? No man would. Yet
   is the inference then to be drawn that this mission is a mistake? There
   is a book by an accomplished clergyman called Wrong Missions to Wrong
   Races in Wrong Places. Is its thesis, when it answers this question in
   the affirmative, correct? I should be the last to say so, though its
   warning is a true one. For, as we have seen, there are missions and
   missions; and this mission belongs to a type which ought to be more
   clearly defined and acknowledged.

   In the evolutionary branch of missions it has simply no place at
   all--no place at all. It is a mistake from first to last. But it does
   not belong to this class, and is not to be judged by its
   standards--perhaps by higher ones. It belongs to the Order of the Good
   Samaritan. It is a mission of pure benevolence. Its parallel is the
   mission of Father Damien on the Leper Island. Who shall say that there
   are not, and will not always be, men among us who see that kind of
   mission, men who have no intellectual apprehension of evolution, but
   who possess the pitiful heart? Or who will say that the day will ever
   come when the leaders of the wider movement will grudge such men to the
   lost places of the earth?

   I cannot leave this subject without paying my passing tribute--may I
   say my homage? for tribute they need not--to the missionaries of the
   New Hebrides themselves. From a recent biography which all of you have
   read, you know something of the difficulties of their work. You
   remember the description of the Island of Tanna, the remoteness of its
   position, the strangeness of its language, the fierceness of its
   people; you remember how daily the savages sought the missionary's
   life, and how after years of facing death in a hundred forms he was
   driven from their shores with scarcely a single convert for his hire.
   Last June, sailing along Tanna, I tried to land near Mr. Paton's
   deserted field. With me was one of the missionaries who has now gained
   a footing on another part of that still cannibal island. As we neared
   the shore, a hundred painted savages poured from out the woods, and
   prepared to fire upon us with their guns and poisoned arrows. But the
   missionary stood up in the bow of the boat and spoke two words to them
   in their native tongue. Instantly every gun was laid upon the beach,
   and they rushed into the surf to welcome us ashore. No other unarmed
   man on this earth could have landed there. It meant that the foundation
   stone of civilization upon Tanna was already laid. Every island was
   once like Tanna; some are like it still. But on one after another the
   cannibal spirit has been already conquered; schools are planted
   everywhere; and neat churches and manses gleam through the palm trees,
   and signify to the few ships which wander in those seas that here at
   least life and property are safe. At Eromanga I went to see the spot on
   the beach where Williams fell. Hard by were the graves of his murdered
   successors, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. Their almost immediate successor, Mr.
   Robertson, is there to-day, his large church and beautiful manse within
   a stone-throw of the place where these first martyrs died; his leading
   elder the son of the cannibal who murdered Gordon. This monster left
   three sons; they are all elders of the Church, and life is as safe
   throughout that island to-day as in England. For the first year of
   their life in Eromanga Mr. and Mrs. Robertson lived in a bullet-proof
   stockade. They left it only under cover of night for a few yards, and
   on few occasions, once to bury their firstborn babe. For a year they
   never saw a European. Their work was to let the people look at them.
   Their message was to be kind. By-and-by acquaintance was picked up with
   one or two natives; the circle of influence spread, and after years of
   extraordinary patience and self-denial, their lives again and again
   hanging by a thread, they won this island for civilization and
   Christianity.

   On another island, where the missionary two years ago used to see the
   smoke of the cannibal feasts from his door-step, the natives brought me
   their spears and bows and poisoned arrows. "We do not need them now,"
   they said; "the missionary has taught us not to kill."

   I have no words to express my admiration for these men, and, may I say,
   their wives, their even more heroic wives; they are perfect
   missionaries; their toil has paid a hundred times; and I count it one
   of the privileges of my life to have been one of the few eye-witnesses
   of their work.

   As to the calls of this field for more men, I must add this. It is a
   proof of the sound sense of the New Hebrides missionaries that they are
   pretty unanimous in agreeing that, considering the needs of the rest of
   the world, they have already a quite fair portion of workers. The
   staff, of course, could be doubled or trebled to-morrow with great
   advantage, but the missionaries do not ask it. With their present
   resources and the number of native teachers who are in training they
   hope in time to cover these islands with mission stations by
   themselves. I confess these are the least greedy missionaries I ever
   heard of.

   I am sorry that, owing to the shortness of my visit to China, I should
   feel it a pure presumption to say almost anything about this, the
   greatest mission field in the world. What I can offer is but a surface
   impression, and I warn you beforehand it is little worth. From the old
   standpoint the work in China seems to be splendid; men and women from
   every Christian Church in the world are busy all over the land, and
   small congregations of native Christians are springing up everywhere
   along their track. The industry and devotion of the workers--Roman
   Catholic, Episcopalian, Congregational, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, and a
   host of others--is beyond all praise, and there is not one of the
   missionaries who will not tell you he is encouraged, that he sees some
   fruit, and that the future is full of hope. There seems to be great
   care, moreover, in the admission to the Churches of native Christians,
   and the belief in education and in medical missions is widely rooted.
   But from the ideal of a Christian evolution there remains very much to
   criticise--happily less in the direction of commission than of
   omission. This band of missionaries--I speak not of this society or of
   that, for the work of each separate society is compact enough in
   itself, but of the army as a whole--is no steady phalanx set on a fixed
   campaign, but a disordered host of guerillas recruited from all
   denominations, wearing all uniforms, and waging a random fight. Some
   are equipped with obsolete weapons, some with modern armament; but they
   possess no common programme or consistent method. Besides being
   confusing to the Chinese, this means great waste of power, great loss
   of cumulative effect. This, of course, is inevitable at first, and it
   is not the sin of the missionaries, but of Christendom; and, after the
   late Shanghai conference, there is more than a hope that even this in
   time may be remedied. But what one would really like to see, in
   addition to greater concentration, would be a more serious
   reconsideration of the manner of approach and the form of message most
   suited to the Chinese mind, and nature, and tradition, and some further
   contribution to the question how far its form of Christianity is to be
   Western, or how far a Chinese basis is possible or permissible. These
   questions might be left to adjust themselves but for one most serious
   fact: the converts in China, in the majority of districts, are almost
   exclusively drawn at present from the lower classes. There are
   exceptions, but the educated classes as a whole, the merchants and the
   mandarins, remain, I understand, almost wholly untouched. There is
   something wrong if this be the case. And leaving the present machinery
   to do the good work it is doing among the poor, I would join with the
   best of the missionaries in arguing for a few Rabbis to be sent to
   China, or to be picked from our fine scholars already there, who would
   quietly reconnoitre the whole situation, and shape the teaching of the
   country along well-considered lines--men, especially, who would lay
   themselves out through education, lectures, preaching, and literature
   to reach the intellect of the Empire. That some men are aiming at this,
   and doing it splendidly, we are already well aware. It is the direct
   policy of many missionaries and even of whole societies. But it is
   these missionaries themselves who are crying out for more of it. Men
   will not take the trouble to enquire what some of these societies are
   really aiming at and really doing, and, in ignorance of either, they
   regard the whole missionary work as a waste of time and money. The
   things also which one hears of missionaries, in talking with the
   business men of the Eastern ports--the contempt, the charges of
   inefficiency, impracticableness, and general uselessness--are enough to
   make any traveller not well on his guard renounce the mission cause for
   ever. These impressions are reimported into this country by ninety out
   of every hundred men who return home from the great commercial houses
   of the East, and they build up a public opinion against foreign
   missions most wanton and most false. As a rule these critics have never
   had ten minutes' serious talk with a missionary in their lives. If they
   had, they would find two things. First, that there were some
   missionaries a thousand times worse in folly and incompetence than they
   had ever imagined; and, secondly, that there were others, and these by
   far the greater majority, than whom no wiser, saner, more practical men
   could be found in any of the business houses of the world. It is men of
   this latter class, and not merely the passing traveller, who are
   calling out to-day for more scientific work and more rational methods
   in the mission field. They are perfectly aware that the evangelization
   of China is not a mere carrying of the Gospel to illiterate and heathen
   savages; and that perfect knowledge both of the modes of thought of the
   people and of the true genius of Christianity is needed to direct a
   campaign that will be permanently effective there. The missionary who
   is an educationist, who has some scientific and philosophic training,
   who knows something of sociology and political economy, and who will
   apply these in Christian forms to China, is the man most needed there
   at the present hour. For it is to be remembered that this is a case of
   arrested motion, and that the most natural development, perhaps the
   only possible one, certainly the only permanent one, will be one which
   is a continuation of that already begun rather than one entirely
   abnormal and foreign.

   It was new to me, though I ought to have known it before, that the
   Chinese, instead of looking up to Europeans, regard them as a most
   inferior and even barbaric people--clever, certainly, in a few
   directions, but with no sort of authority to instruct a Celestial. In
   most mission fields the missionary has a platform simply in the fact
   that he is a white man, that he came in a steam ship, and wears a hat;
   but the Chinaman has no such hallucination. He listens to a European
   missionary much as a London crowd would listen to a Red Indian--half
   curious, half amused, but wholly contemptuous as to his pretension to
   teach him anything. It is the deliberate opinion of many men who know
   China intimately, who are sympathetic with missionaries, who are even
   missionaries themselves, that half of the preaching, and especially the
   itinerating preaching, now being carried on throughout the Empire is
   absolutely useless. Some go so far as to say that it even does harm,
   that its ignorance and general quality make it almost an impertinence.
   In New York I met an influential Christian layman, who had just
   returned from a visit to China, where his son was a missionary; and he
   assured me that he meant to devote this entire winter to opening the
   eyes of the American Churches to the futility and falseness of method
   of much that was being done being done in perfect good faith--by worthy
   men and worthy women to convert the people of China. I cannot verify
   this criticism; I merely record it. But at a time when the loud cry for
   hundreds of more laymen to pour into China is sounding over this land
   the warning ought at least to be heard. I go further. This call is
   frequently uttered in such terms as to take almost an unfair advantage
   of a certain class of Christians--uttered with a harrowing importunity
   and sensationalism of appeal which when it falls upon a tender
   conscience or an excited mind makes it seem blasphemy to decline. The
   kind of missionary secured by this process, to say the least, is
   neither the wisest nor the best; and not only China needs to be
   protected from these men, but they need to be protected from themselves
   and from those who, in genuine but unbalanced zeal, appeal to
   them--protected by sober statements from sober men, who love the word
   of God, and the souls of men not less, but who understand both better.

   I pass now to a country where the situation is more delicate still.
   Japan is the most interesting country in the world at this moment. The
   past never witnessed a birth of a civilized nation so remarkable, so
   orderly, so sudden. Within the lifetime of all of us the Japanese were
   a wholly unilluminated race. They kept their doors shut against outside
   influence of every kind. No foreigner could even enter the land. Today
   all is changed. They sent envoys to France, who brought back law;
   others to Germany, who gave them a military organization. From England
   they borrowed a navy; from America a system of national education. From
   the civilized world in general they imported a most perfect telegraph
   and postal system, railways and tramways, the electric light,
   Universities, technical colleges, and within the last few months,
   Houses of Parliament and a vote. The Japanese have set themselves up,
   in short, with all the material and machinery of an advanced and rising
   civilized State--all the material except one. They have no religion. As
   was inevitable, heathenism has been abolished, and, as already said,
   the people are in the unique position at present of prospecting for a
   religion.

   Now this last fact having become somewhat known, Japan to-day presents
   the spectacle of having already within its borders representatives from
   every Church in Christendom prospecting for converts. Even the
   politicians being fairly agreed--and this in itself is most
   striking--that some sort of religion is necessary, these
   representatives are eagerly listened to, and get a perfectly honest
   chance.

   The noblest building in the capital of Japan is the Cathedral of the
   Greek Church. Roman Catholics are there, Unitarians are there,
   Episcopalians of different degrees of height and Presbyterians of
   different degrees of breadth, and Methodists of different degrees of
   heat, and Baptists and Independents, and Theosophists and
   Spiritualists, and every sect and church and denomination under heaven.
   The issue will be one of the most interesting events in ecclesiastical
   history. For there is no favouritism and no prejudice. When the result
   is known, it will be the purest possible case of the survival of the
   fittest.

   One cannot at all say at present who has it. It will be some sort of
   Christianity; probably not now the Roman Catholic or the Greek; and
   what makes the situation so extremely interesting and the hour so
   overwhelmingly important is that every Christian man, and every
   Christian book, and every Christian stroke of work that are given to
   Japan have an immediate and almost palpable influence upon this
   problem. Such is the mood and such is the malleability of this nation
   at the present hour, that if a Christian of great size arose to-morrow,
   either among the Japanese themselves or among the European
   missionaries, he could almost give the country its religion. If there
   be here one prophet, or half a prophet, or even the making of half a
   prophet, let me assure him that there is no field in the world to-day
   where, so far as man can judge, his best years could be lived to so
   great a purpose.

   With the mention of two more facts, I am done with Japan. You are aware
   that the work of the missionaries has been so successful that there are
   already thousands upon thousands of Christian converts in the country.
   Very many of these know English as well as we do, and many are
   perfectly read in every form of modern European literature, and as able
   and as cultured as the picked men in our Universities. The man among
   these men whom I found was most regarded as a leader of thought among
   the Japanese Christians made to me this striking statement: "We have
   got," he said, "our Christianity almost exclusively from the
   missionaries, especially from the American missionaries, and we can
   never thank them enough. But after a little we began to look at it for
   ourselves, and we made a discovery. We found that Christianity was a
   greater and a richer thing than the missionaries told us. Perhaps they
   themselves were second-handed. At any rate, we must henceforth look at
   it for ourselves. We want Christianity, not perhaps necessarily a
   Western Christianity." His next sentence was expressed with some
   hesitation and much delicacy, but it meant this--"In the past they have
   helped us much; but . . . they may now . . . go."

   In justice to the missionaries, let me say that one or two of the few
   whom I met were quite aware that this feeling existed towards some of
   them, and they also knew its cause; others knew that the Japanese were
   beginning to think them de trop, but they attributed it to conceit, and
   to the general anti-English reaction lately set in in all departments
   But all were agreed that the Japanese church could not yet be left to
   stand alone. What exactly my critic would have replied, or rather how
   exactly he would have qualified by further statement of his meaning,
   may possibly be inferred from the other circumstances which I wish to
   name. It happened in Tokio that I had the privilege of addressing some
   thirty or forty Japanese Christian pastors. At the close I asked them
   if they had any message they would like me to take home with me to the
   Churches here or in America. They appointed a spokesman, who stood up
   and told me, in their name, that there were two things they would like
   me to say. The one was, "Tell them to send us one six thousand dollar
   missionary, rather than ten two thousand dollar missionaries." But the
   second request went deeper. I again give the exact words--"Tell them,"
   he said, "that we want them to send us no more doctrines. Japan wants
   Christ."

   I trust the narrative of these two facts will not be taken as a
   reproach to the missionaries. If they represent a true feeling, it is
   rather to their lasting honour that in a few years they should have
   taught the native Christians to see so far. Of the actual mission work
   in Japan I can say nothing, for I was only a few days there. But if I
   were to judge from the Japanese converts whom I met, I would question
   whether any mission work in the world had ever produced fruit of so
   fine a quality. How deep it is, how permanent it is, remain for the
   test of time to declare; but the immediate outlook, though
   disheartening possibly to individual missionaries, seems to me one of
   the richest hope and promise.

   I had meant in closing to turn to Australia and make a bid for able men
   for that Greater Britain, but there is only time for a word. Composed
   largely of men whom the rush for wealth has drawn from an older
   civilization, the Church's problem in that colossal continent--you are
   aware it is as big as Europe--is to establish the new civilization in
   truth and righteousness. Who, where every man is making money, is to
   make just laws, to raise social standards, to purify political ideals?
   Two kinds of ministers are required to be directly or indirectly the
   leaders of this work.

   (1) Men of the highest culture and ability as ministers for the large
   towns; men who are preachers and students. There is no more influential
   sphere in the world than that open to a cultured preacher in one of the
   capital cities of Australia. His influence will tell upon the whole
   colony almost immediately, and as a public man he will have
   opportunities of giving a tone and direction even to political life
   such as no one at home possesses. At this moment there are some three
   or four vacant churches of the very first rank which must be supplied
   from home; and if these are shut to students or probationers, any man
   of strength in that new land can raise a minor charge to an equal place
   within two or three years' time.

   (2) The second kind of man that is wanted, and he is wanted not by the
   dozen, but by the score, is the bush minister. This man must be a man;
   he must be ready, and adaptable; he may be as unprofessional as he
   pleases, but he must be a Christian gentleman. His work will be to keep
   up an occasional service at some half-dozen wooden chapels--oases in
   the wilderness of forest and scrub--or to hold services in barns or, on
   great occasions, in some village church. You will see why I have
   allocated the man who is the student to the city. This man cannot
   study, or cannot study much. He is the evangelist, the other the
   teacher.

   * * * * *

   If one saw a single navvy trying to remove a mountain, the desolation
   of the situation would be appalling. Most of us have seen a man, or
   two, or a hundred or two--ministers, missionaries, Christian laymen--at
   work upon the higher evolution of the world; but it is when one sees
   them by the thousand in every land, and in every tongue, and the
   mountain honey-combed and slowly crumbling on each of its frowning
   sides, that the majesty of the missionary work fills and inspires the
   mind.

   * * * * *

   Gentlemen, finally, what a field the world is for any man who means, as
   Goethe says, to be a hammer and not an anvil! We have looked down only
   three or four of the vistas of useful work which in every region of the
   earth are opening up; but how attractive, how alluring each of them is
   to the man with a generous purpose in his soul! There is one thing for
   which I love the very sound of the word Evolution--its immense hope,
   its indescribable faith. Darwin's great discovery, or the discovery
   which he brought into prominence, is the same as Galileo's--that the
   world moves. The Italian prophet said it moved from West to East, the
   English philosopher said it moved from low to high. The message of
   science to this age is that all Nature is on the side of the men or of
   the nation who is trying to rise. An ascending energy is in the
   universe, and the whole moves on with the mighty idea and anticipation
   of the Ascent of Man.

   The progress of the past seems almost to guarantee the future. Here
   there may be retardation, there obstruction, but somehow we have
   learned to believe that the mass moves on. Yesterday saw divergence
   from the faith, to-day mourned persecution; but somehow to-morrow we
   feel that the sun will shine again on a Kingdom of God which has also
   somehow grown. After all, this instrument of science, this discoverer
   of a secret motion in the world, this great calmer of faithless men,
   this rebuker of quaking saints, is a religious teacher--we work with
   it, we look with its eyes, we hear its voice, and it says with
   Browning--


   "God's in His Heaven,

   All's right with the world."
     __________________________________________________________________

The Contribution of Science to Christianity

   THERE is nothing more inspiring just now to the religious mind than the
   expansion of the intellectual area of Christianity. Christianity seemed
   for a time to have ceased to adapt itself to the widening range of
   secular knowledge, and the thinking world had almost left its side. But
   the expansion of Christianity can never be altogether contemporaneous
   with the growth of knowledge. For new truth must be solidified by time
   before it can be built into the eternal truth of the Christian system.
   Yet, sooner or later, the conquest comes; sooner or later, whether it
   be art or music, history or philosophy, Christianity utilises the best
   that the world finds, and gives it a niche in the temple of God.

   To the student of God's ways, who reverently marks His progressive
   revelation and scans the horizon for each new fulfilment, the field of
   science presents just now a spectacle of bewildering interest. To say
   that he regards it with expectation is feebly to realize the dignity
   and import of the time. He looks at science with awe. It is the thing
   that is moving, unfolding. It is the breaking of a fresh seal. It is
   the new chapter of the world's history. What it contains for
   Christianity, or against it, he knows not. What it will do, or
   undo--for in the fulfilling it may undo--he cannot tell. The plot is
   just at its thickest as he opens the page; the problems are more in
   number and more intricate than they have ever been before, and he waits
   almost with excitement for the next development.

   And yet this attitude of Christianity towards science is as free from
   false hope as it is from false fear. It has no false fear, for it knows
   the strange fact that this plot is always at its thickest; and its hope
   of a quick solution is without extravagance, for it has learned the
   slowness of God's unfolding and His patient tempering of revelation to
   the young world which has to bear the strain. But, for all this, we
   cannot open this new and closely written page as if it had little to
   give us. With nature as God's work; with man, God's finest instrument,
   as its investigator; with a multitude of the finest of these finest
   instruments, in laboratory, field, and study, hourly engaged upon this
   book, exploring, deciphering, sifting, and verifying--it is impossible
   that there should not be a solid, original, and ever-increasing gain.
   Add to this man's known wish to know more, and God's wish that he
   should know more--for nature is fuller of nothing than of invitations
   to learn--and we shall see how true it is that nature has but to be
   asked, to give her best.

   The one thing to be careful about in approaching nature is, that we
   really come to be taught; and the same attitude is honourably due to
   its interpreter, science. Religion is probably only learning for the
   first time how to approach science. Their former intercourse, from
   faults on both sides, and these mainly due to juvenility, is not a
   thing to remember. After the first quarrel--for they began the
   centuries hand in hand--the question of religion to science was simply,
   "How dare you speak at all?" Then as science held to its right to speak
   just a little, the question became, "What new menace to our creed does
   your latest discovery portend?" By-and-by both became wiser, and the
   coarser conflict ceased. Then we find religion suggesting a compromise,
   and asking simply what particular adjustment to its last hypothesis
   science would demand. But we do not speak now of the right to be heard,
   or of menaces to our faith, or even of compromises. Our question is a
   much maturer one--we ask what contribution science has to bestow, what
   good gift the wise men are bringing now to lay at the feet of our
   Christ. This question marks an immense advance in the relation between
   science and Christianity, and we should be careful to sustain it.
   Nothing is more easily thrown out of working order than the balance
   between different spheres of thought. The least assumption of
   superiority on the part of one, the least hint of a challenge, even a
   suggestion of independence, may provoke a quarrel. In one sense
   religion is independent of science, but in another it is not. For
   science is not independent of religion, and religion dare not leave it.
   One notices sometimes a disposition in religious writers, not only to
   make light of the claims of science, to smile at its attempts to help
   them, to despise its patronage, but even to taunt it with its impotence
   to touch the higher problems of life and being at all. Now science has
   feelings. This impotence is a fact, but it is the limitation simply of
   its function in the scheme of thought; and to taunt it with its
   insufficiency to perform other functions is a vulgar way to make it
   jealous of that which does perform them. We live in an intellectual
   commune, and owe too much to each other to reflect on a neighbour's
   poverty, even when it puts on appearances.

   The result of the modern systematic study of nature has been to raise
   up in our midst a body of truth with almost unique claims to
   acceptance. The grounds of this acceptance are laid bare to all the
   world. There is nothing esoteric about science. It has no secrets. Its
   facts can be seen and handled: they are facts; they are nature itself.
   Apart therefore from their attractiveness or utility, men feel that
   here at last they have something to believe in, something independent
   of opinion, prejudice, self-interest, or tradition. This feeling is a
   splendid testimony to man as well as to nature. And we do not grudge to
   science the vigour and devotion of its students, for, like all true
   devotion, it is founded on an intense faith. Now the mere presence of
   this body of truth, so solid, so transparent, so verifiable,
   immediately affects all else that lies in the field of knowledge. And
   it affects it in different ways. Some things it scatters to the winds
   at once. They have been the birthright of mankind for ages, it may be;
   their venerableness matters not, they must go. And the power of the
   new-comer is so self-evident that they require no telling, but
   disappear of themselves. In this way the modern world has been rid of a
   hundred superstitions.

   Among other things which have been brought to this bar is Christianity.
   It knows it can approve itself to science; but it is taken by surprise,
   and therefore begs time. It will honestly look up its credentials and
   adjust itself, if necessary, to the new relation. Now this is the
   position of theology at the present moment. The purification of
   religion, Herbert Spencer tells us, has always come from science. In
   this case it is largely true. And theology proceeds by asking science
   what it demands, and then borrows its instruments to carry out the
   improvements. This loan of the instruments constitutes the first great
   contribution of science to religion.

   What are these instruments? We shall name two--the Scientific Method
   and the Doctrine of Evolution. The first is the instrument for the
   interpretation of Nature; the second is given us as the method of
   Nature itself. With the first of these we shall deal formally; the
   second will present itself in various shapes as we proceed.

   In emphasizing the scientific method as a contribution from science to
   Christianity, it is not to be understood that science has an exclusive,
   or even a prior claim, either to its discovery or possession. Along
   with the germs of all great things, it is found in the Bible; and
   theologians all along have fallen into its vein at times, though they
   have seldom pursued it long or with entire abandonment. There are
   examples of work done in modern theology, German and English, by the
   use of this method, which for the purity, consistency, and reverence
   with which it is applied are not surpassed by anything that physical
   science has produced. At the same time, this is par excellence the
   method of science. The perfecting of the instrument, the most lucid
   exhibition of its powers, the education in its use, above all the
   intellectual revolution which has compelled its application in every
   field of knowledge, we owe to natural science. Theology has had its
   share in this great movement, how much we need not ask, or seek to
   prove. The day is past for quarrelling over rights of discovery; and
   whether we owe the scientific method to Job and Paul, or to Bacon and
   Darwin, is just the kind of question which the possession of this
   instrument would warn us not to touch.

   To see what the scientific method has done for Christianity, we have
   only to ask ourselves what it is. The things which it insists upon are
   mainly two--the value of facts, and the value of laws. From the first
   of these comes the integrity of science; from the second its beauty and
   force. On bare facts science from first to last is based. Bacon's
   contribution to science was simply that he vindicated the place and
   power, the eternal worth, of facts; Darwin's, that he supplied it with
   facts. Now if Christianity possesses anything it possesses facts. So
   long as the facts were presented to the world Christianity spread with
   marvellous rapidity. But there came a time when the facts were less
   exhibited to men than the evidence for the facts. Theology, that is to
   say, began to rest on authority. Men or manuscripts were quoted as
   authorities for these facts, always with a loss of impressiveness, a
   loss increasing rapidly as time distanced the facts themselves. Then as
   the facts became more and more remote the Churches became the
   authorities rather than individual witnesses, and this was accompanied
   by a still further loss of power. And the surest proof of the waning
   influence of the facts themselves, and the extent of the loss incurred
   by the transfer of their credential to authority, is found in the
   appeal, which quickly followed, to the secular arm. The facts, ceasing
   to be their own warrant, had to be enforced by the establishment of
   judicial relations between Church and State. It is these intermediaries
   between the facts and the modern observer that stumble science. Its
   method is not to deal with persons however exalted, nor with creeds
   however admirable, nor with Churches however venerable. It will look at
   facts and at facts alone. The dangers, the weakness, the
   unpracticableness in some cases of this method, are well known.
   Nevertheless it is a right method. It is the method of all reformation;
   it was the method of the Reformation. The Reformation was largely a
   revolt against intermediaries, an appeal to facts. Now Christianity is
   learning from science to go back to its facts, and it is going back to
   facts. Critics in every tongue are engaged upon the facts; travellers
   in every land are unveiling facts; exegetes are at work upon the words,
   scholars upon the manuscripts; sceptics, believing and unbelieving, are
   eliminating the not-facts; and the whole field is alive with workers.
   And the point to mark is that these men are not manipulating, but
   verifying, facts.

   There is one portion of this field of facts, however, which is still
   strangely neglected, and to which a scientific theology may turn its
   next attention. The evidence for Christianity is not the Evidences. The
   evidence for Christianity is a Christian. The unit of physics is the
   atom, of biology the cell, of philosophy the man, of theology the
   Christian. The natural man, his regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the
   spiritual man and his relations to the world and to God, these are the
   modern facts for a scientific theology. We may indeed talk with science
   on its own terms about the creation of the world, and the spirituality
   of nature, and the force behind nature, and the unseen universe; but
   our language is not less scientific, not less justified by fact, when
   we speak of the work of the risen Christ, and the contemporary
   activities of the Holy Ghost, and the facts of regeneration, and the
   powers which are freeing men from sin. There is a great experiment
   which is repeated every day, the evidence for which is as accessible as
   for any fact of science; its phenomena are as palpable as any in
   nature; its processes are as explicable, or as inexplicable; its
   purpose is as clear; and yet science has never been seriously asked to
   reckon with it, nor has theology ever granted it the place its
   impressive reality commands. One aim of a scientific theology will be
   to study conversion, and restore to Christianity its most powerful
   witness. When men, by mere absorption in the present, refuse to
   consider history, or from traditional prejudice take refuge in the
   untrustworthiness of the records, it is unwise to refer, in the first
   place at least, to phenomena which are centuries old, when we have the
   same among us now.

   But not less essential, in the scientific method, than the examination
   of facts is the arrangement of them under laws. And the work of modern
   science in this direction has resulted in its grandest achievement--the
   demonstration of the uniformity of nature. This doctrine must have an
   immediate effect upon the entire system of theology. For one thing, the
   contribution of the spiritual world to the uniformity of nature has yet
   to be made. Not that the natural world is to include the spiritual, but
   that a higher natural will be seen to include both. It cannot be said
   that Christianity as arranged by theology at present is highly natural,
   nor can it be said to be unnatural. In that relation it is simply
   neutral. The question of naturalness or the reverse is one which has
   not hitherto at all concerned it. There was no call upon theology to
   make its presentation of itself with a view to nature, and therefore,
   if that is an advisable thing, or a feasible thing, it has yet, on the
   large scale at least, to be attempted. In the natural world, the truth
   of the uniformity of nature took a long time to grow. No one in the
   first instance set himself to establish it. Innumerable workers in
   innumerable fields, engaged upon different classes of facts, found a
   mysterious brotherhood of common laws. Again and again, and everywhere
   again and again, the same familiar lines confronted them, few, simple,
   and unchangeable, yet each with a vanishing trend towards an upward
   point, hidden as yet in mystery. These workers did not formally consult
   together about these laws, or seek to follow them beyond the line of
   sight. Nor did they try to find a name for the hidden point to which
   all converged. But there grew up amongst them a sense of symmetry in
   the whole which found expression in the formula, which is now the
   postulate of science--the "uniformity of nature." In the same way
   probably shall we one day see disclosed the uniformity of the spiritual
   world. The earlier work had to be accomplished first, the scaffolding
   for the inner temple; but when the whole is finished there will be
   nothing in the spiritual world to put the mind of science to confusion.
   The laws of both as they radiate upwards will meet in a common cupola,
   and between the outer and the inner courts the priests of nature and
   the priests of God will go in and out together.

   There may be laws, or actings, in the spiritual world, which it may
   seem to some impossible to include in such a scheme. God is not, in
   theology, a Creator merely, but a Father; and according to the counsel
   of His own will He may act in different cases in different ways. To
   which the reply is that this also is law. It is the law of the Father,
   the law of the paternal relation, the law of the free-will; yet not an
   exceptional law, it is the law of all fathers of all free-wills.
   Besides, if in the private Christian life the child of God finds
   dealings which are not reducible to law, grant even their lawlessness
   if that be possible, that is a family matter, a relation of parent and
   child, similar to the earthly relation, and scarcely the kind of case
   to be referred to science. Into ordinary family relations science
   rarely feels called to intrude; and it is obvious that in dealing with
   this class of cases in the spiritual world, science is attempting a
   thing which in the natural world it leaves alone. If ethics chooses to
   take up these questions, it has more right to do so; but that there
   should be a reserve in the spiritual world for God acting towards His
   children in a way past finding out is what would be expected from the
   mere analogies of the family. It is a pity this distinction between the
   paternal and the governmental relation of God is not more apprehended
   by science; for there is an indelicacy about all these questions which
   arises from ignorance of it--questions concerning prayer and natural
   law, "special providences," and others--which is painful to devout
   people. It is not by any means that religion cannot afford to have
   these things talked of, but they are to be approached in privacy, with
   the sympathy and respect due to family affairs.

   The relations of the spiritual man, however, are not all, or nearly
   all, in this department. There are whole classes of facts in the outer
   provinces which have yet to be examined and arranged under appropriate
   laws. The intellectual gain to Christianity of such a process will be
   obvious. But there is also a practical gain to the religious experience
   of not less moment. Science is nothing if not practical, and the
   scientific method has little for Christianity after all if it is not to
   exalt and enrich the lives of its followers. It is worth while,
   therefore, taking a single example of its practical value.

   The sense of lawlessness which pervades the spiritual world at present
   re-acts in many subtle and injurious ways upon the personal experience
   of Christians. They gather the idea that things are managed differently
   there from anywhere else--less strictly, less consistently; that
   blessings or punishments are dispensed arbitrarily, and that everything
   is ordered rather by a Divine discretion than by a system of fixed
   principle. In this higher atmosphere ordinary sequences are not to be
   looked for--cause and effect are suspended or superseded. Accordingly,
   to descend to the particular, men pray for things which they are quite
   unable to receive, or altogether unwilling to pay the price for. They
   expect effects without touching the preliminary causes, and causes
   without calculating the tremendous nature of the effects. There is
   nothing more appalling than the wholesale way in which unthinking
   people plead to the Almighty the richest and most spiritual of His
   promises, and claim their immediate fulfilment, without themselves
   fulfilling one of the conditions either on which they are promised or
   can possibly be given. If the Bible is closely looked into, it will
   probably be found that very many of the promises have attached to them
   a condition--itself not unfrequently the best part of the promise. True
   prayer for any promise is to plead for power to fulfil the condition on
   which it is offered, and which, being fulfilled, is in that act given.
   We have need, certainly in this sense, to know more of prayer and
   natural law. And science could make no truer contribution to modern
   Christianity than to enforce upon us all, as unweariedly as in nature,
   the law of causation in the spiritual life. The reason why so many
   people get nothing from prayer is that they expect effects without
   causes; and this also is the reason why they give it up. It is not
   irreligion that makes men give up prayer, but the uselessness of their
   prayers.

   There is one other gain to Christianity to be expected from the wider
   use of the scientific method which may be mentioned in passing. Besides
   transforming it outwardly and reforming it inwardly, it must attract an
   ever-increasing band of workers to theology. There is a charm in
   working with a true method, which, once felt, becomes for ever
   irresistible. The activity in theology at the present time is almost
   limited, and the enthusiasm almost wholly limited, to those who are
   working with the scientific method. Round the islands of coral
   skeletons in the Pacific Ocean there is a belt of living coral. Each
   tiny polyp on this outermost fringe, and here only, secretes a solid
   substance from the invisible storehouse of the sea, and lays down its
   life in adding it to the advancing reef. So science and so theology
   grow. Through these workers on the fringing reef--behind, in contact
   with the great solid, essential, formulated past; before, the profound
   sea of unknown truth--through these workers, and through these alone,
   can knowledge grow. The phalanx of able, busy, and joyful spirits
   crowding the growing belt of each modern science--electricity, for
   example --may well excite the envy of theology. And it is the method
   that attracts them. And every day theology too, as it knows this
   method, gets busier--not undermining the old reef, nor abandoning it to
   make a new one, but adding the living work of living men to this
   essential, formulated past.

   We are warned sometimes that this method has dangers, and told not to
   carry it too far. It is then it becomes dangerous. The danger arises,
   not from the use of the scientific method, but from its use apart from
   the scientific spirit. For these two are not quite the same. Some men
   use the scientific method, but not in the scientific spirit. And as
   science can help Christianity with the former, Christianity may perhaps
   do something for science as regards the latter. Christianity is
   certainly wonderfully tolerant of all this upturning in theology,
   wonderfully generous and patient and hopeful upon the whole. And so
   just is the remark of "Natural Religion," that the true scientific
   spirit and the Christian spirit are one, that the Christian world is
   probably prepared to accept almost anything the most advanced theology
   brings, provided it be a joint product of the scientific spirit--the
   fearlessness and originality of the one, tempered by the modesty,
   caution, and reverence of the other.

   To preserve this confidence, and to keep this spirit pure, is a sacred
   duty. There is an intellectual covetousness abroad just now which is
   neither the fruit nor the friend of a scientific age--a haste to be
   wise, which, like the haste to be rich, leads men into speculation upon
   indifferent securities, and can only end in fallen fortunes. Theology
   must not be bound up with such speculation. "If" --to recall one of the
   fine outbursts of Bacon--"if there be any humility towards the Creator,
   any reverence for or disposition to magnify His works, any charity for
   man and anxiety to relieve his sorrows and necessities, any love of
   truth in nature, any hatred of darkness, any desire for the
   purification of the understanding, we must entreat men again and again
   to discard, or at least set apart for the while, these volatile and
   preposterous philosophies which have preferred these to hypotheses, led
   experience captive, and triumphed over the works of God; and to
   approach with humility and veneration to unroll the volume of creation,
   to linger and meditate therein, and with minds washed clean from
   opinions to study it in purity and integrity. For this is that sound
   and language which went forth into all lands' and did not incur the
   confusion of Babel; this should men study to be perfect in, and
   becoming again as little children, condescend to take the alphabet of
   it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the
   interpretation thereof, but pursue it strenuously and persevere even
   unto death." [14] The one safeguard is to use the intellectual method
   in sympathetic association with the moral spirit. The scientific method
   may bring to light many fresh and revolutionary ideas; the scientific
   spirit will see that they are not given a place as dogmas in their
   first exuberance, that they are held with caution, and abandoned with
   generosity on sufficient evidence. The scientific method may secure
   many new and unique possessions; the scientific spirit will wear its
   honours humbly, knowing that after all new truth is less the product of
   genius than the daughter of time. And in its splendid progress the
   scientific method will find some old lights dim, some cherished
   doctrines old-fashioned, venerable authorities superseded; the
   scientific spirit will be respectful to the past, checking that mockery
   at the old which those who lack it make unthinkingly, and remembering
   that the day will come for its work also to pass away.

   So much for the scientific method. Let us now consider for a moment one
   or two of its achievements. Apart from the usual reservations, which it
   is hoped are always implied--that science is only in its infancy, that
   the scientific method is almost still a novelty, that therefore we are
   not to expect too much nor to be absolutely sure of what we get--there
   is a special reason in this case for remembering that science is new.
   For this will prepare us to expect its contribution to theology--its
   contribution, that is, where the actual subject-matter of laws and
   discoveries of science are involved, its method--in one direction
   rather than in another, and in certain departments rather than others.
   Itself at an elementary stage, we should be wrong to look for any very
   pronounced contribution as yet to the higher truths of religion We
   should expect the first effect among the elements of religion. We
   should expect science to be fairly decided in its utterances about
   them, to become more and more hesitating as it runs up the range of
   Christian doctrine, and gradually to lapse into silence. Proceeding
   upon this principle we should go back at once to Genesis. We should
   begin with the beginnings, and expect the first serious contribution to
   theology on the doctrine of creation.

   And what do we find? We find that upon this subject of all others
   science has most to offer us. It comes to us freighted with vast
   treasures of newly noticed facts, but with a theory which by many
   thoughtful minds has been accepted as the method of creation. And, more
   than this, it tells us candidly it has failed--and the failures of
   science are among its richest contributions to Christianity--it has
   failed to discover any clue to the ultimate mystery of origins, any
   clue which can compete for a moment with the view of theology.

   Consider first this impressive silence of science on the question of
   origins. Who creates, or evolves? whether do the atoms come, or go?
   These questions remain as before. Science has not found a substitute
   for God. And yet, in another sense, these questions are very different
   from before. Science has put them through its crucible. It took them
   from theology, and deliberately proclaimed that it would try to answer
   them. They are now handed back, tried, unanswered, but with a new place
   in theology and a new power with science. Science has attained, after
   this ordeal, to a new respect for theology. If there are answers to
   these questions, and there ought to be, theology holds them And
   theology likewise has learned a new respect for science. In its
   investigations of these questions science has made a discovery. It has
   seen plainly that atheism is unscientific. It is a remarkable thing
   that after trailing its black length for centuries across European
   thought, atheism should have had its doom pronounced by science. With
   its most penetrating gaze science has now looked at the back of
   phenomena. It says: "The atheist tells us there is nothing there. We
   cannot believe him. We cannot tell what it is, but there is certainly
   something. Agnostics we may be, we can no longer be atheists."

   This permission to theism to go on, this invitation to Christianity to
   bring forward its theory to supplement science here, and give this
   something a name, is a great advance. And science has not left here a
   mere vague void for Christianity to fill, but a carefully defined niche
   with suggestions of the most striking kind as to how it is to be
   filled. It has never been sufficiently noticed how complete is the
   scientific account of a creative process, and how here biology and
   theology have actually touched. Watch a careful worker in science for a
   moment, and see how nearly a man by searching has found out God. The
   observer is Mr. Huxley. He stands looking down the tube of a powerful
   microscope. Almost touching the lens, he has placed a tiny speck of
   matter, which he tells us is the egg of a little water-animal, the
   common salamander or water-newt. He is trying to describe what he sees;
   it is the creation or development of a life. "It is a minute spheroid,"
   he says, "in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a
   structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules in
   suspension. But strange possibilities lie dormant in that semi-fluid
   globe. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the
   plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and
   purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to
   those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As
   with an invisible trowel the mass is divided and sub-divided into
   smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of
   granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the
   nascent organism. And then it is as if a delicate finger traced out the
   line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the contour of
   the body; pinching up the head at one end, and the tail at the other,
   and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions in so
   artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is
   almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid
   to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden artist with his plan
   before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work."
   [15] So near has this observer come to a creator from the purely
   scientific side, that he can only describe what he sees in terms of
   creation. From the natural side he has come within a hair's-breadth of
   the spiritual. Science and theology are here simply touching each
   other. There is not room really for another link between. And it will
   be apparent, on a moment's reflection, that we have much more in this
   than the final completion of a religious doctrine. What we really have
   is the joining of the natural and spiritual worlds themselves. It seems
   such a long way, to some men, from the natural to the spiritual, that
   it is a relief to witness at last their actual contact even at a point.
   And this is also a presumption that they are in unseen contact all
   along the line; that as we push all other truths to the last resort
   they will be met at the point where they disappear, that the
   complementary relations of religion and science will more and more be
   manifest; and that the unity, though never the fusion of the natural
   and the spiritual will be finally disclosed.

   When we turn now to the larger question of the creation of the world
   itself, we find much more than silence, or a permission to go on. We
   find science has a definite theory on that subject. It offers, in
   short, to theology, a doctrine of the method of creation, in its
   hypothesis of evolution. That this doctrine is proved yet, no one will
   assert. That in some of its forms it is never likely to be proved, many
   are convinced. It will be time for theology to be unanimous about it
   when science is unanimous about it. Yet it would be idle to deny that
   in a general form it has received the widest assent from theology. But
   if science is satisfied, even in a general way, with its theory of the
   method of creation, "assent" is a cold word for theology to welcome it
   with. It is needless at this time of day to point out the surpassing
   grandeur of the new conception. How it has filled the Christian
   imagination and kindled to enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds is
   known to all. For that splendid hypothesis we cannot be too grateful to
   science, and that theology can only enrich itself which gives it even
   temporary place. There is a sublimity about the old doctrine of
   creation--we are speaking of its scientific aspects--which, if one
   could compare sublimities, is not surpassed by the new; but there is
   also a baldness. Fulfilments in this direction were sure to come with
   time, and they have come almost before the riper mind had felt its need
   of them. The doctrine of evolution fills a gap at the very beginning of
   our religion, and no one who looks now at the transcendent spectacle of
   the world's past, as disclosed by science, will deny that it has filled
   it worthily. Yet, after all, its beauty is not the only part of its
   contribution to Christianity. Scientific theology required a new view,
   though it did not require it to come in so magnificent a form. What it
   wanted was a credible presentation, in view especially of astronomy,
   geology, and biology. These had made the former theory simply
   untenable. And science has supplied theology with a theory which the
   intellect can accept and which for the devout mind leaves everything
   more worthy of worship than before.

   From the contemplation of the flood of light poured by science over the
   doctrine of Creation, we might pass on to mark the effect upon many
   other theological truths which rays from the same source are beginning
   to illuminate. Nothing could be more interesting than to trace up the
   doctrines one by one in order, and watch the light gradually stealing
   over all. This must always be a beautiful sight; for this is the light
   of nature, and even its dawn is lovely. We should like to mark where
   the last ray gilded the last hill-top, and see how many higher peaks
   lay still beyond in shadow. And then we should like to prophesy that
   another light will rise, when physical science is dim, to illuminate
   what remains. We do not mean an inspired word, but a further
   contribution from nature itself. To many men of science, judging by the
   small esteem in which they hold philosophy, the day of mental science
   apparently is past. To an enlightened theology it is the science of the
   future. It were strange indeed, and a contradiction of evolution, if
   the science of atoms and cells were a later or further development than
   the science of man. Theology sees the point at which physical science
   must cease to help it; but encouraged by that help, it will expect a
   science to arise to carry it through the darkness that remains. The
   analogies of biology may be looked to to elucidate the mysterious
   phenomena of regeneration. When theology has received its full
   contribution from natural science it will be able to present to the
   world a scientific account of its greatest fact. The ultimate mystery
   of life, whether natural or spiritual, may still remain: but the laws,
   if not the processes, of the second birth will take their place in that
   great circle of the known which science is slowly redeeming from the
   surrounding darkness. We shall then have an embryology, a morphology,
   and a physiology of the new man; and a scientific theology will add to
   its departments a higher biology. But this cannot exhaust theology any
   more than biology exhausts the accounts of the natural man. Further
   contributions must come in from higher sciences, and different classes
   of facts must be arrayed under other laws. Theology, therefore,
   predicates a science of man which is yet to come. There is nothing
   external to theology; it must collate the different revelations in mind
   and matter, as science gathers them, one by one. The sciences are but
   so many natural history collectors, busy over all the world of nature
   and of thought in gathering material for the final classification by
   the final science. Without theology, the sciences are incomplete, and
   theology can only complete itself by completing the sciences.

   But we have only space at present to note one or two other examples of
   the contribution of physical science, and these of a somewhat general
   kind. One shall be the doctrine of revelation itself. That science
   shows the necessity for a revelation in a new way, and even hints at
   subtle analogies for the mode in which it is conveyed to human minds,
   are points well worth developing. But we can only deal now with the
   more familiar question of subject-matter and see how that has been
   affected by evolution.

   According to science, as we have already seen, evolution is the method
   of creation. Now, creation is a form of revelation; it is the oldest
   form of revelation, the most accessible, the most universal, and still
   an ever-increasing source of theological truth. It is with this
   revelation that science begins. If then science, familiar with this
   revelation, and knowing it to be an evolution, were to be told of the
   existence of another revelation--an inspired word--it would expect that
   this other revelation would also be an evolution. Such an anticipation
   might or might not be justified; but from the law of the uniformity of
   nature, there would be, to a man of science, a very strong presumption
   in favour of any revelation which bore this scientific hall-mark, which
   indicated, that is to say, that God's word had unfolded itself to men
   like His works.

   Now, if science searches the field of theology for an additional
   revelation, it will find a Bible awaiting it--a Bible in two forms. The
   one is the Bible as it was presented to our forefathers: the other is
   the Bible of modern theology. The books, the chapters, the verses, and
   the words, are the same in each; yet in form they are two entirely
   different Bibles. To science the difference is immediately palpable.
   Judging of each of them from its own standpoint, science perceives
   after a brief examination that the distinction between them is one with
   which it has been long familiar. In point of fact, the one is
   constructed like the world according to the old cosmogonies, while the
   other is an evolution. The one represents revelation as having been
   produced on the creative hypothesis, the Divine-fiat hypothesis, the
   ready-made hypothesis; the other on the slow growth or evolution
   theory. It is at once obvious which of them science would prefer--it
   could no more accept the first than it could accept the ready-made
   theory of the universe.

   Nothing could be more important than to assure science that the same
   difficulty has for some time been felt, and with quite equal keenness,
   by theology. The scientific method in its hand, scientific theology has
   been laboriously working at a reconstruction of biblical truth from
   this very view-point of development. And it no more pledges itself
   to-day to the interpretations of the Bible of a thousand years ago than
   does science to the interpretations of nature in the time of
   Pythagoras. Nature is the same to-day as in the time of Pythagoras, and
   the Bible is the same to-day as a thousand years ago. But the
   Pythagorean interpretation of nature is not less objectionable to the
   modern mind than are many ancient interpretations of the Scriptures to
   the scientific theologian.

   The supreme contribution of Evolution to Religion is that it has given
   it a clearer Bible. One great function of science is, not, as many seem
   to suppose, to make things difficult, but to make things plain. Science
   is the great explainer, the great expositor, not only of nature, but of
   everything it touches. Its function is to arrange things, and make them
   reasonable. And it has arranged the Bible in a new way, and made it as
   different as science has made the world. It is not going too far to say
   that there are many things in the Bible which are hard to reconcile
   with our ideas of a just and good God. This is only expressing what
   even the most devout and simple minds constantly feel, and feel to be
   sorely perplexing, in reading especially the Old Testament. But these
   difficulties arise simply from an old-fashioned or unscientific view of
   what the Bible is, and are similar to the difficulties found in nature
   when interpreted either without the aid of science, or with the science
   of many centuries ago. We see now that the mind of man has been slowly
   developing, that the race has been gradually educated, and that
   revelation has been adapted from the first to the various and
   successive stages through which that development passed. Instead,
   therefore, of reading all our theology into Genesis, we see only the
   alphabet there. In the later books we see primers--first, second, and
   third: the truths stated provisionally as for children, but gaining
   volume and clearness as the world gets older. Centuries and centuries
   pass, and the mind of the disciplined race is at last deemed ripe
   enough to receive New Testament truth, and the revelation culminates in
   the person of Christ.

   The moral difficulties of the Old Testament are admittedly great. But
   when approached from the new standpoint, when they are seen to be
   rudiments spoken and acted in strange ways to attract and teach
   children, they vanish one by one. For instance, we are told that the
   iniquities of the father are to be visited upon the children unto the
   third and fourth generation. The impression upon the early mind
   undoubtedly must have been that this was a solemn threat which God
   would carry out in anger in individual cases. We now know, however,
   that this is simply the doctrine of heredity. A child inherits its
   parents' nature not as a special punishment, but by natural law. In
   those days that could not be explained. Natural law was a word unknown;
   and the truth had to be put provisionally in a form that all could
   understand. And even many of the miracles may have explanations in fact
   or in principle, which, without destroying the idea of the miraculous,
   may show the naturalness of the supernatural.

   The theory of the Bible, which makes belief in revelation possible to
   the man of science, Christianity owes to the scientific method. It is
   not suggested that the evolution theory in theology was introduced to
   satisfy the mind of the scientific thinker, any more than that his
   appreciation of it is the test of its truth. As regards the latter, it
   is to be weighed on its own evidence and judged by its fruits; and as
   regards the question of origin, its ancestry is much more reputable,
   for it was not a concession to any theory, but rose out of the facts
   themselves. Indeed, long before evolution was formulated in science,
   discerning minds had seen, with an enthusiasm which few could at that
   time share, the slow, steady, upward growth of theological truth to
   ever higher and nobler forms. "Wonderful it is to see with what effort,
   hesitation, suspense, interruption--with how many swayings to the right
   and to the left--with how many reverses, yet with what certainty of
   advance, with what precision in its march, and with what ultimate
   completeness, it has been evolved; till the whole truth, self-balanced
   on its centre hung,' part answering to part, one, absolute, integral,
   indissoluble, while the whole lasts! Wonderful to see how heresy has
   but thrown this idea into fresh forms, and drawn out from it further
   developments, with an exuberance which exceeded all questionings, and a
   harmony which baffled all criticism." [16] These are not the words of
   modern science. They were written forty years ago by John Henry Newman.
   Since then the central idea of this passage, which though it does not
   refer to the Bible is equally applicable to it, has been carried into
   departments of theology, in ways which were then undreamed of; and
   however physical science may have contributed to this result, it is
   certain that the method is not the creation of science.

   Evolution is the ever-recurring theme in theology as in nature. We
   might indeed almost have grouped the entire contribution of science to
   Christianity around this point. The mere presence of the doctrine of
   Evolution in science has reacted as by an electric induction on every
   surrounding circle of thought. Whether we like it or not, whether we
   shun the charge, or court it, or dread it, it has come, and we must set
   ourselves to understand it. No truth now can remain unaffected by
   evolution. We can no longer take out a doctrine in this century or in
   that, bottle it like a vintage, and store it in our creeds. We see
   truth now as a profound ocean still, but with a slow and ever rising
   tide. Theology must reckon with this tide. We can store this truth in
   our vessels, for the formulation of doctrine must never, never stop,
   but the vessels, with their mouths open, must remain in the ocean. If
   we take them out the tide cannot rise in them, and we shall only have
   stagnant doctrines rotting in a dead theology. But theology, surely,
   with its great age, its eternal foundation, and its countless
   mysteries, has the least to lose and the most to gain from every
   advance of knowledge And the development theory has done more for
   theology perhaps than for any other science. Evolution has given to
   theology some wholly new departments. It has raised it to a new rank
   among the sciences. It has given it a vastly more reasonable body of
   truth, about God and man, about sin and salvation. It has lent it a
   firmer base, an enlarged horizon, and a richer faith. But its general
   contribution, on which all these depend, is to the doctrine of
   revelation.

   What then does this mean for revelation? It means in plain language
   that Evolution has given Christianity a new Bible. Its peculiarity is,
   that in its form it is like the world in which it is found. It is a
   word, but its root is now known, and we have other words from the same
   root. Its substance is still the unchanged language of heaven, yet it
   is written in a familiar tongue. The new Bible is a book whose parts,
   though not of unequal value, are seen to be of different kinds of
   value; where the casual is distinguished from the essential, the local
   from the universal, the subordinate from the primal end. This Bible is
   not a book which has been made; it has grown. Hence it is no longer a
   mere wordbook, nor a compendium of doctrines, but a nursery of growing
   truths. It is not an even plane of proof text without proportion or
   emphasis, or light and shade; but a revelation varied as nature, with
   the Divine in its hidden parts, in its spirit, its tendencies, its
   obscurities, and its omissions. Like nature it has successive strata,
   and valley and hilltop, and mist and atmosphere, and rivers which are
   flowing still, and here and there a place which is desert, and fossils
   too, whose crude forms are the stepping-stones to higher things. It is
   a record of inspired deeds as well as of inspired words, an ascending
   series of inspired facts in a matrix of human history.

   Now it is to be marked that this is not the product of any destructive
   movement, nor is this transformed book in any sense a mutilated Bible.
   All this has taken place, it may be, without the elimination of a book
   or the loss of an important word. It is simply the transformation by a
   method whose main warrant is that the book lends itself to it.

   It may be said, and for a time it will continue to be said, that the
   Christian does not need a transformed Bible; and fortunately, or in
   some cases unfortunately, this is the case. For years yet the old Bible
   will continue to nourish the soul of the Church, as it has nourished it
   in the past; and the needy heart will in all time manage to feed itself
   apart from any forms. But there is a class, and an ever-increasing
   class, to whom the form is much. Theology is only beginning to realize
   how radical is the change in mental attitude of those who have learned
   to think from science. Intercourse with the ways of nature breeds a
   mental attitude of its own. It is an attitude worthy of its master. In
   this presence the student is face to face with what is real. He is
   looking with his own eyes at facts--at what God did. He finds things in
   nature just as its Maker left them; and from ceaseless contact with
   phenomena which will not change for man, and with laws which he has
   never known to swerve, he fears to trust his mind to anything less. Now
   this Bible which has been described is the presentation to this age of
   men who have learned this habit. They have studied the facts, they have
   looked with their own eyes at what God did; and they are giving us a
   book which is more than the devout man's Bible, though it is as much as
   ever the devout man's Bible. It is the apologist's Bible. It is long
   since the apologist has had a Bible. The Bible of our infancy was not
   an apologist's Bible. There are things in the Old Testament cast in his
   teeth by sceptics, to which he has simply no answer. These are the
   things, the miserable things, the masses have laid hold of. They are
   the stock-in-trade to-day of the free-thought platform, and the
   secularist pamphleteer. And, surprising as it is, there are not a few
   honest seekers who are made timid and suspicious, not a few on the
   outskirts of Christianity who are kept from coming further in, by the
   half-truths which a new exegesis, a re-consideration of the historic
   setting, and a clearer view of the moral purposes of God, would change
   from barriers into bulwarks of the faith. Such a Bible scientific
   theology is giving us, and it cannot be proclaimed to the mass of the
   people too soon. It is no more fair to raise and brandish objections to
   the Bible without first studying carefully what scientific theologians
   have to say on the subject, than it would be fair for one who derived
   his views of the natural world from Pythagoras to condemn all science.
   It is expected in criticisms of science that the critic's knowledge
   should at least be up to date, that he is attacking what science really
   holds; and the same justice is to be awarded to the science of
   theology. When science makes its next attack upon theology, if indeed
   that shall ever be again, it will find an armament, largely furnished
   by itself, which has made the Bible as impregnable as nature.

   One question, finally, will determine the ultimate worth of this
   contribution to Christianity. Does it help it practically? Does it
   impoverish or enrich the soul? Does it lower or exalt God? These
   questions with regard to one or two of the elementary truths of
   religion have been partially answered already. But a closing
   illustration from the highest of all will show that here also science
   is not silent.

   Science has nothing finer to offer Christianity than the exaltation of
   its supreme conception--God. Is it too much to say that in a practical
   age like the present, when the idea and practice of worship tend to be
   forgotten, God should wish to reveal Himself afresh in ever more
   striking ways? Is it too much to say, that at this distance from
   creation, with the eye of theology resting largely upon the incarnation
   and work of the man Christ Jesus, the Almighty should design with more
   and more impressiveness to utter Himself as the Wonderful, the
   Counsellor, the Great and Mighty God? Whether this be so or not, it is
   certain that every step of science discloses the attributes of the
   Almighty with a growing magnificence. The author of Natural Religion
   tells us that "the average scientific man worships just at present a
   more awful, and as it were a greater Deity than the average Christian."
   Certain it is that the Christian view and the scientific view together
   frame a conception of the object of worship, such as the world in its
   highest inspiration has never reached before. The old student of
   natural theology rose from his contemplation of design in nature with
   heightened feeling of the wisdom, goodness, and power, of the Almighty.
   But never before had the attributes of eternity, and immensity, and
   infinity, clothed themselves with language so majestic in its
   sublimity. It is a language for the mind alone. Yet in the presence of
   the slow toiling of geology, millennium after millennium, at the
   unfinished earth; before the unthinkable past of palaeontology, both
   but moments and lightning-flashes to the immenser standards of
   astronomy: before these even the imagination reels and leaves an
   experience only for religion.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [14] Works, v. 132, 133.

   [15] "Lay Sermons," p. 261. The italics are ours.

   [16] Newman, "University Sermons," p. 317.
     __________________________________________________________________

Spiritual Diagnosis

AN ARGUMENT FOR PLACING THE STUDY OF THE SOUL ON A SCIENTIFIC BASIS

    Essay read before the Theological Society, New College, Edinburgh, November,
    1873.

   THE study of the soul in health and disease ought to be as much an
   object of scientific study and training as the health and diseases of
   the body.

   It has long been one of the favourite axioms of Apologetics, that a
   Christian life is the best argument for Christianity. And, if an old
   argument, it is after all the best argument, for in these last days
   there is nothing in the philosophy of apologetical religion at all
   worth reviving compared with this living power of true lives. A
   freethinker may go very far without meeting an argument to throw him
   back upon his own inner soul, but no one can live long, be he in high
   life or low life, without coming within the influence of a Christian
   man. The power of the individual, the value of the unit, the respect
   due to one human soul--this is the great truth for churches, for
   armies, and for empires. Students of the new science of sociology may
   deny this truth as they will, and their great disciple, Herbert
   Spencer, may denounce what he calls the "great-man-theory of history"
   as only fit for savages gossiping round their camp fire, but it still
   remains a great and important truth (as he himself expresses it before
   failing to refute it) "that throughout the past of the human race the
   doings of conspicuous persons have been the only things worthy of
   remembrance."

   The past has indeed no masses. Men, not masses, have done all that is
   great in history, in science, and in religion. The New Testament itself
   is but a brief biography; and many pages of the Old are marked by the
   lives of men. Yet it is just this truth which we require to be taught
   again to-day--to be content with aiming at units. Every atom in the
   universe can act on every other atom, but only through the atom next
   it. And if a man would act upon every other man, he can do so best by
   acting, one at a time, upon those beside him. The true worker's world
   is a unit.

   Recognise the personal glory and dignity of the unit as an agent. Work
   with units, but, above all, work at units.

   But the capacity of acting upon individuals is now almost a lost art.
   It is hard to learn again. We have spoilt ourselves by thinking to draw
   thousands by public work--by what people call "pulpit eloquence," by
   platform speeches, and by convocations and councils, Christian
   conferences, and by books of many editions. We have been painting
   Madonnas and Ecce Homos and choirs of angels, like Raphael, and it is
   hard to condescend to the beggar boy of Murillo. Yet we must begin
   again, and begin far down. Christianity began with one. We have
   forgotten the simple way of the Founder of the greatest influence the
   world has ever seen--how He ran away from cities, how He shirked mobs,
   how He lagged behind the rest at Samaria to have a quiet talk with one
   woman at a well, how He stole away from crowds and entered into the
   house of one humble Syro-Phoenician woman, "and would have no man know
   it." In small groups of twos and threes He collected the early Church
   around Him. One by one the disciples were called--and there were only
   twelve in all. We all know well enough how to move the masses; we know
   how to draw a crowd round us, but to attract the units--that is the
   hard matter. Teach us how to fascinate the unit by our glance, by our
   conversational oratory, by our mystery of sympathy! We know how to
   bring the mob about us, how to flash and storm in passion, how to work
   in the appeal at the right moment, how to play upon all the figures of
   rhetoric in succession, and how to throw in a calm when no one expects,
   but every one wants it. Every one knows this, or can know it easily;
   but to draw souls one by one, to buttonhole them and steal from them
   the secret of their lives, to talk them clean out of themselves, to
   read them off like a page of print, to pervade them with your spiritual
   essence and make them transparent, this is the spiritual science which
   is so difficult to acquire and so hard to practise.

   "After a spirit of discernment," says an old French Sage (La Bruyere),
   "the next rarest thing in the world are diamonds and pearls." [17] Of
   the three elements, body, mind, and soul, which make up a responsible
   human being, two only have been hitherto treated as fit subjects for
   scientific inquiry. From six thousand years of contemplation of the
   phenomena of human life and thought, only two sciences have emerged.
   Physiology has told us all that is possible of the human body;
   psychology, of the mind. But the half is not accounted for. We wish,
   further, a spiritual psychology to tell us of the unseen realities of
   the soul. This is where our University training must be supplemented.
   It deals with man as a body and a mind. It forgets that man is a
   trinity. It is an extraordinary and momentous fact that by far the most
   important factor in human life has been up to this time all but
   altogether ignored by the thinking world. Of course every religious
   writer has a few notions upon the subject, but notions are not enough.
   If the mind is large enough and varied enough to make a philosophy of
   mind possible, is the soul such a trifling part of man that it is not
   worth while seeking to frame a science of it?--a science of it which
   men can learn, and which can be a guide and help in practice to all who
   feel an interest in the deepest thing in human life? It is no use to
   say there is no special soul--that there is a strange
   never-comprehended essence, half emotion, half affection, half reason,
   half unearthliness, to attempt to analyse which would only leave us,
   like Milton's philosophic angels, "in wandering mazes lost." But this
   is the mere concealment of ignorance in mystery. There is a soul, and
   there is a spiritual life. Plato knew it and called it, in his
   wonderment over it, "the soulish mind." Solomon knew it when he talked
   of "the hearing ear." Addison knew it and defined it: " Tis the
   divinity that stirs within us." And in "Culture and Religion" the
   Principal of St. Andrew's University charges his students "that there
   is a faculty of spiritual apprehension which is very different from
   those which are trained in schools and colleges, which must be educated
   and fed not less but more carefully than our lower faculties, else it
   will be starved and die."

   The same thoughtful writer has put the problem which we are
   endeavouring to meet in plain and forcible terms. "But because the
   primary truths of religion," he says, "refuse to be caught in the grip
   of the logical vice--because they are transcendent, and only mystically
   apprehended, are thinking men therefore either to give up these
   subjects as impossible to think about or to content themselves with a
   vague religiosity, an unreal sentimentalism?" The Principal's question
   is a striking question. Are we content to let this great spiritual life
   work silently around us without attempting to know more about it, to
   analyze it, to make it more accessible to us and us to it? Are we to
   regard it as some weird element, unapproachable, mysterious, unstable,
   incomprehensible in its essence? There is, it is true, an element about
   it which keeps us at our distance from it; but as its groundwork is
   human, may we not see the points where it touches the human, the
   changes it effects, the hindrances to the changes, and the wonderful
   complexity of action and interaction which it originates? Are there
   materials here for a philosophy, and is it lawful to reduce it to a
   science? Can there, in short, be a science of spirituality?

   At first sight the idea is repulsive in the extreme. Yet a science is a
   classification of facts; and is there anything irreverent or
   presumptuous in attempting to classify the facts of the spiritual life?
   The facts, it may be answered, are too numerous; they are more than the
   sand of the sea. But so are the combinations of elements with which the
   chemist deals, and the modifications of morphological type with which
   the biologist deals, yet we have a chemistry and a biology. That, then,
   is the least of the difficulty. But a great one, apparently an
   insurmountable one, lies just on the threshold. The facts of physical
   science lie in the order of the natural, and they are finite. The facts
   of spiritual science, if we may call it so, lie in the order of the
   supernatural, and they are infinite. They are pervaded by an element
   which no man can fathom. "The Spirit bloweth where it listeth." We look
   in a man's soul for that which we saw there yesterday, but the unseen
   influence has swept across the heart, and the spiritual scenery is
   changed. The man himself is the same, his passions unaltered in their
   strength, his foibles unchanged in their weakness, but the furniture of
   the soul has been moved, and the spiritual machinery goes on upon a new
   and suddenly developed principle. Here, then, our investigations are
   stopped at the outset. Dare we approach no nearer? Often we would fain
   do so. Often we are placed in such circumstances that plainly we must
   do so. A friend is in trouble, we are in trouble. But how are we to
   proceed? What guide have we in ministering to a soul diseased?

   Is there no guide-book upon the subject, no chart or table of the
   logical history of the spiritual life, no chair of Spiritual Diagnosis?
   We do not mean a table such as Doddridge has given us in "The Rise and
   Progress of Religion in the Soul." The fatal error of that style of
   work is to give the inquiring soul the idea of a certain mechanical
   process to be passed through before conversion can be attained. But
   conversion does not always develop like a proposition in Euclid, or
   sensitized plate in photography. God the Creator will have no
   machine-made men in earth or heaven. And it is not His will that there
   should only be a few stereotyped forms of saints--the Richard Baxter
   type, the Jeremy Taylor type, and the Philip Doddridge type. Therefore
   it is a dangerous thing to put forms and processes, which exist only in
   the logical imagination, into the hands of the inquirer. But when these
   works are put into the hands of the Christian teacher or minister,
   their utility is beyond all praise. He, as spiritual adviser, should be
   thoroughly acquainted with the rationale of conversion. He should know
   it as a physician his pharmacopoeia. He should know every phase of the
   human soul, in health and disease, in the fulness of joy and the
   blackness of despair. He should know the "Pilgrim's Progress" better
   than Bunyan. The scheme of salvation, as we are accustomed to call it,
   should be ever clearly defined in his consciousness. The lower stages,
   the period of transition, its solemnity, its despairs, its glimmering
   light, its growing faith; and the Christian life begun, the laborious
   working out in fear and trembling, the slavish scrupulosity, still the
   fearfulness of fall, still remorse, more faith, more hope; and last of
   all the higher spiritual life, the realization of freedom, the
   disappearance of the slavish scrupulosity, the pervasion of the whole
   life with God.

   Such a skeleton is easily made and easily remembered, and it is all
   that many have to perform their work with; but it is no more adequate
   for its great task than is the compass of a schoolboy's whistle to take
   in the sweep of Handel's "Messiah." To fill up such an outline with all
   the exquisite tracery of thought and emotion and doubt, which develop
   within the mind of an inquiring soul, is a great and rare talent; and
   to apply such knowledge in the practice of daily life is a power which
   scarce one will be found to possess. Let not any think that such
   knowledge is easily attained; nor have many attained it. The men to
   whom you or I would go if spiritual darkness spread across our souls,
   who are they? How few have penetration enough to diagnose our case, to
   observe our least apparent symptoms, to get out of us what we had
   resolved not to tell them, to see through and through us the evil and
   the good. Plenty there are to preach to us, but who will interview us,
   and anatomize us, and lay us bare to God's eye and our own? X won't be
   preached to along with Y and Z and Q; that won't do X any good, for he
   thinks it is all meant for Y, Z, and Q. But to take X by himself; to
   feel his pulse alone, and give him one particular earnest word--the
   only one word that would do--all to himself--this is the simple feat
   which we look in vain for men to perform. There is a tendency piously
   to leave such matters to God, and say they are quite safe in His hands,
   who alone searcheth the heart. But He hath appointed us to be our
   brother's keeper, nor will He do for my brother what could be done by
   me. We cannot expect the Spirit's help to teach us what only laziness
   and personal indifference hinder us from learning; and to despise a
   power which He gave us capacities to possess is not the way to show
   that we trust Him who gave it. "Placeat homini quidquid Deo placet."

   This study of the soul, in which I am endeavouring to enlist your
   interest, is a difficult study. It is difficult, because the soul as
   far transcends the mind in complexity and in variety as the mind the
   body. The soul is an infinitely large subject--an infinitely deep and
   mysterious subject. The chemist in his intricate analysis deals not
   with elements more subtle and evasive


   "Ay, men may wonder while they scan

   A living, thinking, feeling man."

   But we do not need to go to Mrs. Browning, or to "Hamlet," to be told
   "What a piece of work is man!" Apart altogether from the religious
   element in him, he is still the greatest mystery of science. Every man
   is a problem to every other man--much more every spiritual man. It is
   hard to know a man's brain, and harder to know his feelings; but
   hardest of all to know his religious convictions. It is hard to know
   the deepest that a man has. A well-known American essayist and poet has
   told us that the difficulty of analyzing our neighbour's character
   arises from the fact that every man is in reality a threefold man. When
   two persons are in conversation, there are really six persons in
   conversation. Thus, to put the paradox into the shape of an example,
   suppose that John and Tom are in conversation, there are three Johns
   and three Toms, who are accounted for in this way:

   Three Johns

   1. The real John; known only to his Maker.

   2. John's ideal John; John, i.e., as he thinks himself; never the real
   John, and often very unlike him.

   3. Tom's ideal John; i.e., John as Tom thinks him; never the real John,
   nor John's John, but often very unlike either.

   Three Toms

   1. The real Tom.

   2. Tom's ideal Tom.

   3. John's ideal Tom.

   In this way when I talk to another it is not me that he hears talking,
   but his ideal of me; nor do I talk to him as he defines himself, but to
   my ideal of him. Now that ideal will, without almost inconceivable care
   and penetration on my part, be quite different also from his real self
   as God only knows him, so that instead of speaking to his real soul, I
   may possibly be speaking to his ideal of his own soul, or more likely
   to my ideal of it.

   From this it will be seen at a glance that the power of soul analysis
   is a hard thing to possess oneself of. It requires intense
   discrimination and knowledge of human nature--much and deep study of
   human life and character. The man with whom you speak being made up of
   two ideals--his own and yours, and one real--God's, it is one of the
   hardest possible tasks to abandon your ideal of him and get to know the
   real--God's. Then having known it so far as possible to man, there
   remains the greatest difficulty of all--to introduce him to himself.
   You have created a new man for him, and he will not recognise him at
   first. He can see no resemblance to his ideal self; the new creature is
   not such a lovely picture as he would like to own; the lines are
   harshly drawn, and there is little grace and no poetry in it. But he
   must be told that none of us are what we seem; and if he would deal
   faithfully with himself, he must try to see himself differently from
   what he seems. Then he must be led with much delicacy to make a little
   introspection of himself; and with the mirror lifted to his own soul
   you read off together some of the indications which are defining
   themselves vaguely upon its surface. Even in social and domestic
   circles the difficulty of performing this apparently simple operation
   upon human nature is so keenly felt that scarce one friend will be
   found with a friendship true enough to perform it to another. And in
   religious matters it will be at once conceded that the complexity of
   the difficulties increases the problem a hundredfold.

   There is a danger, however--speaking next of the more directly
   religious aspects of the question--in exaggerating these difficulties;
   and, indeed, the further objection may have occurred to some minds
   that, by attaching so much importance to the human power we take away
   the one great element in salvation--its Divine freeness through the
   grace of God.

   Is not religion for the poor and illiterate? is not the way easy to
   find? Thank God it is so! So little can man do to enlighten it. But he
   can do something, and he ought to do more. In this more than in
   anything else he is his brother's keeper. Not for himself does man
   live. Every action of every man has an ancestry and a posterity--an
   ancestry and a posterity in other lives. "Each reads his fate in the
   other's eyes," says Emerson. "I am a part of all that I have met," says
   Tennyson. And how do you explain that most wonderful phenomenon which
   is as surprising a contemplation to some minds as the thought of
   eternity itself--the silence of God? God keeping silence! And man
   doubting and sinning and repenting all alone, and groping blindfold
   after truth, and losing his way and working out his salvation with
   painful trembling and fear! It is an unfathomable mystery; but may it
   not be, in small part, just for this that, on the one hand, God offers
   man the glory and honour of sharing His work; and on the other, that He
   wishes human souls to be graven with the marks of other human souls in
   all their free and infinite variety? God is a God of variety. No two
   leaves are the same, no two sand grains, no two souls. And as the
   universe would be but a poor affair if every leaf were the counterpart
   of the oak leaf or the birch, so would the spiritual world present but
   a sorry spectacle if we were all duplicates of John Calvin. Therefore
   has God made room for individual action in the building up of His
   kingdom upon earth; and therefore it is not a presumption but a duty
   for every man to be moulding and making the souls around him, to be
   perfecting and guiding his own faculties for this great work.

   The great danger in doing this work, next to doing it without any
   education for it, is to overdo it. In dealing with a case which is once
   put into our hands we are apt to consider it too much of a professional
   and personal matter. Our influence has become too conscious. We have
   found what a powerful thing it may become, and we seek a "reputation
   for influence." Thus our pride is smitten if success does not at once
   crown our efforts, and we attempt to second them by unlawful means. We
   assume the didactic when we should simply be attractive or suggestive.
   We encourage the favourable and forget to notice an unfavourable
   symptom. We supply allopathic when prudence would suggest homoeopathic
   doses. And finally, we assume too much upon ourselves, forgetting that
   we are but fellow-workers together with God, and by taking too
   officious an interest, the individual, making nothing of it, is apt to
   throw the responsibility of non-success upon us, and so spoil not only
   our whole influence with others, but his own chance of being bettered
   in the future by others.

   There are also limits to the exercise of this power which are as yet
   not well defined, and which rest at present upon no religio-philosophic
   basis, but on mere empiricism. The whole subject, indeed, rests in the
   meantime only upon the merest individual empiricism; and it is a matter
   of profound regret that so sacred and important a subject should exist
   in such a dishevelled state when the scientific method, which is being
   applied to so many trivial matters, could be so easily applied to it.
   We can conceive of some minds being deeply shocked to hear of
   scientific observations being taken on a human soul, and adjustments
   made to it, and results calculated as if it were a mere question of
   spectrum analysis. But the irreverence is only in the words. We do wish
   a scientific treatment of the subject; and if there is anything to
   sadden and humble in the contemplation of the religious work of the
   day, it is the thought of the crude and slipshod treatment of one of
   the most sacred subjects in the religious life.

   We are not ignoring the power of God in conversion by not speaking of
   it. You say He can work with the roughest tools even on the finest of
   marbles. Without denying it, He would not polish diamonds on
   grindstones if He could get lapidaries to do it better. It won't do to
   talk religiously, or complacently, or blasphemously of trusting in Him
   when we are too lazy to qualify ourselves for being worth the using in
   His service. Don't fear that we shall become too acute at diagnosing
   and prescribing for souls, and so take the matter out of God's hands.

   And now, in conclusion, as to the great subject of the training and
   exercise of the power of spiritual discernment, what is it possible for
   us to say? We can indeed but guess at it. Those who have thought of it
   have confessed that everything yet remains to be done. Thus one of the
   keenest minds of New England has said, "The school of the future may be
   called a Life School, whose object is to study the strength and
   weakness of human nature minutely, . . . to understand men, and to deal
   with them face to face, and heart to heart, . . . and in regard to such
   a school as this, while there has been much done incidentally, the
   revised procedure of education yet awaits development and
   accomplishment." Henry Ward Beecher, in his Yale lecture (on
   preaching), has given to this subject perhaps by far the most valuable
   popular contribution of the age. His chapter on the study of Human
   Nature is especially discriminating, and only the knowledge that there
   must now be few into whose hands that work has not fallen prevents us
   stealing time to make lengthened quotations. (Let two suffice, page 85
   and page 94.) Beecher, had he been less of a preacher and more of a
   pastor, could have been one of the greatest students of the soul. As it
   is, he is surpassed by few, perhaps by none in this country, only by
   Dr. Spencer [18] in his own. Spurgeon is not so much of a practical
   analyst as a self-introspectionist. So also were Thomas a Kempis and
   Blaise Pascal, and pious John Hervey and quaint Robert Bruce, and so
   also in a sense were Dr. Duncan and Dr. Goulburn, who has done for
   spirituality what Burton did for melancholy. The Puritan writers, and
   pre-eminent among them Baxter and Owen, were skilled analysts of human
   nature, but they seem to have applied their power more in the pulpit
   than the pew. In this respect, too, Bunyan was quite unsurpassed, and
   in some of his sermons, specially his famous "last" one, the most
   masterly specimens of this kind of work are to be found.

   Yet with all this perfection there was always something wrong about
   these men from the practical point of view. They knew so much about
   humanity that they had lost what of it they had themselves in the
   pursuit of it in others. Although they are always called practical
   hands, they are only so in a gross sense. They were most of them
   wanting in that delicacy of handling which makes analysis effective
   instead of insulting; and many of the Puritans were quite destitute of
   the foremost quality which distinguishes the successful
   diagnosist--respect, veneration even, for the soul of another. A man
   may be ever so gross and vulgar, but when you come to deal with the
   deepest that is in him, he becomes sensitive and feminine. Brusqueness
   and an impolite familiarity may do very well when dealing with his
   brains, but without tenderness and courtesy you can only approach his
   heart to shock it. The whole of etiquette is founded on respect; and by
   far the highest and tenderest etiquette is the etiquette of soul and
   soul.

   To know and remember the surpassing dignity of the human soul--for its
   own sake, for its great Godlike elements, for its immortality, above
   all for His sake who made it and gave Himself for it--this is the first
   axiom to be remembered. Many men study men, but not to sympathize with
   them: the lawyer for gain, the artist for fame, the actor for applause,
   the novelist for profession. How well up is the actor in plot and
   passion and intrigue! how deftly can the novelist anatomize love and
   jealousy, vengeance and hate! And when there are men found to study
   human nature for its own sake, or for filthy lucre's sake, shall there
   be none to do it for man's sake--for God's sake? There is one great
   reason why the ministry of so many great and holy men has been so far
   from being what is called a converting ministry. We read their
   biographies, and shrink into nothingness at the contemplation of such
   holiness and saintliness of life as we had never dreamed possible to
   man, and we marvel, and greatly, that one irreligious, unconverted man
   should be left in the whole countryside; but we find indeed that their
   parish was no better than its neighbours. And the explanation is plain.
   Those men laboured under a terrible disease--it is called
   Theophobia--the name explains itself. A minister catches it, and his
   power is gone. Men are awed by it, venerate it as they venerate few
   things else. They will speak of it and praise it, but never imitate it.
   It is a grand but useless spectacle. Those who have it become wrapped
   up in one subject; and though that be the highest of all, it is
   nevertheless a monstrosity when followed to the exclusion of everything
   else. The sympathies of these men are all and always Godwards. They are
   always vindicating God. Their whole atmosphere is of God. They have
   left earth before their time. They have left human nature in the lurch;
   they have forgotten humanity, and humanity can no longer profit by
   them, it can only wonder at them. Their thoughts go always straight up
   to God, and are never healthy enough to be refracted upon man. Now to
   get to God is a high thing, but they only get at one side of Him. They
   don't see over to the other side, which is inclined towards man. Yet to
   get to man by way of God, and God by way of man, is the only way to
   keep the entire health of the soul.

   We have much yet to say of this study, but the subject must end almost
   before it is begun. The one great thing is to study life earnestly and
   practically and realistically.

   * * * * *

   We must aim at the manly and sturdy type of the religious diagnosist;
   we must try to be, as Oliver Wendell Holmes forcibly says, "a man that
   knows men in the street, at their work, human nature in its shirt
   sleeves--who makes bargains with deacons instead of talking over texts
   with them, and a man who has found out that there are plenty of praying
   rogues and swearing saints in the world."

   One thing I can assure you of. If any man develops this faculty of
   reading others, of reading them in order to profit by them, he will
   never be without practice. Men do not say much about these things, but
   the amount of spiritual longing in the world at the present moment is
   absolutely incredible. No one can ever even faintly appreciate the
   intense spiritual unrest which seethes everywhere around him; but one
   who has tried to discern, who has begun by private experiment, by
   looking into himself, by taking observations upon the people near him
   and known to him, has witnessed a spectacle sufficient to call for the
   loudest and most emphatic action. Gentlemen, I have but vaguely hinted
   at this subject; I venture to think it a question of vital interest,
   giving life a mission, giving a new and burning interest even to the
   most commonplace surroundings, and opening up a field for lifelong
   study and effort.

   Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome and London.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [17] "Apres d'esprit de discernement ce qu'il y a au monde de plus
   rare, ce sont les diamants et les perles" (Characteres).

   [18] Author of "Pastor's Sketches."
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * Non est simpliciter physica, quia agitur de facultate morali, quae
       congruenter naturae suae moveri debet; nec simpliciter ethica,
       quasi Deus objective solum ageret, et leni suasione uteretur, quod
       pertendebant Pelagiani. Sed supernaturalis est et divina, quae
       transcendit omnia haec genera. Interim aliquid de ethico et physica
       participat, quia et potenter et suaviter, grate et invicte,
       operatur spiritus ad nostri conversionem. Ad modum physicum
       pertinet, quod Deus spiritu suo nos creat, regenerat, cor carneum
       dat, et efficienter habitus supernaturales fidei et charitatis
       nobis infundit. Ad moralem quod verbo docet, inclinat, suadet et
       rationibus variis tanquam vinculis amoris ad se trahit.: [1]1
     * Placeat homini quidquid Deo placet.: [2]1
     * ab extra: [3]1
     * gratiae efficacis motio: [4]1
     * in propria persona: [5]1
     * summum bonum: [6]1 [7]2
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

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   3. file:///ccel/d/drummond/new_ev/cache/new_ev.html3#vi-p9.1
   4. file:///ccel/d/drummond/new_ev/cache/new_ev.html3#vi-p19.2
   5. file:///ccel/d/drummond/new_ev/cache/new_ev.html3#iii-p54.1
   6. file:///ccel/d/drummond/new_ev/cache/new_ev.html3#vi-p8.1
   7. file:///ccel/d/drummond/new_ev/cache/new_ev.html3#vi-p8.2