Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
IT is a strange, though familiar fact, that great differences
of opinion exist respecting the Interpretation of Scripture. All Christians receive
the Old and New Testament as sacred writings, but they are not agreed about the
meaning which they attribute to them. The book itself remains as at the first;
the commentators seem rather to reflect the changing atmosphere of the world or
of the Church. Different individuals or bodies of Christians have a different point
of view, to which their interpretation is narrowed or made to conform. It is assumed, as
natural and necessary, that the same words will present one idea to the mind of
the Protestant, another to the Roman Catholic; one meaning to the German,
another to the English interpreter. The Ultramontane or Anglican divine is not
supposed to be impartial in his treatment of passages which afford an apparent foundation
for the doctrine of purgatory or the primacy of St. Peter on the one hand, or the
three orders of clergy and the divine origin of episcopacy on the other. It is a
received view with many, that the meaning of the Bible is to be defined by that
of the Prayer-book; while there are other’s who interpret ‘the Bible and the Bible
only’ with a
This effort to pull the authority of Scripture in different directions
is not peculiar to our own day; the same phenomenon appears in the past history
of the Church. At the Reformation, in the Nicene or Pelagian times, the New Testament
was the ground over which men fought; it might also be compared to the armoury
which furnished them with weapons. Opposite aspects of the truth which it contains
were appropriated by different sides. Justified by faith without works’ and justified
by faith as well as works’ are equally Scriptural expressions; the one has become
the formula of Protestants, the other of Roman Catholics. The
Another cause of the multitude of interpretations is the growth
or progress of the human mind itself. Modes of interpreting vary as time
goes on; they partake of the general state of literature or knowledge. It has not
been easily or at once that mankind have learned to realize the character of sacred
writings—they seem almost necessarily to veil themselves from human eyes as circumstances
change; it is the old age of the world only that has at length understood
its childhood. (Or rather perhaps is
‘In pious meditation fancy fed.’
Another has straitened the liberty of the Gospel by a rigid
application of logic, the former being a method which was
at first more naturally applied to the Old Testament, the
latter to the New. Both methods of interpretation, the
mystical and logical, as they may be termed, have been
practised on the Vedas and the Koran, as well as on the
Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the true glory and note of
divinity in these latter being not that they have hidden
mysterious or double meanings, but a simple and universal
one, which is beyond them and will survive them. Since
the revival of literature, interpreters have not unfrequently
fallen into error of another kind from a pedantic and misplaced use of classical learning; the minute examination of
words often withdrawing the mind from more important
matters. A tendency may be observed within the last
century to clothe systems of philosophy in the phraseology
of Scripture. But ‘new wine cannot thus be put into old
More common than any of these methods, and not peculiar to any
age, is that which may be called by way of distinction the rhetorical one. The tendency
to exaggerate or amplify the meaning of simple words for the sake of edification
may indeed have a practical use in sermons, the object of which is to awaken not
so much the intellect as the heart and conscience. Spiritual food, like natural,
may require to be of a certain bulk to nourish the human mind. But this ‘tendency
to edification’ has had an unfortunate influence on the interpretation of Scripture.
For the preacher almost necessarily oversteps the limits of actual knowledge, his
feelings overflow with the subject; even if he have the power, he has seldom the
time for accurate thought or inquiry. And in the course of years spent in writing,
perhaps, without study, he is apt to persuade himself, if not others, of the truth
of his own repetitions. The trivial consideration of making a discourse of sufficient
length is often a reason why he overlays the words of Christ and his Apostles with
commonplaces. The meaning of the text is not always the object which he has in view,
but some moral or religious lesson which he has found it necessary to append to
it; some cause which he is pleading, some error of the day which he has to combat.
And while in some passages he hardly dares to trust himself with the full force
of Scripture (
The phenomenon which has been described in the preceding pages
is so familiar, and yet so extraordinary, that it requires an effort of thought
to appreciate its true nature. We do not at once see the absurdity of the same words
having many senses, or free our minds from the illusion that the Apostle or Evangelist
must have written with a reference to the creeds or controversies or circumstances
of other times. Let it be considered, then, that this extreme variety of interpretation
is found to exist in the case of no other book, but of the Scriptures only. Other
writings are preserved to us in dead languages—Greek, Latin, Oriental, some of them
in fragments, all of them originally in manuscript. It is true that difficulties
arise in the explanation of these writings, especially in the most ancient, from
our imperfect acquaintance with the meaning of words, or the defectiveness of copies,
or the want of some historical or geographical information which is required to
present an event or character in its true bearing. In comparison with the wealth
and light of modern literature, our knowledge of Greek classical authors, for example,
may be called imperfect and shadowy. Some of them have another sort of difficulty
arising from subtlety or abruptness in the use of language; in lyric poetry especially,
and some of the earlier prose, the greatness of the thought struggles with the stammering
lips. It may be observed that all these difficulties occur also in Scripture;
they are found equally in sacred and profane literature. But the meaning of classical
authors is known with comparative certainty; and the interpretation of them seems
to rest on a scientific basis. It is not, therefore, to philological or historical
difficulties that the greater part of the uncertainty in the interpretation of Scripture
is to be attributed. No ignorance of Hebrew or Greek is sufficient to account for
it. Even the Vedas and the Zendavesta, though beset by obscurities of language
To bring the parallel home, let us imagine the remains of some well-known Greek author, as Plato or Sophocles, receiving the same treatment at the hands of the world which the Scriptures have experienced. The text of such an author, when first printed by Aldus or Stephens, would be gathered from the imperfect or miswritten copies which fell in the way of the editors; after awhile older and better manuscripts come to light, and the power of using and estimating the value of manuscripts is greatly improved. We may suppose, further, that the readings of these older copies do not always conform to some received canons of criticism. Up to the year 1550, or 1624, alterations, often proceeding on no principle, have been introduced into the text; but now a stand is made—an edition which appeared at the latter of the two dates just mentioned is invested with authority; this authorized text is a pièce de résistance against innovation. Many reasons are given why it is better to have bad readings to which the world is accustomed than good ones which are novel and strange—why the later manuscripts of Plato or Sophocles are often to be preferred to earlier ones—why it is useless to remove imperfections where perfect accuracy is not to be attained. A fear of disturbing the critical canons which have come down from former ages is, however, suspected to be one reason for the opposition. And custom and prejudice, and the nicety of the subject, and all the arguments which are intelligible to the many against the truth, which is intelligible only to the few, are thrown into the scale to preserve the works of Plato or Sophocles as nearly as possible in the received text.
Leaving the text, we proceed to interpret and translate. The
meaning of Greek words is known with tolerable certainty; and the grammar of the
Greek language has
It would be tedious to follow into details the absurdity which has been supposed. By such methods it would be truly said that Sophocles or Plato may be made to mean anything. It would seem as if some Novum Organum were needed to lay down rules of interpretation for ancient literature. Still one other supposition has to be introduced which will appear, perhaps, more extravagant than any which have preceded. Conceive then that these modes of interpreting Sophocles had existed for ages; that great institutions and interests had become interwoven with them, and in some degree even the honour of nations and churches—is it too much to say that in such a case they would be changed with difficulty, and that they would continue to be maintained long after critics and philosophers had seen that they were indefensible?
No one who has a Christian feeling would place classical
The book itself remains as at the first, unchanged amid the changing
interpretations of it. The office of the interpreter is not to add another, but
to recover the original one; the meaning, that is, of the words as they struck
on the ears or flashed before the eyes of those who first heard and read them. He
has to transfer himself to another age; to
Nothing would be more likely to restore a natural feeling on
this subject than a history of the Interpretation of Scripture. It would take us
back to the beginning; it would present in one view the causes which have darkened
the meaning of words in the course of ages; it would clear away the remains of
dogmas, systems, controversies, which are encrusted upon them. It would show us
the ‘erring fancy’ of interpreters assuming sometimes to have the
Such a history would be of great value to philosophy as well
as to theology. It would be the history of the human mind in one of its most
remarkable manifestations. For ages which are not original show their character
in the interpretation of ancient writings. Creating nothing, and incapable of that
effort of imagination which is required in a true criticism of the past, they read
and explain the
Much of the uncertainty which prevails in the interpretation
of Scripture arises out of party efforts to wrest its meaning to different sides.
There are, however, deeper reasons which have hindered the natural meaning of the
§ 2.
Among these previous questions, that which first presents itself
is the one already alluded to—the question of inspiration. Almost all Christians
agree in the word, which use and tradition have consecrated to express the reverence
which they truly feel for the Old and New Testaments. But here the agreement of
opinion ends; the meaning of inspiration has been variously explained, or more
often passed over in silence from a fear of stirring the difficulties that would
arise about it. It is one of those theological terms which may be regarded as ‘great peacemakers,’ but which are also sources of distrust and misunderstanding.
The word inspiration has received more numerous gradations and
distinctions of meaning than perhaps any other in the whole of theology. There is
an inspiration of superintendence and an inspiration of suggestion; an inspiration
which would have been consistent with the Apostle or Evangelist falling into error,
and an inspiration which would have prevented him from erring; verbal organic inspiration
by which the inspired person is the passive utterer of a Divine Word, and an inspiration
which acts through the character of the sacred writer; there is an inspiration
which absolutely communicates the fact to be revealed or statement to be made, and
an inspiration which does not supersede the ordinary knowledge of human events;
there is an inspiration which demands infallibility in
The subject will clear of itself if we bear in mind two considerations:—First, that the nature of inspiration can only be known from the examination of
Scripture. There is no other source to which we can turn for information; and we
have no right to assume some imaginary doctrine of inspiration like the infallibility
of the Roman Catholic church. To the question, ‘What is inspiration’ the first
The other consideration is one which has been neglected by writers on this subject. It is this—that any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to all well-ascertained facts of history or of science. The same fact cannot be true and untrue, any more than the same words can have two opposite meanings. The same fact cannot be true in religion when seen by the light of faith, and untrue in science, when looked at through the medium of evidence or experiment. It is ridiculous to suppose that the sun goes round the earth in the same sense in which the earth goes round the sun; or that the world appears to have existed, but has not existed during the vast epochs of which geology speaks to us., But if so, there is no need of elaborate reconcilements of revelation and science; they reconcile themselves the moment any scientific truth is distinctly ascertained. As the idea of nature enlarges, the idea of revelation also enlarges; it was a temporary misunderstanding which severed them. And as the knowledge of nature which is possessed by the few is communicated in its leading features at least to the many, they will receive with it a higher conception of the ways of God to man. It may hereafter appear as natural to the majority of mankind to see the providence of God in the order of the world, as it once was to appeal to interruptions of it.
It is true that there is a class of scientific facts with which
popular opinions on theology often conflict and which do not seem to conform in
all respects to the severer conditions of inductive science: such especially are
the facts relating to the formation of the earth and the beginnings of the human
race. But it is not worth while to fight on this debateable ground a losing battle
in the hope that a generation will pass away before we sound a last retreat. Almost
all intelligent persons are agreed that the earth has existed for myriads of ages; the best informed are of opinion that the history of nations extends back some
thousand years before the Mosaic chronology; recent discoveries in geology
A similar train of thought may be extended to the results of
historical inquiries. These results cannot be barred by the dates or narrative of
Scripture; neither should they be made to wind round into agreement with them.
Again, the idea of inspiration must expand and take them in. Their importance in
a religious point of view is not that they impugn or confirm the Jewish history,
but that they show more clearly the purposes of God towards the whole human race.
The recent chronological discoveries from Egyptian monuments do not tend to overthrow
revelation, nor the Ninevite inscriptions to support it. The use of them on either
side may indeed arouse a popular interest in them; it is apt to turn a scientific
inquiry into a semi-religious
It will be a further assistance in the consideration of this
subject, to observe that the interpretation of Scripture has nothing to do with
any opinion respecting its origin. The meaning of Scripture is one thing; the
inspiration of Scripture is another. It is conceivable that those who hold the most
different views about the one, may be able to agree about the other. Rigid upholders
of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, and those who deny inspiration altogether,
may nevertheless meet on the common ground of the meaning of words. If the term
inspiration were to fall into disuse, no fact of nature, or history, or language,
no event in the life of man, or dealings of God with him, would be in any degree
altered. The word itself is but of yesterday, not found in the earlier confessions
of the reformed faith; the difficulties that have arisen about it are only two
or three centuries old. Therefore the question of inspiration, though in one sense
important, is to the interpreter as though it were not important; he is in no way
called upon to determine a matter with which he has nothing to do, and which was
not determined by fathers of the Church. And he had better go on his way and leave
the more precise definition of the word to the progress of knowledge and the
It is one evil of conditions or previous suppositions in the
study of Scripture, that the assumption of them has led to an apologetic temper
in the interpreters of Scripture. The tone of apology is always a tone of
weakness, and does injury to a good cause. It is the reverse of ‘ye shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ It is hampered with the
necessity of making a defence, and also with previous defences of the same side;
it accepts, with an excess of reserve and caution, the truth itself, when it
comes from an opposite quarter. Commentators are often more occupied with the
proof of miracles than with the declaration of life and immortality; with the
fulfilment of the details of prophecy than with its life and power; with the
reconcilement of the discrepancies in the narrative of the infancy, pointed out
by Schleiermacher, than with the importance of the great event of the appearance
of the Saviour—‘To this end was I
born and for this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness unto
the truth.’ The same tendency is observable also in reference to the Acts of the Apostles
and the Epistles, which are not only brought into harmony with each other, but interpreted
with a reference to the traditions of existing communions. The natural meaning of
particular expressions, as for example: ‘Why are they then baptized for the dead?’
(
The temper of accommodation shows itself especially in two ways: first, in the attempt to adapt the truths of Scripture to the doctrines of the
creeds; secondly, in the adaptation of the precepts and maxims of Scripture to
the language or practice of our own age. Now the creeds are acknowledged to be a
part of Christianity; they stand in a close relation to the words of Christ and
his Apostles; nor can it be said that any heterodox formula makes a nearer approach
to a simple and scriptural rule of faith. Neither is anything gained by contrasting
them with Scripture, in which the germs of the expressions used in them are sufficiently
apparent. Yet it does not follow that they should be pressed into the service of
the interpreter. The growth of ideas in the interval which separated the first century
from the fourth or sixth makes it impossible to apply the language of the one to
the explanation of the other. Between Scripture and the Nicene or Athanasian Creed,
a world of the understanding comes in—that world of abstractions and second notions; and mankind are no longer at the same
To attribute to St. Paul or the Twelve the abstract notion of
Christian truth, which afterwards sprang up in the Catholic Church, is the same
sort of anachronism as to attribute to them a system of philosophy. It is the same
error as to attribute to Homer the ideas of Thales or Heraclitus, or to Thales the
more developed principles of Aristotle and Plato. Many persons who have no difficulty
in tracing the growth of institutions, yet seem to fail in recognizing the more
subtle progress of an idea. It is hard to imagine the absence of conceptions with
which we are familiar; to go back to the germ of what we know only in maturity; to give up what has grown to us, and become a part of our minds. In the present
case, however, the development is
Neither, as has been already remarked, would the substitution
of any other precise or definite rule of faith, as for example the Unitarian, be
more favourable to the interpretation of Scripture. How could the Evangelist St.
John have said ‘the Word was God,’ or ‘God was the Word’ (according to either mode
of translating), or how would our Lord Himself have said, ‘I and the Father are one,’ if either had meant that Christ was a mere man,
‘a prophet or as one of the prophets’? No one who takes words in their natural
The other kind of accommodation which was alluded to above
arises out of the difference between the social and ecclesiastical state of the
world, as it exists in actual fact, and the ideal which the Gospel presents to
us. An ideal is, by its very nature, far removed from actual life. It is
enshrined not in the material things of the external world, but in the heart and
conscience. Mankind are dissatisfied at this separation; they fancy that they
can make the inward kingdom an outward one also. But this is not possible. The
frame of civilization, that is to say, institutions and laws, the usages of
business, the customs of society, these are for the most part mechanical,
capable only in a certain degree of a higher and spiritual life. Christian
motives have never existed in such strength, as to make it safe or possible to
entrust them with the preservation of social order. Other interests are
therefore provided and other principles, often independent of the teaching of
the Gospel, or even apparently at variance with it. ‘If a man smite thee on the
right cheek turn to him the other also,’ is not a
regulation of police but an ideal rule of conduct, not to be explained away,
but rarely if ever to be literally acted upon in a civilized country; or rather
to be acted upon always in spirit, yet not without a reference to the interests
All men appeal to Scripture, and desire to draw the authority
of Scripture to their side; its voice may be heard in the turmoil of political
strife; a merely verbal similarity, the echo of a word, has weight in the determination
of a controversy. Such appeals are not to be met always by counter-appeals; they
rather lead to the consideration of deeper questions as to the manner in which Scripture
is to be applied. In what relation does it stand to actual life? Is it a law, or
only a spirit? for nations, or for individuals? to be enforced generally, or in
details also? Are its maxims to be modified by experience, or acted upon in defiance
of experience? Are the accidental circumstances of the first believers to become
a rule for us? Is everything, in short, done or said by our Saviour and His Apostles,
to be regarded as a precept or example which is to be followed on all occasions
and to last for all time? That can hardly be, consistently with the changes of
human things. It would be a rigid skeleton of Christianity (not the image of Christ),
to which society and politics, as well as the lives of individuals, would be conformed.
It would be the oldness of the letter, on which the world would be stretched; not
‘the
The neglect of this necessary contrast between the ideal and
the actual has had a twofold effect on the Interpretation of Scripture. It
has led to an unfair appropriation of some portions of Scripture and an undue neglect
of others. The letter is in many cases really or apparently in harmony with existing
practices, or opinions, or institutions. In other cases it is far removed
from them; it often seems as if the world would come to an end before the
words of Scripture could be realized. The twofold effect just now mentioned, corresponds
to these two classes. Some texts of Scripture have been eagerly appealed to and
made (in one sense) too much of; they have been taken by
(1) On the first of the subjects referred to above, it is argued
from Scripture that adulterers should not be allowed to marry again; and the point
of the argument turns on the question whether the words (ἐκτὸς λόγου πορνείας)
‘saving for the cause of fornication,’ which occur in the first clause of an
important text on marriage, were designedly or accidentally omitted in the second
(
With this minute and rigid enforcement of the words of Scripture
in passages where the ideas expressed in them either really or apparently agree
with received opinions or institutions, there remains to be contrasted the neglect,
or in some instances the misinterpretation of other words which are not equally
in harmony with the spirit of the age. In many of our Lord’s discourses He speaks
of the
Another instance of apparent, if not real neglect of the precepts
of Scripture, is furnished by the commandment against swearing. No precept about
divorce is so plain, so universal, so exclusive as this; ‘Swear not at all.’ Yet
we all know how the custom of Christian countries has modified this ‘counsel
of perfection’ which was uttered by the Saviour. This is the more remarkable because
in this case the precept is not, as in the former, practically impossible of fulfilment
or even difficult. And yet in this instance again, the body who have endeavoured
to follow more nearly the letter of our Lord’s commandment, seem to have gone against
the common sense of the Christian world. Or to add one more example: Who, that
hears of the Sabbatarianism, as it is called, of some Protestant countries,
would imagine that the Author of our religion had cautioned His disciples, not against
the violation of the Sabbath, but only against its formal and Pharisaical observance; or that the chiefest of the Apostles had warned the Colossians to
‘Let no man judge
them in respect of the new moon, or of the Sabbath-days’ (
The neglect of another class of passages is even more surprising,
the precepts contained in them being quite
The same habit of silence or misinterpretation extends to words
or statements of Scripture in which doctrines are thought to be interested. When
maintaining the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity, we do not readily recall the
verse, ‘of that hour knoweth no man, no not the Angels of God, neither the Son,
but the Father’ (
Nor indeed is it easy to say what is the meaning of ‘proving a
doctrine from Scripture.’ For when we demand logical equivalents and similarity
of circumstances, when we balance adverse statements, St. James and St. Paul, the
There is a further way in which the language of creeds and liturgies
as well as the ordinary theological use of terms exercises a disturbing influence
on the interpretation of Scripture. Words which occur in Scripture are singled out
and incorporated in systems, like stones taken out of an old building and put into
a new one. They acquire a technical meaning more or less divergent from the original
one. It is obvious that their use in Scripture, and not their later and technical
sense, must furnish the rule of interpretation. We should not have recourse to the
meaning of a word in Polybius, for the explanation of its use in Plato, or to the
turn of a sentence in Lycophron, to illustrate a construction of Aeschylus.
It is the same kind of anachronism which would interpret Scripture by the scholastic
or theological use of the language of Scripture. It is remarkable that this use is indeed partial, that is to
Other questions meet us on the threshold, of a different kind,
which also affect the interpretation of Scripture, and therefore demand an
answer. Is it admitted that the Scripture has one and only one true meaning? Or
are we to follow the fathers into mystical and allegorical explanations? or with
the majority of modern interpreters to confine ourselves to the double senses of
prophecy, and the symbolism of the Gospel in the law? In either case, we assume
what can never be proved, and an instrument is introduced of such subtlety and
pliability as to make the Scriptures mean anything—‘Gallus in campanili,’ as the Waldenses
described it; ‘the weathercock on the church tower,’ which is turned hither and
thither by every wind of doctrine. That the present age has grown out of the
mystical methods of the early fathers is a part of its intellectual state. No
one will now seek to find hidden meanings in the scarlet thread of Rahab, or the
number of Abraham’s followers, or in the little circumstance mentioned after the resurrection
of the Saviour that St. Peter
The question which has been suggested runs up into a more
general one, ‘the relation between the Old and New Testaments.’ For the Old Testament
will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself
or from the New. In the first case a careful and conscientious study of each one
for itself is all that is required; in the second case the types and ceremonies
of the law, perhaps the very facts and persons of the history, will be assumed to
Our object is not to attempt here the determination of these
questions, but to point out that they must be determined before any real progress
can be made or any agreement arrived at in the interpretation of Scripture. With
one more example of another kind we may close this part of the subject. The origin
of the three first Gospels is an inquiry which has not been much considered by English
theologians since the days of Bishop Marsh. The difficulty of the question has been
sometimes misunderstood; the point being how there can be so much agreement in
words, and so much disagreement both in words and facts; the double phenomenon
is the real perplexity—how in short there can be all degrees of similarity and dissimilarity,
the kind and degree of similarity being such as to make it necessary to suppose
that large portions are copied from each other or from common documents; the dissimilarities
being of a kind which seem to render impossible any knowledge in the authors of
one another’s writings. The most probable solution of this difficulty is, that the
tradition on which the three first Gospels are based was at first preserved orally,
and slowly put together and written in the three forms which it assumed at a very
early period, those forms being in some places, perhaps, modified by translation.
It is not necessary to develop this hypothesis farther. The point to be noticed
is, that whether this or some other theory be the true account (and some such account
is demonstrably necessary), the assumption of such a theory, or rather the observation
of the facts on which it rests, cannot but exercise an influence on interpretation.
We can no longer speak of three independent witnesses of the Gospel
Until these and the like questions are determined by interpreters,
it is not possible that there should be agreement in the interpretation of Scripture.
The Protestant and Catholic, the Unitarian and Trinitarian will continue to fight
their battle on the ground of the New Testament. The Preterists and Futurists, those
who maintain that the roll of prophecies is completed in past history, or in the
apostolical age; those who look forward to a long series of events which are yet
to come [ἐς ἀφανὲς τὸν μῦθον
ἀνενείκας οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον], may
alike claim the authority of the Book of Daniel, or the Revelation. Apparent coincidences
will always be discovered by those who want, to find them. Where there is no critical
interpretation of Scripture, there will be a mystical or rhetorical one. If words
have more than one meaning, they may have any meaning. Instead of being a rule of
life or faith, Scripture becomes the expression of the ever-changing aspect of religious
opinions.
§ 3.
It is probable that some of the preceding statements may be censured
as a wanton exposure of the difficulties of Scripture. It will be said that such
inquiries are for the few; while the printed page lies open to the many, and that
the obtrusion of them may offend some weaker brother, some half-educated or prejudiced
soul, ‘for whom,’ nevertheless, in the touching language of St. Paul, ‘Christ died.’
A confusion of the heart and head may lead sensitive minds into a desertion of the
principles of the Christian life, which are their own witness, because they are
in doubt about facts which are really external to them. Great evil to character
may sometimes ensue from such causes. ‘No man can serve two’ opinions without a sensible
harm to his nature. The consciousness of this responsibility should be always present
to writers on theology. But the responsibility is really twofold; for there is
a duty to speak the truth as well as a duty to withhold it. The voice of
a majority of the clergy throughout the world, the half sceptical, half conservative
instincts of many laymen, perhaps, also, individual interest, are in favour of the
latter course; while a higher expediency pleads that ‘honesty is the best policy,’ and that truth alone
‘makes free.’ To this it may be replied, that truth is not truth
to those who are unable to use it; no reasonable man would attempt to lay before
the illiterate such a question as that concerning the origin of the Gospels. And
yet it may be rejoined once more, the healthy tone of religion among the poor depends
upon freedom of thought and inquiry among the educated. In this conflict of reasons,
individual judgement must at last decide. That there has been no
First, that the difficulties referred to are very well known; they force themselves on the attention, not only of the student, but of every intelligent reader of the New Testament, whether in Greek or English. The treatment of such difficulties in theological works is no measure of public opinion respecting them. Thoughtful persons, whose minds have turned towards theology, are continually discovering that the critical observations which they make themselves have been made also by others apparently without concert. The truth is that they have been led to them by the same causes, and these again lie deep in the tendencies of education and literature in the present age. But no one is willing to break through the reticence which is observed on these subjects; hence a sort of smouldering scepticism. It is probable that the distrust is greatest at the time when the greatest efforts are made to conceal it. Doubt comes in at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door. The thoughts of able and highly educated young men almost always stray towards the first principles of things; it is a great injury to them, and tends to raise in their minds a sort of incurable suspicion, to find that there is one book of the fruit of the knowledge of which they are forbidden freely to taste, that is, the Bible. The same spirit renders the Christian Minister almost powerless in the hands of his opponents. He can give no true answer to the mechanic or artisan who has either discovered by his mother-wit or who retails at second-hand the objections of critics; for he is unable to look at things as they truly are.
Secondly, as the time has come when it is no longer possible
to ignore the results of criticism, it is of importance that Christianity should
be seen to be in harmony with them. That objections to some received views should
be valid, and yet that they should be always held up as the
Those who hold the possibility of such a reconcilement or restoration
of belief, are anxious to disengage Christianity from all suspicion of disguise
or unfairness. They wish to
But for the faith that the Gospel might win again the minds of
intellectual men, it would be better to leave
It may be thought another ungracious aspect of the preceding
remarks, that they cast a slight upon the interpreters of Scripture in former ages.
The early Fathers, the Roman Catholic mystical writers, the Swiss and German Reformers,
the Nonconformist divines, have qualities for which we look in vain among ourselves; they throw an intensity of light upon the page of Scripture which we nowhere find
in modern commentaries. But it is not the light of interpretation. They have a faith
which seems indeed to have grown dim nowadays, but that faith is not drawn from
the study of Scripture; it is the element in which their own mind moves which overflows
on the
What remains may be comprised in a few precepts, or rather is
the expansion of a single one. Interpret the Scripture like any other
book. There are many respects in which Scripture is unlike any other book;
these will appear in the results of such an interpretation. The first step is to
know the meaning, and this can only be done in the same careful and impartial way
that we ascertain the meaning of Sophocles or of Plato. The subordinate principles
which flow out of this general one will also be gathered from the observation of
Scripture. No other science of Hermeneutics is possible but an inductive one, that
is to say, one based on the language and thoughts and narrations of the sacred writers.
And it would be well to carry the theory of interpretation no further than in the
case of other works. Excessive system tends to create an impression that the meaning
of Scripture is out of our reach, or is to be attained in some other way than by
the exercise of manly sense and industry. Who would write a bulky treatise
about the method to be pursued in interpreting Plato or Sophocles? Let us not set
out on our journey so heavily equipped that there is little chance of our arriving
First, it may be laid down, that Scripture has one meaning—the
meaning which it had to the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered
or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it. Another view may be easier
or more familiar to us, seeming to receive a light and interest from the circumstances
of our own age. But such accommodation of the text must be laid aside by the interpreter,
whose business is, to place himself as nearly as possible in the position of the
sacred writer. That is no easy task—to call up the inner and outer life of the contemporaries
of our Saviour; to follow the abrupt and involved utterance of St. Paul or of one
of the old Prophets; to trace the meaning of words when language first became Christian.
He will often have to choose the more difficult interpretation (
There are difficulties of another kind in many parts of Scripture,
the depth and inwardness of which require a measure of the same qualities in the
interpreter himself. There are notes struck in places, which like some discoveries
of science have sounded before their time; and only after many days have been caught
up and found a response on the earth. There are germs of truth which after thousands
of years have never yet taken root in the world. There are lessons in the Prophets
which, however simple, mankind have not yet learned even in theory; and which the
complexity of society rather tends to hide; aspects of human life in Job and Ecclesiastes
which have a truth of desolation about them which we faintly realize in ordinary
circumstances. It is, perhaps, the greatest difficulty of all to enter into the
meaning of the words of Christ—so gentle, so human, so divine, neither adding to
them nor marring their simplicity. The attempt to illustrate or draw them out in
detail, even to guard against their abuse, is apt to disturb the balance of truth.
The interpreter needs nothing short of ‘fashioning’ in himself the image of the
mind of Christ. He has to be born again into a new spiritual or intellectual world,
from which the thoughts of this world
But while acknowledging this inexhaustible or infinite character
of the sacred writings, it does not, therefore, follow that we are willing to admit
of hidden or mysterious meanings in them: in the same way we recognize the wonders
and complexity of the laws of nature to be far beyond what eye has seen or knowledge
reached, yet it is not therefore to be supposed that we acknowledge the existence
of some other laws, different in kind from those we know, which are incapable of
philosophical analysis. In like manner we have no reason to attribute to the Prophet
or Evangelist any second or hidden sense different from that which appears on the
surface. All that the Prophet meant may not have been consciously present to his
mind; there were depths which to himself also were but half revealed. He beheld
the fortunes of Israel passing into the heavens; the temporal kingdom was fading
into an eternal one. It is not to be supposed that what he saw at a distance only
was clearly defined to him; or that the universal truth which was appearing and
reappearing in the history of the surrounding world took a purely spiritual or abstract
form in his mind. There is a sense in which we may still say with Lord Bacon, that
the words of prophecy are to be interpreted as the words of one ‘with whom a thousand
years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years.’ But that is no reason for
turning days into years, or for interpreting the things ‘that must shortly come to
pass’ in the book of Revelation, as the events of modern history, or for separating
the day of judgement from the destruction of Jerusalem in the Gospels. The double
meaning which is given to our Saviour’s discourse respecting the last things is
not that ‘form of eternity’ of which Lord Bacon speaks; it resembles rather the
doubling of an object when seen through glasses placed at different angles. It is
The second rule is an application of the general principle; ‘interpret Scripture from itself,’ as in other respects like any other book written in an age and country of which little or no other literature survives, and about which we know almost nothing except what is derived from its pages. Not that all the parts of Scripture are to be regarded as an indistinguishable mass. The Old Testament is not to be identified with the New, nor the Law with the Prophets, nor the Gospels with the Epistles, nor the Epistles of St. Paul to be violently harmonized with the Epistle of St. James. Each writer, each successive age, has characteristics of its own, as strongly marked, or more strongly than those which are found in the authors or periods of classical literature. These differences are not to be lost in the idea of a Spirit from whom they proceed or by which they were overruled. And therefore, illustration of one part of Scripture by another should be confined to writings of the same age and the same authors, except where the writings of different ages or persons offer obvious similarities. It may be said further that illustration should be chiefly derived, not only from the same author, but from the same writing, or from one of the same period of his life. For example, the comparison of St. John and the ‘synoptic’ Gospels, or of the Gospel of St. John with the Revelation of St. John, will tend rather to confuse than to elucidate the meaning of either; while, on the other hand, the comparison of the Prophets with one another, and with the Psalms, offers many valuable helps and lights to the interpreter. Again, the connexion between the Epistles written by the Apostle St. Paul about the same time (e.g. Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians—Colossians, Philippians, Ephesians—compared with Romans, Colossians—Ephesians, Galatians, &c.) is far closer than of Epistles which are separated by an interval of only a few years.
But supposing all this to be understood, and that by the interpretation
of Scripture from itself is meant a real interpretation
The meaning of the Canon ‘Non nisi ex
Scripturâ Scripturam potes interpretari,’ is only this, ‘That we cannot understand Scripture without
becoming familiar with it.’ Scripture is a world by itself, from which we must exclude
foreign influences, whether theological or classical. To get inside that world is
an effort of thought and imagination, requiring the sense of a poet as well as a
critic—demanding, much more than learning, a degree of original power and intensity
of mind. Any one who, instead of burying himself in the pages of the commentators,
would learn the sacred writings by heart, and paraphrase them in English, will probably
make a nearer approach to their true meaning than he would gather from any commentary.
The intelligent mind will ask its own questions, and find for the most part its
own answers. The true use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and
leave us alone in company with the author. When the meaning of Greek words is once
known, the young student has almost all the real materials which
Yet in this consideration of the separate books of Scripture it
is not to be forgotten that they have also a sort of continuity. We make a separate
study of the subject, of the mode of thought, in some degree also of the language
of each book. And at length the idea arises in our minds of a common literature,
a pervading life, an overruling law. It may be compared to the effect of some natural
scene in which we suddenly perceive a harmony or picture, or to the imperfect appearance
of design which suggests itself in looking at the surface of the globe. That is
to say, there is nothing miraculous or artificial in the arrangement of the books
of Scripture; it is the result, not the design, which appears in them when bound
in the same volume. Or if we like so to say, there is design, but a natural design
which is revealed to after ages. Such continuity or design is best expressed under
some notion of progress or growth, not regular, however, but with broken and imperfect
stages, which the want of knowledge prevents our minutely defining. The great truth
of the unity of God was there from the first; slowly as the morning broke in the
heavens, like some central light, it filled and afterwards dispersed the mists of
human passion in which it was itself enveloped. A change passes over the Jewish
religion from fear to love, from power to wisdom, from the justice of God to the
mercy of God, from the nation to the individual, from this world to another; from
the visitation of the sins of the fathers
There is an interval in the Jewish annals which we often exclude
from our thoughts, because it has no record in the canonical writings—extending
over about four hundred years, from the last of the prophets of the Old Testament
to the forerunner of Christ in the New. This interval, about which we know so little,
which is regarded by many as a portion of secular rather than of sacred history,
was nevertheless as fruitful in religious changes as any similar period which preceded.
The establishment of the Jewish sects, and the wars of the Maccabees, probably exercised
as great an influence on Judaism as the captivity itself. A third influence
was that of the Alexandrian literature, which was attracting the Jewish intellect,
at the same time that the Galilean zealot was tearing the nation in pieces with
the doctrine that it was lawful to call ‘no man master but God.’ In contrast with
that wild fanaticism as well as with the proud Pharisee, came One most unlike all
that had been before, as the kings or rulers of mankind. In
Such a general conception of growth or development in Scripture,
beginning with the truth of the Unity of God in the earliest books and ending with
the perfection of Christ, naturally springs up in our minds in the perusal of the
sacred writings. It is a notion of value to the interpreter, for it enables him
at the same time to grasp the whole and distinguish the parts. It saves him from
the necessity of maintaining that the Old Testament is one and the same everywhere; that the books of Moses contain truths or precepts, such as the duty of prayer
or the faith in immortality, or the spiritual interpretation of sacrifice, which
no one has ever seen there. It leaves him room enough to admit all the facts of
the case. No longer is he required to defend, or to explain away, David’s imprecations
against his enemies, or his injunctions to Solomon, any more than his sin in the
matter of Uriah. Nor is he hampered with a theory of accommodation. Still, the sense
of ‘the increasing purpose which through the ages ran’ is present to him, nowhere
else continuously discernible or ending in a divine perfection. Nowhere else
is there found the same interpenetration of the political and religious element—a
whole nation, ‘though never good for much at any time,’ possessed with the conviction
that it was living in the face of God—in whom the Sun of righteousness shone upon
the corruption of an Eastern nature—the ‘fewest of
Such a growth or development may be regarded as a kind of progress
from childhood to manhood. In the child there is an anticipation of truth; his
reason is latent in the form of feeling; many words are used by him which he fin-perfectly
understands; he is led by temporal promises, believing that to be good is to be
happy always; he is pleased by marvels and has vague terrors. He is confined to
a spot of earth, and lives in a sort of prison of sense, yet is bursting also with
a fulness of childish life: he imagines God to be like a human father, only greater
and more awful; he is easily impressed with solemn thoughts, but soon ‘rises up
to play’ with other children. It is observable that his ideas of right and wrong
are very simple, hardly extending to another life; they consist chiefly in obedience
to his parents, whose word is his law. As he grows older he mixes more and more
with others; first with one or two who have a great influence in the direction
of his mind. At length the world opens upon him; another work of education begins; and he learns to discern more truly the meaning of things and his relation to
men in general. You may complete the image, by supposing that there was a time in
his early days when he was a helpless outcast ‘in the land of Egypt and the house
of bondage.’ And as he arrives at manhood he reflects on his former years, the progress
of his education, the hardships of his infancy, the home of his youth (the thought
of which is ineffaceable in after life), and he now understands that all this was
but a preparation for another state of being, in which he is to play a part for
himself. And once more in age you may imagine him like the
‘Which things are an allegory,’ the particulars of which any one may interpret for himself. For the child born after the flesh is the symbol of the child born after the Spirit. ‘The law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ,’ and now ‘we are under a schoolmaster’ no longer. The anticipation of truth which came from without to the childhood or youth of the human race is witnessed to within; the revelation of God is not lost but renewed in the heart and understanding of the man. Experience has taught us the application of the lesson in a wider sphere. And many influences have combined to form the ‘after life’ of the world. When at the close (shall we say) of a great period in the history of man, we cast our eyes back on the course of events, from the ‘angel of his presence in the wilderness’ to the multitude of peoples, nations, languages, who are being drawn together by His Providence—from the simplicity of the pastoral state in the dawn of the world’s day, to all the elements of civilization and knowledge which are beginning to meet and mingle in a common life, we also understand that we are no longer in our early home, to which, nevertheless, we fondly look; and that the end is yet unseen, and the purposes of God towards the human race only half revealed. And to turn once more to the Interpreter of Scripture, he too feels that the continuous growth of revelation which he traces in the Old and New Testament, is a part of a larger whole extending over the earth and reaching to another world.
§ 4.
Scripture has an inner life or soul; it has also an outward
body or form. That form is language, which imperfectly expresses our common notions,
much more those higher
From the inner life of Scripture it is time to pass on to the
consideration of this outward form, including that other framework of modes of thought
and figures of speech which is between the two. A knowledge of the original language
is a necessary qualification of the Interpreter of Scripture. It takes away at least
one chance of error in the explanation of a passage; it removes one of the films
which have gathered over the page; it brings the meaning home in a more intimate
and subtle way than a translation could do. To this, however, another qualification
should be added, which is, the logical power to perceive the meaning of words in
reference to their context. And there is a worse fault than ignorance of Greek in
the interpretation of the New Testament, that is, ignorance of any language. The
Greek fathers, for example, are far from being the best verbal commentators, because
their knowledge of Greek often leads them away from the drift of the passage. The
minuteness of the study in our own day has also a tendency to introduce into the
text associations which are not really found there. There is a danger of making
words mean too much; refinements of signification are drawn out of them, perhaps
contained in their etymology, which are lost in common use and parlance. There is
the error of interpreting every particle, as though it were a link in the argument,
instead of being, as is often the case, an excrescence of style. The verbal critic
magnifies his art, which is really great in Aeschylus or Pindar, but not of equal
importance in the interpretation of the simpler language of the New Testament. His
love of scholarship will sometimes lead him to impress a false system on words and
constructions. A great critic
The study of the language of the New Testament has suffered in
another way by following too much in the track of classical scholarship. All dead
languages which have passed into the hands of grammarians, have given rise to questions
which have either no result or in which the importance of the result, or the certainty,
if certain, is out of proportion to the labour spent in attaining it. The field
is exhausted by great critics, and then subdivided among lesser ones. The subject,
unlike that of physical science, has a limit, and unless new ground is broken up,
as for example in mythology, or comparative philology, is apt to grow barren. Though
it is not true to say that ‘we know as much about the Greeks and Romans as we ever
shall,’ it is certain that we run a danger from the deficiency of material, of wasting
time in questions which do not add anything to real knowledge, or in conjectures
which must always remain uncertain, and may in turn give way to other conjectures
in the next generation. Little points may be of great importance when rightly determined,
because the observation of them tends to quicken the instinct of language; but
conjectures about little things or rules respecting them which were not in the mind
of Greek authors themselves, are not of equal value. There is the scholasticism
of philology, not only in the Alexandrian, but in our own times; as in the middle
ages, there was the scholasticism of philosophy. Questions of mere orthography,
There seem to be reasons for doubting whether any considerable
light can be thrown on the New Testament from inquiry into the language. Such inquiries
are popular, because they are safe; but their popularity is not the measure of
their use. It has not been sufficiently considered that the difficulties of the
New Testament are for the most part common to the Greek and the English.
The noblest translation in the world has a few great errors, more than half of them
in the text; but ‘we do it violence’ to haggle over the words. Minute corrections
of tenses or particles are no good; they spoil the English without being nearer
the Greek. Apparent mistranslations are often due to a better knowledge of English
rather than a worse knowledge of Greek. It is true that the signification of a few
uncommon expressions, e. g. ἐξουσία,
ἐπιβαλών, συναπαγόμενο, κ.τ.λ., is
yet uncertain. But no result of consequence would follow from the attainment of
absolute certainty respecting the meaning of any of these. A more promising field
It is for others to investigate the language of the Old Testament,
to which the preceding remarks are only in part applicable. And it may be observed
in passing of this, as of any other old language, that not the later form of the
language, but the cognate dialects, must ever be the chief source of its illustration.
For in every ancient language, antecedent or contemporary forms, not the subsequent
ones, afford the real insight into its nature and structure. It must also be admitted,
that very great and real obscurities exist in the English translation of the Old
Testament, which even a superficial acquaintance with the original has a tendency
to remove. Leaving, however, to others the consideration of the Semitic languages,
which raise questions of a different kind from the Hellenistic Greek, we will offer
a few remarks on the latter. Much
These remarks may be applied to the Greek of the New Testament,
which although classed vaguely. under the ‘common dialect,’ has, nevertheless, many
features which are altogether peculiar to itself, and such as are found in no other
remains of ancient literature. (1) It is more unequal in style even in the same
books, that is to say, more original and plastic in one part, more rigid and unpliable
in another. There is a want of the continuous power to frame a paragraph or to arrange
clauses in subordination to each other, even to the extent in which it was possessed
by a Greek scholiast or rhetorician. On the other hand there is a fullness of life,
‘a new birth,’ in the use of abstract terms, which is not found elsewhere after the
golden age of Greek philosophy. Almost the only passage in the New Testament which
reads like a Greek period of the time, is the first paragraph of the Gospel according
to St. Luke, and the corresponding words of the Acts. But the power and meaning
of the characteristic words of the New Testament is in remarkable contrast with
the vapid and general use of the same words in Philo about the same time. There
is also a sort of lyrical passion in some passages (
Our knowledge of the New Testament is derived almost exclusively
from itself. Of the language, as well as of the subject, it may be truly said, that
what other writers contribute is nothing in comparison of that which is gained from
observation of the text. Some inferences which may be gathered from this general
fact are the following:—First, that less weight should be given to lexicons, that
is, to the authority of other Greek writers, and more to the context. The use of
a word in a new sense, the attribution of a neuter meaning to a verb elsewhere passive
(
Passing from the grammatical structure, we may briefly consider
the logical character of the language of the New Testament. Two things should be
here distinguished, the logical form and the logical sequence of thought. Some
The observation of this rhetorical or logical element has a bearing
on the Interpretation of Scripture. For it leads us to distinguish between the superficial
connexion of words and the real connexion of thoughts. Otherwise injustice is done
to the argument of the sacred writer, who may be supposed to violate logical rules,
of which he is unconscious. For example, the argument of
Other questions arise out of the analysis of the modes of thought
of Scripture. Unless we are willing to use words without inquiring into their meaning,
it is necessary for us to arrange them in some relation to our own minds. The modes
of thought of the Old Testament are not the same with those of the New, and those
of the New are only partially the same with those in use among ourselves at the
present day. The education of the human mind may be
This is the metaphysical difficulty in the Interpretation of Scripture, which it is better not to ignore, because the consideration of it is necessary to the understanding of many passages, and also because it may return upon us in the form of materialism or scepticism. To some who are not aware how little words affect the nature of things it may seem to raise speculations of a very serious kind. Their doubts would, perhaps, find expression in some such exclamations as the following:—‘How is religion possible when modes of thought are shifting? and words changing their meaning, and statements of doctrine, though “starched” with philosophy, are in perpetual danger of dissolution from metaphysical analysis? ‘
The answer seems to be, that Christian truth is not dependent
on the fixedness of modes of thought. The metaphysician may analyze the ideas of
the mind just as the physiologist may analyze the powers or parts of the bodily
frame, yet morality and social life still go on, as in the body digestion is
uninterrupted. That is not an illustration only; it represents the fact. Though we had no words
for mind, matter, soul, body, and the like, Christianity would remain the same.
This is obvious, whether we think
Connected with the modes of thought or representation in Scripture are the figures of speech of Scripture, about which the same question may be asked: ‘What division can we make between the figure and the reality?’ And the answer seems to be of the same kind, that We cannot precisely draw the line between them.’ Language, and especially the language of Scripture, does not admit of any sharp distinction. The simple expressions of one age become the allegories or figures of another; many of those in the New Testament are taken from the Old. But neither is there anything really essential in the form of these figures; nay, the literal application of many of them has been a great stumblingblock to the reception of Christianity. A recent commentator on Scripture appears willing to peril religion on the literal truth of such an expression as ‘We shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.’ Would he be equally ready to stake Christianity on the literal meaning of the words, ‘Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched ‘?
Of what has been said this is the sum:—‘That Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which is to be gathered from itself without reference to the adaptations of Fathers or Divines; and without regard to a priori notions about its nature and origin. It is to be interpreted like other books, with attention to the character of its authors, and the prevailing state of civilization and knowledge, with allowance for peculiarities of style and language, and modes of thought and figures of speech. Yet not without a sense that as we read there grows upon us the witness of God in the world, anticipating in a rude and primitive age the truth that was to be, shining more and more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, which again is reflected from different points of view in the teaching of His Apostles.’
§ 4.
It has been a principal aim of the preceding pages to distinguish
the interpretation from the application of Scripture. Many of the errors alluded
to arise out of a confusion of the two. The present is nearer to us than the past; the circumstances which surround us pre-occupy our thoughts; it is only by an
effort that we reproduce the ideas, or events, or persons of other ages. And thus,
quite naturally, almost by a law of the human mind, the application of Scripture
takes the place of its original meaning. And the question is, not how to get rid
of this natural tendency, but how we may have the true use of it. For it cannot
be got rid of, or rather is one of the chief instruments of religious usefulness
in the world: ‘Ideas must be given through something;’ those of religion find
their natural expression in the words of Scripture, in the adaptation of which to
another state of life it is hardly possible that the first intention of the writers
should be always preserved. Interpretation is the province of few; it requires
a finer perception of language, and a higher degree of cultivation than is attained
by the majority of mankind. But applications are made by all,
There is also a use of Scripture in education and literature.
This literary use, though secondary to the religious one, is not unimportant. It
supplies a common language to the educated and uneducated, in which the best and
highest thoughts of both are expressed; it is a medium between the abstract notions
of the one and the simple feelings of the other. To the poor especially, it conveys
in the form which they are most capable of receiving, the lesson of history and
life. The beauty and power of speech and writing would be greatly impaired, if the
Scriptures ceased to be known or used among us. The orator seems to catch from them
a sort of inspiration; in the simple words of Scripture which he stamps anew, the
philosopher often finds his most pregnant expressions. If modern times have been
richer in the wealth of abstract thought, the contribution of earlier ages to the
mind of the world has not been less, but, perhaps greater, in supplying the poetry
of language. There is no such treasury of instruments and materials as Scripture.
The loss of Homer, or the loss of Shakespeare, would have affected the whole series
of Greek or English authors who follow. But the disappearance of the Bible from
the books which the world contains, would produce results far greater; we can scarcely
conceive the degree in which it would alter literature and language—the ideas
Many by whom considerations of this sort will be little understood, may, nevertheless, recognize the use made of the Old Testament in the New. The religion of Christ was first taught by an application of the words of the Psalms and the Prophets. Our Lord Himself sanctions this application. ‘Can there be a better use of Scripture than that which is made by Scripture?’ ‘Or any more likely method of teaching the truths of Christianity than that by which they were first taught?’ For it may be argued that the critical interpretation of Scripture is a device almost of yesterday; it is the vocation of the scholar or philosopher, not of the Apostle or Prophet. The new truth which was introduced into the Old Testament, rather than the old truth which was found there, was the salvation and the conversion of the world. There are many quotations from the Psalms and the, Prophets in the Epistles, in which the meaning is quickened or spiritualized, but hardly any, probably none, which is based on the original sense or context. That is not so singular a phenomenon as may at first sight be imagined. It may appear strange to us that Scripture should be interpreted in Scripture, in a manner not altogether in agreement with modern criticism; but would it not be more strange that it should be interpreted otherwise than in agreement with the ideas of the age or country in which it was written? The observation that there is such an agreement, leads to two conclusions which have a bearing on our present subject. First, it is a reason for not insisting on the applications which the New Testament makes of passages in the Old, as their original meaning. Secondly, it gives authority and precedent for the use of similar applications in our own day.
But, on the other hand, though interwoven with literature, though
common to all ages of the Church, though sanctioned by our Lord and His Apostles,
it is easy to see that such an employment of Scripture is liable to error and perversion.
For it may not only receive a new meaning; it may be applied in a spirit
alien to itself. It may become the symbol of fanaticism, the cloke of malice, the
disguise of policy. Cromwell at Drogheda, quoting Scripture to his soldiers; the
well-known attack on the Puritans in the State, Service for the Restoration, ‘Not
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord;’ the reply of the Venetian Ambassador
to the suggestion of Wolsey, that Venice should take a lead in Italy, ‘which
was only the Earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,’ are examples of such
uses. In former times, it was a real and not an imaginary fear, that the
wars of the Lord in the Old Testament might arouse a fire in the bosom of Franks
and Huns. In our own day such dangers have passed away; it is only a figure of
speech when the preacher says, ‘Gird on thy sword, O thou most Mighty.’ The warlike
passions of men are not roused by quotations from Scripture, nor can states of life
such as slavery or polygamy, which belong to a past age, be defended, at least in
England, by the example of the Old Testament. The danger or error is of another
kind; more subtle, but hardly less real. For if we are permitted to apply Scripture
under the pretence of interpreting it, the language of Scripture becomes only a
mode of expressing the public feeling or opinion of our own day. Any passing phase
of politics or art, or spurious philanthropy, may have a kind of Scriptural authority.
The words that are used are the words of the Prophet or Evangelist, but we stand
behind and adapt them to our purpose. Hence it is necessary to consider the limits
and manner of a just adaptation; how much may be allowed for the sake of ornament; how far the Scripture, in all its details, may be regarded as an allegory of human
life—where the true
Truth seems to require that we should separate mere adaptations
from the original meaning of Scripture. It is not honest or reasonable to confound
illustration with argument, in theology, any more than in other subjects. For example,
if a preacher chooses to represent the condition of a church or of an individual
in the present day, under the figure of Elijah left alone among the idolatrous tribes
of Israel, such an allusion is natural enough; but if he goes on to argue that
individuals are therefore justified in remaining in what they believe to be an erroneous
communion—that is a mere appearance of argument which ought not to have the slightest
weight with a man of sense. Such a course may indeed be perfectly justifiable, but
not on the ground that a prophet of the Lord once did so, two thousand five hundred
years ago. Not in this sense were the lives of the Prophets written for our instruction.
There are many important morals conveyed by them, but only so far as they themselves
represent universal principles of justice and love. These universal principles they
clothe with flesh and blood: they show them to us written on the hearts of men
of like passions with ourselves. The prophecies, again, admit of many applications
to the Christian Church or to the Christian life. There is no harm in speaking of
the Church as the Spiritual Israel, or in using the imagery of Isaiah respecting
Messiah’s kingdom, as the type of good things to come. But when it is gravely urged,
that from such passages as ‘Kings shall be thy nursing fathers,’ we are to collect
the relations of Church and State, or from the pictorial description of Isaiah,
that it is to be inferred there will be a reign of Christ on earth—that is a mere
assumption of the forms of reasoning by the imagination. Nor is it a healthful or
manly tone of feeling which depicts the political opposition to the Church in our
own day, under imagery which is
This is the first step towards a more truthful use of Scripture
in practice—the separation of adaptation from interpretation. No one who is engaged
in preaching or in religious instruction can be required to give up Scripture language; it is the common element in which his thoughts and those of his hearers move.
But he may be asked to distinguish the words of Scripture from the truths of Scripture—the
means from the end. The least expression of Scripture is weighty; it affects the
minds of the hearers in a way that no other language can. Whatever responsibility
attaches to idle words, attaches in still greater degree to the idle or fallacious
use of Scripture terms. And there is surely a want of proper reverence for Scripture,
when we confound the weakest and feeblest applications of its words with their true
meaning—when we avail ourselves of their natural power to point them against some
enemy—when we divert the eternal words of charity and truth into a defence
of some passing opinion. For not only in the days of the Pharisees, but in our own,
the letter has
Other simple cautions may also be added. The applications of Scripture should be harmonized and, as it were, interpenetrated with the spirit of the Gospel, the whole of which should be in every part; though the words may receive a new sense, the new sense ought to be in agreement with the general truth. They should be used to bring home practical precepts, not to send the imagination on a voyage of discovery; they are not the real foundation of our faith in another world, nor can they, by pleasant pictures, add to our knowledge of it. They should not confound the accidents with the essence of religion—the restrictions and burdens of the Jewish law with the freedom of the Gospel—the things which Moses allowed for the hardness of the heart, with the perfection of the teaching of Christ. They should avoid the form of arguments, or they will insensibly be used, or understood to mean more than they really do. They should be subjected to an overruling principle, which is the heart and conscience of the Christian teacher, who indeed ‘stands behind them,’ not to make them the vehicles of his own opinions, but as the expressions of justice, and truth, and love.
And here the critical interpretation of Scripture comes in and
exercises a corrective influence on its popular use. We have already admitted that
criticism is not for the multitude; it is not that which the Scripture terms the
Gospel preached to the poor. Yet, indirectly passing from the few to the many, it
has borne a great part in the Reformation of religion. It has cleared the eye of
the mind to understand the original meaning. It was a sort of criticism which supported
the struggle of the sixteenth century against the Roman Catholic Church; it is
criticism that is leading Protestants to doubt whether the doctrine that the Pope
is Antichrist, which has descended from the same
The real unity of Scripture, as of man, has also a relation to
our present subject. Amid all the differences of modes of thought and speech which
have existed in different ages, of which much is said in our own day, there is a
common element in human nature which bursts through these differences and remains
unchanged, because akin to the first instincts of our being. The simple feeling
of truth and right is the same to the Greek or Hindoo as to ourselves. However
great may be the diversities of human character, there is a point at which these
diversities end, and unity begins to appear. Now this admits of an application to
the books of Scripture, as well as to the world generally. Written at many
different times, in more than one language, some of them in fragments, they, too,
have a common element of which the preacher may avail himself. This element is twofold,
partly divine and partly human; the revelation of the truth and righteousness of
God, and the cry of the human heart towards Him. Every part of Scripture tends to
raise us above ourselves—to give us a deeper sense of the feebleness of man, and
of the wisdom and power of God. It has a sort of kindred, as Plato would say, with
religious truth everywhere in the world. It
In some cases, we have only to enlarge the meaning of Scripture
to apply it even to the novelties and peculiarities of our own times. The world
changes, but the human heart remains the same: events and details are different,
but the principle by which they are governed, or the rule by which we are to act,
is not different. When, for example, our Saviour says, ‘Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free,’ it is not likely that these words would have
conveyed to the minds of the Jews who heard Him any notion of the perplexities of
doubt or inquiry. Yet we cannot suppose that our Saviour, were He to come
again upon earth, would refuse thus to extend them. The Apostle St. Paul, when describing
the Gospel, which is to the Greek foolishness, speaks also of a higher wisdom which
is known to those who are perfect. Neither is it unfair for us to apply this passage
to that reconcilement of faith and knowledge, which may be termed Christian philosophy,
as the nearest equivalent to its language in our own day. Such words, again, as
‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?’ admit of a great variety of adaptations
to the circumstances of our own time. Many of these adaptations have a real germ
in the meaning of the words. The precept, ‘Render unto Cæsar the things that are
Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,’ may be taken generally as expressing
the necessity of distinguishing the divine and human—the things that belong to faith
The portion of Scripture which more than any other is immediately
and universally applicable to our own times is, doubtless, that which is contained
in the words of Christ Himself. The reason is that they are words of the most universal
import. They do not relate to the circumstances of the time, but to the common life
of all mankind. You cannot extract from them a political creed; only, ‘Render unto
Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,’ and ‘The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; whatsoever, therefore, they say unto you do, but after their works do not.’
They present to us a standard of truth and duty, such as no one can at once and
immediately practise—such as, in its perfection, no one has fulfilled in this world.
But this idealism does not interfere with their influence as a religious lesson.
Ideals, even though unrealized, have effect on our daily life. The preacher of the
Gospel is, or ought to be, aware that his calls to repentance, his standard of obligations,
his lamentations over his own shortcomings or those of others, do not at once convert
hundreds or thousands, as on the day of Pentecost. Yet it does not follow that they
are thrown away, or that it would be well to substitute for them mere prudential
or economical lessons, lectures on health or sanitary improvement. For they tend
to raise men above themselves, providing them with Sabbaths as well as working days,
giving them a taste of ‘the good word of God’ and of ‘the powers of the world to come.’
Human nature needs to be idealized; it seems as if it took a dislike to itself
when presented always in its ordinary attire; it lives on in the hope of becoming
better. And the image or hope of a better life—the vision of Christ crucified—which
is held up to it, doubtless has an influence; not like
The Parables of our Lord are a portion of the New Testament, which we may apply in the most easy and literal manner. The persons in them are the persons among whom we live and move; there are times and occasions at which the truths symbolized by them come home to the hearts of all who have ever been impressed by religion. We have been prodigal sons returning to our Father; servants to whom talents have been entrusted; labourers in the vineyard inclined to murmur at our lot, when compared with that of others, yet receiving every man his due; well-satisfied Pharisees; repentant Publicans:—we have received the seed, and the cares of the world have choked it—we hope also at times that we have found the pearl of great price after sweeping the house—we are ready like the Good Samaritan to show kindness to all mankind. Of these circumstances of life or phases of mind, which are typified by the parables, most Christians have experience. We may go on to apply many of them further to the condition of nations and churches. Such a treasury has Christ provided us of things new and old, which refer to all time and all mankind—may we not say in His own words—‘because He is the Son of Man?’
There is no language of Scripture which penetrates the individual
soul, and embraces all the world in the arms of its love, in the same manner as
that of Christ Himself. Yet the Epistles contain lessons which are not found in
the Gospels, or, at least, not expressed with the same degree of clearness. For
the Epistles are nearer to actual life—they relate to the circumstances of the first
believers, to their struggles with the world without, to their temptations and divisions
from within—their subject is not only the doctrine of the Christian religion, but
the business of the early Church. And although their circumstances are not our
Such are a few instances of the manlier in which the analogy of faith enables us to apply the words of Christ and His Apostles, with a strict regard to their original meaning. But the Old Testament has also its peculiar lessons which are not conveyed with equal point or force in the New. The beginnings of human history are themselves a lesson, having a freshness as of the early dawn. There are forms of evil against which the Prophets and the prophetical spirit of the Law carry on a warfare, in terms almost too bold for the way of life of modern times. There, more plainly than in any other portion of Scripture, is expressed the antagonism of outward and inward, of ceremonial and moral, of mercy and sacrifice. There all the masks of hypocrisy are rudely torn asunder, in which an unthinking world allows itself to be disguised. There the relations of rich and poor in the sight of God, and their duties towards one another, are most clearly enunciated. There the religion of suffering first appears—‘adversity, the blessing’ of the Old Testament, as well as of the New. There the sorrows and aspirations of the soul find their deepest expression, and also their consolation. The feeble person has an image of himself in the ‘bruised reed;’ the suffering servant of God passes into the ‘beloved one, in whom my soul delighteth.’ Even the latest and most desolate phases of the human mind are reflected in Job and Ecclesiastes; yet not without the solemn assertion that ‘to fear God and keep his commandments’ is the beginning and end of all things.
It is true that there are examples in the Old Testament which
were not written for our instruction, and that, in some instances, precepts or commands
are attributed to God Himself, which must be regarded as relative to the state of
knowledge which then existed of the Divine nature,
§ 5.
Some application of the preceding subject may be further made to theology and life.
Let us introduce this concluding inquiry with two remarks.
First, it may be observed, that a change in some of the
prevailing modes of interpretation is not so much a matter of expediency as of necessity.
The original meaning of Scripture is beginning to be clearly understood. But the
apprehension of the original meaning is inconsistent with the reception of a typical
or conventional one. The time will come when educated men will be no more able to
believe that the words, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’ (
From the circumstance that in former ages there has been a fourfold or a sevenfold interpretation of Scripture, we cannot argue to the possibility of upholding any other than the original one in our own. The mystical explanations of Origen or Philo were not seen to be mystical; the reasonings of Aquinas and Calvin were not supposed to go beyond the letter of the text. They have now become the subject of apology; it is justly said that we should not judge the greatness of the Fathers or Reformers by their suitableness to our own day. But this defence of them shows that their explanations of Scripture are no longer tenable; they belong to a way of thinking and speaking which was once diffused over the world, but has now passed away. And what we give up as a general principle we shall find it impossible to maintain partially, e. g., in the types of the Mosaic Law and the double meanings of prophecy, at least, in any sense in which it is not equally applicable to all deep and suggestive writings.
The same observation may be applied to the historical criticism
of Scripture. From the fact that Paley or Butler
Secondly, it has to be considered whether the intellectual forms
under which Christianity has been described may not also be in a state of transition
and resolution, in this respect contrasting with the never-changing truth of the
Christian life (
And now, as the Interpretation of Scripture is receiving another
character, it seems that distinctions of theology, which were in great measure based
on old interpretations, are beginning to fade away. A change is observable in the
manner in which doctrines are stated and defended; it is no longer held sufficient
to rest them on texts of Scripture, one, two, or more, which contain, or appear
to contain, similar words or ideas. They are connected more closely with our moral
nature; extreme consequences are shunned; large allowances are made for the ignorance
of mankind. It is held that there is truth on both sides; about many questions
there is a kind of union of opposites; others are admitted to have been verbal
only; all are regarded in the light which is thrown upon them by church history
and religious experience. A theory has lately been put forward, apparently as a
defence of the Christian faith, which denies the objective character of any of them.
And there are other signs that
‘Our greatest love turned to our greatest hate.’
A silence is observable on some other points of doctrine around
which controversies swarmed a generation ago. Persons begin to ask what was the
real difference which divided the two parties. They are no longer within the magic
circle, but are taking up a position external to it. They have arrived at an age
of reflection, and begin to speculate on the action and reaction, the irritation
and counter-irritation, of religious forces; it is a common observation that ‘revivals
are not permanent;’ the movement is criticized even by those who are subject to
its influence. In the present state of the human mind, any consideration of these
subjects, whether from the highest or lowest or most moderate point of view, is
unfavourable to the stability of dogmatical systems, because it rouses inquiry into
the meaning of words. To the sense of this is probably to be attributed the reserve
on matters of doctrine and controversy which characterizes the present day, compared
with the theological activity of twenty years ago
These reflections bring us back to the question with which we
began—‘What effect will the critical interpretation of Scripture have on theology
and on life?’ Their tendency is to show that the result is beyond our control,
and that the world is not unprepared for it. More things than at first sight appear
are moving towards the same end. Religion often bids us think of ourselves, especially
in later life, as, each one in his appointed place, carrying on a work
This distraction of the human mind between adverse influences and associations, is a fact which we should have to accept and make the best of, whatever consequences might seem to follow to individuals or Churches. It is not to be regarded as a merely heathen notion that ‘truth is to be desired for its own sake even though no “good” result from it.’ As a Christian paradox it may be said, ‘What hast thou to do with “good?” follow thou Me.’ But the Christian revelation does not require of us this Stoicism in most cases; it rather shows how good and truth are generally coincident. Even in this life, there are numberless links which unite moral good with intellectual truth. It is hardly too much to say that the one is but a narrower form of the other. Truth is to the world what holiness of life is to the individual—to man collectively the source of justice and peace and good.
There are many ways in which the connexion between truth and
good may be traced in the Interpretation of Scripture. Is it a mere chimera that
the different sections of Christendom may meet on the common ground of the New Testament? Or that the individual may be urged by the vacancy and unprofitableness of old
traditions to make the Gospel his own—a life of Christ in the soul, instead of a
theory of Christ which is in a book or written down? Or
I. No one casting his eye over the map of the Christian world
can desire that the present lines of demarcation should always remain, any more
than he will be inclined to regard the division of Christians to which he belongs
himself, as in a pre-eminent or exclusive sense the Church of Christ. Those lines
of demarcation seem to he political rather than religious; they are differences
of nations, or governments, or ranks of society, more than of creeds or forms
of faith. The feeling which gave rise to them has, in a great measure, passed away; no intelligent man seriously inclines to believe that salvation is to be found
only in his own denomination. Examples of this ‘sturdy orthodoxy,’ in our own generation,
rather provoke a smile than arouse serious disapproval. Yet many experiments show
that these differences cannot be made up by any formal concordat or scheme of union; the parties cannot be brought to terms, and if they could, would cease to take
an interest in the question at issue. The friction is too great when persons are
invited to meet for a discussion of differences; such a process is
like opening the doors and windows to put out a slumbering flame. But that is no
reason for doubting that the divisions of the Christian world are beginning to pass
away. The progress of politics, acquaintance
In this movement, which we should see more clearly but for the
divisions of the Christian world which partly conceal it, the critical interpretation
of Scripture will have a great influence. The Bible will be no longer appealed to
as the witness of the opinions of particular sects, or of our own age; it will
cease to be the battle-field of controversies. But as its true meaning is more clearly
seen, its moral power will also be greater. If the outward and inward witness, instead
of parting into two, as they once did, seem rather to blend and coincide in the
Christian consciousness, that is not a source of weakness, but of strength. The
Book itself, which links together the beginning and end of the human race, will
not have a less inestimable value because the spirit has taken the place of the
letter. Its discrepancies of fact, when we become familiar with them, will seem
of little consequence in comparison with the truths which it unfolds. That these
truths, instead of floating down the stream of tradition, or being lost in ritual
observances, have been preserved for ever in a book, is one,
Again, the Scriptures are a bond of union to the whole Christian
world. No one denies their authority, and could all be brought to an intelligence
of their true meaning, all might come to agree in matters of religion. That may
seem to be a hope deferred, yet not altogether chimerical. If it is not held to
be a thing impossible that there should be agreement in the meaning of Plato or
Sophocles, neither is it to be regarded as absurd that there should be a like agreement
in the interpretation of Scripture. The disappearance of artificial notions and
systems will pave the way to such an agreement. The recognition of the fact, that
many aspects and stages of religion are found in Scripture; that different, or
even opposite parties existed in the Apostolic Church; that the first teachers
of Christianity had a separate and individual mode of regarding the Gospel of Christ; that any existing communion is necessarily much more unlike the brotherhood of
love in the New Testament than we are willing to suppose—Protestants in some respects,
as much so as Catholics—that rival sects in our own day—Calvinists and Arminians—those
who maintain and those who deny the final restoration of man—may equally find texts
which seem to favour their respective tenets (
II. Christian missions suggest another sphere in which a more
enlightened use of Scripture might offer a great advantage to the teacher. The more
he is himself penetrated with the universal spirit of Scripture, the more he will
be able to resist the literal and servile habits of mind of Oriental nations. You
cannot transfer English ways of
III. It may be doubted whether Scripture has ever been
Yet Scripture studied in a more liberal spirit might supply a
part of education which classical literature fails to provide. ‘The best book for
the heart might also be made the best book for the intellect.’ The noblest study
of history and antiquity is contained in it; a poetry which is also the highest
form of moral teaching; there, too, are lives of heroes and prophets, and especially
of One whom we do not name with them, because He is above them. This history, or
poetry, or biography, is distinguished from all classical or secular writings by
the contemplation of man as he appears in the sight of God. That is a sense
of things into which we must grow as well as reason ourselves, without which human
nature is but a truncated, half-educated sort of being. But this sense or consciousness
of a Divine presence in the world, which seems to be natural to the beginnings of
the human race, but fades away and requires to be renewed in its after history,
is not to be gathered from Greek or Roman literature, but from
IV. Another use of Scripture is that in sermons, which seems
to be among the tritest, and yet is far from being exhausted. If we could
only be natural and speak of things as they truly are, with a real interest and
not merely a conventional one! The words of Scripture come readily to hand, and
the repetition of them requires no effort of thought in the writer or speaker. But,
neither does it produce any effect on the hearer, which will always be in proportion
to the degree of feeling or consciousness in ourselves. It may be said that originality
is the gift of few; no Church can expect to have, not a hundred, but ten such preachers
as Robertson or Newman. But, without originality, it seems possible to make use
of Scripture in sermons in a much more living way than at present. Let the preacher
make it a sort of religion, and proof of his reverence for Scripture, that he never
uses its words without a distinct meaning; let him avoid the form of argument from
Scripture, and catch the feeling and spirit. Scripture is itself a kind of poetry,
when not overlaid with rhetoric. The scene and country has a freshness which may
always be renewed; there is the interest of antiquity and the interest of home
or common life as well. The facts and characters of Scripture might receive a new
reading by being described simply as they are. The truths of Scripture again would
have greater reality if divested of the scholastic form in which theology has cast
them. The universal and spiritual aspects of Scripture might be more brought forward
to the exclusion of questions of the Jewish law, or controversies about the sacraments,
or exaggerated statements of doctrines which seem to be at variance with morality.
The life of Christ, regarded quite naturally as of one ‘who was in all points
V. It is time to make an end of this long disquisition—let the
end be a few more words of application to the circumstances of a particular class
in the present age. If any one who is about to become a clergyman feels, or thinks
that he feels, that some of the preceding statements cast a shade of trouble
or suspicion on his future walk of life, who, either from the influence of a stronger
mind than his own, or from some natural tendency in himself, has been led to examine
those great questions which lie on the threshold of the higher study of theology,
and experiences a sort of shrinking or dizziness at the prospect which is opening
upon him; let him lay to heart the following considerations:—First, that he may
possibly not be the person who is called upon to pursue such inquiries. No man should
busy himself with them who has not clearness of mind enough to see things as they
are, and a faith strong enough to rest in that degree of knowledge which
God has really given; or who is unable to separate the truth from his own religious
wants and experiences. For the theologian as well as the philosopher has need of
‘dry light,’ unmingled with any tincture of the affections,’ the more so as his conclusions
are oftener liable to be disordered by them. He who is of another temperament may
find another work to do, which is in some respects a higher one. Unlike philosophy,
the Gospel has an ideal life to offer, not to
Secondly, let him consider that the difficulty is not so great
as imagination sometimes paints it, It is a difficulty which arises chiefly out
of differences of education in different classes of society. It is a difficulty
which tact, and prudence, and, much more, the power of a Christian life may hope
to surmount. Much depends on the manner in which things are said; on the evidence
in the writer or preacher of a real good will to his opponents, and a desire for
the moral improvement of men. There is an aspect of truth which may always be put
forward so as to find a way to the hearts of men. If there is danger and shrinking
from one point of view, from another there is freedom and sense of relief.
The wider contemplation of the religious world may enable us to adjust our own place
in it. The acknowledgement of churches as political and national institutions is
the basis of a sound government of them. Criticism itself is not only negative;
if it creates some difficulties, it does away others. It may put us at variance
with a party or section of Christians in our own neighbourhood. But, on the other
hand, it enables us to look at all men as they are in the sight of God, not as they
appear to human eye, separated and often interdicted from each other by lines
of religious demarcation; it divides us from the parts to unite us to the whole.
That is a great help to religious communion. It does away with the supposed opposition
of reason and faith. It throws us back on the
Thirdly, the suspicion or difficulty which attends critical inquiries is no reason for doubting their value. The Scripture nowhere leads us to suppose that the circumstance of all men speaking well of us is any ground for supposing that we are acceptable in the sight of God. And there is no reason why the condemnation of others should be witnessed to by our own conscience. Perhaps it may be true that, owing to the jealousy or fear of some, the reticence of others, the terrorism of a few, we may not always find it easy to regard these subjects with calmness and judgement. But, on the other hand, these accidental circumstances have nothing to do with the question at issue; they cannot have the slightest influence on the meaning of words, or on the truth of facts. No one can carry out the principle that public opinion or church authority is the guide to truth, when he goes beyond the limits of his own church or country. That is a consideration which may well make him pause before he accepts of such a guide in the journey to another world. All the arguments for repressing inquiries into Scripture in Protestant countries hold equally in Italy and Spain for repressing inquiries into matters of fact or doctrine, and so for denying the Scriptures to the common people.
Lastly, let him be assured that there is some nobler idea of
truth than is supplied by the opinion of mankind in general, or the voice of
parties in a church. Every one, whether a student of theology or not, has need
to make war against his prejudices no less than against his passions;
Titus have we the image of the lifelong struggle gathered up in a single instant. In describing it we pass beyond the consciousness of the individual into a world of abstractions; we loosen the thread by which the spiritual faculties are held together, and view as objects what can, strictly speaking, have no existence, except in relation to the subject. The divided members of the soul are ideal, the combat between them is ideal, so also is the victory. What is real that corresponds to this is not a momentary, but a continuous conflict, which we feel rather than know—which has its different aspects of hope and fear, triumph and despair, the action and reaction of the Spirit of God in the depths of the human soul, awakening the sense of sin and conveying the assurance of forgiveness.
The language in which we describe this conflict is very different
from that of the Apostle. Our circumstances are so changed that we are hardly able
to view it in its simplest elements. Christianity is now the established
religion of the civilized portion of mankind. In our own country it has become part
of the law of the land; it speaks with authority, it is embodied in a Church,
it is supported by
But if with ourselves the influence of Christianity is almost
always gradual and imperceptible, with the first believers it was almost
always sudden. There was no interval which separated the preaching of Peter on the
day of Pentecost, from the baptism of the three thousand. The eunuch of Candace
paused for a brief space on a journey, and was then baptized into the name of Christ,
which a few hours previously he had not so much as heard. There was no period
of probation like that which, a century or two later, was appropriated to the instruction
of the Catechumens. It was an impulse, an inspiration passing from the lips of one
to a chosen few, and communicated by them to the ear and soul of listening multitudes.
As the wind bloweth
But however sudden were the conversions of the earliest believers,
however wonderful the circumstances which attended them, they were not for that
reason the less lasting or sincere. Though many preached ‘Christ of contention,’ though
‘Demes forsook the Apostle,’ there were few who, having once taken up the
cross, turned back from ‘the love of this present world.’ They might waver between Paul
and Peter, between the circumcision and the uncircumcision; they might give ear
to the strange and bewitching heresies of the East; but there is no trace that
many returned to ‘those that were no gods,’ or put off Christ; the impression of
the truth that they had received was everlasting on their minds. Even sins of fornication
and uncleanness, which from the Apostle’s frequent warnings
Such was the nature of conversion among the early Christians, the new birth of which by spiritual descent we are ourselves the offspring. Is there anything in history like it? anything in our own lives which may help us to understand it? That which the Scripture describes from within, we are for a while going to look at from a different point of view, not with reference to the power of God, but to those secondary causes through which He works—the laws which experience shows that He himself imposes on the operations of His Spirit. Such an inquiry is not a mere idle speculation; it is not far from the practical question, ‘How we are to become better.’ Imperfect as any attempt to analyze our spiritual life must ever be, the changes which we ourselves experience or observe in others, compared with those greater and more sudden changes which took place in the age of the Apostle, will throw light upon each other.
In the sudden conversions of the early Christians we observe three things which either tend to discredit, or do not accompany, the working of a similar power among ourselves.—First, that conversion was marked by ecstatic and unusual phenomena; secondly, that, though sudden, it was permanent; thirdly, that it fell upon whole multitudes at once.
When we consider what is implied in such expressions as ‘not many
wise, not many learned’ were called to the knowledge of the truth, we can scarcely
avoid feeling that there must have been much in the early Church which would have
been distasteful to us as men of education; much that must have worn the appearance
of excitement
And when we look at this picture, ‘full in the face,’ however
we might by nature be inclined to turn aside from it, or veil its details in general
language, we cannot deny that many things that accompany the religion of the uneducated
now, must then also have accompanied the Gospel- preached to the poor. There must
have been, humanly speaking, spiritual delusions where men lived so exclusively
in the spiritual world; there were scenes which we know took place such as St.
Paul says would make the unbeliever think that they were mad. The best and holiest
persons among the poor and ignorant are not entirely free from superstition, according
to the notions of the educated; at best they are apt to speak of religion in a
manner not quite suited to our taste; they sing with a loud and excited voice;
they imagine themselves to receive Divine oracles, even about the humblest cares
of life. Is not this, in externals at least, very like the appearance which the
first disciples must have presented, who obeyed the Apostle’s injunction, ‘Is any
sad? let him pray; is any merry? let
This difference between the feelings and habits of the first Christians and ourselves, must be borne in mind in relation to the subject of conversion. For as sudden changes are more likely to be met with amongst the poor and uneducated in the present day, it certainly throws light on the subject of the first conversions, that to the poor and uneducated the Gospel was first preached. And yet these sudden changes were as real, nay, more real than any gradual changes which take place among ourselves. The Stoic or Epicurean philosopher who had come into an assembly of believers speaking with tongues, would have remarked, that among the vulgar religious extravagances were usually short-lived. But it was not so. There was more there than he had eyes to see, or than was dreamed of in a philosophy like his. Not only was there the superficial appearance of poverty and meanness and enthusiasm, from a nearer view of which we are apt to shrink, but underneath this, brighter from its very obscurity, purer from the meanness of the raiment in which it was apparelled, was the life hidden with Christ and God. There, and there only, was the power which made a man humble instead of proud, self-denying instead of self-seeking, spiritual instead of carnal; which made him embrace, not only the brethren, but the whole human race in the arms of his love.
But it is a further difference between the power of the Gospel
now and in the first ages, that it no longer converts whole multitudes at once.
Perhaps this very individuality in its mode of working may not be without an advantage
in awakening us to its higher truths and more entire spiritual freedom. Whether
this be so or not; whether there be any spiritual law by which reason, in a
measure, takes the place of faith, and the common religious impulse weakens
as the
Looking at this remarkable phenomenon of the conversion of whole
multitudes at once, not from its Divine but from its human aspect (that is,
with reference to that provision that God himself has made in human nature for
the execution of His will), the first cause to which we are naturally led to attribute
it is the power of sympathy. Why it is that men
In ordinary cases we should truly say that there must have been
some predisposing cause of a great political or religious revolution; some latent
elements acting alike upon all, which, though long smouldering beneath, burst forth
at last into a flame. Such a cause might be the misery of mankind, or the intense
corruption of human society, which could not be quickened except it die, or the
long-suppressed yearnings of the soul after something higher than it had hitherto
known upon earth, or the reflected light of one religion or one movement of the
human mind upon another. Such causes were actually at work, preparing the way for
the diffusion of Christianity. The law itself was beginning to pass away
in an altered world, the state of society was
Spiritual life, no less than natural life, is often the very
opposite of the elements which seem to give birth to it. The preparation for the
way of the Lord, which John the Baptist preached, did not consist in a direct reference
to the Saviour. The words ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire,’ and
‘He shall burn up the chaff with
Except from the Gospel history and the writings of Josephus and
Philo, we know but little of the tendencies of the Jewish mind in the time of our
Lord. Yet we cannot doubt that the entrance of Christianity into the world was not
sudden and abrupt; that is an illusion which arises in the mind from our
slender acquaintance with contemporary opinions. Better and higher and holier as
it was, it was not absolutely distinct from the teaching of the doctors of the law
either in form or substance; it was not unconnected with, but gave life and truth
to, the mystic fancies of Alexandrian philosophy. Even in the counsels of perfection
of the Sermon on the Mount, there is probably nothing which might not be found,
either in letter or spirit, in Philo or some other Jewish or Eastern writer. The
peculiarity of the Gospel is, not that it teaches what is wholly new, but that it
draws out of the treasure-house of the human heart things new and old, gathering
together in one the dispersed fragments of the truth. The common people would not
have ‘heard Him gladly,’ but for the truth of what He said. The heart was its own
witness to it. The better nature of man, though but for a moment, responded
to it, spoken as it was with authority, and not as the scribes; with simplicity,
and not as the great teachers of
And yet, after reviewing the circumstances of the first preaching of the Gospel, there remains something which cannot be resolved into causes or antecedents; which eludes criticism, and can no more be explained in the world than the sudden changes of character in the individual. There are processes of life and organization about which we know nothing, and we seem to know that we shall never know anything. ‘That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;’ but the mechanism of this new life is too complex and yet too simple for us to untwist its fibres. The figure which St. Paul applies to the resurrection of the body is true also of the renewal of the soul, especially in the first ages of which we know so little, and in which the Gospel seems to have acted with such far greater power than among ourselves.
Leaving further inquiry into the conversion of the first Christians at the point at which it hides itself from us in mystery, we have now to turn to a question hardly less mysterious, though seemingly more familiar to us, which may be regarded as a question either of moral philosophy or of theology—the nature of conversion and changes of character among ourselves. What traces are there of a spiritual power still acting upon the human heart? What is the inward nature, and what are the outward conditions of changes in human conduct? Is our life a gradual and insensible progress from infancy to age, from birth to death, governed by fixed laws; or is it a miracle and mystery of thirty, or fifty, or seventy years’ standing, consisting of so many isolated actions or portions knit together by no common principle?
Were we to consider mankind only from without, there could be
no doubt of the answer which we should give to the last of these questions. The
order of the world would scarcely even seem to be infringed by the free will of
man.
The appearance of this sameness in human nature has led many to suppose that no real change ever takes place. Does a man from a drunkard become sober? from a knight errant become a devotee? from a sensualist a believer in Christ? or a woman from a life of pleasure pass to a romantic and devoted religion? It has been maintained that they are the same still; and that deeper similarities remain than the differences which are a part of their new profession. Those who make the remark would say, that such persons exhibit the same vanity, the same irritability, the same ambition; that sensualism still lurks under the disguise of refinement, or earthly and human passion transfuses itself into devotion.
This ‘practical fatalism,’ which says that human beings can be
what they are and nothing else, has a certain degree of truth, or rather, of plausibility,
from the circumstance that men seldom change wholly, and that the part of their
If from this external aspect of human things we turn inward,
there seems to be no limit to the changes which we deem possible. We are no longer
the same, but different every hour. No physical fact interposes itself as an obstacle
But besides such feelings as these, which we know to be
partly true, partly illusive, every one’s experience of himself
appears to teach him, that he has gone through many
changes and had many special providences vouchsafed to
him; he says to himself that he has been led in a mysterious and peculiar way, not like the way of other men,
and had feelings not common to others; he compares
different times and places, and contrasts his own conduct
here and there, now and then. In other men he remarks
similarity of character; in himself he sees chiefly diversity.
They seem to be the creatures of habit and circumstance;
he alone is a free agent. The truth is, that he observes
himself; he cannot equally observe them. He is not
conscious of the inward struggles through which they have
And yet it does not follow, that this inward fact is to be set aside as the result of egotism and illusion. It may be not merely the dreamy reflection of our life and actions in the mirror of self, but the subtle and delicate spring of the whole machine. To purify the feelings or to move the will, the internal sense may be as necessary to us as external observation is to regulate and sustain them. Even to the formula of the fatalist, that ‘freedom is the consciousness of necessity,’ it may be replied, that that very consciousness, as he terms it, is as essential as any other link in the chain in which ‘he binds fast the world.’ Human nature is beset by the contradiction, not of two rival theories, but of many apparently contradictory facts. If we cannot imagine how the world could go on without law and order in human actions, neither can we imagine how morality could subsist unless we clear a space around us for the freedom of the will.
But not in this place to get further into the meshes of the great
question of freedom and necessity, let us rather turn aside for a moment
to consider some practical aspects of the reflections which precede. Scripture and
reason alike require that we should entirely turn to God, that we should obey the
whole law. And hard as this may seem at first, there is a witness within us which
pleads that it is possible. Our mind and moral nature are one; we cannot break
ourselves into pieces in action any more than in thought. The whole man is in every
part and in every act. This is not a mere mode of thought, but a truth of great
practical importance. ‘Easier to change many things than one,’ is
Many a person will tease himself by counting minutes and providing
small rules for his life, who would have found the task an easier and a nobler one,
had he viewed it in its whole extent, and gone to God in a ‘large and liberal spirit,’ to offer up his life to Him. To have no
arrière pensée in the service of God
and virtue is the great source of peace and happiness. Make clean that which is
within, and you have no need to purify that which is without. Take care of the little
things of life, and the great ones will take care of themselves, is the maxim of
the trader, which is sometimes, and with a certain degree of truth, applied to the
service of God. But much more true is it in religion that we should take care of
the great things, and the trifles of life will take care of themselves. ‘If thine
eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light.’ Christianity is not acquired
as an art by long practice; it does not carve and polish human nature with a
graving tool; it makes the whole man; first pouring out his soul before God,
and then ‘casting him in a mould.’ Its workings are not to be measured by time, even
though among educated persons,
For the doctrine of conversion the moralist substitutes the theory of habits. Good actions, he says, produce good habits; and the repetition of good actions makes them easier to perform, and ‘fortifies us indefinitely against temptation.’ There are bodily and mental habits—habits of reflection and habits of action. Practice gives skill or sleight of hand; constant attention, the faculty of abstraction; so the practice of virtue makes us virtuous, that of vice vicious. The more meat we eat, to use the illustration of Aristotle, in whom we find a cruder form of the same theory, the more we are able to eat meat; the more we wrestle, the more able we are to wrestle, and so forth. If a person has some duty to perform, say of common and trivial sort, to rise at a particular hour in the morning, to be at a particular place at such an hour, to conform to some rule about abstinence, we tell him that he will find the first occasion difficult, the second easy, and the difficulty is supposed to vanish by degrees until it wholly disappears. If a man has to march into a battle, or to perform a surgical operation, or to do anything else from which human nature shrinks, his nerves, we say, are gradually strengthened; his head, as was said of a famous soldier, clears up at the sound of the cannon; like the grave-digger in Hamlet, he has soon no ‘feeling of his occupation.’
From a consideration of such instances as these, the rule has
been laid down, that, ‘as the passive impression weakens, the active habit strengthens.’
But is not this saying of a great man founded on a narrow and partial contemplation
of human nature? For, in the first place, it leaves altogether out of sight the
motives of human action; it is equally suited to the most rigid formalist and to
a moral and spiritual being. Secondly, it takes no account of the limitation of
the power of habits, which neither in mind nor body can be extended beyond a
certain point;
All that is true in the theory of habits seems to be implied in the notion of order or regularity. Even this is inadequate to give a conception of the structure of human beings. Order is the beginning, but freedom is the perfection of our moral nature. Men do not live at random, or act one instant without reference to their actions just before. And in youth especially, the very sameness of our occupations is a sort of stay and support to us, as in age it may be described as a kind of rest. But no one will say that the mere repetition of actions until they constitute a habit, gives any explanation of the higher and nobler forms of human virtue, or the finer moulds of character. Life cannot be explained as the working of a mere machine, still less can moral or spiritual life be reduced to merely mechanical laws.
But if, while acknowledging that a great proportion of mankind
are the creatures of habit, and that a great part of our actions are nothing more
than the result of habit, we go on to ask ourselves about the changes of our life,
and fix our minds on the critical points, we are led to view
Every man has the power of forming a resolution, or, without
previous resolution, in any particular instance, acting as he will. As thoughts
come into the mind one cannot tell how, so too motives spring up, without our being
able to trace their origin. Why we suddenly see a thing in a new light, is
often hard to explain; why we feel an action to be right or wrong which has previously
seemed indifferent, is not less inexplicable. We fix the passing dream or sentiment
in action, the thought is nothing, the deed may be everything. That day after day,
to use a familiar instance, the drunkard will find abstinence easier, is probably
untrue; but that from once abstaining he will gain a fresh experience, and receive
a new strength and inward satisfaction, which may result in endless consequences,
is what every one is aware of. It is not the sameness of what we do, but its novelty,
which seems to have such a peculiar power over us; not the repetition of
Nor is it less true, that by the commission, not of many, but a single act of vice or crime, an inroad is made into our whole moral constitution, which is not proportionably increased by its repetition. The first act of theft, falsehood, or other immorality, is an event in the life of the perpetrator which he never forgets. It may often happen that no account can be given of it; that there is nothing in the education, nor in the antecedents of the person, that would lead us, or even himself, to suspect it. In the weaker sort of natures, especially, suggestions of evil spring up we cannot tell how. Human beings are the creatures of habit; but they are the creatures of impulse too; and from the greater variableness of the outward circumstances of life, and especially of particular periods of life, and the greater freedom of individuals, it may, perhaps, be found that human actions, though less liable to wide-spread or sudden changes, have also become more capricious, and less reducible to simple causes, than formerly.
Changes in character come more often in the form of feeling than
of reason, from some new affection or attachment, or alienation of our former self,
rather than from the slow growth of experience, or a deliberate sense of right and
duty. The meeting with some particular person, the remembrance of some particular
scene, the last words of a parent or friend, the reading of a sentence in a book,
may call forth a world within us of the very existence of which we were previously
unconscious. New interests arise such as we never before knew, and we can no longer
lie grovelling in the mire, but must be up and doing; new affections seem to be
drawn out, such as warm our inmost soul and make action and exertion a delight to
us. Mere human love at first sight, as we say, has been known to
Of many of these changes no other reason can be given than that
nature and the Author of nature have made men capable of them. There are others,
again, which we seem to trace, not only to particular times, but to definite actions,
from which they flow in the same manner that other effects follow from their causes.
Among such causes none are more powerful than acts of self-sacrifice and devotion.
A single deed of heroism makes a man a hero; it becomes a part of him, and,
strengthened by the approbation and sympathy of his fellow-men, a sort of power
which he gains over himself and them. Something like this is true of the lesser
occasions of life no less than of the greatest; provided in either case the actions
are not of such a kind that the performance of them is a violence to our nature.
Many a one has stretched himself on the rack of asceticism, without on the whole
raising his nature; often he has seemed to have gained in self-control only what
he has lost in the kindlier affections, and by his very isolation to have wasted
the opportunities which nature offered him of self-improvement. But no one with
a heart open to human feelings, loving not man the less, but God more, sensitive
to the happiness of this world, yet aiming at a higher—no man of such a nature ever
made a great sacrifice, or performed a great act of self-denial, without impressing
a change on his character, which lasted to his latest breath. No man ever took his
besetting sin, it may be lust, or pride, or love of rank and position, and, as it
were, cut it out by voluntarily
Nor, in considering the effects of action, must the influence of impressions be lost sight of. Good resolutions are apt to have a bad name; they have come to be almost synonymous with the absence of good actions. As they get older, men deem it a kind of weakness to be guilty of making them; so often do they end in raising ‘pictures of virtue, or going over the theory of virtue in our minds.’ Yet this contrast between passive impression and active habit is hardly justified by our experience of ourselves or others. Valueless as they are in themselves, good resolutions are suggestive of great good; they are seldom wholly without effect on our conduct; in the weakest of men they are still the embryo of action. They may meet with a concurrence of circumstances in which they take root and grow, coinciding with some change of place, or of pursuits, or of companions, or of natural constitution, in which they acquire a peculiar power. They are the opportunities of virtue, if not virtue itself. At the worst they make us think; they give us an experience of ourselves; they prevent our passing our lives in total unconsciousness. A man may go on all his life making and not keeping them; miserable as such a state appears, he is perhaps not the worse, but something the better for them. The voice of the preacher is not lost, even if he succeed but for a few instants in awakening them.
A further cause of sudden changes in the moral constitution is
the determination of the will by reason and knowledge. Suppose the case of a
person living in a narrow circle of ideas, within the limits of his early education,
perplexed by difficulties, yet never venturing beyond the wall of prejudices in
which he has been brought up, or
Lastly. Among those influences, by the help of which the will of man learns to disengage itself from the power of habit, must not be omitted the influence of circumstances. If men are creatures of habit, much more are they creatures of circumstances. These two, nature without us, and ‘the second nature’ that is within, are the counterbalancing forces of our being. Between them (so we may figure to ourselves the working of the mind) the human will inserts itself, making the force of one a lever against the other, and seeming to rule both. We fall under the power of habit, and feel ourselves weak and powerless to shake off the almost physical influence which it exerts upon us. The enfeebled frame cannot rid itself of the malady; the palsied springs of action cannot be strengthened for good, nor fortified against evil. Transplanted into another soil, and in a different air, we renew our strength. In youth especially, the character seems to respond kindly to the influence of the external world. Providence has placed us in a state in which we have many aids in the battle with self; the greatest of these is change of circumstances.
We have wandered far from the subject of conversion in the early Church, into another sphere in which the words ‘grace, faith, the spirit,’ have disappeared, and notions of moral philosophy have taken their place. It is better, perhaps, that the attempt to analyze our spiritual nature should assume this abstract form. We feel that words cannot express the life hidden with Christ and God; we are afraid of declaring on the housetop, what may only be spoken in the closet. If the rites and ceremonies of the elder dispensation, which have so little in them of a spiritual character, became a figure of the true, much more may the moral world be regarded as a figure of the spiritual world of which religion speaks to us.
There is a view of the changes of the characters of men which begins where this ends, which reads human nature by a different light, and speaks of it as the seat of a great struggle between the powers of good and evil. It would be untrue to identify this view with that which has preceded, and scarcely less untrue to attempt to interweave the two in a system of ‘moral theology.’ No addition of theological terms will transfigure Aristotle’s Ethics into a ‘Summa Theologiae.’ When St. Paul says—‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord;’ he is not speaking the language of moral philosophy, but of religious feeling. He expresses what few have truly felt concentrated in a single instant, what many have deluded themselves into s the belief of, what some have experienced accompanying them through life, what a great portion even of the better sort of mankind are wholly unconscious of. It seems as if Providence allowed us to regard the truths of religion and morality in many ways which are not wholly unconnected with each other, yet parallel rather than intersecting; providing for the varieties of human character, and not leaving those altogether without law, who are incapable in a world of sight of entering within the veil.
As we return to that ‘hidden life’ of which the Scripture speaks, our analysis of human nature seems to become more imperfect, less reducible to rule or measure, less capable of being described in a language which all men understand. What the believer recognizes as the record of his experience is apt to seem mystical to the rest of the world. We do not seek to thread the mazes of the human soul, or to draw forth to the light its hidden communion with its Maker. but only to present in general outline the power of religion among other causes of human action.
Directly, religious influences may be summed up under three heads:—The power of God; the love of Christ; the efficacy of prayer.
(1) So far as the influence of the first of these is capable of analysis, it consists in the practical sense that we are dependent beings, and that’ our souls are in the hands of God, who is acting through us, and ever present with us, in the trials of life and in the work of life. The believer is a minister who executes this work, hardly the partner in it; it is not his own, but God’s. He does it with the greatest care, as unto the Lord and not to men, yet is indifferent as to the result, knowing that all things, even through his imperfect agency, are working together for good. The attitude of his soul towards God is such as to produce the strongest effects on his power of action. It leaves his faculties clear and unimpassioned; it places him above accidents; it gives him courage and freedom. Trusting in God only, like the Psalmist, ‘he fears no enemy;’ he has no want. There is a sort of absoluteness in his position in the world, which can neither be made better nor worse; as St. Paul says, ‘All things are his, whether life or death, or things present, or things to come.’
In merely human things, the aid and sympathy of others increase
our power to act: it is also the fact that we can work more effectually
and think more truly, where the issue is not staked on the result of our
thought and work.
(2) But yet more strongly is it felt that the love of Christ
has this constraining power over souls, that here, if anywhere, we are unlocking
the twisted chain of sympathy, and reaching the inmost mystery of human nature.
The sight, once for all, of Christ crucified, recalling the thought of what, more
than 1800 years ago, He suffered for us, has ravished the heart and melted the affections,
and made the world seem new, and covered the earth itself with a fair vision, that
is, a heavenly one. The strength of this feeling arises from its being directed
towards a person, a real being, an individual like ourselves, who has actually endured
all this for our sakes, who was above us, and yet became one of us and felt as we
did, and was like ourselves a true man. The love which He felt towards us, we seek
to return to Him; the unity which He has with the Divine nature, He communicates
to us; His Father is our Father, His God our God. And as human love draws men onwards
to make sacrifices, and to undergo sufferings for the good of others, Divine love
also leads us to cast away the interests of this world, and rest only in the noblest
object of love, And
Every one knows what it is to become like those whom we admire
or esteem; the impress which a disciple may sometimes have received from his teacher,
or the servant from his Lord. Such devotion to a particular person can rarely be
thought to open our hearts to love others also; it often tends to weaken the force
of individual character. But the love of Christ is the conducting medium to the
love of all mankind; the image which He impresses upon us is the image not of any
particular individual, but of the Son of Man. And this image, as we draw nearer
to it, is transfigured into the image of the Son of God. As we become like Him,
we see Him as He is; and see ourselves and all other things with true human
sympathy. Lastly, we are sensible that more than all we feel towards Him, He feels
towards us, and that it is He who is drawing us to Him, while we seem to be drawing
to Him ourselves. This is a part of that mystery of which the Apostle speaks,
‘of the length, and depth, and breadth of the love of Christ,’ which passeth knowledge.
Mere human love rests on instincts, the working of which we cannot explain, but
which nevertheless touch the inmost springs of our being. So, too, we have spiritual
instincts, acting towards higher
(3) The instrument whereby, above all others, we realize the power of God, and the love of Christ, which carries us into their presence, and places us within the circle of a Divine yet personal influence, is prayer. Prayer is the summing up of the Christian life in a definite act, which is at once inward and outward, the power of which on the character, like that of any other act, is proportioned to its intensity. The imagination of doing rightly adds little to our strength; even the wish to do so is not necessarily accompanied by a change of heart and conduct. But in prayer we imagine, and wish, and perform all in one. Our imperfect resolutions are offered up to God; our weakness becomes strength, our words deeds. No other action is so mysterious; there is none in which we seem, in the same manner, to renounce ourselves that we may be one with God.
Of what nature that prayer is which is effectual to the obtaining
of its requests is a question of the same kind as what constitutes a true
faith. That prayer, we should reply, which is itself most of an act, which is most
immediately followed by action, which is most truthful, manly, self-controlled,
which seems to lead and direct, rather than to follow, our natural emotions. That
prayer which is its own answer because it asks not for any temporal good, but for
In prayer, as in all religion, there is something that it is impossible to describe, and that seems to be untrue the moment it is expressed in words. In the relations of man with God, it is vain to attempt to separate what belongs to the finite and what to the infinite. We can feel, but we cannot analyze it. We can lay down practical rules for it, but can give no adequate account of it. It is a mystery which we do not need to fathom. In all religion there is an element of which we are conscious—which is no mystery, which ought to be and is on a level with reason and experience. There is something besides, which, in those who give way to every vague spiritual emotion, may often fall below reason (for to them it becomes a merely physical state); which may also raise us above ourselves, until reason and feeling meet in one, and the life on earth even of the poor and ignorant answers to the description of the Apostle, ‘Having your conversation in heaven.’
This partial indistinctness of the subject of religion, even
independently of mysticism or superstition, may become to intellectual minds
a ground for doubting the truth of that which will not be altogether reduced
to the rules of human knowledge, which seems to elude our grasp, and retires into
the recesses of the soul the moment we ask for
As a fact, it would be admitted by most, that, at some period
of their lives, the thought of the world to come and of future judgement, the beauty
and loveliness of the truths of the Gospel, the sense of the shortness of our days
here, have wrought a more quickening and powerful effect than any moral truths or
prudential maxims. Many a one would acknowledge that he has been carried
whither he knew not; and had nobler thoughts, and felt higher aspirations, than
the course of his ordinary life seemed to allow. These were the most important moments
of his life for good or for evil; the critical points which have made him what
be
And if such changes and such critical points should be found to occur in youth more often than in age, in the poor and ignorant rather than in the educated, in women more often than in men—if reason and reflection seem to weaken as they regulate the springs of human action, this very fact may lead us to consider that reason, and reflection, and education, and the experience of age, and the force of manly sense, are not the links which bind us to the communion of the body of Christ; that it is rather to those qualities which we have, or may have, in common with our fellow-men, that the Gospel is promised; and that it is with the weak, the poor, the babes in Christ—not with the strong-minded, the resolute, the consistent—that we shall sit down in the kingdom of heaven.
EVERY reader of the Epistles must have remarked the opposite
and apparently inconsistent uses, which the Apostle St. Paul makes of the Old Testament.
This appearance of inconsistency arises out of the different and almost conflicting
statements, which may be read in the Old Testament itself. The law and the prophets
are their own witnesses, but they are witnesses also to a truth which is beyond
them. Two spirits are found in them, and the Apostle sets aside the one,
that he may establish the other. When he says that ‘the man that doeth these things
shall live in them,’
It were much to be wished that we could agree upon a chronological
arrangement of the Old Testament, which would approach more nearly to the true order
in which the books were written, than that in which they have been handed down to
us. Such an arrangement would throw great light on the interpretation of prophecy.
At present, we scarcely resist the illusion exercised upon our minds by ‘four prophets
the greater, followed by twelve prophets the less;’ some of the latter being of
a prior date to any of the former. Even the distinction of the law and the prophets
as well as of the Psalms and the prophets leads indirectly to a similar error. For
many elements of the prophetical spirit enter into the law, and legal precepts are
repeated by the prophets. The continuity of Jewish history is further broken by
the Apocrypha. The four centuries before Christ were as fruitful of hopes and struggles
and changes of thought and feeling in the Jewish people as any preceding period
of their existence as a nation, perhaps more so. And yet we piece together the Old
and New Testament as if the interval were blank leaves only. Few, if any, English
writers have ever attempted to form a conception of the growth of the spirit of
prophecy, from its first beginnings in the law itself, as it may be traced in the
lives and characters of Samuel and David, and above all, of Elijah and his immediate
successor; as it reappears a few years later, in the written prophecies respecting
the house of Israel, and the surrounding nations (not even in the oldest of the
prophets, without reference to Messiah’s kingdom); or again after the carrying away
of the ten tribes, as it concentrates itself in Judah, uttering a sadder and more
mournful cry in the hour of captivity, yet in the multitude of sorrows increasing
the
The fulfilment of prophecy has been sought for in a series of events which have been sometimes bent to make them fit, and one series of events has frequently taken the place of another. Even the passing circumstances of to-day or yesterday, at the distance of about two thousand years, and as many miles, which are but shadows flitting on the mountains compared with the deeper foundations of human history, are thought to be within the range of the prophet’s eye. And it may be feared that, in attempting to establish a claim which, if it could be proved, might be made also for heathen oracles and prophecies, commentators have sometimes lost sight of those great characteristics which distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all other professing revelations of other religions: (1) the sense of the truthfulness, and holiness, and loving-kindness of the Divine Being, with which the prophet is as one possessed, which he can no more forget or doubt than he can cease to be himself; (2) their growth, that is, their growing perception of the moral nature of the revelation of God to man, apart from the commandments of the law or the privileges of the house of Israel.
There are some prophecies more national, of which the fortunes
of the Jewish people are the only subject; others more individual, seeming to enter
more into the recesses of the human soul, and which are, at the same time, more
universal, rising above earthly things, and passing into the distant heaven. At
one time the prophet embodies ‘these thoughts of many hearts’ as present, at another
as future; in some cases as following out of the irrevocable decree of God, in
others as dependent on the sin or repentance of man. At one moment he is
looking for the destruction of Israel, at another for its consolation; going
from one of these aspects
National, individual,—spiritual, temporal,—present, future,—rejection, restoration,—faith, the law, —Providence, freewill,—mercy, sacrifice,—Messiah suffering and triumphant,—are so many pairs of opposites with reference to which the structure of prophecy admits of being examined. It is true that such an examination is nothing more than a translation or decomposition of prophecy into the modes of thought of our own time, and is far from reproducing the living image which presented itself to the eyes of the prophet. But, like all criticism, it makes us think; it enables us to observe fresh points of connexion between the Old Testament and the New; it keeps us from losing our way in the region of allegory or of modern history. Many things are unlearnt as well as learnt by the aid of criticism; it clears the mind of conventional interpretations, teaching us to look amid the symbols of time and place for the higher and universal meaning.
Prophecy has a human as well as a Divine element: that
is to say, it partakes of the ordinary workings of the mind. There is also something
beyond which the analogy of human knowledge fails to explain. Could the prophet
himself have been asked what was the nature of that impulse by which he was carried
away, he would have replied that ‘the God of Israel was a living God’ who had ‘ordained
him a prophet before he came forth from the womb.’ Of the Divine element no other
account can be given—‘it pleased God to raise up individuals in a particular age
and country, who had a purer and loftier sense of truth than their fellow
Especially are we liable to look at religious truth under many
aspects, if we live amid changes of religious opinions, or are witnesses of some
revival or reaction in religion, or supposing our lot to be cast in critical periods
of history, such as extend the range and powers of human nature, or certainly enlarge
our experience of it. Then the germs of new truths will subsist side by side with
the remains of old
Such general reflections may serve as an introduction to what
at first appears an anomaly in prophecy—that it has not one, but many lessons;
and that the manner in which it teaches those lessons is through the alternations
of the human soul itself. There are failings of prophecy, just as there are failings
in our own anticipations of the future. And sometimes when we had hoped to be delivered
it has seemed good to God to afflict us still. But it does not follow that religion
is therefore a cunningly devised fable, either now or then. Neither the faith of
the people, nor of the prophet, in the God of their fathers is shaken because the
prophecies are not realized before their eyes; because ‘the vision,’ as they said,
‘is delayed;’ because in many cases events seem to occur which make it impossible
that it should be accomplished. A true instinct still enables them to separate the
prophets of Jehovah from the numberless false prophets with whom the land swarmed; they are gifted with the same discernment of spirits’ which distinguished Micaiah
from the four hundred whom Ahab called. The internal evidence of the true prophet
we are able to recognize in the written prophecies also. In the earliest as well
as the latest of them there is the same spirit one and continuous, the same witness
of the invisible God, the same character of the Jewish people, the same law of justice
and
‘Novum Testamentum in vetere latet,’ has come to be a favourite
word among theologians, who have thought they saw in the truths of the Gospel the
original design as well as the evangelical application of the Mosaical law. With
a deeper meaning, it may be said that prophecy grows out of itself into the Gospel.
Not, as some extreme critics have conceived, that the facts of the Gospel
history are but the crystallization of the imagery of prophecy. Say, rather, that
the river of the water of life is beginning again to flow. The Son of God
himself is ‘that prophet’—the prophet, not of one nation only, but of all mankind,
in whom the particularity of the old prophets is finally done away, and the ever-changing
form of the ‘servant in whom my soul delighteth’ at last finds rest. St. Paul, too,
is a prophet who has laid aside the poetical and authoritative garb of old times,
and is wrapped in the rhetorical or dialectical one of his own age. The language
of the old prophets comes unbidden into his mind; it seems to be the natural expression
of his own thoughts. Separated from Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah by an interval
of about eight hundred years, he finds their words very near to him ‘even in his
mouth and his heart;’ that is the word which he preached. When they spoke of forgiveness
of sins, of non-imputation of sins, of a sudden turning to God, what did this mean
but righteousness by faith? when they said ‘I will have mercy, and not sacrifice,’ here also was imaged the great truth, that salvation was not of the law. If St.
Paul would have ‘no man judged for a new moon or Sabbath,’ the prophets
of old time had again and again said in the name of Jehovah ‘Your new moons
and sabbaths I cannot away with.’ Like the elder prophets, he came not ‘to build
up a temple made with hands,’ but to teach a moral truth; like them he went
forth alone, and not in connexion with the
It is not, however, this deeper unity between St. Paul and the
prophets of the old dispensation that we are about to consider further, but a more
superficial parallelism, which is afforded by the alternation or successive representation
of the purposes of God towards Israel, which we meet with in the Old Testament,
and which recurs in the Epistle to the Romans. Like the elder prophets, St. Paul
also ‘prophesies in part,’ feeling after events rather than seeing them, and divided
between opposite aspects of the dealings of Providence with mankind. This changing
feeling often finds an expression in the words of Isaiah or the Psalmist, or the
author of the book of Deuteronomy. Hence a kind of contrast springs up in the writings
of the Apostle, which admits of being traced to its source in the words of the prophets.
Portions of his Epistles are the disjecta membra of prophecy. Oppositions
are brought into view by him, and may be said to give occasion to a struggle in
his own mind, which were unobserved by the prophets themselves. For so far from
prophecy setting forth one unchanging purpose of God, it seems rather to represent
a succession of purposes conditional on men’s actions; speaking as distinctly of
the rejection as of the restoration of Israel; and of the restoration almost as
the correlative of the rejection; often, too, making a transition from the temporal
to the spiritual. Some of these contrasts it is proposed to consider in detail as
having an important bearing on St. Paul’s Epistles, especially on the Epistles to
the Thessalonians, and on
(1) All the prophets are looking for and hastening to the day
of ‘the Lord,’ the ‘great day,’ ‘which there is none like,’ ‘the day of the Lord’s sacrifice,’
‘the day of visitation,’ of ‘the great slaughter,’ in which the Lord shall judge
in the
In these ‘terrors of the day of the Lord,’ of which the prophets
speak, the fortunes of the Jewish people mingle with another vision of a more universal
judgement, and it has been usual to have recourse to the double senses of prophecy
to separate the one from the other, an instrument of interpretation which has also
been applied to the New Testament for the same purpose. Not in this way could the
prophet or apostle themselves have conceived them. To them they were not two, but
one; not ‘double one against the other,’ or separable into the figure and the
thing signified. For the figure is in early ages the mode of conception also. More
true would it be to say that the judgements of God on the Jewish people were
an anticipation or illustration of His dealings with the world generally. If a separation
is made at all, let us rather separate the accidents of time and place from that
burning sense of the righteousness of God, which somewhere we cannot tell
Other contrasts are traceable in the teaching of the prophets
respecting the day of the Lord. In that day the Lord is to judge Israel, and He
is to punish Egypt and Assyria; and yet it is said also, the Lord shall heal Egypt,
and Israel shall be the third with Egypt and Assyria whom the Lord shall bless (
(2) A closer connexion with the Epistle to the Romans is furnished
by the double and, on the surface, inconsistent language of prophecy respecting
the rejection and restoration of Israel. These seem to follow one another often
in successive verses. It is true that the appearance of inconsistency is greater
than the reality, owing to the lyrical and concentrated style of prophecy (some
of its greatest works being not much longer than this ‘cobweb
There are portions of prophecy in which the darkness is deep
and enduring, ‘darkness that may be felt,’ in which the prophet is living amid
the sins and sufferings of the people; and hope is a long way off from them—when
they need to be awakened rather than comforted; and things must be worse, as
men say, before they can become better. Such is the spirit of the greater part
of the book of Jeremiah. But the tone of prophecy is on the whole that of alternation; God deals with the Israelites as with children; he cannot bear to punish them
for long; his heart comes back to them when they are in captivity; their very
helplessness gives them a claim on him. Vengeance may endure for a time, but soon
the full tide of His mercy returns upon them. Another voice is heard, saying, ‘Comfort
ye, comfort ye, my people.’ ‘Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her
that she hath received of the Lord’s hand
Naturally this human feeling is called forth most in the hour of adversity. As the affliction deepens, the hope also enlarges, seeming often to pass beyond the boundaries of this life into a spiritual world. Though their sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; when Jerusalem is desolate, there shall be a tabernacle on Mount Sion. The formula in which this enlargement of the purposes of God is introduced, is itself worthy of notice. ‘It shall be no more said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the North. and from all the lands whither he had driven them.’ Their old servitude in Egypt came back to their minds now that they were captives in a strange land, and the remembrance that they had already been delivered from it was an earnest that they were yet to return. Deeply rooted in the national mind, it had almost become an attribute of God himself that He was their deliverer from the house of bondage.
With this narrower view of the return of the children of Israel
from captivity, not without a remembrance of that great empire which had once extended
from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates, there blended also the hope of another
kingdom in which dwelt righteousness—the kingdom of Solomon ‘become the kingdom
of Christ and God.’ The children of Israel had been in their origin ‘the fewest
of all people,’ and the most alien to the nations round about. The Lord their God
was a jealous God, who would not suffer them to mingle with the idolatries of the
heathen. And in that early age of the world, when national life was so strong and
individuals so feeble, we cannot conceive how the worship of the true God could
have been otherwise preserved. But
In this kingdom the Gentiles have a place, still on the outskirts,
but not wholly excluded from the circle of God’s providence. Sometimes they are
placed on a level with Israel, ‘the circumcised with the uncircumcised,’ as if only
to teach the Apostle’s lesson, ‘that there is no respect of persons with God’
(
It was not possible that such should be the relation of the Gentiles
to the people of God in the Epistles of St. Paul. Experience seemed to invert the
natural order of Providence—the Jew first and afterwards the Gentile. Accordingly,
(3) Another characteristic of Hebrew prophecy is the transition
from the nation to the individual. That is to say, first the nation becomes an individual; it is spoken of, thought of, dealt with, as a person, it
‘makes the third’ with
God and the prophet. Almost a sort of drama is enacted between them, the argument
of which is the mercy and justice of God; and the Jewish nation itself has many
parts assigned to it. Sometimes she is the ‘adulterous sister,’ the ‘wife of whoredoms,’ who has gone astray with Chaldean and Egyptian lovers. In other passages, still
retaining the same personal relation to God, the ‘daughter of my people’ is soothed
and comforted; then a new vision rises before the prophet’s mind—not the same with
that of the Jewish people, but not wholly distinct from it, in which the suffering
prophet himself, or Cyrus the prophet king, have a part—the vision of ‘the servant
of God,’ ‘the Saviour with dyed garments’ from Bosra—‘he shall grow up before him
as a tender plant;” he is led as a lamb to the slaughter’ (
Analogies from Greek philosophy may seem far-fetched in reference to Hebrew prophecy, yet there are particular points in which subjects the most dissimilar receive a new light from one another. In the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and the philosophers who were their successors, moral truths gradually separate from politics, and the man is acknowledged to be different from the mere citizen: and there arises a sort of ideal of the individual, who has a responsibility to himself only. The growth of Hebrew prophecy is so different; its figures and modes of conception are so utterly unlike; there seems such a wide gulf between morality which almost excludes God, and religion which exists only in God, that at first sight we are unwilling to allow any similarity to exist between them. Yet an important point in both of them is really the same. For the transition from the nation to the individual is also the more perfect revelation of God himself, the change from the temporal to the spiritual, from the outward glories of Messiah’s reign to the kingdom of God which is within. Prophets as well as apostles teach the near intimate personal relation of man to God. The prophet and psalmist, who is at one moment inspired with the feelings of a whole people, returns again to God to express the lowliest sorrows of the individual Christian. The thought of the Israel of God is latent in prophecy itself, not requiring a great nation or company of believers; ‘but where one is’ there is God present with him.
There is another way also in which the individual takes the
place of the nation in the purposes of God; ‘a remnant
The passage quoted by St. Paul in the eleventh chapter of the Romans is the first indication of this change in God’s mode of dealing with His people. The prophet Elijah wanders forth into the wilderness to lay before the Lord the iniquities of the people: ‘The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword.’ ‘But what,’ we may ask with the Apostle, ‘saith the answer of God to him?’ Not ‘They are corrupt, they are altogether become abominable,’ but ‘Yet I have seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ The whole people were not to be regarded as one; there were a few who still preserved, amid the general corruption, the worship of the true God.
The marked manner in which the answer of God is introduced, the
contrast of the ‘still small voice’ with the thunder, the storm, and the earthquake,
the natural symbols of the presence of God in the law—the contradiction
(4) Coincident with the promise of a remnant is the precept, ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice,’ which, in modern language, opposes the moral to the ceremonial law. It is another and the greatest step onward towards the spiritual dispensation. Moral and religious truths hang together; no one can admit one of them in the highest sense, without admitting a principle which involves the rest. He who acknowledged that God was a God of mercy and not of sacrifice, could not long have supposed that He dealt with nations only, or that He raised men up for no other end but to be vessels of His wrath or monuments of His vengeance. For a time there might be ‘things too hard for him,’ clouds resting on his earthly tabernacle, when he ‘saw the ungodly in such prosperity;’ yet had he knowledge enough, as he ‘went into the sanctuary of God,’ and confessed himself to be ‘a stranger and pilgrim upon the earth.’
It is in the later prophets that the darkness begins to be dispelled
and the ways of God justified to man. Ezekiel is above all others the teacher of
this ‘new commandment.’ The familiar words, ‘when the wicked man turneth away
It is observable that, in the Book of Ezekiel as well as of Jeremiah,
this new principle on which God deals with mankind, is recognized as a contradiction
to the rule by which he had formerly dealt with them. At the commencement of
‘The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying,
‘What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?
‘As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.
‘Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.’
Similar language occurs also in
And yet this opposition was not necessarily conscious to the prophet himself. Isaiah, who saw the whole nation going before to judgement, did not refrain from preaching the lessons, ‘If ye be willing and obedient,’ and ‘Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.’ Ezekiel, the first thought and spirit of whose prophecies might be described in modern language as the responsibility of man, like Micaiah in the Book of Kings, seemed to see the false prophets inspired by Jehovah himself to their own destruction. As in the prophet, so in the Apostle, there was no sense that the two lessons were in any degree inconsistent with each other. It is an age of criticism and philosophy, which, in making the attempt to conceive the relation of God to the world in a more abstract way, has invented for itself the perplexity, or, may we venture to say, by the very fact of acknowledging it, has also found its solution. The intensity with which the prophet felt the truths that he revealed, the force with which he uttered them, the desire with which he yearned after their fulfilment, have passed from the earth; but the truths them- selves remain an everlasting possession. We seem to look upon them more calmly, and adjust them more truly. They no longer break through the world of sight with unequal power; they can never again be confused with the accidents of time and place. The history of the Jewish people has ceased to be the only tabernacle in which they are enshrined; they have an independent existence, and a light and order of their own.
RELIGION and morality seem often to become entangled in circumstances. The truth which came, not ‘to bring peace upon earth, but a sword,’ could not but give rise to many new and conflicting obligations. The kingdom of God had to adjust itself with the kingdoms of this world; though ‘the children were free,’ they could not escape the fulfilment of duties to their Jewish or Roman governors; in the bosom of a family there were duties too; in society there were many points of contact with the heathen. A new element of complexity had been introduced in all the relations between man and man, giving rise to many new questions, which might be termed, in the phraseology of modern times, ‘cases of conscience.’
Of these the one which most frequently recurs in the Epistles
of St. Paul, is the question respecting meats and drinks, which appears to have
agitated both the Roman and Corinthian Churches, as well as those of Jerusalem
and Antioch, and probably; in a greater or less degree, every other Christian community
in the days of the Apostle. The scruple which gave birth to it was not confined
to
The same tendency exhibited itself in various forms. In one form it was the scruple of those who ate herbs, while others ‘had faith’ to eat anything. The Essenes and Therapeutae among the Jews, and the Pythagoreans in the heathen world, had a similar feeling respecting the use of animal food. It was a natural association which led to such an abstinence. In the East, ever ready to connect, or rather incapable of separating, ideas of moral and physical impurity—where the heat of the climate rendered animal food unnecessary, if not positively unhealthful; where corruption rapidly infected dead organized matter; where, lastly, ancient tradition and ceremonies told of the sacredness of animals and the mysteriousness of animal life—nature and religion alike seemed to teach the same lesson, it was safer to abstain. It was the manner of such a scruple to propagate itself. He who revolted at animal food could not quietly sit by and see his neighbour partake of it. The ceremonialism of the age was the tradition of thousands of years, and passed by a sort of contagion from one race to another, from Paganism or Judaism to Christianity. How to deal with this ‘second nature’ was a practical difficulty among the first Christians. The Gospel was not a gospel according to the Essenes, and the church could not exclude those who held the scruples, neither could it be narrowed to them; it would not pass judgement on them at all. Hence the force of the Apostle’s words: ‘Him that is weak in the faith receive, not to the decision of his doubts.’
There was another point in reference to which the same spirit
of ceremonialism propagated itself, viz. meats offered
A third instance of the same ceremonialism so natural to that
age, and to ourselves so strange and unmeaning, is illustrated by the words of the
Jerusalem Christians to the Apostle—‘Thou wentest in unto men uncircumcised, and
didst eat with them;’ a scruple so strong that, probably, St. Peter himself
was never entirely free from it, and at
On the last point St. Paul maintains but one language:—‘In Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.’ No compromise could be allowed here, without destroying the Gospel that he preached. But the other question of meats and drinks, when separated from that of circumcision, admitted of various answers and points of view. Accordingly there is an appearance of inconsistency in the modes in which the Apostle resolves it. All these modes have a use and interest for ourselves; though our difficulties are not the same as those of the early Christians, the words speak to us, so long as prudence, and faith, and charity are the guides of Christian life. It is characteristic of the Apostle that his answers run into one another, as though each of them to different individuals, and all in their turn, might present the solution of the difficulty.
We may begin with
So we may venture to amplify the Apostle’s precept, which breathes the same spirit of moderation as his decisions respecting celibacy and marriage. Among ourselves the remark is often made that ‘extremes are practically untrue.’ This is another way of putting the same lesson:—If I may not sit in the idol’s temple, it may be plausibly argued, neither may I eat meats offered to idols; and if I may not eat meats offered to idols, then it logically follows that. I ought not to go into the market where idols’ meat is sold. The Apostle snaps the chain of this misapplied logic: there must be a limit somewhere; we must not push consistency where it is practically impossible. A trifling scruple is raised to the level of a religious duty, and another and another, until religion is made up of scruples, and the light of life fades, and the ways of life narrow themselves.
It is not hard to translate the Apostle’s precept into the language
of our time. Instances occur in politics, in theology, in our ordinary occupations,
in which beyond a certain point consistency is impossible. Take for example the
following: A person feels that he would be wrong in carrying on his business, or
going to public amusements, on a Sunday. He says: If it be wrong for me to work,
it is wrong to make the servants in my house work; or if it be wrong to go to public
amusements, it is wrong to enjoy the recreation of walking on a Sunday. So it may
be argued that, because slavery is wrong, therefore it is not right to purchase
the produce of slavery, or that of which the produce of slavery
In accordance with the spirit of the same principle of doing
as other men do, the Apostle further implies that believers are to accept the hospitality
of the heathen (
Both in
Cases may be readily imagined, in which, like the preceding, the rule of conduct here laid down by the Apostle would involve dissimulation. So many thousand scruples and opinions as there are in the world, we should have ‘to go out of the world’ to fulfil it honestly. All reserve, it may be argued, tends to break up the confidence between man and man; and there are times in which concealment of our opinions, even respecting things indifferent, would be treacherous and mischievous; there are times, too, in which things cease to be indifferent, and it is our duty to speak out respecting the false importance which they have acquired. But, after all qualifications of this kind have been made, the secondary duty yet remains, of consideration for others, which should form an element in our conduct. If truth is the first principle of our speech and action, the good of others should, at any rate, be the second. ‘If any man (not see thee who hast knowledge sitting in the idol’s temple, but) hear thee discoursing rashly of the Scriptures and the doctrines of the Church, shall not the faith of thy younger brother become confused? and his conscience being weak shall cease to discern between good and evil. And so thy weak brother shall perish for whom Christ died.’
The Apostle adds a fourth principle, which may be
Questions of meats and drinks, of eating with washers or unwashen hands, and the like, have passed from the stage of religious ordinances to that of proprieties and decencies of life. The purifications of the law of Moses are no longer binding upon Christians. Nature herself teaches all things necessary for health and comfort. But the spirit of casuistry in every age finds fresh materials to employ itself upon, laying hold of some question of a new moon or a Sabbath, some fragment of antiquity, some inconsistency of custom, some subtlety of thought, some nicety of morality, analyzing and dividing the actions of daily life; separating the letter from the spirit, and words from things; winding its toils around the infirmities of the weak, and linking itself to the sensibility of the intellect.
Out of this labyrinth of the soul the believer finds his way,
by keeping his eye fixed on that landmark which the Apostle himself has set up:
‘In Christ Jesus neither
There is no one probably, of any religious experience, who has
not at times felt the power of a scrupulous conscience. In speaking of a scrupulous
conscience, the sense of remorse for greater offences is not intended to be included.
These may press more or less heavily on the soul; and the remembrance of them may
ingrain itself, with different degrees of depth, on different temperaments; but
whether deep or shallow, the sorrow for them cannot be brought under the head of
scruples of conscience. There are ‘many things in which we offend all,’ about which
there can be no mistake, the impression of which on our minds it would be fatal
to weaken or do away. Nor is it to be denied that there may be customs almost universal
among us which are so plainly repugnant to morality, that we can never be justified
in acquiescing in them; or that individuals of clear head and strong will have
been led on by feelings which other men would deride as conscientious scruples into
an heroic struggle against evil. But quite independently of real sorrows for sin,
or real protests against evil, most religious persons in the course of their lives
have felt unreal scruples or difficulties, or exaggerated real but slight ones;
they have abridged their Christian freedom, and thereby their means of doing good; they have cherished imaginary obligations, and artificially hedged themselves
in a particular course of action. Honour and truth have seemed to be at stake about
trifles light as air, or conscience has become a burden too heavy for them to bear
in some doubtful matter of conduct. Scruples of this kind are ever liable to increase; as one vanishes, another appears; the circumstances of the world and of the Church,
and the complication of modern society, have a tendency to create them. The very
form in which they come is of itself sufficient to put us on our guard against them; for we can give no account of them to ourselves; they are seldom affected by
Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that scruples
about lesser matters almost always involve some dereliction of duty in greater or
more obvious ones. A tender conscience is a conscience unequal to the struggles
of life. At first sight it seems as if, when lesser duties were cared for, the greater
would take care of themselves. But this is not the lesson which experience teaches.
In our moral as in our physical nature, we are finite beings, capable only of a
certain degree of tension, ever liable to suffer disorder and derangement, to be
over-exercised in one part and weakened in another. No one can fix his mind intently
on a trifling scruple or become absorbed in an eccentric fancy, without finding
the great principles of truth and justice insensibly depart from him. lie has been
looking through a microscope at life, and cannot take in its general scope. The
moral proportions of things are lost to him; the question of a new
moon or a Sabbath has taken the place of diligence or of honesty. There is
no limit to the illusions which he may practise on himself. There are
Scruples are dangerous in another way, as they tend to drive men into a corner in which the performance of our duty becomes so difficult as to be almost impossible. A virtuous and religious life does not consist merely in abstaining from evil, but in doing what is good. It has to find opportunities and occasions for itself, without which it languishes. A man has a scruple about the choice of a profession; as a Christian, he believes war to be unlawful; in familiar. language, he has doubts respecting orders, difficulties about the law. Even the ordinary ways of conducting trade appear deficient to his nicer sense of honesty; or perhaps he has already entered on one of these lines of life, and finds it necessary to quit it. At last, there comes the difficulty of ‘how he is to live.’ There cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose that a good resolution is sufficient in such a case to carry a man through a long life.
But even if we suppose the case of one who is endowed
with every earthly good and instrument of prosperity, who can afford, as is sometimes
said, to trifle with the opportunities of life, still the mental consequences will
be hardly less injurious to him. For he who feels scruples about the ordinary enjoyments
and occupations of his fellows, does so far cut himself off from his common nature.
He is an isolated being, incapable of acting with his fellow-men. There are plants
which, though the sun shine upon them, and the dews water them, peak and pine from
some internal disorder, and appear to have no sympathy with the influences around
them. So is the mind corroded by scruples of conscience. It cannot expand to sun
or shower; it belongs not to the world of light; it has no intelligence of or
harmony with mankind around. It is insensible to the
It is one of the peculiar dangers of scruples of conscience, that the consequence of giving way to them is never felt at the time that they press upon us. When the mind is worried by a thought secretly working in it, and its trial becomes greater than it can bear, it is eager to take the plunge in life that may put it out of its misery; to throw aside a profession it may be, or to enter a new religious communion. We shall not be wrong in promising ourselves a few weeks of peace and placid enjoyment. The years that are to follow we are incapable of realizing; whether the weary spirit will require some fresh pasture, will invent for itself some new doubt; whether its change is a return to nature or not, it is impossible for us to anticipate. Whether it has in itself that hidden strength which, under every change of circumstances, is capable of bearing up, is a question which we are the least able to determine for ourselves. In general we may observe, that the weakest minds, and those least capable of enduring such consequences, are the most likely to indulge the scruples. We know beforehand the passionate character, hidden often under the mask of reserve, the active yet half-reasoning intellect, which falls under the power of such illusions.
In the Apostolic Church ‘cases of conscience’ arose out of religious
traditions, and what may be termed the ceremonial cast of the age; in modern times
the most frequent source of them may be said to be the desire of logical or practical
consistency, such as is irreconcilable with the mixed state of human affairs and
the feebleness of the human intellect. There is no lever like the argument from
consistency, with which to bring men over to our opinions. A particular system or
view, Calvinism perhaps, or Catholicism, has taken possession of the mind. Shall
we stop
So, again, in daily life cases often occur, in which we must do as other men do, and act upon a general understanding, even though unable to reconcile a particular practice to the letter of truthfulness or even to our individual conscience. It is hard in such cases to lay down a definite rule. But in general we should be suspicious of any conscientious scruples in which other good men do not share. We shall do right to make a large allowance for the perplexities and entanglements of human things; we shall observe that persons of strong mind and will brush away our scruples; we shall consider that not he who has most, but he who has fewest scruples approaches most nearly the true Christian. The man whom we emphatically call ‘honest,’ ‘able,’ ‘upright,’ who is a religious as well as a sensible man, seems to have no room for them; from which we are led to infer that such scruples are seldom in the nature of things themselves, but arise out of some peculiarity or eccentricity in those who indulge them. That they are often akin to madness, is an observation not without instruction even to those whom God has blest with the full use of reason.
So far we arrive at a general conclusion like St. Paul’s:—
It is remarkable, that what is in idea so excellent that it may
be almost described in St. Paul’s language as ‘holy, just, and good,’ should have
become a byword among mankind for hypocrisy and dishonesty. In popular estimation,
no one is supposed to resort to casuistry, but with the view of evading a duty.
The moral instincts of the world have risen up and condemned it. It is fairly put
down by the universal voice, and shut up in the darkness of the tomes of the casuists.
A kind of rude justice has been done upon the system, as in most cases of popular
indignation, probably with some degree of injustice to the individuals who were
its authors. Yet, hated as casuistry has deservedly been, it is fair also to admit
that it has an element of truth which was the source of its influence. This element
of truth is the acknowledgement of the difficulties which arise in the relations
of a professing Christian world to the Church and to Christianity. How, without
lowering the Gospel, to place it on a level with daily life is a hard question.
It will be proper for us to consider the system from both sides—in its origin and
in its perversion. Why it existed, and why it has failed, furnish a lesson in
The unseen power by which the systems of the casuists were brought into being, was the necessity of the Roman Catholic Church. Like the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, they formed a link between the present and the past. At the time of the Reformation the doctrines of the ancient, no less than of the Reformed, faith awakened into life. But they required to be put in a new form, to reconcile them to the moral sense of mankind. Luther ended the work of self-examination by casting all his sins on Christ. But the casuists could not thus meet the awakening of men’s consciences and the fearful looking for of judgement. They had to deal with an altered world, in which nevertheless the spectres of the past, purgatory, penance, mortal sin, were again rising up; hallowed as they were by authority and antiquity they could not be cast aside; the preacher of the Counter-reformation could only explain them away. If he had placed distinctly before men’s eyes, that for some one act of immorality or dishonesty they were in a state of mortal sin, the heart true to itself would have recoiled from such a doctrine, and the connexion between the Church and the world would have been for ever severed. And yet the doctrine was a part of ecclesiastical tradition; it could not be held, it could not be given up. The Jesuits escaped the dilemma by holding and evading it.
So far it would not be untrue to say that casuistry had originated
in an effort to reconcile the Roman Catholic faith with nature and experience. The
Roman system was, if strictly carried out, horrible and impossible; a doctrine
not, as it has been sometimes described, of salvation made easy, but of universal
condemnation. From these fearful conclusions of logic the subtilty of the human
intellect was now to save it. The analogy of law, as worked out by jurists and canonists,
supplied the means. What was repugnant to human justice could not be agreeable
to Divine.
It is obvious that there are endless points of view in which
the simplest duties may be regarded. Common sense says—‘A man is to be judged by
his acts,’ ‘there can be no mistake about a lie,’ and so on. The casuists proceed
by a different road. Fixing the mind, not on the simplicity, but on the intricacy
of human action, they study every point of view, and ‘introduce every conceivable
distinction. A first most obvious distinction is that of the intention and the act: ought the one to be separated from the other? The law itself seems to teach that
this may hardly be; rather the intention is held to be that which gives form and
colour to the act. Then the act by itself is nothing, and the intention by itself
almost innocent. As we play between the two different points of view, the act and
the intention together evanesce. But, secondly, as we consider the intention, must
we not also consider the circumstances of the agent? For plainly a being deprived
of free will cannot be responsible for his actions. Place the murderer in thought
under the conditions of a necessary agent, and his actions are innocent; or under
an imperfect necessity, and he loses half his guilt. Or suppose a man ignorant,
or partly ignorant, of what is the teaching of the Church, or the law of the land—here
another abstract point of view arises, leading us out of the region of common sense
to difficult and equitable considerations, which may be determined fairly, but which
we have the greatest motive to decide in favour of ourselves. Or again; try to conceive
an act without
By the aid of such distinctions the simplest principles of morality multiply to infinity. An instrument has been introduced of such subtilty and elasticity that it can accommodate the canons of the Church to any consciences, to any state of the world. Sin need no longer be confined to the dreadful distinction of moral and venial sin; it has lost its infinite and mysterious character; it has become a thing of degrees, to be aggravated or mitigated in idea, according to the expediency of the case or the pliability of the confessor. It seems difficult to perpetrate a perfect sin. No man need die of despair; in some page of the writings of the casuists will be found a difference suited to his case. And this without in any degree interfering with a single doctrine of the Church, or withdrawing one of its anathemas against heresy.
The system of casuistry, destined to work such great results,
in reconciling the Church to the world and to human nature, like a torn web needing
to be knit together, may be regarded as a science or profession. It is a classification
of human actions, made in one sense without any reference to practice. For nothing
was further from the mind of the casuist than to inquire whether a particular distinction
would have a good or bad effect, was liable to perversion or not. His object was
only to make such distinctions as the human mind was capable of perceiving and acknowledging.
As to the physiologist objects in themselves loathsome and disgusting may be of
the deepest interest, so to the casuist
The science was further complicated by the ‘doctrine of probability,’ which consisted in making anything approved or approvable that was confirmed by authority; even, as was said by some, of a single casuist. That could not be very wrong which a wise and good man had once thought to be right—a better than ourselves perhaps, surveying the circumstances calmly and impartially. Who would wish that the rule of his daily life should go beyond that of a saint and doctor of the Church? Who would require such a rule to be observed by another? Who would refuse another such an escape out of the labyrinth of human difficulties and perplexities? As in all the Jesuit distinctions, there was a kind of reasonableness in the theory of this; it did but go on the principle of cutting short scruples by the rule of common sense.
And yet, what a door was here opened for the dishonesty of mankind! The science itself had dissected moral action until nothing of life or meaning remained in it. It had thrown aside, at the same time, the natural restraint which the moral sense itself exercises in determining such questions. And now for the application of this system, so difficult and complicated in itself, so incapable of receiving any check from the opinions of mankind, the authority not of the Church, but of individuals, was to be added as a new lever to overthrow the last remains of natural religion and morality.
The marvels of this science are not yet ended. For the same changes admit of being rung upon speech as well as upon action, until truth and falsehood become alike impossible. Language itself dissolves before the decomposing power; oaths, like actions, vanish into air when separated from the intention of the speaker; the shield of custom protects falsehood. It would be a curious though needless task to follow the subject into further details. He who has read one page of the casuists has read all. There is nothing that is not right in some particular point of view—nothing that is not true under some previous supposition.
Such a system may be left to refute itself. Those who have strayed so far away from truth and virtue are self-condemned. Yet it is not without interest to trace by what false lights of philosophy or religion good men, revolting themselves at the commission of evil, were led step by step to the unnatural result. We should expect to find that such a result originated not in any settled determination to corrupt the morals of mankind, but in an intellectual error; and it is suggestive of strange thoughts respecting our moral nature, that an intellectual error should have had the power to produce such consequences. Such appears to have been the fact. The conception of moral action on which the system depends. is as erroneous and imperfect as that of the scholastic philosophy respecting the nature of ideas. The immediate reduction of the error to practice through the agency of an order made the evil greater than that of other intellectual errors on moral and religious subjects, which, springing up in the brain of an individual, are often corrected and purified in the course of nature before they find their way into the common mind.
1. Casuistry ignores the difference between thought and action.
Actions are necessarily external. The spoken word constitutes the lie; the outward
performance the crime. The Highest Wisdom, it is true, has identified the two: ‘He that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath already
2. What may be termed the frame of casuistry was supplied by
law, while the spirit is that of the scholastic philosophy. Neither afforded any
general principle which might correct extravagancies in detail, or banish subtilties,
or negative remote and unsafe inferences. But the application of the analogy of
law to subjects of morality and religion was itself a figment which, at every step,
led deeper into error. The object was to realize and define, in every possible stage,
acts which did not admit of legal definition, either because they were not external,
but only thoughts or suggestions of the mind, or because the external part of the
action was not allowed to be regarded separately from the motives of the agent.
The motive or intention which law takes no account of, except as indicating the
nature of the act, becomes the principal subject of the casuist’s art.
3. The distinctions of the casuist are far from equalling the
subtilty of human life, or the diversity of its conditions. It is quite true that
actions the same in name are, in the scale of right and wrong, as different as can
be imagined; varying with the age, temperament, education, circumstances of each
individual. The casuist is not in fault for maintaining this difference, but for
supposing that he can classify or distinguish them so as to give any conception
of their innumerable shades and gradations. All his folios are but the weary effort
to abstract or make a brief of the individuality of man. The very actions which
he classifies change their meaning as he writes them down, like the words of a sentence
torn away from their context. He is ever idealizing and creating distinctions, splitting
straws, dividing hairs; yet any one who reflects on himself will idealize and distinguish
further still, and think of his whole life in all its circumstances, with its sequence
of thoughts and motives, and, withal, many excuses. But no one can extend this sort
of idealism beyond himself; no insight of the confessor can make him clairvoyant
of the penitent’s soul. Know ourselves we sometimes truly may, but we cannot know
others, and no other can know us. No other can know or understand us in the same
wonderful or mysterious way; no other can be conscious of the spirit
4. There are many cases in which our first thoughts, or, to speak more correctly, our instinctive perceptions, are true and’ right; in which it is not too much to say, that he who deliberates is lost. The very act of turning to a book, or referring to another, enfeebles our power of action. Works of art are produced we know not how, by some simultaneous movement of hand and thought, which seem to lend to each other force and meaning. So in moral action, the true view does not separate the intention from the act, or the act from the circumstances which surround it, but regards them as one and absolutely indivisible. In the performance of the act and in the judgement of it, the will and the execution, the hand and the thought are to be considered as one. Those who act most energetically, who in difficult circumstances judge the most truly, do not separately pass in review the rules, and principles, and counter principles of action, but grasp them at once, in a single instant. Those who act most truthfully, honestly, firmly, manfully, consistently, take least time to deliberate. Such should be the attitude of our minds in all questions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood; we may not inquire, but act.
5. Casuistry not only renders us independent of our own convictions, it renders
us independent also of the opinion of mankind in general. It puts the confessor
in the place of ourselves, and in the place of the world. By making the actions
of men matters of science, it cuts away the supports
To conclude, the errors and evils of casuistry may be summed
up as follows:—It makes that abstract which is concrete, scientific which is contingent,
artificial which is natural, positive which is moral, theoretical which is intuitive
and immediate. It puts the parts in the place of the whole, exceptions in the place
of rules, system in the
THE revelation of righteousness by faith in the Epistle to the Romans is relative to a prior condemnation of Jew and Gentile, who are alike convicted of sin. If the world had not been sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, there would have been no need of the light. And yet this very darkness is a sort of contradiction, for it is the darkness of the soul, which, nevertheless, sees itself and God. Such ‘darkness visible’ St. Paul had felt in himself, and, passing from the individual to the world, he lifts up the veil partially, and lets the light of God’s wrath shine upon the corruption of man. What he himself in the searchings of his own spirit had become conscious of was ‘written in large letters’ on the scene around. To all Israelites at least, the law stood in the same relation as it had once done to himself; it placed them in a state of reprobation. Without law ‘they had not had sin,’ and now, the only way to do away with sin is to do away the law itself.
But, if ‘sin is not imputed where there is no law,’ it might
seem as though the heathen could not be brought within the sphere of the same condemnation.
Could we suppose men to be like animals, ‘nourishing a blind life within the brain,’ the seed that is not quickened except it
Such is the train of thought which we perceive to be working
in the Apostle’s mind, and which leads him, in accordance with the general scope
of the Epistle to the Romans, to speak of natural religion. In two passages in the
Acts he dwells on the same subject. It was one that found a ready response in the
age to which St. Paul preached. Reflections of a similar kind were not uncommon
among the heathen themselves. If at any time in the history of mankind natural religion
can be said to have had a real and independent existence, it was in the twilight
of heathenism and Christianity. ‘Seeking after God, if haply they might feel after
him and find him,’ is a touching description of the efforts of philosophy in its
later period. That there were principles in Nature higher and purer than the creations
of mythology was a reflection made by those who would have deemed ‘the cross of Christ
foolishness,’ who ‘mocked at the resurrection of the dead.’ The Olympic heaven was
no longer the air which men breathed, or the sky over their heads. The better mind
of the world was turning from ‘dumb idols.’ Ideas about God and man were taking the
place of the old heathen rites. Religions, like nations, met and mingled. East and
West were learning of each other, giving and receiving spiritual and political
While we remain within the circle of Scripture language, or think of St. Paul as speaking only to the men of his own age in words that wore striking and appropriate to them, there is no difficulty in understanding his meaning. The Old Testament denounced idolatry as hateful to God. It was away from Him, out of His sight; except where it touched the fortunes of the Jewish people, hardly within the range either of His judgements or of His mercies. No Israelite, in the elder days of Jewish history, supposed the tribes round about, or the individuals who composed them, to be equally with himself the objects of God’s care. The Apostle brings the heathen back before the judgement seat of God. He sees them sinking into the condition of the old Canaanitish nations. He regards this corruption of Nature as a consequence of their idolatry. They knew, or might have known, God, for creation witnesses of Him. This is the hinge of the Apostle’s argument: ‘If they had not known God they had not had sin;’ but now they know Him, and sin in the light of knowledge. Without this consciousness of sin there would be no condemnation of the heathen, and therefore no need of justification for him—no parallelism or coherence between the previous states of Jew and Gentile, or between the two parts of the scheme of redemption.
But here philosophy, bringing into contrast the Scriptural view
of things and the merely historical or human one, asks the question, ‘How far was
it possible for the heathen to have seen God in Nature?’ Could a man anticipate
the true religion any more than he could anticipate discoveries in science or in
art? Could he pierce the clouds of mythology, or lay aside language as it
were a garment? Three or four in different ages, who have been the heralds
The question here raised is one of the most important, as it is perhaps one that has been least considered, out of the many questions in which reason and faith, historical fact and religious belief, come into real or apparent conflict with each other. Volumes have been written on the connexion of geology with the Mosaic account of the creation—a question which is on the outskirts of the great difficulty—a sort of advanced post, at which theologians go out to meet the enemy. But we cannot refuse seriously to consider the other difficulty, which affects us much more nearly, and in the present day almost forces itself upon us, as the spirit of the ancient religions is more understood, and the forms of religion still existing among men become better known.
It sometimes seems as if we lived in two, or rather many distinct
worlds—the world of faith and the world of experience—the world of sacred and the
world of profane history. Between them there is a gulf; it is not easy to
pass from one to the other. They have a different set of words and ideas, which
it would be bad taste to intermingle;
Yet the Scriptures lead the way in subjecting the purely supernatural
and spiritual view of human things to the laws of experience. The revocation in
Ezekiel of the ‘old proverb in the house of Israel,’ is the assertion of a moral
principle, and a return to fact and Nature. The words of our Saviour —‘Think ye
that those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were sinners above all the
men who dwelt in
It has been asked: ‘How far, in forming a moral estimate of an
individual, are we to consider his actions simply as good or evil; or how far are
we to include in our estimate education, country, rank in life, physical constitution,
and so forth?’ Morality is rightly jealous of our resolving evil into the influence
of circumstances: it will no more listen to the plea of temptation as the excuse
for vice, than the law will hear of the same plea in mitigation of the penalty for
crime. It requires that we should place ourselves within certain conditions before
we pass judgement. Yet we cannot deny a higher point of view also—of ‘him that judged
not as a man judgeth,’ in which we fear to follow only because of the limitation
of our faculties. And in the case of a murderer or other great criminal, if we were
suddenly made aware, when dwelling on the enormity of his crime, that he had been
educated in vice and misery, that his act had not been unprovoked, perhaps that
his physical constitution was such as made it nearly impossible for him to resist
the provocation which was offered to him, the knowledge of these and similar circumstances
would alter
Now the difference between these two views of morality is analogous to the difference between the way in which St. Paul regards the heathen religions, and the way in which we ourselves regard them, in proportion as we become better acquainted with their true nature. St. Paul conceives idolatry separate from all the circumstances of time, of country, of physical or mental states by which it is accompanied, and in which it may be almost said to consist. He implies a deliberate knowledge of the good, and choice of the evil. He supposes each individual to contrast the truth of God with the error of false religions, and deliberately to reject God. He conceives all mankind, ‘creatures as they are one of another,’ and
‘Moving all together if they move at all,’
to be suddenly freed from the bond of nationality, from the customs
and habits of thought of ages. The moral life which is proper to the individual,
he breathes into the world collectively. Speaking not of the agents and their circumstances,
but of their acts, and seeing these reflected in what may be termed in a figure
the conscience, not of an individual but of mankind in general, he passes on all
men everywhere the sentence of condemnation. We can hardly venture to say what would
have been his judgement on the great names of Greek and Roman history, had he familiarly
known them. He might have felt as we feel, that there is a certain impropriety in
attempting to determine, with a Jesuit writer, or even in the spirit of love and
admiration which the great Italian poet shows for them, the places of
Acquainted as we are with Greek and Roman literature from within,
lovers of its old heroic story, it is impossible for us to regard the religions
of the heathen world in the single point of view which they presented to the first
believers. It would be a vain attempt to try and divest ourselves of the feelings
towards the great names of Greek and Roman history which a classical education has
implanted in us; as little can we think of the deities of the heathen mythology
in the spirit of a Christian of the first two centuries. Looking back from the vantage
ground of ages, we see more clearly the proportions of heathenism and Christianity,
as of other great forms or events of history, than was possible for contemporaries.
Ancient authors are like the inhabitants of a valley who know nothing of the countries
beyond: they have a narrow idea either of their own or other times; many notions
are entertained by them respecting the past history of mankind which a wider prospect
would have dispelled. The horizon of the sacred writers too is limited; they do
not embrace the historical or other aspects of the state of man to which modern
reflection has given rise; they are in the valley still, though with the ‘light
of the world’ above. The Apostle sees the Athenians from Mars’ Hill ‘wholly given
to idolatry:’ to us, the same scene would have revealed wonders of art and beauty,
the loss of which the civilized nations of Europe still seem with a degree of seriousness
to lament. He thinks of the heathen religions in the spirit of one of the old prophets; to us they are subjects of philosophy also. He makes no distinction between their
origin and their decline, the dreams of the childhood of the human race and
Among the many causes at present in existence which will influence ‘the Church of the future,’ none is likely to have greater power than our increasing knowledge of the religions of mankind. The study of them is the first step in the philosophical study of revelation itself. For Christianity or the Mosaic religion, standing alone, is hardly a subject for scientific inquiry: only when compared with other forms of faith do we perceive its true place in history, or its true relation to human nature. The glory of Christianity is not to be as unlike other religions as possible, but to be their perfection and fulfilment. Those religions are so many steps in the education of the human race. One above another, they rise or grow side by side, each nation, in many ages, contributing some partial ray of a divine light, some element of morality, some principle of social life, to the common stock of mankind. The thoughts of men, like the productions of Nature, do not endlessly diversify; they work themselves out in a few simple forms. In the fullness of time, philosophy appears, shaking off, yet partly retaining, the nationality and particularity of its heathen origin. Its top ‘reaches to heaven,’ but it has no root in the common life of man. At last, the, crown of all, the chief corner-stone of the building, when the impressions of Nature and the reflections of the mind upon itself have been exhausted, Christianity arises in the world, seeming to stand in the same relation to the inferior religions that man does to the inferior animals.
When, instead of painting harsh contrasts between Christianity
and other religions, we rather draw them together as nearly as truth will allow,
many thoughts come into our minds about their relation to each other which are of
great speculative interest as well as of practical importance. The joyful
words of the Apostle: ‘Is he the God of the Jews only, is he not also of
the Gentiles?’ have a new meaning for us. And this new application the Apostle
himself may be regarded as having taught us, where he says: ‘When
Some facts also begin to appear, which have hitherto been unknown
or concealed. They are of two kinds, relating partly to the origin or development
of the Jewish or Christian religion; partly also independent of them, yet affording
remarkable parallels both to their outward form and to their inner life. Christianity
is seen to have partaken much more of the better mind of the Gentile world than
the study of Scripture only would have led us to conjecture: it has received, too,
many of its doctrinal terms from the language of philosophy. The Jewish religion
is proved to have incorporated with itself some elements which were not of Jewish
origin; and the Jewish history begins to be explained by the analogy of other nations.
The most striking fact of the second kind is found in a part of the world which
Christianity can be scarcely said to have touched, and is of a date some centuries
anterior to it. That there is a faith
The Greek world presents another parallel with the Gospel, which
is also independent of it; less striking, yet coming nearer home, and sometimes
overlooked because it is general and obvious. That the political virtues of courage,
patriotism, and the like, have been received by Christian nations from a
classical source is commonly admitted. Let us ask now the question, Whence is the
love of knowledge? who first taught men that the pursuit of truth was a religious
duty? Doubtless the words of one greater than Socrates come into our minds: ‘For this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that they might
know the truth.’ But the truth here spoken of is of another
But it is not only the better mind of heathenism in East or West
that affords parallels with the Christian religion: the corruptions of Christianity,
its debasement by secular influences, its temporary decay at particular times or
places, receive many illustrations from similar phenomena in ancient times and heathen
countries. The manner in which the Old Testament has taken the place of the New; the tendency to absorb the individual life in the outward church; the personification
of the principle of separation from the world in monastic orders; the accumulation
of wealth with the profession of poverty; the spiritualism, or childlike faith,
of one age, and the rationalism or formalism of another; many of the minute controversial
disputes which exist between Christians respecting doctrines both
Those religions which possess sacred books furnish some other
curious, though exaggerated, likenesses of the use which has been sometimes made
of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures. No believer in organic or verbal inspiration
has applied more high-sounding titles to the Bible than the Brahmin or Mussulman
to the Koran or the Vedas. They
Let us conclude this digression by summing up the use of such inquiries; as a touchstone and witness of Christian truth; as bearing on our relations with the heathens themselves.
Christianity, in its way through the world, is ever taking up
and incorporating with itself Jewish, secular, or even Gentile elements. And the
use of the study of the heathen religions is just this: it teaches us to separate
the externals or accidents of Christianity from its essence; its local, temporary
type from its true spirit and life. These externals, which Christianity has in common
with other religions of the East, may be useful, may be necessary, but they are
not the truths which Christ came on earth to
The study of ‘comparative theology’ not only helps to distinguish
the accidents from the essence of Christianity; it also affords a new kind of testimony
to its truth; it shows what the world was aiming at through many cycles of human
history—what the Gospel alone fulfilled. The Gentile religions, from being enemies,
became witnesses of the Christian faith. They are no longer adverse positions held
by the powers of evil, but outworks or buttresses, like the courts of the Temple
on Mount Sion, covering the holy place. Granting that some of the doctrines and
teachers of the heathen world were nearer the truth than we once supposed, such
resemblances cause no alarm or uneasiness; we have no reason to fable that they
are the fragments of some primaeval revelation. We look forwards, not backwards; to the end, not to the beginning; not to the garden of Eden, but to the life
of Christ. There is no longer any need to maintain a thesis; we have the perfect
freedom and real peace which is attained by the certainty that we know all, and
that nothing is kept back. Such was the position of Christianity in former ages; it was on a level with the knowledge of mankind. But in later years unworthy fear
has too often paralyzed its teachers instead of seeking to
The study of the religions of the world has also a bearing
on the present condition of the heathen. We cannot act upon men unless we understand
them; we cannot raise or elevate their moral character unless we are able to draw
from its concealment the seed of good which they already contain. It is a remarkable
fact, that Christianity, springing up in the East, should have conquered the whole
western world, and that in the East itself it should have scarcely extended its
border, or even retained its original hold. ‘Westward the course of Christianity
has taken its way;’ and now it seems as if the two ends of the world would
no longer meet; as if differences of degree had extended to differences of kind
in human nature, and that we cannot pass from one species to another. Whichever
way we look, difficulties appear such as had no existence in the first ages: either
barbarism, paling in the presence of a superior race, so that it can hardly be kept
alive to receive Christianity, or the mummy-like civilization of China, which seems
as though it could never become instinct with a new life, or Brahminism,
outlasting in its pride many conquerors of the soil, or the nobler form of Mahomedanism; the religion of the patriarchs, as it were, overliving itself, preaching to the
And yet the command remains: ‘Go forth and preach the Gospel
to every creature.’ Nor can any blessing be conceived greater than the spread of
Christianity among heathen nations, nor any calling nobler or higher to which Christians
can devote themselves. Why are we unable to fulfil this command in any effectual
manner? Is it that the Gospel has had barriers set to it, and that the stream no
longer overflows on the surrounding territory; that we have enough of this water
for ourselves, but not enough for us and them? or that the example of nominal Christians,
who are bent on their own trade or interest, destroys the lesson which has been
preached by the ministers of religion? Yet the lives of believers did not prevent
the spread of
The truth seems to be, not that Christianity has lost its
power, but that we are seeking to propagate Christianity under circumstances
which, during the eighteen centuries of its existence, it has never yet
encountered. Perhaps there may have been a want of zeal, or discretion, or
education in the preachers; sometimes there may have been too great a desire to
impress on the mind of the heathen some peculiar doctrine, instead of the more
general lesson of ‘righteousness, temperance,
judgement to come.’ But however this may be, there is no reason to believe that
even if a saint or apostle could rise from the dead, he would produce by his preaching
alone, without the use of other means, any wide or deep impression on India or China.
To restore life to those countries is a vast and complex work, in which many agencies
have to co-operate—political, industrial, social; and missionary efforts, though
a blessed, are but a small part; and the Government is not the less Christian
because it seeks to rule a heathen nation on principles of truth and justice only.
Let us not measure this great work by the number of communicants or converts. Even
when wholly detached from Christianity, the true spirit of Christianity may animate
it. The extirpation of crime, the administration of justice, the punishment of falsehood,
may be regarded, without a figure of speech, as ‘the word of the Lord’ to
a weak and deceitful people. Lessons of purity and love too flow insensibly out
of improvement in the relations of social life. It is the disciple of Christ, not
Christ himself, who would forbid us to give these to the many, because we can only
give the Gospel to a very few. For it is of the millions, not of the thousands,
in India that we must first give an account. Our relations to the heathen are different
from those of Christians in former ages, and our progress in their conversion slower.
The success which attends our efforts
In the direct preaching of the Gospel, no help can be greater
than that which is gained from a knowledge of the heathen religions. The resident
in heathen countries readily observes the surface of the world; he has no difficulty
in learning the habits of the natives; he avoids irritating their fears or jealousies.
It requires a greater effort to understand the mind of a people; to be able to
rouse or calm them; to sympathize with them, and yet to rule them. But it is a
higher and more commanding knowledge still to comprehend their religion, not only
in its decline and corruption, but in its origin and idea,—to understand that which
they misunderstand, to appeal to that which they reverence against themselves, to
turn back the currents of thought and opinion which have flowed in their veins for
thousands of years. Such is the kind of knowledge which St. Paul had when to the
Jews he became as a Jew, that he might win some; which led him while placing the
new and old in irreconcilable opposition, to bring forth the new out of the treasure-house
of the old. No religion, at present existing in the world, stands in the same relation
to Christianity
§ 2.
Natural religion, in the sense in which St. Paul appeals to its
witness, is confined within narrower limits. It is a feeling rather than a philosophy;
and rests not on arguments, but on impressions of God in nature. The Apostle, in
the first chapter of the Romans, does not reason from first causes or from final
causes; abstractions like these would not have been understood by him. Neither
is he taking an historical survey of the religions of mankind; he touches, in a
word only, on those who changed the glory of God into the ‘likeness of man, and
birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things’ (
The appeal to the witness of God in nature has passed from the
Old Testament into the New; it is one of the many points which the Epistles of St.
Paul and the Psalms and Prophets have in common. ‘The invisible things from the creation
of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,’ is
another way of saying, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth
his handywork.’ Yet the conception of the Old Testament is not the same with that
of the New: in the latter we seem to be more disengaged from the things of sense; the utterance of the former is more that of feeling, and less of reflection. One
is the poetry of a primitive age, full of vivid immediate impressions; in the other
nature is more distant—the freshness of the first vision of earth has passed away.
The Deity himself, in the Hebrew Scriptures, has a visible form: as He appeared
‘with the body of heaven in his clearness;’ as He was seen by the prophet Ezekiel
out of the midst of the fire and the whirlwind, ‘full of eyes within and without,
and the spirit of the living creature in the wheels.’ But in the New Testament,
‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father, he hath declared him.’ And this difference leads to a further difference
in His relation to His works. In what we term nature, the prophet
But the God of nature in the Old Testament is not the God of storms
or of battles only, but of peace and repose.
It is hard to say how far such meditations belong only to particular
ages, or to particular temperaments in our own. Doubtless, the influence of natural
scenery differs with difference of climate, pursuits, education. ‘The God of the
hills is not the God of the valleys also;’ that is to say, the
It is impossible that our own feeling towards nature in the present
day can be the same with that of the Psalmist; neither is that of the Psalmist
the same with that of the Apostle; while, in the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes we
seem to catch the echo of a strain different from either. To us, God is not in the
whirlwind nor in the storm, nor in the earthquake, but in the still small voice.
Is it not for the attempt to bring God nearer to us in the works of nature that
we can truly conceive Him to be, that a poet of our own age has been subject to
the charge of pantheism? God has removed himself out of our sight, that He may
give us a greater idea of the immensity of His power. Perhaps it is impossible for
us to have the wider and the narrower conception of God at the same time. We cannot
see Him equally in the accidents of the world, when we think of Him as identified
with its laws. But there is another way into His presence through our own hearts.
He has given
It is a simpler, not a lower, lesson which we gather from the Apostle. First, he teaches that in Nature there is something to draw us from the visible to the invisible. The world to the Gentiles also had seemed full of innumerable deities; it is really full of the presence of Him who made it. Secondly, the Apostle teaches the universality of God’s providence over the whole earth. He covered it with inhabitants, to whom He gave their times and places of abode, ‘that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him.’ They are one family, ‘his offspring,’ notwithstanding the varieties of race, language, religion. As God is one, even so man is one in a common human nature—in the universality of sin, no less than the universality of redemption. A third lesson is the connexion of immorality and idolatry. They who lower the nature of God lower the nature of min also. Greek philosophy fell short of these lessons. Often as Plato speaks of the myths and legends of the gods, he failed to perceive the immorality of a religion of sense. Still less had any Greek imagined a brotherhood of all mankind, or a dispensation of God reaching backwards and forwards over all time. Its limitation was an essential principle of Greek life; it was confined to a narrow spot of earth, and to small cities; it could not include others besides Greeks; its gods were not gods of the world, but of Greece.
Aspects of Nature in different ages have changed before the eye
of man; at times fruitful of many thoughts; at other times either unheeded or
fading into insignificance in
When thoughts like these fill the mind, there is little room
for reflection on the world without. Even the missionary in modern times hardly
cares to go out of his way to visit a picturesque country or the monuments
of former ages. He is ‘determined to know one thing only, Christ crucified.’ Of
the beauties of creation, his chief thought is that they are the work of God. He
does not analyze them by rules of taste, or devise material out of them for literary
discourse. The Apostle, too, in the abundance
§ 3.
In the common use of language natural religion is opposed to revealed. That which men know, or seem to know, of themselves, which if the written word were to be destroyed would still remain, which existed prior to revelation, and which might be imagined to survive it, which may be described as general rather than special religion, as Christianity rationalized into morality, which speaks of God, but not of Christ—of nature, but not of grace—has been termed natural religion. Philosophical arguments for the being of a God are comprehended under the same term. It is also used to denote a supposed primitive or patriarchal religion, whether based on a primaeval revelation or not, from which the mythologies or idolatries of the heathen world are conceived to be offshoots.
The line has been sometimes sharply drawn between natural and
revealed religion; in other ages of the world, the two have been allowed to approximate,
or be almost identified with each other. Natural religion has been often
And if, turning away from the complexity of human life
in our own age to the beginning of things, we try to conceive revelation
in its purity before it came into contact with other influences, or mingled in the
great tide of political and social existence, we are still unable to distinguish
between natural and revealed religion. Our difficulty is like the old Aristotelian
question, how to draw the line between the moral and intellectual faculties. Let
us imagine a first moment at which revelation came into the world; there must still
have been some prior state which
But although the opposition of natural and revealed religion
is an opposition of abstractions, to which no facts really correspond, the term
natural religion may be conveniently used to describe that aspect or point of view
in which religion appears when separated from Judaism or Christianity. It will embrace
all conceptions of religion or morality which are not consciously derived from the
Old or New Testament. The favourite notion of a common or patriarchal religion need
not be excluded. Natural religion, in this comprehensive sense, may be divided into
two heads, which the ambiguity of the word nature has sometimes
i. Natural religion in the first sense is an idea and not a fact. The same tendency in man which has made him look fondly on a golden age, has made him look back also to a religion of nature. Like the memory of childhood, the thought of the past has a strange power over us; imagination lends it a glory which is not its own. What can be more natural than that the shepherd, wandering over the earth beneath the wide heavens, should ascend in thought to the throne of the Invisible? There is a refreshment to the fancy in thinking of the morning of the world’s day, when the sun arose pure and bright, ere the clouds of error darkened the earth. Everywhere, as a fact, the first inhabitants of earth of whom history has left a memorial are sunk in helpless ignorance. Yet there must have been a time, it is conceived, of which there are no memorials, earlier still; when the Divine image was not yet lost, when men’s wants were few and their hearts innocent, ere cities had taken the place of fields, or art of nature. The revelation of God to the first father of the human race must have spread itself in an ever-widening circle to his posterity. We pierce through one layer of superstition to another, in the hope of catching the light beyond, like children digging to find the sun in the bosom of the earth.
The origin of an error so often illustrates the truth, that it
is worth while to pause for an instant and consider the
Instead of this difficult and laborious process, we readily
conceive of man in the earliest stages of society as not different, but only
less than we are. We suppose him deprived of the arts, unacquainted with the
truths of Christianity, without the knowledge obtained from books, and. yet only
unlike us in the simplicity of his tastes and habitudes. We generalize what we
are ourselves, and drop out the particular circumstances and details of our
lives, and then suppose Ourselves to have before us the dweller in Mesopotamia
in the days of Abraham, or the patriarchs going down to gather corn in Egypt.
This imaginary picture of a patriarchal religion has had such charms for some
minds, that they have hoped to see it realized on the
Philosophers have illustrated the origin of government by a picture
of mankind meeting together in a large plain, to determine the rights of
governors and subjects; in like manner we may assist imagination, by conceiving
the multitude of men with their tribes, races, features, languages, convoked in
the plains of the East, to hear from some inspired legislator as Moses, or from
the voice of God himself, a revelation about God and nature, and their future destiny; such a revelation in the first day of the world’s history as the day of judgement
will be at the last. Let us fix our minds, not on the Giver of the revelation, but
on the receivers of it. Must there not have been in them some common sense, or faculty,
or feeling, which made them capable of receiving it? Must there not have been an
apprehension which made it a revelation to them? Must they not all first have been
of one language and one speech? And, what is implied by this, must they not all
have had one mental structure, and received the same impressions from external objects,
the same lesson from nature? Or, to put the hypothesis in another form, suppose
that by some electric power the same truth could have been made to sound in the
ears and flash before the eyes of all, would they not have gone their ways, one
to tents, another to cities; one to be a tiller of the ground, another to
be a feeder of sheep; one to be a huntsman, another to be a warrior; one to dwell
in woods and forests, another in boundless plains; one in valleys, one on mountains,
one beneath the liquid heaven of Greece and Asia, another in the murky regions of
the north? And amid all this diversity of habits, occupations, scenes, climates,
what common truth of religion could we expect to remain while man was man, the creature
in a great degree of outward circumstances? Still less reason would there be to
expect the preservation
ii. The theory of a primitive tradition, common to all mankind,
has only to be placed distinctly before the mind, to make us aware that it is the
fabric of a vision. But, even if it were conceivable, it would be inconsistent with
facts. Ancient history says nothing of a general religion, but of particular national
ones; of received beliefs about places and persons, about animal life, about the
sun, moon, and stars, about the Divine essence permeating the world, about gods
in the likeness of men appearing in battles and directing the course of states,
about the shades below, about sacrifices, purifications, initiations, magic, mysteries.
These were the religions of nature, which in historical times have received from
custom also a second nature. Early poetry shows us the same religions in a previous
stage, while they are still growing, and fancy is freely playing around the gods
of its own creation. Language and mythology carry us a step further back, into
a mental world yet more distant and more unlike our own. That world is a
prison of sense, in which outward objects take the place of ideas; in which morality
is a fact of nature, and ‘wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.’ Human beings in
that pre-historic age seem to have had only a kind of limited intelligence; they were the slaves, as we should say, of association. They were rooted in particular
spots, or wandered up and down upon the earth, confusing themselves and God and
nature, gazing timidly on the world around, starting at their very shadows, and
seeing in all things a superhuman power at the mercy of which they were. They had
no distinction of body and soul, mind and matter, physical and moral. Their conceptions
were neither here nor there; neither sensible objects, nor symbols of the unseen.
Their gods were very near; the neighbouring hill or passing stream, brute matter
But although we find no vestiges of a primaeval revelation,
and cannot imagine how such a revelation could have been possible consistently with
those indications of the state of man which language and mythology supply, it is
true, nevertheless, that the primitive peoples of mankind have a religious principle
common to all. Religion, rather than reason, is the faculty of man in the earliest
stage of his existence. Reverence for powers above him is the first principle which
raises the individual out of himself; the germ of political order, and probably
also of social life. It is the higher necessity of nature, as hunger and the animal
passions are the lower. ‘The clay’ falls before the rising dawn; it may stumble
over stocks and stones; but it is struggling upwards into a higher day. The worshipper
is drawn as by a magnet to some object out of himself. He is weak and must have
a god; he has the feeling of a slave towards his master, of a child towards its
parents, of the lower animals towards himself. The being whom he serves is, like
himself, passionate and capricious; he sees him starting up everywhere in the unmeaning
accidents of life. The good which he values himself he attributes to him; there
is no proportion in his ideas; the great power of nature is the lord also
of sheep and oxen. Sometimes, with childish joy, he invites the god to drink of
his beverage or
Out of this troubled and perplexed state of the human fancy the
great religions of the world arose, all of them in different degrees affording a
rest to the mind, and reducing to rule and measure the wayward impulses of human
nature. All of them had a history in antecedent ages; there is no stage in which
they do not offer indications of an earlier religion which preceded them. Whether
they came into being, like some geological formations, by slow deposits, or, like
others, by the shock of an earthquake, that is, by some convulsion and settlement
of the human mind, is a question which may be suggested, but cannot be answered.
The Hindoo Pantheon, even in the antique form in which the world of deities is presented
in the Vedas, implies a growth of fancy and ceremonial which may have continued
for thousands of years. Probably at a much earlier period than we are able to trace
them, religions, like languages, had their distinctive characters with corresponding
differences in the first rude constitution of society. As in the ease of languages,
it is a fair subject of inquiry, whether they do not all mount up to some elementary
type in which they were more nearly allied to
But if the first origin of the heathen religions is in the clouds,
their decline, though a phenomenon with which we are familiar in history, of which
in some parts of the world we are living witnesses, is also obscure to us. The kind
of knowledge that we have of them is like our knowledge of the ways of animals;
we see and observe, but we cannot get inside them; we cannot think 4:n feel with
their worshippers. Most or all of them are in a state of decay; they have lost their
life or creative power; once adequate to the wants of man, they have ceased to
be so for ages. Naturally we should imagine that the religion itself would pass
away when its meaning was no longer understood; that with the spirit, the letter
too would die; that when the circumstances of a nation changed, the rites of worship
to which they had given birth would be forgotten. The reverse is the fact. Old age
affords examples of habits which become insane and inveterate at a time when they
have no longer an object; that is an image of the antiquity of religions. Modes
of worship, rules of purification, set forms of words, cling with a greater tenacity
when they have no meaning or purpose. The habit of a week or a month may be thrown
off; not the habit of a thousand years. The hand of the past lies heavily on the
present in all religions; in the East it is
One of our first inquiries in reference to the elder religions of the world is how we may adjust them to our own moral and religious ideas. Moral elements seem at first sight to be wholly wanting in them. In the modern sense of the term, they are neither moral nor immoral, but natural; they have no idea of right and wrong, as distinct from the common opinion or feeling of their age and country. No action in Homer, however dishonourable or treacherous, calls forth moral reprobation. Neither gods nor men are expected to present any ideal of justice or virtue; their power or splendour may be the theme of the poet’s verse, not their truth or goodness. The only principle on which the Homeric deities reward mortals, is in return for gifts and sacrifices, or from personal attachment. A later age made a step forwards in morality and backwards at the same time; it acquired clearer ideas of right and wrong, but found itself encumbered with conceptions of fate and destiny. The vengeance of the Eumenides has but a rude analogy with justice; the personal innocence of the victim whom the gods pursued is a part of the interest, in some instances of Greek tragedy. Higher and holier thoughts of the Divine nature appear in Pindar and Sophocles, and philosophy sought to make religion and mythology the vehicles of moral truth. But it was no part of their original meaning.
Yet, in a lower sense, it is true that the heathen religions,
even in their primitive form, are not destitute of morality. Their morality is unconscious
morality, not ‘man a law to himself,’ but ‘man bound by the will of a superior
being.’ Ideas of right and wrong have no place in them, yet the first step has been
made from sense and appetite into the ideal world. He who denies himself something,
who offers
Differences in modes of thought render it difficult for us to
appreciate what spiritual elements lurked in disguise among the primitive peoples
of mankind. Many allowances must-be made before we judge them by our own categories.
They are not to be censured for indecency because they had symbols which to after
ages became indecent and obscene. Neither were they mere fetish worshippers because
they use sensuous expressions. Religion, like language, in early ages takes the
form of sense, but that form of sense is also the embodiment of thought. The stream
and the animal are not adored by man in heathen countries because they are destitute
of life or reason, but because they seem to him full of mystery and power. It was
with another feeling than that of a worshipper of matter that the native of the
East first prostrated himself before the rising sun, in whose beams his nature seemed
to revive, and his soul to be absorbed. The most childish superstitions are often
nothing more than misunderstood relics of antiquity. There are the remains of fetishism
in the charms and cures of Christian countries; no one regards the peasant who
uses them as a fetish worshipper. Many other confusions have their parallel
among ourselves; if we only knew it. For indeed our own ideas in religion, as in
everything else, seem clearer
These are a few of the differences for which we have to allow
in a comparison of our own and other times and countries. We must say to ourselves,
at every step, human nature in that age was unlike the human nature with which we
are acquainted, in language, in modes of thought, in morality, in its conception
of the world. Yet it was more like than these differences alone would lead us to
suppose. The feelings of men draw nearer than their thoughts; their natural affections
are more uniform than their religious systems. Marriage, burial, worship, are at
least common to all nations. There never has been a time in which the human race
was absolutely without social laws; in which there was no memory of the past;
no reverence for a higher power. More defined religious ideas, where the understanding
comes into play, grow more different; it is by comparison they are best explained; like natural phenomena, they derive their chief light from analogy with each other.
Travelling in thought from China, by way of India, Persia, and Egypt, to the northern
shores of the Mediterranean Sea, we distinguish a succession of stages in which
the worship of nature is developed; in China as the rule or form of political life,
almost grovelling on the level of sense; in India rising into regions of thought
and fancy, and allowing a corresponding play in the institutions and character of
the people; in Egypt wrapping itself in the mystery of antiquity, becoming
We may conclude this portion of our subject with a few remarks on the Greek and Roman religions, which have a peculiar interest to us for several reasons; first, because they have exercised a vast influence on modern Europe, the one through philosophy, the other through law, and both through literature and poetry; secondly, because, almost alone of the heathen religions, they came into contact with early Christianity; thirdly, because they are the religions of ancient, as Christianity is of modern civilization.
The religion of Greece is remarkable for being a literature
as well as a religion. Its deities are ‘nameless’ to us before
And yet the great riddle of existence was not answered: its
deeper mysteries were not explored. The strife of man with himself was healed only
superficially; there was beauty and proportion everywhere, but no ‘true being.’
The Jupiter Olympius of Phidias might seem worthy to preside over the Greek world
which he summoned before him; the Olympic victor might stand godlike in the fullness
No religion that failed to satisfy these cries of nature could become the religion of mankind. Greek art and Greek literature, losing something of their original refinement, spread themselves over the Roman world; except Christianity, they have become the richest treasure of modern Europe. But the religion of Greece never really grew in another soil, or beneath another heaven; it was local and national: dependent on the fine and subtle perceptions of the Greek race; though it amalgamated its deities with those of Egypt and Rome, its spirit never swayed mankind. It has a truer title to permanence and universality in the circumstance that it gave birth to philosophy.
The Greek mind passed, almost unconsciously to itself, from polytheism
to monotheism. While offering up worship to the Dorian Apollo, performing vows to
Esculapius, panic-stricken about the mutilation of the Hermae, the Greek was also
able to think of God as an idea, Θεός not Ζεύς. In this generalized or abstract
form the Deity presided over daily life. Not a century after Anaxagoras had introduced
the distinction of mind and matter, it was the belief of all philosophic inquirers
that God was mind, or the object of mind. The Homeric gods were beginning to be
out of place; philosophy could not distinguish Apollo from Athene, or Leto from
Here. Unlike the saints of the middle ages, they suggested no food for meditation; they were only beautiful forms, without individual character. By the side of religion
and art, speculation had arisen and
What the religion of Greece was to philosophy and art, that the
Roman religion may be said to have been to political and social life. It was the
religion of the family; the religion also of the empire of the world. Beginning
in rustic simplicity, the traces of which it ever afterwards retained, it grew with
the power of the Roman state, and became one with its laws. No fancy or poetry moulded
the forms of the Roman gods; they are wanting in character and hardly distinguishable
from one another. Not what they were, but their worship, is the point of interest
about them. Those inanimate beings occasionally said a patriotic word at some critical
juncture of the Roman affairs, but they had no attributes or qualities; they are
the mere impersonation of the needs of the state. They were easily identified in
civilized and literary times with the Olympic deities, but the transformation was
only superficial Greece never conquered the religion of its masters. Great as
was
More interesting for us than the pursuit of this subject into
further details is the inquiry, in what light the philosopher regarded the religious
system within the circle of which he lived; the spirit of which animated Greek
and Roman poetry, the observance of which was the bond of states. In the age of
the Antonines, more than six hundred years had passed away since the Athenian people
first became conscious of the contrariety of the two elements; and yet the wedge
which philosophy had inserted in the world seemed to have made no impression on
the deeply rooted customs of mankind. The ever-flowing stream of ideas as too feeble
to overthrow the entrenchments of antiquity. The course of individuals might be
turned by philosophy; it was not intended to reconstruct the world. It looked on
and watched, seeming, in the absence of any real progress, to lose its original
force. Paganism tolerated; it had nothing to fear. Socrates and Plato in an earlier,
Seneca and Epictetus in a later age, acquiesced in this heathen world, unlike
as it was to their own intellectual conceptions of a divine religion. No Greek or
Roman philosopher was also a great reformer of religion. Some, like Socrates,
were punctual in the observance of religious rites, paying their vows to the gods,
fearful of offending against
Such was the later phase of the religion of nature, with which
Christianity came into conflict. It had supplied some of the needs of men by assisting
to build up the fabric of society and law. It had left room for others to find expression
in philosophy or art. But it was a world divided against itself. It contained two
nations or opinions ‘struggling in its womb;’ the nation or opinion of the many,
and the nation or opinion of the few. It was bound together in the framework of
law or custom, yet its morality fell below the natural feelings of mankind, and
its religious spirit was confused and weakened by the admixture of foreign superstitions.
It was a world of which it is not difficult to find
§ 4.
Natural religion is not only concerned with the history of the
religions of nature, nor does it only reflect that ‘light of the Gentiles’ which
philosophy imparted; it has to do with the present as well as with the past, with
Christian as well as heathen countries. Revealed religion passes into natural, and
natural religion exists side by side with revealed; there is a truth independent
of Christianity; and the daily life of Christian men is very different from the
life of Christ. This general or natural religion may be compared to a wide-spread
lake, shallow and motionless, rather than to a living water—the overflowing of the
Christian faith over a professing Christian world, the level of which may be at
one time higher or lower; it is the religion of custom or prescription, or rather
the unconscious influence of religion on the minds of men in general; it includes
also the speculative idea of religion when taken off the Christian foundation. Natural
religion, in this modern sense, has a relation both to philosophy and life. That
is to say (1), it is a theory of religion which appeals to particular evidences
for the being of a God, though resting, perhaps
Arguments for the being of a God are of many kinds. There are arguments from final causes, and arguments from first causes, and arguments from ideas; logical forms, as they appear to be, in which different metaphysical schools mould their faith. Of the first sort the following may be taken as an instance:—A person walking on the seashore finds a watch or other piece of mechanism; he observes its parts, and their adaptation to each other; he sees the watch in motion, and comprehends the aim of the whole. In the formation of that senseless material he perceives that which satisfies him that it is the work of intelligence, or, in other words, the marks of design. And looking from the watch to the world around him, he seems to perceive innumerable ends, and innumerable actions tending to them, in the composition of the world itself, and in the structure of plants and animals. Advancing a step further, he asks himself the question, why he should not acknowledge the like marks of design in the moral world also; in passions and actions, and in the great end of life. Of all there is the same account to be given—‘the machine of the world,’ of which God is the Maker.
This is the celebrated argument from final causes for the being
of a God, the most popular of the arguments of natural religion, partly because
it admits of much ingenious illustration, and also because it is tangible and intelligible.
Ideas of a Supreme Being must be given through something,
(α) In the argument from final causes, the work of the Creator is compared to a work of art. Art is a poor figure of nature; it has no freedom or luxuriance. Between the highest work of art and the lowest animal or vegetable production, there is an interval which will never be spanned. The miracle of life derives no illustration from the handicraftsman putting his hand to the chisel, or anticipating in idea the form which he is about to carve. More truly might we reason, that what the artist is, the God of nature is not. For all the processes of nature are unlike the processes of art. If, instead of a watch, or some other piece of curious and exquisite workmanship, we think of a carpenter and a table, the force of the argument seems to vanish, and the illustration becomes inappropriate and unpleasing. The ingenuity and complexity of the structure, and not the mere appearance of design, makes the watch a natural image of the creation of the world.
(β) But not only does the conception of the artist supply
no worthy image of the Creator and His work; the idea of
(γ) This difference between art and nature leads us to observe
another defect in the argument from final causes—that, instead of putting the
world together, it takes it to pieces. It fixes our minds on those parts of the
world which exhibit marks of design, and withdraws us from those in which marks
of design seem to fail. There are formations in nature, such as the hand, which
have a kind of mechanical beauty, and show in a striking way, even to an uneducated
person, the wonder and complexity of creation. In like manner we feel a momentary
surprise in finding out, through the agency of a microscope, that the minutest creatures
have their fibres, tissues, vessels. And yet the knowledge of this is but the most
fragmentary and superficial knowledge of nature; it is the wonder in which philosophy
begins, very different from the comprehension of this universal frame in all its
complexity and in all its
(δ) Again, this teleological argument for the being of God gives an erroneous idea of the moral government of the world. For it leads us to suppose that all things are tending to some end; that there is no prodigality or waste, but that all things are, and are made, in the best way possible. Our faith must be tried to find a use for barren deserts, for venomous reptiles, for fierce wild beasts, nay, for the sins and miseries of mankind. Nor does ‘there seem to be any resting place,’ until the world and all things in it are admitted to have some end impressed upon them by the hand of God, but unseen to us. Experience is cast aside while our meditations lead us to conceive the world under this great form of a final cause. All that is in nature is best; all that is in human life is best. And yet every one knows instances in which nature seems to fail of its end—in which life has been cut down like a flower, and trampled under foot of man.
(ε) There is another way in which the argument from final
causes is suggestive of an imperfect conception of the Divine Being. It presents
God to us exclusively in one aspect, not as a man, much less as a spirit holding
communion with our spirit, but only as an artist. We conceive of Him, as in the
description of the poet, standing with compasses over sea and land, and designing
the wondrous work. Does not the image tend to make the spiritual creation an accident
of the material? For although it is possible, as Bishop Butler has shown, to apply
the argument from final causes, as a figure of speech, to the habits and feelings,
this adaptation is unnatural, and open even to greater objections than its application
to the physical world.
(ζ) If we look to the origin of the notion of a final cause,
we shall feel still further indisposed to make it the category under which we sum
up the working of the Divine Being in creation. As Aristotle, who probably first
made a philosophical use of the term, says, it is transferred from mind to matter; in other words, it clothes facts in our ideas. Lord Bacon offers another warning
against the employment of final causes in the service of religion; ‘they are like
the vestals consecrated to God, and are barren.’ They are a figure of speech which
adds nothing to our knowledge. When applied to the Creator, they are a figure of
a figure; that is to say, the figurative conception of the artist embodied or idealized
in his work, is made the image of the Divine Being. And no one really thinks of
God in nature under this figure of human skill. As certainly as the man who found
a watch or piece of mechanism on the seashore would conclude, ‘here are marks
of design, indications of an intelligent artist,’ so certainly, if he came across
the meanest or the highest of the works of nature, would he infer, ‘this was not
made by man, nor by any human art.’ He sees in a moment that the seaweed beneath
his feet is something different in kind from the productions of man. What should
lead him to say, that in the same sense that man made the watch, God made the seaweed? For the seaweed grows by some power of life, and is subject to certain physiological
laws, like all other vegetable or animal substances. But if we say that God
created this life, or that where this life ends there His creative power begins,
our analogy again fails, for God stands in a different relation to animal and vegetable
life from what the artist does to the work of His hands. And, when we think further
of God, as a Spirit without body, creating all things by His word, or rather by
His thought, in an instant of time, to whom
These are some of the points in respect of which the argument from final causes falls short of that conception of the Divine nature which reason is adequate to form. It is the beginning of our knowledge of God, not the end. It is suited to the faculties of children rather than of those who are of full age. It belongs to a stage of metaphysical philosophy, in which abstract ideas were not made the subject of analysis; to a time when physical science had hardly learnt to conceive the world as a whole. It is a devout thought which may well arise in the grateful heart when contemplating the works of creation, but must not be allowed to impair that higher intellectual conception which we are able to form of a Creator, any more than it should be put in the place of the witness of God within.
Another argument of the same nature for the being of a God is derived from first causes, and may be stated as follows:—All things that we see are the results or effects of causes, and these again the effects of other causes, and so on through an immense series. But somewhere or other this series must have a stop or limit; we cannot go back from cause to cause without end. Otherwise the series will have no basis on which to rest. Therefore there must be a first cause, that is, God. This argument is sometimes strengthened by the further supposition that the world must have had a beginning, whence it seems to follow, that it must have a cause external to itself which made it begin; a principle of rest, which is the source of motion to all other things, as ancient philosophy would have expressed it—hovering in this as in other speculations intermediate between the physical and metaphysical world.
The difficulty about this argument is much the same as that respecting
the preceding. So long as we conceive the world under the form of cause and effect,
and suppose the
There are two sources from which these and similar proofs of
the being of a God are derived: first, analogy; secondly, the logical necessity
of the human mind. Analogy supplies an image, an illustration. It wins for us an
imaginary world from the void and formless infinite. But whether
The other source of these and similar arguments is the logical necessity of the human mind. A first cause, a beginning, an infinite Being limiting our finite natures, is necessary to our conceptions. ‘We have an idea of God, there must be something to correspond to our idea,’ and so on. The flaw here is equally real, though not so apparent. While we dwell within the forms of the understanding and acknowledge their necessity, such arguments seem unanswerable. But once ask the question, Whence this necessity? was there not a time when the human mind felt no such necessity? is the necessity really satisfied? or is there not some further logical sequence in which I am involved which still remains unanswerable? the whole argument vanishes at once, as the chimera of a metaphysical age. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been peculiarly fertile in such arguments; the belief in which, whether they have any value or not, must not be imposed upon us as an article of faith.
If we say again, ‘that our highest conception must have a
true existence,’ which is the well-known argument of Anselm and Des Cartes for
the being of God, still this is no
Arguments from first and final causes may be regarded as a kind of poetry of natural religion. There are some minds to whom it would be impossible to conceive of the relation of God to the world under any more abstract form. They, as well as all of us, may ponder in amazement on the infinite contrivances of creation. We are all agreed that none but a Divine power framed them. We differ only as to whether the Divine power is to be regarded as the hand that fashioned, or the intelligence that designed them, or an operation inconceivable to us which we dimly trace and feebly express in words.
That which seems to underlie our conception both of first and
final causes, is the idea of law which we see not broken or intercepted, or appearing
only in particular spots of nature, but everywhere and in all things. All things
do not equally exhibit marks of design, but all things are equally subject to the
operation of law. The highest mark of intelligence pervades the whole; no one part
is better than another; it is all ‘very good.’ The absence of design, if we like
so to turn the phrase, is a part of the design. Even the less comely parts, like
the plain spaces in a building, have elements of use and beauty. He who has ever
thought in the most imperfect manner of the universe which modern science unveils,
needs no evidence that the details of it are incapable of being framed by anything
short of a Divine power. Art,
Nor can it weaken our belief in a Supreme Being, to observe that the same harmony and uniformity extend also to the actions of men. Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should give law and order to the spiritual, no less than the natural creation? That human beings do not ‘thrust or break their ranks;’ that the life of nations, like that of plants or animals, has a regular growth; that the same strata or stages are observable in the religions, no less than the languages of mankind, as in the structure of the earth, are strange reasons for doubting the Providence of God. Perhaps it is even stranger, that those who do not doubt should eye with jealousy the accumulation of such facts. Do we really wish that our conceptions of God should only be on the level of the ignorant; adequate to the passing emotions of human feeling, but to reason inadequate? That Christianity is the confluence of many channels of human thought does not interfere with its Divine origin. It is not the less immediately the word of God because there have been preparations for it in all ages, and in many countries.
The more we take out of the category of chance in the world either
of nature or of mind, the more present evidence we have of the faithfulness of God.
We do not need to have a chapter of accidents in life to enable us to realize the
existence of a personal God, as though events which we can account for were not
equally His work. Let not use or custom so prevail in our minds as to make this
higher notion of God cheerless or uncomfortable to us. The rays of His presence
may still warm us, as well as enlighten us. Surely
‘The curtain of the physical world is closing in upon us:’ What does this mean but that the arms of His intelligence are embracing us on every side? We have no more fear of nature; for our knowledge of the laws of nature has cast out fear. We know Him as He shows himself in them, even as we are known of Him. Do we think to draw near to God by returning to that state in which nature seemed to be without law, when man cowered like the animals before the storm, and in the meteors of the skies and the motions of the heavenly bodies sought to read the purposes of God respecting himself? Or shall we rest in that stage of the knowledge of nature which was common to the heathen philosophers and to the Fathers of the Christian Church? or in that of two hundred years ago, ere the laws of the heavenly bodies were discovered? or of fifty years ago, before geology had established its truths on sure foundations? or of thirty years ago, ere the investigation of old language had revealed the earlier stages of the history of the human mind. At which of these resting-places shall we pause to renew the covenant between Reason and Faith? Rather at none of them, if the first condition of a true faith be the belief in all true knowledge.
To trace our belief up to some primitive revelation, to entangle
it in a labyrinth of proofs or analogies, will not infix it deeper or elevate its
character. Why should we be willing to trust the convictions of the father of the
human race rather than our own, the faith of primitive rather than of civilized
times Or why should we use arguments about the Infinite Being, which, in proportion
as they have force, reduce him to the level of the finite; and which seem to lose
their force in proportion as we admit that God’s ways are not as our ways, nor His
thoughts as our thoughts? The belief is strong enough without those fictitious
supports:
Why, again, should we argue for the immortality of the soul from the analogy of the seed and the tree, or the state of human beings before and after birth, when the ground of proof in the one case is wanting in the other, namely, experience? Because the dead acorn may a century hence become a spreading oak, no one would infer that the corrupted remains of animals will rise to life in new forms. The error is not in the use of such illustrations as figures of speech, but in the allegation of them as proofs or evidences after the failure of the analogy is perceived. Perhaps it may be said that in popular discourse they pass unchallenged; it may be a point of honour that they should be maintained, because they are in Paley or Butler. But evidences for the many which are not evidences for the few are treacherous props to Christianity. They are always liable to come back to us detected, and to need some other fallacy for their support.
Let it be considered, whether the evidences of religion should
be separated from religion itself. The Gospel has a truth perfectly adapted to human
nature; its origin and diffusion in the world have a history like any other history.
But truth does not need evidences of the truth, nor does history separate the proof
of facts from the facts themselves. It was only in the decline of philosophy the
Greeks began to ask about the criterion of knowledge. What would be thought of an
historian who should collect all the testimonies on one side of some disputed question,
and insist on their reception as a political creed? Such evidences do not require
the hand of some giant infidel to pull them down; they fall the moment they are
touched. But the Christian
‘There are two things,’ says a philosopher of the last century; of which it may be said, that the more we think of them, the more they fill the
soul with awe and wonder—the starry heaven above, and the moral law within. I may
not regard either as shrouded in darkness, or look for or guess at either in what
is beyond, out of my sight. I see them right before me, and link them at once with
the consciousness of my own existence. The former of the two begins with place,
which I inhabit as a member of the outward world, and extends the connexion in which
I stand with it into immeasurable space; in which are worlds upon worlds, and systems
upon systems; and so on into the endless times of their revolutions, their beginning
and continuance. The second begins with my invisible self; that is to say, my personality,
and presents me in a world which has true infinity, but which the lower faculty
of the soul can hardly scan; with which I know myself to be not only as in the
world of sight, in an accidental connexion, but in a necessary and universal one.
The first glance at innumerable worlds annihilates any importance which I may attach
to myself as an animal structure; whilst the matter out of which it is made must
again return to the earth (itself a mere point in the universe), after it has been
endued, one knows not how, with the power of life for a little season. The second
glance exalts me infinitely as an intelligent being, whose personality involves
a moral law, which reveals in me a life distinct from that of the animals,
independent of the world of sense. So much at least I may infer from the regular
determination of my being by this law, which
So, in language somewhat technical, has Kant described two great principles of natural religion. ‘There are two witnesses,’ we may add in a later strain of reflection, ‘of the being of God; the order of nature in the world, and the progress of the mind of man. He is not the order of nature, nor the progress of mind, nor both together; but that which is above and beyond them; of which they, even if conceived in a single instant, are but the external sign, the highest evidences of God which we can conceive, but not God himself. The first to the ancient world seemed to be the work of chance, or the personal operation of one or many Divine beings. We know it to be the result of laws endless in their complexity, and yet not the less admirable for their simplicity also. The second has been regarded, even in our own day, as a series of errors capriciously invented by the ingenuity of individual men. We know it to have a law of its own, a continuous order which cannot be inverted; not to be confounded with, yet not wholly separate from, the law of nature and the will of God. Shall we doubt the world to be the creation of a Divine power, only because it is more wonderful than could have been conceived by “them of old time;” or human reason to be in the image of God, because it too bears the marks of an overruling law or intelligence?’
§ 5.
Natural religion, in the last sense in which we are to consider
it, carries us into a region of thought more practical, and therefore more important,
than any of the preceding; it comes home to us; it takes in those who are near
and dear to us; even ourselves are not excluded from it. Under this name, or some
other, we cannot refuse to consider a subject which involves the religious state
of the greater portion of mankind, even in a Christian country. Every Sunday the
ministers of religion set before us the ideal of
It is characteristic of this subject that it is full of contradictions; we say one thing at one time about it, another thing at another. Our feelings
respecting individuals are different in their lifetime, and after their death, as
they are nearly related to us, or have no claims on our affections. Our acknowledgement
of sin in the abstract is more willing and hearty than the recognition of particular
sins in ourselves, or even in others. We readily admit that ‘the world lieth in
wickedness;’ where the world is, or of whom it is made up, we are unable to define.
Great men seem to be exempt from the religious judgement which we pass on our fellows; it does not occur to persons of taste to regard them under this aspect; we deal
tenderly with them, and leave them to themselves and God. And sometimes we rest
on outward signs of religion; at other times we guard ourselves and others against
trusting to such signs. And commonly we are ready to acquiesce in the standard of
those around us, thinking it a sort of impertinence to interfere with their religious
concerns; at other times we go about the world as with a lantern, seeking for the
image of Christ among men, and are zealous for the good of others, out of season
or in season. We need not unravel further this tangled web of thoughts and feelings,
which religion, and affection, and habit, and opinion weave. A few words will describe
the fact out of which these contradictions arise.
It is impossible not to observe that innumerable persons—shall we say the majority of mankind?—who have a belief in God and immortality, have nevertheless hardly any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. They seem to live away from them in the routine of business or of society, ‘the common life of all men,’ not without a sense of right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible to what our Saviour meant by taking up the cross and following Him, or what St. Paul meant by ‘being one with Christ.’ They die without any great fear or lively faith; to the last more interested about concerns of this world than about the hope of another. In the Christian sense they are neither proud nor humble; they have seldom experienced the sense of sin, they have never felt keenly the need of forgiveness. Neither on the other hand do they value themselves on their good deeds, or expect to be saved by their own merits. Often they are men of high moral character; many of them have strong and disinterested attachments, and quick human sympathies; sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness, or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonour. It would be a mistake to say they are without religion. They join in its public acts; they are offended at profaneness or impiety; they are thankful for the blessings of life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such persons meet us at every turn. They are those whom we know and associate with; honest in their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of two classes represented by the Church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends and enemies of God. We cannot say in which of these two divisions we should find a place for them.
The picture is a true one, and, if we turn the light round,
some of us may find in it a resemblance of ourselves no less
Many strange thoughts arise at the contemplation of this intermediate
world, which some blindness, or hardness, or distance in nature, separates from
the love of Christ. We ask ourselves ‘what will become of them after death?’ ‘For what state of existence can this present life be a preparation?’ Perhaps they
will turn the question upon us; and we may answer for ourselves and them, ‘that
we throw ourselves on the mercy of God.’ We cannot deny that in the sight of God
they may condemn us; their moral worth
Other oppositions have found their way into statements of Christian
truth, which we shall sometimes do well to forget. Mankind are not simply divided
into two classes; they pass insensibly from one to the other. The term world
is itself ambiguous, meaning the world very near to us, and yet a long way
off from us; which we contrast with the Church, and which we nevertheless feel
to be one with the Church, and incapable of being separated. Sometimes the Church
bears a high and noble witness against the world, and at other times, even
to the religious mind, the balance
Reflections of this kind are not a mere speculation;
they have a practical use. They show us the world as it is, neither lighted
up with the aspirations of hope and faith, nor darkened beneath the shadow of God’s
wrath. They teach us to regard human nature in a larger and more kindly way, which
is the first step towards amending and strengthening it. They make us think of the
many as well as of the few; as ministers of the Gospel, warning us against
preaching to the elect only, instead of seeking to do good to all men. They take
us out of the straits and narrownesses of religion, into wider fields in which the
analogy of faith is still our guide. They help us to reconcile nature with grace; they prevent our thinking that Christ came into the
Doubtless, the lives of individuals that rise above this average
are the salt of the earth. They are not to be confounded with the many, because
for these latter a place may be found in the counsels of Providence. Those who add
the love of their fellow-creatures to the love of God, who make the love of truth
the rule of both, bear the image of Christ until His coming again. And yet, probably,
they would be the last persons to wish to distinguish themselves from their fellow-creatures.
The Christian life makes all things kin; it does not stand out ‘angular’ against
any part of mankind. And that humble spirit which the best of men have ever shown
in reference to their brethren, is also the true spirit of the Church towards the
world. If a tone of dogmatism and exclusiveness is unbecoming in individual Christians,
is it not equally so in Christian communities? There is no need, because men will
not listen to one motive, that we should not present them with another; there is
no reason, because they will not hear the voice of the preacher, that they should
be refused the blessings of education; or that we should cease to act upon their
circumstances, because we cannot awaken the heart and conscience. We are too apt
to view as hostile to religion that which only takes a form different from religion,
as trade, or politics, or professional life. More truly may religious men
regard the world, in its various phases, as in many points a witness against themselves.
The exact appreciation of the good as well as the evil of the world is a link
of communion with our fellow-men; may it not also be, too, with the body of
The God of peace rest upon you, is the concluding benediction of most of the Epistles. How can He rest upon us, who draw so many hard lines of demarcation between ourselves and other men; who oppose the Church and the world, Sundays and working days, revelation and science, the past and present, the life and state of which religion speaks and the life which we ordinarily lead? It is well that we should consider these lines of demarcation rather as representing aspects of our life than as corresponding to classes of mankind. It is well that we should acknowledge that one aspect of life or knowledge is as true as the other. Science and revelation touch one another: the past floats down in the present. We are all members of the same Christian world; we are all members of the same Christian Church. Who can bear to doubt this of themselves or of their family? What parent would think otherwise of his child?—what child of his parent? Religion holds before us an ideal which we are far from reaching; natural affection softens and relieves the characters of those we love; experience alone shows men what they truly are. All these three must so meet as to do violence to none. If, in the age of the Apostles, it seemed to be the duty of the believers to separate themselves from the world and take up a hostile position, not less marked in the present age is the duty of abolishing in a Christian country what has now become an artificial distinction, and seeking by every means in our power, by fairness, by truthfulness, by knowledge, by love unfeigned, by the absence of party and prejudice, by acknowledging the good in all things, to reconcile the Church to the world, the one half of our nature to the other; drawing the mind off from speculative difficulties, or matters of party and opinion, to that which almost all equally acknowledge and almost equally rest short of—the life of Christ.
No doctrine in later times has been looked at so exclusively through the glass of controversy as that of justification. From being the simplest it has become the most difficult; the language of the heart has lost itself in a logical tangle. Differences have been drawn out as far as possible, and then taken back and reconciled. The extreme of one view has more than once produced a reaction in favour of the other. Many senses have been attributed to the same words, and simple statements carried out on both sides into endless conclusions. New formulas of conciliation have been put in the place of old-established phrases, and have soon died away, because they had no root in language or in the common sense or feeling of mankind. The difficulty of the subject has been increased by the different degrees of importance attached to it: while to some it is an articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae, others have never been able to see in it more than a verbal dispute.
This perplexity on the question of righteousness by faith is
partly due to the character of the age in which it began to revive. Men felt at
the Reformation the need of a spiritual religion, and could no longer endure the
yoke
In other words, the Scholastic Logic had been for six centuries previous the great instrument of training the human mind; it had grown up with it, and become a part of it. Neither would it have been more possible for the Reformers to have laid it aside than to have laid aside the use of language itself. Around theology it lingers still, seeming reluctant to quit a territory which is peculiarly its own. No science has hitherto fallen so completely under its power; no other is equally unwilling to ask the meaning of terms; none has been so fertile in reasonings and consequences. The change of which Lord Bacon was the herald has hardly yet reached it; much less could the Reformation have anticipated the New Philosophy.
The whole mental structure of that time rendered it necessary
that the Reformers, no less than their opponents, should resort to the scholastic
methods of argument. The difference between the two parties did not lie here. Perhaps
it may be said with truth that the Reformers were even more schoolmen than their
opponents, because they dealt more with abstract ideas, and were more concentrated
on a single topic. The whole of Luther’s teaching was summed up in a single article,
‘Righteousness by Faith.’ That was to him the Scriptural expression of a Spiritual
religion. But this, according to the manner of that time, could not be left in the
simple language of St. Paul. It was to be proved from Scripture first, then isolated
by
And yet, why was this? Why not repeat, with a slight alteration of the words rather than the meaning of the Apostle, Neither justification by faith nor justification by works, but ‘a new creature’? Was there not yet ‘a more excellent way’ to oppose things to words—the life, and spirit, and freedom of the Gospel, to the deadness, and powerlessness, and slavery of the Roman Church? So it seems natural to us to reason, looking back after an interval of three centuries on the weary struggle; so absorbing to those who took part in it once, so distant now either to us or them. But so it could not be. The temper of the times, and the education of the Reformers themselves, made it necessary that one dogmatic system should be met by another. The scholastic divinity had become a charmed circle, and no man could venture out of it, though he might oppose or respond within it.
And thus justification by faith, and justification by works,
became the watchword of two parties. We may imagine ourselves at that point in the
controversy when the Pelagian dispute had been long since hushed, and that respecting
Predestination had not yet begun; when men were not differing about original sin,
and had not begun to differ about the Divine decrees. What Luther sought for was
to find a formula which expressed most fully the entire, unreserved, immediate dependence
of the believer on Christ. What the Catholic sought for was so to modify this formula
as not to throw dishonour on the Church by making religion a merely personal matter; or on the lives of holy men of old, who had wrought out their salvation by asceticism; or endanger morality by appearing to undervalue good works. It was agreed by all,
that men are saved through Christ—[that men are saved] not of themselves, but of
the grace of God, was equally agreed since the condemnation of Pelagius —that faith
and works imply each other, was not disputed
On this narrow ground the first question that naturally arises is, how faith is to be defined? is it to include love and holiness, or to be separated from them? If the former, it seems to lose its apprehensive dependent nature, and to be scarcely distinguishable from works; if the latter, the statement is too refined for the common sense of mankind; though made by Luther, it could scarcely be retained even by his immediate followers. Again, is it an act or a state? are we to figure it as a point, or as a line? Is the whole of our spiritual life anticipated in the beginning, or may faith no less than works, justification equally with sanctification, be conceived of as going on to perfection? Is justification an objective act of Divine mercy, or a subjective state of which the believer is conscious in himself? Is the righteousness of faith imputed or inherent, an attribution of the merits of Christ, or a renewal of the human heart itself? What is the test of a true faith? And is it possible for those who are possessed of it to fall away? How can we exclude the doctrine of human merit consistently with Divine justice? How do we account for the fact that some have this faith, and others are without it, this difference being apparently independent of their moral state? If faith comes by grace, is it imparted to few or to all? And in what relation does the whole doctrine stand to Predestinarianism on the one hand, and to the Catholic or Sacramental theory on the other?
So at many points the doctrine of righteousness by faith touches
the metaphysical questions of subject and object, of necessity and freedom, of habits
and actions, and of human consciousness, like a magnet drawing to itself
philosophy, as it has once drawn to itself the history of Europe. There were distinctions
also of an earlier date,
Such is the whole question, striking deep, and spreading far and wide with its offshoots. It is not our intention to enter on the investigation of all these subjects, many of which are interesting as phases of thought in the history of the Church, but have no bearing on the interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles, and would be out of place here. Our inquiry will embrace two heads: (1) What did St. Paul mean by the expression ‘righteousness of faith,’ in that age ere controversies about his meaning arose? and (2) What do we mean by it, now that such controversies have died away, and the interest in them is retained only by the theological student, and the Church and the world are changed, and there is no more question of Jew or Gentile, circumcision or uncircumcision, and we do not become Christians, but are so from our birth? Many volumes are not required to explain the meaning of the Apostle; nor can the words of eternal life be other than few and simple to ourselves.
There is one interpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul which is necessarily in some degree false; that is, the interpretation put upon them by later controversy. When the minds of men are absorbed in a particular circle of ideas they take possession of any stray verse, which becomes the centre of their world. They use the words of Scripture, but are incapable of seeing that they have another meaning and are used in a different connexion from that in which they employ them. Sometimes there is a degree of similarity in the application which tends to conceal the difference. Thus Luther and St. Paul both use the same term, ‘justified by faith;’ and the strength of the Reformer’s words is the authority of St. Paul. Yet, observe how far this agreement is one of words: how far of things. For Luther is speaking solely of individuals, St. Paul also of nations; Luther of faith absolutely, St. Paul of faith as relative to the law. With St. Paul faith is the symbol of the universality of the Gospel. Luther excludes this or any analogous point of view. In St. Paul there is no opposition of faith and love; nor does he further determine righteousness by faith as meaning a faith in the blood or even in the death of Christ; nor does be suppose consciousness or assurance in the person justified. But all these are prominent features of the Lutheran doctrine. Once more: the faith of St. Paul has reference to the evil of the world of sight; which was soon to vanish away, that the world in which faith walks might be revealed; but no such allusion is implied in the language of the Reformer. Lastly: the change in the use of the substantive ‘righteousness’ to ‘justification’ is the indication of a wide difference between St. Paul and Luther; the natural, almost accidental, language of St. Paul having already passed into a technical formula.
These contrasts make us feel that St. Paul can only be interpreted
by himself, not from the systems of modern theologians, nor even from the writings
of one who had so much in common with him as Luther. It is the spirit and
It has been said (and the remark admits of a peculiar application
to theology), that few persons know sufficient of things to be able to say whether
disputes are merely verbal or not. Yet, on the other hand, it must be admitted that,
whatever accidental advantage theology may derive from system and definition, mere
accurate statements can never form the substance of our belief. No one doubts that
Christianity could be in the fullest sense taught to a child or a savage, without
any mention of justification or satisfaction or predestination. Why should we not
receive the Gospel as ‘little children?’ Why should we not choose the poor man’s
part in the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven? Why elaborate doctrinal abstractions
which are so subtle in their meaning as to be in great danger of being lost in their
translation from one language to another? which are always running into consequences
inconsistent with our moral nature, and the knowledge of God derived from it? which
are not the prevailing usage of Scripture, but technical terms which we have gathered
from one or two passages, and made the key-notes of our scale? The
But although language and logic have strangely transfigured the
meaning of Scripture, we cannot venture to say that all theological controversies
are questions of words. If from their winding mazes we seek to retrace our steps,
we still find differences which have a deep foundation in the opposite tendencies
of the human mind, and the corresponding division of the world itself. That men
of one temper of mind adopt one expression rather than another may be partly an
accident; but the adoption of an expression by persons of marked character makes
the difference of words a reality also. That can scarcely be thought a matter
of words which cut in sunder the Church, which overthrew princes, which made the
line of demarcation between Jewish and Gentile Christians in the Apostolic age,
and is so, in another sense, between Protestant and Catholic at the present day.
And in a deeper way of reflection than this, if we turn from the Church to
the individual, we seem to see around us opposite natures and characters, whose
lives really exhibit a difference corresponding to that of which we are speaking.
The one incline to morality, the other to religion; the one to the sacramental,
the other to the spiritual; the one to multiplicity in outward ordinances, the
other to simplicity; the one consider chiefly the means, the other the end; the
one desire to dwell upon doctrinal statements, the other need only the name of Christ; the one turn to ascetic practices, to lead a good life, and to do good to others,
the other to faith, humility, and dependence on God. We may sometimes find the opposite
attributes combine with each other (there have ever been cross-divisions on this
article of belief in the Christian world; the great body of the Reformed Churches,
and
These latter words have been carried out of their original circle of ideas into a new one by the doctrines of the Reformation. They have become hardened, stiffened, sharpened by the exigencies of controversy, and torn from what may be termed their context in the Apostolical age. To that age we must return ere we can think in the Apostle’s language. His conception of faith, although simpler than our own, has nevertheless a peculiar relation to his own day; it is at once wider, and also narrower, than the use of the word among ourselves—wider in that it is the symbol of the admission of the Gentiles into the Church, but narrower also in that it is the negative of the law. Faith is the proper technical term which excludes the law; being what the law is not, as the law is what faith is not. No middle term connects the two, or at least none which the Apostle admits, until he has first widened the breach between them to the uttermost. He does not say, ‘Was not Abraham our father justified by works (as well as by faith), when he had offered up Isaac his son on the altar?’ but only, ‘What saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.’
The Jewish conception of righteousness was the fulfilment of
the Commandments. He who walked in all the precepts of the law blameless, like Daniel
in the old Testament, or Joseph and Nathanael in the New, was righteous before God.
‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Thou knowest the commandments. Do not
commit adultery,
But to the mind of St. Paul the spirit presented itself not so
much as a higher fulfilment of the law, but as antagonistic to it. From this
point of view, it appeared not that man could never fulfil the law perfectly, but
that he could never fulfil it at all. What God required was something different
in kind from legal obedience. What man needed was a return to God and nature. He
was burdened, straitened, shut out from the presence of his Father—a servant, not
a son; to whom, in a spiritual sense, the heaven was become as iron, and
the earth brass. The new righteousness must raise him above the burden of ordinances,
and bring him into a living communion with God. It must be within, and not without
him—written not on tables of stone, but on fleshy tables of the heart. But inward
righteousness was no peculiar privilege of the Israelites; it belonged to all mankind.
And the revelation of it, as it satisfied the need of the individual soul, vindicated
As the symbol of this inward righteousness, St. Paul found an expression—righteousness by faith—derived from those passages in the Old Testament which spoke of Abraham being justified by faith. It was already in use among the Jews; but it was the Apostle who stamped it first with a permanent and universal import. The faith of St. Paul was not the faith of the Patriarchs only, who believed in the promises made to their descendants; it entered within the veil—out of the reach of ordinances—beyond the evil of this present life; it was the instrument of union with Christ, in whom all men were one; whom they were expecting to come from heaven. The Jewish nation itself was too far gone to be saved as a nation: individuals had a nearer ‘way. The Lord was at hand; there was no time for a long life of laborious service. As at the last hour, when we have to teach men rather how to die than how to live, the Apostle could only say to those who would receive it, ‘Believe; all things are possible to him that believes.’
Such are some of the peculiar aspects of the Apostle’s doctrine
of righteousness by faith. To our own minds it has become a later stage or a particular
form of the more general doctrine of salvation through Christ, of the grace of God
to man, or of the still more general truth of spiritual religion. It is the connecting
link by which we appropriate these to ourselves—the hand which we put out to apprehend
the mercy of God. It was not so to the Apostle. To him grace and faith and the Spirit
are not parts of a doctrinal system, but different expressions of the same truth.
‘Beginning in the Spirit’ is another way of saying Being justified
by faith.’ He uses them indiscriminately, and therefore we cannot suppose that he
could have laid any stress on distinctions between them. Even the apparently precise
antithesis of the prepositions ἐν, διά varies in different passages. Only
in reference to the law, faith,
Illusive as are the distinctions of later controversies as guides
to the interpretation of Scripture, there is another help, of which we can hardly
avail ourselves too much—the interpretation of fact. To read the mind of the Apostle,
we must read also the state of the world and the Church by which he was surrounded.
Now, there are two great facts which correspond to the doctrine of righteousness
by faith, which is also the doctrine of the universality of the Gospel: first,
the vision which the Apostle saw on the way to Damascus; secondly, the actual conversion
of the Gentiles by the preaching of the Apostle. Righteousness by faith, admission
of the Gentiles, even the rejection and restoration of the Jews, are—himself under
so many different points of view. The way by which God had led him was the way also
by which he was leading other men. When he preached righteousness by faith, his
conscience also bore him witness that this was the manner in which he had himself
passed from darkness to light, from the burden of ordinances to the power of an
endless life. In proclaiming the salvation of the Gentiles, he was interpreting
the world as it was; their admission into the Church had already taken place before
the eyes of all mankind; it was a purpose of God that was actually fulfilled, not
waiting for some future revelation. Just as when doubts are raised respecting his
Apostleship, he cut them short by the fact that he was an Apostle, and did the work
of an Apostle; so, in adjusting the relations of Jew and Gentile, and justifying
the ways of God, the facts, read aright, are the basis of the doctrine which he
teaches. All that he further shows is, that these facts were in accordance with
the Old Testament, with the words of the Prophets,
But the faith which St. Paul preached was not merely the evidence of things not seen, in which the Gentiles also had part, nor only the reflection of ‘the violence’ of the world around him, which was taking the kingdom of heaven by force. The source, the hidden life, from which justification flows, in which it lives, is—Christ. It is true that we nowhere find in the Epistles the expression ‘justification by Christ’ exactly in the sense of modern theology. But, on the other hand, we are described as dead with Christ, we live with Him, we are members of His body, we follow Him in all the stages of His being. All this is another way of expressing ‘We are justified by faith.’ That which takes us out of ourselves and links us with Christ, which anticipates in an instant the rest of life, which is the door of every heavenly and spiritual relation, presenting us through a glass with the image of Christ crucified, is faith. The difference between our own mode of thinking and that of the Apostle is mainly this—that to him Christ is set forth more as in a picture, and less through the medium of ideas or figures of speech; and that while we conceive the Saviour more naturally as an object of faith, to St. Paul He is rather the indwelling power of life which is fashioned in him, the marks of whose body he bears, the measure of whose sufferings he fills up.
When in the Gospel it is said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved,’ this is substantially the same truth as ‘We are justified
by faith.’ It is another way of expressing ‘Therefore being justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Yet we nay note two points of
difference, as well as two of resemblance, in the manner in which the doctrine is
set forth in the Gospel as compared with the manner of the Epistles of St. Paul.
First, in the omission of any connexion
Faith, in the view of the Apostle, has a further aspect, which
is freedom. That quality in us which in reference to God and Christ is faith, in
reference to ourselves and our fellow-men is Christian liberty. ‘With this freedom
Christ has made us free;’ ‘where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’
It is the image also of the communion of the world to come. ‘The Jerusalem that is
above is free,’ and ‘the creature is waiting to be delivered into the glorious liberty
of the children of God.’ It applies to the Church as now no longer confined in the
prison-house of the Jewish dispensation; to the grace of God, which is given irrespectively
In modern language, assurance has been deemed necessary to the definition of a true faith. There is a sense, too, in which final assurance entered into the conception of the faith of the Epistles. Looking at men from without, it was possible for them to fall away finally; it was possible also to fall without falling away; as St. John says, there is a sin unto death, and there is a sin not unto death. But looking inwards into their hearts and consciences, their salvation was not a matter of probability; they knew whom they had believed,’ and were confident that He who had begun the good work in them would continue it unto the end. All calculations respecting the future were to them lost in the fact that they were already saved; to use a homely expression, they had no time to inquire whether the state to which they were called was permanent and final. The same intense faith which separated them from the present world, had already given them a place in the world to come. They had not to win the crown—it was already won: this life, when they thought of themselves in relation to Christ, was the next; as their union with Him seemed to them more true and real than the mere accidents of their temporal existence.
A few words will briefly recapitulate the doctrine of righteousness by faith as gathered from the Epistles of St. Paul.
Faith, then, according to the Apostle, is the spiritual principle
whereby we go out of ourselves to hold communion with God and Christ; not like
the faith of the Epistle to the Hebrews, clothing itself in the shadows of the law; but opposed to the law, and of a nature purely moral and
We acknowledge that there is a difference between the meaning
of justification by faith to St. Paul and to ourselves. Eighteen hundred years cannot
have passed away, leaving the world and the mind of man, or the use of language,
the same as it was. Times have altered, and Christianity, partaking of the social
and political progress of mankind, receiving, too, its own intellectual development,
has inevitably lost its simplicity. The true use of philosophy is to restore this
simplicity; to undo the perplexities which the love of system or past philosophies,
or the imperfection of language or logic, have made; to lighten the burden which
the traditions of ages have imposed upon us. To understand St. Paul we found it
necessary to get rid of definitions and deductions, which might be compared to
a mazy undergrowth of some noble forest, which we
Remaining, then, within the circle of the New Testament, which we receive as a rule of life for ourselves, no less than for the early Church, we must not ignore the great differences by which we are distinguished from those for whom it was written. Words of life and inspiration, heard by them with ravishment for the first time, are to us words of fixed and conventional meaning; they no longer express feelings of the heart, but ideas of the head. Nor is the difference less between the state of the world then and now; not only of the outward world in which we live, but of that inner world which we ourselves are. The law is dead to us, and we to the law; and the language of St. Paul is relative to what has passed away. The transitions of meaning in the use of the word law tend also to a corresponding variation in the meaning of faith. We are not looking for the immediate coming of Christ, and do not anticipate, in a single generation, the end of human things, or the history of a life in the moment of baptism or conversion. To us time and eternity have a fixed boundary, between them there is a gulf which we cannot pass; we do not mingle in our thoughts earth and heaven. Last of all, we are in a professing Christian world, in which religion, too, has become a sort of business; moreover, we see a long way off truths of which the first believers were eye-witnesses. Hence it has become difficult for us to conceive the simple force of such expressions as ‘dead with Christ,’ ‘if ye then be risen with Christ,’ which are repeated in prayers or sermons, but often convey no distinct impression to the minds of the hearers.
The neglect of these differences between ourselves and the first disciples has sometimes led to a distortion of doctrine and a perversion of life; where words had nothing to correspond to them, views of human nature have been invented to suit the supposed meaning of St. Paul. Thus, for example, the notion of legal righteousness is indeed a fiction as applied to our own times. Nor, in truth, is the pride of human nature, or the tendency to rebel against the will of God, or to attach an undue value to good works, better founded. Men are evil in all sorts of ways: they deceive themselves and others; they walk by the opinion of others, and not by faith; they give way to their passions; they are imperious and oppressive to one another. But if we look closely, we perceive that most of their sins are not consciously against God; the pride of rank, or wealth, or power, or intellect, may be shown towards their brethren, but no man is proud towards God. No man does wrong for the sake of rebelling against God. The evil is not that men are bound under a curse by the ever-present consciousness of sin, but that sins pass unheeded by: not that they wantonly offend God, but that they know Him not. So, again, there may be a false sense of security towards God, as is sometimes observed on a death-bed, when mere physical weakness seems to incline the mind to patience and resignation; yet this more often manifests itself in a mistaken faith, than in a reliance on good works. Or, to take another instance, we are often surprised at the extent to which men who are not professors of religion seem to practise Christian virtues; yet their state, however we may regard it, has nothing in common with legal or self-righteousness.
And besides theories of religion at variance with experience,
which have always a kind of unsoundness, the attempt of men to apply Scripture to
their own lives in the letter rather than in the spirit, has been very injurious
in other ways to the faith of Christ. Persons have confused the accidental circumstances
or language of the Apostolic
Leaving the peculiar and relative aspect of the Pauline doctrine, as well as the scholastic and traditional one, we have again to ask the meaning of justification by faith. We may divide the subject, first, as it may be considered in the abstract; and, secondly, as personal to ourselves.
I. Our justification may be regarded as an act on God’s part.
It may be said that this act is continuous, and commensurate with our whole lives; that although
‘known unto God are all his works from the beginning,’ yet that,
speaking as men, and translating what we term the acts of God into human language,
we are ever being more and more justified, as in theological writers we are said
also to be more and more sanctified. At first sight it seems that to deny this involves
an absurdity; it may be thought a contradiction to maintain that we are justified
at once, but sanctified all our life long. Yet perhaps this latter mode of statement
is better than the other, because it presents two aspects of the truth instead of
one only; it is also a nearer expression of the inward consciousness of the soul
itself. For must we not admit that it is the
II. It is an old problem in philosophy, What is the beginning
of our moral being? What is that prior principle which makes good actions produce
good habits? Which of those actions raises us above the world of sight? Plato
would have answered, the contemplation of the idea of good. Some of ourselves would
answer, by the substitution of a conception of moral growth for the mechanical theory
of habits. Leaving out of sight our relation to God, we can only say, that we are
fearfully and wonderfully made, with powers which we are unable to analyze. It is
a parallel difficulty in religion which is met by the doctrine of righteousness
by faith. We grow up spiritually, we cannot tell how; not by outward acts, nor
always by energetic effort, but stilly and silently, by the grace of God descending
upon us, as the dew falls upon the earth. When a person is apprehensive and excited
about his future state, straining every nerve, lest he should fall short of the
requirements of God, overpowered with the memory of his past sins, that is not the
temper of mind in which he can truly serve God, or work out his own salvation. Peace
must go before as well as follow after; a peace, too, not to be found in the necessity
of law (as philosophy has sometimes held), but in the sense of the love of God to
His creatures. He has no right to this peace, and yet he has it; in the consciousness
of his new state there is more than he can reasonably explain. At once and immediately
the Gospel tells him
III. Thus far, in the consideration of righteousness by faith, we have obtained two points of view, in which, though regarded in the abstract only, the truth of which these words are the symbol has still a meaning; first, as expressing the unchangeableness of the mercy of God; and, secondly, the mysteriousness of human action. As we approach nearer, we are unavoidably led to regard the gift of righteousness rather in reference to the subject than to the object, in relation to man rather than God. What quality, feeling, temper, habit in ourselves answers to it? It may be more or less conscious to us, more of a state and less of a feeling, showing itself rather in our lives than our lips. But for these differences we can make allowance. It is the same faith still, under various conditions and circumstances, and sometimes taking different names.
IV. The expression ‘righteousness by faith’ indicates the personal
character of salvation; it is not the tale of works that we do, but we ourselves
who are accepted of God. Who can bear to think of his own actions as
they are seen by the eye of the Almighty? Looking at their defective performance,
or analyzing them into the secondary motives out of which they have sprung,
do we seem to have any ground on which we can stand; is there anything which
satisfies ourselves? Yet, knowing that our own works cannot abide the judgement
of God, we know also that His love is not proportioned to them. He is a
Person who deals with us as persons over whom He has an absolute right,
who have nevertheless an endless value to Him. When He might exact all, He forgives
all; ‘the kingdom of heaven’ is like not only to a Master taking account with
his servants, but to a Father going out to meet his returning son. The symbol
and mean of this personal relation of man to God
V. Faith may be spoken of, in the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as the substance of things unseen. But what are the things unseen? Not only an invisible world ready to flash through the material at the appearance of Christ; not angels, or powers of darkness, or even God Himself ‘sitting,’ as the Old Testament described, ‘on the circle of the heavens;’ but the kingdom of truth and justice, the things that are within, of which God is the centre, and with which men everywhere by faith hold communion. Faith is the belief in the existence of this kingdom; that is, in the truth and justice and mercy of God, who disposes all things—not, perhaps, in our judgement for the greatest happiness of His creatures, but absolutely in accordance with our moral notions. And that this is not seen to be the case here, makes it a matter of faith that it will be so in some way that we do not at present comprehend. He that believes on God believes, first, that He is; and, secondly, that He is the Rewarder of them that seek Him.
VI. Now, if we go on to ask what gives this assurance of the truth
and justice of God, the answer is, the life and death of Christ, who is the
Son of God, and the Revelation of God. We know what He himself has told us of
God, and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from perfect truth; nay,
this goodness itself is the only conception we can form of God, if we
confess what the mere immensity of the material world tends to suggest, that
the Almighty is not a natural or even a supernatural power, but a Being of whom
the reason and conscience of man have a truer conception than imagination in
its highest flights. He is not in the storm, nor in the thunder, nor in the
earthquake, but ‘in the still small voice.’ And this image of God as He
reveals himself in the heart of man is ‘Christ in us the hope of glory;’ Christ
as He once was upon earth in His
We are on the edge of a theological difficulty; for who can deny that the image of that goodness may fade from the mind’s eye after so many centuries, or that there are those who recognize the idea and may be unable to admit the fact? Can we say that this error of the head is also a corruption of the will? The lives of such unbelievers in the facts of Christianity would sometimes refute our explanation. And yet it is true that Providence has made our spiritual life dependent on the belief in certain truths, and those truths run up into matters of fact, with the belief in which they have ever been associated; it is true, also, that the most important moral consequences flow from unbelief. We grant the difficulty: no complete answer can be given to it on this side the grave. Doubtless God has provided a way that the sceptic no less than the believer shall receive his due; He does not need our timid counsels for the protection of the truth. If among those who have rejected the facts of the Gospel history some have been rash, hypercritical, inflated with the pride of intellect, or secretly alienated by sensuality from the faith of Christ there have been others, also, upon whom we may conceive to rest a portion of that blessing which comes to such as ‘have not seen and yet have believed.’
VII. In the Epistles of St. Paul, and yet more in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, the relation of Christ to mankind is expressed under figures of
speech taken from the Mosaic dispensation: He is the Sacrifice for the sins of
men, ‘the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world;’ the Antitype of
all the types, the fulfilment in His own person of the Jewish law. Such words may
give comfort to those who think of God under human imagery, but they seem to require
explanation when we rise to the contemplation of Him as the God of truth, without
parts or passions, who knows all things, and cannot be angry with any, or see
VIII. A true faith has been sometimes defined to be not a faith
in the unseen merely, or in God or Christ, but a personal assurance of salvation.
Such a feeling may be only the veil of sensualism; it may be also the noble confidence
of St. Paul. ‘I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor death, nor any
other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.’ It may be an emotion, resting on no other ground except that we
believe; or, a conviction deeply rooted in our life and character. Scripture
and reason alike seem to require this belief in our own salvation: and yet to assume
that we are at the end of the race may make us lag in our course. Whatever danger
there is in the doctrine of the Divine decrees, the danger is nearer home,
and more liable to influence practice, when our faith takes the form of personal
assurance. How, then,
IX. This confidence must rest, first, on a sense of the truth and justice of God, rising above perplexities of fact in the world around us, or the tangle of metaphysical or theological difficulties. But although such a sense of the truth or justice of God is the beginning of our peace, yet a link of connexion is wanting before we can venture to apply to ourselves that which we acknowledge in the abstract. The justice of God may lead to our condemnation as well as to our justification. Are we then, in the language of the ancient tragedy, to say that no one can be counted happy before he dies, or that salvation is only granted when the end of our course is seen? Not so; the Gospel encourages us to regard ourselves as already saved; for we have communion with Christ and appropriate His work by faith. And this appropriation means nothing short of the renunciation of self and the taking up of the cross of Christ in daily life. Whether such an imitation or appropriation of Christ is illusive or real, a new mould of nature or only an outward and superficial impression, is a question not to be answered by any further theological distinction, but by an honest and good heart searching into itself. Then only, when we surrender ourselves into the hands of God, when we ask Him to show us to ourselves as we truly are, when we allow ourselves in no sin, when we attribute nothing to our own merits, when we test our faith, not by the sincerity of an hour, but of months and years, we learn the true meaning of that word in which, better than any other, the nature of righteousness by faith is summed up—peace.
‘And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the
greatest of these is love.’ There seems to be a contradiction in love being the
‘greatest,’ when faith is the medium of acceptance. Love, according to some, is preferred
to faith, because it reaches to another life; when faith and hope are swallowed
up in sight, love remains still.
‘The strength of sin is the law.’—
THESE words occur parenthetically in the fifteenth chapter of
the First Epistle to the Corinthians. They may be regarded as a summary of the seventh
chapter of the Romans. The thought contained in them is also the undercurrent of
several other passages in the Epistles of St. Paul, as, for example,
But the singular description of the law as the strength of sin
goes further, and has a deeper meaning; for it seems to make the law the cause
of sin. Here is the difficulty. The law may have been defective—adapted, as we should
say, to a different state of society, enforcing in some passages the morality of
a half-civilized age, such as could never render the practisers thereof perfect,
powerless to create a new life either in the Jewish nation collectively, or in the
There is another kind of language used respecting the law in Scripture which is very familiar, and seems to be as natural to our preconceived notions as the passage which we are now considering is irreconcilable with them. The law is described as the preparation of the Gospel; the first volume of the book, the other half of Divine Revelation. It is the veil on the face of Moses which obscured the excess of light, as the Apostle himself says in the Epistle to the Corinthians; or the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, as in the Galatians; or the shadow of good things to come, as in the Hebrews. But all these figures of speech can only be cited here to point out how different the conception in them is from that which is implied in such words as ‘The strength of sin is the law.’ In these latter we have not the light shining more and more unto the perfect day, but the light and darkness; that is, the Gospel and the law opposed, as it were two hemispheres, dividing time and the world and the human heart.
Nor, again, if we consider the law in its immediate workings
on the mind, as it might seem to be struggling within for mastery over the Gospel,
as we may imagine Catholicism and Protestantism in the mind of Luther or
Once more, parallels from heathen authors, such as ‘Nitimur in vetitum semper,’ and the witness of the heart against itself, ‘that it is evil continually,’ have been quoted in illustration of the verse placed at the beginning of this Essay. The aphorisms alluded to are really metaphorical expressions, intended by satirists and moralists to state forcibly that men are prone to err, not that law is provocative or the cause of sin. Mankind offend in various ways, and from different motives—ambition, vanity, selfishness, passion—but not simply from the desire to break the law, or to offend nod. So, again, as we multiply laws, we may seem to multiply offences: the real truth is, that as offences multiply the laws multiply also. To break the law for the sake of doing so, is not crime or sin, but madness. Nor, again, will it do to speak of the perversity of the human will—of men like children, doing a thing because, as we say in familiar language, they are told not to do it. This perversity consists simply in knowing the better and choosing the worse, in passion prevailing over reason. The better is not the cause of their choosing the worse, nor is reason answerable for the dictates of passion, which would be the parallel required.
All these, then, we must regard as half-explanations, which fail
to reach the Apostle’s meaning. When we ask what he can mean by saying that
‘the
law is the strength of
We are commencing an inquiry which lacks the sustaining interest of controversy, the data of which are metaphysical reasonings and points of view which cannot be even imagined without a considerable effort of mind, and which there will be the more indisposition to admit, as they run counter to the popular belief that the Bible is a book easily and superficially intelligible. Such feelings are natural; we are jealous of those who wrap up in mystery the Word of life, who carry us into an atmosphere which none else can breathe. We cannot be too jealous of Kant or Fichte, Schelling or Hegel, finding their way into the interpretation of Scripture. As jealous should we be also of any patristic or other system which draws away its words from their natural meaning. Still the Scripture has difficulties not brought but found there, a few words respecting which will pave the way for the inquiry on which we are entering.
The Bible is at once the easiest and the hardest of books. The
easiest, in that it gives us plain rules for moral and religious duties which he
that runs can read, an example
Nor is this difficulty less, but greater, in reference to words
which are common to us and to them, which are used by both with a certain degree
of similarity, and with a sort of analogy to other words which puts us off our guard,
and prevents our perceiving the real change of meaning. Such is the case with the
words church, priest, sacrifice, and in general with words taken from the Mosaic
dispensation; above all, with the word ‘law.’ Does not common sense teach us that
whatever St. Paul meant by law, he must have meant something hard to us to understand,
to whom the law has no existence, who are Europeans, not Orientals? to whom the
law of the land is no longer the immediate direct law of God, and who can form no
idea of the entanglements and perplexities which the attempt to adapt the law of
Mount Sinai to an altered world must have caused to the Jew? Is it not certain that
whenever we use the
But the consideration of these difficulties does not terminate
with themselves; they lead us to a higher idea of Scripture; they compel us to
adapt ourselves to Scripture, instead of adapting Scripture to ourselves. In the
ordinary study of the sacred volume, the chief difficulty is the accurate perception
of the connexion. The words lie smoothly on the page; the road is trite and worn.
Only just here and there we stumble over an impediment; as it were a stone lying
not loose, but deeply embedded in the soil; which is the indication of a
world below just appearing on the surface. Such are many passages in the Epistles
of St. Paul. There is much that we really understand, much that we appear to understand,
which has, indeed, a deceitful congruity with words and thoughts of our own day.
Some passages remain intractable. From these latter we obtain the pure ore; here,
if anywhere, are traces of the peculiar state and feelings of the Church of the
Apostles, such as no after age could invent, or even understand. It is to these
we turn, not for a rule of conduct, but for the inner life of Apostles and
Churches; rejecting nothing as designedly strange or mysterious, satisfied with
no explanation that does violence to the language, not suffering our minds to be
diverted from the point of the difficulty, comparing one difficulty with
The subject of the present Essay is suggestive of the following questions:—‘What did St. Paul mean by the law, and what by sin?’ ‘Is the Apostle speaking from the experience of his own heart and the feelings of his age and country, or making an objective statement for mankind in general, of what all men do or ought to feel?’ ‘Is there anything in his circumstances, as a convert from the law to the Gospel, that gives the words a peculiar force?’ And lastly, we may inquire what application may be made of them to ourselves: whether, ‘now that the law is dead to us, and we to the law,’ the analogy of faith suggests anything, either in our social state or in our physical constitution or our speculative views, which stands in the same relation to us that the law did to the first converts?
First, then, as has been elsewhere remarked, the law includes
in itself different and contradictory aspects. It is at once the letter of the book
of the law, and the image of law in general. It is alive, and yet dead; it is holy,
just, and good, and yet the law of sin and death. It is without and within at the
same time; a power like that of conscience is ascribed to it, and yet he who is
under its power feels that he is reaching towards something without him which can
never become a part of his being. In its effect on individuals it may be likened
to a sword entering into the soul, which can never knit together with flesh and
blood. In relation to the world at large, it is a prison
This ambiguity in the use of the word ‘law’ first occurs in
the Old Testament itself. In the prophecies and psalms, as well as in the writings
of St. Paul, the law is in a great measure ideal. When the Psalmist spoke of ‘meditating
in the law of the Lord,’ he was not thinking of the five books of Moses. The law
which he delighted to contemplate was not written down (as well might we imagine
that the Platonic idea was a treatise on philosophy); it was the will of God, the
truth of God, the justice and holiness of God. In later ages the same feelings began
to gather around the volume of the law itself. The law was ideal still; but with
this idealism were combined the reference to its words, and the literal enforcement
of its precepts. That it was the law of God was a solemn thought to those who violated
the least of its commandments; and yet its commandments were often such as in
a changed world it was impossible to obey. It needed interpreters before
it could be translated into the language of daily life. Such a law could have little
hold on practice; but it had the greatest on ideas. It was the body of truth, the
framework of
This idealizing tendency of his age we cannot help tracing in St. Paul himself. As to the Jew of Alexandria the law became an ideal rule of truth and right, so to St. Paul after his conversion it became an ideal form of evil. As there were many Antichrists, so also there were many laws, and none of them absolutely fallen away from their Divine original. In one point of view, the fault was all with the law; in another point of view, it was all with human nature; the law ideal and the law actual, the law as it came from God and the law in its consequences to man, are ever crossing each other. It was the nature of the law to be good and evil at once; evil, because it was good; like the pillar of cloud and fire, which was its image, light by night and darkness by day—light and darkness in successive instants.
But, as the law seems to admit of a wider range of meaning than
we should at first sight have attributed to it, so also the word ‘sin’ has a more
extended sense than our own use of it implies. Sin with us is a definite act or
state. Any crime or vice considered in reference to God may be termed sin; or,
according to another use of it, which is
There are physical states in which the body is exquisitely
sensitive to pain, which are not the sign of health, but of disease. So also there
are mental states in which the sense of sin and evil, and the need of forgiveness,
press upon us with an unusual heaviness. Such is the state which the Scriptures
describe by the words, ‘they were pricked to the heart,’ when whole multitudes m
sympathy with each other felt the need of a change, and in the extremity
of their suffering were saved, looking on the Lord Jesus. No such spiritual agonies
occur in the daily life of all men. Crimes and vices and horrid acts there are,
but not that of
As there could be no sin if we were wholly unconscious of it, as children or animals are in a state of innocence, as the heathen world we ourselves regard as less guilty or responsible than those who have a clearer light in the dispensation of the Gospel, so in a certain point of view sin may be regarded as the consciousness of sin. It is this latter which makes sin to be what it is, which distinguishes it from crime or vice, which links it with our personality. The first state described by the Roman satirist—
‘At stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum
Pingue; caret culpâ; nescit quid perdat,’—
is the reverse of what the Apostle means by the life of sin. In ordinary language, vices, regarded in reference to God, are termed sins; and we attempt to arouse the child or the savage to a right sense of his unconscious acts by so terming them. But, in the Apostle’s language, consciousness is presupposed in the sin itself; not reflected on it from without. That which gives it the nature of sin is conscientia peccati. As Socrates, a little inverting the ordinary view and common language of mankind, declared all virtue to be knowledge; so the language of St. Paul implies all sin to be the knowledge of sin. Conscientia peccati peccatum ipsum est.
It is at this point the law enters, not to heal the wounded soul,
but to enlarge its wound. The law came in that the offence might abound. ‘Whatever
dim notion of right and wrong pre-existed; whatever sense of physical impurity
may have followed, in the language of the Book of Job, one born in sin; whatever
terror the outpouring of the vials of
If from the Apostle’s ideal point of view we regard the law, not as the tables given on Mount Sinai, or the books of Moses, but as the law written on the heart, the difficulty is, not how we are to identify the law with the consciousness of sin, but how we are to distinguish them. They are different aspects of the same thing, related to each other as positive and negative, two poles of human nature turned towards God, or away from Him. In the language of metaphysical philosophy, we say that ‘the subject is identical with the object;’ in the same way sin implies the law. The law written on the heart, when considered in reference to the subject, is simply the conscience. The conscience, in like manner, when conceived of objectively, as words written down in a book, as a rule of life which we are to obey, becomes the law. For the sake of clearness we may express the whole in a sort of formula. ‘Sin = the consciousness of sin = the law.’ From this last conclusion the Apostle only stops short from the remembrance of the Divine original of the law, and the sense that what made it evil to him was the fact that it was in its own nature good.
Wide, then, as might at first have seemed to be the interval between the law and sin, we see that they have their meeting point in the conscience. Yet their opposition and identity have a still further groundwork or reflection in the personal character and life of the Apostle.
I. The spiritual combat, in the seventh chapter of the Epistle
to the Romans, which terminates with the words, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the
II. In another way the Apostle’s personal history gives a peculiar
aspect to his view of the law. On every occasion, at every turn of his life, on
his first return to Jerusalem, when preaching the Gospel in Asia and Greece, in
the great struggle between Jewish and Gentile Christians—his persecutors were the
Jews, his great enemy the law. Is it surprising that this enmity should have been
idealized by him? that the law within and the law without should have blended in
one? that his own remembrances of the past
III. The Gospel of St. Paul was a spirit, not a law; it nowhere enjoined the observance of feasts and sacrifices, and new moons and Sabbaths, but was rather antagonistic to them; it was heedless of externals of any kind, except as matter of expediency and charity. It was a Gospel which knew of no distinction of nations or persons; in which all men had the offer of ‘grace, mercy, and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ;’ which denounced the oldness of the letter; which contrasted ‘the tables of stone with fleshy tables of the heart;’ which figured Christ taking the handwriting of ordinances and nailing them to His cross; which put faith in the place of works, and even prohibited circumcision. Such a Gospel was in extreme antagonism to the law. Their original relation was forgotten; the opposition between them insensibly passed into an opposition of good and evil. And yet a new relation sprang up also. For the law, too, witnessed against itself; and, to the Apostle interpreting its words after the manner of his age, became the allegory of the Gospel.
IV. Once more: it may be observed (see note on the Imputation
of the Sin of Adam), that the place which the law occupies in the
teaching of St. Paul is analogous to
V. It is not, however, to the life of the Apostle, or to the circle of theological doctrines, that we need confine ourselves for illustration of the words, ‘the strength of sin is the law.’ Morality also shows us many ways in which good and evil meet together, and truth and error seem inseparable from each other. We cannot do any thing good without some evil consequences indirectly flowing from it; we cannot express any truth without involving ourselves in some degree of error, or occasionally conveying an impression to others wholly erroneous. Human characters and human ideas are always mixed and limited; good and truth ever drag evil and error in their train. Good itself may be regarded as making evil to be what it is, if, as we say, they are relative terms, and the disappearance of the one would involve the disappearance of the other. And there are many things, in which not only may the old adage be applied—‘Corruptio optimi pessima,’ but in which the greatest good is seen to be linked with the worst evil, as, for example, the holiest affections with the grossest sensualities, or a noble ambition with crime and unscrupulousness; even religion seems sometimes to have a dark side, and readily to ally itself with immorality or with cruelty.
Plato’s kingdom of evil (Rep. I.) is not unlike the state into
which the Jewish people passed during the last few years before the taking of the
city. Of both it might be said, in St. Paul’s language, ‘the law is the strength
of sin.’ A kingdom of pure evil, as the Greek philosopher observed,
VI. The law and the Gospel may be opposed, according to a modern distinction, as positive and moral. ‘Moral precepts are distinguished from positive, as precepts the reasons of which we see from those the reasons of which we do not see.’ Moral precepts may be regarded as the more general, while positive precepts fill up the details of the general principle, and apply it to circumstances. Every positive precept involves not merely a moral obligation to obey it so far as it is just, but a moral law, which is its ultimate basis. It will often happen that what was at first just and right may in the course of ages become arbitrary and tyrannical, if the enforcement of it continue after the reason for it has ceased. Or, as it may be expressed more generally, the positive is ever tending to become moral, and the moral to become positive; the positive to become moral, in so far as that which was at first a mere external command has acquired such authority, and so adapted itself to the hearts of men, as to have an internal witness to it, as in the case of the fourth commandment; the moral to become positive, where a law has outlived itself, and the state of society to which it was adapted and the feelings on which it rested have passed away.
The latter was the case with the Jewish law. It had once
Much of this burden would have been taken off, had there existed
among the Jews the distinction which is familiar to ourselves of a moral and ceremonial
law. They would then have distinguished between the weightier matters of the law
and the ‘tithe of mint, anise, and cumin.’ Such distinctions are great ‘peace-makers;’ they mediate between the present and the past. But in Judaism all was regarded
as alike of Divine authority, all subjected the transgressor to the same penalty.
‘He who offended in one point was guilty of all;’ the least penalty was, in a
figure, ‘death,’ and there was no more for the greatest offences. The infringement
of any positive command tortured the conscience with a fearful looking for
of judgement; the deepest moral guilt could do no more. Such a religion
could only end in hypocrisy and
Let us imagine, in contrast with this, the Gospel with its spiritualizing humanizing influences, soothing the soul of man, the source of joy, and love, and peace. It is a supernatural power, with which the elements themselves bear witness, endowed with a fullness of life, and imparting life to all who receive it. It is not a law to which the will must submit, but an inward principle which goes before the will; it is also a moral principle to which the heart and conscience instantly assent, which gives just what we want, and seems to set us right with the world, with ourselves, and with God. Yet, in a figure, it is a law also; but in a very different sense from that of Moses: a law within, and not without us; a law of the Spirit of life, not of death; of freedom, not of slavery; of blessing, not of cursing; of mercy, not of vengeance: a law which can be obeyed, not one to which, while it exacts punishment, obedience is impossible. When we look upon this picture, and upon that, is it strange that one who was filled with the mind of Christ should have regarded the law as the strength of sin ‘?
Of what has been said, the sum is as follows:—When St. Paul
speaks of ‘the law as the strength of sin,’ he uses the term law partly for law in
general, but more especially for the burden of the Jewish law on the conscience; when he speaks of sin, he means chiefly the consciousness of sin, of which it
may be truly said, ‘Where there is no law, there is no transgression; and sin is
not imputed where there is no law.’ Thirdly, he speaks of the law from his own spiritual
experience of ‘fears within, and of fightings without;’ and from a knowledge of
his own countrymen, ‘who please not God, but are contrary to all men.’ Fourthly,
he conceives the law as an ideal form of evil, analogous to original sin in the
language of a later theology. Lastly, if there be anything apparently contradictory
or to us unintelligible in his manner of speaking of the law, we must
In another sense than that in which the Apostle employs the words, ‘the law is dead to us, and we to the law.’ The lapse of ages has but deepened the chasm which separates Judaism from Christianity. Between us and them there is a gulf fixed, so that few are they who pass from them to us, nor do any go from us to them. The question remains, What application is it possible for us to make of that which has preceded? Is there anything in the world around standing in the same relation to us that the law did to the contemporaries of St. Paul?
One answer that might be given is, ‘the Roman Catholic Church.’
The experience of Luther seems indeed not unlike that struggle which St. Paul describes.
But whatever resemblance may be found between Romanism and the ancient Jewish religion—whether
in their ceremonial or sacrificial character, or in the circumstance of their both
resting on outward and visible institutions, and so limiting the worship of Spirit
and truth—it cannot be said that Romanism stands in the same relation to us individually
that the law did to the Apostle St. Paul. The real parallels are more general,
though less obvious. The law St. Paul describes as without us, but not in that sense
in which an object of sense is without us: though without us it exercises an inward
power; it drives men to despair; it paralyzes human
It has been already remarked that a general parallel to ‘the law as the strength of sin’ is to be found in that strange blending of good and evil, of truth and error, which is the condition of our earthly existence. But there seem also to be cases in which the parallel is yet closer; in which good is not only the accidental cause of evil, but the limiting principle which prevents man from working out to the uttermost his individual and spiritual nature. In some degree, for example, society may exercise the same tyranny over us, and its conventions be stumbling-blocks to us of the same kind as the law to the contemporaries of St. Paul; or, in another way, the thought of self and the remembrance of our past life may ‘deceive and slay us.’ As in the description of the seventh chapter of the Romans—‘It was I, and it was not I; and who can deliver me from the influence of education and the power of my former self?’ Or faith and reason, reason and faith may seem mutually to limit each other, and to make the same opposition in speculation that the law and the flesh did to the Apostle in practice. Or, to seek the difficulty on a lower level, while fully assured of the truths of the gospel, we may seem to be excluded from them by our mental or bodily constitution, which no influences of the Spirit or power of habit may be capable of changing.
1. The society even of a Christian country—and the same remark
applies equally to a Church—is only to a certain extent based upon
Christian principle. It rests neither on the view that all mankind are evil, nor
that they are all good, but on certain motives, supposed to be strong enough to
bind mankind together; on institutions handed down from former generations; on
tacit compacts between opposing
It is no imaginary spectre that we are raising, but one that
acts powerfully on the minds of religious men. Is it not commonly said by many,
that the government is unchristian, that the legislature is unchristian, that all
governments and all legislatures are the enemies of Christ and His Church? Herein
to them is the fixed evil of the world; not in vice, or in war, or in injustice,
or in falsehood; but simply in the fact that the constitution of their country
conforms to the laws of human society. It is not necessary to suppose that they
will succeed in carrying out their principles, or that a civilized nation will place
its liberties in the keeping of a religious party. But, without succeeding, they
do a great deal of harm to themselves and to the world. For they draw the mind away
from the
But it is not only in the political world that imaginary forms
of evil present themselves, and we are haunted by ideas which can never be carried
out in practice; the difficulty comes nearer home to most of us in our social life.
If governments and nations appear unchristian, the appearance of society itself
is in a certain point of view still more unchristian. Suppose a person acquainted
with the real state of the world in which we live and move, and neither morosely
depreciating nor unduly exalting human nature, to turn to the image of the Christian
Church in the New Testament, how great would the difference appear How would the
blessing of poverty contrast with the real, even the moral advantages of wealth! the family of love, with distinctions of ranks! the spiritual, almost supernatural,
society of the first Christians, with our world of fashion, of business, of pleasure! the community of goods, with our meagre charity to others! the prohibition of
going to law before the heathen, with our endless litigation before judges of all
religions! the cross of Christ, with our ordinary life! How little does the world
in which we live seem to be
II. Mere weakness of character will sometimes afford an illustration
of the Apostle’s words. If there are some whose days are ‘bound each to each by
natural piety,’ there are others on whom the same continuous power is exercised
for evil as well as good; they are unable to throw off their former self; the
sins of their youth lie heavy on them; the influence of opinions which they have
ceased to hold discolours their minds. Or it may be that their weakness takes a
different form, viz. that of clinging to some favourite resolve, or of yielding
to some fixed idea which gets dominion over them, and becomes the limit of all their
ideas. A common instance of this may be found in the use made by many persons of
conscience. Whatever they wish or fancy, whatever course of action they are led
to by some influence obvious to others, though unobserved by themselves, immediately
assumes the necessary and stereotyped form of the conscientious fulfilment of a
duty. To every suggestion of what is right and reasonable, they reply only with
the words—‘their consciences will not allow it.’ They do what they think right; they do not observe that they never seem to themselves to do otherwise. No voice
of authority, no opinion of others, weighs with them when put in the scale against
the dictates of what they term conscience. As they
Another form of conscience yet more closely resembles the principle described in the seventh chapter of the Romans. There is a state in which man is powerless to act, and is, nevertheless, clairvoyant of all the good and evil of his own nature. He places the good and evil principle before him, and is ever oscillating between them. He traces the labyrinth of conflicting principles in the world, and is yet further perplexed and entangled. He is sensitive to every breath of feeling, and incapable of the performance of any duty. Or take another example; it sometimes happens that the remembrance of past suffering, or the consciousness of sin, may so weigh a man down as fairly to paralyze his moral power. He is distracted between what he is and what he was; old habits and vices, and the new character which is being fashioned in him. Sometimes the balance seems to hang equal; he feels the earnest wish and desire to do rightly, but cannot hope to find pleasure and satisfaction in a good life; he desires heartily to repent, but can never think it possible that God should forgive. ‘It is I, and it is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me.’ ‘I have, and have never ceased to have, the wish for better things, even amid haunts of infamy and vice.’ In such language, even now, though with less fervour than in ‘the first spiritual chaos of the affections,’ does the soul cry out to God—‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ‘
III. There is some danger of speculative difficulties presenting
the same hindrance and stumbling-block to our
It is true that the generation to which we belong has difficulties
to contend with, perhaps greater than those of any former age; and certainly different
from them. Some of those difficulties arise out of the opposition of reason and
faith; the critical inquiries of which the Old and New Testament have been the
subject, are a trouble to many; the circumstance that, while the Bible is the word
of life
It is foolish to lament over these things; it would be still more foolish to denounce them. They are the mental trials of the age and country in which God has placed us. If they seem at times to exercise a weakening or unsettling influence, may we not hope that increasing love of truth, deeper knowledge of ourselves and other men, will, in the end, simplify and not perplex the path of life. We may leave off in mature years where we began in youth, and receive not only the kingdom of God, but the world also, as ‘little children.’ The analysis of moral and religious truth may correct its errors without destroying its obligations. Experience of the illusions of religious feeling at a particular time should lead us to place religion on a foundation which is independent of feeling. Because the Scripture is no longer held to be a book of geology or ethnology, or a supernatural revelation of historical facts, it will not cease to be the law of our lives, exercising an influence over us, different in kind from the ideas of philosophical systems, or the aspirations of poetry or romance. Because the world (of which we are a part) is hypocritical and deceitful, and individuals go about dissecting their neighbours’ motives and lives, that is a reason for cherishing a simple and manly temper of mind, which does not love men the less because it knows human nature more; which pierces the secrets of the heart, not by any process of anatomy, but by the light of an eye from which the mists of selfishness are dispersed.
IV. The relation in which science stands to us may seem to bear
but a remote resemblance to that in which the law stood to the Apostle St. Paul.
Yet the analogy is not fanciful, but real. Traces of physical laws are discernible
everywhere in the world around us; in ourselves also, whose souls are knit together
with our bodies, whose bodies are a part of the material creation. It seems as if
nature
Changes of this kind pass gradually over the world; the mind
of man is not suddenly thrown into a state for which it is unprepared. No one has
more doubts than he can carry; the way of life is not found to stop and come to
an end in the midst of a volcano, or on the edge of a precipice. Dangers occur,
not from the disclosure of any new, or hitherto unobserved, facts, for which, as
for all other blessings, we have reason to be thankful to God; but from our concealment
or denial of them, from the belief that we can make them other than they are; from
the fancy that some a priori notion, some undefined word, some intensity
of personal conviction, is the weapon with which they are to be met. New facts,
whether bearing on Scripture, or on religion generally, or on morality, are sure
to win their way; the tide refuses to recede at any man’s bidding. And there are
not wanting signs that the increase of secular knowledge is beginning to be met
by a corresponding progress in religious ideas. Controversies are dying out; the
lines of party are fading into one another; niceties of doctrine are laid aside.
The opinions respecting the inspiration of Scripture, which are held in the present
day by good and able men, are not those of fifty years ago; a change may be observed
on many points, a reserve on still more. Formulas of reconciliation have sprung
up: ‘the Bible is not a book of science,’ ‘the inspired writers were not taught supernaturally
what they could have
Ἠνίκα δ᾽ ἂν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον,
περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα.—
THUS we have reached another stage in the development of the great theme. The new commandment has become old; faith is taught in the Book of the Law. ‘Abraham had faith in God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.’ David spoke of the forgiveness of sins in the very spirit of the Gospel. The Old Testament is not dead, but alive again. It refers not to the past, but to the present. The truths which we daily feel, are written in its pages. There are the consciousness of sin and the sense of acceptance. There is the veiled remembrance of a former world, which is also the veiled image of a future one.
To us the Old and New Testaments are two books, or two parts
of the same book, which fit into one another, and can never be separated or torn
asunder. They are double one against the other, and the New Testament is the revelation
of the Old. To the first believers it was otherwise: as yet there was no New Testament; nor is there any trace that the authors of the New Testament ever expected their
own writings to be placed on a level with the Old. We can scarcely imagine what
would have been the feeling of St. Paul, could he have foreseen that later ages
would look not to the faith of Abraham in the law, but to the Epistle to the Romans,
as the highest authority on the doctrine of justification by faith; or that they
would have regarded the
But if the writings of the New Testament were regarded by the
contemporaries of the Apostle in a manner different from that of later ages, there
was a difference, which it is far more difficult for us to appreciate, in their
manner of reading the Old Testament. To them it was not half, but the whole, needing
nothing to be added to it or to counteract it, but containing everything in itself.
It seemed to come home to them; to be meant specially for their age; to be understood
by them, as its words had never been understood before. ‘Did not their hearts burn
within them?’ as the Apostles expounded to them the Psalms and Prophets. The manner
of this exposition was that of the age in which they lived. They brought to the
understanding of it, not a knowledge of the volume of the New Testament, but the
mind of Christ. Sometimes they found the lesson which they sought in the plain language
of Scripture; at other times, coming round to the same lesson by the paths of allegory,
or seeming even in the sound of a word to catch an echo of the Redeemer’s name.
Various as are the writings of the Old Testament, composed by such
numerous authors, at so many different times, so diverse in style and subject,
in them all they read only—the truth of Christ. They read without distinctions
of moral and ceremonial, type and antitype, history and prophecy, without
inquiries into the original meaning or connexion of passages, without theories
of the relation of the Old and New Testaments. Whatever contrast existed was of
another kind, not of the parts of a book, but of the law and faith;
What was then joined cannot now be divided or put asunder. The
New Testament will never be unclothed of the Old. No one in later ages can place
himself in the position of the heathen convert who learnt the name of Christ first,
afterwards the Law and the Prophets. Such instances were probably rare even in the
first days of the Christian Church. No one can easily imagine the manner in which
St. Paul himself sets the Law over against the Gospel, and at the same time translates
one into the language of the other. Time has closed up the rent which the law made
in the heart of man; and the superficial resemblances on which the Apostle sometimes
dwells, have not the same force to us which they had to his contemporaries. But
a real unity remains to ourselves as well as to the Apostle, the unity not of the
letter, but of the spirit, like the unity of life or of a human soul, which lasts
on amid the changes of our being. The Old Testament and the New do not dovetail
into one another like the parts of an indenture; it is a higher figure than this,
which is needed to describe the continuity of the Divine work. Or rather, the simple
fact is above all figures, and can receive no addition from philosophical notions
of design, or the observation of minute coincidences. What we term the Old and New
dispensation is the increasing revelation of God, amid the accidents of human history: first, in himself; secondly, in Ms Son, gathering not one nation only, but all
mankind into His family. It is the vision of God himself, true and just, and remembering
mercy in one age of the world; not ceasing to be true and just, but softening also
into human gentleness, and love, and forgiveness, and making His dwelling in the
human heart in another. The wind, and the earthquake, and the fire pass by first,
and after that ‘the still small voice.’ This is the great fulfilment of the Law
It is not natural, nor perhaps possible, to us to cease to use the figures in which ‘holy men of old’ spoke of that which belonged to their peace. But it is well that we should sometimes remind ourselves, that ‘all these things are a shadow, but the body is of Christ.’ Framed as our minds are, we are ever tending to confuse that which is accidental with that which is essential, to substitute the language of imagery for the severity of our moral ideas, to entangle Divine truths in the state of society in which they came into the world or in the ways of thought of a particular age. ‘All these things are a shadow;’ that is to say, not only the temple and tabernacle, and the victim laid on the altar, and the atonement offered once a year for the sins of the nation; but the conceptions which later ages express by these words, so far as anything human or outward or figurative mingles with them, so far as they cloud the Divine nature with human passions, so far as they imply, or seem to imply, anything at variance with our notions of truth and right, are as much, or even more a shadow than that outward image which belonged to the elder dispensation. The same Lord who compared the scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven to a householder who brought forth out of his treasure things new and old, said also in a figure, that ‘new cloth must not be put on an old garment’ or ‘new wine into old bottles.’
THAT so many opposite systems of Theology seek their authority in Scripture is a fair proof that Scripture is different from them all. That is to say, Scripture often contains in germ what is capable of being drawn to either side; it is indistinct, where they are distinct; it presents two lights, where they present only one; it speaks inwardly, while they clothe themselves in the forms of human knowledge. That indistinct, intermediate, inward point of view at which the truth exists but in germ, they have on both sides tended to extinguish and suppress. Passing allusions, figures of speech, rhetorical oppositions, have been made the foundation of doctrinal statements, which are like a part of the human mind itself, and seem as if they could never be uprooted, without uprooting the very sentiment of religion. Systems of this kind exercise a constraining power, which makes it difficult for us to see anything in Scripture but themselves.
For example, how slender is the foundation in the New Testament
for the doctrine of Adam’s sin being imputed to his posterity—two passages in St.
Paul at most, and these of uncertain interpretation. The little cloud, no bigger
than a man’s hand, has covered the heavens. To reduce such
The two passages alluded to are
We will suppose, then, that no reference is contained in either
passage to ‘actual sin.’ In some other sense than this mankind are identified with
Adam’s transgression. But the question still remains, whether Adam’s sin and death
are merely the type of the sin and death of his posterity, or, more than this, the
cause. The first explanation quite satisfies the meaning of the words, ‘As in Adam
The question involves the more general one, whether the use of
language by St. Paul makes it necessary that we should take his words literally
in this passage. Is he speaking of Adam’s sin being the cause of sin and death to
his posterity, in any other sense than he spoke of Abraham being a father of circumcision
to the uncircumcised? (
I. A very slight difference in the mode of expression would make
it impossible for us to attribute to St. Paul the doctrine of the imputation of
the sin of Adam. But we have seen before how varied, and how different from our
own, are his modes of thought and language. Compare
II. The Apostle is not speaking of Adam as fallen from a state of innocence. He could scarcely have said, ‘The first man is of the earth, earthy,’ if he had had in his mind that Adam had previously existed in a pure and perfect state. He is only drawing a parallel between Adam and Christ. The moment we leave this parallel, all is uncertain and undetermined. What was the nature of that innocent life? or of the act of Adam which forfeited it? and how was the effect of that act communicated to his posterity? The minds of men in different ages of the world have strayed into these and similar inquiries. Difficulties about ‘fate, predestination, and free-will’ (not food for angels’ thoughts) cross our path in the garden of Eden itself. But neither the Old or New Testament give any answer to them. Imagination has possessed itself of the vacant spot, and been busy, as it often is, in proportion to the slenderness of knowledge.
III. There are other elements of St. Paul’s teaching, which are either inconsistent with the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, or at any rate are so prominent as to make such a doctrine if held by him comparatively unimportant. According to St. Paul, it is not the act of Adam, but the law that
‘Brought sin into the world and all our woe.’
And the law is almost equivalent to ‘the knowledge of sin.’ But original sin is, or may be, wholly unconscious—the fault of nature in the infant equally with the man. Not so the sin of which St. Paul speaks, which is inseparable from consciousness, as he says himself: ‘I was alive without the law once,’ that is, before I came to the consciousness of sin.
IV. It will be admitted that we ought to feel still greater reluctance
to press the statement of the Apostle to its strict logical consequences, if we
find that the language which he here uses is that of his age and country. Prom the
circumstance of our first reading the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s sin to
his posterity in the Epistles of St. Paul, we can hardly persuade ourselves that
this is not its original source. The incidental manner in which it is alluded to
might indeed lead us to suppose that it would scarcely have been intelligible, had
it not been also an opinion of his time. But if this inference should seem doubtful,
there is direct evidence to show that the Jews connected sin and death, and the
sins and death of mankind, with the sin of Adam, in the same way as the Apostle.
The earliest trace of such a doctrine is found in the apocryphal Book of Wisdom,
But not only is the connexion of sin and death with each other, and with the sin of Adam, found in the Rabbinical writings; the type and antitype of the first and second Adam are also contained in them. In reading the first chapters of Genesis, the Jews made a distinction between the higher Adam, who was the light of the world, and had control over all things, who was mystically referred to where it is said, ‘they two shall be one flesh;’ and the inferior Adam, who was Lord only of the creation; who had ‘the breath of life,’ but not ‘the living soul.’ (Schoettgen, i. 512-514, 670-673.) By some, indeed, the latter seems to have been identified with the Messiah. By Philo, on the other hand, the λόγος is identified with the πρῶτος Ἀδάμ, who is without sex, while the ἄνθρωπος χοικός is created afterwards by the help of the angels (De Creat. Mund. p. 30). It is not the object of this statement to reconcile these variations, but merely to indicate, first, that the idea of a first and second Adam was familiar to the Jews in the time of St. Paul, and that one or other of them was regarded by them as the Word and the Messiah.
V. A slighter, though not less real foundation of the doctrine has been what may be termed the logical symmetry of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ and of the sin of Adam. The latter half is the correlative of the former; they mutually support each other. We place the first and second Adam in juxtaposition, and seem to see a fitness or reason in the one standing in the same relation to the fallen as the other to the saved.
VI. It is hardly necessary to ask the further question, what meaning
we can attach to the imputation of sin and guilt which are not our own, and
of which we are unconscious. God can never see us other than we really are,
or judge us without reference to all our circumstances and antecedents. If we
can hardly suppose that He would allow a fiction of mercy to be interposed
between ourselves and Him, still less can we imagine that He would interpose
VII. A small part of the train of consequences which have been
drawn out by divines can be made to hang even upon the letter of the Apostle’s words,
though we should not take into account the general temper and spirit of his writings.
Logical inferences often help to fill up the aching void in our knowledge of the
spiritual world. They seem necessary; in time they receive a new support from habit
and tradition. They hide away and conceal the nature of the original premisses.
They may be likened to the superstructure of a building which the foundation has
not strength to bear; or, rather, perhaps, when compared to the serious efforts
of human thought, to the plaything of the child who places one brick upon another
in wondering suspense, until the whole totters and falls, or his childish fancy
pleases itself with throwing it down. So, to apply these remarks to our present
subject, we are contented to repeat the simple words of the Apostle, ‘As in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’ Perhaps we may not be able
to recall all the associations which they conveyed to his mind. But neither are
we willing to affirm his meaning to be that the sin of one man was the cause of
other men’s sins, or that God condemned one part of the human race for a fault not
their own, because He was going to save another part; or that original sin, as
some say, or the guilt of original sin, as is the opinion of others, is washed away
in baptism. There is a terrible explicitness in such language touching the realities
of a future life which makes us shrink from trusting our own faculties amid
far-off deductions like these.
On the whole, then, we are led to infer that in the Augustinian interpretation of this passage, even if it agree with the letter of the text, too little regard has been paid to the extent to which St. Paul uses figurative language, and to the manner of his age in interpretations of the Old Testament. The difficulty of supposing him to be allegorizing the narrative of Genesis is slight, in comparison with the difficulty of supposing him to countenance a doctrine at variance with our first notions of the moral nature of God.
But when the figure is dropped, and allowance is made for the
manner of the age, the question once more returns upon us—‘What is the Apostle’s
meaning?’ He is arguing, we see, κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον, and taking his stand
on the received opinions of his time. Do we imagine that his object is no other
than to set the seal of his authority on these traditional beliefs? The whole analogy,
not merely of the writings of St. Paul, but of the entire New Testament, would lead
us to suppose that his object was not to reassert them, but to teach, through them,
a new and nobler lesson. The Jewish Rabbis would have spoken of the first and second
Adam; but which of them would have made the application of the figure to all mankind?
Which of them would have breathed the quickening Spirit into the dry bones? The
figure of the Apostle bears the impress of his own age and country; the interpretation
of the figure is for every age, and for the whole world. A figure of speech it remains
still, an allegory after the manner of that age and country, but yet with no uncertain
or ambiguous signification. It means that ‘God
‘Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not . . . Then said I, Lo,
I come to do thy will, O God.’—
THE doctrine of the Atonement has often been explained in a way at which our moral feelings revolt. God is represented as angry with us for what we never did; He is ready to inflict a disproportionate punishment on us for what we are; He is satisfied by the sufferings of His Son in our stead. The sin of Adam is first imputed to us; then the righteousness of Christ. The imperfection of human law is transferred to the Divine; or rather a figment of law which has no real existence. The death of Christ is also explained by the analogy of the ancient rite of sacrifice. He is a victim laid upon the altar to appease the wrath of God. The institutions and ceremonies of the Mosaical religion are applied to Him. He is further said to bear the infinite punishment of infinite sin. When He had suffered or paid the penalty, God is described as granting Him the salvation of mankind in return.
I shall endeavour to show, 1. that these conceptions of the work
of Christ have no foundation in Scripture; 2. that their growth may be traced in
ecclesiastical history; 3. that the only sacrifice, atonement, or satisfaction,
with which
§ 1.
It is difficult to concentrate the authority of Scripture on
points of controversy. For Scripture is not doctrine but teaching; it arises naturally
out of the circumstances of the writers; it is not intended to meet the intellectual
refinements of modern times. The words of our Saviour, ‘My kingdom is not of this
world,’ admit of a wide application, to systems of knowledge, as well as to systems
of government and politics. The ‘bread of life’ is not an elaborate theology. The
revelation which Scripture makes to us of the will of God, does not turn upon the
exact use of language. (‘Lo, O man, he hath showed thee what he required of thee; to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.’) The books of
Scripture were written by different authors, and in different ages of the world; we cannot, therefore, apply them with the minuteness and precision of a legal
treatise. The Old Testament is not on all points the same with the New; for ‘Moses
allowed of some things for the hardness of their hearts;’ nor the Law with the
Prophets, for there were ‘proverbs in the house of Israel’ that were reversed; nor does the Gospel, which is simple and universal, in all respects agree with
the Epistles which have reference to the particular state of the first converts; nor is the teaching of St. James, who admits works as a coefficient with
faith in the justification of man, absolutely identical with that of St. Paul, who
asserts righteousness by faith only; nor is the character of all the Epistles of
St. Paul, written as they were at different times amid the changing scenes of life,
precisely the same; nor
Nor again is the citation of a single text sufficient to prove
a doctrine; nor must consequences be added on, which are not found in Scripture,
nor figures of speech reasoned about, as though they conveyed exact notions. An
accidental similarity of expression is not to be admitted as an authority; nor,
a mystical allusion, which has been gathered from Scripture, according to some method
which in other writings the laws of language and logic would not justify. When engaged
in controversy with Roman Catholics, about the doctrine of purgatory, or transubstantiation,
or the authority of the successors of St. Peter, we are willing to admit these principles.
They are equally true when the subject of inquiry is the atoning work of Christ.
We must also distinguish the application of a passage in religious discourse from
its original meaning. The more obvious explanation which is received in our own
day, or by our own branch of the Church, will sometimes have to be set aside for
one more difficult, because less familiar, which is drawn from the context. Nor
is it allowable to bar an interpretation of Scripture from a regard to doctrinal
consequences. Further, it is necessary that we should make allowance for the manner
in which ideas were represented in the ages at which the books of Scripture were
written which cannot be so lively to us as to contemporaries. Nor can we deny that
texts may be quoted on both sides of a controversy, as for example, in the controversy
respecting predestination.
The drift of the preceding remarks is not to show that there
is any ambiguity or uncertainty in the witness of Scripture to the great truths
of morality and religion. Nay, rather the universal voice of the Old Testament and
the New proclaims that there is one God of infinite justice, goodness, and truth: and the writers of the New Testament agree in declaring that Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, is the Saviour of the world. There can never, by any possibility, be
a doubt that our Lord and St. Paul taught the doctrine of a future life, and of
a judgement, at which men would give an account of the deeds done in the body. It
is no matter for regret that the essentials of the Gospel are within the reach of
a child’s understanding. But this clearness of Scripture about the great truths
of religion does not extend to the distinctions and developments of theological
systems; it rather seems to contrast with them. It is one thing to say that ‘Christ
is the Saviour of the world,’ or that ‘we are reconciled to God through Christ,’ and another thing to affirm that the Levitical or heathen sacrifices typified the
death of Christ; or that the death of Christ has a sacrificial import, and is an
atonement or satisfaction for the sins of men. The latter positions involve great
moral and intellectual difficulties; many things have to be considered, before
we can allow that the phraseology of Scripture is to be caught up and applied in
this way. For we may easily dress up in the externals of the New Testament a doctrine
which is really at variance with the Spirit of Christ and His Apostles, and we may
impart to this doctrine, by the help of living tradition, that is to say, custom
and religious use, a sacredness yet greater than is derived from such a fallacious
application of Scripture language. It happens almost unavoidably (and our only chance
of guarding against the illusion is to be aware of it) that we are more under the
influence of rhetoric in theology than in other branches of
I. All Christians agree that there is a connexion between the
Old Testament and the New: ‘Novum Testamentum in vetere latet; Vetus Testamentum
in novo patet:’ ‘I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil.’
But, respecting the nature of the revelation or fulfilment which is implied in these
expressions, they are not equally agreed. Some conceive the Old and New Testaments
to be ‘double one against the other;’ the one being the type, and
It will be considered hereafter what is to be said in answer
to the last of these arguments. The first is perhaps sufficiently answered by the
analogy of other ancient religions. It would be ridiculous to assume a spiritual
meaning in the Homeric rites and sacrifices; although they may be different in
other respects, have we any more reason for inferring such a meaning in the Mosaic? Admitting the application which is made of a few of them by the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews to be their original intention, the great mass would still
remain unexplained, and yet they are all alike contained in the same Revelation.
It may seem natural to us to suppose that God taught His people like children by
the help of outward objects. But no a priori supposition of this kind, no
fancy, however natural, of a symmetry or coincidence which may be traced between
the Old Testament and the New, nor the frequent repetition of such a theory in many
forms, is an answer to the fact. That fact is the silence of the Old Testament itself.
If the sacrifices of the Mosaical religion were really symbolical of the death of
Christ, how can it be accounted for that no trace of this symbolism appears in the
books of Moses themselves? that prophets and righteous men of old never gave this
interpretation to them? that the lawgiver is intent only on the sign, and says nothing
of the thing signified? No other book is ever supposed to teach truths about which
it is wholly silent. We do not imagine the Iliad and Odyssey to be a revelation
of the Platonic or Socratic philosophy. The circumstances that these poems received
this or some other allegorical explanation from a school of Alexandrian critics,
does not incline us to believe that such an explanation is a part of their original
meaning. The human mind does not work in this occult manner; language
It may be said that the Levitical rites and offerings had a meaning, not for the Jews, but for us, ‘on whom the ends of the world are come.’ Moses, David, Isaiah were unacquainted with this meaning; it was reserved for those who lived after the event to which they referred had taken place to discover it. Such an afterthought may be natural to us, who are ever tracing a literary or mystical connexion between the Old Testament and the New; it would have been very strange to us, had we lived in the ages before the coming of Christ. It is incredible that God should have instituted rites and ceremonies, which were to be observed as forms by a whole people throughout their history, to teach mankind fifteen hundred years afterwards, uncertainly and in a figure, a lesson which Christ taught plainly and without a figure. Such an assumption confuses the application of Scripture with its original meaning; the use of language in the New Testament with the facts of the Old. Further, it does away with all certainty in the interpretation of Scripture. If we can introduce the New Testament into the Old, we may with equal right introduce Tradition or Church History into the New.
The question here raised has a very important bearing on the
use of the figures of atonement and sacrifice in the New Testament. For if it could
be shown that the sacrifices which were offered up in the Levitical worship were
anticipatory only; that the law too declared itself to be ‘a shadow of good things
to come;’ that Moses had himself spoken ‘of the reproach of Christ;’ in that
case the slightest allusion in the New Testament to the customs or words of the
law would have a peculiar interest. We should be justified in referring to them
as explanatory of the work of Christ, in studying the Levitical distinctions respecting
offerings with a more than antiquarian interest, in ‘disputing about purifying’ and modes of expiation. But if not; if, in short, we are
II. Of such an explanation, if it had really existed when the Mosaic religion was still a national form of worship, traces would occur in the writings of the Psalmists and the Prophets; for these furnish a connecting link between the Old Testament and the New. But this is not the case; the Prophets are, for the most part, unconscious of the law, or silent respecting its obligations.
In many places, their independence of the Mosaical religion passes
into a kind of opposition to it. The inward and spiritual truth asserts itself,
not as an explanation of the ceremonial observance, but in defiance of it. The ‘undergrowth
of morality’ is putting forth shoots in spite of the deadness of the ceremonial
hull.
The spirit of prophecy, speaking by Isaiah, does not say ‘I will have mercy as well as sacrifice,’ but
‘I will have mercy and not
(or rather than) sacrifice.’ In the words of the Psalmist, Sacrifice and offering
thou wouldest not; Then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God;’ ‘The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit:’ or again, ‘A bruised reed
III. It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer expression of the Gospel than the words of Christ himself, or that any truth omitted by Him is essential to the Gospel. ‘The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant greater than his lord.’ The philosophy of Plato was not better understood by his followers than by himself, nor can we allow that the Gospel is to be interpreted by the Epistles, or that the Sermon on the Mount is only half Christian and needs the fuller inspiration or revelation of St. Paul or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. There is no trace in the words of our Saviour of any omission or imperfection; there is no indication in the Epistles of any intention to complete or perfect them. How strange would it have seemed in the Apostle St. Paul, who thought himself unworthy ‘to be called an Apostle because he persecuted the Church of God,’ to find that his own words were preferred in after ages to those of Christ himself!
There is no study of theology which is likely to exercise a more
elevating influence on the individual, or a more healing one on divisions
of opinion, than the study of the words of Christ himself. The heart is its own
witness to them; all Christian sects acknowledge them; they seem to escape or
rise above the region or atmosphere of controversy. The form in which they
exhibit the Gospel to us is the simplest and also the deepest; they are more free
And Christ himself hardly even in a figure uses the word ‘sacrifice;’ never with the least reference to His own life or death. There are many ways
in which our Lord describes His relation to His Father and to mankind. His disciples
are to be one with Him, even as He is one with the Father; whatsoever things He
seeth the Father do He doeth. He says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life;’ or,
‘I am the way, the truth, and the life;’ and, ‘No man cometh unto the Father but
by me;’ and again, ‘Whatsoever things ye shall ask in my name shall be given you;’ and once again,
‘I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter.’
Most of His words are simple, like ‘a man talking to his friends;’ and their impressiveness
and beauty partly flow from this simplicity. He speaks of ‘His decease too which
he should accomplish at Jerusalem,’ but not in sacrificial language. ‘And now I go
my way to him that sent me;’ and ‘Greater love bath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.’ Once indeed He says, ‘The bread that I give is
my flesh, which I give for the salvation of the world;’ to which He himself adds,
‘The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are truth,’ a commentary
which should be applied not only to these but to all other figurative expressions
which occur in the New Testament. In the words of institution of the Lord’s supper,
He also speaks of His death as in some way connected with the remission of sins.
But among all the figures of speech under which He describes His work in the
The parables of Christ have a natural and ethical character. They are only esoteric in as far as the hardness or worldliness of men’s hearts prevents their understanding or receiving them. There is a danger of our making them mean too much rather than too little, that is, of winning a false interest for them by applying them mystically or taking them as a thesis for dialectical or rhetorical exercise. For example, if we say that the guest who came to the marriage supper without a wedding-garment represents a person clothed in his own righteousness instead of the righteousness of Christ, that is an explanation of which there is not a trace in the words of the parable itself. That is an illustration of the manner in which we are not to gather doctrines from Scripture. For there is nothing which we may not in this way superinduce on the plainest lessons of our Saviour.
Reading the parables, then, simply and naturally, we find in
them no indication of the doctrine of atonement or satisfaction. They form a very
large portion of the sayings which have been recorded of our Saviour while He was
on earth; and they teach a great number of separate lessons. But there is no hint
contained in them of that view of the death of Christ which is sometimes regarded
as the centre of the Gospel. There is no ‘difficulty in the nature of things’ which
prevents the father going out to meet the prodigal son. No other condition is required
of the justification of the publican except the true sense of his own unworthiness.
The work of those labourers who toiled for one hour only in the vineyard is not
supplemented by the merits and deserts of another. The reward for the cup of cold
water is not denied to those who are unaware that He to whom it is given is the
Lord. The parables of the Good Samaritan, of the Fig-tree, of the Talents, do not
recognize
There is a mystery in the life and death of Christ; that is
to say, there is more than we know or are perhaps capable of knowing. The relation
in which He stood both to His Father and to mankind is imperfectly revealed to us; we do not fully understand what may be termed in a figure His inner mind or consciousness.
Expressions
IV. Two of the General Epistles and two of the Epistles of St.
Paul have no bearing on our present subject. These are the Epistles of St. James
and St. Jude, and the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. Their silence, like that
of the Gospels, is at least a negative proof that the doctrine of Sacrifice
or Satisfaction is not a central truth of Christianity. The remainder of the New
Testament will be sufficiently considered under two heads: first, the remaining
Epistles of St. Paul; and, secondly, the Epistle to the Hebrews. The difficulties
which arise respecting these are the same as the difficulties which apply in a less
degree
It is not to be denied that the language of Sacrifice and Substitution
occurs in the Epistles of St. Paul. Instances of the former are furnished by
These two passages are a fair example of a few others. About the translation and explanation of the first of them interpreters differ. But the differences are not such as to affect our present question. For that question is a general one, viz. whether these, and similar sacrificial expressions, are passing figures of speech, or appointed signs or symbols of the death of Christ. On which it may be observed:—
First: That these expressions are not the peculiar or characteristic
modes in which the Apostle describes the relation of the believer to his Lord. For
one instance of the use of sacrificial language, five or six might be cited of the
language of identity or communion, in which the believer is described as one with
his Lord in all the stages of His life and death. But this language is really inconsistent
with the other. For if Christ is one with the believer, He cannot be regarded strictly
as a victim who takes his place. And the stage of Christ’s being which coincides,
and is specially connected by the Apostle, with the justification of man, is not
His death, but His resurrection (
Secondly: These sacrificial expressions, as also the vicarious
ones of which we shall hereafter speak, belong to the
Therefore, thirdly, We shall only be led into error by attempting
to explain the application of the word to Christ from the original meaning of the
thing. That is a question of Jewish or classical archaeology, which would receive
a different answer in different ages and countries. Many motives or instincts may
be traced in the worship of the first children of men. The need of giving or getting
rid of something; the desire to fulfil an obligation or expiate a crime; the consecration
of a part that the rest may be holy; the Homeric feast of gods and men, of the
living with the dead; the mystery of animal nature, of which the blood was the
symbol; the substitution, in a few instances, of the less for the greater; in
later ages, custom adhering to the old rituals when the meaning of them has passed
away;—these seem to be true explanations of the ancient sacrifices. (Human sacrifices,
such as those of the old Mexican peoples, or the traditional ones in pre-historic
Greece, may be left out of consideration, as they appear to spring from such monstrous
and cruel perversion of human nature.) But these explanations have nothing to do
with our present subject. We may throw an imaginary light back upon them (for it
is always easier to represent former ages like our own than to realize them as they
truly were); they will not assist us in comprehending the import of the
Fourthly: This sacrificial language is not used with any definiteness
or precision. The figure varies in different passages; Christ is the Paschal Lamb,
or the Lamb without spot, as well as the sin-offering; the priest as well as the
sacrifice. It is applied not only to Christ, but to the believer who is to present
his body a living sacrifice; and the offering of which St. Paul speaks in one passage
is ‘the offering up of the Gentiles.’ Again, this language is everywhere broken by
moral and spiritual applications into which it dissolves and melts away. When we
read of ‘sacrifice,’ or ‘purification,’ or ‘redemption,’ these words isolated may
for an instant carry our thoughts back to the Levitical ritual. But when we restore
them to their context, a sacrifice which is a ‘spiritual sacrifice,’ or a ‘spiritual
and mental service,’ a purification which is a ‘purging from dead works to serve
the living God,’ a redemption by the blood of Christ from your vain conversation
received by tradition from your fathers’—we see that the association offers no
real help; it is no paradox to say that we should rather forget than remember it.
All this tends to show that these figures of speech are not the eternal symbols
of the Christian
Fifthly: Nor is any such use of them made by any of the writers of the New Testament. It is true that St. Paul occasionally, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews much more frequently, use sacrificial language. But they do not pursue the figure into details or consequences; they do not draw it out in logical form. Still less do they inquire, as modern theologians have done, into the objective or transcendental relation in which the sacrifice of Christ stood to the will of the Father. St. Paul says, ‘We thus judge that if one died, then all died, and he died for all, that they which live shall not henceforth live to themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again.’ But words like these are far indeed from expressing a doctrine of atonement or satisfaction.
Lastly: The extent to which the Apostle employs figurative language
in general, may be taken as a measure of the force of the figure in particular,
expressions. Now there is no mode of speaking of spiritual things more natural to
him than the image of death. Of the meaning of this word, in all languages, it may
be said that there can be no doubt. Yet no one supposes that the sense which the
Apostle gives to it is other than a spiritual one. The reason is, that the word
has never been made the foundation of any doctrine. But the circumstance that the
term ‘sacrifice’ has passed into the language of theology, does not really circumscribe
or define it. It is a figure of speech still, which is no more to be interpreted
by the Mosaic sacrifices than spiritual death by physical. Let us consider again
other expressions of St. Paul: ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’
‘Who hath taken the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and nailed it
to his cross.’ ‘Filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my
flesh, for his body’s sake, which is the church.’ The occurrence of
Another class of expressions, which may be termed the language of substitution or vicarious suffering, are also occasionally found in St. Paul. Two examples of them, both of which occur in the Epistle to the Galatians, will indicate their general character.
This use of language seems to originate in what was termed before the language of identity. First, ‘I am crucified with Christ,’ and secondly, ‘Not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ The believer, according to St. Paul, follows Christ until he becomes like Him. And this likeness is so complete and entire, that all that he was or might have been is attributed to Christ, and all that Christ is, is attributed to him. With such life and fervour does St. Paul paint the intimacy of the union between the believer and Christ: They two are ‘One Spirit.’ To build on such expressions a doctrinal system is the error of ‘rhetoric turned logic.’ The truth of feeling which is experienced by a few is not to be handed over to the head as a form of doctrine for the many.
The same remark applies to another class of passages, in which
Christ is described as dying ‘for us,’ or ‘for our sins.’ Upon which it may be further
observed, first, that in these passages the preposition used is not ἀντί
but ὑπέρ and, secondly, that Christ is spoken of as living and rising again,
as well as dying, for us; whence we infer that He died for us in the same
sense that He lived for us. Of what is meant, perhaps the nearest conception
we can form is
Many of the preceding observations apply equally to the Epistle to the Hebrews and to the Epistles of St. Paul. But the Epistle to the Hebrews has features peculiar to itself. It is a more complete transfiguration of the law, which St. Paul, on the other hand, applies by way of illustration, and in fragments only. It has the interest of an allegory, and, in some respects, admits of a comparison with the book of Revelation. It is full of sacrificial allusions, derived, however, not from the actual rite, but from the description of it in the books of Moses. Probably at Jerusalem, or the vicinity of the actual temple, it would not have been written.
From this source chiefly, and not from the Epistles of St. Paul, the language of sacrifice has passed into the theology and sermons of modern times. The Epistle to the Hebrews affords a greater apparent foundation for the popular or Calvinistical doctrines of atonement and satisfaction, but not perhaps a greater real one. For it is not the mere use of the terms ‘sacrifice’ or ‘blood,’ but the sense in which they were used, that must be considered. It is a fallacy, though a natural one, to confuse the image with the thing signified, like mistaking the colour of a substance for its true nature.
Long passages might be quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews,
which describe the work of Christ in sacrificial language. Some of the most striking
verses are the following:—
That these and similar passages have only a deceitful resemblance to the language of those theologians who regard the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ as the central truth of the Gospel, is manifest from the following considerations:—
1. The great number and variety of the figures. Christ is Joshua,
who gives the people rest (
2. The inconsistency of the figures: an inconsistency partly arising from
their ceasing to be figures and passing into moral notions, as in
3. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews dwells on the outward circumstance
of the shedding of the blood of Christ. St. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians
makes another application of the Old Testament, describing our
4. The atoning sacrifice of which modern theology speaks, is said to be the great object of faith. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews also speaks of faith, but no such expression as faith in the blood, or sacrifice, or death of Christ is made use of by him, or is found anywhere else in Scripture. The faith of the patriarchs is not faith in the peculiar sense of the term, but the faith of those who confess that they are ‘strangers and pilgrims,’ and ‘endure seeing him that is invisible.’
Lastly: The Jewish Alexandrian character of the Epistle must
be admitted as an element of the inquiry. It interprets the Old Testament after
a manner then current in the world, which we must either continue to apply or admit
that it was relative to that age and country. It makes statements which we can only
accept in a figure, as, for example, in
Such were the instruments which the author of this great Epistle
(whoever he may have been) employed, after the manner of his age and country, to
impart the truths of the Gospel in a figure to those who esteemed this sort of figurative
knowledge as a kind of perfection (
The sum of what has been said is as follows:—
Firstly: That our Lord never describes His own work in the language of atonement or sacrifice.
Secondly: That this language is a figure of speech borrowed
from the Old Testament, yet not to be explained by the analogy of the Levitical
sacrifices; occasionally found in the writings of St. Paul; more frequently in
the Epistle to the Hebrews; applied to the believer at least equally with his Lord,
and indicating by the variety and uncertainty with which it is used that it is not
the expression of any
Thirdly: That nothing is signified by this language, or at least nothing essential, beyond what is implied in the teaching of our Lord himself. For it cannot be supposed that there is any truer account of Christianity than is to be found in the words of Christ.
§ 2.
Theology sprang up in the first ages independently of Scripture. This independence continued afterwards; it has never been wholly lost. There is a tradition of the nineteenth century, as well as of the fourth or fourteenth, which comes between them. The mystical interpretation of Scripture has further parted them; to which may be added the power of system: doctrines when framed into a whole cease to draw their inspiration from the text. Logic has expressed ‘the thoughts of many hearts’ with a seeming necessity of form; this form of reasoning has led to new inferences. Many words and formulas have also acquired a sacredness from their occurrence in liturgies and articles, or the frequent use of them in religious discourse. The true interest of the theologian is to restore these formulas to their connexion in Scripture, and to their place in ecclesiastical history. The standard of Christian truth is not a logical clearness or sequence, but the simplicity of the mind of Christ.
The history of theology is the history of the intellectual life
of the Christian Church. All bodies of Christians, Protestant as well as Catholic,
have tended to imagine that they are in the same stage of religious development
as the first believers. But the Church has not stood still any more than
the world; we may trace the progress of doctrine as well as the growth of philosophical
opinion. The thoughts
The study of the doctrinal development of the Christian Church
has many uses. First, it helps us to separate the history of a doctrine from
its truth, and indirectly also the meaning of Scripture from the new reading of
it, which has been given in many instances by theological controversy. It takes
us away from the passing movement, and out of our own particular corner into a world
in Which we see religion on a larger scale and in truer proportions. It enables
us to interpret one age to another, to understand
The history of the doctrine of the atonement may be conveniently
divided into four periods of unequal length, each of which is marked by some peculiar
features. First, the Patristic period, extending to the time of Anselm, in which
the doctrine had not attained to a perfect or complete form, but each one applied
for himself the language of Scripture. Secondly, the Scholastic period, beginning
with Anselm, who may be said to have defined anew the conceptions of the Christian
world respecting the work of Christ, and including the great schoolmen who were
his successors. Thirdly, the century of the Reformation, embracing what may be termed
the after-thoughts of
1. The characteristics of the first period may be summed up as follows. All the Fathers agreed that man was reconciled to God through Christ, and received in the Gospel a new and divine life. Most of them also spoke of the death of Christ as a ransom or sacrifice. When we remember that in the first age of the Church the New Testament was exclusively taught through the Old, and that many of the first, teachers, who were unacquainted with our present Gospels, had passed their lives in the study of the Old Testament Scriptures, we shall not wonder at the early diffusion of this sort of language. Almost every application of the types of the law which has been made since, is already found in the writings of Justin Martyr. Nor indeed, on general grounds, is there any reason why we should feel surprise at such a tendency in the first ages. For in all Churches, and at all times of the world’s history, the Old Testament has tended to take the place of the New; the law of the Gospel; the handmaid has become the mistress; and the development of the Christian priesthood has developed also the idea of a Christian sacrifice.
The peculiarity of the primitive doctrine did not lie here, but
in the relation in which the work of Christ was supposed to stand to the powers
of evil. In the first ages we are beset with shadows of an under world, which hover
on the confines of Christianity, From Origen downwards, with
But the mythical fancy of the transaction with the devil
was not the whole, nor even the leading conception, which the Fathers had of the
import of the death of Christ. It was the negative, not the positive, side of the
doctrine of redemption which they thus expressed; nobler thoughts
Another connexion between ancient and modern theology is supplied
by the writings of Athanasius. The view taken by Athanasius of the atoning work
of Christ has two characteristic features: First, it is based upon the doctrine
of the Trinity;—God only can reconcile man with God. Secondly, it rests on the
idea of a debt which is paid, not to the devil, but to God. This debt is also due
to death, who has a sort of right over Christ, like the right of the devil in the
former scheme. If it be asked in what this view differs
An interval of more than 700 years separates Athanasius from
Anselm. One eminent name occurs during this interval, that of Scotus Erigena, whose
conception of the atonement is the co-eternal unity of all things with God; the
participation in this unity had been lost by man, not in time, but in eternity,
and was restored in the person of Christ likewise from eternity. The views of Erigena
present some remarkable coincidences with very recent speculations; in the middle
ages he stands alone, at the end, not at the beginning, of a great period;—he is
the last of the Platonists, not the first of the schoolmen. He had consequently
little influence on the centuries which followed. Those centuries
2. It was a true feeling of Anselm that the old doctrine of satisfaction
contained an unchristian element in attributing to the devil a right independent
of God. That man should be delivered over to Satan may be just; it is a misrepresentation
to say that Satan had any right over man. Therefore no right of the devil is satisfied
by the death of Christ. He who had the real right is God, who has been robbed of
His honour; to whom is, indeed, owing on the part of man an infinite debt. For
sin is in its nature infinite; the world has no compensation for that which a good
man would not do in exchange for the world (Cur Deus Homo, i. 21). God only
can satisfy himself. The human nature of Christ enables Him to incur, the infinity
of his Divine nature to pay, this debt (ii. 6, 7). This payment of the debt, however,
is not the salvation of mankind, but only the condition of salvation; a link is
This theory, which is contained in the remarkable treatise Cur Deus Homo, is consecutively reasoned throughout; yet the least reasons seem
often sufficient to satisfy the author. While it escapes one difficulty it involves
several others; though conceived in a nobler and more Christian spirit than any
previous view of the work of Christ, it involves more distinctly the hideous consequence
of punishing the innocent for the guilty. It is based upon analogies, symmetries,
numerical fitnesses; yet under these logical fancies is contained a true and pure
feeling of the relation of man to God. The notion of satisfaction or payment of
a debt, on the other hand, is absolutely groundless, and seems only to result from
a certain logical position which the human mind has arbitrarily assumed. The scheme
implies further two apparently contradictory notions; one, a necessity in the nature
of things for this and no other means of redemption; the other, the free will of
God
No progress was made during the four centuries which intervened
between Anselm and the Reformation, towards the attainment of clearer ideas respecting
the relations of God and man. The view of Anselm did not, however, at once or universally
prevail; it has probably exercised a greater influence since the Reformation (being
the basis of what may be termed the evangelical doctrine of the atonement) than
in earlier ages. The spirit of the older theology was too congenial to those ages
quickly to pass away. Bernard and others continued to maintain the right of the
devil: a view not wholly obsolete in our own day. The two great masters of the
schools agreed in denying the necessity on which the theory of Anselm was founded.
They differed from Anselm also respecting the conception of an infinite satisfaction; Thomas Aquinas distinguishing the
‘infinite’ Divine merit, and ‘abundant’ human satisfaction; while Duns Scotus rejected the notion of infinity altogether,
declaring that the scheme of redemption might have been equally accomplished by
the death of an angel or a righteous man. Abelard, at an earlier period, attached
special importance to the moral aspect of the work of Christ; he denied the right
of the devil, and declared the love of Christ to be the redeeming principle, because
it calls forth the love of man. Peter Lombard also, who retained, like Bernard,
the old view of the right of the devil, agreed
3. The doctrines of the Reformed as well as of the Catholic Church were expressed in the language of the scholastic theology. But the logic which the Catholic party had employed in defining and distinguishing the body of truth already received, the teachers of the Reformation used to express the subjective feelings of the human soul. Theology made a transition, such as we may observe at one or two epochs in the history of philosophy, from the object to the subject. Hence, the doctrine of atonement or satisfaction became subordinate to the doctrine of justification. The reformers begin, not with ideas, but with the consciousness of sin; with immediate human interests, not with speculative difficulties; not with mere abstractions, but with a great struggle; ‘without were fightings, within were fears.’ As of Socrates and philosophy, so it may be also said truly of Luther in a certain sense, that he brought down the work of redemption ‘from heaven to earth.’ The great question with him was, ‘how we might be freed from the punishment and guilt of sin,’ and the answer was, through the appropriation of the merits of Christ. All that man was or might have been, Christ became, and was; all that Christ did or was, attached or was imputed to man: as God, he paid the infinite penalty; as man, he fulfilled the law. The first made redemption possible, the second perfected it. The first was termed in the language of that age, the ‘obedientia passiva,’ the second, the ‘obedientia activa.’
In this scheme the doctrine of satisfaction is far from being
prominent or necessary; it is a remnant of an older theology which was retained
by the Reformers and prevented their giving a purely moral character to the work
of Christ. There were differences among them respecting the two kinds of
obedience; some regarding the ‘obedientia
passiva’ as the cause or condition of the ‘obedientia activa,’ while
It was not unnatural that in the middle ages, when morality had
no free or independent development, the doctrine of the atonement should have been
drawn out on the analogy of law. Nor is there any reason why we should feel surprised
that, with the revival of the study of Scripture at the Reformation, the
Mosaic law should have exercised a great influence over the ideas of Protestants.
More singular, yet an analogous phenomenon, is the attempt of Grotius to conceive
the work of Christ by the help of the principles of political justice. All men are
under the
The theory of the celebrated jurist proceeds from the conception of God as governor of the universe. As such, He may forgive sins just as any other ruler may remit the punishment of offences against positive law. But although the ruler possesses the power to remit sins, and there is nothing in the nature of justice which would prevent his doing so, yet he has also a duty, which is to uphold his own authority and that of the laws. To do so, he must enforce punishment for the breach of them. This punishment, however, may attach not to the offender, but to the offence. Such a distinction is not unknown to the law itself. We may apply this to the work of Christ. There was no difficulty in the nature of things which prevented God from freely pardoning the sins of men; the power of doing so was vested in His hands as governor of the world. But it was inexpedient that He should exercise this power without first making an example. This was effected by the death of Christ. It pleased God to act according to the pedantic rules of earthly jurisprudence. It is useless to criticize such a theory further; almost all theologians have agreed in reprobating it; it adopts the analogy of law, and violates its first principles by considering a moral or legal act without reference to the agent. The reason which Grotius assigns for the death of Christ is altogether trivial.
4. Later theories on the doctrine of the atonement may be divided into two classes, English and German, logical and metaphysical; those which proceed chiefly by logical inference, and those which connect the conception of the atonement with speculative philosophy.
Earlier English writers were chiefly employed in defining the work of Christ; later ones have been most occupied with the attempt to soften or moderate the more repulsive features of the older statements; the former have a dogmatical, the latter an apologetical character. The nature of the sufferings of Christ, whether they were penal or only quasi penal, whether they were physical or mental, greater in degree than human sufferings, or different in kind; in what more precisely the compensation offered by Christ truly consisted; the nature of the obedience of Christ, whether to God or the law, and the connexion of the whole question with that of the Divine decrees:—these were among the principal subjects discussed by the great Presbyterian divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Continuing in the same line of thought as their predecessors, they seem to have been unconscious of the difficulties to which the eyes of a later generation have opened.
But at last the question has arisen within, as well as without,
the Church of England: ‘How the ideas of expiation, or satisfaction, or sacrifice,
or imputation, are reconcilable with the moral and spiritual nature either of God
or man?’ Some there are who answer from analogy, and cite instances of vicarious
suffering which appear in the disorder of the world around us. But analogy is a
broken reed; of use, indeed, in pointing out the way where its intimations
can be verified, but useless when applied to the unseen world in which the eye of
observation no longer follows. Others affirm revelation or inspiration to be above
criticism, and, in disregard alike of Church history and of Scripture, assume their
own view of the doctrine of the atonement to be a revealed or inspired truth. They
do not see that they are cutting off the branch of the tree on which they are themselves
sitting. For, if the doctrine of the atonement cannot be criticized, neither can
it be determined what is the doctrine of the atonement; nor, on the same
German theology during the last hundred years has proceeded by
a different path; it has delighted to recognize the doctrine of the atonement as
the centre of religion, and also
According to Kant, the atonement consists in the sacrifice of
the individual; a sacrifice in which the sin of the old man is ever being compensated
by the sorrows and virtues of the new. This atonement, or reconcilement of man with
God, consists in an endless progress towards a reconcilement which is never absolutely
completed in this life, and yet, by the continual increase of good and diminution
of evil, is a sufficient groundwork of hope and peace. Perfect reconcilement would
consist in the perfect obedience of a free agent to the law of duty or righteousness.
For this Kant substitutes the ideal of the Son of God. The participation in this
ideal of humanity is an aspect of the reconcilement. In a certain sense, in the
sight of God, that is, and in the wish and resolution of the individual, the change
from the old to the new is not gradual, but sudden: the end is imputed or anticipated
in the beginning. So Kant ‘rationalizes’ the ordinary Lutheran doctrine of justification; unconscious, as in other parts of his philosophy, of the influence which
existing systems are exercising over him. Man goes out of himself to grasp at a
reflection which is still—himself. The mystical is banished only to return again
in an arbitrary and imaginative form—a phenomenon
Schleiermacher’s view of the doctrine of the atonement is almost equally different from that of Kant who preceded him, and of Hegel and others who were his contemporaries or successors: it is hardly more like the popular theories. Reconciliation with God he conceives as a participation in the Divine nature. Of this participation the Church, through the Spirit, is the medium; the individual is redeemed and consoled by communion with his fellow-men. If in the terminology of philosophy we ask which is the objective, which the subjective part of the work of redemption, the answer of Schleiermacher seems to be that the subjective redemption of the individual is the consciousness of union with God; and the objective part, which corresponds to this consciousness, is the existence of the Church, which derives its life from the Spirit of God, and is also the depository of the truth of Christ. The same criticism, however, applies to this as to the preceding conception of the atonement, viz. that it has no real historical basis. The objective truth is nothing more than the subjective feeling or opinion which prevails in a particular Church. Schleiermacher deduces the historical from the ideal, and regards the ideal as existing only in the communion of Christians. But the truth of a fact is not proved by the truth of an idea. And the personal relation of the believer to Christ, instead of being immediate, is limited (as in the Catholic system) by the existence of the Church.
Later philosophers have conceived of the reconciliation of man
with God as a reconciliation of God with himself. The infinite must evolve the finite
from itself; yet the true infinite consists in the return of the finite to the
infinite. By slow degrees, and in many stages of morality, of religion, and of knowledge,
does the individual, according to Fichte, lay aside isolation and selfishness, gaining
in strength and freedom by the negation of freedom, until he rises into the
It is characteristic of Schelling’s system that he conceives the nature of God, not as abstraction, but as energy or action. The finite and manifold are not annihilated in the infinite; they are the revelation of the infinite. Man is the son of God; of this truth Christ is the highest expression and the eternal idea. But in the world this revelation or incarnation of God is ever going on; the light is struggling with darkness, the spirit with nature, the universal with the particular. That victory which was achieved in the person of Christ is not yet final in individuals or in history. Each person, each age, carries on the same conflict between good and evil, the triumphant end of which is anticipated in the life and death of Christ.
Hegel, beginning with the doctrine of a Trinity, regards the
atonement as the eternal reconciliation of the finite and the infinite in the bosom
of God himself. The Son goes forth from the Father, as the world or finite being,
to exist
Englishmen, especially, feel a national dislike at the ‘things which accompany salvation’ being perplexed with philosophical theories. They
find it easier to caricature than to understand Hegel; they prefer the most unintelligible
expressions with which they are familiar to great thoughts which are strange to
them. No man of sense really supposes that Hegel or Schelling is so absurd as they
may be made to look in an uncouth English translation, or as they unavoidably appear
to many in a brief summary of their tenets. Yet it may be doubted whether this philosophy
can ever have much connexion with the Christian life. It seems to reflect at too
great a distance what ought to be very near to us. It is metaphysical, not practical; it creates an atmosphere in which it is difficult to breathe; it is useful as
supplying a light or law by which to arrange the world, rather than as a principle
of action or warmth. Man is a microcosm, and we do not feel quite certain whether
the whole system is not the mind itself turned inside out, and magnified
in enormous proportions. Whatever interest it may arouse in speculative natures
(and it is certainly of
§ 3.
The silence of our Lord in the Gospels respecting any doctrine
of atonement and sacrifice, the variety of expressions which occur in other parts
of the New Testament, the fluctuation and uncertainty both of the Church and individuals
on this subject in after ages, incline us to agree with Gregory Nazianzen, that
the death of Christ is one of those points of faith ‘about which it is not
dangerous to be mistaken.’ And the sense of the imperfection of language and the
illusions to which we are subject from the influence of past ideas, the consciousness
that doctrinal perplexities arise chiefly from our transgression of the limits of
actual knowledge, will lead us to desire a very simple statement of the work of
Christ; a statement, however, in accordance with our moral ideas, and one which
will not shift and alter with the metaphysical schools of the age; one, moreover,
which runs no risk of being overthrown by an increasing study of the Old Testament
or of ecclesiastical history. Endless theories there have been (of which the preceding
sketch contains only a small portion), and many more there will be as time goes
on, like mystery plays, or sacred dramas (to adapt Lord Bacon’s image), which have
passed before the Church and the world. To add another would increase the confusion: it is ridiculous to think of settling a disputed point of theology unless
by some new method. That other method can only be a method of agreement; little
progress has been made hitherto by the method of difference. It is not reasonable,
but extremely unreasonable, that the most sacred of all books should be the only
one respecting the interpretation of which there is no certainty; that religion
alone should be able to perpetuate the enmities of past ages; that the influence
of words and names, which secular knowledge has long shaken off, should still intercept
the natural love of Christians towards one another and their
The statements of Scripture respecting the work of Christ are very simple, and may be used without involving us in the determination of these differences. We can live and die in the language of St. Paul and St. John; there is nothing there repugnant to our moral sense. We have a yet higher authority in the words of Christ himself. Only in repeating and elucidating these statements, we must remember that Scripture phraseology is of two kinds, simple and figurative, and that the first is the interpretation of the second. We must not bring the New Testament into bondage to the Old, but ennoble and transfigure the Old by the New.
First; the death of Christ may be described as a sacrifice. But
what sacrifice? Not ‘the blood of bulls and of goats, nor the ashes of an heifer sprinking the unclean,’ but the living sacrifice
‘to do thy will, O God.’ It is a
sacrifice which is the negation of sacrifice; ‘Christ the end of the law to them
that believe.’ Peradventure, in a heathen
Again, the death of Christ may be described as a ransom. It is
not that God needs some payment which He must receive before He will set the captives
free. The ransom is not a human ransom, any more than the sacrifice is a Levitical
sacrifice. Rightly to comprehend the nature of this Divine ransom, we must begin
with that question of the Apostle: ‘Know ye not that whose servants ye yield yourselves
to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience
unto righteousness? There are those who will reply: ‘We were never in bondage at
any time.’ To whom Christ answers: ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of
sin’ and, ‘If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.’ Ransom
is ‘deliverance to the captive.’ There are mixed modes here also, as in the
use of the term sacrifice—the word has a temporary allusive reference to a
Mosaical figure
Thirdly, the death of Christ is spoken of as a death for us, or for our sins. The ambiguous use of the preposition ‘for,’ combined with the figure of sacrifice, has tended to introduce the idea of substitution; when the real meaning is not ‘in our stead,’ but only ‘in behalf of,’ or ‘because of us.’ It is a great assumption, or an unfair deduction, from such expressions, to say that Christ takes our place, or that the Father in looking at the sinner sees only Christ. Christ died for us in no other sense than He lived or rose again for us. Scripture affords no hint of His taking our place in His death in any other way than He did also in His life. He himself speaks of ‘His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem,’ quite simply: ‘greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ The words of Caiaphas, ‘It is expedient that one man should die for this nation,’ and the comment of the Evangelist, ‘and not for that nation only, but that he should gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad,’ afford a measure of the meaning of such expressions. Here, too, there are mixed modes which seem to be inextricably blended in the language of Scripture, and which theology has not always distinguished. For the thing signified is, partly, that Christ died for our sakes, partly that He died by the hands of sinners, partly that He died with a perfect and Divine sympathy for human evil and suffering. But this ambiguity (which we may silently correct or explain) need not prevent our joining in words which, more perhaps than any others, have been consecrated by religious use to express the love and affection of Christians towards their Lord.
Now suppose some one who is aware of the plastic and
1. Everywhere St. Paul speaks of the Christian as one with Christ.
He is united with Him, not in His death
Again (2), the import of the death of Christ may be interpreted
by His life. No theological speculation can throw an equal light on it. From the
other side we cannot see it, but only from this. Now the life of Christ is the life
of One who knew no sin, on whom the shadow of evil
And the death of Christ is the fulfilment and consummation
of His life, the greatest moral act ever done in this world, the highest manifestation
of perfect love, the centre in which the rays of love converge and meet, the extremest
abnegation or annihilation of self. It is the death of One who seals with His blood
the witness of the truth which He came into the world to teach, which therefore
confirms our faith in Him as well as animates our love. It is the death of One,
who says at the last hour, ‘Of them that thou gavest me, I have not lost one’—of
One who, having come forth from God, and having finished the work which He came
into the world to do, returns to God. It is a death in which all the separate gifts
of heroes and martyrs are united in a Divine excellence—of One who most perfectly
foresaw all things that were coming upon Him—who felt all, and shrank not—of One
who, in the hour of death, set the example to His followers of praying for His enemies.
Lastly, there is a true Christian feeling in many other ways
of regarding the salvation of man, of which the heart is its own witness, which
yet admit, still less than the preceding, of logical rule and precision. He who
is conscious of his own infirmity and sinfulness, is ready to confess that he needs
reconciliation with God. He has no proud thoughts: he knows that he is saved ‘not
of himself, it is the gift of God;’ the better he is, the more he feels, in the
language of Scripture, ‘that he is an unprofitable servant.’ Sometimes he imagines
the Father ‘coming out to meet him, when he is yet a long way off,’ as in the parable
of the Prodigal Son; at other times the burden of sin lies heavy on him; he seems
to need more support—he can approach God only through Christ. All men are not the
same; one has more of the strength of reason in his religion; another more of
the tenderness of feeling. With some, faith partakes of the nature of a pure and
spiritual morality; there are others who have gone through the struggle of St.
Paul or Luther, and attain rest only in casting all on Christ. One will live after
the pattern of the Sermon on the Mount, or the Epistle of St. James. Another finds
a deep consolation and meaning in a closer union with Christ; he will ‘put on Christ,’ he will hide himself in Christ; he will experience in his own person the truth
of those words of the Apostle, ‘I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ But if he have the spirit of moderation that
there was in St. Paul, he will not stereotype these true, though often passing feelings,
in any formula of substitution or satisfaction; still less will be draw out formulas
of this sort into remote consequences. Such logical idealism is of another
It seems to be an opinion which is gaining ground among
thoughtful and religious men, that in theology, the less we define the better.
Definite statements respecting the relation of Christ either to God or man are
only figures of speech;
If our Saviour were to come again to earth, which of all the
theories of atonement and sacrifice would he sanction with His authority? Perhaps
none of them, yet perhaps all may be consistent with a true service of Him. The
question has no answer. But it suggests the thought that we shrink from bringing
controversy into His presence. The same kind of lesson may be gathered from the
consideration of theological differences in the face of death. Who, as he
draws near to Christ, will not feel himself drawn towards his theological opponents? At the end of life, when a man looks back calmly, he is most likely to
find that he exaggerated in some things; that he mistook party spirit for a love
of truth. Perhaps, he had not sufficient consideration for others, or stated the
truth itself in a manner which was calculated to give offence. In the heat
of the struggle, let us at least pause to imagine polemical disputes as they will
appear a year, two years, three years hence; it may be, dead and gone—certainly
more truly seen than in the hour of controversy. For the truths about which we are
disputing cannot partake of the passing stir; they do not change even with the
greater revolutions of human things. They are in eternity; and the image of them
on earth is not the movement
THE difficulty of necessity and free will is not peculiar to Christianity. It enters into all religions at a certain stage of their progress; it reappears in philosophy and is a question not only of speculation but of life. Wherever man touches nature, wherever the stream of thought which flows within, meets and comes into conflict with scientific laws, reflecting on the actions of an individual in relation to his antecedents, considering the balance of human actions in many individuals; when we pass into the wider field of history, and trace the influence of circumstances on the course of events, the sequence of nations and states of society, the physical causes that lie behind all; in the region of philosophy, as we follow the order of human thoughts, and observe the seeming freedom and real limitation of ideas and systems; lastly in that higher world of which religion speaks to us, when we conceive man as a finite being, who has the witness in himself of his own dependence on God, whom theology too has made the subject of many theories of grace, new forms appear of that famous controversy which the last century discussed under the name of necessity and free will.
I shall at present pursue no further the train of reflections
which are thus suggested. My first object is to clear the
§ 1.
In the relations of God and man, good and evil, finite and infinite, there is much that must ever be mysterious. Nor can any one exaggerate the weakness and feebleness of the human mind in the attempt to seek for such knowledge. But although we acknowledge the feebleness of man’s brain and the vastness of the subject, we should also draw a distinction between the original difficulty of our own ignorance, and the puzzles and embarrassments which false philosophy or false theology have introduced. The impotence of our faculties is not a reason for acquiescing in a metaphysical fiction. Philosophy has no right to veil herself in mystery at the point where she is lost in a confusion of words. That we know little is the real mystery; not that we are caught in dilemmas or surrounded by contradictions. These contradictions are involved in the slightest as well as in the most serious of our actions, which is a proof of their really trifling nature. They confuse the mind but not things. To trace the steps by which mere abstractions have acquired this perplexing and constraining power, though it cannot meet the original defect, yet may perhaps assist us to understand the misunderstanding, and to regard the question of predestination and free will in a simpler and more natural light.
A subject which claims to be raised above the rules and requirements
of logic, must give a reason for the exemption, and must itself furnish some other
test of truth to which it is ready to conform. The reason is that logic is inapplicable
to the discussion of a question which begins with a contradiction
The difficulties raised respecting necessity and free will
partake, for the most part, of the same nature as the old fallacies respecting
motion and space of Zeno and the Eleatics, and have their ‘solvitur ambulando’ as well. This
is the answer of Bishop Butler, who aims only at a practical solution. But as it
is no use to say to the lame man, ‘rise up and walk,’ without a crutch or helping
hand, so it is no use to offer these practical solutions to a mind already entangled
in speculative perplexities. It retorts upon you—‘I cannot walk: if my outward
actions seem like other men’s; if I do not throw myself from a precipice, or take
away the life of another under the fatal influence of the doctrine of necessity,
yet the course of thought within me is different. I look upon the world with other
eyes, and slowly and gradually, differences in thought must beget differences also
in action.’ But if the mind, which is bound by this chain, could be shown that it
was a slave only to its own abstract ideas—that it was below where it ought to be
The notion that no idea can be composed of two contradictory
conceptions, seems to arise out of the analogy of the sensible world. It would be
an absurdity to suppose that an object should be white and black at the same time; that a captive should be in chains and not in chains at the same time, and so
on. But there is no absurdity in supposing that the mental analysis even of a matter
of fact or an outward object should involve us in contradictions. Objects, considered
in their most abstract point of view, may be said to contain a positive and a negative
element: everything is and is not; is in itself, and is not, in relation to other
things. Our conceptions of motion, of becoming, or of beginning, in like manner
involve a contradiction. The old puzzles of the Eleatics are merely an exemplification
of the same difficulty. There are objections, it has been said, against a vacuum,
objections against a plenum, though we need not add, with the writer who makes the
remark, ‘Yet one of these must be true.’ How a new substance can be formed by chemical
combination out of two other substances may seem also to involve a contradiction,
e. g. water is and is not oxygen and hydrogen. Life, in like manner, has been defined
as a state in which every end is
It is at first sight strange that some of these contradictions
should seem so trivial to us, while others assume the appearance of a high mystery.
In physics or mathematics we scarcely think of them, though speculative minds may
sometimes be led by them to seek for higher expressions, or to embrace both sides
of the contradiction in some conception of flux or transition, reciprocal action,
process by antagonism, the Hegelian vibration of moments, or the like. In common
life we acquiesce in the contradiction almost unconsciously, merely remarking on
the difference of men’s views, or the possibility of saying something on either
side of a question. But in religion the difficulty appears of greater importance,
partly from our being much more under the influence of language in theology than
in subjects which we can at once bring to the test of fact and experiment, and partly
also from our being more subject to our own natural constitution, which leads us
to one or the other horn of the dilemma, instead of placing us between or above
both. As in heathen times it was natural to think of extraordinary phenomena, such
as thunder and lightning, as the work of gods rather than as arising from physical
The immoveableness of these abstractions from within will further incline us to consider the metaphysical contradiction of necessity and free will in the only rational way; that is, ‘historically.’ To say that we have ideas of fate or freedom which are innate, is to assume what is at once disproved by a reference to history. In the East and West, in India and in Greece, in Christian as well as heathen times, whenever men have been sufficiently enlightened to form a distinct conception of a single Divine power or overruling law, the question arises, How is the individual related to this law? The first answer to this question is Pantheism; in which the individual, dropping his proper qualities, abstracts himself into an invisible being, indistinguishable from the Divine. God overpowers man; the inner life absorbs the outer; the ideal world is too much for this. The second answer, which the East has also given to this question, is Fatalism; in which, without abstraction, the individual identifies himself, soul and body, in deed as well as thought, with the Divine will. The first is the religion of contemplation; the second, of action. Only in the last, as the world itself alters, the sense of the overruling power weakens; and faith in the Divine will, as in Mahometan countries at the present day, shows itself, not in a fanatical energy, but in passive compliance and resignation.
The gradual emergence of the opposition is more clearly traceable
in the Old Testament Scriptures or in Greek poetry or philosophy. The Israelites
are distinguished from all other Eastern nations—certainly from all contemporary
with their early history—by their distinct recognition of the unity and personality
of God. God, who is the Creator and Lord of the whole earth, is also in a peculiar
sense the God of the Jewish people whom He deals with
We may briefly trace the progress of a parallel struggle in Grecian
mythology. It presents itself, however, in
Such conceptions of fate belong to Paganism, and have little
in common with that higher idea of Divine predestination of which the New Testament
speaks. The Fate of Greek philosophy is different from either. The earlier
Our inquiry has been thus far confined to an attempt to show,
first, that the question of predestination cannot be considered according to the
common rules of logic; secondly, that the contradictions which are involved in
this question, are of the same kind as many other contrasts of ideas; and, thirdly,
that the modern conception of necessity was the growth of ages, whether its true
origin is to be sought in the Scriptures, or in the Greek philosophy. or both. If
only we could throw ourselves back to a prior state of the world, and know no other
modes of thought than those which existed in the infancy of the human mind, the
opposition would cease to have any meaning for us; and thus the further reflection
is suggested, that if ever we become fully conscious that the words which we use
respecting it are words only, it will again become unmeaning. Historically we know
when it arose, and whence it came. Already we are able to consider the subject in
a simpler way, whether presented to us (1) in connexion with the
§ 2.
Two kinds of predestination may be distinguished in the writings of St. Paul, as well as in some parts of the Old Testament. First, the predestination of nations; secondly, of individuals. The former of these may be said to flow out of the latter, God choosing at once the patriarchs and their descendants. As the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses it, ‘By faith Abraham offered up Isaac; and therefore sprang there of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in multitude.’ The life of the patriarchs was the type or shadow of the history of their posterity, for evil as well as good. ‘Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations; Joseph is a goodly bough;’ Moab and Ammon are children of whoredom; Ishmael is a wild man, and so on. There is also the feeling that whatever extraordinary thing happens in Jewish history is God’s doing, not of works nor even of faith, but of grace and choice: ‘He took David from the sheep-folds, and set him over His people Israel.’ So that a double principle is discernible: first, absolute election; and, secondly, the fulfilment of the promises made to the fathers, or the visitation of their sins upon the children.
The notion of freedom is essentially connected with that of individuality.
No one is truly free who has not that inner circle of thoughts and actions in which
he is wholly himself and independent of the will of others. A slave, for example,
may be in this sense free, even while in the service of his lord; constraint can
apply only to his outward acts, not to his inward nature. But if, in the
language of Aristotle, he were a natural slave, whose life seemed to himself defective
and imperfect, who had no thoughts or feelings of his own, but only instincts and
impulses, we could no more call him free than a domestic animal which attaches itself
to a master. So, in that stage of society in
The idea of a chosen people passes from the Old Testament into
the New. As the Jews had been predestined in the one, so it appeared to the Apostle
St. Paul that the Gentiles were predestined in the other. In the Old Testament he
observed two sorts of predestination; first, that more general one, in which all
who were circumcised were partakers of the privilege—which was applicable to all
Israelites as the children of Abraham; secondly, the more particular one,
in reference to which he says, ‘All are not Israel who are of Israel.’ To the eye
of faith ‘all Israel were saved;’ and yet within Israel, there was another Israel
chosen in a more special sense. The analogy of this double predestination the Apostle
transfers to the Christian society. All alike were holy, even those of whom he speaks
in the strongest terms of reprobation. The Church, like Israel of old, presents
to the Apostle’s mind the conception of a definite body, consisting of those who
are sealed by baptism and have received ‘the first fruits of the Spirit.’ They are
elect according to the foreknowledge or predisposition of God; sealed by God
unto the day of redemption;
Again, the Apostle argues respecting Israel itself, ‘Hath God cast off his people whom he foreknew?’ or rather, whom He before appointed. They are in the position of their fathers when they sinned against Him. If we read their history we shall see, that what happened to them in old times is happening to them now; and yet in the Old Testament as well as the New the overruling design was not their condemnation but their salvation—‘God concluded all under sin that he might have mercy upon all.’ They stumbled and rose again then; they will stumble and rise again now. Their predestination from the beginning is a proof that they cannot be finally cast off; beloved as they have been for their father’s sakes, and the children of so many promises. There is a providence which, in spite of all contrary appearance, in spite of the acceptance of the Gentiles, or rather so much the more in consequence of it, makes all things work together for good to the chosen people.
In this alternation of hopes and fears, in which hope finally
prevails over fear, the Apostle speaks in the strongest language of the right of
God to do what He will with His own; if any doctrine could be established by particular
passages of Scripture, Calvinism would rest immoveable on the ninth chapter of the
Romans. It seemed to him no more unjust that God should reject than that He should
accept the Israelites; if, at that present time He cut them short in righteousness,
and narrowed the circle of election,
It is answered by the opponents of Calvinism, that the Apostle is here speaking not of individual but of national predestination. From the teaching of the Old Testament respecting the election of the Jewish people we can infer nothing respecting the Divine economy about persons. To which in turn it may be replied, that if we admit the principle that the free choice of nations is not inconsistent with Divine justice, we cannot refuse to admit the free choice of persons also. A little more or a little less of the doctrine cannot make it more or less reconcilable with the perfect justice of God. Nor can we argue that the election of nations is a part of the Old Testament dispensation, which has no place in the New; because the Apostle speaks of election according to the purpose of God as a principle which was at that time being manifested in the acceptance of the Gentiles.
Yet the distinction is a sound one if stated a little
differently, that is to say, if we consider that the predestination of Christians
is only the continuance of the Old Testament in the New. It is the feeling of a
religious Israelite respecting
It has been said that the great error in the treatment of this
subject consists in taking chap. ix. separated from chaps. x. xi. We may say more
generally, in taking parts of Scripture without the whole, or in interpreting either
apart from history and experience. In considering the question of predestination,
we must not forget that at least one-half
In the Old Testament the only election of individuals is that
of the great leaders or chiefs, who are identified with ‘the nation. But in the
New Testament, where religion has become a personal and individual matter, it follows
that election must also be of persons. The Jewish nation knew, or seemed to know,
one fact, that they were the chosen people. They saw, also, eminent men raised up
by the hand of God to be the deliverers of His servants. It is not in this ‘historical’ way that the Christian becomes conscious of his individual election. From within,
not from without, he is made aware of the purpose of God respecting himself.
A religious mind feels the difference between saying, ‘God chose me; I cannot tell why; not for any good that I have done; and I am persuaded that he will keep me unto the end;’ and saying, ‘God chooses men quite irrespective of their actions, and predestines them to eternal salvation;’ and yet more, if we add the other half of the doctrine, ‘God refuses men quite irrespective of their actions, and they become reprobates, predestined to everlasting damnation.’ Could we be willing to return to that stage of the doctrine which St. Paul taught, without comparing contradictory statements or drawing out logical conclusions—could we be content to rest our belief, as some of the greatest, even of Calvinistic divines have done, on fact and experience, theology would be no longer at variance with morality.
‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to do and to will of his good pleasure,’ is the language of Scripture, adjusting the opposite aspects of this question. The Arminian would say, ‘Work out your own. salvation;’ the Calvinist, ‘God worketh in you both to do and to will of his good pleasure.’ However contradictory it may sound, the Scripture unites both; work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
§ 3.
I. We have been considering the question thus far within the limits of Scripture. But it has also a wider range. The primary relations of the will of man to the will of God are independent of the Christian revelation. Natural religion, that is to say, the Greek seeking after wisdom, the Indian wandering in the expanse of his own dreamlike consciousness, the Jew repeating to himself that he is Abraham’s seed; each in their several ways at different stages of the world’s history have asked the question, ‘How is the freedom of the human will consistent with the infinity and omnipotence of God?’ These attributes admit of a further analysis into the power of God and the knowledge of God. And hence arises a second form of the inquiry, ‘How is the freedom of the human will reconcilable with Divine omniscience or foreknowledge?’ To which the Christian system adds a third question, ‘How is the freedom of the human will reconcilable with that more immediate presence of God in the soul which is termed by theologians Divine grace?’
(1) God is everywhere; man is nowhere. Infinity exists continuously
in every point of time; it fills every particle of space. Or rather, these very
ideas of time and space are figures of speech, for they have a ‘here’ and a ‘there,’ a future and a past—which no effort of human imagination
God is the cause of all things; without Him nothing is made that is made. He is in history, in nature, in the heart of man. The world itself is the work of His power; the least particulars of human life are ordained by Him. ‘Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them;’ and ‘the hairs of your head are all numbered.’ Is there any point at which this Divine causalty can stop? at which the empire of law ceases? at which the human will is set free?
The answer is the fact; not the fact of consciousness as it is sometimes termed, that we are free agents, which it is impossible to see or verify; but the visible tangible fact that we have a place in the order of nature, and walk about on the earth, and are ourselves causes drawing effects after them. Does any advocate of freedom mean more than this? Or any believer in necessity less? No one can deny of himself the restrictions which he observes to be true of others; nor can any one doubt that there exists in others the same consciousness of freedom and responsibility which he has himself. But if so, all these things are as they were before; we need not differ about the unseen foundation whether of necessity or free will, spirit or body, mind or matter, upon which the edifice of human life is to be reared. Just as the theory of the ideality of matter leaves the world where it was—they do not build houses in the air who imagine Bishop Berkeley to have dissolved the solid elements into sensations of the mind—so the doctrine of necessity or predestination leaves morality and religion unassailed, unless it intrude itself as a motive on the sphere of human action.
It is remarkable that the belief in predestination, both in modern
and in ancient times, among Mahometans as well
‘God is infinite.’ But in what sense? Am I to conceive a
space without limit, such as I behold in the immeasurable ether, and
apply this viewless form to the thought of the Almighty? Any one will admit that
here would be a figure of speech. Yet few of us free our notions of infinity from
the imagery of place. It is this association which gives them their positive, exclusive
character. But conceive of infinity as mere negation, denying of God the limits
which are imposed upon finite beings, meaning only that God is not a man
or comprehensible by man, without any suggestion of universal space, and the exclusiveness
disappears; there is room for the creature side by side with the Creator. Or again,
press the idea of the infinite to its utmost extent, till it is alone in
the universe, or rather is the universe itself, in this heaven of abstraction, nevertheless,
a cloud begins to appear; a limitation casts its shadow over the formless void.
Infinite is finite because it is infinite. That is to say, because infinity includes
all things, it is incapable of creating what is external to itself. Deny
infinity in this sense, and the being to whom it is attributed receives a new power;
God is greater by being finite than by being infinite. Proceeding in the same train
of thought, we may observe that the word finite is the symbol, to our own minds
as to the Greek, of strength and reality and truth. It cannot be these which we
intend to deny of the Divine Being. Lastly,
It is useful to point out the ambiguities and perplexities of such terms. Logic is not to puzzle us with inferences about words which she clothes in mystery; at any rate, before moving a step she should explain their meaning. She must admit that the infinite overreaches itself in denying the existence of the finite, and that there are some ‘limitations,’ such as the impossibility of evil or falsehood, which are of the essence of the Divine nature. She must inquire whether it be conceivable to reach a further infinite, in which the opposition to the finite is denied, which may be a worthier image of the Divine Being. She must acknowledge that negative ideas, while they have often a kind of solemnity and mystery, are the shallowest and most trifling of all our ideas.
So far the will may be free unless we persist in an idea of the
Divine which logic and not reason erroneously requires, and which is the negative
not only of freedom but of all other existence but its own. More serious consequences
may seem to flow from the attribute of omnipotence. For if God is the Author of
all things, must it not be as a mode of Divine operation that man acts? We can
get no further than a doctrine of emanation or derivation. Again, we are caught
unwittingly in the toils of an ‘illogical’ logic. For why should we assume that because
God is omnipotent He cannot make beings independent of himself? A figure of speech
is not generally a good argument; but in this instance it is a sufficient one,
what is needed being not an answer but only an image or mode of conception. (For
in theology and philosophy it constantly happens that while logic is working out
antinomies, language fails to supply an expression of the intermediate truth.) The
carpenter makes
(2) Yet although the freedom of the will may be consistent with the infinity and omnipotence of God, when rightly understood and separated from logical consequences, it may be thought to be really interfered with by the Divine omniscience. ‘God knows all things; our thoughts are His before they are our own; what I am doing at this moment was certainly foreseen by Him; what He certainly foresaw yesterday, or a thousand years ago, or from everlasting, how can I avoid doing at this time? To-day He sees the future course of my life. Can I make or unmake what is already within the circle of His knowledge? The imperfect judgement of my fellow-creatures gives me no disquietude—they may condemn me, and I may reverse their opinion. But the fact that the unerring judgement of God has foreseen my doom renders me alike indifferent to good and evil.’
What shall we say to this? First, that the distinction between
Divine and human judgements is only partially true. For as God sees with absolute
unerringness, so a wise man who is acquainted with the character and circumstances
of others may foretell and assure their future life with
There are degrees in human knowledge or foreknowledge proceeding from the lowest probability, through increasing certainty, up to absolute demonstration. But as faint presumptions do not affect the future, nor great probability, so neither does scientific demonstration. Many natural laws cannot be known more certainly than they are; but we do not therefore confuse the fact with our knowledge of the fact. The time of the rising of the sun, or of the ebb and flow of the tide, are foretold and acted upon without the least hesitation. Yet no one has imagined that these or any other natural phenomena are affected by our previous calculations about them.
Why, then, should we impose on ourselves the illusion that the
unerring certainty of Divine knowledge is a limit or shackle on human actions?
The foreknowledge which we possess ourselves in no way produces the facts which
we
(3) But the difficulty with which Christianity surrounds, or rather seems to surround us, winds yet closer; it rests also on the Christian consciousness. The doctrine of grace may be expressed in the language of St. Paul: ‘I can do nothing as of myself, but my sufficiency is of God:’ that which is truly self, which is peculiarly self, is yet in another point of view not self but God. He who has sought most earnestly to fulfil the will of God refers his efforts to something beyond himself; he is humble and simple, seeming to fear that he will lose the good that he has, when he makes it his own.
This is the mind of Christ ‘which is formally expressed in theology
by theories of grace. Theories of grace have commonly started from the transgression
of Adam and the corruption of human nature in his posterity. Into the origin of
sin it is not necessary for us to inquire; we may limit ourselves to the fact.
All men are very far gone from original righteousness, they can only return to God
by His grace preventing them; that is to say, anticipating and co-operating with
the motions of their will. (1) God wills
All these theories of grace affect at various points the freedom of the will, the first seeming wholly to deny it, while all the others attempt some real or apparent reconcilement of morality and religion. The fourth and fifth meet the difficulties arising out of our ideas of the justice of God, but fall into others derived from experience and fact. Can we say that all Christians, nominal and real, nay, that the most degraded persons among the heathen, are equally the subjects of Divine grace? Then grace is something unintelligible; it is a word only, to which there is no corresponding idea. Again, how upon any of these theories is grace distinguishable from the better consciousness of the individual himself? Can any one pretend to say where grace ends and the movement of the will begins? Did any one ever recognize in himself those lines of demarcation of which theology sometimes speaks?
These are difficulties in which we are involved by ‘oppositions of knowledge falsely so called.’ The answer to them is simple—a return to fact and nature. When, instead of reading our own hearts, we seek, in accordance with a preconceived theory, to determine the proportions of the divine and human—to distinguish grace and virtue, the word of God and man—we know not where we are, the difficulty becomes insuperable, we have involved ourselves in artificial meshes, and are bound hand and foot. But when we look by the light of conscience and Scripture on the facts of human nature, the difficulty of itself disappears. No one doubts that he is capable of choosing between good and evil, and that in making this choice he may be supported, if he will, by a power more than earthly. The movement of that Divine power is not independent of the movement of his own will, but coincident and identical with it. Grace and virtue, conscience and the Spirit of God, are not different from each other, but in harmony. If no man can do what is right without the aid of the Spirit, then every one who does what is right has the aid of the Spirit.
Part of the difficulty originates in the fact that the Scripture
regards Christian truth from a Divine aspect, ‘God working in you,’ while
ordinary language, even among religious men in modern times, deals rather with
human states or feelings. Philosophy has a third way of speaking which is
different from either. Two or more sets of words and ideas are used which gradually
acquire a seemingly distinct meaning; at last comes the question—in what relation
they stand to one another? The Epistles speak of grace and faith at the same time
that heathen moralists told of virtue and wisdom, and the two streams of language
have flowed on without uniting even at our own day. The question arises, first,
whether grace is anything more than the objective name of faith and love; and again,
whether these two latter are capable of being distinguished from virtue and truth? Is that which St. Paul called faith
Instead, then, of arranging in a sort of theological diagram the relations of the human will to Divine grace, we deny the possibility of separating them. In various degrees, in many ways, more or less consciously in different cases, the Spirit of God is working in the soul of man. It is an erroneous mode of speaking, according to which the free agency of man is represented as in conflict with the Divine will. For the freedom of man in the higher sense is the grace of God; and in the lower sense (of mere choice) is not inconsistent with it. The real opposition is not between freedom and predestination, which are imperfect and in some degree misleading expressions of the same truth, but between good and evil.
II. Passing out of the sphere of religion, we have now to examine the question of free agency within the narrower limits of the mind itself. It will confirm the line of argument hitherto taken, if it be found that here too we are subject to the illusions of language and the oppositions of logic.
(1) Every effect has a cause; every cause an effect. The drop
of rain, the ray of light does not descend at random on the earth. In the natural
world though we are far from understanding all the causes of phenomena, we are certain
from that part which we know, of their existence in that part which we do not know.
In the human mind we perceive the action of many physical causes; we are therefore
led to infer, that only our ignorance of physiology prevents our perceiving the
absolute interdependence of body and soul. So indissolubly are cause and effect
bound together, that there is a mental impossibility in conceiving
The author of the Critic of pure Reason is willing to accept such a statement as has been just made, and yet believes himself to have found out of time and space, independent of the laws of cause and effect, a transcendental freedom. Our separate acts are determined by previous causes; our whole life is a continuous ‘effect,’ yet in spite of this mechanical sequence, freedom is the overruling law which gives the form to human action. It is not necessary to analyze the steps by which Kant arrived at this paradoxical conclusion. Only by adjusting the glass so as to exclude from the sight everything but the perplexities of previous philosophers, can we conceive how a great intellect could have been led to imagine the idea of a freedom from which the notion of time is abstracted, of which nevertheless we are conscious in time. For what is that freedom which does not apply to our individual acts, hardly even to our lives as a whole, like a point which has neither length nor breadth, wanting both continuity and succession?
Scepticism proceeds by a different path in reference to our ideas of cause and effect; it challenges their validity, it denies the necessity of the connexion, or even doubts the ideas themselves. There was a time when the world was startled out of its propriety at this verbal puzzle, and half believed itself a sceptic. Now we know that no innovation in the use of words or in forms of thought can make any impression on solid facts. Nature and religion, and human life remain the same, even to one who entirely renounces the common conceptions of cause and effect.
The sceptic of the last century, instead of attempting to invalidate
the connexion of fact which we express by the terms cause and effect, should rather
have attacked language as ‘unequal to the subtlety of nature.’ Facts must
be described
Hence, no one who examines our ideas of cause and effect will
believe that they impose any limit on the will; they are an imperfect mode in which
the mind imagines the sequence of nature or moral actions; being no generalization
from experience, but a play of words only. The chain which we are wearing is loose,
and when shaken will drop off. External circumstances are not the cause of which
the will is the effect; neither is the will the cause of which circumstances are
the effect. But the phenomenon intended to be described by the words ‘cause and
effect’ is itself the will,
The same explanation applies to another formula: ‘the strongest motive.’ The will of every man is said to be only determined by the strongest motive: what is this but another imaginary analysis of the will itself? For the motive is a part of the will, and the strongest motive is nothing more than the motive which I choose. Nor is it true as a fact that we are always thus determined. For the greater proportion of human actions have no distinct motives; the mind does not stand like the schoolmen’s ass, pondering between opposite alternatives. Mind and will, and the sequence of cause and effect, and the force of motives, are different ways of speaking of the same mental phenomena.
So readily are we deceived by language, so easily do we fall
under the power of imaginary reasonings. The author of the Novum Organum
has put men upon their guard against the illusions of words in the study of the
natural sciences. It is true that many distinctions may be drawn between the knowledge
of nature, the facts of which are for the most part visible and tangible, and morality
and religion, which run up into the unseen. But is it therefore to be supposed that
language, which is the source of half the exploded fallacies of chemistry and physiology,
is an adequate or exact expression of moral and spiritual truths? It is probable
that its analysis of human nature is really as erring and inaccurate as its description
of physical phenomena, though the error may be more difficult of detection. Those
‘inexact natures’ or substances of which Bacon speaks exist in moral philosophy
as in physics; their names are not heat, moisture, form, matter and the like, but
necessity, free will, predestination, grace, motive, cause, which rest upon
nothing and yet become the foundation-stones of many systems. Logic, too, has its
parallels, and conjugates, and differences of kind, which in life and reality are
only differences of degree, and remote inferences lending an
III. Difficulties of this class belong to the last generation rather than to the present; they are seldom discussed now by philosophical writers. Philosophy in our own age is occupied in another way. Her foundation is experience, which alone she interrogates respecting the limits of human action. How far is man a free agent? is the question still before us. But it is to be considered from without rather than from within, as it appears to others or ourselves in the case of others, and not with reference to our internal consciousness of our own actions.
The conclusions of philosophers would have met with more favour
at the hands of preachers and moralists, had they confined themselves to the fact.
Indeed, they would have been irresistible, like the conclusions of natural science,
for who can resist evidence that any one may verify for himself? But the taint
of language has clung to them; the imperfect expression of manifest truths has
greatly hindered the general acceptance of them even among the most educated. It
was not understood that those who spoke of necessity meant nothing which was really
inconsistent with free will; when they assumed a power of calculating human actions,
it was not perceived that all of us are every day guilty of this imaginary impiety.
The words, character, habit, force of circumstances, temperament and constitution
imply all that is really involved in the idea that human action is subject to uniform
laws. Neither is it to be denied that expressions have been used equally repugnant
to fact and morality; instead of regularity, and order, and law, which convey a
beneficent idea, necessity has been set up as a constraining power tending to destroy,
if not really destroying, the accountability of man. History, too, has received
an impress of fatalism, which has doubtless
According to a common way of considering this subject, the domain of necessity is extending every day, and liberty is already confined to a small territory not yet reclaimed by scientific inquiry. Mind and body are in closer contact; there is increasing evidence of the interdependence of the mental and nervous powers. It is probable, or rather certain, that every act of the mind has a cause and effect in the body, that every act of the body has a cause and effect in the mind. Given the circumstances, parentage, education, temperament of each individual; we may calculate, with an approximation to accuracy, his probable course of life. Persons are engaged every day in making such observations; and whatever uncertainty there may be in the determination of the future of any single individual, this uncertainty is eliminated when the inquiry is extended to many individuals or to a whole class. We have as good data for supposing that a fixed proportion of a million persons in a country will commit murder or theft as that a fixed proportion will die without reaching a particular age and of this or that disease under given circumstances. And it so happens that we have the power of testing this order or uniformity in the most trifling of human actions. Nor can we doubt that were it worth while to make an abstract of human life, arranging under heads the least minutiae of action, all that we say and do would be found to conform to numerical laws.
So, again, history is passing into the domain of philosophy.
Nations, like individuals, are moulded by circumstances; in their first rise, and
ever after in their course, they are dependent on country and climate, like plants
or animals, embodying the qualities which have dropped upon them from surrounding
influences in national temperament; in their later stages seeming to react upon
these causes, and
It is a matter of some importance in what way this connexion
or order of nature is to be expressed. For although words cannot alter facts, the
right use of them greatly affects the readiness with which facts are admitted or
received. Now the world may be variously imagined as a vast machine, as an animal
or living being, as a body endowed
‘deum namque ire per omnes terrasque tractusque maris, coelumque profundum.’
So the term ‘law’ carries with it an association, partly of compulsion, partly of that narrower and more circumscribed notion of law, in which it is applied to chemistry or mechanics. So again the word ‘necessity’ itself always has a suggestion of external force.
All such language has a degree of error, because it introduces
some analogy which belongs to another sphere of thought. But when, laying aside
language, we consider facts only, no appearance of external compulsion arises, whether
in nature, or in history, or in life. The lowest, and therefore the simplest idea,
that we are capable of forming of physical necessity, is of the stone falling to
the ground. No one imagines human action to be necessary in any such sense as
this. If this be our idea of necessity, the meaning of the term must be enlarged
when it is applied to man. If any one speaks of human action as the result of necessary
laws, to avoid misunderstanding, we may ask at the outset of the controversy, ‘In what degree necessary?’ And this brings us to an idea which is perhaps the
readiest solution of the apparent perplexity—that of degrees
How degrees of necessity are possible may be illustrated as follows: The strongest or narrowest necessity which we ever see in experience is that of
some very simple mechanical fact, such as is furnished by the law of attraction.
A greater necessity than this is only an abstraction; as, for example, the necessity
by which two and two make four, or the three angles of a triangle equal two right
angles. But any relation between objects which are seen is of a much feebler and
less absolute kind; the strongest which we have ever observed is that of a
smaller body to a larger. The physiology even of plants opens to our
minds freer and nobler ideas of law. The tree with its fibres and sap, drawing its
nourishment from many sources, light, air, moisture, earth, is a complex structure: rooted to one particular spot, no one would think of ascribing to it free agency,
yet as little should we think of binding it fast in the chains of a merely mechanical
necessity. Animal life partaking with man of locomotion is often termed free; its
sphere is narrowed only by instinct; indeed the highest grade of irrational being
can hardly be said, in point of freedom, to differ from the lowest type of the human
species. And in man himself are many degrees of necessity or freedom, from the child
who is subject to its instincts, or the drunkard who is the slave of his passions,
up to the philosopher comprehending at a glance the wonders of heaven and earth,
the freeman ‘whom the truth makes free,’ or the Christian devoting himself to God,
whose freedom is ‘obedience to a law;’ that law being ‘the law of the Spirit of
life,’ as the Apostle expresses it; respecting which, nevertheless, according to
another mode of speaking
The idea of necessity has already begun to expand; it is no longer the negative of freedom, they almost touch. For freedom, too, is subject to limitation; the freedom of the human will is not the freedom of the infinite, but of the finite. It does not pretend to escape from the conditions of human life. No man in his senses imagines that he can fly into the air, or walk through the earth; he does not fancy that his limbs will move with the expedition of thought. He is aware that he has a less, or it may be a greater, power than others. He learns from experience to take his own measure. But this limited or measured freedom is another form of enlarged necessity. Beginning with an imaginary freedom, we may reduce it within the bounds of experience; beginning with an abstract necessity, we may accommodate it to the facts of human life.
Attention has been lately called to the phenomena (already noticed)
of the uniformity of human actions. The observation of this uniformity has caused
a sort of momentary disturbance in the moral ideas of some persons, who seem unable
to get rid of the illusion, that nature compels a certain number of individuals
to act in a particular way, for the sake of keeping up the average. Their error
is, that they confuse the law, which is only the expression of the fact, with the
cause; it is as though they affirmed the universal to necessitate the particular.
The same uniformity appears equally in matters of chance. Ten thousand throws of
the dice, ceteris paribus, will give about the same number
It is possible to conceive great variations in such tables;
it is possible, that is, to imagine, without any change of circumstances, a thousand
persons executed in France during one year for political offences, and none the
next. But the world in which this phenomenon was observed would be a very different
sort of world from that in which we live. It would be a world in which ‘nations,
like individuals, went mad;’ in which there was no habit, no custom; almost, we
may say, no social or political life. Men must be no longer different, and so compensating
one another by their excellencies and deficiencies, but all in the same extreme; as if the waves of the sea in a storm instead of returning to their level were
to remain on high. The mere statement of such a speculation is enough to prove its
absurdity. And, perhaps, no better way could be found of disabusing the mind of
the objections which appear to be entertained to the fact of the uniformity of human
actions, than a distinct
But the advocate of free will may again return to the charge, with an appeal to consciousness. ‘Your freedom,’ he will say, ‘is but half freedom, but I have that within which assures me of an absolute freedom, without which I should be deprived of what I call responsibility.’ No man has seen facts of consciousness, and therefore it is at any rate fair that before they are received they shall be subjected to analysis. We may look at an outward object which is called a table; no one would in this case demand an examination into the human faculties before he admitted the existence of the table. But inward facts are of another sort; that they really exist, may admit of doubt; that they exist in the particular form attributed to them, or in any particular form, is a matter very difficult to prove. Nothing is easier than to insinuate a mere opinion, under the disguise of a fact of consciousness.
Consciousness tells, or seems to tell, of an absolute freedom; and this is supposed to be a sufficient witness of the existence of such a freedom. But does consciousness tell also of the conditions under which this freedom can be exercised? Does it remind us that we are finite beings? Does it present to one his bodily, to another his mental constitution? Is it identical with self-knowledge? No one imagines this. To what then is it the witness? To a dim and unreal notion of freedom, which is as different from the actual fact as dreaming is from acting. No doubt the human mind has or seems to have a boundless power, as of thinking so also of willing. But this imaginary power, going as it does far beyond experience, varying too in youth and age, greatest often in idea when it is really least, cannot be adduced as a witness for what is inconsistent with experience.
The question, How is it possible for us to be finite beings,
and yet to possess this consciousness of freedom which has no limit? may be
partly answered by another question:
Freedom is absolute in another sense, as the correlative of obligation. Men entertain some one, some another, idea of right, but all are bound to act according to that idea. The standard may be relative to their own circumstances, but the duty is absolute; and the power is also absolute of refusing the evil and choosing the good, under any possible contingency. It is a matter (not only of consciousness but) of fact, that we have such a power, quite as much as the facts of statistics, to which it is sometimes opposed, or rather, to speak more correctly, is one of them. And when we make abstraction of this power, that is, when we think of it by itself, there arises also the conception of an absolute freedom.
So singularly is human nature constituted, looking from without
on the actions of men as they are, witnessing inwardly to a higher law. ‘You ought
to do so; you have the power to do so,’ is consistent with the fact, that in practice
you fail to do so. It may be possible for us to unite both these aspects of human
nature, yet experience seems to show that we commonly look first at one and then
at the other. The inward vision tells us the law of duty and the will of God; the
outward contemplation of ourselves and others shows the trials to which we are most
subject.
Yet this external aspect of human affairs has a moral use. It is a duty to look at the consequences of actions, as well as at actions themselves; the knowledge of our own temperament, or strength, or health, is a part also of the knowledge of self. We have need of the wise man’s warning, about ‘age which will not be defied’ in our moral any more than in our physical constitution. In youth, also, there are many things outward and indifferent, which cannot but exercise a moral influence on after life. Often opportunities of virtue have to be made, as well as virtuous efforts; there are forms of evil, too, against which we struggle in vain by mere exertions of the will He who trusts only to a moral or religious impulse, is apt to have aspirations, which never realize themselves in action. His moral nature may be compared to a spirit without a body, fluttering about in the world, but unable to comprehend or grasp any good.
Yet more, in dealing with classes of men, we seem to find that
we have greater power to shape their circumstances than immediately to affect their
wills. The voice of the preacher passes into the air; the members of his congregation
are like persons ‘beholding their natural face in a glass;’ they go their way,
forgetting their own likeness. And often the result of a long life of ministerial
work has been the conversion of two or three individuals. The power which is exerted
in such a case may be compared to the unaided use of the hand, while mechanical
appliances are neglected. Or to turn to another field of labour, in which the direct
influence of Christianity has been hitherto small, may not the reason why the result
of missions is often disappointing
The great lesson, which Christians have to learn in the present day, is to know the world as it is; that is to say, to know themselves as they are; human life as it is; nature as it is; history as it is. Such knowledge is also a power, to fulfil the will of God and to contribute to the happiness of man. It is a resting-place in speculation, and a new beginning in practice. Such knowledge is the true reconcilement of the opposition of necessity and free will. Not that spurious reconcilement which places necessity in one sphere of thought, freedom in another; nor that pride of freedom which is ready to take up arms against plain facts; nor yet that demonstration of necessity in which logic, equally careless of facts, has bound fast the intellect of man. The whole question, when freed from the illusions of language, is resolvable into experience. Imagination cannot conquer for us more than that degree of freedom which we truly have; the tyranny of science cannot impose upon us any law or limit to which we are not really subject; theology cannot alter the real relations of God and man. The facts of human nature and of Christianity remain the same, whether we describe them by the word ‘necessity’ or ‘freedom,’ in the phraseology of Lord Bacon and Locke, or in that of Calvin and Augustine.
Genesis
Leviticus
Joshua
2 Samuel
Job
Psalms
Ecclesiastes
Isaiah
1:13 19:18-25 19:25 23:1-18 40:1 45:1 53:2 53:7 53:7
Jeremiah
9:25-26 11:19 11:19 12:14-17 31:29 36:30
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Hosea
Amos
Micah
Matthew
2:1 2:15 2:22 5:32 5:34 8:17 9:13 16:18 16:18-19 17:26 18:18 19:21 22:21 24:34 28:20
Mark
Luke
John
1:1 1:36 3:3 3:5 6:52 6:56 6:63 10:35 14:26 16:15 18:36 19:35 20:30 21:25
Acts
Romans
1:2 1:3-4 1:4 1:8 1:16-18 1:23 1:32 2:1-16 2:12-28 2:17-21 3:1-9 3:2 3:9 3:15 3:19 3:23 3:23-25 3:25 3:25 4:1-25 4:25 4:25 5:1-21 5:7 5:12 5:12-18 5:12-21 5:20 9:1-33 9:1-33 9:5 9:22 10:1-21 10:1-12:21 10:5 10:10 11:32 13:1 14:1-23 14:22-23 15:6 16:25-27
1 Corinthians
3:15 3:15 5:7 5:7 8:1-13 8:4 9:20 10:19 10:20 10:25 10:27 11:10 13:1-13 13:8 15:4 15:21-22 15:22 15:29 15:45-49 15:56
2 Corinthians
1:17 3:16 5:15 6:6-10 11:21-33
Galatians
2:17-21 2:20 2:20 2:20 3:1 3:13 3:13 4:11-20 4:13 4:13
Philippians
Colossians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Hebrews
4:8 5:6 6:1 7:6 8:13 9:1 9:11-14 9:14 10:12 11:26
2 Peter
1 John
Revelation
Wisdom of Solomon
i ii iii v x xi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 359 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409