‘JOWETT has been of use to me, because he believes in the great essentials—the life of the dead and the deity of Christ. What he says is very comforting, because he knows on what foundations our faith rests. Others have been most kind and sympathizing; but cut-and-dry sentiments, in which everything is taken for granted, do me no good at all.’—ALEXANDER EWING, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles: 1856.
THE Dissertations which are here reprinted turn principally on the Author’s method of interpreting Scripture. They indicate the point of view from which he looked upon the sacred writings, both in themselves, and in their possible applications to human life in its religious aspect. With the exception of the first Essay, which is of general significance, they formed part of his edition of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans (1855-1859). The Essay on Interpretation, though it appeared afterwards (I860) as a contribution to the volume known as Essays and Reviews, consists of a series of observations which had occurred to the writer in the course of the same long-continued labour. This Essay contains the noble sentences—to print them twice within the limits of the same volume can hardly be superfluous:—
‘When interpreted like any other book, by the
same rules of evidence and the same canons of criticism, the Bible will still remain unlike any other
book; its beauty will be freshly seen, as of a picture
which is restored after many ages to its original
state; it will create a new interest and make for
itself a new kind of authority by the life which is in
it. . . . No one can form any notion from what we see
Though separated from their original context, and republished
after so long an interval, it is believed that these writings will be found to
have a lasting value. Much has since been thought and written in theology, and
discoveries have been made, through which Biblical Criticism has been placed on
more secure foundations. Perhaps, also, the errors of Bibliolatry, against which
some of these Essays were directed, are less current, in the present day, than
sacerdotal tendencies which equally make for obscurantism. But the spirit of
Jowett’s work, in which the purest love of truth was transfused with deep
religious feeling, may still give encouragement to inquirers and comfort to
doubtful minds. Learned treatises abound among us and devotional manuals and
incitements are not infrequent. But the combination of learning with wisdom and of both with
piety, of fearlessness with sobriety, of enthusiasm
with clear judgement, of considerateness with openness of mind, has not been common in any age, and
is rare in our own. Not the matter conveyed so
much as the personality behind it, and ‘the style
The late Lord Bowen, between whom and Jowett there was a life-long attachment, once said of him, ‘The Master taught us not what to think, but how to think.’ The former method has an immediate fascination for many minds, and has often led to the formation of a school. The results of the latter mode of instruction are less obvious, but they are more far-reaching and permanent, supplying stimulus and guidance for all subsequent activities, theoretical and practical.
In an appreciative notice of the former volume,
‘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 on the surface of the waters, but the depths of the silent sea. Lastly, as a measure of the value of such disputes, which above all other interests seem to have for a time the power of absorbing men’s minds and rousing their passions, we only carry our thoughts onwards to the invisible world, and there behold, as in a glass, the great theological teachers of past ages, who have anathematized each other in their lives, resting together in the communion of the same Lord.’
The Sermon on Richard Baxter, which is appended
to this volume, has already appeared amongst the
author’s Biographical Sermons,
In the Congregation which from 1866 to 1893 assembled in the Abbey to hear Professor Jowett each July, there was always more than a sprinkling of personal friends,—former pupils with their wives and families,—who heard him gladly. To them it was at once pathetic and inspiriting to listen to that silvery familiar voice in the evening of life expatiating cheerfully on the solemn experiences of Old Age. That impression was not soon to fade. But the preacher’s purpose had a larger scope. It is observable that in the three sermons just mentioned the Englishmen whom he chose to celebrate had all in their lifetime been estranged from the Communion of the Church of England. ‘They followed not with us.’ And he desired to enforce the divine precept, ‘Forbid them not.’
For in his latest years he increasingly lamented the ‘Schism’ which so long had separated the loyal Churchman from the pious Dissenter, and he strove in various ways to soften the asperity of the misunderstanding which held them apart.
In the Autumn of the same year (1891) in which the ‘Baxter’ Sermon was preached at Westminster,—during a distressing illness which he himself expected to have a fatal result,—he wrote or dictated as follows to his former pupil, the Rev. J. C. Edwards, who had been appointed to succeed his father as Principal of the Nonconformist Theological College at Bala in Wales:—
‘I dare say that you remember the often quoted .saying of Lessing, that “the Christian religion had been tried for eighteen centuries, and that the religion of Christ remained to be tried”. It seems rather boastful and extravagant, but it expresses the spirit in which any new movement for the improvement of theology must be carried on. It means that Christians should no longer be divided into Churchmen and Nonconformists, or even into Christians and non-Christians, but that the best men everywhere should know themselves to be partakers of the Spirit of God, as He imparts Himself to them in various degrees. It means that the old foolish quarrels of science with religion, or of criticism with religion, should for ever cease, and that we should recognize all truth, based on fact, to be acceptable to the God of truth. It means that goodness and knowledge should be inseparably united in every Christian word or work, that the school should not be divorced from the Church, or the sermon from the lesson, or preaching from visiting, or secular duties from religious ones, except so far as convenience may require. It means that we should regard all persons as Christians, even if they come before us with other names, if they are doing the works of Christ.
‘These arc the principles by which the founders or restorers
of a theological College may hope to be guided. They have not been often acted
upon in the history of the Christian Church. But the best men and the best part
of men have borne witness to them in the silence of their hearts.’
And in the summer of the following year (1892), little more than a twelvemonth before his death, he assisted at the formal inauguration of Mansfield College, which had recently been opened in Oxford under Principal Fairbairn, for the training of Non conformist Protestant Ministers. His speech on that occasion, which has been recorded, bears evidence of the same deeply seated desire. He said:—
‘This is a great festival of union and reconciliation. I might go back into the past and speak of the time when, 230 years ago, a few words introduced into a formula divided the whole people of England against itself. Every sensible man knows that there were things done in the olden time that no good and wise man will now defend; and every sensible man knows, too, that it is better to forget them, and not to think too much of what happened to one’s ancestors 230 years ago.
‘Now let me draw your attention to points of
agreement amongst us, not points of difference. . . .
Do we not use the same version of the Scriptures?
Are not many of the hymns, in which we worship
God, of Nonconformist origin? Is there any one who
is unwilling to join with others in any philanthropic
work? However different may have been our education,
Between 1891 and the Essay on Interpretation
there had been an interval of thirty-one years. But
Jowett was the same man still. The love of truth
Fifteen years have passed since then. But his words have not lost their power. And the need for them is not less to-day.
When the wave of mediaevalism and reaction that has submerged so many of our clergy shall have spent its force, the serene wisdom of this Interpreter may yet be audible in quarters where he would have loved to find a hearing. ‘Being dead’ he yet may ‘speak,’ and call his countrymen away from barren controversy and idle speculation to the calm consideration of Bible truths and to the words of Him who ‘spake as never man spake’.
Since writing the above, I have received from Professor Allan
Menzies
‘No doubt things are very much changed since he
wrote. The greatest change of all is that derived
from the new light thrown on the Old Testament by
the discoveries of Wellhausen, Reuss, &c. In his Essay
on Prophecy Jowett calls for a more satisfactory
‘On the New Testament, the synoptic question has been wrought out statistically since Jowett wrote, and there is not much doubt about the main lines of the solution. But the solution, as he truly anticipated, does not solve every difficulty. In other parts of the field his words are remarkably true forecasts of the course of study since his time. What he says about the Greek of the New Testament agrees remarkably with the position held by Deissmann, Moulton, &c., that it belongs to the fusible spoken language of its day, and that to study words and grammatical forms too closely often leads to losing the meaning. The study of Aramaic as the language spoken by Christ is post-Jowett, and I scarcely think Jowett anticipates it. It is true the method remains largely a method, but a valid one, though the results are uncertain. On Hebraisms and the LXX., Jowett is quite in line with the latest writers.
‘His great distinction as a Bible scholar is that he
cares for the ideas and thought of the books. The
attempt to build up the truth of Scripture by
external methods, antiquities, travels, classical analogies, &c., has its uses, but is apt to take the place
of what is vital. On the other hand the Classical
revival has penetrated into New Testament Studies
very powerfully since Jowett in the way of making the
life and the problems of the New Testament Churches
more real to us, and throwing on them the light of
the religious ideas and practices which were general
in those times. The History of Religion had hardly
LEWIS CAMPBELL.
ALASSIO, ITALY,
December 1906.
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, an
other 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 others who
interpret the Bible and the Bible only with a silent
reference to the traditions of the Reformation. Philosophical differences are in the background, into which
the differences about Scripture also resolve themselves.
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 fifth and ninth chapters of
the Romans, single verses such as
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
‘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
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
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 a while 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
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 been minutely analysed both in
ancient and modern times. Yet the interpretation
of Sophocles is tentative and uncertain; it seems to
vary from age to age: to some the great tragedian
has appeared to embody in his choruses certain
theological or moral ideas of his own age or country;
there are others who find there an allegory of the
Christian religion or of the history of modern
Europe. Several schools of critics have commented
on his works; to the Englishman he has presented
one meaning, to the Frenchman another, to the
German a third; the interpretations have also
differed with the philosophical systems which the
interpreters espoused. To one the same words have
appeared to bear a moral, to another a symbolical
meaning; a third is determined wholly by the
authority of old commentators; while there is
a disposition to condemn the scholar who seeks to
interpret Sophocles from himself only, and with
reference to the ideas and beliefs of the age in which
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 on a level with sacred literature; and there
are other particulars in which the preceding comparison fails, as, for example, the style and subject.
But, however different the subject, although the
interpretation of Scripture requires a vision and
faculty divine’, or at least a moral and religious
interest which is not needed in the study of a Greek
poet or philosopher, yet in what may be termed the
externals of interpretation, that is to say, the meaning of words, the connexion of sentences, the settlement of the text, the evidence of facts, the same
rules apply to the Old and New Testaments as to
other books. And the figure is no exaggeration of
the erring fancy of men in the use of Scripture, or of
the tenacity with which they cling to the interpretations
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
imagine that he is a disciple of Christ or Paul; to
disengage himself from all that follows. The history
of Christendom is nothing to him; but only the
scene at Galilee or Jerusalem, the handful of
believers who gathered themselves together at
Ephesus, or Corinth, or Rome. His eye is fixed on
the form of one like the Son of man, or of the
Prophet who was girded with a garment of camel’s hair, or of the Apostle who had a thorn in the
flesh. The greatness of the Roman Empire is
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 Spirit
of God Himself, yet unable to pass beyond the
limits of their own age, and with a judgement often
biassed by party. Great names there have been
among them, names of men who may be reckoned
Such a history would be of great value to philosophy as well as to theology. It would be 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 text from immediately and
universally prevailing. One of these is the unsettled
state of many questions which have an important
but indirect bearing on this subject. Some of these
questions veil themselves in ambiguous terms; and
no one likes to draw them out of their hiding-place
into the light of day. In natural science it is felt to
be useless to build on assumptions; in history we
look with suspicion on a priori ideas of what ought
to have been; in mathematics, when a step is wrong,
we pull the house down until we reach the point at
which the error is discovered. But in theology it is
otherwise; there the tendency has been to conceal
the unsoundness of the foundation under the fairness
and loftiness of the superstructure. It has been
thought safer to allow arguments to stand which,
although fallacious, have been on the right side,
than to point out their defect. And thus many
principles have imperceptibly grown up which have
overridden facts. No one would interpret Scripture,
as many do, but for certain previous suppositions
with which we come to the perusal of it. ‘There
can be no error in the Word of God,’ therefore the
discrepancies in the books of Kings and Chronicles
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. For while we are ready to
shake hands with any one who uses the same language as ourselves, a doubt is apt to insinuate itself
whether he takes language in the same senses—whether a particular term conveys all the associations to another which it does to ourselves—whether
it is not possible that one who disagrees about the
word may not be more nearly agreed about the
thing. The advice has, indeed, been given to the
theologian that he ‘should take care of words and
leave things to themselves’; the authority, however,
who gives the advice is not good—it is placed by
Goethe in the mouth of Mephistopheles. Pascal
seriously charges the Jesuits with acting on a similar maxim—excommunicating those who meant the
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 matters of doctrine,
but allows for mistakes in fact. Lastly, there is
a view of inspiration which recognizes only its
supernatural and prophetic character, and a view of
inspiration which regards the Apostles and Evangelists as equally inspired in their writings and in their
lives, and in both receiving the guidance of the
Spirit of truth in a manner not different in kind but
only in degree from ordinary Christians. Many of
these explanations lose sight of the original meaning
and derivation of the word; some of them are framed
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 answer
therefore is, That idea of Scripture which we gather
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
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
A similar train of thought may be extended to the
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
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
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 point as when the whole of
Christianity was contained in the words, ‘Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou mayest be saved,’
when the Gospel centred in the attachment to a
living or recently departed friend and Lord. The
language of the New Testament is the first utterance
and consciousness of the mind of Christ; or the
immediate vision of the Word of life (
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 not difficult to prove.
The statements of Scripture are unaccountable if
we deny it; the silence of Scripture is equally unaccountable. Absorbed as St. Paul was in the person
of Christ with an intensity of faith and love of which
in modern days and at this distance of time we can
scarcely form a conception—high as he raised the
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 favour
able 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 sense can suppose that ‘in the beginning’ (
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
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
The neglect of this necessary contrast between the
(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 ‘blessedness of poverty’; of the hardness which they
that have riches will experience ‘in attaining eternal life’. ‘It is easier for a camel to go through
a needle’s eye,’ and ‘Son, thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things’, and again
‘One thing
thou lackest, go sell all that thou hast’. Precepts
like these do not appeal to our own experience of
life; they are unlike anything that we see around us
at the present day, even among good men; to some
among us they will recall the remarkable saying of
Lessing,—‘that the Christian religion had been
tried for eighteen centuries; the religion of Christ
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 practicable and in harmony with the
existing state of the world. In this instance it
seems as if religious teachers had failed to gather
those principles of which they stood most in need. ‘Think ye that those eighteen upon whom the
tower of Siloam fell?’ is the characteristic lesson of
the Gospel on the occasion of any sudden visitation.
Yet it is another reading of such calamities that is
commonly insisted upon. The observation is seldom
made respecting the parable of the good Samaritan,
that the true neighbour is also a person of a different
religion. The words, ‘Forbid him not: for there is
no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that
can lightly speak evil of me,’ are often said to have
no application to sectarian differences in the present
day, when the Church is established and miracles
have ceased. The conduct of our Lord to the
woman taken in adultery, though not intended for
our imitation always, yet affords a painful contrast
to the excessive severity with which even a Christian
society punishes the errors of women. The boldness
with which St. Paul applies the principle of individual judgement, ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind,’ as exhibited also in the
words quoted above, ‘Let no man judge you in
respect of the new moon, or of the sabbath-days,’
is far greater than would be allowed in the present
age. Lastly, that the tenet of the damnation of the
heathen should ever have prevailed in the Christian
world, or that the damnation of Catholics should
have been a received opinion among Protestants,
implies a strange forgetfulness of such passages as
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 New Testament with the Old,
it will be hard to demonstrate from Scripture any
complex system either of doctrine or practice. The
Bible is not a book of statutes in which words have
been chosen to cover the multitude of cases, but in
the greater portion of it, especially the Gospels and
Epistles, ‘like a man talking to his friend.’ Nay,
more, it is a book written in the East, which is in
some degree liable to be misunderstood, because it
speaks the language and has the feeling of Eastern
lands. Nor can we readily determine in explaining
the words of our Lord or of St. Paul, how much (even
of some of the passages just quoted) is to be attributed to Oriental modes of speech. Expressions
which would be regarded as rhetorical exaggerations
in the Western world are the natural vehicles of
thought to an Eastern people. How great then
must be the confusion where an attempt is made to
draw out these Oriental modes with the severity of a
philosophical or legal argument! Is it not such a use
of the words of Christ which He Himself rebukes
when He says? ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth. the
flesh profiteth nothing’ (
There is a further way in which the language of
Other questions meet us on the threshold, of
a different kind, which also affect the interpretation
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 be predestined or made after a pattern corresponding to the things that were to be in the latter days. And this question of itself stirs another question respecting the interpretation of the Old Testament in the New. Is such interpretation to be regarded as the meaning of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the thoughts of other times?
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.
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. The unchangeable word of
God, in the name of which we repose, is changed by
each age and each generation in accordance with its
passing fancy. The book in which we believe all
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
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
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 objections of infidels,
is a mischief to the Christian cause. It is a mischief
that critical observations which any intelligent man
can make for himself, should be ascribed to atheism
or unbelief. It would be a strange and almost
incredible thing that the Gospel, which at first made
war only on the vices of mankind, should now be
opposed to one of the highest and rarest of human
virtues—the love of truth. And that in the present
day the great object of Christianity should be, not
to change the lives of men, but to prevent them
from changing their opinion; that would be a
singular inversion of the purposes for which Christ
came into the world. The Christian religion is in
a false position when all the tendencies of knowledge
are opposed to it. Such a position cannot be long
maintained, or can only end in the withdrawal of
the educated classes from the influences of religion.
It is a grave consideration whether we ourselves may
not be in an earlier stage of the same religious
dissolution, which seems to have gone further in
Italy and France. The reason for thinking so is not
to be sought in the external circumstances of our
own or any other religious communion, but in the
progress of ideas with which Christian teachers
seem to be ill at ease. Time was when the Gospel
was before the age; when it breathed a new life into
a decaying world—when the difficulties of Christianity
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 preserve the historical use of
Scripture as the continuous witness in all ages of
the higher things in the heart of man, as the inspired
source of truth and the way to the better life.
They are willing to take away some of the external
supports, because they are not needed and do harm;
also, because they interfere with the meaning. They
have a faith, not that after a period of transition all
things will remain just as they were before, but that
they will all come round again to the use of man
and to the glory of God. When interpreted like
any other book, by the same rules of evidence and
the same canons of criticism, the Bible will still
remain unlike any other book; its beauty will be
freshly seen, as of a picture which is restored after
many ages to its original state; it will create a new
interest and make for itself a new kind of authority
by the life which is in it. It will be a spirit and not
a letter; as it was in the beginning, having an
influence like that of the spoken word, or the book
newly found. The purer the light in the human
heart, the more it will have an expression of itself in
the mind of Christ; the greater the knowledge of
But for the faith that the Gospel might win again
the minds of intellectual men, it would be better to
leave religion to itself, instead of attempting to draw
them together. Other walks in literature have
peace and pleasure and profit; the path of the
critical Interpreter of Scripture is almost always
a thorny one in England. It is not worth while for
any one to enter upon it who is not supported by
a sense that he has a Christian and moral object.
For although an Interpreter of Scripture in modern
times will hardly say with the emphasis of the
Apostle, ‘Woe is me, if I speak not the truth
without regard to consequences,’ yet he too may feel
it a matter of duty not to conceal the things which
he knows. He does not hide the discrepancies of
Scripture, because the acknowledgement of them is
the first step towards agreement among interpreters.
He would restore the original meaning, because ‘seven other’ meanings take the place of it; the
book is made the sport of opinion and the instrument
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 over
flows on the meaning of the text. The words of
Scripture suggest to them their own thoughts or
feelings. They are preachers, or in the New Testament sense of the word, prophets rather than
interpreters. There is nothing in such a view derogatory
to the saints and doctors of former ages. That
Aquinas or Bernard did not shake themselves free
from the mystical method of the Patristic times, or
the Scholastic one which was more peculiarly their
own; that Luther and Calvin read the Scriptures in
connexion with the ideas which were kindling in the
mind of their age, and the events which were passing
before their eyes, these and similar remarks are not
to be construed as depreciatory of the genius or
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 at the end of it. The method creates itself as we go on, beginning only with a few reflections directed against plain errors. Such reflections are the rules of common sense, which we acknowledge with respect to other works written in dead languages; without pretending to novelty they may help us to ‘return to nature’ in the study of the sacred writings.
First, it may be laid down that Scripture has one
meaning the meaning—which it had to the mind of
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 are
shut out. It is one of the highest tasks on which
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
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
But supposing all this to be understood, and that by the interpretation of Scripture from itself is meant a real interpretation of like by like, it may be asked, what is it that we gain from a minute comparison of a particular author or writing? The indiscriminate use of parallel passages taken from one end of Scripture and applied to the other (except so far as earlier compositions may have afforded the material or the form of later ones) is useless and uncritical. The uneducated or imperfectly educated person who looks out the marginal references of the English Bible, imagining himself in this way to gain a clearer insight into the Divine meaning, is really following the religious associations of his own mind. Even the critical use of parallel passages is not without danger. For are we to conclude that an author meant in one place what he says in another? Shall we venture to mend a corrupt phrase on the model of some other phrase, which memory, prevailing over judgement, calls up and thrusts into the text? It is this fallacy which has filled the pages of classical writers with useless and unfounded emendations.
The meaning of the Canon ‘Non nisi ex
Scripturâ Scripturam potes interpretari’, is only this, ‘That we
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
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 an age which was the victim of its
own passions, the creature of its own circumstances,
the slave of its own degenerate religion, our Saviour
taught a lesson absolutely free from all the influences
of a surrounding world. He made the last perfect
revelation of God to man; a revelation not indeed
immediately applicable to the state of society or the
world, but in its truth and purity inexhaustible by
the after generations of men. And of the first
application of the truth which He taught as a counsel
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 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 every where; 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 all people’, yet bearing the greatest part in the education of the world. Nowhere else among the teachers and benefactors of mankind is there any form like His, in whom the desire of the nation is fulfilled, and ‘not of that nation only’, but of all mankind, whom He restores to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God.
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 imperfectly 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 patriarch looking
back on the entire past, which he reads anew,
perceiving that the events of life had a purpose or
‘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.
Scripture has an inner life or soul; it has also an
outward body or form. That form is language,
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
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 certainty, or if
certain, the importance of the result, 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
There seem to be reasons for doubting whether
It is for others to investigate the language of the
Old Testament, to which the preceding remarks are
only in part applicable. 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 has been said of the
increasing accuracy of our knowledge of the language
of the New Testament: the old Hebraistic method
of explaining difficulties of language or construction
has retired within very narrow limits; it might probably with advantage be confined to still narrower
ones—[if it have any place at all except in the
Apocalypse or the Gospel of St. Matthew]. There
is, perhaps, some confusion between accuracy of our
knowledge of language, and the accuracy of language
itself; which is also strongly maintained. It is
observed that the usages of barbarous as well as
civilized nations conform perfectly to grammatical
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
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
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 ages have been remarkable for the former of these two characteristics; they have dealt in opposition, contradiction, climax, pleonasm, reason within reason, and the like; mere statements taking the form of arguments—each sentence seeming to be a link in a chain. In such periods of literature, the appearance of logic is rhetorical, and is to be set down to the style. That is the case with many passages in the New Testament which are studded with logical or rhetorical formulae, especially in the Epistles of St. Paul. Nothing can be more simple or natural than the object of the writer. Yet ‘forms of the schools’ appear (whether learnt at the feet of Gamaliel, that reputed master of Greek learning, or not) which imply a degree of logical or rhetorical training.
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 traced as clearly from the Book of Genesis to the Epistles of St. Paul, as from Homer to Plato and Aristotle. When we hear St. Paul speaking of ‘body and soul and spirit’, we know that such language as this would not occur in the Books of Moses or in the Prophet Isaiah. It has the colour of a later age, in which abstract terms have taken the place of expressions derived from material objects. When we proceed further to compare these or other words or expressions of St. Paul with ‘the body and mind’, or ‘mind’ and ‘matter’, which is a distinction, not only of philosophy, but of common language among ourselves, it is not easy at once to determine the relation between them. Familiar as is the sound of both expressions, many questions arise when we begin to compare them.
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 analyse the ideas of the mind
just as the physiologist may analyse 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 of the
case of the poor, who understand such distinctions
very imperfectly, or of those nations of the earth, who
have no precisely corresponding division of ideas. It
is not of that subtle or evanescent character which is
liable to be lost in shifting the use of terms. Indeed,
it is an advantage at times to discard these terms
with the view of getting rid of the oppositions to
which they give rise. No metaphysical analysis can
prevent ‘our taking up the cross and following Christ’, or receiving the kingdom of heaven as little children.
To analyse the ‘trichotomy’ of St. Paul is interesting
as a chapter in the history of the human mind and
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 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 any thing 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
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, from the philosopher reading ‘God in History’, to the poor
woman who finds in them a response to her prayers,
and the solace of her daily life. In the hour of death
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
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
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 cloak 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
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
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
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 under
stood, to mean more than they really do. They
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 what 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 period, is really discoverable in Scripture. Even the isolated thinker, against whom the religious world is taking up arms, has an influence on his opponents. The force of observations, which are based on reason and fact, remains when the tide of religious or party feeling is gone down. Criticism has also a healing influence in clearing away what may be termed the Sectarianism of knowledge. Without criticism it would be impossible to reconcile History and Science with Revealed Religion; they must remain for ever in a hostile and defiant attitude. Instead of being like other records, subject to the conditions of knowledge which existed in an early stage of the world, Scripture would be regarded on the one side as the work of organic Inspiration, and as a lying imposition on the other.
The real unity of Scripture, as of man, has also
In some cases, we have only to enlarge the meaning
The portion of Scripture which more than any
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
Such are a few instances of the manner 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
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, or
given ‘for the hardness of men’s hearts’. It cannot
be denied that such passages of Scripture are liable
to misunderstanding; the spirit of the Old Covenanters, although no longer appealing to the action
of Samuel, ‘hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord
in Gilgal,’ is not altogether extinguished. And
a community of recent origin in America found
their doctrine of polygamy on the Old Testament.
But the poor generally read the Bible unconsciously;
they take the good, and catch the prevailing spirit,
without stopping to reason whether this or that
practice is sanctioned by the custom or example of
Scripture. The child is only struck by the impiety
of the children who mocked the prophet; he does
not think of the severity of the punishment which
is inflicted upon them. And the poor, in this
respect, are much like children; their reflection on
the morality or immorality of characters or events
is suppressed by reverence for Scripture. The
Christian teacher has a sort of tact by which he
guides them to perceive only the spirit of the
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 under
stood. 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 up holding 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 were regarded in their generation as
supplying a triumphant answer to the enemies of
Scripture, we cannot argue that their answer will be
satisfactory to those who inquire into such subjects
in our own. Criticism has far more power than it
formerly had; it has spread itself over ancient, and
even modern, history; it extends to the thoughts and
ideas of men as well as to words and facts; it has also
a great place in education. Whether the habit of
mind which has been formed in classical studies will
not go on to Scripture; whether Scripture can be
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 times are changing, and we are changing too.
‘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
This distraction of the human mind between ad verse 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 that in missions to the heathen Scripture may become the expression of universal truths rather than of the tenets of particular men or churches? That would remove many obstacles to the reception of Christianity. Or that the study of Scripture may have a more important place in a liberal education than hitherto? Or that the ‘rational service’ of interpreting Scripture may dry up the crude and dreamy vapours of religious excitement? Or, that in preaching, new sources of spiritual health may flow from a more natural use of Scripture? Or that the lessons of Scripture may have a nearer way to the hearts of the poor when disengaged from theological formulas? Let us consider more at length some of these topics.
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 be 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
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
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
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 belief, and almost
the history of the Church of England itself, as the
attempt is sometimes made—not to an uncivilized
people, ready like children to receive new impressions,
but to an ancient and decaying one, furrowed with
the lines of thought, incapable of the principle of
growth. But you may take the purer light or element
of religion, of which Christianity is the expression,
and make it shine on some principle in human nature
which is the fallen image of it. You cannot give a
people who have no history of their own, a sense of
the importance of Christianity, as an historical fact:
but, perhaps, that very peculiarity of their character
may make them more impressible by the truths or
III. It may be doubted whether Scripture has ever
been sufficiently regarded as an element of liberal
education. Few deem it worth while to spend in
the study of it the same honest thought or pains
which are bestowed on a classical author. Nor, as at
present studied, can it be said always to have an
elevating effect. It is not a useful lesson for the
young student to apply to Scripture principles which
he would hesitate to apply to other books; to make
formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would
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 the Old
and New Testament. And before we can make the
Old and New Testament a real part of education, we
must read them not by the help of custom or tradition, in the spirit of apology or controversy, but in
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
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 thresh old 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’,
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,
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,
Lastly, let him be assured that there is some nobler
idea of truth than is supplied by the opinion of man
kind 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; and, in the religious teacher,
the first is even more necessary than the last. For,
while the vices of mankind are in a great degree
isolated, and are, at any rate, reprobated by public
opinion, their prejudices have a sort of communion
or kindred with the world without. They are a
collective evil, and have their being in the interest,
classes, states of society, and other influences amid
which we live. He who takes the prevailing opinions
of Christians and decks them out in their gayest
colours—who reflects the better mind of the world to
itself—is likely to be its favourite teacher. In that
ministry of the Gospel, even when assuming forms
repulsive to persons of education, no doubt the good
is far greater than the error or harm. But there is
also a deeper work which is not dependent on the
opinions of men, in which many elements combine,
some alien to religion, or accidentally at variance
with it. That work can hardly expect to win much
popular favour, so far as it runs counter to the
feelings of religious parties. But he who bears a part
in it may feel a confidence, which no popular caresses
or religious sympathy could inspire, that he has by a
RELIGION and philosophy have often been contrasted as moving in different planes, in which they can never come into contact with each other. Yet there are many meeting-points at which either passes into the circle of the other. One of these meeting-points is language, which loses nothing of its original imperfection by being employed in the service of religion. Its plastic nature is an element of uncertainty in the interpretation of Scripture; its logical structure is a necessary limit on human faculties in the conception of truths above them; whatever growth it is capable of, must affect also the growth of our religious ideas; the analysis we are able to make of it, we must be able also to extend to the theological use of it. Religion cannot place itself above the instrument through which alone it speaks to man; our true wisdom is, therefore, to be aware of their interdependence.
One of the points in which theology and philosophy
are brought into connexion by language, is their
common usage of abstract words, and of what in the
phraseology of some philosophers are termed ‘mixed
modes’, or ideas not yet freed from associations of
time or sense. Logicians speak of the abstract and
concrete, and of the formation of our abstract ideas:
Are the abstractions of Scripture the same in kind
with those of philosophy? May we venture to
analyse their growth, to ask after their origin, to
It is remarked by a great metaphysician, that abstract ideas are, in one point of view, the highest and most philosophical of all our ideas, while in another they are the shallowest and most meagre. They have the advantage of clearness and definiteness; they enable us to conceive and, in a manner, to span the infinity of things; they arrange, as it were, in the frames of a window the many-coloured world of phenomena. And yet they are ‘mere’ abstractions removed from sense, removed from experience, and detached from the mind in which they arose. Their perfection consists, as their very name implies, in their idealism: that is, in their negative nature.
For example: the idea of ‘happiness’ has come
down from the Greek philosophy. To us it is more
entirely freed from etymological associations than it
was to Aristotle, and further removed from any
particular state of life, or, in other words, it is more
of an abstraction. It is what everybody knows, but
what nobody can tell. It is not pleasure, nor wealth,
nor power, nor virtue, nor contemplation. Could we
define it, we seem at first as if we should have found
It is the uniformity in the use of such words that constitutes their true value. Like all other words, they represent in their origin things of sense, facts of experience. But they are no longer pictured by the sense, or tinged by the affections; they are beyond the circle of associations in which they arose. When we use the word happiness, no thought of chance now intrudes itself; when we use the word righteousness, no thought of law or courts; when the word virtue is used, the image no longer presents itself of manly strength or beauty.
The growth of abstract ideas is an after-growth of
language itself, which may be compared to the growth
of the mind when the body is already at its full
stature. All language has been originally the reflection of a world of sense; the words which describe
the faculties have once referred to the parts of the
body; the name of God himself has been derived in
most languages from the sun or the powers of nature.
It is indeed impossible for us to say how far, under
these earthly and sensual images, there lurked among
the primitive peoples of mankind a latent consciousness of the spiritual and invisible; whether the
thought or only the word was of the earth earthy.
>From this garment of the truth it is impossible for
This process of forming abstractions is ever going
on—the mixed modes of one language are the pure
ideas of another; indeed, the adoption of words from
dead languages into English has, above all other
causes, tended to increase the number of our simple
ideas, because the associations of such words, being
lost in the transfer, they are at once refined from all
alloy of sense and experience. Different languages,
or the same at different periods of their history, are
at different stages of the process. We can imagine
a language, such as language was, as far as the
vestiges of it allow us to go back, in its first beginnings, in which every operation of the mind, every
idea, every relation, was expressed by a sensible
image; a language which we may describe as purely
sensual and material, the words of which, like the
first written characters, were mental pictures: we can
imagine a language in a state which none has ever
yet reached, in which the worlds of mind and matter
are perfectly separated from each other, and no clog
or taint of the one is allowed to enter into the other.
Another illustration of degrees of abstraction may
be found in the language of poetry, or of common
life, and the language of philosophy. Poetry, we
know, will scarcely endure abstract terms, while they
form the stock and staple of morals and metaphysics.
They are the language of books, rather than of
conversation. Theology, on the other hand, though
its problems may seem akin to those of the moralist
and metaphysician, yet tends to reject them in the
same way that English tends to reject French words,
Our subject admits of another illustration from the language of the Fathers as compared with that of Scripture. Those who have observed the circumstance naturally ask why it is that Scriptural expressions when they reappear in the early patristic literature slightly change their signification? that a greater degree of personality is given to one word, more definiteness to another, while a third has been singled out to be the centre of a scheme of doctrine? The reason is, that use, and reflection, and controversy do not allow language to remain where it was. Time itself is the great innovator in the sense of words. No one supposes that the meaning of conscience or imagination exactly corresponds to the Latin ‘conscientia’ or ‘imaginatio’, Even within the limits of our own language the terms of the scholastic philosophy have acquired and lost a technical signification. And several changes have taken place in the language of creeds and articles, which, by their very attempt to define and systematize, have slightly though imperceptibly departed from the use of words in Scripture.
The principle of which all these instances are illustrations leads to important results in the interpretation of Scripture. It tends to show, that in using the same words with St. Paul we may not be using them in precisely the same sense. Nay, that the very exactness with which we apply them, the result of the definitions, oppositions, associations, of ages of controversy, is of itself a difference of meaning. The mere lapse of time tends to make the similarity deceitful. For if the language of Scripture (to use an expression which will have been made intelligible by the preceding remarks) be really at a different stage of abstraction, great differences in the use of language will occur, such as in each particular word escape and perplex us, and yet, on a survey of the whole, are palpable and evident.
A well-known difficulty in the interpretation of the
Epistles is the seemingly uncertain use of δικαιοσύνη, ἀλήθεια, ἀγάπη, πίστις, δόξα,
&c., words apparently the
most simple, and yet taking sometimes in the same
passage different shades and colours of meaning.
Sometimes they are attributes of God, in other
passages qualities in man; here realities, there mere
ideas, sometimes active, sometimes passive. Some of
them, as ἁμαρτία, πίστις, have a sort of personality
assigned to them, while others, as πνεῦμα, with which
we associate the idea of a person, seem to lose their
personality. They are used with genitive cases after
them, which we are compelled to explain in various
senses. In the technical language of German philosophy, they are objective and subjective at once. For
example: in the first chapter of the Romans,
A difficulty akin to this arises from the apparently numerous senses in which another class of words, such as νόμος, ζωή, θάνατος, are used in the Epistles of St. Paul. That νόμος should sometimes signify the law of Moses, at other times the law of the conscience, and that it should be often uncertain whether ζωή referred to a life spiritual or natural, is inconceivable, if these words had had the same precise and defined sense that the corresponding English words have amongst ourselves. The class of expressions before mentioned seems to widen and extend in meaning as they are brought into contact with God and the human soul, or transferred from things earthly and temporal to things heavenly and spiritual. The subtle transformation which these latter words undergo, may be best described as a metaphorical or analogous use of them: not, to take a single instance, that the meaning of the word ‘law’ is so widened as to include all ‘law’, but that the law of Moses becomes the figure or type of the law written on the heart, or of the law of sin and death, and ζωή, the natural life, the figure of the spiritual. Each word is a reflector of many thoughts, and we pass, from one reflection of it to another in successive verses.
That such verbal difficulties occur much more often
The difficulty of which we have been speaking, when considered in its whole extent, is its own solution. It does but force upon us the fact, that the use of language and the mode of thought are different in the writings of the Apostle from what they are amongst ourselves. It is the difficulty of a person who should set himself to explain the structure of a language which he did not know, by one which he did, and at last, in despair, begin to learn the new idiom. Or the difficulty that a person would have in under standing poetry, who imagined it to be prose. It is the difficulty that Aristotle or Cicero found in under standing the philosophers that were before them. They were familiar with the meaning of the words used by them, but not with the mode of thought. Logic itself had increased the difficulty to them of understanding the times before logic.
This is our own difficulty in the interpretation of
Scripture. Our use of language is more definite, our
abstractions more abstract, our structure more regular
The difficulty while it is increased, is also explained
by the personifying character of the age. Ideas in the
New Testament are relative to the mind of God or
man, in which they seem naturally to inhere so as
scarcely, in the usage of language, to have an independent existence. There is ever the tendency to
speak of good and virtue and righteousness as in
separable from the Divine nature, while in evil of
every sort a reflection of conscience seems to be included. The words
δικαιοσύνη, ἀλήθεια, ἀγάπη, are
not merely equivalent to righteousness, truth, love,
but connect imperceptibly with ‘the Author and
Father of lights’. There is no other righteousness or
truth but that of God, just as there is no sin without
the consciousness of sin in man. Consequently, the
two thoughts coalesce in one, and what are to us
ideas, which we can imagine existing even without
God, are to the Israelite attributes of God Himself.
Still, in our ‘mixed modes’ we must make a further
step; for as these ideas cannot be separated from God,
so neither can they be conceived of, except as revealed
in the Gospel, and working in the heart of man.
Man who is righteous has no righteousness of his own,
his righteousness is the righteousness of God in him.
Hence, when considering the righteousness of God,
A part of this embarrassment in the interpretation of Scripture arises out of the unconscious influence of English words and ideas on our minds, in translating from Hellenistic Greek. The difficulty is still more apparent, when the attempt is made to render the Scriptures into a language which has not been framed or moulded on Christianity. It is a curious question, the consideration of which is not without practical use, how far the nicer shades either of Scriptural expression or of later theology are capable of being made intelligible in the languages of India or China.
Yet, on the other hand, it must be remembered,
that neither this nor any of the other peculiarities
here spoken of, is a mere form of speech, but enters
deeply into the nature of the Gospel. For the Gospel
has necessarily its mixed modes, not merely because
it is preached to the poor, and therefore adopts the
expressions of ordinary life; nor because its language
is incrusted with the phraseology of the Alexandrian
writers; but because its subject is mixed, and, as it
were, intermediate between God and man. Natural
theology speaks clearly, but it is of God only; moral
philosophy speaks clearly, but it is of man only: but
Scripture language may thus be truly said to belong
to an intermediate world, different at once both from
the visible and invisible world, yet partaking of the
nature of both. It does not represent the things
that the eye sees merely, nor the things that are
within the veil of which those are the images, but
rather the world that is in our hearts; the things
that we feel, but nobody can express in words. His
body is the communion of His body; His spirit is
the communion of His spirit; the love of God is ‘loving as we are loved’; the knowledge of God is ‘knowing as we are known’; the righteousness of faith
is Divine as well as human. Hence language seems
to burst its bounds in the attempt to express the
different aspects of these truths, and from its very
inadequacy wavers and becomes uncertain in its meaning. The more intensely we feel and believe, and the
less we are able to define our feelings, the more shall
No human eye can pierce the cloud which overhangs
another life; no faculty of man can ‘by understanding find out’ or express in words the Divine nature.
Yet it does not follow that our ideas of spiritual
things are wholly indefinite. There are many symbols
and images of them in the world without and below.
There is a communion of thoughts, feelings, and
affections, even on earth, quite sufficient to be an
image of the communion with God and Christ, of
which the Epistles speak to us. There are emotions,
and transitions, and passings out of ourselves, and
states of undefined consciousness, which language is
equally unable to express as it is to describe justification, or the work of grace, or the relation of the
believer to his Lord. All these are rather intimated
than described or defined by words. The sigh of
sorrow, the cry of joy or despair, are but inarticulate
There is yet a further way in which the ideas of Scripture may be defined, that is, by use. It has been already observed that the progress of language is from the concrete to the abstract. Not the least striking instance of this is the language of theology. Embodied in creeds, it gradually becomes developed and precise. The words are no longer living creatures with hands and feet’, as it were, feeling after the hearts of men; but they have one distinct, unchanging meaning. When we speak of justification or truth, no question arises whether by this is meant the attribute of God, or the quality in man. Time and usage have sufficiently circumscribed the diversities of their signification. This is not to be regarded as a misfortune to Scriptural truth, but as natural and necessary. Part of what is lost in power and life is regained in certainty and definiteness. The usage of language itself would forbid us, in a discourse or sermon, to give as many senses to the word ‘law’ as are attributed to it by St. Paul. Only in the interpretation of Scripture, if we would feel as St. Paul felt, or think as he thought, it is necessary to go back to that age before creeds, in which the water of life was still a running stream.
The course of speculation which has been adopted
in this essay, may seem to introduce into Scripture
an element of uncertainty. It may seem to cloud
truth with metaphysics, and rob the poor and uneducated of the simplicity of the Gospel. But
perhaps this is not so. Whether it be the case that
such speculations introduce an element of uncertainty
or difficulty into Scripture or not, they introduce a
new element of truth. For without the consideration
of such questions as that of which a brief sketch has
been here attempted, there is no basis for Scriptural
interpretation. We are ever liable to draw the
But the Gospel is still preached to the poor as before, in the same sacred yet familiar language. They could not understand questions of grammar before; they do not understand modes of thought now. It is the peculiar nature of our religious ideas that we are able to apply them, and to receive comfort from them, without being able to analyse or explain them. All the metaphysical and logical speculations in the world will not rob the poor, the sick, or the dying of the truths of the Gospel. Yet the subject which we have been considering is not without a practical result. It warns us to restore the Gospel to its simplicity, to turn from the letter to the spirit, to withdraw from the number of the essentials of Christianity points almost too subtle for the naked eye, which depend on modes of thought or Alexandrian usages, to require no more of preciseness or definition than is necessary to give form and substance to our teaching. Not only the feebleness of human faculties, but the imperfection of language itself, will often make silence our truest wisdom. The saying of Scaliger, taken not seriously but in irony, is full of meaning: ‘Many a man has missed of his salvation from ignorance of grammar.’
To the poor and uneducated, at times to all, no
better advice can be given for the understanding of
Scripture than to read the Bible humbly with prayer.
Ἡνίκα 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 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 no
thing 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
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
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 en
tangle 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,
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
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
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
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 ones; and thoughts, that are really inconsistent, will have a place together in our minds, without our being able to perceive their inconsistency. The inconsistency will be traced by posterity; they will remark that up to a particular point we saw clearly; but that no man is beyond his age—there was a circle which we could not pass. And some one living in our own day may look into the future with ‘eagle eye’; he may weigh and balance with a sort of omniscience the moral forces of the world, perhaps with something too much of confidence that the right will ultimately prevail even on earth; and after ages may observe that his predictions were not always fulfilled or not fulfilled at the time he said.
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
‘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
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
(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 valley of Jehoshaphat’, in which ‘they shall go into the clefts of the
rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear
of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when
he ariseth to shake terribly the earth’. That day is
the fulfilment and realization of prophecy, without
which it would cease to have any meaning, just as
religion itself would cease to have any meaning to
ourselves, were there no future life, or retribution of
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 where,
at some time we cannot tell when, must and will have
retribution on evil; which has this other note of its
Divine character, that in judgement it remembers
mercy, pronouncing no endless penalty or irreversible
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
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,
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, what is subordinate in the prophets, becomes of principal importance in the application of the Apostle. The dark sayings about the Gentiles had more meaning than the utterers of them were aware of. Events connected them with the rejection of the Jews, of which the same prophets spoke. Not only had the Gentiles a place on the outskirts of the people of God, gathering up the fragments of promises ‘under the table’; they them selves were the spiritual Israel. When the prophets spoke of the Mount Sion, and all nations flowing to it, they were not expecting literally the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. They spoke of they knew not what—of something that had as yet no existence upon the earth. What that was, the vision on the way to Damascus, no less than the history of the Church and the world, revealed to the Apostle of the Gentiles.
(3) Another characteristic of Hebrew prophecy is
the transition from the nation to the individual.
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
There is another way also in which the individual
takes the place of the nation in the purposes of God; ‘a remnant shall be saved’. In the earlier books
of the Old Testament, the whole people is bound
up together for good or for evil. In the law especially,
there is no trace that particular tribes or individuals
are to be singled out for the favour of God. Even
their great men are not so much individuals as representatives of the whole people. They serve God as a
nation; as a nation they go astray. If, in the earlier
times of Jewish history, we suppose an individual
good man living ‘amid an adulterous and crooked
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 of the words spoken to the
natural bent of the prophet’s mind, and the greatness
of Elijah’s own character—all tend to stamp this
passage as marking one of the epochs of prophecy.
The solitude of the prophet and his separation in
(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 him self 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 from his wickedness, and
doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his
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 chap, xviii, as if with the intention of revoking the words of the second commandment, ‘visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children,’ it is said:—
‘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
Ἐν πάσῃ ἐπιστολῇ—‘In every Epistle.’—
THESE three words, dropping out by the way, open a field for reflection to those who maintain the genuineness of the Epistle in which they occur, because they imply, or at least make it probable, that St. Paul wrote other Epistles, which were never reckoned among the Canonical books, and of which all trace must therefore have disappeared in ecclesiastical history, even in that early age in which the Canon was beginning to be fixed.
Other expressions in the writings of the Apostle
lead to the same inference. In the second chapter
of the Epistle from which they are taken, which it is
important to observe is almost the earliest of those
extant, and the words of which cannot therefore refer
to the Epistles which are familiar to us, he twice
speaks of ‘a letter as from us’, as a common and
possible occurrence (
(ii) The character of the Apostle is a further
presumption on the same side of the question. He
who lives in himself the life of all the Churches, who
is praying for his converts night and day, and who
allows no other concerns to occupy his mind,—of such
an one is it reasonable to suppose that, during his
whole ministry, to all his followers in many lands,
he would write no other Epistles but those which
have come down to us? One might have thought
that every year, almost every month, he would have
found some exhortation to give to them; that he
would have received news of them from some quarter
or other touching divisions which required healing,
or persecution under which his children needed
comfort, or advances of the truth which called for
his counsel and sympathy. One might have thought
that his affection for them, and his extreme (may we
call it?) sensitiveness to their feelings towards himself,
would have led him to make use of every opportunity
for writing to them or hearing from them. He who
had no rest in his soul until he had sent Timothy to
know their state, could not have borne to have passed
a great portion of his life without knowledge of them
or intercourse with them. But if so, the Canonical
Epistles or Letters cannot be the only ones of which
the Apostle was the author. For, including the
Pastoral Epistles, their number is but thirteen, not
one in two years for the entire active portion of the
Apostle’s life, and these very unequally spread over
different periods. Of the first ten or fifteen years no
Epistle is extant; then two short ones begin the
series; after an interval of some years succeeded by
another short one: then in a single year follow the
three larger Epistles together, more than half the
whole: lastly, in the years of his imprisonment, we
have not much more than a short Epistle for every
(iii) The Epistles which are extant, with the exception of the Epistle to the Romans, are unlike the compositions of one who in his whole life wrote only ten letters. They are too lively and draw too near to the hearts of men. Those especially to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians (compare Philemon) imply habits of familiar intercourse between the Apostle and the distant Churches. Messengers are passing from him to them, and he is minutely informed of their circumstances. There is no trace of ignorance on the Apostle’s part of what is going on among them. There is none of that natural formality which grows up in letters between unknown persons. Would the Apostle have written to a Church which he only addressed once in his life in a style which is more like talking than writing?—and without the least allusion anywhere to the singularity of the circumstance of his writing to them?
But if, as the allusions which have been mentioned and the reason of the thing, and the style of the extant Epistles themselves, lead us to suppose, St. Paul wrote other Epistles, which have not been handed down to us, then many reflections arise in our minds, some of which have an important bearing on the interpretation of Scripture.
1. It has been observed that within a single year of
his life the Apostle wrote the Epistle to the Romans
and the two Epistles to the Corinthians, which are in
quantity equal to more than half the whole of his
Epistles, and not much short of a seventh portion of
the entire New Testament. Nor is it certain that
2. Suppose, further, that in a distant part of the
world, in some Syriac, or Armenian, or Aethiopic transcript, or even in its
original language, buried in the unexcavated portions of Herculaneum or Pompeii,
one of these lost Epistles were suddenly brought to light: with what feelings would it be received by the
astonished world! The return of the Apostle himself
to earth would hardly be a more surprising event.
There are minds to whom such a discovery would
seem to involve more danger than the loss of an
Epistle which we already have. It is not impossible
that it might be suppressed or ever it found its way
to the Christian public. Suppose it to escape this
fate; it is printed and translated: with what anxiety
do men turn over its pages, to find in them something
which has a bearing on this or that controverted
point! If touching upon disputed matters, is it too
much to conceive that it would not find equal acceptance with disputants on both sides—supposing that it
3. Another supposition may be raised of the discovery not of one but of many lost Epistles of St. Paul,
which suggests a new question. Would the balance
of Christian truth be thereby altered? Not so. A
moment’s reflection will remind us that the servant is
not above his Lord, nor the disciple above his Master.
If we have failed to gather from the words of Christ
the spirit of the Gospel, a new Epistle of St. Paul
would hardly enlighten us; if we are partakers of
that spirit we have more religious knowledge than it
is possible to exhaust on earth. The alarm is no
sooner raised than dispelled. The chief use of
bringing the supposition before our minds is to
remind us of the simplicity of the faith of Christ. It
may help to indicate also to the theological student
the nature of the problem which he has to consider in
the interpretation of Scripture, at once harder and
easier than he at first supposed,—easier because
simpler, harder because beset with artificial difficulties.
Were the Epistles bearing the name of St. Paul not
ten but thirty in number, a great change would take
place in our mode of studying them. Is it not their
shortness which provokes microscopic criticism?—the
scantiness of materials giving rise to conjectures, the
4. No difference is made by the supposition which
has been raised respecting the extant Epistles considered as a rule of life and practice. Almost any one
of them is a complete witness to the Author and
Finisher of our faith; a complete text-book of the
truths of the Gospel. But it is obvious that the
supposition, or rather the simple fact, that Epistles
have been lost which were written by St. Paul, is
inconsistent with the theory of a plan which is some
times attributed to the extant ones, which are regarded
as a temple having many parts, even as there are
many members in one body, and all members have
not the same office. A mistaken idea of design is one
of the most attractive errors in the interpretation of
Scripture no less than of nature. No such plan or
unity can be really conceived as existing in the
Apostle’s own mind; for he could never have distinguished between the Epistles destined to be lost and
those which have been allowed to survive. And to
attribute such a plan to an overruling Providence
would be an arbitrary fancy, involving not inspiration,
but the supernatural selection and preservation of
particular Epistles, and destructive to all natural ideas
of the Gospel. It is a striking illustration of what
may be termed the incidental character of Christianity, that (not without a Providence in this as in all
5. There is no reason to suppose that those Epistles of St. Paul which have been preserved were more sacred or inspired than those which were lost, or either more so than his discourses in the synagogue at Thessalonica during ‘three Sabbath days’, at Athens, at Corinth, at Rome, or the other places in which he preached the Gospel. The supposition of the lost Epistles indefinitely extends itself when we think of lost words. Of these it might be truly said, ‘that if they were written every one, even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written.’ The writings of the Apostle, like the words of our Saviour, are but a fragment of his life. And they must be restored to their context before they can be truly understood. They do not acquire any real sacredness by isolation from the rest. It would be a loss, not a gain, to deprive the New Testament of its natural human character,—instead of receiving a higher and diviner meaning, it would only be reduced to a level with the sacred writings of the Asiatic religions. ‘So Christ and his Apostles went about speaking day after day,’ is a truer and more instructive thought than ‘these things were formally set down for our instruction’. Nor does it really diminish the power of Scripture to describe it, as it appears to the eye of the critical student, as a collection of fragmentary and occasional pieces. For these fragments are living plants; the germ of eternal life is in them all; the least of all seeds, when compared in bulk with human literature, they have grown up into a tree, the shade of which covers the earth.
‘The strength of sin is the law.’—
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 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 utter most his individual and spiritual nature. In some degree, for example, society may exercise the same tyranny over us, and its conventions be stumblingblocks 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.
I. 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 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
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
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
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
III. There is some danger of speculative difficulties
presenting the same hindrance and stumbling-block
to our own generation, that the law is described as
doing to the contemporaries of St. Paul. As the law
was holy, just, and good, so many of these difficulties
are true, and have real grounds: all of them, except
in cases where they spring from hatred and opposition
to the Gospel, are at least innocent. And yet, by
undermining received opinions, by increasing vanity
and egotism, instead of strengthening the will and
fixing the principles, their promulgation may become
a temporary source of evil; so that, in the words of
the Apostle, it may be said of them that, taking
occasion by the truth, they deceive and slay men.
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 for all men,
such inquiries are open only to the few, increases the
irritation. The habit of mind which has been formed
in the study of Greek or Roman history may be
warned off the sacred territory, but cannot really be
prevented from trespassing: still more impossible is
it to keep the level of knowledge at one point in
Germany, at another in England. Geology, ethnology, historical and metaphysical criticism, assail in
It is foolish to lament over these things; it would
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
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
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 way for the consideration of the subject
within the limits of Scripture. Some preliminary
obstacles offer themselves, arising out of the opposition
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 under stand 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
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
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
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
The immovableness of these abstractions from
within will further incline us to consider the meta
physical 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
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 according to His own good pleasure, which is
also a law of truth and right. He is not so much
the Author of good as the Author of all things,
without whom nothing either good or evil can happen;
not only the permitter of evil, but in a few instances,
in the excess of His power, the cause of it also.
With this universal attribute He combines another, ‘the Lord our God, who brought us out of the land
of bondage.’ The people have one heart and one
soul with which they worship God and have dealings
with Him. Only a few individuals among them,
as Moses or Joshua, draw near separately to Him.
In the earliest ages they do not pray each one for
himself. There is a great difference in this respect
between the relation of man to God which is expressed
in the Psalms and in the Pentateuch. In the later
Psalms, certainly, and even in some of those ascribed
to David, there is an immediate personal intercourse
We may briefly trace the progress of a parallel
struggle in Grecian mythology. It presents itself,
however, in another form, beginning with the Fates
weaving the web of life, or the Furies pursuing the
guilty, and ending in the pure abstraction of necessity
or nature. Many changes of feeling may be observed
between the earlier and later of these two extremes.
The Fate of poetry is not like that of philosophy,
the chain by which the world is held together; but
an ever-living power or curse—sometimes just, some
times arbitrary,—specially punishing impiety towards the Gods or violations of
nature. In Homer it represents also a determination already fixed, or an ill
irremediable by man; in one aspect it is the folly which ‘leaves no place for repentance’. In Pindar
it receives a nobler form, ‘Law the king of all.’ 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 schools expressed their sense of an all-pervading law in rude, mythological figures. In
time this passed away, and the conceptions of chance,
of nature, and necessity became matters of philosophical inquiry. By the Sophists first the question
was discussed, whether man is the cause of his own
actions; the mode in which they treated of the
subject being to identify the good with the voluntary,
and the evil with the involuntary. It is this phase
of the question which is alone considered by Aristotle.
Our inquiry has been thus far confined to an attempt to show, first, that the question of pre destination 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 statements of Scripture, or (2) as a subject of theology and philosophy.
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 there fore 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
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
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 fathers’ 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
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 immovable 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, He had done the same with the patriarchs. He had said of old, ‘Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated:’ and this preference, as the Apostle observes, was shown before either could have committed actual sin. In the same spirit He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ And to Pharaoh, ‘For this cause have I raised thee up.’ Human nature, it is true, rebels at this, and says, ‘Why does he yet find fault?’ To which the Apostle only replies, ‘Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay?’ Some of the expressions which have become the most objectionable watchwords of predestinarian theology, such as ‘vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy’, are in fact taken from the same passage in the Epistle to the Romans.
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
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 his race; this the Apostle enlarges
to comprehend the Gentiles. As the temporal Israel becomes the spiritual Israel,
the chosen people are transfigured into the elect. Why this is so is only a part
of the more general question, ‘why the New Testament was given through the Old?’
It was natural it should be so given; humanly speaking, it could not have been
otherwise. The Gospel would have been unmeaning, if it had been ‘tossed into the
world’ separated from all human antecedents; if the heaven of its clearness had
been beyond the breath of every human feeling. Neither is there any more
untruthfulness in St. Paul’s requiring us to recognize the goodness of God in the
election of some and the rejection of others, than in
humility or any act of devotion. The untruth lies
not in the devout feeling, but in the logical statement.
When we humble ourselves before God, we may know,
as a matter of common sense, that we are not worse
than others; but this, however true (‘Father, I thank
thee I am not as other men’), is not the temper in
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 pre
destination, we must not forget that at least one-half
of Scripture tells not of what God does, but of what
man ought to do; not of grace and pardon only, but
of holiness. If, in speaking of election, St. Paul
seems at times to use language which implies the
irrespective election of the Jews as a nation; yet, on
the other hand, what immediately follows shows us
that conditions were understood throughout, and
that, although we may not challenge the right of God
to do what He would with His own, yet that in all
His dealings with them the dispensation was but the
effect of their conduct. And although the Apostle
is speaking chiefly of national predestination, with
respect to which the election of God is asserted by
him in the most unconditional terms; yet, as if he
were already anticipating the application of his
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. Living in close and intimate union with God, having the mind of the Spirit
and knowing the things of the Spirit, he begins to
consider with St. Paul, ‘When it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother’s womb, to reveal his
Son in me.’ His whole life seems a sort of miracle
to him; supernatural, and beyond other men’s in the
gifts of grace which he has received. If he asks
himself, ‘Whence was this to me?’ he finds no other
answer but that God gave them ‘because he had a
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
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 omni potence 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 can transcend. But in
God there is no future and no past, neither ‘here nor
there’; He is all and in all. Where, then, is room
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 causality 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,
‘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
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
(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
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 a great degree of
certainty. He may perceive intuitively their strength
and weakness, and prophesy their success or failure.
Now, here it is observable, that the fact of our
knowing the probable course of action which another
will pursue has nothing to do with the action itself. It
does not exercise the smallest constraint on him; it
does not produce the slightest feeling of constraint.
Imagine ourselves acquainted with the habits of some
animal; as we open the door of the enclosure in
which it is kept, we know that it will run up to or
away from us; it will show signs of pleasure or
irritation. No one supposes that its actions, what
ever they are, depend on our knowledge of them.
Let us take another example, which is at the other
end of the scale of freedom and intelligence. Conceive a veteran statesman casting his eye over the
map of Europe, and foretelling the parts which
nations or individuals would take in some coming
struggle, who thinks the events when they come to
There are degrees in human knowledge or fore knowledge 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 there fore 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 foresee; the circumstance that we
foresee them in distant time has no more to do with
them than if we saw them in distant space. So, once
more, we return from the dominion of ideas and
trains of speculative consequences to rest in experience. God sits upon the circle of the heavens,
present, past, and future in a figure open before Him,
and sees the inhabitants of the earth like grass
hoppers, coming and going, to and fro, doing or not
doing their appointed work: His knowledge of them
is not the cause of their actions. So might we ourselves look down upon some wide prospect without
disturbing the peaceful toils of the villagers who are
beneath. They do not slacken or hasten their
business because we are looking at them. In like
manner God may look upon mankind without thereby
(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 that
some should be saved, whom He elects without reference to their deserts; (2) God wills that some
should be saved, and implants in them the mind of
salvation; (3) God calls all men, but chooses some
out of those whom He calls; (4) God chooses all
alike, and shows no preference to any; (5) God calls
all men, even in the heathen world, and some hear
His voice, not knowing whom they obey. Such are
the possible gradations of the question of election.
In the first of them grace is a specific quality distinct
from holiness or moral virtue; in the second it is
identical with holiness and moral virtue, according to
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 some thing 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
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 absolutely different from that which Seneca
termed virtue or morality? Is not virtue, πρὸς θεόν,
faith? Is faith anything without virtue? But if
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
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 analyse 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 at tempting 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 in some way, and therefore words must be used, but always in philosophy with a latent consciousness of their inadequacy and imperfection. The very phrase, ‘cause and effect,’ has a direct influence in disguising from us the complexity of causes and effects. It is too abstract to answer to anything in the concrete. It tends to isolate in idea some one antecedent or condition from all the rest. And the relation which we deem invariable is really a most various one. Its apparent necessity is only the necessity of relative terms. Every cause has an effect, in the same sense that every father has a son. But while in the latter case the relation is always the same, the manifold application of the terms, cause and effect, to the most different phenomena has led to an ambiguity in their use. Our first impression is, that a cause is one thing and an effect another, but soon we find them doubling up, or melting into one. The circulation of the blood is not the cause of life, in the same sense that a blow with the hammer may be the cause of death; nor is virtue the cause of happiness, in precisely the same sense that the circulation of the blood is the cause of life. Everywhere, as we ascend in the scale of creation, from mechanics to chemistry, from chemistry to physiology and human action, the relative notion is more difficult and subtle, the cause becoming inextricably involved with the effect, and the effect with the cause, ‘every means being an end, and every end a means.’
Hence, no one who examines our ideas of cause
and effect will believe that they impose any limit on
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,
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
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, parent
age, 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
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 sur
rounding influences in national temperament; in
their later stages seeming to react upon these causes,
and coming under a new kind of law, as the earth
discloses its hidden treasures, or the genius of man
calls forth into life and action the powers which are
dormant in matter. Nature, which is, in other words,
the aggregate of all these causes, stamps nations and
societies, and creates in them a mind, that is to say,
ideas of order, of religion, of conquest, which they
maintain, often unimpaired by the changes in their
physical condition. She infuses among the mass a
few great intellects, according to some law unknown
to us, to ‘instrument this lower world’. Here is a
new power which is partially separated from the
former, and yet combines with it in national existence,
like body and soul in the existence of man. Partly
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 with a rational or
divine soul. All these figures of speech, and the
associations to which they give rise, have an insensible
influence on our ideas. The representation of the
world as a machine is a more favourite one, in modern
times, than the representation of it as a living being;
and with mechanism is associated the notion of
necessity. Yet the machine is, after all, a mere
barren unity, which gives no conception of the endless
fertility of natural or of moral life. So, again, when
‘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 of necessity.
For, although it is true, that to the eye of a superior
or divine being the actions of men would seem to be
the subject of laws quite as much as the falling stone,
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
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
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
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
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: How is it possible for us to acquire any ideas which transcend experience? The answer is, only, that the mind has the power of forming such ideas; it can conceive a beauty, goodness, truth, which has no existence on earth. The conception, however, is subject to this law, that the greater the idealization the less the individuality. In like manner that imperfect freedom which we enjoy as finite beings is magnified by us into an absolute idea of freedom, which seems to be infinite because it drops out of sight the limits with which nature in fact everywhere surrounds us; and also because it is the abstraction of self, of which we can never be deprived, and which we conceive to be acting still when all the conditions of action are removed.
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
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. Any transposition of these two points of view is fatal to morality. For the proud man to say, ‘I inherited pride from my ancestors’; or for the licentious man to say, ‘It is in the blood’; for the weak man to say, ‘I am weak, and will not strive’; for any to find the excuses of their vices in their physical temperament or external circumstances, is the corruption of their nature.
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
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 be found in the circumstance, that we have done little to improve the political or industrial state of those among whom our missionaries are sent? We have thought of the souls of men, and of the Spirit of God influencing them, in too naked a way; instead of attending to the complexity of human nature, and the manner in which God has ever revealed Himself in the history of mankind.
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
I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.—Ps. xxxvii. 25.
A GREAT man, Richard Baxter, who died about two hundred years ago, towards the close of his life drew up a narrative of the errors into which upon reflection he seemed to himself to have fallen in the course of it. This is not the exact anniversary of his death, which took place on Dec. 8, 1691. But I may, perhaps, without impropriety, speak to you of him on this day. The lives of great and good men are the best sermons which we ever read or hear; and the preacher may do well sometimes to shield himself behind them, and so to speak with greater authority than his own words could fairly claim. It is probable that the name of Baxter has never been celebrated before within these walls; for he was the leader of the Nonconformists of his day; and it is not to be supposed that perfect justice was done him in a later generation any more than in his own by his opponents. But now that both he and they are gone to their account, we can think of them only as the servants of God who by some strange accident were parted from one another here, but have now entered into common rest and dwell together in His presence.
I propose in this sermon to do three things—First,
The life of Richard Baxter coincides with a long
period of political trouble. He was born in the year
1615, and died about three years after the Revolution
of 1688. Both he and his father, who was an
excellent man, seem to have passed through the
awakening of Puritanism. In 1641 we find him
settled at Kidderminster, in which town he continued
to minister, with some interruptions, for seventeen
years. Wonderful stories are told of the effects of
his preaching. It might be said of him that as the
people of Nineveh repented at the preaching of
Jonah, so did the people of Kidderminster at the
preaching of Richard Baxter. Nor was he more
occupied in preaching the Gospel to his own flock
than in opposing the Anabaptists and other sectaries,
including the soldiers of Cromwell’s army, with in
exhaustible energy and irresistible logic. He was
on the side of the Parliament, but believed for a time
that both he and they were loyal subjects of the king.
Under the Commonwealth he was appointed chaplain
to Cromwell, and seems to have spoken his mind to
him with astonishing freedom about King Charles
After the Restoration, during the short period when it was the policy of the Court to conciliate the Nonconformists, he was offered the Bishopric of Hereford. The offer was declined. Baxter continued to struggle for peace and toleration until, on Aug. 22, 1662, the Nonconformist ministers were finally expelled by the Act of Uniformity. That was the greatest misfortune that has ever befallen this country, a misfortune which has never been retrieved. For it has made two nations of us instead of one, in politics, in religion, almost in our notion of right and wrong: it has arrayed one class of society permanently against another. And many of the political difficulties of our own time have their origin in the enmities caused by the rout of Aug. 22, 1662, called Black Bartholomew’s Day, which Baxter vainly strove to avert.
When the policy of the Church and the Court
could no longer be resisted, Baxter, who might have
been Bishop of Hereford, thought only of retiring to
his beloved Kidderminster. He was not permitted
to do so. For the next twenty-six years his life
was that of an exile in his own land and a prisoner
for conscience sake. Often there must have come into
his mind those words of St. Paul, which in a measure
represented his own sufferings: ‘In labours more
abundant, . . . in prisons more frequent, in deaths
oft. . . . In perils by mine own countrymen, . . . in perils
in the city, . . . in perils among false brethren. . . .
Besides that which cometh upon me daily, the care of
all the churches.’ He was also afflicted during nearly
the whole of his life with painful and terrible disorders
of the body, which had often to be endured in prison
and without the necessary means of support. Yet
When we hear of such men and their labours, who combined the persevering industry of the great scholar with the moral force of a hero and a leader of man kind, we are apt to say, ‘There were giants on the earth in those days.’ It would be better to say, that they were the sons of God who fought not in their own strength—one man more than a thousand, for they endured as seeing Him who is invisible.
Yet in this life of suffering, in the prison, in the
court of the oppressed, in the poor and mean abode,
amid disease and all the ills which flesh is heir to,
there was one star or bright spot which shed a ray
upon his darkness. This was a lady of gentle birth
and breeding who, when he was near fifty years of
age and she little more than twenty, gave herself to
God and to him. He had once thought that it was
better for a minister to be unmarried; he might have
added the reason given by St. Paul—because of the
troubles of the times. But now he came to see that
a lot might be possible for two joined in sweet society,
which to a single person might have been death and
despair only. We may be confident that to her no
other life would have been acceptable. She lived
after her marriage nineteen years. Her name was
Margaret Charlton. Her husband wrote what he
called the breviate of her life, from which and from
There is still one more fact in Richard Baxter’s life which, even in the shortest account of him, ought
not to be passed over in silence: his refusal to join
with the Roman Catholics against the Church of
And so this eminent servant of God passed to his
rest. Considering his character and popularity, the
extent of his writings, his genius and learning, he
may be said to be the greatest of English theologians
(or one of the greatest), as he has certainly been one
of the most lasting influences on popular theology.
He was not without faults, of which, we gather from
his writings and also from the narrative to which
I referred at first, too great pugnacity and contentiousness
Baxter wrote a voluminous autobiography, in which at the end of the first part is found the review of his own life which I am going to describe to you. Why is this passage so remarkable? Because it is one of the few theological writings in which the love of holiness and the love of truth seem altogether to take the place of ecclesiastical and party interests; because it gets rid of conventionalities into which we all of us so readily fall when writing of things which are beyond us; because it admits us behind the veil into the holy place of a good man’s soul. Many persons have written about themselves, but no one has done so with the same calm judgment or the same breadth of charity towards all other men.
He looks back into the vista of the past and judges
his own motives and actions with the impartiality
of history. He sees more clearly his own errors
and prejudices when he is at a distance from them,
as we sometimes have a wider and truer view of the
landscape when the sun is going down and the heat
of the day is past. He tells us that in his youth he
was very apt to start upon controversies in ignorance
of the antipathies and enmities which were engendered
by them; now he is disposed to ignore differences,
and to think with Lord Bacon that ‘it is a great
benefit of Church peace and concord, when writing
controversies is turned into books of practical devotion’. He has learned to doubt whether men can
One more example of his toleration shall be added which, considering the country and age in which he lived, is really wonderful: it goes back far into the history of the past. After speaking of the prodigious lies which had been told in his own age in the interests of religion, and the tendency to believe everything on the one side and nothing on the other, he continues: ‘Therefore I confess that I give but halting credit to most histories that are written, not only against the Albigenses and Waldenses, but against most of the ancient heretics who have left us none of their own writings in which they speak for themselves; and I heartily lament that the historical writings of the ancient schismatics and heretics (as they were called) perished, and that partiality suffered them not to survive, that we might have had more light on the Church affairs of those times and been better able to judge between the Fathers and them. And as I am prone to think that few of them were so bad as their adversaries made them, so I am apt to think that such as the Novatians, whom their adversaries commend, were very good men and more godly than most Catholics, however mistaken in some one point.’
Two characteristics he notes of advancing years.
First, he feels a decline of the zeal of his youth, for
which he is half inclined to blame himself; he thinks
that he is like a person travelling a way which he
hath often gone, or casting up an account which
There are some things for which he believes that
God may have forgiven him, but he cannot forgive
himself, especially for very rash words or deeds by
which he may have seemed injurious or less tender
and kind than he should have been to near and dear
relations, ‘whose love,’ he says, ‘abundantly obliged
me. When such are dead, though we never differed
in point of interest or any grave matter, every provoking
There is another confession which he makes true to the experience, not only of himself, but probably of most religious men. He says that as he grew old he is troubled not so much by the consciousness (of past sins, but by the sensible want of the love of God shed abroad in the heart. This he conceives to be the top of all religion which gives value to all the rest because it alters and elevates the mind. He used to think such meditations tiresome, and that everybody knew God to be good and great, and heaven to be a blessed place, but now he would sooner read, hear, or meditate on such truths than on anything else.
One more extract which speaks to our own and to every other age of the Christian Church: ‘I apprehend it,’ he says, ‘to be a matter of great necessity to imprint true Catholicism in the minds of Christians, it being a most lamentable thing to observe how few Christians in the world there be that fall not into one sect or the other, and wrong not the common interest of Christianity for the promotion of the interest of their sect. And how lamentably love is thereby destroyed, so that most men think they are not bound to love men as the members of Christ which are against their party. And if they can but get to be of a sect which they think to be the holiest or which is the largest, they think that they are sufficiently warranted to deny others to be God’s Church, or at least to deny them Christian love and communion.’
So I have endeavoured to place before you, very
imperfectly, a fragment or two of a great mind. He
And now, leaving history and controversy and subjects which most of us only hear about at a distance, I will suppose a similar vein of reflection to be entertained by an elder person living not two hundred years ago, but a contemporary of our own, present in this Abbey here to-night. He too has something to say to us which is of interest to himself and to others. Now on the threshold of old age, he may be supposed to take a look backward over the sixty or seventy years which have passed, not in the great world, but within the limits of his own home. His religion is not derived from books, but comes to him from his experience of life.
First he has a deep sense of thankfulness to God
for all His mercies. He may have had troubles and
disappointments in life, but he acknowledges that all
things have been ordered for the best. The days
pass more quickly with him now than formerly and
make less impression on him. He will soon be
crossing the bar and going forth upon the ocean.
He is not afraid of death, it seems natural to him;
he is soon about to pass into the hands of God. He
has many thoughts about the past which he does not
communicate to others—about some persons in whom
he has had a peculiar interest, about places in which
he has lived, about words spoken to him in his youth
Before he departs he has some things to say to his children or to his friends. He will tell them that he now sees this world in different proportions, and that what was once greatly valued by him now seems no longer of importance. The dreams of love and of ambition have fled away; he is no longer under the dominion of the hour. The disappointments which he has undergone no more affect him; he is inclined to think that they may have been for his good. He sees many things in his life which might have been better; opportunities lost which could never afterwards be by him recovered. He might have been wiser about health, or the education of his children, or his choice of friends, or the management of his business. He would like to warn younger persons against some of the mistakes which he had himself made. He would tell them that no man in later life rejoiced in the remembrance of a quarrel; and that the trifles of life, good temper, a gracious manner, trifles as they are thought, are among the most important elements of success. Above all he would exhort them to get rid of selfishness and self-conceit, which are the two greatest sources of human evil.
There are some reflections which would often occur to his own mind though he might not speak of them to others. A sharp thrill of pain might sometimes pierce his heart when he remembered any irremediable wrong of which he had been the author, or when he recalled any unkind word to a parent which he had hastily uttered, or any dishonourable conduct of which he had been guilty. He need not disclose his fault to men, but neither will he disguise it from himself; least of all, if he have repented of the sin and is no longer the servant of it, should his conscience be overpowered by the remembrance of it. For sin too, like sorrow, is healed by time; and he who is really delivered from its bondage need not fear lest God should create it anew in him that He may inflict punishment upon him. For in the sight of God we are what we are, not what we have been at some particular moment; nor yet what we are in some detail or in reference to some particular act, but what we are on the whole.
Once more, when a man is drawing towards the
end, he will be apt to think of the blessings of
friendship and of family life. He has done so little
for others and received so much from them. The
old days of his childhood come back to him: the
memory of his father and mother and brothers and
sisters, all in the house together, and the lessons and
the games and the birthday feasts and rejoicings as
in a picture crowd upon his thoughts. When we
have grown old they are most of them taken before
us; no one else can ever fill their place in our lives.
Also there have been friends who have been like
brothers and sisters to us; many of these too are
gone and cannot be replaced. They have sympathized
with our trials; they have inspired us with higher
thoughts; they have spoken words which have been
Yet once more, we may suppose the statesman, who is within a measurable distance of the end,
to make similar reflections on his own political life.
Perhaps he will say in the words of one who ten
years ago was so familiar a figure among us: ‘In
the past there are many things I condemn, many
things that I deplore, but a man’s life must be
taken as a whole.’ He will not look back to party
triumphs or great displays of oratory with the
satisfaction which he once felt in them. He will
acknowledge that he has made endless mistakes, and
will sometimes wish that he had been more independent
of popular opinion. He has done little compared
with what he once hoped to do. He will value most
that part of his work which tended to promote
justice, or to save life or to increase health, or to diffuse
education, or to establish the foundation of peace
between nations and classes. And in the words of
one of the greatest of English statesmen, he will be
Lastly, we may extend the spirit of the reflections of Richard Baxter to the religious difficulties of our own day. We may imagine an aged man who has lived through the last fifty or sixty years, and has been watching the movements which have agitated the Church from extreme to extreme and back again, each tendency seeming to have as great or even a greater reaction. He would see, as Baxter saw in his old age, that all other things come to an end, but that of the love of God and man there is no end. He would not raise questions about the rites of the Church, or the canonicity of the books of Scripture: these belong to criticism and ecclesiastical history, not to the spiritual life. He would seek for the permanent and essential only in the books of Scripture, in the lives of good men, in the religion of the world. To follow Christ, to speak the truth in love, to do to others as you would they should do to you, these are the eternal elements of religion which can never pass away, and he who lives in these lives in God.
Genesis
Leviticus
Joshua
2 Samuel
Job
Psalms
Isaiah
19:18-25 19:25 23:1-18 45:1 53:2 53:7
Jeremiah
9:25 9:26 11:19 12:14-17 31:29 36:30
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Hosea
Amos
Matthew
2:1 2:15 2:22 5:32 5:34 9:13 16:18 16:18-19 18:18 19:21 22:21 24:34 28:20
Mark
Luke
John
1:1 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 1:4 1:8 1:16-18 1:17 1:32 2:1-16 2:12-28 2:17-21 3:1-9 3:2 3:9 3:15 3:19 3:25 5:5 5:7 5:12 5:12-18 9:1-33 9:5 9:22 10:1-21 10:5 10:10 11:32 13:1 15:6 16:25-27
1 Corinthians
3:15 3:15 5:9 9:20 11:10 13:8 15:4 15:22 15:29 15:56 16:3
2 Corinthians
1:17 3:16 4:12 6:6-10 6:8-10 10:10 11:21-33
Galatians
Philippians
Colossians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
2 Peter
1 John
Revelation
i ii iii iv vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 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 49 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 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 199 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242