LECTURE I.

Note I., p. 46.

SEE Galen, De Sectis, c. I. In this sense, the Dogmatists or Rationalists were distinguished from the Empirics. For the corresponding philosophical sense of the term, see Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh. Hyp. I. § 1-3.

Note II., p. 47.

“Dogmatism has its name from this,—that it professes to demonstrate, i. e. to establish dogmatically, as a causal nexus, the relation between things per se and phenomena; and maintains that things per se contain the ground of all that we observe in man and in the world of nature.”—Poelitz, Kant’s Vorlesungen über die Metaphysik. Einleitung, p. xxi.

Note III., p. 47.

Of the theological method of Wolf, the leader of philosophical dogmatism in the eighteenth century, Mr. Rose observes: “He maintained that philosophy was indispensable to theology, and that, together with biblical proofs, a mathematical or strictly demonstrative dogmatical system, according to the principles of reason, was absolutely necessary. His own works carried this theory into practice, and after the first clamors against them had subsided, his opinions gained more attention, and it was not long before he had a school of vehement admirers who far outstripped him in the use of his own principles. We find some of them not content with applying demonstration to the truth of the system, but endeavoring to establish each separate dogma, the Trinity, the nature of the Redeemer, the Incarnation, the eternity of punishment, on philosophical, and, strange as it may appear, some of those truths on mathematical grounds.”⁹⁹⁹⁹   State of Protestantism in Germany, p. 54. Second edition.

The language of Wolf himself may be quoted as expressing exactly the relation between Scripture and human reason mentioned in the text. “Sacred Scripture serves as an aid to natural theology. For in the Scripture those things also are taught concerning God, which can be demonstrated from principles of reason; a thing which no one denies, who is versed in the reading of Scripture. It therefore furnishes natural theology with propositions, which ought to be demonstrated; consequently the philosopher is bound, not to invent, but to demonstrate them.”¹⁰⁰¹⁰⁰   Theologia Naturalis, Pars Prior, § 22.

The writings of Canz, a disciple of the Wolfian philosophy, are mentioned by Mr. Rose and by Dr. Pusey (Historical Inquiry, p. 116), as exemplifying the manner in which this philosophy was applied to doctrinal theology. The following extracts from his attempted demonstration of the doctrine of the Trinity may be interesting to the reader, not only on account of the extreme rarity of the work from which they are taken, but also as furnishing a specimen of the dogmatic method, and showing the abuse to which it is liable in injudicious hands.

“Since the character of every substance lies in some power of action, we must form our judgment of God from a power of action infinite and general. This power being infinite, embraces all perfections, and therefore, does not lie in a bare faculty, which sometimes ceases from activity; for that would imply imperfection; nor in the power of doing this thing only, or only that, for that in like manner would betray limitations; but in an ever-during act of working all things whatsoever in the most perfect and therefore the wisest manner. He is therefore a substance entirely singular.

“Moreover, since God is pure actuality, working all in all, it follows that finite things, which may be and may not be, do not find the ground of their existence in themselves, but in Him who works all things, i. e. in God. There is therefore in God—and this we observe in the first place—an infinite Creative Power. “But since all created things relate to one another as means and ends, yet are themselves, in the ultimate scope, referred to the glory of God, it is plain that there is in God an infinite Faculty of Wisdom. . . . . .

“Finally, inasmuch as there is infinite good in created things, and God, who works all, must be judged to have furnished forth all this good; it is not difficult to understand that there is in God an infinite Power of Love. For he loves, who increases, as far as possible, with various blessings, the happiness of others.

* * * * * * * * *

“That which exists, is said to subsist, when it has reached its own full completion, and proceeds no farther. . . .

“Whatever in this way, in its existence, proceeds no farther, is called by Metaphysicians ὑφιστάμενον, and if to this be added the gift of intelligence or reason, then there exists a Person (persona).

“These things premised, let us see what there is in the nature of God that justifies the designation of Three Persons. There is certainly in God a boundless power of action, and therefore evidence of His being a wholly singular Substance. We can also discover a triple activity, which completes that power; a triple activity, which not only exists, as it presupposes a power of action, but subsists also, as it is neither a part, nor an adjunct, nor an operation of anything else.

“And now there belongs to this triple unlimited activity, by which the Divine power is completed, a consciousness of itself, and a sense alike of the past and the future. It is therefore intelligent, and therefore a Person.

“Since there are three activities of this kind in God, or in the Divine Nature, which is an unlimited power of action, it follows that there are in it Three Persons, which by a threefold unlimited operation complete and exercise that unlimited power.

“Since in every created being, endowed with intelligence, the power of working, understanding, loving, cannot be completed except by one operation, or by one activity; it follows, that in every finite being there can only be one person.

“There is therefore a Trinity of Persons in God, which proceeds from his Infinite Nature as such: which was the thing proposed for demonstration.”¹⁰¹¹⁰¹   Philosophia Wolfianæ Consensus cum Theologia, Francofurti et Lipsiæ, 1737. This volume forms the third part of the Philosophiæ Leibnitianæ et Wolfianæ usus in Theologia, of which the first part was published in 1728, and the second in 1732. The third part is extremely rare. The two former parts were reprinted in 1749.

Note IV., p. 48.

Kant defines Rationalism, as distinguished from Naturalism and Supernaturalism, in the following terms: “He who interprets natural religion as morally necessary, i. e. as Duty, may also be called (in matters of faith) Rationalist. When such an one denies the reality of all supernatural Divine revelation, he is called Naturalist; if now he allows this, but maintains that to know it and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to Religion, he could be called a pure Rationalist; but if he holds a faith in the same to be necessary to all Religion, he would have to be called, in matters of faith, a pure Suspernaturalist.”¹⁰²¹⁰²   Religion innerlhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Werke, ed. Rosenkranz, x. p. 185). For different senses in which the term Rationalist has been used, see Wegscheider, Instit. Theol. § 10; Rose, State of Protestantism in Germany, Introd. p. xvii. second edition; Kahnis, Internal History of German Protestantism, p. 169, Meyer’s translation. In the text, the term is used in 234 a somewhat wider extent than that of the above definition. It is not necessary to limit the name of Rationalist to those who maintain that Revelation as a whole is unnecessary to religion; nor to those whose system is based solely on moral principles. There may be a partial as well as a total Rationalism: it is possible to acknowledge in general terms the authority of Scripture, and yet to exercise considerable license in rejecting particular portions as speculatively incomprehensible or morally unnecessary. The term is sometimes specially applied to the Kantian school of theologians, of whom Paulus and Wegscheider are representatives. In this sense, Hegel declares his antagonism to the Rationalism of his day;¹⁰³¹⁰³   Geschichte der Philosophie (Werke, XIII. p. 96). and Strauss, in his controversies with the naturalist critics of the Gospels, frequently speaks of their method as “Rationalism.” In the sense in which the term is employed in the text, Hegel and Strauss are themselves as thoroughly rationalists as their opponents. Even Schleiermacher, though a decided antagonist of the naturalist school, is himself a partial Rationalist of another kind; for with him the Christian Consciousness, i. e. the internal experience resulting to the individual from his connection with the Christian community, is made a test of religious truth almost as arbitrary as the Moral Reason of Kant. On the strength of this self-chosen criterion, Schleiermacher sets aside, among other doctrines, as unessential to Christian belief, the supernatural conception of Jesus, the facts of his resurrection, ascension, and the prediction of his future judgment of the world; asserting that it is impossible to see how such facts can be connected with the redeeming power of Christ.¹⁰⁴¹⁰⁴   Christliche Glaube, § 97, 99. Indeed, in some of the details of his system, he falls into pure Rationalism; as in his speculations on the existence of Angels, good and evil, on the Fall of Man, on eternal Punishment, on the two Natures of Christ, and on the equality of the Persons in the Holy Trinity.

The so-called Spiritualism of the present day is again only Rationalism disguised; for feeling or intuition is but an arbitrary standard, resting solely on the personal consciousness, and moreover must be translated into distinct thought, before it can be available for the purposes of religious criticism.

Note V., p. 48.

Thus Wegscheider represents the claim of the Rationalists. “They claim for sound reason the power of deciding upon any religious doctrine 235 whatsoever, derived from a supposed supernatural revelation, and of determining the argument for it to be made out, only according to the laws of thought and action implanted in reason.”—Inst. Theol. §10. See also Röhr, Briefe über den Rationalismus, p. 31.

Note VI., p. 51.

“Wherefore if it is not fitting in God to do anything contrary to justice or good order, it does not pertain to His freedom or goodness or will to let the sinner go unpunished, who does not pay to God, that of which he has robbed Him.”—Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, i. 12. “For the voluntary satisfaction of sin, and (or) the exaction of punishment from him who makes no satisfaction, hold in the same universe their own place and fair order. And if the Divine wisdom should not make application of these, where sin is striving to disturb right order, the orderly beauty of that very universe which God ought to control, would be violated and disfigured, and God would seem to be deficient in his own administration. These two (suppositions) being as impossible as they are contrary to the fitness of things, either satisfaction or punishment is the necessary consequence of sin.” Ibid. i. 15. “If therefore, as is evident, it is from men that the celestial state is to be made complete,—and this cannot be done unless the aforesaid satisfaction be made, which none can make but God, and none ought, but man,—then, as a necessary consequence, it must be made by Godman.”—Ibid. ii. 6. Compare Alex. ab Ales. Summa Theologiæ, p. iii. Memb. 7, where the same argument is concisely stated.

Note VII., p. 51.

Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1. ii. c. 16.

Note VIII., p. 51.

Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1. i. c. 5.

Note IX., p. 51.

“God is in such way mercifiul, that He is also at the same time just; mercy does not exclude, in Him, the eternal rule of justice, but there is in Him a perfect and admirable mingling of mercy and justice; therefore, without an equivalent price, sin could not, in the judgment of God, have been remitted to man, and the Divine justice have been unimpaired. 236 There remained, therefore, no other remedy, than for the Son of God himself to assume human nature, and in it and through it to make satisfaction. God ought not, marln could not.”—J. Gerhard, Loci Theologici, De Persona et Officio Christi, c. 8.

Note X., p. 51.

“Because a mere creature could not have endured the immense weight of God’s wrath, due to the sins of the whole world.”—Chemnitz, De duabus Naturis in Christo, c. 11.

Note XI., p. 52.

Such is the demand of Anselm's interlocutor, which he himself undertakes to satisfy. “That I may understand on the ground of a reasonable necessity that all those things ought to be, which the Catholic faith teaches us to believe concerning Christ.”—Cur Deus Homo, L. I. c. 25. To arguments founded on this principle the judicious remarks of Bishop Butler may be applied: “It may be needful to mention that several questions, which have been brought into the subject before us, and determined, are not in the least entered into here: questions which have been, I fear, rashly determined, and perhaps with equal rashness contrary ways. For instance, whether God could have saved the world by other means than the death of Christ, consistently with the general laws of his government.”¹⁰⁵¹⁰⁵   Analogy, Part II. Ch. 5.

Note XII., p. 52.

“In what did this satisfaction consist? Was it that God was angry, and needed to be propitiated like some heathen deity of old? Such a thought refutes itself by the very indignation which it calls up in the human bosom.”—Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul, vol. ii. p. 472. “Neither can there be any such thing as vicarious atonement or punishment, which, again, is a relic of heathen conceptions of an angered Deity, to be propitiated by offerings and sacrifices.”—Greg, Creed of Christendom, p. 265. “The religion of types and notions can travel only in a circle from whence there is no escape. It is but an elaborate process of self-confutation. After much verbiage it demolishes what it created, and having begun by assuming God to be angry, ends, not by admitting its own gross mistake, but by asserting Him to be changed and reconciled.”—Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, vol. ii. p. 504. Compare Wegscheider, Inst. Theol. § 141.

Note XIII., p. 52.

“For what is more unjust, than that an innocent one be punished instead of the guilty, especially when the guilty are themselves before the tribunal, and can themselves he punished? “—F. Socinus, Prælect. Theol., c. xviii. “That each should have his exact due is just—is the best for himself. That the consequence of his guilt should be transferred from him to one that is innocent (although that innocent one be himself willing to accept it), whatever else it be, is not justice.”—Froude, Nemesis of Faith, p. 70. Compare Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 92; Greg, Creed of Christendom, p. 265. A similar objection is introduced, and apparently approved, by Mr. Maurice, Theological Essays, p. 139.

Note XIV., p. 52.

“There is no one who cannot, with the utmost justice, pardon and remit injuries done to himself, and debts contracted to himself, without having received any real satisfaction. Therefore, unless we mean to allow less to God than is allowed to men themselves, we must confess that God might justly have pardoned our sins without having received any real satisfaction for them.”—F. Socinus, Prælect. Theol. c. xvi.

“Now it is certainly required of us, that if our brother only repent, we should forgive him, even though he should repeat his offence seven times a day. On the same generous maxim, therefore, we cannot but conclude that the Divine being acts towards us.”—Priestley, History of Corruptions, vol. i. p. 151. “Every good man has learnt to forgive, and when the offender is penitent, to forgive freely—without punishment or retribution: whence the conclusion is inevitable, that God also forgives, as soon as sin is repented of.’—Newman, The Soul, pp. 99, 100. “Was it that there was a debt due to Him, which must be paid ere its consequences could be done away? But even ‘a man’s’ debt may be freely forgiven.”- Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul, vol. ii. p. 472. Compare also Maurice, Theol. Essays, p. 138, and Garve, quoted by Röhr, Briefe über den Rationalismus, p. 442.

Note XV., p. 52.

“Pecuniary penalties, therefore, can be paid for another, because one person’s money can be made another’s; as when any one pays money, as a penalty, for some other person, then he for whom it is paid is tacitly, in reality, first presented with the money, and is considered to have paid It himself. But the death, or any bodily distress, of one person, cannot be 238made another’s.”—F. Socinus, Prælect. Theol. c. xviii. “Since money is, as the jurists say, something real, and so can be transferred from one to another. But punishments, and the deserts of men’s sins from the law of God, are something personal, and moreover of such sort that they perpetually adhere to him who suffers them, and cannot be transferred to another.”—F. Socinus, Christianæ Religionis Institutio. (Opera, 1656. vol. i. p. 665.) “This original guilt . . . . . . cannot, so far as we see by the light of the law of Reason within us, be abolished by any one else, for it is no transmissible obligation, which, like a pecuniary debt (where it is indifferent to the creditor whether the debtor pay it himself or another pay it for him), can be transferred to another, but the most personal of all personal ones,—the guilt of sin, which only the guilty can bear, not’ the innocent, be he ever so generous as to be willing to undertake it.”— Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 81, ed. Rosenkranz. Compare Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, p. 249, ed. 1839. His argument is chiefly an expansion of Kant’s.

Note XVI., p. 53.

Wilberforce, Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 44, 45; 4th edition. The germ of this theory may perhaps be found in Damascenus, De Fide Orthod. lib. iii. c. 6. See Dorner, Lehre von der person Christi, p. 115. It also partially appears, in a form more adapted to the realistic controversy, in Anselm, particularly in his treatise De Fide Trinitatis et de lncarnatione Verbi, written to refute the theological errors of the nominalist Roscelin. In modern times, a similar theory has found favor with those philosophers of the Hegelian school, who, in opposition to the development represented by Strauss, have undertaken the difficult task of reconciling the philosophy of their master with historical Christianity. In this point of view it has been adopted by Schaller in his “Der historische Christus und die Philosophie,” and by Göschel in his “Beiträge zur Speculativen Philosophie von Gott und dem Menschen und von dem Gottmenschen.” For an account of these theories see Dorner, p, 462, 477. A similar view is maintained by Marheineke, Grundlehren der Christlichen Dogmatik, § 338, and by Dorner himself, Lehre von der Person Christi, p. 527.

Note XVII., p. 54.

“Item sequitur quod aliquid de essentia Christi erit miserum et damnatum, quia illa natura communis existens realiter in Christo et in damnato erit damnatum, quia in Juda.”—Occam, Logica, P. l. c. 15.

Note XVIII., p. 56.

“Religion is (subjectively considered) the acknowledgment of all our duties as divine commands.”—Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 184. ed. Rosenkranz. In the same spirit, Fichte says, “Since all religion sets forth God only as a moral lawgiver, all that is not commanded by the moral law within us, is not His, and there is no means of pleasing Him, except by the observance of this same moral law.”—Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Werke, v. p. 127). This is exactly the theory of Religion which is refuted in anticipation by Bishop Butler (Analogy, P. II. ch. 1.), as the opinion of those who hold that the “only design” of Revelation “must be to establish a belief of the moral system of nature, and to enforce the practice of natural piety and virtue.”

Note XIX., p. 56.

Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, pp. 184, 186.

Note XX., p. 56.

“Prayer, as an inward formal worship of God, and on that account considered as a means of grace, is a superstitious delusion.”— Ibid., p. 235.

Note XXI., p. 56.

“A hearty wish to please God in all our conduct,—i. e. the disposition, accompanying all our actions, to do them as in the service of God,—is the spirit of prayer, which can and ought to be in us ‘without ceasing.’ But to clothe this wish in words and forms (be it only inwardly, even), can, at the utmost, only carry with it the value of a means for the repeated quickening of that disposition in ourselves, but can have no immediate relation to the divine favor; also on that account cannot be a universal duty, because a means can only be prescribed to him who needs it for certain ends.”—Kant, Religion u. s. w. p. 235.—Cf. Fichte, Kritik aller Offenbarung, p. 127. For an account of a similar view advocated in Scotland in the last century, by Dr. Leechman and others, see Combe’s Constitution of Man, ch. ix. Subsequent writers have repeated the above theory in various forms, and in various spirits, but all urging the same objection, from the supposed unchangreable nature of God. See Schleiermacher, Christliche Glaube, § 147, and his sermon “Die Kraft des Gebetes,” Predigten, I. p. 24; Strauss, Glaubenslehre, II. p. 387; Foxton, Popular Christianity, 240 p. 113; Parker, Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology, p. 65; Emerson, Essay on Self-Reliance; and a remarkable passage from Greg’s Creed of Christendom, quoted in Lecture VI. p. 147. Some valuable remarks on the other side will be found in two writers, usually opposed to each other, but for once united in vindicating the religious instincts of mankind from the perversions of a false philosophy. See F. W. Newman, The Soul, p. 118, and “Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq,” p. 218 (Am. Ed.). Kant’s theory is ably criticized by Drobisch, Grundlehren der Religionsphilosopie, p. 267.

Note XXII., p. 56.

Thus Fichte lays it down, as one of the tests of a true Revelation, that it must not countenance an objective Anthropomophism of God. In illustration of this canon, he says, “If we can really determine God by our feelings, can move him to sympathy, to compassion, to joy, then is He not the Unchangeable, the Only-sufficient, the Only-blessed, then is He determinable by something else than by the moral law; then can we hope to move Him, by moaning and contrition, to proceed otherwise with us, than the degree of our morality may have deserved. All these sensuous representations of divine attributes must not, therefore, be pronounced objectively valid; it must not be left doubtful, whether such be essentially the nature of God (Gott an sich), or whether he is willing to allow us so to think of it, in behoof of our sensuous needs.”¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁶   Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Werke, V. p. 135). On this principle, he considers the notions of a Resurrection and a Day of Judgment as having a merely subjective validity.¹⁰⁷¹⁰⁷   Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Werke, V. p. 136, 137). In another passage, he speaks of the representation of God under conditions of time, as “a gross Anthropomorphism;”¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁸   Ibid., p. 109. apparently not seeing that the notion of unchangeableness is at least as much one of time, and therefore of Anthropomorphism, as that of compassion or joy. In a similar spirit, a later writer observes: “With the great importance so often attached to the personality of God, is quite too easily mingled the interest of Anthropopathism and Anthropomorphism.”¹⁰⁹¹⁰⁹   Baur, Christliche Gnosis, p. 705. In another passage, Fichte says: “He who says, Form for thyself no idea of God, says, in other words, Make for thyself no idol; and his command has for the mind the same significance as the ancient Mosaic commandment had for the senses—Thou shalt make to thyself no graven image.”¹¹⁰¹¹⁰   Gerichtliche Verantwortung (Werke, V. p. 267). In like manner, Herder says, “Therefore when we speak of God, better (have) no images! In philosophy, as in the law of Moses, this is our first commandment”—Gott. Einige Gespräche über Spinoza’s System. (Werke, VIII. p. 228.) These words may perhaps have suggested the cognate remarks 241 of Professor Jowett: “It would be little better than idolatry to fill the mind with an idea of God which represented Him in fashion as a man. And in using a figure of speech, we are bound to explain to all who are capable of understanding, that we speak in a figure only, and to remind them that logical categories may give as false and imperfect a conception of the Divine nature in our own age, as graven images in the days of the patriarchs.”¹¹¹¹¹¹   Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. ii. p. 404. If by logical categories are meant analogical representations formed from the facts of human consciousness, this passage may be so interpreted as to imply either an important truth, or a dangerous error. If interpreted to mean that such representations of God cannot be regarded as adequate expressions of His absolute and infinite nature, it states a truth, the importance of which can hardly be over-estimated; but if it be meant, as Fichte undoubtedly meant, to signify that mental no less than bodily images, are, regarded from a human point of view, false and idolatrous, the author would do well to tell us what we can substitute in their place. “We may confidently challenge all natural Theology,” says Kant, “to name a single distinctive attribute of the Deity, whether denoting intelligence or will, which, apart from Anthropomorphism, is anything more than a mere word, to which not the slightest notion can be attached, which can serve to extend our theoretical knowledge.”¹¹²¹¹²   Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 282, ed. Rosenkranz. Compare the remarkable words of Jacobi (Von den göttlichen Dingen. Werke, III. p. 418, 422). “We confess, accordingly, to an Anthropomorphism inseparable from the conviction that man bears in him the image of God; and maintain that besides this Anthropomorphism, which has always been called Theism, is nothing but Atheism or Fetichism.” Kant, however, attempts to avoid the conclusion to which this admission necessarily leads;—namely, that Anthropomorphism, in this sense of the term, is the indispensable condition of all human theology. As regards the charge of idolatry, it is best answered in the words of Storr: “The image of God we have not made for ourselves, but God has placed it before us.”¹¹³¹¹³   Annotationes quædam Theologicæ, p. 10. The very commandment which forbids the representation of God by a bodily likeness, does so by means of two other human representations, that of a mental state, and that of a consequent course of action. “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.” The Satire of Xenophanes has been repeated by modern critics in a manner which deprives it entirely of its original point. Thus Mr. Theodore 242 Parker says, “A Beaver or a Reindeer, if possessed of religions faculties, would also conceive of the Deity with the limitations of its own personality, as a Beaver or a Reindeer.”¹¹⁴¹¹⁴   Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion, p. 100. The satire loses its entire force, when transferred from bodily forms to mental attributes. In imagining a Beaver or a Reindeer with a personal consciousness, we so far imagine him as resembling man, notwithstanding the difference of bodily form. The sarcasm, therefore, amounts to no more than this: that human consciousness in another body would be subject to the same limits of religious thought as in its present one. The latest specimen of this kind of would-be philosophy is furnished by Professor Baden Powell, in his “Christianity without Judaism,” p. 108. “It is not one of the least remarkable of these Anthropomorphisms,” he says, “that (as in former instances) the disclosure of the Divine purposes is made under the figure of Jehovah entering into a covenant with his people,—an idea specially adapted to a nation of the lowest moral capacity.” One would have thought that the fact that this image was selected by God Himself, as the symbol of His relation to His chosen people (to say nothing of its repetition in the New Testament), might have insured its more respectful treatment at the hands of a Clergyman. But Mr. Powell, in his zeal for “Christianity without Judaism,” seems to forget that Judaism, as well as Christianity, was a Revelation from God.

Note XXIII., p. 58.

This remark may seem at first sight not so appropriate in relation to Kant as to some other advocates of a similar theory, such, for instance, as Mr. Greg, whose remarks on prayer are quoted in Lecture VI. p. 147. For Kant, in language at least, expressly denies that any temporal consecution can be included in the conception of God.¹¹⁵¹¹⁵   Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 57, ed. Rosenkranz. But, in truth, this denial is and must be merely verbal. For the moral law, in Kant’s own theory, is regarded as a divine command because it is conceived as a perpetual obligation, binding upon all human acts; and the perpetuity of the obligation, in relation to successive acts, necessarily implies the idea of Time. Thus God in relation to man, as a moral Governor, is necessarily manifested under the condition of time; and this manifestation is the only philosophical representation of God which the Kantian philosophy recognizes as valid. Indeed, if Time be, as Kant maintains, a necessary form of human consciousness, the language which speaks of a Being existing out of time can have no significance to any human thinker.

Note XXIV., p. 58.

Xenophanes, apud Clem. Alex. Stromata, V. p. 601:

“But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers,
Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen,
Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies
Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned.”

[As translated in Morrison’s Ritter’s Hist. Anc. Phil., vol. I., p. 431.]

Note XXV., p. 62.

Plato, Republic, IV. p. 433.

Note XXVI., p. 62.

Advancement of Learning. (Works, ed. Montagu, vol. ii. p. 303.)

Note XXVII., p. 63.

Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, Königsberg, 1792, 2d Ed. 1793. (Fichte’s Werke, V. p. 9.) A few specimens of the criticisms hazarded in this work will be sufficient to show the arbitrary character of the method on which it proceeds. The author assumes that God is determined entirely and solely by the moral law as conceived by man; and that Religion, therefore, must consist solely in moral duties.¹¹⁶¹¹⁶   Werke, V. pp. 42, 55. Hence he lays down, among others, the following criteria, without satisfying which, no revelation can be accepted as of divine origin.

There must have been a moral necessity for it at the time of its publication (p. 113).

It must not draw men to obedience by any other motive than reverence for God’s holiness. Hence it must not contain any prospect of future reward or punishment (p. 115).

It must not communicate any knowledge attainable by the natural reason (p. 122).

It must contain only such moral rules as may be deduced from the principle of the practical reason (p. 124).

It must not promise any supernatural aids to men in the performance of their duty (p. 129).

Kant’s own work, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 244 Königsberg, 1793, is based on a similar principle; and many of his conclusions are identical with those of Fichte. He agrees with his disciple in maintaining that no doctrine can be received on the authority of Revelation, without the concurrent testimony of Reason;¹¹⁷¹¹⁷   Werke, X. p. 228. and that a moral life is the only duty which God can require of a man.¹¹⁸¹¹⁸   Ibid. p. 122. Hence he defines Religion as “the acknowledgment of all our duties as divine commands;” and asserts that there can be no special duties towards God distinct from our moral obligations to our fellow-men.¹¹⁹¹¹⁹   Ibid. p. 184. In accordance with these principles, he advocates, and in some instances applies, a method of Scripture interpretation, which consists in forcing every available doctrine and precept into a so-called moral significance, and rejecting as unessential whatever will not bear this treatment.¹²⁰¹²⁰   Ibid. pp. 98. 130. Thus, in the fifty-ninth Psalm, the enemies of David are interpreted to mean the evil passions which he wished to overcome.

The narrowness of Kant’s fundamental assumption, even as regards the human side of religion only, is pointed out by Willm, Histoire de la Philosophie Allemande, vol. ii. p. 47: “By regarding religion as chiefly a means of promoting morality, Kant has too much limited its divine mission; he has forgotten that religion must besides be a source of consolation and of hope, in the midst of the ills of the present life; and that by powerful motives and lofty meditations it must come to the succor of frail humanity, that it must serve as a support in the double struggle that we have to sustain against temptation to evil and against suffering.” See also Drobisch, Grundlehren der Religionsphilosophie, p. 264, who adopts a similar ground of criticisin.

Note XXVIII., p. 65.

“In the exposition of the pure conception it has yet further been declared, that it is the absolute divine conception itself; so that in truth there would not be the relation of an application, but the logical process is the immediate exhibition of God’s self-determination to Being.”—Hegel, Logik. (Werke, V. p. 170.) In like manner his disciple Marheineke says, “Only as subsumed into this Idea. and sublated¹²¹¹²¹   [“This sublating has the double meaning of tollere and of conservare, and indicates the taking up and the retaining under a higher point of view, etc.”—Chalybaeus’s Hist. of Speculative Philosophy, transl. by Edersheim, p. 351: Edinburgh, 1854.]—Trans. in it, is the human spirit capable of knowing God. His true self-exalting to God by thinking, is however, 245 ever at the same time, a being-exalted, the insertion of the human thinking of God into the divine thinking of God.”¹²²¹²²   Grundlehren der Christlichen Dognmatik, § 21. In another passage of the same work (§ 84) he says, “As God in the knowledge of Himself does not have Himself extra se, and as the self-knowing is no other than the known, but rather the Spirit, unity and essence of both, so is the idea of the Absolute the absolute idea, and as such the stand-point of all knowledge and all science.” Such passages are instructive as showing the only conditions under which, according to the admission of its ablest advocates, a Philosophy of the Absolute is attainable by human thought. In reference to these lofty pretensions, Sir William Hamilton justly speaks of “the scheme of pantheistic omniscience, so prevalent among the sequacious thinkers of the day.”¹²³¹²³   Discussions, p. 787.

Note XXIX., p. 65.

“Besides God there exists, truly and in the proper sense of the word, nothing at all but knowledge; and this knowledge is the divine Existence itself, absolutely and immediately, and in so far as we are knowledge, are we, in the deepest root of our being, the divine Existence.”—Fichte, Anweisungen zum seligen Leben (Werke, V. p. 448). “Man, rational being in general, is ordained to be a complement of the phenomenal world; out of him, out of his activity, is to develop itself all that is wanting to the totality of the revelation of God, since nature receives, indeed, the whole divine substance, but only in the Real: rational being is to express the image of the same divine Nature, as it is in itself, accordingly, in the Ideal.”—Schelling, Vorlesungen über die Methode des Academischen Studium, p. 18. “God is infinite, I finite—these are false expressions, forms not fitted to the idea, to the nature of the case. . . . . . . God is the movement to the finite, and thereby as sublation of the same to himself; in the I as the self-sublating as finite, God regresses to himself, and is only God as this regress.”—Hegel, Vorlesungen, über die Philosophie der Religion (Werke, XI. p. 194). “Man’s knowledge of God is, according to the essential communion, a common knowledge; i. e., man has knowledge of God, only in so far as God has knowledge of Himself; this knowledge is God's self-consciousness; but just so is it, too, His knowledge of man; and God's knowledge of man is man's knowledge of God.”—Ibid. XII. p. 496. “Rational knowledge of truth is, first of all, as a knowledge of God, knowledge through God, knowledge in his Spirit and through it. By finite, relative thinking, God, who is nothing finite and relative, cannot be thought and known. On the contrary, in the knowledge, the I is out beyond 246 itself, and the subjectivity of the isolated consciousness of itself,—it is in God, and God in it.” Marheineke, Grundlehren der Christlichen Dogmatik, § 115.

Rationalism here takes up a common ground with Mysticism, and the logical process of the Hegelians becomes identical with the ecstatic intuition of the Neo-Platonists. Compare the language of Plotinus, Enn. VI. L. ix. c. 9. “It (the soul) may then see itself . . . . . . becoming God, or rather being God.” In the same strain sings the “Cherubic Wanderer,” Angelus Silesius:

For an exactly similar doctrine, asserted in the Hindu Vedas, see Dr. Mill’s Observations on the application of pantheistic principles to the criticism of the Gospel, p. 159.

Note XXX., p. 65.

Hegel, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, thus interprets the history of Christ. “The truth. . . . . . which men have reached in this entire history is this: that the idea of God has for them a certainty; that the Human is immediate, present God; and indeed, in such wise, that in this history, as the spirit apprehends it, the exhibition of the process pertains to that, which constitutes man, the spirit.”¹²⁵¹²⁵   Werke, XII. p. 307. The view here obscurely intimated is more explicitly stated by his disciple, Strauss, whose theory is little more than the legitimate development of his master’s. In his Christliche Glaubenslehre, § 33, he sums up the result of the speculations of modern philosophy concerning the Personality of God, in the following words: “God being in himself the eternal Personality itself, has been forever bringing forth out from Himself his Other (or alterum) Nature, in order forever to return to Himself as self-conscious Spirit. Or, the Personality of God must not be thought of as single-personality, but as all-personality; instead of on our side personifying the absolute, we must learn to apprehend it as the endlessly Self-personifying.” This view is still more plainly stated in a fearful passage of his Leben Jesu, § 151, which the reader will find quoted at length in Lecture V. p. 130. The critic of Strauss, Bruno Bauer, in his Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, § 91, adopts the same view, observing, “In general the religious 247 consciousness is the Spirit estranged from itself;” and to this origin he ascribes the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity: “The historical Christ is man, raised to heaven by the religious consciousness.” Feuerbach, in his Wesen des Christenthums,¹²⁶¹²⁶   See Ewerbeck, Qu’est ce que la Religion d’après la nouvelle Philosophie Allemande, pp 271, 390, 413. from a different point of view, arrives at a similar conclusion, maintaining that God is but the personification of the general notion of humanity. Emerson gives us occasional glimpses of the same philosophy. Thus in his “Christian Teacher” he explains the Divinity of Christ: “He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion: ‘I am divine. Through me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’”¹²⁷¹²⁷   Essays (Orr’s Edition, 1851), p. 511. And, in the “Over-Soul.” in still more daring language, he says: “In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal, is God.”¹²⁸¹²⁸   Ibid., p. 125.

Another form of this deification of humanity is that of M. Comte, who agrees with Strauss and Feuerbach, in finding God only in the human race. This discovery is announced as the grand consummation of Positive Philosophy. “This final estimation condenses l’ensemble of positive conceptions in the single notion of one Being immense and eternal, Humanity, whose sociological destinies develop themselves always under the necessary preponderance of biological and cosmological fatalities. Around this veritable Great-Being, the immediate mover of every existence, individual or collective, our affections centre as spontaneously as our thoughts and our actions.”¹²⁹¹²⁹   Catechisme Positiviste, p. 19. From this grand ideal of humanity. unworthy individuals of the race are excluded; but, “sii ces producteurs de fumier ne font vraiment point partie de l’Humanité, une juste compensation vous prescrit de joindre au nouvel Etre-Suprême tous ses dignes auxiliaires animaux.”¹³⁰¹³⁰   Catechisme Positiviste, p. 31. Thus, under the auspices of the positive philosophy, we return once more to the worship of the ibis, the ichneumon, and the cat. The Egyptians had the same reverence for their “dignes auxiliares animaux.” “They deified no beast, but for some utility which they might get from it.”—(Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I. 36.) Such is the brilliant discovery which entitles its author, in his own modest estimate, to be considered as uniting in his own person the characters of St. Paul and Aristotle, as the founder at once of true religion and sound philosophy.¹³¹¹³¹   This exquisite passage must be quoted in the original to be properly appreciated. “En appliquant aussitôt ce principe evident, je devais spontanément choisir l’angélique interlocutrice, qui, après une seule année d’influence objective se trouve, depuis plus de six ans, subjectivement associée à toutes mes pensées comme à tous mes sentiments. C’est par elle qui je suis enfin devenu, pour l’Humanité, un organe vraiment double, comme quiconque a dignement subi l’ascendant féminin. Sans elle, je n’aurais jamais pu faire activement succéder le carrière de St. Paul à celle d’Aristote, en fondant la religion universelle sur la saine philosophie, après avoir tiré celle-ci de la science réelle.”—Preface, p. xxii.

Note XXXI., p. 66.

“The object of religion as of philosophy, is eternal truth in its very objectivity, God, and nothing but God, and the unfolding of God.”—Hegel, Philosophie der Religion (Werke, XI. p. 21).

Note XXXII., p. 66.

“Thus is religion the divine Spirit’s knowledge of Himself through the mediation of the finite Spirit.”—Hegel, Werke, XI. p. 200. “Religion we have defined as the self-consciousness of God.”—Ibid. XII. p. 191. Compare Marheineke, Grundlehren der Christlichen Dogmatik, § 420. “Religion is, accordingly, nothing at all but the existence of the divine Spirit in the human; but an existence, which is life, a life which is consciousness, a consciousness which, in its truth, is knowledge. This human knowledge is essentially divine; for it is, first of all, the divine Spirit’s knowledge, and religion in its absoluteness.”

Note XXXIII., p. 66.

“Logic is consequently to be conceived as the system of the pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is truth unveiled and absolute. We may therefore say, that it contains in itself the exhibition of God, as He is in His eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite spirit.”—Hegel, Logik (Werke, III. p. 33).

Note XXXIV., p. 66.

Clemens Alex. Stromata, i. 2. Πρῶτον μὲν, εἰ καὶ ἄχρηστος εἴη φιλοσο· φία, εἰ εὔχρηστος ἡ τῆς ἀχρηστίας βεβαίωσις, εὔχρηστος.