LECTURE VIII.

Note I., p. 206.

F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 199; Reply to the Eclipse of Faith, p. 11.

Note II., p. 206.

“Christianity itself has thus practically confessed, what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man.”—F. W. Newman, The Soul, p. 59.

Note III., p. 206.

“In teaching about God and Christ, lay aside the wisdom of the wise; forswear History and all its apparatus; hold communion with the Father and the Son in the Spirit; from this communion learn all that is essential to the Gospel, and still (if possible) retain every proposition which Paul believed and taught. Propose them to the faith of others, to be tested by inward and spiritual evidence only; and you will at least be in the true apostolic track.”—F. W. Newman, The Soul, p. 250.

Note IV., p. 207.

“This question of miracles, whether true or false, is of no religious significance. When Mr. Locke said the doctrine proved the miracles, not the miracles the doctrine, he admitted their worthlessness. They can be useful only to such as deny our internal power of discerning truth.”— Parker, Discourse of matters pertaining to Religion, p. 170. Pascal, with far sounder judgment, says, on the other hand, “we must judge of the doctrine by the miracles, we must judge of miracles by the doctrine. The doctrine shows what the miracles are, and the miracles show what the doctrine is. All this is true, and not contradictory. . . . . . Jesus Christ cured the man who was born blind, and did many other miracles on the sabbath day; whereby he blinded the Pharisees, who said, that it was necessary to judge of miracles by the doctrine. . . . . . The Pharisees said: This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. The others said: How can a man that is a sinner, do such miracles? Which is the 343 clearer?”²²⁴²²⁴   Pensées, Partie II. Art. xvi. § i. 5, 10. Whatever may be thought of the evidence in behalf of the particular miracle on the occasion of which these remarks were written, the article itself is worthy of the highest praise, as a judicious statement of the religious value of miracles, supposing their actual occurrence to be proved by sufficient testimony. In like manner Clarke observes, “’Tis indeed the miracles only, that prove the doctrine; and not the doctrine that proves the miracles. But then in order to this end, that the miracles may prove the doctrine, ‘tis always necessary to be first supposed that the doctrine be such as is in its nature capable of being proved by miracles. The doctrine must be in itself possible and capable to be proved, and then miracles will prove it to be actually and certainly true.²²⁵²²⁵   Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion, Prop. xiv. The judicious remarks of Dean Trench are to the same effect, “When we object to the use often made of these works, it is only because they have been forcibly severed from the whole complex of Christ’s life and doctrine, and presented to the contemplation of men apart from these; it is only because, when on his head are ‘many crowns,’ one only has been singled out in proof that He is King of kings, and Lord of lords. The miracles have been spoken of as though they borrowed nothing from the truths which they confirmed, but those truths everything from the miracles by which they were confirmed; when, indeed, the true relation is one of mutual interdependence, the miracles proving the doctrines, and the doctrines approving the miracles, and both held together for us in a blessed unity, in the person of Him who spake the words and did the works, and through the impress of highest holiness and of absolute truth and goodness, which that person leaves stamped on our souls;—so that it may be more truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ’s sake, than Christ for the miracles’ sake.”²²⁶²²⁶   Notes on the Miracles of our Lord, p. 94 (fifth edition).

Note V., p. 207.

Foxton, Popular Christianity, p. 105. On the other hand, the profound author of the Restoration of Belief, with a far juster estimate of the value of evidence, observes, “Remove the supernatural from the Gospels, or, in other words, reduce the evangelical histories, by aid of some unintelligible hypothesis (German-born), to the level of an inane jumble of credulity, extravagance, and myth-power (whatever this may be), and then Christianity will go to its place, as to any effective value, in relation to humanizing and benevolent influences and enterprises;—a place, say, a few degrees above the level of some passages in Epictetus and M. Aurelius. . . . 344 The Gospel is a Force in the world, it is a force available for the good of man, not because it is Wisdom, but because it is Power. . . . . But the momentum supplied by the Gospel is a force which disappears—which is utterly gone, gone for ever, when Belief in its authority, as attested by miracles, is destroyed.”—Pp. 290, 291, 29!). To the same effect are the excellent remarks with which Neander concludes his Life of Jesus Christ. “The end of Christ’s appearance on earth corresponds to its beginning. No link in its chain of supernatural facts can be lost, without taking away its significance as a whole. Christianity rests upon these facts; stands or falls with them. By faith in them has the Divine life been generated from the beginning; by faith in them has that life in all ages regenerated mankind, raised them above the limits of earthly life, changed them from glebæ adscripti to citizens of heaven, and formed the stage of transition from an existence chained to nature, to a free, celestial life, far raised above it. Were this faith gone, there might, indeed, remain many of the effects of what Christianity has been; but as for Christianity in the true sense, as for a Christian Church, there could be none.”—(English Translation, p. 487).

Note VI., p. 207.

Parker, Some Account of my Ministry, appended to Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, p. 258.

Note VII., p. 207.

“All these criteria are the moral conditions under which alone it were possible for such a manifestation to be realized, conformably to the conception of a revelation; but by no means conversely—the conditions of an effect which could be realized only by God conformably to such a conception. In the latter case, they would—to the exclusion of the causality of all other beings—justify the conclusion, that is revelation; but, as it is, only this conclusion is justified; that can be a revelation.”—Fichte, Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Werke V. p. 146).

Note VIII., p. 208.

“These . . . were the outer conditions of the life of Christ, under which his public ministry and his personal character reached their destined development. It is not in that development alone, but in that development under these conditions, that the evidence will be found of his True 345 Origin and of his Personal Preëminence.”—The Christ of History, by John Young, p. 33. “But this character, in its unapproachable grandeur, must be viewed in connection with the outward circumstances of the Being in whom it was realized,—in connection with a life not only unprivileged, but offering numerous positive hindrances to the origination, the growth, and, most of all, the perfection of spiritual excellence. In a Jew of Nazareth—a young man—an uneducated mechanic—moral perfection was realized. Can this phenomenon be accounted for? There is here, without doubt, a manifestation of humanity; but the question is,—was this a manifestation of mere humanity and no more? “—ld. p. 251.²²⁷²²⁷   The able and impressive argument of this little work is well worthy of the perusal of those who would see what is the real force of the Christian evidences, even upon the lowest ground to which skepticism can attempt to reduce them. Though far from representing the whole strength of the case, it is most valuable as showing what may be effected in behalf of Christianity, on the principles of its opponents.

Note IX., p. 209.

Newman, The Soul, p.58.

Note X., p. 211.

Analogy, Part II. ch. 3.

Note XI., p. 214.

“Although some circumstances in the description of God’s Firstborn and Elect, by whom this change is to be accomplished, may primarily apply to collective Israel [many others will admit of no such application. Israel surely was not the child whom a virgin was to bear; Israel did not make his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; Israel scarcely reconciled that strangely blended variety of suffering and triumph, which was predicted of the Messiah].”—R. Williams, Rational Godliness, p. 56. In a Note to this passage, the author adds, “I no longer feel confident of the assertion in brackets; but now believe that all the prophecies have primarily an application nearly contemporaneous.” As a specimen of this application, we may cite a subsequent passage from the same volume, p. 169. “The same Isaiah sees that Israel, whom God had called out of Egypt, and whom the Eternal had denominated his first-born, trampled, captive, and derided; he sees the beauty of the 346 sanctuary defiled, and the anointed priests of the living God degraded from their office, led as sheep to the slaughter, insulted by their own countrymen, as men smitten of God, cast off by Jehovah. Ah! he says, it is through the wickedness of the nations that Israel is thus afflicted; it is through the apostasy of the people that the priesthood is thus smitten and reviled; they hide their faces from the Lord’s servant; nevertheless, no weapon that is formed against him shall prosper. It is a little thing that He should merely recover Israel, He shall also be a light to the Gentiles, and a salvation to the ends of the earth.”

There are few unprejudiced readers who will not think the author’s first thought on this subject preferable to his second. In the interpretation of any profane author, the perverse ingenuity which regards the Fifty-Third chapter of Isaiah (to say nothing of the other portions of the prophecy, which Dr. Williams has divorced from their context), as a description of the contemporaneous state of the Jewish people and priesthood, would be considered as too extravagant to need refutation. That such an interpretation should have found favor with thoroughgoing rationalists, determined at all hazards to expel the supernatural from Scripture, is only to be expected; and this may explain the adoption of this and similar views by a considerable school of expositors in Germany. But that it should have been received by those who, like Dr. Williams, hold fast the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God, is less easily to be accounted for. If this greatest of all miracles be once conceded,—if it be allowed that “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman;”—what marvel is it, that, while the time was still incomplete, a prophet should have been divinely inspired to proclaim the future redemption? Once concede the possibility of the supernatural at all, and the Messianic interpretation is the only one reconcilable with the facts of history and the plain meaning of words. The fiction of a contemporaneous sense, whether with or without a subsequent Messianic application, is only needed to get rid of direct inspiration; and nothing is gained by getting rid of inspiration, so long as a fragment of the supernatural is permitted to remain. It is only when we assume, a priori, that the supernatural is impossible, that anything is gained by forcing the prophetic language into a different meaning.

Note XII., p. 215.

Of this Eclectic Christianity, of which Schleiermacher may be considered as the chief modern representative, a late gifted and lamented writer has truly observed: “He could not effect the rescue of Christianity on these 347 principles without serious loss to the object of his care. His efforts resemble the benevolent intervention of the deities of the classic legends, who, to save the nymph from her pursuer, changed her into a river or a tree. It may be that the stream and the foliage have their music and their beauty, that we may think we hear a living voice still in the whispers of the one and the murmurs of the other, yet the beauty of divine Truth, our heavenly visitant, cannot but be grievously obscured by the change, for ‘the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.’ Such ecclesiastical doctrines as contain what he regards as the essence of Christianity are received. All others, as being feelings embodied in the concrete form of dogmas, as man’s objective conceptions of the divine, he considers as open to criticism. . . . . . Schleiermacher accounts as thus indifferent the doctrine of the Trinity, the supernatural conception of the Saviour, many of his miracles, his ascension and several other truths of the same class. This one reply, ‘That doctrine makes no necessary part of our Christian consciousness,’ stands solitary, like a Cocles at the bridge, and keeps always at bay the whole army of advancing queries. But surely it does constitute an essential part of our Christian consciousness, whether we regard the New Testament writers as trustworthy or otherwise. If certain parts of their account are myths, and others the expression of Jewish prejudice, and we are bidden dismiss them accordingly from our faith, how are we sure that in what is left these historians were faithful, or these expositors true representatives of the mind of Christ? Our Christian consciousness is likely to become a consciousness of little else than doubt, if we give credit to the assertion—Your sole informants on matters of eternal moment, were, every here and there, misled by prejudice and imposed upon by fable.”²²⁸²²⁸   Essays and Remains of the Rev. Robert Alfred Vaughan, Vol. I. p. 93.

Note XIII., p. 216.

For the objections of modern Pantheism against the immortality of the soul, See Lecture III., Note 27. Of the resurrection of the body in particular, Wegscheider observes: “The resurrection of the body is so far from being reconcilable with the precepts of sound reason, that it is embarrassed with very many and the gravest difficulties. For, in the first place, it cannot be doubted that this opinion derived its origin from the lame and imperfect conceptions of men of defective culture; for such persons, being destitute of a just idea of the Divine being, are wont to imagine to themselves a life after death, solely after the nature of the earthly life. Hence it comes to pass, that, among barbarous nations, and also in the system of 348 Zoroaster, from which the Jews themselves seem to have drawn, that same doctrine is discovered. Then, too, the resurrection of the body, taught in the books of the New Testament, which, even from the apostolic age, was condemned by not a few, is seen to be so closely connected with the mythical opinions of the Messiah, and the story of Jesus restored to life, that it cannot be judged of and explained by any other method than those myths themselves. . . . . . Moreover, the idea is manifestly not in agreement with a God most holy and good, that man, who cannot pass a real life without the body, is to have this body restored to him after many thousands of years. . . . . Induced by these reasons, and others of scarcely less weight, we think that Jesus, wherever he is said to have taught the resurrection of the body, humored the opinions of his countrymen; or, rather, the disciples of Jesus . . . . falsely ascribed to Him an opinion of their own.”²²⁹²²⁹   Institutiones Theologicæ, § 195. Concerning angels and spirits, one of the most significant specimens of modern Sadducceism may be found in Dr. Donaldson’s “Christian Orthodoxy Reconciled with the Conclusions of Modern Biblical Learning,” p. 317, sqq. Ile holds, with regard to intermediate Intelligences, the same view which Wegscheider suggests with regard to the Resurrection, namely, “that our Lord, in his dealings with the Jews, rather acquiesced in the established phraseology than sanctioned the prevalent superstition.”²³⁰²³⁰   P. 363. That is to say, it is boldly maintained that our Lord, in order to humor the prejudices of the Jews of that day, consented to lend his authority to the dissemination of a religious falsehood for the deception of posterity. This monstrous assertion is stated more plainly by Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Polit. c 2. “Indeed He accommodated His forms of thought to every one’s principles and opinions. For instance, when He said to the Pharisees, And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then can his kingdom stand? he meant only to convict the Pharisees on their own principles, not to teach the doctrine of demons.” In like manner, Schleiermacher (Christliche Glaube, § 42) asserts that Christ and his Apostles possibly adopted the popular representations, as we speak of fairies and ghosts. On the other side, it is justly urged by Storr (Doctrina Ciristiana, § 52), that our Lord employed the same language privately with his disciples. as well as publicly with the people; e. g. Matt. xiii. 39, xxv. 41; Mark iv. 15; Luke xxii. 31. See also Mosheim’s note, translated in Harrison’s edition of Cudworth, Vol. II. p. 661; Neander, Life of Christ, p. 157 (Eng. Tr.); Lee, Inspiration of Holy Scripture, p. 69 (second edition). He adds that, “in many respects, our Lord seems to have approved and recommended” the views of the Sadducces; though “he could not openly adopt a speculative truth, which was saddled with an application diametrically opposed to the cardinal verity of his religion.”²³¹²³¹   Pp. 372, 373. It is obvious that, by this method of exposition, “Christian Orthodoxy” may mean anything or nothing. Any doctrine which this or 349 that expositor finds it convenient to reject, may be set aside as a concession to popular phraseology; and thus the teaching of Christ may be stripped of its most essential doctrines by men who profess all the while to believe in His immanent Divinity and Omniscience. Strauss arrives at a similar conclusion, though, of course, without troubling himself about Scriptural premises. “It is, therefore, not enough to leave undecided, with Schleiermacher, the possibility of such beings as angels, and only to fix so much as this, that we have neither to take account of them in our conduct, nor to expect further revelations of their nature; rather is it the case, chat, if the modern idea of God and the world is correct, there cannot be any such beings any where at all.”²³²²³²   Christlichle Glaubenslehre, § 49. To the same effect are his remarks on Evil Spirits § 54 Among the earlier rationalists, the same view is taken by Röhr, Briefe über den Rationalismus, p. 35. In the same spirit Mr. Parker openly maintains that “Jesus shared the erroneous notions of the times respecting devils, possessions, and demonology in general;”²³³²³³   Discourse of matters pertaining. to Religion, p 176.—a conclusion which is at least more logical and consistent than that of those who acknowledge the divine authority of the Teacher, yet claim a right to reject as much as they please of his teaching.

Note XIV., p. 216.

Greg, Creed of Christendom, Preface, p. xii.

Note XV., p. 216.

The theory which represents the human race as in a constant state of religious progress, and the various religions of antiquity as successive steps in the education of mankind, has been a favorite with various schools of modern philosophy. Hegel, as might naturally be expected, propounds a theory of the necessary development of religious ideas, as determined by the movements of the universal Spirit.²³⁴²³⁴   See Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, IX. p. 14. Philosophie der Religion, Werke, XI. p. 76, 78. It is true that he is compelled by the stern necessities of chronology to represent the polytheism of Greece and Rome as an advance on the monotheism of Judea;²³⁵²³⁵   See his Philosophie der Religion, Werke, XI. p. 82. XII. p. 45. The superiority of the Greek religion appears to consist in its greater acknowledgment of human freedom, and perhaps in being a step in the direction of Pantheism. See Werke, XlI 92, 125. Of the Roman religion, he says that it contained in itself all the elements of Christianity, and was a necessary step to the latter. Its evils sprang from the depth of its spirit (XII pp. 181, 184). The best commentary on this assertion may be found in Augustine, De Civ. Dei, Lib. VI.350and perhaps, if we regard the Hegelian philosophy as the final consummation of all religious truth, this retrograde progress may be supported by some plausible arguments.²³⁶²³⁶   Among the imperfections of Judaism, Hegel includes the fact that “it did not make men conscious of the identity of the human soul with the Absolute and its absorption therein (die Anschauung und das Bewusstseyn von der Einlheit der Seele mit dem Absoluten, oder von der Aufnahme der Seele in den Schooss des Absoluten ist noch nicht erwacht, Werke, Xl. p. 86). In another place (p. 161) he speaks of it as the religion of obstinate, dead understanding. Vatke (Biblische Theologie, p. 115) carries the absurdity of theory to its climax, by boldly maintaining that the later Judaism had been elevated by its conflict with the religions of Greece and Rome, and thus prepared to become the precursor of Christianity. The Hegelian theory is also adopted by Baur, as representing the law of development of Christian doctrines. The historical aspects of the doctrine are to be regarded as phases of a process, in which the several forms are determined one by another, and all are united together in the totality of the idea. See especially his Christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung, p. 11, and the preface to the same work, p. vi. Another form of the same theory is that of Comte, who traces the progress of humanity through Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism, to culminate at last in the Positive Religion, which worships the idea of humanity, including therein the auxiliary animals.²³⁷²³⁷   Cours de Philosophie Positive, Leçons, 52, 53, 54. Compare Catechisme Positiviste, pp. 31, 184, 243. In theories of this kind, the distinction between progress and mere fluctuation depends upon the previous question, Whence, and Whither? What was the original state of religious knowledge in mankind, and what is the end to which it is advancing? If Pantheism or Atheism is the highest form of religious truth, every step in that direction is unquestionably progressive; if otherwise, it is not progress, but corruption.

The previous question is clearly stated by Theodore Parker. “From what point did the human race set out,—from civilization and the true worship of one God, or from cannibalism and the deification of nature? Has the human race fallen or risen? The question is purely historical, and to be answered by historical witnesses. But in the presence, and still more in the absence, of such witnesses, the a priori doctrines of the man’s philosophy affect his decision. Reasoning with no facts is as easy as all motion in cacao. The analogy of the geological formation of the earth—its gradual preparation, so to say, for the reception of plants and animals, the ruder first, and then the more complex and beautiful, till at last she opens her bosom to man,—this, in connection with many similar analogies, would tend to show that a similar order was to be expected in the affairs of men—development from the lower to the higher, and not the 351 reverse. In strict accordance with this analogy, some have taught that man was created in the lowest stage of savage life; his Religion the rudest worship of nature; his Morality that of the cannibal; that all of the civilized races have risen from this point, and gradually passed through Fetichism and Polytheism, before they reached refinement and true Religion. The spiritual man is the gradual development of germs latent in the natural man.”²³⁸²³⁸   Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion, p. 68. 69. A similar view is advocated by Mr. Newman, Phases of Faith, p 223, and by Mr. Greg, Creed of Christendom, p. 71. Mr. Parker does not distinctly adopt this view as his own. but he appears to regard it as preferable to the antagonist theory, which he speaks of as supported by a “party consisting more of poets and dogmatists than of philosophers.”

It is to be regretted that Professor Jowett has partially given the sanction of his authority to a theory which it is to be presumed he would not advocate to the full extent of the above statement. “The theory of a primitive religion common to all mankind,” he tells us, “has only to be placed distinctly before the mind, to make us aware that it is the baseless fabric of a vision; there is one stream of revelation only—the Jewish. But even if it were conceivable, it would be inconsistent with facts. The earliest history tells nothing of a general religion, but of particular beliefs about stocks and stones, about places and persons, about animal life, about the sun, moon, and stars, about the divine essence permeating the world, about gods in the likeness of men appearin- in battles and directing the course of states, about the world below, about sacrifices, purifications, initiations, magic, mysteries. These were the true religions of nature, varying with different degrees of mental culture or civilization.”²³⁹²³⁹   Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. II. p. 395. And in an earlier part of the same Essay, he says, “No one who looks at the religions of the world, stretching from east to west, through so many cycles of human history, can avoid seeing in them a sort of order and design. They are like so many steps in the education of mankind. Those countless myriads of human beings who know no other truth than that of religious coëval with the days of the Apostle, or even of Moses, are not wholly uncared for in the sight of God.”²⁴⁰²⁴⁰   Ibid., p. 386.

It would be unfair to press these words to a meaning which they do not necessarily bear. We will assume that by the “earliest history,” profane history alone is meant, in opposition to the Jewish Revelation; and that the author does not intend, as some of his critics have supposed, to deny the historical character of the Book of Genesis, and the existence of a primitive revelation coeval with the creation of man. Even with this 352 limitation, the evidence is stated far too absolutely. But the words last quoted are, to say the least, incautious, and suggest coincidence in a favorite theory of modern philosophy, equally repugnant to Scripture and to natural religion. Two very opposite views may be taken of the false religions of antiquity. The Scriptures invariably speak of them as corruptions of man’s natural reason, and abominations in the sight of God. Some modern writers delight to represent them as instruments of God’s Providence, and steps in the education of mankind. This view naturally belongs to that pantheistic philosophy which recognizes no Deity beyond the actual constitution of the world, which acknowledges all that exists as equally divine, or, which is the same thing, equally godless; but it is irreconcilable with the belief in a personal God, and in a distinction between the good which He approves and the evil which He condemns. But men will concede much to philosophy who will concede nothing to Scripture. The sickly and sentimental morality which talks of the “ferocious” God of the popular theology,²⁴¹²⁴¹   Parker, Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, p. 103, 104. which is indignant at the faith of Abraham,²⁴²²⁴²   Parker, Discourse of Religion, p 214. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 150. which shudders over the destruction of the Canaanites,²⁴³²⁴³   Parker, Discourse, p. 87. Newman, Phases, p. 151. which prides itself in discovering imperfections in the law of Moses,²⁴⁴²⁴⁴   Parker, Discourse, p. 204, 223. Greg, Creed of Christendom, p. 75. is content to believe that the God who could not sanction these things, could yet create man with the morality of a cannibal, and the religion of a fetish-worshipper, and ordain for him a law of development through the purifying stages which marked the civilization of Egypt and Babylon and Imperial Rome. Verily this unbelieving Reason makes heavy demands on the faith of its disciples. It will not tolerate the slightest apparent anomaly in the moral government of God; but it is ready, when its theories require, to propound a scheme of deified iniquity, which it is hardly exaggeration to designate as the moral government of Satan.

We must believe, indeed, that in the darkest ages of idolatry, God “left not himself without witness;” we must believe that the false religions of the world, like its other evils, are overruled by God to the purposes of His good Providence. But this does not make them the less evils and abominations in the sight of God. Those who speak of the human race as under a law of vegetable development, forget that man has, what vegetables have not, a moral sense and a free will. It is indeed impossible, in our present state of knowledge, to draw exactly the line between the sins and the misfortunes of individuals, to decide how much of each man’s history is due to his own will, and how much to the circumstances in which he is placed. But though Scripture, like philosophy, offers no complete 353 solution of the problem of the existence of evil, it at least distinctly points out what the true solution is not. So long as it represents the sin of man as a fall from the state in which God originally placed him, and as a rebellion against a divine command; so long as it represents idolatry as hateful to God, and false religion as a declension towards evil, not as a progress towards good;—so long it emphatically records its protest against both the self-delusion which denies that evil exists at all, and the blasphemy which asserts that it exists by the appointment of God.

Note XVI., p. 219.

“It is an obvious snare, that many, out of such abundance of knowledge, should be tempted to forget at times this grand and simple point that all vital truth is to be sought from Scripture alone. Hence that they should be tempted rather to combine systems for themselves according, to some proportion and fancy of their own, than be content neither to add nor diminish anything from that which Christ and his Apostles have enjoined; to make up, as it were, a cento of doctrines and of precepts; to take from Christ what pleases them, and from other stores what pleases them (of course the best from each, as it appears to their judgment, so as to exhibit the most perfect whole); taking e. g. the blessed hope of everlasting life from Jesus Christ, but rejecting his atonement; or honoring highly his example of humanity, but disrobing Him of his divinity; or accepting all the comfortable things of the dispensation of the Spirit, but refusing its strictness and self-denials; or forming any other combination whatsoever, to the exclusion of the entire Gospel: thus inviting Christian hearers, not to the supper of the king’s son, but to a sort of miscellaneous banquet of their own; ‘using their liberty,’ in short, ‘as an occasion’ to that natural disposition, which Christ came to correct and to repair.

“Now that by such methods, enforced by education and strengthened by the best of secondary motives, men may attain to an excellent proficiency in morals, I am neither prepared nor disposed to dispute. I am not desirous of disputing that they may possess therein an excellent religion, as opposed to Mahometanism or Paganism. But that they possess the true account to be given of their stewardship of that one talent, the Gospel itself, I do doubt in sorrow and fear. I do doubt whether they ‘live the life that now is,’ as St. Paul lived it, ‘by the faith of the Son of God;’ by true apprehension of the things that He suffered for us, and of the right which He has purchased to command us in all excellent qualities and actions; and further, of the invisible but real assistance which he gives us towards the performance of them.” Müller, Bampton Lectures. p. 169 (third edition).

Note XVII., p. 219.

“Thus in the great variety of religious situations in which men are placed, what constitutes, what chiefly and peculiarly constitutes, the probation, in all senses, of some persons, may be the difficulties in which the evidence of religion is involved: and their principal and distinguished trial may be, how they will behave under and with respect to these difficulties.” Butler, Analogy, Part II. ch. 6.

Note XVIII., p. 221.

I do not mean by these remarks to deny the possibility of any progress whatever in Christian Theology, such for instance, as may result from the better interpretation of Holy Writ, or the refutation of unauthorized inferences therefrom. But all such developments of doctrine are admissible only when confined within the limits so carefully laid down in the sixth Article of our Church. “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” Within these limits, the most judicious theologians have not hesitated to allow the possibility of progress, as regards at least the definite statement of Christian doctrine. Thus Bishop Butler remarks: “As it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet understood; so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the restitution of all things, and without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at: by the continuance and progress of learning and liberty; and by particular persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the world.”²⁴⁵²⁴⁵   Analogy, Part II. ch. 3. And a worthy successor to the name has pointed out the distinction between true and false developments of doctrine, in language based upon the same principle: “Are there admissible developments of doctrine in Christianity? Unquestionably there are. But let the term be understood in its legitimate sense or senses to warrant that answer; and let it be carefully observed how much, and how little, the admission really involves. All varieties of real development, so far as this argument is concerned, may probably be reduced to two general heads, intellectual developments, and practical developments, of Christian doctrine. By ‘intellectual developments,’ I understand logical inferences (and that whether for 355 belief or practical discipline), from doctrines, or from the comparison of doctrines; which, in virtue of the great dialectical maxim, must be true, if legitimately deduced from what is true. ‘Practical developments’ are the living, actual, historical results of those true doctrines (original or inferential), when considered as influential on all the infinite varieties of human kind; the doctrines embodied in action; the doctrines modifying human nature in ways infinitely various, correspondently to the infinite variety of subjects on whom they operate, though ever strictly preserving, amid all their operations for effectually transforming and renewing mankind, their own unchanged identity. . . . In the former case, revealed doctrines may be compared with one another, or with the doctrines of ‘natural religion;’ or the consequences of revealed doctrines may be compared with other doctrines, or with their consequences, and so on in great variety: the combined result being what is called a System of Theology. What the first principles of Christian truth really are, or how obtained, is not now the question. But in all cases equally, no doctrine has any claim whatever to be received as obligatory on belief, unless it be either itself some duly authorized principle, or a logical deduction, through whatever number of stages, from some such principle of religion. Such only are legitimate developments of doctrine for the belief of man; and such alone can the Church of Christ-the Witness and Conservator of His Truth—justly commend to the consciences of her members. . . . But in truth, as our own liability to error is extreme, especially when immersed in the holy obscurity (“the cloud on the mercy-seat”) of such mysteries as these, we have reason to thank God that there appear to be few doctrinal developments of any importance which are not from the first drawn out and delivered on divine authority to our acceptance.”²⁴⁶²⁴⁶   W. A. Butler, Letters on the Development of Christian Doctrine, pp. 55-58.

It is impossible not to regret deeply the very different language, on this point, of a writer in many respects worthy of better things; but who, while retaining the essential doctrines of Christianity, has, it is to be feared, done much to unsettle the authority on which they rest. “If the destined course of the world,” says Dr. Williams, “be really one of providential progress, if there has been such a thing as a childhood of humanity, and if God has been educating either a nation or a Church to understand their duty to Himself and to mankind; it must follow, that when the fulness of light is come, there will be childish things to put away. . . . Hence, if the religious records represent faithfully the inner life of each generation, whether a people or a priesthood, they will be, in St. Paul’s phrase, divinely animated, or with a divine life running through them; and every writing, divinely animated, will be useful; yet they may, or rather, 356 they must be cast in the mould of the generation in which they are written; their words, if they are true words, will express the customs of their country, the conceptions of their times, the feelings or aspirations of their writers; and the measure of knowledge or of faith to which every one, in his degree, had attained. And the limitation, thus asserted, of their range of knowledge, will be equally true, whether we suppose the shortcoming to be, on an idea of special Providence, from a particular dictation of sentiment in each case; or whether, on the more reasonable view of a general Providence, we consider such things permitted rather than directed; the natural result of a grand scheme, rather than a minute arrangement of thoughts and words for each individual man. It may be, that the Lord writes the Bible, on the same principle as the Lord builds the city; or that He teaches the Psalmist to sing, in the same sense as He teaches his fingers to fight; thus that the composition of Scripture is attributed to the Almighty, just as sowing and threshing are said to be taught by Him; for every part played by man comes from the Divine Disposer of the scene.”²⁴⁷²⁴⁷   Rational Godliness, pp. 291, 292. A similar view is maintained by Mr Morell, Philosophy of Religion, p. 183, and is criticised by Professor Lee, Inspiration of Holy Scripture, p. 147.

It is the misfortune of this sort of language, that it suggests far more than it directly asserts, and probably more than the author intends to convey. Dr. Williams probably does not mean to imply that we are no more bound by the authority of Scripture in matters of religion than by the primitive practice in sowing and threshing, or that we are as much at liberty to invent new theological doctrines as new implements of husbandry. But if he does not mean this, it is to be regretted that he has not clearly pointed out the respects in which his comparison does not hold good.

Note XIX., p. 222.

Summa, P. I. Qu. II. Art. 2.

Note XX., p. 222.

See Archbishop King’s Discourse on Predestination, edited by Archbishop Whately, p. 10. A different, and surely a more judicious view, is taken by a contemporary Prelate of the Irish Church, whose earlier exposition of the same theory²⁴⁸²⁴⁸   In his Letter in answer to Toland’s Christianity not mysterious. probably furnished the foundation of the Archbishop’s discourse. “Though,” says Bishop Browne, “there are literally 357 speaking no such passions in God as Love or Hatred, Joy or Anger, or Pity; yet there may be Inconceivable Perfections in Him some way answerable to what those passions are in us, under a due regulation and subjection to reason. It is sure that in God those perfections are not attended with any degree of natural disturbance or moral irregularity, as the passions are in us. Nay, Fear and Hope, which imply something future for their objects, may have nothing answerable to them in the divine Nature to which everything is present. But since our reasonable affections are real dispositions of the Soul, which is composed of Spirit as well as Matter; we must conclude something in God analogous to them, as well as to our Knowledge or Power. For it cannot be a thought unworthy of being transferred to him, that he really loves a virtuous and hates a vicious agent; that he is angry at sinners; pities their moral infirmities; is pleased with their innocence or repentance, and displeased with their transgressions; though all these Perfections are in Him accompanied with the utmost serenity, and never-failing tranquillity.”²⁴⁹²⁴⁹   Divine Analogy, pp 45, 46. King’s Theory is also criticized more directly by the same author in the Procedure of the Understanding, p. 11. Mr. Davison (Discourses on Prophecy, p. 513) has noticed the weak points in King’s explanation; but with too great a leaning to the opposite extreme, which reasons concerning the infinite as if it were a mere expansion of the finite. With this may be compared the language of Tertullian (Adv. Marc. II. 16), “All which He suffers after His own manner, even as man after his.”

Note XXI., p. 223.

Compare the remarks of Hooker, E. P. I. 3. 2. “Moses, in describing the work of creation, attributeth speech unto God. . . . Was this only the intent of Moses, to signify the infinite greatness of God’s power by the easiness of his accomplishing such effects, without travail, pain, or labor? Surely it seemeth that Moses had herein besides this a further purpose, namely, first to teach that God did not work as a necessary but a voluntary agent, intending beforehand and decreeing with himself that which did outwardly proceed from him. Secondly, to shew that God did then institute a law natural to be observed by creatures, and therefore according to the manner of laws, the institution thereof is described, as being established by solemn injunction.”

Note XXII., p. 224.

“But they urge, there can be no proportion or similitude between Finite and Infinite, and consequently there can be no analogy. That there can 358 be no such proportion or similitude as there is between finite created beings is granted; or as there is between any material substance and its resemblance in the glass; and therefore wherein the real ground of this analogy consists, and what the degrees of it are, is as incomprehensible as the real Nature of God. But it is such an analogy as he himself hath adapted to our intellect, and made use of in his Revelations; and therefore we are sure it hath such a foundation in the nature both of God and man, as renders our moral reasonings concerning him and his attributes, solid, and just, and true.”—Bp. Browne, Procedure of the Understanding, p. 31. The practical result of this remark is, that we must rest satisfied with a belief in the analogical representation itself, without seeking to rise above it by substituting an explanation of its ulterior significance or real ground.

Note XXIII., p. 224.

I am glad to take this opportunity of expressing, in the above words, my belief in the purpose and authority of Holy Scripture; inasmuch as it enables me to correct a serious misunderstanding into which a distinguished writer has fallen in a criticism of my supposed views—a criticism to which the celebrity of the author will probably give a far wider circulation than is ever likely to fall to the lot of the small pamphlet which called it forth. Mr. Maurice, in the preface to the second edition of his “Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament,” comments upon the distinction (maintained in the present Lectures and in a small previous publication), between speculative and regulative truths, in the following terms. “The notion of a revelation that tells us things which are not in themselves true, but which it is right for us to believe and to act upon as if they were true, has, I fear, penetrated very deeply into the heart of our English schools, and of our English world. It may be traced among persons who are apparently most unlike each other, who live to oppose and confute each other. . . . But their differences are not in the least likely to be adjusted by the discovery of this common ground. How the atmosphere is to be regulated by the regulative Revelation; at what degree of heat or cold this constitution or that can endure it; who must fix—since the language of the Revelation is assumed not to be exact, not to express the very lesson which we are to derive from it—what it does mean; by what contrivances its phrases are to be adapted to various places and times: these are questions which must, of course, give rise to infinite disputations; ever new schools and sects must be called into existence to settle them; there is scope for permissions, prohibitions, compromises, persecutions, to any extent. The despair which these must cause will probably 359 drive numbers to ask for an infallible human voice, which shall regulate for each period that which the Revelation has so utterly failed to regulate.”

Now I certainly believed, and believe still, that God is infinite, and that no human mode of thought, nor even a Revelation, if it is to be intelligible by the human mind, can represent the infinite, save under finite forms. And it is a legitimate inference from this position, that no human representation, whether derived from without or from within, from Revelation or from natural Religion, can adequately exhibit the absolute nature of God. But I cannot admit, as a further legitimate inference, that therefore “the language of the Revelation does not express the very lesson which we are to derive from it;” that it needs any regulation to adjust it to “this constitution or that;” that it requires “to be adapted to various places and times.” For surely, if all men are subject to the same limitations of thought, the adaptation to their constitutions must be made already, before human interpretation can deal with the Revelation at all. It is not to the peculiarities which distinguish “this” constitution from “that,” that the Revelation has to be adapted by man; but, as it is given by God, it is adapted already to the general conditions which are common to all human constitutions alike, which are equally binding in all places and at all times. I have said nothing of a revelation adapted to one man more than to another; nothing of limitations which any amount of intellect or learning can enable a man to overcome. I have not said that the Bible is the teacher of the peasant rather than of the philosopher; of the Asiatic rather than of the European; of the first century rather than of the nineteenth. I have said only that it is the teacher of man as man; and that this is compatible with the possible existence of a more absolute truth in relation to beings of a higher intelligence. We must at any rate admit that man does not know God as God knows Himself; and hence that he does not know Him in the fulness of His Absolute Nature. But surely this admission is so far from implying that Revelation does not teach the very lesson which we are to derive from it, that it makes that lesson the more universal and the more authoritative. For Revelation is subject to no other limitations than those which encompass all human thought. Man gains nothing by rejecting or perverting its testimony; for the mystery of Revelation is the mystery of Reason also.

I do not wish to extend this controversy further; for I am willing to believe that, on this question at least, my own opinion is substantially one with that of my antagonist. At any rate, I approve as little as he does of allegorical, or metaphysical, or mythical interpretations of Scripture: I believe that he is generally right in maintaining that “the most literal meaning of Scripture is the most spiritual meaning.” And if there are 360 points in the details of his teaching with which I am unable to agree, I believe that they are not such as legitimately arise from the consistent application of this canon.

Note XXIV., p. 225.

“There seems no possible reason to be given, why we may not be in a state of moral probation, with regard to the exercise of our understanding upon the subject of religion, as we are with regard to our behaviour in common affairs. . . . Thus, that religion is not intuitively true, but a matter of deduction and inference; that a conviction of its truth is not forced upon every one, but left to be, by some, collected with heedful attention to premises; this as much constitutes religious probation, as much affords sphere, scope, opportunity, for right and wrong behaviour, as anything whatever does.”—Butler, Analogy, Part II. ch. 6.

Note XXV., p. 226.

Plato, Rep. VI. p. 486: “And this also it is necessary to consider, when you would distinguish between a nature which is philosophical, and one which is not.—What then is that?—That it takes no part, even unobserved, in any meanness; for petty littleness is every way most contrary to a soul that is ever stretching forward in desire to the whole and the all, “to divine and to human.”—Cicero, De Off. I. 2: “Nor is philosophy anything else, if you will define it, than the study of wisdom. But wisdom (as defined by ancient philosophers) is the knowledge of things human and divine, and of the causes in which these are contained.”

Note XXVI., p. 226.

Plato, Protag. p. 343: “And these, having met together by agreement, consecrated to Apollo, in his temple at Delphi, as the first fruits of wisdom, those inscriptions which are in everybody’s mouth, Know thyself, and Nothing to excess.”—Compare Jacobi, Werke, IV.; Vorbericht, p. xlii.: “Know thyself is, according to the Delphian god and Socrates, the highest command, and, so soon as it becomes practical, man is made aware of this truth: without the Divine Thou, there is no human I, and without the human I, there is no Divine Thou.”

Note XXVII., p. 226.

Clemens Alex. Pædag. III. 1: “It is, then, as it appears, the greatest of all lessons, to know one’s self; for, if any one knows himself, he will know God.”

Note XXVIII., p. 227.

“It is plain that there is a capacity in the nature of man, which neither riches, nor honors, nor sensual gratifications, nor anything in this world, can perfectly fill up or satisfy: there is a deeper and more essential want, than any of these things can be the supply of. Yet surely there is a possibility of somewhat, which may fill up all our capacities of happiness; somewhat, in which our souls may find rest; somewhat, which may be to us that satisfactory good we are inquiring after. But it cannot be anything which is valuable only as it tends to some further end. . . . As our understanding can contemplate itself, and our affections be exercised upon themselves by reflection, so may each be employed in the same manner upon any other mind. And since the Supreme Mind, the Author and Cause of all things, is the highest possible object to himself, he may be an adequate supply to all the faculties of our souls; a subject to our understanding, and an object to our affections.”—Butler, Sermon XIV.

Note XXIX., p. 227.

“Christianity is not a religion for the religious, but a religion for man. I do not accept it because my temperament so disposes me, and because it meets my individual mood of mind, or my tastes. I accept it as it is suited to that moral condition in respect of which there is no difference of importance between me and the man I may next encounter on my path.” The Restoration of Belief, p. 325.

Note XXX., p. 227.

“The Scripture-arguments are arguments of inducement, addressed to the whole nature of man—not merely to intellectual man, but to thinking and feeling man, living among his fellow men;—and to be apprehended therefore in their effect on our whole nature.”— Hampden, Bampton Lectures, p. 92.—”There are persons who complain of the Word, because it is not addressed to some one department of the human soul, on which they set a high value. The systematic divine wonders that it is not a 362mere scheme of dogmatic theology, forgetting that in such a case it would address itself exclusively to the understanding. The German speculatists, on the other hand, complain that it is not a mere exhibition of the true and the good, forgetting that in such a case it would have little or no influence on the more practical faculties. Others seem to regret that it is not a mere code of morality, while a fourth class would wish it to be altogether an appeal to the feelings. But the Word is inspired by the same God who formed man at first, and who knows what is in man; and he would rectify not merely the understanding or intuitions, not merely the conscience or affections, but the whole man after the image of God.” McCosh, Method of the Divine Government, p. 509.