^ 
 
 Cf 
 
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 
 
ESSAYS &> ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY o/RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 BARON FRIEDRICH von HÛGEL, 
 
 LL.D., D.D. '' 
 
 MCMXXI 
 
 LONDON y TORONTO 
 
 J. M. DENT ^ SONS LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
saj~/ 
 
 * «• ' 
 
 AU rights reserved 
 
 \ 
 
TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF 
 
 DANTE, 
 
 WHO DIED SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO TO-DAY, 
 IN LIVELY GRATITUDE FOR INSPIRATION AND SUPPORT 
 THROUGHOUT SOME SIXTY YEARS OF SPIRITUAL STRESS, 
 
 FROM THE WRITER, HIS FELLOW FLORENTINE. 
 
 September J4th, ig2J* 
 
 4? 60 21 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following collection of some dozen papers arose in a very 
 simple way. About half of thèse essays, ever since their several 
 appearances in print, hâve been a good deal sought after. Hence 
 I hâve thought it well, pending the re-issue of my Mystical 
 Elément of Religion and the completion and publication of a new 
 large work on religions fundamentals, to publish in book-form, 
 from amongst my accumulated papers, such studies as appear 
 to possess some abiding interest, 
 
 One of the papers given hère (as No» 3) has already appeared 
 in a collective volume of essays ; and Nos. 2, 3, 6, 9 hâve 
 previously been published in magazines. But four papers 
 (Nos. I, 4, 5, and 10) are quite new to print. Yet ail the 
 papers were written, in part ako spoken, at the invitation of 
 single persons or of societies ; and ail hâve benefited by 
 questions and criticisms raised on occasion of their first com- 
 munication. They hâve thus had some good chances of a certain 
 maturity. There \s, assuredly, not a paper hère which does not 
 raise more questions than it solves ; nor a pièce which could not 
 be improved considerably even by myself. But life is short at 
 sixty-nine, and my remaining strength is required for larger 
 tasks. Also such freshness as thèse essays may possess would 
 doubtless largely fade away in the process of any considérable 
 re-writing of them. I hâve, then, restricted myself simply to 
 the formai improvement of my texts, especially in the second 
 Troeltsch article, and to the silent withdrawal or correction of 
 some half-dozen errors of fact. Perhaps the chief formai defect 
 now remaining is a certain répétition. But this I trust may help 
 to drive home one or the other conviction which might otherwise 
 fail to impress the reader. 
 
 vil 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 The Roman Church congrégations hold a valuable distinction 
 between the private intention of a writer and the public meaning 
 of his writings» The intention of the writer, what he meant to 
 say, is known in full to God alone and at ail adequately only to 
 the writer himself» The meaning of the writings, what as a 
 matter of fact they say, falls outside the jurisdiction of the writer, 
 Not the writer, but the compétent and careful students of the 
 writings, décide, in the long run, upon the significance (both as 
 to meaning and as to worth) of any literary production, now 
 become an entity possessed of a life, influence and meaning of 
 its own, Ju vénal intended to write poetry, and thought he had 
 written poetry ; mankind has decided that what he wrote is not 
 poetry but splendid rhetoric, Dr, Johnson thought that his 
 tragedy Irène was his masterpiece ; the unanimous verdict of 
 some six compétent judges settled the question to the contrary, 
 on the very night of the first production of the play, and this also 
 for the heroically docile great doctor himself. And a scholarly 
 parish priest in the Black Forest told me, out there, years ago, 
 how, in the winter-time, he had only one University trained 
 parishioner who could help him a little with his manuscripts — 
 a Government forester, He, the priest, had submitted to this 
 forester an elaborate réfutation of von Hartmann *s Philosophy 
 of the Unconscious. The forester studied the manuscript long 
 and minutely ; and then retumed it with the words : 
 ** Admirable I so thorough, so clear ! But on which side of the 
 argument are you yourself, Herr Pfarrer ^ ** 1 cannot turn thèse 
 poor papers into rich and living wisdom, if they are but thin and 
 dead elucubrations, I cannot even mould them into the best 
 that I hâve written. But I can try and make more clear perhaps 
 hère than in the essays themselves — ^in writings of various dates 
 and very various occasions — what I hâve mainly intended to 
 transmit and to illustrate. I will, then, first point out certain 
 convictions which constitute the centres of the several sections ; 
 and I will afterwards attempt to mark what it is that specially 
 holds the three sections together — ^what, I trust, gives a certain 
 definite and stimulating character to the book as a whole. 
 
 In Section I., conceming Religion in General and Theism, 
 the twin papers numbered two strive specially to bring out the 
 always double appréhension, feeling, conviction at work in every 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 spedfically religious act and state. There is the sensc of a 
 Reality not merely human — of a real expérience of thîs Reality; 
 and there is, at the same time, the sensé that this real expérience 
 is imperfect, that it is not co-extensive with the Reality experi- 
 enced, that it does not exhaust that Reality» Nowhere, at no 
 time, does the apprehending soûl, if at a stage of fairly fuU 
 religious awareness, identify the appréhension, however real 
 this appréhension may appear to this soûl, with the Reality 
 apprehended. We hâve hère a strong presumption in favour of 
 the fundamental sanity and of the evidential worth of the 
 religious appréhension in gênerai and we thus ascertain a fact, 
 characteristic of religion in ail its stages, which we should 
 never forget. 
 
 In Paper No, 3 I hâve striven to make clear how slow and 
 how difficult at one time, how swift and how spontaneous at 
 another time, how intermittent and how rarely simply abreast 
 of the growths in the other insights — ^artistic, sodal, even moral 
 — ^are the gifts and the growths of the fuller religious insights 
 and forces of man in his long past ; and how costly will doubt- 
 less always remain, in man^s earthly future, the maintenance, 
 and still more the further deepening, of thèse insights or révéla- 
 tions, Especially hâve I striven to discriminate between the 
 directly religious insights, with the occasions and the pace of 
 their growth, and the appréhensions primarily ethical and 
 political, with the circumstances and the rate of their develop- 
 ment, Thus especially the temper, the very idea, of toleration 
 hâve developed only tardily : there hâve existed true Saints of 
 God, genuine reformers of religion, who were without the temper 
 or idea of toleration, Thus King Josiah indeed saved the Old 
 Testament faith and morals, (the highest then extant upon earth 
 and the eventual root and nidus of Christianity) from irretrievable 
 dissolution in Canaanitish superstition and impurity, but he did 
 so by slaughtering, say, a thousand priests of the High Places 
 and was nerved to so doing by the most complète belief that God 
 Himself demanded this slaughter from him, True, Our Lord 
 rebuked the vindictive ^eal of His apostles, based though it was 
 upon the précèdent of the great prophet Elijah who called down 
 fire from Heaven upon the worshippers of Baal ; and by this 
 reproof Jésus condemned religious persécution. And indeed the 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 Christian Church, for well over the first three centuries of her 
 existence, left ail the killing to her persecutors and herself per- 
 sisted and prevailed ** not by killing but by dying/' Nevertheless, 
 we shall do well, I think, not to deny that even the persécutions 
 tolerated or encouraged by later Church authorities, hâve con- 
 tributed, in certain times and places, to the real consolidation 
 of Christendom» And especially we shall be wise if we do not 
 insist upon any sensé, innate in ail human hearts, of the essential 
 heinousness of ail persécution ♦ 
 
 And in Paper No« 4 I hâve attempted to show how the reality 
 of Evil is beyond any direct explanation by anyone — the true 
 State of affairs hère is not that believers can explain and that 
 unbelievers cannot explain, still less that Christians cannot 
 explain but that sceptics can» No : but that Christianity does, 
 if something other, yet something more than explain EviL 
 Christianity has immensely increased the range and depth of 
 our insight as to Evil ; and, at the same time, Christianity alone 
 has given man the motives and the power not only to trust 
 on, unshaken, in the spiritual sun, in God, in spite of thèse 
 sun spots of Evil, but to transform Evil into an instrument of 
 Good, 
 
 In Section IL, concerning the Teaching of Jésus and Christi- 
 anity in General, Paper No» 5 finds that Christ and His Religious 
 Inerrancy occupy a position towards the fact of the belief in 
 the Proximity of His Second Coming (the Parousia) strikingly 
 similar to the position occupied by God and His Perfect Good- 
 ness towards the fact of Evil présent throughout the âges and 
 places of man 's earthly existence. Evil is an undeniable reality 
 in the world at large, and the Parousia really existed as a primitive 
 Christian belief. The more ancient is a New Testament docu- 
 ment, the more clearly does it announce, or the more intimately 
 does it imply, such a keen expectation of a Proximate Second 
 Coming of Christ ; indeed the Synoptic Gospels report words 
 of Our Lord Himself, of a lapidary emphasis, which His hearers 
 cvidently took in the same sensé. I hâve ventured hère to study 
 this difficult question, because, although, as with the problem of 
 Evil, I do not know any direct and simple solution of it, yet I 
 stoutly believe in the solidity of the délimitations and of the 
 utilisations proposed, and that the full and vivid, operative faith 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 in Jésus Christ^ the Way, the Truth and the Life, remain as 
 genuinely grounded in reason and as entirely possible to feeling, 
 aftcr récognition of the facts concemed with the Paromia, as 
 does the faith in God, the ail powerful and ail good, remain well 
 grounded and entirely possible, in full confrontation of the still 
 wider and deeper facts concerning EviL 
 
 Then the Papers Nos, 5-7insist upon Nature and Super-nature, 
 as two distinct and différent kinds of Good, in a manner which 
 may show how much ail thoughtful modems hâve still to learn 
 from the Golden Middle Age, For myself I do not doubt that 
 a strong and steady revival of a religious mentality amongst 
 cultivated men largely dépends upon a renewed grasp of this 
 immensely resourceful outlook, 
 
 Again, there is, in Paper No. 7, the discrimination between 
 Perfect and Imperfect Freedom, and the conviction that the 
 possibility of Evil arises, not from Freedom as such, but from 
 the Imperfection of the human kind of freedom — ^the liberty of 
 Choice. Quite a number of my younger High Anglican friends 
 hâve on this point, with the best of motives, sacrificed, I believe, 
 the deeper insight to the pressure of popular apologetic. In 
 the long run, however, the more difïicult view, if indeed it be 
 the truer, will undoubtedly prevaiL 
 
 And finally, this same Paper No. 7 insists upon the Abiding 
 Conséquences of certain full and persistent self-determinations 
 of the soûl — 2i doctrine, which I am, of course, well aware to be 
 in acute conflict with the trend of thought and feeling now 
 brgely represented even, perhaps indeed especially, amongst 
 otherwise Catholic-minded High Anglicans. Yet hère again I 
 do not doubt that, not such easier, apologetically inspired views, 
 but the older and sterner, yet also really richer and deeper 
 convictions, spring from religion, especially from Christianity, 
 at the flood-tide of their expériences. In any case it may be of 
 use to some readers to hâve clearly before them the formidable 
 — I myself believe, the hopeless — task which confronts those 
 who would retain the spiritual teaching of Jésus, as indeed still 
 the standard and idéal of our outlook, and who yet would reject 
 ail Abiding Conséquences. 
 
 And in the Third Section, which concems the Church and 
 Catholicism, there are three convictions especially dear to me* 
 
yiii PREFACE 
 
 There is, chiefly in Paper No. lo, the doctrines of Institutions 
 — that men, at large and upon the whole, attain, in and through 
 the Hère and Now of History, to God the Omniprésent and 
 EtemaL Thus Society, Sensé, Sacraments, Successiveness are 
 found, in very various degrees and kinds of adequacy, authority 
 and fruitfuhiess, to accompany the several religions, not as mère 
 accidents, still less as perverse accretions, but, in their substance, 
 as part and parcel of the essence of religion itself, wheresoever this 
 essence is able fully to expand and where men sufficiently unravel 
 the implications and needs of this essence* From the vague or 
 crude semi-magical rites of savage, or at least of still polytheistic, 
 races on to the précisions and elaborations of the Jewish Temple 
 services and then, and above ail, to the sober, delicately spiritual 
 sacraments of the Christian and Catholic Church, we find some 
 such sensible occasions and vehicles of spirit* Things thèse 
 which, at their best, rightly claim great religious personalities 
 as their initiators or transmitters, yet which also correspond to 
 a gênerai human need, especially when and where Supernatural 
 Grâce awakens and exalts Nature to needs and achievements 
 beyond its own scope and powers» 
 
 Then there is the conviction, specially prominent in Papers 
 Nos, 8 and lo, as to the necessity, for ail fruitful human life, 
 and especially for ail powerful religious life amongst men hère 
 below, of friction, tension, rivalry, mutual help and mutual 
 supplementation, between this rehgious life and man's other 
 powers, opportunities, needs, tasks, environments ; and, on the 
 other hand, as to the persistent danger (amongst us men so 
 readily exclusive and so easily obsessed by fixed ideas) of work- 
 ing religion in such a way as to remove from its path, as far as 
 ever possible, any and ail of thèse frictions which in reality are 
 essentially necessary to its own force and fruitfulness, I believe 
 this tendency to self-starvation to be the one ultimate difficulty 
 of the Church and to remain as grave an antinomy for the practical 
 life, as truly only capable of limitation, not of sheer removal, 
 as are the antinomies for the intellect of God and Evil and of 
 Christ and the Parousia* I know of no other religious difficulties 
 truly comparable, in subtle pénétration and in breadth of range, 
 to thèse three massive facts and seeming deadlocks. 
 
 And the third conviction springs readily from the other two* 
 
PREFACE xfîî 
 
 l' It sees in the world of human beings more foUy and weakness 
 than perverse power and malignity ; and especially does it 
 see there many fragments of truth and goodness and few wholes» 
 The fragments of truth and goodness, where they subsist in good 
 faith with regard to fuller truth and goodness, can already, in 
 their degree and way, be of touching beauty and of real worth — 
 of value, also to the opponents of those who hold thèse frag- 
 ments* With regard to non-Christian religions and as to how 
 fervent Christians can respect thèse religions at their best, I 
 love to think of Cardinal de Lavigerie, the sjealous Missionary 
 Archbishop — of his alighting from his carriage and proceeding 
 on foot past such Mosques as he happened to pass in his Algerian 
 Diocèse* And with regard to Christians not in communion with 
 the Roman Catholic Church, I gratefully sympathise with 
 Cardinal Manning who spontaneously and persistently com- 
 bined the liveliest possible conviction as to the suprême powers 
 and universal rights of the Catholic Roman Church with a 
 deep and steady récognition of the definitely supernatural faith 
 and virtue of home upon home of Anglicans well known to 
 b'mself» 
 
 If the reader will now take as one whole the threc Sections 
 of this book, he will find, I believe, that ail are equally penetrated 
 by an ultimate mental and spiritual conviction and habit which 
 the writer has never ceased, now for fifty years, wistfully to find 
 to be somehow rare amongst his fellow-men, even amongst those 
 who are sincerely religious» There runs hère throughout every- 
 thing the sensé that Religion, even more than ail other convictions 
 that claim correspondence with the real, begins and proceeds and 
 ends with the Given — ^with existences, realities, which environ 
 and penetrate us, and which we hâve always anew to capture 
 and to combine, to fathom and to apprehend ; ail this, how- 
 ever, neither as springing from scepticism nor as leading to it, 
 but, on the contrary, as stimulated and sustained by a tenadous 
 conviction that a real, if dim, ** confused ** knowledge of reality 
 is with us already prior to ail our attempts clearly to analyse or 
 completely to synthesise it* Now Religion has, for many a 
 century and upon the whole very fruitfully, been discriminated 
 into Natural Religion and Supernatural Religion* They hâve 
 both been recognised as two kinds, however distinct, of Religion 
 
XIV PREFACE 
 
 — of a habit and conviction of the human soûl occasioned or 
 given by but one God in or to this one soûl» But the fact that 
 both kinds are, ultimately, Given has tended to be forgotten 
 over the différence in the Givenness» Natural Religion awakes 
 when the human soûl, endowed, by its very humanity, with 
 certain religious capacities, cornes into conscious contact with 
 the beauties and interdependences of external nature and with 
 the honesties and decencies of human life, The natural religious 
 appréhension and feeling which are thus aroused, and the natural 
 and human happenings which arouse them, are both given ; 
 and those interior capacities require the impact of thèse exterior 
 existences for the two together to render possible an act or habit 
 of religious faith — ^in this case, of faith of the natural kind» 
 Similarly, Supernatural Religion awakes if and where the human 
 soûl has, by Supernatural Grâce, been enlarged and raised 
 beyond its natural capacities and natural desires, and if this same 
 soûl is presented with facts, actions, realities of a supernatural 
 kind» Hère again, both the supernatural religious appréhension 
 and feeling thus aroused, and the supernatural, superhuman 
 events and existences which arouse them, are given ; and the 
 two givennesses each require the other, if there is to be, hère, 
 the possibility of an act or habit of religious faith, now of the 
 supernatural kind» It is, however, certain that the dispensation 
 under which we men actually live, is not a dispensation of 
 Simple Nature, but a dispensation of Mingled Nature and 
 Supemature, so that the acts and habits specially characteristic 
 of man consist of appréhensions, feelings, convictions, voli- 
 tions which indeed possess a natural substratum and a natural 
 material, but which hâve been more or less widened, raised 
 and transformed (or at the souPs worst, hâve been deflected 
 and perturbed) by supernatural facts, insights and volitions 
 positive or négative» In geological language we hâve hère, not a 
 Sedimentary, nor a Plutonic, but a Metamorphic formation» 
 
 There exists unatiimity amongst thinkers on religion, as to 
 the appropriate treatment of Supernatural Religion» Such Super- 
 natural Revealed Religion is always described and analysed 
 as an Historical Givenness — ^as an extant Reality to be studied 
 with the greatest possible sympathy and in the greatest détail» 
 The calling back to life of the Sunnemitess's son by Elishah — 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 the prophètes eyes upon the lad*s eyes, his mouth upon the lad*s 
 mouth — is a noble symbol for such patient évocation, in cases 
 where the religion studied has completely disappeared. Yet 
 the greatest of the religions are still alive^ in our midst ; and 
 hère the difficulties of a right appréhension spring in part from 
 this very proximity — from our having to know well the move- 
 ments of our own, or of our hving fellows* minds, hearts and 
 wills» Yet both for the vanished and for the still flourishing 
 historical religions a cautious sympathetic analysis — ^roughly 
 speaking, an inductive method — ^is recognised alone to be in 
 place. But the unanimity ceases when we reach Natural Religion. 
 Hère the deductive method has reigned long and very widely, 
 and still largely persists amongst those more specially influenced 
 by the Scholastic tradition. 
 
 The earlier, Patristic tradition divided thèse two kinds of 
 religion much less sharply and found in ail religion predominantly 
 the Given. The Fathers, upon the whole, attempted to penetrate 
 both realms by much the same methods of expérience and 
 analysis. I hâve, as regards method, largely reverted to the 
 Patristic treatment. Yet as to the conception of the content, 
 the subject-matter of religious philosophy, my attraction is very 
 consciously rather Scholastic than Patristic, Aquinas rather than 
 Augustine. I believe that the Golden Middle Age markedly 
 deepened the appréhension of man as he is, and of man*s religion 
 as it ought to be, by putting in the fundamental place, not even 
 Sin and Rédemption, but Nature and Supernature. Man is hère 
 found, not primarily wicked, but primarily weak ; and man hère 
 requires, even more than to be ransomed from his sins, to be 
 strengthened in his weakness — ^indeed to be raised to a new, 
 a supernatural, level and kind of motives, actions, habits, 
 achievements and béatitudes. But hère m Aquinas the continuous 
 ail-round dependence of the soûl upon Grâce and upon Prayer 
 is as fully emphasised and required as ever it is by Augustine. 
 We are in Aquinas as little Pelagian as we are in Augustine, 
 whilst with the balanced Norman Italian we entirely escape 
 Gnosticism — ^that Gnosticism which the véhément African 
 Roman at times dangerously grazes. 
 
 The point on which we require more than either Augustine 
 or Aquinas gave or could give mankind is especially History — 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 the Historié sensé ♦ As to this point, I trust that not a line printed 
 within thèse covers but is steeped in this sensé of Conditions, 
 Growth, Contingencies» And yet also that thèse same writings 
 will reveal a deep appréhension of the Unconditioned, the 
 Abiding, the Absolute — of our need and of our certitude of 
 thèse ; and especially also of Christianity as the original 
 awakener of the deeper Historié sensé, and of our reaehing the 
 Superhistorie within it. Nothing indeed is more striking than 
 the perennial affinity between Christianity and History — that 
 History of whieh indeed Christianity has itself furnished so 
 eentral a part, Certainly the religion of the Incarnation will be 
 able consistently to despise Happenings, however lowly, and 
 the study of Happenings, however minute, only if and when 
 it does not sufficiently realise its own abiding implications and 
 requiremenls, its rootedness in the Childhood at Nazareth and 
 in the Cross on Calvary, 
 
 Indeed we attain to a great gênerai simplification of thèse 
 at first sight complicated questions as to Natural and Super- 
 natural Religion and as to the methods of study appropriate 
 to each severally or to both conjointly, when once we hâve come 
 fuUy to grasp the two great facts which, in real life, conjointly 
 produce the problem and explain its existence and character. 
 In actual life Natural or Rational Religion or Pure Theism 
 cxists as the mirage after the setting, or as the dawn before the 
 rising, of an Historical Religion» And such Historical Religion 
 always claims to be, not Rational but Revelational, and not 
 Natural but Supematural ; and such a Religion is never purely 
 Theistic, but always clings also to a Prophet or Revealer of 
 God and to a Community which adores God and worships 
 the Revealer* And again in real hfe Natural Religion exists 
 as a set or as a System of propositions effected by philosophers 
 who, in spite of their fréquent disdain of ail Sects and Churches, 
 dérive both their materials and their understanding of thèse 
 materials from thèse despised positive teachings and historical 
 traditions ♦ And beside those rudiments of the positive religions 
 and thèse abstractions from the positive religions there exists no 
 such thing, in actual life, as a Natural, Philosophical Religion, 
 Thus the three Sections of this book m reality concern, not three 
 levels or constituents of religion which anywhere actually exist. 
 
PREFACE yvii 
 
 in a stable and flourishing condition, separately the one from the 
 other. Certainly we hâve hère studied God and the Revealer 
 and the Community each in their most perfect and their purest 
 manifestations, Yet hère no less than in the lower forms of 
 actual religion, thèse three facts and the beliefs in them, do not 
 exist and operate separately, but conjointly and with an intimate 
 interpénétration. And this trinity in Unity is a whole given to 
 us for our study which, as with ail other Givennesses, cannot 
 but be, at least predominantly, analytic and inductive in its 
 character, 
 
 There only remains the pleasant duty of thanks to the several 
 Editors, from whose book or reviews most of the papers hâve 
 been taken, for kind permission to reproduce thèse papers hère, 
 I hâve thus to thank Mr, G. S, R. Mead for permission to reprint 
 the two papers from the Quest given hère as No, 2 ; Mr. F, S. 
 Marvin and Mr. Humphrey Milford for a similar permission to 
 reprint from Progress and History the paper given hère as No. 3 ; 
 Canon Arthur G. Headlam, for a like permission as to Nos. 5 
 and 7, reprinted from the Church Quarterly Review ; Mr. Silas 
 McBee, as regards No. 6, reprinted from the Constructive 
 Quarterly, of New York ; the Rev. W. B. Trevelyan, as to No. 8, 
 reprinted from a Liddon Home Occasional Paper; Mr. Robert 
 Scott, as to No. 9, reprinted from the Homiletic Review of New 
 York ; and the Rev. Henry D. A. Major, as to No. 11, reprinted 
 from the Modem Churchman. I hâve also to thank the lady to 
 whom my Paper No. 4 was addressed, for leave to print that 
 letter hère ; and the Rev. Tissington Tatlow and Bishop 
 Hamilton Baynes for allowing me to announce the occasions on 
 which the Addresses Nos. i and 10, and the Address No. 5 were 
 respectively delivered» 
 
 And my gratitude is especially due to the helpful support and 
 alert criticism of my two close friends Professors Norman Kemp 
 Smith and Edmund G. Gardner, in matters of the sélection of 
 the Papers, the title of the book, and even of the constitution 
 of the text, with several corrections of errors of fact. Yet I 
 remain alone responsible for whatsoever hère appears. I hâve 
 also to thank the same kind friend who helped me with the 
 proofs of my three previous works for similar valuable help on 
 this occasion. 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 Once again I commend what I hâve written espedally to those 
 who attempt to combine a faithful practice of religion with an 
 historical analysis and a philosophical présentation of it ; and 
 I submit also this collection, the fruit of analogous endeavours, 
 to the judgment of the Catholic Church. 
 
 FRIEDRICH VON HÛGEL, 
 
 Kensington, September, 1921» 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 / I. CONCERNING RELIGION IN GENERAL AND THEISM 
 
 PAGB 
 
 ^ I. Responsibiuty in Religious Belief ...... 3 
 
 -2. Reugion and Illusion; and Religion and Reality • • * ao 
 
 r 3. Progress in Religion 67 -a^<'-*^ 
 
 ^ Preliminasies to Religious Belief 98 
 
 IL CONCERNING THE TEACHING OF JESUS AND 
 CHRISTIANITY IN GENERAL 
 
 ^sl The Apocalyptic Elément in the Teaching of Jésus ♦ ♦ ♦119 
 
 y 6. The Specific Genius of Christianity 144 
 
 — 7» What do we mean by Heavenç" and what do we mean by Hell^ 195 
 
 IIL CONCERNING THE CHURCH AND CATHOLICISM 
 GENERALLY 
 
 8. The Essentiels of Catholicism 237 
 
 y 9. The Convictions Common to Catholicism and Protestantism • 243 
 
 7^ 10. Institutional Christianity 254 
 
 !!♦ Christianity and the Supernatural 278 
 
 INDEX 299 
 
 Ô 
 
 .^^ î 
 
 XXX 
 
I 
 
 PAPERS ON RELIGION IN GENERAL 
 AND THEISM 
 
RESPONSIBILITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF^ 
 
 SoME thirty years ago a saintly French Cleric was telling 
 me his récent expériences at the death-bed of a Positivist of 
 European renown. The man was in his seventies, and for a 
 full half century had organised and systematised the most 
 aggressively négative of the followers and of the teachings of 
 Auguste Comte — ^teachings which reduce ail religion to purely 
 human realities taken for more than human by a sheer mirage 
 of the human mind» The cleric in question was then in his middle 
 forties, a man of the finest mental gifts and training, and a soûl 
 of the deepest spirituality» He had been sitting, at the express 
 invitation of the Positivist leader, almost daily for three months 
 by the sick man, and had kept a most careful diary of ail and 
 everything from day to day* Nothing could be more emphatic 
 than were this Cleric's convictions that this Positivist had, three 
 months before he called in this Abbé, been touched by a most 
 real divine grâce. A sudden, intense, persistent pain had then 
 awakened in this philosopheras heart, without any doing of his 
 own, a pain which, during the first three months, he had not 
 succeeded in driving away as morbid, or in explaining away 
 as an illusion* The pain was a pain for ail the Sins — ^this term 
 alone was adéquate — ^the Sins of his entire past life. Again 
 this same cleric had come to know, from the Positivist himself 
 during the remaining three months of his life, the gênerai 
 interior history of his long past and the sort of acts which now 
 so much pained him ; and this Cleric could not but marvel at 
 the innocence (according to ordinary standards) of a life adulated 
 from youth upwards and which, until thèse past three months, 
 had remained without misgivings as to the truth, the unanswer- 
 
 ^ A Paper read before the Secretaries of the British branches of the Christian 
 Student Movement, March, igso, 
 
 3 
 
. 4'/ ^''•'**'"' RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 ]J\ y] {abléikss, t&c nècessity and the duty, of its intensive, propagandist 
 iinbelief» The Positivist died, now expliatly sure of two things 
 — ^that the pain was no fancy, but, on the contrary, the most 
 genuine of intimations, the most real effect of realities and forces 
 ignored by himself up to now ; and again, that he was not going 
 to cease in death, but, on the contrary, would then see the realities 
 and forces of which he was now experiencing this effect, Still 
 worshipped by the few whom he still admitted to his présence, 
 with haè a century of intense virile labour and rare moral purity 
 behind him, he was now dying broken-hearted (his own words), 
 prostrate at the foot of that great altar stair of real expériences 
 which was now leading him back to the God from whom they 
 came. On the last day of his life his devotedly Catholic wife, 
 seeing death on his face, asked him whether he would like to 
 be baptised (his militantly unbelieving parents had opposed ail 
 such ** superstition **) and he answered he would ; he was con- 
 sequently baptised shortly before he entered upon unconscious- 
 ness. But to the end this Positivist, if asked to aflftrm the Church, 
 or Christ, or even simply God, would answer, ** pray do not 
 press me ; not yet, not yet/* Apparently, then, a man can be in 
 good faith, at least for many years, in the déniai of even the very 
 rudiments of Theism, 
 
 Some three years ago I was listening to the account, by a 
 scholarly young High Anglican Cleric, of his récent expériences in 
 an English Officers' hospital during the great war, Many of thèse 
 officers, young and middle-aged, had met his religious advances, 
 however elementary and tentative — ^they were ail nominally 
 Anglican — ^with a seemingly prompt, frank and manly répudiation, 
 and with a confident and apparently spontaneous distinction 
 between any and every creed and dogma, as the afîairs of a paid 
 clergy and of dreamy bookworms, and a pure life, as what alone 
 mattered, The Chaplain, much as he regretted this refusai of 
 ail creed and dogma, still, for something like a year, I think, 
 persisted in thanks to God for this récognition and practice of 
 purity. But at last, one day he came upon one of thèse very 
 officers, in the act of some grave impurity, Upon the Chaplain 
 upbraiding him, not only for this impurity, but for the long 
 deceit this officer had practised upon him, the officer turned 
 upon the Chaplain, again with that confident and apparently 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 5 
 
 spontaneous manner, and said : ** There now, once more I catch 
 you out as the artificial paid Cleric, the man who will insist 
 upon the obligation of what is far-fetched and unnatural, and 
 who will be shocked at the like of this. I do nothing but what 
 nature prompts me to do/' Hère we cannot but feel that men 
 can be hardened in bad faith, and this with regard to the most 
 fundamental facts and prindples of the most elementary moral 
 Ufe. 
 
 We ail of us, in various degrees and ways, even directly from 
 the history of our own soûls, can readily add further instances to 
 the two great facts, currents, laws of real life, just illustrated — ^the 
 amadng innocences and the no less ama^ng corruptions of our 
 poor human minds and wills» But let us now press thèse great 
 gênerai facts so as to reach some five large discriminations and 
 deep maxims, helps towards a right attitude and action in thèse 
 very délicate, yet also very important, matters of real life. 
 
 Our first discrimination is quite preliminary, but none the 
 less important ; it clears up a confusion very gênerai in our days, 
 and, with it, a perennial source of indifférence. We shrink in- 
 creasingly — ^upon the whole rightly, I think, — ^from attributing 
 bad faith, or impure life, or selfish motives, to those who difîer 
 from us however largely, short of clear démonstration of the 
 présence and opération within thèse persons of such debasing 
 influences. But this right and proper suspension of judgment 
 leads with ease to the assumption that we ourselves and others 
 are, ail and always and entirely, in good faith and in the eamest 
 search and practice of the light. We thus soon come to see around 
 us a world constituted of countless intelligences and wills, each 
 as true and strong as, there and then, it is capable of being ; they 
 are ail, so far, equally good — ^there is no différence either between 
 the goodness of the one and the goodness of the other, or between 
 the actual goodness and the possible goodness of any one of 
 them. But thus we not only fly in the face of, and we rapidly 
 weaken, the sensé of foUy, weakness, sin, as very real facts in 
 our own life and in ail human history : we even (and this is my 
 
6 RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 momcntary point) ignore and weaken a still more undeniable 
 set of facts and of awarenesses, I mean that we thus sophisticate 
 our sensé of the deep importance of any and every increase of 
 accurate, adéquate insight and power, whether or no we be 
 responsible, innocent or guilty, as regards our possession of more 
 or less of thèse things. Who blâmes a Hottentot for not knowing 
 Greek "t Yet a full hold of Greek means power for any mind. 
 Who condemns Birkett Poster for not being Turner ^ Yet 
 Turner is a genius of the first water. Poster a worthy little 
 stippling talent» So with Milton and Eli2;a Cook : ** I would 
 not burn a man/' says Matthew Arnold, ** who prefers Eli2;a 
 Cook to Milton ; nevertheless Milton is greater than Eli2;a 
 Cook/* Much the greater part in the éducation of a people and 
 in the training of individual soûls, and a very large proportion 
 of the immense value of such éducation and training, is quite 
 independent of any moral blâme attaching to such a people or 
 such an individual, or of any moral praise due to their educators. 
 Malaria has ravaged Greece for now some five centuries ; this 
 has been a curse for the country, even if no one was to blâme 
 for it* Malaria can now be eradicated there within ten years ; 
 this would be an immense blessing, even if the men who brought 
 this blessing were not more virtuous men than are the malarial 
 Greeks* 
 
 If we would keep this preliminary discrimination quite clear 
 and fuUy active, we must cultivate a vivid sensé of the différence 
 between impartiality and neutrality, and we must beware 
 against assuming that God, the one author of any two soûls, will 
 hâve endowed them with an equal depth and range of spiritual 
 insight and of religious calL We do not require to be on our 
 guard against similar errors with regard to the body» I meet 
 two soldiers on my walk, both apparently thoroughly good 
 fellows, and certainly both children of the same God ; the one 
 possesses both his legs, the other retains only one leg. I am herc 
 in no danger of declaring the possession of one leg to be equal 
 to the possession of two legs ; and, in frankly recognising this 
 serious inequality, I do not deserve the charge of bigotry or 
 Pharisaicalness. Dr» J» N» Parquhar, in his fine Crown of 
 Hindooism, has admirably discriminated throughout against 
 two erroncous extrêmes in favour of the true mean amongst 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 7 
 
 the three positions possible for us towards the several religions 
 of the world, Neither, Dr. Farquhar insists, is any one religion 
 alone true, in the sensé that ail the others are merely so much 
 sheer error ; nor, again, are they ail equally true ; but, whilst 
 ail contain some truth, they not only differ each from the other 
 in the points on which they are true, but also in the amount and 
 importance of the truth and power thus possessed. Not the 
 neutrality which would stand equally outside and above thèse 
 very unequal différent religions, and which would level them 
 down to the constituent common to them ail, is what is truly 
 fair and really sympathetic. A much more difficult, a never 
 completed task is alone adéquate hère — ^the impartiality which 
 takes sides, not in préjudice and with only imperfect, exterior 
 knowledge, but which does so according to the respective real 
 content and objective worth of the several religions, as thèse 
 hâve been ascertained after long, docile study and close sym- 
 pathetic observation of the de votées of thèse religions ♦ This 
 would constitute an attempt to level up, — ^it would mean an 
 endeavour gradually to constitute a great ascending scale of 
 religious values and of their several increasingly adéquate 
 représentatives ♦ In such a scheme we can, and ought, clearly 
 to déclare, say, the Sikh religion (in its pristine purity) to stand 
 higher than unreformed Hindooism, and Christianity to be 
 fuller and deeper than the Judaism it sprang from ; and ail this, 
 without any reasonable suspicion of partiality and narrow- 
 mindedness. And the advantages of one religion over another, 
 and the récognition of thèse advantages would be well grounded 
 and of great importance, even if no sin whatsoever were reason- 
 ably chargeable against Hindoos and Jews. 
 
 II 
 
 Passing on now to the question of accountableness, of re- 
 sponsibility in matters of religious belief, we shall do well to 
 acquire and to maintain reality and richness of insight into the 
 matter, by a vivid appréhension of the three great fundamental 
 facts and conditions of man*s spiritual life, indeed, of human 
 existence generally. This will fumish us with our second, third 
 
8 RESPONSÎBILITY IN 
 
 and fourth discrimination — discriminations, thèse, in the very 
 thick of our subject. 
 
 Hère then, we are first busy with what lies below and up to ail 
 specifically human acts and lives, although this lower range of 
 life fumishes the prerequisites, materials, occasions, stimulations, 
 frictions, limitations to thèse specifically human acts in countless 
 most subtle ways. We hère find man to be a créature with an 
 existence ranging from the lowliest properties, functions and 
 impulsions of the animal, indeed of the plant and minerai, up 
 to lofty mental processes and needs ; and from lowly instinctive 
 appréhensions of similar existences of the minerai, plant and 
 animal kind, up to mental and spiritual récognition of, and 
 fcUowship with his fellow-men, even though thèse men live now 
 at the Antipodes or hâve disappeared from this planet thrce 
 thousand and more years ago. We hère discover that even the 
 average humanity of man, even man's bread-winning, law- 
 abiding, tax paying, newspaper-reading, activities ail involve, 
 at every step, a self-discipline, a renunciation of animal impulses, 
 which it has taken this individual man some twenty years of 
 physical and mental growth, of psychic check and of moral 
 docility to acquire, ail under the influence of a human civilisation 
 of some twice twenty centuries at least. And the acquisition 
 and rétention of even a little of such self-discipline involves 
 responsibility, lapses, sin, for so long as the man lives upon this 
 carth» No sane mind seriously dénies that this is so, with man's 
 citizen life and with his natural virtues» Why then should we 
 deny it, with regard to man's supernatural, heroic and spiritual 
 life $* Is it that self-restraint is necessary, if we would at ail 
 timcs give twelve genuine coppers for one genuine shilling, 
 but that self-discipline is not necessary, if we would at ail times 
 wish well to those who wish us ill $* And is a long self-training 
 necessary for acquiring a steady conviction that ** honesty is 
 the best policy,** but no self-discipline necessary for gaining or 
 retaining the insight that ** blessed are the pure of heart, for 
 they shall see God ** f* The fact of the matter is, of course, that 
 ail that is of characteristically human worth in any human life 
 — ail that differentiates the human from the merely animal — 
 involves (if not for the agent, at least for the human influences 
 which mould him), a long and costly élaboration, across the 
 
RELIGIOUS RELIEF 9 
 
 centuries and civilisations right down to the lives of our own 
 parents, teachers, friends* There has occurred hère an élabora- 
 tion of materials and impulsions which, in their raw condition, 
 are, at best, mère possibilities, occasions, and reasons for powers 
 other and greater than themselves* Ail thèse materials and 
 impulsions can be, far more readily, turned astray ; if left to 
 themselves they sink downwards» The acquisitive instinct can 
 and should be trained into orderly and moderate support of 
 self and generous help of others ; but it easily dégénérâtes into 
 cruel cunning, callous cheating, and unbounded covetousness» 
 The combative instinct can be disdplined into the career of a 
 soldier, sailor or explorer — ^into a life devoted to reasonable order 
 and rational service of the pacifie activities of the State ; but 
 it easily sinks to a life of unscrupulous adventure, The sex 
 instinct becomes transfigured into a loyal marital companionship 
 and the noble dévotion of parenthood, or even becomes tran- 
 scended altogether, by an heroic celibacy full of the love of God 
 and of men at large» Yet this same instinct readily leads to the 
 utter ruin of body, mind and souL We are ail thus trebly near 
 to the mère animal, to the worse than the animal ; and responsi- 
 bility, duty, virtue, temptation, sin, are writ large over ail man's 
 life and actions right up to, and inclusive of, his spiritual life» 
 
 III 
 
 At this point I would ask you carefuUy to distinguish with me 
 between what, I submit, are two really distinct and difîering 
 sources or occasions of difficulty in the spiritual life» Hence I 
 pray you to refuse adhésion to the (ultimately single-source) 
 thcory of the Rev» Dr» F» R» Tennant, as propounded especially 
 in his suggestive book upon the Origin and Propagation of Sin» 
 Dr» Tennant there draws out in full the position that responsible, 
 deliberately willing man is evolved from the irresponsible, 
 impulsively striving animal, and that this is why man is so per- 
 sistently tempted to lapse into what now, for man, is Sin — ^into 
 his, man*s, pre-human stage» Sin is thus essentially an atavism. 
 Dr» Tennant also very strikingly élucidâtes how the présence. 
 
10 RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 within us men, of animal impulses is a necessary condition for 
 specifically human purity — 3. purity which is essentially a virtue 
 within the human body and an orderer of its instincts» AU this 
 may be difficult of harmonisation even with the most moderate 
 of the Church symbols. Le. the Tridentine définition, concem- 
 ing Original Sin ; but it is in itself, I think, a position of great 
 psychological interest and of much paedagogic help» The posi- 
 tion explains and simplifies many pressing problems» But Dr» 
 Tennant, very unhappily I believe, extends this his evolutionary 
 explanation to ail sin : sins of Pride and Self-Centredness are 
 traced hère as complications and subtilisations introduced by 
 the sophisticating mind into the animal instincts» Pride and Self- 
 centredness thus also dépend, in the last resort, as truly upon 
 the animal descent as do impurity, gluttonness and sloth» Now 
 this single dérivation, I submit, will simply not work ; and indeed 
 it involves a grave insensibility to the specifically Christian con- 
 ception of Sin, and of the degrees of its heinousness» I take it 
 that what specially distinguishes the Christian from the Stoic 
 and other Philosophical outlooks on to human virtues and vices, 
 is precisely the Christian sensé that Pride and Self-sufficiency is 
 the central, typical sin» Impurity may indeed be the viler sin, 
 but even Impurity is instinctively felt hère to be less deadly than 
 Pride» And for this same outlook, whilst Impurity is occasioned 
 by the body, Pride is not ; the doctrine of the Fall of the Angels 
 grandly illustrâtes this deep instinct» Indeed ail sensitivcly 
 spiritual observation of the human heart bears this out» I take the 
 occasion to Pride and Self-centredness to spring from the double 
 characteristic of ail intelligent créatures — ^that they are finite and 
 dépendent upon God, for their very existence and for ail their 
 essentially finite powers ; and yet that God has endowed them 
 with a certain independence, a certain limited force of initiation, 
 acceptance or revolt» It is, not the body, but the possession of 
 this double characteristic, it is this capacity, not only for obédi- 
 ence and dependence, but also for revolt and défiance — ^it is this 
 Imperfect Liberty which is the occasion of, at least, Pride and 
 Self-Sufficiency» And the reason why ail créatures, so far as we 
 know, hâve been created thus with but imperfect liberty, may 
 well be that even God cannot create a being possessed of Perfect 
 Liberty — ^a being incapable, by his very nature, of falling away 
 
)^^ 
 
 RELIGIOUS BELIEF ii 
 
 frotn his best lights — since such a being would no more be finite 
 and a créature, but infinité and God. 
 
 New this brings us to our third great discrimination and 
 practical maxim* We thus insist that, as below the level of the 
 natural human acts — ^the acts essentially characteristic of a human 
 being — ^there are the aberrations of Impurity, Gluttony, Sloth — 
 so there are aberrations above the level of thèse first, natural 
 human acts» Hère are Pride, Vanity, Self-sufficiency, I take it 
 that many minds which see plainly enough the reality of the 
 lower offences are nowadays in the dark concerning the very 
 possibility of the higher sins. The root-cause of this blindness 
 is doubtless the immense, visible and tangible prédominance, 
 and (within its own inexorably limited range) the immense 
 triumph, of mathematical and mechanical, indeed generally 
 of Natural, Science ; and the inévitable tendency to regard 
 Arithmetic and Geometry as the sole ultimate type and measure 
 of ail truth and knowledge attainable by man, With this assump- 
 tion well fixed within our very blood it does certainly appear 
 supremely ridiculous to blâme anyone for denying anything that 
 cannot, in any place and at any moment, be clearly, demon- 
 stratively, undeniably proved» How can I blâme a man for 
 sticking exclusively to the lucidity of twice two makes four, if 
 this knowledge, in its fuU development, gives him everything he 
 requires, and if ail other supposed knowledge leads him but to 
 fog and fancy i And yet, nothing is more certain than that the 
 richer is any reality, the higher in the scale of being, and the 
 more precious our knowledge of it, the more in part obscure and 
 inexhaustible, the less immediately transférable, is our knowledge 
 of that reality» So is the reality and knowledge of a daisy more 
 difficult and obscure than is that of a quarts crystal, and this 
 crystal again than ** two and two makes four ** ; so is the sea 
 anémone beyond the daisy, and my little dog far beyond both» 
 And so on again to man, to the knowledge of any one human 
 soûl, my own or another, or further to the knowledge of any 
 great past historical personage or to a great historical event or 
 period, say, the Great War so recently with us ail : the richness 
 and the value, yet also the complexity and an obscurity which 
 refuses to be completely banished, are together always on the 
 increase» True knowledge of God is very certainly not a matter 
 
12 RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 of great learning or of subtlc metaphysics ; yet if God be at ail 
 like what ail religion proclaims Him to be^ man's knowledge of 
 Him must indeed be continuously re-beginning, and ail attempts 
 to render this vivid knowledge in terms of a clear science must 
 always leave not a little obscurity» 
 
 — ît may be asked, however, where and how can responsibility 
 and guilt enter hère i The évidence for ail thèse reaHties, from 
 the crystal to God, is what it is : no good will in the world can 
 increase or change it ; no evil inclination can suppress or even 
 diminish it, The answer is, that certain dispositions of the will 
 very certainly enter into ail deep and délicate appréhensions, 
 be they of the life-history of a clematis-plant, or of the doings of 
 a spider, A certain rare disoccupation with the petty self is 
 hère a sine qua non condition of any success ; it is this noble 
 freedom from self which makes the character, e,^,, of a Charles 
 Darwin so very great. And the answer is further that, if a 
 certain parental temper, a loving humility which joyfuUy bends 
 down and contracts itself into the life of créatures lower than 
 man, be necessary for the understanding of the orchid or the 
 earth-worm, so a certain filial temper, a loving humility which 
 joyfully reaches up, and stretches itself out wide towards the 
 life above it, is necessary for our appréhension of God. Indeed 
 the appréhension of the Higher-than-man, of the Highest, the 
 Ultimate, the Perfect, — ^the Beginner, Sustainer and Consum- 
 mator of ail that is good in us, especially of our very capacity 
 to give ourselves to Him ; this, very certainly, not only attracts 
 our higher and best self, but also tries and tests our lower, our 
 self-centred, our jealous and envious self. It is at this point 
 especially that we ought, I believe, to look for and to find the 
 présence and opération of Radical Evil such as Kant traccd it in 
 man's jealousy of the higher and highest as that same man sees 
 them, or is capable of seeing them. True, such a life-story as that 
 of the Positivist, sketched above, perhaps also that of John 
 Stuart Mill, should warn us against explaining ail and every 
 Atheism by such perverse dispositions. Yet it can do but good 
 if, whilst practising the greatest reserve in our judgment of 
 individuals, we keep alive within us this sensé that a certain pang 
 accompanies, in the meanness and jealousy of the human heart, 
 (and any one human heart is liable to more or less of such mean- 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 13 
 
 ncss and jealousy), thc fuU, persistent récognition of a perfection 
 cntirely not of our own making, a perfection we can never equal, 
 and yet a perfection, the récognition of our utter dependence upon 
 which constitutes the very centre, the inévitable condition, 
 of our own (even then essentially finite) perfection» I believe 
 that not to be aware of the costliness, to unspirituaHsed man, 
 of the change from his self-ccntredness, from anthropocentrism to 
 theocentrism, means not only a want of awakeness to the central 
 demand of religion, but an ignorance or oblivion of the poorer, 
 the perverse, tendencies of the human heart, This then will be 
 our third great discrimination — ^the ever possible, and the often 
 actual, faultiness of our attitude to what is above us» 
 
 IV 
 
 So far we hâve considered religion as though it demanded only 
 purity with regard to what is below the soûl, the body, and 
 humility with regard to what is above the soûl, God ; as though, 
 in a Word, religion were constituted simply by intercourse of 
 the alone with the Alone — ^the one soûl with the one God» Yet 
 thcre is a further abiding characteristic of living religion, when 
 taken upon the whole and in the long run, which produces a 
 third great group of responsibilities — occasions of virtue and 
 tcmptations to various excesses or defects. And this third great 
 group is, of course, in actual life, inter-connected, in thc most 
 various ways, with the other two groups» This third group is 
 generated by the great fact, so often and easily overlooked, that 
 though the religion of any one soûl is, where fully alivc, the 
 most profoundly personal conviction and life within it, and though 
 the religion of any such single soûl will always show a certain 
 délicate pitch, temper, application more or less spécifie to itself : 
 yet religion is a profoundly social force, which opérâtes from one 
 contemporary man to other contemporaries and on from généra- 
 tion to génération, largely by means of groups and organisations, 
 history and institutions» Even the most aggressively individualist 
 of men, provided he be still religious at ail, will always reveal, to 
 any at ail skilful analysis of the content of his religious belief 
 and spiritual life, brge indebtednesses to this social, traditional, 
 
14 RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 institutional élément of religion^ This élément — this influence 
 not only of single persons but of Institutions and things — ^is 
 readily traceable in Our Lord 's own life, in that of Su Paul^ in 
 that ol Su Francis, in George Fox, in William Law» And this can 
 only change when man shall walk this planet without a body, 
 when he shall hâve nothing to learn from the things of the sensés, 
 and when God has become the God of the individual alone, and 
 not the God also of human society and of the great human 
 associations — ^the Family, the Guild, the State, the Church» 
 Indeed the paradox is, meanwhile, really true, that the more 
 utterly independent a man thinks himself of ail traditions and 
 institutions, the more excessively, unwisely dépendent he is 
 usually, in reality, upon some tradition or institution, if only for 
 the very simple reason that we cannot even begin to discriminate, 
 and to use instead of being used, where we are unaware of an 
 influence being présent at alL It is, of course, true that a really 
 blind obédience to any authority is never equal to enlightened 
 adhésion, and that it is such adhésion, which should always be 
 the idéal of ail spiritual training ; and, again, that even the most 
 adéquate outlook ceases to hâve any genuine worth in the soûl 
 concerned, where this outlook is an affair of mère routine ♦ 
 Nevertheless it is equally true, and far less obvious, that what 
 any one man can himself directly expérience and exhaustively 
 know at first hand, especially at the first start, is, in ail subject 
 matters and especially also in religion, amazingly limited, 
 sporadic and intermittent» Only by a preliminary trust in the 
 wiser among the teachers and trainers that surround our youth 
 and adolescence, has any such man any chance of escaping from, 
 possibly life-long, self-imprisonment» It is by my not denying 
 as false what I do not yet see to be true, that I give myself the 
 chance of growing in insight. And certainly that man must 
 be an amaang genius who, at twenty, and even at thirty or 
 forty, has not very much to learn from even an average repré- 
 sentative of any one of the long-tried institutional religions, 
 in their positive constructive teachings and practices» 
 
 Now if ail this be so, we hâve hère a third immense field for 
 wise or unwise docility, for humility, partisanship, generosity, 
 shrewdness, for meanness, indifférence, revolt, and for ail possible 
 shades and combinations of such and similar dispositions^ Threc 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 15 
 
 points appear hère to be the most important* There is, first, no 
 such thing in rerum natura as a religious institution which can 
 dispense the individtial soûl from the duty of a wise, discriminating 
 appropriation and detailed application of the teachings and genius 
 of that institution» ** A man may cease to be a Christian, and may 
 yet remain a damned fool/' is a well known judgment attributed 
 to the late Professor Huxley. Similarly, a man may become a 
 Quaker, or a Presbyterian, or an Anglican, or a Roman Catholic, 
 and may remain almost as unwise as he was before ; he may even 
 add new unwisdoms to the old ones, through an unconscious 
 travesty of even the noblest doctrines he has now more or less 
 mechanically gained* We can even truthfully go further, and can 
 maintain that the richer the creed the greater is the expérience 
 and the many-sided aliveness needed by the soûl for an at ail 
 adéquate présentation of this same creed. There is, again, no 
 such thing for man as a complète escape from history and institu- 
 tions. Thus the Quakers, very wisely, possess the institution 
 of the Meetings of the First Day and of their strict obligation. 
 Indeed the minor religious bodies are generally characterised 
 by the specially emphatic stress laid by them upon some, or ail, 
 of the few institutions retained by them. We can thus maintain 
 without undue paradox, that, by appurtenance to a particular 
 religious body, we really keep in touch with the great tradition 
 of mankind at large, and with God's gênerai action in individual 
 soûls. And there is, finally, no such thing as appurtenance to a 
 particular religious body without cost — cost to the poorer side 
 of human nature and cost even, in some degree and way, to the 
 better side of that same nature. Hence the need of an increasingly 
 wise discrimination — of a generous payment of the cost where 
 it affects the poorer side, and of a careful limitation of the cost, 
 and a resourceful discovery of compensation elsewhere, where 
 the cost affects the better side of our nature. No religious 
 institution, e.|f., can, as such, be a society for research into the 
 history and philosophy of religion at large ; no religious institu- 
 tion can, as such, be asked to watch over the laws intrinsic to 
 astronomy or anthropology ; nor can the intellectually finest 
 présentations, even of the particular religious institution, be 
 expected usually to acquire more than a footing of toleration 
 within such institution. Especially will ail thèse Hmitations be at 
 
i6 RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 work in religions of a large popular appeal and foUowing» Ail 
 this will, however^ be bearable, in proportion to the richness in 
 religions history and in présent religions life of the institution, 
 and in proportion to the souFs perception and practice of the 
 other divinely willed, fundamental human organisms and lives — 
 the Faxnily, the Guild, the State — science, philosophy and art, 
 Such a soûl will hâve to lead a life of tension and of many levels ; 
 yet the cost of it ail will not be found excessive, if only the great 
 central Christian realities and life become more and more the ulti- 
 mate convictions and the all-pervading final motives of ail our 
 doings and aims, The omniprésence of God, His self-revelation 
 in Jésus Christ, the need of ail men for ail other men, the organic 
 character of the great complexes, especially of the Church, and 
 the love for the occasions of filial, fraternal, patemal habits, 
 also and especially in the spiritual world — ^these facts and dis- 
 positions must become more and more part of our very life. 
 We shall thus be both old and new, derivative and original, 
 supported and supporting — supporting, at the last, in our little 
 measure, not only other individual soûls, but the very institution 
 itself. 
 
 And this brings us out of our three central discriminations — 
 eut of, as it were, the three assodated clouds constitutive of 
 responsibility in religious belief — ^into a final serene level, 
 somewhat corresponding to, yet greatly exceeding in richness of 
 content and in positive value, the opening serenity — ^the pre- 
 liminary discrimination, which, as yet, was without responsi- 
 bility for religious belief. For hère at last we again come, or 
 seem to come, to no responsibility — ^to, this time, something 
 beyond responsibility. Nothing is grander, in the development 
 of the human outlook, so long as such development is fully, 
 finely Christian — ^from Our Lord 's own teachings onwards to 
 the gênerai spiritual convictions and the greatest spiritual in- 
 corporations of the Golden Middle Age — ^Aquinas, Dante, Su 
 Francis of Assisi — ^than the ineradicable implication, and the 
 growing articulation, of the différence between Imperfect and 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 17 
 
 Pcrfect Liberty» Ail through the great movement wc can trace 
 the opération of the twin facts that man is by his Nature con- 
 stituted in Imperfect liberty, but that the same man is called 
 by Grâce to the love of, and the indefinite approximation 
 to, the Perfect Liberty of God» Su Augustine tells us ** posse 
 non peccare, magna est Ubertas ; non posse peccare, maxima est ** 
 (it is already a great liberty to be able to avoid sin ; but the 
 greatest liberty is to be unable to sin at ail), This doctrine cannot 
 but be true, unless God, Who cannot sin, is thereby a slave ; and 
 unless human soûls which, m proportion to the length and depth 
 of their devotedness, very certainly grow less liable to grave sin, 
 thereby become less free. Thus the Liberty of Choice is an 
 imperfect kind of liberty, and Perfect Liberty consists in willing 
 fully and spontaneously the behests of a perfect nature, and in 
 the incapacity to will otherwise» Hence the more arbitrary an 
 act, the less really free it is. This great insight grew dim soon 
 after Aquinas, amongst the thinkers who successively dominated 
 the later prévalent positions : Duns Scotus and Occham ; Luther; 
 Descartes, Pascal, and many another since, hâve taught a sheer 
 arbitrary will in God, answered by acts of sheer wiU in man» 
 Thus religion becomes more and more something which hovers 
 clear outside, which indeed intrinsically contradicts, the ration- 
 alities of life and of the world, So with Descartes ; though for 
 him the actual world order is within itself a rationally inter- 
 connected System, yet the original choice of just this System is 
 held to hâve been a purely arbitrary act» So further back with 
 Occham : the Commandments, although interconnected as they 
 stand, might hâve been established by God quite différent, 
 indeed directly contrary, to what they actually are» 
 
 When we come to Kant we do indeed, in the doctrine of the 
 Categorical Imperative, attain to something which God Himself 
 could not hâve willed otherwise — ^to something expressive of 
 His Nature» But Kant unfortunately, not merely ignores, but 
 exphcitly combats, the connection, already so nobly proclaimed 
 by Plato and Aristotle, between Virtue and the Highest Good — 
 between Morality and Happiness ; and in Kant the sensé of the 
 Reality of God and of His inviolable Nature (a sensé of God 
 which, in ail living religion, is, together with man's need of 
 God and prayer to God, always primary and central) is, wherc 
 
i8 RESPONSIBILITY IN 
 
 not denied altogether, reduced to hypothèses in aid of the moral 
 life» The fact of the matter doubtless is that even Duty, and an 
 entire life spent in Obédience to Duty, thèse convictions taken 
 alone, are not live religious catégories. So little is it true that 
 perfect religion éliminâtes joy and spontaneity, as unworthy of 
 itself, that only a life penetrated by spontaneity and joy, can be 
 recognised by religion as of suprême religious perfection. The 
 great Pope Benedict XIV., in his standard work on the Béatifica- 
 tion and Canonisation of the Servants of God, points out that, 
 for Canonisation, as distinct from Béatification, the Roman 
 Church requires, not, as is usually supposed, three things, but, 
 in addition, a very important fourth thing. The Roman Church 
 requires for its formai Canonisations a spontaneous popular 
 cultus of one hundred years ; three well-authenticated miracles ; 
 three well-authenticated' acts of heroic virtue ; and the note of 
 expansive joy in this saintly soûles life and influence, however 
 melancholy may hâve been its natural tempérament. As Matthew 
 Arnold puts it, with délicate perception : what entrances 
 Christendom in St. Teresa is not directly her long years of 
 struggle and of suffering to be faithful to conscience ; it is the 
 rapt joy, the gracious spontaneity, the seemmg naturalness of 
 the supernatural, in the last years of her life-long service, a 
 service which has at last become the fullest freedom. 
 
 Now if ail this be true, the whole question of Responsibility 
 in Religious belief seems utterly to disappear on the heights 
 of the religious life. As well insist to Kepler on the duty care- 
 fuUy to consider the stars, or to Darwin on his obligation minutely 
 to watch the fertilisation of orchids, or to Monica on her guilt 
 if she does not love Augustine : as to preach responsibility 
 for belief to a soûl full of the love and of the joy of God. And 
 yet, even hère, indeed hère especially, we hâve to guard against 
 unreality and dangerous simplification. Hère below no soûl, 
 sufficiently ordinary for us to classify it at ail, attains to a 
 love and joy ever unbroken and incapable of increase ; and 
 hence, at some times and in some measure, it has to revert 
 to what were formerly its more ordinary motives. And again, 
 even in the Beyond the perfection of the human soûl, still joined 
 to a body however spiritual, and, above ail, still a finite créature, 
 will not consist in the élimination of ail motives except the most 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 19 
 
 extensive and intensive of them ail, but in the full actuation, 
 allocation/ super and subordination of ail motives variously good 
 in their kind within an immense living System — ^in an immensely 
 rich harmony, and not in a monotone, however sublime. And 
 thus a chaste fear and filial révérence, a humble trust, a sensé 
 of duty, and acts of submission and of self-surrender, homely 
 virtues as well as heroic joys : ail will, somehow, not be super- 
 seded but mcluded in man*s eventual béatitude in God* A holy 
 fear can and will be, even in heaven, the servant and watchman 
 to our love ; and hence there will still remain some place and 
 function, through ail eternity, for the sensé of responsibility in 
 our religious belief* 
 
ao RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 AND 
 
 RELIGION AND REALITY^ 
 
 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 If we know something and care much about man*s religious 
 faith, its possibility, reality and depth, and for man's finding 
 or making for this his faith a place within the rest of his many- 
 staged, many-sided life, we can hardly fail to feel the severe 
 strain, the solemn seriousness, of our présent situation, True, 
 it is a situation prepared by developments, or driftings, or 
 entanglements, none of which is newer than half-a-century at 
 least, Yet it is a situation which may well provoke specially 
 anxious thought at this particular moment in the history of the 
 world. For hère, in the midst of a titanic war, of vast upheavals 
 and of acutest problems, religion seems, at first sight, either to 
 hâve ceased altogether, or to persist as a feeble ghost rather 
 than as an inspiring, formative energy. Religion appears to be 
 the sleepy sleep-compelling partner of ail the institutions and 
 illusions now drifting, under our very eyes, like so much wreck- 
 age, before the storm» Look at the wild dévastation, the Bol- 
 shevik carnival of anarchy and tyranny, now submerging Russia, 
 the land believed by us ail to be so fuU of religious aspiration 
 and of religious faith ♦ Look at Germany. Can religion be 
 accounted a great living power there, where the identification 
 of Government with sheer material force still seems to stérilise 
 ail nobler, richer counter-movements i And look at Italy, 
 France, England, America» Is ail, is much, in thèse countries 
 
 ^ First publishcd in an Italian translation in the Cœnobium of Lugano, 1909. 
 Hcre reprintcd from the cxpandcd original published in The Quest, April and 
 July, 1918* 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 21 
 
 in a Sound and spiritual state $* And is religion really thc central 
 force within what hère may, in its degree, be strong and faithful i 
 
 Is not religion, then, a spent power, a played-out thing^ 
 Ought we not to relegate it to the archaeological lumber-roora 
 — the muséum so fuU already of the curious toys of the babyhood 
 of man ^ Indeed, is not religion essentially illusion i Let us 
 prépare our answer to this poignant question by a glance suffi- 
 ciently far back and around us to furnish us with a starting 
 point, We shall find that, as soon as we do so at ail seriously, 
 we are met by an apparent, or real, contradiction which runs, 
 or seems to run, through the deepest of the things that, though 
 still ever with us, are yet in process of further or new articulation, 
 grouping or fixation. 
 
 I want first to describe this contradiction generally, on its 
 affirmative and on its négative side. I shall next draw out roughly 
 the difficulties attaching to the problem at its deepest. And I 
 shall then, with a view to a doser grasp of the problem thus 
 at its deepest, and to securing a fair hearing for the sceptical 
 solution of it, carefuUy study the leading utterances of probably 
 the best equipped, the ablest and the most thorough of the 
 sceptics. This will suffice for this first paper. Thus fortified in 
 knowledge, I hope to come back to my own gênerai description 
 and questions in a second paper, entitled ** Religion and Reahty,*^ 
 and there to attempt some final resolution of the whole most 
 délicate, most difficult, most important matter^ 
 
 If we care to look back into human history, we can do so now 
 with a greatly increased refinement of critical method and of 
 sympathetic re-evocation. Workers possessed of thèse gifts and 
 acquirements are daily increasing and improving our collections 
 of the literary records, the rites and customs, the oral traditions 
 and legends, the psychical concomitants, and the ethical and 
 social conditions and effects of the various beliefs of mankind. 
 And this wide-spreading, very detailed, ever re-tested study, 
 so long as it remains simply busy with the patient collection 
 and sympathetic articulation of the given facts, traces cvery- 
 where the following four characteristics of religion* 
 
32 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 Everywhcrc this study of the past finds (in various degrees 
 and ways, and in various combinations with other cléments of 
 human expérience) religion, — ^the search for religion, or the 
 sensé of the want of religion, or évidences of the soul's stunted- 
 ncss becausc of the lack of definite religion. Religion, if we takc 
 it in this extension of the term, appears to be as universal amongst 
 men as are the ethical sensé, the political instinct, acsthetic per- 
 ception, or the philosophie impulsion, — ^all of them most certainly 
 characteristic of man in gênerai, yet ail as certainly developed 
 only very weakly in this or that individual or family, or even in 
 this or that entire race or period. 
 
 Everywhere, again, this study discovers, although hère once 
 more in grcatly différent degrees and ways, the influence, indeed 
 the really central if often indirect importance, for good or for 
 cvil, or for both, of ail religion, whether good or bad or mixed. 
 
 Everywhere, too, such study shows that, as ethics, politics, 
 art, science, philosophy, so also religion manifests itself in what 
 is, at first sight, a bewildering variety of simultaneous forms or 
 successive stages» It shows moreover that for the most part (as 
 indeed is also the case mutatis mutandis with those other activities 
 of human life and appréhension) religion remains to this day 
 represented in large part by rude, inchoate beginnings, or by 
 obstinate arrests of growth, or by convictions which, though to 
 some extent more developed and more pure, yet still manifest 
 a considérable admixture of earlier stages of cultus and belief* 
 And this same study shows that religion, in proportion as it 
 gains a fuUer consciousness of its own spécifie character, retains 
 indeed relations with ethics and politics, science, philosophy 
 and art, and even increases or refines such relations, yet in and 
 through ail such relations it increasingly differentiates itself 
 from ail those other modes and ranges of life and appréhension. 
 
 Finally this study discovers the most spécifie characteristic 
 of ail religion to consist in this : That, whereas Ethics and 
 Politics proclaim oughtnesses, and seek to produce certain human 
 acts and dispositions, and to organise human society in certain 
 ways ; whereas Science and Philosophy attempt respectively 
 to discover the laws which govern natural phenomena and to 
 lay bare or to divine the unity or harmony of life and the world 
 as one whole ; and whereas Art seeks to create for us beautiful 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 23 
 
 forms, the incorporations of thc ideals which it cvcrywherc 
 finds indicated, yet nowherc fully achieved, in thc actual visible 
 existence around us ; — Religion, on the contrary, afïirms a 
 suprême Isness, a Reality or Realities other and greater than 
 man, as existent prior to, and independently of, thc human 
 subject's affirmation of It or of Them^ Indeed this Reality is 
 held to occasion such affirmation and to express Itself, however 
 inadequately, in this human response. Rules, indeed even the 
 réalisations, of moral rightness ; social organisations, even the 
 deepest and the widest ; discoveries in and utilisations of natural 
 forces, however stupendous ; laws and ideals of the mind, how- 
 ever essential, however lofty : any and ail of thèse things, in so 
 far as they are taken apart from any super-human cause, centre 
 or end, hâve never been considered, by the specifically religious 
 sensé, to be the concern of religion at alL Religion as such 
 has ever to do, not with human thoughts, but with Realities 
 other and higher than man ; not with the production of what 
 ought to be, but with fear, propitiation, love, adoration of what 
 already is. 
 
 Thèse four characteristics of ail religion, — ^its practical uni" 
 versality, importance, autonomy, and superhumanity, — ^now appear 
 before us in an astonishingly large collection of solid facts, 
 derived from countless âges, races and stages of mankind. 
 
 Yet the opposite, the more or less sceptical, reading of this 
 same mass of évidence is not uncommon, at least for the moment, 
 even amongst serious and learned scholars* Indeed, with respect 
 to the four gênerai conclusions just described, there are certain 
 apparently ruinous difficulties against the admission of their 
 conclus! veness. And thèse difficulties appear to increase with 
 the degree of significance attaching to them severally. 
 
 As to the universality of religion, especially if understood as 
 at least the implicit affirmation of a Reality other and more than 
 human, we are faced by the folio wing apparent facts, Whole 
 races, e.g. the Chinese and Mongols, seem to be more or less 
 lacking in such religion. A very ancient, one of the most widely 
 spread and a still powerfully influential, view and practice 
 of life and death, which certainly considers itself religious, 
 viz. Buddhism, seems in its classical, characteristic period. 
 
24 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 systcmatically to look away from ail things that arc less than 
 man's apprehending powers, yet it apparently does so without 
 thought of, or belief in, any reality or influence other and highcr 
 than thèse powers, existing and operating in itself or elsewhere. 
 A powerful and persistent philosophy, Pantheism, proclaims as 
 its central doctrine the identity of the world, of man and of God ; 
 and this Pantheism, traceable in many a degree and variation 
 throughout more or less ail âges, races and countries, can boast 
 of at least one exponent of the first rank, that great soûl, Spinoza» 
 And the déniai of religion, i.e. of religion taken as involving the 
 affirmation of a more than human Reality, can claim so eminent 
 a mathematician as Laplace, so morally fervent and socially 
 constructive a philosopher as Comte, scholars of such aesthetic 
 pénétration as Rohde, and so great a critical historian as Theodor 
 Mommsen* 
 
 But if we restrict our attention to specifically religious be- 
 lievers, is the importancef the effect of this their belief, for or upon 
 their lives and the world at large, so very marked î* Is the différ- 
 ence, in depth, breadth and fruitful force of soûl, between the 
 devout Theist Newton and the cold Atheist Laplace readily 
 recognisable ^ Is the différence in such effects so very great 
 between Buddhist Tokio, Hindoo Benares, Mohammedan 
 Mecca, and Christian London or Rome ^ Or, in so far as cities 
 are frankly materialist, are they very plainly inferior to cities 
 where they are religious $* 
 
 As to the autonomy of religion, is not this a myth i Is not 
 every even superficial activity of man bound up with every 
 other ; and is not the whole man dépendent, through and 
 through, upon his racial and family heredity, his éducation and 
 environment i* And cannot religion in particular be shown 
 always to dépend upon the moral and intellectual gifts, the 
 gênerai training, indeed upon the political, économie, even 
 upon the psycho-physical, conditions and upon the geographical 
 position of its various votaries i And if this is so certainly very 
 largely, why should it not be so altogether i 
 
 But especially do the objections against the superhuman claim, 
 — ^the very claim which we hold to run through and to char- 
 actcrisc ail specifically religious expérience, — appear grave, 
 indeed final, Sincc then even the univcrsality, the importance 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 25 
 
 and the autonomy of religion can rcadily bc shown to be difficult 
 of proof, or at least to raise particular difficulties, in proportion 
 as we insist upon religion as présent only where there is a super- 
 human daim ; and since, according to our conception, this 
 superhuman claim constitutes the very heart of religion, we can 
 simplify, and yet deepen, our task by concentrating our attention, 
 for the rest of thèse papers, directly upon this, the superhuman 
 claim of ail religion. 
 
 II 
 
 The difficulties against the superhuman claim of reHgion 
 can conveniently, even though only roughly, be grouped ac- 
 cording to the peculiarities in the objects thus presented to and 
 apprehended by the human mind ; the limitations, real or 
 apparent, of thèse our apprehending minds ; and the evils which 
 resuit, with seeming necessity, from ail such belief in the Super- 
 human* Thus the first group draws its material specially from 
 the history of religion, from the examination of still living varieties 
 of religion, and from the student's analysis of his own religious 
 expériences. The second group dépends upon analytic philo- 
 sophy — ^the theory of knowledge in particular. And the third 
 group once again requires history, and a wide knowledge and 
 délicate pénétration of the opérations of religion, as thèse are 
 still active around us and within our own souL 
 
 The first group, then, is busy with the objects, be they only 
 apparent or be they real, presented to the religious human mind 
 and souL Thèse seem to inflict a treble, an increasingly final, 
 déniai and réfutation upon any and ail superhuman claim. 
 
 For we can compare thèse expériences, in the past or even in 
 the présent of religion, simply with each other ; and we shall 
 then find them to présent us with endless variations, and even 
 grave contradictions. Or we can compare the expériences in 
 the past of religion with the moral law and with any sensitive 
 spirituality, precisely in what we now feel sure are their most 
 certain and most precious constituents ; and we shall then 
 discover those expériences mostly to fall visibly short of, and 
 often flagrantly to violate, thèse constituents. And, finally, we 
 
26 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 can compare the religious expériences, in their fuller and more 
 harmonious unfolding and in their completest ethical satis- 
 factoriness, with certain apparently well-grounded conclusions 
 or postulâtes of natural science or of mental philosophy ; and 
 we shall then find ourselves at a loss how to escape from con- 
 tradiction of those expériences or of thèse other truths. 
 
 Thus, if we take together the question of the variations and 
 contradictions and the question of the violation of the moral 
 and spiritual commands and truths, if we restrict ourselves to the 
 Jewish and Christian Scriptures alone, and if we give thèse 
 variations and violations the great advantages of taking them in 
 the order of time and according to the tribe or people when and 
 where they occur, we find such well-known facts as the following, 
 We hâve polygamous and divorcing saints and leaders of God's 
 people, such as Abraham and Jacob ; and again such deceivers, 
 as Jacob and Jaël ; fiercely vindictive prayers by friends of God, 
 such as are many of the Psalms and certain passages of the 
 Révélation of St. John ; and the extermination, by the Chosen 
 People, of entirc tribes of the original inhabitants of Canaan» 
 We hâve also the conception that God Himself both tempts 
 to evil and attracts to good replaced, only after some centuries, 
 by the distinction that God Himself attracts to good alone, 
 and simply permits Satan to tempt the soûl to evil ; and 
 insistences upon this earthly life as the place of the soufs full 
 consciousness, hence for the deliberate service of God, in contra- 
 distinction to Sheol, the grave and the Beyond, where the soûl 
 leads a shrunken existence, — ^insistences which last, practically 
 unbroken by contrary enunciations, right up to the Captivity. 
 
 Indeed, even within the limits of the New Testament alone, 
 we get, first, the vivid expectation of Christ's Proximate Second 
 Coming and of the Consummation of the World ; and then, 
 gradually, the adjournment, and finally the indefinite postpone- 
 ment, of thèse cosmical e vents. Again, certain passages or 
 writings conceive mankind as destined to a happy reign, first 
 or finally, hère upon our earth, however rejuvenated ; and other 
 passages or writings place the after-life outside of, above, this 
 earth. 
 
 And as to the apparent contradictions between the expériences 
 and conceptions of religion and certain facts ascertained else- 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 27 
 
 wherc, there are the three expériences or conceptions which 
 appear to be simply essential to ail Theism, We find hère the 
 expérience of Miracle, which appears to clash with the deter- 
 minism of natural law ; and two conceptions, — the conception 
 of Création, which seems to contradict natural science, even in 
 that minimum of evolutionary doctrine which can be taken as 
 reasonably assured, and the conception of Personality in God, 
 which seems to contradict psychology and philosophy in their, 
 surely, well-grounded contention that personality always implies 
 at least some kind of limitation if not actually a physical body» 
 
 The second group, which deals with the apprehending mind, 
 contains two main difficulties, and this against precisely the most 
 fundamental of ail the évidences and conceptions of religion- 
 Révélation, How can the mind, it is argued, apprehend with 
 certainty anything outside of itself, outside of its own catégories 
 and modes i And, still more, how can the essentially finite and 
 contingent human mind, even if capable of a real knowledge of 
 finite things or of finite minds other than itself, hâve any real 
 knowledge of, be at ail really afîected by, an Infinité and Absolute, 
 even if such Infinité and Absolute can reasonably be conceived 
 as Mind and Spirit i It will be noted that especially thèse two 
 difficulties are called out to their uttermost by any and every 
 superhuman claim. 
 
 And the third group, which dwells upon the effects, i.e* the 
 dire evils, accruing from the admission of religion as in any way 
 or degree superhuman, can be taken as containing two main sets 
 of facts. For has not precisely that belief in the superhuman 
 reality of the Infinité, the Absolute, been the cause why religion 
 has so largely ignored other, great and necessary, human activities, 
 — ^has turned away from science and philosophy, from art and 
 politics, even from society and the family, indeed even from 
 elementary morality itself^ And, again, has not precisely that 
 belief, when it has turned its attention to thèse other sides of 
 life, attempted to dominate, to mould or to break them by and 
 into the specifically superhuman religious catégories, or even by 
 and into whole Systems of philosophy or theology deduced 
 logically from those catégories i 
 
 Of such turning away from the non-religious activities of 
 life we hâve instances in the Jewish prophets* antagonism to ail 
 
28 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 statuary ; in the Mohammedan Sultan Oniar's destruction of 
 the great classical library of Alexandria ; and in the huge 
 Christian exodus, in the fourth century, into the Egyptian désert* 
 And as to the domination, was it not predsely some belief in 
 the Superhuman, attached no doubt in thèse cases to terribly 
 crude and corrupt imaginings of the human heart, that rendered 
 it even possible for Syrian and Canaanitish parents to give their 
 daughters to a life of ** sacred ** prostitution in the temples 
 of Aphrodite, and to pass their children through the fire as 
 holocausts to the god Moloch ^ In already morally higher yet 
 still painfully fierce forms, was it not the belief that God Himself 
 was ordering such acts which rendered it possible for the Jews 
 to exterminate without mercy the Canaanite tribes ^ And, in 
 again less indiscriminate applications and ways, was it not such 
 transcendent claims and beliefs that rendered possible, and indeed 
 terribly actual, the Spanish Inquisition in precisely what con- 
 stituted its apparently irrésistible appeal ^ Indeed, in ail and 
 every attempt at direct régulation or arrest of research, spécula- 
 tion and science by theology, whether the latter be Mussulman 
 or Calvinist or Lutheran or Catholic, is it not in fact the super- 
 human claim, and the acceptance of the superhuman claim, of 
 religion which render such action possible $* Even further, does 
 not the acceptance of any such claim lead necessarily to such 
 results ^ And is not the only sure safeguard against such results, 
 and against their disastrous effects, especially also upon religion 
 itself, the resolute élimination of the superhuman of every 
 kind^ 
 
 And let us note that, not only the efîects we hâve been thus 
 describing fully explain men's sensitive fear, indeed often their 
 angry hatred, of the very words ** metaphysic,** ** transcendence,*' 
 '' ontology,** but that thèse effects also constitute a serious 
 difficulty against the reasonableness, indeed against the continued 
 possibility, of ail and every superhuman belief. For what is the 
 worth of such superhuman affirmations, if we get into troubles 
 and dead-locks of ail sorts, as soon as ever we seriously begin to 
 apply them to anything, — ^as soon as ever we deduce, anticipate 
 or test any sdentific method or scientific fact from them $* Can 
 affirmations be true, and indeed the deepest of truths, if they 
 hâve carefuUy to be kept out of the reach of ail tests of their 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 29 
 
 truth $* Is a position bearable which forces us either to limit or 
 vitiate our sciences — their results or at the least their methods 
 and intrinsic autonomies — or to emasculate our religion i 
 
 III 
 
 It is obviously impossible for a couple of papers, indeed it is 
 impracticable for any one man, to enter fully into ail the sides 
 and problems of this great matter. But before my second paper 
 attempts some gênerai construction that shall utilise and transcend 
 the objections developed above^ I want to take the problem, not 
 according to any formulation of my own, but in the combina- 
 tion of remarkable psychological pénétration, of rare knowledge 
 throughout large reaches of the religious consciousness, and of 
 sceptical assumptions and passion presented by Ludwig Feuer- 
 bach, in by far his greatest work, Dos Wesen des Christenthums. ^ 
 
 It is true that Feuerbach is considerably dominated by 
 
 Hegelian positions which hâve long ceased to be accepted with 
 
 such exclusiveness by the majority of philosophers or even by 
 
 the gênerai cultivated reader, It is true also that the very ruthless- 
 
 ness of his logic renders him sometimes unfair to his own gênerai 
 
 position, and makes him, so far, more easy of réfutation than are 
 
 minds swayed more inconsistently by various, never completely 
 
 developed or entirely accepted, principles and trains of thought, 
 
 Certainly much of value has been collected, analysed and 
 
 speculatively or critically thought out in matters of religion, since 
 
 Feuerbach died in 1872, an utter materialist, with but little 
 
 following in his latest development, Nevertheless thèse earlier 
 
 positions of Feuerbach, even where they hâve ceased to be 
 
 axiomatic for professed philosophers, are still, in secondary 
 
 forms and in semi-conscious ways, most certainly operative in 
 
 various sceptical works, The vein of doctrinaire violence that un- 
 
 doubtedly runs through the book does not prevent the work 
 
 remaining, to this hour, the most probing and thorough account 
 
 ^ The book first appcared in 1841 ; the tcxt quoted by me is from the édition 
 of i849;j as carefuUy reprinted by Qucnzel, in Réclamas Universal Bibliothek, 1904. 
 I give it in Marian Evans' (George Eliot's) English translation, 1854, ^s madc 
 from the text of the first édition, with such few changes of my own as are rendered 
 necessary by the différences between the éditions followed respectively by her 
 and by mysclf . 
 
 £ 
 
30 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 of the certain, or even the simply arguable, contributions made 
 by man to religion, — of the résonance of man*s mind and heart 
 in response to religion ; and there has not, I think, been since 
 Feuerbach any mind, of a calibre equal to his own, that has 
 argued, with so unflagging a conviction, for the sheer illusion 
 and mischievousness of ail religion. And again, in dealing 
 critically with a dead man 's work, we escape ail personal con- 
 sidérations and subjective complications, so readily awakened 
 by even friendly controversy amongst living writers. And 
 finally, by taking, not this dead man 's last, much cruder book, 
 but his fullest and most formidable work, we indicate, by our 
 very self-restriction within the range of the writings of the 
 author chosen by us, that our object is not a complète study of 
 Feuerbach, nor, on the other hand, simply a réfutation of Feuer- 
 bach at his weakest, but the careful analysis of the leading 
 positions of Feuerbach at his best, to be used as so much vivid 
 enforcement and as so much précise aid towards at least the 
 formulation of the great question hère before us. It will be 
 sufficient for our purpose if we restrict our extracts to the two 
 introducîory chapters of the whole book. 
 
 From the first chapter on ** The Essential Nature of Man ** 
 let us take the following passages : 
 
 ** Consciousness, in the strictest sensé, is présent only in a 
 being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of 
 thought. The brute is indeed conscious of himself as an individual 
 — hence he has the feeling of himself as the common centre of 
 successive sensations — but not of himself as a species.*^ — 
 ** Science is the cognis^ance of species. In practical life we hâve 
 to do with individuals ; in science, with species. But only a 
 being to whom his own species, his own nature, is an object of 
 thought, can make the essential nature of other things or beings 
 an object of thought. Hence the brute has only a simple, man 
 a twofold life ; in the brute the inner life is one with the outer, 
 man has both an inner and an outer life. The inner life of man is 
 the life which has relation to his species, to his gênerai, as 
 distinguished from his individual nature. Man thinks — ^that is, 
 he converses with himself.'' 
 
 Now ** the essential nature of man, in contradistinction from 
 the animal, is not only the ground, it is also the object of religion. 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 31 
 
 But religion is consciousness of the infinité ; thus it is, and can 
 be nothing else than, the consciousness which man has of his 
 own, not finite and limited, but infinité, nature. ♦ . . The 
 consciousness of the infinité is nothing else than the conscious- 
 ness of the infinity of the consciousness '* (pp. 53-55 ; Eng. 
 Tr. pp. I, 2). — ** Man is nothing without an object. . . . But 
 the object to which a subject essentially, necessarily relates, is 
 nothing else than this subject^s own, but objective, nature ** 
 (p. 57 ; Eng. Tr. p. 4). — ** The Absolute, the God of man, is 
 man^s own nature. ♦ . . Since to will, to feel, to think are per- 
 fections, essences, realities, it is impossible that intellect, feeling, 
 and will should feel or perceive themselves as limited finite 
 powers, i.e. as worthless, as nothing. For finiteness and nothing- 
 ness are identical '* (pp. 58, 59 ; Eng. Tr. p. 516). 
 
 Now on this I would note the following. Feuerbach gives us 
 hère his own description, or rather his own very précise définition, 
 of what actually occurs within man*s consciousness — of what 
 specifically constitutes the human consciousness. This particular 
 interprétation has been reached, by some few men, tens of 
 thousands of years after millions of men hâve experienced this 
 specifically human consciousness. And even now, after this 
 particular interprétation has come and is offered to ail thus 
 conscious mortals, and especially to those who particularly 
 reflect upon this consciousness, this interprétation is recognised 
 certainly only by a few, and probably even by a few only for a 
 time, as a true and complète account of what is taking place 
 within each one of us. Thèse very certain facts do not prove 
 that Feuerbach 's account is false ; but they do prove that it is 
 not self-evidently true ; and this point might easily be over- 
 looked, seeing the manner in which the truth of this interpréta- 
 tion is assumed throughout the work as entirely above discussion. 
 
 No doubt Feuerbach hère proves himself possessed of the 
 pénétration and the courage necessary for drawing the conclusion 
 of certain assumptions which run, in various degrees and ways, 
 through much of specifically modem philosophy. Yet it may 
 well turn out that his main service in so doing is to make us feel, 
 more strongly than we otherwise should ever hâve felt, that, if 
 the older philosophy had its grave faults and limitations, this 
 newcr orientation is still largcly infected by the weaknesses and 
 
32 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 one sidednesscs of cvery reaction. Hence it will bc well, neither 
 simply to attempt a wholesale return to the old philosophy nor 
 blindly to follow thc new, but carefully to re-test the great 
 questions as to man's primary knowledge in the light of thc 
 great facts of human life and expérience — ^facts which every 
 philosophy worthy of the name has, after ail, not to ignore or 
 violently to explain away, but to accept, to elucidate and to har- 
 monise as best it can. 
 
 Hère then Feuerbach, coming from his radical Hegelism, and 
 writing for a génération still steeped in Hegel, assumes straight 
 away and even angrily emphasises, without any attempt at proof 
 throughout the book, that man essentially consists of mind alone ; 
 that this human mind can penetrate and can be penetrated by, 
 can know at ail, nothing but itself ; that it never grows by, or 
 gains a real knowledge of, realities other than man himself. 
 Man*s mind is thus affected by but one reality — ^that of the 
 species man, mankind, the human race, as distinct from what 
 is simply selfishly particularist in an individual man. There is 
 thus, from first to last, in human expérience only one object — 
 thc subject itself, illusively mistaken, according to Feuerbach, 
 for something différent from this subject ; and truc philosophy 
 consists in unmasking this inévitable, persistent illusion. 
 
 Yet actual life of ail sorts and its various spécial successes, thc 
 différent sciences with their diverse particular results, and the 
 now truly immense accumulation of historical évidence are ail 
 before us to warn us that this is not, that this cannot be, the 
 truth — full and entire. Thèse tell us, as so many elementary 
 facts, as data from which philosophy must start, and to which 
 it must ever be willing to grant appeal, that man is not simply 
 mind, but also sensé, imagination, feeling, will ; that mind itself 
 is not simply abstractive or discursive, but intuitive as well ; 
 that the human personality, if at ail complète and perfect, holds 
 and harmonises ail thèse forces in a generally difficult, always 
 more or less rich, interpénétration ; that thèse various consti- 
 tuents of the human personality are developed in and by their 
 possessor — ^they are slowly built up by him into his true man- 
 hood — only by, and on occasion of, the contact with, and the 
 action upon them of, other minds, other living beings, other 
 things ; and that, however more or other he be than they, or 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 33 
 
 thcy be than he, he ever achieves some real knowledge of them, 
 and thus, through his relations with them, he attains some real 
 knowledge of himself ♦ In this way, neither does the mind stand 
 simply by itself in the human personality, nor does this mind 
 merely abstract from itself and then hypostatise thèse its ab- 
 stractions, nor does the entire personality stand alone in an 
 empty or simply unknown and unknowable world. But the 
 mind, a live force, finds itself in closest contact with other ener- 
 gisings and impulsions within the human subject» This entire 
 human subject is always in the first instance necessarily related, 
 not to an idea or représentation, either of itself or of anything 
 else, but to some, to various, concrète realities distinct from, 
 though not entirely unlike, itselfv It is the action of ail that 
 objective world upon this human subject, and the manifold 
 reaction of this human subject to that world ^s action, which is 
 primary; whereas the abstracting activity is secondary and 
 instrumental, and necessarily never fully catches up or exhausts 
 those primary informations» The more real is the subject thus 
 stimulated and thus reacting, and the more real is the object 
 thus stimulating and thus acting, the more *' inside ** does the 
 subject and the object possess, and the more rich will be such 
 stimulation and such response, This is certainly the case with 
 man when stimulated by a plant, and not by a crystal ; by an 
 animal, and not by a plant ; by a man, and not by an animal ; 
 by Isaiah, Shakespeare or Newton, and not by the man in the 
 Street, And thus we are coming again to see that precisely those 
 realms of human expérience and knowledge which, like history, 
 politics, ethics, give us the widest and deepest subjective stimula- 
 tion of the most varied and often the obscurest kind, and where 
 consequently a clarified, harmonious and full conviction is 
 specially difficult for us, are precisely the realms which carry 
 the richest objective content within themselves, and which 
 offer the fullest reward for our attempts to capture this content. 
 From ail this we can readily see that, whether man's conscious- 
 ness of the Infinité is or is not, as a matter of fact, simply man*s 
 consciousness of his own truly infinité consciousness, we cannot 
 décide straight away that ** it cannot be anything else/' For we 
 certainly, concomitantly with our awaking to a consciousness 
 of ourselves, acquire varying (dim or clear, but very real) 
 
34 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 expériences of the existence, indeed to some extent of the inner 
 life, of other beings as welL And at this stage of our enquiry it 
 will suffice to point out that the specifically religious conscious- 
 ness never has been, nor now is, and cannot (even when brought 
 to book) discover itself to be simply the prolongation of the 
 human individual, or of the human species in their own efforts 
 or achievements, even if we take such prolongation as merely 
 potential, or as still actually to be achieved» The religious con- 
 sdousness is always of Something other than itself; and, in 
 proportion to the spirituality, i.e, to the spécifie religiousness, 
 of this consciousness, does an Infinité not the souVs own appear 
 présent and operative hère and now in the world and in the soûl 
 — ^an Infinité différent in kind from any simply human pro- 
 longation or idéal, since the soûl rests upon It, and finds its 
 support in the actual présence and opération of this Infinité, 
 this Perfectness, 
 
 The following passage from Feuerbach*s ail-important second 
 chapter, on ** The Essence of Religion,'' is specially instructive» 
 
 *' Consciousness of God is self-consciousness ; knowledge 
 of God is self-knowledge* ♦ ♦ ♦ But this is not to be understood 
 as affirming that the religious man is directly aware of this 
 identity ; for, on the contrary, ignorance of it is fundamental 
 to the peculiar nature of religion/' — '' Man first of ail sees his 
 nature as if out of himself before he finds it in himselL ♦ ♦ ♦ 
 Religion is the childlike condition of humanity ; the child sees 
 his nature; — ^man — out cf himself* In childhood a man is an 
 object to himself, under the form of another man* Hence the 
 ^^ historical progress of religion consists in this : that what by an 
 earlier religion was regarded as objective, is now recognised as 
 subjective ; that is, what was formerly contemplated and wor- 
 shipped as God, is now perceived to be something human. 
 What was at first religion becomes at a later period idolatry, 
 
 ♦ ♦ ♦ Man has given objectivity to himself, but has not recognised 
 the object as his own nature ; a later religion takes this forward 
 step : every advance in religion is therefore a deeper self-know- 
 ledge. But every particular religion excepts itself — ^and neces- 
 sarily so, otherwise it would no longer be religion — ^from the 
 fate, the common nature, of ail religions ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ It is our task to 
 show that the antithesis of divine and human is altogether 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 35 
 
 illusory ; that it is nothing else than the antithesis between 
 human nature in gênerai and the human individual *' (pp, 68, 69 ; 
 Eng. Tr» pp» 12, 13)» 
 
 Hère we hâve, I think, a profoundly true reading of history 
 side by side with a colossal paradox, — a paradox which is indeed 
 absolutely necessary to this philosophy, but which does not 
 follow from this reading of history, a paradox which, from its 
 very character, demands the strictest proof, Yet no such proof 
 is forthcoming ; whilst ail the presumptions derivable from 
 man's other, non-religious, expériences, and from the spécial 
 nature and effects of this religious attestation itself, are very 
 decidedly against it» 
 
 Thus it is indeed certain that later stages of religion do gener- 
 ally look upon the earlier stages as so many sheer idolâtries ; 
 and that the strongly religious man, as such, is generally reluct- 
 ant to concède an élément of truth to those earlier stages. Such 
 a man readily sees, in those earlier stages, a mère déification 
 of the worshipper's worst passions, and as readily fails to perceive 
 any traces of a similar projection in his own religious conviction 
 and practice. Hence, no doubt, an important peculiarity in the 
 phenomenology of religion is hère laid bare. Yet it is plain that, 
 unless the Irishman's argument be sound that, because a certain 
 stove will save him half his fuel, therefore two such stoves will 
 save it ail, there is no necessary conséquence from such admixture 
 of illusion with truth to the négation of every and ail truth, — 
 to the déniai of the operative présence of some non-human reality 
 within this long séries of human appréhensions» 
 
 Again, it is true that religion has hitherto moved, upon the 
 whole, from seeing God as it were visibly in the visible, outside 
 world to experiencing Him in the opérations of the human con- 
 science and in the necessary laws and ideals of the human mind» 
 Yet much in récent science and philosophy, and in the gênerai 
 movement of men's minds and requirements, points to future 
 developments when men at large will again see in Nature (now 
 encouraged to do so by science and philosophy themselves) 
 not finally a mechanism, nor a blind impulsion and warfare 
 of forces, but once again, yet now much more deeply than ever, 
 a world which (in proportion to its degree and scale of reality) 
 is purposive — a world indicative of, because preparatory for. 
 
36 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 mind, love and wilL The strict and sharp délimitation of Nature 
 and of Spirit, of mathematico-physical and of historico-philo- 
 sophical methods and of their respective spécial fields, has been 
 very necessary and has produced most fruitful results in both 
 directions, Yet it is obvious that they must be somehow con- 
 ceived as operating within one great inter-connected world, at 
 however various levels of reality, Indeed this inter-connection 
 is continually being shown by the manner in which any earnest, 
 well-conducted enquiry of any one kind promptly benefits ail 
 other enquiries of whatsoever other kind ; and this, as much to 
 the surprise of, say, the discoverer in biology as of the student 
 of religion. 
 
 And in the study of the history of religion there is certainly 
 no necessity for the mind which hère knows most, and knows 
 with the greatest critical discrimination and reproductive sym- 
 pathy, about the endless variations and stages of religion, to 
 recognise in this apparent chaos just nothing but a pretentious 
 effusion, a sheer projection, of the variations of the vain heart 
 of man. Such utter scepticism cannot be a necessary conclusion ; 
 since, were it so, such daring yet religiously tempered critics as 
 William Robertson Smith, Paul de Lagarde, C. P. Tiele, Edvin 
 Lehmann, could ne ver hâve existed* For in the case of thèse 
 scholars, and of many another now living critically trained mind, 
 the intolérable insufficiency of ail mère Immanence, the con- 
 viction that that very history testifies to the immanence of the 
 Transcendent, has certainly not been weakened ; it has somehow 
 been quickened by or during such strenuous studies. 
 
 We undoubtedly find something closely analogous in the 
 history of man*s other expériences and cognitions. What a 
 dreary waste is the history of philosophy, of politics, of ethics 
 themselves, except to the man who is imbued with the strongest 
 philosophical, political, ethical sensé, — ^the man who knows 
 where to look for truth and fruitfulness, and who is at the same 
 time trained in historical — that is in patient, grateful, mag- 
 nanimous — ^imagination I It may be retorted that in religion 
 we are dealing not, as in philosophy, politics, ethics, only with 
 principles and ideas, but primarily, according to our own insist- 
 cncc, with a great self-revealing Reality; and that hence wc 
 may expect in religion, from the first, a greater freedom from 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 37 
 
 absurdities. But we can point, in arrest of judgment, to the ^ 
 Motorious history of the natural sciences. Also thèse sciences 
 are primarily busy with facts and existences which reveal their 
 own selves to the observing mind, Indeed thèse sciences deal 
 with objects which are, of necessity, more readily discernible 
 and more easily describable than could ever be those of religion. 
 For in science the self-revelation is largely to our sensés ; the 
 objects revealed do not claim to be more, and are indeed mostly 
 Icss, than human ; and the dispositions required for their 
 accurate ascertainment are of necessity not as deep, délicate 
 and costly as are those required in the case of religion. Yet 
 especially the early history of the natural sciences is, at first 
 sight, a continuons reeling from one gross absurdity to another 
 hardly less gross. 
 
 The gênerai conditions and circumstances and the spécifie 
 effects of the religions attestation itself also strongly point the 
 other way. For hère we hâve to do, not with this or that par- 
 ticular attestation, nor even with this or that persistent con- 
 comitant of this whole range and succession of human expérience, 
 but with this entire kind of human life — one held by mankind at 
 large to be the highest and the deepest life attainable by man. 
 And yet this life is declared to consist in a sheer projection, by 
 the individual human mind, of the gênerai, but purely im- 
 manental, human requirements and ideals, although this 
 individual mind is, whilst practising such a sheer projection, 
 admittedly so entirely unaware of what it is doing that it actually 
 considers itself, the projector, to be the création of its own pro- 
 jection. But in real expérience doubts may arise within the 
 religions mind against this or that concomitant or élément of 
 its présent faith, — ^it may even entirely lose faith in this or that 
 particular religion, yet it does not pari passa lose faith in trans- 
 subjective, transcendent, superhuman Reality as such. And let 
 it be particularly noted that, according to Feuerbach, the whole 
 force of religion proceeds precisely from what is sheer illusion 
 in it ; for it is just only that inversion, that attribution by the 
 soûl of the most objective validity and transcendent worth to 
 this its mère projection of a self utterly shut up within this selfs 
 own sheer human musings, which gives religion ail its spécifie 
 power. The same, precisely the same, content which, when seen 
 
38 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 in its ** true ** place and character, leaves men cold or only 
 superficially moved, becomes, when seen by them in its ** false ** 
 place and character, the most profoundly, often the most terribly, 
 powerful force known to history» Yet not ail the récitals of the 
 childishnesses, the moral abuses, and the intellectual trials and 
 complications, traceable in and alongside of the various religions 
 of the world, can make any at ail just student overlook religion *s 
 magnificent services to mankind,— the most heroic patience and 
 courage, the noblest purity, the most self-oblivious love and 
 service, and withal the keen sensé of the givenness of man*s 
 very capacities, of the pathetic mystery of his life, and of the 
 entrancing depth of the Reality that touches and pervades it, 
 It is impossible to see why Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz: and Kant, 
 and why again Pheidias and Michael Angelo, Raphaël and 
 Rembrandt, Bach and Beethoven, Homer and Shakespeare are 
 to be held in deepest gratitude, as revealers respectively of 
 various kinds of reality and truth, if Amos and Isaiah, Paul, 
 Augustine and Aquinas, Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc are 
 to be treated as pure illusionists in precisely what constitutes 
 their spécifie greatness* 
 
 The foUowing group of passages will now conclude our 
 cxamination of Feuerbach» 
 
 ** If you doubt the objective truth of the predicates (of God), 
 you must also doubt the objective truth of the subject whose 
 predicates they are. If the predicates are anthropomorphisms, 
 the subject of them is an anthropomorphism too. If love, good- 
 ness, personality, and the rest, are human attributes, so also is 
 the subject which you présuppose ; the existence of God, the 
 belief that there is a God, are anthropomorphisms, presupposi- 
 tions purely human '* (p, 74 ; Eng, Tr, p, 17). — '' Originally, 
 man makes truth dépendent upon existence ; subsequently, 
 existence dépendent upon truth ** (p, 77 ; Eng, Tr, p, 19). — 
 ** Not the attribute of the divinity, but the divineness or deity 
 of the attribute, is the first true Divine Being/* — Hence ** he 
 alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine 
 Being — ^for example, love, wisdom, justice — ^are nothing ; not 
 he to whom merely the subject of thèse predicates is nothing* 
 And in nowise is the négation of the subject necessarily also 
 a négation of the predicates considered in themselves. Thèse 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 39 
 
 hâve an intrinsic, indcpendent reality. They force their 
 récognition upon man by their very nature ; they prove, they 
 attest themselves» It does not folio w that goodness, justice, wis- f 
 dom are chimeras, because the existence of God is a chimera ; • 
 nor that they are truths, because this is a truth» The idea of 
 God is dépendent on the idea of justice, of goodness, of 
 wisdom, , . ♦ but the converse does not hold ** (p, 79 ; Eng» 
 Tr» p. 21)* — ** Religion knows nothing of anthropomorphisms ; 
 to it they are not anthropomorphisms, ♦ ♦ ♦ They are pro- 
 nounced to be images only by the understanding which reflects 
 on religion, and which, while defending them, yet, before its 
 own tribunal, dénies them '* (p* 84 ; Eng, Tr, pp. 24, 25)* 
 
 I take thèse several positions in an order of my own. 
 
 It is certainly contrary to the facts that religion, as such, 
 ** knows nothing of anthropomorphisms,'' Le. that religion, as 
 such, is unaware of the inadequacy of ail human thought and 
 language to the realities, even simply as thèse are experienced by 
 the souL ** O the depth of the wisdom and the knowledge of God ! 
 How unsearchable are his judgments, his ways past tracing out ! " 
 This cry of St. Paul (Rom. xi. 33) expresses the very soûl of 
 religion. ** One of the greatest favours bestowed transiently 
 on the soûl in this life is to enable it to see so distinctly, and to 
 feel so profoundly, that . . . it cannot comprehend Him at 
 alL ... In heaven those who know Him most perfectly, 
 perceive most clearly that He is infinitely incompréhensible.*' 
 This expérience and reflection of the peasant St. John of the 
 Cross {À Spiritual Cantide, stan2;a viiu 10) only places in the 
 very centre of attention that which persistently accompanies, 
 as a délicate background and presupposition, ail deep spiritual 
 expérience, and which indeed can be found to some degree eyep^ 
 in the less spiritual religions. True, philosophical reflection 
 and natural science bring perplexities to the religious mind, 
 and there is some connection between a man 's growth in such 
 other insights and his analysis and theory of his religious 
 expérience. Yet the influence of philosophy and of science upon 
 religious expérience itself appears to be primarily the furnishing 
 of obstacles and stimulants, of tests and purifications ; and 
 certainly the sensé of awe, derived by the religious soûl from 
 its vivid appréhension of the greatness of the Reality, a Reality 
 
40 RELIGION AND ILLUSION 
 
 experienced as so much deeper and richer than the soûl can ever 
 /express, is specifically différent from any sensé of uncertainty 
 (as to the existence and the superhuman nature of the Reality 
 I underlying and occasioning this appréhension» Healthy mysticism 
 ^d genuine scepticism are thus intrinsically opposites» 
 
 The predicates which the believer finds inhérent to the subject 
 ** God/* indeed whatsoever he says or can say, believe or wish, 
 as to God, are undcubtedly expressed within the limits of, and 
 in accordance with, the human nature in which they are ex- 
 perienced or thought» ** Everything that is apprehended by any 
 apprehending being, is apprehended according to the manner of 
 this being's appréhension/' is continuously insisted upon by 
 St. Thomas, the prince of the Scholastics, who hère, as usual, 
 folio ws Aristotle. (So, e.g., in the Summa Theologiae, First Part, 
 75th Question, Article 50») Man can never jump out of his own 
 skin. Yet this in no way décides how widely that skin may 
 stretch, nor what, nor how much of, Reality really affects man 
 and is presumably apprehended by him with some genuine 
 knowledge. Indeed man is found to possess somehow, in very 
 certain fact, a more or less continuous, often most painful, sensé 
 of the inadequacy of any and ail merely human mode and degree 
 both of existence and of appréhension ♦ And this sensé is toc 
 fundamentally human, and too demonstrably impels him to- 
 wards, yet never to rest in, his noblest achievements in science 
 and philosophy, in art, in ethics, in life generally, for it to be 
 anything but suicidai for man himself ever, in the long run and 
 deîiberately, to déclare this sensé to be sheer illusion, or (what 
 is practically the same, and equally inadéquate) to find in this 
 sensé nothing but the merely human race-instinct. There then 
 remains no way out of scepticism, where scepticism is least 
 tolerable and where it is most ruinous, than to carry right up 
 into religion what we believe and practise in our practical life 
 and in our science* Just as we simply admit the existence of 
 countless realities, more or less différent from, though only lower 
 than or equal to ourselves ; and as we frankly grant the real 
 influence of thèse realities upon ourselves and our real know- 
 ledge of them, since such influence and knowledge are prior 
 to, and are the material of, our discursive reasoning about them : 
 so also let us simply admit the existence of a perfect Reality, 
 
RELIGION AND ILLUSION 41 
 
 suffidcntly likc us to be ablc to penetrate and to movc us through 
 and through, the which, by so domg, is the original and per- 
 sistent cause of this our noblest dissatisfaction with anything 
 and ail things merely human. Certainly no other explanation 
 has ever been given which does not sooner or later mis-state 
 or explain away the very data, and the immense dynamic forces 
 of the data, to be explained. But this, the only adéquate, explana- 
 tion moves us on at once, from the quicksands of religion as 
 illusion, to the rock of Religion as the witness and vehicle of 
 Reality» 
 
 Of course, this dim or vivid gênerai sensé of the Perfect, of 
 all-sustaining Spirit, opérâtes in men and is describable by them 
 only in human terms ; but this very fact and the believer's 
 ready admission of it make the persistent witness to the Reality 
 ail the more striking. Feuerbach's own later history shows most 
 instructively that the question of existence does matter ; that, 
 sooner or later, it demands a categorical answer, It shows also 
 how precarious, with dehials as sweeping and as absolute as are 
 those in his Wesen des Christenthums, is the persistence of the 
 sensé, hère still so délicate and apparently so vigorous, of the 
 possibility, indeed of the fréquent reality, of costly, self- 
 oblivious love and dévotion amongst men and for men, without 
 any superhuman beliefs at alL Indeed even in this his chief work, 
 and according to the author*s own actual procédure, which is 
 often strangely ignored by himself, existence does matter. For 
 hère the subject of those predicates of love, wisdom, etc,, is even 
 passionately declared to exist ; it is indeed not God, but it is 
 mankind, conceived as an intensely real reality. But when 
 Feuerbach comes to write his Wesen der Religion, ** mankind ** 
 has become an abstraction, and only two realities remain : 
 utterly determinist, immoral Nature and hopelessly selfish, 
 sensual, cruel individual men. Hère also then existence matters ; 
 indeed hère it matters supremely. 
 
42 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 In ** Religion and Illusion ** we rapidly surveyed the main pecu- 
 liarities to be found in religion at large throughout human 
 history» Thèse peculiarities were four : Universality, as wide for 
 religion as for man's other deeper peculiarities ; Importance, 
 traceable also where man seems without the religious sensé ; 
 Self-differentiation from the other modes and ranges of human 
 life, in proportion as religion grows deep and délicate ; and 
 Super-humanity — the sensé of Givenness, Reality, Otherness, 
 Super-humanness, as characterising the Ultimate Object and 
 deepest Cause of religion» We next noted the chief objections to 
 allowing any spécifie evidential value to this last peculiarity — ^the 
 superhuman intimations ; we noted the difficulties against the 
 admission that thèse intimations really take us beyond individual 
 \ men's idle fancies or egoistic selfishnesses, or, at best, beyond 
 projections, by the human individual, of the deepest, yet purely 
 human, needs and ideals of the human race» The human race 
 itself and the less than human realities around it are taken, by 
 such an objector, as the sole realities of which we men are truly 
 cognizant» And lastly we took the chief articulations of such a 
 purely human, illusionist, explanation of religion, as furnished 
 by Ludwig Feuerbach at his immanentist best, and we attempted, 
 in connection therewith, some preliminary discriminations of the 
 whole question» 
 
 In " Religion and Reality ** 1 now propose to concentrate 
 more fuUy upon the deepest of the four religious peculiarities 
 — ^upon the Evidential, Revelational quality of religion, its 
 intimations of Superhuman Reality, and to meet more systematic- 
 ally the chief objections to the trans-human validity of thèse 
 intimations. But I want first to make plain how much this final 
 exposition intends to cover, and in what way it intends to operate. 
 
 The following pages, then, will chiefly consider Révélation, 
 but also, in some measure. Miracle, Création and Personality, 
 — since thèse four expériences or concepts are ail closely con- 
 nected with the points in need of elucidation against the Pure 
 Immanentists. But this study excludes any equal considération 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 43 
 
 of Evil, Suffering, Sin, It excludes thèse great facts, because 
 they do not directly obstruct, even if they do not directly aid, 
 the question as to the evidential worth of tlie superhuman 
 intimations. If the answer to the objections against the evidential 
 value of thèse intimations, and against the reasonableness of the 
 four expériences and concepts closely connected with thèse 
 intimations, turns out successful, then, and only then, will it 
 be worth while to study thèse great realities as objections to 
 the Theism for which we hâve then found good grounds, Evil, 
 Sufîering, Sin, can then be taken as difficulties which are possibly 
 incapable of any complète solution, yet which, even so, would 
 not of themselves abolish the evidential value we hâve discovered 
 in the superhuman intimations of religion, 
 
 It might indeed be contended that Evil, Sufïering, Sin — 
 that the awful reality and significance of thèse things; — ^them- 
 selves form a large part of the superhuman intimations of religion. 
 But such a contention is based, I believe, on several confusions 
 of thought, The intimations we hère study are of a Superhuman 
 Ultimate Reality ; and this ultimate reality, in proportion as 
 religion grows deeply and delicately religious, is apprehended 
 as good, happy and holy, AU this doubtless is always apprehended 
 in conjunction, and in contrast, with other, différent quahties 
 of the apprehending man himself ; and thèse qualities, it may 
 well be urged, are felt to be evil, painful, sinfuL Yet the appré- 
 hension of the man 's qualities by the man himself are, in any 
 case, only the occasion and concomitant of the same man's 
 appréhension of the Superhuman, It may even be questioned 
 whether a man*s appréhensions of the human which are in the 
 most close contact and in the most constant contrast with the 
 same man^s appréhensions of the Superhuman, are indeed Evil, 
 Suffering, Sin, I believe those closest and most constant con- 
 comitants of the superhuman intimations to be, in actual fact, 
 the feelings of Weakness, Instability, Dependence, And thèse 
 feelings and appréhensions are clearly involved, as concomitant 
 contrasts, in the expériences and concepts of Révélation, Miracle, 
 Création and Personality, which we deliberately include in our 
 study. 
 
 As to the form of the foUowing exposition, it may well seem 
 rather a clearing away of objections than a direct establishment 
 
 F* 
 
44 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 of positive facts. But this would only be an appearance» For the 
 exposition assumes throughout the actual, indeed the admitted^ 
 existence of thèse intimations, whether illusory or not. The 
 exposition has as little the need, as it would hâve the power, to 
 construct thèse intimations ; it simply finds them and describes 
 and analyses them as best it can. The argument gets under way 
 only upon the admission that religion, in fact, is always pene- 
 trated by thèse intimations ; and the argument reaches port 
 the moment thèse intimations are allowed really to be what they 
 themselves claim to be, This study has thus to be taken in direct 
 connection with actual life ; the two, thus taken together, are 
 free from any indirectness or ingenuity, The claim to trans- 
 human validity continues upon the whole as présent, operative, 
 clear, in the religious intimations, as it continues présent, 
 operative, clear, in the intimations of the reality of an external 
 world. And as our removal of objections to the reality of an 
 external world necessarily establishes its reality for us — ^because 
 there is the vivid impression, the sensé of a trans-human reality 
 ail around us, which claniours to be taken as it gives itself, and 
 which was only refused to be thus taken because of those 
 objections ; so now our removal of objections to the reality of 
 the Superhuman Reality necessarily establishes its reality for us 
 — since there, again, is the vivid impression, the sensé of a still 
 deeper, a différent, trans-human Reality which pénétrâtes and 
 sustains ourselves and ail things, and clamours to be taken as It 
 gives Itself, 
 
 We first take, then, the characteristics of the objects appre- 
 hended by the religious mind, 
 
 !♦ Hère it seems clear that the apparently endless variations 
 which exist simultaneously between one entire religion and 
 another entire religion, and even between single mind and single 
 mind, or which show successively in one and the same religion, 
 and even in one and the same mind, indeed that the crude 
 childishness of much that most individuals and most religions 
 think and represent their expérience and its Object to be. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 45 
 
 do not, of themselves, condemn the position that a great 
 trans-subjective superhuman Reality is being thus, variously 
 and ever inadequately, yet none the less actually, apprehended 
 by such groups or persons» The Reality, extant and acting upon 
 and within the world distinct from the human mind, and upon 
 and within those human minds and spirits themselves, can 
 indeed be taken as the determining occasion, object, and cause of 
 man*s long search for and continuous re-finding of God ; of the 
 graduai growth in depth and in delicacy of man^s religious 
 appréhensions ; of man finding his full rest and abiding base 
 in the religious expérience and certainty alone ; and of man 
 simultaneously becoming ever more conscious both of the need 
 of the best, and of the inadequacy of ail, human catégories and 
 définitions to express this really experienced Reality, 
 
 There is nothing intrinsically unreasonable in this, unless we 
 are to become simple sceptics also in Ethics and Politics, indeed 
 in Natural Science itself, since, in thèse cases also, we readily 
 find a closely similar, bewildering variation, both simultaneous 
 and successive, — ^we find similar childish beginnings, and similar 
 slow and precarious growth. In Natural Science the earth and 
 the sun are assuredly really extant, and rocks, plants and animais 
 hâve been with man since first man appeared upon the earth, 
 Yet innumerable crude fancies, each variously contradicting 
 the others, hâve been firmly believed for âges about thèse very 
 certain realities ; nor are thèse same realities, even now, free 
 from mysteries greater certainly by far than is ail we know with 
 certainty about them. Indeed the reality of the external world 
 in gênerai can be called in question, as certainly as can the reality 
 of the spiritual world and of God ; the reality of both thèse 
 worlds can be argued or willed away, as a mère subjective illusion 
 or projection, by this or that person, or group of persons, for 
 a while. But neither of thèse worlds can, with strict consistency, 
 ever be thus dissolved by any single man ; and neither of thèse 
 worlds will ever, consistently or not, be thus dissolved in per- 
 manence by any considérable body of men, for reasons to be 
 givcn presently. And note that the very closeness and interiority 
 of the chief évidences and expériences of religion render the 
 clear perception and true explication of their content and signi- 
 ficance, in certain important respects, indefinitely more difficult 
 
46 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 than is the analogous attempt with regard to the external world ; 
 and that such greater difficulty is characteristic of every advance 
 in depth, richness and reality in the subject-matters of whatso- 
 ever we may study» Thus the science of the soûl is indefinitely 
 ri cher in content, but far more difficulté than is the science of 
 shells, 
 
 2» But we hâve also to face the widespread violation, in the 
 earlier religions (even where thèse are already above nature- 
 worship), of truthfulness, purity, justice, mercy, as thèse funda- 
 mental moral and spiritual qualities and duties are understood 
 in the later religions ; and the fact that much of such improve- 
 ment as occurs (in what, if not the very heart of religion, is surely 
 closely connected with it) appears to proceed, not from religion, 
 but from the growth of civilisation, of the humane spirit, and 
 this largely m keen conflict with the représentatives of super- 
 human religion. Thèse are doubtless grave objections ♦ For 
 if Religion be, at bottom, the fullest self-revelation of the Infinité 
 Perfect Spirit in and to man*s finite spirit, and if indeed this 
 self-revelation takes place most fuUy in Religion, how can this 
 self-revealing Spirit, just hère, and precisely through the belief 
 in the Superhuman, hère most operative, instigate, or at ail 
 events allow, and thus often render at the least possible, terrible 
 crimes of déception, lust, injustice, cruelty i How can It require 
 the aid of man^s non-religious activities against man's religious 
 appréhensions i — Hère if we care to remain équitable, we shall 
 hâve to bear in mind the following, 
 
 Man^s personality, the instrument of ail his fuller and deeper 
 appréhensions, is constituted by the présence and harmonisation 
 of a whcle mass of énergies and intimations belonging to différent 
 levels and values ; and not one of thèse can (in the long run and 
 for mankind at large) be left aside or left unchecked by the others, 
 without grave drawback to that personality. Religion is indeed 
 the deepest of energisings and intimations within man's entirety, 
 but it is not the only one ; and though through Religion alone 
 God becomes definitely revealed to man as Self-conscious Spirit, 
 as an Object, as the Object, of direct, explicit adoration, yet those 
 other énergies and intimations are also willed by God and corne 
 from Him, and (in the long run and for mankind at large) are 
 necessary to man 's health and balance even in religion itself. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 47 
 
 So also the iEsthetic Sensé alone conveys the full and direct 
 intimations of the Beautiful ; yet it nevertheless requires, for 
 its healthy, balanced functioning, the adéquate opération of 
 numerous other énergies and intimations^ from the sensés up 
 to mental processes, in the man who apprehends the BeautifuL 
 
 Such an at ail adéquate and balanced development of any one 
 group of énergies and intimations, let alone of the entire per- 
 sonality, is of necessity, except in rare soûls or in rare moments 
 of ordinary soûls, a difficult and a slow process, It has been so 
 certainly with ethics and humaneness» It has been so still more 
 with religion. 
 
 It is important too, throughout ail thèse somewhat parallel 
 growths, especially those of Ethics and Religion, always to com- 
 pare the conviction, command, or practice of one time, race or 
 country, not with those of much later times or of quite other 
 races or communities, but with the, closely or distantly, pre- 
 ceding habits of one and the same race and community. Thus in 
 Ethics, polygamy should be compared, not with monogamy, but 
 with polyandry; and polyandry again with promiscuous inter- 
 course. And in Religion the imprecatory Psalms and the divine 
 order to exterminate the Canaanites should be compared, not 
 with the Sermon on the Mount, but with purely private vendetta» 
 We thus discover that, in many cases which now shock us, the 
 belief that God had spoken was attached to genuine, if slight, 
 moves or to confirmations of moves in the right direction ; and 
 in ail such cases the belief was, so far, certainly well-founded. 
 
 Doubtless more or less self-delusion in religion must at ail 
 times hâve occurred, and must be still occurring, both in 
 individuals and even in the larger groups ; and doubtless, had 
 religion never existed, certain spécial kinds of self-delusion 
 would not hâve operated amongst men. Yet man cannot, without 
 grave damage, do without Religion ; for he cannot, in the long 
 run, formally deny ail Reality to a Subject in which man 's highest 
 inévitable ideals can find a persistent home and be harmoniously 
 alive ; nor can he attain to the vivid appréhension and steady 
 affirmation of such a Reality except by Religion. Ethics, Philo- 
 sophy. Science, ail the other spécial strivings of man, hâve indeed 
 the right and the duty persistently to contribute their share — 
 a share indispensable (in the long run and in various, largely 
 
48 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 indirect, ways) in awakening, widening, sweetening man*s 
 imagination, mind, émotions, will ; and thus to aid him also in 
 his préparation for, and in his interprétation of, the visitations 
 of God's Spirit. But (again in the long run and in various, oftcn 
 strangely unexpected, yet terribly efïicacious ways) thèse various 
 activities, though not directly religious, cannot fail themselves 
 to sufîer inevitably, if men will go further, — ^if they will deny ail 
 reality to the persistent object of ail living Religion. Our grati- 
 tude most rightly goes out to those men who, from whatsoever 
 quarter, hâve helped to awaken, widen, sweeten man in gênerai, 
 and in ethical, philosophical, scientific directions in particular, 
 cven though those men may hâve had but little spécifie Religion, 
 indeed even if (often more sinned against than sinning) they 
 hâve vehemently combated the only form of spécifie, hence 
 superhuman. Religion which they knew* But a gratitude 
 no less sincère is due to those men also who indeed failed to 
 understand the worth, and who opposed the growth, of such 
 other activities, yet who preserved the sensé of the spécifie 
 character of Religion, — ^that it deals primarily, not with ideas, 
 but with realities, and that a certain superhumanness is of the 
 very essence of ail full Religion. 
 
 3. The points where the affirmations seemingly essential to 
 ail superhuman religion appear to be hopelessly contradicted 
 by Philosophy or Science hâve been taken by us as four : the 
 expériences of Révélation and of Miracle, and the conceptions 
 of Création and of Personality. The first two will be considered 
 presently in connection with the philosophical problems. 
 
 As to Création, it is plain that no sheer beginnings, however 
 much we may attempt to conceive them in terms and images of 
 the latest Natural Science, are picturable, or clearly thinkable, 
 by us at alL Yet assuredly ail the finite life, even ail the ordering 
 of matter, such as is directly known to us in our visible universe, 
 are known to us only with marks of having had a beginning. 
 Natural Science cannot indeed start otherwise than with already 
 extant difïused matter, and cannot but tend to speak as though 
 this matter, by its purely immanental forces, groups itself into 
 such and such combinations, and proceeds to ever more complex 
 and interior results. Yet that '* already extant,*' that presup- 
 position demanded for the purposes of Science, and so as to 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 49 
 
 secure to Science a situation in which it begins to hâve a subject- 
 matter at ail — surely cxhausts ail that such Science requires, 
 and ail that it can confidently teach us, conceming the eternity 
 or non-eternity of matter. Again, the successive advents of 
 vegetable, animal, human life upon our planet introduce différ- 
 ences delicately, powerfully différent in kind, especially when 
 any one of thèse lives is compared with inorganic matter, yet 
 also when any one such life is compared with any other of thèse 
 several lives» And finally, the adaptations, in thèse several 
 organisms, of their life to its environment (even if simply caused, 
 at the observational level of Natural Science, by survival of the 
 fittest amongst a mass of variations) always pre-supposes the 
 original présence and the persistent répétition of variations 
 deserving to be thus selected. We thus, still, get in Natural 
 Science, if not a clear and complète proof of an Etemal Wisdom 
 creating and ever sustaining ail things, yet many a fact and 
 problem which indicate how largely modal, where at ail certain, 
 is Evolution, Evolution in reality still gives us, at most and at 
 best, not the ultimate why but the intermediate how ; whilst the 
 points of central religious importance hère appear to be, not so 
 much the non-eternity, as the createdness, of ail finite realities, 
 
 Thus St. Thomas can teach us that the Eternity of the material 
 universe would not be incompatible with its Création, and that 
 only Création is intrinsically essential to Theism ; although the 
 Jewish-Christian Révélation has now taught us that, as a matter 
 of fact, the universe is not only a créature but a non-eternal one. 
 And indeed it appears certain that what religion hère centrally 
 cares for is *' the mysterious and permanent relation between 
 the moving changes we know in part, and the Power (after the 
 fashion of that opération, unknown) which is ** Itself unmoved 
 ail motion *s source/* - 
 
 As to the Personal God, it has now become a prévalent fashion 
 angrily to proclaim, or complacently to assume, the utter 
 absurdity of anything Personal about the Infinité; since Per- 
 sonality, of every degree and kind, essentially implies, indeed 
 largely consists of, limitations of various kinds, and is a gross 
 anthropomorphism the moment we apply it to anything but 
 man himselL Yet it is interesting to note the readiness with 
 ^ * Rcv. P. N. Waggctt, in Darwhism and Modem Science (1909), p. 490. 
 
50 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 which thèse same thinkers will hypostatise parts^ or spécial 
 functions, of our human personality, and will indeed do so 
 largely with concepts which we know to be specially character- 
 istic of spatially extended bodies. Thus Thought or Love or 
 Law, or even Substance, nothing of ail this is, for such thinkers, 
 anthropomorphic or sub-human ; but anything personal is 
 rank anthropomorphisme Yet it is only self-conscious spirit 
 that we know well, since it alone do we know from within» Self- 
 conscious spirit is immensely rich in content ; and self-conscious 
 spirit is by far the widest and yet deepest reality known to us at 
 alL True, Natural Science and even Philosophy do not, of them- 
 selves, fully find the Personal God, since Natural Science is not, 
 as such, busy with the like ultimate questions, and since Philo- 
 sophy (as we shall show presently) appears, of itself, to bring us 
 indeed to certain more than human orders or laws, but hardly 
 fully to the Orderer» But there is nothing intrinsically unreason- 
 able in thinking of the ultimate Cause, Ground and End of the 
 world as certainly not less than, as somehow not ail unlike, what 
 we know our own self-conscious mind, feeling and will to be, 
 provided we keep the sensé that God is certainly not just one 
 Object amongst other objects, or even simply one Subject 
 amongst other subjects ; and that, though variously présent 
 and operative in ail subjects and objects, He is not only more 
 perfect than, but distinct and différent from, them alL In so 
 thinking we find in, or we attribute to, the suprême Reality 
 what we ourselves possess that is richest in content, that is best 
 known to us, and that is most perfect within our own Httle yet 
 real expérience — ^we hâve done what we could ; and life and 
 history abound with warnings how easy it is hère to go apparently 
 further and to fare in fact very much worse* 
 
 Indeed we can safely hold with Lot^, not only that Personality 
 is compatible with Infinitude, but that the personality of ail 
 finite beings can be shown to be imperfect precisely because 
 of their finitude, and hence that ** Perfect Personality is com- 
 patible only with the conception of an Infinité Being ; finite 
 beings can only achieve an approximation to it/* ^ 
 
 ' Grundziige der Religionsphilosophie (éd. 1884), pp. 45, 46. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 51 
 
 II 
 
 The gênerai philosophical difficulties appear to be met by 
 the folio wing facts and observations* 
 
 I. Man*s actual expériences, the data with which he starts, 
 are never (as a certain current in modem philosophy might easily 
 lead us to believe) simply impressions which are felt by man at 
 the time of his receiving them as purely subjective, or which are 
 conclusively shown to be merely subjective by philosophical 
 analysis, or wliich in reason man ought to assume to be merely 
 subjective unless a strict démonstration of their trans-sub- 
 jectivity be forthcoming. The data of man's actual expérience, 
 on the contrary, are subject and object, each giving to and taking 
 from the other ; the two, and not the one only, are (somehow 
 and to some co-relative extent) included within the single human 
 consciousness. And since only an outlook so purely soUpsistic 
 as to be destructive of the assumptions necessary to any and ail 
 cohérent reasoning can, in the long run, deny the reality of some- 
 thing, indeed also of some mind or minds, other than, and 
 distinct from, our own minds ; and since thèse our minds are 
 doubtless surrounded by and related to such other various 
 realities : the rational presumption is that the spontaneous and 
 universal testimony of thèse our minds (after déduction of such 
 points or forms as can be clearly shown to be simply subjective) 
 is truly indicative of the several trans-subjective realities which 
 thèse expériences so obstinately proclaim. Kant's interestingly 
 unconscious self-contradiction hère, — ^that we can know nothing 
 whatever about trans-subjective reality, yet that we know for cer- 
 tain it is in no sensé like what even our deepest and most closely 
 criticised expériences indicate it to be' — can doubtless not be 
 maintained as reasonable by any mind once vividly aware of the 
 inconsistency» We shall hâve, on the contrary, to say that, by 
 the very nature of things, we cannot indeed get clean out of our 
 mind, so as to compare things as they are outside it with the 
 same things as we expérience them within it ; yet that we hâve 
 every solid reason for, and no cogent reason against, holding that 
 the objects most persistently apprehended by our deeper expéri- 
 ence as trans-subjectively real, and whose acceptance by us as 
 
52 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 thus rcal brings light, order and fruitfulness, in thc most un- 
 cxpccted ways and into thc most rcmotc places of our lifc and 
 work, are indeed trans-subjectively real and are, in themselves, 
 not ail unlike to, not disconnected with, what we thus apprehend 
 thcm to be. 
 
 We doubtless know nothing completely, nothing adequately, 
 not even ourselves ; we know nothing directly from within 
 cxcept ourselves. Yet we do not know only ourselves, or other 
 things only through reasoning them out from this our self- 
 knowledge. But, in the endless contacts, friendly, hostile, of 
 give, of take, between ourselves and the objects of ail kinds 
 which act upon us, and upon which we act in some degree or 
 way, we do not obtain, of ourselves a real knowledge, and of the 
 other things a merely subjective impression as to their merc 
 appearance ; but such contacts always simultaneously convey 
 some real expérience, some real knowledge, both of ourselves 
 and of the objects thus experienced, and indeed of each precisely 
 on occasion, and because, of the other. 
 
 But can I thus expérience and know God i The question is, 
 in the first instance, not whether I can^ but whether I do. It is 
 true that, outside the specifically religious life and appréhension, 
 there is no vivid expérience of God as a Distinct Reality, as the 
 Suprême Subject, as Self-Conscious Spirit. Nor, even in the 
 religious life, is God so apprehended except on occasion of and 
 in contrast to other, différent, lesser realities. Yet even outside 
 such specifically religious expériences, in ail the larger human 
 appréhensions and endeavours, wheresoever they become entirely 
 serious and fully conscious of their own essential presuppositions 
 and necessary ideals, there is found to exist, ineradicably, the 
 sensé of a More-than-merely-subjective, whether individually 
 or even generally human, without which those larger appré- 
 hensions and endeavours would lose ail ultimate worth and 
 justification* 
 
 This More-than-merely-subjective was admirably brought out, 
 as regards Ethics, by Fichte in i8oo. '* Let us suppose you go 
 and sow seed in a field : so much as this may be reckoned as 
 your own act alone. But you no doubt sow, not simply to sow, 
 but that your seed may germinate and may bear fruit. Thc 
 latter, the future harvest — ^howcvcr much your sowing may bc 
 
I 
 
 RELIGION AND REALITY 53 
 
 a necessary condition for it — is no more your action, but the 
 aim of your action» We hâve hère two things, and not one/' 
 ** Now in ail your actions which show visibly in the world of 
 sensé, you always reckon in this way upon two things : — ^upon a 
 first thing, which is solely produced by yourself, and upon a 
 second thing, which exists and which acts entirely independently 
 of yourself, and is simply known to you, — ^an eternal Order of 
 Nature/' And thus too in Ethics. *' If a man hère calls the law 
 by which a spécial conséquence necessarily follows from any 
 particular détermination of his will, an Order, and (in con- 
 tradistinction from the Order of Nature), a Moral or Intelligible 
 Order, whence a Moral or Intelligible Cohérence, or System, 
 or World, would arise ; such a man would not, by this procédure, 
 be placing the Moral Order within the finite moral beings them- 
 selves, but outside of [in distinction from] them ; he would 
 thus assume something in addition to thèse beings/' ** Now 
 hère is, according to me, the place of Religious Faith, — ^here, in 
 this necessary thinking and demanding of an Intelligible Order, 
 Law, Arrangement, or whatever else you may care to call it, 
 by which ail genuine morality, the interior purity of the heart, 
 has necessary conséquences/* ^ But the late Professor Windel- 
 band, in his Praeîudien (1903 and since), and Professor Eucken, 
 in his Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion (1904 and since), hâve 
 traced out in much détail precisely similar necessitations in the 
 Theory of Knowledge and in Logic, and again in -^thetics, where 
 the worlds of the trans-subjectively True and the trans-sub- 
 jectively Beautiful are as truly necessary presuppositions as is a 
 world of the trans-subjectively Good a necessary presupposition 
 in Ethics, And the late Professor Siegwart and Professor Volkelt 
 hâve most thoroughly laid bare the ever-present working of this 
 trans-subjective intimation and faith in Logic and the Theory of 
 Knowledge» 
 
 Now even with thèse three more-than-simply-subjective 
 worlds we hâve not, it is true, yet reached the Self-conscious 
 Spirit experienced by Religion» But we hâve thus established 
 important points» Man's gênerai, human expérience (whereso- 
 ever it is sufficiently wide, deep and earnest, sufficiently trustful 
 of whatever may turn out to be its necessary pre-requisites, 
 * Sàmmtliche Werke, vol» v., pp. 388, 389, 392, 394* 
 
54 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 and sufficiently pressed and analysed) reveals intimations and 
 orders of more than merely human origin^ truth and range ♦ 
 Man's gênerai^ human expérience reveals this Trans-Subjective, 
 Superhuman World in at least three spécifie forms, on three 
 différent sides of his expérience» And whether or not there be 
 still another legitimate form and side of human expérience^ a 
 fourth révélation of the Trans-Subjective, Superhuman World 
 which can bring further light and support to those three, it is 
 certain that, having got as far as those three révélations, it is 
 exceedingly difîicult for men at large to retain a vivid faith in 
 those three worlds, and yet deliberately to reject the révélation 
 of Self-conscious Spirit offered to them by Religion* True, the 
 same Fichte, continuously so sure of the reality and more than 
 human character of the Moral World, tells us, in 1798 and 1800, 
 that '* this faith is faith full and entire» That living and active 
 Moral Order is itself God ; we do not require and we cannot 
 apprehend any other, There is no ground in reason for going 
 beyond such a Moral Cosmic Order, and, by means of a con- 
 clusion from the effect to the cause, to assume, in addition, a 
 Particular Being as this cause/' ^ But then we are left thus at the 
 surely strange, highly abstract, more or less mythical, conception 
 of '* an active Ordering/' ^ We are thus given an Order which 
 is not a mère Orderedriess, in which case God and world would 
 be one, and there would be no God ; but an Order which is an 
 active Ordering, which is, in so far, distinct from the world it 
 orders ; and yet an Ordering which neither is, nor implies, an 
 Orderer* But it is surely entirely doubtful (even apart from 
 what the complète, hence also especially the religious, expérience 
 of mankind may convey and require) whether such a strange 
 intermezzo of a conception is, in the long run, possible for the 
 human mind» For we hâve hère an active Ordering of a gigantic 
 conflict and confusion, according to abiding, more than human, 
 standards of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, standards not made 
 by, yet recognisable by, the human spirit ; and nevertheless this 
 Ordering and thèse standards are not to be the effects of Self- 
 conscious Spirit, and are not to be apprehended by such a spirit. 
 Insistence upon this intermezzo, as the ultimate analysis of 
 man's entire legitimate expérience, becomes indeed something 
 » Sâmmtliche Werke, vol» v., p. i86» » Ibid*, p. 382. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 55 
 
 doctrinaire and contradicts the gênerai method and temper which 
 hâve led the mind to the point attained, if we will maintain it 
 even after we hâve been brought face to face with the massive, 
 varied, persistent witness of the religions sensé and life* For 
 only if we show how and why the logical, the aesthetic and the 
 ethical life can alone be trusted and not the religions life also, 
 where it supplies what those three lives ail severally seek, can 
 we consistently accept the deep-lying testimony of the logical, 
 aesthetic and ethical lives, and, nevertheless, refuse or explain 
 away the central witness of the religions life* Fichte indeed bids 
 us ** cease to listen to the demands of an empty System/* and to 
 beware lest, by our hypothesis of a Personal God, we make the 
 first of ail objective cognitions, the most certain of ail certainties, 
 to dépend upon ** ingénions pleadings (Klûgelei).** ^ Yet the 
 now immensely abundant testimony of Religion lies before us as 
 a warning that Fichte hère confounded philosophical thinking 
 and the gênerai idea of religiousness with the specifically religions 
 expériences themselves. Theological déductions and spécula- 
 tions hâve indeed at times articulated or analysed, in ** ingénions " 
 ways, the deepest and most délicate expériences of living religion. 
 Yet thèse expériences themselves always présent their object 
 as overflowingly existent ; and, in proportion as spirituality 
 becomes more conscious of its own requirements and more 
 sensitively discriminating, this object is apprehended as perfect 
 Self-conscious Spirit, as very Source of ail existence and reality. 
 We can indeed argue against Religion, as mistaken in so doing; 
 but that Religion actually does so, and this, not in the form of 
 deductive reasoning, but in that of intuitive expérience, cannot 
 seriously be denied. 
 
 And this Religions Expérience is, in fact, interwoven, from first 
 to last, with the sensé of Révélation and the sensé of Miracle, 
 
 2. As to Révélation, it is remarkable that men*s latter-day 
 pre-occupation with the apparent imperfections in the content 
 of the varions religions has frequently blinded them to the 
 excellence of the form, the vehicle of ail Religion* For the char- 
 acteristic form of ail Religion is Révélation ; and the varions 
 activities and achievements of human life, wheresoever thèse 
 are sufficiently deep to awaken and to hold the entire man and 
 » SàmmtUche Wêrke, vol* v., p« 180. 
 
56 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 to lead him to some certitude, ail possess, in various degrees 
 and ways, something revelational about ûitra} 
 
 It is true, of course, that the naif Realism or Objectivism of 
 classical and medixval times (so little conscious, upon the whole, 
 of the always présent, and often large, contribution furnished 
 by the apprehending human Subject to this subject's appré- 
 hensions of the Object) led, by the excess of every reaction, 
 to a sometimes equally one-sided Idealism or Subjectivism, in 
 which the entire outer and inner world becomes the sheer pro- 
 jection, or at least the purely subjective élaboration, by mankind, 
 into orders of beauty, truth and goodness, of what is intrinsically 
 (or what at least is found by us analytically to be) a sheer caput 
 mortuwn — ^just so much dead matter or wild flux and chaotic 
 impulsions» Yet it is equally true that the newer sciences of 
 Biology, Sociology and History are now fast bringing us to a third 
 stage where truth and life will more and more evidently be found 
 to consist in the fullest and most manifold interaction between 
 Subject and Object — ^and this in increasing degrees, according to 
 the increase in the importance of the subject-matter experienced 
 or studied. And everywhere in thèse newer sciences there is a 
 sensé of how much there is to get, how rich and self-communi- 
 cative is ail reality, to those who are sufficiently detached from 
 their own petty subjectivisms» A keen yet révèrent study of the 
 Given appears hère, — ^by a Darwin, be it of but the earth-worm, 
 and by a Wilken, be it of but the scribblings on ancient potsherds, 
 ( And then the greater Givennesses are found in those vast Intelligible 
 } Orders, which persistently show themselves anew, wheresoever 
 human expérience is sufi&ciently pressed, and which so entranced 
 the great minds of a Kant and of a Fichte, In ail thèse cases we 
 hâve an absorption of the Subject in the Object, and a response 
 — ^an assuredly graduai, ever only partial, yet a very real, self- 
 revelation — of the Object to the Subject. In the cases of thèse 
 Intelligible Orders we hâve already something more or less 
 religious. Indeed the sensé of Givenness, of Prevenience, of a 
 Grâce, of something transcendent having in part become Im- 
 manent to our human world as a Fact within this factual world, 
 and of this Fact as alone rendering even possible that sensé of 
 
 ^ » S^t Mr. Clcment C. J. Wcbb's excellent exposition in Problems in the Relations 
 ^1 bttween God and Mon (19x1), pp. 28 ff. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 57 
 
 Givenness' — ^all thèse expériences are already présent in thc ap- 
 préhension and affirmation of those Intelligible Orders as truly 
 extant. And yet it is only the specifically religious expérience 
 which gives us Révélation at its fullest, not only as to Révélation *s 
 content but also as to Révélation *s forna* ForReligion alone brings 
 the vivid révélation of Spirit other than the human* — z Spirit so 
 perfect and so richly real as Itself to be the ultimate, overflowingly 
 self-conscious cause of man's very capacity for apprehending lu 
 Nevertheless, such a Self-manifestation of Perfect Spirit, once 
 found and accepted, gives a base, a setting and a crown to ail 
 those other self-manifestations of the lesser realities — a, base, 
 a setting and a crown which their graduated séries, taken as a 
 whole, so greatly requires and which indeed it dimly and semi- 
 consciously prépares yet cannot itself effectuâtes And this samc 
 Self-manifestation of Spirit and the human spirit *s response to 
 It, render superfiuous ail attempts, always more or less hopeless, 
 to construct God à priori, or even to demonstrate Him, from 
 the facts of nature and of human life, by any single, deductive 
 argument of a strictly constraining force» Because Spirit, God, 
 Works in our midst and in our depths, we can and we do know 
 Him ; because God has been the first to condescend to us and 
 to love us, can we arise and love Him in return. ** Do you wake ^ ** 
 asks St. Bernard. ** Well, He too is awake. If you arise in the 
 night time, if you anticipate to your utmost your earliest awaking, 
 you will already find Him waking — ^you will never anticipate His 
 own awakeness. In such an inter course you will always be rash 
 if you attribute any priority, any prédominant share to yourself ; 
 for He loves both more than you love, and before you love at ail/* ^ 
 The prevenience of God becomes thus the crown and final 
 guarantee of ail the other, minor preveniences which variously 
 bring us the materials and occasions for our other kinds of 
 knowledge and conviction — ^from the crystal and the plant on to 
 the animal and man* 
 
 3» The expérience of Miracle, when discriminated in the 
 higher religions and by maturely spiritual soûls, appears to be 
 composed, in its essence, of three, yet only of three, vivid, inter- 
 dependent appréhensions* There is the vivid appréhension of 
 something unique being experienced or produced, hic et nunc, 
 1 Sermons on the Canticle of Cantides, Ixix. 8. 
 
58 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 in this particular experiencing souL There is the vivid appré- 
 hension that this unique expérience cornes from the One Divine 
 Spirit to this particular human spirit- And there is the vivid 
 appréhension that this effect of Spirit upon spirit is not restricted 
 to the human spirit alone, but that the Spirit can affect, and 
 in any particular instance is actually affecting, in more or less 
 striking, most real ways, the very body and its psychical, indeed 
 evcn its physical conditions and environment, and the visible 
 exterior conditions and history of mankind. Ail our previous 
 considérations hâve prepared us thus to conceive Reality as, 
 in proportion to its depth, an ever nearer and nearer approach 
 to the Concrète Universal, to the unique embodiment of a 
 universally valuable type ; to discover, in this tendency, through- 
 out the successive stages of realities, to ever increasing typical 
 uniqueness, the increasingly large opération of the actually 
 extant Concrète Universal, Grod ; and to recognise, as we retrace 
 thèse stages, that neither does God's Spirit live ail aloof from 
 man's spirit, nor does man's spirit live ail aloof from man's body 
 or from this physical body's physical environment» On the 
 contrary, throughout reality, the greater works in and with and 
 through the lesser, affecting and transforming this lesser in 
 various striking degrees and ways, To at least this degree in 
 thèse ways does Miracle, and the belief in Miracle, thoroughly 
 belong to the permanent expérience of mankind, and to the 
 adéquate analysis of this expérience. Grave difficulties arise only 
 when thèse three central expériences are interpreted as meaning 
 that the spiritual or psychical or physical effects of Miracle 
 constitute direct breaches within (as it were) the phénoménal 
 rind and level of natural reality — ^breaches which can be strictly 
 demonstrated to be such by Natural Science itself* This opinion, 
 if pressed, requires of Natural Science (whose subject-matter 
 is essentially limited to that level and that constituent of reality 
 or appearance where strict continuity or répétitive law can be 
 found or applied) to discover its object in what suspends or 
 contradicts thèse characteristics, and hence is outside its spécial 
 range and cognisance* Where ver such suspension or contradic- 
 tion could be discovered. Science would hâve nothing to work 
 upon, and could only wait till it again found something more or 
 less coatinuous or répétitive» 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 59 
 
 III 
 
 It is doubtless the practical difïiculties which, more largely 
 than ail the other objections put together, explain the doctrinaire 
 aloofness or the angry set-purpose to be found extant and opera- 
 tive, more or less in ail times and places, against Religion, as soon 
 as Religion appears in its fuU spécifie and articulate form — 
 i.e* as a conviction and claim of the Superhuman. For as men 
 look back into the past, or even carry the effects of the past within 
 their very blood, they perceive or feel that, if not Religion in its 
 roots, yet at least the various théologies and the various sects 
 and churches hâve, in ail sorts of times and places, ways and 
 degrees, protected and perpetuated, or occasioned and increased, 
 impoverishments, divisions, oppressions, obvious or obscure, 
 yet very real, within men 's inner lives, or as between man and 
 man, or between one group of men and other groups. And in 
 ail such cases the sanction or stimulus to such grave inhibitions 
 or complications appear to hâve sprung precisely from the sup- 
 posed superhuman character of some révélation, command or 
 institution. Such a work as Andrew White's History of the 
 Warfare of Science and Theoîogy (1903) shows, in full détail, 
 how largely the Science, Philosophy, Medicine, Politics, Life 
 generally, which we ail practise or profit by, hâve been established 
 at the price of conflict, more or less costly, with such Superhuman 
 Claims* Hence we are bound to show how and why those blights 
 or deadlocks were not produced by the Superhuman Claims as 
 such, and indeed how and why a Superhuman Conviction, rightly 
 understood and wisely practised, remains our sole ultimate 
 guarantee against Fanaticism on the one hand and Scepticism on 
 the other» 
 
 I. It is plain, for one thing, that this whole practical question 
 is greatly complicated by the fact that (even more than the other 
 circles of the higher human endeavours, — Science, Art, Ethics) 
 Religion always brings with it. Religion indeed always more or 
 less requires, such things as association, organisation, institutions. 
 Religious Institutions indeed habitually insist upon two most 
 predous prindples and practices which the other, non-religious, 
 drcles do not and cannot thus vividly apprehend and directly 
 
6o RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 inculcatc ; yet thèse same Institutions also tend to enforce thèse 
 principles and practices by means which are accountable for 
 certainly the greater amount of the bittemess felt by so many 
 serious, clean-lived men against those very prindples and 
 practices themselves, 
 
 Such Institutions^ then, most rightly maintain the Superhuman 
 Claim as essential to Religion ; they emphasise Religion as essen- 
 tially Révélation, as man*s deepest expérience of the ultimate 
 Reality through the action of that Reality Itself, — a Reality 
 which both underlies and crowns ail our other, lesser strivings 
 and givennesses. And such Institutions, again, most rightly 
 emphasise the great différence in amount, purity, and worth of 
 the spiritual truth and life to be found even within the sincerest 
 and most entirely positive convictions and practices of the several 
 religions of mankind»^ Hère we hâve two immense services 
 rendered by the higher Religious Institutions to the abiding 
 truths, to the ultimate basis of man's worth ; services absolutely 
 without serious parallel, as to their dcpth and range, in any 
 other quarter, 
 
 Yet that superhuman, revelational Religion has, in the rough 
 and tumble of life, and by and for the average institutionalist, 
 been too often conceived as though arising in vacuo, and hence 
 as though able, even in the long run, to dispense with, or to 
 starve, the other activities and necessities of man ; or, again, 
 as though not only Religion but Theology were a divine com- 
 munication^ — ^as though God Himself communicated intrinsically 
 adéquate, mathematically précise formulations of Religion, And 
 thus we get a starving of ail that is not directly religious in man 
 or an arrest of theological improvement. We get an insistence 
 upon a direct and décisive jurisdiction, by a deductive theology 
 and institutional administration, over the results of (indeed over 
 the very methods and necessities spécifie to) man 's other activities 
 and appréhensions, in Science and .fcthetics, in Historical Re- 
 search, Politics and Ethics, and in Philosophy, And in proportion 
 as this is actually effected. Religion becomes bereft of the material, 
 the friction, the witnesses so essential to the health and fruitful- 
 ness of man in gênerai and of Religion in particular. The material 
 
 ^ Sec, as to this second point, the admirable discriminations of J» N. Farquhar 
 in The Crown of Hinduism (191 5), pp. 26-33. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 6i 
 
 is lost ; for man's full other expériences, which, pressed, yield 
 so firm a foundation for spécifie Religion, are hère prevented 
 from being thus full and from being thus pressed, The friction 
 between Religion and Ethics, and between Theology and Science 
 and Philosophy, so necessary to bring out the fullest powers of 
 each and the deep underlying mutual need which in the living 
 man, each has of ail the others, is eliminated ; since ail thèse 
 several activities, except that of the officiai Theology, hâve, 
 previous to ail possibility of wholesome clashing, been carefully 
 deprived of ail their spécifie weapons of attack and of defence. 
 And the witnesses for religion disappear ; for what is a witness 
 who has, by forcible suppressions or modifications of his 
 testimony, been rendered ** safe ** beforehand ^ 
 
 And again, as to ail the religions of mankind other than their 
 own, such great Institutions tend, in their average représentatives 
 and disciples, to speak and act as though it were Indifferentism 
 ever to discover some religious truth and life as présent in such 
 other religions, in however various degrees and ways, The 
 whole conception of varyingly intense and varyingly precious 
 feelings after God ; of stages of growth and of light ; of more 
 or less error and corruption mixed with more or less of truth 
 and of health ; of the test and measure of such truth and health 
 lying indeed within the deepest practice and the fundamental 
 convictions of the most richly and most specifically religious of 
 the great religious bodies — ^with thèse as most fully explicating 
 whilst exceeding the previous illuminations and gropings of 
 man's soûl : such a conception is clearly difficult to every fully 
 organised Religious Institution. 
 
 2. The ail-important facts hère are, however, that no Orthodoxy 
 explicitly dénies such a gênerai position ; and that no Orthodoxy 
 achieves its own deepest function except it explicitly admits and 
 genially practises this its very genuine implication. And is it 
 really so difficult, precisely for men so rightly concentrated 
 upon the reality of God and of His operativeness throughout 
 the world at large, and especially throughout the world of soûls, 
 to find thus His traces, though doubtless in very différent degrees 
 of cleamess and of worth, even where their possessors are not 
 awake to their source, or even where they turn angrily against 
 the bcarcrs of a fuller message ^ Unless the whole Christian 
 
62 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 Church is wrong in insisting upon the Old Testament as thc 
 Word of God, unless St. Paul was wrong in preaching God to 
 the heathen Athenians as ** Him Whom they had ignorantly 
 worshipped/* and unless our Lord Himself was wrong in coming, 
 ** not to be ministered to, but to minister/' some such attitude 
 cannot but be the right one, however difficult to our poor human 
 passions it may persistently remain. 
 
 Even amongst the rigorist Primitive Christians and amongst 
 harsh Mediaeval Churchmen, such mild and comprehensive 
 convictions and characters hâve as certainly occurred as the 
 fierce feelings and persecuting proceedings of others amongst 
 their contemporaries. And it would clearly be utterly a priori 
 and arbitrary to construe thèse convictions and characters as 
 springing from, or as leading to, indifférence. The Church 
 Father Lactantius and the Popes St. Gregory the Great and 
 Alexander II. were no less certain of, and no less zealous for, 
 Superhuman ReHgion — ^for the suprême truth of Christianity 
 and of Catholicism, than were the Church Father St. Augustine 
 or the Popes St. Pius V. and Paul IV. But the former combined, 
 with this their all-pervading and all-crowning faith, a keen sensé 
 for the natural virtues, as the inviolable pre-requisites, con- 
 comitants and conséquences of the Supematural Life ; for the 
 éléments of truth and goodness présent in ail men and in ail 
 religions ; for the essentially free character of the act and habit 
 of faith ; and for the irreplaceable persuasiveness of love ; 
 whereas the latter were ail but exclusively engrossed in thc 
 spcdfically religious virtues, in the completest religion, in this 
 religion *s scholastic and juridical formulation, and in the influ- 
 ence and utility of pressure, fear, commands, obédience. But 
 both groups, in their several ways, are equally discriminative, 
 equally zealous, equally superhuman. 
 
 3. The dispositions and acts of the mild and comprehensive 
 group appear now to be as true and as wise as ever, and to require 
 no more than certain further discriminations. We religious men 
 will hâve to develop, as part of our religion, the ceaseless sensé 
 of its requiring the nidus, materials, stimulant, discipline, of 
 the other God-given, non-religious activities, duties, ideals of 
 man, from his physical and psychical necessities up to his 
 xsthetic, political and philosophical aspirations. The autonomy. 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 63 
 
 compétition, and criticism of the other centres of life will hâve 
 thus to become welcome to religion for the sake of religion itself. 
 We religious men again will hâve to develop, as part of our 
 religion, a sensé, not simply of the error and evil, but also of the 
 truth and the good, in any and every man^s religion ♦ We will 
 hâve to realise, with Cardinal John de Lugo, S J, (who died in 
 1660), that the members of the various Christian sects, of the 
 Jewish and Mohammedan communions, and of the non-Christian 
 philosophies, who achieved and achieve their salvation, did and 
 do so in gênerai simply by God^s grâce aiding their good faith 
 instinctively to concentrate itself upon, and to practise, those 
 éléments in the cultus and teaching of their respective sect, 
 communion or philosophy, which are true and good and origin- 
 ally revealed by God»^ And, finally, we religious men, especially 
 we Catholic Christians, will indeed never drop the noble truth 
 and idéal of a universal unity of cultus and belief, of one single 
 world-wide Church, but we will conceive this our deathless 
 faith in religious unity as being solidly réalisable only if we 
 are able and glad to recognise the rudimentary, fragmentary, 
 relative, paedagogic truth and worth in religions other than 
 our own, — a worth which, as regards at least Judaism and 
 Hellenism, the Roman Church has never ceased to practise and 
 to proclaim. 
 
 To conclude» 
 
 We hâve found reason to hold that ail actually lived Religion 
 is, in proportion to the depth and delicacy of its spirituality, 
 always simultaneously conscious of two closely interconnected 
 things : the more than human reality of the Object of its expérience, 
 which Object indeed Itself reveals Itself in, and makes real, this 
 expérience, and the ahiding différence between even this its présent 
 expérience and the great Reality thus experienced and revealed. 
 And, in this twin consciousness, living Religion is like every 
 other truly live appréhension* No true scientist, artist, philo- 
 sopher, no moral striver, but finds himself, at his best and deepest 
 moments, with the double sensé that some abiding, trans- 
 subjective, other-than-human or even more-than-human reality, 
 or force, or law, is manifesting itself in his expériences ; and yet 
 that thèse very expériences, and still more his reasoned abstracts 
 ' De Fide, Disputatio xix,. Nos. 7, 10 ; xx.. Nos. 107, 194. 
 
64 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 of them, give but a very incomplète, ever imperfect, conception 
 ^f those trans-subjective realities» 
 
 And now let us suppose that ail such conviction of a real 
 contact with Superhuman Reality were to be lost by humanity 
 at large ; and that neither gênerai life, in its deepest necessities, 
 nor the historical religions, in their spécial answers, would any 
 longer be admitted as witnesses to anything but just so much 
 sheer projection of merely human, although racial, fancies. 
 Thus, the spiritual deeps, beckoning us on to their ever further, 
 never exhaustible, exploration, and the spiritual atmosphère, 
 in and through which mankind has ever, with varying degrees 
 of consciousness as to this médium, perceived things finite, 
 would go» And in lieu of Mysterious Reality, to be ever more 
 closely pressed and more deeply penetrated, we should be 
 environed by an importunate mystification which, surely, men 
 would attempt to eliminate at any and every cost» Such men, 
 bereft of ail atmosphère, such ** men of the moon,** would, of 
 necessity, end by being sure that they knew ail there is to know, 
 or, at least, that they or their fellow-men could thus know ail 
 there is to know : hence they would represent the very acme of 
 intolérance. For, in truth, abstractions of his own mind and 
 projections of his own wishes, if and where taken by man to be 
 in very deed no more than himself, and to correspond to nothing 
 outside of or higher than himself, will, in the long run, be in- 
 capable of satisfying man ; and hence they will be unable to 
 check his passions, good or eviL The Fanaticism which in man, 
 as long as he is man, will always lurk within the folds of his 
 émotions, and which in religious men springs, not from their 
 superhuman belief as such, but from their ignorance or mis- 
 understanding of certain pre-requisites and conditions essential 
 to the healthy and fruitful working of Superhuman Religion 
 (that gift and act and habit, so free and yet so firm, within poor 
 yet rich, complex, many-levelled man) — ^will, in such a supposed 
 attempt at a purely immanental life, no doubt at first (if it hâve 
 no other nian*s supernatural belief to tilt against) roam about 
 loose and restless. But Fanaticism, in such a case, would soon 
 attach itself to some sheer Secularism — ^to what such a pure 
 Immanentist would at j&rst admit to be merely such ; it would 
 nesct attempt solemnly to proclaim and to believe such a 
 
RELIGION AND REALITY 65 
 
 Sccularism to be somehow great or cven unique, and to enforce 
 it as such ; and then, unless simple assent to the Trans- 
 Subjective Intimations returned, even this kind and degree of 
 conviction and Fanaticism would be succeeded by a Scepticism, 
 more sincère but more destructive than even this Secularism 
 itself» 
 
 Are cultivated West Europeans really coming, for good and 
 ail, to such a condition of alternate or of simultaneous irréligions 
 fanaticism and utter scepticism $* Surely, no. For if religions 
 faith and hope and love are free gifts of God and free virtues 
 of man, and if they are, in some respects, specially difïicult for 
 such Europeans, yet the présent keenness of irritation, amongst 
 so many of thèse men, against the very terms of Transcendencc 
 and the Superhuman, is demonstrably, in great part, a quite 
 understandable reaction against still widely prévalent ways of 
 conceiving and of applying (Le. of enfordng) the Superhuman 
 and Religion ♦ The présence and pressure of the motives for 
 General Religion, and the answering évidences and aids of 
 Spécifie, Characteristic Religion (as thèse latter culminate, for 
 us Europeans, in the Jewish-Christian Révélation and Spiritual 
 Society) remain, on and on, too strongly rooted in the very 
 nature and necessities of the spiritual world which environs and 
 pénétrâtes us ail, for them not, more or less continuously, to 
 keep or to raise us above such irritation and reactions against the 
 Supernatural as such. And once a man is thus free from a 
 specially dangerous, because inverted and hence unnoticed, 
 dependence upon the faults and excesses of others, he will be 
 able to find, to love and to practise (by means of and within 
 the great Historical Institutions) deep Superhuman Religion, and 
 this without repelling other soûls, where thèse are sincère and 
 serions in their own degree and kind. 
 
 Some years ago alarm grew rife conceming the safety of 
 Winchester Cathedral, discovered to be undermined by water- 
 courses ; and expert divers, in fuU diving dress, plunged down 
 through the springs to the swamps and sands — ^the foundations 
 so daringly accepted by the original builders of the majestic 
 édifice. The divers found the great oaken beams, as laid by those 
 first builders upon those shifting natural foundations, still, 
 for the most part, serviceably sound. Yet some of thèse beams 
 
66 RELIGION AND REALITY 
 
 required replacing ; and the guardian architects decided to 
 replace them ail by great concrète piers. We too, in this study, 
 hâve been probing foundations — ^those of Religion. But hère we 
 hâve found the foundations to consist of rock — ^two inter- 
 dependent, interclamped rock-masses : the gênerai, dim and 
 dumb Religiosity — the more or less slumbering sensé and need 
 of the Abiding and Eternal; and the concrète, précise and 
 Personal Religion^ — the clear answer to that confused asking, 
 and, with this answer, the now keen articulation of that dim 
 demanda And both that gênerai dull sensé and this spécial 
 definite presentment were found by us in actual life,' — ^found 
 by us there as Givennesses of an evidential, revelational, an other- 
 than-human, a more-than-human quality* Yet hère also, in our 
 own subject-matter, as there in the case of the Cathedral, some 
 rénovation or re-arrangement of the structure reared more or less 
 directly upon the ancient and abiding foundations appeared to be 
 demanded. Nevertheless in this, the religious case, the désirable 
 repairs turned out to consist essentially, not in preventing shift- 
 ing, swampy foundations from spreading their sapping influence 
 upwards, but, on the contrary, in eliminating, from the various 
 stages of builders' work reared upon the sound and solid rock- 
 foundations, whatsoever may impede those stages from full 
 réception of this soundness and solidity. And we found the 
 dispositions necessary for the unhampered spreading through- 
 out the whole of life of the soundness résident in the deepest 
 roots — ^in Superhuman Religion, to be three : the soberly auto- 
 nomous development of the several non-religious faculties and 
 of the non-religious associations of man ; the ready récognition, 
 by any one religion, of éléments of worth variously présent in the 
 other religions, together with the careful avoidance of ail attempts 
 at forced conformity ; and a careful respect for the methods 
 intrinsic to history and philosophy, even where thèse analyse 
 or théorise the documents and expériences of rehgion itself. 
 Thus will ail men of good faith be laid open to the appeal, so 
 full of aid to the best that is in them, of Superhuman Religion 
 in its profound life and reality. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 67 
 
 PROGRESS IN RELIGION^ 
 
 The difficulties are deep and délicate which confront any man 
 at ail well acquainted with the fuller significance of Religion and 
 of Progress, who attempts clearly and shortly to describe or 
 define the ultimate relations between thèse two sets of fact and 
 conviction, It is plain that Religion is the deeper and richer 
 of the two terms ; and that we hâve hère, above ail, to attempt 
 to fathom the chief éléments and forces of Religion as such, 
 and then to see whether Progress is really traceable in Religion 
 at alL And again it is clear that strongly religious soûls will, 
 as such, hold that Religion answers to, and is occasioned by, the 
 action, within our human life and needs, of great, abiding, living 
 non-human Realities ; and yet, if such soûls are at ail experienced 
 and sincère, they will also admit — ^as possibly the most baffling 
 of facts — that the human individuals, families, races, are relatively 
 rare in whom this sensé and need of Religion is strongly, sen- 
 sitively active. Thus the religion of most men will either ail 
 but complctely wither or vanish beforc the invasion of other 
 great facts and interests of human life — Economies or Politics 
 or Ethics, or again. Science, Art, Philosophy ; or it will, more 
 frequently, become largely assimilated, in its conception, valua- 
 tion, and practice, to the quite distinct, and often subtly différent, 
 conceptions, valuations, and practices pertaining to such of 
 thèse other ranges and levcls of human life as happen herc to 
 bc vigorously active. And such assimilations are, of course, 
 effected with a particular Philosophy or Ethic, mostly some 
 passing fashion of the day, which does not reach the deepest laws 
 and standards even of its own domain, and which, if taken as 
 Religion, will gravely numb and mar the power and character 
 
 * An Address to the Summer School Meeting at Woodbroke (Birmingham), 
 19x6. Reprinted from Progress and History, ecSted by F. S. Marvin, Oxford 
 University Press, 1916. 
 H* 
 
68 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 of such rcligious perception as may still remain in this particular 
 souL 
 
 I will, then, first attempt some discriminations in certain 
 fundamental questions concerning the functioning of our minds, 
 feelings, wills» I will next attempt short, vivid descriptions of 
 the chief stages in the Jewish and Christian Religions, with a 
 view to tracing hère what may concern their progress ; and will 
 very shortly illustrate the main results attained bythe corres- 
 ponding peculiarities of Confudanism, Buddhism, and Moham- 
 medanism* And I will finally strive to elucidate and to estimate, 
 as clearly as possible, the main facts in past and présent Religion 
 which concern the question of religious ** Progressiveness/' 
 
 I begin with insisting upon seven discriminations which, 
 cven only forty years ago, would hâve appeared largely pre- 
 posterous to the then fashionable philosophy. 
 
 First, then, our Knowledge is always wider and deeper than 
 is our Science. I know my mother, I know my dog, I know my 
 favourite rose-tree ; and this, although I am quite ignorant of 
 the anatomical différences between woman and man ; of the 
 psychological limits between dog and human being ; or of the 
 natural or artificial botanical order to which my rose-plant 
 belongs. Any kind or degree of consciousness on my part as 
 to thèse three realities is a knowledge of their content. ** Know- 
 ledge is not simply the réduction of phenomena to law and their 
 resolution into abstract éléments ; since thus the unknowable 
 would be found well within the facts of expérience itself, in so 
 far as thèse possess a concrète character which refuses translation 
 into abstract relations.** So Professor Aliotta urges with 
 unanswerable truth.' 
 
 And next, this spontaneous awareness of other realities by 
 myself, the reality Man, contains always, from the first, both 
 matter and form, and sensé, reason, feeling, volition, ail more or 
 less in action. Sir Henry Jones insists finely : ** The différence 
 between the primary and elementary data of thought on the onc 
 ^^ > The liealistic Reaction against Science, Engl. tr. 1914, pp. 6, 7. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 69 
 
 hand, and the highest forms of systcraatised knowlcdgc on the 
 other, is no différence in kind, analogous to a mère particular 
 and a mère universal ; but it is a différence of articulation/' ^ 
 
 Thirdly, direct, unchallengeable Expérience is always only 
 expérience of a particular moment ; only by means of Thought, 
 and trust in Thought, can such Expérience be extended, com- 
 municated, utilised. The sceptic, to be at ail effective, practises 
 this trust as really as does his opponent, Thought, takeii apart 
 from Expérience, is indeed artificial and arid ; but Expérience 
 without Thought, is largely an orderless flux. Philosophers as 
 différent as the Neo-Positivist Mach and the Intuitionist Bergson, 
 do indeed attempt to construct Systems composed solely of direct 
 Expérience and pure Intuition ; and, at the same time, almost 
 ceaselessly insist upon the sheer novelty, the utter unexpected- 
 ness of ail direct Expérience, and the entire artificiality of the 
 constructions of Thought — constructions which alone adulterate 
 our perceptions of reality with the non-realities répétition, 
 uniformity, foreseeableness» Yet the amazing success of the 
 application of such constructions to actual Nature stares us ail 
 in the face. ** It is indeed strange,'* if that contention be right, 
 ** that facts behave as if they too had a turn for mathematics/* 
 Assuredly ** if thought, with its durable and cohérent structure, 
 were not the reflection of some order of stable relations in 
 the nature of things, it would be worthless as an organ of 
 life/'« 
 
 Fourthly, both Space and Time are indeed essential con- 
 stituées of ail our perceptions, thoughts, actions, at least in this 
 life. Yet Time is perhaps the more real, and assuredly the richer, 
 constituent of the two. But this rich reality appHes only to 
 Concrète or Filled Time, Duration, in which our expériences, 
 although always more or less successive, interpenetrate each 
 other in various degrees and ways, and are thus more or less 
 simultaneous. An absolutely even flow of equal, mutually 
 exclusive moments, on the contrary, exists only for our theoretical 
 thinking, in Abstract, Empty, or Clock time. Already, in 1886, 
 Professor James Ward wrote : ** In time, conceived as physical, 
 thcre is no trace of intensity ; in time, as psychically experienced, 
 
 * A Cntical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze, 1895, P» i04» 
 » Alxotta, op. cit,f pp. 89, 187. 
 
70 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 duration is primarily an intensive magnitude/' ^ And in 1889 
 Professer Bergson, in his Essai sur les Données Immédiates de la 
 Conscience, gave us exquisite descriptions of time as we really 
 expérience it, of ** duration strictly speaking/' which ** does not 
 possess moments that are identical or exterior to each other/* ^ 
 Thus ail our real soûl life, in proportion to its depth, moves in 
 Partial Simultaneity ; indeed it apprehends, requires and rests, 
 at its deepest, in an overflowingly rich Pure Simultaneity» 
 
 Fifthly, Man is Body as well as Soûl, and the two are closely 
 interrelated. The sensible perception of objects, however humble, 
 is always necessary for the beginning, and (in the long run) 
 for the persistence and growth, of the more spiritual appré- 
 hensions of man, Hence Historical Persons and Happenings, 
 Institutions, affording Sensible Acts and Contacts, and Social 
 Corporations, each différent according to the différent ranges and 
 levels of life, can hardly fail to be of importance for man's full 
 awakening — even ethical and spirituaL Prof essor Ernst Troeltsch, 
 so frec from natural préjudice in favour of such a Sense-and- 
 Spirit position, has become perhaps the most adéquate exponent 
 of this great fact of life, which is ever in such danger of evaporation 
 amidst the intellectual and leading minority of men, 
 
 Sixthly, the cultivated modem man is still largely arrestcd 
 and stunted by the spell of Descartes, with his insistence upon 
 immédiate unity of outlook and perfect clearness of idea, as the 
 sole, uni versai tests, indeed constituents, of truth, ** I judged 
 that I could take for my gênerai rule that the things which we 
 conceive very clearly and very distinctly are ail true *' — ^these 
 and thèse alone.^ Thus thenceforth Mathematics and Mechanics 
 hâve generally been held to be the only full and typical sciences, 
 and human knowledge to be co-extensive with such sciences 
 alone, Yet Biology and Psychology now rightly claim to be 
 sciences, each with its own spécial methods and tests distinct 
 from those of Mathematics and Mechanics, Indeed, the wisest 
 and most fruitful philosophy is now coming to see that ** Reality 
 generally éludes our thought, when thought is reduced to mathe- 
 matical formulas/'* Concrète thought, contrariwise, finds full 
 
 1 EncycL BriU, ** Psychology/' iith cd., p. 577, 
 » Ed. 1898, p. 90. 
 
 ' Discours sur la Méthode, 1637, IVe Partie. 
 * Aliotta, op* du, p. 408. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 71 
 
 room also for History, Philosophy, Religion, for cach as furnishing 
 rich subject-matters for Knowledge or Science, of a spécial but 
 true kind» 
 
 Seventhly» Alrcady Mathematics and Mechanics absolutely 
 dépend, for the success of their applications to actual Nature, 
 upon a spontaneous correspondence between the human reason 
 and the Rationality of Nature» The immensity of this success 
 is an unanswerable proof that this rationality is not imposed, 
 but found there, by man» But Thought without a Thinker is 
 an absurd proposition. Thus faith in Science is faith in God. 
 Perhaps the most impressive déclaration of this necessary con- 
 nexion between Knowledge and Theism stands at the end of 
 that great work, Christoph Sigwart*s Logik. ** As soon as we 
 raise the question as to the real right,** the adéquate reason, 
 ** of our demands for a correspondence, within our several 
 sciences, between the principles and the objects of the researches 
 spécial to each, there émerges the need for the Last and Un- 
 conditional Reason. And the actual situation is not that this 
 Reason appears only on the horizon of our finite knowledge,'' 
 as Kant would hâve it. ** Not in thus merely extending our 
 knowledge lies the significance of the situation, but in the fact 
 that this Unconditional Reason constitutes the presupposition 
 without which no désire for Knowledge (in the proper and strict 
 sensé of the word) is truly thinkable/* ^ 
 
 And lastly, ail this and more points to philosophical Agnos- 
 ticism as an artificial System, and one hopelessly inadéquate 
 to the d^pths of human expérience. Assuredly Bossuet is right : 
 ** man knows not the whole of everything *' ; and mystery, in this 
 sensé, is also of the essence of ail higher religion. But what man 
 knows of anything is that thing manifested, not essentially 
 travestied, in that same thing's appearances. We men are most 
 assuredly realities forming part of a real world-whole of various 
 realities ; those other realities continuously afîect our own reality ; 
 we cannot help thinking certain things about thèse other realities ; 
 and thèse things, when accepted and pressed home by us in 
 action or in science, turn out, by our success in this their utilisa- 
 tion, to be rightly apprehended by us, as parts of interconnected, 
 objective Nature. Thus our knowledge of Reality is real as far 
 * Ed. 1893, vol. ii*f p. 759. 
 
72 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 as it goes, and philosophical Agnosticism is a doctrinaire position* 
 We can say with Herbert Spencer, in spite of his prédominant 
 Agnosticism, that ** the error *' committed by philosophers 
 intent upon demonstrating the limits and conditions of conscious- 
 ness ** consists in assuming that consciousness contains nothing 
 but limits and conditions, to the entire neglect of that which 
 is limited and conditioned/* In reality ** there is some thing 
 which alike forms the raw material of definite thought and 
 remains after the definiteness, which thinking gave to it, has been 
 destroyed/' ^ 
 
 II 
 
 Let us next consider five of the most ancient and extensively 
 developed amongst the still living Religions : the Israelitish- 
 Jewish and the Christian religions shall, as far by the best known 
 to us and as the most fully articulated, form the great bulk of this 
 short account ; the Confucian, Buddhist, and Mohammedan 
 religions will be taken quite briefly, only as contrasts to, or 
 elucidations of, the characteristics found in the Jewish and 
 Christian faiths. Ail this in view of the question conceming 
 the relations between Religion and Progressa 
 
 I. We can roughly divide the Israelitish- Jewish religion into 
 three long periods ; in each the points that specially concem us 
 will greatly vary in cleamess, importance, and richness of content* 
 
 The first period, from the time of the founder Moses and the 
 Jewish exodus out of Egypt to the appearance of the first great 
 prophet Elijah (say 1300 BX. to about 860 BX.) is indeed but 
 little known to us ; yet it gives us the great historical figure of the 
 initial lawgiver, the récipient and transmitter of deep ethical and 
 religious expériences and convictions* True, the Code of King 
 Hammurabi of Babylon (between 1958 and 191 6 BX* ; or, accord- 
 ing to others, about 1650) anticipâtes many of the laws of the 
 Book of the Covenant (Exod* xx* 22-xxiii* 33), the oldest amongst 
 the at ail lengthy bodies of laws in the Pentateuch ; and, again, 
 this Covenant appears to présuppose the Jewish settlement in 
 Canaan (say in 1250 BX*) as an accomplished fact* And, indeed, 
 the Law and the books of Moses generally hâve undoubtedly 
 ^ First Principles, 6th éd., 1900, vol. L, p. 67. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 73 
 
 passed through a long, decp, widc, and elaboratc dcvclopmcnt, 
 of which three chief stages, ail considerably subséquent to thc 
 Covenant-Book, havc, by now, been established with substantial 
 ccrtainty and précision. The record of directly Mosaic sayings 
 and writings is thus certainly very smalL Yet it is assuredly 
 a gross excess to deny the historical reality of Moses, as even 
 distinguished scholars such as Edward Meyer and Bernhard 
 Stade hâve done. Far wiser hère is Wellhausen, who finds, in the 
 very greatness and fixity of orientation of the development in 
 the Law and in the figure of the Lawgiver, a conclusive proof 
 of the rich reality and greatness of the Man of God, Moses. 
 Yet it is Hermann Gunkel, I think, who has reached thc best 
 balanced judgement in this matter. With Gunkel we can securely 
 hold that Moses called God Yahweh, and proclaimed Him 
 as the national God of Israël ; that Moses invoked Him as 
 ** Yahweh is my banner " — ^the divine leader of the Israélites 
 in battle (Exod. xvii. 15) ; and that Yahweh is for Moses a God 
 of righteousness — of the right and the law which he, Moses, 
 brought down from Mount Sinai and published at its foot. 
 Fierce as may now appear to us the figure of Yahweh, thus pro- 
 claimed, yet the soul's attitude towards Him is already hère, 
 from the first, a religion of the will : an absolute trust in God 
 (** Yahweh shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace," 
 Exod. xiv. 14), and a terrible relentlessness in the exécution of His 
 commands — ^as when Moses orders the sons of Levi to go to and 
 fro in the camp, slaying ail who, as worshippers of the Golden 
 Calf, had not been ** on Yahweh 's side ** (Exod. xxxii^ 25-29) ; 
 and when the chiefs, who had joined in the worship of Baal- 
 Peor, are ** hung up unto Yahweh before the sun '' (Num. xxv. 
 1--5). Long after Moses the Jews still believed in the real exist- 
 ence of the gods of the heathen ; and the religion of Moses was 
 presumably, in the first instance, ** Monolatry ** (the adoration 
 of One God among many) ; but already accompanied by the 
 conviction that Yahweh was mightier than any other god — 
 certainly Micah, ** Who is like Yahweh $"* is a very andent 
 Israelitish name. And if Yahweh is worshipped by Moses on 
 a mountain (Sinai) and His law is proclaimed at a spring, if 
 Moses perhaps himself really fashioned the brazen serpent as 
 a sensible symbol of Yahweh, Yahweh nevertheless remains 
 
74 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 without visible représentation in or on thc Ark; He is nevcr 
 conceived as the sheer équivalent of natural forces ; and ail 
 mythology is absent here^ — the véhément rejection of thc calf- 
 worship shows this strikingly» Michael Angelo, himself a soûl 
 of fire, understood Moses well, Gunkel thinks.-"^ 
 
 The second period, from Elijah*s first public appearance 
 (about 860 B,c») to the Dedication of the Second Temple (516 BxO> 
 and on to the public subscription to the Law of Moses, under 
 E^ra (in 444 BX»), is surpassed, in spiritual richness and import- 
 ance, only by the classical times of Christianity itself ♦ Its begin- 
 ning, its middle, and its end each possess distinctive characters* 
 
 The whole opens with Elijah, ** the grandest heroic figure in 
 ail the Bible/' as it still breathes and burns in the First Book of 
 Kings. ** For Elijah there existed not, in différent régions, forces 
 possessed of equal rights and equal claims to adoration, but 
 everywhere only one Holy Power that revealed Itself, not likc 
 Baal, in the life of Nature, but like Yahweh, in the moral demands 
 of the Spirit ** (Wellhausen). 
 
 And then (in about 750 BX.) appears Amos, the first of the 
 noble ** storm-birds ** who herald the coming national destruc- 
 tions and divine survivais» ** Yahweh was for thèse prophets 
 above ail the god of justice, and God of Israël only in so far 
 as Israël satisfied His demands of justice. And yet the spécial 
 relation of Yahweh to Israël is still recognised as real; the 
 cthical truth, which now stood high above Israël, had, after ail, 
 arisen within Israël and could only be found within it.** The 
 two oldest lengthy narrative documents of the Pentateuch — 
 the Yahwist (J) and the Ephraemite (E) — ^appear to hâve been 
 composed, the first in Judah in the time of Elijah, the second in 
 Israël at the time of Amos. J gives us the immortal stories of 
 Paradise and the Fall, Gain and Abel, Noah and the Flood ; 
 E, Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac ; and the documents conjointly 
 furnish the more naive and picturesque parts of the grand 
 accounts of the Patriarchs generally — the first great narrative 
 stage of the Pentateuch. God hère gives us some of His most 
 exquisite self-revelations through the Israelitish peasant-souL 
 And Isaiah of Jérusalem, successful statesman as well as deep secr, 
 still vividly livcs for us in some thirty-six chapters of that great 
 > Article, '* Moses," in Die Religion in Ceschichte und Gegenwart, 1913* 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 75 
 
 collection the ** Book of Isaiah *' (i^-xii*, xv,-xx., xxii.-xxxix»)» 
 There is his majestic vocation in about 740 B»c., described by 
 himself, without ambiguity, as a précise, objective révélation 
 (chap. vi.) ; and there is the divinely impressive close of his long 
 and great activity, when he nerves King He^ekiah to refuse the 
 surrender of the Holy City to the all-powerful Sennacherib, 
 King of Assyria : his assurance that Yahweh would not allow 
 a single arrow to be shot against it, and would turn back the 
 Assyrian by the way by which he came — ^all which actually 
 happens as thus predicted (chap. xxxvii*). 
 
 The middle of this rich second period is filled by a great 
 prophet-priest's figure, and a great prophetical priestly reform» 
 Jeremiah is called in 628 EX,, and dies obscurely in Egyptin 
 about 585 BX, ; and the Deuteronomic Law and Book is found 
 in the Temple, and is solemnly proclaimed to, and accepted by, 
 the people, under the leadership of the High Priest Plilkiah 
 and King Josiah, ** the Constantine of the Jewish Church,*' 
 in 628 B,c» Jeremiah and Deuteronomy (D) are strikingly cog- 
 nate in style, temper, and injunctions ; and especially D contrasts 
 remarkably in ail this with the documents J and E» We thus 
 hâve hère the second great development of the Mosaic Law. 
 Both Jeremiah and Deuteronomy possess a deeply interior, 
 tenderly spiritual, kernel and a fiercely polemical husk^ — ^they 
 both are fuU of the contrast between the one All-Holy God to 
 be worshipped in the one Holy Place, Jérusalem, and the many 
 impure heathen gods worshipped in so many places by the 
 Jewish crowd. Thus in Jeremiah Yahweh déclares : ** This 
 shall be my covenant that I will make with the house of Israël : 
 I will Write my law in their hearts : and they shall ail know me, 
 from the least to the greatest: for I will remember their sin 
 no more ** (xxxi. 33, 34)» And Yahweh exclaims : ** My people 
 hâve committed two evils : they hâve forsaken me, the fountain 
 of living waters, and hâve hewn out cisterns that can hold no 
 water/* ** Lift up thine eyes unto the high places ♦ ♦ ♦ thou hast 
 polluted the land with thy wickedness/' ** Wilt thou not from 
 this time cry unto me : My Father, thou art the guide of my 
 youth ^** (iu 13, iii, 2, 4)* And Deuteronomy teaches magnifi- 
 cently : ** This commandment which I command you this day, 
 is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven. 
 
76 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say : Who shall 
 go up for us to heaven or over the sea, and bring it unto us i 
 But the Word is very nigh unto thee^ in thy mouth and in thy 
 heart, that thou mayest do it *' (xxx* 11-14). And there are hère 
 exquisite injunctions — ^to bring back stray cattle to their owners ; 
 to spare the sitting bird, where eggs or fiedglings are found ; 
 to leave over, at the harvest, some of the grain, olives, grapes, 
 for the stranger, the orphan, the widow ; and not to mu^zle 
 the ox when treading out the corn {kxîu fig. i, 6, 7; xxiv^ 19; 
 XXV» 4)» Yet the same Deuteronomy ordains : ** If thine own 
 brother, son, daughter, wife, or bosom friend entice thee secretly, 
 saying, let us go and serve other gods, thine hand shall be first 
 upon him to put him to death/* Also ** There shall not be found 
 with thee any consulter with a familiar spirit ♦ ♦ ♦ or a necro- 
 mancer» Yahweh thy God doth drive them out before thee/' 
 And, finally, amongst the laws of war, ** of the cities of thèse 
 people (Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, Jebusite) 
 thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, as Yahweh thy 
 God hath commanded thee ** (idu 2-5 ; xiii» 6, 9 ; Tswiiu 10-13 ; 
 XX» 16, 17)» Hcre we must remember that the immorality of 
 thèse Canaanitish tribes and cuits was of the grossest, indeed 
 largely unnatural, kind ; that it had copiously proved its terrible 
 fascination for their kinsmen, the Jews ; that thèse ancient 
 Easterns, e.g* the Assyrians, were ruthlessly cruel at the storming 
 of enemy cities ; and especially that the morality and spirituality, 
 thus saved for humanity from out of a putrid flood, was (in very 
 deed) immensely precious» One point hère is particularly far- 
 sighted — ^the severe watchfulness against ail animism, spiritism, 
 worship of the dead, things in which the environing world of 
 the Jews* fellow Sémites was steeped» The Israelitish-Jewish 
 prophétie movement did not first attain belief in a Future Life, 
 and then, through this, belief in God ; but the belief in God, 
 strongly hostile to ail those spiritisms, only very slowly, and 
 not until the danger of any infusion of those naturalisms had 
 become remote, led on the Jews to a réalisation of the souKs 
 survival with a consciousness at least equal to its earthly alive- 
 ness» The Second Book of Kings (chaps* xxiu, xxiii*) gives a 
 graphie account of King Josiah's rigorous exécution of the 
 Deuteronomic law. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 77 
 
 The end of this most full second period is marked by the now 
 rapid prédominance of a largely technical priestly législation 
 and a corresponding conception of past history ; by the inception 
 of the Synagogue and the religion of the Book; but also by 
 writings the most profound of any in the Old Testament, ail 
 prcsumably occasioned by the probing expériences of the Exile,/ 
 In 597 and 586 B,c. Jérusalem is destroyed and the majority of 
 the Jews are taken captives to Babylon ; and in between (in 593) 
 occurs the vocation of the prophet-priest E2;ekiel, and his book 
 is practically complète by 573 b,c. Hère the prophecies as to 
 the restoration are strangely detailed and schematic — ^already 
 somewhat like the apocalyptic writers, Yet Eîjekiel reveals to 
 us deathless truths — ^the responsibility of the individual soûl for 
 its good and its evil, and God Himself as the Good Shepherd 
 of the lost and the sick (xsniu 30-32 ; xxxiv, 1-6) ; he gives us 
 the grand pictures of the résurrection unto life of the dead bones 
 of Israël (chap, xxxvii*), and of the waters of healing and of life 
 which flow forth, ever deeper and wider, from beneath the 
 Temple, and by their sweetness transform ail sour waters and 
 arid lands that they touch (xlvii* 1-12). A spirit and doctrine 
 closely akin to those of Ezekiel produced the third, last, and most 
 extensive development of the Pentateuchal législation and 
 doctrinal history — ^in about 560 BX., the Law of Holiness (Lev,, 
 chaps» xvii.-xxvi») ; and in about 500 BX», the Priestly Code, As 
 with Ezekiers look forward, so hère with thèse Priests* look 
 backward, we hâve to recognise much schematic précision of 
 dates, généalogies, and explanations instinct with technical 
 interests, The unity of sanctuary and the removal from the feasts 
 and the worship of ail traces of naturalism, which in Jeremiah, 
 Deuteronomy, and the Second Book of Kings appear still as 
 the subject-matters of intensest effort and conflict, are hère 
 assumed as operative even back to patriarchal times, Yet it can 
 reasonably be pleaded that the life-work of Moses truly involved 
 ail this development ; and even that Monotheism (at least, 
 for the times and peoples hère concerned) required some such 
 rules as are assumed by the Priestly Code, 
 
 And P gives us the great six days* Création Story with its 
 splendid sensé of rational order pervasive of the Universe, the 
 work of the all-reasonable God — its single parts good, its totality 
 
78 * PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 very good ; and man and woman springing together from the 
 Creator's wilL But the writer nowhere indicates that he means 
 long periods by the ** days " ; each création appears as effected 
 in an instant, and thèse instants as separated from each other by 
 but twenty-four hours. 
 
 In between Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code, or a little 
 later still, lies probably the composition of three religious works 
 full, respectively, of exultant thanksgiving, of the noblest insight 
 into the fruitfulness of sufîering, and of the deepest questionings 
 issuing in child-like trust in God, For an anonymous writer 
 composes (say, in 550 BX,) the great bulk of the magnificent 
 chapters forty to fifty-five of our Book of Isaiah — a paean of 
 spiritual exultation over the Jews* proximate deliverance from 
 exile by the Persian King Cyrus. In 538 BX» Cyrus issues the 
 edict for the restoration of the Jews to Judaea, and in 516 the 
 Second Temple is dedicated» Within this great Consolation 
 stands (xlii. 1-4 ; xlix» 1-6 ; L 4-9 ; lii. i3-liii» 12) the poem 
 on the Suffering Servant of Yahweh — the tenderest révélation 
 of the Old Testament^ — ^apparently written previously in the 
 Exile, say in 570-560 BX. The Old Law hère reaches to ths very 
 feet of the New Law — ^to the Lamb of God who taketh away the 
 sins of the world* And the Book of Job, in its chief constituents 
 (chaps, i.-xxxi», xxxviii.-xlii»)^ was probably composed when 
 Greek influences began — say in about 480 BX., the year of 
 the battle of Thermopylae. The canonisation of this daringly 
 spéculative book indicates finely how sensitive even the deep- 
 est faith and holiness can remain to the apparently unjust 
 distribution of man*s earthly lot» 
 
 Our second period ends in 444 BX., when the priest and scribe 
 Ezra solemnly proclaims, and receives the public subscription 
 to, the Book of the Law of Moses — ^the Priestly Code, brought 
 by him from Babylon, 
 
 The Jewish last period, from Ezx2i*s Proclamation 444 bx» 
 to the completion of the Fourth Book of Ezra, about a.d, 95, 
 is (upon the whole) derivative» Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah were 
 absorbed in the realities of their own epoch-making times, 
 and of God's universal govemance of the world past and future ; 
 Daniel now, with practically ail the other Apocalyptic writers 
 in his train, is absorbed in those earlier prophecies, and in 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 79 
 
 ingcnious spéculations and predse computations as to the how 
 and the when of the world*s ending» The Exile had given rise 
 to the Synagogue, and had favoured the final development and 
 codifying of the Mosaic law; the seventy years* intermission 
 of the Temple sacrifices and symbolic acts had turned the worship, 
 which had been so largely visible, dramatic, social, into the 
 praying, singing, reading, preaching of extant texts, taken as 
 direct and final rules for ail thought and action, and as incapable 
 of additions or interprétations equal in value to themselves» 
 Yet thus priceless treasures of spiritual truth and light were 
 handed down to times again aglow with great — the greatest 
 religious gifts and growths ; and indeed this literature itself 
 introduced yarious conceptions or images destined to form a 
 largely fitting, and in the circumstances attractive, garment for 
 the profound further realities brought by Christianity» 
 
 In the Book of Daniel (written somewhere between 165 and 
 163 B»c.) ail earthly events appear as already inscribed in the 
 heavenly books {wii* 10), and the events which hâve still really 
 to come consist in the complète and speedy triumph of the 
 Church-State Israël against King Antiochus Epiphanes» But 
 hère we get the earliest clear proclamation of a heightened life 
 beyond death — ^though not yet for ail {xii* 2). The noble vision 
 of the four great beasts that came up from the seà, and of onc 
 like unto a Son of Man that came with the clouds of heaven 
 (chap, viu), doubtless hère figures the earthly kingdoms, Babel, 
 Media, Persia, Greece (Alexander), and God's kingdom IsraeL 
 
 The Psalter was probably closed as latc as 140 B.c. ; some 
 Psalms doubtless date back to 701 — a few perhaps to David 
 himself, about 1000 B.c. The comminatory Psalms, even if 
 spoken as by représentatives of God's Church and people, wc 
 cannot now écho within our own spiritual life ; any heightened 
 consciousness after death is frequently denied (e.^. vi. 5 : ** in 
 the grave who shall give thee thanks ^ ** and cxv. 17 : ** the dead 
 praise not the Lord **) — ^we hâve seen the impressive reason of 
 this ; and perhaps a quarter of the Psalms are doubles, or pale 
 imitations of others. But, for the rest, the Psalter remains as 
 magnificently fresh and powerful as cver : culminating in the 
 glorious self-commitment (Ps. Ixxiii.), " I was as a beast before 
 Thee. Nevertheless I am continually with Thee. Whom hâve I 
 
 I* 
 
8o PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 in hcavcn but Thee S* and thcrc is nonc upon earth that I désire 
 bcside Thee." The keen sensé, présent throughout this amazingly 
 rich collection, of the reality, prevenience, présence, protection 
 -— of the central importance for man, of God, the All-Abiding, 
 finds thus its full, deathless articulation. 
 
 Religiously slighter, yet interesting as a préparation for 
 Christian theology, are the writings of Philo, a devout, Greek- 
 trained Jew of Alexandria, who in A.D 40 appeared before the 
 Emperor Caligula in Rome. Philo docs not feel his daringly 
 allegorical sublimations as any departures from the devoutest 
 Biblical faith. Thus ** God never ceases from action ; as to burn 
 is spécial to fire, so is action to God ** — ^this in spite of God's 
 rest on the seventh day (Gen. iu 2). ** There exist two kinds of 
 men : the heavenly man and the earthly man.*' ^ The long Life 
 of Moses ^ represents him as the King, Lawgiver, High Priest, 
 Prophet, Mediator. The Word, the Logos (which hère every- 
 where ho vers near, but never reaches, personality) is ** the first- 
 born son of God,*' ** the image of God ** ;^ its types are '* the 
 Rock,** the Manna, the High Priest*s Coat ; it is ** the Wine 
 Pourer and Master of the Drinking Feast of God.** * The majority 
 of the Jews, who did not accept Jésus as the Christ, soon felt 
 they had no need for so much allegory, and dropped it, with 
 advantage, upon the whole, to the Jewish faith. But already 
 St. Paul and the Fourth Gospel find hère noble mental raiment 
 for the great new facts revealed by Jésus Christ. 
 
 2. The Christian Religion we will take, as to our points, at 
 four stages of its development — Synoptic, Johannine, Augus- 
 tinian, Thomistic. 
 
 The Synoptic material hère specially concerned we shall find 
 especially in Mark i. i to xv. 47 ; but also in Matt. nu i to 
 T^xwiu 56, and in Luke iiu 1 to -xxiiu 56. Within the material thus 
 marked off, there is no greater or lesser authenticity conferred 
 by treble, or double, or only single attestation ; for this material 
 springs from two original sources — z collection primarily of 
 doings and sufferings, which our Mark incorporâtes with some 
 expansions; and a collection primarily of discourses, utilised 
 especially by Matthew and Luke in addition to the original 
 
 » Ed. Mangcy, vol. i., pp. 44, 49. ' Ibid,, pp. 80-179. 
 
 » Ibid,, pp. 308, 427. * Ihid,, pp. 313* 121, 563, 691. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 8i 
 
 Mark* Both thèse sources contain the records of eye-witnesses, 
 probably Saints Peter and Matthew, 
 
 The chronological order and the spécial occasions of the 
 growths in our Lord*s self-manifestation, or in the self-conscious- 
 ness of His human soûl, are most carefully given by Mark and 
 next by Luke. Matthew largely ignores the stages and occasions 
 of both thèse growths, and assumes, as fully explicit from the 
 beginning of the Ministry, what was manifested only later on 
 or at the last ; and he already introduces ecclesiastical and 
 Christological terms and discriminations which, however really 
 implicit as to their substance in Jesus's teaching, or inévitable 
 (as to their particular form) for the maintenance and propagation 
 of Christianity in the near future, are nevertheless still absent 
 from the accounts of Mark and Luke. 
 
 The chief rules for the understanding of the spécifie character 
 of our Lord's révélation appear to be the following. The Hfc 
 and teaching must be taken entire ; and, within this entirety, 
 each stage must be apprehended in its own spécial peculiarities» 
 The thirty years in the home, the school, the synagogue, the 
 workshop at Na2;areth, form a profoundly important constituent 
 of His life and teaching^ — ^impressively contrasted, as they are, 
 with the probably not fuU year of the Public Ministry, even 
 though we are almost completely bereft of ail détails for thosc 
 years of silent préparation. 
 
 The Public Ministry, again, consists of two strongly contrasted 
 parts, divided by the great scène of Jésus with the Apostles 
 alone at Caesarea Philippi (Mark wiiu 27-33 t Luke ix. 18-22 ; 
 Matt, xvi, 13-23). The part before is predominantly expansive, 
 hopeful, peacefully growing; the part after, is concentrated, sad, 
 in conflict, and in storm. To the first part belong the plant 
 parables, fuU of exquisite sympathy with the unfolding of natural 
 beauty and of slow fruitfulness ; to the second part belong the 
 parables of keen watchfulness and of the proximate, sudden 
 Second Coming. Both movements are essential to the physi- 
 ognomy of our Lord. And they are not simply différences in 
 self-manifestation ; they represent a growth, a relatively new 
 clément, in His human soul's expérience and outlook. 
 
 The central doctrine in the teaching is throughout the King- 
 dom of God. But in the first part this central doctrine appears 
 
8a PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 as cspedally uphcld by Jcsus's fundamcntal expérience — ^thc 
 Fatherhood of God» In the second part the central doctrine 
 appears as especially coloured by Jesus's other great expérience 
 — of Himself as the Son of Man» In the carlier part the King- 
 dom is presented more in the spirit of the ancient prophets, 
 as predominantly ethical, as already corne in its beginnings, 
 and as subject to laws analogous to those obtaining in the natural 
 world. In the second part the coming of the Kingdom is pre- 
 sented more with the form of the apocalyptic writers, in a purely 
 religions, intensely transcendent, and dualistic outlook — especi- 
 ally this also in the Parables of Immédiate Expectation — ^as not 
 présent but future (Matt, xix, a8) ; not distant but imminent 
 (Matt* xvu 28 ; xxiv» 33 ; xxvL 64) ; not graduai but sudden 
 (Matt* xxiv* 27, 39, 43) ; not at ail achieved by man but purely 
 given by God (so still in Rev. xxi. lo). 
 
 To the earlier part belongs the great Rejoicing of Jésus 
 (Matt, xi» 25-30 ; Luke x» 21, 22). The splendid opening, 
 ** I thank Thee, Father — for so it hath seemed good in Thy 
 sight/* and the exquisite close, spécial to Matthew, ** Come unto 
 Me — and my burthen is light,*' raise no grave difficulty» But 
 the intermediate majestic déclaration, ** Ail things are delivered 
 unto Me by the Father — neither knoweth any man the Father 
 save the Son and hc to whomsoever the Son will reveal him,*' 
 causes critical perplexities. 
 
 I take this déclaration to be modelled upon actual words of 
 Jésus, which genuinely implied rather than clearly proclaimed 
 a unique relation between the Father and Himself, Numerous 
 other words and acts in volve such a relation and Jésus *s full 
 consciousness of it, Thus His first public act, His baptism, 
 is clearly described by Mark as a personal expérience, ** He saw 
 the heavens opened ** and heard a heavenly voice ** Thou art 
 my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ** (i. 10, ii), Already 
 in the first stage Jésus déclares the Baptist to be ** more than a 
 prophet ** (Matt. xi, 9), yet claims superiority over him and over 
 Solomon (xi, 11 ; ^i^ 42), His doctrine is new wine requiring 
 new bottles (Mark ii* 22) ; indeed His whole attitude towards 
 the law is that of a Superior, who most really exhorts ail, ** Learn 
 of Me,** And soon after Caesarea Philippi He insists to the people : 
 ** Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me in this génération, of him 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 83 
 
 also shall thc Son of Man bc ashamcd, whcn Ht comcth in the 
 glory of the Father ** (Mark viii. ^S). The most numcrous cures, 
 physical, psychical, moral, certainly performed by Him, appear 
 as the spontaneous effect of a unique degree and kind of spiritual 
 authority ; and the sinlessness attributed to Him throughout 
 by the apostolic community (3 Cor, v. 21 ; Heb. iv, 15 ; John 
 viii, 46 ; I John ii, 29) entirely corresponds to the absence, in 
 the records of Him, of ail traits indicating troubles of conscience 
 and the corresponding fear of God, And this His unique Sonship 
 is conjoined, in the earliest picture of Him, with an endless variety 
 and combination of ail thc joys, admirations, affections, dis- 
 appointments, désolations, temptations possible to such a stain- 
 less human soûl and wilL We thus find hère a comprehensive- 
 ncss unlike the attitude of thc Baptist or Su Paul, and like, 
 although far exceeding, thc joy in nature and the peace in suffering 
 of Su Francis of Assisi, 
 
 The Second Part opens with the great scène at Caesarea Philippi 
 and its sequel (given with specially marked successiveness 
 in Mark viiL 27-x, 45), when, for the first time in a manner 
 beyond ail dispute. Mark represents Jésus as adopting the 
 désignation '* the Son of Man ** in a Messianic and eschatological 
 sensé ♦ For our Lord herc promptly corrects Peter *s conception 
 of ** Messiah *' by repeatcd insistence upon ** the Son of Man ** 
 — His glory yet also His sufferings, Thus Jésus adopts the ter m 
 of Daniel wiu 13 (which already the Apocalypse of Enoch had 
 understood of a personal Messiah) as a succinct description of 
 His spécifie vocation — ^its heavenly origin and différence from 
 ail earthly Messianism ; its combination of the depths of human 
 weakness, dereliction, sufferings with the highest élévation in 
 joy, power and glory; and its connexion of that pain with this 
 triumph as strictly interrelated' — only with and through the 
 Cross, was there hère the offer and the acceptance of the Crown, 
 As to the Passion and Death, and the Risen Life, four points 
 appear to be central and secured, Neither the Old Testament 
 nor Jewish Theology really knew of a Suffering Messiah, Jésus 
 Himself clearly perceived, accepted, and carried out this pro- 
 found new révélation, This suffering and death were conceived 
 by Him as the final act and crown of His services — so in Mark 
 X, 44, 45 and Luke xxii, 24-7, (Ail this remains previous to, and 
 
84 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 indcpcndcnt of. St. Paurs elaboratcd doctrine as to the strictly 
 vicarious and juridical charactcr of the whole.) And the Risen 
 Life is an objectively real, profoundly operative life — ^the visions 
 of the Risen One were effects of the truly living Jésus, the Christ. 
 The Second Christian Stage, the Johannine writings, are fully 
 understandable only as posterior to St. Paul^ — ^the most enthusi- 
 astic and influential, indeed, of ail our Lord's early disciples, 
 but a convert, from the activity of a strict persecuting Pharisee, 
 not to the earthly Jésus, of soûl and body, Whom he never knew, 
 but to the heavenly Spirit-Christ, Whom he had so suddenly 
 experienced. Saul, the man of violent passions and acute interior 
 conflicts, thus abruptly changed in a substantially pneumatic 
 manner, is henceforth absorbed, not in the past Jewish Messiah, 
 but in the présent universal Christ ; not in the Kingdom of God, 
 but in Pneuma, the Spirit. Christ, the second Adam, is hère a 
 life-giving spirit, as it were an élément that surrounds and péné- 
 trâtes the human spirit; we are baptised, dipped, into Christ, 
 Spirit ; we can drink Christ, the Spirit. And this Christ-Spirit 
 effects the universal brotherhood of mankind, and articulâtes 
 in particular posts and functions the several human spirits, as 
 variously necessary members of the one Christian sodety and 
 Church. 
 
 Now the Johannine Gospel indeed utilises considérable 
 Synoptic materials, and does not, as St. Paul, restrict itself to 
 the Passion and Résurrection. Yet it gives us, substantially, the 
 Spirit-Christ, the Heavenly Man ; and the growth, prayer, 
 temptation, appeal for sympathy, dereliction, agony, which, 
 in the Synoptists, are still so real for the human soûl of Jésus 
 Himself, appear hère as sheer condescensions, in time and space, 
 of Him who, as ail things good, descends from the Eternal Above, 
 so that we men hère below may ascend thither with Him. On 
 the other hand, the Church and the Sacraments, still predomin- 
 antly implidt in the Synoptists, and the subjects of costly 
 conflict and organisation in the Pauline writings, hère underlie, 
 as already fully operative facts, practically the entire profound 
 work. The great dialogue with Nicodemus concerns Baptism ; 
 the great discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum, the Holy 
 Eucharist — ^in both cases, the strict need of thèse Sacraments. 
 And from the side of the dead Jésus flow blood and water, as 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 85 
 
 thosc two great sacramcnts flow from thc cvcriiving Christ; 
 whilst at the Grosses foot He Icavcs His seamless coat, symbol 
 of thc Church's indivisible unity. The Universalism of this 
 Gospel is not merely apparent : ** God so loved the world '' 
 (iii* 16), ** the Saviour of the world ** (iv. 42) — ^this glorious 
 teaching is traceable in many a passage. Yet Christ hère condemns 
 the Jews — in the Synoptists only the Pharisees ; He is from above, 
 they are from below; ail those that came before Him werc 
 thieves and robbers ; He will not pray for the world — " ye 
 shall die in your sins " (xvii. 9 ; yiiu 24) ; and the command- 
 ment, designated hère by Jésus as His own and as new, to ** love 
 one another/ is for and within the community to which He 
 gives His ** example *' (xv. 13 ; xiii, 34) — ^in contrast with thc 
 great double commandment of love proclaimed by Him, in the 
 Synoptists, as already formulated in the Mosaic Law (Mark lâi* 
 28-34), and as directly applicable to every fellow-man — ^indeed, 
 a schismatic Samaritan is given as the pattern of such perfect 
 love (Luke x. 25-37). 
 
 Deuteronomy gained its full articulation in conflict with 
 Canaanite impurity; thc Johannine writings take shape during 
 the earlier battles of the long war with Gnosticism — ^the most 
 terrible foc cver, so far, encountered by the Catholic Church, 
 and conquered by her in open and fair fight. Also thèse writings 
 lay much stress upon Knowing and the Truth : ** this is life 
 eternal, to know Thee, the only truc God and Jésus Christ 
 whom Thou hast sent ** (xvii. 3) ; symbolism and mysticism 
 prevail very largely ; and, in so far as they are not absorbed in 
 an Eternal Présent, the réception of truth and expérience is 
 not limited to Christ *s earthly sojourn — ** the Father will give 
 you another Helper, the spirit of truth who will abide with you 
 for ever '* (xiv. 16). Yet hère the knowing and the truth are also 
 deeply ethical and social : ** he who doeth the truth cometh to 
 the light ** (iiu 21) ; and Christ has a fold, and other sheep not 
 of this fold — ^them also He must bring, there will be one fold, 
 one Shepherd; indeed, ministerial gradations exist in this one 
 Church (so in y:iiu 5-10 ; xx. 3-8 ; xxi. 7-19). And the Mysticism 
 herc is but an emotional intuitive appréhension of thc great 
 historical figure of Jésus, and of the most specifically religious of 
 ail facts — of the already overflowing operative existence, previous 
 
86 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 to ail our action, of God, thc Prevenient Love, ** Not we loved 
 
 God (first), but He (first) loved us/' ** let us love Him, bccause 
 
 He first loved us/' ** no man can corne to me, unless the Father 
 
 draw him " — 2l drawing which awakens a hunger and thirst for 
 
 Christ and God (i John iv* lo, 19 ; John vu 44 ; iw. 14 ; wL 35), 
 
 The Third Stage we can find in Su Augustine, who, born a 
 
 North African Roman (a.d* 354) and a convert (a,d, 386) from 
 
 an impure life and Manichaeism, with its spatially extended God, 
 
 wrote his Confessions in 397, lived to expérience the capture and 
 
 sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth, 410, composed his great work, 
 
 The City of God, amidst the clear dissolution of a mighty past 
 
 and the dim présage of a problematical future, and died at Hippo, 
 
 his episcopal city, in 430, whilst the Vandals were besieging it. 
 
 Su Augustine is more largely a convert and a rigorist even than 
 
 Su Paul when Su Paul is most incisive. But hère he shall testify 
 
 only to the natures of Eternity and of real time, a matter in which 
 
 he remains unequalled in the délicate vividness and balance of 
 
 his psychological analysis and religious perception. ** Thou, 
 
 God, precedest ail past times by the height of Thinc ever- 
 present Eternity ; and Thou exceedest ail future times, sincc 
 they are future, and, once they hâve come, will be past times. 
 Ail thy years abide together, because they abide ; but thèse our 
 ycars will ail be, only when they ail will hâve ceased to be, Thy 
 years are but One Day — ^tiot every day, but To-Day. This Thy 
 To-Day is Eternity/' ^ The human soûl, even in this life, has 
 moments of a vivid appréhension of Eternity, as in the great scène 
 of Augustine and Monica at the window in Ostia (Autumn, 387). 
 And this our sensé of Eternity, Béatitude, God, proceeds at bottom 
 from Himself, immediately présent in our lives ; the succession, 
 duration of man is sustained by the Simultaneity, the Eternity 
 of God : " this day of ours does pass within Thee, since ail thèse 
 things " of our deeper expérience ** hâve no means of passing 
 unless, somehow, Thou dost contain them ail/' ** Behold, Thou 
 wast within, and I was without . . • Thou wast with me, but 
 
 1 was not with Thee/' ** Is not the blessed life preciscly 
 that life which ail men désire $* Even those who only hope to 
 be blessed would not, unless they in some manner already 
 possessed the blessed life, désire to be blessed, as, in reality, 
 
 > Conf. X*, 13, a. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 87 
 
 it is most certain that they désire to be/' ^ Especially satisfactory 
 is the insistence upon the futility of the question as to what God 
 was doing in Time before He created, Time is only a quality 
 inhérent in ail créatures ; it never existed of itself.^ 
 
 And our fourth, last Christian Stage shall be represented by 
 St. Thomas Aquinas (a.d. i225-74)> in the one great question 
 where this Norman-Italian Friar Noble, a soûl apparently so 
 largely derivative and abstractive, is more complète and balanced, 
 and pénétrâtes to the spécifie genius of Christianity more deeply, 
 than Saints Paul and Augustine with ail their greater directness 
 and intensity. We saw how the deepest originality of our Lord 's 
 teaching and temper consisted in His non-rigoristic earnestness, 
 in His non-Gnostic detachment from things temporal and spatial. 
 The absorbing expectation of the Second Coming, indeed the 
 old, largely efîete Gracco-Roman world, had first to go, the 
 great Germanie migrations had to be fully completed, the first 
 Crusades had to pass, before — some twelve centuries after 
 Na^reth and Calvary — Christianity attained in Aquinas a 
 systematic and promptly authoritative expression of this its 
 root-peculiarity and power. No one has put the point better 
 than Professor E. Troeltsch : ** The décisive point hère is the 
 conception, peculiar to the Middle Ages, of what is Christian 
 as Supernatural, or rather the full élaboration of the conséquences 
 involved in the conception of the Supernatural. The Super- 
 natural is now recognised not only in the great complex 
 miracle of man's rédemption from out of the world corrupted 
 by original sin. But the Supernatural now unfolds itself as an 
 autonomous principle of a logical, religious and ethical kind. 
 The créature, even the perfect créature, is only Natural — ^is 
 possessed of only natural laws and ends ; God alone is Super- 
 natural. Hence the essence of Christian Supernaturalism consists 
 in the élévation of the créature, above this créature *s co-natural 
 limitations, to God*s own Supernature.*' The distinction is no 
 longer, as in the Andent Church, between two kinds (respectively 
 perfect and relative) of the one sole Natural Law ; the distinction 
 hère is between Natural Law in gênerai and Supernature gener- 
 ally. ** The Decalogue, in strictness, is not yet the Christian 
 Ethic. ' Biblical * now means revealed, but not necessarily 
 * Conf, 1,6,3; *v 27 ; X., 20. " Conf, xi», 13. 
 
88 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 Christian ; for thc Bible represcnts, according to Aquinas, a 
 process of devclopment which movcs through universal history 
 and posscsses various stages ♦ The Decalogue is indeed présent 
 in the législation of Christ, but as a stage preliminary to thc 
 spedfically Christian Ethic. The formula, on the contrary, 
 for the spedfically Christian Moral Law is hère the Augustinian 
 définition of the love of God as the highest and absolute, thc 
 cntirely simple, Moral end — ^an end which contains the demand 
 of the love of God in the stricter sensé (self-sanctification, self- 
 denial, contemplation) and the demand of the love of our neigh- 
 bour (the active relating of ail to God, the active interrelating 
 of ail in God, and the most penetrating mutual self-sacrifice 
 for God). This Ethic, a mystical interprétation of the Evangelical 
 Preaching, forms indeed a strong contrast to the This- World 
 Ethic of the Natural Law, Aristotle, the Decalogue and Natural 
 Prosperity ; but then this cannot fail to be the case, given thc 
 entire fundamental character of the Christian Ethic/' ^ 
 
 Thus the widest and most primitive contrasts hère are, not 
 Sin and Rédemption (though thèse, of course, remain), but 
 Nature (however good in its kind) and Supernature. The State 
 becomes the complex of that essentially good thing. Nature ; 
 the Church the complex of that différent, higher good. Super- 
 nature ; roughly speaking, where the State leaves off, the Church 
 begins. 
 
 It lasted not long, before the Canonists and certain ruling 
 Churchmen helped to break up, in the consdousness of men at 
 large, this noble perception of the two-step ladder from God 
 to man and from man to God. And the Protestant Reformers, as 
 a whole, went even beyond Saints Paul and Augustine in 
 exclusive préoccupation with Sin and Rédemption. Henceforth 
 the single-step character of man's call more than ever pré- 
 dominâtes. The Protestant Reformation, like the French Ré- 
 volution, marks the existence of grave abuses, the need of large 
 reforms, and, espedally on this point, the ail but inévitable 
 excessiveness of man once he is aroused to such ** reforming ** 
 action. Certainly, to this hour, Protestantism as such has pro- 
 duced, within and for religion specifically, nothing that can 
 seriously compare, in massive, balanced completeness, with the 
 » Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Cruppen, igia, pp. 263-65. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 89 
 
 work of the short-lived golden Middle Age of Aquinas and 
 Dante, Hence, for our précise purpose, we can conclude our 
 Jewish and Christian survey hère, 
 
 3^ Only a few words about Confucianism, Buddhism, Moham- 
 medanism, as thèse, in some of their main outlines, illustrate 
 the points especially brought out by the Jewish Christian 
 development, 
 
 Confucianism admittedly consists, at least as we hâve it, in a 
 greatly complicated System of the direct worship of Nature 
 (Sun, Moon, Stars especially) and of Ancestors, and of a finely 
 simple System of ethical rules for man*s ordinary social inter- 
 course ♦ That Nature-worship closely resembles what the 
 Deuteronomic reform fought so fiercely in Israël ; and the 
 immémorial antiquity and still vigorous life of such a worship 
 in China indicates impressively how little such Nature-worship 
 tends, of itself, to its own supersession by a défini te Theism, 
 And the Ethical rules, and their very large observance, illustrate 
 well how real can be the existence, and the goodness in its own 
 kind, of Natural, This-World morality, even where it stands 
 ail but entirely unpenetrated or supplemented by any clear and 
 strong supernatural attraction or conviction ♦ 
 
 Buddhism, in its original form, consisted neither in the Wheel 
 of Reincarnation alone, nor in Nirvana alone, but precisely in 
 the combination of the two ; for that ceaseless flux of rein- 
 carnation was there felt with such horror, that the Nirvana — 
 the condition in which that flux is abolished — ^was hailed as a 
 blessed release, The judgment as to the facts — ^that ail human 
 expérience is of sheer, boundless change — ^was doubtless excessive; 
 but the value-judgment — ^that if life be such pure shiftingness, 
 then the cessation of life is the one end for man to work and pray 
 for — ^was assuredly the authentic cry of the human soûl when fully 
 normal and awake, This position thus strikingly confirms the 
 whole Jewish and Christian persistent search for permanence in 
 change — ^for a Simultaneity, the support of our succession ♦ 
 
 And Mohammedanism, both in its striking achievements and 
 in its marked limitations, indeed also in the présentations of it 
 by its own spokesmen, appears as a religion primarily not of a 
 spécial pervasive spirit and of large, variously applicable maxims, 
 but as one of précise, entirely immutable rules» Thus we find 
 
90 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 hère something not ail unlike, but mostly still more rigid than^ 
 the post-Exilic Jewish religion — something doubtless useful for 
 certain times and races, but which could not expand and adapt 
 itself to indefinite varieties of growths and peoples without losing 
 that interior unity and self-identity so essential to ail living and 
 powerful religion» 
 
 III 
 
 Let us now attempt, in a somewhat loose and elastic order, 
 a short allocation and estimate of the facts in past and présent 
 religion which mainly concem the question of Religion and 
 Progress» 
 
 We West Europeans hâve apparently again reached the fruitful 
 stage when man is not simply alive to this or that physical or 
 psychic need, nor even to the practical interest and advantage 
 of this or that Art, Science, Sociology, Politics, Ethics ; but 
 when he awakens further to the question as to why and how 
 thèse several activities, ail so costly where at ail effectuai, can 
 deserve ail this sacrifice — can be based on anything sufficiently 
 abiding and objective» The history of ail the past efforts, and 
 indeed ail really adéquate richness of immédiate outlook, combine, 
 I think, to answer that only the expérience and the conviction 
 of an Objective Reality distinct from, and more than, man, or 
 indeed than the whole of the world apprehended by man as less 
 than, or as equal to, man himself, can furnish sufficiently deep 
 and tenadous roots for our sensé and need of an objective 
 suprême Beauty, Truth, and Goodness^ — of a living Reality 
 which is already overflowingly that which, in lesser degrees and 
 ways, we small realities cannot altogether cease from desiring 
 to become» It is Religion which, from first to last, but with 
 increasing purity and power, brings with it this évidence and 
 conviction. The sensé of the Objective, FuU Reality of God, 
 and the need of Adoration are quite essential to Religion, although 
 considérable philosophers, who are largely satisfactory on the 
 more immédiate questions raised by .ffisthetics and even by 
 Ethics, and who are sincerely anxious to do justice also to the 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 91 
 
 religious sensé, are fuUy at work to explain away thèse essential 
 characteristics of ail wideawake Religion. Paul Natorp, the 
 distinguished Plato-scholar in Gerraany, the short-lived pathetic- 
 ally éloquent M. Guyau in France, and, above ail, Benedetto 
 Croce, the large encyclopaedic mind in Italy, hâve influenced or 
 led much of this movement, which, in questions of Religion, 
 has assuredly not reached the deepest and most tenacious 
 teachings of life. 
 
 The intimations as to this deepest Reality certainly arise 
 within my own mind, émotion, will ; and thèse my faculties 
 cannot, upon the whole, be constrained by my fellow-mortals ; 
 indeed, as men grow more manysidedly awake, ail attempts at 
 any such constraint only arrest or deflect the growth of thèse 
 intimations* Yet the dispositions necessary for the sufficient 
 appréhension of thèse religious intimations — sincerity, conscien- 
 tiousness, docility — are not, even collectively, already Religion, 
 any more than they are Science or Philosophy. With thèse dis- 
 positions on our part, objective facts and living Reality can reach 
 us — ^and, even so, thèse facts reach us practically always, at 
 first, through human teachers already experienced in thèse 
 things* The need of such facts and such persons to teach them 
 are, in the first years of every man, and for long âges in the 
 history of mankind, far more pressing than any question of 
 toleration. Even vigorous persécution or keen exclusiveness of 
 feeling hâve — pace Lord Acton — saved for mankind, at certain 
 crises of its difficult development, convictions of priceless worth 
 — ^as in the Deuteronomic Reform and the Johannine Writings. 
 In proportion as men become more manysidedly awake, they 
 acquire at least the capacity for greater sensitiveness concerning 
 the laws and forces intrinsic to the various ranges and levels of 
 life ; and, where such sensitiveness is really at work, it can 
 advantageously replace, by means of the spontaneous accept- 
 ance of such objective realities, the constraints of past âges — 
 constraints which now, in any case, hâve become directly mis- 
 chievous for such minds. None the less will men, after this 
 change as before, require the corporate expérience and manifesta- 
 tion of religion as, in var3^ng degrees and ways, a permanent 
 necessity for the vigorous life of religion. Indeed, such corporate 
 tradition opérâtes strongly even where men's spiritual sensé seems 
 
 K* 
 
93 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 most individual^ or where, with the rétention of some ethical 
 nobility of outlook, they most keenly combat ail and every 
 religions institution» So with George Fox 's doctrine of the 
 Divine Enlightenment of every soûl separately and without 
 médiation of any kind, a doctrine derived by him from that highly 
 ecclesiastical document, the Gospel of St, John ; and with many 
 a Jacobines fierce proclamation of the rights of Man, never far 
 away from sayings of Su PauL 
 
 This permanent necessity of Religious Institutions is primarily 
 a need for men who will teach and exemplify, not simply Natural, 
 This- World Morality, but a Supernatural, Other- World Ethic ; 
 and not simply that abstraction, Religion in General or a Religious 
 Hypothesis, but that rich concrétion, this or that Historical 
 Religion. In proportion as such an Historical Religion is deep 
 and délicate, it will doubtless contain afïinities with ail that is 
 wholesome and real within the other extant historical religions. 
 Nevertheless, ail religions are effectuai through their own spécial 
 developments, where thèse developments remain true at ail. 
 As well deprive a flower of its '* mère détails ** of pistil, stamen, 
 pollen, or an insect of its ** superfluous '* antennae, as simplify 
 any Historical Religion down to the sorry stump labelled ** the 
 religion of every honest man.*' We shall escape ail bigotry, 
 without lapsing into such most unjust indifferentism, if we 
 vigorously hold and unceasingly apply the doctrine of such a 
 Church theologian as Juan de Lugo. De Lugo (a.d. i 583-1660), 
 Spaniard, post-Reformation Roman Catholic, Jesuit, Theological 
 Professor, and a Cardinal writing in Rome under the eyes of 
 Pope Urban VIII., teaches that the members of the varions 
 Christian sects, of the Jewish and Mohammedan communions, 
 and of the heathen religions and philosophical schools, who 
 achieve their salvation, do so, ordinarily, simply through the aid 
 afforded by God's grâce to their good faith in its instinctive con- 
 centration upon, and in its practice of, those éléments in their 
 respective community's worship and teaching, which are true 
 and good and originally revealed by God.^ Thus we escape ail 
 undue individualism and ail unjust equalisation of the (very 
 variously valuable) religious and philosophical bodies ; and yet 
 we clearly hold the profound importance, next to God*s sanctify- 
 * De Fide, Disp. xix., 7, 10 ; xx., 107, 194. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 93 
 
 ing grâce, of the single sours good faith and religious instinct, 
 and of the worship or school, be they ever so elementary and 
 imperfect, which environ such a souL 
 
 A man*s religion, in proportion to its depth, will move in a 
 Concrète Time which becomes more and more a Partial Simul- 
 taneity* And thèse his depths then more and more testify to, 
 and contrast with, the Fully Simultaneous God, Because man 
 thus lives, not in an ever-equal chain of mutually exclusive 
 moments, in Clock Time, but in Duration, with its variously 
 close interpénétrations of the successive parts ; and because 
 thèse interprétations are close in proportion to the richness 
 and fruitfulness of the durations he hves through : he can, 
 indeed he must, conceive absolutely perfect life as absolutely 
 simultaneous* God is thus not Unending, but Eternal ; the 
 very fullness of His life leaves no room or reason for succession 
 and our poor need of it. Dr« F, C* S* Schiller has admirably 
 drawn out this grand doctrine, with the aid of Aristotle's Un- 
 moving Action, in Humanism, 1903, pp» 204-27. We need only 
 persistently apprehend this Simultaneity as essential to God, and 
 Succession as varyingly essential to ail créatures, and there 
 remains no difi&culty — ^at least as regards the Time-element — 
 in the doctrine of Création. For only with the existence of 
 créatures does Time thus arise at ail — ^it exists only in and through 
 them. And assuredly ail finite things, that we know at ail, bear 
 traces of a history involving a beginning and an end. Professor 
 Bernardino Varisco, in his great Know Thyseïf, has noble pages 
 on this large thème. ^ In any case we must beware of ail more 
 or less Pantheistic conceptions of the simultaneous life of God 
 and the successive life of créatures as but essential and necessary 
 éléments of one single Divine-Creaturely existence, in the manner, 
 e*g., of Professor Josiah Royce, in his powerful work The World 
 and the Individual, second séries, 1901. Ail such schemes break 
 down under an adéquate réalisation of those dread facts Error 
 and Evil. A certain real independence must hâve been left by 
 God to reasonable créatures. And let it be noted carefully : 
 the greatest theoretic difïiculty against ail Theism lies in the 
 terrible reality of Evil ; and yet the deepest adequacy, in the 
 actual toil and trouble of life, of this same Theism, especially 
 ^ Cognosci Te Stesso, 1912, pp. 144-47. 
 
94 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 of Christianity, consists in its practical attitude towards, and 
 success against, this most real EviL Pantheism, on the contrary, 
 increases, whilst seeming to surmount, the theoretical difficulty, 
 since the world as it stands, and not an Ultimate Reality behind 
 it, is hère held to be perfect ; and it entirely fails really to trans- 
 mute Evil in practice, Theism, no more than any other outlook, 
 really explains Evil ; but it alone, in its fuUest, Jewish-Christian 
 forms, has done more, and better, than explain Evil : it has fuUy 
 faced, it has indeed greatly intensified, the problem, by its noble 
 insistence upon the reality and heinousness of Sin ; and it has 
 then overcome ail this Evil, not indeed in theory, but in practice, 
 by actually producing, in the midst of deep suffering and through 
 a still deeper faith and love, soûls which are the living expression 
 of the deepest béatitude and peace» 
 
 The fuUy Simultaneous Reality awakens and satisfies man*s 
 deepest, most nearly simultaneous life, by a certain adaptation of 
 its own intrinsic life to thèse human spirits. In such varyingly 
 ** incarnational *' acts or action the Non-Successive God Himself 
 condescends to a certain Successiveness ; but this, in order to help 
 His créatures to achieve as much Simultaneity as is compatible 
 with their several ranks and calls. We must not wonder if, 
 in the religious literature, thèse condescensions of God the non- 
 successive largely appear as though they themselves were more 
 or less non-successive ; nor, again, if the deepest religious con- 
 sciousness tends usually to conceive God^s outward action, if 
 future, then as proximate, and, if présent, then as strictly in- 
 stantaneous. For God in Himself is indeed Simultaneous; and 
 if we try to picture Simultaneity by means of temporal images 
 at ail, then the instant, and not any period long or short, is 
 certainly nearest to the truth — ^as regards the form and vehicle 
 of the expérience. 
 
 The greater acts of Divine Condescension and Self-Revelation, 
 our Religious Accessions, hâve mostly occurred at considérable 
 intervais, each from the other, in our human history. After 
 they hâve actually occi:rred, thèse several acts can be compared 
 and arranged, according to their chief characteristics, and even 
 in a séries of (upon the whole) growing content and worth> — 
 hence the Science of Religion. Yet such Science gives us no 
 powcr to produce, or even to foresee, any further acts. Thèse 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 95 
 
 great Accessions of Spiritual Knowledge and Expérience are 
 not the simple resuit of the conditions obtaining previously 
 in the other levels of life, or even in that of religion itself ; they 
 often much anticipate, they sometimes greatly lag behind, the 
 rise or décline of the other kinds of life. And where (as with the 
 great Jewish Prophets^ and, in some degree, with John the 
 Baptist and Our Lord) thèse Accessions do occur at times of 
 national stress, thèse several crises are, at most, the occasion for 
 the demand, not the cause of the supply, 
 
 The mostly long gaps between thèse Accessions hâve been 
 more or less filled up, amongst the peoples concerned, by 
 varyingly vigorous and valuable attempts to articulate and 
 systématise, to apply in practice, and rightly to place (within the 
 other ranges of man's total life) thèse great, closely-packed 
 masses of spiritual fact ; or to élude, to deflect, or directly to 
 combat them, or some of their interprétations or applications. 
 Now a fairly steady improvement is possible, désirable, and 
 largely actual, in the critical sifting and appraisement, as to the 
 dates of the historical documents, and as to the actual reality 
 and détails of thèse Accessions ; in the philosophical articula- 
 tion of their doctrinal and evidential content ; in the finer under- 
 standing and wider application of their ethical demands ; and 
 in the greater adequacy (both as to firmness and comprehensive- 
 ness) of the institutional organs and incorporations spécial to 
 thèse same Accessions. Ail this can and doss progress, but mostly 
 slowly, intermittently, with short violent paroxysms of excess 
 and long sleepy reactions of defect, with one-sidedness, travesties, 
 and — ^worst of all^— with worldly indifférence and self-seeking. 
 The grâce and aid of the Simultaneous Richness are hère also 
 always necessary ; nor can thèse things ever really progress 
 except through a deep religious sensé — ^all mère scepticism 
 and ail levelling down are simply so much waste. Still, we can 
 speak of progress in the Science of Religion more appropriately 
 than we can of progress in the Knowledge of Religion. 
 
 The Crusades, the Renaissance, the Révolution, no doubt 
 exercised, in the long run, so potent a secularising influence, 
 because men*s minds had become too largely other-worldly — 
 had lost a sufîicient interest in this wonderful world ; and hence 
 ail those new, apparently boundless outlooks and problems were 
 
96 PROGRESS IN RELIGION 
 
 taken up largely as a revolt and escape from what looked like a 
 prison-house — religion, Yet through ail thèse violent oscillations 
 there persisted, in human life, the supernatural need and the 
 supernatural calL In this need and in this call God is the greatest 
 central interest, love and care of the souL We must look to it 
 that both thèse interests and Ethics are kept awake, strong and 
 distinct within a costingly rich totality of life : the Ethic of 
 the honourable citi2;en, merchant, lawyer — of Confucius and 
 Bentham ; and the Ethic of the Jewish Prophets at their deepest, 
 of the Sufîering Servant, of our Lord's Béatitudes, of St, Paul's 
 great eulogy of love, of Augustine and Monica at the window in 
 Ostia, of Father Damian*s voluntary death as a leper amidst 
 the lepers in the far-away, antipodean seas, The Church is the 
 born incorporation of this Supernatural Pôle, as the State is of 
 the other, the Natural Pôle, The Church indeed should, at its 
 lower limit, also encourage the This-world Stage ; the State, 
 at its higher limit, can, more or less consciously, prépare us for 
 the Other- World Stage ♦ Both spring from the same God, at 
 two levels of His action ; both concern the same men, at two 
 stages of their need and of their calL Yet the primary duty of 
 the State is tumed to this life ; the primary care of the Church, 
 to that life — ^to life in its deepest depths. 
 
 Will men, after this great war, more largely again apprehend, 
 love, and practise this double polarity of their lives ^ Only thus 
 will the truest progress be possible in the understanding, the 
 application, and the fruitfulness of Religion, with its great 
 central origin and object, God, the beginning and end of ail our 
 true progress, precisely because He Himself already possesses 
 immeasurably more than ail He helps us to become, — He Who, 
 even now already, is our Peace in Action, and even in the Cross 
 is our abiding Joy. , 
 
 BOOKS FOR ReFERENCB ' 
 
 I. I. Oswold Kulpe, The Philosophy of the Présent in Germany* English 
 translation. London : George Allen, 1913* 
 2» J. McKellcr Stewart, A Critical Exposition of Bergson*s Philosophy* 
 London : Macmillan, 191 3. 
 
PROGRESS IN RELIGION 97 
 
 II, I. R, H, Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life* 
 London : A. & C. Black, 1899. 
 
 2. Emest T. Scott, The Fourth Gospel Edinburgh : T, & T. Clark. 
 
 IIL !♦ Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction against Science. English translation. 
 Macmillan. 
 
 a. F. C. Schiller, Humanism, Macmillan, 1903. 
 
 3. C. C. J. Webb, Group Théories of Religion and the Individual, Allen 
 
 and Unwin, 1916. 
 
98 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 ON THE PRELIMINARIES TO RELIGIOUS BELIEF 
 AND ON THE FACTS OF SUFFERING, FAITH 
 AND LOVE^ 
 
 My dear Mrs, N., 
 
 Please allow me, before I attempt to explain some matters 
 of fact and of reality, to suggest to you, with a little détail and 
 vividness, certain habits of mind and certain spiritual practices, 
 which (I am very sure) are simply necessary for any true appré- 
 hension of those facts and realities, I do so ail the more because, 
 even if I fail altogether in my striving to help you as regards those 
 facts, I shall hâve been of some use to you if I succeed in winning 
 you, however little, to thèse gênerai dispositions of souL 
 
 Thèse dispositions I hâve had to gain and to practise for my- 
 self, now during forty years ; and I am very sure that, if I see at 
 ail steadily and profitably, it is owing to thèse habits of souL I 
 find them to be three, 
 
 !♦ I Write, then, to you at ail, only because I believe you to be, 
 or (at least) to wish to be, in the great fundamental disposition 
 in which alone my suggestions, which anyone could make to you 
 as to the facts, can do some little good, and not much harm. That 
 is, I assume you to be non-contentious and non-controversial ; 
 to be athirst for wisdom, not for cleverness ; to be humble and 
 simple, or (at least) to feel a wholesome shame at not being so ; 
 to be just straight, and anxious for some light, and ready to pay 
 for it and to practise it, I take you to be determined not to stop 
 
 * Written to V. N. on the death, after a long illness, of her little daughter of 
 cighteen months, in answer to the question, ** how such suffering could be per- 
 mitted by a God said to be all-good and all-powerful i ** January, 1914, 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 99 
 
 and worry over such facts or expressions of my communication 
 as you may not understand or may not like ; but quietly to 
 move on to, and then to rest and browse amongst, such facts and 
 feelings as hère may gently attract and feed your spirit. Drop 
 brain, open wide the soûl, nourish the heart, purify, strengthen 
 the will : with this, you are sure to grow ; without this, you are 
 certain to shrink» 
 
 How much you can learn, as I myself hâve learnt, from watch- 
 ing cattle dreamily grazing and ruminating in their pastures I 
 See how the sagacious créatures, without any theory or inflation 
 of mind, instinctively sélect the herbs and grasses that suit 
 and sustain them ; and how they peacefully pass by what does 
 not thus help them ! They do not waste their time and energy 
 in tossing away, or in trampling upon, or even simply in snififing 
 at, what is antipathetic to them, Why should they $* Thistles 
 may not suit them ; well, there are other créatures in the world 
 whom thistles do suit. And, in any case, are they the police of 
 this rich and varied universe $* 
 
 You see, no human being can possibly divine, in ail respects and 
 degrees, the every want of a fellow-soul, even at any one of this 
 souFs stages. And yet no soûl can really advance just simply 
 by itself ; either books, or letters, or pictures, or the words or 
 actions of others are, sooner or later, and more or less, always 
 necessary, always indeed operative within us, for good or for 
 evil, or for both, Hence the profound importance for the soûl, 
 for every soûl, to be, to become, always to re-become, outward- 
 moving, humbly welcoming, generously interprétative. For only 
 thus could even an angel from Heaven help it at ail, since thus, 
 and thus only, will it not be fine and hlasé ; will it readily see how 
 much is being offered to it by which it can grow and overcome 
 its old self, and even its présent self; and will it gratefuUy 
 accept and utilise that which is now submitted to it, even where 
 it has somewhat to modify, so as to make fit, this valuable help, 
 
 Thus I assume that you will nowhere, in what foUows, either 
 attempt to force yourself to accept it against your best^ — your 
 quiet — ^light and instinct; nor allow yourself to tilt against, 
 and to judge as wrong or false, what does not, at least not at 
 once, bring to your own soûl some real light and strength. You 
 will judge it ail only as suiting yourself, or as not suiting yourself ; 
 
100 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 and even this much of judging, if you want to grow, will hâve 
 to be done looking up to God, with a gentle imploring, and not 
 down upon man, with self-sufficingness» 
 
 You will never get, you will never deserve to get, light, unless 
 you become, unless you realise that (at your best) you are : 
 
 An infant crying in the night ; 
 An infant crying for the light. 
 And with no language but a cry. 
 
 In this way the very faults and limitations (sure to be plentifully 
 présent) in what follows, will actually become further aids, 
 because occasions of growth, for your soûl, since thus you will be 
 stimulated to practise that peace and patience, humility and 
 love without which we cannot really advance in thèse fundamental 
 quests, 
 
 2* My further preliminary is as foUows. Gently learn to see 
 the reasonableness, the need, the duty, and quietly strive to gain 
 the habit, of dropping ail insistence upon great and continuous 
 clearness — ^upon your degree, your kind of évidence ia thèse 
 deepest things» For thèse things are the deepest things, are they 
 not 5* 
 
 Hère I mean that, if thèse things that we are after are not merely 
 figments, or at least mère abstractions, of our brains, but are real 
 in themselves, and distinct from our minds, then they mustbe 
 dim and difficult for our minds — ^for our analysis and reasoning» 
 Pray get this point quite definite and firm, — ^that to require 
 clearness in proportion to the concreteness, to the depth of 
 reality, of the subject-matter is an impossible position, — I mean 
 a thoroughly unreasonable, a self-contradictory habit of mind» 
 
 This is so, because only abstract ideas, and only numerical and 
 spatial relations are quite clear, utterly undeniable, and instantly 
 transférable from soûl to soûl ; and thèse ideas and relations 
 are thus entirely transparent, because they do not involve any 
 affirmation of particular existences (of realities) — ^at least they 
 do not directly in volve any such affirmation* Thus, for instance, 
 ** largeness,** ** smallness,** ** fullness,*' *' emptiness,** and, again, 
 ** one,** two,** ** seven ** ; ** five and five are ten,*^ ** six times 
 six are thirty-six,*' ** the part is smaller than the whole,'* ** a 
 straight line is the shortest route between any two points ** ; 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF iqi. 
 
 ** one extended thing cannot occupy the same space as another 
 similarly extended thing '* : ail this is absolutely clear, It is ail 
 absolutely clear, yes ; but just because hère we hâve nowhere 
 afi&rmed the existence or reality of anything whatsoever. We 
 havc only asserted that our mind possesses the ideas of ** large- 
 ness/* '* smallness/' " fuUness/' ** emptiness ** ; but whether 
 anything distinct from our mind, and of thèse ideas of our mind, 
 exists in correspondence to thèse ideas — that remains quite 
 unsettled. We hâve, again, affirmed that if there exist realities, 
 say apples, we can number them as one, two, seven apples ; 
 and if there exist five eggs and other five eggs, then the total 
 of ail thèse eggs will be ten ; and if there exist six sets of six 
 nuts each, we shall hâve a collection of thirty-six nuts. But 
 whether there really exists one single apple, one single egg or nut, 
 not ail this clearness and neat reasoning has established in the 
 vcry least. 
 
 Ail stands differently, indeed contrariwise, with affirmations 
 of real existence, and of real qualities attaching to such existences» 
 
 As you doubtless know, even the reality of any outside world — 
 cspecially the existence of material objecta— of sun and moon, 
 of rocks and rivers — their existence, or (at least) that we can at 
 ail know that they exist' — ^has been denied by philosophera of 
 distinction ♦ And we hâve to admit that it is a complicated and 
 tedious business to prove thèse philosophers to be wrong ; that 
 no one argument quotable against them is, taken alone, entirely 
 clear and utterly irrésistible. 
 
 Again, most philosophers deny that we, human individuals, 
 possess any direct knowledge of the nature, the character of 
 other human individuals, however near and dear to us ; they 
 maintain that our knowledge, in ail such cases, is always of 
 ourselves alone, and that we then get, beyond this our sole 
 real knowledge, only our ever faulty and fallible interprétation 
 of essentially ambiguous signs — of peculiarities of gesture, 
 tone, look, which reach us, or seem to reach us, from those other 
 beings* I believe myself that, where we love, we possess, or can 
 develop, direct instinct and intuition in such matters. Never- 
 theless, however the case may really stand, the process, indeed 
 the resuit itself, of our knowledge of our fellows, is not simple 
 and clear. On the contrary, the process is most subtle and 
 
lipp;. PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 côtnplcx ; and the resuit, at its best, is indeed most rich and 
 vivid, but distinctly not simple and ** clear ** — it can be resisted 
 cven by ourselvçs, and it can only very rarely be transferred, 
 with any ease, to others, however closely thèse others may be 
 connected with us. 
 
 Certainly with regard to animais — even with respect to our 
 dogs that we know and love best, we are often in the dark as to 
 what is their momentary disposition and requirement. But how 
 instructive it is to watch precisely such animais thus dear to us 
 — I mean their knowledge and love of us, and their need of us 
 and of our love ! Our dogs know us and love us, human indi- 
 viduals, from amongst millions of fairly similar other individuals. 
 Our dogs know us and love us thus most really, yet they doubtless 
 know us only vividly, not clearly ; we evidently strain their minds 
 after a while — they then like to get away amongst servants and 
 children ; and, indeed, they love altogether to escape from 
 human company, the rich and dim, or (at best) the vivid expéri- 
 ences — ^the Company that is above them, to the company of their 
 fellow-creatures, the company that affords so much poorer but 
 so much clearer impressions — ^the level company of their brother- 
 dogs* And yet, how wonderful I dogs thus require their fellow- 
 dogs, the shallow and clear, but they also require us, the deep 
 and dim ; they require indeed what they can grasp ; but they 
 as really require what they can but reach out to, more or less — 
 what exceeds, protects, envelopes, directs them. And, after a 
 short relaxation in the dog-world, they return to the bracing of 
 the man-world. 
 
 Now pray note how if religion is right — ^if what it proclaims 
 as its source and object, if God be real, then this Reality, as 
 superhuman, cannot possibly be clearer to us than are the 
 realities, and the real qualities of thèse realities, which we hâve 
 been considering. The source and object of religion, if religion 
 be true and its object be real, cannot, indeed, by any possibility, 
 be as clear to me even as I am to my dog. For the cases we 
 hâve considered deal with realities inferior to our own reality 
 (material objects, or animais), or with realities level to our own 
 reality (fellow human beings), or with realities no higher above 
 ourselves than are we, finite human beings, to our very finite 
 dogs, Whereas, in the case of religion — ^if religion be right — 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 103 
 
 wc apprchend and afïîrm realities indefinitely superior in quality 
 and amount of reality to ourselves, and which, nevertheless 
 (or rather, just because of this), anticipate, penetrate and sustain 
 us with a quite unpicturable intimacy» The obscurity of my lifc 
 to my dog, must thus be greatly exceeded by the obscurity of 
 the life of God to me» Indeed the obscurity of plant life — so 
 obscure for my mind, because so indefinitely inferior and poorer 
 than is my human life — must be greatly exceeded by the dimness, 
 for my human life, of God — of His reality and life, so différent 
 and superior, so unspeakably more rich and alive, than is, or 
 ever can be, my own life and reality* 
 
 You may well ask hère : ** But what protection, then, do you 
 leave me against mère fancy and superstition $* Will we not, 
 thus, come to believe, to prétend to believe, in reality because 
 the affirmations of it are obscure ^ And are not ail sorts of non- 
 sense, of bogies, of chimeras, obscure ^ What évidence, then, 
 remains for thèse, the most sweeping and important of ail 
 affirmations ^ Ought we not to be careful, indeed exacting, as 
 to proof, exactly in proportion to the importance of the matters 
 that solicit our adhésion ^ And how otherwise can we be careful 
 than in demanding clearness for the proof, in précise proportion 
 to the importance of the subject-matter ^ *' 
 The answer hère is not really difficult, I think» 
 Note, pray, how Darwin acquired certainty, and remark the 
 nature of the certainty he acquired, concerning the character, 
 the habits, indeed (in part) the very existence of fly-trap plants 
 and of orchids, of earthworms and of humming-birds* He was 
 always loving, learning, watching ; he was always ** out of 
 himself,** doubling himself up, as it were, so as to penetrate 
 thèse realities so much lowlier than himself, so différent from 
 himself, He had never done and finished ; what he learnt to-day 
 had to be re-learnt, to be supplemented and corrected to-morrow, 
 yet always with the sensé that what he had learnt was, not his 
 own mind and its fancies and théories, but realities and their 
 real qualities and habits. His life thus moved out into other lives* 
 And what he thus discovered was, not clear, but vivid ; not 
 simple, but rich ; not readily, irresistibly transférable to other 
 minds, but only acquirable by them through a slow self-purifica- 
 tion and a humble, loving observation and docility like unto 
 
104 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 his own. His own conclusions deserved, and indeed demanded 
 crédit, because so many différent facts, facts often widely apart 
 from each other, converged to thèse conclusions ; and because, 
 on the other hand, thèse same conclusions, once accepted, 
 illumined so large a body of other facts — ^facts which, otherwisc, 
 remained quite dark or strange anomalies» Indeed thèse con- 
 clusions, once accepted, led on to the discovery of numerous 
 facts which had been unknown, unsuspected until then. Yet 
 thèse very conclusions, since this is the process and the nature 
 of their proof , were not and are not irrésistible at any one moment 
 and because of any one single fact or argument. Indeed, to this 
 hour, even the most reasonably assured of the conclusions of 
 Darwin hâve certain clear objections against them, objections 
 which we cannot solve» So also even Copernicanism — ^that 
 mathematically clear doctrine concerning the rotation of the 
 carth around the sun — ^has certain objections standing over against 
 it, which we cannot solve. 
 
 So it always is, in various degrees, with ail our knowledge and 
 certainty concerning existences, realities, and concerning the 
 real qualities and nature of thèse realities. We get to know such 
 realities slowly, laboriously, intermittently, partially; we get 
 to know them, not inevitably nor altogether apart from our dis- 
 positions, but only if we are sufïiciently awake to care to know 
 them, sufïiciently humble to welcome them, and suffidently 
 generous to pay the price continuously which is strictly necessary 
 if this knowledge and love are not to shrink but to grow. We 
 indeed get to know realities, in proportion as we become worthy 
 to know them,^ — ^in proportion as we become less self-occupied, 
 less self-centred, more outward-moving, less obstinate and 
 insistent, more gladly lost in the crowd, more rich in giving ail 
 we hâve, and especially ail we are, our very selves. And we get 
 to know that we really know thèse realities, by finding our know- 
 ledge (dim, difficult, non-transferable though it be) approving 
 itself to us as fruitful ; because it leads us to further knowledge 
 of the realities thus known, or of other realities even when thèse 
 lie apparently quite far away ; and ail this, in a thoroughly living 
 and practical, in a concrète, not abstract, not foretellable, in a 
 quite inexhaustible way. 
 
 Thus we find, through actual expérience and through the 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 105 
 
 similar expériences of our fellow-men, that the right and proper 
 test for the adequacy of abstractions and of spatial, numerical, 
 mechanical relations is, indeed, clearness and ready transferable- 
 ness ; but that the appropriate test for the truth concerning 
 existences and realities is vividness (richness) and fruitfulness» 
 The affirmations which concern abstractions and relations may 
 be ever so empty and merely conditional ; if they are clear 
 and readily transférable, they are appropriate and adéquate» 
 The affirmations which concern existences and realities may be 
 ever so dim and difficult to transmit ; if they are rich and fruitful, 
 they are appropriate and true» Thus in neither set of affirmations 
 do we assent without évidence and proof ; but in each set we 
 only require the kind of évidence and proof natural to this par- 
 ticular set» And our exactingness can increase, ought indeed to 
 increase, with the increase in the importance of the affirmations 
 put forward within either set» But in the mathematical abstract 
 set, I will require more and more clearness and ready transfer- 
 ableness, the wider and the more universal is the claim of a 
 particular proposition ; whereas in the existential concrète set 
 I will require, in proportion to the importance of the existence 
 affirmed, more and more richness and fruitfulness (I mean 
 fruitfulness also in fields and levels other than those of the 
 particular reality affirmed). 
 
 Of course, whether or no the affirmations of religion are thus, 
 not indeed clear, but vivid (rich) i and, not indeed readily 
 transférable, but deeply and widely fruitful i is hère in no way 
 or degree prejudged. We are only busy, so far, with our method 
 and our standard, — ^not with the answer we shall get, but with 
 the question we hâve a right to ask. And though even with this 
 method and standard — ^with thèse by themselves — ^we may be 
 unable to acquire religion, we most certainly will never gain 
 religion without them, and still less in opposition to them. 
 Without the acceptance of such a temper of mind, or at least 
 without striving after, or some wish for, such a disposition, it 
 is worse than waste of time to enter upon the questions of fact ; 
 worse than simple waste, — because we are then certain to come 
 away from such a study more rebellious and empty, or more 
 despairing and bitter, or considerably more sceptical, than we 
 came or could come to iu 
 
io6 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 3» In writing out for you thèse expériences that are continually 
 before me, I think I hâve been leading up, quite naturally, to 
 the last prédisposition which I myself strive hard to practise, 
 and which I will now invite you to appreciate and attempt. 
 Those two habits of mind are indeed the necessary préparations 
 for this last and third habit, or rather they readily issue in a third 
 habit — ^the one I would now propose* Ever since I hâve had, 
 cver since I could hâve children, I hâve felt myself a créature 
 enriched with the noble duty of giving on the largest scale — 
 with the obligation to possess a reserve of light and life and love — 
 a reserve for dearest little beings who would not hâve existed 
 but for myself» I hâve not, it is true, created thèse beings ; 
 yet it was because I chose to marry, to be and to act as a husband 
 and a possible father, that thèse particular beings became 
 possible, and that, when they actually came, they possessed 
 many a physical and temperamental peculiarity of my own, good, 
 bad and mixed» And if I, and still more my wife, possess thus 
 a unique share and responsibility, under God, in the physical 
 existence, and even in the psychical peculiarities of our children, 
 hâve I not, has she not, a deep, indeed unique, share and re- 
 sponsibility, under God, in their spiritual life, spiritual health 
 and spiritual growth ^ 
 
 Of course, I know well how often facts confront us which 
 seem to show that the care of parents, precisely in thèse deepest 
 matters, avails nothing, indeed that it tends to irritate the children 
 and to drive them the other way* I know well, too, how wide- 
 spread just now is the theory, and still more the tacit assumption, 
 that ail such spiritual matters are unfitted to children, that human 
 beings can understand them at ail, and can judge them in any 
 way fairly, only when they are grown men, and hence that our 
 children hâve the right, when they are grown men, to find them- 
 selves facing thèse questions quite unfettered by early bias in 
 any direction» 
 
 And yet our own deepest instincts and expériences, once they 
 are at ail awake to the teeming possibilities, for good and for 
 evil, of our children, and especially as we become alive and 
 sensitive to the deeper and deepest realities, to the religious 
 Realities, cannot sincerely and abidingly acquiesce in thèse or 
 similar cold, and even cynical calculations. For nothing is more 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 107 
 
 certain than that, if children can casily be taught too many 
 practices and too many doctrines, or can be taught even but few 
 practices and doctrines in a thoroughly inappropriate way ; if, 
 as they grow older, we can easily drive them away by much 
 reasoning or by want of alert understanding of their wants, which 
 are always largely quite individual: nevertheless, thèse same 
 children are immensely impressionable to personaîity, not indeed 
 to what those around them say or even do, but to what they are 
 and to whether or not thèse seniors are simple and sincère, and 
 full of love or no» Thus what every child requires is life and love, 
 — ^life and love offered to it long before any explanation or analysis; 
 the child requires such overflowing love as freely as it requires 
 the mother's breast» An^ for the purposes of the child's hungry 
 soûl, the mother's soûl must possess, must it not $*, the spiritual 
 food, just as, for the infantes hungry body, the mother's breast 
 must possess the appropriate physical food. And the history 
 of great soûls shows, upon the whole very plainly I think, how 
 profound has been, in most cases, the influence of, not what 
 the mother taught or said or did, but what she ivas. 
 
 Now if it is important that we poor parents should thus be^ 
 we must lead lives of faith, of trust, of risk. Ail spiritual life and 
 love hâve ever to begin afresh, and thus, only thus, they discover, 
 indeed create conditions, if old yet ever new, and if countless 
 yet unique ♦ And see, how delightful ! The very prédispositions, 
 the habits of mind, which we hâve found to be simply necessary 
 for our own awaking and growth as individual soûls, turn out 
 hère to be precisely the dispositions which fit us to understand 
 and to awaken our children. For we hâve, from the first, been 
 seeking, not even truth, but reality ; not a System or a theory, 
 nothing abstruse or straining. Indeed we hâve not found, even 
 as to methcd, more than that we must learn peacefully to browse 
 amongst, and instinctively to sélect from, the foods, or seeming 
 foods, proposed to our soûls ; and that we must seek reality and its 
 knowledge in action and through self-purification, and must find 
 the tests of what is reality and what is its knowledge in the vivid- 
 ness (richness) and in the fruitfulness of what claims to be 
 spiritually true and spiritually known. Yet thèse means and tests, 
 if we but practise them humbly, silently, generously, more and 
 more instinctively, will certainly make us deeper, homelier. 
 
io8 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 more génial, better : they will bring us into ever doser and wider 
 contact with our children ; they cannot, of themselves, annoy or 
 strain even the most sensitive of thèse our little ones. 
 
 Oh, may we become ever richer in self-giving, in the joy and 
 perpétuai youth of its ever extending, its unspeakable delights I 
 The children *s Father indeed, he too can be, and ought to become, 
 such a self-giver ; but what cannot and ought not the Mother 
 to be and to become in thèse magnificent respects < Yet neither 
 Father nor Mother will ever become thus truly rich except they 
 become poor and little in their own eyes ; and, again, they will 
 never become thus suffidently, profoundly little, except with 
 and because of the consdousness of God, the great Reality which 
 then so solidly sustains and so delightfully dwarfs them» Only 
 prostrate at the foot of ** the world*s great altar-stairs ** will the 
 parent become and remain sufficiently humble, homely and holy 
 for his or her unique sufferings, joys and duties, to bud and 
 blossom as they are silently required to flourish by the soûls of 
 their little ones« 
 
 II 
 
 As to the facts, I will attempt to be very short, since if you 
 hâve accepted, and are practising, or even tryîng to practise, 
 the three dispositions described at some length, you will dis- 
 cover, I think, that the answers — ^the ** explanations ** — ^as to 
 thèse facts^ — ^the kind and degree of answers and ** explanations ** 
 we thus require for (and in) a humble and homely, warm and 
 working action and self-donation, will largely suggest themselves, 
 more or less untaught, to your own heart» 
 
 I. There is, then, your impression that Happiness indeed helps 
 us to believe in a Higher Power, and that your own years of 
 happiness were gradually building up some kind and degree 
 of Faith within you ; but that Suffering acts contrariwise — ^that 
 this your keen, deep trouble has swept ail that budding faith 
 away. 
 
 How natural, inévitable is this impression — at least until we 
 awaken, very widely and sensitively, to the wonderful witness 
 of history and to the no less mysterious testimony of our own 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 109 
 
 deepest spirit, and, through thèse évidences, to another, a fuller 
 set of truths I 
 
 For if I look back upon the long and varied history of man- 
 kind, and if I call to mind the numerous soûls, of the most 
 différent races, tempérament, social grade, "ilucation, whom 
 I hâve known intimately well, what do I see S* I see, as a 
 mysterious but most real, most undeniable fact — that it is pre- 
 dsely the deepest, the keenest sufferings, not only of body but 
 of mind, not only of mind but of heart, which hâve occasioned 
 the firmest, the most living, the most tender faith» It was during 
 the désolation and unspeakable cruelties of the Assyrian and 
 Babylonian Exiles, that Jeremiah learnt the love of God as 
 written, not on tables of stone, but on the living heart of man ; 
 that Ezechiel realised God to be the Good Shepherd going after 
 His wandering, weary and lost sheep ; and that-— doubtless 
 then — ^Psalms were composed of an unspeakable magnificence 
 of unconquerable certainty as to God, the souFs unfailing refuge, 
 its one sure lover and support. It was under the awful per- 
 sécution by King Antiochus Epiphanes that the Maccabees 
 developed their grand faith. It was more even than by the 
 peaceful lake and on the quiet mountain side — ^it was in Geth- 
 semane and on Calvary that the trust and love of Jésus awoke 
 to their fullest. And so, in their lesser, various degress with 
 Stephen and St. Paul ; and, under the Emperor Hadrian, with 
 the touching Jewish martyr, Rabbi Akiba. Christianity at large 
 grew spiritually deep and tender under the terrible early per- 
 sécutions lasting, with few breaks, during some two hundred 
 years and more. The faith and fervour of the Jews, since their 
 dispersion, has, very certainly, suffered but little because of 
 the persécutions they endured, deeply unjust though thèse 
 persécutions substantially were ; their faith and fervour, as in 
 the case of Christians, hâve suffered far more from wordly 
 prosperity where and when this has come. Thus also the German 
 people, largely sceptical when the first Napoléon woke them up 
 to pain and humiliation, learnt again to pray, and, in the strength 
 as much of faith in God as of love of country, effected their 
 national libération. 
 
 And case upon case has passed, in real life, before my eyes, 
 of awful physical suffering (I am thinking of my own dear sister). 
 
iio PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 of deep anguish of soûl (I am thinking of a sweet saint of God, 
 a washerwoman whose feet I wish I could become worthy to 
 kiss), of various other, ail delicately individual cases, in which 
 (sometimes only slowly and after imperfect beginnings, some- 
 times heartwholly from the first) the soul's faith, service, love, 
 devotedness, tenderest abandonment, and acceptance of God, 
 of His will, of His beauty, so largely hidden behind thèse black 
 bars and dread purifications, were splendidly, magnificently 
 awakened and sustained» 
 
 And pray note particularly that of course suffering merely as 
 such, suffering alone does not, cannot soften or widtn any soûl ; 
 it can thus, of itself and alone, only harden, narrow and embitter 
 iu Hence what I hère witness to, — ^and thèse facts are as certain 
 as that the earth spins round the sun, — ^is explicable only by 
 the présence, the opération of a power, a reality, so immensely 
 powerful and real as to counteract and greatly to exceed 
 the suffering and this sufîering*s natural effects» This power 
 cornes from God, — cornes, and can corne, only from the fact 
 that He exists — that He exists most really, and that His reality 
 and aid are more real and more sustaining by far than is ail this 
 suffering and ail the soul's natural sensitiveness and weakness 
 in face of such dread pain. 
 
 I take, then, your impression to be most natural, but not yet 
 to reach the great facts and depths of history at large, of individual 
 soûls still now around us, nor, at bottom, of your own spirit even 
 as it is already, — ^for is not, already now, this your distress at the 
 apparent loss of ail your budding faith, a very sure sign that you 
 still possess some very real faith, pressing to be more $* 
 
 2. There is also your most natural, indeed your absolutely 
 true thought that ** one cannot reconcile thèse things with any 
 theory of a * loving * Father/* And you feel that ** Faith must 
 somehow come to terms with the enigma of suffering/* 
 
 Hère again I look first at the large facts across history, and then 
 to my expérience of many soûls, including my own. And every- 
 where thus without me and within me I see that Christianity 
 has, from the first, been very precisely fronting and overcoming 
 the enigma of suffering, True, Christianity has not '' explained *' 
 suffering and evil ; no one has done so, no one can do so, — 
 Christianity has no more done so than any of the philosophies 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF m 
 
 or sciences, although, unfortunately, apologists for religion 
 too often speak and write as though Christianity had really 
 done so, or, at least, as though it could do so. Hère once more 
 ail the exigencies of ** clearness ** are thoroughly out of place ♦ 
 Yet Christianity, in further articulation of many a deep intuition 
 in the Exilic writings of the Old Testament, has done two 
 things with regard to suffering — ^two things quite other indeed 
 than ** explanation/* yet two things greater, more profound and 
 profitable for us than ever could be such a satisfaction of our 
 thirst for clear intellectual compréhension. 
 
 Christianity, then, has, from the first, immensely deepened and 
 widened, it has further revealed, not the ** explanation ** — 
 which never existed for us men, — ^but the fact, the reality, the 
 awful potency and bafïling mystery of sorrow, pain, sin, things 
 which abide with man across the âges. And Christianity has, 
 from the first, immensely increased the capacity, the wondrous 
 secret and force which issues in a practical, living, loving 
 transcendence, utilisation, transformation of sorrow and pain, 
 and even of sin. It is the literal fact, as demonstrable as anything 
 that has happened or will happen to our human race can ever 
 be, that Christianity, after some two centuries of the most 
 terrifie opposition, conquered — that it conquered in an utterly 
 fair fight — a fight fair as regards the Christian success, — ^the 
 philosophy of Greece and the power of Rome ; indeed that it 
 even conquered Gnosticism, that subtle New Paganism of the 
 thousand elusive hues and forms, that Protean error so very dear 
 to ail over-ripe, blasé civilisations. It is the simple fact that 
 Christianity conquered ; and it is equally the simple fact that 
 it did so, above ail because of what it actually achieved with 
 regard to suffering. 
 
 For Christianity, without ever a hésitation, from the first 
 and everywhere, refused to hold, or even to tolerate, either the 
 one or the other of the two only attempts at self-persuasion 
 which, then as now, possess soûls that suffer whilst they hâve not 
 yet found the deepest. Christianity refused ail Epicureanism, — 
 since man cannot find his deepest by fleeing from pain and 
 suffering, and by seeking pleasure and pleasures, however 
 dainty and refined. And it refused ail Stoicism, — since pain, 
 suffering, evil are not fancies and préjudices, but real, very real ; 
 
112 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 and since tnan's greatest action and disposition is not self- 
 sufficingness or aloofness, but self-donation and love, Christi- 
 anity refused thèse théories, not by means of another theory of 
 its own, but simply by exhibiting a Life and lives — the Life 
 of the Crucified, and lives which continually re-live, in their 
 endless various lesser degrees and ways, such a combination 
 of gain in giving and of joy in suffering. Christianity thus gave 
 to soûls the faith and strength to grasp life's neéle, It raised 
 them, in their deepest dispositions and innermost will, above 
 the pitiful oscillations and artificialities of even the greatest of 
 the Pagans in this central matter, — ^between eluding, ignoring 
 pain and suffering, and, animal-like, seeking life in its fleeting, 
 momentary pleasures ; or trying the nobler yet impossible 
 course, — ^the making out that physical, mental, moral pain and 
 evil are nothing real, and the suppressing of émotion, sympathy 
 and pity as things unworthy of the adult souL Christianity 
 did neither, It pointed to Jésus with the terror of death upon 
 Him in Gethsemane ; with a cry of désolation upon the Cross 
 on Calvary ; it allowed the soûl, it encouraged the soûl to sob 
 itself out. It not only taught men frankly to face and to 
 recognise physical and mental pain, death, and ail other, 
 especially ail moral evils and sufîerings as very real ; it 
 actually showed men the présence and gravity of a host of pains, 
 evils and miseries which they had, up to then, quite ignored 
 or at least greatly minimised. And yet, with ail this — ^in spite 
 of ail such material for despair, the final note of Christianity 
 was and is still, one of trust, of love, of transcendent joy. It is 
 no accident, but of the very essence of the mystery and of the 
 power of faith, it springs from the reality of God and of His 
 action within men^s soûls, that, as the nobly joyous last chapters 
 of Isaiah (Chap. xL to the end) contain also those wondrous 
 utterances of the man of sorrows, so also the serenity of the 
 Mount of the Béatitudes leads, in the Gospels, to the darkness 
 of Calvary. 
 
 Pray believe me hère : it is to Christianity that we owe our 
 deepest insight into the wondrously wide and varied range 
 throughout the world, as we know it, of pain, suffering, evil ; 
 just as to Christianity we owe the richest enforcement of the fact 
 that, in spite of ail this, God is, and that He is good and loving* 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 113 
 
 And this enforcement Christianity achieves, at its best, by actually 
 inspiring soûl after soûl, to believe, to love, to live this wondrous 
 faith, 
 
 Hence ail attempts to teach Christianity anything on this 
 central matter of pain and sufîering would be, very literally, 
 to ** teach one's grandmother to suck eggs/' For the very 
 existence of the problem — I mean man's courage to face it, 
 together with sensitiveness as to its appalling range and its 
 baffling mystery — ^we owe, not to philosophy nor to science, 
 still less to their own untutored hearts, but to religion — above 
 ail to the Jewish and Christian religion» 
 
 And note, please, that the alternative is not between " this 
 or that non-religious view, déniai, or scepticism which does 
 explain suffering and evil,"' and ** religious faith, especially 
 Christianity, which does not explain them/* No : this is a purely 
 imaginary alternative : for there is no unbelief as there is no 
 faith, there is no science as there is no popular tradition, which 
 does or can explain thèse things. The real alternative is : 
 ** irreligion, which still oscillâtes between Epicureanism and 
 Stoicism, Systems which remain variously unreal and unhuman 
 with regard to suffering, and which know only how to évade 
 or to travesty pain and to deny sin,*' and '* religion, which fully 
 fronts, indeed extends and deepens indefinitely our sensé of, 
 suffering and sin, and which, nevertheless, alone surmounts 
 and utilises them/' Thus once again, not clearness, not any 
 ready transferableness, but efi&cacious power and integrating 
 comprehensiveness appear as the true, décisive tests» 
 
 3» You feel — ^this is your keenest, yet also your most fruitful 
 suffering — ^that what has happened is cruel, cruel ; is what 
 yourself, you, imperfect as you are, would hâve given your life 
 to prevent. How, then, you wistfuUy ask, can you possibly love 
 and trust such a power, if it exist at ail, — a power, which, in 
 this case, shows itself so deaf to the most elementary and legiti- 
 mate, to the most sacred of your longings and your prayers^* 
 You possessed the darling, and you loved and served it with ail 
 you were ; who possesses and tends it now S* 
 
 How I understand I how keen, how cutting is this pang I 
 
 And I look around me, and again I see a similar bewildering 
 contrast repeated upon an immense scale. I remember, in our 
 
 M 
 
114 PRELIMINARIES TO 
 
 own day, thc carthquake at Messina, with its thousands of cases 
 of seemingly quite undeserved, quitc unmitigated angiiish, when 
 our own admittedly most imperfect, badly bungling humanity 
 and govemments appeared, as so many small dwarfs of pity, 
 alone pitiful, against this awful background of grim havoc and 
 blind fury and cruelty. And^ of course, we could ail of us add 
 case upon case from history and from our own expérience of 
 soûls ♦ 
 
 But please note welL Where does the keenness of this our 
 scandai corne from i Why do we, in ail such cases, suffer such 
 feelings of shock and outrage ^ What makes us, in the midst 
 of it ail, persist in believing, indeed persist in acting (with great 
 cost) on the belief, that love and devotedness are utterly the 
 greatest things we know, and deserve the sacrifice of ail our 
 earthly gifts, of our very life i Whence cornes ail this i — The case 
 is, I think, quite parallel with that as to trust in reality generally» 
 Why is it, as to such trust and such reality, that even the most 
 hardened of the sceptics continue to trouble themselves and to 
 trouble us ail, if not as to truth, at least as to truthfulness i 
 Why is untruthfulness so very odious $* Untruthfulness is cer- 
 tainly most convenient» Why indeed does every at ail sane mind 
 find it so intolérable to hold itself to be completely shut up 
 within its own impressions, to admit that thèse impressions 
 are nothing but illusions, or, at least, are utterly worthless as 
 indications of realities other than its own ^ Whence springs the 
 sufîering — ^the most keen suffering — of the thought of being 
 thus shut up, if we are, in fact, thus shut up within our own 
 purely subjective impressions and fancies i The answer, surely, 
 is that we thus suffer because, in fact, we are not thus shut up, 
 because we do communicate with realities other than ourselves, 
 and hence that thèse realities so impress and affect us that only 
 by a painful effort can we, violently and artificially, treat those 
 realities as mère fandful projections of our own« 
 
 Similarly, if there is no source and standard of love, of pity, 
 of giving, of self-donation, — z source and standard abiding, 
 ultimate, distinct from, deeper than ourselves, a source Itself 
 loving, Itself a Lover, and which, somehow profoundly pene- 
 trative of ourselves, keeps us poor things, rich with at least this 
 sensé of our poverty and with this our inability to abandon 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF 115 
 
 love (that vcry costly thing) as a chimcra or a mcre ficeting 
 vibration of our nerves : if there is not such a more than human 
 (deeper and higher than human) source and standard^ then thc 
 real, actual situation becomes whoUy rootless and unreasonable, 
 precisely in what it has of admittedly greatest, of most predous 
 and most signiôcant* 
 
 Thus, both in the matter of Truth and Reality and in thc 
 matter of Love and a Lover, we sufîer, when scepticism assails 
 us, because we are not simply shut up within our own fancies, 
 because (mysteriously yet most actually) we are penetrated and 
 moved by God, the Ultimate Reality and Truth, the Ultimate 
 Lover and Goodness» We are moved by Him Who is, Who is 
 before ever we were, Who is with us from the beginning of our 
 existence, Who is always the first in opération whenever there 
 is interaction between Him and us. Because He is, we hâve our 
 unconquerable sensc of Reality ; because He is Love and Lover, 
 we cannot let love go. And it is He Who made the mother's 
 heart ; it is, not simply her love, but, in the first instance, His 
 love, with just some drops of it fallen into the mother's heart, 
 which produce the standard within her which cries out against 
 ail that is, or even looks like, blindness and cruel fate. 
 
 For remember, please, it is not Judaism, not Christianity, 
 not any kind of Theism that bids us, or even allows us, to hold 
 and to accept as good in themselves the several painful or cruel 
 or wrong things that happen in this our complicated, difïicult 
 Kfe. None of thèse convictions worship Nature, or the World- 
 as-a-whole ; they ail, on the contrary, find much that is wrong in 
 Nature as we know it, and in the World-as-a-whole as we actually 
 find it. Ail such believers worship and adore not Nature but 
 God — ^the love and the action of God within and from behind 
 the world, but not as though this love and action were every- 
 where equally évident, not as though they directly willed, directly 
 chose, ail things that happen and as they happen. On the 
 contrary : thèse great religions leave such a pure optimism to 
 absolute Idealist philosophers, and to rhapsodising pantheists 
 and poets ; and thèse religions believe such views, wheresoever 
 they are taken as ultimate, to be either shallow and unreal, or 
 sorry travesties of the facts. 
 
 If, then, I be asked to whom I confide thosc I love when. 
 
ii6 PRELIMINARIES TO RELIGIOUS BELIEF 
 
 aftcr much uttcrly ineffectual-sceming dévotion of my heart, I 
 hâve seen them suffer fearfuUy and disappear from my own carc 
 and longing, I answer that I confide them to that Reality and 
 Love, to that Real Lover, whose reality and lovingness and 
 pénétration of my heart alone make possible and actual my own 
 poor persistent love. Thus my very bittemess and despair over 
 the apparent insuit flung at my love by the world as I know it, 
 turns out to be but one more effect of the reality and operative- 
 ness of God, and one more reason (again not clear, not readily 
 transférable, but rich and fruitful) for believing and trusting 
 in Him, in Love, the Lover. 
 
 Please, in conclusion, to forgivc the grcat length of thèse 
 Icisurely browsings which I love to fecl hâve had to be snatched 
 from hard-worked, laboriously crowded days. And pray be 
 very sure of how keenly I hâve sufîered and I still suffer with 
 your suffering. I beg God to bless thèse poor little pages, and 
 anything else that may ofEcr itself to you with possibilitics of 
 help within it. And I will patiently but unconquerably continue 
 to believe that, in ways and degrees known to God alone, you 
 will attain to Christian humility and trust, to Christian faith, 
 hope and love, — ^to the joy of utter self-dedication. 
 
 Yours very sinccrely, 
 
 FRIEDRICH TON HIJGEL. 
 
II 
 
 PAPERS ON THE TEACHING OF JESUS 
 AND CHRISTIANITY IN GENERAL 
 
THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT IN THE 
 TEACHING OF JESUS: 
 
 ITS ULTIMATE SIGNIFICANCE AND ITS ABIDING 
 
 FUNCTION ^ 
 
 There exists a touching medal struck by devotees of Sir Thomas 
 More, after that great life had been done to death by his sensual, 
 Savage master* You see there the punning symbol of a syca-more, 
 a ** foolish fig-tree ** ; and the legend beneath runs : ** decisa 
 adhuc dulcescit ** — even when eut down, this (syca-)more smells 
 sweet I I hâve often thought this entire medal to be applicable 
 also to Biblical criticism, espedally also to the analysis of the 
 Gospels, even of their eschatological éléments. We can eut down 
 and break up that noble Biblieal tree : somehow, the very 
 fragments still smell sweet î The faet is that religion thrives, 
 not by the absenee of diffieulties, but by the présence of helps 
 and powers ; indeed, every step achieved onwards and inwards 
 in such fruitfulness involves new frictions, obscurities, paradoxes, 
 antinomies. Religion achieves its fullest power and balance 
 only in the completest interaction of God, Christ, Church ; and 
 yet each of thèse great sides and stages of religion contains 
 severally a difïiculty so profound and obstinate as to be, in 
 strictness, capable only of délimitation and discrimination — 
 of being rendered bearable for the sake of the light and the power 
 which surround the burden and the darkness ; but incapable, 
 I believe, of any quite direct and entirely clear, easy and readily 
 transférable solution. There is, at the one end, the profound 
 reality of God, and the all-influencing belief in this His reality ; 
 yet there is also the reality of Evil, with its brutal facts and 
 
 *An Address delivered beforc the Birmingham Clérical Society (Anglican), 
 October, 1919. 
 
 119 
 
120 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 bafïiing obscurities. And, there is, at the other end, the reality 
 of the Church, so pressingly necessary, so manifoldly fruitful 
 throughout the âges and lands of Christendom ; yet there 
 appears also a hampering, a seemingly inévitable hampering, 
 of the other sides, indeed even in part of some of the religious 
 sides and needs, of man*s manifold nature* And, in between 
 those two ends, there stands the reality of Jésus and of His 
 immense attraction and beneficence ; but there stands at this 
 place also the reality of the Parousia — of ail the fantastic-seeming 
 teaching concerning a very near universal cataclysm and cosmic 
 régénération, with Jésus Himself as the visible centre of over- 
 whelming power* It looks indeed as though simply one of thèse 
 levels, with its own formidable difficulty, were abundantly 
 sufficient for man — a créature, after ail, so limited in his capacity 
 for bearing burdens and overleaping obstacles» Nevertheless, 
 the expérience of life and the analysis of though t, on the largest 
 scale and in the longest run, show plainly enough, I believe, that 
 the lights and helps of each level are increased and supplemented 
 by those of the other two ; whilst the obscurities and obstacles 
 of each level are, somehow, reduced, and in part resolved, by 
 the very darkness and difficulty of the others* 
 
 I propose hère to examine the helps and difficulties of the 
 middle of thèse three levels — the problems raised by the 
 Apocalyptic Elément in the Teachings of Jésus. To save time 
 I will not discuss, I will merely state as clearly as possible, the 
 main critical conclusions which appear now to be assured or 
 highly probable ♦ I will next draw out certain peculiarities 
 furnished by thèse conclusions, and I will end by an attempt to 
 fathom the driving forces of ail this Eschatology at their deepest, 
 and to appraise their abiding truth and place in the spiritual hfe* 
 
 Amongst the (at least apparent) antinomies in'the outlook and 
 teaching of Jésus, none is perhaps more immediately striking than 
 is that which obtains between the scènes and sayings which seem 
 to déclare or to imply a sunny, continuous, balanced temper — 
 an expansion from within outwards and from below upwards ; 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 121 
 
 and the scènes and sayings which déclare or imply a stormy, 
 abrupt, one-sided temper — ^an irruption from without inwards 
 and from above downwards. The expansive, continuous temper 
 perpétuâtes and perfects the spirit of the great Prophets during 
 the Hebrew monarchy before the Exile ; the irruptive, sudden 
 movement dérives at least its imagery and some of its tone 
 from the Apocalyptic Writers who began to arise already towards 
 the end of the Exile, but espedally from the Book of Daniel, 
 composed doubtless as late as 165 or 164 B.c, during the oppres- 
 sion of the Jews in Palestine by the Syrian King Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, It is certainly easy to exaggerate the différence 
 between thèse two strains ; it is even not absolutely impossible 
 to interpret the entire life and teaching of Jésus as apocalyptic 
 and eschatological from first to last, Nevertheless there is a différ- 
 ence of gênerai temper between, on the one hand, the great 
 plant parables, the appeal of the liHes and the birds in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, the blessing of the children, and the sleeping on 
 the storm-tossed ship ; and, on the other hand, the parables 
 of expectation, the urgent appeals to be ready for the Lord who 
 cornes as a thief in the night, and the véhément acts in the Temple 
 and the terrifying prédictions on the Mount of Olives, during 
 Jesus's last earthly days. I still feel Loisy and Schweitzer to be, 
 on this point, largely over-ingenious and somewhat violent in 
 their handling of the texts and of their delicately cumulative 
 évidences. 
 
 But if there indecd cxists such a différence, we cannot but 
 place the point of change at Caesarea Philippi (Mark viii. 27 and 
 parallels, onwards). It is hère that, in return for Peter *s récogni- 
 tion of His Messianic dignity, Jésus first announces to His 
 disciples His coming Passion, and adds a more insistent note to 
 His call for self-surrender in His foUowers. And He now 
 promptly introduces the Son of Man as coming to judge ail the 
 world upon the clouds of Heaven. 
 
 True, even in Jesus*s earliest proclamation ** the Kingdom of 
 God is at hand,** and men are to ** repent ** (Mark u 14, 15)» 
 Even those earliest addresses seem to imply a public, a world 
 rénovation, to occur within that living génération ; and certainly 
 also hère the Kingdom, even where it appears as already in 
 course of formation, is conceived as primarily a divine gif t. 
 
122 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 And hère, as simply everywhere in Jesus*s own teaching, temper 
 and implications, there already appears thc Alternative, the Two 
 Ways, and the Abiding Conséquences, Good or Evil, of Good 
 or Evil Choice. Hell, in this gênerai sensé, is not simply a part 
 of only the later stage of Jésus 's own teaching ; still less is it 
 imported into Jésus 's teaching by misunderstanding hearers or 
 reporters, Such Hell indeed is only the natural necessary 
 corollary of Heaven in Jésus *s own unchanging scheme. But 
 in the earlier stage there is no violence, no painful suddenness 
 about the world rénovation ; nor is there any indication of a 
 Second Coming of Jésus Himself ♦ Whereas at and after Caesarea 
 Philippi, Jésus, with ever increasing clearness, implies or insists 
 upon three distinct and several cataclysms ; historical criticism 
 is doubtless right in refusing to identify any two of them, Thus, 
 already from Caesarea Philippi onwards Jésus announces, more 
 or less plainly, His own résurrection after His own passion and 
 death ; but this is to be a directly personal rehabilitation, to be 
 witnessed only by His chosen disciples : He will arise in solitude 
 from the grave and will show Himself to them alone. In the 
 last days at Jérusalem, Jésus quite plainly prophesies the early 
 destruction of the Temple. And later than his own death 
 and arising, but earlier than this national destruction, Jésus 
 proclaims a proximate, sudden, God-worked end of the then 
 extant world generally, with Himself descending from heaven as 
 judge of ail mankind at this great assise. The death of His own 
 body and the destruction of the Temple were, we see in thc 
 Gospel narratives themselves, somehow held mistakenly, by somc 
 of his hearers, to hâve been identified by Himself in His dis- 
 courses to them ; yet He had really spoken of thèse two future 
 happenings as two quite distinct things. Similarly the end of 
 the Temple and the end of the world are really distinct events in 
 Jesus's prophecy ; their identification has been rendered at ail 
 plausible only by a literary accident — the présent position of the 
 ** Small Apocalypse ** (Mark idiu 5-37 and parallels) which thus 
 appears as though communicated by Jésus simply in answer 
 to the question of the disciples as to when would occur the 
 destruction of the Temple, seemingly just prophesied by Him- 
 self (Mark ^ii* 1-4 and parallels). This ** Small Apocalypse ** is 
 (I believe, rightly) now taken by most critics as largely a Jewish 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 123 
 
 document ; but Professer Percy Gardner assuredly goes too far 
 when he attempts to extend this inauthenticity to ail the eschato- 
 logical teaching of Jésus, as found hère and elsewhere in the 
 Synoptists. Such, undoubtedly authentic, eschatological teaching 
 appears even in certain verses which form the frame-work of 
 this very Apocalypse ; and is, besides, warranted elsewhere by 
 texts of immense weight and luminous clearness, which stand 
 above ail suspicion of a secondary origin» So at Caesarea Philippi : 
 ** verily, I say unto you, there be some of them that stand hère, 
 which shall in no wise taste death, till they see the Son of Man 
 coming in His Kingdom ** (Matt, xvu 28) ♦ So in Peraea : 
 ** verily I say unto you, that ye which hâve folio wed me, in the 
 régénération when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of 
 His glory, ye shall also sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes 
 of Israël ** (Matt, xix, 28). So on to the Mount of Olives : 
 ** immediately after tribulation of those days ♦ ♦ ♦ the stars 
 shall fall from heaven ; and then shall appear the sign of the 
 Son of Man in heaven ♦ . ♦ and they shall see the Son of Man 
 coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory ** 
 (Matt* xxiv. 29, 30)» So at the Last Supper : ** but I say unto 
 you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until 
 that day when I drink it new with you in my Father*s Kingdom ** 
 (Matt, xxvi» 29). And so when adjured by the High Priest, 
 during His trial, to tell them plainly whether He is the Christ, 
 Jésus not only admits that He is, but adds : ** I say unto you, 
 henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand 
 of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven ** (Matt, xxvi» 
 64), Thus, as before Caesarea Philippi the Kingdom was con- 
 ceived prophetically; — as a relatively slow and peaceful growth, 
 and from Caesarea Philippi onwards it was conceived apocalyptic- 
 ally, — as a sudden and violent irruption ; so also before Caesarea 
 Philippi the Messiah appears mostly lowly, radiant, and with 
 all-embracing hope, and from Caesarea Philippi onwards as 
 coming again in the clouds of heaven ** with power/* 
 
 Now this Second Coming is an entirely original conception 
 of Jésus Himself ; no trace of such a conviction can be found in 
 any document previous to His enunciation of it. No Jew had 
 ever before Jésus applied Daniel viu 13 to a personal Messiah ; 
 they ail had taken the verse in its doubtless original meaning, as 
 
124 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 describing the true Israël as a people humane and from above, in 
 contradistinction to the heathen empires as beastlike — ^as so 
 many monsters rising up from the océan below» The personal 
 application is the original work of Jésus, and of the Jésus of the 
 second période So far ail the critics agrée with emphasis, There 
 is, however, another doctrine which Jésus launches simultaneously 
 with the Coming on the clouds of heaven, which, I know not 
 really why, is less confidently held, by thèse same critics, to be 
 Jesus's own discovery — the doctrine of the Suffering Messiah. 
 Nevertheless it is certain that the first Jewish attribution known 
 to us of Isaiah liii» (the Suffering Servant) to a Personal 
 Messiah is that of Trypho in St» Justin *s dialogue, written not 
 before a»d, 155 ; whilst as late as a»d. 246 Origen tells of having 
 heard a Jew apply that chapter to the entire Jewish people, 
 dispersed and broken, in order that many prosélytes might be 
 gained (Contra Celsvm, u 55)» It is thus a safe proposition that 
 neither the Old Testament nor the Jews of Jésus *s time knew 
 of a Suffering Personal Messiah* The ** woes,*^ ** birthpangs *' 
 of the Messiah meant, of course, only certain public and cosmic 
 disturbances which were to précède and to announce Messiah 's 
 first and only coming» As to the origin of the actual description 
 of the Suffering Servant, there is, I think, much to commend the 
 notion of Bernard Duhm that, though the picture was meant by 
 the prophet poet for the Jewish people, as God*s missionary 
 amongst the Gentiles, yet that the immensely concrète and 
 moving détails of the picture were suggested by a particular 
 Jew, afflicted with leprosy, whose serene résignation and self- 
 immolation for the good of soûls had first startled and determined 
 the writer* If so, then Jésus, by applying that prophecy person- 
 ally, to Himself as Messiah, only reverted, if not to the original 
 meaning, yet to the original occasion of thèse great Ebed Jahve 
 Lyrics» 
 
 II 
 
 We hâve now accumulated a mass of pressing difficulties, of 
 poignant questions* At bottom, they raise the problem, not 
 merely of Jésus *s Divinity, or at least of His Inerrancy even 
 with regard to matters of directly religious import, but primarily 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 135 
 
 of the soundness and sanity of His human mind. And even if 
 we succeed in finding room for such teaching within His mind, 
 as the convictions of a supremely sane Jew of well-nigh two 
 thousand years ago, what possible use, what present-day appeal, 
 can we unforcedly still discover in thèse strange-sounding pro- 
 positions i And if we do not make some such discovery, is not 
 even the simply human attraction of Jésus ruined, for ourselves, 
 in thèse our days, beyond ail hope of repair i Let us first draw 
 out the foUowing considérations, as preparatory to certain last 
 and deepest probings» I believe that not ail the two séries com- 
 bined are too much for the acquisition of some resilience from 
 under the weight of ail that Eschatology, once it has thoroughly 
 seized a sensitively awake mind, 
 
 !♦ No doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, no affirmation, even 
 of just simply the normality of the mind of Jésus, are other than 
 out of touch with ail the real possibilities of the question, if they 
 do not first recognise that a real Incarnation of God in man can 
 only mean Incarnation in some parti cular human nature ♦ Man 
 in gênerai is only an idea, it is not a fact, a reality ; and God, 
 the supremely factual, utterly real, the creator of the essential 
 facts in man, did not, in the Incarnation, reverse either His own, 
 God 's nature, or the refiex of it, the nature of Man. The In- 
 carnation could not, even by Himself, be made other than the 
 entering into, and possession of, a human mind and will endowed 
 with spécial racial dispositions and particular racial catégories 
 of thought. Assuredly this mind and will would be filled and 
 moved by the deepest religious and moral truth and insight ; and 
 would be preserved from ail essential error concerning the direct 
 objects of the divine indwelling and condescension. Yet this 
 truth and insight would of necessity show, to minds and hearts 
 of other races and times, imaginative and emotional peculiarities 
 — certain omissions, combinations, stresses, outlines, colourings, 
 characteristic of the race and time of the Revealer. Otherwise, 
 the Revealer would begin His career by being simply unintel- 
 ligible to His first hearers, and even, in the long run, to the large 
 majority of mankind ; and He would, in Himself, not be normally, 
 characteristically, man* Now it was most appropriatc that the 
 Incarnation, for purposes of religion, should take place in Jewish 
 human nature, since the Jewish people had, already for some 
 
 N 
 
126 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 thirtcen centuries, fumishcd forth amongst mankind the purest 
 light and strongest leading in religion» Thus, however, the 
 Revealer could not but imagine, think, feel and will the deepest 
 truths and facts of His mission with Jewish catégories, images, 
 émotions. Such a characteristically Jewish category — ^although, 
 in a leèser degree, it is common to antiquity generally — ^per- 
 meates the Bible from cover to cover, in so far as its writers were 
 Sémites in blood and breeding. Everywhere the Divine action is, 
 as such, conceived to be instantaneous* Thus the twenty-four 
 hours of each of the six Days of Création (in Genesis i.) were very 
 probably conceived by the narrator as almost entirely composed 
 of pauses between the créative acts, thèse acts themselves being 
 instant aneous* Even St. Teresa could still, in a*d. 1562, consider 
 the suddenness of a vision to be one of the two décisive tests of 
 its divine origin. If then Jésus held that the world^s présent order 
 would be terminated by an act of God, He could not image and 
 propound this act other than as sudden and rapid. We shall 
 find later on far more ultimate reasons for this category of 
 suddenness ; yet the reason now given appears true and operative 
 so far as it goes. 
 
 2. Nowhere, however, does Jésus présuppose or teach a 
 corresponding suddenness of change in man's dispositions or 
 actions, either as everywhere actually operative or even as 
 normally désirable. Hence, as Canon Scott HoUand, in his 
 profound Real Problem of Eschatology^ very acutely observes, 
 the neamess and suddenness of Christ*s Second Coming does not 
 weaken but heightens the call to persistent self-purification and 
 uninterrupted service of others. A proximate sharp testing 
 awaits His hearers ; but it will be a testing of, at best, an entire 
 long life of persistent faithfulness. And nowhere does Jésus 
 condemn the essential things, conditions and duties of this life, 
 as intrinsically evil ; His own thought and practice imply and 
 show respect for the human body, révérence for the ties of family 
 and of country, even when thèse are transcended in a complète, 
 heroic self-abnegation. Even the military career He nowhere 
 condemns — centurions are left by Him as centurions, He even 
 praises them as such with emphasis. And He possesses the 
 leisureliness of mind necessary for the fuU perception of the 
 bcauties or peculiarities of flower and tree ; bird, shcep and 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 127 
 
 fox ; sky, field and lake ; of sowman, vintner, fisherman and 
 shepherd, mason and housewife ; and He disports Himsclf with 
 children» Immensely earnest and inclusive of the most heroic 
 ascetidsm as is His life, He can yet be accused of being a wine- 
 bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. Ail this tender leisure^ 
 observation, forthcoming friendliness — ail this génial occupa- 
 tion with the présent little things and little friends of God — ^all 
 this only required the prédominant intensity of expectation 
 and detachment, characteristic of the second period of the 
 earthly life of Jésus, to become less central in men*s minds, in 
 order to show itself as constituting, in the permanent scheme, 
 but one of the two great movements of the uniquely wide, deep, 
 various outlook and will of Jésus. The spécial characteristics 
 of the first stage of the earthly life of Jésus thus come to their 
 full development, in His closest foUowers, alongside of, alter- 
 nately with, penetrated by, the spécial characteristics of the 
 second stage. Thus could Dante find — surely, most rightly — 
 in the Poverello of Assisi — so supremely detached, so expansively 
 attached, so heroic without rigorism, so loving without softness 
 — ^perhaps the nearest reproduction of the divine paradox of the 
 life of Jésus Himself. On this point also we shall find a still 
 deeper root in the teaching of Jésus, as expressive of the very 
 soûl of religion. 
 
 3. More and more, after the death of Jésus, did the preaching 
 of the Kingdom, indeed ail direct thought of the Kingdom, 
 wane, and did the Church take the place of the Kingdom. This 
 change was, in its essence, simply inévitable, right and benefi- 
 cent ; indeed the conception and the functioning of a Church 
 most justly claim deep implications, nay, definite institutions, 
 in the teaching and acts of Jésus Himself. Mr. Clutton Brock, 
 in his What is the Kingdom of Heaven i 191 8, very emphatically 
 condemns those who hold that Jésus ever taught or impHed a 
 proximate cosmic cataclysm — He really taught and implied only 
 the transfiguring power, given to the pure of heart, to see God 
 hère and now, and to see ail this Hère and Now as, in its 
 essence, already the Kingdom of God. But then Mr. Brock finds 
 himself most instructively baffled — ^he admits himself deeply sur- 
 prised — ^by the fact that (although this purelyinterior and mystical 
 act and attitude is really ail that Jésus meant by the Kingdom) 
 
 N* 
 
128 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 thc Kingdom of God, thus incapable of coming into collision with 
 any of the great public and world facts and forces, should hâve 
 so rapidly lost its central position in the Christian teaching. In 
 reality, the Kingdom, with its catégories of intense proximity, 
 suddenness and cataclysm, soon ceased to be central, even in 
 the minds of Christians, for the simple reason that the given 
 visible world persisted in lasting ; that the véhémence of this 
 group of teachings could not be maintained for long, if the gentler 
 characteristics of the other group of teaching — equally the 
 utterance of Jésus Himself — ^were to hâve their full réalisation : 
 and that Jésus Himself had given unequivocal indications as to 
 how he would envisage, how He would organise, permanent 
 Christian institutions, did the permanence of the world require 
 — as, in fact, it was now requiring — a corresponding permanence 
 of the Christian organisation» The acute polemic of Jésus 
 against at least the school of Shammai amongst the Pharisees ; 
 His attitude as critic and new legislaîor even as regards the Law 
 itself ; and, perhaps above ail, His death at the instigation of the 
 Sanhédrin, the great officiai Churchmen^s council of His time 
 and country, readily obscure the nevertheless very certain facts 
 of Jesus's organic conception of ail society, civil and religious, 
 and of His actual organising of His apostles and followers» AU 
 soûls are, indeed, to Jésus, equal in a true sense^ — they ail 
 spring from the one God ; compared with God ail their différ- 
 ences are as nothing ; and merely earthly différences do not 
 count as ultimate différences at alL Yet this equality is not inter- 
 changeableness, nor a simply individualist, nor again a socialist, 
 equalisation» It is an equality derived from God and operating 
 within humanity at large as this is organised in the family and 
 the religious community* It is an equality rich, elastic, manifold, 
 thorough differentiation into various kinds and degrees of inter- 
 dependence and mutual service» The very images dearest to 
 Jésus — the Father and his children, the Master and his servants, 
 the Shepherd and his sheep, the King and his subjects — ^show 
 this plainly, as a quite unchanging characteristic of ail His out- 
 look» And Jésus spontaneously acts upon this fundamental 
 conviction when He comes to require a little band of preachers 
 and teachers» As He Himself alone had received the Messianic 
 power and call from the one God, His Father, so He, in turn. 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 129 
 
 sélects twelve représentatives, endowing them with intrinsic 
 authority and power ; and He places one of them at their head 
 with quite unique gifts and duties» The institution remains 
 small in Jesus*s lifetime, not because Jésus objects to a large 
 institution, a Church, or because this small institution is, in 
 any essential point, différent from the Church, The institution 
 remains small simply and solely because of the Proximate 
 Expectation : and, with the fading away of the proximity, the 
 Preaching Band automatically becomes the Church» For already 
 in the Preaching Band there is mission, subordination, unitary 
 headship — the genuine religious movement from the One to 
 the Few and thus to the Many ; and from above downwards, 
 The noblest title ever taken by the Popes — the title by which 
 the great ones amongst them stand confirmed, and by which the 
 bad ones amongst them stand condemned — Servant of the 
 Servants of God — is thus in very truth the, varyingly extensive 
 but everywhere real, call and duty of us alL And surely, in spite 
 of the many difficulties, dangers and abuses brought into the 
 world by neglectful or insufficiently Christian Churchmen : 
 the Church, at its best and greatest, has, as a sheer matter of fact, 
 grandly, indeed uniquely, proved this her capacity for preserving 
 and perpetuating the spirit and power of Jésus Christs 
 
 4» We noted above two quite original points in the 
 Eschatology of Jésus : the Suffering of the Messiah, and the 
 Return of this same Messiah in Power and Majesty. They first 
 appear at Caesarea Philippi in a close interconnection ; let us 
 always keep them thus, as but two constituents of one great fact 
 and law. For only thus, on the one hand, does the picture in 
 Daniel lose every vestige of gratuitousness or inflation ; and 
 only thus, on the other hand, does the picture in Isaiah not 
 express any ultimate scepticism or pessimism* We thus get hère, 
 in its acutest richness of interdependent light and shadow, the 
 most original and the most divinely true of ail the discoveries 
 and powers of Christianity» Suffering, that very suffering, to 
 escape which, as most real and harmful, or to explain which 
 away, as but the false imagination of men, ail the world before 
 Christianity is seen hopelessly fleeing or as hopelessly ignoring : 
 this same suffering, is hère both foreknown and suffered through, 
 by the Revealer Himself, And in this concrète case the Suffering 
 
130 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 is a vcry world of the most diverse malignity, humiliation^ 
 dereliction^ anguish bodily and mental ; and the Sufferer hère 
 never ceases to maintain, about ail this and about every other 
 sacrifice and sufïering throughout the world, both that the pain 
 and the trial and the wicked dispositions which may inflict it 
 or which may be roused by it are most real, most evil, and yet 
 that it ail, if taken in simple self-abandonment to God, is pro- 
 foundly operative towards the souFs establishment in an other- 
 wise uncapturable régal béatitude and peace» Without the Cross, 
 Jésus could not ask as much of us, His followers, as He actually 
 does ; without the Crown, He would but teach an heroic 
 Stoicism» Only with the two together, with Joy succeeding, 
 and actually occasioned by, the previous anguish, does His life 
 both fuUy purify and yet maintain, whilst steadily proposing 
 undared depths of renunciation, man*s divinely implanted in- 
 eradicable thirst, not indeed for pleasure but for a béatitude 
 abiding in deepest self-oblivion» And hère both the Passion 
 ànd the Power are ail, in the first instance, borne for God, borne 
 through God, crowned by God. A virile and wholesome 
 humanitarianism flows indeed necessarily from the heart of 
 Jésus and from men's love of His Spirit ; but they do so, thus 
 wholesomely, because grounded continuously in the primary 
 motive, not of man, but of God» 
 
 III 
 
 Let us now attempt some five quite final, deepest conclusions. 
 
 First, then, as to the conception of ail Divine action as 
 proximate and short. There certainly lurks hère far more than 
 a merely racial category of thought. Paul de Lagarde, that largely 
 embittered, often unfair, but profoundly instructive scholar, 
 so little known in England, has protested, with volcanic energy 
 and the most angry polemic, against ail Jewish thought and 
 feeling on the subject, since the central fact, effect and need of 
 religion, is just exactly its sensé of, its thirst for, Eternity, 
 Simultaneity, an expérience entirely in the Hère and Now. The 
 Présent, the Présence, are hère intensely felt alone to constitute 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 131 
 
 religion ; the Past is dust and archaeology, the Future is wind 
 and fanaticism. God, who Himself is ever Hère and Now, 
 is thus loved in a Hère and Now act and ecstasy — ^all Past, ail 
 Future fall away» — There assuredly works hère a state of soûl, an 
 appréhension, essential to ail genuine spirituality» The same 
 appréhension gives its spécial dignity and truth to Quakerism ; 
 indeed ail Mysticism is Mysticism, in proportion as it thus| 
 apprehends and cultivâtes Présence as the centre of ReligionJ 
 Doubtless the noblest intellectual formulation of this great con- 
 viction is that of Aristotle in his doctrine of the Unmoving 
 Energeia — ^assuredly one more proof of the light given by the 
 Unincarnate God to non-Jewish, non-Christian soûls ♦ This 
 very doctrine has been admirably elaborated by Dr» Schiller, 
 and is re-stated very cogently by Fr, Herbert Walker, S J. in the 
 Hibbert Journal for July, 191 9. But let us be careful lest the great 
 expérience and doctrine hère considered lead us straight into 
 delusions and morbidities. Doubtless God, in His intrinsic 
 nature, is non-successive, is outside Time ; doubtless men them- 
 selves, in rare moments, can and do expérience something like 
 an arrest, an overleaping of succession ; and indeed unless 
 man possessed some such faculty, he could not so vividly appre- 
 hend God and religion as do ail the Mystics, But it does not 
 follow at ail that, because God is simply simultaneous, and 
 because I am sufficiently simultaneous vividly to apprehend, 
 and now and then partially to share, that simultaneity of His, 
 I am simply simultaneous in myself» It is, of course, this 
 assumption that man is, or can become, thus simply simulta- 
 neous, that man 's spirit requires nought else but its own direct 
 union with the spirit of God alone, which underlies the angry 
 contempt of ail history, institutions, the visible and audible — 
 of ail succession — ^in ail Mystics as such, Nevertheless nothing 
 is more certain than that man never does nor can get away, for 
 long, from ail succession ; that he is built up into a man of any 
 sort: — inclusively of religious man^ — ^in and through his body as 
 well as his imagination, his reason, his feeling and his will — 
 bodily things and incitements taking their part also hère ; and 
 that there could be no Quakers, no Mystics, amongst men, were 
 ail men Quakers and Mystics. At bottom, the différence, between 
 the Mystic as such and the religionist of a more historical or 
 
132 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 sacramental type, lies as much in the interesting non-recognition 
 of the médiations always actually at work also in the Mystic, yet 
 always thus ignored or minimised by him, as in the actual pré- 
 pondérance, in this same Mystic, of any directly intuitive élément» 
 
 2* Again it is very certain that Pure Mysticism and Pantheism 
 are one ; and that they both, by their similar excesses, end by 
 levelling ail things down, not up» If any moment, any state, 
 any thing is as good as another, is ail engulfed in, is the complète 
 vehicle of, Eternity — then good and evil, true and false, God and 
 World, God and Man, spirit and sensé, coalesce» 
 
 Now it is profoundly impressive to note how intractable the 
 Synoptic Jésus remains to ail purely mystical interprétation : 
 Evelyn Underhiirs récent attempt is as able as it is unconvincing» 
 The fact of course is that nothing could be more anti-mystical 
 than is the Proximate Futurism of the authentic Jésus» This 
 Proximate Futurism stands out massively against ail Pure 
 Immanentism, ail Evolution taken as final cause and not merely 
 as instrument and method. For we must not forget that the 
 favourite method of ail Hylo2;oists, ail Monists, has always 
 been the insistence upon immense ranges of time and space, and 
 upon the appearance, little by little, within substances vulgarly 
 dubbed ** material,'* of what are as vulgarly dubbed *' spiritual ** 
 characteristics» If only you thus manœuvre with little by little, 
 you can delude yourself and others into holding that this exquisite 
 quantification solves the problem of utterly différent qualities. 
 It is at this point that Jésus calls a most impressive hait» He 
 points, in the expectation cf the Proximate Second Coming, 
 to something not slow of growth, but sudden ; not small and 
 imperceptible, but huge and public ; not produced by the sheer 
 évolution from below of the already extant, but by the descent 
 from without and above, of a newly given, a sheer illapse of 
 quite another quality» Perhaps ail the points of this stupendous 
 picture require permanent softening by us His followers, if we 
 would be equally faithful to His earlier, sunnier outlook, and 
 to the ultimate implications of His Spirit as a whole. Yet 
 the magnificent massiveness of the anti-Pantheism hère, is a 
 permanent service to religion of the very first magnitude» 
 
 3. Let us, however, always remember that, as we hâve already 
 seen, the suddenness of the crisis to be produced by God in no 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 133 
 
 wise involves other than persistent dispositions to be cultivated 
 by man» But indeed there is also another point of persistency 
 assumed by Jésus throughout ; and this point is central in ail 
 Jesus's thought and care. God, the very God Who, in Jesus's 
 Eschatological picture, appears to act with such utterly dis- 
 concerting suddenness and discontinuity, is most assuredly 
 conceived, by this same Jésus, as at bottom profoundly self- 
 identical, uncapricious, persistent, indeed essentially siniul- 
 taneous, eternaL It is really because of Jésus 's utter certainty of 
 the unchanging justice and providence of God that, under the 
 pressure of a proximate earthly defeat of the cause of truth and 
 right, He vividly foresees a corresponding exaltation of this 
 same cause» The self-identical God who allowed the defeat will 
 not fail to exécute the triumph, The beautifully naïve parables 
 which picture God as Father, as Master, as Vineyard Owner or 
 the like, and which thus of necessity introduce successive acts 
 and changes of disposition, as though such vicissitudes obtained 
 in the Divine Nature itself, must very certainly not be pressed 
 as involving real changes in God, If it can be maintained that 
 Jésus did not think even of human history in terms of our modem 
 (largely very problematical) development notions, it can be 
 contended much more certainly, indeed quite finally, that Jésus 
 would hâve rejected with horror any and every doctrine of an 
 intrinsically changing, or developing, or even simply successive, 
 God, We can be sure of this, even already simply because Jésus 
 was a Jew — ^because, short of overwhelming proof to the contrary, 
 a religious Jew of the times of Jésus must be assumed to hâve 
 been penetrated by such instinctive presuppositions, even if, 
 as doubtless was the case with Jésus, the particular Jew in question 
 had not passed through the schools of Hellenistic Judaism, in 
 which the Nonsuccessiveness of God 's nature was very explicitly, 
 very emphatically taught, We thus secure two great points of 
 rest and persistence as, so to speak, fianking and framing a line 
 of movement and change, There is God, at bottom unchanging, 
 an overflowing richness of ever simultaneous life. And there is 
 man capable of, called to, about to be tested concerning, stability 
 — a persistent successiveness of devoted life, The suddenness 
 is only in the testing and in conversions to a persistent devoted- 
 ness ; and the very Suddenness, in thèse cases, springs from the 
 
134 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 nced to express a junction between the Simultaneity of God and 
 the Successiveness, however steady, of man. Thus the two 
 points essential to every real Mysticism are secured, but this in 
 such a combination with other conditions as to render impossible 
 ail direct dérivation of pure Mysticism or Pantheism from the 
 historical Jésus» 
 
 4» Once more, God is indeed the beginning, the middle and 
 the end, the ceaseless presupposition, of ail Jesus's teaching, 
 His was assuredly the human mind and soûl most closely united 
 with God that ever lived on earth. The Christian doctrine of 
 the Divinity of Jésus, which we can trace in ail its development 
 through the Pauline and Johannine writings, through St» Ignatius 
 of Antioch, St» Justin Martyr, St» Irenasus and Tertullian, on 
 to the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, till it finds its fuU 
 crown at last in the Third Council of the Lateran — ^is undoubtedly 
 true and deeply enriching» Yet it can be wisely maintained by 
 us only if we simultaneously remember that, however truly Grod 
 revealed Himself with suprême fuUness and in a unique manner 
 in Jésus Christ, yet that this same God had not left Himself, 
 still does not leave Himself, without some witness to Himself 
 throughout the âges before Christ, and throughout the countries, 
 groups, and even individual soûls, whom the message, the fact, 
 of the historic Jésus has never yet reached, or who, in sheer 
 good faith, cannot understand, cannot see Him as He really 
 is, The Unincarnate God has thus a wider range, though 
 a less deep message, than the Incarnate God ; and thèse two 
 Gods are but one and the same God, Who, mysteriously, mostly 
 slowly and almost imperceptibly, prépares or suppléments, 
 expresses and otherwise aids Himself, in each way by the other 
 way. Thus though of course far from ail that passed and passes 
 for Religion in Paganism can be held by us to be, in its degree 
 and manner, true and right — to be capable of Christianisation, 
 indeed itself to serve the fuller appréhension and service of God 
 and of man ; yet some of the great Greek thinkers* thinking, of 
 the great Roman lawyers* législation, of the Graeco-Roman later 
 religious philosophies and cuits, in very deed sprang from the 
 Unincarnate God to serve and supplément the God Incarnate, 
 Only thus can we be freed from anxiety, and can we sincerely 
 rejoice and be confirmed in our faith in God the Omniprésent, 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 135 
 
 whcn we discover how largely the Old Testament Book of 
 Wisdom borrows from Plato, how appréciable is St» Paul's in- 
 debtedness to the Greek Mysteries, how much in the form of the 
 Fourth Gospel cornes from Philo, how greatly Tertullian leamt 
 from Roman Law, how important was St* Augustine's indebted- 
 ness to Plotinus, how almost wholesale was the Dionysian 
 writer's incorporation of Proclus, and how systematic and grate- 
 fuUy avowed was St, Thomas of Aquino's utilisation of Aristotle, 
 Doubtless thèse appropriations varied in their carefulness, 
 necessity and permanent value ; yet even this most incomplète 
 list surely indicates that the process in gênerai was as legitimate 
 as it has proved fruitfuL Christianity could not otherwise hâve 
 lived and thriven in this world ; and only those who can manage 
 to figure to themselves the world as forsaken by the very God 
 Who made it, and Who sent to it His Son, can, in strictness, be 
 disquieted by such préparations by God Himself for His own 
 fully incarnate coming» 
 
 5. Particularly important also is this discrimination in affording 
 a ready Christian means and a fuU Christian justification for the 
 successive enlargements of man's conception of the world of 
 time and space, and of man's own and of God's own relation 
 to this same world ♦ Even in the teaching of Jésus Himself we 
 hâve as yet no persistent occupation with soûls other than those 
 of the house of Israël — ^it is to them, to the Palestinian Jews, 
 that His own apostles are sent out by Him^ Stephen and his 
 Hellenistic Jewish collaborators already carry the Grospel to the 
 Hellenistic Jews» Su Paul enlarges St. Peter's first evangelising 
 of the Gentiles, and becomes himself emphatically the apostle 
 of the Heathen World. The whole world, the Church's parish — 
 this outlook has never ceased, since then, to actuate the Catholic 
 Church, as this very name implies. Yet though this our earthly 
 world doubtless constitutes the limit of our direct duties and 
 clear knowledge, we hâve, I believe, passed through expériences 
 and hâve reached a time which demand a still further deliberate 
 expansion, admittedly of another but, I submit, of a perfectly 
 practicable kind. Such an expansion appears imperative if the 
 deep and tender universalism of the Gospel is not itself to come 
 to appear a parochial sentimentalism. And the point has its 
 urgency, if so symptomatic book as Foundations is to count 
 
136 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 For there you find, pretty well throughout, an almost angry 
 véhémence of restriction : that we literally know nothing of 
 God except in and through Jésus, that the whole of sound religion 
 is exclusively concerned with God in His dealings with man — 
 that ail over and above this, is the idle guessing of philosophers 
 — and much else substantially to this efïect, I know no better 
 cure for this headiness than a careful, frank facing of the trend 
 in the later philosophy of HegeL For in this later Hegel also 
 you get such a perception as to the actual limits, only that hère 
 you see clearly where such limitation very readily leads» In 
 face of the overwhelming probability that there exist worlds 
 upon worlds of intelligent créatures other than man, superior 
 in intelligence to man, Hegel gives us a God Who comes to His 
 own self-consciousness in and through the development of man, 
 a development which culminâtes in the Prussian State of the 
 Thirties of last century* What appalling Chauvinism ! Yet 
 even without such Pantheistic and humanitarian fanaticisms, 
 the restrictions indicated would slowly but surely spell ruin for 
 religion. For, surely, a religion is doomed which can furnish 
 no émotion appropriate to what I see and surmise every time 
 I look up at the stars at night. And indeed, in other respects also, 
 the outlook considered is narrow to unbearableness ; for what is 
 the worth of the homage I pay to Jésus by the refusai to admire 
 and to thank God for, say, Aristotle^s doctrine of the Unmoving 
 Energeia, or for Plotinus*s grand démonstrations of the spaceless 
 character of God $* The position, if taken seriously, ends by 
 caricaturing the true temper of Jésus, Who did indeed ignore 
 much that we hâve to foster for the sake of careful attention to 
 His spirit, but Who did not thus really exclude, or systematically 
 reject, whatever does not directly come from Himself or is not 
 directly occupied with man*s welfare and rédemption, 
 
 6* A very nest of complications faces us, as soon as we candidly 
 admit, and then attempt sélection, combination, or further 
 development amongst, the competing pictures, implications 
 and teachings of Jésus and of His New Testament followers 
 concerning the End, How far are Kingdom of God, Abraham* s 
 Bosom, Paradise, Heaven identical or at least compatible, or the 
 reverse i And how far are they, more or less, passing hints and 
 how far permanent révélations i Even St, Augustine still 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 137 
 
 inclines to hold that the human soûl sleeps from the body*s 
 death till the day of the Corning and the Judgment ; and he 
 nowhere, I think, clearly décides, for after the Judgment, be- 
 tween a sojourn, limited or not, upon a renovated Earth, and a 
 life eventually, or at once, strictly in Heaven — ^in a condition, 
 or place, or both, quite distinct from any renovated humanity 
 alive on a renovated earth, Such an earthly sojourn, for at least 
 a while, we get in the Révélation of St, John ; and such Millen- 
 narianism has reappeared on and on in the Christian Church, 
 in the Middle Ages ; in the movement of Savonarola during the 
 Renaissance; and, in modem England, in CromwelFs Kingdom 
 of the Saints ♦ Indeed récent Socialism, so largely Jewish in its 
 origin, is full of a mostly quite non-religious Millennarianism ; 
 whiist even such fervent Christians as the missionary Dr. Hogge 
 and the Rev. Dr. David Cairns hâve resumed some such an out- 
 look from deep religious motives, yet with an important modifica- 
 tion of the stress characteristic especially of the Eschatology 
 of Jésus* 
 
 I can but suggest the foUowing discriminations. Even in the 
 Synoptic Gospels alone we get adumbrations and pictures of 
 difïering historical provenance and which are more or less in- 
 capable of complète harmonisation. For certainly Abraham^s 
 Bosom and Paradise hardly appear identical ; and, even if the 
 same, they are clearly distinct from the Sitting upon the Thrones 
 or at the Banquet, which certainly belong to the Parousia circle 
 of ideas. St. PauFs Third Heaven can hardly belong to any of 
 thèse groups ; whereas the Révélation of St. John moves indeed 
 in the Parousia circle, yet more of its Eschatology appears to 
 be directly derived from Jewish sources than can similarly be 
 attributed in the Eschatology of the Synoptists. We see from 
 thèse facts how wide was the freedom and how rich the choice 
 for the Christian Church in its development of a Christian 
 Eschatology. 
 
 We can, next, note that ail the Christian Eschatological views 
 fall, roughly, into two classes^ — the Renovated Earth, the Millen- 
 narian Expectation; and Heaven, Purgatory, Heïl, which, more 
 and more, in the great orthodox Christian bodies, hâve, in practice, 
 supplanted the former. The Millennarian class is more clearly 
 rooted in Jésus *s actual eschatological utterances, and is more 
 o 
 
138 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 directly in kceping with any strongly stressed doctrine of the 
 résurrection of the body. It goes back, historically, to the Jewish 
 Apocalyptic writers» The Heaven class has more and more corne 
 to be felt by Christians of délicate spirituality and wide gênerai 
 cultivation to be the simpler, the more spiritual view, indeed to be 
 the one which most adequately draws out the deepest implications 
 and needs of Theism in gênerai and of Jésus *s own great central 
 teachings in particular» This view is indeed compatible with 
 belief in a résurrection of the body (a doctrine which, in some 
 form or other, it is important to retain), but it lends itself less 
 readily to this belief than does the Millennarian view* Historically 
 this Heaven-Purgatory-Hell cycle goes back to Helletiistic 
 Judaism and to Plato, 
 
 In th^outlook of the average orthodox Christian, for now 
 some telfcEenturies, it is the Heaven-Purgatory-Hell cycle that 
 forms part of his every-day religion ; with, however, a notable 
 addition and distinction ♦- The General Judgment and the End 
 of the World, though thèse are now placed at an indefinite dis- 
 tance of time, still remain constituents of orthodox belief» Yet 
 the Particular Judgment, at the death of each soûl, a doctrine 
 belonging to the Heaven class, is doubtless now the more 
 operative conviction ; whereas the doctrine of the End of the 
 World seems to exercise but little influence ♦ 
 
 As with the change from Kingdom to Church, so with that 
 from a Renovated Earth to Heaven, we may rest very sure that 
 the deepest reasons and needs slowly determined the Church 
 in this direction. In both, closely interrelated, cases we can, by 
 living the spirit of Jésus, discover how preservative of precisely 
 this spirit are thèse modifications of the letter. And especially 
 does the great alternative of Heaven-Hell remain true to the 
 whole gist and drift of Jésus *s teaching and to the growth of this 
 teaching from first to last, since this teaching was never simply 
 a révélation of a divine cosmic process of universal rédemption, 
 but always a waming, an awakening to, a costly, profound 
 alternative of, right or wrong self-determination in view of 
 God's gift and God's call and testing, Millennarianism, on the 
 contrary, mediaeval and modem, shows badly as regards sobriety, 
 and is always followed by disillusionment and relaxation, as the 
 inévitable cost of the nervous exaltation and rigorism which 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 139 
 
 inevitably accompany iu Indeed the Millennarianisms of the 
 last sixty years or so, hâve practically ail been without precisely 
 what gave greatness and depth to Jesus*s entire Eschatology» 
 For with Jésus the very proximity and suddenness ail meant 
 Gift of God, meant God, and meant man*s awed moral and 
 spiritual préparation for this Gift which would either cure or 
 kill him ; with thèse Millennarianists, on the other hand, 
 God, Gift, Test, Préparation — ^all hâve gone ; man a^ man's 
 work< — even pure, unaided human work — ^have succee Jbd : and jf 
 yet this purely human work is proximately, suddenly, jÇ) achieve^^' 
 a new heaven and a new earth, an earthly condition which will, 
 of itself, satisfy ail the cravings of the human heart Jid souU | 
 We thus get something essentially hare-brkined,^nflating, 
 sterilising* We cannot, even if we would, reawéke|ft:he first 
 Christian Expectation in the features of its interis^BBief in a 
 proximate, sudden World Rénovation, even though^piis bdiief 
 was so grand and true in its ardent- faith in God, in His Gift, 
 in our need of Préparation, and in human Life as essentially a 
 Choice and an Alternative» But we will not wish, even if we could, 
 to encourage an Immanentist Millennarianism, an outlook from 
 which hâve disappeared Alternative, Choice, Préparation, Gift 
 and God. 
 
 Indeed even the religiously intended, religiously coloured 
 Millennarianism, will not really work. In this Millennarianism 
 God is fully acknowledged, and the Kingdom, even its proximity 
 and Suddenness, are reconstituted as the Christian central 
 doctrines, yet are interpreted as the coalescence of devoted, heroic 
 human wills to which Crod has promised millennarian results. 
 For such an outlook is based, historically, upon a grave mis- 
 interpretation of Jésus 's meaning, and assumes philosophically 
 a view of human nature and human progress which would make 
 thèse, and not God and His Perfect Simultaneity, the centre 
 of man 's care and striving. Such a view, if it became fixed and 
 full, would bring to already feverish human society only a further 
 contribution of feverishness, indeed the full sanction of such 
 ceaseless tension and intrinsic unrest. Dr. F. Bradley has acutely 
 pointed out that Human Perfection, taken thus absolutely, as 
 a condition attainable suddenly, completely : that such an idea 
 of progress is not a cause or an efîect of Theism properly 
 
140 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 understood, but always its substitute, You can hâve as your centre 
 God ; or you can hâve as your centre such sudden and complète 
 human Progress and Perfection : you cannot hâve both. But 
 Theism remains fully compatible with man*s indefinite improve- 
 ableness, indeed improvement. Religious men, provided they 
 care still more for direct spiritual conditions, cannot care too 
 much for the social, earthly betterment of their fellows ; and 
 this, most of ail, because Grâce, Supernature, is fully awakened, 
 and is given its substrate and material, only by some such setting 
 in motion of the natural interests and activities of ourselves and 
 of our fellow-men» In this way our religion will be also thoroughly 
 social ; but it will bring to this its social outlook a spécial balance 
 and sanity, a freedom from exaltations and cynicisms, an in- 
 destructible, sober, and laborious hopefulness, which, surely, 
 constitute exactly the combination so much required and so rare 
 to find* 
 
 7» And what about the entire critical method which, now for 
 five générations, has been applied by great scholars to delimit, to 
 fathom, to analyse the figure, the doctrine, the spirit of the 
 historic Jésus, and this, often with the assumption, or even the 
 proclamation, that thus only, but that thus really, can we gain 
 the unadulterated Jésus, as He actually breathed well-nigh two 
 thousand years ago $* If we take the method thus, as by itself 
 productive of such a resuit, we are, very certainly, the victims 
 of perhaps the most plausible instance of a very natural and 
 widespread illusion» Prof essor James Ward and Dr. Pringle 
 Pattison hâve, each from a somewhat différent starting-point, 
 admirably brought out the fact I am thinking of. Dr. Ward 
 compares the two chief methods of Psychology — ^the Genetic 
 and the Analytic, and shows how doubtless the perfect knowledge 
 of anything would be a knowledge of that thing at each of its 
 stages of growth and becoming, rather than an analysis of the 
 same thing at its fuUest expansion, yet that, as a matter of fact, 
 the analytic method alone is really completely at our service. 
 And Dr. Pattison demonstrates the spécial danger inhérent in 
 the Genetic Method, even where we can most fully apply it. 
 Let us take the embryology of man. Hère the future human 
 being — ^in strictness the human being, as he really exists from 
 conception onwards — ^is (for ail appearances) first a shapeless 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 141 
 
 material substance, next a plant-like organism, then a mollusc- 
 like, fish-like, bird-like being ; only later on a mammal-like, 
 monkey-like créature, and last of ail a clearly human baby. Only 
 God Himself can directly see a human being in those earlier 
 forms ; so that if we wiîl treat each of thèse stages as self- 
 cxplanatory, as what it appears to us apart from what we know 
 will foUow, man is a monkey, a fish, a plant, a shapeless material 
 substance — the lowest désignation is indeed the most scientific» 
 This method alone is quite clear ; but then, it is also quite 
 inadéquate» Human Marriage, under this treatment, becomes 
 a mère pairing of two animais or plants ; the State, a mère herding 
 of wild animais, or the cruel invention of cannibal cave-dwellers* 
 The God of the Jews becomes the mutterings and tremblings 
 of a volcano in the peninsula of Sinai ; indeed one specially 
 ** thorough '* sage of this school discovers that religion began 
 with, hence that it zs, the scratching by a cow of an itch upon 
 her back. 
 
 It cannot, on the other hand, be denied that the study of 
 Origins properly conducted — that is, conducted with a continuous 
 sensé of the reality investigated as it gradually reveals itself in 
 its ever fuller development — does very genuinely deepen, purify 
 and vivify our appréciation of the full reality» For only such 
 study can make us enter (never quite fully, yet with an otherwise 
 unattainable poignancy) into the homely environment, the difïi- 
 culty and loneliness, the sweat, tears and blood, the obscurities, 
 inhibitions, defeats and difïicult conquests, above ail into the 
 varying appearances and applications, of the self-identical reality 
 thus studied. The very inevitableness, for an at ail human life 
 and teaching, to lose, in course of time, some of the pristine 
 instant attractiveness of its précise pictures and émotions, is 
 thus brought out at its fullest. Yet even this resuit is attained 
 only by a combination of the Analytic method, which moves back 
 from the life of Jésus as still actually lived in Christ *s mystical 
 body, the Church, and of the Genetic method, which starts 
 from the earliest évidence of the earliest stages of Jésus Christ *s 
 life on earth and then on across the centuries. If we were re- 
 stricted to one method only, the Analytic method ought to be 
 preferred, as giving us far more life and reality, indeed as, taken 
 singly, alone capable of furnishing us with genuine life at alh 
 
143 THE APOCALYPTIC ELEMENT 
 
 Yet we can, fortunately, work by both ways simultaneously — 
 we can move from the Christ of the Church, of our prayers, com- 
 munions and inner life, back to the Jésus of the earHest docu- 
 ments ; and, from this Jésus forwards to the Christ» This double 
 movement will, if worked devotedly and wisely, really deepen 
 our sensé of the worlds of beauty, truth and goodness, of idéal 
 help, of idéal reality, of divine facts, offered to us in the Church, in 
 Jésus Christ, in God* 
 
 Two illustrations of the substance of what I hâve been attempt- 
 ing are often with me, They may help to conclude ail with some 
 vividness» In the Italian Alps I used to love a certain deep, ever 
 sunless gorge, through which a resounding mountain torrent 
 was continuously fighting its way, without rest, without fruit, 
 Why did I love it so ^ Doubtless because I realised, amidst 
 that sterile-seeming uproar, that, down far away, this 
 torrent would spread itself out as a sunlit, peaceful, fertilising 
 river, slowly flowing through the rich plains of Piedmont, 
 So is it with the Apocalyptic Jésus and with the Prophétie 
 Jésus, indeed with both thèse Jesuses and the Ever-Present 
 Christ, 
 
 Some years ago the Jesuit Astronomer, Father Perry, was sent 
 out to a South Pacific station to observe the transit of the Planet 
 Venus. He sickened of a mortal fever shortly before the transit, 
 Told of his impending death, he ascertained from the doctor how 
 long he was likely to retain consciousness, and then planned out 
 ail his duties for within this little span of time, He promptly 
 received the Last Sacraments and disposed himself religiously 
 to die. And then he gave himself heartwholly to his présent duty 
 and service of God — ^to the transit, He made and registered 
 ail the délicate observations with a perfect lucidity and com- 
 pleteness ; and then, the moment the planet had ceased its 
 apparent contact with the sun, this true, deep Christian fell 
 back into unconsciousness and death, It seems far from the 
 Eschatology of Jésus, with its eye upon the little Palestine and 
 upon a Proximate End of the visible earth and heavens — ^hcavcns 
 ail circling, as it seemed, around man upon his little planet ; 
 far from that to this modem observer, intent upon stellar 
 vicissitudes of no direct importance to mankind, It seems far. 
 
IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS 143 
 
 yet it ù near, near at least to the complète and fundamental 
 Jésus ; for it is assuredly part of, it is penetrated by, the spirit 
 of Christ living in the Church to bless and to purify ail the gifts 
 and calls of the God of Nature by the calls and gifts of the God 
 of Grâce ♦ 
 
144 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 ON THE SPECIFIC GENIUS AND CAPACITIES 
 OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 STUDIED IN CONNECTION WITH THE WORKS OF 
 PROFESSOR ERNST TROELTSCH^ 
 
 Perhaps the subtlest, yet really the greatest, of the difficulties 
 that beset ail eirenic endeavours, such as the Constructive Review 
 so valiantly represents for our own times and peoples^ lie, not 
 without but within, — consist, not in any possible obstruction 
 from a non-perceptive world, but from a certain flatness and 
 unpersuasiveness which, sooner or later, always tend to pervade 
 whatsoever is readily optimistic, studiously pacifie, free from 
 ail acute stress and strain* Thus even Leibniz, that rich, all- 
 harmonising mind, is he as moving as Tertullian, that véhément, 
 onesided genius, or even as some of Leibniz*s own contemporaries, 
 smaller and less balanced, but more concentrated and instinctive 
 than that serene negotiator, of the large wig, amidst the pontiffs 
 and princesses cf his day i Probably the best antidote to any 
 such danger is the close study, not directly of the contrasts and 
 conflicts between the already made théologies and cuits of the 
 several Churches and Sects, but of the religious life, or at least 
 of its philosophy, still now in the making — of the struggles and 
 successes operative, at this very moment, within some exception- 
 ally capacious mind and deeply spiritual souL At least, for 
 myself, I can be fully happy in Eirenics only in some such entirely 
 unofficial and unfinal, slow, round-about, far-back and far-onward 
 looking way. And thus I come hère to attempt the présentation 
 of the fundamental strivings, and thinkings, in matters of the 
 
 ^ Two Papers rcprinted from the Constructive Qmrterly of New York, March, 
 December, 19 14. 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 145 
 
 spécifie genius, claims and capadties of Christianity, of Professer 
 Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. 
 
 Such a présentation, to be effective, should be clear, yet clear- 
 ness hère is ver y difficult. Life itself is, not clear, but vivid. 
 And even the deeper Sciences — ^those with most of concrète 
 content, such as History and Psychology, — and also Philosophy, 
 will always remain outdistanced, not in cleamess, but in volume 
 and vividness of content, by Life wheresoever it is profound» 
 In Troeltsch *s case we must add, on the side of his subject- 
 matters, the unique depth and vividness, hence the difficulty 
 as to clearness, of his central interest, Religion ♦ We must add, 
 on the side of himself, a most rarely alive sensé of the spécial 
 characteristics of religion and of the différent, quite distinct 
 characteristics of the other depths, ranges and complexes of 
 human expérience and of reality ; and a sensé largely new, in 
 its keen self-consciousness, of the necessary part played in life 
 generally, and particularly also in religion, by the tension thus 
 introduced. Add again strong préjudices within this student, 
 and still stronger préjudices amongst his environment and 
 audience — ^préjudices which he very nobly, but only slowly and 
 partially, throws ofî, and as to which even his fine courage has 
 to accommodate, approximate, reconcile, hence somewhat to 
 obscure, indeed to confuse, the full depth and range of the issues 
 and admissions» And finally, this man is not a Frenchman, 
 with a born sensé for form, but a German with curiously little 
 of such a sensé even for a German, and who, in each of his 
 varying moods and growths, tends always to be so emphatic as 
 to be indeed oppressively clear for that point or moment, yet 
 so as to render more difficult the intégration of this his contention 
 with other parts of his teaching even where this is contemporary, 
 Take ail this together, and you will be prepared for the obscurities 
 and difficulties, but not, I think — ^if only you will persévère as 
 his student — ^for the bewilderingly rich instructiveness, indeed 
 the grandly tonic ethical and spiritual training-power, of 
 Troeltsch, 
 
 For now over twenty years, I hâve learnt quite massively from 
 Troeltsch, as much where regretfuUy but firmly I still disagree, 
 as where, so joyfuUy, I agreed from the first with ail that I am. 
 Possibly no Englishman, probably no American, knows his mind 
 
146 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 and Works as intimately as I know them myself ♦ Hcnce I believe 
 myself to possess some spécial compétence for attempting a 
 description and analysis of his main positions. Nobody less 
 than he himself would wish such an exposition to minimise 
 différences, or not to move on, from our own two selves, to the 
 subject-matter, indeed towards insights and analyses as yet 
 fully neither his nor mine. He considers himself a strong Protest- 
 ant ; I think he is this in fewer respects than he used to be, or 
 than he thinks himself now still to be. For myself I would wish 
 to be, and I hope I am, a devoted Catholic. Yet just those con- 
 victions and habits which, within my own life, I feel to be most 
 centrally Catholic appear to me, ever increasingly, to require the 
 aid precisely of what is most growing, and most rich, in Troeltsch's 
 positive convictions ; and, in return, thèse convictions seem to 
 me to require for their full protection, expansion and fruitfulness, 
 much of the soil and environment they possess within my own 
 Catholic spiritual life. And if my friend objects that I live with 
 my head in the clouds — ^that I reason from a Catholicism con- 
 tinuously less apparent in the fully officiai acts of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, I could, after ail, retort, mutatis mutandis, in 
 much the same vein, as to Protestantism and its contrary, yet 
 very real, difficulties ; especially can I easily show — a point for the 
 most part admitted by himself — ^how much of precisely what 
 appears in him as his own slow conquest of most fruitful, very 
 difficult insights has been so far anticipated, with any real con- 
 sistency or depth, in life, temper, analysis and theory, within 
 the various religious and Christian bodies, by the Roman Catholic 
 Church alone. 
 
 Two articles in a non-technical magazine cannot attempt to 
 analyse the more than two thousand pages to which conjointly 
 run the Professor*s History of Protestantism (in Kultur der 
 Gegenwart), Second Edition, 1910, his Social Doctrines of the 
 Christian Churches and Croups, 191 1, and the second volume of 
 his Collected Works, 191 3 ; let alone many another important 
 article or monograph still awaiting incorporation in further 
 volumes of this collective édition. 
 
 Thèse many pages contain much répétition ; they are at times 
 slovenly in style, and the changes introduced into later éditions 
 are often unskilfuUy introduced ; a curiously thin and obtuse. 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 147 
 
 because unloving spirit spoils, to my own persistent taste, much 
 of his earlier writings, where thèse touch Catholidsm, as he 
 dcfines this complex of religious life, so much richer than, 
 especially there, he sees it to be ; and, perhaps above ail, his 
 still strongly idealistic philosophy prevents his admirably vivid 
 appréhensions as to the spécifie facts, genius and needs of religion 
 and Christianity from attaining to a fully consistent and persistent, 
 concrète and comfortable articulation ♦ Yet he no where simply 
 rcpeats himself ; he is never rhetorical or empty, and can rise, 
 indeed, to the noblest form wedded to the richest content ; his 
 additions are always very instructive ; his love for Christianity 
 is everywhere deeper than his antipathy to Catholicism, indeed 
 it is that love which, with a growing knowledge of ancient and 
 especially mediaeval Christianity, is increasingly limiting this 
 antipathy ; and his religious sensé is too strong, and his analysis 
 of it is too keen, for his philosophical idealism not to show 
 most instructive strains and rents, Certainly no living German 
 thinker is more sensitively alive to the présent prevalence and 
 the perennial plausibility and ruinousness of Monism in ail its 
 forms ; whilst few, not professedly orthodox Germans hâve been, 
 upon the whole, so clear-sighted and courageous concerning 
 the limitations of Kant, Goethe and Schleiermacher» 
 
 I propose in this first paper, to consider his Fundamental 
 Concepts of Ethics, 1902, Second Edition, 191 3 (Ces. Schriften 
 II» pp, 552-672) ; and in a second paper, to study his What 
 do we mean by the Essence of Christianity i 1903, Second Edition, 
 191 3 {Ihid. pp, 386-451), and especially the conclusion to his 
 Social Doctrines, 191 1, pp« 965-986, Thèse two hundred pages, 
 ail told, contain, I think in nuce ail the fundamental principles, 
 strengths and weaknesses of Troeltsch's life-work so far, especially 
 in ail that concerns the constructive interprétation of Theism, 
 Christianity and the Church, in face of and within our modem 
 western world» 
 
 Now the Fundamental Problems of Morality, like so much of 
 Troeltsch's work, takes the form of a criticism of a particular 
 author, indeed of a particular work ; yet it equals in range, 
 and far exceeds in rich fullness and précision, the somewhat 
 vague suggestions of its title» Its six-score pages constitute an 
 
148 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 astonishingly many-sided, whoUy live and stimulating treatise 
 on the spécial characteristics, forces, difficulties and prospects 
 of Christianity, and on how to penetrate, utilise, meet and forecast 
 ail thèse things» 
 
 We shall not ourselves be directly occupied with Professor 
 Wilhelm Hermann and his Ethics, thus studied by Troeltsch ; 
 yet it is well to remember throughout, that Troeltsch is, hère, 
 not starting hares of his own, or beating the air, but is wrestling 
 with a mind and conviction of rare power and tenacity, and with 
 a soûl unusually fuU of enthusiastic dévotion to Christ ; with a 
 man, too, highly représentative of a very prévalent ingrédient of 
 modem thought, and possessing great influence amongst the 
 présent large class of Germans in search of a faith free from 
 historical contingencies, metaphysical subtleties, mystical exalta- 
 tions and priestly oppressions — a combination of Christ and 
 Kant» We cannot, thus, fail to strike hère, in the positions 
 criticised by Troeltsch, upon much that is quietly assumed, 
 or strenuously contended for, by many an English-speaking 
 contemporary, moved and tried by the difficulties of our présent 
 times» 
 
 Let us, then, take briefly Troeltsch*s short account of the 
 starting-point of the past history of the entire enquiry ; and let 
 us thereupon pass on to a longer considération of the four main 
 propositions defended by Troeltsch in this monograph. 
 
 ** Not from a Metaphysic of whatsoever kind, which, by means 
 of its own concepts, would reveal to us the essence of the world, 
 do we now-a-days approach the religious problem» But from 
 the gênerai Ethical Problem of the final values and aims of human 
 life and action do we reach the religious, metaphysical convictions 
 enclosed therein ; and from the development of thèse convictions 
 do we then, in return, détermine the more précise ethical 
 valuations. Psychological, historical and epistemological ascer- 
 tainments jointly give us a theory of values ; and in this theory 
 the metaphysical religious foundations, which underlie it, become 
 apparent ** (Le. p» 553), 
 
 He then gives us a short historical retrospect, ** The old 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 149 
 
 Christian Theology paid no systematic attention to Ethics, and 
 nowhere attempted a scientific présentation of them correspond- 
 ing to those of Religious Metaphysics and of the Dogmas deter- 
 mined by thèse Metaphysics» From the détermination of religious 
 truth the ethical conséquences flowed of themselves ; and Ethics 
 could ail the more be left to their spontaneous form — to manners 
 and the judgments of the conscience — since Christian Ethics 
 coalesced with the nearly related Stoic and Platonic views in 
 the concept of the Natural Ethical Law, and could, thus, be 
 considered as something fixed by Nature *^ (p* 554)» ** When the 
 Catholic Church came to organise her claims and her principles 
 for the direction of ail soûls, as co-extensive with the entire 
 culture of the time, within her great Systems, thèse Systems could 
 not, of course, dispense with an Ethic. But even hère Ethics 
 were conceived, in the identification of the Natural Ethical Law 
 with the Aristotelian Ethics, as a complex given independently, 
 which the Church had to accept and only to modify by means 
 of its own higher outlook» The Christian character of Ethics 
 consisted in the subordination of ail the ends springing from 
 the Natural Moral Law to the final end of the Church» And this 
 subordination was achieved in the Church^s communication 
 of the sacramental forces of grâce for the fulfilment of thèse 
 ethical demands ; in priestly study of the conscience and direction 
 of the soûl, which taught the right application of the natural law, 
 and its combination with particular Christian duties in each 
 concrète case ; and, finally, in the manifestation of certain 
 ascetical achievements efîected by grâce in a quite spécial manner 
 and degree» Only thèse last heroic achievements flowed purely 
 and exclusively from the Christian Principle and not from the 
 Natural Law ; indeed they completed and exceeded this Law with 
 ascetical and mystical commandments of their own» As, in 
 Dogmatics, the immanental natural metaphysic confronts the 
 revealed super-natural metaphysic, so also, in Ethics, the natural 
 moral law and the spécial counsels and achievements of grâce 
 confront each other, separate indeed from each other within 
 this sinful world and not harmonisable by man, but one and 
 actually harmonious in the Divine Mind Itself» An Ethic of 
 grâce, asceticism, contemplation. Divine Love, which springs 
 from the conception of a Supernature and Grâce transcending 
 
I50 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 every creaturely measure, and from the corresponding end of the 
 créature 's participation in the Being of God, is combined with 
 a natural-philosophical Ethic which follows fom the natural end 
 of creaturely existence^ and which régulâtes the worldly interests 
 of Family Life, Society, the State, Economies, Science and Art» 
 The dualism of the two moralities has its foundation in the 
 dualism within the Divine Being Itself, which, in the world of 
 Création, manifests its Nature, and, in the world of Grâce, reveals 
 its Supernature '* (p* 555). 
 
 Hère I would only refer to the truly masterly account of 
 the social doctrines of mediaeval Catholicism, espedally of 
 Su Thomas, in the Soziallehren, as the warmest and wisest 
 appréciation so far reached by Troeltsch ; and would express 
 my opinion that, even there, Troeltsch over-simplifies, and only 
 imperfectly understands or appréciâtes, the doctrine as to Nature 
 and Supernature, and its quite unexhausted truth and rich 
 applicability, 
 
 The earlier Protestantism, with and ever since Melanchthon, 
 also ** always, in the first instance, attacks the problem of Ethics 
 from the side of Dogmatics» Once we hâve, hère, derived from 
 the Bible (a completely suffident, completely clear source) our 
 fundamental view of God, World, Man, Rédemption, there flow 
 from this fixed point the conséquences capital for our conception 
 of Ethics — ^the doctrines of Conversion, Re-birth, the final 
 ethical Idéal of Love* And thèse conséquences can then be 
 applied, by practical expérience and by casuistry, to the demands 
 of Natural Ethics, as thèse are developed, in connection with 
 the tradition of the Schools, by philosophers and jurists, out of 
 the Lex Naturœ, and hence also out of the Divine Will, The 
 contradiction présent hère, between the Ethics of the utter over- 
 coming of the world and of the love that renounces ail résistance 
 and the this-world Ethics, was certainly felt ; but thèse strictly 
 Christian demands were now restricted to the single person, 
 that is, to private life» The Christian, as a member of public 
 life, as bearer of an ofi&ce deriving from the political and économie 
 System of the Natural Law, has to follow the requirements of 
 his office, that is of the order of Natural Law permitted by God 
 together with sin and against sin» In this way the ** personal ** 
 Ethics arc nowhere perilous to the necessities of dvilisation. 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 151 
 
 Ethics hère still belong to the domain of thc subjective and of 
 the application ; Religion, to the domain of the alone simply 
 objective, to authoritative révélation, To attack the problem of 
 Christianity from the ethical side, had, in thèse circumstances, no 
 meaning ; and no one hère came to think of doing so except 
 the Sectaries who, just because of this endeavour, were con- 
 temptuously expelled, as despisers of the Objective Révélation, 
 of Grâce as independent of subjective effort, and of the Church as 
 objectively administering thèse treasures ** {Le. pp, 559-560), 
 
 The great problems hère involved were bound some day 
 to be fully realised, and this their réalisation could not fail to 
 change the relations between Ethics and Dogmatics, and hence 
 the gênerai conception of theology. And this réalisation and 
 change Troeltsch finds to hâve been slowly, complicatedly, in 
 great part unconsciously, effected in two largely contradictory 
 stages ♦ 
 
 The first stage ** reacts against the internecine conflicts of 
 the various Churches and Sects, and seeks a gênerai conception 
 of Religion, which is to include Christianity and is to be based 
 upon Psychology. Religion is hère conceived as an essentially 
 practical bearing of the human mind, which indeed contains 
 certain doctrines, as presupposition and as conséquence, but 
 which finds its spécifie légitimation in its practical achievements. 
 And thèse achievements could, now and at this stage, only be 
 discovered, upon the whole, in certain strengthenings and 
 foundings of Ethics ♦ The resuit was the closest combination of 
 Ethics and Religion, and the reconstruction of Dogmatics from 
 the basis of Ethics — Ethics conceived hère in a predominantly 
 subjective and individualistic manner, Thus Kant and the 
 Kantians consider Ethics (as the necessary, but quite subjective, 
 déterminations of the will by the purely practical reason) to 
 be the fundamental science ; whilst Religion is, for them, the 
 addition of the metaphysical guarantees for the victory of the 
 moral order over the phénoménal world and its laws ** (p. 564), 
 
 But in the second stage ** Religion reconquers its independ- 
 ence of Ethics. Prepared by Hamann, Herder, Jacobi, there 
 arose the new epoch-making définition by Schleiermacher, de 
 Wette and Hegel, which found Religion to be distinct both from 
 Ethics and from Metaphysics, as a central self-determination 
 
 p Ht 
 
X53 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 of the cntirc pcrsonality towards the being and nature of Reality 
 — ^as the attainment of a consdousness, a living expérience, of 
 an absolute spiritual content and meaning of existence» Hence 
 there reappeared an independent, objective détermination of 
 Religion in the conceptions of God and of an élévation of the 
 soûl into the Divine Life/' Indeed ** also Ethics hère find an 
 objective détermination, in the great universally valid ends of 
 action ; ends which are now found within the nature of reason, 
 from which they proceed as its necessary fruits. Thus hère there 
 resuit distinct and spécifie ends and contents of the State, Society, 
 Art, Science, the Family, Religion, which severally détermine the 
 will as so many objective values. Religion ceases to be simply a 
 sanction and guarantee of self-discipline and philanthropy, and 
 stands as a spécifie objective value alongside of the other objec- 
 tive values of civilisation. Hence the question hère is how the 
 Christian Ethic, determined as it is by the religious end, con- 
 stitutes itself under the influence of this end ; and how the 
 demands which resuit from this religious end stand with regard 
 to the demands deriving from the other, the non-religious, 
 ends ** (pp. 565, 566). Troeltsch finds, however, that in Schleier- 
 macher, so largely monistic in his trend and yet, in his later 
 environment and form, so strongly ecclesiastical, there is so 
 much abstract unification and aesthetic harmony that ** the 
 tension, extant between action determined by spedfically 
 Christian religious conviction and action determined by the 
 non-religious ends, ceases to be felt at ail ** (p. 567). 
 
 Yet it is along the gênerai lines of Schleiermacher's Ethics 
 of Objective Contents and Ends, and not those of Kant's Ethics 
 of a Formai Universal Validity, that Troeltsch will now, upon the 
 whole (rightly, I am confident) set to work. 
 
 Let us, then, now take with care the four chief problems 
 as faced and met by the System of Ethics proposed to us by 
 Troeltsch. Thèse are : " the conception of a purely formai, à priori 
 necessity, is it a suffident basis for Ethics ^ ** ** the Ethics of Jésus, 
 are they identical with that fundamental moral conceptions"' 
 *' does the spedal, separatc character of Christian Ethics réside in 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 153 
 
 thcir proffcr of a rcdcmptivc capadty for moral action i ** and, 
 finally, '' what is the application of the spedfically Christian Ethics 
 to the concrète conditions of life $* *' I believe Troeltsch to be in 
 substance profoundly right in his answers to the first, second 
 and fourth questions; but seriously inadéquate in his reply 
 to the third question, The full originality and richness of 
 Troeltsch *s position appears fully disclosed only at the end. 
 
 !♦ As to the first point, Troeltsch admits that Ethics must 
 begin with a gênerai analysis of the Moral, and that thus wc 
 reach the conception of an end absolute, necessary, and valuable 
 in itself ; although already thus we hâve to admit a ** pleasure,*' 
 since the agent *s récognition of such an à priori necessity un- 
 doubtedly présupposes his ** pleasure ** in such a necessity, 
 that is, a sentiment (a sensitiveness) as to idéal values* Also, 
 that the décision as to whether and how an act is really to proceed 
 from such a necessity in the particular cases, is possible only to 
 the ripe ethical conscience, in the form of a judgment offering 
 itself to it as necessarily springing from its moral nature, hence 
 is possible only as an entirely autonomous judgment* And, 
 thirdly, that the essence of Morality consists precisely in the 
 moral disposition — ^the personal conviction as to the necessity 
 and uni versai validity of the insight offering itself as moral. 
 Hère Troeltsch would only emphasise more clearly and strongly 
 the élément of the end, already présent hère ; and would dérive 
 the entire System of concepts from the ideally necessary end, 
 with its great bifurcation into the individual and the social 
 ends (p* 617). 
 
 But then Troeltsch is promptly faced by the far-reaching 
 fact that ** in the reality of the moral life we distinguish between 
 the Subjective Rules which spring entirely from the bearing of 
 the subjects {e*g. truthfulness, thoughtfulness, courage ; benevo- 
 lence, justice, loyalty) ; and the claims, which are ever upon us, 
 to treasure, and to aspire after, the Objective Values (the 
 Family, State, Society, Science, Art, Religion)* We certainly 
 recognise also in thèse latter complexes something valuable, not 
 simply for selfish or sensual rcasons, but ideally and objectively ; 
 something to be striven for cven with the greatest sacrifices. 
 And in thèse Objective ethical values, we recognise, as in the 
 
154 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 Subjective, two sides of both the individual and the social value ; 
 in our dévotion to thèse Objective values we singly acquire a 
 Personal worth, which is always closely bound up with our 
 récognition and promotion of the same personal worth in others. 
 Thus only the Subjective and the Objective values, in each case 
 Individual and Social, can conjointly represent the application 
 of the idea of a moral necessity to actual life ** (Le. pp* 6i8, 619)» 
 
 '' Do not object that thèse Objective Values are the merely 
 natural products of action. For the merely natural processes, 
 which spring simply from physical abilities and needs, or from 
 psychical conditions and instincts, remain a shapeless mass till 
 they are sei2;ed by the moral idea of an Ethical Good to be formed 
 upon this natural foundation, Out of the sexual instinct the moral 
 idea thus forms the community of personalities, the Family ; 
 out of the social instinct, the personal community of the State ; 
 out of the craving for food and possessions, the orders of Pro- 
 duction and Property ; out of the aesthetic impressions, the 
 work of Art which shows us a higher world shining through the 
 world of sensé ; out of curiosity and the need of physical orienta- 
 tion. Science in search of truth to the neglect of every selfish 
 interest ; and out of religious moods and excitations, the con- 
 scious and deliberate Religion which organises an entire life 
 for God and with Him. Ail thèse ends signify an opposition 
 to natural selfishness, sloth, sensuality, and to the merely given ; 
 they ail require, for their achievement, an earnest concentration 
 upcn, and dévotion to, the object, for the sake of its interior 
 necessary value ♦ They ail degenerate when taken simply as 
 pleasures or as outlets to our need for activity, Yet against thèse 
 ever threatening degenerations the principles of subjective 
 morality would be of no avail ; the only help lies in the récogni- 
 tion that thèse ends ail share the character of the intrinsically 
 necessary, are means for the formation of personality, and hence 
 constitute objective values/* 
 
 '' And especially let us note that also the Religious Elément 
 of life belongs, in the first instance, to man^s given instincts, 
 and requires, as ail the others, to be raised into the sphère where 
 it ceases to be something simply to be enjoyed and possessed, 
 and becomes what it ought to be — ^the objectively necessary/' 
 Yct ** Religion is an independent élément of life, with its own 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 155 
 
 sorrows and its own joys, an expérience and a temper of soûl 
 which is not artificially produced, but which is lived through 
 and lived in by man» It stands, in the first instance, as the expéri- 
 ence best interpreted by Mysticism, independently by itself, 
 bound up with Cultus and with Myth» The greater the power 
 of the Gods becomes, the more does it draw also the légal and 
 the moral orders under the influence, control, protection of the 
 Divine» On the other hand, the souFs strivings after religious 
 values (purity, résignation into God*s hands, assimilation to 
 God) become an imperative which represents the spécifie 
 oughtness of Religion ** (pp* 6i8-62o), 
 
 ** Now Ethics, if we attend only to their characteristics of 
 Uni versai Validity and Necessity, and to thèse quite gênerai 
 foundations for the formation of personality, are naturally, in 
 principle, without any history, and, in their central features, 
 are everywhere identical — the différences hère concern only 
 clearness, consistency and strength. The situation is différent 
 as regards the Objective Values ; thèse arise within the labours 
 of history, and hère detach themselves, in the * heterogony of 
 ends ' [in the birth of a variety of ends], from merely natural 
 forms and values» Hère the great formations, from the Family 
 to Religion, hâve ail to be known by means of history» Each of 
 thèse values indeed has its own distinct development, which 
 reveals the spécifie character of this value and the conditions of 
 its life and growth» And again the interaction of thèse several 
 values possesses also its own history. The end of History, then, 
 cannot be an Abstract Uniform Idea or reason, but only a Con- 
 crète Articulated System of Values; and the question as to the 
 real articulation of this System of Values becomes thus the central 
 problem of Ethics.*' 
 
 ** And only in this Objective Ethic do we reach the highest 
 and last, but also the most arduous, problem of Ethics» For in 
 very truth there does exist an Ethic sub specie temporis, and an 
 Ethic sub specie œternitatis. Restrict yourself to purely Formai 
 Ethic, and you will not notice the contrast, or you will interpret 
 it wrongly, or will explain it away» Face the complications of 
 the ethical problems as they battle amidst the Objective Values 
 of life, and that contrast becomes the most important of ail the 
 facts» Each position hère often déclares fierce war against the 
 
156 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 other, as Immancntal and Transcendental Ethics, as Culture 
 and Asceticism» Yet each ever again seeks the other, since either, 
 left to itself, withers and decays. Religion, without référence 
 to the World, narrows and darkens the Ethical, or tums it into 
 some Utopian dream ; Immanental Ethic, without référence to a 
 final, all-englobing, all-determining End, grows flat and aimless *' 
 (Le* pp« 623-625). 
 
 Throughout this first point I can find only one imperfection 
 — ^the sensé, to my mind ambiguous and shifting, in which the 
 term ** nature ** is used ; for the rest I take Troeltsch hère 
 admirably to see and to state the complex situation as it 
 really is. 
 
 2. The second question, as to the identity of the Christian 
 Ethical Idéal with the Kantian formalist Ethic, is a purely 
 historical one, to be dedded independently of our own ethical 
 prédilections. And taking it thus Troeltsch flatly dénies the 
 identity. ** It is an extraordinary misconception of the real 
 meaning and spirit of the Gospel, an impossible feat at the stage 
 we hâve reached in the historical imderstanding of the New 
 Testament. Not without cause has it been rejected ** in the past 
 and the présent ** by ecclesiastical and by radical spokesmen, 
 from à Kempis and Gottfried Arnold, down to Renan and 
 Nietzsche, Tolstoi and Kierkegaard.** 
 
 True, what this identification emphasises is a presupposition 
 of the Evangelical Ethic — ^the spirit of interior liberty and of 
 the need for genuine dispositions which of necessity issue, 
 from the récognition of the End, in an action joyful and assured. 
 This is indeed the soûl of the warfare of Jésus against the doctrine 
 of the Pharisees ; the autonomy of Ethics, as the prerequisite 
 of Morality, has probably never, in a popular form, been more 
 vividly insisted on than in the preaching of Jésus. 
 
 ** Yet this insistence in nowise exhausts the Gospel message. 
 This message does not simply leave each person to do, in each 
 case, what may appear, to his own moral insight, to be necessary 
 and universally valid ; but Jésus points, with the keenest, an 
 all-dominating emphasis, to a concrète and objective Content, 
 End and Value in and for ail action.** 
 
 Already the undoubted superordination in Jesus*s preaching 
 of the Kingdom of God, of a community, over the individual. 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 157 
 
 is incapable of dérivation from thc concept of autonomy ; for 
 the autonomous outlook makes the independent individual 
 the starting-point and centre of the relations within the com- 
 munity. Thus ** in the prépondérance of the social side we get 
 the expression of the détermination of this Ethic by an Objective 
 End^ and the connection of this End with a metaphysical^ or 
 religious, conviction as to the world. The littleness of the créature 
 in face of the Infinité God^ is hère united with God's spécial 
 care for the world as a whole and for ail the individuals within 
 it '' (p, 629). 
 
 ** Hence Matt, viL 12 — * Therefore ail things whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do to you, do ye even unto them ; 
 for this is the law and the prophets * — cannot possibly constitute 
 the centre of the Ethics of Jésus ♦ Propounded thus as central, 
 this passage would be a great triviality ; and indeed, taken thus, 
 it has always earned the lively applause of Utilitarians and 
 Positivists. The passage, according to the entire spirit of Jesus^s 
 preaching and to the context hère, can only mean : * be not 
 hypocrites, demanding of others what you are not prepared to 
 do yourselves/ The locus dassicus for the temper of Jésus is His 
 answer as to which is the great commandment, Matt» xkîL 37 : 
 * Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ail thy heart, and with 
 ail thy soûl, and with ail thy mind. This is the first and great 
 commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself. On thèse two commandments 
 hang ail the law and the prophets ' ** (p. 630). Indeed simply 
 everywhere in the words and in the spirit of Jésus 's preaching 
 appears ** this pairing of the two fundamental commandments, 
 and this dérivation of their fundamental character from the 
 suprême objective end of God and of a community of ail the 
 children of God. The purity of heart and the love hère every- 
 where demanded are a sanctification of the entire person for 
 God and in order to see God. Even where the second funda- 
 mental commandment is immediately concerned, ail still re- 
 mains under the religious point of view. We do not hère find 
 a love of our neighbour in the humanitarian sensé, not, at least, 
 in the first instance. It is the love of God Who has freely given 
 us so much, which is hère the motive of the love of the brethren. 
 Even the individual who apparently stands far away, is to feel 
 
158 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 thc warm breath from the true home of man — and this generosity 
 will remain a rightful act, even if he do not, in conséquence, 
 turn to God, For God reigns over the just and the unjust, 
 Indeed even towards enemies and haters this love must not 
 expire ; it must effect, by the power of God and by the souFs 
 insight into the smallness of ail human combats, what is im- 
 possible to the simply natural man, bounded by his earthly 
 horizon and with ail his little cares looking so important — 
 it must achieve the disarmament of evil by goodness, or at 
 least, where the evil will not yield, the lofty serenity of a for- 
 giving disposition, since most men know not what they do ** 
 (pp. 631, 632). 
 
 This specifically religious Ethic, the most consistently perfect 
 type of religious Ethic based on the prophétie Personalism and 
 Theism, thus finds the end and motive of action in the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. And ** this Kingdom of Heaven is, of course, not 
 the union of men through the common récognition of the law 
 of autonomy, as planted by God in the human breast — a modem 
 abstraction entirely foreign to the naïve ancient realism, but 
 something thoroughly objective, a wonderful Good brought 
 about exclusive ly by a great grâce and deed of God. And the 
 immense concentration of ail thought upon this end appears 
 hère in the immédiate expectation of this divine deed and grâce, 
 and in the Gospel as simply the call to préparation for this 
 deed of God. Ail this-world considérations and ends hâve hère 
 become indiffèrent, — are left far behind and far below by an 
 Ethic which sees only the End and the Consummation — the 
 highest and the last aim and end of life ** (pp. 634, 635). 
 
 ** Thus we recognise, in the unlimited sway of the eschato- 
 logical idea over the evangelical preaching, simply the grandiose 
 expression of the unique value of the Religious End ; and in the 
 subjection, inspired by the proximity of the Kingdom, of every 
 thought to the immédiate rule of this religious end, we hâve 
 the key to the bearing of the Gospel towards the other objective 
 values — ^towards This-World Morality. This latter morality is, 
 thus, not combated, but it is put into the background ; we see 
 hère only its dangers and disappointments. Art and Science in 
 gênerai are unknown in the circles within which the Gospel 
 arises, even though the artistic instinct célébrâtes its naïvest 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 159 
 
 triumphs in the form of Jesus*s parables, and though the 
 sdentific search after unity could not fail strongly to be aroused 
 by His concentration upon the thought of God. State and Law 
 are on the downward grade ♦ Work and Property are dangerous, 
 if they go beyond the care for the day» The Gospel loves the 
 poor, as those most needing help, and as the more ready to be 
 loved and to love ; but it neither formulâtes nor solves any 
 social problems, for the days of Society are numbered and the 
 day of God's Kingdom is at hand» Let us ail possess the world 
 as though we possessed it not. But the heralds of this Gospel 
 shall go further — ^they are to make themselves eunuchs for the 
 kingdom of heaven, and to give ail their possessions to the poor ; 
 so that, as shining patterns of a readiness for every sacrifice, 
 they may proclaim the great message through the cities of Israël 
 until He comes "" (Le* pp, 635, 6^6). 
 
 ** Thus, too, we understand the reality of the analogies between 
 the Ethic of Jésus and every other specifically religious Ethic, 
 which, as such, détermines life from the objective religious end, 
 and consequently represses, or even renders indiffèrent, the 
 this-world ends, The Platonic Ethic, with its methodic élévation 
 of the soûl into the world of the alone eternally Abiding and 
 eternally Valid ; the Stoic Ethic, which finds the standard for 
 man*s sensible, exterior life in the eternal law of nature — ^the 
 rule of the Spirit ; the Buddhist Ethic, with its striving after 
 the changeless and impassive Good ; the Mystical Dualisms, 
 and their sharp contrastings of certain mysterious joys of the 
 soûl with this our earthly world ; above ail, of course, the 
 Prophetical Ethic, with its value of an interior life attained by 
 the individual in union with Grod : ail thèse convictions, in 
 spite of strong différences, are nearly related to the Christian 
 Ethic, just be cause they ail find the standard for action in an 
 Objective Religious Good, Hence they are ail ascetic, rigoristic, 
 super-worldly, transcendent, fuU of tension towards worldly 
 culture, The Christian Ethic differs from thèse other Ethics, 
 only as the Christian religious idea differs from their religious 
 ideas, Hence the essence of the Christian Ethos does not consist 
 in a contemplative immersion in Being, or in a quietistic dénéga- 
 tion of the will, but in an active dedication of the will to a God- 
 head overflowingly alive, Which bears within Itself positive 
 
i6o THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 ends for the world and opens up an immense movement for 
 this same world ** (pp, 636, ^yj)* 
 
 And, finally, we can thus also answer the most difficult of ail 
 the problems raised by the Christian Ethic — ^that as to the 
 précise character of its opposition to the world» Troeltsch him- 
 self, indeed, varies considerably on this point at différent times, 
 or even almost simultaneously» But two central convictions are 
 hère and everywhere operative within him— indeed they are 
 still increasing» 
 
 '* The historical development which succeeded in rendering 
 the fundamental ethical convictions of Christianity fruitful 
 for the work of the world, and which created a civilisation in- 
 spired by Christian ideals, has not misunderstood the Gospel, 
 even though that development itself, in its great complexity, 
 has not always been properly understood» It is precisely the 
 specifically Christian élément, the personalistic conception of 
 God, and the optimism in the estimate of the world (which, in 
 spite of ail the dualism concerning the world, is hère combined 
 with that unitary conception of God) from which springs the 
 perception that the divine action has an end which comprises 
 and fashions the world, and which assigns to human labour the 
 task of constituting a community of personalities devoted ta 
 the sanctification of the ends of this world and to making thèse 
 ends subserve the fuU and final end» For the teaching of Jésus 
 to yield this resuit it is only necessary that the religious end lose 
 the véhémence springing from the expectation of its immédiate 
 réalisation, and, consequently, its power simply to dissolve 
 ail other pre-occupations. That end may well hâve been in- 
 capable of récognition as the highest and all-dominating end 
 except under this condition ; but it can continue to be recognised, 
 even if its réalisation is postponed from the immédiate to a 
 distant future* The religious end is indeed continuously reno- 
 vated by men's concentration upon the image of that classical 
 beginning when it stood, without a rival, with the power of the 
 présent, before men's hearts» But for the sake of God, the God 
 of création, from whom the world and ail its good dérive, the 
 world, as soon as it becomes a lasting field for work, must also 
 be accorded a positive value, and its ends must, as far as possible, 
 be harmonised with the final end revealed to us by God '* (p, 638)» 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY i6i 
 
 And Troeltsch's second conviction is that something which, 
 as we shall see, even he himself finds difficult to distinguish 
 from the Catholic graduation and distribution of a domestic 
 and an heroic type and degree of morality, constitutes the most 
 adéquate solution of the difficulty. He rightly insists^ indeed^ 
 that, ever thus, we can never, in practice and in this life, 
 attain to more than a relative unification ; yet that ** hère is a 
 problem from which no one can escape who knows the religious 
 life in its depth, and is prepared to take upon himself its ethical 
 conséquences ** (p* 639)» 
 
 ** The most spécifie characteristics of the Ethic of Jésus 
 réside/* then, ** in the Content of the moral will, and not in the 
 Form ; and this Content, far from being something self-evident, 
 constitutes an endless task, giving rise to ever new attempts 
 at its adéquate formulation ** (p* 639)» 
 
 I do not see what objection, pecuHar to this second proposition 
 of Troeltsch, can validly be raised, 
 
 3* The third question is, whether the distinguishing, hence 
 the décisive, character of Christian Ethic lies in its bestowal 
 of power for moral action, — ^whether it can be considered ex- 
 clusively as an Ethic of Rédemption, whilst the nature of ail 
 other Ethics would consist in their not disposing of thèse re- 
 demptive forces, and in thus leaving man a prey to the mère, 
 impotent capacities of his nature* 
 
 The answer is foimd by Troeltsch in the foregoing analysis 
 of Jésus *s preaching, a preaching occupied, above ail, with the 
 meaning, content and demand of True Justice* ** Rédemption 
 lies hère at the end, at the coming of the Kingdom* But over 
 Jesus*s announcement of this proximate future there is diffused 
 such a temper of joy, of certainty of God, of the forgiveness of 
 sins, that His preaching is apprehended as power and life, not 
 as law* This, however, is something very différent from that 
 construction of the Christian Ethic which finds the Christian 
 characteristic essentially in the powers hère first conferred 
 sufiiciently for the exécution of the moral law, and which, as 
 against this, conceives the moral demand itself as something 
 universally human ** (p* 640)* 
 
 The combination of a Rédemption essentially accomplished 
 in and by Christ and of a universally human Ethic, Troeltsch 
 
 Q 
 
i62 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 finds to appear already in the earliest formation of Christian 
 ideas — ^in the Apostolic community and St, PauL ** The Gospel 
 becomes a faith in Christ and a cultus of Christ, The faithful 
 venerate, in Jesus^ the divine grâce, wisdom, révélation made to 
 man ; and they see in His death, in the sacraments which apply 
 the fruits of that death, in the out-pouring of the spirit and in 
 the pneumatic leaders, and, finally, in the officiai continuators 
 of the authority of Christ — ^in the Church — ^the great foundation 
 of redemptive grâce. Ail the emphasis is thus shifted, from the 
 Ethical Content, to the authority of the commands and to the 
 healing power of the sacraments ; whilst that Content appears as 
 self-evident, and coalesces from every kind of source — Christian, 
 Jewish, Greek, popular-traditionaL We thus get, at last, a trans- 
 ference of the holiness, from the persons, to the office, the doctrine, 
 the authority and the sacraments of the Church/' Monasticism 
 and the ideals akin to it now represent, with considérable mis- 
 conceptions, the still operative influence of the Sermon on the 
 Mount (pp. 640, 641), 
 
 And against this Church-scheme and type, found by him to 
 reach from St» Paul to Kant, Troeltsch places two other schemes 
 and types of Christian Ethics, ** The Sect-type rejects the 
 Church and ail the dogmas specifically connected with ecclesi- 
 asticism, and emphasises, instead, the content of the Christian 
 Ethics, the Sermon on the Mount, doubtless in a mostly some- 
 what narrow, literal-legal sensé ; and coUects small, voluntary 
 communities of effidently eamest soûls, which manifest them- 
 selves as such by adult Baptism, Gentle, retired saints and 
 violent ethical reformers, firm, exclusive communities and 
 radical ethical individualists hâve proceeded from this spirit, 
 Kierkegaard and Tolstoi hâve sprung from hence/' And ** the 
 Mystical type rejects every extemal law, and clings to a world- 
 renouncing filial dévotion to God and to a fraternal love that 
 binds person to person and consumes the intervening selfish 
 world in its beat. But since the world continues to exist, this 
 spirit is, now, no more a préparation for the coming, but a 
 révélation of the présent, Kingdom of God — a Kingdom which 
 slumbers in man and is awakened by Christ *s message. This 
 objective Ethic of the Suprême Good often and easily moves 
 on into an ascetic Panentheism ; so, both within the Roman 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 163 
 
 Church,as a supplementation to excessive institutional objectivity, 
 and upon Protestant territory, as an independent Christian 
 spiritualisme And where this gênerai mystical spirit abandons 
 the indifférence to the world, and inclines to immanental 
 Pantheism, whilst still claiming a real relation to the person 
 and preaching of Jésus, it attains, in our times, to a great pre- 
 valence, as with Maeterlinck/* ** Under the influence of thèse 
 two groups of the Sect-type and the Mystical type (an influence 
 strengthened by critical research with its discrimination between 
 the historical Jésus, the Pauline Christ, and the Church's God- 
 man), Christian Ethics hâve, in récent times, been increasingly 
 placed under the influence of Jésus, in lieu of the ethical and 
 dogmatic tradition of the Church (pp* 643, 644)* 
 
 ** If then,** Troeltsch concludes this his third question, ** the 
 Christian Ethos is not the universally human Ethos, with simply 
 the addition of the forgiveness of sins and the strengthening 
 by grâce, thèse latter things cannot stand in the first and décisive 
 place ♦ The conception of Rédemption has to take the second 
 place ; it must prove to be a derivative from the fundamental 
 and first conviction — as to God and the Objective Religious End» 
 And the question then is what, under thèse conditions, is the 
 significance of Rédemption *' (Le* pp« 644, 645). 
 
 Troeltsch answers hère that the Rédemption, thus involved 
 in the preaching of the historié Jésus, lies in Faith in God and 
 in Love of God — ^in this and in nothing else« 
 
 Now we hâve already admitted Troeltsch to be right in dis- 
 covering the gênerai ethical teaching of Jésus, and its motivation, 
 to be profoundly sui generis. And hence we cannot hère restrict 
 our Lord's originality to the nature and degree of the Rédemption 
 taught and offered by Him» This Rédemption must indeed be 
 rooted in that Révélation of the character of God and of man*s 
 relations to Him» Nevertheless it is especially over this third 
 position that my dissatisfaction and contrary convictions grow 
 many and definite» But since Troeltsch *s fullest, maturest views, 
 on thèse difficult points, are to be found only in his SûziaU 
 lehren, it will be better to adjourn the at ail detailed considération 
 of thèse matters to my second paper. Hère I can only indicate 
 the gênerai outlines of Troeltsch *s deeply instructive admissions, 
 and of his no less interesting inconsistencies or non-perceptions* 
 Q* 
 
i64 ' THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 I note then, hère simply in passing, our thinker^s full réalisa- 
 tion that St. Paul insists strenuously upon the sacramental 
 principle, and that this prindple underlies the entire scheme 
 of the Johannine writings. Similarly, his noble perception of 
 how the sacramental and hierarchical principle and practice 
 arose, not simply from motives of domination, or from an (how- 
 ever involuntary) opposition to, or limitation of, the Christian 
 spirit, but in order to retain and to perpetuate holiness within 
 and by Christianity. Again how Troeltsch finds even the most 
 théocratie Papal claims, from Hildebrand to Cardinal Torque- 
 mada, to spring substantially from similar motives and needs, 
 and how he finds hère ail ** old Catholic '' limitations both unjust 
 as history and inadéquate as to practice. 
 
 But I also perceive how strangely Troeltsch overlooks the 
 attitude of the historic Jésus to *' brother body/' and to physical 
 symbols and contacts, as occasions and vehicles of spiritual 
 life ; and how greatly he shrinks from any élément of opus 
 operatum in thèse things, whilst having to admit its unlimited 
 sway in the gift and coming of the Kingdom as preached by 
 that same Jésus. Also, how curiously Troeltsch, whilst stumbling 
 at St. PauFs Christocentrism and Sacramentalism, passes over 
 ail but completely the spécial, acute intensification of ail the 
 Original Sin conceptions by this same St. Paul, and the fact that 
 Catholicism, largely from the first, later on more plainly in St. 
 Thomas, and most clearly at Trent, as against Luther and Calvin, 
 did not hère folio w the great Apostle's véhémences. Hence 
 Troeltsch too much involves ail traditional ecclesiastical Christi- 
 anity in thèse véhémences, whereas they are specially character- 
 istic, not of Catholicism, but of orthodox Protestantism. Again 
 I perceive how insufficiently he recognises the noble fullness of 
 insight offered to us ail by St. Thomas 's assignation of the first 
 place to the distinction between Nature and Supemature, 
 in lieu of that between Fallen Nature and Rédemption ; and 
 the same large mind's insistence that, though mère Nature, 
 however clean, could not reach Supernature, yet such mère 
 Nature is only what might hâve existed, — since, in fact. Nature 
 always was, and still is, variously touched and penetrated by the 
 prevenient supernatural God y — ^it has His sait in its mouth, and 
 hence thirsts after Him. I perceive, once more, that the psycho- 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 165 
 
 logy and epistemology of such a ** no sacraments ** position will 
 not work — ^they hâve sprung from extrinsic considérations» 
 I perceive also that, if we insist, as strongly as does Troeltsch, 
 upon the strict necessity for religion, at least amongst mankind 
 at large, of history, worship, cultus of Christ, — ^if we thus lay a 
 strong emphasis upon the prépondérance, in the Christian 
 Ethos, of the Prevenience, the Givenness of God, Christ, Grâce, 
 — ^we accept the Church, and we cannot well reject Sacraments 
 as such. And ail this, finally, leads me to admit the dangers 
 (human nature being what it is in both dispensers and récipients) 
 actually connected with any sacramental System ; and the need 
 of careful discriminations, checks and compléments within a 
 large récognition of history and of facts, and of a rich, inclusive 
 organism of life : ail this, indeed, follows, but not the rejection 
 of sacraments as such, Even hère, however, Troeltsch still aids 
 us powerfully by his virile pénétration of the gênerai position 
 and by the costly sensé of reaHty so characteristic of his sensitively 
 religious souL 
 
 4, The final question asks how the action which springs from 
 the objective religious end of Christianity stands to the action 
 which proceeds from the this-world ends; and espedally how 
 a unitary, harmonious Ethos can ever possibly resuit from ail 
 this variety and clash ^ Hère, and hère especially, do we find 
 Troeltsch great and deep in his fundamental intuitions and 
 ad vice, 
 
 He first replies then : ** The problem lies in the fact that the 
 objective ends are characterised by spécial contents, and hence 
 that we hâve hère a question of Objective Morals, and one that 
 is simply insoluble from the standpoint of Subjective Ethics, 
 The principle of autonomy gives us no aid whatsoever to the 
 solution, nor does the patriarchal category of vocation bring us 
 a single step forward, We hâve hère to do with a relation between 
 objective ends, which, as so many objective ends, require to be 
 thought by us together, and to be brought to the greatest possible 
 unity. And the difficulty then lies in that the this-world ends 
 are moral ends possessing the strict character of ethical values, 
 are ends in themselves and necessary for their own sakes, even 
 up to the sacrifice of our natural happiness ; but that they lie in 
 the world and adhère to historical formations which, proceeding 
 
i66 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 from man^s physical and psychical nature^ dominate his 
 earthly horizon» Contrasted with thèse this-world ends, the 
 other-world end signifies an entirely différent orientation, and 
 a jealous tension towards the compétition of the worldly ends/' 
 Hence grave complications and strains, and even acute conflicts, 
 hâve accompanied the attempts at some working compromise 
 and harmonising theory, from the first moment that Christian 
 Ethics began to organise themselves in an enduring world» And 
 as to the modem ethical culture, ** its nature consists in main- 
 taining, alongside of the religious end, the this-world ends, and 
 in recognising also thèse latter ends as ends in themselves. 
 Indeed, just in this combination consist the richness, the breadth 
 and the freedom, but also the painful interior tensions and the 
 difficult problems, of this civilisation. The Christian Ethic 
 hère finds Politics, Economies, Technology, Science, Art, 
 >Esthetics, in full operative existence as so many independent 
 ends, each possessed of its own logic and going its own way, 
 and leaving to that Ethic at most the possibility of coming to an 
 understanding and of a régulation, but not of a reconstruction 
 proceeding independently from itself ** {Le* pp. 654, 655). 
 
 And next Troeltsch insists that this costly récognition will 
 not arise, or at least will not persist, within us, except we possess 
 the insight that ** morality is, for us men, at the first, nothing 
 unitary but something manifold and with many fissures ; man 
 grows up with a plurality of moral ends, the unification of which 
 is his problem and not his starting-point. This multiplicity can 
 be further determined as the contrast between two pôles, both 
 embedded within man*s nature, from which proceed the two 
 chief types of ends, the religious and the this-worldly. It is the 
 polarity of religious and of humane morality, neither of which 
 can be missed without moral damage, yet which, ail the same, 
 refuse to be brought to a common formula. Upon this polarity 
 reposes the richness of our life, and also its difficulty ; but from 
 it also there ever arises anew the ardent endeavour to find some 
 unification *' (pp. 657, 658). 
 
 And a further point is hère clear to Troeltsch : ** This unifica- 
 tion will always hâve to be effected from the side of the ethico- 
 religious idea. True, there exists a morality which éliminâtes 
 the religious end, and bases itself upon this-world ends alone ; 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 167 
 
 which, in lieu of real religion, is content with a mère gênerai 
 belief in a world-order that, somehow, régulâtes the spiritual 
 ends of nature ♦ But thus — ^as we can trace in Goethe, in Sodalism, 
 in the Spinodst Ethic — the compétition between the various 
 ends is more than ever left open, and this, without aim or 
 standard ♦ And especially do such non-religious ends and strivings 
 fail, as expérience shows, to satisfy the deepest requirements 
 of man/' 
 
 ** Thèse this-world ends indeed présent themselves as ends in 
 themselves, but they do not contain the Ultimate which alone 
 satisfies our hunger after a last, unitary, all-embracing objective 
 value» Hence, when taken as though ultimate, thèse non- 
 religious ends either make men superficial, thus checking their 
 moral striving ; or restless, in a never ceasing search after higher 
 ends/' Niet^che, Anatole France are hère examples» (pp» 658, 
 659O ** The religious end, on the contrary, contains what is lack- 
 ing in the this-world ends ; for it springs from the soul's relation 
 to the Etemal and Infinité, from what alone contains the final 
 meaning of ail things, from the sphère of the Unconditional, the 
 Absolute, the Simple, — ^in its highest Christian form, from the 
 soul's self-dedication to a holy living God, Who, whilst contain- 
 ing within Himself the source and meaning of ail spiritual- 
 personal life, proposes to this life, as its highest task, the fuU 
 élaboration and élévation of its personality to a communion with 
 His will ** (le. pp. 658, 659)» 
 
 And Troeltsch points to history as showing a double current 
 and influence at work between the two kinds of ends» ** Only 
 where the this-world ends had already proved their insufficiency 
 — ^as in Palestine and in the ancient Graeco-Roman world generally 
 — hâve the Christian Ethics exercised their fullest appeaL And, 
 conversely, Christianity has fiUed the this-world ends with a 
 far mightier, deeper life than they ever possessed before, and 
 has, nevertheless, made any return to the old pagan self-limita- 
 tion of the soûl to thèse ends and to nature an impossibility 
 or an affectation for us ** (pp» 660-661)» 
 
 Once more, Troeltsch finds that ** the synthesis we are hère 
 seeking will hâve to be, not a doctrine with absolutely fixed 
 lines, but a practical distribution of the prédominance, hère of 
 the one, there of the other end, according to the individual and 
 
i68 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 natural capacities of the several soûls, which cannot, by any 
 ethical training, be brought to a complète equality» Thus 
 there will be groups : some will more exclusively dévote them- 
 selves to the religions end — in the clérical calling, in missionary 
 work, in nursing the sick, in a contemplative renunciation of 
 the world ; others will, according to their several gifts, inclina- 
 tions, circumstances, dévote themselves more especially to the 
 humane ends — ^the State, Law, Economies, Science, Art — 
 where the service of thèse causes even demands the subordina- 
 tion of the worker's personal Christianity to the necessities of 
 his spécial field of work» The influences across and back will 
 equalise, for the whole, the one-sidedness of the parts, and will 
 keep each group under the influence of the others/' The several 
 âges, also, of the same soûl will similarly, upon the whole, con- 
 stitute stages of growth moving from a proponderance of the 
 this-world ends to a prépondérance of the that-world end and 
 value, **From first to last, indeed, the final end should be 
 placed and be kept before the soûl ; yet a certain liberty and 
 range should be left for both ends and forms, so that con- 
 tinually, and with as great ease as possible, there may resuit 
 the deepening of the humane ends by Christian Ethics, and 
 the humanising of the Christian end — so that life, within the 
 humane ends, may, simultaneously, be a service of God ; and 
 that the service of God may, simultaneously, transfigure the 
 world ** {Le* pp, 664, 655), 
 
 Troeltsch fully realises that ail this ** approximates to that 
 Catholic doctrine which, at the zénith of mediaeval thinking, 
 disposed Nature and Supernature as a succession of steps in 
 the becoming of the personality, and conceived finite man to 
 mount from the first to the second ; and which, moreover, 
 distributed a prédominance of this-world morality and a pré- 
 dominance of superworldly morality amongst différent persons, 
 according to their several dispositions and gifts/' He even finds, 
 precisely because of this, in Catholic Ethics ** a mobility and 
 capacity for adaptation and for various shadings which Pro- 
 testant Ethics, with their equalisation of the moral demand, and 
 their individualisation of it in the civil vocation alone, hâve not 
 possessed/* And he shows how ** where Protestantism outgrew 
 this bourgeois narrowness, and coalesced with the New Humanism, 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 169 
 
 its genuine ethical catégories became lost, and the new ones had 
 no room for the ** profoundly necessary ** tension between God 
 and the world, as we can trace in Herder, Schleiermacher and 
 Goethe ** (pp, 667, 668), 
 
 And finally Troeltsch insists that ** this entire dualism lies 
 deeply embedded in the metaphysical constitution of man ; 
 the contrast apparent within his motives is but one of the effects 
 of his gênerai double position : he fronts both the Finite-Sensible 
 and the Infinite-Supersensible. And this dualism can be sur- 
 mounted at ail only within the becoming of history and within 
 the becoming of the individuaL True, even after man*s com- 
 plète self-dedication, hère on earth, to the final, the religious 
 end, he will still, in his Hfe and motives, hâve to expérience the 
 doubleness of his motivation. But since this doubleness has a 
 metaphysical reason, it can only find a metaphysical resolution ; 
 and hence the final solution appears hère as a life after death '" 
 (Le. pp. 665, 666). 
 
 In my second paper I hope to show Troeltsch again fuller, 
 deeper, richer than he can hère be found. And meanwhile I 
 would conclude with a little simile that brings out, perhaps, 
 the point to which I think both he and I would wish this short 
 study to converge. 
 
 Is there a more nobly characteristic modem building, so 
 ethereal-looking and yet so strong, than is the Paris Eiffel Tower $* 
 Whence its strength î* Storms hâve come and gone, hurricanes 
 may beat against it ; it has stood and will stand. It breaks not, 
 because it bends ; it sinks not, because it sways. It yields as 
 much as five feet in any direction, this grand steel whip, elastic 
 in its live resilience. So also does our frail-seeming soul-life 
 persist, midst storms and hurricanes of temptation and of trial, 
 by means of its range from pôle to pôle, of the sensible, spatial- 
 temporal (almost to philistinism), and of the spiritual, super- 
 spatial and super-temporal, Eternal (almost to fanaticism). Thus 
 rich and not rigid it can, in its little measure, participate in the 
 utterly harmonious, utterly peaceful power and fruitfulness of 
 the Unmoving Energy, the Ever Living God. 
 
170 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 II 
 
 Reality of mind, sensé of what really is and what really matters, 
 insight into the actual, driving forces of this our difficult, rich 
 human life and task and end : how rare are thèse entrancingly 
 noble things ! Perhaps my previous study has already given the 
 reader some expérience of such reality of mind, as it works, 
 massively alive, in the Fundamental Problems of Ethics of Pro- 
 f essor Troeltsch» Kere I now want to penetrate into further, 
 even more manysided, instances of such awakeness, whilst 
 reserving for the penultimate division of this last paper the 
 considération of a certain abstractive, attenuating temper and 
 current that, perhaps everywhere, more or less misfits and 
 hampers this great soul's noble religious realism» 
 
 Only one point shall first be taken from the monograph What 
 is meant hy ** the Essence of Christianity ** i (1903 ; Gesammelte 
 Schriften, voL IL, 1913)» And then five groups of questions 
 shall be studied, partly in an order of my own, from the monu- 
 mental work The Social Doctrines of the Christian Churches and 
 Groups, 1912* 
 
 Among the six characters which Troeltsch finds to be involved 
 in the idea and method of ** the Essence of Christianity/* that 
 of ** ' the Essence * as Critidsm ** is particularly important when 
 brought to the folio wing application ♦ 
 
 ** As soon as we go beyond history of the purely empirical, 
 inductive kind, and venture upon such high matters as the déter- 
 mination of the Essence, we cannot continue to cling to the 
 ethically indiffèrent point of view of the mère understanding 
 of the interconnections, — ^to the mère measuring of so many 
 happenings by an immanental impulse of development. We 
 hâve, at this point, to recognise that ail the values which pro- 
 ceed within the human spirit from a feeling of their necessity, 
 are everywhere more or less opposed by négation — ^by an isolating, 
 disintegrating self-seeking, by crude, animal instincts, by a sloth 
 and luxuriousness which refuse to be dislodged, by a dullness 
 of appréhension which drags down ail things to pettiness, or, 
 at the least, by a commonness busy with turning them into 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 171 
 
 coarse objects of sensé* Whosoever combines, with the conception 
 of the Essence in history, the conviction of a value and an end 
 springing from an idéal necessitation, cannot fail simultaneously 
 to admit the operative existence of radical eviL At ail e vents, 
 we cannot ignore this evil when we come face to face with the 
 great Systems of ethico-religious life» Monism, whether of the 
 more materialist or of the more spiritualist kind, is indeed 
 suffidently questionable also in other provinces of thought ; 
 but on the territory of history it is an incredible delusion, for 
 it contradicts every imprejudiced impression of the actual work- 
 ing of life, and is directly refuted by that bit of history which 
 each one of us knows well, since each one of us lives it — our 
 own Personal expérience/* 
 
 '* The détermination of the Essence thus involves a critidsm 
 of ail that has proceeded from the dullness and vulgarity, the 
 passion and shortsightedness, the stupidity and malice, the 
 indifférence and worldly cunning of mankind : theology cannot 
 évade the reproach of a moralising conception of history* Much 
 as such a conception should be forbidden to touch the détails, 
 where a causal explanation of the various connections is in place 
 — ^for the whole, and at the end, this ethical conception is simply 
 unavoidable* Indeed, a gênerai insight into the Essence is sought, 
 after ail, only in order to secure a sound judgment as to what is 
 essential, whence we can, not only ignore what is unessential, 
 but also condemn what is contrary to the Essence*** 
 
 ** And from hence light accrues to a conception which, in 
 many ways, confuses the détermination of the Essence — ^the 
 conception of * the necessary** Necessity, in the psychological- 
 causal sensé, is one thing ; necessity, in the teleological and 
 ethical sensé, is another thing* Psychological-causal necessity 
 concerns empirical inductive history ; and such * necessity * 
 never means more than the linking of an event to certain forces 
 which lay at the back of it* The various possibilities with which 
 man, whilst he is in action, reckons as with so many undeniably 
 extant alternatives, hâve no place in such empirical inductive 
 history, where the effect which actually occurred is attributed 
 to the motives which hâve been proved the strongest precisely 
 by the resuit which they hâve hère produced* Thus the psycho- 
 logical-causal * necessity * reached by this explanation is not 
 
172 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 co-extensive with the teleological-ethical necessity which invites 
 the décision of the man who délibérâtes, for his coming action, 
 as to what is the conséquence of an idea demanded by this idea 
 itself» Only the latter kind of necessity is in debate when we 
 speak of the * necessary * development and élaboration of a 
 principle ; and, for the estimation of necessity in this sensé, 
 only an interior conviction and personal décision can furnish 
 the test and solution "' (Ges* Schr* IL pp» 409-411)* 
 
 I take this distinction to be as important as its application 
 is difficulté But I cannot help finding hère two excesses in 
 Troeltsch*s own position* 
 
 When that virile thinker ** Idéal ** Ward reached his last 
 earthly years, he came to see clearly, I remember, how, in his 
 feeling and his writing, he had been too prone to ** unspeakably,** 
 ** incredibly,** and the like* So hère, as often with Ward when 
 pressed back to his last entrenchments, Troeltsch, after his quiet, 
 complex yet converging arguments and thinkings, appears 
 finally reduced to a véhément judgment of an apparently quite 
 subjective and inherently problematic kind* He thus, I think, 
 does his actual convictions some real injustice, since I take him 
 to hold that if such judgments inevitably contain an élément 
 of risk and daring, yet also the previous training, expérience, 
 insight are ail necessary to it ; and, again, that the risk and 
 danger are, in reality, necessary hère, only because, through 
 our human sensible-rational, temporal-spatial conditions of 
 appréhension and our many passions and self-involvements, 
 we never can hic et nunc hold ail our achieved, still less ail our 
 possible expérience and évidence fully présent and luminous 
 before us, at least not in far-reaching and deep-going questions 
 such as thèse* We hâve thus, hère and now (by an act rendered 
 possible and rational through ail we possess and know and are), 
 to exceed, and thus to complète, the évidence hère and now 
 before us — ^an évidence which, in itself and in the long run, is 
 sufficient for thèse our convictions and décisions* 
 
 And, again, Troeltsch finds that such a critical judgment con- 
 cerning the Essence of Christianity as is hère propounded by 
 himself, is possible only to Protestantism, with its strong appeal 
 to the individual judgment and sincerity* I believe this would 
 be true, were the judgment a ** purely personal '' affair, such as 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 173 
 
 some of Troeltsch's words and antithèses suggest it to be» But 
 if, intrinsically and at its best, we hâve hère something ** Per- 
 sonal ** rather in the sensé of the deepest and most fruitful 
 synthèses or hypothèses of Science, then Catholicism, at its 
 deepest, not only is capable of such judgments, but it is, in some 
 important respects, better furnished for the — ^in any case very 
 difficult — ^task than is Protestantism» For thèse scientific synthèses 
 or hypothèses no less require ail the great facts that went before 
 them, and a wide expérience and generous appréciation of thèse 
 facts, than they need intuition and courage fuUy to penetrate, 
 indeed to exceed thèse facts, and thus to see more in them than 
 ever before* And the Church-type at its best (Le. Catholicism 
 at its best) possesses a longer, wider and more many-sided 
 expérience of the religious facts and capabilities than does any 
 other type or group* Only if ail seeking after, and adhering to, 
 methods and standards spécial to the several subject-matters 
 to be studied, experienced, penetrated and awakened by the 
 human mind and soûl ; only if ail such dispositions, as is some- 
 times implied, were to be tabooed as ** subjectivism *' or ** private 
 judgment ** : only then would Catholicism be really debarred 
 from the judgments concerning the ** Essence ** as (I submit) 
 thèse judgments actually hâve to be. But then we are still a long 
 way from such a Catholicism, which would, in very truth, become 
 an Idol in a désert, — a Church thus vigorous in the destruction 
 of its own supports, stimulations and subject-matters* 
 
 It is not easy to furnish a short yet useful account and criticism 
 of Troeltsch*s Soziallehren, with its nearly thousand pages, 
 its bewildering variety of topics, and the range and delicacy 
 of compétence it so strikingly reveals* And ail this is hère sub- 
 servient to certain few, closely interdependent, central con- 
 victions and conclusions* And again thèse self-commitments 
 are reached only across surging seas of the strongest feeling and 
 closest net-works of objective complication* And then, too, as 
 I must attempt to show in my penultimate section, there is a 
 relie, a shadow or écho, of Subjectivism frequently, perhaps 
 always, haunting the outskirts of Troeltsch's convictions, or 
 rather of their formulations, which — I believe more than any- 
 thing else — prevents his religious reader from settling down with 
 
174 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 perfect peace and buoyancy under the influence and guidance 
 of this large strong mind and souL 
 
 I must regretfully ignore the instructive autobiographie 
 Préface, and the dry but important Introduction, with its fruitful 
 distinction between the sociological scheme and action developed 
 by the three types of religion (Church, Sect, Mysticism) within 
 their own organisations, and the social idea and attitude developed 
 by them with respect to the non-religious organisations of life, 
 ^d even from the three gigantic Chapters composing the body 
 of the work I can but take certain culminating points of the last 
 two chapters. The wonderfully close-knit and rich Conclusion 
 shall furnish my final translations and suggestions. 
 
 The very great ** Mediaeval Catholicism ** Chapter is, in the 
 first instance, busy with the fuU expression of the Church-type ; 
 let us hère fix upon three passages. 
 
 I. As to the Problem, Troeltsch describes how ** the ancient 
 Church indeed organised itself with a full, firm sociological 
 articulation ; but its social attitude — ^its attitude towards the 
 State and Society — ^was a curiously mixed thing — ^partly a ré- 
 cognition, as of entities sheltered by the Natural Law ; partly 
 a théocratie subjugation and utilisation; partly a propping of 
 the powers of the State, when thèse had become insufficient for 
 their purpose ; partly a rejection of the State and Society in 
 gênerai, expressed in the theory of the sinfulness of everything 
 founded by the relative Natural Law, and in the practice of the 
 renunciation of the world. A Christian civilisation possessed of 
 an interior unity existed neither in fact nor in prindple ; the 
 whole idea was foreign to antiquity. And the décisive différence 
 between the Middle Ages and Antiquity consists precisely in 
 the possession, by the Middle Ages, of such an idéal — ^in their 
 practice and still more in theory; indeed even in officiai 
 Catholicism of our own day this idéal, with some adaptations^ 
 to the modem world, is still active in ail its social doctrines *\ 
 (pp. 178, 179). 
 
 And Troeltsch cogently insists : 
 
 *' The significance of the question of how at ail, and in what 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 175 
 
 way, this idéal and solution could arise in the Middle Ages/' and 
 only then, ** fails to be duly estimated by ail those who ascribe 
 already to the Ancient Church, or even to Christianity generally, 
 such a striving after a unified Christian civilisation/' Yet, in 
 reality ** for Stoicism and Platonism, and still more for Christi- 
 anity, a doctrine of society and civilisation based upon the values 
 of the free personality in its union with God and of the universal 
 communion of mankind, offered the greatest difficulties ; and 
 Christianity, in particular, produced indeed a mighty, purely 
 religious organisation, and ordered within it the conditions of 
 its members* lives in tolerable conformity with its own principles, 
 but/' during its first eight centuries, the Church in this its 
 organisation ** was hostile to the world at large — ^it failed to dis- 
 cover any bond and link between itself and the complexes outside» 
 The Middle Ages, however, lived to see the development of the 
 Church to a social entity inclusive both of the sociological circle 
 of religion itself, and of the politico-social formations also, and 
 which thus realised, in its own way, what had haunted Plato, 
 in his Republic as the true end of a single state — ^the rule of 
 the wise and of the friends of God over an organic, many- 
 levelled social entity, and what the Stoic Cosmopolis had sought 
 — ^the share of ail men in an ethical universal kingdom " 
 (pp. 181, 182). 
 
 2. As to the contrast between the Ancient Christian and the 
 Mediaeval Christian positions concerning man's nature, place, 
 destination Troeltsch is deeply instructive» 
 
 ** The décisive point hère is the conception, peculiar to the 
 Middle Ages, of what is Christian as supernatural, or rather 
 the full élaboration of the conséquences involved in the idea 
 of the SupernaturaL The Supernatural hère is not only présent 
 in the miracle of the God-Man, of the Church and of the Sacra- 
 ments, — ^in the great " complex ** miracle of man's rédemption 
 from out of the world corrupted by original sin ; it has no longer, 
 as in the Ancient Church, an essentially apologetic significance» 
 But the Supernatural now unfolds itself as an autonomous 
 logical, religious and ethical principle» The créature, even the 
 perfect créature, is only natural — ^possessed of natural laws 
 and ends ; God alone is supernaturaL And accordingly, the 
 essence of Christian Supernaturalism consists in its élévation 
 
176 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 of the créature, above this créature *s co-natural limitations, to 
 God's own supernature, to participation in His nature» The 
 médiation necessary hère lies thus, no longer, as in the Ancient 
 Church, between two kinds (respectively perfect and relative) 
 of the one sole Natural Law, but between Natural Law in gênerai 
 and Supernatiure generally ; and especially ail Ethics and Social 
 Philosophy now rest, in the last resort, upon the médiation 
 between Nature (perfect or imperfect) and Supemature» The 
 Decalogue, in reality, is not yet the Christian Ethic; and the 
 Natural Law, identical with the Decalogue, stands, to the 
 specifically Christian Ethic, to the Nova Lex, as near and as far 
 as precisely does the Decalogue ♦ * Biblical * now means revealed, 
 but not necessarily Christian ; for the Bible represents, for 
 Aquinas, a process of development moving through universal 
 history and possessed of varying stages, The Decalogue persists 
 in the législation of Christ, but as a stage preliminary to the 
 Christian Ethic and as an instruction in the exterior application 
 of the new motives springing from this Ethic, The formula, 
 on the other hand, for the specifically Christian Moral Law 
 is the Augustinian formula of the love of God, as the highest 
 and absolute, the entirely simple, moral end,* — ^an end which 
 contains the demand of the love of God in the stricter sensé 
 (through self-sanctification, self-denial and contemplation), and 
 the demand of the love of our neighbour (through the active 
 relating of ail to God, the active inter-connecting of ail in God, 
 and the most intimate mutual self-sacrifice for God), We hâve 
 thus a self-love in God, which loves not the natural self, but the 
 self united to God ; and a brotherly love in God, which loves 
 not the natural fellow-man, but the brother in God. This Ethic 
 (a mystical interprétation of the Evangelical preaching) forms 
 an unmistakably strong contrast to the this-world Ethic of the 
 Natural Law, Aristotle, the Decalogue and natural prosperity; 
 but this cannot fail to be the case, given the entire fundamental 
 character of the Christian Ethic, This same contrast indeed 
 appeared also, clearly enough, in the life of mediaeval society, 
 — ^in the relations between Church and State, between laymen, 
 monks and priests ; and was still at work within the ethical 
 demands made upon even the simplest layman ** (pp, 263-265), 
 Has Aquinas, on the ample questions hère discussed, been 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 177 
 
 anywhere penetrated as delicately and deeply, as generously 
 and justly, as is done hère, in thèse noble sections of a truly 
 great book i 
 
 And yet the culmination of interest and power is reached by 
 the Sozialîehren, where also the Sect-type, and later on where 
 the third and last type, the Mystical, appear at their fuUest 
 on the stage of history, and where, with their contrasting 
 strengths and defects and their tough vitality and far-reaching 
 opération and use, they bring into full relief the abiding truth 
 and meaning of the Church-type, together with the character 
 and range of their own types» Let us attend first to the Sect- 
 type. 
 
 !♦ The main historical origins and stages of this Sect-type 
 appear to be as folio ws« Paulinism already prepared the orienta- 
 tion of Christianity towards conservatism ; yet already alongside 
 of Paulinism there existed a radicalism which was indiffèrent, 
 or even hostile, to the world — so in the communism of love of 
 the primitive community, and in the chiliastic-apocalyptic rejec- 
 tion of the world ♦ Similarly, alongside of the social development 
 of the ancient Church which continued the Pauline conservatism, 
 the radicalism persisted in the Montanist and Donatist sects 
 and (at least as regards extension and importance) especially in 
 Monasticism — ^the latter influencing various Fathers of the Fourth 
 Century in their teaching as to an original communism and 
 equality (p, 359). The first clear émergence of the problem is in 
 A^D. 393-420, in the conflict between Su Augustine*s sacramental 
 hierarchical conception of the Church and the Donatists ; but 
 its décisive appearance foUows only upon the completion of the 
 Church concept in the reform of Pope Gregory VIL, A.D, 1073- 
 1085, although, hère especially, the antagonistic popular excite- 
 ment was largely pushed into the formation of separate sects 
 by the intensely rigorous Church authorities themselves — so 
 especially with the Waldensians (pp* 367 ; 388, 389 ; 403 n*)» 
 
 2» The ail-important point for Troeltsch hère is that '* both 
 the Church-type and the Sect-type lie in the conséquence of 
 the Gospel, and only conjointly do they exhaust the range of 
 the sodological effects and the social conséquences of this same 
 
178 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 Gospel. The Church, assuredly, is not a simple défection from 
 the Gospel, however much it may (at first sight) appear to be so 
 in the contrast between its hierarchy and sacraments and the 
 preaching of Jésus. For where the Gospel is, in the first instance, 
 apprehended as a Gift, a Grâce, where, in the picture which 
 faith forms of Christ, it appears as a Divine Institution, where 
 the interior liberty of the spirit (distinct from ail human making 
 and organising) is experienced as the meaning of Jésus, and 
 where His grand indifférence to worldly things is correspondingly 
 apprehended as an interior independence from, together with 
 an exterior use of, thèse things : there men will consider the 
 establishment of the Church as the normal continuation and 
 transformation of the Gospel. At the same time, the Church, 
 by its emphatic universalism, préserves the fundamental impulse 
 of the evangelical preaching ; but that preaching had com- 
 mitted ail detailed questions, concerning the possibility and 
 exécution of the mission, to the wonderful coming of the King- 
 dom, whereas a Church, working in the duration of the world, 
 had to organise and order, and so to make its compromises.** 
 
 ** Nevertheless, the Sect also is not simply a défection — a, 
 mère lopsided, crippling misgrowth of the éléments of religious 
 life already exhaustively furnished by the Church ; but it is 
 an immédiate continuation of certain evangelical convictions. 
 The radical individualism and love reaches its fuU récognition 
 only in the Sect ; only the Sect instinctively construes the entire 
 community from thence, and attains, precisely through this 
 radicalism of love, an immense firmness in its subjective- 
 interior bond, in lieu of any merely external appurtenance to an 
 institution. Thus the Sect clings to the original radicalism of 
 the idéal and to its sharp contrast to the world, and abides by 
 the demand of personal performance as persistently funda- 
 mental. This performance the Sect also can apprehend as the 
 work of grâce ; but in this grâce, it emphasises the subjective 
 réalisation and effect, not the objective assuredness and présence.*' 
 
 ** The preaching of Jésus, which looks forward to the coming 
 end and the Kingdom, which collects and unités determined 
 confessors, and which bids the brusquest adieu to the world 
 and its children, goes in the direction of the Sect. The faith of 
 the apostles, which looks back upon the miracle of rédemption 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 179 
 
 and of the person of Christ and which lives in the powers of its 
 heavenly master : this faith which leans upon something achieved 
 and objective, in which it unités its faithful and allows them 
 to rest, proceeds in the direction of the Church. Thus the New 
 Testament aids in the formation both of the Church and of the 
 Sect ; it has done so from the first* But the Church had the 
 start and the great mission into the wide world* And only when 
 the objectification of the Church had ** under Hildebrand '* been 
 severely completed, did the tendency which forms Sects react 
 once again, and indeed in a union and persistence greater than 
 ever before, against this excessive objectification ** (pp, 375-377)* 
 
 3^ Troeltsch delicately apprehends the wide-ranging effects 
 of this Sect-reaction. 
 
 ** The institution by the Sect of the absolute law of God and 
 Nature as the sole authority, and the conséquent removal of 
 the entire conception of steps and development, involve the most 
 far-reaching conséquences, — conséquences not perceived by the 
 (mostly very simple) theology of the Sects, Hère the intention 
 and law of God are expressed, without a shadow of ambiguity, 
 in the Bible and in the voice of pure Nature alone ; there is no 
 need for any complicated doctrine as to this law, The moral 
 demand proceeds to ail men alike ; there is no need of a gradua- 
 tion of perfection, according to various vocations. Création 
 does not descend through various stages down to materiality, 
 nor does création thence mount again through steps, as though 
 a great work of art, from Nature up to Grâce and Supernature, 
 But création places mankind immediately before the task of the 
 réalisation of its idéal, and this idéal is hère without the character 
 of a mystical supernature, of the élévation of man's essence above 
 itself, , ♦ , And since such mystical béatitude, as the crown of 
 the System of stages, falls ail but entirely away for the Sects, the 
 conception of Law ** (which, in the Catholic System, was but one 
 of the two déterminations for God, alongside with that of Sub- 
 stance) '' now takes up an all-dominating position, God*s being 
 and will are His natural and revealed Law ; the Bible is the Law- 
 book of révélation, identical with the Law-book of Nature, Thus, 
 in lieu of the institution of Grâce and Rédemption, the con- 
 ception of Law becomes the centre of the Sect theology ** 
 (pp, 380-382), 
 
i8o THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 4» To thèse deeply stimulating analyses and positions I would 
 attach three criticisms of my own, 
 
 My first regret has been already expressed in connection with 
 Troeltsch*s earlier and shorter Grundprohlemef but recurs again 
 hère with respect to his later, very long work, and concerns his 
 non-perception that sensible contacts, vehicles and symbols, 
 that the principle and rudiments of sacraments, are already 
 présent in the spirit and practice of Jésus» I will return to this 
 objection presently in conjunction with my third dissatisfaction, 
 a dissatisfaction so fundamental and gênerai as to be better 
 reserved for discussion till just before the end and my last 
 expression of deep gratitude for ail that Troeltsch has brought us» 
 
 But my second objection is specially in place just hère» I 
 '^find, then, that even the very generous measure in which 
 Troeltsch recognises already within the preaching of Jésus con- 
 ceptions and impulses making for the Church, does not, in the 
 greater part of his book, reach to the fuUness of the facts» For 
 it is now thoroughly acknowledged by ail the best historical 
 workers that the direct central subject of Jésus *s preaching was 
 the Kingdom, and its Proximate Coming» This Kingdom was 
 presented in this preaching emphatically as a pure gift, a sheer 
 opm operatum of God ; men can prépare themselves for it, 
 and can détermine the character of its effect upon themselves ; 
 but they do not produce it, they do not constitute it, — ^And 
 again, neither Jésus Himself nor His Apostles are, it is true, of 
 priestly families, and there is no marked formai ordination of 
 them ; yet it is Jésus, in His humanity, who calls and trains 
 and sends out thèse spécial Twelve, — ^not any and everyone is 
 treated as free to put himself forward to preach on the strength 
 of some purely interior calL In thèse two fundamental points, 
 then, the teaching and practice of Jésus demonstrably initiate 
 the objectivity of the Church and the spécial calls to the clérical 
 office ; we hâve hère sheer historical facts and not interpréta- 
 tions (however legitimate and part-constitutive of religion) such 
 as, for the most part at least, TroeltschJ^takes thèse points to be» 
 Thus the chief characteristic of the central doctrine of Jésus 
 emphasises Givenness, Object, Church, not Activity, Subject, 
 Sect ; and the prominent feature of the organising action of 
 Jésus is certainly not simply an acceptance of soûls ail equally 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY i8i 
 
 and secretly inspired, but a calling of some few men, by Uim, 
 the Man, God, from out of the crowd of mankind^ even from out 
 of the crowd of elementary or secret believers» 
 
 3 
 
 Troeltsch has most effectively located the detailed studies 
 of his three types of Christianity : that of the Church, in the 
 High Middle Ages ; that of the Sect, in the first instance im- 
 mediately after the High Middle Ages, hence still in the Middle 
 Ages ; and that of Mysticism, after the Protestant Churches and 
 Sects^ For he thus examines each type at the time of its own 
 fuUest articulation and strongest influence, and of its most vivid 
 contrast with the other types ♦ We must now consider the part 
 which, in this book thus late, for the first time studies fully 
 the Mystical typey — ^the great pages 850-877. 
 
 !♦ ** Mysticism, in the widest sensé, is nothing but the in- 
 sistence upon immediacy, interiority, présence of religious 
 expérience. It présupposes the objectification of religious life 
 in Rites, Myths or Dogmas, and is either a reaction against such 
 objectifications which it attempts to put back into the living 
 process, or a supplementation of the traditional cuits by a Per- 
 sonal and vital excitation. Mysticism is thus always something 
 secondary and intentionally reflective, although this deliberately 
 produced condition is conjoined with a quite contrary immediacy 
 of the feeling itself. It thus always contains some degree of 
 Paradox, an antithesis to the masses and their average. Hence 
 the primitive religious act and life, for which the event and its 
 expression are simply identical, is never mystical. But the liveli- 
 ness of the religious sensé, when face to face with objectified 
 religion, easily and often assumes mystical characteristics, — 
 enthusiastic or even orgiastic exaltation, vision or hallucination, 
 religious subjectivism and spiritualism, concentration upon the 
 purely interior and only emotionally apprehensible. Such 
 visions, indeed, are almost always only expansions and inter- 
 prétations of the common faith, as with the pneumatic gifts of 
 the early Christians and with the countless visions and prophecies 
 of mediaeval recluses and saints. But this mystical sensé can 
 also create a passionate realism of intercourse with the Godhead, 
 
i82 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 where the erotic side of human nature often plays a grcat rôle. 
 And again such immediacy of feeling loves to fly beyond the 
 sensible-finite world by a spiritualism which treats it as indiffèrent 
 or ignores it, or which by ascetical mortification moves it away 
 into the distance, Thus Mysticism is open to the incursions 
 both of a spiritualistic Pantheism and of a radical Dualism of 
 flesh and spirit, of time and eternity ; and, in connection there- 
 with, to the suggestions of an Asceticism destructive of ail things 
 finite or of a Libertinism treating them ail as indiffèrent/* 
 
 2* ** Now Mysticism, in thèse various forms, is a phenomenon 
 gênerai in ail the religious territories, and is (or was) highly 
 developed especially in India and Persia, in Greece, Asia Minor, 
 Syria, And, naturally, it did not remain foreign to the primitive 
 Christian movement, but in part sprang also from it, in part 
 was brought into it from without and eagerly appropriated 
 there/* 
 
 ** To this Mysticism belong the so-called enthusiasm of the 
 primitive Christians, a large part of the gifts of the Spirit, the 
 speaking with tongues, exorcism, the pneumatic activity. But 
 especially does also Paul himself belong to it — Paul in his 
 mystical orientation which stood in a continuous tension (not, 
 however, experienced by himself as such) with his Church 
 conviction, Paul took over the Christ-cultus of the primitive 
 community as already objectified in its outlines in worship and 
 organisation. But he gave further aliveness to this religion by 
 means of a profound and passionate mysticism, which con- 
 sequently also utilises the ancient terminology of the heathen 
 mysteries. Hère alone lay his religious originality as against 
 the primitive community, and thus only did his anti-Jewish 
 universalism become a workable, effective enterprise. Thus 
 the Lord's Supper, the centre of the new Cultus, became with 
 him a mystical union of substances, Baptism became a real 
 dying and arising with Christ. Thus Christ became for him a 
 new life-sphere of a supersensible kind, in which the believer 
 lives, feels, and thinks, and becomes a new, pneumatic créature. 
 Thus ail mère cérémonial and tradition became an élément of 
 this world, and Christ after the flesh was known no more. And 
 thus again the Israelitish history of rédemption was allegorised 
 into a drama immediately applicable to the Christian believers. 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 183 
 
 and the Christian community became the spiritual body of 
 Christ/' 
 
 ** Hère, in the primitive Christian enthusiasm and in the 
 Pauline Mysticism as to Christ, lie the inexhaustible sources 
 of a Christian Mysticism» In the Fourth Gospel this Mysticism 
 has already become self-possessed and adjusted to the historical 
 and objective ; yet hère especially it has produced or found its 
 characteristic terms— flesh, spirit ; darkness, light ; allegory, 
 letter. And thus, through the New Testament, Mysticism (of 
 the pneumatic and Pauline kind) has become a permanent power 
 which always anew awakens and articulâtes similar needs, 
 especially in periods of criticism of tradition, of religious lassitude 
 and of religious reform/' 
 
 3» ** In primitive Christianity, in the New Testament itself, 
 then, lie the germs of the Church, given with the conception 
 of Grâce and of the completed institution for the salvation of the 
 world* And in it lie the germs of the Sect, which révères its 
 Master's Sermon on the Mount as its moral Law, continues His 
 expectation of the Kingdom about to descend upon earth, and 
 collects the pure and holy into a community tarrying for Christ *s 
 return» But in it lie also the germs of a Mysticism for which 
 ail that passes is but a symbol ; ail that is sensible-earthly, 
 but a limitation ; ail cultus, but a means of substantial union ; 
 ail faith, but an immédiate transplantation into the invisible 
 life of God and Christ ** (pp* 850-852)- 
 
 4. We cannot hère foUow Troeltsch in ail his fine study of 
 ** Mysticism in the narrower, technical sensé of the word, where 
 it becomes a religious philosophy/' and where, unlike its New 
 Testament kinds, it can take up a position of deliberate inde- 
 pendence, of open déniai, or of allegorising evaporation of 
 concrète religion. Yet also this technical kind can still require 
 and serve historical, institutional religion, as in the Dominican 
 cognitive Mysticism, in the Franciscan Mysticism of the affections 
 and the will, and in the more generally philosophical Mysticism 
 of the theologians of the Ancient Church. Ail thèse mysticisms 
 more or less require Christian history, and more or less maintain 
 ethical personality. Especially is Troeltsch moved by the con- 
 ception of the indwelling of Christ : '* Thus was the cleavage 
 overcome between Past and Présent, Doctrine and Practice ; 
 
i84 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 thus did mediaeval dévotion to Christ strike the water of life 
 from out of the rock of the By2;antine dogma ** (pp» 856-858), 
 
 5» As to the Sociological peculiarities of Mysticism, where 
 (as in the various forms of Christian Spiritualism) it is more or 
 other than sheer enthusiasm, and finds its basis in the doctrine 
 of the permanent, equable divine spark in the human soûl, we 
 learn : 
 
 ** Mysticism is a radical individualism very différent from 
 that of the SecU The Sect differentiates individuals against the 
 world, by conscious contrast and ethical rigorism ; unités them 
 in a community resting upon a willed association and growing 
 under disciplinary control ; binds them to the example and 
 authority of Christ ; and intensifies the individualism precisely 
 through its inclusion within such a community and cultus* But 
 Mysticism insists upon a relation, not between man and man, 
 but of man to God ; and reduces everything historical, authorita- 
 tive, cultual to a mère stimulant, which (in strictness) it can do 
 without^ As long as such a Mysticism or Spiritualism remains 
 Christian, the Bible and the historical figure of Christ still play 
 an important rôle, yet never with a power sufficient to produce a 
 firmly-knit community» Thus we do not hère find, as we find 
 in the Sect, a community which possesses an activity and a con- 
 fession of faith of its own — a. community which is continuously 
 reconstituted from the interaction of the individual wills, but 
 we are given hère a parallelism of religious spontaneities con- 
 joined only by the divine life-ground from which they spring, 
 by the common disposition of love, and by the union în the free, 
 invisible work of the divine spirit» In so far as this Mysticism 
 is founded solely upon faith and feeling, it exceeds the in- 
 dividualism even of the most individualistic of the Sects ; yet 
 this mystical individualism is, on the other hand, much weaker 
 than is that of those Sects, because of its tendency to quiétude 
 and abandonment and to the exercise of works of love only from 
 case to case *' (pp, 864, 865)» 
 
 And as to their Social aims, ** where such Mystics form groups 
 they do not intend them, sect-like, to replace the great invisible 
 Church or to interfère with God*s own work of spreading the 
 spirit, but simply as familiar circles for the édification of soûls ♦ 
 The Mystics hâve thus not nearly as much inclination to separate 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 185 
 
 from the Church as hâve the Sects *' (p* 868)* ** Of themselves 
 thèse Mystics cultivate only the individual believer and the 
 interests of his particular soûl ; and though they simultaneously 
 believe, and sometimes strongly emphasise^ the universal com- 
 munion of spirits and of love, yet Church and religious organisa- 
 tion ** are for them ** concessions to human weakness, without 
 interior necessity and divinity/' And ** towards Politics and 
 Economies the indifférence and helplessness are complète ; 
 only sexual and family ethics are hère studied, and indeed with 
 great pénétration ** (pp* 940, 941 ; 864)* 
 
 I will take my criticisms of Troeltsch on the Mystical Type 
 in connection with the most fundamental and gênerai of my 
 dissatisfactions in the following separate section» 
 
 The translations given in thèse papers from Troeltsch hâve 
 deliberately softened or omitted one paradoxical peculiarity 
 which, like a contrary surface-current, runs along much of his 
 thinking and feeling, since, in such mère extracts, I could not 
 otherwise sufficiently render what I am confident is his funda- 
 mental vision and volition» For the same Troeltsch who so per- 
 sistently emphasises the need and the reality of certain historical 
 facts, of community, cultus, organisation, and who, still deeper 
 down, so vividly sees and describes religion as an expérience 
 and affirmation of trans-subjective, more-than-human fact and 
 reality, as metaphysical and ontological or nothing, is also 
 strangely thin, abstract, hypothetic, indeed subjectivist in 
 many of his favourite terms and connotations ♦ ** Thought,** 
 *' thoughts,** ** thinking,'* the mind's spontaneity,*' '' mental 
 créations ** ; ** the Christian legend,** ** the religious myth ** : 
 I hâve mostly translated the former terms with ** appréhension, '* 
 *' conviction,*' ** perceptions,** etc, and hâve hardly given a 
 passage containing the latter expressions* 
 
 !♦ Now Troeltsch, rightly I believe, considers Protestantism 
 in the first instance to hâve been, as a matter of fact, whether 
 rightly or wrongly, ** a réduction ** of ail religion '* to what 
 it held can alone be an object of faith, trust, disposition, — 
 wiz*, to a thought — ^the thought of God, derived from the 
 
i86 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 Apostolic présentation of Christ, as the Holy Gracious Will which 
 forgives us our sins and thus lifts us to a higher life. And 
 this thought includes, in addition, only what can render it 
 certain for the sinner, — ^the insight into God's self-revelation 
 in the Logos/* as ** the assurance afforded to us men of God's 
 sin-remitting love ** (pp, 439, 440). 
 
 And when, much later on in history, Kant appears, I believe 
 Troeltsch, with practically all^historians, is right in finding in 
 him very specially ** the philosopher of Protestantism ** — ^ Pro- 
 testantism, however, representing a much greater retreat of 
 religion upon thought and. the subject than was that of Luther» 
 
 2» Now doubtless not only Luther but Kant also intended 
 thus to find certainty concerning God within their own soûls, 
 and so to escape that lapse into doubt and self-delusion which 
 they considered to attach to ail seeking of such assurance in social 
 traditions and external proofs and practices, Yet the modem 
 idealist philosophy, as first clearly formulated (between Luther *s 
 time and the time of Kant) by Descartes in his fundamental 
 principle, was so eager to make sure of this kind of interiority 
 and sincerity, that it started, not from the concrète fact, viz», a 
 mind thinking something, and from the analysis of this ultimate 
 trinity in unity (the subject, the thinking, and the object), but 
 from that pure abstraction — ^thinking, or thought, or a thinking 
 of a thought ; and, from this unreal starting-point, this philosophy 
 strove to reach that now quite problematical thing, the object» 
 Hume had no difficulty, from such premises, in reaching 
 the purest Scepticism, And although Kant, the greatest of 
 Humées opponents, profoundly advanced Ethics and the Theory 
 of Knowledge, especially in his formulations of the problems, 
 and though his intention was throughout to ground Theism 
 upon unshakable foundations, yet his actual influence, especially 
 in the Neo-Kantian interprétation, has been, upon the whole, 
 hardly less agnostic than that of Hume himself* For take Kant, 
 not from his moral but from his epistemological side, not from 
 the two last Critiques but from the first, not in this or that of 
 his (at least three) différent théories of knowledge, but according 
 to his prédominant mood, or along the line of least résistance, 
 and you will find that hère man knows nothing really of the real 
 nature of anything, although (strangely enough) he does know, 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 187 
 
 so certainly as to be above discussion, that the reality of every- 
 thing is always utterly différent from what this thing appears 
 to be» 
 
 3» No living thinker has so much as Troeltsch insisted upon 
 the sensé of Givenness and of Otherness, as characteristic of 
 ail genuine religion ; and no one has better analysed and de- 
 scribed this evidential character of ail religion, or has more 
 clearly shown how only the acceptance of this évidence as true 
 and final brings firmness, interconnection and sufficient ration- 
 ality into our life as a whole, and depth into ail its parts» It is 
 indeed the very vividness and massiveness of this religious sensé 
 which brings the sympathising reader to a quick and keen 
 bewilderment, or to a painful arrest and benumbedness of feeling, 
 when the same Troeltsch attempts the philosophical formula- 
 tion of this his religious sensé» For in his philosophical formula- 
 tion Troeltsch clings to a more or less Kantian Idealism, which 
 is not always, indeed perhaps never quite clearly, restricted to 
 its rich, almost Realist stage» Indeed at times he writes as 
 though this Idealism, even taken thus in gênerai, were almost 
 an abiding new présentation of Christianity. Thus the religious 
 Troeltsch continually propels and warms us religiously, but 
 the philosophical Troeltsch often, at the same time, draws us 
 back and chills us philosophically, indeed also religiously, since, 
 after ail, man's soûl is not a man-of-war divided into so many 
 water-tight compartments» Again, where the religious Troeltsch 
 speaks, Religion requires history, indeed Christianity is held 
 actually to retain a nucleus of critically established happenings, 
 and permanently to need such a nucleus as essential to its own 
 persistence. And thèse happenings are thus treasured, because 
 they are in their depths far more than they seem on the surface 
 — because they contain and transmit religious realities and 
 powers» Yet when the philosophical Troeltsch speaks, thèse real 
 happenings and their real, religious contents dwindle to such 
 windy subjectivities as the Christian ** legend,** indeed even 
 the Christian ** myth»** Again Christianity, for Troeltsch the 
 believer, exercises its finest and farthest reaching influence as 
 a spécial kind of Mysticism» Yet for Troeltsch, as thinker, the 
 original religious fact and expérience of the fact are always 
 unmystical, and Mysticism is always dépendent upon, and is 
 
 s* 
 
i88 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 secondary to, this unmystical fact and expérience ♦ Nor does 
 such supervening Mysticism distil and express from out of 
 that original fact and expérience their real though latent meaning 
 and virtue ; but the Mystical appréhension is hère simply a 
 ** création of the religions spontaneity/' Further, according to 
 Troeltsch, the original, unmystical religious fact and expérience 
 arise, in ail their greatest, world-moving instances, amongst 
 the socially humble and educationally elementary classes and 
 individuak, thus affording us the spectacle of ** power made 
 perfect in infirmity/' Yet Troeltsch the thinker does not, by 
 this, simply mean that thèse classes and individuals are given or 
 attain, and that they irradiate, a finer and fuller insight into what 
 t$ than do the other, more sophisticated and more sceptical 
 mortals of the middle and upper classes» It is merely that thèse 
 lower-class men approve themselves to be spedally rich in ** myth- 
 constructing capadty/* And finally Troeltsch, especially the 
 religious Troeltsch, insists that man is never without, that he 
 cannot, even if he would, get rid of, the impression that realities 
 not himself directly impinge upon and penetrate himself, 
 realities which are (thus and so far) really known to him, though 
 known only in part, and in that part largely obscurely» Man 
 thus finds his entire nature to be awakened by the various 
 realities distinct from and independent of itself ; he finds that 
 his awakened sensés awaken his reason and his spirit ; and he 
 finds that this generally awake condition of his nature calls forth 
 within his spirit a painful consciousness of the finitude and con- 
 tingency of it ail, a sensé of a contrasting Other, Infinité, Intrinsic 
 and Abiding» Yet for Troeltsch the thinker, our own mind 
 appears often to be what alone we incontestably start with, and 
 any reahty, distinct from the mind's consciousness of itself, is 
 but an inference of this mind from this its consciousness and 
 requires proof as to its trans-subjective validity ; the belief m 
 the need of sense-stimulation for the awakening of the mind 
 and of the soûl, is, in religion, sheer ** magic-mongering ** ; 
 and the sensé of the Contrasting Other comes late and upon 
 reflection, in the mystical reaction against the early and child- 
 like anthropomorphism of the Heavenly Father» In a word, 
 hère, everywhere. Religion proclaims and demands trans-sub- 
 jective, more than human Reality; and hère, everywhere. 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 189 
 
 Philosophy never gets clearly beyond a subjectivism incapable 
 of consistent certainty even as regards the minimum on which 
 ail human certainty and action (even where thèse are previous 
 to religion or more superficial than religion) are demonstrably 
 built. 
 
 It is thus Troeltsch himself who, more even by his intensely 
 alive religious sensé than by his many acute criticisms of 
 Kantianism, makes us thirst for a fuUy thought-out, self-con- 
 sistent Critical Realism» Everywhere such a Realism would 
 assume or announce that thought, primarily and normally, 
 never stands alone, and never is thought of thought, but always 
 thought of a reality distinct from this thinking of it ; that the 
 activity of the human mind and soûl, as known to us in this 
 life, always more or less requires sense-stimulation, and that 
 superstition hère lies as truly in denying as in exaggerating this 
 need ; that our knowledge is always an incomplète knowledge 
 yet a knowledge of reality — since the objects really reveal, 
 in various degrees, their real nature ; that the primary qualities 
 of material objects are trans-subjectively real, and that the 
 instinctive récognition of this reality plays an important part 
 also in the religious habits and certainties of the soûl ; that the 
 mystical type of religion is indeed secondary and refiective 
 in so far as it seeks and sees ail things as immediately présent, 
 but that the original religious fact and expérience of religion 
 already always contains an élément of immediacy, Thus, for our 
 Lord's consciousness, God was immediately présent ; God's 
 Kingdom, its advent upon earth, was proximate, but not simply 
 présent. 
 
 With some such a philosophy would disappear, from out 
 of Troeltsch's noble writings, that disturbing, numbing counter- 
 current certainly présent in them now. 
 
 And such a philosophy need, in no sensé or degree, contravene 
 Troeltsch*s most precious résolve ** not to recognise any specially 
 theological, still less any specially Christian, methods of study '* 
 {Soziallehren, p. ix.). For such a philosophy would be adopted 
 only because it had been found more adéquate to the analysis 
 and elucidation of the facts of human consciousness and know- 
 ledge, of physical science, and of religion ; and because philo- 
 sophy, to remain truly such, has to be the sensitively docile 
 
190 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 interpréter of actual life and reality, not their harshly doctrinaire 
 explainer-away. And such a philosophy, once adopted, would 
 hâve carefully to guard against any wholesale conclusions, and 
 any niggardliness of admiration and docility towards the pro- 
 found gains in method, perception, facts brought us by the 
 Critical Idealism» Careful research, severe criticism, daring 
 hypothesis, independence from aught but the laws and tests 
 found to be obstinately intrinsic to the respective ranges and 
 levels of study, will be as needful as ever ; but ail will now move 
 within a frank récognition of Givenness, of Otherness, of Reality* 
 Our minds will now range from the Givenness of the pebble 
 and the star to the Givenness of the lichen, of the bee and bird, 
 on to the immensely greater Givenness of the human spirit, 
 and (contrasting with, yet sustaining, ail such Givennesses and 
 their numberless given, real inter-relations) the primary, absolute 
 Givenness and Reality of God. 
 
 But let us go back to learn some final lessons from Troeltsch 
 in his rousing summary of some of his rich gains, and finish 
 this very imperfect study of Troeltsch 's conceptions of Christi- 
 anity, its spécifie Genius and Capacities, with some analysis 
 of the conclusion to his Soziaîlehren, probably the most reasoned 
 and best balanced pièce in the entire great work» We thus can 
 end on a nobly prophétie, splendidly sober, ideally realist, 
 humanely Christian, unconquered and unconquerable note of 
 faith in the perennial need, because truth and fact, of religion, 
 and of its great Origin, Object and End, 
 
 I will, hère, concentrate upon the author*s deeper, religious 
 conclusions ; upon his practical suggestions ; and upon his final 
 outlook (pp, 978-986). 
 
 I* The religious conclusions strive to emphasise the abiding 
 ethical values contained in the many-coloured Christian social 
 doctrines : I do not see how they could be made more movingly 
 deep and true. ** The Christian Ethos alone,** as against many 
 a more showy, more easy faith or fancy, ** possesses, in virtue 
 of its personalistic Theism, a conviction of personality and in- 
 dividuality rooted in a Metaphysic, and lifted above destruction 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 191] 
 
 from any and ail the Naturalisms and Pessimisms, Only the 
 personality which arises, out of man, to beyond man in his 
 range as a merely natural product — a personality achieved 
 through a union of his will and deepest being with God — ^this 
 alone is raised above the finite and alone can defy it, Without 
 this support^ every individualism évaporâtes into thin air/* 
 
 And again : ** the Christian Ethos alone, in virtue of its 
 conviction of a Divine Love which attends to ail soûls and 
 which unités them ail, possesses a truly unshakable/* a sound 
 ** Socialism» Only in the médium of the Divine do those conflicts 
 and exclusivenesses disappear, which belong to man as a natural 
 product and which shape his natural existence ; only hère do 
 the associations formed by coercion, physical need, sex-instinct, 
 work, organisation attain a connection superior to them ail 
 and indestructible, because now metaphysical/* 
 
 Again : ** only the Christian Ethos résolves the problem of 
 equality and inequality, since it neither glorifies violence and 
 accident, in the sensé of a Niet^chian cuit of breed, nor out- 
 rages the patent facts of life by a doctrinaire equalitarianism. 
 It first recognises the fundamental différence in the social posi- 
 tions, the powers and gifts of men, as a condition established by 
 the inscrutable will of God, and then transforms this condition, 
 by the interior upbuilding of the personality anid the develop- 
 ment of the sensé of mutual obligation, into an ethical cosmos/* 
 
 ** The Christian Ethos, through its estimation of personality 
 and its love, produces what no social organisation, be it ever so 
 just and rational, can ever entirely do without, since everywhere 
 there always remain incalculable sufferings, needs and maladies 
 — claims upon disinterested caritative help, This helpfulness 
 has, as a matter of sheer fact, sprung from the Christian spirit, 
 and only through this spirit can it persist/* 
 
 And finally, ** the Christian Ethos alone places a goal before 
 the eyes of us ail who hâve to live and struggle through our 
 difficult social existence, — a goal which lies beyond ail the 
 relativities of the earthly life, and, compared with which, every- 
 thing else represents only approximate values ♦ The conviction 
 of the Divine Kingdom of the future, which is but faith in the 
 final réalisation of the Absolute, in whatever way we may con- 
 ceive this réalisation, does not, as short-sighted opponents 
 
192 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS 
 
 maintain, deprive the world, and the life in the world of their value ; 
 but it makes the soûl strong, throughout ils various stages of 
 progression, in the certainty of a last absolute sensé and aim for 
 human toiL It thus raises the soûl above the world without 
 denying it/* Only through this, the deepest insight of ail 
 Christian asceticism, do ** ail social utopias become super fluous ; 
 and the impossibility, always preached anew by expérience, 
 of a full understanding and a fuU exécution of the idéal, need 
 not then throw back the seeker into that scepticism which so 
 easily springs precisely from an earnest veracity, and which is 
 everywhere invading the finer spirits of our times» The Beyond 
 is, in very truth, the power of our Now and Hère ** (pp. 978, 979). 
 
 2. And then he gives us four pregnant positions with regard 
 to the propagation and organisation of thèse religious forces. 
 ** The religious life, upon reaching the stage of spiritual religion, 
 requires an organisation distinct from the simply natural articu- 
 lations of Society. Without a community, organisation and 
 cultus, Christianity is incapable of propagation and fruitfulness/' 
 
 ** Amongst the forms of organisation, the Church-type is 
 superior to the Sect-type and to Mysticism. It is the Church 
 which alone fully retains the characteristic of religion as essenti- 
 ally Salvation and Grâce ; which renders the présence of Grâce 
 independent of the performances of individuals ; which is able 
 to embrace the most diverse stages of spiritual ripeness and 
 Christianisation, and which, hence, is alone fit to harbour a 
 popular religion within the inévitable graduation of its members/* 
 
 ** The Church-type, precisely because of the tension within 
 it between pure Christianity and adaptation to the world, has 
 had a most varied history *' and is, in thèse our times, in a con- 
 dition of change and in a situation of great perplexity. ** Without 
 compulsion, a lasting, uniform, indivisible Church body is 
 inconceivable ; and compulsion again is inconceivable with- 
 out the aid of the State. And, indeed in times of a gênerai 
 naïf belief, such a compulsion has no harmful or irreligious 
 conséquences.** 
 
 ** But,** finally, ** just because of its connection with the 
 unbroken unity of the gênerai life and outlook of large groups 
 of peoples, the unbroken Church-type is interiorly appropriate 
 to such times alone. For at other times, what is a matter of 
 
OF CHRISTIANITY 193 
 
 course for the gênerai outlook tallîes no more with what is a 
 matter of course for the Church» Compulsion is then no longer 
 the préservation of the whole from isolated disturbances, but a 
 violation of the movements of the larger life as it actually is/' 
 And Troeltsch considers the future unification and cohésion 
 of Protestantism as possible only ** on the supposition that the 
 Churches, created though they hâve been in part by state- 
 cnforced conformity^ may become homes in which henceforth 
 a variety of Christian spirits will find room to dwell and act/' 
 ** The Home which was constructed by compulsion and un- 
 shrinking uniformitarianism can thus be inhabited by finer 
 and especially by very various spirits, who then, it is true, will 
 hâve carefully to guard a mutual toleration within certain widc 
 limits/' ** The spirit of the Church-type would thus be herc 
 maintained in its grand conviction of an historical substance 
 of life common to ail, a substance which, in the various smaller 
 religious groups and déclarations, would be expressed, a part 
 in this group, a part in that group, and would thus be kept 
 from stagnation. We thus retain the sensé of a common faith 
 and the conscioiisness of heredity, as *a minimum of the 
 Church * *' (pp. 980-983). 
 
 3. And the valedictory waming is, surely, supremely impressive 
 in its virile sobriety : 
 
 ** If the présent social situation is to be mastered by Christian 
 prindples, thoughts will be necessary which hâve not yet been 
 thought and which will correspond to this new situation, as 
 the older forms corresponded to the older situations. Thèse 
 thoughts will hâve to be drawn from the interior spontaneity 
 of the Christian idea and not exclusively from the New Testa- 
 ment, as indeed has always been the case with the great Christian 
 social forms of the past. And they will hâve the fate in store for 
 ail the créations of the religious-ethical idea : they will render 
 indispensable services and will develop the profoundest forces ; 
 but they will never fully realise their spécifie idéal intention 
 within the range of our terrestrial conflicts.** 
 
 ** As little as any other power in this our world will they create 
 the Kingdom of God on earth, as a completed social ethical 
 organism : every idea will still be met by brutal facts, every 
 upward development by interior and exterior checks. There 
 
194 THE SPECIFIC GENIUS OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 exists no absolute Christian Ethic, still awaiting its first dis- 
 covery ; but only an overcoming of the changing situations 
 of the world, as also the earlier Christian Ethic was not an 
 absolute Christian Ethic, but only such an overcoming, in its 
 own way» There exists also no absolute ethical transformation 
 of material nature or of human nature, but only a wrestling with 
 them both, Only doctrinaire idealists or religious fanatics can 
 fail to recognise thèse facts» Faith is indeed the very sinews of 
 the battle of life, but life does in very deed remain a battle ever 
 renewed along ever new fronts» For every threatening abyss 
 that is closed a new one yawns before us» The old truth remains 
 true : the Kingdom of God is within us» But we must let our 
 light shine before men in confident and ceaseless labour, that 
 they may see our works and may praise our heavenly Father» 
 The final ends of ail humanity lie hidden within His hands ** 
 (pp» 985, 986). 
 
 Entire peoples clash in arms, gigantic industrial struggles 
 puise across continents and océans, immense physical discoveries 
 and inventions almost annihilate time and space. Yet engrossing, 
 and deeply important (also and especially in their help or 
 hindrance to our moral and spiritual upbuilding and faith) 
 as are thèse wild, vast, fleetmg thmgs ail around us, it is not they, 
 but it is this upbuilding and this faith, it is the ultimate Realities 
 which they touch, which indeed penetrate and occasion them, 
 that are the greater and the greatest things experienced by man» 
 And even simply as the utterances of one who, amidst the amadng 
 distractions of our times, steadily perceives and proclaims this 
 abiding pre-eminence of religion, Troeltsch's writings stand 
 amongst the most impressive, because most circumspect and 
 veracious, testimonies to the indestructible need and conviction 
 that the human mind and conscience, still, at bottom, can find 
 rest alone in God, its home» 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN i 195 
 
 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN? 
 AND WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL?^ 
 
 SoME sixty years after our Lord*s death upon the Cross, one 
 of the deepest of Jewish religions writers, yet one who, even then, 
 knew not the historié Jésus, or reached not in Him the Christ, 
 wrote the so-called Fourth Book of E^a, And there God, in 
 the person of the Angel, says to E%ra : ** Just as the husband- 
 man sows much seed in the ground, and yet not ail the seeds 
 which were sown shall be saved in due season ; so also they 
 that are sown in the world shall not ail be saved/' And E^a 
 answers : ** The husbandman's seed, if it corne not up, perishes ; 
 but the son of man, who has been fashioned with thine own 
 hands like thine own image ♦ ♦ ♦ hast thou likened him to the 
 seed of the husbandman i ** And God in His reply assures 
 Ezra : ** Thou comest far short of being able to love my création 
 more than I/' Thèse very facts, problems, difficulties remain 
 with us still ; and we hâve to face them in this article, Yet 
 many other points as to the After Life must be passed over by 
 us — such as the reasons for holding any immortality of man's 
 soûl or personality at alL I will simply assume throughout the 
 discussion that our two questions are asked by men who are 
 already convinced of the reality of some kind of After Life ; 
 and who, besides, accept the historié reality and the character 
 of Jésus and the trend and implications of His teaching, I take 
 our questioners to accept ail thèse religious facts as true and as 
 the deepest révélation and test of true religion, especially as 
 thèse facts appear in the Synoptic Gospels, as they hâve 
 awakened, directed and purified the spiritual needs and hunger 
 of the most inclusive Christian soûls, and as they hâve, in return, 
 
 * An Address delivered to the Religious Thought Society of London in February, 
 1917. Reprinted from the Church Quarterly Review, April, 1917. 
 
 X 
 
196 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN $" 
 
 been articulated and expanded by thèse same soûls* Ail this, 
 then, shall be for us hère the true type and test of the fuUer and 
 fullest spiritual appréhension of our questions and of the answers 
 to them» 
 
 Nevertheless, to be at ail clear and fruitful concerning the 
 two great subjects hère confronted, I must, first, describe shortly 
 the method which I believe alone capable of furnishing solid 
 and sober results ; and I must, secondly and as shortly, eliminate 
 certain peripheral problems which, if left uneliminated, would 
 give our direct subject-matters, and our conclusions concerning 
 them, an appearance which I do not believe them intrinsically 
 to possess* Our direct subject-matters again will require some 
 gênerai considérations before we can articulate our ultimate 
 proposais» I will group ail I hâve to say within five sections — 
 two introductory and three containing the direct effort» 
 
 It is most understandable, yet none the less regrettable for us 
 who approach the After Life problems from within religion and 
 for religion, that two attitudes and activities of mind, as to thèse 
 very problems, frequently attract — distract — ^the soûl whilst still 
 religiously unsettled, and (I believe in practically ail cases) 
 gravely arrest or deflect its still dim and groping religious insight» 
 The first of thèse attitudes concerns the content of the Future 
 Life ; the second concerns the évidences for a Future Life» 
 By the first attitude, the Future Life is desired and conceived 
 as simply a prolongation of this our earthly life, less its pain and 
 (usually) its grossness» In this way of course, and only in this 
 way, can we men fuUy picture a Future Life at ail — ^it thus is 
 just merely a continuation of this life, with ail within it that is 
 attractive to our average tastes in our average moments» And 
 by the second attitude we seek the évidence for the reality of 
 this continuance in intimations which are somehow to be gained 
 from the very persons, thus still thoroughly their old selves, 
 who are now living in the Beyond» And thèse two attitudes 
 usually go together» 
 
 It is certainly, at first sight, very remarkable that the fantastic 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL $" 197 
 
 abnormality of the form and method, which charactcrises ail 
 animistic and spiritualist practices, should habitually yield so 
 less than a normal, so shrunken, banal, and boring a content. 
 Yet such a method cannot fail to reach no further than this very 
 little distance* 
 
 The simple fact, assuredly, is that the soûl, qua religious, has 
 no interest in just simple unending existence, of no matter 
 what kind or of a merely natural kind — an existence with God 
 at most as the dim baj:kground to a vivid expérience of its own 
 unending natural existence* The specifically religious désire 
 of Immortality begins, not with Immortality, but with God ; 
 it rests upon God ; and it ends in God* The religious soûl 
 does not seek, find or assume its own Immortality ; and there- 
 upon seek, find, or assume God* But it seeks, finds, expériences, 
 and loves God ; and because of God, and of this, its very real 
 though still very imperfect, intercourse with God — ^because of 
 thèse expériences which lie right within the noblest joys, fears, 
 hopes, necessities, certainties which émerge within any and 
 every field of its life hère below — ^it finds, rather than seeks, 
 Immortality of a certain kind* The very slow but solidly sure, 
 the very sober but severely spiritual, growth of the belief in 
 Immortality amongst the Jews, a belief fuUy endorsed and 
 greatly developed by our Lord, was entirely thus — not from 
 Immortality of no matter what kind to God, but from God to a 
 spécial kind of Immortality* Especially does Christ always keep 
 God and the Kingdom of God central, as the beginning and end 
 of ail, and the Immortality peripheral, as but the extension and 
 full establishment of the souFs supernatural union with, and 
 of its supernatural activity towards, God and man. 
 
 And let us carefuUy note : such a method does not leave us 
 empty of any vivid and experienced content for our conception 
 of the Future Life* Qui te the contrary : for no expériences are 
 so real, none, in a way, are so well understood by the experiencing 
 soûl, as are its supernatural expériences* By supernatural we 
 hère mean nothing preternatural, nothing even essentially 
 miraculous, nothing that men, who are at ail complète according 
 to man*s supernatural call and awakeness, cannot, or do not, 
 expérience* We mean, on the contrary, acts, expériences, 
 necessities which, though distinct, not only from ail evil but 
 
igS WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN f 
 
 ako from ail simply natural goodness, are nevertheless acts, 
 expériences, necessities found scattered about among3t the 
 spécifie qualities and ends of nature» And thèse acts, expériences, 
 necessities are such that men at large, in their nobler and noblest 
 moments, cannot help saluting and revering them. And, again, 
 this Supernaturalness does not concern Goodness alone, but 
 also Truth and Beauty. God is the Fountain and the Fullness, 
 the Origin and the End, the ultimate Measure of every kind and 
 degree, as much of Beauty and of Truth as of Goodness ♦ Hence 
 wheresoever there are acts, expériences, necessities of sheer 
 self-surrender, in the deepest search and work within the visible 
 and temporal, the contingent and relative, to the Invisible, 
 the Eternal, and the Unconditional : wheresoever such self- 
 surrender is froni those temporalities, apprehended as such, to 
 thèse Eternities, accepted, adored as such : there is the Super- 
 naturah Walter Bagehot, in his great study of Bishop Butler, 
 finds two kinds of religion — that which looks out upon the 
 world, especially the starlit heavens, and finds there God in their 
 beauty ; and that which looks within upon the human soûl itself, 
 especially the conscience, and finds hère God in its sublimity ; 
 Bagehot calls the former Natural, the latter SupernaturaL But 
 I plead hère for a conviction which finds the Natural (including 
 a certain Natural Religion) in the looking within, and in the 
 acceptance of, conscience, as well as in the looking outwards, 
 and in the belief in beauty ; and which, again, finds the Super- 
 natural — Supernatural Religion — ^within both thèse same move- 
 ments and materials» So long as either movement and conviction 
 is primarily busy with the beauty, the truth or the goodness 
 simply in their particular forms, and only vaguely or derivatively 
 assumes or implies their unconditional claim upon the soûl, 
 you hâve Nature» So soon as either movement and conviction 
 attains to a central occupation with the Abidingness, the Non- 
 contingency, of the Beauty, the Truth or the Goodness thus 
 partially revealed and to a récognition of their right to the 
 unlimited service of the observer, you hâve Supemature» 
 
 We hâve thus to discriminate, not simply between Evil and 
 Good, but also between Good and Good — ^between Natural 
 Good and Supernatural Good* Both thèse Goods come from 
 God ; both are operative — ^in différent proportions and in greatly 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL ç" 199 
 
 différent degrees and ways — in ail normal, adult and awake human 
 beings ; and each, as we shall see, variously requires the other, 
 and variously participâtes in Heaven itself, 
 
 The morality of honest barter, of moderate living ; the require- 
 ments of the counting-house, the law-courts, the State ; Con- 
 fucius, Bentham : such moralities, institutions, persons, in 
 their gênerai and positive trend and in their prévalent accept- 
 ance, are assuredly good and necessary, but they are natural. 
 Such moralities, institutions, persons, we may wish to last for 
 ever ; but they do not, of themselves, suggest or require the 
 heightened consciousness, the doser and closest intercourse 
 with God, the reaching, in Him, of the ultimate, living Beauty, 
 Truth and Goodness, which the religious soûl seeks when it 
 seeks Immortal Life, And let us note — ^it is not the absence of 
 any explicitly religious référence that stamps thèse ** natural ** 
 things and persons as only naturally good, The référence, in 
 such persons, if not to God or to a God, then at least to their 
 consciences, is fairly constant ; yet we cannot well count ail that 
 is thus referred as supernaturaL And the référence in Judaism 
 and Unitarianism to God is continuai, and undoubtedly con- 
 stitutes even the average of thèse positions as, at the least, 
 Natural Religions, Yet it can fairly be maintained that the 
 référence is hère largely dry and distant, and is then to God 
 rather as the suprême rule and reward of average earthly honesty, 
 decency and justice, than as the deepest meaning and the final 
 assaugement of the soul's thirst for more and other than thèse 
 things. 
 
 For assuredly there are certain other acts, dispositions, strivings, 
 of individual soûls, and there are certain other ideals and best 
 achievements of certain institutions, which essentially transcend 
 the character, standard and instruments of the Naturally Good, 
 The deepest of the Jewish Psalms, the Seer whose vision of the 
 Suffering Servant of Jehovah is incorporated in the Book of 
 Isaiah, the serenely self-oblivious prayer of Stephen, the deacon, 
 for his enemies whilst they stone him to death ; above ail, 
 Christ*s entire life and work, crowned by the forgiveness of His 
 crucifiers even as He hangs upon the Cross, are the great and 
 the greatest, the most fully explicit, instances of the Super- 
 naturally Good, But indeed, off and on, hère and there, sooner 
 
aoo WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN < 
 
 or latcr, we can find^ within the larger human groups and during 
 the longer human periods, some lives, some acts, not ail différent 
 to those acts and lives — at least some touches, some desires 
 for some such lives and some such acts» And if such acts or 
 desires never and nov^rhere occurred within an entire race of 
 men or within an entire âge of the world, then that race and that 
 âge would, already by this alone, stand revealed as less than what 
 man actually is — a being natural in his constitution yet variously 
 solicited and sustained by supernatural influences, requirements, 
 
 ^ helps and aims, The Christian Church, at ail times in its in- 
 destructible idéal, and indeed always in its fullest and fairest 
 fruits, has been and abides the spécial training ground, home, and 
 
 > inspirer of this supernatural spirit, Our Lord*s Béatitudes are 
 its classical expression, and the Feast of Ail Saints is the peren- 
 nially touching commémoration of its countless manifestations 
 in every âge, clime, race, and religions environment» 
 
 Now the specifically religions désire for Immortality is a 
 désire, not only for the continuance of such supernatural acts 
 and dispositions, and for the continuance of the soûl, in so far 
 as thus acting and disposed, but for the final establishment of 
 the soûl in a world of powers, acts and persons truly adéquate 
 to such supernaturalness» Hère below, this our visible world 
 of time and space suffices for the naturally good acts and the 
 naturally good souL Heaven is not a necessary environment 
 for not cheating in the sale of peas or potatoes, for not smashing 
 Street lamps, for not telling calumnies against one's wife or 
 brother. But only Heaven furnishes the adéquate environment 
 for the élévation and expansion of spirit of a Damian, when he, 
 hère below, devoted himself to sure leprosy for the sake of his 
 outcast fellow-creatures ; of a Joan of Arc, when, in the France 
 of her day, she reaped her short earthly success and her swiftly 
 foUowing witch*s death ; or of the average trooper on the 
 Birkenhead going down, without moving, at attention, with the 
 women and children being saved alive before his eyes in those 
 boats where he was deliberately refusing to take a place at the 
 cost of others, many of whom had no spécial claim upon him- 
 self. Indeed ail of us hâve ourselves witnessed, or hâve learnt 
 from eye-witnesses, deeds or dispositions of a similar quality. 
 Humanity will never, universally or permanently, treat such acts 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL < 201 
 
 as folly^ or indeed as anything less than the very flower of life. 
 Yet to daim that the Trades Union, or a Political or Social 
 Party, or the State, should or could, or ever wisely will, require 
 such things, or directly work for them, is assuredly quixotic» 
 Such a demand or hope can only lead to a dangerous Utopia, 
 folio wed by a not less dangerous reaction, Thus such heroic 
 goodness points to a Beyond, as indeed does ail philosophical 
 research, ail scientific work, ail artistic effort — ^whensoever 
 thèse endeavours penetrate deeper than a certain superficial 
 and conventional leveL Ail such heroic, self-oblivious search 
 and réception of Truth and Beauty, as possessing the right to 
 such self-surrender, appear as spécial divine gifts rather than 
 as mère human efforts, as glimpses of realities which, for their 
 adéquate environment and appréhension, require, not this world 
 and this life, but another life and another world. 
 
 II 
 
 We hâve so far spoken as though Heaven and Hell were the 
 sole, not only ultimate, but also immédiate, alternatives for 
 every man moved by, and called to. Supernature ; and, still 
 more, we hâve let it appear as thgugh the call of the human race 
 in gênerai to such Supernature involved, of necessity, the call 
 of every individual belonging to that race, to this same Super- 
 nature. We must now make some important distinctions in 
 both thèse positions — for we cannot, if we do hold a Heaven 
 and a Hell in the full sensé of the terms, escape, I am confident, 
 from acceptance of some kind of Purgatory, and of some kind 
 of Limbo. 
 
 As concerns the supernaturally awakened soûls, we cannot, 
 surely, conceive the majority of thèse to be, when they die, 
 immediately fit for Heaven, even if they be not really fit for Hell. 
 Yet we are often reminded of certain spiritual facts which seem 
 to rule out any inter médiate state. Thus we are told that it is 
 not Christian, nor even deeply religious in gênerai, to think of 
 man as ever truly owing his salvation to his own merits ; he 
 can, in strictness, owe such salvation only to the generosity 
 and gift of God — ^indeed the very power to merit at ail is a pure 
 
202 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN < 
 
 grâce of God — ^as pure as is man's création. Conformably with 
 this it is insisted that the commencement, the continuation, the 
 crowning of any soul's supernatural life, is through and through 
 rendered possible only by God and His grâce ; and that it never 
 becomes actual without the active aid of the same God and grâce. 
 Thus ail supernaturally awakened soûls, however free from sin, 
 whether original or actual, we may suppose them, attain (at 
 least on one ground entirely common to them ail — ^their original 
 nothingness) to Heaven through God^s gift and mercy. To this 
 is added the further contention that this gift and mercy is speci- 
 ally abundant in the case of those supernaturally awakened soûls 
 which die with sinful or imperfect habits and attachments still 
 clinging to them, and which, nevertheless, attain to Heaven. 
 And it is then asked, if ail this be really so, what need there is 
 of an Intermediate State at ail. 
 
 The answer surely is that we who are still on this side of the 
 veil, hâve direct and real knowledge of the manner in which 
 God*s grâce and mercy operate, even though in this life only ; 
 and that, in this life, thèse gifts usually obey certain gênerai 
 laws of their own. We are able roughly to follow some of the 
 main outlines of thèse orderings by God Himself of God 's own 
 generosities and gifts. We see how, in this our earthly time at 
 least, every impure thought, untrue word or cruel act, every 
 cowardly shrinking from the usually costly docility to our own 
 best insight and spécial grâce, relax or stain, or harden or deflect, 
 our own inclinations, habits, and acts, even more certainly than 
 they similarly affect our influences and achievements in the 
 world at large. We note how even sincère, and fairly deep, 
 repentance for any one evil action, no more removes ail such 
 inward efîects of this action than it removes ail the outward 
 effects of the same action. Thus I regret certain acts of gambling, 
 I even cease to gamble ; but this does not, of necessity, eradicate 
 certain inclinations to gamble fuUy willed by me before and half 
 willed by me still ; it does not eliminate the entire gambling 
 habit, any more than it restores to my bank, or to my créditer 
 friends, the moneys I hâve gambled away from them. My 
 repentance, at any degree of depth, will be a grâce of God 
 through Christ to me ; yet this repentance ànd grâce, unless it 
 be of the deepest kind — ^an act of Pure Love as it was with the 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL ^ 203 
 
 Good Thief on Calvary on Good Friday — ^will still leave me with 
 variously imperfect habits and inclinations. Thèse habits and 
 inclinations, again, will be rectified within me, by the grâce of 
 God and Christ ; but this grâce will, in most cases, work slowly 
 within innumerable new acts of mine, acts contrary in character 
 to those old habits, and within a long self-discipline which now, 
 step by step, retraces the previous long self-dissipation of the 
 souL Purgatory is thus, so far at least, a sheer fact for the soûl 
 in its relation to God during this life. But it is not reasonable to 
 assume a radical change or supersession of so fundamental 
 a spiritual law at the death of the body, except under the con- 
 straint of some ver y definite and unanswerable reason, Such 
 a reason is not forthcoming. And hence I can fînd no serious 
 ground to deny the reahty of a similar Purgatory for the same 
 soûl in face of the same God in the other life. And if Purgatory 
 exists also in the Beyond, then most of the supernaturally called 
 soûls will presumably go, at death, not to Hell, nor, in the first 
 instance, to Heaven, but, first of ail, to Purgatory, 
 
 As concerns mankind at large, we hâve certain gênerai facts 
 of human existence and of life in gênerai, and certain ordinary 
 teachings of theologians, which appear to indicate that many, 
 possibly most, individual human soûls do not attain to the super- 
 natural call, choice, and conséquences — ^that Heaven or Hell 
 can be as little their actual final end, as Purgatory can be their 
 immédiate destination, Three large considérations seem to 
 show that this is actually the case in the realm of human soûls ; 
 that it is in fuU parallel with other ranges and stages of observable 
 life ; and that it is in no wise cruel or unjust. 
 
 This position appears to state an actual fact. For the majority 
 of human beings (if we take the life of the soûl to begin at the 
 moment of the conception of the corresponding body) die before 
 they attain the âge of reason. If we take seriously even the 
 fundamental lines, the gênerai trend, of the Christian outlook, 
 we must reject ail reincarnation schemes ; and we must require, 
 as the ordinary prerequisite for the supernatural call of any 
 individual soûl, the mental and volitional awakeness of this 
 soûl, True, the doctrine and practice of Infant Baptism raise 
 a difïiculty hère. But Infant Baptism admittedly reaches only a 
 small minority of the cases in question, if the human soûl is 
 
204 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN < 
 
 infused into its corresponding body at the moment of this body's 
 conception ; and if, of the human beings who attain to birth 
 at ail, much the greater number of those dying in infancy die 
 without Baptism* And again, Baptism is held to extend to the 
 infant the spiritual life of the Christian Church at large, and 
 this spiritual life in the Church at large is, at the time of the bap- 
 tism of the spiritually slumbering infant, possessed and practised 
 by soûls mentally and volitionally awake» And finally, the efïects 
 of such Baptism, if the infant dies in infancy, are différent in 
 degree from the effects of this same Baptism, if this baptised soûl 
 attains to maturity, Theologians hâve, since many a day, admitted 
 that unbaptised infants live in the Beyond a life of natural 
 happiness — a sort of prolongation of the happiness of children 
 hère below, less their physical sufferings, and less any super- 
 natural expériences which may be traceable in most of them 
 from about seven years of âge onwards* Thus soûls that départ 
 this life as infants, though they be unbaptised, do not go to 
 HelL But soûls that pass into the Beyond as infants, if they be 
 baptised, attain indeed to Heaven, yet to a far lesser degree of 
 the supematural béatitude than do soûls which hâve struggled 
 long and much in and for the supernatural life hère below, and 
 which hâve died substantially fit for Heaven at last, even though 
 they be in need of a long Purgatory first» 
 
 Some such position is also alone parallel to the facts observable 
 in ail the other ranges and levels of life known to us in any detaiL 
 Thus ail wheat-seeds, ail lily bulbs, ail acorns contain the 
 elementary materials and structures of richly fruitful wheat- 
 plants, exquisitely tinted blossoms, and broad-spreading oak 
 trees ; their respective spedes are intended to reach, and actually 
 do reach, in some fortunate représentatives, this consummation : 
 yet of thèse individual seeds, bi^lbs, acorns, not one in a hundred, 
 or even less, attains to this full end of its species, So again with 
 insects, fishes, birds, mammals : the proportion of individuals 
 that actually attain to the full development, ideally intended 
 for each and ail, is astonishingly smalL Thus, from the smallest 
 moss or lichen up to man, we find everywhere, even though in 
 a lesser and lesser degree, the distinction between the careful- 
 ness as to the type and species, and the apparently careless 
 profusion as to the individual incorporations of the type. And 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL < 205 
 
 hence life, in its manifold degrees and kinds, witnesses distinctly 
 against any belief that mankind, and mankind alone within the 
 world of créatures well known to us^ reaches, in every individual 
 man, the fullness of its natural and supernatural calL 
 
 And finally, the position hère defended cannot justly be 
 charged with imputing cruelty or injustice to God. For the soûls 
 that attain only to natural felicity hâve, ex hypothesi, never known 
 the solicitations of the supernatural ; ail their actual, or even 
 latent individual consciousness and needs are fulfiUed within 
 their own spécial kind and degree — a thing thoroughly possible, 
 if, as we hâve already contended. Nature and Supernature are 
 not one and the same call and condition, but two. Thus thèse 
 soûls are not the less fully happy because other human soûls 
 hunger and thirst after a higher and deeper, a différent life ; 
 or because thèse other soûls are satiated with a correspondingly 
 différent happiness» A man with much sait in his mouth requires 
 much more drink to slake his thirst than does the man who has 
 never tasted sait ; the thirst of the man untouched by sait is 
 slaked by a small glassful of water, the thirst of the man aroused 
 by sait is not appeased by less liquid than a bucketfuL And if we 
 take the différence between the two classes of soûls objectively, 
 we find that the two calls and ends are largely balanced by the 
 fact that the supernatural call and end usually involves spiritual 
 struggles, sacrifices, dangers, profound alternatives, whilst the 
 natural call and end is always devoid of ail supernatural pains 
 and périls. 
 
 III 
 
 We stand now before the problem of Heaven and Hell properly 
 so called, the final supernatural alternatives of the supernaturally 
 awakened souL Yet, hère again, we must first clear away three 
 very prévalent objections and misapprehensions. Let us move 
 from the more gênerai to the more particular difïiculties. 
 
 First and foremost, then, we hâve to confront the opinion, 
 increasingly prévalent in Western Europe since the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century, one which now pervades fairly ail 
 the non-religious, and even much of the religious, thought of 
 
2o6 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN ^ 
 
 our day — ^that thc conception of Heaven is, in substance, 
 beautiful, or at least true, or at the very least harmless ; but 
 that any and every conception of Hell is essentially hideous, or 
 at ail events unreasonable, or at the very least most dangerous 
 and noxious. Thus serious scholars attempt to prove that our 
 Lord*s utterances as to Hell are ail due to tnisconceptions of His 
 disciples, or even to amplifications by writers who had not heard 
 His words ; or, again, that thèse utterances, if really proceeding 
 from our Lord Himself, only continue, without any spécial 
 vérification or emphasis, certain already prévalent opinions — 
 that they hâve no organic connexion with the roots of His révéla- 
 tion and message» Thus, too, otherwise helpful religious philo- 
 sophers reduce Hell to a long Purgatory, or simply to a rhetorical 
 or emotional expression (perceived or not perceived by our Lord 
 Himself to be only such) for a correct and indeed noble sensé 
 of the intrinsic différence between right and wrong and of the 
 correspondingly intrinsic différences between the respective 
 conséquences of right and of wrong — différences which are really 
 outside of time and space, but which can only be described, at 
 ail vividly, in temporal and spatial pictures» The net resuit of 
 ail such teachings (quite apart from the still more prévalent 
 and insidious Pantheistic tendencies of our time) is at the least 
 to emphasise the conviction of Mother Julian of Norwich that 
 ** ail will be well,*' whilst the teaching of Christ and of His 
 Church will nevertheless turn out to hâve been true ; or, more 
 boldly, to welcome back, as alone satisfactory, the notions, not 
 of Origen himself, but of some Origenists, as to the eventual 
 Restitution of Ail Things — of ail soûls ; or, again, or quite 
 generally, to treat as a barbarous, impertinent irruption into our 
 superior insight and humanity, not only the applications and 
 détails, but the very substance, of the convictions of Tertullian, 
 St, Augustine and Dante. What can we adduce against such a 
 déniai $* 
 
 We must first of ail remember our discrimination — ^that the 
 question concerning the final destination of man, as such, is not 
 identical with the question concerning the final condition of 
 particular human beings. Hence it is quite beside the mark 
 to bring up the cases of little children, of idiots, of pure savagcs. 
 We must also not forget that there need be no real question of 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL ^ 207 
 
 Hell even for the majority of the supernaturally awakened souls^ 
 if there actually exists a state and process of purgation in the 
 Beyond, as there undoubtedly exists such a state and process 
 hère* Yet thèse provisos do not eliminate the real possibility of 
 Hell, as the gênerai rule, wheresoever is a real possibility of 
 Heaven ; they leave Heaven and Hell as a generally inter-related 
 couple» 
 
 We must next try vividly to realise the fact that it is not Hell 
 which is so much more difficult to believe in than is Heaven ; 
 but that it is the entire specifically spiritual conception of man, 
 of his deepest self, which is difficult, as contrasted with the 
 naturalistic view of thèse same things» The purely naturalistic 
 view of man conceives him as a mère superior animal, which 
 projects its own largely fantastic wishes on to the void or the 
 unknown, and which then fishes them back as objective realities 
 distinct from itself their true creator» And this view is the more 
 plausible, the more quickly statable, the more vividly picturable, 
 the alone readily transmittable, view. But then, the view has ail 
 thèse qualities, precisely because it stops short at the surface- 
 impressions of things, and remains utterly inadéquate to ail 
 the deeper and deepest implications, requirements and ends 
 of knowledge in gênerai, and of art, ethics, philosophy and religion 
 in particular, Yet as soon as we hold the différence between 
 varions kinds of human acts and dispositions to be always 
 potentially, and often actually, of essential, of ultimate, of more 
 than simply social, simply human importance, we are insisting 
 upon values and realities that essentially transcend space and 
 even time, Every at ail noble, every even tolerably adéquate, 
 outlook always possesses some such more than merely empirical, 
 simply contingent, or purely material and mechanical character, 
 Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus possess this outlook, although in very 
 différent degrees ; it ruled the Western world, during the 
 Christian Middle Ages ; and, after the largely négative rationality 
 of most of the Renaissance, it gave its note of pathetic distinction 
 and splendour to the great spirit of Spinoza, gravely cramped 
 by Pantheism though it was in its spéculation. In Kant it again 
 reappears in a more theistic setting, and with the deep per- 
 ception of that deep fact — ^radical evil — of man*s fréquent 
 declaring, willing and doing what he well knows to be false 
 
2o8 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN $• 
 
 and bad, but pleasant ; in Schopenhauer it relieves the gênerai 
 pessimistic oppression with glimpses of a Beauty abiding and 
 all-sustaining. And now, in thèse our times, we are again coming, 
 in différent lands and from différent expériences and starting- 
 points, to schemes really adéquate, indeed deeply friendly, to 
 this Transcendence présent in ail our nobler aspirations, acts and 
 Kends, Thus every profound search after, or belief in, the funda- 
 mental truth or essential beauty or satisfying goodness of any- 
 thing — ^when we press it duly home and sincerely and delicately 
 analyse it — overflows the ordinary, superficially obvious, re- 
 quirements of man*s knowledge, action, life» In each case we get 
 a scheme that looks too big and too ambitious for us little men, 
 and that involves alternatives too wide and deep for the average 
 moments of the average mortaL 
 
 We hâve then, for our purpose, only to ask whether the 
 alternatives — Heaven, Hell — ^are like or are unlike thèse ultimate 
 implications of man^s deepest needs and aspirations, élévations 
 and falls» And the answer will assuredly be : ** They are not 
 unlike, but like/' 
 
 We shall, I believe, be driven to such a gênerai conclusion, 
 if and when we dwell upon our memories of men we hâve known 
 at ail well and long and in sufficient numbers, even though 
 thèse men may hâve belonged to classes and callings least 
 supernaturally attempered at a first appearance^ Thus I look 
 back to my eight friends, the horse bus drivers, in a northern 
 suburb of London* There was their patriarch, Johnnie D,, of 
 the grey top hat, so humorously irritated by ** them Belgiums,'' 
 when thèse white Flemish horses answered so languidly to his 
 whip. ** Don't you ever trust an 'orse dealer,*' he advised me, 
 ** ail 'orse dealers is rogues» Ought to know : me own father was 
 an 'orse dealer/* There was William D,, who would dare his 
 conductor there and then to tell how many shoulders and legs 
 of mutton were passing when droves of sheep passed by ; and 
 who bred Canaries in his spare time» '* Me eldest lad sings that 
 beautiful in the Wesleyan Chapel choir» Sorry he will not take 
 to the slaughterin* — me own line at first* Strange, for he's that 
 fond o* animais/' There was the Scotchman R» ** See this 'and 
 o' mine ^ Writes a beautiful 'and — always did, Got ail the 
 pri2:es at schooL Always steady, lad and man/' And there was 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL i* 309 
 
 the red-haired young Orange Irishman William S*, impulsive, 
 improvident, humorous, humble, sweet» '* Look at that Salvation 
 Army old saint there ; *ave known *im established above ail sin 
 and fallin* exactly sixteen times/* ** I sits on this box up to 
 midnight, Sir, thèse foggy November nights, I drinks lots o* 
 béer — ^it lies that *eavy, cold, cold upon me chest ; Doctor 
 says itll ruin me/* I saw him dying in a little, quiet room» '* Is 
 there anything you want, S. ^ '* ** Nothing, Sir : theyVe kindly 
 found a mangle for me wife, and the children is ail took by good 
 people» And yet — ^yes, there is a thing I miss ; I wish that hère, 
 from me bed, I could hear the old bus go by/* 
 
 The léthargie white old ** Belgiums ** hâve long since ceased 
 to drag the heavy old bus up that hill — ^their bones lie some- 
 where utterly forgotten» Johnnie D» himself has gone, I know ; 
 perhaps also the whilom slaughterer and the self-complacent 
 steady Scotchman hâve already foUowed Johnnie, so thoroughly 
 English in character, and the touching, drinking Irishman» Yet 
 even during those years when thèse men so much refreshed me 
 with their spontaneity, sincerity and simplicity, and still more now 
 when I look back upon what I learnt from thèse my friends, I 
 saw and felt, I see and feel, that not a little of the supernatural 
 was working variously, indirectly, hiddenly, yet most really, 
 also hère» ** Non omnis moriar/* wrote the polished Horace, 
 thinking only of his poetry ; they hâve not, they could not, 
 altogether die — not their works, but they, their own selves — 
 thèse my humble, humorous fellows, touched, sweetened, 
 widened, deepened, as they were, by our common supernatural 
 call and lot, so far beyond their own power to articulate even 
 what they already were, still less what at times they longed to 
 become* 
 
 And we must finally consider the character of our Lord's 
 outlook as a whole» As to this point, we not only find certain 
 texts in the Synoptic Gospels which directly teach Hell 
 and which put it in simple parallel with Heaven ; but (an even 
 more conclusive fact) we can clearly trace, throughout our Lord*s 
 teachings, the keen conviction, and the austère inculcation of 
 the conviction, that the spiritual life is a great, ail-important 
 alternative and choice — a, choice once for ail, with conséquences 
 final and immense* The entire texture and implications of 
 u 
 
210 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN $• 
 
 Jesus's outlook require such choice within this one earthly life 
 on the part of supernaturally awakened souls^ and such abiding- 
 ness of the results of this their choice. ** What does it profit a 
 man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own 
 soûl ^ ** — ^is but an example of what runs (as implication, allusion, 
 pathos, entreaty, menace), throughout the whole of our Lord's 
 teaching in proportion as, espedally in its second stage, this 
 teaching is continuously busy with man 's supernatural call and 
 the strenuous conditions and severe conséquences of this calL 
 
 Only two serious objections can, I believe, be raised against 
 this contention that our Lord Himself unequivocally taught the 
 doctrine of fundamental alternatives and abiding conséquences. 
 The one objection is derived from an analysis and grouping of 
 the Synoptic texts, the other is drawn from the doctrine of St. 
 Paul. 
 
 As to the Synoptists, such serious scholars as the late Dr. H. J. 
 Holtzmann and many others distinguish between a séries of 
 very simple sayings and parables, which reproduce our Lord 's 
 direct teachings, and the great or complicated pictures and 
 similes, which are so many developments, by the primitive 
 Christian community and writers, of certain éléments or adumbra- 
 tions of our Lord 's own doctrine. And only in thèse latter 
 pictures — such as Christ the King separating the sheep from 
 the goats at the Last Judgment (St. Matt. xxv. 31-46) — do 
 thèse scholars find any direct parallel contrast between the saved 
 and the lost, and any explicit insistence upon the abidingness 
 of the condition of the lost as balancing the abidingness of the 
 condition of the saved. Nevertheless, even the passages thus still 
 accepted as fully primitive are, I submit, quite sufficient for our 
 purpose ; since, interpreted otherwise than as involving the 
 conviction of abiding conséquences, thèse sayings, so assuredly 
 strenuous and austère, lose ail their spécifie point and poignancy. 
 Thus we are still told of ** the Father which seeth in secret, 
 who shall reward openly ** — ^who will forgive, or who will not 
 forgive, men's trespasses against Himself, according as men 
 forgive, or do not forgive, their fellow-men*s trespasses against 
 themselves (St. Matt. vi. 4, 6, 18 ; vi. 14, 15). We are still 
 warned ** Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able 
 to kill the soûl ; but rather fear him which is able to destroy 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL s* 211 
 
 both soûl and body in hell ** (St. Matt. x. 20) ♦ We still hcar the 
 soicmn woes pronounced against the unbelieving cities — of the 
 great straits that await them at the Day of Judgment (St. Matt* 
 xi. 21-24 ; xxiii. 37, 38). Jésus still insists that Hc has corne to 
 divide a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother, 
 and that only '* he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it ** 
 (St. Matt. xi. 35-39) ; and, again, that at the Day of Judgment, 
 ** two shall be in the field ** or ** grinding at the mill ** — ** one 
 shall be taken and the other left ** (St. Matt. xxv. 40, 41). He 
 still exhorts us to eut off hand or foot, or to pluck out an eye, 
 rather than be cast with both our hands or feet or eyes into Hell 
 (St. Mark ix. 43-48). He still proclaims that ** he that is riot 
 with me is against me ** (St. Matt. xiL 30) ; and He still déclares 
 that there exists a sin against the Spirit of God which cannot be 
 forgiven (St. Luke idL 10 and the parallels). And we hâve still 
 the parables of the Two Houses built respectively on the rock 
 and on the sand, and resulting respectively in persistent safety 
 and in utter ruin ; of the Unjust Steward ; of the Talents ; 
 of the Men at the Door asking admittance, when it is too late, 
 from the master of the house (St. Luke xiiL 24-30) ; and of the 
 Wise and Foolish Virgins. Ail thèse parables teach the same 
 lesson and possess the same implications. And indeed Hell 
 and its endlessness appear, explicitly and repeatedly, in thèse 
 parables, as they also do in the corresponding séries of sayings.^ 
 
 As to St. Paul, it is true that we hâve, in the magnificent chapter 
 fifteen of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, an account of the 
 résurrection followed by an unending condition, which appears 
 to say nothing as to the fate of unfaithful human soûls, and which, 
 indeed, contains passages that hâve been repeatedly interpreted 
 in the sensé of a Final Restitution of Ail Things, such as was 
 held by some Origenists. Yet every close and careful analysis 
 of this chapter and of St. PauFs other long and highly technical 
 doctrinal expositions shows clearly that nothing is said hère as 
 to the fate of human sinners, simply because St. Paul is busy 
 hère with our Lord's résurrection, and with the fate of thosc 
 human soûls which hâve faithfully conformed themselves to His 
 life. Indeed, in such severely spéculative passages St. Paul 
 
 * See H. J. Holumann, Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Théologie, édition 191 1, 
 vol. i., pp. 392-95- 
 u* 
 
212 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN <* 
 
 docs not apparently hold a résurrection of the wicked, nor a 
 subséquent life, whether temporary or unending, for such persons, 
 at alL The just hâve, during their earthly life, chosen in favour 
 of the Spirit and the Body; and hence they live, and are raised to 
 full life, for ever, with and through thèse powers — the ever living 
 Spirit and the ever vivifiable Body. The wicked hâve chosen 
 in favour of the Psyché (the Animal Soûl) and the Flesh ; and 
 hence they die altogether, with thèse essentially deadly and 
 mortal powers» Hence, even if this be the sensé of thèse spécula- 
 tive passages, St, Paul continues hère the doctrine of Abiding 
 Conséquences ; only that the wicked hère appear sîmply to 
 cease to exist, as against the good who expand into the full life, 
 Indeed St. Paul, when he is not thus developing a severely 
 antithetic spéculation, largely (as such) his own, speaks on this 
 point, as he does also on other points, in close resemblance to 
 our Lord^s own sayings. For he déclares that ** we must ail 
 appear,** or ** be made manifest,** ** before the Judgment-seat 
 of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body 
 — ^according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad ** 
 (2 Cor. v. 10). And in that very chapter fifteen of the First to 
 the Corinthians, Christ, at the end, ** puts down ail rule and ail 
 authority and power ** (v. 24) — doubtless, hostile spirits, which 
 are thus not changed in their willings, but are simply overruled 
 and rendered innocuous henceforth. And assuredly the finish 
 hère ** that God may be ail in ail *' (i;. 28), refers to the relations 
 between Christ with His Saints and God the Father, and has 
 nothing to do with any question as to God*s présence and opéra- 
 tion elsewhere. Thus this chapter no more teaches the Restitution 
 of Ail Things, than this doctrine is meant by the terms palingenesia 
 (** ncw birth **) of St. Matt. xix. 28, or apokatastasis panton 
 {** restitution of ail things **) of Acts iiu 21, passages which 
 merely signify the restoration of the full divme order at the end 
 of the world — ^an order which includes the subjection, but not 
 the salvation, of the godless. 
 
 Thus we confront the impressive fact that throughout the 
 New Testament there is nowhere a déniai or ignoring, but there 
 is everywhere an affirmation or implication, of man's life hère 
 below as a choice between immense alternatives furnished with 
 corresponding abiding conséquences. 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL < 213 
 
 Primitive Buddhism could not hâve existed without the con- 
 viction of the dizzying '* Wheel of Life/* as the starting-point 
 of that creed ; or without Nirvana, as the goal of the same creed : 
 and Wheel and Nirvana each there postulate the other ; only 
 together do they constitute that Buddhism» But Christianity, 
 whether primitive or in any conceivable form which may still 
 leave it essentially Christian, could not coexist with the conviction 
 of the ** Wheel of Life ** — ^with any reincarnation scheme ; or 
 with a Nirvana of any kind. For hère, instead of a passive 
 résignation and despair, is an active choice and hope ; and this 
 because hère, instead of an utterly flowing and chaotic Nature 
 and of the soûl fascinated by ail this fiow and chaos, there is an 
 abiding, a wise and loving God behind Nature, itself seen as 
 largely a cosmos, and there is, in front of this Nature, the 
 persistence, self-identity, personality of the individual soûl. 
 
 We must then retain choice and alternative as at the very 
 centre of the Christian outlook — at least as regards super- 
 naturally awake soûls. Yet we must equally guard this alternative 
 against a certain exclusiveness and against a certain excess. 
 
 We must guard against excluding ail Nature from Heaven. 
 Man, without a certain amount of Nature as his substratum, 
 would cease to be a créature at ail, and would be God ; and man 
 without a certain amount of his own human nature would cease 
 to be a man at ail, and would be really an angel or some other 
 non-human créature. And yet it is certain that man is to save 
 or to lose his soûl, to be in Heaven or in Hell, assuredly not as 
 God, yet also not as angel, but as man. We certainly do not 
 know precisely how much of the Nature of man will be thus 
 preserved, and with what expansions, perfectionings, utilisations. 
 Indeed the gênerai questions as to how a disembodied soûl can, 
 as such, expérience anything or can act at ail ; or, again, how 
 it can refashion a body sufïiciently spiritual to be serviceable 
 there, and yet sufïiciently material to be at ail identical with its 
 former body hère, are full of difïiculties. Yet we can easily show 
 that the entire Christian outlook requires such a préservation 
 of a certain substratum of Nature, and indeed some kind and 
 degree of résurrection of the body. For Nature, in this outlook, 
 is, as to its essentials, good in and for itself ; and it is still better 
 in and for Super nature. *' Grâce does not abolish Nature, but 
 
214 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN ^ 
 
 perfects k ** is the fundamental axiom of ail the teaching of 
 Aquinas. And hence, as leavened bread cannot exist without the 
 mcal, or sait water without the sait ; this particular bread, with- 
 out this its particular meal, and this particular sait water, without 
 this its particular sait : so neither can supernaturalised man exist 
 without human nature ; this particular man, without this his 
 particular Nature ♦ Thus in Heaven each soûl will retain the 
 essentials of its particular Nature, expanded, completed, elevated 
 by its particular Supemature, as this Supernature has now and 
 there found its final form and fullness. And thus again, there will 
 not, indeed, exist in Heaven husbands and wives, parents and 
 children, brothers and sisters, and the other sweet relationships 
 of earth, just simply as such, and merely because they existed 
 upon earth. And yet not one of thèse, or of any other naturally 
 good, relationships, but will continue substantially in Heaven, 
 in so far as this relationship has become the essential natural 
 material of our supernatural life hère on earth, and in so far as 
 it thus requires to continue as the essential natural substratum 
 of our full supernatural life in Heaven. Hence, if truly trans- 
 figured by grâce already hère, thèse relationships can and will 
 continue, in their substance, fully and finally transfigured, 
 there. And thus the sweetness of Nature, the severity of the 
 Choice, and the serenity of Heaven ail appear very really each 
 to fit the other. 
 
 And we must guard against a certain excess of contrast. Evil, 
 and the evil effects of Evil, are, indeed, not the mère absence 
 of Good and of the good effects of Good ; Evil is in truth a 
 force and positive — ^it is an actual perversion, and not an abolition, 
 of the efficacious will. Yet Evil and its effects are not as fully 
 and concentratedly evil, as Good and its effects are full and con- 
 centrated. If this were false, Manichaeism would be true, and 
 Evil would fully balance Good. According to ail Theism, and 
 especially ail Christianity, the Good, if not sheerly all-powerful, 
 is, at the least, more powerful for good than is the Evil for evil. 
 No doubt, the absolute parallelism of form présent in certain 
 of our Lord 's déclarations conceming Heaven and Hell, as thèse 
 are given in St. Mark and St. Matthew, and as they operate in 
 practically ail the popular echoes and expansions of thèse déclara- 
 tions ever since their utterance, would, if pressed, rule out this 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL ^ 215 
 
 discrimination ; yet such a discrimination cannot otherwise 
 be seriously refuted from any sensitively Christian premisis» 
 We shall thus indeed admit an Evil and a Suffering in the 
 Lost, in correspondence to the respective Good and Happiness 
 of the Saved ; but we shall carefully guard against finding that 
 Evil and Suffering to be as full and as concentrated as is this 
 Good and Happiness. 
 
 IV 
 
 We are at last face to face with the spécial subject-matter of 
 our quest. And we must, consequently, attempt to find and to 
 describe the characteristics of our deepest expériences ; and, 
 in each instance, to contrast the fully willed and bliss-bringing 
 acceptance, and the full refusai, with its pain and contraction, 
 of this our profoundest calL 
 
 Our deepest spiritual expériences appear always to possess some 
 or ail of four qualities. And the contrasted effects, as respec- 
 tively within the right disposition and the wrong disposition, 
 seem to be as follows : 
 
 In our deepest moments hère below, our expériences are least 
 changeful and most constant ; they are, in those moments, 
 least successive and most nearly simultaneous. They thus come 
 nearest to the character of God, and to an appréhension of that 
 character. God is Pure Eternity, Sheer Simultaneity ; the animal 
 man is almost Pure Succession, indeed ail but mère change ; 
 the spiritual man is, in proportion to his spirituality, More or 
 Less Simultaneous. 
 
 We hâve every reason, then, to hold that thèse expériences, 
 and their différences, apply also to the supernaturally awakened 
 soûls in the Beyond. The saved spirits will thus, according to 
 the degree of their supernatural call and of their supernatural 
 establishment within it, be quasi-simultaneous in their intelli- 
 gence, feeling, volition, acts, effectuations» This their life will, 
 at any one moment of its slow succession, be too rich and varied 
 to require much succession for the unravelling of its capacities 
 and acts. Indeed, this richness will be actually the richer for 
 this quasi-simultaneity of its contents and gains ; since thus 
 
2i6 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN S* 
 
 the many connexions and contrasts between thèse many things 
 will be very largely présent together with the things themselves» 
 
 The lost spirits will persist, according to the degrec of their 
 permanent self-willed défection from their supernatural call, 
 in the ail but mère changingness, scatteredness, distractedness, 
 variously characteristic of their self-elected earthly life» And 
 owing to their past expérience of the opposite conditions, and 
 to their (still extant although diminished) consciousness of the 
 supernatural call, they will feel the unsatisfactoriness of this 
 their permanent non-recollection more than they felt it upon 
 earth. 
 
 In our deepest moments hère below, again, our greatest 
 expansion and delight arises from our sensé of contact, more 
 or less close and vivid, with Realities not ourselves ; in such 
 moments we not simply reach truth — something abstract, some- 
 thing which we predominantly refer to the already developed 
 tests and standard of our own minds — ^but Reality, some deeply 
 concrète and living thing which enlarges our expériences of fact 
 and indeed our thus experiencing soûls themselves. 
 
 We hâve then, again, every reason to hold that thèse expéri- 
 ences, and their contrasted différences, will persist, greatly 
 heightened, in the Beyond, The saved spirits will thus, according 
 to the degree of their supernatural call and of their supernatural 
 establishment, be supported, environed, penetrated by the 
 Suprême Reality and by the keenest sensé of this Reality, This 
 sensé of God, — of God as distinct from, previous to, independent 
 of, our appréhension of Him — of God as self-revealing and self- 
 giving, will evoke continuous acts and habits — ^an entire state 
 — of a responsive self-givingness in the soûl itself. The great 
 Divine Ecstasy will evoke and be met by the little human ecstasy» 
 Not primarily, this, a self-consciousness of the soûl, with a more 
 or less dim or even hypothetic référence to, or assumption of, 
 God derivatively attached thereto ; but the sensé of God and 
 of the joy in Him, central and suprême, and the sensé of the 
 self, chiefly as of the channel for, the récipient of, and the response 
 to, ail this Divine Reality, Joy and Life. 
 
 The lost spirits will persist, according to the degree of their 
 permanent self-willed défection from their supernatural call, 
 in the varyingly ail but complète self-centrcdness and sub- 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL f 217 
 
 jcctivity of their self-electcd earthly life. But now thcy will feel, 
 far more fully than they ever felt on earth, the stuntedness, the 
 self-mutilation, the imprisonment involved in this their endless 
 self-occupation and jealous évasion of ail reality not simply their 
 own selves. 
 
 In our deepest moments, once more, we reach the fullest 
 sensé of our membership of the social human organism, of our 
 possessing a fruitful action upon it precisely because of this 
 our glad acceptance of our spécial little place within the great 
 family of the thinkers, workers, sufferers, achievers amongst our 
 fellows in the long past and in the wide présent. We hâve, then, 
 no reason to doubt that, in the Beyond, thèse expériences and 
 their contrasted différences will obtain — ^and in still greater 
 measure. 
 
 The saved spirits, then, will receive, exercise, enjoy, aid, and 
 complète a richly varions, deep and tender, social life with 
 fellow soûls. And as the inter course of thèse spirits with God 
 is not simply mental or abstractly contemplative, but quite as 
 much emotional, volitional, active, efficacious ; so also this their 
 intercourse with the fellow soûls is mental, emotional, volitional, 
 active, efficacious. And the quasi-simultaneity, and the deep 
 sensé of and delight in realities, which we hâve already found so 
 strongly to characterise thèse saved spirits, will doubtless pene- 
 trate and enrich this their social joy. For thus they will pro- 
 foundly perceive, feel and will themselves as just parts, spécial 
 parts, of this great social whole ; and they will profoundly see, feel 
 and will themselves, as greatly surpassed in sanctity by innumer- 
 able other soûls. The joy in the rich interconnexion and varions 
 supplementation between thèse countlessly différent soûls, and 
 the joy in reality — ^realities other and far fuller than themselves, 
 will thus add to the bliss and the fruitfulness, outwards and 
 inwards, which spring from the social expérience and activity 
 of the saved. 
 
 The lost spirits will persist, according to the degree of their 
 permanent défection, in their claimfulness and envions self- 
 isolation, in their niggardly pain at the sight or thought of the 
 unmatchable greatness and goodness of other soûls. But now 
 the disharmony of ail this with their own past better expériences 
 and their own still présent sensé of the supematural call, becomes 
 
2i8 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN s* 
 
 more fully and more unintcrmittcntly conscious within thcm 
 than it was wont to be in them on earth. 
 
 And lastly, our deepest moments are assuredly oftcn, perhaps 
 always, shot through, in their very joy, with suffering — even 
 though this suffering be only the birth-pangs of a fuller spiritual 
 life and fruitfulness, Our profoundest happiness hère below 
 always possesses something of the heroic ; and the heroic 
 appears impossible without obscurity met by faith, pain borne 
 by patience, risk and loss faced and transformed by the magie 
 of self-immolation ♦ Thus our fuUest nobility and its unique 
 joys appear as though, after ail, reserved for this our earth alonc^ 
 But not so^ 
 
 The saved spirits in the Beyond will doubtless no further know 
 suffering and pain, temptation and risk and fall, within them- 
 selves, such as we poor little men now know them upon earth. 
 And yet it is not difficult to find, within the deepest characteristics 
 of the human soûl even upon earth and the most certain and most 
 dominant conditions of the Other Life, operative causes for the 
 continuance in Heaven itself of the essentials in the nobility 
 furnished by devoted suffering and self-sacrifice hère below. 
 For the saved spirits in the Beyond indeed see God as He is — 
 but this doubtless only in so far as their finite natures, indefi- 
 nitely raised and expanded by Supernature though they be, can do 
 so. What they see is indeed the very Reality of God ; what they 
 feel and will, and what they act with and for, is in very truth 
 this Reality itself. Nevertheless, they are not themselves Gods ; 
 they are finite, God is infinité ; they are more or less successive, 
 God is purely simultaneous ; they exist through Him, He is 
 self-^xistent ; and thus contrastedly in many other ways. And 
 yet it is God, as He is in Himself, and not as He is only partially 
 seen by them, whom thèse spirits désire to comprehend, to love, 
 to will and to serve. Hence, even in Heaven, there remains, for 
 the saved soûl, room and the need to transcend itself, to 
 lose itself, that it may truly find itself. Hère is an act possessed 
 çf an élément of genuine darkness, of real tension, succeeded by 
 an accession of further light and wider expansion. St. Catherine 
 of Genoa, from her own spiritual expériences, vividly conceived 
 and finely picturcd, in the soûls destined to Purgatory, their 
 joyous acceptance of, their freely willed plunge into, this intrinsi- 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL ^ 219 
 
 cally neccssary bath of purgation ; and their escape, by means 
 of this pain, from the now far greater suffering produced within 
 them by their clear perception of the stains and disharmonies 
 still présent in their own soûls. Such soûls thus taste an ever- 
 increasing bliss and peace within their ever-decreasing pain, 
 whilst those impurities and hardenings are slowly, surely, suffer- 
 ingly yet serenely, purified, softened and willed away. We can, 
 mutatis mutandis, similarly picture to ourselves the soul's acts 
 in confrontation of God, even in Heaven, as, in a sensé, plunges, 
 away from the quite clear yet limited vision, into a wider, but 
 at first dimmer, expérience of the great Reality. And thus such 
 plunges of the soûl there into God, and the somewhat similar 
 goings-out there of the same soûl to its fellow soûls (whom also 
 it will hardly see as completely as it wills to love and serve, and 
 to learn from them) are the équivalents there of men's heroic 
 plunges hère away from sin and self, or from quite clear sense- 
 impressions and pictures of the visible world into the suffering 
 and sacrifice which accompany the fidelity to the instincts and 
 intuitions (as yet relatively obscure) of a fuUer love and service 
 of God and men. 
 
 The lost soûls are left to the pain of stainedness and self- 
 contraction ; they do not attain to, since they do not really will, 
 the suffering of purification and expansive harmonisation. For 
 man, once he is supematurally awakened, cannot escape pain ; 
 he can only choose between the pain of fruitful growth, expansion, 
 tension — ^the throes of spiritual parturition, — ^the pangs of the 
 wide-open welcome to the pressing inflow of the fuller life, and 
 the aches of fruitless stunting, contraction, relaxation, the duU 
 and dreary, or the angry and reckless, drifting in bitter-sweet 
 unfaithful or immoral feelings, acts, habits, which, thus indulged, 
 bring ever-increasing spiritual blindness, volitional paralysis and 
 a living death, Only in Heaven and in Hell is the will finally 
 determined as between the solicitations of the pain within the 
 joy of the right, and of the pleasure within the dreariness of the 
 wrong. Yet even in Heaven there is a certain analogue to the 
 genuine cost in the real gain traceable within the deepest acts 
 of the human soûl whilst hère on earth. And hence, corre- 
 spondingly, the very pains of Hell consist largely in the percep- 
 tion by the lost soûl of how unattainable is that fruitful suffering 
 
220 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN s' 
 
 which would furnish the one escape from the fruitless pangs now 
 actually endured* 
 
 Let us conclude ail with four gênerai reflexions as to Hell, 
 and two anecdotes in illustration of Heaven, 
 
 As to HelL It will be well for us, as concerns the question quite 
 generally, to realise with fuUness and vividness how inadéquate 
 is the prévalent easy-going, slipshod thinking, feeling and living 
 with regard to our free will and responsibility, our moral weak- 
 ness and the reality of sin. Only those profoundly awake to, 
 and earnest about, thèse great facts hâve any right to be 
 counted as opinions in the question of Abiding Conséquences* 
 And again it will be useful for us clearly to note how pan- 
 theistic is the gênerai outlook of the more notable deniers 
 of this Abidingness, It was, of course, inévitable that a John 
 Scotus Erigena, for whom God was the sole substance and man's 
 sin a mère nonentity, should hâve refused to deduce any un- 
 ending effects from the behaviour of men» It was equally 
 inévitable that such a violently naturalistic Pantheist as Giordano 
 Bruno should ceaselessly revile every notion of accountability 
 and of sin — still more so, then, of Heaven and HelL It was 
 similarly inévitable that Spinoza*s pantheistic System should, 
 as such, hâve left no logical room or justification for that great 
 soul's intuitions concerning the costliness, the rarity, the price- 
 less worth of the true, ethical and spiritual life ; hence that 
 even Spino^a^s influence should be deadly to any belief in any 
 objective personal survival and any other-world Heaven or HelL 
 And it was inévitable again that Schleiermacher, so predomi- 
 nantly aesthetic and pantheistic, should hâve laboured hard 
 to eliminate ail belief in the abidingness of evil — evil being too 
 little real for him at ail times for this thin and shadowy thing 
 to be likely, in his opinion, to last throughout ail time» We will 
 not, then, folio w in the wake of such men» But if we walk, 
 instead, in the footsteps of definite and sensitive Theists we 
 shall find that the doctrine of Abiding Conséquences can, at the 
 least, not be treated lightly — the possibility of its substantial 
 truth will persistently demand a serious, pensive considération» 
 
 It is true that by any and every acceptance of this doctrine, 
 we allow that God 's will or God's power does not, or cannot. 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY UELL t 221 
 
 effect, within the realm of human soûls, its own cntire triumph 
 — a triumph which evidently consists in the subjectively free and 
 objectively right self-determination of ail awakened human soûls» 
 And we cannot escape this difïiculty by holding such partial 
 failure to spring directly from any libertarian scheme as 
 such» For St» Augustine teaches admirably that ** it is a great 
 liberty to be able not to sin ; it is the greatest liberty to be 
 unable to sin *' — â doctrine which must be true, unless Grod 
 is not free» Thus we can only say that even the possibility 
 of sin anses, not from the freedom of the will as such, but, 
 on the contrary, from the imperfection of the freedom ; and 
 that there are doubtless reasons, connected with the power 
 of God or with His knowledge (concerning what will, upon the 
 whole, produce a maximum of a certain kind of spiritual happi- 
 ness), why He chose, or permitted, the existing scheme of im- 
 perfect liberty amongst human soûls» After ail, it is not as though 
 man could possess his spécial pathos, power, patience and peace 
 without this, his actual, imperfection of liberty : thèse things, 
 assuredly, ail stand and fall together» And thus we can boldly 
 afifirm that man would, indeed, be a higher créature were Hell 
 impossible for him ; he would be something further, but he 
 would also, throughout, be something différent — man would 
 no more be man» 
 
 And as to the essentials of Hell, I like to remember what a 
 cultivated, experienced Roman Catholic cleric insisted upon to 
 me, namely, the importance of the distinction between the 
 essence of the doctrine of Hell and the various images and inter- 
 prétations given to this essence : that the essence lies assuredly, 
 above ail, in the unendingness» Hence even the most terrible 
 of the descriptions in Dante*s Inferno could be held literally, 
 and yet, if the sufferings there described were considered eventu- 
 ally to cease altogether, Hell would thereby be denied in its 
 very root» And contrariwise, a man might be at a loss to find 
 any really appropriate définitions, or more than popular images, 
 for the sufferings of Hell ; he might even fail to reach a clear 
 belief in more than an unending, though not necessarily very 
 active, disharmony and unappeased longing in the Lost ; and 
 yet he would still be holding the essence of the faith in Hell» 
 
 And as regards Hell in view of men*s ignorances, errors, 
 
 X 
 
322 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN ^ 
 
 déniais in matters of religion, there is a quatemity of most certain 
 
 facts and prindples which we ought never to forge t. Men are 
 
 as genuinely responsible, they can as really sin gravely and can 
 
 as truly end with Hell, by their deliberate thinkings as by their 
 
 deliberate feelings, willings, or visible acts, The deepest of ail 
 
 sins are precisely sins of thought, self-idolisation and arrogant 
 
 revolt against the truth as perceived by the soûl in its depths. 
 
 Men can, however, in countless degrees and ways, be excusably 
 
 ignorant, or invincibly prejudiced, concerning various facts of 
 
 religion and certain laws of the spiritual life ; this, however, 
 
 far more easily and more permanently with respect to the 
 
 historical facts and the contingent institutions, such even as 
 
 Jésus Christ and the Catholic Church, than with regard to the 
 
 metaphysical, non-contingent fact and présence of God, It is 
 
 well known that the Roman Catholic Church itself is clearly 
 
 on the side of such breadth as regards Christ and the Church, 
 
 and appears strict only as concerns God» Men can, however, be 
 
 without any gift or training for the correct analysis or theory 
 
 of their own actual deepest convictions, even as to their faith in 
 
 God* Hence it matters not so much what a man thinks he thinks, 
 
 as what he thinks in actual reality. And men, especially men of 
 
 this very numerous unanalytic, untheoretic kind, can claim much 
 
 patience in such times of transition seemingly in everything, 
 
 as hâve been the last hundred and fifty years in our Western 
 
 Europe» Such persons are greatly overimpressed as to the range 
 
 and depth of our real discoveries and final révolutions, and are 
 
 thus bewildered as to the ultimate facts and laws of the spiritual 
 
 life, facts and law which persist substantially as they were» 
 
 Certain great New Testament texts appear conjointly to 
 cover ail thèse four contentions* To men in gênerai, and on ail 
 subjects. Christ déclares that ** out of the heart proceed evil 
 thoughts,** alongside of acts as heinous as murders, adulteries, 
 blasphemies ; and again that ** every idle word that men shall 
 speak ** — ^assuredly, then, also every idle though^at that men shall 
 think — ^they shall give account thereof at the Judgment (St* 
 Matt» XV» 19 ; idu 36), To the (doubtless many) men who are not 
 aware that they are actually serving Christ in their heroic service 
 of their suffering fellow-creaturcs, to men, then, who presumably 
 do not at ail know the historic Jésus or who do not perceive Him 
 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HELL ^ 223 
 
 to bc thc Christ, Christ thc King says at thc Judgmcnt " Corne, 
 yc bicssed of my Fathcr, inherit thc Kingdom preparcd for you 
 from the foundation of the world* Inasmuch as ye hâve done 
 thèse things unto thc Icast of thèse my brethren, ye hâve done 
 it unto me ** (St. Matt. xxv, 34-40). As to the govemors, priests, 
 soldiers, who hâve actually crucified Him, Christ prays upon His 
 cross, ** Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ** 
 (St. Luke xmu 34). And as to the sceptical, superstitious and 
 restlessly curious men of letters — men so vague and doubtful 
 as to the nature of God Himself, as to hâve erected an altar 
 inscribed ** To the Unknown God ** — St. Paul déclares : ** Whom 
 ye ignorantly worship, Him déclare I unto you ** (Acts xvii* 23). 
 
 And as to Heaven. A good and simple, yet somewhat dry 
 and conventional Roman Catholic priest, a worker for many 
 years among soûls, told me one day, in a South of England 
 town, of the sudden révélation of heights and depths of holiness 
 that had just enveloped and enlarged his head and heart. He 
 had been called, a few nights before, to a small pot-house in 
 the outskirts of this largely fashionable town. And there, in a 
 dreary little garret, lay, stricken down with sudden double 
 pneumonia, an Irish young woman, twenty-eight years of âge, 
 doomed to die within an hour or two. A large fringe covered her 
 forehead, and ail the other externals were those of an average 
 barmaid who had, at a public bar, served half-tipsy, coarsely- 
 joking men, for some ten years or more. And she was still full 
 of physical energy — of the physical craving for physical existence. 
 Yet, as soon as she began to pour out her last and gênerai con- 
 fession, my informant felt, so he told me, a lively impulse to 
 anse and to cast himself on the ground before her. For there, 
 in her intention, lay one of the simple, strong, sweet saints of 
 God at his feet. She told how deeply she desired to become as 
 pure as possible for this grand grâce, this glorious privilège, 
 so full of peace, of now abandoning her still young, vividly 
 pulsing life, of pladng it utterly within the hands of the God, 
 of thc Christ whom she loved so much, and who loved her so 
 much more ; that this great gift, she humbly felt, would bring 
 the grâce of its full acceptance with it, and might help her to aid, 
 with God and Christ, the soûls she loved so truly, thc soûls He 
 loved so far more deeply than ever she herself could love them. 
 
 X* 
 
224 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HEAVEN < 
 
 And she died soon after in a perfect rapture of joy — m a joy 
 overflowing, utterly sweetening ail the mighty bitter floods of 
 hcr pain» Now that is SupernaturaL 
 
 A young friend, now bravely at Red Cross work in France, 
 told me how, in her little, then sleepy English country town, 
 a retired elderly sergeant, who had fought through the Boer 
 War, and who was now a quite average working man, told her 
 the folio wing expérience of his own* He was riding in the Trans- 
 vaal, during that strenuous campaign, with a small troop of 
 cavalry along a road between two British posts, A Boer post 
 in ambush fired upon the troop — ^he himself was hit and slid off 
 his horse ; the rest effected their escape to the near-by post, 
 whence they would bring him help» Ail galloped off thus, except 
 a quite young lieutenant of ancient lineage, luxurious nurture, 
 and, doubtless, largely inarticulate intelligence and conviction — 
 an Eton lad, corne straight out to the War» The lieutenant 
 sprang from his horse, clasped the wounded man in his arms, 
 and, as the Boers renewed their fire, shielded the sergeant with 
 his body» The volley took its effect on the young man ; a great 
 gush of his blood streamed over his elderly charge» The sergeant 
 saw that his rescuer was dying» ** Oh, how sad,*' he said, ** that 
 you, just starting on a brilHant long life, should die thus for and 
 instead of me — ^an elderly man of no spécial outlook or import- 
 ance ! ** The lieutenant tumed a beaming countenance upon him : 
 ** Sad i What could be better ! ** he exclaimed, and fell back 
 dead. Thatf again, is supernaturaL 
 
 And in both cases, the first with the explicit religious référence, 
 the second with no such (at least spoken) explication — in every 
 at ail similar case — ^the roots, justifications and implications, 
 at ail adéquate to such acts and dispositions, are the Etemity, 
 Reality, Sociality, and Self-giving Love which, original and fully 
 active in God, are shared in a measure by man, when thus super- 
 naturally touched and supernaturally responsive — a little hère 
 below already ; more completely and securely, indeed for ever, 
 in Heaven» 
 
III 
 
 PAPERS ON THE CHURCH AND 
 CATHOLICISM 
 
8 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF CATHOLICISME 
 
 It would be possible to treat this subject in one of three ways : 
 I. Historically, as to where, when, how and why the term and 
 idea of Catholicism arose, grew, was lived, and opposed. 2* Con- 
 troversially or negatively, by examining the chief forms of real 
 or supposed anti-Catholicism» 3. By exhibiting the obvious 
 characteristics of some one religious body now extant, or a sub- 
 stance common to more than one body» But there are objections 
 to ail three ways — ^the first would be too long, the second would 
 obscure the positive character of Catholicism, the last would be 
 too exclusive. 
 
 I propose, instead of any such one unbroken way and advance, 
 to make various plunges, from différent starting-points and sides, 
 more or less in médias res, and down to the roots and foundations 
 of the Catholic conviction ; and yet to make thèse plunges ail 
 converge towards the eluddation of one complex of characteristics 
 ever présent in ail fuller spiritual and religious life. I thus hope 
 vividïy to indicate, by the aid of such facts and expériences, the 
 characteristics rightly termed Catholic which are implied and 
 required by ail such fuller life, and to make us grasp and feel 
 the essential conditions, the dangers, the necessity, and the 
 greatness of such Catholicism. 
 
 Thèse plunges shall be three, and shall each deal with some 
 récent book or discussion : i. The Origin and Essence of 
 Catholicism, Gôttingen, 191 1, by the Lutheran, Rudolf Sohm, 
 a German lay canonist. 2. The Letters of Mgr. Luigi Puecher 
 Passavalli, an Italian ecclesiastic of strong anti-Curialist views, 
 published in Milan in 191 1. 3. Articles in La Semaine Sociale de 
 Bordeaux— 2L French lay philosopheras studies (Paris, 1909-10). 
 
 1 An Addrcss to a Gathcring of Young Mcn at Liddon Housc, London, in May, 
 1913. Rephnted from the Liddon Home Occasional Paper for July, 1913. 
 
 227 
 
228 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Professer Sohm*s Dissertation — the detailed historical correct- 
 ness or incorrectness of which does not concern us hère — ^raises 
 a deeply interesting question, and meets it in a strikingly simple 
 and noble manner» He insists upon how great a mystery the 
 appearance of a full-blown Catholic Church, already in the middle 
 of the second Christian century, remains for the outlook of those 
 scholars — still the ail but totality of the German Protestant 
 workers — who will make this conception and fact, of a single 
 Universal Church, to resuit from the amalgamation of countless 
 local Churches, previously independent of each other in theory 
 and in practice, or from the usurpation by some one Church 
 amongst thèse local Churches over against its fellow-Churches. 
 And Sohm accounts for the apparent strange suddenness of this 
 huge fait accompli, by maintaining that, from the first, *' where 
 * two or three * were assembled in the Spirit of Christ, there was, 
 in the religious sensé, the Church — ^always the same Church, 
 the same Christendom, Ecclesia, life of humanity through Christ 
 with God» The community of Christians in its local grouping 
 is nothing as a local complex (Grosse), for as a local complex 
 it is religiously worthless» This community is ail that it is, only 
 as the expression, the visible appearance, of an œcumenical 
 community, of the religious complex (Grosse) of universal (as 
 Ignatius has it, of * Catholic *) Christendom ♦ This community is 
 Church, Catholic Church, not Congrégation ♦ . ♦ ♦ Hence, even 
 in one and the same place, there can exist many Churches, For 
 the smallest assembly of Christians is religiously équivalent to 
 the greatest/* Thus the whole was previous to the parts, or 
 from the first was operative within the parts, and constituted 
 them ; it was not subséquent to the parts, and a mère sum-total 
 of them, 
 
 There was indeed, accôrding to Sohm, a change — z profound 
 change, indeed détérioration, but not as regards the Catholicism, 
 the unity and universality of the Church, The change was, 
 simply, from one universal, grace-impelled, purely voluntary 
 body, to one universal, legalist, compulsory body, 
 
 Whatever may be objected against this view, it brings out 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 229 
 
 admirably, I think, what it is that attracts, and what it is that 
 repels, the deeper religious modem mind, in the gênerai doctrines 
 and habits offered to it, under the one term ** Catholicisme" 
 
 And yet there is one all-pervading constituent in Sohm's 
 position which is, indeed, most intelligible, as a reaction against 
 great contrary dangers, excesses and abuses, yet which, neverthe- 
 less, militâtes against certain essential characteristics of a full and 
 balanced Catholidsm, — characteristics, at bottom, as necessary 
 to it, and as attractive to the deeper religious modem mind, as 
 are the unity and universality so finely apprehended by him^ 
 Everywhere we can trace in Sohm's mind the opération of the 
 antinomy : spirit of liberty, of religion, of Christ, then (in pre- 
 cisely the same proportion) no légal forms or concepts, however 
 intermittent and rudimentary; or légal forms and concepts, 
 then (precisely so far) no spirit of liberty, of religion, of Christ» 
 ** It is impossible,** he says, ** that the Church, in the religious 
 sensé, can form a unity otherwise than by means of Grod, of 
 faith, of the Spirit ; that is, the Church cannot form a unity 
 otherwise than religiously, It cannot be, at the same time, a 
 légal, that is a corporative, unity/* 
 
 The Invisible Church thus excludes the Visible Church ; and 
 the Visible Church excludes the Invisible Church. The very 
 essence of Roman, i,e., of false Catholicism, consists, according 
 to Sohm, in the sheer identification of the Invisible with the 
 Visible Church; and the essence of Lutheran, ix*, of true 
 Catholicism, consists, again according to Sohm, in the mutual 
 cxclusiveness of the Invisible and the Visible Church» 
 
 Yet Sohm himself has to make many damaging admissions, as 
 that ** in primitive Christianity generally no distinction was made 
 between Christendom and the People of God, the Ecclesia, 
 présent only for the eye of faith ** ; and again, ** akeady long 
 before Luther the idea existed of an invisible Church of the 
 predestined ** (pp* 12 and 24)» 
 
 Surely already this much suggests that Primitive Christians 
 instinctively assumed some ordinary, indeed necessary, inter- 
 connection between the Invisible as a whole and the Visible as 
 a whole, and that the reason why Sohm has to come so low down 
 as Luther to find the first complète, formai and fundamental, 
 mutual exclusion of each by the other, is that, in this matter, there 
 
230 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 cxists no such radical antagonism bctwccn Primitive Christianity 
 and early Catholic, indeed Mediaeval Christianity, as Sohm tries 
 to find» Undoubtedly, as he himself indicates, certain Curialist 
 theologians of the Renaissance and Reformation times, e*g^, 
 Cardinal Torquemada, did attempt to elaborate and to impose 
 a System of sheer identification of the Visible and the Invisible 
 Church ; and this is in contradiction with Primitive Christianity^ 
 But so is Luther *s insistence upon the mutual exclusion obtaining 
 between the Visible and the Invisible Church ♦ 
 
 Nothing indeed is more certain than that Roman Catholicism 
 rcmains to this hour, even in its strictest officiai définitions, hostile 
 to, and assuredly incompatible with, such a sheer identifica- 
 tion of the Visible and the Invisible Church ♦ What otherwise 
 is, e*g., the meaning of the doctrine of Invincible Ignorance, 
 or of the fallibility of ail excommunications, or the still most 
 orthodox principle : ** there are many members of the Visible 
 Church who are not members of the Invisible Church, and there 
 are many members of the Invisible Church who are not members 
 of the Visible Church ** ^ Two principles and no more underlie, 
 I think, ail the Roman définitions in this matter : 
 
 !♦ The Invisible, as a whole, is related to, is awakened by, 
 and can and should (and does) variously permeate, the Visible as 
 a whole — ^not only in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, 
 or of Christianity generally, but, in their respective lesser degrees 
 and other ways, also in the case of Judaism, and of the other 
 religions ♦ And 
 
 2* So little is the Invisible as a whole unrelated to the Visible 
 as a whole, that the full and balanced, the typical growth in 
 religious depth and fruitfulness is not a growth away from the 
 stimulations, occasions, concomitants, vehicles and expressions 
 of sensé, and away from the frank admission of their opération, 
 but, contrariwise, is a growth by means of, and into, an ever 
 richer and wider sensible material, and into an ever wiser and 
 more articulate placing, understanding and spiritualising of such 
 means, Certainly Christianity is irreducibly incarnational ; and 
 this its Incarnationalism is akeady half misunderstood, or half 
 suppressed, if it is taken to mean only a spirituality which, already 
 fully possessed by soûls outside of, and prior to, ail sensé stimu- 
 lations and visible vehicles and forms, is then simply cxpressed 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 331 
 
 and handed on in such purely spiritual ways. No : some such 
 stimulations, vehicles and forms are (upon the whole and in the 
 long run) as truly required fuUy to awaken the religious life as 
 they are to express it and to transmit it, when already fuUy 
 awakened^ Such celebrated cases as the deaf-mute-blind girls, 
 Laura Bridgeman and Rose Kellerman, indicate, plainly enough, 
 that man's soûl, whilst united to the body, re mains, in the first 
 instance, unawake even to God and to itself, until the psychic life 
 is aroused by sensé stimulation, by the effective impact of the 
 sensible and visible upon man's mind and souL 
 
 But indeed — ^in spite of George Fox and many another noble 
 would-be Pure Interiorist — a simply invisible Church and 
 Religion does not exist amongst men» Fox and his friends are 
 steeped in images and convictions that hâve grown up amongst, 
 that hâve been handed down by, concrète, historical men, and 
 concrète, historical institutions and cultual acts» The ** Uni versai 
 Reason,*^ '* the Word,'' ^* the Inner Light,'' '* the Universal 
 Brotherhood,** ** the Bread of Life,*' are ail based upon 
 some two thousand years of Jewish and Christian Church 
 expérience, articulated in part by centuries of Greek philosophical 
 thought. 
 
 What remains true is that the Invisible is the central — is 
 the heart of religion ; that the Visible can be so taken as to choke 
 the Invisible ; that there are, amongst those who see too ex- 
 clusively the Visible, fanatics who would déclare the Invisible 
 to be coterminous and identical with the Visible, just as, amongst 
 those who too exclusively apprehend the Invisible and the in- 
 tolerableness of the foregoing abuse, there are enthusiasts so 
 little aware of the history and implications of their convictions 
 and of the constitution of our common human nature, as to seek 
 an impossible and unchristian (because unincarnative and un- 
 historical) simplification — an Invisible achieved outside of ail 
 contact with the Visible, 
 
 Fortunately, however, both Curialist and Quaker find them- 
 selves in a world, and are actually moved and determined by 
 expériences and conceptions, much richer than the formai explicit 
 theory or analysis of either party apprehends or fathoms ; and 
 they are thus prevented, both from without and from within, 
 from making too large, ùe., too disastrous, an experiment of that 
 
232 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 which, in their formulated positions, is excessive and exclusive — 
 hence, not Catholic, 
 
 II 
 
 The Capuchin Archbishop Passavalli is, as we find him in 
 his letters, stronger in spiritual insight than in philosophical 
 analysis and theory, or than in balance and completeness of 
 outlook ♦ Thus his rejection of the définitions of the Vatican 
 Council concerning Infallibility and the universal direct Magis- 
 terium of the Pope, as incapable of reasonable supplementation 
 or interprétation; his apparent inability to perceive the per- 
 manent greatness and fruitfulness of some voluntary self-com- 
 mitment to life-long continence on the part of the clergy; 
 above ail his later acceptance of a doctrine of successive earthly 
 lives for human soûls, surely indicate, in increasing degrees, a 
 certain lack of balance and cohérence ♦ Nevertheless, three 
 interconnected chief difficulties, dangers, abuses, that dog the 
 steps of every largely institutional religion within the range of 
 religion itself, are most vividly revealed in this striking corre- 
 spondence; and any argument in favour of Catholicism (if 
 conceived and rightly conceived, as, of necessity, including a 
 similar institutionalism) will hâve to meet the objections involved 
 in such révélations» 
 
 Monsignor Passavalli *s first expérience and conviction, then, 
 concerns the profound attachment of Churchmen, especially 
 of the Roman Curia, to temporal power, temporal riches, 
 temporal prestige as such, and the irreconcilably unchristian, 
 anti-Christian character of such attachment* He thirsts for the 
 Church*s ** detachment from temporal possessions, and from 
 ail affairs extraneous to the Apostolic ministry — z, detachment 
 which, to my mind,** he adds, ** ought to be inexorable and 
 abiding/* He laments that ** the expérience that I hâve acquired, 
 during many years, of the personnel of the Pontifical Curia has 
 produced in me an unconquerable conviction that never, never, 
 to the very end of the world, will they consent to renounce 
 Temporal Power — they will utilise every means (at one time 
 public at another secret, at one time more violent at another 
 less so) to repossess themselves of that Power at any and every 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 233 
 
 price/* And he speaks of ** this anti-national and anti-Christian 
 influence/' 
 
 The Archbishop's second conviction regards the large place 
 actually assigned by Providence to the layman in the Church, 
 — ^how God can and does use laymen to awaken priests as 
 well as laymen to the Christian, the twice-born temper, and to 
 the need of a continuai rénovation of their own soûls and of 
 alertness to the work of God — ^to the seekings after Him in the 
 great world outside. And also this conviction is pierced by sad 
 expérience — of how there is no recognised position or action 
 of such a directly spiritiial kind left to the layman in the Roman 
 Church of to-day. 
 
 And thirdly Monsignor Passavalli has the keen sensc of how it 
 is the Church 's duty to welcome any and every religious light 
 and grâce manifesting itself outside of her visible bounds ; and 
 yet how prédominant has been, and is, amongst ecclesiastics, 
 the contrary spirit — sl spirit of suspidous, angry, oppressive 
 monopoly» 
 
 Now the three difficulties and abuses, thus insisted on, are 
 very real, very widespread, very deep. Yet it will be suffident 
 for our purpose if I briefly point out that they ail three are 
 so little the resuit of a well-understood and genuine Catholi- 
 dsm, as to be, in reality, direct contradictions of it and to 
 become impossible in proportion to the prevalence of such a 
 Catholidsm, 
 
 For Catholidsm is essentially a twice-born temper, a moving 
 indeed into the visible and sublunar ; yet this, in order to raise 
 this visible and sublunar to the invisible and transcendent, in 
 order that, by such work and contact, Catholicism may itself 
 awaken (more and more fully) to its own twice-born character, 
 and in order again to move back and away from ail the finite 
 and temporal, to God the Infinité and EtemaL Thus, in pro- 
 portion as the soûl is truly Catholic, it will turn away with disgust 
 from what, when taken as simply the final and full end, ever 
 dégrades and kills the souL 
 
 Catholicism, again, is essentially organic — ^the social body it 
 aims at building up is constituted by the several groups of men, 
 down indeed to the individual soûls; and to thèse groups and 
 individuals it gives their spécial, characteristic functions and 
 
 Y 
 
234 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 délicate, irreplaceable interactions, Only such a conception, as 
 it is magnificently pictured by St, Paul, is truly Catholic, A 
 monopoly of ail influence — a. monopoly also of consultation, 
 préparation, application — ^by the Clergy is as uncatholic as is 
 every attempt to hâve no Clergy, no officiai heads, administrators, 
 teachers and formulators, and no hierarchical subordination. 
 In both cases we get impoverishment ; whereas Catholicism 
 is essentially balance, inclusiveness, richness. 
 
 And finally, Catholicism, in its deepest affinities and in its 
 widest self-commitments, has always held and persistently holds 
 the doctrine of stages of religious light, life and love, and of 
 Christ in the Church as appealing to, and answered by, God in 
 the World, The solemn, and utterly final, inclusion of the entire 
 Jewish Old Testament in the Catholic Canon of Scripture, the 
 large utilisation and incorporation of Greek Platonic philosophy 
 in the Fourth Grospel, in the works of Justin Martyr and Clément 
 of Alexandria, on to even larger absorptions of Proclus by the 
 Pseudo-Areopagite and of Aristotle by Aquinas, — the very 
 accusation of Paganising so frequently brought against the 
 Officiai Church, ail prove this récognition of stages, or at least 
 they ail tend in this direction, At this point no more is required 
 than that the fuU implications of this conduct, and above ail 
 that the generosity involved in the deepest and most délicate 
 Christian spirit, should persistently be realised and instinctively 
 be applied, 
 
 It is, however, easy and common to seek after an insufficient 
 and uncatholic escape from this third grievance, We most of 
 us appear still haunted by the, surely artificial, alternative which 
 has so largely, more or less from the first, predominated amongst 
 orthodox theologians : that ** God 's grâce and truth are given 
 either within (and by means of) the Roman Catholic, or within 
 some other Christian Church, or within ail the Christian 
 Churches ; or such grâce and truth is given entirely outside of, 
 quite unconnected with, any and every organisation, history, 
 cuit, directly by God Himself,** Yet nothing, on the contrary, 
 is more obvious, at least to historically trained minds now, than 
 that actual life cries aloud for the doctrine of Cardinal Juan de 
 Lugo — ^thc Spanish Jesuit who taught theology in Rome from 
 1621 to 1641, who teaches in his de Fide, that the members of 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 235 
 
 thc various Christian bodies or sects, of the Jewish and Moham- 
 medan communities, and of the heathen philosophical schools 
 (he is thinking especially of the Graeco-Roman ones), who achieve 
 their salvation, do so, as a rule, simply by the action of the grâce 
 of God which aids their good faith instinctively to concentrate 
 itself upon^ and to practise, those éléments in the worship and 
 teaching of their respective sect, communion, school which are 
 true and good and originally revealed by God» 
 
 This principle is distinctly more Catholic than is the other 
 view which would make the salvation of such soûls something 
 entirely extraneous to such institutionalism as may environ them ; 
 indeed this principle is profoundly Catholic, is alone fuUy 
 Catholic. For we thus admit indeed some light and life and love, 
 some helps and heroisms, everywhere and at ail times, whilst we 
 equally insist upon endless diversities and degrees and stages 
 of illumination, awakening, and love» And, above ail, we insist 
 that outside the Roman Catholic Church, or even outside any 
 other Christian Body, indeed beyond the pale of Christianity 
 and Judaism altogether, man, as a gênerai rule, is still saved 
 (in so far as he is saved at ail) never indeed by his own, or by 
 other men's efforts and labours alone, yet also not by an abso- 
 lutely naked and utterly separate action upon his individual 
 mind and will by God alone ; that he is saved, hère also, by God 
 working with and in and through the sensés of this souFs body, 
 the powers of this souFs mind and will, and the varyingly rich 
 or poor history, society, institutions which (during centuries 
 or millenniums before this soûles existence and throughout our 
 most various humankind now around it) hâve experienced, 
 articulated, and transmitted, and are at this moment more or 
 less mediating, the touch, the light, the food of God» Thus only 
 do we get a fully Catholic, because an organic, an incarnational 
 conception, not only of the Catholic Church or even of Christi- 
 anity, but, in their various seekings and stages, of every sort of 
 religion, indeed of ail spiritual life at alL 
 
236 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 III 
 
 The French philosopher, whose articles were collected to- 
 gether under the title of Catholicisme Social et le Monophorisme, 
 insists upon, and carefuUy develops, the doctrine of Su Augustine, 
 the least naturalistic of the Fathers, in his great exclamation : 
 ** fedsti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec re- 
 quiescat in Te/^ And this development ftilly reveals the pro- 
 foundly Catholic, alone Catholic, doctrine that ** the state of 
 * pure nature * might, without doubt, hâve existed, but that, in 
 fact, it does not exist, and that, in fact, it never has existed/* And 
 he concludes — I slightly modify the grouping and range of his 
 nomenclature — ** In the récent controversies we hâve, only toc 
 often, thought that only two alternatives are extant : on the 
 one hand, the Immanentism so justly condemned by the Church, 
 which makes the entire religious and Christian development 
 to spring from below and from the obscure depths of the human 
 conscience ; and on the other hand a doctrine which, from 
 horror of that Immanentism, perceives nought except the gift 
 from without, the révélation formulated from above, — ^authority 
 addressing itself to a pure receptivity and a passive obédience/' 
 Ncvertheless ** the thesis according to which ail, in Christi- 
 anity, comes from without, extrinsecus, from afference, is no less 
 inexact than the thesis according to which ail comes from within, 
 from efference. Thèse false or incomplète doctrines — of simple 
 afference or of simple efference — ^we might call two kinds of 
 monophorism ; and to such monophorisms we must oppose and 
 prefer the doctrine of the double contribution — ^afference and 
 efference/' Thus everywhere, within human soûls, is there an 
 unrest — a demand, which, at deepest, are of grâce and divine, 
 and which are met and satisfied by grâces, révélations from 
 without, — a. supply» Thus the Jew, indeed the Moslem, the 
 Brahmin, the Buddhist, even the Agnostic and the sincère 
 Atheist, are being secretly solicited by grâce within themselves 
 to love and to practise whatsoever is good and true within their 
 présent community or position, and, in various degrees, to wel- 
 come, and to move on into, the fuUer light and self-discovery 
 offercd to them from the greater fullness outside of themselves 
 in the world of other soûls and of other institutions. 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 237 
 
 And yet, even thus^ we hâve not yet articulated, still less, 
 resolved, the final twin difficulty of religion, which is thus put 
 by Professer Troeltsch in his Gesammeîte Schriften, Vol. IL, 
 1913. ** The difficulty ** (concerning the relations between 
 religion, especially Christianity, and the other complexes of 
 life), ** lies in this, that the this-world ends of our life bear the 
 strict character of moral ends — of ends claiming to be sought 
 for their own sakes, up to the sacrifice of our natural happiness 
 — but that they lie within this world and dépend upon certain 
 historical complexes which spring from the physical and psychical 
 nature of man and which dominate his earthly horizon. In face 
 of thèse ends, the super-world end signifies an entirely différent 
 orientatation and a jealous tension against the compétition of 
 those this-world ends» This state of things has obtained since 
 a Christian Ethic began to make some kind of home for itself 
 in this visible world, and it is this state of things which called 
 forth the heavy crises of^ancient Christendom. The revolt of 
 Montanism and the répugnance to science are the clearest 
 symptoms of those crises. Later on, a compromise was formed, 
 which persisted till the arising of the free modem national 
 civilisations. But since then there has arisen the modem culture, 
 partly under the influence of the classical world, now liberated 
 from ecclesiastical tutelage, partly out of spécial and original 
 struggles. The spécifie character of this culture consists precisely 
 in maintaining, alongside of the religious end, the this-world 
 ends, and in recognising thèse latter ends as ends in themselves. 
 And just in this combination consist the richness, the breadth 
 and the freedom, but also the painful interior tensions and the 
 difficult problems of this civilisation. Poli tics, Sociology, Sexual 
 Ethics, Technology, Science, Art, .^thetics : they ail go their 
 own way, and construct independently their own ideals from 
 out of their own several conditions of existence and their own 
 historical developments. The Christian Ethic finds thèse several 
 disciplines ail fully extant as independent ends, each with its 
 own logic and autonomous action upon real life, and as objects 
 of so many spécifie sciences ; and it possesses, with regard to 
 them, at most the means of accommodation and of régulation, 
 but not of a construction proceeding independently from itself.** 
 " It is simply impossible to treat thèse ends and their pursuit as 
 
238 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 mère natural forms of existence ♦ As we hâve to recognise, in 
 Christian Ethics^ the rule of an objective other-world religions 
 end, so also must we recognise frankly and fully, in thèse ends 
 of civilisation, this-world moral ends of a strictly objective 
 character/' 
 
 Let us note hère, three things, and with them conclude our 
 entire study» 
 
 There can, to-day less than ever, be any question of abandon- 
 ing this magnificent sensé of the Transcendent and Infinité, 
 and of the Immanent and Redemptive Light, Life, Love, God ; 
 of levelling down to sheer naturalism — ^that dreary impossibility, 
 or even simply to the once-born stage of religion» We must 
 hâve the Real God, and we must hâve the Real Christ, the Real 
 Church» We require, then, not Agnosticism, not non-religious 
 Ethic, not even Unitarianism, not Quakerism» We must hâve 
 Catholicism, God in man, and man conscious of sin and sorrow ; 
 nature in grâce, and grâce in nature ; the Infinité and Spaceless 
 in Time and Space ; spirit in the body — ^the body, the stimulator 
 and spring-board, the material and training ground, of spirit ♦ 
 And whatever may be the obscurities, complications, difficulties 
 of the enterprise, we simply must persist in it — ^we must strive 
 to awaken and utilise every stage and range of genuine life, with 
 its spécial characteristics, in its right place and degree, for the 
 calling into fuU action of ail the rest» But such an insistent, 
 pertinacious organic trend is Catholicism, 
 
 And next, this Catholicism, with a most délicate, difficult 
 alertness and selflessness, will hâve to be truly incarnational — 
 that is, it will hâve to recognise, respect, love, and protect con- 
 tinually, not only the less full and less articulate stages of grâce, 
 in the other religions and in ail they possess of what is true, 
 but it will hâve to recognise, respect, love and protect also the 
 non-religious levels and complexes of life, as also coming from 
 God, as occasions, materials, stimulations, necessary for us men 
 towards the development of our complète humanity, and especi- 
 ally also of our religion. There must at no time be any question 
 of eliminating or weakening the transcendental, other-world, 
 God-ward, recollective movement ; it, on the contrary, will 
 hâve, as keenly and penetratingly as ever, to be the great sheet- 
 anchor of our soûls and the great root of the self-identity of the 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 239 
 
 Catholic religion and of its world-conquering peace» We shall 
 only, in our other movement — ^in the out-going, the world-ward, 
 the incamational movement, hâve, far more keenly than men 
 were able to realise in the past, to be attentive, active, observant, 
 hospitable, there also — ^not merely with the sensé of doing good, 
 or with the wish directly to find or to introduce religious facts 
 and catégories, but especially with the conviction that thèse 
 various stages and ranges, each and ail, corne from God, possess 
 their own immanent laws and conditions of existence and growth, 
 and deserve our love and service in this their nature and develop- 
 ment, We shall feel sure that they will, in the long run, benefit 
 (often in the most unexpected but most real ways) régions of 
 Hfe apparently far apart from them, and especially will aid 
 religion, the deepest life of alL And in so doing we shall be 
 Catholic, that is rich — more rich, in the world-ward movement, 
 than men could be in the past : what a gain for mankind and for 
 Catholicism ! 
 
 And lastly, our Catholicism will, owing to this its greater 
 awakeness, this its increased delicacy and sensitiveness of interior 
 organisation and incarnationalism, acquire a great increase in 
 the probing character of the Cross, of purification, of tension, 
 contradiction, suspense, — since thèse will now be found more 
 fully also in precisely what it loves most — ^in the évidences and 
 symmetry of theology, and in the ready and assured application 
 of religion itself ♦ For not only has the religious man now, in 
 one of his two necessary movements of soûl, to be, and to keep 
 himself, awake to ranges and complexes of life and reality domin- 
 ated by laws and affinities other than those obtaining in religion» 
 But, if he is not a Pietist but a Catholic, he will hâve to continue 
 to utilise, to appeal to, strictly to require, history, philosophy, 
 sociology, art for religion itself : yet he will hâve, in appealing 
 to them, and in so far as he thus appeals, to abide, not by the 
 tests of religion, still less by any impatience of his own, but 
 simply by the proofs spécial to thèse several complexes of reality 
 and knowledge. 
 
 Let us vividly realise that, although Catholicism has held and 
 taught a considérable number of religious truths as so many 
 factual happenings, yet that it has ever so taught them — ^thus, 
 as factual happenings, — ^not on the ground of intuition but of 
 
240 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 historical évidence — Le., it has, for its historical élément, always 
 appealed to historical documents. And indeed an abiding nucleus 
 of factual happenings is essential to Catholicism, as Christian, 
 as incarnationaL But CathoHcism — ^its essence which we are 
 hère studying — ^is directly bound up only with the persistent 
 existence of some such nucleus, and with the persistent openness 
 of the historical appeal and the real cogency of the historical 
 proofs ; whereas Catholicism in its essence is only indirectly, 
 only conditionally, bound up with the factual character of ail 
 and every truth long held to be not only a spiritual truth but 
 also a factual happening. And though the great central figure — 
 Our Lord, and the main outlines of Plis life and teaching, death 
 and apparitions — ^require, for the integrity of Catholicism, to be 
 not only spiritual truths but factual happenings, it does not 
 follow that the same is necessarily the case with every truth and 
 doctrine concerning Him. Certainly the Descent into Hell is 
 now conceived, by ail educated Christians, in spite of their 
 continuous acceptance of its truth and importance, — ^it stands 
 in the Apostles' Creed, — ^not in the directly, simply factual way 
 in which it was understood in early times. As I take the relations 
 between the Visible and the Invisible Church, so also do I take 
 the relations between the Factual and the Doctrinal to be neither 
 relations of sheer co-extension nor, still less, relations of even 
 possible sheer antagonism or sheer mutual exclusion. On the 
 contrary : some, a very real, an operative, relation exists between 
 the Visible and the divisible Church, and between the Factual 
 and the Doarinal. And indeed we know that actual life persists 
 in furnishing us with the basis for such a double conviction ; — 
 that is, we know that some amount of Visible Organisation and 
 of Factual Happening remains, and persists in connection with 
 Invisible Reality in both cases, beyond reasonable challenge to 
 this hour. Above ail, we know that God exists and that He will 
 continue to operate within those other complexes — ^history, 
 philosophy, art, as well as within the deepest of ail complexes, 
 religion. 
 
 It is God we believe in, it is God we trust. Without His 
 reality, and without faith in His reality, the world around us and 
 within us is confusion and dismay. But God is — ^the all-per- 
 vading sustainer, the initiator of ail light and life and love. And 
 
OF CATHOLICISM 241 
 
 Catholicism apprehends, lives^ and loves Him thus — ^universal, 
 but in différent stages and degrees ; simple, but in overflowing 
 richness; and the Suprême Reality, but self-limited and divinely 
 respectful of the liberty given by Himself even when and where 
 such liberty is used against Him» God slowly levels upwards, 
 and Catholicism afïirms, loves, encourages thèse various levels 
 and their slow purification and élévation by and towards God, 
 their one origin and universal home» 
 
242 THE CONVICTIONS COMMON TO 
 
 9 
 
 THE 
 
 CONVICTIONS COMMON TO CATHOLICISM 
 
 AND PROTESTANTISME 
 
 It is an honour for a convinced Roman Catholic student to 
 be asked to speak in the company of highly distinguished Pro- 
 testant scholars, concerning the positions and implications of 
 the Catholic doctrines^ when thèse doctrines are confronted with 
 those of the Protestant outlook» I propose, first, to indicate the 
 chief difficulties of my task, the range and method I propose 
 to give to it, and certain points which I shall assume throughout* 
 I will next describe the convictions common in the past to 
 Catholicism and Protestantisme And I will conclude with the 
 points which I believe to be in process of acceptance for the 
 future» 
 
 The difficulties of my task, even were a long volume 
 allotted to it, are many and profound, for it is notorious that 
 Protestantism, as such, has always been fissiparous — a spirit or 
 principle or doctrine prolific, among other things, of divisions 
 down almost to so many individual minds» Hence it is well- 
 nigh impossible, for either Protestant or Catholic, to reach a 
 définition or délimitation of Protestantism acceptable to ail 
 Protestants ; and, indeed, for one*s own mind, the diversities 
 even among the larger and more permanent groupings and cur- 
 rents that claim the title raise perplexing questions as to what 
 varieties, to the right or to the left, still belong to Protestantism» 
 
 * An Article written by invitation for the thcn approaching fourth ccntenary of 
 the Protestant Reformation» Reprinted from the Homiletic Review of New York, 
 September, 1917. 
 
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 243 
 
 I take the great successive variations of Protestantism to be 
 four» The first stage, daring and inexperienced, yet deeply 
 instructive, is chiefly represented by Luther during his first 
 three years of protest (1517-20) ; but it is better to extend 
 it beyond the Anabaptist catastrophe of Munster (1534, 1535) 
 to the religious peace of Augsburg (1555), indeed to about 1560 
 — ^the deaths of Melanchthon and Calvin, and the approbation 
 of the Jesuits» The second stage yields a century and a half of 
 mostly conservative consolidation, during which large parts of the 
 practice and convictions of the old Church are bit by bit resumed; 
 but generally with only a heightened denunciation of Rome, and 
 certainly with little consciousness of the provenance of thèse 
 resumptions» The third stage covers the eighteenth century, 
 with its levelling down and emptying out of the religious con- 
 viction and life. And the fourth, last period, still in progress, 
 approximately begins with Kant, continues as the Romantic 
 movement and the Idealist philosophy, and (in spite of the pro- 
 foundly Naturalistic reaction in the Europe of the middle of 
 the last century) represents, upon the whole increasingly, a deep- 
 lying historic and eirenic sensé — a. struggle after a due compré- 
 hension of man's entire past, and of the positions of each man's 
 présent adversaries* Hère I shall take practically only the first 
 stage and the last. 
 
 As to the simultaneous diversities, we hâve to décide whether 
 ail, or which, are to be included in our conception of Pro- 
 testantism* It is obvious that the great organised bodies of 
 Lutheranism and Calvinism, the latter including Zwinglianism, 
 for m the staple of Protestantism. Again, roughly one-half of 
 Anglicanism is, historically. Protestant, indeed Calvinist. But 
 are the Anabaptists Protestants $* And, still more, are the 
 Socinians such $* If the essence of Protestantism consist in 
 protestation, the Socinians will be more thorough Protestants 
 than any High-church Lutheran or Anglican can ever possibly 
 be. Even the purely Immanentist conception of religion, which 
 empties it of every non-human objective content, appeals, 
 through such able représentatives as Dr. Paul Natorp, to 
 sayings of Luther and to one whole side of the Protestant 
 movement, as proving its right to figure as the residuary legatee 
 of Protestantism. 
 
244 THE CONVICTIONS COMMON TO 
 
 I believc it will be more équitable and more fruitful to measurc 
 Protestantism not simply, or even primarily, by the range of its 
 protests or négations, but to accept, as largely operative, thc 
 obviously sincère intention of Luther, and of Calvin, and even 
 of Zwingli, to abide by the Christian Church and creeds of the 
 first five centuries. We thus eliminate the Immanentist movc- 
 ment as a whole, and we take the Socinian movement as primarily 
 an emphasising and development, not of Protestantism, but of 
 the colder and more purely intellectual éléments of the Renais- 
 sance current. And the Anabaptist movement, and various 
 other sects and groups not belonging to one of the great church 
 organisations, we shall take as largely Protestant, although, in 
 considérable part, they are a continuation or revival of late 
 mediaeval movements. 
 
 On the side of the Roman Catholic Church we need hardly 
 attend to the simultaneous variations, since thèse, whatever their 
 depth and range, are always held (where the appurtenance to 
 the Church is seriously recognised) as diversities well within one 
 great common life and training-school ; but the chief successive 
 developments, which it can variously claim or admit as its own, 
 require undoubtedly to be borne in mind. I take them to bc 
 eight. 
 
 The first period, of the New Testament and the Apostolic 
 Fathers, reaches to about a»d. i6o ; the second, of the apologists, 
 Fathers, and great councils, to about a»d* 500 ; and the third 
 period, the welter of the Teutonic migrations, ends the Old 
 World with the coronation of Charlemagne in a.d. 8oo. 
 
 The fourth period, in action to about a»d. 1240, in spéculation 
 largely up to 1274, indeed up to 1300 — ^the Middle Ages at 
 their best — achieves a differentiation, and yet a connexion and 
 equilibrium, between the State and the Church, reason and faith, 
 liberty and authority, this world and the next. And the fifth 
 period, up to about a.d* 1500, dissolves the mediaeval synthesis 
 by the apparently overwhelming triumph of the claims to direct 
 universal, spiritual-temporal sovereignty of various of thèse later 
 popes, and the ominously rapid development of an opposition 
 even to the abidingly central, spiritual truth and rights of the 
 Church, Thèse two centuries achieve the divorce, in many 
 Christian minds, between reason and faith, State and Church, 
 
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 245 
 
 liberty and authority, Occam, the English Franciscan, is prob- 
 ably the most typical représentative of this universal disintegra- 
 tion, philosophical scepticism, and sheer volitional religion» 
 
 The sixth period inaugurâtes the modem era, from the 
 révolution of Protestantism up to the eighteenth century, and 
 is dominated by the Council of Trent — a period less rich, 
 generous, and spontaneous than the early Middle Ages, yet 
 which nobly eliminated, once for ail, the danger of Roman 
 Catholic enslavement to the Occamist conception* The seventh 
 period, the eighteenth century, is, for Roman Catholicism as 
 well as for Protestantism, largely a time of stagnation and décline ; 
 while the eighth period, in which we still live, shows a remark- 
 able renaissance of Catholic principles also among the finest 
 Protestant minds, often where thèse minds still consider them- 
 selves irreconcilably anti-Roman» 
 
 Of thèse eight periods I will bear in mind especially the first, 
 the New Testament period ; the fourth and fifth — the great early 
 and the décadent late Middle Ages ; and the eighth, our own 
 storm-tossed âge* 
 
 I will assume four points throughout what foUows» First, 
 the Reformation was (largely for its leaders, and still more 
 largely for their immédiate recruits) a révolution. We may think 
 the movement to hâve been inévitable ; but a révolution, and 
 not simply a reform, it most undoubtedly was. And if it really 
 was a just and wise and generous révolution it was indeed a 
 white raven^ — a most rare exception among such upheavals. 
 Secondly, within the limits indicated above, Protestantism was 
 a religious, a Christian movement* The great Bénédictines of 
 the Congrégation of St* Maur, the chief founders of modem 
 historical science, always called Protestants ** our separated 
 brethren ** ; I will treat them hère as such* Thirdly, Protes- 
 tantism (at least incidentally, in the long run, and conjointly 
 with other forces) brought considérable and very necessary 
 libération from certain downright abuses, excesses, or one- 
 sidednesses in the latter Middle-Age practice and outlook, 
 especially in two directions* The magnificent efforts of the Popes 
 during the earlier Middle Ages, for the liberty of the Church, 
 as the organism for the abiding life, in face of the State, as 
 the organisation for the temporal life, were succeeded by 
 
246 THE CONVICTIONS COMMON TO 
 
 the policies of an Innocent IV» and Boniface VIII.^ which 
 largely ignored, or directly subordinated, the really différent 
 rights spécifie to the State. The flagrant abuses of the ** pro- 
 visions/' the oppressions of the Inquisition^ the sometimes 
 nobly used but always mixedly operative deposing power, and 
 similar complications, appeared to many minds as ineradicable 
 except by a full breach with the papal power. And in science 
 and scholarship, turned chiefly earthward by the Renaissance, 
 a wider patience and welcome for things new and strange, 
 than was often accorded by those churchmen who remained 
 definitely reiligious, had become necessary, unless the non- 
 religious side of life was to be gravely crippled, and religion 
 itself was, indirectly, to lose much of its vigour and appeaL But 
 fourthly, nothing of ail this décides whether Protestantism itself 
 brings us a truly adéquate conception and practice of thèse 
 difficult matters ; and, still less, whether Protestantism itself 
 constitutes a truly deeper religion, or has succeeded in capturing 
 for itself the richness and resourcefulness of the old faith» 
 Certainly the Lutheran and Anglican gênerai réduction of the 
 Church to a mère department of the State is a sorry dereliction 
 of an essential attribute of developed religion ; while Protestant 
 bibliolatry has actually much hampered, first, geology and, later, 
 Biblical criticism* And as to the depth and delicacy, wisdom 
 and passion, of religion itself, there assuredly still or again 
 exist not a few religiously ripe Protestants, who instinctively 
 perceive how large is the store of thèse dearest of treasures, of 
 a quite spécifie, unique, quality, which remain, still uncaptured, 
 in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 II 
 
 I take the points common in the past to CathoHcism and 
 Protestantism (taken within the limits fixed above) to be six. 
 
 First, the essential Givenness of Religion. This characteristic 
 was perceived, even one-sidedly, by the Early Great Protestant 
 Leaders, especially by Luther and Calvin. Religion is hère felt 
 intensely as the work of God and as the witness of His présence 
 and spirit. Secondly, this givenness appears in the Society of 
 
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 247 
 
 Believers, or at least of the predestined — ^the particular soûl is 
 awakened within, or into, or by, this pre-existing society» The 
 mystical, indeed the subconscious, élément is thus apprehended 
 hère, and gives fundamental significance to infant baptism, and 
 to its tenacious rétention by Luther and Calvin» Thirdly, there 
 is the keen sensé of the Historical, concrète, contingent, unique 
 Character of the Jewish-Christian Révélation» This is especially 
 marked in Luther's even excessive insistence upon the necessity 
 of knowledge of the historié Christ, and in Calvin *s emphasis 
 on the covenant character of religion» 
 
 The Protestant Non-Conformists in part contribute the follow- 
 ing three, largely contrary, common points» (i) Religion is a 
 Work of Man^ — a deliberate, lifelong, methodical renunciation 
 and self-discipline» It is thus not only a gift and a faith, but also 
 an effort and a labour» This is doubtless the deepest meaning 
 of the insistence upon adult baptism» The fully conscious, 
 deliberately ascetical élément of Christianity, its detachment 
 from the world, appears hère with force and véhémence, even 
 though mostly without any sensé of afiînity to the Catholic, 
 monastic celibate idéal, and, indeed, mostly with an angry 
 préjudice against this form of asceticism» (2) Man even in his 
 présent earthly condition can, through God*s grâce, attain in this 
 work on himself to a Real, not an imputed, Sanctity, and can so 
 attain as a spécial manifestation of God*s power (which thus 
 achieves more than any covering up of sinfulness) and of God*s 
 truthfulness (Who cannot consider the soûl holy which still 
 harbours aught that is unholy)» Of the early Protestant sects 
 only the varieties and individuals of a pre-Reformation spiritual 
 descent appear to hâve held views of this kind ; but later on 
 thèse positions were systematically developed, even alongside 
 of other doctrines of an intensely Puritan and anti-Roman kind, 
 by the Society of Friends, and, less picturesquely, but hère 
 associated with teachings of a more or less Catholic kind, by 
 John Wesley and a considérable proportion of his followers» 
 And (3) the Church is Free ; the Visible Society of Believers is 
 distinct from, and independent of, the State» Luther soon ceased 
 to perceive this point ; Calvin aimed at it to the end, but largely 
 indirectly ; Anglicans did not widely apprehend it until the 
 times of King Charles I. But the Protestant Non-Conformist 
 
248 THE CONVICTIONS COMMON TO 
 
 Bodies, especially the Anabaptists and Baptists, and the Inde- 
 pendents (Congregationalists), hâve nobly and costingly held 
 this essential conviction from the first, though mostly with an 
 ever keener antagonism to ail Episcopal, and especially Papal, 
 Church Government, as but a still more oppressive intrusion 
 of (at bottom) State power within the domain of the religious 
 conscience. 
 
 Thus we hâve three points common to the Church-type of 
 Protestantism and Catholicism as world-seeking, as the religious 
 Society which mingles with and moulds the non-religious 
 associations of human life, and practises the maximum of that 
 attachment which ail religious soûls must practise a little ; and 
 three points common to the Sect-type and the same Catholicism 
 as world-fleeing, as a school of solitude, wherein single heroic 
 soûls learn to practise a maximum of that detachment which 
 ail religious soûls must practise a little. 
 
 III 
 
 Now the unchecked effect in the direction of an approxi- 
 mation to Catholicism, which is certainly involved in the above 
 six Catholic positions at work in Protestantism, will be attained 
 only by the full and widespread acceptance of certain further 
 common points, which are now assuredly in process of récogni- 
 tion, largely newly among Protestants and in part afresh or more 
 consciously among Catholics. 
 
 First, Luther *s own later account (1530 onward) of his own 
 earlier monastic expériences and of the teachings and spirit of 
 the religious orders and officiai church of his Protestant days 
 (1505-17) is predominantly a legend* Denifle's Luther und 
 Lutherthum (1904-9), in spite of its unpleasing polemical 
 véhémence and of its weak imputations of conscious untruthful- 
 ness, has undqubtedly proved this up to the hilt. But if so, even 
 so largely fair-minded an account as Dr. T. M. Lindsay's 
 History of the Reformation (1907) still falls short of the 
 fullness of the facts. For Lindsay still folio ws Luther *s own 
 later account of his own earlier self, and thus retains the figure 
 of the early Luther who then probed the depths of Jewish 
 
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 249 
 
 legalism and popish, monastic self-righteousness, and whose 
 sensitively Christian soûl then ended its self-torture only when 
 it discovered, entirely alone, the meaning of '* the justice of 
 God ** as proclaimed by Su PauL And Lindsay still only praises 
 the domestic, popular religion and hymns of the mediaeval 
 Church, as part sources of Luther*s discoveries as to the absolute 
 need of grâce and the prevenience of grâce, and as to the measure 
 of Christian perfection consisting simply in the love of God and 
 the love of man» Against ail this, the traditional Protestant 
 présentation, Denifle gives countless quotations from letters by, 
 and descriptions of, Luther during his convent days ; from the 
 rules and office-books of the Augustinian Eremites of Luther*s 
 time and monastery, and from some sixty prominent doctors of 
 the Church from about a*d, 370 to 1474 and on to Luther as 
 officiai Augustinian lecturer himself, which demonstrate the 
 contrary on each count» No, and again no ; thèse last mediaeval 
 times were not bereft of deeply spiritual and Christian officiai 
 teaching in church and convent, and justice now requires that 
 we ail frankly admit this simple fact, which, after ail, need not 
 break the heart of anyone* 
 
 Secondly, it is strange and pathetic, to any modem Biblical 
 scholar, to note Luther's unawareness of the contrast between 
 the Synoptic Gospels and Su PauL Even his Liberty of a Christian 
 Man (1520), deservedly held to be the mellowest of his Protes- 
 tant writings, quotes St. Paul as against the three Synoptists 
 in a proportion of (roughly) ten to one ; and even thèse few 
 Synoptic quotations do not touch the points raised by the severe 
 antithesis between faith and works so dear to St* Paul, in his 
 systematic polemical mood — ^an antithesis so little présent in the 
 Synoptists* Luther thus forgets (and only thus can forget) how 
 Jésus first advises the rich young man to keep ail the Command- 
 ments, and then, assured that they had been kept, recommends 
 the youth, if he would be perfect, to go and sell ail things and 
 follow Jésus — ^that he will thus hâve treasure in Heaven* Hère 
 are Luther *s three bugbears ail together : good works, works 
 of supererogation, merit and reward — ^three détestable, specifi- 
 cally Jewish notions, yet somehow notions prominent in the 
 actual words of Jésus ♦ And so, again, Luther can forget, and does 
 forget, the movement characteristic of our Lord in appointing 
 
250 THE CONVICTIONS COMMON TO 
 
 the apostles» It is Our Lord Himself, the One, who hère 
 picks out certain twelve, and appoints one of them the head. 
 It is to thèse twelve, and not to any and every Christian, that 
 He says : ** He that heareth you heareth me, and he that 
 despiseth you despiseth me/' The universal priesthood of ail 
 believers is doubtless, in some sensé, true» But in the Synoptics 
 Our Lord confers certain intrinsic powers only upon a few ; 
 the fruits, but not the roots, are to be shared by alL And, 
 finally, the act of conversion appears in the Synoptics as an 
 active turning on the part of the soûl, as is the case throughout 
 the great Hebrew prophets* The true translation is not ** Unless 
 ye be converted,*' but ** Unless ye turn/* Of course, ail such 
 human activity appears as anticipated, rendered possible, and 
 sustained by God's action. But the one action does not exclude 
 the other ; and Luther has hère also still further emphasised 
 a point in St. Paul which assuredly requires no such heightening. 
 Thirdly, we know well how great and permanent was the 
 debt of Luther to Occam. Now Occam is profoundly atomistic 
 in his conception of Human Society, the State, and the Church 
 — ^these complexes are ail for him simply sum-totals of the self- 
 contained individuals who compose them. And, again, he is 
 profoundly agnostic in his theory of knowledge ; only by a leap 
 of despair of the will, not with any activity of the intelligence, 
 does man attain to faith, even as to the existence, the unity, and 
 the moral character of God. The Commandments of God, which 
 the greatest of the prophets and rabbis, which again Aquinas 
 had magnificently propounded as expressions of Gcd*s own 
 unalterable nature, hâve hère become purely arbitrary enact- 
 ments. Any well-informed Roman Catholic is thus bound to 
 hâve some patience with the persistence of such philosophical 
 préjudices among most of the Reformers, since such views were 
 largely difîused in the Church during the Catholic youth of 
 thèse Protestant Reformers. But the views hère indicated are 
 not the views of the Middle Ages at their best ; and this, the 
 Golden Middle Age, was practically unknown, not only to Luther 
 and Calvin, but even to Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Such 
 great Protestant scholars as the Germans von Gierke and Troeltsch, 
 and the Englishmen F. W. Maitland and A. L. Smith, hâve, 
 of récent years, worked hard and well to awaken men to the 
 
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 251 
 
 grandeur of those earlier views, and doubtless their labours will 
 increasingly prevaiL 
 
 Fourthly, the psychology of Luther, and indeed more or less 
 of the whole specifically Protestant position, is explicable only 
 as the work of men who were attempting to strengthen religion, 
 and who nevertheless were, at the same time, struggling to 
 escape from some of its abiding needs and laws, on account of 
 certain complications and abuses which had grown around thèse 
 needs and laws» Thus the point specially dear to Luther and 
 his followers, that the act and life of faith hâve nothing to do, 
 in their génération, with the sensés, although, once faith is 
 awakened, there is no harm in expressing this pure spirituality 
 in symbols of sensé, is, objectively, a doctrinaire one-sidedness, 
 I kiss my child not only because I love it ; I kiss it also in order 
 to love iU A religious picture not only expresses my awakened 
 faith ; it is a help to my faith 's awakening» And the whole 
 doctrine of the Incarnation, of any and every condescension of 
 God toward man — ^man so essentially body as well as mind — ^is 
 against any such ** pure ** spirituality» Great as doubtless has 
 been the Synagogue, yet the Temple services were not for 
 nothing ; and, great as Judaism with the Synagogue has been, 
 Judaism with both Synagogue and Temple would hâve been 
 more complète» And it is not magie, but a sheer fact traccable 
 throughout our many-sided life, that we often grow, mentally 
 and spiritually, almost solely by the stimulation of our sensés or 
 almost solely by the activity of other minds» Magic begins only 
 when and where things physical are taken to effect spiritual 
 results apart altogether from minds transmitting or receiving^ 
 It is doubtless the fear of priestly power and its intrusion into 
 politics which has determined (from, say, Wyclif, until now) 
 this quite unphilosophical ** magie ** scare among so many 
 Protestants» 
 
 And, fifthly, there is a side of Luther, and of not a few among 
 the various Protestant bodies, which distinctly overemphasises 
 the simply formai side of the moral and spiritual life» Sincerity, 
 conscientiousness, fidelity to our light, the not forcing of others 
 beyond what they can see, and the not pretending ourselves to 
 see more or other than we can succeed in seeing : ail thèse are, 
 doubtless, good and necessary things» Yet not ail thèse things put 
 
252 THE CONVICTIONS COMMON TO 
 
 together reach to the central religious work and problems. We 
 hâve not only to remain faithful towards our own extant standards, 
 but we hâve to grow adéquate concerning that abundant, many- 
 sided, rich life of nature, of other minds, and of other spirits, 
 which lies ail around us and invites us continually, not only to 
 learn new facts, but to leam new worlds, indeed to acquire new 
 methods for apprehending, and new Systems for ordering them» 
 And both the Stoics and Kant are hère hopelessly insuffident^ 
 We ail greatly require criticism, stimulation, reproof, of our most 
 intimate and cherished convictions ; and it is our reciprocal 
 duty, with tact and restraint, to try to serve our fellows similarly, 
 Hegel, perhaps most probingly among ail Protestant philosophers, 
 has exposed in gênerai this impoverishing formalism of Kant 
 ** the Philosopher of Protestantisme' But I believe the true 
 scheme, as concems religion, to hâve been best developed by 
 Cardinal Juan de Lugo, the Spanish Jesuit, who wrote in Rome 
 under the eyes of Pope Urban VIIL, at the end of the seventeenth 
 century» De Lugo first lays down that, according to Catholic 
 doctrine, God gives light, sufficient for its salvation, to every 
 soûl that attains to the use of reason in this life» He next asks, 
 What is the ordinary method by which God offers and renders 
 possible this salvation i And he answers that, though God 
 doubtless can work moral miracles, thèse do not appear to be 
 the rule, and are not in strictness necessary; that the human 
 soûl, in ail times and places, has a certain natural affinity for, 
 and need of, truth ; and again, that the various philosophical 
 schools and religious bodies throughout mankind ail contain 
 and hand down, amid various degrees of human error and dis- 
 tortion, some truth, some gleams and éléments of divine truth» 
 Now what happens as a rule is simply this : the soûl that in 
 good faith seeks God, His truth and love, concentrâtes its 
 attention, under the influence of grâce, upon thèse éléments 
 of truth, be they many or few, which are offered to it in the sacred 
 books and religious schools and assemblies of the Church, Sect, 
 or Philosophy in which it has been brought up» It feeds upon 
 thèse éléments, the others are simply passed by ; and divine 
 grâce, under cover of thèse éléments, feeds 'and saves this souL 
 I submit that this view admirably combines a sensé of man*s 
 profound need of tradition, institution, training, with full 
 
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 253 
 
 justice to the importance of the dispositions and acts of the 
 individual soûl, and, above ail, with a keen sensé of the need of 
 spécial grâces offered by God to the several soûls* And such a 
 view in no way levels down or damps the missionary ardour, 
 Buddhism does not become equal to Mohammedanism, nor 
 Mohammedanism to Judaism, nor Platonism to Christianity, 
 nor Socinianism, or even Lutheranism, to Catholicism» It 
 merely claims that everywhere there is some truth ; that this 
 truth cornes originally from God ; and that this truth, great 
 or little, is usually mediated to the soûl, neither by a spiritual 
 miracle nor by the sheer efforts of individuals, but by traditions, 
 schools and churches, We thus attain an outlook, generous, rich, 
 elastic ; yet also graduated, positive, unitary, and truly Catholic, 
 
254 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 10 
 
 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE CHURCH, ITS NATURE AND NECESSITY^ 
 
 When, as a child and lad, I was taken, for our summer holiday 
 and bathing, from Brussels to Ostend, I used to be impressed^ 
 ever more as the years went by, with how, the nearer we came 
 to the sea and to its sait landward breezes, the more did the 
 trees bend away from thèse blasts» Thèse trees stood there per- 
 manently fixed in every kind of unnatural, fleeing or défiant, 
 attitude and angle, Only after I had passed thèse perturbing 
 effects and tolls of the sea, would I reach, and would I for weeks 
 and weeks admire, this same wide sea, now found to be in itself 
 so life-giving and so hospitable — a part of the great océan encom- 
 passing the world, Those trees and that sea hâve remained with 
 me, for over half a century, as a vivid image of the effect of the 
 Church — ^be it the fact of the Church, or the fancies concerning 
 the Church — ^upon large masses of modem men. In the foUow- 
 ing address I propose to follow the same order as that of my 
 childish expériences, I will first describe the positions frequently 
 attempted, though mostly in combinations of two or three, by 
 those who fear the Church or the Churches, and who thus strive 
 to find or to create operative substitutes for thèse despised or 
 dreaded bodies, I will next try to define the chief causes which 
 (apart from individual peculiarities or obvious perversities) are 
 more or less at work in ail such substitutions, I will, thirdly, 
 indicate the still larger évidences for the abiding need, the strict 
 irreplaceableness of the Church, notwithstanding ail that de 
 facto opposition, indeed even notwithstanding the understand- 
 ableness, the partial justification, of that opposition. And I will 
 
 * An Address delivered in London to the Executive Committec of the British 
 branches of the Christian Student Movement, October, 1918, 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 255 
 
 end with certain rules which I believe readily to spring from the 
 situation as we hâve found it to exist by our first three investiga- 
 tions» Hère I will only add two warnings* For one thing, I am 
 addressing throughout only definite believers in a Personal God 
 and a persistent Providence, and again only those who deliber- 
 ately recognise in the Person, Teaching and Spirit of the earthly 
 Jésus and the Heavenly Christ the suprême révélation of that 
 Personal God and of man's ways to Him. And, for a second thing, 
 I beg my hearers to be patient for a little with the ambiguity 
 involved in the apparently synonymous or alternative use of 
 the terms ** Church ** and ** Churches/' I believe that the 
 sheer facts and necessary implications of the three first sets of 
 arguments will clear up this complexity, gradually indeed but 
 very surely, for and at the end» 
 
 If we take the substitutes offered to mankind for a Church in 
 the order of their increasing extension and subtlety, we shall 
 move through the foUowing five positions» (In actual life the 
 substitutes generally consist more or less of mixtures effected 
 between some two or three of thèse five theoretically possible 
 pure positions») 
 
 There is first the substitution which will doubtless always 
 commend itself to the half-educated man : the Individual» 
 Religion, where such a man is at ail religiously alive, is most 
 rightly felt to be the deepest of man 's expériences» But if so, 
 what more natural, what more unanswerable conclusion can be 
 drawn from this, readily argues this same man, than that religion, 
 the deepest expérience, is also of necessity the most private, 
 the most entirely private, hence again the most incommunicable 
 — ^the most individual — ^the most exclusively individual — of ail 
 things ^ Besides, does not everyone know himself best ^ Such 
 a man, did he know Kant, would agrée with Kant when this 
 philosopher warns us that ail attempts to influence or *to mould 
 the opinions of other men in such deepest matters are always 
 only so much harmful interférence and impertinent tyranny» 
 The later Middle Age was already largely penetrated by this 
 
256 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 spiriu Thus the English Franciscan William of Ockham, whom 
 Luther regarded as his ** dear Master/* teaches at times and 
 generally implies that a holy individual soûl can, at need, of 
 itself alone fill the place of the Church» 
 
 Then there is another, a wider outlook, that of the Waldensians 
 and the Quakers ♦ Hère the Family in great part supplants the 
 Church» 
 
 Next we get a position more comprehensive still, yet one, for 
 the most part, harsher than the second — ^the Sect* Montanus 
 and that genius, his fiery follower Tertullian, are good examples 
 of this position» 
 
 And then the substitution widens out, yet also thins down, 
 into that of the German theologian Richard Rothe, who would 
 deliberately oust the Church in favour of the State — doubtless 
 a great simplification, if only it prove possible and fruitfuL 
 
 And finally there is the subtlest of ail the substitutions, one 
 now again very alluring to not a few fine minds — ^that of Philo- 
 sophy» So with the Stoics and Neoplatonists of old ; so with 
 Hume, in so far as he retained any religion at ail ; so with the 
 Hegelians of more or less the left, as now with Dr* Bradley and 
 Professor Bernard Bosanquet in England, and, with little or no 
 religious sensé remaining, in Benedetto Croce in Italy* Most 
 of the folio wers of M* Bergson appear to be in a similar case» 
 Ail thèse philosophical groups hâve some good to say of Religion 
 — even of Institutional Religion ; but a Church is hère essentially 
 a condescension to the multitude, a largely childish symbol and 
 Kindergarten for what Philosophy alone holds and teaches with 
 a virile adequacy» 
 
 The éléments of truth variously présent in thèse five sub- 
 stitutions — of the Individual, the Family, the Sect, the State, 
 Philosophy — ^will appear later on» Our immédiate further task 
 concerns the direct incentives for seeking after substitutes of any 
 kind» 
 
 II 
 
 We shall never reach fairness towards thèse processes of 
 substitution unless we begin with the conviction that it is im- 
 possible (in view of history at large and of the history of thèse 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 257 
 
 substitutions in particular) to put down thèse processes, simply 
 and generally, to the sheer perversity of human nature* Such 
 perversity is, indeed, very certainly more or less at work hère 
 also, yet demonstrably, upon the whole, only as a preparatory, 
 or intensifying cause, This is certain because of two facts 
 which are simply undeniable. No institution in human history 
 has reaped a more enthusiastic dévotion and a more bound- 
 less gratitude than the Church — ^and this for something like a 
 thousand years and amidst large masses first of Graeco-Roman, 
 and then of Teutonic peoples, indeed also amongst the Celts 
 and the Slavs* And again, thèse enthusiastic admirers were, by 
 natural disposition, no better than are their descendants, nor 
 hâve thèse descendants acquired a congénital taint unpossessed 
 by those predecessors, Hence it is logically impossible to quote 
 the past enthusiasm as a sure proof of the Church *s goodness, 
 and, at the same time, to take the later and présent suspicion 
 and hostility as simply évidence of men's badness, Men hâve 
 remained throughout substantially the same, so that, if they 
 weigh much as witnesses when they admire, they cannot weigh 
 nothing as witnesses when they oppose* 
 
 The chief real causes or occasions of such fréquent attempts 
 to évade the Church, or to supersede it by means of this or that 
 substitute, are, I think, four* I take them in the order of their 
 growing pénétration* 
 
 The Church, as a Visible Institution, is, has to be, administered 
 by human beings* And the majority of human beings are but 
 average mortals who inevitably tend to work the Church, to 
 develop the Church, with insufficient balance, in a spirit of acute 
 rivalry or of worldly ambition, or at least in a simpUstef short-cut 
 manner* Yet thus to work or to develop the Church, in its multi- 
 form inévitable relations with the other God-intended activities 
 and God-given institutions of mankind, spells, of necessity, 
 more or less dangerous friction and ominous repression* And 
 indeed such complications can spring in part from Churchmen 
 truly great in other ways* Striking examples of this are the claims 
 of not a few of the Popes of the later Middle Age and of the 
 Renaissance* The Papacy had rendered priceless services to 
 mankind by achieving the autonomy of the Church in face of 
 the State — of the Church as the organ essentially of Supemature, 
 
 2A 
 
258 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 in face of the State as the organism essentially of Nature. And 
 again the Papacy has been from the first, and will doubtless 
 remain to the last, the divinely intended and divinely blessed 
 instrument and incorporation of the Visible Unity of the Church 
 — of the Church, as essentially but one. Yet after that great, 
 abidingly precious victory, a certain obscuration of this per- 
 manent function could not but follow when certain Popes came, 
 in their turn, to forget, at least in practice, the spécifie rights and 
 legitimate autonomy of the State* Another striking instance of 
 a similar oblivion is the Galileo case, where the sensé has not yet 
 sufficiently awakened or is in abeyance that Science also possesses 
 its own spécifie duties, rights and powers. / 
 
 Again, the Church, as a Visible Institution worked and 
 developed, in its average manifestations, largely by distinctly 
 average men, tends to ignore, or at least to grudge and to minimise, 
 the degrees and kinds of truth and goodness always more or less 
 présent in such other religious bodies as may possess a long 
 duration and ethical seriousness. A remarkable example of this 
 is furnished even by such a God-inspired genius as St. Paul, 
 when in his systematising and spéculative mood. For when in 
 that mood the entire Old Testament Cultus can appear, to this 
 véhément convert to the New Révélation, as exclusively a means 
 for bringing home to its devotees a sensé of their sinfulness and 
 of the radical inability of the Jewish Church to bring any strength 
 whatsoevcr to the avoidance of the sins thus discovered. 
 
 Once more, the Church, as a Visible Institution worked and 
 developed by average men, after conquering and winning the 
 world ** not by killing but by dying,*' came, some half a century 
 after its external triumph under Constantine, to killing — ^to 
 allowing, indeed to encouraging and blessing her lay children 
 to kill in their turn, in and for matters of religious belief. The 
 use of force in religion is, indeed, deeply embedded in the Old 
 Testament — King Josiah^s great, profoundly important and 
 very fruitful reform was demonstrably full of it. And many of 
 the Psalms breathe this same spirit, which indeed still appears 
 plainly in parts of our Christian Book of Révélation. 
 
 And finally, the Church as a Visible Institution worked by 
 average men, has shown, ever since the advent of Historical 
 Criticism, little compréhension of, and at times an acute hostility 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 259 
 
 to, disinterestcd scholarship, with its serious investigation and 
 candid enundation of the successive stages, the human occasions 
 and the surface motives traceable in the history of the Bible and 
 of the Church. This average attitude, on the contrary, requires 
 a sheer identity of the successive forms, a strict sameness in even 
 the subsidiary movements of the religious spirit, We thus find 
 the condemnation of Richard Simon in the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and of Bishop Colenso in the Anglican, and of William 
 Robertson Smith and Charles Briggs in the Presbyterian Bodies, 
 Thèse four checks and oppressions, especially where they 
 appear more or less in combination, readily explain a large part 
 of men*s aliénation from Institutional Christianity, even where 
 there is not the still more décisive incentive of a decided 
 Immanentism or even of bad living or of sheer perversity* 
 
 III 
 
 Nevertheless there lies ready for the docile mind the most 
 varied, unforced, largely indirect and unexpected, cumulative 
 and hence very powerful, évidence for the abiding need of the 
 Church. If we are only sufficiently patient to persist in open- 
 ness of mind towards the rich lessons, past and présent, of the 
 spiritual life, we shall find this évidence for the Church to be 
 more extensive, and deeper than are the évidences against it, 
 and indeed to be alone fuUy germane to the issue in question. 
 
 There is, then, first, the presumption furnished by the other 
 levels and ranges of the multiform life of man. Thus Art, we 
 cannot deny, is developed in and through Académies, Schools, 
 Traditions. True, artistic genius is something more and other 
 than is such training or than ail that such training can give of 
 itself. Yet even genius cannot dispense with at least the more 
 indirect forms and efîects of such training, if this genius is to 
 achieve its own full power and efîect. So too with Science. 
 Science assuredly does not grow solely by means of Schools, 
 Traditions, the succession of teachers ; yet it does, upon the 
 whole, require such an environment and discipline. The same 
 holds good of Philosophy, in its own manner and degree. And 
 Ethics, to be rich and robust, requires the Family, the Guild, 
 
 2A* 
 
26o INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the State, not only as the ends of Ethics but also as its disporting 
 ground and means. And similarly with Religion* Such maxims 
 and habits of soûl as ** To be alone with the Alone ** and ** God 
 is a Spirit, and they that would serve Him must serve Him in 
 Spirit and in Truth ** spring from many centuries of social 
 philosophy and social religion, The facts of man*s essentially 
 mixed condition of sensé and spirit, and of his essential sodality 
 will always, in the long run, réfute and supplant, for the masses 
 of men, every purely individualist or purely spiritual religion 
 or attempt at such a religion. But body and society combined 
 spell (if thus admitted on principle as essential factors of religion) 
 nothing less than the Visible Church. 
 
 There is, next, the actual history of Religion itself. Ail the 
 great religious personalities whose antécédents, doings and efîects 
 we can trace at ail securely and at ail fully, sprang from religious 
 institutions, and either deliberately continued the extant institu- 
 tion or founded another institution, or, at the least, very soon 
 influenced history in such an institutional direction* This is 
 the case with Gautama, the Buddha, in the full sensé of the 
 deliberate foundation of an Ordcr and a Church* Still more is it 
 so (as hère springing from a long development of a religious 
 society and a common worship, and as leading on to a great 
 reinforcement of this social, common cultus) with the Jewish 
 Prophets. We can hère follow the interconnexion of the Social 
 and the Individual from Elijah onwards, ever more clearly, 
 to Jeremiah with King Josiah's centralisation of the Hebrew 
 Worship and his organisation of a definite Church ; and then, on 
 again to Ezechiel, duly followed by the elaborate ecclesiasticism 
 of the Priestly Code* So too with St* John the Baptist, who, ail 
 single and original as he appears, has, in reality, a long tradition 
 and a rich social training behind him and around him* And 
 especially is it so with St* Paul and with the great author 
 of the Fourth Gospel* St* Paul deliberately organises the 
 Christian Church, liberated by him from ail subjection to the 
 Jewish Church ; and the Fourth Gospel présupposes throughout 
 this Church character of Christianity* 
 
 Indeed also with Jésus Himself, as He appears in the Synoptic 
 Gospels, we find such a social, institutional religion, if we but 
 vividly bear in mind three very pregnant facts. The expectation 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 261 
 
 of His Proximate Second Corning is a fact^ at least it was a 
 certainty for the first hearers and first recorders of the words of 
 Jésus ; and this fact has to be remembered, not simply as con- 
 cerns this or that subject-matter of the recorded saying and doings 
 of Jésus, but as it concerns them alL There is no sensé in using 
 this fact, as is now not rarely done, in explanation of the small 
 or no place occupied in the sayings of Jésus by the Family, 
 Labour, the State, Art, Philosophy, or rather of His (practically 
 complète) abstraction from thèse great duties, problems, diffi- 
 culties of manifold yet closely inter-connected human life ; 
 and not to allow for the same fact in the question of the sayings 
 of Jésus concerning the Church. Again, if the précise ter m 
 ** Church ** was, apparently, never uttered by the earthly Jésus, 
 the thing itself is, in its essence, already truly présent in the 
 most undeniable of His own words, acts and organisings» For 
 the parables which hâve for background or for centre the family 
 or a kingdom, an owner of a house or a vineyard, or the parables 
 which turn on the qualities of sait and of leaven : they ail imply 
 a social religious organism, a hierarchy of super-ordination and 
 of sub-ordination as well as of co-ordination. And ail this 
 appears as one side of the rich living paradox which, on the 
 other side, bids us one and ail to be but the lowly servants of 
 each other. And the actions of Jésus entirely bear out this social, 
 organic, graduated — ^this Church conception of religion. Thèse 
 acts move, emphatically, not up from the many to the few, and 
 on from the few to the One ; nor, again, do they proceed down 
 as a light of grâce vouchsafed by God, independently of ail other 
 soûls, to each soûl direct, so that the economy of salvation would 
 consist in so many parallel lines of approach, each free from 
 ail contact or crossing by the others. No : the movement hère 
 is down from the One invisible God, through the one visible, 
 audible, tangible Jésus, on to the twelve visible men formed into 
 a single Collège by Jésus Himself, and sent out by Him to preach, 
 to heal, to forgive sins, with solemn warnings as to the guilt 
 of those who may refuse to hear them* And this visible Collège 
 is given a visible Head by the visible Jésus Himself, and Jésus 
 deliberately changes the name of this His chief représentative 
 to the significant appellation '* Rock,*' in return for the récogni- 
 tion, by Simon alone amongst the Twelve Apostles, of Jésus 
 
262 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 as the Messiah, And finally, if the Church exists, in such sayings 
 and doings as were indisputably spoken or enacted by the 
 earthly Jésus Himself, only in fact and in rudiment, this samc 
 Church appears, very certainly, also in name and in ail its 
 csscntial linéaments, well within the New Testament, indeed 
 throughout a full two-thirds of its contents ♦ Thus Su Paul 
 busily organises the Church and yet simultaneously apprehends 
 the Church as the very Body of Christ, and insists solemnly 
 upon the two great central Sacraments, Baptism and the Holy 
 Eucharist» We hâve the Johannine Gospel, penetrated from first 
 to last with the conception of the Beloved Community and 
 with thèse two great Sacraments, hère the subject-matter of 
 two solemn discourses. And indeed thèse Sacraments are hère 
 summed up symbolically in the Water and the Blood which 
 flow from the pierced side of Jésus upon the Cross ; and the 
 Church is similarly symbolised by the Seamless Coat left by 
 Jésus, the new High Priest, to mankind — ^for the reality so 
 adumbrated is to be thus indivisible except by the sins and 
 schisms of mcn, Indeed, the waiting of the Beloved Disciple 
 to let Peter pass into the empty sepulchre before himself, 
 although he, and not Peter, had first reached the entrance, 
 appears to be one more instance of the sensé of order, of the 
 Church and of its invisible Oneness which, indeed, pénétrâtes 
 the entire work. And finally the Synoptic Gospels, in their 
 apparently later constituents, sum up for us majestically thèse 
 developments, Matthew gives us the two great passages — of 
 the Church now solemnly proclaimed by name and to be 
 built upon the Rock, Cephas, Peter ; and of the sublime com- 
 mission of the Risen Christ to the Apostles, sending them out 
 into ail the world and promising to be with them to the end. 
 And Luke gives us the prophecy of Jésus to the disciples that 
 Satan would attempt to sift them as wheat ; but that He, Christ, 
 had prayed — ^not for them ail, but for Simon Peter, him alone, 
 that his faith should never fail, and that he, Simon Peter, after 
 his conversion (not from infidelity but cowardice) was to confirm 
 them. 
 
 Our Lord died upon the Cross in a,d, 30. The two great 
 primitive collections of His sayings and doings, the Gospel 
 according to St, Mark and the Logia, no doubt existed in written 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 263 
 
 form already in the middle sixties. St. Paul's great Epistles cannot 
 be more récent than a.d. 52-59. The Gospels of Matthew and 
 of Luke (minus some later additions) belong probably, the first 
 to A.D. 70-75, and the second to a.d. 78-85. The Fourth Gospel 
 cannot be more récent than A.D. iio, and may well go back as 
 far as a.d. 95. And already in A.D. 93-97 we hâve the First 
 Epistle of St. Clément Bishop of Rome, a prélude to the World- 
 wide claim and influence of Bishop Victor of Rome in the great 
 Paschal controversy of a.d. 190, 191. In view of such facts it is 
 not fantastic if Wernle (Die Synoptische Frage, 1899, p. 192) and 
 Heinrich J. Holtzmann (Die Synoptiker, Ed. 1901) — ^these two 
 highly compétent Protestant specialists — ^hold as possible that 
 Matthew xvi. 17-19, the great '* Thou art Peter *' passage, 
 already expresses the Roman claims (Selbstbewusstsein). In 
 any case, nothing could well be more certain than are the earli- 
 ness, the spiritual need and fruitfulness, and the prompt emphasis, 
 of the developments of the Church and the Sacraments. History 
 never yields mathematical démonstration even as to the brute 
 facts — as to their happenedness ; still less can history, of itself 
 alone, penetrate to the inner meaning of thèse happenednesses ; 
 hence we can, if we will, stiffen and close our minds against ail 
 thèse developments, we can, at least, treat them as artificial 
 accretions. But the moral certainty spécial to history will thcn 
 raise great difficulties against us in view of the earHness of the 
 developments concerned, and Christianity will then be forced 
 to appear as having fraudulently, or at least quite externally, 
 acquired the hands and the feet, the food and the heart with 
 which it worked, moved, sustained itself, loved and struggled 
 against an acutely hostile world and with which it eagerly and 
 increasingly conquered that world during those early décades 
 and the subséquent three centuries of Catacombs. One thing 
 in any case even the simplest logic forbids us to do. We are 
 not free — ^though how often this is done ! — ^we are not free to 
 accept certain formulations of doctrine, which appear clear and 
 defînite only in the middle and later New Testament, as accurate 
 enunciations of the facts and beliefs implicitly présent from the 
 first ; and to évade or to explain away other, parallel develop- 
 ments, becaus^, we do not like their content. " God so loved the 
 world,** this great passage may appeal to us more than ** Thou 
 
264 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 art Peter *' : yet only both, and not one only^ can, for a large 
 and logical outlook, represent the genius of Christianity, com- 
 paratively late as may be both thèse articulations of iu 
 
 And there is finally a third group of proofs for the need of 
 the Church — évidence, largely délicate and difficult to trace in 
 détail, yet very real and impressively spontaneous and convergent» 
 We hère get évidence both of the impoverishment which follows 
 upon conscious rejection of the Social, Institutional élément of 
 religion, and of the unconscious indebtedness of the individualist, 
 to such social and institutional religion, for much of such 
 adequacy as he may retain» And there is, contrariwise, the 
 évidence of the heightened good which springs from deliberate 
 persistent acceptance of the Church as such» Hère we cannot 
 do more than give some spécimens from the very large mass of 
 facts» Thus, as to the impoverishment in the lives of Churchless 
 religionists, we can trace a certain incompleteness in a man*s 
 humility, so long as it consists of humiliation before God alone, 
 and as it claims to dérive ail its religious help without any 
 médiation of the sensés and of society — ^purely spiritually from 
 the Infinité Pure Spirit alone» Complète humility imperatively 
 demands my continuous récognition of my own multiform need 
 of my fellow-creatures, especially of those wiser and better than 
 myself, and of my Hfe-long need of training, discipline, incorpora- 
 tion ; full humility requires filial obédience and dodlity towards 
 men and institutions, as well as fraternal give and take, and 
 paternal authority and superintendence» Ail this, as against 
 the first of the substitutes for the Church, Individualism» The 
 second and fourth substitutes, the Family and the State (when 
 taken thus not in addition to, but in lieu of, the Church), tend, 
 the first, rather to a sentimental moralism, a mutual admiration 
 society ; and the second, to a morality and inchoate religion of 
 a natural, a Golden Rule type, as in the cases of Confucius and 
 of Bentham» The third substitution, that of the Sect, is rather 
 a one-sidedness than a sheer error, and will be considered later 
 on» But the fifth, the last substitution, that of Philosophy, is 
 probably, for men of éducation, the most inflating error amongst 
 ail thèse substitutions» There can be no doubt that where such 
 patronage of the toiling moiling Church folk by ** superior ** 
 philosophical insight does not induce pride and complacency, 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 265 
 
 this can only spring from certain rare qualities in the character 
 concerned. In any case such a soûl lacks the very definite 
 training in the creaturely mind, so richly furnished by Church 
 appartenance» 
 
 But again» The men who practise thèse several substitutions 
 draw such good as is often largely présent within them, for the 
 most part from the work and ejÊfect across the centuries, and 
 from the still persistent influence, however much ignored, of 
 the Church and of the spirit of the Church. Thus the Individualist 
 dérives his fréquent sensé of the sacredness which attaches to 
 each single soûl, not from his Individualism as such, but from 
 the long, slow élaboration by the Christian Community of the 
 value of its several constituent» — ^the various, ail more or less 
 unique and différent, members of the Mystical Body of Christ» 
 The man who substitutes the Family, similarly takes the said 
 Family as it has been slowly, most costingly elaborated by means 
 of religious ideals, espedally now for well-nigh nineteen centuries 
 by Christian ideals* It was the doctrines, the religious facts, of 
 the Holy Trinity, of the Fatherhood of God, of Christ's Mother, 
 of God 's Children, and of the Church as an organism of inter- 
 dependent, mutually supplementary, variously related members : 
 it was thèse spiritual forces which, at their best, ended by pro- 
 dudng something like idéal Families amongst men at large* 
 Again, the man who substitutes the State for the Church very 
 largely finds such sufficient nobility in the State as he may 
 acquire and reveal, through the mirage thrown on to his image 
 of the State by the ages-long and world-wide work of the Church 
 at its noblest. And finally the man who substitutes Philosophy 
 retains or reaches some depth and delicacy of outlook, largely 
 because the tenets or temper of mind thus adopted by him spring 
 from philosophies which are themselves more or less penetrated 
 by genuine religious instincts, such as Platonism, or Stoidsm, 
 or (espedally) Neoplatonism, or which hâve been considerably 
 influenced by the Jewish or Christian Churches, as with 
 Philonism and the outlooks of Leibniz; and Locke, Kant and 
 HegeL The advantages of a direct, deliberate acceptance of, 
 and of a life-long submission to, the Church, will be best 
 indicated in conjunction with the suggestions for the most 
 fruitful working of such acceptance and submission. 
 
266 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 IV 
 
 How then arc we, scholars or scientists, to work or to develop 
 our extant or incipient Churchmanship in the borderlands and 
 mixed territories created for us by the very fact of our earnest 
 scholarship and fervent Churchmanship i What, as we grow to 
 scholarly and to spiritual maturity, is to be our final conception 
 of the nature and function of the Church for and within this our 
 mixed and multilevelled life i Or rather, which are the extant 
 currents of Christian and Catholic thought and work, which are 
 the personalities of the past and présent of the Church, that 
 furnish us with the amplest and most appropriate dispositions 
 and insights for our own further application and development ^ 
 I believe that seven sets of insight and action, of suffering and 
 tempérament are involved and required in the fullest and most 
 fruitful functioning of Churchmanship in thèse difficult and 
 délicate subject-matters, Each of thèse sets of dispositions and 
 actions, even if taken alone, remains more or less an unrealised 
 idéal for each and ail of us single soûls, indeed even for each 
 and ail of the entire religious bodies. But then ** Idéal ** does 
 not mean ** Utopian/' Each of thèse ideals exists largely realised 
 in quite a considérable number of doers and thinkers, strivers 
 and sufferers ; and the inception, or the fostering, or at least 
 the occasion, of ail thèse ideals sprang from, and continues in, 
 this or that religious body or (in différent degrees and ways) 
 within them ail. 
 
 I* The deliberate récognition and the daily acceptance of 
 limitations and sacrifices imposed upon the single sonVs direct 
 individual claims, as inévitable conséquences and costs of this 
 soul's appurtenance to any Community — ^to any Church extant 
 in our earthly life. This, even where the individual claims are 
 not, in themselves, bad or unreasonable ; or, again, where the 
 requirements of the Church officiais or the temper of the Church 
 majority are not, in themselves, wrong or unwise. The greater 
 number of such cases of apparently useless friction or depressing 
 isolation will, indeed, spring from no definite badness or wrong- 
 hcadedness on either side, but simply from the twin facts that 
 we ourselves are rarely free from unreasonable fastidiousnesses 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 267 
 
 or from the unmanly désire to get without cost, and that also 
 our Church superiors, equals and infenors are men and not 
 angels, as indeed human superiors, equals and infenors are in 
 every conceivable earthly community, religious or politicaL 
 The majority of men, as indeed the majority of our own impulses, 
 thoughts and doings, are, upon the whole, very ordinary, un- 
 imaginative, mechanical ; and indeed both thèse our fellow-men 
 and we ourselves can and do mix more or less of positive bad- 
 ness with this our prévalent ordmariness» We undoubtedly 
 possess the right, mdeed, the duty, to do what we can to raise 
 the average level ; we may not commit sin — ^what we clearly 
 know to be wrong or false — let who will command it ; indeed we 
 may be required by our conscience to hold our own quite openly 
 and to speak out frankly. Assuredly not ail the schisms and 
 séparations, past or still présent amongst men, were originally 
 only the fault, or even much the fault, of the seceders, and little 
 or in nowise the fault of the bodies which the seceders left, 
 sometimes more or less unwillingly. Yet it remains true that 
 there can be no Church for us on earth, if we will not or cannot 
 put up with faulty Church officiais and faulty Church members ; 
 and again, that we shall never put up with such faultiness 
 sufficiently unless we possess or acquire so strong a sensé of 
 ail we hâve to gain from Church membership as to counter- 
 balance the repulsiveness of such faults, This our sensé of need 
 has to be thus strong, since the faults of Church people are not 
 simply the same, in kind and degree, as the faults of ecclesi- 
 astically unattached mankind. No : thèse faults are largely 
 sui generis, and would, in great part, disappear with the dis- 
 appearance of the Church. A large illustration of this, our whole 
 first, difficulty and need is furnished by the very careful Life 
 and Letters of John Henry Cardinal Newman by Mr. Wilfrid 
 Ward, 1912. 
 
 2. The deliberate récognition that a Church, worthy of the 
 name, can never itself be a society for the promotion of research, 
 for the quest of an as yet unfound good. A Church cannot exist 
 without certain credal affirmations, with their inévitable de- 
 limitations. It must be a vessel and channel of already extant, 
 positive religious expérience and conviction, with at least a 
 rudimentary psychology and philosophy of its own* It has 
 
268 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 continuously to risk excessive détail and over-precision ; it 
 simply cannot fmd room within itself for any and every négation ♦ 
 The Congregationalist Dr, P* T» Forsyth has brought this out 
 with rare force in his most striking book, Theology in Church 
 and State f 1915» 
 
 3, Discrimination between facts and principles which rightly 
 claim our absolute interior assent, and déductions and détails 
 environing thèse facts and principles which call only for our 
 conditional belief and practical conformity* The absolute assent 
 goes to the great ** Necessary ** Realities of religion and to a 
 nucleus of Contingent Historical Happenings — ^self-revelations 
 and incarnations of those Realities within our earthly human 
 life of time and space» The interprétation of those ** Necessary *' 
 Realities and of the Church *s faith in them undergoes some 
 modification, slowly across the centuries, by the Church's 
 theologians, as thèse theologians are tested and assimilated by 
 the Church authority itself» Hence there exists a certain legiti- 
 mate distinction between, on the one hand, thèse Realities 
 themselves and the faith of the Faithful conceming them, and, 
 on the other hand, the analysis and theory of Theologians con- 
 cerning this faith» There exists indeed a very real relation between 
 Facts, Faith and Theology, but the relation is not one of sheer 
 identity» The Realities themselves change not ; the Faith, the 
 Life in them change not : only our understanding, our articu- 
 lation of the Facts and of the Faith grow and indeed adapt 
 themselves more and more to this abiding Faith and to thèse 
 persistent Facts, yet they do so in and through catégories of 
 thought which more or less vary across the centuries* And again 
 the précise extent possessed by the nucleus of fully Historical 
 Happenednesses essential to the Christian faith is also a subject- 
 matter demanding a certain conditionalness of belief» For the 
 évidence as to this or that historical happenedness has, of neces- 
 sity, to be of an historical, critical, documentary kind» Yet also 
 in this entire range of happenednesses there are two fundamental 
 points which demand our absolute assent : that a certain nucleus 
 of historical happenednesses is absolutely essential for the 
 Christian faith, and that God has seen to it, and will continue 
 to the end of time to see to it, that sufficient historical évidence 
 for such a sufficient nucleus will remain at men^s disposai on 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 269 
 
 and on» Ail genuine religion, especially Christianity, is revela- 
 tional, evidential, factual — ^this also within the range of sensé- 
 and-spirit, and can never become a System of pure ideas or of 
 entirely extra-historical realities» On the other hand, the précise 
 amount, the full list of historical happenednesses cannot, qua 
 so much happenedness, be kept entirely outside ail examination, 
 testing and délimitation by sober and révèrent historical criticism» 
 The ultimate, alone fuUy adéquate, guarantee that the nucleus 
 will persist sufficient for the Church*s faith to the end is thus, 
 in strictness, not the Church but God ; and, more precisely 
 still, not the God of Révélation and Supemature, but the God 
 of Reason and of Right Nature, or rather, God as the Divine, 
 unshakable Foundation both of Révélation and of Reason, and 
 both» The most continuous perception of this now increasingly 
 important point has, I think, been attained by Professor Ernest 
 Troeltsch, in his later books and papers» 
 
 4» Récognition, persistent, frank and full, of éléments of real 
 truth and goodness, as more or less présent and operative within 
 ail the fairly mature and ethical forms and stages of religion 
 throughout history and the world» Thèse éléments indeed ail 
 come from God and are ail intended to lead to God, the One 
 God of ail truth and of ail création» Yet this récognition requires, 
 as its constant companion, an equally definite conviction as to 
 the unequal richness in such éléments as they are furnished even 
 by the greater religions or indeed the world-religions» Buddhism 
 is poorer in such éléments than is Hindooism ; Hindooism is 
 in gênerai considerably less true than Mohammedanism ; 
 Judaism is much more tender, rich and spiritual than Moham- 
 medanism ; and finally Christianity markedly exceeds Judaism 
 in its range, depth and elasticity of religious insight and life* 
 And religion is so truly the deepest and the most délicate level 
 of man's life that any and every, even seemingly slight, différence 
 in such degrees and kinds of truth and goodness is of profound 
 importance» The Scotch Nonconformist Mission ar y in India, 
 Dr» J» N» Farquhar, has admirably applied such balanced justice 
 to an immense mass of detailed facts in his fine Crown of 
 Hindooism, 191 5» 
 
 5» Récognition, as regards Christianity, of a large élément of 
 truth in what can roughly be called the Sect-type, yet also of 
 
 2 B 
 
270 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 a genuine injustice in this same Sect-type in so far as it may be 
 irreconcilably hostile to the Church-type» The Sect-type, like 
 the world-fleeing éléments in Neoplatonism and Buddhism, 
 and like the similar temper in Christian Monasticism, is pro- 
 foundly right in its sensé that Other-worldliness, Detachment 
 and Poverty, in a word the ascetical and transcendental temper, 
 are essential to ail virile religion» Thus such protests as those 
 of Tertullian, of Valdes, and of Kierkegaard are, so far, true» 
 They are true, not only against such immorality or scandalous 
 worldliness as may hâve actually defiled the Church of their 
 day or country ; they remain still more precious, because thus 
 useful for ali times and places, as bitterly tonic warnings against 
 any Church life and Church idéal which does not fuUy embrace 
 and cherish also this négative, ascetical movement, and which 
 would admit This-worldliness, provided only it be sufïiciently 
 refined and sufïiciently moral, as more or less complète, Yet 
 we must, at the same time, recognise the complementary truth 
 that Detachment, that World-flight alone, that ail Universal 
 Monasticism are, or would be, ideals of an erroneousness equal, 
 even though opposite, to the error of sheer This-worldliness. 
 Only the two movements of World-flight and of World-seeking, 
 of the Civilising of Spirituality, and of the Spiritualising of 
 Civilisation : only This world and That world, each stimulating 
 the other, although in différent ways, from différent sources and 
 with différent ends : only thèse two movements together form 
 man's complète supernaturalised spiritual life. But if so, then 
 the Church *s large and leisurely occupation with Art, Philosophy, 
 the State was not and is not, in itself, a corruption, but a normal 
 expansion of one of the two necessary halves of the Church's 
 own complète nature and end. And this again means that the 
 Sect-type in fact represents, at its best, one half of the whole 
 truth, whereas the Church, at its best, represents both halves 
 of the same whole truth — ^this, however, only because and where 
 the Church manages to incorporate within itself the Sect — ^what 
 was the Sect, now sectarian no longer, since no more claiming 
 to be the whole. Hère again, it is Prof essor Troeltsch who has, 
 I think, most persistently traced out this great twin truth along 
 the widest tracts of history. 
 
 6. A sensitively historical, a penetratingly philosophical, above 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 371 
 
 ail a delicately spiritual appréhension conceming the humble- 
 ness of the apparent beginnings, the slow, or intermittent, or 
 bafflingly sudden manifestation of the implications and require- 
 ments of the Jewish and Christian religions ; and a similar appré- 
 hension of the varying, more or less imperfect methods and 
 impatient analyses which so largely accompanied developments 
 essentially faithful to the immanental logic of thèse religions. 
 We shall hâve to become vividly aware, in thèse respects, of three 
 groups of habits, dispositions and acts as having frequently 
 accompanied the teachings and work even of great inspired 
 Saints and heroes, legislators, rulers and writers, in the past — 
 in the Bible as really as in the Church* There is the fréquent 
 pseudonymity of the writings. This was not ** a lie ** ; this, on 
 the contrary, was deeply admired, in Hellenistic times, amongst 
 cultivated men in gênerai. Thus the Neo-Pythagorean school 
 produced an immense pseudonymous literature — writings of 
 *' Homer,** '* Pythagoras,'* '' Plato," etc. Thèse writings not 
 only bore thèse great names from a mighty past, but they were 
 deliberately composed in a form as like as possible to the actual 
 or presumable writings of those far-distant worthies. And yet 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus singles out the authors of such 
 pseudonymous writings for spécial praise precisely because 
 they thus revealed themselves more aware of their actual position 
 of debtors to, and transmitters of, past wisdom, than did the 
 writers of other schools who resorted less to this literary device. 
 Some of the books, or parts of the books, of the Old and even of 
 the New Testament (whilst, in their content, truly parts of the 
 tradition which they claim to represent) were more or less cer- 
 tainly composed, as regards their form, in a similar literary 
 temper of mind. Thus we cannot press the ascription of the 
 actual texts of Deuteronomy or of the Priestly Code to Moses 
 as their writer, nor of the Book of Wisdom to King Solomon. 
 The same appears to hold good of the Epistles of Jude and of the 
 Second Peter. Indeed it has become more and more difficult to 
 accept literally the apparent claim ôf the grand Fourth Gospel 
 itself to be the sheer record of the writer's own ocular and aurai 
 expériences. It is certain that, in ail thèse cases, the gain to the 
 compréhension of the great facts and truths enshrined in thèse 
 writings which results from the récognition of this ancient 
 
 2B* 
 
272 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 literary method is, in the long run, amply worth the cost of thc 
 œmplication thus introduced for us into their vehicles. This 
 applies also, mutatis mutandis, to more or less similar pseudo- 
 nymities traceable in later Christian writings» 
 
 There is next, the throwing back into the past (ever further 
 and further back^ and ever with greater précision as to sup- 
 posed exact times, places, and other particulars) of the religious 
 expériences, analyses, habits, institutions of the présent, as 
 thèse are found or experienced by the writer within himself 
 and around him» And there is the corresponding projection into 
 the future, with a similar minute identification, of facts or 
 théories of the présent» Hence the Dominion Père Lagrange 
 could wcU point out that the detailed instructions to Moses 
 conceming the minutiœ of the Jewish Cultus which we find in 
 the Priestly Code cannot be pressed as so many downright hap- 
 penings ; and so also we cannot press the détails in the equally 
 précise prophecy of Ezekiel concerning the future reoccupa- 
 tion of Palestine by the Twelve Tribes, as so many future sure 
 and sheer happenings, A somewhat similar, though much 
 slighter, overleaping of time and of its work, can be traced in 
 the scènes and discourses of the Fourth Gospel, where the 
 articulations achieved in the Christian Church's expérience of 
 some six décades appear already fully expressed in Our Lord's 
 very words and acts. 
 
 And finally there is Persécution — ^the use of physical force 
 and the spirit of revenge and of unqualified condemnation, We 
 thus get, in the Old Testament, the extermination of entire 
 Canaanitish tribes, and again the exécution of numerous priests 
 of the high places, presented to us as solemnly required by God 
 Himself and as solemnly blessed by Him ; indeed the central 
 step forward achieved in the Jewish religion by the reform of 
 King Josiah is closely bound up with thèse exécutions ♦ As to 
 the spirit of revenge, it pénétrâtes not only many a Psalm but it 
 still colours the New Testament Book of Révélation ♦ And as to 
 utter condemnation, there are sayings in the Fourth Gospel of 
 a stringency which definitely surpasses the tone transmitted to 
 us by the Synoptic Gospels ♦ 
 
 I submit that ail men of éducation will hâve henceforth to 
 leam the dffficult lesson of patience and fairness with regard to 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 273 
 
 ail thèse three points, We will not deny the reality of such facts 
 nor their imperfection, even though wc find them thus in the 
 Bible itself, as part of the means or accompaniments, in those 
 times, of genuine growths in the light from God ; nor will we, 
 when we* find them in the Church, straight away reject as 
 essentially untrue or evil what may indeed be more or less 
 obscured or stained by the same defects, We will, on the 
 contrary, discriminate, both in the Bible and in the Church, be- 
 tween a substance which, at the least, may be good and divinely 
 intended, and the accidents, which are human imperfections 
 divinely permitted, We must courageously admit that even 
 persécution has had its share, very certainly in Old Testament 
 times and apparently even in some Christian times, in con- 
 solidating and purifying, and in giving independence to, the 
 Jewish and Christian Churches, And as to the pseudonyms 
 and the tendency to ignore history, it will be assuredly deeply 
 unfair to persist in two, mutually incompatible, old habits of 
 mind — ^to ignore such pseudonymity and overleaping of history 
 in the Bible and (in so far rightly) to accept there such pseudony- 
 mous Works as ncvertheless most predous spiritual guides and 
 as substantially true and valuable even as historical documents : 
 yet instantly to stamp as *'fraud,** **deceit,** ** tyranny," ** mère 
 Works of men ** such instances, upon the whole lesser instances, 
 of the same two processes as may appcar within the develop- 
 ment of the Christian doctrine, order and discipline, Certainly, 
 the three, closely parallel, developments of the powers and 
 functions of Priest, Bishop, Pope cannot be treated as legitimate 
 or as spurious, merely according to the absence or the présence 
 of thèse two processes alone. Thèse developments may well 
 be in substantial accord with the deepest implications and acts 
 of Jésus, Paul and the early centuries, and with the immanental 
 necessities of a Church called upon to endure and to spread 
 throughout our earth's time and space, and may yet show, in the 
 détails of their évolution, unhistorical imagination, pseudony- 
 mous documents, even now and then some dishonesty. It is 
 really time that such discriminations became the common pro- 
 pcrty of ail serious scholars whatever their religious allegiance. 
 But indeed already such men as the late Professor F, W. Mait* 
 land, an avowed Agnostic, hâve been admirably full of such 
 
274 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 discriminations. Such men are too historically minded not 
 vividly to perceive how honest, and even how substantially true, 
 can be men unpossessed of historical imagination ♦ 
 
 7^ Ail the preceding positions involve the appréhension, and 
 press forward to the fuU profession, that it is but One God who 
 opérâtes throughout the varions stages and ranges of multiform 
 reality and throughout the correspondingly various responses 
 of mankind» The One God thus opérâtes, in the most diverse, 
 astonishingly délicate, interrelated ways, airaing throughout at 
 a rich unity in diversity — a unity the doser and the more all- 
 penetrating, the more ultimate is the level and the range con- 
 cemed. If so, then the Family, Science, Philosophy, Art, the 
 Handicrafts, the State are ail intended to possess their several 
 unities and autonomies» And is Religion, especially the Christian 
 religion, and in this again the Christian Church, to be an excep- 
 tion, indeed thus to stand at a lower level, as to unity ^ Surely, 
 the only exception hère legitimately conceivable is that the unity 
 hère should be exceptionally great. There is nothing whatso- 
 ever to show that Jésus implied, or would désire, a multiplicity 
 of Churches ; and St. Paul, the Fourth Gospel, and the great 
 Church passages in the Synoptists, teach, with fuU emphasis 
 and deep émotion, the Sacred Oneness of the Church, and 
 picture Jésus as solemnly founding this One Church for ail 
 âges and races « 
 
 Philosophers such as Sir Henry Jones are now coming to 
 analyse the consciousness of the human infant as composed, 
 from the first, of the direct expérience of object and subject, 
 the two in their mutual interaction thus constituting, from the 
 first, man*s single world of consciousness and knowledge. Man 
 articulâtes thèse rich contents of his mind, which at first are 
 throughout vague and confused, only gradually and never 
 exhaustively ; yet, from first to last, there he has his one world 
 given to him. Investigators of the Social Life and of the State 
 and of their conceptions, such as Frederick William Maitland, 
 are now reaching out to the discovery that man, from the first, 
 possessed, however dimly, the sensé both of the Individual and 
 of the Community ; so that man but clarified, slowly as the time 
 went on, both thèse conceptions each through and with the 
 other. Man thus, did not, in spite of appearances, jump out of 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 275 
 
 Ihdividualism into Communism, or out of Communism into 
 Individualism, But he possessed, however inchoately, from the 
 first, the One life, itself both individual and common from the 
 start. Somewhat similarly, though hère driven, not only by a 
 vivid historical imagination but still more by a tenacious spiritual 
 sensé, Professor Rudolf Sohm finds the primitive Chrislian 
 consciousness never to hâve been other than essentially Catholic 
 — ^always to hâve felt the sacredness, the rights, the duties, and 
 the powers of the domestic and otherwise local ** Churches ** to 
 proceed entirely from their expressing, hère and now, the powers 
 and sacrednesses vested in the One Catholic Church spread 
 throughout the world» Hère also the whole is, if not before the 
 parts, yet coeval with the parts, and from the first constitutes 
 the parts as parts ♦^ If this be true, the late Dr, Edwin Hatch 
 and Professor Adolph von Harnack hâve been misled by appear- 
 ances when they hâve taken the Church at large to hâve been, 
 really and literally, upbuilt out of originally independent congré- 
 gations. Then too we hâve had a very wide and very independent, 
 and in no wise ecclesiastically trained thinker, the American 
 Professor Josiah Royce, whose last course of lectures, ** The 
 Problem of Christianity,** found this problem to centre in the 
 reality, indeed the necessity, of a ** Beloved Community ** and 
 of loyalty to it as the great means of spiritual growth in the 
 individual ♦ A pity only that — ^like in many other similar present- 
 day gropmgs after religious community and unity — ^the position 
 remains vague and weak, because adopted without its original 
 concrète, historical root and without .a distinct Christ and a 
 distinct God. 
 
 It is Adolf von Harnack who, perhaps best amidst latter-day 
 non-Roman Catholic writers, has, with exemplary candour and 
 courage, pointed out how closely Catholic and Roman are inter- 
 twined in actual history — how it was in and through Rome that 
 Christianity definitely awoke to the character of Oneness as 
 inhérent to itself, a Oneness not simply of the Invisible Com- 
 munity formed by ail true believers, known as such in strictness 
 to God alone, but the Oneness of a Visible Organisation possessed 
 
 * Henry Jones : A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze, 1895, pp. 102-18 ; 
 F. W. Maitland, Collected Papers, 191 1, vol. ii», p. 363 ; Rudolf Sohm, Wesen 
 vmd Ursprung des KathoHzismus, 1909, passim* 
 
276 INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of various officially superior, cqual, and inferior members» 
 Surely such a conception, such a fact, alone fuUy accords with 
 man's nature, so essentially a sensé and spirit composite ; with 
 the life and work of Jésus, real spirit working in and with real 
 sensés ; and with the central genius of His religion, the manifesta- 
 tion of the Spirit, God, in terms of sensé as well as of spirit, 
 and the call of man, sensc and spirit, through sensé to sensé *s 
 spiritualisation» 
 
 It is well that von Gierke, F, W, Maitland, A, L, Smith, 
 J. N, Figgis and P, T» Forsyth — Lutheran, Agnostics, Anglican, 
 Congregationalist— should, during thèse last three décades, hâve 
 been busy (more fruitfuUy than with sheer abuse, or even than 
 with discreet silence), with the immense, unique services of 
 Rome, predsely also in this matter of Unity. For myself I do 
 not doubt that the day may — ^the day will — come when Rome 
 (what is true in the Protestant instincts even more than in 
 the Protestant objections having been fully satisfied) will again 
 unité and head Christians generally, and this in a temper and 
 with applications more elastic than those of the later Middle 
 Ages and especially than those of post-Reformation times, The 
 Visibility of the Unity is doubtless hère the central difïiculty ; 
 yet nothing which falls deliberately short of Visible Unity can 
 or should be the goal. Nevertheless, in a certain ver y real sensé, 
 such thinkers as Josiah Royce are more ecclcsiastical than evcr 
 will be the Church itself . For a Catholic the fuU end and the 
 deepest centre of the Church can never be simply the Church, 
 still less the simply human social virtues taken as such, virtues 
 which, by abstraction from much else, we can more or less 
 segregate from out of the Church*s total fruits. For the Catholic, 
 the Church essentially possesses, seeks, finds and leads to God, 
 Who alone can and does constitute the fully adéquate home of 
 the supernaturally awakened souL The Church is doubtless, 
 historically speaking, rather the substitute for, than the expansion 
 of, the Kingdom of God, But whether this Kingdom of God, for 
 which the Church waits and for which she prépares, is to corne 
 suddenly or slowly, in this world or in the next, or a little herc 
 and fully hereafter : in any and every case the Kingdom of 
 Heavcn will, for the human soûl, doubtless include the sodety 
 of this soxxVs fellow-creatures, each contributing to the joy of 
 
INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY 277 
 
 ail the others. Nevertheless : the root, the centre and the crown 
 of ail this social joy will be God — God apprehended as more 
 and other than ail men, than ail possible finite beings put together 
 — ^indeed as more and other than are His life and love in and for 
 ail His créatures. The Church, the Catholic Church in its fuU- 
 ness, the Roman Catholic Church, hère again has fathomed 
 the needs and implications of religion : the doctrine of the Holy 
 Trinity, even the seemingly Pantheistic insistence upon Sub- 
 stance in the Trim'ty and upon Things in the Sacraments are, at 
 their best, grand preservatives against ail sentimental humanism 
 — ^against everything that would make God into but a mirror, 
 or into a mère purveyor, of men*s wants. Man's deepest want 
 îs, in reality, for a God infinitely more than such a mère assuager 
 of even ail man*s wants. Especially also is He more than the 
 awakener of ail, even of our noblest, national aspirations. And 
 thus again we persistently require One great international, 
 supernational Church which, by its very form, will continuously 
 wam us of the essentially more than national charactcr of ail 
 fully awake Christianity. 
 
 A sensé and spirit religion and a single world-wide Church : 
 God thus becomes, not only the sole possible originator, pré- 
 server and renovator of such a Church, but also the central end 
 and attainment of such a Church. We will thus in the One 
 Church, through the One Christ, reach, most fully and firmly, 
 the infinitely rich One God. 
 
278 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 11 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL ' 
 
 Large nets in the deep sea are useless there unless we buoy 
 them up — ^heavy as they are on land, heavier still in the water — 
 with light cork floats hère and there* So now I will strive to keep 
 our présent conférence, busy as it is with the profoundest facts 
 and expériences, afloat by hère and there a homely little simile 
 or a harmless little jest* 
 
 Hâve you ever kept tree frogs ^ If not, do ! How amusing 
 they are with their intermittently voracious appetite ! Especially 
 the young frogs : they will jump at and seize a blue-bottle 
 nearly as large as themselves, and will laboriously push it down 
 their maws with their funny little front feet» But feed them 
 with crickets from the kitchen and watch their procédure ♦ The 
 frog will seize a cricket, hard, long, and thin, and will push this 
 struggling down its throat* The cricket insists upon dying 
 within the frog cross-wise, but the frog pats his white abdomen 
 from each side, till he gets the cricket, now at last killed by the 
 gastric juice, into proper conformity with the inside of the frog 
 himself. I am now asking you to leap forth to seize and to 
 assimilate, as well as you can, a mass of spiritual food which may 
 well at first lie uncomfortably athwart your minds» Be patient ; 
 before the end, I hope greatly to relieve the situation — ^we shall 
 then pat our minds ; and the food, so unwieldy at first, will, I 
 trust, find its proper place and will really feed us» No food can 
 feed us properly without considérable friction generated and 
 overcome. 
 
 Let me now introduce the subject seriously by dwelling for 
 some moments upon four discriminations, which will, I think, 
 help us much to concentrate and to clarify our investigation» 
 
 ^ An Address delivered to Junior Members of the Univcrsity of Oxford in May, 
 1920. Reprinted from The Modem Churckman, June, 1920. 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 279 
 
 First of ail, then, we are busy hère, not with the Miraculous, 
 but with the SupematuraL When Bossue t and Fénelon had 
 their celebrated controversy concerning the spiritual life, Fénelon, 
 towards the end, insisted against Bossuet (who found downright 
 miracle in the more advanced states of prayer and of self-sur- 
 render) that the entire spiritual life, from its rudimentary 
 beginnings up to its very highest grades and developments, was 
 for him, Fénelon, essentially and increasingly supernatural, but 
 at no point essentially miraculous. Thus Fénelon found the 
 human soûl, at every stage of its spiritual career, to remain still 
 within the characteristically human kind of freedom, our poor 
 little liberty of choice ; whereas Bossuet considered the soûl, in 
 its fullest supematuralisation, to be, even in this life, literally 
 established in grâce, and to get beyond the imperfect liberty of 
 choice» So too, as to the opérations of the mind : according to 
 Fénelon the human mind, at least in this life, remains through- 
 out more or less successive and discursive in its opérations ; 
 with Bossuet, in the highest state, the mind becomes entirely 
 intuitive and simultaneous in its action, I believe Bossuet, in 
 this matter, to hâve been wrong, and Fénelon to be right, With 
 Fénelon we will not deny the possibility, or even the actual 
 occurrence, of miracle, in the sensé just indicated, within the 
 spiritual life» Still less will we deny historically attested miracles 
 in the Bible and elsewhere» But we will simply hold with Fénelon 
 that the spiritual life of Prayer, of Love, and of Devotedness is, 
 even in its fullest Christian developments, essentially not 
 miraculous but supernatural» Hence we can in the spiritual 
 life more or less foretell its future opérations, and we can very 
 largely discover certain great laws and characteristics within its 
 past opérations, the limits arising hère, not from anything really 
 sporadic in the subject-matter, but simply from the difficulty, 
 patent in every kind of human science, of bringing the analysis 
 and theory of very certain, richly experienced facts, to a clear- 
 ness at ail equal to the vividness of the expériences ; and again 
 from the great need for the observing soûl to be very pure from 
 distracting or distorting passions and very docile to the délicate 
 facts and their manifold implications» 
 
 Agâin, what concerns us hère is not the Supernatural in its 
 contrast and conflict with sin and sinful human nature ; but 
 
28o CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 the Supernatural as distinct from healthy Nature, and the inter- 
 aid and yet tension at work between them, It certainly looks 
 at first sight as though the dread battle between the simply Bad 
 and the Good of whatsoever kind were the more promising 
 mental problem for us, just as this battle is the more pressing 
 practical concern of us ail, especially in our earher years* Yet 
 I hâve come to the conclusion, with many another récent or 
 still living thinker belonging to the most various religious groups, 
 races, avocations and tempéraments, — ^that a certain monotony, 
 dullness, oppression, besets much of the spiritual practice and 
 principles of many religious persons ; that thèse qualities are fatal 
 to the charm, freshness and freedom essential to religion at its 
 best ; and that, not the contrast between sin and virtue, but 
 the différence between Nature and Supernature can furnish a 
 solid starting-point for the recovery, the resuscitation of religion, 
 as by far the richest, the most romantic, the most entrancing 
 and emancipating fact and life extant or possible anywhere for 
 man» 
 
 And thirdly we hâve to do, in the body of this address, not 
 with the implications, however real — ^indeed, necessary — of super- 
 natural dispositions, forces, acts, effects, but with thèse same 
 realities as they appear at first sight, as they feel (at the possible 
 minimum of awareness and analysis of what the soûl is achieving 
 or experiencing) to the agent or patient himself» It was Dr» 
 W. G. Ward, ** Idéal ** Ward, that brilHant Balliol lecturer, 
 and later fervent, indeed partly extravagant. Roman Catholic — 
 a great supernaturalist — ^who first taught me that the Super- 
 natural should not be directly identified and measured by the 
 amount of its conscious, explicit références to Christ or even 
 simply to God, but by certain qualities which we shall attempt 
 to trace later on, and of which heroism, with a keen sensé of 
 givenness and of ** 1 could not do otherwise,*^ appear to be the 
 chief ♦ Thus a man may perform a truly supernatural act, or be 
 in a genuinely supernatural condition of soûl, and yet may 
 possess, at the time or even generally, only the most dim and 
 confused — â quite inadéquate — ^theology» 
 
 And finally my examples and my analysis will mainly be 
 derived from what I know best and love very dearly, from what 
 made me into the little of spiritual worth that I may be — ^the 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 281 
 
 devotedness and faith at work within the Roman Catholic 
 Church» But this does not mean that noble, truly supernatural 
 devotedness does not occur elsewhere in other Christian bodies, 
 indeed also amongst Jews and Mohammedans, or amongst 
 Parsees, Hindoos and Buddhists, even amongst that apparently 
 increasing mass of men who would be puzded to say where 
 they stand theologically at alL Yet my insistence upon Roman 
 Catholic cases not only means that I am obliged, if I am to speak 
 at ail effectively, to speak of what I know much the best, but it 
 also expresses my very deliberate, now long tested, conviction 
 that, be the sins of commission or of omission chargeable against 
 the Roman Catholic authorities or people what they may, in 
 that faith and practice is to be found a massiveness of the Super- 
 natural, a sensé of the World Invisible, of God as the soûles true 
 home, such as exists elsewhere more in fragments and approxima- 
 tions and more intermittently. Many, perhaps most, of you 
 young men must, in this great war, hâve come across not a few 
 supernatural acts and dispositions : happy you 1 By ail means 
 dwell, as I speak on to you, upon your own recollection rather 
 than upon my own* My own examples are given merely to 
 illustrate certain récurrent realities and traceable laws, and thus 
 to give us greater acuteness and accuracy of perception when we 
 come to conclude as to Christianity and the Supernatural, 
 
 Now, for the purpose of bringing out into fuU relief the Super- 
 natural as it is necessarily experienced prior to any full analysis 
 of its content, we will, for the body of this address, consider two 
 sets of facts : the différence between the Natural and the Super- 
 natural, in their respective illumination, power and goodness; 
 and the Supernatural in actual opération within the great virtues 
 constitutive of the spiritual-moral life* 
 
 With the decay of the Middle Ages, from about a^d, 1300 to 
 1450, and then on into the (first Christian then Pagan) Renais- 
 sance and the Protestant Reformation, men largely grew weary 
 of the monastic idéal; and, influenced as much by the atom- 
 istic and sceptical late mediacval philosophy as by the many 
 
 2C 
 
282 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 complications brought in the course of the âges by the exempted 
 position of the great monastic corporations, they at last déter- 
 minée! to dig up the very roots of ail and any monasticism» One 
 half of Europe paid a heavy price for this apparently quite 
 simple return to the supposed utter uniformity of call for ail 
 men as described in the Gospels. For the price paid was not 
 so much the suppression, alongside of the dissolute houses, of 
 monasteries that were still centres of the most beneficent devoted- 
 ness ; nor even so much an unlovely subtlety of interprétation 
 of those Gospel records which, when taken quite unsophisti- 
 catedly, tell a very différent taie. The heaviest price paid was 
 the eradication, as thorough as the new zeal could make it, from 
 men*s minds henceforwards, of a very noble and enriching, a 
 difhcult and délicate discrimination and instinct, operative up 
 to then within the Christian consciousness. The distinction hère 
 meant was all-pervasive during the Golden Middle Ages — say 
 from A»D. 1050 to 1270 — èspecially in Aquinas and in Dante : the 
 distinction, not only between Good and Evil, but between Good 
 and Good, between Natural Good and Supernatural Good» 
 Thus bodily cleanliness, honesty in buying and selling, submis- 
 sion to the police and due tax-paying to the State, a fair amount 
 of courage, too, in war — ^this and the like, with a dim sensé of 
 God — the God of Honesty — ^in the background, ail this was held 
 to be indeed from God, to be necessary, to be good. But it was 
 (or would be, did it anywhere exist thus, quite unmixed with 
 Supernature) only Natural Good. And such a simply Natural 
 Goodness would, for survival beyond death, merely conceive 
 or désire this Natural Goodness, with the dim background of 
 God, to continue for ever, less suffering, offences against this 
 rational code, and death. We hâve hère, for a spiritual land- 
 scape, a parallel to a great plain — say that of Lombardy — ^with 
 its corn ; we could now add its potatoes. Bentham amongst 
 récent Englishmen, and Confucius amongst the great ancient 
 and non-European moral and reh'gious leaders, represent this 
 sane and sensible, but dry and shallow outlook. 
 
 Now the natural virtues and the natural outlook and hopes, 
 ail more or less dominated by the Body and its requirements 
 (its most legitimate requirements), remain, in various degrees, 
 as regards their materials and even their immédiate occasions 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 283 
 
 and proximate motives, a strict necessity and full duty for us alL 
 Even the loftiest sanctity finds hère the substratum, the subject- 
 matters, the occasions for its own supernatural life» But man*s 
 life — so this same rich doctrine proceeds^ — ^has not, as a 
 matter of fact, been left by God as He might hâve left it, at a 
 purely natural level of activity and happiness either in this life 
 or in the next. Man possesses indeed by Nature both an actual 
 and a possible thirst for God» But, unless supernaturally stimu- 
 lated, this thirst requires no more than a certain unity in man's 
 activity and outlook and a certain harmony between both, with 
 God as the ultimate invisible référence of the whole, This 
 natural capacity for the God of Nature and for ail the natural 
 virtues has, however, through Crod's sheer bounty, been stimu- 
 lated to beyond its natural awakeness by His own condescen- 
 sions towards us — His Incarnation in the life and work of Jésus 
 Christ constituting the centre and fullness of ail this ceaseless 
 movement from God to man, Thus God, so to speak, has put 
 sait into our mouths, and we now thirst for what we hâve ex- 
 perienced, We now long for Supernatural Good, Supernatural 
 Béatitude ♦^j Now acts and dispositions be corne possible, attractive, 
 cven actual within us and by us, which no State, no Guild, can 
 cver présuppose or require, Now decency is carried up into 
 devotedness, and homeliness into heroism. Hère the activities are 
 primarily concerned with the SouL Simple justice and average 
 fairness are transfigured into génial generosity and overflowing 
 self-devotion. Compétition is replaced by co-operation, indeed 
 even by vicarious work and suffering. And now the désire for a 
 simple survival of the natural activities and of the natural happi- 
 ness, and of a dim and discursive sensé of God, is replaced by 
 thirst for the full expansion and the final establishment of the 
 human personality in an endless life of such self-devotion and 
 of a vivid, intuitive vision of God, suprême Author and End of ail 
 Nature and Supemature, The State is fanatical the moment it 
 attempts to require or to supply such motives, virtues and con- 
 summations ; and the Church is an irritating superfluity, a 
 feeble ditto of the State the moment it forgets that this precisely 
 forms its spécifie work and call : the awakening, the training, the 
 bringing into full Hfe and fruitfulness of the Supernatural Life, 
 But pray note : this outlook, if the truer, is, where at ail 
 2 c * 
 
284 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 complète, by far the costlier — costlier even as a theory, still more 
 costly in practical exécution» For it means high heroism, yet 
 also hospitable homeliness, it means the Alpine Uplands — the 
 edelweiss and the alpenrose — as well as the Lombard Plains 
 with their corn and their potatoes ; it means poetry and prose, 
 a mighty harmony and a little melody, or rather it means, taken 
 as a complète whole, a great organ récital, with the grand jeu 
 stop of Supemature drawn out full and ail the pipes of Nature 
 responding in tones each necessary in its proper place, yet each 
 sweeter and richer than its own simply natural self» 
 
 And again note that the material ôf the Supernatural is not 
 only the heroic, but also, indeed mostly, the homely ; just as the 
 material of the Natural can, contrariwise, be not homely but 
 heroic» St» Paul tells us that whenever we eat or we drink, we 
 should do it, and ail our other homely natural duties, for the glory 
 of God» And, contrariwise, St» Paul déclares that a man may 
 perform acts materially as heroic as is the giving his body to 
 be bumt or his distributing ail his possessions amongst the poor, 
 and yet thèse acts may remain at the natural level, indeed may 
 become *' splendid ** vices, owing to the absence of the super- 
 natural motive or to the présence, central and determining, 
 of motives of vanity and pride» 
 
 Yet, although the Supernatural is thus more frequently at 
 work in the homely form, this supernatural homeliness always 
 possesses some, and at times much and very much, real heroism ; 
 and again, the Supernatural is more striking, more easily seized 
 in its massively heroic form» Hence, in the instances of the 
 Supernatural now to be given, the massively heroic will be 
 rcpresented in a proportion considerably greater than it obtains 
 in real life» 
 
 II 
 
 I will group my examples under seven heads, seven great 
 virtues, hère at their supernatural level, which together, like 
 the seven prismatic colours, form a rainbow of thrilling, cease- 
 lessly rejuvenating, reconciling beauty, truth and goodness, 
 thrown in splendour over the swampy tracts and murky atmos- 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 285 
 
 phere of poor, average and less than average human ugliness, 
 insincerity and mediocrity of ail kinds and degrees, I deliberately 
 make the sélection as wide as possible, within the range of my 
 vivid knowledge, in order to bring out clearly the unlimited 
 generosity of God and of man, in thèse their great call and 
 response» 
 
 First, let us take Courage — the virtue which always expresses 
 or confers youthfulness unfading, There is the Jewish Rabbi of 
 Lyons, chaplain in the late war, holding up, at a dying Catholic 
 soldier^s request, this soldier's crucifix before his eyes, and this 
 amidst a hail of bullets and shrapnel flying ail around them. 
 The Rabbi was killed, not indeed at that moment, but soon after 
 his touching heroism» And then there is that instance of most 
 painfuUy difficult moral courage, a virtue at ail times so costly 
 and so especially manly, of Walter Bagehot at sixteen» We hâve 
 hère a youth already possessed of the sensitiveness of genius, 
 full of love of wholesome popularity, and averse to ail dis- 
 loyalty and eccentricity, faced with the ordeal of choosing 
 between the possibly life-long réputation of a sneak or the 
 deliberate toleration of a grave immorality, acddentally wit- 
 nessed by himself, an immorality which would be spread right 
 and left throughout the school by a fellow-scholar, the son of 
 parti cularly powerful patrons of the institution. The décision 
 evidently cost Bagehot a very agony of suffering ; and it took 
 years before he could recover the trust of some of his contem- 
 poraries. But who can seriously doubt that he did right to face 
 ail that obloquy, that his act, incapable though it be of direct 
 appeal to any generous-hearted lad, takes rank amidst the rarest 
 heroisms $* 
 
 Let us next take Purity — that immensely virile virtue, always 
 treated as impossible by those senile children, the cynics, every- 
 where. Hère I will take, not instances of much tried yet complète 
 fidelity in unhappy marriages, although there too the Super- 
 natural shines forth magnificently, but two cases, watched most 
 closely by myself, of full voluntary celibacy. Some of you will 
 know what Schopenhauer, assuredly no Christian of any kind, 
 still less a Roman Catholic, says about such celibacy — ^how he 
 considers it to be the culminating manifestation of the Super- 
 natural and how its rejection, by the Protestant Reformers, 
 
386 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 meant nothing less than the dethronement of the SupernaturaU 
 Doubtless, this or that phase, this or that disciplinary rule, of 
 celibacy is open to severe criticism as excessive or harmful, and 
 anything that really belittles marriage, the divine call at ail times 
 for the large majority of the human race, is assuredly to be 
 rejccted. But to taboo ail celibacy, or even simply not to assign 
 to it, at its best, a definite, very high and wide place, function 
 and honour within the Christian life and Church, is to fail to 
 seize one of the two movements of this very life and Church — 
 the movement so classically exemplified in the persons of the 
 Precursor, the Founder, and the greatest of the Apostles, and 
 again by such world-renewing figures as St, Augustine, Su 
 Benedict, and St, Francis ♦ Certainly I know, beyond the possi- 
 bility of doubt, that I myself could never hâve been regained by 
 any but a celibate cleric to purity and to God — ^however much, 
 since I was thus costingly regained, I may appreciate the benefi- 
 cence of a married clergy, and however clearly I may perceive the 
 dangers and drawbacks of too large an extension of obligatory 
 celibacy. Instances of thoroughly happy, and in such cases 
 always specially fruitful, Christian celibacy are fortunately not 
 rare in the Roman Catholic Church, But I hâve constantly 
 before my mind two men to whom, precisely as such specifically 
 Christian celibates, I owe infinitely much, The one was a Dutch 
 Dominican Friar, a man of gentle birth and of great religious 
 expérience, who first trained me in the spiritual life in Vienna 
 — ^fifty years ago, What a whole man that was ! One with ail 
 the instincts of a man, yet ail of them mastered and penetrated 
 through and through by the love of Christ and of soûls. And 
 the other was a French Secular Priest, a man of véhément, 
 seething passions, and of rare forces of mind, whose will of iron, 
 by long heroic submission to grâce, had attained to a splendid 
 tonic tenderness, I owe more to this Frenchman than to any 
 man I hâve eyer known in the flesh, Now both thèse men would 
 hâve remained incredibly smaller had they listened to the subtle 
 explainers away of the renunciation, visible as well as invisible, 
 preached and practised broadcast by the central figures of the 
 Synoptic Gospels, and if they had settled comfortably into a 
 married life, Like their great predecessors, Aquinas and St. 
 Francis, they required the height of celibacy from which to 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 287 
 
 shice and to rain down upon the just and the unjust amidst 
 their dearly loved fellow-men. 
 
 Let us take as our third virtue, Unlimited Compassion and 
 love even of enemies» Courage and Purity unfeigned, gained 
 by close intercourse with God, will readily lead to some such 
 heights. The French cleric just referred to was profoundly 
 convinced of the irreplaceable fruitfulness of celibacy in lives 
 devoted to specially difficult reform work ; hence he was 
 most sensitively insistent that any one who felt himself called 
 to labour for such reforms should himself practise at least as 
 much as was the actual practice amidst those whom he desired 
 to gain to his views, Thus when the Carmélite Père Hyacinthe 
 Loyson abandoned the cowl and married, and nevertheless 
 continued to act as a still possible reforming Catholic priest, 
 the Abbé felt, and never ceased to feel, keenly, the sterilising 
 shallowness of such a combination^ Yet when, many years later 
 Mme» Loyson died, the Abbé, as he told me himself, flew at 
 once to the bereaved old man and poured out ail his treasures 
 of consolation and of communicative strength» No easy-going 
 indifférence could hère achieve so much ; the sympathy of such 
 an one would, in a sensé, be too easy for it to be operative, as in 
 this case, through its very costliness, The other instance is that 
 of a young Anglican officer and of his bearing towards a malignant 
 Personal enemy* Captain Horace de Vere, as was told me by his 
 cousin who had been in close touch with the events to be de- 
 scribed, had recovered from his wounds in the Crimean War, 
 and was back in England in full health, a most happily married 
 man, and the father of two httle girls» He continued his military 
 profession and deep interest in his men* He had instituted a 
 small fund from which the troopers of his Company were to 
 receive a little extra pay for any week throughout which they 
 had remained sober. One of thèse troopers nursed feelings of re- 
 venge against the Captain, since this officer could not honestly do 
 otherwise than pass the man over for many weeks in succession, 
 At last, on parade one day, the trooper shot the Captain through 
 the back and lungs ; but the doomed officer lingered on for a 
 fortnight, Even now the trooper*s vindictiveness was not 
 assuaged, and, although he knew well that exécution awaited him 
 if the Captain died, he nevertheless persisted in open expressions 
 
288 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 of hope that his officer would die» But de Vere, after pro- 
 viding for his young wife and little girls, concentrated ail 
 the strength that remained to him to win his murderer's for- 
 giveness, and to soften that poor hate-blinded heart. And he 
 succeeded : the Captain died fully resigning into God*s hands 
 the wife and the children and his own life^ still well on the 
 upward grade ♦ He lost his bodily life, but he gained a soûl : he 
 went to God assuredly a saint, the meek, self-less victor in a 
 struggle between malignant hâte and perfect love, 
 
 Let us take for our fourth Supernatural virtue Humility, 
 which, though it is rightly appraised as the true foundation of ail 
 the other virtues, I put thus far on in our séries, since it is hardly 
 in reality a virtue for the young — conceit is so pardonable before 
 thirty and becomes fully ridiculous only when the accumulating 
 years bring no self-knowledge and lowliness of mind. Perhaps 
 the least inadéquate instances of Supernatural Humility alive 
 within my own mind are furnished by the unflinching welcome 
 given, by certain Jesuit novices, to humiliations with regard to 
 their own knowledge and its importance for others, and by their 
 eager utilisation of thèse humiliations for purposes of interior 
 growth. There indeed stand before me other, more génial and 
 more mellow instances of Humility, but thèse other instances 
 concem Humility of the Natural and homely, and not of the 
 Supernatural and heroic kind» 
 
 Then for our fifth virtue let us take Truthfulness, where it 
 reaches an heroic depth and delicacy, I put it thus quite late 
 in the séries, since such Truthfulness présupposes especially 
 Humility, Purity and Courage, yet also generous abandonment 
 of ail grievances and bitter feelings against any man, Also 
 because, especially since the Renaissance, perfect truthfulness, 
 in view of the new exigencies in matters of history and of sensitive 
 interest in subject-matters of no direct religious significance, is, 
 I believe, the most delicately difficult of ail the virtues for the 
 average institutional religionist» Such an one finds it ail but 
 impossible not to tidy up reality of ail kinds into what he thinks 
 such reality, as God's will or permission, ought actually to be. 
 For heroic Truthfulness in matters of history I hâve then, 
 before me, the great French Bénédictine historical discoverer 
 and cri tic, Jean Mabillon, who, after a long life spent in the 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 389 
 
 most candid research amidst considérable opposition, died 
 grandly insisting to his disciples upon Truth, and Truth again, 
 in ail their work. And as to heroic watchfulness and accuracy 
 with regard to natural facts apparently of no religions import 
 whatsoever, there is the impressive death of the Jesuit astronoraer, 
 Father Perry, sent by the British Government, as head of one of 
 the expéditions to the South Seas, for the observation of the 
 transit of Venus, Perry, shortly before the transit, was seized 
 by a fever which would surely promptly kill him. He thereupon 
 quietly made his préparations for death and received the last 
 Sacraments, and then absorbed himself, as though in perfect 
 health, in the transit. From the first moment to the last he took 
 and registered ail the manifold délicate observations with flaw- 
 less accuracy. And then, immediately the little planet had ceased 
 ail junction with the great resplendent sun, the hero astronomer 
 gently fell back into unconsdousness and death. 
 
 Then as our sixth, penultimate, virtue comes entire Self- 
 Abandonment in the hands of God, a disposition so great as to 
 seem indeed the very culmination of ail devotedness, and so 
 richly inclusive as to render its agents easily classable under 
 scveral other virtues. Two vivid memories are hère before me. 
 There is an Irish Roman Catholic washerwoman with whora 
 I had the honour of worshipping some thirty years ago in our 
 English Midlands. She had twelve children, whom she managed 
 to bring up most carefully, and a drunkard husband, an English- 
 man of no religion, openly unfaithful to herself. The constant 
 standing of many years at last brought on some grave internai 
 complications : a most délicate opération would alone save her 
 life. Whilst resting in hospital against the coming ordeal, with 
 the experts thoroughly hopeful of success, a visiting surgeon 
 came round, really the worse for drink, and insisted with tremb- 
 ling hands upon an examination then and there. This doomed 
 the patient to a certain death, which duly came a week later» 
 Yet from the first moment of the fatal change to the last instant 
 of her consdousness (so the priest who attended her throughout 
 declared to me after ail was over) she was absorbed in seeking 
 to respond, with ail she was, to this great grâce of God, this 
 opportunity of utter sclf-abandonment to Him, and this although 
 she dearly loved her children, and although she knew well that 
 
290 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 her eyes would hardly be closed before their father would marry 
 a bad woman and give her full authority over this, their 
 mother*s darling little flock. Ail possible plans were made by the 
 dying woman for each of the children, and from the first moment 
 she spontaneously exacted from the priest a promise to prevent 
 any prosecution of the fuddled surgeon — she never stopped to 
 consider his offence even to forgive it ; it was God, and the utter 
 trust in Him^ and in the wisdom, the love of His Will, that 
 swallowed up ail the pain, physical and mental, and ail possible 
 conflicts and perplexities* And the second memory is of one of 
 the Carmélite Fathers, whom we knew familiarly as one of the 
 ministers of our Church on Campden HilL Not an interiorly 
 harmonious, not a directly attractive, man was Simon Knapp 
 in ordinary circumstances. A tall, gaunt, though utterly gentle- 
 manly figure, a véhément over-straining nature ; an adviscr 
 prone to demand too much» Apparently a non-fit, a rolling stone^ 
 But the great War came, and though past fifty, he succeeded 
 with his Order and with the War Office in securing, as in the 
 Boer War, once more his darling wish to go and to serve with ail 
 he was, in the very midst of the acutest dangers, and, if God 
 would deign, to die with and for others. This time he had his 
 life's désire to the fulL My daughter listened to a young officcr, 
 a man apparently of no religion, who described how he had himself 
 seen Knapp, without weapons of any kind, offensive or défensive, 
 standing in the midst of a very hurricane of bullets and shrapnel, 
 utterly oblivious of death imminent at every moment, indeed 
 radiant with happiness as he bent over, supported and comforted, 
 the wounded and the dying» This man had found his true élément, 
 his full expression and joy at last ; a grand example of the reality 
 and the character of the Supernatural. 
 
 You may well ask where can we find any further heroism, 
 our seventh and last virtue i Did not even our Lord 's own life 
 hère below end with utter self-abandon ment, indeed with the 
 great cry of désolation upon the Cross i But the answer is 
 already more or less given in our last example, although the point 
 is, I believe, so crucial for the full elucidation of the Christian 
 Spirit and outlook at their completest, as to deserve, indeed 
 require, a separate final class of virtue to itself ♦ 
 
 Spiritual Joy, Béatitude, does not, indeed, always accompany 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 291 
 
 or crown in. this life cven high heroism, although I believe this 
 non-flowering of heroism to be always caused by some inhibitory 
 influence distinct from the heroism as such. Yet Spiritual Joy, 
 Béatitude, does appear in the very greatest, the most supernatural, 
 acts and lives, Thus with our Lord Himself, we hâve the great 
 rejoicing in the spirit during the Galilean ministry ; and if the 
 last act of His Life appear to be the cry upon the Cross, we hâve 
 to remember that the specifically Christian conception of Jésus 
 Christ absolutely requires, not only the sufïerings of the Passion, 
 but also the Béatitude of the Risen Life ; neither alone, but only 
 the two, the bitter-sweet together, form hère the adéquate object 
 of our Christian faith. Perhaps for this crowning virtue, which 
 alone differentiates quite fuUy the ultimate Christian outlook 
 from ail Stoicisms and categorical-imperative schemes, two great 
 historical figures can be best cited, although I hâve myself been 
 set upon my feet, for now wellnigh thirty years, by one who, 
 himself of most melancholy natural tempérament and fuU of 
 mental and physical suffering, radiated this tonic joy from his 
 darkened room and couch into how many deeply tried soûls ! 
 It was this my later trainer who finally removed ail doubt from 
 my mind as to the full reality of the joy reported to hâve streamed 
 forth from the greatest of the saints, Especially two such great 
 ones are ever with me — Catherine Fiesca Adoma, that unhappily 
 married, immensely sensitive, naturally melancholy and self- 
 absorbed woman, who ended, as the Saint of Genoa, on the note 
 of joy and of overwhelming joy ; and, above ail, the Poverello, 
 St, Francis of Assisi, who, next to Our Lord Himself, appears, 
 amidst ail the Saints we know of, to hâve most completely 
 brought out the marvellous paradox of Christianity — ^utter self- 
 donation with entire spontaneity, a heroism quite unrigorist, a 
 devotedness of suprême expansiveness and joy» 
 
 Let us now conclude ail by attempting to draw out the implica- 
 tions which, doubtless in most cases, are in part but dimly 
 perceived by the heroic agent himself, I believe thèse char- 
 acteristic implications of the Supernatural everywhere to be 
 five, and that Christianity at its best, more fuUy and persistently 
 than any other religion, possesses thèse same characteristics 
 with an explicitness and vividness which answer to and devebp 
 
292 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 and complète, most powerfully, those five great implications of 
 the Supernatural everywhere, 
 
 First, then, the Supernatural expérience, act or state, appears 
 always, for us human beings, on occasion of, in contact with, 
 and as the transfiguration of, Natural conditions, acts, states* 
 Indeed, the Spiritual generally, whether natural or even super- 
 natural, is always preceded or occasioned, accompanied or 
 foUowed, by the Sensible — ^the soûl by the body» The highest 
 realities and deepest responses are experienced by us within, 
 or in contact with, the lower and the lowliest ; only in the 
 moments of deepest spiritual expérience do thèse humbler 
 précédents and concomitants disappear from the direct, or at 
 least from the more vivid, consciousness, and does the Natural 
 substratum seem to be entirely submerged by the sheer Super- 
 naturaL Hence the genuine Supernatural always brings with it 
 a keen sensé of the recipient's littleness — ^he is so hemmed in 
 by, and indeed so largely bound up with, his small human 
 capacities as they front the immensity of the divine life* Even 
 in the Beyond, sound doctrine tells him, limitations, and con- 
 sciousness of limitations, will not entirely cease» There, toc, 
 there will be a body, even though a glorified body ; there too 
 succession, not simultaneity, will more or less obtain ; and the 
 Vision of God, although centrally apprehended by intuition, 
 will be exhaustive only of our own, even there still limited, 
 capacity, and will never be co-extensive with the infinité God 
 Himself» 
 
 Now in such statements we hâve already expressed great 
 insistences of Christianity as it develops and articulâtes the 
 gênerai supernatural expérience» And especially does Christianity 
 carry out and give the deepest practical effect to the groping, 
 involved in that expérience, towards History, towards that 
 mysterious paradox of the Hère and Now as the necessary 
 occasions and vehicle of the deepest sensé of God, the Reality 
 above Space and Time» And Christianity further carries out 
 and gives deep practical effect to the groping, also involved in 
 that supernatural expérience, after contact, not only of spirit 
 with spirit, but of spirit with sensé' — the visible, audible, tactual 
 Sacraments arousing, articulating, transmitting, through human 
 spirits to other human spirits, super-sensible Grâce and Strength* 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 293 
 
 I submit that in thîs matter, neither the Quaker position (which 
 refuses the Sensible both as antécédent help and as conséquent 
 expression of the Super-sensible) nor even Lutheranism (which^ 
 where most fuUy itself, refuses the antécédent Sensible, but 
 readily accepts the conséquent) : I submit that both, in différent 
 degrees, are inadéquate in face of the intimations of the super- 
 natural expérience, where Sensé as readily précèdes Spirit as 
 Spirit is succeeded by Sensé, 
 
 Secondly, the Supematural expérience, act or state, is never 
 quite solitary, but, even in the penumbra of consciousness of the 
 experiencing soûl, and still more in unanalysed ways, it is pro- 
 foundly social as welh Lucretius gives us the noble image of the 
 successive générations of mankind as runners in the torch race, 
 where each génération, as it sinks in death, hands on the torch 
 of human knowledge and expérience to the next génération, 
 to the younger runners who hâve come up to the old ones and 
 who are fresh for further running. But the succession of spiritual 
 example and training is, if less obvious, far deeper and more 
 entrancing stilL Hère it is literally true that behind every saint 
 stands another saint, at least as he lives on in writings by himself 
 or about him. In vain do ail mystics, as such, vividly feel their 
 expérience to be utterly without human antécédent connection, 
 Behind St. Paul stands the Jewish synagogue and the earthly 
 Jésus ; and behind George Fox stands the entire New Testa- 
 ment, Hère is the abiding right and need of the Church, as the 
 fellowship and training school of believers. And indeed the 
 mystics, in so far as they remain Christian, hâve moments of 
 the noblest perception, not indeed of Sacraments and the Visible 
 institutional Church, but of the Invisible Church — sl great reality 
 for us alL Thus I know of no more moving account of the one 
 Catholic Invisible Church than is that of the Lutheran Rudolf 
 Sohm, the life-long impugner of ail Institutionalism, 
 
 Thirdly, the Supernatural expérience, act or disposition always 
 bears an evidential, metaphysical, more than human and other 
 than human implication and character ; and yet, whilst thus 
 affirming Présence, Reality or Otherness, it also always affirms 
 or implies the incompleteness (even within the range of finite 
 capadties) of this genuine expérience of Ultimate Reality, 
 God is hère, but not Grod exhaustively, not in the fullness which 
 
 2D 
 
294 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 He is and which He Himself knows ; not even in the fuUness 
 with which He may be known by other larger and more devoted 
 human soûls» This vivid sensé of the unequal distribution of 
 God's light and of man*s insight, implicit in ail the Supernatural 
 expériences before they hâve been flattened out by all-levelling 
 Pantheisms, is met and fuUy articulated by the Christian con- 
 ception of Jésus ; hère, in this genuinely human mind and will, 
 the séries of ail possible Supernatural expérience by man (each 
 experiencing soûl well aware that other soûls could know, love, 
 will God and His créatures far more and better than itself) 
 reaches its implied goal and centre. For Jésus is conceived by 
 the Christian Church as Christ in a sensé far transcending 
 that of the Jewish Messiah. Jésus hère is declared to hold 
 in His human mind and will as much of God, of God pure, as 
 human nature, at its best and when most completely super- 
 naturalised, can be made by God to hold, whilst remaining 
 genuine human nature stilL And yet this same Jésus (though 
 He is the Christ in this supremely heightened sensé) remains 
 thus still also truly Jésus — ^that is, a human mind and 
 human will bound to a human body, to sensé stimulation, to 
 history and institutions, to succession, time and space, He 
 can thus be our Master and our Model, our Refuge and our 
 Rest. 
 
 Fourthly, the genuinely Supernatural expérience, act or dis- 
 position is always more or less accompanied by Suffering in 
 Serenity, by Pain in Bliss. The very mixedness of the position 
 and powers of the human soûl cannot fail to produce some such 
 effects, where this soûl is raised to its highest possible recipiency 
 and work. The Suffering and the Serenity are, indeed, so inter- 
 locked that the supernaturally advanced soûl ends, without a 
 touch of morbidness or unreality, by ignoring, or even by desiring, 
 the suffering, not of course for itself — -what folly that would be I 
 — ^but as the price and signal of its own growth in solid joy* I 
 doubt not that an équivalent for such noble, freely willed suffering 
 will exist in Heaven itself. Now hère again, hère especially, 
 Christianity meets, indeed alone efficaciously unravels, develops 
 and satisfies this, the soul's deep longing. For it is literally true 
 that only Christianity deliberately trains its disciples to escape, 
 on the one hand, the harshness and unreality of Stoicism^ 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 295 
 
 and, on the other hand, the shallowness and shiftiness of 
 Hedonism» Christianity teaches that suffering is most real and 
 in itself everywhere an evil ; yet it does not, because of this, 
 either fall into any ultimate pessimism, or drown care in fleet- 
 ing pleasure, Sin, for Christianity, always remains a greater evil 
 than any suffering whatsoever» • Suffering hère is grappled with ; 
 and (whether as atonement for sin, or as transfiguration of 
 Nature to a Supernatural level) Suffering and Pain hère powerfully 
 aid the acquisition of Serenity and Peace, And Christianity 
 teaches ail this once more, not as a thin theory, but by the 
 suprême concrète example of Jésus, the Christ — a, life over- 
 flowingly rich in loneliness, failure, pain even unto agony ; 
 yet, in and through ail this suffering, a perennial source of 
 world-embradng joy. 
 
 And fifthly, the Supernatural expérience always involves 
 (though in this its deepest content often especially obscurely) 
 the reality, indeed some dim sensé of God, Qualities, such as 
 reality, transcendence, présence, existence — ^these are not appre- 
 hended as abstractions floating in the air, or fancied in the mind ; 
 such qualities, or the impressions of such qualities are, however 
 confusedly, however unuttered even to itself by the apprehend- 
 ing mind, felt and loved as effects and constituents of a Reality 
 distinct from the appréhender, and yet a Reality sufïiciently 
 like the human spirit, when thus supernaturally sustained and 
 sublimated, to be recognised by this human spirit with rapt, 
 joyous adoration as its living source, support and end. True, 
 Judaism and indeed also Mohammedanism meet this expérience 
 by a doctrine truly appropriate. We are now coming clearly 
 to discern traces of such a faith also in the earlier Parseeism and 
 in primitive Hinduism. Yet it remains a fact that, given the truth 
 of Theism, Christianity brings to this truth a depth of roots, 
 a breadth of inclusions and utilisations, and a penetrative 
 delicacy of applications matched only very partially and sporadi- 
 cally elsewhere. For in Christianity its faith in God is the 
 culmination and resolution of the other four convictions and 
 tensions — of the belief in the natural-supernatural character of 
 human expérience as a whole ; of the insight into the social- 
 solitary quality of ail religion ; of the appréhension that the 
 supernatural endowment is very unequal amongst men, and 
 
 2 D * 
 
296 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 that there exists one supremely rich, uniquely intimate union 
 with God, in one particular human mind and will ; and of the 
 expérience that an élément of Suffering enters into every Serenity» 
 Thus everything beautiful, true and good^ of whatever degree 
 or kind, is indeed included within Christian Theism, but it is 
 included therein according to certain very definite prindples ; 
 the whole is thus not a guess or a jumble, a fog or a quicksand ; 
 it is a certainty as rock-firm as it is rich and elastic, a certainty 
 groped after and confirmed by ail that is virile, pure, humble, 
 truthful, tender, self-immolating and deeply joyous in the depths 
 of man's longings and attempts. Perhaps the most exquisite 
 of ail the sceptical minds I hâve personally known was wont, 
 in his deeper moods, always to end by admitting with me the 
 substantial unanswerableness of the argument that, if man did 
 not somehow hâve a real expérience of objective reality and truth, 
 he — z créature apparently so contingent and subjective through 
 and through — could never, as man actually does in précise 
 proportion to the nobility of his mind, suffer so much from the 
 very suspicion of a complète imprisonment within purely human 
 appréhensions and values» It is precisely this ineradicable sensé 
 of and thirst after Reality which, already deeply met by any 
 and every supernatural act or disposition, is developed to the 
 utmost by Christianity with its immense richness of subjective 
 moods and needs, ail taken as efîects of realities great or little, 
 as helps from the real God, or as, because out of harmony with 
 the reality of things, obstacles to union with the same Divine 
 Reality, 
 
 I take the above five intimations to complète the direct content 
 of the Supernatural, as generally experienced by man hère below. 
 Nevertheless, any considérable expérience of this content, as 
 analysed even apart from any definite Christianity, readily 
 leads to, and fumishes most solia grounds for, belief in Personal 
 Immortality» Such belief is unchangeably part and parcel of 
 ail fully-developed Theism and especially of Christianity, Yet 
 the fully wholesome foundation for my belief in my survival is 
 God and my need of a future life as the alone adéquate environ- 
 ment and condition for the full and habituai exercise of that 
 Supernatural life which hère below I can live only amidst so 
 much that hampers it, and which nevertheless, even already 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 297 
 
 hère and now, alone gives true worth and significancc to what- 
 ever is nobly human either in others or in myself . 
 
 Two little anecdotes and I hâve done» When Frederick 
 William Faber, the Roman Catholic hymn writer and spiritual 
 teacher, was lingering on in a tedious last illness, hc asked 
 whether he might receive the Last Sacraments once again» But 
 the doctor declared that this was really the same ilbess as that 
 in which he had already received them, hence the Superior had 
 to refuse the sick man's request, ** Well, if I cannot hâve the 
 Last Sacraments, give me Pickwick I ** exclaimed Faber. A good 
 homely example of the Supematural and the Natural, and of 
 how well they can co-exist in the same, in a thoroughly fervent, 
 souL 
 
 When my eldest daughter, some eight months before her own 
 death, succeeding in reaching from Rome the centre of the 
 terrible dévastation just then caused (December, 1914) by a 
 specially violent earthquake in the Roman Campagna, she 
 promptly had her observation riveted by a most striking con- 
 trasta There lay before her the wreckage and the ruin, the 
 apparently blind and stupid carnage inflicted upon sentient, 
 homely mortals by sheer physical forces, gas and lire ; and 
 terrified villagcrs merely added to the cruel confusion. And 
 in the midst of ail this death and destruction moved about, 
 completely absorbed in the fate of thèse lowly peasants. Don 
 Orione, a Secular Priest, a man looked upon by many as already 
 a saint from and for the humble and the poor. He was carrying 
 two infants, one in each arm, and wheresoever he moved he 
 brought order and hope and faith into ail that confusion and 
 despair. She told me that it made them ail feel that somehow 
 Love was at the ultimate bottom of ail things, a Love which was, 
 just then and there, expressing itself through the utterly self- 
 oblivious tendemess of this lowly priest. I dwell upon this cleric 
 because, in his long and large labours amidst young people in 
 Rome, he was never happy, as he himself told my daughter, 
 until (in, say, nine cases out of ten) the young man was honour- 
 ably in love with a pure young woman and until the young 
 woman was honourably engaged to a steady young man. Hère 
 again, then, we hâve the union of the heroic with the homely, 
 
 2D 
 
 *♦ 
 
298 CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 the génial loftiness of Christ — ^Asceticism without Rigorism and 
 Love without Sentimentality, The Supernatural thus proves 
 richly hospitable ; there is indeed no expansion, no leisurely 
 happiness, no joy comparable to that of a life completely docile 
 to the God of Nature and of Super-nature. The comfortableness 
 I hoped to find for you has thus, I believe, been really found. 
 
INDEX 
 
 L— OF PERSONS, PLACES AND DOCUMENTS 
 
 Abbé, the French Saintly, 3, 4, 286, 287 
 
 Acton, Lord, and Persécution, 91 
 
 à Kempis, Thomas, 156 
 
 Akiba, Rabbf, 109 
 
 Alexander IL, Pope (d. 1073), 62 
 
 Aliotta, Prof. The Idealistic Reaction 
 
 against Science (19 12), 68-70 
 Amos, the Prophet, 74 
 Aristotle : 
 his doctrine of the Unmoving Energeia 
 
 of Gk)d, 93, 131 ; 
 utilised by Aquinas, 135 
 Arnold, Gottfried, 156 
 Arnold, Matthew : 
 on Milton and Eliza Cook, 6 ; 
 on what entrances us in St, Teresa, 18 
 Augustine, St. : 
 and Aquinas, as to method and con- 
 tent of Natural and Supernatural 
 Religion, xv. ; 
 on Liberty, Imperfect and Perfect, 17 ; 
 contrastée! with Lactantius, as to 
 
 persécution, 62 ; 
 his spécial great contributions to 
 Christian spirituality and theology, 
 86,87; 
 his indebtedness to Plotinus, 135 ; 
 on condition of soûl after death, 136, 
 137 
 
 Bagehot, Walter : 
 on two kinds of Religion, 198 ; 
 his early heroism, 285 
 Benedict XIV., Pope (d. 1758), on 
 note of joy, as necessary for formai 
 canonisation, 18 
 Bénédictines, of Congrégation of St. 
 
 Maur, 245 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 264, 282 
 Bergson, Henri : 
 
 as an Intuitionist, 69 ; 
 his Essai sur les Données Immédiates de 
 la Conscience (1889), 70 
 Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, on prevenience 
 
 of God, 57 
 Birkenhead, the troopers on the sinking, 
 
 200 
 Bossuet, J* B. : 
 
 expresses the true Agnosticism, 71 ; 
 his Miraculism contrasted with Féne- 
 lon's Supernaturalism, 279 
 Bridgeman, Laura, the deaf-mute, 231 
 Briggs, Charles A., 259 
 
 Brock, A. Clutton, What is the Kingdom 
 
 of Heaven i (1919)/ 127 
 Bruno, Giordano, 220 
 Busmen, the London, 208, 209 
 
 Cairns, David, and Millennarianism, 
 
 137 
 Calvin, John, on Givenness of Religion, 
 
 246, 247 
 Catherine Fiesca Adorna, St., of Genoa : 
 on voluntary plunge of the soûl into 
 
 Purgatory, 218, 219 ; 
 her joy in suffering, 291 
 Catholicisme Social et le Monophorisme, 
 
 le (1910) î 
 account of, 236 ; 
 criticism, 237^ 238 
 Clément, St., Bishop of Rome (d. about 
 
 98), 263 
 Colenso, Bishop, 259 
 Confucius, example of Natural Ethics, 
 
 264, 282 
 Consolation, the great (Isaiah XL.-LV.), 
 
 78, 112 
 Covenantf Book of the, 72, 73 
 Croce, Benedetto, 91 
 Cromwell, Oliver, his kingdom of the 
 
 saints, 137 
 
 Damian, Father, 96, 200 
 
 Daniel, the (Apocalyptic) Prophétie 
 
 Book of, 78, 79 
 Dante : 
 still unequalled, 88, 89 ; 
 and St. Francis, 127 ; 
 and Aquinas, 282 ; 
 his Inferno, 221 
 Darwin, Charles : 
 
 greatness of his dispositions as ob- 
 server, 12, 18 ; 
 how he acquired his certainties as to 
 observable facts, 103, 104 
 Descartes, René : 
 as to arbitrary choicc by God of just 
 the extant system of Création, 17 ; 
 his Discours sur la Méthode, 70 
 Deuteronomy, Book of, 75, 76, 271 
 De Vere, Captain Horace, and Super- 
 natural Compassion, 287, 288 
 Dionysius, Pseudo-, the Areopagite and 
 
 Proclus, 135 
 Dionysius, of Halicarnassus, admires 
 pseudonymous writing, 271 
 
 299 
 
300 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Donatists, the, early examples of sect- 
 
 type, 177 
 Duhm, Bernard, his view concerning 
 
 the Suffering Servant, 124 
 
 Elijah, the Prophet, 74, 260 
 Ephraemitef the. Document E of Pen- 
 
 tateuch, 74 
 Erasmus, Desiderius, 250 
 Eucken, Rudolf, on the transsubjective 
 
 worlds of ^sthetics, Dianoêtics and 
 
 Ethics, 53 
 Ezekiel and Law of Hoîiness and 
 
 Priestly Code, 77, 109 
 Ezra, the Priest and Scribe, 78 
 EzrOf the Fourth Book of, 195 
 
 Faber, Frederick W., anecdote con- 
 cerning, illustrative of Nature and 
 Supernature, 297 
 
 Farquhar, Dr. J. N., his Crown of 
 Hindooism (191 5), its rules con- 
 cerning impartiality, 6, 7, 60, 269 
 
 Fénelon on Spiritual Life, as essentially 
 not Miraculous, but Supernatural, 
 279 
 
 Feuerbach, Ludwig, his Wesen des 
 Christenthums (1841) analysed,29-4i. 
 
 Fichte, Johann Gottlob, on Objective 
 Orderedness of World, without any 
 Ordercr, 52-55 
 
 Figgis, J. N., 276 
 
 Forsyth, P. T., his Theology in Church 
 and State (1915), 267, 268; 276; 291 
 
 Foundations (1912), 135, 136 
 
 Fox, George, the Quaker, 14, 92, 231, 293 
 
 Francis, St., of Assisi, the living paradox 
 of his life, 83, 127 
 
 Galileo, the case of, 258 
 
 Gautama, the Buddha, 260 
 
 Gierke, von, on the Personalism of the 
 
 great Human Groups, 250, 276 
 Gospels : 
 the Synoptic, 80-84 / 
 their différence from St.Paul, 249, 250; 
 the Johannine Gospel, its spécial 
 characteristics, 84-86; and Philo, 
 135; 
 authorship of, 271 ; 
 anticipâtes later developments, 272 
 Gregory the Great, Pope St., 62 
 Gregory VII., Pope St., Hildebrand, 
 
 164, 177 
 Gunkel, Hermann, on Moses, 73, 74 
 Guyau, M., 91 
 
 Hamann, J. g., 151 
 
 Hamack, Adolph von : 
 takes Church at large as literally built 
 up out of originally independeat 
 congrégations, 275 ; 
 
 his testimony to intertwinedness of 
 Catholic and Roman from earliest 
 times, 275, 276 
 Hegel, G. W. F. : 
 his influence upon Feuerbach criti- 
 
 cised, 32-34 ; 
 holds Religion to be independent of 
 
 Ethics, 151 ; 
 his indebtedness to Church, 265 
 Hcrder, J. G., 151 
 Hermann, Wilhelm, 148 
 Hildebrand, Pope St. Gregory VII., 164, 
 
 177 
 Hogg, A. G., ChrisVs Message of the 
 
 Kingdom (191 1), 137 
 Holland, Henry Scott, The Real 
 Problem of Eschatological (n.d.), 126 ; 
 132, 133 
 Holtzmann, Heinrich Julius, Die Synop- 
 
 tiker (1901), 263 
 Huxley, Thomas, on unbelief and folly, 
 
 15 
 Irish, the : 
 Barmaid, 223/ 224 ; 
 washerwoman, 289, 290 
 Isaiah, the Prophet, 74, 75 
 
 Jacobi, Friedrich H., 151 
 
 Jcremiah, the Prophet, and Deutcro- 
 
 nomy, 75, 76, 109 
 Jcsuit Novices, examples of Super- 
 natural Humility, 288 
 Jésus : 
 sources of our knowledge of His 
 
 Earthly Life, 80, 81 ; 
 His Public Ministry, its two con- 
 
 trasting parts, 81-83 î 
 teaches the Two Ways, with their 
 several, contrary abiding consé- 
 quences, 209-1 1 ; 
 His Sinlessness, 83 ; 
 Messiah and Suffering Messiah, 83, 
 
 84, i23> 124 ; 
 His Proximate Second Coming, 121- 
 
 24; 
 His Risen Life, 84, 291 ; 
 the Ethics of, compared with those of 
 
 Kant, 156-61 ; 
 perceives men organically, 260-62 ; 
 and the Church, 260-64 ; 
 conceived by Church as Christ in sensé 
 far transcending that of Jewish 
 Messiah, 294 
 Joan of Arc, St., 200 
 Job, the Book of, 78 
 Johannine Writings,the, spécial character 
 
 of, 84-86 
 John the Baptist, St., 260 
 John of the Cross, St.,keenly conscious of 
 anthropomorphisms in Religion, 39 
 
INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Jones, Sir Henry, A Critical Account 
 of the Philosophy of Lotze (1895), 
 68, 69 ; 274 
 
 Josiah, King, his Reform and Persé- 
 cution, 75, 258, 260 
 
 Jude, Epistle of St., 271 
 
 Julian, Mother, of Norwich, as to 
 Abiding Conséquences, 206 
 
 Justin Martyr, St., on the Suffering 
 Servant, 124 
 
 Kant, Immanuel : 
 on Radical Evil, its présence and 
 
 opération, 12, 13 ; 
 on Categorical Imperative, double 
 
 weakness of this doctrine, 1 7, 1 8 ; 252 ; 
 Ethics are, with him, the fundamental 
 
 science, 151 ; 
 his spécial merits and weaknesses, z86, 
 
 187; 
 indebtedness to Church, 265 
 Kellermann, Rose, the deaf-mute, 231 
 Kepler, Johann, 18 
 Kierkegaard, Sôren, 156, 162, 270 
 Knapp, Fr. Simon, the Carmélite, 290 
 
 Lactantius, L. C. F., the Church 
 Father, contrasted with Su Augus- 
 tine, as to Persécution, 62 
 Lagarde, Paul de : 
 a daring yet religiously attempered 
 
 critic, 36 ; 
 requires religion to deal only with the 
 Hère and Now, 130, 131 
 Lagrange, Père, O.P., on Ezekiel and 
 
 Priestly Code, 272 
 Lavigerie, Cardinal de, his attitude to- 
 
 wards Moslems, rm* 
 Law of Holiness, the, 77 
 Lchmann, Edvin, 36 
 Leibniz : 
 compared with TertuUian, 144; 
 indebted to Church, 265 
 Locke, John, indebted to Church, 265 
 Lotze, Hermann, on Personality and 
 
 Perfection, 50 
 Loyson, Hyacinthe, 287 
 Lucretius, his image of the torch-race, 
 
 293 
 Lugo, Cardinal Juan de, S.J., his 
 teaching as to ordinary method 
 foUowed by God in salvation of 
 soûls, 63 ; 92, 93 ; 334/ 235 / 252, 253 
 Luther, Martin, 
 on Arbitrary Will of God, 17 ; 
 as to Original Sin, 164 ; 
 on Givenness of Religion, 246, 247 ; 
 his account from 1530 onwards, largely 
 legendary, conceming his own 
 spiritual expériences in 1505-17, 
 248, 249 ; 
 
 his unawareness of contrast between 
 Synoptic Gospels and St. Paul, 
 249. 250 ; 
 
 his great indebtedness to Occam, 250, 
 251 
 
 Mabillon, Jean, the French Bénédic- 
 tine Scholar, 288, 289 
 Maccabees, the, 109 
 Mach, Ernst, the Neo-Positivist, 69 
 Maeterlinck, 163 
 
 Maitland,F.W.,25o;273/274; 275; 276 
 Manning, H. E., Cardinal, his attitude 
 
 towards Anglicans, idiù 
 Meyer, Edward, 73 
 Mill, John Stuart, the waming conveyed 
 
 by his life, 12 
 Monica, St., her love for Augustine, 18 
 More, Sir Thomas, Blessed, ignorant as 
 
 to Golden Middle Age, 250 
 Moses, 72-74 
 
 Natorp, Paul, his sheer Immanentism, 
 
 91 
 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 156 
 
 Occam, Wiluam of : 
 his doctrine as to Arbitrary Will of 
 
 God, 17 ; 
 Luther's great indebtedness to, 250, 
 
 251 
 Origen : 
 on the Suffering Servant, 124 ; 
 nowhere teaches Final Restitution of 
 Ail Things, 206 
 Origenists, certain, hold Final Restitu- 
 tion of Ail Things, 206, 211 
 Orione, Don, 297, 298 
 
 Paschal, Blaise, on Arbitrary Will of 
 
 God, 17 
 Passavalli, Archbishop Luigi Puecher 
 (d. 1897) : 
 his cccentric views, 232 ; 
 his deep insights, 232, 233 
 Paul, St. : 
 well aware of anthropomorphisms in 
 
 Religion, 39 ; 
 his véhémences as to Original Sin and 
 
 the Law, 164 ; 
 nowhere teaches a Final Restitution 
 
 of AU Things, 209, 210 ; 
 his indebtedness to Synagogue and 
 
 above ail to Jésus, 293 ; 
 and the Greek Mysteries, 135 
 Paul IV., Caraffa, Pope (d. 1559), 62 
 Pentateuch, the, its constituents : 
 Book of Covenant, 72, 73 ; 
 Yahwist (J) and Ephraemite (E), 74 ; 
 Deuteronomy, 75, 76 ; 
 Law of Holiness and Priestly Code, 
 -j-j, 78 ; 271, 272 
 
302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pcrry, Father, SJ., thc Astronomcr, 
 
 143, 143 ; 289 
 Peter, Second Epistle of St., 271 
 Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, 80 
 Plus V., St., Ghislieri, Pope (d. 1572), 62 
 Plato, 135, 207 
 Positivist, the dying, 3, 4 
 Pringle Pattison, Andrew Seth, on 
 
 danger spécial to Genetic Method 
 
 of Research, 140, 141 
 Proclus, 135 
 Psaltcr, the, 79, 80 ; 109 
 
 Rabbi, the heroic French, 285 
 
 Renan, Ernest, 156 
 
 Révélation of St. John, Book of the, 
 
 its Millennarianism, 137 
 Royce, Josiah : 
 The World and the Individual (1900), 93; 
 The Problem of Christianity (1913), 
 275* 276 
 
 Savonarola, Girolamo, his Millen- 
 narianism, 137 
 
 Schiller, F. C. E., on Aristotle's Un- 
 moving Energeia, 93 
 
 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 151, 152 ; 220 
 
 Schopenhauer, Arthur, on Protestant 
 Reformers* abolition of Voluntary 
 Celibacy, 285, 286 
 
 Scotus, Duns ; on the Will of God, 17 
 Erigena, his Pantheism, 220 
 
 Siegwart, Christoph : 
 on Transsubi ective Intimation con- 
 tinuously présent in Logic and in 
 Theory of Knowledge, 53 ; 
 on the Unconditional Reason, as sole 
 adéquate presupposition of désire 
 for knowledge, 71 
 
 Simon, Richard, French Biblical Critic, 
 
 259 
 Smith, A. L., 250, 276 
 Smith, William Robertson, 36, 259 
 Sohm, Rudolf : 
 Wesen und Ursprung des Katholizismus 
 
 (191 1), 228-30; 
 criticism, 230-32, 275 
 Spencer, Herbert, his First Principles 
 
 (1862), 72 
 Spinoza, Baruch, 167, 207, 220 
 Stade, Bernard, 73 
 Suffering Servant, Poem of the, 78, 124 
 
 Tennant, F. R., his Origin and Propa- 
 gation of Sin (1903), its strength 
 and weakness, 9-1 1 
 Tercsa, St. : 
 Matthew Arnold on what entrances 
 
 us in, 18 ; 
 her conception of the Divine Action 
 as Instantaneous, 126 
 
 Tcrtullian : 
 and Roman Law, 135 ; 
 his Montanism, how far true, 270 
 Thomas, St., Aquinas (d. 274) : 
 well aware of anthropomorphisms in 
 
 Religion, 40 ; 
 on Création and Sheer Beginning, 49 ; 
 on Nature and Supernature, 87, 88 ; 
 
 164; 282; 
 his utilisation of Aristotle, 135 ; 
 Troeltsch's account of, 150, 174-77 
 Tiele, C. P., 37 
 Tolstoi, Léo, 156 
 Torquemada, Cardinal Juan (d. 1468), 
 
 164 j 230 
 Troeltsch, Ernst : 
 on acts and contacts of Sensé, as 
 necessary to man*s Spiritual appré- 
 hensions, 70 ; 
 on St. Thomas's Doctrine of the Two 
 
 Stages, 87, 88 ; 
 on history and présent position of 
 
 Christian Ethics, 148-52 ; 
 his four questions concerning Chris- 
 tian Ethics, 152-69 ; 
 his discrimination as to ''the Neces- 
 sary ** in the Essence of Christianity, 
 
 170-73 ; 
 
 his Soziallehren (1912), 173, 174 ; 
 on Mediaeval Catholicism (Aquinas), 
 
 174-77 ; 
 on Sect-type within Christianity, 177- 
 
 81; 
 on Sect-type, as needing incorpora- 
 tion in Church, 269, 270 ; 
 on Mystical type within Christianity, 
 
 181-85 ; 
 his outlook into Future of Christianity, 
 
 190-94; 
 on nucleus of Factual Happenings, as 
 
 necessary to Christianity, 268, 269 ; 
 strength and weakness of his writings 
 
 generally, 145*47; 
 of his Philosophy in particular, 185-90 
 
 Underhill, Evelyn, The Mystical Way 
 (1913), 132 
 
 Valdes, 270 
 
 Varisco, Bernardino, his Conesci Te 
 Stesso (1912), 93 
 
 Victor, St., Bishop of Rome (d. 203), 263 
 
 Volkelt, Johannes, on Transsubjective 
 Intimation and Faith at work in 
 Logic and Theory of Knowledge, 53 
 
 Waggett, Philip N., on Creative 
 
 Power, 49 
 Waldensians, the, 177 
 Walker, Herbert, S.J., on Simultaneity 
 
 of God, 131 
 
INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Ward, James : 
 on Concrète and AbstractTimc, 69, 70; 
 on Analytic and Genetic Method o£ 
 Research, 140, 141 
 Ward, Wilfrid, Life and Letters of 
 
 Cardinal Newman (1912), 367 
 Ward, William George, " Idéal *' : 
 his excessive expressions, 172 ; 
 distinguishes, in Supematural Acts, 
 between their implications and their 
 express références, 380 
 Webb, Clément C. ],, on Révélation, 
 55.56 
 
 Wellhausen, Julius : 
 on Moses, 73 ; 
 on Elijah, 74 ; 
 
 on thc Prophets, as ** storm-birds,*' 74 
 Wemle, Paul, Die Synoptische Frage 
 
 (1899), 263 
 Wette, W. M. L. de, 151 
 White, Andrew, History of the Warfare 
 
 of Science and Theology (1903), 59 
 Windelband, Wilhelm, on Transsub- 
 jective Worlds of -Ssthetics, Diano- 
 ëtics and Ethics, 53 
 Wyclif, 251 
 
 IL— ON SUBJECT MATTERS 
 
 Aberrations, three : 
 below level of Natural Human Acts, 
 
 9> II ; 
 and three, above this level, 1 1 
 Abiding Conséquences : 
 indissolubly part of teaching of Jésus, 
 
 xi.; 210, 211 ; 
 absent in every Pantheism, 220 
 Abraham* s Bosom, 136, 137 
 Abstract Ideas, alone quite clear and 
 
 readily transférable, 100, loi 
 Accessions, the Religious, 94, 95 
 Adoration, essential to Religion, 90, 91 
 Affirmations : 
 the four great, of Religion : 
 Révélation and Miracle, Création 
 
 and Personality, 42, 48 ; 
 Création, 48, 49 ; 
 Personality, 49, 50 ; 
 Révélation, 55-57 ; 
 Miracle, 57, 58 ; 
 of real existence, the appropriate tests 
 for, 100-5 
 Agnosticism, Philosophical, an artificial 
 
 System, 71, 72 
 Analytic and Genetic Methods of Re- 
 search contrasted, 140-42 
 Anthropocentrism, costliness of change 
 
 from, to Theocentrism, 12, 13 
 Anthropomorphisms, Religion well 
 aware of its, 38-41 
 
 Baptism, difficulty as to Infant, how 
 
 wisely met, 203, 204 
 ** Beloved Community,*' the, 275 
 Buddhism : 
 the Wheel of Life and Nirvana, 
 
 together, the substance of, 89 ; 
 in contrast with Christianity, 213 
 
 Gatacxysms, the three, foretold by 
 
 Jésus, 122 
 Càtholic, the Christian consciousness 
 
 from first essentially, according to 
 
 Rudolf Sohm, 274, 275 
 
 Catholicism : 
 
 concerning Essentials of, 227-41 ; 
 the three éléments of, which make 
 
 for inclusiveness, 233-35 ; 
 the three qualities 'specially needed 
 
 in, at présent day, 238-41 ; 
 and Protestantism, the Convictions 
 
 Common to, 246-48 ; 
 further convictions in process of bc- 
 
 coming common to, and Protes- 
 tantism, 248-53 ; 
 duty of, to welcome every religious 
 
 light and grâce manifesting itself 
 
 outside its visible bounds, 233 ; 
 the eight great successive develop- 
 
 ments of, 244, 245 ; 
 in New Testament, 262-64 ; 
 and Roman claims, 262-65, 275, 
 
 276; 
 and Extrême Curialism, 228-32 
 Catholicism, Mediaeval : 
 Troeltsch on, 174-77 î 
 contrast between Ancient Christian 
 
 positions and, 175-77 
 Celibacy of the Clergy, 232 ; 
 at its best, profoundly efficacious, 
 
 285-87 ; 
 Schopenhauer upon its abolition by 
 
 Protestant Reformers, 285, 286 ; 
 the Central Christian Figures, Volun- 
 
 tary Celibates, 286, 287 
 Children, éducation of, what matters 
 
 supremely in, 106-8 
 Choice, the Liberty of, an imperfect 
 
 kind of Liberty, 17 
 Christian Religion, sketch of its history, 
 
 80-89 
 Christocentrism, excessive, caricatures 
 
 the true temper of Jésus, 135, 136 
 Church : 
 abiding need of, three great groups 
 
 of proofs for, 259-65 ; 
 fact and name of, in New Testament, 
 
 260-62; 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Qiurch: — continued 
 necessary for full development of 
 
 creaturely mind, 264, 265 ; 
 is never, for a Catholic, its own end, 
 
 276, 277 ; 
 the five substitutions for, attempted 
 
 by men at large, 255, 256 ; 
 and superiority to them of, 264, 265 ; 
 costingness of a Church, 266, 267 ; 
 cannot be a Society for promotion of 
 
 Research, 267, 268 ; 
 requires persistent récognition of thc 
 clément of real truth and goodness 
 operative elsewhere, 269, and to 
 incorporate and correct the Sects, 
 269, 270 ; 
 and Catholicism, their ultimate diffi- 
 
 culty, xiL, 257-59 ; 
 three convictions concerning, xi.-xiii» ; 
 or Churches, 274-77 
 Compassion, examples of Supernatural, 
 
 287, 288 
 Confucianism, 89 
 
 Contrasts, the, concomitantly appre- 
 hended with Superhuman Reality, 
 are Weakness, Instability, Depen- 
 dcnce, 43 
 Courage, examples of Supernatural, 285 
 Création : 
 Story of the Six Days*, 77, 78, 126 ; 
 and sheer Beginning : St. Thomas's 
 discrimination between, 48, 49 
 Creaturely mind, the, 264, 265 
 
 Degrees, varying, of genuine expérience 
 of Ultimate Reality, présent in 
 Supernatural Acts and States, 293, 
 294 
 
 Dcvelopments, right and necessary, in 
 Religion hâve been accompanied by 
 pseudonymous writing ; by throw- 
 ing back into past of expériences 
 and institutions of présent; and 
 by persécution, 270-72. Thc wise 
 attitude towards thèse facts, 272-74 
 
 Difficulties, the Three Great Ultimate, 
 of Religion, idi,, 119, 120 
 
 Dispositions, fundamental, required for 
 growth in insight, 98-100 
 
 Divinity of Jésus, deeply enriching truth 
 of, requires simultaneous remem- 
 brance of some self - witnessing of 
 God outside of Christianity, 134-35 
 
 EcsTACY, the Divine and the human, 216 
 
 Eirem'cs, weak point of, 144, 145 
 
 Enlargements, the successive, of man's 
 
 appréhension of World of Time 
 
 and Space, their full Christian 
 
 justification, 135, 136 
 
 Eschatological views, the Christian, fall 
 
 into two classes : the Millcnnarian 
 
 and the Heaven classes, 137-40 
 Essence of Christianity : 
 
 Troeltsch's discrimination of two 
 
 kinds of " necessary ** within, 170-72 
 criticism, 172, 173 
 Ethical Idéal, the Christian : 
 is not the Kantian Formalist Ethic, 
 
 156-61 ; 
 contrasted with Platonic, Stoic, Budd- 
 
 hist, Mystical, Prophetical Ethics, 
 
 159, 160 ; 
 its historical development has not 
 
 been a misunderstanding, 160 ; 
 its most spécifie charactcristics lie in 
 
 its Content, not in its Form, 161 ; 
 contains two Pôles, 165-69 
 Ethics, Objective and Subjective, their 
 
 Différence, 153-56 
 
 Factual Happenings, necessity of, for 
 Christianity and the Church ; God 
 as ultimate guarantee of their per- 
 sistent tenableness, 239-;-4i, 268, 269 
 Formai side of Spiritual Life distinctly 
 over-emphasised by not a few Pro- 
 testant bodies, 251, 252 
 Freedom, Perfect and Imperfect, xi., 17 
 Future Life : 
 
 belief in God preceded belief in, with 
 the Israelitish-Jewish prophets, 76, 
 196, 197 ; 
 
 as resolution of dualism in man*s 
 earthly life, 169 ; 
 
 only when kept dépendent upon faith 
 in God, does it yield a rich content, 
 197, 198 ; 
 
 the four deepest expériences of thc 
 soûl in this life, which can be 
 taken to persist, expanded, in the 
 Beyond, 215-20 ; 
 
 no direct spiritual intimation of Future 
 Life, 296, 297 
 
 Genetic and Analytic Methods of 
 
 Research contrasted, 140-42 
 Given, the, both in Natural and in Super- 
 natural Religion, xiii.,xiv. ; xvi., xwii* 
 Givenness and Prevenience, keen sensé 
 of, in ail great appréhensions, es- 
 pecially in Religion, 56, 57 
 God, reality of : 
 indeed aïso some dim expérience of, 
 always involved in Supernatural 
 Acts and States, 295, 296 ; 
 the end of Christ and of Church, 276, 277; 
 the guarantee of persistent credibili^ 
 of Factual Happenings sufficient for 
 genuine Christianity and CathoU- 
 cism, 239-41, 268, 269 
 His Perfect Liberty, 17, 18 
 
INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 Good faith présent and absent in soûls, 
 contrary to ail human expectatîon 
 or appearance, 3-5 
 
 Hell: 
 
 thc prévalent rejectîon of cvery kind 
 of, 205, 206 ; 
 
 yet some doctrine of Abiding Consé- 
 quences essential to the deepest, the 
 Christian^ outlook, 206-13 ; 
 
 two excesses to be guarded against, 
 
 213-15 ; 
 
 Synoptic Cîospels on, 209-11 ; 
 
 St. Paul and Final Restitution of AU 
 
 Things, 211, 212; 
 Origen does not deny, 206, 211 ; 
 essence of, lies, above ail, in its 
 Unendingness, 221 
 Heroic, the, and the Homcly, both 
 furnish occasions and materials for 
 either Natural or Supernatural Acts 
 and States, 284 
 Historical Religions, their " mère dé- 
 tails,'' 92 
 History, sensé of, its recentness and 
 importance, and affinity between 
 Christianity and, xvi., 270-74 
 Human acts and lives : 
 the three instincts which lie below 
 
 level of specifically, 8, 9 ; 
 and the instincts which lie above 
 same level, 11, 12 
 Humility, examples of Supernatural, 288 
 
 Ihmanentism, its présent prevalence 
 
 and abiding insufficiency, 90, 91 
 Immortality : 
 Religion cares only for, of a certain 
 
 kmd, 196; 
 rel^iously valuable belief in, pro- 
 
 cecded from faith in God, 197 ; 
 Personal, not directly intimated by 
 Supernatural Acts and States, 296, 
 
 297 
 Impartiaiity, not Neutrality, wanted in 
 
 study of the Religions, 7 
 Importance of more or of less of insight, 
 
 apart from ail questions of respon- 
 
 sibility, 5-7 
 Incarnation, the, involved Incarnation 
 
 in some particular human nature, 
 
 125, 126 
 Inclusiveness, need of practice of, by 
 
 religions men, 63 
 Instincts, transformation of predomi- 
 
 nantly animal, into moral and 
 
 spiritual energisings and habits, 154 
 Institutional Christianity, 254-77 î 
 the fivc substitutes attcmpted for it, 
 
 purely or in combinations, 255, 256 ; 
 
 how it has lost its immense popu- 
 
 larity, 256-59 
 Institutional Elément of Religion : 
 its présence and importance in every 
 
 religions life, 13-16, 92, 93 ; 
 in Our Lord, St. Paul, St. Francis, 
 
 William Law, 14 ; 
 in George Fox and other Quakers, 
 
 14. 15 ? 
 difi&culty of, 59-61 ; 
 requires careful, costly cultivation, 15, 
 16 
 Invincible Ignorance, range of, 3, 4; 
 
 221-23 
 Israelitish-Jewish Religion, sketch of its 
 history, 72-80 
 
 Joy: 
 Perfect Religion involves, 18 ; 290, 29 1 J 
 no formai Roman canonisation in 
 
 absence of, 18 ; 
 examples of Supernatural, 290, 291 
 
 KiNGDOM of Heaven, the : 
 original doctrine of, was permeated 
 with Parousia expectations, 127-29 ; 
 what it is in preaching of Jésus, 15$ ; 
 and the Church, 260-64 
 
 Laymen in Church, large place assigned 
 
 by Providence to, 233 
 Liberty, Perfect and Imperfect, their 
 
 différence, 16, 17, 221 
 Limbo — a state of Natural Happiness in 
 
 the Beyond, 203-5 
 
 Magic, excessive fear of, amongst Pro- 
 testants ; where Magic begins, 251 
 Man: 
 his double constitution, 169 ; 
 always stands after God, in teaching 
 of Jésus, 157, 158 
 Manichaeism : 
 in Augustine's life, 86 ; 
 how to avoid, in doctrine of Abiding 
 » Conséquences, 214 
 Middle Age, the (oolden : 
 its characteristic outlook, 174-76 ; 
 practically unknown to Protestant 
 Reformers and their Renaissance 
 Catholic Contemporaries, 250 ; 
 its différence from Late Middle Age, 
 282 
 Millennarianism : 
 its varions forms, 136, 137 ; 
 its tough vitality but serions in- 
 adequacy, 136-40 
 Miracle : 
 its essence, 57, 58 ; 
 and the Supernatural, 279 
 Mohammedanism, 89, 90 
 Monolatry, 73, 74 
 
3o6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mystical Type, the, in Christianity : 
 
 according to Ernst Troeltsch, 181-84 ; 
 
 contrasted with Scct Type, 184, 185 ; 
 
 criticism of his position, 187, 188 
 Mysticism : 
 
 according to Troeltsch, always some- 
 thing secondary and intentionally 
 reflective, although conjoined with 
 quite contrary feeling of immediacy, 
 181, criticism of this position, 187, 
 188; 
 
 its several degrees and forms, 181-83 J 
 
 in narrower, technical sensé, 183, 184 
 Mysticism, Pure : 
 
 and Pantheism are one, 133 ; 
 
 the Proximate Futurism of outlook of 
 the historié Jésus renders impossible 
 interprétation of His Life and 
 Teachingas, 132 
 Mystics, the, their nonrecognition of the 
 médiations at work within them- 
 selves also, 131, 132 
 
 Natural and Supernatural Religion : 
 are their methods différent or sitmlar i 
 
 inm^-xv», 198 
 Naturalistic viewof Man, the, the clearer 
 
 and more plausible ; yet only the 
 
 Metaphysical view adéquate, 207, 
 
 208 
 Nature and Supernature : 
 how and why a specifically Catholic, 
 
 non-Protestant view, 281-84 ; 
 explanations and descriptions of, xi»; 
 
 yim., xiv.; 96, 148-50, 156-61, 164, 
 
 176, 198-201, 205 
 examples of, 208, 209 ; 284-91 ; 
 Nature exists also in Heaven, 2x3, 
 
 214 ; 
 God, as Author of both, guarantee 
 
 that nucleus of Factual Happenings 
 
 nccessary to genuine Christianity 
 
 will remain crédible, 269 ; 
 in thought of Golden Middle Age, 
 
 282; 
 recovery of distinction between— of 
 
 Two Stages Doctrine — important 
 
 for power of religion, 279, 280 
 
 Objective, the, need of, in Religion, 90, 
 
 91 
 Opm operatum, the Parousia, in its 
 
 primitive meaning, a huge, 164, 180 
 Organic outlook of Jésus, 261, 262 
 Organisms,thegreat fundamental human, 
 
 or Personalist Croups, 13-16 
 Origins, the study of : 
 its besetting weakness, 140-41 ; 
 its spécial fruitfulness, 141-42 
 Orthodoxy, the largeness permanently 
 
 présent in ultimate, 61, 62 
 
 Panentheism, 162, 163 
 Pantheism : 
 its inadequacy in face of evil, 93, 
 
 94; 
 flattens ail out, 294 ; 
 necessarily excludes ail Abiding Con- 
 séquences, 230 ; 
 seeming, in insistence upon Substance 
 in Holy Trinity and upon Things 
 in Sacraments, its great utility, 277 
 ParadisCf 136, 137 
 Parottsia : 
 the genuine difficulty of problem of, 
 
 X., xi» ; 
 an original conception of Jésus Him- 
 
 self, 123, 124 ; 
 influence of belief in, upon attitude 
 of first Preaching of Christianity 
 towards various problems of human 
 life, 260, 261 ; 
 first considérations in mitigation of 
 
 difficulty, 124-30; 
 final grappling with difficulty, 130-43 
 Persécution : 
 in Deuteronomy and Second Book of 
 
 Kings, 76 ; 
 in Joharmine Writings, 85 ; 
 in some of the Fathers and Popes, 
 
 62; 
 Troeltsch on, 192, 193 ; 
 generally, ix., x. ; 258 
 Pcrsonality, the : 
 of Cîod, 49, 50 ; 
 
 of the great human groups or com- 
 plexes, 13-16 
 Petrine Claims, the, 262-64 
 Polarity, double, of the Christian Ethic, 
 
 165-69 
 Popes and Fathers : 
 of the Inclusive Type, 62 ; 
 the balanced and the excessive, 245, 
 246 ; 257/ 258 
 Preliminaries, the, to Religious Belief, 
 
 98-108 
 Présence, sensé of, in Supernatural Acts 
 
 and States, 293, 294 
 Priest, Bishop, Pope : development 
 of their powers and functions 
 closely parallel; how to view this 
 gênerai fact, 273, 274 
 Progress in Religion, the chief facts 
 
 concerning, 90-96 
 Protestantism : 
 its fissiparous tendency, 242 ; 
 its range, the more équitable view of, 
 
 243/ 244 ; 
 the four great successive variations of, 
 
 243; 
 the earlier, its view of Christian 
 Ethics, 150, 151 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 the later, its Ethical views, two stages 
 
 of, 151, 152 ; 
 thc goodand the evil brought by , 245/ 246 
 Protestants should be conceived by 
 Catholics as their " separated 
 Brethren/* 245 
 Pscudonymous Writing, 271, 272 
 Purgatory, objections to a, and answers 
 to thèse, 201-3 
 
 Realism, need of a Critical, 189, 190 
 Reality : 
 Religion possesses, in ail its Super- 
 natural Acts and States, sensé of a 
 real expérience of, and yet also 
 sensé that this expérience is imper- 
 fect, ix. ; 63, 64 ; 
 of God, always involved in ail Super- 
 natural Acts and States, 295, 296 ; 
 and realities, not ourselves, the reli- 
 gious soul's delight in, 216, 217 
 Rédemption : 
 its place, respectively, in teaching of 
 Jésus and in System of the Church, 
 according to Troeltsch, 161-63 ; 
 criticism of this position, 163-65 
 Reincarnation : 
 
 no room in Christianity for, 213; 
 accepted by Archbishop Passa valli, 232 
 Religion : 
 its four characteristics : Universality, 
 
 23, 24, Importance, 24, Autonomy, 
 
 24, Superhumanity, 24, 25 ; 
 
 its superhuman claim, difficulties 
 against, 25-29 ; 
 
 and Theology, distinct but intcr- 
 connected, 60, 61 ; 
 
 actually lived, always conscious of the 
 More-than-human Reality of Ob- 
 ject of its expérience, and of abid- 
 ing différence between this, and 
 any possible, expérience and the 
 great Reality thus experienced, 63 ; 
 
 sketch of history of Israelitish-Jewish, 
 72-80 ; 
 
 of Christian, 80-89 ; 
 
 indications as to Confucian, Buddhist, 
 Mohammedan, 89, 90 ; 
 
 Progress of, Chief facts conceming, 
 90-96; 
 
 dépendent upon Ethics,with Kant, 151; 
 
 independent, with Hegel, Schleier- 
 macher and others, 151, 152 
 Religions, the several great, ail contain 
 some, but very varying amounts of, 
 truth, 6, 7; 60; 269 
 Responsibility in Religious Belief : 
 
 great importance of différences be- 
 tween man and man, group and 
 group, prior to ail, 5-7 ; 
 
 for training of three great sub-human 
 
 instincts, 8, 9 ; 
 for development of three great intel- 
 
 lectual virtues, 11-13 ; 
 for acquisition of great social, institu- 
 
 tional virtues, 13-16; 
 apparently absent, yet still really 
 
 présent, upon heights of spiritual 
 
 life, 16-19 ; 
 illustrations of amazing ranges of 
 
 innocence and of, 3-5 
 Retum of Messiah and Sufîerings of 
 
 Messiah, both together, the teaching 
 
 of Jésus ; should always be thus 
 
 kept together, 130 
 Révélation, an excellent form of know- 
 
 ledge ; the gênerai form of ail 
 
 genuine Religion, 55-57 
 Roman Catholic daims : 
 earliest évidences for, 262-64 ; 275, 276 ; 
 Roman and Catholic closely inter- 
 
 twined in History, 275, 276 
 
 Sacraments, antiquity, necessity, and 
 
 Christian character of, 161-65 
 Scholarship, sincère, and fervent Church- 
 manship, suggestions for combined 
 working of, 266-77 
 Science and Church : 
 Natural, 258 ; 
 Historical, 258, 259 ; 
 dispositions necessary for Historical, 
 
 270-74 
 Scct, the, its various manifestations, 
 
 256, 264 
 Sect-type, the, in Christianity : 
 
 according to Troeltsch, 177-79 ; criti- 
 cism of this position, 180, 181 ; 
 and Church type contrasted/ 177-79 ; 
 and Mystical type compared, 184, 185 
 Self-abandonment into Gkxl's hands, 
 
 examples of, 289, 290 
 Sensé and Spirit, as against Spirit only, 
 the position adéquate to facts of 
 human life, 70, 251 
 Simultaneity, the, of God, 86, 94, 131 ; 
 
 215, 216 
 Sin: 
 Pride and Self-Centredness, the typi- 
 
 cal, in Christianity, 9-13 ; 
 weakness more prévalent amongst men 
 than, xiii., 43 
 Social, human organism : 
 the religious soul's joy in appur- 
 
 tenance to, 217, 268 ; 
 solitary and, in Religion, 293 ; 
 and Sociological, Troeltsch's distinc- 
 tion between, 174 
 State and Church, their respective ends 
 and sphères, 282-84 
 
3o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Step: 
 the Two, Laddcr from God to man, 
 and from man to God, a central 
 Catholic conception, 87, 88 ; 
 the Single, of Protestant Reformers, 
 
 88, 89 ; 
 rctum of Troeltsch to a Two-Stcp 
 Ladder, 167-69 
 Succession, characteristic of life of man, 
 
 86, 94, 131 
 Suddenness : 
 conceived as characteristic of Divine 
 
 Action, 125, 126 ; 
 limited range of, in outlook of Jésus, 
 
 132-34 
 Suffering : 
 Religion has grown under, 108-10 ; 
 Christianity and, 1 10-13 î 
 in Joy, its équivalent in the Beyond, 
 
 218-20 ; 
 not last Word of Christianity, 17, 18, 
 
 290, 291 
 and Serenity, both présent in Super- 
 
 natural Acts and States, 294, 295 
 Superhuman, the, Reality of : 
 objections against, from character of 
 
 objects apprehended by the reli- 
 
 gious mind, 44-50 ; 
 from gênerai philosophical considéra- 
 tions, 51-58 ; 
 from practical conséquences which 
 
 seem to flow inevitably from ad- 
 mission of, 50-53 ; 
 effects of loss of sensé of, 64, 65 
 Supernatural, the : 
 examples of, 223, 224, 285-91 ; 
 Christianity and, 278-98 ; 
 a wider term than the Miraculous, 
 
 278, 279 ; 
 implications, as distinct from explicit 
 
 références of, 280 ; 
 characteristics of, 280, 291-97 ; 
 présent also amongst non-Christians, 
 
 but fuUest in Roman Catholic 
 
 Church, 281 ; 
 contrasted with the Natural, xi., 174- 
 
 77, 198-200, 281-84 
 
 Theism : 
 
 where Fichte falls short of, 52, 55 ; 
 
 and Pantheism, in face of Evil, 93, 94 
 Theocentrism, costingness of change 
 from Anthropocentrism to, 12, 13 
 
 Third Heaven, the, of St. Paul, 137 
 Time, Concrète, and Clock, 69, 70, 93, 
 
 ^ 94 
 
 Truthfulness, examples of Supernatural, 
 288, 289 
 
 Type and Individual, apparently dif- 
 férent fates of, 204, 205 
 
 Unconditional Reason, the, as pre- 
 supposition of ail désire for Know- 
 ledge, 71 
 Utilisation : 
 
 by Book of Wisdom (O.T0> of Plato, 
 135; 
 
 by St. Paul, of Rabbinical lorc and 
 Grcek Mysteries, 135 ; 
 
 by Fourth Gospel, of Philo, 135 ; 
 
 by Tertullian, of Roman Law, 135 ; 
 
 by St. Augustine, of Plotinus, 135 ; 
 
 by Dionysius the Areopagitc, of 
 Proclus, 135 ; 
 
 by St. Thomas Aquinas, of Aristotlc, 
 13I/ 135 
 
 Values, Objective : 
 the State, Society, Art, Sdencc, the 
 Family, Religion, as so many, 151, 
 152; 
 and Subjective Rules, the former, the 
 centre of Ethical Problem, 153-56 
 
 Variations, the apparently endless, be- 
 tween single religious minds and 
 between entire religions, no dis- 
 proof that a great transsubjective 
 Reality is being apprehended, 44-46 
 
 Vatican Council, Decrees of the, 292 
 
 Violations, in earlier religions, of funda- 
 mental moral and spiritual qualities 
 and duties, as understood in later 
 religions, no proof that some divine 
 light was not operative from first, 
 46-48 
 
 Whole, the, consciousness of, extant 
 from first with consciousness of the 
 parts : in single man's self-aware- 
 ness and knowledge of other real- 
 ities ; in single man's knowledge of 
 himself and of community ; and 
 in single Christian's knowledge of 
 himsetf, as member of the one, sole 
 Catholic Church, 274, 275 
 
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