v ,
 
 COLLOQUIA PEEIPATETICA 

 
 Printed by R. Clark, 
 
 FOR 
 
 EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 CAMBRIDGE . . MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 GLASGOW . . . JAMES MACLEHOSE.
 
 COI LOQUIA 
 
 PERIPATETICA 
 
 (.DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS) 
 
 BEING 
 
 NOTES OF CONVERSATIONS 
 
 JOHN DUNCAN, LL.D. 
 
 Professor of Hebrew in the New College* Edinburgh 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Note xi 
 
 Preface to Third Edition xix 
 
 Philosophical Scepticism and Theology ... 1 
 Nature and Origin of Evil ..... 3 
 The Creed within a Creed ..... 8 
 Conservatism and Theology ..... 8 
 Calvinism ........ 9 
 
 High Calvinism 10 
 
 Biblical Landmarks of Theology . . . .10 
 
 Charity 11 
 
 Optimism 11 
 
 Arianism . . . . . . . .12 
 
 Facts 12 
 
 Eclecticism 13 
 
 Scotch Psalms and Paraphrases .... 13 
 A'Kempis ........ 14 
 
 Three Synthetic Unities 14 
 
 Individuality . . . . . . .15 
 
 Sceptics and Evidence . . . . . .16 
 
 The Gospel, and the permission of Evil . . .17 
 
 The " Te Deum " 17 
 
 Merit 18 
 
 John Owen . 19 
 
 Progress ; .- . . . . . 20 
 
 Faith and Knowledge . . . . .20 
 
 St. Paul at Athens ... . t . .20 
 
 Metaphysics and Theology . . . .. - . 21 
 
 Creation and Design ...... 22 
 
 Pantheism .... 22 
 
 20668O6
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Plato and'Aristotle '. . ''* . 23 
 
 Sir William Hamilton and the Infinite ... 25 
 George Campbell ....... 27 
 
 Opposite Errors ....... 27 
 
 Luther and Melancthon 27 
 
 Dr. Chalmers 27 
 
 Morell .28 
 
 Open Questions ....... 29 
 
 Necessitarianism ....... 29 
 
 Freewill and Synergia . . ... .29 
 
 Aquinas ........ 31 
 
 Uses of Speculation . . . -. .32 
 Adam and Christ . . . . . . .33 
 
 Unburied Speculations . . . . . .33 
 
 Liturgies . . . . . * . . 33 
 
 Anthropomorphism . . . .".. , . 34 
 
 Gratia Irresistibilis . . . . . .34 
 
 Truth, and the Search for Truth : Leasing . . 35 
 Consider the Lilies . . . . . .36 
 
 Systems of Theology : Heresy . . . . 37 
 
 Scotch Sects only Parties . . . ' . .38 
 Augustine and Calvin . . . , . .38 
 
 Satan . . .39 
 
 Ghosts. . . .-.-,. . . 40 
 Angels and Image-Worship . . .- . . 40 
 
 The Legal and the Ethical 42 
 
 Ethicism : Mr. Maurice ...... 43 
 
 The Gospels and Epistles 44 
 
 The Calmness of Divine Power .... 45 
 The Augustinian Theory of Evil .... 46 
 
 Evil 48 
 
 Deism, and the Problem of Being . . . .49 
 
 God and Creation ....... 49 
 
 Hansel's Doctrine of Nescience .... 51 
 
 Carlyle 51 
 
 China, Russia, etc. ...... 52 
 
 English Poets and Prose Writers .... 53 
 
 Aquinas' Hymn on the Eucharist . . . .57
 
 CONTENTS. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Person of Christ 58 
 
 Apollos, etc. . . . . . . .59 
 
 The Primitive Church Service, etc 59 
 
 The Adiaphora .... 61 
 
 Natural Theology, the Philosophy of Theism, etc. . 62 
 Controversialists : value of Concession ... 70 
 The Legal Element : Religious Terms ... 70 
 Ferme on the Epistle to the Romans ... 72 
 The Classification of Knowledge .... 72 
 
 The Telegraphic Age . . . 73 
 
 Biographies : William Law . . . . .73 
 
 Fervour ........ 74 
 
 Plymouthism ....... 75 
 
 Presbyterianism . . . . . . .75 
 
 Knowledge of God in the Son 75 
 
 Revolutions of Character : the New Birth . . 76 
 The Supernatural Historical Evidence . . .78 
 Protestant Dissent ...... 80 
 
 Theocratic Law 81 
 
 Union with Christ : Justification and Sanctification . 82 
 Conversion to God, etc. . .... 85 
 
 Conscience, and the Atonement .... 86 
 
 Kantism : the Doctrine of Merit . . . .88 
 Sincerity and Responsibility '..... 90 
 
 Calvinism and Anninianism 92 
 
 The Freedom of the Will 93 
 
 The Eternal Logos '-.*". . . . .96 
 Conversation between Dr. D. and V. V. on Human 
 
 Nature, the Trinity, Conscience, etc. . . 96 
 
 Christ : the Trilemma 109 
 
 Two kinds of Ignorance : Transcendentalism and 
 
 Anthropopathy . . . . . .110 
 
 The Divine Manifoldness Ill 
 
 .Western Christendom, and Jiistification . . .111 
 Uses of Shallow Minds .' . . . . .112 
 
 The Theanthropos . ... . . . 113 
 
 Culture and the Chief End of Man . ., . ' . 113 
 The Abstract and the Concrete . . . .115
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PA ,! 
 
 Expression of Feeling . . - . . . .117 
 
 The Humourists 118 
 
 Chrysostom 118 
 
 The Fathers and the Folios 119 
 
 The Ritualist and Seceder 120 t 
 
 The best Translations of the Bible . . -. . ' .120 
 ^Esthetic Religionism . . . . . .120 
 
 Intolerance 122 
 
 Idolatry .122 
 
 The Fall, and its Antecedent 123 
 
 The Mean between Extremes . . . . .124 
 
 Salvation of the Jews 125 
 
 The Poetry of the Bible .127 
 
 Ontologia Tripartita 128 
 
 Queries in Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy . .129 
 Law and Gospel ....... 130 
 
 Criticism and Testimony . . . . .130 
 
 Hegelianism ........ 131 
 
 Photography '. .132 
 
 A Symbol 132 
 
 Intellectuality minus Spirituality .... 133 
 
 Progress relative 134 
 
 Man and other Worlds . . . . 134 
 
 Speculative Study .136 
 
 Free Will, etc. ....... 136 
 
 Scotch Divines . . . . . 137 
 
 Aversion to Systematic Theology . . . .137 
 
 The Acts of the Apostles . . * " . .138 
 Defective Consciences . ; <. . . . 139 
 
 Memory . ... . . . . . . 139 
 
 Sociology . . . . . , > . . 139 
 
 Rousseau . .... . . . 140 
 
 Preaching . . .'. . . .141 
 
 The Unsayable 141 
 
 Pantheism . . . . . . . .142 
 
 Sin and Grace . . 142 
 
 The Lord's Table 142 
 
 Power of Christianity . . . . * .143
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The -Stream of Doctrine 143 
 
 " Fulfil Yourself " 143 
 
 Reverent Thought 143 
 
 The Logician and Intuitionalist .... 143 
 
 The Evidences 144 
 
 Death and Immortality . . . . . .145 
 
 The Biblical and the Ecclesiastical . . . .145 
 
 Creeds and Codes .146 
 
 Development . . . . . . .146 
 
 Miracle 147 
 
 Religious movements . . . . . .148 
 
 Transcendentalism : the Fall 148 
 
 Pride 149 
 
 Calvinism and Universalism . . . . .149 
 
 Devil-Worship 150 
 
 The Pelagian and Arminian . . . . .151 
 
 Love and Need 151 
 
 Christ's Errand into the World .... 151 
 
 INDEX 153
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 'T'HIS volume requires a brief note in explana- 
 tion. During part of the summers of 1859 
 and 1860, Dr. Duncan and I lived under the 
 same roof in a seaside Fifeshire village. I was 
 the constant companion of his waking hours. 
 I had just left the philosophical classes of the 
 University, and begun the study of theology; 
 and day by day our conversations turned to 
 those questions where Philosophy and Theology 
 meet : the relations of the Infinite and finite, 
 the nature of our knowledge of God, the human 
 will in its relation to the Divine, and anthro- 
 pology generally; while I was ready, from 
 admiration at once of his intellect, his learning, 
 and his character, to treasure almost everything 
 he said. Of these conversations I took rapid 
 pencil-notes at the moment, and wrote them 
 out in ink afterwards ; and many memorable 
 words fell from his lips during these months of 
 familiar intercourse and discussion. Now that 
 we can hear him no more, I regret that I did
 
 xii PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 not carry out the notion that I had when these 
 jottings were first taken down, of submitting 
 them to himself for revision. But they were 
 written in a style of short-hand intelligible only 
 to myself, and years have passed without my 
 encountering the labour of transcription. Any 
 who pursue them now will, I dare say, forget 
 the youthful hero-worship which led to'such an 
 effort to preserve his sayings, when they re- 
 member that he has left no published work 
 behind him. 
 
 The reluctance of one, who had so much to 
 communicate to all who would listen, to commit 
 his thoughts to writing, was remarkable. And 
 while many causes contributed to it, his 
 humility was not the least of these. One who 
 knew so many books, could not be induced to 
 add another to the pile, unless he could say 
 something which had not already been said. 
 But with him has perished a breathing library 
 of wisdom. 
 
 What are now published are memoranda of 
 Dr. Duncan's table-talk and conversations out- 
 of-doors, while wandering by the sea-beach and 
 in the woods of Wemyss. He was Aristotelic 
 in more respects than one ; and many of his 
 friends associate his most rememberable sayings 
 with walks protracted as long as the listener 
 could be persuaded to receive. 
 
 Necessarily these " Colloquia" are utterly mis-
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. xiii 
 
 cellaneous, and range over many aspects of many 
 themes. I had thought of arranging them in 
 something like order, under headings or in sec- 
 tions ; but have found it impracticable. Some 
 of his most characteristic sayings must have 
 been left out of any such arrangement, being 
 reducible to no special class of questions. The 
 sequence of the thought will sometimes be 
 scarcely apparent, but my MS. notes are often 
 extremely disjointed. As the links of connection 
 between successive subjects were mainly my own 
 remarks, when first written out it seemed a 
 work of superfluity to fill up the gaps. 
 
 A sentence which was interjected in the 
 conversation has, however, been occasionally in- 
 serted, but only where it seems helpful to the 
 understanding of Dr. Duncan's remarks. I need 
 hardly add that there is no "conversation" given 
 in full. This fact will explain the frequent 
 chasms and breaks in the continuity of his talk, 
 and also its occasional repetitions. Only a part 
 of what I have in MS. is now published. 
 
 It always seemed to me that Dr. Duncan 
 needed a quasi-antagonist to bring out his most 
 characteristic sayings. He had to feel that he 
 was clearing up a labyrinth, or imparting in- 
 struction, or exposing a sophism, or meeting one 
 who differed from him, but was on the same 
 track of inquiry, before his mind was stirred to 
 full activity and productiveness.
 
 xiv PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 Dr. Duncan was essentially a modern Rabbi. 
 He gave forth his sayings with the slow and 
 measured emphasis of a Master to disciples. In 
 familiar conversation it was the same as in the 
 class-room. His thoughts naturally took an 
 aphoristic form ; and som'etimes they were less 
 utterances for others than audible soliloquy. 
 But brevity and sententious fulness always cha- 
 racterised them. The thought might penetrate 
 to that shadowy region where language almost 
 breaks down in the eifort, as he put it, " to 
 say the unsayable ; " but, as he condensed the 
 thought, or rather enshrined it in some short 
 compact aphorism, the influence of Aristotle 
 was apparent. His own eulogy of that great 
 master of the precise (see pp. 23 and 57) might 
 with strictness be applied to himself. He never 
 used superfluous phrases, and some of his sentences 
 sparkle like cut crystal in their clearness. He 
 was a schoolman in his love of distinctions, and 
 refined shades of meaning at times super- 
 subtile for other minds. One of his colleagues, 
 who taught philosophy in Edinburgh, and whose 
 mind was the exact antithesis of his, once re- 
 marked, that " when he held up Dr. Duncan's 
 subtile distinctions, often so scholastically exact, 
 before the steady light of consciousness, they 
 usually vanished in mist." But the Rabbi's 
 mind was of another order from his critic's. He 
 was a passionate lover of systematic thought,
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. xv 
 
 and a " master of sentences." A strong logician, 
 with a keen sense of the unfathomable, he had 
 an equal relish for the clear and the indubious ; 
 and however high he soared, he tried to put the 
 results of all his thinking within the framework 
 of intelligible propositions. In him we might 
 say (as he would have said of another), that the 
 Patristic, the Scholastic, and the Puritan, were 
 finely blended ; while the Philosophic underlay 
 these three, and broke through the crust of re- 
 ceived convictions, in jets of most delicate 
 insight ; and his love for the " Biblical con- 
 crete "* coloured and moulded them all. There 
 were flashes of quaintest medisevalism, with 
 " modern touches here and there," in all his 
 deep analyses of the data of human Faith and 
 Knowledge ; and though a schoolman, the classic 
 glow had not died away from his language as it 
 did from the style of Lombard and Aquinas. 
 
 It is scarcely possible for any memorial of 
 Dr. Duncan to do full justice to the many-sided- 
 ness of his nature. Of many we feel, that their 
 writings are better than themselves ; his spoken 
 words most imperfectly shadowed forth the 
 uniqueness of the man. The most common- 
 place remark in conversation his mind took up, 
 and returned, as it were, to the speaker, lit, 
 brightened, vivified by the glow it had caught 
 at the fire within his spirit ; while the patience 
 * See p. 71.
 
 xvi PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 he showed to others, who returned him his own 
 original remarks reduced to commonplace, was 
 equally characteristic of the man. He never 
 made men feel the sense of an interval between 
 them and him, because, in his humility, he was 
 himself unaware of its existence. His life re- 
 mains to be written ; and his friends, with the 
 pupils who sat at his feet, and reverenced his 
 character, will be glad to know that an extended 
 Memoir of him is in course of preparation. The 
 biography of one who was at once a philoso- 
 pher and a scholar, a theologian and one of 
 the humblest of Christians, should be an invalu- 
 able gift to this age. 
 
 This little volume is a mere collection of 
 fragments Deep-sea Soundings, we may call 
 them. They skirt the margin of many great 
 questions, and enter the very heart of others. 
 Casually, and sometimes fitfully, the plummet is 
 let down ; and, while the water is deep, you feel 
 that he has either touched the bottom, or re- 
 ported why he cannot reach it. 
 
 In all our conversations, he made no attempt 
 to draw out an exhaustive chart of theological 
 doctrine. He had a very distinct theological 
 map of his own. The territory laid down on 
 that map had a clear boundary-line, and the 
 sceptre of Augustine ruled over it. But there 
 were frontier lands into which he occasionally 
 went, and he would draw no strict line of de-
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. xvii 
 
 marcation. As to philosophy, he always 
 avowed himself to be without a system; and 
 yet there will be found, even in these pages, 
 scintillations at least of a fuller speculative 
 system than he allowed to be possible. There 
 was* so much of the philosophical sceptic in 
 Dr. Duncan, along with tenderest religious 
 faith and humblest love (a union in which he 
 resembled Pascal), that he had almost a disin- 
 clination to try to exhaust a speculative pro- 
 blem ; and, after sounding here and sounding 
 there, he turned from it to where he found 
 securer footing the revelation which God has 
 made to us in history, and in His Son. 
 
 WILLIAM KNIGHT. 
 
 DUNDEE, May 1870.
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 WHILE I thought this little work might be 
 valued by the former pupils and friends of 
 Dr. Duncan, I was quite unprepared for the 
 sympathetic interest which it has awakened 
 in very diverse quarters. Letters have been 
 received on the subject from men holding the 
 most opposite extremes of opinion, widely 
 separated from each other in intellectual atti- 
 tude and religious sympathy, to whom these 
 fragments of thought have been more than 
 usually interesting. This has been due as much, 
 I believe, to what they indirectly suggest, as to 
 what they directly contribute to the solution of 
 those problems with which they deal 
 
 A collection of miscellaneous sayings, on some 
 of the deepest questions of human inquiry, by 
 one who has thought profoundly and reverently, 
 has also a certain biographic value; and the 
 glimpses of character which they yield may 
 explain one half of the interest which these 
 slight and discursive fragments have awakened.
 
 xx PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Many may still regret tliat my intention of 
 submitting the notes of his conversation to Dr. 
 Duncan's personal revision was never carried 
 out. I am now satisfied, however, that had it 
 been done during his lifetime, and especially in 
 his later years, this little book would in all pro- 
 bability never have seen the light ; for such was 
 his dislike to notoriety that, under some sudden 
 morbid impulse, he might have tossed the MSS. 
 into the fire. 
 
 In several of the critical notices of the 
 earlier editions, there have been exceedingly 
 happy characterisations of Dr. Duncan; and 
 from one of these I make the following ex- 
 tract: "The Hebrew professor was remarkable 
 for many literary peculiarities ; inter alia, for 
 expressing emphasis by iteration ; for a royal 
 liberty which, as master of no one knows how 
 many tongues, he took in coining new words ; 
 for uttering sentences distinguished at once by 
 classic eloquence, epigrammatic terseness, and 
 daring originality; for the subtlety of his 
 distinctions; and for the unbounded range of 
 his thoughts. Morally, the man was as remark- 
 able as he was mentally. There was about him 
 a singular combination of tolerance and intoler- 
 ance. His was an intense, keen-tempered soul. 
 He was not soft, sentimental, addicted to vague 
 indiscriminate charity. He could hate, as well 
 as love (not men, however); there were certain
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION, xzi 
 
 things lie could not bear, as well as many things 
 he could bear, which, to ordinary religionists, 
 are utterly intolerable. He was very decided, 
 and yet very catholic. All these qualities are 
 abundantly illustrated in this book." About 
 a year ago, immediately after the publication 
 of the first edition, I sent to Professor Brown 
 of Aberdeen, who is writing an extended me- 
 moir of Dr. Duncan, some farther notes of his 
 conversation, along with the other memorials 
 of him, which I possessed; adding to these a 
 brief sketch of the Professor, from a student's 
 point of view. This latter I called " Reminis- 
 cences, in memoriam." On hearing that ,a third 
 edition of the " Colloquia " was called for, Dr. 
 Brown has kindly returned to me this sketch 
 that it may be inserted in the preface. It is 
 now printed as originally written. 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 It has rarely been the privilege of any 
 church to number amongst its teachers a more 
 remarkable man than Dr. Duncan. But his 
 finest characteristics were never seen at first 
 sight. Although 
 
 "A man 
 Whom no one could have passed without remark," 
 
 his social peculiarities, his life in a world 
 of his own, and his very singular humility,
 
 xxii PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 prevented many, even of his friends, from 
 discerning his real greatness. There was in 
 him a rare union of powers usually dissociated 
 or opposed; though, while manysided, he was 
 not versatile. His knowledge of the history 
 of human opinion, and his accumulation of out- 
 of-the-way learning, was singularly great, but 
 this was allied (to an extent which it seldom is) 
 with originality of insight and power of criticism. 
 He was in no sense burdened with his learning. 
 The intuitional element in his nature was as 
 highly developed as the logical; while his acute- 
 ness and penetration were balanced by an extreme 
 delicacy and gentleness of spirit towards those 
 with whom he might happen to differ. The 
 blending of a large and loving catholicity, with 
 a righteous intolerance of all evil, and of all he 
 judged erroneous was equally noteworthy. His 
 humour was keen and varied, and his sympathy 
 with the dark and sombre side of things not 
 less so. 
 
 In short, it is not the language of exaggera- 
 tion, but of simple truth, to say that his intellect 
 was massive, luminous, and searching; his 
 humanity large, genial, humorous, sunny ; and 
 his heart very tender, and humble as a child's. 
 He had an omnivorous intellectual appetite 
 (too discursive and indiscriminate at times), and 
 his powers of retention were equally vast. His 
 endowments were of the rarest order; and had he
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION, xxiii 
 
 cultivated these to the utmost possible intensity, 
 especially had he disciplined himself to follow a 
 plan in the acquisition of knowledge, and curbed 
 that fatal tendency to miscellaneousness, into 
 which so many scholars fall, he would have been 
 recognised as a power amongst his contempo- 
 raries, as well as among his friends and pupils. 
 Xo doubt the very desultoriness of his learning, 
 and the strange raids he made into the least 
 cultivated lands of knowledge, gave a quaint 
 colour to his erudition. It removed him from 
 the sphere of other men, and endowed him with 
 the authority of a Rabbi; while the very fact 
 that he had not considered it worth while to 
 commit any of his thoughts to writing, gave him 
 additional power as a peripatetic. His auditors 
 (and especially his pupils) felt that they had a 
 curious library of wisdom before them; and 
 though the arrangement of the folios was very 
 miscellaneous, he had only to begin to prelect, 
 and his hearers recognised that a master was 
 addressing them. 
 
 His appointment to the chair of Hebrew and 
 Old Testament Literature in the New College, 
 Edinburgh, was a notable gain to the Church 
 in Scotland. Amid the stir and haste of our 
 modern life, his antique learning, his devout 
 scholarship, his aloofness from much that tran- 
 spired around him, his very eccentricities, became 
 a fine link of connection with the Christian
 
 xxiv PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 cloisters of the past, and with the quiet of 
 mediaeval times. 
 
 His learning had nothing of the modern type. 
 He suggested Melancthon, Erasmus, or Scaliger, 
 rather than the graduate of Oxford. It was 
 not always verbally accurate. In his quotations 
 from the Fathers and Schoolmen (and his con- 
 versation was full of these), he frequently 
 altered phrases, improving upon the original. 
 And he could never give a full statement of the 
 opinions of other men. His mind was much 
 more retentive and critical, than reproductive. 
 He once said to me, " I cannot state the opinions 
 of any other man : I can only tell you what I 
 thought of them when I read them." 
 
 In the class-room he was wont to dissertate, 
 rather than to teach. Not that he deemed the 
 minutiae of Hebrew grammar and construction too 
 trivial for academic tuition, but from the fulness 
 of his own mind, and, it must be added, its 
 irregularities and eccentricities, he could not 
 abide constraint, and would have wandered 
 away in two days from the best formed plan of 
 academic work, supposing him to have ever 
 devised a plan at all. Miscellaneousness cha- 
 racterised all that he said or did. 
 
 But this very desultoriness in the work of 
 his class had another source. Not to allude to 
 the fluctuations of his own health and subjective 
 experience, he felt that the work of his Chair
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION, xxv 
 
 was altogether secondary in the course of study 
 which fitted men for the Christian ministry. 
 He was exceedingly solicitous about the per- 
 sonal religion of his students, and repeatedly 
 suspended the ordinary work of the class that 
 he might revert to topics connected with the 
 religious life. On more than one occasion I 
 heard him speak of the risk of turning the 
 duties of his Chair into a mere discipline in 
 philology, so as to justify Kowland Hill's taunt 
 that "Divinity halls were manufactories of 
 dried tongues." 
 
 His own mental wanderings in diverse lands 
 of thought fitted him to be the guide of the 
 perplexed not so much by giving them the 
 solutions at which he had arrived, as by rousing 
 their own natures to deal with the problems, 
 alike reverently, hopefully, and patiently. 
 
 But the great themes on which he used to 
 dilate so easily (and ever to illumine as he 
 spoke), he dealt with more as topics for the 
 intellect to handle than for the heart to ponder. 
 I used sometimes to think, after listening for 
 hours to his wonderful talk, in which thoughts 
 of deepest penetration were expressed with a 
 scholastic precision, of which he seemed to hold 
 the secret, that his own mind rather seized the 
 successive ideas as they were borne towards it, 
 or let them drop as intellectual products, with 
 which his mind had done its work, than that
 
 xxvi PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 his heart was at the moment thrilled by them. 
 Not that his own heart was not profoundly 
 moved by everything he said. But he had long 
 ago passed through the phases of experience he 
 was delineating, and while he often looked back 
 upon them, and delighted to recall "the way 
 by which he had been led," his glance at his 
 own past history was a purely mental retrospect. 
 Even in soliloquising on his experience, and 
 prescribing a cure for himself (which he often 
 did aloud), it was the keen and eager intellect 
 that you observed seizing the phenomena (it 
 might be the morbid phenomena) of his own 
 experience, rather than the heart, that was at 
 work. 
 
 Perhaps this was one explanation of the ter- 
 rible dejection into which he was sometimes 
 plunged. I remember the sadness of his lament 
 one day, " My mind is alternating between 
 flushes of over-excitement and times of debility." 
 These flushes of over-excitement took shape in 
 the most singular attempts to analyse his own 
 experience, which he himself pronounced mor- 
 bid ; while in the " times of debility" his spirit 
 sunk so low, that his only utterance was, " My 
 grieved soul doth consolation shun," repeated 
 and repeated with a terrible emphasis of 
 sorrow. 
 
 His humility was one of the most remarkable 
 of his many characteristics. It led to an exa-
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION, xxvii 
 
 gerated depreciation of himself at times, and it 
 assuredly kept him from committing his thoughts 
 to writing. Few men, so far above the ordinary 
 rank and file of men, have had so mean and so 
 unworthily disproportionate an opinion of them- 
 selves. 
 
 He was usually reckoned one of the most 
 absent of men ; and stories are afloat by the 
 score which have the very slenderest foundation 
 in fact. One day when I was with him at his 
 house in Elder Street, a gentleman who had 
 come in told him some stories of himself, which 
 he (the narrator) believed to be true ; and 
 after listening with more than usual patience, 
 the Rabbi denied their authenticity. His visitor 
 concluded with the story of the pinch of snuff on 
 the windy day, when going out to preach near 
 Aberdeen, and said, "You'll at least admit, 
 Dr. D., that that one is true." He replied, with a 
 quiet sarcasm, the edge of which failed to pierce 
 the obtuseness of his critic's imagination, "Well, 
 I have heard that one so often, that I begin at 
 times to imagine myself that there must be 
 some truth in it ! " 
 
 It is not easy, either in few or in many 
 words, to estimate the influence of Dr. Duncan's 
 life on his friends and pupils, or over his church 
 and the college where he taught. That influ- 
 ence the simple impress of his individuality, 
 the lesson of "plain living and high thinking," of
 
 xxviii PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 wide scholarship and of saintly life, was intense 
 and very tender while he lived, and it has not 
 ended with his death. He has gone from us, 
 but he is still with us. His memory is ever 
 green, and his work undying. 
 
 There are some features of his character 
 which will be so much more fitly described by 
 those of his own standing in the Church, to 
 whom the task of delineation naturally belongs, 
 that I do not venture to refer to them, further 
 than to say, that his whole character was tem- 
 pered, mellowed, and beautified, by the deep 
 realities of the Christian life of which even 
 the detached sayings of this book afford abun- 
 dant proof. 
 
 I have only to add to these Eeminiscences 
 that while it would be sheer impertinence in an 
 editor to criticise the philosophical position 
 assumed by one, whose thoughts and tentative 
 speculations on the highest of all subjects he 
 has tried in part to reproduce, it would not be 
 difficult to indicate the many unbridged chasms, 
 the solutions only partially adequate, the lacunce 
 of thought and of reasoning, in the course of 
 these disjointed fragments. And they would 
 never have been presented to the world but for 
 the belief that the slightest or the most idiosyn- 
 cratic notions of a vigorous thinker and a great 
 man are of more lasting value to other minds
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION, xxix 
 
 than scores of treatises which profess exhaust- 
 ively to solve those questions which Dr. Dun- 
 can, in his modesty, only sounded and passed 
 by. Cultivated men do not expect or desire an 
 echo of their own opinions, in the works of 
 others. They value most a reverent interpret- 
 ation of Truth from a point of view quite un- 
 like their own. 
 
 It is to be hoped that further memorials of 
 the late Professor will yet be rescued from obli- 
 vion. It is truer of himself than of Chalmers, 
 of whom he made the remark, " "We have lost 
 much of him for want of a Boswell. Many of 
 his best sayings are gone for ever."* And it is 
 somewhat curious to find another great man, 
 who had remarkable conversational powers, and 
 who has exercised strong influence over con- 
 temporary thought, saying in a letter to a 
 friend, " I sometimes wish I had a shorthand 
 writer, who could take down what I say in 
 conversation with such men as I have been 
 lately talking to. I cannot dictate, and I find 
 that the idea of writing for printing, kills the 
 life of my thoughts, "f This was peculiarly 
 true of Dr. Duncan. The glowing freshness of 
 his thoughts, and that lustre of language which 
 gave such a charm to his conversation, departed 
 
 * See p. 27. 
 
 t Thomas Erskine of Linlatlien, Letters to the Bishop of 
 Argyle, second series, p. 30.
 
 xxx PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 entirely from him whenever he lacked the 
 stimulus of another living presence to which he 
 could impart it. Perhaps also, like some other 
 men most competent to teach, while absolutely 
 indifferent to fame and reputation, he was re- 
 luctant to submit to the drudgery of authorship ; 
 and great as was his regard for the folios, he 
 looked down with something akin to disdain 
 upon the mania for writing books. The thinkers, 
 and those who possessed the gift of articulate 
 speech, seemed to him mightier men than the 
 scribes. It may be questioned if he ever felt 
 any incitement towards authorship, or was, for 
 one moment, the victim of literary ambition. 
 While there was more knowledge to be gathered, 
 and much work to be done, and attainment was 
 endless, why should he begin to write about 
 matters on which he still was learning *? And 
 yet it is impossible not to regret this reluctance 
 on his part. I asked, him repeatedly to put his 
 thoughts on the Supernatural, and on the 
 Essence of Christianity, into a brief essay or 
 series of essays ; urging as a motive the theo- 
 logical crisis at which we had arrived, and the 
 new phases of old questions which historical 
 criticism had recently disclosed. He always 
 answered that he could talk, but could not 
 write, and that enough had been already said 
 in books ; that the world was full of them. 
 As it is, his life and character are the main
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION, xxxi 
 
 legacy he has left to his friends and students. 
 And if these " Colloquia Peripatetica " serve to 
 perpetuate in any degree the remembrance of 
 what he was, their preservation will be justified, 
 and my aim accomplished. 
 
 W. K. 
 
 NEWPORT, FIFE, 
 October 1871.
 
 COLLOQUIA PEEIPATETICA. 
 
 [PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM AND THEOLOGY.] 
 
 T AM a philosophical sceptic, who have taken 
 *- refuge in Theology. I ascend to God. 
 Reason, in some way unknown to me, " over- 
 leaps itself." I agree with the Transcendental- 
 ists in this ; and if we are " made in the image 
 of God," we can reach and positively apprehend 
 Him in whose image we are made. I postulate 
 God, and out of this postulate any philosophy I 
 have emerges. 
 
 [It is altogether deductive then?] 
 
 It is deductive from that point. If we do not 
 assume God, and reason downwards from that 
 assumption, I doubt we shall never rise to Him 
 at all. Once a man has said his " credo," and 
 especially if his creed has been christened, he 
 may build his philosophy as high as heaven. 
 The tendency of all my thinking is not to look 
 upwards from man to God, but downwards from 
 God to man. 
 
 [But, as we are not divine, how do you get 
 up in the first instance ?] 
 
 I cannot tell you ; only, I am up. Probably 
 it is by instinct. Say, if you choose, that rea- 
 son has overleapt itself. I find that I cannot 
 
 B
 
 2 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 bridge the gulf between the creature and a 
 Creator, the many and the One, in my ascent, 
 so I endeavour to do so in my descent. 
 
 [But you must ascend in some way, before 
 you can descend.] 
 
 I must start from theology ; for / am a born 
 philosophical sceptic, but once I am theological I am 
 sceptical no more. But I only part company 
 with the sceptic by recovering my philosophical 
 faith, on a theological basis. 
 
 [Well, but you take this theological faith as 
 the final utterance of your own nature, when 
 consciousness is analysed ?] 
 
 No ; it is not the verdict of my own nature, 
 it is something higher than that. You tell me 
 that this or that is the voice of Nature, and that 
 we can't help believing it. But does this Reidist 
 solution really satisfy any man 1 The belief 
 may be false, though we cannot help believing 
 it ? May not some malign being, a xaxoSa!/j,uv, 
 have created us, or such a demiourgos as the 
 Gnostics believed in. Can't-help-myself-ism is 
 to me a very shallow philosophy. But if I am 
 " made in the image of God," my philosophy is 
 under-propped by theology, and the truth of 
 what my nature avers is guaranteed to me. 
 
 [But who guarantees you this fact, from which 
 you start 1 Must you not fall back, after all, 
 upon the consciousness, lit up by evidence from 
 without? The very nature you turn from is 
 our ultimate court of appeal, and so you reason 
 in a circle.] 
 
 No : there is no circle ; for God is appre- 
 hended within the soul of man, as the archetype
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 3 
 
 of existence. We do not infer his being from 
 what we are. We cannot rise to Him thus. But 
 He is himself within us. His voice, not the voice 
 of consciousness, may be heard. But, Revela- 
 tion apart, I am a sceptic, i.e. I am a philoso- 
 phical sceptic. Sextus Empiricus was long my 
 delight. I used to read the ancient sceptics 
 and dogmatists, just to pit one against another 
 in glorious war, and strove to beat them all to 
 the dust, like so many ninepins. Sextus himself 
 was the ball amongst the ninepins. A good 
 history of previous philosophies is to be found 
 in his treatise Ilgoj rov<; fjt,adrifj,a,rix.o{j$, just be- 
 cause he was himself a sceptic. 
 
 [THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF EVIL.] 
 T CANNOT get out of the meshes of Augus- 
 *- tinianism on the privative nature of sin. 
 Evil is a defect, just as death is a privation, the 
 loss of what once was, and therefore of what is 
 needful for health and completion of existence. 
 Inanimation is the negation of life, and what 
 death physical is to the body: viz. the with- 
 drawal of life sin is to the soul, the withdrawal 
 of its life. God is not the author of sin, because 
 sin has no author. Sin is an off-cutting, a de- 
 generacy, a cancer, or corruption consequent on 
 privation. And just as a new chemistry begins 
 on the death of the body, the chemistry of in- 
 animates ; for want of a better, I take this crude 
 analogue of physical death and dismemberment, 
 upon which a new chemistry supervenes, to 
 
 shadow forth the nature of sin I 
 
 observe that Julius Miiller disowns the Augus-
 
 4 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 tinian doctrine. But how does he save himself 
 from Manichaeism ? It was to escape from 
 Manichseism that Augustine adopted his theory. 
 That theory is certainly necessary to support 
 the strong position of Kutherford in his work, 
 De Providentia, that God is the author of all 
 entitive acts. He that affirms that must be a 
 decided Augustinian ; for no pious man could 
 affirm that God is the author of sin. As dark- 
 ness is the privation of light, and death the 
 absence of life, sin is the privation of good. 
 
 [You used* the symbol of a cancer that would 
 consume all existence, if it had the free range of 
 the universe. Is it easier to conceive the origin 
 of a defect under the symbol of disease, than of 
 a positive revolt ?] 
 
 No. But I used that symbol to suggest more 
 strongly the notion of the privative nature of 
 evil, as against a merely negative conception ; 
 and of a privative effect in a being created with 
 a moral nature and essential activity. 
 
 [By " essential activity" do you mean "free- 
 will" ?] 
 
 Well, "activity" is a more generic word than 
 freewill. But perhaps the phrase, " moral nature 
 and essential activity," is a tautology, for the 
 one may involve the other. But the use of the 
 latter term instead of the word " freewill " keeps 
 us clear of a knotty controversy. ... I 
 would not object to say that sin is first priva- 
 tive, and then positive ; but its privative nature 
 is its profoundest ; and when profoundly looked 
 at does not sin appear more awful on that than 
 * In a previous conversation.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 5 
 
 on any other theory of it 1 For it appears in its 
 essential nature as absolute malitia, which, if 
 unchecked, would go to the extinction of all 
 being, and of God himself. There is no doubt 
 that all sin designs deicide. All sin is directed 
 against universal being. It is primarily against 
 God, inferentially against all being. It seeks 
 to slay Being at the root. 
 
 [It is not so consciously.] 
 
 No. But this is very much because of the 
 sinner's notion of God being false. He would 
 not kill the God of his own fancy. He would 
 only kill the God that is. 
 
 [But if the wrongdoer is not conscious that 
 his sin designs deicide, he cannot be responsible 
 for its being so, even if it is so.] 
 
 A man is not conscious of this till he gets 
 familiar with the character of God, and the 
 closer he comes to God, the more will his sin 
 appear to him to attempt a virtual deicide. All 
 transgression is ambitious, and if it could suc- 
 ceed it would scale the universe and dethrone 
 its monarch. But as to its essence and its 
 origin, beyond this that I have said, it always 
 seems to me that our speculations are directed 
 to find the rationale of the only irrational thing 
 in the universe, and of the only thing that has 
 no cause. Suppose it to have one ; well, is not 
 that causal volition of the creature a sin, equally 
 with all that follows from it ? If so, whence 
 came it? From God 1 ? M ywoiro- If not from 
 God, whence ? From naught. 
 
 [That is, you break the causal nexus.] 
 
 Of course I do, as regards the sin. It is cause-
 
 6 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 less and irrational. It is monstrosity a thing 
 horrible in a God-made universe, just because it 
 is causeless. 
 
 [We must distinguish between the act of sin, 
 and the sin that is in the act. The power to 
 act, and the act itself which is morally colour- 
 less as an act (actus purus), must be caused. Is 
 it only the moral quality that you reckon un- 
 caused 1] 
 
 Yes. I don't suppose that any good thing is 
 causeless, though done by the creature, its moral 
 quality is not causeless. It is only evil that 
 has no cause, and hence its enormity. 
 
 [But do you not weaken the sense of responsi- 
 bility by the theory that the evil per se is cause- 
 less ? And can you split up our actions into 
 two parts, and considering them on the one 
 hand simply as acts, and on the other as moral 
 phenomena, regard them as so far caused, and 
 so far uncaused ]] 
 
 Certainly ; I agree with Eutherford that God 
 is the author of all entitive acts. But He is 
 not the author of sin ; and as He is the author 
 and source of the creature, He is by implication 
 the author of all that His creature does, and 
 therefore of evil, if evil be anything positive. 
 Again and again I come back to it, " Nemo de 
 me quserat efficientem causam malae voluntatis : 
 non enim est efficiens sed deficiens ; quia nee 
 ilia effectio est, sed defectio."* I am still 
 drawn to Augustine, for all that Miiller has to 
 say against him. He was a philosopher, while 
 a Manichee, and as a philosopher he held fast to 
 * Aug. De Civit. Dei, xii. 7. E.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 1 
 
 the causal nexus : but, on renouncing Manichse- 
 ism, he admitted its violation. And I don't see 
 how, if you hold fast to the causal nexus, you 
 can account for the entrance of evil ; or rather 
 you can show that it could not enter. 
 
 [Is not causation altogether a mystery ? 
 Have we any right to affirm that the nexus 
 between volitions is broken on the introduction 
 of evil ?] 
 
 We must do so, or become Manichsean, and 
 charge its entrance upon God. I suppose, 
 however, that Manicheeism was a revolt in the 
 interest of morality, against the immorality of 
 an antecedent pantheism. I am inclined to 
 think that a pantheistic scheme of absorption, 
 or nihilism, must have preceded Zoroastrianism, 
 which was a speculative advance upon the 
 former system. And Manicheeism was only a 
 revived Zoroastrianism ; it was just the intro- 
 duction of the Persian philosophy into Christi- 
 anity. For Ormuzd was a perfectly good 
 being ; but as evil existed as a fact (and hold- 
 ing fast by this was the moral element in Mani- 
 chseism), and as the causal nexus could not be 
 broken, there must be an entirely and eternally 
 bad being, to produce the evil. I believe that 
 it was in the interest of morals that this revolt 
 was determined both in the first principles of 
 the system, and in its virtual tendency. The 
 later system was a revolt from a grosser sys- 
 tem. Manich seism was not a retrograde but a 
 progressive movement, for, with all its absur- 
 dities, it sought in Ormuzd a being morally 
 perfect. We can see how a purer ethic might
 
 8 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 arise from this position. There is at least one 
 being absolutely good. ... It is note- 
 worthy that pantheism, by abolishing moral 
 distinctions, is closely allied to polytheism 
 pantheism, the creed of the refined; polytheism, 
 the religion of the herd. 
 
 [THE CREED WITHIN THE CREED.] 
 
 I'M first a Christian, next a Catholic, then a 
 Calvinist, fourth a Paedobaptist, and fifth a 
 Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order. 
 
 [Some one suggested that these were like 
 circles within each other, the first the widest 
 and the best.] 
 
 I like better to think of them as towers rising 
 one above the other, though narrowing as they 
 rise. The first is the broadest, and is the 
 foundation laid by Christ ; but we are to build 
 on that foundation, and, as we ascend, our out- 
 look widens. 
 
 [CONSERVATISM AND THEOLOGY.] 
 
 " I "HERE is a progressive element in all things, 
 -*- and therefore in religion ; though I am 
 much more of a conservative in Theology than 
 in Philosophy, or in Politics, or in anything else. 
 There we have a "foundation laid." But we 
 have no political Bible, no philosophical Scrip- 
 tures, no scientific infallible writings. And yet 
 we are now in an older age of the world than 
 the apostolic. It is a mistake to look to the 
 Fathers as our seniors. They were our juniors. 
 The Church has advanced wonderfully since its
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 9 
 
 foundation was laid. Polycarp would have 
 stood a bad chance in an examination by John 
 Owen. I think I could have posed him myself. 
 Finest devout men these old Christians were. 
 But what did they do ? They came together, 
 and prayed, and read a great deal of Scripture, 
 and sang, and talked, and went away again, and 
 fell to tent-making : then came back, and read, 
 and prayed, and sang, and so forth. 
 
 And yet the conservative element is always 
 good. Each age needs some men to go back 
 into antiquity, and jealously to guard its trea- 
 sures, that they be not lost and this is always 
 good if we are not bigotedly conservative i.e. 
 blind to progressive light. It is true that to 
 many the light shines in the darkness, and the 
 darkness comprehends it not. But there is 
 a destructive school of progress that I cannot 
 endure. It would simply destroy the past to 
 make way for itself. Conservatism alone, and 
 by itself, is obstructive ; Neoterism alone, and 
 by itself, is destructive. 
 
 [CALVINISM.] 
 
 T^HERE'S no such thing as Calvinism. The 
 *- teachings of Augustine, Remigius, Anselm, 
 and Luther, were just pieced together by one 
 remarkable man, and the result baptized with 
 his name. Augustine taught and developed the 
 doctrine of salvation by grace and the Divine 
 election ; Remigius, particular redemption ; 
 Anselm, the doctrine of vicarious atonement ; 
 and Luther, that of justification by faith.
 
 10 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [HIGH CALVINISM.] 
 
 I THINK I'm a high Calvinist. I have no 
 objection to the height of the Calvinists ; but 
 I have objections to the miserable narrowness 
 of some, the miserable narrowness. As Calvinism 
 rises to the infinite, it can't be too high. But 
 it must not be like a single pillar rising up to 
 heaven, not even like a steeple, but a church. 
 And I have no objection to the crypts below. 
 There is a subterranean region underneath our 
 creeds ; only I'm satisfied if they rise up to the 
 light. 
 
 [BIBLICAL LANDMARKS OF THEOLOGY.] 
 A GOOD way of determining the progressive 
 ** landmarks of Theology might be by 
 selecting typical texts to describe the points 
 made emphatic by the principal teachers of the 
 Church. Thus, to take only six. I would 
 connect the name of Athanasius with the words, 
 " Go ye into all the world, teaching and bap- 
 tizing, in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost : " Augustine, with 
 the words, "By grace are ye saved, through 
 faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift 
 of God;" "Not by works of righteousness 
 which we have done, but according to his mercy 
 he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and 
 renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on 
 us abundantly ;" etc. : Anselm, with the words, 
 " Christ suffered for our sins, the just for the 
 unjust, that he might bring us to God :" JRe- 
 migiiis, " I am the good shepherd ; the good 
 shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. My
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 11 
 
 sheep hear my voice," etc. : Luther, " Knowing 
 that a man is not justified by the works of the 
 law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we 
 have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be 
 justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the 
 works of the law ; for by the works of the law 
 shall no flesh be justified: " and Calvin, "Blessed 
 be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 who hath chosen us in him before the founda- 
 tion of the Avorld, that we should be holy and 
 without blame before him in love." 
 
 [CHARITY.] 
 
 I MUST be charitable, but I must have a 
 radix to my charity. The dya^jj must be 
 based upon the 
 
 [OPTIMISM.] 
 
 U call it the correlative of Theism. Well, 
 I would say, beware of making the one 
 the entrance to the other. I have all my life 
 been hanging about the doors, but I have not 
 yet gone in. I think we may be content to 
 remain still at the door a little longer ; a little 
 longer, till we're done with the darkness. 
 
 [The aphorism that " repentance is better 
 than innocence," was quoted as the kernel of Dr. 
 Bruce's preaching, and as affording one ray of 
 light as to the permission of evil and the theory 
 of optimism.] 
 
 Well, there is great truth in that. I have no 
 objection to Dr. B.'s kernel. But I find that 
 kernel enclosed in a shell, and the shell is, " as 
 far as man is concerned."
 
 12 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [ARIANISM.] 
 
 I'VE been in all the heresies but two. I've 
 lived in them all, without exception, but in 
 two, with which I have never had any affinity. 
 
 These are Arianism, and .* Arianism is 
 
 a very meagre patchwork. If we are to be 
 saved, it must be by God, or by man (and how 
 grandly by the God-man). But that it should 
 be by one, neither God nor man, neither one 
 nor other, not part of both, nor wholly both, 
 nor wholly one of the two, but wholly neither, 
 and, therefore, with no real affinity with either 
 of them ; that system has no attractions for 
 me. Let who choose go to it. I cannot, and 
 never could. 
 
 [FACTS.] 
 
 T AM becoming more and more in love with 
 -*- a good bone of fact. I've been too specula- 
 tive and abstract all my life, and I am now, in 
 my old years, seeing the wisdom of clinging to 
 the facts, the bones. The mystical dreamer 
 and the abstract mind both shun the facts, and 
 in consequence the mystic often becomes a flabby 
 molluscous sort of creature. There are some 
 Christians whom I could describe only as soft 
 pulpy molluscs. And yet their mollusc lives are 
 curious. See the limpet's suction. So some of 
 the most curious spiritual creatures cling to 
 that rock, which is Christ. You may kick 
 them, and they'll only cling the firmer; ay, 
 and with some of them, it is only the knife, or 
 
 * My notes are here defective. I cannot recall the 
 second heresy. ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 13 
 
 death by stoning, that will remove them from 
 " that Rock." There's a law of compensation 
 everywhere. 
 
 [ECLECTICISM.] 
 
 TN one sense, I am not an Eclectic ; in 
 *~ another sense I am. I cannot huddle 
 systems and bits of systems into a mass, apart 
 from their organic connections, and the vital 
 relations of Truth with Truth. I cannot 
 merely juxta-place, and leave the dogmas in a 
 row. But, on the other hand, there is nothing 
 in this world completely false. There is no 
 whole lie that I know of but the Sceptic's ; and 
 even his is not utterly a lie, or it would never 
 have existed. Undoubtedly all errors are 
 abused truths. But then half a truth is also 
 at the same time half a lie. Now I don't like 
 halves. Give me entireties, unities, wholes. 
 
 [SCOTTISH PSALMS AND PARAPHRASES.] 
 
 THEEE is fine poetry in some of our Scotch 
 paraphrases. 
 
 " So days, and years, and ages past, 
 
 Descending down to night, 
 Can henceforth never more return 
 Back to the gates of light." 
 
 That is very fine poetry. But it was born in 
 Hellas, and never visited Judea. Now we are 
 to sing the songs of Sion. " Gates of light ! " 
 I begin to think of Aurora, fair "daughter of the 
 dawn ! On the whole, I prefer the Psalms to 
 the Paraphrases and Hymns. They call them 
 paraphrases or translations and queer trans-
 
 14 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 lations some of them are. If they had given 
 me translations, I would have let them keep 
 their paraphrases to themselves. But George 
 Buchanan's psalms are magnificent ; perhaps 
 the finest translations that we have. They are 
 literal, and yet imaginative. Yet he errs some- 
 times by being ultra-classical, as when he ad- 
 dresses God " Rex Olympi." The Roman 
 Church, even, would have used his psalms, had 
 not their author been a heretic. So one of the 
 popes (Urban VIII.) said. They found nothing 
 amiss in the doctrine introduced only the book 
 was the production of a heretic. A miserable 
 reason ! It's the best compensation for heresy 
 to turn a heretic's book to a good purpose. 
 Buchanan would have got great advancement 
 in the Church, had he only truckled to them. 
 What a contrast to Erasmus, his illustrious 
 brother in scholarship. Poor Erasmus truckled 
 all his life for a hat. If he could only have 
 been made a cardinal ! You see the longing 
 for it in his very features, and can't help re- 
 garding him with mingled respect and pity. 
 But few men do justice to Erasmus. 
 
 [A'KEMPIS.] 
 
 A FINE fellow, but hazy, and weak betimes. 
 ^* He and his school tend (as some one has 
 well said) to make humility and humiliation 
 exchange places. 
 
 [THREE SYNTHETIC UNITIES.] 
 T HAVE three synthetic unities : 
 
 (1.) The Trinity in unity. God the Father, 
 God the Son, and God the Spirit.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 15 
 
 (2.) The dual unity in the person of Christ 
 the God-man. 
 
 (3.) The manifold unity of the Mystical 
 Union, Christ and his Church. 
 
 I am disposed to consider the mystical union 
 as something midway between the Incarnation 
 of Christ and the Regeneration of his Church. 
 It is the connecting-link, and therefore neither 
 the one nor the other. It is Christ becoming 
 incarnate to regenerate man, and so commencing 
 the process with his Incarnation. Then the 
 mystical union began. From that it dates. 
 
 [INDIVIDUALITY. ] 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY is the basis of all noble 
 * character. I like to see a good block of 
 it in all men. But there is an ultra-individual- 
 ism which may be a very bad thing. A man 
 who does not feel the tie of a common con- 
 nection with his race, who is not like the vulgar 
 herd of us, may find a greater difficulty in ad- 
 mitting our common depravity. And a man 
 who does not feel this keenly, but who feels, 
 as it were, cut off from his kind by force of his 
 individuality, may find a stumbling-block in the 
 doctrine of a common atonement, the very same 
 for all of us. But we are not only all indebted 
 to another, but the same provision is made for the 
 general mass of the race, and for the most marked 
 individual in it. And unity is as great and 
 as wonderful as variety and individuality are. 
 There's a tree. It is diverse from every other 
 tree, yet it is a unity, and it came from a seed- 
 ling, which connects it with the genus tree and
 
 16 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 with its own species : and so the umbilicus is a 
 wonderful thing. The race is one, till it is severed. 
 God has made of one blood all the nations of the 
 earth. 
 
 [SCEPTICS AND EVIDENCE.] 
 
 I DO not wonder that there are infidels, be- 
 cause the two greatest facts in our religion 
 seem to be a denial of all moral government 
 whatever. 1st, That the guilty, and the fear- 
 fully guilty, should be freely pardoned ; and 2d, 
 That the only perfect innocent in the universe 
 should be the greatest sufferer in the universe. 
 But how does Socinus get over this latter fact 1 
 The fact is unquestioned that he did suffer, and 
 the fact is unquestionable that he was innocent. 
 Why tlien did he suffer? if not vicariously. Was 
 it for an example of patience ? All that for a 
 sample ! But it is a truth, becoming more and 
 more evident to me as time passes, that "no 
 man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy 
 Ghost;" and I am prepared to prove it. For 
 what is it to call Jesus Lord ? It is to worship 
 him. Either, then, Christ is God, or he is not. 
 If he is not, and if we worship him, we are 
 idolaters. And how can a man be absolutely 
 certain that he is no idolater, or worshipper of 
 man, in worshipping one who was essentially 
 man, whatever else he was ? He cannot, unless 
 he is taught it from above. . . The Jewish 
 mind is essentially fixed in the notion that we 
 Christians worship three gods, and that one of 
 them is a man, and therefore that we are idola- 
 ters. In discussing theology with the Hungarian 
 Jews, I never could get this driven out of them.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 17 
 
 [THE GOSPEL AND THE PERMISSION OF EVIL.] 
 
 Gospel is not a mere remedial system. 
 -*- Christ came into the world that we might 
 have life, and that we might have it more 
 abundantly. Mark, wfpiaoorspuc. There's deep 
 significancy there. It would not suffice merely 
 to give us back the tiling we had lost. That 
 would be much, and more than we deserved, 
 but not enough for God to give, because not an 
 advancement to man, and an increase to his 
 glory. And, I would say it reverently, but 
 without hesitation, it is a good thing that 
 Adam fell, because what he lost is much more 
 than found, or rather, something superlatively 
 better has been found. There's your optimism 
 now ; and in this connection I agree with John 
 Bruce in his repentance doctrine. Repentance 
 is better than innocence ; not abstractly, but 
 so far as man is concerned. Augustine says, 
 " Bonum est mala fieri." My principles lead 
 me to "Bonum est ut mala permissa sint ;" 
 not, you observe, " usque permissa sint," for that 
 would abolish the eternal distinction between 
 good and evil. But, though I tremble while I 
 utter it, " bonum est ut mala sint." 
 
 [THE "T.E DEUM."] 
 
 E " Te Deum" is a grand piece of writing; 
 by far the finest fragment of post-apostolic 
 devotion. I am particularly fond of these lines 
 " Thou art the King of Glory, Christ. Thou 
 art the Everlasting Son of the Father. When 
 thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou 
 didst not abhor the Virgin's womb. When thou 
 C
 
 18 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou 
 didst open the kingdom of Heaven to all be- 
 lievers." The Te Deum must be very old. It 
 was sung at Augustine's ordination, but it is 
 much older. I think Hilary of Poictiers was 
 possibly the author. No one can tell the influ- 
 ence of that hymn during the fourteen centuries 
 it has been in use. But one of the finest de- 
 votional pieces. I know occurs in the " Missale 
 Romanum." It is in the " Mass of the Presancti- 
 fied" for Good Friday, in which the refrain 
 occurs "Quid feci tibi populo meo 1 ?" It is 
 clear to my mind that the service of the Low 
 Mass preceded the dogma, and perhaps it was so 
 also in the High Mass. In one respect the 
 Scottish Episcopal communion-office is more ob- 
 jectionable than the Roman, for it leaves out 
 the " nobis " of the Missale Romanum. There 
 are magnificent prayers in the missal. They 
 are chiefly relics of a very early and much purer 
 age ; and many a good Romanist gets on very 
 well in his Church by the help of these alone. 
 
 [MERIT.] 
 
 PHE Council of Trent says that Christ merited 
 -*- that we should merit. Thus there is no 
 merit that is not ultimately resolvable into that 
 Avhich is meritoriously causal of all merit. They 
 say that if you deny that the saints have merit, 
 you're a heretic. But if you deny that Christ's 
 merits merited their merit, you're a heretic too ; 
 which, as John Owen says, is all that many 
 
 good Protestants would contend for 
 
 Bellarmine was not the worst kind of Papist
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 19 
 
 far from it; but lie always raises a desperate 
 cuttle-fish confusion about him, and then puts 
 
 out his claw and drags. Priest G of L 
 
 is just a modern edition of Bellarmine. He 
 preaches, "so rich are the merits of Christ, that 
 they put into us the capacity of meriting." They 
 merit that we merit. It is a merit of congruity, 
 not of condignity, that they contend for, and 
 they admit that gratia prima must assist us 
 all. Now, since Bellarmine and he deny the 
 merit of condignity, and so do we, we are in the 
 main at one. But what this merit of congruity 
 is I have never been able to see, nor do I expect 
 ever to see. 
 
 [JOHN OWEN.] 
 
 T OHN OWEN has vigorous thoughts, but the 
 J baldest style I know. But better rough 
 speech than an oleaginous style. If rough it 
 may arrest. In Owen were combined the Pat- 
 ristic, the Reformed, and the Puritanic. He 
 was a scholar, and had a fine subactum judicium. 
 He was a good student of texts. But oh, he 
 moves clumsily. He moves like a whale. 
 Robert Hall called his works a " continent of 
 mud." He utterly lacked the aesthetic, which 
 Hall valued highly ; but he is a good specimen 
 of the Patristic Scholastic Puritan ; and he is 
 great in spiritual analysis. If you read him on 
 the " Mortification of sin," you must prepare 
 yourself for the scalpel. He is at the head of a 
 school of divines. Halyburton and Witsius 
 were decided Owenians. They are minor men, 
 and you more easily get at their centre.
 
 20 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [PROGRESS.] , 
 
 "\ 1 J"Ei need a more forward moving Christianity, 
 * ^ with more of the -rXjjgopog/a vlffnu? in it ; 
 which is not " in full assurance of faith," but 
 " in the full sail of faith," bearing right on 
 with the wind ; all canvas up. 
 
 [FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.] 
 
 WE must mark the difference between minds 
 wishing to "add to their faith know- 
 ledge," and minds wishing to drag all faith to 
 the bar of knowledge the difference between 
 wishing to found faith upon philosophy, and to 
 deepen faith by philosophy. We must analyse 
 our faith as far as we can. No rational man 
 will resist that. And we must systematise all 
 our knowledge. We must keep our faith 
 orderly, by rational methods, while we " give 
 unto Faith the things that are Faith's." Philo- 
 sophy was born a pagan, but she may become 
 Christian, and should be christened " Mary." 
 She may be proud to sit at Jesus' feet. Hellas 
 coming to Judea's Messiah is a rarely beautiful 
 sight. But Judea is also the better of going to 
 Greece. For what is our New Testament system 
 but Hebrew thought in a Greek clothing 1 The 
 Hebrew affords the concrete matter, but it puts 
 on the raiment of the Greek form. 
 
 [ST. PAUL AT ATHENS.] 
 
 nPWO things strike me in that wonderful 
 *- sermon of Paul at Athens. His consider- 
 ate tact in recognising all the good he found
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 21 
 
 in Athens ; and how he laid the axe to the root 
 of the tree of Attic pride. The Athenians prided 
 themselves on four things (1.) That they were 
 autochthons. Paul tells them that " God made 
 the world and all things that are therein." (2.) 
 Their grand temple architecture. Paul tells 
 them " The Lord of heaven and earth dwelleth 
 not in temples made with hands." (3.) Their 
 distinction from all " barbarians." " He hath 
 made of one blood all nations of men." (4.) 
 Their chronology and grand antiquity. " He 
 hath determined the times before appointed, 
 and the bounds of their habitation." Why ! 
 that's what they had been all wrangling about 
 since the days of Herodotus. 
 
 [METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY.] 
 '"PHEEE is a very close affinity between a 
 -L metaphysical Philosophy and Theology. 
 Plato has great affinities with Christianity, and 
 so have all the succeeding Platonists more or 
 less, especially our own Cambridge men in the 
 17th century. But many a so-called Christian 
 teacher is not better than a second-rate heathen 
 moralist, nor half so good. He dilutes the 
 essence with so much water. Plato almost 
 anticipated St. Paul's " Oh, wretched man that 
 I am ! " The ancient moralists were far better 
 theologians than either the Priests or the Poets ; 
 (Pindar, however, takes some noble flights). 
 Seneca used to be a great favourite of mine, 
 but the Platonist is nearer of kin to the 
 Christian than the Stoic is, as most of the 
 Fathers allowed.
 
 22 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [CREATION AND DESIGN.] 
 
 V/'OU say that Design never leads to the 
 -*- Infinite, and it never yields the idea of 
 creation. I would add that it never gives me 
 the Infinite, because it never gives me creation. 
 If I reach the fact of creation I reach the In- 
 finite ; for the infinite Power alone is creative. 
 The origin of an atom, equally with that of the 
 Universe (i.e. what I may call the Universe, 
 but then my universe may be God's atom) 
 gives me the notion of Power that is truly and 
 perfectly infinite. 
 
 [PANTHEISM.] 
 
 TDANTHEISM has a curious natural affinity 
 * with man, when he realises his connection 
 with the Universal Life, 'Ei> alrSt stp'sv. We 
 live within God's omnipresence, and we have 
 come from Him. There is something in Pan- 
 theism so deep that naught in bare Deism can 
 meet it. Deism is not so deep. And Pan- 
 theism may well keep the house, till a stronger 
 than Deism comes to take possession of it. In 
 Jesus Christ I find the only solution of the 
 mystery. He was not one with the race, 
 though kindred to it. I admit that Pantheism 
 is a vulgar scheme at bottom; yet the least 
 vulgar and most pious minds will often talk 
 pantheistically, and perliaps they must do so ; 
 (I'm fond of the caveats :) just as those most 
 remote from anthropomorphism very often talk 
 most anthropomorphically. And the most tran- 
 scendental minds can easily afford this. You
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 23 
 
 will find them talking either very abstractly or 
 very concretely. In the poets, in Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and Thomson, you find much Panthe- 
 istic language, but no Pantheism. I was a 
 Spinosist for three years. The ONE was then 
 the ALL to me. But I had to throw the system 
 to the winds that I might live. I believe there 
 are many good Pantheists, but conscience has 
 no speculative warrant in the system of Pan- 
 theism And yet I think that the 
 
 system is an emphatic admission, or rather pro- 
 clamation, that there is a secret in the Universe 
 that belongeth unto God, unfathomed and 
 fathomless by men. 
 
 [PLATO AND ARISTOTLE.] 
 In the Cave under Macduff's Castle, Wemyss. 
 
 '"PHAT'S a wonderful illustration of Plato's 
 * about the cave, and the shadows on the 
 wall. A better symbol of the contrast between 
 the permanent and the transitory could not be 
 found : the moving shadows seen, while that 
 of which they are the adumbration is not seen. 
 But as a writer I prefer Aristotle to Plato. 
 Aristotle's Greek is very amazing. It is the 
 exactest Greek I know. He is by far the com- 
 pactest and most precise writer we have, in any 
 literature. He is the beau ideal of the precise. 
 Two things I wonder at in Aristotle the ex- 
 tent of his acquirements, and the exactitude of 
 his writing. He had gone over the encyclo- 
 paedia of knowledge. And the " Organon" is 
 marvellous Greek. So is the "Nicomachean
 
 24 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 
 
 Ethics." He is not so great I think in his 
 " Metaphysics," either in the matter or its form. 
 I sometimes wonder if we have much of his 
 Esoteric those peripatetic disclosures to the 
 initiated. It is mostly the exoteric I suppose. 
 But if that was the exoteric, what must the 
 esoteric have been! His aesthetic doctrines too 
 have not yet been superseded, though they 
 have been supplemented. And we have a 
 curious fragment of his own poetry, a piece KIP} 
 'Awry;. It is Smollett-like; very like Smollett's 
 " Ode to Independence." But I never could love 
 Aristotle. Admiration is the beginning, middle, 
 and end of my feeling toAvards him. He could 
 see, but could not soar. He could see, I sup- 
 pose, as far as a mason could see into a wall 
 that he had built, and that is a good deal farther 
 than other people see into it. Plato, on the 
 other hand, I love. He is more of the mystic, 
 and he soars sublimely. Plato goes peering up, 
 often into cloudland ; yet I like to follow him 
 into the mist, for when I don't see through it, 
 I generally think he does. It is a good thing 
 to go up now and then into the mist, if we do 
 not, like Ixion, embrace the cloud. . . . Philip 
 of Macedon had been a wise man in getting 
 such a tutor as Aristotle for Alexander. The 
 tutorship may account a little for the greatness 
 of both men. Each benefited the other. But 
 what a petty ambition was that of the ward ; 
 and what a low Empire compared with the 
 tutor's, in worth and duration both. To con- 
 quer the world ! Alexander Magnus was, after 
 all, Alexander Parvus too.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 25 
 
 [Sm "W. HAMILTON AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE 
 INFINITE. ] 
 
 T HAVE never read Sir William; yet we 
 -- have many affinities, I think. I cannot now 
 make use of a new terminology. He has one 
 of his own, very good, I suppose ; but I have 
 my own. We met only once at Fairlie. I 
 greatly enjoyed his conversation. He bothered 
 me that day about the contradictions in the 
 four evangelists. He gave a list of them ; but 
 I told him I thought the whole matter a very 
 small affair. I think I hold a theory of Ignor- 
 ance not essentially different from his. But 
 it is no new thing to hold a theory of Ignorance. 
 It is a theological commonplace. I sometimes 
 wish Sir William were still alive, that I might 
 have a talk with him about Positives and Nega- 
 tives, and my own Positive-negative. For, so 
 far as I can see, there is nothing in his doctrine 
 of Faith and Knowledge different from this, that 
 there is a distinction between the comprehension 
 and the apprehension of things. The rest I 
 take to be a dispute about the two different 
 meanings of the word " know." I do not know 
 the Infinite, says Sir William, excepting nega- 
 tively. We know only the finite ; but in the 
 consciousness of our inability to transcend the 
 finite, we are inspired with a belief in the uncon- 
 ditional and the infinite, and we positively 
 believe in it. Well, I say, we do know it, only 
 not comprehensively but apprehensively, as 
 surely as we know the reality of Finite Sub- 
 stance. We cannot compass either of them in 
 thought, but we know that they are. We appre-
 
 26 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 hend, or know, the positive fact of their exist- 
 ence. Now, I say, if this be all that Sir Wil- 
 liam meant (and we are agreed so far), why 
 deviate from common parlance, and say we do 
 not know them ? The common consciousness of 
 men is the same as that to which Sir W. appeals. 
 And if the majority of men (I mean of the 
 uneducated) express themselves by saying that 
 they know, why should not I ? I admit that we 
 do not comprehend the noumenal, only the phe- 
 nomenal. Yet we know that the noumenal is. 
 You may say you attain to the one by positive 
 knowledge, and to the other, in the collapse of 
 knowledge, by positive faith. I say I want a 
 common term for both, and that I find this in 
 the word "know." Well, we just speak dif- 
 ferent languages about the same old problem, as 
 if Sir William spoke in Greek and I in old 
 Saxon. A new philosophy very often just 
 speaks a new dialect ; very often it is a mere 
 question of vocabulary and nomenclaturing ! 
 Yet I won't give up my positive-negative. I 
 cannot exhaust the infinite in thought ; that is, 
 I am unable by the negation of it to exhaust a 
 positive. ... It would seem, then, that my 
 "scimus" is wider than Sir William's, and my 
 " ignoramus" narrower. I maintain that we do 
 know the infinite as a positivo-negative, or we 
 have no basis for revelation ; or, I would state 
 it thus, we are not properly ignorant of it as a 
 positive, we are only nescient. Ignorance is a 
 defect, nescience is not a necessary defect. 
 Christ was nescient, but not ignorant ; for the 
 latter is that beyond which there is a better
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 27 
 
 not only absolutely but relatively ; better that 
 is, for that particular state. Now there is a 
 better state than nescience absolutely ; but not 
 relatively to man. 
 
 [GEORGE CAMPBELL.] 
 
 "VI THEN at the Grammar School in Aberdeen, 
 * * I got hold of a volume of George Camp- 
 bell's, in which he ridicules, as lamentable folly, 
 the notion that to God there is no past, present, 
 or future to Him all are one. I remember 
 well how I abhorred George Campbell for that. 
 I thought it the most magnificent thought I had 
 ever met with. 
 
 [OPPOSITE ERRORS.] 
 
 /APPOSITE errors have generally a common 
 ^-^ Kgftrov -^iZdos. Legalism and antinomi- 
 anism rise from a common root of error, just as 
 Materialism and Idealism respectively ignore 
 the balance of the universe, and that " all things 
 are double, one against the other." 
 
 [LUTHER AND MELANCTHON. 
 
 IF a subject could be split up into twelve 
 separate points, and also compressed into 
 one, Luther would take the one, Melancthon 
 the twelve. 
 
 [DR. CHALMERS.] 
 
 CHALMERS was not a widely-read divine, 
 ^^ but as a practical thinker and teacher of 
 the heart he was unrivalled. We have lost 
 much of him for want of a Boswell. Many of
 
 28 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 his best sayings are gone for ever. As a man 
 of erudition he might have been better. As a 
 heaven-taught man, he needed little. Though 
 not well read, all his reading passed through 
 the alembic of his own mind. What he took 
 in from without never came forth undigested. 
 . . . . But Chalmers never could understand 
 the real difficulty of the Edwardean contro- 
 versy. It was very poor insight in him to 
 imagine that he had settled the controversy. 
 He and I often talked of Edwards and Philo- 
 sophical Necessity. He never could see that 
 there was a third thing between Necessity 
 and Contingency viz. Liberty. Chalmers 
 was not a speculative thinker; but he was 
 especially great in all questions where the 
 heart aids the intellect. A minister once told 
 me of the fine rebuke he got from him. He 
 had visited a man on his deathbed who was 
 delirious, and returning home met Chalmers. 
 "Well," said he, "did you pray with him?" 
 " No ; he was delirious ; but I prayed with the 
 family." " Ah ! you did very wrong, sir. Who 
 knows but that some old train of thought might 
 have been stirred up by the tones of a familiar 
 voice? You did very wrong, sir." In that 
 region Chalmers was one of the greatest men of 
 our century. 
 
 [IN REFERENCE TO A LIVING PREACHER.] 
 
 HE Morelled too much for me. That is a 
 very shallow book of Morell's on Eeligion. 
 He may call it the philosophy of religion ; but I 
 doubt if it is anything else than cloudification.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 29 
 
 [OPEN QUESTIONS.] 
 
 T "\YOULD not put Augustine's doctrine of evil 
 -*- into the Church's creed. I have no right 
 to impose it on others. I think it is an 
 essential. But into the " credo" I do not thrust 
 it. Systematic theology has a wide margin 
 round it, where we must have the probabilia 
 placed; but the creed should have none. A 
 narrow theology, founded on the theologian's 
 idiosyncrasies, is, after all, no theology at all. 
 
 [NECESSITARIANISM.] 
 
 T DISSENT from Jonathan Edwards' doctrine, 
 -*- because he hazards a speculation on will qua 
 will, and therefore in reference to all will, divine 
 and human. It is fatal to establish a necessary 
 chain throughout every will in the universe. The 
 Divine acts are free. They are necessary, I 
 maintain, qua moral, though free qua will. But 
 I am a determinist as much as Edwards. 
 
 [FREE "WILL AND SYNERGIA.] 
 A EMINIAXISM and Antinomianism have a 
 ** common KPUTOV -^ivfog. Antinomianism 
 says that we (to use the words of Towne) are 
 Christ-ed and God-ed. Arminianism says that 
 half of the Avork is God's and half is man's. 
 Calvinism asserts that the whole is God's, and 
 the whole is man's also. The second scheme 
 robs God ; the first fanaticises man ; the third 
 is the juste milieu, and stands midway between 
 two ultras. I admit moral power in the will, 
 against the Antinomians, and claim it; I abjure 
 power, against the Arminians, and disown it. 
 The Arminian synergia is first, unconsciously,
 
 30 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 atheistic ; and then, consciously, enthusiastic. 
 It first excludes and denies God, and then 
 attributes to Him and to man an act of fanati- 
 cism. It would be better to abolish the word 
 synergia, for it is associated with a contro- 
 versy, on one side of which I take a decided 
 stand. But I have no objection to use it, as 
 it contains a truth. Allow my caveat, and 
 I'll use your word. There is a true and a 
 false synergia. That God works half, and man 
 the other half, is false ; that God works all, 
 and man does all, is true. God svioytf ri di\siv 
 man 6'tXfi xai evsgyeT: I have my theologou- 
 menon, or philosophical speculation on the 
 will that it is set free from the bondage of 
 antecedence and consequence as these reign in 
 Nature. The nexus in the two spheres is not 
 identical. We might even say with Pope 
 
 God, 
 
 "... binding Nature fast in Fate, 
 Left free the Human Will." 
 
 And yet I am a determinist with Edwards, as 
 against Whitby; while I am an assertor of free- 
 dom with Whitby, as against Edwards. The free 
 will which I concede and maintain is just the 
 reason's postulate for the dictamina of conscience. 
 But as to the causal nexus being entirely broken, 
 or as to our power of origination what Sir W. 
 Hamilton would regard as proximate in the con- 
 science as to the will, is amongst my ultima duUa. 
 And, after all, my theologeme " de voluntate " is 
 amongst the 999 unsolved things which I ever 
 carry with me I grant the existence
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 31 
 
 of " remote power " as a condition of respon- 
 sibility ; but this power is inoperative until 
 quickened by the ray from above. We differ 
 in fundamentals if you hold a full ewegyeia, 
 as was maintained in the synergist controversy. 
 But the problem as to what this remote power, 
 which conditions responsibility, is, is a meta- 
 physical one ; and I think that, as metaphy- 
 sicians, we shall be compelled to fall back, after 
 all, on some such statement as the apostle's, 
 " Work out your salvation, for it is God that 
 worketh in you." Arminianism I regard as 
 fanatical in its denial of second causes. 
 
 [AQUINAS.] 
 
 T'VE set myself to be a Thomist commentator. 
 *- " Deus voluit hoc propter illud, sed non 
 propter illud voluit hoc Deus," says Aquinas. 
 The " hoc propter illud " is the subject-matter 
 of the divine volition. God has willed, e.g., 
 that the universe, with all its history, evil in- 
 cluded, should illustrate the divine glory ; " hoc 
 propter illud." But the "illud" is not the 
 motive cause of the " hoc." He has not directly 
 willed the history of the universe for the sake 
 of his glory. There is a relation of proptzrky 
 between the two things as the objects of divine 
 volition. There is much more in this distinc- 
 tion of Aquinas than meets the eye at first 
 glance ; though the vulgar mind will call it a 
 distinction without a difference.* 
 
 * I give the quotation as Dr. Duncan gave it. The only 
 passage in Aquinas to which I can trace it, is the sentence 
 in the Summa Theologice, pars prima, qusest. xix., art. 5,
 
 32 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [USES OF SPECULATION.] 
 
 WE may reverentially, and for solemn ends, 
 speculate on the origin of evil ; and these 
 may be purely practical ends. We may hope 
 to get gleams of light, fugitive rays striking 
 downwards. It is not a bad "sign of a man, but 
 the reverse, that he continues reverentially to 
 gaze into this question and ponder the mystery. 
 As to the "sitting apart, holding no form of 
 creed, but contemplating all," thoughtful men 
 usually do this for a time. The end does not 
 always justify the means ; but perhaps this may 
 be true, that though the unrest is not a good 
 thing in itself, out of it God brings good, and 
 in some cases it may be the only way to the 
 highest good. Yet we shrink from our children 
 going down into that into which we went and 
 emerged. We fear they may not emerge. 
 [Is there faith in such shrinking ?] 
 At least it is a very natural shrinking, and 
 God does not lead us all by the same way. 
 We have no right to suppose beforehand that 
 others need the baptism that we were bap- 
 tized with. A was a great man, and not 
 
 the least part of this greatness was his con- 
 fession, " There may be many an easier way of 
 obtaining rest than the way by which I have 
 reached it." Discipline in philosophy is often 
 a pathway to God, why should it be less so than 
 any other kind of discipline ? and yet its great 
 value is in being a handmaiden, ancilla Domini. 
 You might think I was caring greatly for it. 
 
 "Vult ergo hoc esse propter hoc, sed non propter hoc 
 vult hoc." ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 33 
 
 But what I want is to disencumber the creed, 
 and to christen the philosophy. 
 
 [ADAM AND CHRIST.] 
 
 MY Theanthropology has only two texts 
 "God made man in his own image, in 
 the image of God created He him ;" and " God 
 sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made 
 under the law, to redeem them that were under 
 the law." Therefore, theologically, there are only 
 two men, Adam and Christ. What an honour has 
 been put upon the vo/^-o; under which Adam was, 
 and man is, that under it also Christ should be. 
 
 [UNBUEIED SPECULATIONS.] 
 
 T HAVE no patience with C 's Hades. 
 
 ^ I have a hundred such speculations, all very 
 good for myself. But I have buried them when 
 done Avith them, and never unearthed them since 
 for others. They lie in heaps in one common 
 grave, and mother earth is on them. What does 
 he mean by unearthing his to the gaze of men ? 
 
 [LlTTBGIES. ] 
 
 TN forgetting our Directory we are too little 
 *- liturgical ; and if the Church were very 
 spiritual it would need no liturgy. We have 
 far too many preaching prayers ; many good 
 ministers preach to God. The best of our fore- 
 fathers were more anti-erastian than anti-epis- 
 copal, and more opposed to a bad liturgy than 
 anti-liturgic. I do not wonder that the desire 
 for forms of prayer is returning. I could say 
 nothing against the use of a liturgy, as a catholic 
 D
 
 34 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 question, for all the churches ; but I am definite 
 against confinement to it ; and as for us in 
 Scotland, I am opposed to it in any form at 
 present. But a good liturgy forms a fine com- 
 mon bond for the churches. I remember, when 
 in Leghorn, hearing a very painful sermon from 
 
 the Bishop of ; and on leaving the church 
 
 a friend remarked, " I'm thankful he can't spoil 
 the prayers." 
 
 [ANTHROPOMORPHISM. ] 
 
 \\ 7E cannot exhaust the significance of that 
 * * sentence, " Let us make man in our image, 
 after our likeness." God must be anthropo- 
 morphic, or anthropopathic in his communica- 
 tions. He tells us that He is infinitely unlike 
 us ; but when he is to speak to man he must 
 do so anthropomorphically ; and he has done so, 
 even more lowlily than we ourselves need habi- 
 tually conceive of him. It was in accommoda- 
 tion to the infancy of the world, when men 
 spake, and thought, and understood as children 
 and because so many always do so in all ages. 
 But if we are " in the image " of God, we are to 
 Him, as the shade is to the substance. It is an 
 exceeding high mystery, but I think that the 
 positive notion of the Infinite, which we all have, 
 is a hint to us of that " image." 
 
 [GRATIA IRRESISTIBILIS.] 
 
 T 'VE tried to discover if there be any difference 
 ** between the Jansenist's and the Calvinist's 
 " irresistible grace." But the Calvinists did not 
 adopt the term " gratia irresistibilis " for them-
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 35 
 
 selves. Maestricht shows that it was their 
 opponents who charged them with it ; and so, 
 says M., though it is not our term, or what we 
 would say, we have no objection to the phrase, 
 that gratia is irresistibilis, and yet I hold that 
 in another sense gratia est resistibilis et resisti- 
 tur. But I do not think there is any material 
 difference between the Calvinist and Jansenist 
 doctrine. 
 
 [TRUTH, AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH : LESSING.] ' 
 
 T THINK that both Fenelon and Leighton 
 * (the Scotch bishop) were men constitution- 
 ally afraid of the full blaze of the truth. They 
 were naturally timorous men. They wished to 
 possess the full truth, but they walked too 
 warily, because they looked upon the truth from 
 the sentimental rather than from the moral side. 
 
 [Is it not possible to be too ambitious to pos- 
 sess the whole truth f] 
 
 Never. 
 
 [I mean ambitious to see all its sides at once, 
 or too speedily. May we not pay the penalty 
 of that ambition which overleaps itself 1] 
 
 Well, I like that prayer of Newman's, the 
 subtile devout man : 
 
 " I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for me." 
 
 We may apply it to the search for, and the 
 acquisition of, truth. But we. must get to the 
 centre speedily to that Rock on which we 
 may build. I fear I may not understand Lessing 
 aright ; but if I do, that saying of his, which is
 
 36 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 
 
 so much praised,* contains the essence of all 
 devilry. It may amount to the willingness 
 to be eternally without God. It is delight 
 in the mere activity of the faculties that is 
 chosen, the search that is fearless and free, 
 unimpeded and ^restricted. To be left alone 
 for ever to pursue the endless chase, cut off 
 from the eternal Being, would be to me the 
 horror of horrors. 
 
 [But Lessing does not wish the pursuit with- 
 out reaching the goal, the chase without the 
 prey. He only prefers the intelligent discovery 
 of truth to a blind reception of it.] 
 
 Well, I would add to his maxim, Teach thou me, 
 else I had rather have " the truth " at once. 
 Did the woman who lost the piece of money 
 think the search for it better than the finding 
 of it 1 " Prove all things," says the Apostle, 
 adding, " hold fast that which is good." But, 
 according to Lessing, we should prove all things, 
 but hold fast nothing. It would be a loss to 
 him to get possession of the truth. In short, 
 Lessing's maxim is the maxim of eternal revolt 
 and independence ; and the wish to be as God 
 contains within it a prayer for estrangement 
 from God. 
 
 [CONSIDEB THE LlLIES.] 
 
 PHEEE are times when I cannot rest in the 
 * ethical, when I cannot find any satisfaction 
 
 * " Did the Almighty, holding in his right hand truth, 
 and in his left, search after truth, deign to proffer me the 
 one I might prefer, in all humility, but without hesita- 
 tion, I could request, search after truth." ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 37 
 
 in historical facts. The very evangel satisfies 
 me not. I cannot read my Bible, and I cannot 
 pray. But I go out into my garden to consider 
 the lilies how they grow. My pietpvuTt, they 
 seem to preach : Carking care, away ! 
 
 [SYSTEMS OF THEOLOGY : HERESY.] 
 
 OUR systems of theology are a bondage, and 
 must remain a bondage till they are adopted 
 on rational conviction. And yet very often these 
 very dogmas are cheerfully adopted by those who 
 once rent them asunder as fetters. Systematic 
 truth is systematic error to me, if I ignorantly 
 and unconvincedly bind myself to it ; and all 
 real fetters should always be broken. But earnest 
 and good men usually come to see that what 
 they once found to be fetters, are the cords and 
 bands of a man the girders of his strength. 
 It is a monstrous thing that that horrible word 
 " heresy " is now used on all occasions so freely, 
 and applied so recklessly to all error. All 
 error is not heresy. Amesius, in his book, De 
 Conscientia, starts the question, " an Arminianis- 
 mus heresis sit 1 " But people will use this 
 word, and scatter firebrands, arrows, and death, 
 as recklessly as if they were in sport. Heresy 
 is a work of the flesh, and no man can be 
 charged with it, even on a fundamental, till, 
 after faithful admonishment, he persists in it, 
 knowing that he does so. No man can be de- 
 posed from the church catholic for doctrinal 
 heresy. He may be suspended from this or 
 that individual church, but not cut off from the 
 universal church of Christ. For, note " Who
 
 38 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 can understand his errors 1 " And it is too 
 often forgotten that no man can be charged 
 with an opinion which is only the valid conse- 
 quence of the doctrines he holds, if that conse- 
 quence is by him disowned. You cannot deal 
 judicially with a man for a logical blunder, 
 though you may deem him intellectually weak 
 or confused. There is no indefectible connection 
 between the theoretical and the practical, nor 
 between an axiom and its sequences. I mean, 
 that though the one may entail the other, a 
 man is not to be held chargeable with both, if 
 he explicitly disowns either. 
 
 [SCOTCH SECTS ONLY PARTIES.] 
 T OFTEN think that our church errs in taking 
 * it for granted (indirectly at least) that the 
 fervour and life that characterised the beginning 
 of its history will remain with it, without ex- 
 periencing an ebb of the tide. There are tides 
 in all things ; and the great wave of Divine Bless- 
 ing seems to keep ebbing and flowing amongst 
 the churches. But that is a fine saying of Sack 
 of Bonn, in his History of the Scottish Church 
 "In Scotland there are no sects, only parties." 
 That is a fine testimony from a foreigner. 
 Sometimes you see most truly from a distance. 
 He meant we should not dignify our differences 
 by the name of " sects ; " we are only parties in 
 one great sect the species of a genus. 
 
 [AtTGUSTINE AND CALVIN.] 
 
 A UGUSTINE was greater on the whole than 
 ~~ Calvin. Calvin is the more complete ; no
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 39 
 
 thanks to him for that, for Calvin was standing 
 on Augustine's shoulders, Augustine on his own 
 feet. In Calvin you see great amplitude of 
 mind, and great common-sense clearness ; far 
 less metaphysical profundity, and far less of the 
 subdued Platonic fervour which you find in 
 Augustine. I think of the two men together 
 as " the pigmy on the giant's back ; " though 
 Calvin after all was no pigmy. 
 
 [SATAN.] 
 
 TT is a strange thing that so fine a spirit is 
 ^ let loose to do so much mischief, but he is 
 only " the prince of the power of the air," not 
 of the power of the spirit. I believe there may 
 be more devils than men. They are legion, and 
 go in companies, so far as we can gather from 
 the hints of Scripture. I think each temptation 
 that assails a man may be from a separate devil. 
 And they are not far off; probably our atmo- 
 sphere was the place of their original banishment. 
 And there they live, air-princes. But mark, 
 they have no power over the innermost spirit ; 
 nay, they can have no knowledge of the secrets 
 of the heart of man. No single heart-secret is 
 known to any single devil. These are known 
 only to the Searcher of the hearts, who is also 
 their Maker. Some good Christians disquiet 
 themselves by forgetting this. I would say 
 that our adversary can look and hear, see and 
 listen, and make inferences. He has only a 
 phenomenal knowledge, and that not perfect. 
 He is but a creature, and cannot know the 
 secrets of the universe. It ought to comfort all
 
 40 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 men that only our Maker knows our constitu- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 [GHOSTS.] 
 
 BUT what do you think of ghosts ? For my 
 part, I neither believe nor do I disbelieve 
 in them. A man essaying to demonstrate their 
 impossibility gives evidence of possessing an 
 awfully phenomenal mind, (which thing is my 
 abhorrence. / abhor a mere phenomenalisf). 
 The credulous and facile mind may believe 
 almost anything as to the supernatural ; but 
 the incredulous and merely critical mind is 
 often as crass and stolid as the other. Now, 
 why should ghosts not exist a priori ? There 
 is no reason against them. If Providence is, 
 they may be. They may belong to the unseen 
 cosmical system, or to a part of it. As to the 
 facts a posteriori, each one must satisfy himself. 
 [He told some remarkable ghost-stories.] 
 
 [ANGELS AND IMAGE -WORSHIP.] 
 T BELIEVE it is mercy that our eyes are 
 * shut to save us from angel-worship ; for I 
 so believe in the ministry of angels, that I do 
 not know" but if I saw them I might be led to 
 give them homage. The distinction between 
 latria and doulia might then appear. And if in 
 the upper world we shall see the " angel that 
 came and ministered unto Him," I think the 
 whole church will be greatly interested in that 
 angel. We must beware, in this matter of the 
 intervention of angels, of two extremes of a 
 vulgar credulity and a presumptive incredulity.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 41 
 
 "We live in an age in which we should say it 
 may be so ; and neither that it must be so, nor that 
 it cannot be so. I'm fond of the caveats. Why 
 should they not be delegated to interfere ] 
 Some subordinate agents betAveen God and man 
 there surely are. And if there be a hierarchy 
 rising upwards to the throne, and Him who 
 sits on it, may not the angels be often sent to 
 minister to those on the earth who need their 
 succour 1 My homage to the supernatural 
 would lead me to believe in angels, even though 
 I had no revelation on the subject ; and every 
 suggestion of the unseen is precious, every door 
 opening into it. And ah ! Protestant as I am, 
 even image-worship does appeal to a part of 
 man's nature. There is an old stone of granite 
 by the roadside, as you wind up the hill at old 
 Buda, upon which a worn and defaced image of 
 our Saviour is cut, which I used often to pass. 
 Below the granite block are the words " vos 
 omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte 
 si est ullus dolor sicut dolor meus." The 
 thorough woe-begoneness of that image used to 
 haunt me long: that old bit of granite the 
 beau-ideal of human sorrow, weakness, and 
 woe-begoneness. To this day it will come back 
 upon me, and always with that dumb gaze of 
 perfect calmness no complaining the picture 
 of meek and mute suffering. The memory of 
 it comes up fresh as when I first looked upon 
 it ; and yet it is a purely human feeling, it is 
 not spiritual. 
 
 [Why condemn the emotion 1 It is only the 
 homage that is to be restrained.]
 
 42 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 I can only say I'm a Protestant, and dislike 
 image-worship, yet never can I get that statue 
 out of my mind. So, too, when in Italy I saw 
 the crucifixes by the roadsides, I felt they were 
 not Protestant ; but I could never pass them 
 without a very tender reminiscence. By the 
 way, the Eomish devotee is wrong only in going 
 to the wrong priest : and both the traveller, 
 and the vicar to whom he travels, have very bad 
 optics. 
 
 [THE LEGAL AND THE ETHICAL.] 
 T BELIEVE that the school of theology, to- 
 * wards which many fresh minds are apt to 
 drift, is near of kin to that which they would 
 very much wish to shun, to wit, the harshness 
 of Bradwardine. In Bradwardine and Twisse, 
 the lawyer threatens to swallow up the ethicist, 
 as conversely, in Mr. Maurice's system, the ethi- 
 cist devours the lawyer. In Jonathan Edwards 
 and the New Englanders we have a fine union 
 of moral law and moral ethic. Holiness and 
 justice are respectively the aesthetic and the 
 moral elements of law ; and, with all his rigour, 
 Edwards is supremely moral. Yet he was not 
 fully cognisant (though not wholly unaware) 
 that he held within his system a species of very 
 high and refined internal pantheism. In a 
 hypertheistic system sin must equally vanish as 
 in the atheistic ; and Edwards has in other 
 treatises unconsciously developed this internal 
 pantheism more fully. I have never entered 
 the door of either supra- or infra-lapsarian Cal- 
 vinism. But Maurice's system is pure illegality.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 43 
 
 It will never go down with the lawyers ; it 
 upsets their science entirely. Bare ethic, with- 
 out law, is the ethic of Jehovah alone, and his co- 
 equals, living together in the one tie of aya^, 
 where there are no subjects. This a/a^Tj might 
 be the bond of union on Olympus amongst 
 co-equal gods, were polytheism true ; (though 
 it was not even so much as imagined on the 
 ancient Olympus). But whenever subjects ap- 
 pear beneath the sovereign, obligation enters. 
 I can understand the fact I have heard, that 
 Sir W. Hamilton disliked the theology of Mau- 
 rice. He was an advocate. No lawyer is likely 
 to fall into a sentimentalism about law. It's 
 a serious matter to be under law and to be at 
 the bar, and to feel the solemn rigour of juris- 
 prudence. And the end of punishment is not, 
 I think, primarily to reform the punished, but 
 to vindicate the law. 
 
 [But is not such a vindication blank, if the 
 final end of it is not the reclamation of the 
 transgressor ?] 
 
 Not necessarily ; but the reclamation is also 
 attempted, it is also provided for. Goethe said 
 once, all the course of Providence goes to show 
 that the God of Providence is the same as the 
 severe Jehovah of the Hebrews. . . . 
 
 [ETHICISM : MR. MAURICE.] 
 
 TDAUL'S Christianity, and his anti-christianity, 
 *- had a common principle lying at their root 
 viz. " the law is good ; " and I do not find in 
 Paul the least affinity with that system which 
 would merge law in ethics. He never set him-
 
 44 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 self up as the equal of his Maker. But this is 
 the natural upshot of the sentimental system 
 lately revived in England. The law of fealty, 
 the law which says "thou shalt," does not 
 exist for the Supreme himself. Duty (qua 
 moral} is for the creature and Creator alike ; 
 and in this we oppose Mr. Mansel out and out ; 
 but (qua law), it is for the creature only. I 
 do not charge Mr. Maurice with all the conse- 
 quences of his system, but I proclaim these 
 consequences. A man may veer far from the 
 centre, and yet his error never ripen into a 
 heresy and this heresy (if it be one) has not 
 yet founded a sect. If it does found a sect, in 
 time the doctrine will be seen to develop its 
 full issues ; as a half-truth generally ripens 
 into a manifest lie, and then, at its full deve- 
 lopment, the sect is near its death. 
 
 [THE GOSPELS AND EPISTLES.] 
 T HAVE certainly more of the Pauline Epistles 
 * than of the four Gospels in my nature, 
 though the latter are our foundation. Paul 
 was from first to last a man of law ; and the 
 Pauline relations of law and gospel have taken 
 a very deep hold of me. Paul, too, has more 
 variety than any of the Apostles. He has his 
 own distinctive features, and he has a good deal 
 of the Johannean and the Petrine besides. And 
 honest James was like one of the old prophets 
 risen again. He reads just like a prophet. 
 "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity." 
 " Can the fig-tree, my brethren, bear olive- 
 berries, or the vine figs 1 " " Go to, now, ye rich
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 45 
 
 men, weep for your miseries," etc. etc. He had 
 to write in the same strain to "the twelve 
 tribes scattered abroad," as Joel and the rest of 
 old. The Jews had not improved much. They 
 are a strange people. I have often pitied Moses, 
 for he had a stiff rebellious race to manage. 
 . . Yet I feel that I, with many others, 
 have been disproportionately Pauline. These 
 Epistles presuppose the Gospels (having been 
 sent to those churches that possessed the 
 materials of the latter). Hence, though, for 
 the balancing of truth, there is nothing like 
 the Pauline letters ; for vitality and fresh- 
 ness, there is nothing like the facts of the 
 Gospel ; and were I a younger man, and to 
 begin my studies again, the four Gospels would 
 bulk more prominently in my attention than 
 they have done. The bearing of the life, death, 
 and teaching of Christ, on the whole economy of 
 God's government, that is the Pauline sphere. 
 With his own nature rooted in Christ, Paul sur- 
 veys the relations which He bears to the 
 universe. John, again, with the eagle eye, is 
 content to gaze, and to rest gazing, on "the 
 light, which is the life of men." John was an 
 intense intuitionalist. His Gospel and first 
 Epistle, taken together, make a good apologeti- 
 cal manual. His Epistle gives the philosophy 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 [THE CALMXESS OF DIVINE POWER.] 
 T'VE sometimes thought that God's greatest 
 * power is best seen in the most silent awaken- 
 ings of the spirit of man. So it is in natural
 
 46 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 things ; the daily course of the earth, silent and 
 sure, with no jolt, or start forwards ; so in all 
 our vital acts. God acts in all of these directly. 
 If our vital acts were in our own power, we 
 should not live a moment ; why should it be 
 otherwise in the spiritual sphere, where the 
 soul often awakens quietly at the touch of God ? 
 Let us never imagine that tumultuous changes, 
 stormy upheavals of the will, reveal His 
 presence more markedly than the gentle 
 whispers of His voice. He is not far from any 
 one of us ; for, sv avT& l 
 
 [AUGUSTINE'S THEORY OF EVIL.] 
 T DO not say it is altogether made out, but it 
 -* is maxime probabile. I believe it, and I 
 believe it is essential to Augustinianism, i.e. 
 Augustinianism falls, if it falls. Yet I won't 
 make it an article of the common faith, or place 
 it in the creed. It is so high a theologoumenon. 
 God's will is not bound up by the causal nexus, 
 i.e. His will qua will ; as moral it is necessarily 
 holy. But I am keenly anti-Edwardean in his 
 assertions as to will in general (including there- 
 fore the Divine). I am even Pelagian in refer- 
 ence to the Divine will, qua will : at least I am 
 purely libertarian. As to sin, I am, and must 
 remain, an Augustinian. Yet when I speculate 
 long upon it, my head reels in mental vertigo. 
 Sin is not a positive entity. 
 
 [It is nothing noumenal or substantial, else it 
 would be a creature. It is phenomenal only.] 
 
 It is less than nothing, infinitely less than 
 nothing, the algebraical >. I can realise it
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 47 
 
 to myself only by faint analogies. Death is 
 not a positive thing. It is the absence of life. 
 Dark is the withdrawal of light ; cold, the 
 absence of heat ; rest, the cessation of movement. 
 They are disparates, and there are analogous 
 disparates ; though, I admit, faint adumbra- 
 tions. .Yet sin, as I have said, is a cancer, 
 which, if it could spread unchecked, would eat 
 up all being, and dethrone God himself. 
 
 [Would you say that as it is only the vital 
 force within the human frame that preserves it 
 from decay, by perpetually replenishing it with 
 new material, so it is the life of God within 
 the universe that preserves it from that defec- 
 tion which constitutes sin ?] 
 
 Undoubtedly it is God's upholding that 
 preserves us from sin. It is what I call 
 the chemistry of life that keeps us out of 
 the range of the chemistry of death. So it is 
 a communicated " gratia" that keeps us out of 
 the range of the " delapsus." If God with- 
 draws this (which He is not obligated to re- 
 tain), we fall " de." We experience the " want 
 of original righteousness." This want is clearly 
 privative. But the other term made use of by 
 our Westminster divines viz. the "corruption of 
 the whole nature," is not so easily seen to be 
 merely privative. But it may denote the new 
 chemistry which supervenes at death, and 
 destroys the body, which supervention is due 
 to the prior and clearly privative fall. Yet we 
 must remember that a dead animal is not the 
 same as dead unorganised matter. . . . Do 
 not the majority of ethical writers ignore the
 
 48 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 fall? I do not say deny it, but ignore it. 
 Plato did not ; for he, in striving after the 
 xaXoxayadov, felt that he was once, in some pre- 
 existent state, what he wished to be in this life. 
 And so all noble Platonists feel that 
 
 "Trailing clouds of glory do we come, 
 From God who is our home." 
 
 Plato had a glimmering of the jenseits. 
 
 [EVIL.] 
 
 T T ELL is no blot in God's universe. 
 -- * [Is that not just the optimist doctrine 
 which you neither affirm nor deny ?] 
 
 No : I do not say this is the best of all 
 possible universes. I cannot know that for 
 certain. But I say that there is no blot in 
 this universe, so far as God is concerned. 
 
 [But if there is a blot at all, must not 
 God be concerned with it in some way, if he 
 is the creator of the creature who has made 
 the blot 1] 
 
 That he is concerned with evil, I deny not. 
 He has proved his concern with it, both by bis 
 law, by its punishment, and his intervention to 
 deliver from it. But He has not allowed his 
 universe to be blighted. Sin and death are 
 monstrous anomalies. It was never intended 
 that we should either die or sin. And that 
 the spirit and the body should separate, or the 
 soul separate from God, is only tolerated for 
 the sake of a reunion, through the grander union 
 of the Theanthropos with man. 
 
 [After a long conversation on this mystery]
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 49 
 
 Ah ! think now of the infinite God looking 
 down all this time on our babblings in the 
 dark. 
 
 [DEISM AND THE PROBLEM OF BEING.] 
 
 T SUPPOSE there are few pious Deists. I 
 -* presume there are some, but few. Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury was certainly pious after 
 a sense. But you see men cannot love a God 
 that is misunderstood. Spinoza was a pious 
 man ; so was Novalis. But a God that is mis- 
 conceived is not likely to be often in "all a 
 man's thoughts." There are minds to whom, 
 though they are atheists, the problem of being 
 is interesting for evermore, and draws them into 
 an attitude of reverent pondering. Through- 
 out the three years of my experience of it, I 
 was for ever theologising on my atheism. 
 What are we ? where are we 1 whence, and 
 whitherwards 1 and for what end are we here ? 
 what is the hour on the clock of the universe 1 
 and so forth. Human life, death, and destiny, 
 are for ever interesting to the atheist who thinks. 
 There are some minds in the Christian church 
 who are theoretical theists but practical atheists. 
 It is an awful thing that practical atheism, 
 " without God in the world." It is worse than 
 theoretical error ; and I have known theoretical 
 atheists (pantheists at least), who were believers 
 in God at heart. Let us not judge persons. 
 
 [GoD AND CEEATION.] 
 
 POSTULATE God (let the belief be gained 
 *- as you will, only gained), then creation, in 
 
 E
 
 50 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 the strict sense of the term, must follow. I 
 do not mean that God is under a necessity to 
 create, but that what exists must be his creation. 
 For, if not, then I can conceive a more perfect 
 being than God to wit, such a creator ex 
 nihilo. But God is, by hypothesis, the most 
 perfect, the all perfect ; therefore this perfection 
 of creation is his. 
 
 [This is just reading out analytically the con- 
 tents of your postulate, for in assuming God 
 you assume infinite perfection.] 
 
 Yes, but it is well that we analyse the postu- 
 late thus. He is more perfect than we can con- 
 ceive. We can conceive this, and this is a per- 
 fection, therefore, a fortiori, is this perfection His. 
 And the power to create an atom is a far 
 mightier perfection than indefinite arrange- 
 ments of design in the created matter of an 
 indefinitely great universe. 
 
 [But creation is not ex nihilo into existence ; 
 for is it, not to our conception only, but also 
 really true, ex nihilo nihil ?] 
 
 Yes, the materies rei can never be produced 
 or summoned out of the vacuum of the nihil. 
 I own we cannot conceive creation. 
 
 [And when we try to think it, our thought 
 immediately glides into the notion of evolution 
 or emanation the invisible becoming visible, 
 as vapour condensing in a cloud.] 
 
 Still we must believe in that which transcends 
 conception, or we cannot be theists. 
 
 [Is the doctrine of an eternal materia prima, 
 necessarily, I mean logically, destructive of 
 theism 1]
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 51 
 
 I consider it to be so : though I know some 
 theists hold it contradictorily ; as they think, to 
 escape a greater contradiction. But I see no 
 refuge from pantheism, except in a doctrine of 
 creation ex nihilo. I admit that after creation 
 has taken place, we may have only the record 
 of evolution in things material, though not in 
 things spiritual. 
 
 [MANSEL'S DOCTRINE OF NESCIENCE.] 
 T REPUDIATE Hansel's doctrine of our igno- 
 * ranee of God. It is deadly, both in morals 
 and religion. If I have no knowledge of the 
 Infinite, qua moral ; and if there be not a relation 
 between us, (man's moral nature the typal, God's 
 moral nature the archetypal), how can there be 
 any intercourse between God and man 1 There 
 could be no communion where there was no 
 community of nature. But I go farther ; I say 
 that in the moral region it is not the typal and 
 the archetypal (it is so in the intellectual), but 
 it is identity not a pantheistic uniformity, never- 
 theless an identity of nature. 
 
 [CARLTLE.] 
 
 T AM no worshipper of Force. I see nothing 
 * to admire in mere power, i.e. in its quantity 
 apart from its quality. Carlyle's earnestness 
 is very touching and noble ; but it seems to 
 me that, according to his teaching, if you could 
 conceive an omnipotent devil, you ought to 
 worship him as much as Israel's Jehovah. 
 
 [So that he is in one sense a modern Mani- 
 chee 1]
 
 52 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 I suspect so. And an omnipotent militia 
 of darkness would be the very horror of 
 horrors. . . . The connection between Carlylism 
 and despotism I see, but the link is nowhere 
 explicitly avowed. Carlyle is sometimes diffi- 
 cult to understand, and very difficult to judge. 
 Why did he call Chalmers the last of the Chris- 
 tians 1 I suppose he forgets what he has written 
 elsewhere. Hero-worship ! ah well, he and I 
 have to meet a strange hero yet cbaroj the 
 greatest that I know of, next to Him who over- 
 came him. Carlyle has great faith in the devil, 
 but I suspect he always appreciates quantity of 
 
 being and of power more than quality 
 
 Have you observed how Christianity takes up 
 the fragmentary truth that lies in the demono- 
 logical and the spirit-inhabited 1 We Christians 
 have lost nothing that could be retained in the 
 old mythologies. And perhaps these beliefs in 
 spiritual presences in nature are but the linger- 
 ing mist of patriarchal tradition concerning the 
 spirit-world. 
 
 [CHINA, RUSSIA, ETC.] 
 
 TT is a strange thing that is going on in 
 -* our day, the rise of Christian communities 
 outside the Christian Church. What their 
 Christianity may consist of we do not exactly 
 know. The Chinese rebels, for example : they 
 all accept the Scriptures, they receive the ten 
 commandments, and are iconoclasts. But it is 
 most difficult to get accurate information re- 
 garding them. And the Indian mind has been 
 wonderfully stirred since the days of Eammohun
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 53 
 
 Roy. His " Precepts of Jesus " was a great gift 
 to India, a fine basis. But I wish he had ad- 
 vanced from these, as the first disciples did. The 
 providence of God is bringing Western Asia into 
 prominence just now (1859). We do not know 
 what new pathways are to be opened up for His 
 truth. And I have great interest in the future 
 of Russia. I think there may be a magnificent 
 career yet before that people. Their Peter was 
 a great man, slightly mad ; a magnificent savage, 
 still a savage. He was a noble fellow to go as a 
 workman amongst the wild carles. But had it 
 not been for that Genevese Lefort, he might have 
 gone on like one of the old Czars before him. 
 Lefort put into his mind the notion of visiting 
 Western Europe. A despotism would be the 
 very perfection of government, if we could get 
 so good a sovereign always that his simple will 
 might be absolute law. But this is impossible ; 
 and the next best thing is what we have in 
 England limited constitutional monarchy. The 
 autocrat should be the best originator. In the 
 theocracy of the Jews we have the germ of a 
 despotism under the law of liberty. But it was 
 too perfect for corrupt humanity, and the w^iTtia 
 of the New Testament is better than it, though 
 the spirit of the theocracy cannot die'. 
 
 [ENGLISH POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.] 
 
 A XTORDSWORTH is very grand at times. 
 
 ^ * He is a better Platonist than many of the 
 
 philosophers. But I cannot worship nature as 
 
 he does. 
 
 [It is Nature's spirit he worships, the Uni-
 
 54 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 verse, as "haunted for ever by the Eternal 
 Mind."] 
 
 But what do you make of these lines 1 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 Will teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can." 
 
 That's not true. He had not read many 
 folios. " A vernal wood " may steep you in senti- 
 ment, and make you cease from thinking at all, 
 but it can't teach you in my sense of the word. 
 I daresay he saw those " humanities " in the 
 wood that he had put into it. But I don't see 
 how he could extract them, if he had not put 
 them in. Yet I suppose he only wished to 
 make a truth emphatic by contrast ; and we must 
 not forget the saying, " Consider the lilies how 
 they grow." But what do you think of 
 Coleridge 1 To me, when I cannot follow him, 
 there is always a fine ring, like bell-chimes, in 
 his melody ; not unlike our best nursery rhymes, 
 for it is curious the fine cadences we get in the 
 nursery. I like Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" for 
 its exquisite cadence. That whole passage be- 
 ginning 
 
 " In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree : 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man, 
 Down to a sunless sea " 
 
 has a most fascinating melody. I don't know 
 what it means, but it's very fine. In Southey, 
 too, you meet with nights of fine wild melody,
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 55 
 
 though it is rather rhythmical prose than 
 poetry that Southey has written. Much poetry 
 only amounts to rhetorical prose, as much prose 
 is non- versified poetry. The conterminous 
 limits are difficult to adjust ; but we must add 
 a third region to that of simple prose and 
 poetry. Tennyson sometimes comes nearer to 
 
 Shakespeare than any of our moderns 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney is a writer too little known. 
 His " Defence of Poesy" is one of the finest 
 pieces of prose we have rich as Milton's, with 
 more precision. And Milton's prose is as much 
 worth study as his poetry sturdy strength, 
 with a grand roll about it. Milton, Sir T. 
 Browne, Hooker, and Taylor, are each great 
 writers of various types. The Elizabethan 
 English is largely founded on the Italian of 
 the sixteenth century (the Decameron was a 
 good deal read at that time in England) ; and 
 in it you have neither the purity of the Old 
 Saxon nor the baldness of the Anglo-Saxon. 
 Hobbes founded his excellently terse style, to 
 a great degree, upon the Italian of the six- 
 teenth century. The English is really a most 
 noble language, capable of expressing almost 
 anything, if men only knew its capabilities 
 and the secret of its strength and beauty. But 
 I do not like all the stock models of English. 
 Dr. Adam Clark is one of the best masters of 
 English prose in this respect, that his style is 
 the most perfect blending of the Saxon and 
 the Latin that I know of.* It is neither 
 
 * I retain this reference to Adam Clark, because my 
 shorthand notes are explicit in their mention of him, and
 
 56 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 Swiftean nor Defoean in its Saxon, nor John- 
 sonian in its Latinity. You never feel thai 
 either element is in the least too prominent, or 
 at all defective. And I like old Herbert's 
 prose. That " Country Parson " of his is a fine 
 piece of writing. Carlyle, too, when he keeps 
 to genuine English, when his historical narra- 
 tive (as in some parts of his " French Revolu- 
 tion") is vigorously sustained, has done a great 
 deal to display the capabilities of English 
 prose. But he often writes sheer gibberish, 
 according to the classical tests. And when- 
 ever a man becomes cloudy in his words, be sure 
 that his thought has grown shadowy too. . . . 
 I am fond of the French writers for their 
 clearness. They are not always, or often, pro- 
 found ; but you always know what they mean. 
 You see to the bottom of the well. French 
 literature has not originated much, but it is 
 admirable as a means of popularisation, and 
 good as a vehicle for humour. Voltaire is 
 perhaps the greatest master of wit that ever 
 lived. His style, too, is the finest in French 
 literature. He grounded it, I think, on Pascal's, 
 who wrote most noble French. Voltaire's 
 comedy of "Nanine" I like much. It is senti- 
 mental, but thoroughly good. Jean Jacques is 
 poor compared with him. Eousseau strained 
 
 not of Dr. Samuel Clarke. I may, however, have mis- 
 taken Dr. Duncan on this point, and would unhesitatingly 
 insert the name of the author of the " Demonstration of 
 the Being and Attributes of God," if his style of writing 
 was such as unmistakably to justify the high praise ac- 
 corded above. ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 57 
 
 after show and effect. ... As to writing, in 
 this age of magniloquence I would advise every 
 one to be very careful to use no more words 
 than are necessary to express thought. Aim 
 at the Aristotelic. Some men seem desirous 
 of adumbrating their thoughts by their words. 
 They inoculate their thought, and often with 
 a virus. Some writers word-fanciers seem 
 first to have secured a good stock of terms, if 
 with the " curiosa felicitas," so much the better; 
 and then they consider how they may best fit 
 them into a sentence ! But the result is like 
 that of a word-fancier's essay I once read, and 
 a friend asked, " Is it not deep 1" I answered, 
 " Not deep, but drumlie." Now the drumlie 
 often looks very deep. ... I always recom- 
 mend Aristotle for his clearness. There is no 
 writer like him for using no more words than 
 he had thoughts. He is the very model of 
 the precise and the full together. The School- 
 men lost this. Aquinas is far behind his 
 " Philosophus " in this. But he is much 
 subtiler. Subtility is the main feature of scho- 
 lasticism. 
 
 [AQUIXAS'S HYMN ON THE EUCHARIST.] 
 
 " CUMUNT boni, sumunt mall" They do 
 *J no such thing. This doctrine is my ab- 
 horrence. There is an eternal difference. The 
 latter take only the shell, and miss the kernel. 
 [Aquinas means no more, for he adds 
 
 " Sorte tamen inaequali, 
 Vitae vel interritus. "]
 
 58 COLLOQUIA PEBIPATETIGA. 
 
 But the " sum ere" is not applicable to the 
 " mali." I cannot concede that. And so 
 
 " Ecce panis angelorum, 
 Factus cibus viatorum, 
 Vere panis filiorum ! " 
 
 It is not angels' food. They never tasted it. 
 It is ours. And if you minish that truth, you 
 may eviscerate half the significance of redemp- 
 tion. " He took not on Him the nature of 
 angels," but our nature, and therefore this food 
 is ours. 
 
 [THE PERSON OF CHRIST.] 
 
 "I^HE person of Christ is not sufficiently 
 -* studied or contemplated by the majority 
 of modern theologians. Very many Protestants 
 are Nestorian without knowing it. It is not so 
 with the Catholics. You will never find a 
 Roman priest wandering from the Catholic 
 faith on the person of Christ, or in reference to 
 the Trinity. 
 
 [How do you account for that ?] 
 It is probably because the idler Protestants 
 have engrossed themselves with the one doc- 
 trine of justification, and made it bulk too 
 largely, forgetting its foundation. There are 
 fundamentals beneath justification. The person 
 of Christ is fundamental. Justification, and all 
 else connected with it, is grounded on moral 
 law. Sin had been committed, and satisfaction 
 must be made, made in the nature that had 
 sinned, and the sinning must be the suffering 
 nature too. Therefore Christ became man ; but 
 as atonement by man was impossible, and by
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 59 
 
 the created nature impossible, it was made by 
 the God-man. Now, justification by faith is 
 the meeting point of many doctrines, a rallying 
 centre of theology ; but it is not the foundation 
 doctrine. The Eeformers are not to blame for 
 this inattention to the person of Christ ; they 
 were fuller than the majority of their successors. 
 Nor are the Protestant Schoolmen, either of 
 Geneva or of Holland, to blame. It must have 
 crept in in an unlearned age, when the doctrine 
 of justification began to be looked upon as a 
 radical and special doctrine rather than as a 
 meeting point and centre of other doctrines. 
 It is true that scarcely any of us in Scotland 
 give due prominence to the Incarnation. 
 
 [APOLLOS, ETC.] 
 
 A POLLOS (avrjy Xoy/xoj, not eloquent, but an 
 ** intellectual man, a ratiocinative thinker, 
 somewhat of the type of Philo-Judseus) closely 
 resembled Paul, whose principal aim as a writer 
 seems to be to unfold the whole unity of the 
 Divine plan. Isaiah I take to be the most 
 Pauline of the Old Testament men ; Ezekiel 
 the most Petrine ; and, diverse as they are in 
 many respects, I know no man more Johannean 
 than Moses. His meekness is closely allied to 
 the Johannean love. 
 
 [THE PKIMITIVE CHURCH SERVICE, ETC.] 
 
 ^HAT is our warrant for preaching from 
 texts ? or for the excessive amount of 
 doctrinal preaching that abounds ? There was
 
 60 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 little doctrinal preaching till the heresies came. 
 Before that the disciples came together, and 
 read, and prayed, and exhorted one another. 
 Their words were hortatory, not doctrinal. 
 They read the Scriptures, and said, " Let's be 
 Christians," and partook of the Sacrament, and 
 sang, and went home. A modern Glassite 
 meeting-house is, after all, the nearest approach 
 to the primitive style of worship. I don't say 
 it is therefore the best ; for times change God 
 changes them ; and we must change with them. 
 And as the heresies exist, doctrinal teaching is 
 a necessity. But we have too much of it in 
 our pulpits ; doctrinal preaching is one thing, 
 doctrinal teaching is another. .... I in- 
 sist very strongly on Christian teaching in 
 the household, and on the necessity of stated 
 family worship. We are Romish if we substi- 
 tute the church service for the altar at home. 
 If the call to religious meetings is made more 
 important than the call to daily household 
 prayer, in what does it differ from the call to 
 matins and vespers 1 but we might have a more 
 varied domestic service, as well as a fuller 
 church service. Hymnologies are of great use ; 
 but we should have a better selection of hymns. 
 We might have portions of Scripture translated 
 into verse besides the Psalms, keeping as faith- 
 fully to the original as the Psalms do. But 
 what I would prefer would be the singing of 
 prose. For example " We have a strong city. 
 Salvation hath God appointed for walls and 
 bulwarks." What a fine passage to be sung ! 
 If I were musical, I could almost improvise on
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 61 
 
 that. Handel would have done it. In Rome 
 they have plenty of singing ; they sing in their 
 very pilgrimages. 
 
 [Did you hear the Sistine music at Rome 1] 
 No, and I would not care to hear it, for they 
 are neither men, women, nor children, that sing 
 it. ... Our Scotch collection of paraphrases 
 is not good as a whole, nor are they bad as a 
 whole. A few men (none of them poets) merely 
 recast the old paraphrastic hymns of Wesley, 
 "Watts, and Doddridge, and the result is our 
 " paraphrases." They are often too classical, 
 often commonplace, and some are both ultra- 
 classical and commonplace. The two best hymns 
 in Christendom, in my opinion, are the Te Deum 
 and the Veni Creator Spiritus. 
 
 [NON-ESSENTIALS. ] 
 
 T T'S exceedingly foolish, but exceedingly com- 
 - mon, for men to put the adidpoga, into the 
 place of the essentialia. For example, I am a 
 strong psedobaptist ; but I favour immersion 
 in theory ; and if I built churches, I would 
 build for immersion. But it is an adiaphoron. 
 It is strange that you so often find good theo- 
 logians straining at a gnat, and swallowing 
 camels. So, too, standing when singing is the 
 best attitude. Musical men say it is the best 
 posture for the voice ; and I say it is the most 
 reverential attitude for the worshipper. So is 
 kneeling at prayer. But our churches are not 
 built for it. That is, on the whole, a pity ; but 
 it is altogether an adiaphoron.
 
 G2 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [NATURAL THEOLOGY, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM, 
 ETC.] 
 
 M ANSEL. We and the Eationalists together 
 must fall on him. He makes religion 
 irrational. Now, I believe in reason, and respect 
 it as the creature of God, and a ladder which 
 leads to him, though I am doubtful of the 
 philosophies. 
 
 [That is, you believe in it as an organon, 
 but not as a revelation ; as an eye, but not as 
 a light ]] 
 
 It is certainly more of an instrument of 
 discovery, than a discoverer. At least I do not 
 think it has discovered much. It is of use to 
 show its own impotence, and of use to welcome 
 a revelation. 
 
 [In order to welcome it, it must be itself a 
 light. Is it not the lesser light which rules the 
 night, and revelation the greater which rules 
 the day 1] 
 
 All light is from the Father of Lights. 
 
 [But are not reason and faith two separate 
 powers of apprehension, by which we lay hold 
 of the object appealing to them, as in that sym- 
 bol of the brother and sister, one blind and the 
 other deaf, each deprived of a sense, but each 
 aiding the other by the sense it possesses ?] 
 
 They are not equally balanced powers. I 
 think faith has the start of reason from the first. 
 But what I maintain as to reason is, that though 
 it is a power, it is a barren power, which can 
 produce nothing till revelation descends to meet 
 it. Its efforts in the construction of philoso- 
 phies (much as I value it) are, I think, nil. It's
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 63 
 
 not philosophy I reject, it's the pile of specula- 
 tions. Is a philosophy of the universe compe- 
 tent to man? that's always the question with 
 me. If it is, it hasn't yet been. I still discover 
 that there is a great deal of the philosophical 
 sceptic in me. 
 
 [But you have admitted the validity of the 
 Scotch philosophy of common-sense.] 
 
 I concur in the main with Eeid and 
 Stewart, in the results of their common-sense 
 philosophy, but not philosophically. I believe 
 in axioms (including the mathematical and 
 logical laws) ; in the Senses, which report 
 to me the external world ; in Objectivity (in- 
 cluding the existence of other minds besides my 
 own) ; in Testimony (and under this I rank the 
 evidences of a historical Eevelation) ; and in 
 the syllogistic nexus ; and besides these I don't 
 know that I believe in anything else. Common 
 sense I believe in, but not in a philosophy of 
 common sense. 
 
 [Where, then, do you place the theistic faith ? 
 You have not a category of intuitions.] 
 
 The belief in God presses multifariously upon 
 man. It is not wise to say, " This is its origin ;" 
 or " No, that is its origin." It is not here, or 
 there ; it is everywhere. 
 
 [But what is its root ?~\ 
 
 It is an instinct. I believe man was made 
 in the image of God, and that he still retains 
 part of that image, it being indestructible. 
 There is a knowledge of God which all men 
 have, and a knowledge of Him which is only 
 possible to the xaivf) Krieig, But on the " natural
 
 64 COLLOQUIA PEEIPATETIGA. 
 
 theologies " I'm always inclined to look with a 
 measure of suspicion. I agree with their truths, 
 but not with their method of probation. There 
 is a hole in it somewhere. Does not Mansel do 
 the very reverse 1 He is doubtful of that which 
 is reached, but not dissatisfied with the method 
 of proof. 
 
 [But you cannot be a philosophical sceptic, and 
 save theology ; will not Sextus be able to dis- 
 turb the axiom, " man is made in the image of 
 God," if you overthrow all philosophy, and do 
 not admit an apprehensive intuition of God ?] 
 
 I cannot reach that by philosophy which God 
 gives by inspiration. Faith in Himself seems to 
 be due to a %e!a/j,a 7o\> ayiov ; and, if " the 
 anointing which we have received of Him abideth 
 in us, we need not that any man teach us." I 
 often fear that if we do not'concede enough to the 
 operation of the Holy Spirit in this matter, we 
 will not do much for psychology either. The 
 attempt to make too much of logical deductions 
 is just ultimately to make too little of them. 
 And as for a logical proof of the Divine exist- 
 ence, I am convinced that when the faith is more 
 than parrotism and traditionalism, the Spirit of 
 God has had more to do with it than some 
 orthodox divines are willing to admit. And if 
 so, there must be some terrible falsity in that 
 which says that all conviction must be due to 
 demonstration. 
 
 [But you do admit an intuition of the In- 
 finite ]] 
 
 Well, I affirm that reason overleaps itself; 
 that is the best phrase we can get for it. But
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 65 
 
 our intuition or intuitive knowledge of God 
 cannot be defined. You need not ask me to 
 tell you what it is, for I tell you I cannot, and 
 that no man can. 
 
 [An explanation could only be given by the 
 logical faculty, the faculty of definitions, and you 
 cannot explain ultimates. But logic can clear 
 away mists, and clarify our intuitions.] 
 
 Yes ; but it gives us riddle upon riddle; most 
 puzzling antinomies. I contend for a notion of 
 the Infinite, positivo-negative let us call it. If 
 mankind had not a notion of the infinite, they 
 could not talk of it either affirmatively or 
 negatively. I do not suppose that Sir William 
 would have denied me these two things that 
 you cannot get quit of the idea of the Infinite, 
 and that you cannot get quit of the idea that it is. 
 
 [If it be a mere notion or idea, we may carry 
 the notion with us as part of our permanent 
 mental furniture, without any guarantee that 
 it has a counterpart beyond us. It needs an 
 intuition to carry you out into the domain of 
 the objective.] 
 
 Well, I think that the escape from the 
 prison-house of the Ego is due to the inspiration 
 of the Holy Spirit. You see I fall back on 
 the X' ff / J ' a T by'- And note, in reference to 
 the knowledge of God, that you must not pre- 
 dicate of the abstracts what is predicable only 
 of the concretes. For example, it is true of 
 infinity and finity that the one contradicts the 
 other, but not of the Infinite and the finite. But 
 don't you feel that in almost all our philosophies 
 we put the concrete fact into the alembic, and in-
 
 66 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 stead of getting the essence, we only get the caput 
 mortuum ? For instance, ask Jonathan Edwards, 
 " What is virtue ?" and he answers you, " The 
 love of universal being." Now, Edwards was 
 not a mere speculator, but that sentence of his is 
 the caput mortuum of " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God, with all thy heart, and all thy soul, 
 and mind, and strength." And I think you get 
 the essence by faith. 
 
 [Or by devotion.] 
 
 Well, you are taught it in the near Presence. 
 .... And so philosophy seems to me to be a 
 necessity, and the philosophies to be failures. 
 
 [You honour the process, but reject the 
 product.] 
 
 I honour the process, and greatly honour 
 the producers. And as to the product, moder- 
 ated sceptic though I am, I value Aristotle 
 for his clearness, and Plato for his depth. And 
 the science of Logic has a most noble aim. It 
 is a majestic problem to give the shape to all 
 thinking, without the thinking itself: and in 
 this, in comparison with what Aristotle has left, 
 very little has been added. Yet Aristotle no 
 doubt made partial use of an antecedent logic. 
 . . . As to our knowledge of matter, I always 
 fluctuate between these two positions whether 
 the mind in perception has a direct knowledge 
 of the qualities, or only a sensation with an ac- 
 companying belief in the object. Both systems 
 give me objectivity. And there is a truth in 
 Berkeley's system, which I do not think Reid saw. 
 He is right in the main against Berkeley ; but 
 there may be a very vulgar Reidism. Reid is
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. G7 
 
 right against a certain Berkeleyism,and Berkeley 
 is right against a certain type of Reidism. I 
 was for a long time under the fascination of the 
 Bishop of Cloyne. But I found that the narrative 
 of the six days' creation, if I accepted it as in any 
 sense historical, gave my Berkeleyism a stab. 
 Before man appeared upon the scene, the world 
 did not exist in his thought ; and before the 
 world was, how could it exist in the Divine 
 thought ] 
 
 [Berkeley would say, that is just what he 
 contends for. It didn't then exist. Thought 
 preceded its existence, and its existence is de- 
 pendent on thought.] 
 
 That I do not deny, but I do not think it is 
 inconsistent with what I also affirm, that the 
 existence of creation before man appeared proves 
 that the world of matter is independent of his 
 thought ; and if there was a time when matter 
 was created, it seems then to have passed out of 
 the subjective into the objective. But I think 
 that Berkeley's was a profounder as well as a 
 subtiler mind than Reid's, and after all Hume 
 gives me a deeper analysis than Reid. I abhor 
 the Humist philosophy, but Hume goes beneath 
 the can't-help-myself-ism of Reid. He is scep- 
 tical of Reid's dogma. Why cannot I help 
 myself ] And I do not see that Sir William's 
 doctrine of immediate perception helps me to 
 get rid of my scepticism. I must get hold of an 
 absolute or universal truth, and the objectivity 
 that I reach through the immediate perception 
 of matter may be true for me, but may be no 
 more. It may have no universal validity.
 
 68 COLLOQUIA PEEIPATETIGA. 
 
 What I desiderate is a truth which I shall 
 know to be absolutely universal. 
 
 [But all knowledge is relative to the knower, 
 and its character must differ with the charac- 
 teristics of the knower ?] 
 
 Nay; that this table is a trapezium is not 
 true to my mind and false to yours, or possibly 
 false to my mind. It is true for all mind 
 throughout the universe. / would despise hu- 
 manity, were it not so. 
 
 [But you have gone up to the region of 
 mathematical axioms.] 
 
 Well, I want to know if these hold good 
 for every mind in the universe ; and I want 
 to know the same in reference to the faiths 
 I live by, for I must despise humanity if it is not 
 so ; and I say that I can only find this if I am 
 made in the image of God. 
 
 [But that fact transcends experience. By 
 what ladder do you reach it 1] 
 
 You may say it's a flight. But I think 
 experience suggests it, when it is communi- 
 cated with by Revelation. And Plato was on 
 the track of this truth in his archetypal ideas. 
 My mind tends that way. I cannot tell you 
 whence this conviction comes, but I have 
 reached it. I do not know that its origin can 
 be told. 
 
 [Is it not partly through the innate notion 
 of God which survives, and partly by the 
 tradition of time, and partly by immediate in- 
 spiration ?] 
 
 But you bring in again the philosophy which 
 I cast out.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 69 
 
 [I appeal to intuition, to testimony, and to 
 that ^f!g'jt,a rov ay/oy.] 
 
 I do not know anything of its ultimate ration- 
 ale ; but I have sufficient evidence for it, and 
 it is the starting point with me. 
 
 [But we are in search of a principle, deeper 
 than Eeid's, valid for every mind.] 
 
 If I am made in the image of God, my 
 nature has a universal element in it. And 
 yet, I think, if the mind dwells long on the inti- 
 macy of God with the soul, as made in his image, 
 and still more as re-made in the image of Christ, 
 it approaches very near to a practical pantheism ; 
 and if it dwells over long on the thought of its 
 distance from the infinite as a creature, it is not 
 far from the verge of a practical atheism. And 
 it is a great matter to correct ultras by combina- 
 tions. In Eden, I suppose, there would be the 
 closest sense of intimacy, with the greatest 
 sense of distance. . . . The greatest of the 
 antinomies is between the finite and the infinite, 
 but you cannot say they contradict each other, 
 since they are relatives. But how much more 
 satisfactory is it, in this high region, to get a 
 text from one of those men who saw less 
 through a glass than we do ! Well, Paul told 
 the Athenians, 'E ctvrCj ^ZifAiv, xal mvovpsda, xai 
 hfjtsv. Mark the force of that Iv adrp ; the finite 
 is within the infinite, and Paul was not long of 
 reminding them of their own happy guess, " we 
 are his offspring." Now take this, and come 
 down with it to the sphere of reason, and it 
 casts a light upon those questions with which 
 otherwise we are baffled. Although I don't
 
 70 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 think you can get up by means of reason, yet 
 when you come down with the lamp of faith 
 into the sphere of reason, you perceive some 
 truths that you saw not , before. Now the 
 image of God in man is such an image as fits 
 man for communion with God, mind with 
 mind ; for two minds (or one mind and a mil- 
 lion) can act and react upon each other directly. 
 When one human mind acts upon another, is it 
 not the activity of the one that stirs the activity 
 of the other ? 
 
 [CONTBOVERSIALISTS. ] 
 
 TRUE concession is not only the strength of 
 polemic, but a positive accession to truth. 
 Controversialists should always begin by con- 
 cession. It is courteous, and therefore concili- 
 ates. There is sometimes a razor-like sharpness 
 between truth and error ; sometimes they shade 
 into each other ; and the truth often lies in the 
 via media between opposite errors. When I 
 cannot find out the medium, I always try to find 
 the two extremes. The mere controversialist, 
 who would always be in the thick of the fight 
 with error, is no more worthy of respect than the 
 pugilist. The controversial minds are like the 
 lean cattle of Egypt ; they are very greedy, and 
 are none the fatter for their feeding. 
 
 [THE LEGAL ELEMENT. EELIGIOTTS TEEMS.] 
 T SUSPECT that, after all, there is only one 
 * heresy, and that is Antinomianism. It is 
 one thing to contemplate the relations of a sub- 
 ject under law, and another to be under law as
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 71 
 
 a subject, .^Esthetical religion seems always 
 disposed to kick at the curse of the law, and the 
 theologians in whom the sentimental has extin- 
 guished the jurisprudential, have not fully 
 understood the nature of sin. I don't think 
 that Maurice properly acknowledges sin ; it is 
 only vitiosity. I take it, too, than men of his 
 cast of mind will be averse to, but would be 
 greatly the better of, the material expressions of 
 Scripture. The mind which has a bias towards 
 the ideal side, is itself not in harmony with the 
 biblical concrete ; which we should, in all cases, 
 frequently consult, or we will be working away 
 at the production of internal distilled essences. 
 And I cannot help thinking that there is much 
 unholy philanthropy in that type of the theolo- 
 gical mind. You find it in a very noble man, 
 John Foster. I cannot think his mind a healthy 
 one; and that essay of his on " The aversion of 
 men of taste," etc., I dislike excessively. You do 
 no good by changing the vocabulary of religion. 
 If you change the words, you change the 
 thoughts. They won't translate. There are no 
 synonyms to be found in the dictionary of the 
 Spirit. The more I study language, the more I 
 am convinced of this, that particular shades of 
 thought are wedded to particular words. If you 
 disuse the words, you lose the thought. If you 
 cut the one, you wound the other; they are 
 dermis and epidermis. I find that my best 
 words are Scriptural, my next best ecclesiastical. 
 Take the anthropomorphisms of Scripture. It 
 indicates a most fastidious narrowness to object 
 to use the strongest of them. A man is often
 
 
 72 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 most at rest as regards the ideas in question 
 when he deliberately adopts this mode of speech, 
 knowing it to be inadequate, but contentedly 
 using it as the only one that is possible to him. 
 There is no use in guarding against misconstruc- 
 tion, for it is admittedly imperfect, and yet better 
 in its imperfections than the bare literality that 
 would dispense with it. In this, too, the letter 
 kills, and the spirit gives life ; and, after all, we 
 must be either anthropopathic in our thoughts 
 of God, or sceptic. 
 
 [FERME ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.*] 
 
 YOU here see Aristotle and Quintilian com- 
 bined, working away at St. Paul. Look at 
 his " adjuncta" and " isagoga;" and yet some fine 
 rhetorical flashes. It is very fine to meet with 
 a modern Schoolman, keeping to his quiddities, 
 but pious withal. He must take a logical knife 
 and dissect the Gospel offer to mankind ; but he 
 offers it fully, only cutting it up because he 
 thinks it .better to offer it piecemeal than in 
 the mass. Ferme must have known Ramus, if 
 he did not know Aristotle. These old theo- 
 logical systematisms were good. I don't want 
 to pull down the old structures, but the old 
 house is sadly in need of a good fresh fire in it. 
 
 [CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES.] 
 
 I NEVER tried to turn my mind into an index 
 to an Encyclopaedia ; and it is that which is 
 sought in the classification of the sciences not 
 
 * Analysis logica in Epistolam Apostoli Pauli ad 
 Romanos. Edin. 1651. ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 73 
 
 of course a Britannica, but a Metropolitana. A 
 methodised index to knowledge is a large con- 
 ception, but no one man can produce it. It is 
 not possible perfectly to classify all that is at this 
 time known : each classifier would have his own 
 encyclopaedia, for it must be the subjective know- 
 ledge of the knower that he classifies. It is just 
 a question of beads and a string. Let us first 
 get the beads anyhow, as the sections of know- 
 ledge are mastered, and then we may try to 
 string them together methodically. 
 
 THE TELEGRAPHIC AGE.] 
 
 T DON'T much care for all the world becoming 
 * next-door neighbours. And we are drifting, 
 drifting, drifting into an awfully materialistic 
 and utilitarian age. I do not like to think of 
 railways in the heart of mountains. They are 
 taking them into Greece, and tunneling Olym- 
 pus ! What a strange thought for a man with 
 any classic reverence in him ! They'll be water- 
 ing the engines at Hippocrene ! 
 
 [BIOGRAPHIES WILLIAM LAW.] 
 " I "'HERE are three biographies of which I 
 -* never tire : Augustine's, Bunyan's, and 
 Halyburton's. The first is by far the deepest, 
 the second the richest and most genial, and with 
 Halyburton I feel great intellectual congruity. 
 He was naturally a sceptic, but God gave that 
 sceptic great faith. His book against the Deists, 
 in which he deals wisely with Lord Herbert, is 
 a scholastic prosecution of Owenian principle. 
 There are very strange combinations in some
 
 74 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 men. There was William Law, a mystic, and 
 in his mysticism at times a Christian pantheist, 
 and strongly opposed to imputation. Yet he 
 spoke, as with the sound of a trumpet, upon the 
 practical. The mystical and the practical are 
 seldom so united as they were in him. He in- 
 dulged in extraordinary speculations viz. that 
 matter was " subconcreted " to prevent the 
 angels from seeing into the heart of it. But 
 in practical appeals he is a very Luther. No 
 two men spoke with the sound of a trumpet as 
 did Luther and William Law, the English 
 mystic. They were Boanerges. 
 
 [FERVOUR.] 
 
 TV/TYSTICISM is not altogether false. Mys- 
 ! J- ticism only errs when it enters into the 
 province of logic, to destroy it ; as logic errs 
 when it trespasses on the domain of intui- 
 tion, to fetter it. Whenever we worship, we 
 acknowledge that there is a region above us, 
 at once known and unknown, half-clear and 
 half-dark. And I have no fear of the results of 
 religious fervour in worship. Aberrations gene- 
 rally correct themselves in time. It is the total 
 want of fervour that is lamentable. In any 
 other region fervour is welcomed by men ; why 
 not in the sphere of religion 1 Why should any 
 Christian, and especially any Christian teacher, 
 hold himself aloof from fervid movements 1 
 Some of us are perhaps unnaturally calm and 
 cold. And the magnitude of our subject justifies 
 a greater, rather than sanctions a less, fervour 
 than ordinary. There is a good deal of warmth
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 75 
 
 in the religious life of our time. I anticipate 
 that it may spread over a wide area just now. 
 I question if it will grow as much in depth. 
 
 [PLYMOTJTHISM.] 
 
 THE Plymouth Brethren assert that there 
 should be no sects, because there is no 
 visible church ; nevertheless they add one. 
 
 [PRESBYTERIANISM.] 
 
 TT is strange that all Christendom becomes 
 * Presbyterian on an ordination day. 
 
 [KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN THE SON.] 
 
 OUE knowledge of God is apprehensive, 
 never comprehensive; but it is real and 
 presentative, not ideal and representative. Yet 
 it is through the Son that we directly and 
 immediately perceive the Father. If we have 
 seen the Son, we have seen the Father also. 
 But we cannot truly see the Son, without 
 also seeing the Father in him. We dare not 
 separate the personality of the divine essence. 
 The Father's nature is, in a real sense, adum- 
 brated to man in the Son. And I do not believe 
 in any direct vision of the Father in the future, 
 except as through the Son, and with the Son. 
 I cannot concur with the notion of the School- 
 men, " ultima beatitudo non potest esse nisi in 
 visione divinae essentiae."* To see " in speculo 
 essentise" is impossible to the creature. To 
 comprehend the relations subsisting between 
 the created and the Creator, we must first make 
 * Aquinas, Sum. Theol. prim sec. qu. iii. 8.
 
 76 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 
 
 a leap out of our creaturehood. But as to the 
 Son, as "the express image" of the Father, I 
 have at times a glorious high gleaming of the 
 truth, that 
 
 " In Him all the Father shone, substantially expressed." 
 There is nothing possible to the one nature that 
 is not possible to the other, except the necessity 
 of abiding on the Throne. But this is so high a 
 theologeme that it vanishes soon. It is granted 
 to the intuition of faith, but cannot be propo- 
 sitionally worded. And so it is with all high 
 intuitions. They gleam on us ; but they are 
 the distilled essence of distillations ; and if you 
 try to seize them and detain them for examina- 
 tion, straight they evanish in cloud. They 
 won't allow you to dissect them, because you 
 cannot get them near the dissecting table. They 
 often arise on me in the meditation of a text ; 
 and that which most of all suggests them, is the 
 life and words of Jesus Christ. 
 
 [REVOLUTIONS OF CHABACTER.] 
 T DO not understand the aversion of the 
 scientific mind to believe in sudden changes 
 of character. When you have to deal with the 
 human will and the Divine will, you have two 
 incalculable, incommensurable forces, which no 
 doctrine of " averages " can compute. There are 
 shocks and cataclasms in the moral region quite 
 unknown in the physical, and of which the 
 earthquake and volcano are poor analogies. 
 When C. Malan said to me, on an ever-to-be- 
 remembered day, " You have got God's word in 
 your mouth," I felt as if a flash of spiritual
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 77 
 
 electricity had then passed through me. But 
 the old nature asserted itself right in the face of 
 that word, and refused for a while to receive the 
 death-wound. I sat all day on a seat ; I could 
 neither speak nor think. I lay passive ; all 
 my past life and thoughts seemed to rush 
 through me. I had the feeling that, could I have 
 taken them down, there were materials in that 
 day's thoughts for a lifetime's meditation ; and 
 yet that they were not mine, for I seemed not 
 to think, but to be thought upon. Now that 
 must not be an infrequent experience. The 
 shock, when all that is within rises up and re- 
 fuses to be slain, accompanied too with a desire 
 to be slain by the only bloodless Conqueror, till 
 at length the soul yields, and dies that it may 
 live. That moment, when I was conscious of 
 a revulsion against my renovation, has entered 
 as a fact into all my subsequent theologising. 
 But there is not always pain at the new 
 birth of the soul. God forbid that my way of 
 coming to him should be at all a common one. 
 If a man feels, as I then felt, what sin really 
 designs, that it really designs deicide, his mind 
 may indeed stagger for a time. It is just because 
 God is usually " not in all our thoughts," that 
 this is not realised. I own that my conscience 
 does not feel this so strongly as my intellect dis- 
 cerns it. ... I would be bound to love God 
 for what He is in Himself, even while his very 
 nature was inflicting punishment on myself. I 
 believe I would be morally bound for ever to 
 adore the justice that banished me. And I would 
 not deny that hopeless love is still the devil's duty.
 
 78 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [THE SUPERNATURAL : HISTORICAL EVIDENCE.] 
 T AM not conscious of the supernatural. I 
 am only conscious of the natural, of facul- 
 ties and states. But I know a great deal more. 
 I am cognisant or apprehensive of a great deal 
 more than I am conscious of. In short, I 
 " know" more, using that common word in its 
 catholic signification, and not in that of any 
 particular school. 
 
 [Surely we are conscious of the supernatural 
 as the antithesis of the natural ?] 
 
 But that is only the caput mortuum again. 
 It is only as a fad attested that the super- 
 natural has any hold over me. The miraculous 
 is a question of fact, not of philosophy ; of 
 testimony, not of speculation and God can 
 testify as well as man. He can be his own 
 witness-bearer. How are we to know that 
 a miracle has taken place, admitting that it 
 can? Not otherwise than by testimony. All 
 fad is vouched for either by the report of our 
 own senses, or by testimony. Philosophy and 
 criticism can do a great deal to purify the matter 
 objected to us, but they cannot bear evidence. 
 In the case of the miraculous, the senses can- 
 not now aid us, because the age of miracle is 
 past ; but testimony is sufficient for me. The 
 prophet or evangelist, seeing the miracle, or 
 hearing the voice, had evidence which satisfied 
 him. I have not his consciousness, and cannot 
 tell how he felt in presence of these exceptional 
 phenomena. I have no right to speak of it. -He 
 may have felt just as I do when supernaturally 
 wrought upon. But I cannot tell. He speaks
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 79 
 
 as one having authority to speak of matters of 
 which I am necessarily ignorant. But our 
 only test of the genuineness of this inspiration 
 is the evidence of result. Two men, Isaiah and 
 Bouddha, claim inspiration. I cannot know 
 the subjective conditions of either. The result, 
 the record, is our only criterion, for the in- 
 spired man alone can know what it is to be 
 inspired. 
 
 [Then you may have critical tests by which to 
 judge ; and a standard, in the result which re- 
 mains the revelation which stands the test.] 
 
 Well, I suppose the Scriptures, as a series of 
 documents, are their own best witness-bearers. 
 But the Christian evidence is marvellously cumu- 
 lative. I believe that what our modern men 
 call the "internal evidence" is by far the deepest. 
 But it is incommunicable. Can you describe 
 Light ? There is no doubt that we cannot 
 explain our reception of Christianity. It is too 
 deep for explanation. But we may say it comes 
 to us along the plane of fact, as distinguished 
 from that of the pure reason. The reason 
 enters into three things : axioms, primitive be- 
 liefs, and the syllogistic nexus. Facts, again, 
 have evened (eveniunt). Mathematical axioms, 
 primitive beliefs, and syllogistic vincula, have 
 not evened. This distinction has some value. 
 Of Christianity itself we say evenit. It is a 
 great historical fact ; if we reject it we must 
 explain it, to vindicate the rejection ; we must 
 find its source in natural causes, and this you 
 cannot do. You can trace the stream so far, and 
 then its waters issue from a hidden fountain-head.
 
 80 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A\ 
 
 Then look at Judaism. It is a deposit, not a 
 growth. The Shemitic mind is more receptive 
 than imaginative. It seems to have received a 
 gift from above, and preserved it, for it was not 
 creative like the Greek mind. And yet was 
 not Greece, with all her vivid intellection, grop- 
 ing after something in the dark, till it received 
 it from Judea ? And if criticism is to account 
 for everything, it must account for Israel's God, 
 and show the genesis of that. / say that the 
 whole character of Hebrew history attests the 
 supernatural, and if you add the two nobler 
 chapters from the book of history the life of 
 Jesus Christ, and the story of the Christian 
 church destructive criticism has a good deal 
 to account for ! Some minds admit the possi- 
 bility of miracle, but doubt if it has ever been 
 substantiated ; because they say they must first 
 know the boundaries of the natural before they 
 can predicate of an event that it is supernatural. 
 But this is really withdrawing their concession 
 as to the possibility of a miracle ; because, no 
 matter what the force of the testimony, you 
 might always plead that the margin line of the 
 natural was yet unknown. In short, it is the 
 barren admission that God could work a miracle, 
 but could do nothing ly it could not authen- 
 ticate a revelation thereby. 
 
 [PROTESTANT DISSENT.] 
 
 "I X 7"E Protestants are all Dissenters. It is 
 necessary to vindicate our dissent, but 
 as necessary for those in the Protestant estab- 
 lished Churches to remember that they are dis-
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 81 
 
 senters from the Church of Rome ; dissenters 
 but not schismatics. Rome was schismatic in 
 forcing us out. And it would be well for 
 Christendom, if all the members of Christ's 
 catholic church would endeavour to preserve 
 the unity of the spirit, and think oftener of the 
 many and major points in which they agree, 
 than the few and minor ones in which they 
 differ. 
 
 [THE THEOCRACY.] 
 
 T N a theocracy God is King, and sin is crime. 
 -*- Sin, which is made crime by the theocratic 
 law, is both sin and crime. It is sin as against 
 the Lord of the whole earth, and crime as 
 against the King. Now, if all sin was visited 
 with death under the theocracy, if all sin were 
 theocratic crime, no flesh could li ve ; so holy is 
 God, so sinful is man. Eor example, Divorce 
 is always sin against Him who made man and 
 woman one pair ; but it was not always made 
 theocratic sin, for the law was so regulated as 
 to prevent the rise of unbridled divorce ; always 
 & peccatum contra Deum, it was not always a crimen 
 contra regem. Wherever^ecca/a are at the same 
 time crimina, it is excision from the presence of 
 the Lord, and no flesh could stand that. Every 
 crimen was a peccatum, but every peccatum was 
 not a crimen. Every criminal was eo ipso re- 
 sponsible to God for his peccata, not every pec- 
 cator responsible for crimina. 
 
 There are three main heads of Mosaic Law 
 1. Law Moral ; for which there is strictly no 
 theocratic punishment. " Thou shalt love thy 
 G
 
 82 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 neighbour," etc. If a Jew did not do that, he 
 sinned a sin deserving punishment. But he 
 could not be stoned for it. There was no theo- 
 cratic punishment. 
 
 2. Law Ceremonial ; which had a double re- 
 lation -first, to the law moral ; second, to the 
 law judicial. This ordained that sacrifices were 
 to be brought for sin. But these could not 
 atone for a/j.agr!a ; for Adonai was injured, 
 whenever any of his creatures were injured. 
 
 3. Law Judicial, civil jurisprudence. . . . 
 Now, how far have we to do with the Judaical 
 
 law ? Is it obligatory except on the Hebrews 1 
 Certainly we have not to do with the Mosaic 
 law in its Sinaitic form. There is certainly an 
 abrogation of that. It was but for a time. 
 Yet the moral law of Adonai is eternally obli- 
 gatory : and in room of the laws of Sinai, we 
 have positive Christian institutions for all time 
 to come. These are the Sacraments of Baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper, which are to remain in 
 the Christian Church "till the end of the eon." 
 
 [JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION.] 
 " T F Christ be in you," says an apostle, " the 
 ** body is dead because of sin, but the spirit 
 is alive because of righteousness." It is a 
 fathomless depth, that of our union with Christ, 
 which I cannot yet see far into. It is clear 
 enough that we, by believing in Christ, die, and 
 that we die in the very act of faith. But there 
 is a point which I would like to see into, but 
 which I do not yet see into viz., the condem- 
 nation of sin, in the death of Christ. Christ
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 83 
 
 " condemned sin in the flesh." I think we run 
 away with one-half of the truth on this point, 
 and Eome runs away with the other half (we, 
 i.e. the post-reformers, for I don't charge the 
 Reformers themselves with it). The death of 
 Christ, when sin lay upon him, was, I think, the 
 condemnation of all that so lay upon him, with 
 the pardon of their persons, and the execution 
 or destruction of their sins. Condemnation of 
 sin to death goes along with the adjudication 
 of persons to life. Christ died for the destruc- 
 tion of sin, but for the salvation of the unjust. 
 But I would like to understand more thoroughly 
 the force of the condemnation of sin in the 
 flesh of Christ. " He that hath suffered in the 
 flesh, hath ceased from sin." I do not under- 
 stand that saying yet. When our sins were laid 
 upon our Lord, what took place was a condem- 
 nation of them. The sins of his disciples were 
 then sentenced to be destroyed. So you see 
 how intimately our justification and our sancti- 
 fication are connected ; and our justification, 
 when we apprehend it deeply enough, is the 
 virtual execution of our sins. It is the sen- 
 tence of God to slay our sins, and to save our 
 persons. And here we stand between two 
 ultras. It is the evil extreme of Romanism, that 
 it deprives sanctification of its legal grounds j 
 and it is the evil of an ultra-Protestantism that 
 it stops short at the act of justification, or omits 
 the very close nexus between it and sanctifica- 
 tion ; the connection is not insisted on so much 
 as the distinction. The judicial sentence passes 
 into effect, and all that passes in our sanctifica-
 
 84 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 tion is adjudicated in our justification. It 
 takes place personally in our union to Christ, 
 but it is all virtually contained in the life and 
 death of Christ himself. God's pardon of our 
 persons, and the execution of our sins, both take 
 place in our being (as the apostle says) " crucified 
 with Christ;" nor can I ever consider justifi- 
 cation and sanctification farther separated than 
 as a legal sentence, and the actual execution of 
 it. ... Christ came to " condemn sin in the 
 flesh ; " and that the Law could not do, because 
 it was " weak through the flesh." But the law 
 could always say of sin that it was a moral evil ; 
 and so it becomes an important question, in 
 what sense it could not condemn sin? The 
 apostle also tells us that " the strength of sin is 
 the law." The law, therefore, which is its 
 strength, cannot condemn it. It denounces it, 
 and is wroth against it. But it cannot destroy 
 it. Rather the opposite. The law may pass 
 sentence on the wrong-doer, and even place him 
 under the ban of the empire ; as in that old 
 German sentence of outlawry, " We turn thee 
 forth upon the ways of the world, and no man 
 can sin against thee" But I have no doubt that 
 when Christ "made his soul an offering for 
 sin," the sentence then went forth that all sin 
 atoned for was to be put out of being, out 
 of existence. . . . That justification precedes 
 sanctification is another of the ultraisms of 
 modern Protestantism. I cannot receive that 
 doctrine. Faith precedes justification, but re- 
 generation causally precedes faith. It is there- 
 fore very important to remark initially that all
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 85 
 
 flows from Christ and our union to Him. The 
 only difficulty with me is why glorification does 
 not immediately take place on our union with 
 Christ, because the immediate point of union 
 with Christ should be perfect holiness and 
 blessedness. But God has so planned it that 
 there must be an order in the development of 
 our lives. 
 
 "Wisest God says, no 
 
 This must not yet be so ; 
 
 and the Christian has to realise (what it is 
 sometimes very hard for him to realise) that 
 he is now " seated with Christ in heavenly 
 places," while he is fighting away upon the 
 earth. The transition "from grace to glory" 
 is not greater than is the transition " from 
 nature to grace." 
 
 [CONVERSION TO GOD, ETC.] 
 
 "\ \ 7"HEN men come to adopt a stereotyped 
 * manner of recognising God, or of con- 
 version to Him, you may be sure there is some 
 human conceit in it. There was Nathaniel, 
 a man truly awakened, who had not heard the 
 facts of the life and death of Christ ; and as to 
 Cornelius, I think he was a xaivbg a.vdguvo$ before 
 Peter saw him : " He feared God and wrought 
 righteousness," and " his prayers and alms came 
 up as a memorial before God. This is not 
 affirmable of him unless he was "justified." 
 The same reasoning which would lead me to 
 doubt that Cornelius was justified, would lead 
 me to believe that the seventh chapter of the 
 Eomans was the description of an irregenerate
 
 86 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 man ; and Peter's errand to Cornelius, to show 
 him " the things commanded of God," presents 
 no difficulty on the other side. His words are 
 very significant : " Of a truth I perceive that 
 God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation 
 hie that feareth Him and worketh righteousness 
 is accepted of Him." How dim must the ground 
 of the faith of thousands have been for centuries. 
 .... I preach a free gospel to every man, or 
 I don't preach the gospel at all, but I know 
 that its acceptance without the help of the 
 Spirit is an impossibility. I am not going to 
 hinder a man from attempting an impossibility. 
 I would never forbid him to try his strength to 
 come to God, while I hold that he cannot do so 
 without the help of the Spirit. Calvinism is 
 not inconsistent with a free gospel. I would 
 like to see a divine arise, in whom Jonathan 
 Edwards and Thomas Boston were thoroughly 
 welded into one. 
 
 [CONSCIENCE AND THE ATONEMENT.] 
 A X 7"E are asked to throw aside every theory of 
 * * the Atonement, and repose in the fact. 
 But I cannot receive the Atonement as a blank 
 mystery, though it is ultimately inscrutable 
 and incognisable, as are all great truths. I 
 speak with trembling, but I doubt that the fact 
 of an Atonement would not be clear to me 
 apart from its reasons and relations. God 
 announces to conscience the principles upon 
 which it can rest. Can God be just, and 
 pardon me ? I must know the consistency 
 between these two things, before I believe in
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 87 
 
 their union ; and I don't think 1 go farther 
 than the Scripture carries me. It seems to me 
 a terrible thing to say that there was no in- 
 trinsic necessity for Christ's death, for then we 
 virtually say that he died for sin that he need 
 not have died for ; and it seems to me that we 
 have the softer theology who affirm he did not, 
 and could not. And I think that to die for the 
 sake of sinners whose sin is not actually taken 
 away, would be a clear waste of moral action. 
 So that we must either with the Calvinist deny 
 the universal extent of the Atonement, or with 
 the Socinian eviscerate its meaning. And I 
 think that Magee, in his book on the Atone- 
 ment, has sold himself into the hands of the 
 Calvinists, though he is ever bringing in a salvo 
 against them. Does God pardon as a mere 
 sovereign ? He either pardons arbitrarily, or he 
 pardons on the ground of some atonement. 
 Now I hold that conscience demands that 
 vicariousness which history and experience 
 bring before us. This is the very antithesis of 
 Kantism. Kant may be right as regards the con- 
 science in its crude and unenlightened state. 
 For conscience is out of order through the fall. 
 But conscience quickened by contact with the 
 divine word demands a satisfaction which man 
 has not rendered, and is unable to render. It 
 is also true that the healthy conscience re- 
 pudiates the legal element when separated from 
 the moral ; it repudiates justification divorced 
 from sanctification. A justification that left 
 us as it found us, conscience would disown. 
 What it demands and approves is not an ex-
 
 88 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 trinsic act, but an intrinsic fact. Christ came 
 that I might have life, and this includes both a 
 justified and a sanctified life. 
 
 [How does conscience demand vicariousness ?] 
 Conscience asserts that a gratuitous pardon 
 would not be just. If I appeal to conscience 
 rigorously, it tells me that it would be un- 
 righteous to give men a blank pardon. It 
 cries out for restitution of some sort, and 
 expiation of some sort. And again, while con- 
 science proclaims the fact that man's nature is 
 out of order, and that it cannot rectify its own 
 disorder, experience attests the fact that the 
 image of God, wrested from us at the fall, is in 
 the process of restoration through Jesus Christ. 
 The evidence to the individual is the congruity 
 of that which Christ brings to him, with his 
 nature, and 'its power to rectify his disorder ; 
 and the congruity between the restored Divine 
 image within and the Divine image without, is 
 vouched more by faith than by consciousness. 
 Kant is of too individualising a tendency in 
 morals. He does not recognise the unity of the 
 race in either of its representatives, either in 
 the first man, or in the second. But the 
 umbilicus refutes him ; we are all united, both 
 in our degeneracy through one man, and in our 
 recovery through Another. 
 
 [MERIT AND DEMERIT.] 
 
 NT has ventured on some false correla- 
 tions. As sin implies demerit, virtue he 
 thinks implies merit. Kanfs correlate is my 
 disparate. The first two, sin and demerit, are
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 89 
 
 annexed to each other by a moral necessity; 
 while the latter virtue (obedience) has for its 
 sequel not merit but happiness, and they are 
 related not necessarily but de pacto. Kant 
 omits the fact that we are in a state of forfeiture 
 of good, and deserve evil. Merit is not neces- 
 sarily annexed to obedience. Merit exists only 
 when there is inherent good. Now there is no 
 inherent good iii the volitions of any creature, 
 but only in the volitions of God. There is 
 no sufficiency within the will to ensure the 
 creature's standing. If so, the creature cannot 
 stand without the divine upholding ; and must 
 fall on the withdrawal of that upholding, while 
 the upholding is not a matter of right, but of 
 sovereignty. There can be no claim of rights 
 on the creature's part, and no impugning of the 
 divine justice, should the creature be " left " to 
 the freedom of its own will, as the Westminster 
 divines put it. 
 
 [But this suspends the destiny of the uni- 
 verse upon acts of Divine volition ; is it not 
 better to connect these with an " immutable and 
 eternal morality" ?] 
 
 It is a holy will that rules the universe 
 a will in which loving-kindness is locked up, to 
 be in due time displayed. It is a solemn thing 
 that we and all creatures are at the disposal of 
 pure will ; but it is not merely free will, it is 
 the free will of the holy Lord Jehovah, and 
 therein it is distinguished from the abstractness 
 and apparent arbitrariness of mere will. For 
 the theology of this, I may have been learning 
 more, as time has run on ; but for the principle
 
 90 COLLOQUIA PEEIPATETIOA. 
 
 of its inmost nature, I believe that God taught 
 it me during those three days in Aberdeen, 
 when my will surrendered at discretion. I was 
 taught the error of the will's independency 
 through a most terrible experience. I learned 
 the Divine sovereignty once for all, as by a 
 flash of lightning, and a mournful tranquillity 
 came down. I felt that I was blamable every 
 way. The spirit was broken ; and I remembered 
 that the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a 
 broken heart : and I looked up, and lo ! the 
 burden was gone. 
 
 [INSINCERITY AND RESPONSIBILITY.] 
 " TIT E'S at least sincere" is a common saying, 
 *--*- in defence of a man whose opinions or 
 actions may be very far astray, and it exonerates 
 the man from the charge of hypocrisy. Of 
 course that is something. It is "a soul of 
 good " (if you will) " in things evil." I doubt 
 not that the present Pope is a very sincere 
 Papist ; and I believe that Torquemada was a 
 very sincere inquisitor; and some of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees had a zeal according to the law, 
 and "touching its righteousness" might have 
 been " blameless." But that he has acted con- 
 scientiously does not prove that a man has done 
 his duty. In other matters, sincerity is not 
 held to be the equivalent of duty. If a man 
 is sincere in his debts, that won't exonerate 
 him. Now, if a man misconstrues what God 
 reveals, though he is sincere in a measure, 
 he is blameworthy to the extent of his light. 
 God has spoken to men in his .Word. How
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 91 
 
 would a man take the calling of his word 
 in question 1 He could not tolerate that, but 
 would justly resent it. And though God bear 
 long with us, he must deal with us as a father 
 with suspicious or heedless children. And our 
 not giving heed to what God says is a most 
 serious aggravation of our sin. Its first ele- 
 ment is our not yielding to him, our want of 
 filial submission. The creature's first duty is to 
 be what God made him. His next duty is to 
 do what God ordains. He is directly respon- 
 sible for these things. He is only secondarily 
 responsible for inquiry. But the great want in 
 all men who inquire is the want of a simple 
 love of truth, and the want of the " single eye." 
 A man sees double because of his preposses- 
 sions. . . . Brougham, in his lecture on respon- 
 sibility for belief, never denied that man is re- 
 sponsible for the act of inquiry. He never denied 
 that truth-seeking is a duty ; and that impar- 
 tiality in inquiry is a duty. He admits that 
 man is bound to inquire, and to inquire honestly ; 
 but he denies that man can be forced to believe, 
 because belief is just the result of evidence pre- 
 sented to the mind. But he denies what I 
 affirm, that we are bound to believe on the 
 authority of God, whenever we have reason to 
 believe that God has really spoken. 
 
 [Would not almost every one do so, if con- 
 vinced that God has spoken ? It is that fact 
 which they find it so hard to believe.] 
 
 No. I believe that such is the bent of the 
 human spirit away from God, that it will not 
 come unto the light which it knows to be light,
 
 92 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 just as it often does what is evil while it 
 knows what is good. Paul's confession as to 
 the contrary power within the will is true 
 also of the intellect, which the will leads as 
 well as follows. 
 
 [CALVINISM AND AEMINIANISM. ] 
 
 TT may be, as Anninians impute to Calvinism 
 * what we deny, that conversely we contro- 
 vert an Arminianism which they deny ; and so 
 the two parties may be really nearer than the 
 controversy would always indicate. The con- 
 troversy is sometimes merely one of emphasis : 
 where the emphasis is to be laid ; what is major, 
 and what minor. But often it is much deeper. 
 The fact is, however, that the Calvinist affirms 
 a grace of God towards his own children, which 
 the Arminian denies towards any creature ; so 
 that Calvinism is an intensive exhibition of 
 Divine grace, while Arminianism presents us 
 with an extensive and diffusive one. . . . What 
 is it that the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian attri- 
 bute to subjective grace (grace in the soul of 
 man) distinct from moral suasion, that is not 
 enthusiastic a sort of spiritual galvanism 1 
 They neither allow enough to man nor enough 
 to God. They divide the process in a most 
 arbitrary fashion : one half they give to God, 
 the other half to man ; but are these two inde- 
 pendent ? does the one not permeate and per- 
 vade the other 1 We hold that the process is 
 not halved and separately shared, but united 
 and conjunctly shared. The whole is God's,
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 93 
 
 the whole is also man's. The rb 6'sXsiv is wholly 
 man's ; the tvigyua, -rb OiXsiv is wholly God's. 
 In the fallen nature, the elective faculty re- 
 mains undestroyed. Its destruction would be 
 the destruction of humanity; and though we 
 are in one sense passive in regeneration, in 
 another sense we are not. We yield our wills 
 up to the active ivegytia, of the Higher will. 
 
 [THE NATURE OF FKEE WILL.] 
 
 TT is foolish to dismiss the question of Free 
 -* will, as an insoluble problem of meta- 
 physics. Let no man despise a metaphysical 
 problem. Some say " That is metaphysical," 
 as if it was therefore unpractical or foolish, 
 because insoluble. But to deride such a ques- 
 tion, is to deride what is to some minds (and I 
 own it is to mine) the very deepest chord with- 
 in it. It is like saying to a man of a sensitive 
 nervous organisation, " Now become a muscular 
 Christian at once ! " The will is a metaphysi- 
 cal question, and is not an utterly hopeless 
 puzzle, though it is also a practical question, 
 vitally practical. My metaphysical position 
 consists in having no theory as to the nature of 
 freedom, but maintaining the fact, while I dis- 
 own and repudiate four ultra theories ; two pairs 
 of opposites, one pair on either side of the con- 
 troversy. I disown the liberty of independ- 
 ence. I disown the liberty of indifference. 
 I maintain that the will's freedom is less than 
 these theories assert it to be. On the other 
 side, I disown the "freedom from co-action"
 
 94 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 witJiout the will (external bondage), and free- 
 dom from co-action within the will (internal 
 bondage), as too meagre. I maintain that the 
 freedom of the will is more than these theories 
 concede. I thus stand between two pairs of 
 ultra theories. The liberty, which is the ground 
 of accountability, is more than freedom from re- 
 straint, whether it be within or without the will 
 itself. It is less than the liberty of independ- 
 ency, and less than the liberty of indifference. 
 Independency is just Epicureanism. Disown 
 that and the theory of indifference, and what 
 remains but that the will's agency is elective 
 and selective 1 Man makes an election. God 
 is remotely the cause of that action's causality 
 (the cause of its causality, mark), and h fortiori 
 of its good ; and yet, while he is so, he does not, 
 in being so, take away that freedom of will 
 which might end in a bad volition. God's 
 fnoyei/x, is not galvanism, it is a vitalising act. 
 There is a saying of the good Kutherford, diffi- 
 cult for us to acquiesce in, but true I think in 
 principle, to this effect : The permission of sin 
 is adorable, the actital fact of sin is abominable. 
 As to the permissio, there would certainly have 
 been no display of some of the Divine attributes 
 had sin not been. They would have been con- 
 served for ever in the depths of the adorable 
 Godhead. The reality of sovereign love toward 
 rebellious children could not have been dis- 
 played without a fall. This is the basis of a 
 modified optimism. ... In a certain sense I 
 am a tremendous free-wilier. My predestina- 
 tion is all free will God created the universe
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 95 
 
 for his glory and the manifestation of his 
 attributes. He might have lived without a 
 universe beneath Him. If the universe has 
 a necessary ground of existence, it must be 
 both eternal and infinite. It is therefore 
 fundamental in theology that creation was for 
 the manifestation of the Divine perfection. 
 But I shrink from assuming that these perfec- 
 tions must necessarily have been displayed. 
 The Divine perfections do not necessitate any 
 act, but they qualify and condition every 
 Divine act. ... As to the Divine Will, I am 
 vehemently anti-Edwardean. His system of 
 determinism leads to the necessity of creation. 
 I inferred this when I first read his treatise on 
 the will, and I find it carried out in his other 
 treatise on God's chief end in creation. But 
 my position is much more a theologeme than a 
 philosophical postulate. And yet, if you sub- 
 stitute Jehovism for necessitarianism (which is 
 proximately Providence and virtually pre- 
 destination), very many difficulties are mitigated. 
 And after all, necessitarianism in the brain can 
 do little harm to the man who in heart relishes 
 the Sermon on the Mount, e.g. Chalmers. I do 
 not say that the theory of philosophical neces- 
 sity is innocuous. I believe it is noxious. But 
 look at the Edwardean theology, omitting this, 
 its metaphysical blot. It was steeped in the 
 affections. That will keep any man safe amid 
 intellectual aberration, and prevent it telling 
 on his life. In the Edwardean Ethics you see 
 a fine moral stoical Christianity in conjunction 
 with the finest affections.
 
 96 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [THE ETERNAL LOGOS.] 
 
 T HAVE long thought that without an eter- 
 ** nal Logos you must have an eternal 
 cosmos ; and I therefore suspect that a mono- 
 personal Theism is impotent against the Pantheist. 
 So that, since the controversy has passed from 
 its old atheistic phases, I doubt if either Deist, 
 or Socinian, or Mahommedan, will be able to 
 cope with the Pantheist. In short, I doubt if 
 any but a Trinitarian can do so adequately. 
 
 [How does the admission of an eternal Logos 
 negative an eternal cosmos ?] 
 
 I don't so clearly see it as I feel it. But 
 if God had not always a Son, he must have 
 always had a world ; and if he had always a 
 Son, personality, and conscious life, with re- 
 ciprocal love, must have always existed. We, 
 at least, get out of the nirvana, or the Indian 
 sleep of Brahm. Besides, the doctrine of an 
 eternal Logos harmonises with the notion of a 
 Deity essentially active, and perfect within him- 
 self. 
 
 NOTES of a CONVERSATION between Dr. DUN- 
 CAN and V. V., October 1861 ; V. V.'s re- 
 marks being within brackets, thus [ ]. 
 
 T GOT no rest to the sole of my foot till I 
 -- rejected all speculation. What I rejected 
 was not the tendency to speculate, but the pile 
 of speculations. 
 
 [But if a tendency remains, a fresh pile must 
 accumulate ?]
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 97 
 
 Well, but what can you make of it 1 What 
 can you reach 1 Have you got a philosophy ] 
 It would be very strange if Sextus Empiricus, 
 with all his arguments to destroy philosophies, 
 could not get one to destroy yours. 
 
 [My philosophy is just the constitution of 
 my nature : I must fall back on that : I have 
 no other court of appeal.] 
 
 Well, you can't help believing. I do not 
 wish to shake your faith in that. To weaken 
 confidence in human nature is criminal. But 
 I always think that the Reidist conclusion, " I 
 can't help believing it," is incomplete, without 
 some reason in the nature of things. The 
 " make of my constitution " is a testimony to its 
 Maker, and I want to get out of myself, and 
 beyond myself. Do you not see that without 
 this you are in miserable bondage, to a can't- 
 help-myself-ism 1 
 
 [Well, I just can't help it, and you can't 
 take me higher. I cannot conclude otherwise 
 than that my nature affirms rightly, and that 
 its Maker is good and true.] 
 
 But you must reach a belief in something out 
 of yourself. Conscience is not produced by me ; 
 and it testifies to another beyond me. Conscience 
 is the voice of a lawgiver. I think we get out 
 of ourselves, to a rock higher than we are, if 
 we follow conscience to its source. I affirm 
 that conscience testifies to law, to moral law ; 
 and that not in the secular sense in which the 
 physicists use it, nor in the sectarian sense in 
 which the mathematicians use it, but in the 
 primitive moral sense in which the lawyers use 
 H
 
 98 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 it, as the expression of an authoritative will. 
 The naturalists have no right to the term law, 
 if they do not admit that they have stolen it 
 from the lawyers. There is no such thing as a 
 " law " of nature, except in a figurative sense. 
 The laws of nature do not lead me beyond my 
 own generalising mind, but moral law does ; 
 for if there be not another above me, my Law- 
 giver, then there is no law for me. You see I 
 wish to get beneath the voice of my nature, to 
 the Maker of my constitution. 
 
 [If, from " the make of our constitution," you 
 reach its Maker, and are able to infer his 
 character, does that not enhance rather than 
 diminish the difficulty of the entrance of evil 
 into his universe ?] 
 
 How so 1 Evil is a fact, but not an entity. It 
 is not a " thing " at all. It is a minus quality, 
 like a deficit in a merchant's ledger. If it were 
 a positive entity, I think we could say that 
 either it could not enter into the universe at all, 
 or else that God directly created it. It is a 
 mystery how it ever entered a perfectly good 
 universe, and appeared amongst beings created 
 perfectly good (and therefore without even its 
 germs), while their Creator had no share in its 
 production. It is a product, and the product of 
 the creaturely will, but it is a negative quantity. 
 And if it had not entered, we could not have 
 seen how, God could do a greater thing than 
 permit it viz. put it away; the greatest Divine 
 act, I believe, ever done in the universe : and 
 the few rays of light that Scripture gives us as 
 to the former are always connected with the
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 99 
 
 latter. Christianity does not tell me all I would 
 like to know it does not meet all my specula- 
 tions ; but while it enlightens my reason as to 
 my duties, it gives me sufficient light as to the 
 ultimate mysteries, to prevent their paralysing 
 me altogether. I should like to know if you ad- 
 mit that we are fallen creatures. If we are now 
 what we were made, the demiourgos must either 
 be a very poor being, or a very melancholy crea- 
 ture. Do you admit that we are fallen creatures'? 
 
 [There are contrarieties within us now that I 
 can scarcely think necessary to our constitu- 
 tion. They seem to point to a better state 
 from which we have declined, and to which we 
 may yet return.] 
 
 Yes ; they are both historic and prophetic. 
 But there is more than contrariety there is 
 anarchy. The world of mankind has cast off 
 allegiance to its King. And what do you take 
 the present state of the world to be ? Why, 
 we are under the ban of the empire. Don't 
 think that because sin is merely privative, it is 
 less horrible than if it were positive, or less 
 terrible in its consequences. It is privative of 
 good to man, and of communion with God. 
 And yet God, having a design of saving man- 
 kind (all or some is another question), has placed 
 the whole human race under a system of long- 
 suffering kindness ; while they are nevertheless 
 in the state of condemned criminals under the 
 King's reprieve allowed, it is true, the best of 
 prison fare ; and, under the moral philosophers' 
 keeping, the prison is not quite so dirty as it 
 might otherwise be.
 
 100 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [The moral philosophers have been more than 
 prison warders ; they have been prophets and 
 teachers to humanity.] 
 
 I don't think they have done much more than 
 keep the prison clean, and do effective police work, 
 and that is not an ignoble task. I am not de- 
 spising one of them. And I had rather be a jailor 
 in the house of my God, than dwell in the tents 
 of wickedness. But come, let us turn from this. 
 
 I must take you, my friend, to the centre of 
 all things. You have read the Gospels. Well, 
 can you conceive anything more beautiful than 
 the character of Jesus Christ 1 
 
 [No.] 
 
 Is it not the perfection of humanity 1 
 
 [It is.] 
 
 Could you have invented it ? 
 
 [No.] 
 
 Could the four Evangelists have invented it? 
 
 [I think not.] 
 
 No ; the inventor would be greater than the 
 invention. Jesus Christ, then, is the perfection 
 of humanity, its ideal made real. Whence then 
 came this perfection? Did a Jewish human 
 nature realise its own perfection ? 
 
 [That it was from above I doubt not ; but it 
 is the unity of the Son with the Father in that 
 human life which I cannot conceive. Practically 
 I realise, and admit that He was divine.] 
 
 Conceive! Conceive that unity between 
 Father and Son? What do you mean? We 
 cannot conceive it, and we have no theory 
 regarding it. Let us look at the various 
 hypotheses that have been started; and amongst
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 101 
 
 them you may be disposed to place the Atha- 
 nasian ; but that I take to be not one, but a 
 denial of all hypotheses, affirming the incom- 
 prehensibility of the union, and denying all the 
 explanations of it. Every hypothesis is the 
 root of a heresy. First, in Athanasianism, there 
 is a denial of Tritheism, and a denial of Sabel- 
 lianism. What does Sabellius make of his 
 attempt to theorise 1 h f^ovas irXarvvdifoa, y'syoi/i 
 *'. That is a perfectly barren saying. It 
 casts no light on the mystery, but verges to- 
 wards a heresy. Now consider the attestations 
 of Scripture. No one can read the Old Testa- 
 ment without seeing that that book is strictly 
 Monotheistic. No one can say that Jesus and 
 his apostles did not preach a Monotheistic 
 doctrine. Yet when Jesus Christ and his 
 apostles went about preaching, they said many 
 things which were staggering to a monopersonal 
 Monotheism; and some divines in their inter- 
 pretations of Christ's words have fallen into a 
 tritheistic Theism. But the propositions to 
 which a Christian assents have been clearly 
 and concisely stated by a not very religious 
 person, Dean Swift, thus : 
 
 There are three, the Father, and the Son, and the 
 
 Holy Ghost ; 
 The Father is different from the Son, and from the 
 
 Holy Ghost. 
 The three are one. 
 
 [That statement does not include the word 
 "person."] 
 
 Well, it is not used in Scripture, except 
 in one passage, " the express image of his
 
 102 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 person." I affirm that three persons of men 
 are three beings of men, and three persons 
 of angels would be three beings of angels. But 
 to affirm this of the Divine nature would be 
 Tritheism. And so I am forced to the conclusion 
 that the word "person," as applied to God, must 
 be different from that word as applied to man. 
 But what that is I do not know, because I am 
 not God. You will see that there is a mystery 
 about the doctrine of God, which we would need 
 ourselves to be God to know, and the light of 
 glory will not dissipate that mystery. 
 
 [But it is on the resemblance of personality in 
 God and man, that you found the great postulate 
 that man is made in the image of God. Is not 
 the one doctrine the equivalent of the other, 
 and both the basis of all revelation 1] 
 
 Well, the natures resemble. But the arche- 
 type and the type are not identical. Man is 
 like unto God, made in his image, but God is 
 also infinitely unlike man. I see no contradic- 
 tion between these two, and I am precluded from 
 all deductive reasonings, founded upon that word 
 " person " (such as, because three persons in man 
 are three beings, three persons in God are also 
 three beings), because I abjure an absolute iden- 
 tity or commonness of nature between God and 
 man. 
 
 [But since you hold that man's nature is in 
 the image of God's, and the centre of man's 
 nature is his personality, must not personality 
 be the same in both ?] 
 
 Similar, but not the same. It is surely 
 enough that the type resemble the archetype
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 103 
 
 without being identical with it. If identical, 
 the difference would vanish, like Hegel's 
 ieyn = nichts. As to the Divine personality, 
 ny propositions are twofold first, that the 
 Divine Being or essence is truly and properly 
 (ne; and second, that this unity is not in- 
 compatible with a moral threefoldness ; and 
 I find that this is described by the personal 
 pronouns in Scripture. It is the attempt to 
 clear up the mystery further that I attack ; 
 every intelligible explanation I reject. I don't 
 know what the Divine personality is ; but I 
 inow that it is not as this, or that, or the other 
 theory would try to make it out. It is not Tri- 
 theistic, and it is not Sabellian. But I cannot 
 know it unless I were to know the modus of the 
 eternal generation, and the spiration of the 
 Holy Ghost, i.e. become God myself. It is be- 
 yond the reach of definition then, as an Athan- 
 asian once said to an Arian, who had asked him 
 to explain eternal generation : " Tell me how 
 God is, that we may both go mad." And I am 
 strongly of opinion that it is not only not re- 
 vealed, but that it is not revealable. And there 
 may be much that is not cognisable by finite 
 minds, with which nevertheless the glory of 
 God's character is concerned, and with which 
 the redemption of the world is upbound ; while 
 God may simply tell us that it is so. Sabel- 
 lianism does violence to the Scripture texts. 
 Scripture continually uses the personal pronouns, 
 implying that the Father is God, that the Son 
 is God, and that the Holy Ghost is God, which 
 Sabellianism admits ; but then, while trying to
 
 104 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 make the trinal unity intelligible, it makes the 
 acts of the Three unintelligible ; it makes the 
 atonement an unintelligibility, for how could 
 an Infinite Being make an atonement to kimselj 
 under another condition or relation ? Sabel- 
 lianism makes one phase of the Divine nature 
 atone to another phase of it. 
 
 [I was going to say that Sabellianism might 
 fit in to another theory of the atonement.] 
 
 What theory 1 ? Athanasianism is just the 
 negation of all possible theory on the subject 
 of Christ's person; and so, too, of his work. 
 All the heresies are just explanations of the 
 mystery. What theory 1 
 
 [I was thinking of the atonement of Love, the 
 Divine nature not requiring an offering to be 
 made to it, but offering itself.] 
 
 But to what purpose ] For what end ] Did 
 Christ subject himself for no purpose to an 
 ignominious death ? 
 
 [No.] 
 
 Well, for what purpose ? 
 
 [To bless, and to save ; and that by the mere 
 impulse of love itself.] 
 
 Admitting that the death of Christ was sub- 
 stitutionary, I can see great love in it ; but 
 otherwise, I can't see love in it at -all. Take 
 away the substitution, and all that remains for 
 me is this : " Jesus tried to make us good ; but, 
 good man, he failed" This end, in view, is 
 glorious when combined with the other end, but 
 melancholy when you take it alone. 
 
 [But if he failed, he failed on both theories.] 
 
 No : his intention was, on the one theory, to
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 105 
 
 make the world good ; that has been a failure. 
 But on the other (which, again, I say is no 
 theory), he finished his work ; and secured the 
 ultimate destruction of sin in those in whom 
 the experiment of making them good is for the 
 present most imperfectly successful. 
 
 But to return to the personality of God and 
 man, it comes to this, that with all simplicity of 
 mind we must receive God's propositions, that 
 three persons of men are three beings, three 
 persons of angels are three beings, the three 
 persons in God are not three beings : so that, in 
 theologising, I have risen to the word " person," 
 and found in it a certain uniqueness of meaning, 
 which is an induction from Scripture texts ; 
 leaving the mystery which is round about it as 
 an ultimatum which I cannot use in deductive 
 reasoning. But I need some word to express the 
 distinction within the Divine nature, and I find 
 the personal pronoun " He," and a personal act, 
 " He will send." Now Tritheism gives a false ex- 
 planation, so does Sabellianism ; Athanasianism 
 gives none : and anything that starts up as an 
 explanation is therefore to be rejected. No ; you 
 only think you conceive the Divine unity. You 
 cannot really conceive it. Meditation on it 
 leads us up to propositions which have come 
 out of the mouth of Him whom we cannot 
 comprehend, and whom to comprehend would 
 imply the possession of Godhead. And the 
 relations subsisting between the persons of the 
 Godhead I know not, and have no expectation 
 of ever knowing. I don't think Gabriel knows, 
 and I don't think he can.
 
 106 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [Do you extend this principle to the relations 
 subsisting between the Divine nature and the 
 universe?] 
 
 Necessarily ; and all the schemes in explana- 
 tion err by attempting to define the undefinable. 
 Pantheism, for example, stumbles over the pro- 
 blem, and abolishes the relation in the attempt 
 to explain it. 
 
 [How do you meet Pantheism ?] 
 
 Pantheism will not account for the facts of 
 biblical history. It cannot explain the life of 
 Jesus Christ, without explaining it away. And 
 Pantheism will not account for the phenomena 
 of conscience. God must be distinct from the 
 cosmos, or conscience is all a lie. 
 
 [Is it the mere voice of conscience that you 
 oppose to Pantheism?] 
 
 No ; but conscience is the great root of 
 Theism, and it leads within the veil, because 
 the tree that springs from it breaks through 
 phenomena. It is something supernatural 
 within the natural, and there is no separating 
 these two spheres, if you are true to psycho- 
 logy. The web of the natural and the super- 
 natural are so woven together in the soul, that 
 they cannot be untied. 
 
 [It is easier to dethrone Pantheism than to 
 establish the opposite truth.] 
 
 If you overthrow the one, you establish the 
 other. There is no resting-place between them. 
 If we find that there are beings with conscience 
 and will ; and, more especially, if we find that 
 some of these are bad, and if we admit the full 
 force of moral evil in the will, as the antithesis
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 107 
 
 of good, Pantheism cannot account for that 
 antithesis. A monistic scheme of the universe 
 tnust minimise evil, or reason it away. You 
 admit, I suppose, the reality of moral evil 1 
 
 [Yes.] 
 
 And its personal taint you do not deny 1 
 
 [No.] 
 
 Being under law, you are under a lawgiver, 
 and the law is not self-imposed. In the physi- 
 cal region, law is only metaphoric, but in the 
 moral it asserts that you are the subject of an 
 extrinsic authority. Your reason tells you that 
 obligation implies an obliger. 
 
 [But is not the use of the word " law" in 
 theology also metaphoric, and does it not arise 
 from the notion of human law 1 ] 
 
 You reason in a circle. What is the foundation 
 of human law ] Either God or the hangman. 
 
 [No; it may be the naturally destructive 
 consequences of crime.] 
 
 Why then, if that be all, can society inter- 
 pose to punish ? Suppose there be no eternal 
 and immutable law of Duty, what right have 
 criminal courts, or Lords and Commons (from 
 whom they derive power), to try me for crime 
 and punish me 1 
 
 [There may be a tacit agreement founded on 
 expediency.] 
 
 What tacit agreement is there between the 
 Sultan and his subjects? Under a despotism 
 there is no room for pactions, tacit or explicit ; 
 and civil power, with right to punish, arose, not 
 by consent of the people, but from a despotic 
 assumption, or from transmitted authority. You
 
 108 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 may gather, both from history and from con- 
 sciousness, that law is the emanation of the will 
 of a Superior having authority. Kant saw 
 clearly that moral law implied a lawgiver. I 
 can see no daylight whatever as to law without 
 this assumption. Even the so-called physical laws 
 are to me incomprehensible without a lawgiver. 
 
 [A physical law without a lawgiver is just a 
 succession of sequences.] 
 
 That doctrine is the abortion of modern 
 philosophy, though it is as old as the fall. To 
 thrust all noumena out of our system of the 
 universe, is to give up philosophy in despair. 
 
 [You have given up the philosophies as 
 failures.] 
 
 I renounce the phenomenal schemes by abid- 
 ing fast in the region of the noumena. I begin 
 with the greatest noumenon God. And caus- 
 ality is a noumenal fact ; causes and effects are 
 phenomena. I see and hear causes and effects, 
 and they fall within the circle of experience ; 
 but I never saw and never heard a noumenon. 
 Yet they are more real, because more abiding, 
 than that which we can see and hear. Well, I 
 think you will admit that the Cause of Con- 
 science must be moral. The distinction between 
 right and wrong must be in my Maker, unless 
 I made myself. And in affirming the moral 
 nature of man, you abolish Pantheism, because 
 you indirectly affirm the moral nature of God. 
 Conscience is imperative, and that very impera- 
 tiveness it has belongs to it as a manifestation 
 of God's will. What can be more imperative 
 than will 1
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 109 
 
 [Suppose we say a manifestation of his nature 
 rather than of his will ?] 
 
 But it is both. It is at once a revelation of 
 his character and of his laAV. Ethics without 
 law is as bad in theology as law without ethics. 
 And so far as conscience is ethical, it is a mani- 
 festation of God's nature in man ; so far as it 
 is law, it is a manifestation of his will. A purely 
 legal system, which would be arbitrary legality, 
 or a purely ethical system, which would put 
 aside all legality and make us in a measure 
 equals to associate with God legal equals 
 are opposite extremes. Both systems lead to 
 atheology. People seldom see the issue of the 
 latter system the purely ethical. But, while 
 it ignores the legal element, it leads to a system 
 of legal equality between God and man, or to a 
 doctrine of which that is the logical end. If 
 the legal is sunk in the ethical, duty vanishes. 
 We may still say it is a beautiful and fitting 
 thing to exercise love to God and man, and the 
 opposite is excessively ugly and unbecoming; 
 but there's an end of it. We cannot call the 
 want of holiness sin and crime. For this we 
 require the legal element. But then the legal 
 is a part of human nature, and jurisprudence is 
 a science. . . . 
 
 [CHRIST: THE TRILEMMA.] 
 
 /CHRIST either deceived mankind by con- 
 ^-' scious fraud, or he was himself deluded 
 and self-deceived, or he was Divine. There 
 is no getting out of this trilemma. It is 
 inexorable.
 
 110 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [Two DOCTRINES OF IGNORANCE.] 
 
 WE may ask ourselves, Is it our duty to 
 philosophise 1 ? If not, we may again 
 ask, Is it our interest 1 For duty and interest 
 may go hand in hand. My philosophising has 
 done me two good things it has exercised the 
 
 faculties, and taught me their limits 
 
 I find that there may be two doctrines of 
 ignorance the one of which may minify, if it 
 does not nullify, the second. The one cuts 
 man off from God hopelessly, and deprives 
 me of my two great texts the first declaring 
 our original (the terminus a quo) " God made 
 man in his own image ; " the second announcing 
 our destination (the terminus ad quern) " the 
 new man, which is renewed in righteousness 
 after the image of Him that created him." 
 But the other doctrine of Ignorance is a lesson 
 on the limits of our faculties, and abases the 
 pride of the intellect. As interpreted against 
 the Pantheist and ultra-ontologist, I am inclined 
 to think that Sir William Hamilton's argu- 
 ments are either true or contain the truth. 
 But I cannot do without transcendentalism as 
 the corrective of anthropopathy ; nor without 
 anthropopathy as the corrective of transcend- 
 entalism. And do you not feel that when you 
 have fully imbibed one great Truth, or phase of 
 the truth, you experience a recoil from it 
 towards what is almost its antagonist error, 
 till at length a middle point is reached not 
 the zero of indifference, but the larger whole, 
 in which extremes are lost ? For example, 
 dwelling on the incommunicable perfections of
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. Ill 
 
 God, you must either allow the thought of 
 them to wither up the intellect, or surrender 
 yourself absolutely to the anthropopathic lan- 
 guage of Scripture, which you feel, while you 
 surrender yourself to it, to be altogether 
 inadequate. You feel that there has been a 
 avyxar apatite in the Scriptures divinely appro- 
 priate to man's nature. And you will find 
 that the common sense of common people 
 generally hits the true medium between tran- 
 scendental notions and a gross anthropopathy. 
 They never think that God has literal eyes, 
 nor that He is only transcendental Substance. 
 Transcendentalism is the denial of that which 
 renders man's knowledge an inferior kind of 
 knowledge. Anthropopathy is the withholding 
 of that which renders God's adorable infinity 
 a superior and distinct thing from man's 
 finity. . . . 
 
 [THE DIVINE MANIFOLDNESS.] 
 
 'T'HERE are innumerable moulds in God's 
 J- world. Why do we coop up Divine 
 grace within narrow man-made channels, and 
 say, this is the way God has worked and will 
 work ] His greatness is noways dipslayed more 
 illustriously than in the spreading out of his 
 gifts in a thousand different ways. There is a 
 manifoldness in his operation that surely per- 
 tains to the beauty of his holiness. 
 
 I 
 
 [WESTERN CHRISTENDOM AND JUSTIFICATION.] 
 T is a significant fact that the whole Western 
 Church lost the doctrine of justification by
 
 112 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 faith, from the Apostles' days to Luther's, by 
 confounding justification with sanctification. All 
 the Fathers knew that we were saved through 
 the cross, but none of them apprehended the 
 grounds of our justification : and thus I think it 
 was that many of them lost peace of conscience. 
 Even Augustine, clear and pellucid as he is as 
 to grace, in opposition to Pelagian merit, con- 
 templates grace in us reigning in our sanctifi- 
 cation. We learn from this great fact that 
 the deepest life of godliness may co-exist with 
 muddled doctrine. But that is no argument in 
 favour of obscurity. 
 
 [USES OF SHALLOW MINDS.] 
 
 I LIKE the clear shallow men sometimes; 
 especially I like to listen to their preach- 
 ing. Even the humdrum theology has its uses. 
 Though there are many things their optics can- 
 not reach to, these good men sometimes clear 
 away morbidity, and they are always to be 
 preferred to the cuttle-fish divines. It is possible 
 to find a luxury in darkness, and a highly subtile 
 kind of self-indulgence may keep many a man 
 away from the light of God and the peace of 
 Jesus Christ. And there is sometimes a be- 
 witching fascination in melancholy. When one 
 is tremendously introverted, " the grieved soul 
 will consolation shun," and the effort to get 
 out of it may be just another phase of it. You 
 then need to have rebuke administered ; and 
 at these times I would not go to hear a genius 
 preach, not even a Chrysostom ; I prefer to 
 listen to very clear and very simple words from
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 113 
 
 one who knows how to " rebuke with all faith- 
 fulness." 
 
 [THE THEANTHROPOS.] 
 
 "I^HE Theanthropos is the centre of all things: 
 * the centre of the Trinity, the central figure 
 in history, the centre towards which the human 
 heart gravitates, and in the heart of man its 
 centre. This elevates man, and proclaims the 
 worth of his original nature. " He took not on 
 Him the nature of angels;" and probably one 
 reason why the angels that fell not were * con- 
 firmed," was that they might be ministering 
 spirits to men. 
 
 [CULTURE, AND THE CHIEF END OP MAN.] 
 
 r*HE cultivation of the human faculties is not 
 * man's chief end. I would say the retention 
 and exertion of all the faculties was the chief 
 end of the unfallen creature. 
 
 [Is that not the same thing?] 
 
 No ; I say retention, because man was made in 
 the image of God, and that was made perfect, all 
 that was necessary was its retention by exercise. 
 
 [But if made perfect, was it not conserved by 
 that very perfectness ?] 
 
 No; nothing but immutability insures that, and 
 immutability is a Divine perfection. In a creature 
 it is a contradiction in terms, and would not be 
 perfection. My Thomism leads me to believe 
 in a perpetually present "gratia" upholding the 
 creature, or the creature's fall Immutability 
 alone insures impeccability, or an eternal pac- 
 tion made by the Immutable, a purpose of God 
 I
 
 114 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 to consen r e. An angel would have no merit in 
 loving the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, 
 mind, and strength, to all eternity; and would 
 grow a devil by pride if he either ceased to do 
 so or claimed any merit for doing his duty ; 
 though to be and to do good are praiseworthy. 
 I distinguish merit from praiseworthiness. Now, 
 we either merit, or we do not. I have no sym- 
 pathy with that cuttle-fish method of affirming 
 and denying the same thing at the same time 
 denying merit ex condigno, and affirming it ex 
 congruo. Rome asserts that we have no merit 
 ex condigno, but affirms it ex congruo, because 
 it says Christ merited that we should merit. 
 
 [But you affirm and yet deny that we have a 
 knowledge of God; you affirm and yet deny 
 that the will is free.] 
 
 As to the first, I affirm that we have 
 a knowledge of one kind, but not of another 
 kind ; but I do not affirm that we have, and yet 
 have not, the same kind of knowledge. As 
 to the second, I affirm that the will is free, while 
 I deny that it is uninfluenced by motives in 
 its free volitions. But Rome asserts that we 
 do not merit, and yet that we do merit. That's 
 a direct contradiction, for it is of the same 
 nature that the thing is first denied and then 
 affirmed. ... As to the end of human 
 action, I say that to cultivate human nature is 
 only a part of it. It is our duty to cultivate 
 the faculties ; but, first of all, it is our duty not 
 to have any sin. The law demands that you be 
 what God made you, and that you perceive you 
 cannot be ; and yet you admit that the law is good.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 115 
 
 My first concern is to get quit of sin, or to 
 know how God has provided for my extrication ; 
 and I defy man or angel to free themselves 
 from guilt without an atonement, and to free 
 themselves from depravity without regeneration. 
 When you have got over these two things, I 
 think we may attend to the cultivation of the 
 faculties. 
 
 [But suppose you broaden the idea of culture 
 so as to include the rectification and readjust- 
 ment of the whole nature, and the increase 
 of its powers to " the measure of the stature of 
 the perfect"?] 
 
 You either cannot, or need not. The with- 
 drawal of its disability, and the removal 
 of its stain, must precede the free use of my 
 nature for the glory of God. And if these 
 are effected, what remains but that I, a being 
 made in God's image, have to love Him and 
 my fellow creatures'? Is not that the sum 
 of it 1 And there's an infinity in Him whom we 
 love supremely, as well as an indefinity in those 
 we must love after Him. There would come a 
 time in eternity when we would be tired of the 
 enjoyment of God, if there was not an infinity 
 in Him ; if there was any bottom to that ocean, 
 or any shore around it. 
 
 [THE ABSTRACT AND THE COKCKETE.] 
 
 THE love of Being in general is a cold and 
 barren kind of love. The generality is 
 too vague to touch the heart : but specify, in- 
 dividualise, and the object becomes visible to 
 the heart, and the command instinct with life,
 
 116 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 and you can love. I cannot comprehend the 
 infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Being, with- 
 out being myself infinite, eternal, and unchange- 
 able ; but I can actively apprehend them with- 
 out being so ; and I can apprehend them uni- 
 tively i.e. apprehend that I am united to that 
 Infinite and Eternal Being. Reason does over- 
 leap itself. 
 
 [You think it goes, per saltum, at one bound, 
 over all barriers, and reaches the Divine, and 
 does not ascend by the steps of a ladder ?] 
 
 A ladder ! There can be no ladder to the 
 Infinite. You are no nearer it at the top of it 
 than at the foot. 
 
 [No ; but we speak in a figure, of the ladder 
 of analogy. And is not Christ our ladder to 
 the Infinite ?] 
 
 Yes ; if we have seen Him, and know Him, 
 we have seen and known the Father also. But 
 there can be no revelation through Him, if we 
 have not first apprehended the Infinite God, as 
 a person. 
 
 [If we look at its moral and spiritual aspects, 
 and not to its historical phenomena, may we 
 not say, that the Incarnation is really the direct 
 ladder to the Infinite ? We may have a ladder 
 in the moral, though not in the intellectual 
 sphere.] 
 
 But how do we interpret the Incarnation 1 
 How do you know that the man Christ Jesus is 
 also God, unless you have first got hold of the 
 Infinite, by the condescension of the Infinite 
 itself? My Bible tells me "no man can call 
 Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost ;" and my
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 117 
 
 philosophy tells me the same, that there must 
 be a spiritual revelation of this fact before it is 
 credited. But it is the great glory of God's 
 Revelation that it has changed our abstracts 
 into concretes ; the infinite existence into the 
 " I am " of the Old Testament the personal 
 Jehovah; the infinite love into the personal 
 Christ ; and Jonathan Edwards could not have 
 done better than translate his philosophical 
 virtue, or, " love of being in general," into the 
 sum of the ten commandments : " Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," etc. 
 I speak to the heart surely when I say, that 
 the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, alone, 
 will not satisfy it. The holy, the just, and the 
 good, are needed. We must concrete our ab- 
 stracts. 
 
 [EXPRESSION OF FEELING.] 
 
 TT is most uncharitable to judge of a man's 
 * reverence by its expression. It may be a 
 mere matter of temperament. The average 
 mind cannot easily be taught to make allow- 
 ances for temperament, because it cannot ap- 
 preciate its opposite types. Now the Saxon 
 character is naturally repressive of emotion. 
 The Celtic is naturally expressive of feeling ; and 
 the different types of the Celt, the French, the 
 Gaelic, the Irish, express their feelings duTer- 
 ently. They are all capable of strong emotion. 
 The Celtic nature is almost never apathetic. 
 But with the Frenchman it becomes " a scene ;" 
 with the Gael, pathos ; with the Irishman, 
 humour, or pathos dashed with humour.
 
 118 COLLOQUIA PEBIPATETIOA. 
 
 [THE HUMOURISTS.] 
 
 I HAVE a great regard for the Humourists, 
 for they are generally men of a tender 
 heart. Both Charles Lamb and Thomas Hood 
 were great men, especially the author of " The 
 Song of the Shirt." He had a good head and 
 a fine heart. That song of his is better than 
 many a sermon I've heard. " Punch," too, is an 
 acute censor, generally right in his castigations ; 
 a censor, but not censorious. When those who 
 should lay the axe to the root of the tree won't 
 do it, Providence raises up a buffoon, who 
 preaches many a most rememberable sermon. 
 
 [CHRYSOSTOM.] 
 
 /CHRYSOSTOM, the rhetorical St. John, had 
 V-^ a curious affinity with the apostle; and 
 in the John of the Gospel he saw the Boanerges. 
 He begins his homilies on John most pictori- 
 ally. " In the beginning was the Word, and 
 the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God." 'Ax.ovaa.re irug figovrifyi, says Chrysostom. 
 Hear how he thunders ! * As Bengel says, at 
 the same place, " This is the thunder brought 
 down to us by a son of thunder." Chrysostom is 
 the Christian Demosthenes. It is worth learning 
 Greek only to read the golden-moUthed John. 
 And what a noble life was his ! There is a dis- 
 solute Byzantium, here is the uncompromising 
 bishop ; and almost daily did he preach in that 
 
 * The only parallel passage I find in Chrysostom is the 
 following : " 77 /J.tv otv (Ipom-i) KaraTrX^rrei rdj Jincrtpas 
 i/*i;X&s Hffypov tx ovffa T V JixW Horn, in Joan. I., 
 2. ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 119 
 
 city those glorious sermons of his. I do not 
 know what the bishops of the East do now, but 
 John Chrysostom was in his cathedral daily, 
 preaching to crowded audiences, and he did not 
 spare the lash, or fear to rebuke court vices. 
 He came down upon the empress, the clergy, 
 and the populace alike. His work was prior to 
 that of Augustine (though they were contem- 
 poraries), and the doctrine of grace in its rela- 
 tion to free will had not yet been fully studied ; 
 and thus, though no Pelagian, in his expository 
 ethics he often talks Arminian-like. But his 
 Christology kept him right. On the person of 
 Christ he speaks out with the voice of a trumpet. 
 At his death he exclaimed, "That's glorious! 
 that's glorious!" clapped his hands, and ven- 
 tured to die. 
 
 [THE FATHERS AND THE FOLIOS.] 
 
 I AM going to read Origen again, carefully, 
 some day, for I don't think justice is 
 clone to him. Philo-Judeeus, Clemens Alex- 
 andrinus, and Origen, were three remarkable 
 Alexandrines. I'm particularly fond of the 
 miscellaneous thinking of the "Stromata" of 
 Clement, and of Tertullian. There are excellent 
 things in Tertullian, but terribly crabbed 
 African Latin. There is far too little study of 
 these men in this age of superficiality. I don't 
 blame the age ; that is always a foolish thing to 
 do. It has its function, and is probably fulfil- 
 ling it. It is an age of diffusion, and theology 
 is becoming popular ; but we must always have 
 a conservative few who take care of the folios.
 
 120 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 A man is not at liberty to live altogether out 
 of his own age in theology ; but when the church 
 catholic has stamped a work with its peculiar 
 seal, all theologians must become familiar with 
 that work. 
 
 [THB RITUALIST AND SECEDER.] 
 *"PHE cultus of the ritualist, and of the old 
 Scotch Seceder, are at opposite extremes. 
 In the one we have the external form, often 
 without the internal spirit. In the other we 
 have the internal element, without the smallest 
 regard to its outward form. But it is the ghost 
 and the body together that make the man. 
 
 [TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE.] 
 
 THE three best translations of the Bible, in 
 my opinion, are, in order of merit, the 
 English, the Dutch, and Diodati's Italian ver- 
 sion. As to Luther's, he is admirable in render- 
 ing the prophets. He says either just what the 
 prophets did say, or that which you see at once 
 they might have said. 
 
 [^ESTHETIC RELIGIONISM.] 
 
 A MEEELY aesthetic religion (such as that of 
 ** Goethe, and all worshippers of the beau- 
 tiful) is a miserable substitute for piety ; and it 
 never stands the tear and wear of time, espe- 
 cially in the midst of great sorrows. It is the 
 offspring of sentiment divorced from law ; and 
 that is an illegal divorce. The want of the 
 legal is a fatal blot in theology, and a practi- 
 cal danger in religion. It will lead to a crude
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 121 
 
 philanthropy, to moonlight views of God's 
 government of the world. It has often led to 
 a hazy latitudinarianism, or, to what is even 
 worse, an exaggerated Antinomian evangelism : 
 great raptures and gross viciousness going 
 together; men thinking that they are so spiritual 
 that with the body they may do what they like. 
 But the sesthetic in religion must not be eradi- 
 cated ; it must be supplemented. 
 
 [How would you counteract its excess 1] 
 By the realisation of the moral in God, and the 
 sense of sin in man the sinner feeling that he is 
 in the presence of a holy God that is the only 
 cure for its exaggerations. ^Esthetic religionism 
 is at bottom the bringing of religion to God, in- 
 stead of bringing the soul to God to get religion. 
 It is thus that men make a God of religion, instead 
 of allowing religion to remain a worshipper of 
 God. Let a man be in the presence of the most 
 beautiful things which the universe contains, or 
 be thrilled by that perfection of moral beauty 
 which Scripture yields him, and then come to God 
 in prayer, and he will find that the beauty he 
 had realised has passed upwards through the 
 sublime, and been lost in the majestic holiness. 
 Is the aesthetic snare still felt ? Well then, God 
 says, There's my Law : " The soul that sinneth 
 it shall die." Bring in conscience. If we lose 
 conscience, we lose dignity : we become pulses, 
 not men. The mere poetry of religion by itself 
 weakens the soul. It is the 33 davy preferred to 
 the aetrJ,. The "Tabula" of Cebes was far 
 better than it. ... And yet there is an sesthesis 
 in all that God does, as well as in all that he is.
 
 122 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 God is an aesthetic being. Let me never forget 
 that fact. The exceeding beauty of the floral 
 world alone proves a certain similarity between 
 the sesthetical nature of man and that of God. 
 And the work of the Son, his very humiliation 
 was beautiful, as well as true, and good. It is 
 fair and lovely exceedingly to look upon. But 
 the pursuit of holiness as so much personal 
 adornment is a very subtile snare. I have been 
 humbled by the detection of it. All such de- 
 tections pain and lancinate the soul. 
 
 [How would you deal with it in another ?] 
 I would say to him, Let the effort to clothe 
 yourself with the raiment of the beautiful be 
 changed into an effort to strip yourself. Humble 
 yourself, and think of the Law. 
 
 [INTOLERANCE.] 
 
 *T"*HE vague cloudy men are always talking 
 * against intolerance. Why, our very calling 
 is to be intolerant ; intolerant of proved error, 
 and known sin. The evil is that we are not 
 intolerant enough, though, at the same time, we 
 are not benevolent enough. A man, however, 
 must have a clear eye and a large heart, before 
 he has a right to be intolerant either towards 
 concrete error or concrete sin. At the abstract 
 he may hit as hard as he likes. Propositions 
 don't feel pain. 
 
 [IDOLATRY.] 
 
 '"PHE fact that everywhere man makes for 
 
 *- himself a God after his own image, is a 
 
 suggestive hint of the counter-truth that God
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 123 
 
 made man in his image. Idolatry is but man's 
 helpless effort to get back to God, in whose image 
 he was made ; a proof of that which Augustine 
 says so well " Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum 
 est cor nostrum, donee requiescat in Te."* 
 
 [THE FALL, AND ITS ANTECEDENT.] 
 
 TV /T AN ever is, and must remain, a volent, or 
 ***- cease to be man. This much is man's 
 indefectible prerogative. Yet this is neither a 
 power of independency, nor is it a liberty of 
 indifferency, though what it is I know not, and 
 therefore cannot define it. Motives always sway 
 the will in every choice and in every volition ; 
 but I won't admit that, given the motives, you 
 can tell the result infallibly, or even that the 
 result is infallibly certain; that, for example, 
 given the temptations of Satan, the fall of Adam 
 was necessary. There is an indefinable power 
 lodged in the will, which is its own causality. 
 It was the abuse of our freedom that led to the 
 fall. But it is not absolute pravity, but de- 
 pravity, that resulted. All would be dark if 
 the former had ensued. A shadow would then 
 run upwards to the very throne of God ; but if 
 the latter be the case, the darkness is only par- 
 tial. Pravity would charge it upon God ; 
 depravity brings it down to man. And thus, 
 though depraved, we are morally responsible. 
 We could not be totally depraved and remain 
 responsible. For, if man became sin, then, sure 
 enough, he would be unsalvable. Christ did 
 
 * Conf. I.
 
 124 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 not die for sin. He could not do that. He 
 died for something deeper than sin. A lady 
 once said to me, " The more I see of myself, I 
 see nothing so properly mine as my sin." I 
 said to her, "Well, you do not see deep enough. 
 There is something far more properly yours 
 than your sin; and your sin is improperly 
 yours. It is a blot in your being, which, if 
 you do not get quit of it, will never cease to be 
 unnatural to you. No ; the image of God is 
 more properly yours, though you had no share 
 in the production of it." Very many pious 
 people do not rise high enough in their anthro- 
 pology. They ascend to the fall, and forget 
 the higher fact that we fell from a height, where 
 we were fitted to dwell, and where we were 
 intended to remain. And Jesus Christ has come 
 that he might raise us even higher than that 
 height, and make us sit in the "super-celestials" 
 with Himself. 
 
 [THE MEAN BETWEEN EXTREMES.] 
 A MAN states a truth which may be one- 
 ** sided. I state its counter-truth, anxious 
 to escape from the one-sidedness of error. It 
 is a strange thing that middle station between 
 opposites. It is more than a juste milieu. It 
 is the key-stone of an arch, which props the 
 two sides ; and, sure enough, it is no contradic- 
 tion, if your juste milieu contradicts the two 
 extremes. The key-stone of an arch is not an- 
 tagonistic to the two sides it supports. Being 
 itself neither the one nor the other, it upholds 
 both.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 125 
 
 [SALVATION OF THE JEWS.] 
 
 T T was necessary that Christ should be a Jew. 
 -* Had He not been of the Abrahamic line of 
 descent, there would have been no connection 
 between the Old and the New Testaments ; and 
 thus alone has He been able to fulfil the whole 
 law. The Adamic is very shadowy without the 
 Abrahamic and the Sinaitic. Christ was a Jew 
 first, a Cosmopolitan afterwards. 
 
 [What is the exact force of Christ's being 
 " made under the law " ?] 
 
 He was made under the whole law of Israel, 
 all law moral, and all law positive, that he 
 might do away with the law ceremonial, and 
 simplify the law moral and the law positive. 
 And, observe, we must all become Jews. That 
 nation retains its hold of the world. There is 
 an Israelitic naturalisation for us all. Salvation 
 is of the Jews ; and metaphorically we must all 
 become Jews i.e. we must enter into the 
 Jewish heritage, and reverence the channel in 
 which all our great blessings have come down to 
 us. Why Christ preferred the humanity of the 
 seed of Abraham no man dare say ; but since he 
 has done so, in this channel flow his gifts to the 
 whole world. We are thus related not only to 
 the God-man, but to the God-man Jew : and 
 hence the abolition in Him of all the obligations 
 of the ceremonial law (and of the moral law as 
 " a covenant of works"), and the admission of 
 Gentiles into the family of Abraham. The 
 Abrahamic humanity being chosen in preference 
 to any other, thereafter, " in thee, and in thy seed, 
 shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
 
 126 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 " If ye be Christ's," said the apostle, "then are 
 ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the 
 promise." ... In the incarnation, Christ took 
 our flesh, that he might give us his spirit : and 
 so, on our becoming Christians, we, in a theo- 
 logical sense, lose our personality, because there 
 is but one ffupa; we have no separate ffupa. 
 But we are the /iiXjj, of which Christ is the 
 xspaX?;. But let us always reverence God's 
 choice of Israel as the channel of our blessings. 
 If Adamic blood flows in all our veins, 
 Abrahamic blood flows spiritually in every 
 Christian's veins. ... It is curious that Jewish 
 pride fastens on the particularism of the promise, 
 and' neglects its universalism; while Gentile 
 pride fixes on its universalism, and ignores or 
 forgets its equally significant particularism. . . . 
 I do not see that the Christian Church is now 
 under the theocratic law of the Jews, in respect 
 even to those things in it which were good for 
 all time, except that it is under the spirit of the 
 ancient law. Take, for example, the tithes of the 
 Jewish Church. We should be restoring the 
 Judaical law, if we insisted on the maintenance 
 of tithes ; and if we restore this, we ought in 
 consistency to restore the whole law. Only it 
 might be argued from the Abrahamic custom, 
 that tithes were patriarchal, and therefore of 
 older date than the judicial law of the nation. 
 But on the other hand, sacrifice, which was also 
 patriarchal, is gone ; because it was typical, and 
 the type has been implemented. It will not do 
 to bring us under bondage to any purely Jewish 
 practice ; while none of us are sufficiently
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 127 
 
 thankful to the Jews, or sufficiently reverence 
 the spirit of Hebrew legislation. ... I re- 
 member when that tenth chapter of Genesis 
 gave me a fortnight's joy. To take the cata- 
 logue of the nations, before their dispersion, was 
 surely a significant fact ; to me it is wonderfully 
 touching. 
 
 [THE POETRY OP THE BIBLE.] 
 "I "HE manifold variety of the Bible is to me 
 * quite as wonderful as its unity. There is 
 scarcely a species of literature not represented 
 in it. There is no order of magnificence, in 
 poetry for example, which we do not find in 
 Isaiah. He is sublimely tender, yet majestically 
 stormy; and in his closing chapters he tyran- 
 nised over the Hebrew language to find words 
 that could give fit expression to his thought ; 
 and yet it often seems to me as if he could not 
 get full justice to himself in that language. Of 
 course he didn't feel this ; and I remember that 
 his words were chosen, and in them a higher 
 than Isaiah spoke. . . . Ezekiel is Carlylian. 
 There's a wild, rugged, and abrupt sternness in 
 Ezekiel. He stands midway between the ma- 
 jestic sublimity of Isaiah, and the elegiacs of 
 Jeremiah. . . . The poetry of the sublime rises 
 to its very highest level in Scripture, because 
 we have the sublimity of form added to the 
 sublimity of the theme. Its subject-matter is 
 the very highest. 
 
 [The poetry of aspiration could never be so 
 high as the poetry of revelation.] 
 
 Never : and the main characteristic of Scrip-
 
 128 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 ture consists in its being a descent, a revela- 
 tion coming to man from God, and not the 
 mere ascent of our nature to His. Yes ; the 
 sublime of Scripture lies in its being from God 
 to man. All else goes from man up to God ; 
 or, up not to God. Simply as poetry, what a 
 reach that is, " Let light be, and light was." It 
 did not escape Longinus, who, because of it, 
 calls Moses ov% o rv^uv avqg* And what is 
 there finer in all secular literature, as poetry 
 alone, than the song of the angels : " Glory to 
 God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill to 
 men " 1 . . . It is a great gift to the Church 
 that psalter of Israel. I never tire of the mag- 
 nificent ancient poetry of the Jews. The way 
 the psalmists speak of Nature is very touching, 
 and their sympathy with the life of lower 
 creatures : " The wild asses drink their fill." 
 It is a grand thing that God appointed such a 
 sentence to be sung in the Christian churches in 
 all time to come. 
 
 [ONTOLOGIA TRIPARTITA.] 
 
 {Substance existing. 
 Qualities subsisting. 
 Relation intersisting. 
 
 All relation arises from a correspondence of 
 qualities in different substances. Hence the 
 whole of teleology. Many relations arise from 
 the congruity of opposites ; and from the unity 
 which pervades the diversity of nature : the 
 unity arising out of the aptitudes of the 
 diverse. 
 
 * irepl vinous, Sect ix. ED.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 129 
 
 [QUERIES IN SIR W. HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY.] 
 " I ^HERE are enough of queries remaining as 
 - to Sir "W. Hamilton's metaphysic, to start 
 this reflection, Has not the best thing that 
 he has done for us heen to help us to put new 
 questions ? To take one instance : he says that 
 " the conditioned is the mean between two ex- 
 tremes, neither of which can be conceived as 
 possible, but of which one must be admitted as 
 necessary." * One of these we must admit to 
 be true, but which are we to choose ? We must 
 take unum, but this doesn't determine uter ? 
 . . . Again, does not the realist doctrine of an 
 immediate perception of matter give a foothold 
 to one claiming an immediate knowledge of 
 God? 
 
 [Scarcely; for in the one case the objects (the 
 infinite and the finite) are disparate ; in the 
 other (mind and matter) they are correlate.] 
 
 But if we have an immediate or presentative 
 knowledge of any substance, this seems to attest 
 the possibility of the Infinite revealing (present- 
 ing) Himself to the finite immediately, though 
 in a finite manner. I maintain that a perceptive 
 knowledge of God is possible to man. 
 
 [In that we speak, of course, through a figure, 
 but we may drop the figure in the moment of 
 perception.] 
 
 It need not be called a figure at all. We 
 
 directly see Him. The pure in heart do so, 
 
 when the eye is couched "The Word was 
 
 made manifest, and we beheld His glory." 
 
 " God, who caused the light to shine out of 
 
 * Discussions. Philosophy of Unconditioned, p. 14. 
 
 K
 
 130 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 darkness, hath shined into our hearts, to give us 
 the light of the glory of God," etc. . . . And 
 is not our nescience of God quite compatible 
 with our intuition of Him ? Our knowledge 
 of the infinite Object may not be adequate, yet 
 true and sufficient ; a " communicatio" due not 
 to man's efforts to rise to God, but to an actual 
 presentation of God to man (gratia). I am a 
 realist in theology. Idealism in philosophy is 
 representationism in theology, and that severs 
 man from his Source. 
 
 [LAW AND GOSPEL.] 
 
 THE Law ordained, " Thou shalt love ; " 
 and love ordained that law. Man could 
 not keep it, and love ordained a gospel ; that 
 gospel is " God so loved." Thus, " Thou shalt 
 love" is the whole of the law ; " God so loved" 
 is the whole of the gospel. That is so clear, 
 that it is at once law and gospel for children and 
 for savages ; but it is so deep in its limpid 
 clearness that no philosopher can fathom it. 
 
 [CBITICISM AND TESTIMONY.] 
 
 PHILOSOPHY and Criticism must correct 
 -*- the crudities of spontaneous thinking. 
 That I admit. But what is to correct the 
 philosophy and criticism ? 
 
 [Itself i.e. a deeper and ever-deepening 
 philosophy and criticism.] 
 
 But where are you to get them 1 Have we 
 not seen an end of all perfection 1 
 
 [If the light that is in us be altogether dark- 
 ness, it's sad, but it is hopeless and helpless.]
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 131 
 
 It cannot be altogether darkness. The eye to 
 receive and recognise the light remains, but we 
 must " come unto the light." You see I hold 
 that a light which we once had, has been put 
 out. Is the doctrine of the fall credible ] Is the 
 fact possible ? If so, what is to be its evidence ? 
 It cannot be consciousness, for it is a fact of the 
 past. If true, it is a historical event, for the 
 proof of which we must fall back upon Testimony. 
 Well, I find this testimony in history, and I see 
 its evidence everywhere ; while nothing that I 
 see contradicts it, and my consciousness confirms 
 it. I, remaining a man, might have much sub- 
 tracted from my nature without losing it ; and 
 I too, remaining a man, might have much super- 
 added to my nature, changing it even unto 
 another image, but only enhancing it. 
 
 [HEGELIANISM.] 
 
 HEGEL'S system is Saturnian. It devours 
 its own offspring. Pure being and pure 
 nothing being identical (Seyn = Nichts and nichts 
 = seyn), philosophy must give up the ghost. 
 Hegelianism is philosophical suicide starting 
 from apotheosis. 
 
 [But as every philosophical error is the dis- 
 tortion of a truth, is not Hegel's doctrine intel- 
 ligible thus far that absolute existence or 
 " pure being," devoid of attributes or manifest- 
 ations, is to us the same as no being, because 
 we can predicate nothing of it ?] 
 
 I do not understand the doctrine that seyn and 
 nichts are identical, and yet that the one passes 
 into and disappears in the other ; the nichts =
 
 132 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 
 
 seyn passes into it, and becomes its icerden (and 
 manifestation ensues) ; and again the seyn = 
 nichts passes back into it (and annihilation takes 
 place). If that differs in any essential from 
 Pantheism, I cannot understand it. I under- 
 stand the Pantheistic theory, and a Sabellian 
 theory of God, but not the Hegelian. All 
 ex-istence is being out of or from God. But 
 is the whole record of the universe only the 
 expiration and the inspiration of the Infinite 
 essence ? You might demonstrate a God after 
 this fashion ; but what sort of a God would he 
 be ? Der ? or Das ? which of the two ? To 
 Hegel the problem of Being is as a problem in 
 algebra; to me it is a supremely moral pro- 
 blem. 
 
 [PHOTOGRAPHY.] 
 
 T S light substantial 1 I think it is. The im- 
 -*- ponderables may be imponderable only to 
 us, because our balances are inadequate. The 
 photographic power of light is a marvellous 
 mystery. But some one has said that every- 
 thing that is done is photographed. In morals 
 that is a truth of great moment, but it is 
 not a high motive to right-doing. The great 
 Photographer records our acts, and preserves 
 the record ; but we must love the right, because 
 it is lovely; and do the right, because of its 
 lovableness. 
 
 [SMOKE SEEN RISING FROM AMIDST TREES.] 
 'TREAT'S finely suggestive of human life. 
 * [Some one remarked, " Yes, like a vapour 
 it vanisheth."]
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIC A. 133 
 
 But that's not what I'm thinking of. It 
 also suggests that there is life there, though- 
 unseen. 
 
 [INTELLECTUALITY minus SPIRITUALITY.] 
 
 T CAN certainly conceive of an intellect which 
 * had no idea of either God or Duty, but 
 could nevertheless understand the relations of 
 things, and could reason syllogistically a mere 
 intellectuality devoid of spirituality. But I 
 can see that this world would not be its proper 
 residence. Analogous to this would be the 
 possession of senses for pure intellection, with- 
 out the accompaniments of pain or pleasure ; a 
 rose and assafcetida might be distinguishable 
 without the attraction or repulsion of their 
 sensations ; and this perception of difference 
 might proceed, not from the form of the objects 
 compared, or any other quality, but from the 
 sensations themselves. 
 
 [But these were supposed to be neutral or 
 colourless.] 
 
 Neutral as to pleasure and pain, but not 
 colourless or undistinguishable in themselves. 
 An eye for the mere form without the beauty 
 of objects, would be a case somewhat analogous 
 to an intellect without a moral sense ; for I 
 think the moral sense resembles the painter's 
 eye, and the musician's ear, in their finer dis- 
 cernments. I do not know whether it would be 
 for the good of the universe that such beings 
 should exist, though I cannot deny the possi- 
 bility of their existence. But certainly they 
 were not meant for this world.
 
 134 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [PROGRESS RELATIVE.] 
 
 T)ROGRESS is altogether a relative term. It 
 *- depends on the point from which a man 
 has set out ; and on whether he is going up the 
 hill or down it. If I begin from Atheism, I 
 have progressed when I become a Pantheist, 
 and I have got a step higher when I am a 
 Theist, though I have a great many steps still 
 to take. But if I begin with being a Christian, 
 and descend to the level of a Deist, the Pan- 
 theist who has come up from beneath is higher 
 than I. It is a terrible thing to have moved 
 from the Rock of Ages, and to be going down- 
 wards. . . . When I am asked what I think of 
 a man's position, in reference to God's truth, I 
 always ask in reply What was it some time 
 ago ] What did he start from ? (of course it is 
 of the man's position as a seeker of the truth, 
 and not of the truth itself, that I am speaking). 
 I want to know if his face is set in the right 
 way, if he is looking toward God, or away from 
 God. You see we are on a solemn journey at 
 all times ; and the direction we are taking is of 
 greater consequence than the point we have 
 reached ; for our journey is an endless one. 
 
 [MAN AND THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE.] 
 
 OTHER sheep I have, which are not of 
 this fold." They are of course the 
 Gentile nations not other beings than men. 
 The latter notion implies a vast misunder- 
 standing of the ends and destinies of this 
 creation, as well as of the Incarnation and
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 135 
 
 Death of the Son of God The wonderfulness 
 of man is forgotten. It is improbable that 
 there is any other race like his. These specu- 
 lations on " more worlds than one " are 
 theologically very vague. I think that many 
 seek for magnitude extensive in the work of 
 Christ, in a considerable measure from not 
 seeing its magnitude intensive. It is no shock 
 to reason that Christ should have come amongst 
 us, when you realise the origin of man. And 
 the manifestation which God has made does 
 not need to be repeated. . . . When I say 
 it's improbable that there is another race like 
 man's, of course all I say is, that it is not at 
 all likely or every way unlikely I don't 
 make dogmatic assertions. But is not the fall 
 of man also intensified by its uniqueness 1 
 .... That is a splendid burst of Edward 
 Irving's on world-despising : " Despise man's 
 world ! The masterpiece of God's creation ! 
 the temple of creation's God ! " I confess I 
 have more sympathy with that sentence than 
 with all Brewster's thousand worlds. Sir 
 David's book is full of rash theology. Whewell's 
 mind is evidently more subdued to a philo- 
 sophical calmness. He keeps his likings and 
 his dislikings out of it. It is clear that the 
 inhabitants of the planetary worlds cannot 
 resemble us. I suppose the question would be 
 whether they might belong to the genus 
 " men," though not of our species, with an 
 intellectual and moral nature resembling man's, 
 and possibly inhabiting material bodies. But 
 we cannot possibly know.
 
 136 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 [SPECULATIVE STUDY.] 
 
 CPECULATIVE study has an essential value 
 ^ at all times. If we are to be freed from 
 error as well as from evil, we must speculate, we 
 must interrogate and ponder ; and having ob- 
 tained answers to our queries, turn our answers 
 into questions again. Speculation makes man's 
 spirit active in a noble sense. It rouses from 
 quiescence. Intellectual torpor is a form of death. 
 
 [FBEE WILL, ETC.] 
 
 THE mystery of the origin of evil is less 
 oppressive to me, both when I look into 
 the nature of sin, and find it to be a privation 
 of good ; and when I discover that the beginning, 
 middle, and end of the Divine plan is to abolish 
 and destroy it for evermore. 
 
 [Does not the gift of free-will contain a 
 partial solution ?] 
 
 How so ? 
 
 [If the will is free, the fall is possible, and 
 the mystery is thrown back into the enigma of 
 free-will.] 
 
 But it does not follow that possibilities must 
 be realised ; or that the creation of possibilities 
 makes the creator answerable for their realisa- 
 tion. God is responsible for the history of his 
 universe, so far as it does not contain free-wills 
 within it, and yet these wills are not cut off 
 from his jurisdiction. 
 
 [Whence comes their freedom of will, if not 
 from God, unless they are God's equals, and 
 creative sources 1] 
 
 The freedom of will proceeds from God.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 137 
 
 God is the source of every free as well as of 
 every determined act ; but he is not the cause 
 of the evil that is in acts, whether free or 
 determined. Because the evil has, strictly 
 speaking, no author. God is the cause of good, 
 of all good, and of good only. 
 
 [Would you say then, that if by two chains 
 let down from Deity you represent on the one 
 hand the sequences of nature, and the other the 
 acts of human wills, the Divine efficiency was 
 equal in both ?] 
 
 Dubito: an electric shock passing through 
 nature is very different from Divine grace acting 
 on human wills. We are clay in the hands 
 of the potter : but the will is not passive clay, 
 and it is not passive when first permeated by 
 the causal power of God. In answer to your 
 question I say, I think not ; but dubito. 
 
 [SCOTCH DIVINES.] 
 
 MANY of our old Scottish divines are deeper 
 men than they get credit for. Some of 
 them belong to the class of the "forgotten philo- 
 sophers;" but, because they were first of all 
 divines, their acute philosophy is overlooked. 
 For example, Gib's essay* in answer to the 
 philosophical necessity of Lord Kames is a most 
 ingenious piece of writing. 
 
 [FACTS AND LAWS IN THEOLOGY.] 
 
 IT is the fashion of our time to decry 
 Systematic Theology, but that is tanta- 
 mount to the dislike of science. 
 
 * Essay on Liberty and Necessity ; a postscript to 
 " Sacred Contemplations," by Adam Gib, Edin. 1786. ED.
 
 138 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 [If the theology be scientific, no one will 
 object.] 
 
 But there is Isaac Taylor ; he would keep us 
 to facts alone, and not allow us to arrange our 
 facts and make science of them by interpret- 
 ation and comparison, and the discovery of 
 laws. 
 
 [Some of the facts won't yield laws, for they 
 are ultimate.] 
 
 Well, it is part of the province of theology 
 to prove that, so far as it is true. 
 
 [And to reverence the facts as greater than 
 the laws.] 
 
 No : the laws are as great as the facts, wher- 
 ever they have been deduced by God-inspired 
 men. And there is a fine analogy between 
 science and theology. A world is made, and 
 science is incipient. A revelation is made, and 
 theology is incipient. You quarry facts, and 
 place them, cut and polished, in the temple 
 of science ; and you gather other facts, and 
 build them into the temple of Systematic 
 Theology. 
 
 [THE ACTS OP THE APOSTLES.] 
 
 E key-note to the book of the Acts of the 
 Apostles lies in the word ijg^aro of the 
 first verse. That jjgaro is not pleonastic. It 
 is the acts "which Jesus began," but has not 
 finished. Therefore, the Acts of the Apostles 
 are still Christ's acts in them, and we might 
 say the same of the acts of those members of 
 the Church which constitute this body.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 139 
 
 [DEFECTIVE CONSCIENCES.] 
 
 TT is curious that some men have a constitu- 
 * tionally weak conscience, and the sphere in 
 which they move tends to weaken it more, if 
 infirm at the first. A litterateur's conscience is, 
 I suspect, a somewhat rare phenomenon. His 
 temptations are almost greater than the law- 
 yer's Comte's fundamental want is the 
 
 want of conscience. If you can conceive a 
 perfect intellection of phenomena without a 
 conscience, that is the attainment of Comte. 
 .... The distinction between condignity 
 and congruity might satisfy a Schoolman's con- 
 science, but it does not satisfy mine. 
 
 [MEMORY.] 
 
 THE marvels of the faculty of memory are 
 inexhaustible. But it is as wonderful 
 that we should ever forget anything, as that we 
 should remember some things. It is surpass- 
 ingly strange how thought A should suggest 
 thought B. We speak of the laws of associa- 
 tion ; but they are only a veil to our ignorance. 
 .... I think that both future reward and 
 future punishment will be largely accomplished 
 by the opening of the floodgates of memory. 
 It is a terrible thought that a man might be left 
 to the agony of his own reminiscence for ever. 
 
 [THE PROLETARIAT.] 
 
 OWEN and Proudhon have a measure of 
 truth in their sociology. Eed republi- 
 canism is not entirely false : but red republi- 
 canism is not the cure for humanity. It is too
 
 140 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 physical Chalmers comes far nearer the truth, 
 in his noble understanding of political and civic 
 economy. The reformatory and ragged school 
 are grand social engines. And it is a good idea 
 that of gathering thieves together ; professional 
 thieves invited to meet with each other, and no 
 honest men admitted. I should like to address 
 a company of thieves. It is strange how, out of 
 the dark abyss, a little flame of the better life 
 will sometimes sparkle up of a sudden; and 
 there are a few grains of wheat usually in the 
 fields that are fullest of tares. I have heard of 
 a professional thief giving a very large dona- 
 tion to a society for the suppression of crime, 
 saying as he sent it, " I am by profession a 
 thief ; but yours is a good society, and deserves 
 the support of all honest men." The homage 
 which the bad give to the principle of goodness 
 is also seen in this, that bad men almost always 
 wish their children to be good. 
 
 [ROUSSEAU.] 
 
 "D OUSSEAU, with his offensive vanity and 
 ** literary pride, had a curious respect for 
 Christ. With a good bit of the devil in him, he 
 believed and trembled. But I believe that he 
 believed that sentence in his vague and cloudy 
 panegyric on Christ to be true : " If the son of 
 Sophroniscus was a hero, the son of Mary was a 
 God." The " faith of the devils " lies latent in 
 many a mind for an emergency. As one prayed 
 when his ship was sinking, " O God, if there be 
 a God, have mercy on my soul, if I have a soul." 
 .... It seems to be a common thing for men
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 141 
 
 to take up religion when sick, or when in peril 
 at sea. I would like to see deeper. into that. 
 Why does our common life hide from us realities 
 which come flashing in upon us in peril ] . . . . 
 In fishermen, as a class familiar with the perils 
 of the deep, there is strong natural religiosity. 
 But in sailors you find the reverse. Furlough 
 in port too often destroys them. 
 
 [PREACHING.] 
 
 T LIKE direct practical preaching, which helps 
 *- me to live as a pilgrim on a journey. Now 
 some preach as if they were telling how to make 
 shoes, instead of making them ; as if they were 
 describing the process of shoemaking to those 
 who want to be shod. They would have their 
 hearers all taught to be capital shoemakers, 
 while you want to be a shoe-wearer. They tell 
 you all about the leather, and the rosin, and the 
 awl ; while it's a rough road for bare feet and 
 cold, that you must traverse constantly. 
 
 [THE UNSAYABLE.] 
 
 TF words gave way, and broke down with 
 *- St. Paul, when he attempted to state the 
 Great Mystery in his inspired words, a fortimi 
 must they break down with us when we are 
 dealing with transcendent truths. Paul said, 
 " It is no more I that do it, but sin that 
 dwelleth in me;" and, " I live, yet not I, but 
 Christ that liveth in me ;" and both of these 
 
 sayings of his touch on the unsayable 
 
 Augustine says, " Let no one ask of me where 
 God was before He created the world. He was
 
 I 
 142 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 Himself Time. He was Himself Space."* This 
 is the nearest approach to saying the unsayable 
 that I know of. But there are two kinds of 
 perplexity. The first arises when the theme 
 itself is slippery as an eel, and glides from us 
 altogether : the second when, in our attempt to 
 solve it, or to grapple with it, it gives out its 
 mystery as if it raised a great cuttle-fish obscurity 
 around it. 
 
 [PANTHEISM. ] 
 
 1\ /T Y supreme answer to Pantheism is a moral 
 *** one, and is based upon the fact of sin. I 
 ask the Pantheist, first, is sin real ? Is it a moral 
 antithesis and discord in man's life ? And then 
 I ask him, is that which involves a discord the 
 outcome of the infinite One ? The forthflow of 
 the one life of the universe must contain no 
 ultimately and irreconcilably jarring elements. 
 Now sin and holiness are antithetic, and you 
 cannot connect them by tracing them back to a 
 common fountain-head. Therefore, I say, the 
 universe has not been evolved. 
 
 [SIN AND GRACE.] 
 
 GOD will neither take the blame of sin, nor 
 alienate or split the praise of grace. 
 
 [THE LORD'S TABLE.] 
 
 HPHE Lord's Table is not ours. We of a par- 
 * ticular sect may fence it round, but we have 
 a duty to the church catholic in respect of inter- 
 communion with our brethren. We must not be 
 schismatical, any more than we may be heretical. 
 * Conf. ix. 16, 40.
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 143 
 
 [POWER OF CHRISTIANITY.] 
 
 THERE is an immense power in Christianity 
 to evoke naturally latent power. There is 
 nothing that I know of so powerful to call out 
 the " mute inglorious Miltons." It gives tongue 
 to them. 
 
 [THE STREAM OF DOCTRINE.] 
 
 T NQUIRE whether or not there is a narrow 
 * stream of Christian doctrine persistent 
 through the ages, though often troubled, and 
 sometimes polluted, and frequently unseen. If 
 so, then I would say this stream had come 
 from the living well. Inquire. 
 
 [" FULFIL YOURSELF."] 
 
 " TZ^ULFIL yourself," is the vague and cloudy 
 * cry of some shallow analysts of man's nature. 
 Fulfil what ? Again I ask, Fulfil what ? Your 
 fallen nature, or the new creature ? The sum- 
 mons to let your nature, whatever it may be, 
 get free play, with all its corrupted instincts, is 
 a summons to pandemonium. Let men start 
 from the v.wvr\ -/.rlffis, and the fulfilment of that 
 is the perfection and completion of man. 
 
 [REVERENT THOUGHT.] 
 
 I'M a thinking being, and I must and will 
 think against Dr. G , and against all 
 
 mankind. But I must and will do it reverently. 
 
 A 
 
 [THE LOGICIAN AND THE 
 
 N architectonic intellect is a magnificent 
 
 endowment. Its function is to arrange
 
 144 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 the materials of knowledge; but it cannot quarry 
 the stones. This the intuitionalist must do. 
 
 [THE EVIDENCES.] 
 
 A FTER all the arguments upon the evidences 
 ** that I have read, all that any man has 
 ever brought forward, and after all that I could 
 bring forward as to my own immediate grounds 
 of belief, though I were to write a volume on 
 the subject, I would feel the whole to be 
 incomplete, without "the inspiration of the 
 Almighty, which gives us understanding." It 
 would be an awful thing to live within a father- 
 less universe. As Abraham Tucker writes of one 
 "He travelled to the utmost outskirts of crea- 
 tion ; he saw the socket where the eye should 
 have been, and he heard the shriek of a father- 
 less universe."* The poetry of religion will not 
 lift a man out of that abyss, and reveal to him 
 a Father in the midst of it. We must come 
 to the moral law, and to the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ. . . . Sin and Death, avarog and 
 
 * Here, as at p. 55, I am inclined to distrust the evi- 
 dence of my notes. I have searched " The Light of 
 Nature" in vain for any sentence resembling this, and 
 suspect the reference is to Eichter, in whose wonderful 
 " Dream of Atheism " the following sentences occur : 
 " I heard only the everlasting storm which no one guides; 
 and the gleaming Rainbow of Creation hung without a 
 Sun that made it, over the Abyss, and trickled down ; 
 and when I looked up to the immeasurable world for the 
 Divine Eye, it glared on me from an empty black bot- 
 tomless eye-socket. . . . And he answered, with stream- 
 ing tears, ' We are all orphans, I and you : We are with- 
 out Father.'" ED.
 
 GOLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. ^145 
 
 . cast two shadows over man in this life, 
 which give the lie to a religion merely of the 
 beautiful. 
 
 [DEATH AND IMMORTALITY.] 
 
 ATH is the severance of things which were 
 once united, and which were meant to re- 
 main united. God is the life of the soul, as 
 the soul is the life of the body; and death 
 spiritual severs the first connection, as death 
 physical cuts the second. But neither of the 
 two is natural ; and as provision is made for 
 the reunion of the former, we might conjecture 
 by analogy that some provision for the latter is 
 in store. We may not ignore the material ele- 
 ment in our prospects of immortality. It makes 
 some difference to a man, if his hopes for the 
 future derive some nourishment from the " piece 
 of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb." I would 
 be inclined to say that a Christianity without 
 that hope wants bone. It may be vital, but it 
 wants the organic skeleton of strength ; while the 
 Christianity that looks too much to it is all bone. 
 
 [THE BIBLICAL AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL.] 
 
 I WOULD say to the theologian, Be biblical 
 first of all; study the biblical, then study 
 the ecclesiastical ; and study the two with the 
 presumption that they are coincident, till you 
 find that they diverge. As the biblical gave 
 birth to the ecclesiastical, surely this presump- 
 tion is justifiable. Many men of the robustest 
 intellects, and of the deepest piety and conse- 
 cration of life, have for centuries been dealing 
 L
 
 146 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 with one Book, and they notably agree in 
 their landmarks. 
 
 [CBEEDS AND CODES.] 
 
 " I ^HE creeds are to me next in value to the 
 -*- Scriptures. Undoubtedly, of all human 
 compositions they are most precious. They are 
 to the student of theology what the juridical 
 codes are to the student of law. 
 
 [Does not the ecclesiastical correspond rather 
 to the commentaries on the codes of statute 
 law?] 
 
 Well, the law student could not get on with- 
 out these commentaries. They enlighten and 
 do not darken the codes. And so does the 
 ecclesiastical cast light upon the biblical. I 
 understand, though I do not sympathise with, 
 the un-ecclesiastical mind ; but I like those 
 who, from the ecclesiastical starting-point, wish 
 to advance farther. 
 
 [THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY.] 
 T DO not think the "development theory" 
 *- offers any very terrible results to the theo- 
 logian, but I maintain it is not scientifically 
 made out. Where is your half-formed geologic 
 man 1 Analogy would lead you to expect that 
 some fossil man, half-made, and in the process 
 of development from the stage immediately 
 below, should exist entombed. Where is he ? 
 Why have we no fossil link 1 There are no exist- 
 ing species which shade into each other by in- 
 sensible degrees. And development could not 
 have gone on as by leaps. So far as scientific
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 147 
 
 evidence has as yet gone, I consider species to 
 be distinct creations. 
 
 [It seems the grander idea, and equally 
 theistic, to suppose development to be the law 
 of the Divine action.] 
 
 How then can we avoid the doctrine of 
 emanation ? 
 
 [Suppose we concede it in things physical, 
 and deny it, on the ground of free will, in the 
 spiritual region 1] 
 
 Of the two, I would rather believe that spirit 
 had emanated from spirit, than matter from 
 spirit. 
 
 [I mean that the material world, being created 
 by God, was left to evolve its own powers of 
 life, according to a " pre-established harmony ;" 
 but that when man appeared a new agency was 
 introduced. He was not developed as to his 
 soul, but as to his body he may have been. 
 Suppose each species to be a new creation, the 
 creation would proceed according to law ; and 
 so development would remain.] 
 
 That is, you put it out at the front door, and 
 take it in at the back. I admit that evolution 
 is not atheistic : but I deny that there is any 
 scientific evidence for it. And I think we should 
 have something better than a guess or a conjec- 
 ture in a matter so weighty. 
 
 [THE SUPERNATURAL.] 
 
 TT is a mistake to say that every common 
 - event is as divine as any miracle could be, 
 because God is necessarily its author. Ordi- 
 nary law and common events are scarcely the
 
 148 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 
 
 signs of monotheism, never of Jehovism. Still 
 less could they be the indices of the incarnation. 
 God's agency is at work in every atom and in 
 each event ceaselessly ; but every event is not 
 so well adapted to be a sign of his working, a 
 signal to man that Jehovah is acting in a special 
 manner, and is communicating somewhat. 
 
 [RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS.] 
 
 TN all religious movements, especially when 
 *- they become excited and widespread, I would 
 insist on family worship being at once estab- 
 lished. Willingness to begin it, and to prefer 
 it to excited meetings, is a good criterion. You 
 approach to the cultus of Rome, if you have no 
 altar in the house. It is an unhuman thing to 
 substitute a daily ministry for the family wor- 
 ship of God ; and daily meetings of many, even 
 for devotion, are not always to be encouraged. 
 I should consider a widespread regard for house- 
 hold worship always a good sign of a community. 
 
 [TRANSCENDENTALISM AND THE FALL.] 
 T CANNOT part with my transcendentalism ; 
 * but the mere transcendentalist would rob 
 me of that which is most precious, the ffwyxard- 
 Paffis of Scripture diction. God is only realis- 
 able by the manifestations He has made of Him- 
 self, in word and in deed, and it is a, suggestive 
 thought that if God were nameless he could not 
 be loved. . . . We are bound reverently to 
 inquire in God's temple (and we need not care 
 whether we always enter by the gate called 
 Beautiful, or no) ; yet we come to a point where
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 149 
 
 we must pause before the Divine mysteries, and 
 simply adore them ; while there is a fine modesty 
 that postpones many questions till we have 
 passed the judgment-seat. 
 
 There is something in the idea that the Fall 
 was a prophecy of the Incarnation (though it 
 tends to a mystic supra-lapsarianism). It is not 
 entirely true, but there is something in it. But 
 the controversy between supra- and infra-lap- 
 sarianism is beyond our power to determine. 
 As speculative systems, the former accords most 
 with the reason, the latter with the heart and 
 feelings. 
 
 [PKIDE.] 
 
 A VERY usual way for God to bring down 
 ^"*- the lofty, whether in Church or State, is 
 to allow them to dig a pit, and then to fall 
 therein. 
 
 [CALVINISM AND UNIVERSALISM.] 
 " I ^HERE is a point at which Calvinism and 
 * Universalism are one. They have a com- 
 mon principle, or rather there is a principle in 
 Calvinism, which, if it is contemplated exclu- 
 sively, leads of necessity to Universalism ; and 
 that " is the exceeding great love wherewith He 
 hath loved us." If we start from that, and 
 take nothing but that ; if we do not take God's 
 sovereignty along with it, we are inevitably 
 Universalists. But we must combine it with 
 sovereignty and freedom. That exceeding great 
 love contains all that is common to Calvinism 
 and Universalism. Since God loved us, after 
 our revolt, if he did nothing more, a universal
 
 150 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 amnesty would have been proclaimed. And we 
 neither diminish the fact of the universal love, 
 nor forget the fact of his sovereignty. But it is 
 curious to me that the Arminian theology seems 
 to provide for the possibility of a perpetual 
 refusal on the part of man, and rushes into the 
 very snare it seeks to escape. ... It may 
 also be said to be a bribe to procrastination ; for 
 if we have the power to turn round at any time, 
 why should we be in a hurry about it ? 
 
 [Because delay makes the act more difficult, 
 through the force of habit the other way.] 
 
 But we have the more powerful lever who 
 assert that the act is impossible at any time 
 without the %g/s, which is always at hand. 
 
 [Still, if that is available at any time, the 
 systems are balanced.] 
 
 No : because no man may presume upon its 
 bestowment, or claim it as a right, or complain 
 if it be withheld. As to the action of the will 
 in our renewal, I maintain that the rb QtXttv is 
 wholly man's, the ev'egyeia, is altogether God's. 
 So far as I have any system about it, it rests on 
 these two grounds 1st, That a being created 
 perfectly good, and maintained so up to this 
 instant, does not, for all that, in matters of duty 
 necessarily act well ; that he needs supernatural 
 grace : and 2d, That this grace is sovereign. 
 The propositions that grace is necessary, and that 
 it is sovereign, sum up my belief regarding it. 
 
 [DEVIL-WORSHIP. ] 
 
 HPHE devil-worship of the East is not worship 
 *- but fear; and founded in part on the
 
 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETIGA. 151 
 
 tradition of the Persians, that he is a banished 
 courtier, who may be restored by and by, though 
 at present in disgrace ; and that it is well, on 
 the whole, to be on good terms with him ! 
 
 [THE PELAGIAN AND THE AEMINIAN.] 
 A LL that is in God is in Him infinitely. Hence 
 ^*- it is that there is no prosopolepsy (respect 
 of persons) in Him. And hence the difference 
 between the Divine and human will, indepen- 
 dency being inconsistent with the nature of 
 human will, and predicable only of the Divine. 
 Hence also the irrestrictive freedom of grace. . . . 
 It is difficult to define the exact shade of differ- 
 ence between the Semi-Pelagian and the Armi- 
 nian. Semi-Pelagianism, as I take it, affirms the 
 power of nature, with the aid of universally vouch- 
 safed grace, to effect renewal. The Arminianism 
 of Arminius himself, of Curcellseus, and of 
 Wesley (though not of Episcopius), affirms that 
 no irregenerate man can do that which is spirit- 
 ually good unless the Divine Spirit aids him. 
 But both systems are synergestic. There is a 
 difference, however, between an Arminianising 
 Calvinist and a Calvinising Arminian. 
 
 [NEED AND LOVE.] 
 
 DOES need or love draw most 1 I think need; 
 though at the bottom of it you generally 
 find a grain or two of love. 
 
 I 
 
 [CHRIST'S ERRAND INTO THE WORLD.] 
 ASK, What was Christ's errand into the 
 world? For surely our errand into the
 
 152 COLLOQUIA PERIPATETICA. 
 
 world must be deeply connected with his. And 
 I often think of that saying of his, " It is more 
 blessed to give than to receive," in connection 
 not only with our duty to others, but with our 
 duty to Him. We must not only imitate Him, 
 we must concede to Him this superior blessed- 
 ness of giving to us. And the noblest thing 
 a man can do is just humbly to receive, and 
 then to go amongst others and give. I've not 
 been able to give much. It's because I have 
 received so little. And if there is anything in 
 which I would be inclined to contradict Him, 
 it would be if I heard Him say, " Well done, 
 good and faithful servant."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A FATHERIESS UNIVERSE, 144. 
 Abrahamic humanity, 126. 
 Adiaphora, 61. 
 .ffisthetical religion, 71, 120, 121, 
 
 122. 
 
 A'Kempis, 14. 
 
 Alexandrine theologians, 119. 
 Angels, 40. 
 Anselm, 9, 10. 
 Anthropopathy, 111. 
 Antinomianism, 29, 30, 70. 
 Apollos, 59. 
 Aquinas, 31. 
 Aquinas' hymn on the Eucharist, 
 
 57. 
 
 Arianism, 12. 
 Aristotle, 23, 24, 57, 66. 
 Arminianism, 29, 30, 92, 150, 151. 
 Athanasius, 10. 
 Athanasianism, 101, 104. 
 Atonement, 16. 
 Atonement in fact and in theory, 
 
 87. 
 
 Augustine, 9, 10, 17, 112. 
 Augustine and Calvin, 38, 39. 
 Augustinian theory of evil, 3, 4, 
 
 6, 29, 46. 
 
 BELLARMINE, 18. 
 Berkeley, 66. 
 Biblical concrete, 71. 
 Biographies, three, 73. 
 Bradwardine and Twisse, 42. 
 Buchanan (George), 14. 
 
 CALVTN, 9. 
 
 Calvin and Augustine, 38, 39. 
 Calvinism, 9, 87, 92. 
 Calvinism and Universalism, 149. 
 
 Campbell, George, of Aberdeen, 
 
 27. 
 
 Carlyle, 52, 56. 
 Catalogue of nations, 127. 
 Causal nexus broken, 5, 7. 
 Cause of conscience, 109. 
 Character of Christ, 100. 
 
 harity, 11. 
 Christ, 109. 
 3hrist a Jew, 125. 
 Christ's errand into the world,151. 
 
 hristian communities beyond 
 Christendom, 52. 
 
 hristianity and anti-ehristian- 
 
 ity, 43. 
 
 ihrysostom, 118, 119. 
 
 hurch in the house, 60, 148. 
 
 llark's, Adam, style, 55. 
 Classification of sciences, 72. 
 Clear shallow men, 112. 
 Coleridge, 54. 
 Communion with God, 70. 
 Compensation for heresy, 14. 
 Concession, 70. 
 Concrete and abstract, 117. 
 Condemnation of sin, 83, 84. 
 Confidence in human nature, 97. 
 Conscience, 95, 121. 
 Conscience and the Atonement, 
 
 86. 
 
 Consciences, defective, 139. 
 Consider the lilies, 36- 
 Controversialists, 70. 
 Cornelius, 85. 
 Creation, 22. 
 Creed within a creed, 8. 
 Creeds and Codes, 146. 
 Culture, 113, 115. 
 
 DEATH, 145. 
 Deicide, 77. 
 Deism, 49, 96. 
 Design, 22. 
 Despotism, 53.
 
 154 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Development theory, 146. 
 Devil-worship, 150. 
 Devil's faith, 140. 
 Divine manifoldness, 111. 
 Divine mysteries, 148. 
 Divine personality, 75. 
 Divine power, 45. 
 Divine sovereignty, 90. 
 Divorce, 81. 
 
 E 
 
 EARLY CHRISTIANS, 9. 
 Eclecticism, 13. 
 Edwardean ethics, 95. 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 41, 117. 
 Edwards' necessitarianism, 28,29. 
 Elizabethan English, 55. 
 Emanation, 147. 
 English poets and prose-writers, 
 
 54-56. 
 
 Erasmus, 14. 
 Ethicism, 43, 44. 
 Evidence of testimony, 78. 
 Evidence of the Fall, 131. 
 Evil, 48. 
 
 Evil, causeless, 6. 
 Evil, malitia, 5. 
 Evil, privative, 4, 47, 99. 
 Expression of feeling, 117. 
 Evolution, 142. 
 
 P 
 
 FACT and law, 137. 
 
 Facts, 12. 
 
 Faith and knowledge, 20. 
 
 Family worship, 143. 
 
 Fenelon, 35. 
 
 Ferrae on Epistle to the Romans, 
 
 72. 
 
 Fervour, 74. 
 Foster, John, 71. 
 Free-will, 29, 30, 90, 93, 123, 136, 
 
 151. 
 
 French writers, 56. 
 " Fulfil yourself," 142. 
 
 G 
 
 GENERALITIES worthless, 115. 
 
 Ghosts, 40. 
 
 God and Creation, 49, 51. 
 
 God an aesthetic being, 121. 
 
 God's agency, 148. 
 
 Gospels and Epistles, 44, 45. 
 
 Grace, resistible and irresistible, 
 
 35. 
 Gratia, 47. 
 
 H 
 
 HADES, 33. 
 Halyburton's life, 73. 
 Hamilton's, Sir William, philo- 
 sophy, 25, 26, 129. 
 Hegelianism, 131. 
 Heresy, 37. 
 
 Historical evidence, 78. 
 Hood, Thomas, 118. 
 Humdrum theology, 112. 
 Hume, David, 67. 
 Hymns, 13, 57, 60, 61. 
 
 IDOLATRY, 122. 
 
 Ignorance and nescience distin- 
 guished, 26, 110. 
 
 Image of God, 34. 
 
 Image-worship, 40. 
 
 Immortality, 145. 
 
 Incarnation, the, 149. 
 
 Individuality, 15. 
 
 Infinite, perilous knowledge of, 65 
 
 Infinity of God, 151. 
 
 Innate notion of God, 68. 
 
 Intellectuality minus spiritu- 
 ality, 133. 
 
 Internal evidence, 79. 
 
 Intolerance, 122. 
 
 Intuitions, 76. 
 
 Isaiah, 127. 
 
 JANSENISM and Calvinism, 35. 
 
 Jehovism, 95. 
 
 Jewish and Gentle pride, 126. 
 
 Jewish psalter, 128. 
 
 Jewish theocracy, 53. 
 
 Jewish tithes, 126. 
 
 Judaism a deposit, not a growth, 
 
 80. 
 Justification and sanetification, 
 
 82, 83, 112. 
 
 K 
 
 KANT, 88. 
 Kantism, 88. 
 Kant's ethic, 108. 
 Knowledge of God, 63. 
 Knowledge of God in the Son, 75. 
 Knowledge of God, perceptive, 
 
 129. 
 Knowledge of the Infinite, 25. 
 
 LADDER to the infinite, 116.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 155 
 
 Landmarks of theology, 10. 
 
 Law and ethic, 10T, 109. 
 
 Law and gospel, 130. 
 
 Law, ceremonial, 82. 
 
 Law, its origin, 107, 108. 
 
 Law, judicial, 82. 
 
 Law, moral, 81. 
 
 Law, William, the mystic, 73. 
 
 Laws of nature, 98. 
 
 Leighton, Archbishop, 35. 
 
 Leasing, 35, 36. 
 
 Liberty, necessity, contingency, 
 
 28. 
 
 Liberty of independency, 93. 
 Liberty of indifference, 93. 
 Life, unseen, 133. 
 Liturgies, 33, 34. 
 Logos, the eternal, 96. 
 Luther, 9, 11. 
 Luther and Melancthon, 27. 
 
 M 
 
 MAN and the physical universe, 
 
 134, 135. 
 Man's indefectible prerogative, 
 
 123. 
 
 Manichseism, 4, 7, 51. 
 Hansel's doctrine of nescience, 
 
 51, 62, 64. 
 
 Melancholy, its fascination, 112. 
 Memory, 139. 
 Merit, 18. 
 
 Merit and demerit, 88. 
 Merit of condignity and con- 
 
 gruity, 114. 
 
 Metaphysics, value of, 93, 95, 135. 
 Miracle, 147. 
 Missale Romanum, 18. 
 Monism, 107. 
 
 Monotheism of Scripture, 101. 
 Moral identity, 51. 
 Moral philosophers' function, 
 
 100. 
 
 MoreU, 28. 
 
 Muddled doctrine, 112. 
 Miiller, Julius, 3, 6. 
 Mystery of Godhead, 105. 
 Mysticism, 74. 
 
 N 
 
 NATURAL and supernatural, 78, 
 
 109. 
 
 Natural Theology, 62-66. 
 Neoterism, 9. 
 
 Nescience, doctrine of, 26, 110. 
 New Testament features in Old 
 
 Testament men, 59. 
 
 Newman, J. H., 35. 
 Noumena and phenomena, 108. 
 
 ONTOLOOIA tripartite, 128. 
 Opposite errors, 27. 
 Optimism, 11, 17, 48. 
 Origen, 119. 
 
 Origin of evil, 3, 32, 136. 
 Owen, John, 19. 
 
 PANTHEISM, 22, 96, 142. 
 
 Personality of God, meaning of, 
 102, 103. 
 
 Person of Christ and Catholi- 
 cism, 58. 
 
 Peter the Great, 53. 
 
 Philosophical scepticism, 1, 2. 
 
 Philosophy and the philosophies. 
 66. 
 
 Philosophy indebted to theology, 
 2, 20, 32. 
 
 Philosophy of Theism, 62-70. 
 
 Philosophy, uses of, 20, 21, 32, 
 130, 135. 
 
 Photography, 132. 
 
 Physical law, 108. 
 
 Plato, 21, 23, 24. 
 
 Platonists, 21. 
 
 Plymouthism, 75. 
 
 Poetry of aspiration, 127. 
 
 Polycarp, 9. 
 
 Postures in worship, 61. 
 
 Power of Christianity, 143. 
 
 Practical preaching, 141. 
 
 Pravity and depravity, 123, 
 
 Predestination = free-will, 94. 
 
 Presbyterianism, 75. 
 
 Pride, 149. 
 
 Primitive church, 9, 60. 
 
 Problem of being, 49. 
 
 Progress, 8, 20, 14& 
 
 Progress relative, 134. 
 
 Propterty, 31. 
 
 Protestant dissent, 80. 
 
 Punch, 118. 
 
 QUERIES in Haniiltonianisra, 129. 
 
 R 
 
 RAMMOHUN ROY, 53. 
 Reason and faith, 62. 
 Reid and Berkeley, 66, 67. 
 Reidism, 2, 63. 
 Relativity of knowledge, 68.
 
 156 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Religious movements, 148. 
 Bemigius, 10. 
 Responsibility, 90, 91, 123. 
 Ritualist and Seceder, 120. 
 Rousseau, 140. 
 Rutherford, Samuel, 4, 6. 
 
 S 
 
 SABELLIANISM, 101, 103-105. 
 
 St. James, 44. 
 
 St. John, 45. 
 
 St. Paul, 43, 44. 
 
 St. Paul at Athens, 20. 
 
 Salvation of Jews, 125. 
 
 Satan, 39. 
 
 Sceptics and evidence, 2, 3. 
 
 Scientific mind and conscience, 
 
 76. 
 
 Scotch communion office, 18. 
 
 Scotch divines, 137. 
 
 Scotch sects only parties, 38. 
 
 Scotch paraphrases, 13, 61. 
 
 Semi-Pelagiariism, 151. 
 
 Sextus Empiricus, 3. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 55. 
 
 Sin and crime differ, 81. 
 
 Sin and death, 48, 144. 
 
 Sin and grace, 142. 
 
 Sincerity, 90. 
 
 Singing of prose, 60. 
 
 Sistine music, 61. 
 
 Speculative philosophy, 96, 110, 
 136. 
 
 Spirit and form, 120. 
 
 Spiritual galvanism, 92. 
 
 Stereotyped conversion, 85. 
 
 Stone at Buda, 41. 
 
 Stream of doctrine, 143. 
 
 Supernatural, the, 78, 147. 
 
 Synergia, 29. 
 
 Synthetic unities, 14. 
 
 Systems of theology, 37. 
 
 Systematic theology, vulgar aver- 
 sion to, 137, 138. 
 
 TE DEUM, 17. 
 
 Teleology, 128. 
 
 Tests of inspiration, 79. 
 
 The Aristotelic, 57. 
 
 The biblical, 145. 
 
 The Creed, 29. 
 
 The ecclesiastical, 145. 
 
 The Fall, 48, 99, 149. 
 
 The Fall, and its antecedent, 123. 
 
 The Gospel, 17. 
 
 The Humourists, 118. 
 
 The Intuitionalists, 144. 
 
 The juste milieu, 124. 
 
 The legal and ethical, 42, 109. 
 
 The Logicians, 143. 
 
 The Lord's Table, 142. 
 
 The moral in God, 121. 
 
 The present Age, 73. 
 
 The Theanthropos, 113. 
 
 The Theocracy, 81. 
 
 The unsayable, 141. 
 
 Theanthropology, 33. 
 
 Theology underprops philosophy, 
 
 2, 21. 
 
 Tidal waves of blessing, 38. 
 Transcendentalism, 111, 148. 
 Translations of the Bible, 120. 
 Truth, and search for truth, 35. 
 
 U 
 
 ULTRA-PROTESTANTISM, 83. 
 
 Union with Christ, 82. 
 
 Unity between the Father and 
 
 the Son, 100. 
 Unity with the race, 15. 
 Universal truths, 68, 69. 
 Universalism and Calvinism, 149. i 
 
 VARIETY of the Bible, 127. 
 Vicariousaess, 88. 
 Vocabulary of religion, 71. 
 Voltaire, 56. 
 
 W 
 
 WONDERFULNESS of man, 134. 
 Word-fanciers, 57. 
 Wordsworth, 53. 
 
 ZOROASTRIANISM, 7. 
 
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