n i 
 
 i 
 
 A.V.C.RHUIZING
 
 /f 
 
 7
 
 A UT HORITY 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF AUTHORITY IN LIFE 
 
 AND ITS RELATION TO LEGALISM 
 
 IN ETHICS AND RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 A. v. C. P. HUIZINGA 
 
 Author of "Belief in a Personal God" 
 "The American Philosophy Pragmatism" 
 " The Authority of Might and Right," etc. 
 
 " Without authority the objective norm of truth and value 
 and faith repose in it as our immediate standard life could 
 not well be lived. Is it not strange, therefore, that those who 
 are willing slaves to the idols of our day should clamor for free- 
 dom from all restraint, and raise an outcry against all legitimate 
 authority ?' 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 1911
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH <S- COMPANY
 
 TO 
 DR. FRANCIS L. PATTON 
 
 PRINCETON'S ABLE AND INSPIRING 
 DEFENDER OF THE CALVINISTIC FAITH 
 
 THESE PAGES ARE GRATEFULLY 
 INSCRIBED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In the following pages is presented a general 
 survey of the subject of authority. The author 
 has gone afield to bring out authority's func- 
 tion in life with special reference to legalism in 
 ethics and religion. Law brooks no interfer- 
 ence. Though God's law needs no vindication 
 by the evidence of impending penalties and re- 
 wards, its vindication is written upon the heart 
 of man with unmistakable anticipations. Hu- 
 man law and prevailing custom require con- 
 formity by force. This outward conformity, 
 however, pre-supposes at least the capacity, 
 and the law aims at a willingness of the 
 individual to follow its prescribed course or rule. 
 This is done on authority, in faith. We believe 
 in the thing prescribed, recommended, enjoined. 
 The community as a whole endorses the regula- 
 tions in force over its individuals or members. 
 It is not a matter which is reasoned out, or ra- 
 tionally justified. It is done for us, we accept 
 its right, recognize its authority, we believe, we 
 exercise faith. 
 
 This is individual activity, operating in so- 
 ciety, it has metaphysical implications, and its
 
 PREFACE 
 
 highest sanctions are found in the theological 
 sphere. In the first part of this volume are 
 especially treated the psychological and socio- 
 logical; in the second part, the metaphysical and 
 theological aspect of authority. 
 
 The discussion, moreover, has special refer- 
 ence to the present trend of theological opinion. 
 Quotations are numerous, though they are used 
 as illustrations rather than as authority. Still, 
 the weight of expert opinion, of course, may be 
 used as corroborative evidence in argument. If 
 this essay does not convince, it may at least 
 clarify some notions regarding the subject; or, 
 better still, it may occasion abler scholars to give 
 it deserved attention. For one thing is certain: 
 Authority must become the most vital question 
 for an age which rightly or wrongly tends to 
 challenge its established forms. 
 
 A. v. C. P. HUIZINGA.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY i 
 
 II. CHURCH AND STATE 12 
 
 III. MORAL AUTHORITY 38 
 
 IV. MORAL OBLIGATION 49 
 
 V. THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN LAW ... 55 
 
 VI. ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND FREEDOM OF 
 
 CONSCIENCE 62 
 
 VII. LEGALISM IN MORALS AND RELIGION . . 71 
 
 VIII. INDIVIDUAL WILL 83 
 
 IX. AUTHORITY AND PHILOSOPHY .... 89 
 X. PHILOSOPHIES OF THE DAY AND REVEALED 
 
 AUTHORITY 96 
 
 PART II 
 METAPHYSICAL AND THEOLOGICAL ASPECT 
 
 XI. INDIVIDUALISM AND LEGALISM .... 107 
 XII. SABATIER'S VIEW OF AUTHORITY . . .113 
 
 XIII. HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE STATE AND AU- 
 
 THORITY 124 
 
 XIV. AUTHORITY AND FACT 136 
 
 XV. BIBLE AUTHORITY 143
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVI. AN OBJECTIVE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY . 167 
 XVII. PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY . . . .17? 
 
 XVIII. FAITH AND AUTHORITY 186 
 
 XIX. KANT ON AUTHORITY 195 
 
 XX. MATERIALISTIC TENDENCIES AND RITSCH- 
 
 LIANISM 201 
 
 XXI. SCIENCE AND FAITH 212 
 
 XXII. PRAGMATISM SUBVERSIVE OF AUTHORITY . 221 
 
 XXIII. SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 233 
 
 XXIV. NEEDS AND UTILITY 245 
 
 XXV. THE SOURCE AND GUARANTEE OF AU- 
 THORITY . ... 261
 
 PART I 
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND 
 SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT
 
 CHAPTER I 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 
 
 It was quite characteristic of our age, and cer- 
 tainly of the gathering assembled, when Dr. 
 George A. Gordon raised a storm of approving 
 applause at the International Congress of Re- 
 ligious Liberals held in Boston, September 22-27, 
 1907, with the remark "The loss sustained by 
 the Christian world through the reign of author- 
 ity is incalculable." It is said on every hand 
 that for a true development of the inner life, one 
 may not be subject to any outward restraint. 
 We must strike out along our own lines, not 
 walk by chalk-marks, but according to our own 
 nature. We are to be true to our own selves. 
 Inasmuch as we ourselves are the acting party in 
 all things, we are not to be determined by arbi- 
 trary directions. The very idea of personality, 
 of responsibility, of private initiative, of indi- 
 vidual significance, the entire personal equation, 
 opposes itself to any pressure of external re- 
 straints. 
 
 In ethical theories this individualism is repre- 
 sented in the pleas for self-realization. The 
 vague notion of self-realization, however, can
 
 2 AUTHORITY 
 
 hardly become the basis of social relations and 
 morals, if conceived according to the phrase 
 which proclaims "society versus the individual," 
 and always insists that corporate society is to a 
 large extent incommensurable with personal in- 
 dividuality. There is no allowance made for in- 
 ter-determination, that the individual may be de- 
 termined as well extrinsically as intrinsically; 
 and again that these determinations sustain the 
 closest relation each to the other is left out of ac- 
 count. The atomistic conception of the indi- 
 vidual is insisted upon. It has been said that 
 this "mere individual" is an abstraction of logic, 
 with which philosophy has burdened the world. 
 It is, however, more correct to maintain that the 
 notion of the isolated, separate individual has 
 become persistently prominent in popular views. 
 Professor James H. Tuft says in "The Indi- 
 vidual and His Relation to Law and Institu- 
 tions": "It is the merit of Hobbes to have set 
 the individual in the forefront of discussion, and 
 to have used him as the indispensable agency for 
 the authorization of power." Hobbes' self, how- 
 ever, is the self of war in which interests are ex- 
 clusive, not the self of commerce in which they 
 are mutual. Thus his self is not bound to the 
 fellow individuals by anything except the civil 
 authority, which by its police-duty calls out our 
 individualistic ethics in conformity with it.
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 3 
 
 There is, however, an essentially social setting of 
 the individual life. However much the abso- 
 lutely personal element is centered in every in- 
 dividual, however unique and one's own, yet each 
 man realizes his personality among men as a so- 
 cial being. The ethical and religious contents 
 of man's life have been developed and have 
 taken form historically in social relations. 
 Saint Simon says: "Humanity is a collective be- 
 ing which develops. It has grown from gener- 
 ation to generation as a single man grows in 
 successive years." (L'humanite est un etre col- 
 lectif qui se developpe. Get etre a grandi de 
 generations en generations comme un seul 
 homme grandit dans la succession des annees.) 
 Condorcet expresses the same thought when he 
 says: "The material and moral evolution of so- 
 cieties forms a long and indissoluble chain to 
 which the successive generations incessantly add 
 links." (L'evolution materielle et morale des 
 societes forme une longue et indissoluble chaine 
 a la laquelle les generations successives ajoutent 
 sans cesse des anneaux.") 
 
 In modern literature the individual claims are 
 prominently brought forward, and their indul- 
 gence advocated at the expense of traditional so- 
 cial restraints. "Self-realization" figures large 
 as a motto in modern realism. Love overrides 
 law. Even the passions should know no re-
 
 4 AUTHORITY 
 
 straint. Insistently is dwelt on things as they 
 are. With the Christian in weakness is 
 strength; in realism its strength is its weakness, 
 in that its passion for reality discards idealism 
 to the extent of leaving us in a mass of dis- 
 ordered, conflicting facts, the most faithful por- 
 trayal of which will create only the most jarring 
 discord. Whatever claims, therefore, the realis- 
 tic schools may make as representative of an aes- 
 thetic appreciation of life, it must be firmly 
 maintained that they fail of that harmony which 
 is required by the beautiful, just as they fail in 
 that right proportion and emphasis which is re- 
 quired by the truth. 
 
 Authority always involves a ruling principle 
 which subjects the individual to its regulations, 
 though this need not necessarily involve the sup- 
 pression of his natural functions. 
 
 Liberty is a negative idea which denotes the 
 absence of restraint. It cannot, therefore, be 
 an aim in itself. It may be fully realized in the 
 experience of the individual when he finds him- 
 self entirely in accord with the codified, larger 
 experience of society. Such a condition would 
 exclude the possibility of conflict, and legislation 
 ab extra would be superfluous. But this is prac- 
 tically inconceivable either in single cases or 
 among any people in general. On this account 
 the dreams of anarchistic societies, which would
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 5 
 
 dispense with all laws, are purely ideal and could 
 be realized only at the very end of social prog- 
 ress. As an attainable social state, they are 
 indeed "diablement ideal." 
 
 It is equally evident, however, that neither 
 laws nor governing bodies can be considered as 
 ends in themselves, since they are simply a kind 
 of tangible, objective medium of adjustment be- 
 tween the single, individual life and the corpo- 
 rate wisdom of longer and larger experience. 
 As Fichte well remarked: 
 
 "The state will ultimately end as will all human insti- 
 tutions which are merely means ; the aim of all govern- 
 ment is to make government superfluous." ("Der 
 Staat geht, wie alle menschliche Institute, die blosse 
 Mittel sind, auf seine eigene Vernichtung aus ; es ist 
 der Zweck aller Regierung, die Regierung iiberfliissig 
 zu machen.") 
 
 The alleged antithesis between individual life 
 and social authority is as unwarranted as are the 
 extreme claims for, and emphasis on their re- 
 spective positions. The customary antitheses 
 that we meet in every- day life tend to cause a 
 certain one-sidedness which emphasizes one view 
 at the expense of the other. The reaction from 
 the old conception of "mankind in general," to 
 which corresponded a "typical man," has left us 
 only an aggregate of individuals. From the
 
 6 AUTHORITY 
 
 fact that we do know social morality as an ob- 
 jective code of observance (as public opinion, 
 etc.) only from the individuals which constitute 
 society, it has been wrongly inferred that the 
 single individual by himself exemplifies the func- 
 tions of man as in society; for, as Enrico Ferri 
 says, "in psychological phenomena the union of 
 several individuals never yields a result like that 
 which one would expect from the sum of them 
 severally." 
 
 In a time of thorough sociological and psycho- 
 logical study the capitalized and transmitted ex- 
 periences and their unceasing re-actions upon the 
 individual life are investigated. Thus we make 
 use of such expressions as "social mind," "col- 
 lective consciousness," "national spirit," "Zeit- 
 geist," "public opinion," "conventionality," 
 "folk-psychology," all of which are metaphors; 
 pregnant meanings which cannot be explained 
 by the phenomena of individual psychology. 
 Of course the individual's consciousness is 
 affected by the relation he bears to others. Pro- 
 fessor Baldwin observes rightly, "Modern 
 psychology as well as studies in religion and so- 
 ciology demonstrate the interdependence of in- 
 dividual and society," but "in ethical (and re- 
 ligious) judgments the social sanction is admin- 
 istered by the individual conscience." Mental 
 Development, Chap. X. Although, therefore,
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 7 
 
 in Professor Baldwin's study in psychology the 
 growth of the individual soul is traced in genetic 
 method till all the essential features of the moral 
 and religious man have appeared, he leaves the 
 moral issues with the individual. Thus his valu- 
 able prize essay, while clearing away the opposi- 
 tion between society and the individual, vindi- 
 cates a personal responsibility. 
 
 It has often been asserted that there is no such 
 thing as individual morality, and Roman Catho- 
 lic scholars have charged against the Protestant 
 position an extreme individualism, which is not 
 held by the evangelical churches of Protestant- 
 ism. The content of a strictly individual mor- 
 ality or religion is indeed quite inconceivable. 
 The content and form of moral and religious life 
 are derived from the relations in which individ- 
 uals are placed. The tendency, however, to 
 seek the origin of the moral and religious life in 
 the social relations under which it develops, is 
 faulty. Scholars holding very different points 
 of view agree that the moral sentiment, and 
 therefore the religious impulse, is unanalyzable, 
 not reducible to social effects. And though 
 such genetic theories have often been supported 
 by a large array of alleged facts, they have never 
 proved to be convincing. 
 
 The question is like the transferring of the 
 emphasis in the Lord's command: "Thou shalt
 
 8 AUTHORITY 
 
 love thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 soul and with all thy strength, and with all thy 
 mind, and thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke x, 
 27). The modern socializing tendency has 
 shifted the emphasis from the first command, 
 which is basal, and which in a sense includes the 
 second. It begs the question by the conclusion 
 that the resulting social morality is to be identi- 
 fied with the loving of God, because it is the 
 way in which to express itself. 
 
 Professor H. Visscher gives expression to this 
 idea in a recent work on comparative religion, 
 "Religie en Gemeenschap by de natuurvolken" 
 (Utrecht, 1907). While recognizing that our 
 age rightly, to some extent, approaches religion 
 as an organic development, especially in the 
 field of comparative religion, he observes that 
 most social facts that are codified expressions of 
 social life, such as language, law, and customs, as 
 well as the forms of religion, are not made by 
 man, but have rather grown to be what they are. 
 
 The analogy between the physical and psychi- 
 cal, between matter and spirit, can never lead 
 to an identification of the genetic processes of 
 the two spheres, especially when there is an evi- 
 dent inclination to subsume the spiritual under 
 the material. The complex expression of re- 
 ligious life is a result of the social life, and regu- 
 lates the individual, who is, however, autono-
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 9 
 
 mous neither in language, law, morality, nor 
 religion. All these expressions of social life go 
 back to the psychic life of the individuals that 
 compose society. Religio subjectiva concerns 
 primarily man as man; it assumes social forms 
 simply because man lives in society and thus fits 
 in an organic whole. But it is a wholly wrong 
 view that endeavors to explain religion and mor- 
 ality in themselves as an outgrowth of social 
 forms. If man is incurably religious, then we 
 can hardly make religion and morality in its es- 
 sence an epiphenomenon of social life. They 
 rather cement and control social life. And this 
 is the meaning which a Frenchman expressed in 
 the words: "Le Saint Esprit c'est Dieu social." 
 Even Spencer, though championing the cause 
 of individualism under the phrase "man versus 
 the state," freely admits the organic relation and 
 natural interplay between the individual arid the 
 milieu in the midst of which he has grown up. 
 In his "Principles of Psychology" (sects. 208, 
 216) he says: "The individual cannot sunder a 
 conjunction thus deeply rooted in the organiza- 
 tion of the race" ; hence, he is born into the world 
 with those psychical connections which form the 
 substrata of "necessary truths." In his "First 
 Principles" (sect. 53), he says: "Absolute uni- 
 formities of experience generate absolute uni- 
 formities of thought." Thus it may be seen
 
 10 AUTHORITY 
 
 that, however much the absolutely personal ele- 
 ment is centered in every individual, however en- 
 tirely unique and one's own, yet each realizes his 
 personality among men as a social being. The 
 ethical and religious contents of man's life have 
 been developed and have taken form historically 
 in social relations. 
 
 The individual finds a standard for compari- 
 son, and material to assimilate, in the terms of 
 life as expressed in the personal experiences and 
 judgments around him. And these principles, 
 often authoritative, influence his unconscious ap- 
 plication, as he strives consciously to realize his 
 ethical ideals and religious life under the stimu- 
 lus of personal relations. The importance of 
 the individual standpoint is thus brought out, 
 and the claims for personality are rendered 
 significant, because of the prime factor of indi- 
 vidual life in social life. But we must also per- 
 ceive that the authority of society is fraught with 
 life-experiences akin to those known to the indi- 
 vidual, and this renders the social, ethical, and 
 religious codes less external as regulative law. 
 Professor Giddings made a contribution to the 
 study of societary phenomena in his conception 
 of "consciousness of kind," but failed to give it 
 a proper setting in social life. It is plain that 
 the question whether authority should be lodged 
 with the individual, or with the legal construe-
 
 AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 11 
 
 tions of larger experience, cannot be treated in 
 categorical fashion. We must rather inquire 
 how the individual is related to the "stored-up, 
 codified racial experience." Professor James 
 says : "The legal tradition enters the mind of the 
 vast majority of citizens in a vague way at best. 
 It is clearly conscious in the thought of a special 
 class only, which, however, may be regarded as 
 the social organ of that particular function of 
 the collective mind." That this relation, how- 
 ever, is an essential and real one, is assumed in 
 all educational efforts, which aim so to adapt the 
 individual to his surroundings that he may fit in 
 the social setting with the least waste of mental 
 energy. Dr. G. E. Vincent says in an essay 
 entitled "The Social Mind and Education": 
 "Education sets before itself the task of relating 
 the individual intrinsically to the social tradition 
 so that he may become an organic part of so- 
 ciety." This question as to the relation of the 
 state to the individual raises the problem of 
 reconciling authority and liberty, law and indi- 
 vidualism, and as such constitutes the social as- 
 pect of our inquiry.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 The need of this ultimate authorization has 
 been felt by both church and state alike in the ex- 
 ercise of earthly power. The church ruling over 
 the corporate body of believers who give assent 
 to her order and doctrine does not need to estab- 
 lish her claims. But what is her authority over 
 those who are outside? Some have answered, It 
 is to "go out into the highways and hedges, and 
 compel them to come in," forgetting that, in 
 view of her mission, the compulsion of the church 
 cannot be one of outward restraint. The church 
 endeavors to win people: the state controls 
 people. There is thus a wide chasm between 
 church and state. To the church belongs the 
 higher, more definite sanction, but to the state 
 the wider range. To the church is given a posi- 
 tive commission to fulfill, to the state mainly the 
 vindication of its laws. The state therefore re- 
 mains always more impersonal in its regulations 
 than the church, and, having power of fact, may 
 vindicate its authority by a rational rule of its 
 subjects. A difficult question is raised as 
 whether the state shall rule the church, or the 
 
 19
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 13 
 
 church the state. May the admittedly more im- 
 personal rule of the state be allowed authority 
 over the church, which claims a more personal 
 relation with the Source of all authority? Or 
 may the church, including only the believers, ex- 
 tend her rules, naturally more specific, over the 
 whole of society. A practical, working solution 
 has, of course, been found by allowing state and 
 church to some extent their own respective 
 spheres, even where either of them sways su- 
 perior power. A practical merger of the two 
 functions is the true solution, all the secular, 
 governmental functions sanctioned and per- 
 meated by Christian belief and principle. 
 
 Phillips Brooks discusses this in gingerly 
 fashion in his address on "The Influence of Jesus 
 on the Social Life of Man." 
 
 "I know that here is the essence of what most men, 
 as they look at history, are apt to dread to-day, of a 
 theocracy, of a religious state and of a state religion. 
 If this which I have said be true, if the state and its 
 machineries be valuable to the Christian patriot, as his 
 state was valuable to Jesus, because of the spiritual 
 interests which they enshrine, because of the family 
 life of man with God which they represent, then why 
 should he not ask that the state should manifest its 
 spiritual function to the fullest degree by becoming dis- 
 tinctively and openly the minister of Christ? Why 
 should he not ask that Christianity, as he conceives it,
 
 14 AUTHORITY 
 
 and as it seems to him to be unspeakably important, 
 should be taught in the state schools? Nay, why 
 should he not ask that only men distinctively and posi- 
 tively Christian in belief and life should be entrusted 
 with the conduct of the nation? How can he live, how 
 can he be a patriot, in any land which is as purely sec- 
 ular in its administration as all our lands are growing 
 more and more to be? It is an urgent question. We 
 can only find its answer, I think, in two considerations 
 which no man can ignore. One is that the ideas and 
 methods of spiritual men and even of Christian men, 
 are so divergent from one another that it is only on 
 the broadest basis of the most general purposes of 
 spiritual life that they can meet, not in their special 
 methods of their special creeds, but only in the de- 
 gree and assertion of righteousness and truth to which 
 all their methods and their creeds belong. The other 
 consideration is that, even were all spiritual men at 
 one, they well might doubt whether it would be well 
 to make the government of their land the agent and 
 maintainer of their faith. Any machinery of govern- 
 ment which men have yet devised is too coarse and 
 clumsy for so delicate a task as the inculcation and en- 
 couragement of faith. Government works by compul- 
 sion ; faith by inspirations. Government lays its 
 hands on actions ; faith nestles into unseen affections. 
 Government estimates appearances; faith looks only 
 at realities. And so government, though all the land 
 were unanimously and harmoniously Christian, would 
 still be a poor minister of Christianity. These are the 
 considerations which make the Christian man consent
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 15 
 
 to live in a state whose chosen policy is secular, and 
 yet lets him feel that there are unowned spiritual in- 
 fluences and powers in her to which he may rejoice to 
 lend his aid. Let these considerations pass away, let 
 all the spiritual desire and aspiration of the land be 
 fused into a perfect unanimity of thought and action, 
 and let some new finer machinery of governmental ac- 
 tion be devised or developed which shall be capable of 
 spiritual uses and then theocracy, a religious state, a 
 state religion, a national creed, a Christian public edu- 
 cation, a divine responsibility in every officer all these 
 would be not merely conceivable, they would be the only 
 methods which the Christianized state could think of 
 for a moment. There would be nothing secular in such 
 a heavenly community as that. Only it would be al- 
 tered utterly from what we see now. It would be the 
 New Jerusalem for which we hope, and not the old 
 earthly city which we know so well. At present we 
 can only keep it constantly before our eyes and always 
 proclaim it as the true ideal. We can, and I think we 
 ought to, earnestly assert, when men praise it most 
 loudly, that secularism, however we may accept it 
 cheerfully as the only expedient for the present time, 
 is not the highest nor the eternal type of government. 
 We may strive, by that devotion to the spiritual ele- 
 ment in national life which even pure secularity of 
 public methods still leaves possible, to hasten the day, 
 which must come if Christ be what we know he is, when 
 the idea of Jesus shall be the shaping and moving 
 power of the Christian state; and among the happy 
 sons of God the son of God shall evidently reign, as
 
 16 AUTHORITY 
 
 the old phrase describes, 'King of nations as king of 
 saints.' " (Bohlen Lectures, 1870.) 
 
 We remind here of the fact, that "Black- 
 stone's Commentaries" give explicitly as the au- 
 thoritative source of legislation God's will and 
 revelation. We quote: Section II of the "Na- 
 ture of Laws in General." 
 
 "Law defined: 
 
 "Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, 
 signifies a rule of action ; and is applied indiscrimi- 
 nately to all kinds of action, whether animate or inani- 
 mate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of 
 motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well 
 as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is a rule 
 of action which is prescribed by some superior, and 
 which the inferior is bound to obey. But laws, in their 
 more confined sense, denote the rules, not of action in 
 general, but of human action or conduct; that is the 
 precepts by which man, a creature endowed with both 
 reason and free will, is commanded to make use of 
 those faculties in the general regulation of his be- 
 havior. 
 
 "Here follows a discussion of the law of nature which 
 is stated to be the will of God, such as that we should 
 live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render 
 to everyone his dues. This law of nature is superior 
 in obligation to any other. In consequence of the de- 
 fects of human reason by which we endeavor to know 
 the will of God, there is made necessary the revealed
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 17 
 
 or divine law found only in the holy scriptures. Upon 
 the law of nature and the law of revelation depend all 
 human laws." (Sprague's Abridgment.) 
 
 Charles Zueblin gives in "The Religion of a 
 Democrat" his opinion not only in favor of the 
 separation of Church and State, but of the sub- 
 ordination of church to the state, the church be- 
 ing really one of the state functions to provide 
 for the religious needs of society. 
 
 "The state must be supreme; the church must be 
 subordinate ; and religion can only be free in the state. 
 Our minds have been so befogged by the conflict be- 
 tween church and state that we have grown unable to 
 see the harmony of religion and society. When it is 
 recognized that every individual must have his own re- 
 ligion, regardless of the ecclesiastical authority to 
 which he may hold allegiance, then it will be seen that 
 only the state can facilitate this. The conflict between 
 state and church in France seems to throw light upon 
 our problem. The state is trying to assert its su- 
 premacy over the church; the church, so far as it is 
 conscientious in its activities, argues that it is univer- 
 sal and therefore superior to the state. If it were, if 
 they had such a national church, if it could make its 
 claims to universalism good, would it not be loyal to 
 the interests of society as a whole, and how can so- 
 ciety as a whole be served except through the state? 
 The present organization of the state may be as im- 
 perfect as the present organization of the church, but
 
 18 AUTHORITY 
 
 the state is the only organization which represents so- 
 ciety. The church is the very imperfect, highly spe- 
 cialized organization of one of society's functions, and 
 if it actually moralized all human wants, it could still 
 serve society fully only as an instrumentality of the 
 state. That the church has sometimes seemed superior 
 to the state only means that churchmen have sometimes 
 been superior to statesmen in their capacity for under- 
 standing the interests of society as a whole." (pp. 
 118ff.) 
 
 It is interesting to note, however, that the re- 
 ligious democracy or democratic religion of Pro- 
 fessor Zueblin runs into individualism. He de- 
 clares : 
 
 "Whatever the imperfections of contemporary life, 
 it must not be forgotten that the state is organized 
 society, and that its weaknesses are due to the delega- 
 tion of some of its functions to un-co-ordinated insti- 
 tutions. There can be no moral stability until it is 
 recognized that the individual is sovereign, not subject. 
 Industry lacks efficiency, the church lacks spirituality, 
 and the state lacks solidarity, when the individual is not 
 sovereign. He must be master of his occupation, of his 
 faith and of his citizenship, or these are empty names. 
 In a deep and real sense, democracy is the only moral- 
 ity, but democracy must mean the sovereignty of the 
 people in all human relationships." 
 
 If Professor Zueblin goes deep enough, he
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 19 
 
 will need Christianity to guarantee this concep- 
 tion of democracy! All things are ours when 
 we are Christ's! 
 
 Dr. David Jayne Hill, late United States am- 
 bassador to Germany, expressed in a course of 
 lectures before Columbia University a truly 
 popular conception of government as a kind of 
 public business-management of the different de- 
 partments that society wants discharged. Thus 
 he may well put aside any higher authority, and 
 on such a basis scoff at the affirmation by Em- 
 peror William of a belief in the divine right to 
 govern. 
 
 "The state can no longer speak or act irre- 
 sponsibly in the name of Deity or clothe itself 
 in the garb of super-human attributes or divine 
 supremacy," says Dr. Hill, evidently overlook- 
 ing the fact that a state thus speaking or acting 
 is bound by the highest responsibility, and an 
 admittedly stronger obligation than where "vox 
 populi is vox Dei." The abuses of popular au- 
 thority have demonstrated sufficiently that brute 
 force comes to displace right under whatever 
 great phrases the politicians may work their 
 schemes with the authorizing populus. And it 
 is undeniable that force comes to be looked upon 
 as a controlling and authorizing power under 
 such a regime. "In order to fulfill its mission as 
 the guardian of human rights and the protago-
 
 20 AUTHORITY 
 
 nist of law," Dr. Hill asserts "the state must 
 be entrusted with sufficient organized force to 
 repress wrong-doing and maintain in all emer- 
 gencies public order, but we must not overlook 
 the fact that we have invested it with powers 
 vastly more enormous than it has ever before 
 possessed. There is, without doubt, a great 
 danger in the omnipotence of the state. Dur- 
 ing the greater part of human history govern- 
 ment has been arbitrary, and it has enshrouded 
 its right to be so in some halo of sanctity. The 
 helplessness, dependence, and ignorance of men 
 have rendered them powerless to resist its as- 
 sumptions. Looking up to it as the highest 
 earthly authority they have been taught to re- 
 gard it as possessing a divine prerogative. It 
 has usually, and not unnaturally, intrenched its 
 pretensions in what was most sacred in their sen- 
 timents and consciences, and when it could not 
 dominate them by superior force it has rendered 
 them passive through an appeal to their religious 
 obligations." Has, indeed, government been 
 arbitrary during the greater part of human his- 
 tory, and is the statement impartial, that it has 
 enshrouded its right to be so in some halo of 
 sanctity? Have people been specially "taught" 
 to regard it as possessing a divine prerogative, 
 without regarding it so themselves? We take 
 occasion to remind Dr. Hill that a great number
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 21 
 
 of people not the helpless, dependent and 
 ignorant would maintain with the German Em- 
 peror that nothing less than a divine right to 
 govern constitutes in the end a rightful claim to 
 authority over the people. 
 
 It is on account of this business point of view 
 that reverence for the law is a desideratum in the 
 United States. 
 
 The Duke of Harcourt in an able work, 
 "Quelques reflexions sur les lois sociales," might 
 bring to Dr. Hill's notice the pervasive influence 
 and power of religion in society, and incidentally 
 claim its consequent rights. He observes 
 (Chapitre II Le Sentiment religieux) : 
 
 "Les lois humaines se proposent le bonheur 
 d'une societe, la religion se propose le bonheur 
 de 1'individu; par la elle ne s'accorde pas avec 
 les conceptions de l'homme d'etat. Les lois 
 humaines ont tou jours sacrifie certains individus 
 aux necessites sociales. La religion, faite pour 
 1'individu, ne sacrifie personne." In opening 
 this part of his work he says: "II est de mode 
 aujourd'hui parmi certains hommes, surtout 
 parmi ceux que le courant de notre temps a 
 portes dans les fonctions publiques, de con- 
 siderer la religion, quelle qu' elle soit, comme un 
 accessoire dans la vie d'une societe. Us la re- 
 gardent comme un vieux debris fait pour plaire 
 aux esprits f aibles, et pour lequel, en leur f aveur,
 
 22 AUTHORITY 
 
 on peut consentir peut-etre a quelques sacrifices, 
 mais a la condition que ce ne soil pour 1'etat ni 
 une depense ni un embarras." The learned duke 
 concludes his work: "les sentiments religieux, 
 mis systematiquement par nos hommes politiques 
 en dehors de leurs etudes, restent tou jours la 
 veritable sauvegarde de la societe; les assemblies 
 politiques, quels que soient les merites de leurs 
 membres, sont des etres de creations humaines, 
 des mecanismes, tres utilles sans doute, mais irre- 
 sponsables par leur essence meme, et incapables 
 des qualites pu'on s'obstine a leur demander 
 . . . de ces diverses propositions, les hommes 
 d'etat ne tireront-ils aucune consequence? Je le 
 laisse a leur sagacite." (p. 275) . 
 
 Anatole Leroy Beaulieu makes an emphatic 
 protest against this disregard for religion 
 in governmental functions. 
 
 "L'Etat moderne, Petat, athee, Petat franc-ma9on, 
 Petat nouveau, issu de la democratic, nous Pavons vu plus 
 d'une fois ne laissant de liberte qu a ce que le Saint- 
 Siege appelle le mal et ne reconnaitre de droits qu a 
 ce que Peglise nomme 1'erreur . . . Meconnais- 
 sant son incompetence doctrinale, Petat democratique 
 (dans Pespece, la republique de 1892) se laisse volon- 
 tiers aller a dogmatiser . . . II se fait a Poccasion 
 son Credo et son Catechisms qu'il enseigne au peuple par 
 des catechistes a lui; il tend a s'arroger le droit qu'il 
 denie a Veglise le droit de fondre les esprits dans un
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 23 
 
 moule et de fa9onner les generations a sa guise." (La 
 papaute it la democratic, p. 369 Revue des deux 
 Mondes, Jan., 1892.) 
 
 "The modern state, the atheistic state, the state of 
 free-masons, the new state as issued forth from 
 the democracy, we have seen it more than once, leaves 
 only liberty for what the Holy See calls evil and recog- 
 nizes only as rights what the church considers error. 
 Failing to recognize its incompetence in re- 
 gard to doctrines, the democratic state (specially the 
 republic of 1892) starts readily to dogmatise. 
 It provides occasionally Creed and catechism which it 
 teaches to the people by its own catechisers. It is in- 
 clined to arrogate to itself the right which it denies the 
 church, the right to mould and fashion the mind of the 
 people." (The Papacy and Democracy.) 
 
 The Catholic standpoint in regard to this mat- 
 ter is presented eloquently and in forceful po- 
 lemic strain by Monseigneur J. Fevre, vicar 
 general of Gap and Amiens whose able pen pro- 
 duced a great number of apologetic and polemic 
 works in defense of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 In "La separation de 1'eglise et de 1'etat," he con- 
 cludes that of right the sovereign church inde- 
 pendent in her sphere, in union with the state (as 
 before the Concordat) ought to stand over the 
 secular power of state, but as of fact he accepts 
 the "regime concordat air e" as ratified by the 
 church. Special notice deserves in this connec-
 
 24 AUTHORITY 
 
 tion the emphasis laid upon the distinct and 
 separate spheres of the activity of church and 
 state, whilst it is nevertheless argued with fervor 
 that a separation of church and society would be 
 fatal. 
 
 "La confusion et 1'erreur proviennent ici de 1'idee 
 etrange qu'on se fait de I'eglise et de sa constitution. 
 L'eglise, pense-t-on, n'est qu' une societe ordinaire, une 
 classe d'hommes soumis comme les autres, au controle 
 de 1'etat. La societe civile entraine cette classe dans 
 le cercle de ses attributions comme le soleil entraine, dans 
 son orbite, une planete de second ordre. L'etat ab- 
 sorbe tous les services ; de lui decoulent toutes les fonc- 
 tions, toutes les lois, toutes les grandeurs. Cette cen- 
 tralization est le fruit du progres moderne. 
 N'est ce pas plutot la glorification de la matiere? une 
 monstrueuse apotheose de la force? la resurrection du 
 cesarisme pai'en? Dans tous les cas, c'est une concep- 
 tion fausse, absurde, de la nature de I'eglise et de son 
 role surnaturel dans le monde; c'est un melange batard 
 des traditions pai'ennes et des conceptions heretiques 
 qui consacrent, meme dans 1'ordre religieux, la supre- 
 matie de 1'etat. 
 
 "Non, I'eglise dans sa sphere propre, ne depend pas 
 de vous ; non I'eglise n'est pas une subalterne ou une 
 infirme qui a besoin de votre pouvoir pour s'ouvrir la 
 scene du monde. Le monde entier lui appartient. 
 Dieu 1'a chargee de le diriger, de le redresser et de le 
 maintenir sous sa loi. Quand I'eglise remplit ce de- 
 voir, elle n'usurpe personne; elle ne fait qu' user du
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 25 
 
 pouvoir qu'elle a re9ii de Dieu. Euntes, docete, man- 
 dantes servare omnia. A 1'eglise soit tout ce qui est 
 de 1'eglise." (p. 174 ff.) 
 
 James Bryce, British ambassador to the 
 United States, gives us in his famous discussion, 
 "The American Commonwealth," such a saga- 
 cious and careful description of the Church and 
 State in America, that it seems well to conclude 
 with his impartial observations. 
 
 " 'The abstention of the state from interference in 
 matters of faith and worship may be advocated on two 
 principles, which may be called the political and the 
 religious. The former sets out from the principles 
 of liberty and equality. It holds any attempt at com- 
 pulsion by the civil power to be an infringement on 
 liberty and thought, as well as on liberty of action, 
 which could be justified only when a practice claiming 
 to be religious is so obviously anti-social or immoral as 
 to threaten the well-being of the community. Re- 
 ligious persecution, even in its milder forms, such as 
 disqualifying the members of a particular sect for 
 public office, is, it conceives, inconsistent with the con- 
 ception of individual freedom and the respect due to 
 the primordial rights of the citizen which modern 
 thought has embraced. Even if state action stops 
 short of the imposition of disabilities, and confines itself 
 to favoring a particular church, whether by grants of 
 money or by giving special immunities to its clergy, 
 this is an infringement on equality,' putting one man
 
 26 AUTHORITY 
 
 at a disadvantage compared with others in respect of 
 matters which are not fit subjects for state cognizance. 
 (The question of course follows, what are the matters 
 fit for state cognizance? but into this I do not enter, 
 as I am not attempting to argue these intricate ques- 
 tions, but merely to indicate the general aspect they 
 take in current discussion.) 
 
 "The second principle, embodying the more purely 
 religious view of the question, starts from the conception 
 of the church as a spiritual body existing for spiritual 
 purposes, and moving along spiritual paths. It is an 
 assemblage of men who are united by their devotion to 
 an unseen Being, their memory of a past divine life, 
 their belief in the possibility of imitating that life, so 
 far as human frailty allows, their hopes for an illimita- 
 ble future. Compulsion of any kind is contrary to the 
 nature of such a body, which lives by love and rever- 
 ence, not by law. It desires no state help, feeling that 
 its strength comes from above, and that its kingdom 
 it not of this world. It does not seek for exclusive 
 privileges, conceiving that these would not only create 
 bitterness between itself and other religious bodies, but 
 might attract persons who did not really share its 
 sentiments, while corrupting the simplicity of those who 
 are already its members. Least of all can it submit 
 to be controlled by the state, for the state, in such a 
 world as the present, means persons many or most of 
 whom are alien to its beliefs and cold to its emotions. 
 The conclusion follows that the church as a spiritual 
 entity will be happiest and strongest when it is left 
 absolutely to itself, not patronized by the civil power,
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 27 
 
 not restrained by law except when and in so far as it 
 may attempt to quit its proper sphere and intermeddle 
 in secular affairs. 
 
 "Of these two views it is the former much more than 
 the latter that has moved the American mind. The 
 latter would doubtless be more generally accepted by 
 religious people. But when the question arose in a 
 practical shape in the earlier days of the Republic, 
 arguments of the former or political order were found 
 amply sufficient to settle it, and no practical purpose 
 has since then compelled men either to examine the 
 spiritual basis of the church, or to inspire by the light 
 of history how far state action has during fifteen cen- 
 turies helped or marred her usefulness. There has, 
 however, been another cause at work, I mean the com- 
 paratively limited conception of the state itself which 
 Americans have formed. The state is not to them, as 
 to Germans or Frenchmen, and even to some English 
 thinkers, an ideal moral power, charged with the duty 
 of forming the characters and guiding the lives of its 
 subjects. It is more like a commercial company, or 
 perhaps a huge municipality created for the manage- 
 ment of certain business in which all who reside within 
 its bounds are interested, levying contributions and ex- 
 pending them on this business of common interest, but 
 for the most part leaving the shareholders or burgesses 
 to themselves. That an organization of this kind 
 should trouble itself, otherwise than as matters of po- 
 lice, with the opinions or conduct of its members would 
 be as unnatural as for a railway company to inquire 
 how many of the shareholders were total abstainers.
 
 28 AUTHORITY 
 
 Accordingly it never occurs to the average American 
 that there is any reason why state churches should ex- 
 ist, and he stands amazed at the warmth of European 
 feeling on the matter. Just because these questions 
 have been long since disposed of, and excite no present 
 passion, and perhaps also because the Americans are 
 more practically easy-going than pedantically exact, 
 the National government and the State governments 
 do give to Christianity a species of recognition incon- 
 sistent with the view that civil government should be 
 absolutely neutral in religious matters. Each House 
 of Congress has a chaplain, and opens its proceedings 
 each day with prayers. The President annually after 
 the end of harvest issues a proclamation ordering a 
 general thanksgiving, and occasionally appoints a day 
 of fasting and humiliation. So prayers are offered in 
 the State legislatures (though Michigan and Oregon 
 forbid any appropriation of State funds for days of 
 religious observance). Congress in the crisis of the 
 Civil War (July, 1863) requested the President to ap- 
 point a day for humiliation and prayer. In the army 
 and navy provision is made for religious services, con- 
 ducted by chaplains of various denominations, and no 
 difficulty seems to have been found in reconciling their 
 claims. In most States there exist laws punishing 
 blasphemy or profane swearing by the name of God 
 (laws which, however, are in some places openly trans- 
 gressed and in few or none enforced, laws restricting 
 or forbidding trade or labor on the Sabbath, as well 
 as laws protecting assemblages for religious purposes, 
 such as camp-meetings or religious processions, from
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 29 
 
 being disturbed. The Bible is read in the public State- 
 supported schools, and though controversies have arisen 
 on this head, the practice is evidently in accord with 
 the general sentiment of the people. The whole mat- 
 ter may, I think, be summed up by saying that Chris- 
 tianity is in fact understood to be, though not the 
 legally established religion, yet the national religion. 
 (It has often been said that Christianity is a part of 
 the common law of the States, as it has been said to 
 be of the common law of England, but on this point 
 there have been discrepant judicial opinions, nor can it 
 be said to find any specific practical application. A 
 discussion of it may be found in Justice Story's opinion 
 in the famous Girard will case.) So far from think- 
 ing their commonwealth godless, the Americans con- 
 ceive that the religious character of a government con- 
 sists in nothing but the religious belief of the indi- 
 vidual citizens, and the conformity of their conduct 
 to that belief. They deem the general acceptance of 
 Christianity to be one of the main sources of their nat- 
 ural prosperity, and their nation a special object of 
 the Divine favor. 
 
 "The legal position of a Christian church is in the 
 United States simply that of a voluntary association, 
 or group of associations, corporate or unincorporate, 
 under the ordinary law. There is no such thing as a 
 special ecclesiastical law; all questions, not only of 
 property but of church discipline and jurisdiction, are, 
 if brought before the courts of the land, dealt with as 
 questions of contract (or otherwise as questions of pri- 
 vate civil law. Actions for damages are sometimes
 
 30 AUTHORITY 
 
 brought against ecclesiastical authorities by persons 
 deeming themselves to have been improperly accused or 
 disciplined or deprived of the enjoyment of property). 
 And the court, where it is obliged to examine a ques- 
 tion of theology, as for instance, whether a clergyman 
 had advanced opinions inconsistent with any creed or 
 formula to which he has bound himself for it will pre- 
 fer, if possible, to leave such matters to the proper ec- 
 clesiastical authority will treat the point as one of 
 pure legal interpretation, neither assuming to itself 
 theological knowledge, nor suffering considerations of 
 policy to intervene. (The Emperor Aurelian decided 
 in a like neutral spirit a question that had arisen be- 
 tween two Christian churches.) 
 
 "As a rule, every religious body can organize itself 
 in any way it pleases. The State does not require its 
 leave to be asked, but permits any form of church gov- 
 ernment, any ecclesiastical order, to be created and en- 
 dowed, any method to be adopted of vesting church 
 property, either simply in trustees or in corporate 
 bodies formed either under the general law of the State 
 or under some special statute. Sometimes a limit is 
 imposed on the amount of property, or of real estate, 
 which an ecclesiastical corporation can hold; but, on 
 the whole, it may be said that the civil power manifests 
 no jealousy of the spiritual, but allows the latter a 
 perfectly free field for expansion. Of course if any 
 ecclesiastical authority were to become formidable 
 either by its wealth or by its control over the members 
 of its body, this easy tolerance would disappear ; all I 
 observe is that the difficulties often experienced, and
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 31 
 
 still more often feared, in Europe, from the growth of 
 organizations exercising tremendous spiritual powers, 
 have in America never proved serious. Religious 
 bodies are in so far the objects of special favor that 
 their property is in most States exempt from taxation. 
 (In his message of 1881 the Governor of Washington 
 Territory recommends the legislature to exempt church 
 property from taxation, not only on the ground that 
 'churches and schoolhouses are the temples of educa- 
 tion, and alike conduce to the cultivation of peace, hap- 
 piness and prosperity,' but also because 'churches 
 enhance the value of contiguous property, which, were 
 they abolished, would be of less value and return less 
 revenue.' And this is reconciled to theory by argu- 
 ment that they are serviceable as moral agencies, and 
 diminish the expenses incurred in respect of police 
 administration. Two or three States impose restric- 
 tions on the creation of religious corporations, and one, 
 Maryland, requires the sanction of the legislature to 
 dispositions of property to religious uses. But speak- 
 ing generally, religious bodies are the objects of legis- 
 lative favor. (New Hampshire has lately taxed 
 churches on the value of their real estate exceeding ten 
 thousand dollars.)" (Second Volume, pp. 647-652.) 
 
 The struggle for authority between secular 
 and ecclesiastical power has found its classic ex- 
 pression in the rivalry of Emperor Henry IV 
 and Pope Gregory VII for supremacy in earthly 
 matters. The great success of von Wilden- 
 bruch's work, "Heinrich und Heinrich's Gesch-
 
 32 AUTHORITY 
 
 lecht," may be accounted for largely, apart from 
 its merits, by the interest felt in the theme. The 
 Germans of our day went through a renewal of 
 the same struggle in the Kulturkampf with Bis- 
 marck and Windhorst as respective champions. 
 Bismarck's words in the Reichstag, "Nach Ca- 
 nossa gehn wir nicht," are characteristic. 
 
 The present illustrious ruler has reconciled 
 considerably this conflict, recognizing that Ro- 
 man Catholicism should be judged more desir- 
 able than the secularizing tendencies which (as 
 illustrated most plainly in France, though other 
 nations show the same trend) exemplify an 
 atheistic and revolutionary spirit under the dis- 
 guise of culture and progress. That with the 
 Emperor this does not mean a special indulgence 
 towards papal policy, however, is shown by a 
 very recent warning to the Vatican by Chancel- 
 lor von Bethmann-Hollweg, admonishing the 
 Curia of issuing various decrees without that con- 
 sideration for German conditions which was in- 
 dispensable in maintaining a friendly status. 
 The Kaiser said on the occasion of the inspection 
 of a crucifix which he had presented to the Bene- 
 dictine monastery at Beuron: 
 
 "I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the kind words 
 with which you have received me, and am glad to have 
 the opportunity of paying you a visit and expressing
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 33 
 
 to you my sincere good- will. From the beginning of 
 my reign it was a particular pleasure to me to support 
 the Benedictines in their efforts, since I had noticed 
 that wherever they had worked they had not only en- 
 deavored to maintain and strengthen religion, but had 
 also distinguished themselves as promoters of culture 
 in the field of church-music, in art, in science and in 
 other ways, thus rendering services which should not 
 be under-estimated. What I expect from you is that 
 you will continue working in the paths of your fore- 
 fathers and support me in my efforts to maintain the 
 people's religion. This is all the more important be- 
 cause the twentieth century has liberated ideas which 
 can only be successfully combated with the aid of re- 
 ligion and the support of Heaven. This is my firm 
 conviction. The crown which I wear can only guaran- 
 tee success here if it is based on the word and person- 
 ality of our Lord. As a symbol of this I have pre- 
 sented the crucifix to this church in order, as I said in 
 my letter, to prove that the governments of the Chris- 
 tian princes can only be carried on in the spirit of our 
 Lord, and that they shall help to strengthen the reli- 
 gious feeling which is innate in the Germanic races, and 
 increase respect for altar and throne. Both these go 
 together, and must not be separated. Therefore I pro- 
 mote with my whole heart the aims which you are pur- 
 suing, and in the future as in the past, will grant you 
 my favor and my protection." 
 
 It might be observed in this connection that by 
 an alliance with the Catholics the gifted Dutch
 
 34 AUTHORITY 
 
 Premier, Abraham Kuyper, combated success- 
 fully and finally overthrew the liberal regime, 
 which for over half a century exercised its 
 baneful influence in the Netherlands. 
 
 Gregory's letter, sent in 1075, upbraiding 
 Henry for neglect of papal decrees, was headed : 
 "Bishop Gregory, servant of the servants of 
 God, to King Henry, greeting and apostolic ben- 
 ediction: that is, if he be obedient to the apos- 
 tolic chair as beseems a Christian king. "To this, 
 Henry replied the next year by a letter, begin- 
 ning, "Henry, King not by usurpation but by 
 holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand, now no 
 pope, but false monk," and ending: "I, Henry, 
 King by the grace of God, together with all our 
 bishops, say unto thee, 'Come down to be 
 damned throughout all eternity.' ' Later, 
 when in 1107 at Chalons the questions of investi- 
 ture were discussed, the Pope declared by the 
 Bishop of Piacenza: "To invest with the ring 
 and the staff, since these belong to the altar, is 
 to usurp the powers of God Himself. For a 
 priest to place his hands, sanctified by the body 
 and blood of the Lord, in the blood-stained 
 hands of a layman, as a pledge, is to dishonor his 
 order and holy consecration." It has often been 
 observed that this quarrel occasioned the phrase 
 "by the grace of God" to be attached to the proc- 
 lamation of rulers. So it did, but it is a super-
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 85 
 
 ficial inference to argue that with the phrase was 
 originated the belief or meaning which it ex- 
 presses. The struggle was too keen, too passion- 
 ate, to have sprung out of a newly invented be- 
 lief, to which the phrase might have given rise. 
 When Germany's gifted monarch, William 
 the Great, voiced this deep religious conviction 
 in his Konigsberg speech, liberalism and radical 
 elements misconstrued and misrepresented his 
 words in a wholly unwarranted agitation. The 
 Emperor said: "My grandfather by his own 
 right placed the Prussian crown upon his head 
 and again proclaimed it to be bestowed upon 
 him by God's grace alone and not by Parlia- 
 ments, assemblages of the people, or revolutions 
 of the people, and he saw himself the chosen in- 
 strument of heaven, and as such regarded his duty 
 as regent and ruler. Considering myself as the 
 instrument of the Master, regardless of passing 
 views and opinions, I go my way, which is solely 
 devoted to the prosperity and peaceful develop- 
 ment of our Fatherland." In the same hall the 
 Kaiser said in May, 1890: "We Hohenzollerns 
 take our crown from heaven alone; and in 1894 
 William II, quoting the words of his grand- 
 father William I, about ruling by divine right, 
 added: "So, too, do I take my kingdom by God's 
 grace." To construe this utterance of "divine 
 right" as a declaration of absolutism and under-
 
 36 AUTHORITY 
 
 estimation of the people and the people's repre- 
 sentatives is a flimsy and paltry pretext indeed! 
 for those sowing the discontent on which social- 
 ism feeds. 
 
 What His Majesty proclaimed and has made 
 actual in his conduct as ruler is simply, that his 
 sense of duty rests on religious grounds. As 
 Hegel dignified the laws of the land by conceiv- 
 ing the sovereignty of the state as vested with 
 the authority of the Absolute Idea, so Emperor 
 William feels in it the sanction and expression of 
 God. The German agitators should remember 
 that in spite of this alleged "divine right" by 
 which the Kaiser claims to rule, the Emperor in- 
 deed adheres to the same attitude which Prince 
 von Buelow expressed in the Reichstag July 20, 
 1908: "Not a single case can be adduced where 
 the Kaiser has placed himself in opposition to 
 the constitution." In many a republic without 
 attempt at, or sentiment of justification in Divine 
 authority, constitutional or popular rights have 
 often been disregarded. In fact, only a firm re- 
 liance on supreme authority and right guaran- 
 tees the right of the nation, and is capable 
 of vindicating it. Consider for a moment 
 the superficial, harmful and impious no- 
 tions of a journalist-preacher on "The Spirit of 
 Democracy" and you will doubtlessly recognize 
 the superiority of the man be he ruler or offi-
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 37 
 
 cial who feels himself responsible in his con- 
 science to God over him whose horizon limits it- 
 self to an outlook upon the crowd of voters. 
 Such a viewpoint, however, is maintained by 
 Lyman Abbot in the "Outlook" : 
 
 "The state of nature is the ideal state; let us go 
 back to it. In a state of nature every man is free to 
 live his own life, direct his own energies, carve out his 
 own destiny. Every impediment upon this freedom is 
 an injury to humanity. All government is such an 
 impediment. A little government is absolutely neces- 
 sary to protect the weak from the strong, but govern- 
 ment is a necessary evil, and the less we have of it the 
 better. Humanity has simply consented to it in order 
 to protect itself. It should constrain only to free from 
 constraint. On this consent of the governed govern- 
 ment is founded. This is the basis of all authority. 
 The ultimate appeal is to the people; for the voice of 
 the people is the voice of God that is, if there is a God. 
 Whether there be one or not it is not material to in- 
 quire; for the voice of the people is final. A just gov- 
 ernment is a government carried on in accordance with 
 the will of the majority; an unjust government is one 
 carried on not in accordance with that will."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 MORAL AUTHORITY 
 
 When the objective norm, the legal code, con- 
 ventional morality and new religious formulas 
 are framed in keeping with the changes of con- 
 temporary opinion, they become liable to error, 
 and must be subject to subsequent correction. 
 Thus they cannot well claim the confident sub- 
 mission of the individual as possessing rightful 
 or reasonable authority. Yet the tendency to- 
 day is to regard the sanction of society as final, 
 both in ethics and in religion. Both morality 
 and religion are becoming more and more con- 
 ventional. In this the extreme conclusions of 
 sociological theories run into a pantheistic phi- 
 losophy that does not allow of an "otherness" in 
 the verdict, to which, however, consciousness un- 
 mistakably testifies, and which thus destroys an 
 objective sanction. Martineau describes in his 
 "Types of Ethical Theory" eloquently this au- 
 thority and sanction of conscience : 
 
 "Conscience speaks with authority. The authority 
 is a simple feeling, admitting of little analysis or ex- 
 planation. But it is not simply subjective, not of my 
 
 38
 
 MORAL AUTHORITY 39 
 
 own making, not a mere self-assertion of my own will 
 to which my own will is the first to bend in homage. 
 The authority which reveals itself within us reports 
 itself, not only as underived from our will, but as in- 
 dependent of our idiosyncrasies altogether. If the 
 sense of authority means anything, it means the dis- 
 cernment of something higher than we, no mere part 
 of ourself, but transcending our personality. It is 
 more than part and parcel of myself, it is communion 
 of God's life and guiding love entering and abiding 
 with an apprehensive capacity in myself. Here we 
 encounter an objective authority without quitting our 
 own center of consciousness. A man is a law unto 
 himself, not by autonomy of the individual, but by self- 
 communication of the Infinite Spirit to the soul and the 
 law itself, the idea of an absolute 'should be' is au- 
 thoritative with conscience, because it is the deliver- 
 ance of the eternal perfection to a mind that has to 
 grow and is imposed, therefore, by the Infinite upon 
 the finite." 
 
 Professor Ladd truly remarks, in his "Theory 
 of Reality": "Man's conception of Reality must 
 be derived from his cognitive experience with 
 concrete realities subjected to reflection." 
 And again: "Cognitive experience with concrete 
 things contains at its roots, if anywhere it is to 
 be found, the beginnings to a true answer of the 
 metaphysical problem." In the face of the 
 "personal equation," the saying that there is no 
 greater tyranny than an equality forced upon
 
 40 AUTHORITY 
 
 those who are not equal, is perfectly true. Mon- 
 taigne in the time of the "discovery of man" 
 spoke the pregnant words: "Everyone must have 
 'an inner touchstone' (un patron au dedans) by 
 which to judge his actions." Fouillee rightly 
 remarks in his "Psychologic des peuples euro- 
 peens": "M. Guyau and M. Tarde have strongly 
 insisted that we are under the dominion of con- 
 tinual suggestion, coming from the environment 
 in which we live. . . . We disagree with 
 those who reduce the whole of sociology to a 
 study of these forms, and we believe that the 
 study of its psychological foundation is essential 
 to sociology." Dr. Philip Fogel brought out in 
 an able essay in the American Journal of Soci- 
 ology the metaphysical element involved in soci- 
 ology, which is ignored by Professor Giddings. 
 Durkheim makes of man driftwood on the 
 eddying tides of the social currents. He says in 
 "Les regies de la methode sociologique" : 
 
 "Not only are these types of conduct or of thought 
 external to the individual, but they are endowed with 
 commanding and compelling force in virtue of which 
 they lay hold of him whether he wishes it or not." 
 ("Non seulement ces types de conduite ou de pensee 
 sont exterieurs a 1'individu, mais ils sont doues d'une 
 puissance imperative et coercive en vertu de laquelle ils 
 s'imposent a lui, qu'il le veuille on non.")
 
 MORAL AUTHORITY 41 
 
 This view results from the advocacy of social 
 forms as the prime influence in life, thus laying 
 the basis of moral life with its norms and sanc- 
 tions outside of itself, although logically even 
 these sanctions are rendered superfluous with 
 Durkheim. It is natural that in France this 
 school counts many followers, especially since 
 France is in some sense "la nation la plus so- 
 cialisee, ou les elements sociaux ont fini par 
 dominer le plus les elements ethniques et meme 
 psychiques" (the most socialized nation where the 
 social elements dominate in the highest degree 
 the ethnic and even the psychic factors). The 
 German conception remains less bare, even when 
 irreligious, as Sudermann expresses this view in 
 Der Katzensteg: 
 
 "Es ist gut, dass in diesem Chaos, wo Gut und Bose, 
 Recht and Unrecht, Ehre und Schmach wirr durchei- 
 mander taumeln, und wo selbst der alte Gott im Himmel 
 dahinschwindet, ein fester Pol uns iibrig bleibt, um den 
 sich alles aufs neue ordnen musz, ein Fels, an den wir 
 Ertrinkenden uns klammern konnen, und an dem es zu 
 scheitern selbst noch Wollust ist das Vaterland !" 
 
 After the materialistic movement in the 
 "Naturforschersammlung" of 1854 had excluded 
 spiritual factors from its interpretations, the 
 need of subjective reference announced itself 
 again in the cry: "Back to Kant." After the
 
 42 AUTHORITY 
 
 excesses of the left-wing Hegelians, carrying the 
 master's panlogism into materialistic channels, 
 the individual soul claimed attention once more. 
 The views in literature corresponding to those of 
 the naturalistic school, broke down, because, as 
 the literary critic Rene Doumic expresses it: 
 "People have come to recognize that man has a 
 soul" (On s'est avise qu' on a une ame). Au- 
 gustine's strong affirmation that the home of 
 truth is in man, thus finds its recognition. 
 
 We shall now consider the "subjective refer- 
 ence" or "personal element" in the ethical and re- 
 ligious formulations, not as opposing them to 
 these formulations, but with a view to ascertain- 
 ing the better their individual bearings on legal- 
 ism in ethics and religion, remembering Goethe's 
 words : 
 
 "Gern war' ich Ueberliefrung los 
 Und ganz original; 
 Doch ist das Unternehmen gross 
 Und fiihrt in manche Qual. 
 Als Autochthone rechnet' ich 
 Es mir zur hochsten Ehre 
 Wenn ich nicht gar zu wunderlich 
 Selbst Ueberliefrung ware." 
 
 and those other, not less important, 
 
 "Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast 
 Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen 1"
 
 MORAL AUTHORITY 43 
 
 In spite of the common elements in environ- 
 ment and the kinship of human personality, no 
 two human lives could ever express each other's 
 individual experiences and views. Even if the 
 surroundings were entirely the same, the reacting 
 individuals would be different. Pantheistic sys- 
 tems make a fundamentally false step in slight- 
 ing this fact of the uniqueness of each human 
 personality. This results from the assumption 
 that personality is in itself what it is for others. 
 This approach from without, however, will never 
 yield the essential meaning of personality. The 
 own knowledge of each self is never quite the 
 same as the most exhaustive knowledge about 
 oneself. Pantheism proceeds on the assumption 
 that feeling and will can be left out of account. 
 But even on the basis of thought alone, two in- 
 dividual consciousnesses could never overlap 
 completely. Mr. Hastings Rashdall makes a 
 pointed criticism of Professor Royce's "The 
 World and the Individual," in an article entitled, 
 "Personality: Human and Divine." He says: 
 (Personal Idealism, p. 382 footnote) : 
 
 "It is admitted that two such spirits might have 
 like but not identical experiences (i.e., experience in 
 which there was some identity but some difference) with- 
 out ceasing to be two. Let us suppose the content of 
 the consciousness of each to become gradually more
 
 44 AUTHORITY 
 
 and more like that of the other, including all the time 
 the knowledge of the other's existence. Can it be seri- 
 ously contended that as the last remaining difference 
 disappeared, that consciousness in A of not being B 
 would suddenly disappear too? Of course it may be 
 said that the consciousness of not being B is part of 
 the content of A's consciousness. If so, of course, 
 the case supposed could not possibly arise, and the 
 difficulty disappears. But still the difference between 
 A and B would be absolutely unrecognizable and in- 
 describable for any other consciousness, although such 
 a consciousness might know there were two beings with 
 such contents of consciousness identical but for the 
 knowledge by each that he was not the other." 
 
 Alice in Wonderland may instruct us with her 
 questioning: 
 
 "If I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the 
 world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle! I'm sure 
 I'm not Ada, for her hair goes in such long ringlets, 
 and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I am sure 
 I can't be Mable, for I know all sorts of things, and 
 she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, she's 
 she, and I'm I, and oh dear, how puzzling it all is !" 
 
 James describes this as follows: "That un- 
 sharable feeling which one has of the pinch of his 
 individual destiny as he privately feels it rolling 
 out on fortune's wheel may be disparaged for its 
 egotism, may be sneered at as unscientific, but it
 
 MORAL AUTHORITY 45 
 
 is the one thing that fills up the measure of our 
 concrete actuality. The axis of reality runs 
 solely through the egotistic places they are 
 strung upon it as so many beads." He declares 
 that "the altogether unique kind of interest which 
 each human mind feels in those parts of crea- 
 tion which it can call me or mine may be a moral 
 riddle, but it is a psychological fact." It is ex- 
 actly this individual factor all its own, which 
 cannot be wholly described because of its unique- 
 ness, but leaves a residuum that constitutes the 
 disturbing element which battles with the regu- 
 larity of law. All the more is this true since 
 with this factor lies the issue of obedience to, and 
 maintenance of, the law in society. Each per- 
 son's gaze is fixed upon a particular bit of 
 reality, directly observed in his own way. There 
 is not merely a barrier around the individual 
 soul-life preventing his fellow-creatures from 
 observing this inner life; but intrinsically, from 
 the nature of the case, no outsider can enter into 
 the business transactions of the individual self. 
 There is something of awfulness about the 
 thought of the lonely pursuit of each individu- 
 ality, facing the issue of life singly, seeing 
 through one's own eyes, and accepting the re- 
 sponsibility for its own life. Indeed if life is 
 our own in the last instance, we cannot live it by 
 proxy, cannot resolve it into a mere component
 
 46 AUTHORITY 
 
 part of social life. The pinch of individuality is 
 with us, and with the "I" goes a conscience which 
 is more than a social verdict. It is something 
 which concerns me directly, to which I must 
 make a personal response and thus incur re- 
 sponsibility. Guy de Maupassant felt this fact 
 in a morbid and painful exaggeration, and 
 Mathew Arnold utters this weird lament in 
 "Poems to Marguerite" : 
 
 "In the sea of life enisled, 
 With echoing straits between us thrown, 
 Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 
 We mortal millions live alone." 
 
 How finely is this sentiment portrayed by 
 Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities" at the open- 
 ing of the chapter "The Night Shadows" : 
 
 "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human 
 creature is constituted to be that profound secret and 
 mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when 
 I enter a great city by night, that every one of those 
 darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that 
 every room in every one of them encloses its own secret ; 
 that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands 
 of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret 
 to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, 
 even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can 
 I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and
 
 MORAL AUTHORITY 47 
 
 vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look 
 into the depth of this unfathomable water, wherein, as 
 momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses 
 of buried treasure and other things submerged. It 
 was appointed that the book should be shut with a 
 spring, forever and forever, when I had but read a 
 page. It was appointed that the water should be 
 locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing 
 on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. 
 My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, my love, the 
 darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable con- 
 solidation and perpetuation of the secret that was al- 
 ways in that individuality, and which I shall carry 
 in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial places 
 of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper 
 more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their 
 innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?" 
 
 All the endeavors to make conscience a result- 
 ing inner response to external environment, 
 whether in social interpretation, or legal ex- 
 planation, or evolutionary analysis, fail to ac- 
 count for its authoritative, apodictive com- 
 mands. Conscience neither seeks its authority 
 from the things of the world, nor endeavors to 
 justify its laws by them. For one surely does 
 not reason one's self into an obligation which re- 
 quires sacrifice even unto death. To be sure, the 
 actual ethical responses are considered primarily, 
 or at least mainly, emotional, but this does not
 
 48 AUTHORITY 
 
 account for the strong sentiment of the objec- 
 tiveness of obligation, and sanction of duty and 
 ought. But more than this, the social self is 
 always transcended by the ideal self. As Pro- 
 fessor Baldwin remarks : 
 
 "The social influence which determines the develop- 
 ment of conscience almost entirely in its earlier stages 
 is itself transcended, in the rational or self-conscious 
 organization of the moral life; so that the conscience 
 becomes not merely a social self, but an ideal self."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 MORAL OBLIGATION 
 
 The subjective activity in the assimilating of 
 the ethical verdicts under criticism and compari- 
 son has been widely discussed in recent studies 
 in the analysis or development of conscience. 
 The existence of heterogeneous codes is no 
 longer considered a valid argument against the 
 validity of conscience, since we find the authori- 
 tative claim in the personal application of every 
 form. Although the individual moral norm is 
 one's own construction out of the available ethi- 
 cal judgments to which the person turns, this 
 standard exercises absolute authority. On the 
 validity of its unconditioned demands, the indi- 
 vidual will stake his life. " Belief," says Pro- 
 fessor Baldwin, "is the personal endorsement of 
 reality." Pascal's dictum, "Verite en de9a des 
 Pyrenees, erreur au dela," loses its force upon 
 close observation, and Benthan's remark, "Con- 
 science is a thing of fictitious existence supposed 
 to occupy a seat in the mind," results from the 
 legal conception which regulates the acting ab 
 extra. 
 
 It is plain that there must be an inner indica- 
 
 49
 
 50 AUTHORITY 
 
 tion of outer import, which gives an authorita- 
 tive dictum. On all sides we have primarily the 
 subjective reference, for the moral and religious 
 life announces itself as a private and individual 
 concern in individual experience. The legal 
 command "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not" is to 
 be obeyed only as responded to by the "I ought" 
 or "I ought not" of the individual. The specific 
 application of ! the right is left with the indi- 
 vidual, and cannot be rigidly controlled by the 
 normative and mandatory legal construction un- 
 der which the personal conscience has developed. 
 Moral, religious, and civil law are to be main- 
 tained, rather than carried out, because the ex- 
 clusive uniqueness of the individual refuses to be 
 completely subsumed under law. And although 
 Kant proclaimed an erring conscience a chimera, 
 his impersonal categorical imperative falls back 
 on the concrete experience of single individuals. 
 When he admits that judgment may err as to the 
 form in a particular duty, he lifts conscience out 
 of the moral judgment as such, and identifies it 
 with the ultimate principles of Practical Reason. 
 This is the will-form as carried by the acting in- 
 dividual, and requires personal application. In 
 our age of enthusiastic social study, those who 
 have not gone to the extreme of lodging author- 
 ity in ethical and religious belief in the "collec- 
 tive consciousness" and its stored-up wisdom of
 
 MORAL OBLIGATION 51 
 
 custom and tradition, translate the Kantian will 
 of Practical Reason into a social will. Yet, these 
 customs admittedly yield a determination not of 
 an absolute and final, but only of a relative kind. 
 We have the attempt, therefore, to unite subjec- 
 tive will with the impersonal order of social con- 
 tent. And this raises the question again as to 
 the final decision, or the seat of authority. Each 
 man is the child of his age only as to the form of 
 his problems. Maurice in his lecture on casu- 
 istry calls attention to the fact that, in behalf 
 of ethical and religious improvement, appeals are 
 made to public opinion to enforce the claims of 
 the individual conscience on the one hand, and on 
 the other to the individual conscience to bear up 
 public opinion; showing, thus, that the point of 
 leverage is with the individual, embodied in so- 
 cial ethics. 
 
 The worth and authority of the individual 
 agent is assumed to be derived from, and sus- 
 tained by, the community in the evolutionary 
 views, though it is admitted that "natural selec- 
 tion" has been overemphasized in its dual opera- 
 tion with "the struggle for existence" or "adap- 
 tation to environment." How are these func- 
 tions related? How does the struggling indi- 
 vidual find his place in this unfinished world, ac- 
 cording to the plan of the whole? Is it to be 
 computed, or is the world's explanation to be
 
 52 AUTHORITY 
 
 apprehended only by faith? Spencer's evolu- 
 tionary definition of conscience as being "the 
 control of the less evolved feelings by the more 
 evolved ones" projects from without those princi- 
 ples that we must find within. Moreover the 
 decision as to which is the more evolved feeling 
 is to be made by this individual, reacting rather 
 than acting. 
 
 Evolution has been the watchword of the "en- 
 lightment" of the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century. It has been trumpeted about as a 
 neverfailing explanation for any and all prob- 
 lems. The much-famed theory is just now be- 
 ing modified and broken down in the biological 
 field from which it boldly invaded the domain of 
 philosophy and theology. Darwin himself wrote 
 to the biologist, Ernest Haeckel: "Your bold- 
 ness makes me shudder," when he perceived the 
 daring assumptions to which his own hypothesis 
 had given rise. The discussion of the evolution 
 of organic life was soon carried into every field, 
 till daring logical minds declared God Himself 
 to be in the process of evolution. This more- 
 over was an easy step to take for the age under 
 the influence of the prevailing pantheistic phi- 
 losophy. The famous Dutch botanist, Hugo De 
 Vries, however, in his "Mutationstheorie" comes 
 to a conclusion the very opposite of Darwin's,
 
 MORAL OBLIGATION 53 
 
 concerning the origin of species. We quote (p. 
 22): 
 
 "Quite universally the doctrine of selection is con- 
 sidered inadequate, the species cannot have arisen 
 through fargoing individual or fluctuating variation 
 by means of selection in indetermined directions. 
 Species do not originate, but disappear through the 
 struggle for existence and through natural selection." 
 
 Numerous attacks are being made on the 
 evolutionary dogma, now that its spell is broken. 
 We mention: Professor Dr. A. Pauly: "Wahres 
 und falsches, in Darwin's Lehre"; Prof. Dr. 
 Kassowitz; "Die Krisis des Darwinismus" ; Dr. 
 Dennert; "Vom Sterbelager des Darwinismus, 
 etc. 
 
 We are concerned here only with bearings of 
 evolution on human personality under authority. 
 Dr. P. T. Forsyth, in an able article entitled 
 "Some Christian Aspects of Evolution," in the 
 London Quarterly Review, October, 1905, 
 dwells on this point. He says: 
 
 "The doctrine of evolution substitutes process for 
 effort. We are caught in a tendency which, we are 
 taught, no effort can control. We are borne along on 
 a tide against which we cannot swim. We learn the 
 fruitlessness of moral struggle against these age-long
 
 54 AUTHORITY 
 
 forces that have submerged so many of the best moral 
 attempts. We climb a climbing wave. We are crea- 
 tures of the time and the world. We lose the moral 
 vigor which resists a majority, the public or the priest, 
 and the moral sympathy which helps to its feet the in- 
 ferior race or the struggling right. We learn to dis- 
 trust truth itself. It is all relative only, something 
 in the making, and something which we can make. And 
 it is all over with truth when man feels himself its crea- 
 tor. His truth is not worth martyrdom then, for it is 
 too changing to be an object of faith; and it is hardly 
 worth propagandism, for it will change ere he can con- 
 vert an audience, to say nothing of a generation. Real- 
 ity gives way under our feet, and standards vanish like 
 stars falling from heaven. Growth, it comes to be 
 thought, does not issue from being, but being from 
 growth. Man becomes his own maker and he has a 
 moral fool for his product."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 In France "social morality" has largely sup- 
 planted "individual morality." Individual re- 
 sponsibilities for ethical behavior are pooled in 
 a national morality "sans obligation ni sanction" 
 as Guyau tries to show. According to the gen- 
 eral verdict, however, this morality lacks, exactly 
 the strength of sincere, personal endorsement. 
 The utilitarian conception is but little better, for 
 the main reason that the estimate of worth and 
 utility can never attain more than relative im- 
 portance. There is no KOU o-cti from which 
 to compute the greatest happiness of the great- 
 est number. There must be an internal indica- 
 tion of outer import, which gives an authorita- 
 tive dictum. On all sides we have primarily 
 the subjective reference, for the moral and re- 
 ligious life announces itself as a private and per- 
 sonal concern. The legal command, "Thou 
 shalt" or "Thou shalt not" is to be obeyed only 
 as responded to by the "I ought," or "I ought 
 not" of the individual. The specific applica- 
 tion of the right is left with the individual and 
 cannot be rigidly controlled by the normative and 
 
 55
 
 56 AUTHORITY 
 
 mandatory legal construction under which the 
 personal conscience has developed. Moral, re- 
 ligious, and civil law are to be maintained, 
 rather than carried out, because of a marginal lib- 
 erty left to the exclusive uniqueness of the indi- 
 vidual which cannot be approached ab extra. 
 
 The common law of the Anglo-Saxon nations 
 shows a superior wisdom, and more practical 
 dealing with individual life, than the Roman 
 law. For, in approaching individual cases ac- 
 cording to precedents, the common law is en- 
 abled to do more justice to the individual than 
 can the Roman law since it subsumes the cases 
 under its code. It should, however, be observed 
 that extenuating and aggravating circumstances 
 are modifying the rigidity of the theoretic con- 
 ception of the Roman code. It is to be noted, 
 also, that many jurists give the application of 
 Roman law a psychological turn, whilst there is 
 a disposition throughout with sane judges and 
 legislators to avoid detailed prescriptions. "De 
 minimis non curat lex" Similarly in medicine, 
 education, etc., the general, theoretic rule can- 
 not be applied without reference to the indi- 
 vidual case. Not a disease but a case is treated. 
 
 Hoffding well observes in his "Problems of 
 Philosophy": 
 
 "The law, the demand, must be differentiated ac-
 
 PERSONAL ELEMENT IN LAW 57 
 
 cording to the different individuals if it is really to be 
 identical for all. Each one should be taxed according 
 to his ability. There must be a thorough-going indi- 
 vidualizing of the ethical demand, lest Ethics itself 
 transgress the dictum that personality is always an end, 
 never a mere means. The ethical demand must be no 
 abstract or external command, but should correspond 
 to the ethical possibilities of the individual person, and 
 be adapted to develop them. Legislation and peda- 
 gogics cannot at this point be absolutely sundered. But 
 in individual cases this makes ethical decisions difficult. 
 Ethical thought can formulate no law that could be ap- 
 plied offhand to all the manifold emergencies of life. 
 Nevertheless, we must assume that in every individual 
 case only a single decision can be the completely right 
 one." 
 
 It is felt that the objective code cannot well 
 invade private life too far. Sumptuary laws 
 fall under this condemnation. Ethical be- 
 havior and religious life cannot be built into the 
 legal constraining fabric. Yet, strange to say, 
 in America people have willingly consented to 
 he ruled in these matters to an extent where 
 Europeans would object to the legislation as 
 meddling with private concerns. I refer to cur- 
 few laws, laws against smoking, dress, drinking, 
 etc. In olden time, the so-called "blue-laws" 
 went farther still. It should be remarked, how- 
 ever, that all these compulsory laws were in-
 
 5S AUTHORITY 
 
 itiated by a strong ethical interest and concern. 
 But it is also to be remembered that, as any of 
 these ethical endeavors begins to lean on the 
 backing of legal constraint, this is an indication 
 that the ethical interest itself is on the wane. 
 The prohibitionists think that the whole evil of 
 intemperance will be remedied by the removal of 
 the objects of abuse and misuse. Interest is un- 
 duly centered on the milieu and the circumstances 
 under which the moral life manifests itself, and 
 so legal encroachment makes its appearance. 
 But even in law each case should be judged on 
 its own merit within the adumbration of the 
 proper legal regulations. Disintegration of 
 faith in received codes apart from inner life- 
 experiences which remain primary may find 
 explanation largely in the conflicts occasioned 
 between different opinions, morals and religions 
 by the intensified inter-communication of the 
 various parts of the world. Any conflict or com- 
 parison of opinions involves unsettlement, un- 
 less the convictions are deep-rooted, which is fre- 
 quently not the case in ethics, religion, or civic 
 matters. 
 
 Ladd says in his "Philosophy of Conduct": 
 
 "The authoritative standard leaves the criteria, sanc- 
 tions, and ideals of conduct just where they ought to 
 be left by all merely descriptive, historical ethics
 
 PERSONAL ELEMENT IN LAW 59 
 
 namely in the consciousness of the multitude of the in- 
 dividuals that respond to the stimulus of external con- 
 ditions, with appropriate ethical feelings and ideas." 
 
 But Ladd, although conceding the inadequacy 
 of an external criterion for ethical conduct as 
 much as an a priori and impersonal formula, pays 
 profound and eloquent homage to the moral 
 phenomena of human life as disclosing Reality 
 itself. 
 
 "There is much, however, in this lofty maintaining 
 of the claims of universal reason to have somewhere hid- 
 den in its depths the eternal truth and unchanging prin- 
 ciples of all morality, which excites the enthusiasm and 
 commands the respect of the reflective mind. The most 
 unchanging truths, we feel, are moral. The profound- 
 est insights into the heart of Reality are born of an eth- 
 ical nature. Man's kinship with the Infinite and the 
 Eternal is most intimate and strong only when he has 
 arrived at the maturity of self-consciousness. Things 
 may be in an unceasing flux, and all the physical struc- 
 tures of human skill may crumble away. Even the ele- 
 ments may melt with fervent heat, and the heavens 
 themselves be rolled up like a parchment-scroll. But 
 the obligations of duty can never be abated, the good 
 of righteous living does not fade; the moral ideal loses 
 none of its awful beauty, or of its unconditional value. 
 Over and beyond the last dim and fading vision of the 
 things that minister to a sensuous good, there rises the 
 spiritual vision of a good that is lasting and supreme.
 
 60 AUTHORITY 
 
 And in this good virtue is not the least, but rather the 
 most important, factor; for it is the Ideal which lures 
 on and encourages and commands the moral conscious- 
 ness of humanity." 
 
 We must now face more clearly the issue, that 
 in the last analysis we stand individually before 
 this spiritual ideal in the forms of, and in co- 
 operation with, others through our social milieu. 
 We must, therefore, not attach too much impor- 
 tance to the forms and surroundings, since the 
 purport of social phenomena is to be interpreted 
 always and responded to by the acting subject. 
 Paulsen has well expressed the secondary im- 
 portance of legalism. He says : 
 
 "The legal order may be brought in as a mechanism 
 in the service of the good whose function is to harmon- 
 ize many individual forces, with the least expenditure of 
 energy, or to balance many partially crossing spheres 
 of interest. But the legal system can never realize this 
 end, for in acting mechanically it does not act accord- 
 ing to the requirements of a particular case. In legal 
 systems we see the same thing, individual cases are de- 
 cided according to general rules even when deciding 
 specific cases by themselves ; the method of procedure is 
 to subsume the individual case under a general rule to 
 ascertain the right." 
 
 One may say, therefore, that the law is ex-
 
 PERSONAL ELEMENT IN LAW 61 
 
 tremely useful in sustaining the public con- 
 science, if there be only due reverence for the 
 law, and if the law is not too rigidly applied in 
 its uniformity, but so as to leave room for indi- 
 vidual variety in subsumed cases. 
 
 Fouillee remarks: "In the French idea of 
 liberty the notion of society is never absent, lib- 
 erty is conceived of as a social power in the sense 
 that it is limited and regulated by society, and 
 that the liberty of the one implies the same liberty 
 for others. Liberty appears then as a solidarity 
 of individual activities in society. This circum- 
 stance gave occasion for accusing the French, 
 not without reason, of thinking rather of 
 equality than of liberty, and of not showing in 
 practice that individual initiative, indifferent to 
 others, which is so frequent among other races 
 where the sentiment of 'self is more developed." 
 Fouillee feels that the claims of this subjective 
 reference are to be admitted when he continues a 
 little further on: "The equality is then not the 
 mechanical equalization of those who are un- 
 equal, rather is it the same liberty of manifest- 
 ing these inequalities in the bosom of society."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND FREE- 
 DOM OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 We have remarked in reference to French so- 
 ciologists that they especially minimize or elimi- 
 nate the individual reference, not only because of 
 the prevailing strong social sentiments, but also 
 because of the Roman Catholic tradition with 
 its emphatic legal morality of injunctions and 
 good works and no private conscience. 
 Desmoulins in considering the question, "a quoi 
 tient la superiorite des Anglo-Saxons?" finds 
 this superiority in the individuality, the personal 
 initiative and the supremacy of the conscience 
 which go naturally with the reformed religion. 
 The apologists of the confession invariably come 
 as near to the protestant position on the freedom 
 of conscience as they possibly can. "The priest 
 does not ask. It is you who confess your sins in 
 his presence. That is between you and God." 
 Yet, who would deny that this violates the pri- 
 vate conscience, and challenges the watchword 
 of the great Orange in the struggle of the refor- 
 mation: "Conscience is God's province." It 
 is natural that by disregard for individual con- 
 
 63
 
 ROMAN CATHOLICISM 63 
 
 science the zealous Jesuits could emphasize and 
 cultivate obedience to an unusual degree. As 
 some military ideas would have it : "Loyal to the 
 commander, but dead to the issue !" "My coun- 
 try right or wrong, my country!" The main- 
 spring of man's finer sensibilities asserts itself, 
 however, in the end. Even Sir James Turner 
 with his checkered military career writes: 
 
 "I had swallowed without chewing, in Germanie, a 
 very dangerous maxime, which militarie men there too 
 much follow; which was, that so we serve our master 
 honnestlie, it is no matter what master we serve; so, 
 without examination of the justice of the quarrell, or 
 regard of my duetie to either prince or countrey, I re- 
 solved to goe with that ship I first rencounterd." 
 
 Unless, however, a man is aflame with the 
 issue, his loyalty to the commander sustained in 
 the task undertaken, no real, faithful service can 
 be rendered, because our conduct must come 
 home to us individually. Lowell brings this out 
 well in the sentiments of a disbeliever in war : 
 
 " Es fer war, I call it murder, 
 
 There you hev it plain an' flat ; 
 I don't want to go no furder 
 
 Than my Testyment fer that; 
 God hez sed so plump an' fairly, 
 
 It's ez long ez it is broad, 
 An' you've gut to git up airly 
 
 Ef you want to take in God.
 
 64 AUTHORITY 
 
 " 'Taint your eppyletts an 5 feathers 
 
 Make the thing a grain more right; 
 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers 
 
 Will excuse ye in His sight; 
 Ef you take a sword an' dror it, 
 
 An' go stick a feller thru, 
 Guv'ment ain't to answer for it, 
 
 God'll send the bill to you." 
 
 It is an interesting subject to consider the 
 sphere of official and private assumption of an- 
 other's responsibility in matters of moral obliga- 
 tion. In Roman law the agent is in some in- 
 stances dangerously near being considered a mere 
 means. This matter appears again with big 
 concerns in regard to the private initiative to be 
 left to their employees. Individual authority, 
 its private initiative and responsibility have to 
 be reconciled in co-operating manner with the 
 efficiency of the whole. In all these matters it 
 becomes strikingly apparent how strong a ground 
 the Calvinistic principle has in its vindication of 
 the individual domain of conscience and indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 The Roman Catholic view of an Infallible 
 Church implies the subordination of the indi- 
 vidual conscience and private judgment to the 
 universally valid supervision of the authoritative 
 priesthood. This prevailing legal tendency is 
 frankly admitted by the Church. There is no
 
 ROMAN CATHOLICISM 65 
 
 quest for a final authority. The Church mounts 
 guard with absolute security over the private ap- 
 prehension of moral and religious truth. Even 
 Abbe Loisy, recently dismissed from that church 
 claims that he does not question the Church's 
 teachings, but only the possibility of demonstrat- 
 ing them from the Gospels according to the re- 
 ceived principles and methods of scientific criti- 
 cism. Thus he claimed rights as a critic and the- 
 ologian, which the Church, in direct control 
 over the apologetic problems which these studies 
 may raise, does not allow. The Vatican canon 
 says: "De Fide et ratione: Si quis dixerit: disci- 
 plinas humanas ea cum libertate tractandus esse, 
 ut earum assertiones, etsi doctrinae revelatae ad- 
 versentur tamquam verae retineri, neque ab 
 Ecclesia proscribi possint anathema sit." Re- 
 nan quotes the encyclical of Gregory XVI in an 
 essay on "Lamenais," who raised the far-reach- 
 ing disturbing individual-investigation and pri- 
 vate-judgment for the Church whose uniformity 
 submerges all individual life as independent fac- 
 tors: "Atque ex hoc putidissimo indifferentis- 
 simi fonte absurda ilia fluit ac erronea sententia, 
 seu potius deliramentum, asserendam esse ac vin- 
 dicandum cuilibet libertatem conscientiae." In 
 the same encyclical Augustine's words are 
 quoted: "At quae pejor mors animae quam lib- 
 ertas erroris." Renan also quotes a letter from
 
 66 AUTHORITY 
 
 Cardinal Pacca to Lamenais, relative to the en- 
 cyclical : "The Holy Father disapproves also and 
 even rejects the doctrines relating to the liberty 
 of cults and civil and political liberty." When, 
 therefore, Cardinal Gibbons says in "The Faith 
 of our Fathers": "It should be borne in mind 
 that neither God nor His Church forces anyone's 
 conscience. To all he says by the mouth of His 
 prophet : 'Behold I set before you the way of life 
 and the way of death' ( Jer. xxi, 8) . The choice 
 rest with yourselves," he is addressing only the 
 non-Roman Catholic. For as a Roman Catho- 
 lic bishop wrote to a Calvinistic friend of mine: 
 "The Catholics," it has been said, "rely on the 
 inspired men, not on an inspired book." And 
 the canonicity of the Holy Scriptures is held to 
 rest solely on the authority of the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church. Religious authority in Protestant- 
 ism, however, rests upon the sanction of inward 
 conviction in her creed ; the Bible and the church 
 are norms from which the individual starts in 
 his own interpretation. 
 
 Cardinal Gibbons discusses this standpoint in 
 the following manner: 
 
 "Let us see whether an infallible Bible is sufficient for 
 you. Either you are infallibly certain that your inter- 
 pretation of the Bible is correct or you are not. If 
 you are infallibly certain, then you assert for yourself,
 
 ROMAN CATHOLICISM 67 
 
 and of course for every reader of the Scripture, a per- 
 sonal infallibility which you deny to the Pope, and 
 which we claim only for him. You make every man his 
 own Pope. If you are not infallibly certain that you 
 understand the true meaning of the whole Bible and 
 this is a privilege you do not claim then, I ask, of what 
 use to you is the objective infallibility of the Bible with- 
 out an infallible interpreter !" 
 
 The argument requires no refutation, but is 
 adduced as another concrete instance of the neg- 
 lect of the essential subjective reference in indi- 
 vidual interpretation. Truth, morality, religion, 
 art, ideals have to become subjective to be of any 
 avail to us. This Protestant assertion of indi- 
 vidualism is well expressed in the words of a 
 critic quoted by Fouillee : 
 
 "An eminent critic has said that Protestantism was 
 the protest of the individual against the social charac- 
 ter of Catholicism. That is not, to be sure, a complete 
 or adequate definition of the Reformation, but one may 
 concede that the Reformation was a revolt of individu- 
 alism, moreover a just exaltation of the individual con- 
 science, individual faith and individual religion, too 
 much stifled under the forms, the works and the col- 
 lective organization of Catholicism." 
 
 We fall back, then, on the old evangelical 
 position in which the soul finds satisfaction in its
 
 68 AUTHORITY 
 
 personal effort to reach the transcendent ideal. 
 The sphere of Conduct moreover is not con- 
 ceived as the mere fact of behavior but as re- 
 lated to a transcendent ideal and is also elevated 
 into the concreteness of personality, giving it re- 
 ligious significance. And this religious signifi- 
 cance sustains "mere morality" with God; and 
 for the solitary soul, the one supreme concern of 
 each man, religion discloses duty as personal re- 
 sponsibility to divine commands, not, however, 
 in the Kantian sense "as if," but "because of the 
 impress of God." As Ruckert says in his beau- 
 tiful epigram: 
 
 " Before every one stands the picture of what he should 
 
 become, 
 As long as he has not attained unto it, his peace is not 
 
 complete." 
 
 ("Vor jedem steht em Bild des das er werden soil 
 So lang er das nicht ist, ist nicht sein Frieden voll.") 
 
 Luther, laying hold upon the inner conviction 
 of his own soul, declares it inadvisable to under- 
 take anything against his conscience, even in the 
 face of an august assembly, which represented 
 both the ecclesiastical and worldly power. When 
 we remember that any individual claims deviat- 
 ing from the iron-bound scholastic system of the 
 middle ages were at once met with the awful 
 obloquy and opprobrium of heresy, this act of
 
 ROMAN CATHOLICISM 69 
 
 the Protestant leader was as heroic a stand as 
 was ever taken by any hero in the course of his- 
 tory. If Luther seized upon the principle which 
 takes hold of Reality, then he was right, in spite 
 of the resulting schisms, in breaking the legisla- 
 tive codes before the variegated inner life of the 
 multitude. The whole historic structure of the 
 Catholic Church, identifying the invisible within 
 with the expressed visibility, is a legalistic pro- 
 cedure, the expression of something in its essence 
 never wholly expressed, but hidden in the hearts 
 of the "collective Christ," the invisible church of 
 believers. Dr. A. Kuyper says in his "Lectures 
 on Calvinism": 
 
 "Rome perceived clearly how liberty of conscience 
 must loosen the foundations of the unity of the visible 
 church, and therefore she opposed it. But on the other 
 hand it must be admitted that Calvinism, by praising 
 aloud liberty of conscience, has in principle abandoned 
 every absolute characteristic of the visible church. As 
 soon as in the bosom of one and the same people the 
 conscience of one half witnessed against that of the 
 other half, the breach has been accomplished, and pla- 
 cards were no longer of any avail. As early as 1649 
 it was declared that persecution, for faith's sake, was 
 * a spiritual murder, an assassination of the soul, a rage 
 against God himself, the most horrible of sins.' ' 
 
 Maurice couples "liberty of conscience" with
 
 70 AUTHORITY 
 
 the expression "conscience of liberty" to explain 
 its individualistic meaning. The expression of 
 individual life is the strongest where the objec- 
 tive norm has a less predominating influence. 
 Wherever conscience of liberty is, there also the 
 cry for liberty of conscience is raised against a 
 ruling code which dictates from without. Dr. 
 Kuyper says again in his "Lectures on Calvin- 
 ism": 
 
 "I maintain the sovereignty of conscience, as the pal- 
 ladium of all personal liberty, in this sense that con- 
 science is never subject to man but always and ever to 
 God Almighty. This need of the personal liberty of 
 conscience, however, does not immediately assert itself. 
 It does not express itself with emphasis in the child, but 
 only in the mature man ; and in the same way it mostly 
 slumbers among undeveloped peoples, and is irresist- 
 ible only among highly developed nations. A man of 
 ripe and rich development will rather become a volun- 
 tary exile, will rather suffer imprisonment, nay even 
 sacrifice life itself than suffer constraint in the forum 
 of his conscience. And the deeply rooted repugnance 
 against the Inquisition, which for three long centuries 
 would not be assuaged, grew up from the conviction 
 that its practices violated and assaulted human life in 
 man."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LEGALISM IN MORALS AND 
 RELIGION 
 
 Prof. Palmer observes in "The Field of 
 Ethics": 
 
 "The law is inadequate to the moral demand because 
 it is too objective. By the law the moral agent is not 
 regarded primarily in himself, subjectively, i.e., with 
 reference to the effects which his conduct may produce 
 on his own growth and welfare. He is regarded ob- 
 jectively, i.e., in relation to others, and is accounted 
 good or bad according as he damages or protects other 
 members of his community. And this objectivity of 
 the law will oblige us to look elsewhere for a full ex- 
 hibit of the moral life." 
 
 The law fixes only a minimum requirement 
 and as a mandatory norm addresses itself always 
 more or less to the individual ab extra, although 
 it is incorporated in his social life and tradition. 
 If we are to eke out the legal deficiency, we must 
 enter the recesses of the heart and ask whether 
 the individual is good in himself? Conformity 
 to outward demands is not a sufficient evidence 
 of positive virtue; the individual as personality 
 
 71
 
 72 AUTHORITY 
 
 is a vital factor. Schiirer in his work, "The 
 Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ," 
 after the exposition of the legal practices of the 
 Pharisees in the Chapter, "The Life Under the 
 Law," concludes: 
 
 "The examples brought forward will have made suffi- 
 ciently evident the manner in which the moral and reli- 
 gious life was conceived of and regulated from the ju- 
 ristic point of view. In all questions everything de- 
 pended only upon settling what was according to law, 
 and that with the utmost possible care, that so the sub- 
 ject might have certain directions for every individual 
 case. In a word: ethics and theology were swallowed 
 up in jurisprudence. The evil results of this external 
 view on practical matters are very evident. And such 
 results were its necessary consequence. Even in that 
 most favorable case of juristic casuistry, moving on 
 the whole in morally correct paths, it was in itself a 
 poisoning of the moral principle, and could not but 
 have a paralyzing and benumbing effect upon the vig- 
 orous pulsation of the moral life. But this favorable 
 case by no means occurred. When once the question 
 was started: 'What have I to do to fulfil the law?' the 
 temptation was obvious, that a composition with the 
 letter would be chiefly aimed at, at the cost of the real 
 demands of morality, nay of the proper intention of 
 the law itself." 
 
 Pollock's definition touching the regulative 
 norm made mandatory to an aggregate may
 
 LEGALISM AND MORALS 73 
 
 show how naturally the external emphasis in 
 ethics and religion results in clubbing together 
 the content of individual experiences into a legis- 
 lative dictum for the aggregate. Pollock says 
 in his "Jurisprudence" : "Law may be regarded, 
 in its essence analytically, as a command from a 
 superior to an inferior; or historically, as a rule 
 judicially declared to be entitled to general ob- 
 servance, and therefore obligatory." It is at 
 once evident that law is the rule of government- 
 action, declared or created by competent au- 
 thority. This rightly established authority, 
 which has become law on sufficient grounds in 
 the social life, furthers the inroad of legalism in 
 the field of ethics. Men want a definite, au- 
 thoritative expression of the inner law, and tend 
 to lean on this as its standard. There is thus 
 a tendency to look upon a code of morals as 
 regulative, as a rule of conduct apart from that 
 which the individual formulates for his guidance 
 in the private pathway of life. He does not 
 cross the bridge till he gets to it, but thinks at 
 least of the mode of procedure, the method or 
 rule by which it is to be done. 
 
 Holland is perhaps still more specific in 
 bringing out the formal, external aspect of law. 
 He says in his "Jurisprudence": 
 
 "Any particular law, properly so-called, is a general
 
 74 AUTHORITY 
 
 rule of human action taking cognizance only of exter- 
 nal acts enforced by a determinate authority, which au- 
 thority is human and among human authorities that 
 which is paramount in political society." 
 
 In this definition the terms "general rule of 
 human action," the "cognizance 1 of external acts" 
 only, and the enforcement "by a determinate 
 authority" show that we have gotten away from 
 exclusively personal subjectivity of ethics in 
 the attempt to find a principle independent of 
 the subjective changes in the individuals who 
 constitute the social organization. The definite 
 code was unwritten law long before it became 
 recognized law, but the rule of life and action has 
 been sufficiently externalized by public and gen- 
 eral recognition so as to exercise authority as 
 well ab extra as from within. The feeling of 
 obligation with reference to this established law 
 has not the directness of the inner witness. The 
 "I ought" has been projected without, and 
 stands reflected in the embodiment of an ex- 
 ternal "Thou shalt." 
 
 History, however, gives distinct warning that 
 the preceptive or prescriptive rule is not enough 
 in itself; the personal equation cannot be elimi- 
 nated with impunity. Law is fixed and not 
 plastic; deals with defined, measured duties, not 
 with the infinite obligation; approaches the sub-
 
 LEGALISM AND MORALS 75 
 
 ject from without, not from within; is based on 
 an established moral nature rather than the 
 genetic morality of the individual ; is exacting, 
 and therefore, without close reference to the per- 
 son addressed, not spontaneously urging in in- 
 timate relationships. For all these reasons 
 legal practices are only props of ethical and re- 
 ligious life, because authority in matters of con- 
 science must remain with the individual. The 
 Roman Catholic Church, feeling this, has applied 
 the general rules of morality to specific cases; 
 and the history, of casuistry shows in consequence 
 the bad excesses of legal practices in the ethical 
 domain. Where the conscience is not sensitive, 
 the moral personality not vigorous, the social, 
 conventional, legal morality is much in evidence. 
 This is the case in a country like France with 
 its passion for logical systems, to which even 
 facts must yield. A country where the absolute 
 rule has prevailed for centuries, where the king 
 asserted "L'etat c'est moi" and signed "Tel est 
 notre plaisir," where an abbot deplored the facts, 
 because they did not conform to his system, 
 where the "Prinzipienreiterei" shouted "perisse 
 le monde, vivent les principes!" a country of 
 cut-and-dried theories, which abolished by decree 
 religion and established a cult of reason instead, 
 a land of which the cold-blooded John Stuart 
 Mill says that its people take logical co-
 
 76 AUTHORITY 
 
 herence for proof and dispense with the control 
 of facts. In this nation, dominated by the 
 phrase, carried by the whirls of contemporary 
 opinions, the legalistic inroads have fairly extin- 
 guished individual, moral, and religious life. 
 Here we hear of a religion of honor, of human- 
 ity, of patriotism, of science, etc., as the 
 prevailing notions of the day in their social 
 world will have it. In France where solid, 
 strong personalities are shelved by a frivolous 
 majority as a "genre ennuyeux qui n'est pas 
 bon" the people have suffered irreparably from 
 the curse of legalism. Hugo pleads this point in 
 "Les Miserables," showing how destructive the 
 rigid, mechanical conception of the law is to the 
 individual life. Honore de Balzac says in "Pere 
 Goriot": He (Eugene de Rastignac) had seen 
 the three great expressions of human society: 
 Obedience, Struggle and Revolt ; or the Family, 
 the World and Vautrin (the convict) . He dared 
 ally himself with neither. Obedience was weari- 
 some, Revolt, impossible, and Struggle, uncer- 
 tain. 
 
 We quote Hugo's eloquent words against 
 French legalism: 
 
 "Javert had certainly always had the intention of re- 
 turning Jean Valjean to the law, of which Jean Valjean 
 was the captive, and of which he, Javert, was the slave.
 
 LEGALISM AND MORALS 77 
 
 That, however , J avert and Jean Valjean, the man made 
 to be severe, the man made to be submissive, that these 
 two men, who were each the thing of the law, should 
 have come to this point of setting themselves both above 
 the law, was not this terrible? Jean Valjean was the 
 weight on Javert's mind. His supreme anguish was the 
 loss of all certainty. He felt that he was uprooted. 
 The code was now but a stump in his hand. He had to 
 do with scruples of an unknown species. There was in 
 him a revelation of feeling entirely distinct from the 
 declaration of the law, his only standard hitherto. An 
 entire order of unexpected facts arose and subjugated 
 him. An entire new world appeared to his soul, favor 
 accepted and returned; devotion, compassion, indul- 
 gence, acts of violence committed by pity upon auster- 
 ity, respect of persons, the possibility of a tear in the 
 eye of the law, a mysterious justice, according to God, 
 going counter to justice of men. He perceived in the 
 darkness the fearful rising of an unknown moral sun, 
 he was horrified and blinded by it. An owl compelled 
 to an eagle's gaze. He said to himself that it was true, 
 then, that there were exceptions, that authority might 
 be put out of countenance ; that rule might stop before 
 a fact; that evert/thing was not framed in the text of 
 the code. 
 
 "To feel your fingers suddenly open ! To lose your 
 hold, appalling thing! The projectile man no longer 
 knowing his road, and recoiling! To be obliged to 
 acknowledge this: infallibility is not infallible; there 
 may be an error in the dogma; all is not perfect; au- 
 thority is complicate with vacillation; a cracking is
 
 78 AUTHORITY 
 
 possible in the immutable; judges are men; the law may 
 be deceived; the tribunals may be mistaken! What! 
 the flaw in the cuirass of society could be found by a 
 magnanimous wretch ! What ! a servant of the law 
 could find himself suddenly caught between two crimes 
 the crime of letting a man escape and the crime of ar- 
 resting him ! All was not certain in the order given by 
 the state to the official. If facts did their duty they 
 would be contented with being the proofs of the law; 
 facts, it is God who sends them." 
 
 Although the facts gathered from human ex- 
 perience, elaborated into moral and civic codes 
 have a certain authority, their forms have no au- 
 thority which excludes fallibility. We must 
 therefore refrain from excessive emphasis on the 
 conventional or legal morality. The expressed 
 morality of conformity to moral, religious, and 
 civic rule may be without, or even at the cost of, 
 the inner morality from which it sprang. Yet, 
 as observed, the relation between the individual 
 and the social ideal is close, in that the social 
 morality furnishes the material for the construc- 
 tion of the individual ideal in the form of per- 
 sonal experience. But the evil of legalism is un- 
 due encroachment upon the individual. The in- 
 dividual conscience is weakened when the sub- 
 jective reference of legalism is discarded. Be- 
 sides, conventional, average morality, cultivates 
 simply the negative virtues, the absence of ap-
 
 LEGALISM AND MORALS 79 
 
 parent vices. Thus the idea of morality and re- 
 ligion is conceived prevailingly and naturally as 
 restraint, not as conformity to truth and right, 
 as a life responsive to and expressive of a posi- 
 tive principle within. The apparent opposition 
 between the absolute, positive virtues born in the 
 soul-life, and the ethical endeavors in the sight 
 of men disappears, when we bear in mind their 
 interrelation. For an understanding of our eth- 
 ical life, its social expressions, we must rightly 
 estimate its individual, personal ground and sup- 
 port. An interview as to legitimacy of 
 pleasures, addressed to well-known divines of 
 different denominations, showed this in striking 
 fashion. Bishop D. H. Greer, Dr. B. P. Ray- 
 mond, Dr. Newman Smyth, Dr. C. H. Park- 
 hurst, Dr. J. B. Remensnyder, Dr. R. Stuart 
 MacArthur, Dr. E. B. Kephart and Cardinal J. 
 Gibbons all concurred in acknowledging the 
 complexity of the moral life, affirming "that the 
 church should beware of the artificial conscience 
 and the externality and superficiality of the re- 
 ligious life wherever that conscience is culti- 
 vated." Under the Gospel men are expected 
 to walk not by chalk lines but by the law of the 
 renewed mind. Morality is not determined by 
 a series of specific directions. The office of the 
 church is to educate the Christian conscience, 
 not to impose prohibitions; to formulate
 
 80 AUTHORITY 
 
 a law of comprehension, not a rule of ex- 
 clusion. J. Wesley declared: "The Christian 
 may not do those things which he knows are not 
 for the glory of God." In the General Con- 
 ference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
 1872, however, the attempt was made to specify 
 required "negative virtues." The Methodist 
 Church prohibits dancing, card-playing, and 
 theater-going, and practically also smoking and 
 drinking. The leaning on prescriptive, con- 
 crete forms defeats the purpose of the ethical law 
 by weakening the moral fiber. It is apt to culti- 
 vate the kind of people who are outwardly good, 
 because they dare not be bad, religionists for 
 whom this outward conformity, performed in 
 good faith, constitutes religion, and who, there- 
 fore, by fulfilling the legal minimum, incline to 
 a boast possible on this basis, yet never justified. 
 Least of all where the requirements met are mere 
 legal demands as prescribed in social forms. 
 Rather are they upheld by the law of which they 
 allege themselves to be the proud supporters, in- 
 asmuch as in their paraded legal observance of 
 the good they are but the captives of the posi- 
 tive virtue of others, elevated into normative law. 
 This criticism of legal morality applies to all, but 
 it is furthered by the prescriptive virtue of 
 which Methodism seems to be unduly fond. It 
 does not tend to raise positive, strong charac-
 
 LEGALISM AND MORALS 81 
 
 ters, aims at an impossible preservation of inno- 
 cence rather than at moral excellency tested and 
 proved in life's struggle. 
 
 The contents and forms of morality and reli- 
 gion are assimilated from stored up tradition and 
 legal codes, but in varying degree and manner 
 according to the reaction of the appropriating 
 agent. On this account, the detail of judgment 
 in moral action should be left to the individual. 
 He must be the final arbiter in his own case, for 
 motive and intention are known only to him. 
 Fouillee for example admits that the subjective 
 bearings are fundamental in moral and religious 
 life: 
 
 "On a voulu f aire de 1'imitation un phenomene primi- 
 tif fondement de 1'ordre social. Nous admettons (et 
 c'est la un des principes de la doctrine des idees-forces), 
 que toute representation intense, repetee, exclusive, tend 
 a se faire action parceque toute representation est ac- 
 compagnee d'un mouvement; mais 1'imitation n'est 
 qu'un corollaire de ce theoreme, non un principe. La 
 tendance innee a la sympathie pour les uns et 1'antipathie 
 pour les autres a sans doute son expression objective 
 dans 1'imitation des uns et la non-imitation des autres ; 
 mais c'est la seulement une des expressions de la sym- 
 pathie, non la seule, selon nous ni la plus essentielle." 
 
 ("Some have tried to construe imitation as the prime 
 foundation of our social order. We admit [and this is 
 one of the principles of the idea-forces] that every in-
 
 82 AUTHORITY 
 
 tense representation, repeated, exclusive, tends to turn 
 into action, because every representation is accompanied 
 by a motion, but imitation is only a corrollary of this 
 theory, not a principle. The innate tendency has for 
 some sympathy, for others antipathy, and correspond- 
 ingly result its objective expression in the imitation of 
 the former and in the non-imitation of the latter. But 
 this is only one of the expressions of sympathy, and 
 neither the only one, nor the most essential.")
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 INDIVIDUAL WILL 
 
 Professor A. T. Ormond has expounded well 
 the psychological ground in imitation, conscious- 
 ness of kind, and conduct as vitalized social 
 forms, and has shown that they all involve and 
 refer to an inner activity of the subject. In an 
 article on the "Social Individual" he says: 
 
 "The touch that makes us kin is an inner touch, 
 while the objective and outer motive that leads to the 
 touch is either an imitative movement or a representa- 
 tion that is rendered capable of a reference to the inner 
 consciousness of another by means of prior association 
 with inner experiences of our own. . . . The in- 
 ternal or appreciative moment of the social life, as re- 
 lated to our fellow-creatures in which sphere the ethical 
 life functions, lies with the individual and this reaction 
 of the individual involves his whole personality." 
 
 Again in his "Foundations of Knowledge," 
 Professor Ormond says: 
 
 "We are obliged to trace the primary root of the 
 sense of kind to the self in some primary individual na- 
 ture, that in becoming internally conscious becomes also 
 
 83
 
 84 AUTHORITY 
 
 the *fontal type* of all ends which it seeks objectively." 
 "The reaction of the subject-consciousness is a re- 
 action as a whole, and self-apprehension will be a func- 
 tion of this mode of reaction. If we are sure of our 
 self-activity, we have that assurance because we grasp 
 it in an act of immediate intuition. It cannot be 
 disputed, then, that we know the fact of our self- 
 activity. ... If in the reactive consciousness, 
 self-activity, and not simply activity that has no label 
 is revealed, then it is clear that we have a qualifica- 
 tion of the content as a whole which renders it not 
 merely a "that," but a "what." The fact that the 
 activity is taking the form of a self shows that it is 
 not formless, but is defining itself as a whole." 
 
 Therefore we do not assume a special faculty 
 which assures us of our moral bearings, nor do 
 we arrive at our ethical interpretations mainly 
 through the intellect, but we find our moral 
 obligations vested in our whole personality. We 
 are in touch with the Infinite with our whole 
 personality. Professor Ladd explains this fact 
 by an ontological consciousness. 
 
 "Man has an ontological consciousness. Ontological 
 speculation is an essential function of the human race, 
 the necessary forms of thought are insights into the 
 nature of Reality. The human mind seeks after the 
 unity of an explanatory Ground, and finds it, it recog- 
 nizes as the inner and ultimate truth of the world that 
 it is the expression, the manifestation, the realization
 
 INDIVIDUAL WILL 85 
 
 of Absolute Mind. The Absolute so recognized is posi- 
 tive and full; the very opposite of the Unreality, it is 
 the fruitful source of all relations. It is Spirit i. e., 
 a Will self-active in the realization of ideal ends: this 
 is the innermost essence of all Reality. It is the know- 
 ing Subject, from which issues 'the most fundamental 
 and comprehensive of all relations, that between the 
 knower and what is known.' " 
 
 If we conclude with the generally accepted 
 theories that will-psychology once more pre- 
 dominates over the claims of the intellect, we are 
 inclined to give judgment, as such, a secondary 
 place in morals and religion, but the disposition 
 of the heart primary consideration. Even 
 Thomas Aquinus in his Aristotelianized Chris- 
 tian system defined conscience as "the disposi- 
 tion to realize natural law." 
 
 So the specific ethical feature is to be lodged 
 rather in the response of the individual than in 
 the content to which the response is made, 
 although as one responds so is one responsible. 
 On the face of it, therefore, the enlightenment 
 through the wisdom of experience represented in 
 tradition, civilization, dogmas, and codes is an 
 immense help. The absolute worth is in the re- 
 sponse; but in view of the close, organic relation 
 between the subjective response and the objec- 
 tive situation, to which the responding effort 
 is directed, the latter is indicative of the subjec-
 
 86 AUTHORITY 
 
 tive attitude. In keeping with this, the outside 
 view in "ejective interpretation" infers the inner 
 motive from externalized behavior. As has 
 been shown, this can be only an approximate 
 estimate; whilst the judgment as to its ethical 
 value, which insists that good must be good for 
 something, is always defeated in its computa- 
 tion for the lack of a standing ground; for 
 ethical systems enter upon an infinitely complex 
 field of unending consequences. Moreover, the 
 reaction upon the acting subject cannot be com- 
 puted. The moral and religious features lie pri- 
 marily with the initiative of moral behavior, 
 though inextricably conjoined with the direction 
 and form which takes under given surroundings 
 and circumstances. 
 
 Prof. Caldecott remarks in his "Philosophy of 
 Religion" : 
 
 "Modern psychologists in their various ways regard 
 mental life as consisting primarily of processes of will 
 directed to the satisfaction of feeling ; and making use 
 of intellect as instrumental. In this way they describe 
 much of every individual's experience as due to himself, 
 inasmuch as he has neglected to attend to vast ranges 
 of objects which have only just appeared in the con- 
 fines of his field of view, but killed by neglect, have 
 perished. These have not been taken into experience, 
 therefore, which have been made up of those objects 
 which received a welcome and were attended to by per-
 
 INDIVIDUAL WILL 87 
 
 sonal preference. Thus every man's world is much more 
 his own creation than intellect-psychology had led us to 
 suppose; much more the product of his own personal 
 choice. It is, in short, personal choice which is the 
 core and pith of the life of the human soul." 
 
 Fichte sought to account for this personal 
 element when he defined a volition as the imme- 
 diate consciousness of the activity of any of the 
 powers of Nature within us. But will is a per- 
 son's active power toward a self-chosen end, 
 which mocks rationalistic schemes with the well- 
 known saying: "Who is convinced against his 
 will, is of the same opinion still." It reminds 
 of Tennyson's 
 
 "Our wills are ours we know not how 
 Our wills are ours to make them Thine." 
 
 The personal equation entering into our 
 knowledge as a result of the grasping of facts 
 with personal bias has received ample treatment 
 in the discussions on "selective thinking" and 
 pragmatism. They corroborate the position 
 which proclaims responsibility for beliefs, and 
 considers that ignorance of the right is sinful. 
 Reading the damnatory clauses of the Atha- 
 nasian creed in the light of their implication, 
 they might appear less arbitrary than the
 
 88 AUTHORITY 
 
 eighteen deans urged upon the Archbishops of 
 Canterbury and of York that they were: 
 
 1. Quicumque vult salvus esse, ante omnia 
 opus est ut teneat catholicum fidem. 
 
 2. Quam nisi quis integram inviolatamque 
 servaverit absque dubio in aeternum peri- 
 bit. 
 
 3. Fides autem Catholica haec est ut unum 
 Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in Uni- 
 tate veneremur. 
 
 The agent is infallible and changeable in 
 judgments, whilst the ideal-constructions are 
 made of unreliable material. The "Zeitgeist" is 
 neither sufficient nor final, and the agent selects 
 the materials according to his heart's intent, and 
 this condemns itself in the universal sentiment 
 of deficiency or sin. But it is evident that there 
 is in the mass of codified wisdom an indication 
 of tried experience, an experience of numberless 
 creatures who have lived in touch with the Abso- 
 lute. The claims of private judgments, there- 
 fore, should never go to the extent of tearing 
 away the heritage of the ages, or abolishing the 
 intermediary functions of this embodied larger 
 experience. Individualistic views of ethics stand 
 in strange contrast with actual behavior. If the 
 dogmas and codes do not fit, the fancy and fads 
 of the day are readily espoused as a regulative 
 norm.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 AUTHORITY IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Mirabeau thundered out in matchless elo- 
 quence before the convention in his address to the 
 people: "If it be contrary to act against one's 
 conscience, it is none the less so to form one's 
 conscience after false and arbitrary principles. 
 The obligation to form and enlighten one's con- 
 science is anterior to the obligation to follow 
 one's conscience." Hence instruction in mor- 
 ality is of great importance. Professor James 
 said, in an address before the University of Cali- 
 fornia: "The whole function of thinking is but 
 one step in the production of habits of action." 
 This, of course, is the reactionary view against 
 theoretic formulations, well defined by Prof. 
 James as "a method for estimating the practical 
 value and results of philosophical conceptions." 
 It involves difficulties in charging that which is 
 made such an extremely inferior affair with a 
 mission too high to fulfill, namely, "the produc- 
 tion of habits of action." The pragmatic 
 method must be elevated into a philosophy, if it 
 is to maintain itself in the world of thought. 
 Philosophies, however, are rather expressive of 
 
 89
 
 90 AUTHORITY 
 
 than productive of the behavior of volitional life. 
 "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" 
 (Proverbs xxiii, 7). This reaction is because of 
 the extreme emphasis upon theoretic formula- 
 tions, the logical coherence of which was 
 esteemed of prime importance, without due re- 
 gard to the infinite variety of life, which always 
 left in each system unmanageable residua. 
 Thus systems sometimes forced facts in their 
 effort to secure logical consistency, though em- 
 phasis on certain principles failed to treat all the 
 elements in proper proportion. Yet there is a 
 tendency in man which leads him to strive for a 
 unified whole, a Weltanschauung. And a 
 modern Weltanschauung is much easier held 
 than a time-honored creed. Ex-President 
 Eliot even proposes to make "a judicious selec- 
 tion of beliefs" as if they were taken up or dis- 
 carded at our discretion, instead of being grown 
 in the very texture of our inner experiences. 
 The over-emphasis on intellectualism is, how- 
 ever, to be charged in a large measure to those 
 who denounce the credal formulations as "intel- 
 lectual gymnastics and useless logical struc- 
 tures." They make education of the intellect 
 the panacea for all ills, forgetting that this is not 
 the main faculty of personality. It is, however, 
 consistent with the social interpretation that 
 slights the personal factor.
 
 AUTHORITY IN PHILOSOPHY 91 
 
 Attention should be called to the illogical pro- 
 cedure of discarding the codes and systems that 
 constitute the inherited wisdom of the past. 
 Especially is this unwise in an age in which evo- 
 lutionary theories have linked us everywhere in 
 the different phases of our development with the 
 past. To be consistent it should teach that 
 moral and religious codes are to be studied in 
 order that they may teach us with the rich ex- 
 perience of past generations. If Max Miiller's 
 "impassable barrier" between brutes and man as 
 constituted in the essential human capacity to 
 transmit in language the experience of the race 
 from preceding generations to those succeeding 
 is denied in the interest of our kinship with the 
 brutes, still the kinship of man with man must 
 always be even closer and more useful. His in- 
 corporated dogmas and codes may still be re- 
 sorted to as embodying traditional wisdom. In 
 fact the incorporation of life's experiences into 
 codes is the philosophy constructed by man in 
 general, whilst its systematizing and compre- 
 hensive grouping is done by gifted individuals. 
 As Balfour says in his "Foundations of Religious 
 Belief": "Systems are and must be for the few, 
 the majority of mankind are content with a 
 mood or temper of the thought." Balfour 
 speaks of "psychological climates" in which men 
 are formed, and of the effect on their beliefs
 
 92 AUTHORITY 
 
 produced by custom, education, public opinions, 
 church, and myriad other silent, unnoticed influ- 
 ences of "local color." 
 
 Our inner assent is not an affair of the intel- 
 lect alone; it springs from our whole personality 
 as developed in its surroundings. It is well to 
 observe that the predominance of the volitional 
 element in life, however, does not justify a re- 
 jection of the claims of reason. Such opposi- 
 tion between will and reason may easily be 
 turned into a subjectivism, which will not allow 
 any objective authority. Balfour's "authority" 
 is the influence in the individual which prevails 
 mostly with, often without, sometimes against, 
 intellect in the assent given to certain creeds. 
 The objective element, of course, has to be 
 recognized or the result will be moral and re- 
 ligious anarchy. If the volitional element of 
 personality is set apart from the recognized 
 codes which represent the outcome of reflected, 
 reasoned experience, the individual claims will 
 run riot. An objective criterion is found pro- 
 visionally in the comparison of our life-experi- 
 ences with the outcome of a larger, and longer- 
 tried experience. This provides the co-opera- 
 tion and coherence needed in the growth of civi- 
 lization. To an astonishingly large extent 
 the moral life relies on the verdict of others, on 
 the collective mind and traditional wisdom of the
 
 AUTHORITY IN PHILOSOPHY 93 
 
 past as confirmatory and corroborative. Dr. 
 Stanton remarks truly: "If religious knowledge 
 is to exist objectively at all and not relatively to 
 the individual consciousness alone, the principle 
 of authority must enter, as it does in all kind of 
 knowledge." There is usually with the well-in- 
 formed person an individual decision, a deliber- 
 ate relegation of authority, which proceeds from 
 the individual, but which means to submit by an 
 act of faith to the larger wisdom of codes, 
 dogmas, civil law, unwritten or written statutes, 
 which consensus has established as valid guides 
 for public conduct. And this intermediary 
 function of traditional inheritance in regard to 
 reflected, ordered experience is to b commended 
 to those impatient with all restraint and law. 
 Even when granting this submission to legal au- 
 thority to be intermediary and provisional till it 
 approves itself, such acts of faith are required 
 over the whole field of human activity, and are a 
 prerequisite of all knowledge. That this moral 
 law imposed upon us by authority foreign to our 
 personality should be more than the fallible con- 
 sensus of opinion, which admits of no determi- 
 nation of an absolute and final sort, is admitted. 
 Yet people do lean and have to lean on each 
 other in their advance in moral and religious 
 life as elsewhere. Authority and example lead 
 the world. As Schopenhauer said: "Urteilen
 
 94 AUTHORITY 
 
 aus eigenen Mitteln ist das Vorrecht Weniger: 
 die Ubrigen leitet Autoritat und Beispiel." J. 
 S. Mill says in his essay on "Liberty": "In 
 proportion to a man's want of confidence in his 
 own solitary judgment, does he usually repose 
 with the implicit trust on the infallibility of 'the 
 world' in general. It was the ductile disposi- 
 tion of Newman which made the writer of 'Lead 
 Thou Me On' repose on the bold assumption of 
 the Romish Church, instead of relying on the 
 solitary witness whose Ariadne-thread winds 
 through the labyrinth of numberless sentiments 
 and situations of our complex life. He wanted 
 his "Grammar of Assent" made out for him. It 
 was lack of faith in the unfortified inwardness 
 of Truth's witness which led him to put his faith 
 in the definite formulations and organizations of 
 Rome's visible church." 
 
 "Denn ach, die Gotter leihen keine pfander!" 
 In the changing, multifarious heterogeneity of 
 codes and verdicts, the individual needs confir- 
 mation; and so he is led to legal formulations. 
 But in them he may find to 1 use the same figure 
 not the pledge, but the very gods themselves, 
 provided he truly follows the given thread in the 
 conduct of his life the unanalyzable ought-feel- 
 ing, the simple sentiment of obligation, his con- 
 science. 
 
 Formulated systems may be little known by
 
 AUTHORITY IN PHILOSOPHY 95 
 
 the mass of men, yet all contribute to some ex- 
 tent to the ever-increasing amount of incorpo- 
 rated life-experiences as the influences of their 
 lives pass into the sum-total of human civiliza- 
 tion. To understand this aright is the phi- 
 losophy of all ages. Adjustment to the world 
 is personal. The Weltanschauung gained from 
 some individual viewpoint must be corrected by 
 the added wisdom of a larger horizon. And this 
 comes from legalism, the creation of the "ob- 
 jective mind" which is the unsystematized philos- 
 ophy of the past generations of men. 
 
 Thus becomes philosophic study; do <pdo<ro(pta
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PHILOSOPHIES OF THE DAY AND 
 REVEALED AUTHORITY 
 
 There is no greater blunder than to set 
 oneself against what the past offers as codes of 
 tried experience. The Ritschlian cry of "re- 
 ligion without theology," and its declaration, "I 
 must not theologically affirm what I have not re- 
 ligiously experienced," is an unwarranted asser- 
 tion of lawlessness, which would at once be 
 recognized as absurd in civil law. This protest, 
 however, is made almost exclusively against 
 moral and religious codes. If these doctrines 
 are only men's formulations, yet they are accu- 
 mulated verdicts of the moral and religious ex- 
 perience of vast ranges. Is not the individual 
 rash, therefore, in seeking "emancipation" from 
 the restraint which such codes put upon him? 
 Instead of asserting his unaided views against 
 those codes, he should rather make fair trial of 
 them by personal interpretation with the convic- 
 tion that these codes will be understood better 
 as they are lived. But if they contain the reve- 
 lation of divine truth of supernatural origin, then 
 the incapacity to perceive and receive the doc- 
 
 96
 
 REVEALED AUTHORITY 97 
 
 trine means simply that the age is lacking in 
 moral fiber. 
 
 Dr. Swete says: "Faith is in the last analysis 
 the act of the will and not of the intellect, in its 
 essence a moral act." It is the recognition of 
 that which announces itself as foreign, as other 
 than self, to which the will bends as the 
 volitional life is guided in its responses. It is an 
 essentially false verdict of the inner experiences 
 of soul-life to refuse an objective criterion for 
 our moral and religious life on the ground that 
 dogmas are derivative and are not the experi- 
 ences themselves. If immediate experiences an- 
 nounce themselves as having certain causes, we 
 should not interpret them as merely subjective. 
 Just as on the simple testimony of our percep- 
 tive faculty we believe in the existence of object 
 perceived and subject perceiving, so we should 
 also, in our ethical depositions, take the verdicts 
 of the moral sense as veracious. If the artistic, 
 poetical, and religious sentiments disclose a 
 cognitive apprehension of feeling, then we should 
 take account of this in the same way. The phe- 
 nomena of the inner life should be treated in 
 the same way as all other facts, not refused, but 
 used. It is reversing things, to say, though 
 faith projects the reality to which the religious 
 life testifies, that faith is not from God, but 
 postulates Him to unite the valuable with the
 
 98 AUTHORITY 
 
 existing. To keep us in a mass of unexplained 
 experiences under an unwarranted assumption of 
 subjectivity, is to force an agnosticism on us for 
 the sake of that moral and religious anarchy 
 which proclaims, De moribus non est disputan- 
 dum. As Dr. Rittelmeyer said: "Choice is free 
 for each individual, for the highest values, as 
 modern ethics maintain, are like the final ideas of 
 a Weltanschauung, a-logical (a-logisch), that is, 
 they cannot be forced upon anyone by argu- 
 ments of the understanding." This involves 
 neither mere subjectivity, nor independence of 
 all objective criteria to its exclusion of intellec- 
 tual verification. It rather means that ration- 
 alism declares its own bankruptcy. In life it- 
 self we find not only the objective norm but also 
 the justification of the moral life. In spite of the 
 assumed subjectivity, reference is always made 
 to the vast deposits of religious and moral life 
 with the implicit admission of the truthfulness 
 of their contents. The objection that the truth 
 of religious inheritance should not be taught, but 
 experienced, simply assails the deductive method 
 for an exclusive right of the inductive. This 
 analytical temper and inductive spirit makes bold 
 claims in a materialistic atmosphere, but is in a 
 far deeper sense than is usually urged against it 
 incapable of constructive work. Indeed! "Die
 
 REVEALED AUTHORITY 99 
 
 Teile habt Ihr in die Hand. Fehlt Ihnen jedoch 
 das lebendige Band." 
 
 Prof. Royce in an able discussion on the 
 psychological weakness of Pragmatism shows 
 convincingly that the abuse of deductive reason- 
 ing and the syllogism is largely due to misunder- 
 standing of its nature, and overlooks the im- 
 mense fecundity in life of the syllogism. Rela- 
 tions will continue to play an important part in 
 life. Balfour says: "It is authority rather than 
 reason to which in the main we owe, not religion 
 only, but ethics and politics." He ridicules the 
 idea of a community of which the members 
 should set out to examine deliberately the 
 grounds on which their moral, religious, and 
 civic life rests. This is, however, what people 
 who refuse the instruction of legal and religious 
 codes, practically propose. Not even in exact 
 science does the learner get his information ex- 
 clusively by his own experience, refusing the ex- 
 perience of others, including that of the past. 
 Those who refuse assent to another authority 
 than that which is absolutely final, usually do 
 not admit such authority, but fall in with fallible 
 authorities. They recognize at least the desir- 
 ability of unconditioned good on which to stake 
 the issues of our life in small and great things, in 
 the wear and tear of daily duties, as in the heroic
 
 100 AUTHORITY 
 
 efforts of sacrifice. Since we do not and can- 
 not encompass all of life's experiences in our 
 earthly days, it is well to see life, if not wholly, 
 at least as a whole. This is made possible by 
 the constant incorporation of the varied experi- 
 ences of life in the world's civilization. This 
 civilization becomes ever more mingled, fused, 
 and enriched by contributions from private ex- 
 periences molding the appropriated material of 
 social life. Though codified experience, law, 
 dogma, and code are of changing material in 
 time, yet the expression of the Absolute is in 
 them. The question is, how do we stand related 
 to this world of experience? Are we shutting 
 ourselves up in partial views, or do we attempt 
 to take in the fullness of complex life in its true 
 proportions ? 
 
 It is significant that, though philosophy as 
 a discipline is not in favor, there is a demand 
 for "integration of studies," whereas we have 
 had heretofore at best only a "correlation 
 of studies." Anything presents every kind of 
 problem; if we follow specific subjects far 
 enough, we become involved in other studies. 
 Our age is productive of studies which are indi- 
 cated by the coupling of branches, formerly 
 always pursued in separateness. We are led 
 from the particular to the whole ; in the study of 
 the particular, we encounter the whole ; we travel
 
 REVEALED AUTHORITY 101 
 
 on every road from the periphery to the center. 
 As in Goethe's poem: 
 
 "Willst Du ins Unendliche schreiten, 
 Geh' nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten ! 
 Willst Du dich am Ganzen erquicken, 
 So miiszt Du das Ganze im Kleinsten erblicken." 
 
 or again in his paradox, 
 
 "Was ist das Allgemeine? Der einzelne Fall. 
 Was ist das Besondere? Millionen Falle." 
 
 This temper of scientific pursuit compensates 
 to some extent for the lack of specific philo- 
 sophic discipline. Flint remarks, in the Princeton 
 Review, 1878: "What has to be viewed in rela- 
 tion to primary and efficient, and ultimate final 
 causes, are the results of all sciences." Andrew 
 Seth says : "It is with the ultimate synthesis that 
 philosophy concerns itself ; it has to show that the 
 subject matter which we are dealing with in de- 
 tail really is a whole, consisting of articulated 
 members." The small philosopher, the detail 
 and retail student of manual and of text book, 
 has created a separation between the different 
 branches of study that threatens seriously the 
 harmonious conception of life. E. Halevy gives 
 a gloomy outlook in his report on philosophy in
 
 102 AUTHORITY 
 
 Germany in Revue Internationale de I'en- 
 seignement, 1896. 
 
 "No philosophic spirit presides any more over the 
 work in the universities. The result is that through 
 the lack of philosophic discipline, they have fallen vic- 
 tims to a nationalistic and socialistic political economy. 
 Practical materialism, whose highest form is "National- 
 oekonomie," flourishes in the chairs of the universities, 
 laboratories of collectivism. With the students of the 
 German universities one feels sadly the lack of a pre- 
 liminary philosophic training in the secondary schools." 
 
 It is not strange that not only Wundt, 
 Eucken, Ziegler, Kapper and Paulsen, but 
 Virchow and even Haeckel call for a revival of 
 the philosophic spirit, which shall unify and 
 articulate the separate branches of learning. 
 This, in order that, in spite of the study of 
 manuals and specialities, the student may cre- 
 ate a harmonious, consistent world-view, instead 
 of staring ignorantly at half -perceived problems 
 which needs must arise behind the mass of facts. 
 For, however grouped, they will come to the in- 
 dividual observer with the insistent demand as to 
 their purport; "what," "whence," "whither." It 
 is the old, old problem of reconciling time and 
 eternity, the many and the one, the changeable 
 and the changeless, the persistent quest of the 
 mind. The intellect may not solve it, but faith
 
 REVEALED AUTHORITY 103 
 
 sees the Eternal in fullness, the One in the many, 
 the Changeless in the changing, the Absolute in 
 the relative. Such authority is not discovered, 
 not arrived at by long disquisition. We were 
 graciously placed in the midst of the Absolute 
 Ideal, dissolving all legal questions or vacilla- 
 tions by the assurance, "I am the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life." In the midst of disin- 
 tegrating, unmoral legalism, which becomes 
 skeptical of its sanctions, we confidently appeal 
 to this revelation of Absolute Truth, as once de- 
 livered unto the saints, and over which the 
 church stands guardian !
 
 PART II 
 
 METAPHYSICAL AND 
 THEOLOGICAL ASPECT
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 INDIVIDUALISM AND LEGALISM 
 
 The inquiry how to reconcile the strictly per- 
 sonal, individual life-elements with the claims 
 to authority of those universal elements incor- 
 porated in tradition, in social institutions, in 
 written and unwritten law, is in order in 
 an age of individual assertions and claims, 
 of disruption of systems, of cries of "no dog- 
 mas," of subjectivity, of pragmatism, of "Um- 
 wertung aller Werte," of the disintegration 
 of all things which claim binding authority save 
 that of the ego; in an age which, disregarding 
 the old New England consideration of all things 
 "with reference to eternity," has come to sug- 
 gest, at least professedly, all things to the final 
 judgment of the self-important ego; in an age 
 of individual pretensions which clamor loudly 
 against the impotent, wornout, false, mystical, 
 hundredfold-cursed superstitions of former days 
 that cumber the ground over which progress is 
 to march on to higher and better things. In 
 such an age it must be worth our while to re- 
 flect on the situation, to find out whether indi- 
 vidual sovereignty, personal integrity, cannot be 
 
 107
 
 108 AUTHORITY 
 
 maintained together with the authority of incor- 
 porate law. 
 
 This would bring, if not a solution, at least a 
 reconciliation in the sense of Montesquieu's 
 definition of liberty as "the freedom to do what 
 the law permits" (Esprit des Lois, Bk. II, ch. 
 3). This view is indicated also in the title of 
 Sterrett's recent book "The Freedom of Au- 
 thority," which attempts reconciliation rather 
 than solution. Lavaleye inclines to the side of 
 authority when he thus defines liberty: 
 
 "La liberte est le pouvoir de faire tout de qui 
 n'est pas contraire au droit, en pratique tant ce 
 qui n'est pas contraire aux lois." (Le Gouvern- 
 ement dans la democratic, p. 131.) 
 
 On either side, strong claims are made; in be- 
 half of legal authority as well as for individual 
 rights, though the temper and tenor of our age 
 favor the individualistic interpretation of life. 
 
 In a valuable article of the Yale Review of 
 February, 1907, by Professor Garner, of Illi- 
 nois University, it is stated that the legislative 
 guarantee for individual liberty is a compara- 
 tively late appearance. Along with attention to 
 the individual goes, however, "the tendency 
 since the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 among the states of the civilized world, to push 
 the lines of government farther into the field 
 which the individual under the former con-
 
 INDIVIDUALISM 109 
 
 ditions would have a right to claim as be- 
 longing to liberty." This theme is ably 
 treated in a recent inaugural address by Pro- 
 fessor H. Krabbe, of Leyden University; "De 
 idee der persoonlykheid in de staatsleer." 
 
 Especially is individualism strong in our Re- 
 public, founded under the spirit of revolutionary 
 ideas, through sudden break of historic relations 
 practically without tradition, with much of that 
 "assertive democracy" which will recognize no 
 superiors, where the citizen is possessed of a 
 spirit. 
 
 "That bids him flout the law he makes, 
 That bids him make the law he flouts." 
 
 Morality and religion are of all things asserted 
 to be primarily personal, individual concerns, 
 "Privatsache." And yet, it is exactly in this 
 sphere that legalism is most often complained of 
 as enlisted in the suppression of the individual 
 life by the majority-rule. Legalism, with its 
 outward dictates, has at all times encroached 
 upon the domain of ethical and religious life, 
 though as Maurice remarks the conscience 
 is intimately bound up with the "I." If codi- 
 fied standards become rules for individual life, 
 appearances come to play a large part in life. 
 Legalism has a bad flavor, especially because 
 of those consistent, law-abiding moralists and re- 
 ligionists, the pharisees.
 
 110 AUTHORITY 
 
 The remarkable development of this legalistic 
 religion is finely portrayed in Schiirer's 
 "Geschichte des Jiidischen Volkes in Zeitalter 
 Jesu Christi." (See chapter which treats, "Life 
 under the Law.") 
 
 On the other hand, the proclamation of the 
 utter independence of the individual, in his free- 
 dom from all restraint, is meeting with opposi- 
 tion. Nietzsche, the gifted disclaimer of all 
 bonds and laws, has certainly given a shocking 
 picture in the unlimited, individual pretension 
 of his "Herrenmoral." 
 
 ( See Jenseits von Gut, und Bose. Nietzsche's 
 Werke. Band VII.) 
 
 The movement for a return to nature and the 
 individualism of the "Sturm und Drang" period 
 ran its course without much approval. Rous- 
 seau's prize essay on the question : "Have the Sci- 
 ences Contributed to Purify or to Corrupt the 
 Morality of Mankind?" aimed to establish the lat- 
 ter point with more passion and eloquence than 
 calm reasoning. After the appearance of many 
 treatises on the limitation of the authority of the 
 law and of the state, have come discussions as to 
 the "limits of individual liberty." 
 
 Montague's "Limits of Individual Liberty," 
 Lacy's "Liberty and Law," and Ritchie's "Princi- 
 ples of State Interference" are fruitful discus- 
 sions in this field. J. S. Mill, in his famous
 
 INDIVIDUALISM 111 
 
 treatise, feels that individual liberty must be 
 limited to actions of a "self -regarding class," 
 however difficult they are to define. 
 
 Schiller, in a distich on the Werther-like 
 sceptic of passion, who aims at the realization of 
 unlimited autonomy of the inborn "I," without 
 any outward restraints whatever, characterized 
 fitly its prototype: "For every character has the 
 right of existence; only inconsistency is not al- 
 lowed." "Denn Recht hat jeder Character, es 
 giebt kein Unrecht als der Widerspruch." 
 
 Rousseau, declaring the individual a sovereign 
 law unto himself, does not allow any supposed 
 submission of personal interest to the general 
 welfare of mankind. His motto is: "The indi- 
 vidual above society." The regulations of so- 
 ciety are to be burst asunder, and an abrupt re- 
 turn to nature is proclaimed as the cure for all 
 evils. Such a naive conception of individualism 
 makes him ignore the historic development of 
 society and raise the cry to repeal the "social 
 contract." This anarchistic self-rule, however, 
 has likewise been turned to ridicule and held up 
 for opprobrium. "Anarchy is the permanent 
 liberty of change, it is the elevation of change 
 into law as need or caprice will have it," is the 
 definition given in an anarchistic periodical. 
 Or, as someone has said, "Anarchism is the acute 
 outbreak of individualism."
 
 112 AUTHORITY 
 
 In learning to understand both view-points, 
 the one desiring to regulate the life of the indi- 
 vidual by an expressed, outward authority or 
 law, the other claiming for the individual au- 
 tonomy on the ground of individual sovereignty, 
 we find a common ground on which to meet the 
 problems involved in the conflict. For where 
 conflicts rage, problems are involved. Instead 
 of arguing, therefore, one case at the cost of the 
 other, we shall attempt a solution of the difficulty 
 by a close interpretation of each view, endeavor- 
 ing to find a universal element in the individual 
 and an individual element in the universal. If 
 legalism be the expression in society of a multi- 
 ple individual experience, made regulative 
 for the individual, we shall need to inquire into 
 the organic relation between the two elements, 
 viz., the personal equation and the larger experi- 
 ence of racial wisdom, which assumes the right of 
 regulative law over the single life in its moral 
 and religious functions. In the analysis of this 
 question, light may be thrown on the nature of 
 legalism. Legalism functions instrumentally in 
 the moral life of man. Accumulated, congealed 
 morality, objectified deposits from most vari- 
 egated single sources, it is the historic object- 
 lesson by which man learns to discern the Au- 
 thority of all authority.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 SABATIER'S VIEW OF AUTHORITY 
 
 In the recognition of the forms of authority 
 the exercise of faith is involved. However 
 reasonable, however natural, however inevitable, 
 therefore, the recognition of the forms of au- 
 thority may be, reason can never render an ex- 
 haustive account of life's "grammar of assent." 
 Sabatier in his able discussion, "Religions of 
 Authority," assumes that this can be done. But 
 he can do this only because his final authority is 
 humanity, the last sanction of morality and re- 
 ligion being found in humanity, the source from 
 which it springs, and its final aim. This view 
 is characteristic of France. It is Comte's cult 
 of humanity revived in a disguised form. And 
 this is the fatal fault under which this valuable 
 treatise labors. For Sabatier is right in not 
 recognizing on such a presupposition any final 
 or absolute authority. There is no absolute and 
 final authority when we do not touch somehow 
 in its forms the Absolute from which all au- 
 thority is derived. When the ontological impli- 
 cations of the moral and religious life are dis- 
 carded, the rejection of the metaphysical aspect 
 
 113
 
 114 AUTHORITY 
 
 of religion necessarily follows. This position 
 undermines religion by disowning the real, ob- 
 jective authority lying back of all faith. Saba- 
 tier therefore always remains in the sphere of hu- 
 man or derived authority. He expresses him- 
 self in his Introduction as follows : 
 
 "Authority is a necessary function of the species, and 
 for very self-preservation it watches over that offspring 
 in whom its life is prolonged. . . . Social au- 
 thority and individual autonomy are not more hostile, 
 and can no more legitimately be opposed to one another, 
 than the final destiny of man and of humanity. And 
 yet authority is never other than a power of fact. 
 This is to say that it cannot be the philosophic explana- 
 tion nor the ultimate reason of anything. . . 
 Whether willingly or unwillingly, authority must own 
 the control of reason. . . . An established au- 
 thority, however great its antiquity or its power, never 
 carries its justification in itself." 
 
 This is exactly where Sabatier's and all ration- 
 alistic explanations of faith are at fault. They 
 rest on a false psychology of faith. Authority 
 is power of fact, and never owns the control of 
 reason. Though reason functions in the giving 
 of assent, authority carries its own justification 
 for the person who recognizes it. 
 
 Indeed no authority is legitimate which relates 
 to our minds so as to stultify or bar the exercise
 
 SABATIER ON AUTHORITY 115 
 
 of reason. Though reason does not create truth, 
 it always weighs, assimilates and applies the data 
 which experience places before its consideration. 
 Butler well said in his "Analogy": "Reason is the 
 only faculty we have wherewith to judge con- 
 cerning anything, even revelation itself." 
 When Reville says that in accepting authority 
 we do so on grounds of reason, so that it is the 
 adhesion of our mind that gives authority its 
 weight, he identifies the mind's assent to author- 
 ity's claim to be valid with the establishing of 
 that authority. As Dr. Francis J. Hall observes 
 in "Authority, Ecclesiastical and Biblical" : "It is 
 because authority is valid prior to our reasoning 
 that it is discovered to be credible by reason ; and 
 it is this prior validity that reason discovers, thus 
 establishing the rationality of our dependence 
 upon authority. Authority presents truth to 
 the mind, and does so none the less really whether 
 it is rightly understood or not" ; or even, we may 
 add, rejected. The attitude towards authority 
 is not to believe blindly, or at command as is 
 sometimes mistakenly and incongruously argued, 
 but rather to make an intelligent use of the most 
 trustworthy means available for extending the 
 range of our knowledge. In this function veri- 
 fication has a larger meaning than the cure of 
 doubt. Rather does it enrich the truths already 
 accepted. For, as Sir William Hamilton says:
 
 116 AUTHORITY 
 
 "The original data of reason do not rest upon 
 reason, but are necessarily accepted by reason on 
 the authority of what is beyond itself. These 
 data are, therefore, in rigid propriety, beliefs or 
 trusts." It is an unfortunate circumstance that 
 against the authority of historic Christianity 
 always is asserted that it is at variance with 
 reason. Christian dogmatism is an emphasis on 
 truth, and such a mental attitude in regard to 
 truth should never be regarded as an enemy to 
 intellectual freedom. Chesterton, the master of 
 paradox, expresses this well in the concluding re- 
 marks on "Importance of Orthodoxy" : "The vice 
 of the modern notion of mental progress is that 
 it is always something concerned with the break- 
 ing of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the cast- 
 ing away of dogmas. But if there be such a 
 thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth 
 into more and more definite convictions, into 
 / more and more dogmas. The human brain is a 
 machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot- 
 come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear 
 of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of 
 something having almost the character of a con- 
 tradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail 
 that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a 
 bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. 
 . . . If then, I repeat, there is to be mental 
 advance, it must be mental advance in the con-
 
 SABATIER ON AUTHORITY 117 
 
 struction of a definite philosophy of life. And 
 that philosophy of life must be right and the 
 other philosophies wrong." (P. 283 ff. 
 "Heretics," Chapter xx.) Moberly rightly ob- 
 serves in "Lux Mundi," pp. 222 and 223: "There 
 is no proper antithesis between believing in 
 deference to authority, and believing in defer- 
 ence to reason, unless it be understood that the 
 authority believed in was accepted at first as au- 
 thority without reason, or maintained in spite of 
 the subsequent refusal of reason to give con- 
 firmatory witness to its assertions." Neither 
 should it be represented that grace subverts our 
 reason or replaces it, rather is the gift of grace, 
 an endowment of our reason, a supernatural as- 
 sistance which clarifies reason without altering or 
 subverting its laws. In conversion with the 
 affected will and purified emotions comes also 
 as the work of grace the reason enriched from its 
 creative source, to assimilate it to its perfect 
 archetype. Another circumstance which has 
 given cause to much confusion in regard to au- 
 thority is referred to by Dr. Hall in his work on 
 Authority, where he says: "Absolute trust- 
 worthiness of an authority is one thing, the de- 
 gree of subjective certainty which can be gained 
 in relation to its claim and teaching is another. 
 We may not confuse infallible authority with in- 
 fallible guidance, for the success of guidance
 
 118 AUTHORITY 
 
 depends on subjective conditions in individual 
 and fallible men. The certainty of faith may be 
 so full as to exclude doubt; but in human beings 
 both certainty and doubt are subjective qualities 
 of fallible understanding." Significant in this 
 regard is the conclusion of the Vth article of the 
 Westminster Confession of Faith: "Notwith- 
 standing, our full persuasion and assurance of 
 the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, 
 is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, 
 bearing witness by and with the word in our 
 hearts." 
 
 Now, as Sabatier goes on to say: 
 
 "Being essentially progressive, and far removed 
 from the state of perfection, neither authority nor au- 
 tonomy may be posited as absolute. . . . Au- 
 thority, in its true conception, is and can be no other 
 than relative. . . . This theory of the national 
 genesis and social function of authority will easily be 
 granted for the ordinary course of human things in 
 general. . . . But when the question is of religion, 
 men stop and protest." 
 
 Sabatier fails to understand this protest, be- 
 cause all objects of faith must needs become 
 for him merely mediating forms, designed as 
 method. Intrinsic, real authority does not ob- 
 tain in this sublunary world. He will not abide 
 in the absolute authority which faith proclaims. 
 Truly, the question is not whether) the pope is in-
 
 SABATIER ON AUTHORITY 119 
 
 fallible, but whether he must be infallible. But 
 the latter proposition does not get a hearing from 
 Sabatier. Behind and beyond all sovereignty of 
 fact, rises for him a sovereignty of right ; and on 
 the strength of this he protests against the exer- 
 cise of faith, disallowing authority to any and all 
 forms of authority. Yet, strangely inconsistent, 
 this, his last appeal and final authority to deny 
 any and all its forms, is proclaimed relative. He 
 does not discern in the manifestations of truth, 
 the Truth itself. For Sabatier, the immanent 
 does not involve the transcendent. Metaphysics 
 is professedly disowned. He fails to realize the 
 import of a passage like Hebrews xi. 3. 
 "Through faith we understand that the worlds 
 were framed by the word of God, so that things 
 which are seen were not made of things which do 
 appear"; or of Romans i. 20. "For the invisi- 
 ble things of him from the creation of the world 
 are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
 that are made, even his eternal power and God- 
 head." On Scripture authority, therefore, it 
 would appear that though truth is neither of 
 man, nor by man, it is yet for man, here and 
 everywhere, and at all times. This argument, of 
 course, applies only to those who admit the au- 
 thority of the Bible. Yet, let me quote in this 
 connection the admirable words of Professor An- 
 drew Seth:
 
 120 AUTHORITY 
 
 "Rightly agnostic though we are regarding the na- 
 ture of the Absolute as such, no shadow of doubt need 
 fall on the truth of our experience as a true revelation 
 of the Absolute for us. Hegel was right in seeking 
 the Absolute with inexperience and finding it, too; for 
 certainly we can neither seek it nor find it anywhere 
 else. The truth is hardly likely to be the final truth; 
 it may be taken up and superseded in a wider and 
 fuller truth. And in this way we might pass, in suc- 
 cessive cycles of finite existence, from sphere to sphere 
 of experience, from orb to orb of truth; and even the 
 highest would still remain a finite truth, and fall in- 
 finitely short of the truth of God. But such a doctrine 
 of relativity in no way invalidates the truth of revela- 
 tion at any given stage. The fact that the truth I 
 reach is the truth for me, does not make it on that 
 account less true. It is true, so far as it goes, and if 
 my experience can carry me no further, I am justified 
 in treating it as ultimate until it is superseded. Should 
 it ever be superseded, I shall then see both how it is 
 modified by being comprehended in a higher truth, and 
 also how it, and no other statement of the truth, could 
 have been true at my former standpoint. But before 
 that higher standpoint is reached, to seek to discredit 
 our present insight by the general reflection that its 
 truth is partial and requires correction, is a perfectly 
 empty truth, which in its bearing upon human life, must 
 also certainly have the effect of an untruth." 
 
 In the same essay Professor Seth emphatically 
 declares :
 
 SABATIER ON AUTHORITY 121 
 
 "God is revealed to us alike in the face of nature and 
 in our own self-conscious life, in the common sense 
 which binds mankind together and in the ideals which 
 light us on our upward path. God is not far from 
 any one of us. Within us and around us, here or no- 
 where, God is to be found." 
 
 This, indeed, deserves special emphasis. On 
 the one hand, knowledge is discounted and ren- 
 dered unreliable, because it is treated as relative, 
 inadequate in scope and in nature, whilst even 
 truth itself is considered a fluctuating total of 
 which subjective experiences render inadequate 
 account inasmuch as they play a formative part 
 in it. The extreme tendency in this direction 
 leaves us in subjectivism. On the other hand, 
 the Absolute is lifted out of the reach of the 
 finite, following out Kant's view that thoughts 
 stand between us and things, so that we are shut 
 off from the knowledge of "things in them- 
 selves." The "negative theologies" represent 
 this line of thought, so ably expounded in Brad- 
 ley's work "Appearance and Reality." The 
 Truth, the Absolute, the Infinite, Reality, is con- 
 ceived of as necessarily unrelated and undiffer- 
 entiated substance. It is the pure Being of the 
 Eleatic school. It is strongly insisted upon by 
 Dean Mansel in his Bampton lectures and gave 
 rise to the well-known controversy with Maurice. 
 But it amounts practically to the same thing,
 
 122 AUTHORITY 
 
 whether the Absolute be elevated into such pure 
 Being that it is essentially unrelated and undif- 
 ferentiated, or whether it is held to have no in- 
 dependent objective existence. In either case, 
 or even in Hegelian panlogism or Spinozan ma- 
 terialism, the Absolute is so pure an abstraction 
 that truth becomes a fiction. It is therefore a 
 pointed wit which called Bradley's book: "The 
 disappearance of Reality." Maurice is right 
 when he says of this view in "Sequel to What is 
 Revelation" (p. 10) : 
 
 "No real knowledge of the Eternal is possible; our 
 conceptions are bounded by the finite and the visible. 
 My answer is : If that is the reason, no knowledge of 
 the temporal is possible. Slavery to our conceptions, as 
 the teacher of experimental science has shown us, is 
 the hindrance to any real, solid acquaintance with the 
 mysteries of Nature. When we try to bind her with the 
 forms of our intellect, she will give us no faithful an- 
 swers ; she will only return an echo to our voices. Here 
 is another proof of the analogy between the things 
 sensible and spiritual. The same enemy blocks the en- 
 trance into both regions. The determination to meas- 
 ure all things by ourselves, to bring everything under 
 the conditions of our intellect, makes us exiles from the 
 Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of earth." 
 
 Hegel's system may teach both these errors. 
 For, inasmuch as it equates the Absolute with
 
 SABATIER ON AUTHORITY 123 
 
 human experience, it leaves no room for the in- 
 dependence, the transcendent objectivity of the 
 Absolute, unless it be at the expense of indi- 
 vidual personality, in which case that which 
 figures as such, is only the Absolute as subject 
 of thought. Yet, it teaches also that we can 
 only determine the Absolute by predicates 
 drawn from experience, attributes which experi- 
 ence indeed furnishes in its ever-increasing rich 
 and various forms. These characteristics and 
 determinations are legitimately "thrown out to 
 a vast Reality" as Matthew Arnold terms it; 
 legitimately thrown out, because found and 
 recognized in the forms of life as appearing in 
 the things that are seen.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 
 AND AUTHORITY 
 
 Hegel assumed the knowing of the coming 
 into existence of this worldorder and plan, but 
 rendered the task consequent upon his bold as- 
 sumption easy by the identifying thought and 
 matter, which may mean metaphysical idealism 
 or materialistic pantheism, but in either case 
 strict monism. A world is treated in each in- 
 stance as a negligible quantity. 
 
 Hegel's system of the objective mind as the 
 receptacle of the multifarious individual contri- 
 butions, to the extent that these are intrinsic 
 parts of the social structure, leads necessarily to 
 the consideration of man as a social unit. We 
 are not only fed on the breasts of society, but are 
 part and parcel with it in a panlogistic system. 
 Over against Kant's categorical imperative, He- 
 gel's demand, keeping in close touch with the 
 milieu in the midst of which the individual lives, 
 enjoins: "Observe your station and its duties!" 
 But Hegel solves the possible discrepancy be- 
 tween the subjective and objective mind, indi- 
 vidual and normative law, by a slighting of the 
 
 124
 
 HEGEL ON AUTHORITY 125 
 
 first, and by an unwarranted assumption in be- 
 half of the latter. In his "Phenomenology of 
 the Spirit" he reduces the many to the one on 
 the assumption of the identity of thought and 
 being, which makes the laws of thought the law 
 of things. The well-known watchword is: 
 "Whatever is real is rational and whatever is 
 rational is real." He says in his "Logic" : "Phi- 
 losophy of the Absolute is a representation of 
 God as He was in his eternal essence before the 
 creation of the world or of a finite spirit; as all 
 things were made by Him, and He is before all 
 things and by Him all things consist." The 
 procedure of tracing out the logical processes of 
 his "Immanent Dialectic" has been characterized 
 as a generalizing away of God's personality and 
 of human personality in the Absolute Idea, be- 
 cause thought is stripped of individuality and 
 made abstract and universal. Schopenhauer 
 said: 
 
 "Hegel's system briefly expressed teaches that 
 the world is a crystallized syllogism." The lead- 
 ing theme, briefly stated, is: Sein hat Dasein. 
 Being has existence (ex-sistere) , stands out in 
 determination. We see the process in mind, 
 think God's thoughts after Him. All predica- 
 tion is trichotomy. The judgment A is B con- 
 tradicts A, involving as it does that A is no 
 longer A, but is B. A new synthesis conse-
 
 126 AUTHORITY 
 
 quently is involved. Thus the great march of 
 Hegel's Pure Being or Absolute in its self- 
 realization is pregnant with all the world's con- 
 tent and destiny. Hegel thus naturally em- 
 phasized the immanence of God. In this con- 
 nection, his exposition of cause and effect is 
 worthy of notice, as well as his insistence, con- 
 trary to the attempts of naturalistic theories 
 that a developing series is to be understood in its 
 highest term, for development does not mean ad- 
 dition. He says in his "Logic," "God is the abso- 
 lute Person, as self-conscious, he is not the end 
 of an evolution, but all things created find their 
 reality in Him." (Wallace's translation, pp. 89- 
 91.) Caird is therefore correct when he says 
 that "the advance from mere being is a deepen- 
 ing of being in itself whereby its inner nature is 
 laid bare, rather than an issuing of the more per- 
 fect from the less perfect." ("Hegel," p. 218.) 
 
 Hegel should not be charged with explaining 
 the generation of God, man, and nature out of 
 pure Being which equals non-being. He rather 
 catches Pure Being in the world-process on its 
 way toward self-realization. Keying the proc- 
 ess with that of which it consists, thought, he 
 seeks to trace its development. On this account 
 the terms "abstract" and "concrete" exchange 
 meanings with Hegel. 
 
 This short sketch will suffice to show the bear-
 
 HEGEL ON AUTHORITY 127 
 
 ing of Hegel's main position on the subject of 
 authority. Professor Dyde of Queen's College, 
 who has given us an excellent translation of He- 
 gel's "Rechtslehre," remarks: 
 
 "Since Hegel treats in the 'Philosophy of Right' of 
 an essential stage in the evolution of spirit, whose whole 
 nature is unfolded scene by scene in the 'Encyclopedia,' 
 it is not accurate to speak of Hegel's ethical principles 
 as based upon his logic. The more concrete categories 
 of the 'Philosophy of Right' are related each to the 
 next in the same way as are the more abstract cate- 
 gories treated in the Logic. But the relation of the 
 ethics to the logic is not that of superstructure to 
 foundation or of application to principle, but of the 
 more concrete to the less concrete stage of evolution. 
 One single life runs through the whole organism of the 
 work." 
 
 Dr. Gans, one of the editors of the Complete 
 Edition of Hegel's books, also remarks that He- 
 gel's "Philosophy of Right and Doctrine of the 
 State" is as much as any other an essential part of 
 his philosophy. 
 
 The transcendent part of the Absolute is not 
 very clear in Hegel's system. It may serve to 
 meet Trendelenburg's pointed criticism that He- 
 gel bridges unwarrantably the chasm between 
 "pure being" and "becoming." To endow pure, 
 undifferentiated being with the first attribute or
 
 128 AUTHORITY 
 
 quality in order to start it on its process of self- 
 realization, requires a cause, which is not recog- 
 nized in the system. We can give no other 
 meaning to Sterret's statement in his able work, 
 "Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion," 
 when he says: "In Hegel's whole Logic, 
 which contains his system or method in pure sci- 
 entific form as extending to all his philosophical 
 views, God seems to me to be immanent in the 
 actuality and order of the world, and transcen- 
 dent as its efficient cause." Of the transcendent 
 part in Hegel's Absolute, we are not convinced 
 by seeing "pure Being" narrowed down to the 
 ceaselessly evolving series of events on this 
 planet, where everything appears only as a "mo- 
 ment in the process." The dogmas of the 
 Church appear of course also as "moments in the 
 process," and become mere symbols of reality. 
 But for this "abbreviated knowledge of faith" 
 the believer insists on corresponding reality. 
 We cannot help feeling that Hegel at the end of 
 his three volumes on "Philosophy of Religion" 
 has but increasingly felt this disruption between 
 historic Christianity and the symbols of faith of 
 his philosophic speculation. He practically de- 
 spairs of a possible solution when he says that 
 it is not the immediate affair and concern of phi- 
 losophy, although he always made much of the 
 theological bearings of his philosophy. Dr.
 
 HEGEL ON AUTHORITY 129 
 
 Marheineke who edited Hegel's "Philosophy of 
 Religion" styles it "the highest bloom of Hegel's 
 philosophy." 
 
 Inasmuch as with Hegel, individual, family, 
 and community have their truth and ground in 
 the state, no claims of the individual against the 
 state are admissible. Fries and Krause, who 
 emphasized individualism, objected that Hegel 
 made "the objective mind" the absolute criterion 
 and everything subservient to it. The pivotal 
 maxim, "Whatever is real is rational, and what- 
 ever is rational is real," was partially construed, 
 and only the first part seized upon in argument. 
 Menzel therefore does Hegel here, as in many 
 other respects, scant justice when he remarks: 
 "The notorious proposition of Hegel, 'All that 
 is real is rational,' is made use of to show that the 
 present condition of things is absolutely the most 
 rational, and that it is not merely revolutionary, 
 but eminently stupid, foolish, and unphilosophi- 
 cal to take exceptions to it." When in Hegel's 
 system individual claims of selfhood are shat- 
 tered before the sovereignty of the state and its 
 institutions, and the notion of the "divine right 
 of kings" stalks around again, it should be borne 
 in mind in fairness to Hegel that for him the 
 sovereignty of the state is actualized in the liv- 
 ing monarch and reconciled with the privilege of 
 the individual citizen who obeys only the laws of
 
 130 AUTHORITY 
 
 which he perceives and approves the ground. In 
 Hegel's system, the individual citizen is not sup- 
 posed to be at variance with the state. He says : 
 
 "Epicurus, it is said, believed that the world should 
 be given over to each individual's opinions and whims; 
 and the ethical fabric should be treated in the same way. 
 By this old wives' concoction, which consists in found- 
 ing upon the feelings what has been for many centuries 
 the labor of reason and understanding, we no longer 
 need the guidance of any ruling conception." 
 
 Individualistic schemes, on the other hand, lie 
 open to criticism by opposing the individual and 
 his interests to the interests of the state. It 
 should also be understood that where Hegel in- 
 sists on the sovereignty of the law, of the state 
 over the individual, it is the Idea which is the 
 norm and ideal to which the subject is to be sub- 
 ject, and without which he is not a proper sub- 
 ject. Unfortunately, however, the Idea remains 
 impersonal, in despite of all assertions of neo- 
 Hegelians. The individual citizen does not 
 move in personal relationship with this absolute 
 authority of the state which he is to obey. It 
 remains outward restraint, legal power of fact. 
 Hegel seems to recognize this fact fully in re- 
 taining Kant's distinction between the legal and 
 the moral, the impersonal law subjecting per- 
 sons, and impersonal law subjectified by persons.
 
 HEGEL ON AUTHORITY 131 
 
 The sphere of right demanding conformity to 
 law, though without regard to the individual per- 
 son, subjects him to ethical powers, and is there- 
 fore not a limitation of freedom but rather its 
 reality, as it is only the arbitrary will which is 
 limited. That such a profound view of the au- 
 thority of the state as the goal of all existence 
 should demand obedient recognition of all, need 
 not cause surprise. This view is removed by a 
 whole diameter from the popular notion of a 
 "government of the people, by the people, and 
 for the people," though the two conceptions ap- 
 proach each other when rightly interpreted, ex- 
 cept that Hegel's governmental view with its 
 sovereignty of state and ruler inclines to a par- 
 ental attitude, whilst democracy as voiced by 
 Lincoln tends to stimulate initiative. Both men 
 are typical representatives of their views. 
 
 It is hardly duly appreciated that Hegel's 
 views strongly counteracted the tendency of law- 
 lessness of the period of "Sturm und Drang" of 
 which "Wilhelm Meister" is the classic expres- 
 sion. They exercised a wholesome influence on 
 that lawless individualism of emotional roman- 
 ticism in which the sentimental gush of Rous- 
 seau was combined with the bold claims of Fichte 
 for individual assertion against established law 
 and order. Hegel lent dignity to the law by 
 conceiving so profoundly of the sovereignty of
 
 132 AUTHORITY 
 
 the state as to vest it with the authority of the 
 Absolute Idea. 
 
 Thus the law is taken out of the hands of the 
 individuals or political group (the machine) and 
 lifted over and above all, regulating all alike so 
 that the chief executive of the nation is as much 
 under the law he wields as the meanest citizen. 
 To break this law is treason indeed! It is like 
 lifting a puny, wanton hand against the very 
 framework of God Himself. 
 
 As all governments are historic, ethnic, tradi- 
 tional flowerings of the idea of the specific na- 
 tion, it is wholly beside the mark when critics 
 assert that Hegel would force a rigid, hide- 
 bound Prussian bureaucracy upon a nation like 
 ours, plastic, young, and new meeting occa- 
 sions as they come, and rising equal to deal with 
 them. Of course we do not always deal with new 
 situations in the best way, but we are making 
 more valuable political experiments than are 
 possible under the Hegelian conception of law 
 which tends to bind individual initiative under 
 the yoke of bureaucratic routine. Still we must 
 remember that Hegel thinks that every un- 
 sophisticated consciousness stands upon the con- 
 viction that the rational is real, and conversely. 
 From this circumstance proceeds the view that 
 the spiritual universe is the natural. To quote 
 Hegel:
 
 HEGEL ON AUTHORITY 133 
 
 "When reflection, feeling, or whatever other form the 
 subjective consciousness may assume, regards the pres- 
 ent as vanity, and thinks itself to be beyond it and 
 wiser, it finds itself in emptiness, and, as it has actuality 
 only in the present, it is vanity throughout. Against 
 the doctrine that the idea is a mere idea, figment or 
 opinion, philosophy preserves the more profound view 
 that nothing is real except the idea. Hence arises the 
 effort to recognize in the temporal and transient the 
 substance, which is immanent, and the eternal, which 
 is present. The rational is synonymous with the idea, 
 because in realizing itself it passes into eternal exist- 
 ence. It thus appears in an endless wealth of forms, 
 figures, and phenomena. It wraps its kernel round 
 with a robe of many colors, in which consciousness finds 
 itself at home. Through this varied husk, the con- 
 ception first of all penetrates in order to touch the 
 pulse, and then feel it throbbing in its external mani- 
 festations." 
 
 The critics who represent Hegel as the cham- 
 pion of the baldest conservatism in defense of all 
 actual conditions whatever they be, leave out of 
 account his conception that all rationality of the 
 real has only a relative and partial value. Its 
 value though never lost must be tran- 
 scended, overcome, and make room for another 
 phase. The necessity of the "moments of the 
 process" in the stage of development of pure 
 thought constitutes lasting truth and its justify-
 
 184 AUTHORITY 
 
 ing value. There is a certain ambiguity in He- 
 gel's doctrine according as one approaches the 
 phases of development. If one lays hold of the 
 viewpoint that all our institutions, all our inheri- 
 tance of the past, all the tradition of former days 
 upon which we now stand and to which we are 
 vitally related, must go and make place for the 
 better things to come Le meilleur est I'ennemi 
 du bien then Hegel may be regarded as the 
 proclaimer of an evolution which is ever urging 
 the progress of the principles that throb in na- 
 tional life and its institutions. And truly in 
 Hegel's system there is nothing to offset this, 
 inasmuch as there is no permanent element in 
 the change. Josiah Royce might well exclaim 
 "The conception of the eternity of the forms of 
 things is historically considered by far the most 
 significant opponent that the philosophic doctrine 
 of evolution has had or ever can have," especially 
 when the changing time-elements are interpreted 
 in materialistic fashion. This interpretation has 
 been put upon his doctrine by the left-wing He- 
 gelians, and the fact that they were the most pro- 
 gressive in politics and religion is sufficient refu- 
 tation of the charge that Hegel advocated the 
 acme of conservatism. He was conservative, but 
 his system does not necessarily involve it. He- 
 gel himself emphasized the conservative aspect 
 of his system, but the writings of Feuerbach,
 
 HEGEL ON AUTHORITY 135 
 
 Bruno, Baur, Strauss, and Karl Marx show that 
 the most radical progress could be read into his 
 system. As Professor Bowen has well said: 
 "The baldest infidelity and red-republicanism 
 went under the name and garb of Hegelian phi- 
 losophy." Although this point has been a much 
 controverted question in the Hegelian schools 
 and among their critics, it is plain that those are 
 wrong who place the Hegelian maxim, "What- 
 ever is real is rational," alongside of Pope's ver- 
 sion, "Whatever is is right," of the Leibnitzian 
 optimism, which proclaims this the best of the 
 possible worlds. Pope's "Essay on Man" is no 
 more admissible in Hegel's system than is the 
 scathing and vulgar satire of Voltaire's "Can- 
 dide," which it called forth.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 AUTHORITY AND FACT 
 
 We should accept the fact that objective ex- 
 istence is known in our experience, not only from 
 epistemological considerations, but also from the 
 admission of the necessary function of authority, 
 unreservedly made by those who yet disclaim the 
 meaning of fact. For is not objective authority 
 the mediating agency for the individual, because 
 it constitutes direct, first-hand witness to inde- 
 pendent facts, which we are not able to verify 
 ourselves? The whole function of authority 
 falls to the ground, unless it implies this witness 
 to objective, independent fact. Of course, this 
 functional authority in its most varied forms, to 
 which conscience and reason make their appeal 
 in justification of belief, relates to the objective 
 source of authority, without which these indi- 
 vidual witnesses would not constitute authority. 
 
 In this connection we may call attention to 
 the essentially unscientific procedure of the 
 present Bible-critics in employing the narratives 
 of the original, direct witnesses to Christ, in or- 
 der to "reconstruct" a Christ and a Gospel as 
 they conceive of them, but independent of the 
 
 136
 
 AUTHORITY AND FACT 137 
 
 authority of the Bible-stories. One can readily 
 understand the resulting diversity in the recon- 
 struction and appreciate KalthofF's remark that 
 every school in modern times has its University- 
 Christ. Similarly the modern theorists of this 
 school, in spite of their cry "Back to Christ" re- 
 main from the nature of the case "standing stiff 
 in the stocks." They go neither back nor for- 
 ward to Christ, but contemplate themselves in 
 Christ-images projected rather than found in 
 faith. 
 
 Goethe's sarcasm comes to them with full 
 force : 
 
 "Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott ; 
 Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott." 
 
 It is again Luther's declaration: "Machet ihm 
 jedermann Zum Gott, darzu ihm sein Herz 
 trug." 
 
 At the bottom of this procedure lurks Feuer- 
 bach's bald assertion, contrasted with the affirma- 
 tion, of Christian faith: "God did not create man 
 in His image, but man created God (or Gods) 
 in his image." This theory, especially regard- 
 ing Christianity, is historically false, because it 
 reverses the true causal relation. 
 
 Professor G. T. Ladd takes up this view in 
 his "Philosophy of Religion" in a somewhat con-
 
 138 AUTHORITY 
 
 cessive mood. Accepting the statement that 
 "man made God in his own image," he finds the 
 other statement that "God first made man in His 
 image" to be only a religious interpretation of 
 the first (Vol. I. Ch. xiv). "God himself," he 
 says in another place (p. 146), "as at first the 
 Ideal of power and majesty and afterwards of 
 justice, truth, and spiritual perfection, is the 
 construct of the quenchless desire and growing 
 aptitude for the realization of the Ideal." I am 
 aware that Professor Ladd's ontological con- 
 sciousness strenuously safeguards at least the 
 reality of the truth that appears in historic re- 
 ligions, but his explanation seems rather arbi- 
 trary. 
 
 Professor Schmiedel furnishes another typi- 
 cal illustration of this view in his article on the 
 "Resurrection" in the "Encyclopedia Biblica." 
 After arguing with much elaborateness and abil- 
 ity in favor of the vision theory he says: "The 
 disciples believed they saw Jesus, because they 
 were already persuaded He was alive." 
 
 Examples might be multiplied in which the 
 decision whether Christ made Christianity or 
 Christianity made Christ has been made from 
 theory, rather than in accordance with the re- 
 sults of a strictly historical method of investiga- 
 tion. But in the scientific study of history, as 
 in strict legal procedure, original witnesses are
 
 AUTHORITY AND FACT 139 
 
 not easily displaced by the most ingenious 
 theory. The question is not what might have 
 been the case, but what are the facts. Truth is 
 our first concern, truth in the Old-English 
 meaning of the word Cf treow" which is "faithful- 
 ness," or "appeal to facts" (cf. the German 
 Treue, Dutch trouw) . We must be faithful to 
 facts. Theories and explanations are subservi- 
 ent and secondary to fact. They are mere at- 
 tempts to explain them. But facts require 
 recognition, whether we are able to explain them 
 or not. The irreversible facts are themselves ex- 
 planations as passive witnesses in service of 
 truth. Magna est veritas et praevalebit. 
 
 The nature and importance of original au- 
 thorities is maintained by all historians. Pro- 
 fessor E. A. Freeman, in his "Methods of His- 
 torical Study" (Lectures IV and V), says: 
 
 "The kernel of all sound teaching in historical mat- 
 ters is the doctrine that no historical study is of any 
 value which does not take in a knowledge of original 
 authorities. Let no one mistake this saying, as if I 
 were laying down a rule that no knowledge of any his- 
 torical matter can be of any value which does not come 
 straight from an original authority. 
 
 "The fact is that Livy, Plutarch, and a crowd of 
 others, though they are not original authorities in 
 themselves, are original authorities to us. That is to 
 say, we can for the most part get no further than what
 
 140 AUTHORITY 
 
 they tell us. We know that they copied earlier writers ; 
 we often know what earlier writers they copied. But 
 those earlier writers are for the most part lost; to us 
 Livy and Plutarch are their representatives. For a 
 large part of their story we have no appeal from them 
 except either to internal evidence or to any fragmentary 
 authorities of other kinds that may be left to us. 
 There is no counter-narrative. 
 
 "If, then, we are to define original authorities, we 
 might perhaps define them as those writers from whom 
 we have no appeal, except to other writers of the same 
 class. 
 
 "We must remember that even the best contemporary 
 writer is commonly a primary authority for a part only 
 of his subject. Though living at the time of which 
 he writes, though often an actor in the scenes of which 
 he writes, still he cannot always write from personal 
 knowledge ; he cannot have seen everything with his own 
 eyes; he must constantly write only what he has been 
 told by others; only he is able to judge of what is told 
 him by others in a way that a later writer cannot do. 
 And besides his narrative, there is often other contem- 
 porary evidence which for some purposes may be of 
 higher authority than his narrative. The text of a 
 proclamation or a treaty is, within its own range, of 
 higher authority than the very best contemporary nar- 
 rative. I say within its own range, because the official 
 document, while it always proves a great deal, does 
 not always prove everything. 
 
 "The later writers are by no means to be cast aside ; 
 it is often very important to see how they looked at
 
 AUTHORITY AND FACT 141 
 
 the events of earlier times. The point to be under- 
 stood is that they are not authorities, that they are 
 not witnesses, that a statement made by a contemporary 
 gains nothing in inherent value because it is copied over 
 and over again by a hundred writers who are not con- 
 temporaries. Whenever a man at any date has spe- 
 cial means of knowledge, he becomes so far an au- 
 thority; a local writer or a man who has specially 
 studied some particular class of subjects may be in this 
 sense an authority, that is the nearest approach to an 
 authority that we can get, even for times long before 
 his own." 
 
 In literature the same rule applies. Authori- 
 ties are the standards by which to regulate, but 
 which, after the testing of the times, cannot 
 themselves be subjected to other standards in 
 their authoritative element. Sainte-Beuve, in 
 his "Causeries du Lundi," gives certain defini- 
 tions which may be adduced here by way of illus- 
 tration : 
 
 "A classic is, according to the ordinary definition, 
 an author who is already established in the admiration 
 of the people and who figures as authority in his field. 
 The word 'classic' appears first in this sense with the 
 Romans. With them not all the citizens of the differ- 
 ent classes were called 'classic,' but only those of the 
 first class who possessed at least a certain fixed income. 
 
 "All those who possessed an income below that were 
 designated as 'infra classem,' below the class par ex- 
 cellence. Figuratively the word 'classicus' is found
 
 142 AUTHORITY 
 
 used by Aulus Gellius, and applied to authors ; an au- 
 thor of value and distinction, 'classicus assiduusque 
 scriptor,' an author who counts, who possesses some- 
 thing and is not to be confounded with the mass of 
 proletarians. Such an expression, therefore, presup- 
 poses an age sufficient to have given opportunity for 
 criticism and classification in literature. 
 
 "The idea 'classic' implies something of a regular con- 
 sistent character which forms a whole and has tradi- 
 tion. It grows, spreads, yet endures. 
 
 "The first Dictionary of the Academy (1694?) defined 
 a classic author simply as an ancient author very much 
 approved, one who is authority in the subject-matter 
 with which he deals. The Dictionary of the Academy 
 of 1835 presses this definition further and renders it 
 more precise and specific. It defines 'classic authors' 
 as those who have become models in any languge. In 
 the articles which follow recur continually expressions 
 such as: models, established rules for composition and 
 style, strict rules for art to which one must conform."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 
 
 Subjectivism, pragmatism, and pluralism, as 
 much as agnosticism, logically rule authority out 
 of court. The current attempts to save a kind 
 of authority for the Bible by those who refuse 
 to admit its objective authority are interesting. 
 At the best they simply vest Scripture with their 
 own endorsement, holding that the Bible is not the 
 Word of God, but that the word of God is in the 
 Bible. The authentication of the Word of God, 
 however, is left to the individual. Dr. Forsyth, 
 in an able article in the Contemporary Review, 
 advocates the view that the Bible as such is not 
 the word of God, but derives its authority from 
 the Word of God, of which it is part. This con- 
 ception is not unlike the view of the authority of 
 the Bible held by the Roman Catholic Church, 
 in which the church is set over the Bible, but the 
 Roman view retains at least some objective 
 norm. As Cardinal Gibbons says in "The Faith 
 of Our Fathers": "The canonicity of the Holy 
 Scriptures rests solely on the authority of the 
 Catholic Church, which proclaimed them in- 
 spired." Dr. Forsyth, on the other hand, de- 
 
 143
 
 144 AUTHORITY 
 
 rives the authority of the Bible from its function 
 in the service of the Gospel. If Dr. Forsyth 
 means to leave any intrinsic authority to the 
 Bible in its necessary relation to the functioning 
 of the gospel among men, then his conception of 
 authority is at fault. For authority is not a de- 
 rived power, behind which those to whom its 
 appeal is made, may go. 
 
 There is no inquiry more momentous, more 
 fraught with influences that bear directly 
 upon our ethical life than that which seeks to 
 place before us in authority a reliable, regulative 
 standard for conduct. It can be shown from 
 statistics that in all periods of unsettlement and 
 of social and economic transition, the ethical life 
 is agitated and powerfully affected. Crime in- 
 creases proportionately as the unsettled condi- 
 tion becomes more complete. The facts observed 
 make it evident that, where the restraints of au- 
 thority are less felt, they exercise less influence. 
 Is this restraining influence upon the will the 
 whole content of the concept of authority? Or 
 must we necessarily raise questions regarding 
 that before which the will bows in submission? 
 Evidently this latter question must be raised ; for 
 the authority can not be entirely of the indi- 
 vidual who bends in homage before the dictates 
 of such authority. It is in us, but not of us. 
 Indeed, "liberty of conscience" itself points to a
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 145 
 
 "conscience of liberty." And this would mean 
 that we are mated 1 by our susceptibilities with an 
 unestrangeable witness throughout all the activi- 
 ties of life ; matched by our inner nature with an 
 outward standard. Thus it becomes evident that 
 there is always implied, when we consider au- 
 thority, first of all an objective reference. Of 
 course, in its very dictates and efficacy, this au- 
 thority is determined and conditioned by the 
 ethical nature of him to whom its decrees are 
 issued. This disposes at once of the superficial 
 remark which is often made on the strength of 
 this circumstance f. i. by Professor Perry in 
 "The Moral Economy" p. 34. 
 
 "There is a phrase, 'liberty of conscience,' which well 
 expresses the modern conception of moral obligation. 
 It recognizes that duty in the last analysis is imposed 
 upon the individual neither by society nor even by God, 
 but by himself; that there is no authority in moral 
 matters more ultimate than a man's own rational con- 
 viction of what is best." 
 
 Precisely, this circumstance, this binding obli- 
 gation is a personal expression of personal re- 
 sponsibility to God in the definite social forms 
 and specific individual experience. Philosophi- 
 cal inquiry seeks to define the objective nature 
 of authority. After authority has been estab- 
 lished, the man of daily doings has something to
 
 146 AUTHORITY 
 
 go by, if he can only rely on his given standard. 
 This practical necessity accounts for the codi- 
 fication of the various and rich contents of the 
 religious and ethical life. We thus find always 
 codes, rules, dogmas, external authorities. Our 
 very sense of authority is their guarantee. 
 
 Where more is at stake in the risks of life, as 
 in the religious sphere, the guarantee is propor- 
 tionately stronger. In this light we may see the 
 importance of a subjective belief in an "in- 
 fallible" church, in the Bible as "the perfect rule 
 of faith and practice," in Christ as "very God of 
 very God and very man of very man" in His re- 
 deeming work. 
 
 Within the sphere of faith the creeds are 
 established, and the guarantee accepted for the 
 personal endorsement of belief, but the skeptical 
 inquiry which does not by faith lay hold of these 
 codes, dogmas and securities on the market of 
 life, clamors loudly for demonstration of their 
 right to be authoritative. 
 
 The place assigned to faith in the Bible and 
 by Christianity as fundamental and supreme, 
 underlying and conditioning all human knowl- 
 edge and action is an acknowledged fact. And 
 if faith then must function in all the activities of 
 life, then the only question is which form it takes, 
 for some form it must take. We therefore raise 
 the question: Are the objects of faith adequate
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 147 
 
 and justified, when looked at without the eyes of 
 faith? The multitudes require demonstration 
 from the "faithful" i. e., those who have the 
 faith if they are to be induced to stake life's 
 values on the same principles. We are to verify 
 our credal formulations and beliefs before the 
 men of the world. We are all fighting our 
 battles in this same impartial world. God is no 
 respecter of persons. Will the world yield us 
 the best by conducting life's campaign along the 
 plan of obedience to Christian teachings and be- 
 liefs. This is to be made plain to the world. 
 Is there justification in suspense of assent to the 
 old Christian authority. Not if faith is an essen- 
 tial function in life as actually lived. In life we 
 have to take chances. We, free moral agents, 
 act in God's vast domain at our own peril. 
 A valuation of conduct, a posteriori by others, 
 does not concern me in the brunt of life's battles, 
 face to face with temptations. I must decide 
 now,, how to steer. The pilot with chart and 
 compass must be brought on board of my storm- 
 tossed hulk. 
 
 Nor is the proposal that one should wait until 
 the facts are all in, resting in the assurance 
 that the results will vindicate the reasonableness 
 of the faith, any more satisfactory. To wait till 
 all the facts are in! Can the plummet of my 
 finite intellect fathom the depths of life's ocean?
 
 148 AUTHORITY 
 
 You bid me to suspend judgment, not to decide 
 for the things that have power over me. I must 
 be scientific by committing myself to the infin- 
 itely vague possibility, as over against the con- 
 crete, urgent facts that are upon me. Profes- 
 sor James has shown well, in his "Will to Be- 
 lieve," that what you demand is a psychological 
 impossibility. Suspension of assent is impos- 
 sible, whatever academic, would-be scientific ac- 
 curacy may decide in its theory. 
 
 In actual life there are no dead issues; life is 
 replete with conflicts. Life is a battlefield; I 
 must fight. Therefore only living issues have 
 a chance of being taken up. They are those 
 which approach, and can be carried into, actual 
 life. 
 
 If faith is the surrender to an acknowledged 
 authority, then it would follow that authority of 
 some sort is involved in the conduct of life. The 
 pragmatic! attitude towards life, a disguised utili- 
 tarianism without approximate guarantee for 
 my actions by a computation of results, is 
 either, (1) a tremendously vast faith in the ra- 
 tionality of the universe, matching as it does, 
 my reason, my instincts, my all, in complete har- 
 mony with all about me; or (2) it is a flat re- 
 fusal to accept authority over, and restraint 
 upon, my rebellious nature. 
 
 I believe it is the latter. For, first, conscience
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 149 
 
 does not allow us to say that our natures com- 
 port so well with the world's intrinsic arrange- 
 ment that our actions upon it yield us its essen- 
 tial meaning. We are out of joint with the 
 Universe, with God. The feeling of sin is uni- 
 versal. Secondly, the real tendency of pragma- 
 tism in religion is too clearly manifest to leave 
 us in doubt as to the fact of its opposition to any 
 and all doctrine. 
 
 We must have a "working faith," and it is 
 ipso facto impossible to proceed upon anything 
 with a principle to which I can give sanction only 
 after having seen how it "does work." 
 
 (3) It must be remembered, however, that 
 irrespective of all argumentation or rational 
 proofs, whether logically adequate or inadequate, 
 the Bible still presses upon all men the old 
 alternative of life or death conditioned on imme- 
 diate practical surrender to its requirements. As 
 Calvin observes in his "Institutes": "Scripture, 
 carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns 
 not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes 
 the full conviction with which we ought to re- 
 ceive it to the testimony of the spirit." Or in 
 the words of Athanasius: "The holy and divinely 
 inspired Scriptures are sufficient of themselves, 
 aurapxecz for the declaration of truth." 
 
 The Bible everywhere assumes sovereign right 
 to authority over man every man everywhere
 
 150 AUTHORITY 
 
 and always to command belief and obedience. 
 This is where the skepticism of this age and of 
 all ages takes issue with it. Some theologian 
 has aptly remarked that what our age objects to 
 in the realm of religion and morality is au- 
 thority, and in the intellectual sphere the miracle. 
 Is choice of attitude categorical in this issue? 
 Are the contrasts, which Christ constantly puts 
 before us in his teachings, not to be avoided? 
 Are we to face one way or another; give our al- 
 legiance either to good or to evil? 
 
 In view of the issue at stake the soul's end- 
 less destiny the man who is brought to face it 
 is impelled to ask, just what are the Biblical re- 
 quirements to which it demands my conformity 
 with such sanctions? 
 
 As this question is put, we approach the sub- 
 ject of authority as consisting in a set of prop- 
 ositions, dogmas, codes, to which our assent is 
 required. Such a situation results in the ra- 
 tional formulation and statement of what is in- 
 volved in this authoritative Biblical claim, if any 
 genuine inquirer is to attain to intellectual satis- 
 faction. Hence the normative standard of our 
 creeds, doctrines, codes, and Bible. Yea! re- 
 ligion has been to some extent justly classed by 
 the impious mind as a "police force" in the life 
 of the average believer. It is external, rather 
 than positive and inward; constraint instead of
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 151 
 
 moving principle. It must be observed, how- 
 ever, that the very conception of authority im- 
 plies this restraint. Its dictates are not at our 
 discretion; though in us, they are not of us, but 
 refer beyond us. 
 
 We must also remember that the objective as- 
 pect, of what is too readily called "and external 
 creed," has its corresponding subjective refer- 
 ence. The Old Testament, by addressing the 
 Israelites in progressive ethical commands, may 
 illustrate this. To consider all creeds only from 
 the subjective standpoint, as formulations of be- 
 lief, is to cut asunder the bond of Christian fel- 
 lowship and union, and refuse any objective cri- 
 terion. These tendencies run high in mystic and 
 emotional types of religion. But while in this 
 case piety often guarantees the essential features 
 of religious life and thus its convictions, even if 
 no insistence is put upon their formulation, it be- 
 comes quite another question, when a skeptical 
 age and tendency raises the cry, "Religion with- 
 out theology." That is irrational and impossi- 
 ble. There are over our life objective standards 
 to which we must conform. 
 
 But to admit the authority of a Book as "the 
 perfect rule of faith and practice" is an admis- 
 sion which it is hard for the skeptical mind to 
 make, when it does not find itself in these regu- 
 lative standards. Here is the rub. For the
 
 152 AUTHORITY 
 
 solution of the difficulty, we do no better than 
 repeat the well-known "Credo ut intelligam" ; 
 and this is begging the question, so far as there 
 is concerned a compelling of assent where it is 
 not given. Yet, where the inquiry sincerely 
 comes, "If thou canst do anything, have pity on 
 us and help us," there is also in order, and does 
 also follow, the confession: "Lord, I believe, 
 help thou mine unbelief!" 
 
 Dr. Forsyth, in an article entitled "The 
 Evangelical Churches and the Higher Criti- 
 cism," in the October number of the Contempo- 
 rary Review for 1906, discusses the fact of au- 
 thority, and does it as one whose strong and 
 wholesome evangelical conviction in the authority 
 of the Gospel evokes enthusiastic response. But 
 it must be remarked, nevertheless, that he does 
 not argue the vexed question as to the seat of 
 authority, in his helpful confession of faith in 
 God's redeeming grace in Christ. It is, indeed, 
 true, that faith in the Gospel is the sine qua non 
 which illumines the Bible, which makes us read it 
 religiously, renders it authoritative for us. But 
 unless there first be granted the authority, un- 
 less faith be first exercised in regard to Bible, 
 creed or Church, we cannot experience that sense 
 of authority that awes souls because God reaches 
 man. It must remain a reaching out of man 
 after God.
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 153 
 
 Dr. Forsyth's view is popularly reported by 
 Rev. Monroe Smith in "Christian Faith and 
 Doctrine Series"; "The Inspiration and Au- 
 thority of Holy Scriptures" to which Principal 
 Forsyth wrote the introduction. Rev. Smith 
 confuses infallible guidance for the individual 
 soul (which would do away with freedom) with 
 the infallibility of the inspired record, and de- 
 nies the latter on an argument against the 
 former. 
 
 It isi maintained by the advocates of the Bible, 
 that its Authority can be vindicated at the bar 
 of reason, not that it can be established. 
 
 The historical fact at the foundation is: that 
 God gave the Bible through His prophets and 
 apostles as the Christian Code. The Christian 
 contention is : that the grounds for believing that 
 the Bible is a revelation from God are of such 
 cogency that they should command the assent of 
 every reasonable man. The self-evident duty 
 of the Christian Church, in an age of skepti- 
 cism like the present, is to confront the doubt 
 with the most powerful presentation and 
 enforcement of the rational grounds for be- 
 lief. 
 
 We consider briefly a single phase of the gen- 
 eral argument that from the Unity of the 
 Scriptures as treated by Dr. Forsyth. 
 
 (2) The Unity of the Scriptures has been
 
 154 AUTHORITY 
 
 recently urged with special emphasis as an argu- 
 ment for their Authority or Infallibility. 
 
 We are glad that Dr. Forsyth has directed at- 
 tention to it, in the paper already referred to. 
 It is certainly a most remarkable fact, that a 
 Book, made up of many books, written in dif- 
 ferent ages, in different environments, in dif- 
 ferent languages, by men of all varieties of tem- 
 perament and degrees of culture, should yet have 
 such wholeness, such unity, as to be clearly 
 recognizable as One Book, a fact best ex- 
 plained by its own claim, that God entered into 
 its production, superintending the human agents 
 and agencies. 
 
 Dr. Forsyth urges, that, in order to the full 
 impression of this argument, the Bible should be 
 read as a whole, made up of consentient and co- 
 herent parts. But this insistence, as requiring 
 breadth and persistence of mental vision, bids us 
 pause for thought. 
 
 To say, "We must read the Bible as a whole," 
 is to assume the organic unity; considering its 
 composition, it is to give it a unique value. 
 Against those who, whilst maintaining that God's 
 word is in the Bible, feel yet at liberty to handle 
 its contents and compositions so freely as to treat 
 it practically like any other book, it is not strictly 
 an argument to establish this authority of the 
 Bible as "God's redeeming Word in Christ's
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 155 
 
 Cross," to say : "It is not the Bible that contains 
 God's Word, so much as God's Word that con- 
 tains the Bible"; unless, indeed, the Bible is 
 made an integral part of God's Word. 
 
 And then we dare not be so concessive as to 
 say, "The Bible is not a voucher but a preacher." 
 For we remember the Bible's own warning: "I 
 testify unto every man that heareth the words of 
 the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add 
 unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues 
 which are written in this book: and if any man 
 shall take away from the words of the book of 
 prophecy, God shall take away his part from the 
 tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are 
 written in this book." Unless we feel sure that 
 we do find both corroboration and correction in 
 our Christian experiences; unless we can turn to 
 the Bible religiously, not critically; unless it is 
 an infallible guide whose face value will be sus- 
 tained by those who read it religiously and 
 those who do not read it thus give it no such 
 value unless, I say, the Bible not only proves 
 an infallible guide, but is believed to be such, its 
 authority will not distill the spirit of devotion. 
 The devout attitude, upon which Dr. Forsyth 
 himself insists, in the reading of the Bible, pre- 
 supposes belief in the so much depreciated 
 "Biblicism" which says: "The Bible says, there- 
 fore God says."
 
 156 AUTHORITY 
 
 But Dr. Forsyth emphasizes the recognition 
 of the Unity given to the Bible by God's Pur- 
 pose of Redemption running through it. 
 
 Dr. Forsyth is very explicit about this. He 
 says: 
 
 "The unity of the Bible is organic, total, vital, 
 evangelical; it is not merely harmonious, balanced, 
 statuesque. It is not the form of symmetry but the 
 spirit of reconciliation. Strike a fragment from a 
 statue and you ruin it. Its unity is mere symmetry 
 of the kind that is ruined so. But the unity of the 
 Bible is like the unity of Nature. It has a living power 
 always to repair loss and transcend lesion. The Bible 
 unity is given it by the unity of a Historic Gospel de- 
 veloping, dominant, not detailed. . . . If we are 
 to take the Bible as Christ did, we may not feel com- 
 pelled to take the whole Bible, but we must take the 
 Bible as a whole. . . . The unity and power of 
 the Bible is sacramental; it is not mechanical." 
 
 Views and arguments like those just quoted, 
 touching the unity of the Bible containing 
 much of wholesome truth and yet involving or 
 implying something of serious error appear 
 so frequently and are so generally prevalent that 
 they require close attention. 
 
 It is evident that the notion of unity, as held 
 here, is looked upon as brought to the Bible from 
 without. It may be granted that the regnant
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 157 
 
 Gospel of a Gracious God as moral Redeemer 
 makes the Bible speak with that authority which 
 lays hold of the believer; but the Bible appear- 
 ing as a whole, as a vital unity, being a sacramen- 
 tal Scripture, it must be, indeed, the adequate 
 medium of this Gospel of Christ. By what au- 
 thority is this unity, this wholeness guaranteed? 
 It would seem only an unjustified assumption, 
 unless we concede an intrinsic, objective harmony 
 and unity, which makes the Bible indeed God's 
 Word inspired as believed of old. 
 
 The recognition of the presence of this in- 
 trinsic harmony and unity in God's World gave 
 birth to Modern Science true Science being im- 
 possible until the scientific investigator was will- 
 ing to proceed upon the postulate that "every 
 part of the universe is constructed on principles 
 that will yield clear meaning to his search for 
 unity, law, and order." The beginning of the 
 recognition of a similar objective harmony and 
 unity in God's Word which like God's World 
 is a complete Whole which prepares a way for 
 carrying the same scientific postulate into the 
 study of the Bible foreshadows and indeed in- 
 troduces a new era in Biblical investigation. 
 The current view of Biblical unity as something 
 brought to the Bible from without must needs 
 be supplemented by this conception; which like- 
 wise furnishes a direction and a caution touching
 
 158 AUTHORITY 
 
 the way in which the Scriptures should be criti- 
 cally handled. 
 
 Is it sound reasoning to try to justify muti- 
 lations of the form of the living original, in how- 
 ever small degree, when we admit that the or- 
 ganism as a whole is essential to the individual 
 life, and that this whole is dependent upon its 
 component parts? To say that it will survive, 
 that it has not the "mere symmetry of a statue," 
 is pleading indulgence for a wanton act, which 
 is felt to require defense. But the justification 
 of acts of mutilation on this ground can be noth- 
 ing less than to show an improvement. If this 
 could be shown as it is not shown it would 
 destroy both infallibility and real "wholeness" or 
 unity. It is admitted that by striking parts 
 from a statue it is ruined. Yet, does a statue, 
 as a representation, exact copy and true imita- 
 tion of life, include superfluous or cumbersome 
 elements, which the living original has not? 
 
 It seems strange that men who admittedly 
 value the Bible as expressive of God's revelation, 
 in some way yet God's book and unique, will, on 
 the other hand, labor under this unwarranted 
 contrast between the Bible as we have it, and 
 what they have called the Bible of the Bible, or 
 God's Word in the Bible. If our terms are, 
 however, to mean anything, it is evident that, 
 either God's revelation is adequate, and then au-
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 159 
 
 thoritative; or we have to proclaim our so-called 
 unassisted reason authority over the Scriptures. 
 And, in the latter case, I do not see why we 
 should specially need a Bible at all. Your 
 choice is between alternatives; you are to submit 
 to its authority, if the Book is to guide you in 
 any real sense; or you may discriminate as to 
 the very validity of the Book and its contents, 
 but in that case it is an illusion to fancy yourself 
 guided at all. If you are to be led, you must 
 learn the "grammar of assent" to your leader and 
 to what he is to lead you. You do not under- 
 stand all; there are difficulties, mysteries, per- 
 plexing things in it, as indeed there are in 
 God's World. As you cannot establish your 
 own infallible authority, it has to come to you. 
 Perhaps you do not fully understand it all, but 
 "God is His own interpreter, and He will make 
 it plain." 
 
 It should be further noted that the issue as to 
 the authority or infallibility of the Bible does 
 not involve taking all the parts of it as of equal 
 value. I know of no believer in the infallibility 
 of the Scriptures who means to maintain that he 
 therefore does, or must, value every part of it 
 alike, or claim to understand every particular. 
 Most believers feed with preference upon those 
 sections which find them, which speak to them 
 most potently. Some limit themselves almost
 
 160 AUTHORITY 
 
 exclusively to specific portions of Scripture, with- 
 out having even so much as raised the question 
 that this might imply inferiority of other parts, 
 or even render them superfluous to the Bible. 
 The principle at issue is the authority of the 
 Bible as God's Book. 
 
 As to the use of analogy, suggested by Dr. 
 Forsyth which is intended for concession to 
 those who discard this Biblical authority we 
 would ask: Though its unity is not mere sym- 
 metry or statuesque, any more than is that of 
 any living organism, does that justify at all the 
 claim to mutilate the organism, the whole? If 
 there be a whole at all, the parts must in some 
 way function harmoniously in this whole; relate 
 to it in some subservient, tributary way. We 
 can survive the loss of some parts of our body; 
 the loss of some parts, whose functioning is not 
 known, would not perceptibly change the work- 
 ing of our organism. If this principle is not 
 to be applied so as to mutilate the structure of 
 the living, bodily organism, neither should it be 
 applied to the Bible, if such a unity or whole- 
 ness is granted in it. And this expression, the 
 Unity of the Bible just as its being "God's 
 Book," "Divine Revelation," "Holy Writ," etc., 
 would mean simply that its Truth stands ob- 
 jectively real, over man with authority. 
 
 Revelations, claiming supernatural origin,
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 161 
 
 are understood to arise not from human experi- 
 ence, but to have been projected by God into 
 human life as normative and infallible stand- 
 ards, i. e., possess Divine authority. A distinc- 
 tion between direct and indirect revelation rests 
 upon a false psychology, since it involves the 
 idea of unmediated revelation. Revelation to 
 be revelation at all must, from the nature of the 
 case, be mediated by some form to the recipient. 
 We cannot even conceive of consciousness with- 
 out an implied content. The subject-conscious- 
 ness involves an object. The customary dis- 
 tinction aims, however, rather at a difference be- 
 tween original or final and derived authority. 
 The first, being self -revelation, finds man while 
 man finds the latter only after the first is estab- 
 lished, and as corroborative evidence. Of 
 course, all derived social authority, relative in 
 form and emphasis, is in the end warranted by 
 Divine Authority; but social life as a whole does 
 not go to the source of this final authority. 
 That Divine revelation has to come in the same 
 way as all other knowledge affords no sufficient 
 reason for classing it with other knowledge. 
 This is indeed neglected by those who treat 
 Christianity as mere historic fact and the Bible 
 as mere literature. When historical Christianity 
 and the historical revelation of the Bible become 
 merely descriptive terms, then both may be con-
 
 162 AUTHORITY 
 
 ceived of as made of a piece with all other his- 
 toric events, as purely human product. If such 
 a procedure be adopted, it should be borne in 
 mind that the claim of supernatural origin for 
 both has been dismissed at the start, inasmuch as 
 these events are presumed to be brought wholly 
 within the limits of the historic past. Where the 
 inadequacy of historic explanation is perceived, 
 while this procedure is still insisted upon, resort 
 is taken to allowing traditional inspiration in a 
 merely nominal sense, in order to bolster up the 
 fact of revelation. To keep the closed circle of 
 historic events in which we may trace how men 
 successively conceived of God, not without his 
 divine impulses, and yet to affirm a self-reve- 
 lation of God to man as an impact which either 
 had no result at all, or resulted in the same faulty 
 human products, seems an illogical device. It is 
 difficult to see the help or need of a Divine in- 
 spiration the outcome of which is just as faulty 
 as all other mere human knowledge. And yet 
 such is the logic of that view which retains a be- 
 lief in inspired men, but not in an inspired book. 
 One may go the whole length with the Roman 
 Catholic Church and vest the Church (i. e. the 
 clergy) with this authority. In that case the 
 authority of the Bible is subordinate to the in- 
 spired priest; but another priest is another 
 Christ! We are not now concerned with the
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 163 
 
 question whether these claims of super-natural 
 origin can be vindicated in the face of modern 
 criticism. We admit the point urged by an im- 
 patient unbeliever against the clinging to an au- 
 thority which is admittedly no more acknowl- 
 edged. Bargy compares this procedure to "the 
 retreat of an army in covering which all the 
 members fall one by one. It arrives at last in 
 an inaccessible place of refuge. The army has 
 no more men, but is safe. . . . Little by 
 little parts of the Bible were given up, one by 
 one, without counting they were surrendered to 
 the scientists, but the sanctity of the whole was 
 maintained." ("Religion in Society in the 
 United States.") 
 
 Mcl^eters cautions wisely in regard to these f^ 
 problems of the higher criticism. He says in an 
 article in the Princeton Theological Review : 
 
 "We should not be misled by current contempt for 
 'authority.' Let us rather hope that this is merely 
 a passing phase of intellectual bumptiousness and con- 
 fused thought. To say that the problem of the Higher 
 criticism cannot be settled by 'authority' is either to 
 say that there are no persons who are competent to 
 settle them in the use of internal evidence or otherwise; 
 or it is to say that for the great majority of man- 
 kind they cannot be settled at all. For, whatever the 
 process employed to solve the problems of Higher 
 Criticism, provided it really solves them, he who is mas-
 
 164 AUTHORITY 
 
 ter of that process is in a position authoritatively to 
 solve those problems, for any and all others. Else why 
 do we hear so much about the 'assured results' of a cer- 
 tain school of critics? This label so conspicuously in 
 evidence upon their goods would seem to have but one 
 possible object, namely, to beget in the public the con- 
 viction that there are those who are competent to settle 
 these vexing questions for them. But, if so, then these 
 questions can be settled by authority. And if they can 
 be settled by authority, who shall say that they may not 
 be settled upon the authority of our Lord and His 
 apostles? What, if our Lord assumes the ability and 
 the right to settle them? Shall we repudiate his au- 
 thority at this point? After all, for most persons, so 
 far as these problems are concerned, it is simply a 
 question as to whether they will accept their solution 
 of these from Christ and His apostles, or from certain 
 modern scholars who, quoad hoc, affect to be better in- 
 formed and safer guides than Christ Himself." 
 ("The Determination of Religious Value the Ultimate 
 Problem of the Higher Criticism." July, 1908.) 
 
 All that concerns us at present is whether the 
 authority of Christianity and of the Bible can be 
 retained along with the invalidation of these 
 claims. It will be readily seen that we face here 
 again the same problem of causal connection. 
 Did Christ and the Bible come to be recognized 
 as authoritative because of inherent original au- 
 thority, or is this recognition the projection of
 
 BIBLE AUTHORITY 165 
 
 a faith-state which made authoritative what was 
 not so in itself, and even elaborated a theory 
 of Divine origin and inspiration in its defense? 
 It would leave us to explain, whence this strong 
 sense of authority. 
 
 If the Bible is its own authority, it is well to 
 read the Bible itself rather than to read about 
 it. There has been so much talking about the 
 Bible that it is only fair to let it now speak for 
 itself. For it is surprising to find how little fa- 
 miliar the average church member, or even the 
 modern preacher, is with the Bible! This cir- 
 cumstance appears so significant in this connec- 
 tion that it may well give us pause to reflect, and 
 repeat the locus classical: "Every Scripture in- 
 spired of God is also profitable for teaching, for 
 reproof, for consideration which is in righteous- 
 ness, that the man of God may be complete, 
 furnished completely unto every good work." 
 
 It has also been suggested that, though one 
 might concede the whole of the Bible to be true, 
 and therefore authoritative, this need not bind 
 us now, inasmuch as some parts were true and 
 needed at one time, but are no longer applicable 
 or even desirable as norms. These are, indeed, 
 rightfully in the Bible, because they were re- 
 quired in the developmnt of Christianity. This 
 view, however, needs little consideration, as it 
 resolves truth and authority into a merely func-
 
 166 AUTHORITY 
 
 tional fitness of the organ. The authority of 
 truth is incompatible with the notion of expedi- 
 ency. The concession is meaningless and the 
 view of truth thoroughly pragmatic. The seri- 
 ous-minded theologian is concerned with truth 
 and adheres to the semper ubique ab omnibus. 
 He is therefore disinclined to dismiss or discount 
 any truth, so far as ascertained, because of its 
 incompleteness, nor will he entertain the idea of 
 truth if it be truth at all ever becoming obso- 
 lete. The term "new truth," which is so much 
 in the air, is a misnomer as opposed to "old 
 truth," for all truth is one. The term may be 
 freely admitted in the sense of additional truth. 
 Fortunately, however, it seems usually to mean 
 alleged truths that are destined to remain essen- 
 tially new, inasmuch as they have not enough au- 
 thority in them ever to grow old, not being au- 
 thorized by the Truth they ignore, i. e., the tran- 
 scendent, everlasting source of all truth and au- 
 thority. For the theologian, as for every truth- 
 seeker, the word of Clough expresses a deep 
 conviction : 
 
 "It fortifies my soul to know 
 That, though I perish, Truth is so."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AN OBJECTIVE SOURCE OF 
 AUTHORITY 
 
 Authority means recognized, established 
 power, witness, statement, command, etc., ac- 
 cepted and obeyed without any questioning. It 
 implies the sentiment of Don Diegue in Le Cid 
 of Corneille : 
 
 "On doit ce respect au pouvoir absolu 
 De n'examiner rien quand un roi a voulu." 
 
 It is experienced, felt, and taken with the 
 sense of objective validity. It exists (ex- 
 sistere), it stands out before us, independent of 
 us or of our conception. Though its efficacy for 
 us be largely determined by our relation to it, 
 the authority as generally received is only its 
 subjective aspect, its recognition by men. A 
 source of information, or a duly accredited fact, is 
 considered sufficient to give authority to a state- 
 ment, as, viz., an authoritative witness. But it 
 must be borne in mind that this acceptance of au- 
 thority, the power derived from opinion, respect 
 or esteem, is the resulting influence of authority it- 
 self. Dr. Forsyth in conceding to the Bible only 
 
 167
 
 168 AUTHORITY 
 
 this kind of authority is reasoning in a circle 
 when he tries to authorize the Gospel conception 
 by the Bible. Authority, as objectively resid- 
 ing in the forms of life, and in historic develop- 
 ment, refers to the inherent truth of these forms ; 
 it has self-evident justification. It is the same, 
 when in daily intercourse the utterance is heard: 
 Who or what is your authority? This is a char- 
 acteristic inquiry inasmuch as it asks for a guar- 
 antee to establish the reliability of that to which 
 assent is given. This authorization is not always 
 exhaustively established for those who thus ques- 
 tion, nor do they require this. It is sufficient 
 when subjective needs and required guarantees 
 are met in such a way as to produce acknowledg- 
 ment of the truth. The question calls forth an 
 authority beyond the first alleged authority. 
 The subsequent endeavor aims to have this au- 
 thority acknowledged as objective fact, thus af- 
 fecting the personal witness by meeting and sub- 
 duing the individual authority residing in the 
 verdicts of conscience and reason. It would seem 
 that this is putting objective authority out of 
 court by bringing it before the bar of individual 
 approval. Yet, in leaving the defendant to es- 
 tablish his claim, recourse must needs be taken 
 to authority of some sort in the procedure to 
 establish the recognition of some form of author- 
 ity before the critical mind.
 
 SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 169 
 
 This yielding to final authority seldom re- 
 quires exhaustive verification on the ground of 
 implicit reliance on self-evident truth the au- 
 thority of authority. In the exercise of faith, we 
 accept as a final authority those facts and forms 
 which function creditably in accordance with in- 
 dividual requirements in regard to truth. Thus 
 a scholar, who presents his subject exhaustively, 
 is considered an authority on his subject. He 
 gives first hand evidences which are recognized 
 as such. Consequently his statements made 
 from original, direct, personal contact with facts, 
 as first hand evidence, are received and 
 recognized as authoritative by others. This is 
 strikingly illustrated in the concluding remark 
 of the Gospel of Matthew, which at the end of 
 the Sermon on the Mount, observes in regard to 
 Christ's teaching: "And after Jesus had ended 
 these sayings the people were astonished at his 
 doctrine for he taught as one having authority 
 and not as the scribes." 
 
 The word used is, louffla = out of (His) 
 being, i. e., as direct first hand witness to truth. 
 He, the law in living figure, the Way, the Truth 
 and the Life Himself came to bear witness to 
 the truth in a unique way as contrasted with 
 scribal book-lore about the law. 
 
 Indeed, very few things, even in our daily life, 
 though of trivial importance, are verifiable by
 
 170 AUTHORITY 
 
 each individual. So we constantly believe, speak 
 and act on authority. This being the case in the 
 daily intercourse of our common life in which 
 we depend upon the detailed and penetrating 
 study of experts, it is from the nature of the 
 case much more so in questions relating to ulti- 
 mate causes beyond which we cannot go, as, viz., 
 God's Revelation in His Word. Wherever its 
 verification is excluded, assent is required by the 
 exercise of faith, which accepts its affirmation at 
 face value, that is, on authority. Reason 
 recognizes its own limits. It simply accepts, 
 but does not establish the trustworthiness of our 
 senses, that the world has objective existence, 
 that the laws of thought yield truth, that there 
 is correspondence between thought and being, 
 between subject and object, spirit and matter. 
 
 Even if, in the ordinary departments of so- 
 cial, civil, and religious life, the impossible 
 proposition that we go back for authorization to 
 those primordial truths without which the argu- 
 mentation in justification of any specific form of 
 authoritative truth would be impossible, should 
 be insisted upon; or if the critical disposition 
 should take for granted only a few propositions 
 as established and immune from critical investi- 
 gation; in either case, the acceptance of some 
 prima facie evidence must enter in. It is there- 
 fore an amazingly superficial assumption that
 
 SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 171 
 
 modern writers make when they say, "We want 
 truth for authority, not authority for truth." 
 The first is what we are in search of; we cannot 
 claim to have it already; and it is safe to say 
 that we shall not get it, if we follow the method 
 proposed in the latter part of this motto. We 
 feel, therefore, constrained to repeat the greater 
 wisdom of old "credo ut intelligam." As a mat- 
 ter of fact, authority is in full force in all depart- 
 ments of life. 
 
 Professor James touches upon this subject in 
 his essay, "The Will to Believe." He says: 
 
 "We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, 
 and the avoidance of error as secondary, or we may, 
 on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more 
 imperative, and let the truth take its chance." 
 
 I suppose as Professor James himself sug- 
 gests that of these two alternatives we have 
 only a Hobson's choice. Giving the "first and 
 great commandment to would-be knowers" : We 
 must know the truth; and we must avoid error, 
 he insists that these "are not two ways of stating 
 an identical commandment, they are two sepa- 
 rate laws." And again: 
 
 "Although it may indeed happen that when we be- 
 lieve the truth A, we escape as an incidental consequence
 
 172 AUTHORITY 
 
 from believing the falsehood B, it hardly ever happens 
 that by merely disbelieving B we necessarily believe A. 
 We may in escaping B fall into believing other false- 
 hoods, C or D, just as bad as B; or we may escape 
 B by not believing anything at all, not even A." 
 
 It is strange that this statement should occur 
 in the essay which so ably sets forth the influence 
 of "temperamental atmosphere" and character 
 upon our intellectual beliefs. It simply shows 
 how the views of a candid, empiric philosopher 
 are vitiated by his pluralistic belief. It appears 
 sufficiently evident that a suspense of belief 
 whatever its possibility in specific cases as a 
 rule of conduct at least, is impossible. There 
 is, then, really only one rule : We must know the 
 truth, which incidentally implies that we are to 
 avoid error. It is the sense of the latter injunc- 
 tion that raises the query, "What is your au- 
 thority?" It is the negative safeguard to give 
 assent only to duly accredited facts, to yield to 
 the right of authority, to truth. Now, it would 
 seem that Professor James, in speaking so forci- 
 bly about Clifford's adverse disposition towards 
 Christianity, should have seen that there is no 
 danger of his choosing any form of it. The 
 specific forms, the cases presented to us, appeal 
 to us, or fail to do so, according as we have 
 fashioned and molded our character. It is not,
 
 SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 173 
 
 therefore, a question at all of putting the choice. 
 We start out with the positive injunction, im- 
 plying the negative aspect of rejecting that 
 which does not stand on the rightful authority of 
 truth. Nor is this "enfant terrible," Clifford, 
 urging suspense of judgment because of choice, 
 but rather on account of "insufficient evidence," 
 on the plea that every asset is unwarranted un- 
 til the evidence is complete. Just as James him- 
 self assures us, "Evidently, then, our non-in- 
 tellectual nature does influence our convictions." 
 . . . As a rule we disbelieve all facts and the- 
 ories for which we have no use. For Clifford 
 Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start 
 (consequently excluded from the choice which 
 Professor James proposes). So truth may be- 
 come a dead issue for one by constantly running 
 into error, and error lose its insidious tempta- 
 tions for him whose candor sincerely makes for 
 truth. 
 
 It should be noticed that Professor James in- 
 sists on limiting to the subjective attitude meta- 
 physical implications. The psychologist gets 
 the better of the metaphysician. In his Pragma- 
 tism the whole of metaphysics is let down prac- 
 tically into the sphere of psychology. The great 
 physicist, Du Bois Reymond, also makes an un- 
 warranted inference in his famous address: 
 "Uber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens" with
 
 174 AUTHORITY 
 
 the same subjectivistic bias. He says: "Dass 
 es in Wirklichkeit keine Qualitaten geibt, folgt 
 aus der Zergliederung unserer Sinneswahrneh- 
 mungen. . . . Eigenschaftlos, wie sie aus 
 der subjectiven Zergliederung hervorgeht, ist 
 die Welt auch fur die durch objective Betrach- 
 tung gewonnene mechanische Anschauung, 
 welche statt Schall und Licht nur Schwingungen 
 eines eigenschaftslosen, dort als wagbare hier 
 als scheinbar unwagbare Materie sich darbieten- 
 den Urstoffes kennt." From the fact that sensa- 
 tions are conditioned in their reception, it does 
 not follow that the differentiation is wholly an 
 affair of the receiving agent in response to the 
 activity of a property-less sub-stratum of undif- 
 ferentiated substance. As there is no meta- 
 psychic, we must leave sensations their represen- 
 tative meaning. 
 
 Our belief in truth, that there is a truth, and 
 that our minds are made for it, would stand, even 
 if our social system did not confirm it. Our 
 hearts respond to the authoritative announce- 
 ment that we were created in the image of God, 
 as it says in Gen. i. 27, "And God created man 
 in his own image, in the image of God created 
 he him." This belief is not the result of desire 
 and instinct, but is anterior and basal to them. 
 
 God has left his witness in the heart, and if 
 we are walking in rectitude of will, the Spirit of
 
 SOURCE OF AUTHORITY 175 
 
 truth will lead us into all truth. We find cor- 
 roboration of this everywhere. For truth is in- 
 deed one, as God is one. But Prof. James dis- 
 owns this, until demonstrably verified to the in- 
 tellect. Yet, Prof. James, in another brilliant 
 essay on "The Sentiment of Rationality," says: 
 "The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our 
 mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the 
 scientific philosophers of the present day; but 
 by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it 
 is only legitimate when used in the interests of 
 one particular proposition, the proposition, 
 namely, that the course of nature is uniform. 
 That nature will follow to-morrow the same 
 laws that it follows to-day is, they all admit, a 
 truth which no man can know; but in the inter- 
 est of recognition as well as of action we must 
 postulate or assume it." As Helmholtz says: 
 "Hier gilt nur der eine Rath; vertraue und 
 handle." And Professor Bain urges: "Our only 
 error is in proposing to give any reason or justi- 
 fication of the postulate, or to treat it as other- 
 wise than begged at the very outset." Faith 
 means belief in something concerning which 
 doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the 
 test of belief is willingness to act, one may say 
 that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the 
 prosperous issue of which is not certified to us 
 in advance. In "Reflect Action and Theism"
 
 176 AUTHORITY 
 
 James says: "I will only remind you that each 
 one of us is entitled either to doubt or to believe, 
 he does alike on his personal responsibility and 
 risk." He quotes with approval the lines: 
 
 ("Du musst glauben, du musst wagen 
 Denn die Gotter leihn kein Pfand, 
 Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen 
 In das schone Wunderland.") 
 
 "Believe you must, and risk. 
 For Gods ne'er lend a pledge. 
 A miracle alone can bear 
 Into the beauty of that wondrous land." 
 
 But, in spite of this, Professor James ought 
 to be reminded that there is no metapsychic, and 
 that we can find the home of truth within. And 
 whether we can demonstrate their objective 
 validity or not, we must take the primordial ver- 
 dicts of conscience and reason on authority and 
 as having objective reference.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY 
 
 Professor James has made overmuch of the 
 subjective aspect. In "The Will to Believe" he 
 wrote: "The desire for a certain kind of truth 
 here brings about that special truth's existence," 
 and so it is in innumerable other cases. "Faith 
 in a fact can help create a fact." "There are 
 cases where faith creates its own verification," 
 etc. This subjective aspect is not to be over- 
 looked, and selective thinking, the personal equa- 
 tion in the grouping and viewing of facts needs 
 to be taken in account. Yet, not with disre- 
 gard to objective truth. In fact, what does it 
 matter if all knowledge is subjective? One may 
 then well ask with Pilate in indifferent scorn 
 that greatest of questions: "What is truth?" 
 
 Since, then, Professor James espoused more 
 pronouncedly the pragmatic attitude in disregard 
 of objective reference of truth, he is left not only 
 with things unrelated, but with a world of pure 
 experience, which is unrelated. 
 
 This pragmatism does make successful prac- 
 tice the very essence of truth, and substitutes for 
 the view of truth as "accordance of our ideas 
 
 171
 
 178 AUTHORITY 
 
 with reality," a valuation by the individual. 
 This individual valuation is emphasized in the 
 pragmatic school in proportion as the acceptance 
 of truth at face value, i. e., as true representation 
 of reality, is discredited. This shifting of em- 
 phasis from what constitutes truth (treow = 
 faithfulness to fact) to the always inadequate at- 
 tempt at its verification is a hopeless and harm- 
 ful confusion. Indeed, Professor Macbride 
 Sterrett well says of this school : 
 
 "What now is the fundamental principle of this ex- 
 travagantly vaunted new theory that is styled prag- 
 matism? As one reads most of the volumes, he becomes 
 dazed and bewildered and ends with very vague ideas 
 of what the thing really means. First these prag- 
 matists give us to understand that truth as an objective 
 system truth, the search for which has been the object 
 of all science and philosophy, is a mere cob-web of the 
 intellect. Second, that all our judgments of reality are 
 worth or value judgments. What is called truth 
 and reality consists in bare practical effects. In science, 
 for instance, if it serves our practical purposes better 
 to use the Ptolemic instead of the Copernican theory 
 in astronomy, then it is the true and real for us. In 
 morals, if honesty is the best policy, then honesty is 
 the truth. In philosophy, if we can get more out of 
 our moral and religious life by believing in polytheism 
 instead of monotheism, then polytheism is the truth, 
 which is practically the view of Professor Howison and
 
 PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY 179 
 
 Professor James and Professor Schiller. The cui bono 
 scales are to give us the validity of judgments in all 
 spheres. Reasonableness of truth is not a good in it- 
 self. It is an abstraction. There is no truth, no ab- 
 solute system of truth independent of the needs of men. 
 Love of such supposed truth, which has always been the 
 inspiration of thinkers, is rudely taken from us as the 
 worship of a false god. Such truth is useless, and the 
 useless is false. We can say that what is true in prag- 
 matism is not new, and what is new in it the attempt 
 to substitute value- judgments in all cognition for judg- 
 ments of truth and reality is not true." ("The 
 Freedom of Authority," p. Sllff.) 
 
 Professor Sterrett defines "Authority" as 
 "any power or influence through which one does 
 or believes what he would not do of his own un- 
 aided powers." (p. 6.) If this is understood as 
 a personal dictum, as the command of superior 
 enlarged personality, involving a reliance on, or 
 committal to superior wisdom of wider or deeper 
 experience in which truth is recognized by one's 
 reason, it is quite pointed. 
 
 In another essay ("Humanism and Truth," 
 Mind, U. S. 52, p. 463) Professor James says: 
 "Whether experience itself is due to something 
 independent of all possible experience is a ques- 
 tion which pragmatism declines to answer." 
 And in "Pragmatism" he plainly declares: "Our 
 account of truth is as account of truths in the
 
 180 AUTHORITY 
 
 plural, of processes of leading, realized in rebus, 
 and having only this quality in common, that 
 they pay" (p. 218) . In making satisfaction the 
 criterion of truth, in conceiving of "the true as 
 that which gives the maximal combination of 
 satisfactions," Professor James wrongs our in- 
 herent sense of the authority of truth. Espe- 
 cially does he ignore the sense of the moral im- 
 plications of truth as revealed in our hearts. 
 
 Would the gifted scientist could have said 
 in a deeper sense than he meant to express when 
 quoting Pascal: "Le coeur a ses raisons que la 
 raison ne connait pas!" or have exclaimed with 
 Paul: "With the heart man believeth unto 
 righteousness." 
 
 This pragmatic attitude whose bugbear is to 
 give things real objective reference so that our 
 knowledge fits the scheme of things, finds its 
 "enfant terrible" in Mr. E. W. Lyman, who 
 says, in an article "The Influence of Pragma- 
 tism upon the Status of Theology," published in 
 "Philosophy and Psychology," a commemorative 
 volume by pupils of Professor Garland: 
 
 "Meanwhile the actual absoluteness of Christianity, 
 so far as it can be grounded in religious psychology and 
 religious history, is undiminished by discrediting any 
 artificial supplement that might be constructed through 
 the aid of some supposed metaphysical necessity. The
 
 PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY 181 
 
 recognition of the mere possibility that new values may 
 arise, which may even be discontinuous with the old, 
 does not mean the recognition that there have already 
 arisen needs calling for such values ; it merely asserts 
 the sovereignty of this additional practical need that, 
 when new needs do arise, they should be satisfied by 
 their appropriate values. It is true that the main- 
 tenance of a right proportion in values may require the 
 subordination of the new needs, but at all events they 
 must not be suppressed in advance by a priori reason- 
 ing. This priority of need to values is already an ele- 
 ment in the standard value of Christianity." 
 
 Mr. Lyman, in other words, is so pragmatic 
 that he feels warranted in discrediting the au- 
 thority of truth on the basis of his need of pos- 
 sible needs. Yet, he seems to allow an ordering 
 of our needs, which of course involves a rational 
 procedure to maintain a right proportion of 
 values. Strangely enough, the essay concludes 
 with a tribute to faith. Now faith is the 
 recognition of authority, on as reasonable 
 grounds as the person exercising faith has at his 
 disposal. Mr. Lyman, however, objects to au- 
 thority on the strength of need and instinct. 
 Indeed, the manward side of truth is all there is 
 of truth. And this subjective aspect of truth 
 which has come to displace its philosophy, is 
 dominated by the physical functions which made 
 the world of sense loom up large. This world-
 
 182 AUTHORITY 
 
 view is practical with reference to the instant 
 need of things ; it keeps a steady eye on the wants 
 of the moment. It constitutes the utilitarian ex- 
 pediency of our world-wise age which discards 
 philosophy. As Schiller says: "Meanwhile till 
 philosophy shall hold together the structure of 
 the world, nature maintains its doings by hunger 
 and by love." 
 
 ("Einstweilen, bis den Bau der Welt 
 Philosophic zusammenhalt 
 Erhalt sie (die Natur) das Getriebe 
 Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.") 
 
 Die Weltweisen. 
 
 The prevailing mode of determining religious 
 and moral life from the sense of need rather than 
 from its content, the attempt to confine all our 
 outlook, our whole Weltanschauung, within the 
 compass of humanity demands investigation. 
 Against such meaningless designations of 
 Christianity as Professor Lyman's declaration: 
 "This priority of needs to values is already an 
 element in the standard value of Christianity," 
 it is gratifying to meet with the insistence on 
 truth as the time-honored test, also for Chris- 
 tianity. Professor Perry says in "The Moral 
 Economy" : 
 
 "There is one test of religion which has been uni-
 
 PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY 183 
 
 versally applied by believers and critics alike, a test 
 which, I think, will shortly appear to deserve precedence 
 over all others. I refer to the test of truth. Every 
 religion has been justified to its believers and recom- 
 mended to unbelievers on grounds of evidence. It has 
 been verified in its working, or attested by either obser- 
 vation, reflection, revelation, or authority. In spite of 
 the general assent which this proposition will doubtless 
 command, it is deserving of special emphasis at the 
 present time. Students of religion have latterly shifted 
 attention from its claims to truth to its utility and sub- 
 jective form. This pragmatic and psychological study 
 of religion has created no little confusion of mind con- 
 cerning its real meaning, and obscured that which is 
 after all its essential claim the claim namely to offer 
 an illumination of life." 
 
 Maurice remarks at the conclusion of his work, 
 "The Religions of the World and their Rela- 
 tion to Christianity" (p. 245) : 
 
 "In compliance with the directions of Boyle, I sought 
 for that which seemed to be the most prevailing form 
 of unbelief in our day ; and I found it in the tendency to 
 look upon all theology as having its origin in the 
 spiritual nature and faculties of man. This was as- 
 sumed to be the explanation of other systems, why not 
 apply it to Christianity? The questions we have asked 
 are, 'Is it the adequate explanation of any system?' 
 'Do not all demand another ground than the human 
 one?' 'Is not Christianity the consistent asserter of
 
 184 AUTHORITY 
 
 that higher ground?' 'Does it not distinctly and con- 
 sistently refer every human feeling and consciousness 
 to that ground?' 'Is it not for this reason able to in- 
 terpret and reconcile the other religions of the earth?' 
 'Does it not in this way prove itself to be not a human 
 system, but the Revelation, which human beings re- 
 quire?' " 
 
 The question, then, is: Can we reasonably 
 proceed on this presupposition which makes need 
 the criterion of objective, normative truth? It 
 is generally admitted that what is true for me, 
 is not therefore true in itself. Or, as we may 
 put it, our subjective apprehension of truth is not 
 the same as the objective truth. Now, philo- 
 sophic inquiries are made in search of principles 
 by which reason may obtain a true knowledge of 
 things. It is therefore essential that we lay 
 special emphasis upon the presuppositions with 
 which we begin any and all disquisitions. We 
 must have some philosophic principles to begin 
 with in order to give an orderly account and ex- 
 planation of the facts as we see them. And both 
 we and our theories must be judged in the light of 
 our philosophy. It is therefore a wise custom, 
 followed in many treatises, to devote first of all 
 some discussion to the presuppositions with which 
 we approach the subject; for as Bettex well 
 said: "Die ganze Theorie von der Vorausset-
 
 PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY 185 
 
 zungslosigkeit der Wissenschaft beruht auf der 
 grosser!, falschen Voraussetzung dass der 
 Mensch voraussetzungslos sein konne." 
 
 We hold that philosophy proceeds on the sup- 
 position that there are no phenomena without 
 some reality, which is their ground, and which 
 appears in them. These phenomena, being 
 forms or expressions of this objective reality, are 
 as such of course not that reality itself. Meta- 
 physics inquires into the nature of this objective 
 reality which lies behind phenomena as their 
 ground, and which in them enters into human 
 experience. It thus endeavors to know phe- 
 nomena in their deepest ground, to see their 
 inner being and truth. This view, however, is 
 wholly discarded by many contemporaries. 
 Yet without first settling these points, discus- 
 sions between representatives of different meta- 
 physical convictions will prove fruitless. We 
 may, however, fruitfully compare and contrast 
 systems. Such reasoning, of course, does not 
 create conviction, but rather corroborates and: 
 establishes views already held. As the recogni- 
 tion of authority is an act of faith, we must not 
 therefore consider faith to be the ground of 
 truth, or the source of knowledge of truth, but 
 rather as a faculty of the soul to perceive and 
 recognize objective truth.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 FAITH AND AUTHORITY 
 
 Dr. H. Bavinck observes in "De Zekerheid des 
 Geloofs" (p. 21 ff ) : 
 
 "Certitude is something different from truth, 
 though closely related to it. Truth is agreement be- 
 tween thought and reality and expresses the relation 
 between the content of our consciousness and the ob- 
 ject of our knowledge (i. e., fidelity to reality). The 
 assurance of faith, however, does not express a rela- 
 tion, but a quality, a characteristic, a condition of a 
 knowing subject. Assurance of faith obtains when the 
 soul reposes perfectly in the object of knowledge. 
 Truth carries this certitude, but not every certitude is 
 proof of truth." 
 
 Elsewhere in "Godsdienst en Godgeleerheid" 
 he remarks in this connection : 
 
 "Troelsch recognized rightly that comparative his- 
 toric studies at best can only demonstrate that Chris- 
 tianity is the highest of the present religions relatively, 
 that there is at present no higher religion than Chris- 
 tianity. Yet it is not susceptible of proof that Chris- 
 tianity is the final (endgiiltige) revelation of God, that 
 
 186
 
 FAITH AND AUTHORITY 187 
 
 Christ is the Only begotten of the Father, that is 
 simply a matter of faith. Nature and history as such 
 do not yield an absolute standard. It is the same in 
 the sphere of right, of morals, or aesthetics, and also 
 in the sphere of religion. The absolute standards 
 which sciences use are derived from faith. This is 
 more and more perceived and recognized in theology. 
 Dr. Vistycher's recent essay, 'Geen Theodicee,' treats 
 the futility of logical proofs for the existence of God. 
 Just as formerly the value of historic-apologetic argu- 
 ments was over-rated, they are now in danger of being 
 slighted, and the proof from experience is likely to be 
 considered by many the only argument for the truth 
 of Christianity. This is running to another extreme of 
 one-sidedness and exaggeration. Experience is not 
 conviction, and can never be the ground, standard, and 
 vindication of revelation. But it is nevertheless the 
 way in which the Christian religion is known and recog- 
 nized by us in its absolute character. Rather, the 
 Christian religion as the revelation of God in Christ 
 Jesus His Only Son becomes an absolute certainty for 
 us only by the way of saving faith. If the Christian 
 religion be the absolute one, there can be no other way. 
 And on the other hand, if it had to be demonstrated, 
 it would ipso facto cease to be the absolute religion. 
 From this standpoint, it will not appear strange, but 
 rather quite natural, that the Gospel of Christ does 
 not endeavor to justify itself before the human reason. 
 It witnesses, but does not argue. It claims authority, 
 demands recognition, but renounces all attempts to se- 
 cure approval on the strength of scientific arguments.
 
 188 AUTHORITY 
 
 Yea, it freely acknowledges that the cross of Christ 
 must seem foolishness to the prudential wisdom of the 
 world." 
 
 This, as Bible students will readily admit, is a 
 prominent note in the Scriptures. This 
 sovereignty of faith, of the recognition of au- 
 thority before the claims of reason in its demand 
 for rational explanation, has ever been and still 
 is the great divide in religious controversies. 
 Rationalism violates faith in the interest of 
 reason, whereas the traditional Christian views 
 have always emphasized faith as supreme over 
 reason. M. Scherer says in "Revue de Stras- 
 bourg," p. 66: "I believe in authority whenever 
 I admit a fact simply on my faith in a witness." 
 And yet liberal tendencies of to-day manifest an 
 increasing disposition to oppose authority in 
 moral matters and to discard the miracles in in- 
 tellectual matters. The resort to subjectivism, 
 Ritschlianism and pragmatism have not im- 
 proved matters. Faith and authority are too 
 closely allied. And it is evident that in subjec- 
 tivism real faith and authority are rendered im- 
 possible. Religion is a metaphysico-psycho- 
 logical fact. Its sphere is the human personal- 
 ity, but this is not its ground, and therefore can- 
 not be its sole explanation, as some writers think. 
 Professors Coe, Starbuck, and James have paid
 
 FAITH AND AUTHORITY 189 
 
 almost exclusive attention to experience, without 
 letting objective truth come to its right. They 
 have subsumed metaphysics under psychology. 
 Men, little interested in metaphysical study, la- 
 bor in experimental psychology to reduce religion 
 to its lowest terms, to biological ethics explained 
 by physiological functioning of the organism. 
 Dr. Stanley Hall's endeavor in this direction has 
 been without much success. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that revelation and 
 religious experience are correlative, each imply- 
 ing the other. When the unseen is measured by 
 the seen, the ideal brought within the compass 
 of the actual, and the ought identified with what 
 is, religious, ethical and spiritual interests lose 
 their ultimate ground. 
 
 In this materialism of France this method is 
 predominant. Standing firmly on the facts 
 seen, the facts of greater moment are scoffed at 
 as fiction. Professor Gustave Le Bon utters a 
 wail of sensational alarm over this state of af- 
 fairs. Writing under the title, "Will Civiliza- 
 tion Fade and Die Out," in the New York 
 American of February 24, 1907, he says: 
 
 "Science has renewed our ideas and deprived our re- 
 ligious and social conceptions of all authority. Visible 
 decadence seriously threatens the vitality of the ma- 
 jority of the great white nations, and especially of
 
 190 AUTHORITY 
 
 those known as the Latin nations, and really Latin 
 nations, if not as regards their blood, at least as re- 
 gards their traditions and education. Every day they 
 are losing their initiative, their energy, their will and 
 their capacity to act. The satisfaction of perpetually 
 growing material wants tends to become their sole 
 ideal. The family is breaking up; the social springs 
 are strained. Discontent and unrest are spreading in 
 all classes, from the richest to the poorest. 
 
 "Like the ship that has lost its compass and strays 
 as chance and winds direct, the modern man wanders 
 haphazard through the spaces formerly peopled by the 
 gods and rendered a desert by science. He has lost his 
 faith, and with it his hopes. The individual is coming 
 to be solely preoccupied with himself. Consciences are 
 capitulating and morality is deteriorating and dying 
 out." 
 
 The Me All Mission describes the situation in 
 France as follows: 
 
 "Religiously, at the present moment France is in a 
 condition of 'eclipse of faith.' Of her 38,000,000 not 
 over 8,000,000 or 10,000,000 at the outside remain, 
 in any practical way, attached to the Roman Catholic 
 Church. Clericalism, discredited at the polls, and 
 capitalism, trembling for its property rights, in the 
 presence of socialism, seek, in unnatural alliance, to 
 perpetuate exhausted superstitution, while socialism 
 counts its recruits. Among the working classes, licen- 
 tiousness, alcoholism, and home-life devoid of moral
 
 FAITH AND AUTHORITY 191 
 
 training, are rapidly disintegrating the family. Ab- 
 sinthe numbers its victims by the hundred thousands, 
 annually." 
 
 The French psychologist portrays in dark 
 colors the condition of his people. What we are 
 concerned with here is to call to mind the "esprit 
 gaulois," the peculiar trait of the French nation, 
 its lack of reverence, that negative, critical at- 
 titude which mocks, jests and makes cynical 
 sneers at spiritual things. It is this "esprit 
 gaulois," opposing submission to all authority, 
 which dominates the national life of France. It 
 will recognize no restraint, and revolts boldly 
 against an authority which makes appeal to God. 
 Well did La Fontaine express a French senti- 
 ment: "Notre ennemi c'est notre maitre, Je vous 
 le dis en bon francais." 
 
 Unbelief thus raises the ultimate question of 
 the supernatural. The issues are clear. On 
 neither side is demonstration or proof possible. 
 The eternal cannot be comprehended within 
 time-limits or fully expressed in temporal forms. 
 To speak in evolutionary fashion of an eternal 
 becoming, is to ignore the fruitless attempts of 
 the Greeks and to show little appreciation of the 
 real problem. The kenotic theories of Thoma- 
 sius, Gess, Ebrard and Martensen endeavored 
 to solve this problem by settling it at the outset.
 
 192 AUTHORITY 
 
 Cf. an able and scholarly discussion by H. C. 
 Powell: "Principle of the Incarnation with 
 especial Reference to the Relation between our 
 Lord's Divine Omniscience and His Human 
 Consciousness." It contains an interesting dis- 
 cussion of Kant's view of time and space as the 
 postulates of the inner and outer perception. 
 
 After all, change is in the hand that knows no 
 change. We may say that this world alone al- 
 lows of the application of the time-conception 
 inasmuch as with the world's existence time be- 
 came in the world's process. Time is unthink- 
 able without the world, and it is contradictory 
 therefore to imagine a time in which God was 
 without the world. But to say that there is no 
 time thinkable in which the world was not is 
 simply to state that the world had been as long 
 as it has been. Without the Eternal Spirit there 
 would not be any time. Time and change issue 
 forth from eternity and return to it for judg- 
 ment. Eternity holds absolute sway over time 
 and change, and "stands at the heart of all 
 time." This eternity is the source of each mys- 
 terious variation, and it is also the unseen provi- 
 dence which controls and directs all the varia- 
 tions to their collective end. When Ritschl 
 says: "What is Eternity but the power of the 
 spirit over time?" he simply gave expression to 
 the idea that change rises from the changeless.
 
 FAITH AND AUTHORITY 193 
 
 Reality is timeless. What really is does not ad- 
 mit of a beginning or an end. It is therefore 
 begging the question to endeavor to explain 
 eternity in terms of time; it is a contradiction 
 in terms. Equally contradictory is the effort to 
 explain reality by its appearance in time. The 
 "tertium quid," the undefined and undefinable, 
 does not arise from, else it could not give rise to, 
 the temporal world. 
 
 "The rose-seed holds the glory of the rose 
 Within its heart sweet summer fragrance bides. 
 And there each petal's tender blush-tint hides 
 Till June bids nature all her charms disclose. 
 
 "The sleeping infant's heart and brain may hold 
 The glorious power that in future years 
 Shall move the listening world to smiles and tears. 
 'Tis life potential that the days unfold. 
 
 "One act of Will divine, and lo ! the seed 
 Of growth was sown in young creation's heart, 
 From Life Eternal hath all life its start, 
 And endless change as changeless law we read." 
 
 A true explanation of the world and history 
 is therefore in its nature revelation, to be appre- 
 hended only by faith. No painstaking scrutiny 
 of the facts of reality will ever disclose the truth 
 that stands over it, and pervades it. Levy-
 
 194 AUTHORITY 
 
 Briihl says well: "Une science ne peut etre nor- 
 mative en tant que theorique (p. 14 La morale 
 et la science des moeurs). The eye of faith 
 perceives that higher order in which the facts of 
 nature, our knowledge and ethical norms are 
 reconciled. Professor Dewey in the very at- 
 tempt to argue in his celebrated essay the "Logi- 
 cal Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Mo- 
 rality" admits that the factor of "character" 
 which is to be in reciprocal determination with 
 the "situation judged" is not so evident as is the 
 latter. Both factors, however, involve upon 
 closer analysis psychological and sociological 
 studies which in view of the complexity of the 
 subject as well as of the unanalyzable normative 
 element prove the effort to be utterly futile.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 KANT ON AUTHORITY 
 
 Because Kant failed to give the categorical 
 imperative specific form, and because the norma- 
 tive principle of his ethics lacks content, the sage 
 of Konigsberg has been severely criticized by 
 Hoffding. The Danish scholar uses this point 
 of the Kantian ethics to attack what is strongest 
 and most true in Kant's ethical teaching, 
 namely, its affirmation of an objective, authori- 
 tative norm, which alone makes possible a cate- 
 gorical imperative. We are not unmindful here 
 of the fact that Kant in proclaiming the cate- 
 gorical imperative of the practical reason as the 
 final authority of duty thereby declares reason 
 to legislate within the soul by its own right, i. e., 
 proclaimed in ethics autonomy. We, however, 
 feel that the moral law emanated from God, hav- 
 ing its ground in His essential Being. Thus 
 only can we account for the unconditional claim 
 on man's obedience. Hoffding says in his 
 "Problems of Philosophy": 
 
 "In our estimation of worth and our purposes the 
 inner nature of our feeling and will is revealed. As 
 
 195
 
 196 AUTHORITY 
 
 the concept of purpose depends on the concept of worth, 
 so also the concept of the norm depends on the con- 
 cept of purpose. The norm is the rule for the ac- 
 tivity which is necessary to attain the purpose. It was 
 a fatal thing for the treatment of the problem of 
 worth when Immanuel Kant reversed the relation and 
 tried to derive the concept of purpose from the concept 
 of the norm (of law). This is a psychological im- 
 possibility." 
 
 It is well after all, that Kant's categorical im- 
 perative remains an impersonal dictum without 
 content, for it has ever been the fatal blunder- 
 ing of casuistry to define specific duties and to 
 enjoin them as obligatory. To the individual is 
 left the application of the ethical law, as he feels 
 it, and as it presents itself to him. Hoff ding, 
 however, makes here the fatal blunder of lapsing 
 onto descriptive science by insisting that the con- 
 cept of purpose cannot be derived from the con- 
 cept of norm (of law). This is to ignore the 
 fact that ethics is a normative, not a descriptive, 
 science. By defining norm "as the rule for 
 the activity necessary to attain the purpose," the 
 normative element becomes a fiction, inasmuch 
 as the norms are severally made dependent on 
 the agents who adopt them merely to reach cer- 
 tain ends which they do pursue. Indeed! not 
 always those which they ought to pursue. This 
 procedure gives a method rather than a normative
 
 KANT ON AUTHORITY 197 
 
 standard. It is psychologically impossible to 
 explain the sentiment of ought from what is. 
 The feeling of ought is an original, unanalyzable 
 fact. The revelation of God at the heart of man 
 is the original source of all religion, and also of 
 the original source of all obligations and duties, 
 of whatever specific content they may be. No 
 strictly rational ethics, therefore, is possible. 
 We cannot, even in theory, be good without God. 
 This, however, is the endeavor of "Ethical Cul- 
 ture." Martensen well observes in this regard: 
 "While religion without morality cannot count 
 upon many advocates, morality without religion 
 finds no lack of such." He remarks that "this 
 abstract autonomic morality only appears at 
 those seasons when there is also religious decay." 
 ("Christian Ethics," p. 15, 17.) The postulate, 
 involved in every ethics, that the individual des- 
 tiny at best coincides with the larger good, and 
 conversely, assumes a theistic basis. And so 
 does the originality of the moral sentiment in its 
 commanding authority. Ethics discloses what 
 is before us and behind us, the moral nature of 
 what bears us and what leads us. What ought 
 to be is felt to be the basis and ground as well 
 as the goal of all that is. In the science of 
 ethics, first and final causes are seen to be one; 
 and thus in the ethical nature the heart of reality 
 is laid bare. It is safe to predict that, in our age
 
 198 AUTHORITY 
 
 of indifference towards philosophical discipline, 
 we may expect a re-awakening of metaphysical 
 studies through interest in ethical questions. 
 Only when ethics rests on the religious basis of 
 theistic belief have the English words "duty" 
 and "ought" meaning, in that they bring in the 
 One who is Creator and Judge, to whom is due, 
 to whom is owed, to whom we pray that He "for- 
 give us our debts as we forgive our debtors." 
 Eduard von Hartmann says in "Das Religiose 
 Bewusstsein der Menschheit," "All facts point 
 to the circumstance that the ethical consciousness 
 of man has developed exclusively on the basis of 
 religious conviction, that ethics nowhere has 
 arisen without this, and that in its specific color- 
 ing it has everywhere been conditioned and de- 
 termined by religion." To conceive of the pur- 
 pose for which we are created, "the chief end of 
 man to glorify God and enjoy Him forever," 
 affords an objective authoritative norm. The 
 impossibility of its psychological explanation 
 only corroborates the fact of its being a pri- 
 mordial rule inherent in the nature of God. But 
 a rule which we form as a consequence of our 
 own desires can never figure as such a norm for 
 such a rule would be merely describing the func- 
 tioning of our desires in our purposes, the record 
 of a subjective, unethical condition of fact. 
 Hoff ding, in common with the general tendency
 
 KANT ON AUTHORITY 199 
 
 of our day to give wide scope to theories of 
 values, inclines to subjective and individualistic 
 views, which logically result in individualistic 
 pleasure-pursuits. Against this tendency, the 
 rigorism of Kant's ethical law stands as a whole- 
 some truth. The ethical life, far from being 
 a primrose way determined by transient pleas- 
 ures, should be accepted as an exacting task 
 under the demands of the Infinite! We are to 
 learn to will our duty, not to shape our duties to 
 our wills, for then what we call duties become 
 simply our desires. Not whatever satisfies de- 
 sire is good. Desire itself is to be brought to a 
 test. As Professor Palmer tentatively puts it: 
 "Pleasure probably is nothing else but the sense 
 that some one of our functions has been appro- 
 priately exercised. Every time, then, that a 
 volition has been carried forth in the complex 
 world and there conducted to its mark (and 
 taken its inward effect) a gratified feeling 
 arises." Pleasure, then, should rather be treated 
 as an incident expression of the proper discharge 
 of our function, our duty, "given us by some- 
 thing which we cannot alter, fully estimate, or 
 with damage evade." 
 
 Hoff ding well declares it a psychological im- 
 possibility to derive the concept of purpose from 
 the concept of law. Instead, however, of at- 
 tempting to subsume the law under its contents,
 
 200 AUTHORITY 
 
 which are but its specific expressions, showing 
 the way in which we get this experiential 
 evaluation of the law, he might rather have 
 paused to reflect whether or not the ethical law 
 of right or wrong is unanalysable because origi- 
 nal, and have recognized that God is the ultimate 
 lawgiver and authority, as of old !
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MATERIALISTIC TENDENCIES AND 
 RITSCHLIANISM 
 
 Although of late "Christian Science" has had 
 a large following, and although idealistic phi- 
 losophy has found favor with many, yet it is but 
 natural that in an age of material achievements 
 the slighted factor should be the spiritual world. 
 Characteristic in this regard are the titles of the 
 writings of Romanes. "A Candid Examina- 
 tion of Theism," by Physicus, in which descrip- 
 tive science holds him in a hard, grinding, causal 
 mechanism without outlook upon a spiritual 
 power behind, in, and beyond it. "A Candid 
 Examination of Religion," by Metaphysicus, in 
 which the facts of the inner life are given full 
 recognition, and in which he feels himself again 
 in possession of a Christian Weltanschauung. 
 These books and the history of Romanes are well 
 known and need no comment. It is also a mat- 
 ter of general knowledge that the consistent 
 atheist Nietzsche did away with "das Seelend- 
 ing" and reduced the inner life to a "Begleiter- 
 scheinung." Yet the most prevalent mode of 
 thought reserves for the spiritual a place only in 
 
 301
 
 202 AUTHORITY 
 
 subjectivism. It is indeed a saddening result 
 when modern scholarship is compelled to repeat as 
 Christian what Goethe made Faust exclaim with 
 unspeakable heartache: "The message indeed I 
 hear, but I lack the faith. The miracle is the fa- 
 vorite child of faith." "Die Botschaft hor' ich 
 wohl, allein mir felht der Glaube: Das Wunder 
 ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind." 
 
 Loisy, as well as Harnack, distinguishes be- 
 tween the Easter-message and the Easter-faith. 
 The message is the objective, historic fact, an 
 empty tomb : "He is not here," and faith merely 
 concludes, or creates the conviction "He is 
 risen." The risen Christ is an object of faith 
 (objet de foi, in the sense of faith-product, not 
 as lying at the basis of it, and perceived by 
 faith), not a factual reality (realite de fait). 
 The whole believing atmosphere of the early 
 Church, this faith-state as fact appeals again to 
 the faith of others. It is from faith to faith, but 
 without objective ground in historic fact. 
 Loisy's polemic books, "Autour d'un petit Livre," 
 and "L'Evangile et 1'Eglise," are able presenta- 
 tions of the current subjective views which at- 
 tempt to explain away the supernatural basis of 
 Christianity. Neither Loisy nor Harnack is an 
 approved representative of Catholic or Protes- 
 tant Christianity. Yet, the excommunicated 
 Abbot retains more ground for authority than
 
 RITSCHLIANISM 203 
 
 the able church-historian, whose views lead to 
 individualism. 
 
 Exact science will not allow an objective fact 
 which it cannot explain, and the method of ex- 
 act science has been carried over into historical 
 study. If, after all, sidelights have been util- 
 ized and all circumstances bared, history does not 
 explain the Christ as portrayed by the records 
 and by the effects which He produced, then, in- 
 stead of concluding that mere historic facts can- 
 not explain Him, the explanation of the cause 
 of the world's greatest event is sought in a pious 
 fiction. Christ is the explanation of Christianity, 
 and admittedly cannot be explained by circum- 
 stance and earthly surroundings. The very at- 
 tempt to explain His world-transforming power 
 from faith-elements witnesses to the inadequacy 
 of the historic method to explain Him. He is 
 all-encompassing and future-regarding. No 
 record of the past, therefore, will contain any- 
 thing else than an earthly Christ. What a tre- 
 mendous exercise of faith in the mystery of per- 
 sonality is it for Harnack, on the strength of 
 that mystery, to ascribe to Christ the miracle of 
 sinlessness. This is the pious fiction of the 
 "Zeitgeschichtliche Methode." Calvin's word 
 deserves repeating here: "Totus Christus sed 
 non totum quod in eo est." The earthly Christ 
 was not the all of Christ. And even the earthly
 
 204 AUTHORITY 
 
 Christ in sinlessness defies classification or ex- 
 planation according to these faithless methods. 
 A record of beginnings does not change the 
 nature of the product, the successive phases of 
 which are described in history, any more than 
 life is explained by the development and func- 
 tioning of a living organism. In biological 
 science, life itself is not subsumed under the ru- 
 bric of development, circumstance or functioning. 
 The elementary cell has its "Eigengestaltsam- 
 keit" which descriptive science simply takes as a 
 fact. No more should Christianity with Christ 
 as its center be identified with its development, 
 the circumstances under which it took rise or its 
 subsequent history. If it is out of time, it will 
 go in time, and will deserve the mephistophelian 
 sneer at earthly things: 
 
 "Alles was entsteht 
 1st werth dass es zu Grande geht." 
 
 It could not inspire faith, it would lack its com- 
 manding authority, it would require verification 
 from the things of this world, instead of ruling 
 at their hearts and center. Christ is in history 
 what a priori elements are in individual experi- 
 ence. When an un- Christian temper through 
 lack of faith in this spiritual principle imperi- 
 ously demands demonstration of the world's spir-
 
 RITSCHLIANISM 205 
 
 itual events in terms of the seen, we reply effec- 
 tively, "Faith is the substance of things hoped 
 for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 
 xi, 1). This fact has made some historians re- 
 tire into subjectivism; which leads to an individ- 
 ualistic interpretation of Christianity and threat- 
 ens to destroy both tradition and authority. 
 
 The Ritschlian school has not been able to stem 
 the tide of subjectivism, but has rather furthered 
 it. In spite of Harnack's tribute to Ritschl as 
 the one who saved Protestantism from this dis- 
 integrating tendency, the process is still going 
 on alarmingly. The popular mind comes to 
 think of the Christian religion as a pious senti- 
 ment, and experience of ethical enthusiasm and 
 moral endeavor, as consecrated good-will in the 
 service of mankind, as faith in the eternal right 
 as the condition for self-realization in disciple- 
 ship of the Christ, in the following of our innate 
 religious instincts. The application of a nor- 
 mative standard to a matter so purely private 
 and individualistic is considered difficult and 
 needless. Should no objective reality corre- 
 spond to our deep-rooted religious experiences, 
 we are nevertheless none the worse for indulging 
 in these pious sentiments. They relax the ten- 
 sion of life's struggle and relieve its grim real- 
 ity. Metaphysics hewing been denied its place 
 in religion, psychology tries to comfort us with
 
 206 AUTHORITY 
 
 a last apologetic word in behalf of the retaining 
 of Christianity. 
 
 These ideas easily gain access to the minds of 
 modern preachers. In a recent book, "The Dy- 
 namic of Christianity," by E. M. Chapman, the 
 following remark is made: "The ultimate 
 source of authority is not an objective thing. It 
 has never been fixed, codified, or finished!" 
 Strange confusion of ideas in popular theology! 
 A thing is not objective because it is not fixed, 
 codified, or finished! From the nature of the 
 case it cannot be finished in time, although it re- 
 quires at least some form in which to express it- 
 self in time. The New England pastor, how- 
 ever, fortunately holds to what he calls "that 
 chief practical charisma of the Spirit known as 
 common sense," and believes "the conscience of 
 Christendom, educated by the Bible, by the ex- 
 perience of the Church, by the partial light issu- 
 ing from the ethnic faiths and applied to specific 
 cases of conduct by human reason acting with a 
 full consciousness of its limitations, cannot go 
 far wrong." 
 
 More harmful are the reasonings which would 
 have us discount and repudiate the agencies and 
 manifestations of Christ, i. e., historic Chris- 
 tianity, on the ground that they are not Christ 
 Himself. This is very much like saying that the 
 study of language, in any or all its forms, may
 
 RITSCHLIANISM 207 
 
 be discarded because language is only the expres- 
 sion of thought, not thought itself. And yet, 
 without language thought would not be possible. 
 Such a confusing opposition of Christ to Chris- 
 tianity and Bible may be seen in the following 
 passage of Dr. Jacobus, Dean of Hartford Semi- 
 nary for religious workers: 
 
 "It is upon Jesus Himself that the authority of life 
 and all its religion rests to-day. There are those who 
 say the authority of religion rests with the church, and 
 that all we can hope to do as workers and teachers in 
 religious things is to represent the church. But there 
 are those who push this matter further back and say 
 the authority of the church rests in the creeds, and 
 that all we need to do is to keep the creeds intelligible 
 to men. But there are still others who go further 
 back and say the authority of the creeds rests with the 
 Bible, and all that we have to do is to keep the Bible 
 taught and preached to men. But you see this simply 
 presses the question back one further step for its final 
 answers, because, when we ask where rests the authority 
 of the Bible, the only answer to this question is, it 
 rests with Jesus Christ whom it contains." 
 
 In this typical instance of popular fallacy the 
 church, the creeds, and the Bible are the articu- 
 late members of Christianity which the lecturer 
 desires to push back and out of sight, to get to 
 Christ as the final authority. As if Christ did 
 not buttress Christianity! Why labor to find
 
 208 AUTHORITY 
 
 Him different from, and elsewhere than where 
 He admittedly and professedly is to be found? 
 The Christian Church is Christ operating in his- 
 tory, as reflected in the mind of men, "the collec- 
 tive Christ." Christian experience as a witness 
 is formulated in the creeds. Both may be tested 
 by the perfect rule of faith and practice, the 
 Bible, professedly God's book, the only perfect 
 book as Christ is professedly the God-man, the 
 only perfect man. The abuse of that judicial 
 authority, of which every individual is a reposi- 
 tory, in refusing to exercise it in agreement with 
 the Church to which one owes allegiance, on the 
 paltry plea that the experience of Christ is first, 
 only serves to call in question the reality of one's 
 share in such an experience. The vagueness of 
 this position certainly makes Christian experi- 
 ence itself an undefined and meaningless term. 
 
 As if for the benefit of this religious dean, the 
 eminent Congregational scholar, Dr. Forsyth, 
 writes in the Contemporary Review : 
 
 "It is meaningless to say that Christianity is a life 
 and therefore independent of dogma. The pearl of 
 Christianity is a life lived with Christ in God. But that 
 phrase teems with dogma. Christianity, moreover, was 
 a life introduced under definite conditions of history 
 and thought, and therefore it must have a dogma. It 
 has always existed in such conditions. It is not a life 
 in vactw. Dogmatic nescience or hostility leaves us with
 
 RITSCHLIANISM 209 
 
 little beyond reverie lost in the vague, or skepticism 
 solvent and fatal." (Church, State, Dogma and Edu- 
 cation.) 
 
 Indeed, were Dr. Jacobus to formulate his 
 position, though we do not look for theological 
 inclinations in a school for religious workers, he 
 would land in a species of theology, which the 
 dean of Montauban, Emile Doumergue calls 
 "Fideisme." In the essays "Les etapes du 
 fideisme" and "Le dernier mot du fideisme" by 
 Emile Doumergue we are told that Menegoz as- 
 serts the existence of true faith, saving faith, 
 without any knowledge of Christ, nay! that this 
 true faith involves the decisive rejection of 
 Christ. This religious agnosticism advances also 
 to the position of a denial of the existence of 
 God. It thereby approaches Poulin's proclama- 
 tion: "True religion is to have none. The 
 propagation of the religious idea is at the cost of 
 the acceptance of the idea of the non-existence 
 of God." (Poulin; "Religion and Socialism.") 
 Against this sentimental liberalism we affirm with 
 Liddon : 
 
 "Religion to support itself, must rest consciously on 
 its object: the intellectual apprehension of that object 
 as true is an integral element of religion, in other words, 
 religion is practically inseparable from theology." 
 (Divinity of our Lord.)
 
 210 AUTHORITY 
 
 It is the object of faith that deserves attention 
 rather than the subject of experience, for the 
 object is basal to the experience which it calls 
 forth. The message of the Church should con- 
 sist in proclaiming its belief rather than in tell- 
 ing of its experience. The Church has in trust 
 the preaching of the Gospel as the objective 
 truth. Indeed, guardian of the truth as once de- 
 livered unto the saints, its message, the truth, is 
 the matter of most importance. And this is 
 guaranteed neither by subjective experience nor 
 by cui bono considerations. 
 
 Dr. Francis Hall gives the following texts, 
 bearing either directly or indirectly upon the 
 grounds, nature and limits of the teaching au- 
 thority of the church and her ministers : Matthew 
 16:16-18; 18:17. Mark 16:15. Luke 10:16. 
 John 14:16; 17:26; 16:13-15; 20:21. Acts 1:2, 
 3; 2:1-4, 14-36; 6:2; 15:28; 16:4; 20:28. Ro- 
 man 12:4-8. I Cor. 4:1-2; 11:23; 12:28, 29; 
 15:1-3; 16:16. II Cor. 2:9-10; 4:1-3; 10:8. 
 Gal. 1:1, 8-12; 2:6-11. Eph. 1:22-23; 3:2- 
 11; 4:11-16. Col. 3-16. I Thess. V: 11, 12, 20, 
 21. I Tim. 1:1, 3, 4; 3:15; 6:3-5, 20. II Tim. 
 1 :13, 14 ; 2 :2 ; 4 :2. Titus 1 :l-3, 5, 7, 9, 13 ; 2 :15 ; 
 3 :10, 11. Hebrews 13 :7, 17. I Pet. 5 :l-3. II 
 Pet. 3:2. II John: 10 and Jude 3. The reading 
 of these commissions to the Christian ministry is 
 especially to be commended to our new brand of
 
 RITSCHLIANTSM 211 
 
 pastors, who devote themselves at the expense of 
 their patent duties to philanthropic, sociological, 
 and political activities. In thus deviating from 
 their ministerial calling by the assumption of the 
 work of social workers their inefficiency in the 
 secular fold becomes manifest by the side of those 
 trained along these lines. By putting a secular 
 demand upon the clergy the preparatory train- 
 ing for the ministry has actually undergone in 
 most secularized institutions an important 
 change. When in Princeton Theological Semi- 
 nary similar demands were urged, the great 
 Princeton Divine, Dr. Francis Landay Patton, 
 fortunately vindicated the Seminary's curricu- 
 lum as designed to prepare ministers "to rightly 
 divide the Word." Indeed, it is a sad outlook 
 for the ministerial profession if, under the influ- 
 ence of liberal teachings, it is allowed to become 
 a dabbling in the range of social activities, ethi- 
 cized by such scant Christian teaching as still sur- 
 vives in these circles.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 SCIENCE AND FAITH 
 
 No Weltanschauung is complete, no philosophy 
 entirely satisfactory in every detail. The 
 plumb-line of the finite intellect cannot measure 
 the Infinitude in which it finds itself. In the 
 end, therefore, we shall be brought before alter- 
 natives, and we may well face them at the start. 
 Ballard makes prominent the alternatives in- 
 volved in Christian or non-Christian systems, 
 and urges a choice of them in his able apologetic 
 work, "The Miracles of Unbelief." 
 
 There is, in fact, no more lamentable disposi- 
 tion than the one which is content to hold by im- 
 plication at least that there may be any number 
 of truths; which is not merely content to hold 
 that there are different aspects of truth, truth 
 differently apprehended; but which holds op- 
 posing views true under the claim that everybody 
 is entitled to his own opinion. Though this be 
 conceded in the abstract, to act upon it betrays 
 an indifference to truth as such that kills all 
 search for it and shows lack of confidence in it. 
 The liberalism which proclaims "laisser aller," 
 "laisser faire," as profound wisdom, reveals not 
 
 Hi
 
 SCIENCE AND FAITH 213 
 
 only an intellectual but a moral indifference to 
 opinion. 
 
 This temper, of course, does not obtain among 
 trained, academic minds. Among these the pre- 
 vailing lines of thought are different. Truth is 
 held to be beyond our reach (in negative theolo- 
 gies) ; or incomplete and inadequate (evolution- 
 ary views) ; or again the limitations (not impos- 
 sibility) of our knowledge is emphasized. Some 
 dwell upon our inability to obtain objective certi- 
 tude (subjectivism), and others hold that there 
 are different kinds of truth (pluralism). The 
 most insiduous and subtle mode of thought, how- 
 ever, is that which enthrones need as the ultimate 
 criterion of truth before which inquiry should be 
 silent. We shall, therefore, treat of this at some 
 length, since it involves the subjective stand- 
 point of the other views, although the values de- 
 termined by the satisfaction of need are held to 
 correspond to objective reality. 
 
 The very nomenclature of this mode of thought 
 is suggestive in that it speaks of truth as "cor- 
 responding to objective reality," instead of "re- 
 sulting from objective, disclosed reality." Pro- 
 fessor James tries with great ingenuity to argue 
 the former, in which circumstance only the dis- 
 pensing of its correspondence is needed in order 
 to leave the freest scope to Pragmatism. He is 
 not quite assured of his point, however. In a
 
 214 AUTHORITY 
 
 foot-note on p. 17 in "The Meaning of Truth" 
 he says : "One may easily get lost in verbal mys- 
 teries about the difference between quality of 
 feeling and feeling of quality, between receiving 
 and reconstructing the knowledge of reality." 
 It is evident that a disclosure of reality is always 
 an affair of individual apprehension. 
 
 If faith is the recognition of authority, exer- 
 cised reasonably, not instinctively as led by feel- 
 ing, then the question concerning the forms of 
 authority to which we shall give assent must be 
 settled by reason. Much more intricate, how- 
 ever, does the question become, when we put the 
 analogous inquiry concerning the relation of the 
 sense of need to the true, real need of man as 
 man. Orthodox Christianity has always dwelt 
 upon the fact that religion, as a result of the 
 soul's relation to God, is an individual affair, 
 and therefore it has laid stress upon inner experi- 
 ences and has exalted conscience and reason. 
 But it has never gone so far as to make these hu- 
 man experiences the final authority, because if re- 
 ligious knowledge requires content occasioned by 
 some object, much more does the religious senti- 
 ment. Feeling is not creative; it is merely the 
 capacity to receive impressions. There is, there- 
 fore, no guarantee for the religious life, except on 
 the basis of an acknowledged objective norm, 
 in the recognition of God's truth. Apart from
 
 SCIENCE AND FAITH 215 
 
 the impossibility of demonstrating the existence 
 of things without, at least as perfectly as the 
 reality of the psychical representations, an objec- 
 tive norm is required to set in order our experi- 
 ence as rational beings. History has shown hu- 
 man judgment to be, as it is individually felt to 
 be, inadequate, faulty and unreliable. Profes- 
 sor James acknowledges this in his "Varieties 
 of Religious Experience," but only to invite re- 
 turn to it, as residing in, or guided by utility, as 
 this is apprehended by men. He says: 
 
 "Origin in immediate intuition, origin in pontifical 
 authority, origin in supernatural revelation, as by 
 vision, hearing or unaccountable impression; origin in 
 direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself in 
 prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterances 
 generally, these origins have been stock warrants for 
 the truth of one opinion after another which we find 
 represented in religious history. The medical mate- 
 rialists are therefore only so many belated dogmatists 
 neatly turning the tables on their predecessors by using 
 the criterion of origin in a destructive instead of an 
 accreditive way." 
 
 And again: 
 
 "Not its origin, but the way in which it works on the 
 whole, is Dr. Maudsley's final test of belief. This is 
 our own empiricist criterion, and this criterion the stout- 
 est insisters on supernatural origin have also been
 
 216 AUTHORITY 
 
 forced to use in the end." (H. Maudsley, "Natural 
 Causes and Supernatural Seemings.") 
 
 This is exactly what we do not understand by 
 the final authority, an assent to which is faith. 
 Faith is not born of things seen, authority not 
 recognized after we have seen how expedient its 
 commands are. Those who insist on super- 
 natural origin, are forced to use for verification in 
 apologetic argument the same world-field in time 
 and to abide by the criterion "the way in which it 
 works on the whole." But the convictions were 
 not derived from the survey, not brought about 
 by argument. It is a contradiction in terms to 
 establish one's own authority. After assent has 
 been given, we cannot further accredit the au- 
 thority upon which it rests. All we can do is to 
 find corroboration for the reasonableness of our 
 act of faith. (Cf. "Is Proverbs Utilitarian?" 
 In the January Number of the Bibliotheca 
 Sacra, 1907.) 
 
 The suggestive, plain title of Dr. Maudsley's 
 essay reduces the supernatural to seemings, and 
 proclaims the natural only as cause. It goes 
 without saying that on this presupposition no 
 other guarantee is left. But as we have ob- 
 served the existence of the natural world is no 
 more proved than is the reality of the represen- 
 tations of our psychic life. As Professor Ru-
 
 SCIENCE AND FAITH 217 
 
 dolph Eucken observes in "Das Wesen der Re- 
 ligion" (p. 5) : "To religion surely belongs the 
 reality of another world, above the one we know 
 through sensuous experience. For an imma- 
 nent religion, that vague and inadequate notion 
 which defies this world, is a pitiful contradic- 
 tion." The logical application of this, both to 
 the sphere of inner experiences and the world of 
 outer experiences, is not only analogical, but true 
 to the experiences themselves. Dr. H. Visscher, 
 in urging this in an inaugural address, "De 
 oorspong der Religie," before the University of 
 Utrecht, 1904, quotes his colleague Ziehen as fol- 
 lows: "Shall we indeed speak soon, not of a tree, 
 but of a tree-sensation, or even some specific part 
 of the tree- sensation? Not at all. Our words 
 denote not things, but sensations and ideas and 
 these complexes of experiences are to be taken 
 as real." 
 
 But we wish further to call attention in Pro- 
 fessor James' statement to the view concerning 
 the relation of origin to authority. Professor 
 James takes little account of the origin of that 
 which claims authority. Simply because he does 
 not recognize its truly a priori dictum, he in- 
 clines toward the seeming causes which discount 
 supernatural causes, and discards, in much the 
 same way as medical materialists, the question of 
 origin. (Origin employed here in the sense of
 
 218 AUTHORITY 
 
 source, not as meaning the procedure of genetic 
 appearance.) But on such presuppositions, it is 
 difficult to come to any true appreciation of 
 faith, which requires independent or final au- 
 thority to be acknowledged, not proved. After 
 all the facts are in, from a posteriori reflection 
 upon the thought, act, or experience, we cannot 
 determine the faith required before the issues. 
 Authority always requires as a priori, what 
 James will recognize only as a posteriori and es- 
 timates with a bias on the basis of its results 
 upon things without us. In his "Will to Be- 
 lieve" Professor James remarks: 
 
 "No concrete test of what is really true has ever been 
 agreed upon. Some make the criterion external to the 
 moment of perception, putting it either in revelation, 
 the consensus gentium, the instincts of the heart, of the 
 systematized experience of the race. Others make the 
 perceptive moment its own test, Descartes, for in- 
 stance, with his clear and distinct ideas guaranteed by 
 the veracity of God ; Reid with his 'common-sense' ; and 
 Kant with his forms of synthetic judgment, a priori. 
 The inconceivability of the opposite; the capacity to be 
 verified by sense; the possession of complete organic 
 unity or self-relation, realized when a thing is its own 
 other, our standards which, in turn, have been used." 
 
 Instead of interpreting these facts as accredi- 
 ted to the circumstance that these are attempts 
 to explain and justify the striking creditude
 
 SCIENCE AND FAITH 219 
 
 wherewith first truth was apprehended and au- 
 thority recognized, James insists that "the intel- 
 lect, even with truth directly in its grasp, may 
 have no infallible signal for knowing whether it 
 be true or no. Here is the point at which the dis- 
 cussion has always halted, or shall we say 
 really begun. Those whose faith leans upon the 
 verdicts of reason and conscience, treating them 
 as essentially veracious, demand the infallibility 
 of Absolute truth to back them. 
 
 We believe that truth announces itself as much 
 in the forms of life we find, or rather as it finds 
 us in the forms of life. Truth is dogmatic ; it has 
 authority and inspires faith. This is truth as we 
 see it, of course. Specific forms which represent 
 truth to us may not do so from another angle, 
 and certainly not to another individual. Yet 
 truth recognized as such carries its own verifica- 
 tion. We have already anticipated the objec- 
 tion that our metaphysical bias runs into theoretic 
 abstraction. But we believe that we are free 
 from the charge, inasmuch as we do not identify 
 truth with the specific forms in which it manifests 
 itself to different individuals at different times, 
 i. e., with reality, knowing that it is larger than 
 any temporal form. Yet, in these forms we 
 must find the truth as we can experience it. On 
 strictly psychological grounds, we know that un- 
 mediated faith is a chimera.
 
 220 AUTHORITY 
 
 As Professor Bavinck well says in his Stone 
 Lectures on "Philosophy of Revelation" (p. 
 82): 
 
 "In the knowledge of the truth lies the end of its rev- 
 elation ; reality is an instrument to enable us to find the 
 truth; reality is intended to become truth in our con- 
 sciousness and in our experience. Reality, therefore, 
 does not offer us in the truth a mere copy of itself, so 
 that the world, as pragmatism objects, would be du- 
 plicated. In the truth, reality arises to a higher mode 
 of existence ; having first lain in darkness, it now walks 
 in the light; having once been a riddle, it now finds its 
 solution ; not understood at the beginning, it is now 
 'declared.' So the truth obtains an independent value 
 of its own. Its standard does not lie in its usefulness 
 for life, for, if usefulness were the criterion of truth, 
 then perfect unanimity ought to prevail in regard to 
 usefulness, and life itself ought to be a value not sub- 
 ject to fluctuation. But in regard to life, what counts 
 is not merely existence, or pleasure, or intensity, but 
 first of all content and quality. And it is precisely by 
 truth that this content and quality are determined. 
 The truth is of more value than empirical life. Christ 
 sacrificed his life for it. None the less, by doing so he 
 regained his life. Truth is worth more than reality; 
 it belongs to that higher order of things in which physis, 
 and gnosis, and ethos are reconciled, and in which a true 
 philosophy gives full satisfaction both to the demands 
 of the intellect and to the needs of the heart."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 PRAGMATISM SUBVERSIVE OF 
 AUTHORITY 
 
 Professor James makes in the dialogue, with 
 which "The Meaning of Truth" closes, the Prag- 
 matist dispense with this hybrid term truth. 
 
 "It seems to me that what knowledge knows is the 
 fact itself, the event or whatever the reality may be. 
 Where you see three distinct entities in the field, the 
 reality, the knowing, and the truth, I see only two. 
 Moreover, I can see what each of my two entities is 
 known-as, but when I ask myself what your third entity, 
 the truth, is known-as, I can find nothing distinct from 
 the reality on the one hand, and the ways in which it 
 may be known on the other. Are you not probably mis- 
 led by common language, which has found it conven- 
 ient to introduce a hybrid name, meaning sometimes a 
 kind of knowing and sometimes a reality known, to 
 apply to either of these things interchangeably? And 
 has philosophy anything to gain by perpetuating and 
 consecrating the ambiguity? If you call the object of 
 knowledge 'reality,' and call the manner of its being 
 cognized 'truth,' cognized moreover on particular occa- 
 sions, and variously, by particular human beings who 
 have their various businesses with it, and if you hold 
 
 221
 
 222 AUTHORITY 
 
 consistently to the nomenclature, it seems to me that 
 you escape all sorts of trouble." 
 
 Indeed! Professor James does well to dis- 
 pense with that "hybrid name" truth, if, as on 
 pragmatic basis, there is no normative standard 
 left. H. Heath Bawden hails this new philoso- 
 phy with great acclaim. He declares in "The 
 Principles of Pragmatism": "The new philoso- 
 phy is a pragmatic idealism. Its method is at 
 once intrinsic or immanent, and organic or func- 
 tional" (p. 44). He goes on to say that he 
 means "by saying that its method is immanent 
 that it must be interpreted from within. We 
 find ourselves in mid-stream of the Niagara of 
 experience and may define what it is only by 
 working back and forth within the current. We 
 don't know where we're going, but we're on the 
 way." Yes! on the way, admittedly glorying in 
 the ignorance of the course which uncontrolled 
 sovereign experience takes. "Everything that 
 we experience is equally real" (p. 55). The 
 compass is thrown overboard, truth is functional, 
 to be used, nay to be made and subsequently dis- 
 carded. "Truth is a form of value : its value lies 
 in its ability to mediate other values" (p. 216) 
 floating in a Niagara of experience. "Truth in- 
 volves interaction of means and ends, and since 
 experience is an ever expanding, the standard of
 
 PRAGMATISM SUBVERSIVE 223 
 
 what is true or adequate grows with this expand- 
 ing life. It is not a question of truth, but of 
 truths, not of validity but of specific validities. 
 There is no single criterion of truth, because there 
 is no single truth" (p. 204). The formal logi- 
 cians have maintained that the validity of 
 thought lies in its reference. Heath Bawden in- 
 forms us that "Truth or falsity involves compari- 
 son of two or more judgments. A judgment 
 becomes true or false only when reflectively scru- 
 tinized and evaluated from the standpoint of a 
 new judgment." In this pragmatic movement 
 as taken up by its average advocates, one cannot 
 help being impressed by the boastful attitude 
 with which they present truisms as important new 
 discoveries to do away with the traditional views, 
 the meaning of which they fail to understand by 
 lack of philosophic insight. In these formulae, 
 convictions and judgments which have controlled 
 the thought of the ages and are still the mainstay 
 of the best minds and judgments, is compressed 
 more valuable experience than the noisy superfi- 
 cial clamorings of the new-fangled truths an- 
 nounce. New thought emphasizes discrepancies 
 in life's situations, toys with the unseen, con- 
 trasts logic and life, ridicules the static, the law, 
 the authority which demands submission. It in- 
 sists: "tant de tetes, tant d'avis," and one is as 
 good as another. Its democracy appeals to the
 
 224 AUTHORITY 
 
 crowd by bringing everything exalted within 
 reach of the impious hand. There is no high or 
 low, all is a matter of experience, no standard 
 obtains. The soldier's wish has come true; in 
 philosophy as in morals. Pragmatism is 
 
 "Somewheres east of Suez 
 
 Where the best is like the worst, 
 Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, 
 An' a man can raise a thirst." 
 
 Of course, with Professor James there are 
 "leadings," and Professor Dewey's "Immediate 
 Empirisism" would caution in the use to be made 
 of his statement that the failure with most men 
 is to set up a standard "authoritatively instead of 
 experimentally." For this eminent scholar, to 
 whom the pragmatists will now look as their 
 leader, is a greater philosopher than the illustri- 
 ous Harvard psychologist, and realizes also the 
 import of Kant's words, that in itself doubt and 
 criticism is not a permanent resting place for hu- 
 man reason. Its justification is relative, and its 
 function transitional. Still, in this movement 
 "Human arbitrariness has driven divine necessity 
 from scientific logic, as James well declares in 
 "Pragmatism" (p. 57). Though James is per- 
 haps right in maintaining that he means to ac- 
 knowledge in his system an objective correspond-
 
 ence, by refusing this corresponding reality ac- 
 knowledgment as causal ground which involves a 
 normative, regulative character for experience, he 
 can hardly defend this claim on metaphysical 
 grounds. However, James confessedly always 
 disliked the speculative cobwebs of metaphysics. 
 They restrict life's free flow upon which prag- 
 matism insists. Kant slighted the objective, 
 normative element of the supernatural similarly, 
 when he declared in "Kritik der Urteilskraft" : 
 
 "From nature as object of our senses we have no 
 ground for the belief that things serve one another as 
 means to ends, and nature only by this causality becomes 
 sufficiently intelligible." And "Thus the idea of teleol- 
 ogy in nature must be a necessary postulate for human 
 judgment, a subjective principle of judgment in our 
 reason therefore, which as regulative (not constitutive) 
 is valid as absolutely for human judgment, as if it 
 were an objective principle." 
 
 ("Dass aber Dinge der Natur einander als Mittel zu 
 Zwecken dienen und ihre Moglichkeit selbt nur durch 
 diese Art von Causalitat hinreichend verstandlich sei, 
 dazu haben wir gar keinen Grund in der allgemeinen 
 Idee der Natur als Inbegriffs der Gegenstande der 
 Sinne." (V 61.) " So wird der Begriff der Zweck- 
 massigkeit der Natur in ihren produkten ein fur die 
 menschliche Urteilskraft in Ansehung der Natur not- 
 wendiger Begriff sein, also ein subjectives Princip der 
 Vernunft fur die Urteilskraft, welches als regulativ
 
 226 AUTHORITY 
 
 [nicht constitutiv] gilt, alsob es sein objectives Princip 
 ware.") 
 
 The view that the end in nature may be 
 regulative, but not constitutive, is contradictory, 
 for only then is there a rule when it is truly the 
 expression of nature. It deserves notice that 
 Kant recognizes the force of the regulative ele- 
 ment, but slights this by declaring it subjective 
 in the interest of his mechanical explanation of 
 nature. His aim is "to explain all products and 
 events of nature, even those most fraught with 
 design, as far as possible in a mechanical way." 
 ("alle Produkte and Ereignisse der Natur, 
 selbst die Zweckmassigsten so weit mechanisch 
 zu erklaren, als es nur immer in unserm Vermo- 
 gensteht.") (378.) Pragmatism argues a "cor- 
 respondence," so as not to lack objectivity, but 
 refuses to acknowledge this reality as causal or 
 constitutive, for this would involve regulative 
 norm. Thus, however, cannot be maintained 
 real objectivity. The query rises: Why should 
 there be any correspondence? This is the most 
 pertinent question against James's defense of 
 pragmatism, especially since the most he will al- 
 low is that "We believe our precepts are pos- 
 sessed in common." Subtle psychological so- 
 phistry about the "quality of feeling" and "feel- 
 ing of quality" cannot delude our inner deliver-
 
 PRAGMATISM SUBVERSIVE 227 
 
 ance, even by the scholar whose ingenious stream- 
 theory tried to dispense with the soul, and whose 
 questioning, "Does consciousness exist?" con- 
 cludes with the declaration of his belief that con- 
 sciousness is but "the faint rumor left behind the 
 disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy." 
 Yet, the very same scholar accredited data of 
 spiritualistic seances with the warmth of convic- 
 tion. 
 
 In the "Essays philosophical and psychologi- 
 cal in honor of William James by his colleagues 
 at Columbia" is a helpful suggestion in regard to 
 objectivity in the essay "The New Realism" by 
 George Fullerton. Professor Fullerton re- 
 marks (p. 49) : 
 
 "They have only to distinguish clearly between the 
 objective order itself and their assumed non-phenome- 
 nal entity, and to use that order as a framework for 
 the ordering of experience as a whole. If they do this 
 they are doing what is done in common life and in sci- 
 ence they are distinguishing between the existence of 
 things and our perception of them. Without this dis- 
 tinction, we should, indeed, find it hard to get on." 
 
 On pp. 33 and 35 he says : 
 
 "In answer to the idealistic contention, that there is 
 no experience in the world where there is no sensation, 
 I advance, not a denial, but a complementary statement.
 
 228 AUTHORITY 
 
 It is this: There is no sensation, that can be recog- 
 nized as such, where there is no experience of the world. 
 What is a sensation? The word is surely not one to 
 be used at random. No one thinks of employing it as a 
 mere name for anything and everything. When we 
 imagine a tree or a house, we do not admit that we are 
 concerned with sensations. How can we distinguish be- 
 tween sensations and such experiences as these? But 
 one answer to this question can be given. We find in 
 experience an objective order of phenomena. No one 
 who has not senses finds it of course. The phenomena 
 that stand in the objective order are revealed, i.e., that 
 they may be referred to the sense of someone, and in, so 
 far, they are his perception of the objective order, the 
 man is recognized as experiencing sensations. But, al- 
 though we constantly refer phenomena to our senses, 
 this is not our only way of treating them. We relate 
 them to each other directly, abstracting from the rela- 
 tion to sense, and in so far we recognize them as having 
 their place in an objective order. As so considered the 
 phenomena in question are not sensations ; they are 
 qualities of things. That phenomena may have this 
 double relation is evident from the fact one set of sci- 
 ences occupies itself with them in one relation, and an- 
 other busies itself with them as standing in the other. 
 We cannot repudiate all these sciences. A color merely 
 imagined or seen in a dream cannot be treated by phys- 
 ical science as in any sense the property of a thing; it 
 cannot be regarded by psychology as a sensation. He 
 who dwells upon sense-organs, nerves, and messages, 
 gives a meaning to the word sensation; if he subse-
 
 PRAGMATISM SUBVERSIVE 229 
 
 quently discards this physiological apparatus or subli- 
 mates it into a mere 'projection,' he ought to discard 
 with it all the meaning he has gained, and ought, in jus- 
 tice, to abandon the word. If, by bad luck, he incon- 
 sistently holds on to it he becomes an idealist, a sub- 
 jectivist." 
 
 This is to corroborate what Jevons states in 
 "Lessons in Logic" (p. 11) : "We cannot sup- 
 pose, and there is no reason to suppose, that by 
 the constitution of the mind we are obliged to 
 think of things differently from the manner in 
 which they are." Logic then, holds still good in 
 spite of the vehement denunciations of the mod- 
 ern mind. Perhaps sometimes speculative 
 flights have been attempted without a strict ob- 
 servation of the facts of life. Practical claims 
 might have been occasionally discarded for theo- 
 retic rules, dogma too exclusively conceived as 
 logical formulation or theory, but it all grew out 
 of life, and regarding life, it was in touch with 
 it, not to stifle it, but to enrich it in leading it 
 out constitutively in its regulations. How pal- 
 try many of these truisms of vital life-interpre- 
 tations sound as set over against imaginary tra- 
 ditional formalism may appear from quoting 
 f. i. the felicitous remarks of Scott Holland in 
 "Logic and Life": 
 
 "Faith is not made by argument. It seeks, indeed,
 
 230 AUTHORITY 
 
 for a rational solution of life's mysteries ; it grows 
 through gaining hold of them ; 'The depth said, it is not 
 in me.' Not from things without, but from the heart 
 within, cometh wisdom ; there, in the inner places of the 
 soul, in the secret will with which a man fears the Lord, 
 and departs from evil, is the true place of spiritual un- 
 derstanding. (Preface.) 
 
 "Reason is regarded, not in its isolated character, as 
 an engine with which every man starts equipped, ca- 
 pable of doing a certain job whenever required, with a 
 definite and certain mode of action ; but it is taken as a 
 living and pliable process by and in which man brings 
 himself into rational and intelligent relations with his 
 surroundings, with his experience. Reason is the 
 slowly formed power of harmonizing the world of facts ; 
 and its justification lies, not in its deductive certainty 
 as in its capacity to advance. It proves its trustwor- 
 thiness by its power to grow. Reason moves towards 
 its place, its fulfillment, so far as it settles itself into 
 responsive agreement with the facts covered by its ac- 
 tivity. We have to do, more or less, with the actual 
 construction and nature of the reasoning organ itself. 
 This construction is alive, and every instant sees it 
 change: it is no isolated faculty where working can con- 
 tinue, or be watched f in vacuo,' as we can watch the 
 movement of a machine even when it has no material to 
 work upon. Rather is it to be held in unbroken con- 
 nection with the facts on which it works, for only in re- 
 lation to them is its success, its truths, obvious, or veri- 
 fiable or intelligible. Everything depends on the char- 
 acter of the facts before him, and on the nature of his
 
 PRAGMATISM SUBVERSIVE 231 
 
 main experiences. The excellence of a piece of reason- 
 ing lies simply in its adaptive facility, in the response 
 it evokes between those particular new impressions and 
 the mass of older and habitual experiments. Change 
 the facts, or the experience, and its excellence disap- 
 pears, it becomes unintelligible. Only in intimate and 
 undivided communion with the facts which they express, 
 have the announcements of the reason, on any field of 
 knowledge, any intelligible value; and no one therefore, 
 who does not live, and move, and have his being, in con- 
 stant intercourse with the spirit life can enter into the 
 deep necessities of its laws. I am, of necessity, blind 
 to the force of argument and judgment, as long as I 
 have no corresponding experience, as long as that 
 body of fact which they make explicable remains to me 
 unverified and unexplored. The reason in man is hu- 
 man ; that is all we mean. It is under a man's impulse 
 that it argues and discusses ; it is part and parcel of his 
 corporate and complex existence. The whole long chain 
 of its syllogisms is never mechanical; it is alive along 
 all its length; and feels at every joining the throbbing 
 currents of his moving life." 
 
 It may seem strange that with the exception 
 of Professor James by the pragmatists so little 
 attention has been given to the psychology of 
 faith, though they are intent on undermining 
 faith in all its forms. And Professor James, who 
 brings abundant psychological insight to the 
 statement of the pragmatic philosophy, unfor- 
 tunately reaches forth most aggressively in its
 
 232 AUTHORITY 
 
 metaphysical formulations, a discipline which he 
 confessedly dislikes. This circumstance brings 
 the psychologist under the criticism of his col- 
 league Royce, who urges rightly that in pragma- 
 tism the importance of the syllogism is over- 
 looked and its nature and the nature of deduc- 
 tive reason not psychologically understood. 
 (Compare the author's "The American philoso- 
 phy Pragmatism.") It is admitted that accord- 
 ing as objective recognition is more clear and un- 
 questioned, the stronger our will-power is as- 
 serted, our determination surer. Faith therefore 
 is also an economic help in life, a veritable assur- 
 ance. Forsooth, no balancing mind, no reflective 
 dreamer like Hamlet does the deed. In this 
 psychological oversight, by refusing objective 
 recognition as guarantee for its action, Pragma- 
 tism defeats its own end of action. Faith and 
 Authority are also supreme in this.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 
 
 Professor Rudolf Eucken, in his "Hauptpro- 
 bleme der Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart," 
 remarks : 
 
 "The mental life is simply incomprehensible and 
 could never exercise power with us, if it had not inde- 
 pendent reality apart from man, if the life which ap- 
 pears in it did not have reality and were not truly re- 
 lated. Only a real life-whole is capable of evoking the 
 activities of our inner life (p. 16). . . . We may 
 understand quite different things by the true and the 
 good, but none of us would ever strive for them, did we 
 not think of them as superior to human conditions and 
 opinions, as representative of another timeless order of 
 things. The more we comprehend the mental life as a 
 whole and understand it as another phase of reality, the 
 clearer it becomes that in it we see an independent world 
 of eternal truth appear which gives foundation to the 
 change of temporal happenings and human life (p. 
 54). . . . That its metaphysical elements prove 
 to be ethical and the ethical metaphysical, is the char- 
 acteristic greatness and lasting dynamic of Christian- 
 ity; former times often make it onesidedly metaphysi- 
 cal; we of the modern age should avoid turning it into 
 a mere ethics " (p. 89) . 
 
 933
 
 234 AUTHORITY 
 
 An illustration of the use of authority in the 
 sense of witness to objective fact may be seen in 
 a clause of the last will and testament of the late 
 Rev. John Bampton, specifying the purpose of 
 the now famous Bampton lectures : 
 
 "Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity 
 Lecturer Sermons shall be preached upon either of the 
 following subjects to confirm and establish the Chris- 
 tian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics 
 upon the Divine authority of holy Scriptures upon 
 the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, 
 as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church 
 upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 
 upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost upon the Ar- 
 ticles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the 
 Apostles' and Nicene Creeds." 
 
 From this will it clearly appears that authority 
 is lifted above questionings and inquiries; but 
 justification is sought for it in order to guarantee 
 the rational exercise of faith. The objective 
 witnesses are called upon to justify the authority 
 which is acknowledged. So those in whom espe- 
 cially resides the objective witness to facts, are 
 to render service by bringing about intellectual 
 verification of faith. It is the recognition in 
 Anselm's profound maxim: "Credo ut intelli- 
 gam," of the ut intelligam as well as of the 
 credo, expressed in that other famous saying of
 
 SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 235 
 
 his: "fides quaerit intellectam." In faith, in the 
 recognition of authority, the will is involved ; yet, 
 not the bare will of abstraction according to the 
 former rigid division of our tripartite nature. 
 It is an intelligent will which is to operate under 
 proper and proportionate sentiment. As Dr. 
 W. Benton Greene, Jr., well said in an address 
 delivered before a conference at Princeton: 
 
 "There is no knowledge of the heart. Feeling can 
 give knowledge no more than can excitement. Pro- 
 fessor Bowen said, 'Feeling is a state of mind consequent 
 on the reception of some idea.' Again the head and the 
 heart are not in opposition. They are not, as often 
 represented, rival faculties. Man is not a bunch of 
 separate activities. He is an indivisible unit." 
 
 We cannot fruitfully consider will, intellect, 
 or feeling separately, neither should we leave 
 them too much to abstract consideration, but 
 their bearings should be found, as they function, 
 in the concreteness of human life. In life we 
 find man exercising conjointly his volitional, 
 emotional, and intellectual nature. His whole 
 personality comes to play on the scenes of his 
 life under specific forms to which he responds 
 and upon which he reacts in his own, personal 
 way, thus forming a character with its corre- 
 sponding "Weltanschauung." Fichte was right 
 in saying that a man may be known from his phi-
 
 236 AUTHORITY 
 
 losophy, as was also the author of Proverbs when 
 he said (IV. 23) : "Keep thy heart with all dili- 
 gence; for out of it are the issues of life." 
 
 Are then the forms of authoritative truth on 
 which faith is exercised, such as to warrant the 
 act, are they to be considered final? We must 
 answer, No, unless they carry in themselves the 
 intrinsic power of the truth, unless they are 
 manifestations of God; no derived authority will 
 endure. This, however, is exactly what religion 
 is built on and upon which it rests, as Professor 
 T. Cannegieter has said: ff De taak en meihode 
 der wijsbegeerte van den Godsdienst" p. 129. 
 
 "Through our indivisible, spiritual nature, we are in 
 personal, direct relation with God. He gives us He 
 only knows how the impression of His Presence and 
 relation to us. But it follows from this, that when the 
 question is raised as to the reality of these experiences, 
 it never devolves upon the science of religion to prove the 
 existence of God. For the religious man whose experi- 
 ences are real. For him God is the deepest reality. 
 Out of this blossoms forth his religion. The first point 
 in all religion is God, who is known, because he revealed 
 Himself. Whoever tries to explain religion without 
 this presupposition destroys it. In this one primum 
 all is contained. For when God reveals Himself to the 
 soul, then He is known in His absoluteness as the In- 
 finite, who is the ground of all finite things. And every- 
 thing finite is considered as belonging to Him only.
 
 SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 237 
 
 God revealing Himself is the primordial source of all 
 religion. When did this revelation begin? It coin- 
 cides with creation, it began when man commenced his 
 psychic life equipped for the reception of this revela- 
 tion. As the eye is teleologically fitted for the recep- 
 tion of light, so is the soul of man fitted for the recep- 
 tion of God. 
 
 See also his interesting sketch: "De samen- 
 hang van het objectieve en het subjectieve in de 
 dogmatiek." 
 
 When Leopold Monod observes in "Le pro- 
 bleme de 1'autorite": "I insist that no such re- 
 gime is of divine origin," he practically prede- 
 termines not to recognize any final authority, 
 and thus his conception of the revelation of truth 
 must needs be one that is not only incomplete, 
 but also mixed with error, for it means consist- 
 ently that there is no revealed truth. Yet he 
 presumes to discuss seriously just this point: 
 "We do not dispute the fact of authority in hu- 
 man life, nor its relative right, but the absolute 
 right of authority. Are there authorities, or is 
 there an authority, which commands us in abso- 
 lute fashion, so that to withhold from it our 
 thought and action would be to fail in our first 
 duty? Where is this authority? Where speci- 
 fically for the Christian is the authority which he 
 may not deny without ceasing by the very act to 
 be a Christian?"
 
 238 AUTHORITY 
 
 This method necessarily keeps M. Monod in 
 the sphere of relativity, for he has precluded the 
 serious admission of any final authority or abso- 
 lute truth. The question concerns the recogni- 
 tion of authority, the receiving of the documenta- 
 tion of God's revelation, not the establishment of 
 it. To argue authority into being, would require 
 a regress ad infinitum. And whenever, or in 
 whatever field, such an attempt is made, it is evi- 
 dent that the recognition of authority has already 
 been refused, that the exercise of faith has been 
 shut out. The confusion of these two totally dif- 
 ferent procedures is in the air and is widespread. 
 It seems to be thought a reasonable procedure 
 to-day in many quarters to hold that established 
 authority, in the exercise of its function, be it re- 
 ligious or civil, must give an account of itself 
 even to those over whom it rightfully holds claim. 
 This, however, is a hopelessly confusing princi- 
 ple, and is never acted upon in practice, neither 
 indeed could it be. It would require a judge in 
 office to ask for jurisdiction, an officiating priest 
 to request his parishioners to grant him authority 
 for his ministry. It would require approval by 
 the people of the law that is in force over them, 
 and vindication of the Bible while appeal is made 
 to it. There is a normative, objective standard 
 of truth. All the varied forms of truth, how- 
 ever, differently perceived, admit of being
 
 SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 289 
 
 brought into comparison, inasmuch as all these 
 forms go back to one source, i. e., to human na- 
 ture, which is always essentially the same. 
 
 Dr. Charles Tyler Olmstead, Bishop of the di- 
 ocese of Central New York, commending an 
 article of the Reverend Burnett T. Stafford in 
 the Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1907, remarks 
 truly: 
 
 "It is certain as anything can be that there is an 
 immovable substratum of truth underlying every Divine 
 manifestation, which the human mind may elucidate and 
 view from different points, but can never change. And 
 it is so that the Christian life and civilization are built 
 up on the unchangeable facts of the Incarnate Life of 
 the Son of God. We may mediate on those facts and 
 see more and more of their wondrous significance, now 
 emphasizing one feature and now another; but to deny 
 their reality and call that 'spiritual interpretation' is 
 to put our vain fancies in the place of God's revelation, 
 and to trick out our belief with a deceptive appearance 
 of faith. It will not do. It destroys the foundations, 
 and leaves us a mere human philosophy in the place of 
 divine religion. No such philosophy ever has been, or 
 ever will be, ablejto withstand the active resistance and 
 antagonism of^Euman selfishness." 
 
 Subjectivism tends to discredit the normative 
 element in authority, because its objective aspect, 
 its metaphysical implication, recedes before the 
 claim of subjective interpretation. This finds
 
 240 AUTHORITY 
 
 illustration in a recent volume by Dr. D. W. 
 Forrest entitled, "The Authority of Christ." 
 The author endeavors to enforce Christ's au- 
 thority by enlarging upon the importance of the 
 work of the Holy Spirit. It is a peculiar mode 
 of treatment to affirm at the start: "It appears 
 to me that those who maintain a genuine histori- 
 cal Incarnation of the Son of God have not 
 always sufficiently recognized the limitations in- 
 herent in an Incarnate life, nor how vital is the 
 illumination of the Spirit operating through the 
 best activities of men's minds and hearts, for the 
 discovery of what Christ's authoritative message 
 really is." Dr. Forrest certainly chooses a 
 rather illogical way when he seeks to persuade us 
 of the authority of Christ by declaring His limi- 
 tations according to the kenotic theory to which 
 he adheres, and then subsequently endeavors to 
 establish Christ's authority by appealing to the 
 activity of the Holy Spirit. He thus comes into 
 line with the current subjective interpretations 
 of Christianity, leaving us without guarantee 
 that the "Zeitgeist" will not assert itself as 
 "Heiliger Geist," when he discards "an objective 
 standard of divine commands, unbounded by any 
 fluctuations or vicissitudes of human thought and 
 life." He says again: "What security is there 
 that mankind will not some day universally re- 
 nounce the Gospel of Christ? Is it merely that
 
 SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 241 
 
 the Church claims to have a commission to de- 
 clare, "This is the revealed truth?" Certainly 
 not. A claim is nothing unless it can justify it- 
 self to the; best judgment of men; and the higher 
 it is the more eagerly will its credentials be scru- 
 tinized. Therefore in the end the one guarantee 
 for the perpetuity of Christianity in the world 
 is its adaptation to human nature" (p. 429). 
 
 If the impossible, hypothetical event sug- 
 gested by Dr. Forrest should happen, and man- 
 kind should universally renounce the Gospel of 
 Christ, the Gospel none the less would still be 
 true. Truth does not derive its intrinsic, ob- 
 jective authority either from the needs of human 
 nature or from its appreciation by human nature. 
 Its reception by mankind depends on this sense 
 of need, but to elevate this manward aspect of 
 truth into its criterion is pure pragmatism. The 
 question in point Dr. Forrest dismisses abruptly. 
 The Church does claim to be commissioned to de- 
 clare a revealed truth. For Dr. Forrest to deny 
 these claims because they do not meet the cri- 
 terion which he proposes (though we need hardly 
 mention that in this revealed truth the deepest 
 needs of the human heart are met) is to refuse 
 assent to objective truth, because it does not find 
 its way to the minds which he sets up as judges. 
 With some exaggeration of this statement we 
 might say: Truth which is not popular is a con-
 
 242 AUTHORITY 
 
 tradiction in terms. Such a saying, however, 
 would be a most painful mockery of the world's 
 heroic martyrs who have fallen as witnesses to 
 truth, and even of Him who said: "To this end 
 was I born, and for this cause came I into the 
 world, that I should bear witness unto the truth," 
 and who added: "Everyone that is of the truth 
 heareth my voice" (John xviii. 38), although 
 there were many who did not hear. 
 
 This contention that the claims of Christianity 
 must justify themselves to the individuals who 
 sit in judgment upon them, involves the moral 
 question of beliefs as expressed in Christ's signifi- 
 cant addition. This subjective attitude as pre- 
 requisite for the reception of truth, Dr. Forrest 
 makes practically the whole of Christianity and 
 then elaborates the activity of the Holy Spirit by 
 identifying His work essentially with the best 
 judgment of men, a procedure which runs 
 either into humanitarianism or into pantheism. 
 He who discusses the authority of Christ should 
 remember that, if mankind derives its final au- 
 thority from its own nature, it acts on its own 
 authority, and further, that though the admission 
 of truth to the hearts of men is subjectively con- 
 ditioned, this circumstance does not decide the 
 question concerning the nature of truth itself. 
 "God is His own interpreter and He will make 
 it plain."
 
 SUBJECTIVISM AND TRUTH 243 
 
 But again Dr. Forrest says (p. 428) : "We re- 
 pudiate the attempt to impose upon us the 
 ecclesiastical order of patristic or mediaeval 
 times, and claim the right in Christ's service to 
 be true to ourselves and to our appointed place." 
 The question, however, is not whether systems 
 should be imposed upon those who do not find 
 themselves satisfied in the traditional creed of 
 Christianity. This would make hypocrites, ,not 
 Christians. Those of "the ecclesiastical order of 
 patristic or mediaeval times" were the first to af- 
 firm that human agencies cannot make Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 The issue is one which Dr. Forrest either 
 evades or does not perceive, namely, whether 
 simply being true to ourselves constitutes being a 
 Christian, or whether specific and unique char- 
 acteristics belong to Christianity and the Chris- 
 tian Church. We must first determine the na- 
 ture of Christianity and then answer the ques- 
 tion. What constitutes a Christian? Scholars 
 professedly still turn to the Christ as the source 
 and center of Christianity, though the ethnic 
 faiths have occasionally been called upon for elu- 
 cidation, because of a widely current emphasis on 
 human nature. In discussing Loisy's books, 
 "L'Evangile et 1'Eglise" and "Autour d'un 
 petit livre," Dr. Forrest quite naturally inclines 
 towards Abbe Loisy's subjectivism, but objects to
 
 244 AUTHORITY 
 
 what critics consider Loisy's strongest point, the 
 defense of historic Christianity as the natural and 
 therefore legitimate form by means of which the 
 Church perpetuates itself, declaring that "His- 
 tory knows no instance of religion without a 
 cult."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 
 
 There is a fallacious use made of the phrase: 
 "Natura exigit, imperat Deus" what nature de- 
 mands, God enjoins. This has been interpreted 
 to mean that man's deepest needs are God's high- 
 est laws. Hooker tries to safeguard this view by 
 conditional clauses against too free interpreta- 
 tion. He says in his "Ecclesiastical Polity": 
 
 "The general and perpetual voice of men is as the 
 sentence of God himself. For that which all men have 
 at all time learned, nature herself must needs have 
 taught, and God being the author of nature, her voice 
 is but his instrument." (I. VIII. 3.) 
 
 Also (I. X. 1. 8.) 
 
 "Two foundations there are which bear up public so- 
 cieties: the one a natural inclination, whereby all men 
 desire sociable life and fellowship; the other an order 
 expressly or secretly agreed upon touching the manner 
 of their union in living together . . . the lawful 
 power of making laws to command whole political socie- 
 ties of men belongeth so properly unto the same entire 
 societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind 
 
 245
 
 246 AUTHORITY 
 
 soever on earth to exercise the same of himself, and not 
 either by express commission immediately, personally 
 received from God, or else by authority derived at first 
 from their consent upon whose persons they impose 
 laws, is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are 
 not therefore, which public approbation has not made 
 so." 
 
 Subsequently God's laws have been read in hu- 
 man needs. This fits the modern, democratic 
 conception which evaluates with life as the source 
 and standard of authority. How vague, un- 
 stable and undefined this new democratic au- 
 thority is need not be discussed, but it should be 
 observed that a humanitarian religion with hu- 
 manity as object and source of authority, pre- 
 supposes the higher authority on which all its 
 various manifestations of life are forever de- 
 pendent. Indeed! Christ came that we might 
 have life and have it abundantly, but He de- 
 clared paradoxically: "whosoever will save his 
 life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life 
 for my sake shall find it." Though man's deep- 
 est needs are met in the Gospel, it deserves spe- 
 cial notice that Christ always states; he that be- 
 lieveth on me hath life everlasting. This pre- 
 supposed element of faith rules rational interpre- 
 tations regarding life out of court as authority 
 over the same. This rationalistic tendency be- 
 trays itself in "Modernism a Record and Re-
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 247 
 
 view," which A. L. Lilley dedicates to George 
 Tyrrell. He says in his epistle dedicatory to 
 Tyrrell, who when young left the Anglican com- 
 munion for the Roman Catholic Church: 
 
 "You have not for a moment thought it necessary 
 or even possible to abandon the Church of your delib- 
 erate adoption, even when quite recently you heard the 
 voice of authority raised against you in formal con- 
 demnation. You know too well the nature of a Church 
 and the nature and limits of authority in a Church. 
 For you a Church is a spirtiual fatherland, your due 
 allegiance to which no authority can in the last resort 
 either assess or guarantee. Authority indeed is essen- 
 tial, but it discharges its special function only when it 
 waits upon life and ministers to it. When it attempts 
 to prescribe to life the limits within which it must move 
 and beyond which it must not "venture, it has ceased to 
 be ministrant to life and is engaged, whether it knows it 
 or not, in preparing death. Then it becomes a duty to 
 resist it in its own interests, to resist it in order that it 
 may renew its character and methods and become once 
 again an authentic force of direction and control. The 
 limits of coercive power which it may legitimately exer- 
 cise are prescribed for it by the verdicts of life, as to 
 what things have proved in general and continuous ex- 
 perience to be morally hurtful. Yet these are just the 
 things on which authority (perhaps wisely, for even 
 here there may be some shrunken and distorted growth 
 of life) has always borne most lightly; while with the 
 obstinate blindness which has characterized it at many
 
 248 AUTHORITY 
 
 a moment of its history it crushes the forces which would 
 renew life and open out to it the way of progress. Au- 
 thority through those who have wielded it has too often 
 identified itself with accidental and temporary forms. 
 At such times it is necessary for it to learn that its 
 forms are of the things that can be shaken and must be 
 shaken in order that the things which cannot be shaken, 
 life and the authority which proceeds from it, may re- 
 main. The rulers of every spiritual society need to 
 learn from secular history the lesson that the best citi- 
 zens of the temporal fatherland have often been those 
 who resisted even to death the unlimited claims of some 
 temporary form of authority arrogating to itself that 
 divine right which was even then, through the chang- 
 ing needs and conditions of life, passing to another 
 form. Both in the temporal and the spiritual spheres 
 authority proves its divine right by being limited and 
 ministerial. When it becomes absolute, it has become 
 already denied that right. It is the function of author- 
 ity to keep life dependent upon God, and to that end 
 to reverence and cherish those forward and upward 
 movements of life in which the will of God is gradually 
 declared. It is the temptation of authority to despise 
 life or to ignore it, to identify its momentary will with 
 the ultimate will of God which even inspires man's spir- 
 itual growth and seeks expression through it. You 
 have been condemned as the enemy of religious author- 
 ity, indeed as the enemy of religion itself, because you 
 have sought to recall authority to the sources of its 
 strength and thus to restore to religious unity a world 
 which existing forms and methods have been for long,
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 249 
 
 and are now ever more and more rapidly, reducing to 
 religious disintegration and decay. You will not be ar- 
 rested in the work of enduring pith and moment to 
 which you have been called, by this fiat of a day. 
 Through you the dawn has at last broken for thousands 
 of wearied souls who have battled all their lives, and 
 battled hopelessly with the spectres of doubt and dark- 
 ness. You have spoken for them the word of hope, so 
 simple and obvious that, till you spoke it with the calm 
 confidence of assured conviction, they dared not believe 
 it to be true : 'The present is older and wiser and better 
 than the past which it incorporates and transcends.' 
 They will be with you in the long and patient effort, 
 which you will not abandon or relax to save the majestic 
 and glorious tradition of Roman Christianity from the 
 narrow-hearted and ineffectual isolation from the living 
 world to which it would condemn itself." 
 
 The expressions in this passage which we ren- 
 dered in italics suffice to bring out our above ob- 
 servation. We wish, however, to make a few re- 
 marks in regard to them. In the statement that 
 "the present is older and wiser and better than 
 the past which it incorporates and transcends" 
 we lack the superficiality of much clamoring 
 liberalism, which is born of a day, in that here the 
 present is knit even constitutionally to the past, 
 "which it incorporates and transcends." Thus 
 the spirit of opposition is obviated. As Tyrrell 
 himself states in "Through Scylla and Charyb- 
 dis":
 
 250 AUTHORITY 
 
 "For it is psychologically impossible for any individ- 
 ual to get outside the social process which has made 
 him what he is, as to form a judgment which shall at 
 once be just and yet be contradictory to the social mind. 
 Either he has blundered and misinterpreted the social 
 mind, in which case it is only his liberty of error that is 
 violated ; or he has interpreted it more deeply and truly 
 than the average and official interpreters, in which case 
 he differs from these, but does not contradict them, in- 
 asmuch as his is only a stricter conformity to the same 
 rule as they profess to obey" (p. 60). 
 
 There is no reason why the present should 
 transcend, or even necessarily incorporate the 
 past. This on strict psychological grounds is at 
 once quite plain. It is self-evident that one can- 
 not get any conviction that comes from personal 
 experience and this personal and ethical ele- 
 ment figures so largely in the religious sphere 
 before fulfilling the conditions upon which alone' 
 that experience can come, no matter what has 
 gone on before. The social development is not 
 so that means lead mechanically to the ends. 
 Indeed, often the first are last and the last first. 
 But it would seem that the writer thinks of 
 truth's transcendency in time and in saying that 
 the present incorporates and transcends the past, 
 would add that the future will do this much more 
 so. In this is evident the Romish conception 
 which to use TyrrelTs own words considers
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 251 
 
 "one of the most fundamental and distinctive 
 principles of Catholicism is the subjection of the 
 individual mind, will and sentiment in matters of 
 religion to the collective mind, will, and senti- 
 ment of the community; of the private to the 
 Catholic conscience; in a word, the principle of 
 authority" (p. 58). 
 
 Against such a conception of authority we 
 readily see the protest of persons of spiritual ap- 
 prehension, as indeed the greatest in this church 
 have broken through the sacramental ceremonies 
 of the institutions. Augustine, Gottschalk, 
 Savonarola, Pascal, Port-Royal and Jansenism 
 and Calvin witness to a more purely spiritual 
 conception than this visible church holds. Since 
 Felicite de la Mennais the independent search has 
 made some claims for the individual and spirits 
 like Loisy and Tyrrell are in the wake of this 
 great publicist. Reverence and piety are theirs, 
 they are not kindred of the host of liberals who 
 nowadays proclaim with cocksure pedantry the 
 progressive "new truths" against the supersti- 
 tions of an old outworn faith. De la Mennais, 
 Loisy and Tyrrell are searching, because the 
 visible church of Rome with her elaborate sacer- 
 dotalism does not satisfy. There is something 
 pathetic in the opening note of "Through 
 Scylla and Charybdis": "What I have here put 
 together might be described as the history of a
 
 252 AUTHORITY 
 
 religious, or rather philosophical, opinion. For 
 an opinion, it is, and nothing more. I am much 
 more certain that some other opinions are wrong 
 than that this is right; and if anyone will show 
 me a better, he shall be numbered among my 
 benefactors." Anyone may readily observe the 
 difference in temper from those objections 
 against spirituality which President King of 
 Oberlin College discusses in "The Seeming Un- 
 reality of the Spiritual Life," and which he says, 
 "come from an abstract intellectualism, from a 
 crude sensationalism, and from an impossible 
 hypothesizing of laws, and, in general, from a 
 quite unwarrantable exaltation of the mathemati- 
 cal-mechanical view of the world." Lilley con- 
 cedes authority to be essential, but requires it to 
 wait upon life. Now, as observed above, au- 
 thority only ministers to life when it prescribes 
 to it. Only in controlling it, is authority minis- 
 trant to life. Life does not prescribe to itself its 
 own authority. If it be the function of authority 
 to keep life dependent upon God, then, indeed! 
 this authority must in its forms speak to those 
 whose faith does acknowledge it, with the abso- 
 lute authenticating power of God. That this is 
 not always recognized in the bewildering mass of 
 formal religion is easily seen, especially when the 
 emotional and aesthetic is mainly appealed to at 
 the cost of a spiritual apprehension. "God is a
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 253 
 
 spirit and those that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth." Yet, in Tyrrell's 
 own words: "Catholicism stands out as a religion 
 of the whole man against the pedantry of a 
 purely reasonable religion that would abolish the 
 luxuriant doubtless at times too luxuriant 
 wealth of symbolism in favor of a 'ministry of the 
 word' alone, taking 'word' in its baldest literal 
 sense ; and that would limit the converse between 
 God and man to what can be uttered in spoken 
 or written language." He goes on to say: 
 
 "There is, then, no small pedantry of intellectualism 
 in the notion that worship in the spirit and in truth 
 must necessarily be conducted in circumstances of 
 sought-out plainness, and divested of all appeal to the 
 senses, the imagination, and the emotions ; of all sac- 
 raments and symbols a worship which would suffer 
 no more of God's message to enter the soul than can 
 find its way through the narrow slit of common sense, 
 and clothe itself in the stiff primness of colorless prose. 
 Of such worship Christ and His apostles Jews as they 
 were and lovers of the Temple with its soul-stirring 
 symbolism knew nothing, nor has any religion ever 
 thriven long on such a fallacy of puritanism strictly 
 adhered to. The tendency of puritanism is to reduce 
 Christianity to its lowest terms ; to cast off all that has 
 grown out of, or on to its primitive expression; to 
 bring it down to the level of the lowest and most uni- 
 versal spiritual capacity; to make it democratic in just 
 what seems to us the wrong and popular sense of the
 
 254 AUTHORITY 
 
 term. For it is to favor one section of the church at 
 the expense of another ; to starve the higher and rarer 
 capacity in the interests of the lower and commoner ; to 
 assume the spiritual equality of God's sons means an 
 equality of gifts and graces; to forget that the Chris- 
 tian demos includes and needs every grade and kind of 
 spirituality from the lowest to the highest. For this 
 reason as well as for its severe rationality puritanism, 
 in spite of its studied abstract simplicity, has always 
 been the religion of a certain class, and a certain tem- 
 perament, and a certain culture. Whereas Catholicism, 
 in spite of or rather because of its vast complexity, has 
 been, as no other, a religion both of the crowds and 
 masses, and also of the intellectual, the cultivated, the 
 mystical, the aesthetic minority" (p. 32 ff). 
 
 Tyrrell proceeds to discuss this theme in con- 
 nection with his impressions of St. Etienne 
 du Mont, the most devotional catholic church in 
 Paris, where I myself was struck with a singular 
 contrast in pious worship to the other cathedrals 
 which offer almost the spectacle of being public 
 monuments, utilized by the church. "Moreover, 
 we find in such a church as St. Etienne the ex- 
 pression, not of individual, but of a collective 
 spirit, world- wide and ancient, of which it is the 
 product. Everything there speaks of com- 
 munion with a great international religious or- 
 ganism; with the remote past of Catholicism; and 
 through Catholicism, with the past of those older
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 255 
 
 religions out of which it has grown. It (St. 
 Etienne du Mont) is a visualized and sensible ex- 
 pression of the religious experience of the best 
 part of humanity, by means of which the re- 
 ligious sense of the individual is wakened, stimu- 
 lated, and informed; and his consciousness of 
 solidarity with the general life of mankind deep- 
 ened and strengthened. Every such renewed 
 consciousness of communion with Catholicism 
 is a sacramental reinforcement of the spiritual 
 and "over-individual" elements of his interior 
 life an inward grace mediated through an out- 
 ward sign" (p. 37). As he states on page 39: 
 "Religion aims at communicating God to man, 
 at filling the soul with the inexhaustible riches of 
 divine truth and goodness and loveliness. It 
 cannot put the infinite into a nutshell; it cannot 
 put the whole truth into three words. Though 
 it may and often does sin against simplicity, 
 both by undue compression and undue diffusive- 
 ness all the language at its disposal is not enough 
 for what it has got to convey." We elaborate 
 somewhat on this ritualism and social setting of 
 service because the Roman Catholic Church pre- 
 sents these claims, even in those who drift away 
 from her accepted standards, as Tyrrell is a case 
 in point, and one well qualified to formulate 
 them. They need, however, no refutation, espe- 
 cially since Tyrrell gives us on p. 49 a striking
 
 256 AUTHORITY 
 
 passage in which he discloses a susceptibility to a 
 deeper and spiritual view of Authority. "As for 
 the long and sordid record of clerical scandal that 
 we find in Church history, the persistent recru- 
 descences of avarice, ambition, and licentiousness 
 in the ministers of the sanctuary, it is hard to see 
 what more it can prove against Catholicism than 
 the like phenomena in the ministers of law and 
 government can prove against law and govern- 
 ment. The attempt to deny or mitigate such 
 charges seems to imply the worst of 'sacerdotal- 
 ism' namely, the right of priests in virtue of 
 their merely official and ecclesiastical superiority 
 to that honor which belongs solely to personal, 
 ethical, and 'charismatic' superiority. It is 
 all-important to keep distinct the invisible and 
 spiritual hierarchy from the visible and official 
 hierarchy of the church; to see in the latter but 
 the symbol and servant of the former; to see in 
 the former Christ Himself, vicariously repre- 
 sented by the latter; to distinguish the pre-con- 
 stitutional formless church from the governmen- 
 tal form which it has elaborated for its own apos- 
 tolic needs. Deplorable as they are, the corrup- 
 tions of the official hierarchy keeps this vital dis- 
 tinction clear before the Catholic, and save us 
 from man-worship." 
 
 It is evident that the whole question, in spite 
 of all confusion on the subject, turns on a spiritual
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 257 
 
 conception. That the whole Romanish machin- 
 ery of sacramental symbolism is pleaded to be 
 needed or helpful for spiritual understanding is 
 an admission of the spiritual poverty of the 
 church, and similarly is it a sign, that the 
 Protestant Churches are at a low ebb where 
 they resort to the ritualistic props of religion. 
 It is all an effort to bolster up the felt 
 unreality of the spiritual life, which Presi- 
 dent King discusses in his popular lectures be- 
 fore Yale Divinity School on "The Seeming Un- 
 reality of the Spiritual Life." He opens with 
 the remark : "Yes, but why has no one ever seen 
 God?" It is Philip's old question: "Show us the 
 father." Does it avail "to mediate an inward 
 grace through an outward sign," to "communi- 
 cate God to man" by all sorts or ritual, and sym- 
 bols, to go into a sanctuary with the cultivated 
 sense that a "collective spirit" world- wide and 
 ancient is expressed in the worship? How in- 
 finitely loftier rings the truth that "God is in 
 His holy temple," and in our worship to stand 
 in His august presence with none other than the 
 High-priest Jesus Christ mounting guard 
 over the conscience. Calvinists are not con- 
 trolled by needs, rather would we stand under 
 the authority of God's law, graciously placed in 
 our hearts by the son of His love, Jesus Christ, 
 our Lord. No congregation or church is
 
 258 AUTHORITY 
 
 charged with communicating God to man. He 
 is self-revealing through, or in spite of the visible 
 means which we may devise, but surely operates 
 even by the concession of the ritualists in spiritual 
 manner. He is not bound or conditioned in the 
 work of grace, and no respecter of persons. All 
 these familiar truths should shatter forever the 
 assumption of priestly devices, were it not that 
 the Jew is still strong with us. Inward grace 
 may be expressed by outward sign, but the medi- 
 ation of grace is never bound to ritualistic or 
 sacramental practices. The oft-repeated re- 
 mark, that the stern, austere conception of 
 spirituality, which dispenses largely with the 
 aesthetic and emotional as avenues of worship, 
 limits itself "to a certain class, and a certain tem- 
 perament and a certain culture" is wholly false, 
 a historic review of Protestantism is sufficient to 
 reveal the bareness of this assertion. Does a 
 closer examination of this ritualistic, ceremonial 
 procedure in the service of the church not corrob- 
 orate this view? 
 
 Lessing asked: "Besteht iiberhaupt etwas das 
 nicht bedeutet?" and Longfellow said in "The 
 harvest moon": 
 
 "All things are symbols : the eternal shows 
 Of nature have their image in the mind." 
 
 Thus it is that we may speak of "a sympathetic
 
 NEEDS AND UTILITY 259 
 
 fallacy of nature," positing of sentiments, feel- 
 ings and meanings in the world around us. 
 Definite forms of course and the pictorial repre- 
 sentation, the ceremonial acts have a specific af- 
 fective power upon the imagination. We need 
 not decide which it is most with the beholder 
 a reading into, as in "the sympathetic fallacy of 
 nature" or an interpretation of some idea-repre- 
 senting form. This depends largely on the con- 
 creteness of the symbol. In the service of re- 
 ligion, by association as well as by their more 
 definite meaning the symbols, in order to be help- 
 ful to the ends they serve, are more specific and 
 concrete. In the jargon of the modern school, a 
 fixed symbol however, be it in act, or form, or 
 pictorial representation, cannot well be a lasting 
 expression of progressive, expanding, yea! revo- 
 lutionizing thought. And in the nature of the 
 case this attempt at visualizing the unseen does 
 not tend to spirituality. The main issue laid 
 bare in ritual and ceremony is the appeal to the 
 senses, the aesthetic element pressed into service 
 as an avenue for the spiritual life, with an emo- 
 tional response that arouses rather than sustains 
 the Christian responsibility. For this reason 
 though not as yet in pictorial and ceremonial ap- 
 peal, except such as processions, parades, and 
 meetings of a more or less undesigned, and there- 
 fore incidental sort revivalist resort to this more
 
 260 AUTHORITY 
 
 sensual appeal. In Sunday-schools the banner- 
 class and hundred and one devices to render con- 
 crete our Christian allegiance to the Master 
 grows more and more, and leans stronger upon 
 the outward sign in proportion as inward grace 
 is absent. Yet the outward sign far from being 
 a guarantee for the mediation of inward grace 
 renders us dependent on it in our spiritual as- 
 pirations. Our catholic brethren abuse the ar- 
 gument, the appeal to the senses is not excluded 
 in the puritan service, but God is not sensually 
 apprehended, an emotional appeal is not dis- 
 carded, but the spiritual understanding means 
 more, the many devices to render concrete the 
 spiritual and unseen are perfectly legitimate 
 when they only serve in furthering spiritual life 
 and spiritual understanding which they mostly 
 fail to do. Moreover we require the catholic 
 brethren and those of the reformed confession 
 with ritualistic and ceremonial tendencies to face 
 squarely the fact that the plea in favor of sym- 
 bolizing the unseen is made in behalf of a de- 
 ficiency in spiritual understanding. If it is not 
 well to give strong meat unto babes, does it fol- 
 low that those who crave meat should be fed on 
 milk? In short, then, needs should not enter the 
 sanctuary to control the service there, leading the 
 worship away from "the ministry of the Word."
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE SOURCE AND GUARANTEE OF 
 AUTHORITY 
 
 Christianity interpreted as a mere historic fact 
 cannot be reduced to a series of events, the signal 
 success of which had its origin in an unimportant 
 cause. When Harnack in his "Die Ausbreitung 
 des Christentums" seeks to explain the spread of 
 Christianity by arguing that it won the world to 
 itself by absorbing all the foreign elements with 
 which it came in contact, he is consistent with his 
 subjective standpoint. But it may readily be 
 seen that this explanation is made at the cost of 
 Christianity itself. It amounts practically to 
 saying that Christianity's conquest of the world 
 is a mere appearance. Real Christianity never 
 ran a historic course. Harnack thus must be at 
 a loss to understand the hysteric accusation of 
 Christianity of Nietzsche for checking the bru- 
 tality of human instincts. Historic Christianity 
 is merely a mixture of different pagan elements 
 on which the cross of the early Christians was 
 set. How this became possible is difficult to un- 
 derstand on Harnack's supposition. One is re- 
 minded of Nietzsche's bitter sneer: "In Wirk- 
 
 261
 
 262 AUTHORITY 
 
 lichkweit gab es nur ein Christ und der starb am 
 Kreuz"; and on the other hand of Professor 
 Freeman's remark: "You say, Am I still a be- 
 liever? Certainly. That is, I believe the Chris- 
 tion religion to be from God, in a sense beyond 
 that in which all things are from God. One can- 
 not study history without seeing this. As I said 
 in one of my published lectures : 'For Csesar Au- 
 gustus to be led to worship a crucified Jew was a 
 greater miracle than the cleaving of rocks or the 
 raising of the dead.' ' 
 
 Dr. Geerhardus Vos, discussing the causes 
 which have been operative in spreading the opin- 
 ion that Christian faith is in its essence independ- 
 ent of historical facts, says: "The aim of modern 
 historical research is to view developments from 
 the inside, to catch the subjective tone and color 
 of the period, to study it pre-eminently from its 
 human point of view. Applying this to Sacred 
 History and the Scriptures leads almost inevi- 
 tably to a wrong distribution of emphasis. In 
 redemption and revelation naturally not the hu- 
 main, subjective side, not the religious views and 
 sentiments of men, stand in the foreground, but 
 the great objective acts and interpositions of 
 God, the history as it is in itself, not as it re- 
 flected itself in the mind of man. Facts, rather 
 than the spirit of times or the consciousness of 
 periods, should be here the primary object of
 
 GUARANTEE OF AUTHORITY 263 
 
 investigation." Indeed, though we admit the 
 human factor as determining the forms of Chris- 
 tianity in its historic course, it ought to be clear 
 that unless objective reality is recognized as its 
 ground, yea, Christ as its cause and center, Chris- 
 tian theology will be cast adrift on the eddying 
 tides of human opinion. 
 
 Dr. Forsyth argues eloquently for "the Cross 
 as the Final Seat of Authority." (Contempor- 
 ary Review, October, 1899.) 
 
 He elaborates the idea that the cross is what 
 God has done, does, and will do in an eternal act 
 of grace for the sin-stricken world. The source 
 and seat of man's final authority is, therefore, 
 God at the heart of man (common grace), espe- 
 cially where man responds by faith to His gra- 
 cious revelation (special grace). His words are 
 a fitting close to the drift and temper of this 
 discussion. 
 
 "We must have for these days an authority which is 
 in its nature emancipatory and not repressive, empow- 
 ering and not enfeebling. That authority is the Re- 
 deemer's. The object of human faith must be the 
 source of human freedom, individual or social. Society 
 can only be saved by what saves the soul. The evan- 
 gelical contention is that that object of faith is the Re- 
 deemer, directly and alone. It is the straightness of 
 the Cross, that is the condition of critical, speculative, 
 and social freedom for the world.
 
 264 AUTHORITY 
 
 "The real and final seat of authority is Evangelical. 
 It is the cross of Jesus Christ. Neither soul nor society 
 knows anything as a final authority but Him crucified. 
 The sovereign and the cement of society is the Saviour 
 of the soul. That rules man which rules the conscience ; 
 and that rules the conscience which forgives it and re- 
 deems. The conscience is not the ruler, but only the 
 ruler's throne. The center of authority is the world's 
 central moral personality and order. It is the act of 
 redemption. It is not the ideal but the Redeemer of 
 the conscience that is its King. The cross is the seat 
 of moral empire and human unity. There is more una- 
 nimity among the saved about the Cross than there is 
 among the enlightened about truth. The believer has 
 an authority for society that the thinker has not. 
 
 "The absolute is the only final authority, and we touch 
 that by the moral of personal faith alone. Man is a 
 free creature even more than the rational; the lower 
 animals are more rational than free. And it must be 
 in the region of his distinctive freedom that his King 
 resides ; it is there he needs and finds his authority. It 
 exists for free will rather than for free thought. For 
 knowledge and thought there may be order and limit, 
 but there is no authority, which, in the real, absolute, 
 and final sense, exists for man as moral not as intel- 
 lectual. 
 
 "Something is at once the final victory and the present 
 power; some purpose runs through all things as the 
 truth in all and the crown upon all; some will which 
 turns mere matter into purpose, which elects to proceed 
 in the way of selection, and sustains it in the way of
 
 GUARANTEE OF AUTHORITY 265 
 
 communion. We must find the end of living in the 
 living God, the goal of all is the stay of all. And this 
 is a power which we have only in the revelation of the 
 Cross and its foregone conquest. The empirical world 
 is far too vast, complex, and tragical now for any 
 philosophy of history to surmise and the categories of 
 an irresistible ideal imbedded in thought. We must 
 turn for our certainty elsewhere where philosophy fails 
 as a foundation. Our chief knowledge is that whereby 
 we are known. We are cast upon faith, neither as a 
 pis otter, nor as a leap in the dark, upon a faith which 
 finds in the historic work of the super-historic Christ 
 an absolute warrant of the Kingdom of God as the close 
 and crown of all. Glory is but the consummation of 
 grace, and grace arises in the very heart of nature and 
 history though it springs out of neither. The Kingdom 
 of God is to faith the immanent truth of things, their 
 soul and nisus, subtly, slowly supreme on earth, and 
 eternal in the heavens. In Jesus Christ we have the 
 final cause of history, and the incarnation of that King- 
 dom of God, which is the only teleology large enough 
 for the whole world." (London Quarterly, Oct., 1905.)
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Abbott (Lyman): 87. 
 Anselm (St.) : 234. 
 Aquinus (St. Thomas of) : 
 
 85. 
 
 Arnold (Matthew) : 46, 123. 
 Athanasius: 149. 
 Augustine (St.) : 65. 
 
 Bain: 175. 
 
 Baldwin (Mark). 6, 48, 49. 
 
 Balfour: 52, 99. 
 
 Ballard: 212. 
 
 Balzac (Honore de) : 76. 
 
 Bampton (John) : 234. 
 
 Bargy: 163. 
 
 Baur: 135. 
 
 Bavinck: 186, 220. 
 
 Beaulieu (Anatole Leroy) : 
 
 22. 
 
 Bettex: 184. 
 Blackstone (Sir William): 
 
 16. 
 
 Bowen: 135. 
 Bradley: 121. 
 Brooks (Phillips): 13. 
 Briihl (Levy): 193. 
 Bruno: 135. 
 Bryce (James) : 25. 
 Buelow (Prince von): 36. 
 Butler: 115. 
 
 Caird: 126. 
 
 Caldecott: 86. 
 Calvin: 203, 149. 
 Cannegieter: 236. 
 Carol (Lewis) : 44. 
 Chapman: 206. 
 Chesterton: 116. 
 Clifford: 173. 
 Clough: 166. 
 Coe: 188. 
 Condorcet: 3. 
 Comte: 113. 
 Corneille: 167. 
 
 Darwin: 52. 
 Dennert: 53- 
 Desmoulins: 62. 
 Dewey: 194, 224. 
 Dickens: 46. 
 Doumergue: 209. 
 Dounaic: 42. 
 Durkheim: 40. 
 Dyde: 127. 
 
 Ebrard: 191. 
 
 Eliot: 91. 
 
 Eucken: 102, 216, 233. 
 
 Ferri: 6. 
 
 Feuerback: 134, 137. 
 
 Fevre: 23. 
 
 Fichte: 5, 87, 131, 235. 
 
 Flint: 101. 
 
 267
 
 208 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Fogel (Philip): 40. 
 
 Forrest: 240. 
 
 Forsyth: 53, 143, 152, 156, 
 
 167, 208, 263. 
 Fouillee: 61, 67, 81. 
 Freeman: 139, 262. 
 Fries: 129. 
 Fullerton: 227. 
 
 Gans: 127. 
 
 Garner: 108. 
 
 Genesis (1:27): 174. 
 
 Gess: 191. 
 
 Guy an: 55. 
 
 Gibbons: 66, 79, 143. 
 
 Giddings: 10. 
 
 Goethe: 43, 101, 202, 137. 
 
 Gordon (George A.) : 1 
 
 Greene, Jr. (W. Brenton) : 
 
 235. 
 
 Greer (Bishop): 79. 
 Gregory (Pope) : 34. 
 
 Haeckel: 102. 
 Halevy: 101. 
 Hall (Francis J.): 115, 117, 
 
 216. 
 
 Hall (Stanley): 189. 
 Hamilton (Sir William)}: 
 
 115. 
 
 Harcourt (Duke of):l. 
 Harnack: 202, 261. 
 Hartmann (Eduard von) : 
 
 198. 
 
 Heath (Bawden) : 222. 
 Hebrews; (xi:3): 119, 
 
 (xi:i): 204. 
 
 Hegel: 122, 124, 125, 128, 
 
 130, 132. 
 Helmholz: 175. 
 Hill (David Jaynes) : 19. 
 Hoffding: 56, 195, 198, 199. 
 Holland: 73, 229. 
 Hooker,: 245. 
 Hugo (Victor): 76. 
 
 Jacobus: 207, 
 
 James (William): 2, 3, 11, 
 44, 90, 148, 171, 173, 
 175, 176, 177, 179, 188, 
 214, 215, 217, 218, 221, 
 224. 
 
 Jevons: 229. 
 
 John (xviii:38): 240. 
 
 Kalthoff: 137. 
 
 Kant: 121, 124, 199, 225, 
 
 226. 
 
 Kassowitz : 53. 
 Kephart: 79. 
 King: 252, 257- 
 Kapper: 102. 
 Krabbe: 109. 
 Krause: 129. 
 Kuyper (Abraham) : 34, 
 
 69, 70. 
 
 Lacy: 110. 
 
 Ladd: 39, 58, 84, 137, 138. 
 
 La Fontaine: 191. 
 
 Laval eye: 108. 
 
 Le Bon: 189. 
 
 Lessing: 258. 
 
 Liddon: 209.
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 269 
 
 Lilley: 247. 
 Lincoln: 131. 
 Loisy: 65, 202, 243. 
 Longfellow: 258. 
 Lowell: 64. 
 Luther: 137. 
 Lyman: 180, 182. 
 
 MacArthur (R. Stuart) : 79. 
 McCall Mission: 190. 
 McPheeters: 163. 
 Maurice: 51, 69, 109, 122, 
 
 183. 
 
 Mansel: 121. 
 Martensen: 191, 197. 
 Menzel: 129. 
 Marheineke: 129. 
 Martineau: 88. 
 Marx (Karl): 135. 
 Matthew: 169. 
 Maupassant (Guy de) : 46. 
 MiU (John Stuart) : 94, 110. 
 Mirabeau: 89. 
 Moberly: 117. 
 Monod (Leopold) : 237. 
 Montague: 110. 
 Montesquieu: 108. 
 Miiller (Max): 91. 
 
 Newman (John Henry) : 95. 
 Nietzsche: 110, 201. 
 
 Olmstead (C. Tyler): 239. 
 Ormond (A. T.): 83. 
 
 Palmer: 71, 199. 
 Parkhurst: 79. 
 
 Pascal: 49. 
 
 Patton (Francis Landey) : 
 
 211. 
 
 Poulin: 209. 
 Paulsen: 60, 102. 
 Pauly: 53. 
 Perry: 145, 182. 
 Pollock (Sir Frederick) : 
 
 72. 
 
 Pope: 135. 
 Powell: 192. 
 Proverbs (iv:23): 236. 
 
 Rashdall (Hastings): 43. 
 Raymond (B. P.): 79. 
 Remensnyder: 79. 
 Renan: 65. 
 Reville: 115. 
 
 Reymond (Du Bois) : 173. 
 Ritschie: 110, 192. 
 Ritschl: 96. 
 Rittelmeyer: 98. 
 Romanes: 201. 
 Romans (i:20): 119. 
 Rousseau: 110, 111. 
 Royce (Josiah) : 43, 99, 134, 
 
 232. 
 Riickert: 68. 
 
 Sabatier: 113, 118. 
 Sainte Beuve: 141. 
 Schmiedel: 138. 
 Schopenhauer: 93, 125. 
 Scherer: 188. 
 Schiller: 111, 182. 
 Schiirer: 72, 110.
 
 270 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Seth (Andrew): 101, 120. 
 Simon (Saint) : 3. 
 Smith (Monroe): 153. 
 Smyth (Newman) : 79. 
 Spencer (Herbert) : 9, 52. 
 Stanton: 93. 
 Starbuck: 188. 
 Sterrett: 108, 128, 178. 
 Strauss: 135. 
 Suderman: 41. 
 Swete: 97. 
 
 Tennyson: 87. 
 Thomasius: 191. 
 Trendelenburg : 127- 
 Tuft (James H.) : 2. 
 Turner (Sir James) : 63. 
 Tyrrell: 249, 253. 
 
 Vincent (G. E.) : 11. 
 Virchow: 102. 
 Visscher: 8, 217. 
 Vries (Hugo de) : 52. 
 Voltaire: 135. 
 Vos (Geerhardus) : 262. 
 
 Wesley (John): 80. 
 
 Westminster Confession : 
 118. 
 
 Wildenbruch (von): 31. 
 
 William the Great, Em- 
 peror of Germany: 32, 35. 
 
 Wundt: 102. 
 
 Ziegler: 102. 
 
 Zueblin (Charles): 17.
 
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