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THE FINAL FAITH
THE FINAL FAITH
A STATEMENT OF
THE NATURE AND AUTHORITY OF CHRISTIANITY
AS THE RELIGION OF THE WORLD
W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE
M.A.(Edin.), D.D.(Yale and HbiN.), LL.D. (Princeton)
PRESIDENT OF HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
AUTHOR OF "JOHN MACKENZIE: SOUTH AFRICAN MISSIONARY AND STATESMAN
"the ethics OF gambling" etc.
mew Botft
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
TO
THE BELOVED MEMORY
OF THE
Eev. WILLIAM HOWARD CAMPBELL, M.A., B.D.
OF SOUTH INDIA
WHO, AS EVANGELIST AND TEACHER, PHILOSOPHER AND NATURALIST
LINGUIST AND AUTHOR
FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS GAVE HIS GREAT AND
VARIED POWERS WITHOUT RESERVE TO THE EXTENSION OF
THE FINAL FAITH
AND HIMSELF ENTERED INTO ITS HEAVENLY FULFILMENT
ON
February 18th, 1910
210617
PREFACE
THE following chapters have been written under the
conviction that the Christian Religion has come
to one of the great crises in its history. The recent
World Missionary Conference, held at Edinburgh, has
borne ample testimony that this conviction is wide-
spread among the missionaries and other leading
servants of the Gospel.
No need of the hour is greater than that many attempts
should be made to define or describe the Christian Faith
as it confronts the great world with its claims and pro-
mises, its sense of universal authority, its assertion that
in and through its own nature as a historical Fact and
its own message as a Divine Fact, the will of God is
deahng with the destiny of mankind. For the sake of
the missionaries abroad and the ministry in Christian
lands, for the sake of all who are called upon to support
and promote in any way the work of converting the
world to this one Faith, these attempts are of essential
importance. We must be sure that our task is not the
offspring of bHnd prejudice or Western pride. We
cannot go on with it intelUgently and earnestly unless
we are in our own souls assured, not that Christianity
is a better reUgion than any other, but that it is the
absolute religion, the one final way in which God
— vii —
PREFACE
Himself is concerned with the saving and perfecting of
mankind.
This book is intended to be a contribution to that
work, one of the many attempts which the present
author beheves that theologians and preachers must and
will make to expound Christianity afresh to this genera-
tion as the true rehgion of the world. It is sent out
in the hope that it may be used as a Handbook by many
of those who are, in growing numbers, fired with mis-
sionary enthusiasm, for strengthening their own faith
and for lighting the same fire in other hearts.
It may be added, for the sake of some readers, that
the successive Christian doctrines discussed in these
papers have been selected solely because of their close
relation to the central theme and object of the book.
The exposition of these topics does not follow a uniform
plan. In each case it is concerned with those aspects
of the subject which it seemed important to emphasise
in the presence of the " modern mind," and in view
of the special aim of the whole work.
The influence of Christianity on the social evolution
of man, while briefly referred to in the following pages,
has been more fully illustrated in an earlier volume
entitled " Christianity and the Progress of Man."
W. Douglas Mackenzie.
Ivy Lodge,
GuUane, Scotland,
July 26th, 1910.
viii —
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAQK
Preface ........ vii
CHAPTER I
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
Introductory ...,...!
I. The Rise op Missionary Religions
1. Religion ....... 4
2. The Rise of Missionary Religions . . .5
3. The Three Missionary Religions .... 8
II. The Oldest Missionary Religion: Buddhism
1. The Founder of Buddhism and his Doctrine . . 10
2. The Secret of its Missionary Power . . .14
III. The Youngest Missionary Religion : Mohammedanism
1. Its Pounder ...... 16
2. Its Fundamental Doctrines . . . .17
3. The Weakness of Mohammedanism . . .19
CHAPTER II
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
I. What is Meant by an Absolute or Final Religion . 22
1. Absolute ...... 23
2. Final ....... 24
II. The General Mode op its Foundation
1. The Three Stages . . . . .26
2. Human Need and Divine Grace . . .28
— ix —
TABLE OF CONTENTS
III. The First Stage: Prophetic Revelation
1. Monotheism
2. The Messianic Hope
IV. The Second Stage: Jesus Christ
1. His Relationship with God
2. His Revelation of the Father
3. The Messiahship .
4. His Expectation of Death
5. The Cross and the Resurrection
PAGE
30
30
34
36
38
39
40
42
43
V. The Third Stage: The Christian Consciousness and
THE World ......
45
CHAPTER III
THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
Introductory ......
I. Compared with Agnosticism
1. The Truth in Agnosticism
2. The Revelation in Nature
3. The Revelation in Christ
4. Revelation in the Christian Consciousness
II. Compared with Pantheism
1. Pantheism .....
2. Christ's Conception of the Father
3. God revealed in a Person
4. Christian Experience ....
III. The Enrichment of Monotheism
1. The Mohammedan View of God
2. The Worship of Christ ....
3. The Spirit of God ....
4. The Monotheism of the Apostles
5. The Modem Situation ....
6. The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Light of Reason
(1) God as Rational Being
(2) God as Eternal Father
50
51
52
53
54
55
57
59
61
62
63
65
66
67
71
74
76
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
PAGE
NTRODUCTORY ....... 79
I. The Origin and Basis for the Doctrine of the
Incarnation
1. Non-Christian Incarnations . . , .81
2. Two Tests .....
82
(1) The Witness of disciples .
83
(2) The Consciousness of the Founder
85
(a) Christ's Harmony with God .
86
(&) His Kingship
86
(c) His Power to reveal God
87
(d) Christ and the Effect of His Death
88
(e) Christ as Judge
89
(/) Son of God and Son of Man .
89
II. The Place of the Incarnation in Apostolic Life and
Doctrine
1. Jesus as Christ and Lord . . . .91
2. The Eternal Basis of Lordship
93
(1) Son of God
. 93
(2) Epistle to the Hebrews
. 94
(3) PauUne Teaching .
. 95
(4) Johannine Teaching
. 96
3. The Birth of Jesus
. 98
4. Incarnation and Salvation
. 100
5. The Love of God
. 102
6. Incarnation and the Finality of the Gospel
. 103
II. Explanations of the Person of Christ
. 103
1. Temporary Incarnation .
. 104
2. Incomplete Incarnation .
. 104
3. Subtraction from each Nature
. 105
4. One Person, two Natures
.
. 105
The Modem Situation
.
. 106
CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
Introductory ......
I. *' Something Wrong " with the Race
1. Proved even by Enemies of Rehgion
2. Due to Man's Spiritual Nature .
— xi —
108
109
110
TABLE OF CONTENTS
II. Evil SuFFERma and Sin .
1. Evil in Nature ....
2. Evil in Human Experience
III. The Doctrine op Sin in the Old Testament
1. Derived from Monotheism
2. The Late Prophets
3. Legalism ....
IV. The Teaching op Jesus
1. The Need of a Higher Standard .
2. The Depth of Righteousness and of Sin .
3. Man as Lost
4. The Need of Salvation
V. The Apostolic Teaching
1. The Doctrine of John
2. The Doctrine of Paul
(1) Sin and Law
(2) Sin and Flesh
(3) Sin and Grace
VI. The Modern Situation
1. Sources of Attack on the Bible Doctrine
2. So-Called Evolutionary Explanation of Sin
3. Sin and Man's Place in Nature .
(1) Invasion of Nature
(2) The Cost of Freedom
(3) Sin and the Gospel
CHAPTER VI
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
Introductory ....
I. The Substance of Salvation
1. Forgiveness of Sins
(1) In the Gospels
(2) In the Apostolic Message .
(3) The Meaning of Forgiveness
(4) Removal of Penalty
2. DeUverance from the Power of Sin
3. The Immortal Life
(1) Eternal Life
(2) Moral Power of the Christian Hope
— xii —
TABLE OF CONTENTS
II. The Divine Acts of Salvation .
1. The Atonement ....
(1) The Gospels and the Death of Christ
(2) The Apostles and the Cross
(3) The Modem Dislike of this Doctrine
(4) The Cost of Righteousness in a Worid of Sin
(5) The Cost of Love for a Worid of Sin
2. The Resurrection ....
3. The Gift of the Holy Spirit
PAGE
152
154
164
156
157
158
160
164
165
CHAPTER VII
THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
Introductory ....
I. The Teaching of Jestts about Faith
1. Trust in Himself
2. Trust in God
3. Ignoring other Methods .
4. His Victory and their Faith
II. The Teaching of Paul about Faith
1. The Revelation of Christ to Him
2. His Discovery of Faith .
3. His Battle for the New Truth .
(1) His First Defence : Experience
(2) His Second Defence : Abraham
(3) His Third Defence : The Nature of Grace
III. The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews
1. The Perplexity of Hebrew Christians
2. The Definition of Faith .
3. The Abiding Substance of the Old Testament
4. The Supreme Faith
IV. General Considerations .
1. The Psychology of Faith
2. The Place of Faith in General Experience
3. Faith in the ReHgious History of Man .
4. Faith and Creeds
6. Faith and Mysticism
6. The Principle of Faith as Universal
— xiii —
168
169
169
170
171
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
180
180
182
182
183
184
184
186
189
191
193
194
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII
THE VITAL MEANING OF THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE
Introductory . .
PAGE
. 196
I. The Church of Christ ....
. 198
1. The Outward Form ....
. 198
(1) The essential functions
. 201
(2) The seat of continuity
. 201
2. The Church in the World
. 203
(1) The New Race ....
. 203
(2) The Priesthood of the Church
. 203
3. The Church and Social Institutions
. 207
(1) The Source of its Ethical Influence
. 208
(2) Conditions of Membership as Ethical Forces
. 209
(a) Equality of BeUevers
. 209
(6) The Appeal to Intelligence
. 210
(c) Mutual Love, and Respect for Man .
. 212
II. The Bible ......
. 214
1. The Original Relations of Church and Bible
. 217
2. The unique Authority of the Bible
. 219
3. The Witness of the Spirit
. 220
CHAPTER IX
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
Introductory . .
. 222
I. The Propagation of Life ....
. 223
II. Loyalty to Cttrtst ....
. 225
1. The Purpose of Christ ....
. 225
2. The Cross .....
. 226
3. His Great Command ....
. 227
III. The Nature of Christian Experience .
. 229
1. The Gospel a Social Fact
. 229
2, The Inner Meaning of Mercy
. 230
XIV —
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IV. The World and its Need
PAGB
. 232
1. The Meaning of Humanity
. 232
(1) One Race ....
. 233
(2) The Revealed Destiny
. 234
(a) Christ's Love of Man .
. 235
(6) The Value of a Soul .
. 236
2. The Dreadful Need of Humanity
. 237
3. The Doom of Impenitence
. 239
Pinal Words
1. Pity and Indebtedness . . . .
. 241
2. The Ultimate Reality . . . .
. 241
— XV —
"If Nature is practically trustworthy, and fit to be scientifically
reasoned about, the Omnipotent Spirit immanent in it must be
perfectly good and design the goodness of all. This is final
faith." — Professor A. Campbell Feasee, D.C.L.
— XVI
THE FINAL FAITH
CHAPTER I
THE THEEE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
/CHRISTIANITY occupies in the twentieth century a
^^ relation to the whole world strikingly similar to
that which it occupied, during the first three centuries of
its history, towards the Roman Empire. In none of the
leading nations is the Christian faith forced upon the
formal or outward acceptance of their citizens by the
authority of the State. In one of them at least, namely,
France, there is something like a return to the hostile
and persecuting attitude of ancient Rome. The Church
faces the world to-day with a fresh and solemn con-
sciousness not only of its divine mission, but also of its
dependence for success upon the sole authority of the
truth by which it Uves, and upon the power of that Spirit
of God through which Christ rules the hearts of men.
Even its use of the Bible, which it beheves to be the
Word of God and the vessel of truth, has been made by
modern methods of study to resemble the use made by
THE FINAL FAITH
the early Church of the witness of the Apostles, when as
yet the New Testament had not been gathered into a
canon.
On the other hand, the progress of missionary work
during the nineteenth century, combined with the
scholarly investigation of the rehgions of the world, has
opened the eyes of devout Christians to facts which were
not known a hundred years ago, but were more familiar
in the first century. The early Christians Hved in the
midst of heathenism. They were surrounded not only
by its monstrous evils, but by evidences of the power of
a true religious spirit even when working amid degraded
behefs and practices. They knew many non-Christians
who were not corrupt in life, some who cherished virtue
and were " feehng after God if haply they might find
Him" (Acts xvii. 26-28; Rom. ii. 6-16). They recognised
in certain forms of religious thought the outworking of
that long-hidden light of the world which had appeared
fully and gloriously in the Person of Jesus Christ (John
i. 9, 10). We have come back to something Hke this
standpoint. We recognise in the universal fact of
religion a witness to man's essential nature as a spiritual
being. We recognise in the nobler movements of his
spirit a proof that he has not been deserted of God, but
that everywhere and always the Divine Spirit has been
concerned with the production in his moral and religious
experience of whatsoever things are true and honourable,
just and good, lovely and of good report.
Nevertheless the Church of Christ, while fair to the
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
truth in all religions, cannot be true to its origin and its
nature, to that very faith which holds it living to-day,
without the conviction that in the message of Christ's
gospel and there alone is the secret of salvation dis-
closed to all mankind. Christianity has from the very
first claimed to be the supreme power of God for the
saving of souls and the perfecting of human nature.
When, therefore, the earnest Christian behever studies the
missionary situation of to-day, he is brought in the sure
course of thought to ask himself why the Spirit of Christ
demands of him the surrender of hfe and means to the
cause of missions, and the obedience of all nations.
Behind all these fascinating biographies of mission-
aries, behind the story of the great missionary societies
and of their triumph in many lands and of their
ill-success in others, there must be some field of study
which will account for it all. The missionary student
therefore desires something more systematic in his under-
standing of Christianity as truth. He wishes to know the
real grounds for the claim of this faith that it must
exercise supreme moral and spiritual authority over all
minds and all consciences throughout the world, and to
the very end of time. It is only when these deep, inner
reasons for the absolute and universal nature of the
Christian religion have been deeply and inwardly
grasped that missionary fervour will break out into a
great flame of generous, intelligent, yet passionate and
sacrificial service.
It is in pursuit of this result that the following studies
— 3 —
THE FINAL FAITH
of Christian truth have been prepared. But we must
remember our day and the air we breathe. Therefore
we must begin our study by connecting the Christian
reUgion with the fact of rehgion in general, as a universal
human instinct ; and especially we must take account of
those religions which have, like Christianity, made some
claim to finahty, and have for that reason sought to win
the world to themselves.
I. The Rise of Missionary Religions
1. Religion. — Modern research has made it clear that
reUgion is as real a product of human nature as language.
It is as natural to worship as to speak. This has been
abundantly proved by such facts as these : that rehgious
phenomena are universal in the history of man, that they
accompany every kind and grade of social organisation,
that they have been always closely connected with and
have been ever regarded as sustaining those forms of
conduct which were essential to the structure of society,
that they always express in some more or less systematic
way the highest explanation which has been reached
of the meaning of human Hfe and the destiny of men.
Even the poorest rehgion of the poorest savages represents
their thought about the supreme powers which control
the fortunes of their tribe and the kind of tribal conduct
which those powers punish or reward. Rehgion is
therefore the inevitable result of that intelligence with
which man is endowed, and which he brings to bear not
_- 4 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
only upon the momentary exigencies, but the general
meaning and final outcome of our life. Its origin is as
far back as all the fundamental acts of the human con-
sciousness, its course is intertwined with the whole varied
history of man, and its final form must somehow be bound
up with that consummation towards which the will of
God is directing the successive generations.
2. The Rise of Missionary Religions. — It is a remark-
able fact that while every race and tribe has possessed
rehgious beliefs and engaged in religious practices, only
three religions have appeared which engaged in deliberate,
organised, and persistent missionary labour. Some races
have held, indeed, certain ideas in common and developed
similar forms of worship ; but this has been due either
to a common inheritance or to the force of imitation,
and not to the missionary spirit. Some religions, again,
like Brahmanism in its earliest descent upon South India,
like Judaism in the times of Christ, and Mithraism at a
later date, have felt a temporary wave of this enthusiasm;
but in such cases it has been only partial in its concep-
tion and has been speedily steriHsed by mightier move-
ments. In fact, it has ever been recognised, except in
these three cases, that each people should have its own
gods (or god) who presided over its fortunes and identi-
fied themselves with its life. Every reader of the Old
Testament is famihar with the fact that in early times in
Israel the mass of the people regarded Jehovah as their
God in exactly the same sense as Chemosh was God of
Moab. On the other hand, certain great objects, such as
— 5 —
THE FINAL FAITH
the sun and the moon, and natural processes such as the
seasons and the principle of reproduction, have been
worshipped by many races, being connected with deities
who resided in or presided over and directed them.
But the worship of these great powers, while widely ex-
tended in East and West, did not destroy the worship
of national or clan deities. Manifestly there could be no
place for missionary work under such conditions. In
one way a heathen cult might be spread. For, when
deities were looked upon as national, their glory was
regarded as bound up with the growth and prosperity of
their favoured people. Hence armies were roused to a
white-heat of devotion by the idea that their gods were
spectators of the strife, and that more than human honour
was at stake in their triumph or their defeat ; and
conquered races bowed before the gods of their con-
querors, thus swelling the numbers of their worshippers.
In this manner, no doubt, a reHgion may be said to have
been extended.
But the true missionary religion is of another type
altogether. It is propagated from one race to another,
becomes really international, in a manner entirely new.
Such a religion can only be spread because its believers
find in it a supreme good not only for their own but for
all peoples, and feel in their hearts an inward compulsion,
an irresistible necessity to go forth as its heralds to all
the world. They are not working for the glory of their
nation, any more than they are working for their own
personal advancement or enrichment in earthly things.
— 6 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
A missionary religion is one which is fitted to become the
supreme end, the absorbing enthusiasm of strong and
vigorous natures, who surrender their lives to its claims,
and who are convinced that no better thing can happen to
all men than that they should all make the same surrender
and experience the same glorious and absolute obliga-
tions. It carries with it, therefore, a new view of man, in
which racial and national distinctions give way to some-
thing wider and deeper. It reveals some doctrine of
man which compels him who really beheves it to regard
every human being with a new interest. It teaches him
to see the highest as well as the lowest of our race in the
light of a great and commanding hope, stretching beyond
mere temporal achievements. It plants in his breast the
fire of that hope for himself, and also a strange new fire
more sacred than any which priests have lit and conserved
on .any altar : the burning desire and the set will to kindle
it in other men smjwhere, everywhere.
In the language of our day, it must be said that the
rise of the missionary impulse marks one of the greatest
stages in the evolution of humanity. It means that the
spirit of man has been released from some more of the
bonds which held it captive to the merely individual,
local, temporal, brutal instincts and endeavours. The
long journey towards the kingdom of the divine Ufe has
entered upon a new phase. The reality and glory of the
universal spirit of man has come into view, and its life has
become the one supreme good, its fulfilment in all souls
the one fascinating pursuit of elect souls. God's great
THE FINAL FAITH
work of creating a kingdom of pure intelligences has
begun to appear before the eyes of these pioneers of
humanity, the seers and leaders of the race ; and they
have entered upon the sublime task which without their
vision and their will cannot be fulfilled.
3. The three Missionary Religions. — Sometimes men
write as if the universalism of a reUgion, the quality which
makes it a missionary reUgion, were accidental, dependent
perhaps upon some words of its founder or some phase of
thought among his followers. For example, search has
been made in the gospels for words or acts of our Lord
which affirm this quality of His gospel. Likewise some
have tried to account for the wide influence of Buddhism,
its claim to be a world religion, from the sympathy, the
generous spirit of the great man who first promoted its
principles. But such a view of the matter is, at least,
inadequate. A reUgion becomes a missionary religion, it
attracts believers of various races, it drives its preachers
forth to various climes, because it contains certain
doctrines, it deals with certain facts, it aims at certain
results in which all men are believed to be deeply con-
cerned. It is a mournful fact that only three religions
have arisen in the whole history of man which have
reached this high view-point, and which possess, there-
fore, such qualities as to quicken in their adherents
this missionary impulse. These three are Buddhism,
Mohammedanism, and Christianity. In the world
to-day they alone are deliberately competing for the
faith of mankind. Before the advance at least of the
— 8 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
last two, numerous religions have been swept away.
None has proved strong enough to offer a real and
prolonged opposition. Hence it is generally recognised
that the supreme struggle Hes between these three.
Each is seeking to whet its weapons against the other,
each is planning for a vast campaign, wisely assimilating
truth from its opponent, but determined also to identify
and expose whatever of falsehood it teaches, whatever
of evil Ufe it engenders.
The spread of western civilisation, which has been
so deeply moulded by Christianity, is carrying with it one
weapon, which is proving itself most powerful, namely,
western science. The scientific methods of investigating
outward nature and human history which have grown
up in Christian lands, and which are in a larger measure
than many reahse the product of the Christian spirit,
are rapidly dissolving the power of the mightiest non-
Christian reUgions. Apart even from the preaching of
the gospel, the mind of the heathen world is being
awakened by this process which God has been preparing
for long centuries in Europe and America. It has
begun to throw off the shackles which bound it to dark
superstitions, it has begun to grow out of the juvenile
stage when it caught glorious glimpses of half-truths and
treated them with the unpractical enthusiasm of youth,
as the final meanings of Hfe. That mind is being hurried
with almost breathless speed to make the awful choice
between the Christian faith and a world from which all
gods have vanished, from which all prospects have been
— 9 —
THE FINAL FAITH
shut out except the night of a hopeless death. Christi-
anity, as " the power of God unto salvation," as the
historical embodiment of God's redemption of mankind
and His final self-revelation, is thus destined to stand
before long as the one only religion offered to the heart
and to the intelligence of mankind.
II. The Oldest Missionary Religion : Buddhism
Before we proceed to the study of Christianity as the
absolute work of God's grace, and therefore as the
supreme missionary rehgion, it is right to inquire what
elements in those other two religions, namely, Buddhism
g-nd Mohammedanism, have given them even for a time
the appearance of being absolute or missionary reUgions.
What have the founders and heralds of these religions
thought that they could do for mankind which was
worthy of such ardent devotion ? And first we must
take account of Buddhism.
I. The Founder of Buddhism and his Doctrine. —
This religion arose in Northern India in the sixth century
before Christ, from the experience and teaching of
Gautama, a prince who at the age of twenty-nine gave
up home and family, wealth and power, that he might
discover the secret of the blessed Hfe, and spread among
his fellow-men the good news which he had discovered.
To-day his religion, although it has vanished in its
distinctive form from India, yet holds sway over vast
multitudes in China, Japan, Ceylon, and Siam. Gautama
— 10 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
was wearied of the formalities and corruptions of Brah-
manism, the prevaihng religion. He lost faith in its
gods, its ceremonies, its priests, and its practical moral
influence. There was just one of its fundamental
teachings which he did not get rid of, namely, its doctrine
of reincarnation. He continued to believe and to teach
that the self of every man has existed in countless earUer
forms, and is destined to pass on into yet other conditions
of Hfe. The new form which selves assume at each death,
or at each passing into a new state of existence, is deter-
mined by the kind of life which they have lived in the
preceding one. Through noble life a nobler life may be
reached, while degraded selves inherit in the new state
degraded conditions. Men thus find themselves in a
monstrous " wheel " of existence from which there is no
ascertainable escape. In an endless succession of lives
they have been pajang the penalty of blunders and
crimes committed in some forgotten age of the past,
and they are now preparing themselves for they know
not what better or worse incarnation when their brief
and bewildered life here shall end. With this as the
background of thought, Buddha, the Enlightened One,
as he came to be called, worked out his own spiritual
experience, and from that drew his message of salvation.
(1) The first fact before him was this, that human and
indeed universal experience was full of suffering. All
animals are creatures of pain, even as we. (2) But if
this eternal source of sorrow, this endless chain of
successive births and deaths, with wondering and woe
— II —
THE FINAL FAITH
between, is the supreme fact, it means that existence
itself is the supreme evil. If we know of no path by
which we can break through to eternal joy, then the
only deUverance that seems rational is that each man
should seek to destroy his own existence. That will be
Nirvana, the supreme Rest indeed. (3) Vulgar suicide
cannot do this. That only hastens a man into the
next incarnation by a criminal act. We must learn to
strike at and destroy the very root of existence itself.
Buddha found that mysterious and baleful root to be
the desire for existence, the " will to live." If that
desire can be killed, the restless life which springs from
it will end. (4) The desire for existence works through
or expresses itself in all the particular appetites and
passions of our nature. If these could only be attacked
and slain in detail, the root from which they spring
would perish.
This view of life's problem and its solution was no
mere speculative process. It was worked out in the
soul of Buddha step by step and at a great price. He
tried one way after another which famous teachers
pointed out, until the secret was disclosed through their
failure to help him and his gradual approach to the only
conclusion which seemed possible. He practised as he
thought. He disciplined himseK by separation from all
the interests and responsibilities of that high station
in life into which he had been born. When he found
in his own soul the passions quelled, the very love of
life dead, a wonderful light seemed to shine upon his
— 12 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
soul. He became " Enlightened," at peace, waiting
with meditative calm for that final release when death
should come and he who loved not Ufe should lose its
burden. To be sure of that was to be at rest. And he
practised ere he taught. But, when he had learned this
way of salvation, he could not resist the impulse to call
others to enter upon it. He found and trained a band
of disciples, whom he required to separate themselves
as he had done from the world of human affairs, and to
pursue the path which he had opened up. The societies
of monks and nuns which he formed were pledged to a
life of self-denial, of chastity, of profound and habitual
meditation. They were taught and became teachers
of his four noble truths, including the " eightfold path "
of deliverance. The ideal state which he thus set
before his followers was recognised as possible in this
life only for a few. But the masses of men who were
not strong enough to enter upon its full demands must
be called and trained into sympathy with it. They must
learn to practise, as far as was compatible with the
maintenance of the ordinary relations of Hfe, self-restraint
in all appetites, pity for all living things, the pursuit
of truth, humility, love, and purity. They would thus
do something to ameliorate their next state of existence
and make it easier there to obtain the full enlightenment.
According to the traditions preserved by his followers,
Buddha had no teaching about God. He had lost faith
ahke in the doctrine of Brahma and in all the innumer-
able gods and goddesses of his fellow-countrymen.
— 13 —
THE FINAL FAITH
But in the strange revenge of time, rather through the
invincible appetite of the human consciousness for the
divine, his followers came to regard him as one who was
a man indeed, but who embodied and represented the
universal ideal, which is also eternal and omnipotent.
His high personal quahties became for them a kind of
incarnation of the absolute goodness. This faith in him,
always vague and mystical, was yet something higher
than the minds of men had reached in these Orient lands.
Along with his definite instruction and rules of life this
conception of his person preserved the feehng of relation-
ship with him from one generation to another, and he
became the Fountain of Light, the Lord of Life for
multitudes of our fellow-men.
2. The Secret of its Missionary Power. — Buddhism
seems for a long time to have lost its power to elevate
and purify human society. In India its main teachings
were long ago absorbed by Hinduism, and it ceased to
exist as a distinct cult. In Ceylon, China, and Japan it
is widespread but inert, formal, corrupt. Of course, its
devotees are many of them roused to fresh zeal and
higher aims by the challenge of Christian missions and
the influence of Christian truth. But Buddhism has no
power, as Christianity has, of self -recovery. Christianity
has had its dark ages, its lamentably degraded phases of
history. And yet in the Bible, that constant witness to
the original facts, and in Christ's gift of the Holy Spirit,
it possesses the secret of many a re-birth and the assurance
that its divine mission shall without fail be accomplished.
— 14 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
It is important that we should identify and ponder
those fundamental beliefs of this ancient rehgion which
made it a missionary rehgion and gave it power to
console and inspire and in many cases even to ennoble
and purify the sons of men. They may be briefly re-
capitulated as follows : (a) In Buddliism we have
presented a view of mankind as a whole in its natural
state. It is a dismal view, but it is true. All men are
heirs of sorrow, are doomed to suffer and to die. But
in this religion we have (6) an attempt, which is founded
upon a false theory of the cause of suffering, to discover
the way of salvation. In practice this " way " was
found to be of only partial appHcation. But at least it
was open to " whosoever will." In addition, Buddhism
had two other quaHties which turned these dogmas
into weapons of spiritual warfare, and quickened the
missionary passion in many hearts, (c) The secret of
salvation was found to lie in the realm of moral character.
Buddhism was the first purely ethical rehgion, although
profoundly mistaken in its fundamental view of man's
moral nature. In the region of purpose, of motive, the
real centre of man's being was found to he, and he was
commanded if he would reach the supreme good to be
himself thoroughly good. Formahty and ceremony were
discovered to be of subordinate value, significant only
in so far as they nourished the habits and temper of the
soul in its pursuit of sincerity, kindness, and justice.
(d) This whole view of the human situation arose from a
great soul who was full of pity, of generous impulse, of
— 15 —
THE FINAL FAITH
humble and self-sacrificing love towards the vast world
which seethed in woe around him. His disciples could
only see his meaning as they came to share his spirit.
Thus he taught them to become openers of the way of
peace to their fellow-men. They were missionaries
because one who was full of pity taught them to have
compassion for all burdened hearts and darkened lives,
and to give to others the secret of deliverance which
they had learned.
III. The Youngest Missionary Religion :
Mohammedanism
1. Its Founder. — The founder of this great religion,
Mohammed, was born about a.d. 570 at Mecca in South
Arabia. He began life amid a strange ferment of political
and religious conditions, which pervaded the whole of
that region with disorder and unrest. The ancient
paganism, with its idols and star worship, had fallen into
disrepute. ReUgious enthusiasts were numerous, whose
fervours, asceticism, and wilfulness at once increased
disorder and indicated the birth time of a new order.
Such persons were supposed to be inspired by one of the
Jinn, spirit-beings whom the Arabs believed to be in
close touch with human Hfe. Among the various move-
ments there arose a class known as " converts," who
beheved in the existence and unity of God, in human
responsibihty and in the judgment to come. Mohammed
belonged to this class, and in his earlier manhood was
— \6 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
sincere, mystical, self-sacrificing, earnest. He became an
ardent propagator of the new doctrine, and was soon
marked out as its leader in Mecca. Feuds arose partly
from clan jealousies, but were fostered into new intensity
by his hatred of idolatry and insistence on a purer form
of worship. He was driven to flight and took refuge in
the neighbouring city of Medina, a.d. 622. This became
the first year of the Mohammedan era. With a band of
followers numbering already over a hundred families
he preached even more aggressively than before. He
pubUshed from time to time revelations which he avowed
that he had received by inspiration of God through the
angel Gabriel ; and he claimed from his disciples absolute
obedience to all the laws and practices which he thus
made known by Divine Authority. Judaism had for
long been strongly represented in that region, and
Mohammed was famiHar, though not at first hand, with
the traditional accounts of the Hebrew patriarchs ; Jie
knew a little about the rest of the Old Testament history,
and something also of the Jewish code of morals. Chris-
tianity had also reached that part of the world towards
the end of the sixth century, but evidently in a form
which failed to represent its full strength and truth.
But Mohammed knew enough of Jesus to count Him
the greatest of the prophets that had gone before
him.
2. Its Fundamental Doctrines. — The religion which
Mohammed founded may be said to have five funda-
mental doctrines. Each of these has contributed to
2 — 17 —
THE FINAL FAITH
the missionary character of the religion and the zeal
of those who even to-day in thousands are extending
its borders in Africa and the East. (1) It teaches that
Allah (God) is one, and Mohammed is his prophet. Thus
polytheism and idolatry are swept away at one stroke.
(2) The whole world is seen in its complete and uncon-
ditioned dependence upon the creative will and the
complete, minute, and constant control of the living
and personal God. (3) Notwithstanding its insistence
that the will of God ordains every event that comes to
pass, it violently escapes pessimism by insisting with
equal emphasis upon the responsibiUty of man. (4) There
is one law of God for all men which has been at last and
finally made known by Mohammed. All men are re-
sponsible for their obedience to that divine will, and in
a future life will receive the just penalty or reward for
their doings in this life. The fundamental law is that
they should submit absolutely to Him and His prophet.
This submission must be daily expressed and confirmed
in the constant recital of the creed and in the profound
and humble act of prayer which is required at fixed
hours five times a day. (5) All the messages of God
through Mohammed and all the requirements which He
makes upon man are recorded in the Koran, the book
in which the scattered pronouncements of the prophet
were gathered a few years after his death. Every true
believer is commanded to be master of that book of
revelation.
It is not difficult to see that there is much important
— i8 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
and vital truth in this powerful and widespread rehgion.
Its teachings in many respects resemble, and indeed
were derived from, the Jewish religion. Nor is it hard
to realise that when it comes to a race of idolaters, when
it wins their assent, it must immediately give them
nobler conceptions of human nature, more inspiring
views of duty and destiny than any which they possessed
before. Not only so, but they find themselves roused to
missionary enthusiasm in its behalf. Mohammed himself
required with the utmost vehemence that his followers
should be preachers of the Word. Great rewards were
promised to those who should be zealous in spreading
the truth, and the greatest of all to those who should
die in battle on behalf of their faith, and for its propa-
gation among unbehevers. Of himself he said : " My
sole work is preaching from God and His message." He
had at one time true insight into the true missionary
spirit and method. " Summon them," he said, " to the
way of thy Lord with wisdom and with kindly warning ;
dispute with them in the kindest manner." " If they
accept Islam, they are guided aright ; but if they turn
away, then thy duty is only preaching, and God's eye
is on His servants." Many such magnificent passages
occur in the Koran, and they seem to rest on the con-
sciences of multitudes of Mohammedans who are not
engaged in formal missionary work.
3. The Weakness of Mohammedanism. — Three main
defects in this reHgion may be named here in closing,
to indicate at once the hmits of its power and the
— 19 —
THE PINAL FAITH
manner in which' the Christian gospel surpasses and
completes the measure of truth which it undoubtedly does
possess. In the first place, the character of Mohammed
himself broke down, and he dared to claim for his very-
aberrations the sanction of the will of God. He did
this as to his practice of polygamy, and he did it again
as to the use of the sword in the spread of the faith.
From those two roots have sprung and flourished the
evils which most obviously characterise the Mohammedan
world. Where it spreads it tends to make a desert, and
where it dwells in cities it fails to raise a lofty morality.
It strangely combines a democratic spirit — in some
respects more democratic than any Christian nation —
with submission to an autocratic form of government.
The mixed character of its great prophet makes its
social ideals mixed. In the second place, its appeal to
the sword both sprang from and preserves a superficial
view of man's relations to God in repentance and faith.
And lastly, it really leaves mankind where the Jewish
law left him, condemned and unsaved. Even Mohammed
waited in hope that his sins might be forgiven. He
was no Saviour, and his reHgion offers none. The
expectation of bhss which his followers are encouraged
to cherish is infinitely different in its basis and its
nature from that peace of God, that grace of God,
that assurance of pardon, that sense of inner and
actual reconcihation and fellowship with God Avhich
is the first and supreme boon of the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
— 20 —
THE THREE MISSIONARY RELIGIONS
What we of the Christian faith have a right to expect
is that, as the character, claims, and power of Mohammed
are studied in comparison with those of Christ, it will
become clear that even Mohammed needed for himself
what Christ alone has been able to bestow.
21 —
CHAPTER II
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
TTTE have seen how two missionary rehgions, Buddh-
* ' ism and Mohammedanism, arose ; and we have
briefly described those characteristic features which have
given them their great power over large portions of the
human race and for many centuries. We must now
turn to our main task, to discover what are those elements
in the Christian faith which convince us that it is
destined to become the one universal religion of the
human race. As we have already seen, we cannot give
the reason for the universal quahty of a reHgion, nor
explain its missionary power, without describing its
nature or characteristic doctrines. Hence we must,
in order to appreciate the power of Christianity or
estimate its prospect of conquering its rivals and becom-
ing the only positive rehgion in the world, inquire into
its fundamental nature.
I. What is Meant by an Absolute or Final
Religion
It is well at the start to clear up one matter
which proves itself a difficulty for some inquirers.
— 22 —
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
Christianity aims at becoming the universal reUgion,
because it is the absolute and final religion. Some
shrink from the use of these words because they seem
to claim too much, which is arrogance ; or at any rate
to shut down the prospect of any further advance
of the race, which is despair.
1. Absolute. — About the former word " absolute " it
is asked how we can apply it to a fact or a complex
system of facts which have appeared in time. How
can facts or experiences, or truths, or beUefs which are
obviously relative, because related in time and even in
space to other facts and truths and beHefs, be correctly
described as absolute ? Are we not told that the
Absolute is that which stands outside of all relations ?
It would be, of course, impossible to enter here upon a
technical discussion of the metaphysical problems in-
volved in these questions. But an adequate practical
answer may be found in the two following considera-
tions : First, the gospel is said to be absolute because
therein God Himself is revealed in direct action upon
the human soul. The day of subordinate mediators
is done with. Here in Christ, here in the experience
of personal reconcihation with God, it is the Eternal
and Absolute God HimseK who has entered into direct
relations with mankind and with the individual man.
Second, the gospel addresses itself to that in man which
in a very real sense partakes of the absolute ; namely, his
conscience. It ignores racial distinctions as such. It
has no immediate message to mere intellectual curiosity,
— 23 —
THE FINAL FAITH
and no exclusive message for intellectual superiority. It
penetrates to the central fact in man as a moral being,
his sense of responsibility. It confronts him with duty
which is infinite, it wrings from him the confession of a
sin which he cannot measure or palliate without deepen-
ing it. It reveals to him a mercy which he must and
can call only infinite and wholly of God, if it is to become
his own. In this direct dealing of the supreme and
holy will of God with the supreme element in man's
moral nature we have the secret of the absoluteness of
Christianity.
2. Final, — Then, as to the word " Finahty," we are
asked whether this does not involve the doctrine that
revelation is closed, that man can make no further pro-
gress, that the generations to come can learn nothing
more of God than is already known. Do we not know
more of God and His ways than Paul did ? Did even
John with his piercing insight make of none effect all
the searchings of the saints that have followed him ?
And what of the generations to come ? Are they to re-
ceive no new light from God except what the ApostoHc
minds received ? The answer to these questions is not
very difficult, and connects itself with the previous
paragraph. First, Christianity is the final religion be-
cause no higher boon can be conferred on man than that
communion with God, in peace and love and service,
which it alone of all facts in history has been able to
bestow, in a form capable of universal dissemination.
Second, Christianity is the final religion, because all
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
further progress in our knowledge of God and His ways
must be based upon and conditioned by the saving
power of Jesus Christ. Whatever else God may do for
the race, He will not abolish the supreme significance
of our Lord. Evolution must henceforth flow from
Christ as a fountain-head, not past Him as an incident
in time. He is inwardly, permanently related to the
whole course of history, to the conscience and the
destiny of every man, to the character and growth of
all nations. There is much concerning God's method
of dealing with the race which only the course of time
since Christ has disclosed, and which the Apostles could
not possibly foresee. There are truths concerning the
relation of God to nature also, which were unknown to
them and have become famihar to later generations.
There may be some impHcations of their own words con-
cerning God and Christ, the Church and the Sacraments,
faith and salvation, which were not at all present to the
minds of the Apostles, and which only the relentless logic
of other centuries has drawn out and may yet bring to
light. But none of these things in any way diminishes
the claim that Christianity is the final rehgion, and
therefore destined to deHver its message to the whole
race of man. Its finahty Hes in this, that henceforth
only through Christ and His Spirit does God act
upon the conscience of man, and the history of
the race must be for ever conditioned by the universal
and permanent power of His gospel. The influence
of the Christ, indwelHng in human history, is an
— 25 —
THE FINAL FAITH
essential constituent of the entire future life of
humanity.
II. The General Mode of its Foundation
1. The Three Stages. — We referred to the historical
circumstances amid which the other two missionary-
religions arose, and we must do the same with Chris-
tianity. As it lives and works in the world, and has done
for nineteen centuries, it is the result of three stages in
the action of God upon the field of human nature. First,
we have the preparative revelation in and through Israel
and her prophets. Second, we have the coming and the
manifestation of Jesus Christ, the central, creative Fact.
Third, we have the typical consciousness of communion
with God which was created in the apostolic circle by
the Person and Work of Christ, thus making the
Christian religion an actual experience and giving
it a permanent place in human history. These
three stages are described in the books of the Bible,
which have thus naturally and irresistibly become
the indispensable means of preserving for the Church
and the world a true knowledge of the very nature of
the gospel, of the actual way in which God has worked
and will ever work upon the soul of man in all its rela-
tions, for salvation in all its kinds. It is obvious that
Buddhism, as its founder taught it, having an agnostic
or even atheistic method of dealing with human distress,
falls infinitely short of the sublime Christian doctrine
— 26 —
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
that God, the Eternal and Conscious Will, which sustains
and directs the course of nature and of man, has in a
definite way revealed His character and His redemptive
purpose towards man. And even that form of Buddhism
which transformed its founder into an eternal Being,
long after his death and without any basis for this in
his own consciousness and work, has only as it were
hypostatised (or treated as eternally real) that human
ideal which rose to view in his teaching and his character.
It is obvious that Mohammedanism, on the other hand,
does not get, even in its sacred book, the Koran, beyond
the first of the three stages of the Christian revelation.
Mohammed is a prophet, the authoritative announcer of
the divine law, the exhorter of all men to repent and obey
that law.
But in Christianity, as constituted through the three
stages, we find that the living God has entered, let it be
triumphantly said, into new relations with the Hfe of
man. He has, as it were, invaded human history, from
within or from above, as you hke to put it. The pheno-
mena cannot be explained by saying merely that here
the human striving for God has reached a higher measure
of success than in these other reHgions. That is only a
part, and if anything is here less than anything else,
this human endeavour is the lower side of the history.
It would be nothing if it were all. The vital and sur-
passingly glorious fact is, that throughout this prolonged
story of successive forms of religious experience God
always appears to the individuals, who are at once its
— 27 —
THE FINAL FAITH
vessels and vehicles, as a conscious will, a personal Being
who has invaded the field of human consciousness, and
is dealing with communities and individuals on the open
plains of history.
2. Human Need and Divine Grace. — Moreover, it is
of the utmost importance to recognise the fact that in
the long process which culminated in the Christian
reUgion, men have learned on the one hand the fulness
and reaUty of the Divine character and will, and on the
other hand the depth and extent of the human need.
The two processes are correlative ; the one form of
knowledge has grown with the other. The human need
of God has been variously understood by the religions
of the world. To the primitive worshipper it may be
summed up in the word " protection." Aware of the
innumerable foes which threaten happiness and human
life, men looked at these and measured them in external
terms. Long Hfe and prosperity, security from foes
who threatened them, victory in war and physical
content in times of peace, these were the blessings
expected from the gods, the region of the Divine. The
brooding Oriental mind penetrated to a deeper need in
the great discovery that ultimate reality is to be found
in the realm of the spirit. All that appears to and
is apprehended through the senses is ephemeral. It
is in the inner region of the soul's life alone that the
permanent is to be found. Hence the passionate
hunger of the Hindu mystic for union with that One
ultimate Being on which all things rest, or that inner
— 28 —
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
Principle or Being of which the visible universe is but
the changing and uncertain and even deceptive shadow.
The reabsorption by Hinduism of the Buddhist's deeper
insight into man's need of moral renovation prevented
the East from reaching the deepest view of all. That
came in the prophetic education of Israel. There it
gradually grew clear at least to the noblest souls, that
man's inmost and final need is a personal and moral
harmony with the character and will of the living God.
This discovery does not deny the earlier stages. It
carries them with it into the highest realms of the truth.
For the living God is the providential will which directs
and controls the events of the world, and is also the under-
lying reality of which all else is the expression, the one
undying and changeless fact amid all the flux of the
ages. And man does need the protection of that will,
does need to reach the sense of union with that ultimate
and all-pervasive reahty. But at last it has become
clear that man needs first of all to be dealt with in
respect of his moral relations to that Reality which is a
conscious and holy will, by that very Being Himself
who is the living and eternal God. That is what
prophetism in Israel taught, that is what God did for
man in Christ, that is what the Apostolic consciousness
realised in the first full rush of the accompHshed fact
upon human experience.
We must now briefly describe the three stages
by which this rehgious view became established
among men and took shape as the absolute and
— 29 —
THE FINAL FAITH
final and universal rule of man's relationship with
God.
III. The First Stage : Prophetic Revelation
In the first place, we have the revelation in the religion
of Israel. — It is difficult to summarise this in a few
paragraphs, because modern scholarship has made us
so sensitive to the various influences which acted upon
Hebrew life and thought, and even upon the rehgious
practices of the people, from first to last. Also, we
now recognise the divergent standpoints of the various
periods of Hebrew history, and of the great teachers
whom God sent each with his own flash of reveahng
truth. We are still further aware that a great deal
of most important work was done upon the religious
conceptions and hopes of the Jews which is not described
in the books of the Old Testament. Jesus undoubtedly
grew up among a people whose religious spirit and
theological outlook were influenced by many beliefs
and national experiences which receive little direct
illustration in the received canon of Jewish Scriptures.
In spite of these acknowledged and great difficulties,
we may select the following set of facts as of vital im-
portance for the purposes of this study.
1. Monotheism. — The course of religious life and
thought which began with Moses became gradually
defined as Monotheism, or the beUef in one living God,
the Creator of the visible and invisible universe, the
— 30 —
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
Supreme Lord of all nations, to whom all men are
responsible. Although this idea is nowhere formally
defined, or systematically expounded, or philosophically
defended, there is no doubt that from the days of
Jeremiah it was the prevaihng conception of God in
Israel. Nowhere else in the pre-Christian world was
Monotheism fully and actually achieved. Among the
Hebrews this knowledge of God grew through a long
process of national instruction and discipHne. And yet
it did not merely grow as if, sown deep in the original
soil of that Semitic nation, there were ideas which could
produce this and only this splendid fruitage. It was
produced, all Hebrews and all Christians have beHeved,
and our Lord HimseK taught, — it was produced by
the specific action of God upon the life of that people.
In Moses and in all the great prophets of subsequent
centuries there was a consciousness of inward and
personal contact with Jehovah. This experience was so
deep and real, so illuminating and authoritative, that
it gave them the right to say to the people, " Thus saith
Jehovah," when they delivered their message. And
this vivid experience of the indwelling spirit of Jehovah
was, again, so truly not of man but of God Himself,
that it became through long centuries, in far separated
generations, even through most diverse conditions of
national Ufe and character, a continuous process of
revelation. It is a long unfolding of the loftiest ideas
ever formed in the mind of man, which has at its very
heart, as the invisible spring of each new moment of in-
— 31 —
THE FINAL FAITH
sight, of each new and vigorous mental achievement, the
invincible sense of personal contact with God Himself,
and of God's living action upon the heart of the prophet.
There are two facts about God belonging to the deep
centre of this stream of revelation which must be here
briefly set down.
In the first place, Jehovah, the Lord of all, is
known as ineffable and supreme in His holiness and
righteousness. He is not removed from the material
universe, for He sustains and controls all its mighty
and glorious powers. It is no deceptive shadow cast
upon His glory. It is the robe of beauty which He
wears. It is a majestic array of powers, every one of
which is but a quick sensitive servant of His will. Nor
is He cut off from human Hfe. The children of men
are no less His creatures than the sun and the moon
in their splendour. Nay, they too are His servants,
wherever they live and whatever false or unreal gods
in their pathetic ignorance or bestial sin they may
worship. But in His holiness and righteousness Jehovah
recognises one fact which is utterly hostile to His nature.
His character and His will, — that is human sin. Here
prophetism speaks a most terrible message. Nothing
further can it say until the bitter fact is fully and
humbly recognised by men, that in one only spot has
God no place, that is in the heart of the evil-doer. For
God is holy and righteous, and His attitude towards the
unholy and unrighteous will is and must be one of
inexorable and complete hostiUty.
— 32 —
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
In the second place, there was found stirring in the
earhest prophetic message a note which grew richer and
fuller as the centuries flowed on. For if God is the
living source and ruler of all, His eye cannot be fixed
only on the past and the present. He is a God in
whom men may find something more than a mere task-
master for each day. All the future is the region of
His thought and action, as well as the ages that have
vanished (at least for the children of time) and the
present which stretches wide fields before Him. For
the first time there arose a religion for which the future
is an actual source of joy, the limitless, ever unfolding,
never exhausted country of hope. God is a being of
purpose. His will foreplans and His heart foresees.
The years of our life flow to us like a river from beneath
His throne,
Now, if this fact in God were abruptly united
with the fact of His holy and righteous character,
of His fierce and burning reaction against moral evil
seated in the human will, a despair would settle on
man's mind more terrible than that which gave birth to
the passive pessimism of the Hindu. For it is harder to
face a holy will that dehberately and rightly condemns
you, than a blind universal fate that merely grinds
you. To the latter you present the sullen humilia-
tion of an indignant soul that feels itseK superior
to its crushing foe. To the former you must bow
in a humiliation whose agony is infinite, since both
shame and defeat, both the sense of guilt and the
3 — 33 —
THE FINAL FAITH
despair of deliverance play upon one another with
terrific and unescapable power in the depth of the soul.
Israel was saved from this supreme misery, though
often dragged close to it, by the steady, age-long, pro-
phetic assurance that Jehovah had pledged Himself,
had bound Himself in an everlasting covenant, never to
forsake His people. The greatest discovery ever made up
to that time by the human mind came as a double revela-
tion, through prophet after prophet, that a nation's sin
was its mightiest foe, but that God Himself, against whom
the sin was directed, would prove mightier still, in a pure
and cleansing mercy. Thus arose the vision and worship
of One whose very rectitude was the fountain of His pity,
whose mercy as well as His righteousness endureth for
ever.
2. The Messianic Hope. — But if God is the God of the
future, and if His faithfulness and His grace have one
root in His eternal will, then for Israel a great light
shines upon the future. This light is known as the
Messianic Hope. It took many forms and was expressed
in many images, according to the changing national
conditions and problems. Now, it was a prophet greater
even than Moses, who should usher in a clearer and
loftier revelation of Jehovah. Again, it was a king who
should carry the people to an imperial glory in which
all classes would find their utmost blessing, and all
nations be brought under one beneficent sway (Ps. Ixxii.).
Yet again, it was the age of a new covenant when the
relations of God and man would be thoroughly revised,
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THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
when sin would be forgiven, and iniquity finally removed
from human hearts (Jer. xxxi. 31). As the sense of
sin deepened, and especially as the dreary experience
of the exile both widened the horizon of experience
and revealed hitherto unexplored deeps in the moral
relations between Israel and Jehovah, this hope shone
even through the medium of tragedy. Suffering and
sorrow were transmuted from mere instruments of
Divine wrath into the terrible means of a transcendent
redemption (Isa. liii . ) . The sublime figure of the suffering
servant of Jehovah arose before the prophetic vision,
henceforth haunting the heart of the people with its
baffling and yet fascinating suggestions.
At last the fulfiller of prophecy, the supreme Prophet
and King, Priest and Victim, redeemer through His
sorrow and revealer through His redemption, gathered
into one wondrous Person, and realised in one aU-
inclusive work, these and other elements of that unique
hope which God had given to Israel. No Hebrew or
Jew, no prophet or apocalyptic seer, comprehended in
his dreams and words more than a portion of the vast
truth which is Christ, or of the immeasurable work
which He has done for man. No interpreter or scribe
ever arose who could see in their final unity and inner
harmony all the scattered rays of light which fell from
the future through God's messengers upon the eager
forward gaze of those who awaited the consolation of
Israel. As we look back through Christ upon those
words of encouragement and vistas of hope which the
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THE FINAL FAITH
prophets opened up, we discover the final proof that
they were indeed messengers of God, adapted each
to the need of the hour, holding the faith of the
people firm until the Dehverer came, and preparing
their hearts to know Him.
IV. The Second Stage : Jesus Christ
At last there came out from Nazareth a Man on whose
one Person the history of our race has turned like a great
door between time and eternity upon its hinge. He
came quietly, as all God's greatest blessings have come,
— Hke the secret rise of order out of chaos, hke the break-
ing of each new day from the silent cavern of night, Hke
the stir of happy spring from the fruitless winter-tide.
Even his identification by the great forerunner, John the
Baptist, took place only before a Httle group of prepared
souls. Yet there was in Him a mighty energy. No weak
speaker of smooth and sweet thoughts was He. Senti-
mental and luscious phrases never fell from His Hps.
No doubtful and shifting programme was unfolded
before His mind as He came forth to found the kingdom
of heaven upon earth, to change the inner moral rela-
tions of God and man. There was something over-
whelming in the force of His speech, in the radiating
energy of His spirit. The strong men who became the
inner circle of His followers were brought to a humble
obedience and a yearning faith towards the majesty
of His will and the divine Hght of His wisdom. The
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
gentle dawn was produced by the immeasurable might
of the sun.
But Jesus did not appear as men had generally
expected the Christ to come. He did not descend
from the heavens with awful portents and with physical
signs of a catastrophe in history. Nor did He essay
to grasp the means of earthly power, and establish at
once a Jewish Empire to which all the nations, even
Rome, should bring their tribute. It was through
perplexity and disappointment, even through dismay,
and, for a brief time, through collapse of faith, that
Christ led His disciples into the new era. Nor, again,
did He give them formal instruction about His Person,
and then leave them to attain the new experience of
God's grace as a subsequent event. Nor, yet again, did
He give them first a new experience of God's Fatherly
grace, so wonderful and glorious that in sweet gratitude
they turned round and invented for His meek and in-
appropriate Person the garments of Divinity and the
mythology of an incarnation. The great transformation
of the relations of God and man was wrought much
more simply and naturally and deeply than in any of
these ways, and the New Testament so describes it that
the humblest minds are much more likely to understand
than to misunderstand its essence. The real method of
Jesus may be best put in this way. The new religious
experience, the consciousness of new relations with
God, grew up in the disciples step by step with their
gradually deepening appreciation of the Person of their
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THE FINAL FAITH
Lord. It is as false to say that He first taught them
the full truth about His divinity, and at a later date
they entered into the new experience, as it is false to
say that He led them into the new experience and at a
later date they called Him Divine. The inner experi-
ence of the grace of God the Father, and the worship of
Christ as the Son of God in human form, were from the
first hour of discipleship mutually related. The seed of
both was sown when the disciples called Him Master,
and each nurtured the other until, after the blackness
of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection, they
found themselves in possession of their own new sonship
and caught into the rapturous worship of the Father
and the Son in the Holy Spirit.
1. His Belationship with God. — The first element in
the situation was the quahty of His own relationship
with God, which Jesus manifested in all the varied
expressions of His personal life. Here was one who
not so much aspired after God as possessed Him.
Without penitence, without any signs of past sin or
broken faith or unattained ideals, He Hved in the full
and serene consciousness of perfect oneness with the will
of God and reahsation of His indwelHng Presence. His
very use of the word " Father " as the supreme human
description of God revealed an ideal of faith and devotion
pure and purifying, noble and ennobhng, which no man
can ever feel that he has even adequately grasped, far
less attained. But there was an accent in His use of
that word in relation to Himself — " My Father," " the
_ 38 -
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
Son and the Father " — ^which showed the ideal in all its
grandeur and beauty to be fulfilled in His own heart.
The disciples saw Him among them, yet not of them.
They felt all the power of His sympathy, but it shone
through a sense of His unique distinction. For they
could only reach that wondrous new Hfe with God which
He opened out to them, through a repentance and a
faith which He seemed to be not only commanding but
making possible. Yet, as for Him, that life was already
His by native right.
2. His Revelation of the Father. — The second element
was His revelation of God to them. He came as a
prophet greater than Moses. The Sermon on the Mount
and all the parables of the kingdom fall from Him as
one who ushers in a new era in the ethical Ufe of man-
kind. He does this not as a philosopher founding a
new school of speculation about the nature of goodness
and the method of defining the virtues. Nor, although
His language and the occasions of it are sometimes of
temporal and Jewish significance, does he teach as
legislator for one people and one age, setting forth the
solution of merely local problems in social and poUtical
conduct. He does it as one who is at home among
the very fountainheads of all human action and all
motive, and whose principles of conduct toward God
and man are therefore of supreme authority over the
conscience of every one who shall ever be born as a child
of our race. His work as a teacher or prophet endowed
with the Holy Spirit (Luke v.) was above all concerned
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THE FINAL FAITH
with God. But a curious and indeed most wonderful
difference appears at this point between His method
and that of the ancient prophets. His revelation of
God was found not merely, indeed not so much, in explicit
words about God, as in His own manner of life, and in
the kind of things which He tried to do among and for
the sons of men. His own personaHty contained and
conveyed that supreme truth. When He was con-
demned by His enemies for showing friendship to pub-
licans and sinners. He answered not as a social worker
might, by an appeal to humanitarian principles, but
in parables (Luke xv.) which may be summed up in
the words, " I am acting like God. In my conduct
behold His holy love." He revealed God by actually
representing God, the will and character, the purpose
and the Spirit of the Father shining in His own Person,
the Son of God and Son of Man.
3. The Messiahship. — This will appear more clearly
when we recall the third element in the situation, namely,
His assumption of the work and acceptance of the title
of the Messiah. When Simon Peter made the great
confession " Thou art the Christ," it is safe to say
that Jesus had not hitherto appUed that name to Him-
self. But His entire ministry had made it inevitable
that His disciples should so designate Him. The notes
of the Messiah had one by one come out in His words
and works. His miracles of mercy, His dealing with
sinners as one who had authority not merely to call men
to repent, but to bestow the pardon of God even in
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THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
individual cases (Mark iii.), His authoritative attitude
towards all men, and His insistence upon an absolute
obedience and an absolute trust from His disciples,
proved that in Him the kingdom of God was not merely
heralded, as by a prophet, but established as by the
King Himself, King of kings and Lord of lords. He
made the kingdom actual in His kingship over His
disciples. Them He took away from all other obUga-
tions and under His own complete control. They felt
it, and did not yet understand it. In their minds there
must have been a strange blurring of accepted modes of
thought, through which alone they could pass to the
new and astounding light. They felt themselves con-
fusing Jesus and God. From Jesus they received
pardon, rest, courage, and hope, but there is no sign
in the Gospels that they recognised themselves as
having peace with God. They could not go away from
Jesus and find the Father apart, alone, in some other
source and mode of enhghtenment than Jesus Himself.
The joy and contentment of their souls was in the
presence and power of the Person and Spirit of Jesus.
Hence when He was taken from them they fell back
into despair. Their souls had not yet found God or
God's peace, even after Hving so long with Jesus.
Nothing is clearer as a result of the modern study of
the gospels than this strange condition in which the
Apostles found themselves, morally and religiously,
as the result of the kingship of Jesus over them up to
and beyond the Crucifixion.
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THE FINAL FAITH
4. His Expectation of Death. — There was a fourth
element in the situation. While Jesus awoke in the
disciples the conviction, partly by His sheer moral and
spiritual power over them and partly by His very
words, that the kingdom of God was now founded there,
in His relationship to them, He yet taught them to look
forward. Something more had still to be done ere the
matter could be said to be accompHshed. Gradually it
appeared that the Messiah intended to die. This in-
credible event, which was enough to shatter their faith
and sweep hope from their hearts, Jesus with great energy
and firmness taught them to expect. To the last they
hoped against hope, but it was clear that He was deter-
mined upon such an event. Yet he would relax none of
His claims upon their faith. As one doomed to death,
He still maintained His lordship and demanded their
trust. For what seemed to them disaster was to Him
triumphant achievement. They must still obey Him,
trust Him, follow Him as if He were deathless. They
must still belong to Him as their Messiah-King. It is
true that few sayings of His are preserved which inter-
pret His coming death. But we are told that Jesus
repeatedly unfolded to them that event as one to which
He looked forward. And such unfolding could only
mean that it was part, nay, the crowning act of His
Messianic work to die for His own. He came " to give
His life a ransom for many " (Mark x. 45), and to estab-
lish even through the shedding of His blood a new
relationship between God and man (Mark xiv. 22-25).
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THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
That was what, of course, no man could understand
beforehand. Such an upheaval of the human way of
looking at death could not be represented to reason before
it had created its own new world of experience. Even
with prophetic words like those about the suffering
servant of Jehovah before them, it was morally im-
possible for these men to see how the death of the Messiah
could be an act of Divine redemption. But the will and
words of Jesus steadily held their minds to the fact
that for Him that death was not the close of hfe, but
its beginning ; not the destruction of His Messiahship,
but its consummation.
5. The Cross and the Resurrection. — The fifth element
in the situation must be as briefly described as the others,
though it contains two transcendent events, the death
itself and the resurrection of Jesus. Each of these in-
terprets the other, and the two together revealed at last
to the disciples the full glory of the Person with whom
they had been so confusedly, and earnestly, and bHssfuUy
consorting for more than two years. The resurrection,
with its succession of self-reveahng acts in which Jesus
appeared to His disciples, showed them that the power
and might of God had burst asunder the fearful bands
of death. He Uves ! was the cry of their souls. He is
the Conqueror of the grave. He reigns of right over
a vaster world than they had ever dreamed of. Their
future He holds now as completely under control as
He had sought to hold their persons and their wills
during the earthly ministry. He then had healed their
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THE FINAL FAITH
diseases, delivered them from the storm, rebuked their
sins, demanded their service, evoked by the spell of a
power which shone beyond all His deeds and words
their complete submission to His authority. For these
brief earthly months they had gladly yielded all and
received all this. But now, as the conqueror of death,
as the Lord of the life to come, what limits can be put
to His power or His authority ? The world to come is
already His home and seat of power. He is now set forth
before their eyes as the very Son of God. And no doubt
with awe and hushed breath they confessed that, apart
from His Cross and grave, they could never have known
Him to be this Messiah, this Lord of man's redemption
and man's destiny. Unless He had died they could
not have known Him as the Eternal Life. Further,
the resurrection throws back light upon the Cross.
The disciples are not only taught this by the Risen
Christ (Luke xxiv.), but by the mere fact that He is
the Risen Christ. And as in the days of His earthly
ministry so now, the fact is larger than all the words
that can be spoken about it even by Himself. But this
much at least stands clear : it is proved that He had a
right to say of His life, " No man taketh it from Me, I lay
it down of Myself." The Cross was no base and undesired
fate, the via dolorosa wa,s no unavoidable path along which
only alien forces scourged Him. Amid all the active clash
of wills which nailed Him to the bitter tree. His own was
not a merely passive will. The symbol of the dumb
lamb fails us at that point. The disciples recalled, for
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THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
they have reported, the set face with which He went up
to Jerusalem, the amazing energy and majesty of His
mien as He walked before them ; the dark battle of the
spirit into which at times He was swept, when His voice
broke and His face showed the intensity of the inner
conflict ; the royal authority which clothed Him as He
met His foes in the great conflict of those portentous days ;
the royal grace of His last evening with the disciples ; the
agony in the garden ; the unjdelding will through the
very last scenes. Looking back from the light of the
resurrection, they saw now that through all those weeks
and months He had been giving Himself. Such a gift
from such a being could only have one meaning, and that
the atonement for the sin of the world. The Cross is
illumined by the resurrection sheen. Its very blackness
is its glory. He who endured it despised the shame
for the joy that lay beyond. Into that joy His disciples
had now entered.
V. The Third Stage : The Christian Conscious-
ness AND THE World
When the Spirit of God had entered into the hearts
of the disciples, they knew that the kingdom had now
been actually established. But the very word, kingdom,
seemed inadequate, and hence occurs with comparative
rarity outside of the gospels. In their minds it was
associated with all those mistaken hopes of their people,
out of which they had only been brought at great cost
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THE FINAL FAITH
to their Master and to themselves. What they now
had was salvation, eternal life, the assured and reaHsed
grace and love of God, the indwelUng of Christ, of God,
of the Holy Spirit in their very hearts. We can easily see
from the Acts of the Apostles how surprised and con-
fused they were at the first, and that only by degrees
did they come to see clearly in the new world which they
inhabited. This might receive abundant illustration.
But we must be content with that which concerns the
main subject of our study. The Book of the Acts, in
the simplest and frankest manner, describes for us a
series of astonishing experiences through which the
disciples came to see that their own new relations with
God in Christ constituted the universal religion of
mankind.
Even the words which they have recorded that the
Risen Christ had spoken to them, commanding them to
preach the gospel to all men, were not at once clear to
them. Like so many of His sayings, this last and
glorious one had to break through many prejudices
which still encrusted their minds and hearts ere they
could intelHgently and joyously obey it. It would seem
that some of them never thoroughly entered into its
spirit. At first they made the temple the centre of
their public worship, though they also had other
gatherings of their own. It was not one of the
original band, but Stephen who first proclaimed boldly
that the temple must vanish and Mosaic law lose
its authority. It was only when he had sealed his
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
witness with his death, and the full force of Jewish
hatred smote upon the company of behevers, scattering
them from Jerusalem, that the gospel began to be pro-
claimed outside that city and beyond the Hmits of the
Jewish race. Luke tells us of the successive stages
of enlightenment. Philip the Evangelist ventured to
preach Christ to the Samaritans. The result was such
that Peter and John were formally sent by the Apostles
who had not left Jerusalem to oversee this unexpected
extension of the movement. What they saw com-
pelled their sympathy and co-operation. Philip, an
intrepid and eager missionary, had his famous encounter
with the man of Ethiopia and baptized him. The next
surprise came to Peter himself in connection with his
visit to Cornelius, the Roman officer. He actually
went beyond all strict Jewish rules, for he not only
baptized this man and his friends, but became their
guest. The authorities at Jerusalem were alarmed, but
when he told them the whole story, " they held their
peace, and glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles
also hath God granted repentance unto life." The
universahty of the gospel was beginning to shine before
their astonished eyes. But the scales were not all
removed yet, and their vision of the glory of God's
grace in Christ was still dimmed by fear and prejudice.
At last the whole matter was raised in a decisive
manner by the experiences of the Church at Antioch.
At first the word was preached even there " only to
Jews " (Acts xi. 9), but it was not long before the
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THE FINAL FAITH
message was delivered to men of Greek extraction
(ver. 20). Then Saul of Tarsus appeared on the scene,
and the wider mission of the Church was definitely
begun. The cautious and even timid leaders at Jeru-
salem were perplexed indeed, but it is greatly to their
credit that always when the facts were put before them,
when it was proved that the grace of God, that new
and wonderful force in human history, had done for
Gentiles what it had done for Jews, they acquiesced.
It was not for them to fight against the very Spirit of
their Risen Lord. They might try to make conditions
which would render this unwonted intimacy of com-
munion between Jews and Gentiles less difficult, but
they refused firmly to oppose any obstacle to the full
reception of non-Jewish Christians into the fellowship
of the Church of Christ (Acts xv.).
The man who most powerfully led the Christians
into the new world of freedom was the Apostle Paul.
Others, no doubt, saw the matter for themselves with
the same clearness, as the Johannine writings and the
Epistle to the Hebrews abundantly prove. But Paul
had gifts of leadership, energies of speech and action,
which made him the most effective personal force in
revealing to the Church and the world the absoluteness,
the finality of the gospel, and therefore its claim to the
obedience of every human being. In his work most
fully and broadly, and yet also in the work of all the
acknowledged Apostles of Christ, the Christian rehgion
made itself manifest as the great missionary religion.
THE RISE OF THE FINAL RELIGION
Henceforth it could not be true to itseK unless it claimed
the right and authority to become the one rehgion of
mankind.
It is our duty now to examine more closely into the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity, that we may
see what that is which renders it for all behevers the
absolute and final religion, and which therefore commits
them all in principle to the spirit and aim and work of
the missionaries of Christ.
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CHAPTER III
THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
/CHRISTIANITY fundamentally consists in a reve-
^^ lation of God. This revelation, far from being
merely the achievement of eager human souls who have
discovered Him passive and remote and impersonal,
was made on the plains of human history in words and
deeds and persons by the direct and specific action of God.
The absoluteness lies here, in the real action of God giving
Himself to be known by men in His will and purpose.
This He has done through the Incarnation in the Person
of Jesus Christ, and through the gift of His very self in
the Holy Spirit to each believing soul. The finahty of
Christianity lies here, in that God so made known is able
to do the utmost that man needs for the fulfilment of his
true nature, the attainment of eternal life, the possession
of the supreme good. It is with such affirmations that
this missionary religion arose at first, and confronts the
world to-day. If we are reminded that the Christian
conception of God is questioned by multitudes in so-
called Christian lands, it is sufficient here to reply that
nevertheless this very conception, for its intellectual value
in explaining the course of nature and the experience of
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
man, for its moral beauty and power, still holds the field
in solitary grandeur. There is no important consensus of
opinion upon any other explanation of our world. The
eternal God is still manifesting Himself to the sons of
men in redeemed characters, in saintly lives, in the living
consciousness of countless Christian men and women.
For the purposes of this study we may compare the
doctrine of God which the missionary must carry over
the world, with the ideas which obtain among non-
Christian races to-day. And here we may well pass
over the position of those whose worship is what we
call primitive. Some missionaries and other observers
maintain that even among the rudest African tribes the
idea of a Supreme Being, who is Creator and Lord of all,
survives in the midst of more degraded conceptions.
However this be, the missionary has generally found
that once he has gained the right words, and ascertained
their point of view, it is not hard to get these people to
understand and to accept the truth about the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must compare
the Christian position with that of higher races and
religions.
I. Compared with Agnosticism
In the first place, the doctrine of God is confronted
by Agnosticism. Buddhism has taught multitudes to
deny that we can know Him who is infinite and eternal.
And their position has seemingly been reinforced by
certain movements of Western philosophy which try to
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THE FINAL FAITH
gain a rational ground-work for the teaching that we
not only do not, but by the very structure of our minds
cannot, know God. In India and Japan large numbers
of the educated classes are of this persuasion, which they
associate with the names of Darwin and Spencer.
1. The Truth in Agnosticism. — Now, we must begin
by honestly recognising that not only in the Bible but
throughout the history of Christian thought, a certain
reverent and relative Agnosticism has been maintained
towards the being and nature of God. " God is great,
and we know Him not," has been the humble cry of
many hearts that in another sense know Him well.
" Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou
find out the Almighty unto perfection ? " was the
challenge of Zophar to Job, who so patiently suffered at
the hands of God and the mouths of men (Job xi. 7).
" How immeasurable are His judgments, and His ways
past finding out ! " was the exclamation of Paul, who yet
maintained that God had put Himself within the range
of human knowledge. There must be something in the
Christian position which makes these two statements
compatible with one another. What is it ? The secret
is to be found in this, that God is not a being who can be
merely described in abstract terms by caUing Him the
Absolute, the Eternal, the Unconditioned, and so on.
Those words are really all adjectives used as nouns.
If you raise any adjective to the dignity of a noun, it is
always apt, unless cautiously handled like a beautiful
tame tiger, to have its revenge and slay your power of
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
sane and clear thinking. To avoid this fate, we must
conceive of God, first of all, as a most Hving and real
being, one who possesses conscious will, the power of
determining Himself towards ends worthy of His nature
and His character. In that case He must have the power
of determining Himself towards the means by which those
ends are to be attained. The Christian religion asserts
that He has so determined Himself towards men, that
He has given Himself to be known, for it is only through
our knowledge of Him that His end can be attained.
It is true that He still lives out, far out, beyond any
horizon of knowledge of which our minds are capable.
But He has moved upon us within that horizon, and
has revealed Himself in action, in certain definite and
concrete ways. It must be enough for us here to state
briefly three ways in which God has thus revealed
Himself.
2. The Revelation in Nature. — When from the
Christian standpoint we look back, we can say with
great confidence that God has made Himself known in
nature. Paul takes for granted that the history of
thought in his Greek-Roman world would bear him
out in this (Acts xvii. ; Rom. i.). Thoughtful men of
many types and climes and races have beheld in earth
and sky and sea glorious witnesses to an " everlasting
power and divinity," which alone could account for the
majesty, beauty, order, and beneficence of their pheno-
mena (Rom. i. 19, 20). This is not merely knowledge
about Him. When it is accompanied by sympathetic
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THE FINAL FAITH
insight and responsive action of heart and conscience,
it is real knowledge of God Himself. Paul insists that
in a true sense this is " knowing God " (ver. 21), even
though the knowledge is misused. This must be ex-
panded to include the revelation of God in human nature.
It was through meditation upon the mind of man, in its
inner and unfathomable depths, its superiority to the
world of things, that the Hindu found his way to the
conception of a spiritual universe. Greek philosophy
travelled on the same path, but with clearer method
and more satisfpng results. To it the general concep-
tions of truth and beauty and goodness were not mere
abstract terms, corresponding to no object, but repre-
sented realities in a super-physical realm where the soul
breathes its native air. The Supreme Good, the Idea
which at last in its study of perfection the mind may
reach beyond all other ideas, is the origin of all order
in nature. That is God. And yet under pre-Christian
conditions of life this mode of thought remained as the
privilege of the few, these vistas were for the eye of the
trained philosopher and gave no hope to the masses of
men. For most men human life did not become a
revelation of God. The history of man seemed to have
no unity, no order, no moral beauty, affording no clue
to the Maker of all. Rather did it tend too often to blur
and obliterate the clues which outward nature in her
might and regular movement yielded to thoughtful and
reverent souls.
3. The Revelation in Christ. — Christianity is founded
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
upon the belief that God made Himself known actually
and directly in Jesus Christ His Son. Apart from
features of this fact which we must delay for a little,
one thing must be emphasised here. Jesus claimed that
He knew God, and that His whole work among men
flowed from that direct, real, and even superhuman
knowledge of His Father. The modern Agnostic is by
this fact put into rather an awkward personal situation.
He must have the courage to insist that Jesus Christ
did not know God. There can be no doubt of the
supreme moral elevation of Jesus, nor of His intellectual
power, nor of the mighty influence which He has exerted
on the hves of men at this exact point. His whole
estimate of life. His whole power over men, sprang from
this assured possession of direct, intimate, actual know-
ledge of God which He could communicate to them.
The Agnostic must then say that he knows for certain
that Jesus did not know God, that Jesus must have
been mistaken when He claimed such knowledge. And
what is the basis for this courageous and hazardous
derision of the central fact in the consciousness of Jesus
Christ ? How do you know that Jesus did not know
God ? The answer is, " Because Immanuel Kant and
Herbert Spencer have proved that human knowledge
is only relative, that the Absolute and therefore God
cannot be known." This looks Hke audacity.
4. Revelation in the Christian Consciousness. — But
Christianity has from the beginning maintained that
knowledge of God has become the possession of all who
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THE FINAL FAITH
have faith in Jesus Christ. That assertion constitutes
the very foundation of all its preaching. Without that
assertion it has no message, no meaning, no power.
Jesus Christ has fulfilled His claim and promise. From
Him to all linked with Him by the golden act of faith,
the inward assurance of contact with the very will and
Spirit of God has been conveyed. True, we must speak
humbly and carefully of this knowledge of God. We
must not speak as if individually we have been admitted
to the innermost secrets of the Divine Nature. And yet
we can with great confidence point to the whole course
of true Christian experience, to the quiet peace of multi-
tudes whose names are not emblazoned on the list of so-
called " Saints," to the new sense of enhghtenment which
God's spirit gives more wondrously, more widely, more
simply than ever oriental discipline gave it to the
disciples of esoteric teachers. The number cannot be
told of those who have been able to arise and say that
in the faith of Jesus Christ they have come to know God.
It is not, then, in mere dependence on the triumph of
our philosophical arguments against the abstractionism
(if we may call it so), the essential and desolating scepti-
cism of an Agnostic's theory of knowledge, that we
may face his kind, whether in Christian or non-Christian
lands. We can rest on most soHd and unmistakable
ground when we base our message on the vast evidence
we have that God has made Himself known, and that
countless human beings have consciously communed
with Him.
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
II. Compared with Pantheism
In the second place, the gospel, in some regions of the
world, finds itself face to face with that form of doctrine
which is called, in general, pantheism.
1. Pantheism. — This mode of thought is specially
characteristic of the Hinduism of India. The Hindu
philosophy has laid deep and strong grasp upon the
conception of the ultimate unity of all things. It
regards all life as flowing from one fountain of Hfe. All
differences, the infinite variety of facts which compose
our world have their basis, their reconciHation, in one
eternal, changeless Fact. We cannot name it without
destro3dng it, for all names are symbols drawn from our
scattered and shattered fragments of knowledge. We
may speak of it as The One, The All, the Life of all life,
the Light beyond all lights. The only way to get at
this Idea, which comprehends all ideas within itself, is
to turn the mind, strongly, constantly, in upon itself.
There, in what will at first seem darkness, hght will begin
to shine. When the body has been humbled, when the
appetites have been stilled, when the mind has room to
move unhindered by any of earth's passionate appeals,
when even the innocent and blessed distractions of the
senses have been overcome, when neither sight, nor
sound, nor taste withdraws the intent soul from its
quest, it will discover its deep, underlying oneness
with that universal, all-pervading Fact. That will be
joy unspeakable, peace unfathomable, life inscrutable.
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THE FINAL FAITH
High and fascinating as such a view of the soul's
experience may be, — and we must remember that it is
proving winsome to many in Europe and America, — it is
yet far below the truth which the Christian missionary
is able to carry with him. He ought, if he is going to
deal much with educated Hindus, to appreciate the
fact that Christianity contains whatsoever is valuable
in this Hindu version of man's spiritual life, and sup-
plants its defects with what is of surpassing grandeur.
The former element comes to light in many a mystical
saying in the New Testament, especially in the Apostolic
experience of union with God through the Risen Christ,
and conscious inhabitation of the Holy Spirit. The
latter appears in the Christian emphasis upon the person-
ahty of God. In the mind of the Hindu the idea of
personahty is associated wholly with limitation, littleness,
futihty. He can think of it only as a disease ; indeed,
the root and bitterness of Hving misery lies exactly there.
Hence, of course, to destroy the sense of self, to quench
personahty in the all-absorbing All, is the only way of
deliverance from the pain of personal existence. And
truly, if no light has ever streamed from beyond, from
the good heart of all things to our hearts, this might
be the highest view of man which experience would
support. But Christianity, with its doctrine of a per-
sonal God, must come, some day, to the waiting Hindu
world as the very word of deliverance. Their religion
means despair because the All swallows up all in what
is for man a vast, voracious, unillumined night. Christi-
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
anity alone can be a religion of boundless, exalted hopes,
because it is founded on the living God of redeeming love.
2. Chrisfs Conception of the Father. — The Hebrew
religion arose among tribes who conceived of their gods
as personal beings. That was the point at which the
evolution of the final religion could take its earliest,
distinctive beginning. Hence, throughout the Old
Testament, Jehovah is always regarded as a personal
being. When Monotheism reached its full development
in the later prophets, this intensely personal conception
of God was saved from its peculiar dangers by the
powerful manner in which His lordship over nature
was combined with His lordship over the inner life
of man. But it was, of course, in Christ and His gospel
that the personal being of God, His nature as conscious,
directive will, was at once fully revealed and finally
secured against serious and permanent misconstruction.
In the first place, Jesus teaches us to think and speak
of God as Father. So vital and real is this name, that
He employs it even when describing the relations of God
to outward nature. It is our Father who clothes the
lilies in glory, and feeds the birds of heaven with brood-
ing care. It is our Father who sends rain on the just
and the unjust, and numbers the hairs of our heads.
No one doubts that in the inner life of Jesus there was
what we, perhaps vaguely and unintelligently, call a
mystical element. Upon His soul there fell the supernal
life, as no other soul had ever been quaUfied to receive
it. In his nights of prayer, in the deep movements of
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THE FINAL FAITH
His glorious nature — all passion and all wisdom, all
energy and all love — in the openness of his imagination
to the beauty and meaning of nature, the Divine played
upon Him as, for the first time in human history, upon
its truly appropriate and most perfectly responsive
instrument. But Jesus speaks steadily of this inner
Being of His life as the Father. He does not seem
to have found the full satisfactions of His own spirit,
so far as He revealed them or indicated them to men, in
those strangely fascinating terms of an impersonal kind
with which the mystics have familiarised us. One need
not by any means disparage mysticism, especially as
represented by some of its noblest Christian exponents,
in order to emphasise the fact that they have endangered
Christian faith just in so far as they have excluded from
their conception of union with God the idea of com-
munion between person and person. Perhaps the
Christian message to the Hindu, with his pantheistic
conception of God, can render him no greater service
than to dehver him slowly and painfully, but surely
and triumphantly, out of his hunger for the half -sensuous
excitements of his absorption in the impersonal object
of his faith, and to bring him into a reaHsed communion
with the Living Intelligence, the Holy and merciful Will
of Him who is Lord of All, the God and Father of Jesus
Christ.
And let this be added here. There is a real mysticism
in personal relations which is entirely overlooked by
many devotees of pantheistic mysticism in our days,
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
and it is the mysticism of the New Testament, of Christ
and His Apostles. We need not bow before impersonal
vastness, whether it be called darkness or Hght, in order
to find our souls filled with sweetness and our hearts
thrilled with the sense of the Divine. It is not only the
vistas of forest scenery, or the grandeur of the ocean,
the stars at night, or the dew-drops in summer meadows,
that inexpressibly flood our souls with beauty. There
are higher experiences than even these, and they are
found when friend is unfolded to friend, when pure
love, when lofty purposes, when holy thoughts and
deeds are spoken from the lips and fives of men. These
also have the infinite in them, these also capture us
with their compelling beauty and power. Along these
paths of personal intercourse with personal beings
we can travel out beyond the reach of logic or the
measure of man's mind, into joys and even raptures as
full and more rich in ascertainable meaning than those
awakened by aught that is less than a living and conscious
self. This is the mysticism of the New Testament, as
we have said. It is derived from the guidance and
example, the inspiration of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For Him God was Father, and for His soul the loftiest
joy, and even the ineffable experience, seems to have
come when He was dealing with the Father in His
ordaining will and His all-blessed love.
3. God revealed in a Person. — The conception of God
as personal is, of course, finally sealed for us in the fact
of the Incarnation. We must still defer for a few pages
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THE FINAL FAITH
the direct discussion of that topic. All that needs to
be said here is that the Divine Nature, which has partially
revealed itself in the order and power, in the life and
progressiveness of nature, which is still more clearly
revealed in the structure of man as a moral intelligence,
has been at last most fully revealed by its astounding
and glorious act of assuming the conditions and form of
a human being. No man who believes thoroughly that
in Jesus Christ God has for ever made our nature one
with Himself, can find it possible, or even for a moment
think it aught but disaster, to deny the personality of
the Creator and Lord of all.
4. Christian Experience. — After what has been said,
it need only be shortly set down here for clearness' sake
that the substance of Christian experience involves from
first to last the personality of God. All the terms under
which Christ and His Apostles have taught us to approach
Him are consistent only with this view. If we repent,
it is because His holy will condemns our sin ; if we find
peace, it is because His will grants us pardon ; if we
praise Him, it is for His deliberate and overflowing
grace ; if we are humble before Him, it is not because He
is All, but because the universe, all that is not God,
depends for its being, its meaning, upon His power and
purpose ; if we have hope for the future, if we await the
wonders and bliss of the life to come — the grave robbed
of us, heaven opened to us ! — it is upon the glorious
kindness of His heart towards us that we rest that
expectation. From first to last we must conceive of
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OP GOD
the eternal God whose will and mind and very seM is
immanent in all things, the ground of their being and
the source of their ordered movement, as yet standing
over against us, God our Father, God in Christ, God
flowing to us as the indwelling Spirit.
III. The Enrichment of Monotheism
1. The Mohammedan View of God. — When we come
to Mohammedanism we face a religion which agrees
with Christianity in its opposition both to Agnosticism
and Pantheism. Its marvellous power is largely due to
the vivid and uncompromising manner in which it sets
forth the conception of God as the eternal conscious will
which created, sustains, and rules all things. It is not
fair to accuse Mohammedanism as some do of teaching
a mere Deism, as if God were a Being who, having created
the world, has left it to work out its principles apart
from Him. On the contrary, though He works through
mediating personaUties and forces, yet He works.
Nothing happens which He has not willed, nothing is
done by men which He does not know and record in His
unerring books. Moreover, Mohammedanism arose in
mystic experiences of its great prophet, and through its
history has produced many high and rare souls who
have entered far into those realms of thought and feeling
which are famihar to the mystics of other religions.
But Mohammedanism has its dark side. It is at bottom
a religion of law and not of grace. Salvation is, indeed,
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THE FINAL FAITH
promised to those who believe in God as the prophet
has finally revealed Him, while all who disbeheve that
message are hopelessly doomed to the sufferings of hell.
But this salvation is not to be compared with that which
is of grace, nor this act of faith to be compared with
that which Christ has made possible. For, in the first
place, no act of Divine pardon, no grace that wonder-
fully blots out sin, is offered to men. Even those who
believe in God and His prophet are in the great day of
judgment faced with full, accurate, and detailed state-
ment of all their deeds, and on that basis their admission
to paradise is to be determined. Hence God, though
called " the All-Merciful," is not known as the Father
and Redeemer, the gracious indwelHng Saviour and friend
of those who respect and believe in His gospel. He is
the austere and exalted Ruler and Judge, the awful
administrator of rewards to those whose record deserves
them, and of fearful penalties to all who have fallen short
of His strict and tremendous demands.
Over against this view of God's spirit and way with
men we must set the whole Christian view of God,
and especially its doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incar-
nation, of redemption, and of justification by faith.
We must here consider the first of these four. Christian
missionaries find that the Mohammedans accept Jesus
as a prophet, the highest next to the Founder of their
faith, but that they have an intense hatred of the dis-
tinctive doctrines named above. Mohammed must
have heard some echoes of the faith that Christ is the
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
Incarnation of the eternal Son of God, if he was respon-
sible for words like these in the Koran. " They say,
' the Merciful has taken to Himself a Son ' : ye have
brought a monstrous thing ! The heavens well-nigh
burst asunder thereat, and the earth is riven, and the
mountains fall down broken, that they attribute to the
Merciful a Son ! But it becomes not the Merciful to
take to HimseK a Son ! " " He is God alone ! God
the Eternal ! He begets not and is not begotten ! Nor
is there like unto Him any one ! " It is equally mon-
strous in the eyes of a Muslim to say that God was
incarnate, found in fashion as a man, in Christ Jesus.
The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him ; how then
could He mingle His majesty with the littleness and
shame of human nature ?
2. The Worship of Christ. — As we have already seen,
the Christian faith arose at first among Jews, who were
trained to loathe any form of worship which seemed
to detract from the soUtary glory of Jehovah. So far
as we know there was not in Judaism the slightest
tendency to depart from that principle. But, as we
also know, the disciples of Jesus were gradually drawn
into a conception of Him as the Christ in virtue of His
personal influence over them in the field of their religious
consciousness ; in virtue of His explicit words and acts
as the revealer of God and the Lord of the kingdom of
heaven ; in virtue of His resurrection, viewed as an act
of God which put the Divine seal upon all His claims
and upon all the experiences which His personality had
5 -65 -
THE FINAL FAITH
created ; in virtue of that sacrificial death, illumined
now both by His words and acts before the event, by
His resurrection and by the new world of Divine love of
which it was the dark doorway. The result of all this
was that they could not conceive of God except through
Christ. Their faith in God, their worship of God, their
love of God, their new and happy obedience to His will,
was all conditioned by or realised in their faith and
worship and love and obedience towards Jesus Christ.
This was not a theology, it was no mere syncretism of
ideas floating through the air of troublous times from
Eastern mystics and Western philosophers. It was first
of all an overwhelming experience of the indwelling of
God in their very souls, and it was through and through
made possible in every throb and fibre of it by the
person and work of Jesus Christ. They did not argue
themselves into the worship of God in Christ, of Christ
in God. They were Ufted, surprised, compelled into
it by Himself.
3. The Spirit of God. — And then another event
happened to them, namely, the coming of the Holy
Spirit. There was no such thing as a unified and con-
sistent doctrine of the Spirit in Judaism. As of the
Messiah, so of the Spirit of God, there were scattered
glimmerings, unsystematic notions. Even in the words of
Jesus, not excluding the great passages in John xiv.-xvi.,
there was not enough material to produce of itself the
teachings of the Epistles, nor to create a faith which
could induce that enthusiastic consciousness from
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
whose depths those teachings sprang. Jesus seems to
have said just enough to give them the key to the inter-
pretation of the great event when it happened, and of
the great new Presence which was then and thenceforth
reahsed within the organism of human experience.
Hence it is not too much to say that even if the second
chapter of Acts had not been written, careful students of
the New Testament would have been almost compelled
to invent some such event, — namely, the coming of the
Spirit of God to the disciples as a body, — in order ade-
quately to explain the position which the work and
character of the Holy Spirit assumed in the life and
thought of the Apostles.
The result of all these events, these deeds done upon
them by God, was that those strict monotheists found
themselves worshipping, trusting, loving, obejang God
the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy
Spirit.
4. The Monotheism of the Apostles. — It is of the
utmost importance to note two facts here.
The first is that this new form of conceiving that
Divine Nature towards which their faith and worship
were directed did not come from any anticipations
or suggestions either in Jewish or Greek thought.
They were, as we said above, surprised and yet
compelled into it by the personality of Jesus, by
those events which occurred to Him or flowed from
Him, and by the new relationship with God into
which the whole process finally and consciously
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THE FINAL FAITH
put them. It was as if a company of men should
be carried by the spell of a great captain to board
his ship, should be taken by him through storm and
sunshine and over unwonted seas to a strange and
wondrous land. There, under new skies, and amid the
novelties of a glorious and fruitful scene, they would be
forced to readjust their whole consciousness. Their
very language would begin to change its meanings, and
their ancient forms of thought to jdeld before the pre-
sence of the new environment. So it was with the
apostolic band. They found themselves indeed in a
new world, as if they were completely changed men,
robbed of many an ancient and familiar object, many a
dear custom, and yet forced to make some connection
between the old and the new, forced to look upon the
former things as leading up by God's will to these, lest
their very reason should crack and the sense of their
identity vanish in so mighty a cataclysm of human
experience. The Apostles were thus brought into that
form of worship which, at a later date, came to be
called Trinitarian, not by ingenious reasonings of their
own, not by putting together vague hints from other
rehgions and philosophers, but by a course of experience
which, culminating in the conscious fellowship of God
the Father, was produced by the Person of Jesus Christ,
and was reahsed in the powerful inworking of the Spirit.
In the second place, while thus worshipping these
three names the Apostles strenuously held to the unity
of God. Their monotheism had not perished. It had
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
passed into a new and higher form. There was room
here for abundant and most earnest thought and con-
troversy within the Church, and there was ground also
for deep and natural misunderstanding by those, both
Jews and Gentiles, who were without.
There are passages in the New Testament which
show the Apostles full of confidence that their worship of
the one living and true God in the three names. Father,
Son, and Spirit, could be defended at the bar of reason.
They were living at the earhest stage of the discussion,
and dealing with its first questions, but their affirmations
have been used by the Church always as the basis of all
further investigation. In the Gospel according to St.
John, the idea of the Logos, the Word of God, is used to
explain the eternal relation of Christ to God (John i. 1).
This " Word " is no mere abstraction, but at least a
most real and definite element in the nature and life
of God Himself. Through this power God has created
the universe and directed the course of human history.
All races, " every man that cometh into the world,"
have therefore a native relationship with and dependence
upon this Word of God. " The Word became flesh,"
the writer goes on to say (ver. 14), and thereafter de-
scribes the manner in which the Only-begotten of the
Father lived and taught, died and rose again in the
midst of a chosen group of witnesses. A similar passage
occurs in the Epistle to the Colossians (i. 13-20), where
the Apostle, fighting apparently against some subtle
influences of Greek mystical philosophy (Gnosticism),
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THE FINAL FAITH
described the eternal relations of Christ to God. He
uses the personal term " Son." It was in and through
His Son that all things were created by God. In their
vast and immeasurable concourse they are " held
together " in Him. And He is their true meaning, for
the entire process of creation and redemption of which He
has been the guiding force will bring at last " all things "
into some final and ineffable harmony and unity in Him.
The Epistle to the Hebrews opens with a sublime passage
in which the same doctrine is laid down (Heb. i. 1-4).
A glorious and infinite personality, and not a mere
formula, is the supreme explanation of the universe.
Thus did the writers of the New Testament set forth the
Deity of Christ, and use the terminology, whether Jewish
or Greek, which was naturally at hand and most suitable
for the expression of their thought.
No one disputed that the Holy Spirit represented
the action of God Himself in the human heart. The
only question came to be, in after days, whether
we can draw a distinction between the Holy Spirit
and God the Father as definitely as between the
Father and the Son. But in the days of the Apostles
this was not disputed. The words of Jesus, even the
few sayings in the Synoptics which name the Spirit,
were definite and clear evidence that for His con-
sciousness some distinction did exist.
The Apostles, then, on the authority of Christ's
consciousness, interpreted by and interpreting their
own experience of union with God, held that the
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
names Son and Holy Spirit apply to God's eternal Being
and Nature as truly as the name Father, and that all
three correspond to and represent to our minds, how-
ever dimly, real and eternal elements in His ever glorious
and ever blessed Life.
6. The Modern Situation, — The Christian doctrine
of the Trinity has suffered much in recent days, partly
from misapprehension of its true relation to Christ's
own life, and partly from a prejudice which set in under
the influence of positivist philosophies and of the
methods of natural science, against the use of sheer
reason for the solution of our supreme problems. As
we have now seen, the doctrine of the Trinity was
primarily rooted in the facts of the Christian life. Christ
originated, and His Spirit moulded and directed it.
It may be that for the majority of Christian people
that is enough. Let them see in the Saviour the eternal
Son of God, and in His Spirit the very Spirit of the
eternal God, and they may never need or ask for more.
But such people cannot be teachers of Christianity
either to philosophic minds in Christian lands, or to
educated Hindu and Mohammedan theologians on
the mission field. The Christian view of God must
measure itself in turn against the full force of all these
and any other antagonistic systems, if it is to prevail
over all and become the universal faith of mankind.
In this work its heralds must not, in a kind of childish
fashion, complain of the abstruse and technical nature
of the discussion. These are simply the quaUties of
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THE FINAL FAITH
thoroughness in every sphere of thought. The men who
would convince the world that the worship of the true
God means the worship of God the Father and His
Son Jesus Christ, in His Holy Spirit, must be prepared
to prove at the bar of reason that this view of the
Divine Nature is superior to any other view of the
ultimate cause and ground of the universe.
For example, they must face the follower of Herbert
Spencer, who even in the last edition of his First
Principles, and after writing in other works many
things that seemed inconsistent with it, yet clung to
has early theory that from the three ideas or facts of
matter, motion, and force he could derive the whole
universe and the loftiest reaches of the history of man.
That was his trinity, and it needed no less abstruse
and no less technical discussion to set it forth than
does the Christian Trinity. It might be shown that
Spinoza, the so-called pantheist, rested on a trinity
of fundamental ideas in expounding his famous system.
Not to mention Hegel himself, it may be sufficient to say
that any one of his distinguished disciples of to-day — Mr.
Royce, or Dr. Bradley, or Dr. M'Taggart — seems, when
discussing his conception of the absolute and its re-
lation to human morality, to be at least as difficult,
as remote, as unpractical as any of the great Christian
expounders of the Trinity. The only way to see the
doctrine of the Trinity aright is to compare it with all
other systems which strive to give us an ultimate
explanation of God and His universe.
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
There are three chief opponents of the Trinitarian
view of God. (1) First the Agnostic, which tends always
to become the materiahstic, view is wrecked on its
inabihty to explain the phenomena of the human mind,
including the whole course of man's reUgious conscious-
ness, from below. The lower can never be made to yield
the higher forms of reality by a process of impersonal or
undirected evolution. (2) The Pantheistic view in any of
its varied and subtle forms is ever convicted of doing
deep injustice to man's moral nature. That nature
resents evil and condemns sin as steadily as it holds
the categories of reason ; and a system which, like Pan-
theism, casts all moral distinctions into one melting pot,
to bring out an Absolute in which they are all equally
and indifferently included, cannot be endured by the
normal consciousness of the Christian world. (3) The
Mohammedan or Unitarian view of God as an eternal,
single personality of the type of our own is always
in an unstable equilibrium. It tends to fall away
towards agnosticism on the one hand or towards
pantheism on the other. If it strives to save itself
by chnging to the name of God as Father, it has no
authority for this but the word of Jesus ; and He had
no more authority for it than any other, unless He
was more than man. It is really not too much to say
that the Christian view of God, as a Being who must
be conceived of as triune or threefold in His eternal
nature, is still immeasurably more secure and reasonable
than any of those which we have named.
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THE FINAL FAITH
6. The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Light of Reason.
— There are two principal ways in which in current
theology men try to justify this position at the bar
of reason. They can only be briefly indicated here.
(1) In the first place, there is the purely metaphysical
method, which starts out from the idea of the eternal
God as a personal being, that is, as living in the form
of a conscious will. This conception is given to us
alike by our view of nature as an ordered and purposive
system, and therefore the work of a rational being,
and by our religious experience. But consciousness
always implies an object, and will cannot work unless
it has, as it were, material to work with. The human
conscious will would be inert and really dead, unless
it were from the first in contact with that world upon
which it can be employed and from which it receives
the stimulus to act. If, then, we are to conceive the
divine mind and will as eternally alive and active, it
must have an object eternally worthy of itself. But
between that object, upon which this conscious will
projects itself in a glorious communion, and ItseK,
there must be a medium of mutual interaction. Each
of these three conceptions is inherently necessary to our
total conception of the Eternal God as a living and
conscious will.
It is a curious and interesting confirmation of this
argument that when a philosophical Unitarian like
Martineau faced the problem, he saw that, without an
eternal object, the divine and eternal subject or self
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
could have no conceivable reality or life. Hence he
was compelled, in order to have a real, eternal God,
to suppose that the universe itself is eternal. He did
not seem to see or feel these two deadly objections
to this form of solution, (a) The universe so far as
we know it is a process in time, in which no
object really answering to the full needs of the
Divine Nature can be found. Even if it be
argued that in man, perhaps idealised as humanity,
we find that which answers to the " object " we are in
search of, it must be answered that this is an assump-
tion which all the facts seem to contradict. For one
thing, man is but a late arrival on the scene, and God
is eternal. For another thing, humanity is no more
worthy than the individuals who compose the mass,
and none of them (except One) has been able to confront
the Lord of All with the consciousness that in him the
will of God was fulfilled, (b) It is not a wild assertion,
it is a truth which can be fully argued out, that whatever
form of existence is eternally necessary to the reality
of God must constitute a part or element of His nature.
The theory that the universe is eternal is equivalent,
therefore, to the theory that it is a form or condition of
the very being of God, and in that case we are thrown
back into pantheism, with all its moral dangers and
intellectual inconsistencies, (c) We may add yet a
third observation, that the theory of the eternal creation
of the universe is philosophically just as difficult to
conceive or expound or defend as the theory of the
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THE FINAL FAITH
eternal generation of the Son, or the eternal forthgoing
of the Logos. The latter theory has the double advan-
tage of being free from objections such as (a) and (b) given
above, while it is founded purely upon the rock of the
historical Person and Work of Christ, the Son of God.
If, then, we are to conceive of God in terms of a
living and conscious will, the doctrine of a triune mode
of His being is logical and necessary.
(2) In the second place, the doctrine of the Trinity
may be deduced from the religious conception of God
as the eternal Father. For if we are to speak of an
eternal Fatherhood we are forced to ask of what He is
the Father. To say that He is the Father of the universe
is to correlate terms which are unequal in their content.
The existence of the universe may yield the idea of a
Creator, but not that richer and fuller idea of a Father.
If we again find the correlate of God's Fatherhood in
man, we are still dealing with unequal terms, for man is,
even at the longest date given by science to his birth,
but a child of yesterday when compared with the eternity
of the Fatherhood of God. The doctrine of an eternal
Son is the only secure basis for the faith in an eternal
Father. Men who abandon the doctrine of the Trinity
as a relic of dead dogmatics are really burying the
Fatherhood of God in the same dismal sepulchre of
contempt. For God did not surely become a Father,
incidentally, at a certain stage in the evolution of our
world or of any other world in time and space. Our
rehgious consciousness and needs demand or create
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THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION OF GOD
faith in Him as essentially and absolutely the eternal
Father. On that the permanence of our faith and
the finality of our hope in His grace and mercy
depend. This line of thought means that if God is
eternally and by His very nature a Father, then
some one existed eternally as His Son. But this
Son is in that case a condition or element of the very
nature of God. He is the other, the corresponding
object on whom eternally the will and intelligence and
love of the Father is fixed, without whom neither will
nor intelligence nor love could be eternally active. He
must then be in His own nature and essence the
answering, the all- worthy object of God's Fatherhood,
very God of very God. And the medium or mode
of connection between the eternal Father and the
eternal Son must be that Spirit in which each is
related to and, as it were, acts upon the other.
Through the Incarnation and the Spirit this mystery
of God's nature has been revealed.
It is not possible in this place to extend this exposi-
tion. It is enough to say that this doctrine of the
Trinity is at the very least as worthy of our admiration
as any other attempt to conceive metaphysically and
religiously of that one ultimate Fact on which all created
facts and temporal processes rest. It has this very great
advantage, that it compels us to think of the created
universe as no mere logical deduction or inevitable
outflow from the Divine Nature. It has an ethical
origin. It is the glorious reflection upon the canvas
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THE FINAL FAITH
of time and space of the rich, the ineffably glorious,
inner, and eternal nature and life of the Godhead. It
is not the task of the theologian to describe the mode
in which God has made the created facts to flow in the
channels of time. That is the work of the man of science
and the historian. The theologian who has learnt to
worship God in terms of the Father and the Son and the
Spirit is not only content, but made confident and glad
to find that this worship of the Triune can be defended
at the bar of reason, and that God thus conceived and
thus described, albeit with unworthy and faltering lips,
is yet clearly seen to be above all gods.
78
CHAPTER IV
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
rilHE distinctively Christian doctrine of God rests
on the behef not only that Jesus Christ was more
than man, btit that He was the God-man. In Him
a certain Being who lived eternally in God, assumed
the conditions of an earthly life and entered into the
fundamental elements of a human experience.
The distinctively Christian doctrine of salvation
rests on the behef that in and through Jesus Christ the
personal or moral relations of God and man were changed.
This change was wrought not merely by the act of
incarnation referred to above, but by the act of
sacrifice on the Cross and the act of glory at the
Resurrection.
In proceeding to discuss these two great topics it
is best to begin by fully and frankly acknowledging
their greatness. Christianity can never be fairly
expounded as a system, or promulgated as a gospel,
if at the start we try to recommend it by reducing
the wonder and miraculous nature of its central feature.
In fact, there are many minds which believe it more
easily when it is presented in the unmitigated majesty
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THE FINAL FAITH
of its original affirmations. Such minds feel that the
very ideas involved in it are too wonderful, too much
above the range and spirit of man's best reUgious thoughts,
to have been invented by even the noblest dreamers.
Moreover, these ideas of a God who stooped in divine
pity to the low levels of human experience, and there
endured the shame of death for our salvation, are of
such transcendent worth that, if invented, those who
invented them must be morally superior to Him of
whom they vainly dreamed such glory. But if they
were really acts of Grod, then the Incarnation and the
Atonement are miracles of the most extraordinary
order, perhaps the only miracles in the fullest sense.
In them God has entered into a new relation with His
created universe, with the nature and sin of humanity,
and that relation is becoming the basis for all further
developments of our race. The whole course of man's
history must be henceforth directed and moulded by
God through that system of personal and moral relations
which He has estabhshed between Himself and mankind
in Jesus Christ, His Person and His work.
In this chapter we must deal with the fact of the
Incarnation. Under this head there are three main
subjects to be discussed. First, what is the origin
and basis of this great Christian conception ? Second,
how was it first promulgated, especially in its relation
to other central Christian doctrines ? Third, what
efforts have been made to explain it in the history of
Christian theology ?
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
I. The Origin and Basis of the Doctrine
OF THE Incarnation
1. Non-Christian Incarnations. — Here we must take
account of the idea which has often been advanced,
that as other rehgions and philosophies have cherished
the notion that their founders or heroes had a super-
natural birth or enjoyed a pre-human existence, or
both, the Christian view of Christ must be treated as
simply one more instance of this superstitious tendency
of the human mind. This argument takes two slightly
different forms. The first asserts that this tendency
has shown itself at different times and places inde-
pendently, and that therefore we need not seek to
prove that the Christian Apostles derived it from any
other source than inflamed imaginations working upon
their intense admiration for Jesus. The other, which is
now being strenuously advocated by followers of what
they choose to call " the religious-historical method,"
insists that the air which the Apostles breathed, especially
when they were driven out from the confines of Judaism,
was full of this and kindred conceptions which they
rapidly absorbed and reproduced in the highly developed
form of the Christian system.
In attempting to meet such a criticism of the Christian
faith, many feel, and with full justice, that this strong
tendency of the human mind, when working upon the
great problems of human character and destiny, to
conceive of a union of the Divine Nature and the human
6 _ 8i —
THE FINAL FAITH
nature is a powerful witness in favour of the Christian
position. Is not this one of the flashes of insight given
by that light which Ughteth every man who comes into
the world ? If we are to hold faith in a providential
guidance of the whole race of man, of a praeparatio
evangelica, an inspiration which works in some manner
throughout history, it is surely in wonderful consistency
with that most Christian faith that we find the human
mind in so many races and cHmes attuned to the grand
music which the shepherds heard at Bethlehem, ready
for the manifestation of the eternal Son of God when
the perfect conditions had been arranged ? Man has
evidently a tendency to believe in a God who does
relate Himself closely with human history, and in the
capacity of human nature to receive and exhibit the very
nature and self of God.
2. Two Tests. — But when we come to close dealing
with the inquiry whether this vague human hope
has been fulfilled anywhere in history, we must seek
out and apply faithfully whatever may seem to us to
be real and severe tests, worthy and fit to discriminate
between the true and the false. And here, as everywhere
else in the field of Christian defence, we must be ready
most frankly to apply to our own faith whatsoever
standards and tests of truth we bring to bear upon any
rival faith. In the matter before us there seem to be at
least two vital questions with which we must challenge the
sublime claims of Christianity, as well as those of any other
religion which has developed a doctrine of incarnation.
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
(1) In the first place, we must ask whether the
character and work of the man who has founded
a rehgion, and God's work through him upon other
souls, requires such a theory to account for His
power and therefore for His person. In the case
of the founders of Buddhism and Mohammedanism, it
seems clear that their influence upon their immediate
followers was at the highest possible measure the influence
of earnest, powerful, and perhaps inspired personaHties.
But no element in the work which they did requires us
to believe that the basis of their personality was other
than that which is common to all men. Their personal
excellence, high though it was, could not be called
superhuman. On the contrary, we find that they had,
though in different forms, the sense of moral demerit or
sin. Each bears witness to this in the very form of
his religious experience. He who became the Buddha
had to break away from self-indulgence at twenty-nine
years of age, and passed through a long course of moral
self-discipHne ere he attained his enlightenment. And
that moral vision which he did at last win for himself,
high and noble as it was, shows itself blurred and in-
complete when compared with the white light of the
Spirit of Jesus. As to Mohammed, the Koran itself
bears on many of its pages the marks of his moral un-
worthiness. The work of the Buddha was to point out
to others, with great and compelling enthusiasm, the
discoveries which his own soul had made at such cost,
without any faith in God. The work of Mohammed
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THE FINAL FAITH
was to persuade his fellow-tribesmen that God had
inspired him with a long succession of verbal messages
which henceforth were to be the law of their life. Neither
the moral experience nor the religious influence of these
two men therefore requires us to ascribe to them a nature
that is more than human, and their first disciples did
not do so. A man can get all the best that Buddha or
Mohammed has done for any one, while accounting him
but a child of the human race.
When we turn to the apostolic writings we find our-
selves in another atmosphere entirely. The first disciples
of Jesus received from Him a religious experience,
that is, a new relationship with God, which, if it was real,
none could create for them and in them who was not
more than a man. When Saul of Tarsus was converted,
he found that the infinite gulf, a moral gulf, which had
separated him from God was abolished. It was abolished
not by any theory of his own mind, not by any emotional
appeals of the Christian preachers, not even by a know-
ledge of the teaching of Jesus about the Father ; it was
abolished by the act, the merciful will of Jesus Himself.
The earliest Christian sermon on record asserts that
the sending of the Spirit of God upon the assembled
disciples was the act of Him whom God had exalted in
resurrection glory (Acts ii. 33). Henceforth the supreme
moral and spiritual endowments of which these men were
conscious possessors, than which none higher or more
divine can be named by any man, were immediately
traced to the personal influence, the active will of Jesus.
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
Nay more, the New Testament writers set forth with
great energy the evident truth that one who had saved
men by His death on a cross, who had been raised from
the dead, not Hke Lazarus to a revived earthly career,
but to the eternal life and the throne of God, must be
indeed none other than the Son of God (Acts ii. 36, iii. 14,
15, iv. 10-12 ; Rom. i. 4 ; Heb. i. 1-4, xiii. 20, 21 ;
John XX. 30, 31). It seems evident that the kind of
influence Jesus exerted on His immediate followers, unless
explained away as false in its very nature, could only
proceed from one who was, as they beheved from the
first, more than human.
(2) The second test question which we must use is
this : Did any founder of these religions reveal the fact
that for His own consciousness He was more than a
human being ? It is most significant that no other
founder of a religion did this except Jesus Christ. Many
have claimed to be inspired as teachers or prophets, as
messianic warriors of the earthly sort, as representatives
of God's will in mundane government of the people.
How many of them had a right to make such claims
is not at all the question here. The one thing to note
is that all such claims fall infinitely short of those which
are involved in the whole active ministry of Jesus as
well as in some of His explicit words. There are certain
functions which He proceeded to exercise, calmly and
naturally, persistently and triumphantly, which show
that He felt and knew Himself to be mbre than a human
being. Even at the risk of some repetition from an
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THE FINAL FAITH
earlier chapter (Chap. II.), we must very briefly restate
this matter as follows : —
(a) Jesus consistently manifests the consciousness
of His perfect moral harmony with God. He never
testifies to any conversion through which He had passed,
to any forgiveness of sin which He had experienced, to
any change from unbelief to faith, from moral darkness
to moral light. Yet this was not due to moral obtuse-
ness, such as may be found in many other claimants to
the representation of God's will and the solution of our
supreme problems. His words and His Spirit have
illuminated the awful hoHness of God and the sinfulness
of sin as nothing else in all the history of the human
conscience has done. And it was He who spoke and
acted as the sinless One, the One upon whom men
might look and behold in His character. His moral self,
the very character of God. This alone, this con-
sciousness of perfect harmony with God, sets Him in a
unique place in the history of man, and demands that
some explanation be found for Him, as a moral fact,
which is unneeded in the case of any other man that
ever lived.
(b) Jesus, in announcing the advent of the kingdom
of God, assumed, as if it were His right and His inevitable
and obvious duty to do so, the place of the King. The
work of a king is both to announce and to enforce the
laws of his realm. Through this work the society is
organised in which his subjects are to find the meaning,
the reality, and the joy of their entire fife. And Jesus
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
never speaks as if His society were that of a moment
in the history of Judaism or manldnd. He addresses
Himself to man as man, to human kind in all the forms
and ranges of its life. He exercises over His disciples
that rule which in principle can only be exercised by
the supreme God over the whole race. This must for
His consciousness include the future world as weU as
this, and not only all races, but all generations. What-
ever limits were or were not before His earthly conscious-
ness as He looked into the future, the principles of a
universal, complete, and eternal Kingship were in His
mind and will when He exercised His characteristic
and unique power and authority, claimed his royal
rights and revealed His purposes as the Lord of that
band of disciples.
(c) The consciousness of His Kingship was involved
in or bound up with His consciousness of the power to
reveal God. This revelation, as we saw above, was not
made in formal descriptions, though He uttered what
were till that time the greatest words about God which
had fallen upon human hearts. This revelation was
contained in His personal hfe. It was conveyed to them
to whom the Son willed to reveal the Father. He knew
Himself to stand in full possession of the knowledge of
the Father, and He knew HimseK to stand in full
authority over the destiny of men. In that most
solemn and even dreadful position He cherished and
disclosed the intention to convey, in the only possible
way, namely through His own deeds, the actual
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THE FINAL FAITH
living communion of men with God the Father. The
history of the Christian consciousness, at its best,
is proof that this work has been accompUshed from
the first even until this hour indubitably and
abundantly.
(d) Jesus was conscious that this work of estabhshing
new relations between God and man could not be done
either by the words of a prophet or the deeds of an
earthly king. To get within the relations of God and
man, to make men partakers of His moral standing before
God, He must enter as completely as possible into their
full experience yet without sin. This meant that He
must die. Over, at any rate the latter part of, His
ministry there rests the shadow of the Cross. That for
His mind and will is not His merely human fate. It is
the climax of His work of love. Always moving among
men as one who had " come " into their conditions,
always speaking, working, reproving, exhorting as one
whose utmost love was like the patience of a God, He
yet knew that these burdens were light compared with
that which was looming before him. Strange and
recurrent agonies of soul, precursors of the crucifixion,
marked the closing months of intercourse with His
disciples. At last He consented to be offered up, be-
cause only in dying could He finally pass within the
moral relations of God and man, to change them
for ever both for God and for man. This element of
His consciousness has also entered into the very
substance of the Christian consciousness from that
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
day until this, and must control our estimate of His
Person.
(e) Jesus, even while He lived amid the limitations
of a human experience, was conscious that He must, at
the last day, as it were stand over against the human
race, the representative of man before God, and the
judge of man on behalf of God. At that day He would
confess or deny individual men before His Father in
heaven. At that day He would exercise over all the
nations of the earth the authority of one whose know-
ledge of them is perfect, and whose decision as to their
final moral value is itself final.
(/) Jesus used two titles which seem to express the
fulness of this consciousness that He stood in relations
to Grod and man which are divine, and which therefore
control the whole history of man's moral relations with
God. No criticism has been able to tear from the gospel
records the fact that He used the word " Son " to
reveal, if not to describe, this consciousness. He is
the Son in relation to God the Father, and He is Son in
relation to our race. Son of God and Son of Man. He
does not expand or expound these titles. They are
evidently dear to His soul. They utter His deepest
sense of reality, as to His relations with God and man.
From them as from the double eyes of a spring, high on
the mountains, the waters of His wondrous conscious-
ness pour forth suddenly in one full, pure river of eternal
life. When He would assert His power to reveal God
to men, He bases it on this, that He is the Son of God.
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THE FINAL FAITH
When He would assert His purpose to save men, to give
His life a ransom for many, or His authority to forgive
sins on the earth as well as to judge men from the throne
of God, He bases it all on this, that He is the Son of Man.
The paralleUsm of the titles was dehberately estabhshed
by Himself, and its meaning must be that He was con-
scious of a relationship with the race as a whole and with
God, which no other member of the race could conceive
of himself as sustaining.
It is evident, then, from this brief sketch that the
super-human place assigned to Jesus Christ from the
beginning by His first disciples was not first invented
by them out of gratitude and admiration for qualities
in Jesus which were merely human excellences. Their
conception of His functions in the reconcihation of man
with God was derived from the manifestation of his own
consciousness in word and deed, and was the direct fruit
of His power to lead them into living communion with
the living and eternal God Himself.
The only way to disprove the superhuman quaHty
of the Person of Christ must consist in destroying the
application of our two fundamental tests to Him. This
can be done only if it is made certain that the apostolic
experience of union with God was unreal and untrue, or
that it could be derived from some other sources than
their faith in Christ and His consciousness of power to
create it. But this has never yet been successfully proved
in the whole history of antagonism to the Christian
rehgion.
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
II. The Place of the Incarnation in Apostolic
Life and Doctrine
We must now discuss a matter already briefly re-
ferred to more than once, namely, the manner in which
the doctrine of the Incarnation was promulgated by the
Apostles, especially in its relation to other central
Christian doctrines.
1 . Jesus as Christ and Lord. — Naturally the Apostles
began their work by announcing that Jesus of Nazareth
was the Messiah for whose coming Israel had waited
long with aching heart. They beheved that this ancient
hope had been given and nurtured by God through the
prophets, and that He had been directing the history of
their race towards its consummation. Jesus had put
His seal upon that belief (Luke iv. 16-21 ; Mark xiv.
61 , 62), and had accepted the confession of the faith
that in Himself this God-given hope of the Messiah was
fulfilled (Matt. xvi. 13-20). The supreme, public proof
of His Messiahship was to be found, of course, in the
Resurrection and in the gift of His Spirit to the com-
munity of believers, with the miracles which accom-
panied and followed that gift (Acts ii.-iv.). But the
Messiahship of Jesus was found to coalesce with another
fact, namely, His supreme lordship over human life.
To Him belonged all power and authority in heaven and
on earth (Matt, xxviii. 18 ; Phil. ii. 10, 11 ; Rom. x. 13).
Only those were admitted to be true followers of Jesus,
and to be giving evidence of their entrance into right
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THE FINAL FAITH
relations with God, who confessed with heart and mouth
and obedient Hfe that Jesus was the absolute Lord of
their souls (1 Cor. xii. 3 ; Rom. x. 9, 13 ; John xx. 31).
An examination of a few typical passages would prove
beyond all cavil that when those apostolic preachers
referred to the relations of God and man, Christ as Lord
was always set on the farther side of the gulf which
separates the divine from the human. Thus in Romans
viii. 1-18 we have a paragraph in which the new life of
man in God is very wonderfully described. Here Jesus
is never referred to as one of those human beings in
whom this hfe has been realised. He is named always
along with God, and the Spirit of God, as source of it.
Again, in the opening paragraphs of the Epistle to the
Galatians (i. 1-12) we find the Apostle Paul describing
the origin of the gospel which he had experienced or
received, and which he proclaimed. He insists re-
peatedly that this gospel did not rise out of human
nature ("after man," i. 11), nor was it originated by
" a man," nor was it communicated to him through
" a man " (i. 1, 11). On the contrary, it came from God
through Jesus Christ, and came to Paul when God re-
vealed Jesus Christ in and to his own soul (i. 12, 15, 16).
This principle is not pecuhar to Paul, but underhes all
the writings in the New Testament. Thus in 1 Peter we
find that glory and dominion are ascribed in a tone of
worship and adoration to Jesus Christ for ever and ever
(iv. 11, V. 11), and Christ as Redeemer and Lord stands
over against all those who believe in His name (i. 3, 7,
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
13, 19, iv. 13, 14, V. 10 ; James ii. 1, cf. Ps. xxiv. 8, xxix.
2, and cf. James v. 11 with v. 14, 15).
2. The Eternal Basis of Lordship. — It would seem
evident that no human being, however exalted his
nature or full his inspiration, could be made Lord of all.
That relation to the world must rest on his intrinsic
qualities as superhuman and divine. Hence the Apostles
taught what is called the " pre-existence " of Christ.
This means that before His appearance among men
in the form of Jesus He existed eternally in God. This
conception of our Lord is set forth with great freedom
as well as great power by various New Testament
writers, especially when they find themselves inter-
preting the Christian faith to those who knew something
of, and were intellectually influenced by, the philosophic
thought of that generation.
(1) Son of God. — The basis from which all New
Testament doctrine about the pre-existence of Christ
starts is the term Son of God (Rom. i. 4, viii. 3 ; Col.
i. 13 ; Heb. i. 1-4 ; John i. 18). The Synoptic Gospels
show that, when Jesus began to teach, this title was
used with no very definite meaning, as a kind of honorific
appellation of the expected Messiah. But Jesus adopted
it for Himself as the basis of His work of divine revela-
tion (Matt. xi. 25 £f.), even while avoiding or discourag-
ing the politically dangerous and less adequate title of
Messiah. The latter was capable of serious misunder-
standing if it were thrust into the foreground of His
claims ; while the former, from its previous vagueness,
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THE FINAL FAITH
could easily be filled with whatever meaning He chose to
give it, by His tone and manner of employing it. In
the passages just referred to Jesus distinctly used this
term " Son " in comparison with the term " Father "
in a way which till that time was without example.
The mutual knowledge of Father and Son is set far
above the knowledge which can be communicated to
men. In fact, the knowledge which any man received
of " the Father " is exclusively a gift from " the Son."
In the Fourth Gospel we have two interesting passages
which emphasise the fact that it was the tone and
manner in which Jesus used these terms which roused
the passion of the Jewish theologians as against a blas-
phemer (John V. 16-18, X. 27-39). And, indeed, the
latter passage would indicate that He was more anxious
to be explicit about the Sonship than about the Messiah-
ship.
(2) Epistle to the Hebrews. — When, therefore, the
Apostles set forth the Son of God as an Eternal Being,
they do not appear to be merely arguing of their own
accord from His divinity to His pre-existence, but to
be reflecting His own consciousness as expressed in
His own words. They may even be said to argue from
His divine pre-existence to His saving power. Yet
each writer illustrates the matter in his own way, and
according to the needs of those whom he addressed.
Thus the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, while
he shows (in i. 1-4) his acquaintance with Alexandrine
modes of thought, yet bases his argument for the deity
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
of Christ upon interpretations of the Old Testament
which his Jewish brethren would appreciate. Those
interpretations did not create the doctrine in his mind,
but they supported it through his belief in the inspira-
tion of the Scriptures (i. 5, 7, 8, etc.). The fundamental
argument of his letter is based upon the belief that the
Son of God chose to be made one with his human brethren
for their salvation. That work of salvation indeed
depends for its whole efficiency and glory upon the fact
that it was wrought by one whose very nature was that
of " a Son " towards God.
(3) Pauline Teaching. — In the writings of the Apostle
Paul there are two main classes of passages bearing on the
pre-existence of Christ, — those in which it is referred to as
a matter of course, an idea understood and agreed upon
among Christian believers, and those in which it is deliber-
ately set forth as matter whose significance is in dispute.
To the former class belong such verses as Rom. viii. 3,
ix. 5 (?) ; Gal. iv. 4 ; 2 Cor. viii. 9, etc. But the most
important of these is in Phil. ii. 5-1 1 . To the second class
belongs perhaps only one, the famous passage in Col. i.
13-19, many of whose phrases recur in the Epistle to the
Ephesians. Here the Apostle is evidently dealing with a
situation in which the Christians in certain cities of Asia
Minor were involved. They were confused by certain
teachers of gnostic philosophy, who seemed ready to give
a place of high dignity to Christ among other beings or
principles or emanations of the Divine Nature, " princip-
alities, powers, thrones, dominions," and what not.
— 95 —
THE FINAL FAITH
The Apostle meets the emergency by showing that the
fundamental problems of philosophy are met by faith in
Christ. Those problems concern the origin and method
of creation, the basis and unity, the meaning and end of
the universe, and they are answered in Christ. But it is
of first importance for our present purpose to notice that,
while Paul's language here deals with a Greek situation in
terms which a Greek philosopher would understand, he
does not adapt or change or even add new and foreign
elements to his previous doctrine of Christ in order to win
the assent of Gentile philosophers. The basis of the
whole exposition is found in the original view of Christ
as the Son of God. He is here said to be the " Son
of His love " (ver. 13), a phrase chosen to emphasise
at once the eternal, personal, and ethical nature of
His being.
(4) Johannine Teaching. — Almost exactly the same
thing must be said of the method of John's writings . Even
though it be admitted that the author has been influenced
directly by the speculations of Philo,the Jew of Alexandria
who tried to unfold the consistency of the divine revela-
tion in the Old Testament with the principles of Platonic
philosophy, it does not follow that the Johannine doctrine
of the Logos, or Word of God, is born of Gentile influences.
In the great prologue (John i. 1-18) the author of the
Fourth Gospel does more than merely adopt a current
notion. He develops it in a most original and powerful
manner (see any good Commentary on the Gospel
according to John, or a work on New Testament
-96-
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
Theology like that of Dr. Geo. B. Stevens). But it
would be a great mistake to assert that the doctrine
of Christ in this Gospel was developed through
even the author's own speculations upon the nature
of the Logos. There is nothing in his statements
about the Logos which is not to be found in his state-
ments about the Son of God. Through that prologue
he, as it were, makes connection with the world of thought
around him, just as Paul does in that first chapter of
Colossians. The fact that Jesus was the Christ rested
upon the primary fact that He was the Son of God. As
the Son of God he was the " only-begotten Son," He was
in the bosom of the Father (i. 18), He existed "before
Abraham was born " (viii. 58), He came forth from God
(xiii. 3), He shared the glory of the Father and His love
*' before the world'was " (xvii. 5, 24). It is a matter of
great encouragement for all those who to-day must take
the Christian message into the atmosphere of non-
Christian rehgions and philosophies, whether in the East
or the West, to find this method deeply embedded in the
New Testament. It does not mean that the Christian
revelation is to be twisted or adapted to other modes of
thought, but that it is itself the touchstone of truth.
Using it with great confidence, sympathy, and breadth of
mind, a man will discover the truth in other systems,
release it from error and limitation, develop its often
unsuspected meanings, and make it the means by which
the absolute religion lays hold of hearts and minds so far
prepared for it.
7 —97 —
THE FINAL FAITH
3. The Birth of Jesus. — That event in which the Son
of God became man, the subUme miracle of the Incar-
nation, is described with characteristic variations by
the New Testament writers. As of the death so of His
coming, it is at one time said to be an act of God and again
an act of the Son Himself. The Apostle Paul says that
God sent Him (Rom. viii. 3 ; Gal. iv. 4), but he also says
that Christ made Himself " poor " (2 Cor. viii. 9), that He
" emptied HimseK, taking the form of a servant, being
made in the likeness of men " (Phil. ii. 7).^ The same
double assertion is made in the Epistle to the Hebrews
(C. i. 6, 14-17) and in the Fourth Gospel (John i. 11,
iii. 16, etc.). The stories of the birth of Jesus in Matthew
and Luke deal with the mode by which the Divine
Person was constituted in the midst of the human family
from another point of view. We cannot here discuss the
critical questions which gather around these narratives.
Two things only fall to be said :
(a) It is very remarkable that while the other writings
of the New Testament make no direct statement
about this matter, yet in their many and varied
references to the Incarnation they make no assertion
which is inconsistent with the view that lies behind
the accounts in Matthew and Luke. The Apostle Paul,
in his letter to the Galatians (iv. 4), speaks of Christ as sent
^ I have taken here and elsewhere the ordinary interpretation of these
two passages (Phil. ii. 6 flf. and 2 Cor. viii. 9), making the Subject refer to
the pre-existent Christ. Even if their subject be the historical Christ, His
deity is none the less implied, though the pre-existence be not explicitly
asserted.
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
forth of God and as born of a woman, when it would have
been easy and natural to say that He was born of Jewish
parents and therefore born under the law — the latter
being the chief point he wished to bring out. In the
Fourth Gospel, which was written long after the other
Gospels, and in the light of their description of Christ, the
same freedom from contradiction must be noticed.
(6) With all their important differences the two stories
of the birth of Jesus coincide in the assertion that His
birth was the result of the action of the Spirit of God
in the womb of Mary. That Holy Spirit, the name for
the energy of God, awoke directly the process by which
a new man was developed, and in doing so brought the
Divine Nature into fundamental and organic union
with the new personality. Because this Divine Self
had thus acted upon, and so entered into, the condi-
tions of the formation of a human being, it was natural and
indeed inevitable that it should experience the various
physiological and psychological stages of human growth.
From the beginning He was the Holy One in new and
unique relation with God. Even those who reject it
merely because it is a miracle must confess that the idea
of the Person of Jesus Christ which these stories suggest
is most wonderfully and completely consonant with that
which is implied in all the other apostolic references to
the Incarnation, and with that developed consciousness
of the Man Jesus which we have already described.
Put in brief, we may say that the New Testament
sets forth a most natural and, in one sense, obvious
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THE FINAL FAITH
view of the Person of Christ, though it does raise in-
numerable problems of the utmost gravity for theo-
logical investigation. That view is that the Son of God
who lived eternally in God is the same Person who
appeared as and who was Jesus of Nazareth. In the
minds of the Apostles, Jesus Christ was not conceived
of as two personaUties, but as one, and that the person-
ality of the Son of God. The human nature of Jesus
was for them simply a phase or form of the personal
Hfe and action of a Divine Being. What seemed to
them so obvious has not been regarded as incredible
or unnatural or irrational by the vast majority of Chris-
tian behevers since their day.
4. Incarnation and Salvation, — The whole New Testa-
ment view of the salvation of man is based upon this
doctrine of the Person of Christ. There is not a dis-
tinctive element in it which does not utterly disappear
if the Deity of Christ is denied. His perfect sympathy
with man, even His capacity for that sympathy, is not
obscured, as opponents of this faith allege, by the faith
in His God-manhood. Nay rather, the Incarnation
is the signal and supreme proof of a sympathy whose
perfection of beauty and power and tenderness can
never be paralleled by any other act of God or rivalled
in the conduct of man to man (John i. 16, 17 ; 1 John
ii. 1 ; 2 Cor. viii. 9 ; Heb. ii. 17, 18, iv. 14-16). The
mind of Christ in its pure love, in its self-denial, in its
prolonged persistence in sacrifice, is to be measured
by the same unearthly standard. He gave up more
— IQO —
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
than one can understand when He laid aside the " form
of God " and assumed the " fashion of a man," going
down ^through stage after stage of deprivation until
He hung dead upon the bitter tree (Phil. ii. 5-11). The
full ethical quahty of the work of Christ is derived, as
all ethical quahty must be, from the quaUty of His
Person, from the whole sum of relations in which He
consciously acted.
It is a shallow though a common assumption of the
opponents of this faith, that the appeal of the character
and experience, the hohness and sacrifice of Jesus,
would be enhanced if He were shorn of His divinity.
The supreme force of the gospel, its primary
appeal to the human heart and conscience, is to be
found in this very fact that in Him the Son of
the Eternal God had appeared among men for their
salvation, that He might bring them to the peace and
pardon of God. The whole moral value of the story
of Christ rests upon the background of that journey
from the Throne to the Cross. It does not consist in
this, that from Nazareth to Calvary one more noble
pilgrim soul went, through the well-known road of pro-
phetic service and ethical enthusiasm, to rejection and
contumely and an unjust execution. It consists in this,
that one who was removed far above our earthly nature
and sin and sorrow identified Himself with us, entered
into our struggle, bore our shame, and did it all because
He felt for us, loved us, and saw that only in this way
could He become our deliverer. Take Christ's difference
— lOI —
THE FINAL FAITH
from us out of Christianity and His identity with us
loses all its glorious power.
5. The Love of God. — Not only so, the Incarnation
as the path to the Cross, or the Cross which the Incar-
nation made possible, is the supreme assurance to men
of the love of Almighty God. The great affirmation
that " God is love " was not due to a flash of insight
into the ultimate nature of things by the unaided or
even the inspired mind of an Oriental mystic. It was
derived directly from the conviction, based on historic
facts, that God had sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins (see context of 1 John iv. 8 ; cf . Rom. v. 5-8,
viii. 31-38). Moreover, the history of thought has proved
abundantly that outside of this foundation, except among
sentimental and fluctuating circles which revel in Chris-
tian feeling divorced from Christian doctrine, the con-
science and reason of man can find no permanent and
impregnable ground for belief in the cleansing mercy,
the measureless pity of God. " God so loved the world
that He gave His only-begotten Son " (John iii. 16) ;
God "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up.
for us all " (Rom. viii. 32), — such words take us to the
heart of all things. Other roads may be tried, but they
are circuitous, hazardous, and lead through darkness
amid many contrary voices. But to those who believe
in the abundant proof of the Deity of Christ the way
is clear and open, the journey is swift to the throne
of the eternal Fatherhood, the home of the love which
passeth knowledge and perfects human joy.
— 102 —
^^^■P THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
^K 6. Incarnation and the Finality of the Gospel. — Lastly,
^H let it be said that the absoluteness and finality of the
^K Christian religion must rest on this as one of its great
^B foundation-stones. Even God can do no more for
^^ men than thus to become Himself a subject of human
conditions and human experience. If He has done
this, then belief in it is the final religion. This one fact,
and faith in it, must spread over the world till before
its glory all other dreams of gods and salvations and
worships and paths of peace fade, as all dreams do
when sunlight has lifted our eyelids. This fact of the
Incarnation concerns all men infinitely more even
than food and drink. It must be the will of God that
it should be known to all.
III. Explanations of the Person of Christ
We must very briefly glance at the manner in which
Christian thought has attempted to interpret the fact
of the Divine-human Person of Christ. The work of
the early Church upon this subject was prolonged and
most thorough. In its course every possible logical solu-
tion of the problem was attempted, and each attempt
was tried in the light not only of the words of Scripture,
but of the fundamental nature of the Christian salva-
tion. Any view of the Person of Christ was rejected
which seemed to impair the reaUty either of His divine
or His human nature, and that because it would endanger
faith in the actual and immediate self-revelation of
-— 103 ■—
THE FINAL FAITH
God, or in the completeness and power of the work of
redemption. If He was not God, then God is still un-
known ; if He was not man, then human nature has not
yet been perfected even in one instance, and human sin
has not been done to death by that one on behalf of all.
(1) It seems natural that at first there should have
been an attempt to view the divine in Christ as a tem-
porary union, accomplished at His baptism by a kind
of inspiration, perhaps withdrawn at the Cross, to
relieve the Holy One from the shame of death, resumed
and completed at the Resurrection. But such a theory
was too shallow to go far, and was soon left behind.
It is curious to find it revived and modified to-day in
the interests of a section of theosophy which is trying in
vain to call itself Christian.
(2) It was inevitable, again, that some should arise to
maintain that two individualities, that of the Son of God
and that of the Son of Man, were united not substanti-
ally or, so to speak, physically, but by an ethical bond.
The will of God so prepared the nature of Jesus that
what the Son of God willed He willed, what He did or
thought or said was the word or act of the Son of God,
who was thus inwardly and in an unbreakable sym-
pathy bound up with His personal life. But this
view was also seen to be too vague. It gave us two
personalities linked by an unusual and precarious
nexus, two lives and not one, even though they were
intimately associated. What the Apostles describe,
and what the Gospels set forth, concerning the con-
— 104 —
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
sciousness and experience of Jesus as the Son of God,
cannot be made to resemble this uncertain picture.
(3) It was natural, again, that in revolt from this
theory, and in order to obtain a real union of the divine
and human, one or the other side should be subtracted
from. Though the Arians do not seem to have pro-
mulgated a definite doctrine of the Incarnation, yet
their theory that the Son of God was not eternal and
therefore divine in the full sense, but the first and
greatest Creature of God, may have seemed to many
to make His coming in the flesh more easy of explana-
tion. On the other hand, very important and suggestive
work was done by those (hke Apolhnaris) who taught
that in the Person of Christ a certain element (namely, the
human spirit) was absent, and its place was taken by
the corresponding nature of the Logos. Here we go
much deeper and come into the presence of an organic
and vital union of the human and the divine. But put
in this form it seemed still to impair the completeness
of the human nature of Christ, and therefore to render
His redemption of that nature also incomplete.
(4) The logic of the early Church culminated in
what is known as the Decree of Chalcedon (a.d. 451).
In this important statement it was insisted upon that
in Jesus Christ two natures were present, the divine and
the human ; each was real and each was complete.
The union of these two natures was not temporary,
nor merely ethical, but for ever indissoluble. Neither
t suffered any loss in order to be capable of union
THE FINAL FAITH
with the other, and the two were not merely mixed or
mingled with one another, but each preserved its distinct
characteristics. In what then were the two natures made
one ? The answer is, in " one Person or Substance,"
and that the Person or Substance of the Son of God.
It must be freely admitted that this decree, although
it forms the high-water mark of thought in the ancient
Church on this great subject, does not give a real and com-
plete solution of the problem. Its value has been mainly
twofold, — first, in that it condemned the inadequate
theories which threatened the integrity and reality of
the Incarnation ; and, second, in that it fixed attention
upon the thought that the Person of Christ is the very
self of the eternal Son of God, that the mystery of the
Personality of Jesus is a new form of the indwelling of
God in human nature. The idea which lies behind it, that
you can distinguish between a substance and its quali-
ties or between a person and the "nature" through which
he realises himself and in which he lives, may be due to
a crude psychology or a faulty metaphysic. But even in
modern times there is no general consent on these matters.
For long centuries, and apart from a few minor
controversies on this subject, the Church was content
to abide by the decision reached at Chalcedon. The
fathers of the Reformation in general accepted it.
During last century the attention of scholars has been
mainly given to the work of critically investigating the
literature of the New Testament, and endeavouring to
reconstruct the origins of Christianity with great
— io6 —
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF CHRIST
thoroughness and fulness of detail. The result has been
to delay the attempt to give a full and thorough restate-
ment of this doctrine of the Person of Christ until com-
paratively recent days. For an account of the modern
theories of Christ, such as the kenotic theories, which
try to describe the Incarnation as a process of " Self-
emptying " (Phil. ii. 5-11), in which the Son of God laid
aside His divine attributes in order to assume the status
of a human being ; or the Ritschlian, which insist that
we must be content to treat Christ as having for us the
practical value of God without speculating either about
His eternal nature or the mode of His appearing as man ;
or the easier and shallower notion that in all men there
is a divine indwelling, and in Jesus the Divine dwelt in
the highest degree of which man's nature is capable, —
recourse must be had to other works.
It is sufficient even if we have shown here that the
solution of the Christological problem, though advanced
much beyond the earliest and crudest attempts, is far
from being yet attained. Just because the fact is so
real, so great, so full of meaning and power for the whole
development of our race, it not only wins our faith but
challenges our reason to fresh study of the manner of
it. He stands to-day before the faith of the Church as
the God-man who came forth from God's great love in
God's great wisdom, that in His own will and mind, in
His own love and sorrow, the mystery of the Divine
mercy might be disclosed to the heart and conscience
of the whole race of mankind.
— 107 —
CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
i^NE of the most famous books in Christian theology
^^ is entitled Cur Deus Homo (" Why God became
man"). Its author, St. Anselm, argued that a fact so
transcending all other events in history, as the Incarna-
tion does, must have a reason or purpose of corresponding
greatness. We can only believe that God became man in
the Person of Jesus Christ if we see that He has thus
done something which could not have been done in
any simpler and less astounding manner. Now, the only
object worthy of this miracle above all miracles must be
the salvation of mankind. This is the purpose by which
Jesus Himself explained His appearing among men, —
" The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which,
was lost " (Luke xix. 10), " The Son of Man hath power
on earth to forgive sins " (Mark ii. 10), " The Son of Man
came to give His life a ransom for many " (Mark x. 45).
The whole of the New Testament is filled with this truth,
that Jesus Christ is the Saviour from sin and death unto
righteousness and life eternal. And wherever the gospel
has been carried or is being carried this is its central
message, that the Supreme Deliverer has come. Before
— io8 —
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
we examine the mode of this deliverance we must study
this fact of sin, the situation of man which made so great
a work on his behalf necessary.
I. " Something Wrong " with the Race
1. Proved even by Enemies of Religion. — It might go
without saying almost, that the whole history of man
bears witness, though in varjang ways and degrees, to
his sense of sin. No reUgion has arisen which does not
in some manner imply it. Indeed, the very denial of
religion is the assertion that man, by having a religion
at all, has always and everywhere gone wrong. The
reUgious man beheves that man is in distress, and the
denier of rehgion insists that this behef, universal as it
has been, is itself the supreme error and the mother of
much misery. Both believe that the true path of Hfe has
been somehow missed, and heavy penalties have been paid
for the blunder.
Now, this is a most startHng set of facts, especially if
we are to explain the universe, as many try to do, by some
formula of natural evolution. For the doctrine which
has had most vogue would teach us that no species of
Uving things can arise except as it is in harmony with its
environment. But here we find the testimony unanimous,
that the species called man is infected with fatal error at
the root of its distinctive life and throughout its history.
If religion be true, then the voice of all rehgions tells us
that he is at discord with his spiritual environment, and his
— 109 —
THE FINAL FAITH
moral or social miseries arise from that misfortune. If
religion is all based on falsehood, we still have the same
fact that man is not in harmony with his real environ-
ment, if only for this desolating reason, that he has
deluded and distressed himself with the invention of a
spiritual environment which has no foundation except in
his diseased imagination. It does not help in the least to
urge in support of the latter theory that it is the posses-
sion of a reasoning power that has thus put man wrong.
For in that case a merely naturalistic evolution would
have the impossible task of explaining, how nature could
produce from her system of facts a form of reason which
could so completely and disastrously disarrange that
system and destroy the life it had evolved.
2. Due to Man^s Spiritual Nature. — All rehgions
assume or teach that this discord in man's life rises from his
possession of a spiritual nature, through which he is con-
sciously connected with a divine power or powers above
him. Whether it be the poor fetich-worshipper, striving
to avert the hostility of invisible enemies by wearing his
charms ; or the worshipper of a family, or tribal, god
seeking to retain his friendship by sharing their food with
him, or to placate him by costly sacrifices ; or the Hindu
persuading himself that the universe is full of Hving beings
who are at once the victims and the instruments of the
cruel and relentless wheel of existence ; or the monotheist
believing in the supreme God whose laws of inexorable
righteousness have been broken by all men, — these all
accept it as a fact that man is related with a superhuman
— no —
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
realm of intelligences who control his life here and here-
after, and that his relations with that realm have been
disturbed somehow, to his deep and perplexing and
infinite loss. Wherever the Christian gospel is carried,
it finds the human heart ever ready to confess that such
deep wrong exists, and that a great dehverance is required.
II. Evil, Suffering, and Sin
It is important to distinguish between what religion
calls sin and that wider word " evil " with which it is often
confused. It is the confusion which Buddhism creates
at this point that has rendered its method of dealing
with the situation of man so inadequate. This doctrine,
as we have seen, assumes that the first matter to deal
with is the fact of suffering. Suffering is found every-
where in the sentient world, and appears to the impatient
soul as the fundamental wrong. The aim of man must
therefore be, the Buddhist holds, to inquire what are the
causes of suffering, and then what are the means by which
they may be avoided or defeated. That is his religion, the
kind of salvation he hopes and works for. On the other
hand, the Christian position is that natural suffering is a
wider fact than sin, and indeed an altogether different
kind of fact, due to other causes and having other results.
Our religion does not call us to deal immediately and
primarily with suffering, but with sin. It teaches us
that the great deliverance proclaimed in the gospel can be
realised even by those who continue in this life to suffer,
— in —
THE FINAL FAITH
while of course it also teaches us to set our hope on that
final state in another world where all suffering shall have
ceased to affect us.
1. Evil in Nature. — This, then, is to be carefully-
marked, that evil is a wider term than sin. There are
forms of evil which cannot be called " sin " and may-
have nothing to do with sin, while all sin must, on the
other hand, be called a form of evil. It is then described
as moral evil. The term " evil " seems best understood,
when it is referred to in general, as that which opposes in
any individual the will to live, and by this opposition
causes pain or suffering. It used to be thought appro-
priate to apply this word " evil " to such facts in the
physical universe as earthquakes or mighty storms or the
colUsions of stars, and some writers still do so. It is
clear, however, that these events cannot in themselves be
truly called evil. They only become evil in their effects
upon living beings. When we consider the plant world,
some would maintain that evil certainly reigns there,
because we find there the phenomena of decay and
death. But our modern evolutionary science has
proved decay and death among plants to be important
conditions of evolution. The rustle of faded leaves,
the withered flowers, the mossy consuming of fallen
trees, these are not pathetic incidents in the history
of forest and field. The pathos which we feel as we
watch them is the shadow of man's sorrow, and it falls
athwart our own hearts. It is no part of their being.
These beautiful things lived, so far as we knowj without
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
feeling, and they perished only that more of their kind
might flourish. In such decay and death there is no
evil ; it is the very wonder and wisdom and power of
the art of God.
It is in the world of things which not only live but
feel that the fact of evil in any true sense begins to
appear. For that which can feel at all seems always to
be capable of feeling pleasure and pain. In so far as
it feels pleasure it is in conscious possession of life ;
in so far as pain assails it the grip on hfe becomes
insecure. Constituted as we are, and within the limit
of our knowledge, we cannot but call that evil which
thus causes pain and struggle and at last death to a
form of life which once in any measure rejoiced in life.
And yet even here we must note the use of that word
* measure.' It is an easy trick of thought, when we speak
of pain and death, to sweep our measures of these over
all the sentient creation. There are degrees of sensi-
bihty both to pain and pleasure. We see the signs of
feeling in the lowest forms of animal hfe, but we have
no reason to call their consciousness intense. Rather
have we every reason for regarding pain and pleasure
in the amoeba, or the shell-fish, or even in more highly
organised forms than these, extremely slight. They
have neither the complex organs nor the complex hves
which create or require intensity in their feelings. And
yet again, in spite of that deceptive shadoAV of our own
life, that anthropomorphism which we throw into the
phrases " the struggle for existence," the " survival of
— 113 —
THE FINAL FAITH
the fit," " the extinction of the unfit," we must beware
of thinking that they imply the universaUty of pain.
Some competent observers of nature beUeve that the
vast majority of sentient creatures hardly ever experi-
ence pain, and that death comes to them first with the
benumbing of their power to feel, and then with the
gentle loosening of the subtle, inner bond between Hfe
and matter. And evolutionary science has been sug-
gesting to us that even in this world of animal life, death
is one of the primary causes or conditions both of the
multiplication of sentient beings and of their gradual
advance towards higher and richer forms.
2. Evil in Human Experience. — When we come
to the human race we enter a world in which all the
standards must be changed. It is true that man is
bound up on one side of his nature with the history
of the animal world, and therefore it will not do to say
that pain and death are only evil even for him. Here,
too, they must have their beneficent meaning and
power. Some part of this we can perhaps descry when
we remember that pain is a stimulus, in some degrees
of it, that even death has its high uses for the develop-
ment of man's ideal nature. It is not right to assert
that they are thoroughly evil unless we have proved
that the suffering of pain and death brings no benefit to
the life of the individual and the race. And that can-
not be proved.
It may be urged against this mode of speech,
that it involves too easy and shallow an optimism,
— 114 —
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
that the darkness under which man has lived cannot
be so quickly dispersed, that the fact of evil is too
black and universal and bewildering to be removed by
denying that it is true. But the answer must be, that
such criticism comes too soon. What we have been
tr3dng to do is to discover the true seat and nature of
that harsh discord, that grievous sense of irremediable
wrong which marks the whole story of man, and which
seems to grow more harsh and more grievous as he
rises higher in mental and moral attainments. It does
not at all lessen the burden of evil to see how prone
men have been to extend its shadow and imagine its
pang in regions where fuller knowledge shows that it
does not exist as man sees it, nor is felt as man feels
it. Rather this line of reflection compels us to seek
in man's own consciousness for the origin of evil in
its full and dark horror. The sympathy we feel for
animals when they die, the pity for their pain, is not
the result of calm inquiry into the amount of their
sufferings or into the real value of these facts in the
economy of natural evolution. We simply attribute to
them what pain and death have come to mean to us.
If modern science has made it clear that the measure
of evil which does exist in the form of actual pain in
the sentient world is not devoid of meaning or utility,
it has helped to define with more sharpness the real and
dreadful burden under which the spirit of man groans,
and which has made the whole world seem to him to
be groaning tinder a like infinite weight of affliction. The
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human burden in its innermost reality is not physical
but moral evil. In man we have a being who does not
merely pass from one moment to another of sensation,
whether it be pain or pleasure, a being who does not
take death tacitly as one more swift spasm and pass
away unaware and unregretted. He is possessed of all
those qualities and powers which give him memory and
expectation, which enable him to look at life as something
to be considered and dealt with by him in its wholeness.
He cherishes a love which death wrongs with a deep
and lasting sorrow ; he possesses standards of value, of
virtue, which death in vain has threatened to shatter.
He feels that he cannot live as a rational human being
if he live only as an animal, for the passion of the hour
or even for the pleasures of a short lifetime. He judges
his life from a point of view above and beyond death,
and realises that the visible universe does not exhaust
his environment nor afford him full opportunity for
using all his powers in their ideal range and meaning.
Every noble system of thought, every lofty ideal of
duty known to history, is a full and authoritative witness
to the truth of these statements. When the Buddhist,
in spite of his agnosticism about God, yet affirmed that
man's life cannot be understood within the Hmits of
his earthly birth and death, he bore this witness. When
the Stoic, in recoil from the weakling fury of some and
the weakHng self-abandonment of others, set himself
to discover the inner reason which informs the universe
and planted his life on the scale of that reason, with a
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
self-respect which would neither acknowledge defeat of
his strong will by adversity nor court it by animal
indulgence, whether he was Marcus Aurehus or Thomas
Huxley, he bore the same witness. Man as a moral
and a rational being is allied with and related to a
system of facts with which the animal consciousness
has no responsive relation. It is this fact of universal
moral evil, this consciousness which pervades all human
history that something is wrong at the very root of man's
true life, which is interpreted by Christianity as sin.
III. The Doctrine of Sin in the Old Testament
1. Derived from Monotheism. — In the Old Testament
we have the deepest teaching about moral evil which
the world had ever heard before the coming of Christ.
The reason for this fact is to be found in the teaching
of the prophets about God. Their Monotheism led to
their doctrine of man and of sin. At first, no doubt, the
Hebrews understood by sin, as other Semitic tribesmen
did, any act of disloyalty performed by the tribe, or a
member of it, towards its particular god. Such breaches
of law would consist in failure to perform duly the
customary religious ceremonies, or in doing anything
which had been placed under " the ban " (as in the case
of Achan). But with the rise of prophetism, and from
the days of Moses onward, a new element was introduced.
For, as we saw before, Jehovah, the God of Israel, made
Himself known more and more clearly as the righteous
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One, as a Being who attached infinite importance to
the ideal of faithfulness, who would neither do nor brook
injustice, who therefore looked for inward loyalty among
His people. He demanded that they should depend
wholly on His might and His truth. They must never
forsake this trust nor doubt His gracious loyalty to them,
however dark their days might be, however great the
enemies that conquered them. Thus the relation of
God and His people was transferred from the region of
outward and formal ceremoniaHsm to that of inner
moral purposes. Jehovah called for " mercy and not
sacrifice " ; He had regard to those who " did justly
and loved mercy and walked humbly with their
God."
The Ten Commandments have always, and rightly,
been regarded as of great significance at this point.
For even though we allow that their form, being in the
main negative (Thou shalt not), and referring principally
to outward action, was imperfect, we must emphasise
the fact that they do bear upon the sphere of personal
relations with man and with God. They are ethical
and not ceremonial, spiritual or personal and not
formal or mechanical.
2. The Later Prophets. — It was with that sphere of
the personal and ethical that the great prophets were
almost entirely concerned. For them Jehovah was the
true King of Israel. He made known His will, the will
of unquestionable righteousness, and that was the law
of Israel. To that will the laws and customs of His
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
people should conform. In the light of that will kings
should reign, judges decree justice, citizens conform the
aims and habits of their Hves. Social greed and corrup-
tion, tyranny and oppression, were severely condemned
and threatened with appropriate punishment because they
contravened the righteous will of God, and, in wronging
any class of His people, wronged Him. (See especially,
Amos.) Even the international relations of Israel were
brought under the survey of this divine will. There,
too, His people displayed their reverence or irreverence
for Jehovah, their gratitude or ingratitude, and there
they proved whether they believed in the perfectness of
His wisdom, the supremacy of His power, the stedfast-
ness of His grace. Hence we find in the Psalms, those
reflections in pious experience of the prophetic revela-
tions of God, that the sense of sin is awakened, not by
the failure to reach an ideal, but by the consciousness
of having broken the will of Jehovah (Pss. xxxii., li.,
etc.). The feeling of shame and humiHation was found
in this, that sin was a blow aimed at a Person. The will
of One had been defied whose will was the purest posses-
sion and the grandest security of Israel.
3. Legalism. — After the return from the Exile a new
era set in for this religion. What we know as Judaism
arose, with its prevaihngly legaHstic view of the relations
of God and His people. A vast system of laws was
gradually drawn up, under the impression that the
supreme conception of God is that of a lawgiver and the
ideal religion a code of enactments prescribing rules of
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conduct for each moment and relationship of a man's
Hfe. The result was not only a hard externalism in
religious practice, but a shallow sense of sin. Only
deeper souls saw that primarily God's law has to do with
the heart, and that His will sheds a light upon the inner
depths of motive where the mere legalist never walks,
or walks only blindfolded with fumbling hands and
blundering feet, feeling his way in vain.
IV. The Teaching of Jesus
1. The Need of a Higher Standard. — It needed that
a new light should shine on the personal relations of
man with God, at higher levels than ever ancient prophet
had seen, except in partial, fleeting ghmpses. Even
as it was we must remember that no ancient people
had ever attained a morality so exalted as that of the
Jews. For in the Greek-Roman world of the first
century all serious minds complained that no fixed
standard of goodness stood before the minds of men.
Rare souls might work out lofty codes of ethics for
themselves, but they carried no authority over the
general mass of surging minds. What was needed was
a standard of righteousness as steady and more truly
spiritual than the legaHsm of the Jews, as truly ethical
and more complete, penetrating, and authoritative than
any system of Platonic or Stoic philosophy. All these
demands were met, and surpassed, in the Person and
work of Jesus Christ. We must therefore consider the
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
fact of sin as it is presented to us in the Gospels and
Epistles of the New Testament.
It is sometimes suggested that there is not much
said about sin in the Gospels. There is no " over-
emphasis " of this disagreeable topic in those bright
and genial pages, " ces charmants entretiens sur le bord
du lac Genezareth," as Renan has it. This way of
putting the matter has just so much to be said for it,
that Jesus on this subject pursues His usual method.
He gives no systematic exposition or argument about
the origin or nature of sin. Nor does He persistently
dwell, with hard reiterated strokes, upon certain Umited
aspects of moral evil. Nevertheless one can easily
gather from a survey of His ministry, if not an organised
doctrine of sin, at any rate a definite conception of it,
which is not less terrible or harrowing than any which
Christian theologians have wrought out. To some
minds it will appear all the more impressive and alarm-
ing, just because it is found to have so deeply moulded
His whole ministry and even directed His feet towards
the Cross.
2. The Depth of Righteousness and of Sin. — To begin
with, we must note that Jesus accepts the main prin-
ciples of the Old Testament teaching, and some He
carries further than they had been carried before. For
example. He assumed that man is responsible to God,
that the men He addressed knew or ought to have
known what the righteous will of God is. More expHcitly
than any preceding teacher He pictures over and over
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again the fact that each man must be judged by God
with a strictness worthy ahke of a holy God and a
rational agent. Here individuaHsm is clearly and
consistently carried out. God the Father does not love
men merely in the mass, and God the Judge will likewise
confront each child of the race individually with his
moral task and the quality of its fulfilment. It is a
fact seldom remarked but most significant, that while
Jesus speaks of God so much as Father, when He deals
with the responsibility of men for their conduct, He
speaks of them almost always as servants and subjects
of a Lord who owns and rules and judges them (see the
Parables of Judgment). It is not surprising, then, to
find that, far from despising law, with its penalties and
rewards, Jesus upholds and even carries it further than
had been done before. When He deals with this
matter in the Sermon on the Mount, He distinctly affirms
the permanent authority and excellence of the " com-
mandments," and lays it down that the righteousness
of His disciples must exceed that of the scribes and
Pharisees (Matt. v. 20). It is not going deep enough
to say merely that He means in that saying to demand
sincerity instead of hypocrisy, or depth instead of super-
ficiality. These must be implied, but only because
He shows how much deeper the law of God penetrates
than the scribes and Pharisees had been able to see.
The law of God is not a mere matter of external conduct,
of changes which a man's will works among objects
outside himself hke the men on a chessboard. It
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
applies primarily to the inner spirit, " the heart " of
the man. A good chess player may be an indifferent
lover and a poor citizen, but the man who belongs to
the kingdom of heaven must belong to it and to the
entire range of its principles and laws, inwardly, in the
quaUty of his inmost thought, in the direction and
objects of his desire and will. It is not mere murder,
it is that hatred from which the fatal deed leaps forth ;
it is not the lawless act, but the faithless, self-indulgent
desire ; it is not the mere words of the oath, but the
lying habit of life to which the use of the oath, as a social
device, bears witness, which constitute the real seat of sin.
The commands, not to resist evil and to love enemies,
which Jesus and so many of His missionaries have
obeyed literally, lead up to the subhme utterance,
" Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect " (Matt. v. 21-48). These and other words
of Jesus abundantly show that in His view the sphere
of moral judgment must be found not in overt acts so
much as in that inmost will, that habitude of feeling,
that secret home of motive and impulse where alone
the active, conscious self is to be really found. There
a man must be and feel and think what is worthy of
God, if his deeds are to shine with a divine quality.
3. Man as Lost. — Some people seem to write as if
this deeper view of righteousness, which Jesus gives,
yields a more genial and hopeful standard for mankind.
But that was not the way in which the Lord looked
upon the matter. He treated all men as estranged
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from God, as morally outwith His fellowship. All men
need to have the Father revealed to them by the Son ;
and that need is not an accident of history, it is created
by the moral quality of that inner self which all men
possess. He found no exception, none who did not
need to be saved as from a desperate situation. When
He says that He had come to save the " lost," He meant
all men, alike those who clothed themselves in a decep-
tive garb of technical righteousness, and those whose
passionate manner of life compelled them to acknow-
ledge without cavil or assuagement that they were
indeed sinners before God. When He speaks of the
" lost," Jesus introduces a new element into that
dread conception. He describes them as " lost " from
God's point of view. It is He, the owner and Lord, the
Shepherd and Father of all souls, who is represented
by the shepherd and the woman and the forsaken
father in the parables of Luke xv. If the lost are to
be found — here is the thrilling revelation — it must be
God, who has lost them, who shall also seek and find
and save them all. His grace must seek them out. His
pardon must blot out the unholy past, His power must
change their hearts. There is then in the eyes of Jesus
a universal condition of man in which he is estranged
from God, and from this condition he can be saved
not on his own merits nor by his own powers, but wholly
and solely by the mercy of God. True, he must repent
and believe, but that double movement of the spirit of
man constitutes in the field of will a change which has
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
been wrought upon his very self. A man must become
as a Httle child (Matt, xviii. 2), he must pass through
a transformation as drastic and complete as would be
a new birth (John iii. 3).
4. The Need of Salvation. — To understand what sin
meant to Jesus Christ, we must look not merely to His
words, but to His life, to the work which He undertook
to do for men. There can be no doubt that He claimed
to be a Saviour, and thereby asserted that man's moral
condition requires for his salvation a power from above,
a personal power which has come from God. Nor can
there be any doubt that His task as Saviour led Him
through dark sorrow to the joy of its accompHshment.
What else imposed woe on the Saviour but the woe of
man's estrangement from God ? If the power of His
Cross means only that the spectacle of His faith which
quailed not at utter darkness, and His love which died
not when hfe itself was crucified by hate, draws the
world's responsive trust and grateful love to Him, —
and His death means far more than that, — yet even
this much would prove that sin is a state of the human
heart which only the sacrifice of the Son of God had
strength to destroy. His Cross has always been felt by
those who believe in Him to be a revelation not merely
of the love of God in its purity and splendour (for all
love is enthroned only by sacrifice), but of the bitter
shame of sin. If then the Cross was in Christ's mind
His means of saving the lost, its revelation to our con-
science of the quaUty of sin is as truly and far more
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fully His actual teaching than the Sermon on the
Mount or the rebuke of the hypocrites.
V. The Apostolic Teaching
The Apostles of Christ inherited the Jewish con-
ception of sin. They believed that Jehovah, the only
living and true God, had given the knowledge of His
will to the children of Israel, and sin consisted in active
and deliberate disobedience of that will. While they
were taught to speak with contempt of sinners of the
Gentiles, and considered them as beyond the reach of
that loving-kindness which God had bestowed upon His
elect nation, they were, on the other hand, aware that
even among the Jews the problem of personal salvation
had not been solved. They had been waiting for the
hour of redemption, and now that it had come upon
them they found themselves in a strangely surprising
world. This comes out in characteristic ways even in
their teaching about sin.
1. The Doctrine of John. — Thus in the writings of
John sin appears as that which received the utter con-
demnation of God. It is a form of will which is directly
hostile to His holy will, and the awakened conscience
feels the poignancy of this situation. That awakening
is due to the advent of the Son of God in human flesh
(John i. 5, 10, 14). Henceforth we know that sin in us
is a darkness which is the very opposite of that light
which is God (1 John i. 5). It is also lovelessness, and
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
may manifest itself as hatred towards those who deserve
only our love (1 John ii. 10, 11, iii. 13-18) ; indeed, the
primary sign and proof that a man has passed out of
death into Ufe is the rise of a new kind of love in his
heart, which is the gift of God's Spirit. It is also law-
lessness (1 John iii. 4), for law is the expression of the
will of God, it reveals His commandments ; the man
who sins is not born of God, but shows by his evil works
that he draws his active life from the devil (1 John iii. 8).
In such powerful language does this apostolic writer
seek to convey the new sense of sin, in its power and
its hateful nature, which the coming of Christ has
created. And this is added with reiteration and great
vigour, that a new and supreme commandment, a moral
obligation which precedes all others, had been given in
the Person of Jesus Christ. The first law of human
nature now is to believe on Him, and the sin unto death
is the deliberate rejection of His claims (John iii. 17-21,
vi. 29, xvii. 2, 3 ; 1 John iii. 23).
2. The Doctrine of Paul. — It is the Apostle Paul who
has written most fully and deHberately about this matter
of sin, but we can only briefly describe this general point
of view. Of course he looks upon all mankind as under
sin. He cannot admit that the Jews escape condem-
nation on the ground that they were a privileged people,
because they were confronted with the full force and
exposed to the terrific condemnation of the divine law
given through inspired law-givers and prophets (Rom.
ii.-iii. 19). Nor can he admit that the Gentiles escape
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condemnation on the ground that they had no specific
revelation of that law of God, because their own social
habits and practices show that conscience gave them
light. Do their lives show that they have fulfilled the
law " written in their hearts " ? Except in one passage
(Rom. V. 13-21) he does not refer to the historical origin
of sin, and in that passage his main interest is to find an
illustration of the relation in which Christ stands to the
new Humanity of which He is the head. Through Adam
sin entered into the world, and by his trespass the many
died. There is much in these statements with which
subsequent theology became deeply concerned ; but Paul
does not enlarge on the subject, and we had better not
make him responsible for any conclusions we may base
upon this passage regarding the fall of man and original
sin.
We shall best understand what Paul, as a believer in
Christ and an Apostle of his gospel, taught about sin by
looking at it in the light of a few of the great words which
he used so freely and powerfully, such as law, grace,
flesh, spirit, death, righteousness, life, etc. These were
never used by him with the precision and under the
limitations of technical terms. He was living in a great
creative period, and the new era was taking its rise
largely through the work of Christ's Spirit upon his
conscience and mind. We find him, therefore, applying
words which were already familiar in the religious life of
his days, to the new and mighty experiences which God
had wrought upon his own and other souls. This he does
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
with the freedom and energy of a master of thought and of
language, and not with the mere invariabiHty of a pedant
or a scholastic. For example, the word " sin " itself is
now described as a quaHty of human action (Rom. ii. 12),
and anon as a kind of spiritual force personified, a
potentate (v. 21, vi. 14), a slave holder (vi. 6, 20), an ahen
tyrant using the members of the body as the instruments
of his fatal power, and estabUshing there a law of its own
(vii. 23, viii. 2). It is at once a state in which all men find
themselves (iii. 9), and an attribute of the individual acts
of each man when he transgresses the laws of righteousness
(iii. 25, iv. 7). So free is the energy of his style, the
insight of his mind.
(1) Sin and Law. — In the eyes of the Apostle it is
manifest that sin is co-extensive with human Hfe. It
was in the world before " the law," the historic revelation
of the will of God in the Old Testament history, was given,
even from Adam to Moses. This is proved by two facts,
the presence of death, which is the fruit of sin, and the
working of conscience among those who have not the law.
There is therefore in Paul's view a law before the Mosaic
law (Rom. ii. 12-16) which carries with it the authority of
the will of God. But " the law," the express revelation
of His will, was given to the Jews from the faithfulness
of God, and this was a supreme privilege and oppor-
tunity for that race (Rom. iii. 1-3). The giving of a law
ought to be like the giving of life (vii. 10), since it not
only reveals that will which ought to be obeyed, but also
announces the rewards of obedience and the penalties of
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THE FINAL FAITH
disobedience. But, as a matter of fact, the law encoun-
tered an enemy mightier than itself already seated on the
throne of man's heart. " The law was weak through the
flesh " (viii. 3). Nay more, as the law continued to be
pressed upon man's attention it seemed to aggravate the
sinful conditions (v. 20, vii. 13 ; Gal. iii. 19). The light,
as it fell in upon one chamber after another, displayed
failure and transgression and shame in them all. It
seemed like a curse this disturber of man's immoral
peace, like a betrayer of innocence this voice which
brought aU men under guilt. " By the law is the know-
ledge of sin " (Rom. iii. 20). But this terrible function
of the law, when announced as the inexorable will of God,
was the best preparation for Christ (Gal. iii. 19-25). By
introducing into the world a higher view of God's demands
upon man and a deeper sense of man's native inability
to meet those demands, the need of a Saviour was made
clear. No man who has felt the sting of sin can do aught
but welcome the sound of a Redeemer's voice.
(2) Sin and Flesh. — Another aspect of sin is brought
out by Paul's use of the antithetic terms " flesh " and
" Spirit," especially in such passages as Romans vi.-viii.
and Galatians vi. 13-24. There we find those two words
used to describe the double nature of man. In the lower,
" the flesh," sin has its seat of power and is able to repress
all attempts of the higher principle to obtain full control
of life. Of course the word " flesh " must not be re-
stricted merely to the physical frame and its appetites,
for the works of the flesh include forms of sin, such as
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
covetousness (Rom. vii. 7), sorcery, jealousy, and others
(Gal. V. 20) which do not properly have their seat in
animal passion, but in those desires which are stirred by
the powers of the mind. And yet the word flesh is con-
veniently used as describing at once that main centre,
or the lower part of us, around which the evil will tends
to gather its interests, and that terrible revenge of a
wronged nature by which that lower part becomes the
dominating force in a human character, instead of the
obedient and pliant instrument of " the spirit," the nobler
intellectual and moral seK. Sin is therefore the whole
state of disorder into which the dominion of the flesh
throws the natural relations of our complex being.
(3) Sin and Grace. — Another aspect is brought out
by the Apostle's contrast of man's sin with the grace
of God. The breaking of the law of righteousness has
thrown man into a condition both of guilt and helpless-
ness. That he is guilty means that he has done what
is wrong, and that he must encounter the appropriate
consequences. That he is helpless means that no
conceivable efforts of his own can ever lift him out
of this condition. Man cannot put himself right with
God, because, if he attempts it by fulfilment of the law,
he finds himself involved in a deeper sense of guilt the
further that law penetrates with its holy fight into his
heart. And his fellow-men help his defeat, for self-
redemption can be no mere individual matter achieved
in isolation. A man depends on his social inheritance,
and no man has yet found a mode of life among his
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fellows in which he can clear himself of sin. He con-
tinues to share the imperfect ideals and the unhallowed
impulses of his " set," his race, and his generation.
Paul seems to have felt this even when his " set " pro-
nounced him blameless (Phil. iii. 3-6, cf. Rom. vii.
7—10). But Paul understood the situation only
when " a righteousness " (Rom. iii. 21), a way of
getting right with God, had appeared to him as the
act and gift of God Himself. The grace of God had
suddenly lifted him into new relations with the moral
universe. That grace was simply the holy will of God
showing itseK as an immeasurable love. This was
done for Paul and for all men in the Person
and Work of Christ, and in the universal offer of the
mercy of God, the forgiving and dehvering power of
God. Henceforth this offer of the mercy, the personal
love of God, becomes the fundamental law of the Hfe
of man. It reveals the hideous nature of sin as even
the law could not do. None know sin as do those who
have looked into the heart of mercy. From that centre
there streams such purity, such love, that the conscience
is at once appalled and encouraged. Sin stands revealed
as a quahty of the human will which can never be
cleansed except by an act of sheer forgiveness, and
only the will of God can do that. The Cross alone proves
what that mode, the only conceivable mode, of destroy-
ing the sin of man without destroying man has cost
Him from whose love beyond all our dreams of love
His Son came forth to heal and hallow our great woe.
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
And in that case a new form of sin has been made
possible whenever this grace of God is itself directly,
deUberately, and permanently rejected. This must be
the nature of the deepest, the last, the eternal sin.
VI. The Modern Situation.
These, then, are the elements of the Christian view of
that moral evil which, as we saw, is present everywhere
in the experience of man. We cannot here enter upon
the great discussions of the nature of sin which have
arisen in the course of Christian theology. But a few
words must be said about the present situation of this
doctrine.
1. Sources of Attach on the Bible Doctrine. — There
are three sources from which attack is made upon it :
(1) First, the doctrine of evolution has been used by
some to prove that sin is a natural stage in the progress
of man from the immoral to the spiritual realms of Hfe.
It is the dominance of the lower and selfish appetites
over the higher power of forming social and unselfish
ideals. (2) Second, the conception of the beneficence
of God, whether called His Fatherhood or not, has
been used to still the fear of penalty and assuage
the pangs of repentance. If God chooses, it is urged.
He can pardon sin on any conditions which He may
ordain. An atonement is an impossible device, and its
invention by the perverse ingenuity of the Apostles
was an unnecessary and burdensome addition to the
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sweet and persuasive and comfortable message of Jesus.
(3) Third, we have the subtle opiate of pantheism,
working in various forms. It appears in some sects
of theology, in much of what is called New Thought,
and even underHes Christian Science. Whenever it is
said " Grod is all, and all is good " ; whenever we are
bidden to crush sin by ceasing to fear it, by merely
forming habits of thought which deny it or ignore it ;
whenever we are urged not to deal with it as a matter
between us and the holy will of a personal God, but
to cultivate " healthy-minded " freedom from dread or
sorrow or penitence of soul, we are in the presence of a
pantheistic view of the universe. That way disaster
lies, the lowering of personality in us by denying it in
God, the impoverishing of morality by the removal of
a judgment throne, the withering of love by the removal
of the atoning cross from the centre of history and
from the heart of God.
2. So-called Evolutionary Explanation of Sin. —
Much is being written at present regarding the origin
of sin with a view to a clearer understanding of its
nature. Especially are ejfforts being made to explain
it, as we have said above, in the light of evolution. Sin
marks that stage, we are told, in the development of
our world at which reason and the power of living by
ideals appeared in human nature. Then the appetites
which belong to the animal part of man became the
means of sin. In themselves they are not sinful, but
pure and beneficent, and indeed necessary to the very
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
existence and development of the animal world. Even
in man they only become sinful, because man ceases
to use them for their true and restricted ends. He
turns them from social and racial purposes to private
pleasures. Hunger, which is pure, becomes greed,
which is sinful. Sleep becomes sloth. The sense of
power becomes tyranny. SeK-love becomes selfishness,
and self-respect pride. It is from this point of view that
the absurd, smart saying arose that sin is the mark of
" the Fall upwards," an incident in the ascent of man.
There is a certain amount of valuable truth in all
this, and henceforth theology must take account of it.
But as a real explanation of the nature of sin it is quite
futile. It helps us to understand vice and crime, or
social disorder. It is of some value in the psychology
of sinful habit and conduct. But its failure to explain
sin arises from the fact that the term " sin " has no
meaning outside of the religious consciousness. It is
amazing to read discussions of the matter which com-
pletely ignore the modern history and philosophy of
religion, which only touch the religious view of sin after
all these evolutionary commonplaces have been set
down, when the attempt is being made to relate them
with Christianity.
The fact is, that the sense of sin begins, like all ele-
ments of human consciousness, in dim, confused, and
vague forms, but always in the religious atmosphere.
Sin, as a scientifically used term, cannot be applied
except to the sense of broken relations, of " something
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THE FINAL FAITH
wrong," between a man (or a tribe), and the invisible
power (or powers) whom he (or the tribe) worships.
Even conscience, or the moral consciousness, when
taken merely in its social aspect, does not give us the
clue to sin, unless that consciousness is viewed, as Kant
viewed it, as a function of the religious nature of man.
It is only when man is aware, however dully, of his
relation to a power, a judge, an owner, a master, however
poorly conceived, to whom he is responsible and on
whose will his happiness depends, that the fact called
sin takes its place in history. That consciousness can
now be traced along the trunk hne of rehgious develop-
ment from its crude origins in Chaldea and Arabia to
its full understanding in the souls of Christian Apostles
and the saints whom their message has created.
3. Sin and Man^s Place in Nature. — It remains to
say a few words on that with which we set out, namely,
the fact and problem of evil. (1) First, we may repeat
in a word that modern science forbids us to attribute to
the natural world the amount of evil, in the form of
suffering, which it has been the custom of many to see
there. And further, science teaches us to regard physical
pain as an instrument which a wise Providence may
use for worthy ends. (2) Secondly, the vast sorrow and
hideous sufferings of humanity must be looked at in
the Hght of that rational freedom which is the divinely
ordained basis of his nature, and of that sin which he
has made the abnormal basis of his Ufe.
(1) The Invasion of Nature. — We must remember
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
that it is because man has freedom and reason that he
is able to put himself in a deeper relation than that of
mere animals, with the infinite intricacies and forces of
nature. He invades the ordered events of the world,
he seeks to rearrange its facts elaborately for his own
ends. He builds his cities on swamps, and pestilence
ensues. He builds them again and again where earth-
quakes have occurred and will occur, and encounters
the repeated desolations of Messina and San Francisco.
He penetrates the quiet fields with his mines, half
knowing and half careless of the facts, and ruinous
explosions sometimes reward his daring. He sows his
seed generation after generation, cuts down the forests,
and then sees rainless skies above his head, an exhausted
soil under his feet, and famine at his door. What does
it all mean ? Not that God has put man into a hostile
world to torture him, nor that God has no control for
His own final purposes of the order which He has created.
But this, that the history of man even in his relations
with nature is a co-partnery with God. God, for His
own blessed ends, has created man with free will and
reason, as his co-worker. And behold how vast are
the changes on the surface of our world which man is
making ! There will soon be found no spot on earth
which is not more or less humanised, clothed with new
meaning and even changed in its appearance for man's
ends and in man's taste. But into this work man
carries his whole moral nature, and the fortunes which
he encounters are the results of his character as well
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THE FINAL FAITH
as of his reason striving to master the powers of nature.
And the work itself is reacting on his character as well
as gradually unfolding the infinite resources of his
reason. Is not this the end which God had in view
when the foundations of our world were laid ?
(2) The Cost of Freedom. — But when God chose to
create a free moral being who should at last attain
to full and unspeakable and eternal fellowship with
Himself, He created a nature with whose laws He must
Himself henceforth reckon. God can no more treat
man as a mere thing, and compel him to be good or
happy, than He can treat a stone as an angel to give
it wings of light and songs of a happy heart. The
righteousness, the hohness of God, demands that He
shall treat a stone as a stone and free man as free man.
This means that in the working out of human destiny by
man's uses of nature and worship of God, the laws of
those two sets of relations must be fully and constantly
and at all costs observed. There shall be joy and pain,
defeat and victory, thrilling delight and black, dull woe,
as man in his moral freedom invades the harmonious
unity of nature for his own ends, and as he invades the
presence of God with his prayers and tears, his rebellion
or his trust. In the exercise of his freedom man has
sinned. When and how this situation arose does not
much matter. It is here, a real and most desolate
fact. The mystery of it lies in the free will of man,
and the mystery of that in the supreme will and final
purpose of God. It is the factor of sin in human con-
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THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SIN AND EVIL
sciousness which casts its shadow on death, which
makes suffering hideous, which therefore renders the
death and suffering of all sentient creatures darker in
man's view than they really are for them. It is this
defect in his moral nature which hinders, diverts, and
misuses his rational power over nature. A purer race will
aboHsh pestilence, reduce accident to a minimum, and
learn to see inevitable pain and even death steadily in
the light of the indisputable love and mighty wisdom
of God.
(3) Sin and the Gospel. — That purer race is being
produced by the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The
gospel reveals God in a personal relation with the evil
of history of which no religion has ever had any con-
ception. He is not a blind energy submerged in the
mass which it propels on a dark course toward an un-
known end, any more than He is a cold and transcendent
Deity living in remote blessedness beyond the waves
and tumults of pain and sin. He has entered into
human life, has made its experience His own, has been
" made perfect through suffering," has " tasted death
for every man." This is the sublime message, this the
miracle above all miracles, which the final religion is
carrying to our hearts. The pantheist of the Orient
will be roused from his despair by the fresh hope which
this fact gives to every individual and the glory it sheds
on the lowliest of the sons of men. The Mohammedan
will be subdued to a new sweetness of faith, a new
purity in his hope, by this conquering word of grace,
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THE FINAL FAITH
mightier than the sword of Islam. Evil is transmuted
for the man of faith, as by a divine alchemy, from a
leaden doom to a golden weapon of blessing. And
this is done because the root of evil in man's heart,
sin, has been condemned on the Cross and is being
swept out of individual conscience swiftly, out of social
life gradually, by the indwelling Spirit of the holy and
wise and mighty God of Love and Life.
140 —
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION.
TTTE have seen that the Christian religion frankly and
^ ^ earnestly looks on the condition of human nature
as one of sin. It is not blind to the fact of suffering, nor
deaf to the woeful cries of bereavement and defeat.
But it does deal more firmly and directly than any
previous religion with that element which underlies all
our experience and which it denominates without
paUiation or subterfuge as sin. The state of sin is,
as we have seen, one in which the soul is consciously
separated from God. This separation is of course not
physical nor even metaphysical. For God is and
must be the support of our bodily and our mental
organism and life from the first moment to the last ;
we all " five and move and have our being in Him."
It is a moral separation, a breach in the mutual fellowship
of the Creator of all with His rational and responsible
creatures, of Father and children. That this moral
rupture can continue indefinitely without reacting on
the physical and intellectual life of man is inconceivable.
The nature of man is a unity, and a disaster so central
as this must wreak its doom on the whole round of his
^ 141 -^
THE FINAL FAITH
being, and become manifest in every aspect of his
active and conscious life.
We have seen, further, that sin is reaHsed in definite
sins. We call it a state because it is in all men at first
a form of the moral consciousness, an inner relation
of the conscious self to God ; but it could not be a real
state unless it were expressed and defined in action.
Indeed, it is usually in and through the sinful colour
of his positive deeds that a man discovers himself to be
in a state of sin. And finally, this whole set of conditions,
amid which an Apostle must write, " there is none
righteous, no not one," involves the dread facts of penalty
and doom. The being that is made capable of living
in harmony and union with God, in a universe which
is by its very nature built to bless and sustain that
harmony, must find that the order of things is against
him when he transgresses the conditions of that relation-
ship. Hence at every point sin receives its inevitable
fruitage of pain and at last of death.
This being the situation to which the universal con-
sciousness bears witness with essential unanimity, though
in varying phrase and temper, we must see how the
religion which professes to be absolute and final, and
therefore of universal power and authority, proposes to
deal with it.
I. The Substance of Salvation.
We shall first consider the nature of that deliverance
which Christianity offers to a sinful and a sorrowful race.
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
And it will conduce to clearness if we begin by emphasis-
ing its difference from certain other methods which have
been proposed. (1) It is, of course, thoroughly distinct
from the Buddhist method, which rests upon the idea
that the root of that woe which pervades the entire
universe of sentient beings is existence itself and the
will to Hve. Christianity opposes to this the directly
contrary doctrine. It offers life, and Hfe more abund-
antly. It proposes to make existence a very joy, to fill
the cup of human nature with an experience which is
all-pure and all-blessed and everlasting. (2) It also
departs from all those methods which are associated
with the mysteries of Greece and the so-called " oc-
cultist " proceedings of some Hindu sects. The mere
development of psychic powers, even if possible, has no
influence on a man's relations with God, nor any necessary
influence for good on his moral character. For the very
essence of the reUgious problem of man, as viewed in
the New Testament, is to be found in the personal
relations of God and man. The moral issue is primary
and supreme. (3) The gospel stands in stark contrast
with the message of Mohammed in this, that it is a
message of redemption and that it is based upon a deed
of sacrifice on the cross in which the eternal God Himself
was both the agent and the subject. The might of
God is engaged on behalf of man in and through His
sympathy, as well as His righteousness, His mercy in
historic deeds of salvation as well as His severity in
judgment.
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THE FINAL FAITH
It will be convenient for our present purpose to set
forth the substance of the Christian salvation under
three heads, the first of which will be more fully treated
than the others.
1. Forgiveness of Sins. — In the first place, it offers
and confers the forgiveness of sins.
{1) In the Gospels. — The Gospels make it plain that
in the ministry of Jesus this divine act occupies a most
prominent and challenging position. The Synoptic
Gospels describe with unanimous care the incident of
the healing of the paralytic (see Mark ii. 3-12), when
Jesus not only put the forgiveness of sins in a place of
importance above that of heahng a fell disease, but
claimed that this was the very work which He had
authority to do upon the earth. Indeed, when he first
began His ministry. He took up the message of the
prophet John as his starting-point, and preached that
repentance which has no motive and no issue unless it
be accompanied and blessed by pardon (Mark i. 4, 14, 15).
Although there is no mere iteration of a formula in His
great and creative ministry, although He deals broadly
and sympathetically, and therefore differently, with
the men and women who come into contact with Him,
yet He never obscures the fact that their deepest relation
is with God, and the deepest element in that relation
is moral. No man can face the Father through Jesus
without feeling immediately that his conscience has
been excited to intense activity, and that the ethical
issues are foremost as well as supreme. This is the
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
point at which, subjectively, the absolute union of
ethics and reUgion is for ever established by Christianity.
It is the point from which ceremonialism and an unholy
occultism both shrink back in hatred and scorn ; of this
the cases of Simon the Pharisee (Luke vii. 36-50) and
Simon Magus (Acts viii. 9-24) are good illustrations. The
former case was dealt with by Jesus in words of tender
and immortal beauty. He defended the unconventional
gratitude of the woman, not because she was a sinner
of a certain type, but because she was a sinner ; and
He conveyed to Simon the warning that his first need
was a forgiveness which might break open the pent-in
love of his heart, and that he had as great need of for-
giveness as she. Self -righteousness and self-abandon-
ment to passion are both the enemies of love. The
one starves it in an iron-bound cell, the other murders
it in a garden of luxury. The only deliverer and restorer
of love is the word of forgiveness from the heart of
God.
(2) In the Apostolic Message. — The story of the
Apostolic Church carries from city to city the new great
word " forgiveness." It is new not in its syllables and
outward sound, nor in its mere lexical meaning. But
it is new as the very heart of good tidings from God to
man which were made possible on the Cross and wit-
nessed by the Resurrection of Jesus. The Apostle
Peter found himself proclaiming it under the over-
mastering aiflatus of Pentecost ; and henceforth he and
the rest of the brethren went out farther and farther
lo — 145 —
THE FINAL FAITH
into the world, announcing that Jesus is the Christ, and
that every one who beheves on Him " shall receive
remission of sins." In the writings of Paul and of John,
and of course in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the fact is
the same. While the first-named Apostle is, hke his
Master, free from narrow bondage to words and has varied
ways of approaching the soul, he is never for a moment
untrue to, or neglectful of, the vital and central im-
portance of this experience. Indeed, by a natural
reaction of thought he does once speak as if for-
giveness of sins were a phrase which summed up
the whole meaning and power of our redemption
(Col. i. 14.).
(3) The Meaning of Forgiveness. — In the idea of
forgiveness two elements are present, one negative
and the other positive. According to the former, sin
ceases to be the determiner of relations between God
and man. God as it were wipes out the record of wrong
deeds, removes them from over the man's head as far as
east is from the west. He does not deal with that man
now and henceforth as a guilty man. According to
the latter element, God takes the penitent into His
glorious fellowship. Henceforth he is to be thought
of in our heart, and he is to the heart of God as a son
at home, as a lost treasure recovered to the joys and
uses of its owner. His past is no longer to intrude its
shadow, a shadow which is more soHd and high than
Alpine barriers, between his heart and God, between
his thought of God and the deep joy of that name. In
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
the language of Paul, he is now " justified " or reckoned
and dealt with as righteous, as standing in right relations
with God (Rom. iv. ; Gal. iv.).
(4) Removal of Penalty. — It is evident that in this
great act the first and fundamental penalty of sin,
from which all others flow according to spiritual and
natural law, has been abolished. Separation from
God, alike in His will and in man's will, is at an end,
and a union is established from which henceforth the
whole fife is to take its direction and meaning, its spirit
and power. It is true that many of the penalties of
past sin remain, and their bitterness must continue
to be experienced. But even that fact is transmuted
from a curse into a blessing. HumiHty and patience
are deepened, faith is nourished by this constant demand
upon its exercise, peace is sought and possessed amid
the din of the Holy War. And the man of faith is
inspired to hold that the mighty wisdom and grace of
God can gradually work out of his own life, and from
the lives of those whom he has wronged, the last trace
of his hideous past. The horrid and un-Christian doc-
trine that we must carry the scars of our sins for ever
upon our persons and in our memories, which is some-
times illustrated in the shallowest way by smatterers
in physiology and psychology, is to be rejected as an
insult to God and as an injury to many a perturbed
conscience. The forgiveness of sins is a complete act
of the love of God, and its whole wondrous, pure, and
blessed issues are to be read only in the deepest out-
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THE FINAL FAITH
cries of a sincere penitence and the vast claims of a
measureless trust.
2. Deliverance from the Power of Sin. — But these
words are taking us over into our next topic. The
Christian salvation implies deUverance from the
dominion of sin and evil. Both words must be used
here for reasons contained in our discussion of sin in
another chapter. The dominion of sin is much referred
to by the Apostle Paul, alike as a fact of human experi-
ence and as a matter with which the gospel is qualified
to deal most powerfully. In his famous seventh chapter
of Romans he sets forth the inward and fruitless struggle
by which a man tries to rid himself of sin when he is
confronted with the whole claim and quahty of the
divine law. He is not considering the case of those
who have formed to themselves ideals of manhood and
conduct, no doubt often noble and high, and have set
themselves to follow rules of virtue and seK-respect.
Happily, the number of those is not inconsiderable,
and their attainments are among the most moving
glories of the story of man. He has in view the con-
science which is searched by the law of God, the heart
which is trying to match itself against the claims of a
righteousness both living and real, penetrating and
relentless. In that presence every man confesses that
Paul wrote of every man when he said, " To will is
present with me, but to do that which is good is not.
To me who would do good, evil is present." The bitter
cry, "Who shall deliver me out of the body of this
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
death ? " which he uttered, he also answered for us
all. The dominion of sin has been broken by the coming
of Christ. Through Him new relations to God are
established which include this, that the Spirit of God,
the blessed and wonderful indwelling of God Himself,
enters into a man's heart. Henceforth that man,
acting in new relations with God and the whole moral
universe, lives from new motives, for new ends. He
is a renewed man, a regenerate soul (John iii. 3 ; Eph.
ii. 5, iv. 23, 24 ; 2 Cor. v. 17). His habits of thought are
changed, for he minds the things of the Spirit (Rom.
viii. 5, etc.). His instinctive feeUngs rise as out of a
new well, and graces appear in his tone and temper,
words and ways, which look like fruit of a heavenly
power (Gal. v. 22). The Epistles teem with illustrations
of this wonderful freedom from the thraldom of habitual
sin, of moral blindness, of self-seeking and self-will (Rom.
vi. 12-14).
3. The Immortal Life. — The general idea of salvation
in the New Testament includes not only the giving
of fellowship with God and release from the slavery
of sin, but also the possession of eternal life.
(1) Eternal Life. — It is true that this phrase does
often refer to the quaUty of life rather than its duration,
but the latter element is never excluded, and indeed
is always implied. From no use of it in the New Testa-
ment can the idea of permanence be withdrawn without
wrecking its whole beauty and power. Nor can the
phrase be so etherealised as to extrude the element of
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THE FINAL FAITH
personality. It is personal immortality with which
the New Testament is concerned. It knows nothing of
such mock immortahties as that which is said to con-
sist in joining " choirs invisible," when in the same
breath it is alleged that these choirs are not vivid, in-
tense, and triumphant souls, but only the posthumous
influences of gracious and beneficent lives that have
ceased for ever upon the night. On these influences
the Christian message lays a new and splendid emphasis,
just because it conceives of all human Uves as passing
on, each self unshorn of its selfhood, revealed in its
true and everlasting reaHty, into realms of fuller action
and vaster experience.
(2) Moral Power of the Christian Hope. — The New
Testament teaching about the future Hfe is among the
most remarkable, because most potent and most joyous,
of all its creative gifts to the human consciousness.
With all their usual characteristic differences, these
apostoHc writers agree in certain fundamental features
of their doctrine. They Hved in a world where much
was said and thought about the underworld to which
the souls of men were hurried at death. To most that
was a mere region of shadows, and vain yearnings ; to
none was it a Hving and purifying and inspiring hope.
Christianity alone made it that. It taught that Christ
had opened the gates of Ufe to all behevers. As His
resurrection was a pledge to His disciples of His un-
broken union with them, that union again was a pledge
of their unbreakable union with Him, of their ultimate
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
share in His resurrection glory. The region beyond
death was made definite, imaginable, glorious for their
faith and love by the Person of the Risen Christ. All
vagueness, uncertainty, gloom had vanished from the
thought of that which follows death. It was replaced
by the certainty that the real and everlasting Lord,
Jesus Christ, most human and most divine, would, nay
must by a moral necessity, bring the men, in whose
very hearts He reigned supreme, to the full fruition
of their hopes. " We shall see Him," was the song of
their hps. " To depart and be with Christ " was the
strong desire which made prison cells the vestibules of
the heavenly palace, and martyr fires the rapture of
their souls by His victorious hands. Over the whole
range of the human earthly life their hope, literalljra new
hope, shed its ennobhng and purifying light. A new
sanctity was seen in human ties, a new grandeur in
human responsibility. If for a time in the post- Apostolic
Church natural misinterpretation and unhealthy en-
thusiasm seemed to rob this world of meaning, and the
vast importance of earthly history grew small, that only
proves how mighty and real was the deliverance which
the non-Christian spirit experienced when it passed
into the Christian faith, how glorious was this sense
of rebound from age-long despair to the intensity of this
consciousness of eternal Ufe which was possessed by each
heart in Jesus Christ.
To sum up, it may be said that the substance of
the Christian salvation consists, on the one hand, in
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THE FINAL FAITH
a conscious union with God, union which is realised
not in ecstasies, but in the open moral fellowship of a
penitent, trustful man with the holy and merciful will
of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. On
the other hand, it consists in the positive assurance of
personal triumph over all evil. The word evil must
here be used in its widest meaning to include sin working
through the flesh, misfortune and human sorrow work-
ing through natural and social events to bruise the
heart and daunt the faith, and death itself. " In all
these things we are more than conquerors " is the
assertion of the spirit that has tasted the great salvation
and enjoys the peace of God. Nothing can be named or
conceived which can " separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. viii. 31-38).
That is Christian salvation. (Compare with Rom. viii. ;
2 Cor. iv. 7-v. 10, xi. 21-xii. 10; Heb. xii. 1-13;
1 Pet. iii. 8-iv. 5 ; John xvi. 1-33 ; Revelation).
II. The Divine Acts of Salvation.
The Christian religion is separated by an immeasur-
able distance from all others, in that here alone God
is found to have wrought out the glorious salvation
described above by unique, direct, immediate action
of His own on the plains of human history. Others,
like Hinduism and Buddhism, may try to discover and
describe psychological disciplines and moral machinery
by which the soul is supposed to evolve its own deliver-
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
ance, or like Mohammedanism set forth the law of
God as a pathway by which the righteous may travel
towards His far-off throne in the unseen. But the
gospel of Christ alone presents God as having entered
upon the limitations of human experience, that He
might in His own incarnate Ufe reconstruct from their
very foundations the right moral relations of humanity
with HimseK, and on those establish the transcendent
experience of actual, conscious fellowship with Himself.
The essential condition for this Divine work was of
course created in the act of Incarnation which has
been discussed in an earlier chapter. Without resuming
that discussion, it will be enough here to remind our-
selves that the primary or real end of the Incarnation
was to estabHsh not only physical or intellectual,
but moral relations between God and man. The essence
of the great act Hes in this, that the Divine Person does
not merely watch the experience of human beings, how-
ever sympathetically or understandingly ; nor even,
if we may dare to put it so, does the Absolute Con-
sciousness remain content with its experience as the
Creator of human nature, as the Lord of human history,
the product and object and burden of His eternal will.
There is a further and awful step by which the Eternal
Self willed to taste human experience from the human
side, to know it as the created, dependent, growing, strug-
gling, attaining human spirit alone can know it. That
step was taken when the Son of God laid aside the
form of God, when the Word became flesh. Henceforth
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THE FINAL FAITH
Grod knows both sides of the fact of man, as it appears
to the Creator and Lord of All and as it appears to the
creature in his submissive dependence.
This sublime act of God derives its glory from the
purpose which prompted it, the great and holy love
for man in his sin, in the disaster which had overtaken
his soul. Through the Incarnation an end was to be
achieved, a work to be done, which was possible in no
other way. This work may be considered under three
heads, Atonement, Resurrection, and Impartation of
the Holy Spirit. These taken together are the divine
acts which constitute the substance of the gospel of
Christ, and which produce in receptive man the sub-
stance of salvation described above.
1. The Atonement. — This word is used in Christian
theology to describe the At-one-ment or making one
of man and God through the work of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and especially through His sacrifice on the
Cross.
(1) The Gospels and the Death of Christ. — The mere
fact that we have the four Gospels before us, and that
one of them was written by Luke, the close companion
of the Apostle Paul on so many of his journeys, proves
that the early Apostles did not fail to appreciate the
surpassing value of the earthly ministry and especially
of the teaching of Jesus. There is not an Epistle which
is not saturated with its influence even where verbal
connection cannot be traced. But even the Gospels
reveal the exceptional importance which the ApostoUc
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
Church as a whole, as well as those authors, assigned to
the death and resurrection of Jesus by the exceptional
fulness and force with which these events are described.
With marvellous care and veracity the narratives reveal
to us the attitude of the various personaHties engaged
in those portentous scenes. We must name here only
the steady, unsurprised, masterful will of Jesus. That
He is engaged in a task which shakes His soul to the
depths, that for Him the way to the Cross is a long
agony whose elements are not those of a calm and
triumphant martyrdom, is thrown into startling per-
spective by His air of majesty, by the evidence that
His will is not being overmastered by the feeble ingenu-
ities and plots and malignities of men, but is guided
by the purpose of the Father and His own complete
absorption in that purpose.
In his own teaching it would seem that He
had said little about the final meaning of His
death. Two sayings, to which we have already
referred, are, however, expHcit and sufiicient. One
word from him who is engaged in a great work
may be all we need to reveal what that work is for
his own mind, the end he has in view and the reason
for his method. When, therefore, Jesus says that the
Son of Man had come in order to serve humanity even
to the extent of giving His life as a ransom for many,
and that His body would be broken for His disciples,
His blood shed to estabhsh the New Covenant, we have
the fullest light thrown upon His own purpose as He
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THE FINAL FAITH
went through such agony with such majestic power.
By means of His sacrificial death He intended to recon-
struct the relations of God and man. If we accept
those words as His, if we believe that at the very centre
of the whole matter His disciples cannot have com-
pletely misunderstood and misrepresented His mind,
then in those last scenes we must behold the Son of God
and Son of Man as it were getting within and under the
whole moral system in which God and man are related,
and transforming it by the fact that He died as He
did, in full consciousness of the reasons and issues of
His sublime deed.
(2) The Apostles and the Cross. — When we turn
to the Acts and Epistles, we find that His purpose has
been fulfilled. Men do Hve in new and hitherto un-
dreamt of relations with the eternal and all-holy God.
Christ incarnate and on the Cross has actually made
the infinite change. There is no difference of opinion
among modern scholars about the place which the
Apostles assign to that redeeming death. They all
speak of it as connected in the deepest and most vital
way with the forgiveness of sin and entrance upon
the life of reconciliation with God (Gal. 3 ; Rom. 3 ;
Heb. ix. X. ; 1 John 4). In a large number of cases
they refer in a general and yet definite manner to the
fact that He died on our behalf, that He bore our sins, that
in His death God condemned sin and revealed righteous-
ness, that in this act — the central act in the relations of
God to human history — God revealed or made avail-
- is6-
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
able for the appropriation of men a divine, complete,
and life-giving righteousness. In some cases they
use language which is in harmony with the word " ran-
som " used by Jesus in Mark x. 45 (1 Cor. vi. 20,
vii. 23 ; 1 Pet. i. 18). In a much larger number they
associate the meaning and power of his work on the
Cross with the sacrificial system of the Old Testament,
often with special emphasis upon the shedding of His
blood, thus harmonising with that other great saying
of His at the Last Supper (Rom. iii. 25, 26 ; Gal.
iii. 10-18; Heb. ix. x. ; "blood" in 1 Pet. i. 10; Rev. i. 5,
etc. ; " propitiation " in 1 John ii. 2, iv. 10, etc.).
(3) The Modern Dislike of this Doctrine. — Much of
the modern revolt against the doctrine of the Atone-
ment is due to the influence of two ideas. In the first
place, it has been too often described as if it were a kind
of legal formality, as if God had merely defended Him-
self before the law, an institution above His own will,
a bar at which even He must be tried for showing mercy
to man. In the second place, it has been too often
described as if sin and its penalties were quantities in
an account book which could be transferred by a legal
process from one person to another, as if the sinless Son
of God by enduring infinite penalties could cancel the
claims of the law against the infinite guilt of man.
It is clear that such ideas of the work of Atonement
are too easy, too superficial, to explain so great a deed.
And yet it is also clear that it would be as truly super-
ficial and easy-going to dismiss the whole matter as
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THE FINAL FAITH
absurd and morally impossible. The Christian experi-
ence of reconciHation with God is real and unique, and
its dependence upon the death of Christ not only per-
vades the entire, vast course of Christian history, but
is traceable to His own consciousness, to His own mind
and will through the Apostles whom He taught and
inspired. Somehow He did by His sacrifice on the
Cross really change the moral relations of God and man.
We must be content with a very brief statement of
the matter.
(4) The Cost of Righteousness in a World of Sin. —
When the gospel went forth it was the announcement to
all the world of the Fatherhood of God. In other words, it
was the announcement that God has willed to forgive the
sins of all who repent and put their trust in Him, and to
unite each believer with Himself in His own Spirit of life
and hoKness and love. But in this offer of mercy God is
deaUng with His own relations to the history of man, as
well as with man's historical relations with Him. What
are His moral relations with man ? They rise from His
original purpose to produce in human nature a kind of
righteousness which is only possible where free will exists,
and where the will, the character of God is loved and
chosen and obeyed at all costs and above all other attrac-
tions. This is the meaning of the kingdom of God, which
can be nothing else than a society of free spirits, of moral
beings, in each and all of whom His own holy nature is
perfectly reflected. Throughout the history of man's
conscience and His deaUngs with man's character, that
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
has been the object of God. But since man has sinned,
the fulfilment of that glorious end can only be accom-
plished through an initial act on God's side of forgive-
ness which shall produce, on man's side, repentance and
trust. Manifestly this cannot be done in a mere verbal
offer. Words alone have no weight with conscience, for
in conscience one self faces another self in concrete
relations. It must have deeds in which the very self is
given, in which the very relations are estabHshed which
words shall henceforth describe and urge. Words open
doors, but deeds rear the structures, the shrine of the
Spirit, to which they admit. The word of the gospel
presupposes some living relation of which it is the expres-
sion, some act of God which burns its way to passionate
utterance through hearts upon whom its weight and
glory fell. This act we have in the offering of Christ.
But that deed on the Cross was the fulfilment of
righteousness ! The eternal, primal ideal of God, so to
speak, concerning man was now an accomphshed fact.
No longer did he behold His idea of a righteous man and
actual man in direct contrast to one another. A free
will had now lived and died under human conditions
which had trusted, obeyed His will out of perfect love
and in face of the utmost trial. The Righteous Man
was at last a fact.
But, on the other hand, this great deed was conditioned
throughout its history by the presence and fact of human
sin. It was sin that brought the severest pressure to
bear upon that holy will of Jesus, sin that tempted Him,
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THE FINAL FAITH
opposed Him, betrayed Him, hated Him, condemned Him
through human hearts. He even seems to have tasted
that deepest and last of all the issues of sin, the sense of
derehction, the mysterious and awful desolation of soul
which made Him cry out, " My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me ? " In that darkness He tasted death
indeed, and yet held on in His way of trust, founding His
faith on God even when all reality seemed to slip from
under His soul. Christ paid the utmost price of righteous-
ness where all seemed fashioned and concentrated for its
destruction. In Him through that death on the Cross
God stands in a new, concrete relation both with the
righteousness which He had planned, and which the
human consciousness had failed to attain, and with the
sin which had become the real moral quality of man.
Sin had been endured by God in Christ, and
righteousness had been made real by God in Christ, and
each of them involved the other. In the very act of
proving, as Christ did, that there is nothing He would
not pay as the price of righteousness, He revealed in
the heart agonies of a Uving self the divine hatred and
eternal condemnation of sin. The eternal will is reahzed
in the temporal fact. Henceforth God lives in a new
relation with the moral history and nature of man.
(5) The Cost of Love for a World in Sin. — But this
strange story of the heart of God, this most wonderful
revelation of the character of God, not in general human
fortunes and not in prophetic utterances, but in an
experience which was God's own experience, in a deed
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
which was God's deed upon HimseK, within the con-
ditions of humanity, had a purpose beyond itself. " God
spared not His Son, but deHvered Him up for us all."
" God so loved the world that He gave His only-
begotten Son." If He has proved that there is no
price He would not pay for righteousness, and so con-
demned sin in the very act of realising that righteous-
ness, He has also proved that there is no price He will
not pay, save only righteousness itself, for love of the
sinner. Here we touch the incredible and inestimable
thing which we call mercy. For it is just conscience
itseK, with its sense of guilt, of utter unworthiness,
which finds an infinite difficulty in accepting the assur-
ance of the love of God. It is not the prevalence of
evil, not the mystery of suffering, which has thrown the
darkest shadow upon the name of God. It is the sense
of sin. From that has arisen the dread of God, the
conviction that He must, just because He is the holy
and righteous One, stand opposed for ever to the will that
had made sin its life and found in self instead of God the
spring and end of conduct. The awakened conscience
does not adopt the easy way of some modern theologians
and distinguish between sin and the sinner, concluding
that God sees them apart. Rather does it identify sin
and self so as to say and feel, " I am the sinner, with-
out me my sin would not exist. The stain and shame
rests on me, and not on a mere abstraction called sin.
The only way to destroy my sin is to destroy myseK,
for sin is the quality of my will in the actual relation in
II — i6i —
THE FINAL FAITH
which I have lived." It is upon the heart that so speaks
that the love of God falls from the Cross of Christ.
There is no explaining love, there can be no exposition
or defence of mercy. It flows from that in the very being
of God which is beyond the reach of reason, and could not
have been invented by the most daring imagination of
man. To grasp the love of God, before Christ, man must
have transcended the realm of conscience, have passed
beyond the judgment bar to invade the inviolate heart
of the Eternal, which was inconceivable and impossible.
But in the death of Christ, the Son of God, the reverse
movement has taken place. It is God who has invaded
the violated soul of man, who has brought the scene of
judgment upon the plane of history, and through the very
horror upon the Cross has revealed love for man, and
the will to take him into sonship and holy peace. That
work of reaUsing the Divine righteousness was not done
merely for its own sake, but that God might so reach the
heart through the conscience of man. The will to save
was in it all. Love for each and all of the sons of man, in
their uniform defeat and universal unworthiness, carried
the heart of Christ, the will of God in Him, through all
the agony and darkness. " He loved me and gave
Himself up for me " became henceforth the fact for all
men.
We have dehberately avoided Scriptural language
and the usual technical terms in these paragraphs, not
because they are false or inadequate, but in order
if possible to bring out this one fact, that on the Cross
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
God did actually assume new personal relations with
the fact of sin in the race of man. There was no for-
mahty. He was not bowing to the authority of a
power above Himself. He was not defending Himself
against the criticism of angels or of men for the offer of
pardon. He was making it possible to grant forgiveness
by entering personally into relations with the moral
history of man which are righteous and holy, and by
doing so from the motive of an eternal love and for the
purposes of a free and pure and cleansing mercy. But
when so much has been seen it becomes quite clear that
all the varied modes of New Testament illustration and
description of the atoning act are justified. He did suffer,
" the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring
us to God " (1 Pet. iii. 18). His blood was shed for the
remission of sins (Heb. ix. 14-22), and God set Him forth
in His blood as the object of our trust (Rom. iii. 25). He
did bear our sins in His own body on the tree, and by
His stripes we are healed. God did in Him, as an offering
for sin, condemn sin ; and He did it in the flesh, under
the conditions of a human experience where hitherto
sin had reigned supreme, rebuked by the law but
triumphant through the flesh, carried on and confirmed
by the mere momentum of human habit and organised
custom (Rom. viii. 3). Until these things were done
forgiveness could have no meaning but a bad one, and
the offer of it no attraction for the conscience of man.
But a pardon offered by God in his new relations with
the moral universe, based on the righteousness He has
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THE FINAL FAITH
made real in time, on the sin He has personally endured,
on the holy love from which His wondrous deed has
come, is a boon so pure and high and blessed that it
must break the proud self-will and release the stifled
yearnings of the soul of man for life in God.
2. The Resurrection. — The second stage in the work
of salvation was the Resurrection of Christ. He was
" raised again for our justification " (Rom. iv. 25). It
goes without saying that, so far as the records and all
the human probabiHties go, the Crucifixion would have
utterly destroyed the faith of the disciples. It was His
revelation as the Risen Christ which estabhshed His
Messiahship, defined and disclosed His eternal Sonship
(Rom. i. 4), and awoke that characteristic Christian
faith which has continued from that day to this. It is
right, of course, to emphasise the fact that if death is
a great fact in relation not only to man's physical but
also to his moral experience, then the Sinless One could
not be permanently held in its grasp. But it is also of
vital importance to grasp the idea that through the
process of resurrection Jesus completed the ideal of a
human Ufe. The Perfect Man stood realised and re-
vealed in all the quahties of perfection, physical and
natural, as well as moral and spiritual. For the universe
is one, and man's experience must ultimately be all of
a piece. The physical is no mere fleeting incident in
his relations. It is as real and as essential as any other
conditions of his active life. It too is part of the moral
order of God which we call the universe, and has part
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
and lot in the final outcome of all things (Rom. viii. ;
Col. i.). That is for ever made clear and sure and,
beyond all telling, a glad and glorious fact, in the
resurrection of Christ from the dead. He has won and
revealed the eternal destiny of human nature, and in
Him, again, risen from the dead, God stands in relations
to His created universe which are fundamentally new
and which enable His rational creatures to enter into
new relations with Him, apprehending their destiny
and working their conscious will into His grand scheme
of things.
3. The Gift of the Holy Spirit.— The third and final
element in this method of salvation is known as the
giving or sending of the Holy Spirit. Historically, as
we learn from the Acts of the Apostles (chaps, i. and ii.),
the consciousness of the disciples was not fully developed
into its Christian form, even after the revelation to
them of their Risen Lord. A great gladness was indeed
thrilhng their hearts, but there was a pause of ex-
pectancy. Something was still lacking, and they but
dimly reahsed it. With Pentecost the climax was fully
attained. That overwhelming experience became to
them the permanent assurance that God Himself, in
His Spirit, had verily united Himself with them as a
community and as individual souls. No longer were
they as forlorn spirits seeking rest and finding none ; no
longer as children in a darkened house feeUng about,
and in vain, for the reality and presence of God. In
their consciousness the human spirit and the Divine were
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THE FINAL FAITH
made one in the daylight of pure personal relations.
That fact is, as we have already seen, reflected through-
out the writings of the New Testament. Not in esoteric
terms is it described, nor is it reserved for a few and
rare souls whose leisure or opportunities might make
laboured and technical disciplines possible. This
supreme gift, the pouring of the Spirit of God into the
human heart, is offered to all men through repentance
and faith. Busy men continuing their daily toil, plain
and untutored women whose hearts are moved by the
story of Jesus and the vision of the divine grace, may
all know the fulness of the Christian salvation and
receive into humble, penitent, and trusting hearts the
indweUing of the Holy Spirit, the realised ineffable
union with God.
A final word should be said on one matter of practical
importance, both for individual faith and the preaching
of the gospel. That gospel should never be represented
as an abstract scheme, as a plan worked out to com-
pletion apart from human hearts, and then at last as a
completed whole thrust upon human attention. Christ
wrought out His salvation from step to step upon actual
living men and women. His earliest influences as the
Saviour of the world, when He began to manifest His
quaUty and Person, were exerted upon a group of people
with whom and upon whom the whole force of His whole
work was brought to bear. Stage by stage He carried
them with Him, so that His salvation never for a moment,
as it were, hung fire, but at each moment of its gradual
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THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF SALVATION
achievement and its unfolding took efEect upon that
little community and each member of it. It was an
organic process, a living, effectual act of God upon the
human consciousness throughout the necessary stages
by which it was wrought to its completion. God did
then and there create for Himself, and enter into new
personal or ethical relations with men, in such a way
that when all was done a community had been formed
in which the divine life was actually present. This
community knew itself to be organically united with
God through Jesus Christ, its living, actual, controlHng
Head. There was no salvation wrought out as an
abstract plan. A saved community, the Church of
Christ was created, henceforth to be in the world as
at once the sphere within which the power of God is
effective and the organ by which that power shall
transform the whole world.
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CHAPTER VII
THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
A MONG the many distinctive features of the
-^-^ Christian message to the world, we must place
its supreme emphasis upon the principle of faith.
There was always in the world, as we shall see, a certain
amount of faith, enough to keep some kind of gods
in view, enough to hold society together on its various
levels of civilisation. But nowhere in the history of
religion or of philosophic thought before Christ do we
j&nd that the real meaning and scope of faith had
been discovered. For instance, in the Old Testament
we have a certain emphasis upon the demand that the
people shall believe the messages of the prophets and
shall put their trust in the protecting power of Jehovah.
But nowhere save in a passing phrase, on which after-
wards the Apostle Paul eagerly seized (Hab. ii. 4; cf . Rom.
i. 17 ; Gal. iii. 11), do we find that this act of faith
in Jehovah or faithfulness to Him is selected from
the other elements of their rehgious consciousness
and set on the throne of supremacy. The rehgious life
of Israel was still under the power of ceremonies and
rites, of the effort to deserve the approval of God by
— i68 —
THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
meritorious sacrifices and legal obedience. Or, again,
in the philosophy of Greece, while we find that justice,
courage, temperance, and other virtues are emphasised,
none but an incidental reference can be found to that
mutual trust on which all solid cities are founded. But
in the New Testament, and throughout the history of
Christianity, faith comes to the front. It is discovered
to be the fundamental act by which man stands related
to God, the organ of the soul by which it lays hold of
the treasures of life offered in Christ.
I. The Teaching of Jesus about Faith
It was, of course, in the ministry of Jesus, and in
His full influence on the relations of His disciples to God,
that this principle first came to light and the Christian
faith was born! Jesus Himself nowhere expounds the
nature and working of faith. He does not formally
compare it with other methods of religious action, nor
discuss it as His Apostles and the theologians of His
Church had to do in later times. He had something
far more vital and fundamental than that to accomplish.
It was His work to create the new relations between
man and God, and to produce that faith in which alone
those relations could be realised and made henceforth
the groundwork of the history of our race. To be
brief, we must confine our summary of the matter to
four points :
1. Trust in Himself. — The primary and essential
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THE FINAL FAITH
thing to secure was the trust of His disciples in Himself.
This at first was probably in their minds, admiration
and confidence rendered to a great teacher — a prophet
sent from God. Then it became a gradually deepening
appreciation of His moral quality in its strange and
baffling and humbling perfection. Then it became
ftwe, and at times even fear, at His miraculous powers,
His superhuman dealing with disease and other facts
of nature (Luke v. 8). Then it became the consciousness
that He was conveying to others a new knowledge
of God, a new outlook upon the world, that He was the
Messiah, the Saviour of the people (Matt. xvi. 16 ;
John vi. 68). They saw in Him one whose own unbroken
harmony with God was the only hope they could imagine
for their own elevation somehow, some day, into that
harmony, with its peace, purity, energy, and joy. Thus
they were almost insensibly, yet not without intense
discussion and wonderment, led into a habitual faith
in Him which was the deepest and strongest fact in
their conscious lives.
2. Trust in God. — All through His work among them
Jesus was continually leading His disciples, as we saw
in the second chapter, to a personal faith in God.
" Have faith in God," He explicitly said to those men
who all their lives had thought they believed in Jehovah.
His teaching about the Fatherhood of God was intended
to evoke this act of trust in His power and love. They
must trust in Him for the pardon of their sins (Matt.
vi. 18), for the good things we have need of in raiment
I/O —
THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
and food (ver. 30). Wherever He went He laid an entirely
new emphasis on this attitude. He rebuked the dis-
ciples repeatedly for lack of faith ; at Nazareth He could
not do His mighty works because of unbehef ; He
witnessed the unexpected faith of the centurion ; He
declared that faith, as a grain of mustard seed, could
remove mountains of difficulty from human lives.
Without defining or discussing it in any formal way.
He fixed attention upon it as the deepest law of their
relationship with God and with Himself (John xiv. 1).
3. Ignoring other Methods. — Besides all this we must
remember the significance of the neglect which Jesus
showed towards the traditional modes of approach to
God. He appears to have ignored the ceremonies of the
temple, and, as we saw in an earlier chapter (Chap. V.),
He turned attention away from the verbal precision of
legalism to the free action of an enlightened conscience.
He did demand impHcit and complete obedience to the
commandments of God, but it must flow from this
inner fife of faith and love, and a conscience at rest.
When He described the return of the prodigal son,
when He forgave the sins of the paralytic and the sinful
woman. He revealed the power which their faith exer-
cised even over God.
4. His Victory and their Faith. — At last, when He
had seemed to establish and perfect the faith of His
disciples in God and in Himself, He went on to death,
and beheld with grief but not surprise the perturbation
into which His apparently dismal fate must throw
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THE FINAL FAITH
the minds and the unripe confidence of His followers.
Then came the power of His Resurrection, then the
blessing of His indwelling Spirit. Those Jews found
themselves in a new world, " begotten again," as one
of them said, " unto a living hope." But in that new
world what was the substance of their life, the solid
ground beneath their feet ? All their accustomed
means of confidence had been swept entirely away.
Not sacrificial rites, not priestly ablutions, not painful
and perfect observance of formal enactments, not the
temple nor the altar, not the synagogue any more
than the mountains and the stars, had wrought this
amazing change upon their souls. When they looked
they found in themselves but one fact, one act, on
which heaven seemed to rest : it was their confidence,
their faith in the Risen Saviour and in God through
Him. Nothing in the moral universe bound them to
God but that. Hence, when their fellow-citizens chal-
lenged them to explain this wonder that had come to
them, Peter and his fellow- witnesses found it impossible
to give to them any other secret than this, that they
should repent and believe. Faith had now begun
openly, explicitly, and in glorious solitude of majesty
to rule the world.
II. The Teaching of Paul about Faith
In spite of these facts, it was not the earUest group
of disciples, Peter and James (the Lord's brother), and
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
the rest who first measured the full range of this mighty
revolution in the religious history of man. They knew
that they were saved by faith in Jesus the Messiah and
in God who had raised Him from the dead, but they
continued to haunt the temple as if it were stiU somehow
the earthly centre of their new fellowship. It required
the experience of another set of men to discover the
full power and reach of the new reUgion, and to help
the primary apostles to see it too. Such men were
Stephen (Acts vii.), Paul, the unknown author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and others, who all seem to
have been born and brought up beyond Palestine and
to have breathed the air of non- Jewish culture. It
was they who disentangled from its fatal association
with the past reUgious principles of Judaism, the real
and pure gospel of grace and of faith. We must devote
a Uttle space to the work of Paul and of that unknown
author on this vital matter to make it clear.
1. The Revelation of Christ to him. — Saul of Tarsus
before his conversion had given the marvellous energy
of his rehgious genius to the fulfilment of the Jewish
law as the only way of righteousness and the only way
to peace with Grod. His own reminiscent words in
Phihppians iii. and Romans vii. seem to indicate that
this effort was felt by himself to be a failure. The law
had condemned him in his own conscience even when
he was found blameless by men. But his convictions
were unbroken and his zeal unbounded. He undertook
a fierce and elaborate persecution of the Church if haply
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THE FINAL FAITH
he might please God by the destruction of those despic-
able worshippers of the crucified One, those enemies
of law and temple (Acts vi. 13, 14). Through all, even
of these zealous labours, no voice spoke peace to his
heart, and the righteousness of God remained as far
beyond his reach as heaven itself. But Avhen that voice
broke the stillness of the skies, " I am Jesus whom
thou persecutest," the dark and turbulent night of his
spirit ended suddenly. Saul, the blasphemer and
persecutor, received the inexplicable mercy of the
Risen Christ, the Son of God. With that mercy the
very righteousness of God descended upon him. He
knew this because he found himself in the fellowship of
the Holy One. Who can measure the amazement of
that great heart and the change wrought upon that im-
perial intellect ! At one stroke he saw all the laborious
machinery of the law swept aside. The righteous God
had come to him by the royal road of love.
2. His Discovery of Faith. — But what in his human
nature corresponded to that movement of the Divine
will ? It was not righteousness, because mercy had
overtaken him on the road of rebelHon, of ungodly
hate, of blasphemy and murder. And now as he sat
there blind and silent in the house of Judas in Damascus,
or later as he spent his three great years of brooding
solitude "in Arabia," what did he find in himself, as
his act, responsive to the deed of God which transformed
His whole life ? He found only one thing, and its name
was Faith. " I now live in the flesh in faith, the faith
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
which is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
Himself up for me " (Gal. ii. 20). " By grace " had he
" been saved through faith " (Eph. ii. 8). He gave
up completely all other efforts and grounds of confid-
ence, which had never yielded true confidence, before
God ; he flung them aside as refuse, and found " the
righteousness which is from God by faith " (Phil. iii. 9).
Through that great heart of Paul, in this discovery
of a new world-order, a new way of God with man, Christ
had found at last His entrance to the heart of the world,
and the new era of man's spiritual being was opened,
to the wonder of angels and joy on the throne of the
universe. The absolute and final and universal reUgion
had been fully estabUshed in the grasp of a human mind,
and the gospel could now be proclaimed to the whole
creation. The supreme missionary enterprise had begun
its true history.
3. His Battle for the New Truth. — We must remember
that nothing happens in our world without struggle.
There is strain and stress among the stars, out of which
their harmony is sung. There is clash and competition
in the quiet of the meadow and forest glades, and rush-
ing beneath the most placid summer sea. Even among
the early group of Apostles the gospel of faith did not
win its way without heart-burning [ and]^Jcontroversy.
We have seen how deep was the amazement of the
original Church at Jerusalem when it was found that
even Gentiles received the gifts of the Spirit of God. The
leaders acknowledged the unexpected wonder as the
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THE FINAL FAITH
act of God, and a compact of peace was made between
the two sections which temperament, or habit wrought
by training, rather than difference of conviction, tended
to form among them. But not all would follow such
noble-hearted leaders in the way of peace. Some
remained bitterly hostile to the policy of receiving
Gentiles uncircumcised into the Church, and they were
so vigorous and relentless that even Peter was made
hesitant and inconsistent by their force of will (Gal.
ii. 11 ff.). These men, whose names and relation to the
Church remain in obscure mystery, quickly found that
Paul was the real leader and most powerful Apostle,
and they invaded many of his fields of labour to undo
his work. To their deadly hatred of his gospel and
active antagonism we owe the Apostle's great letter
to the Galatians and passages in other letters, especially
that sent to the Romans, which deal with the new
and creative principle of faith. He has three chief
lines of argument :
(1) His First Defence : Experience. — First, he boldly
and firmly takes his stand on the ground of experience.
He can take his own case, as of one who with utmost
devotion and sincerity had tried the method of the
law, which those enemies were urging upon his converts.
None of them had put more confidence in it or pursued
its principles with greater success (Phil. iii. 3-6 ; Rom.
vii. 7-25; Gal. i. 13, 14). Yet it had utterly failed;
and it had fallen away from him into a dead past when
the Risen Christ was revealed to Him by the act of
— ij6 —
THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
God. In that hour he was put into new relations with
God without reference of any kind to his standing as
a circumcised Hebrew, or a trained and convinced
Pharisee, or a virtuous man, or a reHgious zealot. These
things had exercised no influence upon his new Hfe
of conscious union with God. He could find no act
of his which had any place or relevance in this new
situation except his act of faitha But he could also
appeal to the case of Peter himself, who knew, and
none better, that he had been justified not " by the
works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ "
(Gal. ii. 16). Further, he could appeal to the fact that
the Galatians themselves, who were being so easily
deluded by " a different gospel," had themselves " re-
ceived the Spirit " when he first preached Jesus Christ
to them, and that so vividly that His cross seemed to
stand before their eyes, and they beheved on Him (Gal.
iii. 1,2). And still further, when he writes to the Romans
he can assure them that he does not depend on isolated or
purely personal phenomena for the substance of his gospel.
He has been preaching now for many years, among many
races, and it stands proved by an experience too wide,
too varied, too real, too glorious and godlike to admit of
doubt, that the power of God comes upon " every one
that beheveth," whatever his race or past earthly con-
dition.
(2) His Second Defence : Abraham. — There is one
line of historical argument which Paul felt to be so
powerful that he elaborated it both to the Romans
12 — 177 —
THE FINAL FAITH
(iv. 1-25) and the Galatians (iii. 5-29). He appeals
to the case of Abraham, the father of the Hebrew
race, of whom it is said (Gen. xv. 6) that he " beUeved
God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness."
It is not said that Abraham won his righteousness by
his own labours, nor that he received the payment of
a debt owing from the Almighty to his merits. Nor
again could it be said that the righteousness of Abraham
their father arose from his perfect observance of that
law on whose fulfilment these Jews rested all their hopes ;
for the law came in long after his day and has no bearing
at all upon his rehgious experience. Even the rite of
circumcision which he did observe was instituted after
his righteousness before God had already been estab-
lished, and after the great promise, in which all their
Jewish hope had its ultimate historical root, had been
solemnly made by God. It was clear then that their
own father Abraham entered into righteousness cen-
turies before the law was given, and as an uncircumcised
man ; and the Scripture makes it abundantly clear that
the sole condition of his right standing with God was
this principle of faith, for whose glory he, Paul, was
contending against these Judaising Christians.
(3) His Third Defence : the Nature of Grace. — This
triumphant historical appeal was not felt by Paul to be
the full statement of his case. He also deals with the
inner meaning of the various principles under discussion.
There are two fundamental methods of the religious Ufe
which in this controversy are at war with one another ;
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
the one is the righteousness which is demanded by " the
law," the other is the righteousness which is conferred by
the grace of God. He proves that the latter is no dream,
no theory of what might be. It is an estabHshed fact,
a way of dealing with man which God has now put into
full operation in Christ Jesus. There are human beings
who now consciously possess righteousness. They have
been justified, that is forgiven for a sinful past and taken
into a living fellowship with Himself, by the supreme
and all-holy One. The number of these is multiplying
continually wherever the gospel is proclaimed. No
barriers of race prejudice, of dark iniquity, of barbarism
or ignorance have proved insuperable. On the other
hand, the whole history of legalism cannot produce one
conscience to which it has given the righteousness and
peace of God. Its trophies are tortured consciences,
defeated wills, and broken hopes. The reason for this
great difference lies here, that by fulfilment of the law
a man endeavours to merit eternal life, to make the
Almighty his debtor, while by acceptance of grace a man
assumes his true place in the moral universe as one who
is conscious that he does not deserve the boon of Hfe
eternal, but as one to whom it has been granted by the
free and immeasurable and inexphcable mercy of God
Himself. If the latter deals with man as man, and not
with one man as a Jew and another man as a Gentile,
then the only human act which can be relevant and
reasonable and effectual in this situation is the act of
faith. When the vision of the divine grace, that love
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THE FINAL FAITH
which is clothed with pity, that holiness which shines
through the tempering atmosphere of mercy, breaks upon
a man's soul, his effort to " work" is paralysed, merit
becomes as distasteful as it is impossible, and he casts
himseK in the great deed of self-abandonment upon
a Saviour, a Father, a God whom he trusts wholly
and for ever.
III. The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
While it was the Apostle Paul upon whom the great
task was laid of reveaHng to all men this vital view of
faith, and thus establishing before all eyes the universal
character of the Christian religion, it was given to another
New Testament writer to celebrate the praise of faith in
another way. The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the
Hebrews is a kind of Epic of Faith. Its very style assumes
a swing, a rhythm, a majesty which only great moments
in the history of human thought can clothe themselves
withal.
1. The Perplexity of Hebrew Christians. — The letter
was apparently addressed to Hebrew Christians, who
were passing through a great trial. Outward afflictions
were upon them, but their chief trouble was inward.
They seem to have come to that natural period of personal
history when, the first fervours of faith, the first joys
of the Spirit having been experienced, they faced the
commonplace facts of their social environment. The
hunger for their old habits came back. They wondered
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
whether a real and soHd religion could exist without
temple and sacrifices, without priests and stately cere-
monials. They asked themselves whether really it was
intended by God that those glorious elements of the life
of Israel should thus vanish and leave their world so
bare and colourless as it seemed to their eyes. In earUer
chapters the author has gone over the great Christian
argument with unsurpassed skill of exposition, with
calm dignity and tender sympathy. But when he has
proved that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, surpasses all
the highest names of the Old Testament revelation,
angels, Moses, Joshua ; when he has shown the meaning
and glory of the High Priesthood of Christ, and that
before its grandeur and power all other earthly priest-
hoods must pass away ; when he has proved that the
temple sacrifices were but poor and ineffective symbols
of the only true and potent sacrifice which Jesus
made in His own blood, and which He presents in
heaven for all men for ever, he seems to have proved too
much. " He not only leaves us," his first readers might
well say, " with this ' faith ' as our only earthly security
against the danger of perdition (Heb. x. 39), — and it
does seem so thin — but he seems to abohsh the whole
value and virtue of the ancient Scriptures. If prophet
and priest, temple and sacrifice, existed only until Christ
came, it looks as if Old Testament history was all husk
and no kernel, all symbol and no substance." It is to
this feeling, or something like it, that the great argument
of chapter xi. to chapter xii. 2 is addressed.
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THE FINAL FAITH
2. The Definition of Faith. — The first of its three
stages is very brief, but of vital importance, and consists
of the famous definition of faith : " Faith is assurance
of (or the giving substance to) things hoped for, a con-
viction (or test) of things not seen." Whatever may be
the best Enghsh terms for the first word of each of the
defining clauses, the meaning of the whole is clear.
Faith is our attitude towards the future and the in-
visible. When we act in relation to anything which
is beyond the immediate moment, or beyond our imme-
diate sense perceptions, we then act by faith.
3. The Abiding Substance of the Old Testament. — This
most sound and helpful definition of faith is then applied
to the Old Testament with a most astonishing result.
It results that the real substance of the ancient story,
the vital and essential element of the entire religion of
the Hebrews on its human side, was faith. (1) The very
foundation of all reHgion is the belief in God as the
Creator of the universe (xi. 3), and the life of rehgion
consists in the belief that God is in active relations
with men (xi. 6). (2) But the history of Old Testament
enthusiasm and heroism is simply the revelation of
the glorious nature and commanding power and con-
tagious joy of faith. All these men and women achieved
their greatness because they were great in faith : whether
it was Abraham gazing into the future, or Moses into the
invisible ; whether it was Joseph giving commandment
concerning his bones, or Rahab sheltering the spies of
Jehovah, they acted not in relation to the visible and
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
immediate facts before them, but on the conviction
that God holds sway over the days that are to come,
and rules the things we see from a throne to which
these outer eyes are bhnd. The thriUing recital of the
famihar names of a few, and the heaped-up tumulus of
the sufferings and the wrongs and the tragic deaths
of innumerable unnamed heroes of faith, combine to
make the reader feel that here in the story of the spirit
of man we have the substance of history. Not the stones
of the eternal city, nor the faint echo of her ancient
language and customs to-day in her streets, are Kome
for us ; but the patriotism and enterprise, the courage
and statesmanship, of her ancient citizens. In them we
touch the reahty that was Rome. So this writer makes
his feUow Hebrews feel as they look back upon the story
of Jerusalem, of Israel, of ritual and temple. Not these
vanished glories, but the faith of their fathers in God
bound one generation to another in a hfe of meaning,
and became their great legacy to all the ages of mankind.
4. The Supreme Faith. — The third portion of the argu-
ment is brief, but conclusive. The Old Testament heroes
beheved in the promise of God, died for it, died without
seeing it fulfilled. This was not faithlessness towards them
on the part of God, for they shall most certainly be made
perfect ; but it was grace to us. Not one of them shall
lose his place in the final glory, but we of the Christian
era shall be included. For our faith in God, if we are
worthy to be called the heirs of their faith, looks upward
and onward to Jesus, who is " the author and perfecter of
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THE FINAL FAITH
faith." His great work, nay, He the worker, must be
the object of a trust which all the host of faithful souls
in the past will watch, as an encompassing cloud of
sympathy, and which Jesus Himself will reward from
the very throne of God.
IV. General Considerations.
We must now try, though very swiftly, to survey
this matter, this deep principle of faith, that we may
see how and why it has taken this pre-eminence in the
final religion, and what may be its relation to the mis-
sionary quahty and power of the gospel.
1. The Psychology of Faith. — We must begin by
asking what Faith is, as one of the functions of human
nature. For here there is much misunderstanding.
One of the most common errors is to speak as if it were
a distinctive organ of the soul, and one which may or
may not be created by the Spirit of God in individual
cases. Huxley said it was not included in his structure.
David Hume, with one of his most terrible sneers,
suggested that it was a miracle wrought in a man to
enable him to accept the miracles of the Bible. We
have already seen that faith is described best as a
definite attitude assumed towards things that are
invisible and future. In this attitude the seK is active
in all its fundamental powers of mind and heart and
will. Each of these elements of consciousness is necessary
to the production of faith. The mind must apprehend
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
the reality and place of the object ; the heart, with all
that this somewhat popular term includes, must feel
and appreciate its meaning and value for self ; the will
or power of action must be positively exerted to
relate the self with the object so apprehended and so
appreciated. If I see a certain object and it takes its
place in my universe, if I feel its worth or value, if I
then proceed to act upon its reality and its meaning, I
have acted in faith. Each of the three elements must
be present in some degree if my faith is to be rational
and complete. But if the three are included in my
conduct nothing else is needed to make the act deserve
the name of an act of faith.
Of course, we must recognise that each of these
elements of consciousness has richly varied forms, and
the meaning of faith itself must vary accordingly. To
apprehend the reahty and uses of a bridge before my
eyes, or an island of spices in the orient, or a human
friend, or a great truth, is the work of reason, and yet
how differently she operates in these directions. The
very feelings of the heart are not the same when we
contemplate the value, the relation to our interests,
of these different objects. Our moral sense, our aesthetic
sympathy, colour that response of our inner nature
out of which action or conduct springs. We all re-
cognise objects named as possessing different degrees
of importance for our separate lives. What may be all
important for one man is a "dead hypothesis," as
Professor James has it, for another man. So again,
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THE FINAL FAITH
the movement of the will, the form of action, is not
the same in these different cases. My conduct in using
the bridge for the thousandth time, or bupng spices
for the first time, or leaning on the judgment of my
friend in a great personal crisis, or regulating life upon
an ascertained truth in morals or economics, flows
from my self-determination, and turns my preceding
apprehension and appreciation of the facts into a living
faith ; but in each case the decision seems different
from every other. Nevertheless these are all phases
in that life of faith which is our whole and sole life
upon earth.
2. The Place of Faith in General Experience. — This,
then, is one of the remarkable and happy effects of the
proclamation of the law of faith in the New Testament.
It has helped to reveal to us the essential unity and the
deeply spiritual nature of the whole of man's practical
life. Some minds still tend to retain the word "faith "
wholly for religious uses. They practically restrict it
to the relations of man with God. We have seen that
this must be viewed as psychologically an inaccurate
account of the nature of faith. It can also be described
as a distinct detriment to our view of the meaning of
man's general experience, and of its relation to that which
is specially known as his rehgious life. For if our
analysis is correct and relevant, it follows that faith is
the life-blood of our whole social experience. It is the
inner bond connecting interests and forms of conduct
so diverse as art, science, patriotism, industry, love, and
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
religion. In each of these a man relates himself with
some object, whose reality and value he apprehends,
and towards which he is moved by the deepest impulse
of his nature to act. The man of art, for whom the ideal
of the beautiful, or the man of science, for whom truth
is almost an essential of existence, is not deaHng with
a mere figment of the imagination. Powerless as his
reason may be to explain its ultimate nature and seat
of reality, he apprehends it as a most real as well as a
most glorious object of desire.
The man who is absorbed in the claims of patriotism
may well be puzzled to set forth in precise detail a
logical defence of his passion and sacrifice. His country,
what is it ? What makes it infinitely more precious to
him than all other countries put together ? There are fair
valleys and grand mountains across the border. There,
too, are human homes with all the sweet charm of family
love and the deep mystery of family grief. There, too,
are government, industry, and agriculture, and many
noble hearts serve the cause of that other land as devot-
edly and purely as this man serves his. Who shall
attempt to explore the fountainheads of patriotism ?
They lie far up in the regions where all our ideals spring.
It is mere cloudland if we attempt to guide ourselves in
it by our logical faculty. Our thinking becomes misty
and unrelated to the valleys and fields of life. But
from that region of reason and the spirit of man all the
streams run down which become his practical ideas,
his purest and deepest passions, his mighty motives
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THE FINAL FAITH
and blood red devotions of soul. All which just means
that in the higher levels man walks and runs, loves and
toils, by faith. Some object is before his soul's vision
whose outlines mingle with the skies. It has power over
his affection, his conscience, his yearning for the true,
the beautiful, the good, and it rouses him to lifelong
and most costly tasks. It is the call of the infinite,
to which the answer of man can never be aught but the
rejection or the acceptance of the law of faith.
To put the matter in another way, it may be said
that all society is founded on faith. This becomes
clearer as civilization becomes more complex, and the
mutual interactions of men more intricate, more potent
in their influence. Men depend on one another for
kinds of conduct which cannot be regulated by law or
controlled by courts of justice. Standards of honour are
erected by common consent which become powerful
over the selfishness and greed and meanness of individual
members of society. These often exercise a sway far
beyond that of formal legislation. But it is evident
that their fulfilment is secured by faith. In all business
affairs men have to lean on one another for promptitude
and honesty. In the deeper relations of family and
friendship faith is the very soul of reality. Thus we can
have no true love, no frank intercourse, no purity of
motive, and no sincere sacrifice except as we are bound
together by this golden chain of personal trust. The
very fact that we realise this more openly and intelli-
gently than was possible in past ages is proof that the
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
social order is becoming more truly ethical, that its
most sacred and sohd boons are known and confessed
to be the fruit of that free movement of conscience and
heart which is the very atmosphere of the great principle
of faith.
3. Faith in the Religious History of Man. — The sig-
nificance of faith was not known, and its deHberate
cultivation was not possible, until the Christian religion
had begun to do its sublime work upon human nature.
But when we ponder its place and power in relation to
the gospel, we begin to realise that it has very deep
connections with the deepest foundation of our being.
All who believe in the living God hold that the universe
depends wholly upon His will and flows from His pur-
pose. It derives its being and meaning from Him, — the
dead things of the inorganic universe no less than the
thrilling spirits before His throne. This dependence is, of
course, unconscious among all forms of existence that are
unconscious and unrational. It may be that it begins to
reveal itself to consciousness, blindly and in dull fashion,
when we reach animals that are capable of fear, and flee
to the shelter of any object that seems to promise dehver-
ance from danger. But in man it breaks out into the
daylight of a rational will. He can grasp this universal
fact of creaturely dependence on God, and make it the
guide of conduct and the hope of his heart. It follows
that all religions do found themselves even unwittingly
upon faith. However crude and superstitious they seem
to us, they express for their devotees this sense of depend-
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THE FINAL FAITH
ence for definite and supreme blessings upon that Power
which is over all.
This is one of the facts upon which the wise missionary
is careful to seize as a guide to him in his delivery of the
Christian message. Perhaps it may not be rash to say
that here many minds find a more soHd and more
Christian basis for cherishing what Tennyson called
*' the larger hope," than in speculations about future
probation and such uncertain matters. For the faith
of the nations is a real thing ; and if corruption has
invaded their religions, and gross darkness their social
practices, we must yet recognise that in none has faith
been utterly destroyed. Even among degraded
savage tribes the missionary is very apt to find some
circle of men whose minds revolt at the worst forms of
shame, in whose hearts there is faith in a better order,
and who have a dim feeling that the Power over all
powers is on the side of that higher ideal. If we are
permitted to see faith in Rahab, how much more in the
multitudes of men and women of nobler mind and purer
life than she, who have kept the lamp of trust burning
in the darkest days of human history. Even the smoking
flax He shall not quench.
It is evident that in the times of his ignorance man
did not know the nature and range of his needs, and
therefore could not exercise the full powers of his faith
in God. Even when he knew that he depended on God
for life and breath and all things earthly, he did not
know that God must supply all the demands of his
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
moral nature and situation, nor, indeed, what those
demands were. When he began to reaHse this under the
spur of the law and the lash of prophetic accusations, he
still had to learn that God both can and will deal with his
sin, not to destroy but to deliver him from its disgrace
and its disaster. The great and final revelation came
when God appeared as the forgiver and remover of sin,
as the Father seeking fellowship with his sons far-
wandered and forespent. The supreme act of faith, the
very crown and glory of that marvellous principle of all
personal life, is, to depend on God for His mercy towards
a sinful and penitent soul. That, apart from Christ and
His Cross, is the one incredible thing which no other
reHgion had discovered, nor its founders promised, before
Him. But, once disclosed in the power of the Saviour,
once grasped, expounded, and defended by His Apostles,
it took its place as the cHmax of the rehgious development
of man, as the one, universal, and indispensable law
which must henceforth govern the relations of man and
God, and saturate all human experience with its pure
and heavenly nature. God is the God of mercy, and man
can have no duty, no privilege, no object of rational
action, no motive of purity, till he meets that mercy with
trust. This is the essence and fountain of all further
history for the individual and the race.
4. Faith and Creeds. — We have seen that the act
of faith implies always a movement of the mind. An
object must be apprehended by me as a reahty, and it
must be set there in its own place in my universe, before
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THE FINAL FAITH
I can feel its value and deal with it. That is to say,
there is an intellectual element in faith. Wheresoever
it is created our reason is at work there, building or
rebuilding our total view of things. It is from this
intellectual necessity of our life that all systematic
thought has grown, all philosophies, all doctrines, all
creeds, all theologies. They are the inevitable, healthful,
and constant offspring of faith. The word " creed "
is used to cover a great variety of forms under which
the effort of Christian leaders to summarise Christian
truth has worked. Originally it means just " I believe "
(Latin, credo), and the first creed was simply an expression
of personal trust with a statement of the object on
which the trust was directed (see Apostles' Creed). But
the widening life and influence of the Church, and the
progressive efforts made to set forth the whole body of
Christian truth in a formal and systematic manner,
led to the construction of creeds and confessions from
which the personal act was gradually eliminated and
in which we find only an impersonal statement of
objective truth. This was a natural and even necessary
outcome of the whole facts.
To prevent the Church from thinking, which those
would do who deny doctrine and theology and sneer
generally at the creeds, would be to crush that rational
element of faith which we have seen to be vital. Indeed,
already, where we have neglect of doctrine and dispar-
agement of the study of Christian truth in a systematic
manner, we have as a result, merely sentimental forms
— 192 —
THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
of enthusiasm which lose their grip on the ordered Hfe
of man, and even superstition of the grossest kinds,
with a bUnd readiness for the acceptance of fad rehgions,
both nebulous and futile.
On the other hand, it must be observed that faith
cannot be forced. It cannot possibly live as real faith
except in the atmosphere of freedom. The authority
of the creeds and of the Church must be used solely
as a moral authority, appealing to the will through
the conscience of each man, with his affections and the
movements of his mind. To make mere belief a law
which men can administer, to define doctrines of the
Christian faith as if they were enactments enforcible
at a human judgment bar, is not to preserve or nourish
but to dishonour and desolate the power of a living
faith. When force has been used in support of creeds,
the offspring has not been the glorious and radiant
consciousness of the sons of God, the dignity of con-
scious choice, the energy of personal decision, but a
society of dull worldlings interspersed with faces of
terror. Faith must rear her creeds if she would be
reasonable, but faith must be free from an attempted
physical enforcement if she would live at all.
5. Faith and Mysticism. — It has been objected
to this whole view of faith that it seems to ignore
what is called the mystical element, which we find so
powerful in the language of the Apostle Paul. But this
objection is surely due to a misunderstanding of the
seat of mysticism in Pauline thought. As we have
13 — 193 —
THE FINAL FAITH
seen in another connection, the mystic element in
religion arises from the sense of direct contact between
the individual soul and eternal realities. That con-
tact is said to be realised in various ways, but in the
Christian gospel it is given in and through the appre-
hension that the Risen Christ, and God through Him,
is presented to us as, so to speak, an object, a Person
to be dealt with in conscience and heart. When that
is intensely realised, the soul is brought consciously
and powerfully under the influence of facts, all of which
run up, as it were, in living connections between itself
and the infinitude of God. It is here, in the opening
out before our eyes of the heart of mercy, surely the
most mystical fact in the universe ; here in the intense
reality of the divine righteousness and the divine love
poured out upon the earth through the breaking of the
heart of Jesus on the Cross ; here in the sense of sin which
the quickening presence of God awakes, and which refuses
to count itself limited or measurable or explainable ;
here in the sound of that home-call of the soul when it
reahses its affinity with God, and is moved to its depths
as by the voice of its own inmost being crying for hfe,
it is here that true Christian mysticism has its healthy
life. And here is the birthplace and nurture of faith.
5. The Principle of Faith as universal. — We must
conclude with another glance at the fact that the religion
which has made the act of faith the fundamental mode
of man's life towards God has there one more witness
to its finaUty and its universality. For no simpler and
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THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH
no deeper connection can ever be established in a world
of sin between guilty men and a loving but merciful
God than lies in this attitude which we call trust.
It is an act or attitude so centrally founded in
human nature that all men of all races, and all forms
and degrees of intelUgence and civiHsation, are capable
of it. None who can have the sense of sin or conceive
of God, none whose eyes can be lifted beyond the
horizons of this life, none whose hearts can be reached
by the notes of love, are beyond the range of this message.
"It is the power of God unto salvation to every one
that belie veth."
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CHAPTER VIII
THE VITAL MEANING OF THE CHURCH AND
THE BIBLE
TTTE have seen that the Christian rehgion never
^ ^ existed as a mere abstract plan of salvation or
programme of conduct. When the redemption of man
and the revelation of God though Christ were accom-
plished facts, they had already taken their place in
human experience. They had even then become the
life of a community, the basis of its distinctive exist-
ence, and the driving power of its history. Christianity
was not like a philosophy, a kind of formless spirit
which may spread like an atmosphere through a people's
life and yet fail to produce a new organism of its own.
Nor was it a merely individualistic interest. Although
it did in a sense discover the human individual as no
rehgion and no philosophy had ever seen him, in the
infinite meaning and value of each soul for God and
for itself, it did not leave each man " burning upward
to his point of bliss " in isolation. On the contrary,
its individual behevers were of infinite value for each
other also, and they could only realise the full reality of
their new life in social as well as in secret experience.
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
The glory of a redeemed humanity in conscious union
with God was brought into view after such a manner
that each beheld the majesty of his brother Christian,
and found it as impossible to ignore that brother as it
was to ignore himself.
The general social nature of the human race appears
in and rests on such fundamental facts as (a) the law
of reproduction, (b) the necessity for co-operation
aUke in the nurture of children and in the communal
conquest and uses of nature, and (c) the possibility
of progress in the pursuit of moral and spiritual ideals,
including the practice of reHgion, only through the
co-operation of many individuals. Each and all of
these vital elements of society were recognised and taken
up, in changed forms, into the hfe of Christianity.
From the first the teaching of Jesus gave prominence to
the idea of the kingdom of God, which is a definitely
social conception, and which by natural steps passed
over into that of the fiving and witnessing Church. It
is true that, to begin with, they were only a formless
group of men and women, with only the rudiments of
organisation, who composed the Christian community.
But they speedily began to exercise the functions of a
living organism. The principle of reproduction was re-
cognised and put into operation as they began to bear
witness in the very presence of utterly hostile groups
of men to the nature, origin, and power of the Hfe which
bound them together. The principle of co-operation
in development of character, in enrichment of thought
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THE FINAL FAITH
and experience, was recognised as they met together
and apart from the world for deeper instruction in
Christian truth, and for partaking of the Sacraments.
It was out of these modes of action, by that inchoate
community which waited in Jerusalem until Pentecost,
that the Christian Church and the Bible gradually took
definite shape, and entered upon their permanent and
ever-widening influence in the world. We must con-
sider each of these in turn.
I. The Church of Christ
We have already seen that the Church of Christ is
the name given to the community of believers in Him.
They were not merely united by possessing the same
convictions about God and man, the way of salvation
and the hope of eternal life. Many temporary associa-
tions of men have been formed by interest in the same
studies, or in the same artistic pursuits, or in the same
theories of the meaning of life. But in such groups
there is something lacking of which the Church has
been conscious from the very beginning, — that is, its
inward, living union with God in Christ, its inhabita-
tion by the Spirit of life. It has never believed
itself to be merely an earthly association of human
beings, but a spiritual union of those who are united
with Christ, or in other words an organism of which
He is the life, a body of which He is the Head.
1. The Outward Form, — At Pentecost the Church
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
seems to have been, as we have said, a formless
mass, with only the rudiments of organisation. One
distinction did exist between those who were called
Apostles and all other believers in Jesus Christ, and
a function of pecuHar importance was recognised as
belonging to the former class in the new economy.
That function arose naturally and inevitably from the
fact that they had been chosen by Jesus to form an
inner circle of disciples, whom He taught and influ-
enced more continuously and deeply than any others,
and by the further fact that they were witnesses of
His resurrection. They were by these circumstances
constituted as the leaders of the new community.
For a time there seems to have been no idea of
imposing any definite polity upon the Christians.
Rather does organisation seem to have arisen, as it
does wherever hfe is present, partly from the action
of the environment and partly from the felt needs of
the living thing itself. The appointment of seven
men for a special work, which is described in Acts vi.,
is a clear illustration and proof of this process. Every
step in the development of a polity in the ApostoHc
Church, so far as it can be traced, is of the same kind.
The fundamental needs were such as teaching, evan-
gelism, care and disbursement of money for the poor,
oversight of the local community in each city where
a church was formed. Modern historical scholarship
has made it abundantly clear that these offices were
variously conceived and named, and appointments to
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THE FINAL FAITH
them were variously made in different countries. There
was no uniformity, no observance of a fixed programme.
Everywhere there was a keen appreciation of the prac-
tical demands of the place and the hour, and an inner
sensitive and assured dependence upon the guidance
of the Spirit of God. Hence it is that we have such
difficulty in setting forth any general outward organi-
sation of the Church, either in apostolic times or for
several centuries afterwards ; and hence it is that all
the leading forms of Church polity which obtain in the
Christian world to-day are able to find some justification
for themselves in the principles and practice of the New
Testament Churches. Nowhere do these statements
appear to be more fully confirmed than by the three
Epistles, known as " Pastoral Epistles," to Timothy
and Titus. There Paul deals in a special way with
special groups of churches, and in describing the duty
of the two younger men, whom he is sending on their
unusual errands, discusses the basis and meaning of
the offices with which they are to deal. But the dis-
cussion has almost nothing to do with mere matters
of procedure or form. It is concerned only with
the spiritual and moral meaning of the work to be
done, and with the spiritual and moral equipment
which they must possess who would undertake the
work.
This is not the place for a discussion of controversial
topics regarding the rival forms of Church polity. But
two things may be said on which there will nowadays
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
be a very wide agreement among leaders of different
sections of the Church of Christ.
(1) In the first place, practically all sections do make
provision for the three or four fundamental matters
without which the Church can hope neither to be fully
nourished in its own faith and power, nor to extend
the blessings of its life to others. It must make due
provision for missionary work or evangelism, for con
tinuous instruction and teaching of its members, for
pastoral oversight of its spiritual and temporal affairs
and its works of charity and mercy, and for the due
observance of its sacraments and other sacred ordin-
ances. Failure or laxity in any of these matters always
leads to loss of energy and influence.
(2) In the second place, because the Church is not a
mere association of individuals for a partial and evan-
escent purpose, but rather a living organism, " the body
of Christ," the true seat of its continuity must be sought
in the continuous relation of all believers to its Lord
and Hfe, Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, every body
of Christian beHevers throughout the world to-day can
trace its history back through a communal life, and
through all the changes of the centuries, to the witness
of the Apostles. If we keep our eye upon that indubit-
able statement, we shall better understand the meaning
of all divergences in outward organisation, and of all
changes in the doctrine concerning the Church which
have inevitably accompanied those divergences. This
does not imply that questions of Church government
— 20I — 1
THE FINAL FAITH
are not important. But it does mean that they must
be studied in the Ught of their environment, as well
through the influence of the whole circumstances which
gave them birth as through the partial or controversial
explanations given of them by their respective founders
and followers.
These observations are of pecuUar importance for
those who carry the gospel into mission fields, and find
themselves under the solemn and yet inspiring responsi-
bihty of guiding young Christian communities in building
up the organised forms of Church fife and work. Few
intelligent persons beheve that anywhere the ideal
organisation is to be found either to-day or in any
previous generation. Yet every intelhgent leader of
Church life must often dream of that form through
which the Spirit of Christ would wield its finest and most
potent influence upon the whole moral and spiritual
life of man. Somewhere even to-day there must be
communions which approach more nearly to that ideal,
and some which are further off. It can only be through
the utmost mutual charity, through deep and faithful
search for the signs of His presence in the character
and power of His disciples, through patient and loving
intercourse between those whom birth and training
as well as personal study and conviction have placed
in different groups, that the paths will open which
lead from various quarters of the ecclesiastical world
to the centre where His throne is set, and from
which He, with His royal patience and divine wisdom,
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
most firmly rules and most forgivingly guides them
all.
2. If we assume that the Church of Christ even in its
broken parts and in its unworthiness, which all Christians
continually and humbly confess, is the actual organism
through which the Spirit of God is directing the history
of man, something must be said of its place in the world.
(1) First, we must mark its inter-racial or universal
nature. Recent historians have been emphasising the
fact that the early Christians felt themselves very
vividly to be a new race. They found themselves
united in the circle of Christian behevers with people
of all kinds from all quarters of the known world. Bar-
barians, Scythians, bondmen, freemen, men and women,
cultured philosophers and unlettered peasants, mer-
chants and soldiers, they were united in a new kind of
community by the mighty consciousness of a new life.
That life was so real, so glorious, so rich in meaning
and in joy that it tended powerfully to obliterate racial
distinctions which otherwise seemed irreducible, and to
remove social barriers to intimacy of trust and love
and mutual service which previously no man dreamed
of surmounting. Even the " middle wall of partition "
between Jew and Gentile had been broken down by the
power of Christ, and after that all rivers of human
experience seemed to flow together.
(2) The Church felt itself to occupy through its
whole membership a position which had been confined
to a select claies, namely, that of a priesthood. Amid
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THE FINAL FAITH
all differences of interpretation which the various peoples
and religions placed upon the power of their priests two
things were held in common. The priests were supposed
to have special access to the presence of God, or special
influence among superhuman forces, and special auth-
ority to stand before the people in His name. This double
function was transferred to the entire body of Christian
believers. They all had an equal right to enter into the
holy place of actual and personal communion with God ;
and they had the solemn and inspiring burden of living
among men as representatives of His will and spirit.
This mystical view of the nature and meaning of the
Church has never been wholly lost, although there
have been times when it seemed to be submerged by a
return to non-Christian views of priesthood. It has
always had its place in the great acts of public worship,
in the constant practice of intercessory prayer by all
true beHevers, and in the sense of responsibility for the
propagation of the gospel by private individuals as well
as by those ordained to preach. It is always most
clearly held when the Church has become openly engaged
in missionary work, or where beHevers have found
themselves surrounded by a hostile as well as a sinful
and suJBfering world. It is felt, strange to say, with
very great depth at opposite extremes of ecclesiastical
organisation and practice. Those who habitually employ
elaborate and symbolical forms of worship, — if they
have, as their teachers and guides, earnest men who
are filled with the zeal of the gospel, and are able to
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
keep elaboration from crushing the imagination and
symbolism from starving the sense of immediate contact
with God, — do often cherish the priesthood of the whole
Church, and carry on its intercessory task with singular
devotion. On the other hand, those also who practise
the simplest forms of worship, and meet together in
humble and obscure places, often possess the most
exalted and radiant convictions about their responsi-
biUty for the spread of the gospel ; and they too, alike
in sacrificial lives, in constant prayer, and in true realisa-
tion of the presence of Christ in their midst, exercise a
priesthood stripped of outward adorning, which has a
dignity and beauty and power worthy of Him who
sacrificed for all men on Calvary, and intercedes for all
men at the throne of God.
Men differ as to what may be considered the
most poetical thing in the world. One says it is an
island ; another says it is a road leading the traveller
through forest and field, over hill and valley, always
alluring and always revealing ; another thinks it is a
child in whose face the glory of another world yet shines,
and whose eyes are full of wonder as they gaze on the
confusing lights and shadows of this world. Perhaps
the most thoroughly poetical fact in history is the
Church of Christ. There the consciousness of the
Divine and human mingles with the organised life of
humanity. There we have in an intensified form the
struggle of right with wrong, of mortal fear with im-
mortal hope, of faith which lays hold of the very heart
— 205 —
THE FINAL FAITH
of God with guilt which shrinks from the name of the
holy Judge, of pure love caught from the fire of divine
mercy fighting with the fiercer passion of self-will. Over
the whole course of its varied history during nineteen
centuries the great warfare has been waged. The sordid
and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly, the
selfish and the sacrificial, are always at work in its mem-
bership, and most intensely in the hearts of its noblest
leaders. Sometimes the one set of forces, sometimes
the other, have seemed to reign supreme. From the
first its mystic beauty was felt, and men searched for
the most pure and holy symbols to describe it, such as
" the body of Christ," " the Bride of the Heavenly
Bridegroom," " the family of God," " the city," " the
people of God," "the flock of the Shepherd," "the
soldiery of the Divine Captain," the temple whose
stones are living souls. To-day it lives, having seen
empires come and go, and legions of enemies rise in
fierce hatred only to fall away again before its strange
and unearthly persistence. And this community, this
human organism, with the Risen Christ as its animating
principle and source of its exhaustless energy, is spread-
ing over whole races of man more quickly and rapidly
than ever. The mighty drama between human and divine
wills is being played out before our own eyes and
through our own hearts. None is touched by or touches
this body but is put into immediate connection with
values and forces which are infinite, eternal, and divine.
It is the poetry of human history, because it hfts each
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
human soul through imagination, intuition, and faith,
through hate of sin and love of perfection, into contact
with God Himself.
3. The Church of Christ is being studied more and
more as an ethical force, and here again it not only
excels all other religious organisations, such as the
Hindu or Buddhist or Mohammedan religions have
created, but sets itself in a peculiar relation with the
most fundamental human institutions, such as the
family and the State. Even in its earhest days, as
the New Testament proves so abundantly, the young
community felt that new light had been thrown upon
all the essential elements of human social experience.
Yet no formal programme of reconstruction was an-
nounced. There is a reserve about the original Christian
teachers which is almost a proof of their inspiration or
divine guidance. They do not declare an open war
upon slavery or the autocracy of the Empire. They
do not sketch out an ideal commonwealth, nor even
an ideal Christian Church. With a superhuman wisdom
they are confined to the discussion of principles which
underlie all organisation, or of individual and local pro-
blems in whose right solution later generations find
guidance for situations and perplexities no human
intellect could possibly have conceived of in Apostolic
times. But it is remarkable to watch the sane judg-
ment, the keen and delicate insight of these disciples
of Jesus. While they do not speculate about the nature
of the virtues, they name them, possess them in their
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THE FINAL FAITH
hearts, practise them in their lives. A light seems
to shine upon the moral universe which reveals to them
right and wrong, truth and He, the pure and the impure
in concrete cases, as no human eyes had ever seen
them before. So have we beheld perhaps a sudden
burst of sunshine fall through a sky of black clouds
upon an island set in dark and sullen waters. With
startling clearness and in unnatural detail each stone
and twig and leaf is picked out and defined. The dull
rocks gleam and the pine trees stand out in unwonted
glory. So did the heavenly light fall upon the Church
enisled in that hostile heathen world, and all virtues
and all graces shone radiant and real before the men
whose Redeemer and Master was Christ.
(1) The purely ethical force of Christianity arises and
can only arise from the ethical conditions under which
its local churches as social institutions are gathered
together. What their members are to one another is
the leaven which is transforming the social structure
of the world. No mere preaching about virtue from
those untutored lips could have moved the Empire
with the sense of a changed moral atmosphere. No
formal exposition or philosophy of righteousness could
have done it. The Epistles of Paul derived all their
ethical power from the fact that they were addressed
to communities which were already organised on the
Christian basis. The moral function of these letters
was to elucidate and make evident to each Church the
real meaning of its existence as a community which
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
was established on a new moral basis. If a missionary
were to invade a Chinese village to-day with a startling
programme of social and moral reform, and seek first to
convince the people of the value of that programme
in the abstract and of its practical nature, he could
receive nothing but misunderstanding and hostility.
What he does as a Christian evangelist is to form a
community upon the basis of a new relationship of each
individual with God in Christ. That Christian com-
munity contains in its very structure a moral and social
programme of changes so vast that only a few Christian
communities have yet caught glimpses of their real
meaning, and no country in Christendom has yet felt
their full force.
(2) We can here do little more than name a few of
the conditions of membership in the Christian com-
munity which have exerted most influence upon social
ideals and practice.
(a) All men are viewed by the gospel as equal in
their need of the divine salvation, and as equal in their
capacity for receiving it. This position may be affirmed
here in spite of the fact that some people, on so-called
psychological grounds, have lately maintained that men
have varied capacities for rehgious experience, that some
were born to be devout and some born to be inevitably
secular or sensual in their minds. This is an unexpected
revival of hyper-Calvinism, and may be left out of con-
sideration here. The New Testament offers the divine
mercy to all, and charges all with personal responsi-
14 — 209 —
THE FINAL FAITH
bility for obedience or disobedience to its challenge
and its call. This means that in respect of salvation,
i.e. of the ultimate valuation which God puts upon
human lives and His exertion of power upon them,
the outward social distinctions between man and man
have no place at all. We may still count a general
higher than a private solidier for purposes of war, a
king does occupy a more exalted station than a subject,
a man of culture is preferable for some reasons to a man
of simple education ; but these distinctions are of partial
and temporary significance. They have no bearing upon
the right or power of a man to be in the Church
of Christ, nor do they afford any clue to his standing
before God in the day of his judgment.
(b) And yet the Christian religion did from the first
appeal to and stimulate the intelligence of all who came
under its influence. Just because it revealed a God
acting in history, history acquired a new reality and
attraction. The past was not henceforth to be con-
sidered as merely past and done with, if a deed of God
on a definite day and place is the salvation of all gener-
ations. The nations were not to be any longer super-
ficially regarded as having wholly separate interests,
if one who is the Son of Man is the Redeemer and Lord
of all. And not the past ages only, but the invisible
universe also comes within the ken and is faced by the
quickened conscience of the man who would deal with
God as God deals with him, through the risen and
reigning Christ. The material for a philosophy is here
— 2IO —
THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
which shall surpass that of any pre-Christian school, and
yet it is presented to the mind of the humblest with
inspiring and ennobHng effect. It gives every man a
new and intense interest in the world around him. The
Roman Empire becomes a definite object of thought,
of critical thought, of moral consideration, in an entirely
new manner to soldier and civilian, Roman and Phrygian
alike. Moreover, it was felt from the first that the
exercise of this intelligence was one of the conditions
of salvation. Hence the Apostles became teachers,
and made arrangements everywhere for systematic
instruction.
To-day throughout the world it is not secular
prosperity, but the Christian gospel, which is the most
powerful promoter and the most ardent friend of uni-
versal education. The Church has in this as in other
matters by no means proved itself infallible. It has
made many and even disastrous mistakes. Its lessons
have not all been learnt yet, and through many a bitter
struggle on this question it must press on in every
land under heaven. But it remains true now as at the
beginning of its days, that of all human interests the
Christian religion can least afford to ignore the task
of quickening intelligence, and bringing each human
mind face to face with the divine meaning of the uni-
verse as a whole and the history of man. The spreading
work of this universal religion is the one guarantee we
have that at last all human beings shall be able at least
to read the Word of Life for themselves.
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THE FINAL FAITH
(c) The mode by which the Christian rehgion has
cleared the moral vision and strengthened the moral
character of various races is to be found in the mutual
relations of its members, and in its influence upon the
ideal of family life. When people of the most diverse
races, social conditions, and personal character were
brought together in the early churches, entirely new
demands were made upon them. They must actually
learn to love each other, and this love must be expressed
in all kinds of deeds. They must trust each other,
and so learn to practise utter truthfulness in their
mutual conduct. They must serve each other, primarily
in spiritual and therefore in all other affairs. They must,
in fact, feel and live as a pure and strong and happy
brotherhood. Where the outer world, or individuals
in it, heard of this new kind of social life it felt the
thrill of its ideal beauty. In spite of the usual foul
suspicions which were spread through every city about
the evil purposes of their secret assemblies, suspicions
which did much to inflame the spirit of persecution,
it did become known that " these Christians loved one
another " in a pure and noble and novel manner of lave ;
and defenders of the Christian cause like Tertullian
were able to appeal to the generous charities and chaste
lives of the Christians as to facts well known, though
poorly weighed by their unjust judges and political
enemies.
One of the foundations of all Christian morality is
to be found in the command of an Apostle, " Honour
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
all men." It forbade all contempt for any race or any
class of human beings. It endowed with deeper mean-
ings and inspired with a universal efficacy the brilliant
saying of a heathen writer, that " Man is a sacred fact
for man." The sanctity could now be seen and felt by
others than meditative philosophers living remote from
sordid Hves. It rose to view with faith in the Redeemer
and His Cross, in the Father and His love, in the Spirit
and His universal appeal. That word, and such pieces
as the letter of the Apostle Paul to Philemon, were
revelations of a new force in human history which
shall not cease from its working until slavery in every
form is shattered, and deliberate injustice or selfish
greed is universally despised by the human heart. We
see not yet this long task accomplished. Some are
disheartened because results have been so slow, and
others are contemptuous as though it were not the
Spirit of Christ in His Church that has secured even the
meagre victories of the past. But neither class has a
right to their judgment either of disappointment or of
scorn. The work is long and complex, because human
society is so deeply entangled in sin and social wrong,
and because the Spirit of Christ has no better medium
through which to work than the obscured vision and
imperfect faith and unclear consciences of such men
as we are to-day in the Church of to-day. But the work
which has been done is great indeed. Many sins lurk
only in corners of Christian cities which flaunt in the very
temples and the open streets of heathendom. Some
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THE FINAL FAITH
forms of slavery are for evermore rendered impossible,
and others are being tracked to their origins and await
their doom. Above all, ideals of justice, of freedom, of
brotherhood, of purity are earnestly cherished and
publicly propagated, which are only the offspring of
that new life planted in the Church of Christ by the
indwelling presence of God Himself.
'. _ j>' ■ ■ ■ ' .
II. The Bible
We have already said that the Christian faith has
been perpetuated in history by two institutions, — the
Church and the Bible. In making a brief statement
about the latter we must perforce begin by emphasising
the use of that word " institution." A piece of writing
which is nothing more than the expression of individual
feeling or opinion is not in the true sense an institution,
however excellent may be its literary qualities or crucial
its place in the history of thought. But if a piece of
writing becomes the controller of a communal life, it
takes on the form of a living institution. Such a docu-
ment as the Constitution of the United States, or such
a work as the Koran, is an institution in this sense. It
holds an inner, organic, formal relation to the organised
life of a society of men. Of this class of works is the
Bible. It rose out of the intense and progressive re-
ligious life and experience of Israel and the nascent
Christian Church. But it came rapidly and indeed
necessarily to be regarded as something more than the
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
record of a spiritual history, whose significance lay
wholly in the past, or the expression of personal ideals
and attainments. It was, and it is, felt to be necessary
for the religious experience of all races in all times to
come. The reason Hes in the conviction that the Bible
describes acts of God upon the hearts and minds of men
which were of such a kind as to create or open the way
of communion with Him for every child of man. A
divine purpose Hes in the reHgious story of Israel and
in the birth of the Christian Church, which takes up
the record of these into itseK and makes that record
an instrument of God's deahngs with all following
generations.
This comes out most clearly in the case of the New
Testament. When the Spirit came upon the Apostolic
Church, and its full and real life began, an essential
condition of that life was the witness of the Apostles.
The vital importance of this lay in the double fact that
they had been chosen by Jesus as the inner circle of His
disciples, to whom He most fully unfolded His mind
and the power of His Person, and that they had been
chosen to see and recognise and commune with Him
after the Resurrection. These relations with Jesus
Christ can never be repeated. They are absolutely
unique, and for the existence of the Church they are
absolutely essential. By a supreme act of God's
selecting grace and power the Apostle Paul was added
to this group. He had received a form of preparation
which has proved no less vital for the Church's experi-
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THE FINAL FAITH
ence and faith than that which consisted in following
the earthly ministry of Jesus ; and to him who was the
chief enemy, the most convinced and instructed and
determined persecuter of the Church, the Risen Christ
had appeared in a manner of peculiar significance. He
ever after knew himself, and the Apostolic Church con-
fessed him, to be an organ of the Spirit of God for the
apprehension, dissemination, and interpretation of the
gospel of salvation.
The earliest churches were founded by or were
immediately guided by these Apostles. Wherever they
went it was felt that their teaching had an authority
which could be possessed by no other. Hence their
oral accounts of the ministry, death, and resurrection
of Christ became speedily arranged into forms con-
venient for the memory, and were also written down
and became the basis of our Four Gospels (see Luke
i. 1-4). Their addresses to the non-Christian world are
preserved for us only in the meagre though most precious
records of the Book of Acts. But as the Church in-
creased in numbers and power, and as the Apostles
extended their journeys, it became necessary for them to
send letters — some of them formal, some of an informal
character — to individuals and communities. These were
probably copied very freely, and circulated more or
less widely from the beginning. As the apostolic age
drew to an end, and especially in the next, the sub-
apostolic stage of history, we find many half-pathetic
and yet fervid references to the teaching of the Apostles,
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
as being ever essential to the continued existence of
the Church. But signs soon appeared that oral tradition,
even in the " unforgetting East," is at best a precarious
record of the past. It is always plastic to the touch
of the human spirit, which receives, moulds, and trans-
mits it. Hence vigorous steps were taken to gather,
identify, and preserve the writings of the Apostles.
We cannot here enter into any of the innumerable
perplexing problems which arise from the effort to re-tell
the story of the New Testament canon. We must be
content with having stated thus briefly the impulses
which brought it into existence. And here it is. Criti-
cism has not yet proved that its account of the rise of
the gospel is not to be trusted, or that the vast majority
of these writings did not come from the teaching and
direct authority of the first circle of Apostles. It is for
us to-day what the oral witness of the Apostles was
in Judea and Syria, in Galatia and Macedonia, in Athens
and Kome. It brings us into immediate personal con-
tact with the creative acts of God, by which for us
and for our salvation He sent His own Son into the
world, and appointed Him to die, and raised Him
from the dead, and gave Him in the outpouring of His
Spirit to be the Saviour and Lord of all who believe
in Him. But there are three things which we may add
about the New Testament, and which may serve to knit
together what has already been set down :
(1) In the first place, the question which has troubled
some theologians as to whether the organised Church
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THE FINAL FAITH
or the Bible is supreme is really irrelevant. They are
institutions which both arose out of the experience
and witness and work of the Apostles of Christ. They
are both organs of the Spirit of God, and they are there-
fore organically related to and dependent on one another.
As we cannot conceive the gospel of Christ taking hold
of human history without creating its own community,
destined to cover the earth and to bring forth every-
where out of the old and perishing race the new and
real and final form of humanity, so we cannot conceive
of it without that primal witness of the Apostles, that
original and originating statement of the gospel, which
alone could authenticate the truth for all coming genera-
tions. The Bible is merely the preservation of the
apostolic witness to the origin and nature of the gospel ;
the Church is the solid organism created through that
witness. In modern days we have learnt to use what
seem to us deeper words about these facts than our
fathers knew. We cannot think of the Church as a
mere association, nor as an organisation, with its officials
exactly and formally defined in function and relation
and title for all circumstances and all ages. Nor can
we think of the Bible as a kind of legal document, whose
words taken separately are capable of direct application
to the details of every human Ufe and the variations
of human thought. Each of these institutions is of a
living nature. It grew from the witness of the Apostles
and from the presence and power of the Spirit of
Christ in that witness.
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
(2) In the second place, the facts which are before
us constitute the Bible as the supreme authority for
faith and practice among Christians. The nature of
authority in general, and its particular seat or seats
in the Christian religion, is a large and intricate topic.
Suffice it to say that that only can be an ultimate author-
ity for the faith and practice of Christians which brings
them even in the most widely separated fields of thought
and conduct under the supreme power of the Saviour
and Lord of man. Nothing does this as the witness
of His Apostles preserved for all generations in the
New Testament has done it from the first day until
now. After historical study has done its utmost to
trace the literary history of these documents, to dis-
cover the various forms of secular culture which played
upon the minds of their authors, they are still there
in the form which they have possessed since the end
of the apostolic period. No other can tell us what the
gospel is with a more authoritative voice than they.
Beyond them we can appeal to none higher to tell us
what God did in Christ to create this new life in human
experience, to bind the sinful in peace and faith, in love
and hope, to His own heart of mercy and of power. To
know how and why we may trust in the Fatherhood
of God, how and why we may best spend our swift
lives in the fulfilment of His abiding and eternal will,
we must all at last depend on those pages as on no other
word or institution which all the ages of endeavour
have produced. Over and over again the Church has
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THE FINAL FAITH
found that here, in this book of the first witnesses to
Christ, it has the means by which its false develop-
ments may be corrected, its thoughts may be restrained
from conclusions which are fatal to the power of Christ,
its conduct may be brought back to the test of a
divine purity and an eternal righteousness. By appeal
to it Athanasius in one century and Augustine in the
next, whatever imperfections clung to their teaching,
saved the Church from the threatening inundations
of heathenism. By reopening its fountains and letting
them flow upon various portions of Europe, Francis
of Assisi and Luther (how different their methods and
spirit !) both gave men to taste again a little of the
airs of that first glorious springtide when the Prince
of life made the Apostles radiant with the joy and
power of God's delivering grace.
(3) The Bible is, then, the permanent instrument
of the Spirit of God. Wherever it goes the fruit of the
Spirit begins to appear among men. That is why in
the last century of world-wide missions it has been
translated into more than four hundred languages.
That is why no mission is felt to be complete, though
it have hospitals and meeting-houses, charities and
teachings, unless it has planted the Bible in the life
of the people. There is here again something mystical
which we may all see and feel and cherish, though it
be hard to name and impossible to define. Some speak
with scorn of bibholatry, and urge that the Bible be
reduced to the level of other books if we would save
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THE VITAL MEANING OF CHURCH AND BIBLE
the world from a new form of superstition. And truly
we must not be superstitious or foolish or irrational
in the place which we assign to it in the life of the
Church and in relation to our faith. But yet this book
does stand related to the Spirit of God and to the
faith and destiny of man in a manner which is with-
out comparison or rivalry. Through it He still speaks
to mankind. Its pages still glow with a personal
appeal which comes from the throne of the universe
to the individual heart and conscience. God has made
it most truly and powerfully His word in which a second
time, as it were, He is incarnate for the apprehension
and obedience of mankind. These ancient writings
contained the message which He breathed into the
souls of His beloved Apostles, selected for this very
purpose ; and through them, as we read them, He
moves still among men.
This Bible is part of the secret by which original
Christianity remains final, and by its means the original
gospel is being carried to the whole creation.
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CHAPTER IX
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
XN preceding chapters we have been studying the
nature of the Christian reUgion, so as to discover
the nature of its claim to be the absolute rehgion, and
the relation of that claim to its missionary function.
In it we see not so much man finding God by his own
outreaching towards the Divine, as God revealing Him-
self in His personal relations and purposes towards man
by acts of transcendent meaning and power. Those
acts of God, when they take effect upon the human soul,
become the substance of Christian experience. When
they are considered in their historic setting and in their
cosmic significance, they determine the distinctively
Christian view of God and the world ; they constitute
Christian doctrine and the Christian message. What
we have now to consider more closely is the fact that
these Christian truths, when accepted and obeyed
most fully and intelligently, have from the first created
the missionary impulse. That impulse takes form in
the individual as a mighty desire to make known to
others the gospel which he has experienced, and which
he beUeves that God gave to the world. It is the reflec-
tion in his will of the revealed will of God towards man.
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
Nothing seems to him so great, so worthy of a man's
life, as this effort to make the Christian faith prevail
over all hearts, and transfigure all Uves throughout
the world. That for which God ha« loved humanity-
he beheves that he knows, and he yields himself as the
instrument of this sublime, this divine purpose.
But each man has approached the gospel on his
own feet, along his OAvn path, and each man will give
his own account of his missionary impulse. For when
one explains or defends any impulse from which he acts,
he does so always by changing it into a reason. He
seeks, as it were, to universaUse his personal feeling,
to see it in that system of life in which he is involved
with other reasonable beings. Hence those who are
acting under this great Christian impulse will be found
always to explain the dedication of their lives by Hnking
their will in that act with some one or more aspects of
the Christian system. The greatest and wisest among
them will give many reasons, but all their reasons will
be found to lie not in a mere feeling, but out there in
the Christian system as they see it, and in its relation
to humanity.
It must be our task now to deal with some, the most im-
portant, of these explanations of the Christian missionary
impulse.
I. The Propagation of Life
We may begin with one explanation which has no
doubt unconsciously swayed multitudes, namely, the
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THE FINAL FAITH
fundamental impulse to propagate life. We are told
in the Fourth Gospel of the woman who, " when she is
deHvered, remembereth no more the anguish, for the
joy that a man — a human being — is born into the world."
There is the deep racial instinct at work, without which
no child could be loved, without which mankind could
not endure. It is remarkable that in the New Testa-
ment the missionary impulse allies itself with this
instinct. It has been pointed out above how soon
and how powerfully the early Christians conceived of
themselves as belonging to a new race, not Roman
or Greek or Jewish, nor a mere conglomerate of these,
but a race as real as any other, yet embracing children
of them all. " Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people for God's own possession "
(1 Pet. ii. 9). St. Paul speaks still more boldly when he
declares that Christ has overcome the opposition between
Jew and Gentile, " that He might create in Himself
of the two one new man " (Eph. ii. 15). The Apostles
felt that they were most intimately concerned with
the work of bringing the new race into actual being.
It is something more than a mere effusion of tenderness,
it is the consciousness of a vital and mystic relation
between his converts and himself, which St. Paul some-
times described in most daring language (Gal. iv. 19;
1 Th. ii. 7, 11 ; 1 Cor. iv. 14-17 ; 2 Cor. vi. 13 ; Philem. 10 ;
1 Tim. i. 2 ; 2 Tim. i. 2 ; Titus i. 4 ; cf . 1 John ii. 1 ;
3 John 4). To him the family of God was most real ;
the eternal life was no mere future state, but a present
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
power. And he saw and felt that those over whom he
laboured, and who entered into that Ufe, into that
supreme family relationship, through his prayers and
his teaching, stood for ever as in a sense the offspring
of his spirit. All true ministers have entered into this
joy in their own measure. And many have gone out
into the work of evangelists under this most sacred and
deep impulse, yearning to communicate the great new
life beating in their own hearts, to see it spring up in
other lives.
II. Loyalty to Christ
Th« supreme, explicit reason for the missionary
impulse may best be summed up in the words, " loyalty
to Christ." We have already seen that in the Christian
faith He sits supreme, the Redeemer in whose great
sacrifice of love, the love of the Almighty and eternal
God for each human being is opened upon man's vision
and breaks in upon his heart. He is also the Lord,
the Leader or Captain of the Christian community,
which is knit together by the will to do His will, to
follow out his purposes towards mankind.
1. The Purpose of Christ. — The one word in which
the purpose of Christ is summed up is — "to bring men
to God." That was the mind which was in Him when
He laid aside the form of God and became incarnate,
when he girt His human will for obedience, " yea even
unto the death of the Cross." The same mind is in
Him to-day as His very Spirit works in human history.
15 — 225 —
THE FINAL FAITH
His will is to bring men unto God. As one who has
accepted Christ's leadership, with all it means, gazes
directly and intently upon that will, the missionary spirit
is stirred in him. As he looks from the foot of that kingly
throne at which he kneels day by day out upon the world,
as he realises that the eyes of his King are watching
with an infinite and eternal love all those teeming sons
of men, he finds his own heart reflecting that divine
passion of desire, his own will gradually directed and
finally determined simply to live for Christ's own end,
to bring men to the love of God the Father. When
that has taken place the Christian man is naturally
and inevitably led to regard it as the call of Christ to
himself. Without superstitious waiting for voices or
outward signs, he receives the certainty that loyalty
to Christ means the mission field for him ; just as at
an earlier day he discovered that his faith in Christ was
God's gift, that it was the seal of his personal salvation
set upon his own will by the Spirit of the Eternal.
2. The Cross. — The man whom this view of the will
of Christ has begun to move mightily finds it throwing
a bright light upon the whole work of Christ as the
Redeemer and Lord of men. With a new fascination
he regards the gospel story in which what we may call
the universaHty of the consciousness of Jesus stands
revealed. While He confined his own earthly ministry
to the boundaries of the Jewish people, He yet dealt
with them on broad and human grounds. He did not
limit His call " Come unto Me " to the children of
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
Israel. He did not say, " Every Jew that confesseth
Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father
which is in heaven." He did not say, "The Son of
man came ... to give His life a ransom for all who
are already loyal to Moses." In all such sayings
Jesus set Himself in relation with human nature as
such. He makes us see and feel that He was dealing
with the fundamental relations of the whole race with
God. He evidently intended to teach and labour, to
su£fer and rise again, " that repentance and remission
of sins should be preached in His name unto all the
nations " (Luke xxiv. 46, 47). It is therefore impossible
for any one intelUgently to look upon the Cross of Christ
in its individual, without looking upon it also in its
universal, aspect. No man dare say, " He loved me
and gave Himself up for me," without remembering
that all men have the same right to use those w^ords ;
and no one man can use them fully of himself while
in his spirit he denies them to any class or race of man.
Before that Cross, as we have already seen, all geograph-
ical, racial, educational, social obstructions vanish. It
is the universal human situation which it deals with,
and each man who finds it applied to his own case has
looked into the depth and height, as it were, of the
heart of Christ as He willed on the Cross to change
the relations of man and God.
3. His Great Command. — But loyalty to Christ
attaches itself not only to the leadership of Christ on
his throne, directing the history of His Church out-
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THE FINAL FAITH
wards upon the race, not only to that will of His in the
wonderful days of his flesh, as He moved towards the
Cross, it also bows in reverence before His explicit words.
No one who beheves in the fact of the Resurrection can
reasonably doubt that the Gospels have preserved in
varjring forms of words His direct and final command
to His disciples to proclaim His gospel to the whole race.
"Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations "
(Matt, xxviii. 18-20) ; " Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel unto the whole creation " (Mark xvi.
15; cf. Luke xxiv. 25-27, 44-49; John xx. 19-23).
The missionary nature of the Christian rehgion Ues,
as we have seen, in its very nature, and many of the
most thoughtful and powerful missionaries have felt
the impulse arise within them, as they found themselves
personally related to that Divine Person and the virtues
of His redeeming work, and as they saw into the white
and burning centre of that love of His for all men. But
the missionary Church is right to set those explicit
words emblazoned on high as the formal charter of its
world-wide and endless empire. From the hps of the
Risen Lord they fell. They uttered His will, expressed
once for all and for ever the consciousness which filled
His mind and will no less in the dark depths of Gethse-
mane than on the Mount of the Ascension. They formally
sealed that, His consciousness, upon the consciousness
of those men as the law of the Church's very being.
Before the larger community was gathered together,
before the first word of witness was borne from behevers
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
to those who knew not the God-wrought story of salva-
tion, before the first table of communion was set up or
the first convert to the Christian faith was baptized, the
Lord of the Church wrote upon its primary group the
nature and the end of their existence as His Church.
And loyalty to Christ to-day is summed up, for an
increasing number of souls, in direct obedience to those
supreme words through which alike the mission of the
Church and the destiny of the world stand revealed
in their mutual dependence : " Preach the Gospel
to the whole creation."
III. The Nature of Christian Experience
We come to a third ray of light which falls upon the
missionary impulse. We have seen it as the energy
of the new Ufe which animates the Christian com-
munity, and as the expression of individual loyalty to
Christ, the Redeemer and Master of mankind, for fulfil-
ment of His purpose and obedience to His command.
It is also quickened by the conditions and nature of
that experience which we have studied.
1. The Gospel a Social Fact. — It is important here to
recall the fact that this is in no sense a purely private
experience. Personal or individual we must call it,
for here individuality is reaHsed in a manner and to an
intensity of degree which no other human relationship
or conduct makes possible. There is a true and deep
sense in which, when the gospel seizes a man's soul, it
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THE FINAL FAITH
reveals his personality to himself, and creates new
ranges and qualities of individuality within him. A man
is never fully the man he was designed and intended
and called to become until his personal nature is united
with, filled out, and completed by union with God in
Christ. But while this is true, the other side must not
be forgotten. The gospel is a social fact. To us all
it comes through the mediation of the Christian com-
munity. That community produced and has dissemin-
ated the Scriptures, the witness of the primary Christians
to the nature of the gospel. That community, multi-
form now beyond our description, through some human
agency brought that witness to our doors, urged it
upon our consciences, instilled its truths into our minds.
The gospel is a social fact, received by the individual
through and in the midst of a community — a small
group, or even one messenger it may be, representing
the vast Church of God, the whole body of living and
faithful souls who confess the Name of Christ. It
streams to him, indeed, from God's own Spirit, an inward
personal act of God upon himself, with elements in it
which are his very own, alone, and can belong to none
other. But it streams to him also at first and at last
through others, through the written page of Scripture
and the preacher's voice, through the intercession of
the Church and its praises, through its symbols of
ceremonial and sacrament. It is a debt which each
man owes to other men.
2. The Inner Meaning of Mercy, — We may go even
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
deeper into the experience of the mercy of God. That
mercy, immeasurable, inexpHcable, descends upon the
individual as a gift offered to all. When modern
evangelists use with inexhaustible effect the old words
" whosoever will," their effort is to get men to see in that
phrase the strange interblending of the universal and the
particular. " Whosoever " is a distributive word which
seems to isolate a man and deal with him singly. But
the gospel message so isolates, or would isolate, every
man without exception. It is out of that glorious
universal call that the overwhelming individual appeal
at last reaches the inner seat of the heart and the will.
I do not understand mercy till I have seen it directed
upon me, but I could not so see it until it shine before
me and above me like an encircling and universal sky
embracing all human beings in its blessed light. Even
here, then, in the lonely hour when remission of his own
sins is granted to each man, he owes it to the fact that
he belongs to the race upon which the mercy of God
has fallen.
The divine mercy is then something which can be
truly understood in its individual appUcation only when
it is seen in its general intention. Each man must
meet the will of God as He directs His grace upon all
men. He must see its wonder, its searching beauty, its
merciless exposure of all sin, and its merciful wiping out
of all guilt, in order to grasp that grace for himself. In
the very act of accepting mercy he must feel mercy —
" Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
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THE FINAL FAITH
But who can thus truly see the '' wideness of God's
mercy," and who can thus appreciate it as the source
of his personal salvation and object of his personal faith,
without feehng the impulse to convey it unto others ?
If I can only receive a boon for myself because it is
intended for all, how can I avoid the wish, or stifle the
will, that it shall reach all because it has reached me ?
The very sense of a baffling and inscrutable Providence
which overwhelms one when he asks the unanswerable
question, why this word of grace has come to him and
not to one thousand million other persons in the world
to-day, ought to arouse in him the determination to do
something that the word may spread from heart to
heart till all the world is leavened with that grace. The
missionary impulse springs from the experience of
personal salvation, because when a man enters upon
this experience he does so as a child of the race.
IV. The World and its Need
We have seen the missionary impulse as it arises
from the energy of the new life, from loyalty to Christ,
from the innermost implications of the experience of
salvation. We must try to understand how it is related
with the world when looked at in the light of the gospel.
1. The Meaning of Humanity. — The coming of Christ
and His Spirit changed the meaning of the word humanity.
There had been among Greek and Roman thinkers
some insight into the unity of mankind, but it had not
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
been deep and true enough to create a new and perma-
nent personal attitude. A Roman poet did say, "Nothing
human is foreign to my interest," and the thriUing
word must be ever welcome to our hearts. It was
a foregleam of that full sunhght which the gospel of
Christ alone has shed abroad upon the human race.
We must admit, of course, that even in Christendom,
race prejudice still holds our hearts in bondage. They
are few and rare souls, indeed, of whom it can be said,
that none of the distinctions among men which arise
from colour, or social standing, affect their conduct or
even their feelings toward their fellowmen. But it is a
matter of supreme meaning that, in spite of that fact,
the missionary impulse is sending people all over the world
who are determined to see and act upon humanity in
every child of the race, and pour something of the love
of God through their own hearts upon the lowest
members of the race. The vast works of philanthropy,
which involve close fellowship and even intimacy with
the pitiable objects upon whom their redeeming efforts
are spent, would be impossible unless a new power had
appeared to make that other Roman saying about the
" sac redness of man " more clear and more real than it
was to the philosophic and superior Stoic of old.
(1) One Race. — In the first 'place, modern philosophy,
as well as modern studies in history and ethnology,
have not only compelled us to say that mankind is one
race, they have revealed to us the greatness of the
nature which we call human. Something of the infinite
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THE FINAL FAITH
seems to be suggested by all the central powers of man.
Reason, ever growing in its grasp of the outward word,
and withal, holding infinite ideals in its grasp ; conscience,
claiming the authority to utter the laws of a rational
universe ; imagination, a glowing fire from which warmth
and beauty are flung out upon the coldest seas and the
most distant star ; love, which even in the dullest heart
may suddenly wake to utter its claims of endless life,
indignant at the separating grave, — all these and any
other power which may belong to man as man possess
a dignity, suggest a glory not to be measured in earthly
terms. These forms of knowledge cannot discover
man's actual destiny, but they show us man's capacity
for some great destiny. They describe to us a nature,
" heaven's consummate cup," so nobly planned that we
must not only admire it as it is, but expect some greater
thing from it and of it, which no eye has seen nor ear
heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man to con-
ceive it.
(2) The Revealed Destiny. — In the second place, while
philosophy sets man sub jade ceternitatis, discloses that
he is fashioned for an infinite end, that end cannot be
defined. The eternity of which Philosophy speaks
remains an empty form. It has no describable substance.
It may say with Kant that man must pursue the good
will as an infinite and for ever unattainable goal. It
may tell us that man is pursuing " the pathway to
reality " or perfecting " individuality." But none of
these terms, valuable in their place, can give to the
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
capacity of a man . a concrete achievement which
immediately glows with substantial reahty. Philo-
sophy can neither lift history above time nor drag its
eternal goal down and set it there ardent, mystic,
actual to win our love and dominate the whole
movement of our living energy. Christianity alone
has ever professed to satisfy this need. It has set
humanity sub facie Christi. Now the face of Christ is
at once a historical and an eternal fact. In Him the
infinite good has suddenly become actual in history.
The perfectly good will, conscious of its triumph, the
final individuality, conscious of its perfect reality, is
there in Him. The Christian man, knowing Christ,
knows what is to be made of man. The meaning of our
nature stands revealed in Him whose love led Him to
the Cross and whose power lifted Him from the dead to
the throne of God. There the cup of human nature
stands, fashioned gloriously, with the very life of God
filling it full.
(a) For one thing, man was the object of the love of
Jesus even in His earthly life. No one has put the
meaning of this more beautifully than the author of
Ecce Homo : "Of this race Christ HimseK was a member,
and to this day is it not the best answer to all blas-
phemers of the species, the best consolation when our
sense of its degradation is keenest, that a human brain
was behind His forehead and a human heart beating in
His breast, and that within the whole creation of God
nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been
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THE FINAL FAITH
found than He ? . . . And yet He associated by pre-
ference with these meanest of the race. . . . There is
nothing of which a man may be prouder than this ;
it is the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history ;
it is precisely what was wanting to raise the love of man
as man to enthusiasm. An eternal glory has been
shed upon the human race by the love Christ bore
to it."
We must add, of course, that the love of Christ for
man reached its perfect as well as its most mysterious
expression in His sacrifice on the Cross. If man's
measureless guilt in His view made that most dreadful
deed of His will upon His own heart necessary. He
performed it because He saw in man that which was
worthy of being redeemed. Man's original power to
receive the life through the love divine must be restored
at any cost, that the eternal will of his Creator may be
done. This joy was before Jesus when He endured the
Cross, despising shame. This joy of His drops into the
heart of His disciple as the impulse of the missionary
and the philanthropist.
(&) The man who gives himself to Christian service,
if by any means he may save some, is one who has
caught a glimpse of the infinite value of the human
soul. That glance of its glory may be connected with
a study of its capacities, but it came primarily from the
revelation of the intention of God. The cup exists
not for itself ; it is beautifully fashioned in base and
rim for uses of a cup, for the joy of Him at whose feast
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THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
of love it is destined to serve. The infinite value of
human nature is suggested by its rehgious capacity ; it
is revealed and made sure in the whole work of God in
Christ and in the descriptions of that eternal kingdom,
that family of God, that host of the redeemed, that
temple in which God is revealed, that city in which
his own Light stands, which our Lord and His Apostles
gave to the world. Many an eager saintly spirit, brood-
ing over this will of God, has been fired with the passion
to open that world of hope to the bewildered souls
that know not how great they are, nor how near, when
Christ, is named, stands the infinite measure and assur-
ance of their destiny.
2. The Dreadful Need of Humanity, — Over against
the world in its splendid capacity we must fix our eyes
steadfastly on the world in its dreadful need. As we
have already seen, the very history of man's religious
endeavours is a most pathetic witness to " something
wrong " at the very root of his life. Splendid indeed
have been many of his religious aspirations, inspiring
have been many of his words uttered in moments of
true and deep insight. But everyvt^here we find proof
that his striving for God has been deflected and defeated
by some other force in his nature and experience.
What barbarities and tortures has he not inflicted in
the name of his gods and for their approval ! What
extremes of anguish has he not endured as proofs at once
of his insatiable appetite for some supreme good and
of his inveterate tendency to mix it with iniquity !
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THE FINAL FAITH
And nowhere has he found a true and lasting peace.
The enlightenment of Buddha was only partial and
incapable in its original form, still more so in its later
developments, of conferring that glorious and positive
sense of triumph, that possession of the pardon of God,
that assurance of life everlasting, which the consummate
religion can only bestow.
The Christian man knows, as he regards even the
history of religion, that he is looking on the desolation
of sin. It has clouded man's vision, it has blocked his
way, it has oppressed his heart. The sense of right
undone, of wrong accomplished, is not peculiar to the
higher civilisations. An accusing conscience casts its
shadow throughout the world upon the human spirit.
It underlies all legislation and government, it reared
every altar of expiation, it sang every dirge of hopeless
woe. To quell it man has put on the garments of joy,
but the flowers always wither. He has tried to simulate
the peace it had shattered, to despise the victory of the
grave, to be content with pleasure of the senses, to cage
his infinite yearnings within the bars of time and cir-
cumstance, even to torment and mutilate his poor body
that his spirit might have peace. But always in vain.
" I ought " is a feeling that woke up in man's breast
when he first sought the Divine ; it woke with the
pang of remorse, and the pang has survived all devices,
save only the Cross of Christ.
But the Christian man of to-day is peculiarly sensitive
to the fact that the desolation of sin is no mere inward
— 238 —
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
and secret sorrow of the religious soul. It appears out-
wardly in all the wrongs that infest the relationships
of men. True it is, as we have seen, that sin is the
misuse of appetites and impulses seated in man's original
nature, and themselves sinless. But the fact of the
desolation is spread over the whole of human history.
The lust of the flesh and the pride of the spirit, the
passion for power and the will to deceive, have worked
in all races. They have reared empires on the graves
and crushed hearts of conquered races ; and they have
undermined and cast the same empires down into the
dust. In our day, even in Christian lands, the social
desolation of man has evoked the zeal of all reformers,
and sent whole armies into the highways of social
service. The Christian man, believing that until the
broken relations with God are set right, until the state
of sin is removed, these desolations must persist, gives
himself to the service of that gospel which deals first
with sin that it may cleanse the fountainhead of greed
and self-will, of passion and crime. He knows that he
is working at the root of all social evil when he seeks
to bring the conscience to that peace of God, in whose
light righteousness shines clear and in whose merciful
love the heart of man learns the love of man.
3. The Doom of Impenitence. — There is another
view of the situation which was more emphasised in a
former day than in our own, and which we may describe
as the doom of impenitence. It would be right to say,
perhaps, that the error of that former time lay not so
— 239 —
THE FINAL FAITH
much in mere exaggeration of this peril of the human
soul, but in its isolation. It is not the sole fact nor
the whole truth about man. But it is assuredly one
element or aspect of his condition which it is mere
blindness not to see, and sheer folly not to treat with
appropriate energy and awe. No book throws so bright
a light upon the destiny of man as the Bible, but the
corresponding shadow is proportionately dreadful and
dark. It was Jesus who so loved man as we have seen,
who could be so broad and generous and even genial
in His treatment of the facts before Him in the multi-
form interests of human society, who yet could utter
the words of most astounding and even of appalUng
severity. It was He who used the word " lost," and
He allowed no exceptions to be made in its appHcation.
That is enough. He saw multitudes Uving without
God, some openly, some as the hypocrites. He saw
the possibility of a final impenitence. He and His
Apostles have taught us that the children of darkness
may prefer that darkness when the intensest light of
God is shining straight upon their hearts and minds.
The wondrous charity of the New Testament which
recognises that in every nation he who worketh righte-
ousness is accepted of God, must not paralyse but
quicken the missionary impulse. For surely if men
are to be judged according to their light, they will do
better in a brighter light. Surely if in all heathen
religions there is expressed in some measure man's
hunger for the divine, they who have the secret of that
— 240 —
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
true Bread of Life must take it to them, lest they fail
to find it. Surely if the will may become impenitent,
it ought to have every chance, which the very grace of
God can give it, to turn unto righteousness and repent
and live. This religious view of man's situation, as one of
infinite danger, led Jesus to the Cross and sent forth all
the great heralds of His salvation to the ends of the earth.
Two final observations must be made :
1. In the first place, the missionary impulse is com-
posed of two elements, the sense of a supreme com-
passion and the feeling of an everwhelming debt. The
pity is born in a man's heart from the new love of God
and from his new insight, which that very love makes
clear and poignant, into man's dreadful need. The
debt is felt to be a debt of honour. No institution can
enforce it. No human being can judge his neighbour
in respect of the manner and amount of its payment.
It rests upon every man's honour to see it and weigh
it and pay it. It may be put briefly in two sentences —
" What I have freely received I owe to him who has it
not. Especially do I owe the greatest boon to the
direst need."
2. In the second place, the man who believes in the
gospel of Christ with all it contains, not only of grace
offered now, but of human glory prophesied hereafter,
knows that he is here gazing upon the deepest form
of reality. What does not belong to this fife in Christ
from God must pass from human experience. From
this and around this must gather all that henceforth is
i6 — 241 —
THE FINAL FAITH
to be human nature and a human world. Through Christ
and His work the divine purpose with man is as it were
gazing in upon our souls and challenging our confidence,
our hfe's devotion, in the call to beUeve and serve the
gospel. That divine purpose is the substance of man's
nature and history, the final reaUty for which all the
stages of history are but the scaffolding and the
tools.
We may put it this way — All are agreed that much
of what seems most solid in our experience is evanescent.
Most are agreed that if anything is to last or preserve
its identity for ever, and so prove itself of supreme
value, it must be sought not in the physical, nor in the
fitful pulses of pleasurable emotions, nor in the forms
of earthly knowledge, but solely in the moral nature
of man, in a good conscience, a will made one with the
will of God. There you strike upon the indestructible
thing, the one form of reality that must live as long as
God. But here is our climax of glorious assumptions,
our claim which outtops all wildest effronteries of the
human spirit. We of the Christian world hold this as
our fundamental conviction that only through the power
of Jesus Christ is that good conscience, that unity of
man's will with God's will, being actually created. This
conviction is Christianity, and to deny it is to lose the
whole Gospel.
The preacher and teacher, the humblest ministrant
of the gospel, is working for that. He may close his
eyes to all other careers, and be deaf to other praise.
— 242 —
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
This is praise enough, and here is work sublime enough.
It brought the Son of God to earth, that He might in
our world produce that which when all else has vanished
for ever will remain for ever — the human soul alive for
ever in God.
— 243 —
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