.iVATIujOO \J£ 11ju_- . -^uO 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED IN 
 
 THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF FRANCE; 
 
 BEING 
 
 ESSAYS & REVIEWS, 
 
 Bearing on the chief Religion* Questions of the day, 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH \ 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON 
 
 "THE OXFORD ESSAYS & REVIEWS " 
 
 BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 JOHN R. BEARD. D.D. 
 
 Fides in tel lee turn amplexans. 
 
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 PREFACE. 
 
 The following pieces (except the lust; are translated from La Reçut 
 de Théologie et de la Philosophie Chrétienne, the first volume of which 
 appeared in the year 1850. Continued down to the present, that period- 
 ical now bears the title of Nouvelle Ilevuc de Théologie* The leading 
 object of the work is stated in the first essay, entitled. ;i Views and Aims." 
 by its original editor, T. Colani, Those "Views and Aims" have, with 
 some variety, been developed and laid before the public under the able 
 and judicious direction of the editor, aided by various eminent, liberal, 
 and earnest members of the French Protestant Church. From the 
 writings of the most distinguished of the contributors, these Essays and 
 Reviews have been selected. The primary object of the volume is to 
 place before the English public an important phase of religious thought. 
 Having for some time contemplated doing this, I have been hindered 
 until the present moment ; and now I congratulate myself that the 
 volume appears in the midst of a not uncongenial religious movement, 
 and may, with God's blessing, do something to promote it. The exter- 
 nalities of popular systems of religion have in this country received a 
 blow from which they will not recover, at the hands of the authors of 
 ,; Essays and Reviews." In the direction of that blow, parts of this volume 
 are designed to work, in particular, the essay on the " Errata of the Xew 
 Testament/' and that entitled "Theological Conversations." But while 
 the Oxford " Essays and Reviews " are effective in either undermining or 
 battering down strongholds of religious falsity, they scarcely present the 
 positive side of true religion with sufficient fulness and prominence. Yet 
 the most effectual way to displace error, is to place truth in the human 
 
 * Strasburu, Tremtcl et Wiirtz : LOKMKV, David Nutt, 270 Strand.
 
 mind. The present volume therefore exhibits the Gospel in most of iti 
 important aspects — first. God, and God's relation to the universe, and 
 especially to the human mind ; second. Christ, and his true and rightful 
 authority in the soul ; third, Christ's religion in its essential harmony 
 with science ; fourth, Revelation in its general character, and in its 
 particular exhibition in the Bible, leading to direct and distinct state- 
 ments of what the Bible is, and what the Bible contains. It is a 
 distinguishing peculiarity of the system of religious thought here ex- 
 pounded to hold that the Gospel is self-evidencing, and so needs no 
 outward testimony or support. Yet there are miracles in the Bible. 
 Especially do the miracles of Jesus Christ demand attentive study. The 
 essay on the subject does something toward exhibiting their real nature 
 and their true value in a discriminating manner, and in a spirit alike of 
 free enquiry and reverent faith. This essay, it is thought, may serve to 
 qualify and supplement the piece contributed by the late Professor 
 Powell to the " Essays and Pieviews." A view of the spiritual conception 
 of Christianity presented by the liberal writers in the Nouvelle Revue de 
 Théologie, and as the writer believes, greatly needed in the present state of 
 religion in this country, would have been more defective than that here 
 offered to the public, had these pages not contained the brief but valuable 
 piece on M The Simplicity of the Gospel ;" nor would this picture of the 
 new French school of thought have been complete, nor could the full 
 impression hoped for in this country have been produced, had not the 
 contrast been exhibited, which appears in the biographical notice ot 
 Calvin, as between the new. fresh, and vigorous forms of religious 
 thought and sentiment, and the decaying ones of a traditional and 
 exploded theology. In this brief account of the objects and contents of 
 the volume I now put forth, [ must not omit to state that while keep- 
 ing my eye fixed on the improvement and wants of what i? commonly 
 called •' the religious world."' I have not overlooked those of the world 
 which professes to do without religion. I hope that the earlier of the 
 compositions which ensue may help to counteract the materialistic and 
 infidel tendencies and efforts of the present day which are by no means 
 confined to England, but which, wherever they are active, make a desert 
 which their advocates erroneously denominate peace. 
 
 Among rhe hopes that I cherish in the labour of love in which 1 
 Lcrj cn^fge id tliat of contributing to bring into closer alliance, and i
 
 mer and more practical sympathy, the cultured and noble repre*eu- 
 
 ves of free religious thought and earnest religious life, that are now 
 
 ively working for God and Christ, in France, England, and the 
 
 lited States. Actuated by that hope, I have written and published 
 
 e Introductory Essay, in which I endeavour to report in a way to be 
 
 merally understood, what the much decried " Reviews and Essays " 
 
 ?ally are, what they teach, and what they will do. 
 
 In translating and editing this volume, I have acted simply as a 
 reporter, except in the parts in which I express my own opinion. In 
 very much of what is here contained, I. reporter though I am, entirely 
 concur. To other parts my adherence is qualified. From some things 
 I dissent more or less. I commit the whole to the public in the hope 
 that it will contribute to the advancement of a free and truly spiritual 
 Christianity. 
 
 Lower Broughton, near Manchester. 
 April 21st. 1861.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 page 
 
 I. Biographical Notices of the Contributors, by 
 
 Dr. A. Seville, translated by Dr. Davison ... i— viii 
 
 II. Introductory Essay on the Oxford " Essays and 
 
 Reviews," by the Editor ... ... ... ix— li 
 
 III. Views and Aims, by T. Colani ... ... ... 1—9 
 
 IV. On Modern Materialism and its Causes, by Dr. Scholten. 
 
 Professor of Theology in the University of Leyden. 10 — IS 
 
 V. Religion and Science, by Dr. A. Seville. ... ... 19—93 
 
 — VI. The Future Life, a Critique of the Chapter thereon in 
 
 the " Dogmatik" of Strauss, by Dr. A. Seville. . . . 94—136 
 
 VII. The Authority of Jesus Christ, by Dr A Seville. ... 137—172 
 
 VIII. What is Revelation, by A Gratz, translated by 
 
 Dr. Davison. ... ... ••• ••• 173—201 
 
 — IX. Theological Conversations : 
 
 1. Catholicism is a Branch of Protestantism. 
 
 2. Protestantism is a Branch of Catholicism. 
 
 3. The Christ of the Popular Churches offers no 
 
 Medium of Reconcilliation, by Edmund 
 
 Scherer 202—2 
 
 X. The Errata of the New Testament, by Edmund 
 
 Scherer, translated by Dr. Davison. ... ... 248—297 
 
 XL What the Bible is, by Edmwnd Scherer, translated by 
 
 Dr. Davison 298 — :316 
 
 — XII. The Miracles of Jesus Christ, by Edmund Scherer. 317—342 
 
 XIII. What there is in the Bible, by T Colani. ... ... 343—362 
 
 XIV. The Simplicity of the Gospel, by T. Colani, trans- 
 
 ,v M. :<. ... ... ••• ••• 368—372 
 
 — ' ;■:■-,:- n„ian. 373— 38f
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 By A. Reville, D.D., 
 
 MINISTER AT ROTTERDAM, 
 
 • Mons. Ernest Renan, member of the institute, at the 
 present moment the first orientalist in France, perhaps the 
 best writer and the most generally liked by readers of re- 
 finement, is of Breton origin, and descended from a very 
 Catholic family. He was himself destined for the career of 
 the Church, and studied with this view at St. Sulpice, at 
 Paris, with the fathers of the oratory. His penetration, his 
 precocious intellect, his zeal for study, caused his instructors 
 to entertain the highest hopes of him. Unfortunately for 
 them, the love of knowledge brought the young Lévite within 
 the sphere of German erudition and criticism. He lost under 
 that influence, his Catholic faith, and almost, it may be said, 
 his religious faith. One thing however saved him from this 
 — his exquisite feeling for the beautiful in history, in art, and 
 in the soul of man, and often, pagan by his intellect, he be- 
 came more and more Christian by his heart. Having been 
 named to an appointment in the Imperial Library of Paris, he 
 found there all the time and all the assistance necessary to
 
 the development of his critical studies. His connections and 
 his tastes constantly drew him more toward the society of- 
 liberal Protestants. He married a Miss Scheffer, the niece of 
 the celebrated Ary Scheffer. His works, already numerous, 
 are published by M. M. Levy Frères. They are — 
 
 Studies of Religious History 4th edition. 
 
 On the Origin of Language 3rd edition. 
 
 Averroë s and Averroism 2nd edition. 
 
 History and Comparative System of the Shemitic 
 
 Languages 2nd edition, 
 
 (the work which obtained the prize of the institute.) 
 
 The Book of Job 2nd edition. 
 
 Essays on Morals and Criticism 2nd edition. 
 
 Solomon's Song 1st edition. 
 
 It would be going much too far to consider E, Renan 
 altogether one of our church. He has retained, from the 
 crises through which he passed, a leaven of scepticism which 
 will not be removed all at once. In any case, as time advances 
 he is continually coming nearer to us, and we feel that he 
 considers himself already as swimming in the same seas. He 
 protects and defends us on all occasions, and it is to him that 
 I owe it to have been admitted into the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, a position very much desired in France, and very 
 difficult to obtain, especially fora Protestant theologian. The 
 Catholics have complete liberty to speak or Avrite against their 
 own church, but they do not like to hear the same things 
 said by a Protestant. E. Renan is at present (March, 1861). 
 in Syria on a scientific mission from government. His special 
 object is to study on the spot the Phenician antiquities. He 
 i- a man yet young, and though to a certain extent worn by 
 study and work, one who will do much in the rature. In his 
 last work he pronounces himself decidedly in favour of Christ- 
 ian history, <<t' the Protestant Church, and of Prot<
 
 111. 
 
 science, and promises them the future. He is in bad repute 
 among the orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, by whom he is 
 much misrepresented. 
 
 n. 
 
 Mons. Edmond Scherer, D.D., formerly professur of 
 theology in the University of Geneva. His debut corres- 
 ponded with the hopes of his orthodox supporters. He 
 was zealous against his theological antagonists and their 
 friends. But by degrees, rumours began to be circulated 
 respecting modifications which were taking place in his views. 
 It was especially towards the central point of the inspiration 
 and the authority of the Bible that these rumours pointed, in 
 respect to heterodoxy of the young professor. Soon there 
 was no doubt about the matter. Under the influence of Ger- 
 man criticism, M. Scherer rejected miraculous inspiration, and 
 the divinity of the canon, and even denied the correctness of 
 the principle of authority in matters of faith. Great was the 
 scandal. The professor was led to resign, and the Revue 
 de Théologie was commenced at Strasburg. The old liberal 
 party triumphed in the wound which had thus been inflicted 
 on its adversaries, but soon perceived with anxiety that the 
 venom was spreading among its own ranks, particularly among 
 the young theologians. This is where we now are. In fact 
 orthodoxy has taken lower ground. It endures Semi- Arians in 
 its communion and strangely enough on the other hand it adopts 
 the Arminianism theory against the moral necessity asserted 
 by the new school, which in this point, more readily re- 
 cognises the relative truth of the old Calvinism, without, 
 however, agreeing with the Dfecretum Horribile. On its side, 
 the old liberal party is being divided, the one portion uniting 
 
 a2
 
 IV. 
 
 itself to this moderate orthodoxy, in order to exclude us 
 from the Church, the other portion, desiring to preserve us in 
 the ranks, and becoming insensibly leavened with our ideas and 
 ■our principles. M. Scherer, since his resignation, has held 
 himself aloof from any direct participation in the state Church, 
 and since the polemical discussions of the commencement, has 
 written little else than critical articles, or dogmatic essays, 
 such as may be read in the B évite de Théologie. As a writer, 
 he is serious, thorough, concise, and a little abstract, He 
 excels in literary criticism, and has published some very re- 
 markable articles of this class in the Bibliothèque Universelle of 
 Geneva, a monthly publication. They have been indeed so 
 much noticed that I may announce to you that he will soon 
 take his place also in the Be vue des Deux Mondes, in which 
 he will write on philosophical and literary subjects. He is 
 perhaps rather too much discouraged by the obstacles which* 
 his views have met with in the Church. His most important 
 works have been collected in a volume, entitled Miscellanies of 
 Religious Critcis/n, (Paris: Levy Frères), which appeared last 
 year. 
 
 III. 
 
 Mons. A. GnoTz, pastor at Xismes, and a pupil of the 
 college of Montauban, was at first much under the influence 
 of A. Monod (the great orthodox professor and preacher) and 
 who, like many of his fellow students, was carried away by the 
 theological earthquake, caused by the Scherer difficulty. He 
 is said to be a very good preacher, and his writings bear the 
 impress of a pious and liberal tone of thought, perhaps rather 
 enthusiastic than severe.
 
 v. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mons. T. Colani, pastor at Strasburg. His family be- 
 longs to the most strict form of orthodoxy, and he himself 
 long held the same views. But his sincere and independent 
 mind, his residence at Strasburg, on the very borders of 
 Germany, the lessons of professor Reuse, and his own reflec- 
 tions separated him from this form of belief, and intimately 
 connected with Scherer, he was his principal ally on his rupture 
 with orthodoxy. His theological writings are to be found in 
 the Revue de Théologie. A certain flavor of the Evangelical 
 Alliance gives a certain originality to his views, otherwise so 
 broad and advanced. Unfortunately he was poor, and was com- 
 pelled to give lessons for a livelihood. He was born to be a 
 professor, and he hoped to become one at Strasburg. By a thou- 
 sand intrigues his religious opponents have succeeded as yet in 
 closing against him the doors of the academy. It is one of 
 the difficulties of our position in France that at every turn we 
 are obliged to choose between complete freedom and our most 
 pressing personal necessities. But a new course was opened 
 for him. On the occasion of the illness of a pastor at Stras- 
 burg, Colani was induced to preach a few times. He did not 
 believe himself fitted for it, but he made the attempt, animated 
 by the secret desire of proving that it was possible to preach 
 with profit before man and in the presence of God, according 
 to the principles of the new theology. To the general sur- 
 prise, his sermons had a prodigious success. The Lutheran 
 Directory, (I must tell you that in France, great importance 
 is not attached to the distinction between the Reformed and 
 the Lutheran Churches), under the influence of orthodoxy, 
 dared not give him a place in the pulpit ; but public opinion,, 
 and among other things, a petition signed by a very large 
 number of members of the church, had its effect on the 
 Directory, and carried the point. He has now a place a*
 
 
 pastor at St ras Lairg. *His published sermons form 
 volumes, and their sale has been as rapid as possible, 
 edition follows after another, and they contribute largely 
 to dissernniinate our ideas among our theological readers. 
 
 v. 
 
 to Dr. Sholtex I must refer for everything relating 1 
 to his ideas to my article in the Revue des Deux M 
 upon the religions schools of Holland. He is without any 
 doubt at the present moment the most distinguished theolo- 
 gian of that country, and he exercises an immense influence 
 upon the young by his zeal and by his philosophic depths of 
 thought. He is a man of ripe age, the son of a pastor liberal 
 according to the old meaning of the word, and very well 
 acquainted with the German philosophy. It is to him I owe 
 my comprehension of it. Constantly exposed to the violent 
 attacks of the orthodox and of the old liberals, he defends 
 himself with a boldness and a success which disconcert his 
 adversaries. Supported by his colleague Kuenen, who is 
 a younger man, and wl > ial duty is criticism, 
 
 strengthened also by the recent addition of one of his pupils. 
 Professor Raunenhoff, for ecclesiastical history, he finds 
 position becoming stronger from day to day. He is in other 
 respects a man of very simple tastes and in every sense love- 
 able. 
 
 *A fact which {lately "oceured may serve as a commentary on this, some 
 parties wished to procure the removal on the ground 01 PelJMer, an 
 
 eloquent preacher of Bordeaux, entirely of our views. Not only the majority of 
 the Consistory refused point blank, bur besides this, a petition signed 
 out of a church, which Bombera perhaps 3000 souls, formally demanded oft': 
 «story to maintain him in the place. Facts like this are significant and encoura- 
 ging.
 
 Vil. 
 
 VT. 
 
 I have not much to report respecting myself. I was bom at 
 Dieppe, in Normandy, the son of a pastor there, whose recent 
 loss I am still mourning. My father brought me up in his own 
 liberal ideas, as they were taught at Geneva. Whilst very 
 heretical in matters of doctrine, I was quasi-orthodox in mat- 
 ters Biblical. My own reading, my knowledge of German, 
 and the Revue de Tliéologie have brought me to the point at 
 which I now am. Desirous, as far as might be in my power. 
 of assisting in the revival of the Theology of French Protest- 
 tantism, and in rectifying the common notions of Christianity 
 J accepted a pastorship offered me at Rotterdam, in 1859, 
 although out of my native land, in the hope that I might find 
 there some time and more opportunities than in the most of the 
 churches in France, to devote myself to this work. My hope 
 has not been disappointed. I have succeeded in gaining for 
 myself a certain name in connection with French Protestantism. 
 and even beyond that limit. My writings in the Lein , le Disciph 
 fie Jésus CJn-ist, the Reçue de Strasburg, etc., etc., have contri- 
 buted to propagate what I believe to be the truth, and have even 
 drawn , upon me the attentions of readers whom I little 
 expected.; I mean men like Renan, Laboulaye, etc. who have 
 opened to me the door of extensive Parisian publicity. I 
 have entered in, and I quite hope to remain inside. I have 
 made an opening through which better men than I am will 
 pass, and I am well pleased at having been ajjle to make it. 
 Just now there is in the press at Leyden, a treatise of 
 mine, on the Origin and Composition of the Gospel of 
 Matthew, a treatise which I wrote in answer to a question pro- 
 fessed by a Theological Society of this country. My answer 
 received the prize offered for competition, and has procured 
 me the degree of Doctor of Theology. Four or five years ago, 
 I was all but appointed professor at Montauban Happily i
 
 vin. 
 
 was spared that misfortune. Montauban being the seat of 
 authority where four or five ignoramuses set themselves up to 
 lay down the law for the world, I should have been stifled 
 in such a stove. From the seclusion of my Dutch study, I 
 send forth my shafts against orthodoxy, when and how I will ; 
 four French Protestant Journals are at my disposal, the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes and the Revue Germanique are open to me : 
 what would I have more 7* 
 
 *Dr. Réville, pastor at Rotterdam, beeldee contributing largely to the Nouvelle 
 Revue de néologie and the other periodicals which he mentions, is the author of a 
 very instructive and interesting volume, entitled Essais de Critique Religieuses 
 Paris, Chefbuliez; the last Essay In Which Des Etudes Religieus en France con- 
 tains much information illustrative of the main object of the present publication.
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 ON 
 
 "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS." 
 
 By the Editor. 
 
 *• This presumptuous imposing of the senses of man upon the words of 
 God, the special senses of man upon the general words of God, and lay- 
 ing them upon men's conseiences together under the equal penally of 
 death and damnation ; this vain conceit that we can speak of thethir-gs 
 of God better than in the words of God ; this deifying our own inter- 
 pretations, and tyrannous enforcing them upon others ; this restraining 
 of the word of God from the latitude and generality, and the understand- 
 ings of DM13 from that liberty, wherein Christ and the Apostles left them 
 — is and hath been the only fountain of all the schisms of the Church, 
 and that which makes them immortal." — Chillingworth. 
 
 The ttro re ligious atmospheres of France and England 
 cffer at the present moment an interesting yet painful corres- 
 pondence. They are both strongly marked by the signs of 
 progress ; they are both disturbed by passion, which attempts 
 to resist the onward movement. The progress too in both 
 instances has a similar origin and a similar tendency. Its 
 origin is in the spirit of the age — a spirit which, being on the 
 one side, a re-action against disbelief, is on the other, the 
 child of mental freedom and improved methods of inquiry and 
 modes of thought. This spirit is now passing over all civi- 
 lised lands, levelling old and decaying systems of opinion and 
 government, by calling into being a broader and higher life, 
 irental, moral, and religious. Its continued existence and 
 operation are as inevitable as its re-constructing power is cer- 
 tain and efficient. Naturally it calls forth opposition. In 
 tHs opposition, too, France and England have points of agree- 
 ment. The opposition there and here comes from the unin
 
 formed multitude ; from theologians who are ignorant of their 
 science in its most advanced condition ; from spéculatifs who 
 have voluntarily enclosed themselves within the net-work of 
 the past, or who see so little ahead as to be afraid of looking 
 boldly into the future : or whose phiL arrow and 
 
 so shallow aa to be alarmed at every new theory, whether it 
 be of a successive and unbroken development of life, or of lost 
 links in the chain of ever improving species : from elergymen 
 and dissenting ministers of all kinds, who, having cl< 
 
 against all the new light of the day, fondly think that 
 the creeds and formularies to which th< 
 contain absolute and unchangeable truth, and ought 
 others as completely as they satisfy themselves, and 
 consequence are made both uncomfortable and 
 in-coming novelties of form and substance. Yet thes 
 
 s are the leaders of public opinion in what is 
 religious world. Easily therefore can they, as they hi 
 raise a storm of protestation and reproach again 
 prophets. Hence is it that in France a bare majorit; 
 clamour down and expel from their pastorships the mini* 
 of the party of progress in the Protestant ( 
 hence too is it that we see the clergy of 
 rising almost as one man, to assail by hard w< 
 their brethren, who. knowing more than they, a 
 enough to tell the world what they know. Tl 
 power, inasmuch as it is for the most part blind on 
 topics on which it thinks it sees and certainly ought 
 would be neither formidable nor of long duration v 
 centrated and marshalled by an alliance which is 
 called, we may presume, because tl 
 contain none of their peculiar notions. H 
 taking its stand on some one of the 1< 
 dozy, and boldly identifying itself with the Gospel, 
 andtemper worthy of the pope himself, busies itself 
 European nations in putting forward its favourite artie] 
 belief, and for that purpose, in withstanding every ! 
 of free thought, and every manifestation • 
 its own little si I orthodoxy. For year- 
 
 active in Germany and France in attempting to put 
 theological individuality and spiritual emancipation 
 by constant interference and personal infhien 
 liberal subsidies, it has zealously laboured to build a
 
 against the rising and overflowing waters of divine truth. Of 
 course the zeal has been spent in vain. The course of God's 
 providence is not stopped by a staff of clerical agitators. 
 While however they were intent in sealing theological eyes 
 in Berlin, and making preparations for the same unchristian 
 office at Geneva, lo ! of a sudden they are startled with insur- 
 rection at home. Seven men of might and valour within the 
 well-fenced " Church of England " come forth of their own 
 accord and declare to their fellow countrymen, and, through 
 them, to the world, that the thinkers of society have outgrown 
 the scholastic forms of the creeds, articles, and prayer-book ; 
 that theology is on all sides undergoing a moulting ; and 
 that those who would save their religion must fly to the moun- 
 tains, where the air is pure and free, and where life is safe 
 and vigorous. This proclamation they have made in a volume 
 which they designate by the collective title of " Essays and 
 Reviews." Some notice of these I have thought might not 
 inappropriately stand here as a kind of introduction to similar 
 papers, disclosing states of mind and religious endeavours in 
 a neighbouring country, not a little resembling such as the 
 English volume represents. 
 
 What are " Essays and Reviews, ." said a little boy to me 
 recently, seeming to expect for answer that it was some 
 newly-invented machine of war, or some newly-dis-/<> 
 beast of prey — something bad certainly. The curiosity of the 
 child is become all but universal, thanks to the clergy of the 
 country, who, when they take heartily to the business, are of 
 all advertising mediums the most effectual, and never do they 
 take to anything more kindly than when a new thought, or a 
 free-spoken book has to be hunted down. What are "Essays 
 and Reviews?" The question could receive an answer based 
 on a personal knowledge from very few of its numerous clerical 
 assailants, most of whom have condemned the book unseen, 
 and unread, some without any acquaintance therewith, others 
 with only such an acquaintance as can be gathered from ex- 
 tracts, made expressly for the purpose of procuring its con- 
 demnation. What the book really is, and what it teaches, 
 can be exactly and thoroughly known only to those by whom
 
 tn. 
 
 it is attentively perused. And if I now undertake to give- 
 some account of it I do so chiefly in the hope of augmenting 
 its already large number of readers 
 
 The title • " Essays and Reviews " is a little singular. 
 Undescriptive, and unattractive as it is. it may have been 
 taken from a modesty characteristic of sound learning and 
 character, which instinctively shrink from display and parade. 
 The title may also indicate the origin of the contents of the 
 volume — which are not without an appearance of having been 
 so many essays and reviews contributed to one periodical or 
 more. The supposition is confirmed by the matter which is 
 one in its subject rather than in its treatment. To all 
 appearance, the volume consists of a number of review articles 
 collected and put together with only the one design of con- 
 tributing to a revival of theological study and religious 
 improvement in England. "With this statement correspond 
 the few words of explanation offered -'To the Reader" by the 
 authors themselves. 
 
 " It will be readily understood that the authors of the 
 ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles 
 only. They have written in entire independence of each other, 
 and without concert or comparison. The volume, it is hoped, 
 will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage 
 derivable to the cause of a religious and moral truth from a 
 free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable 
 to suffer by the repetiton of conventional language, and from 
 traditional methods of treatment." 
 
 Here we learn several things bearing on the purpose and 
 aim of the authors : 
 
 1. — They desire to bring advantage to religious and moral 
 truth. 
 
 2. — For that object they use the freedom which belongs 
 to them as men and as Christian. 
 
 3. — That freedom is linked with reverence. 
 
 4. — That freedom eschews conventional language and 
 traditional methods of treatment. 
 
 5. — The endeavour is made without any systematic or 
 pre-concerted plan, so that there is here no attempt to form 
 a school, or found a sect, but a simple utterance of truth for 
 truth sake. 
 
 The authors are members of Oxford University, eminent 
 alike for learning and character. One, Dr. Temple, is chap-
 
 xin. 
 
 lain in ordinary to the Queen ; Head Master of Rugby 
 school, and chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh. Another, Dr. 
 Rowland Williams, is Vice- Principal, and professor of Heb- 
 rew, in St. David's College, Lampetor, Wales, and Vicar of 
 Broad Chalke, Wilts. A third, Benjamin Jowitt, M.A., is 
 Regius Professor of Greek, in the University of Oxford, and 
 author of a translation and Commentary on Paul's Epistles 
 to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans, which has 
 reached a second edition. Men of this mark are not likely to 
 put forth new and unpopular doctrines without a full and 
 overpowering necessity. Their scholarship and habits of study 
 give them the best opportunities of knowing the truth, and 
 the personal, professional, and social restraints under which 
 they act, guard them against rashness, and afford others an 
 assurance that they speak nothing beyond what honesty 
 compels them to speak. Such men deserve the attention they 
 ask. They have gained attention far greater, probably, than 
 they expected. The more thoughtful, the sound-hearted, the 
 earnest lovers of truth, especially among our more cultivated 
 laity, have, all over England, read the seven " Essays and 
 Reviews" with a care and an appreciation well attested by the 
 extraordinarily rapid sale of the volume. 
 
 With these preliminary explanations, as to what the book 
 is, I proceed to state what the book teaches, and shall end by 
 enquiring what the book will do. 
 
 Dr. Temple's essay, entitled " The Education of the 
 World," proceeds on the assumption that there exists an 
 analogy between the several stages of the life of individuals, 
 and the great epochs through which our race has passed and 
 is passing. The substance of his view may be presented in 
 these his words : " We may rightly speak of a childhood, a 
 youth, and a manhood of the world. The men of the earliest 
 ages were in many respects still children, as compared with 
 ourselves, with all the blessings and with all the advantages 
 that belong to childhood. We reap the fruits of their toil, 
 and bear in our characters the impress of their cultivation. 
 Our characters have grown out of their history, as the character 
 of the man grows out of the history of the child. There are 
 matters in which the simplicity of childhood is wiser than the 
 maturity of manhood ; and in these they were wiser than we. 
 There are matters in which the child is nothing, and the man 
 is everything ; and in these we are the gainers. And the
 
 process by which we have either lost or gained, corresponds 
 . with the process by which the infant is trained 
 for youth, and the youth for manhood." 
 
 This training has three stages. In children we are 
 subject to*positive rules, which we cannot understand, but are 
 bound implicitly to obey. In youth we are subject to the 
 influence of example ; and soon break loose from all rules, 
 unless illustrated and enforced by the higher teaching which 
 example imparts. In manhood we are comparatively free 
 from external restraints ; and if we are to learn must be our 
 own instructors. First come rules, then examples, then 
 principles. ' First comes the Law, then the Sob of Man, then 
 the Gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child, under 
 tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. 
 Then, when the fit season had arrived, the example to which 
 all ages should turn, was sent to teach men what they ought 
 to be. Then the human race was left to itself, to be guided 
 by the teaching of the Spirit within. 
 
 To the Law and the Prophets the world is indebted for 
 the unity and spirituality of God. The unity of God out-tops 
 all other ideas in dignity and worth. The spirituality of God 
 involves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immortality of 
 the soul, the final judgment of the human race. If God is one 
 and spiritual, then the spiritual power within us. which pro- 
 claims its own unity and independence of matter by the univer- 
 sality of its decrees, must be the rightful monarch of our 
 lives. 
 
 The Hebrews desciplined the human conscience ; Rome, 
 the human will ; Greece, the reason and taste ; Asia, the 
 spiritual immagination ; so Athanasius, a thorough Asiatic in 
 sentiment and in mode of arguing, was the bulwark of the 
 doctrine of the trinity. 
 
 The childhood of the world was over when our Lord 
 appeared on earth. The tutors and governors had done their 
 work. It was time that the second teacher of the human race 
 should begin his labour. The second teacher is example. 
 The one example of all examples came in the fulness of 
 time, — for which all history had been preparing, to which all 
 history since has been looking back. Hence the first and 
 largest place in the New Testament is assigned to his life, 
 four times told. This life we emphatically call the Gospel. 
 If there is little herein to be technically called doctrine, yet,
 
 here is the fountain of all inspiration. There is no Christian 
 who would not rather part with all the rest of the Bible, than 
 with these four books. There is no part of God's word which 
 the religious man more instinctively remembers. The sermon 
 on the mount, the parables and the miracles, the last supper, 
 the Mount of Olives, the garden of Gethsemane, the cross on 
 Calvary — these are the companions alike of infancy and of 
 old age ; simple enough to be read with awe and wonder by 
 the one ; profound enough to open new depths of wisdom to 
 the fullest experience of the other. 
 
 Our Lord was the example of mankind ; and there can be 
 no example in the same sense. But the whole period from 
 the closing of the Old Testament to the close of the New 
 was the period of the world's youth ; and our Lord's presence 
 was not the only influence of that kind which has acted upon 
 the human race. Three companions were appointed by Pro- 
 vidence to give their society to this creature whom God was 
 educating — Greece, Rome, and the early Church. To these 
 three, mankind has ever since looked back, and will ever here- 
 after look back with the same affection, the same lingering 
 regret, with which age looks back to early manhood. In these 
 three mankind remembers the brilliant social companion, 
 whose wish and fancy sharpened the intellect and refined the 
 imagination ; the bold and clever leader with whom to dare 
 was to do, and whose very name was a signal of success; and 
 the earnest, heavenly-minded friend whose saintly aspect was 
 a revelation in itself. 
 
 The early Church stands as the example which has most 
 influenced our religious life, as Greece and Rome have most 
 influenced our political and intellectual life. We read the 
 New Testament not to find there forms of devotion, for there 
 are few to be found ; nor laws of Church government, for 
 there are hardly any; nor creeds, for there are none; nor doc- 
 trines logically stated, for there is no attempt at logical pre- 
 cision. The New Testament is almost entirely occupied with 
 two lives, the life of our Lord and the life of the early 
 Church. 
 
 When Christians needed creeds and liturgies, and forms of 
 Church government, and systems of theology, they could not 
 find them in the New Testament ; they found there only the 
 materials out of which such needs could be supplied ; but the 
 combination and selection of those materials they had to pro-
 
 XVI, 
 
 vide fur themselves. The example of the early Church will 
 live and teach for ever. In her we learn what is meant by 
 zeal, what by love of God, what by joy in the Holy Ghost, 
 what by endurance for the sake of Christ. There have been 
 great saints since the days of the apostles; holini 
 possible now as it was then, but the saintliness of that time 
 had a peculiar beauty which we cannot copy, in the perfect 
 simplicity of the religious life, the singleness of heart, the 
 openness the childlike earnestness. 
 
 Since the days of the apostles no further revelation has 
 been granted. The claim of infallibility, still maintained by 
 a portion of Christendom, has been entirely given up by the 
 more advanced section. The Church, in the fullest sense, is 
 left to herself to work out, by her natural faculties, the princi- 
 ples of her own action ; and whatever assistance she is to re- 
 ceive in doing so, is to be through those natural faculties, and 
 not in spite of them, or without them. From an early day 
 she undertook a career of dogmatism, which in many ways 
 was similar to the hasty generalisations of early manhood. A 
 vast number of her early divisions are practically obsolete, 
 and even many of her doctrinal statements are plainly unfitted 
 for permanent use. Under the influence of the spirit of God, 
 men are beginning to take a wider view than they did. Physi- 
 cal science, researches into history, a more thorough knowledge 
 of the world have enlarged our philosophy beyond the limits 
 which bounded that of the Church of the Fathers ; and all 
 these have an influence whether we will or no, on our deter- 
 minations of religions truth. There are found to be more 
 things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in the patris- 
 tic theology. God's creation is a new book, to be read by the 
 side of his revelation, and to be interpreted as coming from him. 
 AVe can acknowledge the great value of the forms in which 
 the first ages of the Church defined the truth, and yet refuse 
 to be bound by them : we can use them, and yet endeavour to 
 go beyond them, just as they also went beyond the legacy 
 which was left us by the apostles. 
 
 In learning this new lesson, Christendom has needed a 
 firm spot on which she might stand, and has found it in the 
 Bible. Had the Bible been drawn up in precise statements of 
 faith or detailed precepts of conduct, we should have had no 
 alternative but either permanent subjection to another law. or 
 loss of the highest instrument of education. But the Bible
 
 from its very form is exactly adapted to our present wants. 
 It is a history ; even the doctrinal parts of it are cast in an 
 historical form, and are best studied by considering them as 
 records of the time at which they were written, and as convey- 
 ing to us the highest and the greatest religious life of that 
 time. Hence we use the Bible, — some consciously, some 
 unconsciously — not to override but to evoke the voice of con- 
 science. Wlien conscience and the Bible appear to differ, the 
 pious Christian immediately concludes that he has not under- 
 stood the Bible. Hence too while the interpretation of the 
 Bible varies slightly from age to age it varies always in one 
 direction. The schoolmen found purgatory in it. Later 
 students found enough to condemn Galileo. Not long ago it 
 would have been held to condemn geology ; and there are 
 still many who so interpret it. The current is all one way : 
 it evidently points to the identification of the Bible with the 
 voice of conscience. The Bible, in fact, is hindered by its 
 form from exercising a despotism over the human spirit ; if it 
 could do that, it would become an outer law at once ; but its 
 form is so admirably adapted to our need, that it wins from 
 us all the reverence of a supreme authority, and yet imposes 
 upon us no yoke of subjection. This it does by virtue of the 
 principle of private judgment, which puts conscience be- 
 tween us and the bible ; making conscience the supreme 
 interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but whom it 
 can never be a duty to disobey. How utterly impossible it 
 would be in the manhood of the world to imagine any other 
 instructor of mankind? And for that reason every day makes 
 it more and more evident that the thorough study of the 
 Bible, the investigation of what it teaches and what it does 
 not teach, the determinaton of the limits of what we mean 
 by its inspiration, the determination of the degree of authority 
 to be ascribed to the different books (if any degrees are to be 
 admitted), must take the lead of all other studies. He 
 is guilty of high treason against the faith who fears the 
 result of any investigation, whether philosophical, or scientific, 
 or historical. And therefore nothing should be more welcome 
 than the extension of knowledge of any and every kind ; for 
 every increase in our accumulations of knowledge throws 
 fresh light upon these, the real problems of our day. If 
 geology proves to us that we must not interpret the first 
 chapters of Genesis literally ; if historical investigation shall 
 
 b
 
 xviu. 
 
 show us that inspiration, however it may protect the doctrine, 
 yet was not empowered to protect the narrative of the inspired 
 writers from occasional inaccuracy : if careful criticism shall 
 prove that there have been occassionally interpolations and 
 forgeries in that book, as in many others, — the results should 
 still be welcome. Even the mistakes of careful and reverent 
 students are more valuable now than the truth held in un- 
 thinking acquiescence. The substance of the teaching which 
 we derive from the Bible will not really be affected by any- 
 thing of the sort : while its hold upon the mind of behV 
 and its power to stir the depths of the spirit of man, however 
 much weakened at first, must be immeasurably strengthened 
 in the end by clearing away any blunders which may have 
 been fastened on it by human interpretation. The immediate 
 work of the day is the study of the Bible. If we have made 
 mistakes careful study may teach us better. Life indeed is 
 higher than all else : and no service that man can render to 
 his fellows is to be compared with the heavenly power of a life 
 of holiness. But next to that must be ranked whatever tends 
 to make man think clearly and judge correctly. Thought is 
 now higher than action, unless action be inspired with the 
 very breath of heaven : for we are now men governed by prin- 
 ciples, if governed at all : and cannot rely any longer on the 
 impulses of youth or the discipline of childhood. 
 
 According to Dr. Temple the course of human life, whe- 
 ther individual or general, is an educational course. The idea, 
 borrowed from Lessing. stands in broad contrast with the 
 theological view of man's career, and is destined to supersede 
 it. The essence of the latter is a fall from what is termed 
 41 original righteousness.'" That fall entailed original sin. 
 Original sin vitiates the race. A vitiated race requires an 
 outward redemption. Hence the atonement which is an infi- 
 nite sacrifice for an infinite sin, committed by man as sinning 
 against the infinite God. Thus the educational view by exclu- 
 ding the theological, excludes the figment of original sin and 
 all its fancied consequei: 
 
 In Dr. Rowland Williams's account of the late Baron 
 Bunsen's Biblical researches the writer reports the opinions of 
 another rather than states his own. The authority of that 
 other, namely Bunsen, is very great with all who having ) :
 
 XIX. 
 
 a careful study of his works, are competent to form a sound 
 and discriminating judgment. A more encyclopedic mind 
 than Bunsen's probably never existed. Nor was there ever a 
 more enlightened conscience, a more honest heart, and in sim- 
 ple manly piety, he is surpassed by very few. The only 
 drawback is a certain mysticism not unusual in the German 
 mind. That drawback is lessened when Bunsen's doctrines 
 are interpreted by Rowland Williams. For indeed the latter 
 is not ashamed to sit at the feet of the former. Accordingly 
 when the master's massive German learning is expounded by 
 the British sound sense and clear judgment of the scholar, 
 there ensues a result which deserves attention from all, and 
 will command respect from those with whom the love of truth 
 is paramount. 
 
 The great principles developed, the important discoveries 
 made, and the valuable truths taught by Bunsen, as set forth 
 by Williams, can here receive only a passing notice. History 
 combines with geology in considerably throwing back the age 
 of the world as gathered from the Bible. The exact prolonga- 
 tion is scarcely determined. There is no danger in prefixing 
 some millenium to our ordinary chronology. God's providence, 
 favourable as it was to the Hebrew people, embraced other 
 nations of the earth, all the inhabitants of which are dear in 
 his sight inasmuch as they are his children. As to different 
 branches of this great family different aptitudes and corres- 
 pondingly different tasks were assigned, so to the faithful 
 Abraham and his descendants was given the highest of all 
 privileges, namely, the power and the office of religionising 
 thé world. Accordingly Abraham is at once the progenitor 
 of Moses, Mahomed, and Christ, in and by whom, as is now 
 patent to every one, all the families of the earth are destined 
 to be blessed. The blessing has been coming to man with 
 constant increase from the earliest ages, first in divine 
 influences preparing for Abraham, whose religion is summed 
 up in deep and practical trust in the one God, the maker of 
 all things ; then in the Mosaic institutions, including the 
 noble race of prophets — the moral and political because truly 
 religious teachers and reformers of their several ages; then in 
 the ministry of Christ; and finally in the ministry of the 
 Spirit of God working in the Christian Church, by working 
 in the heart of every one of its faithful members. 
 
 These general views? are wrought oui in the midsl of 
 
 b 2
 
 details which ea ir the whole texture tnre and 
 
 if hole domain of theology, nol n. Whatever 
 
 is touched receives light. But I have ■ for particu- 
 
 lar instances, and must pass from scholarship to divii 
 
 Proceeding on the right and the Scriptural basis of rev 
 riisii:_ 3 the moral and spiritual Saviour of mankind — 
 
 ion which was in the heart perhaps even more than 
 in the heal, and which in making him one in affection, aim, 
 and spirit with Christ gave him the best of all titles to the 
 name of Christian : Bunsen interpreted many of the doctrines 
 and facts of the Gospel with a true Christian sentiment, and 
 so has brought into permanent relief many trnt pre- 
 
 cious than scriptural. Thus justification by faith means 
 acceptance with God. and the consequence peace of mind which 
 Les on simple and loving trust in God, as the Father of 
 8, — a valuable exchange surely for the orthodox fiction of 
 merit by transfer. Propitiation too is the tranquilising of the 
 waves of human passion by virtue of the power of God in 
 Christ, rather than the appeasement of the vindictive wrath of 
 the Almighty. The fires of hell are images of the ti. 
 conscience. Heaven is the enjoyment of the love of 
 The kingdom of God is no more Romish sacerdotalism than 
 ish royalty, but the realization of God's will in man's 
 heart. More speculative and ela] ss true are 
 
 Bunsen' s views >m the relations borne by God and Christ one 
 to another. Yet even here there is at least a wide departure 
 from scholastic and once popular errors. On this point I 
 transcribe Dr. Williams's own words. " The expression of 
 spirit in deed and form is generically aki 
 illustrates the incarnation ; for though the true substance of 
 Deity took body in the Son of Man, they who know the 
 divine substance to be spirit will conceive of such embodiment 
 of the Eternal Mind very differently from those who abstract 
 all divine attributes. — such as consciousness, foreth 
 love, — and then imagine a material residuum, on which 
 confer the holiest name. The divine attributes 
 tial with the divine essence. He win» abides in love abid 
 
 I in him. Tims the incarnation becomes with 
 our author as purely spiritual as it was with Paul. Th 
 of David by birth is the son of God by the spirit of holi 
 What is born of flesh i> flesh, and what is born 
 •it."
 
 These verities became materialised in the unspiritual hands 
 Dtf Fathers and Churchmen. " Salvation from evil though 
 sharing a Saviour's spirit was shifted into a notion of pur- 
 chase from God through the price of his bodily pangs. The 
 deep drama of heart and mind became externalised into a 
 commercial transfer, and this effected by a form of ritual. So 
 with the more speculative fathers, the doctrine of the trinity 
 was a profound metaphysical problem, wedded to what seemed 
 consequences of the incarnation ; but in ruder hands, it 
 became a materialism almost idolatrous, or an arithmetical 
 enigma. Even now different accepters of the same doctrinal 
 terms hold many shades of conception between a philosophical 
 view which recommends itself as easiest to believe, and one 
 felt to be so irrational that it calls in the aid of terror. The 
 historian, (Bunsen), of such variations was not likely, with 
 those whose theology consists of invidious terms, to escape the 
 nickname of Pelagian or Sabellian. He evidently could not 
 state original sin in so exaggerated a form as to make the 
 design of God altered by the first agents in his creation, or to 
 destroy the notion of moral choice and the foundation of 
 ethics ; nor could his trinity destroy by inference that divine 
 unity which all acknowledge in terms. The fall of Adam 
 represents with him ideally the circumscription of our spirits 
 in limits of flesh and time, and practically the selfish nature 
 with which we fall from the likeness of God, which should be 
 fulfilled in man. So his doctrine of the trinity ingenuously 
 avoids building on texts which our Unitarian critics from Sir 
 Isaac Newton to Gilbert Wakefield, have impugned; but is a 
 philosophical rendering of the first chapter of St. John's Gos- 
 pel. The profoundest analysis of our world leaves the law of 
 thought as its ultimate basis and law of co-herence. This 
 thought is con substantial with the being of the Eternal I AM. 
 Being, becoming and animating ; or substance, thinking and 
 conscious life, are expressions of a triad which may be also 
 represented as will, wisdom, and love; as tight, radiance, and 
 warmth; as fountain, stream, and united flow; as mind, 
 thought, and consciousness; as person, word, and life; as 
 Father, Son, and Spirit. In virtue of such identity of thought 
 with Being, the primitive trinity represented neither their 
 originant principles, nor their transient phases, but their 
 eternal inherencies in one Divine .Mind. " The unity of God 
 (to quote Bunsen's own words) as the Eternal Father ;
 
 XXII. 
 
 fundamental doctrine of Christianity" ;* but (continues Dr. 
 Williams) the Divine Consciousness or Wisdom, consubstan- 
 tial with the Eternal Will, becoming personal in the Son of 
 Man, is the express image of the Father ; and Jesus, actually, 
 but also mankind ideally, is the Son of God. If all this has 
 a Sabellian sound, its impugners are bound, even on patristic 
 grounds, to show how it differs from the doctrine of Justin 
 Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and the historian 
 Eusebius. If the language of those very Fathers who wrote 
 against different forms of Sabellianism, would if now first used, 
 be condemned as Sabellian, are we to follow the ancient, or 
 modern guides ? May not a straining after orthodoxy, with 
 all the confusion incident to metaphysical terms, have led 
 the scholars beyond their masters ? We have some authori- 
 ties, who, if Athanasius himself were quoted anony- 
 mously, would neither recognize the author nor approve his 
 doctrine. They would judge him by the creed bearing his 
 name, the sentiments of which are difficult to reconcile with 
 his genuine works, as its Latin terms are with his Greek 
 language. Baron Bunson may admire that creed as little as 
 Jeremy Taylorf and Tillotson J did, without necessarily con- 
 tradicting the great Father to whom it is ascribed. Still 
 more ; as a philosopher, sitting loose to our Articles, he may 
 deliberately assign to the conclusions of councils a very 
 subordinate value ; and taking his stand on the genuine words 
 of Holy Scripture, and the immutable laws of God in the 
 human mind, he may say, either the doctrine of the trinity 
 agrees with these tests, or, if you make it disagree, you make 
 it false. If he (Bunsen) errs in his speculation, he gives us 
 in his critical researches the surest means of correcting his er- 
 rors ; and his polemic is at least triumphant against those who 
 load the Church with the conclusions of patristic thought, and 
 forbid our thinking sufficiently to understand them. As the 
 coolest heads at Trent said, " Take care, lest in condemning 
 Luther yuu condemn Augustin'" : so if our defenders of the 
 faith would have men believe the doctrine of the trinity, they 
 had better not forbid metaphysics, or even sneer at Realism." 
 I conclude this imperfect outline of Williams's masterly 
 report of Bunsen's researches with the following : " Bunsen' s 
 
 *Hippol\tus, vol. '2, p. 46, first edition. 
 
 tLiberty of Prophesying, p.p. 4SI, 2, vol vii. : Ed.. Heber. 
 
 (Burnet's- 'Own Times : Letter from Tillotson atthi
 
 enduring glory is, neither to have faltered with his conscience, 
 nor shrunk from the difficulties of the problem, but to have 
 brought a vast erudition, in the light of a Christian con- 
 science, to unroll tangled records ; tracing frankly the Spirit 
 of God elsewhere, but honouring chiefly the traditions of his 
 Hebrew sanctuary." 
 
 If we are to retain the old anglican foundations of research 
 and fair statement, we must revise some of the decisions 
 provisionally given upon imperfect evidence ; or, if we shrink 
 from doing so, we must abdicate our ancient claims to build 
 upon the truth ; and our retreat will be either to Rome, as 
 some of our lost ones have consistently seen ; or to some form, 
 equally evil, of darkness voluntary. The attitude of too" many 
 English scholars before the lost monster of the deep, is that 
 of the senators before Tiberius. They stand balancing terror 
 against mutual shame. Even with those in our universities, 
 who no longer repeat fully the required shibboleths, the expli- 
 citness of truth is rare. He who asserts most, commiting him- 
 self least to baseness, is reckoned wisest." 
 
 The late Professor Baden Powell's " On the Study of the 
 Evidences of Christianity" is rather a general critique on the 
 views put forth on the subject of miracles generally and the 
 miracles recorded in the New Testament in particular, than a 
 systematic treatise expounding principles and deducing truths 
 connected with the subject. Accordingly it is not an attack on, 
 or a defence of the miracles of the Bible, though the tendency of 
 the remarks is of an adverse character. This tendency seems 
 to have arisen from the habits of a mind formed all but exclu- 
 sively in geometrical processes, and which accordingly is led if not 
 to deify physical nature, at least to make what are called its laws 
 supreme, and to throw open a wide gulph between the physical 
 world and its creator and all-pervading presence, God. Of 
 course, if God is shut out from his own universe, or if God 
 is involved in an iron net- work of independent and changeless 
 law, then the action of God being in either case restricted, 
 miracle in any proper sense of the term is impossible. Not 
 so, but the reverse, if, as is really the truth, God is essentially 
 free, and if God in perfect freedom lives, moves, and acts 
 throughout the great cosmos, the existence and phenomena of 
 which are simply the movements of his will and the manifesta-
 
 tion of his attributes. However, let Mr. Baden Powell be 
 right or wrong, the Yolmne is not pledged to hit 
 becausel 1 . the rniracl 
 
 among the facts of the Gospel. 
 
 In the fourth essay of the volume the Rev. Henry B: 
 Wilson, author of "Schemes of Christian Comprehend 
 which formed part of the Oxford Essays ( 1897), argues 
 behalf of the principle of an Established Church, and main- 
 tains a free if not a latitudinarian interpretation of the Articles 
 of the Anglican Establisment. Two principles, that of indiv- 
 dualism, and that of muhitudinism, present themselves as the 
 
 ! condition of a Christian community. The latter em- 
 bracing whole nations, form national churches, and lend to 
 individuals the united sympathy and aid of numbers, in their 
 efforts to work out the religious life. The former places the 
 individual himself in direct contact and communion with his 
 Maker. The former is the object of Mr. Wilson's preference. 
 In the very terms of the latter, I find grounds for making it 
 my own; and that the rather, because while the form* 
 utterly futile, except so far as it secures and intensifies the 
 agency of the latter, the latter avoiding the evils incident 
 to the former, recognises the essential element of all true 
 religion, gives it full scope, and educes from man's native 
 powers, aided by their Divine Author, all the good they are 
 ble of producing. Were I however a churchman, I should 
 feel that Mr. Wilson had rendered a service to the Establish- 
 ment; and even as I am I rejoice in the claim he puts forward 
 for a liberal interpretation of its formularies, and the words he 
 utters on behalf of a catholic spirit. This is the way in which 
 the grounds of union present themselves to his view. 
 
 11 The Protestant feeling among us has satisfied itself in a 
 blind way with the anti-Roman declaration, that " Holy 
 
 rare containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that 
 whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is 
 not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an 
 article of the faith," etc., and without reflecting how very much 
 is wisely left open in that article. For this déclara r 
 is partly negative and partly positive ; as to its negative 
 partit declares that nothing — no clause of creed, no 
 of council, no tradition or exposition — Ls to be required to
 
 believed on peril of salvation, unless it be Scriptural ; but it 
 does not lay down that everything which is contained in Scrip- 
 ture must be believed in on the same peril. Or it may be 
 expressed thus : — The word of God is contained in Scripture, 
 whence it does not follow that it is co-extensive with it. The 
 Church to which we belong does not put that stumbling block 
 before the feet of her members ; it is their own fault if they 
 place it there for themselves, authors of their own offence. 
 Under the terms of the Sixth Article, one may accept literally, 
 or allegorically, or as parable, or poetry, or legend, the story 
 of a serpent tempter, of an ass speaking with man's voice, of 
 an arresting of the earth's motion, of a reversal of it motion, 
 of waters standing in a solid heap, of witches and a variety 
 of apparitions. So, under the terms of the Sixth Article, 
 every one is free in judgment as to the primeval institution of 
 the Sabbath, the universality of the Deluge, the confusion of 
 tongues, the corporeal taking up of Elijah into heaven, the 
 nature of angels, the reality of demoniacal possession, the 
 personality of Satan, and the miraculous particulars of many 
 events. So the dates and authorship of the several books 
 received as canonical are not determined by any authority, nor 
 their relative value and importance." 
 
 Many may take a view different from that of our author ; 
 but they have no right to deny to others the liberty they use 
 themselves. 
 
 " To lay down as an alternative for striving for more 
 liberty of thought and expression within the Church of the 
 nation, that those that are dissatisfied may sever themselves 
 and join a sect, would be paralleled by declaring to political 
 reformers that they are welcome to expatriate themselves if 
 they desire any change in the existing forms of the Constitu- 
 tion. The suggestion of the alternative is an insult ; if it 
 could be enforced, it wouM be a grievous wrong." 
 
 " Jesus Christ has not revealed His religion as a theology 
 of the intellect, nor as an historical faith ; and it is a stifling 
 of the true Christian life, both in the individual and the 
 Church, to require of many men a unanimity in speculative 
 doctrine, which is unattainable, and a uniformity of historical 
 belief, which can never exist." 
 
 " On the Mosaic Cosmogony" is the title of the fifth essay- 
 by C. W. Goodwin, ALA., the only layman of the seven. The
 
 XXVI. 
 
 piece supplies a sufficient refutation of the opinion of tJ 
 who hold that the narratives of the creation, taken in their 
 only proper sense, namely the sense of the writer or vrrr 
 are in harmony with the teachings of modern Geolo- 
 
 The Rev. Mark Pattison. B.D. furnishes in the sixth essay 
 some account of the " Tendencies of Religious Thought in 
 England, from 1688 — 1750." The essay is mainly histori- 
 cal. Contributing to the value of the volume, it supplies 
 little to alarm a suspicious orthodoxy. Yet here 
 are found truths whose utterance is too free to be for- 
 given. Mr. Pattison argues that the outwardness of reli- 
 
 a thought, particularly in its application to what are called 
 " the evidences of religion,"' tended to make men sceptical 
 rather than believing, and is specially detrimental when trying 
 to embody the essence of religion in creeds, confessions, 
 and rituals, it made their acceptance the one condition of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 " The defect of the eighteenth century theology was not 
 in having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides. 
 In the present day. when a godless orthodoxy threatens, as in 
 the fifteenth century, to extinguish religious thought altogether, 
 and nothing is allowed in the Church of England but the 
 formula? of past thinkings, which have long lost all sense of 
 any kind: it may seem out of season to be bringing forward 
 a misapplication of common sense in a bygone age. There are 
 times and circumstances when religious ideas will be greatly 
 benefitted by being submitted to the rough and ready tests 
 which busy men try what comes in their way ; by being made to 
 stand their trial and be freely canvassed coram populo. As 
 poetry is not for the critics, so religion is not for the theo- 
 logians. When it is stiffened into phrases, and these phrases 
 are declared to be objects of reverence but not of intelligence, 
 it is on the way to become a useless incumbrance, the rubbish 
 of the past, blocking the road. Theology then retires into the 
 position it occupies in the Church of Rome at present, an un- 
 meaning frost-work of dogma, out of all relation to the actual 
 history of man." 
 
 The gem of the book is professor Jowett's trea 
 the Interpretation of Scripture." The great principle which
 
 underlies the whole is of the utmost simplicity. Il is ih\>. 
 that the way to inter] net any writing, and so the way to inter- 
 pret the writings of the Bible, is to ascertain what in each 
 word, clause, sentence, paragraph, and chapter your author 
 meant or intended to say. Get and state the thought of 
 Paul, Peter, or James, and you perform the primary duty of 
 Scriptural exposition. Having once obtained their thought, 
 that is their state of mind, you will then consider what, in the 
 present state of the world, and in your own particular condi- 
 tion, that thought or meaning says to you in the way of 
 instruction or obligation. These principles are applied by the 
 learned essayist with a multiplicity of illustration and a point 
 and force of evidence, which can hardly fail to weigh with 
 opponents, and which carry the impartial and teachable along 
 in willing and grateful accordance. 
 
 It is impossible on this occasion to give an analysis of 
 this wonderfully instructive and eloquent piece of writing. 
 The most meagre account of it would occupy many pages. I 
 must content myself with two or three extracts. Distinguish- 
 ing between the Scripture itself and men's opinions or inter- 
 pretations of Scripture, the author makes these remarks 
 " The book itself remains, as at the first, unchanged amid the 
 changing interpretations of it. The office of the interpreter is 
 not to add another but to recover the original one — the mean- 
 ing, that is, of the words as they first struck on the ears or 
 flashed before the eyes of those who heard and read them. 
 He has to transfer himself to another age ; to imagine that 
 he is a disciple of Christ or Paul ; to disengage himself from 
 all that follows. The history of Christendom is nothing to him ; 
 — but oidy the scene at Galilee or Jerusalem, the handful of 
 believers who gathered themselves together at Ephesus, or 
 Corinth, or Rome. His eye is fixed on the form of one like 
 the Son of Man, or of the prophet who was girded with a gar- 
 ment of camel's hair, or of the apostle who had a thorn in the 
 flesh. The greatness of the Roman empire is nothing to him : 
 it is an inner, not an outer world that he is striving to restore. 
 All the after-thoughts of theology are nothing to him ; they 
 are not the true lights which give light in difficult places. 
 His concern is with a book, in which, as in other ancient 
 writings, are some things of which we are ignorant ; which 
 defect of our knowledge cannot however be supplied by the con- 
 jectures of Fathers or Divines. The simple words of that book
 
 he tries to preserve absolutely pure from the refinements 
 distinctions of later times. He acknowledges that they are 
 fragmentary ; and would suspect himself if out of fragments 
 he were able to create a well-rounded system or a continuous 
 history. The greater part of his learning is a knowledge of 
 the text itself : he has no delight in the voluminous literature 
 which has overgrown it. He has no theory of interpretation ; 
 a few rules guarding against common errors are enough for 
 him. His object is to read Scripture like any other book, 
 with a real interest, and not merely a conventional one. He 
 wants to be able to open his eyes, and to see or imagine things 
 as they truly are." 
 
 One. source of error is, that separate passages " are inter- 
 preted with a reference to the traditions of existing communions. 
 The natural meaning of particular expressions is set aside in 
 favour of others, which, however improbable, are more in 
 accordance with pre-conceived opinions, or seem to be more 
 worthy of the sacred writers. The language, and also the text 
 are treated on the same defensive and conservative principles. 
 The received translation of Phil. iii. G, (" who being in the 
 form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"); 
 or of Rom. iii. 25 (" whom God hath set forth to be a pro- 
 pitiation through faith in his blood") ; or Rom. xv. 6 ("God, 
 even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ") though erroneous r 
 are not given up without a struggle ; the passages 1 Tim. iii. 1(3, 
 and 1 John v. 7 (" the three witnesses") though the first (" God 
 manifest in the flesh") is not found in the best manuscripts, 
 and the second in no Greek manuscript worth speaking 
 have not yet disappeared from the editions of the Greek 
 Testament commonly used in England, and still less from the 
 English translation. An English commentator, who with 
 Lachmann and Teschendorf, supported also by the authority 
 of Erasmus, ventures to alter the punctuation of the doxology 
 in Rom. ix. 5 ('who is over ail God blessed for ever,') hardly 
 escapes the charge of heresy. That in most of these cases, the 
 words referred to have a direct bearing on important con- 
 troversies, is a reason not for retaining but for correcting them." 
 
 " The neglect of another class of passages is even more 
 surprising : the precepts contained in them being quite prac- 
 tical, and in harmony with the existing state of the world. 
 In this instance it seems as if religious teachers had failed 
 to gather those principles of which they stood most in ]
 
 XXIX, 
 
 1 Think ye that those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam 
 fell ? ' is the characterestic lesson of the Gospel on the occa- 
 sion of any sudden visitation. Yet it is another reading of 
 such calamities that is commonly insisted upon. The observa- 
 tion is seldom made respecting the parable of the good 
 Samaritan that the true neighbour is also a person of a differ- 
 ent religion. The words, ' Forbid him not, for there is no 
 man which shall do a miracle in my name that can speak evil 
 of me,' are often said to have no application to sectarian differ- 
 ences in the present day, when the Church is established and 
 miracles have ceased. The conduct of our Lord to the woman 
 taken in adultery, though not intended for our imitation 
 always, yet affords a painful contrast to the excessive severity 
 with which even a Christian society punishes the errors of 
 woman. The boldness with which St. Paul applies the prin- 
 ciple of individual judgment, ' Let every man be fully per- 
 suaded in his own mind ;' as exhibited also in the words ' Let 
 no man judge you in respect of the new moon or of the Sab- 
 bath days,' is far greater than would be allowed in the present 
 age. That the tenet of the damnation of the heathen should 
 ever have prevailed in the Christian world, or that the damna- 
 tion of Catholics should have been a received opinion among 
 Protestants, implies a strange forgetfulness of such passages 
 as Rom. ii. 1 — 16, ' Who rewardeth every one according to his 
 works' ; and 'When the Gentiles, which know not the law do 
 by nature the things contained in the law,' &c. What a dif- 
 ference between the simple statement which the Apostle 
 makes of the justice of God, and the ' uncovenanted mercies,' 
 or ' invincible ignorance' of theologians, half reluctant to give 
 up, yet afraid to maintain, the advantage of denying salvation 
 to those who are extra palam ecclesœ. The same habit of 
 silence or misinterpretation extends to words or statements of 
 Scripture, in which doctrines are thought to be interested. 
 When maintaining the Athanasian doctrines of the trinity we 
 do not readily recall the verse ' Of that hour knoweth no one ; 
 no, not the angels of God ; neither the Son, bat the Father.' 
 The temper of feeling which led Saint Ambrose to doubt the 
 genuineness of the words marked in Italics, leads Christians in 
 our own days to pass them over. The Calvinist ignores 
 almost the whole of the sacred volume for the sake of a few 
 verses. The truth is that in seeking to prove our own opin- 
 ions out of Scripture we are constantly falling into the com-
 
 mon fallacy of opening our eves to one class of facts and 
 closing them to another. The favourite verses shine like stars, 
 while the rest of the page is thrown into the shade." 
 
 The reader has before him an imperfect sketch of what is 
 taught by the " Essays and Reviews." To that teaching, in 
 the main. I subscribe. The principles on which it is grounded, 
 the method by which it set forth, and the substance of which 
 it coiisis-ts. I have for years taught, alike from the pulpit and 
 the press and the tutor's chair. With the modifications I 
 have made as I proceeded. I entirely and cordially own and 
 avouch, the tenor of this volume. Representing my thought 
 correctly in the general, it does not represent it fully. With 
 Dr. Temple, I acknowledge Christ as my example, but I 
 love, revere, and serve him as my Saviour. To me Chris 
 emphatically the moral and spiritual Saviour of mankind. 
 Equally "the power and the wisdom of God/" Christ is k * able 
 ve to the uttermost ,, all who come to God through him, 
 in the faith of a loving and trusting heart. Of curs.', such 
 an acknowledgement can hold no secondary place. It is the 
 sun of my Christianity, as it is the central heat and light of 
 the Gospel. Nor is the sublime and endearing idea more 
 necessary for a holy Christian life than for a free, reasonable, 
 and consistent theology. " God in Christ, reconciling the 
 world unto himself." i> the one word which solves all probl< 
 whether speculative, moral, spiritual, or social. And it is 
 mainly because the volume under notice conduces to the re- 
 ception of that thought in its simple scriptural purity and 
 genuine power — it is mainly on that account that I give it a 
 hearty welcome and wish it God speed. 
 
 Xo where however, do I find my own thoughts so exactly 
 fully reflected as in the essay by the professor of Greek 
 in the University <>f ( >xford. To almost every sentence of 
 that admirable composition could 1 subscribe. < >n 
 carries me back to my college days, when my theological tutor, 
 a man who in most essential res] in advance of his 
 
 age. taught as the sum of his doctrines on the interpretation 
 of Scripture, that which Mr. Jowett gives as the sum of his 
 own instructions : — "That Scripture, like other books, has 
 meaning, which is ; lered from itself withoul reference 
 
 to the adaptation- of Fathers or Divin. - : and without r<
 
 to à priori notions about its nature and origin. It is to be 
 interpreted like other books, with attention to the character of 
 its authors, and the prevailing state of civilisation and know- 
 ledge, with allowance for peculiarities of style and language, 
 and modes of thought and figures of speech. Yet not without 
 a sense that as we read there grows upon us the witness of 
 God in the world, anticipating in a rude and primitive age the 
 truth that was to be, shining more and more unto the perfect 
 day in the life of Christ, which again is reflected from different 
 points of view in the teaching of his apostles." 
 
 Nor am I alone in my cordial sympathy. I am indeed 
 not aware that Unitarians have circulated passages of the 
 volume (as they have been rudely accused of doing), though 
 if they can obtain the requisite permission I hope they will do 
 so, and that without delay. But I know that a Unitarian 
 publisher of Boston in the United States, has issued two 
 editions of the work. I will add, that I should rejoice to see 
 a cheap edition for the people put forth in England imme- 
 diately. These statements may gratify the assailants of the 
 volume. They will be glad probably to be able to point to 
 my words and say triumphantly, "See, you are so heretical as 
 to be approved by Unitarians." I think however that the 
 authors of the book have fortitude enough to bear the reproach 
 calmly. I at least know the extent of the power for harm 
 which reviling possesses, and am indifferent to all it can do. 
 
 If the book is of God, it will make its way and do its 
 work in spite of detraction ; if it is not, let it perish, and the 
 sooner the better. Equally indifferent am I to the charge 
 preferred in Convocation against Unitarians of being " the 
 direct natural enemies of the Church of Christ," for I am 
 hardened against this sort of thing by some experience, nor 
 wholly unprepared by Him, who, speaking of the priests of 
 Judea, said to his disciples, " The disciple is not above his 
 master, nor the servant above his lord ; it is enough for the 
 disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord; 
 if they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how 
 much more shall they call so them of his household: fear 
 them not therefore ; for there is nothing covered that shall 
 not be revealed, and hid that shall not be known. What 1 tell 
 you in darkness, that speak ye in the light; and win \\ 
 hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." (Matt. 
 x., 24,seq.)
 
 
 XXX11. 
 
 A great national instructor who smiles while he teaches, 
 and plays while he reproves, has given this wise piece of 
 advice. 
 
 •• Some heresies are so engrained, 
 E"en burning wont remove them, 
 
 A shorter and an easier way 
 You'll fiud it — to disprove them. 
 
 " Be this, Plight Reverends, your revenge, 
 
 For souls, the best of cure. 
 Essay essayists to upset. 
 
 And to review reviewers.*' 
 
 I have called this council wise, and yet I am not sure 
 that it would be easier to refute than to burn the "Es* 
 and RevieAvs. 1 ' Certain however it is that neither to burn a 
 book nor to cry it down is a very logical way of dealing with 
 it. Nor is either a method which accords with the funda- 
 mental principles of Protestantism, though the same cannot 
 be said of the practice of the Protestant Church of England 
 in some periods of its history. Rarely indeed do men bring 
 on themselves the disgrace and odium of hooting or destroy- 
 ing what they are able to confute. ^To put a book into the 
 pillory is, at least in these days, to throw around it the halo 
 of martyrdom, and make it as a city set on a hill, which 
 cannot be hid. The more therefore, men hate a book, the 
 less, were they prudent, they would say about it. But " the 
 moderation of the Church of England " has definable limits. 
 How indeed could it be endured that doctrines which do not 
 so much assail High Church or Low Church, as aim a blow at 
 what is common to all forms of the popular churches, whether 
 established or non-conformist, should be put forth without let or 
 hindrance ? Where all are in danger, all must combine. Let 
 those who can, write " Essays and Reviews " in periodicals ; 
 from a giant or two, a volume or two may in due time be ex- 
 pected ; but all are able to shout, and therefore let all shout 
 their loudest, that, if possible the book may be put down by 
 a load of denunciations. In consequence, the clerical body is 
 moved from north to south and from east to west; from the 
 archbishop that sitteth <>n the throne, to the hard-working 
 curate that pine? in With one voice thousands de- 

 
 clare and proclaim that the book is dangerous and heretical, 
 if not atheistic. 
 
 If we are to take the word of the Bishop of Durham, "the 
 hearts of honest and faithful churchmen should burn with in- 
 dignation' 1 '' at the book; "a more heterodox volume could 
 scarcely have been produced. The atonement is denied ; 
 miracles are explained away ; prophecy is cast aside ; inspi- 
 ration, in the only real meaning of the term, is rejected. 
 Men of all shades of opinion are convinced of the presence in 
 the person of those seven essayists of a common foe to Chris- 
 tian truth-" and the bishop thinks it a duty to " show our 
 abhorrence of opinions which I, from my heart, consider to be 
 not only detrimental to the best interests of morality and dero- 
 gatory to the word of God, but manifestly opposed to the 
 truth, as it is in Jesus." Accordingly there is in the sacer- 
 dotal order a strong desire to go beyond words. " What is 
 to be done ?" is the general inquiry in the established Church. 
 " What can be done?" " Something must be done." All are 
 ready for action. Strip Professor Jowett of his professorial 
 gown. Drive Dr. Temple from his mastership at Rugby. 
 Expel Dr. Williams from his vice-principal chair. Unfrock 
 every priest among them ; and close the door to advancement 
 against the layman. Try them all for heresy. Is imprison- 
 ment impossible ? Cannot the island be made too hot to hold 
 them? Any way make them recant; "nothing," says the 
 Bishop of Oxford, " but an entire recantation can satisfy the 
 Church." The storm, though neither pleasant nor becoming, 
 is witnessed by the country with interest indeed, but without 
 alarm. These terrible threats expend themselves in the 
 anathemas of a convocation of the clergy which has long been 
 powerless and is now becoming absurd. Doubtless there is in 
 the clerical mind the will to inflict coercive penalties. But 
 the civil power guards our right of free speech, and so 
 all this sacerdotal heat is evaporating innocuously. Should 
 any attempt be made to transmute this passionate zeal into 
 persecuting deeds, the queen, as the representative of our 
 British liberties, would appear in the upper house of convoca- 
 tion, with the dignity and the power which befits the monarch 
 of a free people, and act the part ascribed by Virgil to Nep- 
 tune, in curbing the self-willed fury of the winds, his unruly 
 subjects. 
 
 Disjectam Aenae toto videt aequore olassem ; 
 Fluctihus oppressos Troas coelique ruina.
 
 
 Nee latuere doli fratrem Junonis et irae. 
 
 Eurum ad se Zephyrumque vocat ; dehinc talia fatur : 
 
 Tantaene vos generis tenuit fiducia vestri ? 
 
 Jam coelum terramque meo sine numine. Venti, 
 
 Misceri. et tantas audetis tollere moles .' 
 
 Quos ego — Sed motos praestat componere fluctug. 
 
 Post mihi non simili poena commissa luetis. 
 
 Maturate fugam, regique hsecu dicite vestro : 
 
 Non iili imperium pelagi saevumque tridentem, 
 
 Sed mihi sorte datum.* 
 
 Had it been their purpose to illustrate the impotency of 
 their Church in matters of self-goTernment and doctrinal 
 discipline, the clergy would not have taken measures more 
 effectual than those which they have taken. Rome, even in 
 her present hour of decay, retains the power of authoritatively 
 branding an obnoxious volume, and of keeping it out of the 
 hands of at least the great bulk of its subjects, by giving it a 
 place in its notorious Index. Indeed, it has lately taken this 
 step in regard to a volume similar in aim and tendency to 
 " Essays and Reviews," written by Dr. Reville. productions 
 from whose learned and eloquent pen the reader will have 
 the opportunity of perusing. What, however, the Church of 
 England wants in power she tries to make up in the way of 
 misrepresentation. Of this resource the Rev. Cannon Stowell 
 has made copious use. In a passage of a speech delivered 
 before the Church Missionary Society, which is an appeal to 
 passion more than to argument, he gives the impression that 
 
 *The passage is translated by Dryden thus : — 
 
 He saw the Trojan fleet dispers'd, distress'd, 
 
 By stormy winds and wintry heaven oppress'd. 
 
 Full well "the God his sister's envy knew, 
 
 And what her aims and what her arts pursue : 
 
 He snmmon'd Eurus and the western blast, 
 
 And first an angry look on both he cast : 
 
 Then thus rebuk'd ; Audacious v.-inds : from whence 
 
 • bold attempt, this rebel insolence ? 
 Is it for you to ravage see and land, 
 Unauthoris'd by my supreme command ? 
 
 ise such mountains on the troubled main ? 
 Whom I— but first tis fit the billows ta restrain : 
 And thcu you shall be taught obedience to my reign. 
 Hence to your lord my royal mandate bear, 
 The realms of ocean and the fields of air 
 Are mine, not his ; by fatal lot to me 
 The liquid empire fell and trident of the sea.
 
 xxxv. 
 
 the authors of the " Essays and Reviews" are striving to rob 
 the sick and the dying of the light, solace, and support of the 
 Bible. On what ground is this imputation made ? The only 
 possible ground is found in the fact that they take one view of 
 certain theological doctrines and the accuser takes another. 
 To them the Bible is as dear and venerable as it is to him. 
 He indeed charges them with taking from the Bible, but then 
 he cannot in the face of the scholarship of the world, deny or 
 at least disprove, that he and his associates add to the Bible. 
 So long as the convicted forgery of " The Three Heavenly 
 Witnesses" is allowed to remain part of the Bible, and so long 
 as Canon Stowell joins others to send that forgery over the 
 world as a part of " God's Word," he is not in a condition to 
 reprove men for disrespect to the Bible. Why, who shows 
 the greater respect to a book, he who circulates it while con- 
 taining acknowledged additions and errors, or he who endea- 
 vours to make the book exactly the same as it was when it 
 proceeded from the hands of its author ? and who shows the 
 greater respect to the author of a book, he who interprets 
 it in the sense of imperfectly informed ages, ages when 
 papal despotism took the Bible out of the hands of the 
 people and made it all but inaccessible even to their spiritual 
 guides, — ages when gross darkness in religion covered all 
 Europe, yet the very ages when orthodoxy was born, bred, 
 and brought to maturity ; or he who interprets the Bible with 
 the aid of all the light of the present day, light which includes 
 everything that is solid and useful in the experience of seven- 
 teen centuries, and who interprets the Bible with this aid so 
 as not to put on the Bible his own opinion or the dogmas of 
 any church, but simply to learn what the Bible is, as 
 handed down to him by Divine Providence, and what God in 
 his own Bible says to him and to his fellow-men ? Surely the 
 Bible can and does tell its own tale. Surely that tale is sim- 
 ple enough to be read and understood of all honest men, and 
 surely that man is most honest who takes the Bible at its own 
 word, and employs his learning and ability to report to the 
 world what the Bible really is, and what the Bible really says. 
 And in such an issue as the present it is more seemly and 
 more worthy, if not also more honest, to study God's own 
 facts concerning the Bible, which in truth are God's own 
 words and requirements as to our belief and duty relative to 
 the Bible, than to make a piteous appeal to " the chamber
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 of affliction, the house of mourning, the bed of sick 
 ness, or the agony of the dying." Such an appeal is the 
 more to be deprecated when the point submitted for decision 
 is not the point which is in debate. To say nothing of the 
 absurdity of asking a dying girl what she thought of the 
 authenticity of the second Epistle of Peter, (so called,) what 
 answer could she give were she asked for the correct transla- 
 tion and the true meaning of Paxil's words, " All Scripture is 
 given by inspiration of God," (2 Tim. iii. 16.) If able to 
 answer at all she might reply " what I know of the Bible is 
 this, namely, that it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for 
 correction, for instruction in righteousness : that the man of 
 God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
 works," (17). And knowing this she would know what Paul 
 meant, for it is what he declared inspired Scripture to be ; and 
 she would know enough, know all that needs to be known or 
 can be known for the practical guidance of life : and this her 
 knowledge is held no less by the Essayists and Reviewers 
 than by their accusers. Mr. Stowell puts a false issue when 
 he makes the question to be inspiration or no inspiration. 
 Doubtless there is inspiration in the Bible. The sole question 
 asks, Is the inspiration in the letter or the spirit of the book ? 
 Does it permeate the Bible and making every part true make 
 every part obligatory ? Then why do not our spiritual autho- 
 rities keep the law of Moses ? Do they reply the Gospel has 
 superseded the law ? If so, the latter and the smaller part of 
 the Bible cancels the former and the larger part; — and all is 
 inspired, all infallible, all obligatory. Here however I place 
 myself under an impenetrable shield. Jesus in his sermon on 
 the Mount has revised the religion of the Old Testament, 
 abrogating this and supplementing that. Two instances must 
 suffice. The Old Testament enjoins, " Perform unto Jehovah 
 thine oaths," " but I say unto you," adds Christ, " Swear not 
 at all; but let your communications be yea, yea ; nay, nay." 
 The Old Testament enjoins " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for 
 a tooth ;" "but I say unto you," adds Christ, " Resist not 
 evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek turn 
 to him the other also," (Matt. v. 33, seq.) Can there be a 
 plainer contradiction ? Are both commands inspired ? Then 
 inspiration is against inspiration. Are both infallible ? then 
 one infallible abrogates the other. Are both obligatory ? then 
 you are to do and not to do the same thing. If both arp not
 
 inspired which is ? Either or neither ? And how am I to 
 judge? A judge there must be since an option has to be 
 made. You say I must judge. Then you make me a judge 
 of inspiration, and so lose the infallible authority you want ; 
 for I a fallible judge can never give an infallible decision. 
 Here you will probably begin to call me an infidel. It would 
 serve your purpose better to drive me from my position, or to 
 repair the breaches made in your own. In truth you do not 
 believe in the infallibility of even Jesus Christ much less 
 of the Bible in general. Disprove my words by swearing not 
 at all, and by turning the left cheek to him who smites you 
 on the right. Indeed I know no one who more frequently or 
 more k openly disobeys Christ than the zealous clergymen on 
 whose words I am animadverting, for while he regards Rome 
 as the incarnation of evil, he never "ceases to resist evil, with 
 as much conscious Christian innocence as if the Great teacher 
 himself had omitted the " not." 
 
 If we attempt in one or two particulars to forecast the 
 future as modified by the volume of " Essays and Reviews," 
 we are naturally led to ask in the first place what will Jje the 
 upshot of the present excitement. It will be short-lived. Like 
 similar movements in the state church it will be short-lived. 
 A state church is, as such, adverse to a deep and living ear- 
 nestness. In the present instance there is little reality. The 
 bulk of the protestors have no personal knowledge of what it 
 is against which they raise their voice. Were they acquainted 
 with the volume they are totally disqualified for sitting in 
 judgment on it contents. They have a certain set of theolo- 
 gical opinions. These they identify with the Gospel. Their 
 opinions they do not find in the volume. In consequence the 
 volume is hostile to the Gospel. What remains but to cry it 
 down ? This is the general state of the clerical mind. As to 
 the real questions at issue it possesses scarcely the faintest 
 glimmer. In Biblical studies, " in the grounds and objects of 
 religious knowledge" ; in points touching the vitals even of 
 religion itself — the bulk of the clergy know little of 
 any description, and all but nothing do they know of 
 what has been thought out and published by some of 
 the greatest minds and largest hearts that ever upheld 
 and adorned the Church of Christ. The last half century 
 is to them as if it had never been, in nearly all that 
 concerns that which they prefer to teach and maintain. Yet
 
 the last half century has virtually revolutionised religion. 
 Never since the days of Christ, never with the sole exception 
 of the Reformation, (and I hardly know that I ought to make 
 that exception), was there a period so pregnant with religious 
 change and renewal as that which, speaking somewhat more 
 widely, began with the last quarter of the last century and 
 continues to the present hour. , It is not merely that old con- 
 crete forms of doctrine have crumbled away. It is not merely 
 that religious thought has been re-cast from one end of civi- 
 lised Europe to the other. It is not merely that the first 
 minds in all departments of secular study and pursuit, have 
 moved more or less to a distance from the beliefs, sympathies, 
 and aims of the Churches recognised or set up at the Refor- 
 mation. It is not merely that our own most healthy and 
 vigorous literature has broken, wholly and for ever broken, 
 with orthodoxy even in its less attenuated forms. But as 
 underlying these great ordinal changes, new principles have 
 come to be recognised, and new powers are in energetic action, 
 which make the re-establishment of the old creeds impossible, 
 and are bearing all cultivated persons — bearing many even 
 unconsciously — to new and nobler conception of all divine 
 realities. Of this tendency the " Essays and Reviews," is at 
 once a product, a witness, and an instrument. Its authors 
 have partaken of that higher, broader, and deeper continental 
 culture to which I have referred, and which coming, as it does 
 primarily, from the great arsenal of thought, and source of 
 light and power, Germany, the land of Luther, the father of 
 the Reformation, will spread, as it is rapidly spreading, first 
 over all Europe and then over the civilized world. The effect 
 of the diffusion on the ignorantists of all churches is foretold 
 in the effect produced by the Reformation on the same class of 
 persons. In these great revolutions of thought you must 
 yield or be swept away. Even the stars d when the 
 
 sun is up. So the monks vanished when the Bible was 
 printed. Equally were the I • . the priests of 
 
 all classes, corrected or replaced, here in England, as the 
 flame of God went over the land, which Luther had received 
 from on high, and gave to Tyndalc ; who (burnt to death for 
 his pains,) handed the blazing torch to so many faithful hands, 
 that darkness was no loi ible, though the powers of 
 
 darkness confederated to extinguish the light oi heaven. Simi- 
 lar changes are impending. Already the tide is rising.
 
 X XXIX. 
 
 il ppy those who flee to the ark provided of God in the sim- 
 ple and all-sufficing Gospel of his Son. 
 
 The futility of the present excitement becomes the more 
 apparent when we discern the real nature of the issue. Its 
 originators declare that the issue is simply that of truth 
 against error. What, are they then infallible ! Is the arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury the pope of Rome ! A prompt denial 
 will be given to the implications. In word denied, the impli- 
 cation has strong ground in fact. If what is called the evan- 
 gelical church has not in some way deluded itself into the 
 belief of its infallibility, its tone of denunciation is inexplicable. 
 •Among its lights there are men, no few, who, though they do 
 not pretend to be free from the possibility of error, are quite 
 sure they are never wrong. It is only such a confidence that can 
 explain their burning zeal and heavy condemnations. " Believe 
 me or perish " is, in effect said by them incessantly, and could 
 in no way be said by any one, who, whatever his theory, did 
 not in fact consider himself infallible. But such a pretention 
 is simply ludicrous. You are of one opinion, I am of another, 
 which is right ? — that is the issue in all these dogmatical and 
 critical questions. That issue is fairly joined in the volume 
 under consideration. Too long has evangelical orthodoxy put 
 itself forward as the representative of Christianity. Too long 
 have men been led to identify Christianity with its irrational 
 creed, narrow spirit, and aversion to science, culture, and 
 innocent recreation. One consequence has been an evil alter- 
 native. This or infidelity ? The continuation of Christianity 
 in many a mind has been made dependent on which side of that 
 alternative was taken. But if any Christianity depends on 
 your creed, then the strength of your creed is the measure of 
 my hold on Christianity. The strength of your creed is but 
 the strength of your opinion. Let that opinion break down 
 in but one part, my basis is gone. You do your best to take 
 from me self-reliance. You tell me that reason is unreason- 
 able. You tell me that my heart is untrustworthy as being 
 corrupt and rotten. All this you do in order to make me sub- 
 missive illapse of what you consider a higher power. But 
 suppose the light that is in me, the power I have of God, my 
 inborn moral liberty— which you have but lulled to sleep — is 
 awakened bv some true voice from a brother man, or some act 
 of Divine Providence. At once I see the hollowness of your 
 whole system. But to me that system is the Gospel. In
 
 il. 
 
 «oneequence I become an unbeliever. The words describe the 
 way in which tens of thousands have been alienated from 
 Christ. How needful then is another and a truer exposition 
 of Christianity. God be thanked that he has sent forth these 
 essays to open an alternative of faith to those who have been 
 unchristianized or are being unchristianized by the dogmatic 
 and unnatural absurdities of evangelical orthodoxy. 
 
 Here however I must guard against being misunderstood 
 as if I held that religion had no better ground than opinion. 
 True indeed it is that on opinion depend all mere matters of 
 opinion, such as the creeds of all churches embody. But 
 these matters of opinion lie on the outside of religion. Reli- 
 gion itself is independent of them. Religion having its roots 
 in God, has its seat in man, and is there, in man's soul, fed, 
 nurtured and made strong by the universe, the Bible, Divine 
 providence and domestic intercourse. Religion thus under- 
 stood is a great vivifying restorative and ennobling power, of 
 which Christ is at once the focus and the representative. In 
 him all are one, as all are safe, who worship God in spirit and 
 in truth. Beyond this, moral and spiritual power is the broad 
 and barren region of human opinion. It is only when we 
 come to the essence of religion in the simple love and service 
 of God through Christ ; it is only when we come to the prac- 
 tical experiences of the Christian life, as they appear in " faith, 
 hope, and charity," that we quit the religion of opinion ta 
 enter the religion of certainty, and in that peaceful and serene 
 religion all who love Christ are of one heart and bear one 
 testimony. Toward those sunny skies and verdant plains a 
 large number, a larger number than ever before — God's own 
 elect children — are safely and joyously travelling, led on by 
 the Spirit of God, which is now moving on the waters of the 
 Church, and introducing the germs of a fresh and loftier 
 state of thought and sentiment. Foremost, at least in Great 
 Britain, among the heralds of a truly spiritual Christianity, is 
 the volume under consideration. The movement out of which 
 it comes it will advance, and that the more the more it is 
 blindly opposed. 
 
 This tendency toward union is distinctly and favourably 
 recognised in a truly liberal passage of Professor Jowett's 
 essay. 
 
 " No one casting his eye over the map of the Christian 
 world, can desire that the present lines of demarcation should
 
 III. 
 
 always remain any more than he will be inclined to regard 
 the divisions of Christians to which he belongs himself, as 
 in a pre-eminent or exclusive sense, the Church of Christ. 
 Those lines of demarcation seem to be political rather than 
 religious ; they are differences of nations, or governments, or 
 ranks of society, more than of creeds or forms of faith. The 
 feeling which gave rise to them has, in a great measure, passed 
 away ; no intelligent man seriously inclines to believe that 
 salvation is to be found only in his own denomination. 
 Examples of this " sturdy orthodoxy" in our own generation, 
 rather provoke a smile than arouse serious disapproval. Yet 
 many experiments show that the differences cannot be made 
 up by any formal concordat or scheme of union ; the parties 
 cannot be brought to terms ; and if they could, would cease 
 to take an interest in the question at issue. The friction is 
 too great when persons are invited to meet for a discussion of 
 differences ; such a process is like opening the doors and 
 windows to put out a slumbering flame. But that is no rea- 
 son for doubting that the divisions of the Christian world are 
 beginning to pass away. The progress of politics, acquaint- 
 ance with other countries, the growth of knowledge, and 
 material greatness, changes of opinion in the Church of Eng- 
 land, the present position of the Roman communion, — all 
 these phenomena show that the eclesiastical state of the 
 world is not destined to be perpetual. Within the envious 
 barriers which " divide human nature into very little pieces," 
 (Plato Rep., iii., 395) a common sentiment is springing up, 
 of religious truth ; the essentials of Christianity are contras- 
 ted with the details and definitions of it ; good men of all 
 religions find that they are more nearly agreed than heretofore. 
 Neither is it impossible that this common feeling may so pre- 
 vail over the accidental circumstances of Christian communities, 
 that their political or eclesiastical separation may be little felt. 
 The walls which no adversary has scaled may fall down of 
 themselves. We may perhaps figure to ourselves the battle 
 against error and moral evil taking the place of one of sects 
 and parties." 
 
 The brevity of the excitement is guaranteed by its being 
 merely clerical. The country is parcelled out between two 
 camps. Of these, the one is sacerdotal, the other literary and 
 scientific. The former is engaged in active hostilities against 
 the essayists; the latter take their part, either by a significant
 
 : 
 
 silence or by a steady defence and counter assault. This di- 
 vision of the national mind is to be regretted. It is also full 
 of meaning. The vessel of the church-state, held fast by her 
 old moorings, remains where she was centuries ago. though 
 now threatened by receeding tides to be shortly " left high 
 and dry." The vessel of the cultivated community at large 
 floats at ease in deep water, and sails up and down in stately 
 efficiency ; out with ail the 
 
 skill and furnished with all the active force of the most ad- 
 vanced civilization. In less figurative terms, all the other 
 branches of knowledge, except Theolo. >gressive; and 
 
 every other profession, except the clerical, absorbs and utilises 
 the treasures which Art and Science are gradually amassing 
 from year to year. But if society constantly advances while 
 the Church persistently remains still, the two are separated ; 
 the two may be separated by a wide interval, and at last, the 
 two may be separated so as never to re-unite, unless either 
 society fall back or the Church move on. That interval al- 
 ready exists. Every year does the interval widen. In no 
 Protestant country is the interval so wide as in England. The 
 diction of our pulpit differs from the diction <*f our literatnre. 
 As the pulpit has a phraseology of its own, so has it a pecu- 
 liar pronunciation. Distinguished from other men by his 
 attire, the clergyman is distinguished from other men in his 
 manners and conduct. There is one # code of morality for a 
 layman, and another for a priest. If these divergencies are 
 to be regarded with lenity as in the main a relic of dark 
 and sacerdotal ages, there are others which are to be deplored 
 if not condemned, as occasioned by the immoveability of the 
 Chtirch. Can there, for i:. Led a greater 
 
 diversity than the view of the universe which is presented by 
 the Book of Common Prayer, and the ki Assembly's Cate- 
 chism." and the view of it taken by the Christian Philo- 
 sopher ? The two views differ in every important par- 
 ticular — God, man, time, eternity, and the relationships 
 of each with each, together with the issuse of all. On the one 
 side is God. the universal Father, living in, through, and over 
 all things : which are the simple pourings forth and issues of 
 .ill ; and so living in them as to make them 
 all. in perfect freedom and continual development, fulfil the 
 purposes of his inexhaustible goodness, each in its own order, 
 and after the measure of its own strength, yet each ascending
 
 ever into higher orders, until all being filled with the Spirit of 
 God, shall accomplish exclusively and fully God's righteous 
 will, and so be happy with a bliss which is truly divine because 
 it is purely like God, its primal and ever- flowing source and 
 fountain. On the other side is God creating the universe out 
 of nothing, sitting apart from the works of his hands ; making 
 man out of the dust of the earth, and woman out of man's 
 rib ; giving them a command which he had not given them 
 power to keep ; and punishing with eternal death the misdeed 
 of a moment ; and instead of mercifully extinguishing the 
 race, giving life to successive generations tainted with a 
 deadly and unavoidable disease, whom he condemned to ever- 
 lasting burnings, because their progenitor fell when he had not 
 power to stand, and because they themselves fell too, because 
 they were born as powerless as he. While such is the pain- 
 ful and pitiable condition of the whole race of Adam, spread 
 over all the face of the earth, God leaving the great bulk of 
 men in their natural condition, makes a special revelation of 
 his will to a mere handful of his creatures, on whom however 
 he bestows a Saviour, but not until the favoured tribes have 
 lived ignorant of the way of salvation for some fifteen hundred 
 years. At the end of that time however, he himself becomes 
 incarnate in the son of a Jewish peasantess, on a strip of land 
 which borders a small margin of the Mediterranean Sea, 
 Having thus taken a human body, he offers himself a sacrifice 
 to himself for either the elect and predestined few, or for such 
 as may accept the redemption purchased with his blood. The 
 final issue is that the bulk of God's intelligent creatures are 
 still lost — lost in every generation from the reign of Augustus 
 until that of Victoria, and the bulk will in all probability be 
 lost from the reign of Victoria to the end of time ; so that 
 the lost outnumbers the saved as the hosts of heaven out- 
 number the greater planets, or the sands on the seashore 
 outnumber the cattle grazing in the neighbouring meadows. 
 This is the view of the universe taken by the Church ; that is 
 the view of the universe taken by the Christian phoilosopher 
 The two are as wide as the poles asunder. The two can by 
 no theological mechanism be brought into harmony and 
 unison. If the one is true the other is false. If the one is 
 taught by the spirit of the Bible and attested by the spirit 
 of the age ; by the same great authorities is the other con- 
 demned. The final issue it is easy to predict. The final issue
 
 lir. 
 
 is foretold in the sublime, tender, human and divine life 
 of Christ. Yes, Christ is one with the best tendencies of our 
 day, for they are the fruit and the reward of his perfect obedi- 
 ence to the perfect will of the one common Father, And as 
 Christ is ever now going forth in a new outpouring of his own 
 spirit of true liberty, practical wisdom, brotherly love and 
 divine aid, so he holds the foremost place, and leads the way 
 for the ever-augmenting band who seek God and truth, and 
 moral power, as the supreme object of their existence. Such 
 men whether in the Church of England or out of it, whether 
 lay or elerical, whether Protestant or Catholic, are the sons of 
 God and the brethren of Christ, of this generation ; they will 
 also be the lights of the next generation, and probably of 
 generations to come. Where they are, there is the ark of the 
 covenant, and as the ark of the covenant was in the van of 
 the Hebrew pilgrims, so do they go before to prepare the way 
 for their brethren. If the clergy are a part of that vanguard 
 happy for them, happy for their church, and happy for all. 
 If the clergy still loiter in the rear, they cannot fail to be left 
 in the wilderness, for the armies of the living God must keep 
 advancing continually, until having passed the Jordan, they 
 enter the promised land and enjoy the rest prepared for their 
 ever-enduring recompense. 
 
 Among the effects which the book we are studying will 
 produce is the increase of the number of those divinely called 
 and divinely appointed leaders who are heroically marshalling 
 the way out of darkness into light, and out of bondage into 
 freedom. The volume of " Essays and Reviews" is a free and 
 bold word for God, truth, and liberty. What courage was 
 needed to utter that word can be known only to those who are 
 personally acquainted with the venerable associations, the 
 refined endearments, the attractive prospects which bind men, 
 so learned and so able as these writers, to the church of their 
 childhood, the church of their fathers, the church of the high- 
 est orders in the realm, the Sovereign herself included. The 
 mere tie of university fellowship is as strong as it is graceful 
 and elevating. To be imbued with the same liberal studies ; 
 to cherish the same refined tastes ; to have in common pure 
 and lofty recollections and bright and worthy hopes ; to look 
 back on a common boyhood of letters and recreations, and to 
 look forward to an old age sunned, warmed, and cheered by 
 memories of saintly scholars and more saintly benefactors,
 
 trained within the same hallowed walls and prepared there for 
 the same noble struggle in life and the same glorious victory 
 in death — all these pure influences which belong to men who 
 have drunk of the same living fountain of human and divine 
 culture, unite to make the place of one's education dear and 
 venerable, and to interpose all but insuperable obstacles to 
 any step even likely to lead away from its inspirations and its 
 sanctities. Think not that these magic bonds can be lightly 
 broken. To endanger their permanence seems like an act of 
 impiety. How great the daring then required to defy the 
 risk of such a torrent of abuse as that now poured out on the 
 patient heads of these essayists and reviewers. It is no small 
 pain to encounter coldness where you had been used to cordi- 
 ality. It is no small pain to see society frown and repel you, 
 when a little before it was covered with smiles at your 
 approach. It is no small pain to find the avenues to profes- 
 sional usefulness and distinction closed and barred against 
 you. It is no small pain to know that the very means of sub- 
 sistence for your family are being frittered away together, with 
 your once honourable name. It is no small pain to hear your- 
 self called fool by friends and see the scornful triumph of your 
 foes. It is no small pain to be conscious of failure in the one 
 great object of your public life. Nor is it a small risk to 
 incur the possibility of the loss of professional rank together 
 with that of social position. But all these things united come 
 not up to the penalty attempted to be inflicted on these 
 seven scholars by the body to which they belong and of which 
 they are some of the principal ornaments. Of the ' ; hailstone 
 and fire, " of condemnation hurled at the delinquents judge 
 from the words used by Bishop Trower, when lately, he put 
 into the hands of the primate of all England, the adverse 
 address of eight thousand clergymen. The speaker declared 
 that they, (himself and the eight thousand for whom he 
 spoke) thought it important it should be known that the pub- 
 lication of " Essays and Reviews" had been received with 
 a cry of horror and indignation by the clergy of all kinds in 
 all parts of the country." The piercing tones of that cry 
 must have been anticipated as a possibility by the writers. 
 And yet they broke silence. It was a courageous as well as 
 conscientious act. In the way of Divine Providence they 
 had been led to question or deny accepted doctrines and to 
 see, embrace, and value new truths. They found the change
 
 xlri. 
 
 a great relief. They found it as salutary as pleasant. Thus 
 placed they were called to make their light known. Regard- 
 less of consequences they publish their thoughts, desirous only 
 to make others as free and happy as themselves. What else 
 could they do ? Were they to incur reproof from the Master 
 by hiding their light under a bushel ? Were they to disre- 
 gard the requirements of conscience ? Were they to disown 
 the peril in which the Gospel stands, arising from the great 
 gulph opened between it and the world's highest thought and 
 noblest strivings, by a zeal without knowledge ? They 
 delivered their souls, and so have gained an imperishable 
 name for honesty and moral courage. The example will make 
 itself felt. Already it is working powerfully in the great 
 numbers of especially young men. in all denominations, nor 
 least in the church established by law ; who, knowing the 
 insecurity of the old foundations, are seeking " a city which 
 hath foundations whose builder and maker is God : " and 
 others who, having renounced the old and accepted the new, 
 hesitate to make their change known, lest they should act 
 rashly or indiscreetly : and again, others who have been con- 
 strained to part with the traditions of men, once accounted the 
 truth of God, without being able to find a better way, and now 
 stand shivering on the brink of a chilling disbelief. To all 
 such the book will be like a ray of light from heaven. It 
 will open the eyes of the blind, it will guide the wanderer, 
 it will decide the wavering, it will hearten and determine the 
 timid. Already, I doubt not, it has produced these desirable 
 effects on a large scale, and that not the less because the vol- 
 ume instead of been answered has been abused. To the young 
 at least, virtuperation in place of argument is repulsive. It 
 calls forth their generous sympathies, and sometimes places 
 them by the side of the weak and the ill-used when they 
 could not have been brought thither by any other considera- 
 tion. It is indeed a feature of our national character to stand 
 by the proscribed. Sacerdotal maledictions have, down from 
 the days of the Saviour, worked in direct opposition to the 
 wishes of their utterers. Balaam's is not the only curse 
 which God has turned into a blessing. 
 
 It is not an uncharitable proposition that th 
 would have acted more worthily, and have more effectually 
 advanced religious truth, had they of their own accord quitted 
 the ecclesiastical position they hold. To this opinion I am
 
 xlvii. 
 
 myself inclined. But I, at the same time, confess that I am 
 not in a condition to know, still less to feel and appreciate, all 
 the circumstances and considerations of their case. So far as 
 my knowledge does extend, I see much to commend and 
 admire. I will own the good, the large positive good. I 
 will respectfully welcome those men as able and faithful 
 fellow workers. And, had I the power, I would throw 
 before them a protecting shield, and defend them all the more 
 zealously the more bitterly they are assailed. At the 
 same time I congratulate all who like myself stand on 
 the outside of these mouldering bonds and restraints, 
 and in full enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ hath 
 made us free, and together with the liberty, somewhat, I trust, 
 of the freshness and vigour which liberty fosters. And should 
 the result of the persecution which still extends itself, be that 
 the essayists quit the Anglican Church, they will, when 
 wholly free, not value their privilege less, because each may 
 then say, " With a great sum obtained I this freedom." 
 
 An altogether different course has been set before them. 
 They must recant. An entire recantation, declares the bishop 
 of Oxford, is the sole condition on which their misconduct 
 can be condoned. I can imagine with what virtuous indigna- 
 tion the requirement was heard by the essayists. The very 
 spirit of persecution have we here ; the very spirit of inquisi- 
 tion. " Down on your knees and, like the humiliated Galileo, 
 declare that what you know or believe to be true, is not true." 
 Why, what idea does the Protestant inquisitor entertain of a 
 man's thoughts ? Do his thoughts hang so loosely about an hon- 
 est man, that he can throw them off at will — as you would throw 
 off a light cloak, on an outburst of the sun in spring ? This 
 may be the case with men who adopt opinions, but not with 
 those who form them. The requirement is an insult, for it 
 supposes that the book is a product of caprice, or self-will, or 
 the love of notoriety. The requirement, however, reflects 
 disadvantageously on none but its author. The requirement 
 also involves absurdity. It is an " entire recantation " that is 
 demanded. In other words, the essayists are to say, " no," to 
 all to which they have said "yes," and "yes ,, to all to which they 
 have said " no." At any rate they must contradict whatever 
 is contrary to popular belief. Whether the white sheet of 
 penitence will also be imposed, I know not ; but this I know, 
 that in presence of the civilised world, in presence of the
 
 ilri 
 
 scholars and men of science of all lands, and in presence of 
 free churches and their ministers, wherever found, the essayists 
 must disavow the principal positions of their volume, and 
 avow the opposite. Then, having thus degraded themselves 
 by eating their own words, they will be received back into 
 favour, and may hope for advancement in the church ! And 
 this to come from professed disciples, the only orthodox 
 disciples of him who said, " To this end was I born, and for 
 this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness 
 unto the truth ; every one that is of the truth heareth my 
 voice." (John xviii., 37). 
 
 But let us for a moment see in one or two particulars, 
 what this recantation involves. The entire recantation extorted 
 from Dr. Temple, would compel him to unsay these words : — 
 
 " The second stage in the education of man was the pre- 
 sence of our Lord upon the earth. Those few years of his 
 divine presence seems, as it were, to balance all the systems 
 and creeds and worships which preceded, all the Church's life 
 which has followed since. Saints had gone before, and saints 
 have been given since ; great men and good men had lived 
 among the heathen ; there were never at any time examples 
 wanting to teach either the chosen people or any other. But 
 the one example of all examples came in "the fulness of time," 
 just when the world was fitted to feel the power of his pre- 
 sence. Had the revelation been delayed until now, assuredly 
 it would have been hard for us to recognise his divinity ; for 
 the faculty of faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accept 
 any outer manifestations of the truth of God. Our vision of 
 the Son of God is now aided by the eyes of the apostles, and 
 bv that aid we can recognise the express image of the 
 Father." 
 
 Here Ave have a no scanty confession of positive religious 
 beliefs — first the Father, second the divine presence of the 
 Lord on earth, the one example of all examples ; third the 
 revelation to man thus made ; fourth the Church as the great 
 result, and fifth in the Church, saintly men and women — and 
 all this so arranged and so fixed relatively to the state of the 
 world as to be no less timely and seasonable than salutary. 
 Yet all this must be unsaid for nothing less than " an entire 
 recantation" will satisfy. And why ? Because it rims not in 
 the old ruts of traditional phraseology, and because it is said 
 that "great and good men have lived among the heathen,"
 
 impeaching the dogma of original sin ; and that " there 
 were at no time examples wanting to teach other nations 
 besides the chosen one" — thus denying the exculsiveness of 
 God's Providence and the exclusiveness of Christ's redemp- 
 tion. 
 
 Next, Professor Williams must revoke for himself as well 
 a:* Bunsen, the following not inconsiderable statement of posi- 
 tive belief. " Bunsen stands at the farthest pole from those 
 who find no divine footsteps in the Gentile world. He 
 believes in Christ because he first believes in God and in 
 mankind. In this he harmonises with the Church fathers 
 before Augustin, and with all our deepest evangelical school. 
 In handling the New Testament he remains faithful to his 
 habit of exalting spiritual ideas, and the leading character by 
 whose personal impulse they have been stamped on the world. 
 Other foundations for healthful mind or durable society he 
 suffers no man to lay, save that of Jesus Christ the Bon of 
 God. In him he finds brought to perfection that religious 
 idea which is the thought of the eternal ; without conformity 
 to which, our souls cannot be saved from evil." 
 
 Fiijally. Professor Jowett must recall these statements. 
 "The life of Christ, regarded quite naturally as of one who 
 was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin, is the 
 life and centre of Christian teaching. There is no higher aim 
 which the preacher can propose to himself than to awaken 
 what may be termed the feeling of the presence of God and 
 the mind of Christ in Scripture ; not to collect evidences about 
 dates and books, or to familiarise metaphysical distinctions ; 
 but to make the heart and conscience of his hearers bear him 
 witness, that the lessons which are contained in Scripture — 
 lessons of justice and truth, lessons of mercy and peace, of 
 the need of man and the goodness of God to him, are indeed 
 not human but divine." And here I may transcribe the truly 
 pious words with which Dr. Jowett concludes his essay : — 
 
 " He who takes the prevailing opinions of Christians, and 
 decks them out in their gayest colours, who reflects the better 
 mind of the world to itself, is likely to be its favourite teacher. 
 hi that ministry of the gospel, even when assuming forms 
 repulsive to persons of education, no doubt the good is far 
 greater than the error or harm. But there is also a deeper 
 work, which is not dependent on the opinions of men in which 
 (opinions) many elements combine, some alien to religion, or
 
 accidentally at variance with it. That work can hardly ex- 
 pect to win much popular favour, so far as it runs counter to 
 the feelings of the religious parties ; but he who bears a part 
 in it may feel a confidence, which no popular caresses or reli- 
 gious sympathy could inspire, that he has by a divine help 
 been enabled to plant his feet somewhere beyond the waves of 
 time. He may depart hence before the natural term, worn 
 out by intellectual toil, regarded with suspicion by many of 
 his contemporaries, yet not without a sure hope that the love 
 of truth, which men of saintly lives often seem to slight, is 
 nevertheless accepted before God." 
 
 The fine spirit which breathes in these words assure ub 
 that at least one of the seven essayists has counted the cost 
 of his moral daring, and will suffer any penalty short of re- 
 cantation. That spirit is indeed, in some measure, and in 
 varying degrés, the spirit of the volune, Whatever I might 
 think of the soundness of its learning, or the justifiableness of 
 its hostilities, I could not fail to reverence the pure and eleva- 
 ted moral tone by which is is pervaded. That moral tone 
 springs from a yet deeper source. Religion is the very 
 essence of the book. Yes, call them what you will, you can- 
 not, unless you are overrun with prejudice, deny that these 
 essayists are pre-eminently religious men. There is more 
 real religion in the book than in all the creeds that were ever 
 composed. And more faith too is there in the book than in 
 all the articles of the Church of England. These men believe 
 more than many of their episcopal assailants. Their faith is 
 far wider, broader, deeper ; it is also more vivid and more 
 practical. You say they deny. I know they deny, but they 
 deny not in a spirit of scepticism, but of faith. Like " The 
 Great One" they have faith in truth because they hav^ 
 faith in God. And having faith in truth they seek it 
 with all their heart, soul, and strength ; and when they are 
 compelled to deny, they deny only to affirm. A volume 
 breathing such a spirit must do good. It will accomplish a 
 great work — a work greater even than the breaking up of 
 decaying traditions and manifest falsities — the very work of 
 God, that namely of spreading the free, healthy, vig< 
 large and loving spirit of Christ. It will do much t 
 ise the spirit of free enquiry. It will demonstrate 
 tial harmony which exists between true science anù ' 
 religion. It will win over to the cause of the G 
 who have been trained in the rigorous logic and :
 
 Ii. 
 
 knowledge of the age, but who have been alienated fror. 
 Church by the narrowness of its representatives. It will • 
 that it is possible to unite honest doubt and honest dis -i 
 with faith the loftiest, the most comprehensive, the moat 
 reasonable, and the most intense. And it will illustrate 
 and enforce the truth that human life, whether clerical or lay, 
 is of small account unleea when inspired, led and ennobled by 
 the Gospel.
 
 VIEWS AND AIMS. 
 
 By T. Colani. 
 
 Two systems divide the minds of men — Orthodoxy and 
 Rationalism ; they do not satisfy us. 
 
 Orthodoxy has the prestige of antiquity ; it is in some 
 sort the legitimate system of religious opinion. If however 
 we survey its history, we cannot admit that it proceeds 
 directly from the Gospel. In the sixteenth century the Re- 
 formers found Catholicism reigning without a rival, the church 
 and the pope, substituted for Christ, demanded obedience as 
 mediators between God and man ; while, under their influ- 
 ence, salvation was attainable by certain external forms, or 
 even by money. These monstrosities appeared, it is true, 
 before a free salvation was proclaimed aloud by the powerful 
 voice of Luther. But was the reform complete ? Did it reach 
 the root of the evil ? Was dogma entirely transformed by the 
 principle of "justification by faith " ? We do not think so : 
 and Protestant orthodoxy seems to us the offspring of the 
 Reformation wedded to the scholastic philosophy. 
 
 In its immediate desire for unity, Catholicism had linked 
 the present to the past in «order to enchain the future. It 
 had raised the vast pyramid of tradition ; which had for its 
 foundation the writings of the Apostles, and, lower down, the 
 books of the Old Testament ; the upper layers were formed 
 of the decrees of oecumenical synods ; and each age depositing 
 thereon the documents of its belief, became a sacred basis for 
 its successor. Protestant orthodoxy does not acknowledge 
 a great value in the edifice taken as a whole, but it accept- its
 
 principle ; it even carries that principle to an extreme. Arbi- 
 trarily conceding an authority to the three first centuries 
 which followed the birth of Christ, it divinises the first ; not 
 satisfied with sedulously guarding thé sacred vase which 
 contains the truth, it adores it as a relic ; it makes of the 
 New Testament, and even of the Old, a code miraculously 
 descended from the skies. Catholic tradition left some latitude 
 to the mind ; each generation, provided it kept in a line with 
 the preceding, marched ahead, perfecting certain points of 
 doctrine. Under the strict orthodoxy of our church, we had 
 no power for progress; God had promulgated his law, his 
 system of dogma; that we dare not touch. But I ask. "Where 
 then is the liberty promised to the children of God ? If my 
 
 aerated conscience cannot guide me, if I need new tables 
 of the law, in what is Christianity superior to Mosaism ? If 
 faith in the Redeemer, based on authentic documents, suffices 
 not to save me. how did Christ die for our sins ? You im- 
 pose a yoke heavier then that of circumcision: and yet yon 
 dare believe yourselves disciples of Saint Paul ! 
 
 Orthodoxy could not so readily have abandoned the law of 
 liberty, that is. in a word, salvation by Christ alone, had its 
 Christ been the same as the Christ whose life John narrates, 
 and whose love Paul displays. It does indeed inculcate two 
 natures in Christ : but of these the one is annihilated by the 
 other. C sly do we hear it anathematise those who 
 
 deny his deity : but does it ever. ?h either sermons or books, 
 insist <-.n his humanity ? Do they believe in the reality of his 
 combat-, his struggles? or do they not rather see in those 
 incidents a part written beforehand, which the second person 
 in the Trinity has to perforai ? Docetism is the logical con- 
 nce of this system, as well as of Catholicism. Humanly, 
 'Jhrist is with both a totality of appearances. In the system 
 expiation is not a real sacrifice, bill a legal fiction, agreed on
 
 in heaven and represented on earth. Then comes substitu- 
 tion — another fiction ; the obedience of Christ even to death — 
 fiction, still fiction, for that death is only a scenic representa- 
 tion of a fixed decree, realised from all eternity. Metaphy- 
 sics put in the place of history, abstraction superceding life, — 
 this is the great fault of orthodoxy, it rests not on facts, but 
 dogmas. 
 
 The impersonal element thus displayed in the work of 
 Christ, presents itself in the faith of the Christian ; for since 
 the former is a fiction, the latter can be only a formality, an 
 opus operatum, a dead work. Doubtless here, as elsewhere, 
 Protestantism has set a step toward the truth; the opus 
 operatum is in some sort transferred to the interior of man ; 
 it is no longer his purse that saves him ; nor is it a certain 
 movement of the body ; it is a state of his intelligent nature. 
 Faith is a belief. Of that faith, which nevertheless produces 
 justification, man is not the free author; he does not 
 accept pardon by means of an act of the will ; faith is imposed 
 on him. Grace is not satisfied with drawing the sinner, it 
 takes possession of him, and transforms him without any 
 co-working on his part. In this too exclusively intellectual, 
 and almost purely passive character of faith, a deep injury is 
 inflicted on the moral consciousness. 
 
 Orthodoxy (we say it with grief) singularly derogates 
 from the dignity of Christ. It all but takes from him his 
 humanity. In doing so it robs him of his reality. It estab- 
 lishes by his side a second revelation in the scripture, thus 
 proclaiming the insufficiency of the first. Very far from 
 making the personal Christ its entire dogma, it banishes 
 him into a corner ; shuts him up in a chapter ; and invests 
 with the same inviolability as Christ himself, the recitals of 
 thf Chronicles, and the calculations of the Apocalypse.
 
 Rationalism is a reaction ,!ïed forth by the doctrine of 
 salvation by magic — snch as is taught by orthodoxy. Taking 
 it in its origin, among the English deists, in the German 
 Semler, Lessing, Kant ; in the French encyclopédistes — every- 
 where we see a protest ; accompanied, it is true by impure 
 elements; but still a protest of the conscience against a 
 clerical Judaism, against an arbitrary law interposed between 
 man and God. However vague the term rationalist may be 
 in theology, all those to whom it applies place, as the first 
 condition of truth, its conduciveness to morality. And they 
 are right, for the moral life, much more than thought, consti- 
 tutes morality ; the kernel of our being, it subjects to itself 
 all the rest as envelope and organ. 
 
 But rationalism is not of Christian birth. If it raises 
 itself against orthodoxy, it is not because orthodoxy misrepre- 
 sents the sacrifice of the cross, but because it violates the 
 human conscience. For us indeed to protest in the name of 
 conscience, and to protest in the name of Christ, is all one — 
 not so for rationalism. The Evangelical narratives are not, 
 in its eyes, a divine balsam which heals the most secret 
 wounds of the heart ; it finds them little conformed to its 
 idea of a perfect religion ; and while, professing toward them 
 a respect, often sincere and deep, it labours to annul them, 
 and to free itself from their embarrasments. The bond winch 
 connects it with Christianity is a simple matter of habit, and 
 must, sooner or later, come to an end ; the two are never 
 more than set side by side ; they are never united ; they 
 remain for ever strangers to each other ; now he that is not 
 for Christ is against Christ. 
 
 It is in truth remarkable that this system manifests eager- 
 ness to reduce Jesus and his work to diminutive proportions. 
 Its promoters take him from his place at the basis of faith,
 
 to make him into a simple promulgator of the dull and colour- 
 less lessons of natural religion. They cast the facts of the 
 Gospel into the bed of Procustes ; that bed is reason, their 
 reason ; what reason ! It is not that faculty of the mind 
 which regulates our thoughts, sets them in relative order, 
 carries back everything to unity, excludes what is contradictory, 
 — logic, dialectics, admirable and all-powerful organ of our 
 intelligence ! When rationalism appeals to the sovereignty of 
 reason, it means something different to this; — common-sense; 
 party opinion ; shop philosophy, so proud of its little wisdom, 
 turning up its eyes at everything new, great, sublime ; 
 eminently sceptical and materialistic, it believes only what it 
 daily sees with its own eyes, and what it touches with its 
 own hands ; it is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, of faith, 
 of devotedness. This temper infests all the schools of rational- 
 ism. How then can they understand Christianity ! I don't 
 ask, how can they understand its spirit, but its history. 
 
 If reason so much preached by the system is a conventional 
 thing, not less conventional is its morality ; and there lies at 
 once its strength and its weakness. Rationalism absolutely 
 disowns sin ; it is an imperfection, inseparable from a finite 
 being, not a fault ; disowning sin, it does not see the need of 
 redemption : it has no sympathy with the absorbing majesty 
 of man's wretchedness and restoration. In consequence, the 
 ethical as well as the moral world of the Gospel is a sealed 
 book to rationalism. The morality to which it invites us is 
 not holiness, but probity ; it would make of us not perfect 
 beings, but respectable people. We repel rationalism more 
 decidedly than we repel orthodoxy ; the latter, in spite of its 
 grave errors, holds by its roots to the cross ; rationalism is 
 the negation of the cross. Let not our words be misunder- 
 stood : we speak not of individuals, nor even of the system, but 
 of the principle of the system. Rationalism is irréligion, ming-
 
 ling with the Christian sap, while orthodoxy is an amalgam of 
 the Gospel with Judaism. 
 
 Few words will be requisite to establish the position which 
 we ourselves wish to occupy. 
 
 Christianity is specially a fact ; it is the life and the teach- 
 ings of Jesus ; his miracles, his death, his resurrection ; and 
 then the spontaneous adherence of the sinful soul to this 
 superhuman revelation ; the intimate union of the individual 
 to his Saviour ; with the felicity of which that union is the 
 source, and the divine favour it bestows on the soul. These, 
 we repeat, are facts. The intelligence of the christian cannot 
 refuse to study them, to understand them, to give them a clear 
 and definite form. Such is the origin of dogma, — a moveable 
 element, without doubt, but still an integral part of religion. 
 It is its envelope, its body ; intended to serve as an organ of 
 the soul, but which may also become its coffin. 
 
 Theology then is a religious science, which first contrives to 
 establish the facts, and then explains them according to laws 
 and principles. It is composed of two parts, — it is history and 
 it is philosophy. 
 
 As history, it embraces the entire development of humanity, 
 of which Christ is the pivot ; and in this view one can hardly 
 blame the narrowness of orthodoxy enough, which sees no 
 preparation for the Gospel except in the Jewish nation. 
 History places before us, the human race, which God has never 
 abandoned, sighing, in a thousand different languages, and 
 under a thousand mythological forms, for the restoration of the 
 divine image : it follows in all its windings, through eighteen 
 centuries, the river which takes its rise at Calvary ; it recounts 
 its beneficent effects ; it also shows what impure streams 
 entered its bosom, discolouring its waters and disturbing its 
 movements. But specially does it take its seat at the foot of 
 the cross ; for its great task is to re-constitute the features of
 
 the Son of man ; to pourtray that ligure, so meek, so mild, so 
 pitiful yet so sublime, so terrible in his perfect sanctity ; that 
 endearing figure which ceaselessly attracts us and dominates us 
 with all its incomparable elevation. Those facts we shall 
 study without any preconceived idea, and without fearing to 
 shock cither rationalist or orthodox prejudices. The truth, 
 nothing but the truth ! Come to us, you who are weary of a 
 conventional and a priori history, exegesis, criticism : you are 
 ours. Come and clear the ground ; come and cast down the 
 walls which have been built around the Saviour; let Christ 
 appear before us in all his reality, in all his glory. 
 
 During many centuries men have been discussing the 
 relations of speculative theology with philosophy ; and in 
 truth, if Christianity is a system of supra-rational doctrines, 
 the question is serious, or rather it is insoluble. But for us 
 who see in doctrines formulas of a divine fact, it is not so ; there 
 is no dualism, no antagonism. Dogma blends with philosophy; 
 it is philosophy handled by a christian ; it is specially the 
 philosophy of history, the explanation of religious facts. 
 Now, what is the bond between all these facts which are 
 summed up in the words sin and redemption ? What is their 
 essence ? The moral life — that substance of our being ; and 
 it is by the attentive study of liberty, of personality ; it is 
 by piercing the thick folds of the will, that theological science 
 will succeed in renewing itself. Christianity especially has to 
 be re-constituted from this point of view. Jesus Christ is the 
 point of union between heaven and earth ; he is a founder of 
 a new humanity.; there is a double problem which contains all 
 dogma in itself — the relation of the Saviour to the Creator, 
 and the mutual relations which are established between the 
 Saviour and ourselves. But as long as, sundering these 
 two, you shall place side by side two abstract and metaphysical 
 natures as in Christ, you will have no formula adequate to
 
 8 
 
 christian faith, for christian faith requires reality before all 
 things, and in consequence it requires the unity, the person- 
 ality of our Lord. The problem of Christianity is not 
 essentially different from that of the. existence of each man. 
 Every individual is the product of three agents ; he springs 
 from human parents, by his education ; he is born by the good 
 pleasure of God, who raises him up when he pleases and where 
 he pleases ; he is the product of his own liberty — he makes 
 himself what he is. These three agents we find in Jesus 
 Christ with an intensity altogether peculiar. The child of 
 humanity, to humanity he belongs ; subject to trial, he came 
 off victorious, and made himself holy ; and he has his roots in 
 the depths of the Divinity. At once, Jesus of Nazareth, the 
 second Adam, and the son of God, — in him behold the author 
 and the finisher of our faith. We assert it with full convic- 
 tion — there lies the germ of a new developement of science ; 
 by that view Christianity may resume its empire over the 
 masses, and resolve the great question of solidarity and indi- 
 viduality, which weighs so heavily on the world. When we 
 see coming forth on all sides, that pantheism, which has long 
 been hidden in modem thought, and even in the theology of 
 eminent christians, we feel it to be a duty to combat that 
 enemy under all his disguises, to defend courageously the 
 precious deposit contained in the Gospel, to proclaim also 
 personal liberty, and responsibility, to show in Jesus Christ 
 the perfect and historical realisation of the human ideal, to 
 insist incessantly on the necessity of an act of the will to the 
 salvation he offers. 
 
 We do not present to our readers any fixed system ; we 
 have none ; we are asking for one conscientiously, patiently ; 
 with all our contemporaries we are in the midst of an epoch 
 of transition. Those who may think that therefore we are in 
 the pangs of doubt, we are able to relieve in full. Our labour
 
 9 
 
 in the way of theological revision is indeed sometimes hard, 
 and we have passed through painful crises when we have had 
 to tear out of our hearts a thousand inveterate, and up to then, 
 sacred prejudices ; but each of those crises has changed into a 
 triumph, and brought us nearer to Christ, making him to us 
 more immediate, more living. We wish to be well understood. 
 It is a strange mistake to accuse us of intellectualism, or of 
 sacrificing our faith to some fancied Moloch of reason. Nothing 
 can be more untrue. With all the faculties of our soul we 
 embrace the salvation which is in Christ. Jesus is the object 
 of our love — true love comprises instinct, will, intelligence. 
 We love Christ because he first loved us. We scrutinise and 
 analyse our love in order to purify it, to strengthen it by con- 
 templating the perfection of its object. We have no division 
 in our Christianity — this for the head, that for the heart, the 
 third for the life ; but we aim at flooding it with the entire 
 stream of our being. The task is great and noble ; by our own 
 strength we could not accomplish it — we should fail miserably. 
 But He, for whose glory we intend to labour, will not desert 
 us, but rather shew himself mighty in our weakness. 
 
 Such is our hope. Such are our principles. We call 
 around us those who dissatisfied with the forms of an anti- 
 quated system of dogma, and fully admitting salvation by 
 Christ alone, desire to labour in raising the new edifice which 
 is to be built on the solid basis of him who is at once the Son of 
 man and the Son of God. We ask you not to receive all the 
 ideas we have propounded. Not a school, not a system, but 
 a tendency is that which we represent. The device on our 
 banner is The True Development of Christian Thought. We 
 repeat the motto of the theologians of the sixteenth century : 
 In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas ; with us only one thing 
 is necessary — The Gospel; for all the rest we demand the 
 most complete liberty.
 
 MODERN MATERIALISM AND ITS CAUSE& 
 
 By Dr. Scholten. 
 
 There has in the last few years appeared on the territory 
 of science a phenomenon well worthy the attention not only of 
 those who study nature, but also of philosophers and theo- 
 logians ; for it concerns the highest interests of humanity, 
 morality, and religion. Materialism, though often, and as 
 was thought, solidly confuted, has raised its head in a manner 
 which renders an examination of its pretensions altogether 
 necessary. It is a study of this kind that we now propose to 
 go through. We shall first describe materialism in its prin- 
 cipal features, and then we shall endeavour to indicate and 
 probe the causes of its periodical appearance in the modern 
 world. 
 
 Materialism is that scientific tendency according to which 
 all the phenomena of nature and of human life are deduced 
 from matter and explained accordingly. Matter is the sole 
 and unique substance. Science is and can be only the know- 
 ledge of matter and its properties. Materialism relying on 
 the new atomic theory and on the recent discoveries of physics 
 and chemistry, declares that the universe is nothing else than 
 an assemblage, a co-working of the eternal atoms, otherwise 
 termed the ultimate particles of matter ; which, whether in 
 consequence of a law of necessity, or by a fortuitous concourse 
 of circumstances, have produced the unity of the world, and 
 the organisation of individual beings. Everything comes 
 from a mixture of matter, in relation with its effects and its
 
 11 
 
 physical laws. Organised beings themselves — the plants, the 
 animals, man not excepted, and man too even as a spiritual 
 being, is a purely chemical and physical product of the mix- 
 ture and change of matter, indefinitely varied. Thought, self- 
 consciousness, even the manifestations of our moral life, 
 are simply the properties of the organism, the result of a 
 certain arrangement of the brain and the nerves ; and these in 
 their turn, owe their existence to no other thing than the 
 union of substances discovered therein by chemical analysis. 
 The union of our individual consciousness is then the total 
 collective sensation of all the individual sensations which affect 
 the nerves ; and to that collective sensation the name soul is 
 given. Thus, professor Lehmann, of Leipsig, declares in a 
 recent work : "As you can hardly demonstrate the existence 
 of the force which is called vital, belonging exclusively to 
 organised bodies, all the phenomena proper to living beings 
 must be explainable by the laws of physics and chemistry. 
 Those Laws alone will give us the key of the phenomena of 
 life." 
 
 Modern materialism does not shrink from the logical and 
 necessary consequences of the point of view which it adopts. 
 If everything is a chemical product of materials, mixed under 
 the action of physical laws, or of the properties of matter, it is 
 clear that what was formerly said of a "vital force," or, at 
 least, of organic life, considered as a natural force, distinct 
 from purely physical and chemical forces, is without foundation, 
 All idea of unity, object ; every kind of teleology or aim, 
 whether in the universe, or in individual beings ; every affirma- 
 tion of an organising or directing power, is nothing better 
 than fiction. These are so many empty abstractions imposed 
 on natwe. To speak with Oerstedt, of " Spirit in Nature",* 
 
 * See " The Soul in Nature " by Hans C. Oerstedt, translated from the German 
 by Leonora and Joanna B. Horner ; London, H. G. Bonn.
 
 12 
 
 or with Alexander von Humboldt,* to see in nature the activity 
 of the Supreme Intelligence, is pure folly. Science does not 
 know spirit or soul, but only matter with its constant effects. 
 Man may experience religious sentiments, whatever their 
 cause may be, but science must disown the existence of a God. 
 Man, the product of organisation, who is only a combination 
 of atoms, must cease to exist when those atoms cease to exist, 
 when those atoms separate one from another ; and belief in 
 immortality is henceforth only a chimera. Thought, like all 
 the other faculties of man, being merely a combination of the 
 atoms of the brain, our moral power, which, wakened by 
 thought, calls forth sentiment and will, is nothing but a 
 consequence of a modification in the aforementioned combina- 
 tion. Love and hate, virtue and vice, are the necessary results 
 of material combinations in our human organism. Morality 
 is thus referred to a simple physico-chemical operation ; all 
 efforts to ameliorate beings who cannot be made over afresh, 
 is vain and superfluous, and morality is to be considered as one 
 of the inventions suggested by egotism, against which nature 
 maj assert her solid rights, as in encountering an arbitrary 
 despotism. 
 
 I have endevoured to sketch, briefly and faithfully, the 
 contemporaneous materialism, such as it appears when deduced 
 from the premises set forth by celebrated modern natural- 
 ists — Burmeister, Pfluger, Lotze, Schleiden, Dubois-Reymond, 
 Lehmann ; such as it appears, when developed with much 
 logic, by men like Buchner, Moleschott, Vogt, Czolbe, Max 
 Stirner, &c. Far from me be the thought of rendering 
 responsible for all the consequences of materialism, every one 
 of these by whom the principle has been adopted. Thus we 
 might cite the great physiologist, J. Mùller, a declared» enemy 
 
 snos, a Physical Description of the Universe" by Alexander von Hum- 
 boldt, translated from the German by E. C. Otte ; London, H. G. Bohn.
 
 13 
 
 of materialism, who nevertheless believes that the organic 
 force, and all the phenomena of life, can scarcely be considered 
 otherwise than the consequences or the properties of a certain 
 combination of material objects. Only he limits his thesis to 
 the field of Physiology, and forbids himself to apply it to 
 researches which have the soul for their object. In the same 
 way, Lotze, as a physiologist, opposes with all his strength, 
 the hypothesis of a vital force distinct from physical and 
 chemical forces ; but, as a psychologist, he attributes, at 
 least provisionally, to the soul a nature independent of the 
 body, and combats materialism with much vivacity. In his 
 " Mikrocosmos" he says, " Man is perhaps a unit, but he 
 appears to me a double being. I consider the living indi- 
 vidual as the union of a soul with a system of bodily 
 elements."— pp. 165, 182. 
 
 The unity of conciousness proves, in his view, that the soul 
 is not the product of the body : " A false materialism makes 
 the Intelligence of the universe truly impossible by pretending 
 to deduce man's mind and all its wealth, as an appendix of no 
 importance, from the reciprocal action of material elements, 
 such as blows and pressure, contraction and extension, mixture 
 and dissolution." (p. 164.) But it is not only physiologists, 
 others also, and among them the Philosopher Erdmann, who 
 hold that the science of nature is necessarily materialistic ; 
 though it may be said that at least Erdmann seems merely to 
 mean that the study of nature, as such, has to do with nothing 
 but physical laws and their consequences. Theologians how- 
 ever have declared that materialism is the last word of science ; 
 but, after the example of the physiologist, they seek to supple- 
 ment disbelieving science by either throwing themselves into 
 the arms of ecclesiastical tradition, or by adducing the histori- 
 cal proofs of a supernatural revelation ; or finally, by showing
 
 14 
 
 in the subjective wants of man, the basis of convictions not to 
 be attained from the processes of science. 
 
 The latter however have, in common with materialism, 
 the pretension that science, as such, furnishes no indication 
 of the existence of God, and the substantial unity of the 
 human soul, any more than it gives guarantees of a moral 
 order, He who lives morally and religiously, does so in 
 virtue of quite different motives from those which he might 
 obtain from science. 
 
 If materialism, as ensues from the foregoing, has occupied 
 men's minds to such a degree that even theologians and 
 philosophers see no other source for their faith in God, and 
 immortality, but a refuge in the badly defended harbour of 
 authority, or a subjective mysticism ; if religion and morality 
 are to be threatened in their existence, the moment that these 
 tottering bases give way, it is clear that the hour is come 
 to examine the titles of which materialism makes its boast. 
 To what is it to be ascribed that notwithstanding consequences, 
 which materialists refuse more readily than they avoid, this 
 system is in a condition to exercise so great an influence, and 
 to enroll distinguished men under its banner ? I distinguish 
 three causes of the appearance and the power of contem- 
 porary materialism : 
 
 I. The non-philosophic study of nature. 
 
 II. Defective psychology and metaphysics. 
 
 III. The faith of authority. 
 
 I have indicated as the first cause of materialism, the 
 non-philosophic study of nature. In employing the expression, 
 "non-philosophic," I do not mean to say that among the 
 patrons of materialism, there are not men remarkable for 
 scientific precision, and a very delicate observation of particular 
 facts. On the contrary, we are indebted to many among them 
 for new explanations of purely physical phenomena relating
 
 15 
 
 to life, explanations as ineontestible as are the facts to which 
 they relate. What I understand by the philosophical study 
 of nature, is the art of considering facts as a whole, the 
 judicious distinguishing between effects and causes, and the 
 deduction from facts and phenomena, of rigorous logical con- 
 clusions. This criterion of true science appears to be lacking 
 in the materialism of the present day. To justify my state- 
 ment, I will for a few moments occupy a ground which is 
 not exactly my own — that of the natural sciences. I beg 
 then that it may be borne in mind that when I adduce natural 
 facts, I rest not on my own experience, but on results 
 established by such as are naturalists by profession. The 
 science of nature in itself is beyond my personal studies; 
 but the task of speculative philosophy is to reflect on the 
 results of that science, on its established facts, in order to 
 systematise them. 
 
 In the critical study of materialism it is before all things 
 necessary to test its principle. Its affirmation is as follows : — 
 Everything, not only in inorganic nature, but also in organic 
 nature, is explainable by material combinations in connexion 
 with the physical effects of light, heat, and electricity. 
 
 One thing is unquestionably proved, namely, that in 
 organic nature, the same physical and chemical laws, to which 
 inorganic nature is subject, are always in action. It is also 
 a fact that all matter entering into the composition of organised 
 beings, is open to chemical analysis. We have then no idea 
 of explaining the phenomena of life in organic bodies by the 
 negation of the physico-chemical laws prevailing everywhere 
 else ; nor to pretend that a substance, on entering into an 
 organised state, must lose the properties it possessed before. 
 But it is altogether another question whether an appeal to 
 the laws of physics and chemistry, suffices to explain the 
 formation of organic elements of organisms and of life.
 
 16 
 
 First. Of the sixty-one simple bodies known to chemistry, 
 only eighteen or nineteen are found in organised bodies, and 
 as in this number some appear there only fortuitously, the 
 number must be reduced to fifteen. Purely organic substances 
 are composed of four — at most, five or six — simple substances. 
 Whence such a phenomenon if physical forces, and chemical 
 affinity alone co-operate in the formation of organic beings ? 
 Whence is it that nature, which employs so many elements in 
 the inorganic world, is systematically limited to so small a 
 number, and excludes all the rest, although, in part, these 
 are found, for the plant — in the earth, and for the animal — 
 in its sustenance. Herbivorous animals find in their food 
 more silex or flint than anything else, and plants plunge 
 their roots into earth formed specially of alumina (argilla- 
 cious earth) such as clay, loam, &c, yet neither they, nor 
 those by whom they are eaten, absorb flint or clay. One of 
 the most important elements of the globe does not enter into 
 the composition of any living being. Scarcely any of the 
 important elements of the earth, properly so called, lime 
 excepted, enters into the composition of animals. Since 
 animated beings have the power to select their elements in 
 the earth, in the air, in the water, what 'reasons determine 
 the choice ? If physical forces and chemical affinity were the 
 sole factors of the organism, how is it that the same causes 
 in one case bring together so many elements, and in another 
 reject so many ? Let us add that while the plant is nourished 
 by no organic matter, but assimilates simply surrounding 
 elements, the animal is not nourished by elements, such as 
 they are in their simple state, but solely when other organisms 
 have converted them into organic bodies. If we grant that 
 in this there is nothing directly contrary to materialism ; does 
 it not indicate a function of nature distinct from physical 
 forces and chemical affinity — a function which experiment
 
 17 
 
 does not establish, but which nevertheless presents itself to 
 us as a postulate of established facts ? 
 
 Second. — If everything in organic bodies depends on 
 chemical combination, and the action of physical forces, whence 
 is it that the same elements which, at death, are dissolved 
 into general nature, obeying chemical laws, and resuming the 
 form which they had originally when out of the organism, are 
 in the organism of such a kind that the unlimited supremacy 
 of chemical laws, of the physical force of cohesion, is limited 
 and modified in its effects so long as life endures ? The con- 
 trolling power has been called vital force, the power of life ; 
 and it has been said, the vital force exercises dominion over 
 chemical affinity. This force, it is added, exists out of matter, 
 and independent of matter. So far, however, as the explanation 
 admits a dualism, as of nature, and of vital force, it must be 
 disallowed. Such a dualism is an error of the past. It exists 
 not in nature. But clearly a power appears which is not within 
 the range of known chemical and physical laws; and that 
 power is of such a character as to modify their action, and 
 change their results. In a word, those laws are overruled to 
 a superior end, namely, the formation of organisms. 
 
 Third. — The circumstance that several organic substances, 
 the physico-chemical properties of which widely differ, resolve 
 into simple elements, identical, and of the same weight, 
 remains absolutely incomprehensible, if we have in them only 
 a simply chemical product, and of necessity supposes an 
 activity of nature superior to the domain of chemistry. These 
 bodies are called isomeric, that is, bodies having equal parts. 
 The term was suggested by Berzelius, to designate certain 
 compounds which contain the same elements in the same ratio, 
 and which nevertheless possess physical and chemical proper- 
 ties quite distinct. The two cyanic acids are instances of the 
 kind. They both consist of cyanogen and oxygen in the
 
 18 
 
 same ratio, and have the same equivalent : yet they differ 
 greatly in their chemical properties. Now, science has no 
 reason to give, of the cause of this difference. The pheno- 
 menon, is indeed attributed to a difference in the arrange- 
 ment of the elements ; or, when the combination is only 
 binary, the difference is ascribed to the atoms of which the 
 simple substances are themselves composed. But this is 
 nothing else than a refuge in ignorance. Clearly here is 
 a cause which is beyond ascertained chemical and physical 
 forces. 
 
 Fourth. — Xo more can chemistry explain why the same 
 substances which in organised bodies are almost always in 
 a ternary and quaternary state, present themselves, when 
 beyond the organic domain, in the binary state, and return 
 to it when the dissolution of the organism takes place. 
 
 Fifth. — When, in consequence of chemical combination, 
 unity is formed, the chemical effect ceases. The chemical 
 process has come to an end, and as long as the external 
 circumstances remain the same, no change can take place. 
 In organic life, on the contrary, that process is continually 
 renewed. This fact also shews, us that in organised beings 
 there is one or more factors beyond those, the existence of 
 which is shown by chemistry. 
 
 Sixth. — Materialism ought also to explain why, while 
 chemistry can resolve every organic substance into its simple 
 elements, it has never been able to affect the re-composition 
 of a purely organic substance. Chemistry, which can produce 
 water by combining oxygen and hydrogen, is not in a con- 
 dition to produce chemically, a single organic substance — 
 such as blood, nerve, muscle, brain : it cannot form the 
 -mallest hair, the smallest leaf, not even the smallest cellule. 
 Though some substances, found in organic bodies, have been 
 drawn from non-organised matter, — for example, the urea,
 
 1'.) 
 
 from the bladder ; this proves nothing against our objection, 
 
 Fur the urea is a thing which the organism secretes and 
 repels, and as Liebig, and Eschtrecht judiciously remark, 
 does not belong to the purely organic elements of the animal 
 body. Liebig adds, " Never will chemistry succeed in re-pro- 
 ducing a cellule, a muscular fibre — in a word, any part of 
 the organism really endowed with vital properties." With 
 inorganic substances indeed the chemist may make certain 
 bodies that are classed among organic bodies, as sugar, lactic 
 acid, alcohol, but according to Liebig, that is possible only in 
 virtue of two or more organised atoms already collected, 
 while in vain does he try to produce out of purely inorganic 
 elements, one of those combinations. If however we may 
 follow the same authority, those combinations are not organic, 
 but chemic, containing parts of substances already formed 
 under the influence of organisation. In any case, writes the 
 physiologist, Lotze, the substances which chemistry is able 
 to re-produce, belong not to the highest functions of organic 
 life. All this tends to prove that, beyond physical and 
 chemical laws, nature is in possession of a superior force. 
 
 Seventh. — When the adversaries of vitalism, to explain 
 the phenomena of life, speak of " particular circumstances," 
 of " quite special relations," of " extraordinary conditions," 
 of " particular arrangement of atoms," of " a force inherent 
 in the nerves without any analogue in all nature," of " a 
 plastic power," and acknowledge that there are forces distin- 
 guishing animate from inanimate beings ; when Lotze him- 
 self, who sees only mechanism in organisation, speaks of 
 a chemical force peculiar to the organism, and when he sees 
 in the relation which at once binds and distinguishes all the 
 members of the organism, " an effect conformed to the general 
 plan i' 1 what do they mean by these phrases, if not that being 
 unable to explain solely by physics and chemistry, the forma - 
 
 b 1
 
 20 
 
 tioii of organic beings, they are forced to take refuge in the 
 unknown, in some cause not furnished by either physics or 
 chemistry ? If, to explain life, they appeal to the influence 
 of light, or to the electric fluid, which, according to Dubois- 
 Reyrnond, traverses all the nervous system, they forget first 
 that the existence of such agents is itself very hypothetical, 
 as yet, and quite as much as " the vital force," lies beyond 
 the field of common experience ; and secondly, that in ac- 
 knowledging the influence of light in the development of 
 organic beings to be considerable, their formation, and parti- 
 cular the life of subterraneous plants, is free from that 
 influence ; lastly, that the unquestionable co-working of 
 physical forces — for example, of electricity — does not solve 
 the problem of life any more than it is solved by chemical 
 affinity alone. It is curious to observe how the same people 
 who chase before them the darkness of an obscure phrase, 
 such as " vital force," without the least hesitation employ 
 in aid of their mechanical, physical, and chemical explana- 
 tions, phrases, at least not less obscure, when they speak of 
 " chemical force," " chemical affinity," " plastic power," ' or 
 " extraordinary conditions." 
 
 Eighth. — Let us however admit that, according to the hope 
 of materialism, some time or other, science, mistress of things 
 which now escapes from her grasp, shall be able to form, by 
 chemical means, certain organic substances; still, she must 
 not on that account boast of having explained the union of 
 those substances in a living and harmonious organism ; and 
 still less of having told how the union of those substances in 
 a plant or an animal takes place constantly acccording to 
 the same type. This is the reason why the botanist, Schleiden, 
 though refusing to admit any vital force, in>i>t- on the re- 
 markable difference which distinguishes crystallisation, in 
 which the formative force comes from without, and acts from
 
 21 
 
 without on all points, while the formative force in the organi- 
 sation or formation of a cellule, comes from within, and 
 spreads from the centre toward all the parts. The expres- 
 sions which he employs, shaping process, self-preserving process, 
 formative impulse, have sense only if the organism is con- 
 sidered as a unit, but have sense no longer if, according to 
 materialism, we must find there only an aggregate of material 
 things and forces. 
 
 A powerful confirmation of this point of view may be found 
 in the fact long since recognised by naturalists, namely : that 
 the organic unity is the more absolute in a living being 
 according as that being is more elevated in the scale of 
 creation. Yet indistinct in the polypus, imperfectly centered 
 in the worm, the organic unity reaches perfection in the 
 quadruped. This shows that central unity determines the 
 class of organisms ; the more organic a being is, the more he 
 is one. 
 
 Ninth. — I have not yet spoken of the marvellous power 
 called instinct, in virtue of which each animal seeks the ele- 
 ment and the nutriment necessary for its life : the bird builds 
 his nest, the spider spins her web, bees live in society, per- 
 fectly well ordered ; the migratory bird, at the appointed 
 time quits her abode and traverses lands and seas, and at the 
 right season returns to the spot she had left. Come, now ; 
 try, try, and do your best, to explain this admirable harmony, 
 out of the resourses supplied by known physical and chemical 
 means. 
 
 Tenth. — EVen were we to grant materialism all we have 
 yet denied, it would still have to explain the constant equality 
 of the composition and temperature of the blood ; its distri- 
 bution over all parts of the organism, and all the complications 
 implied in the facts of assimilation and reproduction. If you 
 cannot satisfy such a requirement, if the hypothesis some-
 
 22 
 
 times put forward of the generatio œquivoca, (or spontaneous 
 formation) — another plunge into the dark abyss — must 1».- 
 rejected as insufficient and visibly false, nothing remains but 
 to accuse materialism of having, contrary to sound reason, 
 taken the effect for the cause, phenomena for their foundation, in 
 attempting to explain the miity of an organic being by a 
 plurality, by a concourse of distinct particles. Science, then, 
 does not exceed her prerogative when, in addition to physical 
 and chemical laws, she stipulates for an organising and 
 conducting power, an organic factor, whatever name may 
 be given to it ; which is sovereign over the organic develop- 
 ment, — an active principle or agent, which makes all the 
 numerous physical and chemical causes it can dispose of 
 concur to one determined end — in a word, a principle of 
 formation which by means of materials necessary to its 
 actvity, and furnished by anterior nature, shapes the par- 
 ticular organism after an immutable type, and, in spite of 
 the continual coming and going of substances, now assimilated, 
 now rejected, constantly maintains that fundamental type, 
 from the primitive cellule, through a long series of combina- 
 tions, secretions, and assimilations. These are undeniable 
 facts ; the organism preserves its general form, whilst within 
 that form matter ceaselessly comes and goes ; notwithstanding 
 its continual changes and exchanges with the outer world, that 
 general form remains the same, and even conquers by its 
 identity ; it is preserved not only as an individual, but also 
 as a genus, and shares in the general development of its kind ; 
 it does not find all its organs fully formed, as parts of 
 a mechanism, but forms organs itself; it is at once cause and 
 effect, causa sui, (its own cause) and that not only at the 
 moment of its birth or during its growth, but also through all 
 its existence ; the products of its life are at the same time the 
 factors of its life, so that in it means are the same as ends,
 
 23 
 
 and ends are means ; each member exists only in normal 
 relation with the whole, as the whole lives only by the normal 
 condition of each part. These facts, which are verified by 
 experience, find no analogy in inorganic nature ; and in 
 reality constitute at each successive instant a direct opposition 
 to that which takes place in inorganic nature. 
 
 Eleventh. — That agent of organic formation which, accord- 
 ing to the data of experience, is already active in the 
 appearance of the first germ of life, and attests its existence 
 before the different organs necessary to life are formed by assi- 
 milation ; which, during the whole of life, and notwithstand- 
 ing the constant variations of matter, always remains active, 
 protecting the organism against injurious influences whether 
 from within or without ; or. re-establishing it should it have 
 suïered detriment : — this primum agens furnishes proof that, 
 if in the organism there exists a great number of mixtures 
 and combinations belonging to the sphere of physico-chemical 
 laws, those combinations and those mixtures are in no way the 
 fun lamentai cause of life, but on the contrary are subjected 
 to a superior cause. The resemblance between the first germs 
 of d fferent animal species is so great that the best microscopes 
 have given reason only to suspect some vague differences. 
 And nevertheless those imperceptible germs, subjected to the 
 influence of the same circumstances, develope in a manner so 
 as to produce the numberless and enormous differences which 
 distinguish the animal races one among the other, and in 
 particular distinguish man from them all. Can this also be 
 explained solely by chemistry, or does it not rather indicate 
 an original difference, which has its base not only in the 
 varied combinations of matter and physical forces, but in the 
 special differences of individuals and kinds ? 
 
 Twelfth. — If we apply this consideration to man, the brain 
 does not proceed solely, as materialism would have it, from
 
 24 
 
 the union of the substances of which it is composed ; thought 
 is not the product of the physical modification of the nervous 
 system; on the contrary, we must search for the cause of 
 both the organism and its vital functions, in a higher region, — 
 the central life ; that is to say, in the very essence of man, — 
 in that invisible factor which realises his organs in relation 
 with his destiny. In the egg of the bird that first principle 
 makes use of substances placed as its disposal by uature, in 
 order to form a " flying-fowl." The same in man, employing 
 also substances, chemical and physical forces, it makes cellule?, 
 muscles, and blood, — whatever is necessary to vital functions, 
 — and subjects them to the organic unity ; without being 
 aware of what it does, it spontaneously and surely directs the 
 formation, the development, the harmonious concurrence of the 
 higher organs which man will need for the realisation of his 
 destiny as a rational being. In other terms, it is not in the 
 combination of the substances of which the nerves and mm 
 are composed ; nor in the electric currents of the organism ; 
 nor in their co-operation, that the cause of life must be looked 
 for. It is in man himself, in that invisible unity which, from 
 the first moment of his existence, is at the base of ail his 
 vital functions. This is the original factor, the former of the 
 matter of the body, which causes the combinations aid the 
 laws of the physical and chemical world to concur to its own 
 end. There is a symbolic teaching on the part of nauire in 
 the fact established by modern physiology, that the imman 
 embryo begins in a state similar to that of inferior aninals, is 
 born as an infant, and continues to unfold until it reaches 
 spiritual perfection. This procest /or progression of 
 
 life) bears witness to the original unity of the being called man. 
 Thirteenth. — In any case, materialism encounters an insu- 
 perable obstacle ; that which appears in the constant identity 
 of the organism in the midst of the perpetual change of the
 
 25 
 
 substances in which the identity is realised. How, we ask, 
 can the organism have the ground of its existence in a 
 combination of substances which are not there at the 
 beginning of its devolopment, and of the presence of which, 
 as results from the perpetual coming and going, even the 
 essence of the plant and the animal is independent ? 
 
 Fourteenth. — Let us not forget the essential fact of self- 
 consciousness. Man has a consciousness of his identity, after 
 years are passed, during which his brain has been completely 
 renewed. Independently, then, of the determinate mass of 
 matter which enters into his organism, there is a something 
 which does not come from a combination of substances and 
 chemical laws, and which on the contrary is the cause, the 
 former of his organic unity. 
 
 Fifteenth. — However let us suppose it possible. Let us 
 admit that in effect organic life may be explained by physics 
 and pure chemistry ; that it is necessary even to deny all 
 difference between the mechanical, physical, and chemical 
 functions of nature ; that would not preclude the existence of 
 a true anthropology — the anthropology which establishes its 
 facts before it imagines its theories ; that would not preclude 
 the acknowledgment in man of a power which stands far above 
 the blind movements of nature, far above even organic animal 
 life ; a power which it is impossible to trace back to the 
 simple effect of matter in motion. I allude to the power 
 which virtually exists in man, and developes gradually in him, 
 — moral liberty, personal independence. I do not mean by 
 liberty that which a superficial psychology has baptised with 
 that name, free choice, of which indifference is the charac- 
 teristic (indifferentia ad velle et non velle), a notion which all 
 truly philosophic minds,— Locke and Spinoza, Leibnitz and 
 Hegel,— have rejected as false. What I refer to is the moral 
 power, in virtue of which man, rising above the fatalsm of
 
 26 
 
 nature, mies the natural inclinations and passions of his 
 organic life, enters aa a superior cause into the chain of blind 
 causes, and has the power to modify, to put away, to subject 
 to a moral and the natural course of physical and chemical 
 laws. The animal has no moral faculty. The dog, for 
 example, which remembers the pain he felt on being whipped 
 for devouring the game his master had killed, may find in 
 that recollection the cause which restrains the free application 
 of his physical instinct, but that cause is really not in himself, 
 it comes from without. In man exclusively the moral sense 
 unfolds as a power of inner life which, independent of exter- 
 nal circumstances (for example, the foresight of punishment) 
 and in virtue of that internal moral necessity, which is nothing 
 else than true liberty, makes him able to master his selfish 
 inclinations, and then to trample on the most powerful of his 
 instincts. — the love of life. The moral power of self- 
 renunciation, the power of love, this it is which separates man 
 by a great gulf from the plant and the animal. The latter 
 necessarily and constantly revolve within themselves and live 
 only during a time, fixed as that within which their physical 
 forces continue. Man, on the contrary, in his moral develop- 
 ment becomes always more and more capable of living for the 
 good of others. This capability, by the fact of its existence, 
 proves that there is in the world something more than thai 
 which the materialist calls matter and material laws. This is 
 a force the cause of which must be sought in the essential 
 difference which distinguishes man from the animal, and 
 which, far from owing its existence to a combination of matter, 
 does not indeed destroy the anterior laws of nature, with which 
 man is connected by his physical being, but overrules matter, 
 modifies its effects, and makes use of physical forces to attain 
 a loftier aim. It is thus that experience shews us a magnifi- 
 cent ascent in the evolution of nature. It first presents to «
 
 27 
 
 objects, like iron, the parts of which are mechanically held 
 
 together according to the laws of attraction and cohesion. 
 Then it conducts us to other substances, as water, which are 
 formed by chemical combination, and thereby rise above a pure 
 aggregate and above mere mechanism. Higher still stand 
 the beings in which organic force realises effects superior to 
 those of mechanism and chemistry. Finally, moral beings 
 appear, beings whose personal will and independence dominate 
 and modify anterior forces, the organic not excepted. 
 
 Sixteenth. — When materialism boasts of being able to 
 explain not only the unity of organic life, but also that of 
 consciousness, by the idea of a total or collective sensation of 
 all the nervous impressions, it forgets, first, that every sensa- 
 tion supposes something else beside the sensation itself — 
 namely, a sentient subject — a perception ; to say nothing of all 
 that is incomprehensible in the idea that the consciousness of 
 self is a sensation, we may conclude that man, having a 
 consciousness of himself, has no other sensation than that of 
 his I, or me ; that he is at the same time subject and object ; 
 and that thus the consciousness of self decidedly cannot be a 
 nervous impression : second, that this reasoning ends in this 
 absurdity, namely, that from a plurality of impressions comes 
 the unity of consciousness, as if plurality could of itself 
 resolve into unity. 
 
 Seventeenth. — The materialistic formula pretends that 
 there is nothing but matter and the forces which are inherent 
 in it. Every force, then, is a property of matter. But here 
 materialism digs its own grave without knowing it, If by 
 this is meant that all matter, even the smallest atom, has 
 force for a property, we come to this consequence, — that there 
 is no matter which is not at the same time force, and conse- 
 quently that we have no means to distinguish between matter
 
 28 
 
 and force. If by this on the contrary it is meant something 
 which is added to matter, and that thus matter is something 
 which of itself is without force, then we come to the notion 
 of a formless, inert matter, the Greek v\rj. It follows 
 that when we speak of matter in science, we make use of a 
 word legitimatised by usage, but which owes its origin to a 
 dualistic conception of things, according to which, speculators 
 saw in matter the negation of force, and in force the negation 
 of matter, the two being considered as distinct substances, 
 the one by the side of the other. But this is a worn out 
 conception, which no one at present would more categorically 
 reject than the materialists themselves, who cry out so loudly 
 against all idea of forces existing apart. Matter, then, is in 
 reality only the tangible and visible side of nature, the side 
 whose existence we can prove by our senses ; though it may not 
 be directly perceptible, as is the case, for instance, in impon- 
 derable ether. Matter is not'something distinct from force, nor 
 is it a thing possessing forces, but it is the form perceptible 
 to our senses which reveals force ; or, if you prefer the term, 
 life. In other terms matter is the manifestation of force. 
 
 If we apply these principles to man : the body is the 
 temporary form, the tangible and visible manifestation, the 
 expression of man's self-developing life. If we apply them 
 to the universe, matter is the side of it which is perceivable 
 by our senses, the manifestation and the expression of the 
 one and everlasting life of nature ; in other terms the form 
 which the Absolute Spirit takes. If materialism will remain 
 faithful to its name, it must accept the nonsense of the v\tj 
 that is of matter without form, that chimaera of the ancients. 
 But as long as it persists in speaking of laws, of life, of forces, 
 as properties of matter, of matter which has forces, it 
 carries in itself an enemy which devours it. 
 
 t
 
 29 
 
 If the axiom of materialism, " exerything proceeds from 
 the mixture of matter," is demonstrated false, materialists 
 must renounce that disdain with which they treat the teleo- 
 logical conception of nature. By the right by which science 
 rejects the notion of forces without and apart from matter, 
 it forbids the explanation of natural phenomena, according 
 to an end assumed a 'priori ; this is to introduce a Deus ex 
 machina, to cut the gordian knot, not to untie it ; and this 
 method gratuitously confounds the end and the cause. The 
 science of nature has not to enquire after final causes ; it does 
 not ask the why, but seeks the forces and the laws which 
 explain the causes of those phenomena. But this does not 
 shut out the true idea of an end, object, or purpose. Every 
 organic being is, in growing, destined to an end or object, 
 *oward which all his development gravitates. Here expe- 
 rience decidedly shows us an end, and not only so, but the 
 means which nature, with an unfailing certainty, uses to 
 attain that end. The development of nature takes place 
 according to a plan, an idea which attains its complete 
 realisation only in a perfect state of the several beings. In 
 organic nature the living being is causa sui, the cause of 
 himself. The means which he employs are not in his case as 
 in the case of a machine, a watch, etc., ready prepared, and 
 coming from somewhere else, it is he himself that forms them. 
 That which is product and purpose in him, in turn becomes 
 his means, while the means become the end. Each part ex- 
 ists as much by the whole, as the whole by each part. But 
 this unity of plan and of end, nature reveals in the least as 
 well as in the greatest things ; in the regularity of crystalline 
 formations, and of the mathematical laws presiding over the 
 undulations of the luminous ether, as well as in the organisa- 
 tion of imperceptible molecules, and of the infusoria ; in the 
 development of the egg, as in the planetary system ; in the
 
 80 
 
 physical development and formation of the globe, as in the 
 
 province of history, and the moral and social development of 
 the human race. By taking his stand on this unity, this 
 constant regularity of things, Cnvier, famished with a fossil 
 bone, reconstructed an unknown animal from to] 
 of which, afterward a specimen was found preserved entire, 
 and entirely conformed to his predictions. By taking his 
 stand on this unity, the astronomer, by his calculations, 
 devined the existence of Neptune, and as well as his exact 
 locality in space, the very locality where the planet was found 
 by Galle. So in the moral kingdom : the prophet discerns 
 in the germs of his age the ideal which will be realised in an 
 age to come. Chance ? arbitrary and blind necessity ? no- 
 where. Everywhere law. order, harmony, development, the 
 concurrence of physical, chemical, organic, moral forces, in 
 the realisation of some end. The unity of the molecule, 
 united to other molecules, forms the unity of the object. The 
 unity of objects centres in the unity of species. Species, 
 collected into the three great kingdoms of nature, continue by 
 their development the unity of the geological development of 
 the planet. This development, in its torn, forms part of the 
 totality of the solar system : which, with its planets and their 
 satellites, moves round a centre yet unknown. This internal 
 centre, this concourse of each particular life which at once 
 is its own end, and contributes to the supreme end, whose 
 universal unity is the grand final end ; this relation of each 
 individual thing with the great whole — to attempt to explain 
 all this without a central principle, an intelligence, a Creative 
 Mind, directing the development of each object, so that n 
 does the boundless multiplicity destroy the absolute unity — 
 such an attempt would be a- reasonable as to refer the 
 appearance of a book, logically divided and composed. t<> the 
 arbitrary and fortuitous concourse of millions of metal forms
 
 31 
 
 called letters: as to refer a symphony to an indescribable 
 number of instruments and insrumentalists playing indepen- 
 dently one of another ; as to refer a beautiful edifice to the 
 mere accumulation of the logs of wood, bars of iron, and 
 blocks of stone of which it consists. The arugument, ancient 
 as it is, becomes constantly more forcible in the degree in 
 which successive generations know the universe better. Thus 
 nature in proportion as it unrolls before our eyes its diverse 
 aspects, gives us an accumalative revelation of the harmonious 
 life of the world. The forces of nature lead us to the One 
 Force which controuls all phenomena conformably to a plan, 
 an idea. And what naturalists have been accustomed to call 
 the eternal laws of nature, if we consider the true sense 
 of that phrase, is the expression of God's thought. That 
 thought human reason gradually becomes acquainted with; 
 that thought it gradually systématises, and hence forms the 
 true science of the universe. 
 
 The natural sciences, properly studied, far from excluding 
 God from his works, and leaving to the religious man only 
 the choice between blind faith and vague mysticism, conducts 
 us in concert with all other sciences, to the Supreme Principle 
 which sovereignly rules and governs the Great Whole; in 
 other terms, it leads us to acknowledge God; God not sepa- 
 rated from nature, which is the revelation of himself; but God 
 who manifests his diviner life in the measureless abundance 
 of innumerable individualities ; God who is the life of all life, 
 and in whom man, as a rational and moral being, lives and 
 acts. 
 
 A cause of materialism not less important than the non- 
 philosophic study, of nature, consists in a defective psychology 
 and a defective system of metaphysics. 
 
 The ancient psychology, still occupying the ground on 
 which it was left by Plato and Descartes, spoke of the soul
 
 32 
 
 as a separate substance, mechanically united to the body. 
 It was thus admitted to be possible for the soul to exist 
 independently of all bodily form, and this notion gave birth 
 to a host of others more or less absurd — to spectral appear- 
 ances, to demoniacal possessions, to the transmigration of 
 souls, to the pre-existence of souls, to a state intermediate 
 between death and the resurrection, to the false idea of the 
 resurrection, which made it consist in an equally mechanical 
 reunion of the soul with its former body. On the same 
 ground the question was raised whether the soul existed 
 before its connection with a carnal organism, or whether God 
 created a soul for every new organism. With such a con- 
 ception of man, any intimate bond between the soul, that is 
 the essence of man, and the body, was inconceivable ; and it 
 was in vain that the old psychologists devised hypotheses to 
 explain the mutual action of the body on the soul, and of the 
 soul on the body— the influxus jihysicus (physical influx) the 
 divinely regulated concomitance of the Cartesians, the occa- 
 sionalism of Geulinx. Leibzitz himself, although a partisan 
 of a dynamic conception of the universe, considered the soul 
 as a monad which was united to the body — that is, to an 
 aggregate of other monads — only by what he called "the 
 pre-established harmony." 
 
 Other hypotheses are such as could not justify themselves 
 before the tribunal of experimental science. The resemblance 
 of children to their parents, or their parents' parents, not 
 solely as to their body, but also their aptitudes, character, 
 faculties, visibly indicated that the entire man, and not only 
 a part of the man, was virtually contained in the embryo. 
 No wonder naturalists could not avoid rallying that psychology 
 which passed its time in inquiring in what part of the body 
 the soul was situate, or at what moment of the fœtal life the 
 soul entered the embryo. The question was considered as
 
 33 
 
 important by legal medicine in order to fix the degree oi 
 criminality in the case of voluntary abortions, as well as by 
 traditional theology, that it might determine if the foetus 
 ought to be baptised before its birth. 
 
 This dualism of body and soul engendered the materialism 
 of empirical anthropology. That science could not continue 
 to divide man into two heterogeneous substances, and saw in 
 him, as in all other beings, a unity developing itself organic- 
 ally. If metaphysics stipulated for the duality of spirit and 
 matter, mechanically joined together, one or other of these 
 consequences ensued of necessity : — the tendency of the natural 
 sciences toward unity could not fail to destroy one of the factors, 
 either by denying matter, and so producing the idealism of 
 Berkeley ; or by affirming, in accordance with truth, that 
 there are no forces separate from matter, and not the least 
 trace of a substance united mechanically with an organism. 
 All force then was referred to matter. The soul, already 
 reduced by Locke to the condition of a sheet of white paper, 
 and thereby reduced to nothing, was completely put aside, 
 while all the high functions of human life were considered as 
 so many attributes of matter. This result was arrived at in 
 the notorious Système de la Nature of the Baron d' Holbach, 
 and the same position was that of the French materialists, 
 Helvetius, La Mettrie, and others. This too, is the position 
 which is held by the materialists of the present hour. If the 
 consequences of this tendency are sad and even terrible, we 
 must avow that there where dualism prevails, science, by which 
 dualism cannot be endured, must come to this extreme ; and 
 that, according to the very just remark of M. J. H. Fichte,* 
 materialism has its relative legitimacy in the presence of this 
 duality. Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason^ had previously 
 demonstrated that the hypothesis of a unity, or separate sub- 
 
 ► Anthropologie, 1856, p. 56 and 80 ; Compare Liebig's Chemical Letters, p.p 
 È06, i?j, -ra.
 
 34 
 
 stance, which is called the soul, rested on a paralogism — in 
 this way, that by abstraction, you detach from man himself, 
 certain attributes of man, by which he is distinguished from 
 other beings, and that this abstraction once effected, you have 
 left in your hands not a man but a thing. A valuable remark 
 made by the great chemist, Liebig, may confirm the general 
 tenor of these words. " If we would not be unjust towards 
 the apostles of materialism, we must allow that their ideas 
 are only an exaggerated reaction against the doctrines which 
 they found in vogue . The physiology of the philosohers of 
 nature wanted that basis which is indispensible to all exact 
 research, namely experience. All the phenomena of nutrition, 
 of respiration, of motion, were with it, the simple effects of 
 what is called the vital force. In the organic body, they said, 
 physics and chemistry have nothing to do ; the body produces 
 iron as it disengages heat, that is, by its own motion. At 
 present, a more exact study of nature has shown that all the 
 forces of matter really take part in the organic developement ; 
 and the extreme reaction consists in maintaining, contrary to 
 the anterior point of view, that chemical and physical forces 
 are the sole causes of the phenomena of life, and that there 
 are no others in living bodies. But as little as the philoso- 
 pher of nature were able to prove that their vital force did al>, so 
 little have our materialists the power to prove that inorganic 
 forces suffice to produce the human organism and "the human 
 mind. The truth lies midway. Eising above exclusive opin- 
 ions, it acknowledges a formative principle, or an over-ruling 
 idea, which co-operates with physical and chemical forces, 
 making them contribute to its own end." 
 
 In view of the doctrines tints explained, recent philosophy 
 recognised the duty of conceiving of man as a unit, as a su- 
 perior unit, rising above the opposition of a soul and a body, 
 not to sacrifice one of the two to the other, but in the inten- 
 tion of attacking the dualism in its last retrenchments, and
 
 35 
 
 overcoming it. The monadism to which science is accordingly, 
 led may be expressed in this formula : — The soul is the 
 essence of man, his identity which lives on through the suc- 
 cessions of matter and thought, and is from the first develop- 
 ment of the germ in the matrix, destined to become, through 
 a series of evolutions, that which it is according to its idea, a 
 conscious and independent person. This essence, considered 
 as a unity, is the base of all the vital functions, the directing 
 principle of the entire development, and, as we have seen, 
 cannot be deduced from matter and its combinations ; but 
 finding its materials in the matter around it, gives itself a 
 form. From matter it draws the organs which are necessary 
 to it in order to attain its destiny, which is to be a rational 
 being. By means of those organs it thinks, and by them also 
 appropriates tho invisible truths, the ideas which are reflected 
 in objective nature. As every organism indicates in its origin 
 a unity of plan and of principle, a power which gradually 
 realises itself, conformably to a constant directing idea ; the 
 germ from its first appearance virtually contains the entire 
 man, as well in his carnal relations as in his spiritual. The 
 human person, like the animal, begins in the state of pure 
 nature, but that which then distinguishes it from other beings 
 of this class, is the virtual power of the highest moral and 
 spiritual development. Man is not distinguished from a plant 
 or an animal in being a duality, whilst they are a unity, but 
 in this, namely, that his essence, his individuality, holds a 
 superior rank, a specifically different rank, in the scale of 
 being. The plant and animal assimilate simply what they 
 need for their organic development ; man, in addition, has the 
 capacity (by means of organs which the animal either has not 
 or has only hi an imperfect state, and the presence of which 
 in man comes from his original and essential difference from 
 the animal) man, we say, has the power of appropriating 
 
 c 1
 
 
 36 
 
 invisible truth, or the ideas expressed by visible reality. It 
 is thus that he can recognise objective beauty, the order and 
 wisdom which reigns in the universe; it is thus that he 
 unfolds as a rational and moral being, strong enough by his 
 moral will to keep down the physical and animal life which k 
 in and around him. The true side of materialism is the ex- 
 perimental truth that there is no force independent of matter, 
 that is to say, of the form or sensuous^ envelope which is the 
 manifestation of force. Spiritual force itself is not independent 
 of the body ; and the mind, separated from matter, thus under- 
 stood, would be only an empty abstraction. The power of 
 materialism consists in the v,ar which it has declared against 
 the dualism that denies the unity of the human being. On 
 the other side, its error lies in seeking the foundation of that 
 unity in a collection of different things — in the combination of 
 chemical substances found by analysis in the body, and the 
 concurrence of the physical laws of cohesion, light, heat, elec- 
 tricity. On the contrary, in this finality, in this concurrence 
 of so many diverse things converging to one end, it ought to 
 see the proof of the substantial unity which is the original 
 factor of all the functions, bodily and mental, of human life. 
 
 A fear deduced from this view of the oneness of human 
 nature, of having to abandon a beKef in immortality, still pro- 
 cures for the dualistic view many adherents. To this, I reply, 
 that if the belief in immortality is founded on a purely abstract 
 hypothesis having no support in reality, such a position would 
 be the opposite of a proof in its favour. — This reasoning, — 
 Immortality is certain, therefore you must admit the dualism 
 of the body and the soul — is lame, and cannot hold itself up 
 before experimental science. The true conclusion would rather 
 be this : — If the belief in immortality cannot maintain itself 
 except by admitting the dualism of the body and the soul, as 
 such dualism is unsustainable, that belief must fall.
 
 37 
 
 But by no means does the admission of man's oneness 
 involve the forfeiture of our assurance of immortality. That 
 faith does not depend on the ' relations of the body and the 
 soul, but on the essential nature of man. The being whom 
 we call man, is he or is he not restricted in his development 
 by the limits of his earthly life ? The question comes to this, 
 does the development of man, as a moral being, contain 
 indications of his surviving the dissolution of his animal 
 organism ? The reply must be in the affirmative. In truth, in 
 man's moral nature there dwells a law superior to every law of 
 animal organisation. This law makes it obligatory on him, 
 and, in the higher regions of the moral world, determines 
 him to renounce himself, to renounce his sensual and selfish 
 inclinations, in favour of a general interest, overtopping his 
 own. The existence of such a law is quite as well founded 
 on experience as that of the mechanical, chemical, and organic 
 laws. This law of self-renunciation, imposed on man alone, 
 is a phenomenon which, deviating from all else in nature, 
 would be inexplicable, were it not in relation with another law, 
 equally well ascertained in the moral world. That other is 
 that self-renunciation marks the development of our being 
 in view of a superior perfection. Nature, which obliges man 
 to renounce himself, justifies the obligation by shewing us in 
 it, and in the moral necessity which characterises it, the 
 tendency of man to rise above physical necessity, and to bring 
 forth the spiritual life victorious over the thousand enslaving 
 complications of the natural life. If renunciation is develop- 
 ment, we must add that the duty is not limited to the priva- 
 tion of all sensuous enjoyment when a superior interest demands 
 it, but that it goes so far as to exact a sacrifice of the whole 
 man himself. The law of renunciation is often nothing short 
 of the duty of surrendering life. It is thus that the most 
 
 ^572
 
 
 38 
 
 noble of our race, obeying this moral impulse, hare sacrificed 
 themselves for the truth, fur the realisation of a great idea, 
 for their country, for humanity. It is thus that .Testis died. 
 Our moral nature teaches us to acknowledge the obligation 
 imposed on man of giving up his life, when duty requires it. 
 and shows us that there is in us all a force which, well de- 
 veloped, puts us in a condition to accomplish that supreme 
 obligation. Either nature is not faithful to herself, or the 
 highest act of renunciation coincides with the law of develope- 
 ment. In other terms, in the moral obligation of incurring 
 death there is an indication that death is the development and 
 not the annihilation of life. Were death the suppression of 
 life, then would result the inexplicable phenomenon, that nature 
 which secures to each being, the duration contained in his 
 original aptitude, imposes annihilation on superior beings, and 
 that in order to realise this highest development. It is thus 
 that our moral life carries with it the proof that death, or the 
 dissolution of the body, is by no means the dissolution of our 
 being. 
 
 We might speak of other indications of the same truth. 
 Thus we might insist on the permanent struggle which the 
 moral principle in us, has to sustain against the sensual 
 a struggle which, never # during our present life, even with 
 the best, ends in absolute triumph. We might speak also of 
 the disproportion which exists between the external condition 
 of man, and his moral development ; that also indicates a 
 future in which life is not traversed by misfortune and suffering. 
 But we limit ourselves to the confuting of an objection often 
 advanced against faith in immortality. 
 
 Nature discloses a tendency to' individualise itself. W 
 it in that infinite number of individuals in which general nature 
 becomes particular. But this individualisation, in the animal 
 and in the plant, is but temporary. The individual, vegetable
 
 39 
 
 or animal, ceases to exist at the end of a certain time, and 
 re-enters into the generality of things. Will it not be the same 
 with man ? Permanent duration, immortality, are they not 
 in man's case attributes of the species ? Does not the species 
 periodically absorb the individuals of which it is composed ? 
 We answer : if the remark is true of animals and plants, it 
 proves merely that with them the tendency of nature to indi- 
 viduality is not yet revealed in all its potency. We already 
 see a tendency to individualisation, but not the real individu- 
 ality. Besides, experience instructs us that in those two 
 provinces the tendency of nature does not realise itself with 
 the same force. It is evidently much less complete in plants, 
 and in those animals of which you may indefinitely obtain 
 specimens by mere vivisection, without needing either a grain 
 or an egg. It is on the contrary more complete in those 
 plants and those animals of a higher kind, which cannot be 
 re-produced by such a division of the individual. Moreover, 
 among the superior animals themselves, as we learn from the 
 difference of their normal duration, individualisation is unequal, 
 and nowhere is perfect enough to resist eventually the absorb- 
 ing form of nature. Individuality is real, only in the case in 
 which the individual is not solely a temporary appearance of 
 the general life, but is an individual in the true sense, that is 
 to say in the permanent sense of the word, able to maintain its 
 individuality against the generalising power. Il> is in such 
 an individual that nature realises its tendency to individualisa- 
 tion, and this tendency of nature, everywhere visible, but always 
 incomplete in the physical world, gives us a right to presume 
 that above this physical world it reaches its end, and so 
 becomes perfect. This realisation takes place in man. This 
 is proved by his self-cor.sciousness, and the personal indepen- 
 dence to which he comes in virtue of his normal development. 
 If the plant and the animal are able for some time to main-
 
 40 
 
 tain themselves against general nature, although destined 
 sooner or later to fall before it* superior power, in man, on the 
 contrary, the individual, as a moral being, tends to personality, 
 to the emancipation of the spiritual life from physical servitude. 
 Contemplating the difference in this respect between the 
 plant and the animal, we see a development, the result of 
 which is that the mind, peculiar to man, already in this life 
 struggling against physical nature, does not, like purely 
 organic life, succumb to the absorbing influence of general 
 nature, but goes on continually unfolding more and more, 
 acquiring a strength of individuality, constantly fuller and 
 higher, and which it finally maintains and keeps, notwith- 
 standing all the force exerted by its opponent. The attentive 
 observer of human nature cannot question that man, as a 
 moral being, tends to individuality in the loftiest sense of the 
 word. His destiny is to become an individual in this sense, 
 namely, that he is finally emancipated from the destructive 
 power of physical nature. This is his goal ; to this all his 
 struggles converge, all his development ; and th£ realisation 
 of this in full, which is impossible in this life, is reserved to 
 that ulterior period of his being, of which the tendency itself is 
 a guarantee. The very idea of individuality supposes that the 
 individual, in the complete sense of the word, is not a tempo- 
 rary phenomenon, a transient specimen of his species. To say 
 that man is distinguished from the animal in being an I, that 
 is, a conscious and independent person, an individual in the 
 higher sense of the word, is to say that man is immortal. 
 
 If now our belief in immortality reposes on solid grounds, 
 if our moral nature and our personalty are its guarantee, it 
 clearly is very different from that thing-soul (the soul con- 
 sidered merely as a thing), that abstract thing-soul which not 
 merely materialism, but also Kant and the best psycholo- 
 gians of the day, Canus, J. H. Fichte, Roorda, &c, have with
 
 
 41 
 
 reas<fn disallowed. The question is simply to leam if the 
 human race carries in its development marks of permanence. 
 Should it prove necessary to consider man as an agglomeration 
 of material substances, or, if the phrase is preferred, of physi- 
 cal and chemical laws and effects, then we must conclude that 
 his individual existence will end with the dissolution of those, 
 his constituent elements. But if man is one, properly one, 
 then is it possible that the being who, notwithstanding the 
 continual change of the matter which composes his body, still 
 maintains his identity, commences a new period of life when 
 the organism appropriated to his terrestrial activity, falls to 
 pieces in death. It is possible that the vital principle which 
 takes an earthly organism from the materials and the physico- 
 chemical laws by which it is surrounded, takes a higher or- 
 ganism at the moment of death, in a manner which escapes 
 our perception. Perhaps, as many of our present naturalists 
 suppose, it finds the substance out of which it weaves its new 
 investment, in that universal ether which exist^ everywhere 
 and pervades all things, although perfectly invisible and im- 
 ponderable.* Perhaps, even in this life, it unconsciously pro- 
 fits by that substance to prepare withal the condition of its 
 higher perfection. I know that I am now speaking of a 
 simple hypothesis, or probability ; but it must be remembered 
 that belief in immortality does not rest exclusively on this 
 view, and that this or any other hypothesis, ought not to be 
 proposed until the belief itself has been established on the 
 solid foundations which are furnished by our nature. 
 
 Anthropological dualism has been one cause of materialism. 
 It has led materialists to reject the soul, considered as a 
 thing, as well as its immortality. The same dualism lies at the 
 
 * Sears, in his interesting and instructive " Foregleams of Immortality" 
 (Simpkix, Marshall, & Co., London) has valuable remarks running in this 
 tenor.— Translator.
 
 
 12 
 
 root of their denial of God. The first effect of philosophy to 
 explain the universe was purely naturalistic, only afterwards 
 did man come to see that nature involves something in addi- 
 tion to matter. Then in Anaxagoras philosophy rose to the 
 idea of a Rational Principle, so explaining the order and the har- 
 mony of the world. Plato taught his brilliant theory of ideas 
 as the formers of matter. But the abstraction which produced 
 the dualism of soul and body, produced with him the separa- 
 tion of matter and its forming powers, namely, the nous 
 (i/oOç) or mind, and placed the divinity outside inanimate 
 matter. This dualism passed into modern philosophy, even 
 after the theory of matter being formless, already condemned 
 by Aristotle, had disappeared before the verdict of the natural 
 sciences, then having reached greater precision. Speculators 
 continued to represent God as a being who, existing abstractly by 
 himself, created the world in time; then, that once done, gives 
 his creation up to itself, as a workman leaves the piece of 
 mechanism he has made to work according to its forces; at N 
 most they accorded to him the right of introducing, when 
 desirable, his omnipotent hand into its ordinary operations. 
 Such was the idea of God, truly a Dèus ex machina, a divinity 
 reserved to untie or cut the knot : — such was the idea of God, 
 of which philosophy made use to explain the existence of the 
 world. Accordingly materialism came forward and, taking its 
 stand on scientific experience, declared that the life in nature 
 could not have a cause acting mechanically from without ; but 
 that all must be explained by the eternal properties and laws 
 of matter. If the ancient metaphysics explained nature accor- 
 ding to an end or a plan anteriorly formed, and for that sup- 
 posed a thinking being, existing on the outside of matter, 
 existing independently of matter, " The System of Nature " 
 saw in the universe not the work but the workman. Nature, 
 it said, is an infinite workshop, provided with all possible
 
 
 4;] 
 
 materials ; a power which itself produces the instruments and 
 the means of which it makes use ; and to this it is that the 
 answer of Lalande refers — " I have certainly found in the 
 heavens eternal laws, but I have not found God." All this 
 was the consequence of a system of metaphysics which, sepa- 
 rating spirit and nature, force and matter, idea and form 
 (which in reality are always one), was the cause why men 
 tossed mind overboard as a superfluous factor, as something of 
 which the natural sciences had- no need. 
 
 To defective metaphysics Kant's criticism has put an end. 
 He saw how unsustainable were the metaphysical proofs com- 
 monly advanced in behalf of the existence of God, and he 
 prepared the way for a juster notion of the Divine Being. 
 According to this conception nature is not the work of God 
 in the sense in which a table is the work of a joiner (as a 
 Dutch theologian taught), or as a watch is the work of a 
 watchmaker (as Rousseau affirmed), but it is the revelation of 
 the one unique Infinite Being, who acts in fixed laws which 
 the human mind becomes acquainted with and systématises ; 
 who manifests himself to our reason as the Supreme Reason ; 
 who specially manifests himself in the moral world as Holy 
 Love ; who, without being abstractedly separated from nature 
 and man, lives and acts in nature and man, in ten thousand 
 indefinitely diverse manners; and at the same time, superior 
 to the continual ebb and flow of finite forms, the Absolute 
 Mind, the self-conscious and supreme personality, is all in all. 
 
 Viewed from this position, law is but the expression of the 
 divine life and activity ; matter, the visible form of that life ; the 
 human body, the organ by which man developes and rises to per- 
 sonal independence ; and belief in immortality is the prediction, 
 of a future ; a prediction of that future which, placed beyond 
 the boundary of the present life, is guaranteed by the experi- 
 mental life of man as a thinking, reasonable and moral being.
 
 
 44 
 
 It remains for me to call attention to a third circumstance 
 winch one cannot pass in silence when one speaks of the causes 
 of modern materialism. I mean the curtailment and even 
 annihilation of the free development of the mind, crushed 
 under the weight of dogmatic supernaturalism. and obliged to 
 submit blindly to formularies fixed once, for all persons and all 
 times. The dogma of the church, originally the expression of 
 a religious idea, or of a philosophical speculation, gradually ( 
 became petrified in ecclesiastical tradition, and was imposed on 
 the mind as a power superior to reason and conscience. Then 
 imperceptibly men grew accustomed to consider divine truth, 
 supernatural in itself and in its origin, as lying beyond the 
 field of human science. If the divine could be recognised in 
 a human manner, that could take place only supernaturally, and, 
 therefore, divinely. Faith, in consequence, abstained from 
 seeking to comprehend and became itself a supernatural gift. 
 Thus a divorce took place between faith and science, and tne 
 power of religion was made to consist in its right to hold 
 reason captive, under the domination of the doctrine of the 
 Church. Dogma became mystery : the criterion of truth, 
 revealed by God. was found in its antagonism to human reason. 
 Making a misuse of an incorrectly understood text, the doctors 
 called this preferring the folly of God to human wisdom. All 
 this was pregnant with consequences. If religion is anti- 
 human, religious duty, understood in the highest sense, Le 
 suppress whatever is human. Hence asceticism, the life of 
 the cloister, and even the inibruting of our moral and rational 
 sense, — all for the glory of God. The extreme point of this 
 direction is the total annihilation of the subject, or, as the 
 principal requirement of Jesuitism expresses it, the Christian 
 must, for the glory of God. account himself as a mere cot 
 perinde ac cadaver. 
 
 What wonder if Bayle. in face of such a theology, placed
 
 45 
 
 the peculiar character of the ecclesiastical doctrine in absurdity, 
 and with bitter irony accused of treason those theologians 
 whom philosophy conquered in part, by telling them that they 
 introduced into the sanctuary the enemy which would one day 
 give them their death blow. " Choose," said he, confounding 
 Christianity with the tradition of the Church, " Choose, 
 theologians, either philosophy or the gospel. Would you 
 understand what you profess, leave Christianity and be 
 philosophers ; would you be Christians, cease to examine, 
 abandon philosophy and believe." What wonder if in coun- 
 tries where such a point of view held exclusive sway, free 
 development being shackled and individual thought considered 
 as false and dangerous, all care for spiritual things was aban- 
 doned to the Church and its functionaries ? The believer soon 
 became a practical materialist, and on his side the philosopher, 
 in his first efforts to gain emancipation, disowned every thing 
 that is spiritual and divine, and fell into theoretical materialism. 
 Just as the earliest efforts of Greek philosophy, asserting the 
 right of the mind against the despotism of traditional opinions, 
 had for its result materialism, and the immoral cavils of the 
 sophists, before Socrates succeeded in submitting the indivi- 
 dual, disembarassed of tradition, to the authority of truth as 
 recognised by reason. Thus in France the enslavement of the 
 mind to the Church and the state produced the revolution 
 with its excesses and follies, the destruction of all the 
 foundations of religion and government, and, still in our own 
 days, that socialism which is often nothing else than the 
 grossest materialistic selfishness. There where mental liberty 
 has been suppressed, the abolition of slavery is not sufficient to 
 give birth to the true life, and individuals, to whom the things 
 of the spirit are mere superficialties, or irrational dogmas, 
 become materialists in theory when they reject that outward 
 authority ; just as the blind servants of the Church who sub-
 
 46 
 
 ject their reason and conscience to its dogma, becomes in spite 
 of their pretended orthodoxy, materialists in practice. 
 
 I have endeavoured to set forth the causes which in my 
 judgment have occasioned the appearance of modern mate- 
 rialism. With a knowledge of the causes one may indicate the 
 remedies. Materialism, the fruit of a superficial, and unphilo- 
 sophic study of nature ; of a defective psychology and system 
 of metaphysics ; as well as of the despotism of dogma over 
 mind, must be overcome, first, by a deep and philosophical 
 study of nature. The naturalist who believes in God only on 
 the authority of the Church, or of his religious wants, but 
 who in his own science cannot get beyond materialism, falls 
 inevitably into the abyss, as soon as his insufficient supports 
 are taken away. When the science of nature is acquired with- 
 out philosophy and without any regard to metaphysics, it 
 becomes materialistic, and he who professes it is a materialist 
 in this domain of science, even when on a traditional basis 
 the historical reality of which cannot be substantiated, he has 
 recourse to supernatural hypotheses, condemned long since by 
 another branch of human science. When R. Wagner affirms 
 that science teaches nothing respecting the soul he is a mate- 
 rialist, and the advice he gives to others, namely, that they 
 should believe, in spite of science, that God created the world 
 and that the soul is immortal, will never be followed by those who 
 in spiritual matters desire something more then the woman's 
 reason "It is so because it is so," or the famous credo quia 
 absurdum, / believe it because it is absurd. Whoever has not 
 an interior and personal faith in supra-sensible realities, in 
 whose eyes mind is something external, which expresses itself 
 in formulas and dogmas, having no foundation in man himself, 
 he is a materialist in science, and as soon as his supernatural 
 basis gives way under him, he becomes a materialist in practice. 
 The Pharisee, whose faith rested exclusively on tradition, is
 
 47 
 
 not less a materialist than the Sadducee by whom tradition is 
 rejected; neither of them possesses that higher life of the 
 spirit which raises man above material nature. On the other 
 hand, metaphysics must ha\»e done with abstract speculation. 
 The speculative philosopher, as much removed from an exclusive 
 empiricism, as from that playing with a priori, ideas, with 
 which some despising realities have too long amused themselves, 
 ought to make it his task to comprehend the real, such as it pre- 
 sents itself to our internal and external perception in nature and 
 in humanity, and to find in reality, thus understood at the pre- 
 sent moment, the germ of future reality, toward which present 
 reality tends as toward its supreme ideal. The supra-natu- 
 ralistic point of view, with its hollow notions, which the 
 Reformation itself has not wholly driven away, and which is 
 untenable on all points, must be replaced by a pure religion 
 which, like Christianity, does not chain the human mind to 
 formulas, but emancipates the spirit by the development of 
 the interior life, and raises it to true independence. Christi- 
 anity is not a dogma, nor an aggregate of dogmas ; it is a 
 power of the inner life which, raising man above the sphere of 
 finite objects, enables him to comprehend the realities which 
 are not seen with our bodily eyes. 
 
 Christianity is neither supernatural, nor superhuman. It is 
 the highest point of the development of human nature itself, 
 and, in this sense it is natural and human in the highest and 
 noblest acceptation of those terms. Christianity is not a mys- 
 tery if by mystery is meant something incomprehensible. 
 According to the Lord Jesus and his apostle Paul it is a 
 mystery only for the man in whom the religious life is not 
 yet sufficiently developed for him to estimate the Gospel at its 
 true value,' and to know by experience that it is the most 
 precious treasure of our race. 
 
 In itself, Christianity is the realisation of the true religion
 
 In 
 
 in the life and sublime person of its founder, and through hiin ? 
 in human kind. This is a fact which it is the office of history 
 to elevate to the height of a revelation of the Divine Wisdom ; 
 a fact which resolves the enigmas of the government of the 
 world by God, and which opens men's eyes, more than all 
 abstract arguments, to the mysteries which envelope the grave. 
 For a philosopher to pass by such a fact as Christianity, is to 
 rob himself of the most important chapter in the great book 
 of revelation presented by the moral world. On the other side, 
 the mission of science is to put man into a condition to com- 
 prehend that divine volume, and to contemplate in nature and 
 in history the inexhaustible riches of the divine wisdom. Be- 
 fore a Christianity such as this, which in the person of its 
 founder overcame the world on the cross, materialism will 
 never maintain itself long, and nevertheless it must be acknow- 
 ledged that, in the ways of Providence, it has been the necessary 
 reaction against baneful errors and prejudices. Thus even 
 materialism has, after its manner, served the cause of ever- 
 lasting - truth.
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE RECONCILED ON THE 
 GROUND OF HISTORY. 
 
 By Albert Reville, D.D. 
 
 I write in the hope of contributing my share to a new kind 
 of scientific literature, the actual development of which in 
 France ought to be encouraged as much as possible. A new 
 kind, I have said, especially in this country, where until lately 
 singular indifferences has prevailed in regard to religious 
 science. This was in a great measure owing to the fact that 
 religion hardly any longer occupied a place in our national life; 
 in fact also to incorrect but very generally diffused ideas as to 
 the true nature of religious matters. Some were not willing 
 to handle them, others dared not. Probably we owe it to certain 
 events that those who had the will have now also the courage, 
 and that those who had the courage have now also the will, to 
 submit to a serious examination religion, that flower of human 
 life, without which all the rest is colourless, and as if struck 
 with death. But when we have once entered on this course 
 we must not rest satisfied with simple literary distractions. 
 The religious education of the great body of the public has to 
 be gone over again, and it is only long studies, studies which 
 often run contrary to deeply-rooted prejudices, that can supply 
 all that is needed. When, for instance, you reflect that nothing 
 is so little known in France of the nineteenth century, as pure
 
 50 
 
 Christianity ; such, I mean, a? it was when it came forth 
 from the mind of Jesus Christ, you will not be disposed to 
 charge such a statement with exaggeration. 
 
 Doubtless religion in itself is not an affair of knowledge 
 
 and intelligence. The unlearned adore as well as the learned, 
 and often better. But that truth, so often alleged by ignorant 
 or timid persons, in order to dispense with religions studies. 
 does not prevent there being an intellectual condition, in 
 which the weak sides of traditional religions become no 
 longer sustainable. Nor does it prevent the fact that in our 
 ooor in exceptional geniuses, but rich in general instruc- 
 tion, what is called the enlightened class has become very 
 numerous ; that this enlightened class may find less and less 
 satisfaction in the ecclesiastical doctrines ; that its estra 
 ment from religion is a very perilous trial, and a huge 
 stumbling block in the way of the simple-minded. Moreover, 
 the enlightened class are not a caste; by insensible steps it 
 I'a^svs into the inferior classes, and by its means chiefly 
 improvement as well as perversion filtrates down into the 
 humblest ranks of society. What a happy day for France 
 will that be in which the enlightened class of our country 
 shall again become religious, knowing why they ought to 
 adore, and what they onght to adore. 
 
 Assuredly there is very little proportion between such a 
 miracle and my writings. All my ambition is to prove to my 
 
 ers that on the ground to which 1 invite them there i> 
 something to be learnt, and something to be done, and that 
 the trouble is rewarded by the charm which belongs to studies 
 having for their object human life in its most mysterious, as 
 well as august and intricate, relations. I should be glad to 
 think that here and there I had been able to contribute 
 
 into bud some of the gi rms which, still hidden under 
 -round, will form the future harvest : to kindle and feed the
 
 51 
 
 tire of research in some souls, in which the sacred fermentation 
 is already begun ; in a word, to persuade some of my fellow- 
 countrymen of the truth of that old and deep averment, that 
 " man lives not exclusively by what he eats." 
 
 What strikes my mind first and most is the moral conflict 
 in which the present generation is engaged, and which, under 
 a multitude of different forms, may issue in the antagonism 
 of religion and science. Not small is the number of those 
 who reject the former in the name of the latter, or, at least, if 
 it is rare that the preference granted to one of those elements 
 of spiritual life, reaches to the absolute proscription of the 
 other, (for indeed it is difficult entirely to deny what corres- 
 ponds to an essential want of our nature), yet the ground 
 conceded to science by many religious men, and, on the other 
 hand, what many philosophers leave to religion, is, on either 
 side, reduced to so little that we may assert as a fact the 
 existence of the antagonism to which we have alluded. 
 
 The antagonism of science and religion cannot have a 
 foundation in right, since there would hence ensue a sunder- 
 ance of human nature, which is essentially one. But it is 
 easy to understand why it may, in fact, be real and actual. 
 The causes now at work in this direction have formerly 
 produced the same result. Let us first form a faint idea of 
 the two terms, in order that we may correctly apprehend their 
 relations. 
 
 Religion, in its most general sense, is a faculty natural to 
 man, by which he tends to unite himself as a whole — will, 
 heart, imagination, intelligence — to that which reveals itself 
 to him as The Absolute. Science is the progressive knowledge 
 of objects, and of their mutual relations. 
 
 Religion, since it is a spontaneous tendency, proceeds by 
 intuition; science, since it is a methodical research, proceeds 
 by reflexion. The formel- specially needs the i<l<';il ; the latter,
 
 52 
 
 the real. In that, sentiment predominates; in this, reason. 
 The first may be possessed by children; the second snp] 
 the maturity of intelligence. The great transformations, and 
 the great steps to religion, are made by exceptional geniuses 
 who rise in human kind, and who, pronouncing with a loud 
 and intelligible voice the word which the multitude scarcely 
 lisps, draw around themselves ordinary minds by the force of 
 moral affinity more than by the force of demonstration. The 
 progress of science on the contrary is gained by comparison, 
 by meditation, by minute and cautious research. In other 
 words, while science advances by the labour of disciplined 
 minds, who set no step onward without first giving to them- 
 selves an account of what they have done, and what they 
 wish to do; religion comes forth from inspired minds, who 
 seize at once a higher truth, which masters them to such an 
 extent as to prompt their words and mould their lives. This 
 distinction is indeed not absolute. There are also scientific 
 geniuses, and a kind of inspiration in some discoveries, as 
 those of Columbus and Newton in modern times, and of 
 Archimedes in antiquity. But itys not the less true that the 
 philosopher does not forthwith surrender to the inspirations of 
 his genius, which both for him' and others remain as pure 
 hypothesis, as long as they are not confirmed by experience. 
 On the contrary, the prophet — we take the word in its widest 
 acceptation — abandons himself to the inspiration that opens 
 his eyes to a radiant truth, which he feels no need of submit- 
 ting to an experimental verification ; nor does even the thought 
 of so doing occur to him. Religions inspiration is nothing 
 but an extraordinary kindling of the divine spirit inherent in 
 human nature, and which, latent or at least snpressed in each 
 of us. in some choice spirits pierces through its material enclo- 
 . and darts toward the infinité, to Fall back again in rain 
 which fecundates the human race. From that time our sp<
 
 53 
 
 gradually rises towards the height held by the revealers. The 
 sound which they utter so powerfully, makes corresponding 
 cords vibrate in their fellow men. We draw our life from the 
 life of the prophets. Here, however, we are near the moment 
 of conflict as between religion and science. 
 
 Revealers precede others in their perception of higher 
 spiritual realities, a knowledge of which brings man near the 
 absolute ; but not in a scientific . acquaintance with objects. 
 In consequence, the form or expression they give to their 
 revelations necessarily partake of that intellectual imperfection. 
 But as the generation in the midst of which they live cannot, 
 any more than themselves, be aware of this inequality of the 
 form as compared with what it ought to express, it ensues, 
 that for them also the form and the substance possess the 
 same degree of evidence. If for example, the sentiment of a 
 future retribution shines forth in the human soul, many 
 generations will pass, before a person surmises' all that is 
 erroneous in the representation of heaven as a solid vault, and 
 of hell as a subterraneous cavern, which were so long connect- 
 ed in all minds with that sacred belief. The same remark 
 may be applied to all traditional religious doctrines. 
 
 What is the consequence ? This period of scientific pro- 
 gress and independent reflexion are always marked by a reci- 
 procal severance of enlightened thought and religious tradition. 
 And not only so ; but the mind has so long been habituated 
 to identify the form and the substance of anterior revelations, 
 that, revolted by the form, it rejects the substance also. 
 Breaking with religious traditions, it passes on to break with 
 religion itself. You would say that the more instructed it is, 
 the less it is religious. On their side, the masses, who possess 
 not the intellectual development sufficient to make them 
 aware of the increasing conflict that exists between science and 
 tradition, remain attached to the latter, consider it identical
 
 54 
 
 with what it contains, aud charge with irréligion those who 
 
 call it in question. Besides tradition is a great power in 
 religion. As religious truth must be eternal, the simple- 
 minded do not readily allow that the knowledge of that truth 
 may be new or recent. As the ignorant see the infinite 
 there, where the philosopher sees only an imposing grandeur ; 
 as for instance, a primitive tribe may adore the sea, the 
 mountain, the ample river, which seems to them bound 
 less; so a doctrine which presents itself to the uncultured, 
 with the recommendations of hoary tradition, produces on 
 them the impression of having been admitted by all, every- 
 where, and in every age. Is not this the constant pretensions 
 of old religions, when they fight against the invasions of a 
 new religion ? This need of connection with antiquity is so 
 strong that new religions, in their turn, always find the means 
 of ascribing to themselves an origin anterior to that of the 
 edifice which they desire to overturn. The history of religion 
 is full of examples. Still more ; it must also be said that in 
 the moment of struggle men, really enlightened, but in whom 
 our spiritual wants and sentiments are very strong, fascinated 
 by that venerable religious character which time stamps on old 
 doctrines, as on old walls, consider it a duty to suppress in 
 themselves, and to proscribe with others, the inconvenient 
 requirements of science. Let us try to understand the 
 natural progress of these things, and let us cease to hurl at 
 each other's heads those charges of spiritual pride or of 
 hypocrisy, which have no solid foundation. There may be 
 sincerity on both sides. 
 
 I think I have in what precedes described the theoretical 
 conditions of our present religious situation. 
 
 To speak at the same time of science and of religion is, in 
 the opinion of many, to speak of a profound antagonism. To
 
 pretend to conciliate the two is, in their idea, either to fall into 
 an innocent illusion, or to lay a snare for the partisans of one 
 of the two powers, with a view to advantage the other. " No, v 
 say thousands of voices at this moment, "revelation and 
 
 reason, science and faith, are opposed as much as day and 
 night. They, when occasionally they meet, exchange polite 
 salutations, but it is affected politeness, pure diplomacy. Ai 
 the bottom they detest each other ; each in secret hopes for 
 the annihilation of its rival, and even declares so when the 
 opportunity serves." 
 
 As long as men confound religion itself with any religious 
 tradition, this conflict will be irremediable. On the one side 
 the friends of religion will grant to science the right to live only 
 on condition of submitting to the decrees of authority which 
 they adopt, and evidently science would sign its own deposition, 
 and its sentence of death, if it accepted such a treaty of peace. 
 How gilded soever the cage, wings are utterly useless to the 
 bird which it imprisons. On the other side, men of science 
 will see in religion, thus compromised, at most a means for 
 keeping the lower classes in order. In their judgment, religion 
 ought to withdraw by little and little, in the degree in which, 
 intelligence spreading, the masses may substitute for their 
 traditional beliefs abstract principles and logical rules of con- 
 duct. And they are surprised that religion ran not accept 
 that inferior part which their disdain consents to leave to it 
 provisionally! They do not see that religion must reign or 
 perish ! 
 
 What is to be done ? For in truth man is naturally 
 a religious being, and the deprivation of religion is always 
 accompanied by moral suffering. Christianity, to us the final 
 and perfect religion, resolves to live. It is a dream, the 
 emptiest of fancies, to suppose that a new religion can 
 come forth from philosophy. On the other side, man is
 
 56 
 
 capable of knowledge, ought to acquire knowledge, is resolved 
 to possess knowledge. He is gifted with reason — it is that 
 he may make use of it. He has a conscience — it is that he 
 may prefer and pursue the right, the good, the true. He feels 
 himself responsible — it is that he may own the duty of sub- 
 scribing only to what rests on a solid foundation. In the 
 spiritual life, as in the commercial life, it is always a fault 
 to put your hand to a document before you have read and 
 approved it. 
 
 Certain persons, taking credit to themselves for liberal 
 ideas, while the most liberal thing they possess is, perhaps, 
 their conscience, have devised a very simple method of getting 
 themselves out of the dilemma. They divide their brain into 
 two compartments, lodge in the one religious tradition, modern 
 science in the other ; and draw by turn from the two, that 
 which suits the circumstance of the hour and place in which 
 they find themselves. They do as was done by a certain 
 Italian priest, whose curious history I have somewhere read. 
 He was a learned personage. In his house he had built and 
 furnished two studies. The one he loaded with the most 
 orthodox books that can be conceived. There you saw only 
 fathers of the church, canonists, pontifical decrees, acts of 
 councils, annalists like Baronus, controversialists like Bellar- 
 mine, political writers like Donoso Cortès, etc. In the other, 
 all the free thinkers, from Plato to Voltaire and Kant — an 
 excellent selection of literary and scientific works, presented a 
 complete arsenal of independent reason. The proprietor, who 
 discharged certain canonical duties in the Court of Rome, 
 was also a member of many profane, learned academies. If 
 he had to draw up a document bearing on his ecclesiastical 
 functions, he shut himself up in his Catholic, Apostolic and 
 Roman study, and then his pen, inspired by the genius loci, 
 or atmosphere of the place, traced lines which were of imma- 

 
 &1 
 
 eulate orthodoxy. That done ; lie proceeded into the other 
 study, and there gave himself up to literary and scientific 
 labours, the boldness of which Avas the delight of the philoso- 
 phic societies of which, happily for them, he was an industrious 
 member. When you came to consult him, he asked you in 
 the lobby what was your business, and led you into the 
 study on the right side, or the study on the left side, accor- 
 ding to the nature of the wished-for consultation ; and even 
 if the questions put to him during the interview were of a 
 different kind, he, before giving a reply, begged you to pass 
 into the room corresponding with the nature of your inquiry. 
 This truly was a refined sort of playing at truth, but was it 
 as moral as original ? 
 
 The simple truth is, that which has to be done here is not 
 to discover some method of self- extrication. Learned or 
 ignorant, we all stand before the same sovereign tribunal ; to 
 which science and faith must alike submit, namely, conscience. 
 Now conscience pronounces this division of the soul criminal. 
 The same man says successively, "yes," and " no," to the 
 same thing. If one affirmation is true, the other is false. 
 His moral is that of the bat, in La Fontaine's fable. 
 I am a bird, for here are my wings ; 
 I am a bat, and woe to the rats ! 
 
 The fabalist makes his animal the type of the sage. So 
 much the worse for his judgment if he spoke seriously — any 
 way, his sage is not an honest man. In reality, he deserves 
 the epithet, learned as little as that of religious. Had he had 
 the sacred fire of either science or faith, he would not have 
 been able to endure such separation, and would have given 
 himself entire to either the one or the other. 
 
 I am well aware that sometimes this dualism, which exists 
 as a fact between religion and science, is raised to the altitude 
 of a philosophical theory. If we believe some writers, the
 
 58 
 
 contradiction not only exists, but ought to exist. To attempt 
 i i reconcile the two is impossible and useless, because it 
 would be to deny what must be. It may well happen that a 
 thing philosophically true, is religiously false, and reciprocally. 
 What need we reply, except that, even admitting this point 
 of view, which becomes ludicrous the moment you apply it, 
 the state of mind which it supposes is intolerable for those 
 who take religion and science, or only one of the two, in 
 earnest ? At present it hardly need be remarked, that we do 
 not confound this theoretical dualism with the involuntary 
 dualism in which those are engaged who feel the painful 
 conflict of these two tendencies of our nature, and as yet 
 know not how to bring them into harmony. It is to these 
 persons that we address ourselves in the hope of indicating 
 to them the true solution of the problem. 
 
 Others again understand quite differently the position of 
 these two rival powers, and it is among religious men that 
 we find this new category. With them the traditional reli- 
 gious doctrines are absolutely true. At present science and 
 philosophy contradict them on certain points. Well, science 
 and philosophy are in the wrong. Let science and philosophy 
 carry their researches further; let them study nature, man, 
 and history better and more impartially; and very certainly 
 they will end by rendering homage to truths which they 
 have denied. Even already, they assert, religion has derived 
 results from certain discoveries, and registered several avowals 
 of secular wisdom. The haughty pagan has been more than 
 once compelled to take her seat on the stool of repentance. 
 
 This point of view has its true side. There is no scholar 
 worthy of the name, who does not now acknowledge that, 
 especially in the eighteenth century, science directed against 
 religious tradition objections which prove simply that she 
 was advanced little beyond pupilage. But since that period
 
 59 
 
 there have been minds eager to collect the contradictions 
 
 which she was forced to address to herself, and who thought 
 tli at science was about to become orthodox again. There 
 exists a literature of no small extent, especially in England, 
 in which ingenuity is exercised in finding in the Bible all our 
 modern sciences. Some discover our geology in the first 
 chapter of Genesis. Others, with ample forces from ethno- 
 graphical and physiological erudition, strive to prove that 
 the human race necessarily descended from one couple. The 
 universal deluge, the confusion of languages, the miracles of 
 the Exodus, are objects of elaborate demonstrations. The 
 authenticity, such as tradition makes it, of the books of the 
 Bible, is defended, a priori, with a simplicity and a zeal truly 
 deserving better results. You can have no idea of the arbi- 
 trariness, of the violence, of the proceedings in vogue in this 
 special literature. It is evident that the unbelievers, who 
 have been brought back to religion (if any have been) by such 
 kinds of defence, experienced, anteriorly, very vivid religious 
 wants, and only lacked an excuse for surrendering. A book 
 of this kind, extensively diffused in France, is that of Cardinal 
 Wiseman, on " The Relations of Science and Religion." 
 Theologians may judge of the logical value of such demon- 
 strations by reading the last part of the work, where the 
 writer undertakes to prove that another modern science, 
 namely, sacred criticism, has marvellously confirmed the 
 superiority of the text of the Vulgate. The fact is that an 
 ordinary reader may easily allow himself to be taken by the 
 Cardinal's dexterity. Judge then of the real force of the 
 argument borrowed on other points from the developments of 
 geology and the historical sciences. But Avhat surpasses my 
 comprehension still more is the assurance with which those 
 defenders of the faith rest on science. How is it then, they 
 do not see that in the case of science pronouncing their con-
 
 60 
 
 damnation, they, by the nature of their defence, have surren- 
 dered the right to appeal against the the sentence ? Either 
 independent science has no right as against tradition : then 
 why make its results into a possible weapon of offence ? or, 
 that tradition may receive from science a mortal blow : then 
 the faith of the simple minded depends for the future on that 
 science which, whatever may be said, has become generally 
 more religious, but not more orthodox. Let there be here 
 no misunderstanding. To make use of the sciences as Caria- 
 tides to support the sanctuary, is by implication to avow that, if 
 they refused their service, the sanctuary would fall on its wor- 
 shippers. Besides those books themselves suppose a singular 
 transformation of ideas. You cannot in their perusal help 
 suspecting that their authors believe in the reality of science 
 rather than of religion. While in former times they brought 
 science before the bar of the Bible and of religion, in these 
 times, the Bible and the Church are put on their defence at 
 the bar of science, and are glad enough to be pronounced 
 "not guilty." Alas !• is this the assurance which belongs to, 
 which befits, religion ? The English tourist, who brings home 
 an inscription copied in the ruins of Egypt or of Asia, has the 
 power to shake my faith ! It is possible that the artesian 
 well, which they are now digging, may have an heretical 
 odour ! A spear from an Aztec may deal a blow fatal to 
 revelation ! 
 
 Is the situation better for doctrines of a metaphysical 
 description, such as the trinity, the incarnation, original sin ? 
 There have not in our age been wanting religious writers who 
 have endeavoured to reconcile their actions with modern rea- 
 son by means of speculative constructions, which always require 
 to be put into new forms, because they regularly break in 
 pieces and fall on the good nature by which they are dictated. 
 The history of the formation of those doctrines has taken from 

 
 Cl 
 
 them the prestige which they owed to the idea of their neces- 
 sary connexion with Christianity. From that moment the ab- 
 solute contradiction which the doctrines contain became sensible, 
 even to very religious minds. Accordingly it is very natural 
 not to yield without distrust to those so-called philosophic 
 demonstrations, in which the place of arrival being always 
 indicated before hand, there is always reason to fear that the 
 road along which you are conducted may be smooth and direct 
 in appearance only. The experience of late years has suffi- 
 ciently proved that such distrust was not without reason. 
 Who does not remember the illusions which were engendered 
 by Hegelianism under its first form ? It would without the 
 least scrapie have signed all the old confessions of faith ! Its 
 misfortune was that before long it gave its sanction with fuller 
 evidence, to the most distressing impieties. And then returns 
 the same difficulty we spoke of but now. Does religion 
 depend on your dexterity in manipulating metaphysics ? 
 If by any skill of transcendental speculation any one succeeded 
 in throwing a veil over the palpable contradictions of our 
 traditional dogmas, who will assure us that to-morrow 
 some one, more dexterous, will not blow into films the cob- 
 webs which you have so laboriously spun and so dexterously 
 employed ? 
 
 So much more reason is there for believing that even 
 those who have given themselves to so futile a task have not 
 been able to avoid being much more modern than they would 
 like. It is much less the sense of the old dogmas that they 
 preserve than their forms. They cease not to pour into the 
 old leathern bottles new wine, which makes them burst on all 
 sides. How much time and trouble lias been wasted on this 
 unrcmunerative labour ! What ! have we not learnt from the 
 experience of the past that it is impossible to avoid rents when a 
 piece of new Jotk i> sewed on to a piece that is old? What
 
 62 
 
 service was rendered to expiring paganism by the Platonic 
 
 interpretations of the great mysteries of Alexandria ? 
 
 The dualism of religion and science is an actual fact : the 
 fact cannot be denied. Moreover, the fact ought not to exist, 
 for it rends man in two, and that in the noblest and most 
 essential parts of his nature. If the evil has no right to be, 
 then there must be a remedy for it. It is a disease, and so 
 can be cured. Let all who think they possess the means 
 communicate their thoughts. 
 
 Now, I believe that there is bnt one way of reconciliation. 
 This one way is, however, sure. It is history. 
 
 As a genuine child of our suspicious age, I will take up 
 my position on the positive ground of experience. And 1 
 will not condemn myself to close my eyes on the eyid< 
 which experience furnishes to our observation. So much the 
 worse for speculation, if it has not the power to reduce the 
 facts into a system; and so much the worse for empiricism, 
 if it will not see the facts which offer themseves to its notice. 
 
 Now things (I use the words in its widest sense) offer to us 
 a primordial truth, a truth anterior to all science and all 
 belief; or, to speak more exactly, a truth which is at once 
 scientific and religious, namely, that they exist in mutual 
 relations'. Objects show themselves to us as a universe, as a 
 
 08. The facts of detail which a first view may present as 
 objections are only apparent contradictions, since, on a little 
 reflection, we see that in the world there is no real destruction, 
 no real exception. Sin itself is not abnormal, for it, like 
 everything else, i- Bubject t<> constant laws, and finds in pain 
 a barrier which confines it within certain limits. 
 
 Things then are the one for the other. They mutually 
 condition and suppose each other: they reciprocally tend 
 toward each other. This is the universal fact on which philo- 
 sophy lia-- constructed it> theory, more rallied than confu
 
 f>3 
 
 of final causes ; and the best system of metaphysics now is, 
 in my opinion, that which takes its stand on this primary 
 fact, to deduce therefrom a logical conception of God, of the 
 world, and of man. I refer to the metaphysical school of 
 Germany, of which J. A. Fichte (not to be confounded with 
 a philosopher of the same name belonging to the commence- 
 ment of this century) is the most distinguished representation, 
 and the work entitled Die Spéculatif Théologie, the most 
 remarkable manifesto. Let it, however, be observed that I 
 have no intention of developing a system of metaphysics. The 
 sole consequence 1 wish at this moment to draw from the 
 truth I have mentioned is this — that every subject requires 
 a determiner, every tendency supposes an attraction, every 
 effort implies an end, and that each of these propositions may 
 be reversed. Thus to say that a stone not suspended in the 
 air tends towards the earth, or that the earth attracts a stone 
 not suspended in the air ; that the human eye is organised so 
 as to receive impressions from the light, or that the nature of 
 the light is such as to produce impressions on the human 
 eye ; that a current of electricity is absorbed in the soil, or 
 that the soil is in a condition to absorb a current of electri- 
 city ; that the leaves of trees and plants inhale the carbonic 
 acid of the air, or that that gas is by its nature and its 
 presence in the air, fit to penetrate the tissue of the leaves of 
 trees and plants, etc., etc. — this is to enunciate a series of 
 tautologies, of identities, a series which may be prolonged to 
 infinitude, a series whose phenomena depend on a grand law, 
 of which they are only multitudinous ramifications. From 
 this truth man has no escape. If it is not reflected in his 
 intelligence, it speaks in his instincts. This sentiment of the 
 necessary correlation of things is the base of all science. How 
 would man have had the idea of going from the known to the 
 unkown, from the immediate phenomenon to its hidden cause.
 
 (U 
 
 from the constant concomitance of two facts t" their common 
 reason, had he not been inspired by this fundamental convic- 
 tion? The tendency of man to know, corresponding to the 
 
 reality of knowledge, is only one of those innumerable facts of 
 reciprocity entering into the universal law, which we have 
 announced. But now it is an assurance of the same truth 
 which lies at the basis of all primitive religion. How could 
 the view of natural objects have awakened the religious sense 
 in man, had he not observed, or thought he observed, harmony 
 in the objects of his adoration, and a certain relation between 
 himself and those objects? On this ground it is that we 
 declared the truth both religious and scientific. Science and 
 religion certainly meet together in this contradiction given to 
 the idea of chaos. 
 
 This general law of reciprocity takes the determinate form of 
 No tendency wthout attraction. In this shape we take the law, 
 for the theme of what ensues. It is then, we affirm, impossible 
 to conceive a tendency without an attraction, or an effort 
 without an aim. This is as impossible as to represent to 
 yourself a river which does not run towards a sea or a lake ; 
 or to suppose an affinity between two bodies, inherent in only 
 one of them; or to suppose a foetus having lungs as a respira- 
 tory organ, which is not destined to live in the atmosphere. 
 
 On this account, If you would understand the destinies of 
 any being you must study its fundamental appearances and 
 what may be called its promises. If Paleontology has reason 
 for deducing the nature and species of f» tssils from the partieu - 
 lar structure of their skeletons : if it has the right of affirming 
 a state of heat very different from the present one, by relying 
 on the relation which must always have existed between the 
 fauna and the flora of an epoch and a place, on the one side- 
 and its temperature, on the other ; if the astronomer is autho- 
 rised from the deviations of a star from it< normal orbit to
 
 65 
 
 deduce the certain existence of a heavenly body moving in 
 some part of unknown space; if the physiologist has solid 
 ground for believing that an organ, like the spleen, the func- 
 tion of which can be only conjectured, undoubtedly has a func- 
 tion, and fulfils its office in the economy of the vascular glands 
 of the body ; if the animal instinct is always, so long as it 
 remains natural, infallible as to its objects, the reason is that 
 every being suppose the existence to which it tends — and man 
 cannot be an exception. 
 
 Here the office of history, its measureless office, as a re- 
 vealer of man's destiny, appears in full light. 
 
 In order to understand man we must not restrict ourselves 
 to the study of an individual, nor even to the study of a peo- 
 ple, or a race. We must study human nature in itself, such 
 as we find it more or less developed in all the individuals 
 which compose humanity. Otherwise we shall risk taking as 
 a characteristic of man that which belongs solely to a man, 
 and to elevate an accidental into a general law. It is true 
 that several constituents of human nature in their complete 
 development, fall to the share of only a minority, for instance 
 the sense of the beautiful in art. Nevertheless, the germ of 
 them may be found in the race considered as a whole. In a 
 word, we cannot know man except by knowing mankind. 
 
 This comes to the same as the declaration that history 
 alone makes us acquainted with man. 
 
 Now, to come immediately to the special subject of our 
 researches, the testimony of history as to the spiritual 
 nature of man is decisive. Man is a religious being. 
 Religion, in the sense of the definition we have given of it, 
 is an integral part of human nature. Much developed with 
 these, almost imperceptible with those, rising or falling as the 
 mind rises or falls, whence it proceeds, it has arisen in the 
 human conscience from the earliest existence of that con
 
 OG 
 
 science. The species is religious, as an eminent writer has 
 said. And let us well note that we speak not exclusively of 
 a sensation more or less vague, fugitive, caused by the 
 appearance, real or unreal, of the Absolute ; but of a positive, 
 imperious tendency, deeply modifying the course of events, — 
 modifying did I say ? rather determining it with a power 
 which nothing could withstand; attesting its force by arts, 
 customs, monuments ; imprinting its features on art, politics, 
 thought. In a word, on the life of every age and every day. 
 Not merely passive is man in regard to religion, he is active 
 as well. It is too little to say that he is religious ; since he 
 makes an effort, and so tends voluntarily toward the Absolute, 
 we must add that man is a worshipping being. 
 
 Whence the conclusion is inevitable that there is a Being 
 to be worshipped. Adoration implicates the adorable. 
 
 I wish to be understood. I do not condemn the ordinary 
 proofs of the existence of God. I believe that some of them 
 are solid, that especially which experimental metaphysics has 
 derived from the final causes of the universe. I should be 
 sorry to discourage anyone, and for my own part I have by no 
 means renounced the purely philosophic research after the 
 higher truths. But I advisedly interdict myself a field on 
 which at present great differences occupy earnest minds. I 
 am unwilling to deprive myself of the immense advantage 
 which I owe to the ground 'I occupy. If I expound a 
 metaphysical doctrine I am obliged to remove logically all the 
 difficulties objected, in the name of abstract logic, to the idea 
 of God which I should hence have acquired. To propose a 
 metaphysical system is a task, the very idea of which appals 
 me ; and I avow that after having taken much trouble to seek 
 absolute truth by that rugged path, I have learnt to wonder at 
 those metaphysiciaus who are convinced of the full reality of 
 their system. On the contrary, from the historical point of
 
 
 67 
 
 view, I have the right to reply quite simply, " I do not 
 know," when I am asked how I harmonise the ideas which 
 one must logically form of an adorable Being with certain 
 logical difficulties of which religious philosophy has not yet 
 found a perfectly satisfactory solution. It is in the same way 
 that every experimental science arrives finally at a mystery, 
 the admission of which does not authorise anyone to contest 
 the results previously obtained. 
 
 I will make a direct application of this view to one of the 
 philosophical and religious questions most debated at the 
 present hour. I mean pantheism. By pan theism I understand — 
 every idea of God which denies the divine consciousness, and 
 accordingly the divine personality, so as to identify God and 
 the unity of the world. Pantheism owes its attraction for 
 poetic and religious souls to its rendering the universal presence 
 of «God sensible to the soul, instead of banishing him, as does 
 deism and some kinds of theism, to an infinite distance. So 
 far as pantheism insists on the immanence of God in the 
 world I agree with it. This is certain : a God separated from 
 the world is one being by the side of another, and is not 
 absolute ; a world, any being separated from God, from the 
 God, from the Absolute Cause, is a notion without meaning ; 
 and up to the present, the religious sentiment, far from rising 
 in opposition, views with complacency the idea of God as of 
 the Being who contains in himself life, movement, and 
 existence. But when, proceeding further, reposing on a 
 supposed incompatibility between man's self-consciousness and 
 the Absolute Being, — affirming that the world, if distinct, 
 limits God, pantheism sees in the absolute being nothing more 
 than the unconscious and impersonal unity of things, I part 
 company from him without hesitation. Is it possible for me, a 
 personal being, endued with consciousness and reflexion, to 
 adore a blind being, a being, — who however infinite, is by 
 
 e 2
 
 that blindness my inferior ? Can an impersonal ideal be my 
 ideal? Were I a madrepore or an echinus marinus, that might 
 be ; but when I adore, I must have for the object of my 
 adorations a being to whom I can say, " Thou !" The per- 
 sonality of God is an essential element of religion to such an 
 extent that, to say the truth, the history of religion is com- 
 posed of personifications of the objects successively adored by 
 man. From the moment when, better instructed, as he 
 thought, he saw only things where he formerly saw persons, 
 he ceased to adore them, and carried his worship to some 
 other shrine. It may also be remarked that religious pan- 
 theists cannot prevent themselves from personifying God, as 
 soon as they give a certain vivacity to their religious senti- 
 ments. Full of confidence in nature, I return then to the 
 testimony of human nature, and since there is an Adorable 
 Being, I shall not cease to attribute to him that which renders 
 him adorable, at the same time confessing that we are always 
 in danger of lowering the Infinite Being by applying to him 
 qualities which we are forced to borrow from our finite nature. 
 But that confession doos not trouble us greatly. For if those 
 qualities are not vigourously exact, the reason is that they are 
 below, not above, the reality. However, let not pantheism 
 glory so much over its logical value. It is a power at the 
 present day because it re-acts against the deplorable deism 
 bequeathed to us by the 18th century, and because it vic- 
 toriously combats that false dogma, which has in some sort 
 become traditional. If ever pantheism should in its turn be- 
 come so, it would see that if, as it boasts, logic conducts to it, 
 logic also leads away from it. Were there nothing but the 
 testimony of our moral consciousness to break the connexion, 
 that testimony would suffice. For, in good logic, that testi- 
 mony forms the most invincible of premises, and a pr< 
 the immediate consequence of which is palpable.
 
 69 
 
 We are able to apply our historical point of view also to 
 the second demand of religion, a personal immortality. If 
 man is a religious being, adoring the Adorable Being, he 
 tends to the infinite. His end is then of such a kind that 
 always attracted by it, he never reaches it completely. There 
 is» in him something by which he is distinguished essentially 
 from his bodily and animal nature, which not only does not tend 
 to this infinite but, as we might say, would be in the wrong 
 in so doing, since its duration is visibly and necessarily limi- 
 ted. Up to a certain degree of human development the re- 
 ligion and the immortality of man support and sustain each 
 other mutually. If my individuality is to be annihilated I am 
 but a transitory being, and am wrong to pursue an end which 
 the essential conditions of my being interdict. As well com- 
 mand a terrestrial being to put himself by leaps beyond the 
 attraction of the globe. The projection which, obeying my inner 
 law, I direct towards boundless space, I am forced immediately 
 to bring back in a curve, and in a very narrow curve, to the 
 surface of the earth ; and then my nature is deceptive. On 
 one side it tends to the infinite ; on the other, it is unable to 
 surpass a contracted limit. Now, nature is never deceptive. 
 The religious life, which here meets with the moral life, re- 
 quires me at every instant to be superior to the impulses of 
 my carnal nature. It may even be that the former demands 
 of me the complete sacrifice of the latter ; history informs us 
 that man has often made to God the sacrifice of his bodily life, 
 and then it is that man has specially shown himself man, real- 
 ising the ideal of human nature. Is this not a proof that the 
 religious life, and consequently conscious life, is prolonged 
 beyond the body. Has not all life for its primary tendency 
 the assertion of its own existence at the cost of inferior races ? 
 This is its fundamental axiom. Its first instinct is to preserve 
 self, and so to destroy whatever is hostile. J s this self-afifirm- 
 ation mere self-destruction ?
 
 70 
 
 I have spoken of a certain degree of human development. 
 In truth history teaches us that the belief in immortality is 
 not as ancient as religion. This belief took shape insensibly 
 at différent dates according to difference of peoples and races. 
 Before forming part of the confession of faith of the human 
 race, it required the distinct sentiment of individuality, which 
 was not very clear in the earliest ages of our race ; and be- 
 sides it required a notion of moral destiny, a consciousness of 
 man's value, to which the infantine thought of the earliest 
 humanity had no means of access. It was necessary that man 
 should feel that he was not finite, that he had not given all 
 he promised before the death of the body. It was necessary 
 that the human mind should have in part freed itself from the 
 shackles of matter, and that human life should have become 
 somewhat spiritual. This is bo certain that the first rudiments 
 of personal immortality in populations, which as yet had a 
 clear idea of it. consisted in the belief that certain men of 
 mark had escaped from death. The heroes of the Greeks, 
 Enoch, Moses, Elijah among the Hebrews, may serve as ex- 
 amples. Human nature had in them displayed its energy in 
 an exceptional manner, and the people felt that such men 
 must have been superior to death. What is remarkable is, 
 that before the appearance of this belief, there was ignorance 
 rather than negation, and in reality man has never believed 
 in his own absolute annihilation. The door always remained 
 open to the possibility of another life. The primitive man 
 formed to himself, of the state beyond the tomb, a vague idea 
 as of sleep ; and it may be said, that in the the degree in 
 which the conciousness of his superior destiny awoke in him. 
 he awakened his dead. Besides, the more history extends 
 the fields of its conquests, the more consistency does it give to 
 that idea, which at first seemed only a play of the imagination, 
 namely, that there is a close parallelism between the develop-
 
 of the human species, and the development of the individual. 
 Observe little children — their goings on, their intuitions, their 
 instincts, their language, and you will detect the most aston- 
 ishing resemblance to that which we know of ante-historical 
 humanity. And as in the life of the child certain revelations 
 of the future, certain presentiments of its destiny as man, 
 arise in its soul ; as the youth, who feels his forces grow- 
 ing, exchanges by little and little the timidities and fears of 
 his earliest days for the boldness and firmness which befit 
 virility, and gives himself a clearer account of the life which 
 awaits him ; as the innocent virgin finds in the new senti- 
 ment of modesty the harbinger of a new world which she can- 
 not define, yet whose dim outline takes possession of her 
 beating heart, so may we say, that on some occasion or other 
 man discovered that he was immortal. From that time 
 religion and belief in immortality grew up together, the one 
 always profiting by the progress of the other, as was proper 
 since the two are nourished from a common sap. This great 
 revelation of history, the natural tendency of men toward the 
 infinite, this tendency which at the same time affirms the ex- 
 istence of an infinite which attracts man, is more powerful than 
 any demonstration for everyone who is accessible to the idea of a 
 universe or cosmos. 
 
 Sometimes an objection is taken to this consensus gentium 
 in favour of personal imortality founded on the Buddhist 
 doctrine of the Nirvana. According to that, Buddha promises 
 annihilation as the highest reward to his elect, professes to 
 show them the way to reach it, and yet Buddhism has become 
 the religion of a moiety of the world. I am of opinion that 
 the opposite is the right consequence. To be convinced of 
 this, it is enough to know on what condition Buddhism pro- 
 mises the total annihilation of individuality. Millions of 
 years, hundreds of heavens to traverse, fearful renunciations
 
 s 
 
 barely mffioe. So difficult does man find the annihilation of 
 his individuality ! Cudddism really teaches that man has 
 only to allow himself I scording to his natural Law in 
 
 order to exist for ever. Besides, it must m 
 that Buddhism, a moral advance beyond Brahminism, is by no 
 means a step forward religiously. Buddhism is man disgusted 
 with nature, as Brahminism was man intoxicated with nature. 
 "vYTiat is lacking to the one and to the other is mind vic- 
 toriously disengaging itself from nature, and conciliating nature 
 with itself by making nature its servant. Buddhism is the 
 religion of aged and decrepit races who no longer hope for 
 anything in the future. Finally it would be very erroneous to 
 fancy pure Buddhism to be the real religion of the Buddhist 
 people. No religion, Christianity not excepted, has become 
 more difficult to recognise than Buddhism in its divers branches, 
 and the Buddhist peoples do not really profess the genuine 
 doctrine. Thus travellers report that the populations of Indo- 
 China conceive of the Nirvana as a state of absolute repose, 
 in which the blessed have as much rice as they wish, without 
 the necessity of procuring it by labour. 
 
 Has the testimony of history been exhausted ? It is 
 doubtless much to have found in it an Adorable God and a 
 personal life, going toward the infinite. But as yet we have 
 in some sort only a theoretical religion, and we know that 
 the religious tendency of the human mind is not satisfied with 
 
 iye, instinctive aspiration toward infinite. Man has 
 need not to feel merely but to live religiously. He requires a 
 practical religion, a religion which impresses its seal on his 
 life. That life religion must idealise, but this it cannot do 
 except by penetrating it, and embodying itself in it. We have 
 forms ; we have a vase — how can we fill them ? 
 
 Here history is the revealer. By teaching us what man is 
 she teaches nfl how we ought to live so as to live religiously.
 
 There is no one who, seriously studying history, can hence 
 gather the idea that humanity is only an aggregate < >i" individuals. 
 History is neither nominalist nor realist, but it declares that 
 the species acts on the individual, and the individual acts on the 
 species. It belongs to philosophy to explain, if it can, the great 
 mystery of the reciprocal relations of the particular and the 
 general. History has only to establish and reproduces the fact. 
 
 Now the fact is this — each of us is what he is only 
 because he represents a result of human forces anterior to 
 himself, and absolutely independent of his free will. The 
 correlation of the human race is a visible fact, a fact which 
 will ever become more visible. If we separate from our indi- 
 vidual character what we owe to our education and to the 
 education of our educators, what remains ? Sciences, arts, 
 political condition, material life, tastes, even temperament — all 
 this constitutes in each of us for the most part a legacy of our 
 ancestors. On the broad field of history races appear more 
 real than individuals ; and as in the eyes of a European who 
 lands in China all the natives seem to have the same visage, 
 because their general type strike him before he is able to note 
 individual diversities, so, on the high lands of history, when one 
 takes a general and rapid view of humanity, the race sums it- 
 self up in a small number of collective individuals ; and these 
 in their turn end by sinking into one who goes whither God 
 leads him. 
 
 The reason is that humanity realises a plan. What is its 
 destiny on earth ? It would perhaps be presumptuous to de- 
 clare it yet. But this we know, namely, that chaos exists not 
 there any more than elsewhere. It does not even appear to 
 exist to any but those who rise not high enough to see things un- 
 roll themselves, and show their true nature and mutual depend- 
 encies. The single fact that already there are attempts at 
 a philosophy of history, no matter whether successful or not
 
 — that single fact proves the statement. If as yet no one has 
 certainly discovered the exact law, many have shewn that a 
 law exists and operates. Already we can see converging 
 lines. Already we are able to assert that the primitive tribes 
 which swarmed over the surface of the globe, obeyed hidden 
 laws of which they were not aware. Already we see that 
 civilisation follows a march almost rhymthical, going from 
 station to station from upper Asia toward the AYest — upper 
 Asia constantly abandoned by ancient races, and as constantly 
 occupied by fresh ones. For evidently each race has its 
 destiny — its youth, its maturity, its decay, its death : — death, 
 I say, unless in its development it finds a principle of life 
 which may prove to it a source of indefinite rejuvenescence. 
 Such is my hope for the Christian races, who have found the 
 tree of life, whose fruits make those who eat of them live 
 for ever. 
 
 This is the realastic side of history, and so visible it is 
 that it has produced an illusion in those who, the first per- 
 ceived it. They were misled into forgetting individualities 
 and into denying them . This was a great error in the 
 of the same history. Man is not only a sample of his sp> 
 as a plant or an animal. If his species acts on him he acts on 
 his species. Our inmost sense, our self-love informs us of 
 the fact. All the great steps in human progress have a per- 
 sonal origin. The individual by himself can do nothing, 
 whatever superiority we suppose him to possess, unless the 
 multitude by which he is surrounded possesses at least some 
 sparks of the same fire which burns in him ; it is the indivi- 
 dual which kindles the flame, and the individual only which 
 can set the whole in a blaze. Humanity grows in virtue of 
 the force of its men of genius. They, it is true, have come 
 forth from its womb, and, like others, have been raised by an- 
 terior elevations, but they repose only to rise to greater alti-
 
 75 
 
 tude ; and long did they remain solitary on the heights to which 
 they climbed. Genius is the most personal of all things. 
 Here history is decidedly individualist. 
 
 I spoke of progress. Persons who overlook the general 
 in clinging too much to details sometimes deny the reality of 
 progress. I grant that progress does not move in a straight 
 line : — far from it. I acknowledge that if humanity is pro- 
 ceeding upward, it is not after the manner of a pyramid, but 
 rather that of a chain of mountains which converge to their 
 highest point through a deep abyss subjoined to every fresh 
 elevation. But how can it be denied that definitively, progress 
 results from each of the great revolutions of history. It can- 
 not, for example, be denied that humankind, as a whole, has 
 grown considerably since the decay of the classic civilisation. 
 Its dominion over the earth is far differently secured than it 
 was in the finest days of Greece and Rome ; and if we must 
 not over-rate our industrial discoveries, we must equally not 
 forget that the enslavement of nature is the neccessary and 
 constant condition of the reign of mind. As to intellectual 
 progress, properly so called, we remark that the rivalry be- 
 tween the ancients and the moderns comes not on the carpet 
 here. The question is not whether our highest skill in these 
 days could produce poems like those of Homer, or build 
 palaces equal to those of Babylon. It is certain also that 
 humanity has given birth to things whose equals will never be 
 seen again. In vain shall man, arrived at the age of reflexion, 
 attempt to produce over again the fairy dreams, the sweet 
 songs, and the fond desires of its early youth. But the true 
 question is, to know whether in the elements whose combina- 
 tion forms our spiritual life, we have not more than was 
 possessed by the ancients. Thus put, the question admits of 
 only one answer. Evidently we have more, since we have 
 what they had, and in addition, what our immediate prede-
 
 70 
 
 >;s have left us. Their thought, their arts, their civili- 
 sation, are known to us. To these we have added the heritage 
 we have received from our fathers ; as well as our own 
 acquisitions; and we propogate the whole over the entire 
 earth. Definitively, if the spirit of the ancient East, of Greece, 
 of Rome, is one day to become the patrimony of the whole of 
 human kind, the result will be due to us. At this moment 
 Plato is interpreted at Melbourne, and Moses at Canton. 
 There are Greek statues at New York, and the Sanscrit has 
 at least twenty chairs in Europe. A moment's reflexion 
 will suffice to learn what a mass of important facts is in- 
 volved in those words, seized as it were, in flying over the 
 map of the world. Intellectual life, formerly the privilege 
 of an almost imperceptible minority, has become accessible 
 to many millions of men, and will extend indefinitely, so as 
 to deposit constantly more and more of the best possessions 
 of past generations in those that are to come. To explain 
 my thought by a single example — never again shall we write 
 poems like those of Homer ; but, preserving these, we add 
 to them those of Dante, those of Milton, those of Goethe, 
 and we cause them all to be read by all. 
 
 But if there is a domain of the mind in which progress, 
 considered from aloft, is clearly visible, it is that which we 
 have hitherto purposely passed in silence, that of religion. 
 No longer does the sun set on Christendom. Consider what 
 the religions were which Christianity found in the world. 
 Then can you judge of the magnitude of the transformation. 
 In a merely human point of view we may consider Christianity 
 as the final religion of mankind. For it is the religion of 
 the invading races, the races who are filling desert continents, 
 and will shortly graft themselves on the decrepid civilisa- 
 tions, as well as the barbarisms, of the nations that are 
 not Christian.
 
 This brings us back to our subject. Humanity then, de- 
 velops itself by the action of individual genius, and the 
 individual himself does not successfully unfold except by not 
 breaking the bond which unites him to the general develop- 
 ment of his species. The duty and the destiny of each of 
 us is individual development, since each of us naturally tends 
 to the infinite under the influence of the inmost powers of 
 his being ; but it results from the natural law of all develop- 
 ment, that isolation is of no service to man, whether in 
 religion or any other thing ; and I will say that this is true 
 more emphatically in religion than in ought else. In religion 
 indeed the action of individual genius is most murked ; nay, 
 it is even indispensable. For religion being essentially a 
 tendency, an aspiration, a flight toward the infinite, inspira- 
 tion only "can in this domain be truly a source of revelation. 
 Here is the reason why philosophy has never been able to 
 found a religion. To ascend to God it is less needful to 
 express his essence with exactitude, than to receive the 
 impulse of those who have approached him most nearly. 
 Our individual religion must receive its sap and its strength 
 from that which has come down to us from holy men of old 
 who were led by the spirit of God. Moreover, as a law of 
 our nature determines that the energy of our sentiments and 
 our emotions should increase or decrease according as we 
 find them in others or not, it is clear that the flame of 
 religion cannot be kept up except by permanent contact with 
 religious humanity. 
 
 But what is the religion of our race ? We have already 
 given it a name : it is Christianity. We see that this is the 
 future religion of human kind. Its origin too discloses to us 
 this its high destiny. The Shemitic race, whence it comes, 
 has obviously for its historical mission the foundation of the 
 universal religion. For it founded monotheism as a popular
 
 
 78 
 
 faitli ; and little else did it do. Shemitism, by its three 
 great religious founders, Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, lias 
 accomplished its task. Revelation has been its speciality- 
 It is under the tents of Bhem, it is in the race of Abraham, 
 that the religious sap has distilled, which vivifies the world. 
 This is not a dogma of the Church, it is the voice of history. 
 At present it is manifest that of those three names, that of 
 Jesus is the one which- must soar above the others as the 
 supreme revealer. We shall see this better immediately 
 when we speak of his doctrine. But remaining in the circle 
 of ideas over which we have gone, we may support ourselves 
 on the fact, that Jesus only has been 'able to conquer the 
 races of the future. The people in whose bosom he was 
 born, a withered tree since the day of his appearance, makes 
 progress now only under the indirect influence of him whom 
 it rejected. The reign of Mahomedanism is passed ; its fall 
 is inevitable. If moreover, we compare the idea of God, 
 such as it came forth from those three prophetic minds, we 
 shall easily understand why the God of Jesus Christ must 
 gain the victory over the two others. "We may place on two 
 nearly parallel lines, Moses and Mahomed. Both preached 
 in substance the same God, and what would distinguish 
 Mahomed to his advantage, the consciousness of religious 
 universality, and of immortality, disappears if you reflect 
 on the extreme distance in antiquity at which Moses stands, 
 and the ease with which Mosaism, in its natural evolution, 
 arrived on its part, at those two elements of true religion. 
 Now, the God of Jesus is alone adorable for us, for he is superior 
 to the God of the law, purely exterior to the world, who was 
 taught equally by the prophet of Sinai and that of Mecca. 
 The God of Moses, and the God of Mahomed are unique, 
 invisible, pure spirits, absolute masters of the universe. But 
 the God of Christ is all that, and besides, lie is our Father who
 
 79 
 
 is in heaven, whose Holy Spirit pleads in our hearts, while his 
 continuous, regular, all prevailing activity, reveals itself even in 
 the humblest details. Here, certainly, is the only true God — the 
 God whom we must adore, and whom men must always adore. 
 We cannot adore beings whose superior we know. God must be 
 to us incomparable, and since Christ has brought to light the 
 divine ideal with which his own mind was full, we must adore 
 either his God and Father, or nothing. The God of Christ is 
 the God toward whom the human race is advancing; it 
 is the Being whom the species ceases not to contemplate since 
 the son of man has shown him forth. In the name of our 
 nature and of history, which is its faithful reflexion, we declare 
 that if we would grow religiously, we must pay our adoration 
 to the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 For if our individual religious development is a branch, the 
 living trunk of which is to be that of humanity, and if Jesus 
 of Nazareth has pronounced the word which alone responds to 
 the aspirations of the religious soul, it ensues that we must 
 unite ourselves as filled with his spirit, to the human society 
 which is only the prolongation in time and in space of his 
 work upon earth. We must attach ourselves to the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 But, it may be asked, does history supply reasons to think 
 Jesus himself will not be surpassed ? Are we permitted to 
 speak of a final revealer ? Who knows what the future has 
 in reserve ? Does not Christianity itself incline toward an 
 end, distant, perhaps, but inevitable ? And has not the poet 
 sung with a moved voice these two melancholy lines, 
 A secret thing, O Jesus, fills me with alarm, — 
 It is the echo of thy voice ever growing weaker. 
 The reason is that the poet with a lyre moved by the breeze 
 of the moment, confounded the voice of Christ with the voice 
 f tradition. " The voice of Christ ever growing weaker ?"
 
 On the contrary, it is only in the future, when the criticism of 
 
 the traditions by which Christianity is for the d cov- 
 
 ered, shall have done its work, and passed into the public 
 mind — it is then, and then only that the amplitude and im- 
 perishable worth of the gospel will be generally understood. 
 Historically speaking, there are reasons for thinking the 
 period of great religious inspirations in humankind is pa- 
 The end of the actual world is still far distant, for our race 
 is still far from having realised the design of God on the earth. 
 Nevertheless the end will come. Philosophical and physical 
 reasons show the fact, and we may now say that we are near 
 the age of maturity. In future, reflexion has the better of 
 spontaneity in man's historical course. It is shewn also by 
 the development of the science of history ; man does not thus 
 turn back on his past until he has come to the age of reflexion. 
 Then; inspiration with individuals, with natures, with races 
 is a privilege of youth. Besides Christ is not passable. He 
 who preached the Holy God, loving all men since he attracts 
 all, and who sacrificed himself for the love of man, has secured 
 a place which no one is able to take from him, and accom- 
 plished a work which cannot be repeated. For. any way, the 
 second could be only an imitation of the first. Finally, Christ 
 in boldly announcing the idea of indefinite progress, in calling 
 man to the perfection of God himself, in proclaiming the 
 universal brotherhood, in making his religion consist not in 
 dogmas, nor in rites, but before all in the state of the 
 heart, and in a continued impulse toward God — in thus 
 founding a pure religious spiritualism, Christ has brought it 
 about that all uli ss of humanity in re!! 
 
 can henceforth be only applications of the principles 
 which he bequeathed to the race. It is thus that many 
 of the moral and rcl!. iforms, on which primitive 
 
 Christianity is silent, or speaks but vaguely, — the abolition
 
 81 
 
 of slavery, religious toleration, the mitigation of war, the 
 penalties of crime, &c., &c, — are genuine and direct fruits of 
 the spirit with which Jesus inoculated his first disciples. But 
 he who in word and deed sets forth the principle of ceaseless 
 perfectibility is, by the very act, the generator of all future 
 improvements. An ancient legend which Jerome, in the fifth 
 century, found among the Jewish Christians of Syria, relates 
 that, at the baptism of Christ, the Spirit of God said to him, 
 " My Son, thee have I waited for in all the prophets, that in 
 thee I might take my rest ; for thou art my rest, my first born son, 
 and thou reignest for ever." This is a mythical envelope of a 
 profoundly true idea. In Jesus of Nazareth the spirit has 
 uttered the word eternity, the final word, the word of which 
 all that remains can be only the endless development. In 
 virtue of this, Christ is really he who has fulfilled all. He is 
 truly the son of man, the centre and the essence of humanity, 
 and it is by a very good right that he has cut history in two 
 moieties. 
 
 This, however, will not appear certain, except to him who 
 will take the pains to learn exactly in what consists the 
 teaching and the work of Jesus. For this it is necessary 
 to interrogate himself, and not to confound Christianity 
 with any Christian tradition, however ancient and venerable. 
 It is absolutely necessary to rid oneself of the positively false 
 idea that Christianity, as such, is really interested in the 
 triumph of any system of geology, of astronomy, of physios. 
 It is necessary to consider the books of the Bible as documents 
 over which criticism has the same rights as over all the other 
 written monuments of the ancient world. It is also necessary 
 to distinguish between the thought of Christ and that of his 
 historians, by whom the former was not always conceived in all 
 its spirituality. Thus it is clear that they insisted on the 
 miraculous side presented to their eyes by the appearance and
 
 82 
 
 life of their divine hero, while Christ himself is in open eon- 
 Hict with the prejudice which will have miracle to be the 
 necessary sign of a true revelation, and has taught the world 
 to recognise the work of God in the regular action of natural 
 forces. It may without exaggeration l>e said that on this 
 point it has taken eighteen centuries to bring: Christian 
 thought to rejoin the thought of the founder of Christianity. 
 It is necessary to put aside the inevitable elements of imper- 
 fection thrown into the forms of his utterance by the intel- 
 lectual condition in the midst of which he lived, of which he of 
 sity partook, and to consider him as a revealer only there 
 where he offers himself as such, that is to Bay where he 
 affirms, aa so many truths drawn from his own consciousness, 
 the essential bases of the religion he wishes to establish. To 
 effect this distinction it is sufficient to learn what he makes 
 the conditions of salvation, or. to employ his usual expression, 
 entrance into the Kingdom of God. 
 
 You are then struck with the marvellous spiritual sobriety 
 and solidity which distinguish his revelations. He places his 
 foot on the territory acquired before his day by Judaism, that 
 is to say by monotheism, immortality, and the prophetic idea 
 of the Kingdom of God, which was to come. Then he grafts 
 on that living plant religions and moral principles, perfectly 
 simple, but at the same time incalculably rich. Nothing in 
 troth more striking than the teachings in which Jesus compares 
 bis work with the imperceptible grain cast into the earth, and 
 issing in itself the vigour to become the largest of trees. 
 By an expression of rare beauty, " Our Father who art in 
 Heaven," he purifies the idea of God from the poor or gross 
 notions retained, and sometimes even reinforced, by Jewish 
 monotheism. Nothing more absolute, and also nothing more 
 attractive for man than this representation of God. xis to 
 the relation in which man ought to stand to God in order Mj
 
 83 
 
 make true religion Lis own, the essential, according to Christ, 
 is, that man divesting himself of all illusion as to his own 
 merits, or those of external things, — such as birth, race, works 
 of devotion, traditions, orthodoxies, — entering simply into his 
 own consciousness, turning back entirely on himself, should 
 open his heart to that moral and religious disposition which 
 may be termed thirsting after God. Then, the Supreme Ideal, 
 toward which it is necessary always to tend, reveals himself to 
 the soul. Moral perfection — that is the end ; the point of 
 departure is the feeling of imperfection. But we must set out 
 and go on toward the end with a full faith, an entire con- 
 fidence in God, by whom we are called at once to begin and to 
 complete our journey. Christ declares that salvation is 
 assured to repentant and bruised souls ; to the poor or needy 
 in spirit, that is those who feel their wants and long after the 
 fulness of God's riches ; to the poor in heart ; to the pitying ; 
 to those who hunger and thirst for the right. With an 
 authority which only a life so holy as his own could add to 
 such a doctrine, he announces God's pardon to every sinner 
 who turns from the error of his way; that faith which is as neces- 
 sary to moral recovery as it appears uncertain to him who fears 
 taking for a divine behest the selfish desires of his own 
 corrupted heart. In order to rise toward God it is in effect 
 necessary that man should begin with the feeling that his 
 previous faults and infirmities are virtually annulled the 
 moment he seriously sets his foot on the road which leads to 
 perfection. One may even say that it is above all as the 
 herald of pardon that Jesus is a revealer. When a conscious- 
 ness as penetrated as was his with the holiness of God 
 • xperiences no repugnance to the idea of pity always open to 
 repentance, and on the contrary proclaims it to be unlimited, 
 one may be well assured that such is truly the image of the 
 true God as reflected in the most limpid mirror. Accordingly 
 
 f 2
 
 
 84 
 
 God's pardoning mercy, or the changeless will of God that 
 man should renounce sin in order to rise to perfection, may be 
 likened to an eternal note, to the diapason of which 
 our souls must be made to correspond and vibrate. More- 
 over, nothing more spiritual than all this doctrine. Religion 
 is emphatically moral, as morality is essentially religious. 
 The two become one in the queen of the spiritual faculties, 
 love, the two great objects of which are God and man : God 
 as supreme perfection, man as an always perfectible spirit. 
 External forms and ceremonies are of secondary importance. 
 Not any are necessary. Not the shadow of an hierarchy, not 
 the shadow of a priesthood in this religion which professes to 
 put man once "come to himself"' (Luke xv., 17) into 
 immediate and personal communion with God. Never does 
 Jesus lay down any dogmatic conditions. Never does he 
 make the religious character depend on the adoption of any 
 form of doctrine. He even goes so far as to declare that men 
 may meet together having those dispositions of mind which 
 he requires, who nevertheless have never known himself 
 (Matt, xxv., 31-40). However, he is conscious of his 
 personal value as the founder of the Kingdom of God among 
 men. He has the sense, perfectly legitimate in the historical 
 point of view, of the true destiny of his people, as well as of 
 himself. He considers himself as realising the prophecies 
 which spoke of the establishment of the Kingdom of God on 
 the earth. He professes to fulfil them, and to fulfil them in 
 effect, while removing from them whatever chimerical or 
 political views they contained. Since he feels himself in 
 intimate harmony with the divine will, since his work is 
 nothing less than the spiritual conquest of human kind, he 
 knows he is the true Christ, the true Messiah. A new world 
 was to be the consequence of his appearance in history. The 
 future appeared to hi* vision as summed up in an immense
 
 85 
 
 revolution of everything, whence would come forth a form of 
 humanity renewed, of which he was to be King by the 
 authority and influence of the Holy Spirit. Fully inspired of 
 God, he knows that his spirit must draw men nearer and 
 nearer to himself, and penetrate and pervade them like leaven. 
 His personal life, which is the embodiment of his doctrine, 
 and which transmutes that doctrine into a positive reality ; 
 his holy and joyous activity is to be the primitive hearth, the 
 flame and heat of which will gradually extend to all by which 
 it is approached. He came, as he declared, to kindle a fire 
 on the earth, and his task is accomplished as soon as he sees 
 it in a flame ; never will it go out. On this account it is that 
 he invites men to attach themselves to him personally, to 
 remain in spiritual communion with him ; in a word, to have 
 faith in him. Finally, he reckons on his premature death, the 
 inevitable issue, the reward easy to foresee, of a life so ideal 
 in a world so much below itself, in order that the remembrance 
 of him may never be effaced from men's memories. Here, 
 also, his intuition of the future is wonderfully just. Why has 
 this holy one been crucified ? This is the question which the 
 cross ceaselessly puts to humanity indifferent or incredulous, 
 and the answer which must be given goes a long way. It is 
 not, then, without reason that he connects with, his death a 
 touching symbol of the new covenant which the Christian 
 Church is to repeat piously from age to age, as the most 
 august of its ceremonies, as preaching with irresistible energy 
 the great truth confirmed by history, namely the communion 
 of religious souls with the Persecuted Holy One. 
 
 Such are the principles of Christianity. Here is some- 
 thing that is indestructible. Indestructible is it even when 
 you have allowed independent and strictly historical criticism 
 to apply itself in full liberty to the evangelical narratives. 
 And now we turn with confidence to the men of our age whose
 
 
 $6 
 
 heart is right, saying to them : Do you not desire such a 
 religion ? inspect it closely ; Christianity is more than a 
 religion, it is the religion, the religion realised. 
 
 It is with the Christian Church as it is with religion. If 
 in itself it exists independently of the diverse forms which it 
 has assumed, it is to us concrete and real only in one or other 
 of those forms. You do not attach yourself to the Christian 
 Church while you live apart from its manifestations T though 
 you even feel a philosophical sympathy for them all. This 
 conception of the Christian life is a false idea, too widely 
 spread in these times, and the result is. that those who are 
 actuated by it do not really share in the common Christian 
 life. But I also acknowledge that to many persons the selec- 
 tion of a form appears impossible, and that the repugnance to 
 becoming sacetary has its legitimate side. Here, especially, 
 comes into prominence the antagonism between science and 
 modern reason on the one side, and our natural religious 
 wants on the other. People remain in the church in which 
 they were born, without taking any personal interest in what 
 is done within it, and no one of the other Christian commu- 
 nion appears to them to deserve explicit and complete es- 
 pousal. 
 
 For my part, I am persuaded that tfcis cfiffieulty comes 
 from ignorance of the true historical conditions of Christian- 
 ity, and of Protestantism, its most modern branch. You may 
 
 ^ured by the picture I have just given of the essential 
 principles of the religion of Jesus Clirist, that they live in, 
 the midst of a crowd of different dogmas and forms. The 
 dogmas have imposed themselves on those purely moral and 
 religious principles, in virtue of the simple reason that those 
 principles, and their mode of appearance in history, presented 
 problems to be solved, — problems which Christian thought 
 «ould. and did. solve in several manners- It happened that
 
 87 
 
 under the traditional prestige one of those manners passed for 
 absolutely true, and was held as such as long as the level of 
 mind did not rise above its level. When the former stood 
 superior to the latter, schism ensued. The Reformation 
 wished to purify Christian doctrine from the heterogeneous 
 elements which the stream of time had thrown into it. In 
 fact, it brought Christian doctrine back much nearer to its origi- 
 nal spirit than could be permitted by the church of the middle 
 ages. It deposed its dogmatical convictions in official sym- 
 bols, called " Confessions of faith, 1 ' and these confessions of 
 faith answered not amiss to the state of knowledge as it stood 
 in the sixteenth century. Then that happened to it which 
 had happened to the Church before the Reformation, namely, 
 the Protestant dogmas became traditional in their turn, and 
 presented an object of attack to the more enlightened criti- 
 cism of the times. Here the resemblance stops. The Re- 
 formed Churches being founded on the principle of Christian 
 liberty, in the face of religious tradition, could not consist- 
 ently deny the exercise of that liberty in its own communion, 
 and hence ensued its variations, — variations which alarm tra- 
 ditionalistie minds, but which with the thinker and historian, 
 are its true glory. It is a natural consequence that at the 
 present hour there is not one considerable Protestant Church 
 which rigorously gives the force of law to all the points of its 
 confession of faith. Being a Lutheran in Germany by no 
 means signifies the acknowledgment of all the dogmas signed . 
 in the Confession of Augsburg. Being a Protestant in France 
 in no way implies the adoption of all the articles of the Con- 
 fession of Rochelle. The greatest dogmatic diversities divide 
 amongst them the chairs of Protestant theology. You may 
 clearly distinguish in the debates of the churches sprung from 
 the Reformation, a right and a left; the latter imbued with 
 the necessity of modifying Christian dogma so that it may
 
 *K 
 
 be always in harmony with the development of modem 
 thought ; the former resisting the required transformations, 
 and granting them but slowly, in the fear of losing the trea- 
 sure contained in the old dogmas. It is possible to take a 
 decided part in favour of the one or of the other of these par- 
 ties without disowning the relative legitimacy of the other. 
 In the historical point of view they are necessary each to each, 
 and it is their antagonism which constitutes the spring of the 
 development of religious thought. This is the reason why. 
 from the time of their origin, the Protestant Churches have 
 been in a state of interior development. To be a member of 
 the one or of the other is, on the one side, to be connected 
 with the historical Christian Church which is most advanced ; 
 and on the other, to remain independent in regard to the par- 
 ticular doctrines to which adherence is felt to be impossible. 
 
 It is essential that this should be well understood. Pro- 
 testantism, to justify its origin, must recognise as its basis 
 the legitimacy of free inquiry. But it is an error to make 
 free inquiry the sole basis of Protestantism. When that is 
 done, nothing distinguishes Protestantism from philosophy. 
 Protestant free examination is Christian. Its office is to 
 criticise tradition, on the ground that it is neccessary to correct 
 rather than to destroy, to reform rather than to abolish. 
 Below Protestant free inquiry then lies the grand idea of the 
 ascending development of humanity ; this it is which, in our 
 judgment, demonstrates its legitimacy. This is the sole 
 method of progress which can justify itself in the historical 
 point of view. On the other side, if you call to mind in what 
 consists the essential principles of Christianity, their strictly 
 religious and moral nature, the entire liberty they leave to 
 human intelligence, provided the heart is pure and the con- 
 science is alive, you must admit that science may move in the 
 bosom of the Protestant Church with an independence as entire
 
 89 
 
 as it could wish. But let us not sunder ourselves from the 
 historic development of the human mind. In its passage 
 over the centuries it must have gathered up much " wood, 
 hay, stubble," (Cor. iii., 12.) The fires of criticism must 
 burn up these base materials, but yet so as to save the pure 
 gold. But for this truth, history would be an empty dream. 
 Thus at the present day, the doctrines of the Reformation are 
 in a state of transformation. The modern Protestant theology 
 aspires not to deny them absolutely, but to preserve the truth 
 that is in them, by filtering them through a medium more 
 conformed to our science and our reason. The dogmas of 
 original sin, the trinity, the incarnation, justification by faith, 
 future rewards, the inspiration of the sacred writings may 
 serve as examples. On the first of these dogmas renouncing 
 the idea of an original perfection, the reality of which is con- 
 trary to reason and to all our historical analogies, modern 
 theology would insist on the evil influence which determines 
 to evil an individual plunged in society where sin reigns, on 
 the neccessary passage from a state of innocence to a state of 
 moral consciousness and struggle, on the fall which man 
 endures when he sinks from his higher nature to his lower, 
 and renounces God's will to serve his own. As to the trinity, 
 avoiding the scholastic and contradictory tritheism of the old 
 creeds, intent on vigorously preserving God's essential unity 
 and at the same time his conscious or personal life, this theology 
 attaches itself to the grand idea of the divine word pervading the 
 world, as the uttered thought, the objective revelation of God, 
 conceived as manifesting himself to himself in his works. In hu- 
 manity this eternal word becomes the Holy Spirit, the light which 
 lightens every man coming into the world, but which shines in 
 all its splendour in Jesus Christ. In this series of ideas the 
 incarnation loses that stamp of absolute contradiction which it 
 takes from the orthodox idea of one and the same person who
 
 00 
 
 
 is at the same time God and man, finite ami infinite, localised and 
 omnipresent, praying and prayed to, knowing and not knowing 
 all things, and impeccable yet tempted, £c. The pure and 
 real humanity of Christ is the basis of the system; and the 
 
 system may be summed up in these words : The Son of Man 
 is the Sob of God, Man is justified by faith not as the old 
 orthodoxy taught, that is. because he believes that satisfaction 
 was given to God in his place and on his behalf, but because 
 he has confidence in the eternal love of God and in his own 
 destination for good, as evidenced by Christ in his life and in 
 his death. The eternity of future sufferings gives place to an 
 idea more in conformity with sound philosophy and the reve- 
 lation of infinite love, according to which pain resulting from 
 sin can have for object only the amelioration of the sinner, 
 and special stress is laid on the spiritual truth that heaven 
 and hell are much less different places than different star 
 the soul. The inspiration of the Scriptures, that dogma the 
 truth of which consisted in the scriptural value of the Biblical 
 books as giving a sure basis for faith, as supplying aliment to 
 piety, and as elevating the heart, more and more losef 
 miraculous character to approach analogous phenomena, 
 drawn from religions in general, or from other fields where the 
 mind of man reveals itself as inspired. The change of views 
 however does not take from the Bible its character as a truly 
 divine book, still does it remain in religion The Book of 
 Book». 
 
 I limit myself to these brief indications, wishing to add 
 that as no one must look here for an explicit confession of 
 faith, still less for an official description of modern Protest- 
 antism. I wished merely to illustrate by these instances how 
 and with what results the transformation of Christian dogma 
 is at present going forward. 
 
 Adherence to the Protestant Chureh then does not signify
 
 91 
 
 the adoption of its authoritative forms of belief, which yon 
 have not grounds to deny, and which I have not grounds to 
 accept; still less, to accept religiously what I repel rationally. 
 In this view to be a Christian is to participate in the general 
 life of the Christian Church, and to take part with others in 
 the labours of the Christian mind, in seeking a better expres- 
 sion for itself, without un that account reviling the old tents 
 imder which our fathers reposed. This transformation of doc- 
 trines in Protestanism is not a totally new fact. What is now 
 called orthodoxy, that is to say, the right side of the chamber 
 withstanding the claims put forth by modern thought, is itself 
 pervaded by points of view, ideas, beliefs which would have 
 rendered it incompatible with the orthodoxy of the sixteenth 
 century ; and this change we are far from laying to its charge 
 as a reproach. If examples are required, the dogmas of radi- 
 cal corruption, predestination, even the trinity would supply 
 them. To enter the Protestant Church then is to become a 
 citizen of a free country, a country which freely discusses and 
 reforms its constitution every time its revision becomes necces- 
 sary. It is to float on the stream of religious thought which 
 conducts those who give themselves up to the current to 
 lands ever new and smiling, without on that account separat- 
 ing from the original fountain of the waters. I insist on this 
 point because it is solely in the Protestant Church that I see 
 the means of now bringing religion and science into agree- 
 ment. Every well informed Christian, the member of another 
 church, is drawn forward by his knowledge, and backward by 
 his belief. 
 
 And when, filled with the sentiment which history inspires 
 of the development of Christian thought on its immovable 
 basis, namely, the life eternal in progress toward God by 
 spiritual communion with Christ, we personally share in the 
 life of the Church ; then are we happy. We live in the
 
 92 
 
 
 society of the faithful. That society we seek, in that we find 
 delight. There is between the unlettered man. who prays by 
 your side, and yourself, the same distance as exists between 
 the actual moment of Christian thought, and one of its ante- 
 rior moments: — there is this distance and no other: — no 
 rupture, no disdain, no pride. You are both members of the 
 same body. A continuous line leads from him to you, from 
 you to him, as from the past to the present, and perhaps in 
 pure religion he is much your superior. Xot to remove to a 
 distance from him will be of immense advantage to yourself, 
 and on your part, you will contribute toward the elevation of 
 his beliefs. It is pleasant to be able to follow one's wife and 
 children to the house of God. It is pleasant to raise one's 
 thought toward the Almighty Father in common prayer. It 
 is pleasant, while lost in the assembled multitude, to receive 
 one's part of the exhortations, councils, instructions, and 
 solace, offered from the pulpit. It is pleasant to sing the old 
 psalm. It is pleasant to celebrate those great festivals of the 
 Church in which are embodied the sublime ideas of hope, self- 
 renunciation, immortality, progress and spiritual regeneration, 
 in remembrances and symbols of ideal beauty. It is pleasant 
 t<> commune with brothers and sisters, and to warm ourselves 
 with them all at the always genial hearth which Christ keeps 
 burning in his Church. Life takes colour from the rays of 
 the Sun of Christianity : it thereby gains in dignity, in joy, 
 in morals, in energy. The religious sentiment. — that precious 
 sentiment which, as we have seen, contains in itself all the 
 greatest hopes ; — that flower of the soul which the exclusive 
 pursuit of business, or scientific studies, would blight and 
 wither, is continually refreshed by ceaselessly plunging into 
 the grand religious waters of humanity. 
 
 The sum of all this is that the man of our day who unites 
 with scientific development, religious wants, ought to love in
 
 93 
 
 humanity the religion which is its higher life ; in religion, 
 Christianity, which is the supreme revelation of that higher 
 life ; in Christianity, the Christian Church, which is its his- 
 torical development ; in the Christian Church, Protestanism, 
 which represents at once the ancient and the modern elements 
 of the Christian Church ; and finally, in Protestanism, 
 the tendency which is most Protestant, which continues the 
 reformation, and forms the advance guard of religious thought. 
 Thereby you will of course be in the minority. But is 
 not that the condition of all progress ? Nevertheless, though 
 you are the advanced guard, you feel yourself not the less 
 supported by the great body of the army which marches in 
 your rear, and follows you in the conquest of the life eternal. 
 Is it only in religion that the minority leads the rest ?
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE; 
 
 A REVIEW OF THE ATTEMPT OF STRAUSS TO 
 
 DESTROY ITS FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 By Albert Reville, D.D. 
 
 " Fine days for theology, days of hope and joy. were those 
 which brought to an end the first third of our century. The 
 prediction of the patriarch of modern philosophy seemed 
 about to be accomplished, not only in regard to religion in 
 general, but also quite particularly in regard to Christianity. 
 The long quarrel between philosophy and religion appeared 
 happily terminated by a matrimonial alliance between the 
 two great houses, and Hegelianism was saluted as a child of 
 promise, in whose name a new world was . inaugurated, where 
 wolves and lambs would dwell together, while leopards re- 
 posed by the side of kids. The Wisdom of the World, that 
 haughty pagan dame, humbly submitted to baptism, and re- 
 peat a confession of Christian faith; while faith on its side, 
 decreed to her in attestation of sound Christianity, and warmly 
 recommended her to the fraternal welcome ot the Churches. 
 Then might you see youthful theology courageously play with 
 the serpent of doubt, and present to it head and bosom, certain 
 that it possessed the magic formula which could charm its old 
 enemy at pleasure; and even in the circles of a rigorous 
 orthodoxy manceuveres were effected and arms brandished, 
 directly borrowed from the exercise-grounds and arsenals of 
 philosophy.' 1
 
 ;»:> 
 
 With these words of irony, cutting to the quick, did 
 Strauss, in 1840, commence his famous system of Dogma,* 
 the complement of his Leben Jesu (Life of Christ) which 
 was intended by its author to complete the ruin of the ancient 
 edifice, whose base, in his opinion, he had taken away. We 
 must, with him, acknowledge that the illusions, at the mo- 
 ment at which he spoke, were great. Hegelianism was vic- 
 torious all along the line. It was the time when Gabier, 
 Gôschel, Rosenkrantz, " the Evangelical Gazette" itself, as 
 well as Bruno Bauer, (all so much changed since!) enthusi- 
 astically chanted the Hegelian incantation to the sound of 
 sacred organs, crushing with their orthodox disdain poor old 
 rationalism, which tottered to its grave, and little thought 
 that many of its devout despisers would soon find even it 
 much too religious and Christian. I don't know whether in 
 the history of human thought you can find an intellectual 
 intoxication similar to that, which had then taken possession 
 of a host of eminent persons, who plunged delightedly into 
 the heady vapours of the new speculation. Old Mother Church 
 and Science gave each other the kiss of peace. Alas ! the 
 pleasing harmony was not of long duration. Many remember 
 what a crash of thunder broke forth when Strauss (a boon 
 companion with a cold head, who had drunk the new wine to 
 profusion, but had not for a moment lost his balance) thought 
 proper to tear from the goddess of the moment her orthodox 
 masque, and to turn against even the foundations of the sanc- 
 tuary, the complicated machines, with which it had been sur- 
 rounded as by cheavaux de frise, on which the charges of 
 criticism and common sense were in all time to come to spend 
 their force in vain. 
 
 * Die Christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer gcschictliehen Entwicklung und im 
 kampfc mit dor modernen Wiisscnschaft ; dargestellt von Dr. F. Strauss, 1840-41 ; 
 London : NUTT, 270, Strand.
 
 96 
 
 Sunt lacrymae rerum ; one might almost weep over the 
 disappointment. Though we even admit that the dismay 
 was deserved, we cannot avoid a certain sadness of feeling at 
 the sight of enthusiastic illusions dispelled by the inexorable 
 course of events and of logical necessity. Strauss himself, 
 when he traced the lines we have cited above, knew that a few 
 years afterwards he in his turn would pass for a laggard, and 
 his own doctrine would be dubbed with the offensive name of 
 " A Sermon;" which appeared to him humiliating for a work 
 of scientific pretentions. 
 
 After the philosophic inebrity came prostration. It is 
 before all to the orgies of Hegelian speculation, that the 
 orthodox reaction owed its triumphs in the last few years. 
 Among the spirits who did not bend before its haughty 
 menances, a good number took a deep disgust for the extra- 
 vagant idealism with which the age had saturated them, and 
 threw themselves their whole length along in the ruts of a 
 brutal and often cynical materialism. In intellectual matters, 
 Germany carries everything to extremes, and this is the reason 
 why it is so instructive. 
 
 Among the books of a certain real value, fit to shew the theo- 
 logian who is beginning to study the relations of religion and 
 science, at what point the question now stands, the Glaubens- 
 lehre of Strauss is specially instructive. Before this work 
 appeared, it might be imagined that Strauss would compensate 
 by the riches of Christian ideas, for what he took from his- 
 torical Christianity. A fond illusion certainly, but a possible 
 one. His Dogmatik came forth, the Church stopped payment 
 as its author predicted ; and if its ruthless creditor did not 
 push the matter to a bankruptcy, his followers did ; and in 
 truth no other result was possible in a concern, whose books 
 were so badly kept. 
 
 The method which Strauss applied to the old dogmas wa*,
 
 97 
 
 as might be expected, learned and rigorous. His object was 
 to show that each of those dogmas had run its historical race, 
 and given forth all it contained. Armed with the Hegelian 
 principle, that an idea unfolds its consequences along the line 
 of history until its substance is run out, he described each 
 of the Christian dogmas in its rudiments, its formation, its 
 growth, its apogee, and its decline. The germs of its decline 
 might already be discovered in the conditions in which its 
 apogee was reached. At the end of all the chapters you 
 regularly came to the epitaph of the worn out dogma — which 
 was nothing else but an abstract shade of its former self, 
 colourless, hard and dry as a stone, the only durable precipi- 
 tate of the tumultuous mixture of the dogmatic notions of 
 the past. Naturally this wreck was always an Hegelian 
 apothegm. 
 
 After all Strauss has # rendered great services. When a 
 metaphysical speculation, great in itself and singularly seduc- 
 tive for men of strong minds, adds to that powerful prestige, 
 the prestige of an apparent harmony with the inmost wants of 
 the conscience, and the heart, then the ideal seems attained and 
 the name of absolute truth is on the point of being pronounced. 
 And this is always to be regretted. As long as humanity 
 shall see unroll before it the long future, which every thing yet 
 concurs to promise, the pretensions of closing the labours of 
 thought will always be suspicious. If we were compelled to 
 allow it, we must exchange our western love of progress for 
 Chinese immoveability, and condemn ourselves to sail in 
 search of no more new lands. Hegelianism will always re- 
 main one of the most imposing monuments of intelligence 
 and its influence on the direction of the human mind will 
 never cease to be felt. Henceforth the thinker lacks some- 
 thing who has not strengthened himself in the robust exercises 
 of that gymnasium. But he would also lack much were he 
 
 G
 
 98 
 
 not able to give himself an account why he did not remain 
 there. Hegel did not like criticism. A massive logician, an 
 extreme généraliser, he rolled the huge block of his specula- 
 tive dialectives over the timid objections of experience and of 
 history. In the disdainful contempt with which he acted, may 
 he not have felt a presentiment that in the end the gnats 
 would kill the lion whom they tormented ? This, however, is 
 certain, namely, that the historical tendency, that which 
 seeks in the study of man and in the history of the race, the 
 true explanation of man's destiny ; this tendency, which by its 
 very nature is critical, has not been able to breathe at its 
 ease in the Hegelian corslet of iron. Inspired by the senti- 
 ment of the general harmony of things, bringing into relief, 
 not only generalities, but also individualities in their positive 
 reality, it knew not how always to bend to a system which 
 outrages the universal aspirations of the human mind, and 
 which swallows up individuals in their several species. With- 
 out in any way renouncing the idealism which ought always 
 to be the end and the vivifying salt of man's researches, the 
 historical tendency refuses to quit the solid ground of reality 
 and experience. Strauss then has himself accomplished an 
 excellent criticism of the philosophy which he adored, in 
 showing, with unrelenting rigour, how much, or rather how 
 little, of the grand historical c'evelopment of religious and 
 Christian thought his system allowed to remain. 
 
 Rigidly brought back to its own true religious contents, 
 Hegelianism is made a bankrupt at the suit of human nature. 
 We desire to give some precision to these too general con- 
 siderations, by showing their application to one of the capital 
 points of religious thought, as it is treated in the works of 
 Strauss, of which we have spoken. By this specimen, those 
 of our readers to whom this work is not known, will be able 
 to form some idea of the whole. Indeed, the same point of
 
 99 
 
 view and the same method pervade the entire volumns. In 
 consequence the system if unstitched in one part must fall to 
 pieces in all. 
 
 The chapter which we take for our subject corresponds to 
 that which, in an ordinary system of divinity, would be entitled 
 " On Eschatology," or " The Final Issues." With Strauss, 
 this subject resolves itself into this Hegelian idea : — " the 
 temporary appearance of the divine, according to the moment 
 of the future, as a religious hope." This, if it is put into less 
 obscure terms, may mean that the divine life, manifesting itself 
 in man, limited as to his individual life, produces the sentiment, 
 the notion of immortality. But this immortality has nothing 
 in reserve for the individual who is the negative, transitory, 
 fundamentally false element, the mere form, destined to be 
 broken in pieces in passing into the universal, and so becom- 
 ing divine. In other words, Strauss, in the name of Hege- 
 lianism, rigorously deduced in its consequences, denies all 
 conscious and personal survival of the individual after the death 
 of the body. It is only the human race which is divine and 
 immortal. 
 
 The following is the way in which he announces (p. 100) 
 the object which he purposes, in this the last part of his 
 Treatise ; " From the concrete tissue of the biblical and ecclesi- 
 astical traditions, namely: the return of the Messiah, the 
 ressurrection of the body, the final judgement, paradise and 
 hell ; modern reflexion has drawn the abstract thread of its 
 doctrine of immortality, to attach thereto the I (the individ- 
 ual) above the dreaded abyss of annihilation. We Bhall 
 follow this course. We shall deccribe the formation and the 
 decomposition of the eschatology of the church, so as to 
 ascertain what the thread of the modern belief in immortality 
 may continue to be." 
 
 In an early paragraph, accordingly, the author sums np 
 
 g 2
 
 100 
 
 the biblical eschatology, on which the church has built its 
 own. He calls to mind how the worthies of the Old T< 
 nient, as well as all those of the primitive ages, foresaw after 
 death only a vague state of sleep, alike without joy and grief, 
 and equally without any return to life ; and confined their 
 expectation of divine recompense to the course of their actual 
 existence on earth. It was in the mind of the Hebrews that 
 the first rudimental notion of a future resurrection of the 
 dead sprang into existence, in the depths of Sheol, .the hidden 
 dark repository of the shades of the departed. The notion 
 was of late origin: the first trace of the belief of a resurrection 
 is found in the book of Daniel fxii. 2 seq. ) The second book 
 of Maccabees shows us how popular the belief became among 
 the Jews, and how the idea of a distributive remuneration 
 connected itself immediately therewith. This resurrection, 
 according to the ancient shemitic idea of life, namely, as 
 having its source in the blood (Gen. ix. 4.) must of neces 
 be that of the body. On this point the Alexandrian Judaism 
 sharply distinguished itself from the Palestinian, in this man- 
 ner : regarding the body as the prison of the spirit, it saw in 
 the spirit the real factor of life, and in consequence considered 
 death as a deliverance. In the age of Christ, the Pharisees 
 appeared to have professed the Palestinian, or strictly Jewish, 
 doctrine, while the Essenians approached the Alexandrine, 
 and the Sadducees denied both. At the same time, Pharisa- 
 ism seems to have admitted a provisional retribution in Sheol 
 or Hades, anteriorly to the final resurrection. 
 
 The New Testament only contains the eschatological doc- 
 trine of the Pharisee^, thongh we are not able to refer to one 
 and the same body all the declarations which it contains. 
 We must, however, specify the teachings of Jesus respecting 
 the cessation of sexual distinctions and the analogy of the 
 future state with that of the angels, together with the theory
 
 101 
 
 of Paul respecting the relation of the spiritual body with the 
 animal one — which is to the former what the grain is to the 
 fully blown plant. For the rest, all the New Testament is 
 written in the expectation of the end of the world, of the 
 immediate resurrection of the dead, and of the judgment to 
 be pronounced on the assembled nations by the triumphant 
 Christ. Paul, not less than the Apocalypse, believes in the 
 trumpet which was ere long to sound. The book of Revela- 
 tion positively teaches the reign of a thousand years (the 
 Millenium) and puts within a Christian frame the entire 
 picture of the Rabbinical eschatology. Rewards and punish- 
 ments, alike everlasting, are reserved respectively for the 
 righteous and the wicked ; and Strauss denies all logical 
 value to the proofs alleged to support the thesis of a final 
 universal restoration. As shewing the germ of a discordance, 
 under which the dogma of the church will continually suffer, 
 the fact deserves note, that the New Testament oscillates 
 between the two ideas of a judgment which immediately 
 follows death, fixing for ever the destiny of the individual, 
 and of another judgment at the end of time, which appears 
 superfluous, the moment the first is received as a reality. 
 
 Here then is the base of the eschatological doctrine of the 
 Church. The earliest centuries of the Christian era shows us 
 that Christian thought decidedly rejects the old shemitic idea 
 of the unconscious sleep between death and the general resur- 
 rection. An endeavour has been made to unite the two 
 conceptions. It is said that all souls go into sheol or 
 hades, and that hades is divided into two regions — one, hell, 
 which receives the impious; the other, Abraham's bosom, 
 which opens its gates to the righteous exclusively. The latter 
 is commonly distinguished from paradise — a celestial locality, 
 to which the martyrs only have access before the resurrection 
 and the final judgment. It is also believed that Christ
 
 102 
 
 having descended into hell, conducted thence into paradise 
 the just men of the ancient covenant, and the door which he 
 opened, (the key of which he confided to Peter) allowed 
 a number of saints and monks to pass afterwards. 
 
 During the middle ages, and in the degree in which the 
 Church was removed from Christian antiquity, the notion of 
 sheol disappeared more and more, and the idea got estab- 
 lished that the souls of the deceased were, immediately on 
 death, transported according to their deserts, to either heaven 
 or hell. A Pope (John xxh) ineur*s the suspicion even of 
 heresy because he maintained that the elect, now dead, 
 do not yet enjoy the full vision of God. This rendered still 
 more vague the idea to be formed of the last judgment ; and 
 that the more because it was admitted that, according to the 
 old system, the blessed and the cursed are able to behold one 
 another ; so that the last judgment was only a perfectly 
 superfluous proclamation of that which was already univer- 
 sally known. Tims the judgment which follows death in- 
 sensibly absorbs the last judgment, and the immortality of 
 the soul absorbs as insensibly the resurrection of the body. 
 
 The last absorption, however, was long in coming. The 
 doctrine of the Fathers, of the scholars of the middle ages, of 
 the Protestant doctors, constantly supposes that the actual 
 body will rise quite entire. And Strauss giggles over all the 
 two-sided conceptions which may be gleaned on the field of 
 the history of Church Doctrines, from that which defined the 
 number of hairs which would be restored to the bald, to the 
 opinion which promised to all the same height of person as 
 was that of Christ, according to a gross misinterpretation of 
 Ephesians iv.. 31. In particular, the resurrection of the 
 entrails gave the doctors of the Church a thread to twist and 
 untwist, and Saint Thomas considered it his duty to make 
 their contents consist of perfumed essences. Moreover,
 
 103 
 
 inextricable difficulties constantly arose from the idea of so 
 man)- organs to be restored to the dead which would be of no 
 service. The Fathers and the scholastic doctors were not less 
 embarrassed as to men mutilated by wild beasts, or, a yet 
 more thorny matter, devoured by other men. Augustin 
 restored the litigated flesh to its original proprietor, and held 
 that God would, by a creative act, supply what was lacking to 
 the actual tenant. Another cause of perplexity arose from 
 the purely incorporeal qualities which were ascribed to 
 rescuscitated bodies, — such as immutability, insensibility, 
 omnipresence. Scarcely was the conclusion avoided that 
 bodies which were invisible, impalpable, unlimited, in either 
 time or space, were no longer bodies. 
 
 The spiritualistic opposition to the resurrection of the 
 body dates far back in the church. The New Testament 
 touches some portion of it, and the Gnostics openly pro- 
 claimed the antagonism. Origen took a middle path, keeping 
 close to the teachings of Paul in 1 Corinthians xv., 36 seq. 
 As a true Platonican, he presumed that the future body would 
 be an ethereal body, round in form, so that Justinian thought 
 it his duty to anathematise those who hold that the raised 
 bodies would not be able to stand upright. Scotus Erigena 
 went so far as to deny all form to bodies in the next world. 
 At the same time, these are only insulated attempts, calling 
 forth no great response in the church. The philosophy of 
 Descartes introduced a new set of conceptions. Every idea 
 of a proper resurrection was set aside, and the eighteenth 
 century spoke of only the immortality of the soul. But 
 since by reflexion men found that a spirit without body could 
 not have either true life or true consciousness, they admitted 
 that the defunct soul might take a new body, but in another 
 manner, and by using different substances to those which com- 
 pose our present bodies. But who or what guarantees the
 
 104 
 
 identity of conscience? An ethereal body, intermediate in 
 this life between the soul and the material body, as proposed 
 by Priestley,* Jung Stilling, Eschenmayer, and which should 
 accompany the soul to the other world ? How many 
 unfounded hypotheses ! and how far are we from the state- 
 ments of the New Testament and of the ancient church ! 
 Besides, either this ethereal body is a product of the material 
 body, and the latter dissolving, its product vanishes ; or it is 
 its producer, and the vanishing of the material body is the 
 evident proof that its producer has equally vanished, f 
 
 It is in vain that in our times Goschel and Weisse have 
 endeavoured to give an Hegelian sense to the resurrection. 
 Marheineke and Blasche have proclaimed the sole idea which 
 can be at one with modern speculation, namely, the resurrec- 
 tion is an eternal fact ; it is man's consciousness in the 
 process of formation, and the general resurrection is the 
 universal consciousness coming to itself in the individual. 
 Whether the individual continues to subsist or disappears 
 what matters ? It is not he that is to become eternal, and 
 others will come to take his place. 
 
 Another important element of the ancient eschatology, 
 the wreck of which has been effected, is the great drama 
 which of old filled so many Christian souls with the prospect 
 
 * I do not know what authority Strauss had for ascribing to Priestley this 
 gauze-work intermediary between the soul and the body ; but I do know that in 
 the ninth section of Priestley"s " Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit" the author 
 distinctly disavows, and undertakes to confute the very idea in opposition to 
 Wollaston and Hartley. See Rutt's Edition of Priestley's Works, vol 14, p. 276 seq. 
 
 Editor. 
 
 tThe author of this critique appends to this the following note : " Doubtless the 
 hypothesis which Strauss opposes is not proved. But his dilemma does not hit the 
 mark. In the first place, it is possible that the dissolution of the body, as of the 
 grain, may have its product, its fruit ; in the second, it is possible that the produc- 
 tive principle of the body may be called to other developments, and let its first 
 organism fall." Editor.
 
 Klf) 
 
 of its awful scenes — the end and the renewal of the world. 
 The general belief formerly was that all things would be 
 dissolved by fire, and that from the conflagration a new world 
 would arise. The fathers and the scholastic divines indulged 
 thereon in the same extravagant reveries as those with which 
 they had treated the theme of the resurrection of the body. 
 There resulted a future world which was the re-production of 
 the present one, without having any of its properties. Then, 
 all this eschatology moved within the circle of the astrono- 
 mical notions of antiquity. No hesitation was felt in holding 
 that the heavenly bodies would also sink in the great cata- 
 clysm. Why indeed should they remain ? They had no longer 
 anything on which to shine. But after the teachings of 
 Copernicus amendments could not be avoided. Some autho- 
 rities stopped with the destruction of the solar system ; others 
 carried their admissions no further than that of our own 
 planet. The latter fancied that they had support in certain 
 astronomical and geological phenomena. But how would it 
 be with the burnt up earth ? Michaelis hoped that the fire 
 might spare some fertile region. No doubt, in a speculative 
 point of view, our earth, which had a beginning, must come 
 to an end ; for a being which, having a commencement, does 
 not cease to be, would augment the sum total of being in the 
 universe — a contradictory idea. But referred to this revolu- 
 tion of the planetary orbs — one moment in the ten thousand 
 moments of the eternal transition — the end of the world has 
 no longer the least relation with our individual destiny ; men 
 in future live on without thinking of it ; and the true end of 
 the world, the true philosophic dogma, consists in the feeling 
 that the old world of appearances and tumultuous passions 
 is come to an end for him who knows how to rise to the 
 notion of the absolute unity, immanent in the multiplicity of 
 things.
 
 
 106 
 
 A last chapter is appropriated to what may be called the 
 end of the end of the dogmatists, that is, the last judgment 
 and salvation, with its correlative damnation. All the ortho- 
 dox fathers and the protestant doctors always represented the 
 last judgment in the way in which it is described in the New 
 Testament — as an outward event, and the tribunal of Christ, 
 as being set up after the manner of earthly tribunals in 
 courts of justice. Origen and some other authorities, however, 
 inclined to the opinion that the great assize would be rather 
 an internal event, the great crisis of conscience. Neverthe- 
 less, the assembling of all men in one place to be judged 
 exteriorly remained intact. The real meaning of this dogma 
 was unveiled, when at last critics learned that the judgment 
 of the world is nothing else than its history, in which God's 
 spirit continually returns to separate the true from the false r 
 and the good from the bad. But then, this continual judg- 
 ment, from the fact of its being continual, excluded the idea 
 of the last judgment. 
 
 The same materialism which characterised all the primi- 
 tive eschatology appears in the notions entertained of the 
 fate of the elect and the reprobate. Nevertheless, from the 
 time of Origen, chiliasm, so general before, took a step back, 
 and a very arbitrary notion assumed a place among the re- 
 ceived ideas. Whilst "the worm which dietli not" was 
 considered a pure symbol, they took the eternal flames as 
 literal, and by a curious association, " the outer darkness.'"' 
 Origen was very roughly handled for having assimilated them 
 to the torments of a guilty conscience. " The beatific vision,'' 
 or the vision of God, most generally comprised what was 
 thought of the felicity of the elect, and that vision ordinarily 
 consisted in a perfect knowledge of God — the true paradise 
 of the theologians. The joys and the pains of the other 
 world were absolute, without interchange, without end. But
 
 io: 
 
 then the question came up how a perpetual joy could be 
 experienced in the long run, since habit dulls all joys, and a 
 finite being can taste of joys only on the supposition of a 
 desire which is not immediately satisfied. Other difficulties 
 arose as to the absolute separation of the elect and the 
 reprobate. After all, the former owed their perfect happiness 
 only to their entire separation from the latter ; the solidarity 
 of the human race is broken asunder with all the good effects 
 of which it is the indispensable condition ; and it was 
 impossible not to connect the weal of the elect with a marked 
 diminution of the bases of moral progress. It was even 
 necessary to ascribe to them a perfect selfishness in regard to 
 their former brethren. For, according to the old dogma, the 
 elect and the reprobate could contemplate the one the other, 
 and the former were required by the system to take pleasure 
 in witnessing the rigorous execution of the divine justice on 
 the latter. Origen was a great heretic, but a noble character, 
 when he laid it down that Christ himself could not be com- 
 pletely happy until the last sinner should have been restored 
 to peace. It was only at a modern date that the idea of the 
 same doctor was revived, as to an eternal progress, in opposi- 
 tion to the old notion, which would have it that the beatitude 
 of the elect was immediately full and consummate. Only it 
 must have been observed that progress necessarily supposes 
 discontent with the present, a desire to quit the present, and 
 an effort to stand some steps in advance. Consequently the 
 idea of beatitude and the idea of progress are incompatible.* 
 The origin of the Catholic dogma of purgatory consists 
 
 *Here the hypereriticism of Strauss goes beyond the truth by exaggerating it. 
 It is not less true that a finite being is always happy in making progress, wha 
 the theoretical conditions of progress ; and happiness being nothing else than the 
 development of life, the beatitude of a finite being necessarily consists in the con- 
 stant development of his aptitudes. In such a case, present imperfection is absorbed 
 in the prospect of perfection.
 
 1 08 
 
 in the transference into the other world of the lire which, 
 according to 1 Corinthians, iii., 13, is to try every man's 
 work, and which the ancient church in general understood of 
 our present earthly trials. Augustin did not see why such a 
 fire should not exist on the other side of the tomb as well as 
 on this. By little and little the lire of the other side absorbed 
 the fire of this side, and, moreover, was understood in a very 
 material sense. Protestantism, relying on scripture, and 
 man's conscience, revolted at the numerous absurdities there- 
 with connected, categorically denied every kind of purgatory, 
 but was somewhat in trouble to explain how the soul, always 
 in reality affected with sin, though ideally justified, came 
 before Christ in a purified condition. 
 
 The eternity of hell torments, proclaimed by orthodox 
 theology, whether Catholic or Protestant, has never ceased to 
 grieve the human heart. Origen denied it. Jerome exempted 
 bad Christians from the penalty, while he held it firm against 
 good Pagans. At a later day. under the impression that it is 
 nonsense to speak of endless penalties apart from equally 
 endless transgressions, as their cause, a tendency was mani- 
 fested to identify eternal punishment with eternal sin 
 (Leibnitz). Joined to the admission of free will, this belief 
 brought that of the hypothetical eternity of punishment. 
 Man shall be wretched as long as he sins, and, besides, he will 
 be eternally inferior to those who have gone before him in the 
 good way. But, besides that/ this was not at ail the meaning of 
 the scriptural declarations, and of the dogmas of the church, 
 who could declare that, as it is seen in this state, those who 
 worked only the last hour might not overtake those who 
 began to work early in the morning ? What a mechanical idea 
 of the mind must the defenders of this view have had ! 
 
 This is the reason why the final restoration of all things, 
 already taught by Origen, advantageously took the place of
 
 109 
 
 this eternal mechanism. At the end of time there re-appeared 
 then great A=A, with its monstrous monotony, so thoroughly, 
 that Origen, not being able to endure the idea, admits for spirit- 
 ual beings, an unlimited series of moral falls, the causes of 
 successive worlds, the destiny of which was to be analogous to 
 that of the present world. In our days, Nitzsch proclaimed 
 the possibility, Schleiermacher, the firm hope of a final restora- 
 tion. But sentimental platitude has taken from this hope its 
 early charm, without preserving to it the grandeur it drew 
 from the bold speculations of Origen. The Result : all these 
 ideas of future happiness and woe are only abstractions, and it 
 is much better to express them in their crudity, as did the 
 ancient church, than to give them an appearance of reality by 
 arbitrary representations. It is, in actual reality, that we are 
 to find hell and heaven. Not the good, but goodness is 
 eternal ; damnation is the pure negative of badness ; the 
 restoration of the damned is badness negatived by goodness, 
 but ever coming forth out of that negation. 
 
 If the reader has attentively followed this critical history 
 of the doctrine of " The Last Events," he will have apprehended 
 its method, and what I may call its constant rhythm. On 
 each of the points raised you obtain at the end of the develop- 
 ment what you denied at the beginning. At present, we 
 believe in an immediate conscious immortality ; which is pre- 
 cisely the opposite of that belief in the primeval Sheol, on 
 which the different stages of the doctrine built themselves. In 
 respect to immortality; we expect only that of the soul, and 
 without much repugnance we resign our mortal remains to the 
 four elements. This is an idea completely opposed to that of 
 the ancient belief in the resurrection of the body. We have 
 no longer any notion of what the end of the world can have to 
 do with our eternal destiny, while, with the first Christians, 
 the two ideas were closely connected together, being necessary
 
 110 
 
 each to each. And, as a faithful disciple of Hegel, Strauss 
 acts in such a way as to show that the contradiction which is 
 as clear as day. if you fix your sight on the two ends of the 
 chain, insensibly comes into view in the proportion in which 
 the later links follow the former. From thesis to antithesis, 
 each calling forth the other, you go all round the circumfer- 
 ence, and at the moment of your arrival, you perceive that you 
 are at the point diametrically opposite to that at which you 
 started. Or it is like a sun-beam decomposed by a prism ; 
 you may pass from the violet to the red through a number of 
 intermediate shades, each of which is so like its two neighbour- 
 ing shades that you can scarcely distinguish them. 
 
 The eschatalogical idea is then exhausted. In future it 
 has nothing more to yield. Its debris are three or four specu- 
 lative consolations which we have indicated as we came along : 
 the continual return of the universal consciousness to itself: 
 the end of the world already real for him who by reason unites 
 himself to the eternal unity, the judgment of history, and the 
 negation of badness by goodness. 
 
 And after this for Strauss to reproach modern theology 
 with feeding on abstractions ! 
 
 If I had the honour to meet that man whom I must ad- 
 mire for his fine talents and respect for his misfortunes, I 
 should be curious to learn from him if his ideas on this point 
 are still the same. It is said that he does not like to converse 
 on theological questions, and that he wishes he had never 
 occupied himself with them. Nevertheless, I would venture 
 t<> ask him whether the beatitude he promises J o the Hegelian 
 disciple is not at least as monotonous as that of the " plurnp- 
 cheeked angels seen in Catholic paintings." What a notion ! 
 to be condemned, in order that you may satisfy your spiritual 
 thirst, to eternally contemplate Moloch as, eternally revolving 
 abort himself, he throws up his syllogisms in the eternal mirror
 
 Ill 
 
 by which he is surrounded. For myself, I should prefer the 
 paradise of the old Puritans, who hoped to pass eternity in 
 singing psalms. 
 
 The fealty with which Hegelianism identifies its abstract 
 generalisations with real beings, and not things, is something 
 amazing. There are no living beings, there is life ; no minds, 
 but mind. Hegelianism is a continual personification of meta- 
 physical catagories. This fact has been its death. By this 
 it has made rebound, in all its vigour, the spring, whose 
 mighty force it has disowned; I mean human nature, which 
 is individualist, fond of realities, impatient of abstractions. 
 Doubtless the history of the eschatological doctrine accom- 
 plishes its own criticism, as does the history of every dogma ; 
 for, not without reason, does the human mind modify its re- 
 ligious representations. One after the other it breaks the 
 forms which it made as receptacles of a deposit which it is so ol I 
 far from losing that it understands the said deposit the better 
 in the degree in which it better understands the forms with 
 which it is surrounded. But from the fact that the final form 
 is contrary to the initial one, does it follow that the sub- 
 stance which has passed through all the intermediate modifi- 
 cations, is reduced to zero, according to the argument of 
 the chapter of which we have given an analysis ? Is it 
 inevitable that the sublime hope of the religious man, de- 
 claring that death is not a curtain behind which lies a 
 boundless sphere of darkness, should terminate in those 
 formulas of stone, which destroy the race in destroying each 
 individual in turn ? And is it not instructive that we have 
 the right to reproach the best accredited supporter of modern 
 unbelief with the same faults for which w T e blame the rigorous 
 orthodox, — that is with confounding the form of dogma with 
 their substance ? 
 
 For example, let us take the dogmatic evolution to which
 
 112 
 
 the method of the famous teacher applies in the most specious 
 manner, that which leads from the total resurrection of the 
 actual body, coming forth cap-a-pie from the bowels of the 
 earth at the end of time, which, we say, leads from that con- 
 ception to our present hope of immortality. Evidently a 
 palpable contradiction exists between the two ; and we may 
 even declare that there is not a single point of concidence 
 between this representation and that. But after all, on what 
 does the contradiction fall ? Solely on the different forms, 
 given in different ages, to one and the same thing — the senti- 
 ment that our individual destiny passes beyond the dissolution 
 of the body. As to the sentiment itself, it is found as entire, 
 as vigorous ( and even more definitely apprehended) at the ex- 
 tremity of the chain, as at its beginning. In good logic this 
 would be a strong presumption in its favour. That must be 
 something of a very solid nature, which lives on through 
 modifications so remarkable, and we ought rather to admire 
 the identity of the substance, which appears so visible in two 
 forms so contrary to each other. 
 
 In fact, the law-suit which we carry on against this ap- 
 plication of the Hegelian dialectics, we might turn against 
 Hegelianism itself. It is gnawed to death by abstractions. 
 The idea which forms the centre of the system, that of b' 
 ing, or the state of passing from the subject to the object, this 
 constant development in reality consist of mere phantoms. 
 I think J. H. Fichte was the first to bring into view this weak 
 side of the system. In order that this transition should be a 
 reality, there ought of necessity to be some permanent element, 
 some identical thing, which extends through all the transfor- 
 mation*. This, truly speaking, would be the object which 
 becomes or passes on, modifying itself continually by its rela- 
 tions with other things, but never losing its own essential 
 realitv. Without this the wheol lacks an axle-tree : the
 
 metamorphoses take place without a living soul, and you 
 have nothing except a mechanical succession of forms having no 
 internal relations, and building themselves the one upon the 
 other. In such a case there is no becoming, for nothing be- 
 comes ; there is no transition, for nothing passes over. 
 Strauss, in reducing to zero, the evolutions of religious 
 thought in regard to a conscious and personal immortality, 
 has disowned this perpetual element which, nevertheless, is 
 the soul of the movement ; by this element I mean the not 
 only general but individual tendency of each of us towards 
 the infinite, — a tendency to which man has always paid obedi- 
 ence, since man has always been religious, and of which be- 
 lief in a future life, under whatever forms it makes its ap- 
 pearance, is only a perfectly natural prolongation. If ever the 
 Hegelian dogmas could be embodied in a traditional doctrine, 
 the world would then see human nature protest against the 
 system by a host of heresies. 
 
 Moreover, Strauss himself, is well aware that on this point 
 he has not completely realised his programme. By an excep- 
 tion, he adds to his eschatological chapter an appendix, 
 specially devoted to the criticism of modern theories of im- 
 mortality. He perceives that there is yet a very solid ring, 
 by which the consciousness of the present generation links 
 itself to the chain of ancient hope. In its turn we must ex- 
 amine this supplement. 
 
 The author begins by describing, with his biting irony, 
 that which may be the most sacred hope of a religious trust, 
 quite as well as the selfish calculations of a superstitious one. 
 He pretends that in these days Christians would allow their 
 God and their Christ to be taken from them rather than their 
 survival beyond the tomb. Their Credo comes to this, that 
 after the criticism applied by Kant to the old beliefs, these 
 three objects remain — God, liberty, and immortality, and that
 
 114 
 
 the greatest of them is immortality. In this fond hope, modern 
 sentimentalism dreams its dream of " meeting again in 
 another and a better world.'" which flourish in so many fune- 
 real inscriptions, so many letters of condolence, so many ser- 
 mons, so many romances. Only they always take care to 
 leave out what would happen should one of the two, who are 
 to meet again, be reserved for the infernal regions, while the 
 other is admitted to the celestial. When Christ spoke of the 
 "many mansions of his Fathers house," (John xiv. 2.) the 
 credulous fancy that he may have had in view the suns, and 
 the nebulae of the modern astronomy. They thus fabricate 
 for themselves a paradise of tourists, as of old there was a 
 paradise of beadles. In a word, in the midst of the ruins of 
 all the ancient eschatology, the individual I has deluded itself 
 with the notion of remaining on its legs, and of preserving 
 out of its own monstrous egotism what, and only what, it pleas- 
 ed. It is just, that Eichter made a frank and simple negation 
 of a future personal life succeed the silence of Hegel and of his 
 earliest disciples, and dismissed the immortal I to sleep 
 with the ancient divinities which he had so scornfully broken 
 in pieces. The mystic obscurities of the Hegelians of the right, 
 Weisse, Goschel. &c, could not prevent Eichter having logic 
 on his side ; and the future will more and more confirm the 
 alliance. It is after a deluge of sarcasms of this nature that the 
 pitiless critic passes on to the proofs commonly advanced in be- 
 half of immortality. 
 
 The most popular of these proofs is the sentiment of a neces- 
 sary moral retribution. If the dead do not outlive their bodies 
 11 let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." It is the fear 
 of future punishment and the hope of future reward, it is these 
 alone, which can sustain us in the struggle against evil. 
 Spinoza first had the honour of refuting this selfish utilitari- 
 anism, by showing that good ought always to be done for the 

 
 115 
 
 love of good, and of God, and that salvation can consist in no- 
 thing else than sanctity itself. Good being conformed to the 
 true nature of man, both is and produces happiness. Calvin 
 himself, in one of his better moments, said that "it sufficed to 
 reflect on the paternal goodness of God, even were there no 
 hell, to have more horror at the idea of offending him than at 
 the idea of suffering the worst kind of death." In a word, 
 he who needs a future recompense to make him virtuous, is 
 only on the steps of the temple of virtue ; he is not morally 
 ripe, and has no right to handle the question. If we do good 
 to get good our good is no longer good, and it matters little 
 whether the reward is placed on this side the grave or that. 
 Self-interest is in either case the real motive. 
 
 Setting aside the unreasonable raillery with which Strauss 
 has tried to season his reasoning, which is truly close and 
 vigorous, I cannot help, I avow, being of his opinion when he 
 exposes the weak, and not very moral, side of the vulgar 
 argument. At the bottom, the Protestant doctrine which 
 assigns to us the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ as the 
 sole ground of sanctification, opposing, meanwhile, every idea 
 of human merit, — has it not directed men's minds towards a 
 more just idea of the essence of morality ? To do good solely 
 through love to God — is this logically different from doing 
 good because you love good, and because you are happy in 
 doing that which you love to do ? And yet whence comes the 
 vivid sentiment shared by men of the most distinguished 
 sanctity, that the hope of happiness to come compensates for 
 the bitterness of the present, and powerfully encourages him 
 who wrestles with temptation ? Certainly I admire Spinoza 
 greatly ; I admire his genius and his character. Neverthe- 
 less, I cannot put him on the same level as Paul, much less 
 on the same level as Jesus. I fear finding at the bottom of 
 the solitary of the Hague a certain speculative quietism, the 
 
 h 2
 
 116 
 
 majesty of which is imposing but the egotism distressing 
 Spinoza cannot be my ideal. He is too fond of giving his 
 thought repose, when fatigued with deep meditation, in watch - 
 ing flies and spiders in their conflicts. Spinoza can suffer for 
 truth. His resignation has something antique in it, which 
 commands my respect, without, however, moving me strongly. 
 I prefer, I must prefer, the Messiah, who places on the com- 
 mon table the cup in which he has for the last time drunk the 
 juice of the vine, and declares to his associates, with a moved 
 voice and an inspired countenance, that he will drink it with 
 them, after a new manner, in the Kingdom of God. In a 
 word, stoical resignation is great, but greater still is eternal 
 hope. Besides, is it difficult to find the reconciliation between 
 the strictly moral point of view, which demands good done for 
 good, God worshipped for God, without any interested motive, 
 and confidence in a better life to come ? What, if in the 
 future life as in the present, good is always true happiness, 
 but with this difference, that this happiness, quite real on earth 
 as in heaven, has no longer to suffer from the bitter drug of 
 contradictions, iniquities, and griefs of this poor world ? If 
 consequently I do good, not with reference to a reward ex- 
 ternal to good, but in the assurance that good is my destiny, 
 my true and imperishable nature, and that to succumb to the 
 temptations of sin is to refuse the sole true happiness, which 
 is sanctity ; can there be here any question of an interested 
 motive ? Or do we not rather find in this point of view the 
 harmony of moral obligation on the one side, and the desire 
 of happiness inherent in every living thing on the other. 
 Whether we think of the future or of the present life, good 
 is never loved or sought except for itself. I, in my turn, may 
 express my surprise that so able a reasoner as Strauss has 
 passed over this view of the question in silence. Perhaps he 
 would say that, put thus, it is indifferent to the problem
 
 117 
 
 av it li which he is occupied ; that the identity of true happiness 
 and moral good being granted, there is not the least reason 
 why holiness, which is unhappy here, should be happy here- 
 after. But again, would he be deceived, or at least he would 
 forget that then we are on the road to the rational transfor- 
 mation of the popular argument. Happiness to any living 
 creature whatever, can be nothing else than the normal de- 
 velopment of life, or, which is tantamount, the realisation of 
 its destiny. Consequently, every living creature ought to 
 find happiness in attaining the full realisation of its normal 
 life. At present the higher destiny of man, which is sanctity, 
 is necessarily in conflict with the conditions of his terrestrial 
 existence, and this conflict unavoidably produces sufferings on 
 the part of the just. Therefore, either nature, which, accord- 
 ing to Hegel and Strauss, is logic, and which must be logic 
 for every one who believes in God, — either nature flatly con- 
 tradicts herself, or the sufferings of sanctity are the conditions 
 of its emancipation in the prospect of a state of things more 
 favourable to its realisation. There, as every where else, our 
 higher life has a painful parturition for its antecedent. 
 
 At present there is something that we have a right to 
 require from those who deny a personal immortality, I mean 
 the final abandonment of accusation of egotism, of a puerile 
 attachment to life, of a utilitarian morality, which they are 
 continually directing against its defenders. After all, I do 
 not know that the greatest saints are on the side of those by 
 whom the doctrine is denied, and it is a fact to be regretted 
 that the denial, whether it be philosophical or the reverse, 
 often serves as an excuse, or a pretext for the grossest ma- 
 terialism. It is thus possible to throw and throw back im- 
 putations for a long time without advancing the question one 
 step. The only thing to be done is to combat that view 
 which makes virtue a bill of exchange drawn on eternity
 
 118 
 
 but we have just seen that the problem to be solved is at the 
 bottom very independent of so peurile a calculation. Besides, 
 if it is absurd to declare a thing true because it smiles on our 
 secret desires, it is not less so, to conclude from that co- 
 incidence that it is false. Because temperance is the best 
 safeguard of my health, and in consequence accords with my 
 interests properly understood, I am not to conclude that I am 
 wrong in being temperate. If experience proves that frank- 
 ness and fidelity, in spite of the enemies they call forth, are 
 the best means of making true friends, that is no reason why 
 I should turn traitor or trickster. Why wish to remonstrate 
 with nature ? The desire of happiness is inseparable from life ; 
 moral obligation, from conscience. Leave them to direct 
 themselves towards the mysterious point where the finger of 
 God has fixed their meeting. Finally, I am fully justified in 
 declaring that, in the name of certain metaphysical formulas, to 
 extinguish the most radiant hope that can illumine the soul, 
 a hope which colours life and death with joyous splendour, 
 which authorises me never to acquiesce in moral imperfection, 
 to appeal from every unrighteous deed, to console all severe 
 griefs, to dry the most scorching tears, to murmur to every 
 one I love, the sweet " We shall meet again " — even though 
 Strauss should accuse us of sentimentality — homo sum, I am 
 a man, and I therefore say that this is one of those prospects 
 which ought not to be renounced until it can no longer be 
 retained honourably. 
 
 I am well aware that such is his pretension. To him the 
 belief in personal immortality appears condemned by philo- 
 sophic reflexion. Nevertheless in the first part of his refuta- 
 tion I have seen nothing like victory. I have seen only 
 reasons for modifying the ordinarily received form of a very 
 popular argument ; and, what does not surprise me, that 
 modification has for its result — to change the argument into
 
 119 
 
 a particular application of the great principle at which we are 
 coming, and against which Strauss appears to have in vain 
 directed the strokes of his keen dialectics. 
 
 I wish to say something on the teleological argument which 
 is at bottom the only convincing one, or at least which gives a 
 positive value to the arguments of detail which are sometimes 
 unwisely presented apart from their common principle. It is not 
 difficult to see that if the individual destiny of each of us sur- 
 passes death, no one of us is finished, no one has completely rea- 
 lised his existence before death. By the same reason, from the 
 experimental fact that no man is finished before death, we are 
 justified to conclude that all are destined to surpass death. If 
 now it appears that the individual carries in himself an in- 
 exhaustible mine of possible developments, aptitudes, and 
 tendencies aiming at the infinite, we are bound to affirm not 
 only the survival after death, but personal immortality. Let 
 us add that it is only another form, the religious form, of the 
 argument, to say that man is loved of God, attracted of God, 
 and is intended fully to realise God's image ; which being 
 absolutely perfect, will never be absolutely realised. A little 
 reflexion will suffice to persuade all our readers that these two 
 arguments are fundamentally the same. To say that man is 
 destined to ascend eternally toward God, and to say that God 
 eternally draws man upward to himself, is to express one and 
 the same truth. 
 
 Before Strauss' Dogmatik appeared, this teleological proof 
 had been expounded by J. H. Fichte, one of those post-Hege- I. 
 lian philosophers, who, while owing much to the master, felt 
 the necessity of going beyond his system. In what way does 
 Strauss reply to Fichte ? I am sorry to say he replies by a 
 burlesque. " To convince us of the falseness of such reasoning," 
 he says, "it is sufficient to consider every log of wood we 
 burn at Christmas, and pvory bit of caviare we swallow; for
 
 120 
 
 ht the latter there was an aptitude to become a thousand 
 fishes, and in the former a tendency to rise into a magnificent 
 pine ; now neither the one nor the other reaches its develop- 
 ment ; yet we do not consider it necessary to postulate for them 
 a future life. Clever and ridiculous doubtless ; and having said 
 this we have said all. The comparison in no way proves that the 
 normal development of man does not surpass the dissolution of 
 the body, for, in the natural state, the young pine becomes 
 something else than a fagot, and the eggs of caviare do not 
 of themselves enter the stomach of gourmands. The com- 
 parison could mean something, only in the case that beings, 
 at once free and superior to man were able for their own good, 
 suddenly to put a stop to their development. Now this can- 
 not be admitted on the side of Strauss, and in a more general 
 point of view, it is evident that man being in creation the 
 being who enters into conscious personal and direct relations 
 with God, is also the last word of creation, the repose of the 
 creator, and that there is nothing between him and God r 
 nothing, I say, but his own ascent to God. The individual 
 may have elder brothers, predecessors, but not destroyers. 
 If, as analogy indicates, the heavenly bodies also are the abode 
 of spiritual beings, whatever difference there may be between 
 them and us, as to physical conformation, they are nevertheless 
 of the same race as ourselves, and do not constitute another 
 kingdom. Without the least inconvenience, Strauss might 
 have left at rest the logs, and the eggs of caviare. He is so much 
 aware of this that he suddenly returns to the minor branch of 
 his syllogism : every being realises his aptitude ; the aptitude 
 of man is infinite ; in consequence he must live for ever. 
 "Whence is it known, he ask, that the aptitude of man is in- 
 finite ? that the moment never comes when nothing new can 
 come forth from the hidden depths of his being ? Certainly, 
 it is not from experience. On the contrary, that shows us
 
 121 
 
 that each man attains a maximum of physical anil intellectual 
 life, after which decay sets in on both. At eighty years of 
 age a Goethe has survived himself. Again a veiy strange 
 argument ! Might not as much be said of the sleep of each 
 day, the need of which forces itself on the most active man, 
 paralysing all his faculties ? Yet who ever fancied that his 
 friend had finished the task which he had the power to accom- 
 plish because sleep compelled an interruption of it ? It is 
 painful to hear Strauss pretend that a man may believe him- 
 self to have truly reached a limit which he can never pass. 
 He might in his turn deserve a little raillery, when he gravely 
 asks, " Of what further development of soul was Spinoza 
 capable ?" pantheistic feticism ! Had he only the develop- 
 ment which would have allowed him to tell us what con- 
 stitutes the unity of thought and space ; that alone would have 
 been worth living for. 
 
 The question is not, if a man struck with decrepitude 
 shows, in that condition, the signs of an ulterior development. 
 It is to know, if man in his full maturity, ever completely 
 realises his ideal, is what he feels himself capable of being, 
 draws from himself all he is conscious he could produce. x\nd 
 it is the intellectual élite of human kind, its great religious 
 geniuses ; poets, artists, prophets, saints ; the Son of Man 
 himself, who replies in the negative, and who ask of God a 
 yet higher glory. Physical decrepitude, and its more or less 
 necessary consequence, the darkening of the mind, remains a 
 fact which has to be explained, but which does not destroy the 
 former fact ; already we can conceive that it represents on a 
 larger scale, on a wider rhythm, what the phenomenon of 
 sleep brings with it each day. The old man, very ad- 
 vanced in years, is singularly like a man who dreams. 
 
 The species, Strauss will say, is the immortal ; it is the 
 species which possesses the infinite, inexhaustible aptitude.
 
 122 
 
 It is the species that makes constant progress and ascends 
 toward God. But the individual is the negation of the species. 
 He exists only in the degree in which he limits the general 
 impersonality. In no way, we reply; so little is the indivi- 
 dual the negation of the species that the species is real only in 
 individuals, and but for individuals, the genus would have 
 no existence, would be itself a negation. It is individuals who 
 affirm the genus : it is individuals which enable the genus to 
 make progress. For we must always remember that which 
 Hegelianism has forgotten, namely, that the individual man 
 is something else than a mere specimen of his race. The 
 proof is in the fact that the individual acts on his race, accele- 
 rates or retards its step, according to the use which he makes 
 of his genius, and has rights in face of his race. The Spinozan 
 motto, which Hegelianism has adopted, omnia determi Untie 
 negcttio, all definition is negation, is a great error. If true it 
 would follow that the most undefined being would be the most 
 real ; while experience proves the contrary, and teaches us 
 that a being is so much more elevated in the scale of the uni- 
 verse, so much fuller of life — in a word, so much more affirm- 
 ative, the more he is definite ; God must be infinitely definite 
 in himself to be the absolute reality. Were the Hegelian 
 thesis of the purely negative character of the individual well 
 founded, then the more perfected the individual, the more 
 obscured would be the feeling of individuality, and the more 
 would it be lost in that of the whole. But history, and each 
 one's experience categorically contradicts this the necessary 
 consequence of the principle. The fact is, that the intellectual 
 great ones of whom we spoke but now, even those who died 
 for humanity, postulated in no way the abstract immortality of 
 the species, but their own and that of every man. 
 
 Strauss now thinks himself at liberty to direct a shower of 
 sarcasm on the way in which >; the Philistines" reason on the
 
 12:; 
 
 body. Many analogies encourage the opinion that there are 
 no essential differences in the planetary matter. In a word, 
 grand hope of eternal progress. What ideal would not suffer 
 by being translated into the vulgar tongue ? And because 
 Faust finds its caricature in the imbecile Wagner, must we 
 abjure its noble aspirations ? Let him also have full leave to 
 share in the indignation of Richter on hearing of those persons 
 who, if they must give up the hope of immortality, " would 
 not think themselves superior to swine, and would prefer the 
 life of the animals to their own." These are unworthy 
 thoughts, and it must be acknowledged that even without a 
 future life, it is better to live on earth in a human than in a 
 bestial form. But if man is not bound to be moral by the 
 sole reason that he is immortal, not less ought we to maintain 
 that he is immortal because he is bound to be moral. With- 
 out immortality we have within us the most lamentable conflict 
 in creation ; and if, without immortality, we must nevertheless 
 be religious, pure, as well as hunger and thirst after the ideal 
 and the infinite, there would be terrible folly in our nature in 
 thus tending to the infinite in despite of its destiny. Then 
 every man, while yearning for divine realities, would be like 
 a bird who beats itself incessantly against the bars of its cage. 
 Still might we be the first of all creatures, but certainly we 
 should be the most miserable. 
 
 It is also possible that we allow ourselves to be drawn on 
 to chimerical reveries when we speak of a possible relation be- 
 tween our future destiny and the celestial worlds. But the 
 consideration by which Strauss attempts to cut short these 
 hypotheses, namely, the indissoluble connexion which exists 
 between each star and its inhabitants, who, like us, proceeding 
 from the total organism of the particular world which they 
 inhabit, are inseparable from it, as we from the earth, is a 
 mere fancy. In any case, it could apply to only our actual
 
 124 
 
 our globe which undergoes the direct influence of the other 
 orbs of heaven, even as it makes its own felt by them ; on the 
 surface of which life appears only by means of the action of 
 forces coming from without, combined with its own inherent 
 forces, does not lead a solitary life in space . All of us at 
 every instant partake in those numerous and essential bonds 
 which make our earth a member of the cosmos, and absolutely 
 nothing hinders us from taking to the letter the title of 
 " citizens of heaven/' 
 
 As a last resource Strauss occupies himself with the criti- 
 cism of the metaphysical proofs of a personal immortality ; 
 and here he is least assailable. The first victim he immolates 
 is the old spiritualistic argument, which, separating by a great 
 gulf spirit and matter, the soul and the body, making the one 
 the simple opposite of the other, deduces the immortality of 
 the soul from the absolute lack of relations between the two. 
 There is no difficulty in showing that this argnment has no 
 force, except you put the conclusion you want in the major 
 proposition of your syllogism, that is, you must beforehand, 
 define mind and matter so as to throw into prominence their 
 radical contradiction. Xow. in reality, spirit and matter exist in 
 man in no such absolute antagonism. Man is one being, who 
 is spirit and matter. The hypotheses of the ancient spiritual- 
 ism, its "animal spirits," its "occasional causes," its "pre- 
 established harmony," &c, have, by emptiness, shown how 
 false that dualism is. 
 
 In our days, it has been attempted to connect personal 
 immortality with the Hegelian speculation. But the efforts 
 of Goschel* are powerless to deduce it from the idea of the 
 unique substance realising itself in virtue of its immanent 
 
 * '-Von den Boweisen fur die Unsterblichkeit den Menschlichen Seele ; 1S:J4;'' 
 London, Nntt, 270. Strand.
 
 L25 
 
 negativeness, through and by means of individuals. From 
 this point of view it is clear that the individual must of neces- 
 sity be absorbed by the species, the temporary negation by 
 the eternal affirmation. In vain is it to appeal, as does our 
 philosopher, to a pretended essential difference between man and 
 nature. Nature, he says, is essentially otherness (anderheit) 
 that is, it is indifferent to its radical transformation. It al- 
 ways remains object, whatever changes it undergoes. On the 
 contrary, the mind is essentially identity, and resists what- 
 ever tends to annihilate it, so as to make it become something 
 else. Accordingly the idea, the Divine Thought immanent 
 in things, eternally pursuing them in their essence, preserves 
 the intellectual subject identical with itself, on the same 
 ground that it continually changes the natural object. After 
 having set forth this cloudy argument, Strauss burst into a 
 fit of laughter, saying, " Who then has told Goschel that the 
 natural being is indifferent to its annihilation ? He prudently 
 chooses for his examples pure aggregates, a cloud of dust. 
 Let him only try to make a dog or a cat pass into his l other- 
 ness.' The teeth of the former, and the claws of the latter 
 would soon teach him that they are by us means indifferent 
 to their experience." Nevertheless the thought of Goschel 
 has a value for the matter with which we are engaged ; as 
 indeed every thing that observation furnishes tending to 
 specify a difference in the respective destiny of man and all 
 other beings. It may, when put into English, denote that 
 the repugnance which exists to the notion of annihilation is 
 a truly human sentiment, a sentiment that man carries in his 
 mind all his life, even when nothing directly threatens him, 
 and that for those who think that the nature of a being is in 
 relation with his destiny, there is here an indication of a 
 human destiny, different from the destiny of the animals. 
 These, it is true, like every living thing, resist whatever tends
 
 126 
 
 to rob them of life ; but, notwithstanding all the sense which 
 some now concede to the brutes, I do not think any of them 
 is accessible to the particular feeling which all men more or 
 less possess, even those who in no way fear death itself. But 
 Gôschel, hampered with the Hegelian logic, had not, without 
 quitting the system he did not wish to leave, the power to 
 escape from the reasoning. Reality is the impersonal idea 
 of the species ; and, in consequence, the individual has no 
 right to live on, whatever may be his repugnance in presence 
 of death. 
 
 It is true that when you are freed from all metaphysical 
 superstition, you may bring Strauss to a stand still at the 
 first word of his syllogism, by asking him if that reality which 
 is only the impersonal idea of the species, is not of all things 
 the most unreal. Then we may observe that after all, Hegel - 
 lianism can require only the final absorption of the individual 
 by the species, while it is observation alone which authorises 
 Strauss to declare that absorption is coincident with death. 
 On this point our critic opens a road which will be prolonged 
 by people for whom he has no great respect — the band of 
 materialists; who will speedly make merry in the midst of 
 the ruins of idealism, dead of inanition. But no matter for 
 the moment. What it is important to show here is, that 
 no longer can Strauss or Goschel pretend to settle every thing 
 by a priori dialectics. Weisse grants to experience more 
 scope in his manner of handling the question. According to 
 him, philosophy is alone able to determine the conditions on 
 which a soul may pretend to immortality, but experience 
 alone can inform us if there are souls which possess those 
 conditions. Those conditions are summed up in one — the 
 communion of our life with the Absolute Spirit. He only is 
 immortal who, entering into himself, finds there a power 
 stronger than nature, and all egotism. The great majority
 
 127 
 
 of the human race, who never attain to that height, are 
 destined for annihilation. Strauss objects, and, as it seems 
 to me, with reason ; that such a theory supposes total death 
 to be the natural destiny of the individual, in which case 
 the exceptional immortality of some choice souls would be a 
 true miracle, a metaphysical prodigy, achieved by a purely 
 moral fact. This is to introduce into human nature a Mani- 
 chaean dualism ; which cannot be accepted by speculative 
 reason. If there are immortal men, it is because human 
 nature possesses in itself the power of immortality ; beyond 
 that, dialectics cannot go. The idea of Weisse contains, 
 nevertheless, a great truth, if by it we understand that what 
 constitute man's immortality is that personal and immediate 
 relation of man with God, in virtue of which man tends to 
 God, lives for him, lives in his sight, and constantly draws 
 new forces and a new life in the ideal, always more sublime 
 the nearer it is approached, and which insensibly unfolds itself 
 before the eyes of those by whom it is sought. Eternal 
 nutriment is necessary for the life eternal. But here we 
 return to our great teleological principle of the destination of 
 man to perfection, to the image of God. What, if I mistake 
 not, Weisse wished was to maintain the relation of individuals 
 with the species, such as it is required to be by Hegelian- 
 ism, united with a desire of not assigning to the moral and 
 religious soul a purely animal end. For that he required 
 something which made of distinguished individuals more 
 than the momentary negation of substance, and he thought 
 he had found the cup of immortality in the communion of the 
 individual with that absolute substance. Cutaway the Hege- 
 lian principle, and there remains the universal thesis of the 
 natural immortality of the moral and religious being. 
 
 On all sides then we find ourselves invited to break the 
 circle of iron. Speculative axioms cannot long hold their own
 
 128 
 
 before experience, when experience is contrary to them. It 
 compels the mind to modify tliem, so as to briny them into 
 harmony with itself. We may apply this remark to a princi- 
 ple put forward by Strauss, that " whatever has a beginning 
 must have an end;" just as whatever has an end must have 
 had a beginning ; without which, the sum total of being 
 would undergo augmentations or diminutions, which is con- 
 tradictory. To appeal to the pre-existence of souls in order 
 to maintain their immortality, is a desperate resource which 
 cannot stand against criticism. As to ourselves, observation 
 obliges us to express the metaphysical point of view differently, 
 without going into that extreme against which our inner feel- 
 ing protests energetically. In our opinion, it is solely of the 
 world that it is necessary to postulate eternity and permanent 
 equality with itself. For it is not impossible to conceive that 
 the powers which successively realize themselves, in proportion 
 as the conditions of their realization appear, have always 
 existed. It is in this manner that our actual Geology leads 
 us to represent to ourselves the appearance of life on our 
 globe. The germs of life, in a latent state, must have existed 
 in its bosom, virtual before their realization in fact was possi- 
 ble. Were it otherwise, it is the metaphysical axiom itself 
 we must deny on the authority of experience ; for certain it is 
 that life has commenced on the globe, and if, at the moment 
 of its appearance, that sum total of being was not really 
 augmented, one does not see how the permanent duration of 
 individuals would augment it afterwards, 
 
 The observation of man, in history and in the individual, 
 is that which, in a question such as the one that occupies our 
 thoughts, ought decidedly to have . the last word ; and no 
 a priori metaphysical formula has a right to oppose its veto 
 to the conclusions to which it legitimately leads. Such is the 
 doctrine which we consider ourselves justified to affirm, as
 
 129 
 
 •uggested by Strauss' chapter on a future life. Moreover, it 
 is the consequence to which his book impels you, from one 
 end to the other. He simply intended to write the epitaph, 
 the requiescat in pace, of the old dogmas, without perceiving 
 that he buried with them the metaphysics in the name of 
 which he declared them interred for ever. As we have said, 
 the great proof of a personal and conscious immortality is 
 that man is never completed before the dissolution of his body, 
 and — a remarkable fact — feels himself so much the less com- 
 pleted in the degree in which he attains a high degree of 
 development. If the babe which yet lies in its mother's 
 womb could observe itself and reason, it would as legitimately 
 conclude from the study of itself that it was destined to a 
 more perfect existence. Each living man from the moment 
 in which conscience is born within him, projects toward the 
 infinite a line which prolongs itself eternally. For it is to 
 God that it makes its way ; God draws it on toward himself, 
 and ever does it approach its end, yet reaches it never. This 
 immortality is personal, for God is our God ; it is not the 
 human race in the abstract which God causes to ascend to 
 himself, but individuals ; and only the race by them, with 
 them, and in them. Otherwise he would be " the God of the 
 dead," and every human conscience from which rises the sigh 
 for the infinite, would be deceived and repelled by the very 
 voice which says to him, u come to me !" 
 
 The best means of awakening in yourself and in others 
 the consciousness of immortality is then, to collect the pheno- 
 mena in which the grand truth that death is not the end of 
 man, shines forth with special brilliancy. Some of these 
 phenomena we have presented as we have gone along. It is 
 specially in the moral and religious world that they offer 
 themselves. The single fact that man is a religious being, I 
 mean, that he is drawn by The Absolute, whom all his life 
 
 i
 
 130 
 
 he seeks without ever being as near as he desires, preaches 
 his immortality. God then attracts man, and wishes that 
 man should rise toward himself. The exceptional certainty 
 assumed in us by the belief in immortality in circumstances 
 when the soul, moved in its depths, rises superior to the 
 trivialities of the earth, (during oppressive grief, in view of 
 noble self-devotement, near saintly death beds,) is a living 
 word which declares that our destiny reveals itself to us better 
 on the heights of moral sentiment than in the arid dust or the 
 difficult marshes of common life. The eye of the mind, 
 being more pure, sees the things of God more clearly and 
 distinctly. The fact that sin, all our life long, stands in the 
 way of our realising the desires of conscience ; that conscience 
 never justifies self-satisfaction, is also a prediction of immor- 
 tality. The history of the belief in immortality is far from 
 dissolving as Strauss asserts. For long independent of phi- 
 losophy, faith in a future life insensibly grew up in man's 
 mind. Never has man, even when ruled by pure instinct, had 
 the idea of his absolute annihilation. " The dead sleep " — 
 this is the ancient belief, a belief which foretold an awaking. 
 Then, society declared the immortality of heroes, those who 
 had raised themselves to such a height as to seem superior 
 to death. A parallel movement of the mind induced the 
 primitive Christians to hold that martyrs and eminent saints 
 did not pass through sheol, but ascended at once to God. At 
 last arose a belief in a general immortality. This came when, 
 having a distinct idea of the personality of each man, society 
 felt that what belonged to men of note, lay as a germ in all 
 men. Faith in immortality has continually become more 
 affirmative, and, in one sense, more aspiring, in the degree in 
 which man has risen above a purely instructive state of exist- 
 ence. But specially rich in presentiments and revelations of 
 the life to come, is the severe conflict carried on by the best,
 
 
 131 
 
 even the perfect man, as long as he lives a corporeal life, in 
 order to remain faithful to conscience. It may be said that 
 for every man Gethsemane and Calvary involve the ascension 
 from Olivet. Otherwise there would ensue this contradiction — 
 that man never realises his true nature as man, except in the 
 hour of his agony. Agony must be the means, the condition, 
 not the end. At the bottom, every act of self-sacrifice, every 
 martrydom, every dévotement of duty reveals immortality. 
 For the universe teaches us that unfailing law, that the 
 different kingdoms among which life is distributed, constantly 
 tend to affirm themselves by sacrificing the lower to their 
 exigencies. Only on this condition are they real and per- 
 petual. Now, in man the moral life is superior to the bodily 
 organism, and assumes the mastery over it. This prerogative 
 proceeds even to distinction itself, for often the inner man 
 commands the outer man to perish, just as the latter sacrifices 
 inferior creatures for his own service. If man were not 
 immortal, we should have before our eyes this absurdity, that 
 the moral life destroys itself in order to realise itself; and 
 where it most emphatically affirms itself, there it most entirely 
 denies itself. In such a case man would be the great sophism 
 of God. 
 
 Such is the voice of history ; such is the preaching of 
 experience. Without doubt we must follow it even to the 
 coporeal man, — there we find a new adversary. Modern 
 materialism, finding a powerful ally in the false notions of the 
 spiritualism, which involve an absolute opposition between the 
 body and the mind, and pretending that our personal life is 
 simply the result of a certain combination of physical and 
 chemical laws, comes forward to contradict our conclusion in 
 favour of a conscious and personal immortality. The confi- 
 dence with which it speaks might make men fancy that its 
 doctrines are mathematically demonstrated. I send those who 
 
 i 2
 
 132 
 
 would estimate the value of their proofs, tu the most recent 
 treatises on physiology. They will see that darkness yet hangs 
 over the most important phenomena of life. Besides, mate- 
 rialism in its application to anthropology, will always suffer 
 shipwreck on the realities of our moral nature. If man is but 
 the result of the chemical and physical forces of his body, how 
 is it that he is determined by an internal force, at every instant 
 foreign and contrary to that result ? Will materialism extri- 
 cate itself by denying moral obligation ? Whence then comes 
 the illusion which has always misled men under the name of 
 duty ? Elusions — would there be such things if there were 
 only physical and chemical laws ? Entrenched behind our 
 moral nature, we may, in all tranquility, watch the develop- 
 ment of the natural sciences. Their present progress, moreover, 
 does not favour materialism, unless you do not look very 
 closely into the phenomena. Doubtless, experimental analysis 
 will discover in the human body only substances similar to 
 substances of the sa aie name, which are found on our planet. 
 Doubtless, the laws which send the blood through our arteries 
 and veins are the same hydraulic laws which govern the move- 
 ments of all liquids. Digestion and nutrition are purely 
 chemical transformations. Nervous phenomena present strik- 
 ing analogies with electric currents. In a word, the analysis 
 of our organs and their functions does not establish the pre- 
 sence of that hypothetical agent, dignified by certain medical 
 schools with the name of Vital force. What then, does all 
 this explain life ? Does all this tell us what is the mysterious 
 power which makes this ingenious selection of substances, and 
 combines in a thousand ways, we know not how many 
 physical and chemical laws, so as to form a living unity? 
 Does this enable us to comprehend the instinctive resistance of 
 the organism to whatever is injurious to it, and its power of self- 
 reparation and self-cave? With reason bas it been said: the
 
 133 
 
 demonstrations of materialism resembla the attempt of ft 
 person who should take it into his head to explain the har- 
 mony of a concert of instruments, solely with the aid of 
 physical and chemical forces. When he has described the 
 chemical composition of each of them, calculated within a 
 hair's breadth, the vibrations of the waves of sound which they 
 send forth, the degree of impulse given in their emission by 
 the mouth or the arm of the performers, the relation of the 
 surrounding air with each and every note, — would he have 
 said all ? True, one thing only would he have omitted ; but 
 that is the essence of the whole ; he would have forgotten the 
 leader of the orchestra, beating time ; but for whose directing 
 hand and mind the whole would be one huge dissonance. 
 
 Physiological studies have a close relation with psychology. 
 The continual assimilation and elimination of the substances 
 of which bodies are made up, place in full light the supremacy 
 of the one identical conscious principle, which lives on through 
 the total and reiterated renewals of the body. 
 
 The plurality of the nervous centres is acknowledged ; and, 
 henceforward, you may question the science of the man who 
 seeks in some corner of the brain the power which commands 
 the whole frame. The unity of life must have its source 
 above the nervous system in which it appears in separate 
 branches ; for instance, it is the cerebellum, or hinder part of 
 the brain, which presides over the harmony of our voluntary 
 movements, and it is in the spinal marrow that the need and 
 the power of respiration resides. Another result of contem- 
 poraneous physiology is to show the absurdity of the questions 
 which scholasticism so long propounded, and which it resolved 
 with heroic daring, that is, the time when the soul enters 
 the body. The soul must not be identified with self-con- 
 sciousness, which is a property, a faculty to which it comes 
 only after a certain development. The soul itself certainly
 
 1S4 
 
 exists in the primitive organic cellule, the numberless mul- 
 tiplications of which by itself, and the prodigious transforma- 
 tions of which j produce its future organs, one after another, 
 and all in relation with its future destiny. In the imper- 
 ceptible globule then there exists an unconscious artificer, a 
 knowing something which knows not itself, which, led by 
 instinct alone, directs the formation and arrangement of its 
 several members. This is the clearest information given us 
 at present by physiological science, and there is in such 
 results something extremely spiritualistic A modern ma- 
 terialist has said, that the soul is to the body that which the 
 centre is to the circumference — the former makes the latter : 
 take away the circumference the centre exists no longer. 
 But to make the example pertinent you should furnish the 
 centre with a moveable radius, by means of which it could 
 trace its curve, if it had ink near and a hand to use it. Thus 
 there would be raised a corner of this mysterious veil which 
 hides our future destiny. If our real person, our I, has 
 already incarnated itself in this way, so as to make itself a 
 body out of surrounding materials, why should it not repeat 
 the process in a similar form, when arrived at a higher degree 
 of its development ? Perhaps even the actual body contains 
 the rudiments of that superior organisation, and our metamor- 
 phosis resembles that of the intermediate layers of the animal 
 kingdom, being the means of transition between a preparatory 
 existence and a more perfect life. When also you reflect that 
 our features depend not only on circumstances which may 
 invest them with physical beauty or plainness, but also on 
 our character, our fundamental tendencies, in a word, on our 
 individual qualities : you see there is nothing impossible in 
 our mutual recognition in the life to come — that pleasurable 
 hope which Strauss considers egotistical, but which we believe 
 legitimate ; and indeed the Creator in prolonging our love»
 
 135 
 
 from one end of life to another, even long after the objects of 
 them have disappeared from the scene of this world, seems to 
 have stamped them with the seal of eternity. 
 
 I am fully aware that I here proceed on pure hypothesis, 
 even while on the last point I am affirmative, at least as to 
 the fact itself, if not as to the explanation which I have 
 ventured to give. There is, however, this much of truth in 
 the criticism of Strauss, namely, that our eschatology in con- 
 tinually growing more simple has also grown less substantial. 
 We affirm the future life, but have nothing to say on the 
 mode of its realisation. This has no reason for denying it. 
 Simplicity is better than unreal display. Besides this, sim- 
 plicity has the advantage of throwing into relief certain 
 elements which, without doubt, were not strangers to the 
 ancient eschatology, but were much overshadowed by its 
 surroundings. Thus the ignorance in which we are, as to the 
 mode of our future existence, has, for a necessary result, that 
 we attach ourselves much more to that which alone can be its 
 sure basis, our communion with Grod, active love put for ever 
 at his service. If we cease to fear the flames of hell, we 
 ought only the more to dread the torments of conscience. 
 Religion itself becomes more spiritual when its hopes have 
 become so. The magnificent idea of universal salvation, that 
 sacred affirmation, forms part, taeit or avowed, of the con- 
 fession of faith of the élite of the church, and rests on the 
 essential ethical character of the future life. A purely spirit- 
 ual salvation cannot be purchased nor be given by a substi- 
 tute ; the idea of redemption is purified by its contact with 
 the spirituality of the world to come. Christian thought 
 then is not, as Strauss would have it, totally decomposed and 
 dissipated. At the same time we do not deny that we should 
 be glad to know something respecting the form of the life to
 
 13fc 
 
 come, and nothing absolutely forbids the hope that the union 
 of physiological and psychological researches, each as yet 
 pursued in much too exclusive a character, may at last throw 
 some light on the secrets of the future which awaits us. 
 
 Having brought our labours to an end, we think it a duty 
 to add a last word. We shall have been mis-understood if we 
 are thought to have intended to demonstrate a personal 
 immortality. It is not a matter for demonstration, in the 
 strict sense of the word. You may embarrass the person 
 who refuses to believe in it ; you may confute the reason he 
 alledges for his unbelief; but you cannot so compel him to 
 abjure it. If we are right in declaring that man is immortal 
 because he is not complete in his earthly existence, it is clear 
 that faith in immortality can be founded on only one of these 
 two bases : either a religious tradition admitted, without 
 reflexion, blindly ; or the personal experience which alone can 
 give the evidence to which we appeal. On this ground it is 
 that I have elsewhere said that a belief in immortality is a 
 result of an intuition of the future T and not the conclusion of 
 a syllogism. If I am to have a firm hope of my own personal 
 immortality, I must have reached that height in the spiritual 
 life — that moral and religious altitude — in which this earthly 
 life and all that it can offer me, is with me inferior to the 
 destiny to which I feel myself invited. Here is the reason 
 why the faithful Christian carries in himself the évidence of 
 his own immortality. Here is the ground on which the Holy 
 Spirit places in our spirits the first fruits of the life which 
 will never end. Here is the reason why he who has faith in 
 Jesus Christ has even now the life eternal. Here too is the 
 reason why it is declared that our " Saviour Jesus Christ hath 
 abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. " 
 (2 Tim. i. 10.) To take from death its sting, and to yield in
 
 137 
 
 manly confidence to the current of the eternal river which 
 flows on to the Father, it is sufficient to contemplate his per- 
 son, and to imbibe his spirit. For here we obtain the assur- 
 ance that never does man more surely find his life than when, 
 at the voice of duty, he is ready to surrender it-
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 By Albert Reville, D.D. 
 
 It was on one of those fine winter evenings which Provi- 
 dence has bestowed on the northern regions to make up for 
 their unattractive spring, — one of those evenings it is so 
 pleasant to spend in a well-curtained room and near a bright 
 fire, while talking over, with a friend, the latest news touch- 
 ing Art, Science, Politics, and the Church. True, I was 
 alone with Stephen, who was to pass several days in the 
 town where I dwell ; but for me, his company was better than 
 a crowd of ordinary faces. Stephen is one of those men for 
 acquaintance with whom one blesses God as for a special 
 favour. Benignant, affable, of fine ability, fond of chatting 
 as well as of an earnest disposition, in love with conversation 
 on serious subjects; a Christian on conviction, possessing also 
 a mind imbued with all contemporaneous science ; with a 
 tone of thought, equally ardent and sincere, and actuated in 
 his pastoral relations by an irreproachable zeal, he realises in 
 my judgment a sort of perfection which I much like to con- 
 template closely, as it lives and speaks in him. Never without 
 profit, though often humiliated, I converse with him respecting 
 the needs — the present and future, — of our Church and of 
 society in general. Would that I possessed the serene hopes 
 which he joins to a very vivid sense of our actual infelicities, 
 the simple and natural faith, spiritual in essence and little 
 beset by forms, which he maintains and nourishes in the midst 
 of our theological chaos, and which he has elevated to that
 
 139 
 
 height, where criticism, philosophy, controversies, lose their 
 dissolving power ; and his christian activity which he ever keeps 
 at an equal pace with the most profound researches. The 
 friendship with which he honours me proceeds probably from 
 his fancy that I possess the aspirations and tendencies which 
 have become the principles and elements of his life ; just as 
 my continually growing affection for him has for its cause 
 and support the satisfaction one has in finding in another that 
 which one desires to possess oneself. As far as it can be said 
 of a man and a friend, he is to me an ideal. 
 
 One of his most constant desires, a desire which results 
 from the happy way in which he unites theory and practice, 
 thought and life, is to discover the means of popularising in 
 the Church the principles of the modern theology with which 
 he is imbued, without, while he attempts to purify men's 
 belief, doing any damage to the edifice itself, which however 
 so many persons consider indissolubly bound to the old scaffold- 
 ing whose inevitable fall must bring down the building it has 
 so long upheld. Moreover as he has no taste whatever for 
 theological diplomacy, and cannot speak of God, Christ, and 
 salvation without saying exactly what he thinks, he would 
 be glad to find the middle terms by which the simple-minded 
 and little instructed might pass on to religious conceptions, 
 more just and more salutary than those of tradition, without 
 the necessity of every one's possessing that theological erudi- 
 tion, the consequences of which the old orthodoxy cannot any 
 longer endure ; access to which however is possible for the 
 many only by slow degrees, and after a succession of years, not 
 to say generations. In the efforts which he makes with this 
 view, he reaps astonishing success as a catechist and preacher ; 
 and the young especially, in the populous city in which he 
 exercises his ministry, by their affection, their attendance, and 
 other encouraging signs, repay the very great trouble he takes
 
 1-10 
 
 to shed the light of truth and the warmth of life on minds 
 which in these days would be closed to the former had they 
 not been opened by the latter. I have no need to tell with 
 what eagerness I gather from his lips the results of the ex- 
 perience on this difficult side of modern preaching, which he 
 has collected partly from his own labours, partly from the 
 labours of others. Nearly always agreeing with him as to 
 principles and theories, I feel the deepest interest in watch- 
 ing the way in which he reduces both to practice in the active 
 duties of the Christian ministry. 
 
 The evening of which I speak, our conversation turned on 
 the now much debated question of authority in matters of 
 faith, or belief. I drew his attention to the enormous mis- 
 understanding that still existed thereon between many congre- 
 gations and their preachers, a mis-understanding which is kept 
 up by our traditional forms, our eclesiastical usages, certain 
 essential elements of public and domestic worship, and even 
 the custom of taking from the Bible a text, as the necessary 
 theme of all our discourses from the pulpit. Moreover, the 
 advocates of a completely free faith cannot deny that in fact, 
 and to some extent, in right, authority has its part to play 
 in the religious education of man and society. The child can- 
 not do without it ; and how many men remain to the end of 
 their days, children in religious knowledge. And how can 
 one declare from the pulpit, before an open Bible, a Bible 
 perpetually appealed to, in the presence of an auditory of 
 which the majority consists of such children — how can one 
 declare that outward authority in matters of faith has no claim 
 to exact the subjection of the conscience and reason of indi- 
 viduals ? There resulted between Stephen and myself an 
 exchange of reflexions in which turn by turn the theory and 
 the demands of practice were examined in their respective 
 rights ; and, with my mind quite absorbed by all I had heard
 
 141 
 
 and said, I thought of throwing the substance into a review 
 article — when I remembered that I had to preach the next 
 day. Reflecting on the two demands, I thought I could 
 conciliate their claims by choosing the subject of that con- 
 versation for the theme of the discourse I had to deliver on 
 the morrow. Without having the least pretension of exhaust- 
 ing in a few pages so grave and complicated a subject as that 
 of authority in matters of faith, I shall then endeavour here 
 to reproduce the chief points of a conversation which gave me 
 much to reflect on, and which, as I hope, will not have proved 
 useless either to myself or to others. 
 
 In order to show the ground on which Stephen and I were 
 led to consider the question of authority, I cannot do better 
 than state the point where our conversation commenced. We 
 were speaking of the materialism of the present day, which 
 unhappily has engulphed so many distinguished minds, and 
 which threatens with death the very sciences in the name of 
 which it pretends to impose itself on our acceptance, I 
 remarked that this disposition to deny mind, to see everywhere 
 only a game of physical forces, to replace philosophy by 
 chemistry, had obtained for itself great influence in the abso- 
 lute dualism placed between mind and matter. To such an 
 extent had this gone, that to admit their co-existence in the 
 same being was impossible. If mind is simply the opposite 
 of matter, and matter simply the opposite to mind, if there is 
 nothing in common between the two, how can the one exert 
 any influence over the other? Not their opposition, but 
 distinction it is that ought to be asserted and maintained. 
 Unhapily, I continued, general opinion is habituated to regard 
 them as directly opposed ; and since, in all the sciences, the 
 method of observation has triumphed over the a priori method, 
 it follows that many an observer, meeting at first with matter 
 and material laws, has been led to deny the invisible substance,
 
 142 
 
 mind, which never presented itself to the focus of his micro- 
 scope ; to set matter in opposition to mind as the scientific 
 reality contrasted with practical reverie ; and in any case to 
 think that the phenomena commonly placed in the category of 
 mind, could not find an explanation on the outside of physical 
 forces and their known applications. Thus the spiritual 
 world — God, the soul, religion, duty, immortality, &c. — has 
 been referred to a particular series of cervical secretions, and 
 in consequence, adjudged to be empty dreams, possessing not 
 the slightest reality. 
 
 You are right, said Stephen ; only do not show the honour 
 to materialism of thinking that it is the legitimate offspring 
 of observation. It denies mind because it no where sees it ; 
 but does it see matter to which it reduces all things ? Has 
 it anywhere met with a body, a substance, an atom which it 
 may show us while saying, " There is primordial matter — 
 matter absolute, disengaged from all form, and indépendant 
 of all law ?" Certainly not. It does nothing more than estab- 
 lish facts of a certain kind, laws of a certain order. Matter itself, 
 as a pure substance, is as much unknown to it as mind to 
 us ; and after all it is the extreme of the à priori method to 
 pretend that the manifestations of existence cannot surpass the 
 sphere of the laws called chemical and physical. In reality, 
 he continued, the empirical method cannot be materialistic. 
 By the single fact that we do not and cannot meet with formless 
 matter, we have the right to declare matter exists nowhere 
 alone ; and that the least organised body, the most material 
 object, witnesses the continued co-existence and coincidence of 
 two forces, one which acts, the other which is acted on, and 
 then re-acts ; and I do not see why we should not call the 
 first mind. What after all are we taught by observation, 
 enlightened by all the acquisitions of modern science ? This, 
 namely, that man is the point of junction of two worlds,
 
 ~ - 143 
 
 and that he tends to pass from one to the other. If we 
 consider all that precedes us, we see existence rise towards us 
 by a slow, insensible movement, passing through all the degrees 
 of development ; at first chaotic matter : by which I mean 
 matter without laws defineable by our intelligence ; then 
 vegetable life ; then animal. Observe that each anterior 
 degree is necessary to the degree by which it is immediately 
 followed, so that it is impossible to see in the latter the pure 
 negation of the former ; and yet, there is something new, 
 something which existed not before, in each superior degree 
 compared with its antecedent ; something which in part denies 
 the anterior reality, even while making use of it as a neces- 
 sary medium. An organized cellule, which multiplies itself 
 indefinitely, says to us something which would be false of a 
 cellule exactly similar in its chemical composition, but 
 lacking vital impulse. It is on the latter degree of being, on 
 the animal, that we men have, so to say, been engrafted. 
 But while the animal life is the point of arrival for all 
 that goes before, it is for us the point of departure. A new 
 series of facts and laws, up to this point unknown, begins 
 with us. This animal, physical man, thrown naked on the 
 naked earth, obliged to pass more painfully than all others 
 through the conditions of growth, rules all others from an 
 inconceivable elevation. He thinks, he speaks, he compares, 
 he reasons, he loves, he adores, he owns moral obligation. 
 His countenance reflects sentiments born with him on the 
 earth. Hate, remorse, hope, heart -suffering, admiration, 
 moral firmness, religious aspiration, — all this is painted on 
 his features. To rise, to ascend, to progress, to sigh for the 
 mysterious and unknown world, on the borders of which he 
 feels himself, and the reality of which forces itself on his mind 
 as soon as that mind awakes : as the light strikes the eye of 
 the newly-born babe ; — this we might call man's instinct, if
 
 144 
 
 we were to make intellectual man a fresh chapter in Natural 
 History : and by a strange paradox, which, nevertheless, by 
 its undeniable truth, defies all systems of materialism, past, 
 present, and future, man is never truly happy except on con- 
 dition of never being satisfied. 
 
 You conclude then, I said to Stephen, that the new 
 phenomena inherent in human nature, suppose that something 
 new has appeared with man, something unknown, not to be 
 found in anterior nature, and that if the humblest moss de- 
 notes in itself a principle, a cause, a motive force, the proper- 
 ties and effects of which you would in vain seek in inorganic 
 nature, the life of man also has for cause a principle active, 
 and as active, so real, to which you must give a new name, 
 and of which the properties may differ from those of material, 
 vegetable, and animal bodies. 
 
 Not may, but must differ, replied Stephen. For I defy 
 materialism to refer to the same category of forces and laws, 
 the stone and the plant. If that faculty which essentially 
 constitutes life, namely, the assimilation of external substances 
 for growth and self-propagation, is absolutely different to, and 
 often exclusive of anterior physical verities, I am justified in 
 declaring that the mind, which produces so many phenomena, 
 not only before unknown, but also opposed to all before known, 
 is a power distinct from the rest, and in which consequently 
 the laws applicable to the rest, have lost their value. This 
 results from the most immediate experience. Suppose then 
 for a moment, that the mind is only the modification of an 
 already known material body ; suppose, as has been lately 
 said in Germany, that man owes his intellectual superiority, 
 even the animal, to the greater proportion of phosphorus 
 contained in his brain, I ask you what the author of so 
 ridiculous a statement (belied by other observations as to the 
 material fact) would say of a Chemical Dictionary, in which
 
 145 
 
 under the article Phosphorus, there should stand these words : 
 " Phosphorus, a simple body, luminous in the dark, solid at 
 the ordinary temperature, transparent, colourless, tasteless, 
 having an onion-like odour ; combines with many metals 
 (phosphurets) forms divers acids which produce salts (phos- 
 phates and phosphites) ; in certain conditions becomes rational, 
 religious, moral, artistic, and speculates on change." 
 
 I burst into laughter at this unexpected sally. I under- 
 stand you, I said, you wish to maintain the sublime realities 
 which humanity will never deny, while placing yourself in the 
 point of view of the continual development of the divine 
 thought, that lasting fruit of Hegel's teaching, which must 
 be maintained, must it not ? without allowing oneself to be 
 strangled by the mechanism of the system. Thus, in your 
 opinion, religion, which undoubtedly is the most lofty, the 
 most rich, the most universal of the phenomena of the mind, 
 came to man, not from without but from within. 
 
 Evidently, replied Stephen ; but let us understand each 
 other. Religion comes to man from within, that is, he is reli- 
 gious by nature, and the forms under which he represents divine 
 things to himself, depend on his internal condition. But that 
 does not mean that the object of his religion is found within him. 
 it is in this matter as it is with sight. "Within us the faculty 
 of vision resides, and within us operate the optical laws, 
 determining the forms under which objects appear to us. 
 But by the side of that is the outer world, without the exist- 
 ence of which we should see nothing. In the same way, the 
 mind obeys an inmost law of its existence when it detaches 
 itself from the material and animal world in order to seek 
 God ; but to reduce God to the mind seeking itself is to re- 
 produce the obsolete system of Fichte ; or to say that he is 
 only the result of an optical illusion — man doubled. No; 
 the human mind, as I have said, is the first manifestation to
 
 146 
 
 m of the higher world, on the borders of which we stand. 
 Its tendency is to pass from the lower world into the sphere 
 of infinitude. The mind tends toward God, toward the ideal, 
 the absolute ; and Ave are as certain that the object of that 
 tendency exists as, at the view of a flowing stream, we are 
 sure that it runs toward the ocean or toward a lake. It is a 
 law of the whole universe that each thing is attracted by its 
 object; consequently every attraction supposes a real object; 
 every tendency implies an end, failing which, their would be 
 no tendency. All historical religions, the dead and the living, 
 are so many efforts made by man to pass from the animal 
 life, and to lift himself to the divine life. In this everlasting 
 pilgrimage the pilgrim every instant sees that he is losing 
 his way. Yet it cannot be said that he has ever gone astray 
 for long. With every religion, too, man imagines he has 
 reached the end. The morning comes, morning of painful 
 experience, when he is made aware that he has been mistaken. 
 Xo matter. The mind, with its interior force, is still active, 
 and under its impulse the pilgrim resumes his task, sets out 
 once more, and journeys on until he thinks he has reached 
 the absolute — that which cannot be surpassed — that which he 
 must adore for ever. 
 
 All that, I answered, is very fine ; but, philosopher, 
 have you nothing better to say for the poor abortion whose 
 sole possession is his short life and superficial knowledge ? 
 Is the endless course of the Wandering Jew a very encourag- 
 ing symbol of the religious destiny of man ? Here am I, an 
 individual, thrown by the chance of birth into the midst of 
 one of those historical religions of which you speak, the most 
 beautiful and sublime of all, I am willing to believe ; but who 
 assures me that it, like every other, is not one station on the 
 endless road ? Who assures me that we are not advancing 
 toward a day when Christianity shall be to its successor what
 
 147 
 
 Greek paganism, or even Judaism, was to Cliristanity ? Is 
 there not an enormous scepticism in the theory by which I 
 confess I am attracted, perhaps more than I should be, the 
 theory, I say, of the successive evolutions of the universal 
 religion ? 
 
 I understand you, said Stephen; and that reminds of a 
 conversation I lately had with a passionate admirer of the 
 Chinese civilisation. It is more difficult than you imagine to 
 prove the superiority of ours over theirs. My companion had 
 passed many years of his life in China, and to every thing I 
 alleged respecting our industry, our governments, our legis- 
 lations, he replied by parallel facts, or by citing more than 
 one thing which we have not, but ought to have, and which 
 is possessed by the Chinese. I saw very well that, on the 
 ground of details, the discussion would last a long time 
 without any issue. I seized a position which made me master 
 of the field of battle. After all, I said to him, there is one 
 thing which proves our superiority; we can appreciate the 
 Chinese civilisation, while the Chinese are wholly unable to 
 appreciate ours. We observe that theirs has often something 
 reasonable, ingenious, or admirable ; while they, in doltish 
 misapprehension, confound all we say or do. It is only our 
 Armstrong Guns that have succeeded in extorting from them 
 some respect. In a word, we understand them, and they do 
 not understand us. Here is the reason why our civilisation 
 is in itself superior to theirs, and is destined to supersede 
 it. For it is the product of a superior mind. It is the 
 only one of historical religions in the bosom of which you 
 can appreciate the rest, discern their merits and defects, and 
 criticise itself without ending with denial or renunciation. 
 I speak, you will be sensible, of pure Christianity, such as it 
 exists in the mind of Him from whom it takes its name. It 
 is different with the Churches, or with what one may call the 
 
 k 2
 
 148 
 
 Christian religions. The Christian can understand all re- 
 ligions ; he surpasses them all ; and the fact may give us 
 confidence as to the future of Christianity. This faculty of 
 understanding the religions of the world comes from the fact 
 that Christianity is not a but the religion. It is implanted in 
 human kind without dogmas, without church, without cere- 
 monies. It is then linked to nothing perishable. Man must 
 cease to be religious by nature before Christianity gives place 
 to a successor. Consider whether, at this moment, it) is 
 possible for an earnest man to speak of religion without his 
 voice taking a christian tone. Even those who are not pre- 
 pared to speak with the Son of Man cannot help speaking 
 according to his Holy Spirit. And Stephen, thereupon, 
 pointed to the book of Monsieur J. Simon on Natural Religion, 
 which lay open on my desk. 
 
 It is so; I said to him; the thought has often occurred to 
 me, and tranquilised my mind in presence of the scepticism 
 too apt to rise from the study of past ages. Nor do I retire 
 from the meditation without feeling that our own age will one 
 day appear as much in the rear, as full of errors as its prede- 
 cessors. However 1 am only half satisfied. You will grant 
 me that if Christianity is in its origin quite independent of 
 all formal dogma, it is not the less the parent of that luxuriant 
 forest, sometimes very picturesque, often very dark and very 
 stormy, which is called the History of Dogma. Why has 
 Christianity produced dogmas ? Is it simply owing to the 
 dilettantism of Christians, who have found in dogma an exercise 
 which was pleasant and strengthening ? Is it not much rather 
 because it was impossible that dogma should not proceed out of 
 Christianity, that faith should not seek an intellectual expres- 
 sion ? — Evidently — Then we are not wrong now when we 
 require something more positive, more apprehensible, by our 
 intellect, than tin; powerful but indefinite sentiment.' . which
 
 149 
 
 imite oui- hearts to the heart of Christ. That is enough to 
 enable us to live religiously, but not to satisfy our intelligence. 
 We see that Christian doctrine has to be re-constructed. We 
 declare the necessity with a loud voice. But where is the 
 architect whose strong hand shall raise an edifice capable of 
 sheltering us all ? Besides, if we saw the building rise we 
 should have to say this will suffice for some generations; 
 after it another will rise just as the last succeeded the Ee- 
 formers, the Reformers succeeded the Schoolmen, the School- 
 men the Fathers, and the Fathers the Apostles. Do you 
 know that criticism and history, at the very time that they 
 undermine all religious authority, call up in the mind a strong 
 temptation to accept religious authority of some kind with 
 our eyes closed ? 
 
 Without doubt, replied Stephen ; and it is characteristic 
 of our times that the two principles of liberty and authority 
 have never been better understood in their radical opposition, 
 and have never been carried by their respective partisans to a 
 more intense paroxysm. It is not by accident that the age 
 which has witnessed on the part of very religious men the 
 proclamation of the nullity of all external authority in religion, 
 is that in which bibliolatry among Protestants, and ultra- 
 ïhontanism among Catholics, have reached their apogee. 
 Nothing, in my opinion, better proves the transitory character 
 of our epoch. For this contrariety always appears in periods 
 of transition. As long as belief is entire, uncontested, if not 
 in all its ramifications, at least at its root, men enjoy spiritual 
 repose. At least they declare themselves at rest ; for I con- 
 fess that those purely negative enjoyments, enjoyments void 
 of the charm of comparison, have little attraction for me. 
 But the time being come in which hereditary faith is shaken, 
 men find themselves at once dispossessed of their anterior 
 convictions, and tormented by unanswerable questions which
 
 ir,o 
 
 rise before their minds. Then some, alarmed at the roid 
 before them, return by a desperate effort to the old things 
 which are passing away, and endeavour to retain them at any 
 cost. They apply themselves to the effort with the energy of 
 terror, with the persistence of a man who hangs by a single 
 branch over a precipice. Is that branch strong ? Will it 
 hold firm ? Does not prudence advise you to try its power 
 of resistance ? Truly a fine question ! The branch is there, 
 near the hand, and the sole alternative is to seize it or 
 perish. 
 
 Others, convinced of the irremediable perishingness of the 
 old belief, give it up, and resign themselves to the fall with 
 as much fortitude as they can. Then, all mangled, all bleed- 
 ing, they endeavour to regain the height alone, distrusting 
 all aid promised from above, and little envying the position 
 of others whom they see suspended between heaven and earth, 
 at the end each one of his branch which threatens to break 
 immediate. Happy those who, though dejected at a futile 
 effort to recover their ground, do not resign themselves to 
 remain in the marsh at the bottom of the precipice, but 
 struggle upward until they are once more in safety and peace. 
 
 Excellently, I said ; you describe things in a superior 
 way. But I asked you for counsel as to the existing evil, 
 and what do you but describe the evil in a way, the justness 
 of which I do not question, but in which I find no grounds 
 for a revival of confidence. 
 
 What, rejoined Stephen, what could you have ? I suffer, 
 or rather I have suffered from the general evil. At present I 
 suffer less for myself than for others. 
 
 So that either you think yourself in a condition to impart 
 to our undecided generation a body of yet unpublished beliefs, 
 which will command general assent ; and I think you too 
 modest, too self- distrustful, to attribute to you such ambition ^
 
 151 
 
 or you have discovered a middle term, a point where authority 
 and liberty may meet together in peace, which suffices for 
 yourself, but which is not of a kind to be offered to all the world. 
 
 You shall see and judge for yourself, he replied. But first 
 tell me how it comes to pass that you, whom I have long 
 known for a determined friend of the principle of liberty, 
 speak as if there was some vacillation in your thoughts ? 
 
 What would you ? As a theologian, as a reasoner, I am 
 in no way shaken intellectually. But who in our days does 
 not know the trial of heart there is when one is required to 
 take hard, severe, oppressive truth, austere and stoical truth, 
 in place of easy, composing, and accommodating error? As 
 you know, I spend much of my time in studying religious 
 history. Well, I am often seized with the desire of some- 
 where finding some good and solid eternal authority, infallible, 
 and infallible without a doubt, safe from the attacks of criti- 
 cism, under the shelter of which I might see history unroll 
 its chronicles, as the aged mariner, now safe on shore, 
 calmly contemplates the shipwrecks which are every year 
 occasioned by the equinoctial gales. Do you know that one 
 needs some strength of character to withstand the ordinary 
 arguments employed by the partisans of authority, especially 
 when the weapon used is wielded by an able hand ? And in 
 truth, I am often surprised they do not make more proselytes 
 among men devoid of solid historical knowledge. Open any 
 one of the works intended to defend the absolute authority of 
 the Church or the Bible. What do you find? Constantly 
 an elaborate proof of the powerlessness of man to attain any 
 certainty whatever, beyond the pale of the alleged authority. 
 " What temerity, what folly, worm of the dust, to wish to 
 penetrate into the impenetrable by thy own resources ! How, 
 with thy ignorance and feebleness, can you expect to find 
 your way through that maze of opinions and systems ? Whither
 
 152 
 
 have they been carried who acted as you are acting?" And 
 then your reprover tells the piteous tale of all the aberrations 
 into which the unaided mind of man has been hurried. The 
 history of Philosophy is an inexhaustible arsenal. The bril- 
 liant follies of Plato, the profound efrrors of Aristotle, the 
 cynicism of Diogenes, the fatalism of the Stoics, the sensual- 
 ism of the stye of Epicurus, the hallucinations of the Pytho- 
 goreans and Alexandrines — so much for the ancient world. 
 In modern times, they pass in review before you the failure 
 of Descartes, the pantheism of Spinoza, the ignoble materialism 
 of the Last Century, the gigantic, but empty conceptions of 
 Germany as it is — what more ? If your mentor is a Catholic 
 he adds a little flattering list of all the eccentric sects begotten 
 by free inquiry, unchained by the Reformation, from the 
 Anabaptists of Munster to the Mormons of the present hour. 
 After which, out of all these freaks of the mind, out of all 
 these ridiculous figures, out of all these caricatures of truth, 
 out of all these monsters, pretending to be reasonable, but which 
 are only extravagant, he fomis for you a large idol in human 
 shape, whose mouth opens as if to swallow you up in your 
 turn ; and when, bewildered and distressed, you, with clasped 
 hands, ask. •■ What must I do to escape ?" " Believe in the 
 one true Church," says the Catholic; " Believe in the one 
 infallible Book." says the Protestant. 
 
 My dear friend, replied Stephen : what pleasure you would 
 
 give to the Abbé B and pastor G , could each of 
 
 them hear those words in your tirade, which square with 
 their opinions. Thus, after all. your temptation to return to 
 some authority has for its cause, not the assurance of having 
 discovered an authority whose credentials will bear examina- 
 tion; but merely the fascination exercised over your imagina- 
 tion by a skilful combination of certain historical facts. But, 
 in my turn, allow me to oppose fascination to fascination,
 
 153 
 
 idol to idol. Mine will not be less diabolical than yours. 
 I will first give him, as vanguard, some light armed troops 
 who will clear his way and prepare for his formidable appear- 
 ance. In the first place, making myself the champion of 
 liberty in opposition to your terrifying style of argument, 
 I declare to you distinctly that if at any time I should be 
 possessed with a desire to subject myself to some authority, 
 it is because I should have need of certainties which I do not 
 easily obtain from free inquiry. Now, you must be told that 
 your authority is not the least in the world proved by the fact 
 that on the outside of it human reason has given birth to only 
 errors and illusions, any more than I prove that a man is rich 
 by showing that he is surrounded by paupers. I even confess 
 that I should deduce from his companions a presumption not 
 very favourable to his opulence. Morever, I must say that 
 for you as well as me the question regards external authority ; 
 but before every external authority there is an authority which 
 was born and has grown up with me, and the requirements of 
 which I am never at liberty to elude, the authority of my con- 
 science, which tells me that, happen what may, even were I 
 all my life to walk in darkness, I have no right for a moment 
 to call that false which appears to me true, or to call that true 
 which appears to me false, although all external authorities 
 confederated should require me to lie to myself. I say further 
 that the faith of authority is no faith at all, that it is only the 
 limitation and the negation of real faith ; for if I believe in 
 God, in the immortality of my soul, in Christ as my Saviour, 
 in my own personal salvation, not because my conscience and 
 my reason find in those beliefs truth and happiness, but solely 
 because the Church or the Bible bids me believe in them, 
 then it is not in God, in the immortality of my soul, in Christ 
 as my Saviour, in my own personal salvation that I believe 
 but in the Church or the Bible ; that is to say, when I drink
 
 i:»4 
 
 to quench my thirst I ara to expect from the vase and not 
 the liquid the refreshment of a salubrious draught. Evidently 
 the vase is useful only for carrying the potion to my lips ; 
 when once I have swallowed the contents, it is either really 
 restorative, and then I shall feel invigorated, or it is not, and 
 then in vain shall I have drunk the draught. A vase that 
 has fallen from heaven would not make lukewarm water 
 agreeable to the taste, nor fetid water salutary. I also assert 
 that with your fear to rely on yourself when you are in the 
 presence of traditional authorities, you, if a Jew, would have 
 rejected Christ : if a pagan, you would have refused the Gos- 
 pel : if a Roman Catholic of the sixteenth century, you would 
 have bought a good handful of indulgences and cursed Luther. 
 Finally, I declare — and here is my idol to be placed by the 
 side of yours — that if the human mind has often, when on 
 the road of liberty, fallen into gross and immoral error, it has 
 not been less unfortunate when on the road of authority. 
 And then I take into my hands the history of religions, the 
 history of churches, the history of dogmas, and now claim my 
 turn to call forth frightful monsters and hideous phantoms ; 
 my turn to invoke the aid of terror, and say, look, these are 
 the fruits of authority in matters of faith, — these, adored 
 animals, immoral divinities, human sacrifices, sacredotal 
 tyrannies, divining juggleries, pontifical infamies, absurd dog- 
 mas, science gagged, consciences perverted, tantalising super- 
 stitious, religious persecutions, millions of martyrs whose 
 blood cries aloud to heaven for retribution — and how much 
 more ? Now tell me, my dear friend, which picture is the 
 more revolting ? 
 
 You preached to one already converted, said I in reply. 
 You have only repeated in your own form what I have often 
 said to myself, and what, long ago, made me give preference 
 to libertv over authoritv. Bv the latter one cannot shut the
 
 155 
 
 door on gnawing doubt, any more than of old, people barred 
 it out by cooping themselves up within the pages of a book 
 or the enclosures of a priesthood. Of this I need no other 
 proof than the anger and rage of those who still believe it 
 necessary to surrender themselves prisoners. The only thing 
 which allows a religious authority to subjugate minds, is the 
 absence of all rival authority, the silence of every negative 
 voice. In the middle ages, when the earth was not known, 
 the Bible was not known, history was not known, man might 
 believe in the Church. From the fifteenth century until 
 now, so placid and serene a faith has been, and is, impossible. 
 Some condemn themselves to the old authority, some resign 
 themselves, some reason themselves, into its servitude; but 
 no longer is there in the submission either security or peace. 
 If one voice declares, in the hearing of the believers, that the 
 authority on which he rests is illusory, the charm is broken, 
 and all becomes uncertain and confused. Forthwith he is 
 compelled to scrutinise the foundation of the house which he 
 inhabits, to appeal to reason, to conscience — to the very 
 tribunal he had done his best to shun. And if any one should 
 attempt to prove to him the validity of the basis on which he 
 placed his confidence, he would be able to fix its defender on 
 one of the horns of this dilemma — either the belief dictated 
 by your religious authority is agreeable to my conscience and 
 my reason, and then why impose it on me and not limit 
 yourself to the simple exposition of it ? or it is contrary 
 to my conscience and my reason ; but then what right have 
 you to appeal to that conscience and that reason to prove 
 that I ought to surrender both ? In virtue of what monstrous 
 sophism do you expect to force me to believe that I am blind, 
 when you begin your argument by saying to me, Now open 
 your eyes and look on these considerations ? 
 
 Good, replied Stephen, in a playful vein ; you have come
 
 156 
 
 back to yourself. But now let us try to get to something less 
 negative than the opposition of principles which turn by turn 
 destroy each other. 
 
 Agreed, I answered, but first let me tell you exactly where 
 I am. I am on the side of liberty ; there I pray God I may 
 always be found ; for there abides not only truth but duty. 
 I believe that in the presence of science, reason, and con- 
 science, I am compelled to be on the side of liberty ; and, as 
 I said but now, I shall always have this advantage over the 
 advocate of the opposite principle, namely, that he has no 
 arms against me whatever until he adopts my doctrine ; so 
 that already he is beaten and I am victorious. On the other 
 side I do not conceal from you my feeling that the man of 
 authority will make a powerful chord vibrate in us, as often 
 as he sets forth our need of religious knowledge, and our 
 manifest impoteney to obtain it by our own endeavour alone. 
 I then submitted to Stephen the practical difficulties of which 
 I spoke in the beginning, and which I have felt specially in 
 the duties of the pulpit and the pastoral care. 
 
 Right, replied he ; and your present views were mine not 
 too many years ago for me to understand you entirely. I 
 will now report to you the steps I think I have set in advance, 
 and you will confirm me in my experience if I succeed in 
 causing you to share it with me. Yes, in religion we need 
 something more than feelings, we need also knowledge. But 
 what is the knowledge which we want ? Have we a right to 
 desire in this respect more than is necessary ? And is not 
 that which is necessary determined by the fundamental needs 
 of our spiritual nature ? Since religion is the development of 
 an inborn tendency of the human mind, we are justified in 
 expressing a want of religious knowledge only in the measure 
 in which that want would prevent us from living as religiously 
 as we are able. For the r<:->t. welcome if it comes : but the
 
 157 
 
 love of luxury is not legitimate, and that would not be a 
 pure thirst of knowledge which extended to luxury ; it would 
 be an ill founded curiosity ; which at least is not in its place 
 except in science, and cannot, properly speaking, be an ele- 
 ment of true religion. Man is not authorised to ask of God 
 more than his daily bread. Thus let us for a moment suppose 
 we know what is needful concerning God, God's relations with 
 the world ; concerning the soul, duty, immortality, salvation, 
 — what is needful, I mean, to make such knowledge furnish 
 to our religious life, motives, and a boundless field of develop- 
 ment; with this we ought to be satisfied; and if, as theologians 
 we lack system, logical organism, the light of psychological 
 and historical observation, we are in the same position as 
 the astronomer who studies the laws of the heavenly bodies, 
 and who knows that his possible errors will not prevent the 
 sun from giving warmth, the stars from giving light, the 
 universal mechanism from accomplishing its course. I have 
 then precisely knowledge enough to desire earnestly to pene- 
 trate further into religious truth, and to give myself up to my 
 researches in full security as to results which may probably 
 escape from me all my life. If, for example, I have the 
 conviction that there is a God, the Infinite Father, to whose 
 infinitely good will I ought to refer everything ; who loves 
 me, who has made perfection the aim for which I should strive ; 
 who wishes that I should be saved, and live for ever ; a God 
 who pardons in sanctifying, and sanctifies in pardoning ; I 
 repose on a solid spiritual foundation, and may be at rest in 
 regard to everything else. 
 
 It seems to me, I answered, that you are giving an outline 
 of fundamentals, but I see not how anything hence arises 
 which bears on the question with which w r e are occupied. 
 
 Patience! We shall come to it soon. Let us observe 
 that in general the question is very ill put between the friends
 
 158 
 
 of authority and tbt friends of liberty. It would seem as if 
 the question was. whether an individual man, -without aid of 
 any kind, consulting himself solely, absolutely limited tu his 
 own single strength, is able tu deduce from his mind all the 
 certainties required by his religious and moral nature. It is 
 forgotten that man has not the option of thus sundering him- 
 self from his race. Whatever he does or is, he has received 
 the impress of a tradition as old as the world. Do you think, 
 for instance, that Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel, all the great and 
 aspiring minds which have essayed to make the world anew, 
 have not at every moment been determined by their prede- 
 cessors and by the antecedents of human kind ? In truth, the 
 man of the strongest mind invents nothing, he only criticises 
 the tradition in whose bosom he is born, and he modifiies it 
 for others in the degree in which his voice calls forth an echo 
 in their hearts. Xow. it is one thing to examine and simplify 
 an already existing construction, and another, for a single 
 man to form such a construction in all its parts. The very 
 fact that our thirst for religious knowledge has acquired 
 such intensity, results from a very ancient and multiform 
 tradition. I fancy that the earliest human beings in the 
 forests, in which our race passed its infancy, unconscious and 
 yet virtually divine, knew little of either seeking or doubting. 
 
 In tradition then, you acknowledge our necessary instructor. 
 But as you do not acknowledge its infalibility, I see not what 
 you gain thereby. 
 
 Wait a little. That vague, indefinite quality which I call 
 the tradition of human kind, is for us a real and concrete 
 power, considered as Christian tradition. We find a presump- 
 tion in its favour, without going beyond the fact that it is 
 the most recent of all the great religious traditions. You 
 know, do you nut, that at the bottom Islamism is older than 
 Christianity ? It has never pretended to be a novelty, but
 
 159 
 
 exclusively a reform, a return. It is a return to Abrahamic 
 monotheism, effected by a people among whom it never ceased 
 to exi^t in a latent state, and under the influence of an 
 Arabian prophet, in whom were embodied the best qualities of 
 the genius of his race. The Christian tradition ought to inspire 
 in us a confidence greater than all other traditions, just as the 
 judgments and ideas of mature age appear to us, and also are, 
 more certain than those of our youth. Humanity resembles 
 a man who is growing, and who, amid daily errors, makes 
 constant progress in a knowledge of the world. Let us then 
 limit our present examination to the Christian tradition. 
 For now some centuries it has been subjected to a criticism at 
 once suspicious and not easy to satisfy. The natural and 
 legitimate tendency of that criticism consists in its continually 
 drawing nearer to the centre, to the primary origin, to the 
 essence of the tradition. Before the Reformation, they 
 attempted to ascend the river of ages by putting episcopacy, 
 collected in a council, above the pontifical power, itself an 
 issue of episcopacy. At the Reformation, they, in right, 
 went back to the New Testament, which, so to say, is the 
 precipitate of the tradition of the first century ; in fact, 
 minds were then already under the influence of the dogmatic 
 tradition of the first five centuries. A consciousness of this 
 opposition between the theory and the facts, has called into 
 existence the theology which is properly called Biblical, in 
 contradistinction to the doctrines of the confessions of faith ; 
 the watchword of which is, the Bible, the whole Bible, and 
 nothing but the Bible. After this, criticism coming into the 
 field, the teachings of the Bible itself making men own the 
 duty ; theologians have gone back to Christ himself, and 
 further they cannot go. Christ is a person, a person is indi- 
 visible, and this continual simplification of Christian tradition 
 has found the point beyond which it cannot pass without deny-
 
 160 
 
 iug itself. Such tradition is founded in right ; for in the 
 name of the same authority I may require every Christian to 
 acknowledge only the authority of Christ who declares, You 
 have only one Master (teacher) Christ, and all ye are brethren ; 
 this is the word of the author of the Gospel, a word which is 
 found in his most certainly authentic discourses, in discourses 
 most clearly marked by his personality. Accordingly, the sole 
 decisive authority that can here be owned, the only authority 
 that can be cited against individual resistances, the single 
 thought that can serve as a rule to our thought, is the 
 thought of Christ. 
 
 Here I suddenly interrupted Stephen. What do you 
 say ? I asked : are we not falling back into full dualism, as 
 between eternal authority and conscience ? Does not the 
 dilemma I put forward but now return upon us, as strong 
 against the authority of Christ, in matters of faith, as against 
 that of the Bible or the Church ? 
 
 That, easily answered Stephen, I must deny, and you too 
 will deny it, if you have patience to listen to me to the end. 
 Be so good as in the first place to remember that Christ, 
 while asserting his own authorty, as he does in the text which 
 I have just cited, and in many others, never acts and speak* as 
 one who commanded faith. Never do you hear Jesus employ 
 words which come to this, — What I teach you may be absurd, 
 but believe it because I teach it. Far from that, his method, 
 his constant method, consists in acting on men's consciences, 
 in such a way as to lead them to acknowledge the truth of 
 what he says. This is the reason why he either purely and 
 simply proclaims the great religious and moral truths which 
 he possesses, or indirectly brings his auditors to see as he sees. 
 His parabolic preaching, his symbolic acts, his paradoxes, so 
 striking and so spontaneous, have no other object. Why so ? 
 The secret of this, his constant method, you must seek in his
 
 1(51 
 
 own person, in the way in which he himself had come to those 
 sublime certainties respecting God and the things of God. 
 Let us call to mind that oui* religious ideas depend less on our 
 science and reason than on our spiritual disposition. Every 
 spiritual state supposes a certain intuition of the spiritual 
 world, just as every physical state supposes a certain impres- 
 sion of the external world. Now it was neither by a system- 
 atic education, nor by philosophic reflexions, that Christ 
 arrived at his certainties. It was immediately, directly, it 
 was by intuition, that he seized and saw spiritual things. That 
 is natural. With us also, I repeat, a perception of things of 
 the spirit depends on our moral and religious development — 
 observe, I do not say on our theoretical and logical knowledge. 
 A man who is very learned but not religious, and who is only 
 moderately moral, will never succeed in proving to himself 
 the truths which concern the soul, the world to come and 
 God. Even the matter to be contemplated escapes from him, 
 and he has no claim but to act like a blind man investgating 
 the laws of light. Jesus, on the contrary, in the immaculate 
 purity of his soul, not being disturbed by any selfish passion, 
 saw and knew, knew infallibly, all those grand things which 
 he has said to us respecting ourselves and our God. Probably, 
 my dear friend, you have not yet appreciated at its just value 
 a word, unique in our Gospels, and which I have never ceased 
 to dwell upon since the day when first I understood it. You 
 find it where it is said that Jesus, in traversing the villages 
 of Galilee, was astonished at the unbelief of his countrymen 
 (Mark vi. 6). Let us confess that with the knowledge which 
 we have of the state of things and of minds in the Jewish 
 people of his time, the opposite would astonish us. Yet, in 
 the eyes of Christ, that unbelief was incomprehensible, just 
 as you would not understand a person who should tell you 
 that we are talking at midday, at this moment, when the
 
 L62 
 
 clock is about to strike eleven at night. In the same manner, 
 Jesus marvelled that those, his fellow-townsmen, did not see, 
 did not even suspect, that which he saw so clearly, felt to be 
 so near, and apprehended so distinctly. The cause of that 
 unbelief was altogether of a moral nature ; so he declared to 
 his contradictors in that well known word : If thine eye is 
 sound, thy whole body shall be full of light ; take heed, lest 
 thine eye be full of darkness. He himself, refers to no other 
 cause the clearness and the certainty of his declarations on 
 that which he holds from his Father; the Father, says he, 
 loveth the Son. and showeth him all that himself doeth, and 
 what things soever he doeth, those the Son likewise doeth 
 (John v. 19) Here again, the Son reveals the Father because 
 his eye is sound and his look pure. In fact, God shows him- 
 self in every thing . and to every body : the question is, are 
 your eyes in a sound condition ? 
 
 I think I begin to understand you, said I to Stephen. 
 You mean that at the bottom, the authority of Jesus is not 
 external relatively to us, in this sense, namely, that Jesus 
 simply said what we should say ourselves, were our moral and 
 religious consciousness as pure as his. 
 
 That is it, he answered, and if you set out from this prin- 
 ciple you will find that all which Jesus has revealed to us of 
 the divine world connects itself therewith in the most direct 
 manner. Let us leave on one side all theology, Christ's sin- 
 lessness itself — which is but a scientific postulatum. Let us 
 begin simply with the fact that Christ sways us religiously, 
 sways us from an incomparable elevation, — with the fact that 
 he is the one whom we must consult if we would know what 
 human nature, at its highest degree of religious altitude, 
 discerned in the divine world, on the borders of which he 
 stood. Interrogate Christ then respecting God. He will 
 answer you : God is our Father which is in heaven, who lores
 
 163 
 
 us ail ; (he Father, without whose permission, not a hair of 
 our heads falls to the ground. Who told him that ? His 
 own pure mind, in the mirror of which God reflected himself 
 as does the sky in a perfectly limpid sheet of water. A re- 
 sense, like that of Jesus, perceives the infiiiite God and his 
 absolute spirituality, as two immediate intuitions, intuitions 
 which need not to be verified by reason. A sanctity like that 
 of Jesus sees and knows God's love ; and to it that a being 
 who desires men to be holy, even as he is holy, does not love 
 man infinitely, would be the most patent of absurdities. 
 Look at the difference that exists between him and us ; that 
 difference depends altogether on the difference which separates 
 our spiritual sense from his. Is it not true that, if at any 
 time we feel our assurance of God's love vacillate in us, it is 
 when we see the apparent indifference of nature in regard to 
 our destiny and the state of our minds ? Whether man does 
 good or does ill, whether he is happy or unhappy, whether he 
 comes into existence or goes out of it, nature pursues its 
 regular course without one moment of sympathy. Not the 
 less does the sun shine, the rain fall, than nature seems to us 
 a huge machine, which rolls on in no way caring for the poor 
 creatures that are seized, lacerated, or crushed by its pon- 
 derous wheels. This is the impression which is made on the 
 least religious man. On the other side, look at Jesus. He 
 too, like us, recognises the ceaseless footsteps of nature. We 
 see that the sight attracted his eye ; not, however, to raise 
 in his mind the question how he was to bring into agreement 
 his daily experience with his sight of the infinite love — to his 
 eyes the latter is not less evident than the former — but solely 
 to ask himself what results from a state of things such as 
 God wishes it to be. And then what a sublime consequence 
 he deduces ! There he finds a permanent revelation of God. 
 There he learns that we should do as does God who makes 
 
 L 2
 
 1 6-1 
 
 hi>; sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his 
 rain on the just and on the unjust. He draws an analogous 
 inference from the phenomena of the regular germination of 
 plants, thus giving us a sublime view of the unity of the 
 creator's plan in the moral and in the physical world. Yet 
 another thing. Jesus never had in his mind the least notion 
 of what we, in our metaphysical discussions, call the trans- 
 cendence and the immanence of God. Nevertheless, the two 
 realities are found in his discourses. With him God is above 
 the world — he is in heaven ; but he is also in the world ; he 
 is on the earth, where he ever works ; in the sequestered 
 chamber, where he sees him who prays in secret ; he clothes 
 the grass of the field; he communicates himself to every one 
 by whom he is sought ; and specially is he in us by his Holy 
 Spirit, and in the clear and definite sentiment which Christ 
 has of his intimate and permanent communion with God, he 
 tell us that God is in him as he is in God. Moreover, Jesus 
 does not argue in order to establish all these things ; he tells 
 us these things because they are, and because, did you rise 
 even in thought, to his altitude, you would see that they are 
 as clearly as he. As to immortality, Jesus sees it as distinctly , 
 and as positively as we see our actual existence. The reason 
 is, that at a certain height of moral and spiritual life, immor- 
 tality is evident; and here is the cause why it is so difficult 
 to prove it to those who stand low in the religious life, or who 
 think that they ought not to believe unless they can prove it 
 logically. Jesus knows that a man loved of God cannot 
 perish. We survive the destruction of the body because God 
 is our God, and because our immortality has the guarantee 
 of his eternal life. Here is the ground of his fine reply to 
 the Saddueees, in which you hardly know which to admire 
 the more, the simplicity of the argument, or the depth of the 
 thought. Observe, especially in Mark, with what firmness of
 
 n;:> 
 
 tone, and what calmness he declares to the Sadducees that 
 they "greatly err (Matt. xxii. 29; Mark xii. 24, 27). As to 
 salvation, Jesus draws from his own sanctity the assurance 
 that his Heavenly Father is ready to forgive, and that it is 
 his will all men should be saved. As a theory of redemption 
 he has left us the parable of the Prodigal Son. And all this 
 he every day proclaims with serenity, in presence of the 
 greatest sinners. 
 
 I confess, that this way of presenting the authority of 
 Christ made a lively impression on me. I began to discern 
 a crowd of consequences which had never before entered my 
 mind. 
 
 Yes, replied he, after a moment's silence; it is on this 
 account that Jesus spoke with that authority which charmed 
 the people, that same people who yet saw in him nothing 
 more than a country rabbi, and whose traditions and traditional 
 authorities he overturned. Let us take counsel of our own 
 experience. Is it not true that in certain moments of our 
 life, when we have lost some dear friend, when we have borne 
 trouble in a Christ-like spirit, when we have devoted ourselves 
 to some good object or to some person, — or when we have 
 witnessed some fine act of self- dévotement — a simple, noble, 
 generous act, the sight of which moistened our eyes and 
 quickened the pulses our heart, is it not true that, in those 
 blessed moments, the grand truths of the gospel acquire in 
 our minds a degree of power, clearness and evidence, which 
 they do not possess in ordinary moments ? Do we not then 
 specially apprehend God, lay hold on eternal life, and believe 
 in our own immortality ? And whence come the radiant 
 certainties which so often illumine the countenance of the 
 dying, when the other vital functions are already enfeebled ? 
 Is it not that then, already delivered from the load of earthly 
 things, as the parting moment comes nearer, the soul puts forth
 
 166 
 
 form herself powers hitherto unknown, hidden till now in her 
 own depths, which gradually unfold and blossom under the 
 rising sun of eternity ? We shall understand the authority of 
 Christ when we know that those saintly flowerings of the soul 
 which are ours but for an instant, and in a slight degree, were 
 the constant experience of Jesus, and that in consequence, his 
 eye was fully open on the unknown world, on the borders of 
 which we live, and where he saw marvellous things, unknown 
 to all by whom they have not been learnt by him. 
 
 Thank you, Stephen, for your excellent lesson, I said to 
 my friend. Once more you have rendered to me the service 
 of explaining and making definite a crowd of things which 
 were in a chaotic state in head. I see how, in your point of 
 view, to submit to the authority of Christ is, at the bottom, 
 only the best way of realising our liberty, that is, that in 
 receiving him as the revealer, because he is pure and holy, we 
 believe simply what we should ourselves see, were we as pure 
 and holy as he. Consequently, the more we grow up toward 
 his spiritual altitude, the more we rise into the regions which 
 he has traversed before us, the more clearly and fully shall we 
 see what was seen by him. Here, however, I meet with 
 difficulty. Christ, it appears, becomes our revealing authority 
 by disclosing to us that which is seen and known in the world 
 of mind, by one who has reached the highest moral and re- 
 ligious development. Does it hence follow that we ought to 
 receive as revealed truth, and as having a right to our credence, 
 the theological forms under which his thought of necessity 
 expressed itself, in order to be apprehended ? 
 
 By no means, replied Stephen. Christ is all intuition, 
 all spontaneousness ; but he is not a theologian, he is not a 
 philosopher. We are not at liberty to reproach him with 
 having given to his religious thought a scientifically defective 
 expression, any more than with not having had our anatomical
 
 1G7 
 
 or chemical knowledge. Permit me a comparison. It will 
 not be a reason, but it may aid me to illustrate the reason of 
 my remark. Suppose that the atmosphere of the earth was 
 constantly foggy, so that we saw the sun and other heavenly 
 bodies but very dimly. Nevertheless, we should see them 
 sufficiently to desire to see them better, and to study their 
 nature and movements. Now, there is only one mountain 
 which ascends beyond the regions of mists, and the only per- 
 son amongst us who is able to climb to its summit, has an 
 excellent eye, exquisite good sense, a character above all 
 suspicion, but he is not an astronomer. "What is to be done ? 
 Forego profiting by his piercing eyes and good sense ? Ab- 
 surd. Write down all he reports touching his observations 
 and impressions, and then make them into so many astro- 
 nomical formulae? Absurd again. What you must do, is 
 carefully to collect his observations, and to interpret them by 
 the light of science. The criterion of these interpretations 
 will be their coincidence, more or less exact, with the original 
 observations. If, for example, the observer said there was a 
 group of stars situated toward the east, and if the calculators 
 know not what place to assign to the group in their map, it 
 is clear that their calculations are false. If the observer 
 asserts that the higher you ascend, the more the rays of the 
 sun lo^se their heat, the astronomers might call in question 
 the justness of the expression ; nevertheless, their theories 
 must adapt themselves, so as not to suppose a degree of heat 
 increasing in proportion as you rise from the earth. Let us 
 apply this compari-on to some dogmatical points. It is 
 possible that evil, with its pervading contagious potency, may 
 have appeared to the thought of Jesus under the features of 
 the Satan of tradition, although the heart was with him the 
 true source of sin. We are free to modify this form, but not 
 to deny the substance of Satan, the evil, sin, but for which
 
 168 
 
 Jems would never have spoken of Satan, It is possible that 
 our reason is unable to reconcile the immanence and the 
 transcendence of God, both of which are certainly reflected in 
 the teachings and the consciousn as. This, however, 
 
 rain, that every view which confounds God and the world, 
 and every view which sunders God from the world, is incapable 
 of being applied to the immediate sentiment, so pure and so 
 vivid, which Jesus had of the Infinite Father. It is possible 
 that in regard to eschatology, Jesus had not altogether broken 
 with the popular representations (though he does so in the 
 degree in which those representations are materialistic and 
 selfish) but every doctine which should deny a conscious and 
 individual immortality, or the idea of retributory judgment, 
 would be too narrow to exhibit the thought of the Lord, and 
 would thereby denote that it did not contain all which exi-t< 
 in the religious life of the true man. In a word, let us not 
 ascribe to Christ the title of "doctor of divinity" — an honour 
 he has never sought — but let us leave to him that of a re- 
 ligious teacher, to which he has a full and undoubted claim. 
 For is he not the Christ ? the anointed of God ? he who has 
 the spirit of God ? that spirit which has never dictated a 
 system, and which none the less leads into all truth. 
 
 Thus authority and liberty are harmonised in Jesus Christ r 
 first because we simply obtain in him by anticipation an 
 intuition of spiritual things, which will become our own in 
 proportion as we rise toward him ; and then because that 
 intuition itself is not necessarily bound to the dogmatical 
 forms with which it clothed in the words of Jesus, as histori- 
 cally transmitted to us. But, added I, after a moment's re- 
 flexion, may not one refer the other traditional authorities to 
 an analogous point of view ? 
 
 That is impossible, replied Stephen, Can you become a 
 book ? Can you become a Church ? Do you not see that
 
 lf'.'.i 
 
 only a human being can become to us an authority which is 
 at the same time our liberty ? Besides, the formulae con- 
 tained in a book or decreed by a church, the moment you 
 have their authority on the simple fact that they are written 
 in a book or prescribed by a church, the moment you no 
 longer find them in your own experience, the moment you 
 have not sight to distinguish between the letter and the spirit, 
 become a fixed law, admit of no modification, and cany with 
 them all the difficulties and impossibilities of arbitrary and 
 external authority. On the contrary, let us preach to the 
 multitude religious truth in the name of Jesus Christ, but let 
 us preach it as it was preached by Jesus Christ himself, 
 deriving, as did he, our authority from the truth of what 
 we declare in his name. Let us induce the multitude to 
 become great in character, and to rise toward Christ. Let 
 us leave to Catholic priests the privilege of preaching a 
 blind faith : while we remain sincere Christians and con- 
 sistent Protestants. We lean on the Bible in preaching ! 
 And why not ? What an excellent custom that which 
 compels us never to detach ourselves from the great stream 
 of religious life, which has its source in the cradle of mankind, 
 which comes into view in Abraham, and which never after 
 ceases becoming broader and steeper. The preachers of the 
 present day, who are familiar with the criticism of the Old 
 Testament, are too much afraid of thence taking texts. After 
 all, the history which it contains is that of a people which 
 continues to grow until it is in a condition to produce the 
 Christ. Whatever brings it near or removes it from that 
 marvellous destiny is the very thing which brings us near or 
 removes us from God. In this point of view, there is in the 
 Old Testament an inexhaustible mine of treasure, applicable 
 to our moral and religious life. The New Testament, even 
 on the outside of the personal teachings of Christ, is still the
 
 170 
 
 direct echo of that creative word, and, inappreciable advantage ! 
 shows us the first rudiments and development of the Church. 
 There we find Catholics in the Judaizers, a Protestant in Paul 
 of Tarsus, a m iralist in James, and one who hopes against 
 hope in the prophet of Patmos. There we mid an entire re- 
 ligious microscosm, which prophecies what the christian world 
 will always be, having Jesus for its centre, in whom it ever 
 renews its religious life. We have then the right to speak 
 in the name of the Old Testament and the New. The sole 
 precaution we need observe is to expound rather than prescribe. 
 We shall soon be understood by the more enlightened mem- 
 bers of the church, by whom aid will be offered to others. 
 It is the duty of every christian to labour to raise others up 
 to himself, that they may be able to rise to Christ. Besides, 
 let us be trustful. As children of the light, let us be friends 
 of truth, and let us love the truth too much not to follow it, 
 whithersoever it leads ; for never can it lead us away from 
 duty, and a practical allegiance to duty forms the essence of 
 the christian character. In our endeavour to follow Christ, 
 let us begin with an unshaken confidence in goodness, the 
 beauty and the power of truth, which lies at the basis of his 
 life, and is the cause of his sublime self-sacrifice. Such a 
 state of mind deserves to bear the name of him in whom it 
 appears in perfection, and so to be called a christian state of 
 mind. The past we will venerate, as did our master ; without 
 the past we should know nothing : we will also love the 
 future; by whose favour, under. God, we shall know every- 
 thing. 
 
 But I perceive, he suddenly said, that we are shamefully 
 passing the hour when decent people retire to their chambers. 
 
 Looking from the window, I followed Stephen with my 
 eyes, as he walked toward the house where he received hos- 
 pitality. The night was superb. The deepest silence reigned
 
 171 
 
 in the streets, so animated during the day, of the town where 
 I dwell. The stars shone with all their brilliancy. The moon 
 played amid the cordage of numerous vessels anchored in the 
 neighbouring bay, and which seemed as if they slept, soothed 
 by the gentle stream of the Meuse. The opulent houses of 
 the river banks proudly mirrored themselves in the softly 
 moving waters. At a distance, the lamps of three railways 
 threw forward their lights, while over my head passed those 
 magic wires which, in the twinkling of an eye, carry a thought 
 and a wish from Paris to London, from Vienna to St. Peters- 
 burg. It occurred to me that this populous and flourishing 
 city, one of the centres of the commerce of two worlds, was, 
 a few generations since, only a sheet of mud which every tide 
 covered. The change has been effected, said I, by persevering 
 industry, and certainly it is God's glory that his creature is 
 able thus to transform his creation. But at what cost has 
 man achieved this victory over nature ? How many ineffect- 
 ual efforts, disastrous inundations, fatal overthrows, separate 
 the present moment from the hour when, for the first time, 
 a man set foot on some dry spot in the ancient marsh. Never- 
 theless, no labour has been wholly fruitless in the long series 
 of transitions ; and had it thought and spirit, the meanest 
 particle of earth might say, I too, I have had my share iu 
 the victory. 
 
 This reflexion carried me back to Stephen's closing words 
 as to the duties we owe to our less instructed bretheren. Why 
 should we doubt of the reign of God in men's hearts, any 
 more than of the reign of man over the earth ? The same 
 objection which sloth or dejection would raise against the 
 spiritual progress of our race, might, of old, have been equally 
 well pleaded against the possibility of the material prcir 
 the tokens of which I saw on all sides around me. And 
 carrying my eyes to the starry vault, which seemed to smile
 
 172 
 
 the smile of the Infinite Father, I felt that we also, in our 
 humble sphere, ought to labour to raise the whole of our kind, 
 without dwelling on disappointment in the past, and without 
 evading our obligations under the pretext of inability. We 
 owe our share of effort, mean though it may be, to the im- 
 provement of our kind — we owe it, as the river owes its tribute 
 to the ocean whence its waters come ; if only because, if we 
 contribute our part to the continual ascent of our race, we 
 are sustained and carried upward under its ceaseless beneficent 
 
 influence. 
 
 Let noble man 
 
 Be helpfull and good ! 
 
 Ever creating 
 
 The right and the useful, — 
 
 Type of those loftier 
 
 Beings of whom the heart whispers ! 
 
 Goethe.
 
 OF THE NOTION OF EEVELATION, 
 
 By Bev. A. Grotz. 
 
 We propose to enquire into the meaning, and determine 
 the real significance of a word often employed in philosophical 
 and religious language, but to which different persons attach 
 very different significations. This word is Revelation. What- 
 ever be the interest, the philosophical importance of questions 
 of etymology, we do not here speak specially of the sense of 
 the word. We do not profess to write an article for a lexicon. 
 Besides, there can hardly be, as it seems to us, any difference 
 of opinion as to the word revelation. All will agree that where- 
 ever what has been concealed is uncovered, what has been 
 hidden is manifested and made clear, there is revelation. On 
 this ground there is no doubt, no difference of opinion possible. 
 
 But as soon as we set foot on religious, that is, on theo- 
 logical ground, difficulties present themselves, and constantly 
 increase. The word is turned and twisted into every possible 
 sense : it is made to express ideas the most diverse, and some- 
 times the most contradictory. Is it a question of fact ? — or 
 of doctrine ? — Has there been but one revelation ? — or do we 
 reckon several ? Is revelation given once for all, or is it 
 successive ? Is revelation at an end for ever ? — or is it perma- 
 nent and progressive ? To one, revelation is a book, the 
 letter; to another, a life giving spirit, a wide spreading and 
 irresistible current, traversing the world in all ages. One 
 will distinguish between a direct revelation and a trans- 
 mitted revelation : one will call it natural, another super- 
 natural : one mediate, the other immediate : one restricts,
 
 
 another extends the signification of the word. At first sight, 
 all appears confusion itself, a real chaos. We propose to 
 endeavour to clear up and to unravel a little these discordant 
 ideas. This is not, we must believe, a mere piece of intel- 
 lectual gymnastics, a vain and useless search : on the contrary, 
 serious interests, both moral and religious, are affected by 
 the solution of the question. In fact, according as we adopt 
 one or the other signification of the word revelation, man is set 
 upon a pedestal, or drawn through the mire, religion is conceived 
 of as a doctrine, or as a life, as a system of authority, or as a 
 free and spiritual development, as a collection of formulas, or 
 as a regeneration of the soul, even to its lowest depths. And 
 how many times, alas ! has revelation been. nay. is. a word 
 I of sense. How many men are there around 
 us to whom revelation, contrary to its etymology, reveals 
 nothing and ought to reveal nothing. 
 
 Xumerous as are the definitions of the word revelation, 
 various as are the systems deduced from these definitions, it 
 seems to us possible to arrange these systems and these 
 definitions under two principal heads. Generally speaking, 
 revelation is judged, and its true character and value deter- 
 mined, from one or other of two points of view, quite opposed 
 one to the other, or, in other words, each exclusive of the 
 other. 1. — In the one of these, the idea of authority if 
 sumed as the basis — -of authority conceived in its harshest and 
 most severe expression. Man, say the supporters of this 
 view, was created perfect : bnt he sinned, and from that time 
 forth all was and is degraded and spoiled in him ; his moral 
 blindness is complete : there is no longer any soundness, any 
 purity, in his spiritual nature ! no longer any religious ideas of 
 any value, any energy, any pure springs of action ! To escape 
 from this state of lethargy, this moral and religious death, 
 he himself can do absolutely nothing ; there is no longer in
 
 him any affinity, any possible point of contact, for truth. 
 When these premises are stated and accepted, the rest is na- 
 turally a matter of course. God is introduced in action, and 
 in action of the nature of magic; he is really the I J tu s ex 
 machina. Man is in the position of the slave of olden time. 
 God is the master ; he speaks, he orders, he dictates precepts 
 and ordinances ; — and man's part is to accept all with his 
 eyes shut, without examination. We are indeed told that 
 man cannot examine, and that if he could, he would only by 
 examining offend God, for he would thus manifest his audacity 
 and his ingratitude, and his doubts of the wisdom of his 
 Creator. He is essentially a minor, absolutely passive ; his 
 spontaneity, his liberty, and his will, are annihilated ; they 
 have no power whatever to arrive at truth and goodness; these 
 faculties are only recognised as powerful in the cause of 
 error and of evil. Hence it follows, with absolute necessity, 
 that revelation is essentially external ; its power over man, 
 arising from its origin, and from the truths which it contains, 
 is such, that he must take it as it is, as a whole, on trust. 
 Revelation is in this case a law, a decree. Logic has even 
 compelled the defenders of this view to assert that we can do no- 
 thing for our salvation, or to prevent our perdition, these things 
 having been ordained from all eternity, independently of our 
 conduct and of our will. Can we accept such an idea of 
 revelation ? Will it endure the test of a candid and serious 
 examination ? We think not. This idea, which takes its 
 rise in the absoluteness of God, makes of no account the 
 real needs of the human soul ; cares not at all to study our 
 spiritual nature, disdains and despises all ancient civilisation, 
 the efforts of the sages of pagan times ; in a word, all human 
 preparation, all human influence is wilfully set aside. And 
 again, as to the question whether facts agree with the 
 logical data, whether they suit the results of the system, no
 
 176 
 
 possible attention U paid to this : the system is complete, 
 
 and must be taken as \\ "External authority,"' writes 
 
 M. Secrétan, " can never induce the disciple to assimilate its 
 teachings with himself, because the very premise upon which 
 the necessity of external authority is founded, excludes the 
 possibility of such assimilation." 2. — In the other, the 
 abstract idea of lil ken as the basis — of liberty con- 
 
 ceived in its most absolu Man alone, with his facul- 
 
 ties, his necessities, and his d taken into the account; 
 
 the belief appears to be that he is alone in the world. His 
 spontaneousness of action, his liberty, are regarded as the 
 only rule, the only motive, the only possible instrument of 
 revelation. Let man examine the universe, let him descend 
 into himself, let him study, let him enumerate his faculties 
 and their laws, and let him energetically reject all which 
 seems contrary to his nature and to his faculties ; this is his 
 right, it is his duty. From this point of new all is made to give 
 way to human liberty. Revelation is nothing more than the 
 progr ciety, the work of humanity, the development 
 
 of the powers of the human mind, in a word, civilisation. 
 Xo more law ! no more limit ! no more authority ! Man is 
 sufficient for himself, he is his own law, his God, or to express 
 it in few words, humanity reveals itself to itself. Can we 
 accept such an idea of revelation ? Will it endure the test of 
 a candid and serious examination ? We think not. Evidently 
 here again, no regard is paid to facts or to reality ; here 
 again, the study of the faculties and of the needs of the soul 
 is not complete. God remains outside of man, he is excluded 
 from his life, he plays no part in the development of his soul: 
 whence it follows that the very notion of revelation i- losfe 
 From the other point of view, we saw nothing but God ; here 
 we see nothing but man : and from each of these points of 
 view, something is left out of sight : on the one hand, the real
 
 177 
 
 action of God, nature itself, and on the other, the real wants 
 of man and his most glorious powers. " No one can pretend 
 to have himself discovered the secret of all things, without 
 deifying himself, or at least without regarding himself as the 
 last limit of progress, which is not becoming to any one." 
 The struggle has long been between these two points of view, 
 between these two systems, and in our own days, the contest 
 seems to be more serious than ever, and to threaten to urge 
 each party into extreme views. 
 
 But is it not possible to take up a third position ? Can 
 we not conceive of a revelation, which should be at the same 
 time authority and liberty, which should unite, melt together 
 these terms into a living reality, which should take what is 
 good and true from each of these exclusive systems, and should 
 reject all errors and exaggerations of both ? Let us consider 
 the case: the question is certainly worth the trouble. 
 
 In the first place, before entering upon the subject itself, 
 we have to put and to answer the question, Is a revelation 
 possible ? We answer in the affirmative. We take for 
 granted the existence of God, of a personal God, the Creator ; 
 we have therefore before us two terms, two beings, God and 
 man. We are not now called upon to examine what is exactly 
 their relative position, what is the nature of these two beings. 
 We ask only if there is any impossibility in conceiving of 
 some sort of relation between God and man, impossibility to 
 conceive of action on the part of God upon this world and 
 upon his creatures, impossibility on the part of the latter to 
 be conscious of this action. Neither need we here examine 
 the nature or the direction of divine action. The question 
 for us may be stated in general terms : " Cannot God, who 
 has created man, act upon him, and manifest himself to him, 
 directly or indirectly?" Who would dare to maintain that 
 this is impossible ? It would be necessary at the same time
 
 
 178 
 
 to maintain that creation is impossible, to close one's eyes to 
 all evidence, or to deny God. From the moment that you 
 admit, that you take for granted God and man, God the 
 Creator, man the creature, you take for granted, by this very 
 fact, relations between God and man. As soon as any thing 
 exists besides God, there is revelation, for there is manifes 
 tion. The idea of a God, the Creator, and of revelation are 
 correlatives. But the question becomes much clearer by 
 studying with ever so little care, the nature of man, his 
 situation, his faculties, his necessities. It is not possible, we 
 are aware, to conclude logically of the reality of anything 
 because it is merely possible : but a glance at our own nature 
 -will immediately conduct us from the possibility to the 
 necessity of revelation. Not many remarks will be required. 
 
 It is matter of universal experience that there is, at the 
 bottom of the heart, a feeling of dependence. Man does not 
 feel himself alone, as a spiritual, free, loving being. By a 
 vronderful instinct, he feels, he guesses, he affirms the existence 
 of a Being, at first very indistinctly defined, but the thought 
 of whom pursues him in all times and places. If he examine 
 his own thoughts and feelings, he hears a voice, he is con- 
 scious of wants and wishes. The voice is commanding, and 
 will be obeyed : the wishes will be satisfied, and this is the 
 condition of his happiness. This feeling of dependence, it has 
 been truly said, is the basi igion: and this may be 
 
 to be the side of authority, of what is imposed on man. But 
 there is more than this in man. He feels himself dependent 
 upon some Being: but he d 50 to approach him, he 
 
 aspires to know him, to remove the mysterous veil which hides 
 him from his sight, to seize upon him with all the powers' of 
 his soul, to be united to him. On the part of God there is ac- 
 tion, since he has put into the human soul desires, wai 
 and in the same manner, man aspires to re-a • !. he even
 
 179 
 
 feels the necessity of so re-acting. This may be said to be the 
 side of liberty, of spontaneity. But here we find a strange 
 phenomenon, an afflicting spectacle. God acts, man does not 
 re-act as he ought; God speaks, man does not answer, does 
 not wish to answer ; the harmony is interrupted. " The 
 mysterious cable, which connected the vessel with the port, 
 is broken," and the vessel, as without helm or compass, is 
 driven about at the mercy of the wind, over a sea filled with 
 rocks and shoals. Man's ideal, man's object, as he feels and 
 as he asserts almost by instinct, should be the intimate and 
 living union with, and the knowledge of God, the satisfaction 
 and development in God of all the wants and wishes of the 
 human soul. But is it so ? No. Man is in a strait between 
 the voice of conscience and his own passions. The feeling of 
 dependence weighs upon him ; He can only think of God with 
 terror, for his violations of the moral law, engraven on his 
 soul, are numerous, manifest, palpable. The consciousness of 
 God in man, instead of being a joy, becomes a torment. And 
 yet man, by an astonishing contradiction, has always a long- 
 ing for truth, for justice, for holiness. The religious senti- 
 ment still exists — but what strange channels it chooses for its 
 expression ! Despairing of being able to seize this God, the 
 thought of whom pursues him always, man will localise him, 
 will make of him a statue, an idol, will place him in the stars, 
 in certain physical phenomena of remarkable power. Despair- 
 ing of realising the ideal of justice, of holiness, which his 
 conscience feels, and to which he aspires, he will make a God 
 for himself after his own standard. He has thought to seize 
 upon God, to give a firm basis to morality : fatal illusion ! 
 God is destroyed, morality overthrown. I see the door opened 
 to superstition of every kind, to the wildest exaggerations of the 
 passions. Let us recognise the fact, man is in a false position 
 — he is fallen. How can this situation be explained ? Could 
 
 m 2
 
 180 
 
 God have been deceived ? can he have failed in his work ? 
 Who would assert this ? — Not wishing, not being able to sacri- 
 fice God, we explain to ourselves the present state of humanity 
 by a fall, by a falling off. Not that we understand the man- 
 ner in which this fall could have taken place : the logic of 
 facts, observation of moral phenomena, and the religious sen- 
 timent lead us to it, force us to it. 
 
 It has been said that God revealed himself to the first 
 man ; and almost all nations speak of an age of gold at the 
 origin of all things. This primitive revelation is said to have 
 been complete and perfect. But what is meant by this ? 
 Let us endeavour not to be satisfied with words, and let us 
 not allow ignorance, the spirit of system, or the rule of taking 
 for granted to hide themselves behind mystery. Does this 
 mean that man had arrived at an adequate notion of God ? 
 that he had the real formula of God ? that he possessed those 
 metaphysical and transcendental notions, which we now only 
 approach with an inward shudder ? We candidly confess 
 that we do not comprehend such a revelation, it appears 
 to us even impossible. Does it mean that the will of man 
 was in harmony with the Divine will ? This we can con- 
 ceive and grant. Such a harmony does not exclude progress, 
 development, an intellectual conception more and more accu- 
 rate and true of our relations to God. It is in this agree- 
 ment more or less durable of the human will with the 
 Divine will, in this still unstained and untarnished religious 
 feeling, that the primitive revelation, according to my view, 
 manifests itself. The fall is the revolt of the will, is that 
 man constitutes himself outside of God, taking himself as 
 the basis and ultimate object. It is supposed, commonly 
 enough, that the first man had a number of ideas and notions, 
 which, since the fall, have been lost from his mind. Such 
 a supposition is inadmissible. ' In fact, it is not the intelli-
 
 181 
 
 gence which is obscured, so much as the will which has become 
 enervated and rebellious. Could it be that these notions made 
 men religious or pious ? It is possible to discuss learnedly God 
 and his nature, it is possible to define these points in very exact 
 terms, and yet to live without God, to have no real and living 
 communion with the Creator. Man is fallen, this is a fact. But 
 what does this mean ? That there is no longer in him any 
 possible point of contact with truth, no longer any affinity for 
 good, no longer any bond of union possible between him and 
 God ? that everything in the human breast is necessarily evil, 
 and fatally depraved ? Is the image of God totally effaced ? are 
 all those faculties, which, according to Calvin, ought to make us 
 regard man asa" mirror of the glory of his Creator," annihi- 
 lated? But then man could be no longer man, and what 
 could mean his ardent aspirations, his desires and regrets, 
 the hunger and thirst of his soul ? Joy and sorrow, peace 
 and remorse could only be vain words, chimeras or phantoms. 
 " There is no doubt," says Calvin (Inst. lib. I. c. 15.) " that 
 Adam, fallen from the happy state in which he had been 
 created, did infinitely remove himself from God, by his revolt. 
 And therefore, although we confess that this image has not 
 been entirely annihilated and effaced in him, yet, etc." Cer- 
 tainly no one will accuse Calvin of exaggerating the value of 
 the natural man. By the very fact that man has a conscious- 
 ness of God, whatever be the feelings that this consciousness 
 calls into action, it is proved that there is a possiblity, and, 
 I add, a necessity for reunion. Man is fallen — well : but, and 
 it is here that there is hope that he may rise again, he has 
 consciousness, he can have consciousness of his fall. The 
 feeling of imperfection, of weakness, of corruption, may be- 
 come, and does very often become, a condition of progress. 
 What is needed then is not a creation in the proper sense of 
 the word; the individual would then disappear, and with the
 
 1*2 
 
 individual, the true moral basis ; no, the individual person- 
 ality remains, and must always remain : it is a conversion, or 
 a regeneration which has to be effected. Man, who has to a 
 certain extent allowed God to escape from him, must seize 
 upon him again. Here as we understand it, is, and here ought 
 to be, the work of a revelation. 
 
 It may be asked here if the natural development of the 
 energies of the human soul would not suffice to bring man 
 to the point which we have indicated. Let History and 
 Anthropology answer : in our opinion, they answer in the 
 negative. "Without doubt there is at bottom an agree- 
 ment between religious truths and our spiritual nature ; 
 witln »ut doubt, truth is made for man, and man in his turn is 
 made for truth : but we have to remark that the question is 
 here less of a combination of true ideas than of a change of 
 heart and of will. Men of our days are born amidst circum- 
 stances continually richer in knowledge and in acquirements. 
 I grant it. But is the basis of human nature, its nature itself, 
 that which constitutes its essence, in any degree different ? 
 Is the point of departure different ? Are our wills born more 
 pure, more upright, more holy ? No one would probably 
 maintain this. On the other hand, consider from a moral 
 point of view, or as regards religion, the barbarous popula- 
 tions, say of Oceanica : consider what is their idea of God, 
 of man, and of his destiny. For ages they have been going 
 through the same circle of ideas. The religious sentiment 
 has degenerated into superstition, and has created an author- 
 ity, arbitrary, absurd, and puerile ; and liberty, not resting 
 upon the divine, has become licentiousness and immorality. 
 Whence we may also derive the following hint : that upon 
 the ground of religion and religious teachings, the people, the 
 masses go for nothing, do not act directly : it is the individual
 
 183 
 
 we must study, it is by the individual that the question must 
 be decided. Let us therefore consider the individual. 
 
 We should now comprehend what is to be our point of 
 departure in the matter under consideration. Feeling of 
 dependence, desire of union with God. We suppose a man 
 seeking God, desirous of union with him. Where and how 
 will God manifest himself ? Revelation is possible, it is neces- 
 sary. What is it ? — We would be as complete as possible, 
 and leave out of sight no manifestation of the Deity. 
 
 In the first place, God reveals himself outside of man, in 
 the physical universe. The very sight of a vast and rich plain, 
 of the immense sea, of the starry night, of the wild glacier, 
 has in it something that affects the mind. Is it necessary to 
 insist upon this point ? Always and everywhere such a sight 
 has caused a thrill in some secret fibre of the human heart. 
 The power, the grace, the order, the magnificent harmony, 
 strike with never-failing effect upon man's mind. In accor- 
 dance with the laws of his nature, he ascends from the work 
 to the workman, from the creation to the Creator. See and 
 admire the effect of nature on men as yet but little civilised, 
 living under the blue vault of heaven. They have before them 
 and they recognise it, an open volume, a volume of which 
 every blade of grass, nay even the smallest insect, is a sublime 
 fragment. Hebrew literature offers us some magnificent 
 pages on this grand theme. Read for example the Song of 
 the three young Hebrews from the 34th verse. I might quote 
 numerous passages from profane authors and verses from the 
 psalms, from the books of Job and of the Prophets, in which 
 the powerful influence of the physical universe upon the 
 human soul is well depicted 
 
 God again reveals himself in History, in the progress of 
 society, in literary and scientific development, in the trials and 
 the conquests of humanity. It would appear as if each nation had
 
 1S4 
 
 received special gifts for a special mission; as if each people 
 brought its stone to the construction of the immense edifice. 
 Some mysterious instinct agitates them and urges them on : 
 events attach them one to the other, by closer and closer bonds. 
 Can this be only a caprice, an accident ? Can so many genera- 
 tion have passed away without result — can they have appeared 
 and lived without end or object ? Impossible. Each generation 
 has had its task, its mission. The fire lighted the first day of 
 creation has passed on increasing from age to age, from nation 
 to nation. What discoveries ! What admirable actions I 
 "What prodigies 1 What splendour ! .Soon, it may be per- 
 mitted us to believe, no single nation shall remain outside of 
 this great and irristible current, which is carrying society along. 
 But if nature and history are a revelation, it is because there 
 is something answering to them in man. In fact if man turns 
 round upon himself, if he penetrates into the depths of his being r 
 he discovers there a new manifestation of God; the external 
 appearance of the universe, and the great facts of history are 
 engraven upon the soul, and awaken there a crowd of feelings. 
 One might suppose a hand as it were, gathering in and 
 preserving these impressions from without. The universe 
 speaks and conscience answers : there is reciprocal action, and 
 re-action, authority and liberty. If there were nothing in man 
 but a vegetative vitality, the impressions made by the physical 
 world would be without result. But this is not all. There 
 is in us, in the deep places of our being, as it were, a world 
 apart, entirely internal, entirely spiritual. Brought to bear 
 upon any action whatever, conscience speaks ; according as 
 man decides in such or such a way, conscience approves or 
 condemns ; it can distinguish between the just and the unjust^ 
 the evil and the good. And more than this, these distinctions 
 are not mere abstractions. These notions assume form, they 
 become incarnate. The true, the just, the beautiful, are con-
 
 185 
 
 centrated into a single fdea, or rather I should say into a single 
 being — into God ! If man fears when acting in opposition 
 to his conscience, it is that he feels he has offended some 
 one, a being, who is perfection itself, and whom he ought 
 rather to resemble. This revelation of conscience and by 
 conscience acting upon nature, upon history, and upon ordinary 
 life, explains to us the elevated ideas some Pagans have 
 entertained of the Divinity, their presentiments, their aspira- 
 tions. Socrates and Plato are called by St. Augustine, the 
 precursors of Christ. What impious breadth of thought, 
 what audacious blasphemy, is there not in the language of 
 the holy bishop, in the eyes of some who deny any preparation 
 for the Gospel, in the midst of paganism ! " We are in re- 
 lation to God, " says Vinet (Medit, p. 158.) "what the moon is 
 "in relation to the sun, reflectors only, but animated, sensible, 
 "personal reflectors, appropriating to themselves the light of 
 " God, reflecting it voluntarily, and shedding it abroad with 
 "knowledge and intention. And yet reflectors, nothing but 
 "reflectors ! but how glorious for us to be so ! " 
 
 We have just pointed out the instruments of universal 
 revelation, and it appears to us easy to get at the results of 
 this revelation as to the notion of the Divinity. God is mani- 
 fested as power, wisdom, providence, justice, and holiness. 
 
 But it is evident, as experience proves and as reason 
 acknowledges, that there is here some incompleteness, and 
 consequently a difficulty. Nature, which reveals God, conceals 
 him at the same time. The sight is so grand, so imposing, 
 that it crushes man ; the impression upon the senses is so 
 lively, so direct, that the latter, may, by their excitement, 
 weaken the spiritual faculties and trouble the conscience. 
 And conscience itself, whilst receiving impressions and elab- 
 orating the great ideas of religion and morality, may weaken 
 the one and alter the nature of the other ; for it is fallen :
 
 186 
 
 the mirror is not broken but it is singularly tarnished. 
 Conscience may fall into deplorable aberrations. The will 
 has become vitiated, capricious : and even if we suppose 
 conscience to be perfectly upright and true, will the will 
 always obey its commands ? Let facts answer. The revela- 
 tion of nature has been found to reduce man to the grossest 
 supei r to a vague and enervating pantheism; the 
 
 revelation of conscience has been found to lead to the most 
 us moral errors. But though there is this difficulty, it 
 true that there is a natural revelation. Every 
 maii ery perception of the Infinite in power, 
 
 in justice, in beauty, in holiness, is a revelation. ''That 
 ther^ in man a feeling of the 
 
 Divinity, and that this feeling comes to him from his own 
 powers and from a natural instinct, is a fact which we con- 
 sider beyond all q 
 
 This is however not ail, this is not enough. What vague- 
 ness there is in this natural revelation ! How fleeting are its 
 impressions ! If ihe imagination is struck: if reason is arrested, 
 wonders, and is raised to more effective conceptions, man 
 himself is not moved in the depths of his nature, and does 
 not reaiiy seize upon the idea of God : all the wants of his 
 heart are not satisfied : he is unceasingly in doubt between 
 authority and liberty ; his conscience often hesitates, and this 
 because the revelation is above all things external. And here 
 ause to remark, that revelation thus far is nothing in 
 itself magical or arbitrary, which shocks reason and conscience. 
 Let us advance another step. 
 
 manifests himself in man, or rather by man. It is 
 certain that all are not born with the same gifts, the same 
 character, faculties equally developed. If all are fallen, 
 there are yet some whose conscience is more true, whose ideas 
 are more clearlv defined, whose moral sense is more delicate,
 
 is; 
 
 whose will is firmer than those of others. Further, these men 
 already privileged by nature, have been placed in such posi- 
 tions, under the influence of such circumstances, that their 
 natural dispositions have been happily and admirably de- 
 veloped. Solitude, retirement, contemplation, prayer, are 
 some of the means which have served to raise them to a 
 sounder conception of God, and to cause them to comprehend 
 more fully the nature of man. These men, few in number, who 
 have received special and extraordinary gifts, and who have 
 been placed in specially favourable circumstances, present 
 themselves to us as workmen of God. They have themselves 
 a consciousness of their mission, and they accept it with so 
 much energy that their mere personality seems lost in presence 
 of their work. Do not these few words contain the lives of all 
 the legislators of antiquity, of those sages and philosophers 
 who have left their trace on the social improvement of their 
 times, who have advanced civilisation, founded religions and 
 empires ? All certainly present themselves as charged with a 
 special mission ; they are inspired, that is to say, in direct 
 relation to the Deity, who in the depths of their being, in the 
 silence of the heart, dictates to them his will. In this capa- 
 city, they are clothed with absolute authority. They speak ; 
 the crowd listens, accepts, obeys. In the midst of a people, 
 ignorant, rude, superstitious, blinded by mere material in- 
 stincts, some religious authority is required, just as in the life 
 of every man there is a period where a firm hand is required 
 to restrain and guide. Is not this the sight which Moses and 
 the people of Israel present to us ? The Mosaic revelation is 
 a law, it is essentially an authority. This, we must here re- 
 mark, is the first form of revelation in history. As soon as 
 we perceive a positive revelation, we perceive at the same time 
 authority ; in his religious education, man is at first treated 
 like a child. And yet, leaving out of the question the marvel-
 
 188 
 
 lous portion of the revelation of Moses, all that has to do 
 with prodigies (an element, it must be admitted, which is 
 found in all the older religions) what is left ? To what is 
 this Mosaic revelation reduced ? Does it consist of truths, 
 of ideas, such that men must accept them without under- 
 standing them, without being able to appropriate and assimi- 
 late them ? Does authority here take for its object the com- 
 pulsory reception and belief of the incomprehensible ? What 
 do we see ? The unity of God, proclaimed loudly and 
 pointedly. " Jehovah is the only God," is the. fundamental 
 dogma. Then a series of moral precepts (The Decalogue), 
 then sacrifices, ritual ordinances, and civil laws. "We do 
 not now require to consider the ceremonial, civil or political 
 portions of the Mosaic revelation. What is there then, we 
 ask, which goes beyond man, which he cannot accept, which 
 does not immediately find an echo in his soul ? The unity of 
 God ? Reason accepts it. conscience brings us to the same 
 conclusion. Keniove the veil, appease the evil passions, 
 dissipate errors and prejudices, and this notion of God be- 
 comes easily seized. "Why then does Moses speak in the 
 name of authority ? Precisely because of these errors and 
 prejudices which obscured and falsified the action of conscience: 
 it was needful in some sort to do violence to men, and to 
 impose upon them what was yet to be found in their own being. 
 And, as to the moral precepts ? Are they not in a similar 
 position to the notion of Jehovah, the one God? Moses 
 promulgated them by authority, by a revelation. In the 
 midst of the moral darkness, the rude morality of his time 
 and of his people, such precepts must at first sight have 
 appeared strange : this was a revelation. But, in reality, 
 what is there mysterious or extraordinary in these precepts ? 
 Absolutely nothing. Are they not in perfect agreement, in 
 harmonv with the conscience ? The real laws of the moral
 
 189 
 
 being were, in the shade, without effect : Moses, the legislator, 
 promulgated and revealed them. This appears to be little : 
 it is all. 
 
 One circumstance, however, seems to astonish us. There 
 is one feature which characterises the Hebrew nation, and 
 distinguishes it from all other nations of antiquity. Besides 
 its notion of Jehovah, sole God, besides its moral precepts, 
 it has a promise : it expects something, it waits for some one. 
 It is not now the place to examine the history of this promise, 
 the character of this expectation, the materialistic and carnal 
 corruptions which were connected with it : but what is certain, 
 what is attested by authentic documents, is, that the Jewish 
 people lived in the future, in the expectation of a happier 
 state, of a deliverer. This is surely a very special revelation : 
 and still more remarkably, facts have proved the truth of 
 this expectation ; the promise has been realised. But is this 
 promise of which we speak at variance with the aspirations of 
 the human soul, with the requirements of conscience? On 
 the contrary, it confirms the former, and satisfies the latter. 
 The people are unhappy and suffer — they hope for, they see 
 in the future, a reparation, a consolation, a salvation. What 
 is there here strange or magical ? what more natural ? The 
 law must soon have proved itself, to some souls at least, 
 powerless, insufficient. In proportion as morality becomes 
 purer, as conscience rises in power and effect, the authority of 
 law must necessarily become weaker. There is a suspicion, 
 a guess, that at least as to its historic form it is not to be 
 eternal. Why should we not say that God revealed the 
 future to a pure conscience, to a holy life ? We believe it 
 and assert it. There were at the same time to be seen the 
 results of the law, of the authority of the letter : formalism, 
 increasing from day to clay, and, conscience stifled and falsified 
 by casuistry.
 
 190 
 
 We come thus to a fresh revelation by man, prop hecy. The 
 law, the letter was becoming obsolete, authority had become 
 useless in certain respects, religious and moral truths were in 
 danger of being corrupted, and of losing their influence upon 
 life : the form, in a word, was almost overpowering the 
 reality, when the prophets appeared. What an admirable 
 part do these inspired men play in the midst of the Jewish 
 people ! They may be compared to a magnificent temple in 
 the midst of ruins ! Moses had proclaimed the law, given 
 rules and precepts, regulated all the externals of public wor- 
 ship, all the actions of civil life. "A law," as has been said, "a 
 precept, things so convenient to accept and so easy to break!" 
 This law, imposed with absolute authority, treated man as a 
 minor, exacted from him passive obedience. And therefore, 
 notwithstanding its great value, its intrinsic excellence, it 
 remained for him something external, something beside man 
 and not in man, and any individual, at a given moment, might 
 nave accomplished all the law without being moral in the true 
 sense of the word, without advancing one step in holiness. 
 Did not the Pharisees even go beyond the law ? And were 
 they therefore more moral or more religious ? Every law, 
 every external authority, after having been in the infancy of 
 the society or of the individual a support, becomes, unless 
 counterbalanced by something else, at a certain point in the 
 individual's development, a hindrance, and gives to life a false 
 direction. Then the prophets presented themselves; they 
 declared that the Eternal was not content with sacrifice, with 
 external rites, with obedience to law alone. They are, amongst 
 the Jewish people, the expression of conscience in its holiness 
 and its purity. They tend to simplify and to spiritualise 
 religion ; they strive to bring it home to men, not in its form, 
 but in its spirit ; to express it, not in any given action or prac- 
 tise, but in the heart, and in the trust in God — in a free
 
 191 
 
 trust, a free obedience. Themselves the representatiyes of eon- 
 science, they address themselves to the conscience of men, and 
 cause its light to shine forth : and thus their teaching rests upon 
 the true basis of the moral and religious being, the remains of 
 the image of God. The image is obscured, almost effaced : 
 their task is to restore it and bring it again to light. It is 
 evident that to the prophets, man is capable of entering into 
 direct relation with religious truth and with God. In the sublime 
 pages of their writings we find proclaimed in words of fire, 
 in tones which cany conviction, that the law is done away, 
 authority is modified and dethroned: they proclaim the 
 real nature of God, holiness, and love. What is there magical 
 here ? What is there mysterious in their teachings ? Xo 
 incomprehensible formulas ! Xo transcendental notions ! God 
 intervenes doubtless ; but not by creating extraordinary ideas, 
 by developing unknown faculties. He intervenes by develop- 
 ing and sanctifying what in man is still in the germ, or is 
 imperfectly aroused to action. The impression of this revela- 
 tion by man must have been immense. 
 
 And yet on examining this point carefully, we find here 
 also some weakness, at least some incompleteness. The point 
 of view of the divine dispensation is yet limited ; the prophets 
 have not yet been able to escape entirely from the specialties 
 of their age and of their circumstances, have not been able to 
 entirely do away with the authority of the letter. The indi- 
 vidual is more directly addressed ; but he is not yet entirely 
 emancipated. In fact it is the mass, the people of Israel, who 
 suffer, who obey or who rebel, this people which is called to 
 salvation, which expects the promise. Pagan nations can only 
 arrive at the truth by becoming one with Israel : they must 
 first bow themselves under the yoke of the law. Authority even 
 yet represses and keeps down liberty, which is however alive 
 and becoming active. And farther, this God who is love, is
 
 102 
 
 foreseen, affirmed, announced, but can in no way be felt or 
 realised. Do we not feel that prophetic revelation is here to a 
 certain extent incomplete and contradictory ? But this is not 
 all. Holy as was the life of the prophets, firm as was their 
 will, they had their weaknesses, their imperfections. The 
 image of God was reflected from a surface, polished, it is true, 
 but which had yet its dark spots. What the man was worth, 
 the revelation was worth. But the man not being perfect, 
 neither could the revelation be perfect. God forbid that we 
 should strive to lower the merit, to make light of the influence 
 of the prophets. We recognise the great value of their 
 teachings, we bless their glorious mission: "they did the work 
 of their time and of their position; " they prepared for and 
 brought about the coming of the Messiah. 
 
 Light was about to appear. We are now close to the 
 Gospel, and we are indeed anxious to arrive there. All that 
 we have yet said is only preparation : we have as yet been 
 only cleariug the ground. In the gospel we have the revela- 
 tion, the perfect revelation. It is given to the world by a 
 man — but what a man — the perfect man, the Christ. Con- 
 ceive of the purest holiness, the most exalted wisdom, the 
 truest conscience, the most sublime intelligence, the most 
 moral beauty, the most ardent and disinterested love — increase 
 and develope these conceptions — go on still further — still 
 higher — you are at the confines of the moral and the religious 
 world ; you have reached the mysterious limit where humanity 
 ceases and divinity begins ; your eyes fail, your head becomes 
 giddy: — and yet still Jesus is before you — his face shining with 
 celestial glory, and pronouncing the words, " He who has seen 
 me has seen the Father." But is this possible ? Has such a 
 being ever existed ? Let history reply. Did there appear, yes 
 or no, a man having thus lived, and having a consciousness of 
 this life, a perfect man, united t<> God in the depths of his
 
 19."» 
 
 soul, living with God, in God, a man whose every word is the 
 expression of truth, whose every feeling is the expression of 
 holiness and love? Jesus did appear: the perfect man did 
 live upon earth. And also, though no sage suspected this 
 wonderful means, religious consciousness foresaw and de- 
 manded this : and this presentiment, this postulate of con- 
 science, history gives us, history proves to be a fact. Come 
 near to Jesus, and you will find the solution, inexplicable as 
 it may appear to ordinary reason. 
 
 Let us endeavour, however, to give an account of this 
 revelation : to ascertain how it addresses itself to man and 
 acts upon his life. 
 
 Every manifestion of God, we have said, is a revelation, 
 and every manifestation ought to awaken some echo, ought to 
 find some answering chord in the depths of the human soul. 
 The physical world manifests the power and the wisdom of 
 the Creator. The laws engraven in our souls prove his justice 
 and his holiness. With .Moses, revelation tends more to be- 
 come incarnate, to approach more nearly to man. It loses per- 
 haps in extent, but it certainly gains in intensity. Revelation 
 becomes more and more positive. The men, who are revealers, 
 excel in religious life, in purity of conscience, all their cotem- 
 poraries ; their revelation presents itself as an authority. 
 Authority is the educating means ; it is like the bridle which 
 restrains and directs. With the prophets, the horizon be- 
 comes more extended : the part which man takes becomes 
 greater: his spontaneousness of action, his liberty become 
 more developed ; revelation tends to become more and more 
 spiritual, more and more internal. It is no longer simply a 
 ritual, a law, a precept; it is before all other things free 
 obedience, submission of the heart, acquiescence of the will. 
 Man, however, sees his ideal becoming better : he aspires to 
 perfection : he wishes to seize upon God, to unite himself to
 
 m 
 
 him in a living manner. Where can we find the bond of 
 union? What is it? — Here Jesus presents himself: here 
 must be placed the record of this extraordinary existence. 
 Revelation is a life, and becomes a principle of life. In fact, 
 what does Jesus preach ? what does he announce ? what does 
 he do ? He reveals to us at the same time God and man. 
 How does he reveal God to us ? By showing us in his words, 
 in his actions, in all his personality, the most adorable 
 qualities, and that quality which contains them all, holy love. 
 God was partly concealed by the physical world ; the impres- 
 sion of him was vague and confused : but now the veil is 
 removed, and the impression becomes distinct, exact, fixed. 
 The law and the precept remained outside of man : now the 
 law has become incarnate, the precept has become life. The 
 statue moves ! It is no longer a cold and dead image : it is 
 a man, a being who has a heart, who has arms extended to 
 receive the sinner and the sufferer, a look to support him, 
 words to console him. Yes, it is a man — but it is also a 
 God. And how does Jesus reveal to us man ? Airain by his 
 life, by giving to conscience a powerful and salutary impulse. 
 Jesus was placed in the same condition as we are, and he has 
 overcome, he has conquered the evil. He always obeyed the 
 voice of duty, the voice of conscience ; he always practised 
 justice ; he realised perfect holiness, he was love itself. The 
 ideal of conscience is realised in him — nay, it is exceeded. The 
 life of Jesus presents the most striking contrast to our own 
 lives. It is light, the brightness of light, beside the deep and 
 sombre cavern ; or rather it is light penetrating into this 
 cavern, and revealing all its windings. In his mysterious and 
 living union of the divine and the human, Jesus may justly 
 be called the Man-God. {Revue Theol. vol. v. p. 46). 
 
 We can already see what position Jesus assigns to man. 
 It would be easy to determine a priori, but we prefer to re-
 
 195 
 
 main upon historic ground. Jesus speaks to man, teaches 
 him, exhorts him, sustains him. Is there then nothing in us 
 capable of uniting with Jesus ? To pretend this would be 
 contrary at the same time to the data of common sense and of 
 experience : it would be to make an absurdity of the words 
 and of the life of Jesus, such as the gospels give them to us. 
 There is in us will, a vitiated will, I allow, but still will ; 
 there is in us conscience, a falsified or slumbering conscience, 
 I admit, but still conscience ; there are faculties, powers, 
 affections, tending in different directions, often going astray, 
 but which it is impossible to ignore altogether. In a word, 
 we have instruments at our command, the use of which may 
 be, and doubtless often is, fatal in our natural state, but which, 
 in the dispensations of God, ought to aid in the development 
 of our spiritual life, and the origin of which is divine. What 
 does Jesus do, our living revelation ? Does he reject or 
 destroy these instruments ? Does he say to man, " shut your 
 eyes, accept without examination ?" — Where, we would 
 inquire, where does the Saviour require the rejection of the 
 intellectual faculties ? — Where does he condemn conscience, 
 as such? — Where does he demand to find in his disciples, 
 slaves, passive or voluntarily blinded beings ? — That he should 
 condemn the bad passions of man, that he should blame the 
 abuse of liberty, the errors of the conscience and the will, I 
 can understand : that he should require a change of heart, and 
 should give to God a part and the principal part in this 
 regeneration, I can also comprehend : but that he demands 
 the annihilation of the human individual, I deny. What 
 blindness to attribute to the gospel such impiety ! Even the 
 Law required justice : and therefore considered man capable 
 of doing justice, or at any rate of discerning what was just. 
 Two principles are to be distinguished in man. All serious 
 moral philosophers have been struck at the same time by our 
 
 N 2
 
 19G 
 
 greatness and our misery. These two principles contend in 
 us for mastery, and clash at every instant. Human -weakness 
 and the spirit of systems sees only either one or the other. 
 Jesus acknowledges both and reconciles them ; he re-consti- 
 tutes, he forms anew the true man, created in the image of 
 God. Jesus is authority, doubtless; his words, his actions, 
 all his personality impress us vividly. It is impossible to 
 approach him in a right spirit without feeling a deep, a 
 marked influence in ourselves. But what is the nature of this 
 authority ? Does it contradict our intelligence ? Does it. 
 commit it to an absurdity, to an uintelligible formula ? Does 
 it oppose itself to our conscience, to the requirements of our 
 hearts, the aspirations of our souls ? Xo ! Jesus is authority, 
 but a living and spiritual authority : he does not remain at the 
 door, outside the soul ; he enters, he establishes himself in the 
 centre of our feelings, our affections, our will, and without 
 destroying anything, he transforms and sanctifies all. Jesus 
 is at the same time liberty. He brings this liberty, he gives 
 it to us. " If the Son make you free, then are ye free 
 indeed. " He makes us free by the truth, by purifying the 
 heart, by developing and strengthening all the energies of the 
 human soul. " Every true belief," says Vinet, (and we add T 
 every true feeling, every correct idea) " is on the path of the 
 Gospel." — (v. Revue Chrétienne, p. 231.) 
 
 But objectors insist, and say, u Revelation has no other 
 object than to communicate to mankind transcendental truths, 
 dogmas." But what does this mean ? Are these truths 
 things which we cannot assimilate to ourselves ? And in that 
 case, of what use to us is such a revelation ? Such a revelation 
 in fact would reveal nothing. Is it again only a formula to 
 Temember, a certain set of words to commit to memory ? If 
 this means, that, given the fact of the life of Jesus, each one 
 Las to draw from this life certain consequences, and to give to
 
 107 
 
 these consequences a rational and logical form, nothing can ba 
 more legitimate. But it is not thus that it is generally under- 
 stood. Most commonly revelation is taken to mean an 
 assemblage of doctrines, of dogmas, which must be accepted 
 en masse, such as they are, under the penalty of being excluded 
 from salvation. To what then in ourselves, to what faculty, 
 to what need of our moral and religious being do these dogmas 
 address themselves ? Let us be told once for all. And let 
 us not be accused of wishing to remove from revelation every 
 appearance of the supernatural. Our views as to the 
 person of Jesus and his work ought to free us from any 
 reproach in this respect. What we attack is the magical, 
 the extra-human, or un-human character, which many look 
 upon as the strongest proof in favour of revelation. It has 
 been said, and in our opinion with much truth — " the dogmas 
 are only believed in after a belief in Christ." We are sur- 
 prised besides at finding those very persons, who assert that 
 all human faculties are utterly corrupt and absolutely power- 
 less, making use at the same time of these faculties. If you 
 would be consistent, at least make no use of them. Do not 
 first affirm the fact of this radical corruption, and then make 
 use of it to prove revelation. Beware ! you are on the road 
 to scepticism ! Or rather, why do you not accept an infallible 
 tribunal, to regulate and formularise everything- ? No 
 more preaching ! no more teaching ! for what is the use of it ? 
 Catholicism at least is consistent. Perinde ac cadaver is the 
 man of Ignatius Loyola. 
 
 Whence then come the most of these difficulties ? From 
 the fact that the question has been removed from its proper 
 place, because between Christ and the human soul the letter 
 has been interposed, because exactly the same force has 
 been attributed to the living revelation, the written revela- 
 
 . and dogmatic formulas, and these have all bfen placed
 
 19.S 
 
 upon the same level. Is not this the explanation to a great 
 extent, of the long struggle, of the endless contest between 
 philosophy and revelation ? Doubtless if the latter con- 
 sisted of a number of formulas, the opposition might be com- 
 prehended. But even then opposition is only possible when 
 the data on each side are clear and distinctly laid down. 
 When on the one side, for example, on that of revelation, there 
 is complete obscurity, a number of incomprehensible formulas, 
 man can only give up the contest and acknowledge his incom- 
 petence — he retires altogether. But what then becomes of 
 man and of life ? There is no longer any life. — And is this 
 the end of revelation ? Can we accept this as its object ? No 
 one would dare to do so ; and besides facts do speak, however 
 much they may be kept in the shade. It is the heart of man 
 which is bad. Change this heart, and the instrument you 
 speak so slightingly of will be found well adapted to its work. 
 " Is it necessary," as Yinet says, "in order to deprive man 
 of injustice, to deprive him of himself?" Esaays, p. 157. 
 
 Jesus himself wrote nothing. He feared perhaps, it has 
 been said, the deification of the form. It is so easy for man 
 to abandon the spirit for the letter. It was not till many 
 years after the ascension that the principal facts of the life of 
 our Saviour were set down in writing. Some among the most 
 eminent of the early Christians developed and communicated 
 in letters the ideas they had formed of Jesus, of his nature, of 
 his relations to God and to man. At the end of a certain 
 time there was a volume ; a certain number of writings by 
 different authors had been collected. In the fourth century 
 the canon was closed under the especial influence of two 
 celebrated teachers of the Church. This is the written revela- 
 tion. I am wrong. The Old Testament was placed in the 
 same category as the New ; both have the same value ; every- 
 where, from the first to the last line, it is God who speaks ;
 
 100 
 
 everything there is authority. Be it so Î And yet, if I find 
 in this collection, things which offend my moral sense, which 
 shock my Christian conscience, if I find najrow conceptions, 
 confused ideas, material errors ? " No matter," I am told. 
 " A revelation is nothing else than a collection of truth, of 
 truths, true by virtue of their origin, and not by virtue of a 
 detailed examination. The question is therefore to ascertain, 
 not what we must admit of revelation, but where is this reve- 
 lation." These words contain the essence of a well known 
 system; I add, that they contain also its formal condemnation. 
 Let us speak plainly ; they express something monstrous. 
 Revelation according to this can say yes or no ; it is true 
 in the mass, it may be wrong in details. This is one specimen 
 of the effects of authority invented by men ! God speaks to 
 me, you say ; but is it to tell me things of which I can have 
 no conception ? things which have no point of contact 
 with my conscience, which I can in nowise assimilate to 
 myself? " It is always necessary," it has been said, "that 
 the truth outside of us should be measured by the truth which 
 is in us." But there is more than this. You contradict 
 yourselves. " These truths are true by virtue of their origin." 
 Surely then I must be allowed to examine their origin ; you 
 allow me at least this right. And how can I discover the 
 origin of these truths so as to confide in them ? What is more 
 simple, more natural, and less daring, than to ascend from 
 particular facts to general facts, to the cause ? Not so how- 
 ever ; this process may be good elsewhere ; here it is good for 
 nothing. It is more natural to pronounce an absolute judg- 
 ment on the whole without knowing anything of the parts; to 
 judge of the whole is more easy than to judge of the details. 
 When the defenders of any system advance arguments like 
 these, the system is condemned ; it has served its purposes. 
 The spirit of system appears, in addition, to pay but small
 
 200 
 
 regard to history. Many years passed by before the writings 
 of the New Testament were composed. Was there then no 
 revelation then ? The first generation of Christians had not 
 the New Testament to strengthen their faith : this at least is 
 certain. Were, therefore these Christians less pious than we, 
 less attached to their Saviour, less living ? Neither do the 
 objectors do us justice. We do not reject the Scriptures : God 
 forbid ! They are for us too, an admirable, a necessary means 
 of grace. We hold fast by the Bible, we love it, for to us 
 also it is the inspired book. We desire only to see things as 
 they are, and " he alone." writes A. Monod, " understands 
 the Bible, who is able to separate the divine thoughts from 
 the human framework which contains them.*' (Jesus Tent, 
 p. 105J. Jesus was long present in the midst of his disciples 
 by the astonishing impression which he had made upon them, 
 and by the preaching of the apostles. By degrees, a tradition 
 was formed, legends took their rise, and went on multiplying- 
 Many of the accounts degenerated under the influence of 
 ignorance and of imagination. It was found necessary to fix 
 the tradition, which ran great risk of being lost, or utterly 
 corrupted ; and thus the gospels were written " by men and 
 for men." Was this the revelation ? The revelation was 
 Christ. These books are a testimony, the testimony of a 
 living faith to the fact of a revelation : they are therefore the 
 product, the result of this revelation. They relate to us — and 
 in this consists, in our opinion, their value — the history of 
 is, they bring the soul into contact with the Saviour. 
 For my own part, I read the sacred writers with admiration. 
 I listen to them with respect : I have need both of their words 
 and of their testimony ; they are, from the external point of 
 view, the source of my faith. But can they free me from the 
 necessity of racing myself towards God by meditation and by 
 prayer ? Can they free me from the necessity of addressing
 
 201 
 
 myself directly to the Saviour ? On the contrary ; they 
 induce me, they urge me to this course. And did not Jesus 
 promise to be with us till the end of the world? Is the spirit 
 of God refused to us or withdrawn from us ? — " I will not 
 leave you comfortless " — touching and blessed words ! " The 
 highest revelation," says Neander, "is the personal communi- 
 cation of God to humanity." And Jesus is this revelation. 
 In Jesus, the conscience of God manifests itself as a real 
 existence in the depths of the human soul. 
 
 One word more. Having regard to the manner in which we 
 conceive of revelation, and the influence it ought to possess, it 
 will be easily understood what value we attribute to what are 
 called external proofs, prophecy and miracles. We 
 place these proofs entirely in the background. We admit 
 that they are very proper to strike the imagination, and to 
 strengthen in their convictions those who are already con- 
 vinced. But in our opinion, they are not properly speaking 
 proofs : they are the consequences of the idea which is enter- 
 tained of Jesus, of his nature and of his mission. The 
 greatest miracle is Christ himself. "Even if there were no 
 prophecies for Jesus Christ, and he were without miracles, there 
 is something so divine in his teaching and in his life, that all 
 men must have been charmed." Do we reject the miracles 
 and the prophecies ? No, surely ; we merely wish to put them 
 in their proper place, to point out their real character. In our 
 opinion, the Christian religion and truth must he the gainers 
 by this course. What does life lose by it ? What does that 
 revelation lose, which acts upon the will and changes the heart? 
 We cannot see that it loses anything.
 
 THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS. 
 
 By Edmund Scherer. 
 
 1.— CATHOLICISM IS ONLY A BRANCH OF PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 The city which I inhabit stands on the side of a hill, the 
 levelled edge of which forms a terrace. This terrace is my 
 favourite promenade. The view extends thence over fine trees, 
 fertile fields, the high banks of a river, and sinks down with 
 a kind of voluptuousness on the graceful lines of the horizon. 
 The advanced season of the year had, it is true, stript the 
 nearest plains, and already the snow whitened the mountain 
 tops, but a slight hoar frost covered with harmony the whole 
 district which it half veiled. A friend and myself had for an 
 horn* or so been walking up and down in the principal path, 
 with a somewhat rapid step for the sake of getting warm, and 
 while carrying on a conversation, throwing our eyes frequently 
 over the beauties of the scene. It was Catholicism of which 
 we spoke. My companion defended its beliefs with a convic- 
 tion which did not exclude a scrupulous good faith in the 
 choice of his arguments. He is one of those rare men whose 
 religious principles are too firm and too sincere to decline free 
 discussion. 
 
 Our controversy threatened to become prolix. I wished 
 to shorten it. Let us end, I said to him, with what we ought 
 to have begun. Give me a definition. What is Catholicism ? 
 
 Catholicism is at once, revealed religion and the Church 
 instituted by Jesus Christ — Catholicism is Christianity. 
 
 Take care, I replied. Your definition takes for granted 
 the very point in dispute. It expresses the opinion which
 
 203 
 
 the Catholics have of Catholicism : — that and nothing else. 
 Would it not be possible to obtain a more impartial statement ? 
 For example : might we not say that Catholicism is one of 
 the forms in which Christianity has realised itself on the earth? 
 one of the great systems among which Christians are divided ? 
 In this way, we should pay regard to all rival pretensions, and 
 avoid deciding between Rome, Geneva, and the Synod of Dort. 
 
 What ! rejoined he, do you not see that under the pretext 
 of being impartial, you become sceptical ? By taking up a 
 position on the outside of the Churches, you place them on 
 the same rank, as if they could all be at the same time in the 
 truth. You wish to arrive at an objective definition, as the 
 phrase is, and, in reality, you only substitute your own sub- 
 jectivity for mine — the definition of one who is indifferent, in 
 place of the definition of one who believes. In my turn allow 
 me to put a question to you ; Do you believe in the existence 
 of truth upon earth ? 
 
 I do not very well see what you mean. Do you mean that 
 truth is a person or a thing occupying some particular spot 
 on the face of the globe ? 
 
 Right ; the expression I used is at once too abstract and 
 too metaphysical. Well ; tell me if you believe in the dis- 
 tinction of the true and the false. 
 
 Assuredly. 
 
 And the true is better than the false ? Is not the first, 
 man's highest good, the life of his soul ; while the second is 
 its death ? 
 
 Without doubt. 
 
 And has God done nothing to secure that good to men ? 
 
 Go on ; I have no wish to contradict you. 
 
 Let us then take another step — is Christianity true or 
 false ? 
 
 What Christianity ? there are several you know.
 
 204 
 
 Yours, if you like, he replied with some temper. Pray let 
 ns for a moment, leave on one side objections of the kind. I 
 repeat my question — -do you believe Christianity true or false? 
 
 I regard it as true. 
 
 And, he asked, do you believe that Christianity saves men 
 because it is true, or that it could be equally divine, equally 
 holy, equally powerfully over the soul if it were false ? 
 
 Certainly not ; I consider that the true and the good are 
 one. 
 
 God who gave men Christianity, desires that they should 
 have a knowledge of it . 7 
 
 Granted. 
 
 And not only that they have a knowledge of it, but should 
 that they should have a knowledge of it exempt from error ? 
 Since otherwise Christianity would have ceased to be the 
 truth, that is to be Christianity and the salvation of the world. 
 
 I understand you, I replied, you think that Christianity 
 is not only truth in itself, in the thoughts and in the words of 
 Christ, for instance, but equally in its earthly manifestation ; 
 according to you God has acted so that it is free from error ; 
 he has devised a means by which all men may have an exact 
 acquaintance with it. In a word, you believe in absolute 
 truth on the earth, at least in the religious order, and that 
 absolute truth is with you Catholicism. 
 
 Precisely. 
 
 Wry good : and I return thanks to the chances of discus- 
 sion which thus conduct us to the heart of the question debated 
 between us. Indeed I have long regarded a pretension to 
 the absolute as the very foundation of Catholicism, But let 
 us not rest in words ; let us try to lay hold of the things 
 which are behind the words they wear. Permit me then to 
 ask what you mean by absolute truth. 
 
 Truth, perfect and unmixed with error.
 
 205 
 
 Excellent; but truth itself — how do you define it? W P 
 agree, I believe, in acknowledging that it is neither a person, 
 nor a substance, nor any entity whatever. What is it then ? 
 It is, I think, defined as the agreement of thought with the 
 object of that thought. 
 
 Nothing could be better. Truth then is not in the object 
 itself, but in the thought which I form of the object. A body 
 is what it is, a fact took place as it took place ; the know- 
 ledge which I have of it changes nothing in it, but that know- 
 ledge itself may be exact or inexact. In a word, what is true 
 or false is my thought or notion of facts, my conception of 
 things. 
 
 I grant it, he said. 
 
 Consequently, when you speak of absolute truth you mean 
 a state of mind absolutely conformed to the nature of things, 
 and when you say that Catholicism is absolute truth, you 
 mean that Catholicism is the one adequate conception of 
 Christianity, a religion entirely conformed to the teaching 
 and institution of Jesus Christ. 
 
 He inclined his head in token of approval. I continued. 
 
 Again, let us beware lest we are misled by words. No- 
 thing is so misleading as abstract terms. We speak of the 
 conception of Christianity, but that conception supposes a 
 subject. Let me explain. The Catholic notion of Christi- 
 anity must be formed in some human intelligence. Well, where 
 am I to look for it ? Who is the depositary ? 
 
 The Church. 
 
 Another abstract term ! What is the Church ? Do you 
 speak of the teaching Church ? 
 
 Doubtless. 
 
 What ! do you ascribe infallibility to all the clergy ? Is 
 every priest free from error ? 
 
 No ; but the representative Church, the pope and the 
 roui;.
 
 206 
 
 Well : I will not press you on that point. I will place 
 infallibility where you like — in the councils, presided over by 
 the pope, in the councils themselves, in the pope alone — it is all 
 the same to me. Let us place it in the pope. The absolute 
 truth then of which Catholicism boasts consists in this, that 
 the pope has of Christianity a knowledge exempt from error. 
 
 Add, that this conception of Christianity, as you call it, 
 i-. at least in part, already fixed in the works of the fathers, 
 and formulated in the decrees of the Church. 
 
 Let it be so. But why, I beg, does the Catholic Church 
 attach so much importance to the possession of absolute truth 
 and to the infallibility which guarantees its possession ? 
 
 Do you put such a question ? asked he, with some warmth. 
 Because it is only truth that saves: because truth is li;' 
 you yourself have acknowledged. Nothing indeed is less 
 arbitrary then the necessity of orthodoxy to salvation. 
 
 I expected that reply. Xow. see what my difficulty is. 
 God is substantial truth. Jesus Christ, if I dare Bay 
 conceived of God in an infallible manner. The pope, in his 
 turn, reproduces the conception of Christ in an equally infal- 
 lible manner. But what are we to say of the conception of 
 the pope's conception ? the interpretation of the interpreta- 
 tion ? are they equally infallible ? The teaching Church 
 received the deposit of absolute truth, not for herself, but to 
 communicate it to believers — are those believers equally 
 infallible? If they are not, does not the absolute truth 
 come relative ? that is to say. imperfect and mixed with 
 error ? does it not of necessity undergo that change in enter- 
 ing their minds ? How then can it save them ? And if it 
 saved them, notwithstanding the relative character it has 
 received, why should it not save the heretic as well ? the 
 Protestant, for example, whose errors, beyond a doubt, are 
 mixed with some truth ? I do not see why infallibility is
 
 207 
 
 necessary to the pope, if it is not necessary to the bishops, 
 the priests, the faithful ; if a believer may do without it to 
 receive the teachings of the doctors, why may not the doctors 
 do without it when they have to comprehend the teachings 
 of Christ ? 
 
 My companion did not reply immediately. He had the 
 air of suspecting some weak point in my reasoning. In a 
 moment or two I resumed. 
 
 You will never get out of that difficulty. Infallibility is 
 necessary everywhere or nowhere. The apostles were infallible 
 in interpreting the doctrine of Jesus Christ ; the Fathers of 
 the Church were infallible in interpreting the teachings of the 
 Apostles ; the Councils were infallible in determining the 
 sentiments of the Fathers; — still you have gained nothing, 
 unless the bishop is infallible in explaining the councils to 
 the parish priest, nor unless the parish priest is infallible in 
 transmitting to me the explanations of his bishop : while I 
 too must be infallible to apprehend the words of my parish 
 priest. I defy you to show that the truth runs less risk of 
 alteration at one point of this transmission than another. 
 Make your choice in this dilemma — you go too far or you do 
 not go far enough. You pretend to absolute truth, and had 
 you it, it would be of no use to you ; where is the good of 
 beginning with the absolute, only to forthwith fall into the 
 relative ? 
 
 "We walked up and down for some time in silence, en- 
 deavouring on both sides to get to the pith of the matter. 
 This lasted two or three minutes. Then I went on. 
 
 It is easy to verify absolute truth. The existence of the 
 unconditioned (as the philosophers call it) in a world where 
 all the rest is relative, limited, conditional, must be recognised 
 at once. It is a miracle, a standing miracle, a miracle which 
 could not fail to mark itself broadly out from purely natural
 
 facts, such as those of which history commonly i We 
 
 have tested the Catholic hypothesis by examining how it 
 solves the problem, for the solution of which it has been 
 invented. I wish to continue the application of the test by 
 carrying the hypothesis to its immediate and legitimate con- 
 clusions. For a long while the phrase, " absolute truth," has 
 appeared to me synonymous with this, truth absolutely 
 Evident ; I mean that one of those attributes implies the 
 other, that the second is the inseparable correlative of the first. 
 What is your opinion ? 
 
 What do you mean? What is evident? The truth of 
 the Catholic doctrine, or that particular truth that the Catholic 
 Church is infallible and its doctrine absolutely true ? 
 
 Both, I replied. The two things are but one. You will 
 not deny that the Catholic doctrine is summed up in the 
 dogma of infallibility — that is to say. in the belief of the 
 absolute nature of its doctrine. Tell me then what you think 
 of it ? do you think that the n of absolute truth by 
 
 the Catholic Church is evident — self-evident ? 
 
 Xo : but explain yourself. 
 
 I say that if this privilege is not self-evident, it ought to be 
 so; and that such self-evidentness is a necessary corollary, 
 a consequence, perhaps not perceived, but inevitable, a lo 
 element of the Catholic system. You believe that the Cath- 
 olic Church is the depositary of absolute truth : how do you 
 know that ? Tell me. 
 
 By the Church herself: or, if you will, by Jesus Christ 
 and the Apostles, who founded the Church. 
 
 Impossible ! Clearly we are in a vicious circle. The 
 testimony of Jesus Christ, of the Apostles, of the Church, 
 forms part of that very truth whose character we are enquiring 
 after ; the reality, the sense, the value of that testimony 
 depends on the value of the doctrine of the Church — that is
 
 209 
 
 it depends on the very point which is in question. 
 
 It remains to be ascertained, if it is possible to avoid a 
 vicious circle in such a matter. 
 
 We must do so at any cost, and we can do so only on one 
 condition ; it is, that the point of departure is unquestionable. 
 Here then we are at the thesis which I wish to establish. 
 Catholicism is nothing if it is not unquestionable. It must 
 rest on an axiom, and that axiom can be nothing but itself, 
 its pretensions or its right, its absolute character. But here 
 I touch on another consideration. Let us for a moment leave 
 Catholicism on one side. Do you know any other absolute 
 truth in the world ? 
 
 Doubtless; mathematical axioms, and in morals, duty. 
 
 And how do know that these truths are absolute, if it is 
 not by the possibility of every moment comparing your thought 
 of the object with the object itself; for instance, the definition 
 of a straight line with a straight line ; the act commanded 
 by the conscience with the sentiment of moral obligation? 
 And how can you make the comparison, unless by an intuition 
 more or less direct ? Now the possibility of an intuition of 
 this kind is precisely that which we call evidentness. If then 
 Catholicism is absolute truth, it can be recognised as such 
 only intuitively and by way of evidence or manifestness ; it 
 must be evident — clear to see — unquestionable. 
 
 Granted. I have no wish to contradict you. I am ready 
 to admit that Catholicism is evident. 
 
 Wait one moment, I replied, the thesis is good enough to 
 be established before it is admitted. How do you say that 
 man is saved ? 
 
 By faith. 
 
 What faith ? 
 
 The orthodox faith. 
 
 That is to say by believing what the Church teaches ? at
 
 210 
 
 least in being ready to believe it ; that is to say in believing 
 in the Church itself, in its infallibility, in its quality as the 
 depositary of absolute truth. Faith in the Church is then 
 obligatary ? 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 Obligatory for all ; for the priest and the layman ; the 
 learned and the ignorant : the missionary and the savage ? 
 
 Why so many words ? Of course for all. 
 
 Consider then if Catholicism can do without evidentness. 
 I must believe in it, believe in it as absolute truth, believe in it 
 under pain of damnation : the most ignorant man must believe 
 in it as well as the most enlightened ; how is it possible, 
 unless the object thus proposed to our faith is evident, self- 
 evident ? The artizans and the peasants of our own country ; 
 the negro: s and savages of our colonies, cannot go through 
 a course of study to appreciate the proofs alleged by your 
 scholars and preachers ; they need something open and clear 
 to all. Or perhaps you hold that men believe without reasons 
 for believing ? 
 
 By no means. Besides, I repeat it, I see no grounds for 
 excepting to your conclusions. 
 
 Stop. I cannot let you go yet. I wish to put it beyond 
 a question that Catholicism pretends to evidence and cannot 
 do without it. You know that by nature it is not tolerant. 
 The use of force to convert either misbelievers or disbelievers 
 is an established practice in your Church. Augustin invoked 
 that means ; your popes and your very Christian kings have 
 l ade much use of it ; the most zealous and approved of your 
 organs in the press will allow nothing to be said against it; 
 and it is a fact that the official authority of Catholicism has 
 never blamed it. Such a condemnation is a satisfaction which 
 it has not granted to the spirit of the age. In this it is, I 
 think, guided by a very sure instinct. It is aware that abso-
 
 211 
 
 lute truth must be evident truth, and that the evidentness of 
 religion makes persecution as natural, as necessary, as other- 
 wise it would be absurd and hateful. Well then, if the truth 
 of Catholicism shone with an evidence sufficient to convince 
 all minds, it would be embraced by the whole world — the only 
 exceptions being the insane and the depraved. Then, I do 
 see not why it would not be proper, useful, and legitimate to 
 compel the vicious to become virtuous on the penalty even of 
 death. 
 
 You are carrying me too far. 
 
 How too far ? the consequence is inevitable. But let us 
 return to our facts. Do you grant what I ask ? Can an abso- 
 lute truth be anything else than a truth absolutely evident ? 
 The two terms, if not identical, are surely correlative — are 
 they not ? 
 
 I think I must say yes. 
 
 You grant it, I cried, changing my tone to mark a change 
 on my part. You grant it ! Catholicism is evident ! But are 
 you not playing with me ? Rather say that it is paradoxical. 
 In what is it evident ? On what point ? Is that tradition 
 evident which lies scattered and inapprehensible in the Fathers 
 and the Councils ? Is that authority evident, the seat of 
 which has never yet been determined ? Is that infallibility 
 evident which has no relations with the learning, the character, 
 the sanctity of those who are its organs, so that even a scoun- 
 drel may become the mouth-piece of the Holy Spirit ? Are 
 those sacraments evident, which, being external and material 
 rites, have to wash away sin, and regenerate souls ? Is that 
 transubstantiation evident, an anonymous miracle which exists 
 only for faith, a supernatural fact which hides itself under the 
 appearance of the natural ? Yes, Catholicism must be evident, 
 self-evident : that must it be or it is nothing. But at the 
 same time it is not evident, it cannot be evident, it will never
 
 212 
 
 be evident. Here it bears in its bosom a contradiction, and 
 that contradiction is its gnawing worm. 
 
 I see no contradiction, he replied. I do not see how there 
 can be one. In vain do you raise objections against religion; 
 I declare that religion has to my eyes, the character of 
 evidence, — what will you reply ? If evidence does not prove 
 itself, neither does it discuss ; it cannot be refuted ; I see, I 
 declare that I see ; You do not, I presume, pretend to prove 
 to me that I do not see ? 
 
 Give me your attention. You forget your part. You 
 handle an instrument which will wound your hands. Did you 
 not mention the words I and me ? Did you not affirm that 
 religion is evident to your eyes ? You thus entrench yourself 
 in your own inmost thought, in your personal conviction. 
 But it is evidence you ought to adduce, and not your own 
 sentiment — the evidence, which, observe, does not need to be 
 adduced, for it is the same for all : self-evidence which no one 
 thinks of either proving or disproving, precisely because it is 
 self-evident, because it is seen by all the moment they cast 
 their eyes thereon. Who disputes about the light of day ? 
 
 None but the blind. 
 
 Pass the blind for a moment, I will return to them. I 
 was intimating that the peculiar character of self-evidence is 
 universality ; and I add that Catholicism is not universal. 
 As to the extent of its prevalence illusion was possible before 
 the sixteenth century ; but since the half of Europe has 
 detached itself from the Roman Church, illusion is no longer 
 possible. Catholicism is only a branch of Protestantism. 
 
 What do you - 
 
 That Catholicism is no longer anything but an opinion, — 
 a sect by the side of another sect. It anathematised indivi- 
 dualism, subjectivism, but it could not keep itself free from 
 them. You affirm your dogmas. You maintain the infalli-
 
 213 
 
 bility of your church, the absolute truth of its doctrine, the 
 evidence of its propositions — what is this ? Merely your 
 opinion — that and nothing more ; of small importance is it 
 that your opinion is shared by many others ; that is merely a 
 question of plus or minus, an affair of figures. The majority 
 furnishes no test of truth. 
 
 Reflect, I continued. Evidence is a fact or it is not a 
 fact. You claim it. A bad sign, a proof that it is not clear 
 of itself. But what is evidence which is not clear of itself? 
 People may differ from you, for they do so differ ; but differ 
 they could not if your absolute truth was manifest truth. 
 You say that Catholicism is true ; another will say as much 
 of his religion, or of his irreligion; you declare it evident, 
 but your opponent declares that his system is evident. What- 
 ever you do, you find yourself in the presence of an opinion 
 different from your own, an opinion which will set up the 
 same claims ; nor can the whole world solve the question to 
 the satisfaction of both parties. To all your arguments I am 
 able to reply that they do not satisfy me, that I think differ- 
 ently, and that I have as much right to my opinion as you 
 have to yours. What would you have ? Thus has God made 
 the world. He has not willed that Church dogmas should 
 be as a lustre which hangs from the ceiling in the middle of 
 a room, and which every one beholds the moment he enters. 
 Your attempts to bring forth truth from that relative con- 
 dition in which God has placed it, your efforts to set up the 
 absolute on the earth, disown even the conditions of the 
 problem, I should say the conditions of humanity. You are 
 like a man who should desire to get upon his own shoulders, 
 or who should take his stand at the window to see himself 
 pass along in the street. Excuse me, but all this seems to 
 me somewhat puerile. 
 
 On my part, he answered, with some warmth; I must
 
 214 
 
 fay that you are swimming in full scepticism. If I am to 
 believe you there is neither truth nor falsity. 
 
 Then you err. There is relative truth, that is, what each 
 holds for truth, what is evident to each. For, observe, I do 
 not pretend that you cease to regard Catholicism as true, and, 
 if you will, as evident ; it is in the nature of things that 
 we should consider that evident which we consider true ; we 
 cannot, at the same time, account a proposition as true and 
 as doubtful, as certain and uncertain. All I m is, 
 
 that you should re-act against your impression. It is neces- 
 sary to control the personal and interior fact by means of the 
 exterior and historical fact. You hold a statement to be 
 evident, that is to say. it appears such to you : but others do 
 not agree with you : the moment the disagreement is declared 
 the statement is not evident, for evidence excludes div» 
 of opinions, and you ought to limit yourself to the assertion 
 that the statement is evident to y iat would be bel 
 
 that you look on it as true. 
 
 By no means ! the human race does not say "that seems 
 to me true," but " that is true.'" Why ? Because it believes 
 in the unity of human intelligence; it does not allow that 
 what is true for one may not be true for another. I again 
 affirm, you are falling into scepticism. And, indeed, it is the 
 common fate of all who abandon the Catholic truth. 
 
 You forget. I replied, that the same man who identifies 
 his opinion with absolute truth will perhaps to-morrow ac- 
 knowledge that he was mistaken, and with the same confi- 
 dence adopt another opinion which, when better informed, he 
 will again renounce. You shut yourself up in the observation 
 of the psychological phenomenon, that is, in the personal and 
 subjective fact, while the question which occupies us is a 
 question capable of an (so to call it) historical solution. In- 
 deed, at the bottom it is a question of words. The point is
 
 *15 
 
 to determine what is meant by evidence. And what is it ? 
 Not that which one person or more take for certain ; but that 
 which is certain for all, that which exacts your " yes" 
 whether you will or not, that which imposes itself as by its 
 own authority. 
 
 With these explanations, I continued, I do not deny 
 objective truth. There is in the world something besides 
 individual opinions ; there is a fusion of those opinions which 
 takes place under the heat even of debate ; there is a general 
 truth which arises out of particular affirmations and negations; 
 there is a certain objective power of truth which soars above 
 the sentiments of individuals — which modifies them, tempers 
 them, and harmonises them. It is thus that humanity suc- 
 cessively resolves this and that question, never more to return 
 to it ; after which it passes to others and advances continually, 
 leaving the sides of its pathway strewn with refuse. That refuse 
 is the error which it has rejected; especially ideas the sub- 
 stance of which it has extracted ; first impressions ; childish 
 and insufficient forms of thought. In this view it has been 
 said, with some reason, that truth does not so much exist as 
 is ever being born. It remains to ascertain if Catholicism is 
 one of these definitive acquisitions which our race has made ; 
 if it has become one of the axioms of its moral and intellectual 
 life; or if it is not rather the worn-out envelope of some 
 substantial truth, a form of which human kind will more and 
 more feel the insufficiency. 
 
 I hope, my friend replied, that moral truths are of the 
 number of those to which you grant objective force and the 
 evidence which results. Nothing more than this do I claim 
 for Catholicism. Catholicism is evidence with a moral evi- 
 dence ; it is powerful with a religious power. Of course it 
 requires corresponding dispositions of mind. The Gospel 
 addresses itself to humble and penitent hearts. There ia.
 
 216 
 
 there can be no demonstration of the faith for him who fears 
 its demands. The light shines for all the world, but there 
 are men who lore darkness rather than light. 
 
 This that you now say is certainly a lowering of preten- 
 sions. You began by maintaining the self-evidence of Cath- 
 olicism. That assertion amounts to nothing less than to 
 declare every dissident struck with folly, or guilty of a hard- 
 ened heart. You abandon intellectual evidence : at any rate 
 it is clear that all unbelievers in Catholicism are not ready 
 for bedlam. Now you entrench yourself in moral evidence. 
 Is the position much better ? May not all churches and all 
 opinions employ the same resource ? Do they not actually 
 employ it ? Would it not be well for all to give up an argu- 
 ment which does equal service to all 1 This is not all. I 
 deny the truth of your assertion, and I appeal from your 
 defence to your conscience ; from your theory to your moral 
 sentiment. You speak of internal dispositions requisite to 
 faith ; do those dispositions of necessity lead to Catholicism ? 
 Is repentance, is humility, is devotedness, is charity, found 
 exclusively in your church ? Has not heresy its saints ? 
 Have you never felt the spirit of Christ in other communions 
 besides your own ? Is it not the misfortune, I had almost 
 said the curse, of your system to be unable to recognise piety 
 in a dissident, to be obliged to deny it under pain of denying 
 yourself ? Take my advice, never raise the question on which 
 you have just trusted; none is more dangerous for Catholi- 
 cism ; it is the point where its theory breaks to pieces on 
 the rock of facts ; there it becomes alike inconsistent and 
 odious. 
 
 Your arguments are specious, replied my companion ; 
 perhaps I should find some difficulty to reply to them ; and 
 yet I must say your logic does not shake me much. It is so 
 easy to criticise 1 In vain do you prove Catholicism false ;
 
 217 
 
 notwithstanding, il has for sixteen centuries been the life of 
 the world — and at present what does it want in order to save 
 society — unless to be believed by society ? 
 
 The misfortune is, that society can no longer believe 
 Catholicism. You distrust logic, you say — as if, in all the 
 discussion, I had done any thing else than show the disagree- 
 ment of the Catholic theory with reality and experience. 
 There was a time when that theory corresponded with the 
 facts with which it had to do. Catholicism was truly Cath- 
 olicism, for it embraced, if not the world, yet Europe ; its 
 doctrines might pass for evident, since they were generally 
 admitted; the truths which it taught might be taken for 
 absolute, for no others were known. But the facts which 
 supported it have now abandoned it; there is contradiction 
 between it and reality; between its dogmas and the wants, 
 tendences and ideas of our age. It has fallen into "the sere 
 and yellow leaf;" for living purposes it is powerless. 
 
 Would that this were its sole fault ! Catholicism was 
 one of the great things of the world; it watched over the 
 cradle of modern civilization ; it taught it the name of God 
 and the name of Christ ; it inculcated on it faith in mind and 
 in immortality ; in ages of rudeness and license, it alone 
 represented justice and charity ; we owe to it the germs of 
 all we are. Alas ! it is not we who quit it, it is Catholicism 
 that abandons us. It has not learnt how to remain young ; 
 together with its strength it has lost its sincerity ; together 
 with its sincerity it has lost its sap and its life. For those 
 who known how to rise above sectarian passions, and to regard 
 objects in the light of eternal truth, there is no more painful 
 sight than modern Catholicism with its impotency, its passions, 
 its puerile paradoxes, the bad faith of its polemics, the bitter- 
 ness of its party spirit, its lack of political morality ; with its 
 fanatical and ignorant clergy ; with its journals devoted to
 
 21* 
 
 universal reviling ; with its pope occupied in decreeing the 
 immaculate conception ! It bear? in its countenance all the 
 signs of decay ; in our age of great ruins it is in reality the 
 strongest and the most complete. 
 
 
 2— PROTESTANTISM IS ONLY A BRANCH OF CATHOLICISM. 
 
 I went to see a Protestant clergyman — one of my friends. 
 I recounted to him the conversation that I had had with the 
 Catholic. He was delighted with me: — Excellent, he cried; 
 perfect, unanswerable ! And what did he reply ? Nothing 
 of importance, I am sure. 
 
 I must confess I was a little embarrassed with this appro- 
 bation. I did not, I answered, expect to find you so com- 
 pletely of my way of thinking. 
 
 Why not ? Do you suspect me of some sympathy for 
 their superstitions ? 
 
 No, I replied, in a hesitating tone ; but I feared my 
 objections might appear to you somewhat bold. Let us speak 
 frankly ; it seems to me that the considerations which I used 
 to refute my adversary go somewhat further than Catholicism, 
 and, who knows ? strike other orthodoxies through the side 
 of Rome. 
 
 I know where you are, said the pastor. I have already 
 heard you maintain that position. In your view, Luther and 
 Calvin only displaced the seat of authority to place another 
 in its stead ; instead of a man for a pope they gave us a book 
 for a pope ; and after having proved to the catholics that 
 their religion is an inconsistent Protestantism, you undertake 
 to prove to the Protestants that their religion is a bastard
 
 219 
 
 Catholicism. That may be clever, but you are not serious in 
 it. One of your proposition destroys the other; one must 
 choose between the two. 
 
 Assist me to get out of the difficulty. If I have under- 
 stood you, you are disposed to admit the first of my two 
 assertions, and you would see nothing too paradoxical in con- 
 sidering Catholicism as a branch of Protestantism. 
 
 That depends on what you mean by Protestantism. 
 
 I take the word in its most general sense, and, if you will f 
 in its ideal sense. Let us leave aside the doctrinal differ- 
 ences which separate the Protestant churches one from another 
 — what remains ? A Protestant is a man who makes religion 
 an affair between his soul and his God, and in consequence, 
 an affair of personal conviction ; that is to say, that he knows 
 what he believes and why he believes ; it is also to declare 
 that his faith bears the imprint of his own individuality, and 
 that he admits the right of diversity among believers, the right 
 of churches in the church. 
 
 You are describing free inquiry ! and you find some 
 analogy between that principle and Catholicism ! On the con- 
 trary, I had always thought that the Catholic was a man who 
 had renounced all enquiry, who renounced his own judgment, 
 and who acknowledged but one church — the Catholic. 
 
 Let him admit no church, no Christianity, no salvation 
 out of his own pale — it is of small consequence ; he is exclu- 
 sive — are Protestants never so ? Do they not devote one 
 another to eternal damnation ? As to free inquiry, I defy the 
 Catholics to do without it. 
 
 Truly you are simple enough. Except a few Protestants 
 who throw themselves into the arms of mother Church, and 
 that less by conviction than fatigue and impotence, the Catho- 
 lics remain in their Church because they are there, remain by 
 their vis inerttœ, without taking the trouble to inquire whether
 
 22* 
 
 they are in the truth, without caring for religious truth, — 
 in a word — without believing such a thing. 
 
 And the Protestants, I cried. Are they never Protes- 
 tants by birth, by baptism, by habit, by assumption, by in- 
 difference ? Are those in cur Church numerous who have 
 weighed the pro and con ; who have called to their council 
 their intelligence and their conscience ; who have given them- 
 selves an account of their faith ; who have truly formed their 
 opinions, and chosen their Church ? You make my task too 
 easy. One might say, that you had undertaken to prove the 
 position against which you spoke before, and to show how 
 much Catholicism there is in Protestantism. 
 
 Plight, replied he, smiling. I have furnished you Avith 
 arms against myself. However, we will return to this point ; 
 at present it is with the opposite paradox we have to deal ? 
 
 What then, I asked, is the principle of Protestantism ? 
 Duty, and consequently, the right of each to form a personal 
 belief. In order that my faith may have a religious character, 
 I myself must believe it ; I myself must search, learn, choose, 
 and inwardly digest. This is what is called free enquiry. 
 Now, it is in vain that Catholicism tries to escape from free 
 enquiry. One of two things it must take : either it wishes 
 men to believe blindly, mechanically, as the savage believe3 
 in his fetiche ; or it wishes men to believe in full knowledge 
 of the facts, and for that purpose it exhibits reasons for believ- 
 ing. But if it exhibits reasons for believing, it must be that 
 each may appreciate them, and here you have the faith which 
 depends on individual conviction. Must I not at least know 
 if the Roman Church is truly the Church of Jesus Christ, the 
 veritable Church, sole and infallible ; and how can I know it 
 if I have not examined the question ? Afterwards, I shall be 
 able to give myself up. with my eyes closed, to the authority 
 which I have acknowledged to be infallible; but first that
 
 221 
 
 infallibility inust be demonstrated to me, and that implies 
 examination and discussion. How small soever a part Catho- 
 licism leaves to free discussion, it is compelled to leave some 
 part. Here the principle is conceded. Besides it is an en- 
 croaching guest ; give it an inch, it will take an ell. 
 
 I have only one objection to make to you, replied the 
 minister. You have taken the word Protestantism in too 
 general and too negative a sense. A Protestant is not only a 
 person who claims the right to examine and judge for himself, 
 but one Avho, in the exercise of that right, has come to a 
 positive faith. 
 
 Yes, I replied. But what is that faith, that positive prin- 
 ciple of Protestantism, in your judgment ? 
 
 The authority of Scripture. How divided soever the 
 Protestant Churches, they have a common bond ; that com- 
 mon bond is the Bible considered as the supreme rule in 
 matters of faith. 
 
 I will not contradict you. Only observe that we thus 
 come to the point to which I desired to lead you. Catholicism, 
 we saw, could not escape from inquiry which is the Protestant 
 principle ; now it seems that on its side, Protestantism retains 
 authority in religion, that is, the essential principle of Catho- 
 licism. In reality, Catholics and Protestants do not differ as 
 to the necessity of authority, but solely as to its place or seat; 
 — what or who is the depositary of authority in religion? 
 They say, the Church ; you say, the Scripture. 
 
 The difference, it seems to me, is very great. It is the 
 difference between the true and the false. The authority of 
 the one is a pure fiction ; that of the other is the very word 
 of God. 
 
 You mistake ; that is not the point. The question is not 
 to inquire which is the true and which the false authority. 
 The very idea of authority is false, for it is contradictory.
 
 222 
 
 You might as well deny motion in presence of a man who 
 is walking up and down. Authority is a fact. 
 
 I did not speak of the fact, but the idea. Let us analyse 
 that idea. I find there the pretension to the absolute. In a 
 word, he who avouches authority avouches infallibility ; and 
 he who avouches infallibility avouches the absolute. 
 
 What ! are we going to fall back into the the controversy 
 you had the other day ? 
 
 That is inevitable, since we are speaking of the relations 
 of Protestantism with Catholicism. 
 
 Well ! tell me what contradiction you find in the notion 
 of the absolute. 
 
 The absolute itself, the absolute considered as the posses- 
 sion of a man is a contradiction, for man is a relative and 
 limited being. 
 
 Man's fallibility does not prevent the scripture from 
 being infallible in itself. 
 
 No, but it does prevent its being infallible for you, and 
 it does prevent its being recognised as infallible by you. I 
 should say of the Bible what I have said of the pope ; let us 
 admit that it is the depositary of absolute truth, not a step 
 the more forward are we on that account. In passing from 
 the original text into a translation, and from a translation 
 into an explanation which you give me, or which I give myself, 
 absolute truth inevitably becomes relative ; in order that the 
 infallible truth should, as such, enter and be in my mind, I 
 must be infallible myself, and infallibly must I understand 
 and interpret the scripture. This has been felt in all ages of 
 the Church. It is to provide for this requirement, that the 
 early christians ascribed a supernatural origin to the Septu- 
 agint Version, that the Council of Trent sanctioned the use of 
 the Vulgate, and that the Swiss theologians of the seven- 
 teenth century extended inspiration to the vowel points of the
 
 223 
 
 Hebrew text. Vain efforts ! Were the text certain, were 
 the translation dictated by God, the interpretation of the text 
 or the version would remain to be done by man ; and though 
 we possessed an inspired commentary, the ordinary christian 
 would himself need inspiration to understand the explanation 
 infallibly. 
 
 Well, well ! you take, pleasure in pushing things to an 
 extreme. Certainly it is not indifferent whether we draw at 
 a pure or an impure fountain, even if our vases are rude and 
 cracked. I should say that our means of arriving at Biblical 
 truth are not infallible, but sufficient ; as I should admit that 
 inspiration itself is, if not absolute, at least sufficient. 
 
 Take care. The concession goes a long way. The abso- 
 lute must be absolute or nothing ; absolute or relative there 
 is no other choice. In declaring yourself satisfied with a 
 sufficient certainty, you renounce the absolute ; that is, you 
 give up infallibility ; and so, you relinquish authority ; for in 
 matters of faith there can be no authority on the outside of 
 the absolute. A fine authority that which you must interpret, 
 discuss, qualify, limit ! What is sufficient authority but 
 authority of your own making. Sufficient to you may not be 
 sufficient to me. I warn you, you are betraying the cause of 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 There was a short interval of silence. 
 
 Let us go on, I resumed, to another element of the idea 
 we are analysing. If authority is absolute truth, its titles 
 must be self-evident. Are they not so ? Then the authority 
 depends on something independent of itself. In other words, 
 the authority is no authority at all. Accordingly Protestant- 
 ism has produced evidence on behalf of the supernatural 
 character with which it invests the Scripture. Such is the 
 object of the properties attributed to the sacred code, of what 
 the theologians call perspicuitas et semetipsum interpretandi
 
 224 
 
 facultas, the clearness of Scripture and its faculty of self- 
 interpretation. Such is the object especially of that "testi- 
 mony of the Holy Spirit" to which Protestants appeal as the 
 sovereign proof of the divinity of the Bible. The leaders of 
 the Reformation fully understood the difficulty. They needed 
 a point of support for their lever : a solid first principle ; and 
 that basis must be a truth within the reach of all. Suppose 
 that the proof of inspiration did not repose on itself, that is, 
 on its own proper evidence, on what could it repose ? on the 
 researches of science or the testimony of the Church and of 
 tradition ? In the latter case, it is not the Scripture which 
 would form the dogmatic authority, but the testimony of 
 which the authority of the Scripture would be only the conse- 
 quence. In the former case, if the aid of science were neces- 
 sary to establish the divinity of the Scriptures, faith would 
 become the exclusive privilege of such as leisure and culture 
 made fit for the arduous labours of criticism, and Christianity 
 would cease to be the religion of the simple-miuded, the 
 religion of all — in a word, it would cease to be Christianity. 
 
 "Whither are you tending ? interrupted the clergyman. 
 I subscribe to all you have just said; I accept the necessity 
 of self-evidence to constitute the authority of Scripture : I 
 acknowledge that such is the doctrine of Protestantism ; but I 
 do not see where that doctrine is in fault. Permit me here to 
 appeal to your own consciousness, to your experience as a 
 Christian ; — have you never felt what the reformers call "the 
 testimony of the Spirit ?" Has the majesty of the Scriptures 
 never spoken to your heart ? Have you never, while reading 
 the Bible, been moved in the depths of your being ? Have 
 you not understood the force of that word of the Lord, at 
 which, for my part I confess, I always stop with a kind of 
 surprise. " You are already pure through the word which I 
 have spoken unto you." (John xv. 3) Yes, there is in the
 
 225 
 
 word of God a purifying virtue, a virtue which has no need of 
 proof, but which makes itself felt by the soul directly and 
 immediately ; which impresses it with the assurance that only 
 God could have so spoken, and that the Scripture is the truth 
 because it is the light and the life. 
 
 Far am I from wishing to contest the legitimacy of the 
 sentiments which you describe so well, or the justice of the 
 instinctive reasoning which infers the divine origin of a doc- 
 trine from its holy influence. God is the only source of all 
 that is good as well as all that is true, and the more we feel 
 ourselves raised toward him, united with him by words which 
 we hear or read, the more are we inclined to disregard the 
 human mediums in order to seek in God the sole cause of the 
 emotions we experience. But that is not the question. I 
 undertook to prove that the notion of authority is contradic- 
 tory. Here is the contradiction. On the one side, authority 
 cannot do without self-evidentness ; on the other, self-evident- 
 ness implies appreciation on the part of man ; and such ap- 
 preciation destroys authority. To appreciate, is to receive on 
 solid grounds, to judge before submitting, to assert the right 
 of rejecting as well as that of accepting. Now on such con- 
 ditions authority is impossible. Consider rather what are the 
 consequences of the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The sen- 
 timents which you have described, in terms so eloquent, you 
 do not experience equally on reading every page of the Bible. 
 There are many parts of that collection which do not at all 
 call them forth, and which have never called them forth in 
 the mind of any one. This is not all ; the same sentiments 
 sometimes accompany the reading of other religious writings, 
 the preaching of the Gospel on the part of truly religious men 
 who do not, however pretend to apostolic gifts. If, then, you 
 take your personal sentiment as criterion of inspiration, it 
 will appear that the Scripture is not the sole inspired object.
 
 52(5 
 
 and that the Scripture is not inspired as a whole — and then I 
 ask you, what becomes of its authority ? I do not blame the 
 reformers for having given the testimony of the Holy Spirit 
 as the last foundation of faith. They required self-evident- 
 ness as a point of departure, and the testimony of the Holy 
 Spirit is but another name for self-evidentness in matters of 
 faith. Besides, the Reformers, in the choice of this principle, 
 manifested great depth of religious insight — they saw that 
 you cannot get any assured certainty for the soul but that 
 which spontaneously springs from a direct view and personal 
 experience of the truth. But they did not forsee the whole 
 bearing of their principle. That principle is negative as well 
 as positive. It has a critical value. In its reaction, it 
 attacks all the heterogenous elements of the reformed faith. 
 Allow the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to put forth its imme- 
 diate consequences, and you will have a revolution in your 
 theology. What in effect does that doctrine signify, if not 
 that the religious sentiment of each is t\\e sovereign criterion 
 of religious truth. And what ensues ? That man ought to 
 repel every article of belief which his religious sentiment does 
 not accept. Hence an immense shipwreck of dogmas of all 
 kinds, and specially the shipwreck of authority. Instead of 
 one Bible, whose inspiration, determined a priori, escapes 
 from all judgment, we have a collection of books, whose 
 intrinsic value we are called to appreciate ; instead of living 
 under the the absolute empire of one irresponsible authority, 
 we find ourselves in presence of moral power, by which we 
 are dominated and persuaded at the same time ; instead of one 
 mode of Christian evidence, supported on proofs altogether 
 external, we have the everlasting testimony which is ren- 
 dered to the everlasting Gospel; instead of a dogmatic 
 ontology, composed of formulas relative to the trinity, the 
 eternal generation of the logos, and the procession of the
 
 227 
 
 spirit, in union with the two natures and two wills in Christ, 
 we have a religion altogether religious, that is a religion 
 for the conscience and the life ; instead of ascetic and ritual 
 observances, ablutions, fasts and sabbaths, we have a morality 
 which reposes directly and entirely on our moral sense. 
 You see the doctrine of the internal testimony is a heresy, 
 the responsibility of which you had better make haste to 
 disown; or, rather it is a pregnant principle, all the con- 
 sequences of which you ought to accept. Any way, it is the 
 authentic expression of Protestant subjectivism ; and, on that 
 account, I reject as so many contradictions, the elements of 
 the system which cannot be referred to the testimony of the 
 Spirit, and, in particular, even the search after some outward 
 authority. 
 
 In that how well do I, said the minister, recognise your 
 mind, prone to extremes in all things. A dilemma, the 
 absolute opposition of terms — such is the constant method of 
 your arguing. With this abstract sort of logic one may gain 
 the victory in a discussion, but one also throws oneself beyond 
 the limits of reality. For a moment lay logic aside and con- 
 sider facts. I do not see that authority and liberty are 
 incompatible. Far from that, the harmonious development 
 of social conditions depends on the equilibrium of the two 
 principles, as its catastrophes proceed from the predominance 
 given to the one or to the other. In consequence I cannot 
 hinder myself from recognizing a sign of wisdom, an element 
 of strength, and a pledge of duration in that pretended incon- 
 sistency by which Protestantism at once turns to account the 
 rights of free enquiry and those of tradition, the rights of the 
 individual and those of the Church, tempering one principle 
 by the other, and maintaining between them an equipoise 
 equally reasonable and advantageous. 
 
 r 2
 
 22* 
 
 I confess, I answered, that I have greater confidence than 
 you in logic, that is, in truth, in the ideal. Be assured that 
 in the long run it is k)gic which governs the world. Logic is 
 the latent spring of all human things. It ceaselessly labours 
 to disengage the true from the false, overturning old in rais- 
 ing up new ones, and leading humanity on to the realization 
 of the divine idea. A patient but incorruptible Nemesis, 
 sooner or later it punishes all infractions of the eternal laws 
 of truth and justice ; it redresses all wrongs ; it vindicates all 
 rights. The fact does not prevent one from admiring with you 
 a government in which authority and liberty temper each 
 other. Carefully must we distinguish right and fact in this 
 matter. I will explain myself. But first let us define the 
 terms. Long have I desired to ask what you understood by 
 authority. 
 
 By authority I understand the right of a person to be 
 believed or obeyed, simply on the ground that he speaks. 
 
 Simply on the ground that he speaks or on his word, I 
 added ; and in consequence independently of the justice which 
 I may find in the order he gives, or the intrinsic truth which 
 I discover in the doctrine he enunciates ? 
 
 Doubtless, he answered. 
 
 I resumed : — You do not, I presume, wish that the doc- 
 trine taught by authority cannot be recognised as good, holy, 
 true ; but merely that the perception of its excellence is not 
 the condition of the welcome to which it is entitled. 
 
 Exactly. 
 
 Only, I say again, the more we believe in a doctrine 
 because we find it true, the less we believe it by authority ; as 
 also the less we receive it on its own proper account and in 
 virtue of its own proper truth, the more we yield to authority. 
 
 Granted.
 
 229 
 
 Let us give the name of experience to that direct appre- 
 ciation of the truth of things, that judgment as to the intrin- 
 sic value of a statement or a doctrine, and we shall arrive at 
 a law which may be formulated thus : — the domain of autho- 
 rity lessens in the degree in which the domain of experience 
 increases. 
 
 I have nothing to object. 
 
 Be good enough to follow me a little further. If an 
 authority is to be obeyed on its word, it ought surely to 
 establish itself as an authority ? 
 
 Of course. 
 
 And how shall we known it for such ? 
 
 It will exhibit its testimonials. In the last issue, the sole 
 and supreme source of authority is God ; all authority must 
 go back to God; an authority is legitimate only in the 
 degree in which it is able to adduce a divine testimony. 
 
 But how are we to know that the testimony is divine ? 
 How shall we judge that the testimonials are authentic ? 
 
 By supernatural signs, such as prophecy and miracles. 
 
 In pronouncing these words the good pastor seemed to me 
 slightly embarrassed. Probably his confidence in the grounds 
 he mentioned was not complete. So difficult is it to pre- 
 serve yourself from the religious renewal which at the present 
 moment every one inhales with the air he breathes. 
 
 I hastened to put him at his ease. 
 
 I should, I replied, have more than one objection to raise 
 against the intervention of supernatural proofs ; would it be 
 very easy to point in the Bible to one perdiction, a single one, 
 which is at once sufficiently authentic, sufficiently precise and 
 manifestly accomplished ? Are you acquainted with any cri- 
 terion by which you can distinguish the natural from the 
 supernatural ? Are the Biblical writings of such a nature as 
 to put the reality of the miracles they contain beyond all ques-
 
 230 
 
 tion 1 Finally, what are we to think of the principle of 
 Locke, according to which we ought to judge the miracle by 
 the doctrine and not the doctrine by the miracle ? But all 
 this would take us far from our subject. I admit then the 
 certainty of the Biblical narratives, the reality of the miracles 
 f. jund therein, the force of evidence attached thereto by theo- 
 logy, the rigour of the logic by which you deduce the infalli- 
 bility of the Scripture from that of the apostles, and that of 
 the apostles from their miraculous gifts ; I grant all that ; 
 protestant authority is constituted. Are we out of the busi- 
 ness ? By no means ! The scaffolding raised with so much 
 labour falls at the first breath. 
 
 Indeed ? I do not very well see whither you are going. 
 
 I beg you to continue your reply. Since you hold so 
 firmly to the cause of authority tell me whence comes the 
 importance you attach to it. What interest for instance, 
 have you for establishing the divinity of the Bible ? What do 
 you think religion gains thereby ? 
 
 Can you put such a question ? he cried. The advantage 
 is manifest. The Catholic who believes in the authority of 
 the Church, accepts all that the Church teaches. The Pro- 
 testant who believes in the authority of the Bible, admits all 
 he finds written in the Bible. He deprives himself, so to say r 
 of the right of raising any objection to the facts, the ideas, the 
 precepts, which may shock his pride or scandalise his reason. 
 
 I understand. The object of authority is to cause one to 
 receive the Christian teaching in a mass, to substitute one act 
 of faith for several, to reduce belief to one à priori, and 
 implicit assent, and by that means to exclude all à posteriori 
 judgment and even examination into details. In brief, it is 
 an inheritance which the heir is to accept without an 
 inventory. 
 
 I could not have spoken better.
 
 231 
 
 So much the worse for you, for if such is the intention 
 and bearing of your system, a new and radical contradiction 
 must be acknowledged in the idea of authority. Authority, 
 it seems, has for its object to exclude à posteriori judgments. 
 This pretension is vain, because authority does not contain in 
 itself any self-justification, because it does not find in the 
 nature of things any legitimate prescription to oppose to the 
 rights of reason, becanse the limits it wishes to impose on 
 enquiry are arbitrary. It is this which made me say just now 
 that in itself authority is null. It is a phantom which 
 governs the world, and which vanishes at the touch of an 
 infant's fingers. 
 
 You expect, I dare say, that I shall take your assertions 
 for proofs. 
 
 Be calm, I am coming to the proofs. Do you know 
 whence comes the impotence of authority ? From its in- 
 ability to make a religion with authority for its sole dogma. 
 The Christian cannot always remain at the preface of Christi- 
 anity, I mean at the demonstration of the infallibility of the 
 Church or the inspiration of the Bible ; you must communi- 
 cate to him what the Church teaches : you must let him read 
 his Bible. Now, in reading and in listening he judges, and 
 and the moment he judges, to him authority exists no longer. 
 
 No longer am I able to follow you. 
 
 I will put a question — When once authority is established, 
 would it be legitimate to examine the doctrines which it pre- 
 sents to us as divine ? 
 
 Certainly not ; since those doctrines are divine, all that 
 remains is to receive them with submission. 
 
 Then, when the apologists of religion cause us to admire 
 the divine perfections manifested in redemption ; when Pascal 
 displays the relations of the doctrines of Christianity with the 
 wants of the human heart, they perform a dangerous work.
 
 
 232 
 
 O no ! for they seek to ooufirm those doctrines and not 
 to shake them, and consequently to establish authority and 
 not to overthrow it. 
 
 Praise then is permitted, but not blame ? We may admire, 
 but must not criticise ? Yet how can we praise unless we know 
 the facts, aud how can we know the facts unless we examine ? 
 and if in an examination undertaken with the best intentions we 
 meet with insurmountable difficulties, unanswerable objections, 
 grounds for denying* that which we had at first thought we 
 ought to believe — what then ? 
 
 Submit. Authority once established, submission is inevi- 
 table. In such a case, as Bossuet wonld say, you must 
 renounce your own judgment to acquiesce in the judgment of 
 the Church, or as I should say, of the Bible. 
 
 Submit ? Why I Are the new results to which I have 
 arrived, are they necessarily less sure than the former? 
 
 My friend grew impatient. Once more, he said, once 
 more I ask you, have you not supposed the authority demon- 
 strated ? Then, the discussion is at an end. God has spoken, 
 you have only to bow down. 
 
 But there is conflict between the arguments which support 
 authority and the objects by which it is called in question. 
 
 Conflict, my dear sir. When there is conflict between God 
 and man, man, I have always thought, is bound to submit. 
 
 Agreed, I replied. But that is not the question here. 
 The supposed conflict is not between God and man ; it arises 
 between one series of human reasonings and another, between 
 certain general considerations which have established or ap- 
 peared to establish authority, on the one side, and on the 
 other, particular facts which lead to a different conclusion, 
 i'ou think you reply to all that by declaring that God has 
 spoken, presuming that the infallibility of the Bible is proved. 
 In speaking thus, you set aside the essential conditions of
 
 23: 
 
 human knowledge. There is no proposition so certain but 
 has some preliminary, A system is true only so far as it is in 
 agreement with reality, with all reality ; and if facts are dis- 
 covered by which it is contradicted, you must necessarily 
 modify the system, perhaps you will have to abandon it. 
 Thus it is with the authority of the Church in Catholicism, 
 and the authority of the Bible in Protestantism. I am told 
 that the Church is infallible ; specious aguments are put 
 before me, but if infallible, it cannot have been mistaken ; 
 but mistaken it is, for the doctrine of the trinity implies a 
 contradiction ; or when I find the Catholic Church pledged to 
 the doctrine of the immaculate conception, and know that the 
 doctrine is nothing but a mythological fancy ; I learn that 
 infallible though it pretends to be, it is in reality fallible, for 
 it has actually fallen into error. After the same manner — the 
 Protestants say that the Bible is inspired, and, as inspired, 
 so infallible ; they want not considerations of various kinds, 
 which make the opinion plausible ; but if I read the sacred 
 books, I find in them historical errors, contradictions, impossi- 
 bilities ; in consequence, I conclude, and I cannot but con- 
 clude that they are fallible, and are led to pronounce the 
 reasoning fallacious, which might at first have inclined me to 
 think the whole Bible inspired. 
 
 My companion shook his head, but made no answer. I 
 profited by his silence to continue my remarks, 
 
 We have seen it, I said ; the true name of the faith of 
 authority is faith by wholesale. The aim is to reduce enquiry 
 to the smallest morsel. You are forbidden to search the 
 vessel, under the pretext that the flag covers the merchandise. 
 Authority is a general argument, intended to hold the place 
 of the study of particular facts. But why ? On what right 
 do you exclude facts ? I defy you to give an answer, and 
 still cleave to your authority. General arguments, which rest 

 
 234 
 
 not on an analysis of particular facts, which are any thing else 
 than the synthesis of those facts, have only an hypothetic 
 value ; they are mere conjectures, which you must verify by 
 an examination of details. Here is the vulnerable point of 
 systems of authority; — here is the dropped link in the chain- 
 armour of the cuirass. The partisans of authority desire to 
 preclude enquiry and the free thought which ensues ; at least, 
 they desire to limit and circumscribe both ; but never have 
 they found valid reasons why reason should abdicate its 
 functions. 
 
 You do not take into account, the pastor at length replied, 
 the spiritual darkness with which sin has obscured our human 
 intelligence. I am not surprised; pelagianism always follows 
 at the heels of rationalism. Besides, the errors of the Bible 
 may be only apparent. How often has science dissipated the 
 difficulties, reconciled the contradictions, overturned the objec- 
 tions which infidelity had heaped together ! 
 
 Are you speaking seriously ? Are you reduced to have 
 recourse to scepticism, in order to defend the faith. Do you 
 not see that if man is not competent to ascertain an error in 
 the text, he cannot be competent for any thing else ? You 
 refuse him the less to grant him the greater. He is invited 
 to sit in judgment on questions the most delicate and the 
 most difficult — such as the reality of the supernatural, the 
 mission of Christ, the credibility of the apostolic testimony, the 
 inspiration of the Bible, and yet you will not let him pro- 
 nounce an opinion on historical or literary questions, the 
 authenticity of a writing, or the likelihood of a narrative. 
 Or do you refuse to man all competence in matters of faith ? 
 But then, how can he distinguish between the true and the 
 false ? How can he judge that the gospel is divine ? How 
 can he choose ? How can he believe ? Your doctrine leaves 
 you no means of arriving at religious truth, except super-
 
 
 235 
 
 natural illumination, and, in the last analysis, the abritrari- 
 ness of predestination. Moreover, my dear sir, allow me to 
 tell you that all this discussion is perfectly idle. Decline, as 
 long as you please, the competency of man — prohibit enquiry, 
 proscribe reason, You lose your labour. Even those whom 
 you have persuaded will the next moment become faithless to 
 the principle which had seduced them by the appearance of 
 submission and self-renunciation. Man often believes what 
 he wishes to believe, but often also the evidence is too strong 
 for him, and drags him along against his will. If you would 
 put an end to criticism, you must put an end to thinking — 
 nay, you must close man's eyes and stop his ears. The mo- 
 ment I read the Bible I have, whether I will or not, an im- 
 pression ; that impression is an appreciation, a judgment, and 
 that judgment may prove contrary to the infallibility of the 
 book. 
 
 What ! man cannot abstain from giving a judgment ! he 
 cannot, in presence of a difficulty offered by science, repel the 
 doubt by appealing to a recognised authority ! Why, that is 
 seen every day. 
 
 And every day also you see good faith surrendering to 
 evidence, and rejecting the authority before which it had been 
 inclined to bend. Moreover, I want no other judge than 
 yourself. You shall see whether it is easy to renounce reason. 
 Only two or three questions will be needful ; do you consent 
 to give me replies ? 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 I remember to have heard a minister of the Anglican 
 Church preach on the history of Jonah. The abiding of the 
 prophet in the whale's belly gave him no trouble. I go so 
 far, said he, as to declare that if the Scripture made Jonah 
 swallow the whale instead of the whale swallow Jonah, we
 
 236 
 
 should be equally bound to believe its statement. What is 
 your opinion, my dear sir ? Would you go so far as that ? 
 
 The supposition of the preacher is absurd. No one has a 
 right to put fooleries into the Bible, by way of hypothesis. 
 I believe in the contents of the Bible because the Bible is 
 inspired ; but, at the same time, I believe that by reason of 
 that inspiration, the contents of the Bible are worthy of belief. 
 
 Very well said. The supposed fact cannot be found in 
 the Bible, because it is absurd, and because the Bible, being 
 inspired, cannot contain absurdities. To say that Jonah 
 swallowed the whale is, you intimate, an absurdity. I con- 
 clude, that if the Bible recounted such a thing, it would no 
 longer be your Bible; it would, in your eyes, cease to be 
 inspired. But I pass on to another fact. If you have ever 
 been at Florence, you may have noticed in the Church of 
 Santa Maria Maggiore, above the altar of Saint Joseph, an 
 inscription intended to recommend the intercession of that 
 blessed personage. Then you read, Ite ad Joseph — go unto 
 Joseph (Genesis xli. 55). They are, you will remember, the 
 words with which Pharaoh, during the famine, sent the 
 Egyptians to his provident vizier. What do you think of 
 this manner of citing scripture ? 
 
 It is scandalous. 
 
 And what would you do if you found such citations in the 
 Bible — if, for example, you found the Old Testament quoted 
 in the New, with as much license ? 
 
 I simply reply that that is impossible because the Bible 
 is inspired. 
 
 In other words, the Bible would not be inspired if it con- 
 tained such extravagances. That is settled. And what 
 would you say of a passage of Dante which I just now remem- 
 ber ? It is in his Paradise. According to Beatrice, when
 
 237 
 
 God's justice appears to us injustice that is a reason why we 
 should believe it to be justice. This you will admit, is a little 
 paradoxical. 
 
 Another idle supposition. God cannot be unjust because 
 he is God ; and revelation cannot so represent him because it 
 is revelation. 
 
 I do not, I replied, wish to examine whether or not the 
 Bible contains parts which tend to represent God as unjust, 
 citations which call to mind that of Santa Maria Maggiore, or 
 marvels as extraordinary as the existence of a whale in a 
 man's stomach. This is all I want you to admit. — You do 
 not pretend that the Bible changes error into truth, and 
 impossibility into reality ; you are satisfied with saying, that 
 the Bible cannot contain any error or impossibility because it 
 is divine ; but in speaking thus, you declare yourself fit to 
 judge what is true and what is impossible. That is not all ; 
 in declaring that the Bible cannot contain an arbitrary cita- 
 tion or a puerile argument, you admit the converse proposition, 
 namely that the Bible would cease to be inspired for you, if 
 you found in it faults of that kind. Henceforward competent 
 to judge of error and truth, if in reading the Scripture you 
 find there a manifest error, a contradiction, an inexact state- 
 ment, an unsatisfactory argument, an unworthy sentiment, a 
 false notion of the Deity, you could not help concluding that 
 your earlier faith was erroneous, and that the sacred volume 
 was not infalible. Exactly in this way does belief in inspira- 
 tion every day sink and disappear in a multitude of minds. 
 
 I am not sure ; said the minister after some moments of 
 reflexion, I am not sure that you have not exaggerated the 
 pretensions of Protestantism in order the more easily to com- 
 bat them. Let us admit that the authority of Scripture 
 ought to be proved not solely by general and external con- 
 siderations, but also by the study of its contents ; let us admit
 
 23$ 
 
 that the inspiration of a collection of books can be established 
 only by a double operation, the dogmatic or à priori proof, 
 and the solution of difficulties of detail — what would you find 
 there of a serious nature for Protestantism ? in what way 
 would the solidity of the system be shaken ? 
 
 Call to mind your own definition of authority. It is, you 
 said, the right which a person has to be obeyed on his word : 
 it is the Magister dixit, " so said the master; " it is Scriptum 
 est, "so it is written," — this is the argument — the word decides. 
 Now if I believe in the words of the Bible, not because they 
 are in the Bible, but because I have examined them and found 
 them good and true, I shall still have a Bible, I shall have 
 even an inspired Bible ; but that Bible will no longer be an 
 authority for me. Besides, the proceeding once admitted, 
 others may arrive at different results, this man rejecting a 
 part of Scripture, that man rejecting it altogether. The door 
 is henceforth open to liberty without any other guarantee, 
 ope» to subjectivism without any other counterpoise than the 
 objectivity and power of truth itself. 
 
 By your account, authority is only a dream, and the diffi- 
 culty would be to learn how the word came into existence. It 
 seems to me however, that authority has played and still plays 
 a great part in the affairs of the world. 
 
 I have, I answered, made a distinction between fact and 
 right. By right, authority is null and void, for it presents a 
 contradictory idea, or if you prefer the statement, an idea 
 which cannot be realised. It aims in reality to suppress 
 individual judgment, and nevertheless it has never been able 
 to justify the renunciation of individual judgment which it 
 exacts, nor to establish grounds for its own existence. But 
 if authority is null and void as a matter of right, it is, I 
 grant you, real as a matter of fact. Authority is the com- 
 mon patrimony heaped up by tradition, habit, and testimony,
 
 233 
 
 and transmitted from generation to generation. Authority is 
 that circle of generally received notions in the midst of which 
 an individual is born, under the influence of which he is 
 developed, and with which he can no more dispense than the 
 embryo can dispense with the maternal womb. All men 
 begin with authority; and all, even the most independent, owe 
 to it even to the end the greatest part of their spiritual life. 
 Authority is however null in right, for as soon as I approach 
 it, it vanishes ; as soon as I ask for its titles, it cannot even 
 attempt to shew them without ceasing to be authority. It is 
 absurd to believe without reason for believing, or, what comes 
 to the same thing ; without any other reason than example 
 and habit : it is absurd to live and to die in such and such 
 a religion, solely because it is that of my family and my 
 country. Nevertheless such is the condition of the bulk of 
 our race. Well : — here we meet with the true authority, that 
 which imposes itself on us without having even to show itself 
 — the authority of fact. But let doubt arise, let objections be 
 put forward — that moment authority is no more. It looses 
 all the ground that inquiry takes possession of, or experience, 
 or personal independence, or individuality. The more a man 
 is a child the more he belongs to authority ; he becomes a 
 man only by putting away authority ; his enfranchisement in 
 regard to authority is the condition and the measure of his 
 mental and moral development. 
 
 The strength of Catholicism, I continued, is in its being a 
 fact, as is authority itself; it is religion in an unconscious 
 state, in a state of usage and national tradition. Its weak- 
 ness lies in its not being able to discuss ; the dream vanishes 
 the instant you set your eyes thereon. The strength of Pro- 
 testantism is that it is a right of every man. Protestantism 
 is religion made personal or individual by free enquiry ; now 
 such a religion is the sole religion which truly deserves tha
 
 240 
 
 name. But the weakness of Protestantism is its mixture of 
 two contradictory principles — authority and free enquiry. It 
 is nevertheless true to say that Protestantism owes its history 
 to its very inconsistency. Owing to that inconsistency it has 
 been a compromise and a transition, a transition from pure 
 authority, against which the human mind began to rise in 
 revolt ; to pure liberty, for which Europe was insufficiently 
 prepared. Had it been more consistent it would have been 
 more feeble. However, Protestantism and Catholicism have 
 common elements. The latter dares not and cannot entirely 
 repudiate enquiry ; the former endeavours to retain authority. 
 There is however this difference between them, that the centre 
 of gravity of Catholicism is in authority, while that of Protes- 
 tantism is in liberty. The historical significance of the Refor- 
 mation is in the revolt of individual judgment against 
 tradition. Now, a system always unfolds itself according to 
 the sense of its principle : it tends to reject the foreign 
 elements it contains, and to become more logical and more 
 homogeneous. The human mind does not easily resign itself 
 to contradiction^ : — as soon as it becomes aware of having 
 fallen into them it makes an effort for its extrication. 
 Accordingly the days of Protestantism are numbered ; I mean 
 the days of Protestantism as a positive system, as an institu- 
 tion ; for as a principle it is immortal. God grant that when 
 the day of liberty shall have come, it may find souls strong 
 enough to bear it, and that before the corpse of the Church 
 which has been our mother and our nurse, we may be able to 
 exclaim not " All is coming to an end ! " but " All is 
 beginning ! "
 
 541 
 
 S.— THE CHRIST OF THE POPULAR CHURCHES UTTERS NO WORD OP 
 
 SOLUTION. 
 
 I had come to a stand, in order to converse with a friend. 
 The minister of whom I have spoken, was traversing the 
 promenade. He recognised me, came to me, and apologised 
 for interrupting us. 
 
 I have found it ; said he, in laying his hand on my arm ; 
 I have found it ! 
 
 "What have you found, my dear Archimedes ? 
 
 Precisely that, he answered, which the philosopher of 
 Syracuse asked for. He undertook to lift the earth, provided 
 some one gave him a point of support for his lever. I say as 
 much of the moral world ; authority is the only lever which 
 can raise the moral world, and the question is reduced to the 
 discovery of a point of support for authority. 
 
 That in truth is the difficulty. 
 
 And what will you say if I show you that the point of 
 support is found ? 
 
 I shall yield to the resources of your dynamics. 
 
 You embarrassed me the other day with your sophistries; 
 let us now enter into historical reality and look at facts as 
 they really are. 
 
 With all my heart, I replied. 
 
 Two words will suffice to make you understand my 
 thought. The Divinity of Jesus Christ is the essence of 
 Christianity, since this belief once taken away nothing sepa- 
 rates us from Deism. Is it not so ? 
 
 Deism ? You alarm me. I grant you all. Go on. 
 
 Omniscence is a necessary attribute of divinity ; so that 
 
 Q
 
 242 
 
 Jesus Christ must have known all things. But if he knew 
 all things, he could not be mistaken ; that is, he was infallible. 
 What is your opinion ? 
 
 You draw nothing from your premises which is not con- 
 tained in them. 
 
 Well ; tell me, yes or no, did not Jesus Christ cite the 
 Old Testament as a sacred collection, as a divine book, as a 
 decisive authority — in brief, as an inspired and infallible word ? 
 
 I must say I rind a certain difference between the manner 
 in which the Saviour cites the Scriptures and the manner in 
 which they are cited by his contemporaries, in particular the 
 apostles. But I might have some trouble in making you 
 understand what I mean. I suppose then that you are in 
 the right — what do you aim at ? 
 
 If Jesus Christ held the Old Testament to be infallible, 
 infallible the Old Testament is, and we ought humbly to 
 accept it as such. All the appearances of error and contra- 
 diction can be nothing but appearances. At every objection 
 raised by reason you will find yourself required to choose 
 between the objection and the divinity of Jesus Christ, be- 
 tween human reason and Christianity. If you hesitate you 
 will fall into Deism, and we have no longer any terms to keep 
 with you ; you are a disarmed and open enemy ; as soon as you 
 open you mouth we shall cry out " Deism ! " " Deism !" as soon 
 as you take your pen in hand, we shall feel pity and regret, 
 and all will be over. 
 
 This certainly is a new " short way" to the end of con- 
 troversy. But how about the New Testament ? Jesus Christ 
 could not have set his seal to a collection of books which, in 
 his day, did not exist. 
 
 I beg your pardon; in proclaiming the divinity of the one 
 he proclaimed the divinity of the other. 
 
 What do vou mean ?
 
 243 
 
 He gave the idea that a second collection would be formed, 
 and that that collection would be inspired equally with the 
 first. 
 
 Is it so indeed? I do not remember any passage in 
 which Jesus makes allusion to a future collection. 
 
 That is not what I intended. He could not professedly 
 speak of a book which was not an existence. 
 
 Why not? He certainly announced to the apostles the 
 persecutions, of which they would be the victims ; to Judas 
 he foretold his treachery ; to Peter, his martyrdom ; to all, 
 the ruin of Jerusalem and the temple. Why could he not 
 have spoken of the Xew Testament ? 
 
 That would be useless. It is quite clear that the Christ- 
 ians could not fail to have a sacred collection, since the Jews 
 had one. The want of it would have been in inferiority. 
 
 Saint Paul saw in such a want, a pre-eminence. Any way, 
 you must allow me to think that a declaration of Christ would 
 not have been useless to the New Testament. Reflect a little. 
 If we had from his lips a list of books, which were to con- 
 stitute our canon, and a solemn attestation of their divine 
 authority — how many difficulties would have no existence ! 
 We really possess all that. 
 
 You possess it ? Have you discovered a fifth gospel ? 
 No ; but every time that Jesus Christ speaks of the Old 
 Testament, he speaks equally of the New. 
 How so ? 
 
 By analogy ! or rather, à potion'. In fact. Jesus Christ 
 sanctions a collection, the history of which is unknown, the 
 books of which are for the most part anonymous, and the con- 
 tents of which raise a crowd of objections — much more has he 
 sanctioned a collection which was equally formed we know 
 not well how; the authors of which are in part unknown, but 
 of which the religious character is much superior. 
 
 Q 2
 
 2U 
 
 You lay open new -worlds, I said ; I could not have 
 thought that so many things -would be drawn from nothing. 
 It is a veritable creation ex nihilo. You will change the whole 
 face of thèolog 
 
 Had I not reason for declaring that I had found the point 
 of support needed by Archimedes ? 
 
 But the Catholics — it is the Catholics that trouble me. I 
 fear they will turn your method to their own account. Jesus 
 Christ, they will say. frequented the temple, observed the 
 
 lie ceremonial, acknowledged the divine origin of the 
 Jewish priesthood, and in so doing, implicitly sanctioned the 
 divine origin of the ritual and priesthood of Catholicism. But 
 Let us return to the subject of our discussion — where were we ? 
 
 I have established the divinity of the Bible. The book is 
 infallible, and every Christian is bound to accept it as such, or 
 to reject the infallibility of Jesus Christ himself: that is to 
 say. his divinity, in other words, the foundation of Christianity. 
 
 I understand you. The infallibility of the book rests on 
 the infallibility of the Lord. Now let us examine. You >ay 
 that Jesus Christ was infallible. That means that he could 
 not commit an error. 
 
 Yes. 
 
 And consequently that he never was in error ? 
 
 DoubtL 
 
 The two propositions are convertible ; if he is infallible he 
 does not err ; if he does err, he is not infallible ? 
 
 Of course. 
 
 Well : I declare that according to your view Jesus Christ 
 is in error. 
 
 That is a little strong. 
 
 Observe that I say according to your view. It is you who 
 accuse him of error. 
 
 That has the air of an unworthy pleasantry.
 
 245 
 
 I employ no pleasantry. If Jesus Christ, as you pretend, 
 held the books of the Old and New Testament as infallible, 
 he certainly erred. 
 
 What ? How know you that ? That is precisely the 
 question. 
 
 No question at all ; is is a fact. I dû not say that the 
 fact is self-evident, since it does not appear certain to every 
 mind ; but I declare that the inauthenticity of the book of 
 Daniel and of the second Epistle of Peter ; that the historical, 
 hermeneutical, and logical errors of the Bible, are facts much 
 more clear than the propositions of which your dogmatic 
 deduction consists, 
 
 But in what point does that deduction fail ? Is anyone of 
 the links too weak ? Is there any break in the chain ? If so, 
 show me ; if you are unable, acknowledge your inconsistency 
 in not yielding to the authority of the Son of God. 
 
 You are wrong, my dear sir, in wishing to force me to 
 pronounce a decision on your system. I do not think myself 
 obliged to discuss it in detail. One reply suffices. The 
 Bible, you say, is infallible, for such it is declared to be by 
 Jesus Christ, who is infallibility itself. On my part, I reply; 
 if Jesus Christ declares the Bible infallible, his testimony 
 proves nothing ; for in that case he certainly errs ; and if he 
 errs, he is not infallible. 
 
 Speak for yourself, he answered ; say that such is your 
 opinion. 
 
 As it is yours that Jesus Christ proclaims the divine origin 
 of the Scriptures. These are two opposite opinions between 
 which no one can decide with authority, and of which each 
 will speak according to his light and his prejudices. That 
 does not prevent my view having a real advantage over yours. 
 
 What advantage ?
 
 248 
 
 It- simplicity. No question lies within narrower limits. 
 none is more elementary, none more accessible than that of 
 ascertaining whether two evangelists contradict each other ; 
 whether a prediction has been accomplished ; whether an 
 apostle cites a prophet exactly. Now Matthew cites a passage 
 which he ascribes to Jeremiah, (Matt, xxvii. 1.) I open my 
 Bible and learn that the passage cited is found in Zechariah, 
 (xi. 12. 13.) I conclude that the evangelist Lb mistaken. You 
 cannot conceive an intellectual operation less complete. Quite 
 different is it with your dogmatic deduction. It is composed 
 of several propositions, each of which is more or less doubtful. 
 It is not perfectly certain that the Gospel of John is authen- 
 tic : it is not perfectly certain that the discourses attributed 
 to Jesus in that Gospel are exactly reported ; it is not per- 
 fectly certain, even according to that Gospel, that Jesus 
 taught his consubstantiality with his Father ; it is not per- 
 fectly certain that the Divinity of Christ involves his omni- 
 science ; it is not perfectly certain that the Lord intended to 
 decide on questions of criticism and canonicity : it is not 
 perfectly certain that in citing the Old Testament as he does, 
 he admits its inspiration in the sense in which you take it ; it 
 is not perfectly certain that in referring to the law and the 
 prophets, he acknowledges the divinity of the Canticles and 
 the Ecclesiastes ; it is not perfectly certain that in sanctioning 
 the divinity of the Old Testament, he implicitly sanctions that 
 of the New. How many points raised by each of those ques- 
 tions ? How much room for doubt in the links of your argu- 
 ment ? 
 
 One may doubt everything ; rejoined the pastor ; and as 
 to you, you are known to be a sceptic. Most people, I am 
 sure, would acknowledge some validity in the considerations 
 I have presented to you.
 
 247 
 
 Possibly so. Have you never found something specious 
 in the arguments of Romanists ? Bossuet, Mohler, have they 
 never fascinated you ? As for me, this is the way in which I 
 escape from their delusions. When I have read some inge- 
 nious or eloquent dissertation on the infallibility of the Church 
 of Rome, I think forthwith of the Athanasian creed, the doc- 
 trine of Chalcedon, the theory of the sacraments, the assump- 
 tion, or the immaculate conception of the Virgin, &c, &c, 
 and I shake my head and say, " No ! no ! the Roman Church 
 is not infallible — for it has erred." 
 
 So you do not believe that Jesus Christ regarded the 
 Scriptures as infallible ? 
 
 I hold to my dilemma ; if he had your opinions on the 
 point, he was not infallible ; if he was infallible, he certainly 
 had not your opinions on the subject of the Scripture. One 
 of these destroys the other. Establish that the Saviour 
 understood the words, " It is written," as you understand 
 them, and you aim a fatal blow at the authority of Jesus 
 Christ.* 
 
 * Wherein lies the true authority of Christ may be found set forth in the 
 latter part of Dr. Roville's Essay on the Subject— which also presents the only true 
 solution of the question here raised as between the rival churches ; and Chat other 
 more important question which arises as between the rival churches and Christ- 
 ianity. 
 
 Editor.
 
 THE ERRATA OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 
 By Edmund Scberer, 
 
 We hare had occasion to point out the influence which 
 the historic circumstances in which they are placed has exer- 
 cised upon our canonical writers, and we have seen that this 
 influence does not suffer as to regard the Bible as inspired in 
 the literal orthodox sense. But the sacred authors have fallen 
 into errors of a more positive nature than are mere faults of 
 quotation or of interpretation, These errors are for the most 
 part contradictions, either of facts as differently related by 
 different authors, or of biblical facts as compared with the 
 certain data of history. We shall proceed to enumerate some 
 of these errors, beginning with the least important, errors 
 which, in fact, are only such when regarded from the dogmatic 
 point of view, and which derive all their importance from 
 doctrinal assumption. 
 
 It is known that the New Testament often contains differ- 
 ent records of the same fact or of the same discourse. This is 
 the case for example with the conversion of Paul, three 
 accounts of which are found in the book of Acts ; it is often 
 the case in the gospels, especially in the three first, in which 
 the words and actions of the Saviour are reproduced in texts 
 at once the same and different. We have thus a test of 
 comparison ; and it is enough to be assured that the evan- 
 gelists intended to report the same miracle or the same dis- 
 course, to have also the right to compare them one with the
 
 249 
 
 other, and to s*e whether this comparison does not throw 
 some light upon the question of inspiration. 
 
 The first fact which presents itself to us in our study of 
 the discourses of the Saviour is, that the same words occur in 
 the different gospels in quite different contexts. Thus many of 
 the portions of the Sermon on the «Mount, as Matthew has 
 recorded it, are entirely wanting in the record of this discourse, 
 which Luke has preserved, and appear on different occasions 
 in chapters xi. xiii. xvi. and especially in chapter xii. of this 
 latter evangelist's gospel. The instructions of Jesus to his 
 apostles (Matth. x.) are found partly in Luke x., in reference to 
 the missions of the seventy disciples, and partly in Luke xxi., 
 in the middle of the discourse about the ruin of Jerusalem 
 and the end of all things. Of the parables which we find 
 together in Matth. xiii., one is found in the viii., and one 
 in the xiii. chapter of Luke. The address, in respect to the 
 Scribes and Pharisees (Matth. xxiii.) corresponds as to the 
 the circumstances with Luke xx. 45 — 47, and as to its sub- 
 ject matter with Luke xi. 37 — 45. Many more examples 
 might be given : any number may be found by opening any 
 harmony of the gospels. Between two contexts we must 
 choose ; we must admit that if one is exact, the other is not 
 exact ; possibly that neither is exact. There is then error, in 
 this respect, in the evangelic records : infallibility has not been 
 brought to bear on this point at any rate. And yet, how many 
 times does religious teaching insist upon the contexts in which 
 the words of Jesus are found, and how many lessons are drawn 
 from these contexts ! Calvin, for his part, has made no difficulty 
 in admitting that' Matthew and Luke composed the discourses 
 of the Saviour out of fragments, collected from different 
 times and places. But if nothing is more simple than this, 
 from the historical point of view, it is, by no means, so simple 
 in reference to the question of inspiration. The evangelist-
 
 2iO 
 
 by no means give us their accounts as a collection of separate 
 memoranda: they have no con^ci msness of this pro- 
 they believe in the correctness of the context which they 
 give : and when they place any phrase, or set of phrases, 
 in connection with historical circumstances where it was not 
 spoken, they evidently commit an error which cannot be re- 
 conciled with the supernatural intervention of the Holy Spirit. 
 But there is something yet more serious. 
 
 The discourses which occur in several of the gospels, and res- 
 pecting the general identity of which there can be no doubt, are, 
 however, not reported in identical words. It follows, thai we do 
 not possess these discourses literally a? they were spoken, or 
 under a genuine form. Jesus, according to Matthew, says, that 
 men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ; ac- 
 cording to Luke, he names two kinds of thorn bushes, thorns 
 and brambles (Matthew vii. 16: Luke vi. 44) — We read in 
 the one, " not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, 
 shall enter into the kingdom of heaven : but he that doeth 
 the will of my Father, which is in heaven." In the other we 
 read, " and why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
 which I say?"' (Matthew vii. 21; Luke vi. 46), After the 
 parable of the husbandmen, who slew such as were sent unto 
 them. Jesus asks the Pharisees what punishment these hus- 
 bandmen had to expect from the Lord of the vineyard. " They 
 say unto him. he will miserably destroy those wicked men, 
 and will let out his vineyard unto others." Such is the ac- 
 count of Matthew. Mark and Luke put the answer of the 
 Pharisees into the mouth of Jesus himself. (Matthew xxi. 
 41 : Mark xii. 9: Luke xx. 16) — The same is the case with 
 the question as to the lawfulness of healing on the sabbath 
 day ; a question which Matthew puts into the mouth of the 
 Jews, whilst Mark and Luke put it into the mouth of Jesoftl 
 (Matthew xii. 10; Mark iii. 4; Luke vi. 9) — Christ, accord-
 
 2.31 
 
 ing to one evangelist, forbade the apostles to carry with them, 
 on their journey, staves : according to another, this is exactly 
 the only thing that he allows them to take (Matthew x. 10; 
 Mark vi. S) — In one place we read " and if any man will 
 * * * take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 
 also." But it is more natural to suppose that anyone would 
 take first the outer garment, and Luke has more exactly "and 
 him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat 
 also." (Matthew v. 40; Luke vi. 29) — With what right can 
 literalism, in the face of these facts, present to us every word 
 as genuine, and every particle as divine ? 
 
 Besides these differences, as to the context, and as to the 
 expressions of the evangelical discourses, there are others 
 which even affect the ideas and the thoughts. Here is an 
 example. There can be no doubt as to the general identity 
 of the Sermon on the Mount as reported to us by Matthew 
 and Luke. But these reports commence with the beatitudes, 
 and both conclude with the simile of the house founded on 
 the rock ; it is sufficiently clear that both authors intend to 
 relate the same discourse, and there are, in fact, many pas- 
 sages in both which are evidently only different versions of 
 the same original. And yet, see how far diversity can extend ! 
 In the beatitudes of Matthew all is spiritual, the need as well 
 as the promise : whilst in Luke, the hunger is a real hunger, 
 the poverty an actual poverty, and the satisfying of the hun- 
 ger a merely material satisfying. 
 
 And if the case is thus with discourses which we can test 
 by the comparison of the different accounts, it is clear that 
 we have no right to admit the literal correctness of those in 
 regard to which we have not this power of comparison. The 
 discourses reported in the Gospel of John or in the Book of 
 the Acts, have no right to any special privilege, arising from 
 th© insuffieiency of our critical resources.
 
 252 
 
 The consequences of the facts just stated are so threaten- 
 i the ort: item, that it has been found nece- 
 
 to attempt to explain them. The sixteenth century was free 
 enough, because men were still sufficiently believers not to 
 trouble themselves about facts. The seventeenth interposed, 
 here, as everwhere else, with its petrified theology and it- iron 
 dogmatism. Heroically faithful to their theopneustic notion-, 
 the harmonists of that period laid it down as a principle that 
 there could not be in the inspired accounts any difference 
 either in the thoughts, or in the ex; or even in the 
 
 context of the discources of the Saviour. According to this 
 principle, as many discourses are admit .icies 
 
 of the text require. Jesus, therefor . 1 at 
 
 times some words oi a meaning at once enigmatical and mani- 
 fold, some sentences of a proverbial turn of ex; ind of 
 general application : but he must sometimes have repeated 
 precisely the same words, like a schoolboy learning his les 
 or an actor studying his part. We have all read with emotion 
 the words at once reproachful and compassionate, addr 
 by the Saviour to an incredulous city : " O Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets >nest 
 them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings, and ye would not." These words 
 are related by Luke and by Matthew in the very same terms, 
 but under different circumstances. According to the former, 
 Jesus uttered them on his way to Jerusalem : according to 
 the latter in Jerusalem itself. (Luke xiii. 04 : Matt, xxiii. 
 37.) It is in vain to urge that these words spring from the 
 heart, that all their significance, all their truth depends on the 
 feeling which prompted them, and that they can no more be 
 repeated than they could have been committed to memory : in 
 vain to say that the Master who teaches is lost here behind
 
 253 
 
 the Saviour who laments: dogmatism has spoken, and inspira- 
 tion requires that Jesus should express his grief tirice in 
 terms stereotyped for that purpose. When a system has got 
 so far as this, the accusation against it is not one of subtlety, 
 but of profanation ! 
 
 What we have said of the words of Jesus, we say also of 
 his actions. When we consider the matter closely, there are 
 many differences which are in themselves contradictions. 
 When Mark and Luke speak of one demoniac, where Matthew 
 speaks of two, the account of the first implies that there was 
 only one. When Mark and Luke record that Jesus cured a 
 blind man, the latter as he was entering Jericho, the former 
 as he was leaving that town, it is clear that there is a contra- 
 diction. It is useless to endeavour to solve this difficulty by 
 supposing two blind men healed, for the two records prevent 
 such a supposition by their very resemblance. Everything is 
 identical, the cry of the blind man, the opposition of the dis- 
 ciples, the perseverance of Bartimaeus, the question of Jesus, 
 the answer, the words in which the Saviour announces the 
 cure, the eagerness of the healed man to follow his benefactor, 
 everything except the side of the town on which the fact took 
 place. To suppose such an exact repetition of all the circum- 
 stances of any fact, must be, it must be said, the height of 
 blindness or of bad faith. The case is the same with the 
 three portions of the temptation of the Lord, the natural order 
 of which as given by Matthew has been inverted by Luke, and 
 this without any indication or indeed any suspicion that it has 
 been so inverted. The case is the same with reference to 
 the two thieves, crucified with Jesus. According to Matthew 
 they both insulted their fellow- sufferer : according to Luke 
 one was full of repentance. One of these accounts must 
 necessarily be incorrect.
 
 254 
 
 When Paul, relating bis conversion to Agrippa puts into 
 the mouth of the Lord and places at the very period of his 
 apparition, words (Acts xxvi. 10, sqq.,) which according to 
 other accounts of the same fact, are only addressed to him 
 several days afterwards, and by the mouth of Annanias, we 
 have here liberty taken with facts very venial in itself but 
 fatal to the verbal inspiration theory. 
 
 The most remarkable however, and the most decisive fact 
 of this kind is the following. Luke and Matthew both record 
 the history of the centurion, whose faith was expressed in a 
 simple manner, and whose servant was healed by Jesus. One 
 tells us, however, that the centurion came himself to Jesus, 
 the other that he only sent a messenger to him. We pass by 
 the other peculiarities of the two accounts, and we ask, Is 
 there not here a contradiction ? Is it not true that we must 
 choose between the two reporters ? When Matthew writes 
 that a centurion came to Christ and spoke to him, can this be 
 interpreted to mean that he sent a message to him by a third 
 person ? Or must we not do violence to our common sense if 
 we endeavour to avoid the evidence which such a fact 
 furnishes ? 
 
 We shall conclude this portion of our enquiries by ad 
 ennumeration of various passages in the New Testament, in 
 which, if the error is not more manifest, it is at any rate more 
 serious than in the preceeding cases. 
 
 1. Matthew begins his Gospel with a genealogical table of 
 the descent of Joseph, the husband of Mary. This genealogy, 
 which goes from Abraham to David, from David to the cap- 
 tivity, and from the captivity to the birth of Jesus, which 
 therefore takes in the principle points in the history of the 
 people of God, is intended to connect the birth of the Messiah 
 with the economy of this history. Such is, in especial, the 
 intention of the division of the genealogy into three equal
 
 255 
 
 series, of fourteen names each, the writer seeking to bring out 
 the relation which he indicates and in some sort the divine 
 thought contained, by the symmetry of numbers. In any 
 case, the table of which we speak presents many difficulties 
 generally acknowledged. In the first place, Rahab is repre- 
 sented (v. 5.) as the wife of Salmon, son of Naasson, and is 
 the great-great-grandmother of David : but between the 
 taking of Jericho and the birth of David there is an interval 
 of nearly 400 years, for which interval the table in Matthew 
 only gives three generations. The error arises from the fact 
 of the evangelist having copied on trust the genealogy given 
 at the end of the Book of Ruth, where there is a gap of about 
 six generations. In the second place, Matthew omits between 
 Joram and Ozias, (v. 8,) we know not why, three kings, 
 Ahasiah, Joash, and Amaziah. In the third place, in v. 11, 
 between Josias and Jechonias he omits Jehoiakim, and gives 
 brethren to Jechonias. who had none, whilst Jehoiakim had. 
 Now Jechonias was also called Jehoiakin : hence it is clear 
 that the evangelist has confounded the similar names, and has 
 made only one person of Jehoiakin or Jechonias and his 
 father Jehoiakim. In the fourth place, at v. 12, Matthew 
 omits another name, that of Pedaiah, between Salathiel and 
 Zorobabel, because he has followed Ezra v. 2, instead of 1 
 Chron. hi. ID. 
 
 But this is not all. Matthew has so little suspicion of 
 these omissions in his genealogy which amount altogether to 
 ten or eleven generations, that he considers it to include all 
 the generations from Abraham to Christ, (v. 17,) and pro- 
 ceeds to establish among these fictitious numbers a certain 
 symmetrical connection which disappears as soon as the gaps 
 have been discovered. And beyond this, this very symmetry, 
 remarkably enough, is illusory even from Matthew's own 
 point of view, and supposing his genealogy to be correct. In
 
 256 
 
 fact, in order to obtain three series of fourteen names each, it 
 is 11.it only necessary to reckon Jesus himself, which presents 
 no difficulty, but it is necessary to count David twice, once at 
 the end of the first series, and once at the commencement of 
 the second, an arbitrary mode of calculation which the expres- 
 sions of v. 17, show that the evangelist intended to adopt. 
 Here, however, there is a third difficulty, the second series 
 thus terminating with Jcsias, and the third commencing with 
 Jechonias, who according to v. 11, (comp. v. 12,) belongs, at 
 any rate as to his birth, to the period anterior to the Babylo- 
 nish Captivity. 
 
 II. Considered by itself, the genealogy furnished by Mat- 
 thew cannot stand a critical examination. Considered alone, 
 the genealogy of Luke calls for but little remark. At the 
 same time, when he makes Salathiel the son of Xeri, (iii. 
 he is in contradiction with I Chron. iii. 17 : further, when he 
 makes Rhesa the son of Zorobabel, (iii. 27,) he inserts a name 
 not known to the compiler of the list in 1 Chron. iii. 19, 20.: 
 and again Luke has followed the Septuagint instead of the 
 Hebrew text, when he makes Cainan instead of Salah the son 
 of Arphaxad, (Gen. xi, 12.) 
 
 On the other hand there are between the genealogies 
 given by Lgke and Matthew, differences which have often 
 been noted. Luke goes as far back as Adam, and Matthew 
 only as far back as Abraham : but in the corresponding por- 
 tions of the two tables there is hardly the slightest resem- 
 blance. The only points of contact are the following : the 
 point of departure, David : the point of arrival, Joseph, the 
 husband of Mary : and between them, of all the names cited, 
 only two, Salathiel and his son Zorobabel. All the other 
 names are different. Matthew, after David, starts from Solo- 
 mon, Luke from Nathan : Matthew makes Jechonias the 
 father of Salathiel, Luke, Xeri ; Matthew makes Abind the
 
 2o7 
 
 eon of Zorobabe], Luke, Rhesa, ; Matthew gives as the father 
 of the husband of Mary, an individual named Jacob, Luke, a 
 personage of the name of Heli. The names in Matthew are 
 of the royal race, whilst those in Luke are totally unknown, 
 except the two which he has in common with Matthew. 
 Finally Luke reckons forty-two generations, Whilst Matthew 
 has only twenty-seven. 
 
 We have then two different genealogies : how are they to 
 be reconciled ? Here has been a grand field of conjecture for 
 theologians of all times ! The oldest of these conjectures is 
 the supposition of one of those marriages, where the brother 
 of the deceased married his widow, the dead man having left 
 no children, (Deut. xxv.) According to this theory, Jacob 
 was the first husband of the mother of Joseph, and Heli the 
 second, or vice versa. It is true that according to this hypo- 
 thesis, Jacob and Heli being brothers, their ancestors must 
 have been the same, and the two lists ought therefore to have 
 agreed. To meet this difficulty another supposition has been 
 found necessary, namely, that Jacob and Heli were only 
 uterine brothers, and were the sons of different fathers. Even 
 this however, is not sufficient, and to explain the coincidence 
 between the two lists as to the names of Zorobabel and Sala- 
 thiel, this same double hypothesis has to be renewed respect- 
 ing the father of Salathiel : and even then remains to be 
 explained how one of the evangelists makes Abind the son of 
 Zorobabel, and the other Rhesa. 
 
 The wish to avoid so many arbitrary and at the same time 
 unsatisfactory suppositions has given rise to another explana- 
 tion. Most modéra interpreters admit that the genealogy in 
 the first Gospel is that of Joseph, and that in the third Gos- 
 pel that of Mary. In support of this idea it is alleged that 
 Luke indicates at the commencement of his table the super- 
 natural birth of Jesus, (iii. 23,) and that he could therefore
 
 258 
 
 hare had no intention of giving a genealogy of Joseph, 
 between whom and Jesus he had just denied any natural rela- 
 tionship : but this allegation leaves out of sight that Matthew 
 indicates precisely the same idea at the end of his table, (i. 
 16,) which corresponds with the commencement of Luke's, 
 and that in any case he knows of and records the miracu- 
 lous conception, (i. 18.) Besides no effort of interpretation, 
 no possible conjecture can make us believe that the name of 
 Joseph, in Luke iii. 23, means Mary, or that the genitive 
 case, which in all the rest of the table expresses direct descent 
 implies here only the relationship of son-in-law. Why, and 
 in what possible connection, or with what conceivable object 
 should Luke have named Joseph instead of Mary if he wished 
 to give the genealogy of this latter, and have made use of 
 this obscure form of words ? Why should he have named 
 Joseph, when he thereby expressly obliged himself to add 
 that he was not really the father of Jesus? It is as well 
 also to recollect that this solution, already opposed by Calvin, 
 gives no account of the difficulties arising from the names of 
 Salathiel and Zorobabel, and compels recourse to be had at 
 least once to the hypothesis of a levirat-marriage. 
 
 III. Luke (ii. 1, sqq.) accounts for the presence of Joseph 
 and Mary at Bethlehem, at the period of the birth of 
 Jesus, by the necessity imposed upon Joseph of going up to 
 be taxed in the city of his birth, in conformity with an 
 edict of Augustus, which commanded a census to be made of 
 the inhabitants of the whole Roman empire. The evangelist 
 adds, " this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor 
 of Syria;" or more correctly, "this taxing, which was the 
 first, this first taxing took place whilst Quirinius was governor 
 of Syria." What these Roman taxings or censuses was is well 
 known. All the citizens were enrolled, with the amount of 
 their property, to facilitate the collection of the taxes ; and
 
 250 
 
 whenever a country became a Roman province, it was made to 
 submit to an operation of this kind. 
 
 There are no less than five difficulties in this passage in 
 Luke. I begin with the least serious. 
 
 In the first place, v. 5, says that Joseph went to Bethle- 
 hem with Mary, to be enrolled with her, which implies that 
 her presence was necessary in reference to this enrolment. 
 Indeed nothing but necessity could have induced her to under- 
 take such a journey at a time so near to that of the birth of 
 her child. But this necessity is by no means evident; indeed, 
 in order to establish it, we are obliged to have recourse to 
 some clauses of the Roman or Jewish law according to which 
 Mary must have been an heiress, or have been possessed of an 
 independent fortune. But the poverty of the married couple 
 renders such hypothesis very doubtful. 
 
 In the second place, the Jewish manner of enrolment was 
 regulated undoubtedly by the place whence each family derived 
 its origin : but the Roman enrolment was made according to 
 the domicile of individuals. Now the manner in which Joseph 
 and Mary were lodged at Bethlehem proves sufficiently that 
 they were strangers in that town. A learned jurist has con- 
 tested this point, and has asserted that the place where the 
 Roman enrolment was carried out, was the town of which each 
 person was a municipal citizen, that is to say, in which each 
 person was born. But Luke does not assert that Joseph was 
 born at Bethlehem ; he says only that he went up because he 
 was of the house and lineage of David (v. 4.) Others have 
 supposed without any authority, that an enrolment in Judea 
 would have been conducted according to Jewish forms. 
 
 In the third place, it has been asked how an enrolment of 
 the Roman empire could have extended to Judea, which was 
 then an independent kingdom under Herod the Great ; which 
 consequently was not a part of the Roman empire, and where 
 
 r 2
 
 1>60 
 
 the taxes were received not by the Romans, but by Herod. 
 The attempts to explain this, the efforts to find similar facts 
 elsewhere in history, have had only one result, to set more 
 clearly in view the improbability, not to say the impossibility 
 of the fact recorded by Luke. 
 
 This again brings us to a fourth difficulty. The taxing of 
 which Luke speaks, is a taxing of all the world, that is accor-' 
 ding to the hyperbolic form of expression, of all the Roman 
 empire. There must have been therefore a general census of 
 the empire, in the reign of Augustus, about the time of the 
 birth of Jesus Christ. How is it then that neither Josephus 
 nor any other ancient historian, has the slightest knowledge of 
 such a census, though they record two or three others* ordered 
 by Augustus ? Pretended testimony has certainly been ad- 
 duced of the fact ; but some of the witnesses, like Dio Cassius 
 and the tables of Ancyra, are unworthy of credit, and some 
 others, as Cassodorus, Isidore, and Suidas, rest entirely upon 
 the authority of this passage itself. 
 
 There remains another point which is decisive. Luke 
 speaks of this taxing as " the first," and as having been 
 carried out when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Now at 
 the time of the birth of Christ, Quirinius was not governor of 
 Syria; and besides by the words " the first," Luke distin- 
 guishes this taxing, from another one well known, of which 
 he himself speaks, Acts v. 37, which took place two years 
 later, and which was carried out under the orders of the very 
 Quirinius, to whom Luke here attributes an operation with 
 which he can have had nothing to do. At the death of 
 Herod the Great, four years b. c, (according to our incorrect 
 mode of reckoning,) the kingdom of this prince was divided 
 between his three sons. One of them, Archelaus, received 
 Judea, Idumea, and Samaria : but after a reign of ten years, 
 he was accused at Rome of tyrannical conduct, deposed by
 
 261 
 
 the Emperor and exiled to Gaul. The possessions which had 
 composed his kingdom, were not given to another king, but 
 were united with the Eoman province of Syria, which was 
 governed by a pro-consul, resident at Antioch. This new 
 portion of the province of Syria was specially governed by a 
 Roman procurator, under the pro-consul of Syria, and resi- 
 dent at Cesarea. We know many of these procurators from 
 the New Testament, Pontius Pilate, Felix, Festus. We 
 know also from other sources the pro-consuls of Syria : he 
 who held that office at the time of the birth of Christ was 
 Sentius Saturninus : after whom came Quintilius Varus, and 
 then the Sulpicius Quirinius, of whom Luke speaks. He 
 was governor of Syria when the kingdom of Archelaus was 
 added to that province, and he consequently, according to 
 Roman custom, organised a census of property in the new 
 countries incorporated with the empire. This occurred in the 
 year 6 of our era, ten years after the death of Herod, eleven 
 or twelve years after the birth of Jesus Christ, that is, after 
 the time which Luke has fixed for his so called first taxing. 
 
 And hence, supposing even that there had been, at the 
 time indicated by Luke, a first taxing unknown to all other 
 historians, there is still a capital error in our Gospel, in that 
 the author makes the government of Quirinius coexistent with 
 the birth of Christ. It is amusing to see the efforts of ortho- 
 dox exegesis to escape from so terrible a result. Theodore 
 Beza, in the three first editions of his Commentary, and many 
 more after him, have cut the knot which they could not untie, 
 and have asserted that v. 2 of our passage is an interpolation. 
 Others have wished to understand the term governor as refer- 
 ring not only to the proconsulate of Quirinius, but also to a 
 special mission from the emperor in reference to this very 
 census — an interpretation which the context renders inadmis- 
 Bible. Others have changed the accent of one of the Greek
 
 262 
 
 words, and have translated " the first taxing itself took place 
 when etc." But what is the meaning of this phrase ? How 
 could the taxing of Quirinius be said to be the first at the 
 very time when Luke is speaking of a preceding one ? Or can 
 the meaning be that the taxing, commenced by Saturninus, 
 was interrupted, and afterwards completed by Quirinius ? 
 But then what mean the words, the first ? And how can this 
 idea be reconciled with v. 3, which shows us the edict of 
 Augustus in full course of execution ? The interpreters of 
 our day therefore have had recourse to a new explanation. It 
 has been agreed to accept the first in the sense of the preposi- 
 tion before r and to translate, " This taxing took place before 
 Quirinius was governor of Syria." This parenthesis would 
 then be intended to distinguish this census from the later 
 census presided over by Quirinius : but it must be confessed 
 that the distinction would be pointed out in a remarkably 
 indirect manner. Besides the construction of the Greek lan- 
 guage does not admit of the proposed interpretation, and the 
 examples produced in favour of this supposed meaning have 
 only demonstrated the absence of any philological argument 
 in support of a desperate hypothesis. It is true that the 
 defenders of Luke go so far as to admit the incorrectness of 
 the interpretation which they defend : in other words, they 
 endeavour to get rid of the error in chronology by allowing a 
 mistake in grammar. This process is however, at the same 
 time too convenient and too violent. 
 
 It is clear then that Luke has committed a chronological 
 error in making the pro-consulship of Quirinius coeval with 
 the birth of Christ. Is this all ? — and by admitting this error 
 can we accept the remainder of the statements which Luke 
 makes ? Was there in fact a general census about the year 6 
 of our era, and is the error of Luke simply an error of 
 memory, making him give the name of Quirinius of this
 
 263 
 
 census, which he confounded in this respect alone with a later 
 census? Such an explanation does not do away with the 
 other difficulties which we have found in this account of the 
 Evangelist. It must be remarked besides that Luke does not 
 regard the later census as identical with that of which he 
 speaks here ; he distinguishes them on the contrary, he knows 
 of two, since he mentions a second in the Book of Acts, and 
 especially since he alludes to that one even here by the expres- 
 sion the first. Luke appears to have doubled, so to speak, the 
 census of Quirinius, of one he has made two, and inasmuch as 
 the former had no historical reality, he has reported of this 
 first one all that he knew of the second : in other words Luke 
 only distinguishes them as to number, and identifies them as 
 to character and circumstances. This explains to us how he 
 could not only make the first taxing take place under the 
 orders of Quirinius, but also confound the period when Judea 
 was an independent kingdom with the time when it formed 
 part of the Roman empire. It is true that Luke makes the 
 first to be a general census of the empire, whilst the second 
 was only a census of Judea : it is true that the real census of 
 Quirinius did not precisely take in Galilee, where Luke shows 
 us the work in full activity : but there is nothing to show 
 that Luke, a Greek by birth, a stranger to Palestine, residing 
 at a distance from the events he narrates, knew that the 
 census was thus limited. 
 
 Strictly speaking, if we are to rely upon the Jewish 
 method of enrolment which v. 4 seems to imply, we might 
 admit that Luke was only mistaken in taking for a general 
 census some purely Jewish enrolment ordered by Herod. But 
 the fact itself of the enrolment seems to have been imagined 
 by Luke, or rather by the tradition, for the purpose of 
 explaining the presence of the parents of Jesus Christ at 
 Bethlehem at the time of his birth. Matthew accounts for it
 
 264 
 
 in another way. He does not report the journey of which 
 Luke speaks : he supposes that Joseph and Mary resided at 
 Bethlehem, and only settled at Nazareth after the birth of 
 Jesus, and to escape the dangers which they feared in Judea, 
 (ii. 22, 23.) 
 
 IV. Matthew reports that Herod wished to put John 
 Baptist to death, but was prevented by the respect which the 
 people had for him as a prophet. Hence the regret experi- 
 enced by the king on account of his rash promise to the 
 daughter of Herodias can only be explained by his unwilling- 
 ness to do anything which he considered impolitic, (Matt. xiv. 
 5, 9.) Mark represents the matter in quite a different light, 
 (Mark vi. 19, 20.) According to him, Herodias alone de- 
 sired the death of the prophet, whilst Herod " feared John, 
 and observed him : " liked to hear him and was guided in 
 many things by his influence. 
 
 V. Jesus, according to Matthew xxiii. 35, speaks of " all 
 the righteous blood shed — from the blood of righteous Abel 
 unto the blood of Zacharias, the son of Barachias." We do 
 not press the point that the murder of Zacharias was not in 
 reality the last of the events of this kind recorded in the Old 
 Testament. The prophet Urijah, put to death in the reign of 
 Jehoiakim, (Jerem. xxvi. 23,) was later than Zacharias. The 
 expression put into the mouth of Christ is to a certain extent 
 a proverbial one; no account was taken of the murder 
 recorded by Jeremiah, whose book was not properly a histo- 
 rical one ; and the Book of Chronicles, which related the 
 murder of Zacharias was regarded as closing the history of 
 the people, as it was the last of the Jewish Canon. But 
 what is a positive error is the designation "son of Barachias." 
 The Evangelist has confounded the prophet Zachariah, whose 
 correct designation this was, (but of the manner of whose death 
 we know nothing of) with the priest Zachariah, son of Jehoia-
 
 265 
 
 dah, who was murdered in the reign of Isaiah in the court of 
 the temple, (2 Chron. xxiv. 20—22.) This difficulty has 
 been sought to^ be explained away by the fact that the names 
 Jehoidah and Barachiah have some resemblance in signification, 
 as if the use of proper names was regulated by etymo- 
 logy. Other interpreters have chosen to see in these words a 
 prediction referring to tli3 death of a certain Zachariah, son of 
 Baruch, of whom Josephus speaks, and who perished thirty 
 years after Jesus Christ ! But a comparison with Zach. i. 1, 
 puts an end to all conjectures, showing not only the error, but 
 the origin of the error. And unfortunately, there is not the 
 slightest variation. Here at least is an error, clearly shown, 
 allowed by all, if we mistake not : in other words, here is a 
 breach made iu the system of absolute inspiration. 
 
 VI. The result is far less clear in reference to Matt, xxvii. 
 9. The Evangelist quotes a passage from the Old Testament 
 as taken from Jeremiah : but the passage is not in Jeremiah, 
 but (with the exception of some arbitrary changes,) in Zacha- 
 riah, (xi. 13.) There is then an error, and moreover, an 
 error the origin of which is easily discovered.. Matthew 
 introduces arbitrarily into his quotation the purchase of the 
 field of a potter : now mention is made of a potter in one pas- 
 sage of Jeremiah, and of the purchase of a field in another 
 passage of the same prophet, (Jerem. xviii. 2 ; xxxii. 7.) 
 Hence a confusion analagous to that of which we have just 
 spoken, Augustine thought that the Holy Spirit permitted 
 this error in order to show that all the prophets are as it were 
 one and the same instrument of God, (August. De Consensu 
 Evang. iii. 7. (29, 30).) Calvin has the good faith to 
 admit that there is an error, without seeking to explain or to 
 excuse it. 
 
 VII. Mark makes Christ say, (Mark ii. 26,) that David 
 took the shew-bread when Abiathar was high-priest, a fact
 
 266 
 
 which is not recorded in the parallel passage in Matthew. 
 This record rests upon a confusion of names and is an error. 
 The fact took place during the high-priesthood-of Abimelech, 
 son of Ahitub, and father of Abiathar, (1 Sam. xxi. 1 ; xxii. 
 11. 20.) Mark has confounded the son with the father : and 
 indeed the same confusion is found also in the Old Testament, 
 (2 Sam. viii. 17 ; 1 Chron. xviii. 16 ; xxiv. 6. 
 
 VIII. According to Matt. xxi. Jesus enters Jerusalem 
 (v. 10,) goes to the temple, where he drives out those that 
 sold therein, (v. 12,) and in the evening of the same day goes 
 to Bethany, where he passes the night (v. 17). The account 
 in Luke also implies that he drove out the sellers from the 
 temple the same day that he arrived in Jerusalem. It is 
 different with Mark (xi. ii.) according to whom, Jesus entered 
 into the temple immediately after his arrival at Jerusalem, 
 then went out to Bethany because it was late, and only cast 
 out the buyers and sellers on the next day. (v. 15.) 
 
 IX. In reference to this same fact, the difference between 
 the three first evangelists and the last is still much greater. 
 The action is absolutely the same, except that mention is 
 made of the whip of small cords ; the terms in which it is 
 recorded are almost identical ; the words pronounced by Jesus 
 closely resemble'each other in the two accounts ; the event in 
 both cases happens when Jesus comes to Jerusalem for the 
 festival of the Passover: in short, the two accounts" are so 
 like that it would never have entered into any one's head to 
 suppose them to refer to~two different events, if John had not 
 mentioned as occurring on the first journey to Jerusalem, 
 what the other evangelists record to have happened at the 
 last. It remains to be considered whether this reason is 
 sufficient, or whether it is not more simple, not to say more 
 necessary, to admit an historical contradiction. This necessity 
 seems to me to arise very clearly from three considerations.
 
 2e; 
 
 The first is that the record in Matthew, Mark, and Luke T 
 contains no reference to a previous fact of the same kind. 
 The second is the impossibility of admitting that Jesus twice 
 went through exactly the same actions, and used the same 
 words, particularly in a case where the actions and words 
 would lose all sense, not to say all dignity, by the mere fact 
 of their repetition. The third is, that if the fact recorded 
 did take place on a former journey of the Saviour to Jeru- 
 salem, the three first evangelists, who only report one 
 journey of the kind, who only know of one, namely the 
 last, have been necessarily obliged to record the fact in 
 relation to the only entry into Jerusalem with which they 
 were acquainted. 
 
 X. The gospel of John is is contradiction with the three 
 other gospels in many points of the history of the passion 
 and resurrection of Christ. One of the most serious of these 
 contradictions has reference to the last supper and to the 
 chronology of the whole week of the passion. The four evan- 
 gelists agree that the last supper took place on the Thursday 
 evening, the crucifixion on the Friday, and the resurrection on 
 the Sunday ; but they differ as to which of these days it was 
 on which occurred the feast of the Passover. According to 
 John, this festival occurred that year on the Sabbath, or 
 Saturday, and consequently Christ was crucified the day be- 
 fore the Passover, and the last supper of which he partook 
 with his disciples had nothing in common with the festival : 
 according to the other evangelists, the Passover occurred upon 
 the Friday, Christ was crucified on the very day of the festival, 
 and his last meal was the Paschal supper. It must be re- 
 membered that the Jewish day began at sunset, and conse- 
 quently that the Paschal supper, with which the festival 
 commenced, took place on the evening before the day which 
 we call the Passover.
 
 268 
 
 Nothing can be more clear than this contradiction. The 
 three first evangelists report that the apostles asked Jesus 
 'where they were to prepare the Paschal supper for him and 
 for themselves, and that, after receiving his answer, they made 
 the necessary preparations. This was done on the day usually 
 devoted to such preparations, or as Mark says, the day -when 
 they killed the passover. (Matt, xxvi., 17; Mark xiv., 12; 
 Luke xxv., 7.) When the evening was come, he sat down 
 with them to partake of the repast thus prepared. The words 
 in Luke xxii., 15, would if needful confirm the fact that this 
 was really the Passover, the legal and regular Paschal supper. 
 As to John, he also speaks of a last repast of Jesus with his 
 disciples ; but far from attributing to this repast, the cha- 
 racter of the Paschal supper, he places it before the feast of 
 the Passover (xiii. 1 — 4), a position which is confirmed after- 
 wards by the supposition of the eleven in reference to the 
 departure of Judas (xiii. 29). 
 
 The accounts of the events of the following day bring us 
 to the same result. Jesus, after the repast of which we have 
 spoken, goes forth out of the city, is taken during the night 
 and brought before Caiaphas, and the next morning before 
 Pilate. According to the three first evangelists, this Friday 
 belongs to the festival of the Passover, which had commenced 
 the evening before ; according to Jonn the festival had not 
 yet been celebrated, and would only commence that evening 
 after sunset. For this reason the Jews take Jesus to the 
 pretorium, but refuse to enter in lest they should be defiled, 
 and thus unable to eat the Passover (John xiii. 28.) They 
 had not therefore already eaten it, the Paschal supper had 
 not yet taken place, the festival had not yet begun, and 
 John's narrative formally contradicts that of the other sacred 
 historians. 
 
 Two other passages support this result. John calls the
 
 269 
 
 day upon which Jesus was crucified, the Friday, the day of 
 the preparation of the Passover, and moreover he says that 
 the day following, which was a Sabbath, was to be an im- 
 portant Sabbath ("an high day ") which can only be under- 
 stood of the coincidence of the Sabbath with the festival of 
 the Passover. (John xix. 14, 31.) 
 
 Many reasons appear to decide in favour of the account 
 of John, and to confirm the genuineness of the fourth gospel. 
 It is difficult not to suppose that tradition, when it represented 
 the last supper of Jesus to have been the Paschal supper, gave 
 in to a certain Jewish- Christian tendency. The necessity was 
 felt of making the Last Supper coincide with the Passover, 
 so as to square the type with the antitype.* 
 
 XL The differences between the four Gospels, in reference 
 to the denial of the apostle Peter, are of little importance as 
 to the facts themselves, but numerous and evident enough to 
 present insurmountable obstacles in the way of complete 
 inspiration. 
 
 In the first place Mark, in conformity with the manner in 
 which he records the prediction of Jesus, (xiv. 30,) represents 
 the cock as crowing thrice, at the first and at the third denial, 
 whilst the other evangelists only represent him as crowing at 
 the third. And remark that the prediction in Matthew, (xxxvi. 
 34,) excludes any idea of reconciliation. 
 
 And then as to the denial itself. 
 
 The circumstances of the first denial of Peter are similar 
 or at least reconcileable in the four accounts. 
 
 It is not so however with the second denial. Matthew 
 and Mark agree pretty well, except that according to Matthew 
 
 * (Note.— See on this point the Revue de Théologie, vol. II. p. 71, sqq. Wo have to 
 remark here Unit M. Ebrard, after having endeavoured in his flril edition, to 
 reconcile the two accounts, has given up this attempt in his second edition. Ano- 
 ther theologian, no less firmly attached to the orthodox dogma. Kahilis, has been 
 compelled to make the same concession. It is true that still more recently M. 
 Luthardt has reintroduced the forced interpretations of Hengstenberg.)
 
 270 
 
 the servant who questioned Peter is a different one from the 
 first, while according to Mark it is the same. As to Luke 
 and John, they agree with one another, but they differ from 
 the two first both in respect to the place and to the person 
 who puts the question to the Apostle. Luke and John 
 indicate no change of place, and consequently leave us in 
 the court, which is confirmed by the mention in John that 
 Peter was standing and warming himself, (John xvii. 15, 
 18, 35 ; Luke xxii. 55 :) according to Matthew and Mark on 
 the contrary. Peter was gone into the porch. Besides accor- 
 ding to John, the question is put generally by those who were 
 present, (*' They said unto him'') ; according to Ltfke it is a 
 man, (another, masculine, and his answer, Man) ; according 
 to Matthew and Mark, it was a servant maid. 
 
 There is also a difference in respect to the third denial. 
 Luke gives us a period of an hour as elapsing between this 
 denial and the preceding one, whilst Matthew and Mark say 
 " a little after." It is true that this last expression is vague, 
 and that length of time is quite a relative question. It is 
 more difficult to reconcile the different accounts in respect of 
 the words in answer to which Peter forswore himself. In 
 fact in the three first Gospels, those who were present, or one 
 of them, recognise him by his provincial pronunciation to be a 
 Galilean, and consequently a disciple of Jesus. According to 
 John on the contrary, he who addresses Peter is a relation of 
 that Malchus whose ear Peter had cut off, and he alleges not 
 the accent of the apostle, but the recollection of having seen 
 him in the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus. The difficulty 
 is avoided by supposing that the two remarks were addressed 
 to Peter at the same time, and that he replied to both by the 
 same denial ! 
 
 XII. The account of the appearances of Jesus after his re- 
 surrection is full of insurmountable difficulties to any one deter-
 
 271 
 
 mined not to admit of any error in any of the record». According 
 to Matthew, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, 
 go to the sepulchre ; an angel declares to them that Jesus 
 is risen, orders them to announce the fact to his disciples, and 
 adds that Jesus 'would go before them into Galilee, where 
 they should see him. The two women leave the sepulchre ; 
 but Jesus himself appears to them on their way, and orders 
 them to tell his brethren to go into Galilee, where they 
 should see him. The eleven apostles go in fact to Galilee, 
 meet Jesus in the mountain where he had- appointed them, and 
 receive from him their apostolic mission. And with this the 
 gospel ends. 
 
 According to Mark, the women who go to the sepulchre 
 on the morning of the first day, are three in number, the two 
 Maries and Salome. The find an angel, who also points out 
 to them Galilee as the place where the disciples should see 
 Jesus. Notwithstanding Jesus appears that same day, first 
 to Mary Magdalene, then to two disciples on the road, and 
 lastly to the eleven. And on this last occasion he gives them 
 their apostolic mission and then ascends into heaven. 
 
 According to Luke, the women who go to the sepulchre 
 are the Maries, Joanna, and others besides. Two angels ap- 
 pear to them and announce the resurrection, but without 
 saying anything of the journey to Galilee. Jesus appears 
 the same day, to Peter first, then to two disciples on the way 
 to Emmaus, finally to the eleven apostles and the disciples, 
 gives them the apostolic mission, and leads them out as far as 
 Bethany, whence he ascends to heaven. Let us add, that 
 according to the book of the Acts, there is another differ- 
 ence. According to this account, Jesus remained forty days 
 on earth, appearing to the apostles, giving them further in- 
 structions, working miracles, and it is only after the end of
 
 272 
 
 this time, that having solemnly given them the apostolic 
 injunction, he ascends into heaven. 
 
 John only names Mary Magdalene as going to the sepul- 
 chre (xx. 1.) ; but the use of the plural in the next verse 
 "we know not" implies that she was not alone. Nothing is 
 said about angels in this portion of the account. Marj sees 
 that the stone has been taken away, goes back to inform 
 Peter and John, who run to the sepulchre, returns herself 
 after they have left, and it is then that she sees the two 
 angels, and that Jesus appears to her. He sends her to 
 announce his resurrection to his brethren, also without speak- 
 ing of Galilee. The same evening he appears to the apostles, 
 among whom Thomas alone is wanting, and confers upon 
 them the apostolic mission with the gift of the Holy Spirit. 
 Eight days after he again appears to the apostles, among 
 whom this time Thomas is present. Here the gospel properly 
 concludes (xx., 30, 31), but an appendix records another 
 appearance of Jesus in Galilee to six or seven disciples, and 
 accompanied by a miracle, (xxi.) 
 
 Let us now examine the relation of the various accounts 
 to one another. Not to embarass the question we may leave 
 on one side two points of criticism, which affect it very nearly, 
 the genuineness of Mark xvi., 9 — 20, and of the last chapter 
 of John. 
 
 The four accounts may be reconciled as to the number and 
 names of the women who visit the sepulchre on the morning 
 of the first day of the week. One names one, another two, 
 another three, and the other yet more, but there is here no 
 real difficulty. 
 
 The same thing may be said of the angels, although Luke 
 mentions two, Matthew and Mark only one, and John only 
 introduces them later on. 
 
 But what is infinitely more serious is what refers to th^
 
 27:1 
 
 circumstances and the number of the appearances of Jesus > 
 and to the duration of his sojourn on earth after his resur- 
 rection. Matthew narrates a single appearance of Jesus, on 
 the day of the resurrection and at Jerusalem ; he appears to 
 the women and directs them to inform the disciples that 
 they shall see him again in Galilee. The account of Matthew 
 does not merely pass over in silence other appearances which 
 might have taken place at Jerusalem : it formally excludes 
 any such appearances. Jesus appoints his disciples to meet 
 him in Galilee, sees them there for the first and last time, and 
 gives them his last instructions. Matt, xxviii., 16, 17, clearly 
 implies that the tlisciples had not yet seen Jesus, and the con- 
 clusion of the account implies also that it was their last inter- 
 view. In Mark, Luke, and John, leaving out the appendix 
 to this last gospel, we find exactly the contrary. Jesus ap- 
 pears five times the first day, either at Jerusalem or in the 
 immediate neighbourhood ; eight days afterwards he appears 
 again to the disciples in the same town, (John xx. 26) ; he 
 takes leave of his disciples at Bethany, quite near to Jerusa- 
 lem : in a word, the accounts of Mark, Luke, and John ignore 
 and exclude the appearance in Galilee as completely as the 
 account of Matthew excludes those which took place in Judea. 
 Again, how long did Jesus remain on earth after his 
 resurrection ? The impression left by Matthew's account is 
 that he only remained long enough to allow the disciples to 
 arrive at the meeting place in Galilee. If we only consult the 
 Gospels of Mark and Luke (see especially Mark xvi. 19.), the 
 different appearances, the instructions to the apostles and the 
 ascension all took place on the very day of the resurrection. 
 John in his 20th chapter gives no other indications of chrono- 
 logy than the period of eight days which elapsed between the 
 first and second appearance to the apostles. And finally, if 
 we only had the passage Acts i. 3, it would be impossible to
 
 274 
 
 doubt that Jesus passed forty days on earth between his 
 resurrection and his ascension : but the accounts of Matthew 
 and of Mark leave no place for a supposition of this kind.* 
 
 In fact however, we may leave out of the question the 
 difficulties arising from the silence of one or other of the 
 evangelists ; we may leave on one side the omission of the 
 ascension in Matthew and John; we need not even compare 
 the different versions of the instructions of the Saviour as 
 to the apostolic mission, (Matt, xxvii. 18 — 20; Mark xvi. 15 
 —18; Luke xxiv. 46— 49 ; Acts i. 8; John xx. 21—23); 
 we need not compare with the accounts of the evangelists the 
 enumeration which Paul gives of the appe'arances of Jesus 
 (1 Cor. xv. 5 — 8). It is sufficient to the purpose we have in 
 view to restrict ourselves to positive contradictions. 
 
 According to Matthew (xxviii. 8) the women hasten to 
 obey the angel, and to announce the resurrection to the 
 disciples. According to Mark (xvi. 8) they receive the same 
 order, but are so afraid that they say nothing to any man. 
 
 According to Mark (xvi. 14) and Luke (xxiv. 33, 36), the 
 eleven were present when Jesus appeared to them on the day 
 of his resurrection : according to John (xx. 24) there were 
 only ten of the apostles, as Thomas was not present. 
 
 According to Matthew, Jesus gives his last instructions to 
 his apostles and takes leave of them in Galilee, and it is im- 
 possible, after this scene, to conceive of a repetition some days 
 afterwards at Bethany, at the time of the ascension. Between 
 the accounts of Matthew and Luke it is absolutely necessary 
 to choose. 
 
 But the most serious difficulty is that which refers to 
 Christ's first appearance. According to Matthew it, occurs in 
 the presence of the two Maries ; according to Mark and John, 
 
 {Note.— The traditions did not all agree as to the length of time that Jesus 
 passed on earth after his resurrection. The Valentinians believe that he remained 
 eighteen months v. Irenasus, I. 3. § ?.)
 
 27.-) 
 
 in the presence of Mary Magdalene alone ; whilst Luke says 
 nothing of any appearance to the women. It is not possible to 
 escape from this difficulty by alleging that the details given 
 by one evangelist supply the want of details given by the 
 others. In fact according to Matthew, it is on the road, whilst 
 on their way to announce the resurrection to the apostles, that 
 Mary Magdalene and the other Alary see the Lord (xxviii. 9.) 
 According to John, on the contrary, Mary Magdalene comes 
 to the sepulchre, finds it empty, goes to announce this fact to 
 Peter and John, returns to the tomb, and there, alone, sees 
 Jesus for the first time. There are here no less than four 
 contradictions. 1. — According to Matthew, the two women, 
 consequently Mary Magdalene, who is one of them, find the 
 stone removed from the entrance of the sepulchre, but they 
 enter into the tomb, hear the angel, and go to report to the 
 apostles the news of the resurrection : according to John, 
 Mary Magdalene finds the stone removed and the tomb empty, 
 and this is the only report she brings to Peter and John. 
 2. — According to Matthew, it is as they are returning from 
 their first visit to the sepulchre that Mary Magdalene and her 
 companion see the Lord : according to John it is after she has 
 informed the two apostles and has again gone to the sepulchre, 
 that she sees Jesus. 3. — According to Matthew, Jesus ap- 
 pears to the two Maries at once i according to John, to Mary' 
 .Magdalene alone. 4. — Finally, according to Matthew, Jesus 
 appears to the two women on the road leading from the 
 road to the town : according to John, Jesus appears to Mary 
 Magdalene at the entrance of the tomb itself. 
 
 The usual method in which the difficulty is eluded is by 
 the following supposition : Mary Magdalene and the other 
 women came together to the sepulchre ; Mary seeing from a 
 distance that the stone was removed, immediately turned back to 
 announce the fact to Peter and John ; in the mean time, the
 
 276 
 
 other women arrived at the sepulchre, saw the angel, received 
 his instructions, and set out to carry them out. Peter and 
 John on their part, followed at a distance by Mary, came to 
 the tomb by another route to that which the women had taken, 
 which accounts for their not having met them ; they return : 
 Mary comes to the sepulchre, and sees Jesus there : and all 
 this occurs before the other women had arrived at home, for 
 Jesus, after having appeared to Mary Magdalene (Mark xvi 9.) 
 appeared again to the women on their road. Xothing can well 
 be more heroic than this hypothesis. Seldom have arbitrary 
 supposition and the faculty of taking for granted been pushed 
 further. But it is in vain. According to Matthew, Jesus 
 appears to the two Maries at once, and on their way ; accord- 
 in^ to John, one of these Maries announces to Peter and to 
 John that they have taken away the body from the sepulchre, 
 and that she does not know where they have put it. Xo- 
 thing in the world can reconcile these two accounts. 
 
 XIII. Matthew xxvii., 5 — 8, is in threefold contradiction 
 with Acts i., 18, 19. 
 
 According to Matthew, (v. 7 ) the priests buy a field with 
 the money refused by Judas, and destine this field for the 
 burial of strangers. According to Acts on the contrary, (v. 18) 
 Judas had himself employed tha purchase-money of his 
 treachery in buying the field, and had made this acquisition 
 for himself. The Greek verb signifies, he pinrhasecl for 
 himself. 
 
 According to Matthew, the field received its name of the 
 " field of blood," because the money with which it had been pur- 
 chased had itself served first to purchase the blood of Christ 
 (v. 8). It appears on the contrary from the account in Acts, 
 that Judas himself perished in the field which he had bought, 
 (v. 18) and that in consequence of this circumstance the fiel( 
 was called Aceldama (v. 19).
 
 Finally, the two accounts differ completely as to the man- 
 ner of the death of Judas, xiccording to Matthew, he hanged 
 himself (v. 5). According to the Acts, he fell headlong, and 
 burst asunder in the midst. The account of Luke does not at 
 all indicate the nature of a fall which must have been singularly 
 violent, and this moderation in matters of detail has given 
 rise to conjectures suited to reconcile such manifest discre- 
 pancies. The usual supposition is that Judas hanged himself, 
 and that the cord having broken, his body burst asunder in 
 the fall. In accordance v>ith this view, the account in the 
 Acts would not refer to the mode of Judas's death, but to the 
 consequences of it only, which hardly agrees with the context. 
 Others think that Judas strangled himself and at the same 
 time cast himself down from some lofty eminence, two acts 
 manifestly inconsistent one with the other. It is besides to 
 be remarked that the expression rendered in our (French) 
 versions, "having cast himself down," (Acts i., 18, " s' étant 
 précipité' 1 '') means simply, having fallen down on his face. 
 In a word, the account in the Acts does not at all indicate 
 an act of suicide, and by the very fact of not so indicating it, 
 excludes the idea. It would be besides curious, if in narrating 
 the same fact Matthew and Luke should have so exactly 
 divided between them the different circumstances of the event, 
 that there should not be the slightest point of contact in 
 the two accounts. 
 
 XIV. The examination of parallel passages in the three 
 first gospels suffices to prove that discourses are sometimes 
 very freely reported in the New Testament. The passage in 
 Acts i., 18, 19, shows that this liberty sometimes extends so 
 far as to create words which never were pronounced. It is 
 clear that Peter did not narrate in a circumstantial manner 
 facts which he says himself were well known to all. Besides 
 this name of xVceldama, given to the field of Judas, could not
 
 278 
 
 have become general at the time when Peter was speaking, 
 and hare received, as it were, the confirmation of common use. 
 Again, Peter, who was speaking Aramaean, conld not say of 
 the inhabitants of Jerusalem that Aceldama is a word of their 
 proper tongue, seeing that it was his also : and especially he 
 could not translate this word into Greek in the middle of an 
 Aramaean speech. Luke has forgotten therefore that he was 
 introducing Peter as speaking, and has spoken in his own 
 person, and from his own point of view, as a Greek writer. 
 It would be a vain escape to take the two verses in question 
 as a parenthesis of Luke's own : the context opposes such an 
 idea as this. 
 
 XV. The address of Stephen, m the 7th chapter of the 
 Acts, contains a considerable number of difficulties, some of 
 which have been elsewhere remarked. The 16th verse in 
 particular has been noticed in a preceding article as an ex- 
 ample of the influence of tradition. It is more remarkable 
 still in other respects. According to this passage, Jacob and 
 his sons, the patriarchs, were buried at Sychem : this may 
 have been the case with the patriarchs, but not with Jacob, 
 who was buried at Machpelah (Gen. 1., 13). Further, Stephen 
 attributes to Abraham the purchase of the field of Emmor èf 
 Sychem, and places a burial place there. There is here a 
 confusion of facts. It was at Machpelah, near Hebron, and 
 of a man named Ephron, that Abraham bought a field in 
 which was a cavern that served him for a burial place (Gen. 
 xxiii.), whilst Jacob bought a field at Sychem, of the sons of 
 Emmor, a field which was originally not at all intended as a 
 place of sepulture, although Joseph was afterwards buried 
 there. (Gen. xxxiii. 19) Calvin frankly acknowledges this 
 last error. It may be said perhaps, that Stephen was not 
 inspired, that he might be mistaken, and that the inspiration 
 of Luke consists precisely in relating facts as they occurred.
 
 279 
 
 It may be cause of astonishment that this outlet has not been 
 already made use of by the orthodox. It is right however to 
 add that it could not be of much use to them, after it has been 
 shown that the sacred writers do not report discourses literally. 
 There was nothing to prevent Luke from correcting Stephen, 
 and hence we are compelled to make him responsible for the 
 mistakes which he has allowed to remain. 
 
 XVI. Luke makes Gamaliel commit a rather serious mis- 
 take in Acts v. 36. Gamaliel is made to remind the Sanhe- 
 drim of two insurrectionary movements, the one headed by 
 Theudas, the other by Judas of Galilee. This latter name is 
 known to Josephus, whose account is reconcileable with that 
 in the Acts. It is not so with the former. According to Luke, 
 Theudas appeared before Judas (v. 37), got together a company 
 of about four hundred men, and was slain. Josephus also 
 speaks of a Theudas, a magician, who professing to be a pro- 
 phet, imposed upon a considerable number of persons, led 
 them to the Jordan, where he promised to divide the waters, 
 but was attacked by a party of horsemen sent after him by 
 the Roman governor ; his partisans were slain or taken pri- 
 soners, and he himself brought to Jerusalem, where he was 
 put to death. There is evidently sufficient resemblance be- 
 tween these two accounts to make it clear that they refer to 
 one and the same event ; they only differ in respect of the 
 number of adherents who joined Theudas. But this very 
 resemblance is the best proof of Luke's mistake ; the fact of 
 which Josephus speaks having taken place in the reign of the 
 Emperor Claudius, under the government of the procurator 
 Cuspius Fadus, that is to say not only after Judas the Galilean, 
 but about a dozen of years after the time when Gamaliel was 
 speaking. To justify Luke, we must either assume that 
 Josephus was mistaken, which is the less probable as he 
 gives the date of the event, without insisting upon the
 
 - 
 
 fact, that, in a matter of Jewish history, the authority of Luke 
 can be by no means so good as his : or we must suppose that 
 there were two Theudases, both false prophets (" boasting 
 themselves to be somebody," Luke), both leaders of insurrec- 
 tionary movements, and who both suffered a violent death. 
 This is one of those improbabilities which are practically 
 impossibilities. 
 
 XVII. Paul in Acts xiii. 20, assigns to the period of 
 the Judges a duration of 450 years, which is much too 
 long. According to I Kings vi. 1, there were only 480 years 
 between the Exodus and the building of the temple. Xow from 
 these 480 years take forty years for the journey through the 
 desert, at least nineteen years for the government of Joshua, 
 forty years for the reign of Saul, (v. 21), forty years for that of 
 David, and four for that of Solomon up to the building of the 
 temple, in all 141 years, and there remain only 336 years in- 
 stead of 450. If the chronology of Paul is not however in 
 agreement with that ôf the Old Testament, it coincides with 
 that of Josephus. 
 
 XVIII. The epistles of the Xew Testament, especially 
 those of Paul, present fewer errors of fact than errors of cita- 
 tion and of interpretation, of which we have already spoken. 
 We shall content ourselves here with giving an example of an 
 error of memory. Paul speaks of 23,000 Israelites who- 
 perished in a single day, in consequence of their participation 
 in the impure worship of the Moabites (1 Cor. x. 1). The text 
 of the Old Testament has 24,000, a number which is also found 
 in the Septuagint, Josephus, Philo, and the Rabbis. (Num. 
 xxv. 9) 
 
 XIX. We have elsewhere spoken of the error in the 
 epistle to the Hebrews (xix. 4), referring to the contents of 
 the ark of the covenant, an error which appears to be derived 
 fcom a tradition of the Rabbis. There is another in the same
 
 28J 
 
 chapter (v. 2, 4) which rests simply on a mistake. The author 
 only places the golden candlestick and the table of the shew- 
 bread in the sanctuary (v. 2) , and puts the golden censer in 
 the Holy of Holies (v. 4). But this latter object was with 
 the other two in the sanctuary, as is proved by the following 
 passages : Exod. xxx. 6, xl. 26 ; Levit. xvi. 12 ; 1 Kings vi. 22, 
 vii. 48, 49; 2 Chron. iv 19, 20). It is however easy to perceive 
 in these passages themselves the circumstances which led the 
 writer into the error he committed. 
 
 XX. We have noticed also the influences of tradition in 
 the eleventh chapter of the same epistle. There are in this 
 chapter other errors which appear to have their origin solely 
 in the writer's own mind, and in the course of argument which 
 he is adopting. 
 
 It is thus that he transforms into faith the obedience of 
 Abraham ready to sacrifice his son, and arbitrarily determines 
 the nature of this faith by saying that Abraham expected the 
 resurrection of Isaac (xi. 19.) It is thus also that in exprès^ 
 contradiction to the Old Testament (Gen. xviii. 10, seq.) he 
 attributes the conception of Sarah to the faith which she had 
 in the declaration of God (xi. 11). 
 
 XXI. I come now to a question which affects the gospels 
 and which extends also to the other writings of the New 
 Testament ; the expectation of the second coming of Christ. 
 
 The Saviour himself often alludes to this point. When 
 he gives his first instructions to the apostles, he declares to 
 them that they shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, 
 till the Son of Man be come, (Matt. x. 23.) On another occa- 
 sion, after having received the testimony of Peter, he begins 
 to show to his disciples the event with which his ministry was 
 to conclude ; but he announces to them at the same time 
 that the Son of Man should return in the glory of his Father,, 
 and he adds, " Verily, I say unto you,thcre be some standing
 
 282 
 
 here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of 
 Man coming in his kingdom," (Matt. xvi. 28.) The passage 
 Matt, xxiii. 39, also refers to the return of Christ, but does 
 not speak, as the two preceding ones do, of the proximity of 
 this event. But it is exactly to this latter point that we wish 
 to direct attention. 
 
 Besides these passing allusions, the evangelists have pre- 
 served a somewhat lengthened discourse of Jesus Christ upon 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, the second coming of the Son of 
 Man, and the end of the world. This discourse, by much the 
 most complete in Matthew, (xxiv., xxv.), is found also in all 
 its essential points in the 13th chapter of Mark and in the 
 16th of Luke. As to the Gospel of John, the second coming 
 of Christ is represented there as a spiritual coming, and if the 
 idea of a historical and visible return is not excluded, if even 
 it may be referred to here and there, it is certain that it is not 
 expressed, still less emphasised, (comp. especially the 14th 
 chapter.) Let us first consider the text of Matthew, and 
 then compare this text with the accounts in the second and 
 third Gospels. 
 
 The Jews expected a period of trial as the one imme- 
 diately to precede the great deliverance ; this period of suffer- 
 ing is referred to in the expression, the beginning of sorrows, 
 (Matt. xxiv. 8. "douleurs de l'enfantement du Messie"), because 
 the coming of the Messiah and the re-establishment of the 
 Theocracy were to succeed to these sufferings, and in a certain 
 sense to proceed from them. It is not certain, as has often 
 been asserted, that the destruction of the temple and of the 
 city was considered as the culminating point of this painful 
 crisis. This opinion, of which the Talmud bears some traces, 
 was perhaps connected with later Rabbinism. This popular 
 idea is not however necessary to explain the question of the 
 apostles to Jesus, Matt. xxiv. 8, Though they recognised
 
 283 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, they had by no means aban- 
 doned the idea -which had grown up among the Jews, bas«d 
 upon the prophetic declarations ; they only referred to a second 
 coming of Christ all that they had expected at first from the 
 first and only coming, and moreover, they expected this second 
 coming as something about to take place immediately (Acts i. 6) 
 Hence it is, that when they heard the words of the Saviour 
 concerning the destruction of the temple, they supposed imme- 
 diately that they referred to his second coming in glory. 
 
 Jesus, in his answer, leaves at first on one side the question 
 of the time ; he answers that part later, generally, and on the 
 whole negatively (32 — 36, Acts i. 7). As to the other portion 
 of the question, as to the signs of his coming, he answers it 
 immediately and direetly, connecting together that which was 
 also connected in the thoughts of the apostles, the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, and his coming (4 — 31). This answer is very 
 distinctly divided into three portions. In the first he indicates 
 the calamities which, without belonging to the event itself, 
 are to be regarded as the precursors of it (4 — 14). In the 
 second he speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem (15 — 28), 
 In the third he announces and describes the second coming 
 of the Son of Man, and the end of the world (29 — 31). In 
 these three parts, in accordance with the question of the 
 apostles, it is rather the signs of the events than the events 
 themselves, which are the object of the statements of the 
 Lord. 
 
 The division of the discourse, as we have just indicated it, 
 is so clearly shown in the text, the three epochs or periods are 
 so clearly distinguished, that it is impossible not to recognise 
 them. Unfortunately it is exactly on this distinction that the 
 difficulties are based which we have now to notice. 
 
 In the first place, among the afflictions announced to 
 precede the fall of Jerusalem, (4 — 14) there are some which
 
 284 
 
 did not occur previous to that event. There were persecutions 
 on the part of the Jews and of the Gentiles, especially that of 
 Nero, (v. 9). It may even be allowed that the Gospel had 
 been preached to all the nations of the earth, if this expression 
 is understood of the Roman Empire alone, and then not too 
 far pressed, (v 14.) But as to false Messiahs (v. 5), general 
 wars, and other remarkable calamities, (v, 7.), history records 
 nothing at all resembling them, 
 
 In the second place, in conformity with v. 14, which in- 
 cludes in the end the two events of the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem, and the second coming of Christ, v. 29 declares that the 
 latter event shall take place immediately after the former, and 
 as if to reduce to despair all interpreters who might seek to 
 elude the force of this expression, v. 3^ adds, " verily I say 
 unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all these 
 things be fulfilled." Let us add to these passages the two 
 analogous declarations of Christ already quoted, (Matt. x. 23 
 and xvi. 28) and then say if it be possible to escape the convic- 
 tion that Jesus Christ, (except there be some error of the evan- 
 gelist, or of the traditions followed by the evangelist) predicted 
 the end of the world as about to follow immediately after the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, and to happen before the end of the 
 generation to whom he was addressing himself. 
 
 It is interesting to compare here the accounts of Mark and 
 Luke. They have no parallel passage to Matt, x., 23. As to 
 Matt, xvi., 25, they have the same words in the same context» 
 but with a very remarkable modification (Mark ix., 1 ; Luke 
 ix., 27). Instead of the personal return of Christ, they have 
 the idea of a coming of the kingdom of God, doubtless a 
 synonymous expression in reference to Messianic hopes, but 
 one which is more readily susceptible of a spiritual interpreta- 
 tion. As to the discourse reported in the 24th chapter of 
 Matthew, Mark and Luke differ from this evangelist, and
 
 2SÔ 
 
 differ in a very significant manner as regards the question of 
 the apostles. Both have the declaration "that this generation 
 shall not pass away till these things shall happen " (Mark 
 xiii., 30 ; Luke xxi., 32) ; but they have neither of them the 
 immediately after of Matthew, which leaves no interval between 
 the destruction of Jerusalem and the signs of the second 
 coming of Christ. Mark (xiii., 24) makes use of a very 
 vague phrase, " in those days, after that tribulation." Luke 
 places between the two events a period of undetermined dura- 
 tion ; " Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until 
 the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled " (xxi., 24.) It has been 
 concluded, with much probability, from the difference between 
 the first gospel and the two others, that the author of the 
 first account wrote before the fall of Jerusalem, whilst Mark 
 and Luke wrote after that event. It seems equally natural 
 to conclude from Mark ix., 1, and Luke ix., 27, and especially 
 from Mark xiii., 30, and Luke xxi., 32, that both wrote before 
 the end of the generation which had seen Jesus Christ, and 
 consequently but a short time after the expedition of the 
 Romans (compare specially the vagueness of Matt, xxiv., 15, 
 with the preciseness of Luke xix., 43.) 
 
 However this be, we cannot for the present escape from 
 the following result; Jesus Christ, especially according to 
 the account of Matthew, announced his second coming as an 
 event about to take place at a time very closely appf< >aching : 
 of two things, therefore, one : either the evangelists have 
 faithfully reported the words of the Lord, and then he himself 
 committed the error ; or the Lord did not mistake, and the 
 error is entirely that of the evangelists. We shall have to 
 return to this question by-and-bye. (v. Rev. de Théol., ii., p. 
 67, sqq. ; vi., p # 47, sqq.) 
 
 XXII. The result at which wc have arrived in respect to 
 the teaching of Jesus, is very closely connected with another
 
 28G 
 
 result of the study of the New Testament. The apostles and 
 the Christians of their time, expected the second coming of 
 the Lord as an event soon to happen ; they did not regard 
 the speedy return of Christ as merely possible, but as certain, 
 and it may be said that there is not a passage in the New 
 Testament which asserts, or which even supposes, the possibil- 
 ity of the duration of the Church and of the world in its actual 
 condition for more than one or two generations. The second 
 epistle of Peter is the only exception, and this epistle is not 
 genuine. This expectation continued to hold a prominent 
 place in the faith and in the life of Christians up to about 
 the end of the second century. Traces of it are found in 
 Barnabas, in Papias, in Justin, in Irenaeus and the Monta- 
 nists. It disappeared only by degrees from the Church, as 
 time passed on, and in its passage dissipated these unfounded 
 hopes. We know how many times this expectation has been 
 revived in the course of centuries, and even in our own day. 
 
 This belief in the proximate return of Christ was such a 
 main article of faith in the apostolic times, that it is found 
 expressed, remarkably enough, in the writings of every one of 
 the authors of the New Testament. Thus Paul, in I. Thess. 
 ih\, 13; iv., 15; (comp. II. Thess. ii., 1 — 12); I. Cor. x., 
 11; xv., 51 ; Phil, iv., 5 ; the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, x., 25 ; Peter, in the first epistle, iv., 7 ; James, in 
 v., 9 ; John,* in his first epistle, ii., 18, '28 ; Jude, in the 
 21st verse ; the Apocalypse, from one end to the other, es- 
 pecially i., 1 — 3 ; iii., 11 ; xxii-, 7 — 10; 12, 20. The second 
 Epistle of Peter betrays its later date precisely by the manner 
 in which this expectation is there spoken of (iii. 4). 
 
 We confine ourselves at present to a notice of a few of 
 the most decisive of these passages. Whe^i the bearing of 
 some of them has been once determined, the sense of the 
 remainder is naturallv determined also.
 
 287 
 
 In I. Thess. iv., 13, v., 10, Paul is re-assuring bis readers 
 in reference to the lot of those Christians who are already 
 dead, declaring that they also shall share in Christ's kingdom at 
 his second corning. — " We which are alive and remain unto 
 the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (take precedence 
 of) them which are asleep." (iv. 15.) It is easily seen by 
 this ive, that Paul expected to be of the number of those who 
 should survive at the period of which he speaks, and it is of 
 no use to give to this pronoun a communicative sense, since 
 even if it does not apply to Paul personally, it certainly applies 
 to the great majority of those whom he addressed, the genera- 
 tion of Christians then living. A little farther on, (v. 2), 
 Paul reminds them, it is true, that the day of the Lord cometh 
 like a thief in the night ; but this expression only means that 
 the event itself will be sudden or unexpected ; it by no means 
 implies that the general proximity of the occurrence is matter of 
 uncertainty either to the apostle or to his readers. We say the 
 same thing of the passage 2 Thess. ii. 1 — 12. The Christians 
 of Thessalonica, in the expectation of the immediate return of 
 Christ, were living in a state of agitation easily comprehended. 
 The apostle does not argue against this expectation in reference 
 to the approaching second coming, which would be in contra- 
 diction to his first epistle, but simply against the expectation 
 that this return should be immediate, (v. 2.) He reminds 
 them that other events are to precede this coming, the end of 
 the fourth monarchy and the appearance of Antichrist ; but 
 everything proves that he regarded the event itself as very 
 near. 
 
 We find the same idea again in 1 Cor. x. 11, where Paul 
 speaks of the Christians of his time as those on whom the ends 
 of the world are come. , The two comings of the Lord were to 
 follow closely one upon the other, and the second was to bring 
 the consummation of all things. The passage 1 Cor. xv. 51,
 
 3 
 
 contains the same employment of the first personal pronoun 
 as 1 Thess. iv. 15, and necessarily refers to the generation 
 among whom the apostle lived. 
 
 What can we say finally of such passages as the following, 
 — " But the end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter iv. 7) — 
 "for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh" — (James v. 8) — 
 " Little children, it is the last time"(l John ii. 18). Ebrard, 
 who endeavours to escape all the other passages, cannot get 
 rid of these ; he recognises in them a false conjecture of the 
 apostles, (Adbersus erronem nonnullorum opinionen, etc., Er~ 
 langen 1842, p.p. 42—44. 47). 
 
 To resume these arguments : the discourses of Jesus, as 
 they are preserved to us by the three first evangelists, announce 
 the return of the Messiah as near at hand, and the writings 
 of the apostles prove that the early church firmly believed in 
 this proximate return. It is clear that these two facts stand 
 in some sort of relation the one to the other, and therefore all 
 explanations must be regarded as unsatisfactory which bear 
 only upon the one or the other, much more all such explana- 
 tions as either in the gospels, or the epistles, deal simply 
 with detached passages, instead of furnishing a key adapted 
 to all passages of a similar nature. This objection applies 
 particularly to the criticisms which have been made use of in 
 reference to Matt. xxiv. And besides, apart from this objec- 
 tion, what an exegetic scandal is the history of the interpreta- 
 tion of this chapter. Some only find there the destruction 
 of Jerusalem ; others only find the second coming of the Mes- 
 siah. The latter interpret by way of allegory, and, for exam- 
 ple, understand by the darkening of the sun and the falling of 
 the stars, the downfall of paganism : the former propose a 
 fresh division of the discourse. The greater number turn their 
 attention especially to the difficult words in this chapter, 
 translating cûOèws in v. 29 by suddenly instead of immediately*,
 
 289 
 
 7«*'ea in v. 34, by race instead of generation : or in this last 
 verse understanding all these things of the signs of the fall of 
 Jerusalem, of which Jesus is made again to speak. It is 
 with these explanations as with Pharaoh's lean kine : they 
 6wallow up one another, without being any the better for it 
 themselves. 
 
 The attempts at a general solution of the question applied 
 to the exegetical problem are not more satisfactory. To con- 
 sider with Hengstenberg that the fall of Jerusalem is the 
 exact type of the end of the world, in such manner that each 
 of these two events at the same time represents the other, is to 
 introduce into the text an idea not only not indicated there, 
 but manifestly inconsistent with its general tenor. To have 
 recourse with Olshausen to the conditions of prophetic per- 
 spective, is to confess, at last, that Jesus Christ was mistaken 
 in laying down chronological data unsuitable to prophecy. 
 
 XXIII. The exercise of the gift of tongues had given rise 
 to great abuses in the church of Corinth. Paul gives direc- 
 tions in reference to this gift which enable us partially to 
 understand the nature of the phenomenon. It is usually 
 spoken of as consisting of a knowledge of foreign languages 
 to him in the person speaking, communicated to him in some 
 supernatural manner. 
 
 The data which the first epistle to the Corinthians furnishes, 
 reject this notion in the most formal manner. (It is to be 
 observed, that for the proper comprehension of what follows, 
 the original Greek must be consulted. The versions render 
 the meaning of the original text very imperfectly.) The 
 employment of the singular, and the absence of any adjective 
 in the expression <y\waar] XaXeîy (xiv. 2, 4) do not admit of 
 our understanding them as used of a foreign language. The 
 assertion contained in xiv., 2, would indeed be absolutely 
 false, if it were here a question of a foreign language, since
 
 290 
 
 there might be persons present who could speak and under- 
 stand it. Elsewhere, (xiv., 6) speaking with tongues is oppo- 
 sed to prophetic discourse and to teaching ; but teaching and 
 prophecy are not opposed to the use of foreign languages ; 
 they might on the contrary be very well expressed in these 
 languages. Further on (xiv., 10, 11) the phenomenon is 
 compared with unknown languages, and consequently cannot 
 be one and the same thing with them. Further on again 
 (xiv., 14.) the gift of tongues is characterised as being 
 exercised in spirit, and is opposed not to words spoken in a 
 known language, but to words accompanied by understanding. 
 According to xiv., 27, it was necessary that another member 
 of the Church should interpret what was spoken with tongues : 
 but a man who speaks in a foreign language can always under- 
 stand what he says, and can always interpret it himself in any 
 other language which he also knows. In general, in all this 
 discussion, Paul would have taken quite different ground if he 
 had been speaking of the use of foreign languages ; he would 
 naturally have insisted on the fact of the presence or absence 
 of persons capable of understanding those languages, as a fact 
 of importance in determining whether they should be employed 
 or not. 
 
 Let us remember, besides, that the power of speaking 
 foreign languages could have been of little use at a time when 
 Greek and Latin served as the universal means of communi- 
 cation. We find no accounts either in the Xew Testament, 
 or in Christian antiquity, moreover, that the apostles or other 
 Christians ever employed this power in the evangelisation of 
 the world. And lastly can it be admitted that the neoph 
 of whom we hear in the book of Acts (x. 46, xix. {)). began 
 all at once, and without any object, to speak in languages up 
 to that time unknown to them ? 
 
 We beiie\e. in accordance with all these data, that the
 
 291 
 
 gift of tongues must be understood to mean a discourse in 
 extatic words, in a language created expressly for the purpose, 
 without any known sense, and simply as an arbitrary expres- 
 sion of sentiments inexpressible by words. 
 
 According to 1 Cor. xiv. 13 — 17, the subjects of this kind 
 of expression were prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, that is to 
 say, exactly those spiritual exercises in which the understand- 
 ing has the least place, and where feeling or sentiment reigns. 
 Thus the gift of tongues is spoken of in connection with 
 prophecy, (Acts xix. 6 ; 1 Cor. xiv. 1, sqq.) as something 
 analogous to this gift. It is also represented as an extatic 
 gift during the first ages of the Church : Origen is the first 
 who speaks of it otherwise. Finally the gift of tongues, as 
 manifested among the Irvingites in 1831, has a most 
 striking analogy with the phenomenon we have been describing, 
 and confirms, in a remarkable manner, the exegetic results 
 already acquired before that period. 
 
 As to the account in the book of Acts, on the other hand, 
 (Acts ii.) it is impossible not to perceive that there foreign 
 languages properly so called are spoken of (v. ô — 11). At 
 the same time, even this account bears traces of a tradition 
 more conformable to the testimony of Paul on the subject. 
 Thus we see (v. 4) that the disciples begin to speak with 
 tongues before there is any person present to hear them; thus 
 they are accused of drukenness, (v. 13), which can only be 
 understood of some form of enthusiasm, not necessarily con- 
 nected with the mere use of a newly acquired language ; 
 thus Peter quotes a prophecy (v. 17, 18) which supposes a 
 phenomenon entirely different from that which Luke appears 
 to have understood by this gift. In a word, the author of the 
 Book of Acts, or of the tradition which Luke has incorporated 
 into his narrative, has given a fictitious development to facts, 
 of the true nature of which he was ignorant, probably because 
 
 t 2
 
 202 
 
 he himself had never been personally present on any occasion 
 when the gift of tongues was manifested. 
 
 XXIV. We shall conclude this catalogue with the Apo- 
 calypse, and here it is the whole book which is open to objec- 
 tion. This work, the enigmatic appearance of which has 
 given rise to so many different interpretations, and the mystery 
 of which has so generally appeared to be impenetrable, has 
 at length yielded up its secret to the rigourous method of 
 historical interpretation. It may be said that the veil has 
 been removed, and that the results of science are as certain 
 as they are unexpected. 
 
 The author wrote immediately after the death of Xero, 
 during the short reign of Galba. The persecution of the 
 Christians by Xero. the first attack of the kind, which the 
 Church had had to endure, had hardly ceased : it was needful 
 to reanimate the faith of the disciples, to awaken their hopes, 
 to strengthen their constancy, and it is for these purposes 
 that John takes up the pen. Pagan Rome, identified with 
 the persecuting emperor, seems to him to be the prophesied 
 Antichrist. Basing his theory upon the prophecies of the Old 
 Testament, especially those of Daniel, to which he gives as it 
 were a commentary and a continuation, expanding and 
 developing the elements of the hopes of both Jew« and Christ- 
 ians, lie announces the coming of Antichrist in the return of 
 Xer<>, the temporary occupation of Jerusalem by this hostile 
 power, the defeat of the oppressor, the fall of Rome and the 
 Millennium. John expects the accomplishment of these 
 events within a very short period, forty-two months, or three 
 years and an half. 
 
 We believe it useless to enter upon the proofs of an expla- 
 nation which the labours of Ewald, Liicke, Reuss, and De 
 Wette, have demonstrated to be the correct one. But if we 
 admit this interpretation, what are the consequences ? On the
 
 293 
 
 one hand we find in the work a symmetry so ingenious, so 
 learned and so refined, as absolutely to exclude the reality of 
 the visions presented to us in such a form : the order and the 
 connection of these visions are a work of reflection, a produc- 
 tion of art, and not a mere relation of a real and objective 
 fact. We must say the same of the style of the writer, which 
 presents on attentive study, a very skillful but at the same 
 time artificial and laboured cento of phrases, images and whole 
 passages taken from the prophecies of the Old Testament, 
 On the other hand, and this is even more decisive, the Apoca- 
 lypse contains a prediction which was never accomplished, 
 Nero was not Antichrist, he did not return with the kings of 
 the east, the three years and a half assigned to the sufferings 
 of the Church passed over without bringing about the last 
 catastrophe, and centuries have since passed without bringing 
 it about either. In a word, the author of the Apocalypse was 
 not the revealer of the secrets of the Most High, but the 
 organ of the fears and of the hopes of the Church, the minis- 
 ter of the exhortations which it needed, and the echo of the 
 superstitious prejudices of the time. 
 
 We have found a very considerable number of errors in the 
 Bible. We have consented to limit the field of our observa- 
 tion to the New Testament, and there in the narratives, in 
 the epistles and in the predictions, we have discovered 
 phenomena, which the theopneustic theory cannot account for. 
 Among the objections against which the dogmatic idea which 
 we are criticising is shattered into a thousand fragments we 
 find the use of the version of the Seventy, quotations from the 
 Old Testament in a sense not admitted by the original, the 
 influence of Jewish tradition, Rabbinical arguments, uncer- 
 tainty in the reports of the discourses of the Saviour, implicit
 
 *94 
 
 and explicit contradictions between different accounts of the 
 same fact, faults of chronology and of history. Messianic hopes 
 and expectations not in accordance with external events. We 
 have not endeavoured to exhaust the subject, nor have we 
 been able to enter upon discussions which might have been 
 here and there necessary to establish in all their force the 
 exegetic results at which we have arrived. Those who are 
 acquainted with the subject, know what is the present position 
 of the questions we have touched upon, and the refutation of 
 opinions different from ours would have appeared very obscure 
 to those who are not acquainted with the subject. What is 
 certain is this, that of the numerous objections which we have 
 pointed out, any single one, we repeat, any one singly is 
 enough to overthrow all the edifice of orthodoxy. It is enough 
 that Matthew should have written Jeremiah for Zechariah, 
 that Mark should have Abiathar instead of Ahimelech : it is 
 enough that one thread should give way, and the whole arti- 
 ficial fabric of dogmatic demonstration must tear from end to 
 end. 
 
 At the same time we in no sense deceive ourselves. Of 
 all the difficulties we have raised, there is not one which has 
 not been attempted to be explained away, or in which the 
 partisans of plenary inspiration have definitely recognised a 
 difficulty. Not that impartial exegesis has made no conquests, 
 that science has obtained no concessions, that certain doubts 
 have not entered into some souls, and certain arguments been 
 more or less modified ; but that, looking at religious literature 
 from a general point of view, it may be said that théopneustie 
 has not yielded a single inch of ground, that the most en- 
 lightened of its supporters rather have avowals extorted from 
 them than confess a truth, and that the most zealous or the 
 most ignorant defenders of the commonly received dogma can 
 always, in case of need, give two or three answers for one, and
 
 -2 or» 
 
 can maintain very tolerably their advantage in the eyes of all 
 those (and they are by far the greater number) who count 
 reasons instead of weighing them. 
 
 There are then, and there will be to the end of the world, 
 resources available to this defeated orthodox belief. Critical 
 researches have this peculiarity, that it is difficult to deduce 
 from them evidence sufficiently strong to shut all mouths, 
 light so clear as to be palpable to all eyes. And yet we must 
 venture on one remark on this point. Is there always com- 
 plete sincerity in the subtleties, the windings, the conjectures, 
 the arbitrary comparisons, the artificial deductions, which the 
 defenders of (plenary) inspiration are obliged to have recourse 
 to, in order to attain their object ? Are they never troubled 
 in their consciences when they propose to others an explana- 
 tion, of which they themselves know the weakness, if not the 
 falsity? Do they never internally lament the obligation 
 which they have imposed upon themselves to justify every 
 word and every letter ? Do they not often leave their own 
 demonstration, les^ convinced than they were before ? Is not 
 the force of these scruples of conscience in exact proportion to 
 the extent of the knowledge, the depth of the study, and the 
 critical skill of him who endeavours to reconcile the evidence 
 of facts with the requirements of the system ? Are there not at 
 least times in the lives of these men, in which their whole posi- 
 tion in respect to the Gospel and human knowledge, appears 
 singularly false ? Does not this question of Inspiration become 
 to them one of constant anxiety, does it not form as it were a 
 diseased point in the body of their belief, do they not feel with 
 uneasiness that doubt is transmitted from it even to the other 
 points of their faith, that because of this dogma alone their 
 piety is wanting in simplicity, in unity, in joy, and that they 
 have no remedy but in the efforts of their minds not to think 
 more of it, and in the activity of their lives which enables
 
 296 
 
 them to forget a question too threatening to be boldly and 
 fairly met ? And finally, if this sincerity is now complete, 
 if the art of taking for granted has now become a habit, if, 
 fortunately, the belief of which we are speaking is a true and 
 real belief, was not at first at any rate a severe wrench given 
 to the natural feeling for truth ? 
 
 And this leads us to a second reflection. This obstinate 
 endeavour to explain away anything in the Bible which bears 
 the least trace of an error, and to make this Bible an infallible 
 authority in matters of history, of geography, and of chrono- 
 logy, as well as of religion, these endeavours must necessarily 
 have a dogmatic. point of departure. You do not admit that 
 there are any errors in Scripture, but it is because you con- 
 sider Scripture to be inspired. Your belief in this inspiration 
 does not proceed from any examination of the book, and from 
 the solution of the difficulties which it presents : it is anterior 
 to this examination, the method and limits of which it deter- 
 mines. If you apply to the criticism of the New Testament 
 an à priori process of apology which you do "not apply to any 
 other book, it must be because the New Testament is to you 
 in advance a book different from every other book. In short, 
 you proceed manifestly on the principle that you must find at 
 any price a mode of reconciling contradictions, a plan of 
 explaining away errors. Evidently you have some motive 
 for acting thus, and this motive is an article of faith, a fact 
 which appears to you already ascertained : and this fact which 
 regulates your exegesis, this article of faith which appears to 
 you more sacred than the results of criticism appear evident 
 to you, is inspiration itself. 
 
 In other words you refuse to recognise errors in the Bible, 
 because the Bible is infallible ! The reasoning in a circle is 
 already clear. Is it in vain that you say that there is here 
 one of those apparent contradictions in which two truths
 
 291 
 
 appear to us equally certain, though we are unable to recon- 
 cile them. In vain that you cite as a parallel case those anti- 
 nomies, which can only be resolved by sacrificing some neces- 
 sary or sacred truths. In vain you pretend that appearances 
 opposed to the theopneustic theory are counterbalanced by 
 other considerations and other proofs, such as the assertions 
 of the Saviour and his apostles, the constant faith of the 
 Church, the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. There is 
 here no antinomy, because there are not two contradictory 
 truths, but a single fact to be established, namely, the infalli- 
 bility of the Bible. This fact cannot be at the same time 
 true and false, be and not be at the same moment, and there- 
 fore a single certain error in the Bible is enough to overthrow 
 all testimony, all considerations which tend to establish the 
 impossibility of finding such an error. It is the case of the 
 man before whom the possibility of motion was denied, and 
 who broke down the learned demonstration by rising from 
 his chair. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated that at the bottom of all 
 discussions by the defenders of inspiration, we find a profound 
 ignorance of the nature of critical facts. They do not believe 
 in facts, they question the value of their evidence, because 
 they have not been accustomed to stand upon the ground of 
 historical exegesis. But the more study becomes strong, and 
 extends its influence, the more will the love of truth become 
 developed, and will reduce to their real value the abstraction» 
 of a superannuated dogmatism,
 
 
 WHAT THE BIBLE IS. 
 
 By Edmund Scherer. 
 
 We have said much of what the Bible is not, and in our 
 struggle with superstition, ignorance, and dogmatic assump- 
 tion we shall in all probability have to say much more. We 
 are far from sharing some people's fear of negations. There 
 is a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted, 
 a time to destroy and a time to build. It is a great mistake 
 to believe that truth can be established by a predication simply 
 positive. Nothing but the antagonism in which a dogma is 
 placed in respect to that which is not it, can explain its true 
 sense, and give it its complete and real bearing. And if this 
 attitude were not polemical, the majority of mankind would 
 take this, side without comprehending its real object and 
 scope. 
 
 On the other hand, nothing is so barren of results as a 
 criticism which finds its end in itself, nothing so childish as a 
 disposition to destroy for the pleasure of making ruins. Be- 
 sides this it is with ideas which bear upon the Bible 
 as with all traditional dogmas ; these dogmas are never 
 absolutely false : that which has formed a portion of the faith 
 of the church for centuries, which has strengthened the Chris-
 
 2 , .)i> 
 
 tian in temptation, which has consoled him in trial, which has 
 brought peace to his heart, can never have been merely a 
 mockery. Besides a form, now old, there is a substance 
 durable, nay eternal. It is thus that Christianity preserves 
 its essential identity in the midst of all the changes which 
 result to it from the developments of human thought. It is 
 thus that it is at one and the same time always the same and 
 always new. The duty of religious science consists precisely in 
 reconciling revelation with the growing requirements of 
 human thought, in smoothing over the transition from the 
 dogma of the past to that of the future, and dogmatic exege- 
 gis accomplishes this task and fulfils this duty by separating 
 the substance from the form, and the faith from the formulas 
 of belief, by distinguishing and pointing out the religious ele- 
 ment under the temporary expression which reveals it. Such 
 is the task we propose to ourselves in respect to the Holy 
 Scriptures of Christians. 
 
 Let us first notice the defects of the orthodox notion : we 
 shall thus at the same time indicate the conditions of a theory 
 more conformable to the nature of things. 
 
 Traditional theology is in this position. The need of author- 
 ity has brought it to a special idea of inspiration, according to 
 which the sacred writings constitute a written revelation, and 
 present a divine and infallible text. On the other hand, the 
 power of habit, respect for any l fait accompli,' this other form of 
 the necessity for authority, has induced the theology of which 
 we speak to receive the collection of sacred books as it is be- 
 queathed to us by the church of the first two centuries. The 
 orthodox faith in Scripture rests then upon two bases, inspira- 
 tion and the canon of Scripture, or in other words, on the 
 nature of inspiration, and on the subjects or organs of this
 
 500 
 
 inspiration. Orthodoxy believes that inspiration is a theo- 
 graphy (a writing with the ringer of God), and that the in- 
 spired books are the biblical books, all the biblical books, 
 and the biblical books alone. 
 
 The arguments employed by the defenders of this tradi- 
 tional dogmatism, the theories advanced to justify the holy 
 collection of books and the authority attributed to this collec- 
 tion, must therefore be applicable to the two bases spoken of 
 above : these theories must prove the reality of inspiration in the 
 sense spoken of, and they must be capable of being adapted 
 to all the authors and to all the writings in the biblical 
 collection. 
 
 But exactly the reverse has happened, As the theographic 
 notion of inspiration is not a historical reality, but merely the 
 requirement of a necessity in itself false and unsound, as 
 the canonical collection was originally formed on principles 
 of criticism now abandoned, there is no system ingenious 
 enough to apply to all the writings of this sacred collection, or 
 prove the reality of the supernatural character attributed to 
 these writings. Facts always overlap upon one side or other 
 the dogma in which it is desirable to frame them, and the 
 only means of arriving at the truth is to take these facts as our 
 point of departure. 
 
 The two elements of the biblical idea, as we have just said 
 are inspiration and the Canon. The one relates to the inter- 
 nal and religious character of the sacred writings, the other 
 to the determination of these writings or the external limitation 
 of the collection which contains them. To reduce this collection 
 to unity of idea we may proceed from the contents to the 
 containing form, or on the contrary, from the containing form 
 to the contents, from that which is external to that which 

 
 SOI 
 
 is internal. If we adopt the former of these modes, our task 
 is to determine inspiration, after which the Canon will be 
 formed naturally of all such books as shall appear to partici- 
 pate in this inspiration thus determined. If on the contrary, 
 we proceed from the external, and decide upon determining 
 which are the inspired books in accordance with some indepen- 
 dent criterion of subjective and individual appreciation, this 
 criterion must be sought fur in some fact externally apprecia- 
 ble, such for example, as the apostolic origin of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 We believe for our own part, that both these methods 
 should be used in turn, and should serve as a check upon one 
 another. At the same time, inspiration is, so to speak, the 
 fact nearest to us, because it is a fact of immediate and 
 personal experience. Let us begin therefore with this. 
 
 The stand-point of authority has spoiled everything in our 
 theology. It has been deemed advisable to determine for us 
 d priori what we ought to believe, what we ought to feel, what 
 we ought to respect and love: it has been considered desirable 
 to settle in advance, and by processes necessarily external to 
 us, by criteria necessarily material, what Jesus and his words, 
 what the disciples and their writings ought to be to us. The 
 human conscience has been ignored, and the testimony which 
 it bears to the truth of God, when this truth comes in contact 
 with it, has been distrusted, and thus we have had made for us 
 an empty and dead theology. 
 
 There is only one way of recognising the divine, and that 
 is by experiencing it. The case with orthodox arguments on 
 the subject of Scripture is precisely the same as with the 
 proofs of the existence of God : they prove nothing except to 
 those who believe already by personal experience. Leave on
 
 302 
 
 one side, once for all, demonstrations always more or less illu- 
 sory, and let the Bible itself speak for itself and plead its own 
 cause. Instead of taking pains to place the reader under the 
 influence of your dogmatic ideas, encourage him to approach 
 the Scriptures for himself without the interference of anything 
 taken for granted. Do not hinder him from reading it 
 as he would read any other book. Have confidence in 
 the power of the spirit. Beware of attributing to your dog- 
 mas an influence which the sacred volume would not have 
 of itself. If the Bible says nothing to the heart, be you 
 sure that your systems in reference to the Bible will not be 
 more efficacious. All your arguments taken from prophecies 
 and miracles, your reasonings in a circle which pretend by 
 texts to establish the authority of other texts, will never per- 
 suade a man to submit to words which do not speak to his 
 soul. And even if* he did submit, what would be the value 
 of such a submission ? 
 
 The apologists of authority contradict themselves. Hun- 
 dreds of times they have told us of the peculiar virtue of Holy 
 Writ, of the effect which it produces, of the witness of the 
 spirit which accompanies the study and the reading of it. The 
 power which the Bible possesses of justifying itself to the 
 conscience of men may even be called a Protestant dogma. 
 And let us add, never was dogma better founded. How many 
 times has Scripture reproved the mocker in his soul, or arres- 
 ted the worldling in his vicious course ! With what power it 
 accuses the hardened sinner! With what mildness it raises up 
 the penitent sinner ! Towards what a vast horizon of hope 
 does it direct the looks of the despairing ! At one time it is 
 like the lightning flash darting into our souls, and revealing 
 us as we are to ourselves, as the fire from heaven lights up 
 during the night the plains over which it bursts ! At another 
 like the sword that transfixes in with its irresistible impulse 

 
 503 
 
 and penetrates the lowest depths of our spiritual being ! At 
 another, a healing balm, calming the piercing wounds of pride ! 
 It is the blessed voice of pardon we have there, the voice of a 
 God calling himself our Father, the voice of a love deeper than 
 hell, and stronger than death. It is our ideal which appears 
 to us, the ideal of the sublime and the gentle, of the majestic 
 and of the tender, the ideal of a life of holiness, which fills the 
 heart in turns with confusion and with joy. I open Gen< 
 and I find in the mysterious yet naive recital of the first trans- 
 gression, the history of all temptations and of all falls. I 
 take the Psalter, and my remorse, my aspiration^, tnv grati- 
 tude, all find expression there. I take the Prophets, and I 
 have there God, who disdains sacrifices, and who is pleased t<» 
 dwell in humble and contrite hearts. Further on appears 
 the Preacher of Xazareth. He speaks of him without whose 
 will not even a sparrow falls to the ground; he declares bles- 
 sed the cast down and afflicted; he promises peace of soul to 
 those who come to him ; and each of his words leaves as it were 
 a track of light in the abysses of my heart, and in the m • 
 ries of my existence. And behind the Son of Man advance 
 his disciples. One proclaims the riches of the love of Christ, 
 and declares to us that the cross is his glory, suffering his 
 privilege, and death his hope. Another speaks to us of the 
 life which has been made manifest, and of the Saviour who 
 showed himself to the world, full of grace and truth. The 
 impression produced by all these words is not an idea, it is a 
 fact. This light cast upon the dark places of the heart is a 
 fact; this involuntary confusion, these aspirations towards 
 goodness and towards God, this tender respect tor Jesus, this 
 shame for the past, this desire for good, this thirst alter eter- 
 nal life — all these are facts, and the power which produces 
 these effects is a fact too. The words which lead as so irre- 
 sistibly to God, can only come from him. It is his spirit
 
 .VU 
 
 which, when we read these pages, communes with our spirits. 
 The men who spoke thus were assuredly filled with power 
 from on high, and it is with good right and justly that their 
 writings have been regarded as inspired. 
 
 Such is inspiration. It is a manifestation in words of the 
 spirit of holiness which Jesus announced to his own, and 
 which he introduced into the world. We feel this spirit in 
 the Scriptures : their truth is one with their power and their 
 effect ; our heart thrills under this influence ; they bear with 
 them their right and their title to our regard ; they no more 
 require any testimony to the heart, than does the ray of light 
 to the eye, or the edge of the sword to the bosom which it 
 pierces. We have heard, we have seen, we have touched the 
 eternal word. Proofs of the divinity of the word are not only 
 superfluous in a case like this, they are absurd and ridiculous. 
 
 The presence of the Holy Spirit is felt, the proof of its 
 reality is in its effects, but various considerations confirm this 
 datum of the feelings. 
 
 The divine life cannot manifest itself without divine know- 
 ledge, and this knowledge, though less immediately due to the 
 breath of heaven, is yet not less one of its results. The fire 
 with which faith burns lights up also the intelligence. Thus 
 if we consider the first century of Christianity, we are struck 
 with the power of speculation which accompanies it. Although 
 the teachings of the Saviour never go beyond the sphere of the 
 religious life, his words, like everything which modifies man 
 in the depths of his moral life, contain within them the germ 
 of a new conception of man himself, of the world and of God. 
 And this is not all. Jesus, with his absolute purity, with his 
 infinite love, with his cross at once sublime and infamous, 
 Jesus, the ideal of humanity, the manifestation of divinity.
 
 the healer of diseases, the powerful yet gentle saviour of - 
 the revealer of a yet unknown God, that heavenly messenger) 
 
 who infused eternal life into the souls of those who believed 
 in him — Jesus must, in his own person, have become for the 
 thought of Christendom the centre of a theology. This in 
 fact took place, from the day after his resurrection. In respect 
 to dogmatic formativeness we can hardly sufficiently admire 
 the sap of the apostolic age. We find in the writings of 
 this age a fulness of fruitful ideas, a bold combination of old 
 speculation and of new facts, of views which take in at once 
 the origin of humanity and its history, the problems of the 
 creation and of evil, the agreement of the divine revelations. 
 Jesus of Nazareth no longer remains merely the Messiah of 
 the Jews : he becomes the eternal Logos, the first-born of 
 creation and the second Adam. The aspirations of humanity 
 towards God are discovered by our apostolic writers even in 
 paganism. Judaism is brought back to its mere temporary 
 position, the worship in spirit is proclaimed, and the Old 
 Testament at once abolished and accomplished, is reconciled 
 with the New by means of an interpretation as profound as 
 new, as new as bold» 
 
 There is another consideration which ought to engage our 
 attention for a moment. It is impossible, even when we look 
 at tile Bible in an historic, or so to speak, objective point of 
 view, not to recognise in it a divine work. The writings of 
 which it is composed, carry with them the remembrance of the 
 most important events in the religious history of the world, 
 they have served to bring about these events, they are them- 
 selves a part of them. Are not Judaism and Christianity 
 there in their entirety ? Were not the prophets of the old 
 dispensation, whose discourses we read even to this day, truly 
 men of God ! And do not the first pastors of the Church 
 and Jesus himself speak and live in our canonical books? 
 
 o
 
 306 
 
 These books are then mure than books, more than the written 
 word — they present us with the living personality of those who 
 founded God's kingdom upon earth. 
 
 We must further consult the testimony of the Church, 
 which is only the experience of the Christian controlled and 
 confirmed by that of his brethren of all ages. The Church 
 is founded upon Scripture: this is a fact, and the Church 
 cannot do without the Scripture. It is its tradition, its charac- 
 ter, its title : more than that it is, I will not say the rule, 
 nor the object, but the source of its faith, and consequently of 
 its life. Tins fact must not be confounded with the fate of 
 such and such a theory respecting the Bible. It is not upon 
 these theories that the Church has lived and still lives, but 
 upon the nourishment of the substantial word, upon the 
 contact of its spirit with the Spirit of God in its sacred 
 
 Let us return to the spontaneous judgment of faith. Con- 
 tinuing to enquire here., we find the notion of Scripture, or 
 the notion of inspiration become clearer as it becomes more 
 limited. It is true that the believer i it of 
 
 in the Bible : but it is also true that he does not recog- 
 ': everywhere, nor everywhere equally, and that he recog- 
 it elsewhere than in the pages of the canonical collection. 
 ration is a fact, but it is also a fact — and a fact furnished 
 est experience of faith — that the spirit 
 hich the Scriptures are vivified is not all imprisoned 
 en the covers of that volume. The spirit of the Bible 
 is the eternal Spirit of God, the spirit promised to all by 
 Jesus Christ, the spiric which sustains the Church after having 
 founded it long since, the spirit which has at all times inspired 
 the prophets, that spirit which has always blown where it 
 listed. Which animated Augustin, St. Bernard, a Iv mpis,
 
 ;-;n- 
 
 Arndt, Vinet. To pretend to enclose the Spirit of God in 
 the Bible, to deny the identity of the spirit of the Bible with 
 the spirit of the holy men of all times, is an outrage upon the 
 Spirit itself, is a lie of theology against faith. The Bible is 
 so far from having the monopoly of inspiration, that there are 
 lion-canonical writings in which this inspiration is much more 
 clear and distinct than in some of the biblical books. 
 
 We can say the same thing of the distinction between one 
 part of Scripture and another. The tyranny of dogmatic 
 theory cannot in this case stifle the sure instinct of the reli- 
 gions life. The believer makes, unknown to himself, perhaps 
 even in spite of himself, a difference between the canonical 
 authors, between the different writings of these authors, and 
 between different portions of these writings. He feels the 
 Spirit of God clearly, because powerfully, manifested in the 
 greater part of the Psalms and Prophecies, he does not feel it 
 in the same degree in the Law and in the Proverbs, he has 
 difficulty in feeling it at all in Ecclesiastes or Solomon's Song. 
 He reads the New Testament more than the Old. the Gospels 
 and the Epistles more than the Acts or the A; Paul 
 
 more than .laines, .rames more than Jude. The Sermon on 
 the Mount, the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans 
 on the life of the Spirit, the thirteenth of the first Epistle to 
 the Corinthians on Charity, approve them his con- 
 
 science as inspired words, while it is difficult to inch 
 
 of the genealogy of the twelve tribes in the Book of ( îhroni- 
 Cles, or of that of Jesus Christ in Matthew and in Luke. 
 Inspiration is not felt, and consequently is not, in the nautical 
 details of the voyage and shipwreck of Paul, in his commis- 
 sions to Timothy, and in the salutations at the conclusion of his 
 letter to the Romans. It is this judgment founded upon the 
 nature of things, which expresses the distinction between the 
 Word of God and the Scripture, between the • and 
 
 C 2
 
 the form, between the pure religious character of the one, and 
 the necessary mixture in the other, based upon the human 
 conditions of every written work. 
 
 We have determined what is Inspiration, let us now see 
 on what the Canon rests. Inspiration we have said is not 
 limited to the Canon of Scripture. If this is so, what is the 
 value of the Canon, and what significance has the collection 
 of biblical books ? It seems as if an exclusive privilege 
 should be the ground of the existence of this collection, and 
 that in the absence of this privilege, the Bible can only be an 
 arbitrary collection of writings arbitrarily chosen from among 
 the varied products of the Christian intellect. The objection is 
 natural : and in the face of the fact of the constancy of inspira- 
 tion in the Church, the biblical Canon must in point of fact have 
 fallen to pieces, did not this Canon find its constituent principle 
 and its ground of existence in some other fact no less real, and 
 even in the nature of things. Let us turn our attention to this 
 constituent principle of the Canon. 
 
 Each epoch produces a literature, and every great epoch 
 produces a literature which becomes classical. A classic 
 literature is that which, originating in a particular set of 
 circumstances, is distinguished by richness and harmony, by 
 truth and power, especially however by the close connection 
 which exists between it and some great historic epoch, in such 
 manner that this literature becomes the final and complete 
 expression of a nationality, serves to define it by this expres- 
 sion, and remains for succeeding ages an ideal type of the 
 genius of this nationality, a lasting source of inspiration, an 
 eternal model of imitation. It is important at the same time 
 to remark, that the perfection of a classic literature is neces- 
 sarily relative, that i> to say, that Mich a literature inevitably
 
 309 
 
 becomes old, that it constantly becomes older, and that in thus 
 becoming old, it becomes also, from many points of view, 
 strange to the thought and to the taste of future generations 
 who study it. The veneration with, which it is continually 
 surrounded, does not exclude the consciousness of this dis- 
 cordance. It is found necessary to make allowances for the time, 
 the circumstances, the historical events, in which the litera- 
 ture took its rise ; to place one's self, not at any absolute point ' 
 of view, which can never be suitable in human affairs, but at 
 the point of view of the epoch which it is desired to appreciate. 
 It is in their relation to their age that the writers of any age 
 are judged. No one thinks of reducing the horses of the 
 Frieze of the Parthenon to our modern ideas of the picturesque. 
 No reader demands from Homer what he expects from Shaks- 
 peare, nor exacts from Shakspeare what he would be offended 
 at not finding in Racine, nor is dissatisfied at finding in Racine 
 a different set of ideas and expressed in different words from 
 those of Goethe, Lamartine, or Tennyson. The same rule 
 holds here as in the conditions imposed on the arts by the 
 nature of things, and tacitly accepted by every one. Phaedra 
 may speak in verse, painting is degraded when it becomes a 
 mere optical delusion, and the most exact imitations of the 
 human face are banished to the hair-dresser's shops, whilst 
 there is no effort in accepting as a living man, a block of 
 white marble carved by the sculptor, or of bronze cast by the 
 founder. 
 
 All this is applicable to the Bible. Canonical literature 
 is nothing else than the classic literature of Christianity. 
 This literature appeared at the very origin of the church, became 
 it is the peculiarity of Christianity, as a divine revelation, to 
 have manifested itself in all its fulness at its very commencement. 
 It is not the limit of a development, it is the principle of one, 
 and complete from the beginning, it must also from its beginning
 
 310 
 
 be a classical expression. But it is by no means to be assumed 
 that this expression is absolute ; to judge of it and its influ- 
 ence, we must place ourselves at the historical point of view, 
 and consider it in its general relation to the circumstances 
 which called it into being. The respect which we have for the 
 Bible, the affection we bear towards it, the eagerness with 
 which we study it, the submission with which we hear its 
 teachings, are perfectly compatible with that unconscious and 
 spontaneous accommodation with which the reader makes 
 allowances in the divine work, for that which is human, tem- 
 porary, imperfect. 
 
 We see therefore that the idea and the limitation of the 
 Canon do not necessarily imply an exclusive idea of inspira- 
 tion. Canonical literature finds its ground of existence 
 and its external limitation in the facts of history, in the 
 character of the epoch which produced it, and of which it is the 
 enduring monument. 
 
 There is another fact which must be attended to in the 
 constitution of the biblical idea. The inspiration of the 
 Bible, we have seen, is not equal, but differs in the case of 
 different authors. In order to secure for this fact the impor- 
 tance which belongs to it, it is necessary to consider the 
 relation of Scripture to Christianity. Jesus Christ is the 
 centre of Christianity, and consequently' also the centre of 
 the Bible. The Old Testament is part of the Scriptures of 
 Christians only in the sense and in the degree that the Old 
 Dispensation belongs to the New, namely, as a presentiment, 
 prediction and preparation. As to the New Testament 
 itself, its centre is clearly and visibly found in the words of 
 Christ, as they are preserved, or, so to speak, stereotyped in 
 the first three gospels. It is here that inspiration, by which
 
 311 
 
 I understand the manifestation of the divine, is the most 
 striking, most immediate, most original, and most .illimitable. 
 It is here also that we have the source of all other inspira- 
 tion, the germ of all development, the creating word of the 
 Church. Around this bright centre are ranged many concentric 
 circles more or less removed from it, according as the inspira- 
 tion is more or less deep and living. John first with his 
 Gospel and his epistles ; his gospel, which is less a history 
 than a mystic commentary on the life of his beloved Master, and 
 his- epistles, which are again a commentary on his gospel, and 
 which, like it, while they have scarcely furnished a single article 
 to our creeds, have been no less the hidden manna for longing 
 hearts in all nations. Then comes Paul, not less profound, 
 doubtless, in the mysteries of the spiritual life, but with whom 
 feeling willingly adopts the arms of argument ami loses its im- 
 pulsiveness by clothing itself in the garb of doctrine. Let us add 
 that it is this impetuous reasoning, this dogmatic faith, this 
 analysis of the ideas implicitly contained in Christianity, 
 which have served to bring home the Gospel to the masses. 
 Paul has been understood where John and Jesus were not. and 
 his doctrines of the sovereign mercy and of the free gra< 
 God have presided more than once over the revivals of the 
 Church, bearing to the apostle a whole succession of spiritual 
 descendants, Augustine, Luther, îSt. Cyran and Wesley. 
 The last of these concentric circles across which shines this 
 spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of God, contains the 
 writings of various authors : the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 whefe we find, breaking through the littlenesses of rabbinical 
 interpretations, a conception at once ingenious and maj 
 of Christianity in relation to the Jewish revelation : the 
 Epistle of James, grave and serious, where we find mingled 
 together the sententious tones of Hebrew wisdom, and the 
 threatening accents of the ancient prophets; ihe first Epistle
 
 of Peter, the resemblance of which to the writings of Paul 
 forms a remarkable historic problem ; and the Apocalypse, in 
 which the attachment to the letter, and the calculations of 
 times and seasons, of which God has reserved the secret to 
 himself, have not been able to stifle the language of evangelic 
 faith and hope. 
 
 The peculiarity of the orthodox notion of inspiration is 
 that it encloses the Canon within limits rigorously deter- 
 mined, which however the conscience of Christians does not 
 acknowledge, and which criticism constantly tends to over- 
 throw, at the risk of at the same time overthrowing the 
 Canon itself. The peculiarity of an idea, at once more 
 religious and more historical, is, on the contrary, that it leaves 
 the limits of the Canon undetermined. The spirit which 
 animated the age of the apostles, and which manifested itself 
 in the literature of that age, that spirit which penetrated in 
 different degrees the great monuments of that literature, is 
 little to be felt in some of the books of the New Testament. 
 If the sacred collection has its luminous centre, its rays do 
 not entirely vanish without having a twilight, in which we can 
 recognise at the same time its presence and its gradual decay. 
 The extreme circle of the canon is composed of those books 
 in which the breath of inspiration seems exhausted, whether like 
 the Epistle of Jude, they have been admitted into the collection r 
 or like the first Epistle of Clement, and those of Polycarp and 
 Barnabas, they have been excluded from it by a too narrow 
 idea of what is canonical. We know besides that the early 
 Church distinguished between writings universally recognised 
 and doubtful writings, and the German reformers between 
 canonical and deutero-canonical books. As to the supposititious 
 books, that is it say, books introduced to the Chureh by the 
 name of some venerated man who was not the author of them, 
 it is certainly not fair to judge of this fraud according to the
 
 318 
 
 strictness of literary criticism in our days, but it is difficult 
 to attribute anything but an historic interest to these feeble 
 gleams of the genius of a great age. 
 
 The Old Testament almost arranges itself upon somewhat 
 of a similar plan. The theocratic spirit is concentrated in the 
 Mosaic law, the constituent revelation of Judaism ; it extends 
 with different degrees of intensity through the prophets and 
 the Hagiographa, and casts an expiring ray upon the books 
 known by the name of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. 
 
 Such is the real organisation of the Canon. This organi- 
 sation is neither literary nor dogmatic, it is religions; or 
 rather Scripture is not an organisation, it forms a choir of 
 voices, which, each in its own way, sings the praises of Him 
 who is the Father of Jesus Christ, and our Father, the God of 
 Jesus Christ, and our God. 
 
 And there is one final distinction to be made. We have 
 taken inspiration (in the religious sense,) as the principle of 
 Scripture, and inspiration in its relation to the age of the apostles 
 as the principle of the Canon. It is far from true however that 
 all the books of which the biblical collection is composed, justify 
 the places which they occupy there, by the manifestation of 
 the spirit displayed in them. The very nature of manj of 
 these books excludes up to a certain point the character of 
 inspiration. We refer to the historical books of the Bible. 
 The duty of the authors of these books is to say all that they 
 know : they are mere chroniclers, often mere compilers, echoes 
 more or less faithful of traditionary accounts. Far from com- 
 plaining of this, we should rejoice at it. It is facts that it is 
 important we should possess, and would to God that these 
 facts were more numerous. However this be, it is remarkable 
 to observe in how great a degree the person of the biblical 
 historians is lost in their histories : not a word reveals them to
 
 314 
 
 us, not a characteristic marks their individuality. We are 
 often ignorant of their names, and even when we know these* 
 we are not much further advanced, for in the most cas* 
 are unable to identify them with any individual person. Who 
 would dare to speak of the inspiration of the books of Samuel 
 or of Ruth, of Kings or of Chronicles ? In what passage of the 
 the first three gospels or of the Acts do we perceive the brilliancy 
 of the fire froni on high, or even feel the throbbing of the 
 Christian heart ? When Jesus speaks in the gospels, it is the 
 Spirit of God himself speaking, but who would dare to s.. 
 much of the text in which these discourses are contained ? 
 And this is what dogmatic theorisers forget too easily. 
 
 Once more we make no reproaches in respect to biblical 
 historiography. Far from this, the historical books of the 
 Canon hold a most important place there. We could do 
 without others more easily than these, for they contain the 
 history of the divine revelations, and this history is as neces- . 
 sary to the Church, as the history of a nation is to its present 
 greatness, as the recollections of a man are to his moral life. 
 History is for nations the condition of their national con- 
 science ; sacred history ù to the Christian the condition of 
 his religious conscience. Abrah - s, David, Isaiah, 
 
 Ezra, John Baptist, Stephen, Paul, are links in the chain 
 which biuds earth to heaven, and without which our globe 
 would sink into the icy solitudes of irreligion and of material- 
 ism. No ! humanity cannot do without these annals in 
 which we find living at once all the heroes of holiness and of 
 sacrifice, and in which rises above them all, calm though bleed- 
 ing, the head of the Crucified ! 
 
 The Bible then is composed of two different elen 
 of which however play an essential part, and which represent 
 the two great manifestations of the spirit of holiness. The 
 biblical annals are inspiration in action, the biblical teachings
 
 315 
 
 are inspiration in words. The history of God and the word 
 of God form together what we call Scripture ; not. as pre have 
 before said, that God speaks no more on earth, or that the his- 
 tory of God is finished in our day, but because the teachings 
 and the history of the Bible are the constituents of the 
 Church. 
 
 We have thus finished our task. We have attempted to 
 explain what the Bible is, that is to say to account to Chris- 
 tendon) for its faith in the Bible; forth e of the 
 Bible and faith in the Bible are facts, and theology neither 
 makes nor unmakes facts, but merely explains them, by bring- 
 ing them back to the general idea upon which they rest. It is 
 true that in acting thus, theology attempts to bring back the 
 fact to the law and the reality to the ideal, to purify faith by 
 giving it a knowledge of itself. And thus theology ought not 
 to adapt the fact to the dogmatic theory, but on the eon 
 deduce the latter, from the former. It ought not, as it has too 
 often done in reference to the subject which has been occupy- 
 ing our attention, to endeavour -to impose upon history the 
 mould of notions manufactured à priori, hut on the contrary, 
 to strive to express the results of experience, and to studj 
 Bible before saying what it is. Finally, it ought nut to 
 generalise arbitrarily any given datum, but it should take 
 account of all the facts and distinguish before uniting, analyse 
 before systematising. This is what we have endeavoured to 
 do. Analysis has taught us the diversity of the elements of 
 the Bible, difference between the Old and the New Testaments, 
 difference between the history and the teaching, difference 
 between the content and that which contains, difference in 
 the degree of inspiration. Far, however, from these differ- 
 ences destroying the unity of the Bible, they prove and mani-
 
 
 :t. The Bible, we have established, has its unity, the 
 unity of revelation, the unity of history, namely Jesus Christ. 
 It is the spirit of Jesus Christ which pervades it, it is the 
 person of Jesus Christ which forms the centre of it, it is 
 because the age of Jesus Christ is the classic age of the 
 Church, that the religious literature of this age remains the 
 canonical literature of Christendom. 
 
 Yes — dogmatic theology has changed, it is changing and 
 will change, but faith will remain, and with faith, the Bible, 
 where faith finds even the object of its belief. The Bible will 
 remain the book of poWer, the marvellous book, the Book of 
 Books. It will remain to be the light of the spirit and the 
 bread of the soul. In vain it has been made a source of 
 puerile inventions, an aliment for superstitious piety, an arena 
 for the disputes of theologians — it has triumphed over the 
 folly of some and the negations of others, it will triumph still, 
 and will continue for ever to console the sorrows and to satisfy 
 the consciences of men. If there is anything certain in the 
 world, it is that the destiny of the Bible is for ever closely 
 connected with the destinies of all holiness on the earth.
 
 THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 By Edmund Scherer. 
 
 If miracle is in some sort the central question of revelation, 
 since the Gospel could not be a revelation properly so called, 
 without being a supernatural revelation, it will be also granted 
 that the miracles of Jesus form the centre of the question of 
 miracle, and that they offer the principal element of the idea 
 at which we wish to arrive. We are but ill satisfied with the 
 methods which are commonly pursued in this branch of theo- 
 logical study. Some set out with the current definition of 
 miracle, with the idea of natural laws, and then apply their 
 formula to the facts presented by history. Such is the method 
 followed by Strauss. He begins to study the evangelical 
 narratives, only after having declared miracles impossible. 
 After such a declaration no one will expect from him a very 
 impartial consideration of the narratives ; and one may justi- 
 fiably ask if the hypothesis of a free legendary invention, 
 working on the recitals of the Old Testament, is much supe- 
 rior to the naturalistic explanations given by the more ancient 
 rationalism. AVe cannot regard as much more legitimate, 
 the method which consists in placing the point of departure 
 in the evangelical facts taken wholesale and without criticism. 
 To proceed thus is to be enslaved to an illusion, and that in 
 several ways as to the true condition of things. In the first 
 place, it is to mistake the historical character of our evange-
 
 318 
 
 lists, the traditional origin of the three first, as well as the 
 dogmatical and apologetic aims of the fourth. It is to 
 mistake, on one side, the insensible formation and modifications 
 the gospels underwent, collected as they were from scattered 
 masses of primitive oral tradition; and on the other, the 
 subjective conceptions and aims the possibility of which is 
 involved in such an origin. This is not all — to appeal in a 
 general way to the credibility of our canonical historians is to 
 forget the nature of testimony. When we analyse the forma- 
 tion of the conviction produced by a witness, we readily see 
 that it is the result of two elements ; the credibilty of the 
 witness — that is to say, his intelligence, his probity, his 
 acquaintance with the facts; and the credibility of the facts 
 themselves to which the witness gives his attestation. You 
 may suppose a witness of so ill a repute or so unfavourably 
 circumstanced, that you would not receive from his lips a fact 
 which, in itself, is likely enough. On the other hand, there 
 are facts so unlikely, as to require for their reception witnesses, 
 numerous and well qualified ; perhaps after all, in spite of 
 their averments, you will receive the fact only on interpreting 
 for yourself what seemed improbable, or on reserving a defini- 
 tive judgment. On the outside of the doctrine of the plenary 
 inspiration of the Scriptures there is no general view of the 
 historical authority of our gospels, which can guarantee the 
 multitude of all their statements, and consequently there is 
 none which can dispense with criticism in detail. Yet that 
 is exactly what orthodoxy lacks, and we here meet with the 
 great illusion of all systems of authority, namely, that " the 
 flag covers the merchandise " — a very good maxim it may be, 
 an international law, but a rule not to be accepted in historical 
 researches. General arguments have always something ab- 
 stract about them, and the à priori method never establishes 
 a solid conviction. The student believes himself convinced
 
 319 
 
 when he is not convinced; he knows not what to answer, and 
 yet he has the feeling that a proof has really not been given ; 
 and how little soever he pursues his inquiries, he sees that 
 which he had easily admitted in general, fall in pieces bit 
 by bit. 
 
 We hope to follow a surer path in taking onr stand on 
 a critical examination of the facts, and on the results, the 
 certainty of which, such an examination may be found to 
 establish. That criticism, it will be at once acknowledged, 
 must be religious as well as historical, since it has to do with 
 religious facts. Moreover the facts thus appreciated form 
 only one of the elements of the question ; there ie a second 
 not less essential, I mean the manner in which Jesus himself 
 conceives and represents miracle. In the consciousness of the 
 Lord himself we find, together with the most decisive testi- 
 mony given to the fact, the most authentic instruction as to 
 its true nature, and as a consequence, a new criterion for the 
 appreciation of the miracles recorded in the gospels. These 
 promises once obtained it will be more easy to ascertain what 
 idea of miracle comes out of the miracles of Jesus Christ, and 
 so to obtain, if not a general definition, at least a determina- 
 tion of the most important elements of such a definition. 
 
 I. THE EVANGELICAL NARRATIVES. 
 
 There is scarcely any historical met better attested than — 
 I will not say, the miracles, but the miraculous power of 
 Jesus. It is enough to call to mind that Paul himself worked 
 miracles, that he alludes to the fact as one of common noto- 
 riety (Rom. xv., 19; 2 Cor. xii., 12), and that he ascribes 
 the same gift to others as to himself in the primitive Church 
 (1 Cor. xii., 9, 28). Now it would be difficult to concede 
 the power to (he disciples without recognising it in the Master,
 
 320 
 
 and not to acknowledge here the right of reasoning à minori 
 ad majus, or from the less to the greater. This is not all. 
 We have in addition the general belief of the ancient Church, 
 the universal testimony of the evangelical history, and, what 
 is much more decisive, the expression of the consciousness felt 
 by Jesug himself of possessing and exercising miraculous power. 
 
 By the side of the general testimonies stand the particular 
 records in which the Lord appears as invested with that power. 
 But it is precisely here that one difficulty begins — those 
 records being in nature very diverse, and the character of the 
 writings in which we read them not permitting us to accept 
 the statements without examination and without distinction. 
 We thus find ourselves in presence of a critical task from 
 which the theologian is not at liberty to seek exemption. 
 
 Let us commence with the negative results. One cannot 
 deny that the examination of the texts at once leads to the 
 elimination of some of the miracles attributed to Jesus. Tra- 
 dition, which sometimes confound several facts in one, some- 
 times also makes several out of one. It is possible that the 
 miraculous draught of fish reported by Luke, is an echo 
 of the fact recounted in the last chapter of John. It is 
 probable that the cure done for the centurion of Capernaum 
 is identical with that which was obtained by the entreaty of 
 "a nobleman" of the same city (Matt. viii. ; John iv.). It 
 is certain that if Matthew narrates twice the multiplication of 
 bread, it i> because he inferred a repetition of the prodigy 
 from a difference of the figures traditionally preserved. ~M 
 over the reasons for doubt present themselves differently. 
 For instance, — Ave must acknowledge that the circumstances 
 of healing the ten leapers (Luke xvii.) are of a nature to 
 cause us to suspect a parable under a history, if one could 
 admit that Jesus ever gave a place to himself in any of his 
 parables.
 
 321 
 
 In another view, if the religious sentiment easily recogni- 
 ses the connexion of miraculous power with the spiritual 
 dignity of Jesus, if miracle appears to it as a natural and 
 almost necessary feature in the physiognomy of the Redeemer, 
 that general judgment furnishes no criterion for determining 
 the authenticity of this miracle or that. On the contrary, the 
 criticism which is here exercised by the religious sentiment is 
 essentially negative. One in truth cannot read our evangelical 
 recitals without spontaneously making a distinction between 
 the miracles therein reported. While the majority are acts 
 of compassion and deliverance, and thus directly enter into 
 the ministry of him who " went about doing good," there are 
 some, such as that of Jesus walking on the sea, the catching of 
 the fish with the " piece of money" in its mouth ; which have 
 no other character than that of the marvellous. Now that 
 character forthwith raises objections. We will not say that the 
 very proportions of miracle, by removing it from all analogy 
 with known events, do not absolutely allow us to figure to our 
 mind the manner in which it is performed. It is omnipotence 
 in the abstract which manifests itself therein, and that seal, 
 far from shocking those who form an idea not less abstract of 
 the deity of Jesus, becomes a new attraction for the infantine 
 and eager imagination of slightly cultivated persons. But 
 there is something more important ; miracle thus stript of all 
 religious character ceases to be miracle, to become nothing 
 more than prodigy, and then, having no relationship with 
 revelation, is no longer distinguished in any way from apocry- 
 phal miracles, and has no claim to belong to christian verity. 
 It is true that when the element of religiousness at, a 
 
 new object is sought for. The attempt is not always i 
 According to thé last and the most resolute of the <i 
 of the evangelical history, the changing of the water into 
 
 i. Geschichte; 1850,2nd Edir. 
 V
 
 wine and the walking on the sea were intended to manifest 
 the deity of the Lord, while in the miracle of the u 
 money" J d himself the king to whom the entireworld 
 
 is subject, he multiplication of the bread, he meant to 
 
 try and to select his disciples : and after the same manner he 
 struck the fig tree with barrenness as a symbol of the fate 
 which awaited Israel, and as the sign was in danger of nol 
 being understood, he gave the explanation of it with his own 
 lips. Where ? In .Matthew xxiv. .32 ! We do not know 
 that it is possible to Hud a better explanation of the statements 
 in question, but we do knew, and know well, that it is impossible 
 to hud one which more compromises their reality. The purely 
 epidictic miracle, that is. the miracle which has no other aim 
 than the manifestation of miraculous power, raises the most 
 us difficulties. The obj aed cannot be attained 
 
 independently of the internal character which its advoi 
 are obliged to deny it : considered as simple prodigies, tie- 
 miracles of Jesus over nature, are inferior to those of M 
 and Elias, and accordingly cannot manifest his deity without 
 implicating theirs. Add to this that the doctrine of Jesus 
 himself on the subject of miracle absolutely disowns the point 
 of view under consideration, and that critical reflexion tries in 
 vain to appropriate it we shall presently 
 
 mg the results which we have up to this obtained. 
 some are positive, but too general, and the others are d 
 precise, but exclusively negative. However, we believe that 
 criticism may arrive at something more satisfactory. The 
 first thing to be done i> t" seek among the miracles reported 
 by the evangelists, some of those internal chara truth 
 
 which occasionally make up for the insufficiency of external 
 testimony : and since the quality of the writings cannot on 
 this point guarantee the certainty of the facts, we must 
 consider whether those fact-, viewed fir>t in th< may
 
 323 
 
 not boar witness to their own reality. Tims is it certainly 
 with most of the words of Jesus. They bear in their simpli- 
 city, originality and depth, the indestructible seal of their 
 authenticity ; each word carries conviction with it, and the 
 criticism of Strauss so prejudiced, yet, at the bottom so intel- 
 ligent, has not been able to impair this magnificent diamond. 
 Unhappily a fact, being a less immediate and less character- 
 istic expression of personal qualities is rarely susceptible "1' 
 the same evidence. One cure resembles another: this prodigy 
 resembles that; and if particular circumstances sometimes 
 accompany a miracle, and give it a more marked physiog- 
 nomy (e.g. Mark vii., 31 se<p, viii., 22. seq.) those circum- 
 stances are for the most part wanting, or sometimes must be 
 attributed to the narrator. 
 
 All this does not prevent us from being able to attain in 
 some cases a degree of certainty which leaves nothing to be 
 wished for. There are miracles, the performance of which are 
 mdissolubly linked to one of the words of the Saviour, of which 
 we spoke but now, the unique character of which excludes 
 doubt; or to some expression, equally characteristic of another 
 personage. When the centurion expresses in a manner so 
 natural and so lively his confidence in the power of Jesus : 
 when the Canaanitish woman, put to the test by the refusal, 
 consents to be accounted a dog which picks up the crumbs 
 under its master's table; there is in those features a character 
 of authenticity which, criticism cannot disown, and the force 
 of which extends to the miracle itself. It is, it seems to me, 
 the same with the reasoning with which Jesus repels the re- 
 proach of being in league with Beelzebub, and the argumentum 
 ad hominem by which be justifies himself in having done euro 
 on the Sabbath day (Matl xii. 1 1 ). Here also, the word bears 
 an impress, the origin of which cannot be mistaken, and that 
 word supposes a miraculous healing. It is nol always so I 
 
 v 2
 
 32 I 
 
 acknowledge. The more often this signature is not found. 
 Besides there are cases in which you may sunder the word from 
 the fact with which it stands connected. Thus the saying "I 
 will make you fishers of men" does not of necessity suppose a 
 miraculous draft of fishes, but only the known profession of 
 John and Zebedee. Thus the discourse of Jesus on the temple 
 tax, and the power of faith are perfectly separable from the 
 miracles of " the piece of money" and the fig tree. Not less 
 does it remain established that we have some miracles cer- 
 tainly wrought by Jesus, and that that certainty illustrates 
 the miraculous power of the Saviour, at least in the sphere of 
 facts analogous to those which furnish us with the proof in 
 question. 
 
 II. THE DOCTRINE OF JESUS. 
 
 In speaking of miracles one may say that the fact is not 
 wholly in the fact, and that the capital element of the miracles 
 of Jesus is the manner in which he" conceives and presents 
 them himself. The thought of the great teacher on the sub- 
 ject offers us indeed less the dogmatic idea to which we are 
 tending, than one of the historical facts on which the idea 
 must be founded, and at the same time, a new criterion for the 
 appreciation of the evangelical naratives. 
 
 You cannot examine the conduct and the words of Jesus, 
 relative to miracle, without being struck with the negative, 
 and in some sort polemical turn by which they are charac- 
 terised. The Lord Jesus does not set forth the thought on the 
 point didactically and directly: he expresses it constantly 
 under the form of an opposition to the ideas of those by R 
 he is surrounded. This is true especially of Christ a 
 appears in the first three gospels — which here as in • 
 subject of study, you must carefully distinguish from the 
 fourth.
 
 325 
 
 The point of view which thus determines the angle under 
 which the question presents itself to us in the synoptics, is the 
 vulgar notion of miracle, that which still prevails among the 
 thoughtful. The hearers of our Lord regard miracles as a 
 testimonial letter given to a divine envoy to accredit his 
 mission, and proclaim the confidence which his word deserves. 
 This is what may be called teleological conception of miracles. 
 Now the entire life and teaching of Jesus seems to us to ex- 
 clude this conception, and sometimes even to repel it. very 
 directly. 
 
 In the first place, on all occasions Jesus refuses to per- 
 form miracles when they are asked of him, that is, to give, 
 according to the popular notion, the proofs of his mission 
 which his contemporaries thought they had a right to demand. 
 We remind the reader of the two first features of the tempta- 
 tion. Jesus refuses to employ his miraculous power either to 
 satisfy hunger, or simply to show his supernatural authority. 
 Matthew informs us that Jesus did not perform many miracles at 
 Nazareth because of the incredulity of its inhabitants (xiii.58) 
 Whether this want of faith is attributed to the sick only or to 
 the whole population, we are equally brought to this strange 
 result, namely that Jesus made the presence of faith a condi- 
 tion of his working those miracles, the supposed object of 
 which was to produce faith. One would on the contrary think 
 that he ought to have multiplied them in the degree in which 
 they were received with incredulity. Besides the Jews declare 
 themselves ready to believe if Jesus shows them a sign ; they 
 adduce the example of Moses and the manna; Christ answers 
 by turning the conversation to purely spiritual subjects (John 
 vi. 30) Herod hopes to see some of those wonders of which 
 he has heard so much said ; the accused Jesus keeps silence, 
 and does nothing to answer to this desire (Luke xxiii. 8). It 
 serves no purpose to allege the vain curiosity with which Herod
 
 326 
 
 and the Jews were animated. Either miracle is destined to 
 overcome unbelief; and then it is always in its proper place 
 
 where unbelief appears : or miracle exacts certain moral con- 
 ditions in order to be accepted; and then yon take away from 
 its teleological vainc as much as you ascribe to it a religious 
 character. 
 
 But Jesus does not merely refuse to perform the miracles 
 which are asked of him ; he makes the refusal in tenus which 
 in the most significant manner exclude the notion commonly 
 attached to those manifestations. To those who asked of him 
 ■• ;i sign from heaven" he replies by directing their eyes to the 
 the times" (Matt. xvi. 1 — 3) that is, the great 
 moral, spiritual and social phenomena of the day — such as the 
 aspirations and hopes of the people, the Gospel announced to 
 babes, the forthcoming of the kingdom of God open to all, 
 the publicans and even women of ill fame rushing toward it, 
 the spirit on all sides overflowing, and submerging the old 
 forms of thought, usage and habit, finally, the presence of him 
 whom many prophets and just men had desired to see. (Matt, 
 xiii. 16; xxi. 32.) 
 
 It is thus that Jesus repels a similar request by those 
 words which an evangelist has reported under a form so much 
 the more authentic that he has little understood them himself: 
 
 ïtroy this temple, anil in three days 1 will raise it up 
 again' 1 (John ii., 10: Matt. xxvi.. r,l : Acts vi.. 14). .1 
 instead of performing the required miracle, appeals to the 
 power which he possesses to substitute another form of wor- 
 ship, another religion, another dispensation, in place of that of 
 which the temple is the seat and the symbol. In other words he 
 refuse- 1«.> legitimatise his mission otherwise than by his mfc 
 itself: he throws himself not on something outward, such as 
 a wonder, but solely on the consciousness of his right, and on
 
 
 the manner in which he exercises that right; he près 
 himself here as the master of the temple, as elsewhere the 
 master of the Sabbath. 
 
 Something still more decisive: requests for miracles were 
 so natural, so deeply founded in the gross minds of the Jewish 
 people, that they were frequently renewed. We have seen 
 several examples : Matthew and Luke report another (Matt, 
 xii., 88 — 12 ; xvi., 4; Luke xi., 20 — 32). In this ease 
 Jesus rejects the request with the most rigorous expression of 
 blame, and declares that no sign shall be given to the Jews 
 except the sign of the prophet donah. In what does that sign 
 consist, and what does the expression signify? According to 
 Matthew, the sign is a marvel analogous to that offered in 
 the story of Jonah — that is, the abode of Jesus in the heart 
 of the earth : — an interpretation arbitrary and impossible, and 
 which everthing forces us to refer to a mind incapable of seiz- 
 ing the deep sense of the true answer given by our Lord. 
 X"t only in reality was the abode of donah in the whale's 
 belly a sign to no one, not only the resurrection of Jesus, 
 could not be a sign to the Jews who did not see him after his 
 crucifixion, but the sense indicated by Matthew is contrary to 
 the context. It is even doubly contrary. Jesus could nol 
 refuse a sign, and refuse it with reproach while referring to a 
 prodigy which exactly answered to the request he repels. 
 One cannot understand how he should refuse them the less 
 while granting them the greater, or what purpose in such a case 
 his refusal could have. The contradiction is manifest. But 
 it is not the only one. The narrative of Luke does not con- 
 tain the passage under our notice ; much rather it excludes 
 the passage while presenting the person of Jonah, and his 
 ministry in general as the sign offered to the Xinivites (30); 
 and the account given in Matthew itself protests against the 
 gloss it has been forced to receive. The true interpretation
 
 
 is found in the verses which ensue (41, 42). There we no 
 longer read of Jonah's adventures, but simply of his preach- 
 ing ; and Christ is declared superior to him, not by his mira- 
 cles, but in his general character, and if the Xinevites are one 
 day to condemn the Jews, it is because they listened to the 
 words of the prophet, and not because they yielded to the 
 evidence of the prodigies which they did not witness. In a 
 word, remove from the narrative of Matthew verse the fortieth, 
 and you will have a speech which will be not only in agree- 
 ment with Luke, but consistent in itself, as well as profound, 
 moral, and instructive ; allow the verse to remain, and you 
 have an account in which everything becomes enigmatical and 
 contradictory. 
 
 The primitive tenor of the discourse once re-established, 
 this is what it presents to our mind. First, a positive mean- 
 ing ; Jesus is a sign to the Jews in the way in which Jonah 
 was a sign to the inhabitants of Xineveh, by his appearance, 
 by his ministry, by his word. His person is a sign, that is, 
 the index of a revelation from God, so that Jesus declares 
 that the revelation and the sign which is to cause it to be 
 accepted ; that the divine word and its proof; that the object 
 of faith and its attestation, consist in the intrinsic spiritual 
 evidence of the Gospel ; an idea well worthy of our attention ; 
 an idea which all our future inquiries will more and more 
 confirm ; and which our age, not less gross than that of 
 Christ, has not less difficulty to accept. But by the side of 
 the positive meaning there is in the passage a negative sense 
 not less important. Jesus not only gives the spiritual quali- 
 ties of his mission as the true sign and evidence of his mission, 
 he declares besides that his miracles have not the object im- 
 puted to them, and that if they form part of his ministry, and 
 consequently are a sign as that ministry itself, it is only on
 
 329 
 
 the same grounds, and in virtue of their intrinsic religious 
 character. 
 
 The point of view which comes into sight in these replies 
 given by the Saviour to the requests of the Jews, is confirmed 
 by a great number of facts and declarations. When Nicode- 
 mus declares that he recognises in the miracles of Jesus, an 
 attestation from on high when the Gallileans ask of Jesus 
 how he passed over the sea, Jesus turns the conversation 
 aside to the new birth and the eternal nutriment (John ii., 2, 
 3 ; vi., 25, 26). If he commends the faith of Peter as resting 
 on an altogether spiritual basis (Matt, xvi., 17 ; John vi., 68, 
 69), he in other places expresses himself with a species of im- 
 patience in regard to the belief which needs miracle (John vi., 
 48). Whence it ensues that Jesus possesses in himself those 
 titles and claims of faith, and that faith in him is possible 
 without miracle, but not that Jesus does miracles to produce 
 faith, nor that the faith thus produced is the only true faith. 
 The examples cited by John sufficiently prove the contrary 
 (ii., 19, 20; v., 36—38; vi., 15; xii., 41). We find the 
 same thought in the words addressed to Thomas, " Blessed 
 are those who believe but have not seen;" and still more in 
 the parable of Lazarus, " If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they hear though one rose from the 
 dead" (Luke xvi., 29). 
 
 The character of the majority of the miracles ascribed to 
 Jesus Christ, and precisely of those whose reality is most 
 confirmed by examination, adds support to our interpretation. 
 They are cures, acts of mercy, in which the moral aspect 
 manifestly outshines the simply marvellous. This is so true 
 that the Jews are not satisfied with such evidence, and cease- 
 lessly demand fresh wonders. To this circumstance sufficient 
 attention has not been paid. Miracle with Jesus is not the
 
 330 
 
 striking prodigy that it ought to be to ad as the proof of the 
 mission of him by whom it is performed. 
 
 When Jesus bestow- on his disciples the power of working 
 cures, it is merely as a means of beneficence, and without 
 any intimation of the argumentative power they might hence 
 deduce. 
 
 If the miracles had for their purpose the proof of Christi- 
 anity, it is impossible to understand why Jesus commanded 
 his disciples to keep them concealed, why indeed he should 
 perform miracles which he would not allow to be made known 
 (Matt, viii., 4 : ix., 30; xii., 10). 
 
 Finally, we come to a word which appears to us altogether 
 remarkable : " Behold I cast out demons, and do cures today 
 and tomorrow and the third day I shall be perfected" (Luke 
 xiii. 32.) According to this, Jesus considers his miracles as 
 being essentially acts of healing, since he mentions no others, 
 and he regards those acts of healing not as attestations of his 
 mission, but as directly entering into it and forming an integ- 
 ral part of it ; not as the Eternal seal put thereon, but as the 
 very substance of the work. 
 
 It is thus that all the elements of the thought of Christ, 
 scattered through our Gospel, converge towards the sain»' 
 point, and with a striking unanimity, present an idea of mira- 
 cle as opposed to that of the Jews as it is to the old form of 
 Christian evidence. However there remain two or three pas- 
 sages which are often brought forward in this discussion, 
 which a superficial examination might be tempted to oppose 
 to the results we have obtained, but which in truth confirm 
 that result in the most striking manner, when they are looked 
 into somewhat closely. 
 
 Thus we often hear alleged in favour of the teleological 
 idea of miracle, the argument which Jesus set forth against the 
 Pharisees: "But if I cast out devils by the spirit of God,
 
 331 
 
 then the kingdom of God is com.' unto you,"' (Matt. xii. 
 But the question is not that of miracle as an eternal attest» 
 
 tion ; the kingdom of God is itself a healing, a deliverance, a 
 victory over Satan ; the freedom of the soul from demons is 
 not a sign of the coming of the kingdom but rather its reali- 
 zation, and it is not a proof of its presence except as it is its 
 manifestation. We here find the constant thought of Jesus 
 — spiritual things legitimate themselves directly. 
 
 The same interpretation forces itself on us with greater 
 necessity when we read, " Woe unto thee, Chorazin ? Woe 
 unto thee, Bethsaida ! for if the mighty works which were 
 done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would 
 have repented long ago in sack-cloth and ashes. And thou, 
 Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought 
 down to hell," &c. (Matt. xi. 21 — 23.) How poor the teleo- 
 logical notion of miracle appears in this instance. How 
 exaggerated and extravagant does the passage seem if you 
 take " the mighty works" as a simple attestation of the mis- 
 sion of Christ. And then Capernaum to have been "'exalted 
 unto heaven" by the privilege of witnessing prodigies ! and 
 to have merited the being brought down to hell by not having 
 believed them ! And that repentance which Sidon would 
 have infallibly undergone under the influence of such marvels ! 
 And besides, what in this point of view, are the miracles of 
 Jesus compared with those of Moses, of Elijah, of Elisha? O 
 the carnal Judaism of our theology and our Christianity ! 
 
 But the most remarkable of those passages and the most 
 important for the right understanding of the miracles of Jesus, 
 that which gives us the whole key to the subject, is precisely 
 that which seems to offer most support to the gross interpre- 
 tation we oppose. John the Baptist conceives doubts relative 
 t«> the mission of him whom he had saluted as the Messiah, 
 and whose humble ministry corresponds so little with the
 
 332 
 
 expectation be bad formed. From bis dungeon he sends two 
 of his disciples to ask of Jesus if be is truly He who i 
 come. Jesus charges them with the answer, " Go and show 
 John those things which ye do hear and see ; the blind receive 
 their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the 
 deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the Gospel 
 preached to them ; and blessed is he who shall not be offended 
 in me." (Matt, xi, 4 6.) There are several things here which 
 deserve attention. In the first place, these words are an allu- 
 sion to the Messianic passage, (Isaiah xxxv, 5) so that the 
 mere fact of the citation implies an affirmative answer to 
 John's enquiry. Then Jesus enumerates the signs of his 
 mission, in following a marked gradation, a gradation which 
 sufficiently indicates the place given to raisings from the dead, 
 a gradation, the culminating point of which is the preaching 
 of the Gospel to the poor. Now, this last term of the climax 
 forms an oxymoron, a kind of paradox of expression, which 
 Jesus is fond of employing, and by which he here presents as 
 proof of his mission, the very facts in which John had doubted 
 if he could recognise the Messiah, and as the highest proof 
 that feature which gave most trouble to John's mind, the 
 proclamation of the Kingdom of God specially to the lowly. 
 At the same time the last feature thus presented as the most 
 significant of the signs of the ministry of Jesus, sufficiently 
 shows in what sense we ought to take the others. The 
 enumeration does not contain heterogeneous elements — on the 
 one side preaching, on the other miracles ; but, as the grada- 
 tion of the thoughts requires, elements perfectly homogeneous, 
 the true signs of the presence of the Messiah. Accordingly, 
 Jesus by mentioning the preaching of the good news to the 
 poor, indicates, in the most significant manner, in what sense 
 he regards and presents his miracles as signs of the divinity 
 of his mission. It is not as prodigies, for John well knew
 
 333 
 
 that Jesus wrought cures, and was astonished precisely because 
 they were not more wondrous. Our Lord does not say — 
 •" John requires miraeles — well, I perform some, go and report 
 them; 1 ' a platitude to which the common interpretation 
 inevitably comes. The reply of Jesus contains an allusion to 
 the carnal nature of John's expectations, and has no other 
 end than to correct his views as to the character of the King- 
 dom of God. John regarded the miracles of Jesus as too 
 humble, too obscure ; he also wanted some sign direct from 
 heaven. Jesus replies by drawing his attention to the intrinsic 
 nature of his miracles ; leaving out that element of prodigy 
 with which John's mind was filled, he presents them to him 
 under the aspect of pity, deliverance, benefaction. The proofs 
 of the Messiaship of the Saviour, he gives him to understand, 
 are all spiritual ; he succours humanity in its sufferings and 
 bears the glad tidings to the despised children of men 
 
 It is not necessary to explain the juxta-position of these 
 two things — the healing of the body and the healing of 
 the soul. Nevertheless the connexion of these two parts 
 of the work of Christ is closer in his mind than might at 
 first be supposed. On this point tne passage with which we 
 are engaged offers a valuable indication. In effect the text of 
 Isaiah to which Jesus refers is in no way a prediction of the 
 miracles of the Messiah, but a figurative description of the 
 return of the Israelite exiles from Babylon. The deliverance 
 of the blind and the deaf, of the lame and the dumb, is the 
 image of the joy caused by the termination of the captivity. 
 Jesus does not take this figurative passage in a literal 
 to apply it literally to his cures, but in his <>wn cures he 
 also a symbol, the image of another deliverance — they are the 
 emblem of the redemption which he is working out in the 
 spiritual world. The indication which Jesus here gives 06 <>!
 
 33 I 
 
 the symbolical character of* his miracles contains a point of 
 view valuable for the study of those facts. ' 
 
 That which predominates in the reply to the d 
 the Baptist is the sense in which the Saviour presents his 
 miracles as signs of his Messiaship. They are so, but on 
 the same grounds as the Gospel preached to the poor: — they 
 are so, less as prodigies than as healings : less as works of 
 power than works of redemption : and thus we find ourselves 
 brought back to the result already obtained : the miraci 
 Jesus are less proofs of his divine mission than manifestations 
 of that misson itself; and they are the proof of it only so far 
 as they are its exercise : the substance, and display thereof. 
 
 If now we pass from the synoptical gospels to that of John, 
 we find ourselves conducted by a différent rout to an end which 
 i> absolutely the same. Here the idea of miracle is intimately 
 connected with the fundamental idea of the book. That idea 
 is christological ; it is the manifestation of the divinity of the 
 logos or word made flesh, a manifestation which is at the 
 same time a revelation of the Father: Christ, if we may use 
 such an expression, is the exponent of God. The sum of 
 the theology of John and his gospel may be stated in these 
 words — "He who has seen the son has seen the Father."' 
 Well, the whole life of Christ — words and actions — is a inani- 
 tion of the divinity which is in him, and the supernatural 
 is an altogether spécial manifestation of it. Such is the im- 
 portant fact which the miracles play in the economy of the 
 fourth gospel. John reports few miracles, but he arranges 
 them in a gradation, and recognises in them a sense essentially 
 dogmatic, the display of the divinity of Christ. 
 
 This idea is indicated at the commencement. Miracle is 
 a showing forth of the glory of Christ (ii, 11) or, what <•• 
 to the same, a proof of the in-dwelling of the Father, and of 
 the intimate union of the Son with the Father (x. 38; xiv. 0,
 
 10). This is also that which is signified by the opened heav< ns 
 and the angels ascending and descending on the son of man 
 
 (i. 52), and it is in this sense that Jesus exclaims, " Ye have 
 seen me and believe not !" (vi 36). It may, it is true, be asked 
 in what way miracle manifests the divinity of Christ, whether as 
 prodigy, in the abstract and external pense of Bupematnralism, 
 or, in a deeper and more spiritual sense, in virtue of the religious 
 quality of the act. But if, on one side, it is difficult to 
 understand what religious character the conversion of water 
 into wine can have, on another, it is not less so to see how the 
 teleological notion can explain the cited ; Miracles 
 
 thus conceived would prove the favour of God, but not an 
 ethical and a metaphysical union with him, a spiritual and 
 real presence of the Father in the Son. The objection drawn 
 from the miracle at Cana may hear against the authenticity of 
 the fact, hut not against the idea which the evangelist had 
 thereof 
 
 To the passages which we have cited must he joined those 
 in which the miracles of Jesus are spoken of under a designa- 
 tion peculiar to John. The other evangelists make use of the 
 terms "wonder," "power," "sign:" which designate miracle 
 either as prodigy, or in regard to the superior force mani- 
 fested in it, or as proof or manifestation of the divine. 
 John frequently employs the word works to designate, 
 not miracle in particular, hut the whole spiritual agency 
 of Christ (iv. >'i ! ; wii 1) and the miracles of Christ as 
 constituting an integral part of his agency: as destined, 
 like all the acts of Christ, to express that divine glory the 
 manifestation of which is the object of his coining, and con- 
 sequently as being of the same spiritual nature as the rest of 
 his doings. The miracles of Jesus, are not the attesta 
 tio.n and recommendation of his ministry; they are acts of 
 that ministry, acts which have not their value exterior to
 
 
 themselves, but in themselves: the value of which is not in their 
 argumentative character, but in their own intrinsic nature. 
 The term " work," in being applied at once to the miracles 
 and the religious power of the Saviour, assimilates things 
 which can in consequence be no longer considered as dispai 
 When Jesus speaks of •'• greater works " which he is to ac- 
 complish and works still greater which his disciples are to do 
 (v., 20 ; xiv., 12 ). he evidently refers to miracles wrought in 
 the kingdom of mind, and the comparison confirms the 
 analogy. When the " works " of Christ are presented as a 
 proof of the intimate union of the Son with the Father, of the 
 abiding of the one in the other, it is impossible to attribute 
 this effect to mere prodigy (x., 28; xjv. 10. 11). When we 
 read that the Jews would not have had sinned if Christ had not 
 done among them works which no other had done, we are 
 constrained to admit that miracle is something else than a 
 proof, or rather that it is a proof only in its spiritual character, 
 that the proof lies in that spiritual character itself (xv., 24). 
 The sense of the word thus fixed, it must be extended to other 
 passages, which, if they were insulated, might be explain 
 another sense, but which lend themselves better to that which 
 we have indicated (v., 20 : x.. 25, 32 ; xv., 24). ' 
 
 This sense is found in passages such a and xi., 42. 
 
 In the first Jesus reproaches the Jews with looking to the 
 physical advantage which they derived from the multiplication 
 of the bread, rather than to the sign which manil 
 glory. In the second (compare verses 4 and 15) we have 
 doubtless a reflexion on the effect of the miracle which ap] 
 out of place in Christ's prayer, and which one is disposed to 
 make the narrator answerable for; but, all c 
 have nothing which obliges us to admit a contradiction to the 
 idea of miracle of which the who 1 ,' 
 If the resurrection of Lazarus was to produce in the speota-
 
 337 
 
 tors, belief in the mission of Christ, it is because it was to 
 manifest the glory of Christ. Nothing however stands in the 
 way of admitting that there is in the fourth Gospel a certain 
 oscillation between the two views of miracle — one more exter- 
 nal, the other more internal, as there is an oscillation relative 
 to the person of the Saviour between the ethical view and the 
 metaphysical. These views do not indeed exclude each other ; 
 and the spiritual character which Jesus marks in his miracles 
 does not exclude their value as means of proof, but gives to 
 that proof itself a more profound character. 
 
 The examination of the gospels into which we have gone 
 has shewn a remarkable agreement in those writings as to the 
 doctrine of Jesus touching miracle, and it now remains only 
 to define the dogmatical result of these investigations. 
 
 III. THE DOGMATIC IDEA. 
 
 Up to this time we have employed the word miracle in its 
 vague acceptation. But it is important to determine what a 
 miracle is. This we propose to do in taking our stand on the 
 facts which we have studied, that is, in the miracles and in the 
 mind of Jesus himself. 
 
 We must premise that the sphere of miracle is physical 
 nature. You gratuitously complicate the question if you ex- 
 tend the term to an action on the mind, such as the pheno- 
 mena of conversion and the religious life. 
 
 This being said, miracle presents itself to us at first as an 
 inexplicable thing, more, as a thing contrary to the laws of 
 causation which experience has rendered familiar to us. In 
 other words, miracle is a product of an unknown cause. 
 This is what they call the formal or negative element of 
 miracle. 
 
 But this element gives us prodigy and not miracle. Sim- 
 ple prodigy having no religious character, stands in no relation 
 
 w
 
 333 
 
 with our religious sentiment, and cannot be an object of faith 
 to us. For prodigy to become miracle it must take to itself 
 a positive or material element, in virtue of which it becomes 
 a religious deed. Now, this is what we find in the bulk of 
 the miracles ascribed to Jesus. They are specially cures, acts 
 of beneficence, works of deliverance, and this positive element 
 predominates over the other in the thought of the Saviour. 
 
 This points out to us in what relationship the miracles of 
 Jesus stand with his work considered as a whole. They are 
 an integral part of it. His cures are not merely the symbol, 
 they are the counterpart of the spiritual redemption he brings 
 to the world. We here find the deep connexion which the 
 doctrine of the Bible establishes between sin and suffering. 
 The Kingdom of God is, in all cases, healing, enfranchisement, 
 restoration. 
 
 Under this view, as a redemptive act, miracle is in close 
 and necessary relationship with the person of Jesus, the Re- 
 deemer. His work is himself ; and miracle, as making part 
 of his work, is an emanation of his person, an expression of 
 his nature and his life. The redeeming action of Jesus is 
 before all the manifestation, and, so to say, the exhibition of 
 his personality ; his word expresses what he is, and his mira- 
 cles are another form of that expression. 
 
 If it is thus, miracle is truly the act of Jesus. It is a 
 product of his liberty and of his mind. He is not the author 
 of miracle in an apparent or mechanical sense, but in a real 
 sense. He is not the channel of his supernatural virtue, a 
 simple instrument in the hands of God; miracle is his act, 
 just as every moral act is his ; it springs from the depth of 
 his spiritual nature ; and if Jesus receives and holds it from 
 God, it is in the same way as that in which he refers to God 
 every gift and every grace. This rests on all we have seen 
 in the foregoing pages : but, in reality, such an idea needs no
 
 339 
 
 proof. It forces itself on the religious mind still more than 
 on the scientific mind, On the outside of the mechanical 
 conception of supernaturalism it is impossible to conceive of 
 miracle except as in direct relationship with the personality of 
 him by whom it is performed, and the thoroughly religious 
 miracles of Jesus otherwise than as being in direct relation- 
 ship with his religious personality. 
 
 All this goes to declare that the study of the facts of the 
 case tend to substitute, relatively to the miracles of Jesus, an 
 ethical value in place of the theological, the dynamical point 
 of view in place of the mechanical, and the relative conception 
 in place of the absolute. Let us take up the different terms 
 of this antithesis. 
 
 The theological notion of miracle sees in it before every- 
 thing else an object, and places that object on the outside of 
 the act itself ; miracle is there only to acredit the divine mes- 
 senger in his functions as a revealer. Accordingly, the true, " 
 the only author of miracle is God himself ; man who shows the 
 phenomenon, is merely an instrument : the act is not his act, 
 and then the teleological point of view inevitably leads to the 
 mechanical one. Moreover, all holds together in this concep- 
 tion, and the mechanical notion is insparable from the notion 
 of absolute miracle ; which consists in passing over all so-called 
 causes in order to ascend directly and immediately to God. 
 
 The connection is not less real and intimate between the 
 different terms of the opposite conception. The ethical idea of 
 miracle is that which considers it as a specially moral act, and 
 in consequence, as having its end in itself. Now. a moral act 
 has no character except as emanating from the moral nature of 
 an individual, and except as being truly his act because the 
 product of his personal energy. This is what we call the 
 dynamic idea. But the moment that a miracle of Christ is n 
 personal and moral act, it becomes not only u-spIps^ but contra-
 
 340 
 
 dictory to have recourse to another cause than the spiritual 
 nature of Christ, and the miracles -which he performed enter 
 into that relative notion which does not think it necessary to 
 ascend above secondary cause, merely because they act in a 
 manner entirely new and unknown. 
 
 The question of the credibitity and of the argumentative 
 value of miracle receives a solution essentially different, accor- 
 ding as you place yourself in the one or the other of these 
 points of view. It is besides clear that we must distinguish 
 in this question between the ocular witness of the miracle, and 
 those who like us can have no knowledge of it except through 
 the medium of an historic testimony ; that we must distinguish 
 specially between the mind which is cultivated, thoughtful, 
 critical ; and the uncultivated, to which prodigy is an attrac- 
 tion, and which believes in the supernatural the more easily 
 the less it is acquainted with the laws of nature. Having 
 made this distinction, we hold that in the teleological point of 
 view, miracle, far from being able to serve as an attestation 
 to any doctrine whatever, cannot even become the object of a 
 well-founded conviction. A simple prodigy, lacking religious 
 character, or possessing that character only accidently, it 
 is out of keeping with the Christian revelation, out of keep- 
 ing with evangelical faith ; accordingly it is inevitably and 
 absolutely incredible. According to the system of super- 
 naturalism, mil . pure supernatural deed, external to 
 revelation, alien to faith; which addresses the natural man 
 through the medium of his senses and which is to lead him to 
 acknowledge an intervention of God. in favour of a divine envoy, 
 and, as a consequence, to receive the teachings thus sanctioned 
 from above. According to this, belief in miracle leads to faith, 
 but is distinct from it. That is to say, it is not a moral act, 
 and consequently no one can be held responsible for his want of 
 belief in this respect. If conviction is to come to me through
 
 341 
 
 my senses and my intelligence, it is to the account of my senses 
 or my intelligence that I must place my doubts. Man is 
 answerable for only moral convictions, because only they are 
 free. We go still further. Faith supported by miracle 
 becomes not only an affair of caprice, accident or culture, but 
 an impossibility. Confidence in the laws of nature will often 
 gain the victory, and ought always to gain the victory over a 
 prodigy, the certainty of [which depends on human testimony, 
 for testimony constantly deceives us and the laws of nature 
 never deceive us. 1 do not deny that miracle may be an 
 introduction to faith, a faith at first external and carnal, after- 
 wards spiritual and living ; but I declare that this effect has 
 never been produced by pure and simple miracle, unless by a 
 vice of reasoning, on which we certainly may congratulate the 
 believer, but which we certainly cannot elevate into a law of 
 intelligence. 
 
 In the ethical point of view, miracle being one with the 
 work of Christ, of which it is a homogeneous element, is a 
 proof of the divine mission of Christ, in the sense in which 
 that divine mission serves as a proof to itself. Such, in reality, 
 is the true legitimation of spiritual things. They prove them- 
 selves in presenting themselves ; their appearance is their 
 demonstration ; they immediately address those deep impre- 
 scriptible wants of the soul, in virtue of which the sinner owns 
 God's gifts, hails them with joy, and seizes them as his eter- 
 nal patrimony. One may say of miracles what Paul said of 
 prophecy, they are a sign, yet not for the unbeliever, but for 
 the believer. (1 Cor. xiv. 24, 25.) 
 
 Finally, we desire it should be observed that if we have 
 disallowed the notion of absolute miracle, it is solely as being 
 inapplicable to the particular facts which we have studied in 
 this essay. We do not pretend to deny it, à priori, and in a 
 general manner. Independently of the manifest interest which
 
 54? 
 
 theism finds in maintaining it, there is a great number of facts 
 in Biblical history or otherwheres — voices from heaven, fire 
 from on high, sudden destruction, which not being performed 
 by a human medium, must be traced to a direct intervention 
 of God, if sufficiently evidenced, and well established, and which 
 might find in their connexion with the Christian revelation, 
 the character of credibility, which pure prodigies do not 
 possess. As to their authenticity, it belongs to criticism, to 
 the criticism which is at once scientific and religious, to pro- 
 nounce a decision. All we think it now necessary to maintain 
 is, that the acts of healing ascribed to Jesus, come not within 
 that notion ; is that the epidictic miracles which are ascribed 
 to him find no support in his doctrine or his consciousness ; is 
 finally that the ethical and dynamical characters manifest them- 
 selves equally (the latter, however, more distinctly than the 
 former) in the best attested apostolic miracles. It would 
 remain (did time serve) to appreciate the miracles of which 
 the Saviour appears to be less the author than the object, 
 especially that of the resurrection. Let it suffice in this 
 respect, to remind the reader that the two points of view 
 are equally Biblical. If Jesus had the power to lay down his 
 life, and to take it up again (John x. 18) the resurrection 
 was his own act, that is a manifestation of the power of his spirit 
 over death and over nature.
 
 WHAT THERE IS IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 A Sermon by T. Cot. am. 
 
 :i Search (You search) the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have 
 eternal life ; and they are they which testify of me ; and (but) ye will 
 not come to me that ye might (may) have life, John v. 39, 40. 
 
 The heart of man is so made as to be incapable of happi- 
 ness when without God. By the uneasiness which accompanies 
 ordinary pleasures, by the tedium which results from relaxa- 
 tions, by the disquiet which arises in the bosom of repose, we 
 are compelled to turn our regards away from this world while 
 we say "Vanity of Vanities!" We need a life superior to 
 this life; if our heart is to be filled, we need the infinite. But 
 God whom we thus call for, our eye does not see ; he is impal- 
 pable, difficult of apprehension ; while the world is about us 
 as if it were reality itself, thrusting itself on us through the 
 five senses, taking possession of ourselves by means of the 
 body. Knowing to what a degree the slaves of the world are 
 wretched, the soul protests, but protests with small effect ; she 
 nevertheless lets herself be captured, unless God becomes to 
 her more than a sigh, a desire or even an idea. Now nature 
 with her beauties, by turn, sweet and sublime, shows as 
 clearly an admirable order in the universe ; she awakens in us 
 a mysterious echo which may be the poetry of religion : but, 
 she does not unveil the face of God
 
 344 
 
 of human destiny, and the study of our own heart make us 
 feel that if virtue, if remorse, if conscience are not vain words, 
 God not only exists, but is also the supreme disposer of all 
 things. But even that is not sufficient. Reduced to consult 
 only nature and reason we should feel a painful insulation. 
 It would be with us as with navigators, who, possessing neither 
 rudder nor compass, suddenly become aware that the current 
 is hurrying them toward an ocean having no shore. They 
 know that their native land exists, that it is a magnificent 
 land, that they are beloved by their families and their friends ; 
 this they know, but this does not fill them with strength or 
 joy. In the same way, if no real and obvious bond bind us to 
 the Heavenly Father, if we cannot go beyond philosophic 
 deductions, as positive as regrets, but not less empty, we are 
 most unfortunate of beings — seeing too dimly to see God 
 through opaque matter, and seeing not dimly enough to own 
 that matter is worthless. 
 
 What joy then to know that God has not left us to our- 
 selves. No! we are not condemned merely to feel after God; 
 to search for him by some process of mental divination. He 
 has made himself manifest ; he has made himself manifest in 
 the Bible. Everywhere else, if only you sound the ground 
 before you set your foot thereon, you find a moving sand ; 
 you find men's opinion, it may be men's prejudices ; at the 
 bottom no few of men's illusions. But when you sound the 
 Bible, you reach the rock, the Eternal Bock, God. 
 
 The way to so grand a result is worth consideration. The 
 Pharisees read the Old Testament Scriptures, they read and 
 scrutinized them ; and the Lord Jesus while approving the 
 act, declares in our text that the study did not lead them to 
 the truth. Not much surprised should we be at the failure, if 
 they had treated the book as a purely human book — just as 
 we read the works of some pious thinker of former days. But
 
 345 
 
 no ! they thought they had eternal life in those writings ; 
 eternal life, that is, the supreme good, a revelation of God's 
 will ; and from other historical sources we know that they 
 regarded their sacred writings with a respect, which knew no 
 bounds, every phrase from the lips of Moses or a prophet was 
 to them an oracle coming to them from God, as directly as if 
 God had himself pronounced it. Nevertheless, the Scripture 
 remains to them a sealed book. They read it, and they do not 
 see that it bears testimony to Jesus ; they study it, and they 
 find there the promise of a very different Messiah ; they scru- 
 tinise it, and they end by believing that it bids them put the 
 Christ of God to death. 
 
 " What blindness !" You will say. Nevertheless examine 
 yourselves ; Do you read the Bible as it was read by the Jews ? 
 If so may you not fall into similar perdition ? 
 
 Jesus, a poor and unlettered man, spending his time in 
 journeys, in teachings, in cures ; Jesus, who comes with no 
 other sign than the testimony of John the Baptist and some 
 miracles, claims acceptance as the Messiah. The Jews are 
 versed in the prophecies — do they receive him ? They consult 
 the most recent of those books ; it is at the same time the 
 most explicit — they consult the book of Daniel. There they 
 learn that when Messiah comes, God himself, the "Ancient of 
 days," shall appear in person, having for his throne a devour- 
 ing flame. Then are the books opened; then is the judgement. 
 And then shall come the Son of man. He shall come in the 
 clouds of heaven ; and he shall receive from Jehovah, dominion 
 over all nations. These things the Pharisees read, and hence 
 they conclude " Jesus is not the Son of man." 
 
 If however that page of Daniel stood alone ! But in many 
 another passage where the prophets describe the salvation to 
 come, they use similar colours. Material form is the distinc- 
 tive trait of the Saviour whom they foretell ; and they expect
 
 34G 
 
 from him the conquest of the enemies of Israel — whether the 
 
 Babylonians, the Syrians, or the Edomites. Listen to Isaiah 
 
 (lxiii), 
 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Who is he that cometh from Edora ? 
 In scarlet garments from Bozrah ? 
 This, that is glorious in his apparel, 
 Proud in the greatness of his strength * 
 
 THE AVENGER. 
 
 I, that proclaim deliverance, 
 And am mighty to save 
 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Wherefore is thy apparel scarlet ? 
 
 And thy garment as of those who tread the wine- press * 
 
 THE AVENGER. 
 
 I have trodden the wine-press alone, 
 
 And of the nations none was with me. 
 
 And I trod them in my auger." 
 
 And I trampled them in my fury ; 
 
 So their blood sprinkled my garments, 
 
 And stained all my apparel. 
 
 For the day of vengeance was in my heart, 
 
 And the year of my delivering was at hand. 
 
 And I looked and there was none to help , 
 
 And I wondered there was none to uphold. 
 
 Wherefore my own arm achieved victory, 
 
 And my fury alone sustained me. 
 
 I trod down the nations in my anger ; 
 
 I crushed them in my rage, 
 
 I made the soil drink their blood. 
 
 Is there not a complete and unqualified opposition 
 between this Saviour, who makes the blood of his foes flow on 
 all sides to satiate his wrath, and the work of Christ, who 
 sheds no blood but his own, and sheds that blood on the cross, 
 while praying for his murderers ? 
 
 The teachings of Jesus also must have appeared to the 
 Jews in contradiction with the Scriptures. " Love your ene- 
 mies,'' he said (Matt. v. 44.), while the Psalmist, when a
 
 347 
 
 captive in Babylon, cried aloud, " danghter of -Babylon, 
 happy the man who shall seize thy little ones, and dash them 
 against the rocks (Psalm cxxxvii), " Bless them who curse 
 you ; do good to them who hate you ; pray for them who 
 calumniate you" (Matt. v. 54). And in the Old Testament 
 it fs said : " Set thou a wicked man over him : and let Satan 
 stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him 
 be condemned : and let his prayer become sin. Let his days 
 be few ; and let another take his office. Let his children be 
 fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be con- 
 tinually vagabonds, and beg. Let the extortioner catch all 
 that he hath ; and let strangers spoil his labour. Let there 
 be none to extend mercy unto him : neither let there be any 
 to favour his fatherless children, &c." (Ps. cix). 
 
 How could Jesus say that the Scriptures testified to him ? 
 He changes the law ; he adds to it, he takes from it — and the 
 law had formally said, " You shall add nothing to their com- 
 mandments you shall diminish nothing from them" (Deut. iv. 
 2). He declares external things of no value, as able neither 
 to sully nor to purify the man, while the Old Testament 
 seems to make his moral condition depend principally on the 
 observance or the violation of ceremonial requirements. 
 
 Yes ; but by the side of the passage which I have just 
 cited there are others very different. If Jehovah ordains a 
 whole host of sacrifices and ceremonies, he also declares " I 
 desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more 
 than burnt offerings." (Hos. vi. 6). And the Psalmist whose 
 conscience is loaded with adultery and murder, is well aware 
 that victims are unable to reconcile him with the righteous 
 God who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. " I 
 acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 
 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, God, thou God of my sal- 
 vation. Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it ; the
 
 348 
 
 sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite 
 heart, God, thou wilt not despise." (Ps. li.) You see sal- 
 vation by penitence, by faith, by grace, which is the Gospel 
 itself, is taught or at least longed for in the Old Testament. 
 
 Sometimes also the prophets show how they know thgre 
 is a virtue more prevailing than force, and that the lot which 
 is most worthy of God's servant is not triumph but grief, 
 grief undergone for others, devotedness. The same prophet, 
 who places before our eyes the Saviour, proud and strong in 
 his bearing, and trampling on nations in the wine-press of 
 battle, paints the servant of God as cast down more than 
 any other. 
 
 If however during the agony of the Saviour, this passage 
 had been read to the PL lio scorned and scoffed be- 
 
 neath the cross, could they have failed to recognise in him, 
 who hung there, the true servant of G 
 
 In fine, my brethren, the Jews found in their sacred 
 writings opposite elements ; these favourable, those contrary 
 to the person and the doctrine of the Lord Jesus : by the side 
 of passages quite gospel-like in tone, they read others bearing 
 the imprint of an exclusive patriotism. It was absolutely 
 necessary to distinguish which of the two ought to be taken 
 to the letter, as expressing an eternal truth ; and it is because 
 they did not make that choice that the Pharisees ended by 
 rejecting the true Messiah. The choice was of high im] 
 ance; it was indispensable; — was it also difficult ? The text 
 supplies the answer, " But ye will not come to me that ye 
 may have life." Yes, all depended on an act of the will. 
 There was no need of learned criticism ; the option was not to 
 take what they liked and leave what they disliked ; all I 
 was necessary was that they should place themselves in face 
 of the Scriptures (like a child with his eyes fixed on the eyes 
 of his father) with an ardent wish to learn God's will, and
 
 349 
 
 that will doubtless they would have ascertained. Is there 
 anyone, who could refuse assent to this declaration, " I desire 
 mercy and not sacrifice ?" Are you not also as a man forced 
 to agree with the Psalmist when he asserts, " The sacrifices of 
 God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, 
 God, thou wilt not despise." These are ideas which, once 
 enunciated, seize and master us, whatever we do. If anyone 
 should profess to doubt this perfect truth, I would reply to 
 him by a flat contradiction, as I would reply to a man who 
 denied that twice two make four. Either you are, or you are 
 not a man ; now every man is morally constituted in such a 
 way that he is in conscience unable to place matter above 
 mind, and to fancy that God prefers the shedding of human 
 blood, even were it in torrents, to the slightest movement of 
 humility and love. In those two passages— not to speak of 
 others — the Jews had the key to all their sacred books, for those 
 two passages contain an incontestible truth, and nothing that 
 contradicts them can be true. Had they so willed, they 
 would have seen that it is better to bless one's persecutors 
 than to curse them, and that consequently it was more worthy 
 of the Messiah to come without form and appearance, bending 
 beneath poverty and contempt, than to descend on the clouds 
 of heaven, surrounded by angels and devouring flames. Had 
 they so willed, they would have understood the confused testi- 
 mony rendered by the Old Testament to Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and with faith and love they would have seized his hand ex- 
 tended for their succour, instead of nailing it to the cross. 
 
 Our position at the present day, my brethren, is much 
 more advantageous than that of the Jews. The) had in some 
 sort to divine the Messiah, and their. mind did not recognise 
 him in Jesus, unless their heart beat for him. We, on the 
 contrary, see him fully revealed. His august figure occupies 
 the centre of the sacred writings, and that so clearly that to
 
 .r>o 
 
 him our eyes are unavoidably carried. Owing to that clear- 
 ness we can no longer err while reading the Bible, after the 
 manner and in the degree of the Pharisees ; and in this 
 assembly there is, I am sure, no one who would consent to 
 repeat the curse against Babylon, which I cited a little while 
 ago. Whether practically we forgive others as we hope to be 
 forgiven, we know that we are required to follow Christ, and 
 not David, and so ought to bless our enemies instead of 
 •cursing them. Nevertheless though the light of the revela- 
 tion of God in Christ is so clear and penetrating, to us also 
 the Bible may prove a source of error rather than truth. The 
 moment you do not read it exclusively in order to find there 
 the life eternal. You seek in it something that it neither 
 contains nor offers, and so enter on a wrong and perilous path. 
 The life eternal of which the Bible speaks is not merely 
 what is called the life to come, or the life beyond the grave ; 
 it is complete, perfect, divine life ; it is the life of God in the 
 soul of man ; it is such a life as that which Christ lived ; it is 
 is at once consummate virtue and consummate happiness. In 
 a word, it is man's highest good. The sacred Scriptures 
 present that eternal life to you and to the world — that they 
 present and nothing more, nothing less : they present it in 
 shewing you the image of Christ ; in that image the life 
 eternal is fully manifested. We possess a real, or rather, a 
 personal knowledge of God in Christ, and only of God in 
 Christ, and we know Christ only by the Bible. The sole ob- 
 ject of the Bible is to bear witness to the Saviour, and in him to 
 open to us the inexhaustible fountain of the life which is eternal 
 because divine. You who labour and are heavily laden, hasten 
 hither to the living fountain. You who thirst for love, and 
 who hitherto have found only indifference, or even cruel mis- 
 conceptions, hasten to the cross and contemplate that perfec- 
 tion of love, abandoned by all, betrayed by one of his own
 
 351 
 
 circle, and who cries, " Happy those who weep, for they shall be 
 comforted.'* You who courageously struggle for the truth, and 
 obtain in reward of your labours only opprobrium and calumny, 
 look at that head crowned with thorns, listen to the man of 
 sorrows while he pronounces a beatitude on you, — hear his 
 blessed words and rejoice and leap for joy. You who sink 
 beneath a sense of your sins, and who under that heavy load 
 are unable to set a single step toward good, behold how he 
 lifts up the sinful woman simply because she loved much. 
 Whatever your trouble (and is there one among you who has 
 not at least one secret wound?) in the Bible you will find com- 
 fort and strength, for there, in every part, you will find the 
 Saviour of the world. But, once more, look for nothing else, 
 expect nothing else. Otherwise you will be disappointed, and 
 may be misled. 
 
 A fundamental error committed by many is, that they 
 seek in the Scriptures science far more than life. So has 
 it been in all ages. You remember that Romanist theo- 
 logians, relying on some words of the Old Testament declared 
 that anterior to all exploration, they knew that the earth 
 was not and could not be a sphere, and so did their best 
 to prevent an enterprising navigator from sailing to make the 
 discovery of the new world. In our own days also you see 
 pious men laboriously collect from the Bible notions on Natural 
 History and Comparative Grammar. What will such notions 
 do for our salvation? Belter far to know God, to know 
 Christ, to know our own heart. The Ever-living One has not 
 drawn up for us in Scripture, a manual of Xatural History, nor 
 a manual of Astronomy, nor a manual of Geology, nor a 
 manual of Mental Philosophy, for the simple reason that he 
 has placed us in a condition for studying these sciences by, 
 and for ourselves. Had he judged it good to have given us 
 all these ready made to our hands, he sure he would not have
 
 352 
 
 presented them in enigmas, in obscure passages, passages in 
 which the critic finds either no certain sense, or this sense today 
 and that sense tomorrow. Do not degrade the Bible to that 
 degree. It speaks to you of things infinitely more important 
 than all the sciences united — it teaches you your duty and 
 your destiny ; it discloses to you your sinful condition, and it 
 reveals to you the Saviour. 
 
 So little has the Bible intellectual enlightenment in view, 
 that it occupies itself but very indirectly with our theological 
 instruction. While indeed the questions are religious, so far 
 as they stand in intimate connection with life, the Scripture is 
 perfectly transparent, and immeasurably deep, — but it quits 
 you the moment you touch the land of speculation. Very 
 clearly does it tell us that God is our Father, and the Father 
 of our Lord Jesus ; that God was in Christ reconciling the 
 world unto himself; that God is spirit and dwells in our 
 hearts. But when you begin to discourse on the persons in 
 the trinity, know and be assured that you quit the Bible,' and 
 speak a tongue that it does not speak. If instruction in dogma 
 had been the object of Scripture, do you not think it would 
 have expounded it methodically, as is done in catechisms and 
 systems of divinity ? We should have had an epistle or a 
 discourse on God, another on sin, a third on redemption. 
 But never does the Great Teacher handle these subjects in an 
 abstract manner ; incessantly does he speak of them, but in 
 the most-directly practical point of view. The Apostles do the 
 same. One of the epistles of Paul indeed is a theological 
 treatise — the Epistle to the Romans, where he sets forth the 
 doctrine of free grace, where he unfolds the doctrine that men 
 are justified by faith and not by works, and where he cites the 
 example of Abraham in support of his views. Now, true as 
 the doctrine is when scripturally understood, yet, as if to show 
 that every formula is too narrow, and that religious truth sur-
 
 353 
 
 passes all dogma, the same spirit that was in Paul led James 
 to write that men are justified not by faith alone, but by 
 works, and that it was so with Abraham, whose case Paul 
 cites for a testimony. What ! is there then a contradiction 
 between the Apostles on a point of such gravity ? Yes, in the 
 terms, in the formula, the contradiction is patent ; but above 
 and beyond the terms, above and beyond the formula, there is 
 a unity of spirit ; man is justified by faith, that is, by that 
 supreme act, by which we divest ourselves of our own imper- 
 fect righteousness, and give up ourselves to God to be clothed 
 upon with the righteousness which is of God in Christ; — but 
 then faith is an act, a deed, a work, the greatest and the most 
 pregnant of works, and so it is equally true that God saves 
 us and that with God's aid we save ourselves. You see, the 
 Bible does not undertake to supply us with formulas, since 
 here having given a formula by one apostle, it takes it away 
 by another; or, in other words, it completes by Peter the 
 doctrine which it taught by Paul. Faith is one side and works 
 another of the christian life. Faith lays the foundation and 
 works builds the superstructure, and both faith and works are of 
 God from whom cometh down every good and perfect gift. So far 
 for the positive teaching of these two great lights of the Church. 
 Negatively, man is not saved by works though he cannot be 
 saved without works, for how can my virtue in time, how 
 perfect soever, gain for me either the right or the power to 
 live the blessed life of eternity ? But my works are in no 
 case any thing but imperfect, defective, very imperfect and 
 very defective. Not fulfilling the law, even the law of my 
 own conscience, they entail condemnation, and so I am thrown 
 on my desire to do God's will, that is on my faith, as the sole 
 tenable ground of my acceptance with God. Conscious of 
 my own emptiness, I cast myself on the infinite fulness, and 
 so am received and enriched, not for what I am but for what 
 
 x
 
 354 
 
 I would be, and shall at last be forgiven and welcomed into 
 life, not for what I have done so much as for what I desire; not 
 for my conformity to law so much as for my tenderness and 
 trustingness of spirit. 
 
 The pains I have taken to explain this doctrine and to re- 
 concile its two diverse expositions, are enough to prove that 
 the Bible does not offer these words and forms as the bread of 
 life which every man must eat or die. Indeed, so simple is the 
 Gospel itself, that dogmatic expositions are almost as useless 
 as they are needless. The great themes are, " Come unto me 
 all ye that labour, and I will give you rest ; Blessed are they 
 who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
 filled." What need then of lengthy creeds and dogmatical 
 systems ? The publican Zaceheus, the woman that was a 
 sinner; the loving Mary and the busy Martha needed no 
 Rabbi, needed no Rabinnical treatise in order to feel and know 
 their wants, or to see in Jesus the fulness of that fatherly 
 spirit which fills all in all. His presence sufficed for them 
 and ought to suffice for us. What ? his presence is not with 
 us ? Yes, even more fully than with them is the Son of God 
 before our eyes, in the Gospel, which narrate his words, recount 
 his deeds and reproduce his life ; — in the epistles, which show 
 us the Saviour in the love, the fidelity and the heroism with 
 which he inspired his followers, making them strong to over- 
 come the world. In both the Gospels and the Epistles the 
 light and the power which God gives are found in facts and 
 in lives, and not in abstract doctrines. 
 
 No more are you to take Scripture as a manual of morality, 
 which shall in every circumstance dictate your conduct by a 
 command at once brief and decisive. Had God intended to 
 give us such a manual, he would have drawn it up differently ; 
 for he does all with consummate wisdom. Instead of the 
 fragmentary and occasional narratives which fill the Bible, he
 
 35ô 
 
 would hare laid out his orders on a regular plan, according 
 to our several faculties and conditions, and according to our 
 different duties; and afterwards he would have detailed the 
 laws in which those duties were modified or suspended by 
 others. Books of the kind exist. They are called Collections 
 of Cases of Conscience. You may think them convenient. 
 You hesitate between two commands. You consult your 
 guide, you learn your duty. But do you perform it ? Jesus 
 «ame not to teach casuistry, which has always proved a dead 
 letter, and generally been no less baneful than inert; but 
 to call forth and to foster in his disciples the principle of 
 moral life, which, when once strong and active, gives power 
 as well as light, for it is the word of God in man's soul. 
 The purpose of Jesus is to quicken and discipline conscience, 
 not to supersede it; he intends to call forth its activity, not 
 to spare us the trouble of reflexion and the responsibility of 
 choice, Mark in what style Jesus has taught his morality, 
 and then say whether the Bible gives itself out for a code of 
 laws : "If any man sue thee at law and take away thy coat, 
 let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel 
 thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Whosoever shall 
 smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." 
 (Matt v. 39, 41). A code of laws does not speak in figures. 
 Then either the gospel is not a code of laws, or you must 
 take these commands to the letter. But who does so ? Xot 
 those who are loudest for the jot and tittle infallibility, and 
 the all over-riding authority of every word of Scripture. 
 Take another example : " If any man come to me and hate 
 not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren 
 and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my 
 disciple." (Luke xiv. 26). You hear; Christ commands you 
 to trample under foot the most Bacred obligations; yes, he 
 commands you to pluck out your right eye; to cut off y out
 
 556 
 
 right hand, if they cause you to do wrong ; yes, he promises 
 you that with a grain of faith you might say to a sycamore 
 tree, Be thou plucked up by the root and be thou planted in 
 the sea ; and it should obey you. (Luke xvii. 6). Do you 
 not see that he that spake as never man spake has purposely 
 given to his thought a manifest exaggeration to arrest your 
 attention, to compel you to think, and to lead you to dis- 
 tinguish in his discourses between the substance and the form, 
 the letter which killeth and the spirit which giveth life. 
 Well knowing how inclined men are to a blind and doltish 
 submission, he employs real paradoxes with a view to scatter 
 our idleness, to rouse us from our torpor, to break our chains, 
 and make us true freedmen of the Lord. The passages cited 
 are not true if taken literally, but they are true in aim and 
 spirit ; they open to your conscience new aspects of duty, dis- 
 close to it a superior virtue, and convey in each case, a great 
 and everlasting principle, founded on a great and everlasting 
 law of our spiritual life. And all the Bible has thus for its 
 object, to awaken our slumbering moral ideal, to give us 
 wings by which to mount to heaven. In a word, Christianity 
 attaches little importance to this act or that, compared with 
 the inspiration and the regeneration of our whole inner man. 
 As its doctrine consists in the portrait which it gives us of the 
 Saviour, so does its morality consist in our transformation 
 into the likeness of that Saviour — for this is life eternal. 
 
 that you, my brethren, may read the Bible as God, its 
 giver, wishes it to be read, not as a collection of curious 
 instructions respecting the earth and the skies, respecting 
 angels and demons, respecting the origin of the world and its 
 final destiny ; not as a collection of precepts and counsels for 
 gaining a good position either in the present world or the 
 future ! Rather ask of it the satisfaction of your deepest and 
 most pressing wants — ask of it forgiveness, sanctification,
 
 357 
 
 peace, joy, trust, — in a word, God : and for the rest say to 
 yourself in confidence, this is a form more or less indifferent 
 which the God's Spirit had made use of in order to be under- 
 stood in ages of slumber and partial light. Do not, as did 
 the Jews, confound the necessary with the essential ; do not 
 by a servile attachment to the letter, lose the priceless benefit 
 of divine revelation. 
 
 A choice must be made in Scripture. But that does not 
 mean* that you have the right to take this and leave that, as 
 you please — to take what suits your prejudices, your tastes, 
 your moral deadness and perversities ; and thus to turn over 
 the leaf, when you meet with things that are unpalatable. 
 Much profit of a truth would you gain from so reading the 
 Bible — introducing into it your weaknesses, your littlenesses, 
 your evil desires, your illusions — in a word, yourselves. The 
 Bible can be useful to us and conduct to life only by differing 
 from us, by surpassing us, by raising us above our ordinary 
 level. To reduce it to that level, to fashion it after our own 
 likeness, is to take from the salt its saltness. Here then is 
 the rule which should direct your choice in the Scriptures ; 
 receive, as coming directly from God, the words which at the 
 same time humble and strengthen you. In other words, 
 cleave to the narratives, to the exhorations, to the instructions 
 which either disclose to you the state of your own heart with 
 its numerous wants, or make you understand better the 
 character of the Lord Jesus with his perfect sanctity and 
 his boundless pity. All is there — in those two things — all, 
 for all religious knowledge, and all religious power is summed 
 up in this, namely, to know ourselves and to know the 
 Saviour. When Luther, wishing to give to the Reformation 
 a divine basis, published his translation of the Bible, he 
 prefixed to it an excellent preface, in which are these wo: 
 i( I held," said he, "to the books which present to me Christ
 
 55$ 
 
 purely and clearly ; " and these he designated as " the Gospel 
 of John, the Epistles of Paul to the Romans, to the Galatians, 
 the Ephesians, and the First Epistle of Peter. These (he adds) 
 are the books which show you Christ, and teach you all that 
 you require for knowledge and felicity.' T Let the choice of 
 Luther be or be not the most evangelical ; if our Christianity 
 is to resume any vigour, we must apply ourselves to read the 
 Scriptures in the spirit of the great Reformer, seeking there 
 in perfection nothing but Christ, as the life eternal : Christ 
 the way, the truth and the life. 
 
 Then will disappear those narrow sectarian tendencies 
 which are mining the Protestant Church. Men will cease 
 to ascribe supreme importance to their own particular forms 
 of opinion, which they fancy they have drawn from the Bible , 
 but which, when traced to their true source, turn out to be 
 speculations borrowed from obsolete philosophies, or fancies 
 spim in the hard, dry and dark brain of some theologising 
 speculator or speculative theologer ; and to which the infinite 
 variety of the Bible has only lent a costume, or given a 
 colouring. Because the attire is in word partly Biblical, its 
 wearer and his adherents think themselves justified to con- 
 demn, as enemies to the word of God, whosoever does not 
 accept them as the very path of life. When once we have 
 learnt to distinguish between the substance and the form, 
 these reveries lose their venerable mask, the public conscience 
 recognises them for what they really are, and while their sup- 
 porters may continue to proclaim them as the veritable balm 
 of Gilead, they are unable to impose them on others with 
 authority, and end by becoming either more wise or very 
 harmless. Then also the piety of the poor in spirit, the piety 
 of God's weaklings, will in truth be no less touching and 
 mighty than simple. As it is, how often have we seen a ser- 
 vant, a labouring man, who, suddenly aroused by the preach-
 
 $59 
 
 ing of the gospel, and becoming alive to his real condition 
 and his true interests, began to read the Bible assiduously. 
 Drawn on by pernicious example he seeks in the Scripture, 
 not simple edification, but science ; he wants to fathom all 
 mysteries ; to rise to all knowledge ; he mixes all in hopeless 
 confusion, — the Old Testament with the New, the. word of the 
 Lord with the word of his witnesses and servants ; the teach- 
 ings of the Book of Life with those of the leaders of his sect, 
 and so he fabricates a kind of theological system, very narrow, 
 very absurd, very anti-chrlstian ; in which, what is of man 
 darkens and overpowers what is of God; and which in the very 
 degree in which the earthly eclipses the heavenly, he defends 
 with zeal and supports by anathemas, while running — now to 
 this side, now to that' — after gladiatorial discussions and 
 theological pugilism ; striking out right and left against every 
 gainsayer, and showing himself ten times more irreligious 
 than he was before what he calls his conversion. Alas ! 
 alas ! this is what the piety of the simple too often becomes. 
 On every step of the social ladder you encounter these little 
 theologers, — they may be men, they may be women — who 
 pervert the word of God ; who transmute it into an arsenal of 
 arguments and a treasury of excommunications. There is 
 more than one drawing room where frivolous talk is inter- 
 'mingled with heavy dissertations on grace, on redemption, on 
 plenary inspiration ; there is many a grand lady who has no 
 other desire than to shine by the unrivalled splendour of her 
 raiment, and by the spotless purity of her orthodoxy. how 
 sad is this ! my brethren, how sad is this ! 
 
 But you who are truly religious, you who are deeply in 
 earnest ; who open the Bible really for your own edification ; 
 who read it solely that you may become better men, women, and 
 children — do you study it with sufficient simplicity ? Easily 
 may you ascertain. You have only to ask yourselves if your
 
 560 
 
 faith in the Bible is joyous, serene, free from fear. An affec- 
 tion makes us happy only then when it is accompanied by full 
 and entire confidence ; the moment you doubt your friend, 
 that you fear to find him faithless, you are seized by cutting 
 grief, and lose all your moral energy. Now, do you never 
 fear to see the gold of the Scripture grow dim before your 
 eyes? When the geologists scrutinise the surface of the earth; 
 when hardy explorers disinter the ruins of Nineveh ; when 
 historians re-cast the dates of the past, and, aided by philoso- 
 phers, throw back the origin of the present state of their globe 
 thousands of years, and the origin of the globe itself beyond 
 all calculation ; when the learned examine with microscopic 
 eye, every page, every word, every line, of the biblical text, 
 to see if everything is as it was in the beginning, and as it 
 should be now, then, and for ever — nothing added, nothing 
 taken away, nothing changed ; and when you are told that 
 variations exist by thousands, and great losses have to be 
 acknowledged, and some corruptions to be confessed, and, if 
 possible, corrected ; — then do you follow these investigations 
 and hear these statements with a certain fear if not disquiet, 
 as if the final issue might not be damaging to the Bible ? In 
 this case, your faith is not the true faith ; and by your own 
 fault, the Bible, far from supporting you during your pilgrim- 
 age, is to you a reed, which bends and breaks, and pierces' 
 your hand, instead of God's rod and staff on which you may 
 confidently and securely lean. 
 
 For me, my brethren, the word of God contained in the 
 Bible is beyond all attack. Whatever may now or hereafter 
 be the progress of science, I know that to the end of time 
 this volume will enshrine the fount of eternal life. Never will 
 it be proved that the spirit which flows and overflows there, is 
 not superior to the truest, the grandest, the divinest of all 
 that man can do or get out of his own resources. Everywhere
 
 361 
 
 else I feel myself the equal of existing authorities — intellectual 
 authority, social authority, religious authority ; here, 1 bow 
 my head, my knee, my heart ; here, for here in the Bible I 
 find God ; so much holiness humbles me ; so much love wins 
 and yet overpowers me ; so much pity first lifts me up, and 
 then casts me down. divine word ! by thee am I judged ; 
 by thee am I condemned ; by thee am I forgiven ; by thee am 
 I comforted ; by thee am I cherished, fed, strengthened, and 
 saved. Come into my heart with all thy power ; come and 
 lead me to Christ ; come and fill me with God's spirit ; come 
 and transform me into the image of the Son of God, that I 
 may have present and everlasting communion with the Father 
 and the Son.
 
 THE SIMPLICITY OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 By T. Colani. 
 
 The Lord Jesus has said, that the Gospel was hidden 
 from the wise and revealed unto babes and sucklings (Matt, 
 xi. 25 : Luke x. 21). It thus appears that children are supe- 
 rior to us, in as much as they have a certain quality which it 
 is necessary to posses, in order to benefit at all by the lessons 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 It is not the superiority of intelligence, for the intelligence 
 of children is unformed, and therefore not capable of reasoning 
 or of understanding any thing which is not visible and sensible. 
 Attempt to explain the simplest things to them, — I do not 
 speak of any abstract problem, or philosophical idea, or rule of 
 calculation ; but try to give them a faint idea of a simple 
 phenomenon, a mechanical contrivance, or a plain tool — you 
 fail, they do not understand a word of your explanations, unless 
 you place before them some tangible substance which repre- 
 sents your idea. It is clear, then, that Christianity (since it 
 professes to be especially adapted to the comprehension of 
 children) cannot be abstruse, is not merely a collection of 
 definitions, much less is it contained in any doctrine or system. 
 What would a poor child do with those abstractions, those 
 solutions and definitions, those dogmas and formularies ? 
 His blooming form shrinks before these great words ; and if 
 you say he must repeat them, he will listen to you with a 
 stupified air, and then burst out into a fit of crying.
 
 SF,S 
 
 Neither do I think that the superiority of children consists 
 in their moral strength. For instance, has not your child r 
 when punished again and again for a bad habit, promised 
 sincerely and earnestly to correct himself ; never to do it again, 
 he is quite sure ? But the repentant tears are hardly dry, 
 before he is again tempted, and yields without much resistance. 
 Pleasure has a great fascination for young spirits : a fascination 
 which to us seems incredible, to us who have so much difficulty 
 in finding any joy in this weary world. Evidently, then, if 
 children are peculiarly capable of practising Christianity, it 
 must contain something more than a list of commands and 
 prohibitions, such as the Decalogue, a collection of moral 
 counsels, maxims and sentences : therefore Christianity must 
 require from mankind something more than heroic virtue. 
 Nothing is less stoical than a child ; and we know how little 
 exhortations and remonstrances have the power of captivating 
 him. 
 
 Inferior to us in intelligence and force of will, children are 
 our equal in feeling. A child loves as soon as he is conscious 
 of life ; and under some circumstances his power of loving far 
 surpasses ours. He is more instinctive, less reasoning, less 
 dependent on his mind than we are. He loves without know- 
 ing why ; he loves because he feels the necessity of it, because 
 his mother's love excites in him a feeling of acknowledgement 
 which overflows ; and because his friends are very good to 
 love him. Besides his affections are blended with everything 
 surrounding him incessantly; when he sleeps, when he wakes, 
 when he is hungry, when he suffers, when he is happy, when 
 lie calls to his mother, and not happy unless within lier arms. 
 Above all, the affection of a little child is so full of trust and 
 confidence ; it is this which clothes him with a grace which 
 has no parallel. We seniors hardly ever succeed in complete 
 self-forgetfulness. In our most lively effusions we reserve some
 
 364 
 
 bidden nook, from which we never come out ; where we cling* 
 to ourselves, fearing that if we slacken the hold we shall lose 
 entirely our independence. The child has no doubt ; he loves 
 as you cau love only a being who seems to you quite perfect. 
 
 This then is the superiority of children over the wise, to 
 which Jesus alluded. In other words, the Gospel is not an affair 
 of the reason, but an affair of the heart. It wishes to produce 
 in us a profound and absorbing affection, as confiding as that 
 of a child for its mother. And what must be the object of this 
 affection ? Evidently a person ; for an institution, a system, 
 a creed, would not inspire us with such a sentiment. Instead 
 of dogmas, the Gospel gives us a person to contemplate ; 
 because Christ being entirely divine, the more we study 
 his life, the better shall we understand divine things. For 
 abstract morality, we find a person to imitate ; for there 
 is no virtue wanting in the anointed of the Eternal. Instead 
 of a form of worship, we find ourselves in the presence of a 
 person to love ; for in loving Christ we shall become partici- 
 pators of the spirit of holiness which will regenerate us. 
 
 The gospels are the biography of a man who lived eighteen 
 centuries ago. You read it as you would read any other 
 narrative ; but I know not how, this man has a secret charm, 
 which so attracts, so moves, and so governs you, that you 
 cannot refuse to give him your heart. Little by little you 
 adopt all his thoughts, you experience all that he experienced, 
 and behold ! you are transformed into the image of a wise 
 man and a prophet shall I say ? No, but into the image of 
 God himself, for this unknown one, this sage, this prophet, is 
 the perfect man, the Son of God. Sublime simplicity of 
 Christianity ! provided the heart be entirely subdued, the 
 appears indifferent. Consider how little importance the Ma 
 attaches to all speculative questions. Remember, how at the 
 well of Sychar, the Samaritan woman having recognised him
 
 56a 
 
 as a prophet, hastens to lay her scruples before him, and to 
 ask him whether she ought to follow the manner of worship 
 of Samaria or that of Jerusalem ; whether it was right to 
 pray on Mount Gerizim or on Mount Zion. What does he 
 reply ? " Woman, you worship what you know not, we worship 
 what we know." He then well knows on what side truth and 
 reliable tradition are found. " But," adds he, " the hour 
 cometh when ye shall worship the Father neither in this moun- 
 tain nor at Jerusalem, for the Father requires that ye worship 
 him in spirit and in truth." Ah ! if it is science which saves, 
 if salvation depends on the exact knowledge of a revealed 
 doctrine, if one can only enter the kingdom of God by a sort 
 of theological examination, then, alas ! we do well to lament ; 
 and I do not know which would be the more deplorable — the 
 weak, who are never sure of having understood aright, or the 
 strong, who might think they are excluded from Heaven by an 
 inexorable doubt which stands before them like the flaming 
 cherubim at the gates of Eden. Or again, if salvation is the 
 result of our own efforts, the reward which crowns a holy life, 
 we lose all hope of obtaining it, for each step that we take is 
 marked by a fall. But as it is sufficient to love, to enter by 
 Christ into the communion of life with the Eternal, we may 
 be saved — the strong and the weak, the virtuous and the 
 sinful, the wise and the ignorant. We must only take care 
 not to shut our eyes to the light, we must admit that the 
 Supreme Beauty is worthy of our affection, and declare that 
 the lessons taught by the Gospels have done us good, and 
 raised us above ourselves. In a word, we must not contend 
 against the sanctifying influence of Christ, but accept it 
 with the confiding trust of a child. 
 
 Is it possible that Christianity is as simple as I have 
 pictured it ? Is it really sufficient to give our hearts without 
 burdening our memories with subtleties, without inclosing our
 
 36* 
 
 intellects within narrow limits, without submitting our wills to 
 capricious commands ? The Lord Jesus says so, it is true, 
 but I can understand why men should hesitate ; for if Chris- 
 tianity is in the least degree a natural thing, or a light burden, 
 we must conclude that what is generally presented under 
 the name of Christianity is altered and falsified to the great- 
 est extent. — When you visit a library, look at the books 
 entitled " An abridgement or Summary of the Christian reli- 
 gion;" you would expect to find a brief treatise, shorter even 
 than the Xew Testament. They are a large series of immense 
 volumes, for the Gospel of the theologians is so confused, 
 that it requires thousands of pages to elucidate it. It seems, 
 alas ! as if man cannot refrain from retouching the work of 
 God. This arises from various causes. In the first place, 
 we do not examine the Gospels without already having some 
 opinions which are dear to us ; involuntarily we attribute 
 them to Jesus, and we persuade ourselves that they form part 
 of his teachings. Truly, we are not able to find any trace of 
 them in his conversations, but we are so sure of the fact, that 
 we never think of verifying it. It is thus that many Catho- 
 lics, diligent readers of the Bible, are very much astonished 
 when we show them that the Gospel does not enjoin worship 
 of images, confession, or the sacrifice of the mass. In the 
 second place, we have an instinctive fear of what is vague and 
 undefined, and we desire to possess for each question, a com- 
 plete, precise, and clearly defined answer. That the Gospel 
 should be in essence a sentiment, seems to us unintelligible ; 
 for after all how can we prove that it is necessary to love, 
 how define affection, how justify trust ? We must have some- 
 thing more positive, something which will speak plainly to our 
 senses. 
 
 These and many other causes have been in action from the 
 commencement of the Church. Truly may we declare that in
 
 367 
 
 no age has «he fully accepted the worship in spirit and in 
 truth, or the Christianity of children, not even in the age of 
 the apostles. Open the epistles of St. Paul, and you will see 
 there how he struggles incessantly against the deplorable ten- 
 dency of new converts to complicate the Gospel with outward 
 observances and dogmas. The Galatians admit without doubt 
 that a man is justified by faith; but they think it safer to 
 add the necessity of circumcision ; and they supplement the 
 message of Christ with requirements taken from Moses. 
 The Colossians think it necessary, in order to be good Christ- 
 ians, to celebrate the Sabbath, to observe the days of the 
 New Moon, and to abstain from certain kinds of food. More- 
 over, carried away by a foolish desire to know the secrets of 
 the other world, they search for revelations about angels, 
 about their functions, and their ranks, nor do they hesitate 
 to introduce notions into the body of christian doctrine. In 
 truth, if Paul was not there to reprimand and correct them, 
 the gospel would have disappeared in the first generation 
 behind a mass of superstitions. 
 
 Afterwards, the Fathers of the Church occupy the place 
 of the vigilant guardians, and doubtless they try to remove 
 from our divine religion all that could alter its august simpli- 
 city. Alas! to preserve it pure, they believe it indispensable 
 to surround it with things that have nothing to do with it. 
 Christ said " Call no one your master." Frightened at this 
 anarchical counsel, the venerable doctors never cease to say 
 to the faithful, "Take, take the bishops for guides and mas- 
 accept their orders as the orders of God himself.'' Christ 
 says, "Come to me with the trust of a little child, and you 
 will find rest for your souls." " Yes, go to him, " repeat those 
 good shepherds, " but remember that he is obliged to repulse 
 without mercy, whoever wanders from the fixed doctrine of 
 our councils; whoeveT doubts that the ><>n is consubstantial
 
 3G8 
 
 with the Father; whoever refuses to acknowledge the Unity 
 in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity; whoever is bold enough 
 to confound the persons of the Deity or to divide the 
 substance. These terms seem barbarous, but they are neces- 
 sary for salvation, and unless you say them again and again, 
 you are cast at once into the fire which is never quenched. 
 " My yoke is easy" says the Master, and requires no other 
 condition than a humble heart. " Humiliation of heart is very 
 good,*' so the successors of the apostles decree, but it will not 
 be amiss to join to it various external things, such as penances, 
 fastings, mortifications, liberal almsgiving, to the Church ; or 
 better still, the one of living without family or pleasure in the 
 depth of a monastery. Jesus did not say so exactly, but these 
 things so evidently form part of true Christianity, that he 
 must have intended them, even as he intended all the cere- 
 monies of our cathedrals, all the hierarchy of our clergy, and 
 all the dogmas of our theologians." 
 
 At the sight of these grave doctors, who, in the name of 
 Christ, so entirely falsify the Gospel, we can hardly repress a 
 bitter smile. Xevertheless, we Protestants, is our Christianity 
 a more simple, true, and natural religion than theirs ? Does 
 it sum up every thing in ardent love : have we not supple- 
 mented the Gospels with superstitions and extraneous things ? 
 We no longer believe in the necessity of circumcision, nor in 
 the efficacy of fasts and vows : but would it be a very difficult 
 thing to draw up a long list of practices and observances 
 which seem to us as essential as faith in Christ ? I do not 
 intend to examine whether these practices and habits are salu- 
 tary or not, but I ask whether we do not make them a con- 
 dition of salvation, in direct contradiction to Christ? Let us 
 be honest. To be a Christian in our eyes, you must admire 
 our favourite authors, and use the language of devotion com- 
 mon in our circles. And in point of doctrine, do we remain
 
 969 
 
 faithful to the spirit of the Gospel ? When a man drinks the 
 water of the Gospel, do we then account him orthodox ? Is it 
 not true on the contrary, that each one has a pet doctrine of his 
 own, which he protects and forces on every body; in which he 
 sees the first and last word of the Glad Tidings. With one it 
 is the literal interpretation of Scripture, with another the doc- 
 trine of eternal punishment, with a third the speedy return of 
 Christ to judge the living and the dead, with a fourth it is 
 something else ; but each thus shuts himself up in a corner 
 which he cultivates with care, and which hides from him the 
 light of the vast field of God. 
 
 Such narrowness, may however be allied with a kind of 
 liberality. They will give you up all other points of doctrine, 
 but they are intractable upon this one ; they close heaven 
 against those who do not sign their confession of faith, and 
 they display an energy the more indomitable, the more worth- 
 less the question at issue. This fault is very general ; only 
 here and there do you find an exception. 
 
 Alas! our Christianity is very different from that which 
 Jesus recommended. Our Christianity is all but entirely an 
 affair of the intellect, and not an affair of the heart ; a heavy 
 yoke, under which the reason bends, not a balm which refreshes 
 the soul. And that is the reason it is not simple. But what 
 am I saying ? Do not the Christians of our day pique them- 
 selves particularly on their child-like faith? To all objections 
 which call forth their remarks and prejudices, they oppose this 
 argument, " Oh yes, my manner of seeing things is absurd, 
 nevertheless, I have the simplicity to hold it fast ; God has 
 had the grace not to embarrass me with your reasonings. " 
 
 What an unworthy parody on simplicity, this absurd 
 point of view in which you persist. Know that you did not 
 receive it from Christ. You have receired it from some falli- 
 ble man, very fallible; or perhaps you have invented it yourself 
 
 I
 
 370 
 
 by your continual refinements. When then you close your eyes 
 to evidence, you are guilty of a serious and common fault, 
 namely, obstinacy. And this obstinacy is the more culpable, 
 because you give it the guise of confidence in Christ. If you 
 were truly animated by the spirit of trust which characterises 
 children, if you clung to the words of Jesus with their joyous 
 assurance, your first and last thought would be to rid yourself 
 of your delusions, instead of clinging to them obstinately. You 
 would labour to render your mind independent of human 
 authorities, so that it might become the truthful mirror of the 
 mind of Christ. Every pretended religious idea which is not 
 expressly contained in the gospels, you would reject without 
 hesitation as at best useless, and as not having any right to 
 the title of Christian. Your most ardent desire would be to 
 revise your faith and concentrate your trust on Christ.
 
 JOHN CAM I.N 
 
 By Ernest Kenan 
 
 M. Jules Bonnet, already well known by excellent works 
 on the history of the Reformation, and in particular by a very 
 interesting biography of Olympia Morata, has lately published 
 in two volumes a collection of the letters of Galvin, written in 
 French.* This valuable correspondence had not been before 
 collected in a complete manner. " About to return to God," 
 as Theodore Beza states, " John Calvin, constantly occupied 
 with the interests of the Church, put into my haul- his trea- 
 sure, that is a vast mass of papers, expressing a desire that if 
 among them there was anything likely to be useful to the 
 Church, it should be given to the public." This dying wish 
 of the apostle obtained in the sixteenth century only an 
 imperfect fulfilment. The contests which engrossed all the 
 activity of men's minds, the catastrophic* and m > hich 
 
 ensued immediately on the demise of the reformer, and still 
 more the scruples of respectful admirer-, absorbed at once in 
 the accommodations due to contemporaries, and in the regard 
 claimed by a memory which was dear to them — all contributed 
 to delay the task bequeathed by Calvin to his friends. 
 longer have we reason to regret the postponement, since a 
 young and laborious historian has, with the care of a disciple 
 
 ^Lettres de Jean Calvin recueillies pour la premiere m 
 
 les manuscrite originaux; Lettrée firangeiaes. 2 Vol. Paria : C. Meyruets, 
 
 Y 2
 
 572 
 
 and the exactness of a scholar, brought together into one, those 
 archives of the cradle of his faith. The labours of Mons. 
 Bonnet leave only one desire unfulfilled, namely, that a col- 
 lection of the letters written in Latin should as soon as possible 
 be added to the volumes consecrated to those which are written 
 in French. Calvin's letters are historical documents. We 
 under-value them if we seek therein only a literary interest ; 
 we misapply them if we make of their contents a book of piety. 
 Is the character of Calvin, such as it results from these 
 new sources of information, sensibly different from that which 
 could be traced from the lights of history and the parts of his 
 correspondence already published ? There would be some 
 exaggeration in an affirmative answer. Calvin was one of 
 those absolute characters, fused as a whole at once, whom you 
 see entire at the first glance — a letter, an act suffices to show 
 you the man. No fold in that inflexible soul — which never 
 knew doubt or hesitation. The natures which reserve for 
 history unexpected secrets, and which at each posthumous 
 revelation show themselves under new aspects are those rich 
 and flexible natures which, superior to their course of action, 
 their destiny and even their opinions, deliver themselves 
 to the world only by halves, and always keep a mysterious 
 side, bv which they freely communicate with the infinite. 
 God, who abandons the world to the strong and the violent, 
 nearly always refuses to them the gifts of subtlity, which 
 alone lead to truth in speculation. Truth is all in nice 
 shadings ; now in order to exercise a powerful influence in 
 the world, you must have no eye for fine distinctions ; you 
 must believe that you only are in the right, and that thoso 
 who think differently from you are wholly in the wrong. 
 The mind which is void of passion and delicate in its percep- 
 tions, the mind which is critical toward itself, sees the weak 
 Bides of its own cau^e, and on certain occasions is tempted
 
 37.*: 
 
 to be of the opinion of its adversaries. On the contrary, 
 the man who is positive and heated in his opinions, boldly 
 identifies his cause with that of God, and acts with the daring 
 which naturally springs from such self-confidence. To him 
 the world belongs ; and in some sense, justly, for the world 
 moves on solely under the impulse of characters so firm and 
 resolute. Nevertheless, to such the luxuries of thought are 
 denied ; they never behold truth in its pure form ; duped by 
 themselves, they die and pass away without having attained 
 genuine wisdom. 
 
 More than any other person, Calvin possessed this un- 
 bending rigour, which is the essential characteristic of the 
 man of action, I doubt if you would find a more complete 
 type of an ambitious soul, eager to gain sovereignty for his 
 own thought, because he believes it true. No regard for 
 riches, for titles, for honours ; no display ; a modest life, an 
 apparent humility ; every thing sacrificed to the desire of 
 modelling others after his own image. I see only one person, 
 Ignatius Loyola, who can dispute with Calvin the palm of 
 self-assertion ; but Loyola employed in the work a Spanish 
 ardour, and a fervour of imagination, which have their beauty; 
 ever did he remain a familiar reader of the Amadis de G .ml, 
 pursuing after the chivalry of the world, spiritual chivalry; 
 while Calvin has all the severities of the passion, without 
 having any of its enthusiasm. He might be styled a sworn 
 interpreter, arrogating to himself a divine right to determine 
 what is christian and what is anti-christian.-*- His correspon- 
 dence lofty, grave, stoical, is totally destitute of grace ; there 
 is no life in it ; never do you find there a spontaneous out- 
 burst, or an accent of the heart. His style is equally firm 
 and nervous, but also dry, dead, confused, often obscure, 
 doubtless because the terrors and the constraint of the age 
 obliged him to utter himself inarticulately: It is said that
 
 374 
 
 his Latin letters show him on a more tender side. In th.^e 
 now before me I observe nothing but rigour — a grave con- 
 viction, a saddened disposition, beholding sin every where, 
 and regarding life as an expiation. A single time, on 
 occasion of the birth of a child, he tries to smile ; but it is 
 a strange outburst, which forthwith terminates in sadness : 
 " It grieves me that I am not with you, at least for half a 
 day, to laugh with you while they make the babe smile — but 
 on the penalty of enduring his crying and weeping ; for the 
 life which is to end in smiles must begin in tears." 
 
 It is surprising that a man, who in his life and in his 
 writings shows himself so unsympathising, should have been 
 in his day the centre of an immense movemenjt, and that a 
 temper so sharp and severe should have exercised a great 
 influence on the mind of contemporaries. How, for example, 
 could one of the most distinguished women of his time, 
 Renée de France, surrounded, in her court at Ferrara, by 
 the flower of the first minds of Europe, be smitten with this 
 severe master, and be engaged by him in a course which was 
 spread with so many thorns ? You cannot exert this kind 
 of austere seduction, except when you are deeply in earnest 
 with opinions. Without that lively, profound, sympathetic 
 ardour, which was one of the secrets of Luther's success, 
 without the charm and perilous attractions of François de 
 Sales, Calvin gained success because he was the most Chris- 
 tian man of his age, in an age and a country that were bent 
 od a Christian re-action, liven moroseness was a condition 
 of his success, for persons seriously religious are gained more 
 easily by severity than laxity ; they prefer narrow and rough 
 roads to broad and easy ones, and the surest means to attach 
 them to you is to require much from them without appearing 
 to concede to them anything. Need I add, that for the es- 
 sential qualities of uprightness, honour and sincerity, the
 
 375 
 
 correspondence published by M. Bonnet completely clears the 
 Reformer from the calumnies invented by hate and party 
 spirit ? Two letters fabricated by a clumsy forger with a view 
 of sullying Calvin's memory, and which superficial historians, 
 following in the steps of Voltaire, not only accept but propa- 
 gate, have been successfully shown to be apocryphal. If the 
 argumentation of M. Bonnet on this point was not conclusive 
 it would find a decisive confirmation in the new researches of 
 M. Charles Read on the subject, researches founded on a 
 comparison of the pretended autographs of Calvin with the 
 documents which really issued from his hand.* 
 
 Intolerance was the inevitable consequence of the character 
 and position of Calvin. Whenever a man allows himself to 
 be mastered by an opinion which he holds to be a complete, 
 absolute and evident truth, to such an extent that you are 
 guilty if you do not accept it, he is of necessity intolerant. At 
 the first view Calvin offers a strange contradiction in eagerly 
 claiming liberty for himself and his associates while sternly 
 refusing it to others. But in reality, all this is very simple ; 
 he believed differently from the Catholics, but he believed as 
 absolutely as they.- — What is now regarded as the essence of 
 Protestantism in its birth, namely, freedom of belief, the right 
 of each one to form his own creed, was scarcely known in the 
 
 sixteenth century. Doubtless bhat appeal from the Church to 
 
 Scripture which was the soul of the Reformation, would not 
 do otherwise than in the long run turn to the profit of criti- 
 cism, and in this sense the first Reformers are the harbingers 
 of free thought. But this they were without either knowing 
 or wishing it. The Catholics have with some reason said of 
 the French Revolution — " Effected against us. it has worked 
 for us :" the philosopher may say the same of the Reformation. 
 
 Bulletin de, la Société de l' histoire du Protestantisme français ; t e ttunife, i l ' r 
 cahier.
 
 376 
 
 History presents many instances in which the doctrines of a 
 party, and the occult tendencies of that party are in full con- 
 tradiction. In the quarrel of the Jesuits and Jansenists, the 
 former maintained a doctrine more conformed to reason, and 
 more respectful for liberty than that of the latter ; and yet 
 Jansenism was at the bottom a liberal movement, and so a 
 movement around which honourable and cultivated men might 
 naturally rally. 
 
 — This violent zeal which forces a man, strong in his own 
 opinions, to seek the salvation of others by forcible means, and 
 without any regard to the claims of mental freedom, shines 
 out in the whole of Calvin's correspondence: — Writing to the 
 Regent of England, during the ministry of Edward VI., he 
 says, " As I learn, my lord, you have two sorts of rebels who 
 raise themselves against the king and the kingdom ; the one 
 are fanatics who, under the pretext of serving the gospel, 
 desire to throw everything into confusion; the others are 
 devotees of the superstitions of the Roman antichrist. All of 
 them well deserve to be put down by the sword which is 
 entrusted t i y>u. seeing they assail not only the king, but 
 God, by whom the king has been placed on his throne, and 
 ha^ committed to you the protection as of his person so 
 of his majesty." The model which he proposes to the regent, 
 and afterwards to the King of England himself, is Josiah, 
 King of Juclah, who was designated by the prophet as him who 
 should offer idolatrous priests on their own altar (1 Kings, 
 xiii., 1 seq. : 2 Kings, xxiii.), and who is described as sur- 
 passing all other antecedent raonarchs because he did his 
 utmost to root out the priests of Baal. The example too 
 which Calvin holds up for their fear and avoidance is that of 
 the kings who, " having beaten idolaters down did not utterly 
 extirpate them." and who are reproved for failing "to destroy 
 their chapels and other places of senseless devotion."— As the
 
 377 
 
 Catholics, Calvin claims toleration not in the name of liberty 
 but in the name of truth? -^When he entreats civil magistrates 
 to punish " the incorrigible men who despise spiritual penal- 
 ties, and those who profess new dogmas," he never once 
 thinks that the same principle might be turned against him- 
 self, and, desiring to defend himself against the murder of 
 Servetus, he writes with an untrembling hand this terrible 
 
 title, Defensio orthodoxie fidei ubi ostendiur hsereticos 
 
 jure gladii coercendos esse : A Defence of the orthodox faith 
 
 in which it is shown that heretics must be put down by 
 
 the use of the sword. 
 
 Violence of the kind astonished no one.* It was in some 
 sort a common right. Bolsec violently driven from Geneva ; 
 Gruet beheaded ; Gentilis for a time escaping from the scaffold 
 by retractation ; Servetus, suffering, under the eyes of Farel, 
 his atrocious punishment ; are not insulated acts, Bitterness 
 and threatening flow into Calvin's pen as a natural sentiment ; 
 " Aware in part what sort of man he was ;" so he writes in 
 regard to some unknown person ; " I should have wished he 
 had rotted in some ditch, could it have been according to 
 my desire, and his coming rejoices me as much as his who 
 had pierced my heart with a poignard ; and I assure you, 
 
 * This statement is too absolute. More than one powerful voice was raised in 
 protest against the persecuting spirit. I give as a specimen words uttered by 
 Luther "The repression of heresy belongs to the bishop not to the magistrate. For 
 heretics can be restrained by no outward force. In consequence you must deal 
 with them in a different manner than by the severity of the sword. The matter 
 must be conducted with the Word of God. If you succeed not with thai instrument, 
 in vain do you apply worldly force, even if you fdl all things with blood. Hen >y 
 is something of a spiritual nature, which can be consumed by no fire, nor washed 
 out by any water ; Solely by the Word of God can it lie destroyed. So far arej'ou 
 from being able to root it up by violence, that you do bur add strength to it there- 
 by." See a scarce, interesting, and valuable piece published in L554 by Sébastian 
 Castellio under the incognito of Martin Bellius, in which may be found the origi- 
 nal whence I have made the above extract, an essay against persecution, by Cas- 
 tellio himself, the opinion of other eminent men of differed ages to the same effect, 
 and a refutation, by Basil Montfort.of the chief reasons adduced in behalf of the 
 use of violence in spiritual things. The piece is entitled De Eareticia, an sint 
 perse-quendi, et omnino quomodo sii rum ei» agendum. The Editor.
 
 378 
 
 madam, if he had not escaped so soon, it would not have been 
 my fault that he was not consigned to the flames." You 
 here recognise the terrible frankness of the man who in regard 
 
 Servetofi wrote, Si venerit, modo valeat mea auctoritas, 
 vivum exire non patiar; If he come, provided my authority 
 ■</. / will not allow him to go out alive; of the man 
 who. of his own accord, furnished to the Inquisition at Vienna 
 proofs against that persecuted one, and sent to the Archbishop 
 of Lyon the leaves of the book which was meant to kindle 
 Serve tus' s funeral pile.* Not even death appeased him. 
 Three years after the execution of Gruet, there was found in 
 a garret an autograph work in which the rebellious canon 
 expressed with rage and despair the thoughts which in better 
 times he would have had the right to express with calmness 
 and wisdom. Calvin, not thinking the work punished suffi- 
 ciently by the death of its author, caused it to be burnt by 
 the hand of the public executioner, and drew up its condem- 
 nation with his own hand. Instead of the pity called for by 
 the dreams of an exasperated mind, repaying persecution 
 by violence of language, he has nothing but anger for what he 
 calls " blasphemies so execrable that there is no human being 
 but oinrhc to tremble at hearing them.'* ^This unhappy man, 
 fated to die for the guilt of saying in bad style in the six- 
 teenth century, what was said in good style in the nineteenth, 
 is in the eyes of Calvin " the adherent of an infected and 
 worse than diabolic sect — disgorging execrations, disgustingly 
 offensive, infections so stinking as to taint a whole country, to 
 such an extent that all people of conscience ought to ask 
 pardon of God for such a blaspheming of his name." 
 
 The severities of Calvin in what regards private morals, 
 astonish and wound us perhaps still more than those which 
 
 the essay of M. E Saisset on Servetna in the Berne dtt deux Mondai 
 February and March
 
 379 
 
 were dictated to him by orthodoxy. Too much inclined to 
 slight human liberty, and solely occupied with moral reforms, 
 
 he in every way took a false view of the function of the state, 
 and made Geneva into a kind of theocratic republic which 
 was governed by the ministers of religion, and in which a 
 Protestant Inquisition extended itself to the whole of man 1 1 
 existence. " The condition of men's souls" in Geneva in 
 the sixteenth century, held the same rank as it holds in Spain 
 in our days. An annual visitation from house to house was 
 set on foot, to question the people as to their faith, and to dis- 
 criminate between the ignorant and the learned on one side, and 
 believers on the other. ' The most embittered strokes of irony 
 came from the pen of our reformer against that party of 
 libertines, who offered an effectual opposition to his rigours ; 
 "There have certainly been some murmurs and menaces from 
 the debauched creatures who cannot endure chastisement. 
 Even the wife of him (Amédée de Perrin) who is about to pay 
 you a visit, and writes to you from Beza, lias arrogantly raised 
 her voice. But she was compelled to seek the country because 
 things did not go well for her in the city. The others lower 
 their heads instead of raising their horns. There is one of them 
 (Gruet) who is likely to pay very dear for his doings; I do not 
 know that he will escape with his life. The young seem to 
 have got the notion that I press them too hard. But it 
 would be a pity if the rein were not kept tight on them. 
 Accordingly it is a duty to secure their happiness, notwith- 
 standing their opposition." And in another place ; " Satan 
 has here a pretty good number of tinder boxes and matches, but 
 it will all end in smoke. The capital punishment inflicted 
 on one of the set (Gruet) has well beaten down their pride. 
 As to your guest (Amédée Perrin), I know not with what 
 face he will look on us on his return. However Ids wife lias 
 done so much devilry that she has been obliged to flee to
 
 380 
 
 the country. She has been absent about two months. When 
 she comes back she will find it necessary to make no noise." 
 
 It would, however, be unjust to estimate the character of 
 Calvin merely from these rigorous proceedings. Moderation 
 and tolerance can hardly prevail in times which are ruled by 
 absolute and ardent convictions. Persuaded that a sound 
 creed is the supreme good, a good in comparison with which 
 this earthly existence is a small matter, each party is naturally 
 inexorable towards every other. Hence a terrible reciprocity. 
 The man who makes light of his own existence and is ready 
 to surrender it for his creed, is readily tempted to make light 
 of the existence of others. Human life, of which moderate 
 epochs are so justly sparing and careful, is sacrificed with a 
 frightful prodigality. The abominable excesses of 1793 can 
 be explained only by one of those crises in which human life 
 falls, so to say. to the lowest price. A sort of frenzy seizes 
 men's minds; they receive and inflict death with equal uncon- 
 cern, Let us represent to ourselves the state of excitement 
 in which the fervent apostle of the reformation must have 
 lived, when from day to day he received from Paris, from 
 Lyon, from Chambery, news of the tortures endured by his 
 fellow religionists. History has not sufficiently insisted on the 
 atrocity of those persecutions, and on the resignation, the 
 courage, the serenity of those by whom they were endured. 
 There are in those scenes, pages worthy of the first ages of the 
 Church, and I doubt not that a narrative, simple, touching, 
 written from the documents and letters of the time — that such 
 a narrative of those sublime combats would equal the ancient 
 martyrology in beauty. '""The voice of Calvin, in these trying 
 moments, ascends to a truly admirable elevation. His letters 
 to the martyrs of Lyon, of Chambery, to the prisoners in the 
 Châtelet, sound like an echo of the heroic times of Christianity, 
 of pages detached from the writings of Tertullian or Cyprian.
 
 381 
 
 I allow that before I had been introduced by M. Bonnet into 
 this blood-stained chamber of martyrs, I was not aware of the 
 nobility of the victims, or the cruelty of their tormentors. 
 Other persecutions have, without doubt, been more murderous. 
 Philip ii. shed m >re blood. What persecutor does not lower 
 his head in the presence of the Duke of Alba ? But at least it 
 was the faith of centuries which, in Spain and the Low Coun- 
 tries, fired the stake and erected the gallows. Those heca- 
 tombs, offered to what was considered religious truth, have 
 their grandeur. But when Sardanapalus (the name given by 
 Calvin, in his correspondence, to Franeios 1er) in order to serve 
 the interests of his policy, or to keep his pleasures undisturbed 
 makes himself the avenger of a creed which he does not hold, 
 he commits a crime at once odious and horrible. The absolute 
 faith of Spain covers its funeral piles with a sort of poetry. 
 You form a lofty idea of human nobility, when you see a 
 barbarous man, given up to all the impetuosity of his instincts, 
 prefer his religion to his life, and inflict and suffer death for 
 what is to him the truth. But in seeing in a country over- 
 run with indifference, a highly civilised country, noble women 
 burned, infants put to torture, tongues cut out, scores of 
 victims perishing in dungeons where they await their death, 
 and the king, as a proof of his zeal, declaring that he was 
 " not satisfied with his parliament of Paris, and causing his 
 counsellors to be scolded as unconcerned and tardy because 
 they did not burn men fast enough," who can avoid indigna- 
 tion ? who can help, for a moment, doubting the moral value 
 of a country which could permit so execrable a gambling 
 with human life ? 
 
 Let us not be astonished if Calvin appears to us so severe, 
 so bitter in his convictions, so intolerant towards the convic- 
 tions of others. • How can you believe by halves that for which 
 you are proscribed ? What vacillating faith does not become
 
 382 
 
 fanatical under torture ? The joy of suffering for your faith 
 is so great that empassioned natures have been known to 
 embrace opinions in order to hare the pleasure of suffering for 
 them. In this view persecution is an essential condition of 
 all religions creations. It has a marvelous efficaciousn». 
 fix ideas, to drive away doubts, and what is wrongly (in my 
 opinion) called the scepticism of our times would yield under 
 this energetic remedy. If we are timid, undecided ; if we 
 hardly believe our own ideas, we should be brought to a vivid, 
 and active faith, were we to be subject to persecution. Let 
 us not desire the medicine, for it might make us intolerant in 
 our turn. 
 
 It admits of no question that the rigour of character 
 which constituted Calvin's strength, obstructs the develop- 
 ment of intelligence and excludes the flexibility of that menial 
 freedom, which is drawn on in every way by the disinterested 
 love of truth. But powerful action must be bought at that 
 price, great though it is. Largeness of mind founds nothing. 
 It is narrow thoughts that unite men. Men who build up 
 churches are commonly as restricted in thought as they are 
 unamiable in temper. One is at first surprised, in going 
 through Calvin's letters, to find in them the correspondence 
 of a statesman, charged with the details of business rather 
 than that of a thinker or an asetic. Even his theology 
 has no lofty range. Pretty much disengaged from scholasti- 
 cism, more of a civilian than a theologian, Calvin, in producing 
 the reformation he effected, yielded not so much to speculative 
 considerations as to views of practical morality. His long 
 professions of faith scarcely furnish a few lines which can be 
 assimilated by the thought of our times : the creed has 
 til its grandeur ; the philosophy is feeble: all imagina- 
 tion, all poetry has disappeared. But to stop here would be 
 What did it matter that Calvin was a poor philoso-
 
 383 
 
 pher and theologian, if that very mediocrity was the condi- 
 tion of the work he was to accomplish ? Would a solitary 
 thinker have succeeded, as did he, in lightening the burden of 
 the middle ages, and in boldly receding ten centuries in Christ- 
 ian history ? In the same way, would Calvinism, without its 
 strong aristocratic organisation, without the vigorous guardian- 
 ship to which it subjected individual consciences, have success- 
 fully withstood the attacks which it underwent and have 
 preserved in France an imperishable leaven? Strength is 
 ordinarily gained only at the price of great sacrifices exacted 
 from liberty, we and may hold that the endeavours of Calvin, 
 disjoined from his sombre and austere character, would only, 
 like so many others, have proved futile in presence of the 
 enormous pressure exercised by Catholicism on the human 
 mind. 
 
 FINIS.
 
 8i56 -nr
 
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