3 1822 00173 3401 to JNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 5/ 3 1822 00173 3401 THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1893. THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1893. LECTURES ON THE BASES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. DELIVEEED IN OXFORD AND LONDON IN APRIL AND MAY, 1893. BY CHARLES B. UPTON, B.A., B.Sc. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MANCHESTER COLLEGE. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, CO VENT GARDEN, LONDON; AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1894. [All Riyhtt reserved.] LONDON : PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON, 178, STRAND. TO MY REVERED TEACHER IN PHILOSOPHY, THE KEY. JAMES MAKTINEAU, LL.D., S.T.D., D.D., D.C.L., D.LiTT., WITH DEEP ADMIRATION FOR HIS EMINENT GENIUS, AND WARMEST GRATITUDE FOR VERY MANY PROOFS OF HIS EVER- READY PERSONAL KINDNESS. " Welche Keligion ich bekcnne ? Keine von alien, Die du mir nennst ! Und waruni keine 1 Aus Eeligion." Schiller. H /?ao-iAeia TOV Of.ov ei'ros V/J.MV ecrr/v. Kai OVK elfju j,oi/os, on 6 Trarrjp [ACT* e/zov ecrrt. Maxapipi ol KaBapol Ty KapSip, OT6 avrol TOV 6euv o Sayinys of Jesus of Nazareth "The Kingdom of Heaven is within, but we must also make it with out. " Florence Nightingale. PREFACE. THESE elementary Lectures on the Philosophy of Eeli- gion have been delivered and published mainly in the hope that they may prove in some measure helpful to those persons who have ceased to see in an external, miraculously-attested Eevelation a satisfactory founda- tion for Eeligious Belief, and are seeking a rational basis for faith which shall be in harmony with that general theory of the cosmos to which the soundest science and philosophy of our time appear to lend the strongest support. In this respect, accordingly, the pre- sent volume may, perhaps, be found of some service as an introduction to far more elaborate and important works, such as are Dr. Martineau's two treatises, "A Study of Eeligion," and "The Seat of Authority in Eeligion." While recent books on religious philosophy from an "orthodox" standpoint (such as Dr. Fairbairn's erudite and thoughtful treatise on "The Place of Christ in viii PREFACE. Modern Theology") represent all that is deepest and most precious in both Ethics and Religion as derived from an abnormal and wholly exceptional disclosure made to humanity through the Incarnation of the Second Person of a tri-une Godhead, the aim in these Lectures is to find a natural and rational ground for Theism in the normal self-consciousness of mankind. Hence, while it is maintained in this volume that the Incarnation or felt Immanence of God in man's rational, ethical and spiritual nature is the only solid foundation of a satis- fying theistic faith, the Incarnation here contended for, though, in my view, most completely manifested in the personality and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, is by no means peculiar to him, but is, in its essence, the intrinsic property and highest privilege of all rational souls. Accordingly, I heartily accept Dr. Lyman Abbott's happy characterization of Jesus as the " greatest religious genius" of our race, but I give to that expression a breadth of meaning, and carry it out to logical issues, which Dr. Abbott, and his confreres of the neo-orthodox school, are evidently, at present, quite unprepared to endorse. The philosophical writers whose works have had the greatest influence on the composition of these Lectures are Dr, James Martineau and the late Prof. Hermann Lotze ; PREFACE. IX and the position of these two distinguished thinkers on the basal question of the Freedom of the Will is accepted and expounded. On some points, however, of which the more important are, (1) the exact relation of God's direct Causality to physical phenomena, and (2) the question why our Ethical Ideals are felt to carry with them an absolute authority, there will be found some difference, though, I think, of only a superficial character, between Dr. Martineau's views and those set forth in Lectures VI. and VII. ; and my treatment of the " problem of evil" deviates in some degree from that sketched in Sections 70 74 of Lotze's Grundzuge der Religionsphilosophie. A Lecture has been devoted to the criticism of that form of religious philosophy known as Absolute Idealism, or Hegelianism ; and though for the reasons there given I feel myself utterly unable to accept that system as a whole, I am well aware that I owe much to the writings of T. H. Green and of the gifted brothers Caird, as well as to the privilege of personal converse with some of the younger members of this interesting and influential philosophical fraternity. The general theory of the universe, which links together the subjects of the several Lectures, agrees in the main with that which is presented in such fascinating shape in Lotze's Mikrokosmus. b X PREFACE. I gladly avail myself of these prefatory words to give expression to my grateful sense of twofold indebted- ness to the Hibbert Trustees, first, for the great and timely advantages I enjoyed, many years ago, as a Hibbert Scholar and Fellow, and now again for the valued opportunity of offering this small contribution towards the study of a difficult and important subject. CHARLES B. UPTON. LlTTLKMORE, Feb. 27/i, 1894. TABLE OF CONTENTS. LECTURE I. PAGE INTRODUCTION. THE NATURE OF KELIGIOUS BELIEF 1 LECTURE II. SPIRITUAL INSIGHT 64 LECTURE III. AGNOSTICISM 97 LECTURE IV. CULTURE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF : I. Culture and Dogmatic Religion ... ... ... ... 125 LECTURE V. CULTURE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF : II. Culture and Rational Religion 147 LECTURE VI. GOD AS GROUND AND CAUSE OF THE COSMOS 194 LECTURE VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS.. 235 Xll CONTENTS. LECTURE VIII. PAGE ABSOLUTE IDEALISM (including the discussion of the Freedom of the Will) 278 LECTUEE IX. ETHICAL THEISM (including the question of Individual Immor- tality) 328 LECTURE I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. THE aim of the previous Lectures which have been delivered under the auspices of the Hibbert Trustees differs in one very important respect from the aim of the present course. Eeligion has been discussed by my pre- decessors in this Lectureship mainly as an interesting phase of anthropology ; and in their deeply interesting and important descriptions and analyses of the chief forms which religious belief has assumed, they have not been called upon to attempt any settlement of the question whether these beliefs rest upon a permanent basis in human nature, or whether they are merely transient fea- tures in the course of man's mental career, which, though incidental to the lower stages of intellectual development, are, as culture advances, discovered to be baseless, and so gradually loosen their hold on reflective minds. Several of the Hibbert Lectures, especially those by Prof. Max Miiller, Prof, Kuenen, Dr. Hatch, and Count D'Alviella, do contribute most valuable aids towards an affirmative answer to the philosophical question, but the nature of their specific tasks prevented them from making this the central object of interest. In the present course, on the other hand, the lecturer is called upon to make it his 2 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. primary business to examine what ground there is for maintaining that these various beliefs contain within them some elements of permanent truth which sound culture in no way tends to undermine and efface, but simply to separate from the accidental and transient concomitants which in the earlier stages of human his- tory, to a large extent, conceal and distort the essential and indestructible factors of religious experience. It is obvious that the condition of opinion at present predominant in the cultured and critical class is not very favourable to the awakenment of any warm and wide-spread interest in such enterprizes as that in which we are now about to engage. For many reasons, and among others the present engrossing interest in physical and sociological phenomena, metaphysical and theolo- gical thinking is for the nonce under a cloud, and there is a widely diifused impression that this is no merely temporary eclipse, but rather the indication of approaching extinction. Eeligions as historical matters, as curious phases in the history of speculative ideas which have once deeply influenced mankind, are no doubt subjects about which even scientific and positivist thinkers delight to hear and to read. The study of the origin and growth of psychological illusions is always fascinating, and it is pleasant to think that our more illumined minds have completely liberated themselves from these hallucinations, which still mislead less enlight- ened spirits. Around the post-mortem dissection of defunct religions a crowd of curious spectators is sure to gather ; but he who in the present day still ventures to maintain that religious belief, so far from being either defunct or I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 3 moribund, is an indestructible and indispensable element in all healthy and progressive social life, must expect at the present time to be passed by as the dull repeater of an outworn tale. Evolution is the key to the solution of all problems, and mental evolution is, in defiance of its etymological meaning, popularly interpreted to mean the mode by which the lowest states of mind, such as sen- Fation, so combine as to become transformed into the highest ideas and emotions. Thus religious beliefs are traced back to no higher sources than human hopes and fears, and to the credulous transformation of gratifying imaginations into objective and solid realities. A little reflection, however, will, I think, suffice to make this account of the origin of religious belief appear somewhat questionable. Evolution, both etymologically and rationally, means the passage into explicitness of that which was before implicit, and therefore affords not the slightest ground for the alleged conversion of a lower stage of consciousness into one intrinsically higher. If religion really grows out of personal hopes and fears, it can reach no higher level and exercise no higher potency than such as these individual hopes and fears can explain and justify. It cannot, however, be denied that the first impression made on the critical observer by the hetero- geneous and often grotesque or repulsive forms of theo- logical belief and practice which the study of comparative religion discloses, is that there is nothing in these reli- gious phenomena which may not be accounted for by the interaction of selfish fears and cravings, and of those fanciful conceptions of the presence and activity of invi- sible powers which naturally arise in the pre-scientifio B2 4 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. mind. And this idea, that religion has no loftier source than -human passions and human fancies, is apt to be confirmed when it is noticed that religions which in their early stage presented some attractive and ennobling features, often become transformed at a later date into gross and debasing superstitions. Still even in its corruptions religious faith exercises such a powerful influence over the character and will of its votaries, and calls forth in them at times such emotional fervour and such readiness to sacrifice personal interests, that the conclusion seems inevitable that there must be some deeper spring in human nature than personal hopes and fears, which religion, even in its least rational and beautiful forms, has power to set in action. The super- ficial aspect of popular religions affords no adequate explanation of the influence which these religions exert. In the present day, for instance, the religious appeals made by earnest Salvationists on the one hand, and by sacerdotal pretensions and ornate ceremonial in ritualistic churches on the other, appear vastly irrational and even childish to a critical and unsympathetic observer; and yet there can be no question that there is awakened in connection with these illogical appeals and with this sen- suous imagery a previously latent psychical force, which in many cases kindles in the worshippers a quite new moral enthusiasm, and gives to the character and conduct a decidedly higher and nobler tone. Now the spiritual energy which is thus liberated in the worshippers by the impassioned orthodox preacher or the imposingly appa- relled priest, is wholly unaccounted for by either the dogmas of the one or the esthetic ritualism of the other ; I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 5 nay, further, these very dogmas and rites generally mis- direct in part the energy which they set free, and to no small extent turn it into unlovely and uncharitable channels; nevertheless the power summoned into exist- ence is a very real one, and it is a power which, so far from being a mere compound of personal interests, is the principle of all others which on occasion proves competent to hold in check and even to entirely overcome the most urgent personal claims. And not only is this natural religious potency in human nature the only adequate explanation of the great influence of theological doctrines and forms which in themselves seem almost beneath the notice of the calm and rational observer, but this same religiosity manifests its indestructible and irrepressible character just as cer- tainly whenever an attempt is made to ignore its exist- ence and to treat human nature as consisting of nothing more than sensations elaborated by association and logical judgment. It is a commonplace remark that the human mind ever tends to rebound from the extreme of mate- rialistic negation to that of over-credulous acceptance of alleged mysteries and miracles; and the passage from the most thoroughgoing secularism to the most unques- tioning acceptance of the wonders of spiritualism and theosophy, of which we have in the present day some notable examples, is only a particular illustration of the universal truth that the human mind never remains long satisfied with the information which the mere senses and intellect can supply, but inevitably seeks some form of expression and satisfaction for that consciousness of per- sunal relation with the non-phenioncual and the universal I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. which in some form will assert itself in the mind and heart of man. What, then, is this mysterious element in human nature which finds a strange satisfaction and an access of emotional and moral power in public and private devotions, and in dogmas and rituals which are often in- trinsically inconsistent and irrational, and quite powerless to justify themselves in the face of intelligent criticism ? Why is it that when, as was the case in this country in the eighteenth century, and in the Illuminism of France and the Aufklarung of Germany, common sense and criticism, revolting from ecclesiastical pretensions and theological absurdities, have succeeded in rationalizing everything, and in emptying religious faith of every ingre- dient which the critical understanding cannot endorse, why is it, I ask, that this condition of things, in which the spirit of the time confines its attention to physical and psychological phenomena, and rejects all faith which cannot be traced back to this sensational source, is invari- ably short-lived, and a Wesley in England or a Schleier- macher in Germany soon finds crowds eager to imbibe a fresh and richer supply of that mystical faith in the invi- sible central Mind and Heart of the universe, apart from which the soul feels a craving which will not for long together leave it at rest ? Why was it, in like manner, that in Eome, when rationalism had so discredited the old religion that, as we are told, a state soothsayer could hardly repress a smile when he met in the street a brother official, Neo- Platonism with its spiritual ecstacies, and Orphic and Chaldaic mysteries with their theurgic rites, flowed into the world's capital to fill the aching void ; and why is it I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 7 now in this country, when one-sided scientific study and philosophical agnosticism have divested a large proportion of thinkers of anything approaching to religious faith, that psychical research, with its eager study of ghost- stories, and clairvoyance, spiritualism and theosOphy, indicate the presence of a most eager desire to discover some occult method of getting behind the veil of visible and tangible phenomena, and so attaining living contact with some transcendental spiritual presence ? Surely the explanation of this vital connection between atheistic negation and theosophic credulity in both ancient and modern times, is to be found in the fact that human insight and interest cannot be confined to the finite disclosures of the senses, but that there is in the human spirit, in an implicit or explicit condition, an inner sense of relationship to an invisible Presence and Power. My endeavour in these Lectures will be to indicate what is the rational ground of that first-hand faith in the supersensual, which, though it may be repressed or stifled for a while either by philosophical scepticism or by ecclesiastical formalism, inevitably and speedily begins to re-assert itself in a form which, by reason of the violence of the re-action, is often exaggerated and in part irrational. Is this religious faith an integral and perennial factor in the constitution of human nature, or is it a temporary phase in mental development, which, like the belief in alchemy and astrology, begins to decay and disappear as philosophical and scientific insight broadens and deepens ? In other words, we have to inquire whe- ther religious faith is capable of surviving and thriving in the pure atmosphere of clear scientific thinking and 8 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. philosophical reflection. Our first business, then, will be to form some definite idea of the essential nature of this religious belief, which finds such varied expression both in history and in speculative thought. It will, however, facilitate our inquiry if, before con- sidering the several definitions which have been given of religion, we inquire whether the scientific and philo- sophical conception of the cosmos to which our present culture has attained, affords any primd-facie probability in favour of the doctrine that human knowledge and human belief are not essentially confined to the sphere of physical and psychological phenomena, but have to do also with the central ground and cause in which these phenomena have their basis and their unification. The successive stages of human culture are broadly distin- guished by the circumstance that some are predominantly analytic and others predominantly synthetic. A gene- ration or two ago the analytic tendency was in the ascendant; to-day, the synthetic rules. The analytic mind fixes on the ultimate individualities which it reaches in the course of analysis as the truly real and the truly important feature of the universe. It is this tendency which gives rise to atomic explanations of the cosmos in science and philosophy, and to extreme indi- vidualism in sociology and politics. The synthetic mind, on the other hand, delights to concentrate its interest on the universal principles which are found to be immanent in all the individuals, and to unite the individuals into larger wholes or systems. In science and philosophy, this tendency engenders extreme monistic theories of the universe, either materialistic or idealistic, which treat I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 9 what are usually called individuals as merely phases in the successive manifestation of one self-subsistent being, and therefore as having no proper independent selfhood or individuality ; and in the sphere of politics it seeks to realize that socialistic ideal in which the free initiative of individuals is suppressed and replaced by the dominant pressure of the social whole. The conflict between these two tendencies of thought always leads at length to the conclusion that the truth lies neither in an extreme in- dividualism nor in an all-absorbing universalism, but rather in the constant recognition and re-adjustment of the claims of both. No real existence, be it a physical atom or a rational soul, appears to be capable of intel- ligible explanation, unless we assume that in its nature individuality and universality inseparably blend. In the present condition of our knowledge, we can only speculate as to the ultimate constitution of the physical universe ; but various considerations render it not alto- gether improbable that the monads or centres of force into which scientific research resolves the universe, are not merely modes of the being or will of the self- subsistent ground of all things, but have themselves an elementary measure of " selfhood '' or individual- ity. But be this as it may, when we ascend from inor- ganic to organic being, we find in the lowest forms, and still more in those higher organisms in which we see evidence of feeling and consciousness, an increasing amount of apparently self-initiated activity ; and we are led to the conclusion that the end of evolution is the production of beings whose individuality shall be so real that, as in the case of man, they sluill not only consciously 10 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. determine their own action, but shall be able to contrast their own existence with the existence of other finite beings, and thus to attain an increasing insight into the character of the universe of which they appear to form a part. We thus come to regard the universe, with all its modes of matter, force and consciousness, as the form in which the Eternal God calls into existence, by a partial self -sundering, it would seem, of His own essential being, this universe of centres of energy and personal selves, which some philosophers, such as Hegel, designate as the Son of God. But in this self-sunder- ing in which the Supreme Being eternally generates a cosmos in one aspect distinct from Himself, only rational souls possessed of freedom of will are gifted with that high degree of individuality which constitutes them truly "other" than the Eternal, and so capable of standing in moral and spiritual relations to Him. But it is of the highest importance to observe that no dependent or created existences, whether they be the centres of energy which science investigates, or such high individualities as self-conscious souls, can be regarded as having a separate existence wholly sundered from their supreme source. Even in the case of man, the separation from the Eternal which constitutes his personal individual- ity is only a partial one ; and every moment of our lives our personality depends for its existence and its several activities just as much on that side of our being by which we still remain indivisibly united with the Eternal, as on that other side of our being in which we truly say we have a will of our own. Apart from that theoretical and practical reason which manifests itself in all souls I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 11 alike as self -consciousness awakens, no knowledge of nature, no interchange of ideas between human minds, no consciousness of moral authority, no possession of the spirit by divine love, would be possible to man. Perpetual unity with Him in whom we live and move and have our being is as essential to all rational thought, to all moral ideals, to all divine affection, as our partial sundering from Him, the separation of our wills from the Divine Will, is essential to all moral freedom and all personal relationship between the soul and God. And as this partial unity with, and partial separation from, the Eternal is the condition of intelligent communion of man with man, and of man with nature, so likewise in the case of physical atoms and physical objects no dynamic relations between them are conceivable, apart from the supposi- tion that every monad or ultimate principle of what we call matter is still on the inner side of its being in con- tinuous union with that Universal and Self-subsistent Being out of whom in part it emerges. Hermann Lotze argues with great force that the appa- rent action of atom on atom, and body on body, is wholly unaccountable if we regard the ultimate elements of matter as simply isolated existences existing side by side in space. It is not intelligible, he says, that a change in the inner states of one atom or monad should necessarily be followed by a change in the inner states of contiguous atoms if the several atoms were wholly independent existences. Looked at from the outside, nature, even to the scientific vision, seems to resolve itself into a pluralism of ultimate indestructible existences, and both common sense and science speak of these elements as influencing one another. 12 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. Thus things are supposed to exercise what is called a "transeunt" action or causality, whereby the one pro- jects out of itself an intermediate something which effects a change in other things. But it is impossible to form any rational conception of this supposed efficient influ- ence, this intermediate something, which has no inde- pendent existence of its own, but which, if it passes from one body to another, must in the transition state be the property of neither. It follows, therefore, that though atoms and bodies appear to be isolated co-existences in space, this complete isolation and seeming independence of each other is only an appearance ; for the reciprocal causality by which all these atoms and bodies are linked together, inevitably forces us to the conclusion that, deeper than the apparent spatial distance and division, there is a metaphysical unity, or, in other words, that the self-subsistent creative ground of all finite existence does not wholly separate Himself from any one of the plurality of dependent energies or beings into which He differentiates Himself ; and therefore, as every finite atom or finite soul still remains, as regards a part of its nature, in indivisible union with its self-subsistent ground and source, this common relation to the Self-subsistent One affords the true explanation of the metaphysical unity of the cosmos, and also of the possibility of reciprocal action of the monads of nature on each other, and of reciprocal action of the finite mind on nature, and of nature on the mind. Thus the most recent science and philosophy appear to assert at once a real pluralism or individualism in the world of finite beings, but at the .same time a deeper monism. The Eternal who differen- I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 13 tiates His own self-subsistent energy into the infinite variety of finite existences is still immanent and living in every one of these dependent modes of being ; and it is because all finite or created beings are only partially individual, and still remain in vital union with their common ground, that it becomes possible for them through the medium of this common ground to act dynamically on each other ; and it is for the same reason that those finite beings such as man, who have attained to self- consciousness, are able to enter into intellectual, moral and spiritual relations both with other rational finite minds and also with the Eternal Being with whom their own existence is in some measure indivisibly con- joined. In support of this conclusion that no satisfactory account can be given either of nature or humanity which does not do justice at once to the individualism or pluralism, the reality of which lends infinite interest to nature and to human history, and also to the divine monistic ground, or God, in w r hich all this variety finds its source, its unification, and its capacity for interaction and mutual understanding, the following passage from Lotze's Melaphysic 1 deserves careful consideration: i " In the course of our consideration of the world, we were led at the outset to the notion of a plurality of Things. Their multi- plicity seemed to offer the most convenient explanation for the equally great multiplicity of appearances. Then the impulse to become acquainted with the unconditioned Being which must lie at the foundation of this process of the conditioned, was the occasion of our ascribing this unconditioned Being without sus- picion to the very multiplicity of elements which we found to exist. If we stopped short of assigning to every reality a pure 1 69. 14 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. Being that could dispense with all relations to other beings, yet, even while allowing relations, we did not give up the independ- ence, of things as against each other which we assumed to begin with. It was as so many independent unities that we supposed them to enter into such peculiar relations to each other as com- pelled their self-sufficing natures to act and re-act upon each other. But it was impossible to state in what this transition from a state of isolation to metaphysical combination might consist, and it remained a standing contradiction that Things having no dependence on each other should yet enter into such a relation of dependence as each to concern itself with the other. This prejudice must be given up. There cannot be a multi- plicity of independent things, but all elements, if reciprocal action is to be possible between them, must be regarded as parts of a single real Being. The Pluralism with which our view of the world began has to give place to a Monism, through which the ' transeunt' operation, always unintelligible, passes into an 'immanent' operation." Lotze's theory of the universe is of especial value for our present purpose, seeing that in him, probably in a higher degree than in any other recent thinker, high faculty and achievement in the region of physical science were conjoined with an equally high faculty and culture in the sphere of philosophy. We may then, I think, with some confidence assume that the higher thought of our time discerns that no scientific account of the uni- verse based on the study of particular things and events can be intelligible and adequate, if it does not recognize as immanent in the plurality of atoms and of souls the presence and causality of the Eternal Self-subsistent One. God then, or the ultimate source and ground of dependent existences, is present as the basis and explanation of all mutual dynamic action alike in the inorganic world and I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 15 in self-conscious spirits ; but in the case of self-conscious beings He is also immanent as the necessary pre-condition of all knowledge, of an intelligent inter-communication between mind and mind, and mind and nature. Without the living presence of the universal and the eternal principles of thought and of aesthetic and ethical ideals, neither genuine knowledge, nor genuine morality, nor genuine spiritual love, is possible or conceivable. Unless the universal ground of all beings revealed its universal nature in each self-consciousness, man's nature could not be rational, but would be no more than blind feeling, wholly incapable of recognizing its relation to other beings and to the primal source of all dependent being. The very fact that the self-conscious soul is capable of rising above itself, of comparing itself with other selves, and of passing judgment on its own character, is of itself proof positive that that which is not finite and particular, but is infinite and universal, is immanent within it ; and it is this universal element which by its presence kindles that very light of reason in virtue of which the finite soul is enabled to enter into cognitive and sympathetic relations with the other energies and souls which owe their existence to the same primal source. I have dwelt at, I fear, somewhat tedious length on this question as to what is the general theory of the universe (the Weltanschauung, as the Germans term it) which in the present day most recommends itself to cultivated minds. We entered, you will remember, on this inquiry with the object of learning whether what we now see reason to accept as the most satisfactory account of the nature of the cosmos of matter and mind, suggests the possibility, 16 I. NATUEE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. or even the probability, that this religious belief, which we have seen to have been hitherto so influential and irrepressible an element in human nature and human society, has a permanent foundation in the very nature of things, and therefore, amid all the evolution of its changing forms, preserves, and must preserve, its essen- tial character and influence. Now if it be true, as we have seen reason to conclude it is, that the individual man, though in respect to God a finite and dependent being, has yet, immanent in his consciousness, the presence and activity of the universal ground of his own being, and also of all other dependent or created beings, and that it is the presence of this universal -principle within him which alone enables him to have dynamic and cognitive relations with the other finite existences in the cosmos, it follows from this very fact that man, as a thinking, a moral and a spiritual being, is conscious of wholly tran- scending his own finitude, and can discriminate between the action of this universal or higher self, as we term it, and that of his own finite self, that there is a certain self-revelation of the Eternal and Infinite One to the finite soul, and therefore an indestructible basis for religious ideas and religious beliefs as distinguished from what is called scientific knowledge. Science, in so far as it confines itself to inductions from the deliverances of our senses, does not imme- diately envisage or apprehend that universal element in our thinking and in our moral and spiritual life with which philosophy and religion are directly and principally concerned. It is true that no science would be possible apart from this immanence in man of the I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 17 eternal, self-subsistent principles of logical thinking. Were we not enabled by the help of the indwelling God to rise above our finitude and so to see things from a universal point of view, we should, as I before pointed out, be confined to the sphere of blind feeling, and be wholly unable to rise to the level of knowledge, whether of our own existence or of our relations to other beings. But though the activity of the immanent God is neces- sarily implied in all scientific study, still the attention of the savant is not directed to this inner and immanent condition of all his thought, and he confines himself to investigating the relations which link together the various finite phenomena which his senses report. But while Science deals with the infinite multiplicity and variety of the finite things or energies into which the Eternal One has differentiated His own essential being, Philosophy and Religion are concerned specially and primarily with that monistic side of the cosmos which underlies all the divisions which separate finite indivi- duals from each other; for, as we have seen, it is through the felt presence and activity of this universal ground of all being in the individual consciousness that mail becomes at once a philosophizing and a religious being. What constitutes the essential difference between the philosophical and the religious attitude of mind, I will afterwards discuss ; but at present I will content myself with having indicated the presence in the consciousness of each finite mind of that immanent universal principle which cannot be said to pertain to or be the property of any individual mind, but belongs to that uncreated and eternal nature of God which lies deeper than all those c 18 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. differences which separate individual minds from each other, and is indeed that incarnation of the Eternal, who, though He is present in every finite thing, and is not only present, but is felt and known to be present, in every rational soul, is still not broken up into individualities, but ever remains one and the same eternal substance, one and the same unifying principle immanently and indivisibly present in every one of that countless plurality of finite individuals into which man's analyzing under- standing dissects the cosmos. If this be so, we are prepared to admit as primd-facie probable that there may exist, as an integral and there- fore indestructible factor in human nature, a sense of relationship not only to the finite individualities, which like ourselves are dependent or created beings, but also to that deeper, self-existent ground of unity which is immanent in all finite existences. Now my contention is, that it is the felt relationship in which the finite self- consciousness stands to the immanent and universal ground of all being which constitutes Eeligion. And in support of this view I will now ask you to examine and compare those definitions of Eeligion which have recently been given by thinkers who have made religious pheno- mena their special study. Among the masters of the science of Comparative Eeligion, Count D'Alviella will be acknowledged to hold high rank. In the Hibbert Lectures which he delivered two years ago, he defines Eeligion as " the conception man forms of his relations with the superhuman and mysterious powers on which he believes himself to depend." In another course of Hibbert Lectures, that I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 19 by Prof. Max M uller on " The Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions of India," we read: " Keligion is a mental faculty which independently, nay, in spite of sense and reason, enables men to apprehend the Infinite under different names and under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion, not even the lowest worship of idols and fetishes, would be possible ; and if we will but listen atten- tively, we can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God." Some ten years later, in his Gifford Lectures on " Natural Religion," delivered in Glasgow in 1889, Prof. Max Miiller admits the justice of the criticisms passed upon his definition of Religion by Prof. Pfleiderer, Dr. A. R^ville and others, and proceeds to modify his former statement. " I had defined Religion," he says, " simply as a ' perception of the Infinite/ without adding the restriction, ' a perception of the Infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man.' The fact was that in my former writings I was chiefly concerned with dogmatic religion. I was anxious to discover the origin of religious concepts, names and theories, and I left the question of their influence on moral actions for further consideration. . . . Still I plead guilty to not having laid sufficient emphasis on the practical side of religion ; I admit that mere theories about the Infinite, unless they influ- ence human conduct, have no right to the name of Religion, and I have now tried to remedy that defect by restricting the name of Religion to those perceptions of the Infinite which are able to influence the moral character of man." Since delivering the Gifford Lectures on "Natural Religion," Prof. Max Miiller has delivered aud pub- c2 20 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. lished three other courses of Gifford Lectures, entitled, " Physical Religion," " Anthropological Eeligion," and " Psychological Religion or Theosophy," this three-fold division of religious phenomena being based on the three different ways in which the Infinite may be conceived, namely, under the forms of Nature, Man, or Self. In Prof. Max Muller's view, Religion is in its "physical" stage when, as in the earlier form of the Yedic religion, there was a recognition of the Infinite in Nature as underlying all that is finite and phenomenal in our cosmic experiences. This apprehended Infinite became named, individualized and personified, till at last it was conceived again as beyond all names. As soon as the human mind succeeds in distinguishing between body and soul, and sees "something infinite, immortal and divine in man," then the stage is reached which Prof. Max Muller terms "anthropological" religion. Kant, when his religious mood was awakened by the admiration and the awe which the sight of the starry firmament suggested, reached Religion, or the apprehension of the Infinite, by the " physical" road ; but when, on the other hand, his sense of the Infinite was called forth by awe and reverence in the presence of the moral law within, then his religious feelings sprang from an "anthropo- logical" source. But as Physical Religion grows out of the apprehended presence of the Infinite in nature, while Anthropological Religion supposes the recognition of the Infinite in the human soul, there arises, in Prof. Max Muller's view, a still higher phase of the religious con- sciousness, which unifies these two seemingly distinct Infinites by recognizing the indissoluble unity of God I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 21 and the human soul. The two currents of thought which lead respectively to Physical and to Anthropological Eeligion " always strive to meet, and do meet in the end, in what is called Theosophy or Psychological Religion, which helps us to the perception of the essential unity of the soul with God. Both this striving to meet and the final union have found, I think, their most perfect expression in Christianity. The striving of the soul to meet God is expressed in the love of God, on which hang all the Laws and the Prophets ; the final union is expressed in our being in the true sense of the word the sons of God." 1 Prof. Max Miiller's "Theosophy" must not be confounded with the entirely different specula- tion with which the names of Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant are associated. The Theosophy which Prof. Max Miiller appears to regard as the highest form of the religious consciousness is exemplified in various stages of development in the Upanishads of India, the Sufi sect among the Mahommedans, in the Stoic and Neo-Platonic schools of Greek thought, in Alexandrian Christianity with its doctrine of the Logos, and in such Christian mystics and theosophists as Eckhart and Tauler. It may be added, though Prof. Max Miiller does not sny so, that such religious philosophy as is presented in the Keo-Hegelian writings of T. H. Green, Principal John Caird, and Prof. Edward Caird, is essentially an attempt to give to this Theosophy a rational expression and justi- fication, and to show that religion as so expounded is identical with the presentation of Christianity found in the Pauline Epistles and in the Fourth Gospel. 1 Theosoplty or Psychological Reliylon, p. 542. 22 J. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. Now it must at once be admitted that Prof. Max Miiller's account of Eeligion, as implying a faculty in man to apprehend the Infinite, rightly emphasizes one feature which certainly appears in the religious conscious- ness when it enters on the more reflective stage. If by the Infinite is meant the self-existent ground of all finite existences, the apprehension of man's relation to such an ultimate Eeality could not be wholly absent even from the most elementary religious consciousness ; and it is no doubt correct to say that in the order of development of religious ideas this Infinite Ground of all things is first conceived as manifesting Himself rather in the visible external cosmos than in the inner life of the human soul. But even if the consciousness of the Infinite were ever so clear, the apprehension of it alone would by no means be an adequate account of what is implied in Eeligion. Eeligion implies the sense of personal relationship be- tween the soul and the object of worship. There is implied a consciousness of dependence upon a Being or Power higher than ourselves ; as Count d'Alviella says, there must, to constitute religion, be a felt relation to some superhuman and mysterious power or powers on which the worshipper believes himself to depend. In the early stages of religious thought, it is the superior power rather than the infinity which is the prominent and influential factor in the idea of God ; and that power cannot be conceived as personally related to the wor- shipping soul, unless it is itself, in some vague fashion at least, regarded as personal. Hence Dr. Martineau fixes upon the essential element in religion when he says : " Eeligion is belief in an ever-living God, that is, of a I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 23 Divine Mind and Will ruling the universe and holding moral relations with mankind." By this description of God as " a Divine Mind and Will" I do not understand Dr. Martineau to "mean that God stands in the same relation to our finite minds as these finite minds stand to each other, but only that the words " Mind " and " Will " are our best approximate expressions for a supreme self-consciousness and activity which essentially transcends the limits of human conception. God, as I have before pointed out, appears to be the immanent light of each man's reason, the immanent source of all that is permanent in our ideals and real in our spiritual affections. It may well be, as Lotze maintains, that this Supreme Ground and Source of all finite existence, in whom in a certain real sense all our finite personalities live and move, and on whom we feel ourselves to con- tinually depend both for existence and for our rational and moral insight, is Himself not only most adequately conceived by the human mind under a personal form, but actually is the one sole realization of that absolute and perfect personality of which our finite personalities are but dependent and imperfect reproductions. But admitting this, as I shall afterwards endeavour to give reasons for doing, we must, I venture to think, regard our conception of the Supreme Being as "a Mind and Will," as only the most adequate mode we possess of apprehending a Eeality which by the very nature of the case we cannot fully grasp either in imagination or in thought. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that Dr. Martineau teaches a most important and indeed vital truth when he insists that Keligion involves the 24 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. belief that a personal and ethical relationship exists between the worshipper and his God. Whenever, as in the Upanishads, the idea of a per- sonal relationship between man and God fades away, and the gods which in the Vedic hymns were invested with personality are replaced by the Pantheistic conception of an impersonal and eternal self, then, though philosophy may thrive vigorously in this atmosphere of speculative thought, religion proper inevitably decays and dies, for it lacks that sense of immediate personal contact with a superior being which is the indispensable condition of its birth and of its life. Hence the definition of religion given by Dr. A. KeVille appears to me much more satis- factory than Prof. Max Miiller's. "Religion," says Dr. Reville, "is the determination of human life by the sentiment of a bond uniting the human mind to that mysterious Mind whose domination of the world and of itself it recognizes, and to whom it delights in feeling itself united." Elsewhere Dr. ReVille writes : " More- over, we must bear in mind for this is essential that the sense of the bond which unites the human mind to the superior spirit (or spirits), whose sovereignity over himself and the world he believes that he recognizes, is the source of secret, though it may be undefinable com- fort, of which those only can deny the reality who have never known it." I conclude, then, with Dr Martineau and Dr. ReVille, that it is indispensable to all genuine religious conscious- ness that it should involve the feeling of relationship with the Being who is reverenced and worshipped. This consciousness of personal union and communion with God I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 25 is the vital element in the highest form of religion to which the race has attained, and it is equally present and -influential in the lowest, manifestations of the reli- gious sentiment. But while this feeling of relationship and kinship with a superior Being is the unchangeable essence of religion, the idea which is formed of this Object of the religious sentiment the form, that is, of theological dogma passes, like the scientific conception of th'e material world, through successive stages of develop- ment corresponding to the gradual evolution of man's scientific knowledge, and more especially to the deepen- ing and broadening of man's consciousness of the imma- nence of the Universal or the Divine as an inspiring and authoritative element in the soul's individual life. And it is to be noted that if we would understand what is most essential and permanent in man's idea of God, we must seek it, not in lower manifestations of theological dogma, such as are presented in peoples at a low level of intellectual and moral development, but rather in those conceptions of the Supreme Being which are now found in minds who in the greatest degree com- bine the deepest personal religious experience with the fullest rational insight into the highest culture of the time. For as religious experience and the accompanying theological ideas are an unfolding or evolving of the capacity of the finite mind to commune with and to rationally apprehend that Uncreated and Universal Being or Divine Self who is immanent in all finite objects, and who is also in varying degrees of fulness revealed in the consciousness of each rational soul, it will naturally be the case with theological evolution, as it is with every 26 I. NATURE OP RELIGIOUS BELIEF. evolution, that the true key to the essential nature of the process, and to the relative importance and permanence of each factor in that process, must be sought, not in the embryonic stages, but rather in the most fully developed manifestations of the evolving idea. What is most essen- tial and permanently dominant in human nature will not be discovered by studying the physiology and psychology of the anthropoid apes or even of the most primitive men, and therefore the anthropological question, whether, in the lowest stages of human civilization, the dawning religious sentiment of mankind found its earliest theolo- gical expression through the obvious conjecture that the more conspicuous objects and energies of nature were instinct with life and will, or through the notion of immaterial selves or spirits suggested by the experiences of dreams, &c., this question, I say, though very inte- resting, and indeed important from a psychological point of view, has no primary or decisive significance in regard to a true philosophy of religious experience. The ele- ments which are deepest in man's rational, emotional and artistic nature, and which finally clearly reveal themselves in the consciousness as the highest and right- fully dominant ones, are by no means those which first come to the front and find verbal or ceremonial expres- sion in the earlier stages of human evolution. If, however, I am right in placing the root and essence of religious experience in each finite soul's felt personal relationship to, and continual dependence on, that deeper and uncreated Self who is immanent in all nature and in all souls, and is the eternal Ground and Source of all that is felt to be universal and therefore intrinsically I. NATURE OF ItELIGIOUS BELIEF. 27 authoritative within us, it follows that this germinal prin- ciple of all genuine religion must be in some faint degree operative in the consciousness of even the least cultured of rational beings. But in the early history of mankind, just as in the early years of the individual man, when the perceptive faculties are all active and reflection is as yet at its minimum, the Divine Self with which the soul feels its relationship is naturally regarded as existing and manifesting itself almost exclusively in the outward world of nature ; and as natural phenomena do not to the pre-scientific mind bear clear marks of unity of author- ship, there was an inevitable tendency to multiply the powers of whose activity the different aspects of nature were regarded as the expression. But even at such low levels of culture as are reached by the Polynesian islanders, there is evidence that, along with the belief in many particular gods in whom the believers feel a more vivid interest, there also exists, more in the background of consciousness, the notion of one supreme Deity who creates and sustains the entire universe of nature and humanity. And when, partly by the experiences in dreams, but in a greater degree, I am inclined to think, by reflection on the fact that the spirit is the motive cause of action and that the body is its instrument, the notion of spirit as capable of existing apart from the body was gained, the idea of God as a Spirit pervading not only nature, but also all human minds, could not fail to arise, as giving a much more satisfying expression to the reli- gious consciousness of personal relation to a higher Being. Thus in one of the Vedic hymns we read : 28 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. " Whether one walks or stands or conceals himself, whether one lies down or rises up, what two persons sitting together whisper to each other, King Yaruna knows it ; he is as a third party in their midst. This earth too is King Varuna's, and this wide heaven, together with its distant ends. The two seas (the ocean and heaven) are Varuna's hips, and so also is he contained in each tiny drop of water. If one should fly away to the other side of the heavens, even then he would not run away from our King Varuna." 1 In this passage we see the transition from the concep- tion of God as another Self, and existing over against the human self, to the more spiritual view of God as the Self immanent, not only in nature, but also in the worshipper's own soul. In the Upanishads, which represent rather a philosophy than a religion, this idea of God as the imma- nent, all-pervading Self is dwelt upon so exclusively, that the human self tends to lose all true reality and all moral relations to God, and becomes a mere transient phenomenal phase of the life of the Great Self who is the only Eeality. In fact, the Pantheism of India is, like the Pantheism of Spinoza and of Hegel, the inevitable result of treating the relation between the soul and the immanent God as simply an intellectual or rational relation ; for the reason alone cannot see any basis for asserting the slightest degree of independent reality or causality in the human self as distinguished from the Absolute or Divine Self, and therefore such systems furnish no foundation for real moral and affectional relations between the soul and God. 1 Prof. 0. Pfleiderer's article, Zur Frage nach Anfang und Entioick- lung der -Religion, in the Jahrbucher fur prutestantische Theologie, Vol. I. (1875), p. 101. I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 29 Unless the Divine Self who is immanent in the finite soul has by His own act delegated to the finite soul an adequate degree of independent reality and moral free- dom, man does not become in any true sense a real other than God ; and apart from such otherness, there can be no genuine moral responsibility, no justification for that sense of personal relationship and consciousness of de- pendence which are indispensable factors in all genuine religious experience. I shall have occasion to dwell upon this thought in a later Lecture, when discussing the claims of what is called "Absolute Idealism," or Hegel- ianism, to represent the truest and highest form of .the religious consciousness. Though this idealism is declared by some of its recent advocates to be simply Christianity clearly thought out, I cannot but think that a system of thought which allows of no real dualism of will between man and God is not a religion at all ; still less is it iden- tical with Christian Theism ; and that as a philosophy it is but a modernized form of the same line of Pantheistic or purely intellectual speculation to which we owe the Indian Upanishads. The complete conception of Eeligion is, I believe, not reached till we recognize the fact that the immanent God is apprehended by the religious consciousness, not only as the Light of its reason, but as the Source of its moral imperative and its moral ideal, and is also directly felt as in immediate personal relation with the soul. No account of Eeligion is adequate to cover the facts of religious experience which omits any one element of this three-fold manifestation of the Eternal in the human consciousness. The eternal or divine side of man's self- 30 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. consciousness manifests itself alike in that theoretical reason which enables us to rise above ourselves and to apprehend our relation to other finite and created beings as well as to the infinite whole in that practical reason whereby esthetic and ethical ideals emerge out of our sensuous experience, and, in virtue of their self-evident universality, carry with them immediate authority to claim our reverence and to dispose of our will and also in that immediate feeling of dependence on, and sympa- thetic relation with, that Infinite and Universal Being whose essential nature our highest aspirations are intui- tively discerned to reveal. All these aspects of the self- revelation of the immanent Eternal One have the same character, that they raise the soul above the level of its separate individuality and its own personal and finite interests, and reveal the fundamental fact that this rational nature of ours is not a mere finite and limited creation by the Eternal One, but is a real differentiation or reproduction of God's own essential substance ; so that in man are potentially present those infinite and divine capacities and faculties whereby he is capable of rising above finite phenomena to unifying thought, above selfish expediency to moral principle, above personal gratifica- tion to the ineffable joy and satisfaction of self -forgetful love. How religious belief becomes mutilated, ineffective and even mischievous, when any one of the three aspects to which I have adverted are overlooked or denied, will become evident by a reference to historical instances. If the revelation of the universal and the divine is recognized in the theoretical reason and in that alone, I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 31 the inevitable result is a Pantheistic conception of God, man and the universe, in which both nature and humanity come to be regarded merely as transient and illusory appearances, temporal phases of the eternal thought-prin- ciple, which thought-principle, as being itself timeless and therefore by us wholly inconceivable, is the only true reality. To such Pantheism the exclusive intellectualism of Hindoo and ]S~eo-Platonic thought inevitably led ; and it is this feature which renders the imposing philosophical system of the noble and " God -intoxicated" Spinoza incompetent to adequately explain and justify the soul's ethical experience, and to satisfy its craving for a spiri- tual and eternal relationship with God. And notwith- standing the fact that Hegel and his Scotch and English disciples eloquently assert that in Absolute Idealism we have the only true and adequate religious philosophy, this system, too, is, as I shall endeavour to show in a future Lecture, essentially Pantheistic, and Pantheistic in the objectionable sense that it, like Spinoza's Ethica, makes the human consciousness a mere phase of the Divine consciousness, and, therefore, undermines the feeling of moral responsibility, transforms sin from an ontological reality into an inevitable and therefore salutary phase in the evolution of finite souls, and renders unintelligible that felt personal relationship and communion between God and His rational creatures which is presupposed alike in the ethical and in the religious experience of mankind. In this system the free initiative of the individual will in the formation of human character vanishes ; men can no longer, with Tennyson, say to the Eternal, " Our wills are ours to make them Thine ;" for at no stage in human 32 I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. life could the will possibly or conceivably be other than it actually is, and therefore the human will and the Divine will are to the consistent Absolute Idealist not two wills, but simply two indivisible aspects of one and the same Absolute Will or Absolute Thought. And while the exclusive insistence on Eeason or Thought, as the only mode in which the finite soul comes into conscious relation with the immanent Universal Prin- ciple, or God, thus necessarily leads to a Pantheism which mutilates and paralyzes the ethical and emotional elements in the religious consciousness ; so the exclusive insistence on the Feeling of immediate relation to the Universal, which is so eloquently advocated in Schleiermacher's Reden uber die Religion, though far from presenting so inadequate a rationale of the religious consciousness as intellectual Pantheism presents, is nevertheless an imper- fect account of the matter, and involves a Mysticism which tends to weaken and destroy all living interest in science and philosophy, as well as in social and political affairs. That the religion of Feeling, or Mysticism, has seized upon and emphasized a real and indispensable factor in the religious consciousness, is evident from the great interest which such preachers as Schleiermacher always awaken, and from the fact that in every stage of his- torical religion forms of mysticism always assert them- selves and exercise a powerful fascination and an elevating influence over some of the choicest spirits. Indeed, wherever we find a form of religion in which the mys- tical element is wholly absent, where no appeal is made to the soul's immediate consciousness of the Divine pre- sence, and God is treated mainly as a rational hypothesis I. NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF* 33 to account for the facts of nature or of man's moral life, there we invariably find a religion which kindles no warmth and enthusiasm, possesses little or no self-pro- pagating power, and which, though in general highly con- servative of the recognized moralities, is not favourable to the incoming of new and higher moral and social ideals. At the same time it cannot be denied that Mysticism ignores or neglects some very important elements which are always present in rich and effective religious experi- ence. An admirable description of the merits and defects of the exclusively mystical religionist is furnished in the following quotation from Dr. Charles Beard's Hibbert Lectures on " The Eeformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation to modern Thought and Knowledge." l " The mystic," says Dr. Beard, " is one who claims to be able to see God and divine things with the inner vision of the soul a direct apprehension, as the bodily eye apprehends colour, as the bo'dily ear apprehends sound. His method, so far as he has one, is simply contemplative ; he does not argue, or generalize, or infer; he reflects, broods, waits for light. He prepares for Divine communion by a process of self-purification : he detaches his spirit from earthly cares and passions: he studies to be 0i o-eavrov of the Delphic oracle. The ' Know thy Self of the Upanishads means, Know thy tme Self, that which underlies thine Ego, and find it and know it in the highest, the eternal Self, the One without a Second, which underlies the whole world. This was the final solution of the search after the Infinite, the Invisible, the Unknown, the Divine, a search begun in the simplest hymns of the Veda, and ended in the Upanishads, or, as they were afterwards called, the Vedanta, the end or the highest object of the Veda." And the essential supremacy of this inner unity, this Eternal Self (which is but the Hindoo way of abstractly expressing the same immanent Reality, which Jesus describes in all its concrete fulness by the words, " the Father within me"), is thus vividly set forth in the 1 P. 317. 240 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OP IDEALS. following quotation given by Prof. Max Mtiller from one of the Upanishads : " Verily, the worlds are not dear, that you may love the world ; but that you may love the Self, therefore the worlds are dear. Verily, the Devas are not dear, that you may love the Devas ; but that you may love the Self, therefore the Devas are dear. Verily, creatures are not dear, that you may love the creatures ; but that you may love the Self, therefore the creatures are dear. Verily, everything is not dear, that you may love everything ; but that you may love the Self, therefore everything is dear." l Evidently the author of this passage is inspired by a perception of precisely the same deep truth which Eichard Lovelace, the cavalier poet, expresses in the words : " I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more;" for "honour" is just one of the aspects under which that Eternal Self reveals His presence in the inmost heart of every rational being. This Supreme Unity, this Eternal indwelling Self, which the mind discerns by reflection, gradually took the place, in the more thoughtful and speculative minds among the orientals, of the many Deities who in the popular religion were supposed to manifest their presence and activity through the various phenomena of nature. And hence all philosophy and religion, in the view of cultured Hindooism, tended to pass into contemplation of this abstract Unity. In meditation on this Eternal Self, and mystic union with the same, the only road to salvation was supposed to lie. Now Buddhism was virtually a grand ethical protest 1 P. 329. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS/ 241 against this merely contemplative and mystical method of seeking salvation, and against the superstitions which always attend this passive mysticism. It is only by the fashioning of moral character, teaches Gautama the Buddha, that you can escape from the illusions of exist- ence; and therefore all speculations about the Gods, and indeed all questions concerning their reality, are practically worthless and unedifying. Hence Buddhism presents a tolerably exact parallel to the present reaction in many minds against all metaphysical theology, and to the consequent endeavour to confine religious interests to the purely ethical realm. There is, however, this important difference between the Buddhistic and the modern ethical revolt against the current theology. The Ethics of Buddha rests upon the Brahmanic notion of the illusory and worthless character of individuality, so that practically the Buddhist, like the Brahman, seeks to escape from this undesirable con- dition of individual life; but, unlike the Brahman, he thinks, as do Von Hartmann and other modern pessimists, that moral discipline and culture, and not mere philoso- phic meditation, is the most effectual way of losing that irrational longing which ties the soul to this unsatisfac- tory finite existence. Accordingly, both in Brahmanism and Buddhism man's ethical ideal is not regarded as a real revelation of the essence and character of the Eternal Self ; for in their view the end of Ethics is not to realize in increasing fulness a sense of personal relationship to the Divine Self, or the Father within us, but either to so fuse the human self with the Eternal Brahma as to B 242 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. virtually destroy all distinct sense of individual per- sonality ; or else, as in the case of Buddhism, to achieve that total extinguishing of the desire to live which appears to be equivalent to personal annihilation. The tendency of both these systems of Hindoo thought is to weaken and efface all personal passions and affections, and so to destroy that distinct consciousness of indivi- duality which, in their view, was not a privilege, but rather an undesirable condition from which they sought redemption. One of the chief features in human nature, which gives an absolute value to individuality or separate personality, is the capacity of the soul to feel a quite infinite affection for other souls, and a quite infinite aspiration to realize an ideal. It is a noteworthy fact that Gautama, notwith- standing his practice and inculcation of the highest bene- volence both to mankind and to animals, never clearly recognized that the spiritual affections and passions whereby man is related to the Infinite and the Eternal are totally different in kind from the animal and selfish desires from whose tyranny he sought to rescue the soul. He apparently never clearly saw, as Jesus saw, that Spiritual Love, so far from being a passion which con- flicts with the Eeason and fetters the soul to what is finite and disappointing, is really like the Eeason itself (of which, in truth, it is only another aspect), the self- manifestation in man of Him who is Universal and Eternal, and that, consequently, the true freedom, the blessedness and the insight of the finite soul, are only realized by progressive self-surrender to this immanent VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 243 and self-revealing Deity. Hence Prof. Kuenen, in his admirable Hibbert Lectures on " National Religions and Universal Religions," truly says of Buddhism : " It seeks not to convert, but to rescue to rescue from delu- sion and desire. The moral life is not its end, but its means. The reality was (happily !) too strong for it, and compelled it to recognize as an independent magnitude that to which it could on principle assign no such lofty place. But its want of a posi- tive ideal avenges itself. It cannot have a future unless it has and gives a prospect in the future. It is not the present inac- tivity of Buddhism, but its devoted zeal in earlier times, that astonishes us. We gratefully observe that at first compassion overbore quietism. But .that quietism, in its turn, has at last maimed compassion, who shall wonder ?" 1 "Now there can be no question, I believe, that for the entirely different estimate now generally formed of the value of individuality the modern world is chiefly indebted to the influence of Hebrew and Christian thought. It is because the Hebrew genius (in the utter- ances of its great prophets) attached supreme and inde- pendent importance to the Conscience, as the real centre of individual character, where man and the Eternal enter into the closest personal relations, that the Hebrew and the Christian never dream of seeking the true end, or ideal, of human life in the loss of individuality. As seen from the point of view of the moral consciousness, man can never be regarded as simply a transient mode of the existence of the Eternal Self. It is because the Conscience makes known the possibility in man of resist- ing the injunctions of the moral imperative, that it reveals a clear distinction between the Will or Personality of 1 P. 285. 244 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. God and the will or personality of man, and thus confers upon the latter an independent value and importance which it always tends to lose when the relation between man and God is viewed solely from the standpoint of the pure reason or intellect. Just as the feeling of resistance renders most men quite unable to doubt the reality of an external world, so does the consciousness of spiritual resistance, as presented in the discord felt at times between the human will and the invitations and injunctions of the Ideal, i.e. of the indwelling God, make it impossible for any one in whom ethical experience is vivid to remain satisfied with any theory which treats the human spirit as merely a transient mode of the Universal Spirit. Wherever the Conscience is regarded as revealing a supreme authority, there complete Pantheism becomes impossible, and individual spirits become of quite infinite significance and worth. Systems of philosophical and theological thought, such as the chief Hindoo systems, some Greek and German systems, and the system of Spinoza, which contemplate man's relation to God and nature mainly from the intel- lectual point of view, recognize no possibility of any real or ontological antagonism between the will of God and the will of man. Vice and Virtue tend to be regarded as merely necessary phases in the development of the life of the individual ; and as man in this view has no real power of origination, he practically becomes of value simply as playing a brief part, and subserving a tem- porary purpose, in the necessary evolution of eternal fate or eternal thought. The noblest Pantheistic religions, such as Stoicism in Greece and Eome, which regard VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 245 self-consciousness and reason as the very substance of all reality, emphasize a most important truth, the imma- nence of God in all souls and in every object of nature ; and undoubtedly they succeeded for a long time in inspiring and sustaining a high ethical ideal and warm ethical enthusiasm. Still, in the long run, such systems inevitably work out for themselves the logical conse- quences which are implicit in their essential nature ; for if each individual and his character is no more than a phase of the self-manifestation of the Universal Spirit, all individuals will be regarded at length as of quite secondary value, and interest in the moral progress of society will resign its place to mere speculative interest in that Eternal Being who is the only permanent reality. It is to the Hebrew race, then, I apprehend, that the world owes a great debt of gratitude for saving modern culture from the two extremes which so often meet, of Pantheism and Materialism. Looking for the relation between man and God at the very point where the two most certainly meet, viz. in the sense of Duty, the Hebrew saw in wilful wrong -doing something far deeper than vice; he saw sin there, and sin meant to him a real estrangement and opposition for the time between God and the individual soul. 1 Hence Pantheism was for him 1 " Without ever formulating a theory, the teachers of post-exilic Judaism were inclined to lay the greatest stress upon man's unfettered choice between good and evil, upon his unrestricted capacity to obey the law and to transgress it. Man's will was free." Mr. C. G. Monte- fioro's Hibbert Lectures on " The Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews," p. 518. For the antithesis of this view, see Mr. F. II. Brudley's recent work on Appear* ance and Reality, passim. 246 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. impossible. He could not view his own moral being as simply an emanation or inevitable development from self- existent thought. He was conscious that he was able in moments of temptation to obey or resist the Divine Yoice; hence he and his character had an independent or abso- lute interest and value in the view of the Eternal. The Hebrew conception, however, of the action of God on the individual spirit, was seriously defective in this, that the Ideal, in the earlier stages of Jewish thought, was con- ceived as reaching the individual soul in the form of an external commandment, rather than as inherent in the very constitution of the soul, in virtue of the soul being of the same substance as God. It was not till late in their history that the Hebrew seers saw what the Pantheistic thinkers of India and Greece had long seen, that the human spirit is a reproduction or differentiation of the Absolute Being, and that therefore in the awakening of the conscience we have not to do with an external com- mandment, but with the conscious realization of the authority of that Divinity who is already implicitly present in the very nature and essence of the soul. The human mind, accordingly, reaches, I think, most nearly to a correct apprehension of the true relation of the soul to God, when it combines what is best and most vital in the Hebrew ethics and religion on the one hand, and in Greek and oriental religious thought on the other; that is, while preserving with the Hebrew the sense of the freedom and absolute worth of the indi- vidual soul, and of the fundamental character of sin and holiness, yet realizing, with the Pantheist, the essen- tial divinity of human nature, the immanence of the VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 247 Universal and the Eternal in the depths of each man's personal life. In the last Lecture I considered how far the external world is capable of awakening in man the belief in an Eternal Cause and Ground, but, as I then said, religion never adequately realizes itself in the human conscious- ness till we recognize in our inner life the presence of Ideals which appeal to us with the authority, not of any individual mind, nor of any social combination of indivi- dual minds, but with a quite absolute imperative. As it is characteristic of man as a rational being that he can rise above his finite individuality, so in the moral life of man Ethics proper shows itself in the form of an Ideal of conduct which, although it emerges out of our own individual consciousness, has yet a quite universal sig- nificance. This felt invitation and injunction to higher levels of thought and action has clear characters which indicate that it does not originate in that finite and par- ticular nature which we share with the animal, but has its source in that universal and rational nature which belong to us as consciously participating in that Eternal Life, of which our souls are a reproduction. All our personal experiences which are occasioned by the finite impressions made upon us by the external world are capable of eliciting in us ideas which are more than finite, and which could not be produced by any addi- tion or accumulation, either in our own case or through heredity, of merely finite sensations. The experiences of finite extension gradually elicit, but do not constitute, the idea of Infinity ; nor does the accummulation in imagi- nation of finite durations constitute the idea of Eternity. 248 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. In like manner, in the case of our aesthetic and ethical sentiments and j udgments, the particular experiences of life awaken by degrees Ideals of the True, the Beautiful and the Good, which are distinctly recognized as not belonging in a special sense to each one of us individually, but to be the emergence in our consciousness of the per- ception, more or less vivid and adequate, of a universal or absolute beauty, of a universal or absolute good. This higher, or, as I may call it, Divine element in our con- sciousness, is both in its origin, and indeed all through its history, associated, and in a measure limited and dimmed, by narrow views, passions and considerations of expediency which appertain to us as individual finite beings seeking our immediate or remote personal plea- sures and satisfactions ; but I maintain that so soon as the animal passes into the properly human stage of existence, this ideal insight into a good, which is not merely mine or yours, but which is absolutely worthful, begins in some elementary form to manifest itself as a real factor in man's consciousness. The savage whose sympathies or hereditary tendencies have led him to identify in some degree his own personal self with the tribal unity, not only feels, when his own individual desires and the interests of the tribe happen to clash, that there is some amount of pain (as the Darwinians would say) resulting from allowing the occasional personal appetites to override the more permanent social affections, but he also feels the incipient presence of something more than this ; he feels that he is bound by some authority, which is quite distinct from either his natural appetites or his natural sympathies, to hold in check his own cravings VII. GOD AS THE SOTTKCE OF IDEALS. 249 when the well-being of his tribe demands it. 1 In like manner, in regard to valiant behaviour in war and fortitude in bearing pain, the more conspicuous elements in these virtues are no doubt explicable as the outcome of animal passions: but there is more than this ; the yielding to fear or to bodily torture is not only repressed by the savage's thought of the consequences to his reputation, but he also feels bound to repress it by that element of self-respect or honour in his consciousness which authoritatively asserts itself. 2 So in more advanced stages of civilization, when self-indulgence is seen by any one to be undermining and paralyzing his higher faculties, there are no doubt strong prudential and social considerations which influence him to put a curb on his lower appetites : but these are not all; for if these were all, the profligate, on observing the wreck of his better nature, would only charge himself with imprudence arising from short-sightedness ; there is also the consciousness that he has violated a law of his nature which is unconditionally binding upon him. It is true that the actions which a man performs at the bid- ding of this universal or absolute imperative are in most cases in accordance with the moral code of the persons among whom he lives, and they are also actions which on the whole are found to be conducive to the general welfare of society ; but for all that, in so far as they are 1 See the admirable chapter on the "Nature of Moral Authority," in Dr. Martinoau's Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II. 2 In relation to this subject, Mr. Huxley's candid admission, in his Romanes Lecture, that there is more in the sentiment of 'ought' than evolutionist theories avail to explain, is most important and signifi- cant, as coming from such an unexpected quarter. 250 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. truly moral acts of the individual self, they imply the recognition of an absolute obligation ; they contain the elements of the sense of duty, and of the attendant reverence for a felt authority, which, though it expresses itself in the individual consciousness, is recognized as having a source which is not individual and particular, but universal and eternal. The late Prof. Rauwenhoff of Holland, in his recent original, and in many respects very valuable, treatise on the " Philosophy of Religion," aptly expresses the idea, which I am seeking to convey, in the following words : " The consciousness of Duty is something entirely unique in us. Far from always agreeing with inclination, it is for the most part opposed to it ; and not only to the inclinations which at the very beginning of man's moral life are recognized as per- verse, but also to those inclinations from which life is wont to derive its most beautiful blossoms and fruits. It forbids the great social and religious reformer at times even to seek a place where he can lay his head ; it obliges him prematurely to sacri- fice to the hostility of his opponents his own life, which if he could have preserved it might have been of inestimable value to his fellow-men. It asks nothing about the calculations of utility and expediency. Inexorably and pitilessly it pursues us with ' Thou must !' (Du musst), and if we give no heed to it there comes into the ' Thou must !' a more emphatic tone, and it passes over into an imperative ' Thou shalt !' (Du sollst). Through the whole of our life (if our higher nature be not stupefied and deadened by absorption ni pleasure or in some ruling passion) this 'Thou must!' accompanies us, and as we reach any stage of ethical development we still feel the pressure of the Ideal summoning us to a still higher point of moral perfection." 1 1 Dr. Hanne's German translation of liauwenlioff's Wijslegeerie van den Godsdiensi, p. 233. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 251 Rauwenhoff adds : " Not all men feel this. It happens even in the case of intense mental work that the object of study may so completely pre-occupy a man that he has heart for nothing else than for his literature, his art, his music, his natural science, or whatever else it may be." But estimable, he says, as from one point of view such all-engrossing devotion to one aim may sometimes be, man, nevertheless, becomes in this way little more than an instrument ; and as concerns the other sides of his soul's life, he is practically as insensible as a sleep- walker is, except to the one idea on the realization of which his mind is concentrated. "But whenever a man wakes up from this one-sided absorption, he begins to pass this absolute judgment on himself, and the Ideal of a more perfect life appeals to him in tones which he cannot choose but hear." The Ideal which is here spoken of by Rauwenhoff is not something which arises independently of experience ; it is only an occasion of experience that it presents itself; and the fuller and richer the experience, the more pure and elevated the ideal is likely to become. But what is here contended for is, that experience and reflection do not make, but awaken or elicit the Ideal ; the actual, the individual, calls forth something higher than itself ; and the very ideal which social intercourse serves to bring into clear consciousness may even turn out to be an ideal which morally constrains a man to take a course which involves the breaking of the closest and most precious social ties. What relation, then, do these ideals of truth, of beauty, of goodness, of infinite love, which speak to us 252 711. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. in tones of absolute authority in which nothing finite, nothing merely individual, mingles what relation, I ask, do they bear to that Supreme Ground and Cause which is discerned at the central core of each man's consciousness? Surely they must be regarded as an expression of the inmost essence of human nature, and therefore as a revelation of the true character of that Eternal One out of whose substance the spirit of man is formed. It may be objected that these ideals are very different at different stages of mental and moral develop- ment. No doubt they are, for the elevation of the ideal is in necessary relation to the state of culture amid which it arises ; still all the evidence goes to prove that as human nature, under the influences of civilization, evolves its higher faculties and aspirations, the ethical ideal, as it unfolds and purifies itself from lower admixtures, becomes more and more identical in all the higher forms of humanity, thus showing that it is not the result of indi- vidual or local accident, but is the making explicit that which is already implicit in the original constitution of man. Kauwenhoff regards the reverence we feel for the moral ideal as the very essence of religion, and he would deny the name "Keligion" to any cultus in which this was not a chief feature. Eeligious faith means, in his view, the faith we have in the moral order of the uni- verse; the conviction that somehow (though the "how" may be beyond our comprehension) the man who follows the leading of the moral ideal will find that he and the purpose of the universe are at one; and he maintains that, though we cannot pretend to determine the ends VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 253 towards which nature is working, there is clearest evi- dence that the cosmos is an organism, that the forces in the universe have a definite direction imposed on them, and that Darwinism has proved nothing that weakens or refutes the Aristotelian doctrine that an idea to be realized dominates the whole course of evolu- tion, and that this idea is essentially the idea of moral perfection. But though Rauwenhoff has such faith in the moral order of nature, he will not allow that we are justified in assuming that an Eternal Self -consciousness is the ground of this moral order. It is admissible, he holds, and indeed not only admissible, but very desirable, that we should think the Cause and Ground of all things under a personal form ; but we must always remember, he says, that all such theological conceptions are but poetic symbols of a reality which transcends the range of human thought. But as Prof. Pfleiderer 1 points out, Rauwenhoff himself admits that we cannot conceive of this moral order except as the expression of a highest Will, and also adds that we must cherish and put our trust in the truth of this, though "not as a logical conception, but as poetry." If Rauwenhoff only means that the attempt to conceive of the Ground of the Universe as an Eternal Self -consciousness and Will gives us no exhaustive conception of the reality, he is doubtless right. All that is maintained is, that this mode of conception is not simply the only possible one, if we 1 See an excellent article by Dr. Otto Pfleiderer on "Die religions- philosophischen Werke von Rauwenhoff und Martineau," in the Ja.hr- biicher fur prot&itantiache Tlieoloyie for 1889. 254 Til. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. are to have any conception at all, but that there are good reasons in the constitution of our own minds, in the existence within us of authoritative ideals, and in the feeling of personal relationship between the human spirit and the Eternal, for holding that in conceiving of God after the type of our personal consciousness we are gaining a true, though only partial, insight into the infinite reality. Eauwenhoff thus agrees with Kant in recognizing our moral consciousness as the real basis of man's belief in God; but whereas Kant is obliged by the principles of his philosophy to reach the belief in God by roundabout inferences from the reality of moral obligation to an Immortality which shall allow of unending approach to perfection, and to a Supreme Being who shall secure moral retribution, Eauwenhoff and Dr. Martineau most justly, I believe, find in the moral consciousness itself immediate and firm ground for theistic belief. Even Prof. H. Sedgwick (though he is in close sympathy with the empirical school of philo- sophical thought) not only admits that the feeling of "ought" is unique, that is, is irresolvable into feelings of pleasure, pain or sympathy, but he also agrees thus far with Dr. Martineau, that no empirical explanation can be given for the recognized moral principle that we are bound to sacrifice our selfish interests when the welfare of our fellow-men demands it. Social influences alone cannot have generated that ideal of conduct which, as we have seen, at times imposes on a man the obligation to incur social obloquy, and even to sacrifice his life without the slightest calculation as to whether society will or will not be the gainer by his death. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEA.LS. 255 If, then, religious belief has its chief source in man's conviction of the divine authority of his moral ideals, how comes it about that established theology has been so often the bitter foe of the most truly conscientious men ? I have already given an answer to this question in the previous Lecture on " Culture and Dogmatic Religion." This terrible mischief has arisen from the fact that established churches are ever tempted to forget that the only legitimate foundation of their existence and of their authority is in the moral consciousness of mankind, and hence they generally attach a factitious authority to mere forms of doctrinal opinion, to particular books and persons. When we consider the unwarranted pretensions of nearly all existing established religions, we see the justification of Schiller's well-known distich : " Welche Religion ich bekenne ? Keine von alien Die du mir nennst ! Und warum Keine ? A us Religion." It is through locating ultimate authority, not on its legitimate throne in the highest ethical and spiritual insight of mankind, but in some supposed exceptional revelation, that established churches have so often suc- ceeded in blunting and perverting the natural con- science of their adherents, and have substituted in its place an unnatural ecclesiastical conscience. As Dr. Martineau eloquently says, in his "Seat of Authority in Religion : " 1 " It is in vain to tell me how conscientious the ecclesiastical persecutors were. There lies the very charge I make against the Church that it has put into the conscience what has no business to be there ; has treated error of thought as if it were 1 P. 157. 256 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. unfaithfulness of will ; and misguided the affections of men "by rendering it possible for them to hate what is most lovable, and honour, if not love, what is most hateful. The whole conception of an " orthodoxy" indispensable to the security of men's divine relations is an ethical monstrosity in the presence of which no philosophy of duty is possible and every moral ideal must be dwarfed or deformed." There is, happily, good reason for hoping and expect- ing that these attempts to override and supersede the natural ethical judgment by the pretence of a superior ecclesiastical authority will not long continue to deform the civilization of our time. Every fresh generation sees with greater clearness that whatever else true reli- gion may involve, it certainly involves the recognition of the highest ethical ideal as man's only reliable insight into the nature and will of God. That every year will bring educated persons nearer to this identifying of Religion with what is highest in Ethics can hardly be questioned ; the only doubt which the present condition of culture suggests is whether in the future Ethical Ideals will take the place of theology, and reverence for these ideals replace the faith in that God, in whose essential nature Theism believes that these ideals are eternal realities. This important practical question calls, accordingly, for serious consideration. The, in many respects, admirable founder of Positivism maintains that it is impossible for the human mind to make a real synthesis of humanity and nature ; that is, to discover any one principle or being out of which both arise ; for nature, he holds, in itself has no features which are in harmony with human ideals. But still Comte VII. GOD AS THE SOUBCE OF IDEALS. 257 maintains that religious thought must somehow manage to harmonize and unify the inward and the outward aspects of human life so as to conceive of a Unity the thought of which shall serve to kindle inspiration and enthusiasm. As he maintains that the human mind cannot reach this unity (as Theism professes to do) by a real or objective synthesis, it must take the next best course, viz. unify the two by the play of poetic imagination, or, as Comte expresses it, by a subjective synthesis. " The logic of religion," he says, " when freed from scientific empiricism, will not confine itself any longer to the domain of hypotheses which are capable of verification. It must in the end find its completion in the domain much wider and not less legitimate, which, without offending the reason, is peculiarly suited to develop the feelings. The utterances of true poetry are better adapted to our moral wants, and are as harmonious as those of sound philosophy with the intellectual conditions of this relative synthesis. They ought, therefore, to obtain a great extension and influence in our efforts to systematize our thoughts ; and Positivism permits of their doing so without any danger of confusion between the two distinct methods of think- ing which openly consecrates the one to Reality, the other to Ideality." 1 In precisely the same spirit Frederick Lange, the author of the valuable " History of Materialism," en- deavours to show that it has not been truth, but illusions, which have kindled spiritual enthusiasm and founded the great religions of the world. He is, no doubt, quite justified in contending as he does that in the beliefs that have swayed so many souls at the birth-period of a new and influential religion, many of the ideas which 1 Prof. E. Caird's Social Philos'jp^y and Rflffjion of Comic.. 8 258 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. have most strongly acted on the emotions and the have not been ideas which the science of that age, or indeed of any age, could verify. But when Lange pro- ceeds to argue that, therefore, mere Ideals, which are not supposed to correspond to any reality, will suffice to kindle and sustain religious fervour and ethical zeal, he overlooks the essential point, viz. that whether these beliefs were or were not consistent with the highest culture of the age that held them, they were, at all events, beliefs which were regarded by the believers in them as in true accord with the deepest reality ; and had these believers come to see that their beliefs had no other foundation than in the poetic imagination of the prophets who uttered them, the religious movement to which they gave rise would assuredly have forthwith collapsed. As Heinrich Lang of Ziirich pertinently remarked in reply to Lange, Eeligions have ever fallen when people no longer believed in them ; that is to say, when people have come to see that their doctrines are only poems and not truth. " That is not the fate of poems which profess to deal with creations of the imagination. Has Homer's Iliad become dis- credited since the Gods and heroes have no longer been believed in ? Has Goethe's fyhiyeneia passed into oblivion because nobody thinks the story on which it is founded a fact ? Poems hold their own if they aesthetically satisfy, icligions fall when they are NO longer believed in. ' L It is quite futile, then, for Positivists to suppose that a merely subjective or imaginative synthesis of the ground of nature with human ideals will avail to create 1 Versuch einer Chrutlichen Dogmatik. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 259 and sustain a real and effective religious faith. And if we carefully consider that Worship of Humanity with which Comte and his disciples have sought to replace Theism, we cannot, I think, avoid the conclusion that it lacks the essentials of a satisfying and effective religion. As I indicated in a former Lecture, it is only by personi- fying or hypostatizing the abstract idea of Humanity (after the fashion of a Platonic Realist), and hence intro- ducing as all-important one of those very metaphysical conceptions which, according to Comte's fundamental law, cultivated society is supposed to have done with for ever, that the Grand-etre can at all perform the func- tion of an object of worship. And when we leave this metaphysical fiction and contemplate the fact, we find that the aggregate of individual human beings is about the least inspiring object of reverence that man's specu- lative imagination ever devised. It is not in the con- templation of human beings in the mass that any reli- gious sentiment or faith takes its rise. Such faith is kindled (as Comte himself was very well aware when he drew up his interesting Calendar of the Saints of Positivism) by contemplating the lives and cha- racters of those among mankind who have been the purest and noblest representatives in their respective spheres of that Divine Ideal which is implicit in the depths of every human soul. Such men are, no doubt, the real redeemers of humanity. But why are these select spirits of such surpassing interest, of such infinite worth ? Why is the contemplation of their lives and their thoughts such a perennial source of inspiration, such an efficient means of awakening religious faith and ethical enthusiasm? Surely s 2 260 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. it is because in them that Ideal which is dimly present and operative in every human mind incarnates itself in a living concrete character ; and the divinity thus realized in a grand personality fertilizes and fructifies those germs of divinity which are inherent in every soul, because every rational soul is the offspring or reproduction of Him in whom all true ideals have at once their source and their realization. Did we suppose that the ideas of the thinker or poet, the creative genius of the artist, the divine love of the saviours of the world, were but splendid develop- ments of the merely individual and accidental resources of their particular minds, we should indeed wonder at and admire them for their exceptional splendour; we should note how grandly they overtop the average level of their fellow-mortals ; but in such a case they would be quite ineffective to awaken in us religion. What kindles faith and enthusiasm as we come into personal contact, either through the living voice or through lite- rature, with these divinest of our brethren, is the inspir- ing consciousness that in them that divine ideal, which in us is but a vision and an aspiration, has become a concrete possession of mankind, and under this influence the ideals of truth, beauty and love (those features of the authoritative Universal in our souls) become invested with quite new life and interest, and for a season at least we feel assured that the Ideal is after all the most truly Eeal. As this Divine side of our nature is thus called forth into clear and intense self-consciousness, the finite Self spontaneously recognizes with joy its deep inner relationship and communion with that Eternal Self who is felt to be revealing Himself and His essential VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 261 character in that aspiration, hope and faith which the vivid presentment of the Ideal never fails, in some measure, to call forth in the human mind. Thus the cosmological demand for an adequate Ground and Cause for all finite existences, of which I spoke in the last Lecture, blends with the ethical and spiritual insight of our highest moods, and in their union they generate in all rational souls some degree of that strength- ening religious belief which enabled the world's repre- sentative Theist to say, " I am not alone, for the Father is with me." Because the spirit of man, in those elements of our self- consciousness which reveal the Universal and the Ideal, is of the same substance with the Eternal and Absolute One, the inmost life of man and the life of God so indi- visibly blend that it may almost be said, in a certain sense, that they are identical. If we say with Tennyson, " our wills are ours to make them Thine," we may also say " our Ideals are Thy Eeality, and Thou dost reveal them in our inner life that we may, by moral effort and by self-surrendering love, weave them into the very tex- ture of our character, and so make them increasingly Real to us as they are eternally Real to Thee." The law of conduct which the beauty of the Ideal invites, and which the moral imperative enjoins, is, as Kant and T. H. Green truly held, felt to be imposed upon us by ourselves ; but it is at the same time felt to be imposed upon us by the Eternal Self or God, who is at once the Ground of all cosmical life and of our individual existences. And it is, no doubt, because the positive ethical Ideal is the same in all spirits that have reached the same level 262 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. of mental and moral culture, that nearly all schools of ethical theory, however much they may differ in their way of accounting for the genesis and mode of deve- lopment of the ethical ideal, agree that the supreme principle in Ethics is the principle of Spiritual Love. Love, in its purest essence, is the emotion which attends the conscious realization of a deep oneness or identity of nature between one finite soul and another, and between the finite Self and the Eternal Self. Every expression and actualization of the Ideal in human life, whether it be in the higher reaches of "divine philosophy," in poetry, in art or music, or, chief of all, in the possession of the soul by spiritual love, all awaken the sense of a deeper unity beneath individual variety and plurality. Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, that sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men, while Eeligion is the emotion and the devotion which attends the realiza- tion in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual rela- tionship, arising out of that unity of Substance which constitutes man the true son of the Eternal Father. It is because of this essential identity of substance which relates all finite souls to each other and to God, that I cannot but think that the leaders of the " Ethical Culture" movement, among whom are some of the noblest of men, are unconsciously standing in the way of the realization of the divine end which they have at heart when they attempt to dissociate ethical enthusiasm and effort from that deep sense of metaphysical unity and spiritual relationship with the Absolute Ground of all existence of which our ethical insight and sense of Til. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 263 moral obligation is only a partial, though most impor- tant phase. Apart from the faith, the hope, and the consciousness of infinite sympathy and support which springs from the religious feeling of immediate personal relationship and communion with the Eternal Ground and animating Spirit of the cosmos, of whose essential nature man's ethical ideals, in so far as they become purified and perfected, are the ever-present expression, the sphere of ethical interest and enthusiasm is unrea- sonably and unnaturally narrowed, and is divorced from conscious relation to that deeper and central life of the universe in which all that is true in science, beautiful in literature and art, noble and heroic in conduct, ecstatic and uplifting in religious aspiration and devotion, find their common ground, their unification, and their inner- most vitality. Our apprehension of God may be faint or vivid, but it is not to be explained as gained by inference from the action upon us of something external to ourselves. It is the gradual emergence in man's self-consciousness of a clearer vision of that Eternal Self whose essential cha- racter becomes clearer as the ideals of the human mind and heart become higher and purer. Two great princi- ples are admitted by nearly all moralists to hold supreme rank in the ethical scale, the principle of Eighteousness or Justice, and the principle of Benevolence or Love. By many theologians God's Justice and God's Love have been regarded as antagonistic principles. Jesus, how- ever, clearly saw, and the world's greatest thinkers agree with him, that Justice, or moral retribution, the principle that " as a man sows so shall he reap," so far from admit- 264 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. ting of real opposition to the principle of true Benevo- lence, derives its very being and eternal validity from the fact that Infinite Love is at the helm of the universe. The insight, then, into the Divine Being, which our moral consciousness gives, is that God is at once eternal Justice and eternal Love, and that He is eternal Justice because He is Eternal Love. But is it so ? Does the actual universe as interpreted by science, do the facts of individual life and of human history, accord with and endorse this a priori insight of the conscience and the heart, that Love, or the aim to communicate the highest possible good, has been and is the regnant principle in the universe ? The answer to this question cannot fail to be influenced to an immense extent by the view which the answerer takes of the valid- ity of that ethical insight which we have been discussing. If the belief that God is Love were reached, as an induc- tion from the study of nature and history, then, of course, to take this belief with us as a clue when we have to deal with the stern reality of Natural and Moral Evil would be mere reasoning in a circle. It appears to me evident that the belief that Love belongs to the essence of God's nature is, in general, based on the principle, which each religious mind verifies for itself, that man most truly realizes his own higher nature when his con- duct is at the free disposal of rational self -forgetful love; and the mind spontaneously infers, and feels itself justi- fied in inferring, that the principle which speaks with highest authority in the individual consciousness is also the principle which is dominant in the universe. The human mind is thus generally predisposed, or, if you prefer VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 265 to say so, prejudiced, through .faith in its own ethical insight, in favour of the conclusion that both nature and humanity have their origin in the causality of a Being whose aim is to confer the highest possible good on the aggregate of sentient and self-conscious beings whom He creates, or, as I have preferred to phrase it in these Lectures, into whom He differentiates, in some measure, His own substance. The most important recent attempt to prove that the universe, apart from man, is wholly devoid of any ethical character, is the Eomanes Lecture on " Evolution and Ethics," recently delivered at Oxford by Prof. Huxley ; and in the brief treatment of the problem of Evil which I am able to give here, I will have chiefly in view Prof. Huxley's representations. Now it is to be noted first that Prof. Huxley takes no account whatever of the above ethical prejudgment concerning the character of the Cause of the universe. It appears to him, for instance, a somewhat surprising and regrettable feature in the philosophy of the Stoics, with whom in other respects he finds himself in general sympathy, "that they perfected, if they did not invent, that ingenious and plausible form of pleading, the Theodicy, for the pur- pose of showing, firstly, that there is no such thing as evil; secondly, that if there is, it is the necessary cor- relate of good; and moreover, that it is either due to our own fault, or inflicted for our benefit." 1 I doubt very much if Prof. Huxley, whose evident devotion to truth and to humanity all must admire, is himself altogether free from this tendency to form for 1 P. 24. 266 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. himself a Theodicy. It appears very probable, from the statement made on the last page of his printed Lecture, viz. that " the man who hopes to abate the essential evil in the world must cast aside the notion that the escape from pain is the proper object of life," that our eminent biologist is not wholly without the faith that if the Absolute has not kept pain and sorrow out of the cosmos, it is probably because the existence of pain and sorrow is a necessary condition of the attainment of a higher good. He tells us that he cannot see why, among " the end- less possibilities open to omnipotence," that of "a sinless happy existence" 1 should not have been selected. But why does he not say that he cannot see why, among the possibilities open to the Eternal, that of a perfectly com- fortable existence, containing at the same time rich opportunities for the manifestation of self-sacrificing love and moral heroism, should not have been selected ? Clearly it is because he cannot but regard this particular combination as not being among the possibilities open to what he calls " omnipotence." And I should feel much surprised to learn that Prof. Huxley does not in his inmost heart endorse the satisfaction which the Theist feels in the thought that " among the possibilities open" to Him, the Absolute has chosen that one which allows the rational spirit to approach to, and to experience, that highest blessedness which is cheaply purchased at the cost of long-continued self-sacrifice, pain and sorrow. When Mr. Spencer looks forward to an ideal condition of things in which there shall be little or no pain, and 1 P. 25. Til. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 267 little or no opportunity for self-sacrifice, and Spinoza speaks of suffering as " a passage to a lower state of perfection," it may well be questioned whether these great thinkers have at all realized what the universe would lose if its Eternal Ground and Cause had no other and higher aim than the complete avoidance of suffering. As Dr. Momerie justly and eloquently writes : "I say we may well thank God for the existence of such suffering. 'We will not complain/ says Thomas Carlyle, 'of Dante's miseries : had all gone right with him as he wished it, Florence would have had another prosperous lord mayor, but the world would have lost the Divina Commedia.' Again, we do not know much about Shakespeare's life ; but we do know from his sonnets that he had suffered vastly. The most striking instance, however, that I am acquainted with of the way in which poets ' learn in suffering what they teach in song,' is to be found in Tennyson. The only great poem he has written is, ' In Memoriam ;' and that, as you know, he wrote soon after the loss of his friend, Arthur Hallam. See now the inspiration he derived from suffering. Why, there are single stanzas in ' In Memoriam' worth ten thousand times as much as all his other poems put together. And it is not only those who will have a niche in the Temple of Fame that are teachers of sorrow's divine lessons. I have known women of whom the world will never hear, whose whole life was one protracted grief who, by their patience, "their faith, their cheerfulness, their unselfishness, have preached to all who came near them sermons more eloquent by far than were ever delivered from any pulpit sermons in com- parison with which the discourses of Chrysostom or Savonarola must have been tame and dull." 1 As Miss F. P. Cobbe expresses it in her beautiful hymn, "All noblest things are born in agony." Struggle and anguish in some form and measure is the inevitable 1 The Origin of Evil, and other Sermons, p. 21. 268 VII. GOD AS THE SOTJECE OF IDEALS. lot of those whose devotion to the Ideal is of the right genuine sort ; and the idea ever haunts my own mind, though I have no direct proof to offer in its justification, that the suffering of those divinest sons of God who most richly share in His true inward peace and blessed- ness, has its supreme counterpart in the inmost being of that Eternal Father who may be truly said to be ever sacrificing Himself that Nature and Humanity may live, and of whose infinite sympathy with the joys and woes of His dependent offspring we may believe that our finite experiences can give but a faint inkling. 1 With regard to the presence of Moral Evil, the usual explanation which spontaneously occurs to most minds appears to me to be an adequate one. Appalling as is the blackness and deformity which Sin introduces into the cosmos, yet the absence of it from the world would surely not exhibit a nett profit to mankind, if with it departed, as must needs depart, all true moral freedom, 1 See on this subject a thoughtful volume of sermons, Religion in Life, by Rev. Edwin Smith, M.A., p. 94, and also a tract by the late Rev. T. T. Lynch, entitled, Amongst Transgressors. In a striking sermon (which the author conceives to be written from Hegel's point of view), the following remark occurs : " The only true and profit- able way of studying God is through ethical principles. Any con- ceptions of God which impose ethical limitations on Him, or that are ethically valueless for us, are worse than useless, for they are false. The former of these two canons excludes the Unitarian God, for the God of the Unitarians cannot comply with the central and essential ethical principles, viz. the sacrificing of self to find self" Liverpool Pulpit, March, 1893, p. 34. I am quite unable to see why a monopoly of this mode of thinking about God is claimed either for the old- fashioned Trinitarians or for the new-fashioned Hegelian ones. It so happens that I know some Unitarians who not only have this con- ception of God, but lay great stress upon it VII. GOD AS THE SOUBCE OF IDEALS. 269 all genuine responsibility. To ask why wrong-doing is in the world is virtually to ask why Evolution did not stop short at the animal stage and not press upwards into human experience. In Dr. Martineau's words: "To set up an absolute barrier against the admission of wrong, is to arrest the system of things at the mere natural order, and detain life at the stage of a human menagerie, instead of letting it culminate in a moral society." 1 Who that earnestly reflects would really wish for a world in which all that is truly ethical should be lacking, and where all those sentiments of moral admiration and of moral reprobation and indignation which impart the highest interest and sublimity to the grand drama of each individual life and of the history of mankind, should be transformed into mere aesthetic judgments concerning the inevitable phases of relative beauty and ugliness in the course of cosmical and biological evolution? It must be remembered, too, that if the possibility of Moral Evil were absent, the conscious relation between the human soul and the immanent Father would lose all those essential elements of aspiration and felt personal sympathy for the existence of which a certain dualism of will and personality is an indispensable condition. 2 1 A Study of Religion, VoL II. p. 108. 2 The above inadequate treatment of this great problem of the existence of Moral Evil is intended only as an introduction to the study of the subject. Those interested in it will find the clearest and fullest presentation and discussion of all the phases of the question in Dr. Martineau's great work, A Study of Religion, VoL II. They should also read Dr. Momerie's admirable sermons on the Origin of Evtt, from which I have quoted above, and also the Rev. George 270 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. And now I will turn to what is called Natural or Physical Evil. Does this Evil fatally collide with that character which the intuitions of our ethical conscious- ness prompt us to ascribe to the Eternal? The main purpose of Prof. Huxley's Eomanes Lecture is to prove that the cosmical principle which dominates the process of Evolution up to the point when man appears and begins to feel an elementary moral ideal, is diametrically opposed to that course of action which the moralized man regards as right. "Let us understand," he says, " once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." 1 Now if this is a correct way of expressing the principle of cosmic evolu- tion, we find ourselves confronted with an astounding conception of the universe. Here is a cosmos which St. Glair's Handbook on Evil, Physical and Moral. One of the ablest attempts to solve the problem is the Eev. Charles Voysey's volume of sermons on The Mystery of Pain, Death and Sin ; and the following passage from a letter written to Mr. Voysey by a deceased brother of his, an Anglican clergyman, happily expresses the main feature of the Theistic solution : " "Why was it that evil was permitted to come into the world 1 ? .... The explanation lies in half a-dozen words ; that the highest manifestation of any nature can only take place, i.e. its highest qualities can only be in exercise and the depth of its resources and the sufficiency of its strength only fully called out, in dealing with what is antagonistic to itself. Any nature less or meaner than Divine would have left evil and antagonism out of his Creation as a parent would keep it out of his nursery, or a master from his school, and would have revelled in the contemplation of scenes of happiness and order. But the higher nature lets in the evil, the disorder, the trouble, knowing the inexhaustible and matchless force of its resources to deal with it and subdue it." 1 P. 34. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 271 bears all the marks of being a unitary system : we have learned from Prof. Huxley in one of the articles he has contributed to the Nineteenth Century^ that there is no better way of describing the course of evolution than, as "a materialized logical process;" and in the Lecture before us we are told that, in the view of science, the cosmos " assumes the aspect, not so much of a permanent entity, as of a changeful process, in which nought endures save the flow of energy and the rational order which per- vades it." 2 But strange to say, this system of rational order, which up to a certain stage exhibits not the slightest traces of a dominant benevolence, or, indeed, of any benevolence at all, all at once begins to evolve a being whose fundamental principles of conduct are in complete antagonism to the whole spirit of the process which has generated him. This cosmic nature, which we are told is "no school of virtue," 3 manages somehow to present as its culminating product a race of beings who (to use Prof. Huxley's words) " do not doubt that, so far forth as they possess a power of bettering things, it is their paramount duty to use it, and to train all their intellect and energy to the supreme service of their kind." 4 Surely, then, the evolution of nature as thus presented to the hearers and readers of the Romanes Lecture is hardly a process to be characterized as " rational order." For myself, I cannot but think that the Cosmos is marked by much more unity of purpose and inherent rationality than Prof. Huxley gives it credit for. Is, for instance, 1 February, 1888, p. 164. 2 P. 4 (the italics are mine). 8 P. 27. * P. 31. 272 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. the relation between man's animal appetites and passions, and his gradually developing ethical ideal, of such a nature that it is an accurate and adequate account of the matter to say that " the cosmos works through the lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it?" 1 In some respects the lower nature of man, as well as of animals beneath him in the biological scale, appears, as in the parental and social instincts, to be an anticipation of, and preparation for, ethical principles of conduct ; and even when passion and greed collide, as in self-conscious man they so often do, with the ethical imperative, this very antagonism, so far from having no ethical signifi- cance, is the indispensable condition of that free self -for- mation of moral character on the part of rational agents which seems to be the final result for which the cosmical process has been all along preparing, and towards which it has through its whole course been tending. John Stuart Mill, in his Essay on Nature, has depicted the apparently unmoral or malevolent features of the cosmos in the darkest possible tints ; yet in his final Essay on Theism he writes : " Endeavouring to look at the question without partiality or prejudice, and without allowing wishes to have any influence over judgment, it does appear that, granting the existence of design, there is a preponderance of evidence that the Creator desired the pleasure of his creatures Even in cases when pain results, like pleasure, from the machinery itself, the appear- ances do not indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to produce pain ; what is indicated is rather a clumsi- ness in the contrivance employed for some other purpose. The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having 1 P. 27. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OP IDEALS. 273 made it susceptible of pain ; but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure ; a supposition which avails nothing on the theory of an Omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one in the case of a contriver working under the limitation of inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter. The susceptibility being conceded as a thing which did enter into design, the pain itself usually seems like a thing undesigned ; a casual result of the collision of the organism with some outward force to which it was not intended to be exposed, and which, in many cases, provision is even made to hinder it from being exposed to. There is, therefore, much appearance that pleasure is agreeable to the Creator, while there is very little or any appearance that pain is so : and there is a certain amount of justification for inferring, on grounds of Natural Theology alone, that Benevolence is one of the attributes of the Creator." 1 Hermann Lotze has, I believe, conclusively shown that the mechanical necessity, which everywhere marks the lower planes of cosmical existence, is an indispensable foundation for the advent of an intelligent and morally free being such as man is, for it alone furnishes the needful condition alike for scientific knowledge and for 1 Tliree Essays on Religion, p. 190. It is to be noted, that even if the development of animal species is mainly conditioned by the " struggle for existence," this struggle by no means involves any great amount of suffering. Mr. Wallace, who ranks with Darwin himself as an authority on this matter, writes : " Now that the war of Nature is better known, it has been dwelt upon by many writers as presenting so vast an amount of cruelty and pain as to be revolting to our instincts of humanity Now there is, I think, good reason to believe that nil this is greatly exaggerated ; that the supposed ' torments ' and ' miseries' of animals have little real existence, but are the reflection of the imagined sensations of cultivated men and women in similar circumstances ; and that the amount of actual suffering caused by the struggle for existence among animals is altogether insignificant." Darwinism, pp. 36, 37. T 274 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. the free formation of moral character. The fallacy involved in the popular assumption (in which one is surprised to find such a thinker as Prof. Huxley appa- rently acquiescing), that God, in manifesting His love in the eternal creation of the cosmos, has wholly unlimited possibilities, is admirably exposed in the following pas- sage from Dr. Martineau's " Study of Religion : " " Do you ask, What business have ' imperfections' in the work of an infinite Being ? Has he not power to bar them out ? Yes, I reply, if he lives out of his boundless freedom and, from moment to moment, acts unpledged, conducting all things by the miscellany of incalculable miracles, there is nothing to hinder his Will from entering ' where it listeth,' and all things will be ' possible to him.' But, if once he commits his Will to any determinate method, and for the realization of his ends selects and institutes a scheme of instrumental rules, he thereby shuts the door on a thousand things that might have been before ; he has denned his cosmical equation, and only those results can be worked out from it which are compatible with the values of its roots. If the square of the distance gives the ratio of decreasing gravitation, the universe must forego the effects which would arise from the rule of the cube. If, for two transparent media, the index of relative refraction is made con- stant, the phenomena are excluded which would arise were it variable. Every legislative volition narrows the range of events previously open, and substitutes necessity for contingency ; and a group or system of laws, in providing for the occurrence of one set of phenomena, relinquishes the conditions of another. It is vain, therefore, to appeal to the almightiness of God, unless you mean to throw away the relations of any established uni- verse and pass into his unconditioned infinitude ; in the cosmos he has abnegated it ; and there is a limit for what you may demand from it as within its compass. The limits, it is true, which are assigned to its play are self-imposed : but, in order to any determinate action at all, some limits had to be assigned : VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 275 and unless you can show that to a different scheme better possi- bilities and a less mixed good would have attached themselves, a tone of complaint which can only be justified by such com- parative criticism is out of place." 1 As to the existence of pain in animals, it is quite con- ceivable, as J. S. Mill points out, that the liability to it is an indispensible condition of the enjoyment of plea- sure. The psychological principle of relativity appears, indeed, to indicate that such a necessary relation between pleasure and pain is not only conceivable, but is the real state of the case ; and the beneficent mission of want and suffering in directing the animal's conduct aright, and in preserving" it from greater ills, has been a common theme of moralists from ancient times. 2 1 Vol. II. p. 85, 1st ed. 2 There is another aspect of nature which has often been noticQd by theists as indicating the ethical as well as the logical unity of the cosmos. It is so admirably expressed in a recent sermon by the Eev. J. Thomas, M.A., and is so strongly confirmative of the conclu- sion which we have reached by another route, that I feel impelled to append the passage : " Selfishness is self-destructive. This law arises from the fundamental ethical principle that ethical life is the realiza- tion of self through what is other than self. Indeed we find this law of inter-dependence everywhere, revealing that even the physical crea- tion is ethical at heart. All things thrive in proportion as they relate themselves to the world around them, in proportion as they surrender themselves to their environment. While the branches surrender their independence, and lose themselves in the tree, they grow beautiful with leaf and flower and fruit ; but, as soon as they detach themselves from the general life, they begin to wither and rot, and men gather them into bundles, and bum them. While the members surrender their individual life to the one life of the body, the rich blood courses through them and they become strong and vigorous, but a severed member soon becomes a withered, shapeless thing. So the selfish man ethically destroys himself by selfishness. It is as we lovingly T2 276 VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. There remains one more aspect of this grand problem of justifying the ways of God in the cosmos to the ques- tioning intellect and the ethical insight of His offspring, man ; it is the presence of God in History, and the question whether the facts of History support the theistic position that those forces, or springs of action, in human nature, which the ethical consciousness declares to be intrinsically the higher, do, as human nature and social organisms develop, become more and more the regnant principles which control and subjugate the relatively lower passions and affections of mankind. Along the line of argument which leads to an affirmative answer to this question I cannot in these Lectures travel ; but this is no cause for regret, for even should I attempt so to do, you would find me a far less competent and inte- resting guide than the one that is ready at your hand in Dr. Martineau's powerful chapter on the "Triumphs of Force in History." 1 I may conclude this outline-sketch of a Theodicy with the repetition of the remark which I made in introducing the subject, viz. that I am not contending that, apart from the insight into the nature of the Eternal which man's ethical and spiritual experience affords, the out- surrender ourselves to the larger life of the world, realizing that we are but parts of a Divine whole, in and through which we must find our true life, that our thought will expand into a nobler conception of life, our sympathies will be quickened, enlarged, enriched, refined and purified, and our action will become more holy, vigorous, intense and comprehensive. In proportion as we give shall we receive, and the power of perfect sacrifice is also the power of perfect life." Liverpool Pulpit, March, 1893. 1 A Stud// of Religion, Vol. II. p. 116, 1st ed. VII. GOD AS THE SOURCE OF IDEALS. 277 ward aspects of the world of nature and of the world of humanity would furnish wholly conclusive evidence that God is Love. "What I do contend for is, that the main features of natural and human evolution are confirmative of this Theistic faith, and that there appear to be no established facts, physical or mental, which even to our very limited vision are necessarily incompatible with that belief in God's essential character which the pressure of the Ideal in our own inner life continually inspires and sustains. LECTURE VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. THE historian of religious thought in this country will have to chronicle, as a somewhat important feature in the speculations current during the latter half of this century, the appearance in England and Scotland, especially at the great educational centres of Oxford and Glasgow, of an importation of German philosophy, which has taken strong hold of many reflective minds, and during the last ten years especially has given a particular colour to much of our ethical and theological literature on both sides of the Atlantic. I refer to the movement of thought called "Kational" or "Absolute" Idealism; a movement which, it is admitted, has its origin in the writings of Hegel. At the time when Hegelianism was first introduced into this country, some thirty years ago, it had almost ceased to be taught as a philosophical system in Germany, though no doubt it had left a marked and permanent impression on philosophical speculation. But philoso- phical thinkers in Germany had become dissatisfied with Hegel's system as a whole, and the prevalent interest had passed over either to such forms of spiritual realism as Hermann Lotze's views presented, or to those psycho- VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 279 physical researches to which Prof. Wundt at Leipsic and his disciples have given such celebrity. In the sphere of religious and theological thought, likewise, the Hege- lian philosophy has, in Germany, largely given place to a theological theory in some respects essentially opposed to it, especially on the basal question of the freedom of the will, viz. the system of religious thought put forth in the writings of the late Albrecht Eitschl of Gottingen, and developed by Prof. Hermann and others. It is to this school of theological thought rather than to the Hegelian that the majority of the younger theologians of Germany now look for light and guidance. There are, I believe, clear indications that Hegelianism as a philosophy of religion is already losing its interest in this country, and in all probability its fate her,e will only repeat what has happened at an earlier date in its native land. The logical development of its principles, in the writing of Prof. Alexander and of Mr. F. H. Bradley, leads to issues which will hardly satisfy any theistic thinker, and the present determined opposition to it by able men who have been trained in its prin- ciples, such as Prof. Andrew Seth, Prof. James Seth, Prof. Schiller and others, are all signs which indicate incipient disintegration. The appointment, however, of several thinkers of this school to the Scottish Gifford Lectureship, will, probably, cause it to remain for some time to come as an influential factor in the speculative religious thought of English-speaking nations. On the surface it seems somewhat strange that the Hegelian mode of dealing with ultimate problems should 280 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. have had any special attraction for the Anglo-Saxon mind, for, while British thought delights to keep very close to the facts of sensation, Absolute Idealism appears to soar into quite transcendent regions of speculation. Appearances here, however, are very deceptive. Genuine Hegel ianism has very close affinities with the popular view of Evolu- tion, and with prevalent scientific ideas. It is true that it lays down as its fundamental doctrine that all objective phenomena require for their existence a unifying prin- ciple of thought, which by thinking them gives them the only reality they possess. But when the scientist or the psychologist has once allowed that all his facts have on one side this philosophical or theological aspect towards the unifying thought, the Hegelian theory will not trouble them with any more call for the recognition of the activity or causality of God. In the Hegelian view the Absolute exhaustively manifests Himself in physical and psychical phenomena, past, present, and to come ; and all that can be known of nature and God is to be learned by the progressive study of these pheno- mena. Direct action of the Universal Spirit on the finite spirit in response to prayer or aspiration, such as most Theists recognize, has no intelligible meaning from the Hegelian point of view. Every experience of the soul's communion with God has its only possible explanation in its inevitable relations to the other psychical facts of a man's inner life, and, therefore, its rationale falls wholly within the scope of psychological science. And as Hegelianism also rejects Free-will in the true sense of that term, it makes all nature, physical and psychical alike, a necessary process of evolution with the inevitable VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 281 sequences of which no causal action, either of God's spirit or of man's spirit, can in the slightest degree interfere. This will help to explain, I think, the fascination which ITegelianisni, like Spinozism, to which it is very closely akin, exercises over the predominantly scientific mind; but it still remains a problem why it should have any great attraction for the theologian and the preacher. The explanation, I believe, is that very few preachers do really embrace the genuine Hegelian doctrine. While they imagine they are preaching Hegeliauism, they are frequently much more in sympathy with the different theological position of Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher had such immense influence in Germany, because he was the great modern representative of that most real side of religious experience called the mystical. There are some striking similarities between his system and that of Hegel, but they are more apparent than real. Both of these great thinkers agree in their tendency to dis- parage what they call the " mere individual" ; both insist on the principle that alike in Ethics and Eeligion " we must die to live," and declare that the essence of religion consists in transcending the ideas and the affections which belong to us as finite individuals, and in surrendering ourselves freely to the spirit of the Whole ; both alike accept the fundamental principle of Pantheism, that there can exist no real and fundamental dualism of Will in the relation of man to God. In other respects, how- ever, the followers of Hegel and those of Schleiermacher part company. With the disciples of Schleiermacher religious experience resolves itself finally into Feeling 282 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. feeling of dependence on and communion with the Uni- versal and the Eternal ; with the disciples of Hegel the very highest religious experience resolves itself into clear Thought; and whereas the sympathies of the former are predominately with the Mystics, the sympathies of the latter are increasingly in the direction of Positive Science, physical, psychical and sociological ; for, as Prof. Seth points out, " there never lived a man more wedded to hard fact than Hegel, and he had an instinctive aver- sion to seeking the Divine in some ideal beyond the confines of the world that now is." My own impression is, that ere very long those theo- logians and preachers of this country who now look upon Hegel as the world's greatest thinker, will follow the example of their German confreres, and will recognize the truth that a system of philosophy which allows of no room for the immediate personal action of the Eternal upon the human soul, and which, by admitting no possi- bility of real antagonism between the will of God and the will of man, makes sin no fundamental reality, but simply a relative appearance (as Mr. F. H. Bradley calls it), is not the philosophy which either accords with, or renders intelligible, the deepest facts of man's ethical and religious experience. What Absolute Idealism really comes to, when its principles are fully understood and its necessary implications unfolded, may be seen in the writings of Prof. S. Alexander, in Mr. F. H. Bradley 's "Ethical Studies," and still more clearly in this writer's recent metaphysical treatise on "Appearance and Eeality,'' an important work which, in some of its features, vividly reminds one of Spinoza's writings, though it lacks that VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM; 283 mystical doctrine of the intellectualis amor Dei which renders the Fifth Part of Spinoza's Ethica so fascinating to some religious minds. In reading Prof. E. Caird's most interesting and instruc- tive Gifford Lectures on the "Evolution of Religion," and his brother's captivating presentation of Hegel's views in his " Introduction to the Philosophy of Keli- gion," I do not know whether Ffeel more delighted with the many precious and beautifully expressed thoughts which these writings contain, than I feel disappointed at the fact, which appears to me evident, that the truth and importance of much of the doctrine, and the grace- fulness of the style, unintentionally serve to hide, rather than to reveal, the real nature and intrinsic character of the philosophy of ethics and religion which underlies these eloquent utterances. Let me endeavour to explain what I mean. To do so, it is necessary to give in outline the view of God, man and nature to which the line of thought in the previous Lectures has brought me ; and, therefore, I must beg you to excuse some repetition of what I have before said. Starting with our own consciousness, we have seen that this finite life of ours is felt to be continually dependent for its existence on an Absolute or Self-existent Being. We have noticed, also, that we are surrounded on all sides by energies which limit and restrict our activity, and we necessarily assume that these centres of force are, like ourselves, dependent sources of activity; we refer them, therefore, to the same Absolute Ground and Cause to which we refer our own existence. The cosmos, then, appears to consist of an infinite aggregate of centres 284 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. of energy, some of which, under certain conditions, rise to sentiency, and others to clear self-consciousness. These all appear to interact, and by their interaction to produce all the variety of cosmical phenomena. To study what are called the causes of phenomena is the function of Science, and Science is satisfied when it has reached certain finite sources of dynamic energy which are ade- quate to account for the phenomena it is its business to investigate. We further saw that Science cannot answer the final questionings of the human mind. When Science has reached its finite causes and their laws of operation, it has not touched the ultimate problem. While it has been discovering and enumerating the various causes and laws of phenomena, Eeligion has been asking what is the fundamental Ground and Cause which is eternally keep- ing in existence all these infinitely numerous dependent sources of energy, or centres of force. As Lord Gilford truly says : " The human soul is neither self -derived nor self- subsisting. It would vanish if it had not a substance, and its substance is God." 1 As the forces in nature affect our consciousness, and our wills affect them, the natural inference is that they are of a nature like our own soul, and that, in fact, what we call matter is simply spirit in its lowest mode of manifestation. All the varied dynamic energies of nature are, then, of one substance, and that substance is Spirit. When, then, the religious mind looks round and asks for the absolute or indepen- dent Cause of all this infinite variety of dependent scien- tific causes for the Cause, that is, which so constitutes and unifies them all that they form, not a chaos, but a 1 Prof. Max Miiller's Anthropological Religion, p. 392. VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 285 rational cosmos the answer necessarily is, that this Absolute Cause must be that deeper Self which we find at the very heart of our own self-consciousness. If, then, all the dynamic centres or souls in the universe are spiritual in their nature, and the Eternal Self is at the inmost core of every one of them, the only reasonable and satisfactory account of their relation to Him is that the Absolute and Eternal One (who, by reason of His creating our finite minds, must have all the essential elements of self-consciousness in Himself), in virtue of the action of His Will, creates out of His own substance, by an eternal act of self-differentiation, this infinitely varied aggregate of spiritual energies to which our souls belong. But as the Eternal Self is immanent in the self-consciousness of each of us, so He is equally imma- nent in every other monad, soul or centre of force in the universe. And not only does this follow from the fact that we feel Him within us, and therefore must assume His presence in all other finite natures, but it is likewise powerfully confirmed by the conclusive arguments in which Lotze has shown that the action of monad on monad, of mind on nature, and of nature on mind, only becomes intelligible on the hypothesis that all finite existences, partially individual as they are, are yet on one side of their being in continuous union with that Eternal Ground out of whose self-differentiation they arise. Were not the self-same God identically immanent in every atom and in every soul, not only would not interaction be possible in the physical world, but also in the psychical world all knowledge, all duty, all spiritual love, would be wholly inconceivable and impossible. We 28G VII I. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. saw that the Eternal is not only immanent in our several spirits as the ground of all our mutual influence and inter- course, but also that He reveals Himself in His universal and essential character in our rational, our aesthetic, our ethical, and our religious ideals and emotions. So far I reached in the last Lecture ; and we have now come to the pivot on which the controversy between the Absolute Idealism, which Prof. Edward Caird so admirably represents, and the Ethical Theism which I am endeavouring to expound, really turns. From what I have said, you will perceive that there is in every finite existence a two -fold nature or aspect ; there is the indivi- dual nature which belongs to it as being a separate dif- ferentiated portion of the eternal substance, and there is the universal nature which belongs to it in virtue of its continuous union with that Eternal Ground whose volun- tary self-determination has given it birth. For our pre- sent purpose we have only to do with the mode in which this duality of aspect and nature presents itself in our own rational souls. We have seen in previous Lectures that no adequate account of the facts of our self-conscious- ness can be given which does not allow that with regard to the universal or ideal side of our inner life we in a certain true sense participate in the very essence of God's being. That is to say, that in so far as absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute goodness, are apprehended in our imperfect and progressive Ideals, we, to that extent, share the essential nature of God ; and hence it is that these Ideals ever carry with them a consciousness of their absolute worth and of their intrinsic authority to com- mand our reverence and our allegiance. It is true that VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 287 though they are in our nature and in God's nature too, they are not in us as they are in Him. In us they are a revelation of the perfection which ought to be realized, in Him they are eternally realized in His essential being ; and it is only as the ideal becomes, in virtue of self-sur- rendering devotion and moral effort, actually realized in our characters, that man's Divine Sonship, which is implicit in him in virtue of his being of the same sub- stance with the Father, becomes an explicit reality. Were it not for this universal side of our nature, in which, so to speak, the Eternal Essence of God flows into and at times absorbs our finite consciousness, we could know nothing of absolute truth, of eternal beauty, of the ethical imperative and of spiritual love. And, on the other hand, were it not for the reality of our individuality there could be no sin, no moral heroism, no sense of estrangement from God, no joy of reconciliation with Him. It appears quite clear, accordingly, that an ade- quate philosophy of ethics and religion must recognize, and do justice to, both sides of our nature the universal side, in which God reveals Himself in our self-conscious- ness, and the finite or individual side, in which consists that special selfhood of ours, that Will, which is dele- gated to us by God that we may freely make it His. Now it is recognized alike by the Ethical Theist and by the Absolute Idealist that the characteristic defect of Deism is, that on the human side it treats all men as isolated individuals forgetful of the immanent divine nature which inter-relates them and, in a measure, unifies them, and that on the divine side it separates man from God, and makes the relation between them a purely external one. 288 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. It is admitted also by both parties that the characteristic defect of Pantheism, on the other hand, is, that it does injustice to man's individuality, and by practically iden- tifying man and God effaces all true moral responsibility in man, and all moral distinctions in the nature of God. The Theist and the Absolute Idealist, then, are quite at one in asserting that both of these two extremes must be avoided, but each of them asserts that his own religious philosophy is the very one and the only one which hits the happy mean, and so escapes alike the lifeless Deism which isolates man and God, and the unmoral Pantheism which identifies them. Our question accordingly is, Which of the two, the Ethical Theist or the Absolute Idealist, is most successful in making good his preten- sion? Let me now ask you to consider carefully what Prof. E. Caird has to say on this matter. His clearest utterance is, I believe, the following : " It becomes possible to think of man as ' a partaker in the divine nature,' and therefore as a self-conscious and self-deter- mining spirit, without gifting him with an absolute individuality which would cut him off from all union and communion with his fellow-creatures and with God. I do not deny that there are many difficulties in this view, difficulties with which I have not attempted to deal. But it seems to me that this is the only line of thought which makes it possible to escape the opposite absurdities of an Individualism which dissolves the unity of the universe into atoms, and an abstract Monism which leaves no room for any real individuality either in God or in man ; not to speak of the still greater absurdity of holding both of these one- sided views at once," 1 If I had seen no more than this passage, and were not 1 The Evolution of Religion, Vol. II. p. 84. VIH. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 289 acquainted with the context and with other writings by Prof. Caird, I should be inclined to say that I heartily agreed with it. All through the long note, of which what I have quoted is the concluding paragraph, there are clear indications of the great influence which Hermann Lotze's writings have had over the author's thought. Evidently Lotze and Prof. Caird are aiming at the same result, namely, to reach a religious philosophy which sacrifices nothing really valuable in man's individuality, and at the same time does full justice to the universal immanence of God in nature and humanity. And if Prof. Caird had devoted a lecture or two to making clear his philosophical position in relation to Lotze or to Dr. Martineau, instead of giving so much space to extreme Deists and extreme Pantheists (specimens of whom are comparatively rare), he might have done a most essen- tial service in extricating many perplexed minds in the present day out of their mental entanglements. For the fact is, that Hermann Lotze, as a careful student of the various forms of German Idealism, went through pre- cisely the phase of philosophical development in which the two eminent brothers Caird now find themselves, but after a careful survey of that speculative region he came to the conclusion that it was not suitable for a permanent mental settlement, and so he journeyed on; and, as I have before said, I cannot help thinking that before very long a large section of the Neo-Hegelian party will, in like manner, strike their tents, and, following the example of Lotze, will seek a Weltanschauung in which their moral and religious consciousness will find greater satisfaction. . What, then, caused Lotze to move on ? Simply this, u 290 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. that reflection forced him to the conclusion that the words "sin" and "moral responsibility," without the possibility of real choice, without the presence of any alternative, are voces et prceterea nihil, a delusion and a sham ! It was in vain that the siren voice of Idealism whispered in Lotze's ear: " Surely if you make the choice yourself, if you are not determined to choose by some influence external to yourself, if your moral decision is the expression of your character, it is your own choice, and therefore you are properly accountable for it." To this " soft " Determinism, as Prof. William James, of Harvard, aptly calls it, the reply is : "If my conduct follows, as Absolute Idealism says it does, in this inevi- table way from my character at the present moment, and my character now is determined with like inevitableness from my character of yesterday, and I have never had the slightest option in regard to the kind of character conferred upon me, then you may call my behaviour at any time aesthetically beautiful or ugly if you like, but morally good or morally bad it cannot be." And when the Idealist replies that " an indeterminate choice " is really quite incomprehensible by the human mind, Lotze answers : "Of course, it is incomprehensible and inex- plicable, for if it were comprehensible and explicable by the human intellect, if, that is, it could be seen to follow necessarily from the pre-existing conditions, it, from the very nature of the case, could not be a morally "free" choice at all." x But, adds Lotze, this exercise of really 1 " Denn angenommen, die Freiheit sei, so liegt es in ihrem Begriffe selbst, dasz es einen 'begreiflichen' Vorgang ihrer Entscheidung nicht geben kann, weil dies voranssetzen wiirde, dasz die Entscheidung VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 291 free choice is not the only fact the "how" of which is wholly incomprehensible by the human mind. We can- not comprehend how the mind moves the muscles, or how a moving stone can set another stone in motion ; and if the Hegelian should reply that bodies have no reality save as groups of thought-relations, there still remains for him the insoluble problem how the Absolute calls into existence those "reproductions" of Himself which form our individual selves. It is, therefore, wholly futile to seek to invalidate man's consciousness of freedom of choice in moments of temptation on the ground of its " inconceivability." If the final cause or supreme end of the Absolute in calling the cosmos into being was to produce a universe of which Aristotle, or Hegel, or Mr. Spencer, or some other intellectual giant, would be able to give a complete account which should be exhaustively intelligible by man, then, of course, the conferring of the faculty of free moral choice on His "reproductions" would have been eschewed as being quite incompatible with the object aimed at. But if the final cause of the eternal creation of the cosmos is not primarily the present satisfaction of the full demands of man's questioning intellect, but rather the institution dutch eine Reihenfolge einander bedingender Umstande, also nicht 'frei' erfolge." Lotze's Grundziige der Religions-philosophic, 61; compare Lotze's Grundziige der practischen Philosophic, 18, and Lotze's Mikrokosmos, Vol. I. p. 288 if. No student of this subject should miss reading Dr. Martineau's masterly chapter on " Determinism and Free-will," in A Study of Religion, Vol. II. Compare with Green's chapter on the "Freedom of the Will," in the Prolegomena to Ethics, an acutely reasoned pamphlet on " Freedom as Ethical Postulate," by Prof. James Seth. u2 292 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. of the highest personal relations between the Absolute and His rational offspring, then it is indeed inconceivable how this end could have been gained save by imparting to man a measure of real moral freedom. And if by the conferring of this most precious, but " incomprehen- sible," gift, scientists and academic philosophers are subjected to a certain amount of dissatisfaction, probably the infinite gain both to God and to humanity may well compensate for an occasional hiatus in those imposing expositions in which some eminent savans and philoso- phical thinkers seek to give a logically connected account of God and of His modes of manifestation in the universe. It is no doubt perfectly true, as Prof. Caird remarks, that the insistence on the existence of an alternative in any of our moral decisions a offends science by the asser- tion of a kind of freedom in individuals which seems to be the negation of all laws of causation ; and it offends philosophy by the denial that there is any point of view from which the differences of things can be brought back to a rational unity." 1 The expression " rational," however, in this passage may possibly belong to that frequent form of fallacy to which our logical handbooks so properly call attention under the head of " question- begging" epithets. If by " rational unity" Prof. Caird simply means a unity wholly comprehensible by the human intellect, the statement is no doubt unimpeach- able ; but if this epithet is meant to insinuate that a uni- verse involving the existence of intelligent beings morally free would be, from the Divine point of view, an irrational universe, I venture to think that the statement is about 1 Evolution of Religion, Vol. II. p. 24. VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 293 as false as false can be ; for the conferring on man the faculty of moral freedom is, I apprehend, an indispensable feature in that supremely rational scheme of creation through which the eternal love of God seeks to confer the highest possible blessedness on the creatures who are fashioned out of His own substance and made after His own image. I am, accordingly, utterly unable to see how Prof. Caird's "Absolute Idealism," which manages to offend neither exclusive scientists nor exclusive intellectualists, can at the same time fulfil the needful function of being a true and satisfactory mean between Deism and Pantheism. So far as I can understand his position, it is simply unmiti- gated Pantheism, for according to it every moral decision which man comes to, be it called noble or be it called base, is an act for which no human being, but only God, is responsible. For where in Prof. Caird's account of the matter does real human initiation come in ? At no single point. The Absolute, manifesting itself through the processes of evolution and heredity, is responsible for every man's special character, and every one's conduct follows inevitably from his character and his environ- ment. 1 1 Since the above criticism was written, I have met with the follow- ing lucid expression of a similar judgment on the ethical aspect of Absolute Idealism, in a paper entitled, "A Criticism of Current Idealistic Theories," by the Hon. Arthur James Balfour, in a recent number of Mind (Oct. 1893) : " Now it may seem at first sight plausible to describe that man as free whose behaviour is due to ' himself alone. But without quarrelling over words, it is, 1 think, plain that whether it be proper to call hiui free or not, ho at least lacks freedom in tho sense in which freedom is necessary in order to constitute responsi- 294 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. In reading the brilliantly written Gifford Lectures by Prof. Caird, for whose genius and philosophical learn- ing and acumen I have the highest respect, and also the newspaper reports of his eloquent brother's recent Gifford Lectures on "Natural and Eevealed Religion," I cannot but feel how much deeper and more ennobling would be the moral and spiritual response which these thoughtful and graceful utterances would evoke in the minds and hearts of their hearers and readers, were it not for this depressing fatalism which pervades them and so seriously weakens their ethical and religious force. In his first Gifford Lecture, Principal John Caird says : " By its cardinal doctrine of the unity of God and man Chris- tianity dissolved the dualism and bridged the gulf between the finite and infinite which, apart from Christianity, was never spanned, and by its conception of the self-realization of God in bility. It is impossible to say of him that he " ought," and therefore he " can," for at any given moment of his life his next action is by hypothesis strictly determined. This is also true of every previous moment until we get back to that point in his life's history in which he cannot in any intelligible sense of the term be said to have a character at all. Antecedently to this the causes which have produced him are in no special sense connected with his individuality, but form, part of the general complex of phenomena which make up the world. It is evident, therefore, that every act which he performs may be traced to pre-natal, and possibly to purely material antecedents, and that even if it be true that what he does is the outcome of his charac- ter, his character itself is the outcome of causes over which he has not, and cannot by any possibility have, the smallest control. Such a theory destroys responsibility, and leaves our actions the inevitable outcome of external conditions not less completely than any doctrine of controlling fate, whether materialistic or theological." VHI. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 295 humanity solved the problem which baffled the greatest minds of ancient times." There is, undoubtedly, a great and important truth in this statement ; but if Principal Caird holds, as it is clear from his later lectures on the " Problem of Evil" he does hold, that moral evil is the product of human volitions, and that these volitions could not possibly or conceivably have been other than they actually were, he empties of all real content his eloquent remarks about "sin," "repentance," "moral responsibility," &c. How he could persuade himself that, with his philosophical theory of human conduct, he could consistently use these words in the sense in which Jesus of Nazareth used them, is a psychological problem which nothing that he says enables us to solve. Christianity, of a truth, does bridge the gulf between God and man, but certainly not by the simple Hegelian expedient of making the will of man only the will of the immanent God under a different name. Jesus surely means by "Sin" something infi- nitely deeper and more ontological than it is possible for those thinkers to mean who accept the Spinozistic and Hegelian dogma that the real is the rational and the rational the real. I can only suppose that the minds of the lecturer and of his sympathetic hearers were so satu- rated with the remains of Calvinistic ideas, which for so long a time fettered Scottish theological thought, that the intrinsic incompatibility of this "soft" determinism with Christian ideas of sin and genuine moral accounta- bility quite escaped their notice. Principal Caird can hardly have seen, as I have seen in several cases, how 296 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. effective this Hegelian Idealism has been in undermining and destroying all real interest in theological thought and in religious devotion. My own experience quite bears out the remarks made not long ago by the veteran German philosopher, Dr. Schaarschmidt for many years the editor of the philosophical journal, the Philosophische Monatshefte who, in an article, Zur Widerlegung des Determinismus, thus gives the result of his life-long study of the various phases of "hard" and "soft" Determin- ism : "I regard the deterministic view of human nature, be it connected with foreign Positivism and Empiricism, or with native Pessimism and Pantheism, as among the most influential (folgenschwersten) errors of the present day ; " and the whole drift of his paper is to justify the conviction that "the vitality of Eeligion, no less than that of Ethics, depends on the recognition of real Freedom of the Will." I have dwelt at some length on what I conceive to be the fatal defect in this, at first sight, fascinating "idealist" theory of ethics and religion; but I am by no means blind to the great and permanent gains which philosophical thought has derived from the speculative movement which began with Fichte and culminated in Hegel. It cannot be denied that it is impossible to study the Hegelian philosophy, either in Hegel's own works, or in the writings of T. H. Green, the brothers Caird, Mr. D. G. Eitchie, or of the many other able writers of the same school, without feeling that whether we accept its fundamental principles or not, we have derived from the study a most powerful stimulus towards a reconstruction of a large portion of our mental furniture. A careful VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 297 study of Hegelianism may, and does, I think, suggest the criticism which leads at length to its own rejection as a complete system ; but, for all that, it has been a great educational influence, and none who have come under this influence will go out from it with precisely the same philosophical views with which they went in. Allow me, then, to enumerate one or two of the important gains which present thought appears to owe this Idealism. In the first place, it has helped to lift off from the modern mind that paralyzing notion of the merely relative value of all knowledge which the Kantian philosophy, with all its merits, left pressing like a night- mare upon European thought. As Hegel himself said, Kant tells us what are the ways in which we cannot help thinking, and then adds that for that very reason these ways do not appear to lead to any true insight into the reality. Philosophy, accordingly, owes a debt of grati- tude to Hegel for having reinstated thought in its true rights, as being capable of giving man a genuine and progressive insight into the nature of reality. Another direction in which, I believe, Hegelian speculation has effected a permanent gain, is in getting rid of the old notion of Matter as a mysterious substance with proper- ties wholly unlike and incomparable with the properties of Mind. It attempts, indeed, to outflank Materialism by the simple device of allowing the most thoroughgoing materialists to have their full say, and then turning round on them with the remark, But how about your material atoms and brain molecules ? they have no real existence save as objects of thought, and therefore the very thought, which you say your atoms produce, turns 298 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. out to be the essential pre-condition of their own exist- ence. I am inclined to think that this short and easy way of refuting materialism proves, like most very short cuts, to be a misleading road; but, nevertheless, it is largely owing to idealist thinking that the supposed impassable chasm between mind and matter has been bridged over, and the two have been linked together in the different systems of ideal or spiritual realism. A still greater gain than any I have mentioned to the philosophy of ethics and religion, is the clearer insight which Hegelianism has given into the truth, on which I have insisted so often in these Lectures, that reciprocity of causal action is inconceivable, that the fact of know- ledge is inexplicable, and the presence of absolutely worthf ul ideals in our consciousness wholly unaccount- able, unless we believe that beneath the partial dualism which separates mind from mind, and all finite and dependent minds from God, there is a deeper unity of substance which, by its immanent presence in each and all, inter-relates part to part, and vitally connects every part with the unitary life of the Whole. In the earlier portion of this Lecture I have said that, in my view, Hegelians have carried this most true and important idea of the essential unity of God and man beyond its legitimate limits, and by denying that God has given to the Will of man any real power to put itself in antagonism to His Will, they have undermined the basis of Ethics, have turned Theism into Pantheism, and converted human individuality from being a real " other" than God into a mere finite phase of God's Eternal Life. Nevertheless, I believe that Hermann Lotze was much helped by a VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 299 study of Idealism to that conception of a substantive Monism underlying the partial Dualism and Individual- ism which is presented in nature and in humanity, and was thus enabled to give to his philosophy of physics, ethics and religion that solid and rational foundation in the indestructible facts of consciousness upon which in the main it appears to me to securely rest. There is another thought, at least as old as Aristotle, which Hegel and his followers deserve the credit of having emphasized and developed in a most suggestive and fruitful way, viz. the idea that in an organism a complete knowledge of any one of its parts, or of any stage in its process of growth, implies a knowledge of the whole ; so that in studying the nature of a plant, or the evolution of the cosmos, the motto of the Hegelian is, as has been well said, Respice finem; and so with good reason they feel sure that Mr. Herbert Spencer's mode of explaining cosmical evolution cannot possibly turn out a complete success. On the merit of Hegelianism in this direction, Prof. W. James of Harvard says, 1 in his bril- liant and humorous way, some words to the point : "The principle of the contradictoriness of identity and the identity of contradictories is the essence of the Hegelian system. But what principally washes this principle down with most beginners is the combination in which its author works it with another principle, which is by no means characteristic of his system, and which for want of a better name might be called the ' principle of totality.' This principle says that you cannot adequately know even a part until you know of what it forms a part. As Aristotle writes, and Hegel loves to quote, an ampu- tated hand is not even a hand ; and as Tennyson says : 1 Mind, April, 1882, p. 195. 300 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. ' Little flower but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.' " As Prof. James afterwards remarks, it is obvious " that until we have taken in all the relations, immediate or remote, into which the things actually enter, or poten- tially may enter, we do not know all about the thing." But when Hegelians jump from this sound Aristotelian doctrine to the wholly different doctrine that the relations constitute the reality of the thing, they perform a very questionable feat of intellectual gymnastics. Having thus endeavoured to appraise, as fairly as I can, the permanent good which Hegelian speculation has, directly or indirectly, conferred on philosophy, I will now recal your attention to what appears to me to be the fatal defect in the system. Its chief defect I take to be this, that in representing both nature and man as merely moments in the self-evolution of the Idea, or self- existent thought-principle, it deprives both physical and psychical existences of that degree of selfhood or inde- pendent reality which is, on the one hand, needful for any satisfactory science of the cosmos, and, what is far more important, is quite indispensable for a satisfactory rationale of man's ethical and religious consciousness. The limits of these Lectures do not allow of my criti- cizing the grounds on which Green and others maintain that all that we call reality in nature has no other mean- ing than is implied in the fact that physical things are thought by some self -consciousness. In a previous Lec- ture I have glanced at this subject and pointed out that Green's theory of "reality" is quite incapable of giving VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 301 any intelligible explanation of the reality of pains and pleasures to irrational animals themselves. Practically the further discussion of this subject is hardly, I think, called for, seeing that the popular theories of evolution have, for the nonce at all events, taken all life out of the pretensions of idealism, whether it be the sensational idealism of Mill, or the rational idealism of Green, to resolve the dynamic sequences of the cosmos into a neces- sary succession of relations in the human or Divine con- sciousness. You will no more persuade the evolutionist of the present day that the formation of solar systems, and the successive stages of geological and biological evolu- tion, have no other reality than that they are necessary stages in the thought of the Eternal, than, in that won- derful story, " Through the Looking-glass," Tweedledum and Tweedledee were able to convince Alice that she was nothing more than " a sort of thing in the Eed King's dream." 1 Tell the scientist that the facts of cosmical evolution are the successive manifestations of the Will^ or energizing of God, as well as of His Thought, and you may, perhaps, carry him with you. What science imperatively demands, and will never cease to demand, is a real dynamic ground and cause for the eternal sequences of natural phenomena, and no subtile mani- pulation of the idea of Force will ever succeed in supply- ing the place of the real force with whose presence and activity neither common sense, nor science, nor sound philosophy, can possibly dispense. At any rate, every- body knows that his own will does not derive its reality 1 See the late Prof. W. K. Clifford's Lectures and Essays, Vol. II. p. 143. 302 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. simply from being an object of the Eternal Subject, and by necessary analogy lie cannot help concluding that both the energies of nature and the souls of animals have some other hold on reality than is expressed by referring them to the objective side of the Eternal Self- consciousness. However, in this course of Lectures we are not so much concerned with the question of the kind and degree of reality which Absolute Idealism allows to the centres of force in nature or to the souls of animals. The crucial question with us at present is: What kind of reality, and what degree of real causality, does Hegel- ianism allow to the human individuality, to this Per- sonal Self with whose character and responsibility both Ethics and Eeligion are so vitally concerned? I hope I have made it clear to you that in regard to the universal features of our consciousness, in regard to our reason and to the essence of our ideals, there is no real dualism between man and God; but the common consciousness of mankind declares that in the case of the Will which constitutes the essence of each man's individuality there is a real dualism, and therefore a possible antagonism, between the will of the dependent spirit, man, and the Will of the Absolute and Universal Spirit, God. I also maintain that such real duality of will, and not the appearance of duality, as Mr. F. H. Bradley puts it, is the essential condition, not only of all true ethical relations between man and God, but also of those personal relations between our finite minds and the immanent Eternal in which consists the highest blessed- ness of man, and, if the deepest intuitions of man's VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 303 spiritual experience tell true, the highest blessedness of God likewise. It is on this field of thought that the great battle of the religious philosophies the battle between the Ethical Theism of such thinkers as Lotze, Bitschl and Dr. Martineau, and the Absolute Idealism of Hegel and his disciples will have to be fought out. Goethe, in one of his poems, says : " Freundlos war der grosse "Weltenmeister, Fiihlte Mangel, datum schaf Er Geister." Let us, accordingly, consider whether the Hegelian account of these " Geister" which, in Goethe's view, the great "World-master projects, in some way incom- prehensible to us, out of His own substance that they may be a real " other" to Himself, so that He and they may enter into responsive and reciprocal personal rela- tions let us consider, I say, whether the sort of indivi- duality which in Hegel's view is conferred on man by God is really such as, on the one hand, to allow of true ethical relations between man and God, and, on the other hand, to meet that eternal need, or, I should rather say, that Eternal Love in God, in which the manifested uni- verse, with man as its culmination, has its perpetual ground and source. If Divine Love has called into existence these human individualities that they may be able in a measure to understand His essential character, and so of responding in an ever-increasing degree to His infinite Perfection, then surely these individualities, these Geister, are ends in themselves of God's Eternal energiz- ing, and the preservation of their separate reality must be a matter of quite infinite importance in the cosmical economy. Hence the quite limitless value set upon each 304 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. human soul in the world's highest and most influential religious literature; and quite in accord with this is Kant's assertion that the only thing which possesses absolute value in the universe is a " Good Will." As I before mentioned, there are solid grounds for concluding that this high estimate of the value of the individual soul is mainly the outcome of Hebrew and Christian influences, and that the germ of this great truth may be traced back to the special prominence which the higher minds among the Hebrews gave to moral conduct and to the ethical consciousness. To recal what I said in the last Lecture : just as the belief in an external world has arisen out of the experience of resistance to our volitional efforts, so whenever the ethical experiences of life receive steady attention, it is found that in these experiences man encounters an autho- rity which is felt to be entirely distinct from any pro- duct of his own finite individuality, or of the collective individualities of the society of which he forms a part. Two indestructible facts of consciousness will always save mankind from being permanently the slave of Pantheistic illusions ; first, the rational consciousness that our finite selves are not primitive or self-existent, but are depen- dent on a deeper and Absolute Reality; and secondly, the ethical consciousness that our personal wills are capable of being resisted by the inner self-revelation of a higher and Absolute Will. When an ideal of conduct whose worth we recognize clashes with our own per- sonal desires, we cannot give any more satisfactory interpretation of what we feel than in saying that an infinite source of authority reveals its presence in our VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 305 self-consciousness, enjoining this, forbidding that; and all other interests in life are felt to be really subordinate in importance to man's harmonious or antagonistic rela- tion to this felt inner authority. Out of this experience springs a very clear conception of a real distinction of Causality in God and man ; and when this distinction is attended to and fairly estimated, it wholly prevents the possibility of regarding man as a mere phase or mode of manifestation of the Eternal Unity or Self. Let me now refer to some of the grounds which, in my view, justify the charge that Hegelianism ignores or undervalues individual personality, and tends to explain away and dissipate that real and vital distinction between the will of the individual man and the Will of God on which all genuine conviction of moral responsibility ultimately rests. I will begin with a passage out of Hegel's Encyclopaedic, 1 in which he briefly describes the relation of God to man and nature. " The good," he says, " the absolute good eternally accomplishes itself in the world, with the result that it is already accomplished in and for itself and does not require to wait for us. That it does so wait is the illusion in which we live, and which is the sole active principle upon which interest in the world rests. The idea, in its process, causes this illusion to itself, sets another over against itself, and its whole action consists in cancelling this illusion. Only from this error does the truth spring, and herein alone lies the reconciliation with error and finitude : other- ness or error as cancelled is itself a necessary moment of truth which is only in so far as it makes itself its own result." 1 Works, Vol. VI. p. 15. Some excellent critical remarks by Rosmini on this passage will be found in Prof. Thomas Davidson's Philosophical System of Rosmini- Serbati, p. 145. X 306 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. From Hegel's way of viewing human life, then, it follows that both the finite individual himself, and all that we find most interesting in the individual, his moral struggles, his gradual growth of character, are, when looked at from the high philosophical standpoint, or, as Spinoza would say, sub specie ceternitatis, part of an end- less series of transient illusions. Goethe's Weltenmeister would surely find little relief from the sense of friend- lessness in the timeless consciousness of this alternate positing and cancelling of illusions. And here a few words seem called for on this doctrine that the Eternal Self-consciousness is timeless. Green, in the First Book of his " Prolegomena to Ethics," says that every act of knowledge in the case of man is a timeless act. In comparing the different aspects of the stream of successive phenomena the mind must, he says, be itself out of time. I cannot myself feel the force of his reasoning. Surely all that is needed for such knowledge is that the self that knows should remain really identical with itself through all the successive changes in its conscious states. And though we are entering a purely speculative region when we ask whether Time is an essential condition in the very nature of God, I cannot for my own part see any sound reason for the conclusion that the eternal series of physi- cal and mental phenomena, which to us are past, present and future, are all equally present at once to the self- consciousness of God. Not only is such a statement one which conveys no positive idea to the human mind, and which if true would make man's moral freedom a self- contradiction, but it appears to me to deny to the Supreme VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 307 Being all those aspects of consciousness which lend inte- rest to our own life. If the consciousness of the Eternal is timeless, then, as Hegel says, to Him our individual selves and our development of character must appear as illusions ; but if He waits to see the issue of that moral freedom which He has conferred on us, and at every moment out of the reserved possibilities which He keeps in His own hands neutralizes as effectually as possible the temporary disorder that our misused freedom may occasion, then the relation between the individual soul and God is of perpetual and ever new interest to the Eternal as well as to man ; and instead of the Hegelian idea of God's self-consciousness as an eternal cancelling of illusions, we have the Christian idea of God as taking an infinitely varied interest in the history of the plurality of real individuals whom His creative love calls into existence, 1 The essential inability of Absolute Idealism to extri- 1 On this difficult question of God's relation to Time, Prof. James of Harvard, in a very able article on " The Dilemma of Determinism," in the Unitarian Review for Sept. 1884, writes : " Is not, however, the " timeless mind" rather a gratuitous fiction ? and is not the notion of eternity being given at a stroke to omniscience onty just another way of whacking upon us the block-universe, and of denying that possi- bilities exist 1 just the point to be proved. To say that Time is an illusory appearance is only a roundabout way of saying that there is no real plurality and that the frame of things is an absolute Unit. Admit plurality, and time may be its form. To me, starting from the appearance of plurality, speculations about a timeless world in which it cannot exist are about as idle as speculations about a space of more than three dimensions good intellectual gymnastics, perhaps, but at bottom trifles, nugm difficiles" See also Lotze's Metaphysics, p. 268ff., where, in opposition to Kant, Lotze emphatically contends for the transcendental validity of Time. x2 308 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. cate itself from fatalistic and Pantheistic conceptions of human nature is most clearly exhibited in Green's " Pro- legomena to Ethics." And it is most clearly seen here because the ethical intensity of Green's own mind always prompted him to take an estimate of personality antithetic to that which the idealist philosophy allows. In fact, he uses language at times which is altogether Kantian and not Hegelian. Thus he says : "In virtue of his character as knowing, we are entitled to say that man is, according to a certain well-defined meaning, a Free Cause." The reading of the " Prolegomena to Ethics" does not enable me to see how man can be supposed, on Green's theory, to have either original causality or freedom. For what does Green mean by an individual man ? His account of man's origin and nature is as follows : when, in the course of the development of the objective side of God's thought, a particular organization, the human body, appears, then God's eternal self-consciousness reproduces itself in connection with this body. To use his own words : " Our consciousness may mean either of two things ; either a function of the animal organism which is being made gradually and with interruptions a vehicle of the eternal consciousness ; or that eternal consciousness itself as making the animal orga- nism its vehicle, and subject to certain limitations in so doing, but retaining its essential characteristic as independent of time, as the determinant of becoming which has not and does not itself become." 1 It thus appears that man is regarded by Green under two aspects, first, as a mere individual having a beginning 1 Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 72. VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 309 and a history; and, second, as the eternal or timeless consciousness under certain limitations. Unfortunately, it is a great source of confusion in Green's reasoning that he uses the term " consciousness" in a double sense, at one time meaning the self-consciousness of the indivi- dual man, at another the Eternal Self-consciousness ; for, indeed, he cannot consistently with his first principles distinguish the two. Let us see, then, if in either of these aspects of human nature we can find any point where man as an indivi- dual exercises any free, self-determining choice. Green's main contention is that what is properly called Determi- nism means natural causation, as when a moving body moves other bodies, or when an animal acts under the influence of its strongest appetite ; and he maintains that man's moral choices do not fall under this category. Green believes that he can avoid determinism by main- taining that a man's motives, when he makes a moral choice, are not influences outside of a man's self, but are an integral part of his own nature or character; and therefore to say that a man is determined by motives is to say that he is self-determined, that is, free. In order to make this intelligible, Green entirely alters the usual meaning of the word " motive." The contention of the believer in Free-will is that man, in the critical moments of temptation, is not merely a theatre on which conflict- ing motives contend, but is himself able, by having his power of attention at his own free disposal, to so act upon his own ideas or emotional states as to make one or the other the dominant one. Now Green departs altogether from past philosophical usnge; he calls the 310 YIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. above competing influences, so long as a man's mind is not made up as to which of them he will chose, not "motives," but mere "solicitations of desire"; they do not become motives, he tells us, till tha self- conscious- ness has identified itself with one or the other; then they are changed into motives, or elements in the self, which, under their collective influence, presents some one line of action to itself as its greatest good. Whether Green has done any service to psychology by this change in the meaning of the word "motive" is doubtful, but at any rate it does not affect the point at issue between him and the believer in free-will, but only alters the phraseology employed. Green says the self makes its motives by identifying itself with one solicita- tion of desire rather than with another. Here, then, is the point at which, if anywhere, free-will is exercised. The libertarian, accordingly, wishes to know from the idealist whether the self has any power of alternative choice in thus identifying itself with one solicitation of desire rather than with another. It is of no avail that Green tells us that the very fact of our being able to know that we have these several solicitations of desire shows that we are the vehicles of an eternal or timeless self. That may or may not be, but the question at issue is : Have we as individual selves, selves with a history and a character developing in the direction of good or ill have we a power of preference, a choice of alternatives, in the act of identifying ourselves with a certain solicitation of desire ? Here is the impor- tant point ; and here it is that, evidently against his own natural impulse, the necessities of the philosophy VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 311 he has adopted compel Green to give such an account of the human personality as virtually makes each indivi- dual's history and the growth of that individual's cha- racter as much a matter of natural or necessary causation as is the development of a tree or of any one of the lower animals. What is the individual man according to Green ? A particular form of character. And what is his will ? This same character expressing itself in action. "A man's character," he says, "is himself. His character necessarily shows itself in his will ; man being what he is and the circumstances being what they are at any particular con- juncture, the determination of the will is already given, just as an effect is given in the sum of its conditions. The determina- tion of the will might be different, but only through the man being different." 1 It is clear, then, that there is not the slightest oppor- tunity for the exercise of true freedom of will in human nature as Green depicts it. In truth, there is no real individual self in Green's view. That which knows in our nature is not our indi- vidual self, but God's timeless Self using us as its vehicle. If we look into our consciousness in moments of temp- tation, we become aware, I believe, that our own true Self causally acts by way of attention upon our mental states, and according to the mode in which we employ this faculty of attention is our final choice morally good or morally bad. As Dr. Martineau pertinently asks: " Is there not a Causal Self, over and above the caused self, or rather the caused state and contents of the self, 1 Green's Works, Vol. II. p. 318. 312 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. left as a deposit from previous behaviour?" 1 Now the characteristic feature of Absolute Idealism is that it will not recognize the existence of this Causal Self, though I believe every person is distinctly conscious of his own activity as such a Causal Self every hour in his life. But the Absolute Idealist resolutely ignores its existence. And, indeed, Mr. F. H. Bradley, in a long paper in Mind for July, 1886, entitled, "Is there any Special Faculty of Attention?" takes sides with J. S. Mill in holding that when we say we voluntarily attend to an idea, this only means that the idea in question happens to be more vivid or interesting than any of the imme- diately preceding or attendant ideas. It would be diffi- cult, I think, to find a more flagrant case in which the clear deliverance of consciousness has unconsciously been perverted to meet the exigencies of a preconceived philo- sophical theory. Of course, if the individual self has no causal power it has no real existence ; on such a theory of human nature, all that our self-consciousness is capable of is simply knowing, and in knowing it is, in Green's view, nothing but a vehicle or phase of the timeless self- consciousness of the Eternal. Having thus handed over all that specially belongs to us as individuals to the action of natural or necessary causation, it is a mystery how Green could have imagined that he had left to the spirit of man any real freedom or genuine responsibility. And that Green's idea that moral free- dom is possible to man in the absence of the recognition of any true individual self, capable of choosing between 1 A Study of Religion, Vol. II. p. 227. VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 313 alternative possibilities and of exercising its causality in attention and volition, was simply a self-delusion, is strongly confirmed by the fact that one of the ablest and most earnest of the disciples of Green's school, Mr. Samuel Alexander (now Professor of Philosophy in Owens College, Manchester), has felt himself logically compelled to depart altogether from Green's conclusions on this question. In his work on " Moral Order and Progress," 1 he writes: "We cannot distinguish human action from other kinds of causation as being self-determined in the sense that the process of willing goes on wholly within the human mind that nothing can affect the mind's action except so far as it becomes a motive, and that a man acts thus from his own nature. For the same thing stated generally is true of all action even in the inanimate world. All action is & joint result of the nature of the thing affected and of that which affects it. All action in this sense is equally self-determination and equally compulsion. The differ- ence between human and other action lies not in some special character of the mind's unity, but in the higher development of the mental states ; the mind in willing is aware of what affects it, the wall is not. But this difference does not invalidate causation ; it only shows that we have causation working in a different subject. The consciousness which makes such a differ- ence to human action, and on account of which human action is justly described as self-determination, is something merely phenomenal, not something which puts an absolute barrier between it and other action." Prof. Alexander does good service to philosophical thought in thus working out the necessary logical con- sequences of the idealist's denial of true causality to the individual self. Take away this causality, and, as Prof. 1 P. 337. 314 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. Alexander virtually admits, man becomes, so far as real responsibility is concerned, on a par with the tree or the stone. His moral character is, on this theory, an inevi- table growth; heredity and circumstances are the sole arbiters of his ethical destiny. How, then, about the moral sentiments the senti- ments of praise and blame ? Can consistent followers of Hegel still continue using the terms "moral responsi- bility," and "remorse" for wilful wrong-doing, in the same sense which these words bear when spoken by those who believe that in temptation alternative possi- bilities of moral decision are open to a man? Green evidently supposed that his disciples could continue to employ this phraseology, for he argues that Esau might very well have felt remorse for his conduct, because, though the action which expressed his nature was the joint outcome of his circumstances and character, yet as the process of personal development involves the reaction upon circumstances of the self-presenting and self-seeking Ego, Esau was bound to regard the act as in a true sense his own, and therefore to reproach himself for it. 1 To this the reply is, that if the self-presenting Ego had possessed any faculty for doing anything beyond simply knowing the successive changes in its own character, Green's contention might have some basis ; but how any one who sees in the whole course of his mental and moral development nothing but a process, every stage of which was inevitable and admitted of no possible alter- native, can consistently feel remorse for his past deeds, is to me wholly inexplicable. Regret and aesthetic senti- 1 Prolegomena to Ethics, pp. 99ff. VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 315 ments of repugnance, at certain phases of his career and past character, he may very well feel; but if he feels what is commonly called remorse, it must be because his philosophical convictions have not yet had time to duly modify his sentiments. On this point, Spinozism and Hegelianism, if consis- tently thought out, come precisely to the same thing, and Spinoza's words in the Ethica must, I believe, find an echo in every thinker who, like Professor Alexander, has mentally carried out Oxford Hegelianism to its inevitable issues. Repentance and Remorse are senti- ments which, in Spinoza's view, have no rational justifi- cation, though for the good of society it is desirable that vulgar minds should not be prematurely enlightened in regard to this matter ; and this is what Spinoza's words come to, for he says in his fourth Book : " Kepentance is not a virtue ; that is to say, it does not spring from reason ; on the contrary, the man who repents of what he has done is doubly wretched or impotent It is not to be wondered at, however, that prophets, thinking rather of the good of the community than of a few, should have commended so greatly humility, repentance and reverence. Indeed, those who are subject to these sentiments can be led much more easily than others, so that at last they come to live according to the guidance of reason, that is to say, become free men and enjoy the life of the blessed." No doubt T. H. Green would have repudiated this distinction between a philosopher's esoteric and exoteric teaching, but I doubt whether, if you come to the con- clusion that there is in man no causal self, and no con- ceivable or possible alternative in any case of human self-determination, it would be possible for a true lover 316 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. of his fellow-men to find any legitimate stopping-place short of Spinoza's position. Still, the very fact that you feel doubtful whether it is for the good of mankind that you should indiscriminately disclose a supposed truth, inevitably suggests the doubt whether your philosophi- cal doctrine has a sure foundation. It appears to me self-evident that the emotion expressed by the word "remorse" is wholly irrational if Green's view of the mode of the development of character is correct. As Coleridge says in his "Aids to Eeflection:" "With a deterministic system of human nature, not all the wit of man, not all the Theodicies ever framed by human inge- nuity before and since the attempt of the celebrated Leibnitz, can reconcile the sense of Responsibility, nor the fact of the difference in Kind between Regret and Remorse" If, then, the followers of Hegel disallow the existence of any alternative possibility in man's moral self-determinations, and yet continue to use the words "ought," "responsibility," "desert," "merit," "sin," &c., they use them, as Professor Sidgwick remarks, 1 " with quite new significations," for the view taken concerning the possession by man of true freedom of choice "is the pivot on which our moral sentiments naturally turn." I cannot within the limits of a Lecture do more than glance at the objections to the Libertarian view of man's moral conduct. There can be no doubt that just at present the doctrine of Free-will is very unpalatable to a large proportion of scientists and philosophers; still, who- ever reads the chief philosophical periodicals of England,. 1 The Methods of Ethics, chapter on " Free-will." VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 317 America, France and Germany, will be aware that there are not the smallest signs of any falling off of interest and vigour on the Libertarian side of this controversy; indeed, within the last two or three years that side has been supported by an increased number of able advo- cates. 1 In Prof. Alexander's work on " Moral Order and Progress," occurs the strange statement that only two writers of note now take the Free-will side, these two 1 It is true that some of the idealist thinkers have of late taken to speaking very disdainfully of all who take the Free-will side ; and it looks as if ere long it will require some little moral courage to profess yourself a Libertarian in certain select circles of Oxford culture. Mr. F. H. Bradley, for instance, in his recent thoughtful work on Appear- ance and Reality (p. 435), writes : " Considered either theoretically or practically, 'Free-will' is, in short, a mere lingering chimera. Cer- tainly no writer who respects himself can be called on any longer to treat it seriously." It appears, then, that whoever thinks it worth while to discuss the reasons which have made Lotze, Martineau, Edward Zeller, Renouvier, &c., firm believers in Free-will, and have led Kant to assert that a sinful act " could have been left undone," runs at present the risk of being considered somewhat wanting in " self- respect." I cannot but think that Mr. Bradley hardly appreciates the very deep foundations in our moral consciousness on which the belief in our moral freedom rests. Even those who theoretically reject it practically accept it at times in passing judgment on certain acts of themselves and others. It is one of those beliefs to which the fami- liar line, Expellas naturam furca tamen usque recurret, is eminently applicable. The keenest criticism never wholly kills it ; and if it is contemptuously pitchforked out of academic lecture-halls and college common-rooms, it picks itself up very speedily, and soon puts in an appearance again. Indeed, I have little doubt that could we, like Rip van Winkle, take a long nap and waken up in the year 5000 or 10000 A.D., it would confront us amid the most highly evolved social and intellectual conditions, and the old controversy would be going on, with the Libertarians as numerous and as sanguine as ever. 318 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. being Lotze and Dr. Martineau. We are all more or less apt to think the " cackle of our bourg, The murmur of the world," and no doubt in the philosophical circle in which Prof. Alexander's great ability gives him a distinguisted place, the current idea is that highly educated Libertarians are now an almost extinct race of which only one or two fine specimens still linger in existence. The Libertarian cause is, however, by no means so hopeless and help- less as Prof. Alexander imagines. When we glance over the list of recent distinguished thinkers, and find on the Libertarian side (in addition to the two eminent men whom Prof. Alexander specifies) such thinkers as Eenouvier and Fonsegrive in France, Edward Zeller, Kuno Fischer, Dr. Schaarschmidt in Germany, Prof. W. James and many others in America, we cannot doubt that there exists reasonable ground for the expectation that iWe-will will not only, as heretofore, have the support of at least nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of ordinary mortals, but also that it will by no means fail of adequate representation even in the highest ranks of philosophical culture. In one important respect Green has quite failed to rea- lize the true position of the believers in the freedom of the Will. He says that " on their theory a man may be something to-day irrespectively of what he was yesterday, and something to-morrow irrespectively of what he is to-day." This is not the case. The Libertarian never dreams of supposing that a man can act without motives, VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 319 and what his motives are is strictly determined by what his character is at the time. What is a temptation to a man in one stage of moral development may cease to be a temptation in the next stage ; and the acts of self- determination which modify a man's character to-day alter the character of the temptations or moral problems with which he may have to deal to-morrow. In every temptation a man feels the influence of at least two motives ; and when he has decided, you may always in one or other of these motives see an apparently adequate explanation of the choice : it is only in our self-conscious- ness that the evidence lies that our own self's free causal activity in the way of attention counted for something in making one of the motives the prevailing one. Following in the steps of Green, Mr. F. H. Bradley declares that Free-will is synonymous with " Chance." " We must insist," lie says, " that every act is a resultant from psychical conditions. This would be denied by what is vulgarly called Free-will. That attempts to make the self or will, in abstraction from concrete conditions, the responsible source of conduct. As, however, taken in that abstraction, the self or will is nothing, 'Free-will' can merely mean Chance." 1 As I have before pointed out, our personal conscious- ness appears to me to emphatically endorse Dr. Marti- neau's assertion that man is a Causal Self, that is, he not only has mental states, but can attend to, and act upon, his own ideas and motives. In a moment of temptation he not only discerns which is ethically higher among the various impulses which arise out of his character at the time, but he is able to freely select among these conflict- 1 Ajtpearance and Reality, p. 435. 320 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. ing springs of action, and by attending to and empha- sizing one, to cause that one to take effect on conduct ; and the contention of the believer in Free-will is, that if man does not possess this power over his springs of action, he cannot, in any true ethical sense, be called " respon- sible" for the growth of his character. Accordingly, Mr. Bradley's charge that Free-wiH means Chance comes to no more than this, that some of man's self-determina- tions are intrinsically incapable of being predicted. Now the obvious answer to this is, that in a universe which is to subserve the highest moral and spiritual ends, a limited area of this contingency, which Mr. Bradley terms "chance" (but which I should term the sphere of man's free causality), is an indispensable constituent. Were that which Mr. Bradley calls "chance" wholly eliminated from the universe, and man so constituted that adequate psychological insight would give an exhaustive explanation in every case why one man becomes a saint or a hero and another man a hypocrite or a scoundrel, I venture to maintain that not only would all ethical terms have to be emptied of their now recognized meaning, but the drama of individual life and of human history would be deprived of all that makes it most interesting to the mind of man, and, so far as we are able to see, to the mind of God also. It will be evident from what I have said that man's moral freedom can cause deviation from the uniform order of psychical sequence only within very narrow limits ; still within these limits there is a sufficient basis for responsibility. The vast majority of every man's self- determinations involve no temptation, that is, no inner VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 321 moral struggle ; they are the inevitable expression of his formed character, and might be fully explained by any one who had full insight into the dynamics of his inner life. The only features of the moral life which are intrin- sically beyond the reach of prevision are those in which temptation comes in. In such cases, the agent is not merely giving expression to his already formed character, but is by his voluntary self-determination changing that character for good or ill. Only, then, in the compara- tively rare instances in which the soul is called upon to decide between the cravings of its lower self and the invitations and injunctions of the ideal, or between its previous moral ideal and some newer and higher ideal which puts in its authoritative claim, do we come upon the critical points in a man's changing moral history, in the case of which true freedom of choice is exercised, and therefore certain foresight of the result is impossible. Though such critical choices are comparatively infrequent in most men's lives, it is to the behaviour of the true self in such moments of ethical trial that the moral worth or worthlessness of a man's character is mainly due. Still, even when the character is undergoing a decisive moral change, this change ordinarily makes but a very gradual alteration in the man's outward actions, so that it is not at all surprising that, notwithstanding free-will, moral statistics preserve much general uniformity, and that we can in the very large majority of cases safely predict how a person whom we know well will act. Free-will is by no means that serious disturber of uniformity of law and possibility of prevision which its opponents are wont to assert it to be. It is indispensable as a rational Y 322 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. ground for moral responsibility, for the existence of real merit and demerit, for the judgment of approbation and disapprobation ; but what is necessary for the securing of these all-important ends is quite compatible with a modest science of ethics and with a philosophy of his- tory which does not lay claim to a near approach to omniscience. To sum up, then, the chief results of our inquiry : it appears to me that the Hegelian philosophy of nature, ethics and religion, lacks a solid foundation in the ulti- mate and indestructible facts of our self-consciousness. As Idealism cannot allow to the individual man the possession of a real and permanent Self, to whom a certain independent causality and freedom of action is delegated by the Eternal, it is compelled, however reluctantly, to represent individual human spirits and their moral history as merely transient phases in an eternal process of thought-evolution a process which appears to the human mind under an illusory temporal and successively developing form, but which is related as a completed whole to the timeless Idee. This denial of any real and permanent individuality and causality to man as distinct from God has for its necessary counterpart the effacement of any effective distinction between God and the world of matter and mind. God, when thought of by abstraction as distinct from nature and humanity, becomes merely the Logical Subject which serves to unify the collective groups and series of cosmical phenomena. The existence and laws of succession of all physical and mental changes involve their indivisible association with, and relation to, a time- VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 323 less principle of thought. But as this timeless principle exhaustively manifests itself in phenomena, and these phenomena find their sole and sufficient explanation in the relations among themselves which science and philo- sophical reflection gradually discover, God, being equally a factor in all phenomena and serving simply for their logical unification, may, as a late student of Balliol acutely remarks, 1 be safely treated by the consistent idealist, both in the study of nature and in the study of mind, as what the mathematicians call une quantite neglig r eable. 2 And that this complete merging of all theological interest in a purely scientific and philoso- phical interest is the inevitable outcome of the system, is confirmed by the fact that it is not with Theology, nor with anything directly connected with Theology and Worship, that the majority of the more gifted and high- minded young Idealists are now chiefly concerned. Ethics and Sociology have in their case practically supplanted and replaced to a very large extent the interest which was formerly felt in religion and in the worship of the Eternal. Notwithstanding Green's and Principal Caird's 1 Riddles of the Sphinx : a Study in the Philosophy of Evolution, by a Troglodyte, p. 327. 2 Some Hegelians, such as Prof. Royce of Harvard, maintain that the Eternal One knows all physical and psychical changes ; others refuse to predicate self-consciousness of the absolute principle of unify- ing Thought ; but all, I believe, are at one in declining to appeal to the direct volitional causality of God ; and hence it is that Mr. Bradley and his confreres are so anxious to show that the volitional causality in attention, which is commonly attributed to man's true self, is a psychological illusion. Y2 324 VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. cherished idea that their philosophical views furnish the only satisfactory rationale of what is deepest in Christian thought and sentiment, the fact remains that idealist interest and enthusiasm increasingly tend to find exclu- sive expression in the study of ethical theory and in noble efforts to apply and realize ethical ideals in social and political life. There is another very serious difficulty, to which my limits only allow me to give a passing mention, which helps to still further weaken the Idealist's interest in Theology I refer to the only too prominent presence in the world of Moral Evil. This is a serious problem for Ethical Theist and Absolute Idealist alike, and how the former seeks a partial solution of it I have tried to show in the preceding Lecture. But formidable as is the diffi- culty for the Ethical Theist, for the Absolute Idealist it is far more so. The Ethical Theist holds that God, as an essential pre-condition of ultimately conferring on man the highest possible good and blessedness, has delegated to him a degree of freedom of will, and so rendered it pos- sible for him to make a bad use of this privilege, and thus to mar and retard within certain limits the realization of the Ideal and the Divine in individual and in social life. Hence in his view this sin and wickedness is an absolute evil, but it is an evil which is permitted to exist by the Eternal, because the effacement of it would mean at the same time the effacement both for God and for man of the possibility of reaching the highest spiritual good ; and though it is permitted to exist, the limitation of it is ensured by the reserve of possibilities which are still Till. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 325 open before the Divine Causality. But by the Absolute Idealist no portion of this Moral Evil can be ascribed to the antagonistic causality of man. In his view every feature in the process, the basest and cruelest, as well as the noblest and the most beneficent, are equally indis- pensable features in that process of self-evolving Thought which constitutes the universe. Every personal self-deter- mination or choice, be it moral or be it immoral, is, from the highest point of view of the Hegelian, a perfect choice, seeing that it is "a function of the Perfect Whole." l This being the case, it is impossible, I contend, to see any valid reason why the principle of Eternal Thought and Eternal Love should, in its process of self-manifes- tation, take its way through all the actual depravity and suffering in the world, for in the view of the Idealist the Causality of God is wholly unconditioned and unimpeded by any possible counteracting causality on the side of the human will. And if it be hard to see why there should be so much that is morally repulsive in society, if the character of each human being is precisely that which it must be and, therefore, ought to be, it is still harder to reconcile with Eternal Love the fate of the many who appear to be unfortunate victims of this evolutionary process. If it were the tendency of Absolute Idealism to engender and support a faith in personal Immortality, we might find in this faith some clue to the solution of this dark problem ; but, if we may judge from the latest utterance of one of the profoundest of the living thinkers that Oxford Idealism has produced, the hope of a Future 1 See Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, p. 508. 326 Vni. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. Life is likely to receive from this school of thought but very meagre encouragement. 1 Here, then, I believe is an additional reason why the best aspirations and interests of many of the younger Hegelians are largely diverted from theological study and from united worship to what they feel is, at all events, a work about whose essential divineness there < can be no doubt or question the aiding to dissipate ignorance, to elevate social ideals, and to eliminate as far as possible all that makes for selfishness and vice. All honour to them for their noble, self -forgetful aims ! My only fear is (as I have explained in the previous 1 Mr. Bradley thus summarizes the results of his reflection on this subject : " And the genera] result to my mind is briefly this. When you add together the chances of a life after death a life taken as bodiless, and again as diversely embodied the amount is not great. The balance of hostile probability seems so large that the fraction on the other side to my mind is not considerable. And we may repeat, and may sum up our conclusion thus. If we appeal to blank igno- rance, then a future life may even have no meaning, and may fail wholly to be possible. Or if we avoid this worst extreme, a future life may be but barely possible. But a possibility, in this sense, stands unsupported face to face with an indefinite universe. And its value so far can hardly be called worth counting. If, on the other hand, we allow ourselves to use what knowledge we possess, and if we judge fairly of future life by all the grounds we have for judging, the result is not much modified. Among those grounds we certainly find a part which favours continuance ; but, taken at its highest, that part appears to be small. Hence a future life must be taken as decidedly improbable :" loc. cit. p. 505. For a lucid exposure of the ambiguous use of the word " Self," which pervades and vitiates Hegel's treatment of the doctrine of Immortality, see Prof. Seth's Hegelianism and Per- sonality : " Even if we take Hegel's argument at his own valuation it is only the immortality of the Absolute Self which it proves :" p. 226. VIII. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 327 Lecture) that this social interest and enthusiasm is in- trinsically incapable of permanently sustaining itself at a high level, apart from a truer doctrine of man's moral freedom and responsibility, and of his personal and ethical relationship to that supreme Self-consciousness on whom all human spirits eternally depend. LECTURE IX. ETHICAL THEISM. THE philosophies of religion between which the thoughtful mind is called upon to choose in the pre- sent day may be divided into Theism and Pantheism. Deism is an accidental, and now probably almost extinct, form of Theism which grew out of a particular phase of intellectual culture. In the seventeenth century the great achievements of science were in the direction of mathematical and experimental physics. Hence, as Dr. Martineau admirably describes it : 1 " The imagination of men ran easily into mechanical grooves, and nothing seemed perfectly clear till it could be brought into the likeness of a machine ; every regular consecution of things was apt to be described as wheel upon wheel ; every transmis- sion of force, as the operation of a weight or spring upon clock- work, and those who denied the free-will of man pronounced him a machine, or with the prophet compared him to clay upon the potter's lathe." Eeligious ideas, accordingly, were conceived in ana- logy with the prevailing scientific conceptions ; God was supposed to have constructed nature, and, according to some few Deists, to have then left it to work according 1 A Study of Religion, Vol. II. p. 188. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 329 to the laws he had imposed upon it. Many Deists, how- ever, admitted that God was ever present and active in general law; but still, even in this case, the law is regarded as a kind of external force compelling matter to take a particular shape and direction. And this mechanical way of conceiving of God's action was not confined to the Deists, or adherents of what was called natural religion ; it pervaded the minds of believers in wh#t was called revealed religion also, for revelation was regarded as simply a particular kind of external divine action, by which certain ideas were imparted into the minds of the prophets, and their authenticity as coming from God satisfactorily proved by the working of miracles and the fulfilment of prophecy. Hence all knowledge of God, when Deistic ways of thought were prevalent, was supposed to have its origin from without the soul, either in the observation of design in nature, or in the study of the supernatural revelations commu- nicated by God through the intermediation of prophets. As this Deistic way of thinking was brought about in modern thought largely by the influence of science, so it began to pass away so soon as the main interest of science passed from merely physical and material phenomena to the study of biology. As Aristotle had long before pointed out, in the case of an organism we have to do with the product, not of an external force, but of an immanent idea of a final cause which seems to pervade the whole body, and domi- nate every stage of the process of growth. The applica- tion of this idea to theology caused in Europe a revival of the idea of God common to many of the early Christians 330 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. and to the Pantheistic thinkers of India and Greece, that God is not an external creative energy, but the immanent life of both nature and the human soul. The energies in nature are now conceived of, not as imposed on nature from without, but rather as being the modes of action of an indwelling life or soul. This idea of the imma- nence of God in nature and in the spirit of man is common, then, both to Theism and Pantheism. It has taken possession, in some degree, of all forms of reli- gious thought, and has given a new impulse to philo- sophy, to poetry and to art. Herein lies the explanation of the statement which we now frequently hear, that all religion of the inner and deeper sort must be in some measure Pantheistic. For this assertion is certainly true, if by " Pantheistic" we mean that the life and evolution of every object of nature and of every rational soul implies the indwelling presence and immanent acti- vity of the life which animates and unifies the whole. But this conception of God as immanent in nature and the soul is not peculiar to what is technically called Pantheism; it is common to Theism also, and distin- guishes both Pantheism and Theism from what was formerly called Deism. Pantheism assumes two chief forms, according as, on the one hand, the idea of God is first derived by abstraction from the universal elements of thought implicit in the human consciousness, or, on the other hand, is arrived at from the study of the phenomena of nature, through the apprehension of a common principle of which all the objects and forces of nature appear to be modes of manifestation. The latter Pantheism (now often called Agnosticism) may IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 331 be distinguished as the lower or scientific Pantheism; the former, which is exemplified in such systems as those of Spinoza and Hegel, may be characterized as the higher, or metaphysical, Pantheism. This latter Pantheism, inasmuch as it regards God as a principle of thought, and sometimes as a self - consciousness, is often by its adherents, and by historians of philosophy, termed a species of Theism. In order, therefore, in the present Lecture to distinguish my own position from the position occupied by the Hegelians, or Absolute Idealists, it will be convenient to borrow from Dr. Martineau, as a name for the form of cosmical theory which, in my view, best explains the facts of man's moral and reli- gious experience, the name, Ethical Theism. From what I have previously said it will follow that there is much in common between the higher Pantheism and that Ethical Theism to which I now wish to direct your attention. Both Theist and Pantheist may feel in their minds and hearts the inspiriting sense of relationship with the Universe ; both may be lifted above the common cares and interests of life by ideal imaginings and trans- figuring hopes ; both may feel the conflict between their personal life, with its self-seeking appetites and ambi- tions, and that universal life which is seeking unim- peded expression through their individuality. Both may feel all this; but they part company when they come to reflect on the real nature of the relation between themselves as individuals and that Universal Soul, that dominant Self of the Universe, as Dr. Martineau terms it, which reveals itself in the human spirit in the form of its purest and highest ideals. As I said in a previous 332 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. Lecture, I believe that the true relation of our individual self to this cosmical Self, or God, is more truly appre- hended when regarded, as it was particularly by the Hebrews, from the point of view of our moral conscious- ness. And if we compare this Hebraic or ethical view of our relation to God with that feature in Pantheism which represents the human soul as an efflux from, and reproduction of, the life which animates and unifies the whole, we arrive at a clear distinction between the attitude of the Pantheist and the Ethical Theist in regard to the relation of man to that Eternal Life out of which he emerges. The Pantheist sees in his own inner life but phases or modes of the life of the Cosmos manifesting itself under such limiting conditions as the particular stages of biological, intellectual and sociological develop- ment necessitate; and though, as he contemplates his own past career, he may see much that is repulsive to his ideal of beauty and perfection in the sensual and selfish passions which at times in his case realize them- selves in his character and conduct, yet he cannot consis- tently, as Spinoza admits, feel repentance or remorse for such phases of his existence, since from the Pantheistic standpoint they are all necessary temporal stages in the evolution of the Eternal Thought. To the Ethical Theist, on the other hand, the ideals which visit his soul and claim his allegiance are not simply influences from the Universal Soul which necessarily find a definite expres- sion in accordance with the particular character of the individual soul which feels them; they are invitations and injunctions arising in the dependent soul by the immanent action of the Universal Soul, and the former IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 333 is, to a certain very real extent, left free to determine itself in favour of or against these divine influences. The essential difference between the Pantheistic and Theistic attitude of mind may be realized as follows. Theist and Pantheist alike may with Wordsworth conceive of God as One " Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought And rolls through all things." But only an Ethical Theist could, with Wordsworth, address "Duty" as "Stern daughter of the voice of God : ' ; only an Ethical Theist could consistently say, with Browning, that God's plan was " To create man and then leave him Able, His own word saith, to grieve him." Or, with Tennyson : " Our wills are ours, we know not how ; Our wills are ours, to make them thine." So, too, it is only an Ethical Theist who could exclaim with Marco Lombardo in Dante's Purgatorio : " Ye who are living every cause refer Still upwards to the heavens, as if all things They of necessity moved with themselves. If this were so in you would be destroyed Free-will, nor any justice would there be In having joy for good, or grief for evil." The Ethical Theist, then, does not believe that the highest aim of God in the case of human spirits is the mere development of reproductions of Himself under temporal 334 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. limiting conditions, but rather that His own infinite love can only find adequate expression and response in giving existence to rational beings with some real power of free self-determination ; and that in order to bring about the infinitely precious result that human mind and hearts should freely respond to the divine appeal, God vacates, in the case of man's moral decisions, to some real extent the exercise of His own determining causality; or, as Browning expresses it : " God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away, As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at Him from a place apart, And use his gifts of brain and heart." "Now out of this distinctly personal relationship in which the Ethical Theist feels himself placed in respect to the Universal Soul, there arises that sense of union and com- munion with the Eternal One, which (to again quote Dr. A. ReVille's words) "is a source of secret (though it may be undefinable) comfort, of which those only can deny the reality who have never known it." In Professor Seeley's treatise on " Natural Religion," he represents what I have called Ethical Theism as only one form of Religion, and defines it as the religion of goodness, while he maintains that there are two other forms of religion which in the present day have also their sincere votaries. Besides the worship of Goodness, there is, in his view, the worship of Beauty, which often constitutes the only religion of the artist; and there is the worship of Truth, or of the natural laws in which IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 335 the unity of the Cosmos reveals itself, and the search of, and reverence for, truth often becomes the only form of devotion to which the savant surrenders himself. As we have before seen, there is an ideal of truth and reality in which the scientific man believes, and to the attainment of which he may consecrate his powers ; there is an ideal of beauty which the artist discovers with increasing clearness, and to which he seeks to give more adequate expression; there is an ideal of social perfec- tion of which every great social reformer believes he has a perception, and which he seeks to realize ; but, as was shown in the passage I before quoted from Prof. Rauwenhoff, the man who wholly concentrates his atten- tion on one of these aspects of the Universal Soul, which reveals itself in him, and thinks of and cares for nothing else, is in the position of a somnambulist who is under the mastery of one fixed idea. The artist who is an artist and nothing more has not yet realized his own human nature, and the same is the case with the scien- tist on whose soul nothing but science makes a recog- nized claim. But when the whole of a man's nature comes clearly before his consciousness (as it must sooner or later), then he perceives that these separate ideals have no absolute claim upon him that the moral con- sciousness may at times require from the artist to forego his art, from the savant to waive for a while the pursuit of science, whenever moral reverence or the love of humanity demands the sacrifice. Dr. Martineau, in his " Types of Ethical Theory," 1 has clearly shown that as the moral nature of man develops it reveals to him the relative 1 Vol. II. chaps, vi. and vii. 336 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. worth of the several springs of action within him ; and the truly moral and religious man is always conscious of a higher claim upon him than his science, or his art, or his poetry, which on occasion may require him to leave his favourite pursuit and to obey the ethical summons which proceeds from the Supreme Source of all ideals. The so-called Eeligion of Science, if it is abstractly cultivated, constantly tends to pass into de- pressing Agnosticism ; and the votary of Beauty can only reach the highest and truest loveliness in conjunction with that moral reverence, that spiritual sense of rela- tionship with the source of all perfection, which Ethical Theism recognizes and intensifies. Hence it will be found, I believe, that while a cold and narrow Deism is unfavourable to a warm interest in science, in art, and in the highest branches of literature, and while Pan- theism has always a tendency to subordinate the moral to the merely scientific, artistic or literary, Ethical Theism proves at once eminently favourable to an inte- rest in science, in art, and in all social reforms, inasmuch as it regards all these ideals as having their source in that Universal Soul who is at the very centre of man's per- sonality, and recognizes in man's moral perceptions a true insight into the nature of the Eternal, an authorita- tive guidance in all the vocations of life. There are not, then, I contend, three possible religions, as Prof. Seeley appears to think there are ; for religion proper does not clearly show itself in human nature till reverence for an authority, manifested in the conscience, presents the soul with a supreme ideal, in which the presence and the authority of the Eternal One are felt to be revealed. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 337 As the soul, in its ethical and spiritual experiences, thus realizes the presence and the absolute worth of an Ethical Ideal, it spontaneously conceives the source of this inspiration, and of the spiritual support which accom- panies self-surrender to this inner authority, under the form of Personality. And though reflection at once sug- gests that there are essential limits in our human per- sonality which can have no possible application in the case of God, yet there are substantial reasons for con- cluding that these limitations may be dropped without affecting the essence of the idea, and that, in truth, our finite human personality suggests a deeper personality which is not, as ours is, dependent on another cause to create it, and on an external world to awaken and develop it. Pantheistic systems, in as much as they represent the personality of man as merely a limited phase of the infinite and eternal Being, cannot conceive or admit of any true analogy between the personality of man and the nature of God. Thus Spinoza says that the human intelligence has no more in common with the divine intelligence than the animal we call " dog" has with the constellation in the heavens to which we give the same name. If, however, the human and divine intelligence were so utterly dissimilar, it would be quite unintelligible how it comes about that the human mind is capable of gradually interpreting that " materialized logical process" of evolution in which the Eternal Intel- ligence manifests itself. Hegel, in like manner, says : " It is absurd to predicate personality or selfhood of the Infi- nite, which by its very nature is the negation of personality or z 338 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. selfhood ; the Infinite, being that which combines and contains all, and which, therefore, excludes nothing." To this Mr. W. S. Lilly l (following Lotze) pertinently replies : " This would be true if Personality were a limitation. But it is not. In the proper sense of the word, Personality (fur sich seiri) can be predicated only of the Infinite. Perfect selfhood means self-existence. What we call personality or selfhood in man, is but the finite effluence from the Source of Being, in whom alone is Perfect Eeason, Perfect Will. This ultimate reality contains within itself the conditions of its own existence. Man does not, for he needs the stimulus of the not-self to be conscious of his own selfhood. He does not need that stimulus to become a person; for the not-self does not create consciousness; it is merely the occasion of its manifestation. The idea of personal- ity, like all ideas, is fully realized only in the Self-existent one ; the original of all existence which transcends all our ideas, yet in transcending includes them." This Absolute and Eternal Being is manifested in the human consciousness as the originator of the soul's dependent existence, and of that supreme ethical law which man's developing moral insight ever more and more clearly apprehends. In this ultimate reality reli- gion sees the Supreme Good in whom all ideals are realized; the Ultimate Ground and Cause of the Uni- verse; the Self -existent One, out of whom all finite personalities proceed, and in whom alone Perfect Per- sonality is realized. If this view of the Supreme Being taken by Ethical Theism be the correct one, it follows that the Pantheistic conception of God as simply imma- nent in the phenomena of the Cosmos is inadequate. 1 The Great Enigma, p. 241. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 339 Pantheism and Theism are sometimes represented as maintaining, the one the immanency, the other the transcendency, of God. Theism, however, as now gene- rally understood, no less than Pantheism, teaches the immanency of God in nature and humanity : but while Pantheism holds that God's nature is exhaustively mani- fested in the cosmos, Theism maintains that the inner nature of God transcends all phenomenal manifestations. " The Pantheist," writes Dr. Martineau, " can say nothing affirmative of God's agency which the Theist may not repeat. The conflict begins with the Pantheist's negative proposition, that beyond the natural order of things, and prior to it, no divine life or agency can be. It is this limitation of the supreme existence, the denial of a supra-mundane cause, which alone the Theist is con- cerned to resist It is simple ignorance both of the principle and history of his doctrine to charge him with planting all divine agency outside of nature except at her birth-hour, at an indefinite distance from its self-realizing purpose in the constitution of living beings. It is sufficient for him if God be somewhere more than the contents of nature, and overpass them in his being, action and perfection. Let this condition only be saved, there is no limit to the admissible identification of what are called ' natural powers' with him, or of organic purpose with his design." 1 As Dr. Martineau has further shown, the very fact that the universe is the manifestation of a Divine Idea, implies that the idea must transcend its phenomenal expression. And not only so, but the facts of man's moral and spiri- tual consciousness remain unintelligible if the essence of the Supreme Being is supposed to be wholly exhausted in the natural order of phenomena which he calls into exist- ence. All real religious experience proves that the Abso- 1 A Study of Religion, Vol. II. p. 150. 340 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. lute Being who eternally manifests His energy in the creation of the world of matter and of mind, still out of the unpledged freedom of His own essential being enters into personal communion with His rational creatures. It is, indeed, in virtue of this transcendent freedom of God as a Spirit that real union and communion between Him and the human soul, which to many persons is a rich source of peace and joy and strength, becomes possible. As Dr. Charles Beard finely says, in his Hibbert Lec- tures: "Many scientific men now tell us that we are everywhere in the grip of law ; there is nothing in our life which is not accounted for by our inheritance and our environment ; if God exists, He neither can nor will break asunder the bonds of fate which tie us down ; we cannot feel the touch of His hand upon our personal life, and the best that is left to us is the faith that somehow in a general way, in which we too shall have our share, ' good will be the final goal of ill.' And the only escape from this spiritual imprisonment lies in keeping open a region of free and intimate intercourse between God and the human soul. There is the less difficulty in this, as the existence of such a region, the reality of such an intercourse, are precisely the mes- sage which religious men in all ages bring, out of the depths of their own experience, to those who have less insight than them- selves. This they announce as ' the fountain-light of all their day, the master-light of all their seeing;' and not their light only, but their strength and consolation. And as this experi- ence involves a series of facts as real and as little to be pushed aside as the embryonic changes and the aborted organs which are rightly regarded as so full of meaning, Keligion yet retains the right of reserving to herself a space in which spirit may meet with spirit, on the one side in impulse and support, on the other in aspiration and self-surrender." 1 1 The Reformation, p. 397. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 341 These profound utterances by Dr. Martineau and Dr. Beard bring out into clear relief the fact of free spiritual intercourse between the Soul of souls and the individual soul. This religious experience, which few persons are wholly destitute of, while to some it is felt to be the most precious and significant feature in their lives, firmly establishes the Theistic position, that while the immanent presence and activity of God is manifested in the orderly physical and mental phenomena of which science takes cognizance, the transcendent action of God in human souls is no less evident in the authority of the conscience, and in the more or less vivid consciousness of infinite Divine sympathy and support through which the Eternal Self responds to the spirit's self-surrender to the divine voice within. Most closely connected with this religious experience of communion between the finite Spirit and the Father within it, is the question as to the continuance of that communion. Is this communion conditioned and limited by the life-time of man's physical organism ? or is this present life but one stage in a progressive intimacy with that Eternal Being, whence man derives his self-con- sciousness, his moral freedom, his capacity for limitless thought and infinite affection ? If in calling into exist- ence spirits capable of increasing response to His Self- revelation, the Supreme Being summons them to a destiny of which this present life is but the prelude, it may at the first glance seem most irrational that the same Love which purposed this Immortality should not have made it unmistakably clear that such a career of unending deve- 342 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. lopment lies before each rational soul. We should remem- ber, however, that if Ethical Theism be a sound philosophy of religion, it would be an indispensable feature in the creation of human spirits who should voluntarily (and not by compulsion or bribe) draw near to the Eternal that the conditions of free moral choice should be completely secured to mankind. But could real freedom of choice be possible if it were a strictly demonstrable certainty that the character which we fashion for ourselves here by our daily moral self-determinations would inevitably affect our destiny through eternity ? If earth is to be really a place for the growth of disinterested virtue and goodness, then scientifically demonstrable knowledge as to the eternal consequences of moral conduct must be withheld. As our great poet Browning says, in his profound philosophical poem, "La Saisiaz": " Once lay down the law, with. Nature's simple ' Such effects succeed Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly deed Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line On his making point meet point, or with, or else without incline,' Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must. Lay hut down that law as stringent, ' Wouldst thou live again, he just,' As this other, ' Wouldst thou live now, regularly draw thy "breath ! For suspend the operation, straight law's hreach results in death ' And (provided always, man addressed this mode be sound and sane) Prompt and absolute obedience, never doubt, will law obtain ! " And not only would this definite and absolutely certain knowledge of a retributive hereafter largely deprive our moral choices of true ethical worth by making self-love and virtue practically coincident, but as we now see, in the case of persons who become absorbed in real or sup- posed spiritualistic phenomena, the interest in the affairs IX. ETHICfAL THEISM. of - the after- world would be very detrimental to the achievement of the one thing needful here, viz. to the building up of a high moral character by virtue of earnest devotion to the realization of a lofty ideal under the social conditions of this present world. If, then, we are right in supposing that the goal to which evolution tends is the development of free, self- conscious, rational beings, who by their own voluntary choice obey the injunctions and respond to the invita- tions of the immanent Universal Soul, we see that it is quite in accordance with this supreme end of the universe that the soul's highest relations to the Eternal Self, and therefore to the Future Life, should not rest upon that basis of demonstrable certainty which characterizes the mathematical and physical sciences, but should be of the nature of Belief or Faith, which admits of degrees, and the amount of assurance of which is largely dependent on the measure in which we freely surrender ourselves to the claims of our higher nature pass, that is, into practical sympathy and co-operation with that indwelling Father who is only truly known as He is loyally followed and supremely loved. But if demonstrative certainty with regard to the reality and conditions of man's life hereafter is neither possible nor compatible with the highest end of this present life, it is none the less true that it is indispensable, both for man's happiness and for his persistent moral endeavour, that a faith in immortality (a faith which at times quite reaches to moral certainty) shall be acces- sible to the human mind and heart. Such a belief, a thoughtful study of the cosmos, and of the highest phases 344 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. of human faculty and character as culminating features of cosmical development, tends, I maintain, to engender and to increasingly strengthen. It is in the contemplation of the eternity and infinity which our highest powers and affections imply and require for their complete exercise and satisfaction, and in the consciousness of sympathy and ethical communion between the finite soul and the Universal Soul, that the belief in the continuity and inde- structibility of the personal relation between the human soul and the Soul of souls reaches its maximum of inten- sity. But even apart from these higher spiritual expe- riences, the insight into the history and tendency of the physical and psychical universe, which our present scien- tific knowledge gives, affords of itself a strong presump- tion that both the resources of the cosmos and the destiny of humanity extend indefinitely beyond the limits where our finite powers of sensible perception reach the end of their range. For if we take man as the manifestly highest production of the long process of biological development, and study his powers and aspirations, we find that if we suppose physical death to be the end of the individual man's existence, the fitness of means to ends, the symmetry and rationality which appear to characterize all the lower forms of organic life are in the case of man conspicuously missing. If we consider the upward trend of the brute creation, we observe that the insentient organic life of the vege- table is the necessary preparation for the emergence of the higher sentient forms with power of locomotion ; and in sentient beings the nervous system, which at first merely subserves sensation, motion and reproduction, IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 345 begins at length by imperceptible degrees to prepare the way for intellectual life. A new differentiation in the brain, which commences almost imperceptibly and is for a long time quite subordinate to the nervous centres of mere feeling and movement, gradually assumes structural and functional prominence ; till at length the cerebrum, the organ which subserves intelligence, which in the lower vertebrate animals is hardly the size of a pea, becomes in man by far the most important portion of the brain sub- stance. In the human being, the development of physical size and shape appears to reach its acme and stops, the process of evolution now concentrating itself on the deve- lopment of the intellect and the higher affections, and on the more elaborate structure of the physical organ which appears to minister to these higher functions of life. The struggle for existence which has characterized the lower processes of evolution is gradually replaced by intellectual competition which results in the increasing development of man's mental powers. But even intellectual competition is evidently subservient to something higher. Beneath all this rivalry which^arises from man's inheritance of animal passions, and from the application of intellect to furthering man's craving for self-preservation and self- gratification, there gradually arise and come to the front in human nature new principles which do not lead to competition and to the development of exclusive indivi- dualism, but, on the contrary, completely transcend all individual interests. 1 Though the occasion of the emergence of these higher 1 See, for a more elaborate and forcible presentation of the above argument, Prof. J. Fiske's admirable little treatise on Man'* Destiny^ 346 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. springs of action in human life is the growth of the sympathetic feelings which have developed out of the gregarious instincts of animals, yet by virtue of the dawn and development of the rational principle in human nature, ideas and sentiments arise of a quite universal character; and these new principles carry with them an authority to hold in check, and if necessary to over- rule, the lower principles of competition and self-preser- vation. Hence arise in the mind living interests which cannot find adequate satisfaction within the range of this present existence a desire to know which has no limits, a capacity for love which demands eternity, an ideal of moral rectitude and of beauty which advances to loftier heights as its lower forms attain realization, and so allows of no finite goal to man's rational, moral and aesthetic pilgrimage. In the lower stages of animal life, the appetites and instincts all subserve the well-being and reproduction of the animal's physical structure ; but in man, springs of action, aspirations and ideals arise which altogether transcend the physical frame, which dominate the organism, use it for their own purposes, and, if occasion should arise, make man ready and willing to sacrifice even his own physical organism for the attain- ment of some higher end. As Dr. Martineau eloquently writes : " We here see the very impulses which begin as purveyors for the body ending with a conquest over its importunities, and a subjugation of it to rational, if not unselfish, aims. And, the moment we enter the inner circle of human characteristics, the interpretation of these characteristics as instruments for work- ing the organism utterly fails us. Who would ever think of referring the sentiment of Wonder to its physiological use ? It IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 347 neither helps the digestion nor regulates the temperature; it succours no weakness, it repels no foe ; the labour to which it incites, the enthusiasm which it kindles, often detract from the animal perfection and consume the organic powers that serve it, and only elevate the level and widen the relations of life opening to it intellectual interests and possibilities unlimited in extent and inexhaustible in duration. ... It is not physically that we are nobler and more complete for our libraries, or theatres, or ' Schools of Athens.' Compassion, sympathy, attach- ment, also serve in us, no doubt, the same ends for which they more or less exist in other creatures. But how soon and far do they transcend this useful function, and claim a good upon their own account ! ... If you judged these features of humanity by a prospective instead of a retrospective measure, and asked yourself whither they look instead of whence they come, could you hesi- tate to say : ' It is for these that we are made ; these it is to which we must yoke our physical power in humble service, by which we are to rise above it, and pass into a life of larger dimensions.' " l As we reflect upon considerations such as these, we are spontaneously led to the conclusion, that as there is a striking harmony in the lower stages of the animal crea- tion between the animal's appetites and instincts and its actual life, the same must hold good in the case of man also ; and that, consequently, as in human nature there arise ideas and aspirations for which the limits of this earthly existence afford no satisfaction, the explanation of this apparent anomaly must be found in the belief that the soul's connection with its present physical organ is not the whole, but only the preliminary stage, of that career in the course of which its unlimited capacities and aspirations will find increasing exercise and satisfaction. Whether or not our true self first begins to exist with 1 A Study of Religion, Vol. II. p. 343. 348 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. our advent at physical birth we cannot say, but we have in consciousness clear evidence that this personality of ours preserves its identity amid the incessant changes of our physical frame. And if it be urged by the Pantheist that, though we are eternal in the sense of being a phase of the self-existent Absolute, our individuality is finite and transient, and that at death the efflux from the Eternal Self, which appears for a short season as a per- sonal Ego, will flow back into the ultimate Unity out of which it arose, the Theist may well reply, that the rational presumption is, that personalities, characters built up by long years of patient loyalty to the Ideal, of self- surrender to Divine guidance, are infinitely too precious both in the view of each other and in the view of the Eternal to be allowed to perish. Dr. Martineau, in the second volume of "A Study of Eeligion," l translates from " Schleiermacher's Life" a touching correspondence between Schleiermacher and one of his pupils, a young widow from whom a dearly beloved husband had been snatched away by sudden illness. This correspondence vividly shows how wholly unsatisfactory to the pure and loving heart is the Pantheistic doctrine of the state of the soul after death. " I implore you," writes the bereaved one to her old friend and teacher, " I implore you, Schleier, by all that is dear to God and sacred, give me, if you can, the certain assurance of finding and knowing him again. Tell me your inmost faith in this, 1 P. 360. The whole of this deeply interesting correspondence, with Dr. Martineau's comments thereon, is most valuable as exhibiting in the clearest light the intrinsic incompetence of Pantheism (be it the Pantheism of Schleiermacher or that of Hegel) to respond to the reasonable claims of the soul's highest and noblest affections. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 349 dear Schleier : oh ! if it fails, I am undone. Speak to my poor heart : tell me what you believe. You say, his soul is resolved back quite melted away in the great All ; the old is quite gone by, it will never come to recognition again ; oh, Schleier, this I cannot bear!" But Sch.leiermach.er can only reply : " How can I dissipate your doubt, dear Jette ? It is only the images of fancy in her hour of travail that you want me to con- firm. If he now is living in God, and you love him eternally in God, as you knew and loved God in him, can you think of any- thing more glorious ? " Nothing can be more pathetic than Schleiermacher's strenuous but ineffectual efforts to bring consolation to this stricken heart while remaining faithful to his own Pantheistic principles. " True it is," he says, " that in the personal life the spirit does not find its essence, but only makes its apparition, to be renewed, we know not how : all here is beyond our knowledge : we can only imagine." "Ah, then," she thinks, "the apparition has vanished for ever, that dear personal life which is all that I know ; he is Ehrenfried no more : gone to God, not to be kept safe, but to be eternally lost in Him." Most reasonable is this protest of her loving heart, for, as Dr. Martineau truly says, "Love knowledge where persons are not : can there be a greater contra- diction ? " l 1 In regard to these deeper problems of the spirit, the insight of the higher affections is keener than that of the intellect ; and the poet is often a better guide than the savant or the philosopher. Hence such poems as Browning's "Evelyn Hope" are not mere imaginations, but have in them an element of real inspiration : 350 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. But the doubt suggests itself, Where, then, is the departed spirit? and where is the body whereby it is placed in organic and conscious relation with the cosmos and with other spirits ? Reflection reminds us that while recent science makes it evident that our actual knowledge of the universe is but slight and superficial, it at the same time suggests and renders probable the existence of far deeper cosmical resources of whose nature we have at pre- sent but a faint inkling. Our bodily senses do but admit to a perception of the outermost film of the unfathomable reality. With acuter senses, a richer world would at once open before our astonished vision ; and it is not at all improbable that there exist different aspects of reality from those which we now perceive, to which new senses of a more subtile nature may give our spirits access. Even the scientific imagination, though it can penetrate far deeper than the senses, and reach that mysterious all-pervading ether which altogether evades our sensible perception, still starts profounder questions than any that " For God above Is great to grant as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love ; I claim you still for my own love's sake ! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few ; Much is to learn and much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you." Of a like character is that grand Threnody which the death of his beloved and gifted child wrung out of the heart of Emerson, in which occur the lines : " What is excellent As God lives is permanent : Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain ; Heart's love will meet thee again." IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 351 it solves. The dissipation of force, and the as yet wholly unrevealed secret why, in spite of that continual dissipa- tion, a past eternity has not brought the dynamic activity of the cosmos to a standstill, suggests a transcendent source of new cosmical life and energy, and warns us that human , science is by its very nature intrinsically inca- pable of reaching an exhaustive and fundamental expo- sition of the inner life and nature of the universe. And as to the question of a bodily investment for the liberated spirit, it is by no means improbable that, as Swedenborg thought, each soul in this present life, as its character forms, is fashioning its own spiritual body a body either lovely with the beauty of virtue, or disfigured by the impress of selfishness and vice. We need not go in imagination into remote regions of space to find our heaven or hell ; there are depths of being immediately around and within us which open limitless possibilities as to the "where" and "how" of the departed spirit's existence. Nay, I am inclined to think, with Kant and Lotze, that Space l itself is but the mode or symbol under which finite minds, by the necessity of their constitution, picture the invisible relations of metaphysical reality ; and while this beneficent constitution of our perceptive faculty is the condition of clear scientific insight and discrimina- tion, it at the same time gives an appearance of isolated separateness to things, and hides that deeper metaphysi- 1 If Space be an objective reality, it must be conceived either as an attribute of God, or as independent of God, and co-eternal with Him. To both of these alternatives there appear to me to be formidable objections which I am unable to surmount. In regard to Time, on the other hand, I have in the previous Lecture given my reasons for dissenting from Kant's view. 352 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. cal connection whereby all things, in spite of their par- tially independent existence, are yet on the inner side of their being inseparably connected with one underlying and undivided Unity. If, then, neither physics nor metaphysics are capable of finally closing the door of negation against the. possible realization of our infinite spiritual aspirations and quench- less loves, does not our moral nature also furnish solid ground for the positive assurance that of the seeds of character which in virtue of our free ethical activity we sow in this life we shall assuredly reap the harvest either here or hereafter ? It is not immediately that either sinful or virtuous conduct works out its inevitable retributions. Sin and suffering are inseparably connected, and the suffering is at once the expression of Divine Justice and of Divine Love, for only suffering heals the spiritual hurt which Sin has wrought. As Dr. Martineau forcibly puts it : " Our moral nature cannot run through its own cycle in our experience here. It announces a righteous rule which again and again it brings to mind and will not suffer to be forgotten, but of which it does not secure the execution. It is a prophecy carrying its own credentials in an incipient foretaste of the end, but holding its realization in reserve ; and if Death gives a final discharge alike to the sinner and the saint, we are warranted in saying that Conscience has told more lies than it has ever called to their account." 1 Further, is it conceivable that that wonderful thing called Character^ which grows stronger and stronger in 1 A Study of Religion, Vol. II. p. 388. 2 " Strange to say, it is in old age, when we are told all is decay, that the sinews of the spirit are more knit for climbing than the sinews IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 353 a good man's life, which is mighty enough to bear up patiently under all disease and trial, which no tempta- tion, however mighty, can divert from its course, and which grows firmer and solider as the body ages and grows weaker is it conceivable, I ask, that this spiritual nature, whose life and growth is by no means parallel with that of our mere physical structure, should at the same time be vitally implicated in the act of physical dissolution ? Is it conceivable that the prophet, or great social reformer, whose personality was powerful enough to initiate a move- ment the influence of which extends over many centuries, whose will possessed such spiritual force that no induce- ment could make it swerve a jot from its allegiance to Eternal Duty and Eternal Love, should break up and be chemically dissolved and dissipated at the stroke of an executioner's axe, or because a few nails are driven into its physical organ and vehicle ? Nor can I regard it as credible that the world's greatest thinkers, artists and poets, of many of whom the genius was only fully recognized after they had departed this life, should wholly vanish from the sphere of conscious being, and never become aware of the sincere homage of admiration and love which a grateful posterity delights to offer at their shrine. We read with joy fulness of spirit George Eliot's grand utterance : of the body were in youth, and the inner man is renewed day by day as by an elixir of life for the effort age has to make. As we grow older, even as the intellect gets weaker and weaker, spiritual thinys love, joy, peace, quietude, temperance grow stronger ! All the strength of the past lingers in our spiritual life as spiritual pmcer." From a newspaper report of a recent sermon by the Rev. Stopford Brooke. 2 A 354 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. " may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence !" but how certainly and suddenly would the mighty charm of these noble words fade away if for the " choir invi- sible" we were to read the "choir unconscious" Surely it is because, though invisible, they are felt to be still living with God, that the thought of them is so full of inspiration and of poetic power. But in addition to man's intellectual and moral nature, there is our specially spiritual or religious nature (which lies at the deepest heart and core of our being); and the spiritual consciousness of communion with, and sympathy from, the immanent Eternal is with many persons the firmest basis for their faith in Immortality. The more the sense of personal relationship to God deepens, the more religion takes a strong and vital hold upon us, and we realize more fully our personal union with that Eternal Self, the Father within us, out of whose living presence arise all our aspirations for truth, all our ideals of per- fection, all those yearnings of divine love which raise us above our finite selves, the more assured and confident we become that ideas of death and final separation are wholly inapplicable to this felt spiritual relationship with the eternal Cause and Ground of all existence. We feel with Jesus, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." * 1 This instinctive faith, that Death cannot break the link of Love which unites the finite mind with the Universal Mind, is well expressed in the lines which Emerson, in his Essay on the Over-sou^ quotes from Henry More, the thoughtful Platonist of the seventeenth century : IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 355 It is not merely or chiefly for his own individual satisfaction that man hopes for and believes in a Here- after ; it is not from egoistic motives that many noble souls cling with such tenacity to the idea of Immortality : it is rather because they feel that the Divinity which is immanent in their own consciousness would be baffled, confounded and disappointed, if this short life were all. All through the process of Evolution, Matter and Mecha- nism have appeared to be subservient to the advent of human self-consciousness of a being of u wise discourse, looking before and after," and capable of ever-increasing participation in Divine Thought and Divine Love. Shall, then, this self-revelation of God in the human conscious- ness, to which all the earlier stages of biological deve- lopment have slowly but surely led up, suddenly and irrationally break off just when the finite mind has awakened to a clear sense of its essential relationship to the Universal Mind, and is standing, with yearning gaze, on the threshold of the infinite possibilities and hopes which the felt immanence of the Eternal appears to at once disclose and guarantee ? Shall the curtain of Death suddenly fall, and prematurely end for ever the opening drama of man's spiritual career, leaving it wholly incom- prehensible why this gradual ascent in the scale of life, this emergence of capacities and affections which tran- scend all finitude, should abruptly terminate in this sorry " But souls that of his own good life partake, He loves as his own self; dear as his eye They are to him : he'll never them forsake : When they shall die, then God himself shall die j They live, they live in blest eternity." 356 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. fiasco, which, leaves matter and mechanism after all the real masters of the situation, the lords, and not, as heretofore, the servants of the spirit's higher life ? For myself, I cannot believe that Death will thus falsify the prophetic presentiments of the Intellect, the Conscience and the Heart, and I will bring my treat- ment of this subject to a close with the following sober and forcible words by Prof. J. Fiske which give clear expression to my own conclusion : " The more thoroughly we comprehend that process of Evolu- tion by which things have come to be what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in man is to rob the whole process of its meaning. It goes far towards putting us to permanent intel- lectual confusion, and I do not see that any one has as yet alleged, or is ever likely to allege, a sufficient reason for our accepting so dire an alternative. For my own part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work." 1 The general result, then, to which the thoughts which I have sought to express in these Lectures lead, is this : that while our felt dependence on the Absolute, and the rational need of the eternal creative causality of the Absolute to explain, not only the existence of the infinite series of dynamic energies which make up the universe, but also their organic unity, compel the mind to a belief in the reality of One Self-existent Ground and Cause for the evolving universe, it is in the progressive dis- cernment of the universal and authoritative ideals of 1 Man's Destiny, p. 115. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 357 truth, beauty and goodness, that the essential nature and character of the immanent God is revealed within us. We are differentiations of His Substance, and in the universal elements of our higher life His Being and our being are at one, for what is the Ideal in us is the eternally Eeal in Him. In our most exalted rational, ethical and spiritual experiences we immediately feel the presence, the sympathy, and the absolute worth and authority of the Divine and the Eternal. The raison d'etre of this eternal series of differentia- tions of God's substance appears to be, that, when the fitting stage of evolution is reached, rational spirits, who in their higher nature share His essential life, but as indi- viduals have a delegated freedom of will, may of their own voluntary choice respond to the injunctions and invitations of the indwelling Eternal, and so enter into ever closer personal intimacy and co-operation with Him. Though in the lower stages of mechanical evolution the immanent energy of God compels the action of the monads of nature by what we call physical necessity, yet this mechanical character of the lowest forms of God's self-manifestation in the cosmos is simply the indispensable prior condition of a coming superstructure of rational and moral freedom. In the case of the self-conscious soul, the Eternal no longer wholly deals with it through necessity (either physical or psychical), but appeals to it, through its progressive Ideals, to throw in its lot with the essential being and aims of the Universal Spirit of the Cosmos. Hence arises a felt personal relationship between the dependent soul and the Father within it a relationship based on the fact that man in his higher experiences 358 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. attains some conscious apprehension of the Infinite, feels aspirations and affections which have nothing finite in their nature. And so the faith inevitably tends to arise that God, who gives to man this moral freedom and this advancing insight into His Perfections, will open up for him an unlimited possibility of rising above the finite and the temporal, and of enjoying eternally in increasing measure that intimacy and sympathy with Himself to which man's life on earth is only the propaedeutic stage. The infinite capacities and aspirations of man, as Fourrier said, predict his destiny ; and we can well imagine that, in view of the highest good of conscious union with Himself, the Eternal has been willing to sacrifice to a large extent the lower good of unvaried personal ease and comfort, in order that through the indispensable path of trial, temptation, suffering and sorrow, man may at length, by his own voluntary choice and effort, attain to spiritual blessedness, to that harmonious inter- com- munion of the human and the Divine, which only the freely proffered Grace of God, and the free and persistent response of the human will can ultimately realize. Permit me, in conclusion, to say a few words on that immediate consciousness of God which, in my view, is so important an element in religious faith. Believing, as I profoundly do, that all wholly satisfying and effec- tive religious belief arises out of the immediate feeling of God's self-revealing presence in our consciousness, these Lectures will, in my view, have failed of their main purpose, if they have not had some slight flavour of that " Divine philosophy " which the poet Milton IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 359 found so "charming" ; that is, if they have not helped my hearers and myself to realize more vividly, and to believe in more unreservedly, that ideal side of our being in which God, as it were, lends a portion of His eternal life to us that we may by earnest thought and action make it at length our very own. If they have at all succeeded in rendering this " eternal " aspect of our higher thoughts and sentiments more truly real to us, I doubt not they will have conduced to a firmer belief in God and to a clearer insight into His character. If so, they will also have stimulated us to so use our moral freedom as to rise above the atmosphere of low personal desires and ambitions which clouds the spiritual insight of the soul, and to avoid of all things the hardening selfishness (the only real Devil and Hell in the cosmos) which incapacitates the finer fibres of our heart and mind for vibrating to the throbbing of that Eternal and Universal Love which is the life-pulse of the universe, whose unresisted influence in human souls makes the music of the world. Spiritual Love is intuitively discerned to hold the highest place among the Ideals which testify to the immanence of the Eternal in the self-consciousness of man; and the bright and hopeful feature in modern civilization is the widespread practical recognition of the supreme divinity of this unifying sentiment which, in the view of the founder of Christianity, is synonymous with God. The power of this deep actuating principle is proving altogether too strong for the restraining bonds of religious Dogmatism, and is shattering all theological creeds which refuse to expand in accordance with its 360 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. eternal and, therefore, authoritative claims. By many cultured persons at the present time this destruction of 11 orthodox " dogmas by the expansive force of broad humanitarian sympathies is supposed to involve the dis- solution of Theistic faith, and the coming replacement of churches by schools of high art and by societies for ethical culture. But, unless I have in these Lectures gone altogether astray from the truth, this very recog- nition of the intrinsic supremacy of Love among the springs of human action, so far from being indicative of the disintegration and decay of Ethical Theism, is simply the outward sign that the living spirit of religious faith is liberating itself from the outworn formulas which now so often cramp and stifle its free expression. The theo- logy which is based on external and miraculously-attested Revelation has reached an apologetic and tottering stage, and its downfall is evidently drawing near ; but in its place is uprising a theology sublime and beautiful a theology which rests upon the indestructible foundations of the felt immanence of the Eternal God in man's purest and noblest ideals, and on the consciousness of sympa- thetic response from the indwelling Father to all aspira- tions and efforts through which man seeks to realize in character and conduct that implicit divinity which at once links man to God and all men to each other in closest brotherhood. To this Theistic faith of the future the present fruitful study of the great religions of the world is richly con- tributing ; for as accurate scholarship and philosophic acumen penetrates to the central formative principles of each of these influential religions, this principle is found IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 361 to spring from true spiritual insight in some deeply reli- gious soul. These faiths, it is beginning to be clearly seen, derive their life and power from the recognizing and emphasizing of some important aspect of the self- revelation of the Eternal in the rational, ethical and spiritual self-consciousness of man ; l and if the Theism 1 In illustration of this truth, it is very interesting and significant to have the testimony of one of the most cultured and religious minds among the Hindoos, viz. of Mr. Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, the present leader of the Brahmo-Somaj or universal-religion movement in India, who, in the course of his Farewell Address, given on Dec. 5th, 1893, in the Arlington Street Church, Boston, U.S.A., on his way home from the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, says : " I maintain that this simple religion which I have tried to lay before you has the power of absorbing to itself all the resources of all the great religions. Believing in nothing more complex than that God is and that he is good, that he is near and that he is loving; believing in nothing more complex than that you are my sisters, my brothers, and my friends, I have the spiritual wealth of all the great religions that ever flourished. What is there in the enthusiasm and energy of Islam that I cannot accept ? What ails my liberal religion that I cannot assimilate that energy, that fidelity, that monotheistic influence, that obedience to the laws of God ? What ails me that I cannot assimilate the marvellous benevo- lence of Buddhism, its self-conquest, its kindness to man and beast alike, its tolerance, its equality of men and women, its poverty and simplicity ? What is the matter with my simple theistic principles that I cannot absorb the wonderful insight of the Hindu into the spiritual constitution of the universe? Why should I not learn from him that introspection by which in his own soul he beholds the glori- ous manifestation of his supreme Brahma 1 ? Why should not I learn from him the law of self-renunciation, of absolute self-forgetfulness, and his devotion in life and death to the search for the glorious purposes of God and the carrying of them out 1 Why should I not sing the swel- ling Psalms of David, which have reverberated for so many centuries ? And when we think of Christ and his beloved Father, is there anything that can keep me back from the love of Jesus, the Son of Man 1 ? .... All the treasures of all scriptures that teach the dealings of God are mine." 2 B 362 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. associated with the name of Jesus of Nazareth is destined, as I believe it is, to be the cosmopolitan faith in which all religious souls will finally concur, this will be for no other reason than that the profound ethical and spiritual experience of Jesus revealed to him that the essence of the indwelling Eternal, and, therefore, the highest ideal that man can seek to realize, is sympathetic, self-sacri- ficing Love. And what makes the faith of Jesus, not simply a phi- losophical theory, but a soul-satisfying religion, is that this supreme immanent principle of Love is with him no merely abstract quality in which all good spirits share, but is a living concrete reality whose actuating presence in the soul carries with it a sense of personal relationship between the human spirit and the Eternal of so real and intimate a character, that the intimacy of finite souls with each other is but the finite reflex and image of this fundamental divine experience. It is, indeed, a truth which every deeply- feeling and deeply- thinking mind cannot fail to recognize, that no human love is of the truly spiritual and eternal sort if it does not contain, as an integral factor, the sense of a still deeper relationship to the Eternal Self, or, as Jesus expresses it, to the Father within us. As the poet Lovelace says, in the graceful love-song from which I have before quoted, he could not love his sweetheart so much "loved he not honour more," so all true friends feel, with more or less vivid- ness, that their friendship would lack its most essential element, did it not involve a sense of deeper personal intimacy on the part of each with the Absolute Reality, the Eternal Friend. IX. ETHICAL THEISM. 363 We experience the feeling of this Divine Presence at the very heart of our profoundest philosophic thinking, in each act of resolute devotion to moral principle, and with special intensity in every act of self-surrender to the promptings of Humanity and Love. If this Abso- lute Presence which meets us face to face in the most momentous of our life's experiences, which pours into our fainting wills the elixir of new life and strength, and into our wounded hearts the balm of a quite infinite sym- pathy, cannot fitly be called a Personal Presence, it is only because this word, personal is too poor, and carries with it associations too human and too limited, to ade- quately express this profound God-consciousness. But we cannot spare the word "personal" in this connection, for we have no higher term ; and if we part with it, our description must needs sink to a lower level. And as I have before endeavoured to show, it is quite possible to retain all the essential and positive elements which this word connotes apart from those negative and limiting features which necessarily appertain to our finite experi- ences, and thus to discern in the highest forms of human personality a true, though not exhaustive, revelation of the nature of the Perfect Personality of God. 1 1 In the Address by Mr. Mozoomdar from which I have quoted above, there occurs the following striking utterance on this relation between the prophet's personality and the personality of God : " The personality of God, without which spiritual religion is impossible, is a truth which is revealed by human personality. The personality of man is a unique thing, and that alone enables us to reach the higher Personality from which these little units that we are have come. Human personality unfolds the great personality of God What would Christianity be without the central personality of Christ, and 364 IX. ETHICAL THEISM. From this point of view, Eeligion and Ethics are, as we saw in the Seventh Lecture, most intimately asso- ciated ; and ethical endeavour loses, I believe, a most important source of its own vitality if it dissociates itself from that sense of personal relationship to, and co-opera- tion with, the Soul of souls, which dissipates pessimistic gloom, and kindles in the heart of the social reformer an immortal trust and hope which no frowns of society, and no failures and disappointments, can wholly quench. 1 the great apostles who worked out his wonderful teachings ? It is these Godlike men, these incarnations of God, these embodiments of the Divine Personality, that have made religion to me a personal matter. Our sorrows are so real, our sufferings are so pressing, that we hasten to some personality where there is sympathy, where there is love for distress, blessing for misery, comfort for pain, and healing for disease ; and these personalities, when they are godly, work in the name of the Supreme Person whose servants and whose representatives they are." 1 I have given further reasons for this conclusion in an Address delivered at the opening of the Session of Manchester New College, October, 1892, on the question, "Are Ethics and Theology vitally connected ? " C. Green & Son, Printers, 118, Strand. 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ; 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. CATALOGUE OF SOME WORKS PUBLISHED BY WILLIAMS & NORGATE. Abbotsford Series of the Scottish Poets. Edited by GEORGE EYRE-TODD. I. Early Scottish Poetry ; II. Mediaeval Scottish Poetry ; III. Scottish Poetry of the Sixteenth Century. Price of each part, 3s. 6d. ; fine paper, 5s. nett. IV. Scottish Ballad Poetry. Price 5s. ; fine paper, 7*. 6d. nett. Ainsworth (Rev. W. M.) Memorial of. With Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. Barrow (E. P., M.A.) Regni Evangelium. A Survey of the Teaching of Jesus Christ. Crown 8vo, cloth. 6*. Baur (F. C.) Church History of the First Three Centuries. Translated from the Third German Edition. Edited by Rev. ALLAN MENZIES. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth. 21s. Baur (F. C.) Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, his Life and Work, his Epistles and Doctrine. A Contribution to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity. By Rev. A. MENZIES. Second Edition. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth. 21s. Beard (Rev. Dr. C.) The Universal Christ, and other Sermons. Crown 8vo, cloth. 7s. 6d. Beard (Rev. Dr. C.) Lectures on the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. (Hibbert Lectures, 1883.) 8vo, cloth. (Cheap Edition, 4s. 6d.) 10s. 6d. Beard (Rev. Dr. C.) Port Royal, a Contribution to the History 01 Religion and Literature in France. Cheaper Edition. 2 vols. Crown 8vo, cloth. 12s. Bleek (F.) Lectures on the Apocalypse. Translated. Edited by the Rev. Dr. S. DAVIDSON. 8vo, cloth. 10s. 6d. Booth (C.) Life and Labour of the People. Vol. I. The East End of London. Third Edition. 8vo, cloth. 10s. 6d. Vol. II. London (continued), Ac. With Appendix of coloured Maps. In 2 vols. 8vo, cloth. 21s. 2000/3/94/JS. Catalogue of some Works Castorius' Map of the World, generally known as Peutinger's Tabula. Printed in colours, after the original in the Imperial Library, Vienna, 5s. Cleland, Mackay, Young (Professors) Memoirs and Memoranda of Anatomy. Vol. I. 16 Plates. 8vo, cloth. 7s. Qd. Collins (F. H.) An Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy. With a Preface by HERBERT SPENCER. 8vo, cloth. 15s. Conway (Moncure D.) Centenary History of the South Place Ethical Society. With numerous Portraits, a Facsimile of the Original Autograph MS. of the well-known Hymn, " Nearer, my God, to Thee," and Appendix containing an Original Poem by Mrs. ADAMS (1836), and an Address by WILLIAM JOHNSON Fox (1842). Crown 8vo, half vellum, paper sides. 5s. Davids (T. W. Rhys) Lectures on some Points in the History of Indian Buddhism. (Hibbert Lectures, 1881.) Second Edition. 8vo, cloth. 10s. 6cZ. Delitzsch (Professor F.) Assyrian Grammar, with Paradigms, Exercises, Glossary, and Bibliography, Translated by the Ven. Arch- deacon R. S. KENNEDY. Crown 8vo, cloth. 15s. Delitzsch (Professor F.) The Hebrew Language viewed in the light of Assyrian Research. Crown 8vo, cloth. 4s. Drummond (Dr.) Philo Judseus ; or, the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy in its Development and Completion. By JAMES DRUMMOND, LL.D., Principal of Manchester College, Oxford. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth. 21s. Enoch, The Book of, the Prophet. Translated from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library, by the late RICHARD LAURENCE, LL.D., Archbishop of Cashel. The Text corrected from his latest Notes by CHARLES GILL. Re-issue, 8vo, cloth. 5s. Ennan's Egyptian Grammar, Translated under Professor Erman's supervision, by J. H. BREASTED, Professor of Egyptology in the University of Chicago. Crown. 8vo, cloth. 18s. Ewald's (Dr. H.) Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament. Translated by the Rev. J. F. SMITH. 5 vols. 8vo, cloth. Each 10s. Qd. Ewald's (Dr. H.) Commentary on the Psalms. Translated by the Rev. E. JOHNSON, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth. Each 10s. 6d. Ewald's (Dr. H.) Commentary on the Book of Job, with Translation. Translated from the German by the Rev. J. FREDERICK SMITH. 8vo, cloth. 10s. Qd. Published by Williams and Norgate. Frankfurter (Dr. 0.) Handbook of Pali ; being an Elementary Grammar, a Chrestomathy, and a Glossary. 8vo, cloth. 16s. Gould (Rev. S. Baring) Lost and Hostile Gospels. An Account of the Toledoth Jesher, two Hebrew Gospels circulating in the Middle Ages, and Extant Fragments of the Gospels of the first Three Centuries of Petrine and Pauline Origin. Crown 8vo, cloth. 7s.