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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M. A., 
 
 U 
 CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 II s'en faut peut-etre que le christianisme, a cette heure qui nous parait si avancee, ait 
 prodait dans la conscience et dans la vie de l'humanite toutes ses applications, ait ex- 
 prime toute sa pensee, ait dit son dernier mot. Dans un sens, il a tout dit des l'abord ; 
 dans un autre sens, il a beaucoup a dire encore, et le monde ne finira que quand le chris- 
 tian isme aura tout dit. — Vixet. — 
 
 FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 
 
 WITH A NEW PREFACE AND OTHER ADDITIONS. 
 
 
 R E DF I E L D 
 
 110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET NEW YORK. 
 
 18 5 4. 
 
TO 
 
 < ALFRED TENNYSON, ESQ. 
 Ifyistt fMnah* 
 
 My Dear Sir, 
 
 I have maintained in these Essays that a Theology which does not 
 correspond to the deepest thoughts and feelings of human beings cannot 
 be a true Theology. Your writings have taught me to enter into many 
 of those thoughts and feelings. Will you forgive me the presumption of 
 offering you a book which at least acknowledges them and does them 
 homage ? 
 
 As the hopes which I have expressed in this volume are more likely 
 to be fulfilled to our children than to ourselves, I might perhaps ask 
 you to accept it as a present to one of your name, in whom you have 
 given me a very sacred interest. Many years, I trust, will elapse, before 
 he knows that there are any controversies in the world into which he 
 has entered. Would to God that in a few more he may find that they 
 have ceased ! At all events, if he should ever look into these Essays, 
 they may tell him what meaning some of the former generation attached 
 to words, which will be familiar and dear to his generation, and to thoso 
 that follow his, — how there were some who longed that the bells of 
 our churches might indeed 
 
 Ring out the darkness of the land, 
 'Ring in the Christ that is to be. 
 
 Believe me, 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 Yours very truly and gratefully, 
 
 F. D. Maurice. 
 
 186716 
 
/* 
 
 «r 
 
 IWIVER8 
 
 £*UFORNlL 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 A Lady, once a Member of the Society of Friends, who died some 
 years ago, desired me in her will to apply a small sum to purposes in 
 which, I " knew that she was interested." It was not difficult to 
 comply with the letter of this command, as she was interested in 
 many benevolent undertakings. But I was aware that the words of 
 her bequest had a special meaning, and that she intended to lay me 
 under the obligation of writing, or procuring to be written, some book 
 especially addressed to Unitarians. 
 
 I have made several efforts to execute this task, but have never done 
 anything which gave me the least satisfaction. A mere controversial 
 work I felt that I could not compose. Such works, so far as my expe- 
 rience has gone, do little else than harm to those who write, and to 
 those who read them. Still it has been a great weight on my con- 
 science, that I was neglecting a request so solemnly conveyed to me. 
 
 Some months ago I seemed to see a way in which I might acquit 
 myself of the obligation. A series of Discourses which had occurred to 
 me as suitable for my own Congregation, in the interval between Quin- 
 quagesima Sunday, and Trinity Sunday, might, I thought, embrace all the 
 topics which I should wish to bring under the notice of Unitarians. It 
 was suggested by a friend that I should throw each discourse into the 
 form of an Essay, after it had been preached. By following this 
 advice, I have been able to avail myself of criticisms which were made 
 on the sermons when they were delivered ; to introduce many topics, 
 which would have been unsuitable for the pulpit ; and at the same 
 time, I hope, to retain something of the feeling of one who is addressing 
 actual men with whom he sympathises, not opponents with whom he 
 
VI. ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 is arguing. I did not allude to Unitarians while I was preaching. I 
 have said scarcely anything to them in writing, which I do not think 
 just as applicable to the great body of my contemporaries, of all classes 
 and opinions. Nearly every Essay has been re-written, and greatly 
 enlarged in its passage out of the sermon state. Two were originally 
 composed in their present form. 
 
 Though I have printed the Essays one after another, before the 
 whole work was completed, that I might be compelled to perform a 
 task which I had deferred so long, I cannot ask for any toleration on 
 the plea of haste. The book expresses thoughts which have been work- 
 ing in my mind for years ; the method of it has not been adopted care- 
 lessly; even the composition has undergone frequent revision. No 
 labor I have been engaged in has occupied me so much, or interested 
 me more deeply. I hope it may be the means of leading some to a far 
 higher knowledge than their guide has ever attained. 
 
 May 2-1, 1853. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 A critic of these Essays in the November number 
 of the Prospective Review, observes that I have "not 
 the art of convincing " him ; but then, " that it is startling 
 to think how few writers ever do radically overturn any 
 mature system of belief." I certainly never suspected 
 myself of possessing this "art." I do not know whether 
 there is such an " art." If there is, and if I had it, I 
 am not certain that I should wish to exercise it. To 
 overturn " radically a mature system of belief" is the 
 very last object of my ambition. There are some Uni- 
 tarians, and some Trinitarians also, who are not very 
 mature in their convictions, not very settled in their 
 belief, who have tried systems, and are not content with 
 them. To such I addressed myself. By some of these 
 I have been understood. They have responded to my 
 words with more sympathy than I had any right to 
 expect. For they have perceived that I have not wished 
 to unsettle them in their opinions, or to bring them to 
 mine, but to show that God has laid a foundation for 
 them and for me upon which we may stand together. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 I should wish these weary and earnest seekers to read 
 the Article to which I have referred, and to ask them- 
 selves whether they find there what they are looking 
 for. The Review is written with much gracefulness 
 and eloquence. It contains the latest message of 
 the new Unitarian school. It undertakes to expose the 
 feebleness of my analysis, and the unsatisfactoriness of 
 my logic. Very likely it may have succeeded. But 
 the question at issue between us is not that at all, not 
 whether they are good reasoners and I am a bad one, 
 but what Gospel they have to bring to mankind, what 
 light they have to throw on all the questionings and 
 yearnings of the human spirit, what they can show has 
 been done for the deliverance of our race and of its 
 members, what hope they can give us of that which 
 shall yet be done. On that issue I am willing to put 
 their creed and mine. That which is true in itself, that 
 which the God of Truth declares to his creatures, can, 
 I am sure, bear the test. What proceeds from man will 
 never satisfy man. 
 
 I have no cause to complain of the Writer of this 
 Article for want of courtesy to me personally. On the 
 contrary, he has paid me compliments to which I am not 
 entitled, and which I am bound to disclaim. He thinks 
 that I have some good and genial qualities of my own ; 
 that I should probably prefer truth to a lie, if I had not 
 set myself to defend certain Articles of Faith. That 
 necessity leads me into " miserable juggling," and makes 
 me an object of the Reviewer's deepest compassion. It 
 is very agreeable thus to get all honors for oneself, and 
 to have all one's crimes attributed to an unfortunate 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 position. I feel the temptation to accept a distinction 
 which sets the conscience so much at ease, and gives 
 one's vanity such a pleasant stimulus. But I cannot do 
 so without proving- myself not to be what the Reviewer 
 is kind enough to say that I am, but the very opposite 
 of it, — without being guilty of a conscious and inward 
 falsehood. I know that the Creed which leads me, as 
 the Reviewer thinks, to contradict my better nature, 
 gives me an interest in my fellows, a sympathy with 
 mankind, which I have not naturally, and which I find 
 it exceedingly hard to maintain. I know that that 
 Creed has led me to desire truth in my inward parts, 
 and to resist those tendencies to " juggling" and trick- 
 ery into which the Reviewer supposes that it tempts me. 
 I know, moreover that the belief in fixed Articles 
 respecting the relations and acts of God has enabled me, 
 and does enable me, to believe that the world is pro- 
 gressive, and not stationary; just as the belief in the 
 fixed article respecting gravitation has given an impulse 
 to all the inquiries of natural students. If, after nearly 
 6,000 years of man's existence, we assume that nothing 
 is known respecting the questions which men have felt 
 to concern them most, we shall not expect that any- 
 thing will be known. I contend that articles do not 
 crush inquiry, but awaken it ; frhat they do not hinder 
 education, but show how we may avoid superstitions 
 which have hindered it most effectually ; that they do 
 not oblige us to be harsh or repulsive to any men 
 of any sect, but qualify us to understand them, 
 to sympathise with them, to justify their opposing 
 thoughts, to reconcile them. These doctrines I main- 
 
 A* 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 tained in the first book which I wrote after I took orders.* 
 The experience of nineteen very eventful years in Eng- 
 lish Ecclesiastical history has led me to change some 
 of the opinions which I expressed in that book. I would 
 not impose our Articles upon the students in our Univer- 
 sities, because I see that by doing so we tempt them to 
 dishonesty, and lead them to dislike a document which 
 I believe they ought to love. But the other convic- 
 tions which I maintained then, instead of being shaken, 
 have been confirmed by all I have seen, heard, thought, 
 and regretted since. I am more than ever persuaded 
 that they whose zeal for progress leads them to preach 
 that the Bible is a collection of obsolete Hebrew stories, 
 are seeking to defraud the world of the treasure to 
 which it has owed its past and will owe its future pro- 
 gress ; that those who tell us that we may not express 
 the facts and principles of the Bible in popular Creeds 
 and teach them to our children, leave us at the mercy 
 of coteries, where men and women prostrate themselves 
 before some newspaper oracle which allows them no 
 freedom whatever ; — that those who would take from us 
 our intellectual formularies, under pretence that if we 
 cast them off we shall do greater justice to the earnest 
 convictions of those who dissent from us, are not just to 
 these convictions themselves, but very intolerant of 
 them ; and that, on the contrary, we are bound by those 
 forms, in spite of our own natural narrowness, sectarian- 
 ism, and dogmatism, to recognise and honor the striv- 
 ings after truth of every man whatsoever, even of the 
 man who scorns us and hates us most. 
 
 * Subscription no Bondage ; or, the Thirty-nine Articles guides in 
 Academic Education. Oxford. 1835. 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 In connexion with this subject, I shall allude to an 
 event of which it would be affectation to suppose that 
 the readers of this book are altogether ignorant. Most 
 of them will have heard that the publication of it has 
 led to my expulsion from a College connected with the 
 Church of England. The inference has been readily 
 drawn, that I shall now feel the position which I have 
 taken up as a defender of the Church and its formularies 
 to be untenable, that I must have learnt in myself how 
 galling that yoke is which I have wished that other 
 men should endure. 
 
 I do not know whether I shall be suspected by some 
 of a base motive for what I am going to say ; but I 
 know that there are those who will believe that I am 
 speaking solemnly, deliberately, as in the presence of 
 God. I affirm, then, that during the thirteen years 
 which I passed in that College, I never was restrained 
 from uttering one word which I thought it would be good 
 or right to utter before my Class, by the obligation under 
 which I had laid myself to teach according to the for- 
 mularies of the Church of England ; that I should have 
 suppressed, in obedience to what have been called my 
 " sectarian timidities, " many words which I did utter, 
 if those formularies had not given me boldness, had not 
 raised me to a higher point of view than my own, had 
 not warned me against the peril and guilt of accepting 
 the opinions of the age as my guides. I declare that 
 if I have ever been able to see any method in history, 
 civil or ecclesiastical, or to make my pupils see it, the 
 Bible and these formularies have shown me that method. 
 I declare further, that if I have been able to teach my 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 pupils, — and I have tried diligently to teach them, — 
 that they are to reverence the convictions of all men 
 of all sects and. schools, and to show them sympathy, I 
 have done what I should not have been encouraged to 
 do, or have thought it safe to do, if I had not taken 
 these Articles as my own teachers and helpers, and if I 
 had not considered that it was my duty, as far as I could, 
 to impregnate those who would afterward be ministers 
 in the Church with their spirit. 
 
 Once more, the fact that I had accepted these Articles 
 and had bound myself to teach according to them, made 
 me comparatively indifferent about the question, whether 
 my view of the right method of education was the same 
 with that of my superior for the time being. I had 
 announced over and over again in various forms of lan- 
 guage, that I did not look upon our Articles as marking 
 out a close and narrow line between two opposite schools, 
 and as authorising us to denounce both ; but as announce- 
 ments of a higher truth, which should lead us to deal fairly 
 with the strongest assertions of both. I could not lecture 
 on Church History without telling my pupils that Creeds 
 and Articles do not and cannot stifle opinions, seeing that 
 the decrees of the Nicene Council were the beginning, 
 not the end, of the Arian controversy, and that the pro- 
 clamation of James I. against discussions upon Election 
 and Predestination, was the signal for the most furious 
 war between Calvinists and Arminians ever waged. The 
 Principal of King's College had, I believe, declared him- 
 self the conservator of a via media ; he probably expects 
 results from Articles which I should consider most unde- 
 sirable, even if they were not unattainable. But if, in 
 
PREFACE. xia 
 
 the face of my statements, he could accept me as a fel- 
 low-worker, even invite me to become one, my con- 
 science was clear. I could teach with perfect freedom, 
 knowing that I was trying to obey the laws which we 
 both confessed, not feeling that I was more tied to the 
 habits of his mind, than he was to mine. It might be 
 reasonable to expect that such a connexion would at 
 some time or other terminate. But it would have termi- 
 nated much sooner, — it would have been immeasurably 
 less satisfactory while it lasted, — if there had been no 
 common rule to which all the members of the College 
 did homage. In that case, the fear of saying something 
 which a superior would disapprove if he knew it, must 
 be continually tormenting the mind of a teacher. He 
 works in that most fretting- of all chains, the sense of 
 some unexpressed, implicit obligation to abstain from 
 acts which his duty to his pupils, to the Church, and to 
 God, would urge him to perform. 
 
 I cannot pretend that any recent experience of mine, 
 either in a College or in the Church, has in the least 
 changed my opinion, that our formularies are the best 
 protection we have, against the exclusiveness and cruelty 
 of private judgments. If our Catechism did not bear 
 a continual witness to our children that Christ has 
 redeemed them and all mankind, how could we resist 
 the dictation of writers who pronounce it a heresy to say 
 that our race is redeemed at all, that it is not lying under 
 God's curse ? If our Articles did not put forth the doc- 
 trine of Christ's Godhead and Manhood as the ground 
 of Theology, before they speak of the Fall and the depra- 
 vity of man, how could we withstand the popular theory, 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 so plausible, so gratifying to all the selfish instincts of 
 religious men, that the Gospel is only a scheme for sav- 
 ing them from the ruin which God decreed for the uni- 
 verse when Adam sinned ? If the Articles had not 
 refused to dogmatise on the meaning of the word Eter- 
 nal, and on the endlessness of evil, what could prevent 
 the doctrine, that an immense majority of our fellow- 
 beings are in an utterly hopeless condition, from being 
 regarded as the characteristic doctrine of Christian 
 Divinity ? I am sure that it has been so regarded by 
 multitudes of our lay brethren, and that therefore the 
 consciences and hearts to which we ought to present our 
 message are closed against it. They understand us to 
 say that God has sent His Son into the world, not to 
 save it, but to condemn it. 
 
 I count it the highest blessing of my life that I have 
 been permitted to become a witness, that the Church of 
 England gives not the faintest encouragement to so hor- 
 rible a contradiction of God's word. I receive the 
 cordial and generous sympathy which has been shown 
 to me by persons from whom I had no right to expect 
 it, who would naturally have regarded me with preju- 
 dice and suspicion, not as rendered as to me, but as a 
 proof how much affection towards the Church there is 
 still in the hearts of our countrymen, how glad they are 
 to believe that she is not what her sons sometimes repre- 
 sent her to be. And though opinions, which merely as 
 such, are a thousand times weightier than mine, are in 
 favor of forcing our Church to say what as yet she does 
 not say, I believe they will not succeed in putting a new 
 yoke upon our necks. I believe the English clergy will 
 
PKEFACE. xv 
 
 assert the freedom which God has given them, — the free- 
 dom of being silent where He has not spoken, being well 
 assured that if they do not, they will soon be compelled 
 to keep silence when He has spoken, nay, to deny that 
 He wishes that all men should be saved, though He has 
 
 » 
 
 declared that He does. 
 
 In the present Edition of these Essays, I have altered 
 some passages which were said to be obscure, and have 
 erased some which have caused unnecessary offence. 
 In the Essay on the Atonement, besides some changes 
 in my own language, I have made one omission with 
 very great reluctance. I had quoted the beautiful Col- 
 lect for the Sunday before Easter. I quoted it simply 
 to show, by the most living instance, that the Church 
 referred the Sacrifice of Christ to the " tender love of 
 God to mankind." I never even alluded to the clause 
 which speaks of our "following the example of his great 
 humility," not because I did not prize it, or believe that 
 it stood in the closest connexion with the rest of the 
 prayer, but because it did not concern the special truth 
 of which I was speaking. Yet I read with my own 
 eyes, in one of our religious newspapers, the charge 
 that I had appealed to this Collect because I regarded 
 Christ's death not as a sacrifice, but simply as an 
 example : and because I wished to fix that opinion upon 
 the Church ! As the Church believes, and as I believe, 
 in Christ's Sacrifice, not in a narrower or more " atte- 
 nuated" sense than that in which this religious news- 
 paper believes it, but in an infinitely wider and deeper 
 sense, — as I believe it to be a real sacrifice made by the 
 Son, of His whole spirit, soul and body, to the Father, 
 
xv | PREFACE. 
 
 — as I believe it is a sacrifice which takes away sin, a 
 sacrifice, satisfaction, and oblation for the sins of the 
 whole world, — I have deliberately blotted out a, sen- 
 tence which was worth all the rest of the Essay together, 
 rather than even seem to sanction so monstrous an infer- 
 ence. But I have not, of course, modified in the slight- 
 est degree the principles which I maintained in that 
 Essay. 
 
 The Church does not maintain in one prayer, but in 
 all its prayers, that the love of God is the only root and 
 ground of Christ's Atonement, and that the perfect sub- 
 mission of the Son to the will of the Father constitutes 
 the deepest meaning of the Sacrifice. These principles 
 belong to the essence of our faith. In life, in death, I 
 hope I may never abandon them or shrink from confess- 
 ing them, and from repudiating any notion which sets 
 them at nought or weakens them. I have perceived that 
 the fact of the Atonement, which is the fact of the Gos- 
 pel, is lost to numbers of people who are very earnest 
 and who desire to be thoroughly Christian, through the 
 restless efforts which their understandings make to 
 apprehend the cause of it. They do not believe the 
 Atonement, but an explanation of the Atonement which 
 they have received from others or devised for them- 
 selves. And so they do not actually feed upon the 
 Sacrifice which is given for the life of the world, but on 
 some dry notions about the Sacrifice, which cannot give 
 life to any human being. But this is not all. These 
 explanations, being exceedingly plausible, seeming won- 
 derfully to conspire with the experiences of a sin-sick 
 soul, being such as a Heathen would use to defend the 
 
PREFACE. xvii 
 
 Sacrifices which he offers to a malignant power, come 
 into the most frightful collision with those which the 
 Scripture gives for the Sacrifice wherewith God is well 
 pleased. There may be myriads of aspects of this 
 cardinal doctrine which I have perceived very imper- 
 fectly, and into which I shall rejoice to enter more 
 deeply. But they must be such aspects as do not inter- 
 fere with and invert the very nature and meaning of the 
 Sacrifice. The more unspeakably precious we consider 
 it to each man and for all mankind, the more vehement 
 shall we be in protesting against misrepresentations of 
 it, which are leading more than we know or can count, 
 to cast it out of their thoughts altogether. 
 
 I would make a similar remark in reference to the 
 Essays on the Resurrection and the Judgment Day, 
 which I have altered very slightly. It has been affirmed 
 that I have sought to explain away the doctrines of the 
 Resurrection of the Body, and of Christ's final Judg- 
 ment ; or at least, to throw an atmosphere of doubt over 
 them. I affirm that I have endeavored to bring forth 
 these doctrines, which I hold to be most vital and neces- 
 sary, out of the atmosphere of doubt, which popular 
 theories, as it seems to me, have thrown over them. I 
 do not say in any case who does or does not hold these 
 theories, or any modification of them. But I find that 
 they have darkened and are darkening the faith of mul- 
 titudes in the articles of the Creed, and are destroying 
 their practical effect on many more. Therefore I have 
 spoken. Unitarians are probably less pleased with my 
 words on these subjects than any other persons. I did 
 not write to please them, or anybody, but to maintain 
 
xvm PREFACE. 
 
 what I think is the truth. And I ask any serious per- 
 son whether those who say that the doctrines of the 
 Atonement, of the Resurrection, and of the Judgment, 
 can only be received in connexion with certain meta- 
 physical, legal, or commercial explanations, — or I who 
 say that they may be received simply as good news from 
 Heaven, which suffering people on earth have need of, 
 most deserve to be accused of Rationalism ? 
 
 I have rewritten the Essay on Eternal Life and Eter- 
 nal Death, and greatly enlarged it. It has been sup- 
 posed that I have argued for some mitigated notion of 
 future punishment, as more consistent with the mercy 
 of God than the ordinary one. To me the ordinary doc- 
 trine seems full of the most miserable mitigations and 
 indulgences for evil. I plead for the Love of God, 
 which resists sin, and triumphs over it, not for a mercy 
 which relaxes the penalties of it. With continual effort, 
 — only by the help of that revelation of God which is 
 made in the Gospel of Christ, — I am able to believe that 
 there is a might of Good which has overcome Evil, and 
 does overcome it. To maintain this conviction, to believe 
 in the Love of God, in spite of the appearances which 
 the world presents and the reluctance of my own nature, 
 I find to be the great fight of life ; one in which we are 
 continually baffled, but in which we must hold on, if we 
 are not to become haters of each other, as we are always 
 prone to be. I admire unspeakably those who can believe 
 in the Love of God and can love their brethren in spite 
 of the opinion which they seem to cherish, that He 
 has doomed them to destruction. I am sure that their 
 faith is as much purer and stronger than mine, as it is 
 
PKEFACE. xix 
 
 than their own system. But if that system does pre- 
 vent me from believing that which God's word, the Gos- 
 pel of Christ, the witness of my own conscience, the 
 miseries and necessities of the universe, compel me to 
 believe, I must throw it off. I do not call upon them 
 to deny anything they have been wont to hold ; but I 
 call upon them to join us in acknowledging God's Love 
 and His redemption first of all, and then to consider ear- 
 nestly what is or is not compatible with that acknow- 
 ledgment. As it is, we are desired to believe the popu- 
 lar tenet respecting the future condition of the world 
 absolutely, and God's love to mankind in a sense. I 
 appeal to every devout man, to every preacher of the 
 Gospel especially, dares he adopt this order in his con- 
 victions ? Must he not confess that he has no good news 
 lor mankind if he does ? 
 
 I have expanded the Theological part of the Essay 
 on Regeneration, and have added to that on the Trinity 
 some observations respecting the Unitarian notions of 
 Prayer. I have also added some passages at the end 
 of the Essay on Inspiration, the purpose of which has 
 been perhaps more misunderstood than that of any in 
 the book. It is against the very low notion of the worth 
 of the Bible and of the nature of Inspiration which seems 
 to prevail in the religious world, that I have there pro- 
 tested. I hold the Bible to be the Book of life ; 1 see 
 it turned into a Book of Death. It is treated in a way 
 in which no other book is treated. The divine method 
 of it is despised ; it is reduced into a collection of bro- 
 ken sentences ; these are used in the most reckless irre- 
 verent manner by any one who has a notion of his own 
 
xx PREFACE. 
 
 to defend, or a notion of an adversary to attack. The 
 posture of students and learners tgwards it is abandoned 
 by those who yet profess to accept it as their only guide 
 and authority. There must be something very wrong 
 in our belief, when this is our habitual practice. Have 
 we not lost the faith in Inspiration, while we have been 
 talking about it and inventing theories about it? Have 
 we not lost our faith in the Inspirer? I trust to show 
 shortly, in a book which I have been writing for several 
 years on the Gospels and on the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 that I do not receive the words of the Bible less lite- 
 rally, or regard it less as a whole, or submit to it less 
 an authority, than those who have complained of me 
 because I cannot bear to see their sons driven into 
 hopeless infidelity by their hard and cruel attempts to 
 substitute a tenet concerning Inspiration for the Divine 
 Word. 
 
 I ought not to conclude this Preface without referring 
 to the kindness and generosity of the new Bishop of 
 Natal, who chose a moment when he knew that mv cha- 
 racter was in disgrace with the religious public, and 
 when any acknowledgement of me might be perilous to 
 him, for dedicating to me a volume of admirable Ser- 
 mons. The very great delight which I felt at receiving 
 such a testimony from such a man, would have been no 
 compensation for my sorrow, that he should have risked 
 his own reputation for the sake of a friend, from many 
 of whose opinions he had expressed his dissent, if I had 
 not seen in this act a pledge of his possessing those qua^ 
 lities of courage and indifference to self, which are so 
 especially needed in a Chief Pastor of the flock, and 
 
PREFACE. xxi 
 
 which have very remarkably characterized our Colonial 
 Bishops. For the events which followed this Dedica- 
 tion I cannot feel anything but thankfulness. Though 
 Dr. Colenso had proved by his Sermons that he believed 
 in the endlessness of future punishments, he had asserted 
 most broadly and distinctly his conviction, that we are 
 living in a world which God loves, and which Christ has 
 redeemed, and had affirmed that this was the message 
 which he was called to bear to the natives, as well as to 
 the colonists, of South Africa. Those who think that 
 the world is not redeemed, that God's love is limited to 
 a few, felt that a golden opportunity was afforded them 
 of obtaining from the authorities of the English Church, 
 a practical contradiction of the doctrines which they 
 abhor. The attempt was made, and it failed. Bishop 
 Colenso is permitted to carry to the English and the 
 Zoolus, the same Gospel, which St. Paul was denounced 
 by his countrymen as a heretic and blasphemer, for car- 
 rying to Jews and Gentiles, in Greece and Asia Minor. 
 May the message be as mighty and effectual in the nine- 
 teenth century as it was in» the first ! 
 
 London, December 9th, 1853. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 m 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ESSAY I.— On Charity, 1 
 
 II.— On Sin, 14 
 
 III. — On the Evil Spirit, 20 
 
 IV. — On the Sense of Righteousness in Men, and 
 
 their Discovery of a Redeemer, ... 42 
 
 V. — On the Son of God, 59 
 
 VI. — On the Incarnation, 76 
 
 VII. — On the Atonement, ...... 98 
 
 VIII. — On the Resurrection of the Son of God from 
 
 Death, the Grave, and Hell, .... 116 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ESSAY IX. — On Justification by Faith, .... 143 
 
 X. — On Regeneration, 102 
 
 XI. — On the Ascension of Christ, , 192 
 
 XII. — On the Judgment Day, 217 
 
 XIII. — On Inspiration, 240 
 
 XIV. — On the Personality and Teaching of the 
 
 Holy Spirit, 2G8 
 
 XV. — On the Unity of the Church, . . . 289 
 
 XVI. — On the Trinity in Unity, .... 310 
 
 Concluding Essay — On Eternal Life and Eternal Death, 335 
 
ESSAY I . 
 
 ON CHARITY. 
 
 St. Paul says, Though I have all faith, so that I could 
 remove mountains, and have ?iot Charity, jT am nothing. 
 
 Many a person in this clay has exclaimed, when he has 
 heard these words, " If the Apostle Paul always adhered to 
 that doctrine, how readily one would listen to him, — what 
 sympathy one would have with him ! For this one moment 
 he confesses how poor all those dogmas are, on which he 
 dwells elsew T here with so much of theological refinement; 
 faith, which he told the Pomans and Galatians was necessary 
 and able to save men from ruin, shrinks here to its proper 
 dimensions, and in comparison of another excellence is pro- 
 nounced to be good for nothing. It is for divines to defend 
 his consistency if they can ; we are only too glad to accept 
 what seems to us a splendid inconsistency, in support of a 
 principle which it is the great w r ork of our age to proclaim." 
 
 I have been often tempted to answ r er a person who spoke 
 thus, in a way which I am sure w r as foolish and wrong. I 
 have been inclined to say, " The Charity which the Apostle 
 1 
 
2 FALSE MODE OF DEFENDING ST. PAUL. 
 
 describes is not the least that tolerance of opinions, that dispo- 
 sition to fraternize with men of all characters and creeds, 
 which you take it to be. His nomenclature is spiritual and 
 divine, yours human and earthly. If you could look into the 
 real signification of this chapter, you would not find that you 
 liked it much better than what he says of Faith elsewhere." 
 
 This language is impertinent and unchristian. We fall into 
 it partly because we look upon objectors as opponents whom 
 it is desirable to silence ; partly because we suppose that there 
 is a spurious Charity prevalent in our time, which must be 
 carefully distinguished from real and divine Charity ; partly 
 because we think that the interests of Theology demand a 
 more vigorous assertion of those distinctive Christian tenets 
 which are often confounded in a Vague all-comprehending phi- 
 losophical Theory. I have felt these motives and arguments 
 too strongly not to sympathise with those who are influenced 
 by them. It is in applying them to practice that I have found 
 how much I might be misled by them. 
 
 1. I know I can silence an objector by telling him that the 
 Bible means something altogether different from that which it 
 appears to mean. He does not care to discuss any question 
 with me when he has understood that there is no medium of 
 communication between us; that I am speaking a langu. 
 which I cannot interpret to him. lit; believes the book I 
 honor above all others to be a book of Cabbala, and he 
 throws it away accordingly. And if I afterwards refer to any 
 passages of beautiful human morality which I think may im- 
 press him in its favor, he tells me plainly, that I know the 
 intention of those passages is not what the words indicate, and 
 that the conscience of mankind responds to their apparent, not 
 to their real signification. 
 
 I have done this service to him by that method of mine. 
 What have I done for the Bible ? I have practically denied 
 that its language is inspired, and that the truth which the 
 
COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE BIBLE. 3 
 
 language expresses is divine. 1^1 must suppose that inspired 
 language is the most inclusive and comprehensive of all lan- 
 guage ; that divine truth lies beneath all the imperfect forms 
 of truth which men have perceived — sustaining them, not con- 
 tradicting them. ; If a particular temper or habit characterises 
 a man, or a country, or an age, the believer in a Revelation 
 would naturally conclude that there must be an affinity be- 
 tween this temper or habit, and some side of that Revelation , 
 — he would search earnestly for the point of contact between 
 them, and rejoice when he recognised it. He might find the 
 temper or habit in question often confused, often feeble, often 
 evil. His only hope of removing the confusion, strengthening 
 the feebleness, counteracting the evil, would lie in the power 
 which seemed to be given him of connecting it with that wider 
 and deeper principle from which it had been separated. 
 Every, even the slightest, inclination on the part of persons 
 who were habitually suspicious of that which he regarded as 
 J;ruth, to acknowledge a portion of it as bearing upon their 
 lives, he would eagerly and thankfully hail. So far from 
 complaining of them because they fixed upon a certain aspect 
 of the Revelation, remaining indifferent or sceptical about 
 every other, he would consider this a proof that they were 
 treating it in the most natural and sincere way, — accepting 
 what in their state of mind they could most practically appre- 
 hend and use. If another side of it was for them lying in 
 shadow, he might, — provided he had any clear conviction that 
 God has His own way of guiding His creatures, — be content 
 that they should not, for the present, try to bring that within 
 the range of their vision. At all events, he would feel that 
 his work was clearly marked out for him. In this, as in all 
 other cases, he could not hope to arrive at the unknown, ex- 
 cept through that which is perceived, however partially. He 
 would not quench the light by which any men are walking, 
 under pretence that it is merely torch-light, lest he, as well as 
 
4 HOW TO MEET THE TEMPER OF AN AUE. 
 
 they, should be punished with complete darkness. If I have 
 failed to act upon these maxims, I am certain that my faith 
 in God's Revelation has been weak. 
 
 2. I do not deny that there is much in the feelings which 
 we of this age associate with the word Charity, that is artifi- 
 cial, fantastical, morbid. Most will admit this respecting the 
 charity of others — some about their own. I do not deny that 
 the talk about charity, the sensation about it, even the attempt 
 to practise it, is compatible with a vast amount of uncharita- 
 bleness. That also will be generally admitted ; perhaps, the 
 confession is more sincere than any other which we make. It 
 is equally true that each school has its own notion of charity, 
 that the definitions of it are unlike, that the limitations of it 
 are various and capricious. The point to be considered is, 
 whether all these diversities, subsisting under a common name, 
 do not prove, more than anything else, the tendency of the 
 time in which they are found — the direction in which our 
 thoughts are all moving. The con of roen, asleep to^ 
 
 many obligations, is awake to this. All confess that tl 
 ought to have charity of some kind. Portraits of dry, hard, 
 cold-hearted men, who have in them, possibly, a sense of jus- 
 tice and right, are sure to produce a revolting, as from some- 
 thing profoundly and essentially evil, even in spectators who 
 can look upon great criminals with half-admiration, as gigantic 
 and heroical. The formalist has become almost the name for 
 reprobation among us ; that from which every one shrinks 
 himself, and which he attributes to those whom he execrates 
 most, precisely because it denotes the man in whom charity 
 has been sacrificed to mere rule. The more you look into the 
 discussions of different parties in our time, the more you will 
 find that, however narrow and exclusive they may be, compre- 
 hension is their watchword. We separate from our fellows, 
 on the plea that they are not sufficiently comprehensive; we 
 strive to break down fences which other people have raised, 
 
CHARITY IN OUR DAY. 5 
 
 even while we are making a thicker and more thorny one 
 ourselves. 
 
 If there is any truth in the observations which I made un- 
 der the last head, these indications might appear almost to de- 
 termine the course which a divine in the nineteenth century 
 should follow, though by adopting it he departed from the pre- 
 cedents of other times. The same motive which might have 
 led one of the reformers to speak first on Faith, — because all 
 men, whether Romanists or Anti-Romanists, in some sense ac- 
 knowledged the necessity of it — should incline a writer in this 
 day to begin his moral or theological discourses from Charity, 
 at whatever point he may ultimately arrive. But there would 
 be no deviation from precedent. The doctors of the first 
 ages, and of the middle ages, continually put forth the Divine 
 Charity as the ground upon which all things in heaven and 
 earth rest, as the centre round which they revolve. And this 
 was done not merely by those who were appealing to human 
 sympathies, but in scientific treatises. What is more to our 
 purpose, the compilers of our Prayer-book, living at the very 
 time when Faith was the watchword of all parties, thought it 
 wise to introduce the season of Lent with a prayer and an 
 epistle, which declare that the tongues of men and of angels, 
 the giving all our goods to feed the poor, the giving our bodies 
 to be burnt, finally, the faith which removes mountains, with- 
 out Charity, are nothing. This Loy.e was to be the ground 
 of all calls to repentance, conversion, humiliation, self-restraint ; 
 this was to unfold gradually the mystery of the Passion, and 
 of the Resurrection, the mystery of Justification by Faith, of 
 the New Life, of Christ's Ascension and Priesthood, of the 
 Descent of the Spirit, of the Unity of the Church. This was 
 to be the induction into the deepest mystery of all, the Name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. If it 
 is asked what human charity can have to do with the mys- 
 teries of the Godhead, the compilers of the Prayer-book would 
 
6 WHY WE SHOULD BEGIN FROM IT. 
 
 have answered, " Certainly nothing- at all, if human charity is 
 not the image and counterpart of the Divine; if there can be 
 a charity in man which beareth all things, believeth all thin 
 endureth all things, unless it was first in God, unless it be the 
 nature and being of God. If He is Charity, His acts must 
 spring from it as ours should ; Charity will be the key to unlock 
 the secrets of Divinity as well as of Humanity." As a Church- 
 man, I might, perhaps, venture to follow out a hint, which rests 
 on such an authority and comes to us supported by such a 
 prescription, without being suspected of innovating tenden- 
 cies. 
 
 3. But I know why many will think that such a course ma 
 have been adapted to former days, and yet be unsuitable for 
 ours. I shall be told " that it was very well to speak of Char- 
 ity, divine or human, when the importance of dogmas and of 
 distinguishing between orthodox and heretical dogmas, was 
 admitted, nay, if that is possible, exaggerated ; but that now, 
 when all dogmatic teachings are scorned, not by a few here 
 and there, but by the spirit of the age ; when it is the minor- 
 ity who plead for them and feel their necessity ; and when 
 the popular cry is for some union of parties in which all bar- 
 riers, theological, nay, it wxmld s'eem sometimes, moral also, 
 shall be thrown down : — at such a time to speak of putting 
 Charity above Faith, or of referring to Charity as a standard 
 for Faith, is either to palter with words in a double sense, pre- 
 tending that you agree with the infidel, while you keep a 
 reserved opinion in your own heart which would repel him if 
 you produced it ; — or else it is to give up your arms to him, 
 owning that he has vanquished." 
 
 I feel as strongly as these objectors can feel, that this age is~^\ 
 impatient of distinctions — of the distinction between Right 
 and Wrong, as well as of that between Truth and Falsehood^ 
 Of all its perils, this seems to me the greatest, that which 
 alone gives us a right to tremble at any others which may be 
 
DOGMATISM. 7 
 
 threatening it. To watch against this temptation in ourselves, 
 and in all over whom we have any charge or influence, is, I 
 believe, our highest duty. In performance of it, I should 
 always denounce the glorification of private judgment, as fatal 
 to the belief in Truth, and to the pursuit of it. We are always 
 tending towards the notion that we may think what we like to 
 think ; that there is no standard to which our thoughts should 
 be conformed ; that they fix their own standard. Who can 
 toil to find, that which, on this supposition, he can make ? 
 Who can suffer, that all may share a possession which each 
 man holds apart from his neighbor ? 
 
 But Dogmatism is not the antagonist of private judgment. 
 The most violent assertor of hie private judgment is the great- 
 est dogmatist. And, conversely, the loudest assertor of the 
 dogmatical authority of the Church, is very apt to be the most 
 vehement and fanatical stickler for his own private judgments. 
 His reverence for the Church leads him to exercise in his indi- 
 vidual capacity, what he takes to be her function in her col- 
 lective capacity. He catches w 7 hat he supposes to be her 
 spirit. He becomes, in consequence, of all men, the most 
 headstrong and self-willed. There must be some other escape 
 than this from the evils of our time ; this road leads us into 
 the very heart of them. p> 
 
 It seems to me that, if we start from the belief,-!-" Charity 
 is the ground and centre of the Universe, God is Charity," — 
 we restore that distinctness which our Theology is said to » 
 have lost, we reconcile it with the comprehension which we ' 
 are all in search of. So long as we are busy with our theories^ 
 notions, feelings about God — so long as these constitute our i 
 divinity — we must be vague, we must be exclusive. One 
 deduces his conclusions from the Bible ; one from the decrees 
 of the Church ; one from his individual consciousness. But 
 the reader of the Bible confesses that it appeals to expe- 
 rience, and must in some way be tested by it ; the greatest 
 
8 ARTICLES OF FAITH. 
 
 worshipper of the Church asks for a Bible to support its 
 authority; the greatest believer in his own consciousness 
 perceives that there must be some means of connecting it 
 with the general conscience of mankind. Each denounces the 
 other's method, none is satisfied with his own. { If Theology is 
 regarded not as a collection of our theories about God. but as 
 a declaration of His will and His acts towards us, will it not 
 conform more to what we find in the Bible — will it not more 
 meet all the experiences of individuals, all the experiences of 
 our race r And to come directly to the point of the objection 
 which I am considering, will it not better expound all the spe- 
 cial articles which our own Church, and the Christian Church 
 generally, confesses ? This at least is my belief. 
 
 I have tried to understand those articles when they have 
 been interpreted to me by some doctor or apologist who did 
 not start from this ground, and I frankly own I have failed. 
 Their meaning as intellectual propositions has been bewilder- 
 ing to me ; as guides to my own life, as helps to my conduct, 
 they have been more bewildering still. But seen in this light, 
 I have found them acquiring distinctness and unity, just in pro- 
 portion as I became more aware of my own necessities and 
 perplexities, and of those from which my contemporaries are 
 suffering. They have brought the Divine Love and human 
 life into conjunction, the one being no longer a barren tenet or 
 sentiment, the other a hopeless struggle. 
 
 I wish that I might be able to set them before some whom 
 I know, as they present themselves to me. I do not think that 
 I have anything rare or peculiar to tell ; I believe I have felt 
 much as the people about me are feeling. I might therefore 
 address myself to many of different classes with a slight hope 
 of being listened to ; but I have one most directly and promin- 
 ently before me w*hile I write. 
 
 The articles of which I shall speak are precisely those which 
 offend the Unitarian ; in defending them I shall certainly 
 
UNITARIANS OF TWO CLASSES. 9 
 
 appear a dogmatist to him, however little I may deserve that 
 name from those who regard it as an honorable one. Ho 
 either repudiates these articles absolutely, and considers that 
 it is his calling to protest against them ; or he repudiates them 
 as distinct portions of a creed, holding that all the spiritual 
 essence which may once have been in them, departs when they 
 assume this character. I differ from those who take up the 
 last position quite as much as from those who maintain the 
 first ; but I have points, strong points, of sympathy with both, 
 and I have profited by the teaching of both. I am not ashamed 
 to say that the vehement denunciations of what they suppose 
 to be the general faith of Christendom which I have heard 
 from Unitarians, — denunciations of it as cruel, immoral, incon- 
 sistent with any full and honest acknowledgment of the Divine 
 Unity, still more of the Divine Love, — have been eminently 
 useful to me. I receive them as blessings from God, for which 
 I ouffht to give Him continual thanks. I do not mean, because 
 the hearing of these charges has set me upon refuting them ; — 
 that would be a very doubtful advantage ; (for what does one 
 gain for life and practice, by taking up the profession of a theo- 
 logical special pleader?) — but because great portions of these 
 charges have seemed to me well founded; because I have been 
 compelled to confess that the evidence for them was irresisti- 
 ble. And I have been driven more and more to the conclusion, 
 that that evidence does not refer to some secondary, subordinate 
 point, — which we may overlook, provided our greater and 
 more personal interests are secured, — or to some point of 
 which we may for the present know nothing, and be content to 
 confess our ignorance : but that it concerns the grounds of 
 our personal and of our social existence ; that it does not touch 
 those secret things which belong to the Lord, but the heart of 
 that Eevelation which He has made to us and our children. I 
 owe it very much to these protests that I have learnt to say to 
 myself:— " Take away the Love of God, and you take away 
 1* 
 
10 OBLIGATIONS TO THEM. 
 
 everything. The Bible sets forth the Revelation of that 
 Love, or it is good for nothing. The Church is the living 
 Witness and Revelation of that Love, or it is good for 
 nothing." 
 
 I owe also much to those Unitarians, who, being less strong 
 in their condemnation of the thoughts and language of books 
 written by Trinitarians, and avowing a sympathy with some of 
 the accounts which they have given of their own inward conflicts, 
 nevertheless hate Orthodoxy, as such, with a perfect hatred, 
 affirming it to be the stifler of all honest convictions, and of 
 all moral growth. I have not been able to gainsay many of 
 their assertions and arguments. I cannot say that I have not 
 n and felt these effects following from what is called a 
 secure and settled profession. I cannot say that the events of 
 the last twenty years in the English Church do not convince 
 me that it is God's will and purpose that we should be shaken 
 in our ease and satisfaction, and should be forced to ask our- 
 selves what our standing ground is, or whether we have any. 
 I cannot dissemble my belief, that if we are resting on any for- 
 mulas, supposing they are the best formulas that were ever 
 handed down from one generation to another, or on the divin- 
 est book that was ever written by God for the teaching of 
 mankind, and not on the Living God Himself, our foundation 
 will be found sandy, and will crumble under our feet. For 
 telling me this, for giving me a warning which I feel that I 
 need, and that my brethren need, I thank these Unitarians, and 
 all others not called by their name, who have, in one form or 
 another, in gentle or in rough language, united to sound it in 
 our ears. I can say honestly in the sight of God, I have tried 
 to lay it to heart, though not as much as I might have done, 
 or as I hope to do. And now I wish to show that my 
 gratitude for these benefits is not nominal but real, by telling 
 the men of both these classes what they have not taught me, — 
 
FAILURES OF THE FIRST CLASS. 11 
 
 what I have been compelled to learn in another school than 
 theirs. 
 
 To the first, then, I say : — You have urged me to believe 
 that God is actually Love. You have taught me to dread 
 any representation of Him which is at variance with this ; to 
 shrink from attributing to Him any acts which would be un- 
 lovely in man. Well ! and I find myself in a world ruled over 
 by this Being, in which there are countless disorders : yes, and 
 I find myself adding to the disorder; one of the elements of 
 it. My heart and conscience demand how this is. I want to 
 know, — not for the sake of a theory, but for the most practical 
 purposes of life, — I want to know how these disorders may be 
 removed out of the world and out of me. You are, I am aware, 
 benevolent men, a great many of you eager for sanitary, social, 
 political reformation. That is well, as far as you are con- 
 cerned ; but is the Ruler of the Universe as much interested 
 in the state of it as you are ? Has He done anything adequate 
 for the deliverance of it from its plagues : is He doing any- 
 thing ? I have not found you able to answer these questions; 
 and I do not think other people find that you are able. Men 
 who have to sorrow, and suffer, and work, may accept your help 
 in improving their outw T ard condition, but they do not accept 
 your creed : it is nothing to them. Atheism is their natural 
 and necessary refuge, if the only image of God presented to 
 them is of One who allows men to be comfortable, — w T ho is 
 not angry with them, — who wishes all to be happy, but leaves 
 them to make themselves and each other happy as well as they 
 can. They can meditate the world almost as well without 
 such a Being as with Him. I say this, because it is true, and 
 because the truth should be spoken. God forbid that I should 
 say for a moment that it is true for you. I know it is not. I 
 know the vision you have of God is consolatory to you; that 
 it would be a loss to all of you, — to some, a quite unspeakable 
 loss, — to be deprived of it. Not for the world would I rob 
 
12 THE MODERN SCHOOL. 
 
 you of it, or of one iota of strength and comfort which you de- 
 rive from it. Not for the world would I persuade you that your 
 belief in a God of infinite Charity is not a precious and divine 
 gift. But, remember ! — infinite Charity. Charity is described 
 as bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. 
 Any charity which is not of this character, I am sure you would 
 cast out of your scheme of ethics ; you would feel it could not 
 be an ideal for men to strive after; you do wish, in your own 
 case, not to give barren phrases to your fellows, but to ' suffer 
 with your suffering kind.' I have a right to claim, that you 
 should not think more meanly of the God whom you condemn 
 other sects for misrepresenting, than you do of an ordinarily 
 benevolent hero, nay, than you do of yourselves. It is all I 
 ask of you before w r e engage in our present inquiry. 
 
 You, again, who think that there is some important truth in 
 the doctrines we confess, but are convinced that we hold the 
 shell of it, while you are possessing, or at least seeking for, the 
 kernel ; and that no fellowship will ever exist among human 
 beings till they have been persuaded to cast the shell away : 
 you who support this sentiment by evidence, all too clear and 
 authentic, drawn from the records of the controversies bctw. 
 Churchmen, and from the feebleness of their present condition ; 
 3'ou who bid us always keep our eyes upon some good time 
 corning, when such controversies will cease, and another kind 
 of Church will emerge out of those which you tell us are 
 crumbling into dust ; you, I have asked what the substa; 
 is within the shell ; and the best answer I have got is, — 'a cer- 
 tain religious sentiment — a tendency, that is, or bias or aspira- 
 tion of the soul towards something.' And that is — what? Is it 
 known or unknown, real or fantastic, a Person or an abstrac- 
 tion ? It is not a trifle to me whether I know or not ; the 
 world too, is interested in the question. We cannot be told 
 that our words and phrases, are worthless, and then be put off 
 with other words and phrases, which are certainly not more 
 
THE CHUKCII THAT IS TO BE. 13 
 
 substantial. You declare aloud how divided Churches are : will 
 you tell us what has prevented them from being wholly 
 divided ; what has kept the members of them from being 
 always at war? Has it been a religious sentiment; — has it 
 been a philosophical abstraction ? Are you afraid to join with 
 me in considering that question ? 
 
 Lastly, you look for a better day, and a united Church : — so 
 do I. But I want to know whether the foundation is laid on 
 which that church is to stand, or whether it is to be laid ; 
 whether the Deliverer and Head of mankind has come, or 
 whether we are to look for another ? Your speculations have 
 left me quite in the dark on this subject. I cannot bear the 
 darkness. Shall we try if we can grope our way into the 
 light ? 
 
ESSAY II. 
 
 ON SIN. 
 
 Clergymen seem to take it for granted that their congrega- 
 tions understand what they mean when they speak of Sin. I 
 am afraid some of us do not ourselves quite understand what 
 we mean by it. Perhaps, if we would attend more to the 
 doubts and objections of others, they might assist in clearing 
 and deepening our own thoughts. 
 
 They frequently take this form : " We find a number of 
 crimes, outward, palpable, interfering with the existence of so- 
 ciety ; these we try to check by direct penalties. We find 
 that these crimes may be traced to certain habits formed in 
 the man, beginning to be formed in the child ; these we try to 
 extirpate by some moral influences. There is scope for infi- 
 nite discussion as to the nature, measure, and right applica- 
 tion, of these direct penalties, and these moral influences ; as 
 to the evils which most demand either. But scarcely any one 
 doubts that both these methods are necessary ; that there are 
 disorders which need the one and not the other. It is differ- 
 ent when a third notion is thrust upon us, one which we can 
 refer to the head neither of Legislation nor of Ethics. 
 
 (14) 
 
ETHICS, LEGISLATION, THEOLOGY. 15 
 
 " The Theologian speaks of Sin. What is this ? You say 
 it is committed against God. Does God, then, want anything 
 for His own use and honor ? Does He 'crave services and 
 sacrifices as due to Him ? Is not doing justice and mercy to 
 the fellow-creatures among whom He has placed us, the thing 
 which He requires and which pleases Him ? If not, where 
 would you stop ? Do not all Heathen notions, all the most 
 intolerable schemes of propitiation, all the most frightful in- 
 ventions and lies by which the conscience of men has been de- 
 filed and their reason darkened, and from which crimes against 
 society have at last proceeded, force themselves upon us at 
 once ? What charm is there in the name or word l Christian- 
 ity ' to keep them off, if they are, as we know they are, akin 
 to tendencies which exist in all men, whatever names they 
 bear, and which, for their sakes, need to be abated, if possible 
 extinguished, certainly not fostered ? But, if once we admit 
 good feeling and good doing towards our neighbor to be the 
 essence and fulfilment of God's commandments, why are not 
 the ethical and legal conceptions of evil sufficient ? What 
 room is there for any other ?" 
 
 Those of us who have had these thoughts, and have ex- 
 pressed them, have probably heard answers which have satis- 
 fied us very ill. We have been told, perhaps, "that the Com- 
 mandments speak of a duty towards God as well as of a duty 
 towards our neighbor ; that there is no reason why He, from 
 Whom we receive all things, should not demand something in 
 return ; that, apriorij we could not the least tell whether He 
 would or not : that if He did, it would be reasonable to ex- 
 pect that He would enforce very heavy punishments upon our 
 failure — especially if it might have been avoided ; that those 
 punishments may be infinite — at all events, that we can have 
 no reason to allege why they should not be ; that if we have 
 any authority for supposing they will be so, we ought to do 
 anything rather than incur so tremendous a risk." 
 
16 THEOLOGICAL CALCULATIONS. 
 
 There is something in us all which resists these arguments: 
 I believe great part of the resistance comes from conscience, 
 not from self-will. 'There is a horror and heart shrinking from 
 the doctrine that we are to serve God because we are ignorant 
 of His nature and character. There is a greater horror and 
 heart-shrinking from the notion that we are to serve Him be- 
 cause, upon a fair calculation, it appears likely that this course 
 will answer better than the opposite course, or that that will 
 involve us in ruin. He who says, " I cannot be religious on 
 these terms — it is my religion to repudiate them," may not 
 prize the Commandments very highly. lie may look upon 
 them merely as the w^ords of an old Jewish legislator. But 
 he will at least feel that this legislator meant more by duty to 
 God than his interpreters suppose him to mean, nay, meant 
 something wholly and generically different from this. He may 
 not acknowledge the name of Christ, or may attach to that 
 name quite another signification from that which we attach to 
 it ; but he will at least be sure that Christ did not come into 
 the world to tell men that they cannot know anything of their 
 Father in Heaven ; or that He is to be served for hire, or 
 through dread of what He will do to them. 
 
 Most earnestly would I desire that each man should hold 
 this conviction fast, that he should suffer no arguments of 
 divines or of lay people, however plausible, to wrest it from 
 him. And if he does not yet perceive any reality in the word 
 u iSin," or in the thoughts which his teachers associate with it, 
 by all means let him not feign that he does. For the sake of 
 the sincerity of his mind, for the sake of the truth which may 
 come to him hereafter, let him keep his ethical or his legal doc- 
 trine, if he really has some grasp of it, not exchange it for any 
 that has a greater show and savor of divinity. But I would 
 conjure him also, for the sake of the same sincerity, not to bar 
 his soul against the entrance of another conviction, if it should 
 come at any time with a very mighty power, because he is 
 
THE CONSCIENCE OF EVIL. 
 
 17 
 
 afraid that he may be receiving some old tenet of Theology 
 which he has dreaded and hated. [At some moment, — it may 
 be one of weakness and sorrow, it may also be when he is full 
 of energy, and is set upon a distinct and decided purpose, — he 
 may be forced to feel ; " / did this act, i" thought this thought ; 
 it was a wrong act, it was a wrong thought, and it was mine. 
 The world around me took no account of it. I can resolve it 
 into no habits or motives; or if I can, the analysis does not 
 help me in the least. Whatever the habit was, I wore the 
 habit ; whatever the motive was, I was the mover." At such 
 a moment there will rush in upon him a multitude of strange 
 thoughts, of indefinite fears. There will come a sense of Eter- 
 nity, dark, unfathomable, hopeless, such as he fancied he had 
 left years behind him amidst the pictures of his nursery. That 
 Eternity will stand face to face with him. It will look like 
 anything but a picture, it will present itself to him as the 
 hardest driest reality. There will be no images of torture and 
 death. \" What matter ivhere, if I be still the same £" — this 
 question will be the torture, all death lies in that. Yes, bro- 
 ther, such a death, that you will gladly fly from it to any 
 devices which men have thought of for making their Gods gra- 
 cious, to any penances which they have invented for the pur- 
 pose of taking vengeance on themselves. These are all 
 natural, — oh, how natural ! — there is not one of them which 
 the coldest, most unimaginative man may not have coveted ; 
 there are few which, in certain periods of confused restless 
 anguish, he may not have believed would be worth a trial. 
 And why ? Because anything is better than the presence of 
 this dark self. I cannot bear to be dogged by that, night and 
 day; to feel its presence when I am in company, and when I 
 am alone ; to hear its voice whispering to me, — " Whitherso- 
 ever thou goest, I shall go. Thou wilt part with all things 
 else, but not with me. There will come a day when thou 
 
18 HORRORS OF IT. 
 
 canst wander out in a beautiful world no longer, when thou 
 must be at home with me." 
 
 This vision is more terrible than all which the fancy of priests 
 has ever conjured up. He who has encountered it, is begin- 
 ning to know what Sin is, as no words or definitions can teach 
 it him. "When once he arrives at the conviction, " I am the 
 tormentor, — Evil lies not in some accidents, but in me," be 
 no more in the circle of outward acts, outward rules, outward 
 punishments ; he is no more in the circle of tendencies, inclina- 
 tions, habits, and the discipline which is appropriate to them. 
 He has come unawares into a more inward circle, — a very 
 close, narrow, dismal one, in which he cannot rest, out of 
 which he must emerge. And I am certain he can only emerge 
 out of it when he begins to say, " I have sinned against some 
 Being, — not against society merely, not against my own 
 nature merely, but against another to whom I was bound." 
 And the emancipation will not be complete till lie is able to 
 say, — giving the words their full and natural meaning, — 
 Father, I have sinned against Thee." 
 
 I know there are some who will say, " There is no occasion 
 for a man ever to be brought into this strange sense of con- 
 tradiction. He need not be thus confronted with himself: he 
 need not see a dark image of Self behind him, before him, 
 above him, beneath him. Very few people, in fact, do ] 
 through this experience. Some of a particular constitution 
 may. But how absurd it is of them to make themselves the 
 standards for humanity ! How monstrous, that a few meta- 
 physicians or fanatics should lay down the law for all the busy 
 men, the merchants, tradesmen, handicraftsmen, who get through 
 the world, and must get through it somehow, without ever 
 knowing anything of these torments of conscience, internal 
 strifes, or by whatever other names philosophers or divines 
 like to describe them !" 
 
 Very well ! but were not you complaining — have you not 
 
NEED A MAN UNDERGO IT ? 19 
 
 a right to complain — of those priestly inventions which inter- 
 fere so much with the peace of society, which interrupt the 
 merchants and handicraftsmen in their employments, which 
 beget so many horrors, especially such dreadful anticipations 
 of divine punishment and vengeance in human hearts? Is'it 
 not your object to sweep these away as fast as you can, because 
 you find them so troublesome, taking so many different forms, 
 reappearing when you least expect them, in periods and coun- 
 tries whence they seemed to have been driven for ever ? Do 
 you not complain that Christianity gives you no security, that 
 Protestantism gives you no security, against the invasion of 
 superstitious terrors, and against all the sacerdotal powers 
 which are acknowledged wherever they prevail ? Do you not 
 say that they interfere with the progress of science, and that 
 science needs an aid against them, which neither itself, nor 
 civil rulers, nor public opinion can give ? Would it not be 
 w r ell, then, to look a little more deeply into the matter, and 
 instead of raving at certain pernicious effects, to examine from 
 what cause they may have sprung ? 
 
 I tell you the cause is here. That sense of a Sin intricately, 
 inseparably interwoven with the very fibres of their being, of a 
 Sin which they cannot get rid of without destroying themselves, 
 does haunt those very men who you say take no account of it. 
 This is not the idiosyncrasy of a few strange inexplicable tem- 
 peraments. It is that which besets us all. And because we 
 domot know what it means, and do not wish to know, we are 
 ready for all deceits and impostures. They may come in vari- 
 ous shapes. They may be religious impostures, or philosophi- 
 cal ; they may appeal to our love of the outward world, or to 
 our craving for mysteries ; but they will not permit us to be 
 at rest, or to be acquainted with our own hearts, or to under- 
 stand one another. All you can boast is, that preachers of 
 religion have not a monopoly of these influences in this time; 
 that here, as elsewhere, there is unrestricted competition ; that 
 
20 ' METHODIST PREACHING. 
 
 Mormonists, Animal Magnetists, Rappists, take their turns 
 with us, and often work their charms more effectually than we 
 work ours. As long as men are dwelling in twilight, all ghosts 
 of the past, all phantoms of the future, walk by them : I want 
 tc» know, as I suppose you do, how they can come out of the 
 twilight ? The passage is the same, friend, for them, as for 
 you and me ; we are not of different flesh and blood from 
 theirs; that within us which is not flesh and blood is not more 
 different, but more closely akin, whatever you, in your philo- 
 sophical or literary or religious exelusiveness, may think. The 
 darkness which is blended with the light must, in some way, 
 be shown to be in deadly contrast with it, — the opposites 
 must be seen one against the other. 
 
 Think of any sermon of a Methodist preacher which roused 
 the heart of a Kingswood collier, or of a dry, hard, formal 
 man, or of a contented, self-righteous boaster of his religion, 
 in the last century. You will say the orator talked of an infi- 
 nite punishment which God might inflict on them all if they 
 continued disobedient. He may have talked of that, but be 
 would have talked till doomsday if he had not spoken another 
 language too, which interpreted this, and into which the con- 
 science rapidly translated it. He spoke of an infinite Sin ; he 
 spoke of an infinite Love ; he spoke of that which was true 
 then, wiiatever might become true hereafter. He said, " Thou 
 art in a wrong state : hell is about thee. God would bring 
 thee into a right state : He would save thee out of that hell." 
 The man believed the words ; something within him told him 
 they were true : and that for the first time he had heard truth, 
 
 n truth, been himself true. I cannot tell what vanities and 
 confusions might come to him afterwards from his own dreams 
 or the crudities of his teachers. But I am sure this was not 
 a delusion — could not be. He had escaped from the twilight : 
 he had seen the opposite forms of light and darkness no longer 
 miserably confused together. Good was all good; evil was 
 
POWEK OF IT ; CHANGE IN IT. 21 
 
 all evil : there was war in heaven and earth between them ; in 
 him, even in him, where the battle had been fiercest, the odds 
 against the good greatest, good had gotten the victory. He 
 had a right to believe that the morning stars were singing 
 together at the news of it; otherwise, why was there such 
 music in his, the Kingswood collier's, heart ? 
 
 If such processes are rare in our days, it is, I believe, because 
 the descendants of these Methodist preachers, and we in imita- 
 tion of them, fancy that the mere machinery, whether earthly 
 or divine, which they put in motion, was the cause of them, 
 — because we do not thoroughly understand or heartily believe 
 that there is that war of Life and Death, of Good and Evil, 
 now in every man's heart, as there was of old. Therefore, 
 we do not speak straightly and directly to both. "We suppose 
 men are to be shown by arguments that they have sinned, and 
 that God has aright to punish them. We do not say to them, 
 " \ r ou are under a law of love ; you know you are, and you 
 are fighting with it." 
 
 Benevolent men wish that the poor should know more of 
 Legislation and Ethics and Economy. I wish heartily that 
 they should. But I believe that you will never bring them to 
 that knowledge unless you can point them to the deeper 
 springs of humanity, from which both Ethics and Laws and 
 Economics must be fed, if they are to have any freshness and 
 life. I do not think it dangerous that any man should get any 
 knowledge of any subject whatever ; the more he has the bet- 
 ter. I And I often think, that what is sincerely communicated 
 to hinTbf Economics or Physics, may bring him sooner to a 
 right moral condition, — may startle him into apprehensions 
 respecting his own being, sooner, — than insincere artificial 
 theological teaching. But yet I cannot help seeing also, that 
 Legislation, Ethics, Economics, even Physical Science, may 
 themselves contribute to the foundation of superstitions, if the 
 
22 SOCIAL FEELINGS. 
 
 man is not first called into life to receive them and to connect 
 them with himself. I am sure, at all events, that an infinite 
 responsibility rests upon its, not to be interfering with other 
 men, or to be checking their efforts, whatever direction they 
 may take, — but to be calling forth, by that power which, I 
 believe, we possess, if we will use it, the heart and conscience 
 of men, so that being first able to see their Father in I i 
 truly, and themselves in their true relation to Him, they n 
 afterwards manfully investigate, as I am sure they will long to 
 do, the conditions under which they themselves. His children, 
 exist, and the laws which govern all II is works. I am con- 
 vinced, indeed, that the n ge will be, in some respects, dif- 
 ferent from that which the Methodists delivered, even when 
 theirs is stripped of all its foreign and enfeebling acci 
 Men are evidently more alive now to their social than to their 
 individual wants ; they are therefore more awake to the evils 
 which affect society, than to those which affect their own souls. 
 To him who merely, or mainly, preaches about the soul, this 
 Lfi a most discouraging circumstance, — to him whose purpose 
 is to awaken men to a knowledge of God and a knowledge of 
 Bin, it need not be discouraging at all. 
 
 For if God presents Himself to us as the Father of a Fami- 
 ly, it is not necessary for the knowledge of linn, that we 
 should force ourselves to forget our relations to each other, 
 and to think of ourselves as alone in the world. And thowh 
 ! have admitted and asserted, the sense of Sin is atially 
 
 the sense of solitude, isolation, distinct individual asil/ilitv, 
 
 1 do not know whether that -case, in all its painfull and 
 agony, ever comes to a man more fully than when he recol- 
 lects how he has broken the silken cords which bind him to 
 his fellows ; how he has made himself alone, by not confessing 
 that he was a brother, a son, a citizen. I believe the convic- 
 tion of that Sin may be brought home more mightily to our 
 generation than it has been to any former one ; and that a 
 
REPENTANCE. 23 
 
 time will come, when every family and every man will mourn 
 apart, under a sense of the strife and divisions of the body 
 politic, which he has contributed to create and to perpetuate. 
 The preaching, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at kand, 
 has always been the great instrument of levelling hills and 
 exalting valleys. It will be so again. The priest and the 
 prophet will confess that they have been greater rebels against 
 the law of love than the publican and the harlot, because they 
 were sent into the world to testify of a Love for all, and a 
 Kingdom for all, and they have been witnesses for separation, 
 for exclusion, for themselves. 
 
 My Unitarian brother ! You believe that, at least, respect- 
 ing us. You have often told us so. And how 7 is it you have 
 no power to work on the minds and hearts of men, and to 
 convince them of God's love, when, as you say rightly, we are 
 forgetting or denying it ? How is it, that in the last age you 
 were in sympathy with all our feeble worldly tone of mind, and 
 thought we were right in mocking at spiritual powers, and in 
 not proclaiming a Gospel to the poor? Why did you talk 
 just as we talked, in sleepy language to sleepy congregations, 
 of a God who was willing to forgive if men repented, when 
 what they wanted to know was, how they could repent, who 
 could give them repentance, what they had to repent of? You 
 had a mighty charm in your hands. You spoke of a Father. 
 Why could you not tell men that He was seeking them, and 
 wishing to make them true instead of false ? You did not — 
 you know you did not. Why was it ? I beseech you, do 
 not turn round and say, " You were as guilty as we." I have 
 said already, " We were much more guilty." Every creed 
 we professed, every prayer we uttered, told us that this Fa- 
 ther was an actual Father, actually related to us by the closest, 
 most intimate bonds. We did not believe much of those 
 creeds and prayers ; you wished us to believe less than we 
 did. Thank God, neither you nor we could get rid of the 
 
24 THE UNITARIAN MESSAGE. 
 
 \, 
 
 witnesses which He had established, or of the deep necessities 
 which corresponded to them. The earnest preachers of the 
 day beat us both, because they believed in a Father, while we 
 repeated his name, and you argued to prove that he was the 
 One God. 
 
 And now you have, many of you, changed your language. 
 You see that there is a spiritual power in the world ; these 
 preachers have proved that there is. You point out power- 
 fully and skilfully, what dull, drowsy priests we were who 
 denied it. But you say that those who asserted it were nar- 
 row, that they are worn out, that spiritual power is much 
 more widely at work than they suppose, that it is to be felt 
 everywhere. Be it so — the lesson is most impressive ; we ac- 
 cept it. But why are you still powerless ? why cannot you 
 stir the hearts of the people by your message more than your 
 fathers did? Why must it be proclaimed, not exactly like 
 theirs, in the ears of comfortable merchants and dowagers 
 wanting a not too troublesome religion, — but at least in the 
 ears of those chiefly, who crave for some new thing, not of 
 those who are hungering and thirsting for life? The secret 
 of both failures seems to me this. You, of the older school, 
 knew something of transgression ; almost nothing of {Sin. But 
 the transgression was of a rule rather than of a law ; breaches 
 of social etiquette and propriety, at most uncomely and unkind 
 habits, seemed to compose all the evils you took account of, 
 which did not appear in the shape of crimes. Those who 
 must be treated, not as members of some class of men, but as 
 men, have no ears for discourses about conventions and beha- 
 vior; if you cannot penetrate below these, you must leave 
 them alone. You who believe in spiritual powers, do you yet 
 acknowledge spiritual evil ? Can you speak to us as persons ? 
 Can you tell me of myself; what I am ; who is for me, who 
 is against me? I have not found that you can. You have a 
 
NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES. 25 
 
 religion for us, I know, apparently a graceful and refined one. 
 It is a luxury, if we can afford it. But we have an enemy 
 who tries to deprive us even of necessaries. Unless you can 
 teach us how to procure them, in spite of him, I and my fellow- 
 fighters must for the present let your religion alone. 
 2 
 
 
ESSAY III. 
 
 ON THE EVIL SPIRIT. 
 
 I suppose if any of us met with a treatise which professed to 
 discuss the Origin of Evil, our first and most natural impulse 
 \yould be, to throw it aside. " The man must have great 
 leisure," we should say, " or be very youthful, who could 
 occupy himself with such a subject us this. After six thou- 
 sand years' experience of Evil, and almost as many of hope! 
 controversy^ about its source, we may as well reckon that 
 among the riddles which men are not to solve, and pass to 
 something else." 
 
 The resolution may be a wise one, as far as it relates to dis- 
 cussions philosophical or theological upon this topic. Possibly 
 the chief good they have done is, that they have shown how 
 little they can do ; that they have proved how inadequate 
 school logic is for the necessities of human life. But if we 
 supposed, when we closed the book, that we had done with 
 the question which it raised and which it tried to settle ; if we 
 thought it would not meet us again in the law T -court and the 
 
 (26) 
 
INFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 27 
 
 tnarket place, and mix itself, most inconveniently, in all the 
 common business of the world,' — a little experience will have 
 shown us that we were mistaken. We must consider the ori- 
 gin of Evil, whether we like it or not. We are debating it 
 with ourselves, we are conversing about it with others, w r e 
 are acting on some conclusions we have formed about it, 
 every day of our lives. Take a few instances. 
 
 1. A man cannot help perceiving that the climate he is 
 living in has some influence on himself, and upon all who are 
 about him. It is an influence which directly affects his body, 
 but it does not stop there; through this, it acts in a number 
 of ways upon his thoughts and his habits. If it affects him 
 less or more than others, the difference is caused bv a differ- 
 ence of temperament ; that must be set down as another influ- 
 ence which requires to be taken account of; one of which the 
 workings are great, and in various directions. Add the con- 
 ditions of luxury, mediocrity, or poverty, into which he is 
 born^and he is conscious of a whole system of agencies work- 
 ing upon him from childhood upwards, modifying apparently, 
 if not determining, his wishes, conceptions, purposes. He has 
 not yet calculated the effect of association upon him, even tak- 
 ing that word in its simplest, narrowest sense, to express his 
 intercourse with his brothers, sisters, schoolfellows. If he 
 enlarges the word to comprehend all that he has received from 
 the atmosphere of his country and his age, he may become 
 well nigh overwhelmed. For he begins to think what shape 
 his moral code might have taken, if he had been born within 
 certain degrees of latitude. He asks himself whether he should 
 not almost certainly have been a Eoman Catholic, if his lot 
 had been cast in any part of the south of Europe : — a Hindoo 
 or a Buddhist, or perhaps something worse, if he had grown 
 up in some of the finest regions of Asia. Without plunging 
 into these speculations, there is the obvious' and undeniable 
 operation of those who have educated him ; the operation of 
 
28 EVIL TRACED TO IT. 
 
 all the thoughts, feelings, and habits, which had descended 
 upon them from their instructors and ancestors. 
 
 These are but a few items in an enormous calculation, a few 
 hints which might be expanded indefinitely. What is the 
 result? As some evil tendency or temper, which exists in 
 him, forces itself upon his notice, or is forced upon him by the 
 criticisms and admonitions of others, he refers it to some of 
 these circumstances by which he is hemmed in. Has he not a 
 right to do so ? Can he not prove his case ? That effeminate, 
 slothful disposition — cannot he explain to himself clearly what 
 early indulgence, what ill-health, what inherited morbidn 
 begot it in him ? That gambling fever which is consuming 
 hi m — does he not know where it was caught, who gave him 
 the infection? That loss of truth in words and deeds, cannot 
 he trace it up to frauds practised on him in the nursery; can- 
 not he almost fix on the hour, the moment, when one of them 
 seemed to undermine his soul and make it false ? But for 
 riches, would he have been so hard and indifferent to oth< 
 But for poverty and successive disappointments, would he. 
 have been so sour and envious ? 
 
 In this way we reason about ourselves; we deliberately 
 assign an origin to the evil within as; can we refuse the advan- 
 tage of the same plea to our fellows ? Do we not blush wl 
 we tell any man, " You ought to have been so different.' 7 
 Have not a thousand influences that we know acted upon him 
 for evil, which have not acted upon us ? May there not have 
 been tens of thousands which w T e do not know ? Our practi- 
 cal conclusion, if we are charitable, is, that we must make 
 great allowances for him; his circumstances have been, or 
 may have been very unpropitious — may not much of his 
 wrong-doing be owing to these ? Here we seem to be extend- 
 ing a doctrine concerning the origin of evil to men generally. 
 
 And if w r e are roused to exertion respecting ourselves or our 
 brethren, it appears as if we directly applied this doctrine to 
 
CONCLUSION FROM THESE TREMISES. 2& 
 
 practice. We fly from old associations, we bring new ones 
 about us ; we assume that those who have erred will not be 
 better unless we can give them a different education, another 
 social position, positive restraints imposed by us, opportuni- 
 ties for restraining themselves, freedom from some shackles 
 which appear to have operated injuriously. We do not scru- 
 ple, any of us, to say that there are forms of government and 
 forms of belief which we wish to see destroyed, because we 
 suppose individual morality can scarcely exist under their 
 shadow. 
 
 tjrom these data it is not wonderful that some persons, anx- 
 ious to set the world right, should have generalized the con- 
 clusion, that all evil has its origin in circumstances; that when 
 you make them good, you make men good. It is not wonder- 
 ful that they should strive to point out how the first object may 
 be accomplished here and everywhere ; how the second is ne- 
 cessarily involved in it. We must submit to be charged by 
 them with great logical inconsistency, for going with them so 
 far, and yet stopping short at what seems to them the inevit- 
 able consequence. 
 
 2. There is one great hindrance to the acknowledgment of 
 that consequence ; perhaps to some persons it is the only one. 
 They cannot persuade themselves that human creatures would 
 receive so many evil impressions from the surrounding world, 
 if there was not in them some great capacity for such impres- 
 sions. They cannot suppose that the bad circumstances pro- 
 duce the susceptibility to which they appeal, however they 
 may increase it. How, they ask, did the circumstances be- 
 come bad ? Perhaps the elements are good, but they are ill- 
 combined. AVhat produced that bad combination? Who 
 put them out of order ? Or there is some one of them that 
 was bad and disturbed the rest. That one must have become 
 so, independently of its circumstances. " There must," they 
 say, " be some evil, which was not made so by the accidents 
 
30 CORRUPTION OF NATURE. 
 
 that invested it; you will be involved in a wearisome circle, an 
 endless series of contradictions, if you do not admit this. And 
 if you do, is it not more reasonable," they ask, " to say that this 
 evil belongs to the very nature of man, that it is a corruption 
 of blood ? Will not that account both for the growth of bad 
 circumstances and for the reaction of them upon you, upon us, 
 upon all? Confess that the infection you speak of is in us all, 
 confess that w T e are members of a depraved race, and you can 
 explain all the phamomena you take notice of; on any other 
 hypothesis they are incomprehensible." 
 
 This view of the origin of Evil is also pregnant with practi- 
 cal consequences; it never can become a mere theory. It 
 must lead all who hold it to inquire, whether this corruption is 
 necessary and hopeless, or may be cured; whether the cure 
 may come by the destruction of the substance in which it 
 dwells, or whether that may be reformed : in either what 
 
 the seat of the malady is, how the amputation may be effected 
 or the new blood poured in, and the man himself survive. The 
 world's history is full of the most serious and terrible answers 
 to these questions, — answers attesting how real and radical 
 the difficulty was which suggested them. " The disease is in 
 my body, this flesh, this accursed matter ;" — here was one 
 often-repeated, never-exhausted reply ; " the flesh must be de- 
 stroyed; till it is'destroyed, I can never be better." All the 
 macerations and tortures of Indian devotees had this justif 
 tion. " No, it is not there ; it is in the soul that you are cor- 
 rupted and fallen ; the body is but the tool and handmaid of 
 its offences ;" — that was another, seemingly a more hopeful 
 conclusion. And this soul must try to recover itself, must seek 
 again the high and glorious position which was once its own. 
 By w T h at ladder ? " It must think high thoughts of itself; it 
 must not allow itself to be crushed and overpowered by low 
 bestial instincts, it must refuse to be degraded by the mere 
 animals in the form of men, among whom it dwells." This 
 
STATE OF THE DISEASE. 31 
 
 was one prescription. " Ah, no !" said the mystic, after bitter 
 trial of that method ; " it must not rise, but sink ; the soul 
 must desire annihilation for itself; till it dies, it will never 
 know what life is." 
 
 These conclusions, we might fancy, affected only a few indi- 
 viduals. Oh no ! the whole society in which they are found, is 
 colored and shaped by them. I do not deny that there may 
 come a time when they may lose their power, when the large 
 mass of notions and practices which they have created through 
 a series of ages may begin to upheave, when a general unbe- 
 lief may take the place of an all-embracing credulity. But out 
 of that unbelief you will see forms arising which will prove 
 that the old notions are not dead ; that they cannot die. They 
 are about you while you are despising them; they are 
 within you while you are denying them ; if you can find no 
 clue to them, no explanation of them, they will still darken 
 your hearts and the face of the whole universe. 
 
 3. This is equally true, I believe, of another, an older, we 
 may think quite an obsolete, method of accounting for the ex- 
 istence of Evil. The belief in Evil Spirits, in Powers of Dark- 
 ness, to which the bodies and spirits of men are subject, which 
 haunt particular places, which hold their assemblies at certain 
 times, which claim certain men as their lieges, from whose as- 
 saults none are free : this belief we may often have been 
 inclined to look upon as the most degrading and despicable of 
 all, from which a sounder knowledge of physics and of the 
 freaks and capacities of the human imagination, has delivered 
 us. Are we sure that the deliverance has been effected ? Are 
 we sure that fears of an invisible world, — of a world not 
 to come, but about us, — are extinct, or that they may not rush 
 in with great force upon rich and luxurious people, as much 
 as upon the poorest and the least instructed ? Are we sure that 
 they may not press the discoveries of physical science, and the 
 possibilities of the vast undiscovered regions above and be- 
 
32 POWERS OF DARKNESS. 
 
 neath to which it points us, into their service ? Are we sure 
 that all our discoveries, or supposed discoveries, respecting 
 the spiritual world within us, may not be equally appealed to 
 in confirmation of a new demoniac system? Are we sure that 
 the very enlightenment, which says it has ascertained Christian 
 stories to be legends, will not be enlisted on the same side, be- 
 cause if we will only believe these facts, it will be so easy to 
 show how those falsities may have originated 9 
 
 And why is this belief at least as potent as either of the 
 others, often mixing with thern and giving them a new charac- 
 ter ? Because there is in men a sense of bondage to some 
 power which they feel that they should resist and cannot. 
 Because that feeling of the " ought," and the " cannot," is 
 what forces, not upon scholars, but upon the poorest men, the 
 question of the freedom of the will, and bids them seek some 
 solution of it. Has not every one wondered that the deepest 
 problem in metaphysics, the one which so many professional 
 metaphysicians relinquish as desperate, that respecting which 
 divines cry out in pulpits, " Ask nothing, it is so hard ; there 
 is some truth in each view of it," — should exercise and tor- 
 ment peasants in ten thousand ways ; that they should have 
 listened, as they did when Covenanters and Puritans were 
 preaching, to the most elaborate as well as the most startling 
 expositions of it ; that if they cannot have the knot untied for 
 them, they always find some intelligible superstition wherewith 
 to cut it ? Oh ! let us give over our miserable notion that 
 poor men only want teaching about things on the surface, or 
 will ever be satisfied with such teaching ! They are groping 
 about the roots of things, whether we know it or not. You 
 must meet them in their underground search, and show them 
 the way into daylight, if you want true and brave citizens, nut 
 ^community of dupes and quacks. You may talk against 
 aevilry as you like; you will not get rid of it unless you can 
 tell human beings whence comes that sense of a tyranny over 
 
THEOLOGY IN RELATION TO IT- 33 
 
 their own very selves, which they express in a thousand forms 
 of speech, which excites them to the greatest, often the most 
 profitless, indignation against the arrangements of this world, 
 which tempts them to people it and heaven also, with objects 
 of terror and despair. 
 
 Here then are three schemes of the universe, all developed 
 out of the observation of facts, or, if you like that form of 
 speech better, out of the consciousness of men, all leading to 
 serious results affecting our well-being in this as well as in 
 other periods of history. Each has given birth to theories of 
 divinity, as well as to a very complicated anthropology. They 
 show no symptoms of reconciliation ; yet they exist side by side, 
 and gather new votaries from various quarters, as well as new 
 confirmation from each of these votaries. Shall we ask what 
 Christian Theology, not according to any new conception of 
 it, but according to the statements which have embodied them- 
 selves in creeds, and are most open to the censures of modern 
 refinement, says of them ? 
 
 1. First, then, — -there is no disguising it, — the assertion 
 stands broad and patent in the four Gospels, construed accord- 
 ing to any ordinary rules of language ; — the acknowledgment 
 of (an Evil Spirit is characteristic of Christianity. * I do not, of 
 course, mean, that the dread of such a Spirit did not exist in 
 every part of the world, before the Incarnation of our Lord. 
 Powers which are plotting mischief against men, enter into 
 every heathen religion; gradually those religions came to sig- 
 nify little else than the conciliation of such powers ; in the 
 highest civilization of the Roman Empire, when unbelief in the 
 Divine had become habitual, the fear of the devilish expressed 
 itself in a devotion to magic and prophecy, which was as real 
 as the devotion* of frivolous people can be. The Jew was 
 taught, throughout all his history, that there were enemie«| 
 within as well as without, who were contending against him. 
 lie realized the conviction in his prayers to the God of his 
 
34 THE EVIL SPIIU1 THE GOSPELS. 
 
 fathers. lie could not believe that Philistines or Moabites 
 were tormenting him in his chamber. He learnt that the 
 secret impalpable enemies there, were his country's tyrants, 
 even more than the visible ones. The Pharisee of later times, 
 with no feeling for his country except as it reflected his vanity 
 or ministered to his contempt of others, wrapt up in the desire 
 to get what he could for himself in this world and the next, 
 had wrought out of the hints which the living rnen of former 
 days supplied him, a very extensive Demonology. Beelzebub, 
 the prince of the devils, occupied a large place in his theory ; 
 he could always be resorted to for the explanation of any more 
 than usually startling difficulty. And this being was uncon- 
 sciously becoming the object of Jewish worship. All his fea- 
 tures were gradually transferred by the imagination of the self- 
 seeker to the God of Abraham. 
 
 When then I speak of the belief in the existence and j 
 ence of an Evil Spirit as characteristic of the Gospels, I mean 
 this : — that in them first the idea of a spirit directly and abso- 
 lutely opposed t<» the Father of Lights, to the God of 
 lute goodness and love, bursts full upon us. There first we 
 are taught, that it is not merely something in peculiarly i 
 men which is contending against the good and the true ; no, 
 nor something in all men : that God has an antagonist, and 
 that all men, bad or good, have the same. ; There, first, this 
 antagonist presents himself to us, altogether as a spirit, with 
 no visible shape or clothing whatsoever; there first the belief 
 that Evil may t>e a rival creator, or entitled to some worship, 
 — a belief, which every reformer in the old world had spent 
 his life in struggling with, — is utterly put to flight ; the vision 
 of a mere destrover, a subverter of order, who is seeking con- 
 tinually to make us disbelieve in the Creator, to forsake the 
 j|rder that we are in, takes place of every other. With tbi 
 cliscoveries another is always connected ; that this tempter 
 speaks to me, to myself, to the will ; that over that he has 
 
RELATION TO NATURAL CORRUPTION. 35 
 
 established his tyranny ; that there his chains must be broken ; 
 but that all things in nature, with the soul and the body, have 
 partaken, and do partake, of the slavery to which the man 
 himself has submitted. 
 
 I simply state these propositions ; I am not going to defend 
 them. If they cannot defend themselves, by the light which 
 they throw on the anticipations and difficulties of the human 
 spirit, by the hint of deliverance which they offer it, by the 
 horrible dreams which they scatter, my arguments would be 
 worth nothing. But I am bound to show how this part of the 
 divine revelation affects those two other hypotheses of which 
 I spoke first. 
 
 2. That there is a pravity or depravity in every man, and 
 that this pravity or depravity is felt through his whole nature 
 the Gospel does not assert as a principle of Theology, but con 
 cedes as an undoubted and ascertained fact of experience 
 which no one who contemplates man or the universe can gain 
 say. \ What it does theologically with reference to that expe 
 rience is this ; — as it confesses an Evil Spirit whose assaults 
 are directed against the Will in man, it forbids us ever to look 
 upon any disease of our nature as the ultimate cause of trans- 
 gression. The horrible notion, which has haunted moralists, 
 divines, and practical men, that pravity is the law of our being 
 and not the perpetual tendency to struggle against the law of 
 our being, it discards and anathematises. By setting forth 
 the Spirit of selfishness as the enemy of man, it explains, in 
 perfect coincidence with our experience, wherein this pravity 
 consists ; that it is the inclination of every man to set up him- 
 self, to become his own law and his own centre, and so to 
 throw all society into discord and disorder. It thus explains 
 the conviction of the devotee and the mystic that the body 
 must die, and that the soul must die. Self being the plague 
 of man, in some most wonderful sense he must die, that he may 
 be delivered from his pravity. And yet neither body nor soul 
 
36 RELATION TO CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 can be in itself evil. Each is in bondage to some evil power. 
 If there is a God of Order mightier that the Destroyer, 
 body and soul must be capable of redemption and restora- 
 tion. 
 
 3. And thus this Theology eomes in contact with that wide- 
 spread and most plausible creed, which attributes all evil to 
 circumstances. Every one of the facts from which this creed 
 is deduced, it fully admits. Every husband, father, ruler, 
 brings his own quota of selfishness to swell the general stock. 
 It accumulates from age to age. The sins of the fathers are 
 visited upon the children, to the third and fourth generation. 
 The idolatrous habit, the sensual habit, goes on propagating 
 itself, so that ihe cry, 
 
 ,<Etas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 
 Xos nequiores, mox daturo 
 
 I'rogeniem vitiosiorem, 
 
 is the ordinary complaint of intelligent observers. And 
 because it is so, the prudential alleviations of the evil to which, 
 as I admitted, we all do and must resort, have the highest 
 justification in principle. Take away from a man all the in- 
 jurious influences that it is possible to take away ; not because 
 circumstances are his rightful masters, but because these influ- 
 ences lead him to think that they are, and to act as if they 
 were. Take them away that he may know what has robbed 
 him of his freedom, whose yoke needs to be broken if he is not 
 always to be a slave. And since the man soon discovers, — 
 since his worship of circumstances is itself an acknowledgment 
 of the discovery, — that the tyranny which is over him is a 
 tyranny over his whole race, we shall never give him any clear 
 ness of mind, or any hope, unless we can tell him that the Spirit 
 of Selfishness is the common enemy, and that he has been 
 overcome. 
 
 I cannot be ignorant, that in this Essay I have encounter! 
 
 
DEPRAVITY MADE A LAW. 37 
 
 one of the most deeply rooted aversions in the minds of Uni- 
 tarians. They have always regarded the doctrine of the exist- 
 ence and personality ol the Devil as the least tenable figment 
 of orthodox theology. They scarcely think that any one who 
 professes to hold it, in the present day, can be sincere. They 
 are very tolerant, can give us credit for much invincible igno- 
 rance ; but they do not believe that any man in the nineteenth 
 century is quite fool enough for that. 
 
 I perfectly understand this feeling. I know that it is very 
 widely diffused. I shrink with instinctive cowardice from say- 
 ing, " I maintain this dogma." I should like exceedingly to 
 hide it under some respectable periphrasis. I will tell you why 
 I cannot. I believe that some of what seem to me the hardest, 
 most mischevious theories of our modern popular divinity, — 
 those which shock the moral sense and reason of men most, 
 those which most undermine the belief in God's infinite charity, 
 —arise from this timidity, of which I am conscious myself, and 
 which I see in my brethren. When men in the old time would 
 have said bravely, meaning what they said, " We are engaged 
 in a warfare with an Evil Spirit, he is trying to separate us 
 from God, to make us hate our brethren," ive talk of the deprav- 
 ity of our nature, of the evil we have inherited from Adam. 
 Now that every child of Adam has this infection of nature, I 
 most entirely and inwardly believe. But to say that this infec- 
 tion forces us to commit sin, is to say what the Jews of old 
 said, — what the Prophets denounced as the most flagrant 
 denial of God, — We are delivered to do all these abominations. 
 And it is the very close approximation which we make in some 
 of our popular statements to this detestable heresy, which has 
 called forth an indignant and a righteous protest from many 
 classes of our countrymen, the Unitarians being in some sort 
 the spokesmen for the rest. When we try to avoid this cen- 
 sure, it is by the very feeble and pusillanimous course of introduc- 
 ing modifications into the broad phrases with which we started, 
 
38 EQUIVOCATIONS. 
 
 modifications that make them mean almost nothing. We main- 
 tain the " absolute, universal, all pervading depravity" of 
 human nature; but then there are u beautiful relics of the 
 divine image," " fallen columns," &c. ; — pretty metaphors, no 
 doubt ; but who wants metaphors on a subject of such solemn 
 and personal interest ? Who can bear them when they reduce 
 assertions, which we were told had the most profound signifi- 
 cation, into mere nonentities ? 
 
 What is pravity or depravity — affix to it the epithets univer- 
 sal, absolute, or any you please — but an inclination to some- 
 thing which is not right, an inclination to turn away from that 
 which is right, that which is the true and proper state of him 
 who has the inclination ? What is it that experiences the inclina- 
 tion ? What is it that provokes the inclination? I believe it is the 
 spirit within me which feels the inclination : I believe it is a Spirit 
 speaking to my spirit, who stirs up the inclination. That old way 
 of stating the case ex^laius the facts, and commends itself to my 
 reason. I cannot find any other which <Joes not conceal some 
 facts, and does not outrage my reason. And of this I am 
 sure, that when I have courage to use this language, as the 
 expression of a truth which concerns me and every man, the 
 whole battle of life becomes infinitely more serious to me, and 
 yet more hopeful; because I cannot believe in a Spirit which 
 is tempting me into falsehood and evil, without believing that 
 God is a Spirit, and that I am bound to Him, and that He is 
 attracting me to truth and goodness. 
 
 And thus another very unsightly, and to me quite porten- 
 tous, imagination of modern divines, is shown to be utterly in- 
 consistent with the faith which we and our forefathers have 
 professed. There is said to have been a war in the Divine 
 mind between Justice and Mercy. We are told that a great 
 scheme was necessary to bring these qualities into reconcilia- 
 tion. AY hen I attribute this doctrine to modern divines, I do 
 not affirm that there may not be very frequent traces of it in 
 
JUSTICE AND MERCY OPPOSED. 39 
 
 the argumentative discourses of old divines ; but I mean 
 that, with the strong belief which they had, that an Evil 
 Spirit was drawing them away both from mercy and righteous- 
 ness — was tempting them to be both unjust and hard-hearted — 
 they had a practical witness against any notion of this kind, 
 which we have lost, or are losing. They could not but feel 
 that to be in a healthful moral state, they must be both just 
 and merciful; that there must be a perfect unity and harmony 
 between these qualities : that whatever puts them in seeming 
 division, comes from the Evil Spirit ; that it is treason to 
 ascribe to the archetypal mind that which destroys the purity 
 of the image. The God who w T as to deliver them from this 
 strife, could not Himself be the subject of it. I believe, then, 
 that the change which the Unitarians perceive in us, and which 
 they consider the blessed effect of civilization and progress 
 upon minds naturally averse from either, has introduced dark- 
 ness into our views of God, feebleness into our struggles for 
 good as men. As soon as we return to the practical faith of 
 the old teachers, we shall fling their theories and our own to 
 the winds when they interfere with the absolute righteousness 
 and love of God ; we shall know that there must be an All- 
 Good on the one side, or that we shall be at the mercy of the 
 All-Evil on the other. 
 
 And now, having applied this principle to our own condem- 
 nation, I have a right to turn round upon the Unitarian, and 
 ask him whether the same causes are not at work upon him 
 as upon us. I complained in my first Essay that the Unita- 
 rians of the last century substituted a mere amiable, good-na- 
 tured Being, for a God of perfect Charity. I referred in the 
 last to their superficial notions respecting Sin. I said that 
 they could not tell us anything about the actual conflict of 
 life; that the deepest wants of which human beings are con- 
 scious were unknown to tbem; that they could only teach us 
 to preserve quietness and propriety, when there is little to 
 
40 SPIRITUAL CONFLICTS. 
 
 ruffle the air or the sea. Is not that refinement whieh will not 
 face the fact of an Evil Spirit— the scorn of such a belief as 
 vulvar — at the root of a weakness which is alienating not 
 merely other men, but the youthful and earnest members of 
 their own sect, from them ? 
 
 For these younger men, I know, do confess the reality of 
 spiritual conflicts. Bunyan's u Pilgrim's Progress " they re- 
 gard as a book of great significance. They have no doubt 
 that Christian must, in some sense, fight with Apollyori. "And 
 who," they ask, " can object to an allegory which clothes so 
 much of real experience in a robe of fantasy? Of course,' 1 
 they continue, " you would not take the whole of that story 
 for gospel, would you ? And if we are quite willing to take 
 what is universal in it apart from its old Hebrew drapery, 
 what more do you want ? AVe allow there are abysses and 
 eternities, with which men have to do. — valleys of the shadow 
 of death, if you like that language. When you speak of the 
 Devil, we suppose you mean that, or a conceit of your own, 
 or a dream of the past." 
 
 One word, dear friends, only one word, just that we may 
 understand each other. If you do maintain the universal 
 truth which lies in that story of Apollyon, I am thoroughly 
 content : let all the outsides pass for what they are worth ; 
 let them be acknowledged as the mere dress suitable to a story 
 — not to a fact; to the seventeenth century, not to the nine- 
 teenth. But mark, it is the outside which I give up; to the 
 inside I hold fast. I am very sorry to say, that these eterni- 
 ties and abysses of yours look to me very like outsides, mere 
 drapery; the fashionable dialect of a certain^not very earn' 
 rather fantastic, period. The dress of the old people being 
 stripped off, as we are agreed it shall be, there remains — 
 what ? The history of some mental process, no doubt ; — but 
 the nature of the process ? Is it a shadow-fight ? Is it a game 
 of blacks and whites, the same hand moving both? These 
 
SUBSTANCE AND DRAPERY. 41 
 
 are questions of some importance to the sincerity of our acts 
 and thoughts. I tell you plainly you have not resolved them, 
 as I have a right to demand, on my own behalf and on behalf 
 of my kind, that they should be resolved. And though I 
 would not for the world that you should anticipate by one 
 hour the decision of your own consciences upon them ; though 
 I honor you for not adopting phrases of ours, or of the Bible, 
 which do not express something substantial to you ; yet I 
 cannot conceal my conviction, the result of my own experi- 
 ence, that your minds will be in a simpler, healthier state, that 
 you will win a victory over some of the most plausible conven- 
 tionalisms of this age, that you will grasp the truth you have 
 more firmly, and be readier to receive any you have not yet 
 apprehended, when you have courage to say, " We do verily 
 believe that we have a world, and a flesh, and a Devil, to 
 fight with." 
 
 And before you believe it, or know that you do, I shall 
 claim you as men who are actually engaged in this struggle, 
 and I shall go on to show, that in your heart, as much as in 
 mine, there is a witness for righteousness and truth, which 
 world, and flesh, and Devil, have been unable to silence. 
 
ESSAY IV. 
 
 ON THE SENSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN MEN, AND THEIR 
 DISCOVERY OF A REDEEMER. 
 
 Every thoughtful reader of the book of Job must have 
 been struck by two characteristics of it, which seem, at first 
 sight, altogether inconsistent. The suffering man has the most 
 intense personal sense of his own evil. He makes also the 
 most vehement, repeated, passionate, protestations of his own 
 righteousness. It cannot be pretended that he defends his 
 innocence as far as men are concerned, but that he confesses 
 himself guilty in the sight of God. On the contrary, he ap- 
 peals again and again from rrren to God. He calls for 
 His judgment. He longs to go and plead before Him. There 
 would have been no need of clearing himself before a human 
 tribunal. His friends do not, as it has been customary to say, 
 attack him. They try, in their way, to console him. They 
 are as much astonished at the vehemence of his self-accusa- 
 tions as they are shocked at his self righteousness. They are 
 quite convinced that God is ready to forgive those who make 
 their prayer to Him. That is what they would do, if they 
 
 (42) 
 
JOB AND HIS FRIENDS. 43 
 
 had fallen into Job's calamities. The ancients, who were 
 much wiser than he or they, have assured them that it is the 
 right course. Why does not the stricken man take it? Why 
 does he indulge in such dreadful wailiDgs, which must be offen- 
 sive to the Judge who has afflicted him? Above all, how 
 dares he talk, as if a man might be just before God ? itow 
 could he, who complained that he possessed the sins of his 
 youth, nevertheless declare, that there was a purity and a 
 truth in him, which the Searcher of all hearts would at last 
 acknowledge ? What did this contradiction mean ? How 
 could he justify it against all their precedents and arguments? 
 He could not justify it at all. The contradiction was there. 
 He felt it, he uttered it, he found in it the secret of his anguish. 
 He could only tell his friends : " Your precedents and your 
 arguments do not clear it away in the least. I knew them 
 all before. I could have poured them out upon you if you 
 had been in my case. But when one is brought face to face 
 with suffering, they prove to be mere wind. These words of 
 yours buzz about me, torment me, sometimes leave their stings 
 in me, but they have nothing to do with me. They do not 
 show me where I am wrong and where I am right. I am be- 
 fore a Judge who does not appear to recognise your maxims 
 and modes of procedure. Oh ! that I might order my cause 
 before Him !" Nor was it only the self-righteousness of Job 
 which shocked Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar. Their theory 
 of the nature of pain w x as also thoroughly outraged by his lan- 
 guage. I do not see any proof that they thought it merely a 
 judgment from God for his transgressions. They would have 
 been quite willing to call it, as we do, a merciful visitation. 
 What offends them is, that Job groans under it as if it were 
 an evil, that he seems to speak of it as if it came from an ene- 
 my. How can this be ? Did not God send it ? Is not all this 
 suffering permitted, even ordained, by Him 1 What possible 
 
44 HIS PROTEST AGAINST SUFFERING. 
 
 right can a poor creature, a worm of the earth, have to remon- 
 strate and complain that anything is amiss? 
 
 Again it is clear that the friends have the advantage. Job 
 cannot at all explain how it is that pain should seem to him so 
 very intolerable, and yet that it should be from God. It is 
 the secret he wants to discover. But the demands for submis- 
 sion which his friends make upon him are not the least helps 
 to the discovery. He cannot satisfy these demands: he can- 
 not do what they tell him to do. He must and will cry out. 
 He is sure that all is not right, let them pretend to think so, 
 as much as they will. This pain, however it may have come 
 to him, is an evil. No one shall force him to belie his con- 
 science by saying that it is a good. 
 
 It does not appear from the story that in either of tin 
 points, Job grows into more consent with their opinion, as his 
 discipline becomes more severe and his experience greater. 
 His confidence that he has a righteous] a real substantial 
 
 righteousness, which no one shall remove from him, which he 
 will hold fast and not let go, waxes stronger as his pail* be- 
 comes bitterer and more habitual. There are great alterna- 
 tions of feeling. The deepest acknowledgments of sin come 
 forth from his heart. But he speaks as if his righteousn 
 were deeper and more grounded than that. Sin cleaves very 
 close to him ; it seems as if it were part of himself, almost as 
 if it were himself. But his righteousness belongs to him still 
 more entirely. However strange the paradox, it is more lam- 
 self than even that is. He must express that conviction, he 
 does express it, though he knows, better than any one can tell 
 him, how much it is at variance with what he had been think- 
 ing and saying the moment before. 
 
 So also of the suffering. He has wonderful intuitions, ever 
 and anon, of the mercy and goodness of God. He belie\ 
 that He is trying him, and that He will bring him forth out of 
 the fires. And yet, why does this happen to him 7 What is 
 
MY KEDEEMER LlVETli. 45 
 
 it all for'? He will not cheat God and outrage His truth, by 
 uttering soft phrases which set at nought the conviction of his 
 heart. There is that about him from which he feels that he 
 ought to be delivered, an anguish of body and soul, which 
 he cannot reconcile with the goodness he yet clings to and 
 trusts in. 
 
 There comes a moment in the life of Job when these two 
 thoughts, the thought of a righteousness within him which is 
 mightier than the evil, the thought of some deliverance from 
 his suffering which should be also a justification of God, are 
 brought together in his,mind. He exclaims, " I know that my 
 Redeemer liveth ; in my flesh shall I see God, ivhom I shall see 
 for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another?''* He 
 expects that this Eedeemer will stand at the latter day upon 
 the earth. But he evidently does not rest upon an expecta- 
 tion. It is not what this Eedeemer may be or may do hereaf- 
 ter he chiefly thinks of. He lives. He is with him now. 
 
 * The force of this passage, as I understand it, is not in the least 
 affected by the question whether the word "Redeemer" should be 
 exchanged for the " Avenger of Blood." I do not quote Job to prove a 
 future state, or anything relating to a future state. The idea of an 
 Avenger is inseparably connected with that of a Redeemer ; he who be- 
 lieves there is one, believes there is the other. I make this remark in 
 especial Reference to an eloquent article on the book of Job, which has 
 appeared in the Westminster Revietc y since the first edition of these 
 Essays was published. To a great part of that article I must object, as 
 containing what seems to me a wrong statement of facts. I cannot find, 
 as I have explained more at large in my Sermons on the Old Testament, 
 that the Jewish Scriptures exhibit that theory about Prosperity and Ad- 
 versity which the Reviewer attributes to them. Every one of the heroes 
 of the history, Joseph, Moses, David, is a sufferer. The chosen people 
 is a suffering people. But this difference between us does not affect the 
 Reviewer's interpretation of the text to which I have alluded. I am 
 quite content that he should demolish, any formal argument which has 
 been deduced from it; its practical and spiritual significance become 
 thereby the more apparent. 
 
46 THE BOOK ACCEPTED AS TRUE. 
 
 Therefore he calls upon his friends to say whether they do not 
 .see that he has the root of the matter in him. 
 
 At length, we are told, God answers Job out of the whirl- 
 wind. He show r s him a depth of wisdom in the flight of every 
 bird and in the structure of every insect, which he cannot dive 
 into. He shows him an order which he is sure is very good 
 though he is lost in it. Then he says, " I have heard of Thee 
 by the hearing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth Thee. 
 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 
 A wonderful conclusion follows. God justifies the complain- 
 ing man more than those who had pleaded so earnestly for his 
 power and providence. They are forgiven when he prays 
 for them. And the last days of Job are better than the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 The early passages in the book of Job respecting Satan seem 
 to anticipate what I said w r as especially New Testament the- 
 ology. They do so only, I believe, because the story is more 
 simply human, less Jewish, than any in the Old Testament. 
 Job is represented as living outside of the limits within which 
 the posterity of Abraham was confined. No words are us 
 to identify him with them, or to show that he poi d any of 
 
 the privileges with which their covenant and history invested 
 them. We have here, therefore, what is at least meant to be 
 a history of human experienoe. Whether it is biographical or 
 dramatical, or, as I conceive, both, this must be the intention 
 of it. Job is shown, and we are shown, by an cxperimentum 
 cruris, what in him is merely accidental, what belongs to him 
 as a man. Christendom has received the book in this sense. 
 Doctors have taken pains to illustrate it, and have left it much 
 as they found it. Plain, suffering men have understood it with 
 all its difficulties much better than the most simple tracts writ- 
 ten expressly for their use.- You will see bedridden women, 
 just able to make out the letters of it, feeding on it, and find- 
 ing themselves in it. You will hear men who regard our 
 
ALL HAVE A SENSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 47 
 
 Theology as a miserable attempt to form a theory of the uni- 
 verse, expressing their delight in this one of our theological 
 books, because it so nobly and triumphantly casts theories of 
 the universe to the ground. How it squares with our hypo- 
 theses they cannot imagine, but it certainly answers to the 
 testimony of their hearts. 
 
 And I believe most clergymen, most religious persons, who 
 have conversed at all seriously with men of any class, from the 
 most refined to the most ignorant, in any state of mind, from 
 that of the most contented Pharisee to that of the lowest crim- 
 inal, have another test of the authenticity of the book as a 
 record of actual humanity. (jThey hear from one and all, in 
 some language or other, the assertionof a righteousness which 
 they are sure is theirs, and which cannot be taken from them. 
 They may call themselves miserable sinners ; some of them 
 may feel that they are so ; some may tremble at the judgment 
 which they think is coming upon them for their sins. But in 
 all there is a secret reserve of belief, that there is in them that 
 which is not sin, which is the very opposite of sin. When you 
 tell them that the feeling is very wrong, that " Grod be mer- 
 ciful to me" is the only true prayer, that God's law is very 
 holy, that they have violated it, and so forth, — they will listen 
 — they may assent. From prudence or deference to you they 
 may suppress the offensive phrase, or change their tone. Those 
 will not be the best and honestest who do so. The man who 
 cries, Till I die you shall not take my integrity from me, and who 
 makes his teacher weep for the fearful deceitfulness of the human 
 heart, may be nearest, if the Bible speaks right, to the root of 
 the matter, — nearest to repentance and humiliation. But be 
 that as it may, the fact in each case is nearly the same.\ Each 
 man has got this sense of a righteousness, whether he realizes 
 it distinctly or indistinctly, whether he expresses it courage- 
 ously or keeps it to himself. 
 
 Not less true is it that each man has that other conviction 
 
48 vais. 
 
 which Job uttered so manfully, that pain is an evil and comes 
 from an enemy, and is contrary to the nature and reason of 
 things ; however from a stoical maxim, or a sense of duty, or 
 a habit of patience, he may submit to it ; however much, to 
 please his teacher or to get rid of him, he may assent to 
 phrases which appear to affirm an opposite doctrine. The wit- 
 ness of the conscience, — of the whole man, on this point, is too 
 strong for any cool, disinterested reflections. It is no time for 
 school distinctions about soul and body. Both are confounded 
 in one mortal anguish. 
 
 And when the man sends forth a bitter cry towards heaven, 
 when he expresses his'faith that he has a Deliverer somewhere, 
 it is not a Redeemer for his soul that he asks, more than for 
 his body. It is from the condition in which he finds himself 
 that he cries to be set free ; he feels that he has a kind of right 
 to be set free from it. To be as he is, is not, he thinks, accord- 
 ing to nature and order. He asks God, if he asks at allj to 
 show that it is not according to His will. 
 
 If we did believe that there is a divine process, such as the 
 Book of Job describes to us, — if we might take that book as 
 an inspired history of God's ways to men, — we should not 
 surely stop at this point of the application. We should sup- 
 pose God was really answering his creature and child out of 
 the whirlwind ; and by wonderful arguments, drawn, it may be, 
 from the least object in nature, from the commonest fact of the 
 man's experience, or from the whole Cosmos in which he fin- Is 
 himself, addressed to an ear which our words do not reach, 
 entering secret passages of the spirit to which w-e have no 
 access, was leading him, — the instincts and anticipations of 
 his heart being not denied but justified, — to lay himself in dust 
 and ashes. When a man knows that he has a righteous Lord 
 and Judge, who does not plead His omnipotence and His right 
 to punish, but who debates the case with him, who shows him 
 his truth and his error, the sense of Infinite Wisdom, sustain- 
 
CnRIST BEFORE THE GOSPELS. 49 
 
 ing and carrying out Infinite Love, abases him rapidly. He 
 perceives that he has been measuring himself, and his under- 
 standing, against that Love, that Wisdom. A feeling of 
 infinite shame grows out of the feeling of undoubting trust. 
 The child sinks in nothingness at its Father's feet, just when 
 He is about to take it to His arms. 
 
 But it is a Father, not a vague world, before which he has 
 bowed. Oh ! if we would preserve our brethren from a dark 
 abyss of Pantheism, whmi their spirits are beginning to open 
 to some of the harmonies of the universe, let us not pause till 
 we understand how it should be the end of God's discipline 
 to justify Job more than his three friends ; how it can be pos- 
 sible for Him to sanction that conviction of an actual righteous- 
 ness, belonging to the man himself, which we were so anxious 
 to confute. I believe, for this purpose, we must lay the foun- 
 dations of our faith deeper, not than they are laid in the Scrip- 
 tures or in our Creeds, but very much deeper than they are 
 laid in modern expositions. We say we wish to bring the sin- 
 ner, weary, heavy-laden, and hopeless, to Christ. What can 
 be a more blessed, or more benevolent, or more divine desire ? 
 But do we mean that we merely wish to bring the sinner to 
 know what Christ did and spoke, in those thirty-three years 
 between his birth and his resurrection? I fear we shall never 
 understand the infinite significance of those years, or be able 
 to take the Gospel narratives of them simply as they stand, if 
 we hare no other thought than this, or if there is no other 
 which we dare proclaim to our fellow-men. Do we not really 
 believe that Christ was, before He took human flesh and dwelt 
 among us 1 Do we not suppose that He actually conversed 
 with prophets and patriarchs, and made them aware of His 
 presence ? Or is this a mere arid dogma which we prove out 
 of Pearson, and which has nothing to do with our inmost con- 
 victions, with our very life ? How has it become so ? Is it 
 not because we do not accept the New Testament explanation 
 3 
 
50 THE 8TRAUSSIAN DOCTRINE. 
 
 of these appearances and manifestations; because we do not 
 believe that Christ is in every man, the source of all light that 
 ever visits him, the root of all the righteous thoughts and acts 
 that lie is ever able to conceive or do ? 
 
 I am afraid, not only that we are letting this truth go, but 
 that we are actually disbelieving it, and that we shall therefore 
 fall not into the doctrine about Christ which prevailed in the 
 last century, not into a belief of Him as a man and nothing 
 more than a man, — various experiences have been making it 
 difficult, almost impossible, for us to acquiesce in such a the- 
 ory, — but into the notion of Him as a shadow-personage?, whom 
 the imagination has clothed, as it does all its heroes, with a 
 certain, divinity, really belonging to and derived from itself. 
 That notion, when it is presented to our divines, strikes them 
 at first with amazement, as an hypothesis which cannot by pos- 
 sibility gain acceptance with reasonable people. Then tl 
 discover how much acceptance it has gained ; how naturally 
 men in our day fall into it ; how many of them seem to receive 
 it as if it was that which they had always been holding, only 
 they had not courage to tell themselves so, or skill to put 
 their thoughts into words. 
 
 The next step is to look about for some method of confuting 
 the theory ; to see whether we can prove that Strauss and his 
 disciples have misquoted the New Testament or abused ancient 
 authorities. Perhaps, if we cannot establish these points suf- 
 ficiently by our learning, our German friends, who have been 
 more closely engaged in the battle, may help us. I dare Bay 
 they can, and that we also may do something for ourselves in 
 that line, if we try. But I am convinced, also, that the effort 
 will be worth next to nothing, if it is made ever so skilfully, if 
 our blows are ever so straight and well directed. That which 
 is a tendency and habit of the heart, is not cured by deteclfhg 
 fallacies in the mode in which it is embodied and presented to 
 the intellect. If you have no other way of showing Christ not 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RIGHT IN MAN. 61 
 
 to be a mythical being, or a man elevated into a God by the 
 same process which has deified thousands before and since, 
 except by convicting the propounder of the hypothesis of some 
 philological and historical blunders, you imry be quite sure 
 that he will prevail, though those blunders were multiplied a 
 thousandfold. 
 
 I would earnestly entreat our divines to think well wbethei 
 they are not to blame for the prevalence of this theory; and 
 whether, if they would eradicate it, they must not, in the first 
 place, deal much more honestly with the facts of human expe- 
 rience, and secondly, connect those facts with principles which 
 they admit to a certain extent, when they are arguing with 
 those who deny them, but which they seldom fairly present 
 to themselves, and still more rarely bring home to the con- 
 sciences of their suffering fellow men. The facts I have tried 
 to present in the light in which Scripture exhibits them to us, 
 — Scripture abundantly confirmed by daily observation. We 
 apply the principle to those facts, when we say boldly to the 
 man who declares that he has a righteousness which no one 
 shall remove from him — " That is true. You have such a 
 righteousness. It is deeper than all the iniquity which is in 
 you. It lies at the very ground of your existence. And this 
 righteousness dwells not merely in a law which is condemning 
 you, it dwells in a Person in w ? hom you may trust. The 
 righteous Lord of man is with you, not in some heaven to 
 w T hieh you must ascend that you may bring Him down, in 
 some hell to which you must dive that you may raise Him up, 
 but nigh you, at your heart." 
 
 The principle is expressed again when we say, (i You main- 
 tain that the pain you are suffering is not good but ill, — a sign 
 of wrong and disorder. You say that it is a bondage, from 
 which you must seek deliverance. You say that you cannot 
 stop to settle in what part of you it is, that it is throughout 
 you, that it affects you altogether, that you w T ant a complete 
 
r„ 
 
 2 EFFECTS OF PAIN, AND THE CURE OF IT. 
 
 emancipation from it. Even so, Hold fast that conviction. 
 Let no man, divine or layman, rob you of it. Pain is a sign 
 and witness of disorder, the consequence of disorder. It is 
 mockery to say otherwise. You describe it rightly ; it is a bon- 
 dage, the sign that a tyrant has in some way intruded himself 
 into this earth of our's. But you are permitted to suffer the 
 consequence of that intrusion, just that you may attain to the 
 knowledge of another fact, — that there is a Redeemer, that 
 He lives, that He is the stronger. That righteous King of 
 your heart whom you have felt tcTbe so near you, so one with 
 you, that you could hardly help identifying Him with yourself, 
 even while you confessed that you were so evil, He is the 
 Redeemer as well as the Lord of you and of man. Believe 
 that He is so. Ask to in: and the way in which He has 
 
 proved Himself so. You will find that God, not we, has been 
 teaching you of Him, that He has been talking with you in 
 the whirlwind, while we were darkening counsel with words 
 without knowledge ; leading you, to the sight of His glory, 
 that He might make you willing to confess your own base- 
 ness. He has taught you that you have been in chains, but 
 that you have been a willing wearer of the chains. To break 
 them He must set you free. Self is your great prison- 
 house. The strong man armed, who keeps that prison in 
 safety, must be bound. The rod of the enchanter, who 
 holds your will in bondage, must be broken by some diviner 
 spell before the arms can be loo3ed, and the captive rise and 
 
 move again. 
 
 '■ If you have carried away this lesson from your hours of 
 suffering and resolve to keep it, your latter days will be bet- 
 ter than the beginning. The grey hairs of the stricken, worn 
 out, desolate man, though no new children should crowd hit 
 hearth in place of those that are departed, though no flocks 
 and herds should be restored to him for those which the rol 
 here have taken away, will be fresher, freer, more hopeful than 
 the untaught innocence of his childhood. But you have had, 
 
UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 53 
 
 in those hours, a glimpse into the deep mystery, how God may 
 use the consequences of the evil to which you have yielded, — 
 and can make also the deliverance, if it be at present only a 
 partial one, from those consequences, — instruments in your 
 emancipation from the evil itself; because^ through His disci- 
 pline, these have become the means of leading you to the 
 apprehension of Himself, and of that Daysman, between us 
 and Him, whom Job saw that he needed, and who must be as 
 much yours as He was His." 
 
 The remarks I made in my last Essay show that I do not 
 undervalue the testimony which the elder Unitarians bore 
 against some of the phrases and opinions respecting human 
 nature and human corruption, into which our popular reli- 
 gious teachers have fallen. They maintained stoutly, that ordi- 
 nary men do good acts, and that we have no business to call such 
 acts splendid sins. " Either," they said, " words mean noth- 
 ing, and human language, when it is turned to religious pur- 
 poses, is used to conceal not to express our thoughts, or else 
 the epithets, gentle, brave, just, to whomsoever they are applied) 
 must be taken as expressing sincere moral commendation, and 
 must not be explained away because we have some mental 
 reservation about the religion or irreligion of the person to 
 whom we apply them." All such protests seem to me honest 
 appeals to the conscience, and to the truth of God, — denuncia- 
 ations of a style of thinking, and judging which leads to the 
 most fatal moral confusions. 
 
 But the Unitarians, I think, were very little able to sustain 
 these useful assertions of theirs against an earnest and thought- 
 ful man, who had known what evil was in himself, and who 
 had adopted St. Paul's language, not only because it was St. 
 Paul's, but because it expressed the deepest thoughts of his 
 own heart, In me, that is, in my flesh, dioelleth no good thing. 
 Such expressions seemed to them merely extravagant and 
 foolish ; indications of a temporary insanity in the person who 
 resorted to them, which time or change of air would probably 
 
54 EARNEST MEN NOT CONVINCED. 
 
 cure. Sometimes they saw that these remedies were effectual. 
 The man's judgment of himself was conneeted with much that 
 was morbid; his judgments of others, and the theories which 
 he deduced from his experience, he gradually perceived to be 
 uncharitable and untenable ; his vivid impressions yielded to 
 such discoveries and passed away. There were others whom 
 neither time nor change of air, nor the observation of their 
 own rashness, nor repentance for it, at all shook in this strong 
 and solid conviction. They had found the Apostle's asser- 
 tion to be true. They could abandon it for no Pelagian 
 refinements. "With them, these Unitarians felt themselves 
 utterly at a loss. They could only talk to them about an 
 external morality, of which the hearers made no account, The 
 disputants were speaking of different subjects; but subjects 
 between which there e I a close connexion ; one of which, 
 
 if rightly understood, would have been bf the greatest help in 
 explaining the other. The Unitarians discoursed concerning 
 the doings of a man, those they called enthusiasts concerning 
 his being. But how poor are his doings if they do not draw 
 life from his being; how much he will deceive himself about 
 his being, if it does not make itself manifest in doings ! 1 low 
 soon will even commercial honesty perish, if you have not 
 found out the secret of making the man honest ! But how 
 easy is it for a man to frame for himself a certain internal 
 standard, which shall be compatible with the greatest external 
 fraud and wrong ! 
 
 I am sure people are coming to some discoveries of this 
 kind ; and that they are almost equally dissatisfied with that 
 flimsy doctrine about behaviour, which was all that the religion 
 df rewards and punishments could produce, and with that asser- 
 tion of truths as belonging to the believer and not to other 
 men, which is its antagonist. Both systems are falling by 
 their own weight. The external moralist fails to produce the 
 results he says are all-important ; the exclusive religionist 
 shows himself more worldly than his neighbors. But while 
 
denial of Christ's pre-existence. 55 
 
 # 
 
 each is separately perishing, was there no truth in each which 
 cannot perish ? "What is it ? How shall we find it out ? 
 
 I have been led in this Essay to seek for this reconciliation, 
 by a method which will seem to the Unitarian to the last de- 
 cree strange and monstrous. What infinite pains Priestly and 
 his school took to disprove the pre-existence of our Lord ! 
 How satisfactorily they showed that that pre-existence must 
 imply something more than the Arians said it implied; that 
 there was no resting in their half conclusion ! How indefatiga- 
 bly they strove to exhaust Scripture of all expressions which 
 savored of this mystical imagination ! With what rapture they 
 hailed a bad translation, or a doubtful reading ! How re- 
 solved they were that even the early Church and the early 
 heretics should not mean what all previous students of their lan- 
 guage thought they must mean ! They exhibited great diligence, 
 undoubtedly, and diligence not without its reward. For their 
 orthodox antagonists, eager to confute these statements, made 
 a concession which, fur their purposes, was quite invaluable. 
 They argued as if you might start from the Unitarian hypo- 
 thesis of our Lord's nature, and then prove Him to be some- 
 thing more than that lu'pothesis affirmed Him to be. It was 
 to be taken for granted that the new Testament spoke of 
 Jesus of Nazareth first as a good man and a great prophet; 
 it was to be contended that it also spoke of Him as divine. 
 
 To be involved in such a controversy is to be involved in the 
 necessity of arguing, refining, special-pleading for a principle 
 which, at the same time, we affirm to be the substance of the 
 Gospel, to be connected with the very life of man. What an 
 utterly false position for men to be thrown into ! How could 
 the spectators help thinking that it was a fencing-match, the 
 interest of which depended upon successful parries and thrusts ; 
 unless, as was too often the case, the combat acquired a deadly 
 interest when one of the combatants w r as persuaded into the 
 crime of Laertes, when, changing their rapiers, they struck 
 
•56 MOTIVES TO BTRAUSSIANISM. 
 
 each other with the poisoned instrument ? And where there 
 was on the one side the advantage of academical fame, of 
 ecclesiastical dignity, the shouts of the crowd, the patronage of 
 the state, the sympathies of the lovers of fair play would of 
 course be bestowed on the opposite. 
 
 It was not exactly that the supporter of the orthodox side 
 chose a bad standing ground. In the last age this was felt to 
 be the natural standing-ground. Some men were driven from it 
 by spiritual convictions; some found it inconsistent with a 
 scholarlike study of the Bible; but most spoke as if it were 
 the reasonable position. You yielded it up in deference to an 
 invincible array of texts or authorities, or to some power which 
 directly bore upon your own spirit. Those who maintained it 
 were supposed to be adopting the faith which every philoso- 
 pher and every simple man would adopt, unless he were pre- 
 pared for a very bold iniidelity, or unless, in deference to 
 Scripture ami tradition, he gave up his common sense. 
 
 In what I have said ol Strauss, 1 have hinted how much the 
 e is altered now in this respect. The habit of thought 
 which made the arguments of the Humanitarians seem so 
 strong and decisive, which was always ready to supply any 
 gaps in their reasoning, is subverted. Through whatever in- 
 fluence the change has come to pass, philosophers recognise it ; 
 all feel it. There is no eagerness now to show that the disci- 
 ples of Jesus did not attach a mysterious and supernatural dig- 
 nity to His character ; the labor is to prove that they did. 
 Philology is discovered to have been in favor of the older 
 notion of their opinions; only philosophy failed in accounting 
 for them. The modern Unitarian has strong: motives for looking 
 favorably upon statements of this kind. They meet the discon- 
 tent with which he has learnt to regard the dryness of his own 
 creed. They justify his traditional dislike of the orthodox 
 creed. They gratify his desire for a religion which shall point 
 less to external conduct, more to internal life. \i he can look 
 
WHO CANNOT YIELD TO THEM. 57 
 
 upon Jesus as connected in some way with the experiences of 
 his own heart, with those spiritual conflicts of which he has 
 learnt to see the significance, what an emancipation it will be 
 from the formalism which he hates, in his own school and ours ! 
 How much more easily than Priestly or Belsham, with how 
 much less of outrage upon scholarship, he can get rid of mere 
 texts and narratives ; with how much more of delight than they 
 ever betrayed, can he recognise all that was divinest in the life 
 of him who is called the Son of Man ; with how much more of 
 freedom and less of exclusiveness can he connect him with all 
 the other great champions of the race ! 
 
 Yes ; these are great temptations, irresistible temptations to 
 one wmo, as Bunyan says, " has not a burthen on his back." I 
 may easily persuade myself that the Christ I was taught to be- 
 lieve in, is a creation of the human intellect or imagination. 
 That hypothesis will come to me clothed with a wonderful 
 plausibility, when I stumble all at once, in my walks through 
 this common world, upon mines of which I had not suspected 
 the existence, — mines in which the most busy processes are 
 going on, and must have been going on for generations. But 
 if by chance while I am exploring these rich mines in myself, 
 I am brought to a standstill by the discovery that /am the 
 worker of them ; that I have worked them ill ; that I am the 
 steward of some one who is the possessor of them ; that I am 
 bankrupt, and guilty ; — then it becomes a necessity — not of my 
 traditional faith, or of my fears, hut — of my inmost spirit, that 
 I should find some One whom I did not create, some One who 
 is not subject to my accidents and changes, some One in 
 whom I may rest for life and death. Who is this ? What 
 name have you for Him ? I say it is the Christ, whose name 
 I was taught to pronounce in my childhood ; the Righteous 
 one, the Eedeemer in whom Job, and David, and the Prophets 
 trusted, the ground of all that is true, in you, and me, and every 
 man ; the Source of the good acts, — which are therefore not 
 splendid sins, — of you and me, and every man ; the Light that 
 3* 
 
58 CONCLUSION. 
 
 lighteth every man who cometli into the world. Apart from 
 Him, I feel that there dwells in me no good thing; but I am 
 sure that I am not apart from Him, nor are you, nor 4s any 
 man. I have a right to tell you this : if I have any work to do 
 in the world it is to tell you this. And now I will tell you 
 further why I hold that this righteous Being is the Son 
 of God. 
 
ESSAY V 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 " I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our 
 Lord," has been for eighteen centuries the creed of Christen- 
 dom. The teachers to whom. I alluded in my last Essay, are 
 especially active in pointing out the delusion into which we 
 have fallen upon this subject. 
 
 " All mythologies recognise Sons of God. Every legendary 
 person in the Greek w T orld wits the offspring of some 
 God; the most conspicuous, of Zeus, the chief God. 
 WheVe is your singularity ? Where are the signs of some es- 
 sential characteristic divinity in your faith 1 It bears about it 
 the ordinary tokens of humanity. To these it owes its gen- 
 eral acceptance. In this instance, as in all others, it has 
 adopted into itself those human feelings and notions which 
 had taken various forms in different ages and races; it has 
 adopted them free from some adjuncts and accidents which 
 were worn out and ready to perish. It has added to them ac- 
 cidents of its own, which will drop off in due time by a neces- 
 sary law. It has especially connected a high ideal of humanity 
 with a particular person. That ideal will be found to belong 
 
 (59) 
 
00 SONS OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 to the whole race, not to him. He will retain a high place 
 among the asserters of human rights and duties, not that 
 which the idolatry of his disciples has assigned him. 1 ' 
 
 I have admitted already that the ordinary methods of con- 
 troversy are entirely out of place when statements of this kind 
 are propounded. The question, whichever way it is decided, 
 must concern the life and being of every one of us. It must 
 affect the condition of mankind now, and the whole future his- 
 tory of the world. To argue and debate it as if it turned 
 upon points of verbal criticism, as if the determination could 
 be influenced by the greater or less skill in reasoning on either 
 side, as if it could be settled by votes, must have the effect 
 of darkening our consciences, of making us doubt inwardly 
 whether the truth signifies anything to us, or whether we can 
 arrive at it. To keep silence on these doubts, if this is the 
 only modi' of treating them, is not only a sign of religious 
 reverence, but of common sense. But since there is, I believe, 
 another way of dealing with thein — one which will be 
 acknowledged as fairer by those who experience them, and yet 
 one which does not require the heart and conscience to be 
 asleep, but which asks all their help in determining whether 
 we have received a fable, or are holding, all too weakly, an 
 eternal verity — I consider it much safer not to leave such a 
 topic to the chances of ordinary conversation and popular lit- 
 erature, but to introduce it into solemn discourses as if we 
 were aware of the number of human souls which it is tor- 
 menting. 
 
 Our first plain duty is to admit the fact as it is stated, not 
 entering into particulars for the sake of showing whether there 
 are any exceptions to it or limitations of it. For our purpose 
 it is not necessary to inquire why the Oriental spol re of 
 
 emanations from God, and the Greeks, as well as our own 
 ( rothio ancestors, more of sons of God. The question is very 
 interesting and even important. I may allude to it again at 
 
j0? I" ^ 
 
 WHAT IS INVOLVED IN IT. 61y 
 
 some other time, but it is enough here to admit the general 
 proposition, that sons of God will be found occupying a con- 
 spicuous place in the mythology of every people which has 
 left any strong impression of itself upon the history of the 
 world. This being granted, the next point is to ascertain 
 what are those general human feelings which this faith embo- 
 dies. We cannot hesitate for a moment to allow that there 
 are some; that it is very desirable to know what they are; 
 and that they must be nearly related to Christianity. 
 
 First, then, it seems to be an instinct of men, so far as we 
 may judge by these indications, that their helpers must- come 
 to them from some mysterious region ; that they cannot be 
 merely children of the earth, merely of their own race. If 
 they belong to us — so the conscience of man interpreted by 
 history seems to bear witness — they cannot understand our 
 evils, or bring any power that is adequate to overcome them. 
 Secondly, there seems to have been a strong persuasion among 
 men that human relationships have something answering to 
 them in that higher world from which they suppose their 
 heroes to have descended. Thirdly, they seem to have been 
 sure, that unless the superior beings were, not only related to 
 each other, but in some way related to them, their mere pro- 
 tection would be worth very little; they would not confer the 
 kind of benefits which the inferior asks from them. These are 
 the obvious common-place inferences from these stories, which 
 suggest themselves to every one; they lie upon the surface o£^~ 
 them. 
 
 And if so, it can hardly, I think, be taken for granted that 
 we are showing our respect for the instincts and conscience 
 of humanity, when we assume that all the beings who have 
 done it good, have not come from any mysterious source, but 
 have belonged to the common stock of human beings; that 
 they have not been given to us, but, as to all their most trans- 
 cendent qualities, created by us ; that their relation to us was 
 
t)2 THE GODS, HOW CREATED BY MEN. 
 
 the ordinary one of flesh and blood ; that we have glorified 
 and deified them. These conclusions may be true, but they 
 cannot follow from those facts to which our attention has 
 been so eagerly directed : those facts would seem at first 
 sight to contradict them. I am quite willing, however, to ac- 
 knowledge that there is evidence, and very strong evidence, in 
 favor of these opinions, — evidence which has made it most 
 natural that serious thinkers should adopt them in this day 
 and in other days. Notwithstanding that strong conviction in 
 the minds of men, that their gods and heroes must be of a na- 
 ture higher than their own, and that any sympathy with them 
 must imply a condescension and stooping, it is quite manifest 
 that they have imputed to the beings whom they reverenced, 
 all the habits and peculiarities of the countries and races to 
 which they belonged, all that was morbid in their own tem- 
 peraments, much of the corruption and debasement to which 
 they know themselves to be prone. About this point then 
 no dispute. It is no new discovery, but one which Gn 
 sages made more than two thousand years ago, about their 
 own countrymen. It was the secret of the unbelief of so many 
 of them. It led a few into the strongest and most settled 
 assurance, that there was that which man did not create, and 
 to which he must be conformed. And there is no doubt that, 
 from age to age, the tendency went on increasing, till the gods 
 became different from the mass of men only by being the 
 models and ideals of a superhuman malice and cruelty. 
 
 But there is a chapter of human experience which we have 
 not yet looked into. It is that of which I spoke in my last 
 Essay. We found a man broilght into a condition of physical 
 and moral pain and weakness which deprived him of all advan- 
 tages he might once have possessed, and confessing himself on 
 a level with the most wretched of human creator There 
 carne to this man, so smitten, a consciousness of evil, which 
 was perfectly new to him. This consciousness was strangely 
 
REFERENCE TO THE LAST ESSAY. 63 
 
 mixed with the assurance that there was a righteousness 
 which he could actually claim as his. The righteousness was 
 more deep than the evil. At times he felt that it was even 
 more his own, though that seemed bone of his bone and flesh 
 of his flesh. This conflict in his mind was connected with ano- 
 ther. He could not deny that his suffering had come from 
 God ; but yet he felt it to be a plague, an evil, an enemy. It 
 spoke to him of bondage and oppression. Could God be the 
 oppressor? This man, we found, was gradually taught that 
 God was not his oppressor, but the defender of his cause, the 
 asserter of his righteousness. How was this 1 "Was he then 
 righteous? Was he not the sinner he had believed himself to 
 be? Yes ; it was then first that he felt himself to be wholly a 
 sinner, — that he became ashamed of all the pleas he had put 
 forth on his own behalf. But there was, in some nrysterious 
 manner, a Redeemer, — an actual person connected with him, 
 — one who he was sure lived, one who was at the root of his 
 being, — one in whom he was righteous. 
 
 I tried to show, not from a particular sentence, but from the 
 context of the book, that this was Job's experience. I tried 
 to show further, that Job was not a man unlike other men, 
 placed under rare and peculiar conditions, w 7 hich enabled him 
 to ascertain certain facts as true for himself, which are not 
 true for his race ; but that by hard discipline, he was drawn 
 out of that which was local and individual, brought to 
 the apprehension of that which is human and universal)! tried 
 to show that any other hypothesis is inconsistent with our rev- 
 erence for the book of Job as part of the canon of Scripture, 
 equally inconsistent with the testimonies which have been 
 borne to its truthfulness by people of the most various charac- 
 ters, and in the most dissimilar circumstances. If so, the 
 Avenger or Redeemer whom Job confessed was not a Re- 
 deemer, but the Redeemer; not one of those who came down 
 from time to time, out of some unknown world of light, to 
 
64 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 scatter some portion of the world's darkness, but the actual 
 source of light ; not one of those who here and there puts 
 down one of the earth's oppressors, but the asserter of marCs 
 right against the oppressor of man. He cannot be one of 
 those whom men have ealled into existence, and invested With 
 the qualities which belongto them as members of some particu- 
 lar race or locality. The sufferer has been compelled to feel 
 himself simply a man. All accidents are nothing to him now. 
 [( he has not hold of a substance, he must perish in his despair. 
 
 Such are the results at which we have arrived already. But 
 if that part of the story is true, — and no part of it can be true 
 if that is not, — which represents (iod as Himself discovering 
 to the innermost heart and spirit of the man his righteousm 
 as well as his sin, — the Avenger as well as the oppressor, — 
 the question must have forced itself upon Job, and for 
 
 if upon us: Is this Redeemer, so closely connected with 
 the human sufferer, not connected also with that divine In- 
 structor who answered him out of the whirlwind ? Was this 
 righteousness which .lob perceived, not the righteousness of 
 God Himself? Was He as widely separated from His crea- 
 ture as ever ? AVas there no meaning in the assertion that 
 one was the image of the other ? What did all this history of 
 a struggle signify, if that assertion was false? Why had .Job 
 cared to know the mind and purpose of his Maker ? Why 
 had he that sense of separation from Him — that longing to 
 plead with Him ? Whence came that cry for a Daysman be- 
 tween them ? 
 
 If the Lord and Redeemer whom Job, and thousands be- 
 sides Job, in that day and in all days, in that country and in 
 all countries, felt after and found, explains to us those many 
 lords and redeemers, whom men in different places and ages 
 have dreamed of or hoped for, may not He also explain tin 
 many sons of God of whom I have been speaking here ? [May 
 not this be the great radical experience which interprets those 
 
NOT YET INCARNATE. 65 
 
 superficial experiences ; the great universal experience which 
 interprets those partial ones? Job could not think of this 
 Daysman, near as He was to his very being, except as one 
 who had come to Him, — who had stooped to him, — who be- 
 longed to a world of mystery. Job could not think of Him 
 except as related to the Invisible Lord of all. Job's most 
 intimate conviction was that He was related to himself. 
 These are the conditions that meet in all those dreams of 
 demigods and heroic men which mythology presents us with. 
 But here are not the causes which make those dreams local, 
 temporary, artificial. It is from the One Being, the Lord of 
 the spirit of all flesh, that this Son of God must have come. 
 He must be spiritual like that Being ; for it is the spirit and 
 not the sense of the suiferer, which confesses Him. And 
 whatever righteousness and goodness are perceived by the 
 erring, trusting, broken-hearted penitent to be in the One, — 
 speaking to his sorrows and wants, — must be the image and 
 reflex of an absolute righteousness and grace in the other, 
 which he could only adore. 
 
 Many readers fancy that w r hen we speak of a Person who is 
 at once divine, and the ground of humanity, we must be assum- 
 ing an Incarnation. I have not yet touched that doctrine ; 
 what I am saying here has no reference to it. \jOhristian theo- 
 logy does not speak of an Incarnation, till it has spoken of " an 
 only-begotten Son, begotten of his Father before all worlds, of 
 one substance with Him."jThese words, though we unite so 
 often in pronouncing them, and though in former times they 
 were the strength and nourishment of confessors and martyrs, 
 have come, in modern days, to be regarded as mere portions 
 of a school divinity, w r hich learned men must maintain by subtle 
 arguments and an army of texts ; which ordinary men are to 
 receive implicitly, because it is dangerous to doubt them ; but 
 which have no hold upon our common daily life, which can be 
 tested by no experience, which those who are busy with reli- 
 
66 MYSTERIES PRACTICAL. 
 
 gious feelings and states of mind will pass by with indifference, 
 as not concerning vital godliness. 
 
 We owe it to these objectors of whom I have spoken, (and this 
 surely ought to convince us how faithless and heartless our dread 
 of any objections is, and how much we are fighting against God, 
 when we try to suppress them,) we owe it to them that this delu- 
 sion has been scattered, or must soon be scattered; and that th< 
 truth.- compelled to come forth from amidst the cobwebs 
 
 in which we have left them, to prove that they can bear the 
 open day, and that they bring a more glorious sunlight with 
 them, which may penetrate into all the obscurest caverns of 
 human thoughts and fears. W we take the Apostle St. John 
 a our Liuide, we shall find that those mysteries, from which we 
 have shrunk back, as if they must rob us' of all simple and 
 childlike faith, arc the preservers of simplicity in thought, in 
 word, in act, from the innumerable temptations to artifice and 
 falsehood which beset religious men. not less, but more, than 
 others; that they can set us free from a host of vulgar earth- 
 born notions and superstitions, which we have adopted from the 
 cloister or the crowd into our Christian dialect and practice; 
 ["that they can show how the one fundamental truth of God's 
 Move and charity makes all other facts, — those belonging to tl 
 most inward discipline of the heart, those concerning t\m most 
 outward economy of the world, — sacred and luminous J 
 
 I can only see at a great distance, that this must be so and 
 is so, and can hope and pray that God may raise up some 
 in these latter days of the world who will help us to feel that 
 it is so. The utmost I shall attempt now is, to say a few 
 words on one passage of St. John's Gospel, in which our Lord 
 points out, as it seem to me, in a wonderful manner, the relation 
 in which a belief in the Son of God stands to that conscious- 
 ness of bondage which is inseparable from the consciousness 
 of sin. 
 
 If I traced in this passage any allusion to a belief in His 
 
THE SON OVER HIS OWN HOUSE. 67 
 
 Incarnation or to that Passion which had not yet taken place 
 I should not quote it. But the only way in which the words 
 bear upon the first of these subjects is this : they were ad- 
 dressed to certain Jews who had believed on Christ as a teacher, 
 as a man standing visibly before them. He desired to lead 
 them into a higher and better faith, the one which true men 
 had held before He was born into the world, the only one 
 which could sustain any after He had left it. He had said to 
 those Jews who believed on Him, " If ye continue in my ivord, 
 then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall maize you free.'''' They answered, u We are 
 Abraham \s children ; ive were never in bondage to any man. 
 How say est thou then, Ye shall be made free V A strange 
 question for men who were looking so earnestly for a deliverer 
 from the Roman yoke, and yet one which had a good mean- 
 ing in it. They were certain that in some way or other the 
 privilege of being Abraham's children was the gift of a higher 
 freedom, a nobler citizenship, which the Caesars could not take 
 from them. Perhaps it was this. Perhaps our Lord came 
 to show them hoiv it was this. But in the mean time, there 
 was a plain staring fact which they must admit. Whether they 
 were Abraham's children or not, they had committed sin; they 
 felt and knew that they had. And that sin did make them 
 bondsmen. They were under a yoke, a heavy one to each of 
 them, however he might slight his subjection to the emperor, 
 however little that might practically or individually gall him. 
 His will had a master ; he confessed it in a thousand ways ; 
 he continually pleaded its subjection as an excuse for doing 
 wrong acts, for not doing right ones. It was better simply to 
 own the fact than to dissemble it. To own it was the begin- 
 ning of emancipation. "For the servant abideth not in the 
 house forever, but the Son abideth ever?'' Over that house of 
 theirs, not made w T ith hands, there was a Son actually ruling, 
 a Son of God. To Him the house belonged, not to the poor 
 
68 PRAYER TO THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 slave who fancied it was his. Let him once confess the true 
 Lord of it, let him once give up his own imaginary claim of 
 dominion, which was submission to a real servitude, and his 
 chains would drop off. u For if the Sun shall make you free, 
 then are ye free indeed" All other attempts to shake oil' the 
 yoke from your wills, make it harder and heavier. In the cou- 
 pon that a Son, an actual Son of God is your Lord, lies the 
 secret of freedom. This is the true Hercules who takes Pro- 
 metheus from his rock, and shiys the vulture that is preying 
 upon him. This is the deliverer of each man, because He is 
 the deliverer of mankind. 
 
 I beliuve there never has been, is not, nor will be, any other 
 way of asserting freedom or of preserving it than this. And 
 I do § believe that God is leading us by strange and hidden 
 paths, to seek for this freedom and to find it. ^Lany a heart, 
 I trust, which shrinks back from our teaching, and perhaps 
 thinks that we are binding grievous chains on men's necks, is 
 yet praying this prayer : 
 
 " Strong Son of God, Immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove ; 
 
 u Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
 He thinks he was not made to die ; 
 And Thou hast made him : Thou art just. 
 
 " Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, Thou : 
 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. 
 
 M Our little systems have their day ; 
 
 They have their day and cease to be : 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."* 
 
 * " In Memoriam," opening verses. 
 
REVELATION NOT SYSTEM. 69 
 
 Yes ! it is deeply and eternally true that " Thou, Lord 
 art more than they." And therefore it becomes us most ear- 
 nestly, for the sake of our fellow-men and of all the thoughts 
 and doubts which are stirring in them so mightily at this time, 
 not to let the faith in an actual Son of God be absorbed into 
 any religious or philosophical theories or abstractions. When 
 we lose that, we lose all hope of freedom ; our own conceits 
 become our masters, and we are at the mercy of any ingenious 
 and skilful combiner, who can put those conceits into a system; 
 we become liable for a time to all the caprices and fantasies 
 of the age in which we live ; we shall probably sink at last into 
 the implicit credence which we suppose to be the characteristic 
 of ages that are past. Let us look, therefore, courageously 
 at the popular dogma, that there are certain great ideas float- 
 ing in the vast ocean of traditions which the old world exhibits 
 to us, that the Gospel appropriated some of these, and that 
 we are to detect them and eliminate them from its own 
 traditions. We have found these great ideas floating in that 
 vast sea ; — the idea of an Absolute God, the idea of a Son 
 of God, who has close and intimate relations with men as their 
 Lord and their Deliverer. We have found that these ideas 
 demand to be substantiated ; that all mischief, confusion, mate- 
 rialism, surrounded them when they became the creatures of 
 men's fancy, liable to be altered, disturbed, divided, at their 
 pleasure. What we ask for, is — not a System that shall put 
 these ideas into their proper places, and so make them the 
 subjects of our partial intellects, but — a Revelation which shall 
 show us what they are, why we have had these hints and inti- 
 mations of them, what the eternal substances are which corres- 
 pond to them. We w T ant such a Eevelation for philosophers 
 and common men, for the prince and the serf: we ask if there 
 is such a one or no : we beseech the Father of Lights, if He 
 is the God of infinite Charity we proclaim Him to be, to tell 
 us whether all our thoughts of Freedom and Truth have pro 
 
 
70 UNITARIAN BELIEF IN A SON OF GOD. 
 
 ceeded from the Father of Lies; whether for eighteen centu- 
 ries we have been propagating a mockery when we have said 
 that there is a Son of God, who is Truth, and who can make 
 us free indeed. 
 
 " And is this all you have to say," asks a grave Unitarian of 
 the older school, " to convince me that I must believe those 
 myster i outrageous t<> my reason, which you confess that 
 
 even persons proud of their orthodoxy are rather eager to dis- 
 miss from their thoughts ? That is really, as the lawyers say, 
 your case?" I will tell you, friend, why I have said thus 
 much, and why, on this topic, I mean to say no more. It is 
 because I know that I have you on my side; because you are 
 the principal evidence for what I have been maintaining. You 
 Dever have made up yourminda to abandon the name '•' Son of 
 God." You find it in the (Jm-jm-Is. Four drsire to assert the 
 letter of them, against what you suppose our figurative and 
 mystical interpretations, forces you to admit the phra- You 
 not only do so, but you make the most of it. You quote all 
 the pas-. m which Christ declares that the Son can do 
 
 nothii. If, that the Father is greater than lie, as deci- 
 
 sive against the doctrine of our creeds. You do a vast service 
 by insisting upon them, by compelling us to take notice of 
 them. They are not merely chance sentences carele.- 
 thrown out, inconsistent with others which occur in the same 
 books. You are right in affirming that they contain the i 
 to the life of Christ on earth. You have si; ted the thought 
 
 to us, — you could not, consistently with your scheme, bring it 
 forward, but it was latent in your argument, — that what lb; 
 was on earth must be the explanation of what He is. Never 
 can I thank you enough for these hints, for the help they have 
 been tome in apprehending the sense and connection of th 
 words which you cast aside. If the idea of subordination in 
 the Son to the Father, which you so strongly urge, is once lost 
 sight of, or considered an idle and unimportant school tenet, 
 
PROTEST AGAINST IDOLATRY. 71 
 
 the morality of the Gospel and its divinity disappear together. 
 You have helped to keep alive in our minds the distinction of 
 the Persons, and that I believe is absolutely necessary that we 
 may confess the unity of substance. 
 
 But, moreover, you have borne a very strong and earnest 
 protest against Idolatry. You have said that the Christian 
 Church is just as liable to idolatry as the Heathen world was, 
 and that its idolatry may be, probably will be, of the same 
 kind, one adopted from the other. Truths most needful to be 
 uttered, which Christian men refuse to heed at their peril ! We 
 Protestants require them as much as Roman Catholics ; we 
 Englishmen, as much as Spaniards or Italians. May I venture 
 to add, You need them also ? In so far as you feel, — and I 
 am sure many of you do feel, — a sincere, fervent admiration 
 and love for the character of Jesus Christ, in so far as you be- 
 lieve him to be the wisest, holiest, most benignant Teacher the 
 world ever had, are you not in danger of setting a man above 
 God? For I think the dim and distant vision of a Being 
 nowise related to you, as far as your theory is concerned, — 
 though by a happy and noble inconsistency you delight to call 
 lirm Father, — cannot by any possibility, be so satisfactory as 
 the thought of one who has actually done good and wrestled 
 with evil, and in some sense for you. When you can fairly 
 say, we are contemplating either, that is the fairer object, is it 
 not? — the one upon which you would rather dwell, even, if it 
 must be so, to the exclusion of the other ? Well ! but surely 
 here is the commencement and germ of all idolatry. For you 
 do not mean by idolatry, plain and practical people as you are, 
 the mere outward service of the temple, the bowing the knee 
 to a certain name ; you mean the deliberate preference of the 
 judgment and the affections. And that, it seems to me, you 
 will, and must bestow upon Christ rather than upon God, if 
 you do not accept the doctrine, that He is God of God, Light 
 of Light. 
 
72 ESCAPE FROM IT. 
 
 And do not think that it is possible for you, or for any man, 
 to stop short, at this point of idolatry. I think I could show 
 from the history of the Christian no less than of the ancient 
 world, that where a Son of Man, simply in that character, has 
 attracted to himself the reverence, affection, gratitude, homage, 
 which are not paid to God, those sons of men and daughters 
 of men, who are felt to be less removed from the sins and im- 
 purities of ordinary creatures .than lie is, practically oversha- 
 dow him. I intreat you, as resolute asserters of the worship 
 due to the One God, seriously to consider this evidence, as his- 
 
 y presents it to us, and then seriously to compare it with the 
 evidence which your own hearts present to you. By utter 
 coldness, by becoming merely men of the world, by forgetting 
 Christ habitually, and using the name of God merely as the 
 symbol of a formal worship, yen or we may contrive to escape 
 any fervent idolatry cither of natural or human objects, because 
 the sleepy, habitual, unconscious, all-pervading idolatry of 
 Mammon in his grossest form takes its place. But let any 
 earnest sympathy or affection be awakened in us, and does not 
 the clear, definite creature supplant the dim vision of the Crea- 
 tor, unless in some way or other, it suggests Him ? If it sug- 
 gests Him, how and why ? What link is there between the 
 human love and the divine ? What and where is the Daysman ? 
 "Who can it be — must there not be someone? — in whom 
 the human love entirely represents and images the divine? 
 
 I do not wish to press this argument further, lest it should 
 become too satisfactory to your reason, before it has satisfied 
 your conscienc There is an ascent by another and more rug- 
 ged road, which is, I believe, generally safer. In the sad hours 
 of your life, the recollection of that Man you read of in your 
 childhood, the Man of Sorrows, the great sympathiser with 
 human woes and sufferings, rises up before you, I know ; it 
 has a reality lor you, then ; you feel it to be not only beautiful 
 but true. In such moments, does it seem to you as if Christ 
 
THE NEW OPINIONS. 73 
 
 was merely a person who, eighteen hundred years ago, made 
 certain journey ings between Judea and Galilee ? Can such a 
 recollection fill up the blank which some present grief, the loss 
 of some actual friend, has made in your hearts ? It does not, 
 it never did this for you, or for any one ! Yet I do not doubt 
 for a single instant, that a comfort has come to you from that 
 contemplation. So far from denying your right to it, I would 
 wish you and all earnestly to believe how strong and assured 
 our right to it is. In Him, and for Him, we were created ; 
 this is our doctrine, or rather the doctrine of St. Paul; for we 
 have said little enough about it. If so, is it wonderful that He 
 should speak to you, and tell you of Himself? And oh ! if that 
 voice says, "You may trust me, you may lean upon me, for I 
 know all things in heaven and earth — I and my Father are 
 one ;" is the whisper too good to be true, too much in accord- 
 ance with the timid anticipations and longings of our spirits 
 not to be rejected ? 
 
 In some of the younger Unitarians, I hope, these words, (or 
 if not these, yet the thoughts which they try to express, in some 
 other words or without any,) may find a response. I do not 
 mean in those who have learnt to talk of the great defenders 
 of humanity and human rights, the Moseses, the Zoroasters, 
 the Jesus Christs, the Mahomets, the Kobespierres. Men who 
 put forth language of this kind to grieve their mothers and sis- 
 ters, and insult those whom they pretend to call their brethren, 
 are not in earnest. They use words to which they attach no 
 meaning. They may be Unitarians or Emersonians to-day. 
 After a little time they may become stiff Anglicans. Then 
 they may take a turn with Cardinal Wiseman. One can only 
 hope for them that in their final transmigration, after they have 
 had a glimpse into the bottomless pit of Atheism, they may 
 become little children again, eager to learn something, if it be 
 but their alphabet. I do not speak of these. But there are 
 many who are confounded with them, — who, in a kind ofreck- 
 
 4 
 
1^ HOW THEY TEND TO IDOLATRY. 
 
 lessness, adopt phrases nearly akin to theirs, or who take that 
 course from disgust with our hard speeches and narrowness 
 of heart, — between whom and the vain coxcombs with whom 
 they are associated there is the breadth of a whole heaven. 
 "What I fear for them is a great and vehement reaction against 
 the opinions which they have learnt, not in orthodox but, in 
 liberal and Unitarian nurseries. Instead of recognising an 
 impassable chasm between the human and the divine, these 
 become in their minds utterly confounded. The distinction 
 between them, they describe as impalpable, impossible to di- 
 cover ; the plague of orthodox divinity they say is, that it has 
 made the attempt, that it has used hard and stiff words to 
 define the boundary. " Of course, Christ is divine. Why 
 should he not be ? How can so beautiful a conception as that 
 which his character exhibits, be otherwise than divine?" But 
 the vehement struggle against their earlier faith which this 
 mode of speaking indica lOWfl also how strong the impres- 
 
 >n of that early faith has been. They are working up from 
 the earthly ground ; they can recognise no basis except that ; 
 they conceive Divinity only as an apotheosis of humanity. 
 
 Now here is and must be the beginning of a very extensive 
 and very frightful idolatry. The Straussians are perfectly 
 right. There always have been sons of God ; there always 
 must be. We cannot contemplate the world without them. 
 They always must stand in the most close relation to us; they 
 must leave their footprints on every different 6oil.Q3uddhists, 
 old Greeks, modern Romanists, we of this utilitarian time and 
 country, have all traced them and confessed them. The temp- 
 tation of one and all has been, by measuring and comparing 
 these footprints, to form an abstraction which is called a God, 
 and which may be anything, everything, nothing. The witness 
 in all these hearts has been — It cannot be so that we arrive at 
 Divinity. These must be the sons of a God. An abstraction' 
 a generalization, cannot be their Father/"} 
 
TRANSITION TO THE NEXT ESSAY. 75 
 
 " The witness of all these hearts ! Why that is your old 
 orthodox dogma, against which we have been all our lives pro- 
 testing !" I cannot help that. You can help embracing that 
 dogma. You can continue your protest. But will you not 
 think a little of the other alternative ? Will you not ask your- 
 selves seriously if you can escape the worship of ten thousand 
 imaginary Buddhas and demigods ? Have you courage to go 
 with me into the yet further question, whether you can avoid 
 the acknowledgment of fleshly beings made into gods, w T ith all 
 their infirmities and crimes, if you are not prepared to confess 
 that there is an only-begotten Son of God, who has been made 
 flesh? 
 
ESSAY VI. 
 
 THE IXCAR NATION'. 
 
 The Sons of the gods in Greek mythology can scarcely be 
 separated from Daman forms, from actual flesh and blood. 
 Those mysterious emanations from the Divinity which the Ori- 
 ental spoke of, and which became closely connected with the 
 later Greek philosophy, shrunk from this contact. But the 
 hearts of the people, as much in the East as in the West, de- 
 manded Incarnations; no efforts of the more spiritual and 
 abstracted priests could resist the demand. If you consider 
 the passages in the Old Testament which speak of Angels or 
 Sons of God, you will be struck with a resemblance to both 
 these conceptions, and a difference from both. They are per- 
 sons, not abstractions; they converse with human beings as 
 if they were of the same kind; no clear or deep line is drawn 
 between them. On the other hand, they are never spoken of 
 as assuming flesh, as putting on any vesture of mortality. You 
 know not how, but they leave on you an impression of spiritu- 
 ality all the more strong because no pains are taken to produce 
 it. Yet it is not an impression made at our cost ; we feel our- 
 
 (76) 
 
THE WORD OF GOD. 77 
 
 selves to be raised by what is told us of them ; if they are spirit- 
 ual, we must be so likewise. For this reason, the Jew had no 
 difficulty in acknowledging one higher Angel, one Son of God, 
 above all the rest ; who yet was in more direct and continued 
 communication with human creatures than they were ; a Word 
 who spoke to prophets and holy men, drew them away from 
 the phantoms of sense, taught them that they were spirits, 
 inspired them with cravings for the knowledge of God. Such 
 a Person they traced through their Scriptures. Those per- 
 ceived Him most who entered into the Scriptures most, and 
 whose own minds were most alive. The formal Scribes, who 
 were busy in framing a religion about God from the Bible and 
 the Elders, might never discern Him, though they might 
 expect, some day or other, the coming of a great King and 
 Messiah. But those who believed that God was speaking and 
 ruling, who had some vision of His awfulness and absolute 
 perfection, who yet felt that He had made men in His image, 
 and meant them to know Him, could inquire earnestly how 
 and in whom He governed and spake, how that awfulness and 
 perfection could come into relation with creatures, and be ap- 
 prehended by them. They did not confine the illuminations 
 of this mysterious Teacher to the wise of their own land, but 
 they believed that the Law and the Prophets interpreted His 
 relation to God and to the souls of men as no other books did, 
 and that their nation was chosen to be an especial witness of 
 His presence. 
 
 But when the voice went from a band of despised men, — 
 " The Word, or the Son of God, has been made flesh, and has 
 dwelt among us," — each of these classes, the Oriental, the 
 Greek sage, the learned and devout Jew, as well as the popu- 
 lar idolater, had his own reason to be offended. Was not flesh 
 the very seat of all evil, if not its cause ? Was not the great 
 effort of the wise man, to disengage himself from fleshly appe- 
 tites and fleshly illusions ? Had not the Divine Word espe- 
 
78 THE STRUGGLE IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
 
 cially chosen out a band of spiritual men to apprehend secrets 
 which the multitude, given up to the pursuits of the flesh and 
 the world, must remain ignorant of? These were arguments 
 of prodigious weight for all who had pursued the deeper wis- 
 dom. The traditional worshippers, Jew or Gentile, did not 
 need arguments. The force of habit and prescription was 
 strong enough without them. The love of what was fleshly 
 and external was as mighty a motive with these for rejecting 
 the new message, as the dread of it was with the others. They 
 were told to turn from their dumb idols — and the Jew was 
 given to understand that the rites in which he trusted had be- 
 come his idols — to the Living God. The Son of God was 
 said to have taken flesh that He might reclaim all for the ser- 
 vants of His invisible Father. 
 
 Accordingly, the chief struggle of all minds in the first cen- 
 turies after the Church had established itself in the world, v. 
 against this belief. I say emphatically and deliberately, in all 
 minds, for the conflict was just as apparent amon^ those who 
 had been baptized, as among their opponents. As they became 
 less alive to their own personal necessities, they had leisure to 
 contemplate the many sides which the Gospel presented to the 
 student and to the world — the points of contact between it and 
 surrounding opinions. Then this and that teacher arose to 
 show how possible it was to regard Christ as one of the ema- 
 nations from the unseen and absolute Essence, one of the stars 
 which had penetrated from the world of light into a world of 
 darkness, one of the agents of a good Being, who had come to 
 recover elect souls from fleshly corruption, and to make them 
 capable of the highest knowledge. Then more accomplished 
 teachers traced an order and scheme of emanations ; assigning 
 to Christ a place amidst a multitude of qualities, energies, 
 intellectual or physical principles. Then the modes of attain- 
 ing the higher intuitions were duly set down and distinguished 
 by each school for its own initiated disciples. But in every 
 
REASONS AGAINST AN INCARNATION. 79 
 
 one, it was necessary to account for the appearance of our Lord 
 in the world, without supposing Him to have been actually- 
 endowed with a human body. The connexion, it was said, 
 was not real but fantastic ; the Christ or the Son of God had 
 descended for a while into the body of Jesus at His baptism, 
 leaving it before His passion, not actually participating in any 
 of its infirmities. By some means or other, it must be explained 
 how a deliverer could come among men without being one of 
 themselves, without being associated with that in which lay, 
 as these teachers held, all defilement. 
 
 I have expressed what I believe were the three maxims com- 
 mon to these various and dissentient schools. They held, first, 
 that it was possible to know God without an Incarnation ; 
 secondly, that it is not right or possible, that a perfectly good 
 Being should be tempted as men are tempted ; thirdly, that all 
 we have to look for, is a deliverer of some choice spirits out of 
 the corruption and ruin of humanity, not a deliverer of man 
 himself, of his spirit, his soul, and his body. 
 
 These being the three cardinal dogmas of the teachers who 
 departed from the general creed of the Church, the convictions 
 which have sustained that creed cannot, perhaps, be expressed 
 better than by reversing these propositions. First, We accept 
 the fact of the Incarnation, because we feel that it is impossible 
 to know the Absolute and Invisible God as man needs to know 
 Him, and craves to know Him, without an Incarnation. 
 Secondly, "We receive the fact of an Incarnation, not perceiv- 
 ing how we can recognise a perfect Son of God, and Son of 
 Man, such as man needs and craves for, unless He were, in 
 all points, tempted like as we are. Thirdly, "We receive the 
 fact of an Incarnation, because we ask of God a Redemption, 
 not for a few persons, from certain evil tendencies, but for 
 humanity from all the plagues by which it is tormented. I 
 will take these points in their order. 
 
 1. Rapt devotees who have lived in perfect abstraction, have 
 
f 
 
 80 FAITH WITHOUT AN INCARNATION. 
 
 obtained a vision of a cloudless essence, of that which they 
 felt was awful and infinite, and which they could adore in 
 silence. Thoughtful and earnest seekers after wisdom, by 
 careful study of all common things which are presented to 
 them, by honest meditation upon the words which they use, by 
 diligent efforts to escape from the appearances of the senses 
 and the prejudices of the intellect, have been enabled to con- 
 
 s, and confidently to believe, that there is an Absolute and 
 Eternal substance at the ground of all things. Suffering men, 
 tormented by pain of body and anguish of spirit, have per- 
 ceived that there must be a health deeper than their sickness, 
 a righteousness beneath their evil Are we to slight any of 
 these disco\ . or not to reckon them true and divine? Cer- 
 
 tainly not. Their worth is, I believe, unspeakable. But why 
 were not those who obtained them satisfied with them? Why 
 did Heathen Bl tarn baek with a look half of longing, half 
 
 of loathing, t<> the popular legends? They saw that there was 
 in them a wit Of the presence of Guardians, Broth. 
 
 Fat which they could not .part with. To accept th< 
 
 clothed in all the tempers and tendencies which they felt to be 
 imperfect and distorted in themselves, was impossible for their 
 
 son. But their reason demanded a standard for acts; the 
 grace and righteousness which they saw in different divided 
 human images ; a foundation for the relations upon the pre- 
 servation and purity of which society depends; an absolute 
 Truth, which should not be merely dry existence, merely an 
 ultimate Hercules' Pillar of the Universe, but living ; such as 
 truth is when it comes forth in a guileless person. 
 
 St. John says, " We beheld Ills glory as of the only begotten 
 of the Father, fall of grace and truth" Am I to believe this, 
 asks the objector, on the testimony of a Galilean fisherman, or, 
 for aught we know, of some later doctor assuming that guise ? 
 I answer, You are not to believe — you cannot believe — either 
 fisherman or doctor, if the assertion itself is contrary to truth, 
 
CRAVING FOR ONE. 81 
 
 to the laws of your being, to the order and constitution of the 
 Universe in which you are living. They may repeat it till 
 doomsday. It may come, as it did, with no authority, against 
 the weight of all opinion, breaking through the customs and 
 prescriptions of centuries, defying the rulers of the world ; or 
 it may come clad with authority, with the prescriptions of cen- 
 turies ; with the help of rulers and public opinion ; it is all the 
 same; you cannot believe the words, however habitual and 
 familiar they may be to you, if there is that in them which 
 contradicts the spirit of a man that is in you, which does not 
 address that with demonstration and power. What we say is, 
 that these words have not contradicted that spirit, but have 
 entered it with the demonstration of the spirit and of power. 
 Men have declared, " The actual creatures of our race do tell 
 us of something which must belong to us, must be most need- 
 ful for us. A gentle human being does give us the hint of a 
 higher gentleness ; a brave man makes us think of a courage 
 far greater than he can exhibit. Friendships, sadly and con- 
 tinually interrupted, suggest the belief of an unalterable 
 friendship. Every brother awakens the hope of a love 
 stronger than any affinity in nature ; and disappoints it. 
 Every father demands a love, and reverence, and obedience, 
 which we know is his due, and which something in him as 
 well as in us hinders us from paying. Every man who suffers 
 and dies rather than lie, bearswitness of a truth beyond his 
 life and death, of which he has a glimpse." Men have asked, 
 " Are all these delusions ? Is this goodness we have dreamed 
 of all a dream ? this Truth a fiction of ours? Is there no 
 Brother, no Father beneath those, who have taught us to be- 
 lieve there must be such ? "Who will tell us ?" 
 
 What St. John answers is this : " No, they are not delusions. 
 It has pleased the Father to show us what He is. A man did 
 dwell among us — an actual man like ourselves, who told us 
 that He had come from this Father, that he knew Him. And 
 
82 ST. JOHN S ANSWER TO IT. 
 
 we believed Him. We could not help believing Him. There 
 did shine forth in His words, looks, acts, that which we felt to 
 be the grace and the truth we were wanting to see. We were 
 sure they were not of this earth ; that they did not spring 
 from that body which was such as ours is. We should have 
 been ready enough to call them His. But He did not — He 
 said they were His Father's, that He could do nothing of Him- 
 self, only what He saw his Father do. That was the most 
 wonderful token to us of all. We never saw any man before 
 who took nothing to Himself, who would glorify Himself in 
 nothing. Therefore, when we beheld Him, we felt that He 
 was a Son, an Only-Begotten Son, and that the glory of One 
 whom no man had seen or could see was shining forth in Him, 
 and through Him upon u 
 
 Hut why must we think that this person was more -than a 
 shrine of the Holiest 1 why should we speak of Him an the One? 
 why should this name of " the Only-Begotten" be bestov. 
 upon Him ? Again I say, Withhold it if your heart and con- 
 e bid you do so. But do not deceive yourseh ^The 
 question is not any longer, whether there should be an Incar- 
 nation, whether God can manifest Himself in human flesh; but 
 what the Incarnation should be, in what kind of person we are 
 to expect such a manifestation ; or whether He will diffuse His 
 glory through many persons, never gathering it into one. With 
 respect to the former question, the Church has always admit- 
 ted, the Apostles* eagerly asserted, that the demand w r hich 
 they made upon human faith was enormous. The glory of 
 God revealing itself, not in a leader of armies, a philosopher, a 
 a poet, but in a carpenter, — could anything be more revolt- 
 ing ? There w r as no shrinking from the shameful confession. 
 It was put forward prominently; it was part of the Gospel 
 which w T as preached to Jews, Greeks, Eomans. And it was 
 received as a Gospel, a message of good, not of ill, because 
 the heart of man answered, " We want to see, not some side 
 
THE CARPENTER. 83 
 
 of earthly power elevated till it becomes celestial ; we want 
 not to see the qualities which distinguish one man from ano- 
 ther, dressed out and expanded till they become utterly unlike 
 anything which we can apprehend or attain to. We want to 
 see absolute Goodness and Truth. We want to know whether 
 they can bend to meet us. That which cannot do this is not 
 what we mean by Goodness. It is not what we should call 
 goodness in any man. That truth which belongs to a few and 
 not to all, is not what we mean by Truth. The truest man w T e 
 know, has a voice which commends itself to all, which reaches 
 even the untrue, if it be but to frighten and incense him. 
 # The goodness which can stodp most, which becomes, in the 
 , largest sense, grace, — the truth which can speak to the inmost 
 heart of the dullest creature, is that which has for us the surest 
 stamp of divinity." 
 
 And here lies also the answer to the other question, " Why 
 should not the Glory of God be diffused through many images ? 
 why must it be concentrated in one ?" The practical reply 
 which Christendom has made is : " That it may be diffused 
 through many, it must be concentrated in One. That there 
 may be sons of God in human flesh ; men shining with the 
 glory of God, reflecting His grace and truth ; there must be 
 One Son who has taken human flesh, in whom that full glory 
 dwelt, who was full of grace and truth." He, so we have pro- 
 claimed, who could say, My Father ; could say Your Father • 
 He who could say, He has sent Me, could say, So send I you. 
 And Christendom has not merely put this doctrine forth in a 
 proposition. She has been able to establish it by the experience 
 of other men's truths ; still more by the experience of her own 
 errors. She can say, " Take away the belief of the one incarnate 
 Son of God and Son of Man, and all the heroes of the old 
 w T orld and of the new 7 become merely so many men who have 
 earned a right, by their superiority to the mass of their fellow- 
 creatures, to despise them and trample upon them. Admit 
 
84 THE SON TEMPTED AS WE ARE. 
 
 
 
 Him to be the centre of them, and they all fall into their places ; 
 each has had his separate protest to bear, his appointed work to 
 do. Though he may not have known in whose name he was 
 ministering, his ministry, so far as it was one of help and bl< 
 iug to mankind, so far as it implied any surrender of self-glory, 
 may be referred to the man, may be hailed as proceeding from 
 Him who took upon Him the form of a servant." On the other 
 hand, the Church can say, and should say, with the deep- 
 irimi i ?? ^n Ihi nth n r l i nn 1, Mv i Pl ii mrli ii nn rnjj -m ilihilhi^flTTji 
 humiliation, " Look what miserable creatures the saints 
 whom I have boasted of have become, when through their own 
 crime, or the crime of those who have magnified them, it has 
 been supposed that they had some independent merits, that 
 their souls or their flesh had some sacredness of their own. 
 Look through my whole history, and see whether the great 
 confusions I have wrought in the world, the cruellest oppi 
 sioDfl of which 1 have b ailty, have not been caused by 
 my desire to exalt individual men into the place of the Chri 
 by ray efforts to accomplish the very object which you hope to 
 attain, when you have emancipated yourselves from my Creed/' 
 2. But I pass to the second point, upon which the teachers 
 who deny an Incarnation are at variance with the Apostles — 
 and, I think, with the conscience of mankind. They say, " It 
 destroys the idea of a Son of God, to suppose him in contact 
 With the temptations of ordinary men." We say, " We can- 
 not know II im to be the sinless Son of God, except Tie was 
 in all points tempted like as we are." This is that side of 
 Christian divinity which presented itself in all its power to 
 Milton ; Paradise was, according to him, regained by the en- 
 durance of temptation. His strict adherence to that one idea 
 has given a unity to his second poem, as a work of art, which 
 wanting to its more magnificent predecessor. And this 
 unity it would not have received, if the soul of the writer had 
 not been penetrated and absorbed by the principle which it 
 embodies. Tn it lay the strength and vitality of the age 
 
PARADISE REGAINED. 85 
 
 which he represented ; especially of the Puritan part of it. 
 Men felt then that they had a battle with principalities and 
 powers ; the test of the Son of God was, that he had entered 
 into that battle, and had overcome in it. This thought might 
 become too exclusive in their minds ; when it was separated 
 from the one we have just been considering, it was liable to 
 various perversions ; but I can scarcely conceive of any which 
 has stood men in greater stead, or which we can less afford to 
 dispense with. In fact, as I said in a former Essay, it seems 
 to me that our actual forgetfulness of it, our effeminate timid- 
 ity in acknowledging the existence of an Evil Spirit, our desire 
 to represent all temptations as arising out of our nature, has 
 been the cause of more superstitions, and more dishonorable 
 thoughts of ourselves and of God, than any other of our popu- 
 lar religious habits. But it is inevitable while there is the 
 least reluctance to adopt the language of the New Testament 
 respecting our Lord's temptation. We cannot and dare not 
 think that there is an actual spirit striking at the deepest root 
 of our being, striving to separate us from what is good and 
 true, if we do not believe that righteousness is mightier, or if 
 we suppose it has only a distant abstract superiority ; not one 
 which has been ascertained in an actual trial. If we suppose 
 that the Son of God had any advantage in that trial, any 
 power save that which came from simple trust in His Father, 
 from the refusal to make or prove Himself His Son instead of 
 depending on His word and pledge, we shall not feel that a 
 real victory has been won. And thence will come, (alas ! have 
 come,) the consequences of supposing our flesh to be accursed 
 in itself, our bodies or our souls to be subject to a necessary 
 evil, and not to be holy creatures of God, made for all good. 
 It is needful to repeat these maxims often ; for the habits and 
 maxims w'hich contradict them, are presenting themselves in 
 every variety of form and application, and are, I think, disturb- 
 ing all our lives. I recur to them now, because I wish to put 
 
86 DISBELIEF OF CHRIST'S TEMPTATION. 
 
 that doctrine of the Incarnation, which is so often denounced 
 as an outrage upon reason, conscience, and experience, to 
 every possible test of reason, conscience, and experience. If 
 there are any tests besides these, I do not ask that it should 
 be tried by them ; these should not be declined by those who 
 are continually appealing to them. Let them fairly and man- 
 fully ask themselves whether they do not evade either some 
 great fact of daily experience, some evidence of actual misery 
 and evil, or else some sure and authentic testimony of the 
 heart that nothing in its principle and constitution can be evil, 
 if they deny that there has been One, who, in our condition, 
 was tempted by the Devil ; and that it was no imaginary 
 temptation, but the real one, that which makes others real. 
 Either I shall resort to some subterfuge to conceal my own 
 evil, or I shall shrink from acknowledging my relation in hope 
 and in sorrow to all human beings, or I shall invent some 
 wretched sub^itute for the Friend whom I have lost, if I am 
 too refined to believe that there is one who showed himself in my 
 flesh, to be a sharer of all Qod'fl truth and of all my danger. 
 
 3. This refinement in the Gnostical teachers had the close>t 
 connexion with that third characteristic of theirs to which I 
 alluded, — their belief that Christ descended from some pure 
 and ethereal world, to save certain elect souls from the pollu- 
 tions of the ilesli and the death which was consequent upon 
 them ; not to save the human race ; above all, not to save that 
 which was designated as the poor, ignoble, accursed body. 
 
 "J 1 he whole Gospel history was a most cruel insult to the 
 feelings which this opinion denoted. Christ is represented 
 addressing himself to multitudes. Those selected out of these 
 multitudes to be His disciples, are ignorant men, not better, 
 not more spiritual, than their fellows. Those who gather about 
 Him are publicans and sinners. He heals their bodies. He 
 speaks of their bodies as bound by Satan. Pain, disease, death, 
 are treated not as portions of a divine scheme, but as proofs 
 
REASONS FOR DISCARDING THE GOSPELS. 87 
 
 that it has been violated — as witnesses of the presence of a 
 destroyer, who is to be resisted and cast out. These are the 
 startling phenomena of the Gospels, subversive of their credit 
 and character with all persons who, on any grounds whatever, 
 religious or philosophical, are maintaining an exclusive posi- 
 tion, striving to separate themselves from other human beings, 
 or wishing to disparage animal existence as the only way of 
 exalting that which is intellectual or spiritual. The traditions 
 of their country may induce some of these to suspend their 
 condemnation of the documents, — nay, even to express unlim- 
 ited belief in them. Some may hesitate, from sympathy with 
 that in them which their hearts acknowledge as beautiful 
 and divine. But when the chain of authority is broken for 
 the one, when the other find books appealing more directly to 
 their tastes and temper, as being dressed in the fashion of their 
 own time, it /will be seen how gladly they will welcome any 
 mode of accounting for the Gospel narratives, which shall not 
 compel them to accept what they do not like to think divine 
 because it is so human. And here again it is to the great 
 human heart that theology must make its appeal. That has 
 found a witness for the Gospels and for the fact of an Incar- 
 nation in these offensive passages. That has clung to them 
 because it demands one who comes into contact with its actual 
 condition ; who relieves it of its actual woes ; who recognises 
 not the exceptions from the race, but the lowest types of it, as 
 brethren with Himself, and as the children of His Father; 
 who proves man to be a spiritual being, not by scorning his 
 animal nature and his animal wants, but by entering into them 
 — bearing them, suffering from them, and then showing how 
 all the evils which affect man as an animal haye a spiritual 
 ground, how he must become a citizen of the kingdom of hea- 
 ven, that every thing on earth may be pure and blessed to 
 him. " The Son of God was manifested that He might des- 
 troy the works of the devil ;" this is St. John's summary of the 
 
88 REASONS FOR HOLDING THEM. 
 
 whole matter. He revealed the Father, and so in human flesh 
 He destroyed the great calumny of the devil, that man has not 
 a Father in heaven, that He is not altogether good, that Jle 
 does not care for His creatures : He submits to all temptations 
 in human flesh, and so proves that man is not the s-ubject and 
 thrall of the tempter. He in human flesh delivered spirits, 
 
 lis, and bodies out of bondage, so affirming that the state 
 into which the devil would draw them is not the state which 
 is meant for them, that His own humanity is the standard of 
 that which each man bears, and is that to which man shall be 
 raised. 
 
 The evangelists say that when the Son of God was to be 
 manifested to men, there did not come a great prophet to argue 
 and prove the probability of an Incarnation ; but there came 
 a prophet preaching in the wilden and saying, " Repent, 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 11 I have said already, 
 that I belie h a call to repentance is the true way of 
 
 bringing evidence For any one of the articles of Christian theo- 
 ]<>l When the hearts of the fathers are tamed to the child- 
 
 :. when the doctor or pharisee feels himself on the level of 
 the publican and the harlot, then these articles come forth in 
 their own native and divine might; then the objections, which 
 are merely the creatures of fancy or of pride, are scattered as 
 chaff before the wind ; then those deeper objections, which 
 touch the heart and reason, are seen to affect not the princi- 
 ples themselves, but only some earthly additions to them, 
 which have weakened and subverted them. While we are 
 frivolous, exclusive, heartless, no arguments ought to convince 
 us of Christ's incarnation ; they would carry their own con- 
 demnation with them, if they did. When we are aroused to 
 think earnestly what we are, what our relation to our fellow 
 men is, what God is, — the voice which says, " The Word v 
 made flesh and dwelt among us," " The Son of God was man- 
 ifested that He might destroy the works of the devil/' will no 
 
PREACHING OF REPENTANCE. 89 
 
 more be thought of as the voice of an apostle. We shall know 
 that He is speaking to us Himself, and that He is the Christ 
 that should come into the world. 
 
 Let no Unitarian suppose that these last words are pointed 
 at him, — that I suppose he has greater need of repentance than 
 we have, because some special moral obliquity has prevented 
 him from recognizing the truth of the Incarnation. I had no 
 such meaning ; I was thinking much more of the orthodox. I 
 was considering how many causes hinder us from confessing 
 with our hearts as well as our lips, that Christ has come in the 
 flesh. The conceit of our orthodoxy is one cause. Whatever 
 sets us in any wise above our fellow-men, is an obstacle to a 
 hearty belief in the Man ; it must be taken from us before we 
 shall really bow our knees to him. I know not that if He were 
 now walking visibly among us, He might not say that many a 
 Unitarian was far nearer the kingdom of heaven than many of 
 us ; less choked with prejudice, less self-confident, more capable 
 of recognizing the great helper of the wounded man who has 
 fallen among thieves, than we priests or Levites are, because 
 more ready to go and do likewise. I cannot say that this might 
 not be so ; I often suspect that it would be so ; and therefore I 
 certainly did not intend to convey the impression that the moral 
 disease at the root of their most vehement intellectual denials, 
 is, necessarily, a malignant one. 
 
 But though I do not think that such a call as we are told 
 went forth from the lips of John the Baptist, to prepare the way 
 for Christ, is less needful for us than for them, I should be far 
 indeed from wishing to shut them out from so great a benefit. 
 We all want it, I think, for the same reason. When St. John 
 explains the object of the Baptist's mission, he does not use the 
 language of the other evangelists. He says, " He came to bear 
 witness of the LIGHT, that all men through Him might 
 believe" This is not a mere equivalent for the words, "Repent, 
 
90 THE LIGHT WITHIN. 
 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ,**' but it gives us the 
 innermost force of those words ; it takes away their vague- 
 ness ; it shows why one person, as much as another, had need 
 to hear them. " There ta a light within you, close to you. 
 Do you know it ? Are you coining to it ? Are you desirous 
 tli at it should penetrate you through and through ? Oh, turn 
 to it ! Turn from these idols that are surrounding you, — from 
 the conftised, dark world of thoughts within you ! Itwill reveal 
 yourself to you ! It will reveal the world to you !" " What 
 do you mean?" asks the well-instructed, formally, habitually 
 religious man : " my conscience, I suppose." " Call it that, or 
 what you please ; but in God's name, my friend, do not ch 
 yourself with a phrase. I mean a reality; I mean that which 
 has to do with your innermost being; I mean something which 
 does not proceed from you or belong to you; but which is 
 theirs, searching you and judging you. Nay ! stay a moment. 
 I mean that this light comes from a Person, — from the King 
 and Lord of your heart and spirit, — from the Word, — the Son 
 of God. When I say, Repent; I say, Turn and confess His 
 presence. You have always had it with you. You have been 
 unmindful of it." 
 
 Such words would startle some Unitarians, but not more than 
 they would startle those who are settled on the lees of a com- 
 fortable orthodoxy. The cries of " Mysticism," " Lore im- 
 ported from the Alexandrian fathers," " Utterly inconsistent 
 with all sound modern philosophy," " Derived from our own 
 conceits, not from the Bible," " Fenelon, Madame Guion, 
 Jacob Bohme," &c, would rise just as loudly from one as from 
 the other. The teacher, if he happens to know anything of the 
 persons he is accused of copying, may tell what he knows ; but 
 he will do better if he delivers his message simply to those who 
 have need of it. They will discover in themselves whether it 
 is a poor plagiarism ; they will know whether it fills them with 
 mystical conceits, or scatters those conceits. If he has cour- 
 
MATERIALISTS. 91 
 
 age to go on, he will find a response, not only in those who have 
 been told, from their youth upward, that the voice of con- 
 science is Christ's voice, but from* a number who are nominally 
 and in profession materialists ; who cannot conceive of any spi- 
 ritual communication whatsoever, who think that the testimo- 
 nies of conscience are the echoes of words addressed to the ear. 
 For theories signify little when the question is one of fact and 
 moral demonstration. They disappear, as they do before any 
 great and decisive experiment in physics, and adjust themselves, 
 not at once, but gradually, to the law which has been brought 
 to light. And a materialist who has been honest with himself, 
 has sought to do right, and has not used phrases which for him 
 bad no meaning, is quite as likely as another man to yield to 
 such evidence. 
 
 It is necessary for my present purpose to make this state- 
 ment ; for I cannot disguise from myself the truth that there 
 are many, not only among Unitarians, but among us, who 
 would be simply bewildered by the proposition, " Christ took 
 fleshy What Christ ? they would ask, if they were not with- 
 held by some fear. " Is not Jesus of Nazareth the Christ ?" 
 And this difficulty is not relieved, but increased, by the empha 
 sis with which the ablest, most devout, and most learned divines, 
 both here and in Germany, are dwelling on the words, " God 
 manifest in the flesh." I do not mean that these divines care 
 whether or not that precise expression occurs in the Epistle 
 to Timothy ; whether the line in the can be detected with 
 the aid of spectacles or not, they are far too manly and too 
 well grounded in their faith, to make it depend upon this or 
 any other philological crux. They take these words as express- 
 ing the very sense of the Gospel and of the New Testament. 
 I do not think they can be stronger in that persuasion than I 
 am ; but I cannot help perceiving, — and a consideration of 
 Unitarian difficulties has especially led me to this conclusion, 
 — that if, in their eagerness to set forth the manifestation, they 
 
92 st. johx's method. 
 
 take no pains to declare who is the manifester, they will leave 
 an impression on a number of minds, the very opposite to that 
 which they seek to produce. They will lead people to suppose 
 that the Image of the Holy One had no reality till it was pre- 
 sented through a human body to men, or at least, that till 
 then, this Image had no relation to the creature who is said in 
 Scripture to be formed in it. By this means the whole of the 
 Old Testament econom} T , instead of being fulfilled in the reve- 
 lation of the Son of God, becomes hopelessly divided from it. 
 But, what is worse still, by this means the heart and conscience 
 of human beings become separated from that revelation. It 
 stands outside, as if it were presented to the eye, nut to them ; 
 as if those who saw Christ in the flesh must really have known 
 liim for that reason, whereas every sentence of the Gospel.- 
 telling us that they did not. 
 
 I conceive the method of St. John is far more scientific, and 
 far more human and practical. He declares to us the 
 Word Mid, and also as with God; as Him by whom all 
 
 things were created; as Him whose Life was the Light of 
 a; whose light was shining in the darkness, and the dark- 
 SB did not take it down into itself; whose Light was wit- 
 nessed by the visible teacher, that all men might believe; 
 Who was in the world, though the world knew Him not; 
 Who came to his own house, and its inmates did not receive 
 Him; Who gave those who did receive him power to 
 become sons of God, being born not of ilesh nor of blood, nor 
 of the will of man, but of God; Who at last was made flesh 
 and dwelt among men, and in Whom the glory of the Only- 
 begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, was seen. Quite 
 aware how strange this method must seem to many of our- 
 selves, still stranger to the Unitarian, I have yet tried to follow 
 it, because it appeals, I think, both to the reason and to the 
 conscience, and because I should be very inconsistent if I sup- 
 posed that the Light which lighteth every man did not light 
 
OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNIPKESENCE. 93 
 
 the Unitarian, or that he may not come to it and discover 
 whence it flows. Nor do I think that any one of the grounds 
 upon which I have rested my defence of our creed con- 
 cerning the Incarnation, will be entirely unintelligible to him. 
 1. I have told him before, that I think he is exposed to a 
 danger, of which he least dreams, — that of honoring the Son, 
 not as he honors the Father, but above Him. I would now 
 ask him seriously to consider, whether the best part of the 
 honor he ever has paid to the Father, that which has been 
 most real and akin to his heart, has not been derived from the 
 image which was presented to him in Christ ? He may have 
 used some large phrases about Omnipotence, or Omnipresence. 
 I do not say that they conveyed no meaning to his mind. But 
 was it such a meaning, — so deep, so penetrating, so satisfactory 
 to his moral instincts, — as that which was brought to him by 
 the story of a person actually, thoroughly, inwardly and out- 
 wardly, righteous ? If the quality of mere power became 
 more sacred and venerable in his mind than that of righteous- 
 ness, or mercy, or truth, will he not have suspected himself? 
 will he not have said, " I am yielding to a disease, I am bor- 
 rowing my notions from the phantoms of greatness and glory, 
 which the world worships ; I am forgetting the moral standard 
 which I profess to set up ?" And if, (as I think,) power is 
 intended to command a reverence, and must always command 
 it, though in subordination to that which determines its ends, 
 have not the instances of calm power, recorded in the Gospel, 
 — of Christ ruling the waves, for instance, or feeding the mul- 
 titude, — appealed more directly to the faculty which receives 
 that impression, and bows to it, than any such mere abstraction 
 as this of Omnipotence ? These are hints which I should like 
 any Unitarian who wishes to give a fair account to himself of 
 his own emotions and convictions, steadily to follow out, not 
 minding whither they lead him. They may not lead him at 
 once, or for a long time, to accept our language, " of one sub- 
 
94 CHRIST S TRUTH AND POWER. 
 
 stance with the Father," he may make a great many attempts 
 to avoid it, by speaking of a Unity of purpose or of will. Bat 
 if he once comes to understand himself about Unity of pur 
 pose and will, and carefully to consider what that involves, I 
 have no fear but that he will by degrees understand thoroughly 
 what the Church intends by Unity of substance. 
 
 2. Nor do I fear that the younger Unitarian, especially, will 
 discard what I have said of Christ entering into our tempta- 
 tions, as worthless and unmeaning. AY hat I do fear for him, 
 as I have told him already, is, that he may adopt a kind of 
 sentimental talk, very prevalent in our day, about struggles and 
 conflicts of the spirit, — as if these were striking phenomena to 
 observe in men of other ages who are entitled to our patronage, 
 and in a qualified sense to our admiration, for having pas* 
 through tempests, which we can contemplate and criticise from 
 a calm and secure height. I know this temptation; I do not 
 warn them of it as if /were on a calm height out of its reach. 
 It assaults us all continually ; I cannot tell how often I may 
 have yielded to it while writing this book. But I can testify 
 that the only escape I have ever found from it, is in the belief 
 that a real and " strong" Son of God encountered the enemy 
 of me, and of all the men who are living now, or ever have 
 lived. While I hold fast that confidence, I cannot suppose that 
 the fight which our fathers had to fight is a different one from 
 ours. I cannot fancy that I have acquired any position or 
 any skill, which gives me the slightest advantage over them, 
 or on the other hand, that our circumstances are the least to 
 be deplored ; that the former days were better than these. I 
 must believe that the struggle becomes intenser as it approaches 
 nearer to the final decision, but the thought of that decision, 
 and that it will be for, not against, the race whose nature 
 Christ took, ought to make us more trusting, not more self- 
 confident, than those were who have finished their course. 
 
CALVINISTS AND UNITARIANS. 95 
 
 3. If I dared to indulge in a mere argumentum ad hominem, 
 I might hope to make much of my third proposition in dis- 
 coursing with a Unitarian. He is pledged to hostility against 
 the Calvinistical theory of election ; he has often fraternised 
 with Churchmen on thr.t ground. But I think that he and the 
 Arminians of my own communion, hav« been equally to blame, 
 for the course which they have taken in this controversy. 
 They have complained of the Calvinist partly for his exclu- 
 sions, partly for his zeal in proclaiming the will of God as the 
 sole cause of man's redemption and salvation. Because I dis- 
 like and repudiate his exclusions, I would follow him with all 
 my heart and soul in that proclamation. If man is held to 
 choose God, and not God to choose man, I see no deliverance 
 from the darkest views of His character and of our destiny. 
 Some of the Unitarians appear to be making this discovery ; 
 at least I judge so, from a very impressive sermon by Mr. Mar- 
 tineau, on the words : " Ye have not chosen me, but I have cho- 
 sen you?' 1 
 
 Before, then, we enter into any alliance, offensive or defen- 
 sive, against Calvinism, it must be clearly understood that we 
 do not mean this side of Calvinism ; for that is as much pre- 
 sumed in the doctrine that God redeems mankind, as in the 
 doctrine that He redeems certain elect souls out of mankind. 
 Every redeemed person must, according to me as much as 
 according to the Calvinist, refer every good that is in him, that 
 he does, that befals him, to the Father of Lights, — must con- 
 sider his will as freed by Him from a bondage, and as freed, 
 that it may become truly a servant. Nay, so strongly do I 
 feel this, that I see no refuge from the exclusiveness of some 
 of those who consider themselves very moderate Calvinists, 
 especially from those favorite divisions of theirs which seem 
 to make the " believer" something different from a man, and 
 so to take from him the very truth which he has to believe, — 
 but by recalling the strong and energetic statements of the ear- 
 
96 EXCLUSIVENESS OF VARIOUS KINDS. 
 
 lier Calvinists, respecting the one root and origin of faith, as 
 well as of right acts. But this is not all. I have no right 
 to denounce the exclusiveness of the Calvinists, unless I am 
 willing to renounce all that may cleave to myself. The Unita- 
 rian may fairly say to me, ''Give up your Anglican exclusive- 
 ness if you wish me to think you sincere in your complaints of 
 them." And I, if I am striving to do so, may turn upon him and 
 say, " Give up your Gnostical exclusiveness, your Emersonian 
 exclusiveness,your notions of a high intellectual election, if you 
 wish me to think you sincere in your complaints of Calvinists or 
 of Anglicans." I do not believe that we shall any of us comply 
 with these demands, each of which is perfectly reasonable and 
 righteous, unless we heartily and unfeignedly acknowledge that 
 Christ, the Son of God, has taken the nature of every man. 
 AVith that faith, when it has possessed our whole being, exclu- 
 siveness of any kind cannot dwell. 
 
 To conclude. I should be content to put the whole cause 
 on this issue. Let it be considered earnestly what has made 
 the difference between the belief concerning God and con- 
 cerning Man, which has prevailed in Christendom, and that 
 which exists in any part of heathendom. To understand the 
 difference, study as carefully the resemblances — all the dark 
 and horrible thoughts respecting our Father in heaven, and 
 our fellow- creatures on earth, which exist among us, and which 
 we have adopted from Heathenism. Let all allowance you 
 please be made for varieties of races, and for progress of civ- 
 ilization, on condition that you are not satisfied with these for- 
 mulas, but are willing to regard them as indications of facts, 
 which need to be explained. And then let it be seen whether 
 the belief that the Jesus Christ set forth in the Gospels is the 
 express Image of God, and the image after which man is 
 formed, has not been the secret of all that is confessedly high, 
 pure, moral in our convictions ; the departure from that 
 belief, and the attempt to deduce the nature of God from some 
 
THE TEST. 
 
 97 
 
 philosophical generalization, or from some heroical man, or 
 from a number of men, or from ourselves, has not been at the 
 root of all that is cruel in our doctrine, as well as of that 
 which is most feeble and base in our practice. 
 
ESSAY VII. 
 
 CN THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 It will be evident, I hope, by this time, on what grounds I 
 object to the so-called Theology of Consciousness. Not, surely, 
 because I am not anxious to observe all the experiences and 
 consciousnesses which the history of the world bears witness of. 
 Not because I do not desire that all these should be under- 
 stood, as they can only be understood, through the conscience 
 of each man. Not that I do not ask of theology that it should 
 explain these consciousnesses, and clear and satisfy that indi- 
 vidual conscience. 
 
 But I find that a theology which is based upon conscious- 
 ness, which is derived out of it, never can fulfil these condi- 
 tions. In former Essays, I have tried to indicate the feelings 
 and demands of a man who has been awakened to know sin 
 in himself. He asks for deliverance from a plague which seems 
 part of his own existence. He asks that some power, which is 
 crushing him and vanquishing him, and making free thought and 
 action impossible, may be put down. He is in despair, because 
 he is sure that he is at war, not merely with a Sovereign Will, 
 but w T ith a perfectly good will. He is convinced that, in some way 
 
 (98) 
 
CONSCIOUSNESSES. 99 
 
 or other, he has a righteous cause, though he is so deeply and 
 inwardly evil. He thinks a righteous Being must be on his 
 side, though he has grieved Him, and been unrighteous. He 
 thinks he has an Advocate, and that the mind of this Advo- 
 cate cannot be opposed to the mind of the Lord of all, the 
 Creator of the universe, but must be the counterpart of 
 it. He thinks that the true Son of God must be his Redeemer. 
 He thinks He must stand at some day on the earth, to assert 
 His Father's righteous dominion over it, and redeem it from 
 its enemies. 
 
 Here are strange, conflicting " consciousnesses," all of which 
 are actually found in human beings, all of which must be 
 heeded, which will make themselves manifest in strange ways, 
 if they are not. The consciousness of sin will lead to a con- 
 sciousness of consequences flowing from sin, stretching into the 
 furthest future. And when this consciousness tries to con- 
 struct a theology for itself, those consequences, apprehensible, 
 tangible, material, will determine the character of the theology. 
 How can I escape from these? will be the question. Who 
 shall sever the consequences from the cause ? The conscious- 
 ness that the Creator has linked the one to the other, suggests 
 the thought that pain, suffering, misery, are especially His 
 work, the signs which denote His feelings towards His crea- 
 tures. The consciousness of a tyrant and oppressor leads to 
 the supposition that He is that tyrant and oppressor. The 
 consciousness of an Advocate leads to the supposition that 
 He may be the instrument of delivering us out of the hand of 
 the Creator, of saving us from the punishment which the Cre- 
 ator has appointed for transgression. The consciousness 
 that we share our sin with our fellow creatures, and that we 
 are obnoxious to a punishment which belongs equally to 
 them, leads to the reflection, " How can we put ourselves 
 into a different position from theirs ? how can we escape 
 from the calamities with which God has threatened them ?" 
 
100 THE SIN OF PRIESTS. 
 
 What I wish the reader to observe is, that in each of these 
 cases a notion or maxim respecting theology is likely to be ge- 
 neralised from the co?iscious?iess, which will oppose and outrage 
 the conscience. Building on his own ground, assuming all his 
 own vague and contradictory impressions as data, the man of 
 necessity works out a system on which he afterwards gazes 
 with horror, from which he longs to break loose, which he 
 charges priests and doctors with having created. No doubt 
 they have contributed their wicked aid to the fabric ; their guilt 
 is heavier than that of the poor bewildered creatures' who 
 have consulted them. But their guilt has consisted in the wil- 
 lingness which they have shown to create a religion out of con- 
 sciousnesses ; to endorse all the conceptions and conclusions 
 about God which the diseased heart fashions for itself, 
 while they have a witness within them of truths which contra- 
 dict these conceptions and conclusions; to supply intellectual 
 links which may fasten together what would be loose, incoherent 
 fragmentary fancies ; to devise rules, and ethical practices, 
 which may meet the morbid and selfish cravings of the heart, 
 and be justified by the theory the understanding has moulded 
 from them ; finally, to stamp with the name, dignity, and 
 sacredness of faith, that which is grounded, in great part, upon 
 fear and distrust. 
 
 I believe that priests in all lands have been chargeable with 
 this great crime of accommodating themselves to the carnal 
 notions and tendencies of those whom they might have raised 
 and educated. For I believe they have had an intuition of a 
 higher truth, which it was their calling to proclaim, and which 
 alone gave substance to the opinions with which they and their 
 disciples disfigured it. I dare not deny that this crime has 
 been greatest in the priests of Christendom, precisely because 
 I hold that they have a theology revealed from Heaven, which 
 perfectly satisfies the demands of the human heart ; Which 
 explains to men the contradictions in their own impressions 
 
THE POPULAR DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE. 101 
 
 and experiences ; which presents such a God as the conscience 
 witnesses there must be and is, not such a one as the under- 
 standing tries to shape out from its own reflections on the tes- 
 timony of the conscience ; which shows what the relation be- 
 tween Him and men is, what the cause of the separation be- 
 tween Him and men is, what He has done to establish the 
 relation, to destroy the separation. 
 
 I have now reached the subject which is the test of all that 
 I have been saying hitherto. Those who cry for a theology 
 based upon consciousness, which shall supersede the theology 
 of Christendom, say that the doctrines respecting sacrifice 
 and atonement which prevail in Christendom, among Protes- 
 tants as well as Eomanists, prove more clearly than anything 
 else what need there is of the reform which they seek. " These 
 doctrines," they say, " darken the sense of right and wrong in 
 the minds of Christians; bewilder their understandings; sanction 
 the most false conceptions concerning sin, the most cruel con- 
 ceptions concerning God. The conscience of human beings is 
 in revolt against them. Civil authority owns that it can de- 
 fend them no longer. Ecclesiastical authority tries to defend 
 them. They have a certain public opinion on their side ; — that 
 which has resisted in every age every great moral improve- 
 ment, that which has sustained every false religion. They de- 
 rive a support from those who half believe them, who dare not 
 say how much of them they do not believe. But they are 
 doomed : texts of Scripture will not preserve from burial that 
 which is already dead. No appeal to the verdict of centuries 
 will galvanise doctrines which do not represent our convictions. 
 We must have a theology which embodies them, or none." 
 
 On tli is point I join issue with them. I say that they 
 are right in imputing to Romanists and Protestants a set of 
 notions, — some of them common to both, some peculiar to each, 
 — which deserve the epithets they bestow on it ; which out- 
 rage the conscience, which misrepresent the character of God, 
 
102 ORDINARY HISTORY OF ROMANISM. 
 
 which generate a fearful amount of insincere belief, of positive 
 infidelity, — also, I think of immorality. I see, with them, that 
 these notions are becoming more and more intolerable to 
 thoughtful and earnest men ; that those who are neither, often 
 maintain them merely because they do not care to look at them, 
 or to question themselves about them. I cannot conceal from 
 myself that our want of courage in saying whether we regard 
 these as parts of our creed, or not, is leading thousands to iden- 
 tify them with it, and to reject it as well as them. But I main- 
 tain that these notions are not parts of God's Revelation, or of 
 the old Creeds, but belong to that Theology of Consciousness 
 which modern enlightenment would substitute for the Theolo- 
 
 of the Bible and of the Church ; that their rise can be dis- 
 tinctly and historically traced to this source; that the protest 
 on the part of the conscience against them in other days, has 
 
 n a confes>ion of its own inability to construct a Theodi- 
 
 i, a claim that God should remove its confusions by reveal- 
 ing Himself; that the protest of the conscience against them 
 in our day is of the same kind, and must have the same issue, 
 if it is not unnaturally silenced; that Christian theolo: 
 expressed in the language of the Bible and of the Creeds, con- 
 strued most simply, is a deliverance from these oppressive 
 notions, and is the only one which has ever yet been or ever 
 will be found. 
 
 1. The account which I have given of the way in which 
 different consciousnesses, beginning with the consciousness of 
 sin, have worked themselves out into a scheme, is precisely 
 that which has been given over and over again by liberal his- 
 torians who have wished to describe the growth of the Romish 
 
 tern. " Men," they have said, " who were stung with the 
 recollection of evil acts, thought they might do something to 
 win the favor or avert the wrath of the Divine Being. They 
 must make sacrifices, the greatest they could think of, or which 
 any could suggest to them, that their sins might be forgiven. 
 
NECESSARY LIMITATIONS OF IT. 103 
 
 What sacrifices these should be, they could very imperfectly 
 guess ; they must ask wiser people to tell them. They found 
 an organized hierarchy established for the very purpose of ex- 
 plaining the relations between the visible and the invisible 
 world, and of maintaining the intercourse between them. 
 Those who composed it ought to know what they should do. 
 And these devised indulgences to soothe the pains of the dis- 
 eased patients, penances that irritated them. At first, the 
 suggestion might be merely benevolent; even suitable to the 
 case, grounded on a knowledge of the symptoms. Then came 
 in the love of power, with the discovery how much of that, 
 (which presented itself to the vulgar priest in the form of ma- 
 terial riches,) might be obtained by catering to the cravings of 
 a morbid appetite. If the regular practitioner did not meet 
 them, popular confessors appearing in new orders supplied the 
 defects of the original svstem. But neither one nor the other 
 were sufficient. The poor offender felt, all confused as he 
 w T as, that his sacrifices could never of themselves move the 
 mind of God. He must ask the aid of those who had pre- 
 vailed in the fight, in which he seemed likely to be worsted. 
 Saints must be invoked, who would themselves invoke the 
 Highest of all, to be merciful. A number of accidents of time, 
 place, occupation, education, would dictate which should be 
 besought by any particular person. The Virgin Mother 
 would be a more general pleader, especially for the female 
 suppliants. Those who habitually sought her intercession 
 with the Divine Son, might hope that His infinite sacrifice 
 would remove the sins which they had contracted, after the 
 great original sin had been purged away in baptism." 
 
 Something like this is the natural history of Romanism, 
 past and present, which we find in books not pretending to be 
 specially theological, but trying to look at the subject fairly, 
 from an ordinary human point of view. To make the state- 
 ment quite fair, I suppose most persons would admit, — I, at 
 
104 THE EVIL HOW DETECTED. 
 
 least, as a very vehement Protestant, should, — that there is an 
 immense amount of moral and spiritual influences acting- upon 
 those who are tied and bound in this system, which does not 
 proceed from it, and is not expressed by it. Romanists will 
 be found in no ambiguous phrases acknowledging the love of 
 God and His free grace as the only source of good human 
 acts, submission to His will as the only acceptable sacrifice. 
 They will make these confessions, not as if they were conced- 
 ing something to us, blit as the proper expression of their own 
 faith, as implied in the very nature of a Catholic church ; they 
 will prove the sincerity of them by their lives. All such facts 
 are to be admitted, not reluctantly, not as if it was a shock to 
 our belief that we were obliged to make them, but with the 
 most unspeakable delight; as well for the sake of those to 
 whom they apply, as because they prove how utterly the no- 
 tions which oppose these confessions are at war with the deep- 
 est and truest convictions of men, how unnatural it is to asso- 
 ciate them with any faith. Multiply proofs of this kind a 
 thousandfold, you increase the evidence that it is a duty to 
 labor continually that a cancer may be extirpated, which is 
 eating out the heart of Christendom, the poisonous quality 
 and deadly effects of which our most vehement Protestant de- 
 claimers do not exaggerate, but underrate. 
 
 2. Nor can I discover that those declaimers are the least 
 mistaken in the explanation which they commonly give of the 
 means whereby this mischief was detected, and by which 
 some were enabled to escape it. They 6ay that when Luther 
 found out that he was a sinner, when he knew that fact in the 
 length and breadth of it, — not by the hearing of the car, but 
 by his own tremendous experience, — he could no longer be 
 content with any of the priestly inventions for putting away 
 sin ; that he then knew that he could only be delivered from 
 it if God delivered him; that he demanded to know whether 
 He had proclaimed forgiveness of sin ; whether there w r as any 
 
STORY OF LUTHER. 105 
 
 sacrifice which He had appointed and accepted ? They say 
 that Luther found the answers to these questions in the Bible 
 — that he was content when he was told, on its authority, that 
 the Son of G-od had taken away sin ; that this might be re- 
 ceived and preached to ail men as His Gospel. The person 
 who differs most with Luther, must accept this as a statement 
 of notorious facts; it is as much acknowledged by Michelet 
 as by Marheineke, or Merle d'Aubigne. I accept it also as 
 being entirely in accordance with internal evidence — with the 
 law which I am endeavoring to establish. Luther's conscience 
 did not make a system. It protested against one which had 
 been made in compliance with apparent necessities of the con- 
 science. It said that the real necessity of the conscience was, 
 that God should speak to it, declare Himself to it, — should 
 proclaim Himself as its reconciler, should show how and in 
 whom He had accomplished that work on its behalf. 
 
 3. But I admitted that there were grave and earnest pro- 
 tests against much of what is called oar doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment. u You hold," it is said, a that God had condemned all 
 His creatures to perish, because they had broken His law ; 
 that His justice could not be satisfied without an infinite pun- 
 ishment; that that infinite punishment would have visited all 
 men, if Christ in His mercy to men had not interposed and 
 offered Himself as the substitute for them; that by enduring 
 an inconceivable amount of anguish He reconciled the Father, 
 and made it possible for Him to forgive those who would be- 
 lieve. This whole statement," the objector continues, " is based 
 on a certain notion of justice. It professes to explain, on cer- 
 tain principles of justice, what God ought to have done, and 
 what He actually has done. And this notion of justice out- 
 rages the conscience to which you seem to offer your explana- 
 tion. You often feel that it does. You admit that it is not 
 the kind of justice which would be expected of men. And 
 then you turn round and ask us what we can know of God's 
 justice ; how we can tell that it is of the same kind with ours. 
 5* 
 
106 COMPLAINTS OF THE PROTESTANT DOCTRINE. 
 
 After arguing with us, to show the necessity of a certain 
 course, you say that the argument is good for nothing ; we 
 are not capable of taking it in ! Or else you say that the car- 
 nal mind cannot understand spiritual ideas. We can only 
 answer, We prefer our carnal notion of justice to your spirit- 
 ual one. We cau forgive a fellow-creature a wrong done to 
 us, without exacting an equivalent for it ; we blame ourselves 
 if we do not ; we think we are offending against Christ's com- 
 mand, who said, ' Be ye merciful as your Father in J leaven 
 is merciful,' if we do not. We do not feel that punishment is 
 a r-atisfaction to our minds : we are ashamed of ourselves when 
 we consider it is. We may suffer a criminal to be punished, 
 but it is that we may do him good, or assert a principle. And 
 if that is our object, we do not suffer an innocent person to 
 prevent the guilty from enduring the consequences of his guilt 
 by taking them upon himself. Are these maxims moral, or 
 are the opposing maxims moral ? If they are moral, should 
 we, because God is much more righteous than we can imagine 
 <>r understand, suppose that His acts are at variance with 
 them ? Should we attribute to Him what would be unright- 
 eousness in us V 1 
 
 These questions I ked on all sides of us. Clergymen are 
 
 exceedingly anxious to stifle them. " We know," they say, 
 11 by experience whither such doubts are leading. The objec- 
 tor begins with disputing some views of the Atonement, which 
 may perhaps be extreme. 11< < on to deny the doctrine 
 
 itself — to say that it has no place in the scheme of Christian- 
 ity. He knows, however, that his fathers held it to be a vital 
 doctrine. He suspects that it is in the Bible. The end is — 
 that he denies the Bible itself." Such a conclusion may well 
 startle a good man. He feels that principles w T hich his expe- 
 rience has proved to be infinitely precious are in hazard. He 
 has never visited the dying bed of a humble penitent who did 
 not cling to the cross of Christ as her dearest hope, who did 
 
THE PENITENT. 107 
 
 not feel that without His sacrifice and death she could have no 
 peace. He asks whether he is to rob the poor and meek of 
 these jewels because certain proud men do not like the casket 
 which contains them, because they cannot bring the teachings 
 of the Bible to the level of their understandings 1 
 
 Debates are going on in every corner of our land suggested 
 by these difficulties. What misery, what alienation of heart 
 arises from them no one can tell ! On the one side, the conse- 
 quence of the strife is an ever increasing hardness and dogma- 
 tism blighting all the fruits of the Spirit; on the other, a bar- 
 ren hopeless infidelity. It must then be the most serious of all 
 duties to labor so far as in us lies that the sound and deep 
 convictions which evidently are in the heart of the divine and 
 the moralist may not become utterly destroyed through their 
 separation, that each should confess the error which was min- 
 gled with that truth in his mind, and is threatening to make 
 it inoperative. 
 
 The statement of the clergyman is certainly not exaggerated 
 — that the best, the humblest, truest hearts are those which 
 rest with most childlike faith upon the belief that " God has 
 reconciled the world unto Himself, not imputing their tres- 
 passes unto them ;" that the death of Christ is the death of 
 that " Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." 
 To tell such persons that no atonement has been made between 
 man and God, would be to tell them that the future is onlv a 
 perpetual lengthening out of the anguish of conscience which 
 is and must be bitterer to them than all other anguish ; that 
 there is an impassable gulf between them and all truth and 
 righteousness. What is it to assure them that transgressions 
 are forgiven by a bare act of amnesty, unless the sin of the 
 heart and will, the separation from God, which is the root 
 of these transgressions, is at an end ? How can you ever 
 persuade them that it is at an end unless God Himself has re- 
 moved it ? How can God have removed a separation unless 
 
108 THE SIMPLE GOSPEL. 
 
 there is some One in whom we are bound more closely to Him 
 than our evils have put us asunder? 
 
 The broad simple Gospel, that God has set forth His Son as 
 the propitiation lor sin, that He has offered Himself for the 
 sins of the world, meets all the desires of these heart-stricken 
 sinners. It declares to them the fulness of God's love, & 
 forth the Mediator in whom they are at one with the Father. 
 It brings divine Love and human Buffering into direct and ac- 
 tual union. It shows Him who is one with God and one with 
 man, perfectly giving up that self-will which had been the 
 cause of all men's crimes and all their misery. Here is indeed 
 a brazen serpent to which one dying from the bite of the old 
 serpent can look and be healed. The more that brazen ser- 
 pent is lifted up, the more may we look for health and renova- 
 tion to the whole of humanity, and to every one of its palsied 
 and withered limbs. 
 
 I do not deny, that besides these leading convictions which 
 take possession of the heart as it contemplates the Cross of 
 Christ, there are others apparently of a different kind. Since 
 nowdiere is the contrast between infinite Love and infinite Evil 
 brought before us as it is there, we have the fullest right to 
 affirm that the Cross exhibits the wrath of God against sin, 
 and the endurance of that wrath by the \vell-belo\ed Son. For 
 wrath against that which is unlovely, is not the counteracting 
 force to love, but the attribute of it. Without it, love would 
 be a name, and not a reality. And the endurance of that 
 wrath or punishment by Christ came from His acknowledging 
 that it proceeded from love, and His willingness that it should 
 not be quenched till it had effected its full loving purpose. 
 The endurance of that wrath was the proof that he bore in the 
 truest and strictest sense the sins of the world, feeling them 
 with that anguish with which only a perfectly pure and holy 
 Being, who is also a perfectly sympathising and gracious Be- 
 ing, can feel the sin of others. Whatever diminished his pari- 
 
WRATH AGAINST SIN. 109 
 
 ty, must have diminished his .sympathy. Complete suffering 
 with sin and for sin is only possible in one who is completely 
 free from it. 
 
 But is the clergyman who preaches this gospel, and sees the 
 effect of it upon some of his flock, therefore bound to adopt 
 those conclusions respecting the reasons of Christ's death, 
 which have so shocked the conscience of the sceptic whom he 
 is condemning ? Properly speaking, his business is simply to 
 proclaim the good news of reconciliation. Reasons may occur 
 to him besides those which the Bible gives us. Some may be 
 plausible, some may be tolerable. But they do not belong to 
 the essence of his commission. Woe be to him, if he mistakes 
 the best of them for that which it tries to account for. Since, 
 however, it is inevitable that his understanding and imagina- 
 tion will be busy with this and every other subject divine or 
 human that he handles, it is very necessary that he should per- 
 ceive what conclusions of theirs may contradict the truth 
 which God has committed to him. For "this purpose, I would 
 beseech him to observe carefully which portions of his state- 
 ments come home to the hearts of the really humble and con- 
 trite — which afford delight and satisfaction to the conceited, 
 self-righteous, self-exalting men and women of his flock, who 
 in ease and health think that they are safe, because they are 
 condemning others, who in sickness and on a death-bed dis- 
 cover that in seeming to believe everything, they have actually 
 believed nothing. This comparison, if it is faithfully pursued, 
 and never separated from self-examination, will lead him, I be- 
 lieve, to precisely the same result at which he would arrive by 
 the other method of considering what is demanded by the 
 principles which Protestants and Pomanists recognise in com- 
 mon. On this last subject, I wish to speak a little more at 
 large. I wish to show that the orthodox faith as it is ex- 
 pressed in the Bible and the Creeds, absolutely prevents us 
 from acquiescing in some of those explanations of the Atone 
 
110 THE WILL OF GOD. 
 
 ment, which both in popular and scholastic teachings have 
 been identified with it. 
 
 1. It is involved in the very method of theology, as the 
 Bible and the creeds set it forth to us, that the A V i 1 1 of God 
 should be asserted as the ground of all that is right, true, just, 
 gracious. There is no acknowledged difference of opinion on 
 this point. It would be accounted heresy in all orthodox 
 schools to deny that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour 
 of men ; that the Father set forth the Son to be the propitia- 
 tion for our 6ins ; that Christ, by his life, proved that God is 
 light, and that in Him is no darkness at all. These declara- 
 tions of St. John are admitted as fundamental truths, to which 
 all others must do homage, which no other passages can con- 
 tradict. All I ask is, that we may hold fast this profession 
 without wavering ; that no feeble compromiser may be suf- 
 fered to come in and say, " All this is true in a sense," with- 
 out telling us in what sense ; and if it is such a sense as clear- 
 ly is not meant to govern all our thoughts, determinations, 
 conclusions, he may be dismissed as one who has no business 
 to call himself an orthodox man. 
 
 2. It is admitted in all schools, Romanist and Protestant, 
 which do not dissent from the Creed, that Christ the Son of 
 God was in heaven and earth, one with the Father, one in 
 will, purpose, substance; and that on earth His whole life was 
 nothing else than an exhibition of this Will, an entire submis- 
 sion to it. There is no dispute among orthodox people about 
 this point, more than about the othi And there is no 
 
 dispute as to the principle being a fundamental one, that 
 on which the very nature of Christ's sacrifice must depend, as 
 the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that it does. 
 What we have a right to insist on is, that no notion or theory 
 shall be allowed to interfere with this fundamental maxim. If 
 we w T ould adhere to the faith once delivered to the Saints, we 
 
reasons of Christ's deA-tit. Ill 
 
 must not dare to speak of Christ as changing that Will which 
 He took flesh and died to fulfil. 
 
 3. It is confessed by all orthodox schools, that Christ was 
 actually the Lord of men," the King of their spirits, the Source 
 of all the light which ever visited them, the Person for whom 
 all nations longed as their Head and Deliverer, the root of 
 righteousness in each man. The Bible speaks of His being 
 revealed in this character ; of the mystery which had been 
 hid from ages and generations being made known by His In- 
 carnation. If we speak of Christ as taking upon Himself the 
 sins of men by some artificial substitution, we deny that He i3 
 their actual Eepresentative. 
 
 4. The Scripture says, Because the children were " partak- 
 ers of flesh and blood He also Himself took part of the same.'' 
 He became subject to death, " that He might destroy Him 
 who had the power of death, that is, the Devil." Here are 
 reasons assigned for the Incarnation and the death of Christ. 
 He shared the sufferings of those whose head He is. He over- 
 came death, their common enemy, by submitting to it. He 
 delivered them from the power of the Devil. All orthodox 
 schools, in formal language, — tens of thousands of suffering 
 people, in ordinary human language, — have confessed the 
 force of the words. Instead of seeking to put Christ at a dis- 
 tance from themselves, by tasking their fancy to conceive of 
 sufferings w r hich, at the same moment are pronounced incon- 
 ceivable, they have claimed Him as entering into their actual 
 miseries, as bearing their griefs. They have believed that He 
 endured death, because it was theirs, and rose to set them 
 free from it, because it was an evil accident of their condition 
 — an effect of disorder, not of God's original order. They 
 have believed that He rescued them out of the power of an 
 enemy, by yielding to his power, not that He rescued them | 
 out of the hand of God by paying a penalty to Him. Any 
 notion whatever which interferes with this faith ; any ex- 
 
112 REMOVAL OF SIX, SATISFACTION. 
 
 planation of Christ's sufferings which is put in the place of 
 the Apostle's explanation, or does not strictly harmonize 
 with it ; far more any that contradicts it, and leaves us open 
 to the awful danger of confounding the Evil Spirit with God, 
 — we have a right to repudiate as unorthodox, unscriptural, 
 and audacious. 
 
 5. The Scripture says, " The Lamb of God taketh aivay the 
 >S/'/i of the icorld." All orthodox teachers repeat the lesson. 
 They say Christ came to deliver sinners from sin. This is 
 what the sinner asks for. Have we a right to call ourselves 
 spiritual or orthodox, if we change the words, and put " penalty 
 of sin" for " sin ;" if we suppose that Christ destroyed the con- 
 nexion between sin and death, — the one being the necessary 
 wages of the other, — for the sake of benefiting any individual 
 man whatever? If He had, would He have magnified the 
 Law and made it honorable? Would He not have destroyed 
 that which I If came to fulfil? Those who say the law must 
 
 •cute itself, must have its penalty, should remember their 
 own words. How does it execui If if a person, against 
 
 whom it is not directed, interposes to bear its punishment? 
 
 G. The voice at Christ's baptism said, " This is my beloved 
 Son, in whom I am well pleased." Christ said, " Therefore doth 
 my Father love me, because I lay down my life for the sheep." 
 Ail orthodox schools have said, that a perfectly holy and loving 
 Being can be satisfied only with a holiness and love correspond- 
 ing to his own ; that Christ satisfied the Father by presenting 
 the image of His own holiness and love, that in his sacrifice 
 and death, all that holiness and love came forth completely. 
 There is no dissent upon this point, among those who adhere 
 to the Creed. But it cannot be an accidental point; it must 
 belong to the root and essence of divinity. How, then, can 
 we tolerate for an instant that notion of God which would re- 
 present Him as satisfied by the punishment of sin, not by the 
 purity and graciousness of the Son 1 
 
> SUMMARY. 113 
 
 \ 7. Supposing all these principles gathered together; sup- 
 posing the Father's will to be a will to all good; — supposing 
 the Son of God, being one with Him, and Lord of man, to 
 obey and fulfil in our flesh that will by entering into the lowest 
 condition into which men had fallen through their sin ; — sup- 
 posing this Man to be, for this reason, an object of continual 
 complacency to His Father, and that complacency to be fully 
 drawn out by the Death of the Cross ; supposing His Death 
 to be a Sacrifice, the only complete sacrifice ever offered, the 
 entire surrender of the whole spirit and body to God ; is 
 not this, in the highest sense, Atonement ? Is not the true, 
 sinless root of Humanity revealed ; is not God in Him recon- 
 ciled to man ? Is not the Cross the meeting point between 
 man and man, between man and God ? Is not this meeting 
 point what men, in all times and places, have been seeking for ? 
 Did any find it till God declared it ? And are not we bring- 
 ing our understandings to the foot of this Cross, when we 
 solemnly abjure all schemes and statements, however sanction- 
 ed by the arguments of divines, however plausible as imple- 
 ments of declamation, which prevent us from believing and 
 proclaiming that in it all the wisdom and truth and glory of 
 God were manifested to the creature ; that in it man is pre- 
 sented as a holy and acceptable sacrifice to the Creator ? 
 
 " I am not nearer, then, to Unitarianism, because I have 
 joined them in repudiating certain opinions which they, and 
 many of us, have supposed inseparable from the doctrine of 
 the Atonement ?" Not nearer to them, certainly in any one 
 of their negative conclusions. On the contrary, I have used 
 the articles in the Creed which they most dissent from, as my 
 weapons against the representations of God, which we agree 
 in thinking horrible. I have appealed to the Creed, as my protec- 
 tion from dogmas which I have attributed to the active work- 
 ings of the consciousness and the intellect ; one or other of 
 
114 NO APPROACH TO UNITAPJANISM. 
 
 which they are generally inclined to deify. Nor can I help fur- 
 ther offending them by saying, that the tenacity with which my 
 orthodox brethrenhave maintained notions at variance, as I think, 
 with their inmost faith, has been owing in great measure to 
 their Unitarian opponents. They have heard the faith and the 
 opinions assailed together; they have supposed that there 
 must be an intimate connexion between them ; they have 
 feared to ask whether there is or not. Men of the Evangelical 
 
 uol, who did not like Archbishop Magee's book, because 
 they found nothing in it which responded to the witness of 
 their hearts, yet accepted it on the poor calculation that it 
 was a learned book, and might defend what they were pleased 
 to call the outworks of the faith. Men of the Patristic school, 
 who knew how little it accorded with the divinity they most 
 admired, yet argued, economically, that it might serve the 
 purposes of such an age as ours is, and might confute ob- 
 jectors who did not deserve to be acquainted with any higher 
 truth. I acknowledge the dishonesty and faithU s of both 
 
 decisions; I feel most deeply the mischiefs which have followed 
 from both ; but I see how much there was to make them 
 plausible. I believe it is only a peculiar discipline and some 
 very painful experience, which has led me to abandon them, 
 and to say boldly, " I must give up Archbishop Magee, for I 
 am determined to keep that which makes the Atonement pre- 
 cious to my heart and conscience; to keep the theology of the 
 Creeds and of the Bible. 
 
 But though I should be dishonest if I pretended that I was 
 approximating a step nearer to TJnitarianism, because these 
 seemingly impassable barriers are removed, I do think that they 
 have separated us from the hearts and reasons of Unitarians 
 most unnecessarily and mischievously. When the Atonement is 
 defended as an opinion of ours which they are setting at nought, 
 as a conception respecting the method of God's government, and 
 the reasons of His conduct, which they are disputing, the in- 
 
EFFECT OF BELIEVING THE ATONEMENT. 115 
 
 dignation against them becomes greater, because the question 
 at issue becomes more involved with our personal credit, inge- 
 nuity, security. We are on one side, they are on the other ; 
 the assurance that the divine Atonement is infinitely wonder- 
 ful, mixes with a consciousness that we are making it petty by 
 our mode of fighting for it. We revenge ourselves for the 
 painful contradiction by increased violence, hoping so to con- 
 vince ourselves that we are in earnest. When the Atonement 
 is contemplated as the ground of a Gospel to men, — when I 
 dare to say, God so loved the world as to give His only-begot- 
 ten Son for it, — how closely does that belief bind me to Unita- 
 rians, of every class and hue ! They may build their theology 
 upon certain deductions of the intellect, or upon certain indi- 
 vidual consciousnesses ; mine rests on the Eternal Love, which 
 overlooks all distinctions, which embraces the universe. They 
 may glorify this or that material — this or that spiritual — • 
 notion and conception. I am bound to acknowledge a Son 
 of God, who is the Lord of their spirits and souls and bodies 
 as He is of mine, who took their nature as He did mine, who 
 died upon the cross for them as He did for me. They may 
 argue about the degree of sin in one or in other of us ; lam 
 bound to think that I am as much a sinner as any of them can 
 be, and that Christ is the Lamb of God who took away the 
 sin of the world. They may think there is some other way 
 to the Father than through the cross of the Son; I must con- 
 fess that there, He is as willing to meet and bless every one of 
 them, as He can be to meet and bless me. I can only hope 
 to know Him while I seek Him in One who perfectly humbled 
 himself; what a lie and a blasphemy to exalt myself on the 
 plea of possessing that knowledge ! 
 
ESSAY VIII. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD FROM DEATH, 
 
 THE GRAVE, AND HELL. 
 
 In the last Essay I spoke of the Death of Christ as it is 
 connected with the Christian idea of Sacrifice and Atonement. 
 But all people who know the tendencies of this age, and who 
 know themselves, are aware how much more easy it is to con- 
 template this or any event recorded in the Scripture, as an 
 idea, than as a fact. There are many who acknowledge the 
 Death and Resurrection of Christ, in what they call a spiritual 
 sense, to whom the plain words of the Creed, u He was dead 
 and buried, He descended into Hell, the third day He n 
 again from the dead," are merely words which they repeat be- 
 cause they have repeated them from childhood. Numbers 
 more hold those words to be the relics of an effete supersti- 
 tion, out of which the world has extracted whatever good 
 there was in it, and which may now be left to crumble. I 
 wish to inquire whether the spiritual men, or these words of 
 the Creed, meet the demands of the human heart best : whe- 
 ther these words, or those who cast them aside, are most 
 favorers of superstition. 
 
 (116) 
 
THE LAST ENEMY. 117 
 
 1 . St. Paul says : " The last enemy which shall be destroyed 
 is Death." Str auss., being at issue with him on most other 
 points, appears to have reached the climax of opposition upon 
 this. He says : "The last enemy which shall be destroyed is 
 the belief of man in his own immortality." Some may sup- 
 pose that he has merely uttered an audacious paradox, for the 
 sake of startling us, and showing us how far his vehemence 
 against our ordinary faith will go. I do not think so. If we 
 question our own minds honestly, we may find that there have 
 been many hours, days, weeks, perhaps years, in which we have 
 practically yielded assent to his proposition. " If I could get rid 
 of this sense of immortality, if I could convince myself that 
 my years would be rounded with a sleep, if I could be sure 
 that there would be no dreams in that sleep — what freedom 
 I should possess ! how I should be able to enjoy the threescore 
 years, or the thirty or twenty years, which are allotted me 
 here!" Surely the modern teacher has a large body of un- 
 confessing, unconscious disciples ; he must have 'known that 
 he was the spokesman for thousands, whom some fear with- 
 held from expressing their own feelings. And have I not been 
 obliged to confess in former Essays, that there is a justification 
 for these feelings ? Cannot numbers tell of sad effects which 
 the dread of the w r orld to come has produced upon their con- 
 duct to other men, upon their judgment of the beautiful w r orld 
 in which God has placed them, upon their thoughts of God 
 Himself? Have they not been cold, hard, selfish, whenever 
 their minds have been occupied with the one problem, how 
 they may avert the doom which they fear is awaiting them 
 hereafter 1 Have they not almost cursed the trees and flowers, 
 the new birth of spring, the songs of birds, the faces of chil- 
 dren, as if they w r ere mockeries — witnesses of some present 
 life with which they cannot safely sympathise ? Has not the 
 vision of God been one of darkness and horror ? When they 
 have said, " Our Father," have they not intended one who 
 
118 DREAD OF IMMORTALITY. 
 
 might destroy them, and from whom they have wished to be 
 delivered ? Such experiences in themselves, interpret what 
 they read in history. They see what frightful crimes have 
 been committed by men for the sake of pleasing or appeasing 
 those who may dispose of their future destiny ; how these 
 crimes have become a part of their moral system, sanctioned 
 and promoted by those who had apparently more insight into 
 the mind of their God or gods than they have ; what poverty 
 and filth, what neglect of relations, what slavery and cowardice 
 have been engendered by the notion that the business of exist- 
 ence here, is to provide for the possibilities of another existence 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum 
 
 has been no unreasonable summary of this evidence. Is not 
 this summary expressed in another form by the words : " The 
 enemy to be got rid of, is the sense of immortality ?" 
 
 But practical men are driven to ask themselves another 
 question. How is this sense to be got rid of? How is this 
 enemy to be destroyed? No experiments for the purpose 
 have succeeded yet; no theories of the universe, no new- 
 arrangements of it. When you have seemingly extinguished 
 this consciousness, it starts up again ; the arguments and 
 schemes which were to exclude it, themselves suggest it and 
 awaken it. And yet there have been such approximations to 
 the extinction of this feeling, as show clearly the only way in 
 which it ever can be reached. Each one may understand for 
 himself that the more he cultivates a merely animal existence, 
 the more he forgets that he was created for anything but to eat 
 and drink and sleep, the less clear and strong is this sense of 
 immortality. And if he could stifle all thoughts that carry 
 him back into past generations, and onward into those which 
 will be when he has left the earth ; if he could disconnect him- 
 self altogether with family, race, country, social sympathies ; 
 • if he could cease to think of himself as a person, and become 
 
CAN WE ESCAPE FKOM IT ? 119 
 
 merely a thing, he might quit himself of this coil ; not, I sus- 
 pect, till then. As long as everything about him preaches of 
 permanence and restoration, as well as of fragility and decay ; 
 as long as he is obliged to speak of succession and continuance 
 and order in the universe, and in the societies of men ; as long 
 as he feels that he can investigate the one, and that he is a 
 living portion of the other : so long the sense of immortality 
 will be with him ; he cannot cast it off. The philosopher to 
 whom I have alluded, probably supposes that he can substi- 
 tute a political immortality for a personal one : that he can 
 teach men to be indifferent about their own continuance after 
 death, by making them think of the life and endurance of their 
 race. He will find that the more strongly one sentiment is de- 
 veloped, the more certain the other is to come forth ; that if 
 one perishes, the other must perish. For he who heartily be- 
 lieves himself to be the member of a family or society, for 
 which it is worth while to fight, and to perish, has the strongest 
 conviction of his own personality ; he cannot separate his life 
 from its life ; if it has any being he must have a being. 
 
 But on the other hand, it is most true that a man may be- 
 come awfully conscious of his own personality, while he is 
 standing apart from all human beings. This is what I spoke 
 of, in a former Essay, as emphatically the sense of Sin, the 
 experience of a dark, hopeless isolation, caused by one's own 
 self, certain to continue while that continues. And this 
 it is which unites Sin to Death, which makes it so hard for us 
 to divorce them in our thoughts. Death, in the obvious aspect 
 of it, is isolation ; the separation of each creature from its fel- 
 low. The internal dread of it, strictly corresponds to this its 
 outward manifestation. " I said in the cutting off of my days, 
 I shall go to the gates of the grave; I am deprived of the re- 
 sidue of my days. I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in 
 the land of the living. I shall behold man no more with the 
 inhabitants of the world." This was Hezekiah's language ; 
 
120 THE SOLITUDE OF DEATH. 
 
 the most natural language that a man could utter ; the revela- 
 tion of the thoughts of innumerable hearts. He has in him- 
 self the sense of immortality. It has been nourished by all his 
 faithful acts as a King, by all his sympathies with his nation, 
 by all his efforts to preserve it alive, by all his confidence that 
 God would uphold it from generation to generation. Now he 
 is losing sight of all those with whom he has shared his hopes, 
 his fears, his sorrows. He is losing sight of the temple of God, 
 of all that has reminded him of His presence. Where shall he 
 be ? shall he not be alone ? A living creature, but an exile 
 from living creatures. No longer in an order; perhaps in a 
 chaos. Oh ! infinite horror ; the horror of absolute solitude ! 
 what can be compared with it? 
 
 The German philosopher, then, has much to say for himself; 
 but I think St. Paul has more. The sense of immortality is 
 very dreadful, but the terror is not one which the thought of 
 death relieves us of; the thought of death awakens it in us, 
 — the nearer we come to death, the more it faces us. Death, 
 then, is the enemy; we must grapple with that if we would 
 overcome the other. And men do grapple with it. There 
 is a deep conviction in their minds, that death is utterly 
 monstrous anomalous; something to which they cannot, and 
 should not, submit. Generations of moralists have done noth- 
 ing whatever to enforce the experience of six thousand years. 
 They go on denouncing the folly of men for thinking that death 
 
 not a necessity, for not yielding to the necessity ; the heart 
 of man does not heed their discourses ; their own hearts do not 
 heed them. There is that in them which rebels against death, 
 which rebels against it all the more because it is a necessity. 
 Till you explain what that is, till you justify it, you will not 
 cure it. You may wonder why men are so unreasonable, why 
 they dread death, hate it, defy it, and then again seem to long 
 for it, to suppose that it is the only end of their struggle of 
 pain and doubt and despair ; but you will fall into the same 
 
COMMUNITY IN DEATH 121 
 
 unreasonableness yourselves, you will repeat all these incon- 
 sistencies as soon as you pass from the professor's chair to the 
 couch of actual suffering. 
 
 I cannot see that the belief in Christ's death would be any 
 deliverance from these awful perplexities, if that death were an 
 artificial arrangement for saving us from a future penalty, 
 while the actual penalty which makes us tremble is incurred 
 as much as ever. But it is not in this light that the Cross 
 ever presented itself to a weary, heavy-laden man. He hears 
 that there is One who has shared his death and the death of the 
 whole world; One in whom God delights ; One in whom each 
 man may delight. If this news is believed, the separation 
 of death, that which is indeed its sting, is taken away. It 
 is now, for the first time, common to the individual man 
 with his race. He shall not die alone. He shall not cease 
 to see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living ; no, 
 nor man with the inhabitants of the world. A new and mys- 
 terious attraction holds him to both. Death becomes a bond 
 to them. And it is no longer a mere necessity. Christ chose 
 it because it is ours. We can choose it as His more than ours. 
 What I am saying, has no direct reference to our belief in the 
 issue of the death. That may be always implicitly contained 
 in our belief of the death itself. We should not be satisfied 
 with it if we did not see in it the pledge of triumph. But 
 Jesus Christ, as the Crucified, has been an object of rest and 
 comfort to multitudes who have not consciously dwelt on His 
 resurrection. The fact is undoubted, and we do not rightly 
 understand ourselves or our fellow-creatures if we overlook it. 
 2. Nor are we accurate observers of facts, if we roughly 
 confound the feelings of men respecting death, with those 
 which are awakened by the grave. Philosophers or divines 
 may classify them together, — for actual men they are different. 
 " He is gone," are the words by which those who are stand- 
 ing by a bed-side, declare that the person whom they knew, is 
 6 
 
122 EARTH TO EARTH. 
 
 not in the form which they look upon. But that form is sacred, 
 and awful. It is the witness and pledge that he has been. 
 They cannot look at it in its stillness and repose, and satisfy 
 themselves with any thoughts of a disembodied spirit. In 
 some way or other, they must connect it with the friend who 
 spoke with them, and cared for them. And yet the instinct, 
 " Bury the dead out of our sight," is also deep and healthy ; 
 there is something essentially brutal in tho3e people who, like 
 the Tartars, can bear to leave corpses exposed. We call that 
 which the earth encloses, that which it devours and assimilates 
 to itself, "remains;" or, " what is mortal ;" we have a horror of 
 identifying it with the actual body which was so precious to 
 us. We shrink from the mummy as from a weak, irreverent, 
 materialistic experiment to preserve that which was meant to 
 perish. The earth or ashes seem to us far better ; we would 
 rather east the dearest form into the sea, than give it that hor- 
 rible, unnatural kind of endaranc These are true feelings, 
 which are found strongest in the truest minds; yet they are 
 very inexplicable. The body associates itself with any thoughts 
 we have of personality and immortality ; that which lies in the 
 earth, or is consumed w 7 ith the fire, we naturally and inevita- 
 bly associate with decay, putrefaction, destruction. It is e; 
 for superstition to confound the feelings, and to invest relics 
 with the sacredness which we must attach to body; none of its 
 appeals to the heart have been so successful. But the eon 
 science bears witness against the confusion, and longs for a 
 deliverance from it. " HE was buried." He the Kin<r of men, 
 the true Man, the Son of the Highest, has been in the grave. 
 He knows its secrets, not as a stranger, but as an inhabitant. 
 I believe myriads of sorrowers have found comfort in that 
 conviction, which all their speculations could not give them, 
 but rather took away. His burial, they feel, ought to explain 
 that which all others cannot explain. And they do get the 
 
THE ABYSS OF SPACE. 123 
 
 explanation into their hearts, though their understandings may 
 still be much bewildered. 
 
 3. But besides and beyond this narrow house, there are fields 
 of speculation, in which men have lost themselves almost from 
 the beginning of the.earth until now. Lord Byron has brought 
 Cain into the Abyss of Space, Lucifer being his guide thither. 
 No conception can be truer. The first murderer must have 
 traversed those regions; innumerable footsteps have followed 
 his, all perhaps under the same conduct. A dark, formless 
 world, in which there is nothing for ttie eye to dwell upon, for 
 the heart to embrace, where all is vague and monstrous, — this 
 may become, this has become, the habitation of human intel- 
 lects, formed in God's image. We can come into such utter 
 dreariness, because we are spirits, because we have a home 
 and a Father, because we can have no rest till we find that 
 home and that Father. If we were merely children of earth, 
 we might be satisfied with its pictures and images ; these 
 would be all in all to us. Being better than this, we must 
 make a hell for ourselves, if we cannot find a heaven. Yes, a 
 hell ! the simple language is the best. I will not quarrel about 
 the etymology of Hades. It may mean the unseen, or the 
 formless. But the unseen becomes to the bewildered con- 
 science the formless ; the negation of a world, the darkest 
 conception a man can have of that which is without himself. 
 He brings into it a more terrible darkness, that which is ivithin 
 himself; the worm of conscience which he cannot kill, the fire 
 he can never quench. To be delivered from that, is to be 
 delivered from sin. But how may he be delivered from the 
 imagination to which sin has imparted its own horror and con- 
 fusion ? What glimpse of daylight can he discern in the track- 
 less abyss? " He descended into hell" Mighty words ! which 
 I do not pretend that I can penetrate, or reduce under any 
 forms of the intellect. If I could, T think they would be of 
 little worth to me. But I accept them as news that there is 
 
r 
 
 124 MEANING OF HADES. 
 
 no corner of God's universe over which His love has not brood- 
 ed, none over which the Son of God and the Son of man has 
 not asserted His dominion. I claim a right to tell this news 
 to every peasant and beggar of the land. I may bid him re- 
 joice, and give thanks, and sing merry songs to the God who 
 made him, because there is nothing created which his Lord 
 and Muster has not redeemed, of which He is not the King; I 
 may bid him fear nothing around him or beneath him while ho 
 trusts in Him. I may beseech him to watch continually, lest 
 he should lose his confidence in the divine and human Saviour 
 and Conqueror, or forget that lie has saved and conquered 
 for his brethren as well as himself. I may tell him that if he 
 does, he will become agaio the self-seekii. f- worshipping, 
 
 cowardly creature the Devil is always seeking to make him, 
 and that then he will assuredly fill into a condition of utter 
 falsehood, in which all real things will seem to him unreal, and 
 all unreal real; in which the worm and the fire of conscience 
 will become ever more and more intolerable. 
 
 4. The Gospel narratives of the Resurrection are only a little 
 longer and more minute than those which record the fact of 
 Christ's burial. The women go to the sepulchre, they find the 
 stone rolled away, angels ask them why they seek the living 
 among the dead, lie is not there, lie is risen. They tell 
 Simon Peter. He and John go to the sepulchre. One stays 
 without, one looks at the linen cloth and the napkin. Tl 
 tell it to the rest. There is wonder and doubt. — This is the 
 story. What ! only this ? no greater array of proofs to secure 
 our assent for that which stands solitary in the history of the 
 world ? No more overpowerin [monies than that of tie 
 
 women and these fishermen, in support of an event which is to 
 be the basis of a world-belief? No ! — meditate the fact well 
 — this is all. Diligent men, in later times, may have shown, 
 with great skill, why these fishermen and women were entitled 
 to credit ; why their simplicity and their own doubts confirm 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 125 
 
 their trustworthiness ; what they endured for their persever- 
 ance in their story, &c. Those to whom the word of the Insur- 
 rection first came, received it simply as a message which, 
 through whatever feeble voices it might reach them, must have 
 been sent them from a Father in Heaven, because no one else 
 knew how much they wanted it. If they had a Father, if He 
 wished them to know that they had, this, they felt, must be 
 His way of telling them. Between them and God there had 
 been a dark impassable gulf; if that were not in some way 
 filled up, they might talk of Him, use His name in their peti- 
 tions, dream that He meant them well, but nothing had actually 
 been done for them ; no one hope of their hearts had been sat- 
 isfied, no dread had been taken away. If there was no person 
 who was actually one with God and one with man, the gulf 
 must remain for ever unfilled ; if there was, it was not incredi- 
 ble that He had entered into man's death, grave, Hell ; it was 
 absolutely incredible that He should be holden of them. Every- 
 thing such a Being did, must be actual, not fictitious ; seeming 
 could have no relation to His nature; what men knew of suf- 
 fering and fear He must have known. But to suppose that His 
 Father forgot Him, did not own Him, did not claim Him, 
 because He was exhibiting the fulness of His love, and carry- 
 ing out His purposes, w T ould have been a shock to the heart 
 and reason such as they had never been called to undergo yet. 
 Here was the evi dence for the Resurrection ; with this did the 
 preachers of it subdue the world. 
 
 And this, I believe, must and will be the evidence of it in 
 all generations to come, as much as it was in the first. The 
 testimony will be mighty, because the thing testified of is that 
 which all men, everywhere, are ^v an tin g, — which some who do 
 not crave for what is peculiar and distinguishing, who must 
 have that which is human, are taught by many hard processes 
 that they want. But though I hold this evidence to be the 
 highest, and to be that which all other kinds of it only serve 
 
126 NEW EVIDENCE. 
 
 to corroborate, I am convinced that the experience of eighteen 
 centuries, — our experience especially of the confusions and con- 
 tradictions into which churchmen and church doctors have 
 fallen respecting the state of men here and hereafter, the expe- 
 rience that is appealed to as conclusive against our Creed, — 
 illustrates the words I have been spunking of in this Essay, as 
 they could not have been illustrated in the first ages. 
 
 1. We speak continually of death as the separation of the 
 soul from the body. If we try to give ourselves an account 
 of what we mean by Soul and Body, we should say, I suppose, 
 roughly, that the soul is that with which we think ; the body 
 that which moyes from place to place, and to which certain 
 organs of sense belong. If this be so, how little does our lan- 
 guage correspond to the fact which it tries to describe ! Death, 
 so far as we can judge from any of the phenomena it presents 
 to us, affects the powers of thinking, of motion, of sensation, 
 equally: our natural impression would be, that whatever influ- 
 ence it produces on one, it produces also on the other. But 
 that strange " sense of immortality" which the benevolent Ger- 
 man is so eager to extinguish, would not allow people to fol- 
 low this conclusion of nature; something, they said, must sur- 
 vive. The soul would go to Hades ; the hero himself would 
 be a prey to the birds and dogs. We have adopted the lan- 
 guage very nearly : often we adopt it altogether, even though 
 we have a confused impression that the soul has more to do 
 with the hero himself, and the body with that which the dogs 
 or birds, devour. But when that conviction has thoroughly 
 taken possession of a man, when his "sense of immortality" 
 has begun to express itself in the only language which can 
 express it, and he sa} r s, u I shall survive, /cannot perish !" 
 then, first, all that horror which Strauss would deliver us from 
 is awakened ; then, secondly, it becomes impossible for the 
 man to divide his soul from that which has been durino- all his 
 experience of it, its yoke-fellow. If he has cultivated his pow- 
 
SOUL AND BODY. 127 
 
 ers of reflection, and has studied the forms of language, he 
 may learn gradually to find that the names which have stood 
 so distinct in men's discourses, have distinct realities answering 
 to them. But he will not allow his imperfect psychology to 
 interfere with the witness of his conscience — that he, who uses 
 equally the powers of thought and the powers of motion and 
 sensation which have been entrusted to him, is responsible for 
 both ; — that, however they may be divided or united, they are 
 both intimately attached to his personality. 
 
 If, then, there comes upon him a much stronger sense of his 
 connexion with deeds done in the body than he had while he was 
 drawing those artificial lines, and also a much stronger convic- 
 tion of the dignity and sacredness of the body than those can 
 entertain who would separate it from the soul, — the marvel of 
 death, which seems to extinguish soul as well as body, and yet 
 which he can neither hope nor fear will extinguish him, pre- 
 sents itself under a new aspect. He must have a solution of it. 
 The solution must be one which does not hide any part of the 
 fact, which does not impose a notion upon him as a substitute 
 for the fact. The Scripture says plainly, that Christ poured 
 out His soul, as well as his body to death. The description 
 of His agony and crucifixion has been received by those who 
 have believed it, practically, if not in name, as the history of 
 1jie death of a soul as well as of a bod} r . Those who have 
 wished to represent his death as different from all others, for. 
 the sake of enhancing its worth, have dw T elt upon this as its 
 most wonderful characteristic. To me it seems the most won- 
 derful, because from it I am able to learn what other deaths 
 are, — what the death of man is. Christ gave up all that was 
 His own, — He gave Himself to His Father. He disclaimed 
 any life which did not belong to Him in virtue of His union 
 w y ith the Eternal God. It is our privilege to disclaim any life 
 which does not belong to us in virtue of our union with Him. 
 This would be an obvious truth, if we were indeed created and 
 
128 RELICS. 
 
 constituted in Him, — if He was the root of our humanity. We 
 should not then have any occasion to ask how much perishes 
 or survives in the hour of death. We should assume that all 
 must perish, to the end that all may survi - 
 
 2. Such a conclusion would go far, I think, to help us 
 through that terrible perplexity, into which I said we all fell, 
 respecting the body and that which we commit to the ground. 
 j As long as we suppose the mystery of death to be the division 
 of soul and body, so long we must cling, with a deep love, to 
 those remains which yet we are forced to regard with a kind 
 of loathing. We shall be ready to believe stories of miracles 
 wrought by them, we shall be half inclined to worship them. 
 Or if we reject this temptation, — because Romanists have fallen 
 into it, and we think it must therefore be shunned, — we shall 
 take our own Protestant way of asserting the sanctity of relit 
 by maintaining that at a certain day they will all be gathered 
 together, and that the very body to which they once belonged 
 will be re-constructed out of them. That immense demand is 
 made upon our faith — a demand in comparison of which all 
 notions of cures wrought at tombs fade into nothing, — by 
 divines who would yet shrink instinctively from saying that 
 what they call a living body here, is a mere congeries of par 
 tides, — who would denounce any man as a materialist if he 
 said that. This demand is made upon us by divines, who use 
 as a text-book of Christian evidences, " Butler's Analogy," the 
 ground chapter of which, " On the Future State," is based on 
 the argument that there is no proof that death destroys any 
 of our living powers, — those of the body more than those of 
 the soul ; — and which distinctly calls our attention to the fact, 
 that ordinary attrition may destroy the particles of which the 
 matter of our bodies consists, more than once in the course of 
 a life ; so that nothing can be inferred from our depositing the 
 whole of that matter at the moment of dissolution. This de- 
 mand is made upon our faith by divines, who read to every 
 
IDENTITY OF THE BODY. 129 
 
 mourner as he goes with them to the grave of a friend, that 
 corruption cannot inherit incorruption ; that flesh and blood 
 cannot inherit the kingdom of God. 
 
 But though I speak of this opinion as " a demand upon our 
 faith," I hold it to be the fruit of our unbelief. If we did 
 attach any meaning to that expression upon which St. Peter at 
 Jerusalem, St. Paul at Antioch, dwelt so earnestly, that 
 Christ's body saw no corruption ; if we did believe that He 
 who was without sin showed forth to us in Himself what is 
 the true normaF condition' of humanity, and showed forth in 
 that body of His what the human body is, — we should not 
 dare, I think, any longer to make the corrupt, degrading, 
 shameful accidents which necessarily belong to that body in 
 each one of us, because we have sinned, the rule by which we 
 judge of it here : how much less should we suppose these to 
 be the elements out of which its high, and restored, and spi- 
 ritual estate can ever be fashioned ? 
 
 It is impossible not to perceive, under this notion of a resur- 
 rection of relics, — of that corruption which our Lord did not 
 see, — a very deep conviction that the body of our humiliation 
 must be identical with the body redeemed and renewed. This 
 conviction is so rooted in the heart, that it will absolutely force 
 nature, met, Scripture, everything, into accordance with it. I 
 must be, in all respects, the same person that I was before I 
 put off my tabernacle; therefore, these elements, which were 
 once attached to my body, must come from all the ends of 
 the earth to constitute it. What a witness for the reality of 
 a belief, that it can sustain such a contradiction as this 
 rather than cease to exist! All through my life on earth, 
 soul and body are groaning together under a weight of decay 
 and mortality, — are crying for deliverance from it. An houi 
 comes which seems to say that their emancipation has takes 
 place ; that these Adam conditions belong no more to the man , 
 that as to them he is utterly dead. The preacher of God's 
 6* 
 
130 DEATH IN ADAM, LIFE IN CHRIST. 
 
 Gospel runs about saying, " Oh, no ! it is a mistake ! These 
 witnesses of the fall, — these pledges of pain and shame, from 
 which fever, consumption, cholera, after days or years of suf- 
 fering, have at last set your friend free, — belong to him inse- 
 parably, necessarily, eternally. They are that body, the most 
 curious, wonderful, glorious, of God's works ; they are not, as 
 .your consciences tell you, as the Scripture tells you, the proofs 
 that this wonderful fabric has suffered a monstrous and cruel 
 outrage; that it needs a deliverer to raise it and renew it." 
 A strange Gospel, one would think ! And yet one which men 
 receive, which they will continue to receive and hold, rather 
 than think that they are to perish, or that they are to have 
 merely a visionary soul-life. 
 
 11 As in Adam all die, so, in Christ shall all be made alive.' 1 '' 
 This is St. Paul's broad statement in that passage of his writ- 
 ings which deals specially and formally with this subject. Tt 
 is in Btrict accordance with all his other doctrine. Christ is 
 the Lord of Man, the Life-giver Ojf .Man. the True Man ; Adam 
 is the root of his individuality, of his die of his death. All 
 
 is strictly in order. Death has its accomplishment: the Adam 
 dies, and is buried, and sees corruption; Christ gives Himself 
 to death, and sees no corruption. If a man has an Adam na- 
 ture and is also related by a higher and closer affinity to Christ, 
 — is the effect of that union that he shall be redeemed, body 
 and soul, out of the corruption which is deposited in the grave, 
 or that it shall be his future, as it has been his past, inherit- 
 ance? 
 
 But has not St. Paul spoken of a change to take place in the 
 twinkling of an eye? and has he not connected this with the 
 last trump? I hope at some other time to examine the whole 
 of this great chapter, and to see what it actually reveals to us. 
 But I cannot refuse even here to meet this special objection, 
 it is for many reasons so practically important. 
 
 If, then, there was no allusion to that last trump of the 
 
THE LAST TRUMP. 131 
 
 Archangel in this sentence, I do not think we should any of 
 us have hesitated to believe that St. Paul, in strict conformity 
 with all his teaching respecting our death in Adam, and our 
 life in Christ, was unfolding the mystery, — so deep, so necessary 
 to all, so contrary to all the notions of the Corinthians, — that 
 men, instead of sleeping in their graves, would be changed in 
 a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. And I believe no one 
 could have hesitated in any particular case to have applied the 
 words. Nay, I do not find that men hesitate, even with their 
 customary notions and opinions, to apply them now. As they 
 watch the last breath departing from a dear friend, they seize 
 the language, they feel they have a right to it. They say, " A 
 moment a°'0 he was mortal, and now he is free ! It has been but 
 the twinkling of an eye, and what a change has come !" Such 
 are the uncojitepioug utterances of men's faith and hope, 
 grounded, as they surely think, and, as I am convinced they 
 have a rigb* to think, on St. Paul's words. 
 
 Nor d*es the thought then disturb them, that there is a 
 want o identity between him that has been and him that is. 
 Though th e decaying, agonized frame is lying calm and at rest, 
 the- do not then doubt that he who spoke to them a few mo- 
 nvnts before, did not derive his powers of speech, any more 
 /nan the celestial smile which still remains on the clay, from that 
 clay. Faith and reason, however crushed and confounded, are 
 too strong, in uh< hour of reality, for a notion so cold and so 
 inhuman. ^s. 
 
 « But the trump of th. \ rc hang;el ! that seems to put all be- 
 lief of a resurrection of the *<■ tQ &n i nconce } vab j e distance, 
 un a to make the hw^^esis, whio. identifies it with a resurrec- 
 fi™ ~? -" mJS after a11 tn e only scv , i ,,,»•., it . 
 
 9«£ become, so intertwined withTj Tp ctatn of a 
 
 I', Z m SaCred ' n0ral p, ' iDCi P leS ' that w « n-y -ell 
 tremble when we encounter it. If I did not feel that morality, 
 
132 PICTURES. 
 
 and godliness and the practical belief of a judgment, were put 
 into the greatest risk by the confusions which we are tolerat- 
 ing respecting these words, I would gladly pass them by. But 
 
 I dare not be silent, because I see what a mass of unbelief 
 and indifference is congealing in men's minds under a thin 
 coating of apparent orthodoxy. 
 
 I scarcely need ask any Protestant whether the words 
 
 II trump of the Archangel" convey to him precisely the im- 
 pression which he would derive from the picture of Michael 
 Angelo. He is likely to answer with, what I should think, 
 rather excessive and unnecessary indignation, that none of his 
 impressions are derived from pictures ; tint he has the great- 
 est horror of their sensualizing effect ; that of course he does 
 not dream of a material trumpet 1 do not *se this language 
 myself. I have learnt from pictures, and am willing to learn 
 from them. I believe I might learn much frdn this one of 
 Michael Angelo's, which would do me great ta>d, which 
 would give me E th, distinctly n depth, t, my own 
 convictions, and to the words of inspiration. But i accept 
 the statement, from which I am sure no pious and inte^,,^,^ 
 Romanist would for an instant dissent, that the mere trum,^ 
 whether read of in a book, or seen in a picture, though it n 
 be helpful to the mind in delivering it from vagueness, is sj 
 bolical ; that to give it an actual material counterpart, would 
 be gross and superstitious in the last and lowest degree. 
 
 I should scarcely think it necessary tr*uakethis remark, if I 
 did not perceive painful proofs that r * r zoa '> — to a great extent, 
 I think, an honest zeal— against / m °oIism, sometimes involves 
 us in a confusion, to which u0se Nvho are ^ , "uted in it, (hrW 
 thereby I allow expo-- to other temptations,) are m 
 subject We ad^-hat we suppose is a spiritual substrtu 
 for some literal or material representation. * e find we DM e 
 got only a shadow or phantom. We must fill up the hollow in our 
 hearts by some means ; and we unconsciously add on the very 
 
MEANING OF THE TRUMPET. 133 
 
 driest and most material conception, to the (so called) spiritual 
 one, as a necessary support to its feebleness. I could give in- 
 stances upon instances of this strange intellectual hocus-pocus ; 
 the neglect of them by divines is, I believe, contributing most 
 effectually to the return of Romanist notions and habits. I do 
 not therefore think it unnecessary to bring each person who 
 speaks of the Archangel's trumpet distinctly to book, and to 
 make him confess, — though he may be disposed to shrink from 
 the acknowledgment as too obvious and humiliating, — that he 
 does not mean such a trumpet as men play upon; that he 
 would count it shockingly irreverent to let the thoughts of such 
 an instrument dwell in his mind in connexion with such a 
 subject. 
 
 But are we then to dismiss the phrase as if it imported no- 
 thing to us, because we cannot reduce it to this signification, 
 which would be actually nothing ? I apprehend that it has the 
 most serious import, and that the Scriptures tell us what it is. 
 The Prophets of the Old Testament, in whose ears the trum- 
 pet that sounded loud and long on Sinai was ever repeating 
 its notes, did not allow their countrymen to rest in the old 
 image. Every rending of the mountains, every earthquake, 
 everything wiiich idolators looked upon as the sign of the 
 wrath of the tyrant before whom they trembled, everything 
 that the mere philosopher calls an ordinary convulsion of na- 
 ture, was with them an Archangel's trumpet, declaring that 
 the righteous and everlasting King was coming forth to punish 
 the earth for its iniquities, and to set truth and judgment in the 
 midst of it. This was the teaching, — the uniform teaching, — 
 of the old seers, in whose school St. Paul's mind was formed. 
 Are we to suppose that he had a less comprehensive, less spi- 
 ritual idea of the divine method than they had, — that he desert- 
 ed them for some more heathenish conception ? Are we not 
 
 1 oi * to conclude that he was carrying out their truth to its 
 
134 JUDGMENT OF NATIONS AND MEN. 
 
 highest power; that whatever they meant he meant still more 
 perfectly ? 
 
 If you ask whether he meant that there would sound in his 
 own day an Archangel's trumpet, which would call the nations, 
 — his own first, — into God's judgment, and that a mighty 
 change in the condition of them all, the beginning of what may 
 be rightly called a new world, would follow upon that judg- 
 ment, I should answer, Undoubtedly I think so ; I can put no 
 other construction upon his language; and I can put no 
 other construction upon the facts of history, except that they 
 fulfilled his language. But if you ask further how lie connect- 
 ed this with the condition of each individual man, who might 
 or might not be alive at that crisis in the world's history, I 
 ihould say, since he held that in Adam all die, and that in 
 Christ all are made alive, he of necessity believed also that a 
 day was at hand for every man, a day of revelation and dis- 
 covery, a day which should show him what life was, and what 
 (hath was; what his own true condition, what his own false 
 condition was. And everything which warned a man that such 
 a day was at hand, which roused him to seek for light, and to 
 ily from darkness, was a note of the Archangel's trumpet ; a 
 voice bidding him awake that Christ the Lord of his spirit 
 might give him light. And in a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an eye, by a fit of apoplexy, by the dagger of an assassin, the 
 vesture of mortality which hides that light from it, might 
 drop off from him, and he might be changed. What had 
 merely sounded to him here as some common earthly note of 
 preparation for death, would then be recogni>ed as the Arch- 
 angel's trumpet calling him to account, asking him whether the 
 light that had been vouchsafed to him, whilst shadows were 
 still about him, had been faithfully used, or whether he had 
 loved darkness rather than light, because his deeds were evil ? 
 In both these anticipations — if they are, or can be separat- 
 ed — I accept St. Paul and the other Scriptures as 
 
DISCOURSES OF PREACHERS. 135 
 
 respecting the condition of us who are living in this later pe- 
 riod of the world. I look for a judgment of Nations and 
 Churches to wind up our age, as he looked for one to wind up 
 his age. I believe the trumpet of the Archangel has been 
 sounding in every century of the modern world, that it is 
 sounding now, and will sound more clearly before the end 
 comes. But I do not, for this, allow myself to doubt that it is 
 sounding in the ears of each individual man ; that a time will 
 come, when the light will burst in upon him, and show him 
 things as they are ; when he will know that there is all life 
 for him in Christ, and that there is all death in himself. I can- 
 not persuade myself that the eloquent words I have heard from 
 preachers, in wmich this truth was pressed home upon the 
 consciences of men, in which they were told how all personal 
 and family visitations were messages from heaven, trumpets 
 of the Archangel calling them to repentance, were merely tine 
 metaphors which, if possible, were to produce a startling 
 effect, but which meant nothing. It is indeed " fiddling while 
 Kome is burning," for God's ambassadors to be indulging in 
 fine talk about His judgment, which their congregation are 
 not to take as real. I must suppose that they think such lan- 
 guage not metaphorical, but the translation of metaphors into 
 reality. And if so, there is nothing in this part of the teach- 
 ing of St. Paul, to hinder us from accepting the other part as 
 a confirmation, not a contradiction, of the inference which we 
 should draw from the New Testament generally, — that Christ 
 was buried in order that the body might be claimed as an heir 
 of life; as redeemed from corruption. 
 
 3. Supposing this to be the doctrine'which is involved in the 
 belief of Christ's descent into the grave, another enormous 
 weight would be taken from the human spirit, — a weight 
 which the heart and the understanding have been equally 
 unable to bear. We are told to believe in a place of disem- 
 bodied spirits. According to all the maxims which we ordina- 
 
136 DISEMBODIED SPIRITS. 
 
 rily recognise, place appertains to body ; it is only of body that 
 you can predicate it. And this logical principle, so far from 
 beino-at variance with our higher instincts, entirely accords with 
 them. People talk of their friends as disembodied. When ti 
 think of them, they are obliged to suppose them clothed with 
 bodies. They admit the necessity ; it is part, they say, of their 
 weakness. They ought to feel otherwise. They ought to com- 
 pel themselves to imagine that which they cannot imagine; 
 that which they do only imagine at the peril of a direct contra- 
 diction ! " But Scripture demands it." How, and where ? It 
 speaks of the bodies of saints coming forth, and showing them- 
 selves after the Resurrection. It speaks of Moses and Elias 
 appearing to the disciples. It records acts of our Lord on 
 earth, by which bodies are recalled from the unseen region 
 into ours. "Oh! but these are exceptions.'' Exactly; and 
 Scripture presents nothing but exceptions to your theory. \[) 
 however, I accept the Scriptures as teaching me laws by 
 instances, and so correcting my theories, and dispossessing me 
 of them, I think I am at least as much bowing my neck to its 
 authority as you are, even though the result may be that I am 
 not obliged to force my conscience or my intellect into an 
 impossible position. 
 
 " But are we not, then, to believe in a Hades ?" It was not 
 a duty, but a terrible necessity, which led men of the old 
 world to speak of Hades. They did not believe in it — there 
 was nothing to believe. The. void beyond the grave had never 
 been entered ; they could do nothing but mark it down in 
 their charts by some name which left an impression of its 
 
 uue, inaccessible character. But the heart was so impatient 
 of the void, that all earthly forms and pictures must be thrown 
 into it, if, perhaps, it might be tilled. It cannot be ail Sty- 
 a darkness ; there may be verdant meadows here and there 
 scattered in the midst of the desolation ; the forms of human 
 justice must be there; /Eacus and Ehadamanthus will decide 
 
THE EARTH A PLACE OF SPIRITS. 137 
 
 which of the shadows that pass by them shall be consigned to 
 the better, which to the more hateful region. The Jew, taaght 
 in the law of his fathers, dared not let his fancy indulge in 
 such creations. There was no Elysium in his Hades. He 
 tied from the f|jghtful vision of mere death and darkness, to 
 trust in the living God. The dead he was sure could not 
 praise Him : if God had been his hope and deliverer all through 
 his pilgrimage, He would not desert him at last. He would 
 not leave his soul in Hades, nor suffer that which had been 
 holy in His eyes to see corruption. Yet the fact of corruption 
 was before his eyes ; the grave did receive its victim ; the 
 worms did gnaw upon him. Was this confusion to last for 
 ever ? I believe that the words, " His. soul was not left in 
 Hades ; His body did not see corruption," are a removal of it 
 once and for ever. I have no right to speak again of an un- 
 visited, trackless region beyond the grave ; I have no right to 
 people that region with forms of my fancy. Elysium and 
 Stygian pools have vanished ; I have no right to call them in- 
 to existence again. I have no right to accept the darkness 
 which haunted the minds of patriarchs and prophets, and in 
 which they believed it was a sin to dwell, as if it were intended 
 for us. 
 
 " But we mean by Hades, a place of Spirits ; do not you 
 believe in that?" Certainly, I believe in a place where Spirits 
 dwell. This earth is such a place ; w r e, who dwell in it, are 
 spirits. There may be a multitude more dwelling in it, who 
 have cast off their conditions of mortality, or w T ho have never 
 been subject to such conditions; I do not know; there is no- 
 thing to oppose such a belief — much, perhaps, to encourage it. 
 As the butterfly in its free flight may drop upon the leaf or 
 flower, and taste its sweets, on which it fed as a caterpillar, or 
 in which it lay wrapped as a chrysalis, so those who could 
 just see the glories of the earth through its decay, and were 
 sometimes so entranced by them as to forget their own great- 
 
138 TIIE SPIRITS IN riUSON. 
 
 ness and their Father's house, may now enter fully and safely 
 into the beauty which overpowered them, and make it the 
 occasion for thanksgiving, or may be instruments in leading 
 us to an apprehension of it. There may be many more plat 
 for Spirits in those innumerable worlds which #ie Astronomer 
 is discovering to us, and which we shall delight in and wonder 
 at the more, as we become more convinced that they are God's 
 worlds, and that not one of them can have been made without 
 Him who is the Light of men. The question is, whether, 
 above and beyond all these, I must invent a place which my 
 senses do not tell me of, which Science does not open to me — 
 not for spirits, but for shadows ; and must use the language of 
 Scripture which, apparently, is meant to deliver me from such 
 a dreary necessity, as the excuse for it. 
 
 "But Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison." I 
 rejoice to believe it. I do not, indeed, know, more than 
 Augustine did, to what age or place that preaching is to be 
 referred ; I may think with him, that the words of St. Peter, 
 literally taken, point more to the time of Xoali than to a later 
 time. But be that as it may, I thank God that Christendom, 
 even in some of those traditions wherein there has been most 
 of vagueness and fancy, has borne witness to the fact that 
 Christ is the Lord of all spirits, who have lived in all tin 
 and that He is the great deliverer of spirits. I thank G 
 that men have been sure that there was a justification for that 
 faith in Scripture, whether it is to be found in the particular 
 texts to which they appealed, or not. But how that preach- 
 ing to spirits in prison warrants me in building a prison for 
 them, which, according to no laws that the Scripture teaches 
 us about spirits, could hold them, — a place for the disembo- 
 died, — 1 have yet to be informed. 
 
 " But, your language, pushed to its consequences, might 
 prove that there is no Heaven and no Hell." Forgive me — 
 that is the very consequence which I dread from the perplex- 
 
HEAVEN AND HELL. 139 
 
 ity into which you have led us. I believe that Christ came 
 into the world expressly to reveal the kingdom of Heaven, and 
 to bring us into it. He and His Apostles speak of it as the 
 kingdom of righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost. 
 They present Righteousness, Love, Truth, to us as substantial 
 realities, as the Nature of the Living and Eternal God; mani- 
 fested in the Only-begotten Son; inherited by all who claim 
 to be made in His image. And since they reveal Heaven to 
 us, they of necessity make known Hell also. The want of 
 Righteousness, Truth, Love, the state which is contrary to 
 these / is and must be Hell. 
 
 "Mystical ! mystical ! States, not places ! So we expected." 
 A danger to be feared ; and one to be carefully avoided. I 
 have tried to avoid it, by saying that I know of no place for 
 disembodied spirits. I cannot understand how men realise a 
 state except in some place. I do not try to understand it. I find 
 some spirits in different places of this earth very miserable, 
 and others in a certain degree of blessedness. I do not find 
 that the place in which they are, makes the difference. The 
 most fertile and beautiful may be the most accursed ; the nat- 
 urally sterile may be more desirable. I should conclude from 
 these observations, if I had nothing else to guide me, that the 
 moral and spiritual condition of the inhabitants is the means 
 of making a heaven or a hell of this earth. Scripture sustains 
 this conclusion. All it tells me of the kingdom of Heaven, 
 shows me that man must anywhere be blessed, if he has the 
 knowledge of God and is living as His willing subject; every- 
 where accursed, if he is ignorant of God and at war with Him. 
 This, I have a right to say, / know. And if I believe God's 
 revelation of His Son, I may know a little more. I may be 
 sure that death, — as Butler maintains from analogy, — does not 
 change the substance of the human creature, or any of its 
 powers or moral conditions, but only removes that which had 
 crushed its substance, checked the exercise of its powers, kepi 
 
140 I AM THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 its moral conditions out of sight. I may conclude, even if 
 Christ did not tell me so expressly in all His parables, that the 
 laws of God's kingdom in its different regions are not different; 
 that one must explain the other ; that everywhere to know God, 
 and work for God and with God, to help His creatures, to cry 
 and labor lor the extirpation of-evil, must be the good of spirits 
 formed in God's image ; that everywhere sympathy, fellow- 
 ship, affection, must be the condition of right human existence ; 
 selfishness, its plague and contradiction. I cannot believe the 
 
 >d anywhere, in any creatures, to have reached its climax, 
 because the Scriptures and reason teach me that there must 
 be a perpetual growth in the knowledge of God, and in the 
 power of serving him. And as long as there is any evil in the 
 universe, I must suppose, seeing that God and His Son desire 
 its overthrow, that good spirits, also desire its overthrow. 
 Further than this I dare not go. ' And this, it seems to me, 
 should be enough to make our zeal in proclaiming the Gos- 
 pel of men's deliverance from evil, and death, and hell, very 
 strong and vehement, and in exhorting our brethren not to 
 reject so great a salvation ; seeing that left to ourselves with- 
 out a Redeemer and a Father, there must be a continual 
 descent into a lower depth. It cannot signify much to me, or 
 any man, whether 1 call that depth Hades or Gehenna. To 
 me the Hades becomes a Gehenna, because my own self be- 
 comes one, if I cannot be raised out of myself, and brought 
 into sympathy with God's order, and God's love. 
 
 4. When Jesus said to Martha, " Thy brother shall rise 
 
 in" she, taught in the popular school of the time, answered, 
 " I know that he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day?' 1 
 
 sus answered" says St. John, " I am the Resurrection a?ul 
 the Life; he that bdieveth in me, though he ivere dead, yet shall 
 lie live. And whosoever liveth and bclieveth in me shall never 
 die." It seems to me sometimes, in low 7 and desponding moods, 
 that in the nineteenth century of the Christian Church, we 
 
THE RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO UNITARIANS. 141 
 
 have got back to Martha's point of view, — that we believe 
 just what the Pharisees had instructed her to believe ; — that 
 the glorious mystery implied in the words by which our Lord 
 raised her out of that condition of mind, and in the act which 
 confirmed them, has perished out of the circle of our convic- 
 tions. But I am sure this is not so, and that it only seems to 
 be so, because we judge of the inward belief of human beings, 
 — of that deep and secret wisdom which they receive from 
 above, — by the hard and formal propositions which they 
 have caught from us, and have probably misunderstood. Tins 
 distinction, — which I find it more and more necessary to keep 
 in mind respecting ourselves, that I may feel our sins, and 
 God's mercy, — is also a great comfort in thinking of Unitarians. 
 To me, nothing sounds harder and colder than their mode of 
 talking about Christ's Resurrection. In old times they clung 
 to the belief with great tenacity ; it was the main article of their 
 faith. The Resurrection, they said, proved the truth of immor- 
 tality, which philosophers had always disputed. It proved 
 also the truth of the Christian religion. Apparently the trans- 
 lation of the first statement is, that a stupendous violation of 
 all the laws and principles of the universe was divinely ordained, 
 to convince men of a truth which they had never been able to 
 forget; which had haunted them, and given birth to the most 
 frightful superstitions; from which the most modern wisdom 
 hopes that we may at last be rescued. As to the second rea- 
 son, a man is compelled to ask, " And what is the religion 
 which this stupendous anomaly is to establish ?" for it cannot 
 itself be the religion ; it is described as a means to an end ; a 
 mere mode of demonstration. Is it to show that certain great 
 moral maxims are sound and true, which would commend 
 themselves to the conscience without any such evidence, and 
 which cannot be obeyed at all the more, if it were multiplied 
 a thousandfold ? Both these difficulties would seem to have 
 been increased greatly, by the perseverance with which Priest- 
 
142 Priestley's faith, 
 
 ley and the earlier Unitarians maintained the simplest mate- 
 rialism, denying the existence of a soul, and holding that the 
 body slept till some distant Resurrection-day. And yet I am 
 sure that the faith of these Unitarians in the Resurrection was 
 often most strong, most energetic. It bore them through many 
 outward difficulties, made them ready to encounter popular 
 indignation and contumely, saved them from the tempta- 
 tion, — which must have been often great, as the correspon- 
 dence between Gibbon and Priestley shows, — to cast in their 
 lot with the accomplished infidels, who respected them for 
 their knowledge of physics, and despised them for their want 
 of boldness in not wholly repudiating the supernatural. A 
 belief which could bear these fruits, I at least feel that I have 
 no right to speak slightingly of; nor do I discover that I have 
 what German doctors call " a theological interest" in under- 
 valuing it. I rather think, that if I were thoroughly rooted in 
 the principles which I have endeavored to assert in this and 
 the foregoing Essays, I should give thanks for thee is and 
 
 witnesses that Christ is with those who seem to speak most 
 slightingly of Him, testifying to them that He is risen indeed, 
 and that they have a life in Him which no speculations or 
 denials of theirs have been able to rob them of, even as we 
 have a life in Him, which our sins often hinder us from acknow- 
 ledging, but cannot quench. Since, however, it is evident that 
 the younger Unitarians cannot retain the ground which their 
 fathers held; since they must either give up all belief in the 
 fact of the Resurrection, or find some divine basis for it, which 
 was not perceived by them, — I do very earnestly ask them to 
 reflect upon the deeds and words on which I have been try- 
 ing to comment, and not to let the theories of my brethren, or 
 mine, hinder them from uniting with us in a confession which 
 -ted before all these theories, and will live when they have 
 perished. 
 
ESSAY IX. 
 
 ON JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 Whenever, such broad statements are put forward as 
 those which I have endeavored to defend in my last four Es- 
 says, — that Christ is the Lord of man ; that He took the nature 
 of man ; that He reconciled man and God by the sacrifice of 
 Himself; that He rose again as the Redeemer of man, from 
 death, the grave, and hell, — there arises in our minds a fear 
 which is both natural and righteous. Does not such language 
 overlook the notorious fact, that good and evil men are mixed 
 together in this world, — that the evil far outnumber the good ? 
 Does it not break down moral distinctions, which it is our first 
 duty to preserve ? Does it not practically deny that God ap- 
 proves the just and condemns the wicked? 
 
 No one should be weary of answering these objections, or 
 should complain because they rise up again and again after he 
 fancies that he has disposed of them. Though the whole pur- 
 pose of his argument may have been to show how essentially 
 and eternally opposed Good and Evil are, how impossible 
 it is that they ever can blend together; what according to 
 
 (143) 
 
144 HOW TO SEPARATE THE GOOD AND BAD. 
 
 God's revelation of Himself, He has done and is doing to sepa- 
 rate them, — he must not be the least grieved if he should be 
 met at last with the observation, " "What you talk about the 
 redemption of mankind, means nothing after all. It is a mere 
 dogma or technicality, with which those who are not in con- 
 tact with the actual world may amuse themselves. We who 
 are, know that, instead of identifying ourselves with the mass of 
 the creatures around us, we must learn how we may become 
 most entirely unlike them, or we never shall be like Him who 
 you say is perfectly Good and True." Such words, even 
 though they may be uttered in a very contemptuous tone, 
 would not excite any displeasure in us, if our own minds were 
 in a right and healthy state. We should welcome them is 
 signs that the speaker had an honest and deep conviction which 
 he will not part with, and which must be thoroughly satisfied 
 before he takes in any other. And it is the less excusable to 
 manifest any irritation when we are the subjects of this kind 
 of animadversion, because we know, or ought to know, that 
 this difficulty, in one shape or other, has given occupation to 
 every age of the Christian Church ; that it has been no sooner 
 overcome by a mighty effort in one direction, than it has reap- 
 peared in another ; that it has, therefore, all the tokens of 
 being a practical human difficulty, and one of so grave a kind, 
 that people have been compelled to seek an explanation of it, 
 and that when they have sought, they have found. The past 
 experiences of the world, in this and in all cases, are not war- 
 rants for discouragement ; if we use them faithfully they are 
 full of hope. 
 
 1. The Church, after the days of the Apostles, was no 
 longer contending chiefly with Jewish sects, which claimed to 
 be portions of the one divine nation. It was in the midst of a 
 huge empire which hated it, and with the principles of which 
 it was at war. Its members must carefully distinguish them- 
 selves from those among whom they dwelt, with whom they 
 
POST-BAPTISMAL SIN. 145 
 
 trafficked, who were under the same protection or tyranny. 
 Baptism was the sign of their fellowship. Baptism must sepa- 
 rate the churchman from the common earthly man. It could 
 not merely denote an outward contrast. The Aew dispensa- 
 tion had penetrated below the surface to the roots of things. 
 Baptism must import the most inward purification, the remo- 
 val of that common evil which all men had inherited from 
 Adam. " Then," it was argued, " he who wants this, is neces- 
 sarily lying under that common evil ; he can bs looked upon 
 only as a natural creature." There were innumerable checks 
 and counteractions to this opinion. It was incompatible with 
 the interest which the more spiritual of the Fathers felt in the 
 inquiries of Gentile philosophers, as bearing upon all the 
 deepest mysteries of the Gospel; it was still more obviously 
 incompatible with the view which they took of their own inter- 
 nal conflicts before they entered into the fold of Christ. But it 
 became the formal recognised school maxim, and it could not 
 be that, without having the most direct influence upon prac- 
 tice. The influence was felt more bitterly and painfully within 
 the Church than without it. Many Christians were found to be 
 leading as sinful lives as heathens. It could not be doubted 
 that their responsibilities were greater, and that, therefore, 
 their sin must be greater. An inference was speedily deduced 
 from that fact. The blessings of Baptism were said to be in- 
 finite for those who first received it. Their sins were blotted 
 out; they were now creatures. But the blessings were ex- 
 hausted in the act. Every subsequent step, in the immense 
 majority of cases, perhaps in every case, w T as a step out of pu- 
 rity into evil. The white robes were soiled ; the divine offer- 
 ing for sin had been spurned ; pardon could only be hoped for 
 by continual acts of repentance and mortification. 
 
 In this instance, as in the other, the counteracting influences 
 were most numerous. The Psalms were still the great book 
 of Church devotion. They spoke of flying to God as a refuge 
 7 
 
146 EFFECT OF THE DOCTRINE. 
 
 from all enemies ; of sins being forgiven and iniquities covered ; 
 of God not desiring sacrifice and offerings. The Creed pro- 
 claimed belief in forgiveness of sin, as part of the ordinary and 
 necessary faith of a Christian man ; the Lord's Prayer taught 
 him to say, " Our Father ;" the Eucharist was a continual 
 thanksgiving for a sacrifice offered and accepted. Still the 
 doctrine of post-baptismal sin had been proclaimed ; the un- 
 derstanding could not refute it ; the sin-stricken conscience 
 confirmed it ; the natural inference that it was much safer to 
 defer baptism to the latest moment was drawn, and, as in the 
 e of the first Christian emperor, reduced into practice. Con- 
 stant ue had settled the debates of the Donatists and presided 
 at a Council concerning the deepest mysteries of the faith, be- 
 fore he received the rite of initiation. He availed himself of 
 the delay to murder his son, and to leave orders for the slaugh- 
 ter of the most conspicuous members of his family. 
 
 If this memorable example of the moral consequences of 
 the doctrine had been wanting, there was more than enough 
 in the despair with which it inspired numbers of those who 
 had received the Sacrament, in the experiments to which that 
 despair drove them, in the utter confusion of their thoughts 
 respecting the character of God and the services which He 4 
 required of them, to startle its most resolute champion. But it 
 continued to dwell in the minds of good men, because for them 
 it was, to a great extent, inoperative-; their love for God and 
 His family, and for the whole world, made any opinion they 
 held a reason for severity to themselves, and for tenderness to 
 their brethren. They could not see any logical escape from 
 this one ; they conspired with bad men to suggest practices, 
 for curing outward sins or removing the sores they left in the 
 heart, which strengthened and deepened it. And thus it 
 seemed as if the great line which separated the Church from 
 the world was one which could not be wisely passed ; for, by 
 the Church's confession, the majority of those who were with- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR. 147 
 
 in it were not better than the rest of men, and were exposed 
 to a more dreadful doom. 
 
 But if this line was not deep enough, others might be 
 drawn. One class of baptized men might be allowed to rest 
 contented with an ordinary secular life, — to marry, rule the 
 household, and do those works which were considered godly 
 by the patriarchs and prophets, and which St. Paul command- 
 ed the ministers, as well as the members, of the churches he 
 founded, to perform; others might 'become religious, — might 
 eschew, as far as possible, human ties and obligations, and give 
 themselves to the service of God. Here was another experi- 
 ment for the purpose of separating the righteous from the 
 unrighteous. A church was to be set up within the Church. The 
 whole fellowship was not one of saints, but it was one which 
 might nurture saints. There were two great counteractions to 
 the habit of mind which this division indicated. The first lay 
 in the feeling of churchmen that they were meant to rule the 
 world, and therefore must take part in all the most secular 
 affairs of it, whatever danger there was of defilement from them. 
 The second arose from the strange discovery, that those who 
 were felt and confessed to be the truest saints in virtue of the 
 influence which they exerted, were precisely those who broke 
 down the barriers which had been raised between them and 
 ordinary people. They ate and drank with publicans and sin- 
 ners. They were especially witnesses to the people of a com- 
 mon Friend and Redeemer, w T ho cared for all. But these exist- 
 ing agencies enable us to understand better the effect of the 
 belief itself on the morality of the Church. Its dealings with 
 the ordinary business of the world took a particularly cunning, 
 sordid, debasing form, because that ordinary business was 
 supposed to be destined only for a lower Christian caste ; the 
 very sympathies which were most truly human and divine 
 looked artificial because, according to the theory, they were por- 
 tions of the saintly ideal, and the means by w r hich it was 
 
148 EFFECTS OF THE DIVISION. 
 
 exhibited to men. And the lowering effect of the scheme 
 upon those who gathered from it that their calling was to 
 shuffle through existence as they could, and only to expect 
 that divine helpers would be found waiting for them at the 
 close of it, no words can describe. 
 
 2. At last there came a clear and effectual testimony against 
 these notions, and the practices to which they had given birth. 
 And it took this form : — It said, " You are seeking to make 
 yourselves just orrighteous before God. You cannot do it. 
 There is but one 'Righteousness, that which is in Christ, for the 
 woret and the best of us. You are seeking to deliver your- 
 selves by this and that experiment from the sense of the evils 
 you have committed. You cannot do it. Faith in the Son of 
 God is the only deliverance for the conscience of any man. 
 You are not free till you trust Him; till you are free, you can- 
 not do the works of a freeman, but only those of a slave." 
 The Reformers who bore this protest were obliged to carry it 
 still further back. They were forced to Bay, as St. Paul had 
 said before them, " God Himself is the justifier. He has given 
 Christ for our sins, and has raised Him again for our justifica- 
 tion. He calls you, each of you, to know that Just One, in 
 whom you are accepted." 
 
 It is impossible not to see that this was levelling language ; 
 it was breaking down, to all appearance, the barriers between 
 the righteous and the wicked, barriers which centuries had 
 been at work to build up. Nay, it seemed as if this Ian., 
 carried one beyond the limits of the Church : as if any man 
 might claim the righteousness of Christ, — might have his con- 
 science set free from sin, — might believe that God had justified 
 him. The Romanists charged both these consequences of their 
 doctrine upon their opponents. u By preaching faith without 
 the deeds of the law," they said, " you efface moral distinc- 
 tions; by speaking so generally as you do of Christ's death 
 and resurrection, you seem to take away the privileges of the 
 
PROTEST AGAINST IT, 149 
 
 baptized man." The Keformers retaliated. " You," they 
 said, " are guilty of the sin you impute to us. You have over- 
 thrown all difference between the pure and the impure; you 
 have done so inevitably, because you have destroyed all differ- 
 ence between those who believe and those whodo not believe." 
 That being the danger which they dreaded most, they set them- 
 selves to consider how they might most successfully avoid it. 
 The result was a new set of experiments to separate the Church 
 from the world, and then to create a Church within the Church. 
 Faith justifies, but it must be ascertained who have faith. 
 Christ's is the only righteousness ; but to whom is that right- 
 eousness imputed ? God calls men to the knowledge of His 
 Son ; but if He calls, does He not also reject ? 
 
 It seemed to Protestant divines and laymen just as 
 necessary to invent plans for dividing the faithful from the 
 unbelieving, — those who belonged to Christ from those who 
 had no relation to Him, — the elect from the reprobate, — as it 
 had ever seemed necessary to the Eomanist to divide heathens 
 from baptized men, ecclesiastics from the laity, the saint from 
 the ordinarv Christian. And I think it must be owned, that 
 the effects in each case have been similar. The great moral 
 distinctions, w T hich God's law proclaims, and which the con- 
 science of man affirms, have not been deepened but obliter- 
 ated ; fictitious maxims and standards have been introduced 
 which are as unfavorable to the common honesty of daily life, 
 as they are to any higher righteousness which we should seek 
 as citizens of God's kingdom, as creatures formed in His image. 
 It seems as if faith signified a persuasion that God will not 
 punish us hereafter for the sins we have committed here, because 
 we have that persuasion ; as if some men were accounted 
 righteous, for Christ's sake, by a mere deception, it not being 
 the fact that they are righteous; as if God pleased of mere 
 arbitrariness that certain men should escape His wrath, and 
 that certain men should endure the full measure of it. I find 
 
150 OUR DUTY. 
 
 it hard even to state these propositions, without being guilty 
 of a kind of profaneness, and a kind of uncharitableness, so 
 shocking do they sound when they are put into plain words, and 
 so wrong is it to suppose that any man holds them in the sense 
 which those words seem to convey. But it is not wrong, — it 
 is a great duty, — to set them out broadly and nakedly, that 
 those w 7 ho have dallied with thoughts which are capable of 
 such a construction may shudder, and may ask themselves 
 whether this, or anything like this, is their meaning ; or, if 
 not, what they do mean. Provided always, that we admit, in 
 this instance, as in that of the Romanists, what enormous influ- 
 ences there are at work to neutralize these notions and state 
 ments ; even to change them into their direct opposites ; how 
 strong and earnest their desire is for freedom from sin, and 
 their willingness to bear any punishment rather than be slaves 
 of sin, who seem as if they thought their faith was merely to 
 procure them an exemption from penalties which others must 
 suffer ; how serious their zeal for God's truth, who seem, by 
 their words, as if they could bear to suspect Him of a fiction ; 
 how thoroughly in their hearts they acknowledge God to be 
 without partiality, and to be altogether just, whose phrases 
 ascribe to Him a principle of conduct upon which they would 
 themselves be ashamed to act. I repeat what I said before ; 
 the more frankly and thankfully we make these admissions, 
 the more we are bound to labor, that the faith which is in the 
 hearts of men may not be extinguished in them and utterly 
 misrepresented to their children, by the perilous unbelief which 
 they allow to mingle with it. For the sake of the precious 
 good, w r e must wrestle with its counterfeit. And this, I believe, 
 we can only do by resolving once for all, that since every 
 attempt which has been hitherto made to draw lines and limit- 
 ations about the Gospel of God, for the purpose of dividing 
 the righteous from the wicked, has tended to confound them, 
 — to put evil for good, and good for evil, — we will abstain in 
 
THE JUSTIFICATION OF CHRIST. 151 
 
 future from all such attempts, and will ask seriously whether 
 God has not himself established eternal distinctions, which 
 become clear to us when, and only when, we are content to be 
 the heralds of his free and universal love. I think it may be 
 shown, not only that these distinctions are most recognised 
 when we look upon all men as interested in Christ's Death and 
 Resurrection, but that we cannot do justice to the zeal of 
 Romanists for Baptism, of Protestants for Faith, that we can- 
 not reconcile the one with the other, paying the highest honor 
 to each, till we claim the wider ground from which they are 
 both inclined to drive us. I think that w T e shall find that the 
 Scriptures interpreted simply, interpreted especially in connex- 
 ion with the fact of the Resurrection which has lately occupied 
 us, explain and vindicate each of these apparently inconsistent 
 tenets, but explain and vindicate them by taking from each its 
 exclusive and inhuman, and with that, its fictitious and immoral, 
 character. 
 
 3. If we start from the point at which we arrived in the last 
 Essay, and believe that the Christ, the King of man's spirit, 
 having taken the flesh of man, willingly endured the death of 
 which that flesh is heir, and that His Father, by raising Him 
 from the dead, declared that death and the grave and hell 
 could not hold Him, because He was His righteous and well- 
 beloved Son, we have that first and highest idea of Justification 
 which St. Paul unfolds to us. God justifies the Man who 
 perfectly trusted in Him ; declares Him to have the only 
 righteousness which He had ever claimed, — the only one which 
 would not have been a sin and a fall for Him to claim, — the 
 righteousness of His Father, — the righteousness which was 
 His so long as He would have none of his own, so long as He 
 was content to give up Himself. " He was put to death in the 
 flesh, He was justified in the Spirit /" this is the Apostle's 
 language ; this is his clear, noble, satisfactory distinction, 
 which is re-asserted in various forms throughout the New 
 
152 JUSTIFICATION OF MEN. 
 
 Testament. But St. Paul takes it for granted, that this justi- 
 fication of the Son of God and the Son of man was his own 
 justification, — his own, not because he was Saul of Tarsus, not 
 because he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, but because he was 
 a man. All his zeal as an Apostle of the Gentiles, all his 
 arguments against his own countrymen, have this ground and 
 no other; the one would have worn out from contempt and 
 persecution, the other would have fallen utterly to pieces, if 
 he had not been assured that Christ's resurrection declared 
 Him to be the Son of man, the Head of man, and therefore, 
 that His justification was the justification of each man. He 
 had not arrived at this discovery without tremendous personal 
 struggles. He had felt far more deeply than Job did, how 
 much he was at war with the law of his being, the law which he 
 was created to obey ; he had felt far more deeply than Job, 
 that there was a righteousness near him, and in him, in which 
 his inner mind delighted. He had been sure that there must be 
 a Redeemer to the righteousness the victory over the 
 
 evil ; to deliver him out of the power to which he was sold, to 
 
 tisfy the spirit in him which longed for good. He had 
 thanked God through Jesus Christ his Lord. And now he felt 
 that he was a righteous man ; that he had the only righteous- 
 ness which a man could have, — the righteousness of God, — 
 the righteousness which is upon faith, — the righteousne- 
 which is not for Jew more than for Gentile, — which is for all 
 alike. 
 
 How impossible, then, was it for him to receive Baptism as 
 if it were merely the outward badge of a profession, a sign 
 which separated the sect of the Nazarenes from other Jews, or 
 other men! If it marked him out as a Christian, that w; 
 because it denoted that he would no more be the member of 
 any sect, of any partial society whatever, — that he was claim- 
 ing his relation to the Son of God, the Head of the whole 
 human race. It must import his belief that this Son of God, 
 
MEANING OF BAPTISM. 153 
 
 and not Adam, was the true root of Humanity; that from 
 Him, and not from any ancestor, each man derived his life. It 
 must import his acknowledgment, that in himself, in his flesh, 
 dwelt no good thing; but that he was not obliged or intended 
 to live as a creature of flesh, as a separate self-seeking being; 
 that it was utterly contrary to God's order that he should. 
 But if Baptism imported so much, it must import more. Paul 
 had not devised it, or invented it. An act which expressed 
 the giving up of himself, could not be one which only signified 
 that he had made a choice between two religions, abandoning 
 one, adopting another. He had done nothing of the kind. He 
 had not abandoned his Jewish faith; he was holding it fast, 
 maintaining that it had been proved to be true throughout. 
 He was not adopting a Christian religion. He was simply 
 submitting himself to a Son of David as being also the Son of 
 God. Baptism, then, he accepted as the ordinance of God for 
 men, as His declaration of that which is true concerning men, 
 of the actual relation in which men stand to Him. If He had 
 justified His Son, by raising Him from the dead, — if, in that 
 act, He had justified the race for which Christ had died, — then 
 it was lawful to tell men that they were justified before God, 
 that they were sons of God in the only-begotten Son ; it was 
 lawful to tell them that the act which, by Christ's command, 
 accompanied the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, signi- 
 fied this, and nothing less than this. If Christ was not the 
 actual Mediator between God and man, — if His resurrection 
 did not declare that God confessed Him in that character, and 
 thereby confessed men to be righteous in Him, — Baptism was 
 a nullity, a mere delusion ; it ought not to be associated with 
 the proclamation of facts so stupendous; a message professing 
 to come from God, who is a spirit, and concerning all the 
 mysteries of man's spiritual life, should not be linked to a poor 
 petty rite which denoted merely his external position. 
 
 By declaring in plain words, that they who were baptized 
 
 7# 
 
154 TRUST ALWAYS RIGHT. 
 
 into Christ were baptized into His death, that they put on 
 Christ, that they were to count themselves dead indeed to sin, 
 but alive unto God, risen with Christ, St. Paul pointed out the 
 ever-effectual protection against the error into which the Church 
 afterwards fell ; the one great divine distinction for which it 
 substituted its awkward and mischievous theories and prac- 
 tices. So long as Baptism was really felt to denote the true 
 and eternal law of man's relation to God, so long it could give 
 no excuse for those notions respecting post-baptismal sin, out 
 of which such enormous and complicated evils were developed. 
 How could those who believed that God had declared His 
 Son to be the root of righteousness for every man, — that they 
 were baptized into Him. adopted to be sons of God in Hiin, — 
 teach any human creature that he had had a certain righteous- 
 
 38, justification, freedom from evil, for a moment, but that 
 when he had yielded to the lusts of the flesh, or the power of 
 the Evil Spirit, these blessings were his no longer? Of course 
 it would be so, if his righteousness were his own property, if 
 it could ever become his own property. But if what baptism 
 proclaimed was precisely, that it never could, that the notion 
 of a self-righteousness is false in principle, the greatest of all 
 contradictions, then it must be the right and duty of men at 
 all times to turn to Him in whom they are created, redeemed, 
 justified ; their trust was either lawful at no time, or it was 
 lawful at every time ; on no principle, save that of continual 
 trust in the Lord of his spirit, could a man assert the privilege 
 and glory of his baptism, and rise above his enemies. What- 
 ever doctrine robbed him of that trust, or led him to build his 
 life and conduct upon distrust, was earthly, sensual, devilish. 
 
 The Reformers, I conceive, were riot denying the strongest 
 assertions of St. Paul respecting baptism, when they used this 
 language, and called on all men to believe in the Son of God 
 for their justification. In fact, they appealed to these assertions 
 continually ; they were their most effectual weapons. Nor, I 
 
PROTESTANT SINS. 155 
 
 conceive, did they pervert or weaken these words, when they 
 said that the Church was falling into the condition of a mere 
 world, and that faithful men must be the instruments of raising- 
 it out of that condition. Faith, they said, — and the conscience 
 of men confirmed their words, — is the ground of right hearty 
 action ; unbelief makes it impossible. 
 
 " Yes," replies the Eomanist, u and your Protestant mode 
 of reforming the universal Church was to split it into a thou- 
 sand sects ; your Protestant way of asserting the preciousness 
 of faith was, to leave us nothing in which we should believe." 
 The mockery is severe, and it is deserved. Sectarianism has 
 been the effect of the schemes which Protestants have adopted 
 for the purpose of defining who have a right to be members of 
 Christ's Church, and who have not; the loss of a distinct and 
 common object of faith has been the effect of the schemes 
 which Protestants have adopted to ascertain who have and 
 who have not the gift of faith, or the right to believe. They 
 have sought to be wiser than God, and God has confounded 
 their vanity. He has laid one foundation for a Universal 
 Church, and they thought they might make foundations for 
 themselves. He has established the great distinctions, that 
 there is in every man a spirit which seeks righteousness, and a 
 flesh which stoops to evil ; that there is with every man the 
 Christ, who would quicken his spirit, and deliver his soul and 
 body out of death ; and with every man an evil power, who 
 tempts him to become the slave of his flesh, and so to destroy 
 his soul and body ; that in Christ, the true Lord of their spirit, 
 men are claimed as sons of God, and that they, by distrusting 
 Him, and yielding to the devil, become utterly unlike Him, 
 forming themselves in the image of the father whom they have 
 chosen. And we, for these great practical divine contrasts, 
 which will be brought out in the clear light of God's judgment- 
 day, and which nothing in earth or hell or heaven can alter or 
 modify, must have our own sets of spiritual and carnal men; 
 
156 THE CLAPHAM SCHOOL. 
 
 of those who can make it clear to us that they believe, and of 
 those who cannot : divisions which are so many premiums to 
 hypocrisy, so many hindrances to honest men, so many tempta- 
 tions to him whose experiences have acquired for him the title 
 " religious'' to think that he has not a world and flesh and devil 
 to struggle with, while he may be convincing a looker-on, by 
 his ordinary behavior, that he is an obedient slave of all three; 
 which tempt those who are treated as carnal and worldly, to 
 believe what they are told of themselves, to act as if they had 
 not that longing for good, which they yet kuow that they have, 
 and which God does not disown, for His Son has awakened it, 
 though His servants may be stilling it. 
 
 Most Bi lly the curse of God is upon these Protestant 
 
 devices, and we shall fee] it more and more. But is the refuge 
 in going back to those who have been guilty of framing devices 
 for the same ungodly end ; devices, the condemnation of which 
 is written in the history of the world ? Js it not rather in the 
 bolder, freer proclamation of God's universal Gospel, of a 
 Church founded on Christ the Bon of iBod and the Son of 
 man, of His justification of each man as a spiritual creature, a 
 child of God created to trust Him, to know Him, to exhibit 
 His likeness ? 
 
 I have alluded to the sympathy which existed between 
 orthodox English Churchmen and Unitarians in the last cen- 
 tury, on the subject of the conversions and spiritual struggles 
 upon which the Evangelical teachers dwelt so much. There 
 was an alliance also between these same parties against the 
 leading Evangelical doctrine. Both alike foretold that the 
 consequence of holding and preaching justitication by faith, 
 must be the weakening of moral obligatio: A high-flown 
 
 pedantical morality might be cultivated by those who adhered 
 to this tenet; plain home-spun English honesty and good faith 
 would be uudermined by it." 
 
THEIR WITNESS FOR TRUTH. 157 
 
 When the Evangelical leachers appealed to our Articles, in 
 defence of their proposition, they used a good argwmentu?n ad 
 hominem for one division of their opponents ; it had no weight 
 at all for the other. The evidence they required was of a dif- 
 ferent kind, and it was not wanting. The Edinburgh Eeview, 
 by adopting Sir James Stephen's delightful Essay " On the 
 Clapham School," has practically declared, that the cause of 
 which it was the ablest champion forty years ago, is not now 
 defensible; that the men who, if the words of its accomplished 
 clerical ally were true, must have been utterly fantastical, as 
 w 7 ell as fanatical, — governing themselves by some absurd 
 imaginary principle, which has nothing to do with the business 
 of the world, were really simple, clear-hearted, clear-headed 
 men, who were faithful in their callings, who infused a new and 
 juster spirit into commercial life, who compelled politicians to 
 acknowledge other maxims than those of party, another object 
 than that of advancing themselves. There can be now no 
 manner of doubt that the existence of such men had the most 
 purifying, elevating influence upon English society ; that they 
 did very much to overthrow that morality of sentiment, which 
 the Anti-Jacobin could only ridicule, and to counteract the 
 stock-jobbing tendencies of the day, which some of those whom 
 the Anti-Jacobin most lauded were nurturing. Their one 
 great. testimony, that a man can never be a chattel, was the 
 most significant practical commentary on all they said of the 
 worth of the individual soul ; a proof how thoroughly their 
 doctrine possessed their lives ; an example to all after genera- 
 tions; seeing that the very time they chose for making this 
 protest was the one in which the doctrine of the individual 
 rights of men was frightening them and most of their political 
 associates, seeing that they were accused of promoting Jaco- 
 binism as well as of putting the wealth and commerce of the 
 great English cities in peril, and that they nevertheless perse 
 vered, in the faith that evil must be denounced at all hazards, 
 
158 APPEAL TO UNITARIANS. 
 
 and that that which is wrong in the tendencies of a time, can 
 only be effectually resisted by the assertion of the right which 
 is most akin to it. This was faith, and these men were in the 
 true sense "just by faith." Their outward acts proceeded 
 from a principle; that principle was, Trust in an unseen Person. 
 
 "Why do those who talk most of justification by faith in our 
 day exhibit no similar fruits'? Why is English society not 
 raised or purified by their presence in it? Why are the trades- 
 men among them as ready as any others to mix chicory with 
 their coffee 1 the merchants and politicians to job ? the divines 
 to slander ? Is it not because they believe justification by 
 faith, instead of believing in Christ the Justifier? Is not the 
 whole principle changed ? Is not the formula which repre- 
 sents the principle doing duty for it ? 
 
 I know well how many there are in the modern Evangelical 
 'school who imitate the faith as well as the works of their 
 fathers. I know how deeply they are grieved by the crowd 
 of heartless aud noisy champions who defend their cause be- 
 cause it is the popular and patronised one now, as they would 
 have cursed it and slandered its professors fifty years ago. I 
 entreat tiie Unitarians to compare these two classes ; those 
 whom they cannot for one moment suspect of hypocrisy, to 
 w r hose honesty and simplicity of character they are willing to 
 do homage ; and those whom they have a right to condemn as 
 loud, talking, unreal bigots, bitter against all who differ from 
 them, in proportion as they feel their own ground insecure. I 
 entreat them to ask themselves whether the most striking char- 
 acteristic of the former, so far as they are able to judge, is not 
 faith in, and devotion to, a living Person, whom they reverence 
 as their Lord, and to whom they cleave as their Friend i 
 whether the others are not as evidently fighting for a notion or 
 a theory ? Supposing this to be the case, then are not the former 
 holding with a strong grasp that very belief, which the Unita- 
 rian idea of Christ would wrest from them ? Would not the 
 
UNITARIAN AND EVANGELICAL ALLIES. 159 
 
 loss to the other, if that idea were forced upon them, be very 
 inconsiderable indeed? If the anti-orthodox faith obtained 
 the ascendency which it once held among the Vandals in 
 Africa, and were as persecuting as it was among them, is there 
 not the highest probability that this latter class would supply 
 a band of ready, promising, very soon vehement, converts 
 to the new system ? is it not certain that the former would 
 withstand it to the death ? 
 
 There is one fact recorded by the faithful and affectionate 
 biographer of the Clapham school which, I should be very dis- 
 honest and cowardly if I suppressed. It is, that one of the 
 neighbors of Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Thornton, who was 
 united with them in many of their benevolent projects and in 
 close personal friendship, was professedly and notoriously 
 a Unitarian. It must have puzzled him greatly at first, to ex- 
 plain how T all the plain and practical virtues which he saw in 
 them, not only accompanied, — that he might have accounted 
 for on his general maxims of toleration, — but manifestly flowed 
 out of, the faith which he had been taught was so likely to 
 beget immorality. It may have puzzled them almost equally 
 to understand how he, an opposer of that faith, not only per- 
 formed right acts, but exhibited, as we are told he did, that 
 habitual rectitude, which they would ordinarily and rightly at- 
 tribute to some deep root. I suppose he came at last to some 
 solution of his difficulty which satisfied him. I should think 
 their faith in Christ the Justifier must have been the solution 
 of theirs. As that grew stronger, they must have said more 
 and more frequently, " Thou, Lord, art more than all our 
 systems and calculations. Thou mayest perchance have rule 
 in a thousand hearts, where they are not admitted, even as it 
 is clear Thou dost not rule in many where they are received." 
 And that conclusion, instead of leading them to Latitudinarian- 
 ism, will have saved them from it. How could they ever give 
 up their faith in Christ as a living Person, when they traced, 
 
160 COWPER. 
 
 not only all that was not evil in themselves, but all that was 
 good in any man, to Him 3 If they had not only seen that 
 truth at certain times, but had been able to state it fully at 
 all times, from how much of misery might they have saved 
 some of their contemporaries, from how much vagueness and 
 infidelity their descendants ! Need Cowper have sunk into 
 despair if he had believed that Christ was in him at all times, 
 and was not dependent upon his apprehension or faith 1 
 Would his evangelical biographers have been reduced to the 
 miserable — not always the successful — apology, that his mad- 
 ness was not caused or aggravated by his Christianity ? 
 Might they not have had to give thanks that that was the cure 
 of it ? If Blanco "White had ever learnt to extend that belief 
 to all men, would he have approached the confines of specula- 
 tive atheism ? 
 
 I ask these questions with fear ; but I think, for many rea- 
 sons, that they should be asked. And since the last of them 
 has a very close interest for the new school of Unitarians, I 
 would venture to offer one or two more thoughts for their re- 
 flection. They have learnt from Mr, Carlyle and others, to 
 speak of faith in a tone altogether different from that which 
 was common in the last generation. I would respectfully in- 
 quire of them, whether they are not, ever and anon, falling into 
 the error which I have attributed to our modern Evangelicals, 
 and which infects many beside them, — that of making Faith 
 itself an object of trust, almost of worship ? I know how they 
 will escape from the charge. " Oh no !" they will say, " we 
 mean, not faith in Faith, but faith in an idea. Don't you know 
 what Mr. Emerson says of the Mahometans, that they over- 
 threw hosts, because they were horsed on an idea ? What we 
 object to is, your doctrine that faith in a Christian idea is the 
 only faith." I beg to disclaim any such representation of my 
 doctrine. I acknowledge that Mahomet triumphed over hosts, 
 I acknowledge that he triumphed by faith. Yes ! by faith in 
 
FAITH IN AN IDEA. 161 
 
 a real living God. His opponents were horsecLupon ideas ; (or 
 rather conceptions of their own mind ;) therefore the horses 
 and their riders were cast into the sea. I think that his faith 
 could overcome much, because it was faith in a substance, a 
 reality, a Person. I do not think it could overcome the world, 
 or the flesh, or the devil. I think all three have proved in the 
 issue, too strong for the Mahometan. I accept the Apostle 
 John's explanation of the two conditions which are necessary 
 to a complete victory. It has stood the teat of much experience, 
 and will I think, stand the test of all. " This is the victory 
 that overcometh the world ; even our Faith." " Who is he 
 that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus 
 is the Son of God?" 
 
ESSAY X. 
 
 ON REGENERATION. 
 
 Mr. Combe's Essay on the Physical Constitution of man has, 
 I am told, had an enormous circulation, both here and in Scot- 
 land. I cannot wonder at its success: nor do I regret it, 
 though I might not easily find a book from the conclusions of 
 which I mora entirely dissent. It has, I think, brought the 
 question of education, and many other questions, to the right 
 issue. What is the constitution of man ? We want to know 
 that. Till we know it, we cannot educate ; we cannot do 
 much to benefit the condition of men, individually or socially. 
 When we know it, our main business will be to ask what there 
 is which has hindered men from being in conformity with their 
 constitution ; how they may be brought into conformity with 
 it. That I understand to be Mr. Combe's main principle, 
 and I heartily assent to it. I do not think it is now for the 
 first time announced. I believe men have been trying to act 
 upon it. But I believe also that many causes have prevent- 
 ed us from stating it to ourselves consistently ; that notions of 
 education and reformation, inconsistent with this, have intruded 
 
 (162) 
 
PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 163 
 
 themselves into our minds ; that they are confusing us greatly; 
 that any one who recals us to this sound and orthodox doctrine 
 is doing us a service. Mr. Combe, however, claims for him- 
 self an honor which did not belong to our ancestors. He says, 
 that they knew little or nothing of man's physical state, of the 
 laws of his body, of the condition under which he exists as a 
 citizen of this earth. I am not inclined to dispute either the 
 charge against them, or the pretensions which he puts forth 
 for himself. I had no doubt this was their special ignorance, 
 and that it was the mother of a multitude of false theories and 
 mischievous practices. I think God has given us great means 
 of removing the primary error, and its fruits ; and that we are 
 guilty in His sight, if we do not use them. 
 
 But, further, Mr. Combe assumes that this knowledge 
 which we have attained, respecting men's physical condition, 
 is the only secure knowledge, the only knowledge upon which 
 we can act. All other, he thinks, all which our ancestors sup- 
 posed they had, is a mere collection of guesses. They did not 
 agree about it themselves ; we agree about it still less. How 
 can we teach men guesses ? How can we apply them to 
 practice ? When they are put into one scale, and ascertained 
 laws into another, must not they kick the beam ? Practically, 
 therefore, even if we have ever so much hankering after these 
 guesses, — ever so much of what we call Faith in them, — we 
 must leave them out of our calculation. And is it not proba- 
 ble that we shall find, at last, that we had the best possible 
 right to leave them out ; that in fact these physical laws explain 
 them ; that if we understand them, we understand the whole 
 constitution of man ? 
 
 To these questions I answer distinctly : Whenever guesses 
 are balanced against laws, guesses must kick the beam ; if 
 divines and moralists have nothing but guesses to produce, 
 and Mr. Combe has laws, it is not a matter of doubt but of 
 certainty, that he will be the teacher of the world, and that 
 they must make their way out of it as fast as they can. I ad- 
 
164 REASONS FOR DISSENTING FROM MR. COMBE. 
 
 mit, further, that there are a great many appearances in the 
 history of the world and in our present position, which may, 
 very naturally, lead Mr. Combe and thousands of others to 
 the conclusion that divines and moralists are guessers and no- 
 thing else. Not a few of them have almost admitted that they 
 have no certain ground to stand on. Many of those who do not, 
 rest the proof that they can teach things which may and should 
 l>e believed upon reasons which do not. satisfy the understand- 
 ings and consciences to w T hich they are presented. The divi- 
 sions of Christendom, which have increased, and are increasing, 
 seem to make out the strongest prima facie case in favor of 
 Mr. Combe's practical decision. If every other method of ed- 
 ucation is laid aside and his adopted, as the only one which 
 Btal in sanction or which is available for men universally, 
 
 he and those who have joined with him in advocating it will 
 be much less answerable for the result, than we who have 
 opposed him. 
 
 After what I have said in previous Essays, it would be great 
 affectation to pretend that I have any doubt as to the final 
 ie of that experiment. As I have throughout been tracing 
 feelings and consciousnesses in men which point to some spir- 
 itual object, and which are uneasy, feverish, tormenting, pre- 
 cisely because that which they seek they cannot find, and be- 
 cause some faint, obscure image is offered to them as the sub- 
 stitute for it ; as I have maintained that these feelings and 
 consciousnesses are not less active now than in former days, 
 but, perhaps, more active, — active in quarters where the influ- 
 ence of Church doctrines is utterly repudiated ; as I have dif- 
 fered from my brethren chiefly in confessing the wider extent 
 oi these consciousnesses, the evidence which proves them to 
 exist where we should be inclined to ignore them ; as I have 
 been reasoning with those who would build a new scheme of 
 divinity on these very consciousnesses, — one which is, they 
 say, to be universal, and to displace our exclusive doctrines : 
 
GOOD HIS DISCIPLES MAY DO. 165 
 
 it cannot be very necessary that I should enter at large into 
 my reasons for not supposing that we can provide for all the 
 necessities of human beings, or set them altogether right, by 
 treating them as creatures possessing a stomach, a liver, and 
 a brain. It is, of course, an obvious and familiar theory, that 
 these consciousnesses are secreted in the stomach, the liver, 
 and the brain ; I am quite willing that any one should hold 
 that theory, and should try to work it out. I believe that in 
 the course of his workings he will do much good ; that he 
 will continually observe, and may enable us to observe, the 
 close connexion of these bodily functions with the thoughts 
 and moral state of human beings, — their action and re-action 
 upon each other. I believe that the more the facts which 
 establish that relation and inter-dependence are noted, the bet- 
 ter ; that the more they are meditated upon, the better. And 
 this because the thorough patient observation and meditation 
 of them will, I am sure, set right a great many crude notions 
 of ours, and will also convince the inquirer that his scheme 
 must fail ; that when he has got all priests and traditions out 
 of his way, he is only beginning the process of clearance which 
 is needful for his success ; that he must get the thoughts and 
 convictions which have helped most to raise and civilize human 
 society out of his way also : that if he does not, they will per- 
 plex and torment him continually. And I do tell him plainly 
 and confidently, that, tolerant man as he is — honestly tolerant, 
 I have no doubt, and eager to rid the earth of us, because we 
 are intolerant — he will not be able to expel an infinite number 
 of religious experiences, fancies, notions, by medicines allopa- 
 thic or homeopathic: he will be obliged to resort to older, 
 more tried methods. He must — I would say it to him in the 
 lowest whisper — but I must say it, and he and the world will 
 find whether I am right, — he must persecute. The inconvenient 
 consciousnesses, which do not let the physical constitution act 
 freely and healthily, will have to be prohibited. And since it 
 
166 WHY THEY 3JUST BE PERSECUTORS. 
 
 is not easy to reach them, by decrees and swords, the expres- 
 sion of them must be checked, because it will be found that 
 they are just as infectious as scarlet fever or small pox. I do 
 not speak these words lightly or inconsiderately. The history 
 of persecution by all sects, governments, churches, in all fami- 
 lies and neighborhoods, seems to me most clearly to show that 
 it originates with a desire, — (often an honest desire — it was so 
 in Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, when they ordered the deaths 
 of Ignatius and Polycarp) — to put down that which is found 
 to interfere seriously, either with the quiet of society, or with 
 the comfortable working of some system or theory, which we 
 have convinced ourselves is salutary and needful for human 
 beings. That I think is an account of it which includes all 
 the particular motives and influences being of course 
 most various. And I cannot understand how those who think 
 that there are certain common tendencies in all men, call them 
 physical or what you please, should suppose themselves free 
 from this tendency, which experience shows to be so general ; 
 or, at least, why the world should suppose them free 
 from it. I rather think the danger of their yielding to it 
 greatly increased by their apparent conviction that it never can 
 assail them. 
 
 I do not, however, dream that warnings of this kind will 
 deter any one from reducing Mr. Combe's theory to practice ; 
 most certainly I do not wish that they should hinder any one 
 from giving it the most serious consideration. There are some 
 eminent moralists among ourselves, formed in the school of 
 Butler, who will be inclined to dismiss it rather superciliously 
 on another ground. They will exclaim, " Why, are Mr. 
 Combe's disciples really ignorant that a much closer observer 
 and deeper thinker than he is, has been in this field before 
 him, and has shown us clearly and satisfactorily that there is 
 a moral constitution in which all human beings are sharers ? 
 Have they never heard that Butler has proved social affections 
 
BUTLER. 167 
 
 to be an integral part of our human nature, a far more essen- 
 tial part of it than the senses or the power of locomotion ? Do 
 they not know that he has proved self-love and resentment to 
 have a moral basis ? Have they forgotten the evidence by 
 which he has shown that the Conscience is not only one of the 
 faculties of our nature, but the lordly, sovereign faculty, to 
 which all owe obedience ? Will any one say that the pro- 
 cesses by which these positions have been demonstrated are 
 less legitimate or less scientific than those to which Mr. Combe 
 has had recourse ?" 
 
 I, at least, feel no temptation to maintain that paradox. I 
 should find it difficult to say how much I honor Butler, or 
 how much I owe to his discourses on Human Nature. But I 
 cannot help perceiving that there are causes which give the 
 exclusive believers in a physical constitution, — immeasurably 
 inferior as they may be to him, — a very decided advantage 
 over him. Though Physiology may be even yet in its infancy, 
 the physiologist speaks confidently of some facts and laws 
 which he has ascertained. As Butler is commonly interpreted, 
 he assumes all moral principles to depend merely on probable 
 evidence. Some of his disciples seem to look upon that as his 
 most characteristic doctrine. 
 
 Again, there are certain diseases of the body which can 
 without any hesitation be traced to certain conditions of the 
 atmosphere, which are the effects of bad drainage, neglect of 
 ventilation, want of cleanliness ; others, which can be directly 
 referred to drunkenness or profligacy. The former are posi- 
 tive evils directly curable by physical remedies, the latter, which 
 we commonly call moral, might be avoided by a man who 
 noticed how much of sickness, pain, poverty, they produced, 
 But when our social affections and our self-love are diseased, 
 it does not appear that Butler has pointed out any satisfactory 
 method of setting them right, of restoring their healthy 
 activity. He shows that they are meant for us, and that they 
 
168 HIS DOCTRINE OF THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 are meant to be in harmony ; but suppose they are dormant, 
 how are they to be awakened ? suppose they are in discord, 
 what is to reconcile them ? Is it not likely that a man will say, 
 " Mr. Combe helps me to a certain extent. He shows me some 
 influences which may seriously derange the economy of my 
 individual life, and of the world. He tells me how I may avoid 
 those influences. Till you can give me some aid that is more 
 efficient, I must avail myself of his." The student of Buth 
 doctrine on the Conscience, is often forced even more painfully 
 upon this conclusion. For he will say to himself, " My con- 
 science ought, you say, to be a king. But it is not a king. It is 
 a captive. How shall it be raised to its throne ? And when it 
 lias got a temporary ascendency, can I trust it? Does not 
 Butler himself admit the posssibility of superstition acting 
 upon it, and deranging its decisions ? Is that a slight excep- 
 tion to a general maxim'? Does not all history show that the 
 decrees of this great ruler may be made contradictory, mon- 
 strous, destructive, by this disturbing force, which Butler 
 notices, but hardly deigns to take account of?" 
 
 And thirdly, it must not be forgotten that so intelligent and 
 ardent (I dare not say, so excessive) an admirer of Butler as 
 Sir James Mackintosh, has complained, that while he is bold 
 and clear in asserting the fact of a conscience, and its right to 
 dominion, he is timid and hesitating in affirming what it is, and 
 how its prerogatives are to be exercised. Is not this remark 
 strictly true ? Is not every practical student of Butler obliged 
 to put the question to himself: " This faculty belongs to my 
 nature : then : — What, to me ? Is the conscience mine ? Do I 
 govern it, or does it govern me ?" The school-doctor may 
 dismiss this difficulty with great indifference. For the living 
 man everything is involved in the answer to it. 
 
 I have taken Butler as the highest specimen and best known 
 representative of a noble class of thinkers and writers, to whom 
 I believe we are under the greatest obligations ; who have 
 
REGENERATION ; ONE MEANING. 169 
 
 brought to light truths which we could never less afford than 
 now to lose sight of, but who are in danger of being utterly- 
 supplanted by a race of mere physical philosophers, or of mere 
 spiritualists, if we are not prepared to examine in what rela- 
 tion they stand to both. The great facts to which Butler bore 
 so brave a witness, cannot, I think, be explained, while we 
 regard them merely as facts in man's nature. The more we 
 look into them, the more they imply an ascent out of that 
 nature, a necessity in man to acknowledge that which is above 
 it, that which is above himself. When we take in this neces- 
 sity, as implied in our constitution, the difficulties which beset 
 the most full and masterly explanation that can be given of 
 these facts, gradually disappear. I will endeavor to explain 
 what I mean, and to offer one more evidence that Theology 
 is the protector and basis of Morality and Humanity. 
 
 The Word Regeneration occupies a prominent place in all 
 summaries of Christian Theology. It seems to many who 
 hear it, and to many who use it, as if it imported a principle 
 most inconsistent with that which Butler has defended in his 
 Sermons on Human Nature. " If a man requires to be regen- 
 erated," they ask, " before he can be that which God requires 
 him to be, that upon which He looks with approbation, how 
 can human nature in itself be the good thing which Butler 
 would have us believe that it is ? Must he not be at variance 
 with the Scriptures, at variance with the testimony of our 
 hearts, which confess the Scriptures to be true, and ourselves 
 to be evil?" I am always glad when I hear a person who has 
 really a reverence both for our great moralists and for the 
 Scriptures, asking this question ; it is nearly certain to lead 
 him into a clearer apprehension of both. I am always sorry 
 when I hear a person asking it who wishes to prove Butler 
 wrong ; it is nearly certain that he will be confirmed in the 
 notion that he himself is perfectly right, and that in his eager- 
 8 
 
170 ANOTHER MEANING. 
 
 ness not to twist the Bible into conformity with Butler's notions 
 he will twist it into conformity with his own. 
 
 Regeneration may mean the substitution, in certain persons, 
 at some given moment, (say in the ordinance of Baptism, or at 
 a crisis called conversion,) of a nature specially bestowed upon 
 them, for the one which belongs to them as ordinary human 
 beings. No doubt it has this meaning for a great many Prot- 
 estants, as well as Romanists; no doubt this meaning mixes 
 with another, in some of the purest and noblest hearts to be 
 found in either communion. Such a doctrine of regeneration, 
 I apprehend, is quite incompatible with the doctrine of a moral- 
 ist, who supposes the human constitution, -*4hat which belongs 
 to us not as special individuals different from the race, but as 
 members of the race, — to be good, and any violations of it and 
 transgressions of it to be evil. There is no possibility, so far 
 as I see, of bringing these two schemes of thought into recon- 
 ciliation; they are directly, essentially antipathic. For, to sup- 
 
 96 that they can coexist in any human heart or intellect, 
 merely because one has the label'- moral,"and the other, " theo- 
 logical," is to suppose that heart or intellect, a mere shop or ware- 
 house of opinions, in which no living processes are going on, 
 but where goods are kept to meet the inconsistent demands of 
 different markets. 
 
 Regeneration may mean the renovation or restitution of that 
 which has fallen into decay, repair of an edifice according to 
 the ground-plan and design of the original architect. This 
 meaning is in accordance with the common usage of language. 
 It is more like the sense which either a popular writer or a 
 philologer would put upon the word, supposing he did not 
 know that it had acquired another. And it is a signification 
 which cleaves to the word in the discourses of the most reli- 
 gious people ; one which Romanists and Protestants adopt con- 
 sciously in the way of argument, and fall into unconsciously in 
 their prayers and exhortations. It is obvious that such a sig- 
 
OBJECTIONS TO THAT MEANING. 171 
 
 nification need not in the least contradict Butler's idea of a 
 human constitution, but might remarkably illustrate it. There 
 being a certain constitution intended for man by His Crea- 
 tor, and certain influences about him or within him which 
 weakened or undermined it, the author of the work might 
 look lovingly upon it, and devise certain measures for counter- 
 acting those influences, and bringing it forth in its fulness and 
 order. Some such theological complement of his moral system 
 we may suppose gave coherency and satisfaction to the mind 
 of Butler himself. 
 
 But there is a great difficulty in our way, if we seek to put 
 this idea of Regeneration in the place of the one which I set 
 forth previously. Such a regeneration may be intended for us ; 
 there may be processes leading some men, even leading the 
 world, towards it ; but are there any signs that it has been 
 accomplished ? Is the order, in this sense, restored ? Can 
 even good men be said in this sense to have recovered what 
 the race had lost ? Theologians therefore dwell on a restitu- 
 tion or reformation, or complete renewal of the divine image in 
 individuals, as an object of hope. Many of them connect with 
 that, a restitution and reformation of the earth and of the 
 order of human society. But they contend, as earnestly, that 
 there is something already obtained by Christ, for those who 
 will receive it. This something, they say, is very real ; we are 
 partakers of it now, not to be partakers of it in some future ideal 
 state ; it is the necessary beginning of, and preparation for 
 any such state. And the words " birth" and " generation," 
 which they find recurring so continually in Scripture, do, they 
 contend, suggest another thought than that which the restora- 
 tion of an edifice suggests. They must indicate a life communi- 
 cated from a Father. A life of this kind they affirm they have 
 received ; it is renewed every hour ; they cannot possibly wait 
 for it till the world recovers its primitive glory; they w 7 ant 
 it as the pledge that they shall not sink into utter debasement. 
 
172 DIALOGUE WITH NICODEMUS. 
 
 Those who use this language, refer to the 3d chapter of St 
 John's Gospel, as containing the full interpretation of the doc- 
 trine which is so unspeakably precious to them. All Chris- 
 tians admit that this is the passage by which their opinions 
 respecting Regeneration must be tested. No humble reader, 
 I suppose, thinks that he has fathomed the depth of the dis- 
 course with Nicodemus. Every humble reader probably feels 
 that he has caught glimpses of light from it w 7 hich he would not 
 hange for the most costly treasures of the world. He perceives 
 from the very letter of the Evangelist, that the birth is from above; 
 that a Divine Spirit is the author of it; that it is the birth of a 
 spirit ; that it is the condition of entering a kingdom ; that it has 
 something to do with Baptism. He suspects that the latter part 
 of the conversation concerning earthly things and heavenly things, 
 the Son of Man who came down from Heaven and is in II 
 ven, the serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness, the love 
 of God to the world in sending His only-begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life; the light which is come into the world, the con- 
 demnation which consists in loving the darkness, cannot be 
 separated from the former part. But he is bewildered by the 
 number of different opinions that present themselves to him 
 pecting the relation which the portions of this truth, as our 
 Lord sets it forth, bear to each other. " How comes the exter- 
 nal rite of baptism," he inquires, " to be so linked w T ith an 
 inward operation ? What has a kingdom to do with a m 
 life? Is it a future state that is denoted by the term Ileav< 
 or if not, what is it ? How is the Son of Man said to be in 
 this Heaven, even while He is upon earth ? Why should the 
 exaltation of the Son of Man upon the cross be referred to in 
 this connexion, all-important as it may be in reference to the 
 doctrine of redemption, or in the expiation for sins ? Why is 
 God's love to the world brought into a passage which seems 
 to speak expressly of the condition of those who are separated 
 
CENTRE OF THE DISCOURSE. 173 
 
 from the world ? Is Dot the condemnation of men this, that 
 they do not partake of this divine and spiritual birth ? Why- 
 is it declared to be that they love darkness rather than light ?" 
 
 All our disagreements, intellectually considered, arise from 
 the answers which are given to these questions. Each of us is 
 disposed to fix upon some one of our Lord's statements, as that 
 to which he shall refer all the rest. If we desire to have our 
 thoughts orderly, not loose and incoherent, not mere qualifi- 
 cations or contradictions one of another, there must be a cen- 
 tre round which they revolve. But it is unspeakably import- 
 ant that we should not choose this centre and so create a sys- 
 tem for ourselves ; but that w T e should find it. Then we may 
 find also what are the orbits and inter-dependencies of the 
 bodies which it illuminates. Will any one say that I am wrong, 
 if I affirm that God Himself is the centre here, that the love 
 with which he loved the world, is that to which our Lord is 
 leading us, that if we learn from Him what that love is, what 
 it has designed, what it has accomplished, we shall be in a 
 better condition to apprehend all that He is teaching us respect- 
 ing the birth from above ? 
 
 Starting from this point, then, it seems to me that this love 
 is declared to have manifested itself in setting forth the only, 
 begotten Son, not merely as the author of forgiveness, but as 
 the very ground and source of man's eternal life. Looking up 
 to the cross as the exhibition of God's love, — as the exhibition 
 of the true and perfect Man, — the man does not perish by the 
 bite of that serpent which is continually stinging him, that 
 spirit of selfishness which is continually separating him from 
 God and his brethren. He sees that Eternal Life which was 
 with the Father, and which in the Divine Word is manifested 
 to us; he becomes an inheritor of it. But his perception does 
 not make the fact which he perceives. The Son of Man, who 
 is one with men and one with God, who is in Heaven, in the 
 presence of God, whilst He is walking on earth, has come 
 
174 BArTiSM ; life ; heaven. 
 
 down to establish the kingdom of Heaven upon earth, to unite 
 earth and heaven in Himself. He has come to claim men as 
 spiritual beings capable of this spiritual life, inheritors of this 
 spiritual kingdom. Baptism declares this to be their proper 
 and divine constitution in Christ. All who receive it claim the 
 kingdom wmich God has declared to be theirs. They take up 
 their rights as spiritual beings. He bestows His spirit upon 
 them that they may enjoy these rights ; that they may be as 
 much born into the light of Heaven, into the light of God's 
 countenance, as the child is born out of the womb into the 
 light of the sun. That countenance is shining upon them, the 
 Spirit is with them to open their eyes, that they may take in 
 the light of it. And this is the condemnation, and this will be 
 the only condemnation, that they do not come to it, that they 
 shut the eyes of their spirit to it, that they love darkness rather 
 than light, because their deeds are evil. 
 
 We have considered three views of Regeneration, each of which 
 was plausible, each of which had arguments from Scripture and 
 arguments from experience to allege on its behalf. The first of 
 them was directly opposed to Butler's doctrine of a moral con- 
 stitution for man. The second was compatible with it but scarcely 
 accorded with the exact language of Scripture. The third 
 promised something like a kingdom or constitution to man 
 hereafter, but seemed to make the existence of a spiritual 
 society at present rather an anomaly and an exception among 
 human societies. If we may take Christ's own exposition, if 
 we may assume Him to be the Regenerator of humanity, a 
 light seems to fall on all these different aspects of the theolo- 
 gical doctrine; we need, not despair of their being reconciled. 
 And that same light enables us to remove the practical obsta- 
 cles w ? hich hinder the application, even the acceptance, of 
 Butler's ethical principle. 
 
 First, that great and serious objection of his affectionate 
 critic. Sir James Mackintosh, is taken away, The name, Con- 
 
APPLICATION TO BUTLER. 175 
 
 science, would seem to import, not a power which rules in us, 
 but rather our perception and recognition of some power very 
 near to us, which has a claim on our obedience. 1 think this 
 interpretation of the word is fully borne out by the most fami- 
 liar, and at the same time by the most serious and thoughtful, 
 usage of it. The most conscientious man does not speak of 
 his conscience as giving him a law; he speaks of it as confess- 
 ing a law which he dares not violate. No one, I believe, felt 
 this more strongly than Butler. Again and again one per- 
 ceives how much it penetrated his whole mind. If the indi- 
 vidual conscience undertakes to lay down laws of its own, his 
 idea of a human constitution, that is, of a law or order for all 
 human beings, is absolutely set at nought. And yet he was 
 forced to say, that in our nature, conscience is the lordly fac- 
 ulty, the one entitled to speak and to be obeyed. But if I am 
 entitled to say, " There is a Lord over my inner man to 
 whom I am bound, apart from whom I cannot exercise the 
 functions which belong to me as a man, according to the law 
 of my being," conscience can be restored to its simple and 
 natural signification ; it does not demand sovereignty, but pays 
 homage. And since it is the witness of His authority who 
 governs all the faculties and. energies of man, since it claims 
 their service for Him, since it testifies of every act of disobe- 
 dience done by any of them to Him, it does occupy that posi- 
 tion relative to all of them which Butler has assigned it. They 
 are all out of order when they do not listen to its voice ; they 
 are all in harmony when its suggestions are heeded. It may 
 in the most true sense be said, that we are only in our natural, 
 that is to say, in our orderly and reasonable state, when every- 
 thing within us is preserving its subordination to its righteous 
 ruler. It can be said with equal truth, — and one assertion 
 illustrates instead of contradicting the other, — that naturally, 
 that is to say, when we follow our own inclinations, when we set 
 up to govern ourselves, and forget that there is a supernatural 
 
1 76 SUPERSTITION. 
 
 government established within us, we become disorganized and 
 bestial. 
 
 The habits of Butler's time, perhaps, did not allow him to 
 use this language. Hence that hesitation and timidity which 
 Mackintosh so livingly and admirably describes. We may 
 see in it the shrinking of a reverent thinker when he approaches 
 an awful truth, interwoven with his own being, which he is not 
 able distinctly to express. But what was reverence in him, 
 would be, it seems to me, cowardice in us. We have been 
 driven forward into a new position, in which we must either 
 grasp a higher truth, or let the one go which he vindicated. I 
 feel that I am not confessing Christ before men, that I am 
 ashamed of Him and of His words, if I do no that it is of 
 
 Him my conscience speaks, that I am under His government, 
 in His kingdom. Nor dare 1 hide from any man the good 
 news that he, too, is a subject of this kingdom, that the & -gen- 
 erator of humanity is his Lord and Master, or the warning that 
 if he chooses another condition than this, he is declaring war 
 with his Creator, with his fellows, and with himself. 
 
 Next, if this truth be accepted, Butler's honest admission 
 respecting the possible effects of superstition in perverting the 
 decrees of the conscience will no longer be fatal to his princi- 
 ple. Till the true Lord of the conscience has made Himself 
 known to it, of necessity it must go about seeking rest and 
 finding none. Every false king will assume dominion over it ; 
 as it bows to the impostor it will become beclouded in its 
 judgments; the more it tries to regulate its vassals, the more 
 mischief it will do them, the more cruel they will feel its 
 tryranny. It may prescribe those very outrages on physical 
 rules, which I said would oblige the disciples of Mr. Combe 
 to coerce it. It may prescribe outrages on the social 
 affections, and so may drive the disciple of Butler, with 
 all his reverence for its authority, to coerce it. Butler con- 
 fesses the necessity ; the appeals which he makes to our fears 
 
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 177 
 
 when he most desires to convince us that we have, in our- 
 selves, a love of right for its own sake, are an acknowledgment 
 of it. But if we believe that Christ is the ruler of this con- 
 science, how beautifully that distinction of St. Paul between the 
 flesh and the spirit to which I alluded in my last Essay, would 
 interpret the mystery of His divine government ; what a solid 
 basis would it lay for ethics and practical education ! All the 
 actual punishments which overtake wrong doing, all the fears 
 of punishment which visit the w T rong doer, are needful for that 
 evil nature in us, which is always seeking to break loose from 
 law, and which would reduce us into mere animals. But the 
 Christ, the true bridegroom of man's spirit, is ever drawing it 
 towards Himself, — is holding out to it freedom from evil, and 
 the knowledge of Himself as its high reward. Owming Him, -the 
 man rises out of dark superstitions, out of immoral practices ; 
 he recognises the fitness of all God's arrangements in the 
 physical and moral world ; he claims for the body as w T ell as 
 the soul a redemption from all which corrupts and degrades it. 
 The full bearing of the principle that Christ is the regenera- 
 tor of humanity, upon Butler's view of the human constitution, 
 is not however understood till we have sought to apply his 
 doctrine that we are essentially social beings just as much as 
 we are individuals. I say, to apply it ; for nothing is easier than 
 to state the maxim ; it may sound to us like the veriest com- 
 mon-place. But when we have tried, in any particular case, 
 to " bid self-love and social be the same," we have, probably, 
 found that we could utter that command, just as we could call 
 spirits from the vasty deep ; but that self-love and social did not 
 do as they were bid, any more than the spirits came when they 
 were called. The theoretical common-place then becomes the 
 hardest of all practical paradoxes : and yet in its very difficulty 
 there lay the strongest witness of its truth. I am certain that 
 I have no self that I can love, — nay, that self must be an object 
 of intense torment and hatred to me, unless I am the member 
 8* 
 
178 SELF-LOVE AND SOCIAL. 
 
 of a body. I am certain that I cannot be the member of a 
 body consisting of persons, unless I am myself a person ; that 
 I cannot love another person unless I do also love myself. 
 ~Bring in the belief of the one Head and Brother of each man, 
 the one Centre of society, and that great moral contradiction is 
 felt to be a great moral necessity ; one which we can welcome 
 and rejoice in, and act upon. 
 
 "But alter all," the disciples of Mr. Combe will say, "you 
 have not proved these positions. They have not the certainty 
 wmich belongs to our statements respecting the physical con- 
 stitution of man. Butler, in his Analogy, fairly admits that he 
 is dealing only with probabilities and chances. That is affirm* 
 ed by his disciples especially, to be his great merit. You may 
 pretend that you have given certainty to what was doubtful in 
 his speculations by adding to them the words of Scripture. But 
 you have only given Ufl your interpretation of those words, 
 which is surely not entitled to any great weight. It is but a 
 guess sustaining a guess/' 
 
 Xow I am bound to own that Butler did use words 
 addressed to the loose thinkers of his day, the men of wit and 
 fashion about town, which seemed to confound probabilit 
 with chances, to suggest the thought that we ought to calcu 
 late the odds for and against the truth of a religious principle, 
 and that, if there is a slight balance in favor of it, — nay, none 
 at all, — we are to throw in the danger of rejecting it, and so 
 force ourselves into the adoption of it. I mourn over these 
 words as I read them, feeling how much a great and good man 
 sacrificed of what was dearest to his heart for the sake of an 
 argument um ad homincm, which, after all, was not an argu- 
 ment that ever reached the conscience of any man, or that 
 could do so if the conscience is what Butler affirms it to be. 
 But I have mourned more deeply when I have seen the>e pa- 
 culled out by persons of great acuteness, — acuteness 
 cultivated in an Aristotelian, not a Baconian, school, — and 
 
DOCTRINE OF CHANCES. 179 
 
 used first as a representation of the whole plan and purpose of 
 Butler, secondly as the basis of a theory which was to save 
 English divines from the necessity of demanding either the 
 dogmatical certainty which Rome promises to her children, or 
 the scientific certainty which Protestants seem to be craving 
 for. Thanks be to God, that house of cards has fallen down. 
 The ingenious architect has, himself, undertaken to expose it3 
 instability.* How much better for him that he should be 
 seeking even such a temporary standing-ground, — sandy and 
 shifting as I believe it to be, — as Rome can afford him, till he 
 finds an eternal rock, neither of authority nor of probabilities, 
 on which he and the Church may rest; — nay, how much better 
 that one in whose heart there is, I am convinced, a real, even 
 a passionate, love of Truth, should pass through all imaginable 
 subtleties, distortions, impostures of the intellect, in his way to 
 it, than that he should be content with a scheme which shuts 
 out Truth from men as an unattainable, scarcely desirable, 
 treasure ! How much better for us that we should incur the 
 bitterest hatred and scorn, expressed with the most admirable 
 cleverness and wit, of one who I 3-et doubt not is capable of 
 all generous affections, than that we should be saddled with a 
 theory which was leading numbers of young men to think that 
 the main, perhaps the only, reason for believing in a God is, 
 that if there should happen to be one, He might send them to 
 hell for denying His existence ! I am sure that the thought of 
 tempting any to such an opinion would have been horrible to 
 this writer at all times ; I have dared to put it into words, that 
 it may awaken horror in the minds of those who are left among 
 us, and may lead them to reflect on the infinite peril of resort- 
 ing to plausible arguments for Faith, which may prove to be 
 hiding-places for Atheism. 
 
 * Compare Father Newman's book on " Romanism and Popular Pro- 
 testantism," with the masterly demolition of his theory of probabilities 
 in his "Essay on Development." 
 
180 C£KTAINTY IN PHYSICS. 
 
 But to return to Butler. I entirely deny that either the 
 conclusions of his disciples, or his own inconvenient statements 
 in some passages of the Analogy, represent his design or his 
 method as it conies out in the first part of that great work, or 
 in the Sermons at the Rolls Court. On the contrary, he is 
 pursuing precisely the same end as the physical inquirer, by an 
 inductive process as nearly as possible the counterpart of his. 
 He is as unwilling to accept hasty generalizations as every 
 disciple of Bacon must be; he is as ready to look at facts and 
 test them ; he seeks to be delivered from vague hypotb hat 
 
 he may feel the ground upon which he is actually standing. 
 What more can Mr. Combe do? lie knows perfectly well 
 that he cannot lay down conclusions which shut out further 
 inquiry; that he would be a very mischievous man if be could; 
 that he cannot have certainty in this sense; that he disclaims 
 it. He must collect facts respecting the condition of men in 
 different circumstances ; respecting their states of health and 
 of disease; respecting the treatment, mischievous or beneficial, 
 which has been applied to them. Such facts must not be 
 merely observed, loosely and carelessly; they must be sub- 
 mitted to a series of searching experiments. There must be 
 eriments on the bodily frame which illustrate those on the 
 influences to which it is exposed ; the anatomist, physiologist, 
 chemist, geologist, must each contribute his quota of observa- 
 tion and thought, to the confirmation or correction of the other. 
 Then, after many theories have been accepted, and thrown 
 aside, some simple law is brought to light, the great test of 
 which is its power of explaining facts, new and old; so far as 
 it can do that, it sustains its character ; when it fails, it is not 
 discarded, but it is supposed that some deeper, more compre- 
 hensive law is vet to reward the toil and humility of the 
 inquirer. "What can be better or truer than investigations of 
 this kind ? What duty can be greater, than to avail ourselves 
 of the results to which they lead ? But the more we study 
 
THE BIBLE. 181 
 
 them and admire them, the less shall we adopt those loose 
 expressions which represent this evidence as something altoge- 
 ther different in kind from that which is open to moralists and 
 divines, if they like to make use of it. 
 
 They may scorn facts ; they may cling to anticipations and de- 
 finitions which they bring with them; just as all the old physi- 
 cal students did ; but if they take that course they depart from 
 all the precedents of the wisest of their predecessors ; they 
 depart still more from the precedents of Scripture. For the 
 Bible is a book in which God is teaching His creatures induc- 
 tion by setting them an example of it. Nothing is there taught 
 as it is in the Koran, by mere decree ; everything by life and 
 experiment. It offers us the severest tests of its own credi- 
 bility. It meets the facts of human life and the difficulties of 
 human speculation ; it undertakes to interpret the one, to show 
 us the source of the other. If we accept Revelation for this 
 purpose, we do not put our own sense upon it ; we go to it in 
 our great necessity, to see whether it can give us the help we 
 need ; we expect that if it is God's, He will do for us what we 
 cannot do for ourselves. If that w T hicb was a presumption 
 before, — a presumption which I could not disowm without dis 
 owning all my own processes of thought and judgment, but yet 
 w T hich I did not dare to pronounce certain, because I was afraid 
 lest some idiosyncrasy of my mind should, in spite of my watch- 
 fulness, have mixed itself jvith these processes, and falsified the 
 result, — becomes clothed with a new force, illuminated with a 
 new brightness ; if it comes back to me, stripped of all that 
 was merely my own, and yet I recognize it as more mine than 
 ever, — I do not know what the reason can ask for besides, to 
 quiet it, and satisfy it. That, and more than that, I think the 
 belief of Christ as the Regenerator of humanity does for all 
 the questionings and demands of human suffering beings; that 
 and more than that, for the speculations of the faithful moral 
 student who has been painfully tracing the vestiges of an order 
 
182 TEST OF TRUTH. 
 
 and constitution in the thoughts and doings of himself and his 
 fellow-creatures. 
 
 What I say is to be tested by life, and cannot be proved by 
 words. But since Mr. Combe and his followers are rightly 
 and naturally disturbed by the discords and contradictions of 
 Christian divines, — by their practical contradictions even more 
 than their speculative, — by the evil acts and courses which 
 ha\ med to follow from their dogmas, and by their eager- 
 
 ness to enforce them, — I shall draw the evidence I produce 
 from this source ; I shall maintain that these can be distinctly 
 traced to the unbelief of Christians in the fact that Christ is the 
 Regenerator of man ; that this faith, had they maintained it, 
 must have made their conduct and their influence on society 
 very different from what they have actually been. 
 
 1. It may sound like the strangest of all charges against 
 Romanists to say that they have undervalued the Church ; 
 that they have thought meanly of it in relation to God and to 
 man, of its work and of its powers. But I do believe that that 
 is the very charge which we have most right to bring against 
 both Latins and Greeks ; it is for this sin, I hold, that they have 
 been called, and will be called, to give account before the tri- 
 bunal of Him who has committed to them their stewardship, 
 and before those for whose use they have received it. Do you 
 say, u They have done their very utmost to exalt the Church ; 
 they have boasted of it as divine ; they have said that there 
 was nothing in earth or heaven that it could not bind and loose ; 
 they have, till men became too enlightened to believe them, re- 
 duced their doctrine to practice, and made the priest the ruler 
 over the spirits, souls, bodies of men V Even so ; your words 
 are true ; they establish my position. The Apostles, instead 
 of doing their utmost to exalt the Church, did nothing. They 
 spoke of the Church as being in God the Father and in Jesus 
 Christ ; they told those who belonged to it that they were cre- 
 ated and redeemed in Christ Jesus and called ; they bade them 
 
POWERS AND WORKS OF THE CHURCH. 183 
 
 remember that they had no worth or greatness of their own ; 
 they said that they were to be witnesses to all men of the re- 
 demption which had been wrought out for them by the love of 
 God through the sacrifice of Christ ; they said that in propor- 
 tion as they renounced idols, and devil worship, and parties, 
 and claimed the dignity of spiritual creatures, and acted as if 
 they were sons of God and members one of another, they 
 would be such witnesses. How could men who had this posi- 
 tion make one for themselves ? What had men who could ex- 
 ercise such a mighty power over the world to do with asserting 
 or vaunting of if? No Jew or heathen believed that they had 
 it ; but tltey believed it, and acted as if they did. When the 
 Church's fuith in its divine birth, in its regenerate position, in 
 God's calling, was growing weak, then it must begin to say 
 how very divine it is. When it no longer understands itself 
 to be in Christ, to be by its very nature aifd constitution spiri- 
 tual, it must begin to assert that a certain mysterious spiritu- 
 ality had been conferred upon it, apart from Christ ; it must 
 suppose that He had delegated His functions to those who 
 should have been the witnesses that he was continually and in 
 person exercising them ; at last the notion must be adopted, 
 and be regarded as necessary to the unity of the Church, that 
 one person was representing Him in His absence, w r as his com- 
 missioned vicar. 
 
 Every pretension of the church, which has been felt as tyran- 
 nical and intolerable by the inward conscience and reason of 
 mankind, has arisen from this low and imperfect view of its 
 own position. It must force men's assent to opinions, because 
 it did not believe that it had power to elevate them into a 
 knowledge of the Truth ; it must hold down human thoughts 
 and energies, because it did not believe that it had a commis- 
 sion to awaken and emancipate them ; it must be the worst of 
 all civil rulers, the most miserable of policemen, the most des- 
 picable of intriguers, because it did not feel that the God of 
 
184 POWERS AND WORKS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 • 
 
 Truth was with it ; that it might make men citizens of His 
 
 kingdom ; might raise them out of the inner corruptions, the 
 
 evil results of which troubled the civil ruler — demanded the aid 
 of the policeman; that it might deliver people and their rulers 
 from the habit of lying one to another.* 
 
 But the Church has done — all honest modern historians, in- 
 fidel as well as Protestant, confess it— other works than these. 
 However strange it may be to say that, having committed all 
 these abominations, she has yet been a civilizer and educator 
 of human beings ; has given a new principle to society ; has 
 helped, at least, to break the chains of the serf; has made the 
 new world quite unlike the old ; this has been said, and must 
 be said. Those who cannot bear the inconsistency, cannot 
 bear history. If they want it to utter either fact without the 
 other, they must write it afresh ; it is not what (Jod has writ- 
 ten. Both facts muft be explained in some way. If I find that 
 
 m who have acted in the faith of God having regenerated the 
 world in Christ, and who have thought themselves called 
 churchmen to proclaim that fact and bear testimony to it by 
 their lives, have been the great instruments of good to the 
 world, and if I find that men — possibly these very men at some 
 other period of their lives, or at the very same period — who 
 have acted on the opposite hypothesis, who have behaved as 
 if it was their bu.^iiH-ss to make human beings something else 
 than God has made them, have produced all manner of mis- 
 chief and confusion ; I have a right to say, that my explanation 
 is not altogether unreasonable. 
 
 2. But Protestants have said, — Englishmen especially have 
 said with great energy : — The habit of magnifying the Church, 
 which Romanists, and Greeks also, though not perhaps in an 
 eqnal degree, have indulged in, has been utterly injurious to 
 
 * See the Essay on " the Unity of the Church," where I have endea- 
 vored more fully to work out these statements, in connexion with the doc- 
 trine of an Indwelling Spirit, which I have not touched upon here. 
 
CIVIL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 185 
 
 ordinary morality and human life, because the state and civil 
 order, and ultimately domestic order, have been disparaged, for 
 the sake of glorifying it ; for the sake of maintaining a certain 
 spiritual or ideal life, which is supposed to be the most truly 
 Christian. Undoubtedly all this has happened ; the complaint 
 has the best possible foundation. And why has this been so ? 
 Because Romanists and Greeks, whatever they have professed, 
 have not believed that Christ came into the world to regenerate 
 all human society, all the forms of life, — all civil order, all do- 
 mestic relationships; — because they have not really confessed 
 that, when He took human flesh, and ate common food, and sat 
 at the marriage feast, He declared these to be connected with 
 Him, to have a divine, eternal, spiritual basis, and not to lose 
 that character because they are connected with the earth and 
 the body. A secret Manicheism has been infecting the practice 
 of the Church, while she has denounced the heresy in terms ; 
 and that Manicheism has gained strength and must gain strength 
 every hour, till the idea of a regenerated humanity supersedes 
 and extinguishes it. You may try other expedients, and you will 
 try them in vain. The office of the magistrate will be scorned as 
 secular, marriage will not beheld tobe honorable nor the bed un- 
 defiled, till neither king, father, mother, wife nor child, are loved 
 more than- Christ, till all are honored and loved, because He is 
 acknowledged as the bond of their union. What then are Pro- 
 testants doing to maintain that which it is the peculiar glory of 
 Protestantism to maintain w T hen they deny the renewal and re- 
 generation of society in Christ ; when they insist that we may 
 not claim for our children the glory and privilege of the new birth, 
 of being members of Christ; that this is the special distinction 
 of a few persons who have been brought to know that they 
 possess it ? How can they defend the honor of kingdom or 
 fatherhood, or of conjugal life, against Romanists, while 
 they surrender their true position for so feeble a one ? 
 
 3. And thus I am brought back to Mr. Combe and Jhe 
 
18G HOW TO SECURE HONOR FOR THEM. 
 
 Physical Constitution of Mas. " That has been very often 
 disparaged by churchmen ; the body has been spoken of con- 
 temptuously by them; health and cleanliness have been treated 
 as vulgar things." Assuredly ; to our shame be it spoken ; it 
 has been even so. And why ? Because we have forgotten 
 that Christ took a human body, and spent the greater part of 
 His time on earth in healing the sicknesses of it : because we 
 have not confessed that the body and the earth are as much 
 redeemed and regenerated by Him as our spirits, or intellec- 
 tual powers ; because we have not confessed the meaning and 
 power of the Resurrection. A man who fully believes in 
 Christ's Regeneration, must regard every physical study as a 
 sacred study, physiology as the most sacred of all ; must desire 
 that they should be pursued manmlly and fearlessly, with no 
 other check than that which every true student voluntarily 
 submits to, — the check upon his own pride and impatience, — 
 that restraint, which tends to the highest freedom, which every 
 scientific man covets, that he may be a true discoverer of 
 God's laws, and a benefactor to his brethren. We ought to 
 feel that all God's judgments by fever and cholera, are judg- 
 ments for neglect of His physical laws, but that they will not 
 be obeyed till men obey His moral laws, by ceasing to live to 
 themselves, by feeling that it is their business to care for their 
 fellows and for the earth. 
 
 4. An able and benevolent man* has complained that we 
 have been talking and arguing about Baptismal Regeneration, 
 while our brethren of the working classes are discussing the 
 
 * Since these words were written, he to whom they referred has left a 
 blank in many hearts, and has been taken from the evil to come. The 
 sentence I alluded to occurs in a beautiful lecture by the Rev. F. Robert- 
 son, of Brighton. If I objected ^o the mere form of his complaint, it was 
 with the full consciousness that he knew infinitely more about the work- 
 ing classes than I did, sympathised with them far more deeply, was 
 teaching them much better the mystery of spiritual and social Regener- 
 ate 
 
THE WORKING CLASSES. 1 87 
 
 question, whether there is a God. He means to intimate that 
 we know next to nothing of what is going on in their minds, 
 that we are quarrelling about our technicalities, while they are 
 occupied with first principles. I feel the truth of much of 
 the charge, and desire to take it home to myself. There is a 
 sad chasm between us and them ; the cause is all too well indi- 
 cated by this remonstrance. But I cannot admit that we are 
 discussing theological technicalities, when we are talking about 
 Regeneration ; I believe we are discussing the most radical 
 principle of human life. I cannot admit that the working 
 classes are strangers to the w T ord Regeneration, or to contro- 
 versies about it ; it is one of their favorite words ; they are 
 continually thinking about plans of social regeneration. I can- 
 not believe, finally, that they will ever come to the settlement 
 of that primary question, whether they have a God to believe 
 in and worship, till they are taught whether He has done any- 
 thing, or is doing anything, for their regeneration. 
 
 Our fault, I conceive, is, not that we have spoken too much 
 on this great subject, not that we have been too earnest in 
 asserting that God has regenerated us, and has given us a 
 simple sign and pledge that He has done so, but, that we have 
 not made the people understand, because we have not under- 
 stood ourselves, that we were needing such a Regeneration as 
 they want and feel that they want, — a social as well as an indi- 
 vidual Regeneration. If we did see our way to tell them this ; 
 to explain that we regard Christ as the Restorer of Humanity 
 to its true and proper condition ; as the King of kings, and 
 Lord of lords; as the Head and bond of a universal brother- 
 hood ; as the righteous Judge and Punisher of all that violate 
 their relations to each other, and set up self in opposition to 
 society ; I think we might, in time, bring some of them to feel 
 that the Church was their friend and deliverer, not as they 
 now, with great excuse, consider it, the bitterest of their foes. 
 
 Let any one, however, who shall determine to speak and act 
 
 v 
 
188 INTERESTED IN THIS DOCTRINE. 
 
 on this principle fully count the cost, and determine with him- 
 self whether he is ready to incur it. Let him be sure that he 
 must offend all parties, without a single exception. He is a 
 silly dreamer, if he fancies that he shall conciliate High Church- 
 men because he defends Baptismal Regeneration, or Low 
 ( hurchmen because he says that faith in Christ as the .Redeemer 
 • •aerator is the ground of all right Christian action, 
 lie must offend priests, monarchs, nobles, fur he must tell them 
 they have sinned against Christ, who has appointed them to 
 take care of His sheep. He must offend those who denounce 
 priests, monarchs, and nobles, because he recognises their 
 appointment, and does not conceive that the Church, being a 
 brotherhood, is therefore a democracy. He will displease those 
 who say that you must reform the individual before you reform 
 society, for he declares that Christ is the Reformer of both, and 
 that the individual who claims any relation to Him, must own 
 himself the member of a society. He must displease those 
 who talk of reforming Society, as the only way of reforming 
 the individual, because they understand by the reformation of 
 society, the alteration of its circumstances, not the assertion of 
 a spiritual root and ground of it. He must count upon the 
 hostility of those who wish to keep things as they are, and 
 who dread change lest the whole social fabric should fall to 
 pieces, because he is certain that it will fall to pieces, uni 
 Christ, who sacrificed Himself, is acknowledged as its foun- 
 dation, and unless all maxims and practices, religious, polit- 
 ical, commercial, which assume another and contrary founda- 
 tion to this, are abjured and cast aside as anti-social, 
 immoral, destructive. He must count upon the active oppo- 
 sition, or profound contempt, of the whole new school of phi- 
 losophers and reformers, because their greeting to each other 
 is, " Christ is not risen ;" their message to the tyrants and 
 wrong-doers of the earth is, " You need not fear the wrath of 
 Him that sitteth upon the throne, or of the Lamb ;" their gos- 
 
UNITARIAN POLITICS. 189 
 
 pel to the prisoners in Neapolitan or Roman dungeons, " The 
 deliverer of captives has not come ; it is a figment of the priests 
 that there is such a one." Whereas, his only hope of that 
 which shall be, lies in his acknowledgment of that which has 
 been and is. His assurance that the bands of death and hell 
 have been loosed, is his only ground for confidence that they 
 will be loosed ; his certainty that Christ is the Judge of the 
 earth is his only reason for believing that it will be one day 
 purged of all its oppressors ; his trust that the King has actu- 
 ally been one of the sufferers, and the chief of them, is his war- 
 rant for declaring that the earth shall not cover the blood of 
 any of her slain, — that what has been done of good or evil to 
 the least of. Christ's brethren, has been done to Him. 
 
 I cannot tell what amount of sympathy has been expressed 
 by Unitarians generally with Mr. Combe's doctrines, but I 
 should imagine that one class of Unitarians, being sincerely 
 philanthropical, and more or less strongly inclined to materi- 
 alism, must be very favorable to them. I have no arguments 
 to urge upon them in reference to these doctrines, besides 
 those which I have addressed to my countrymen generally. 
 Some of them, I know, are admirers of Butler, and regard his 
 doctrine of human nature as a valuable counteraction to our 
 favorite theological dogmas, — to that especially which they 
 understand us to associate with the word Regeneration. If I 
 have succeeded in showing that this dogma, interpreted not 
 according to some peculiar theory of mine, but in the way 
 most consistent with the profession of Churchmen, explains 
 Butler's moral constitution, and proves that we need not reject 
 it because we do all honor to Physics, I shall at least prepare 
 their minds (and this is all I desire) for a calmer and less pre- 
 judiced consideration of the whole subject. 
 
 As men earnestly interested in politics, I also claim their 
 attention. They will see, I trust, that a clergyman may con- 
 cern himself with politics, not merely as they bear upon the 
 
190 WHIGGISM ; ITS TRUTH. 
 
 interests of his order, not merely as they contribute to make 
 the office of the priest more honored either on civil or ecclesi- 
 astical grounds. And this not because he thinks meanly of his 
 order, or entertains any theories about a universal priesthood 
 which interfere with the acknowledgment of individual priests; 
 but because he counts it a most degrading thing for a priest 
 ert his powers instead of using them, and beta use he 
 believes those powers must be used sinfully and shamefully, if 
 they interfere with those which are committed to any other 
 functionary, and if they do not promote the moral and civil 
 freedom of the community in which they are exerted. The 
 elder Unitarians are, I believe, commonly Whigs. And so far 
 as Whiggism implies the recognition of a constitution for each 
 particular nation, the principles and forms of which are adapted 
 to the character and circumstances of its inhabitants, and are 
 brought to light through its history, I heartily sympathise with 
 them, and would only suggest that in our day we can scarcely 
 understand or defend such particular constitutions, unless we 
 are willing to inquire whether there is a constitution for mankind, 
 — one which does not destroy, as so many universal constitutions 
 that men dream of do, but upholds, the order of each country 
 and each family. But if by Whiggism they mean merely a 
 compromise between the past and the present, between order 
 and freedom, I who hold that a faithful care of the treasures 
 of the past ensures the brightest hopes for the ages to come, 
 that there cannot be an excess of order or of freedom, — must 
 part company with them as wholly unsatisfactory teachers, 
 from whom no practical good can be obtained, and betake my- 
 self to some of the younger men of the sect who, I suppose, 
 would prefer the name of Radicals. 
 
 That name, too, I hold in sincere reverence, and wish that I 
 were worthy to claim it. I fear we have none of us been radi- 
 cal enough, that we have all been too content with superficial 
 changes, not demanding a full and thorough reformation. After 
 
radicalism; its truth. 191 
 
 thinking with some earnestness, how that may be attained for 
 us in England and for men everywhere, I have come to the con- 
 clusion which this Essay expresses. I hinted at it when I beg- 
 ged the new school of Unitarians to tell me plainly what kind 
 of a Church it is which they look for in the future ; whether it 
 has anything to do with that which has existed in the world for 
 eighteen centuries ; whether He who is declared in our Creeds 
 to be the Corner-stone of that, is also to be the Corner-stone of 
 this. I press the inquiry again, now that I have told them my 
 mind frankly upon it. I will add this only : that if I accepted 
 the doctrine of some of those with whom they are associated, 
 and whom they sometimes proclaim to be the heralds of a new 
 dispensation ; if I thought that the world which is to arise out 
 of the wreck of that in which we are living were one of which 
 some other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was to be the 
 king ; I should have no more fervent wish, supposing I could 
 then form a wish, — I could conceive no better prayer, suppos- 
 ing there was any one to whom I could offer a prayer,— than 
 that I and my fellow-men, and the whole universe, might perish 
 at once, and for ever. 
 
ESSAY XI. 
 
 ON THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST, 
 
 It is a favorite practice among some writers and thinkers of 
 our day, to contrast the vulgar, low-minded, animal Jew, with 
 the refined, imaginative, spiritual Greek. The comparison is 
 dwelt on especially by those who wish to deliver us from what 
 we have been used to call the facts, from what they call the 
 legends of the New Testament. All these, they say, had an 
 ideal truth for the old Greeks, and furnished them with the 
 hints of a thousand beautiful stories. The hard, definite forms 
 in which they have obtained currency throughout Christen- 
 dom, they owe, we are told, to the intellects of a few Gali- 
 lseans, below even the average of their countrymen in cultiva- 
 tion, beyond them in coarseness and superstition. 
 
 This charge applies more or less directly to all the records 
 of our Lord's life in the Evangelists ; to all the articles of the 
 Creed which I have been considering in my recent Essays. 
 But it bears most strongly upon the words, " He ascended 
 into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father 
 Almighty." " Here," it is said, " we have a great idea sen- 
 
 (192) 
 
THE IGNORANT GALILEANS. 193 
 
 sualised and materialised Humanity is continually longing 
 and striving to ascend above itself. There is always a myste- 
 rious heaven, which it desires to reach. Ever and anon it feels 
 that it has actually gained a vision of the Infinite, towards 
 which it aspires. The Greeks, possessing the creative faculty, 
 had various modes of expressing this truth. The people 
 rejoiced in the symbols ; the wise men, indifferent to them, 
 perceived that which was latent in them. The poor Jew could 
 think only of an actual body ascending into some actual 
 Heaven. The Christian Church, unable to divest itself of the 
 same dry habit of mind, has accepted the Jewish dogma. But 
 she has felt the restraint which it imposes. The notion of a 
 present Christ alternates in her teachings with that of One who 
 has gone away. The doctrine of Transubstantiation has 
 represented and perpetuated the contradiction. Protestants 
 have tried to rid themselves of it. They will not do so," these 
 teachers continue, " till they are content to receive the kernel 
 without the shell, to take the idea of the Ascension, and to cast 
 away the story of it." 
 
 I have ventured already to encounter the idealists in some 
 of their favorite positions ; I can have no wish to shrink from a 
 fair examination of these. I should be taking a very strange 
 course if I denied that the Galilseans were the most ignorant 
 part of a race which w T as specially inclined to animal worship, 
 which had exhibited that tendency throughout all its history. 
 The Scriptures tell us so ; as I accept their testimony, I must 
 believe that it was so. Nor can I make any exception in favor 
 of the fishermen, from whom our Lord chose His Apostles. 
 If I did, I should contradict their own repeated statements. 
 No doubt they were immeasurably less imaginative than the 
 Greeks, very little able to conceive of a world beyond the range 
 of their senses, or to people it with bright forms. Not only had 
 they little natural capacity for this kind of creation ; it was 
 restrained in them by laws, institutions, traditions. They were 
 
 9 
 
1 94 TIIEIR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 told that the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, had 
 chosen their fathers to know Him, and to spread abroad the 
 knowledge of Him. They were told that they must not think 
 of Him as being like anything in heaven, or earth, or under the 
 earth. They had a great hankering to do so. It was very 
 hard to help such thoughts. What could He be like if He were 
 not like some of these things ? From time to time they were 
 ready to fancy Him like the meanest of them ; foreigners might 
 suggest thut He was like the worthiest, like a man : they were 
 not insensible to the suggestion ; still they clung to the law of 
 their father 
 
 Were they never to have any knowledge of this Being except 
 what they got from their books and their traditions ? How 
 strange and sad it was to read the books, to hear the tradi- 
 tions, if that was the case I For all whose storit-s were related 
 to them had spoken of actually knowing His name for them- 
 selves, of taking refuge in Him, of delighting in Him, of find- 
 ing Him a high tower from the face of their enemies. Was all 
 this changed ? Was IJe removed to an infinite distance from 
 them? — He who had seemed to promise that the ages to come 
 should know Him better than those to whom He spoke; who 
 had encouraged the fathers to hope that they should leave a 
 richer legacy to their children than any that had come to them, 
 and that it would go on increasing for their heirs ? 
 
 At times they felt that this could not be ; at times they 
 knew that it could not be. What times were these ? Were 
 they hours of some special freedom from their ordinary cares 
 and dulness, when the peasant was for an instant transfigured 
 by the sight of some glorious sunset, when the fisherman 
 looked into another world below the lake, and heard voi 
 tempting him to come down and behold its wonders ? No — it 
 was not then; it was in hours of special toil, sickness, oppres- 
 sion ; it was when the child or the friend was taken away ; it 
 was when sorrow for the past, doubt in the present, terror of 
 
THE TEACHER. 195 
 
 the future, were griming them fust — it was then that the con- 
 viction dawned upon them, " He still is;" " He may be known 
 by us." " We may find in Him a refuge, even as David or 
 Isaiah did." And then they perceived how it was that He 
 must be known, if the knowledge was to do them any good, 
 to bring them any comfort ; that their hearts, not their eyes, 
 were crying out for the living God ; that with their hearts 
 they must perceive Him, if they were ever to throw off their 
 burden and enter into rest. 
 
 It was but for a little while they retained that confidence 
 and that clear understanding : they tried, perhaps, to keep 
 both alive, by asking aid and instruction from some scribe or doc- 
 tor of the law. He might give them words which would sink 
 into their memories and their hearts, to come up again at some 
 other day — he might give them rules which would bind them 
 with heavy chains, from which afterwards they would struggle 
 in vain to break loose, because they were rules for fitting them 
 to seek that intercourse into which they must enter before 
 they could be fit for it — or rules which bound them to those 
 earthly things and those shameful recollections, from which 
 they wanted to be set free. 
 
 But at last there came a Teacher, not removed from them 
 like the Rabbis, a peasant, even as they were, — One who had 
 grown up in their villages, and walked about in their cities, — 
 One who went into all companies, but who seemed to care 
 for no society so much as theirs. And He spoke to them as 
 one having authority. He did not tell them of a God, who 
 had been in other days, with whom it was possible for Moses 
 and the prophets to hold converse. He spoke to them of a 
 Father who knew them, the fishermen of Galilee, and whom 
 they might know. He spoke of having come forth from Him. 
 He spoke of His kingdom as the kingdom of heaven, and yet 
 as one in which they, the meanest sons of earth, could dwell, 
 the secrets of which they might understand, the powers of 
 
196 HIS METHOD. 
 
 which they might exert, which they were to assure their own 
 countrymen was at hand, the gates of which they w r ould ulti- 
 mately open to the world. As He interpreted to them the 
 nature of this kingdom, they more and more felt that He was 
 drawing them from a world which they looked upon with their 
 eyes, into an unseen world which another eye that He was 
 opening must take in ; yet a world which was intimately unit- 
 ed to the one they were walking in, which gave the forms of 
 that world a distinctness they had never had before. When 
 He wielded the powers of His kingdom, they felt more and 
 more that He governed the secret heart of nature and of man 
 — that spirits were subject to Him — that through them He 
 was acting upon bodies — that all His influences proceeded 
 from within, though at last they left the clearest marks upon 
 that which was visible and outward. It was strange how they 
 re continually strivin inst this education, trying to invert 
 
 it. translating His words and acts of power into some low, 
 material, ineffectual Hut it was stranger still how His 
 
 teaching met all their thoughts and anticipations, in spite of 
 this opposition ; how natural it seemed to be, how exactly 
 framed and devised for them ; how it harmonized with all 
 they had heard in their Scriptures of a righteous and invisible 
 God, who cared for His creatures, and desired that they 
 should seek Him and find Him — how it raised them atx 
 those animal inclinations of theirs — what a new feeling of hu- 
 manity it kindled in them! But the Teacher Himself — what 
 was He ? Might not He who was leading them out of all 
 visible idolatry Himself become the object of it ? Could they 
 help regarding Him with such a reverence as interfered with 
 the reverence for Jehovah ? Did not the Phar continu- 
 
 ally reproach them with this sin, and Him with encouraging 
 it? There was this danger. What was He doing to deli 
 them from it? When Simon Peter said, "Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God," He said, " Blessed art 
 
THE PASSOVER NIGHT. 197 
 
 thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
 to thee, bat my Father in heaven." When Simon Peter said, 
 " That be far from Thee, Lord," that Thou shouldst be reject- 
 ed of the chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, He 
 said, " Get thee behind me, Satan : thou savorest not the 
 things that be of God, but the things that be of men." For a 
 moment He was transfigured before them, and His face be- 
 came bright and glistening; then a cloud covered Him, and a 
 voice came out of the cloud, <c This is my beloved Son; hear 
 Him :" and He began to speak of His passion, and, He came 
 down into the crowd about the boy who had fits. Thus a sense 
 of inward glory belonging to Him, which spirit might appre- 
 hend, but the eye could not, was awakened in them; while they 
 saw Him crushing and humbling all that they looked upon, all 
 that they could make an excuse for idolatry. And at last the hu- 
 miliation became complete. They saw Him in agony. The 
 Jewish law sentenced Him as a blasphemer. The Gentile 
 ruler gave Him up as an impostor, who pretended to the 
 crown and the purple. He was not stoned, but crucified. 
 Whatever could put contempt upon a Son of God, or a King, 
 was poured upon Him. The night before His passion He 
 spoke words, so St. John tells us, which the Apostles could 
 not at all interpret. " For a little while," He said, " they 
 should see Him, and then a little while, and they should not 
 see Him, because He went to His Father." " What is this," 
 they said to themselves, " which He saith, a little w r hile ? We 
 cannot tell what He saith." And then when He saw they 
 were " desirous to ask Him," He spoke of a day of bliss to 
 them, which should succeed a night of sorrow ; a day when 
 they should feel like the woman who remembers no more the 
 anguish of travail, "for joy that a man is born into the world." 
 That same night, we are told, " He took bread and blessed it, 
 and gave it to His disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my 
 body, wiiich is given for you ;" and poured out wine, and said, 
 
198 PREPARATION FOR THE ASCENSION. 
 
 " Drink ye all of this ; for this is my blood, the blood of the 
 New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the 
 remission of sins." What such words signified, they knew 
 not, and could not know. His body was there ; within a few 
 hours it was taken down from the cross and laid in a sepul- 
 chre. That He would ever rise out of it, they say, they had 
 only the faintest dream, in spite of words which encouraged 
 the belief. But then, they add, that when He did rise, this 
 seemed to them the explanation of all that He had done, and 
 said, and been. They report words which they say they 
 heard of Him: "Ought not Christ to have suffered th 
 things, and to enter into His glory ?" If there was such a 
 Son of God and Son of man, as He had led them to beli> 
 there was, then i* ied to them strange and monstrous that 
 
 He should die, but natural and reasonable that He should rise. 
 And soon they ted to have felt it scarcely less natural and 
 
 necessary that lie should ascend to Him from whom they be- 
 lieved that He had come. They relate, in a few simple words, 
 how they arrived at that convietion, how He educated them 
 into it. He appeared to them while they were met together, 
 the doors being shut for fear of the Jews. He showed them 
 His hands and His side — He ate with them — He vanished out 
 of their sight — He breathed on them — He commanded them 
 to go and baptize all nations ; He said, " All power is given 
 unto Me in heaven and earth ; He said, " Lo ! I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end of the world." 
 
 I repeat their story. If it sounds unnatural, inconsistent, 
 grotesque to any, I certainly shall not make it less so by trans- 
 lating it out of their words into mine. But at all events this 
 was clearly the effect of what they heard and saw, or fancied 
 or pretended they heard and saw. They felt, " This Lord of 
 ours is actually related to us now as He was before He v 
 crucified. He is related to His Father now as He was then. 
 His body is the very body which He had then. But we are 
 
RESULT OF THE TEACHING. 199 
 
 not henceforth to see Him often in that body. Our intercourse 
 with Him will not be helped or hindered by the eye. It will 
 be, as it has always been, intercourse with a divine Teacher — 
 with a Guide and Enlightener of our spirits. It may be — 
 must be — immeasurably more perfect than it has been, because 
 He has been Himself cultivating and preparing us for it so 
 long. But it must be, as He has always taught us to expect, 
 intercourse with Him as the Head of a great kingdom, as the 
 Lord of men, as One who has a work for us to do on behalf 
 of men 1 . It will be real and blessed if we enter into that work 
 — if we do it as those whom He has called to do it — if we do 
 not seek to appropriate Him to ourselves, to confine Him with- 
 in our boundaries — if we remember that He is to fill all things, 
 to bind earth and heaven in Himself. It must be — as he told 
 us it would be — henceforth awful intercourse with the Father 
 through Him, so that as in Hitn God has stooped to us, in Him 
 we may ascend to God." 
 
 " We may ascend to God ! Why that is the ideal language. 
 You are now translating Hebrew into Greek." If I am, I am 
 doing what the Apostles did. Their minds — the minds of these 
 dull Galileans — were idealised, spiritualised. It is what I wish 
 you to observe ; and I wish you to observe also the process by 
 which this strange transformation was wrought. A person 
 whom they had known, with whom they felt that they were 
 inseparably, eternally united, had gone out of this world ; to 
 what place they knew not, nor cared to know ; but certainly to 
 His Father, certainly to Him with whom He had always been 
 one, with whom He had come to make them one, whom He 
 had declared and proved to be their Father, as well as His 
 Father. It was the great witness and demonstration to them 
 that they were spirits having bodies, that they were not bodies 
 into which a certain ethereal particle, called spirit, was infused. 
 That which conversed with God was not something accidental 
 to them, but their substance. And this too was that by which 
 
200 THE EUCHARIST. 
 
 they held converse with each other. Without this there was 
 no possibility of their feeling together, suffering together, hop- 
 ing together. AVith this, it was possible to feel, suffer, hope 
 with all men, with the whole universe. But was it necessary 
 to forget that Christ had a body in order that they might 
 enter into this fellowship with his Father and with His breth- 
 ren ? If thoy did forget that, the fellowship would cease, and 
 their spirits would fall again into their old slavery. For this 
 is the pledge of their union to him; His victory in the body, 
 over the body, for the body, is theirs also. They could claim 
 the dignity of spirits, because they were one with Him who 
 had redeemed the body and made it spiritual. They could 
 have fellowship with all sufferers in the body, because He had 
 suffered and died, and was the common Lord of all. They 
 could rise to communion with the Father of Spirits, because 
 there was One in a body who was His well-beloved Son, and 
 who had offered Himself for them. 
 
 The disciples of Christ, having gained this learning, could 
 enter into the force of those words spoken at the Paschal sup- 
 per, which had been at first merely bewildering. They could 
 remember how at Capernaum He had spoken of his flesh being 
 meat indeed, of His blood being drink indeed; how He had 
 said that His flesh would be given for the life of the world ; 
 how, when some were offended, He said," The spirit ijaick- 
 e?ieth, thejlesh profitelh noticing ;" and how He had connected 
 these apparent contradictions with the question, " What and 
 if ye shall see the So?i of man ascend iq) ivhcre he ivas before?" 
 And now, as they ate the bread and drank the wine, accord- 
 ing to His commandment, they could receive these tokens as 
 the surest pledges that they were risen with Him ; that they 
 were in His presence as much as ever ; that they had no life in 
 themselves ; that the life of the world was in Him ; that His 
 flesh and blood were indeed the bond between the creatures 
 and the Creator, between the creatures and each other. 
 
SAUL OF TARSUS. 201 
 
 You see, then, how careful the Apostles are to impress us 
 with that fact which wise men, who do not in general consider 
 them trustworthy authorities, are also so anxions to impress us 
 with, that they were very stupid people, — on a level with the 
 most stupid. Thus they show that the great experiment of 
 what man is and what he is meant for, was made in corpore 
 vili ; so that none could say, " This lesson is not for me ; I can- 
 not claim to be a spiritual being, and to be risen and ascended 
 with Christ." 
 
 These Galileans, not being men of any gifts of soul, not 
 men whose race or general culture led them to magnify the 
 soul above the body, yet came to such an apprehension of the 
 spiritual condition and glory of man, — to such a practical 
 apprehension of it, — as no sages in any country had ever 
 reached ; I say of Man ; for this was necessarily involved in 
 the discovery that they were not better than the worst of their 
 countrymen, and that Christ had cared for the worst and taken 
 their nature. Though, as their mission was to the lost sheep 
 of the House of Israel, all they needed, generally, to proclaim 
 was, that the silliest of those sheep, — the one who had wand- 
 ered furthest, — had an interest in the sufferings and triumphs 
 of the good Shepherd. 
 
 But there came a time when a Jew of Tarsus felt that he 
 was called to go forth and tell Greeks that they were pos- 
 sessors of the blessings of the children of Abraham. The 
 blessings of the children of Abraham ! What a message to 
 bring to the most graceful and refined people on the earth that 
 they might share the privileges of those whom they accounted 
 the most coarse and inhuman ! To assure those who believed 
 that they must be meant, in one way or other, to bear rule 
 over mankind, because they had souls and the majority of men 
 only an animal nature, that they might become what some of 
 the least intellectual of that miserable majority already were ! 
 And yet this was the proclamation of the Jewish tent maker. 
 
 9* 
 
202 GROUND OF A FELLOWSHIP FOIl MEN. 
 
 And instead of its seeming to him or to his countrymen a 
 message which flattered their national pride, Saul declared 
 that, until that pride was crushed in him by a revelation of 
 Jesus the Son of God, — until he knew Him to be indeed the 
 King of his own spirit, and the risen and ascended King of 
 the whole earth, he could not endure the thought that the 
 Greek was cared for by the God whom he worshipped, and was 
 a member of the same body with himself. When he did with 
 his whole heart acknowledge that truth, and was convinced 
 that he had a commission to declare it, Greeks, who had been 
 given up to demon-worship, and whose thoughts of that which 
 was divine had found the most exquisite visible forms to clothe 
 themselves in, turned with wonder and awe to the invisible 
 Lord whom the poor Syrian tribe had for centuries been con- 
 claimed Ilim as the common Father of them and the 
 barbarians ; owned that one perfect human image of Ilim had 
 been manifested, and that all the images which they had formed 
 must be cast away ; believed that a way was opened into His 
 presence for them and for all, through the Mediator, who was 
 in their nature at His right hand. On this ground a church of 
 men, taken out of all nations and kindreds, stood; this v 
 the bond of their fellowship ; this destroyed the divisions which 
 locality, race, individual temperament, old traditions, private 
 judgments, had established among them. And when they 
 met, as St. Paul told them they were to meet, and kept that 
 feast which Christ had instituted the same night that He was 
 betrayed ; they met to have fellowship with a Lord who had 
 ascended in that body which he had offered up, and which 
 death could not hold ; they met in the assurance that they 
 were risen with Him and brought into his presence ; they met 
 to realize their union with the whole family in heaven and 
 earth, which was named in Him the elder Brother of it; 
 they met to give thanks in Him, to the Father who had made 
 
DISEASES OF THE CHURCH. 203 
 
 them meet to be partakers of an inheritance with the saints in 
 light. 
 
 But St. Paul discovered in each one of these churches, ten- 
 dencies which were threatening the existence of this commu- 
 nion, and were bringing back all Judaism, all idolatries, all 
 local divisions, the materialism of old traditions, the spiritual 
 conceits of those who had not been taught to suspect them- 
 selves and to know that they knew nothing. He encountered 
 each of these tendencies as he saw it rising ; traced it to its 
 source ; pointed out the habits that were akin to it, and that 
 were fostering it. Among the Corinthians he discovered the 
 love of faction and party leaders, which was so specially Greek ; 
 among the Galatians, the influence of teachers who persuaded 
 them that the Jew had still a position higher and diviner than 
 that of all other men, and that they must become Jews if they 
 were to have God's favor; in the Colossians, speculations about 
 angels, demons, emanations ; all that constituted the philoso- 
 phised mythology of Orientals or. Greeks. There is something 
 peculiarly adapted to this last habit of mind in the words 
 which we find in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Colos- 
 sians : u If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that 
 are above, where Christ sittethon the right hand of God?'' He 
 wished to remind the philosophers who were trying to scale 
 heaven by their theories, that they would be baffled, as all the 
 giants of former days had been. He wished to show' them 
 that what they called spirituality was not that at all ; that it 
 was merely the exaltation of the soul at the expense of the 
 body, of the sage at the expense of the common man, and that 
 it led by a very direct road to the degradation of Humanity. 
 He wished them to see how — not the soul or the sage — but the 
 man had been exalted in the exaltation of Christ ; how the 
 whole Body, and not some of its choice members, might claim 
 to be risen with Him ; how impossible it was for any one to 
 rise who tried to rise by himself, or to set himself in anywise 
 
204 RISEN WITH CHRIST J PALEY. 
 
 apart from his brethren. But though there is this especial 
 appropriateness in the words, they are generally applicable to 
 all conditions of the Church, which St. Paul discovered then, 
 or which he expected might exist hereafter. They point out, 
 I think, what would be the source of various diseases, and 
 what would be the one remedy for them. 
 
 When we hear the words, " If ye be risen ivith Christ" our 
 first inclination is probably to say, " It is not an actual rising, 
 of course, which he means ; the language is metaphorical. We 
 are to rise, as one of the collects cxpr it, in heart and 
 
 mind." Now Paley, who had a broad, simple, English nature, 
 who was a utilitarian by profession, and who had as little ten- 
 dency to mysticism as any one who ever lived, was struck 
 especially by the businesslike quality of St. Paul's mind. You 
 may say, Paley was an advocate, he held a brief for St. Paul. 
 No doubt; but he need not have chosen that peculiar merit 
 for his panegyric ; there were a thousand stereotyped common 
 places about devotion, intrepidity, self-sacrifice, which would 
 have done as well, lie would certainly have resorted to them, 
 and not to this phrase, if he had thought Paul was in the habit 
 of using metaphors when he was writing on grave practical 
 topics. No man of business would do that, and therefore 
 Paley, whatever construction he might have put on, or have 
 abstained from putting on, such passages as these, which are 
 so familiar to every reader of St. Paul, so characteristic of his 
 
 le and of the man, certainly must have concluded that they 
 were not pieces of fine writing, not flourishes of rhetoric ; that 
 they were unlike those expressions of poets or philosophic 
 which are far from being unmeaning or nonsensical, but which 
 he would have deemed so, about the wings of Psyche, or the 
 
 tent of the divine in man into its native element. Our Arch- 
 deacon must have perceived, with his shrewd northern com- 
 mon sense, that St. Paul, though very unlike him in most 
 respects, was just as substantial as he was, just as little of a 
 
THE FANTASTIC AN!) SUBSTANTIAL. 205 
 
 dreamer or a sentimentalist ; that there was a connexion 
 between what he said of spirit and " business." 
 
 It is precisely this connexion which I have been endeavoring 
 to trace, and which marks out St. Paul as " a Hebrew of the 
 Hebrews." The Teacher whom the other Apostles had known 
 after the flesh, trained him, by discipline not less regular, mys- 
 terious, and severe than theirs, to know that the spirit is the 
 substantial part of man ; that he is, because he is made in the 
 image of God, who is a Spirit; that he is in a fallen, anoma- 
 lous condition, when the senses which connect him with the 
 earth are his rulers, and he judges what he is from them ; that 
 he is in a restored, risen, regenerate condition, when he is able 
 to assert his glory as a spiritual being by asserting his relation 
 to God. Believing, therefore, that God had regenerated and 
 restored Humanity in Christ, that He had called men to claim 
 their relation to the Father through the Son, he could say 
 boldly, " You are risen with Christ." " It is not a metaphor 
 or fancy that you are ; you will be always in a region of meta- 
 phors and fancies, always shaping some dream of a nobler life 
 out of the coarse material of your earthly existence, until you 
 take up this position. Then all becomes simple and real. 
 There is no more a straining after some high ideal ; the most 
 quiet, reasonable life you can lead is that of creatures who are 
 raised into union and fellowship with a higher nature ; who 
 are continually looking up to Him, in weakness and depend- 
 ence leaning upon Him, confident that He can lift you, and is 
 lifting you, above all the things which He has put in subjection 
 to you, and is giving you the power to use them as your minis- 
 ters, and to consecrate them to Him. x\nd because you know 7 
 how these things have corrupted you, and enslaved you, and 
 become your idols, therefore as risen creatures, as regenerate 
 sons of God, seek the things that are above, whore Christ 
 sitteth at the right hand of God. Claim your portion in the 
 eternal Truth, and Love, and Righteousness, which He has 
 
206 THE FLESH AND BLOOD. 
 
 manifested to you, and of which he lias made you heirs; have 
 done with all earth-born phantoms, superstitions, conceits, 
 fears. They will cling about you, as all grovelling lusts and 
 filthy imaginations will likewise. But give entertainment nei- 
 ther to one nor to the other. You can disengage yeursel 
 from them. For you are members of Christ's body, and Christ 
 is at the right hand of God. And if you say, ' But the earthly 
 attraction is too mighty, and the sense of past evil and slavery 
 recurs continually, and the moment we seem to rise we are 
 fallen again, and when w< : to be united to our brethren, 
 
 then come in all low, petty thoughts about ourselves; and 
 when we want to rule the world for God, the world gets the 
 mastery, and rules us for the Devil;' then, I say, remember 
 the words, ' My jfcslt is meat indeed, my blood is drink indeed. 1 
 Be assured that He who is at the right hand of God is not 
 merely a spiritual being separated from you; He is in your 
 nature, He has taken your flesh. He has redeemed it, glori- 
 fied it ! Come, then, brother man, not as a fine, dainty, selfish 
 epicure, to seek some special and solitary blessings for your- 
 self; but come as one of a family, to seize a common food 
 which is given to all, a sacrifice which has been offered for all. 
 Come, and eat it in haste, with your shoes on your feet and 
 your staff in your hand, as a man who has a journey before 
 him and work in hand, as a pilgrim, not as a philosopher. But 
 
 tin : eat it, all of you, as risen men, as spiritual creatures ; 
 not as those who are peeping into the ground and muttering, to 
 ask the aid of some familiar spirit ; not as those who come with 
 cowardly prostration before a daemon whose favor they are 
 bribing ; but as those who have their habitation and their 
 polity with Christ, their Representative and Intercessor." 
 
 If the Greeks, with their high spirituality, had anything to 
 produce which was more spiritual than this, — if, with their 
 Humanity, they had anything which was more human, — it is a 
 pity they did not bring it forth in those three centuries when 
 
MIRACLES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 207 
 
 they were struggling, with every possible advantage, against 
 the Christian Church. But I think the more we look into the 
 history of that Church in those centuries, and in all that have 
 succeeded them, the more we shall perceive that it has become 
 earthly, debused, superstitious, inhuman, just in proportion as 
 it has lost hold of this truth of Christ's actual ascension, just 
 in proportion as it has substituted a mere symbolical or ideal 
 ascension for that, just in proportion as the Greek notion of 
 men rising and ascending by dint of high gifts of soul into 
 gods, has superseded the notion of the fishermen and the tent- 
 maker, that they and the humblest men are risen with Christ, 
 and may therefore seek those things that are above. 
 
 My readers will perceive at once that this is a natural and 
 direct inference from the doctrine I maintained in my last 
 Essay. I showed then how many of the mischiefs and abomi- 
 nations which had tormented the Church, and made her the 
 oppressor of mankind, arose from her disbelief in Christ as the 
 Regenerator of man. There are some special applications of 
 this statement which belong to the subject I am now con- 
 sidering. 
 
 The resurrection and ascension of Christ having been taken 
 by a great portion of the Church as merely extraordinary, 
 anomalous events, — not as events which could not have been 
 otherwise, which exhibit eternal laws, which vindicate the 
 true order and constitution of human existence, — while at the 
 same time there has been an assurance that they were neces- 
 sary to men, and that they must in some way be pattern events, 
 examples of that which men were to be and to do, — a series of 
 acts, attesting the power of spirit over body, the capacity of 
 men to overcome the powers of nature, the possibility of rising 
 into communion with the infinite, has been imagined. These 
 have been considered strange exceptions in the order of the 
 world ; and being such, the whole inventive power of the 
 human spirit has been employed in decking them out and con 
 
208 HATERS OF SCIENCE AND ART. 
 
 necting them with the life of some favorite saint or hero. By 
 degrees it has been discovered that a number of these triumphs 
 may be referred to ordinary principles and laws, which govern 
 the human frame and the course of nature — that other portions 
 of the stories are traceable to mistake, confused reporting, or 
 direct fraud. Still not merely the affections of men, but their 
 consciences, have clung to these instances of an actual con- 
 nexion between the spiritual and the external world, and of 
 the dominion of the first over the second. In vain you produce 
 the clearest evidences of imposture — iu vain you talk of natural 
 The heart of man says, " Here are signs of a faith 
 which was not false, but true — here are tokens of that which 
 
 iot natural, but supernatural." And now a new change 
 evidently taking place. Science itself is becoming dynamical 
 rather than mechanical; pow er s and agencies are discovered 
 in nature itself, not less mysterious than those which miracle- 
 workers spoke of. Man is able, through science, to exer< 
 such powers as seem to attest the dominion of spirit over 
 nature more completely than any signs they wrought The 
 victories of the old artist over the marble, the mysterious 
 energy by which he compelled it to express the thoughts and 
 emotions of living beings, are leading many whom these facts 
 do not impress, in the same direction ; the legends of Greece 
 are received as striking commentaries on the powers of her 
 s.-ulptors and poets. The Romish priests, as teachers of youth, 
 see that a movement is going on very like that which the popes 
 rashly encouraged at the revival of letters. Some of them cry 
 out that it must be checked. " Let us have as little science as 
 we can. The old notions about the sun are safer than the 
 new. They must be restored if possible. Let us banish the 
 classics from our schools. The Greek legends are corrupting 
 our youth. They and profane art must be proscribed." It 
 impossible not to see that many in Protestant England, who 
 hate these priests on other grounds, would be ready to join 
 
SUCH FEELINGS SHAMEFUL IN US. 209 
 
 them in their prohibitions. There are those among us who 
 think that the facts of science, unless they are well sifted and 
 sorted by religious men, and mixed with religious maxims, are 
 likely to disturb the faith of the people, and that the beautiful 
 forms of Greek sculpture, especially if they are not clothed, 
 and made unnatural, must corrupt their morals. I shudder at 
 these notions, but I do not wonder at them. It seems to me 
 that the Romish protesters are wise in their generation. If 
 their disciples are to learn fictions, it is better they should not 
 be able to compare them with facts ; it is not well that they 
 should know how many of their stories are borrowed from 
 Pagan sources, and how much less pure the copies are than 
 the originals. On higher grounds they may be right in think- 
 ing that those who are not allowed to read the Scriptures in 
 their simplicity and breadth, have no standard for judging of 
 what is good and evil in other literature, and had better be 
 kept from it altogether. The existence of such feelings amongst 
 us is far less excusable. Our education in the Bible ought to 
 have taught us to believe in a God of Truth — to reverence 
 facts, because they must be His facts — to long that laws 
 should be discovered because they are His — to fear nothing 
 but what is false, that being certainly of the Devil. Our Bible 
 culture ought to have made us understand that nothing is 
 impure save the corrupt and darkened conscience and will, and 
 that that may convert all things, even the holy words of inspira- 
 tion, into its own nature. The breadth, simplicity, nakedness 
 of the Scripture language should have taught us to dread what 
 is disguised and dressed up for the purpose of concealment as 
 immoral and dangerous — to regard the study of forms as they 
 came from the divine hand, with the beauty which He has 
 impressed upon them, as safe and elevating. Such has been 
 the effect of the Bible upon the daughters of England ; if her 
 sons manifest it less, the Greek legends are not to blame. 
 Those, like Milton, who have been most deeply penetrated by 
 
210 HOW OUR EDUCATION HAS FAILED. 
 
 the meaning of these, if their minds have had a sound Hebrew 
 root, have been the purest and the bravest. I do not believe 
 any single man of us can look back and say, " It was this cul- 
 ture, or my diligence in seeking it, which has done me injury." 
 It was a want of zeal and sincerity somewhere else. It was 
 that the words the boy heard in church, or was compelled to 
 learn, about the religion of his countrymen, did not present 
 themselves to him as connected with those which he was read- 
 ing in his Greek or Latin form. One did not illustrate the 
 other; they seemed to be mere contradictions, intended for 
 different creatures. If the heart acknowledged a fellowship 
 and sympathy with the one, it seemed as if the other was 
 frowning disapprobation. The Hebrew Scriptures, and the 
 Creed, and Catechism, were taken to be setting forth a theory 
 about God. The Greek world was human. And what had 
 the human and divine to do with each other? Yes ! — let the 
 words be rung in the ears of our divines till they have taken in 
 the full force of them — our youths ask, What have the Divine 
 and human to do with each other? in a country which recer 
 as the cardinal tenet of its theology, that Jesus Christ is very 
 
 d and very Man. 
 
 " We accept that tenet certainly in a sense." Fes, and. in 
 the name of my countrymen, of our faith, and of God, I do- 
 maud in what sense? Is it a veal sense, is it a fundamental 
 sense ? Is it one which explains the facts of Humanity, or 
 leaves them unexplained ? Because if it is, be assured people 
 will get their explanation elsewhere. The Greek legends, all 
 feeble as they are because they interpret God by human meas- 
 ures and do not bring men to a divine measure, will yet be 
 preferred to a mere doctrine which puts God at an infinite dis- 
 tance from man, and makes Him an object of dread not of 
 confidence to the creatures who are declared to be formed 
 in His image and who are craving for the knowledge of Him. 
 These thoughts must press heavily on the heart of every 
 
CRISIS IN ENGLAND. 211 
 
 one who studies the condition of England, — especially of her 
 young men, — at this time. The struggle between the tenden- 
 cies which incline them to regard Christianity as utterly hope- 
 less, — as convicted of incapacity for giving any relief to the 
 efforts of human beings after a higher state, and to accept a 
 Christianity which guarantees the salvation of their souls if 
 they will abjure all such efforts, and surrender to a system that 
 which their consciences tell them they can only surrender to 
 God, — this struggle is more tremendous than any of us know. 
 Their English hearts solemnly protest against either alterna- 
 tive ; but it is impossible for men, whose minds are awake, to 
 live in a perpetual see-saw ; nothing, they feel, is less English, 
 less manly, than such a position. What evil may not be await- 
 ing us, if all the sounds which reach such perturbed spirits are 
 loud ravings against Rationalism and Romanism, while nothing 
 is offered them but what looks less sincere and hopeful than 
 either! But oh ! what good, beyond anything I can think of 
 or dream, may God be preparing for us through this conflict ! 
 What a day of joy may succeed a night of travail, if the mes- 
 sage is indeed brought to us, " The Man is born into the 
 world !" And is not this the message which is contained in 
 the old story of Christ's ascension to the right hand of God, if 
 we take that story not as a legend, but as the fulfilment of all 
 legends ; not as an idea, but as the substantiation of an idea 
 in a fact ? With what delight might we then trace the unfold- 
 ing mysteries of science, believing that each new fact is reveal- 
 ing some step in an ascending scale of creatures, the lowest of 
 which is an object of creating and redeeming love, the highest 
 of which is in communion with the Son of God ! How the 
 triumphs of art would then be felt as witnesses for the subjec- 
 tion of all things to man, a subjection accomplished in Him 
 who lias gone through death and has ascended to His Father ! 
 What joyful testimony would every mythological story then 
 bring in, not to the wishes and aspirations of men only, but to 
 
212 THE EUCHARIST. 
 
 God's satisfaction of them ! "Why may not the countrymen of 
 Bacon, and Shakspeare, and Milton, aspire thus to declare to 
 all mankind, tb lificancy of science and art, the essential 
 
 and practical connexion of earth with heaven, of the human 
 and the divine ? 
 
 But they have still a higher work to accomplish, which 
 perhaps must precede the other. I have alluded more than 
 once in this Essay to that feast which the Galilean fishermen 
 were told to keep when they sat at the Paschal supper ; which 
 St. Paul said that he was commanded to perpetuate in the 
 churches which were gathered by the preaching of his gospel 
 from the different tribes of men. For eighteen centuries Chris- 
 tendom has kept this feast ; there has been no other like it in 
 the world. It has spoken of the union of rich and poor, of men 
 of all races, kindreds, educations, opinions, with each other, 
 and with a divine Loyl who bad died for them. All the sec- 
 tions of Christendom have kept up some form of it, save the 
 Quakers,and they affirm that they keep it in a higher sense. 
 All the sections of Christendom have made it the symbol of 
 their separation from the rest. That which was to unite all 
 men, of every kind and degree of intellect, has been made the 
 subject of the most subtle, intellectual distinctions. That which 
 was to deliver men from the bondage of sense, has been made 
 the minister of the senses. The doctrine of Transubstantiation 
 has gathered up all idealism and all materialism into itself, is 
 a compendious expression of all the contradictions in the hearts 
 and understandings of human beings. Set what hold it seems 
 to have upon those hearts ! How it defies the skill of Protes- 
 tant divines, the wit of Protestant scoffers ! How it mixes 
 itself, unconsciously, with their theories! How mightily it has 
 stood its ground against all notions that the bread and wine 
 were but the memorials of an absent Lord, or that the believer 
 created a Presence which, but for His faith, would not be ! 
 How it is strengthened by all Quaker experiments to make 
 
ENGLISH PUZZLES CONCERNING IT. 213 
 
 spiritual feelings and notions, which appertain to the few, — the 
 expression of which is intelligible to still fewer, the media of 
 intercourse, instead of those symbols which speak of food and 
 life for mankind ! My dear countrymen are puzzled by all 
 these observations which their experience forces on them. They 
 are impatient of theories, unskillful in forming them. Yet it 
 seems to them as if they must have a theory, either compoun- 
 ded of all theories that have ever existed, or the negation of 
 all : — some grains of Paschasius, a few globules of Luther, an 
 infusion of Zwingle, shaken together, and plentifully diluted 
 with the aqua pura of George Fox. Then tired of a mixture, 
 which must be either tasteless or nauseous, this man plunges 
 into Romanism ; that exchanges sacraments for some tran- 
 scendental exposition of them ; another who discovers the 
 flimsiness of the exposition, flies to the open worship of Mam- 
 mon, to his sacraments, in which* the outward sign and the 
 thing signified are so perfectly consubstantiated. Oh, breth- 
 ren ! must we, being such blockheads, as our German and 
 Gallic brethren consider us, and as we know ourselves to be, 
 in all metaphysical conceptions, always try to rival them ? Is 
 it not possible God may have some other work for us, not so 
 satisfactory to our pride, but on the whole, if we perform it 
 faithfully, not less serviceable to mankind, or less to His glory ? 
 Has it struck you that we are not merely countrymen of Bacon, 
 Shakspeare, or Milton, but also of some millions of men, living 
 on oHir own soil and in our own day, speaking our tongue, who 
 work with their hands, and who have, besides those hands, 
 senses which converse with this earth, sympathies that should 
 unite them to each other, spirits that might hold converse with 
 God ? I do not know that they want theories about transub- 
 stantiation or consubstantiation, Romanist dogmas or tran- 
 scendental dogmas, Le Maistre or Schelling. But I do know 
 that they want occupation for these senses, these hearts, these 
 spirits. And I do know that you can, if you will, say to them, 
 
214 HOME ; OtJB COLONIES. 
 
 one and all, " Brothers, here are the pledges that we have a 
 great Elder Brother, who was a suffering peasant here on 
 earth, who died and rose again, and who is at the right hand 
 of God. These tell us that we are one with Him where He is. 
 We need not ascend into Heaven to bring Him down ; we need 
 not go down into the deep to bring Him up again. You may 
 hold converse with Him where He is. He has proved you to 
 be spirits. He has given you this bread and this wine, th 
 common things which belong to us all alike, that we may claim 
 a participation in that body and that blood which were as real 
 as yours, which were given for you, raised from death for you, 
 glorified at God's right hand for you. Take, eat ; receive this 
 New Testament in His blood. Confess your selfishness, your 
 divisions, your heart-burnings. Claim the unity which belongs 
 to you. Go your ways ; work like men ; till the earth, and 
 subdue it for God; make it bring forth corn for the sower, 
 bread for the eater. In due time it will be all God wants it 
 to be. Meantime you have a city that hath foundations ; a 
 house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
 
 And there is something besides which perhaps we have for- 
 gotten. Though it has not pleased God to make us clever in 
 building systems, He has seen fit to bestow on us an empire 
 on which the sun does not set. He has committed to our care 
 some hundreds of millions of human beings, who have certainly 
 the same flesh and blood with us, and who show by the .-tninge 
 speculations which their sages (often rich in the gifts we are 
 deficient in) express in w ? ords, and which are for the people 
 embodied in acts, that they are spiritual beings, and that they 
 know they are. Most of our civil and military servants, 
 though they have done some parts of their business admirably, 
 and have taught these people to believe that there is truth and 
 justice among men, — alas ! they have often doubted and denied 
 their own position, — have felt that with this part of their mind, 
 
THE HEATHEN WORLD. 215 
 
 though the most radical, though affecting their whole exist- 
 ence, they could not meddle. Missionaries have gone forth 
 with the noblest aims ; not seldom they have effected blessed 
 results. Yet the officials say, nay, many of them say them- 
 selves, that the majority of the natives have only derived from 
 their presence a vague impression, that all they had held them- 
 selves is false ; and that we could offer them in exchange the 
 choice of some twenty different religions, manufactured in 
 Europe, and belonging to white men. Suppose we could go 
 to them and say, " There is an Advocate and Intercessor, not 
 for Europeans, but for men, at the right hand of God. And 
 here are the witnesses that you as men, having flesh and blood, 
 and being, as you know, spiritual creatures, are one with Him, 
 sharers of His nature, and, therefore, children of God, fellow- 
 heirs, with all men everywhere, of His kingdom," — does it not 
 seem possible that the animal and the human sacrifice, the fear- 
 fill invocation to Kali, the prayer-machine of the Buddhist, 
 might disappear more quickly, than while we merely argue 
 with them for opinions respecting which we are divided as 
 well as they ? 
 
 These are thoughts which I have addressed specially to 
 English Churchmen, who, if they heeded them, might, perhaps, 
 in due time, first bring the sects in their own land to meet them 
 in a common sacrifice and a common Lord ; secondly, might 
 reconcile Protestants and Romanists abroad, instead of hover- 
 ing uneasily between them, or showing a contempt, which is 
 amply returned, towards both. 
 
 I now lay these same thoughts before my Unitarian breth- 
 ren, of both sections. "What I have said of Paley, may show 
 those whom the younger school stigmatise as materialist or 
 utilitarian, that I do not feel separated from them ; that I do 
 not think it is needful for them to go through an initiation in 
 any German or American school, before they can understand 
 
216 MATERIALISTS AND SPIRITUALISTS. 
 
 St. Paul or St. John. Good manly sense seems to me so pre- 
 cious and noble a gift, that I am afraid I often speak intoler- 
 antly of those who put spiritualism and philosophy in place of 
 it. But I have no right to do so, for I have felt that tempta- 
 tion strongly ; and if I have felt also the punishment for having 
 indulged it, and the reaction against it, I should be the last to 
 cast stones at any offender. Most earnestly, therefore, do I 
 call upon all of the spiritual school to join with those from 
 whom they are in part alienated, and with me, in believing that 
 there is One ascended on high, and on the right hand of God, 
 who is our Mediator and theirs; who claims us as spirits now, 
 and can change the body of our humiliation to the body of 
 His glory, by that power whereby He is able to subdue even 
 all things to Himself. 
 
ESSAY XII. 
 
 THE JUDGMENT DAY. 
 
 There is no question which exercises the minds of moralists 
 and politicians so much as the question of responsibility. How 
 are you to make ministers of state, legislators, judges, respon- 
 sible ? To whom are the highest officers in every state respon- 
 sible ? Are they to be practically ruled by those whom they 
 profess to rule ? Is the sovereign a sovereign only in name ? 
 Is the ultimate authority vested in those who, by a fiction, are 
 called his subjects ? Or is he governed only by some code 
 written in letters which he has himself the power of interpret- 
 ing, with which he may even at times dispense ? Or is he an 
 autocrat, whose own will is the last court of appeal, that to 
 which all must not only in name, but in deed, do homage ? 
 We all know in what an infinite variety of forms these ques- 
 tions present themselves, how they force themselves upon us 
 in the business of every day life. 
 
 The notion which prevails mostly among ourselves is, I 
 
 think something of this kind. In a civilized country, — above all, 
 
 ' in one which possesses a free press, — there is a certain power, 
 
 10 (217) 
 
218 PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 mysterious and indefinite in its operations, but producing the 
 most obvious and mighty effects, which we call public opinion. 
 If this can be brought to bear upon the acts and proceedings 
 of any functionary, we suppose that there is as much security 
 for his good behavior as can be possibly obtained. He lives 
 under the conviction that his acts, as a public servant, are 
 open to a vigilant and suspicious scrutiny, experience assures 
 him that no nice or acurate line will be drawn between this 
 part of his life and that which he might wish to claim as pri- 
 vate — his domestic relations, his opinions on the different 
 topics which interest his fellow-men. Thus his whole existence 
 is in a great measure exposed; his sphere of independent 
 action or judgment is very limited. Though the right of think- 
 ing for himself may be one which he is anxious to assert, nay, 
 which the habits and rules of the times require him to assert, 
 the actual power of thinking for himself can only be exercised 
 under strict conditions ; practically, the circle in which he 
 moves, or the world at large, or those, be they who they may, 
 who dijject the world, think for him. 
 
 When public opinion has been for some time deified in this 
 manner, there comes a strong recoil. " Is it possible," men 
 ask, " to live honestly on such terms as these ? Has the pro- 
 gress of civilization, as it is called, not brought us into greater 
 freedom, but only into more hopeless slavery ? If we are to 
 have masters, should we not know who they are ? Should 
 we not, at least, know what is their right over us ? Should 
 they not have some claim to our reverence, if they have no hold 
 upon our affections ? What can be so ignominious as this sub- 
 jection to judges whom we do not in our hearts believe to be 
 wise, to whom in secret we attribute little sincerity or truth, 
 who are the sport of a thousand accidents and influences, as 
 vulgar as any of those which could pervert our own judgments 
 if we were left to ourselves ? Is it not the business of a man to 
 whako off such a yoke as this, to say that he will not have his 
 
REBELLION AGAINST IT. 219 
 
 deeds or thoughts moulded by this opinion, that he will not 
 bow down and worship an image, which has been set up he 
 cannot tell when or by whom, but which exacts devotion to 
 itself under the heaviest penalties 1 Should not a minister of 
 state, a legislator, a judge, hold himself responsible to some 
 other tribunal than this 1 Must he not do so, if the words 
 which go forth from his lips, if the deeds which he performs, 
 are ever to be of any worth to ages to come, even to his own ? n 
 
 These complaints are uttered. In youth, many strong reso- 
 lutions are often founded upon them, — many bold and eccen- 
 tric courses taken in pursuance of them. But again and again 
 the man is driven into the old rut. He finds that the world was 
 right in saying that self-will is a perilous and fatal guide. He 
 thinks in vain where a substitute for this strange force of opin- 
 ion is to be found ; how wicked men are ever to be curbed, if 
 it is not held up to them as an object of fear ; how well-disposed 
 men are ever to be kept in an even course, if they have not 
 some hope of its protection. " It is vague, indefinite, intangible 
 enough, no doubt, but is not that the case also with all the 
 powers which affect us most in the physical world 1 The fur- 
 ther men advance in the study of nature, the more of these un- 
 controllable, invisible forces seem to make themselves known. 
 If we think with awe of mysterious affinities, of some mighty 
 principle which binds the elements of the universe together, 
 why should not we wonder also at these moral affinities, this 
 more subtle magnetism, which bears witness that every man 
 is connected by the most intimate bonds with his neighbor, 
 and that no one can live independently of another ?" 
 
 It may easily be admitted that a reflection of this kind is 
 suggested when we meditate upon public opinion, — the insig- 
 nificance of the agents by which it works, and the greatness 
 of its results for good or for evil. But I apprehend no one is 
 able to derive this lesson from it, or at least to turn*it to any 
 practical use, till he has risen in some measure above the ter- 
 
220 THE GREAT ASSIZE. 
 
 ror of it ; any more than he can estimate the sublimity of a 
 storm, while he is trembling lest it should in a moment destroy 
 him and all that are dear to him, or than he can think of all the 
 hallowed associations w r hich a churchyard at night-time might 
 call up, while he is dreading lest he should be pursued by some 
 pale spectre. If we could learn the secret of overcoming this 
 power, of acting as if we were indeed responsible to some other 
 and more righteous one ; if that conviction could be as present 
 to us as the thought of the judgment which our fellow T -creatures 
 pass upon us ; if our whole lives were moulded by the one belief 
 as much as they are wont to be moulded by the other, we should 
 be able to understand what the world's judgment can do for us 
 as well as what it cannot do ; the very same principle which 
 lfeeps us from obeying it would keep us from despising it ; we 
 should be saved from setting up our own tastes, caprices, nay, 
 our own most deliberate judgments, against the tastes, caprices, 
 judgments of our own or other ages; just because we should 
 have courage to say to them, one and all, " Whether it be 
 right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto 
 God, judge ye." 
 
 Divines have thought that the words, " We must all appear 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ," might be so taken into the 
 hearts of men, and become such a strong abiding conviction 
 there, that all the opinions of contemporaries, all fear of popu- 
 lar assemblies — even of the most august earthly tribunals — 
 should shrink and dwindle before them. They have, therefore, 
 presented to their disciples the picture of a great assize, 
 to which ail ages and nations shall be summoned. What has 
 been the effect of such descriptions ? We feel ourselves 
 at leisure to analyse our own emotions in listening to them, to 
 compare the methods in which the subject is treated by different 
 artists, to criticise their skill. We observe how much more 
 powerful and judicious Jeremy Taylor is than others, because 
 he has gathered together distinct groups, such as " those whom 
 
DESCRIPTIONS OF IT. 221 
 
 Caesar Augustus did tax," instead of trusting to vage cloudy ab- 
 stractions. Surely this is proof sufficient that the preacher has 
 failed of his purpose. He has not given us some mighty con- 
 viction before which we must bow, — which will go with us 
 where we go, and stay with us where we stay. The fabric of 
 this vision, raised by however noble an architect, fades more 
 surely, more rapidly, than that of any of the earthly temples 
 which he tells us are perishing. As it departs it leaves the im- 
 pression on our mind that the vulgarest, pettiest motives, 
 which act upon us in the bustle of the common world, are more 
 efficient than the most magnificent anticipations of that which 
 is to be, in some far-off period. We may mourn that it should 
 be so ; we may utter some common-places about the weakness 
 or depravity of human nature ; but in some way or other we 
 reconcile ourselves to the discovery. 
 
 Have earnest devout men, then, deceived themselves in this 
 matter ? Were they wrong in supposing that the belief 
 in Christ's judgment ought to be a mighty belief for mankind ? 
 Was it not a mighty one for their own hearts ? I am 
 sure they were not deceived. The thought of Christ's judg- 
 ment was their strength in prosperity and in calamity. It 
 saved them from floating with the current of their times when 
 it was gentle, — from being swept away by it when it was 
 strong. But I do not conceive they would have derived the 
 least support from the anticipation of standing before Christ in 
 some distant day, if they had not believed they were standing 
 before Him in their town day. They were sure that for them 
 the judgment was already set, the books were already opened ; 
 that they were every hour of their lives in the presence of One 
 who knew the intents of their hearts, and who was calling them 
 to account for these and for the acts to which they gave birth. 
 It is for the efforts which they have made to ground us in the 
 same habitual persuasion that we are chiefly beholden to them. 
 Whatever light they have thrown on the Scripture doctrine of a 
 
222 THE JUDGMENT PRESENT. 
 
 judgment to come has proceeded from the light in which they 
 were continually walking. If they have ever darkened that doc- 
 trine or colored and distorted it by their fancy, we may trace the 
 error to their forgetfulnesa of that truth which the writers of 
 the New Testament never suffer us to forget, — that Jesus 
 Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 
 
 Perhaps you will say, " After all these descriptions which 
 you represent as so ineffectual, even when the ability displayed 
 in them is greatest, are only the expansion and realization 
 of the words in the Creed : ' From thence He shall come to 
 judge the quick and the dead.' If one is weak, the other must 
 be weaker ; if the picture which tries to embody the fact is of 
 such small worth, what can be the use of merely repeating a 
 bare announcement of it ?" 
 
 The objection would be most reasonable, if the w r ords, " He 
 shall come to judge the quiek and the dead," could be se- 
 parated from all that has gone before, — if no pains had been 
 taken to tell us who He is. But if the Creed has been declar- 
 ing Him to be the Son of God our Lord ; if it has been exhib- 
 iting Him, first, in the closest relationship with God, secondly, 
 in the closest relationship with man, — this relationship not 
 being created by any acts which are recorded afterwards, but 
 being the ground and explanation of those acts, not being the 
 consequence of His Incarnation, or Death, or Insurrection, or 
 Ascension, but the cause of them ; — then I apprehend the pi 
 ticul difference between the dry statement and the brilliant 
 translation of it is immeasurable. According to the one, it is 
 impossible, without violating the law of my being, the eternal 
 order and constitution of things, that I should separate myself 
 from Christ. He is the Lord of my own self, of my spirit ; 
 whether I confess Him or not I must continually hear His 
 voice, be open to his reproofs. Wherever I am, whatever I am 
 doing, He must be there; He must be the standard of my acts; 
 the right in them must be that which has originated in Him,— 
 
CHRIST ALWAYS WITH US. 223 
 
 the wrong must be the revolt from Him. No present or pos- 
 sible conditions of our being can change this order. Death, it 
 has been proved, does not dissolve our relation to Him ; He 
 has entered into it for us. The Resurrection from the dead is 
 a resurrection for us as well as for Him ; it has vindicated 
 man's true condition, not subverted it. 
 
 The Ascension, if we admit it to be a fact, not a mere idea, 
 proves, as I urged in the last Essay, not that we are divided 
 from Him, but that place cannot divide us ; that we are spirits ; 
 that when we act as if we belonged to the bodies which we 
 are meant to rule, we stoop knowingly, and are condemned by 
 our consciences. Such a doctrine, I said, so far from being at 
 variance with the facts of history and the laws of the physical 
 universe, is confirmed by both. History shows how confident 
 men have been in all times that they were meant to ascend 
 above their earthly conditions, and to have fellowship with an 
 unseen world ; their noblest dreams have had this origin, — 
 their wildest and most degrading superstitions have arisen 
 from their incapacity to claim what they felt was their right. 
 Physical science shows how many violations of true and divine 
 laws men commit when they become slaves of their bodies, and 
 into what ignorance they fail when they accept the testimony 
 of their senses as determining those laws ; in either case they 
 are evidently not obeying reason, but setting it at naught. 
 What follows? This exclusion of Christ from the eyes of 
 sense is not, as men fancy, an interruption of that judgment 
 which ,He, as Lord of their spirits, is continually pronouncing; 
 they are not less in His presence, open to His clear, all-pene- 
 trating vision, now, than if He were walking in their streets. 
 The disciples who accompanied Him when He journeyed from 
 Galilee to Jerusalem, and sometimes were amazed at the mys- 
 tery of His being and at His knowledge of their thoughts, 
 understood first when He was parted from them how entirely 
 independent that being and that knowledge were of the acci- 
 
224 WHAT IS A JUDGE ? 
 
 dents which then surrounded Him, — how much these accidents 
 had interfered with their recognition of Him. As long as they 
 had any notion that they stood to Him only in the peculiar 
 relation of disciples to a Master, as long as that relation seemed 
 to them an external fleshly relation, they wanted the real awe 
 and check, as well as the real help and support, of His pre- 
 sence. It was w r hen they understood that this relation was 
 common to them with a multitude of persons nowise bound to 
 them by kindred, occupation, race; it was when they learnt 
 that the real bond between a disciple and a Lord is not a 
 visible, but an invisible one, that they exercised themselves to 
 have consciences void of offence, being certain that all things 
 were flaked and open to the eyes of Him with whom they had 
 to do, and that to be reproved by 11 im was a far more serious 
 thing than to be reproved by Sanhedrims or Proconsuls. The 
 Creed, then, affirms, for you, and me, and mankind, first of all 
 this discovery of theirs, — that Christ, ascended on high at the 
 right hand of God, is our judge, the judge of the living and 
 the dead. I do not say that this is all which the words signify ; 
 I do not think so; but I say that whatever else they signify, 
 they signify this, and that we never can enter into the other 
 part of their signification if we do not acknowledge this as the 
 groundwork of it. And though this meaning may be latent in 
 our popular discourses on a great judgment day, — and I have 
 no doubt it is, — I cannot think that the hearers or readers of 
 those discourses commonly detect it ; they suppose that they 
 are, at some distant, unknown period, to be brought into the 
 presence of One who is far from them now, and who is not 
 now fulfilling the office of a Judge, whatever other may be 
 committed to Him. 
 
 There is another difference, not less radical and essential, 
 which, I think, we must all at times have perceived, if not 
 when we were repeating this article of the Creed, at least when 
 we were reading those parts of the Scriptures which most 
 
SCRIPTURE IDEA OF IT. 225 
 
 illustrate it. What is this office of a Judge? Jf we follow 
 the popular representations of the great Assize, we should 
 conclude that it was fulfilled when certain persons w r ere sub- 
 jected to an infinite penalty for their transgressions, and cer- 
 tain others w T ere absolved from that penalty, — perhaps acquired, 
 by some means, an infinite reward. It is obvious that those 
 who make these statements, intend to accommodate themselves 
 to the ordinary maxims of men ; to those which are recognised 
 in earthly jurisprudence. They rightly assume that there must 
 be an analogy between the divine procedure and that which 
 we own to be righteous here. "The difference of degree," 
 they would say, " does not prevent the inspired writers, and 
 ought not, therefore, to prevent us, from resorting to the same 
 language to represent both." I fully accept this statement, 
 and, therefore, I would put it to any English jurist, whether 
 such an account of the function of a judge as this, satisfies any 
 conception that he has formed of it ? Would not he say at 
 once,^' It is a very secondary part of this function to assign 
 penalties or rewards : that, in a majority of cases, is done 
 already by the law which the judge announces. But to dis- 
 cern who is right and who is wrong ; amidst a multitude of 
 shifting, distracting appearances, to find out the fact; to detect 
 the lie which is hidden under the plausible coherent story ; to 
 justify the true and honest purpose which may have got itself 
 bewildered in a variety of complications and contradictions, — 
 hie labor j hoc opus ; here is, indeed, a sphere for the exercise 
 of that judicial faculty, which we all esteem so highty, — 
 scarcely any of us enough." And I am certain we shall find 
 that, when the Scriptures speak of a divine Judge, it is this 
 correspondence, this analogy that they mainly suggest to us. 
 You hear of the Word of God, who is quick, and powerful, 
 and sharper than any two-edged sword — who divides asunder 
 soul and spirit, joints and marrow — who is a discerner of the 
 thoughts and intents of the heart. You hear St. Paul declar- 
 
 10* 
 
226 MINOS AND RHADAMANTHUS. 
 
 ing that though he is not conscious of anything against himself, 
 he does not judge himself, but He that judgeth him is the 
 Lord. You find him using, in the same passage, the remark- 
 able expression which oocurs again and again in his writin 
 and to which I shall have to refer presently for another pur- 
 pose, that it is a very little thing for him to be judged by a 
 human day* Such an expression, so strikingly denoting the 
 kind of light which men were able to throw upon the secrets 
 of the heart, is a key to thousands of others in the New Tes- 
 tament — nay, I will be bold to say — a key to the language of 
 the Bible, wherever there is an allusion to the judgments of 
 God, or to Christ as judge. Everywhere the idea is kept 
 before us of judgment, in its fullest, largest, most natural 
 
 se, as importing discrimination or discovery. Everywhere 
 that discrimination or discovery is supposed to be exercised 
 
 r the man himself, over his internal character, over his 
 meaning and will. Everywhere the substitution of any mere 
 external trial or examination for this, is rejected as inconsistent 
 with the spirit and grandeur of Christ's revelation. 
 
 Xowhere is this difference more remarkably brought out 
 than in the words which we have translated, " For we shall 
 all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." When we bear 
 these words without examining them, or their context, we are 
 likely enough to say, "Here is the old story of Minos and 
 Bhadamanthus again; St.. Paul knew that it was familiar to 
 the ears of the Corinthians, lie altered it, and adapted it to 
 his Christian notions." I am far indeed from denying that 
 St. Paul was anxious to preserve the eternal truth which lay 
 hid in those legends. He would have been most grieved if he 
 
 1, in any one point, made the Greeks, to whom he proclaim- 
 ed! a faith, unbelievers. It was his duty to avail himself, as 
 far as it was possible, even of the forms of language, — espe- 
 cially if they were not merely Greek, but human forms, ap- 
 
 * 1 Cor. iv. 3, dv9p«Ctn;s r^'poj. 
 
II. CORINTHIANS, CHAP. V. 227 
 
 pealing to the feelings and consciences of men in all countries, 
 which had been associated with old convictions. To this extent 
 I am ready to admit that the word " judgment-seat," or " tri- 
 bunal," was intended to remind the Corinthians both of the 
 courts with which they were familiar in their own city, of the 
 more solemn Areopagus, and of those which their imaginations 
 had fashioned on the model of these for the pale spectres in 
 the world below. But if this were his object, mark what the 
 process of transformation is. In the first ten verses of this 
 chapter, and several of the preceding, he has been working 
 out the doctrine that man stands in a twofold relation; to a.'i 
 earthly visible tabernacle which is dissolving ; to an invisible 
 Lord. The dissolution of that perishabletabernacle will not, 
 he says, involve homelessness, nakedness. There is a new 
 clothing provided for him ; a house not made with hands, eter- 
 nal in the heavens. - Here there is much groaning ; the body 
 bears the signs of suffering and death. He longs to put on 
 one which shall be free living, immortal, "that mortality may 
 be swallowed up of life. He believes that God is working in 
 him to produce such a renovation and has given His Spirit as 
 an earnest of it. He is confident, therefore, and had rather be 
 absent from the body which is making such demands upon 
 him, that he might be present with the Lord of his spirit. 
 " For we walk," he says, " by faith, not by sight." We do 
 not see Him to whom we are united — we only believe Him 
 and trust Him. And whether that vision at any time is strong 
 or weak, whether we are crushed by the external tabernacle, 
 or are rising above it, we are still ambitious to be well pleasing 
 to Him, " For we must all " — not appear — but " be made 
 manifest before the tribunal of Christ." A time must come 
 when it will be clearly discovered to all men what their state 
 was while they were pilgrims in this world ; that they were in 
 a spiritual relation just as much as they were in relation to 
 those visible things of which their senses took cognizance. 
 
228 THENCE HE SHALL COME. 
 
 That which has been hidden will be made known ; the dark- 
 ness will no longer be able to quench the light which has been 
 shining in the midst of it, and seeking to penetrate it; each 
 man will be revealed as that which he actually is, that every 
 one may receive the things done in the body, according to that 
 he hath done, whether it be good or bad.* 
 
 This language is, I think, strictly and beautifully consistent 
 with all that the Apostle has taught us of Christ as the Re- 
 deemer and Justifier — with the whole purpose and method of 
 His Gospel. But it certainly suggests to us the thought, that 
 tiie tribunal of Christ is one which is not to be set up for the 
 first time in some distant day, amidst earthly pomp and cere- 
 monial, but that it is one before which we, in our own inmost 
 being, are standing now, and that the time will come when we 
 shall know that it is so, and when all which has concealed the 
 Judge from us will be taken away. 
 
 "But if that is the sense of St Paul's words, why do we 
 speak in the Apostle's Creed of His coming tJtcncc to ju<: 
 the quick and dead ? why do we say in the Nicene ( 'reed that 
 He shall come agaiii in glory?" These questions are so im- 
 portant, and they connect themselves with so many thoughts 
 which are occupying and agitating men's minds in the present 
 day, that I am most anxious fairly to consider them. 
 
 If I read the words, From thence He shall come, following 
 immediately upon the account of an ascension into heaven, 
 which is described as a great triumph for Him and for man- 
 kind, I do not think my first notion w T ould be that they implied 
 that He would descend from that state — that He would assume 
 again the conditions and limitations of the one which He had 
 left. The favorite scriptural analogy of the sun coming forth 
 out of his bridal chamber, after the dark night, would present 
 
 Iva xoynariTai ixaaros ra 61a, lov <5u>ua7o$, rtpoj u t~pa%t v ) tlri uyaObv 
 elrt xaxov. I do not think any one can be exactly satisfied with our 
 rendering of this sentence, though I am not prepared to suggest another. 
 
 * 
 
THE UNVEILING OF CHRIST. 229 
 
 itself as, at all events, much more obvious. No doubt a great 
 many considerations might induce me to reject this sense and 
 accept the other. I might find that express words in the New 
 Testament or a general current of meaning obliged me to take 
 up with the more difficult hypothesis. But, in fact, express 
 words and the current of sense force me out of the difficult 
 hypothesis into the natural one. When St. Paul wishes to 
 teach us about the coming or the judgment of Christ, the word 
 he most commonly uses is atfoxd-kv^i^ or ' unveiling.' He 
 looks forward to the unveiling of Christ. He bids His disci- 
 ples in all the Churches live in the expectation of it. Or else 
 he speaks of $avipw<ns — ! a manifestation ' — as in the passage 
 I referred to just now, and as in that celebrated passage in the 
 eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where he 
 describes the whole Creation as looking forward to deliverance 
 from its travail at the manifestation of the sons of God. 
 Each of these words, especially the first, receives the greatest 
 illustration from the Apostle's own history. Whenever he 
 gives the story of his conversion, he describes it as an un- 
 veiling of Christ to his bodily eye ; when he lays open the 
 principle and meaning of his conversion, he represents it as 
 the revealing or unveiling of Christ in him. This idea, in 
 these two different aspects of it, therefore, possessed his whole 
 mind, and penetrated his teaching. His Gospel to men was 
 a manifestation or revelation of Christ to them, as one who 
 had proved himself to be their Lord, by entering into their 
 death, and by redeeming them from their tyrants. His assu- 
 rance to each man was, that if he yielded to his Deliverer, and 
 struggled against all that were trying to enslave him, Christ's 
 power and presence would be revealed to him more every day. 
 His hope for the world was, that Christ would in due time re- 
 veal himself completely as its Conqueror and King, and would 
 bring all men to see that His universe was built on truth and 
 righteousness. In strict accordance with this teaching, ho uses 
 
230 THE DAY OF CHRIST. 
 
 "day" to express the coming or revelation of Christ; "day" 
 being taken, as the reader will perceive if he turns to the thir- 
 teenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, or to the fifth 
 chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in opposi- 
 tion to night. Hereby he explains that use of the words 
 " human day," to which I referred before, as expressing the 
 judgment passed by men upon himself; hereby he brings forth 
 the full force and intention of that phrase which recurs so 
 continually in the prophets of the Old Testament — " The day 
 of the Lord."* 
 
 And there is this further — I think, quite unspeakable — bene- 
 fit arising from his use of this form of expression. Instead of 
 allowing us to dream of a final judgment, which shall be unlike 
 any other that has ever been in the world, he compels us to 
 look upon every one of what we rightly call " God's judgments" 
 •ntially resembling it in kind and principle. Our eagerness 
 to deny this doctrine, — to make out an altogether peculiar 
 and unprecedented judgment at the end of the world, — has 
 obliged us, first, to practise the most violent outrages upon the 
 language of Scripture, insisting that words cannot 'mean really 
 what, according to all ordinary rules of construction, they must 
 mean. Secondly, it has obliged us to treat with most especial 
 contumely that solemn discourse of our Lord with his disciples 
 when they showed Him the buildings of the Teniae, and 
 almost to deny His assertion that that generation should 
 not pass till all the things he spoke of w T ere fulfilled; though 
 he adds to it a sentence which might have made us serious in 
 our belief of Him, if anything could : — " Heaven and earth 
 
 * I have dwelt so much upon the use of this language, in my Sermons 
 on the Kings and Prophets of the Old Testament, as well as in the pre- 
 vious volume on the Old Testament, that I did not wish to enlarge upon 
 it here ; especially as it will come out more properly when I speak of 
 the Epistles to the Thessalonians, in the book I have mentioned in the 
 preface to this Edition. 
 
 4 
 
FALSE IDEA OF JUDGMENT. 231 
 
 shall pass aicay, but my word shall not pass away." Thirdly, 
 as I hinted when I was alluding to this subject in connexion 
 with the doctrine of the Resurrection, it has driven us into 
 the perilous notion that we are only using metaphors when 
 we speak of God as coming forth to judge the world in any 
 crises of war or revolution. Certainly the Bible justifies that 
 language, as not metaphorical, but most real. It speaks of all 
 such crises as " days of the Lord." 
 
 The " coming" of the Apostles' Creed, and the " coming 
 again" of the Nicene Creed, must both indicate, if we derive 
 our interpretation of them from the Scriptures, not that 
 Christ will resume earthly conditions, or will take a throne in 
 some part of this earth, but that He will be manifested as He 
 is. The Nicene phrase, " coming again in glory," which is taken 
 from our Lord's own words, u The Son of man shall come in 
 the glory of His Father ', and of the holy angels" seems express- 
 ly intended to guard against the notion that He should be 
 invested with some of those vulgar ensigns of royalty which 
 the sense-bound Jew supposed were needful to make Him a 
 King, while He proved Himself to be one by healing the sick, 
 and casting out devils. In our day, many of those who are 
 most busy in the study of prophecy, complain of the Creeds, 
 because they do not set forth, distinctly, their notion of a 
 second coming of Christ to reign on the earth, but only speak 
 of a judgment of quick and dead. I can sympathise to a con- 
 siderable extent, with their feelings, though I am convinced 
 that the Creeds are right, and that they are wrong. 
 
 If the belief of a judgment takes the form, which it certainly 
 has taken in the minds of many of us ; if we look upon it only 
 as something exceedingly terrible, which we are to set before 
 our readers when all ordinary resources of argument and rhe- 
 toric have failed, — when we can no longer move them by any 
 testimonies we bear concerning the mercy of God or His 
 redeeming Love ; if the thought of Christ as a Judge is one 
 
 
232 THE SECOND COM NG. 
 
 which we are to shrink from, though we may find satisfaction 
 in thinking of Him as a Saviour; — then it is, indeed, utterly 
 unintelligible why the writers of the Old Testament should so 
 continually call upon God to rise and judge the earth ; why 
 this should be the great burthen of their prayers, the ultimate 
 point of their hopes; and why the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment should exhort their disciples to lift up their heads, and to 
 desire, above all things, the Eevelation of Jesus Christ. To 
 
 ape from this amazing contradiction, it has been natural 
 for men to invent a theory and say, " He is coming, but not 
 only for this end, not first for this end. 1 ft- is coming to reign 
 
 P His saints, — to give them rest from their enemies; tl 
 the judgment of the world will follow/' It is better, I think, 
 that men should cherish this belief, than that they should con- 
 template Christ as one who has saved heretofore, but is com- 
 ing hereafter only to punish and condemn. For though some 
 connect no better thoughts with this faith than the expectation 
 of their own supremacy, — and from the supremacy of those 
 who can indulge so dark and selfish a dream, good Lord ! 
 deliver Thy bleeding earth — no tyranny that hfl P existed 
 
 upon it, would be so godless and so intolerable, — there are 
 numbers of true-hearted Millenarians, who rejoice in it only 
 because it is identified in their minds with the victory of Christ 
 over what is evil, with the establishment of His gracious domi- 
 nion over all people. Such men felt themselves tied and bound 
 by the notion of the religious world, that Christ had taken the 
 nature of man and died on the Cross, only to save a few elect 
 souls. They were sure that He must intend to bless mankind, 
 to redeem the earth. Most glorious conviction, which no Creeds 
 that men have ever framed, must tempt us to part with, for the 
 Bible witnesses of it in every page ; *the truth and love of God 
 are involved in our holding it fast ! But the Creeds differ in one 
 respect from the supporters of this pre-millennial Advent. They 
 teach us that 1800 years ago, He who was crucified under Pon- 
 
THE CREEDS 6PEAE1 OF A REIGNING KING. 233 
 
 tius Pilate, asserted and proved that He was the Lord of Man, 
 — that while the Jews were confounding a real king with an 
 emperor clothed in purple, He demonstrated wherein kingship 
 consists, and what are the highest powers which belong to it. 
 A creed that speaks of a Son of God and a Son of Man, has 
 no need to tell us, — could not tell us without contradicting all 
 its other statements, — that at some distant day he will assume 
 an authority which He has never exercised yet. But it may 
 tell us, it should tell us, that He who sat as a King, and judged 
 as a King, when the city and temple of Jerusalem fell, and the 
 old world passed away with a great noise ; He who sat as a 
 King, and judged as a King, when the mightiest empire the 
 world had ever seen was broken in pieces by a stone cut out 
 of the mountain without hands ; He who has been confessed 
 as a King by all the most civilized nations of the Western 
 world ; in whose Name kings have reigned and decreed just- 
 ice ; He who has been proving that the powers which they used 
 were His, by sweeping away dynasties, and putting down 
 nations, the cup of whose iniquities was full ; He from whom 
 all that has been righteous, gracious, gentle, orderly, civilized, 
 in the economy of nations, families, churches, has come ; He 
 against whom all that has been cowardly, cruel, slavish, super- 
 stitious, in that economy, has been rebelling, — will most assu- 
 redly be manifested, not in some little obscure corner of the 
 earth, where pilgrims may go to look for Him, but as the light- 
 ning shineth from the one end of heaven to the other ; will be 
 manifested, not changed and shrivelled from the crucified, risen, 
 ascended Lord, to the miserable Caesar the Jews fancied Him 
 to be; but " coming as He went," in the glory of His Father, 
 so that every eye may see Him, so that every king, and judge, 
 and priest, who has professed to rule or teach by His authority 
 or for Him, shall be forced to own to himself and to the uni- 
 verse, whether he has been serving truth or a lie ; whether he 
 has been serving Christ, or Mammon, or himself; whether he 
 
234 HOW TO KEEP BAD MEN IX AWE. 
 
 has bowed down to the judgment and opinion of any public, 
 religious or secular, or has walked as a child of the day in that 
 light which lighteth every man who does not choose the dark- 
 ness. Surely a sound creed should tell us this, and should there- 
 fore convey to us the needful assurance and comfort, that all 
 
 ■nts have been working under a divine guidance to a divine 
 
 ie; that nothing which lias been good can ever perish ; that 
 nothing which is evil can abide in that kingdom of righteous- 
 ness, and truth, and peace, which is the kingdom of God and 
 of His Son, and therefore can have no end. 
 
 In spite of my conflict with the Idealists in my last Essay, I 
 am quite prepared to hear the charges that I have now been 
 defending an ideal, and not an actual, judgment day, and that 
 I confound the spiritual kingdom of Christ with His reign over 
 the earth. I can only answer, as I have answered before, that 
 1 have found the current notions of a judgment, not exactly 
 ideal, but exceedingly fantastic, figurative, inoperative, and that 
 I have tried to ascertain whether Scripture does not give us 
 the hint of something more practical and more substantial. If 
 the popular notion on this subject is thought necessary to pro- 
 duce terror in the minds of thi< ad vagabonds, I own that 
 I am ideal enough to think the constabulary force a more u 
 ful, effectual, and also a more godly, instrument. That does 
 
 sert the existence of an actual present justice.; that does 
 awaken in the consciences of evil men the sense of a law. which 
 never loses sight of them, and may find out their darkest deeds ; 
 that holds out to their merely animal nature, which requires 
 such discipline, the prospect of a sure and speedy punishment. 
 If, again, the popular notion on this subject is wanted as an 
 influence to act habitually on the lives of ordinary worldly men, 
 and it is alleged that I have substituted for it the notion of a 
 mysterious judgment, of which it is impossible that such men 
 can make any account, — then I reply, that it is precisely 
 this kind of mysterious judgment, which these men do 
 
WORLDLY MEN J RELIGIOUS MEN. 235 
 
 recognise, and to which they pay habitual homage under the 
 name "of Public Opinion. But if you require this popular 
 notion for the sake of religious men, or of those who are look- 
 ing forward to some great improvement in the constitution of 
 the world, then I say it is quite clear that such nfen are not 
 in the least satisfied with it, but are inclined rudely to discard « 
 it. Such men demand for themselves an habitual government, 
 inspection, judgment, reaching to the roots of their heart and 
 will ; such men demand for the earth some complete deliver- 
 ance from all that defiles it and sets it in rebellion against a 
 true and righteous King. The religious men must have a king- 
 dom over their own spirits; do not they see that only such a 
 kingdom can be of any worth to any human being whatsoever? 
 Has not Christ claimed to be King over both the spirits and 
 bodies of men ? over their bodies, because over their spirits ; 
 over all things whatsoever, because over the creature to which 
 all things are put in subjection. Do we need a return to the 
 lowest Judaism, the lowest Heathenism, in our notions of the 
 relation between spirit and matter, the eternal and the tempo- 
 ral ? Do we not require a redemption of all that is human 
 from its changeable accidents ; a judgment and separation which 
 shall come from the revelation of Him who has redeemed and 
 glorified our whole humanity, between that in us which is His, 
 and that which we have contracted by turning away from Him? 
 Do we not ask for a day in which all the scattered limbs of 
 Christ's body in heaven and earth shall be gathered together 
 in Him, for a day in which light and darkness, life and death, 
 shall never be mingled or confounded again 1 Is there any one 
 who seriously believes that it is a day of twenty-four hours in 
 > duration which we are thus expecting ? Is it not one which 
 has dawned on the world already, which our consciences tell 
 us w T e may dwell in now, which therefore Scripture and reason 
 both affirm must wax clearer and fuller till He who is the Sik: 
 of righteousness is felt to be shining everywhere, and till there 
 
236 USE OF THE WORDS OF THE CREED. 
 
 is no corner of the universe into which His beams have not 
 entered ? 
 
 I do not intend these Essays as a commentary on either of 
 our Cree< We have, I suspect, more commentaries on them 
 than we want. In most cases, I have preferred to take my 
 titles from popular and recognised names of doctrines, not to 
 express them in the words of our formularies. I have spoken 
 of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, of Justification by Faith ; 
 not of Christ being conceived by the Holy Ghost, or born of 
 the Virgin Mary, or suffering under Pontius Pilate. For my 
 object has been to examine the language with which we are 
 most familiar, and which has been open to most objections, 
 especially from Unitarians. Respecting the Conception, I have 
 
 en purposely silent; not because I have any doubt about 
 that article or am indifferent to it, but because I believe the 
 word l miraculous, 'which we ordinarily connect with it, sug- 
 gests an untrue meaning ; because I think the truth is conveyed 
 to us, most safely, in the simple language of the Evangelists ; 
 and because that language, taken in connexion with the rest 
 of their story, offers itself, I suspect, to a majority of those who 
 have taken in the idea of an Incarnation, as the only natural 
 and rational account of the method by which the eternal Son 
 of God could have taken human flesh.* 
 
 But I have deviated from this practice in three cases. I 
 have used the express words of the Creed as the text of my 
 remarks upon the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Judg- 
 ment. I have done so, perfectly well knowing that I am lay- 
 ing nryself open to the displeasure, not only of the Unitarians, 
 but of the other Dissenters, who would have a much better 
 
 * I have expressed my thoughts on this subject in a Sermon " On 
 Marriage," in " The Church a Family." 
 
TENETS AND CREEDS. 337 
 
 opinion of me, if I had defended the same principles without 
 appealing to what they consider dry and worn-out documents. 
 
 I do not know whether I can find a better opportunity than 
 this for addressing myself directly to the feelings of Unitarians 
 on this point. They have a great horror of a Creed. But 
 tenets they must have. The other Dissenters have a great 
 many. Their list, they boast, is reasonably small. The tenet 
 of a Judgment to come or Resurrection of the just and unjust, 
 however, is included among them. I do not know whether 
 they very distinctly define their opinions on this subject ; but 
 a respectable, well-conditioned Unitarian would be very sorry 
 if his orthodox neighbor supposed they were widely at variance 
 upon it. I conclude, therefore, that the same vague, supersti- 
 tious apprehension, which 1 have said that we derive from hea- 
 thenism, he must have derived from it also. The sense of a 
 judgment to come is so kindred to our nature, so rooted in 
 our nature, that we must hold it under one form or another. 
 The old Minos form, or one that is akin to it, will be the form 
 which this tenet assumes so long as it is merely a tenet. What 
 I contend is, that it assumes a higher, nobler, more practical 
 form when, ceasing to be a tenet, it becomes part of a Creed. 
 When it is viewed as one of the acts of a living Person, a Son 
 of Man and a Son of God, then its coating of superstition falls 
 off from it : it becomes identified with the greatest triumphs 
 that humanity has yet won — with its present struggles, with 
 its most glorious hopes. 
 
 I submit this remark to the earnest consideration of all 
 classes of Unitarians, but especially of those who are becoming 
 discontented with the tenets of their forefathers. They very 
 naturally argue in this way, — "We cannot bear the yoke 
 which is upon our necks already. You would put a heavier 
 one upon them. We have been beaten with rods ; you would 
 beat us with scorpions." The other Dissenters press the same 
 argument upon their disciples : " You complain of us for com- 
 
238 THE OPPRESSION OF TENETS. 
 
 pelling you to accept dogmas which you do not feel to be rea- 
 sonable, nay, even for preventing you from appealing to Scrip- 
 ture against them, because, after a congregation or school has 
 accepted a certain interpretation of Scripture, it is bound by 
 that. What would become of you, then, if you were connect- 
 ed with a Church which formally and avowedly holds its mem- 
 bers to a certain Creed ?" I am not careful to answer this 
 argument. I am a very bad proselytizer. If I could persuade 
 all Dissenters to become members of mv Church to-morrow, I 
 should be very sorry to do it ; I believe the chances are, they 
 might leave it the next day. I do not wish to make them think 
 as I think. But I want that they and I should be what we 
 pretend to be, and then I doubt not we should find that there 
 is a common ground for us all far beneath our thinkings. For 
 truth I hold not to be that which every man troweth, but to 
 be that which lies at the bottom of all men's trowings, that in 
 which those trowings have their only meeting point. But what 
 I cannot and would not do, I believe, the experience of a great 
 many Dissenters will do for them. They will be driven to 
 edfl by their weariness of tenets. They will find that they 
 are at the mercy of every tyrannical congregation, of its weal- 
 thiest member, of every dogmatist who rules a school, of the 
 public opinion of the sect which rules him. They will be com- 
 pelled to ask, " How r does this happen ? Is there no escape 
 from these oppressive judgments of human beings, — no escape 
 but into absolute doubt and denial ? not even an escape into 
 them, — for what intolerant dogmatists there are among doubt- 
 ers and deniers !" If they want freedom .for their reason and 
 wills, the old Creeds speak of One who came to deliver them. 
 If they feel that the language of Scripture cannot be tied down 
 by the language of a formula, Creeds oblige us to look out of 
 themselves to some booK which shall unfold the person and 
 the acts of Him of whom they are bearing witness. They 
 never can put themselves in the place of our reason or of Scrip- 
 
GOD S METHOD. 239 
 
 ture, till their words are perverted, and the sense of them con- 
 tradicted. Why there should be such documents in the world, 
 I can explain no more than I can explain why any part of the 
 order of Nature should exist, or why it should be in harmony 
 with any other part. I find it so. I give God thanks that it 
 is so. I hope, in the day when He is revealed, and we are all 
 called to answer for the use or abuse we have made of His 
 gifts, that He will enable us to enter more fully into this and 
 many other mysteries of His government, which I understand 
 most imperfectly, but which have helped me to understand 
 myself. 
 
ESSAY XIII. 
 
 ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Any Clergyman who ventures to write on Inspiration, will 
 be asked whether he is prepared to defend the popular views 
 on that subject. If not, all his more judicious friends will ad- 
 ■ him to be silent. He may injure his own reputation; he 
 may do what is much worse — he may injure the faith of his 
 countrymen and countrywomen. 
 
 \ cannot undertake to defend the popular views upon this 
 or any other subject. First, I find it very difficult to ascertain 
 what they are. What is called a popular view expands or 
 contracts at the pleasure of writers in newspapers and reviews. 
 It appears to be exceedingly definite ; you approach it, it has 
 almost vanished. Popular notions have a considerable vigor 
 for purposes of attack. They can be used with great effect 
 against a supposed enemy of the faith. They only fail when 
 you want them for use and comfort. They are full of warmth 
 and fervor on the platform, in the closet they are as cold as 
 ice. They stir up all the elements of strife and bitterness in 
 the natural heart ; I do not find that they stir the spirit to any 
 
 (240) 
 
POPULAR NOTIONS ; ARE THEY POPULAR? 241 
 
 energetic action for God or man. Next, what are called popu- 
 lar notions answer, it seems to me, very ill to their name. 
 They do not come from the people, they do not touch the 
 hearts of the people. They are not like old, racy, homely pro- 
 verbs, which embody so much of common, and therefore so 
 much of genuine, feeling. They do not call forth any hearty, 
 intelligent response when they are proclaimed among simple 
 men who work with their hands. There is a sickly perfume 
 about them, which denotes them not to have been nursed in 
 the open air, but in flower-pots. The seeds of them may have 
 been sown in the study, but they have ripened in the boudoir ; 
 their greatest exposure has been in crowds, in which there is 
 breath enough of some kind, but which the breath of heaven is 
 not suffered to visit. And lastly, adherence to these popular 
 notions is, I think, incompatible with a strict adherence to 
 those Creeds which we solemnly confess, still more incompati- 
 ble with a continual and direct appeal to the Bible, as a guide 
 and an authority. I have explained why I think so in other 
 cases ; some of the popular notions about Inspiration, instead 
 of being an exception to either remark, offer, I suspect, the 
 most striking illustrations of both. 
 
 What is said about the danger to reputation is perfectly 
 true ; every one should consider it for himself. A man trem- 
 bles for his wealth in proportion to the insecurity of his invest- 
 ment ; the miser, who has been afraid to deposit it anywhere 
 but in some chest or cupboard within his reach, has the best 
 reason of all for trembling. The religious world has a painful 
 feeling that it has been hoarding up treasures for itself, and 
 has not been rich towards God ; therefore it is continually in 
 dread of burglars and pickpockets. Let it use all precautions ; 
 let it prove how free it is from the maxims of the ordinary 
 world, by banishing trust and cultivating universal suspicion. 
 All of us like its smiles, dread its frowns. We shall take great 
 pains to secure one, and avert the other, if there is no smile 
 
 11 
 
242 REPUTATION AND USEFULNESS. 
 
 that we care for more, no frown which we count more terrible. 
 But many of us persuade ourselves, all of us have probably at 
 one time yielded to the opinion, that reputation is necessary 
 for the sake of usefulness. Every hour, I think, will show us 
 more and more that the concern about reputation is the great 
 hindrance to usefulness; that if we desire to be useful, we 
 must struggle against it night and day. 
 
 That thought suggests the really great argument against 
 meddling with this subject of Inspiration ; we may injure the 
 faith of our brothers and sisters. A most potent reason for 
 p taking some course in reference to it ; whether silence is that 
 course, they may be able to decide who know something of 
 the present feeling of different classes of Englishmen. Can 
 you prevent any set of men, nay, any man or woman, from 
 knowing that this question has been stirred ? Do not those 
 who lay down theories of Inspiration, and denounce others for 
 not acquiescing in them, proclaim that fact aloud ? Is it not 
 true, as thflM persons affirm so constantly, that the faith of 
 our countrymen, as well as of other Kuropeans, in the Bible, 
 is shaken already ? Are there not very clear evidences in 
 their restless eagerness to get all objections put down, that 
 their own faith is feeble and tottering? Is it not a duty w T hich 
 we owe to those who confess their doubts, which we owe 
 quite as much to those who are trying to hush their doubts by 
 making a noise, not to avoid the subject, but to face it, and to 
 express ourselves upon it with as much frankness, as little am- 
 biguity as possible ? To avoid the charge of ambiguity, of wil- 
 fully concealing some opinion which it would be inconvenient 
 to express, is impossible. No one who has had the slightest 
 experience will expect to do that. The most vehement cham- 
 pion of modern theories about the Inspiration of the Bible, — 
 the most passionate denier of its Inspiration, — will agree in 
 declaring that any person who refuses the shibboleths of either 
 is tampering with his conscience, and does not mean what he 
 
DANGER OF REPETITIONS. 243 
 
 says. They are perfectly entitled to their opinion ; their har- 
 mony upon one point, while they agree on no other, will be a 
 decisive proof with many that they are right. Those who try 
 to disturb so fixed a conviction, will always repent of their 
 pains, and will find that the argument, — probably, which is 
 much more precious, the temper — they have expended, has 
 brought no calculable return. The utmost any one can dream 
 of or should desire is, that his sincerity should be tried by his 
 peers ; that is to say, by those who have felt these difficulties, 
 and have sought, or still seek, a solution of them; not by men 
 of another and altogether superior race, who are quite above 
 human dangers and human sympathies, and are able to look 
 down upon us from a region of self-satisfied, untroubled ortho- 
 doxy, or from a region which, being exactly antipodal to this, 
 resembles it in temperature, the region of self-satisfied, untroub- 
 led unbelief. 
 
 The only legitimate reason which can deter a person who 
 has spoken or written much on theological subjects, from enter- 
 ing on this, is, that he must almost necessarily have handled it 
 before. The question of Inspiration touches so nearly upon 
 all the thoughts with which men in this day are occupied, that 
 at whatever point one comes into contact with those thoughts, 
 it must be encountered. The fear of repeating the same pro- 
 positions again and again, besets every one who tries to ex- 
 press convictions which are very sacred to him, and which he 
 thinks his contemporaries have as much right in as he has. 
 As he knows only common -places, and cares for nothing else, 
 he cannot deal in novelties. But he must be conscious how 
 much common-places lose their force, and are mistaken for the 
 idiosyncrasies of a particular mind, when they come forth fre- 
 quently clothed in the phrases and forms which education or 
 circumstances have made habitual to him. The dread of giv- 
 ing them merely a personal character, grows with his belief 
 that they are truths for mankind. But however justifiable this 
 
244 NECESSITY FOR THEM. 
 
 feeling is, it must often yield to other considerations. A man 
 will not understand what your convictions are, till you have 
 put them in various lights; till you have given him an oppor- 
 tunity of applying various tests to them. It is not enough to 
 treat of any great subject which an age is busy with, collat- 
 erally ; you must speak of it directly, must grapple with the 
 very words and forms in which people are wont to see it 
 exhibited; else they will fancy that you and they arenot intending 
 the same thing. It is better to run the risk of a hundred repe- 
 titions, (which after all, not fifty or twenty persons may be 
 aware of]) than to omit an opportunity when it offers, of 
 relieving the conscience of a fellow-creature from some dis- 
 tressing bondage, or of protesting against some unrighteous 
 attempt to keep it in prison.* 
 
 I shall therefore fix my thoughts on the word Inspiration 
 our disputes are emphatically about the word. They are not 
 •al for that. They point to facts and to substances; but 
 the best way < and of coming to understand 
 
 * Not at all that I may oblige ■ lor (which I could not do if I 
 
 ■would) to look into books which he may never have heard of, but simply 
 that any one who pi :nay have an opportunityof proving either thai 
 
 I have merely said again here what I have said before, or that I have said 
 something altogether inconsistent with that, I would mention that I have 
 alluded to the subject of Inspiration in a chapter on the Bible, in a book 
 called "The Kingdom of Christ," which was published many years ago ; 
 more recently in a Sermon on the Psalms, contained in a volume on tho 
 Prayer Book ; and in a Sermon on the character of Balaam, in a volume 
 on the Old Testament. I should not have spoken of some still more 
 casual references to it, in a book on the Prophets and Kings of the Old 
 Testament, published this year, if a particularly kind critic in the Non- 
 conformist, for whose commendations, and still more for whose friendly 
 reproofs, I desire to express my gratitude, had not called upon me to 
 develope more clearly my hints, and to state my whole mind on the subject 
 of Inspiration I would request him to accept this Essay as an answer 
 to that courteous challenge. 
 
GREEK INSPIRATION. 245 
 
 what we mean ourselves and what others mean, is to examine 
 our uses of the name which we feel to be so sacred. 
 
 1. We find the singers of the old world asking some divine 
 power to inspire them. In the last age this language of theirs 
 was not much heeded. It had been so much abused by the 
 vulgarest writers who adopted classical fashions (I should be 
 scarcely correct in saying classical forms,) that it was supposed 
 never to have had any signification. We have learnt to do 
 more justice to the men whom we profess to admire. "We feel 
 that they would be worthy of no admiration, that they could 
 not have won any, if they had not been simple and sincere. 
 If they were merely using a trade phrase when they asked a 
 Muse or a God to teach them, they must have had the fate of 
 similar traders in later times. The rest of their speech is genu- 
 ine and transparent ; this part of it cannot be less so. It must 
 express, not their loosest convictions, but their strongest. 
 
 2. But whatever force we allow to this sense of the word, 
 are we to suppose it has any, even the slightest relation, to the 
 sense in which religious men speak of the Inspiration of the 
 Bible ? A number of voices all around us are saying, " There 
 is no real distinction between these books and any others. 
 Inspiration is predicable of both, in the same sense. It can be 
 but a question of degree, and therefore if you feel yourselves 
 at liberty to exercise all kinds of criticism upon the methods, 
 principles, and authority of the one, you cannot fairly debar 
 yourself or any one else from the same liberty in respect of the 
 other." We hear again a number of voices saying, " You 
 exercise that liberty at your peril. The Bible must be looked 
 upon as the inspired book. To put it on the same ground 
 with any other, is to deprive us of all foundation for our faith 
 now, for our hopes in the world to come." 
 
 3. But again : religious men, the most earnestly religious 
 men, speak of themselves as taught, actuated, inhabited by a 
 Divine Spirit. They declare that they could know nothing 
 
246 FANATICS. THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 of the Scriptures except they were under this guidance. Is 
 this the Inspiration which we attribute to the writers of the 
 Old and New Testament, or is that different from it in kind ? 
 
 4. A number of religious teachers actually claim to be 
 inspired men, and circles of admiring disciples believe them ; 
 nay, crowds run after them, in the faith that they have a divine 
 commission. Here is another fact which well deserves to be 
 examined, a very serious fact indeed. It is one which the per- 
 emptory decrees of our schools have certainly not cleared up. 
 They have not prevented the fanatics from appearing by their 
 maxim respecting inspiration. They have not done much to 
 weaken or to explain their influence. If fanaticism is to be 
 checked, we must understand ourselves a little better about its 
 nature and cause. 
 
 5. But the Church of England, which many religious people 
 say is not spiritual enough, whose sons boast that it is expressly 
 opposed to fanaticism, has used this very word " Inspiration, 1 ' 
 and has claimed it for these sons, apparently in a fuller, larger 
 sense than either of the classes to which I have last referred. 
 On the Fifth Sunday after Easter, we ask u Him from whom 
 all good things do come, that by His holy inspiration we may 
 think those things that be good, and by His merciful guiding 
 may perform the same." Every Sunday morning, and on 
 every Festival-day, we ask, in our Communion Service, that 
 11 the thoughts of our hearts may be cleansed by the inspiration 
 of the Holy Spirit, so that we may perfectly love God, and 
 worthily magnify His name." Here are petitions which con- 
 cern not a few specially religious men or some illuminated 
 teachers, but the whole flock ; to say the least, all the miscel- 
 laneous people who are gathered together in a particular con- 
 gregation. Are we paltering with words in a double sense ? 
 When we speak of Inspiration do we mean Inspiration ? When 
 we refer to the Inspiration of the Scriptures in our sermons, 
 ought we to say, * Brethren, wo beseech you not to suppose 
 
ST. PAUL IN GREECE. 247 
 
 that this Inspiration at all resembles that for which we have 
 been praying. They are generically, essentially unlike. It 
 is blasphemous to connect them in our minds ; the* Church is 
 very guilty for having suggested the association." These are 
 the questions we have to discuss; let us not shrink from them, 
 or dispose of them lightly and frivolously, as if the hearts of 
 tens of thousands were not interested in them. 
 
 1. When St. Paul came into the different cities of Greece, 
 he found men whose traditions told them of an Inspiration, 
 which poets, prophets, priestesses, received from some divine 
 source. These traditions had facts for their basis. Men were 
 actually seen to be carried far above the level of their ordinary 
 thoughts ; they spoke as they did not speak when they were 
 buying and selling ; their words entered into other men's minds 
 and worked mightily there. There was no denying this ; the 
 experience of men established it beyond all controversy. And 
 I think the conscience of men, expressed in these traditions, 
 was entitled to bear its testimony as w r ell as their experience. 
 That conscience said, " This power is something which we 
 cannot measure and reduce under rules. It works in us, but 
 it is above us. We may in some sort control its exercises, but 
 we are the subjects of it. It must come from some higher 
 source. A God must have imparted it to us." 
 
 The next and more awful question was, " What God, what 
 is his name?'''' When they tried to consider this question, a 
 number of new facts forced themselves upon their observation. 
 A man under the influence of some extraordinary afflatus, 
 might be raised to a higher and nobler state, might be an inven- 
 tor of arts, might overcome his inclinations to pleasure, might 
 do heroic acts for the benefit of the world, might have intuitions 
 of the future. Or he might be merely inebriated, maddened, 
 might exhibit wild contentions, might in the worst and grossest 
 sense, lose the mastery of himself. The theory of a divine 
 Inspirer must, they thought, explain both these discordant 
 
1» CHARACTBB OF HIS TEACHING. 
 
 experiences. Every one who reflects upon the legends which 
 cluster about the name of Dionysus, and the various grotesque 
 forms whicn embodied them lor the eye, will understand bow 
 the heart and imagination of the Greek were exercised by this 
 problem. 
 
 How might we suppose that St. Paul would act, — how do 
 we know that he did act, — when he brought his Gospel to a 
 people with these notions and traditions % i If he had told them 
 that all the thoughts of their ancestors were unmeaning and 
 ridiculous, he would have found a willing ami prepared audi- 
 ence in Athens and Corinth. Their sophists had told them so 
 before ; the inclination of their minds was to accept the state- 
 ment. They would indeed have continued to bow down to all 
 manner of idols; why not'/ they were beautiful objects; wor- 
 ship might do them some good ; who could tell ? ki The peo- 
 ple certainly needed such im. it was philosophical to 
 humor the vulgar taste; a very high philosophy might see a 
 meaning in it." JJut St. Paul ^id not take this com The 
 one which he did take must have tended to awaken that old 
 faith out of its sleep ; not to smother it in its sleep. Tor he 
 spoke of gifts of healing; gifts of speech ; gifts of government. 
 Jle spoke of these gifts as proceeding from a Terson. lie spoke 
 of His presence as the great gift of all. He spoke of that gift 
 as coming to men, because a Man had appeared in the world, 
 and had ascended on high, who was the Son of God. [Such 
 language could not but associate itself with all the thoughts 
 which they had before of Inspirations and an Inspirer. We 
 know that it did, for most of the confusions in the Corinthian 
 Church arose from the old dreams of a Uionysiac inspiration. 
 And how are the two distinguished r" There would have 
 been nothing to distinguish them, there womd have been no 
 witness against idol worship or demon worship, if St. Paul had 
 said, " Those powers which you referred to Dionysus, or 
 Apollo, or iEsculapius, are not what we are permitted and 
 
EFFECT OF IT. 249 
 
 enabled to exercise ;" for the understanding would still have 
 demanded, " What then is the origin of those V But if he was 
 able to say, " What you have attributed to a demon, to a being 
 whom you have fashioned out of a set of phenomena which you 
 could not account for, I come to vindicate for the Father of 
 Spirits, for the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;" this would 
 indeed have been the most triumphant testimony he could bear, 
 that the reign of the old Gods was over, and that the one Lord 
 who had spoken to a poor band of exiles from Egypt, was now 
 asserting His dominion over the world. And so — and only so 
 — it w r ould be apparent, why He who lifted men into a nobler 
 and freer life, could not mean man to be the victim of a frenz} 7 , 
 or of mere animal impulses. The history which the Apostle 
 told was the history of the gradual discovery of man's relation 
 to God, and consequently of man's spiritual condition. That 
 a Divine Spirit should come to meet and raise a spirit hard 
 pressed with animal inclinations, to give it the power of main- 
 taining its own position, of looking up to Him in whose like- 
 ness it was made, apart from whom it had no life, was so rea- 
 sonable, was so necessary a corollary from the previous part 
 of the message, that the heart of the hearers anticipated it, was 
 eager to recognise it. But then whatever counteracted this 
 inlluence, whatever led the animal to assert that supremacy to 
 which it had been proved to have no claim, must be either the 
 turbulent and rebellious movement of the lower nature, or the 
 action of some evil power, speaking directly to the spirit and 
 aiming to destroy it. 
 
 The opposition between the divine and either the animal or 
 the devilish, which had been confounded with it in the old 
 mythology, was manifested just in proportion as those very 
 powers and gifts, which man had felt before he could not 
 ascribe to himself, were ascribed to the Spirit of God, the 
 Spirit of Order and Truth. But it is equally evident that 
 there was another great and broad distinction betw r een the old 
 
 11* 
 
250 LAW BEFOHE INSPIRATION. 
 
 t 
 
 and new belief. The first had been partial, narrow, peculiar. 
 It had tried to explain how extraordinary men, or men in 
 some extraordinary crisis of their lives, were able to do strange 
 acts, to speak unusual words. St. Paul's Gospel was human 
 and universal. It explained indeed the influence of seers and 
 prophets; it asserted the existence of special endowments; it 
 put all honor upon distinct callings. But first, it asserted that 
 the Spirit was necessary for all human beings, and was intend- 
 ed for all. And this human gift it did not degrade below 7 the 
 other, as being a secondary, inferior exhibition of that which 
 the great man obtained in its highest form. The Divine Spirit, 
 the Spirit of Love, who was promised to all, was described as 
 the source and spring of those peculiar endowments which 
 were given to this and that man as lie willed. They wore to 
 'rem their gifts mainly as witn- Of Hi- presence, 
 
 2. Hut if St. Paul asserted that the inspiration which the 
 ( [reeks bad attributed to false ( lodfl was derived only from the 
 true, what kind of dignity did he claim lor the inspiration of 
 hisownseer8and prophets? J apprehend that he could say noth- 
 ing more glorious fur them than this, that they had spoken as 
 they were moved by the Holy (ihost; that they had consistently 
 disclaimed all wisdom and power for themselves ; that they had 
 been in the most orderly and divine manner, preparing the way 
 for that manifestation of Him which had been promised to 
 their children, and had at length been granted. Inspiration was 
 not the first idea in the mind of a Jew, as it was perhaps in 
 that of a Greek. The Law took precedence of the Prophets; 
 the Covenant was before either. The Lord had said to 
 Abram, " Get thee out of thy father** house, to a land that 1 
 tci/l show thee" — had promised " that in him and Ids seed the 
 families on the earth should be blessed.'' 1 The Lord had declar- 
 ed to Moses His great name, had sent him to be the deliverer of 
 His people, had given them through him commandments, and 
 statutes, and ordinances. The Righteous King and Judge, 
 
THE PROPHETS' INSPIRATION. 251 
 
 who claims men as His servants, who teaches them to judge 
 between right and wrong, is revealed first. The prophet who 
 speaks in His name is still mainly the witness of Unchange- 
 able Right, and of judgments that shall distinguish between it 
 and the wrong. And the Word, who comes to him, and speaks 
 to him, makes him aware how he and his people are related to 
 that Lord God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain; 
 makes him understand that there is a King on the holy hill of 
 Zion, One whom he can call his Lord, and to whom the Lord 
 is saying, " Sit Thou on my right hand, till I make Thine ene- 
 mies Thy footstool" The revelation of this mysterious Teach- 
 er, this Divine King, is what he looks for; he gains glimpses' 
 of the steps and method of His manifestation through his 
 own sorrows and the trials of his country ; he is confident that 
 some day God will be fully declared, and that in that day man, 
 His image, will attain his proper glory. 
 
 But how is it that the prophet is able to enter into 
 these divine communications ? What is there in him different 
 from other men which makes him capable of them ? What 
 mean these stirrings within him, this sense of a power which 
 seems at times more than he can bear, this mighty influence to 
 which lie must yield, which does not suffer him to speak till it 
 has humbled and crushed him ; which, when he does speak, 
 makes him know that his words, though they have come out of 
 the depths of his own heart, are the Lord's, and that they be- 
 long as much to all his countrymen as to him 1 This is surely 
 inspiration. But who is the Inspirer ? How can He be so 
 near to him, to his own very self? For this power is not 
 merely or chiefly one which elevates and transports. It does 
 not merely take hold of some faculty or impart some energy. 
 It carries on the most searching, intimate, terrible converse with 
 him who uses the faculty, who wields the energies. 
 
 The answer to this demand came gradually, slowly, like the 
 answer to the other." St. Paul believed that it had come at last 
 
252 THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 most effectually. John the Baptist preached of repentance 
 for the remission of sins. But he preached of one coming after 
 him, that was before him, who should baptize with the Holy 
 Ghost and with lire. Jesus (so Paul's companion tells us) had 
 received the Holy Ghost in his baptism, when He was pro- 
 claimed to be the Son of God. In the power of that Holy Ghost, 
 he resisted the Tempter, healed the broken-hearted, preached 
 deliverance to the captives, proclaimed the Jubilee of the Lord. 
 Then when he was going away, He spoke of a Spirit of Truth 
 whom He would send to His disciples from the Father, who 
 would abide with them, who would brin£ all things to their re- 
 membrance, who would show them plainly of the Father. He 
 had spoken continually in bid earlier discourses of a Father 
 who was both His and theirs ; all these words seemed intended 
 to receive their interpretation from what He said to them now 
 of a Comforter. The disciples were perplexed. How could 
 they have another to supply His place? How could He be 
 with His Father, and yet manifest Himself to them 1 What 
 could lie mean by saying that He and His Father would come 
 to them, and abide; with them? He told them to wait for the 
 promise of the Father; then they would know what was now 
 dark to them. AVhen He had ascended, and had led then), by 
 that strange discipline I spoke of in a former Basay, to bell 
 that in some wonderful way they were even then to ascend 
 with Him, and be with Him where He was. He again told 
 them to wait; He could not satisfy their desire to know whe- 
 ther the kingdom would be at that time restored to Israel; li>' 
 could only assure them that they should be endued with pow- 
 ers from on high. On the Festival day, St. Luke says, the 
 sound of the mighty rushing wind was heard ; the cloven 
 tongues sat upon the Apostles; they spoke as the spirit gave 
 them utterance ; the multitude heard them in their own 
 tongues proclaiming the wonderful works of God. Herein St. 
 Paul saw r the revelation of Him who hau inspired the Pro- 
 
REVELATION OF THE INSPIRER 2b 3 
 
 phets ; the fulfilment of the divine promise ; the assurance 
 that the Father of all was indeed claiming the sons of men, 
 Jews, Greeks, barbarians, as His children. So soon as 
 he learnt this truth, he became the herald of a new dispensa- 
 tion. This manifestation of the Spirit was that which the 
 world had been waiting for so long. He had taught prophets 
 to speak, He had enabled them to suffer, He had given them 
 glimpses of a glory which their children should see, in which 
 they themselves should be sharers. Now it might be pro- 
 claimed aloud. " The baptism which John foretold is for you 
 all. ' Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit 
 of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' " All 
 gifts ever bestowed upon prophets, were the gifts of a Father 
 to His children, the foretastes of that adoption and emancipa- 
 tion which were awaiting men, when their schooling under the 
 elements of the world should be completed. 
 
 "What a magnificent idea, then, must St. Paul have had of 
 those books, which, in his Pharisaical days, had seemed to him 
 merely objects of fear, and of a kind of worship ; excuses for 
 Jewish self-exaltation ! How every old teacher will have 
 started into life, when he contemplated him no longer as a 
 mere utterer of dark sentences, which the Scribes copied out 
 and made darker by their expositions, but as endued with that 
 same Divine Spirit which was enabling him to be a teacher of 
 the Gentiles; of whom he could dare to say to each Church,, 
 "He dwells with you;" to each member of a Church, " He 
 has made your body His habitation !" What a grand proces- 
 sion those old teachers formed, each one of whom was leading 
 men onwards to that discovery of the Inspirer ! What was 
 there in all the rest of the world together that could compare 
 with them, not in their distinct worth alone or chiefly, but in 
 their continuity, their orderly succession, their harmony ; their 
 worth as witnesses to the divine method of government in 
 their own day, a method which must be the same in all after 
 
254 THE EVANGELICAL PROTEST. 
 
 generations ; their worth as foreseers of that which had now 
 come to pass ! What would the history of the rest of the 
 world be but a collection of inexplicable fragments, if there 
 were not this revelation to unite them and make them a 
 whole ! 
 
 But if this was the effect of his New Testament wisdom, 
 how must he have feared any relapse into that state of mind 
 from which he had emerged; how must lie have dreaded it 
 for his converts, and for those who should come after them ! 
 Can we conceive any view of the Holy Scriptures, — either of 
 those he had known from a child, or those he was contribut- 
 ing to form, — which would have seemed to him more dreadful, 
 than one which, under color of exalting them, should set aside 
 their own express testimony concerning the unspeakable gift 
 which God had conferred on His creatures? If he would have 
 turned with indignation from those in later days who, pretend- 
 ing to honor the Bible, forbid men to read it, lest it should 
 awaken the questionings in their hearts, which it is meant to 
 awaken, and which a Church instead of stifling should encoun- 
 ter, and satisfy ; would he have felt less indignaut with those 
 who, talking of the Bible as their only religion, and only rule 
 of life, prevent it from being either, by saying that its Inspi- 
 ration has no relation to that of the w r riters whose dark say- 
 ings it illuminates, to that of the human beings it is intended to 
 educate and console ? 
 
 3. This Scribe notion of the Bible was stoutly resisted by 
 the Evangelical teachers of the last age. Francke and Spell- 
 er have been referred to again and again by their admirers in 
 this country, as faithful witnesses against the hard German 
 doctors of their day, who looked upon the Bible as a mere col- 
 lection of dry facts and dogmas, and who supposed that it 
 could be understood without the aid of such a spirit as dwelt 
 in the writers of it. Our own Venns and Newtons took up 
 the same language ; the orthodoxy as well as the liberalism of 
 
SUFFERERS OF TWO KINDS. 255 
 
 their contemporaries was offensive to them, precisely because 
 both seemed equally to separate the Bible from the conflicts 
 and experiences of Christian men. The testimony which they 
 bore, I hope, is not extinct, — has not merely given birth to a set 
 of phrases about " head knowledge," or to charges of " want of 
 vital and experimental acquaintance with divine things," — 
 phrases which any one can learn by heart, and which may 
 often be used most glibly by those who are half conscious that 
 they have a very near and personal application. In solitary 
 chambers, among bedridden sufferers, the words of the old 
 men have still a living force. The Bible is read there truly as 
 an inspired book ; as a book which does not stand aloof from 
 human life, but meets it; which proves itself not to be the 
 work of a different Spirit from that which is reproving and 
 comforting the sinner, but of the same. It is of quite infinite 
 importance that the confidence in which these humble students 
 read, should not be set at nought and contradicted by deci- 
 sions and conclusions of ours. It is absolutely necessary that 
 we should be able to say, that they are not practising a delusion 
 upon themselves; that they arenot amiable enthusiasts ; that they 
 are believing a truth and acting upon it. But we cannot say this 
 if we must adopt the formulas, which some people would force 
 upon us. Either we must set at nought the faith of those who 
 have clung to the Bible, and found a meaning in it when the doc- 
 tors could not interpret it, or we must forego the demand 
 which we make on the consciences of young men, when we 
 compel them to declare that they regard the Inspiration of the 
 Bible as generically unlike that which God bestows on His 
 children in this day. 
 
 I know well how this last remark will be met. " Do you 
 not know," some one will say, " that the simple Christians you 
 speak of have the most unfeigned, unquestioning reverence for 
 the Bible ? do you not know, also, that those young men of 
 whose consciences you are so tender, avoid explicit statements 
 respecting the Inspiration of the Bible, precisely because they 
 
256 DOUBTERS. 
 
 are full of neological doubts and theories about it, which never 
 entered into the heads of the others, and would utterly shock 
 them if they did ? What folly or dishonesty to compare eases 
 so dissimilar!" Now I am perfectly ready to admit, that, in 
 a great many cases, perhaps in most, scruples, which may be 
 called neological, are at the bottom of the objections which the 
 younger members of Evangelical families make to the doc- 
 trines respecting the Inspiration of the Bible, which their 
 elders require them to accept. But I venture to think, first, 
 that it is neither foolish nor dishonest to protest against the 
 invention of tests to meet a particular case, which — supposing 
 they do accomplish their particular object, and supposing 
 that is a good one — also may promote another which is decid- 
 edly and evidently bad. I should have thought that the his- 
 tory of heresies might have taught us that, whenever a dogma 
 has been devised merely to fit and contradict some denial 
 which is prevalent, it has almost always been the parent of 
 some other denial quite as dangerous. But secondly, I should 
 like to be informed how these n jioal tendencies have arisen 
 in persons apparently so well secured by their education against 
 them. ] to me that this is generally the history of their 
 
 growth. These young men were informed early that no true 
 knowledge of the Bible could be had, unless God's Spirit illu- 
 minated the page and their hearts. It was intimated to them 
 also, (or this was what they gathered from the lessons they 
 received,) that they did not at present possess this illumina- 
 tion. In the meantime they were instructed in what v 
 called the external evidence, which proved that these records 
 were of divine authority. Some of this, evidence might be 
 good, such as would pass muster in any English court of jus- 
 tice ; some might be tolerable, such as would be listened to if 
 there were nothing to overweigh it on the other side ; some 
 was decidedly weak and worthless. But the best could not 
 put in the least claim to authority ; it would have abandoned 
 all its peculiar boast if it had. All was therefore open to 
 
MODE OF DEALING WITH DOUBTERS. 257 
 
 legitimate examination and criticism ; that which could not 
 hold water must give way ; that which was worthy would often 
 be suspected for its sake. Very soon the book itself, the mer- 
 its and dignity of which had been staked upon this issue, — 
 which the youth had been distinctly told that he was not to 
 receive, merely because his parents or his country received it, 
 which he had been told also that he could not } 7 et receive upon 
 any distinct witness of his own spirit, sank nearly — never quite 
 — to the level of the arguments by which it had been recom- 
 mended to him. He discloses his perplexities, he asks whether 
 this or that passage in the book is not less tenable than the 
 rest : he is told that he must take all or none : the whole is 
 inspired ; to doubt it is to renounce the word of God, — to 
 renounce God himself. This course I hold to be inhuman and 
 ungodly, one which will infallibly make the doubter what you 
 accuse him of being. It is possible to pursue quite a different 
 method, one that may make your children feel that the Bible 
 is their book as it was their fathers', and that no modern wis- 
 dom will supply the place of it. You may show them that 
 there is -divinity here and inspiration there ; you may lead them 
 to confess that there are passages which speak to the heart 
 within them, which awaken a heart that was asleep ; you may 
 make them know, — if you believe it yourself, — that there is a 
 Divine "Word who is enlightening them, that there is a Divine 
 Spirit who is seeking to inspire them. You may then bring 
 them gradually, with many tears and much joy, to trace that 
 "Word and that Spirit not only here and there, but connecting, 
 reconciling those various documents which seemed to them so 
 inconsistent with themselves, explaining the facts of the uni- 
 verse with w r hich they appeared to be at war. Be sure, how- 
 ever, that before you can take one step in this course, you 
 must give up the attempt to impose a theory of Inspiration 
 upon them, nay, you must very gravely consider whether the 
 
258 THE ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM. 
 
 one which you huld is compatible with that belief in Inspira- 
 tion which belonged to prophets and apostles. 
 
 I foresee that some critic will say to me, " It is a cunning- 
 method to put forward these young men, and to pretend so 
 much sympathy with them. Every one can see that you are 
 really pleading your own cause. You have some secret unbelief 
 about the books of the Bible, which makes you shrink from 
 this tenet of Inspiration. We are glad to know it. The screw 
 should always be applied where there are any symptoms of 
 tenderness or wincing." 
 
 I wish my friend the critic could look me as steadily in the 
 face, while he is making these observations, as, if he stood 
 before me, I would look him in the face while I replied to them. 
 1 would tell him that I am conscious of just as much unbelief 
 about the books of the Bible, as 1 am about the farts of 
 nature and of my own existenee. I am conscious of unbelief! 
 about those facts; oftentimes they seem to me quite incredi- 
 ble. I overeome this unbelief, and acquire what I think is a 
 truer state of mind, when I turn to the Bible as the interpre- 
 tation of them. The more difficulties I have found in myself 
 and in the world, the more help has it been to me. The 
 Bible is not the cause of my perplexities, but the resolver of 
 them. Of course there are a multitude of things in it which f 
 do not understand ; a multitude more in myself which I do not 
 understand. But this has been my experience hitherto, and 
 each year, almost each day, that experience is strengthened. 
 Instead, therefore, of wishing to get rid of those documents 
 which the traditions of my country teach me to hold divine 
 because they belong to some bygone condition of things with 
 which modern civilization has nothing to do, I feel the neeessity 
 of them inereasing with every step whieh civilization tak 
 with every new complication of feelings and circumstances in 
 which I am myself involved. Books of the Bible which were 
 lying in shadow for me, in which I could see little meaning, 
 
ANSWER TO IT. 259 
 
 have come forth into clearness, because I met with hard pas- 
 sages in myself or in society which I could not construe with- 
 out their help. And I have found this to be the case more 
 and more in proportion as I have rested my faith on the God 
 whom the Bible declares to me, and not upon my conclusions 
 respecting the authenticity of different books. " These conclu- 
 sions may be sound, — I hope they are ; but they may not be 
 sound. My understanding is very liable to error ; and how 
 can those who require me to consider the Bible as alone free 
 from error, encourage me, at the same moment, to transfer that 
 immunity to myself? This they must do, if they will not let 
 me first of all accept the canon of Scripture as given to me, 
 and secondly, rise gradually to believe, not on the authority 
 of any Samaritan woman or Church doctor, but because I 
 have heard Christ for myself, speaking to me out of this book, 
 and speaking to me in my heart, and therefore know that He is 
 indeed that Saviour who should come into the world.* 
 
 * A distinction is often hinted at, sometimes formally taken, between 
 Facts and Doctrines. "You may," it is said, " believe that the Spirit 
 guides a man into a knowledge of principles. But do you accept the 
 facts of the Bible ? Do you look upon them as divinely communicated to 
 the seer ? ' Any one who considers doctrines as I have considered them 
 in these Essays finds it exceedingly hard to separate them from facts ; 
 doctrines and principles he supposes to be the meaning of facts. If, then, 
 I am asked whether I receive the transcendent facts of Scripture, those 
 which offer most occasion to disbelief, I appeal to what I have written 
 here. If I am asked whether I believe the ordinary facts of Scripture, 
 e. g. that such a city was taken at such a time? I answer, that when I find 
 a man so free from biblical prepossessions as Niebuhr assuming Isaiah 
 and Jeremiah to be better authorities about such facts than any he knew 
 of, I am surprised that our divines and religious people should be 
 so very eager to get confirmation of the testimonies in sacred books 
 from profane authorities, as if they felt insecure of them till then, a 
 sentiment I cannot the least understand or share in; that, believ- 
 ing the writers of the Bible to have been possessed by the Spirit of 
 Truth, I am sure they will have more shrunk from fictions, and have 
 
260 VERBAL INSPIRATION. 
 
 On his way to this discovery, a man may have to pass, as 
 numbers have passed before him, through terrible struggles 
 and contradictions of mind. But you believe it is true, do 
 you not ? You think God has revealed it, do you not ? You 
 believe He lives, do you not? If so, lie can perhaps take 
 about as good care of His truth, His book, His creatures and 
 the universe, as you or I can. He can teach us without a the- 
 ory of Inspiration, which is taking the place, it is to be feared, 
 in very many minds, not only of faith in Inspiration, but of 
 faith in Him. 
 
 For the different forms in which this theory expresses itself, 
 I care little. If any one likes to talk of a verbal Inspiration, if 
 that phrase conveys some substantial meaning to his mind, by 
 all means let him keep it. He cannot go further than I should 
 in calling for a laborious and reverent attention to the very 
 words of Scripture, and in denouncing the unreasonable notion 
 that thoughts and words can be separated — that the life which, 
 is in one must not penetrate the other. If any one likes to 
 speak of 'plenary Inspiration, I would not complain ; I obi 
 
 been more careful to avoid mixing them with facts, than other men ; 
 that it seems to me far safer, more scriptural, more godly, to suppose they 
 did take palvs, and that the Spirit taught them to take pains, in sifting 
 facts, than to suppose that they were merely told the facts ; that I most 
 assuredly should not give up the faith in God which they have cherished 
 in me, if I found they had made mistakes ; and I have too much 
 respect and honor for those who use the strongest expressions about the 
 certainty of every word in the Scriptures, to suppose that they would. 
 I will not believe any Christian man, even upon his own testimony, who 
 tells me that he should cease to trust in the Son of God, because he found 
 chronological or historical misstatements in the Scriptures, as great as 
 ever have been charged against them by their bitterest opponents. If I 
 did suspect him of such hollowness, I should pray for him that he might 
 never meet with any travellers or philologers who confirmed the state- 
 ments of Scripture ; none but such as denied them or mocked at them ; 
 because the sooner such a foundation as this is shaken, the better it will 
 be for him. 
 
FANATICS. 261 
 
 to the Inspiration which people talk of, for being too empty — 
 not for being too full. These forms of speech are pretty toys 
 for those who have leisure to play with them, and if they are 
 not made so hard as to do mischief, the use of them should 
 never be checked. But they do not belong to business. They 
 are not for those who are struggling with life and death ; such 
 persons want, not a plenary Inspiration or a verbal Inspiration 
 — but a book of Life ; and they will know that they have such 
 a book when you have courage to tell them that there is a 
 Spirit with them, who will guide them into the truth of it. 
 
 4. " But if these words are openly proclaimed, what a plen- 
 tiful crop of ranters and fanatics we shall have ! "What crowds 
 will run after them ; for who will then have a right to deny 
 their inspiration ? v A dreadful prospect ! But is it a pros- 
 pect ? — have we not the fanatics and ranters already ? Do 
 they not draw disciples after them ? You have tried to weaken 
 their influence by telling them that the Bible was the Inspired 
 book ; that it is utterly absurd and extravagant for men in 
 these days to call themselves inspired ; that the same course 
 has been tried in former times, and has always led to ruin. 
 There is great apparent justification for this method — it has 
 been used often by very ingenious and sagacious men, with 
 whom it ought to have succeeded, if it was to succeed. But 
 it has not succeeded. It has not cured the immediate evil 
 which it was meant to cure ; it has left the seeds which pro- 
 duced that evil always ready for fresh germination. And what 
 is worse, this kind of treatment has destroyed precious seeds 
 which God has planted in men's hearts, and which they can- 
 not afford to lose. You long to expose the impostor, the 
 mountebank, who is deceiving a number of poor simple souls. 
 But do you desire that the earnest, cordial faith, which has 
 been called forth in them, while they are following him, should 
 be taken away from them ? Do you desire that those fervent 
 hopes, kindled for the first time in men who have been crawl- 
 
262 HOPES DISAPPOINTED. 
 
 ing all their days on the earth and eating dust, should be put 
 out for ever? Do you think nothing of the desolation which 
 they will feel, when they find that he in whom they trusted 
 has failed them utterly, and that what looked the most real of 
 all things, was but a dream? Oh ! is there nothing dreadful 
 in the unbelief, the prostration of soul,the wretchlessness of un- 
 clean living, which follows such disappointments and disco- 
 veries ? 
 
 " But they must come," you say, " how T can we help it ?" 
 We could have done this. We could have told the deceiver 
 that he was not exaggerating in the least the blessings of which 
 a man is capable, and which God is willing to bestow on him. 
 We could have told him that instead of a mere power of utter- 
 ance, which it is evident he poe s } and for which he will 
 have to give an account, the Spirit who has endued him with 
 that power is near him, claiming him as a servant; near him, 
 and near every one of those too whom he is making his tools. 
 We might say t<> him, "If you believe this, there will come 
 into your mind such an awe, such a sense of the tearfulness of 
 trifling with this gift and blessing, — there will come such a 
 desire to learn, such a fear of the responsibility of ruling over 
 other men, such a conviction that you can only do it without a 
 crime, when you give up yourself to the Spirit of Truth — that 
 nothing will seem to you so great a reason for penitence and 
 shame, as that you have dared to exalt yourself on the plea of 
 possessing that, which if you had possessed it rightly, would 
 have entirely humbled you." And if with this, we teach the 
 people that the Spirit of God has come down, not on the great 
 prophet only, but for the whole flock of Christ, to keep them 
 from pride and self-conceit and delusion, and to guide them 
 into all truth, I believe we shall do our best that the chaff in 
 their minds may be separated from the wheat, and may be 
 
 burned up. 
 
 5. For this principle, we of the Church of England are, I 
 
THE THREE METHODS. 263 
 
 conceive, specially bound to bear testimony. The collects I 
 have quoted, and the tenor of our prayers, which is in confor- 
 mity with them, lay us under this obligation. The function 
 which our orthodox men in the last century claimed for us, of 
 being witnesses against fanaticism, is a most honorable func- 
 tion. God grant that we may be able to fulfil it! But we 
 cannot fulfil it in the way they dreamed of, — by setting at 
 nought all belief in spiritual operations, by referring all that is 
 spoken of them in Scripture to the age of the Apostles. That 
 plan has been tried ; none ever failed so completely and shame- 
 fully. We cannot do it by the course which our modern evan- 
 gelical school, renouncing the maxims of their forefathers, seem 
 inclined to recommend, — the course of setting up the Bible as 
 a book which encloses all that may lawfully be called Inspira- 
 tion. That plan is under trial, and, if we may judge by pre- 
 sent indications, it is likely to produce a general alienation 
 from the Bible, a widely spread unbelief in Christianity. There 
 is another method ; may we have faith to follow it out ! It is 
 that of saying to our countrymen, of every order and degree, 
 " The Father of all has sent forth His Son, made of a woman, 
 * that you may receive the adoption of sons. He Iras baptized 
 you with the Spirit of His Son ; and that Spirit w r ould be cry- 
 ing in your hearts, Abba, Father. That Spirit would be 
 leading you into fellowship with all your brethren. That Spi- 
 rit would be making you humble, teachable, courageous, free. 
 That Spirit would claim all things for you ; common books 
 and the chief book, Nature and Grace, earth and heaven." 
 
 It may seem to some Unitarian listener, who had hoped that 
 I was going to join him in cursing several of his enemies, that 
 I have blessed them these three times. He might expect from 
 me some more rational theory about Inspiration than that 
 which is current among our Evangelical and High Church 
 teachers. He might think my apparent indifference to their 
 
26 1 THE rOPULAR NOTIONS SEMI-UNITARIAN. 
 
 opinions, promising. But I have at last come to a conclusion 
 which will strike him as far more distant from his own than 
 theirs is. I have appeared to protest against current theories 
 of Inspiration, because they fail to assert the actual presence 
 of that Spirit, whom it has been one of the standing articles of 
 his creed not to confess. 
 
 I cannot deny this charge. I do think that our theories 
 of Inspiration, however little they may accord with Unitarian 
 notions, have a semi-Unitarian character ; that they are de- 
 rived from that unbelief in the Holy Ghost which is latent in 
 us all, but which was developed and embodied in the Unita- 
 rianism of the last century. I have not been able to conceal 
 this opinion in the present case or in other cases. I have not 
 tried to conceal it ; for I am persuaded that we must go fur- 
 ther from Unitarianism, if we would embrace Unitarians; that 
 we shall never know them as brothers, or love them as bro- 
 thers, till we bring out our own faith more fully, and disen- 
 gage it from some of the elements of distrust which we, in 
 imitation of them, have allowed to mingle with it. Especially 
 do I look forward to this result, however distant and improba- 
 ble it may seem, from a full assertion of that portion of our 
 creed which refers to the Person of the Comforter. I do see 
 in that, such a bond of loving fellowship for all men — such a 
 breaking down of sect-barriers — that I long to speak of it even 
 if it be with the most stammering tongue, to those who have 
 been divided from us. I have not entered upon that subject 
 here. Till the question of Inspiration had been fairly consid- 
 ered, I saw no hope of being able to express my thoughts 
 fully and clearly upon it ; for nothing seems to me so danger- 
 ous, as that the Bible should be used to hinder the reception 
 of a truth which can alone make its words intelligible, and, 
 apart from which, its Inspiration, and all inspiration, is the 
 dream of a shadow. 
 
 !>tit as the subject of this Essay is not meivly inspiration, 
 
COMPLIMENTS TO APOSTLES. 265 
 
 but the inspiration of the Bible, I should like to say one word 
 on a method of treating that book which is characteristic of 
 the new Unitarian school; The members of that school readily 
 recognise the inspiration of Apostles and of Prophets. Where 
 their fathers honored the letter, they perceive a divine mind in 
 the old seers. But they do not half so much accept them as 
 teachers. It seems to me that the last writer of an article in 
 one of their newspapers or reviews looks upon himself as a 
 much more enlightened mau than St. Paul or St. John, as one 
 who can afford to compliment them upon the approximations 
 which they often made to the wisdom Which he has attained. 
 I discover this tendency in men who I think really wish to be 
 modest and self-distrusting — who are driven into what must 
 strike us as insufferable arrogance, not willingly, but by the 
 necessity of their position. They defend that position as being 
 the only one which it is possible for men of science and men 
 of progress to occupy. If earnest search is always rewarded 
 with new discoveries, how can we acquiesce in the decrees of 
 the past ? If the world is always advancing, is not a third-rate 
 man of this day wiser than the greatest of ages gone by ? Such 
 questions are not in general fairly met. The understanding is 
 staggered by them ; though I believe the conscience in every 
 man revolts at the conclusion to which they lead. 
 
 The process of thought by which I have myself been delivered 
 from them is something of this kind. Physical science, it has 
 seemed to me, presumes a world which exists and which we 
 did not create. Science was impossible while men glorified 
 their own thoughts and speculations more than that which 
 nature presented to them. It has become firm and safe since 
 they have humbled themselves into the condition of learners. 
 This has been the secret of discovery, this has been the secu- 
 rity for progress. Is it altogether otherwise, I have asked 
 myself, in moral science? Is self worship the posture of mind 
 which is most favorable to that, as self-abnegation is the great 
 12 
 
266 SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY. 
 
 pre-requisite in the other? Shall we discover because we 
 believe in our powers of discovery ? Will the ages to come 
 learn from us, if we teach them that all wisdom is concentrated 
 in us ? I have not the least reason to think so. I do not meet 
 with any man who does think so consistently. I often see 
 those who ought to hold this opinion, if their other statements 
 were true, clinging to the past with great affection and rever- 
 ence, nay, not seldom disposed to appeal to it with even a fond 
 idolatry, when they find themselves pressed down and tor- 
 mented by the maxims of their own age. And so I have been 
 forced by the inconsistencies of these modern teachers when I 
 liked them best, by the vanity which made me despair of all 
 good from them when they were following their theory to its 
 consequences, to inquire whether that old notion of a Bible, a 
 book of books, a book which sets forth a revelation that has 
 been made of God and His relations to man, a revelation that 
 is complete and cannot receive additions from our research 
 — is unfavorable to science, to discovery, to progress; nay, 
 may not be the necessary protection of all three. If Science 
 concerns that which is fixed and absolute, that whicM is, then 
 to believe that God has declared Himself, that He has with- 
 drawn the veil which hides Jlini from His creatures, that He 
 has in a wonderful and orderly history enabled us to see what 
 He is, and what He is to us, what those eternal laws and prin- 
 ciples are which dwell in Himself and which determine His 
 dealings with us, is to believe that there is a divine and human 
 Scieme, that we are not left to the anticipations or guesses of 
 one age or of another. If He who thus reveals Himself is 
 light, there must be perpetual openings for Discover?/ the more 
 we meditate upon His revelation, the more we compare it with 
 our own experiences and the experiences of the world. Instead 
 of being cut off from such discoveries by acknowledging that 
 we are not the authors of them, we enter upon just such a 
 steady and gradual method for arriving at them as the physical 
 
 I 
 
PROGRESS. 267 
 
 student entered on when he exchanged the eyllogisms of the 
 study for the induction of the laboratory. If all Progress con- 
 sists in the advancing further into light and the scattering of 
 mists which had obstructed it, the Bible contains the promise 
 of such Progress, a promise which has been most fulfilled when 
 it has been most reverently listened to, when men have gone 
 to it with the greatest confidence and hope. I complain of our 
 modern religious world, not for cherishing this confidence or 
 this hope, but for abandoning it and robbing others of it. If 
 we come to the Bible as learners, it has more to teach us yet 
 than we can ask or think. If we believe that we know all that 
 is in it and merely resort to it for sentences and watchwords to 
 confirm our own notions and to condemn our brethren, God 
 will show us, — He is showing us, — how great the punishment 
 to us and to our children must be, for abusing the unspeakably 
 precious treasure with which He has endowed us. 
 
ESSAY XIV. 
 
 ON THE PERSONALITY AND TEACHING OF THE 
 
 HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 I surrosE there is nothing which is causing so much unbelief 
 here and everywhere, as a comparison of the hopes which 
 Scripture seems to hold out of the effects that should follow 
 the revelation of Christ, with the history of the world since He 
 appeared in it. I apprehend this difficulty is felt much more 
 strongly in our day than in former days. There are several 
 reasons why it must be so. We have been led to consider the 
 different portions of history more in relation to each other than 
 our fathers did. The records of the old Pagan world have 
 been brought side by side with those of the Christian Church. 
 Great differences have been observed in them, no doubt; more 
 differences than were perceived formerly. But though all new 
 inquiries may show us more clearly what crimes, what contra- 
 diction of moral principles, what superstition existed in the 
 countries whose literature we have been most taught to prize, 
 they show us also, that our ancestors were not mistaken in 
 speaking of the patriotism and nobleness of particular men in 
 those countries, of the ideal which they 6et before themselves, 
 
 (268) 
 
THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 269 
 
 nay, of the homage which was paid to that ideal by the body 
 of thetr countrymen, — proving it to be national, not individual. 
 " What other conclusion does the history of the later world 
 suggest ? There, too, is crime, contradiction of moral princi- 
 ples, fearful superstition. There, too, are facts which show 
 that many have set before themselves a high standard, and 
 have done various acts in conformity with it ; there, too, we 
 see that their contemporaries, who often persecuted them and 
 cast out their names as evil, yet confessed that their aim was 
 the right aim ; there we find proofs that they were not creating 
 a rule for themselves, but following one which would have been 
 good for all men. Where is the great alteration ? Are not 
 all things much as they were from the beginning ? In some 
 respects, is there not a change for the worse ? Does not Chris- 
 tendom confess, by the pains which it has 4aken that its sons 
 should study the lore of the old Pagan world, that something 
 is to be gained from that lore which is not to be found among 
 its own treasures ? Have not some crimes, against which the 
 old world protested, been canonized by what has been called 
 the faith of the new ? Have not some of the old virtues been 
 disparaged, even trampled under foot, by the professors of the 
 same faith ?" 
 
 There is another cause for the new strength which these 
 reflections have gained in our time. If we thought, as many 
 divines in the last century thought, that the appearance of an 
 illustrious Teacher, a great Messiah, in the world, who pro- 
 mulgated a sublime code of morals, and did certain extraordi- 
 nary acts to illustrate its truth, is all that was signified by the 
 New Testament Dispensation and the name " Christianity," we 
 might not be under any great obligation to explain why that 
 Teacher had not been much more heeded than those who pre- 
 ceded Him, why the announcement of His code has not 
 ensured obedience to it, why His miracles may be acknow- 
 ledged as singular occurrences for the time which witnessed 
 
270 CONFESSION OF A SPIRIT. 
 
 them, and yet may have left no distinct practical impression 
 upon human life. But we have abandoned, — I think, have 
 been compelled to abandon, — this apparently secure position. 
 The hearts of suffering men have demanded from the book 
 which we told them contained the charter of their inheritan 
 — have found in it, — information which these statements did 
 not convey. They have asked whether God had merely laid 
 down rules for them, without giving them any power to follow 
 the rules ; whether He had bidden them love Him and their 
 neighbors, without taking account of the tremendous inclina- 
 tion they had to care only for themselves, or supplying them 
 with any means to overcome it. They have craved for some 
 influence over themselves, a quickening, transforming influence. 
 And they have thought that the Bible very distinctly met these 
 necessities of theirs. In the New Testament especially, they 
 have discovered continual reference to a Spirit who should 
 work in men to do those acts which they were least able of 
 themselves to do, who should help their infirmities, who should 
 teach them what they wanted, and how they might ask for it; 
 who should knit together those whom place, time, jealoue 
 had divided. They have perceived that the promise of this 
 Spirit is put forth as the most obvious and characteristic pro- 
 mise of the Christian dispensation. The very name of Christ, 
 they have learnt, indicates that He was Himself endowed or 
 anointed with a Spirit; the preaching of His forerunner and 
 all His own preaching declared that He had received it Him- 
 self, to the end that He might bestow it upon His disciples 
 then and in ages to come. Churchmen have discovered that 
 the language of our formularies, as well as of the Scriptures, is 
 in accordance with these convictions. Vv e have learned to 
 speak habitually of a dispensation of the Spirit; we have said 
 that our Lord's coming in the flesh would have effected very 
 little, that His moral teaching would have been necessarily 
 inoperative, if He had not carried out His own assurance, and 
 
CONSEQUENT DEMANDS ON US. 271 
 
 sent His Spirit to enlighten and renew hearts which would 
 have been otherwise dark and lifeless. 
 
 But if w T e adopt this language, we ought to understand that 
 we give every one a right to ask us some searching questions. 
 They will take this form : — 
 
 " A Divine Spirit," you tell us, " has been given to men, 
 given for the very purpose of moulding their lives into confor- 
 mity with the law which has been proclaimed to them. Surely, 
 then, you are bound to show some evidence of that conformity. 
 It cannot suffice merely to complain of men's disobedience or 
 incredulity. Do you mean there has not been a power w T hich 
 could overcome these? It cannot avail to talk of a world, or 
 flesh, or Devil. Do you mean that these are stronger than 
 God ?" 
 
 There are several ways of evading this difficulty, of which 
 Christian teachers and students have not failed to avail them- 
 selves. " We can point you," they have said, to fruits of faith 
 and love, w r hich can only have been produced by a divine influ- 
 ence ; we can show you that those who have done the best 
 deeds and cherished the best thoughts have traced them to this 
 influence. More than this we are not bound to do. Nay, we 
 are bound to draw a broad line between these and the multf- 
 tude who do not confess any spiritual influence, who are not 
 the subjects of any." 
 
 To a reader of the New Testament this statement must be 
 most unsatisfactory. The Apostles speak of the holy men of 
 old as moved by the Holy Ghost; no one who reads the words 
 of those men can doubt that they referred every true thing in 
 themselves to a divine source. Yet the Apostles teach us, and 
 they teach us, that they were looking forward to a blessing 
 which had not been given them, and which later ages should 
 inherit. This expectation, as I showed in my last Essay, pointed 
 not merely to the manifestation of a great king, but also to the 
 manifestation of Him from whom their thoughts and impulses 
 had proceeded. 
 
272 THE BIBLE, 
 
 The Christian kingdom cannot be described as a dispensa- 
 tion of the Spirit if these anticipations were not fulfilled. The 
 Apostles must have deceived their hearers if the condition of 
 those who lived after Christ's glorification, was not better in 
 this respect than that of those who waited for His coming. 
 The story of the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pente- 
 
 -t, and of the signs which accompanied it, and of the preaching 
 which followed it, must be thrown aside altogether, if no great 
 blessing was then vouchsafed to mankind, — if a few here and 
 there may vindicate and appropriate to themselves a treasure, 
 which the true men who understood its nature best were impa- 
 tient to acknowledge as universal. 
 
 Some of those who could not acquiesce in so limited a view 
 of the language of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles 
 as this, have suggested that since the holy Scriptures are the 
 work of the Divine Spirit, the complete Bible may perhaps be 
 that common possession which distinguishes the now world 
 from the old. To possess a divine history which was growing 
 for centuries, in its order and fulness, so that all the steps of it 
 may be traced, and the issue to which it was leading distinctly 
 apprehended, i« no doubt an incalculable advantage. But, if 
 what I said in the last Essay is true, we lose altogether the 
 6ense and symmetry of this history unless we look upon the 
 revelation of the Divine Spirit to men as that which explains 
 the past to us and binds it to the future. Nay, according to 
 its own showing, we have not the capacity of judging of its 
 particular passages, and of their relation to each other, unless 
 we partake of the Spirit by which its writers were guided. So 
 that to put the book as the substitute for the gift of which it 
 testifies, or as including it, is as flagrant a contradiction as we 
 can possibly fall into. 
 
 A popular ecclesiastical historian of the last century, quite 
 alive to this inconsistency, and, at the same time, aware of the 
 wretched divisions and horrible atrocities which he should have 
 
SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN. 273 
 
 to record, has resorted to the hypothesis that there have been 
 certain "lapses " of the Spirit in different periods, like in their 
 principle, though not in their outward tokens, to that of which 
 "Whitsuntide reminds us. Such lapses he thought would account 
 for the revival of moral light and life after long ages of super- 
 stition and degeneracy ; for such events as the Reformation in 
 the sixteenth century, and for others nearer to his own day, to 
 which he attached a similar, and almost equal, significance. I 
 shall not now inquire whether his theory will account for these 
 facts, or, if it does, whether there are not others equally 
 demanding interpretation, for which it does not account. I 
 would only remark that the phrase, occasional " lapses " of the 
 Spirit, cannot be an exact counterpart of that which our Lord 
 uses when He speaks of a Spirit who shall abide with His dis- 
 ciples for ever, and that what we have to consider is, whether 
 such a description corresponds with the experience of Christen- 
 dom, or contradicts it. 
 
 Finally, in our own day, a number of persons fancy they 
 have discovered a sufficient equivalent for the doctrine of 
 Scripture respecting a divine Spirit imparted to man, in the 
 belief that man himself has a spiritual nature, — that all his 
 powers, energies, affections, show him to be more than a crea- 
 ture of flesh and blood. The doctrine of the Creed, they say, is 
 only an old theocratic mode of enunciating a truth which belongs 
 to the consciousness of all men, and of which some races have 
 had a much keener intuition than the Jews. As I have already 
 maintained that the G ospel and Epistles assert not merely that 
 man has a spiritual nature, but that he is a spiritual being, as 
 I have spoken of our Lord's ascension according to the ordi- 
 nary view of it, as being the practical vindication of our spirit- 
 ual position and spiritual capacities, I certainly cannot refuse to 
 connect the doctrine of the coming of a divine Comforter with 
 that human principle. St. John connects them ; for he says, 
 
 " The Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet 
 
 12* 
 
274 MONT ANUS. 
 
 glorified." But both he and St. Paul take the greatest possible 
 pains to distinguish them. A mighty gift, according to the one, 
 was bestowed upon God's creature as soon as that creature 
 was capable of receiving it. " The Spirit," according to the 
 other, " witneaseth with our spirit that we are the Sons of 
 God." 
 
 It w r ould have been obviously unfitting that I skould reckon 
 amongst these methods of explaining the words of our Lord and 
 His Apostles that to which a Phrygian heretic of the second 
 century resorted, when he affirmed that the Comforter whom 
 our Lord promised w T as a bodily teacher, who was to fill up the 
 gaps in his doctrine. But since that proposition, even accom- 
 panied with the assertion that Montanus himself was the ful- 
 riller of the promise, hud plausibility enough to secure the sujh 
 port of 80 able a man as Tertullian, and since it has reappeared 
 in various shapes ever aiooe, and was never more likely to appear 
 than now, I think it is worth while to consider why it has 
 med to those who entertained it, to answer more exactly to 
 our Lord's language than any mere notion of an invisible 
 intluenc< 
 
 Such an influence is continually spoken of in Scripture. The 
 symbols of " rain " and " dew " serve beautifully to describe 
 its silent, penetrating, life-giving, orderly nature. But what is 
 there in such symbols which corresponds to these words ? — 
 
 " And when lie is come, He will reprove the world of sin, 
 and of righteousness, and of judgment: of Sin, because they 
 believe not on me; of Righteousness, because I go to my 
 Father, and ye see me no more ; of Judgment, because the 
 Prince of this world is judged." 
 
 All here is personal in the strictest sense. I will send Him, 
 lie shall come, He shall reprove. Is a Teacher, a Helper, a 
 Sustainer, like moisture or vapor ? I apprehend, then, that if 
 a man has been much vexed, as Tertullian with his fierce Afri- 
 can nature was, by Gnostical Teachers, who have no associa- 
 
CAUSE OF HIS HERESY. 275 
 
 tions with Spirit, except these, — who do habitually confound 
 it with vapor, and do not even attach to vapor that sense of 
 power which the sight of a locomotive engine suggests to us, 
 — he is very likely to adopt a coarse material counterpart of 
 reality, and as the punishment of his intemperate folly, to be- 
 come the victim of some feeble impostor. A great lesson lies, 
 I think, in that painful experience. If Christ has shown that 
 the body which He took did not constitute His personality, but 
 that, because He was a Person, because He was the Son of 
 God, he could raise, redeem, and glorify His body ; if He has 
 shown a man not to be a person because he has a body, but 
 that he only claims and realizes his personality then when he 
 maintains his relation to God, and holds his body as a subject; 
 if the Evil Spirit is not less personal because he comes to us 
 and came to Christ in no bodily shape ; if we can only worship 
 the living and true God as a Person and a Father ; then I 
 believe we shall accept the words which I have quoted in the 
 most literal sense when we take them in their most spiritual 
 sense. There is indeed a deep question growing out of this 
 concerning the relation of the Person of the Comforter to the 
 Son, who says He will send Him, — to the Father, from whom 
 He is said to proceed. That question I reserve for a future 
 Essay. In this I propose only to inquire whether, if we acknow- 
 ledge this Spirit as a Person, and if we accept our Lord's 
 account of His work, we shall not have a solution of the diffi- 
 culty with which I started — the only interpretation of the dark 
 as well as of the bright passages in the History of Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 1. 1 suppose no one doubts that the feelings about Sin in 
 the modern world have been very different from any which can 
 be traced in the old. I have little need to make out a proof 
 of this fact, because it will be rather eagerly accepted as a 
 concession by those who hold that Christianity has operated 
 injuriously on the welfare of mankind. They will say, " It is 
 
276 THE SENSE OF SIN. 
 
 certainly true that there has been a terror in the minds of 
 men respecting a number of practices and habits which seemed 
 very innocent to Pagans, comparatively innocent even to J evvs. 
 There has been a fear of teaching, tasting, handling, which 
 belonged in an immeasurably less degree to Greeks and Ro- 
 mans. A dark shadow has been cast over the face of nature, 
 and over social life." I shall not now inquire to what extent 
 these charges are true, because J have considered the subject 
 in my second Essay ; and I have had occasion in every suc- 
 ceeding one to make use of the conclusions at which I arrived 
 in the course of it. 1 spoke of an evil which lies beneath the 
 transgression for which laws ailix punishment, beneath the 
 habits and temperament to which the more ethical philosopher 
 confines himself. This evil lies close to myself; I become con- 
 scious of it when I think of myself; 1 cannot refer it to the 
 operation of outward circumstances; I am rather obliged to 
 confess it as the cause of anything wrong which affects me in 
 them. I said that undoubtedly this sense of personal evil had 
 set men upon devising a multitude of schemes for avoiding its 
 present anguish, for escaping from the terrors of which it 
 seemed pregnant in the future, for conciliating the Power whom 
 it might have offended. If then it is true that thi Be of 
 
 personal evil did not exist to at all the same extent before the 
 coming of Christ as it has existed since: that though we mav 
 trace clear anticipations of it in some of the great thinkers of 
 the old world, as well as in the popular belief, yet that for the 
 most part both are occupied with the less radical and inward 
 forms of evil, it is quite to be expected that the superstitions 
 of the latter time should have had oftentimes a worse character 
 that those of the former, that the wickedness should be of a 
 more conscious kind, that the man should be in more direct 
 open war with himself, with his fellows, and with his Creator. 
 All this sounds very shocking and very confirmatory of that 
 which the objector urges. And yet I maintained that it is 
 
SENSE OF DELIVERANCE. 277 
 
 good for a man thus to know what is going on within him ; 
 thus to see himself stript bare of appearances and plausibilities ; 
 thus to be prevented from transferring to accidents, which he 
 cannot remedy, what may be cured when he sees it and con- 
 fesses it as his own. And I urs^ed that all the mischief of those 
 contrivances which the man himself has imagined, or his priest 
 suggested, for the sake of soothing his pain, lies in this, that 
 they throw him back into a region of phantoms and shadows, 
 out of which this dreadful experience is intended to lead him • 
 that they hinder him from seeking the moral freedom which is 
 awaiting him if he will receive it. 
 
 For there is another set of facts, as we have seen, in the his- 
 tory of Christendom to which, also, there is only a most imper- 
 fect parallel in the ancient world. We find men emerging out 
 of darkness into a marvellous light, coming to understand what 
 that strife in themselves meant, and how and why they had 
 fallen into it, coming to see that their true state is that of union 
 with One higher than themselves, their king and their Deliverer, 
 in whom they were created, apart from whom they cannot sub- 
 sist, in trusting whom they lose that feverish self- consciousness 
 which has been their death, and acquire a pure, and true, and 
 common life. 
 
 Now, what is it that one wants to make these two sets of 
 facts, which comprise so much of what is most dismal and 
 most blessed in the individual and in the social experience of 
 eighteen centuries, intelligible to us ? Is it not the belief that 
 some Person has been leading men, in spite of all struggles 
 and reluctance on their parts, in spite of all efforts to escape 
 from the reality of things, in spite of all the soothing or irrita- 
 ting prescriptions i of earthly doctors, to a knowledge of what 
 they are according to that separate, unnatural, immoral condi- 
 tion which they have imagined for themselves, and of what 
 they are according to the true and blessed order which God 
 has established for them ? And is not this precisely what is 
 
278 STANDARD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 expressed in the words, " The Comforter shall reprove" (or 
 convict) " the world of sin, because they believe not on me?" 
 
 Nothing in those words, determines how this or that man 
 shall receive the influence which is exerted upon him. The 
 " world 1 '' is said to be the subject of the conviction ; the whole 
 of Society will be acted upon by the divine Spirit. And yet 
 it is not to the outside world that lie will speak. A convic- 
 tion of Sin must be addressed to the conscience, the inner 
 man, the person from whom thoughts, words and acts flow. 
 There will, it is said, be this silent mysterious operation. It 
 will produce results. These results may be merely fear, cow- 
 ardice, horror of God, contrivances to escape from Him. They 
 may be trust in Him as a Friend and Deliverer, a renunciation 
 of all self-seeking experiments, rest in the Son of Man. They 
 may be any condition of feeling between these two extremes. 
 On this subject we have no information ; we require none. We 
 want to know who is speaking to us ; what He is saying, to 
 what issue He would lead us, what there is in us which may 
 !d to Him or resist Him. On these points we have all the 
 light we require; all that can help us to obedience and peace. 
 If we wish to limit the movements of that Spirit which bloweth 
 where it listeth, that we may prove ourselves to be within the 
 circle of His influence, we offer a sad evidence that we are 
 resisting Him. 
 
 2. If the conscience of sin is characteristic of the new world 
 as distinguished from the old, I do not think any one can doubt 
 that there has been also a higher standard of Righteousness 
 than any which can be traced in the best men and the best 
 nations that classical history introduces to us. I make this 
 remark with a full recollection of the apparent objections to it 
 which I noticed before, and with the greatest desire to admit 
 their reasonableness. I acknowledge that the elevation of the 
 Christian standard has been a plea for treating the love of city 
 and country which the Greek and Roman heroes exhibited as 
 
PERVERSION OF IT. 279 
 
 mundane and heathenish. I acknowledge that this feeling has 
 prevailed among Protestants as well as Romanists, and that 
 whenever and wherever it has prevailed, there has been the 
 best excuse for exclaiming against the popular religious doc- 
 trines and doctors as immoral and antisocial, for declaring that 
 the patriotism which they despised was better and truer than 
 anything which they put in its place. I admit, as I did in my 
 Essay on Regeneration, that spiritual or ecclesiastical maxims 
 of life have proved, not only hostile to civil life, but to domestic; 
 to those relations upon which God, in the Jewish dispensation, 
 put such high honor, which He takes as the very instruments 
 of revealing himself, which St. Paul connects with the life and 
 substance of the Church. And this being the case, it has fol- 
 lowed, of course, that the ideal Righteousness has sunk into a 
 meaner and more degrading form of Self-righteousness than 
 any which can be found beyond the circle of Christendom. 
 Nay, it would seem as if the self-righteous practices which 
 have tormented the world elsewhere have their centre and 
 explanation in Christian Society. 
 
 Above all, the fearful contradictions which have gathered 
 about the idea of Sacrifice, and have made the giving up of 
 Self the plea for the most intense calculating Selfishness, have 
 received their fullest illustration from the acts and conceptions 
 of Christian men. Among them, too, the horrible notion of 
 making the safety of the soul a motive for violations of Truth, 
 nay, of making Truth merely a means to safety, has led to such 
 intricacies of deception and of cruelty, as it would be hard to 
 find examples of in the countries where it has never been pro- 
 claimed that the Lord God is a God of Truth and without 
 iniquity, one who hateth robbery for burnt-offering. 
 
 I do not want to conceal one of these terrible observations ; 
 we have need to meditate them more and more deeply. I only 
 want you to dwell as earnestly, on another class of observa- 
 tions, which appear utterly opposed to them, and yet which 
 
280 UNIVERSALITY, SELF-SACRIFICE, TRUTH. 
 
 cannot be separated from them. That wicked contempt for 
 national and domestic life to which I alluded, is connected with 
 such an idea of a universal fellowship, of a union with men as 
 men, of duties owing to all men everywhere, with such evi- 
 dences that this idea is not a barren one, not a mere maxim or 
 theory, but a mighty operative principle, — as you can scarcely 
 perceive the faintest foreshadowing of among- the greatest citi- 
 zens of the old republics. That grovelling notion of men prac- 
 tising acts of devotion that they may avert some penalty or 
 buy some prize, has been associated with such a resolute cast- 
 ing away of life, reputation, hope, everything, when other men 
 were to be blessed, and the love of God to them was to be 
 declared, — with such an overpowering belief in a charity that 
 is mightier than Sin, Death, the Devil, which can penetrate the 
 being of man, and utterly destroy the selfishness there, — as you 
 can only hear the feeblest prophecy of in the highest raptures 
 of aneient poets and philosophers ; and yet the realization of 
 it has been among peasants and feeble women. That blasphe- 
 mous notion of lying for God, which has defiled the morality 
 of Romanists and Protestants, has been accompanied in the 
 minds of both, with a persuasion that Truth is higher than 
 Heaven and deeper than Hell, that God Himself is the Truth ; 
 that everything is to be parted with for the sake of that. I 
 do not say that the best men in the old world had not a 
 conviction that this must be so, or that we do not owe them 
 gratitude unspeakable, for having testified that man's busin 
 in life is to seek for that which is, to believe in it that he may 
 find it, and to strip himself of all phantoms and shadows which 
 interfere with the apprehension of it. God be thanked for 
 having raised up such witnesses to Himself! What I say is, 
 that the witness has been found to be real and substantial, by 
 tens of thousands who have known nothing of dialectics, whoso 
 only training has been that of poverty, sickness, the prison, 
 the rack. These were their schoolmasters ; by these they 
 
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 281 
 
 were lifted up to feel that there was a perfect Righteousness, 
 a universal self-sacrificing Love, an Eternal Truth, of which 
 they were inheritors. 
 
 And here is the solution of the mystery. " When He com- 
 et h He shall convince the world of Righteousness, because I go 
 to my Father, and ye see me no more?" 1 There had been a 
 standard of eternal righteousness, love, self-sacrifice, exhib- 
 ited in the world, exhibited by a man carrying mortal 
 flesh, dying a death which we die. And that man had 
 gone out of sight, had seemed to leave no traces of Him- 
 self on earth. But a voice was ever whispering at men's hearts, 
 " He is ascended on high to His Father and your Father. 
 That righteousness which was seen here, is now } 7 ours ; it is 
 for one and all of you. You are participators in that sacrifice 
 which he has offered for all, and which He is presenting as 
 your Intercessor to His Father. You may know that Truth, 
 and that Truth may make you free, of which He came into the 
 world, and died, and has ascended, to testify." 
 
 How otherwise we could bring these different warring 
 experiences into harmony, I cannot conceive. The wisdom of 
 Church teachers will not explain them ; they have been often 
 the great agents in corruption, and when they have been 
 otherwise the secret must be accounted for. The innate noble- 
 ness of man will not explain them, for we have to interpret 
 proofs of his debasement. His innate evil will not explain 
 them, for we have to interpret high thoughts and glorious 
 deeds. If we believed that there had been a Spirit of Truth, 
 not acting upon the surface of men's minds, but carrying on a 
 controversy with them in their inmost being, encountering all 
 the rebellions of the cowardly, reluctant Will, all its desires to 
 become a mere Self-will, bringing out its darkness, as light 
 always must, into fuller and stronger relief, making the devilish 
 apparent because it was confronted with the divine ; if wo 
 
282 SENSE OF JUDGMENT. 
 
 could believe that this was a Comforter, a divine Person, 
 stronger than His enemies, able to strengthen man to all fixed 
 resolutions and noble purposes, — to bring the objects which lie 
 perceives dimly and at a distance, within the sphere of his 
 vision ; able to inspire longings and hopes when the spirit of 
 man is most bent and cowed ; able to point him upwards to a 
 Father in Heaven when he is most ready to call himself merely 
 a son of earth ; able at the same time to make him understand 
 his work on earth, and to endcnv him with powers for perform- 
 ing it ; able to support him in suffering, to give him glimpses 
 of the substantial glory into which Christ has entered through 
 suffering; able to make him perceive that everything which is 
 merely his own is perishable, that what is most divine is com- 
 mon to him with his fellows ; — then I think we need not cho< 
 the bright spots of modern history and eonceal its horrors ; 
 the more courageously we face the one, the more hope will 
 come to us from the contemplation of the other. 
 
 3. For assuredly there has been, and is, a conviction work- 
 ing in the minds of men, the most various and unlike each 
 other, that this kind of conflict is not to go on for ever. There 
 is a sense of Judgment, of some great decision, that is to set- 
 tle for ever w T hich of these is the stronger, the Evil, or the 
 Good with which the Evil has been so intricately combined. 
 This thought of Judgment has been itself as perplexed as 
 either of the others. Men have fancied they w r ere to prepare 
 for judgment by eschewing their common duties, — by devoting 
 themselves to the work of saving their own souls. They have 
 fancied that if, by any means, they could escape from judg- 
 ment, it would be an unspeakable blessing. They have fan- 
 cied that Christ came, not as He said, to save the ivorld, but 
 to save tlicm, that they might not be judged like their fellows. 
 The strangest results, doctrinal and practical, have followed 
 from these habits of mind, and from the encouragement which 
 
HOW CHARACTERISTIC OF CHRISTENDOM. 283 
 
 Christian teachers have given to them ; some of them I pointed 
 out in my twelfth Essay. But in the midst of these we per- 
 ceive a deep and settled desire for judgment, a longing that 
 there should not be a perpetual confusion of Sin and Right- 
 eousness, of Truth and Falsehood, — a certainty that if Christ is 
 King, there cannot be. While there has been, and is, such a 
 dread of judgment as there never was in the old world, there 
 has been, and is, such a passionate craving for judgment as 
 the heroes of it may have now and then felt in hopeful mo- 
 ments when the contradictions of the world became very 
 oppressive ; but such as certainly never became a part of their 
 abiding convictions. For it is evident that the feelings respect- 
 ing Judgment must correspond to those respecting Sin and 
 Righteousness. If our thoughts of these are superficial, our 
 thoughts of that will be ; if we connect them with the very sub- 
 stance of our being, the judgment will bear reference to that. 
 The awfulness of the thoughts of Judgment which we in 
 Christendom have entertained has been the inevitable conse- 
 quence of Sin coming out of such close tremendous connexion 
 with our own selves, of the Righteousness which opposes it 
 being brought so close to us. The hopefulness of our thoughts 
 respecting Judgment has arisen in like manner from the sense 
 of a mighty struggle in the inmost region of our thoughts and 
 consciences between the powers of good and evil, from the 
 certainty that the good is mightier even there, and that God, 
 being absolutely righteous, is on the side of the good against 
 the evil. But what external doctrine about the righteousness 
 of God could have kept this faith alive in any single heart, far 
 more in the heart of Christendom, for eighteen centuries ? 
 What confidence that Christ had come and preached of good 
 being mightier than ill, nay, had shewn it in His own person 
 to be mightier, could have kept it alive ; or how could that 
 confidence have been itself preserved ? " When He cometh 
 
284 THE PRINCE OF THE WORLD JUDGED- 
 
 He shall convince the world of judgment, because the Prince 
 of this world is judged." Yes! The Spirit has been saying 
 to every generation, He is saying very emphatically to ours, 
 — " It is not uncertain what the issue of the battle between 
 right and wrong, truth and lies, will be. It is known ; you 
 may know it. The evil power seems to have a mighty ascend- 
 ency. If you look at the outside of history, if you merely 
 dwell upon statistics, you will come to the conclusion that the 
 good is very weak indeed. But examine the inner life of the 
 world, search into the principles and causes of its peace and 
 order, of its misery and confusion ; above all, look into the 
 principles and causes of the right and truth you have sought 
 and done, of the wrong and falsehood to which you have 
 yielded, and you will find in the one the pledges of endurance 
 and eternity, in the other of swift and sudden destruction. It 
 is true for you ; it is true for mankind ; Christ has proved it ; 
 and though heaven and earth pass away, His words, His acts, 
 His triumphs, do not pass away. He will bring forth right- 
 eousness to judgment." 
 
 To speak of this conviction merely as some gracious influ- 
 ence which steals into certain gentle, prepared, believing hearts, 
 is altogether to misinterpret its nature, and to make such influ- 
 ences unintelligible to the persons who receive them. They 
 are worth nothing to any one who calls them his own. They 
 soon become occasions of pride and self-glorification, or else of 
 despondency, because the feelings which were so serene and 
 pleasant yesterday are turbulent and gloomy to-day ; unless 
 they are traced to One whose presence does not depend upon 
 any of our changeable moods. No doubt it is a paradox that 
 we have the Comforter, and ask for the Comforter; that we 
 pray for Him, and could not pray without Him. No doubt it is 
 a paradox that He is with those who feel His presence least ; 
 that when we seem for a moment to feel He is ours, He is 
 
THE COMFORTER IN THE BOOK. 285 
 
 gone. These are paradoxes ; for everything which has relation 
 to our internal being, puts on a strange shape when it takes 
 the form of a proposition. Every man finds this out for him- 
 self, when he begins to think and suffer. The difficulty is not 
 increased by referring our thoughts and feelings to One who 
 overlooks them, and knows them, and sympathises with them. 
 It is saved from being intolerable. If we were forced to think 
 that all which Scripture tells us of One who grieves .with us, 
 and for us, and whom we may grieve, is mere fiction, the bur- 
 den of existence would have nothing to lighten it. Few as 
 there may be who attach a distinct meaning to those words * 
 all would find an infinite loss if they were taken away. For 
 they belong to all, and w r e cheat ourselves of the blessing they 
 might afford us, and the light they ihrow upon God's ways, 
 by denying them to any. 
 
 Again, it cannot be that this Teacher is merely speaking to 
 us out of the Bible. To have Him speaking there in broad 
 common words ; to have Him setting before us thoughts that 
 were thought, and feelings that were felt, ages ago, and which 
 we may, nevertheless, assert as ours to have Him there, unfold- 
 * ing the steps of a world-drama which has reached a divine cat- 
 astrophe, and yet which is moving on to another catastrophe, 
 — we being persons in it now, and able to understand the pas- 
 sing scenes of it by those which are presented to us in the book, 
 — and to be sure that the same Divine Person who appeared 
 at the opening of it, has been present throughout, and will ga- 
 ther all round Himself, at the end ; this is wonderful : this is a 
 sign to us that we are not to control the Spirit, or make Him 
 the mere minister of our experiences. But the Comforter is 
 not in the book if He is not convincing the world. 
 
 And therefore it cannot be that He descends now and then, 
 at distant intervals, in uncertain lapses, like the Angel into the 
 pool of Bethesda. There maybe great crises in the education 
 
286 EFFECT OF GLORIFYING FACULTIES. 
 
 of the world, times when it starts up after years or centuries 
 of paralysis, into a more vigorous and healthy life; when 
 buried truths come forth out of their caves, and cast away 
 their grave clothes ; when there seems to be a new heaven and 
 a new earth, because the clouds which hid the face of one, and 
 hindered the quickening processes of the other have passed 
 away. But such moments, however surprising they may seem 
 to us, obey some fixed law, and are connected by close, how- 
 ever invisible, links, and denote the action and inspiration of 
 One who is dwelling in the midst of us. 
 
 1 -But oh, how melancholy if we must resolve this Spirit into 
 the spiritual movements, affections, powers of the creatures 
 whom He came to guide and animate ! Thanks be to God for 
 the witness which is borne in our day for the spirituality, not of 
 a few men, but of man as man. It is His teaching, J I is way 
 of declaring II is Son to us, the battle of His Spirit with our 
 pettishness and vanity. But If we substitute the lesson for the 
 Teacher, if man falls down and worships his own faculties of 
 worship, if he determines to be a God because he has 
 the capacity of knowing God, what a tyranny of particular 
 spiritual men is he preparing for himself, what a slavery 
 to mere gifts, what a rivalry of impostors, each pretending to 
 be the spiritual and divine man who can guide the rest ; ulti- 
 mately what an abyss of materialism ! We shall not have 
 one Montanus claiming to be the Comforter, but each 
 little neighborhood and sect will have its own Montanus, its 
 petty prophet, to take the place of the Spirit ivho guidetk into 
 all truth. 
 
 " After all, how easy it has been for the Unitarian to deny the 
 1 Vrsonality of the Holy Spirit, and even to find Spiritual 
 excuses for his denial !" It is most easy for him, and for all 
 of us. I could find a thousand excuses if I wanted them ; I 
 should not despair of bringing any texts by skilful proces 
 
DENIAL OF THE COMFORTER. 287 
 
 to vote on my side ; after a time I might convince myself that 
 that was their most natural meaning. But I cannot find that 
 it is an object for which I ought to spend this labor. I cannot 
 find that I should be much the gainer if I persuaded myself that 
 I had not this Friend, and Teacher, and Comforter with me. 
 I do not mean in ease, or satisfaction, or peace of mind. These, 
 one is never to keep at the expense of truth. In fact, I have 
 never discovered how one can keep them, if one prefers them 
 to truth. But it seems to me that I shall not love the truth 
 better, if I feel I have not a Spirit of Truth guiding me towards 
 it. I think I should give up the pursuit altogether, I should 
 take up with any appearances or falsehoods that looked 
 plausible. ■ x 
 
 " It is not, however," some Unitarian will say, " a proof of 
 our having a gift, that we have a need of it. Locke's argument 
 against the Papists has always passed muster with us. You 
 say there is an infallible authority, because we should be the 
 better for having one ; how much better we should be off if 
 we wera all infallible, and yet we are not." I am bold enough 
 to differ both with Locke and the Papists. I do not think we 
 should be better for having an infallible mortal guide, or for 
 being infallible ourselves. If either state were good for us, I 
 believe it would have been appointed for us. I think we have 
 an infallible, immortal Guide, and that this is what we need. 
 But do not accept the evidence of your wishes or necessities, 
 if you think that unsatisfactory. Try whether you can solve 
 the problems of the world without the belief in this personal 
 Teacher. Or if you do not care for the problems of the world, 
 try whether you can solve the problems of your own heart. I 
 speak boldly to you on this point, for I am satisfied that you 
 have this Comforter with you as I have ; that He is convincing 
 you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, as well as me. 
 I am sure there is a Spirit of lies who is always striving to lead 
 
288 REASONS FOR TRUSTING HIM. 
 
 me into all falsehood, and to separate me from you and from 
 all men. I believe we shall understand one another when we 
 know that his adversary is with us, to make us true and to 
 make us one. The unity of the Spirit, however, and what is 
 involved in it, I reserve for my next subject. 
 
ESSAY XV. 
 
 ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 " Supposing those facts which you dwelt upon in your iast 
 Essay do imply the presence of Him whom our Lord calls the 
 Comforter, the great difficulty for those who compare the 
 promises of the New Testament with the History of Christen- 
 dom still remains. The Apostles speak, or have always been 
 supposed to speak, of a Church, a one Catholic Church, as 
 established, or about to be established, on this earth. They 
 connect that Church with the gift of a spirit, who is called the 
 Holy Spirit, who, it was said, should dwell in the Church as 
 He did not in the world, — who was to purify the hearts of its 
 members. "Where is this Church ? What does History say. 
 of it ? What do our eyes tell us about it ? Answer these 
 questions, or the deepest anxieties of our age are still unsat- 
 isfied." 
 
 I feel the truth of these remarks. The subject which I dis- 
 cussed in the last Essay approaches so closely to this, that I 
 could not always avoid allusions to it. But I passed it by as 
 much as I could ; the words of our Lord on which I commented 
 13 (289) 
 
290 THE BIBLE, SOCIAL. 
 
 enabled me to do so. They speak of a World , not of a Church. 
 They speak of the Comforter as convicting the world of Sin, 
 of Righteousness, of Judgment, — not of Him as a Sanetifier, 
 or Reconciler. I desired to follow His guidance : but I did 
 not wish to shrink from the other examination, however appall- 
 ing it may seem. I allow that there is a very distinct obliga- 
 tion laid upon us all to explain what we understand by the 
 language of Scripture respecting the gift of the Spirit and the 
 foundation of the Church, and how we suppose the records 
 the world, and the world which we. see, can be explained in 
 accordance with it. 
 
 I cannot make this task easier to myself by maintaining that 
 the New Testament promises certain spiritual blessings to indi- 
 viduals, but that it does not connect the gift of the Spirit with 
 a Society. Kvery ] je in the Bible — the construction of 
 
 the Bible — refutes that supposition. The earlier records speak 
 of a nation called out by God to be the witness of His pr 
 enee and government ; the later records have no connexion 
 with these, — have no distinct meaning of their own, — if they 
 do not describe the expansion of a national Society into a 
 human and universal Society. The expectations of the Apos- 
 tles, awakened and sustained by their Lord's teachings, pointed 
 to this issue: — they were to be the ministers of a kingdom \ 
 they were to preach of a kingdom to Israelites ; finally, they 
 were to baptize all nations. They were told they had not yet 
 power to fulfil that work. They knew T that they had not. 
 They had a mysterious assurance that they were united still 
 to the Lord who had been with them on earth ; they felt they 
 might call upon His Father as their Father. But they could 
 not realize their relation to that invisible world into which their 
 Master had entered — entered, He said, for them. He had 
 chosen them as a body to work under Him. He had told them 
 that they were to work together after He had gone away. 
 He had said that all men would know they were His disciples 
 
THE APOSTLES. 29 J 
 
 by the love they had to each other. But they were conscious 
 of jealousies and rivalries ; each might soon again be trying to 
 live and act for himself. Unless their Lord could bind them 
 together by that power which bound Him to them, fellowship 
 among such naturally unsociable elements was impossible. 
 And surely such a power was needed if they were ever to 
 break through the fetters of their Jewish exclusiveness ; to 
 have any communion with men of other kindreds and tongues. 
 The events said to have occurred on the day of Pentecost, 
 exactly corresponded to these anticipations. A pow T er is said 
 to have taken possession of them, — a power which governed 
 their thought and speech. But it was the power of a Spirit 
 who made them feel they were one, and proclaim their oneness 
 with the.crowd which was assembled at that feast, because He 
 who established it, and whose mighty works were commem- 
 orated in it, was declaring them to be one with Him. The 
 story follows of the baptism of the three thousand, who were 
 to receive the same gift as the Apostles had received, and of 
 the new Society at Jerusalem, which is not noted for the exer- 
 cise of the gift of tongues, but for the continuance of its mem- 
 bers in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, for the joy and 
 singleness of heart with which they ate their bread, for their not 
 counting the things they had as their own, for the distribution 
 which they made to those who had need, for their courage 
 before the Sanhedrim, for the confidence with which they 
 prayed that they might speak with all boldness of the King 
 against whom Jews and Gentiles had gathered together. 
 
 The Apostles do indeed exercise powers of healing, and they 
 are especially careful to assert that no cure was wrought in 
 their own name, but in the name of the ascended Son of God. 
 But what the historian chiefly dwells on, is the order of the 
 Society which was established in that Name, its unity and holi- 
 ness while it confessed the Spirit to be with it, — the punish- 
 ment of those (for there were such in that infant community) 
 
292 THE PHENOMENA OF THE WORLD. 
 
 who lied against the Holy Ghost, — the new organization which 
 was bu :ed by the quarrels (for there were those in that 
 infant community) between Hebrews and Hellenists. 
 
 When St. Paul goes with his Gospel into the cities of A 
 Minor, of Macedonia, of Greece Proper, it is still to form 
 Societies. Each of these is named an Ecclesia ; the members 
 of it arc said to be called or chosen, or to be in God the Father 
 and His Son Jesus Christ. They are said to be baptized by 
 one Spirit into one body. These distinct bodies are portions 
 of a universal body. 
 
 Everything, then, in the Old and New Testament, speaks of 
 fellowship and organization. And to suppose that the lat 
 birth in the universe so solemnly announced, so long waited 
 for, was an abortion, or that the child was not to come to the 
 use of its limbs and vital energies for centuries, is to suppose 
 the Apostles at once deceived and deceivers. They told their 
 their Lord had told them, that a crisis to be wit- 
 i by BOme of them, would show that a kingdom had 
 come forth, which, however apparently insignificant, was instinct 
 with a Spirit that would enable it to rule the nations. 
 
 Admitting this, how can I dare to face the problems which 
 the world, as wc sec it, presents to us ? ]\Iust I not save the 
 credit of Inspiration by resorting to fictions which had not 
 done men much good hitherto, and which will certainly not 
 save them now? By assuming, for instance, that forms and 
 professions constitute a Church, — that external badges mean 
 the same thing as an indwelling Spirit? I hope I shall be 
 preserved from any such wicked trifling ; if I fall into it, the 
 falsehood will soon make itself evident. 
 
 I. First, then, we find a body which affirms itself to be the 
 one Holy Catholic Church of the world. Its members form the 
 bulk of the population of Western Europe : its claims to be 
 what it represents itself to be, are publicly recognised by many 
 of the most conspicuous and civilized states. This body boasts 
 
CLAIMS OF THE LATIN CBUKCH. 293 
 
 (hat it is the heir of that which was established in Jerusalem 
 on the day of Pentecost : whatever rights and powers resided 
 in that Church, it says, have descended upon it. If that Church 
 was able to do wonderful works, this Church declares that it 
 can do the same; the gift, it says, has never been withdrawn, 
 has been exercised at intervals in all generations, makes itself 
 manifest now. This sign of continuance and identity it is 
 inclined to dwell upon most; still others are not wanting. 
 " There has been no break," it declares, " in the line of Church 
 ministers, from the time of the Apostles downwards. The 
 character of the organization is the same. The Apostles w 7 ere 
 regarded as the fathers of a family ; the idea of paternity has 
 been strictly preserved ; it has even unfolded itself; it is more 
 completely realized now than it was at first. The capital of 
 the Church," it is admitted, " has been changed ; but that 
 change came to pass, first, by a divine ordinance expressly 
 depriving Jerusalem of its honor; secondly, by a series of 
 events, — equally attesting the divine purpose, — which have 
 deposed the old Caesars from their seat, and have established 
 the successors of St. Peter upon it. And this circumstance 
 has, it is said, produced an unity which would otherwise have 
 been wanting to Christendom. The wild Gothic tribes, full of 
 their separate strifes, impatient of fellowship, have been brought 
 to confess a general spiritual head, and a community of faith 
 higher than any differences of race or any national disagree- 
 ments. In defiance of the tendencies of each nation to find a 
 separate language for itself, a common language has established 
 itself as an organ of devotion. In defiance, again, of the ten- 
 dency of each nation to set up for itself a separate worship — a 
 tendency equally evident in the Old world and the New, — a 
 common creed and a common worship have succeeded in keep- 
 ing their ground for many centuries, the head of the Society 
 being always able to interpret what has been misunderstood, 
 to put down the inventors of new opinions, to provide for fresh 
 
294 ITS HOLINESS. 
 
 emergencies. For, there being such a person, whose authority 
 all the different members of this Society acknowledge as infal- 
 lible and past appeal, the Church," it is said, " can combine the 
 greatest fixedness with the greatest elasticity. It has main- 
 tained the faith once delivered to the saints without wavering ; 
 it has ever been giving birth to new opinions and practices, 
 where they were needful to develop and complete the old, — to 
 new orders of men when it was requisite to encounter diseases 
 or necessities in the body politic, that had previously not existed 
 or not been observed. 
 
 " This Church," it is further declared, " is not only spread 
 over the whole surface of modern European society; not only 
 are its priests to be seen at the corners of every street ; not 
 only are they performing services continually in every Church, 
 which establish a communion between angels and men, the 
 living and the departed; not only is the Sacrifice continually 
 offered up which reconciles the offending creatures to their 
 Creator, and brings down blessings on the earth ; not only is 
 that Sacrifice lifted before the eyes of men, that they may 
 believe and adore, — but the influence of the Church affects the 
 politics of all kingdoms, penetrates into the rec of all 
 
 families. Every individual is within the reach of its guidai 
 and blessing. Every burdened conscience knows where it may 
 go that it may lay down its burden, — who can set it free. 
 Nothing in the arrangements of this Society," it is said, " is 
 merely distant and abstract ; it meets its peculiar case, pro- 
 vides a remedy for every ailment, a satisfaction for every crav- 
 ing. And it proves," — so its champions triumphantly continue, 
 — " its title to be the one Catholic Church, since all who rebel 
 against it or separate from it necessarily become divided, since 
 no body besides it can put forth the least pretension to univer- 
 sale v. And it proves itself to be holy, because no other can 
 show such an array of devoted, self-sacrificing saints." 
 
 It is at this point, I suspect, that the ordinary observer, the 
 
OBJECTIONS. , 295 
 
 simple layman, the European traveller, — for it is to such a man, 
 and not to some adverse divine, that these statements are likely 
 to be addressed, — will step in with an objection. " All your 
 arguments," he will answer, " may be true enough ; at all 
 events, I cannot refute them. You may have the miraculous 
 powers you speak of, the uninterrupted descent, the infallible 
 authority, the fixed dogmas, the adaptation to circumstances, 
 the band of saints. But when you talk of a holy society, do 
 tell me what your words mean, for they utterly bewilder me. 
 Do you call this society, in which I am dwelling, a holy society ? 
 Do you call this country, for instance, which is nearest the 
 centre of holiness, a holy country? I will not press you too 
 much. I will suppose that though you have miraculous powers, 
 the power does not always exert itself in this way. That it 
 can make statues wink more easily than it can make human 
 beings abandon their habits of revenge or lying, — I can under- 
 stand. But when the power is exerted, when you are doing 
 a work for men, I want to know whether that is for good or 
 for ill ? I cannot make up my mind that it is for good. I can- 
 not help perceiving, not that you cfo not reclaim men from being 
 false, but that you continually make them false ; not that you 
 sometimes fail in preventing moral corruption, but that you are 
 working very hard, by some of your most potent and most 
 vaunted agencies, to inornate it ; not that evil and debasing 
 habits have defied all the energies of preachers, confessors, and 
 absolvers; but that preachers, confessors, and absolvers, are 
 very often helping more to strengthen these habits, and make 
 them invincible, than all other men together." 
 
 This kind of conviction, — Romanists should understand it, 
 and we for our humiliation should understand it too, — is doing 
 immeasurably more to make their arguments fall lifeless upon 
 practical men, w T hose minds are not blinded to the distinction 
 of right and wrong, than all our elaborate reasonings. And 
 when a man has gone so far in his examination of the phrase, 
 
296 IS THE UNITY REAL ? 
 
 " One Holy Catholic Church," his observation, without any 
 help from divinity, or much from ecclesiastical history, may 
 carry him a little further. He may demur to a unity which is 
 compatible with the infinite 'contrarieties } not diversities, of 
 belief, which he will himself have met with in Roman Catholic 
 countries; with the wild immoral heathenish superstitions, 
 which an intelligent priest will at once disclaim, yet which exist 
 m the very classes that most acknowledge the influence of 
 priests ; with the contemptuous infidelity which they themselves 
 impute to the classes that are out of their reach ; with the dis- 
 content that is muttered by better men. All this, — with the 
 modifications of faith which exist in the sacerdotal order itself, 
 touching all points from the most unquestioning orthodoxy to 
 absolute atheism, — may co-exist, no doubt, with something that 
 is called unity ; nay, these differences may be alleged as proofs 
 how vigorous the m must be which can enforce a unifor- 
 
 mity in spite of them. But they may somewhat puzzle a person 
 who is inquiring whether this is that Church which began when 
 a Spirit of unity took possession of a body of men, allowing 
 them to retain their ex? dini-rences, because they had that 
 
 ici/Jtia which made them one. And a similar difficulty will 
 beset him when he considers that the symbol of the descent of 
 that Spirit was, that men could hear, in their different tongues, 
 the wonderful works of God, and when he observes that the 
 one tongue which is the symbol of modern Catholicism is a 
 sentence of exclusion to the whole body of(i reeks, seeing that 
 they boast of a somewhat older and more sacred dialect. And 
 generally it will strike him, I fancy, that the boasts of Roman- 
 ists themselves establish the inference which he would have 
 deduced from his own experience, that the preservation of a 
 
 st machinery, of a surface uniformity, of an artificial holiness, 
 is what they understand by the preservation of a Church in 
 which the Holy Spirit of Unity has made His habitation. 
 
 II. An impartial observer who has arrived at this mournful 
 
PROTESTANT NATIONS. 297 
 
 conclusion may turn, with some pleasure, to another class of 
 facts which the modern European world offers to him. He 
 may hear with satisfaction that several nations have raised their 
 protest against the attempt to crush all distinct thoughts and 
 languages, under one general name. He will rejoice to find 
 that their rulers are considered responsible to God, for their 
 conduct to their subjects and to other lands ; and to no earthly 
 superior, whatever claims of infallibility or divinity he may 
 allege. He may find that in such countries there is a recogni- 
 tion of the dignity of civil life, of the duty of nations to main- 
 tain their independence, of the inviolability of the domestic 
 hearth, of the worth which belongs to the ordinary virtues of 
 plain dealing and truth-speaking, which he has sought for in 
 vain among those who only breathe a sacerdotal atmosphere. 
 He may be pleased to observe that nevertheless in these coun- 
 tries there is an acknowledgment of the importance "and neces- 
 sity of a spiritual influence ; that the priest, though he cannot 
 claim to be a king, has his own recognised and lawful position. 
 At first such discoveries may be very cheering ; possibly 
 they will not cease to be so. But he will soon hear, not only 
 from Romanists, not only from those who suppose that the 
 Romanist is somewhere near the truth in his conception of the 
 Church, but also from those who regard him as hopelessly and 
 fatally astray, that these protesting nations are altogether 
 unspiritual and secular. These hard names will not be bes- 
 towed without some startling evidence to show that they are 
 deserved. " Look," he will be told, "at the lower classes in 
 these nations. They may be less flagrantly superstitious than 
 those in Romish countries. Are they less debased, less ani- 
 mal, less ignorant ? What spiritual influence has been exerted 
 over them ?" — " Look," it will be said again, " at the upper 
 classes. The priests are less obnoxious to them than the 
 Romish priests are to those among whom they dwell. Is not 
 this because it is more clearly understood that they shall be 
 
 .3* 
 
298 COMPLAINTS OF THEM. 
 
 left to themselves, that their vices and their wrong doings to 
 those who are under their influence shall not be noticed ; that 
 the priest shall abdicate his functions as a spiritual reprover, 
 and shall be content to be reckoned a safety-valve of the social 
 machine, or as some insignificant accessory to it, which no one 
 will disturb until it begins to move'? Certain doctrines lie is 
 to believe, certain words he is to repeat, certain acts he is to 
 go through ; what have those doctrines, Words, acts, to do with 
 men not of his profession ; — often, what have they to do with 
 him ? They are charms to keep the different classes of a coun- 
 try in those positions to each other, which the laws and con- 
 ventions of the land have assigned them. And whither," it is 
 asked, " are these nations tending ? Are not material gratifi- 
 cations becoming more and more the only prizes which they 
 are setting before themselves ? Is not the pursuit of wealth 
 the only great means of winning that prize ? Are not art, 
 lice, religion, valued just so far as they contribute to make 
 the possession of money more agreeable or the search for it 
 more secure ? Is it here that we are to look for a Holy Catho- 
 lic Church ; can we find tokens here that a Spirit of lloli- 
 and Love is dwelling among men ?" 
 What use can there be in shutting one's ears to such words 
 ? Is it not better to take in the full force of them, 
 and to meditate on them silently ? For so we may in due time 
 discover, not the secret of acquiescence in the evils which press 
 upon us, but the secret of deliverance from them. Those who 
 are flying to Rome expect that a miraculous illumination will 
 some day enable them to see the anomalies which now shock 
 them in its system, quite differently. It is probable that a 
 blindness, (which may be also miraculous), will by degrees save 
 them from the unhappiness of seeing these anomalies at all. We 
 should wish and pray, in proportion as we love our country, 
 that we may not shrink from contemplating one of its sins 
 
SPIRITUAL SECTS*. 299 
 
 which are our own, but that God's light may show them to us 
 just as they are. 
 
 III. Perhaps the student may find some relief in turning 
 from both these spectacles to a number of particular societies, 
 which declare that the so-called Catholic body, and the bodies 
 which pretend to be National Churches, have equally mistaken 
 the foundation on which a Church ought to rest. He must 
 needs be attracted by their statements, not only because they 
 point out evils which he has himself noticed in their opponents, 
 but because they affirm that the true spiritual principle is with 
 them. " The Church," they say, " cannot be a mere world. 
 It must be a body of men chosen out of the world. It cannot 
 be a body merely held together by certain external professions. 
 It must consist of those who are drawn by a Divine Spirit to 
 confess a Divine Lord." What data can sound more hopeful 
 than these ? How likely it seems that here at last the feet of 
 weary pilgrims will find some resting-place ; that here we have 
 arrived at the secret which has escaped anxious and earnest 
 men for so many generations ! There is much in the early his- 
 tory of all sects to favor this opinion. Who can deny the fer- 
 vent zeal against injustice and evil which possessed the leaders ; 
 the hearty affection, genial sympathy, passionate self-devotion 
 of the followers ? Who can say that they were only denounc- 
 ing other men, and not uttering the deepest conviction of their 
 own hearts ? If they were sometimes unjust and violent, their 
 fierce language was often the indication of a loving rather than 
 of a hating spirit ; a wise man who was the object of it would 
 have liked it much better than the smooth and civil speeches 
 of less cordial foes. ' A Spirit — yes, the Spirit of truth — there 
 must have been among these men ; their sect would not have 
 survived them for a century, or even a year, if it had been 
 merely gathered for a purpose of spite or faction. 
 
 A person who has arrived at this conviction will not be driven 
 from it by any criticisms or denunciations of those who oppose 
 
300 * DESPONDED 
 
 these sects. But what if be should hear deep groans arising 
 from the midst of them, from the very persons who have been 
 educated in them, from those who have learnt to despise, and 
 have continued to despise, the bodies whence they have gone 
 out ? What if the complaints of them should be of this kind, 
 — that they are not spiritual bodies at all, but formal and 
 worldly ; not asserters of moral freedom, but great restrained 
 of it ; that they are bitter against each other, seldom at pe; 
 within ; that the best praise which can be bestowed upon the 
 best man in any one of these bodies, — the praise which his 
 admirers always dwell upon — is that he has emancipated 
 himself from the ordinary habits and temper of it? Such is 
 the testimony, not of hard judges, but of sufferers. And if 
 so, can we find among these Beets the resemblance of that 
 Church of which St Paul spoke as being one Body, into which 
 all had been baptized by one Spirit ? 
 
 But if no one of these separate inquiries has led to any satis- 
 factory result, how much more unsatisfactory would the com- 
 parison of them seem to be ! What an impression that must 
 leave upon every mind of conflict, strife, contradiction, in th< 
 who bear the name of tho one Lord ! What utter despair it 
 must awaken in him of all Unity, unless, indeed, men can agree 
 that they are not spiritual beings ; that they are not. connected 
 with an invisible world at all ; that they are not children of a 
 Father in Heaven ; that they have no ties to each other except 
 such as are produced by outward animal necessities, which one 
 man cannot satisfy without the assistance of his neighbor. 
 Were it possible to arrive at thai state of feeling, some difficul- 
 ties might no doubt be removed. But does experience show 
 that it is possible? Would perfect unity or unbroken discord 
 — a war of elements, without the hope or chance of peace, — 
 be the consequence, if it were ? 
 
 To one revolving that frightful possibility, and asking 
 whether there must not be some way out of this labyrinth, the 
 
HOPE. 301 
 
 thought, I am sure, will at last present itself, that those facts 
 which he has been pondering, offer the most decisive witness 
 for, not against, the law which was proclaimed on the day of 
 Pentecost ; for, not against, the assertion that it is the law of 
 human Society, — the one by which Society is governed,— how- 
 ever much men may be denying it or rebelling against it. 
 Look once again at that Church which boasts to be One, Holy, 
 Catholic. Is her boast too grand a one ? Has she believed 
 too firmly that a Church has been established of which all her 
 sons have a right to call themselves members, that a Spirit has 
 been given of which they all have a right to be partakers ? 
 Would to God she did hold that belief! What a differ- 
 ent picture her history would present if she had held it stead- 
 fastly ! If she had been convinced that Heaven and Earth 
 were brought into one, — that a real fellowship exists, and has 
 been manifested between them, — what a mass of contrivances 
 to produce that fellowship, to fill up the chasm between the 
 visible and the invisible world, would be swept away ! What 
 portentous superstitions, what dark idolatries, would vanish if 
 once that faith, — not the faith of her enemies, but her own, — 
 was really accepted, honestly carried out 1 
 
 I pressed this point in my Essay on Regeneration ; but I 
 could not then speak of the faith which the Homish Church 
 professes to have in an in-dwelling Spirit, a Spirit of truth, and 
 love, and power, which is to bind all together in one and enable 
 her to rule the nations. I could not then point out what the 
 contradiction was between this profession and her adoption of 
 those practices of the conjuror, which the miracles of the Gos- 
 pel were intended to explode; of the practices of the diploma- 
 tist, from which she ought to have delivered the nations, instead 
 of setting the vilest example of them; of the practices of the 
 hard-hearted worldly oppressor, crushing the spirit under the 
 flesh, the conscience under casuistry, the reason under decrees, 
 when she was sent to teach men of a Father who had claimed 
 
302 INNOCENT III. 
 
 them as his sons, of a Son who was at his right hand for them, 
 of a Spirit who was within them to make thorn inheritors of His 
 glory. I could not then show how great the sin was which 
 she had committed in assuming that St. Peter or any successor 
 of his, could be the Father of the Church, how necessarily 
 such a fiction divides earth from heaven, and makes the Church 
 into a world. 
 
 Like the Angelo of our great dramatist, the deputy of a true 
 ruler has played his tyrannical and hypocritical tricks, punish- 
 ing others for the crimes which he commits himself, often betray- 
 ing the innocence which he is commissioned to protect. But, 
 as that same story teaches us, the Duke is not really absent 
 from his government, but is watching, counteracting, bringing 
 to an altogether different issue, the plots of his agent. See 
 how the Papa) history in its most palmy moment bears witn 
 of that fact The policy of Innocent III. was so mysterious 
 and so perfect, that a modern German historian, through admi- 
 ration of it, is said to have abandoned the faith of his child- 
 hood. M What but a divine power," he and others have argued, 
 " could have enabled a man to rule the world as Innocent did ; 
 to guide at the same moment the Latin kingdom in Greece, 
 which he did not assist in establishing, but which he knew so 
 well how to use when it was established; to nurse a young 
 monarch for Germany, who might hereafter make the Empire 
 the tool of the Papacy ; to set his foot on the prostrate mon- 
 arch of England ?" A wonderful spectacle assuredly ; but there 
 is another as well worthy of our study. Is it not as clear an 
 evidence of a divine government in the world, that all these 
 exquisite plots came to nothing ; that the reviving energies of 
 Greece so soon shattered the Latin kingdom in pieces; that 
 Frederic II. became, not the instrument of Popes, but their 
 most hated enemy and scourge ; that Stephen Langton, forced 
 into his see by interdicts and excommunications, became the 
 asserter of English independence, the punisher of the monarch 
 
THE SIN OF NATIONAL CHURCHES. 303 
 
 who betrayed his trust, the author of the Charter ? Is it not 
 as great a proof of a spiritual power in the world, that the 
 feeble Francis of Assisi, by the one thought that Christ is the 
 friend of the poor, did so much more to preserve and extend 
 the Church, — even to support the Papacy itself, — than the hun- 
 dred-handed Pope, with all his resources of outward strength 
 and unrivalled craft? Is it nothing that Louis IX., because 
 he was a faithful national sovereign who loved justice, was felt 
 to be such a saint as no Pope had ever been ? 
 
 Thus, then, every oppression and crime that has been rightly 
 imputed to Rome, has arisen from her not confessing in deed, 
 as she has confessed in words, that a spirit has appeared to 
 build up a one Holy Catholic Church. Every healthful influ- 
 ence she has ever exercised, — or Christian men and women 
 have ever exercised in her name, — has proceeded from that 
 belief. 
 
 And may not all the sins, which, with no less truth, have 
 been imputed to Protestant National Churches, be traced to 
 the same unbelief; all that has been good to the same faith ? 
 Have they erred from their too great patriotism, their too zeal- 
 ous determination not to give it up for emperor or pope, for 
 man or devil ; from their fixed purpose that no' religion what- 
 ever should rob them of their common morality, or persuade 
 them to do evil for the sake of pleasing Grod ? No ; but they 
 have erred in not thinking that the Spirit of G-od was with 
 them, to enable them to maintain their national steadfastness, 
 to fulfil their common duties, to support their love of truth 
 against the temptations which are continually overpowering it; 
 to purify their patriotism of exclusiveness, their zeal for the 
 plain and the practical, of sordidness ; to enable them to feel 
 that all citizens of the same commonwealth, however different 
 their ranks and civil positions, are, in the highest sense, equal ; 
 to give them the freedom, the manliness, the sympathy with 
 those of other races, which selfishness is taking from them. 
 
304 AND OF SECTS. 
 
 And why have those sects I spoke of become so partial, so 
 hard, so cruel ? Is it because their forefathers were wrong in 
 telling them that the Spirit was seeking to bind them in one, 
 and that no mere external bond could bind them ? Surely 
 not ; this lesson taken home to the heart, makes men first true, 
 in due time Catholic, leading them to cling mightily to the 
 special conviction God has wrought in them, afterwards ena- 
 bling them to feel the necessity of other convictions to sustain 
 that. It is .the loss of this faith, it is the substitution of some 
 petty external badge and symbol of theirs, for the belief and 
 confession of a Divine Spirit, which is making them impatient 
 of dogmas, yet fiercely dogmatic ; eager to rob other men of 
 their treasures ; feeble in their hold upon their own. It is this 
 which tempts their BOm sk whether the earth has no other 
 
 foundations than those which th - have laid, often to arrive 
 
 at the miserable conclusion that its foundations are built on 
 rotten 
 
 But it is not so ! however much excuse they may have for 
 suspecting it. There has no promise of Scripture been proved 
 nugatory ; there is none which has not been fulfilled more 
 than men dreamed of, which will not be fulfilled to the very 
 hitter. I have said there were !i; id raurmurers in the 
 
 Church at Jerusalem. The promise was not, that there should 
 not be these in the time to come. Every form of corruption 
 and heresy was discovered by St. Paul in the Churches to 
 which he wrote. There was no pit iven, that these should 
 
 not appear in the later time. St. John said there were many 
 Antichrists in his day. It is no stumbling-block to our faith, 
 if there are many in ours. But it would be the utter uproot- 
 ing of our faith if we found that there was no such body as 
 the Apostles told U3 there should be, with which all lying and 
 contention should be at war ; if there was no Spirit dwelling 
 in that body against which these heresies and corruptions and 
 Antichrists are fighting, and which will at least prevail against 
 
NULLA SALUS EXTKA ECCLESIAM. 305 
 
 them. Romanists, Protestant nations, all se^ts, declare that 
 there is such a body, and that there is such a Spirit. Their 
 words bear witness of it ; their crimes, which outrage those 
 words, bear witness of it still more. 
 
 And thus we are enabled to understand better than by all 
 artificial definitions, how a Church differs from a world. " The 
 Comforter" our Lord says, " si hall convince the world." When 
 He speaks to the disciples, He says, " He shall come and dwell 
 * in you." . The world contains the elements of which the Church 
 is composed. In the Church, these elements are penetrated 
 by a uniting, reconciling power. The Church is, therefore, 
 human society in its normal state ; the World, that same soci- 
 ety irregular and abnormal. The world is the Church without 
 God ; the Church is the world restored to its relation with 
 God, taken back by Him into the state for which He created 
 it. Deprive the Church of its Centre, and you make it into 
 a world. If you give it a false Centre, as the Romanists have 
 done, still preserving the sacraments, forms, creeds, which 
 speak of the true Centre, there necessarily comes out that gro* 
 tesque hybrid which we witness, a world assuming all the dig- 
 nity and authority of a church, — a Church practising all the 
 worst fictions of a world ; the world assuming to be heavenly, 
 — a Church confessing itself to be of the earth, earthly. 
 
 From this contradiction a number of others proceed : I will 
 take one which will serve as the specimen of a. whole class. 
 The doctrine, Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam, sounds the cruel- 
 lest of all doctrines; it has become so in fact. But consider 
 the origin of it. A man possessed with the conviction that 
 human beings are not meant to live in a world where every 
 one is divided from his neighbor, — in which there is no uniting, 
 fusing principle, in which each lives to himself, and for him- 
 self, — bids them fly from that chaos. For he cries, " There is 
 n universe for you ! Nay, more, there is a Father's house open 
 to you. God is not the fcowning, distant tyrant the world 
 
306 THE OLD AND NEW MEANING OF IT. 
 
 takes Him to be ; not split up into a multitude of broken forms 
 and images ; not One to whom we are to offer a cold civil lip 
 service, by way of conciliating Him or doing Him honor. He 
 is the Ilea 1 of a family; His Son has proved you to be mem- 
 bers of it; His Spirit is given you that you may know Him as 
 He is, not as your hard material hearts represent Him to you. 
 Come into this Ark ! Take up your place in this Family ! 
 Here is deliverance and health ! Nulla sains extra Ecclesiam. 
 No comfort, no health, no peace, while you count yourselves 
 exiles from God, strangers to your brethren." 
 
 Is this a hard saying ? Is it not full of gentleness, benignity, 
 love? But the Church becomes a world-Church ; a Church 
 that speaks of a Father in Heaven, and sets up a Father on 
 earth ; that introduces earthly mediators because the Mediator 
 has gone away, and it is needful to make Him propitious ; 
 that boasts itself to be endued with a Spirit of truth, and can 
 only exhibit the powers of the Spirit in doing untrue acts : 
 then the phrase necessarily assumes, not a different meaning 
 from this, but one that is directly opposite to it. " Nulla sains 
 extra Ecclesiam ! God is ready to destroy you. We can 
 save you from Him. Think what a risk you are incurring. 
 Y<m may be wrong ! Then perdition is certain." Oh, doc- 
 trine of devils, if such is to be found in earth or in hell ! Surely, 
 vation and Damnation become identical, if the soul is saved 
 by the loss of its trust in God, by conceiving Him to be like 
 those demons from whom the Apostles said that Christ came 
 to deliver mankind, as unlike as possible to the perfect ima 
 which was shown forth in Him. 
 
 We cannot, however, cast stones at the Romanists, for 
 
 adopting this notion of safety. We have fallen into it almost 
 
 much as they have. It belongs especially to our monev- 
 
 :ting habits. If some wander from our Church to Rome, 
 because they believe that, on the whole, they have a better 
 chance of escaping destruction there, we have ourselves to 
 
DUTY OF OUR CHURCH. 307 
 
 blame ; we have sown the wind of selfishness, and we must 
 reap the whirlwind of desertion. But it would be a great mis- 
 •take and injustice, to suppose that the selfish motive is the 
 exclusive one, even in the worst cases, or the predominant one 
 in any better men. Love and Selfishness are strangely, inex- 
 tricably blended. The true idea of Safety is mixed with its 
 accursed counterfeit. They long for a larger fellowship, a 
 Father's house, a Spirit who can make them brothers with all 
 men, Greeks, Romanists, Protestants. The wish may be 
 shrivelled and contracted by a thousand causes ; but it is there ; 
 and if we cannot gratify it, — if we cannot tell them that they 
 are inheritors of Christ's kingdom in earth and heaven, and that 
 the Spirit of the Father and Son is with them — in order that 
 the inheritance may not be a nominal, but a real one, — we 
 shall not keep them, we ought not to keep them. They will 
 try whether that blessing wiiich our creeds and prayers assure 
 them is theirs, can be obtained elsewhere ; and if they meet with 
 bitter disappointment, or take up with a wretched substitute 
 for the infinite good which God has taught them to feel neces- 
 sary, is not our unbelief the cause? And is not the only way 
 of preserving our National Church, to declare solemnly, habitu- 
 ally, perseveringly, that it does bear this witness not for itself 
 alone, but on behalf of the Romanist and the Protestant Sec- 
 tarian ? yes ! that it is ready to make any sacrifices if it can 
 but bear that witness effectually ? 
 
 I do not indeed say that this witness must come from us 
 alone, perhaps not from us chiefly. Let it come from where 
 it will, God must be the author of it. He may see fit to bring 
 this truth with mighty power to the heart of some Italian 
 monk, who has been seeking in vain to make himself holy, and 
 discovers that holiness must come from a Spirit of Holiness, 
 who is also a Spirit of Unity. It may come to some Romish 
 Bishop as he listens to the Veni Creator Spiritus, and believes 
 that the sevenfold gifts are intended for him. It may come to 
 
308 THE TRINITY. 
 
 some earnest member of a Protestant sect, feeling that the 
 Spirit of Truth cannot be the Spirit of narrow It may 
 
 come to some man lying outside of all churches and sects, and 
 asking whether he can be intended to be only a part of an un- 
 sympathising, forlorn world. To whichever it comes first, the 
 faith will pass rapidly, as by an electrical chain from one to 
 another. It will break through all barriers of opinion and cir- 
 cumstance. Xone will know how he has received it, because 
 all will have received it from that Spirit who bloweth where 
 He listeth, and of whom you cannot say whence He cometh 
 or whither He goeth. 
 
 But seeing that -what appear to us the most irregular cur- 
 rents obey a fixed and eternal law, we may be sure that that 
 Spirit will work as He has always worked ; that He will change 
 nothing and yet will make all things new. That mighty w T onder 
 which we behold every year when the selfsame roots and stems, 
 which were the symbols of all that is hard, and dry, and sepa- 
 rate, become clothed with verdure, full of life, and joy, and 
 music, will be exhibited in the moral world. No form will be 
 cast away, no ordinance will be treated as worthless, nothing 
 which has expressed the thought or belief of any man will be 
 found unmeaning, because the Spirit of the living God will 
 call forth every sleeping and latent power into activity, every- 
 thing that has been dead into life, all that has been divided into 
 harmony. Only the miserable counterfeits will pass away. 
 Whatever has been true, if it has been ever so weak. and bro- ' 
 ken, will find its place in that creation which God has declared 
 to be very good. 
 
 But have I not spoken again and again in this Essay 
 of a Father, a Son, and a Spirit ? Has not all my comfort in 
 the past, my hope for the future, been connected with the re- 
 velation of that Name,. with the full acknowledgment of it? 
 Even so, my Unitarian brother. And all the longings you 
 have for fellowship, and freedom, and unity, for the breaking 
 
CONCLUSION. 309 
 
 down of barriers, for a universal comprehension, point the same 
 way. I have not deceived you by pretending to agree with 
 you where I caunot. I am more entirely at issue with you in 
 your denials than those who denounce you most. I have come 
 now to the root of all your denials, to that Name which i" be-~ 
 lieve to be the ground of human life, and of human society. If 
 you have borne with me so far — considering many of my 
 words, no doubt, enthusiastical, antiquated, obscure, foolish, 
 yet still I hope now and then detecting a sense in them which 
 answers to a sense in you, — will you listen while I tell you why 
 I could not believe that a Trinity in Unity is a foundation for 
 myself to rest upon, if I did not also regard it as a foundation 
 for you and for all men ? 
 
ESSAY XVI. 
 
 ON THE TRINITY IN UNITY. 
 
 My first ESssay was on Charity; this will also be on Charity. 
 I could not find that a charity which believed all thingB, hoped 
 all things, endured all things had its root on this earth, or in the 
 
 ill of any man who dwells on this earth. Yet it seemed to me 
 that sueh a Charity was needed to make this earth what it ought 
 to be, and that human heart- have a profound sense of its neces- 
 sity for them, an infinite craving topo it, and be filled with 
 it. Something stood in the way of the good which the earth sighs 
 for, and which man sighs for. A vision of Sin rose up before 
 us confronting the vision of Charity. It was portentous, for it 
 seemed part of the very creature who had the dream of a per- 
 fect good. But he disclaimed it, he tried to account for it bv 
 some accidents of his position, or by some essential error in his 
 constitution ; at last he said, I have yielded to an oppressor ; 
 an Evil Spirit has withdrawn me from my true Lord. Then 
 arose the question, Who is this true Lord ? where is he to be 
 found? Righteousness was felt tobeevenmore closely intertwined 
 with the being of the man than Evil ; for a while he was disposed 
 
 (3101 
 
RECAPITULATION. 31 J 
 
 to claim it as his own ; suffering, and the sense of an infinite con- 
 tradiction, did not deliver him from that belief. .But some one 
 there was who led him to cry for a Redeemer, to be sure that 
 He lived, to be sure that Righteousness was in Him, and 
 therefore was Man's. 
 
 Was this Redeemer, so near to man, so inseparable from 
 man, of earthly race ? The vision of a Son of God rose upon 
 us ; a thousand different traditions pointed to it ; it took the 
 most various forms; but the heart of man said, " There must 
 be one in whom all these meet ; there must be One who 
 did not rise from manhood into Godhead, but who can exhibit 
 the perfection of manhood, because he has the perfection of 
 Godhead." Is the perfection of manhood then compatible 
 with the infirmities and corruptions of which men have 
 become heirs ? The mythologies of the world said, " It must 
 be so, we need Incarnations ; our deliverers must share our 
 flesh, our sorrows ;" yes ! they could not stop there — " our 
 sins." The philosophers said, " It cannot be so ; the Divine 
 Nature must be free from the contact of that which debases 
 us, of that from which we ourselves need emancipation." They 
 could show how men, forming the Gods after their own images, 
 had glorified and deified what was most immoral and base. 
 The Scripture spoke to us of the Son of God taking the flesh 
 of man, entering into all the infirmities of man, bearing the 
 sins of man, so showing forth the purity, compassion, love, of 
 His Father. 
 
 But the sense in men of a separation from the God to whom 
 they were meant to be united, had, we found, produced innu- 
 merable schemes for bringing about a reconciliation. The 
 Scriptures told us of an Atonement, originating with God ; 
 made with men in His Son ; who entirely trusted and entirely 
 obeyed His Father ; who willingly entered into the death of 
 man ; who made the perfect Sacrifice which took away Sin ; 
 whose dqath was the satisfaction to the Divine Love of the 
 
312 RECAPITULATION. 
 
 t Father ; the expression of that wrath against Evil which is a 
 part of Love ; the satisfaction of man's yearnings for recon- 
 ciliation with' God. Yet Death, the Grave, the Abyss beyond, 
 are the dark contradictions for human beings ; He could not 
 .be a perfect deliverer w T ho had not entered into them, or who 
 remained under their power. The idea of a bodily Resurrec- 
 tion, we found, had been accepted by men, not as a fact to be 
 attested by a great amount of evidence, but as the inevitable 
 issue of the previous revelation. If there is a Son of God, a 
 Lord of man, He must rise. What did such a Resurrection 
 imply ? The Scripture speaks of it as implying a Justification 
 of Gentile as well as of Jew ; that is, of every man, who might 
 therefore believe in Christ and acquire His Righteousness. AVe 
 i\v how Christians had evaded this declaration, and the evi- 
 dence of it which their baptism offered, limiting the blessing 
 by certain rules and measures of theirs, even using the witr 
 
 f it as an excuse for doubt 1 , and for new efforts of their own 
 to make themselves righteous; then, at last, discovering that 
 faith in God's Justification is the only condition of doing any 
 good acts. But this faith of each individual man, that God 
 h;id justified him by the Resurrection of Christ, and was invit- 
 ing him to habitual trust, implied something more. We dis- 
 covered in the belief of Christians the acknowledgment of a 
 Regcneratio?i, effected not for individual men merely, but for 
 human society in the true Lord and Head of it. 
 
 This belief, however feebly and imperfectly held by the 
 Church, had nevertheless vindicated itself by the experience 
 of history, and enabled us to reconcile the doctrines of eminent 
 moralists respecting the constitution of man, with the fullest 
 admission of actual departures from it. For, if the Resurrec- 
 tion of Christ declared that men, in spite of all that seemed to 
 put them at a distance from God, w 7 ere recognised by him as 
 his children on earth, the Ascension of Christ in their nature 
 proclaimed that they did not belong to earth ; that they were 
 
RECAPITULATION. 313 
 
 spiritual beings, capable of holding converse with Him who is 
 a Spirit ; able to do so, because that Sou who had taken their 
 flesh, and had offered it up to God, and had glorified it, had 
 said that His body and blood should be their food and nour- 
 ishment. This belief of the Ascension as the great triumph 
 for man, was greatly shaken by a prevalent notion that Christ, 
 being absent now and not exercising the functions of royalty or 
 judgment, will assume them at some distant day ; and be sub- 
 ject again to earthly limitations. It w T as therefore needful to 
 show, that the Judgment spoken of in the Bible and the Creed, 
 implied the continual presence of Christ, the daily exposure of 
 men and nations to His cognisance and censure, the assurance 
 that He will be manifested, not in some humbler condition, but 
 as He is, to the consciences and eyes of men ; for the putting 
 down of all evil, and the establishment of righteousness. But 
 though the minds of men had always felt that they must look 
 upwards to some Ruler above them, they had equally confessed 
 the presence of an Inspirer within them. The Christian reve- 
 lation, we found, corresponded as much to these anticipations, 
 as to any which we had considered before. It explained to us 
 whence all Inspirations had proceeded, who was the Author 
 of them, how they are to be received how they may be abused. 
 The full Revelation, with that which was the preparation for it, 
 had been recorded to us in a book which had been the treasure 
 of the Church, the witness of the emancipation of mankind, the 
 assurance of a Comforter who should come to the ages follow- 
 ing Christ's Ascension, in a way He had not come to those 
 which preceded it. I inquired whether events have justified 
 this assurance. I endeavored to show that there bad been such 
 a sense of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment in the latter 
 periods of the world's history, as cannot be traced in the ear- 
 lier, and as could only have proceeded from the teaching of a 
 Person, such as our Lord describes to us. But finally, we 
 were told this Person would not only convince a world, but 
 14 
 
314 THE TRINITY NOT A FRESH SUBJECT. 
 
 be the establisher of a One Holy Catholic Church. The 
 difficulty of accepting this statement was very great. A 
 certain body had claimed to be the one Catholic Church, a 
 number of bodies had claimed to be Churches ; they had 
 denounced each other ; there had been that in all which con- 
 tradicted the idea the Scripture sets forth of holiness, unity, 
 universality. But this contradiction showed that the Scrip- 
 ture had revealed the true law of human society ; for that one 
 body and these different bodies had not become partial, tyran- 
 nical, godless by maintaining too strongly that Earth and Hea- 
 ven had been reconciled, and that the Spirit had come down 
 from the Father and the Son to establish that reconciliation ; 
 but by acting as if Heaven and Earth were still separated, as 
 if we had still to effect for ourselves that which the Scripture 
 declares that God has effected, as if there were no Spirit to 
 unite us with the Father and the Son, and with each other. 
 To this cause, — no other was adequate, — we could trace the 
 want of holiness, catholicity, unity, in the Church. This unbe- 
 lief being removed, all that man has dreamed of, all that God 
 has promised, must be accomplished. 
 
 I have not, then, to enter upon a new subject in this Essay. 
 I am not speaking for the first time, of the Trinity in Unity. 
 I have been speaking of it throughout. Each consciousness 
 that we have discovered in man, each fact of Revelation that 
 has answered to it, has been a step in the discovery and demon- 
 stration of this truth. I should be abandoning the method to 
 which I have endeavored strictly to adhere, if I admitted that 
 now, at last, I have come upon a mere dogma which had no 
 support but tradition, or inferences from texts of Scripture ; or, 
 on the other hand, upon a great philosophical tenet which wise 
 men may deduce from reason or find latent in nature, but with 
 which the poor way-farer has nothing to do. AYe may owe 
 much to tradition for giving expression to the faith in a Trinity ; 
 
 ts of Scripture may confirm it; the context of Scripture 
 
OBJECT OF THIS ESSAY. 315 
 
 may bring it out in beautiful harmony with all the divine dis- 
 coveries to man. Philosophy may have seen indications of a 
 Trinity in the forms and principles of the universe, in the con- 
 stitution of man himself. But unless we are utterly inconsis- 
 tent with all that has been said hitherto, these can be but 
 indexes and guides to a Name which is implied in our thoughts, 
 acts, words, in our fellowship with each other ; without which 
 we cannot explain the utterances of the poorest peasant, or of 
 the greatest sage ; which makes thoughts real, prayers pos- 
 sible ; which brings distinctness out of vagueness, unity out of 
 division ; which shows us how in fact, and not merely in imag- 
 ination, the charity of God may find its reflex and expression 
 in the charity of man, and the charity of man its substance 
 as well as its fruition in the charity of God. What I have to 
 do in this Essay, then, is certainly not to bring forward argu- 
 ments against those who impugn this doctrine, but only to show 
 how each portion of that Name into which we are baptized, 
 answers to some apprehension and anticipation of human 
 beings ; how the setting up of one part of the Name against 
 another has been the cause of strife, unrighteousness, super- 
 stition ; why, therefore, the acknowledgment of that Name in 
 its fulness and Unity, is Eternal Life. 
 
 I. It often seems to us a great contradiction in Greek Mytho- 
 logy, that the chief of the Gods should be represented as him- 
 self subject to Fate. We do not enough consider what a real 
 and deep comfort the Polytheist found in this thought. A 
 ruler of the Elements might have in himself all the vicissitudes 
 which nature exhibits. If he were like a human sovereign, he 
 might have all the caprices of a human sovereign. This faith 
 in Necessity told the Greek that the Universe was not, after 
 ail, dependent on those natural vicissitudes or human caprices, 
 that a law fixed and unchangeable was beneath them all. At 
 times, it seemed to him as if Jove, the king of earth, was chain- 
 ing down all the aspirations of man, was fastening to a rock, 
 
316 LAW AND WILL. 
 
 and tormenting with a vulture, the champions who sought to 
 do him good, to make him freer and wiser. What a relief to 
 think that Destiny had determined the period of this captivity, 
 and of the tyranny which had imposed it ! And yet there were 
 times when the -sense of a hard, dry, iron rule, — an irresistible 
 necessity, — became more intolerable than the government of 
 the most uncertain king; when the heart fled from that as a 
 horrible oppression, to this as human and sympathetic. Espe- 
 cially these words, " Father of Gods and men," touched chords 
 which at once responded to them. There was the hint of 
 something not only more friendly than Fate, but more mighty. 
 The will in man leaps up to acknowledge a Will that is akin to 
 its own, and that may govern it. 
 
 Through all the Jewish History, fixed law, grounded on the 
 name of the I AM, had been coming forth in conjunction with 
 a course of discipline which tho God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
 
 ■<>b was declared by prophets and holy men to be carrying 
 on for the children of His Covenant. The Law asserted that 
 Which was right ; nothing could alter it; to violate it was death. 
 The Jud the whole earth was doing right; His design was 
 
 to make His people right. Christ on the Mountain announced 
 the Will of which that law was the expression. He said it was 
 the Will of a Father. Here is the root and substance of His 
 revelation. He does not proclaim a Will which dispenses with 
 law or changes it, but that absolutely righteous and true Will 
 of which it affirms the existence, but which it cannot make 
 
 dual. And this Will is the Will of the Father. Beneath 
 the oame of the God of Abraham, this was concealed. The 
 sound of it was from time to time caught, not only by holy 
 men in their closets, but by the ordinary worshipper. The 
 (ireek heard the echo of it from his Thessalian hill. Christ 
 uttered it. 
 
 For those who receive His m e, the two conceptions 
 
 which were always fighting with each other, always trying to 
 
HOW POLYTHEISM REVIVES. 317 
 
 be one, are actually united. There is the perfect rest which 
 comes from the thought that there can be no caprice in the 
 order of the Universe, — that right can never become wrong, or 
 wrong; right ; there is the comfort that no hard fate controls 
 caprice, that the Divine Will excludes it. The fixed and dfche 
 absolute which man craves for as the support of his being, and 
 of all creation, is there. It is bound inseparably with a name 
 which speaks of Relation, which tells him what he was sure 
 must be; that his own Will has an author; that he is not 
 merely a creature of the highest God, but a child. 
 
 All is peace if we accept this as a Revelation, — as a Gospel 
 from God. Reduce it again into the conceptions of your own 
 mind, — make your anticipations, not the test, that they must be, 
 but the measure of the Revelation, — and all becomes war again. 
 An iron necessity for the nineteenth century after Christ, as 
 much as for all before it, becomes that to which you refer the 
 world's life and your own. It is your best comfort to do so 
 And yet it is such miserable comfort that you will be continu 
 ally seeking a refuge from it. The vision of some present 
 helper, — some one to whom you can address cries and litanies 
 — rises up, whether your philosophy has taught you to banish 
 it or not. To such a one you will give the name of Father ; 
 it will seem the most natural name ; you will feel that you 
 must use it, or that your words die in the utterance. But that 
 name will be associated, as it was among old Polytheists, with 
 thoughts of the clouds and the changes of Nature ; if your 
 heart insists upon more human associations, then with the tur- 
 bulence and irregularity you find in yourself. Deal honestly 
 with your own experiences, — it is all I ask, — and then say 
 whether the old name, the given name, is not that which you 
 need, antl which you are trying to spell out. You are sure it 
 is there : it must be very near to you. But speculation does 
 not bring it nearer. The child must confess its Father, and 
 
318 MEDIATORS. 
 
 confess itself to Him; then it knows whose Will rules it, and 
 with what Will it has been striving. 
 
 All our past inquiries into the superstitions of the Christian 
 world have brought us to the same conclusion. From what- 
 ever quarter they have proceeded, their tendency has been the 
 same. The notion of a sovereign Necessity has taken the pla 
 of a Will of absolute truth and goodness ; the notion of a capri- 
 cious Power to be made placable by some agency of ours ! 
 superseded the belief in a Father, whose will Christ came on 
 earth to manifest and to fulfil. Each opinion gives birth to the 
 other as a deliverance from it ; one is supposed to be more 
 philosophical, the other more practical, than our Baptismal 
 Faith; that remains as a refuge for those who have found the 
 first utterly offensive to their reason, the second subversive of 
 their morality. The more simply it is proclaimed, the 1 
 pains we take to sustain it by our proofs,— the more it will 
 commend itself to the hearts that are needing it. If we sub- 
 stitute for a belief in a Father a belief in a notion of ours 
 about a Father, we shall turn a confession which should be the 
 greatest witness that the Kingdom of Heaven has been opened 
 to all, into a means of excluding our brethren as well as our- 
 
 . es from it. 
 
 II. There can be no Mediator betw r een a man and a mere 
 Pate or Necessity. A multitude of mediators will be conceived 
 between a man and the capricious Power who seems to be 
 dealing with him at his pleasure. These Mediators will be all, 
 more or less distinctly, felt to be the helpers of the creatures 
 
 ■linst their Creator; they may be regarded as having some 
 natural relationship to him, or as having by some merit 
 obtained an influence or a right over him ; but they will be 
 always the benignant patrons of those whom he is disposed, for 
 some reason, to injure. When the word " Father" has taken any 
 strong hold of a man any where, when it has displaced the 
 notion of a mere sovereign, there will be a counteraction to 
 
THE LIVING WORD , THE SON. 319 
 
 this feeling. Those who plead for man with Him, must "be 
 felt in some sense to express His mind ; they will be acknow- 
 ledged as His sons. But this counter action, though great, will 
 be inadequate till we have learnt the lesson of. which I was 
 speaking just now, — the lesson that the Will of this Father is 
 as steadfast as any Fate can be ; that its steadfastness con- 
 sists in its righteousness ; that there cannot be variableness in it 
 because it is good, and can only seek to do good. This Will de- 
 mands that which the Necessity excludes. It must speak, it 
 must utter itself. A Will cannot be without a Word. A Will 
 that is, and lives, must utter itself by a living Word. This is 
 what St. John, in his divine theology, declares to us. But if he 
 speaks in one sentence of a Word, he speaks in the next of a Son. 
 The names are used interchangeably ; but we should, I believe, 
 lose more than we know, if either had been used exclusively. 
 Experience has shown that those who determinately prefer the 
 first, soon fall into that notion of a mere emanation from some 
 mysterious abyss of Divinity, which haunted the oriental mys- 
 tics and the early heretics, or else into the notion of a mere prin- 
 ciple indwelling in man. The Word becomes impersonal : the 
 Will becomes impersonal : very soon the man forgets that he 
 is a person himself, and becomes a mere dreamer or specula- 
 tor. The blessed name of Son, which connects itself with all 
 human sympathies and relationships, is the deliverance from 
 this phantom region. While we cleave to it, we can never 
 forget that only a Person can express the Will of the Absolute 
 Being ; that only in a Person He can see His own image. But 
 the Son of God will soon be merged for us in the Son of Man, 
 — we shall refer His relationship to ours, not ours to His, — if 
 we do not recur to that other name, if we do not, by medita- 
 ting upon it, save ourselves from the unspeakable dangers into 
 which those fall who think of the Son only as their Saviour, 
 and not as the brightness of His Father's glory. Both these 
 perils are besetting us now as much as they beset any former 
 
320 THE ABSTRACT AND POPULAR TENDENCIES. 
 
 age. I think they are besetting us more ; often when we are 
 not conscious of either as a theological tendency, it is affecting 
 our moral and social feelings, and our ordinary acts, in innu- 
 merable ways. 
 
 There is an abstract way of thinking about the Son of God 
 which is hurrying some of us into Pantheism, and multitudes 
 partake of the effect who are not in the least alive to the cause. 
 There is a popular way of thinking about the Son of God, 
 which is hurrying us into idolatry ; and parents are startled 
 at seeing their children fall over a precipice, to the edge of 
 which they have walked under their guidance. Nor do I see 
 how either evil can be averted if we do not more earnestly 
 consider what is involved in the faith of little children ; whe- 
 ther the name of the Son into which we are baptized is notour 
 redemption from all vagueness, and from all partial, separate, 
 self-seeking worship, a witness that we are adopted into Him 
 as members of His body, and must therefore seek the things 
 that are above, where lie sitteth at the right hand of God. 
 This faith is not notional, but practical ; not for this and that 
 man, but for mankind. If we were forced to form conceptions 
 about a Son of God, or Son of Man, there would be a perpe- 
 tual strife of intellects; there could be no consent; each man 
 must think differently from his neighbor, must try to establish 
 his own thought against his neighbor's. If He is revealed to 
 us as the ground of our intellects, — the creative Word of God 
 from whom they derive their light : as the centre of our fel- 
 lowship, the only-begotten Son of God, in whom we are made 
 sons of God ; the weary effort is over ; our thoughts may tra- 
 vel to the ends of the earth, but here is their home; apart 
 from Him men have infinite disagreements ; in Him they 
 have peace. 
 
 III. A mere Fate or Necessity of course communicates no 
 life or energy to those who are the subjects of it. Life and 
 energy are excluded from the very idea of Necessity. A Ru- 
 
THE DIVINE ESSENCE. 321 
 
 ler or Lord of Nature may impart powers or energies to par- 
 ticular men. It will be the great sign of his favoring them, 
 above others, that he does so. A free and imaginative people 
 like the Greeks would account it a much greater proof of a 
 man's being dear to the Gods, that he was able to perform 
 rare achievements, and exhibit unusual wit and prowess, than 
 that he possessed houses and land, and an outward good for- 
 tune. High gifts were felt, as I showed before, to indicate an 
 Inspirer, and that Inspirer was acknowledged to have descend- 
 ed from the highest God. Here, again, the name of Father 
 greatly modified the previous belief. The gift of Inspiration 
 was generally taken as an evidence that the man who received 
 it stood in some real relation to the Divine Power ; it was not 
 merely bestowed from choice or favoritism, it was a kind of 
 inheritance. 
 
 The moment a Will drives out a Fate, an absolute will to 
 good, mere irresistible decrees, the belief that this Will must 
 seek to make other wills like its own, forces itself upon us. 
 " This is the will of God, even your sanctification," becomes 
 the deepest conviction of the reason. 
 
 At first these words may be reflected on with much inward 
 satisfaction, without any great awe. \ But when a man remem- 
 bers that holiness, in its fullest sense, holiness as involving 
 truth and love by involving separation from what is false and 
 unlovely, must be the innermost nature of God, he may well 
 wonder and tremble while he hears that of this, it is the will 
 of God to make him partaker. This gift is so amazing, so 
 essential, that he is utterly baffled when he tries to meditate 
 how he can ever be possessed of it. Can he become a God ? 
 While he dreamed of God as a being of mere power, he might 
 dream also of measuring his own power with His. But as 
 soon as the belief of God's holiness has at all entered into him, 
 his desire is to sink rather than to rise. The consciousness of 
 his pride is that which alarms him most. And that pride 
 
 14* 
 
322 LOVE MUST HAVE AN OBJECT. 
 
 haunts him perpetually. If he became the most abject of men, 
 he feels as if he should be proud of that abjectness, — more 
 proud than he had ever been before. This is a perplexity 
 concerning himself: there is another concerning God. It is 
 wonderful that the inmost life of God should be communica- 
 ted ; but it would be a contradiction that it should not be 
 communicated. We cannot think of a Being of perfect love 
 us wrapt up in Himself, as dwelling in the contemplation of 
 His own excellence and perfection ; we can as little think of 
 His being satisfied with any lower excellence or perfection. 
 The belief of a Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, 
 meets both the human and the divine difficulty. To think of the 
 Father resting in the Son, in the (hep' ;se knowing the Son, 
 
 and of the Son knowing the Father, we must think of a uniting 
 Spirit. And if there is Bach B Spirit, it must be capable of 
 being imparted: that must be the way in which holiness is 
 imparted. And if this gift comes to men through the Son, we 
 are sure that the Spirit which they receive must be the Spirit 
 of lowliness, and meekness, and obedience. We are sure that 
 it cannot be a Spirit which exalts any one man above his fel- 
 low, it must bring all to a level. In so far as they confess it 
 to be the Spirit of a Father, they must confess that it is meant 
 to make them Sons of God ; in so far as they confess that it 
 the Spirit of Christ, they confess that it is meant to make them 
 brothers. But the more this Spirit quickens thern, the more 
 they will delight to own it as distinct from them; the more our 
 Lord's words respecting a Comforter will seem to them the 
 truest and fullest of all ; the more they will be compelled to 
 feel that there is is a Divine Person with them to whom they 
 owe reverence and worship. 
 
 St> wonderfully, — if our baptismal faith is true, — are Divin- 
 
 and Humanity blended; so awfully are they distinguished. 
 
 Each step in the revelation of the distinct Persons comes out 
 
UNITY. 323 
 
 to meet and satisfy some infinite need of man ; some witness 
 which has been awakened within him of his own grandeur, and 
 of his own weakness; of his belonging to a society, and of his 
 being an individual ; of his dwelling in a world, subject to ail 
 the accidents of time ; of his right to a state that is free from 
 these accidents. The more near he is brought to God, the 
 greater he feels is the necessity for adoration and worship, — 
 while he contemplates Him at a distance there is terror, but 
 not reverence or awe. 
 
 And it is equally true that while he beholds him at a dis- 
 tance from himself, as the heathen did, and as we are always 
 prone to do, there can be no acknowledgment of His Unity. 
 As long as a Jove, or some Lord of Nature is worshipped, he 
 must be divided into a multitude of forms. The conception 
 of such a being shows what a need the heart and reason have 
 of Unity, but also how impossible it is for them to find it, or 
 create it for themselves. The multitude of forms which we 
 behold in the world will make, in spite of all reasonings and 
 theories, a multitude of world-gods ; it is only when we ask in 
 wonder whence we ourselves are ; to what law we are subject ; 
 in whom it is that w T e are living, and moving, and having our 
 being; who is guiding us; whither he would lead us ; that we 
 begin to escape from darkness into light, from division into 
 Unity. When the Gospel was preached, when the name of the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, w T as uttered, when men 
 had been baptized into it, idols fell down ; the worship of the 
 visible became intolerable ; the sense of Unity profound. The 
 separation of that name has been in all ages since, the secret 
 of division, the commencement of idolatry. If we watched our 
 own minds more we should find that it is so with them. We 
 have sometimes fancied w r e could dwell simply on the thought 
 of a Father , all others should be discarded as unnecessary. 
 But soon it has not been a Father we have contemplated, it 
 
324 ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 has been a mere substratum of the things we saw, a name un- 
 der which we collected them. How rejoiced is the heart to 
 pass from such a cold void to the thought of a Son filled with 
 all human sympathies ! But how soon does the sin sick soul 
 frame a thousand images and pictures of its own as a substi- 
 tute for the perfect Image; dream of Mediators closer and 
 more gracious than the One who died for all ! What a relief 
 to fly from these fancies to a Divine Spirit ! How we wonder 
 that we should ever have thought that God could be anywhere 
 but in the contrite heart and pure ! Alas, the heart does not 
 long remain contrite and pure! Its holiness disappears ; then 
 the Object of its worship disappears, — for that Object was be- 
 coming more and more itself. And the man either is content 
 with that miserable condition, and amuses himself witli high 
 phrases about humanity to hide the facts of it from his own 
 conscience; or he asks lor some mortal .1 him what he 
 
 should believe, because lie di rs that he has come to believe 
 
 nothing. 
 
 He will find mauy ready to meet that craving. He will bear 
 voices saying to him, " To what a condition you have reduced 
 yourself by forsaking the one safe guide, the only teacher who 
 can enable you to obtain Eternal Life ! For does not Christ 
 say that we can only obtain eternal life by knowing God and 
 1 1 i 1 1 1 ? And what knowledge, what certainty, have you on 
 these subjects? How can you get that certainty unless there 
 is an infallible guide who will say to you, This is true, believe 
 it?" What a powerful, almost irresistible, argument to one 
 who fancied that he believed everything, and is beginning to 
 find that he scarcely believes in a God! And if the new teacher 
 could restore him that belief, what else does he want, what 
 might he not sacrifice for such a gift ? But can that be, when 
 he begins with assuming our Lord to have uttered words which 
 He never did utter, and which directly set at nought His 
 actual words ? He did not say, " Men obtain eternal life by 
 
ETERNITY AND TIME DISTINCT. 325 
 
 knowing God;" but, " This is life eternal, that they may know 
 Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent? 1 
 The knowledge does not procure the life, but the knowlege 
 constitutes the life. 
 
 We fancy we attach a distinct meaning to these words, Eter- 
 nal Life; they are such precious words, that every one tries to 
 form some notion of them. But surely if there is any subject 
 on which we want a guide, an infallible guide, it is on this. 
 We feel that we are under a law of change and succession, that 
 we live in days, and months, and years. We feel also that we 
 have to do with that which is not changeable, which cannot be 
 represented by any divisions of time. A long life, the poet 
 says, may be curdled into an hour. Every great and serious 
 event of our lives has taught us that this is so. We experi- 
 ence the utter vanity and emptiness of chronology as a mea- 
 sure of suffering, of thought, of hope, of love. All these be- 
 long to another state of things. We perceive that Scripture 
 is speaking to us of that state of things ; that it is educat- 
 ing us into the apprehension of it. The more we attend to the 
 New Testament, the more we find to confirm the witness of our 
 reason, that eternity is not a lengthening out or continuation 
 of time ; that they are generically different ; as St. Paul so 
 beautifully expresses it, " that ivhich ive see is temporal ; that 
 which we do not see is eternal.' 1 '' The spiritual world, — we are 
 obliged to confess it in a thousand ways, — is not subject to tem- 
 poral conditions. This is no discovery of philosophers. Every 
 peasant knows it as well as Newton. If you have listened 
 with earnestness to the questions of a child, you may often 
 think that it knows more of eternity than of time. The suc- 
 cession of years confounds it ; it mixes the dates which it has 
 been instructed in most strangely ; but its intuition of some- 
 thing which is beyond all dates makes you marvel. Scripture, 
 in like manner, illustrates and makes clear our own thoughts 
 about Life and Death. It teaches us to think that the healthy 
 
326 " THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL." 
 
 activity of all our powers and perceptions, and their direction 
 to their right object, is the living state ; that the torpor of these, 
 or their concentration on themselves, is a state of Death. 
 
 With these hints, which every day's reading of the Scrip- 
 tures, by an earnest student, will multiply and expand, what 
 need we have of some direct words to bring together the two 
 thoughts of Eternity and of Life. If I spoke of defining Eter- 
 nal Life, I should feel, and I think all would feel, that I was 
 using an improper word; for how can we define that which is 
 out of the limits of time ? But in the depth of prayer and 
 communion with His Father, our Lord gives us that which 
 corresponds to the most accurate and divine definition, an 
 exposition which we are bound henceforth, if we reverence His 
 authority, to apply on all o< us, and to use as the correc- 
 
 tion of our loose and vague conceptions. Instead of picturing 
 to ourselves some future bliss, calling that eternal life, and 
 determining the worth of it by a number of years, or centu- 
 
 -, or millenniums, we are bound to say once for all : "This 
 is the eternal life, that which Christ has brought with Him, 
 that which we have in Him, the knowledge of God ; the enter- 
 ing into His mind and character, the knowing him as we only 
 can know any person, by sympathy, fellowship, love." And 
 so the meaning and order of the Divine revelation become evi- 
 dent to us; God has been declaring Himself to us, that we 
 might know Him, because He would have us partakers of this 
 
 irnal life. And the final Revelation, that which is expressed 
 in our Baptismal name, tells us what all the experience of our- 
 selves and of the world tells us also, that unless the Spirit of 
 the Father and the Son were with us, we could not break loose 
 from the fetters of Time, the confusions of Sense, the narrowness 
 of Selfishness ; that if we yield to that Spirit we can have fel- 
 lowship with those who are nigh and those who are far off; 
 with men of every habit, color, opinion ; with those whom the 
 veil of flesh divides from us; with Him who is the Perfect 
 
ROMANIST PERVERSION. 327 
 
 Charity ; with the Father and the Son who dwell in the Unity 
 of one blessed and eternal Spirit. 
 
 Many Unitarians still think as their fathers did, that the 
 idea of a Trinity involves an utter contradiction, — that every 
 rational man must reject it. Many of them are aware that 
 some of the deepest minds in the world have felt that the 
 acknowledgment of a Trinity was necessary to their reason. 
 But they are careful to observe that this is not the Trinity of 
 which we speak; if they should ever come to accept a Trinity 
 as a portion of their belief they would still, they say, not be 
 stooping to a creed. That act would be a sign of Progress, 
 not of retrogression ; they would welcome a discovery of phi- 
 losophy, not surrender themselves to a religious tradition. 
 
 Such language is lofty ; I would beseech every earnest Unita- 
 rian to consider whether it is wise. Does he mean by a discovery 
 of philosophy, the discovery of a verbal formula ? If he does, 
 I must leave him to any advantage he may get from it, only 
 reminding him that he has now become the worshipper of for- 
 mulas; that he cannot henceforth cast that charge upon us. 
 But if it is a truth he discovers, may it not be a truth for man- 
 kind ? And may not a living and true God have taken some 
 way of making that truth known to the creatures whom He 
 has made capable of knowing it ? When we speak of a Creed 
 which may be taught and believed, we say that He has done 
 this. We say that in Christ the Trinity is revealed substan- 
 tially. It is not a doctrine, unless it is more than a doctrine. 
 Either real Persons are declared to us, or nothing is declared 
 about those Persons. Either a real unity is declared, or 
 nothing is made known to us about a Unity. Supposing philo- 
 sophy to have perceived a Trinity, or the shadow, or the hint 
 of one, it cannot appropriate this perception to itself, — any 
 
328 THE ROAD TO TRUTH. 
 
 more than Gravitation is a truth which Newton could appro- 
 priate to himself. The philosopher must ask to what reality 
 the perception or intuition corresponds ; of what substance 
 that which he sees is the shadow. No one is bound to assume 
 the position of a philosopher ; few have any call to assume it ; 
 but supposing a man becomes one, this must be the condition of 
 his work : — he must seek fur that which is human and universal ; 
 for Truth itself, not for some image of it or some logical expres- 
 sion of it. And he must ask how truth in this sense, — truth as 
 the equivalent of substance or being, — can be made known, so 
 that all shall be partakers of it. I leave that thought to tho 
 modern Unitarian philosopher. I would not have him aban- 
 don his task, if he thinks that he is appointed to it. I would 
 have him pursue it steadily. For I believe he will find that the 
 philosopher must ascend to knowledge by the same steps as the 
 man ; that if he is to find truth, God must reveal Himself 
 to him. 
 
 The last words suggest a subject upon which I should like 
 to say a few words. I have used the phrase that a belief in the 
 Trinity makes " Prayer possible." Do I mean that it is imjios- 
 sih/e to every person who has not received our Creed, — that 
 the Unitarian cannot pray ? I mean no such thing. My great 
 ire has been to show that we are dwelling in a Mystery 
 deeper than any of our plummets can fathom, a Mystery of 
 Love. Our prayers are not measured by our conceptions; they 
 do not spring from us. lie who knows us, teaches us what we 
 should pray for, and how to pray. Therefore, of all 
 transgressors of our Lord's command " not to judge," they 
 are greatest who pretend to pronounce upon the depth or sin- 
 cerity of their neighbor's prayer, who think they can ascertain 
 it by the professions which he makes, by his apparent pride or 
 humility. 
 
 But the more I have seen of Unitarians, or have read of 
 their books, the more have I been convinced that this was the 
 
PRAYER. 329 
 
 great difficulty of their Creed — that in which its other difficul- 
 ties begin and terminate. " Is God's Will good, — then 
 why attempt to move it by petitions and intercessions ? Is it 
 not good ? then how hopeless the effort must be, seeing that He 
 is omnipotent !" These logical icebergs continually move 
 away for human sufferers who are trying to force a passage 
 between them. They pray because they cannot help it. Whe- 
 ther the effort is a reasonable one or not, they must make it. 
 When the necessity has passed away, the understanding finds 
 a justification for the violence which has been put upon it, and 
 for the habitual repetition of such violence, by saying that though 
 our prayers cannot move God, they are useful for their action 
 upon our minds. But conscience then comes in with its pro- 
 test : " What, practise a pious fraud in order to effect an im- 
 provement in your moral condition ! Pretend that you are 
 praying to some Being beyond yourself, when you are, in fact, 
 your own object ! What charms, what Buddhist praying- 
 machine can be more insincere than such a process ? Can the 
 adoption of it make us more serious and truthful ? If 
 not, what is that reaction upon our own characters which is 
 urged as a defence of it ? 
 
 I do not think the Unitarian has ever been able to answer 
 these objections, and yet I am nearly sure that many Unita- 
 rians would sooner die than give up the act of prayer, and that 
 they believe it not to be the falsest, but the truest of all acts, 
 that wilich is necessary to make them sincere, and keep them 
 sincere. I do not doubt that the greater part of Unitarians, 
 even those who retain Dr. Priestly's dogma of Necessity 
 in their speculative creed, contrive to separate the idea of Him 
 they call Father, from that Necessity. They confess a Will ; 
 they do not worship a mere God of Nature. And they can 
 believe that this Will may govern them, in some different way 
 from that in which He governs the trees, and flowers, and 
 streams. This belief implies the possibility of some intercourse ; 
 
330 HOW IT IS SOMETIMES DEFENDED. 
 
 yes ! they must use that name, however much it savors of 
 what they have been wont to call fanaticism ; no other will 
 avail. But again the doubt occurs. " How can this inter- 
 course take place ? Am I sure that I have any relation to this 
 mysterious Will ? Are the words ' speech and hearing' appli 
 
 ble to this subject?" Consider these questions in all wi 
 You are afraid of traditions. I do not ask you to receive mine 
 You long to be rational. Use your reason upon this subject 
 And see whether the doctrine of a Mediator, one with the Fa 
 ther, one with you, does not meet it, — whether anything 
 else can. 
 
 But think again ; some anguish drove you to prayer. I do 
 not ask what it was. It might be the loss of reputation ; it 
 might be the loss of a friend or child. Whatever it was, I am 
 certain a sense of wrong, of remorse, of repentance, mingled 
 with your sorrow : you had been hardly treated, but you were 
 not quite blameless ; the friend was very dear, but you might 
 have done more for him. Thai misery drove you to God ; but 
 did it not also keep you from Him? There w r as a feeling of 
 separation, not merely from the human being that was gone, 
 I3ut from Hin). Was it overcome? I do not say that it was 
 not, for I believe that God has given the Son in whom He sees 
 us, and in whom we may see Him, to be a ransom, for all, to be 
 
 tified in due time. 
 
 But if you acknowledged that ransom, — if you accepted 
 Christ's Sacrifice, as the assurance of His reconciliation with 
 you, — would not that explain the sense of strife ; the union 
 which is mightier than it ; the possibility, the infinite truth 
 of prayer? And will not the thought, "Such an one is ever 
 presenting His Sacrifice not for me, but for the whole family ; 
 it is binding me to men as well as to God," — put an end to 
 the struggle and selfishness of your prayers in time to come 
 — without making them less earnest, less individual ? For 
 
A SPIRIT OF GOOD. 331 
 
 you must know, then, that you are not striving to get some- 
 thing which God is unwilling to give — that you are crying out 
 for the victory of His "Will over your own and over all others. 
 And if you believe this Will is that all should be saved, and 
 should come to the knowledge of the truth, and that Christ 
 has fulfilled this Will on earth, and is fulfilling it now, is it not 
 an infinite comfort that your wishes are but the feeble echoes 
 of His ? 
 
 Yet there is something more wanted still to make your 
 prayers real, and to explain that " reaction on your own minds" 
 which you have talked of. Are not you conscious very often 
 of utter powerlessness, of a mind anything but disposed to 
 good, anything but disposed to love or aid your fellow-men as 
 you think God is loving and aiding them ? Would it not be a 
 satisfaction, — not to your feelings only, but to your sincerity, — 
 to believe that there is a Spirit who is urging us to those higher 
 impulses to which we are so indisposed, who is lifting us above 
 ourselves, who is drawing us to the Father of our Spirits ? I 
 ask you to ponder these thoughts. If you entered into them, 
 you would not at all be adopting the doctrines of this book. 
 You might be leaving them and me, far behind you. You 
 might be entering into a knowledge of God which I have never 
 attained; might be contemplating Christ's sacrifice as I have 
 been unable to contemplate it ; might be seeing the future con- 
 dition of the world and God's judgment of it under aspects 
 altogether different from mine. But you would be realizing all 
 that I desire for myself, for you, for my brethren, because you 
 would be committing us and yourselves to God. 
 
 I should, indeed, be contradicting all I have said hitherto, 
 and the deepest testimony of my soul, if I persuaded any Uni- 
 tarian to pray as if that was true which as yet he does not 
 believe to be true. Let him cling to his belief in a One God ; 
 let him hold fast to the name of Father. I do not dread his 
 zeal, but his indifference ; not his grasp of his own convictions, 
 
332 PRAYER TO THE FATHER. 
 
 but his inclination to use them as weapons against other men. 
 While we Use the doctrine of the Trinity in that way, I am 
 certain we shall not believe it, whatever we may pretend. 
 While they think they know what that awful name " Father " 
 means, because they can pronounce it, or what that wonderful 
 word " Unity" means, because they can fight for it, they will 
 not only not enlarge the circle of their convictions, but they 
 will lose those that they have. Let them pray the Lord's 
 prayer, determining that the first words of it shall not be mere 
 words to them, — that they shall be such as sick people want 
 who sigh for the morning ; as poor men want who toil in mines; 
 as captives want who are chained together in loathsome 
 prisons ; and I have no fear of their coming to acknowledge 
 the whole name which we confess. Let them sigh for that 
 Unity which all the strifes and divisions of the world are rend- 
 ing, and I have no doubt they will learn to pray to as well as 
 for a Spirit of Unity, or that their prayer will take the form of 
 the old hymn of which we have this simple and noble version • 
 
 Teach us to know the Father, Son, 
 And Thee of both, to be but one ; 
 That through the ages all along 
 This may be our endless song, — 
 Praise to thy eternal merit, 
 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
 
 Note. — As the remark in this passage on Romanist arguers applies 
 directly to some Sermons of Mr. Manning's, on John, c. 17, v. 3, I cannot 
 let it go forth without saying, that I entirely acquit him of that which 
 would be a great sin, the intention of interpolating our Lord's words. I 
 can quite conceive that vehement opponents of Rome have read his 
 Sermons without discovering that flaw in them. For the truth is, that 
 we adopt this paraphrase as much as the Romanists do. Mr. Manning 
 probably learnt it among English divines, and is making fair use of it 
 against them now. "What I hoped and believed was, that he had risen 
 out of such a low notion of orthodoxy, to whatever society it belongs. In 
 
MILTON ON TIME. 333 
 
 the fourth volume of his Sermons, published shortly before he left the 
 English Church, there was such a vein of true Catholicity, such an 
 assertion of the highest Theology as the possession for all men, such a 
 vindication of the truth that the knowledge of God is Eternal Life, as it 
 did one's heart good to meet with anywhere. Though there were suffi- 
 cient indications in that volume, that the writer might not stay very 
 long amongst us, I could not help hailing it as a far nobler addition to 
 the stores of English divinity, than those very exquisite, probably more 
 popular, but it seemed to me less masculine, discourses which Mr. Man- 
 ning had put forth previously. I ventured to hope, — almost to prophecy, 
 — that he might only be breaking the fetters of our Anglican system, 
 and that even the new fetters of Romanism would not hinder him from 
 being Catholic. Nor will I abandon that hope now. In a still more 
 recent Sermon he has asserted the doctrine which I have maintained in 
 these Essays, that Love is the groundwork of all Divinity, with a 
 breadth and fullness which I should rejoice to find in the Discourses of 
 those whom he has forsaken. I trust, that he believes himself, and will 
 teach others, that the Spirit of Love is also the Spirit of Truth, and that 
 no lie is of the Truth : when he and we are possessed by that conviction, 
 we cannot long be separate. 
 
 In illustration of what I have said on the generical distinction between 
 Time and Eternity, I should wish my readers to meditate these lines of 
 Milton. 
 
 " Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race ; 
 Call on the lazy, leaden-stepping hours, 
 Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace ; 
 And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, 
 "Which is no more than what is false and vain, 
 And merely mortal dross : 
 So little is our loss, 
 So little is thy gain. 
 
 For when, as each thing bad thou hast intomb'd 
 And last of all thy greedy self consumed, 
 Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss 
 "With an individual kiss ; 
 And joy shall overtake us as a flood, 
 When everything that is sincerely good 
 And perfectly divine, 
 With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine 
 
334 MILTON ON TIME. 
 
 About the supreme throne 
 
 Of Him to whose happy-making sight alone 
 
 When once our heavenly- guided soul shall climb 
 
 Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 
 
 Attired with stars we shall for ever sit 
 
 Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time." 
 
C ONCLUDING ESSAY. 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE AND ETERNAL DEATH. 
 
 Here I might stop ; for the Trinity is, as I believe, the ground 
 
 on which the Church stands and on which Humanity stands; 
 
 Prayer and Sacrifice are, I believe, the means whereby the 
 
 Trinity is made known to us : in the Trinity I find the Love 
 
 for which I have been seeking: in Prayer and Sacrifice I hold 
 
 that we may become partakers of it. But here I cannot stop, 
 
 for the Unitarians and multitudes who are not Unitarians, 
 
 declare that all I have said is futile, for that there is another 
 
 doctrine which contradicts the principle of my whole book, and 
 
 yet which is as much an article of my faith as the Trinity 
 
 itself. "Your Church," they say, " maintains the notion of 
 
 everlasting punishment after death. Consider what is included 
 
 in that notion. You cannot thrust it into a corner as you might 
 
 naturally wish to do. You cannot mention it as something by 
 
 the way. If it is anything, it is fundamental. Theologians 
 
 and popular preachers treat it as such. They start from 
 
 it ; they put it forth as the ground of their exhortations. 
 
 The world, according to them, lies under a sentence of 
 
 (335) 
 
336 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 
 
 condemnation. An immense — an incalculable — majority of all 
 that have been born into it, must, if their statements mean any- 
 thing, if they are not merely idle frivolous rhetoric, be hope- 
 lessly doomed. Their object is to point out how a few, a very 
 few, may be saved from the sentence. All their doctrines 
 therefore have this centre. Let them speak of Atonement, 
 Justification, Regeneration; — these are only different names 
 to denote the methods by which certain men may have the 
 comfort of feeling that they are not sharers in the condition to 
 which God has consigned our race." 
 
 " What is most appalling," the' objector continues, " to a 
 person who takes the words of Scripture literally, is that the 
 passages from which the proofs of this doctrine are derived, 
 are found in the New Testament, in the discourses of Christ 
 himself. Dr. John Owen especially draws the attention of his 
 readers to the fact, that here and not in the Old Testament, 
 which is Bupposed to contain the severer and sterner religion 
 of the Law, the sentences concerning eternal perdition occur. 
 There can be no doubt, that his observation is true, whatever 
 reason may be given for it Our fathers used to think that 
 they could explain away such passages by giving a different 
 force to the word Eternal, when it is connected with blessed- 
 ness, and when it is connected with punishment. But such 
 philological tricks will not answer in our day. "We feel the 
 necessity of giving up the passages, of supposing that they 
 were not spoken by Him to whom they are attributed, or that 
 He was mistaken. But you dare not take that course." 
 " It is a discouraging circumstance also," they say, "that in 
 pect of this tenet, theology has not gained by the Reforma- 
 tion, but has lost considerably. The belief in hopeless punish- 
 ment belongs, no doubt, as much to Romanism as to Protes- 
 tantism. But how much are its extreme horrors mitigated by 
 the admission of a Purgatory for a great multitude of human 
 souls ! To whatever abuses that notion may have been subjected 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT ; PROTESTANTISM. 337 
 
 by superstition or cupidity, it is surely milder and more humane 
 than the decree which goes forth from so many pulpits in our 
 land ; Under stand ', sinner s } whatever be your offences, whatever 
 your temptations, the same irremediable anguish is prepared for 
 you all. Even in the Inferno of the Florentine poet, though 
 all hope was to forsake those who entered it, what traces there 
 are of recollection and affection, what hints of a moral improve- 
 ment through suffering! With us, there is only one dark 
 abyss of torment and sin for all who, in the course of three- 
 score years and ten, have not been brought to believe things 
 which they could not believe or have never learnt, who have 
 not abstained from acts which they have been taught from 
 their youth up to commit." 
 
 " Once more," they proceed, " experience, which is said to 
 teach individuals a little — nations almost nothing — has taught 
 theologians, it seems, to be more outrageous, more contemp- 
 tuous to human sympathies and conscience, than they used to be 
 when all men bowed the neck to their yoke. This tenet must 
 be accepted with greater precision now than in the days gone 
 by. The Evangelical Alliance, longing to embrace all Pro- 
 testant schools and parties, makes it one of its nine articles of 
 faith, one of those first principles which are involved in the 
 very nature of a comprehensive Christianity. It is clear, that 
 they are not solitary in their wish to give the doctrine of ever- 
 lasting punishment this character. Your orthodox English 
 Churchmen, though they may dissent from some of their opin- 
 ions as too wide, will join heart and soul with them, whenever 
 they are narrow and exclusive. They may suffer doubts and 
 modifications in some points ; on this, be sure, they will 
 demand simple unqualified acquiescence." 
 
 These statements may be heard in all circles, from young 
 
 and old, from men and women, from persons longing to believe, 
 
 from those who are settled down into indifference. Those who 
 
 know, say that they are producing infidelity in the highest 
 
 15 
 
338 CONCESSIONS TO THE OBJECTOR. 
 
 classes; — hard working clergymen in the Metropolis can bear 
 witness that they supply the most staple arguments to those 
 who are preaching infidelity among the lowest. How impos- 
 sible it is that I can pass them by, every one must perceive. 
 They affect not one, but each of the principles which I have 
 been discussing. If all these assertions are true, all that I 
 have written is fal I am bound, therefore, to examine 
 
 which of them have a foundation and which have not. For no 
 one can doubt that there is a truth in some of them which can- 
 not be gainsaid. * 
 
 I. I admit, without the slightest hesitation, that there is very 
 much more about Eternity and eternal punishment in the Gos- 
 pel than in the Law, in the words of Christ than in the books 
 of Moses and the Prophets. Let that point be well recollected 
 and carefully reflected upon, in connexion with the opinion 
 which all in some Way or other entertain, in some language or 
 other exi that] the New Testament is more completely a 
 
 elation of the ^Xove^ of God than the Old isj The two 
 assertions must be reconciled. We cannot go on repeating 
 them both, dwelling upon them both, drawing arguments from 
 them both, while yet we feel them to be incompatible or con- 
 tradictory. Let it be further conceded at once, that we can- 
 not honestly get rid of this contradiction by attaching two dif- 
 ferent meanings to the word curios in different applications. 
 The subjects which it qualifies cannot affect the sense we put 
 upon it. If we turn it the least awry to meet our convenience, 
 we deal unfaithfully with the book which we profess to take 
 as our guide. 
 
 Starting from these premises, let us consider why it is that 
 the New Testament has more to do with Eternity than the Old. 
 I think no Christian will diifer very widely from me when I 
 answer, " it is because the living and eternal God is more fully 
 and perfectly revealed in the one than in the other." In both 
 He is discovering Himself to men; in both He is piercing 
 
ETERNITY IN REFERENCE TO GOD. 339 
 
 through the mists which conceal Him from them. But in the 
 one He is making Himself known chiefly in His relations to the 
 visible economy of the world ; in the other He is exhibit- 
 ing His own inward nature, and is declaring Himself as He is 
 in Him who is the brightness of His glory, the express image 
 of His person. Whenever the word Eternal is used, then, in 
 the New Testament, it ought first, by all rules of reason, to be 
 considered in referen ce to God. Its use when it is applied to 
 Him, must determine all its other uses. There must be no 
 shrinking from this rule, no efforts to evade the force of it ; for 
 this is what we agreed to condemn in the Unitarians and IJni- 
 versalists of the last age, that they changed the force of the 
 adjective at their pleasure, so that.it might not mean the same 
 in reference to punishment as to life. How can we carry out 
 this rule ? Shall we say that Eternal means, in reference to 
 God, " without beoinnino- or end ?" How then can we affix 
 that meaning to Eternal, when we are speaking of man's bliss 
 or misery ? Is that without beginning as well as without end ? 
 " Oh no ! you must leave out the beginning. That of course 
 has nothing to do with this case." Who told you so ? How 
 dare you play thus fast and loose with God's word ? How 
 dare you fix the standard by which the signification of a word 
 is to be judged, and reject that very standard a moment after ? 
 But are there no better reasons why we should not affix 
 this meaning, "without beginning and end," to the word 
 alc*vio$ when it is applied in the New Testament to God ? I 
 quite agree that such a meaning might have seemed very 
 natural to an ordinary Greek. The word might have been 
 used in that sense by a classical author, or in colloquial lan- 
 guage, without the least impropriety. But just the lesson 
 which God has been teaching men by the revelation of Him- 
 self was, that mere negatives are utterly unfit to express His 
 being, His substance. Erom the very first, He had taught 
 His chosen people to look upon Him as the righteou: Being, 
 
 A, 
 
 f\i ,•■■■ 
 
340 ST. JOHH'fl LANGUAGE. 
 
 to believe that all their righteousness was grounded on His. 
 He had promised them a more complete knowledge of His 
 righteousm Every true Israelite had looked to this know- 
 
 ledge as His reward, as the deliverance from his enemies, its 
 the satisfaction of his inmost longings, as the great blessing to 
 his nation and to mankind, as well as to himself. His Righte- 
 ous His Truth, His Love, the Jew came more and more 
 to perceive, were the substantial and eternal things, by seeking 
 which he was delivered from the worship of Gods of Time 
 and Sense, as well as from the more miserable philosophical 
 abstraction of a God who is merely a negative of time; with- 
 out beginning and without end. Therefore, when the Son was 
 revealed, this is the language in which the beloved disciple 
 speaks, " The life was manifested, and we have seen it, and 
 declare unto you that eternal life which was with the Fa- 
 ther, and which has been manifested unto us." This is but a 
 icimen of his uniform languag ¥es, and I will be bold 
 that his language interprets all the language of the N 
 
 Testament. \The eternal life is the righteoui and truth, 
 
 and love of God which are manifested in Christ Jesus; 
 manifested to men that they may be partakers of them, 
 
 L they may have fellowship with the Father and with the 
 Son. J This is held out as the eternal blessedness of those who 
 seek God and love Him. This it is, of which our Lord must 
 have spoken in His last prayer, if he who reports that prayer 
 did not misinterpret His meaning. 
 
 Is it inconsistent, then, with the genera] object and character 
 of the Xew Testament, as the manifestation of His love, that 
 Eternity in all its aspects should come before us there as it 
 does nowhere else, that there we should be taught what it 
 mean- is it inconsistent with its scope and object that there, 
 too, we should be taught what the horror and awfuloess is, of 
 being without this love, of setting ourselves in opposition to it? 
 Those who would not own Christ in His brethren, who did 
 
INFERENCE AS TO PUNISHMENT. 341 
 
 not visit Him when they were sick and in prison, go away, He 
 said, into eternal or everlasting punishment. Are we affixing 
 a new meaning to these words, or the very meaning which the 
 cqntext demands, the only meaning which is consistent with 
 the force that is given to the adjective by our Lord and His 
 apostles elsewhere, if we say that khe eternal punishment is the 
 punishment of being wi thout the knowledge of God , who is 
 love, and of Jesus Christ, who has manifested it ; even as eter- 
 nal life is declared to be the having the knowledge of God and 
 of Jesus Christ ? If it is right, if it is a duty, to say that Eter- 
 nity in relation to God has nothing to_do with time. or duration, 
 are we not bound to say that also in reference to life or to 
 punishment, it has nothing to do with time or duration ? 
 
 II. What I have said respecting the New Testament will 
 explain some phenomena, which have puzzled observers, in the 
 opinions of the early Church upon this subject. Uniformity is 
 not to be looked for. If any one expects to find that, he will 
 be woefully disappointed. He will probably discover in all the 
 Fathers a very strange, almost overwhelming, feeling that 
 Christ had revealed eternity, the eternal world, the eternal 
 God, as they had never been revealed before, that a quite new 
 blessedness had been disclosed to men, that there was a tre- 
 mendous disclosure of evil correspondent to that. But as in 
 every case the wisest teachers of these centuries were but try- 
 ing to catch the meaning of our Lord and His Apostles, some 
 seeing it on one side, some on another; — some through the 
 refracting medium of a heathen education, some through the 
 Jewish Scriptures, some through their own conflicts and the 
 conflicts of their time; — so was it here. One caught at this 
 aspect of eternity, one at that. Here was an eloquent preacher 
 who drew pictures of miseries to come, and mixed together 
 material images with spiritual ideas. There was a Universalist 
 who dwelt on the possibility of men being restored after ages 
 of suffering to the favor of God. There was one who dreamed 
 
342 CHRYSOSTOM ; THEODORA. 
 
 of alternations of misery and blessedness. There were those 
 who learnt in the dreadful strife with Manicheism the real dis- 
 tinction of time and eternity, of life and death. There were 
 those who, troubling themselves less with questions respecting 
 the future state of men, dwelt on the eternity of the Father 
 and the co-eternity of the Son, and showed how needful it was 
 that no notions of time or duration should intrude themseh 
 into such mysteries. The influence of these last men upon the 
 Church was great ; so far as fixing the language of her formu- 
 laries in questions respecting the distinction of temporal and 
 eternal things, it was paramount. Even their anathemas 
 against opponents, however reckh - they pointed to a dis- 
 
 belief which concerned the knowledge of God, kept up the 
 feeling in the Church that that knowledge constitutes Eternal 
 Life, and that the loss of it is Eternal Death. But the prac- 
 tical teachers naturally gave the form to the popular divinity. 
 It is only wonderful that that divinity should have preserved 
 so Spiritual a tone as it did; that a preacher like Chr >m, 
 
 for instance, >hould have spoken of the second death as the 
 death of Sin, the loss of the moral being, when he must have 
 been continually tempted to think that the coarse reprobates of 
 Antioch and Constantinople needed only, and could only under- 
 stand, threats of material brimstone. But God did not Buffer 
 the champion whom He had educated to be the oppoeer of 
 courts and empresses, habitually to adopt the low policy which 
 is so suitable to them, so shameful in the minister of Truth. 
 
 Very different was the behavior of the bishops in the city 
 which he ruled so righteously, a century and a half after his 
 death. Yielding to the intrigues of a successor of Eudoxia, — 
 in comparison with whom she was an angel, — a woman who 
 had the greatest interest, one would have thought, in believing 
 that the love of God might convert even the lowest victims of 
 lust and hatred into His servants and children, — these reverend 
 Fathers consigned Origen to endless perdition because he had 
 
THE LATIN CITURCHES. 343 
 
 held the opinion that his fellow-beings were not intended for it. 
 This example how far morality was interested in such decrees, 
 — how much of grovelling submission on the part of ecclesias- 
 tics to civil rulers was the cause of them, — might have led the 
 Western Church, which had other reasons for not esteeming 
 very highly the orthodoxy of Justinian and Theodora, to pause 
 before they advanced in the same course. But barbarians 
 were crowding into the fold of Christ^who brought with them 
 all the dreams of a Walhalla. To govern was the function of 
 the Latin Church ; theology was to be used as an instrument 
 of government. Distinctions, once established, were to be 
 carefully defended and enforced. But where none existed, the 
 Church was to prove its capacity of embracing the nations, by 
 adapting herself, with wonderful facility, to the superstitions 
 which she found among them, by incorporating them into her 
 own body of doctrine, by stooping to material influences and 
 artifices, for the sake of moving those who were supposed to 
 have little or nothing in them which could respond to a spiritual 
 message. To a superficial and yet an honest observer, the 
 whole course of Papal history looks merely like a series of 
 these politic appeals to the appetites of the lower nature, for 
 the sake of bribing them not to instigate crimes, or of enlisting 
 them in the service of the Church, — nothing but a series of 
 testimonies what crimes must be the result of such bribery, 
 what a service that must be which secures the aid of such 
 mercenaries. The efforts to materialize the terrors of the 
 future world, and to make those terrors the great motives to 
 obedience, — with the obedience which was actually produced 
 by them, — at once suggest themselves as the most startling 
 and decisive points in the evidence. The vision of a purgatory 
 from which men might be delivered by prayers or by money, 
 coming so much more near to the conscience, suggesting so 
 much more practical methods of proceeding than the mere 
 distant background of hopeless torment, offers itself as the 
 
344 PERDITION ; DAMNATION. 
 
 natural product of a scheme, devised to act upon the fears and 
 hopes of man, not drawn from the word of God. But a more 
 careful student is not satisfied with this statement of the case, 
 though he is forced to confess that it is true. He perceh 
 that there were words belonging to the popular language of 
 the Latins, not derived from the Greek-, which showed that the 
 doctrine of the New Testament respecting eternal life and 
 death, had still a hold upon the conscience of the Western 
 Church. 
 
 What is Perdition but a loss ? What is eternal damnation, 
 but the loss of a good which God had revealed to His crea- 
 tures, of which He had put them in possession ? What a wit- 
 ness there lay in these word- a when thrown about by the 
 most random rhetorician, against the notion of a mere future 
 prize to be won by men who could purchase it by sacrifiV 
 of a future misery which God had designed for His creator* 
 And the witness was not inoperative. The noblest Doctors of 
 the Middle Ages did believe this to be the meaning of all 
 which they di i for themselves and for mankind. They 
 did believe that Love was at the root of all things, and that to 
 lose Love, was to lose all things. This was the ground of 
 their most passionate exhortations, whatever forms they might 
 take. Whatever were the crudities of their intellects, this was 
 the undoubting testimony of their hearts. It was this inward 
 conviction which made them tolerant of the idea of Purgatory 
 — which allowed them to wink with a dangerous " oeconomy " 
 at what they must have known were the abominations con- 
 nected with it. They were afraid to limit the love which they 
 felt had been so mighty for them and for the world. They did 
 not dare to measure the sacrifice of Christ and J lis intercession 
 by their notions. The deep conviction which they had of Evil 
 as opposed to the nature of God, made them shudder as they 
 looked down into that abyss. They would rather think of 
 material punishments which might, elsewhere as here, be God's 
 
DANTE. 345 
 
 instruments of acting upon the spirit to awaken it out of death. 
 The great poem of the Florentine brings out this deeper theo- 
 logy of the Middle Ages, in connexion with all the forms in 
 which it was hidden. The loss of intellectual life, of the vision 
 of God, is with him the infinite horror of hell. Men are in 
 eternal misery, because they are still covetous, proud, loveless. 
 The evil priest or pope is in the worst circle of all, because he 
 has been brought most closely into contact with spiritual and 
 eternal things. Even here, there are all varieties of evil, 
 approximations to penitence and good. The purgatory is the 
 ascent, not out of material torments, but out of moral evil, into 
 a higher moral state. The Paradise is the consummation of 
 that state in the vision of perfect truth and love. Those who 
 dwell there, are ever looking down upon the poor wanderers 
 below, aware of their strifes, choosing guides for them, — it 
 may be some poet of the old w T orld, — who shall be helpers in 
 their perplexity, who shall enable them to have a clearer vision 
 of the order which lies beneath the confusions of the w T orld, 
 of the divine government to which all human governments 
 must submit, and by which they must be judged. There may 
 be all material accidents about the poem, derived from the age 
 in which it was written ; but that this is its theological sub- 
 stance, I do not think any considerate reader has ever doubted. 
 But whatever right we have to detect that theology, through 
 its external coverings, in the writings of divines or of patriots, 
 the two were inextricably blended in the popular as well as 
 the scholastical teaching, and the darkness was endeavoring 
 more and more to draw down the light into itself. In the 
 period between Dante and the Reformation, there were many 
 in Germany, in England, in France, — one noble Dominican at 
 least in his own Florence, — who were laboring to disentangle 
 the threads, and to teach Christendom that moral evil is the 
 eternal misery from which they need to be delivered, the right- 
 eousness of God the good which they have to attain. But dilet- 
 
 15* 
 
346 LUTHER. 
 
 lanti popes, who believed nothing and therefore were desirous 
 that the world which they ruled should believe everything, 
 who promoted letters by denying all knowledge to the people, 
 who built churches to him who they said was the rock of the 
 Church, by the help of missionaries who proved that it stood 
 upon no rock but money, — these popes were consummating all 
 the confusions that had been in the theology of the Church 
 before ; were establishing, once for all, the doctrine that the 
 thing men have to dread is punishment and not sin, and that 
 the greatest reward which the highest power in the Church 
 can hold out is deliverance from punishment, not deliverance 
 from sin. Let us understand it well ; it was against this doc- 
 trine that Luther protested in his theses at Wittenberg. Every 
 thing in these theses, ything in his subsequent career, turns 
 upon the tion that a man requires and desires punishment, 
 
 not indulgence, when he lias done evil; that, if you cannot 
 • him from evil you do him no service; that Tetzel had 
 therefore not only been robbing people of their money, had not 
 only been uttering wild and blasphemous words about his own 
 powers and the powers of those who sent him, but that he 
 had been promising that which it is not good for a man to 
 have, which a man should most earnestly pray not to have, but 
 to escape from, if it could be given him for nothing. That 
 which we call the great proclamation of the Reformation, that 
 a man is justified by faith alone, becomes intelligible through 
 this principle, and is not intelligible without it. Luther declared 
 that what man wants is freedom from sin and not freedom 
 from punishment, that righteousness is the reward we crave 
 for. And then he said, " This freedom, which no pope can 
 give you, this reward which you can acquire by no efforts and 
 labors of yours, God has given you freely in Christ. Believ- 
 ing in Christ, the righteous One, you rise out of your own sins, 
 you become righteous men, you are able to do righteous acts." 
 And this doctrine, which w T e are told in our days is so fine and 
 
THE ENGLISH ARTICLES. 347 
 
 abstract, that no men can listen to it or care for it, except some 
 people of delicate and tender consciences, went through the 
 length and breadth of Europe, spoke to the hearts of the com- 
 monest handicraftsmen and laborers, was recognised by them 
 as the message which they were waiting to hear, because it 
 enabled them to obtain a moral standing ground and a moral 
 life, which threats of future punishments and hopes of outward 
 rewards had never won for them. 
 
 The consequence of this doctrine where it was believed, was 
 unquestionably to bring out the contrast between the good and 
 evil state so distinctly and sharply, that the notion of any inter- 
 mediate state between these, was vehemently rejected. Hell 
 as the state of unrighteousness, Heaven as the state of right- 
 eousness, Earth as the battle-field between the two, filled and 
 possessed the mind. Even if purgatory had not been so con- 
 nected with the system of indulgences, it could scarcely have 
 found its place among the thoughts which were then driving all 
 others before them. In the great Jesuit reaction of the six- 
 teenth century, it recovered its hold upon numbers, who had 
 been dispossessed of it, because the social feelings and sympa- 
 thies of men and their sense of an intimate connexion between 
 the visible and the invisible world, for which the Middle Age 
 theology, amidst all its confusions, had borne witness, had met 
 with a very inadequate recognition in the different schools of 
 the Reformation. But though this was the case, it is not true 
 that Protestantism has pronounced more positively than Eo- 
 manism did upon the future condition of men. So far as our * 
 own Church is concerned, the assertion is not only wide of the 
 truth, but is directly in opposition to it. 
 
 In the first draft of our Articles, in the reign of Edward VI., 
 one was introduced, the forty-second, which contained a decree 
 upon this subject. It was expressed in the most moderate 
 terms. It merely declared that " They also are worthy of con- 
 demnation who endeavor at this time to restore the dangerous 
 
348 THE FOKTY-SECOND. 
 
 opinion, that all men, be they never so ungodly, shall at length 
 be saved, when they have suffered pain for their sins a certain 
 time appointed by God's justice." 
 
 After what I have said of the character of the Reformation, it 
 cannot be wonderful that those who had entered most into the 
 spirit of it, should be most anxious to show that pain did not 
 make amends for sin, and that the misery of sin does not con- 
 sist in an arbitrary penalty affixed to it by God, who has sent 
 His Son to make men righteous. On these grounds the Divines 
 of Edward VI.'s reign might easily have excused themselves to 
 their contemporaries, and even to their successors, for adopt- 
 ing an Article which had already been sanctioned at Augs- 
 burg. Nevertheless it has been contended, with great reason- 
 ableness, from the expression >; at this time," and from two 
 other Articles which are found in the same draft, that this 
 sentence was devised to meet a special emergency. The 
 Anabaptists, among a number of other I , all of which had 
 
 taken a sensual and a revolutionary form, had propounded 
 some theory like that which the Reformers here denounced. 
 Every one knows how eager Lutherans, Calvini.-ts, and English 
 Reformers were to disclaim sympathy with those who had done 
 so much to make the new doctriftes odious in the eyes of 
 Europe. It was very likely indeed that this eagerness should 
 be exhibited in any careful digest of their own doctrines, lint 
 the dread of the danger had subsided in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth. It had not, indeed, so subsided that the framers 
 of the Articles in that reign thought it safe to omit a special 
 denunciation of the doctrine of community of goods. But they 
 could venture, and they seized the privilege, to strike out the 
 forty- second Article. 
 
 This statement is not mine. It is the justification which is 
 offered for the compilers of our Articles, by those who would 
 have wished them to dogmatize most peremptorily on the sub- 
 ject. Taking their explanation, the evidence that the members 
 
THE OMISSION OF IT. 349 
 
 of the Church of England have perfect freedom on this subject, 
 is irresistible. It is scarcely possible to invent a case in one's 
 mind, which would be equally strong. Mere silence might be 
 accounted for. But here is omission, careful considerate omis- 
 sion, in a document for future times, of that which had been 
 too hastily admitted, to meet an emergency of that time. The 
 omission was made by persons who probably were strong in 
 the belief that the punishment of wicked men is endless, but 
 who did not dare to enforce that opinion upon others ; above 
 all, who did not dare to say that the words Eternal and Ever- 
 lasting, which they knew had such a profound and sacred 
 meaning in reference to God Himself, and to the revelation of 
 his Son, could be shrivelled and contracted into this signifi- 
 cation. 
 
 III. I have answered two of the objections at some length. 
 I have considered how it is that the New Testament speaks 
 more of eternal life and of eternal punishment than the Old ; 
 how the usage of the words in the New Testament explains 
 that fact, and is explained by it; how, instead of interfering ( 
 with the assertion of St. Paul, that it is the ivill of God, that 
 all men should be saved, and of St. John, that God is love ; 
 without these words, the others would be inexplicable. Next, 
 the charge that there has been a tendency throughout the his- 
 tory of the Church to determine the limits of God's love to 
 men, and to speak of all but a few as hopelessly lost, but that 
 this tendency has been much more marked and strong in Pro- 
 testants than in Romanists, so that we are much more bound 
 by the opinion than they were, — I have met by a sketch of the 
 history of opinion upon this subject, which, however slight, I 
 believe is accurate, and will bear examination. And I have 
 come to the conclusion, that the deepest and most essential 
 part of the theology previous to the Reformation, bore witness 
 to the fact that eternal life is the knowledge of God who is 
 Love, and eternal death the loss of that knowledge ; that it 
 
350 METAPHYSICS. 
 
 was the superficial theology, — that which belonged to the Pa- 
 pal system as such, — which interfered with this belief; that it 
 was the great effort of the Reformation to sweep away that 
 superficial theology, in order that Righteousness and Evil, 
 Love and Hatred, might stand out as the two eternal oppo- 
 sites; the one as the eternal life which God presents to men — 
 the other as the eternal death which they choose for them- 
 selves, and which consists in being at war with His love. I 
 have now to consider the third statement, that, whatever may 
 have been the case at the time of the Reformation, theologians 
 have in our age become entirely positive and dogmatic upon 
 this subject; that upon it they can brook no doubt or diversity 
 of opinion; that in faet, they hold that a man is as much 
 bound to say " I believe in the endless punishment of the 
 iter portion of mankind ? ' as " I believe in God the Father, 
 in God the Son, and in God the Holy Ghost." 
 
 I wish that I felt as able to controvert these propositions as 
 the others. Hut I am bound to admit that the evidence for 
 them is ver. og. Perhaps I may be permitted to trace 
 
 io of the causes which have led to this state of feeliog. 
 They will account, I think, for the existence of it, at least un- 
 der certain modifications, in very good men. They will explain 
 what are likely to be the issues of it if it is not counteracted. 
 They may help to show English Churchmen, and especially 
 English Clergymen, what their standing-ground is, and what 
 their obligations are, if they are really stewards of the everlas- 
 ting Gospel. 
 
 I. Everyone must be aware how much the philosophical 
 teaching under which we have grown up, unconsciously modi- 
 fies our thoughts and opinions on a multitude of subjects which 
 we suppose to be beyond its range. Luther's first battles, i 
 his letters show as, were with Aristotle : he found how much 
 the habits of thought learnt from him, and consecrated in the 
 schools, interfered with the understanding of St. Paul. He 
 
ARISTOTLE; LOCKE. 351 
 
 wanted his pupils to look directly at the sense of Scripture ; 
 they came with certain preconceived notions which they impu- 
 ted to the Sacred writers ; any one who construed them with- 
 out reference to these notions was supposed to depart from 
 their natural, simple meaning. It was not that Aristotle might 
 not be an exceedingly useful teacher for certain purposes ; but 
 what Bacon discovered to be true of him in the investigation 
 of Nature, Luther discovered to be true in the investigation of 
 Scripture. His logical determinations and arrangements, even 
 his accurate observations, hindered the student, who was not 
 to bring wisclom, but to seek it. 
 
 What Aristotle was to the German in the sixteenth century, 
 John Locke is to an Englishman in the nineteenth. His 
 dogmas have become part of our habitual faith ; they are ac- 
 cepted without study, as a tradition. In this respect he resem- 
 bles his predecessor. Proscribed at first by divines for the 
 Essay on the Understanding more than for his politics or his 
 interpretations of Scripture, just as Aristotle was proscribed 
 by popes in the twelfth centur}', — divines now assume that 
 Essay to be the rule and measure of thought and language, 
 even as in the thirteenth century the Stagirite Metaphysics 
 became the rule and measure of thought and language to 
 all orthodox schoolmen. But there is this difference. Aris- 
 totle belongs merely* to the schools; Locke connects the 
 schools with the world. He found a number of mystifications 
 which doctors were canonising. He courageously applied 
 himself to the removal of them. The conscience of ordinary 
 men recognised him as their champion. He spoke to the love 
 of the simple and practical, in which lies the strength of the 
 English character. He asked men who were using phrases 
 which they had inherited, and to which they attached no mean- 
 ing, to give an account of them, and if they could not, to sur- 
 render them. It was evident that he had an immense advan- 
 tage over his opponents, because he understood himself, and 
 because he had determined to be faithful to his own convic- 
 
352 HIS AUTHORITY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 tions. He succeeded in persuading those who believed very 
 little, not to pretend to believe more than they did. "Who can 
 doubt that this was a good and great service to mankind ? But 
 it involved this consequence. If men should chance h ere a It t 
 to discover that some of the principles held by their ancestors 
 had a substance and meaning in them', however little that 
 substance and meaning might be represented in the dialect of 
 the day, there would be considerable difficulty in recovering 
 the possession. It would be supposed that the good sense of 
 a great man had settled the question for ever, and those who 
 knew little how r it had been settled or what there was to settle, 
 would be just as zealous in discountenancing and ridiculing 
 any further investigation, as if they were bowing to a dictator 
 — not accepting help from one who had protested against dic- 
 tation. 
 
 When any one ventures to say to an English audience, that 
 Eternity is not a mere negation of time, that it denotes some- 
 thing real, substantial, before all time, he is told at once that 
 he is departing from the simple intelligible meaning of words; 
 that he is introducing novelties ; that he is talking abstractions. 
 This langu; etly honest in the mouths of those who 
 
 use it. But they do not know where they learnt it. They did 
 not get it from peasants, or women, or children. They did not 
 
 ; it from the Bible. They got it from Locke. And if I find 
 that I cannot interpret the language and thoughts of peasants 
 and women, and children, and that I cannot interpret the plain- 
 est passages of the Bible or the whole context of it, while I 
 look through the Locke spectacles, — I must cast them aside. 
 I am sure Locke would wish me to do so, for I believe he was 
 a thoroughly honest man, and one who desired nothing less in 
 the world, than that he should become an oppressor to the spi- 
 rits which he supposed he was setting free. 
 
 Here then is one cause of our present state of feeling respect- 
 ing the question which I am now considering; here is a proof 
 how much that state of feeling must affect a multitude of sub- 
 
ROMISH COMPREHENSIVENESS. 353 
 
 jects, besides that of everlasting punishment. "When the Scrip- 
 tures speak of Eternity they must mean endlessness; they can 
 mean nothing else. To be sure they do mean something else, 
 when they speak of God's eternity ; but we have only to put 
 in also l without beginning ' to that, and all is right." The 
 divines who use such language, are supported by those who 
 most object to the conclusion which they deduce from it. The 
 old Unitarian cannot give up Locke. The orthodox Dissent- 
 ers have always supposed that he must be right, because 
 Churchmen disliked him for his notions of government and 
 toleration. Practical men suspect that some German mysti- 
 cism must be near, when his decrees are disputed. And those 
 who have no dread of this mysticism, and who know that the 
 explorers of other nations have passed beyond the Hercules 
 pillars, within which our navigators confine themselves, and 
 have even affirmed the existence of islands and continents where 
 Locke supposed there was nothing but ocean, yet ask " what 
 that has to do with old Hebrews like Paul or John ? of course 
 they knew nothing about these islands and continents. The 
 coarsest, most material view of things is most suitable to them." 
 Nearly all people therefore in this country, who speak on such 
 matters, are agreed that the words of the Gospel, if they were 
 taken strictly and fairly, must have the hardest (I do not say the 
 most awful, for I believe the sense I contend for is much more 
 awful) meaning which has ever been given them. Only the tens 
 and hundreds of thousands who cannot speak, dissent from 
 that decision. 
 
 2. However hard and exclusive the Romish Church may have 
 been, — though the great complaint we make of her is, that she 
 excommunicates those who are members of the body of Christ 
 as much as she is, — it is impossible not to see that she takes up 
 a position which looks, at least, much more comprehensive than 
 that of the Protestant bodies. She assumes the Church to 
 represent mankind. The day before Good Friday, the Pope 
 
354 PROTESTANT EXCLUSIVENE8S. 
 
 blesses the universe. The sacrifice which she presents day by 
 day, is declared to be that sacrifice which was made for the sins 
 of the whole world. We believe that the strongest witness we 
 have to bear is, that the sacrifice was made once for all ; that our 
 acts do not complete it, but are only possible because it is com- 
 plete, that they arc grounded upon our right to present that con 
 tinually to the Father, with which He has declared Himself well 
 ] (leased. AVe ought) therefore, to assert the redemption of man- 
 kind more distinctly than they do. But it is clear that in prac- 
 tice we do not seem to the world to do so, nor seem to our- 
 selves to do so. The distinctiveness, the individuality of Pro- 
 testantism is its strength, as I have maintained before in th 
 Essays^ But close to that strength is its greatest weakness, 
 that which we all feel, — which all, in some sort, confess, — which 
 is the root of our sectarianism — which is continually kept alive 
 by it; and yet, which is destroying the Very bodies that it has 
 1. What is the consequence to theology 1 The religious 
 men, the saved men, are looked QpOD as the exceptions to a 
 rule; the world is fallen, outcast, ruined; a few Christians, 
 about the signs and tokens of whose Christianity each sect dif- 
 fers, have been rescued from the ruin. I have had to speak in 
 aim v page of this book, respecting the habit of mind 
 
 t<> which this opinion appertains; and to show how it is at war 
 with all the articles of the Christian faith. I only wish to point 
 out here, how it bears upon the subject of everlasting salvation 
 and damnation. Damnation does not mean what its etymolo 
 would lead us to suppose that it means, what it certainly did 
 mean to the Church in former days, amidst all rplexities 
 
 and confusions. It is not the loss of a mighty gift which has 
 been bestowed upon the race. Men are not regarded as reject- 
 ingthe counsel of God against themselves. God is represented 
 the destroyer. Nay, Divines go the length of asserting — 
 even of taking it for granted, — that our Lord Himself taught 
 this lesson to His disciples when He said, "And I say unto you 
 
PERVERSION OF OUR LORD'S WORDS. 355 
 
 my friends, Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after 
 that, have no more that they can do ; but I will forewarn you 
 whom ye shall fear : Fear him which, after he hath killed, 
 hath power to cast into hell, yea, I say unto you, fear him. 
 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings ? and not one of 
 them is- forgotten before God. But even the very hairs of your 
 head are all numbered. Fear" not, therefore; ye are of more 
 value than many sparrows." We are come to such a pass, as 
 actually to suppose that Christ tells those whom He calls His 
 friends, not to be afraid of the poor and feeble enemies who 
 can only kill the body, but of that greater enemy who can destroy 
 their very selves, and that this enemy is — not the devil, not the 
 spirit who is going about seeking whom he may devour, not 
 him w r ho was a murderer from the beginning, — but that God 
 who cares for the sparrows ! They are to be afraid lest He 
 who numbers the hairs of their head should be plotting their 
 ruin ! Does not this interpretation, which has become so fami- 
 liar, that one hears it without even a hint that there is another, 
 show us on the edge of what an abyss we are standing, how 
 likely we are to confound the Father of lights with the Spirit 
 of darkness ? 
 
 While this temper of mind continues, it is absolutely inevi- 
 table that we should not merely look upon the immense majo- 
 rity of our fellow-creatures as doomed to perdition, but that we 
 should regard the Gospel as itself pronouncing their doom. 
 The message which, according to this view of the case, Christ 
 brings from Heaven to earth is, " Your Father has created 
 multitudes whom He means to perish for ever and ever. By 
 my agony and bloody sweat, by my cross and passion, I have 
 induced Him in the case of an inconceivably small minority to 
 forego that design." Dare we state that proposition to our- 
 selves, dare we get up into a pulpit and preach it ? But if we 
 dare not, seeing it is a matter of life and death, and there must 
 be no trifling or equivocation about it, let us distinctly tell our- 
 
356 OPINIONS OF THE LAITY. 
 
 selves what we do mean, and if we find that a blasphemous 
 thought has mingled with our belief hitherto, let us confess that 
 thought to God, and ask Him to deliver us from it. 
 
 3. I cannot wonder that Divines, even those who would 
 shrink with horror from such a view of God's character and 
 His Gospel as this, should crave for some more distinct appre- 
 hensions, nay even statements respecting eternal punishment, 
 than might perhaps be needful in former days. It is quite 
 clear, that the words which go forth from our pulpits on the 
 subject, have no effect at all upon cultivated men of any class, 
 except the effect of making them regard our other utterances 
 with indifference and disbelief. They do not think that we put 
 faith in our own denunciations. They ask, how it is possible 
 for us to go about and enjoy life if we do ; how, if we do, we 
 can look out upon the world that is around us and the world 
 that has been, without cursing the day on which we were 
 bora 3 They say that we pronounce a general sentence, and 
 then explain it away in each particular i they say, that we 
 
 believe that God condemns the world generally, but that 
 under cover of certain phrases which may mean anything or 
 nothing, we can prove that, on the whole, He rather intends it 
 good than ill. Tl. .-, that we call upon them to praise Him 
 
 and give Him thanks, and that what we mean is, that they are 
 to testify emotions towards Him which they do not feel, and 
 which His character, as we represent it, cannot inspire, in 
 order to avert His wrath from them. Cultivated men, I say, 
 repeat these things to one another. If we do not commonly 
 hear them, it is because they count it rude ever to tell us what 
 they think. Poor men say th< me things in their own assem- 
 
 blies with more breadth an.! honesty, not wishing us to be 
 ignorant of their opinions respecting us. And though these 
 considerations, so far as they concern ourselves, may not move 
 us, how can we help being moved by their effect on those 
 
THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 357 
 
 who utter them ? If we believe that the words Eternal Dam- 
 nation or Death have a very terrible significance, such as the 
 Bible tells us they have, is it nothing that they should be 
 losing all their significance for our countrymen ? Is it nothing 
 that they should seem to them mere idle nursery-words that 
 frighten children, but with which men have nothing to do ? Is 
 it nothing, that a vague dream of bliss hereafter into which 
 righteousness and goodness do not enter, which has no relation 
 to God, should float before the minds of numbers, but that it 
 should have just as little power to awaken them to any higher 
 or better life, as the dread of the future has to keep them 
 from any evil ? 
 
 The members of the Evangelical Alliance perceive, more or 
 less clearly, that this is the state of things which has increased 
 and is increasing, among us. They hear of a vague Univer- 
 salism being preached from some pulpits in America and on 
 the Continent. They think that notion must encourage sinners 
 to suppose that a certain amount of punishment will be enough 
 to clear off their scores, and to procure them ultimate bliss. 
 " You are relaxing the strictness of your statements," they say, 
 "just when they need to be more stringent, because all moral 
 obligations are becoming laxer, because people are evidently 
 casting off their fear, without obtaining anything better in the 
 place of it. Therefore they conclude that such freedom must 
 be checked. It cannot answer, they think, now, however it 
 may have answered heretofore, to leave any loop-hole for 
 doubt about the endless punishment of the wicked. 
 
 I have stated the arguments which I think may have inclined 
 worthy and excellent men to arrive at this conclusion ; though 
 I believe a more fatal one, one more certain to undermine the 
 truth which is in their hearts, and which they are seeking to 
 defend, cannot be imagined. We do, it seems to me, need to 
 have a more distinct and awful idea of eternal death and eter- 
 
358 REAL FEARS OF MEN. 
 
 nal punishment than we have. I use both words, Death and 
 Punishment i that I may not appear to shrink from the sense 
 which is contained in either. Punishment, I believe, seems to 
 most men less dreadful than death, because they cannot separ- 
 ate it from a punisher, because they believe, however faintly, 
 that he who is punishing them is a Father. The thought of 
 His ceasing to punish them, of His letting them alone, of His 
 leaving them to themselves, is the real, the unutterable horror. 
 A man may be living without God in the world, he may be 
 trembling at His Name, sometimes wishing that He did not 
 exist; and yet if you told him that he was going where there 
 would be no God, no one to watch over him, no one to care 
 for him, the news would be almost intolerabi We do shrink 
 from thin; all men, whatever they may fancy, are more appal- 
 led at the thoughts of being friendless, homeless, fatherle 
 than at any outward terrors you can threaten them with. I 
 know well how the conscience contuses this anticipation with 
 that of meeting God, with being brought face to face with Him. 
 The mixture of feelings adds infinitely to the horror of them. 
 Tin w of wrath abiding on the spirit which has re- 
 
 fused the yoke oflove. This is one part of the misery. There is 
 a sense of loneliness and atheism. This is another. And 
 surely this, this is the bottomless pit which men see before 
 them, and to which they feel that they are hurrying, when they 
 have led selfish lives, and are growing harder, and colder, and 
 darker every hour. Can we not tell them that it is even so, 
 that this is the abyss of death, that second death, of which all 
 material images offer only the faintest picture ? Will not that 
 show them more clearly what life is, the risen life, the eternal 
 that which was with the Father and has been manifested 
 to v. Will it not enable us to say, "This life is that for 
 which God has created man, for which He has redeemed man 
 in His Son, which He is sending His Spirit to work out in 
 
HOW TO MEET THEM. 359 
 
 man ?" Will it not enable us to say, " This eternal death is 
 that from which God sent His Son to deliver men, from which 
 He has delivered them ? If they fall into it, it is because they 
 choose it, because they embrace it, because they resist a power 
 which is always at work to save them from it." By delivering 
 such a message as this to men, should we not be doing more 
 to make thein aware how the revelation of God's righteous- 
 ness for the redemption of sinners is at the same time the 
 revelation of the wrath of God against all unrighteousness and 
 ungodliness ? Would not such a message show that a Gospel 
 of eternal love must bring out more clearly than any mere law 
 can, that state which is the resistance to it and the contradic- 
 tion of it ? But would not such a message at the same time 
 present itself to the conscience of men not as an outrage 
 on their experience, but as the faithful interpreter of it, not as 
 disproving everything that they have dreamed of the willing- 
 ness of God to save them, but as proving that He is willing and 
 able to save them to the very uttermost ? 
 
 Suppose instead of taking this method of asserting the truth 
 of all God's words, the most blessed and the most tremendous, 
 we reject the wisdom of our forefathers and enact an article 
 declaring that all are heretics and deniers of the truth, who do 
 not hold that Eternal means endless, and that there cannot be 
 a deliverance from eternal punishment. What is the con- 
 sequence 1 Simply this, I believe : the whole Gospel of God 
 is set aside. The state of eternal life and eternal death is not 
 one we can refer only to the future, or that we can in any wise 
 identify with the future. Every man who knows what it is to 
 have been in a state of sin, knows what it is to have been in a 
 state of death. He cannot connect that death with time ; he m ust 
 say that Christ has brought him out of the bonds of eternal 
 death. Throw that idea into the future and you deprive it of 
 all its reality, of all its power. I know what it means all too 
 
360 TIIE QUESTION STATED. 
 
 well while you let me connect it with my present and personal 
 being, with the pangs of conscience which I suffer now. It 
 becomes a mere vague dream and shadow to me, when you 
 project it into a distant world. And if you take from me the 
 belief that God is always righteous, always maintaining a fight 
 with evil, always seeking to bring His creatures out of it, you 
 take everything from me, all hope now, all hope in the world 
 to come. Atonement, Eedemption, Satisfaction, Regeneration, 
 become mere words to which there is no counterpart in 
 reality. 
 
 I ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, 
 what are the possibilities of resistance in a human will to the 
 loving will of God. There are times when they seem to me — 
 thinking of myself more than of others — almost infinite. But I 
 know that there is something which must be infinite. I am 
 obliged to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the 
 abyss of death : I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into 
 death, eternal death if I do. 1 must feel that this love is com- 
 passing the universe. More about it I cannot know. But 
 God knows. I leave myself and all to Him. 
 
 It is of this faith that some are seeking to rob us. J lave we 
 made up our minds to surrender it ? Have we resolved that 
 the belief in Endless Punishment shall be not a tenet which 
 any one is at liberty to hold, — as any one is at liberty to 
 hold the notion that the elements are changed in the Lord's 
 Supper, provided he does not force the notion upon me, and 
 will come with me to eat of a feast which is beyond all notions, 
 — but the tenet of the Church to which every other is subor- 
 dinate; just as Transubstantiation has become in the Romish 
 Church since it has been declared essential to all who partake 
 of the Eucharist? Let us consider, not chiefly what we are 
 accepting, but what we are rejecting, before we tamely sub- 
 mit to this new imposition. 
 
• our lord's method. 361 
 
 There is one other consideration which I would impress very 
 earnestly upon my brethren — especially upon the Clergy, be- 
 fore I conclude. The doctrine of endless punishment is avow- 
 edly put forward as necessary for the reprobates of the world, 
 the publicans and harlots, though perhaps religious men might 
 dispense with it. Now, I find in our Lord's discourses, that 
 when He used such words as these, " Ye serpents, ye gener- 
 ation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell'?" 
 He was speaking to religious men, to doctors of the law; but 
 that when He went among publicans and sinners, it was to 
 preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Does not this difference show that our minds are very 
 strangely at variance with His mind? Ought not the discov- 
 ery to make us think and to make us tremble ? I am certain 
 that we who are in continual contact with eternal things do 
 require to remind ourselves what danger we are in of losing 
 these things. Spiritual pride is the essential nature of the 
 Devil. To be in that, is to be in the deepest hell. Oh ! how 
 little are all outward sensual abominations in comparison of 
 this ! And surely to those who are sunk in those abomina- 
 tions, no message will avail but that which He who knew what 
 was in man delivered. Freedom to the captives, opening of 
 sight to them that are blind, a power near them which is migh- 
 tier than the power of the Devil, a Father and a Son and a 
 Spirit who are willing and able to bring them out of darkness 
 and the shadow of death — this was the news which turned the 
 circumcised and the uncircumcised, the children of God's cov- 
 enant, those who were afar off, the corrupt men and women 
 of the most corrupt period in history, into saints and martyrs. 
 We deliberately proclaim that this method will not avail for 
 us ! What is this but saying that we have not faith in that 
 which the Apostle declares to be the power of God unto sal- 
 vation ; that we have substituted for it an earthly and Tarta- 
 16 
 
362 OUR METHODS. 
 
 rean machinery of our own ? May God preserve us from such 
 apostasy ! May He teach us again by mighty evidence that 
 when we preach the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost, we invade the realm of Death and Eternal Night, 
 and open the kingdom of Heaven ! 
 
NOTE ON THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 There are those who will say, "Your explanation of the word 
 Eternal in the New Testament may be the true one. It certainly 
 accords with what we have been wont to think its peculiar characteris- 
 tics, better than the one which is given in popular sermons. It even 
 seems to throw a light on a phrase which is very common in those 
 sermons, the loss of the soul, which ought to have a spiritual sense, one 
 would suppose, and which continually receives a very carnal and mate- 
 rial one. And it is at least possible, that if Eternal punishment denotes 
 in Scripture, Spiritual punishment, portions of its language which seem 
 to contain threatenings of outward sufferings may, without losing their 
 literal force, receive a new character by being referred to this leading 
 principle. We can understand this ; we may be glad at least to try 
 your method, and see whether the words of Apostles and Evangelists 
 will bear the application of it. But can you accept it honestly ? Are 
 you not tied by formularies which bind you to another maxim 1 Must 
 not these be thrown aside before you can freely and fairly give a force 
 to the words Eternal or Everlasting Punishment, Fire, Death, or Damna- 
 tion, which they do not convey to the ears and eyes of ordinary hearers 
 and readers 1" 
 
 It will be perceived that I have already given a partial answer to this 
 question. To the Articles one naturally turns for definitions of words, 
 for assertions of doctrines. In the Articles we find no definition of the 
 word Eternal or Everlasting. They are not merely silent on the doc- 
 trine of everlasting punishment. The framers of them have refused to 
 pronounce upon it. But the Articles are only one part of our formu- 
 laries. We have Prayers which we are expected to use daily; we 
 have Creeds which have descended to us from the early ages — the ages 
 of anathemas. What do these say ? 
 
 First as to the Prayers. It is assumed that I am teaching a meaning 
 of the word Eternal, which the ordinary person, the peasant or woman, 
 
3G4 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 cannot take in, which can only be understood by the most learned 
 theologian or metaphysician. I utterly deny the charge. I say that I 
 have been forced into the belief of an Eternal world or kingdom, which 
 is about us, in which we are living, wliich has nothing to do with time, 
 by prayers. These common prayers which I offer up with peasants, 
 and women, and children, have taught me that there is an Eternal Life 
 which is emphatically a present life, (not according to a doctrine which 
 I have listened to lately with astonishment, alike for its logic and theo- 
 logy — a future life begun in the present ;) and that this Eternal 
 Life consists in the knowledge of God ; and that the loss of the 
 knowledge of God is the loss of it. And I say that simple people do 
 believe in this life, do grow in the perception of it as they pray, do cast 
 aside, as they pray, that other notion which is so plausible* to the 
 senses and the carnal understandings, and which doctors find it so hard 
 to escape. Negatively, then, the Prayers define nothing about Eternity, 
 for definitiefa is not the office of prayer. Positively, they are the great 
 means of leading thousands into a practical apprehension of that mean- 
 ing of Eternity, which I have deduced from the New Testament. But 
 -e prayers carry us further still. "We have no prayers, thank God! 
 for the dead as such. IIow can we, when Christ says that all live to 
 God ? W« have no masses for the dead. How can we ? The sacri- 
 fice is complete; we cannot make it more perfect than it is. But 
 prayer does break down the barriers between the visible and invisible 
 world, and in prayer we cannot set it up again, however in our theories 
 we may. Christ's sacrifice compasses the whole universe j we cannot 
 limit the extent of its operation by measures of space or time. When 
 we pray for " all men" how dare we limit the Spirit who is teaching us 
 to pray, and affirm that we will not pray for any but those who are in 
 certain conditions with which we are acquainted ! When we meet to 
 hold communion with Him who has given Himself for the world, how 
 dare we declare for whom He shall or shall not present His all-em- 
 bracing sacrifice ! I Are we wiser or more loving than He is ? Do we 
 wish better things for mankind than He does, from whom all our good 
 and loving thoughts proceed ? 
 
 Next as to the Creeds. The negative evidence for the Apostles' and 
 the Nicene — our daily popular Creeds — is decisive. They speak of a 
 Judgment of quick and dead. They speak of Eternal Life. They con- 
 tain no sentence about future Punishment. But the positive evidence. 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 365 
 
 from their effect on those who utter them, is stronger still. They are 
 expressions of Trust j Trust in a Father, a Son, and a Spirit. Augus- 
 tine taught them to the Heathens in Africa, as witnesses that there is 
 a God of Infinite Charity, utterly unlike the gods whom they wor- 
 shipped. Our missionaries, I hope, use them for the same purpose. 
 All who say them with their hearts feel that they are flying to God 
 from their enemies — Death, Hell, the Devil. 
 
 But the Athanasian Creed ? Does not that settle the question ? I 
 think it does. There, indeed, we find no more definition of Eternity 
 than we do in the other Creeds. But we do find sentences about 
 Punishrefcnt to which there is nothing corresponding elsewhere. They 
 are such sentences as I affirm could not have been introduced and could 
 not be repeated by any honest or Christian man, if the idea of Eternal 
 Life, as consisting in the knowledge of God, and of Eternal Death, as 
 consisting in the absence of that knowledge, were not practically the 
 idea of the old time as well as of our own ; however in our formal 
 writings we may deny it. 
 
 Eleven years ago I expressed what were then my opinions on this 
 subject, in a book not addressed to Unitarians. I said that I could not 
 agree with Mr. Coleridge in thinking that this Creed contradicted the 
 Nicene, on the subject of the subordination of the Son to the Father; 
 that, if it forced me to pronounce judgment on any person, I would 
 not have laid myself under the obligation of reading it, — whatever 
 Church might adopt it, — because I should be violating an express com- 
 mand of Christ ; that I never had felt myself encouraged or tempted by 
 it to pass sentence on those who differed with me most on the subject 
 of the Trinity ; that, on the contrary, I had felt it was passing sentence 
 on my own tendencies " to confound the Persons, and to divide the 
 Substance ;" that these tendencies in me, I knew, had nothing to do 
 with intellectual formulas, but with moral corruptions, from which 
 many who are called heretics may be freer than I am ; that I doubted 
 whether we should gain in Truth or Charity by casting away this 
 Creed, because I looked upon it as a witness, that eternal life is the 
 knowledge of God, and that eternal death is Atheism, the being without 
 Him.* I have not seen any cause to alter these opinions. I feel, 
 indeed, that every year of fresh experience, as it should ground us more 
 in principles, should make us more diffident of our own judgment on 
 
 * " Kingdom of Christ, or Hints to a Quaker," vol. ii. p. 54S. 
 
366 THE ATIIANASIAN CREED. 
 
 questions of expediency. Though the Creed, instead of tempting us to 
 condemn others, has, I think, often overcome our inclination to condemn 
 them — (for the more tremendous its language, the less we can dare to 
 bring any individual within the scope of it;) though some sentence 
 it, those especially concerning " the taking of the Manhood into God, 
 the reasonable soul and flesh, the persons, and substance,* 9 have thrown 
 a clear broad light into dark p s of my mind, and I doubt not, 
 
 have taught my brethren more; yet, if it does cause any of those for 
 whom Christ died to stumble, if it hinders any from entering into the 
 
 Btery of God's love, I hope He will not suffer us to retain it. For 
 that which is meant as a witness of Him, must be given up. like the 
 brazen serpent, if it ceases to be so, or is made an instrument of turning 
 men's eyes from Him. Still I cannot help thinking that the reasons 
 generally urged for abandoning it are not charitable, and that submis- 
 sion to them will not conduce to charity. 1 find persons objecting, 
 first, that the basis of our fellowship should not be laid in Theology, in 
 principles concerning the nature of God. Secondly, that Eternal Pun- 
 ishiiKiit or Heath minj be denoun* kinst those who hold certain 
 
 opinions on certain subjects, — probably on the subject of the Trinity, — 
 but should not be denouiK linst those who do not think "thus" or 
 
 '• thus " concerning it. 
 
 On the firsl proposition I have spoken much in these Essays, and 
 have endeavored to show : - of fellowship but a Theological 
 
 — any basis of human consciousness, or of mere materialism, — m 
 be narrow and e.\dusi\ on which an edifice of superstition will 
 
 certainly be reared, one which must be protected by persecution. On 
 the second point I would observe, that if the Creed had meant that the 
 not holding certain intellectual notions concerning the Trinity involved 
 the penalty of everlasting death, it would consign to destruction, not 
 heretics. — extreme or moderate. — but every ]>casant, every child, nearly 
 every woman in every congregation in which it is read, seeing that 
 
 -e (thank God!) have formed no such intellectual conceptions, that 
 the majority are not capable of forming them. And the few persons it 
 would count worthy of eternal life, are a set of schoolmen, the best of 
 whom pray everv day and hour that they may become as little chil- 
 dren, and have the faith which those have who do not look upon the 
 
 ject from a logical point of view at all. Lastly, it would directly 
 contradict its own most solemn assertions. If we could comprehend 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 367 
 
 this truth in an intellectual statement, the Father would not be incom- 
 prehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehen- 
 sible. But since there is no alternative between this utterly monstrous 
 imagination, and that which supposes the Creed to affirm the knowledge 
 of God and eternal life to be the same ; and therefore the denial, — not 
 in the letter, but in the spirit, — not intellectually and outwardly, but 
 morally and inwardly, — of the Father, Son, and Spirit, to be eternal 
 death, — I cannot help thinking that, with all its fierce language, it has 
 a gentler heart than some of those who get themselves credit for Tole- 
 ration, by wishing the Church well rid of it. They leave us free to 
 judge occasionally, to assume a portion of God's authority, only pro- 
 testing against any excessive intrusion into it. The Creed obliges us to 
 give such a meaning to eternal life, — or rather to adhere so closely to 
 our Lord's explanation of it, — that we have no power of saying, in any 
 case, who has lost it, or incurred the state which is opposite to it. 
 
 If I am asked whether the writer did not suppose that he had this 
 power, I answer — When you tell me who the writer was, I may possibly, 
 though probably not even then, be able to make some guess whether he 
 supposed it or not*. At present, I am quite in the dark about him and 
 his motives. If I adopt the theory, which is as reasonable as any other, 
 that he lived in the time of the Vandal persecution, I think it is very 
 likely, that along with a much deepened conviction of the worth of the 
 principle for which he was suffering, he had also a mixture of earthly 
 passion and fierceness, and that he was tempted to show his opponents, 
 or those who were apostatizing, that there were more terrible penalties 
 than those of scourging the back or cutting out the tongue. In that 
 case, I should say I was giving up that part of his animus which he 
 would wish me to give up ; that part which was not of God, and could 
 not be meant to abide ; and was clinging to that which made his other 
 words true and consistent with themselves, when I interpreted his 
 Creed in conformity with our Lord's sentence. I should not be imi- 
 tating the treatment which Mr. Ward (in his Ideal of the Church) 
 applied to our articles, (I have no doubt he is one of those on whom 
 Romanism has conferred a benefit by making him at least respectful to 
 the formularies by which he is bound,) when he maintained that a non- 
 natural sense might be put on them, because the compilers of them 
 meant to cheat Catholics, and Catholics might pay them in their own 
 
368 THE ATE AN ASIAN CREED. 
 
 coin. I should apply just the opposite rule. If I found a general scope 
 of meaning which was important and precious, and which belonged to 
 all times, I should not sacrifice that for the sake of a portion which 
 belonged to the circumstances and feelings of a particular time or a par- 
 ticular man. To use Mr. Canning's celebrated simile, I should not 
 follow the example of those worshippers of the Sun, who chose the 
 moment of an eclipse to come forth with their hymns and their symbols. 
 This rule is necessary, I suspect, that we may do justice to the 
 Church of the Fathers generally, and prove our reverence for it. I 
 cannot honor that age too much, for its earnestness in asserting and 
 defending theological principles. I believe no other age has had pre- 
 cisely the same task committed to it. Of course, I have most sympathy 
 with those (like him to whom this creed is erroneously attributed) who 
 fought at fearful odds for that which was dear to them — who exposed 
 themselves to imperial, episcopal, and popular mdignation, for the sake 
 of it. It is not only more pleasant to contemplate them than the pros- 
 
 >us men, — and them in their adversity than when they were threat- 
 ening and excommunicating others; but their weak time was certainly 
 the time in which all their chief work was done. -. 1 cannot 
 
 that their anathemas were indications of a cniel spirit; that thi 
 did not show, like their endurance of persecution, how much they were 
 in earnest, and how precious the truths which they had realised were 
 
 hem ; or that the distinctions which were the excuses for them were 
 not very valuable for Theology and for Humanity. 'J'hrre, 1 believe, 
 they were wiser than we are, unless we are willing to profit by their 
 
 lorn. But there are points on which I know we ought to be wiser 
 than they were. They could not foresee how God would govern His 
 world, what methods He would see fit to use for bringing His truth to 
 light. We ought to see that doubts, que partial apprehensi- 
 
 denials of one principle for the sake of affirming another, have bet 
 through His gracious discipline, means of elucidating that which would 
 otherwise have been dark. Would the sentence of the Nicene Council 
 have sufficed to illustrate the faith of Athanasius? Was not a century 
 of strife in the Empire, — three centuries of Arianism among the Bar- 
 barians, — needful for that purpose? And if I find this to be so. and 
 find also much horrible sin among the orthodox mixed with their excel- 
 lencies, many virtues among the heretics mixed with their denials and 
 rtradictions, I am bound bo believe (J.».i was using both. I dare not 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 369 
 
 deny History any more than the Theological truth, which, I believe 
 History has expounded. That truth will suffer if I do. How was the 
 noble heart of Dante crushed by the thought that his dear master, and 
 all the men whom he reverenced in the old world, were outcasts for 
 not believing in the Trinity ! That thought evidently shook his faith 
 in the Trinity. And it would shake mine, because it would lead me to 
 suppose, that Truth only became true when Christ appeared, instead of 
 being revealed by Him for all ages past and to come ; so that, whoever 
 walked in the light then, whoever walks in it now, seeking glory and 
 immortality, desirous to be true, has glimpses of it, and will have the 
 fruition of it, which is Life Eternal. 
 
 I have spoken of the possible animus of the writer of this Creed ; 
 but I must repeat that I know nothing of him, and therefore my guesses 
 are good for very little. The animus imponentis concerns us, as all 
 casuists admit, much more ; and of that we have no right to pretend 
 ignorance. Our Church has given us great helps for understanding 
 what her meaning is, and what spirit she wishes us to be of. So long 
 as I am commanded to repeat her prayers, no one shall compel me to 
 put a construction upon this formulary which contradicts them, and 
 makes me consciously false in the use of them. And I will add, once 
 for all, in reference to those who wish to bind us by the current and 
 floating opinions of this age on the topics I have discussed in these 
 Essays — I hold to that which I have confessed already ; I hold to the 
 prayers in which I find that confession made living and effectual for me 
 and for all my brethren. If you say my faith is not distinct enough, 
 bring forth your substitute for it. Do not talk about a perfect Atone- 
 ment, or a divine Satisfaction, or an Eternal Death ; these I believe in 
 as much as you can do. Put forth distinctly before your own con- 
 sciences, and before the conscience of England, the meaning which you 
 attach to these words. See whether what you intend is not either that 
 assertion of God's infinite Charity, which is contained in St. John's 
 express words, in the whole Bible, in our forms, or something so 
 flagrantly in contradiction with that, as to make the duty of rejecting 
 it, and protesting against it, one from which no Churchman and no 
 man ought to shrink. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 UNI i/r&»,_. 
 
J. S. REDFIELD, 
 
 110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK, 
 
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