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THE NEW THEOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BASCOM 
 
 AUTHOR OF A PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; OR, THE RATIONAL GROUNDS 
 
 Or RELIGIOUS BELIEF," "THE WORDS OF CHRIST AS 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL AND SOCIAL 
 
 GROWTH," ETC., ETC. 
 
 WVERSIT 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD ST. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 27 KING WILLIAM ST., STRAND 
 
 S^e ginuherbochrr fins* 
 1892 
 
&3£ 
 
 Copyright, 1891 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BASCOM 
 
 or/ <^3 
 
 Ube IRnicfeerbocfter press, IRew Jt)orft 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED TO 
 
 EDWARD ORTON, 
 
 WHOM I FIRST LEARNED TO LOVE ON ANDOVER HILL 
 
 —A POINT OF REVOLUTION AND DEPARTURE 
 
 FOR US' BOTH 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface ( » . ^ 
 
 Introduction . i 
 
 I. — Naturalism . , a = s « e n 
 
 II. — The Supernatural * * . 73 
 
 III. — Dogmatism . „ ♦ « * « ♦ . *i3 
 
 IV. — Pietism * • * » *57 
 
 V. — Spiritualism • ««•**• 288 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This work is equally removed in its conclusions from 
 the opinions of those who think that, in the deeper ques- 
 tions of being, we can know nothing, and waste our time 
 by inquiry ; and the opinions of those who suppose that 
 we are already sufficiently instructed in these directions 
 by revelation, and have only to hold fast its truths. It 
 proceeds on the supposition that there is truth of infinite 
 moment attainable by man both from nature and from 
 revelation, both from the constitution of the world and 
 from the aggregate of human experience under it, but 
 that this truth is of such breadth and magnitude that our 
 measurements are all necessarily partial and ephemeral. 
 A range of mountains is none the less visible, none the 
 less inspiring, because we can see but a small portion of it 
 from any one point, and because even this portion changes 
 rapidly with a shifting of position or a transfer of light. 
 It is this mobility of a vision that makes it divine. 
 
 Great things are, in the measure of their greatness, 
 incomprehensible, yet our knowledge of them is of more 
 worth than all other knowledge, is as truly knowledge as 
 our knowing of the most minute and sensuous things. 
 
 We see by the light of a sun not one millionth part 
 of whose rays ever enter the eye ; we behold, in the 
 spiritual world, by the light of truths which transcend our 
 perception of them like the depths of infinity. Yet it is 
 this very fact that distinguishes man from all the creatures 
 
 vii 
 
viil PREFACE. 
 
 near him. While he stands on great heights, he is intel- 
 lectually filled with things far beyond his vision. He 
 flings his life forward, and wins it again in the empty 
 spaces of thought. He casts his bread on the waters, and 
 gathers it after many days. He that saves his life by a 
 prudent economy of inquiry loses it, and he that loses 
 his life in the boldness of well-timed faith saves it ; no- 
 where is a whole-souled venture more applicable than in the 
 higher ranges of thought. We submit ourselves to nature, 
 we submit ourselves to revelation ; we are restrained here, 
 and helped there ; now sobered, and now quickened in 
 inquiry, but all in obedience to the ends of life. This is 
 the spirit of the work here offered ; a trust in the powers 
 of the mind — in many ways aided and corrected — labori- 
 ously, patiently, vigorously, to fulfil all the ends of 
 thought. To ask a question, is to have a clue to the 
 answer. We make no further apology for returning again 
 to difficult discussions. 
 
THE NEW THEOLOGY 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 That which is designated as the New Theology is, on 
 the constructive side, the most general and conspicuous 
 religious fact of our time, and by far the most significant 
 one. What I have to say aims at a better understanding 
 of this fact, in itself, in the forces which give rise to it, and 
 in its practical results. 
 
 The New Theology is after all not a theology. There 
 is no creed that we can call the new creed ; there is no 
 conclusion or series of conclusions that occupies, in this 
 movement, any more a final position than do other 
 allied convictions. The New Theology is not a creed but 
 a tendency ; is not a result but a movement. All men 
 may feel it and share it, — most cultivated men do share 
 it, — no man can make it his own or sufficiently voice it. 
 Indeed it consists largely in breaking old bonds and in 
 refusing to accept new ones. It is a ferment in the reli- 
 gious mind, an excitement in the religious camp, of which 
 many marches are already the result, from which many 
 more are to come. Some of these marches have carried 
 those who have taken part in them quite beyond the 
 lines of safety, and, as we think at least, over the un- 
 certain borders which separate belief and unbelief. Such 
 marching, because it is bold, even to recklessness, and is 
 
 i 
 
• 
 
 2 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 yet the result of the new inspiration, is not, therefore, its 
 most complete or most just expression. Some have hardly- 
 left the camp, and only slightly shifted their quarters in 
 it, yet this restlessness has the same cause and the same 
 significance as the rashness of their fellows. The New 
 Theology is to be judged by that which is sound, safe, 
 and moderate in it, and not by its excesses or its insuffi- 
 ciencies. 
 
 The New Theology stands for an awakening in religious 
 thought which leads it to seek for more flexible, less 
 rigid ; more productive, less barren ; more living, less dead 
 forms of expression and action, and by means of them to 
 come fully under the progressive movement which belongs 
 to our time as one of enlarged knowledge and renewed 
 social life. One of the most conservative forms of 
 thought is the religious form. But that conservatism 
 has been sensibly reduced in many directions, and that 
 fact is the fact of the New Theology, — the greatest fact 
 in the history of the period because it expresses the 
 utmost power and stretch of the tendencies that are 
 securing change, that are pushing men onward, and bring- 
 ing forward the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 The point of greatest interest in this movement is not 
 what leading minds now think, but what directions, what 
 degrees, what rapidity, of progress are to be occasioned by 
 the pulsation of faith in the religious mind as a whole. 
 Our only test of these later results is what we ourselves 
 regard as the most guarded conclusions of the soundest 
 thinkers of to-day, but we may be well assured that 
 humanity, in traversing more slowly the same wilderness 
 of thought, will not pitch its tents in exactly the same 
 positions we have chosen, nor tarry in them merely be- 
 cause we have found it convenient to rest there. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 The real question in society, in religion, even in phi- 
 losophy, is the question of the masses. As the glacier, 
 by its immense weight and untiring pressure in all direc- 
 tions, seeks out, and furrows out, through every zig-zag, 
 the lowest lines of advance, so the popular mind, by the 
 slowness, the multiplicity, the universality of its impres- 
 sions, successfully unites the very facts of life with the 
 very ideas which give them the safest and most compre- 
 hensive solution. If the movement is exceedingly slow, 
 it is far less erratic than that of the more gifted. While 
 much is due to rapidity, much is also due to inertia, in 
 intellectual soundness ; and we are interested in the New 
 Theology not merely on account of the sudden accelera- 
 tions of thought which overtake the minds of intellectual 
 men by means of it, but because of the retardations and 
 corrections and final resolutions it is suffering, and is to 
 suffer, under popular sentiment. This sentiment as often 
 expends itself indirectly, in social problems, as directly, in 
 religious speculation. It brings to the solution of the 
 theories of life the forces of life, and gives them that 
 final, concrete exposition from which there is no escape. 
 The social eagerness of the many is akin to the specula- 
 tive interest of the few, and later results will combine 
 them both. 
 
 We understand, then, by the New Theology a move- 
 ment — one that is to be measured by masses, and often 
 to be watched with most care at points at which it is the 
 slowest. It is the essence of this movement that there is 
 really nothing new in it, nothing final ; that its features of 
 interest, as in all progress, are direction, volume, rapidity, 
 and that it has just now received a new name, because the 
 slope of thought has made all these factors, for the mo- 
 ment, conspicuous. 
 
4 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 The most obvious occasion for this accelerated move- 
 ment in theology has been the progress of knowledge in 
 other directions, more especially in science. This advance 
 of knowledge has forced a reconstruction of the religious 
 idea of the origin of the world, of the order and depend- 
 ence of physical events, of the time occupied by them, 
 and of the part they play in development. This revision 
 of thought would have carried with it no great difficulty 
 had not the dogmatic temper previously brought to these 
 outlying questions a certainty and authority that do not 
 belong to them. The fortune of central spiritual truths 
 had come, in men's minds, to be identified with that of 
 the remote conceptions associated with them, and so such 
 a topic as that of the creation of the world raised the 
 entire question of the adequacy and authority of religious 
 instruction. The infallible is cut off from correction. 
 Readjustment is impossible, and so great riffs, deep faults, 
 began to appear in faith. 
 
 Science has also altered our conception of the govern- 
 ment of God, and so somewhat of his character; the 
 natural has gained immensely on the supernatural. A new 
 statement of both of these forms of action is called for, 
 and of their relation to each other. The confusion and 
 the difficulty of thought at this point have been very 
 great, and neither science, nor philosophy, nor religion, 
 has been able to give us any generally accepted solution. 
 Science, as interested in naturalism, and religion, as iden- 
 tified with supernaturalism, have inevitably slipped into 
 conflict ; the conflict which is incident to diverse and par- 
 tial views, whose lines of reconciliation and union have 
 not been found. 
 
 Just here a most thorough reconstruction of thought is 
 called for — one that shall reach equally our physical and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 moral conceptions, our practical and spiritual experiences. 
 Science has frequently fallen into a dogmatism at this 
 point which has served to relieve the dogmatism of reli- 
 gion, and to make the contest between them somewhat 
 more equal. Absolute naturalism in science is as unten- 
 able as easy-going supernaturalism in faith. The general 
 mind will accept the latter as readily as the former, and is 
 waiting for a philosophy that will accord as full a recogni- 
 tion to the laws of mind as to those of matter. Or rather 
 it possesses latent within itself such a philosophy, and is 
 looking for its more full exposition, defence, and accept- 
 ance. Nor does a positive assertion of agnosticism help 
 the position of science. The human mind will not suffer 
 itself to be curbed in pushing inquiries, which profoundly 
 interest it, without an altogether sufficient reason. The 
 giving of the reason opens anew the entire discussion. 
 
 An occasion for a profound movement in religious 
 thought has been found in the inevitable extension of 
 naturalism, incident to the progress of science, an exten- 
 sion almost as direct in its effects on religious ideas and 
 methods of work as on invention and labor. 
 
 Science has also brought with it new methods of proof, 
 has altered the relation between deduction and induction, 
 and has led us to seek and to demand in all statements 
 which touch facts, even remotely, the confirmation of ex- 
 perience. The facile ways of deduction are much nar- 
 rowed, and many of the conclusions which have been 
 made to rest upon them are received with incredulity. 
 The exact conclusions concerning the subjective con- 
 stitution of God, known as the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 arising largely from verbal analysis, seem little better than 
 moonshine, when contrasted with the faithful, flexible 
 conceptions of science, won in the very presence of the 
 
6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 facts to which they pertain. Hence there is present to us 
 a new estimate of proof, and of the proper subjects of in- 
 quiry, and this brings with it a decisive change for the 
 dogmatic and theological temper. In this movement 
 there is some excess, unwarrantable depreciations, and un- 
 reasonable exaltations, of method, but, as a very profound 
 and valid step of progress, it touches religious thought in 
 many ways, and brings to it correction on many sides. 
 The nature of dogmatism, and the limits of religious dis- 
 cussion, are thrown upon the mind for fresh consideration. 
 
 A still more important regenerative force has been 
 found, in this passage from the old to the new, in ethical 
 inquiry. The law of conduct in individual and social 
 development, in national life, and in the historic progress 
 of the race, is the latest and fullest fruit of knowledge. 
 The ethical law, in its authority, and in the multiplicity 
 of its applications, must ever grow in the minds of 
 men. This law, demanding so much investigation, ever 
 taking to itself new and higher services by virtue of the 
 services already rendered, ever leading to more perfect 
 insight by the insight already achieved — this law, shaping 
 itself into fresh forms of the divine grace, demands con- 
 stant reconciliation with religion, and a constant reconcili- 
 ation of religious truth with it. The divine character, 
 the fundamental principles of faith, find the record of facts 
 in which, and by which, they are brought near to us, in 
 the moral discipline and growth of the world ; and the 
 harmonizing of our religious conceptions with the facts to 
 which they pertain in society must forever go forward by 
 means of this inquiry into the laws of conduct. 
 
 Religious action that does not perpetually reshape itself 
 to these laws of conduct, growing up under the increased 
 insight and widest experience of men, becomes religiosity, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 checking the freedom of thought, and barring out the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. The purity and power of faith at 
 any one period or place must depend on its harmony with 
 the forces of ethical construction there present. While 
 religion corrects morality, morality equally corrects reli- 
 gion, and the two interlace each other as the form and 
 force of the same thing. Indeed, if we accept the fact of 
 the divine being and character as established, morality 
 covers the laws of conduct which grow out of this fact, 
 taken in connection with our own constitution, the consti- 
 tution of society, and of the world to which we belong. 
 Between sound religion and safe morals there is no dis- 
 tinction of subject-matter. They are both the interpreta- 
 tion of the same set of facts. The only way in which 
 there springs up a difference between them is by a limita- 
 tion of the facts accepted, or by a divided method of 
 growth under them. If we deny the being of God, we 
 destroy religion, but only weaken morality. Ethics takes 
 its start in the character of man and his immediate social 
 relations, and from this centre, under the growth of expe- 
 rience, lays down the laws of conduct. Religion starts 
 with the character of God and the convictions of faith sup- 
 ported by revelation, and from this point of light declares 
 the nature of righteousness and the rules of behavior. 
 The results, in either case, should be the same. Our base 
 lines lie in the same field, and our surveys should meet in 
 identical measurements. No moral deductions from the 
 character of God as to the government of the world 
 should contradict the careful inductions of experience, 
 gathered under that very government itself. Indeed, 
 these two processes of thought are present for the very 
 purpose of mutual correction, and any conflict between 
 them implies error in one or in both. 
 
8 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Our piety must be morally sound and productive, and 
 have the practical wisdom and extension of experience ; 
 and our morality must have the vigor of piety and its 
 undying inspiration, if the two are to be constituents of 
 sober character, outer and inner phases of a divine life. 
 The love which is of God must express itself in a wide 
 and wise culture, which nourishes human powers and 
 affections through the entire field of individual and social 
 growth. 
 
 There is a scepticism of unsatisfied feeling in our time 
 that we have most of all to fear. It is a scepticism taking 
 possession of the working classes, because they do not 
 find the heart of Christ in the church of Christ. Social- 
 ism, in its inner force, is a mistaken search for a social 
 construction which shall fulfil the second commandment, 
 at least on its formal side. The masses crave the unity 
 and strength which belong to the Christian idea ; and if 
 they turn from that idea, as expressed in the faith of our 
 day, it is because the truth is not offered to them in a 
 form in which they recognize it. We fall off from the 
 wisdom of God in our dogmatic statements, and so pro- 
 voke a scepticism of thought ; we miss the love of Christ in 
 social construction, and so call forth a wider, more dan- 
 gerous, more revolutionary scepticism of the affections. It 
 is in our hearts that we affirm there is or there is not a 
 God. A sound moral sense, sustaining itself with the 
 force and tenderness of the religious emotions, would win 
 men back, in full ranks, to the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 Our social problems are most urgently and directly the 
 problems of faith. 
 
 The movement which we designate as the New Theol- 
 ogy owes much of its vigor to a renewed effort to j^njte 
 the pietism of religion and the virtue of morality to a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 higher, wider, deeper spiritualism, which shall have the 
 mastery of ideas in their practical development, and by 
 this practical development shall rise continually into purer 
 and more just conceptions of them. This union of the 
 present with the future, the life that now is with the life 
 that ought to be ; this meeting God in the works of God ; 
 this making revelation the light that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world, are the substance of the New 
 Theology ; new only in casting aside the mischievous 
 limitations of faith, and giving it free play once more in 
 the work of interpretation, correction, and inspiration 
 which falls to it. Faith that was ceasing to grow is 
 planted in fresh soil, and becomes again the tree of life, 
 bearing twelve manner of fruits, and yielding its fruit 
 every month ; while its leaves are for the healing of the 
 nations. 
 
 The present volume proposes five topics of consideration, 
 which closely concern the New Theology : Naturalism, 
 Supernaturalism, Dogmatism, Pietism, and Spiritualism. 
 The discussion will involve a partial reconsideration of 
 topics before discussed by me, but the importance of the 
 topics, their modified presentation and new relations, will 
 justify this demand for fresh attention to them. While 
 these topics of thought in their final statement are the 
 most difficult that come before us, they return to us as 
 no other topics do, and affect the inner flow of thought 
 and outward form of action with a vigor all their own. 
 As long as life is more than meat, will men consider, and 
 be wise in considering, these themes which bring rest to 
 the mind within itself, and lay down lines of thought and 
 laws of conduct that stretch to the spiritual horizon. The 
 mind raises questions for the very end of answering them, 
 and though the answers may be long in coming, the in- 
 
IO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 quiries themselves imply the movements of thought which 
 are finally to bring them. 
 
 An agnosticism that raises doubts, and then professes 
 an absolute inability to solve them, overlooks the fact, at 
 least in part, that the push and pertinacity of inquiry 
 arise from the clues that are leading to its resolution. We 
 would stand by all that is given to knowledge and sound 
 faith, both in matter and in mind, and put once more the 
 same questions that men have put from the beginning, 
 believing that while no answer is absolute, each succeed- 
 ing answer may be more exact, more complete, than any 
 preceding one. We may well remember that _we are, 
 where all men should love to be, at the dawn of reason. 
 Though the day seems to break slowly into light, our im- 
 patience is the impatience of children who take slight 
 measure of the events and processes about them. If we 
 were to have more, we should in truth have less, having a 
 weaker hold on the inner force of facts, dropping into a 
 sensuous measure of things and out of the spiritual range 
 of ideas. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 NATURALISM. 
 
 We understand by naturalism the universal presence of 
 laws in the world, and their coherence in a complete sys- 
 tem. We do not, however, understand by it one form of 
 law, to the exclusion of other forms ; but the union of 
 different forms in one harmonious whole. Naturalism 
 includes, therefore, not simply physical laws, but intellec- 
 tual laws and moral laws as well ; the laws of matter, of 
 thought, and of conduct. It embraces not simply forces, 
 but reasons and motives. It has to do not only with the 
 coherence of causes and effects, but also with the connec- 
 tion of premises and conclusions, and the union of feel- 
 ings and actions in volition. If we insist on naturalism 
 under the single form of physical law, we shall soon, if we 
 are coherent in our thinking, involve the spiritual world 
 in a deadlock that cannot be overcome. 
 
 The world has unity, not identity, of method ; coher- 
 ence, not sameness, of parts. Naturalism means this 
 unity and coherence, and because of it the system of 
 things is wholly fitted to the reason of man. The element 
 of reason in it is not fragmentary and sporadic, but con- 
 current and pervasive. To say this is only another way 
 of asserting naturalism. The prevalence and power of 
 reason in the world, by which it becomes the school of 
 reason to man, constitutes its naturalism — the systematic 
 
 ii 
 
12 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 presence of method. This naturalism is an essential con- 
 dition to inquiry and to control, to knowledge and to 
 conduct. Action which is not mechanical, nor organic, 
 nor instinctive, but, higher than these, rational, must have 
 a rational basis of procedure, and this basis is law. When 
 law ceases, reason ceases ; and action ceases as the expres- 
 sion of thought. All moral discipline must come to an 
 end along those lines which divide order and confusion, 
 an action of method and methodless action. 
 
 This truth of naturalism, though always present more 
 or less to men's thoughts, is the one emphatic lesson of 
 science ; a lesson which has unspeakably enriched the 
 human mind, increased its powers, and enlarged its 
 responsibilities. In the enforcement of naturalism, science 
 has found itself in conflict with religion, because religion 
 has cherished many expectations, and adopted many 
 methods, not well grounded in law ; has conceived and 
 entertained a supernatural more or less in conflict with the 
 natural, and has thereby lost the secure footing of obe- 
 dience to law, an obedience science never wearies of 
 enforcing. Here is a discrepancy in our two methods of 
 thought of utmost moment, and one to be overcome only 
 by a thorough reconsideration of the religious notion of 
 supernaturalism, on the one side, and a wise extension of 
 the scientific idea of naturalism, on the other. Our first 
 step toward this enlargement and harmony of thought is 
 a reinforcement of the completeness and coherence of the 
 divine method, a reassertion of naturalism as the basis of 
 spiritual life equally with physical life. While naturalism 
 must be redefined, it is a fatal mistake to carry our re- 
 ligious experience away from it. This is a leading occa- 
 sion of the New Theology, and its primary result is the 
 extended recognition of a comprehensive naturalism, cov- 
 
NATURALISM. 1 3 
 
 ering both the physical and the spiritual, and rendering 
 them a suitable field for the coherent, rational develop- 
 ment of the powers of man. God and man thus meet, in 
 one continuous, progressive, and prosperous movement. 
 The divisions of the universe, if not healed, are being healed, 
 by the grace of God. We are coming to understand all 
 things as organic parts of one process — redemption. 
 
 In one direction, especially, — both because the inquiry 
 is initiatory, and is a favorable example of method — we 
 wish fully to enforce the strictly natural terms of faith, 
 that of inspiration. We must know, to begin with, on 
 what terms the mind deals with religious truths. The 
 prevalent notion of inspiration, so far as it implies a super- 
 natural and final authority in Revelation, takes the truths 
 of Revelation from under the ordinary laws of thought, 
 and enforces them upon the mind in a manner alien to the 
 development of reason. So far as religious truth rests on 
 authority, it ceases to rest on reason, ceases to be a dis- 
 cipline to reason, ceases to be subject to its laws. Reason 
 may, and often must, accept much on authority, which it 
 does not, for the time being, understand. This is no sus- 
 pension of reason. Its earlier action is found in testing 
 the sufficiency of the authority, and its later action in 
 testing, at its leisure, the correctness of the assertions 
 made under that authority. At neither point can reason 
 be straitened without pushing the mind from its proper 
 basis. The inquiry into the rightfulness of authority 
 must usually precede the inquiry into the truth which the 
 authority supports; but it can never suspend that inquiry 
 when the proper time for it comes. The one act only 
 prepares the way for the other. The length of time that 
 may lapse between them is a matter of the mind's growth 
 and of convenience. 
 
14 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 The doctrine of inspiration, so far as it creates an 
 authority external to the mind itself, and makes that 
 authority final, slips from the basis of naturalism, and, 
 at the very threshold of theology, separates religious 
 truth from all other forms of truth, takes it from under 
 the laws of mind to which it is addressed, and enforces 
 it in a supernatural way. This method we believe to be 
 profoundly unreasonable, since it arises in partial suspen- 
 sion of reason in its highest function ; this method we 
 believe to be profoundly unwise, since it tends to pre- 
 vent the free, hearty, and sufficient exploration of this 
 highest field of thought, thus enclosed by the quickset 
 hedge of authority. The continuity of the intellectual 
 and spiritual world is thus broken up, and we have a 
 dividing line beyond which the powers of mind are in 
 suspension. Of course, this suspension, so obviously in- 
 admissible in itself, is enforced with many evasions and 
 concessions ; it should not be enforced at all. Every 
 measure of arrest is a loss to the mind of its proper activ- 
 ity, and that, too, in the best and holiest direction. We 
 may well pluck off our sandals when we tread holy places, 
 but to tread them is the divine gift. 
 
 The works and words of God are not divided in their 
 relation to mind. If the works of God can bear all the 
 limitations, delays, and failures of reason, so can his 
 words. If the works of God yield the largest service to 
 man in calling forth inquiry and in responding to it, so 
 do his words. If the works of God, direct from the hand 
 of God, may still bear human handling, so may his words, 
 which come to us through the mutable minds of men. 
 
 What is now to be said will be regarded by some as an 
 attack on inspiration, and so an attack on religion. It is 
 not an attack on inspiration, except as inspiration is 
 
NATURALISM. 1 5 
 
 enforced in suspension of the laws of the mind ; nor on 
 religion, except as religion is fenced about by a super- 
 naturalism which disguises its true character. Religion 
 rests on a divine method which penetrates the world 
 from centre to circumference, a method which is the 
 fulness of the divine thought. In this form we wish to 
 possess it and defend it, and, therefore, we are willing to 
 break down those barriers of authority, which, like the 
 uncalled-for defences of a camp, take from us the true 
 field of conflict. 
 
 We wish to see the Scriptures reposing on their own 
 basis, the only sufficient and secure basis, of intrinsic 
 truth ; we wish to see them fully restored to all the uses — 
 even abuses, if you please — of mind ; we wish to acknowl- 
 edge and possess an inspiration which consists in the 
 soul's mastery of its own medium of life, its inbreathing 
 of its own native air, the spiritual presence and love of 
 God. There is a naturalism by which the physical world 
 holds the wisdom of God like a saturated solution ; by 
 which the laws of thought are seen to have everywhere 
 constructive mastery; by which the affections of the 
 mind are offered to us as the last, highest, fullest product 
 of growth — this naturalism, the way of God, and the way 
 to God ; this naturalism, the path of light that threads 
 the creation from the beginning, passing ever more and 
 more into perfect day, we are in search of, and must be 
 allowed, no matter how dizzy the height or perilous the 
 way, to pursue in humble, faithful exploration, helped, in 
 spite of all apparent difficulties, by every inspired agent 
 and servant of God. 
 
 In an attempt to establish naturalism as the only 
 secure foundation of religious life, the methods of re- 
 ligious truth must first be settled. We must know, at 
 
l6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 the very outset, to what laws of inquiry we are commit- 
 ted, or whether to any laws ; whether in the highest form 
 of search into truth, the work is to be done for us, or 
 whether we are to be trusted to it and it to us with that 
 hesitancy, feebleness, and obscurity which fall to our 
 powers ; whether the power is helped or we are helped in 
 the use of the power ; whether truth is eternally truth in 
 living action under its own laws, or whether it is capable 
 of an unconscious transfer, and can be made to play an 
 obscure, yet vital, part in a mind that is not mastering it. 
 
 We can meet with no great success in religious inquiry 
 till we correctly understand our sources of knowledge and 
 their right method of use. Evidently the existence, char- 
 acter, and government of God are to be established, if 
 established at all, in connection with the constitution of 
 the world, and pre-eminently in connection with its 
 spiritual constitution. If these outer and inner facts of 
 being do not contain and confirm our religious theory, 
 that theory is void, for it is ultimately a theory of these 
 very things. The world, then, in its physical, intellectual, 
 social, and spiritual features offers the fundamental facts 
 which we have occasion, in religious thought, to under- 
 stand and expound. 
 
 A more familiar source, and, to most minds a more 
 direct source, of religious truths is the Scriptures, what 
 we term Revelation. It is of the utmost moment that 
 we apprehend correctly the relation of Revelation to our 
 empirical inquiries into the constitution of man and of 
 society. These last are necessarily changeable and grow- 
 ing terms with us, and our new knowledge from these and 
 kindred sources must either bring fresh interpretation to 
 Revelation, or increasingly collide with it. The freedom, 
 form, and force of our investigation in the field of actual 
 
NATURALISM. \J 
 
 life — spiritual life as we know it — will turn very much on 
 our notion of the nature of this controlling term in re- 
 ligious thought, Revelation. Our view of it may be such 
 as greatly to narrow inquiry, or such as greatly to enlarge 
 it ; such as to perplex its processes, or such as to ac- 
 celerate them. 
 
 The character of Revelation is discussed as the doctrine 
 of inspiration. Nothing, in our religious methods, will 
 be more controlling than our conception of this doctrine. 
 There are much vagueness and diversity of opinion on the 
 topic, and yet there is a very general concurrence, in 
 Christian churches, in the belief that inspiration stands, 
 in some very peculiar way, for a divine word which is 
 sufficient and final in religious thought ; that Revelation 
 takes the things disclosed by it out of the category of 
 truths to be constantly investigated and forever restated, 
 and puts them in that of truths to be apprehended and 
 accepted once for all. The doctrine of inspiration thus 
 goes far to determine the nature and limits of inquiry in 
 the religious world. An authoritative rule of faith and 
 practice is something very different from an open and 
 changeable field of investigation. 
 
 No degree of labor, therefore, is lost which is directed, 
 at the very outset, to this dependence on each other of 
 natural and revealed religion, of the truths we are still 
 reaching and those we have already reached. If these 
 are so far removed from each other as to have different 
 sources of authority, and to make different appeals to the 
 human mind, we must have that fact constantly in view, 
 and, even then, much perplexity will arise from it. This 
 feeling of diversity is the more common religious experi- 
 ence, and gives occasion to a very conservative and dog- 
 matic temper, and one distrustful of inquiry in the actual 
 
1 8 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 world. The office of religion is felt to be rather the crea- 
 tion of a new world, than the development of the world 
 that now is. 
 
 We believe, and wish to show, that the two forms of 
 truth are one and the same, rest on identical grounds, 
 and must be unfolded concurrently. We wish to aid in 
 opening all paths of thought. Inspiration is the mind's 
 mastery of truth, — nothing less than this and there is 
 nothing greater than this — and this mastery is in no 
 person, at no period, and in no important particular, com- 
 plete. The rational criteria of knowledge are uniform, 
 throughout the realm of thought, no matter how purely 
 spiritual that thought may be. 
 
 A doctrine of inspiration that affirms the divine author- 
 ity of any principle, aside from the insight of the mind of 
 the recipient, involves an inadmissible idea, is without 
 sufficient proof, fails to perform the very service expected 
 of it, and interferes, at every stage, with the just develop- 
 ment of religious truth. 
 
 The idea is untenable in the degree in which we strive 
 to give it distinctness. There are three kinds of truths in 
 the Bible : those which contain fundamental principles in 
 the divine government and in human conduct, those 
 which utter the feelings of the writers in their own per- 
 sonal experience, and those which are simple statements 
 of facts. It is in connection with the first form of truth, 
 the truth of principles, that the doctrine of inspiration is 
 of most moment. Some are ready to confine it to these 
 spiritual truths, and yet, after all, it is least applicable to 
 them. Insight alone gives us the mastery of the truth, 
 and makes it truly valuable. In the measure in which 
 principles are understood are they possessed, and in the 
 measure in which they are obscure are they lost, by us. 
 
NATURALISM. 1 9 
 
 Truths cannot be used successfully as mere rules of 
 thumb in action. When we miss comprehension, we miss 
 the point of light, the point of power. If, then, the last 
 and highest phase of exaltation in religious truth trans- 
 cends insight, we are putting darkness in place of light 
 where light is most precious. We object to any view of 
 inspiration which precludes error by overstepping the 
 human mind, because it breaks down the inner organic 
 force of thought in the very act in which God most 
 strengthens it. It humbles us inexplicably, where God 
 exalts us unspeakably. No life can come out of a process 
 which itself lacks life, and least of all in the spiritual 
 world. The soul never so lives, as when it lives before 
 God in the light of his truth. 
 
 We must accept the freedom and force of the mind in 
 grasping the truth, otherwise the truth is not grasped. 
 The power of understanding the truth is of so critical 
 and profound an order that it must be allowed to com- 
 plete itself according to its own nature. Nor can we 
 properly say that any comprehension of truth by a sacred 
 writer is due to a foreign impulse. The normal as op- 
 posed to the abnormal, the natural as contrasted with the 
 divine, is defined by the very fact that the percipient 
 mind does, by its own free movement, enter into the truth 
 as truth, and that to the very limit of its comprehension of 
 it. It would not be more unphilosophical to say that the 
 prophet, in a portion of his physical functions, lives by a 
 miracle, than to say that he in part thinks by a miracle. 
 Thought as thought is, in all its degrees, natural ; as 
 human thought, it is limited in all its degrees, and, in all 
 its degrees, is open to variety, partiality, error. It can 
 retain its constitution on no other terms. We have no 
 occasion for two causes of one thing, and the one cause 
 
20 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 of human thought is the human mind, aided in many 
 ways, but in no way overpowered, by the divine mind. 
 
 The advocates of an inspiration that fills human speech, 
 as a dry conduit of words, with the living flow of divine 
 thought, do not seem to have sufficiently considered the 
 incompatibility of the two terms they are handling. In- 
 congruous things are united by them in impossible ways. 
 Language and idea can only coalesce as a living process of 
 thought. This union must take place either in the human 
 mind or in the divine mind ; or the two must unite in and 
 by the truth. The truth is the only point of spiritual con- 
 tact. To put any strain upon our faculties beyond their 
 own normal activity is so far to confound them ; is to turn 
 vision into illusion by pressure upon the eyeball. Noth- 
 ing is more removed from all knowledge than words which 
 have lost their interpretation within the mind itself. They 
 are stones without cement — that leak at once the living 
 waters that are entrusted to them. That which is under- 
 stood affiliates with itself throughout under the action of 
 the comprehending mind ; it has no affiliation with that 
 which is not understood. 
 
 Even in prophetic vision, it is something seen and felt, 
 and so far understood, that is spread before the eye. The 
 prophetic mind is prophetic because it catches the gleam 
 of the winding river. The light of God's presence is on 
 the years before it as on the years behind it. An inspira- 
 tion that should exceed insight, and yet claim to be of the 
 nature of truth, would be as unintelligible as if no human 
 mind intervened, as if we saw unknown words suddenly 
 appear upon the wall. We should have instant recourse to 
 a teacher who could read and understand for us the in- 
 scription. It is astonishing, to the verge of foolishness, 
 the way in which we speak of the truth, and bow to it, 
 
NATURALISM. 21 
 
 and salute it, as if it were an external reality, and not only 
 and forever an inner, spiritual presence, born of our own 
 thoughts. We are willing to turn the high-priest of truth 
 into the keeper of a fetich, as if he were more to us thus 
 than as ministering to the life of the soul within the soul 
 itself — leaving us to make what way we can with the 
 divine message. 
 
 There is no inspiration except in truth, and no truth 
 except in the vision of the mind. Words do not contain 
 it, but only words that are comprehended. That would 
 be a strange revelation which revealed nothing, but the 
 truth is revealed only as the mind is in living interplay 
 with the vehicle of expression. We might as well regard 
 light as disclosure independent of the eye, as to conceive 
 the light of God's spiritual kingdom as a certain something 
 transmissible without vision. 
 
 This brings us to another difficulty. If religious truth 
 is given in an inspiration that transcends the powers of 
 mind it should be, nay it must be, transmitted from person 
 to person in a like way ! How can the pupil perceive what 
 the teacher could not conceive ! How can we rise to truth 
 the apostles could not win ! In its daily uses the truth 
 must settle at once to the level of the minds of those who 
 have to do with it. Speaker and listener must stand on 
 the same spiritual basis. In the degree in which truth 
 rises above the moral level in which it is employed it is 
 useless ; it is no longer truth for any purpose of those in- 
 terested in it. The spaces between the powers which can 
 understand a principle, when it is stated, and the powers 
 which can grasp that principle, in the facts which contain 
 it, are only human spaces — spaces traversable by human 
 thought. If we separate the mind of the teacher from the 
 lesson he is to communicate by a stretch too great for 
 
22 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 his comprehension, he must necessarily cease to be a 
 teacher. We acquire truth by coming in contact with a 
 mind that has mastered it. If, therefore, in our theory of 
 Revelation we put between the first message and the re- 
 ceiver of it an interval too great for the human mind, we 
 have done either a mischievous thing or an unnecessary 
 thing : unnecessary, if we are each of us to master the 
 Revelation all the same ; most mischievous, if we are cut 
 off from this mastery. 
 
 In the last analysis, what the doctrinaire affirms by 
 inspiration is the inspiration of his own mind. No other 
 inspiration can help him. His own mind is the sole 
 medium of truth ; as his own eye is of vision. The doc- 
 trine he affirms to be unmistakable is his own conception 
 of that doctrine. When Calhoun claimed the right of 
 the citizens of South Carolina to carry their property, to 
 wit, slaves, into the territories with the same freedom with 
 which the citizens of Massachusetts carried their property, 
 to wit, household goods, into them, Webster responded : 
 " We hold our property under common law ; you hold your 
 property under the local law of South Carolina. What 
 you are demanding to make universal is that law which is 
 an abomination to mankind." 
 
 What the theologian wishes to carry with him as of 
 universal authority is his own conception of truth. He 
 has nothing else to offer. We are all agreed that truth in 
 itself, truth yet to be disclosed, whether latent in nature 
 or in Revelation, will have full, divine authority when it 
 comes. All that we wish to secure is perfect freedom in 
 mining, reducing, and coining this gold. We admit no 
 pre-emption. 
 
 This difficulty and kindred difficulties have been ob- 
 scurely felt, and have resulted in a constant reduction of 
 
NATURALISM. 23 
 
 the doctrine of inspiration, till only a shadow of its former 
 self remains, — a subtile presence sustaining the mind in 
 its spiritual action. Yet the only logical outcome of this 
 softening tendency is naturalism, the mind free with its 
 own powers. In the measure in which it lacks freedom, it 
 lacks use, and the growth incident to use. 
 
 The simplest form of the doctrine of inspiration, as the 
 communication of truth without error, is the earlier form 
 of verbal dictation. This gave at least an exterior prod- 
 uct of a definite kind. Yet such an inspiration is so 
 wholly out of keeping with the circumstances of Scripture 
 composition, so inconsistent with the changeable forms 
 and hap-hazard ways in which the Word has come down 
 to us, so opposed to the real wants of men as to make it 
 rationally untenable — outside the possible conclusions of a 
 sound judgment. It is new cloth in an old garment that 
 instantly makes the rent worse. But between this view 
 and the view that inspiration stands simply for the mind's 
 hold upon truth, there is no intelligible stopping-place. 
 The mind may be quickened and aided in many ways, it 
 may attain penetrative and wide vision, but it cannot be 
 pushed beyond its own limits, or be checked within them, 
 without becoming confused, helpless, mechanical in its 
 action. If its own insight is overstepped, something like 
 verbal dictation must take the place of knowledge ; if it is 
 repressed in its own powers, something very like defeat 
 and barrenness must follow. The divine may be enclosed 
 in the human, and it is so enclosed in all just, spiritual 
 thought ; but how can it either restrain or transcend the 
 human, without making the uses to which the human is then 
 and there put to the same degree formal and valueless ? 
 
 The surplus of revelation beyond insight, in whatever 
 way it is given, cannot be truth, either to him who utters 
 
24 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 it or to those who receive it. It is the frenzy of an oracle 
 the rhapsody of a mind unduly heated within itself, the 
 unreason of man put for the reason of God. It would 
 seem, therefore, that if we are to overpass the insight of 
 the mind in any degree, the only and sufficient way of 
 doing it, the way farthest removed from mysticism and 
 those dark shadows of confusion and frailty which so 
 easily rest on the human spirit, is this very way of verbal 
 dictation. The mind may at last return to such a record 
 later, with the hope of making something of it. Yet even 
 then, if the truth is mastered, the truth and the spirit 
 meet, in the instant of communication, on a level, and 
 that level the level of naturalism. The feeling, therefore, 
 which drives us away from verbal inspiration should carry 
 us at once over to its only proper antithesis, the freedom 
 of the human mind with the divine mind. 
 
 We thus escape the conflict of two distinct methods : 
 the mind's self-contained search after truth, and the put- 
 ting of truth upon it by an agency external to it. All 
 forceful inspiration must be perplexed by this incongruity 
 of processes. So far as the Scriptures are made up of 
 familiar facts, so far as they are the record of personal 
 feelings, the purely natural suffices, and must suffice, for 
 their explanation. But between human products and the 
 immediate products of the divine mind, there must be a 
 marked cleavage. To find this cleavage, define it, and 
 respect it, will be a point of first importance, and of hope- 
 less perplexity, in exegesis. 
 
 Hence the doctrine of an authoritative inspiration has 
 always been found more or less incompatible with free 
 inquiry and thorough criticism. Christian men have had 
 occasion, over and over again, to soften their notion of 
 inspiration, and of the range of the truths dependent on it, 
 
NATURALISM. 2$ 
 
 in order to meet the new facts brought before them, and 
 the growing temper of inquiry. The progress of truth 
 has been delayed, and bitter and misleading discussions 
 have arisen, because of the doctrine of inspiration. The 
 facts of science, as in reference to the creation, have first 
 been contemptuously rejected, then slowly received, and, 
 last of all, made fully compatible with a modified view of 
 the authority of the Scriptures. Free inquiry cannot 
 readily proceed, when its path may be crossed at any 
 moment by this line of cleavage which separates human 
 thoughts and divine truths, the partial and the relative 
 from the complete and the absolute. The doctrine of in- 
 spiration has not, empirically, justified itself as a means of 
 entering into all knowledge. It gives occasion to the 
 very strange assertion that complex spiritual truth, as it 
 lies in the human mind, can be absolute. We thus reach 
 a result the exact opposite of that we had in view. The 
 doctrine of inspiration arises largely from diffidence, a 
 distrust of human wisdom. We are compelled, however, 
 in defence of the doctrine, to affirm that the most wide- 
 reaching truths are complete and final in human know- 
 ledge. It thus cuts us off from that ever renewed inquiry 
 into them which is at once the real modesty and true 
 power of human thought. 
 
 The moral discipline of the world is thereby funda- 
 mentally disturbed. That discipline consists quite as 
 much in finding the truth, in correcting and enlarging it, 
 as in obeying it. Indeed, these two things are insepar- 
 able from each other. At no point ought this discipline to 
 be more ample and obligatory than in connection with 
 religious truth. But so far as inspiration renders this 
 truth complete and final, it limits inquiry and arrests 
 moral training. Religious truth is thrown out of har- 
 
 ** 
 
 - 0? 
 
 ihiversitt; 
 ■■ms&> 
 
26 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 mony with other forms of truth, and religious action with 
 the action of the world. Everywhere else investigation 
 is in order, and is allowed freely to correct all previous 
 conclusions. Not thus is it in faith, and the inevitable 
 result follows. Human thought, in its freedom, lashes 
 against these boundaries of the religious world, and tlie 
 air is filled with needless confusion and clamor. 
 
 No strong tendency, however, is found in the spiritual 
 world without some underlying reason. What is the 
 reason which has so long sustained this doctrine of inspi- 
 ration, and made it the very citadel of theological belief? 
 It is, I think, our just sense of dependence on God, and 
 our desire to be assured of his guidance. This feeling 
 has given this belief, as it so readily does other truths, too 
 exterior and mechanical a form. The great gifts of God 
 are in ourselves. His chief aid is in the very action of our 
 own powers. Everything else is quite secondary to this. 
 The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Inspiration prop- 
 erly means a breath of life, a living transfer of the divine 
 thought to us, a free participation on our part in it. We 
 deny a formal inspiration only that we may insist on a 
 real one. We brush aside an external, ineffectual gift, 
 only that we may accept an all-sufficing one in the mind 
 itself. God does most for us, when we are doing most 
 for ourselves ; and we no longer make any division be- 
 tween the human and the divine in truth. It is all human, 
 all divine ; the atmosphere in which the spirit of man and 
 the spirit of God meet each other. The spiritual dis- 
 places the mechanical, and when we think of God justly, 
 God is present with us. His spirit is the spirit of truth, 
 and testified within the mind itself. Truth is a living 
 presence passing forever between mind and mind. Inspi- 
 ration is always one thing, intelligence rejoicing in the 
 
NATURALISM. 2*J 
 
 light which floods the universe from the Divine Presence. 
 We are not denying the doctrine, we are placing it on a 
 more adequate and comprehensive foundation. We are 
 identifying the method of God in Revelation with his 
 universal method in the world. We are giving the actions 
 of God the harmony and extension which belong to them. 
 We are enforcing naturalism. 
 
 This belief of a sufficient and final statement of reli- 
 gious truth in the Scriptures lacks proof. Wanting clear- 
 ness and inner coherence, it requires a degree and form 
 of proof which it is difficult to furnish. If the Scriptures, 
 by complete harmony and absolute correctness, so far as 
 we can test these qualities, seemed to justify this claim 
 of divine authorship ; if the notion of divine authorship 
 could be so framed as to include no incongruous terms ; 
 if the Scriptures themselves explicitly affirmed their su- 
 pernatural origin, there might be an internal force in these 
 concurrent facts that would carry conviction. But none 
 of these things are present. There is much in the Scrip- 
 tures which embarrasses this claim of infallible inspira- 
 tion, and renders it hard to accept ; the notion is not 
 coherent within itself or analogous to the divine method 
 in other directions ; and the statements of the Bible on 
 the subject are such as readily to receive a much less 
 rigid interpretation. 
 
 If we were to look for external proof of this doctrine of 
 divine intervention, and demand this evidence in a suf- 
 ficient form, the unsustained assertions of the writers 
 themselves would go but a little way in establishing the 
 dogma. No man can testify to his own inspiration, or to 
 the inspiration of another, in a conclusive form. The 
 facts are too obscure, and admit of too easy misappre- 
 hension. This testimony must be sustained, as Christ 
 
28 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 said of his own testimony, by the witness of God. We 
 should thus be compelled, under external proof, to call for 
 a perfectly explicit assertion of superhuman intervention, 
 and the direct support of the declaration by miraculous 
 power. Moreover, the entire proof so made out, should 
 be transmitted to us in a method beyond reasonable crit- 
 icism. Any weakness in any of these particulars would 
 so reduce the evidence as to destroy its irrefragable 
 character. It belongs to so definite and so extraordinary 
 a claim as this of divine aid, and one involving such 
 ample resources, to be equally definite and startling in its 
 vindication. The supernatural, when offered as a fact, 
 must establish itself undeniably out of its own abundant 
 means. A distinct, divine element in Revelation must 
 not be so hidden and smothered by natural causes as to 
 lose its true position. This is to breed hopeless confusion, 
 and leave the mind without any secure footing. 
 
 The proofs actually offered of a transcendent inspira- 
 tion are very far from meeting these claims. They are 
 chiefly assertions in the New Testament made concerning 
 the Old Testament, and one and all they easily accept the 
 less rigid construction. Thus Paul says : " All Scripture 
 is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for re- 
 proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." ' 
 Certainly ; this assertion is every w r ay as true on the sup- 
 position that the mind of the writer, enveloped in the 
 thought of God, is thoroughly possessed by the truth, as 
 on the supposition that this truth is in any way pushed 
 beyond his powers. Errors of thought and of expression 
 do not prevent the profitableness of Scripture for reproof, 
 correction, instruction. They rather put it on the same 
 plane with our other terms of discipline in these purposes. 
 
 1 2 Tim. iii., 16. 
 
NATURALISM. 29 
 
 Inspiration, in this passage, may as readily mean a normal, 
 as an abnormal, action of mind. 
 
 Peter seems more explicit when he declares : " Prophecy 
 came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of 
 God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 1 
 While we can put into these words the stronger form of 
 inspiration, if our minds are already convinced, they 
 readily receive the weaker one. The will of man is con- 
 trasted with holy men of God, and means not human 
 action, but human action as separating itself from divine 
 counsel. The antithesis lies between the obedient and 
 the disobedient temper, and not between human thought 
 and divine thought. The force we give to the words, 
 " moved by the Holy Ghost," will turn on our apprehension 
 of the office of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. The 
 coming of the Holy Spirit is especially emphasized by 
 Christ. In his last address to his disciples he says : " I will 
 pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, 
 that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of Truth J 
 whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, 
 neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth 
 with you and shall be in you." 3 These assertions are not to 
 be urged as promises of a special inspiration to accompany 
 the disciples. This rendering is much too narrow. They 
 are addressed through the disciples to us all. They stand 
 for the general and comprehensive fact of the fellowship 
 of all good men in spiritual truth with God, the eternal 
 Spirit of Truth. Such a declaration as this, we live and 
 move and have our being in God, should sweep from our 
 thoughts, as by a whirlwind running before the Divine 
 Presence, any notion of any particular and narrow and 
 sub-conscious way in which a few favored minds are acted 
 
 1 2 Pet. i., 21. 2 John xiv., 16, 17. 
 
30 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 on of God. No ; it would be the infinite misfortune of 
 these elect disciples — shall I say of seclusion and mystery 
 — not to have been fully brought forth into the light of 
 the Spirit of Truth ; not to have stood with the Word 
 of God and the household of God in the open presence 
 of. God. The condition of a simple believer, living and 
 moving and having his being in God, is one infinitely pref- 
 erable to that of a disciple, so pressed upon and unfairly 
 dealt with by the divine strength as to become the mouth- 
 piece of truth beyond his own mastery. Such a separa- 
 tion of the inspired writer is to his own detriment and 
 dishonor. God's methods are large, generous, general. 
 They belong to all believers. He does for each of them 
 the best possible thing. There is no hierarchy based on 
 exceptional power or position. We all drink of the cup 
 of Christ, and are baptized with his baptism. 
 
 " There is a spirit in man," says Job, " and the inspira- 
 tion of the Almighty giveth them understanding." 1 
 What could it do less than this ; what could it do 
 more than this ! Understanding is the inspiration of the 
 Almighty. It is his own life. The entrance of the word 
 giveth light. Thus Peter feels that he has right to the gen- 
 eral exhortation : " If any man speak, let him speak as 
 the oracles of God." 2 Yes, indeed, if any man speak, let 
 him speak as the oracles of God. 
 
 The idea of inspiration is somewhat definitely disclosed 
 by the sacred writers. So grand a thing is knowledge felt 
 to be by them that, even in its inferior forms, and wrong- 
 ful forms, it is referred to divine wisdom, and likened unto 
 it. God is represented as saying concerning Bezaleel, the 
 son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah : " I 
 have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in 
 
 1 Job xxxii., 8. 2 I Pet. iv. II. 
 
NATURALISM. 3 1 
 
 understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of 
 workmanship to devise cunning works, to work in gold 
 and in silver and in brass." ' Not a more explicit statement 
 is anywhere made of inspiration than is covered by the 
 skill ascribed to this workman in gold and silver and brass. 
 A little farther on it is said : " In the hearts of all that are 
 wise-hearted I have put wisdom." It is also affirmed : 
 " The counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those 
 days, was as if a man had inquired of the oracles of 
 God." 3 
 
 The Scriptures give us other indications of the nature 
 of inspiration. Says Luke, in opening his gospel: 
 " It seemed good to me also, having had perfect under- 
 standing of all things from the very first, to write unto 
 thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou 
 mightest know the certainty of those things wherein 
 thou hast been instructed." He does not so much as 
 intimate that his words are to have any other authority 
 than this of his personal knowledge ; a grievous mistake, 
 certainly, if the real subscription of his gospel, giving it 
 weight, is the divine autograph. In the presence of such 
 a confirmation, other grounds of trust would be insignifi- 
 cant. The apostles claim authority for this testimony as 
 eye-witnesses of the event. Is this then their authority, 
 or is it not ? 
 
 The Gospels, like other portions of Scripture, taken in 
 their relation to each other, declare, as conclusively as 
 any set of facts can declare, their own character, that 
 they were put together out of changeable and incomplete 
 material, material so incomplete as to preclude either a 
 consecutive or a full narrative. What is their weakness, 
 from one point of view, goes far to establish their essen- 
 
 1 Ex. xxxi., 3. 2 2 Sam. xvi., 23. 
 
32 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 tial correctness. Their variety of form, taken in connec- 
 tion with their general coherence in spirit and substance, 
 calls for that substratum of facts on which they claim to 
 rest. We are thus indebted to the particular knowledge 
 of Luke for the preservation of the two parables of the 
 prodigal son and the good Samaritan, containing the 
 most explicit development of the two factors of faith, — 
 the love of God and the love of man — and to St. John 
 for the full spiritual force of the words of Christ. 
 
 A sound mind cannot easily see the extent to which 
 these thoroughly natural causes have been wrought into the 
 very substance of the Gospels, determining what has been 
 saved and what lost in the teachings and life of Christ, 
 without feeling that this naturalism, which has been 
 allowed such range among these most precious things, 
 must be supreme throughout ; that the words and acts 
 of Christ, like all instruction from the beginning until 
 now, were committed unreservedly to the flow of events. 
 The seed was scattered, and fell, some by the wayside, 
 some on good ground. Any other conclusion is incongru- 
 ous, improbable, and so irrational. The force of circum- 
 stances declares itself everywhere. There is no divine 
 intervention, correcting the confusion of the narrative, or 
 supplying its deficiencies. We seem to be compelled to 
 admit that the partial and confused knowledge that lies on 
 the face of the Gospels expresses the real facts in the case. 
 
 If we contrast the Gospels with each other, we find dis- 
 crepancies very unexpected on the supposition of an over- 
 ruling inspiration, but perfectly natural, not to say unavoid- 
 able, if each author is left to make the best he can of his 
 own resources. Even the Lord's Prayer is not given in 
 the same words by the two evangelists, and one or both 
 of the forms are, therefore, inaccurate. If these most select 
 
NATURALISM. 33 
 
 possible words arc inexact, what is there that may not be 
 so ? If we compare the Sermon on the Mount as recorded 
 by Matthew and by Luke, the agreement between the 
 two renderings is sufficient to show that the writers have 
 in view the same discourse, while the omissions and 
 variations on the part of Luke indicate plainly that his 
 knowledge, in this particular, was much less complete 
 than that of Matthew. Indeed, his version of the beati- 
 tudes is so imperfect as to be liable, taken by itself, to mis- 
 lead us as to their very spirit. Matthew says : " Blessed 
 are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
 heaven." Says Luke : " Blessed be ye poor, for yours is 
 the kingdom of God." Matthew tenderly affirms, " Blessed 
 are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted "; Luke, 
 in a temper much less subdued, declares, " Blessed arc 
 ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh." We can hardly 
 doubt which is the more correct statement of the gentle, 
 discriminating words of our Lord. A feeling of alarm 
 passes over us at the danger we have incurred of missing 
 the spiritual aroma that attended on the real utterances of 
 Christ, by the imperfect version of some one evangelist. 
 
 It is hardly admissible, in the presence of such facts, to 
 say that Matthew and Luke are alike preserved by divine 
 intervention from material error. They are too plainly 
 not kept from decided deficiency and partial mistakes. 
 We may well think lightly of these discrepancies, if all we 
 wish for is an open path to the mind of Christ ; but if we 
 are in search of explicit and final authority, this desire at 
 once makes them serious. If we still insist that the evan- 
 gelists are preserved from any serious error, we are putting 
 ourselves on ground that is tenable only because it is vague 
 and indefinite. No facts are a sufficient refutation of an 
 
 erratic spirit of interpretation. As men of sound minds, 
 3 
 
34 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 we ought to meet all these weak defences of the highest 
 truths with an earnest protest in the name of sober reason 
 and simple righteousness. How exact and ample is the 
 assertion of Peter : " Ye have purified your spirits in 
 obeying the truth through the Spirit." ' What other liv- 
 ing office is there for the Spirit than that given by John : 
 " He will guide you into all truth." 2 These processes 
 of thought and action are perfectly normal, and we 
 are not incautiously to allow any confusion to creep into 
 them. If our theory is unsound, what will our results be 
 under it? If we set aside reason in initiating inquiry, 
 how shall we restore it in its progress ? 
 
 Paul is especially relied on for dogmatic authority. But 
 Paul's epistles, as the Epistle to the Romans, or the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, are full of debate, argument, 
 proof. What is the significancy of this fact ? Evidently 
 this: he is relying on the inner coherence, justness, and 
 energy of his presentation for its authority. His force is 
 that of discussion, and being that of discussion it is neither 
 more nor less than it. Having finished the argument, he 
 is not at liberty to say : These logical relations are not 
 the grounds of my assertion, its real grounds are the in- 
 forming words of the Holy Spirit. First to make an appeal 
 to reason, and later to withdraw into the presence cham- 
 ber of Deity, is illusive and dishonorable. If one should 
 offer us conclusions which seemed to be wholly his own, 
 and when he had called forth discussion and contradiction 
 should proceed to quell it with the affirmation : These are 
 simply the words of the highest authority on this subject, 
 we should feel that we had been dealt with unfairly. We 
 had been drawn into the field of debate by false appear- 
 ances. Paul is not right in putting his own personality 
 
 1 I Pet. i., 22. 2 John xvi., 13. 
 
NATURALISM. 35 
 
 back of his words to the degree in which he docs, if, after 
 all, it does not belong there ; if he is tempting us to cross 
 swords with him and then leaving us to shiver our weapons 
 on the buckler of the Almighty. For my part I must have 
 too exalted an opinion of St. Paul to believe that he ever 
 did any such thing. If he was a divine herald of truth, 
 one method, and one only, properly belonged to him, 
 that of quiet, exact utterance of the message entrusted to 
 him, as one resting on an authority infinitely beyond his 
 own. Who is able to sort out things human and things 
 divine when once commingled, and to assign each its true 
 value ? 
 
 His own view seems certainly to be, not this, suffi- 
 cient and final authority, but this, an earnest search after 
 truth. " We know in part and we prophesy in part." 
 " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to 
 face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as 
 I am known." ' This is his exhortation : " Havine these 
 gifts, differing according to the grace that is given us, 
 whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the pro- 
 portion of faith." 2 With a noble humility and a divine 
 courage, he says : " Brethren, I count not myself to have 
 apprehended ; but this one thing I do, forgetting the 
 things which are behind and reaching forth unto the 
 things which are before, I press forward toward the mark 
 of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 8 
 Grand Apostle of Truth ; let nothing intervene between 
 our souls and thy soul, as nothing intervenes between thy 
 soul and God. It is this fellowship of life with life, in 
 one eternal movement toward God, that is alone regenera- 
 tive in human experience. Is there not in these words of 
 Paul something very like a direct testimony against a full 
 
 1 I Cor. xiii. , g, 12. * Rom. xii., 6. 3 Thil. iii., 13. 
 
36 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 and sufficient revelation of truth? This doctrine of in- 
 spiration carries with it immeasurable confusion when we 
 are dealing with the expression of personal feeling, the 
 poetic insight of David, the pathetic lament of Jeremiah, 
 the forecast of Isaiah, the tenderness of John, the up-lift 
 of St. Paul. These things must be human, genuine, 
 through and through, or they sink into spiritual rubbish. 
 
 We cannot manage the personal element, which ap- 
 pears so frequently, so freely, and so profitably in 
 Scripture, otherwise than by accepting it as perfectly 
 sincere. Paul's estimate of faith, hope, and charity, con- 
 tained in the thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to 
 the Corinthians, must be understood as the product of 
 his own experience ; and his fervid exclamation in the 
 eighth of Romans, opening with the words, " Who shall 
 separate us from the love of Christ," must be rejoiced in 
 as the fulness of his own affection. 
 
 One is also justified in supposing that if the apostles 
 were under a complete protection against error in spiritual 
 things, this fact would have shown itself in their words 
 and actions as well as in their writings ; in their handling 
 of the early churches under the circumstances of peculiar 
 perplexity and danger which they encountered. We 
 must have the strongest reasons for asserting an inspira- 
 tion in their written words which we do not find in their 
 spoken words. When the Gospel began to be freely 
 preached to the Gentiles, and accepted by them, the 
 relation of these converts to the Jewish church and to 
 Jewish observances came before an apostolic synod at 
 Jerusalem for settlement. W T hile a wise and acceptable 
 conclusion was reached, it is quite certain that a good 
 deal of diversity of opinion and feeling appeared among 
 the apostles, and that this division of sentiment remained 
 
NATURALISM. 37 
 
 a long time. St. Paul and St. James occupied extreme posi- 
 tions, while St. Peter vacillated somewhat between them. 
 Paul's account of the synod, given in the second chapter of 
 Galatians, shows that the irritation of the discussion was 
 considerable, lingered many years in the differences it 
 involved, and frequently embarrassed him in his work. 
 " Those who seemed to be somewhat, whatsoever they 
 were, it maketh no matter to me : God accepteth no 
 man's person ; for they who seemed to be somewhat " — 
 James, Peter, and John — " in conference added nothing 
 to me." 
 
 This difference of view is so far reproduced in the 
 epistles of Paul and of James, that acute and earnest 
 exegetes have been unable to reconcile the two statements. 
 A fact of such supreme importance, in the early history 
 of the Church, as this of the divided feeling of the apos- 
 tles on the manner of extending the Gospel does not 
 accord with the supposition of a divine guidance that 
 precluded error of doctrine. The apostles seem to have 
 been left, like the servants of truth everywhere, to make 
 what shift they could in reaching their conclusions and 
 doing their work. No exception was made in their be- 
 half to the universal method. But if they were not able 
 to guide themselves perfectly under the most critical and 
 important circumstances, how shall they guide us without 
 error ? Though much more importance has been at- 
 tached to these differences of opinion than belongs to 
 them, they evidently involved some error and limitation 
 of view. 
 
 We have now said enough to show that we have no 
 burden of proof to overcome in rejecting a doctrine of 
 inspiration that carries the impulse toward truth off the 
 plane of human powers. We are at full liberty, therefore, 
 
38 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 to consider the historic results of this doctrine, and the 
 mischievous part it has played in theology. Dogmatic 
 development tends to three phases. The truth which lies 
 back of any dogma is first held freely, uncritically, with 
 changeable definition. The truth is submissive to a 
 living purpose in the feelings and actions. The period of 
 analysis has not come. The thoughts have not yet 
 turned back on themselves in the process of exposition 
 and defence. Later, under the push of speculation and 
 unbelief, doctrine is turned into definite dogma, which 
 the believer is called on to accept under specific terms. 
 The chief interest of this phase of movement is intellec- 
 tual, not vital. Still later, when these limits of thought 
 are found to be insufferable bounds, robbing the truth and 
 the mind under the truth of their proper liberty, they are 
 broken over, and belief is taken up again into a more spir- 
 itual experience, with deeper and more personal insight, 
 and with more living service. What the truth thus loses 
 in precision, it far more than gains in scope and power. 
 Henceforth it ranks with those divine things which give 
 light without themselves being fully disclosed in the light. 
 In this process of development, partial and misleading 
 images are cast aside ; rigid terms of definition are burned 
 up in the heat of the mind's action ; and the conceptions 
 under consideration come to be held, like moisture in the 
 atmosphere, as life-giving terms, capable of many, most 
 variable, most beautiful manifestations, no one of them 
 final. The dogmatic period is transitional between a lower 
 and higher use of truth. It lies between conceptions less 
 purified and spiritualized, and those more purified and 
 spiritualized. It is a hasty crystallization of the truth, 
 but it aids in separating its real substance from an obscure 
 admixture of sensuous elements. The dogma is dissolved 
 
NATURALISM. 39 
 
 again in a purer medium the moment the growing 
 mind calls for it in its living processes ; and in each of 
 these dissolutions and distillations and crystallizations, it 
 gains additional purity. This movement of thought is 
 every way wholesome. The storm-clouds that lie low and 
 massive and threatening, when the winds have passed and 
 the tumult ceased, reappear serene, orderly, infinitely 
 peaceful in the upper air. 
 
 The engine, with sharp puff and visible power, flings 
 out in the frosty air great billowy masses of vapor and 
 smoke, full of expansive force. This voluminous and 
 luminous mass is pervaded by the inherent energies which 
 create it. As the engine passes on, this streamer of clouds 
 is slowly dissolved. The vapor, its potent term, is ab- 
 sorbed in the atmosphere, and the smoke, its dead term, 
 remains a dark trail behind it. So in a dogmatic contro- 
 versy, instinct with living tendencies, the power of spirit- 
 ual convictions is quickly reabsorbed, while the verbal 
 deposit lingers only to obscure and cloud the horizon, and 
 mark the path that has been left behind. 
 
 The doctrine of the Trinity assumed form in the midst 
 of theosophic and Gnostic speculations. Occult concep- 
 tions, foreign to our experience and alien to the Christian 
 temper, find expression in it. In the eternal begetting of 
 the Son, and the perpetual procession of the Spirit from 
 the Son and the Father, we are in the midst of images 
 which have no explanatory power. The doctrine of the 
 atonement received its most explicit statement at a time 
 when Roman law was in full revival, and common law was 
 beginning to move in its fountains. The result was a 
 narrow, governmental view of our relations to God, which 
 we have been slowly casting off ever since. The smoke 
 of the cloud could not be absorbed in the spiritual atmos- 
 
40 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 phere as a medium of life, and we have waited long for it 
 to fall to the earth as cinder and dust. 
 
 The doctrine of inspiration reached its rigid and exact 
 statement in the scholastic period of reformed theology ; 
 the period which followed its first years of protest and 
 strength. Protestant theologians, having broken with the 
 church and with tradition, sought authority, in a period in 
 which authority was chiefly external and counted for much, 
 in the Scriptures. They pushed the doctrine to the full 
 extent of verbal inspiration. This conclusion was the 
 opaque element obstructive to vision, and we are still 
 waiting for a pure and pellucid medium between us and 
 the works of God, between us and God. The slow sepa- 
 ration has gone on, however, and there now remains to 
 many Christian minds only one trace of darkness, the ar- 
 bitrary assertion that the Spirit is present in Scripture for 
 the positive anticipation of error in spiritual things. This 
 is the last, low trail of the cloud that covered half the 
 heavens. 
 
 The uses of the doctrine of inspiration — by no means 
 unimportant, times, places, and persons being considered 
 — have shown two forms of unequal value, and often of 
 conflicting force. This doctrine aims at authority, and 
 finds for it a pivotal point in the Scriptures. It was the 
 desire for authority, and the supposed need of authority, 
 which carried the doctrine in expression from point to 
 point, till a final defence was set up in the assertion of the 
 absolute verbal completeness of the divine message. 
 
 This desire for authority in religious faith involves 
 different and diverse tendencies. It may come in satis- 
 faction of an intellectual and spiritual craving for assured 
 truth in a region of peculiar doubts and difficulties. 
 The soul covets rest and casts itself freely on a belief 
 
NATURALISM. 4I 
 
 that promises support. The sense of personal feebleness 
 and confusion is met by the doctrine. But a very different 
 and much less commendable feeling is often involved in 
 this desire for authority. It is not rest for our own 
 spirits that is sought for so much as conclusions that we 
 can lay peremptorily upon others. The strength of the 
 Church is felt to be the infallibility of its faith, and 
 each zealous disciple becomes much in earnest to affirm 
 and to share this infallibility. The doctrine then arises 
 in satisfaction of the wish to rule, so universally present 
 to men. Those who hold the doctrine for this end easily 
 fall into the condemnation of Christ : " For ye have taken 
 away the key of knowledge ; ye entered not in yourselves, 
 and them that were entering in ye hindered." 1 
 
 This desire for authority, this desire to arrest inquiry, 
 as having fulfilled its purpose, is, in the world of per- 
 sonal, spiritual experiences, a mistake. It means a point 
 of support taken outside the mind itself, not the poise 
 and rest of the mind within itself. Authority arises in 
 suspension of the inner life of the soul. Its dicta become 
 an indigestible something, incapable of assimilation, which 
 has found its way into the food of the spirit. At no 
 point does the divine method differ more broadly and 
 fundamentally from the human method than at this 
 point of authority. The very gist of divine nurture is to 
 hold us steadily to the double duty of discovering and 
 obeying the truth. We cannot well obey truth, till we 
 can also understand it. The two processes demand the 
 same temper, and something of the same wisdom. For- 
 mal obedience, divorced from diligent inquiry, easily loses 
 the very nature of virtue. A mistake in the method of 
 faith may readily become a mistake in the very substance 
 
 1 Luke xi., 52 
 
42 THE NEW THEOLOGY, 
 
 of faith, and quite mislead the mind. The bat, hanging 
 head downward by hooks on his wings, is not more unlike 
 the bird, riding restfully on the brisk wind, than is the 
 mind, subjected to authority, unlike the mind that seeks 
 freely unto God. To accept authority in religious truth 
 is to run the risk of falling into the hands of religious 
 rulers, and being employed for the most mischievous 
 purposes of tyranny. 
 
 This subject of authority is obscure with us, because 
 we mingle, in its discussion, very different things. We 
 confuse the spiritual ordering of the thoughts with the 
 outward control of the actions by religious organizations. 
 Men, in all stages of development, seek earnestly for 
 authority in society, which stands with them for peace, 
 strength, and good order. The Church, as clothed with 
 power, has been a primary means of construction. This 
 beneficent service we associate with its authoritative 
 interpretation of truth. But the limits of ecclesiasticism, 
 as a form of government, are being reached. Those who 
 think otherwise may still find spiritual control, in its 
 most effective form, in the Catholic Church. It is the 
 true mission of Protestantism to appeal to the liberty of 
 the mind with the truth, and this appeal can accept no 
 new limitations. It arises the moment thought is vigor- 
 ous enough to claim its own laws of development, and 
 assert itself as sufficient unto itself within its own spiritual 
 realm. 
 
 The masses of men may still need instruction in their 
 search into religious truth, and personal influence in 
 their obedience to it. This fact modifies, without altering, 
 the fitness of freedom. Protestantism cannot vacillate 
 between the old and the new. It must accept its own 
 principles, and live by them. It strives in vain to main- 
 
NATURALISM. 43 
 
 tain the shreds of ecclesiastical authority by attaching 
 an extraneous force to the truth, aside from its appeal 
 to the mind. The order it strives to induce in society is 
 a purely spiritual one, and, in attaining this order, it 
 must fully accept the conditions it has laid down for 
 itself. 
 
 The doctrine of inspiration has deepened dissent and 
 division in Protestant churches. It has enforced the 
 letter, as opposed to the spirit, and made the devotees 
 of faith blind and refractory from the outset. When a 
 believer has laid hold of an exact statement, — as Luther 
 of the words, This is my body, — it has been found 
 impossible to shake him loose. Every verbal difference 
 has been a barrier to be fought over with inexhaustible 
 bitterness. If a free appeal to reason had been open, 
 much confusion would have readily disappeared. But 
 such an appeal was precluded by the doctrine of inspira- 
 tion, and by the dogmatic temper attendant on it. The 
 letter was not freely dissolved in the spirit, and so ready 
 to crystallize again in obedience to the inner, rational 
 movement. The soul became blind and bigoted by a 
 false adhesion to misapplied symbols. A judicial temper 
 was lost, and a confused and obstinate one took its 
 place. What inexhaustible stores of fanaticism and folly 
 have been found in The Revelation. This one book, by its 
 abuse, has blighted many a spirit which it should have 
 blessed. 
 
 When one begins to talk about the number of the 
 beast, and make up the sum of years which lies between 
 us and the millennium, we feel that he is hopelessly drop- 
 ping off from the Divine Mind as disclosed in the march 
 of events. 
 
 The effort to secure authority has resulted in the loss 
 
44 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 of authority, a device to prevent division has increased 
 division, and discussion of peculiar bitterness has grown 
 out of that which forbade discussion. The army of be- 
 lievers has been scattered and peeled, wrangling over 
 innumerable trifles, and unable to see the sun in the 
 heavens. The sharp, acrimonious strife over the bread 
 and the wine, over the form of baptism, over the seventh 
 day and Sunday, offers such a tithing of mint, anise, and 
 cumin, as was scarcely surpassed in the Jewish Church. 
 Mind and heart have been alike blinded and blasted by 
 this turning of small things into large ones. God's world 
 has been hidden behind one's fingers. 
 
 The search for authority, we have seen, is double, 
 authority in support of trembling faith, and authority 
 against recalcitrant faith. Not only did external authority 
 put irreconcilable division between believers, it ultimately 
 weakened faith within the soul itself. This has been the 
 second grave mistake in the doctrine of inspiration, a 
 mistake that stands in bold relief theoretically and his- 
 torically — the loss of the hold of the mind on truth as 
 truth. The doctrine has acted in contradiction of the 
 words of Christ : Ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free. If there is one fundamental thing 
 which the Christian Church has lacked, in a conspicuous 
 way ; one fundamental thing which it should have pos- 
 sessed in a conspicuous degree, it has been tolerance, 
 an earnest and wide search for truth, and a patient hold- 
 ing fast to it in tenderness. 
 
 The spirit of science has risen in the assembly of the 
 saints to administer well-deserved censure. The failure of 
 the Church to nourish a truth-loving, truth-seeking temper 
 is attributable, in large part, to this very doctrine of in- 
 spiration. The Church was supposed to possess perfect 
 
NATURALISM. 45 
 
 truth, and had, therefore, no occasion to go in search of it. 
 Those who ventured out of beaten paths were thought of 
 not as eager inquirers in the world of Revelation, but as 
 foolish adventurers, wickedly forsaking the old ways. 
 That which made this independent search more difficult, 
 made it also, when undertaken, more dangerous. The 
 mind was thrown, to begin with, into a defiant, rash atti- 
 tude, and found itself at every step unsustained and 
 uncorrected. A headlong, resentful temper bore it on 
 toward error. Nothing can well be more oppugnant to 
 an indwelling of the spirit of truth in the minds of all, 
 than this bondage to the letter, which attends on any com- 
 plex statement as a final form of thought. No matter 
 how simple the words may be, religious principles are im- 
 measurable in their scope. The divine impulse may at 
 any moment transcend its previous terms. 
 
 This conception of inspiration is inapplicable to higher 
 forms of truth. Truth is not a verbal proposition. It is 
 the inner, visible coincidence of thought and the subject 
 of thought. As long as we are dealing with words, we 
 are missing ideas, we are missing truth. No matter how 
 correct any given formula may be, when offered to us, it 
 holds no truth till we too see its relation to the facts cov- 
 ered by it. Truth is the insight of the mind, nothing less, 
 nothing more. A divine push, that pushes the mind off 
 this balance of thought, is violence in the spiritual world. 
 Words are paper currency in the exchange of thought, 
 and owe their value to their power to command the coin 
 of truth. Used otherwise, they are illusive symbols of 
 value, and not value itself. To give, therefore, authority 
 to words, or to an irreconcilable conception that lies back 
 of them, is the worst possible sin against the truth, since it 
 blocks all farther pursuit of it, all possible approach to it. 
 
46 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 This seems very plain, when we are dealing with the 
 more profound forms of truth. Who would think of 
 understanding mathematics otherwise than by under- 
 standing it, or penetrating the divine purpose in the 
 government of the world otherwise than by penetrating 
 it ! There are some limited and comparatively barren 
 statements of facts which can be made to us in words, 
 rendered by us in familiar images, and accepted without 
 any insight. But these assertions lie in a narrow, sensu- 
 ous experience, and play a very small part in Revelation. 
 Revelation, as a profound fact, is understanding the mind 
 of God, and this means that our thoughts are keeping 
 pace with his thought, that our spiritual experiences are 
 touching their meridian in the noontide of his presence. 
 
 Strangely enough, when the Apostle Peter states twice 
 over, quite explicitly, a simple fact that transcends our 
 knowledge, and yet comes within the forms of imagina- 
 tion, the preaching of Christ to the spirits in prison, a 
 large share of the Christian Church turns from the asser- 
 tion as one inconsistent with previous convictions. If 
 revelation of unknown events — a direction in which reve- 
 lation is most possible — is sought for, here it is, and yet it 
 is here to very little purpose. It is well for us to remem- 
 ber that from this most obvious form of a supernatural 
 disclosure the Scriptures keep quite aloof. 
 
 The one divine attitude, on our part, is teachableness, a 
 meekness and poverty of spirit which are slowly enriched 
 by the kingdom of Heaven. We must not account our- 
 selves to have attained, but, forgetting the things that are 
 behind, press forward toward the mark of the prize of our 
 high calling in Christ Jesus. Certainly, timid and feeble 
 minds can be helped, but they must be helped on the 
 basis of naturalism and not off of it. Otherwise they sink 
 
NATURALISM. 47 
 
 into hopeless dependence, spiritual pauperism, and are pecu- 
 liarly liable, under any sudden trial, to drop into unbelief. 
 
 The slovenly reasoning Ave often meet with in the re- 
 ligious world, the narrow outlook from a single window 
 thrown open for a specific purpose, should pass away, and 
 we should learn to meet God in his own world, in his own 
 large way, through the entire range of his providences. We 
 should follow Christ needfully as he moves among men, 
 letting fall his blessings on those who are nearest to him. 
 If fundamental truth is ever and always that which dis- 
 closes to us the mind of God, then inspiration, in its higher 
 forms, must be insight, understanding Christ, when we are 
 with him, behold his works, and hear his words. 
 
 The apparent reverence expressed by the doctrine of 
 inspiration is often deceitful, and simply puts the mind in 
 bondage to human authority. The echo and re-echo of 
 dogma in the region of dialectics take from us the sim- 
 plicity and purity of heart by which we see God. We 
 have no inner habit by which we find our way alone into 
 the Divine Presence. Among the various renderings of 
 the Scripture, we accept that as inspired with which we 
 are familiar. We are bowing to a divine authority, but it 
 is an authority which is expressed to us in a very human 
 way, by very fallible men. The entire relation of man to 
 God is embarrassed. Instead of inquiring directly into 
 the truth, we are put upon an indirection in which men 
 and systems and interpretations and transmissions play a 
 leading part. The soul, seeking unto God, is fairly caught 
 in the net of churchcraft. If thine eye is single, it shall 
 be full of light. The importance attached to some devia- 
 tion from an established standard greatly increases this 
 confusion, and leaves the mind worn out, and its strength 
 wasted, by the mere accidents of sound thought. 
 
48 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 A faulty form of inspiration mingles hopelessly the 
 natural and the supernatural. We meet with no diffi- 
 culty in the supernatural ; we accept it with lightness and 
 gladness of heart ; we believe it to stand in living relations 
 with the natural, and so standing, to be the sensible joy 
 of the Divine Presence. As the higher powers of man 
 are first rooted in his physical endowments, and, deeper 
 down, in the very soil of the earth, and yet preserve their 
 transcendent character, so the supernatural, in its true 
 form, is the very flower and fragrance of the natural, 
 the vanishing point of physical laws as they are taken up 
 into the divine purpose — clouds that are losing form and 
 color and melting into the blaze of light about them. 
 
 We cannot understand the world without the living, 
 spiritual presence of God in it, and the miraculous is this 
 presence in its most sensuous form ; the mind and heart, 
 of God overpassing, with a little intensity of emphasis, 
 their ordinary expression. A supernatural, therefore, 
 which arises in fulfilment of the natural, is in most pro- 
 found sympathy with it, is the voice of the speaker, in 
 fitting intonation, ringing the thought on its way; is the 
 light and heat with which the electric current discloses its 
 presence. The supernatural is deeply affiliated with the 
 inmost force of faith, and rational life. 
 
 We take objection to the Divine Presence which attends 
 on the doctrine of inspiration, not because it is super- 
 natural, but because it enters in suspension of the highest 
 form of the natural, the insight of mind ; because it substi- 
 tutes for the purest impulse of reason in the human soul, 
 we know not what obscure and blind tendency ; because 
 it represents God as acting, not as we find him acting, a 
 God of order, but as one of confusion. This method gives 
 us heat, without light ; is not so much a tongue of flame 
 
NATURALISM. 49 
 
 resting harmlessly on men, as one of fire burning them up. 
 A repression of human power has always gone with this 
 controlling sense of the divine hand. The thoughts of 
 men, the activities of men, have been overborne by it, 
 and the spirit of truth has been sought rather as a power 
 to quicken the dead than as one to give more life to the 
 living, more wisdom to counsel, more coherence to labor, 
 more justification to hope. There has thus arisen a deep- 
 seated tendency to displace the earthly life with the 
 heavenly life, rather than to make the one the harmonious 
 prelude of the other ; to invoke with importunate and 
 painful prayer a divine intervention, rather than to fill 
 full, sweetly full, with pure waters, all the fountains and 
 streams of our present being. The supernatural has over- 
 whelmed the natural, and so has lost its own right to be, 
 and to be believed in. This is a most fatal mistake, and 
 has given rise to much of the unbelief that now attends 
 on religion. If nature and faith are found in conflict, 
 there can be no doubt with which the victory will rest. 
 
 Inspiration, real inspiration, is the light that springs up 
 at the point of highest, most harmonious, union of the 
 natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, 
 in their perpetual passage into each other in all wisdom 
 and righteousness. The natural, by itself alone, is dead, 
 the body without the soul, the word without the idea ; 
 the supernatural, breaking in on and displacing the natu- 
 ral, is a stress of life too great for the physical, intellectual 
 powers which sustain it, a meaning so intense as to strangle 
 the forms of speech through which it struggles to express 
 itself. As long as God is the immanent soul of things, let 
 us not fear to handle freely the divine thought, let us 
 make sure rather that we are dealing with this thought, 
 declared in the full light of day, and not with the phos- 
 
50 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 phorescent gleams of decaying things, superstitions that 
 still flicker on the horizon of belated spirits. Inspiration 
 is the rational extension of the divine thought in the 
 minds of men. Knowledge as knowledge involves the 
 highest, most normal, activity of mind. This activity is 
 nourished on two sides : by what we know as nature, in 
 the narrow use of the word — strictly causal relations ; and 
 by what we know as the supernatural, a divine presence 
 in these fixed relations, both ordering and extending them. 
 Knowledge contains in itself both terms, — the fixed and 
 the free, the thing comprehended and the comprehending 
 power — and demands them both in all its higher acts of 
 acquisition. 
 
 If we insist that a determinate inspiration pervades the 
 Scriptures, or even their spiritual truths, — though it cer- 
 tainly is not easy to separate between the historic facts 
 and the moral principles they contain — we put all the dif- 
 ficulties, and the growing difficulties, of exegesis at their 
 maximum, and make any material failure to meet them 
 fatal. We carry our costly vase in our hands, yet to drop 
 it once is to shatter it utterly. The authority of the 
 Bible, and so our view of its value, are imperilled at every 
 step of interpretation, and we are tempted to shield it in 
 many disingenuous ways. It has thus suffered wreck and 
 rescue many times already. A single rock may be fatal 
 to the bravest ship that ever floated, and one failure may 
 destroy the whole fabric of faith, built up on this extrav- 
 agant claim. A double evil follows : many persons are 
 precipitated into entirely needless unbelief; and many, 
 evading this result, become flimsy and insufficient in 
 thought, unprogressive and narrow in action, and unspir- 
 itual in the very substance of their lives. The theological 
 mind, instead of sharing to the full the extraordinary im- 
 
NATURALISM. 5 1 
 
 pulse of our times ; instead of making the divine char- 
 acter tally with the enlarging revelation of it in the world, 
 has often been busily occupied, in the last half century, 
 in contending against the progress of knowledge, and 
 with futile contrivances to protect its own theories. What 
 should have been a heavenly discipline, infinitely enlar- 
 ging faith, has been productive of miserable makeshifts, 
 stupid denials, reluctant concessions, half apprehensions. 
 Such an attitude confirms unbelief in the unbelieving, and 
 divides the religious camp into hostile factions, chafing 
 under the endless collisions of the progressive and the 
 dogmatic temper. 
 
 The indescribable and bitter bigotry of the mediaeval 
 era, begetting all narrowness of thought and cruelty of 
 method, resting like the shadow of a wrathful heavens on 
 the whole community, issuing in an insane sacrifice of 
 human life, instead of passing utterly away, has given 
 place but slowly to a crabbed temper that makes each 
 necessary concession too late to escape its evils, too in- 
 complete to use its fruits in growth. 
 
 It is not easy to do the devout mind a more serious 
 injury than this of putting the moral and the religious 
 impulse in conflict. One or other of the two strongholds 
 of our spiritual nature is weakened, our confidence in 
 moral law or our confidence in its personal equivalent in 
 the character of God. There is no more fundamental 
 harmony in our personal development than that which 
 should lie between ethical law and religious sentiment, 
 between the government of the world and our conception 
 of the mind of God. Yet the two are constantly falling 
 apart, a fact often due to the irrefragable character given 
 to dogma by this doctrine of inspiration. Religious men 
 may come to entertain a kind of spite toward scientific 
 
52 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 inquiry and ethical truth, as if they were in some way 
 enemies of religion. This they never can be save by a 
 strange perversion of knowledge and morality on the one 
 hand, or of religion on the other. The first and second 
 great commands are not more closely united than are 
 morality and religion, knowledge and the will of God. 
 
 This possible conflict between a moral precept and a 
 command of God — as if the two were not necessarily the 
 same — is brought out in the attempted sacrifice of Isaac 
 by Abraham, and the ordinary interpretation of it. In 
 this narrative and its exegesis the very human lesson of 
 implicit, blind obedience is put forward, and the very 
 divine lesson of patient, rational inquiry hidden behind it. 
 Our ready acceptance of the story, in its literal form, 
 grows out of the easy adhesion of our untrained thoughts 
 to the miraculous, and the reluctance with which we take 
 up the lessons of truth on their strictly natural basis. It 
 is a strange perversion of the divine method to suppose 
 that God, by a miraculous intervention, commanded 
 Abraham to violate the plainest principles of morality, 
 and then left him in the confusion of thought thus 
 begotten as a trial of faith. Nothing could well be more 
 opposed to our experience of the ways of God. Such 
 devices would institute a hopeless conflict between the 
 sober duties of life and our religious conceptions concern- 
 ing them. If we suppose Abraham not yet wholly to 
 have escaped from surrounding influences and the sense 
 of the fitness of human sacrifice, and — as has been sug- 
 gested — that this narrative marks the culmination of the 
 struggle in his own life, then all is clear, and an inadmis- 
 sible conception is no longer laid upon our credulous and 
 overburdened faith. 
 
 Like perplexities are constantly brought to us in the 
 
 
NATURALISM. 53 
 
 study of the Old Testament by the absolute character 
 given to its teachings. Things fundamentally wrong are 
 passed upon as essentially right, and we are not allowed 
 to understand them, in the only way in which they can 
 bring us any instruction, as the products of the time and 
 place to which they belonged. The mind thus loses its 
 proper outlook on truth, its own advanced position, the 
 training of God for thousands of years. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we accept the Bible for what it 
 so plainly is, a growing revelation, a slow finding by men 
 of their way among spiritual things, the dangers and diffi- 
 culties of interpretation disappear. The shell drops from 
 the kernel, and no edible portion is wasted. The Bible 
 loses nothing and gains much. Slight flaws in the head 
 of an axe are of no moment, flaws in its cutting edge are 
 fatal. The view that we urge leaves the cutting edge of 
 truth entire, and transfers defects to the dead weight that 
 drives it. 
 
 If we are confronted with the fact that God is repre- 
 sented as offended with David for numbering the children 
 of Israel, and as inflicting a severe punishment on the entire 
 nation for this fault of the ruler, we have only to reply, 
 " Thus imperfectly did David conceive the divine charac- 
 ter," and the criticism drops at once to the ground, like 
 chaff from wheat. The imprecatory psalms do not hide 
 the lustre of those of worship ; nor the pessimism of 
 Ecclesiastes — " vanity of vanities, all is vanity " — burden 
 the faith of Isaiah, beating its way heavenward with un- 
 wearied wing. If St. Paul mistakenly expected the sec- 
 ond coming of Christ, the fact offers no difficulty ; it is 
 only our false attitude toward his opinion that is trouble- 
 some to us. If truth is simply the inexhaustible light of 
 divine love, it is immaterial exactly where that light falls, 
 
54 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 or how much of it seems to be lost. Like the light of 
 day in unclean or in desolate places, it is always pure and 
 forever unmeasured ; thus is it with a divine message in 
 the mouths of men. What subversion of first truths, 
 what horrible fanaticism, what far-reaching cruelty have 
 been accelerated by the story of the witch of Endor and 
 the command, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 
 Sound thought has given way before this injunction, and 
 thousands of lives have been sacrificed to it ; and that, 
 too, in a matter which touches most intimately the gov- 
 ernment of God. 
 
 We sum up the difficulties we find in complete inspira- 
 tion with the comprehensive objection, that it prevents 
 that constant reconstruction of religious truth which 
 properly belongs to all times, and for which our own time 
 is peculiarly ripe. If there is any one principle obvious 
 in itself, and thoroughly enclosed in the laws of mind, a 
 principle completely incorporated in the world about us, 
 a principle that embraces all spiritual exhortation and 
 scriptural motive, it is this very principle of religious 
 progress, an unfolding of the minds and hearts of men 
 toward God, a mastery in society of all divine impulses, 
 a spreading abroad of the light and life of God till his 
 kingdom is fully with us. But an inspiration that claims 
 to give us anything like a perfect statement of truth, 
 as contrasted with an inspiration that simply puts the 
 mind, under its special powers and phases of development, 
 in living contact with the truth, checks spiritual unfold- 
 ing, and often holds us back from the divine ministration 
 nearest to us. If the truths of the Bible, or any portion 
 of its complex principles, are complete, if nothing can be 
 added to them and nothing taken from them, then these 
 truths must be known to us in this perfection, and no 
 
NATURALISM. 55 
 
 longer remain to be inquired into. A verbal statement 
 that is absolute, but not understood, is a deceptive idea. 
 Language owes its power to the meaning it imparts. 
 Language that conveys no idea has no significance, and 
 language that imperfectly conveys its idea is, to that 
 degree, imperfect. If the doctrine of complete inspira- 
 tion is to avail anything, we must accompany it with the 
 assertion of our own power perfectly to measure the 
 truth given us in the Scriptures, and, as its leading 
 principles are there dealt with, to catch the breadth and 
 fathom the depth of the divine mind. But if we contrast 
 this bold statement with our feeble and contradictory 
 attainments in knowledge, with the real insight of any 
 body of theologians, it seems both foolish and profane. 
 We have not yet seen that body of men who, collectively 
 or singly, have had any right to plant themselves across 
 the path of the divine word among men. It required a 
 vision three times repeated to get the Apostle Peter out 
 of the way of truth in a single, simple particular. 
 
 We do not escape this dilemma by saying that the 
 Scriptures are complete, but not completely understood. 
 A perfection of this sort can subserve no purpose of 
 authority. It is a perfection, by the very supposition, 
 unverifiable, since it is not yet reached. The Bible is to 
 us what we understand it to be, and no more. We are 
 liable, by this sophistical form of thought, to commit 
 again that deep offence against reason — holding fast an 
 untenable dogma by a trick of words. Truth must be left 
 in theory in that incomplete form in which we find it in 
 practice, if we are to understand our duty under it, and 
 our method of inquiry into it ; if we are to be led by 
 the providence of God and by his growing revelation 
 heavenward. We are in danger of throwing away the pres- 
 
56 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 ent in favor of the past, of losing God's gifts to us by our 
 veneration of his gifts to others, of building the tombs of 
 the prophets and slaying the prophets themselves. 
 
 The time has come in which the spiritual mind should 
 turn from dogmas to facts — dogmas that have arisen from 
 a speculative expansion of single, partial, and inadequate 
 ideas, till, from a cloud the size of a man's hand, they 
 have come to brood in darkness over the whole heavens ; 
 facts in the physical and spiritual world, that are springing 
 this very day with creative power from the mind of God, 
 and, under the light of his revealing spirit, are laying 
 open to us from a new and higher position the divine 
 counsel. The time has come to turn from logical discus- 
 sion to ethical law — discussion that has exhausted and 
 frittered away in dissection the ideas it once contained ; 
 ethical law that is regnant in the world of thought and ac- 
 tion as never before. This emigration from the old to the 
 new, — an emigration that carries with it all the wealth 
 of the past, an emigration that enters on the virgin fields 
 that historic forces have prepared for us, — this emigration 
 the growth of knowledge is forcing upon us, and in it the 
 living energies of God are waiting to lead us. It is a 
 fresh call as significant as that of Abraham. True science 
 is natural theology, which runs before and behind, above 
 and beneath, all theology ; that receives, as a dispersing 
 atmosphere, the solid beams of light that enter it from 
 without, and converts them into a genial, universal dis- 
 closure of the things nearest to us. We have converted 
 science, so far as we readily could, into an enemy by 
 struggling with its conclusions, rejecting its corrections, 
 and turning aside from its inspirations. If Christian think- 
 ers had awakened with the day, and diligently sought all 
 traces of God's presence, and of his moral government, in 
 
NATURALISM. 57 
 
 the world, we should now be able to meet physical law 
 with spiritual law, the outer perfection of form with the 
 inner force of idea ; and God immanent in the world, the 
 world, the immediate expression of Divine Being, would 
 be convictions flowing in on us every moment, as the 
 light of all our life. This is to be the issue, and we are 
 delayed in attaining it because we will not let go the past, 
 we will not accept the more perfect in place of the less 
 perfect conception, we will not relax our hold on dogma — ■ 
 the hand already rigid in its desperate clutch — till it is 
 wrenched from us ; and then we sink, many of us, into 
 unbelief, like spent swimmers. 
 
 There are two errors equally errors, though not equally 
 false : the tendency to shape our lives by our beliefs, and 
 the tendency to shape our beliefs by our lives. The first 
 tendency is incipiently right, and shows its failure only 
 later in its rigidity. The second is incipiently wrong, and, 
 with a flickering of light here and there, walks into deeper 
 and deeper darkness. While belief properly initiates life, it 
 should be in constant action and reaction with it. Life 
 should enlarge its truths, correct its errors, and lead it to 
 higher and yet higher points of observation. A belief that 
 runs in advance of life, and is not renewed by it, will 
 either consume, with ascetic heat, many beautiful things, 
 or maintain itself one side of real life, in dull denial of 
 it. Thought and action must live by one process, in one 
 household, if they are to live at all. 
 
 If, in place of a supernatural inspiration, we accept an 
 inspiration which is the immediate revelation of truth to 
 the minds of men, a revelation that is human, because it 
 is measured by the thoughts of men, which is divine, 
 because it flows from the one fountain of truth and leads 
 us to it, we shall have quite another view of the nature of 
 
58 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 duty, quite another disclosure of the path of ascent tow- 
 ard God. So true is this, that very few are willing, 
 even while asserting the absoluteness of religious truth, 
 to affirm the complete sufficiency of their own dogmas. 
 Yet what less than this can they say to any purpose. If 
 we are to be clear and coherent in our thought we must 
 not hold on to absolute truth and progressive truth as 
 parts of the same system. The absolute admits of no 
 new light, no change of position ; the relative calls con- 
 stantly for both. We must say of ourselves, in contrast 
 with all men, we are right and they are wrong. 
 
 Inquiry, if it proceeds, must be allowed to bring new 
 construction to the entire system of truth. On no other 
 terms is it appropriate. Nothing can remain intact except 
 by an isolation that cuts it off from the living fellowship 
 of faith. Growth must modify all that comes within its 
 range. If growth is applicable to religious truths, we 
 must let it have its way among all religious conceptions. 
 Duty ceases to be holding fast what we have, and consists, 
 by means of it, in seeking what we have not yet attained. 
 We are pressing forward toward the mark of the prize 
 of our high calling in Christ Jesus. Our own discipline is 
 sought by us, the world is of interest to us, the kingdom 
 of heaven is ours, as all equally involving a movement 
 forward under the truth and toward the truth. The 
 use of truth in action, and the disclosure of truth in 
 thought, become more and more one and the same 
 expansive process, that allows no limits and accepts no 
 delays. Duty is thus constantly the building of a new 
 and larger kingdom within the mind and without it, an 
 entering into fresh light, the rectification of conduct and 
 character under it, and a reconstruction of personal, social, 
 and civil relations in harmony with the enlarging spiritual 
 
NATURALISM. 59 
 
 world. Thought and action lie together at the living 
 centre of growth, and this growth is not a process of 
 private significance merely, but spreads abroad, far and 
 wide, like the buds of a tree, in the warm, glowing at- 
 mosphere which belongs to the race of men, dealt with 
 collectively by God. Duty thus becomes a new thing, a 
 more divine thing. It is not keeping clean and consecrate 
 a temple already built ; it is not holding fast an order 
 already established ; it is helping to build a new temple 
 out of material just coming to light ; it is carrying forward 
 insufficient terms of order toward that more perfect con- 
 ception of which they are the rudiments ; it is working 
 with God and seeing God work with us, as cosmic terms 
 take form under the divine purpose which they contain. 
 
 Equally does the notion of inspiration, as the living 
 presence of God with us, reinterpret life for us. Life has 
 thus an integrity it cannot otherwise attain. There is no 
 dead material in it ; certainly not in the higher ranges of 
 truth. We understand, we feel, we obey, we live. We 
 live, and in living we enlarge action, feeling, knowledge. 
 The words of prophets and apostles are translucent terms 
 in Revelation, giving color to the light, receiving color 
 from it — genuine products of the movement to which they 
 belong. We find in St. Paul deep convictions, glowing 
 feelings, a spiritual nature profoundly moved by the 
 truth, but we find in him no law laid upon us. We 
 may share his life, because we share his liberty in it. 
 Truth, as a mere abstraction, perishes in many minds, be- 
 cause it fails really to enter them. It must perish in all 
 minds that do not turn it into a personal experience. 
 What the cloud is to the sunlight, gathering it and glo- 
 rifying it, that is the mind to the message of truth. It is 
 living experiences that are the real terms of revelation. 
 
60 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Christ himself becomes an incarnation ; in his life and 
 action God gives a disclosure of divine love. The spir- 
 itual distance between understanding a truth and the 
 power to utter that truth is a finite one. He who can 
 apprehend the words of apostles, could, standing in the 
 current of historic revelation, have uttered them. Reve- 
 lation is this bringing of truth within the sweep of human 
 thought, and human thought within the sweep of the truth. 
 The highest minds, like the highest mountains, catch the 
 light first, and reflect it longest ; but it is lost in inap- 
 proachable space till these summits are touched by it. 
 Down their slopes it glides rapidly, resting upon the 
 entire plain. It is a strange inversion of thought to 
 suppose that what the apostles could not grasp, may yet 
 become a revelation in the minds of their disciples ; that 
 light may be present below, which has not been first 
 present above. The integrity of our own lives, the integ- 
 rity of the lives of God's servants, must make the move- 
 ment of the mind under the truth genuine, through and 
 through, from inception to completion. 
 
 What wisdom of exegesis comes to us the moment we 
 direct the attention simply to the facts. The Old Testa- 
 ment is apprehended only as it is interpreted historically. 
 The principles it contains are to be judged as principles, 
 and their growth through the ages gratefully recognized. 
 This fact granted, we inquire at our leisure, and with 
 perfect safety of thought, into the precise circumstances 
 which attended on their utterance. The truth of princi- 
 ple, the one invaluable things is surely with us, and needs 
 no confirmation beyond itself. 
 
 We often have hard work, in the confidence of hope, to 
 hold fast immortality. Is it not because religion is with 
 us, to such a degree, a supernatural revelation, and not, 
 
NATURALISM. 6l 
 
 what it might be, a personal experience, native to the 
 world about us? We hold it as a relatively alien thing on 
 outside authority, and not as indigenous life sealed in our 
 own spirits. So far as we are full of spiritual life, we 
 shall have no doubt of immortality. Confidence, push, 
 buoyant power, belong to life, and compel it to take pos- 
 session of its own field. The spirit, instinct with life, will 
 assert that life, and stretch upward toward immortality in 
 its fulfilment. If life is weak, the sense of immortality 
 must sink with it. 
 
 This belief in God, as ever and equally with us, gives 
 us also a new view of his method of work. The kingdom 
 of heaven is not delayed as a matter of divine counsel, it 
 is pushed forward as rapidly as its own nature and the 
 mastery it must win over the hearts of men will allow. 
 There is a true evolution in the spiritual world, a passage 
 from darkness into light, a birth of the higher and holier 
 in the region of the lower and less pure, a slow shaping 
 of all the conditions of life to life, till it is made domi- 
 nant within and without. This movement is, from be- 
 ginning to end, a living process, a self-conscious progress, 
 an inner triumph of pure reason, pure love, and one which 
 cannot, therefore, for an instant, in any part of it, be 
 thrown off its own rational centre. Its haste is an inner 
 fervor, its fervor a growing conviction, its conviction the 
 unfolding of truth within the soul itself by its own expe- 
 rience. To this end Goa is pouring his own life into the 
 hearts of men as rapidly as they can, or they will, receive 
 it. The whole process is life fed by life, and this divine 
 gestation cannot shorten its own periods. The light of 
 reason waits on it, and would at once be turned into 
 darkness and death by any violence done to it. Any 
 touch of force is violence, and nothing is life but the lib- 
 
62 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 erty of the spirit. The length of time it takes us to 
 understand this fact is only another enforcement of our 
 lesson that progress is a thing of growth. 
 
 The historic flood is let in ; the wheels of motion are 
 all spinning under it. What has been done, what shall 
 be done, are, one and all, a continuous creation, a grow- 
 ing dawn, a revelation that cannot stop, or retreat on itself, 
 or be at strife with itself, or be pushed beyond itself. A 
 pagan dispensation, a Jewish dispensation, a Christian 
 dispensation, are stages in the free, yet irresistible, uni- 
 versal coming of the kingdom of heaven ; the fruit of a 
 movement they do not measure ; stars that, ushering in 
 the day, are swallowed up by it. We may say, in the 
 rapt spirit of the apostles : " For all things are yours, 
 whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, 
 or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are 
 yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's." 
 
 We have thus a more just sense of the momentum and 
 majesty of the divine movement. It spreads over the 
 whole earth and through all years ; it gathers together 
 in one all things, whether in heaven or on earth. It is 
 not a flash of light, a sudden flush in the sky, it is the day 
 breaking in all spaces. God is immanent in the universe, 
 the miracle of creation is every moment repeated. Light 
 is everywhere issuing from darkness ; order from chaos. 
 The kingdom of heaven is rising up clear, sweet, imper- 
 turbable, into the Divine Presence. The authority of this 
 revelation is ample, the only ample authority — the fact 
 that the earth and the heavens are meeting each other 
 and embracing each other, in all the ministrations of life, 
 through the whole stretch of vision. 
 
 We should understand how thoroughly the instruction 
 of God is object-teaching. The world of facts lies under 
 
NATURALISM. 63 
 
 the world of ideas, its serene reflection, its stable form. 
 If we are redeemed, saved, purified ; redemption, salvation, 
 purification are not dogmatic assertions, dull text, they 
 are visible facts, brilliant illuminations, whose beauties we 
 hourly experience. We cannot have a philosophy of life, 
 a spiritual interpretation of life, which does not issue in 
 life itself. Are Christians saved ? And if so, how are 
 they saved ? These are most pungent and pertinent 
 questions, and are to be answered on this side and on 
 that, in inner force and outer form, in full view of the facts 
 of the world and of the ideas regnant in it. History, 
 with its vices, virtues, decay, reform, littleness and large- 
 ness of spiritual life, lies as a map before us, that we may 
 find our own whereabouts, and our lines of march in the 
 divine plan. He that has eyes to see, let him see , and 
 he must see the clearest wisdom of God in the events that 
 are nearest him, the foreground of his picture. Mirage, 
 illusion, are always at play on the horizon. We must walk 
 with the omniscience of God where that omniscience 
 is most immediate to us, in our own lives. This is 
 inspiration. If we put inspiration, as a gift, far back 
 among the servants of God, we put it far off from our 
 own thoughts. Our lives are the types of all lives, and 
 should be richer than the lives of those who have gone 
 before us, because we are higher up in the mount of 
 vision. 
 
 Is then the truth, the truth which fills the universe of 
 God, as a trumpet made for its proclamation ; the truth 
 which is the breath of every living spirit, the invisible 
 presence that moves creatively on the face of the waters, 
 that otherwise surge aimlessly and darkly in the social 
 world : is then the truth so inferior and insufficient, that 
 we need something other than it, called Revelation, to 
 
 hiveiuity; 
 
64 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 take its place, and do its work ? Nay, indeed. Christ 
 is the way and the truth and the life ; and this life is the 
 light of men, the true light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world. With him we abide livingly and 
 lovingly among divine things. What God is to one he is to 
 all, and, in a profound sense, equally to all. Our inspira- 
 tion is the inspiration which God has poured out from the 
 beginning, like sunshine and rain, for the fertilization of 
 all fields, and whose creative touch we to-day enjoy as 
 never before. 
 
 We accept then that view of inspiration which makes it 
 stand for the normal hold of the human mind on truth, 
 under all the liabilities and limitations which belong to its 
 powers. In this process of truth-finding, truth-feeding, 
 God is pre-eminently near us, helping our thoughts from 
 within and from without ; especially is he near to us in 
 our approach to those higher truths which are revelations 
 in the deeper world of spiritual being. We so earnestly 
 and urgently reject the more familiar doctrine of inspira- 
 tion, not because it does not aver for most minds a fact 
 of great moment, but because it has come to be used as a 
 key to a dogmatic structure, a wedge that, driven to its 
 place, holds firm the entire edifice of theological thought; 
 that greatly needs to be rebuilt by us. There is a lazy 
 love of authority and finality that we all, more or less, 
 share ; but he who places his hand in the hand of God to 
 be led of him must be up by times, take many weary 
 steps, and find himself in many obscure places. Yet thus 
 there is safety, and thus there is strength. We are ready 
 to strive for this liberty, to walk with God. 
 
 It has been necessary to urge at length, and in the very 
 outset, these difficulties of inspiration, because only thus 
 could we be fully restored to naturalism, God's universal 
 
NATURALISM. 65 
 
 method of dealing with men, those safe, sober paths of 
 thought and action in which he daily leads us. The doc- 
 trine of inspiration, standing at the entrance of inquiry 
 into religious truth, settling its method, and assigning its 
 peculiar tests, forbade any sound naturalism in faith, and 
 threw the mind at once into a conflict with knowledge 
 and the growth of knowledge, which spring from the deep, 
 fertile soil of natural and spiritual law. We could not 
 otherwise so much as open our inquiry, or open a way to 
 it. The New Theology is involved in this very move- 
 ment toward more breadth and more unity in all truth, 
 this identification and integrity of method in all worlds. 
 
 If now we accept all truth as resting flatly and fully on 
 its own laws, it may be thought that we have escaped one 
 difficulty in harmonizing religion with nature only to 
 encounter another and greater one. Can prayer also be 
 made to stand on the basis of law? Are miracles only 
 manifestations of uniform methods? We wish to give 
 ourselves to no feats of interpretation, feats that over- 
 strain and destroy the truth they are intended to present. 
 Our naturalism is not a naturalism of physical laws simply. 
 We do not in the least accept the dictum of Huxley that 
 " the progress of science has in all ages meant, and now 
 means more than ever, the extension of the province of 
 what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant 
 gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of 
 what we call spirit and spontaneity." Quite the reverse 
 of this, knowledge, wisdom seems to us to be the extension 
 and reconciliation of both these primary terms of thought, 
 till they interlace each other in every part of a universe 
 that was dead and is alive. 
 
 Prayer is in harmony, wholly in harmony, with spiritual 
 
 law. If there is any universal method which belongs to 
 5 
 
66 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 the feeble, dependent human mind, it is this method of 
 asking and giving aid. So incorporate is prayer in the 
 constitution of man, that he cannot but pray. He may 
 close his lips, but his heart remains full of it, under any 
 exigency. But if it is a law of mind to seek help, it 
 must, with a theistic interpretation of the world, become a 
 fixed portion of a rational method to bestow help. The 
 asking and the receiving are complementary under one 
 set of powers. If it is a law of mind to think, thought 
 must be a factor in success. If it is a law of the affections 
 to seek sympathy, it is equally a law to confer it. No 
 construction of the spiritual world could be more unequal 
 and incongruous than a prayerless one, or one of un- 
 answered prayer. This would be to give and withhold in 
 the same act ; to confer powers, and repress their exercise. 
 As a matter of fact, the affections owe a vigorous, free, 
 enjoyable life to this very act of prayer. We must hold 
 by things as they are. This is empiricism. It is no part 
 of our philosophy to believe that the world is wholly 
 different from that which it offers itself to us as being. 
 We leave such conclusions to theorists. 
 
 But prayer, if it strengthens and sustains the mind, 
 ought to find, and does find, entrance thereby into the 
 physical world. As long as mind is a term of energy in 
 that world, a mental effect may become a physical one ; 
 and prayer may be an agency whose action is present 
 among physical events. Prayer is thus certain to extend 
 at least an indirect influence over current circumstances. 
 
 Nor is it opposed to true naturalism to believe that 
 prayer may meet with a direct answer in the modification 
 of physical things. In the naturalism of the world, as we 
 understand it, mental processes and powers hold a certain 
 supremacy among physical forces. To understand the 
 
NATURALISM. 6? 
 
 conditions of control, and control itself, is the very gist of 
 naturalism. That God should aid wise endeavor, no more 
 throws us off the basis of endeavor than does the response 
 of our fellow-creatures to our petitions. Prayer may be 
 used to weaken effort, and so may it be used to strengthen 
 it. Wisely used, it leaves unaltered the laws of action, — 
 the physical and spiritual naturalism which envelops it. 
 It certainly marks a peculiar feature of that naturalism, 
 and in that feature we supremely believe. It is not easy 
 to overrate the force of sympathetic, spiritual life. 
 
 If it be said that prayer, as effecting direct results 
 among physical things, is, if possible, incapable of proof, 
 we at once demur. It is, indeed, incapable of sensuous 
 proof, but not of proof. It is contrary to the conditions 
 of the problem to demand sensuous proof. If the answer 
 of prayer were established in this way, it would become a 
 miracle ; and a miracle stands in very different spiritual 
 relations. Prayer subserves primarily a sympathetic, 
 rational purpose. On that basis, there is ample evidence 
 of the answer of prayer in the lives of many millions. 
 On that basis, its answer must rest ; for only thus can it 
 reach its object of ministering to faith. To try to push it 
 from its own pivot of revolution, and test it as a naked, 
 physical fact, is to lift the magnetic needle from its rest, 
 and still insist on its vibration. It is quite sufficient if 
 physical events, rendered in a sensuous way, do not con- 
 tradict the answers of prayer ; the spiritual energy that 
 accompanies them must always remain spiritual, as much 
 so as the energy of mind. 
 
 So in turn the typical miracle, as the miracles of Christ, 
 is wholly in keeping with naturalism. The miracles of 
 our Lord are the highest expression of the fundamental 
 fact of naturalism, the interpenetration of physical laws 
 
63 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 and mental processes, the triumph of reason through the 
 entire realm of being. The miracles of healing were 
 wrought under, not by, natural laws, and left those, so 
 renovated, on precisely the same plane of physical forces 
 on which it found them. The gifts of these miracles were 
 chiefly spiritual. The physical gains were soon lost 
 again, if the living impulse of divine love — an impulse so 
 native to the highest development of the human spirit — 
 was not felt. The miracle of help is no more abnormal, 
 no more subversive of a true naturalism, coming on fitting 
 occasion from the hand of God, than is the assistance by 
 which one restores his neighbor, who has fallen in the road, 
 to his feet. 
 
 The feeling of opposition between the wisely ordered 
 miracle and natural law arises from the very narrow limits 
 we put upon naturalism, as the uniformity of physical 
 sequences, clamped close within themselves. Any modi- 
 fication of these mechanical terms is their breakage. 
 Accept a true theism, a theism which puts personal 
 reason — we say personal reason, though reason is the very 
 essence of personality — at the very centre of all things ; 
 a theism which makes reason, as the cohesive law of 
 thought, as wide as thought itself ; a connection of cre- 
 ation as pervasive as creation itself, and there is no dam- 
 age done the lower by the rule of the higher over it. 
 When it prevails as uniformity, and when it prevails as 
 an exception, the fact is equally one of reason. The 
 miracle is only a more marked expression of a relation 
 that is prevalent everywhere. The miracles of Christ aid 
 us in comprehending the world ; they do not alter its con- 
 struction, or our permanent standing in reference to it. 
 Instead of discord and disproportion, there are the highest 
 harmony, the widest naturalism, the most manifest asser- 
 
NATURALISM. 69 
 
 tion of the most fundamental fact, the omnipresence of 
 reason. What limits reason shall assign itself, is an 
 empirical lesson of the Divine Reason addressed to the 
 reason of man. 
 
 We have the firmest faith in naturalism, but no patience 
 with a naturalism that takes the most narrow and inflex- 
 ible term in our complex experience, and sets it up as the 
 absolute type of all terms. We are pleading for the 
 naturalism of reason, and not of causation built up by 
 reason against itself. We refuse to chisel an idol, and then 
 bow down to it. In a stony presence of this kind, all 
 spiritual life is petrified. There is no iconoclasm in which 
 we are more hearty than that which breaks down the 
 images of the senses set up in the temple of reason. We 
 believe in God, and the laws that he has framed cannot, 
 beyond their own uses, stand against him. We accept 
 reason, and all the claims of reason, but that reason should 
 subject itself to its own products is not among these 
 claims. The denial of the fitness of a miracle is the 
 abrogation of reason in behalf of physical laws, when life 
 has been allowed to sink out of them, till they have 
 become the dead, inflexible, crust of things. Spiritual 
 life in all its terms perishes under such a process. Reani- 
 mate law once more with the living reason it contains, 
 and it regains at once flexibility and submits itself to all 
 the uses of life. 
 
 It may still be felt that the inflexibility of physical law 
 is a simple, well-established fact of experience, and that a 
 fact cannot be pushed aside by a reason. But has this 
 inflexibility been established ? Certainly it has been 
 established, as the fruit of reason, if it has been established 
 at all. It is not a matter of sensation. The problem 
 much transcends our experience. We are brought back 
 
yo THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 then once more to reason, and it is just as much within 
 the scope of reason to recognize the inflexibility of physi- 
 cal laws under purely physical terms and their flexibility 
 under spiritual terms as it is simply to assert their absolute 
 uniformity. We abide with reason, and we must have 
 reasons, the gold currency of mind, for what is offered in 
 the name of reason. All turns on the true key of thought 
 in the world. We believe that reason unlocks itself and 
 unlocks all things, that its law is within itself, that the 
 final term in light is light itself. Mind, whose office is 
 exposition, expounds both matter and mind. Matter, the 
 relatively opaque and passive element, does not measure 
 mind, the relatively transparent and active element. Mind 
 cannot be allowed to perish in its own presence by its 
 own processes in deference to conceptions that are its own 
 creation. 
 
 The miracle, as the expression of the supreme term in 
 the cosmos, may easily break bounds, has often broken 
 bounds, in men's thoughts. But so may every trace of 
 order, dependent on man's conception of it, be effaced or 
 confused. Superstitions are the ugly, ravelled fringe of 
 spiritual life. Life, the more extended it is in its field, 
 the more delicate in its processes, is but the more liable to 
 these miserable perversions of its own growth. In this 
 relation the miracle is akin to what we find everywhere. 
 We scale the heights of being by a complexity and balance 
 of action of most unstable equilibrium, at the farthest 
 possible remove from the stolid dependencies of mechan- 
 ism. The checks and counter-checks of thought are not 
 to discourage us by their multiplicity and subtilty, if we 
 are to make ourselves heirs of the Infinite. Who can tell 
 how the bird rides the wind, and who can sufficiently 
 define the poise of the spirit between physical and spiritual 
 things ! When we consider the patience with which, in 
 
NATURALISM. 7 1 
 
 spite of all flutter and feebleness of wing, the mind of man 
 has pushed, and is pushing, its way upward into the region 
 of spiritual life, how empty of authority do the vigorous 
 words seem by which Positivism represses this spirit, and 
 bids it back again to the earth. " History will place your 
 dogma in its class, above or below kindred competing 
 dogmas, exactly as the naturalist classifies his species. 
 From being a conviction it will sink into a curiosity ; 
 from being the guide to millions of human lives it will 
 dwindle down into a chapter in a book. As history 
 explains your dogma so science will dry it up ; the com- 
 peting law will silently make the conception of the daily 
 miracle of your altars seem impossible ; the mental climate 
 will gradually deprive your symbols of their nourishment, 
 and men will turn their backs on your system, not because 
 they have confuted it, but because, like witchcraft or 
 astrology, it has ceased to interest them."* 
 
 This passage vividly describes a most real movement, 
 that by which the chaff is winnowed from the wheat — ■ 
 error eliminated from truth. But when the author expects 
 to find only seed wheat, and all of it, in his own sieves, 
 the totality of truth among his own convictions, we are 
 astonished at the insight and the lack of insight which his 
 words convey. We must have both the harvest of thought 
 and the gleaning of all its fields before we can fill our 
 granaries, and turn the key on our treasures. We have 
 room for physical things, and room for spiritual things, 
 and room for their mutual corrections ; we have room for 
 the gathering of the senses, and room for the touch of 
 Insight which turns it into the musical rhythm of thought. 
 The wind with which John Morley proposes to clean our 
 threshing-floor would prove a veritable cyclone driving 
 away not the chaff, simply, but the grain of thought so 
 * John Morley, " Miscellanies," vol. i., p. 8:. 
 
72 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 far won in our intellectual culture. We must, indeed, 
 admit the energies of reform ; they will certainly force 
 their own entrance, as intimated, but we must not allow 
 them to reform away, nor will they reform away, the very 
 substance of life to which alone they are made to minister. 
 What men have been doing from the beginning, that, from 
 the nature of the case, they must continue to do to the 
 very end ; though they may, indeed, do it in a more 
 complete way. No subsoiling can be so deep as to plough 
 the very ground from under us. Spiritual germs are 
 waiting extension, not extermination. 
 
 All that we have now occasion to enforce is the simple 
 fact, that there is not, necessarily, in the miracle any 
 conflict with naturalism, as a law of rational action. The 
 nature of the supernatural — for it has a nature — and its 
 relation to naturalism remain to be considered. 
 
 But it may be said, if we believe so profoundly in the 
 supernatural, why have we been so urgent in our attack 
 on inspiration? How can two walk together, unless they 
 are agreed ? The supernatural element, retained in in- 
 spiration, puis constant suspension and harmful limitation 
 on naturalism, on reason, on the growth of mind under its 
 own laws. The instant the spirit strives to move forward, 
 in the highest realm of thought, it encounters this dogma, 
 and is often turned peremptorily back by it. The glass 
 in which, with open face, we behold the glory of God, and 
 are changed into the same image from glory to glory, is 
 that habitual reflection of him which we know as natural- 
 ism. We object to the ordinary view of inspiration, not 
 because it involves supernaturalism, but because it stands 
 in obscure, perplexing, and misleading relations with natu- 
 ralism, the coherent method of God. We exclude this 
 dogma in the interests of a true reconciliation of the 
 double terms of being. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 THERE is no question of religious thought more difficult 
 or more urgent than that involved in the nature and real- 
 ity of the supernatural. We may dispense with this in- 
 quiry, as we may dispense with any inquiry, by a belief 
 or an unbelief that only partially understands its own 
 grounds. If, however, the world of facts and the world 
 of spiritual experiences are to assume anything like a 
 clear and consistent expression for us, we must settle in 
 our minds the limits and relations of the natural and the 
 supernatural. 
 
 Religion, in all its forms, has had and must have to 
 do, and that very freely, with the supernatural. A faith 
 without the supernatural — if we should still insist on call- 
 ing it a faith — could gain no hold on the general mind. 
 Religion ordinarily does mean, and ought to mean, our 
 belief in personal, spiritual agents ; our relation to the 
 problem of spiritual life. If any belief short of this is 
 called a religion, it is so called because it has taken the 
 place of religion, and we wish to give it, in its difficult 
 and unnatural position, what prestige and support we can. 
 What especially distinguishes religious faith from all other 
 forms of faith is, that it lays hold on an invisible personal 
 element, and assigns it some part in the world, no matter 
 how obscure and partial that part may be. Such personal 
 
 73 
 
74 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 powers are, from the very nature of the case, supernatural, 
 and their devotees are only too ready to accept any super- 
 natural manifestation of their presence. 
 
 No faith can properly be called a religion which does 
 not introduce the mind to this invisible world. However 
 we may choose to employ words, there is nothing plainer 
 than that a belief which accepts invisible spiritual factors 
 will be so distinct from one that denies them as properly 
 to belong to a peculiar class. Religions all agree in this 
 assertion, and differ among themselves only in the charac- 
 ter and control of these superhuman beings. These 
 spirits, one and all, are found in the closest affiliation 
 with the supernatural, and when they manifest themselves 
 through the natural, it is made thereby to stand in differ- 
 ent relations from those we ordinarily recognize in it. It 
 is infused with a power and employed for a purpose 
 which quite transcend it as cosmic mechanism. 
 
 Religious thought is especially liable to drop into su- 
 perstition, to become wayward and fantastic in belief, 
 and dangerous and fanatical in action, at this point of 
 supernatural intervention. No definition is, therefore, 
 more urgent for religion itself than this which defines 
 the relation of the visible and the invisible in the 
 government of human life. This is the problem which 
 every form of faith that aims in any degree to be rational 
 must work over, again and again, in connection with our 
 increasing knowledge of the world. It is time that the 
 ignorance which once might have been winked at should 
 pass away. The entire inductive growth of religious 
 truth and life lies here. New methods, fresh corrections 
 and restraints, are brought to belief by a better mastery 
 of the natural, and a better apprehension of the limits it 
 assigns the supernatural. Thus, on the practical and 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 75 
 
 the theoretical side alike, the one thing to be correctly 
 fathomed in faith, the one thing to be wisely applied in 
 conduct, is the inner and abiding relation of spirit and 
 form, substance and expression, the Divine Being and the 
 divine mode of being. Is the form form through and 
 through ? Is the physical physical to its very core ? Is the 
 natural dead by means of laws that have no purpose or 
 constructive idea ; that neither arise, nor can carry the 
 mind, beyond themselves ? These are questions which 
 reason, because of its own life, cannot fail to ask, nor can 
 it fail to be profoundly affected by the answers given 
 them. The religious tendency — a tendency native to 
 thought — is always struggling for a supernatural some- 
 thing of the nature of spirit, which lies back of, above, and 
 beyond, all the sensible terms of our experience. 
 
 The scientific tendency, later in its development, leads 
 us to magnify the natural, and, in its extreme expression, 
 to exclude with it the supernatural. The terms of exact 
 knowledge lie chiefly in physical things and events, bound 
 together as causes and effects. The extension of these 
 relations is the expansion of determinate thought, and all 
 the successes of the past century urge us to complete the 
 work by giving full sweep to the ruling idea. This move- 
 ment has, for the moment, gathered great momentum, 
 and those who wish to put any restraints upon it, or sup- 
 plement it by earlier forms of inquiry, are easily pushed 
 aside, or looked upon as having scant claims even to this 
 courtesy. 
 
 While there have arisen many secondary points of dis- 
 cussion between religion and science, points at which 
 science has been more frequently in the right, the real 
 difficulty of reconciliation between the two methods of 
 thought is found in this very thing, the supernatural. 
 
y6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Science has an instinctive disrelish for the supernatural, as 
 something in whose presence its own methods are of no 
 avail, something from which there goes forth an obscur- 
 ing, chilling mist of uncertainty, that brings inquiry 
 speedily to an end. The supernatural, instead of being an 
 essential term in a higher order, is felt to be a loss of all 
 order in chaos and confusion. The controversy, there- 
 fore, between science and religion, our knowledge of the 
 physical world and our knowledge of the spiritual world, 
 can only be settled by a just definition of the natural and 
 supernatural, and by a determination of their dependence 
 on each other. If reason excludes either, we cannot know 
 the fact too quickly ; if both are to be gathered up in one 
 universe, this is a primary truth in human knowledge. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that our successful hand- 
 ling of the world as a whole must turn on our recon- 
 ciliation, either by exclusion, or by subordination, or by 
 concurrence in a result more comprehensive than either 
 alone can offer, of these two terms, form and spirit, 
 matter and mind, the natural and the supernatural. We 
 can in no other way reach the power and the peace of our 
 own lives. The questions, What are the aims of life ? Is 
 life worth living? are so frequently raised, and so variously 
 answered, because we have been losing the harmonious 
 stroke of the two wings by which we rise, and ride on the 
 impalpable atmosphere of the spiritual world. In conse- 
 quence, we have revolved helplessly in it, or plunged 
 fatally from it. 
 
 What then are the natural and the supernatural ? If 
 we can satisfactorily distinguish these two things in their 
 own nature, we shall easily understand the part they play 
 in the universe, and readily furnish the proof on which 
 they rest. There is very general consent as to what is to 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. y/ 
 
 be understood by the natural, in its narrow signification. 
 It covers all things and events which are interlocked by 
 causal relations — phenomena that are settled in their form 
 and order of procedure. Every purely physical occur- 
 rence is completely conditioned by coexistent and ante- 
 cedent circumstances, and it is these fixed dependencies 
 which constitute its nature. However variable this nature 
 may seem to be, the appearance is deceptive, for all re- 
 sults are perfectly defined by the energies involved. Here 
 is a conception so distinct and final as to claim, on our 
 part, clear recognition. As to this central phase of the 
 natural, there should be no confusion or doubt. It is a 
 form of being without degrees and vanishing lines. The 
 entire physical world conforms to the conception. 
 
 But do all events come under these unchangeable rela- 
 tions ? Most assuredly not. To present at once the 
 nearest and strongest example of another law, thought 
 cannot be regarded as natural in this narrow meaning of 
 the word. If it is, in any sense, natural, it is so in a 
 higher and wider way. It is natural simply as provided 
 for in the framework of things, and habitually associated 
 with it, and not as itself a constituent term enclosed in it. 
 This use of the word is so much more extended than the 
 previous one, in the connections implied, that nothing but 
 confusion can arise if we do not carefully mark the widen- 
 ing of meaning when we include both sets of facts under 
 one term. It is fatal to the higher relations of thought 
 to crowd them in with the lower ones of physical events ; 
 or it loosens the lower ones at once to include with them 
 the wider phenomena. The essential connection, in the 
 one case, is causation, and, in the other, that of spon- 
 taneous procedure under the laws of truth. The laws of 
 truth are not involved as forces in facts, but imply the 
 
78 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 conformity of the mind, under its own insight, to the im- 
 palpable thought-relations of things. This conformity is 
 established by the mind itself, and therefore the mind is 
 and must be free in pursuing it. No search for truth, 
 that is not deceptive, can be entered on without this 
 spontaneous, self-directed movement. No conformity can 
 be established between our conclusions and the facts to 
 which they pertain without accompanying insight, and 
 the action of the mind under it. If truth seems to elude 
 us, we must be able to pursue it. If it is a certain some- 
 thing addressed to the mind alone, then the mind must 
 have powers and laws — those of thought — in reference to 
 it. All that declares human freedom declares also this 
 special relation of thoughts within themselves. It is 
 sufficient, however, to insist on one thing, and that one 
 thing is so conclusive as to render absolutely inadmis- 
 sible the extension of causation to all processes. To 
 affirm that thoughts have the same causal relations as 
 things is to destroy truth, and is, therefore, a self-de- 
 structive affirmation. If our judgments are interwoven 
 with the forces that impel the physical world, with the 
 fixed connections that control it, then each and every 
 judgment, as a simple fact, must, like other facts, have 
 a sufficient cause ; and all judgments must have one and 
 the same right to be, that of being ; that of inclusion in 
 the nature of things. No judgment can be opposed to 
 any other judgment as true or false ; all are equally real, 
 equally the product of adequate causes, equally included 
 in the framework of the world. If, as Huxley affirms, 
 consciousness " is a function of nervous matter, when 
 that nervous matter has attained a certain degree of or- 
 ganization," we shall be utterly unable to define that 
 peculiar relation of thoughts — themselves subtile products 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 79 
 
 of causation — to the other products of causation, which 
 we term truth. 
 
 The distinction between the true and the false must 
 disappear, and that between the real and the unreal 
 take its place. If one strives to restore the conception 
 of truth as the correspondence of judgments with the 
 reality of things, he must mean by the reality of things, 
 not the actuality of things, — for our thoughts are only the 
 counterparts of the intellectual relations expressed by 
 things, and never a reproduction of the things themselves, 
 — but certain supersensible connections involved in them. 
 But how involved? Certainly not as any form of phe- 
 nomena, but only as the possible interpretation of the 
 phenomena. This possibility is outside of causation, 
 something put upon it by mind, and by mind alone. 
 Here, then, we have a triple separation of the movement 
 of thoughts from the movement of things. It is toward 
 an idea and not toward an event — it is not the very act of 
 thought, but the intellectual product of the thought, that 
 interests us. This distinction of results lies in the realm of 
 the true and the false, and not in that of the real and the 
 unreal. The result itself is one of immediate, conscious 
 conformity, and not one of prior, unconscious determina- 
 tion. The search for truth must be a conscious one, 
 since truth is a visible agreement, under insight. Events, 
 merely, gain nothing by consciousness, since the forces 
 which settle them lie deeper than consciousness and are 
 incapable of independent modification in it. 
 
 If mind is under natural, causal law, truth is three 
 times lost. It is lost in fact, as the only question be- 
 comes one of realities. It is lost in theory, as there is 
 nothing other than mere facts to which the thoughts, 
 themselves mere facts, can conform. There are no addi- 
 
80 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 tional facts, called truths, to which the process of develop- 
 ment can bend. And truth, if granted in theory, is lost 
 in attainment, since we can give no reason why a series of 
 thoughts produced by one series of causes should conform 
 to a series of relations expressed by other facts, under 
 their own independent lines of causation. Causes can only 
 reach facts, and those of a predetermined order. Truths 
 must themselves be phenomenal characteristics, if they 
 are to be included in phenomena ; while the method of 
 coincidence remains entirely unintelligible. 
 
 We must stanchly deny, therefore, that thoughts are 
 causal, contained in nature, in its limited sense. They 
 are rather, in their origin, supernatural ; since they play 
 upon nature from above for its interpretation in physical 
 and spiritual uses. Their laws are laws of their own, and 
 their conformity to them is achieved by a higher impulse 
 than physical forces. 
 
 If we look at the way in which the two terms, thoughts 
 and things, are united, the same conclusion is forced 
 upon us by another method. This junction is accom- 
 plished by intervention of the brain. The processes 
 which take place in this highly organized organ, an organ 
 which contains the most delicate, varied, complex, mobile, 
 and dependent forms of activity anywhere found in the 
 physical world, are purely physical, and have their types 
 in methods elsewhere present. Brain action presents a 
 closed circle of forces that run through a familiar circuit 
 within themselves. The energies that are realized in de- 
 composition are expended in motion, heat, recomposition. 
 There is in this expenditure no known term that takes 
 the form of thought or feeling. These are incidents, not 
 facts, of the process. Thought has no phenomenal ex- 
 pression which it can take, side by side with physical 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 8l 
 
 activities. No one of these is the equivalent of thought, 
 transmutable into it, or capable of being restored from it. 
 Thought remains a perfectly intangible accompaniment 
 of these tangible terms. Brain constituents, in their con- 
 sumption, do not give it, nor can it return to the form of 
 these constituents. On the other hand, these issue in their 
 own equivalents, wholly aside from thought. In discus- 
 sing brain action within its own circle of composition 
 and decomposition, we have no more occasion to consider 
 thoughts and feelings beyond the nervous activity inci- 
 dent to them, than we have, in making up the product of 
 expenditures in a steam-engine, to estimate the play of 
 shadows; or the mind of the operator in computing the 
 waste of a telegraphic circuit. 
 
 Thought does attend, or may attend, on these physical 
 activities, complete within themselves in the brain and 
 body of man. The amount of thought will stand in close 
 relation to the volume of movement, but the nature of 
 thought as thought will not determine the nature of the 
 nervous activity, nor the nature of the nervous activity de- 
 cide that of the thought. Slow, inaccurate, and perplexed 
 thinking will consume brain energy as certainly as rapid, 
 correct, and ready apprehension. Thought on one subject 
 will involve essentially the same changes — not perhaps ab- 
 solutely identical ones in the parts of the brain affected — 
 as thought on a very different subject. The divisions of 
 thought, so far as they reappear in distinctions of nervous 
 action, do it under perfectly disparate terms. What is a 
 mental difference here is a local one there. The brain 
 thus takes, in reference to the mind, the position of an 
 instrument which both limits and aids the mind, and has 
 many degrees of aptness in reference to it. Yet it no 
 more determines the direction and perfection of execu- 
 
82 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 tion than do the tools of the carpenter the form and 
 success of his work. 
 
 The superior and supersensible relation of the mind, in 
 spite of the closeness and constancy of its dependence on 
 the brain, — yet not closer or more constant than that of the 
 telegrapher on his instrument — is anticipated and typified 
 in that intermediate term between matter and mind 
 which we call life. It is not merely brain, but the living 
 brain, which is the organ of thought. So unable have 
 those been, who are striving to give a fixed interpretation, 
 under physical forms, to all parts of the world, to find any 
 satisfactory exposition of life, or place for it in their sys- 
 tem, that some of the most able and sharp-sighted of 
 them all, like Professor Huxley, have denied its exist- 
 ence as an entity of any sort. The physical terms of the 
 living thing are complete within it, and fully cover the 
 phenomena before us. Life finds no place among them 
 as one of them. It is thought, therefore, to be an un- 
 warranted act of mind to create for it another position on 
 another plane, above them or back of them, and enthrone 
 it thereon as a supersensuous presence. The living circle, 
 sufficient unto itself, needs only itself for its compre- 
 hension. 
 
 By this method of thought the very notion of compre- 
 hension, the reference of phenomena to something deeper 
 than themselves, is set aside. Each step in the dance is 
 a simple mechanical fact ; the entire dance is made up 
 of these distinct steps, therefore the form and rhythm of 
 the whole are sufficiently covered by the exposition of the 
 parts. It is possible to say this in reference to life, because 
 life declares itself only in and by these intertwined circuits 
 of molecular and atomic movement, this dance of the 
 elements. It is not possible to say it in reference to mind, 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 83 
 
 —though exactly the same reasons lead us to wish to say- 
 it — because the wholly distinct phenomena of mind in 
 consciousness declare the presence of something in addition 
 to all physical facts. Yet these mental phenomena find 
 no more place among the physical terms which accompany 
 them, than does life among organic functions. In both 
 cases, a result addressed to the mind, is made the ground 
 of inferring a corresponding agency. 
 
 If we hold that a certain series of physical facts mani- 
 fest themselves in an additional w r ay as a series of mental 
 phenomena, we must also hold, under the notion of causa- 
 tion, that these phenomena are the expression of those 
 physical forces, and stand on terms of transfer with them. 
 Not only are these conclusions subversive of the very 
 nature of truth, and therefore to be summarily rejected 
 by the truth-loving temper, they find no confirmation in 
 our knowledge of nervous facts, and bring no light to our 
 thinking. It is as impossible to discover thought in the 
 brain economy, as it is impossible to pick up life in our 
 anatomy of physical organs. Thought may easily enough 
 be said to be a specific, higher form of life. Yet these 
 heroic assertions we have chosen to make not only sweep 
 aside the habitual methods of mind, they do nothing 
 whatever for us, unless it be regarded a solution of the 
 problem to abolish the problem itself ; an explanation of 
 differences to deny their existence. 
 
 If the distinctive phenomena of life do not establish life 
 as a real agent, then the peculiar phenomena of mind do 
 not give us mind as a spiritual entity. Thus mental 
 activity sinks at once into a mere succession of phenomena. 
 Our earnest affirmations, our sharp denials, our indignation, 
 our ardent vindication, are either mere appearances, or 
 are determined by something quite other than themselves. 
 
84 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 If there were the least philosophy left in us by such 
 a philosophy, which there well enough may not be, we 
 should be content simply to watch these shadows of clouds 
 pursuing each other across the intellectual landscape. We 
 must, then, start our philosophy with the validity of truth ; 
 and this is found only in the integrity of the mind itself, 
 in the coherence and justness of its own processes, in the 
 essential soundness of knowledge. 
 
 Here, then, in mind, we have something obviously 
 supernatural ; indeed, the very term which leads us to 
 entertain the notion of the supernatural, and make use of 
 it in our processes of thought. What can be a better 
 image of the supernatural, something above nature, as a 
 closed circuit, and in free use of it in spite of its closure, 
 than mind ? An engineer is watching his engine in 
 reference to correction. When he shall strike in, how he 
 shall strike in, whether he shall strike in at all, are points 
 he is waiting to determine. Whatever change he makes, 
 takes its appropriate place in the circle of physical con- 
 ditions, and the outcome of them all is altered by it. 
 This involves a supernatural presence, not a power de- 
 tached from the natural and alien to it, not a power 
 included within the natural and bound by it, but a power 
 that from its own resources works on and through the 
 natural, and by its labor brings forth within the natural 
 fresh returns for itself. The moment the inquirer recog- 
 nizes the truth-seeking, truth-obeying processes for what 
 they are, he holds the secret of the supernatural. 
 
 Confusion frequently arises in the discussion of evolution 
 because of the different degrees of force which are assigned 
 the word. It may imply that each succeeding state is 
 wholly included in the preceding one, or only that they 
 are closely united to each other, the former with its full 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 85 
 
 quota of work passing into the latter. A narrower and 
 a wider meaning, in a similar way, attach to naturalism. 
 We may mean by it conclusively causal relations, or we 
 may include in it the whole empirical system of which we 
 are a part, with its intellectual as well as its physical terms. 
 When, in our first chapter, we affirmed naturalism, we ex- 
 pressly gave it this wide meaning ; now, when we contrast 
 it with supernaturalism, accepting the latter also, we assign 
 it its narrower signification. It is not easy to avoid the 
 double use, because it is involved in the double character 
 of the facts themselves. There is in it no confusion of 
 thought, and need not be of presentation, if the attention 
 is distinctly drawn to it. Intellectual activity lies between 
 purely causal and purely spiritual forms of being, and is 
 affiliated with both. As provided for by fixed physical 
 conditions, it is natural ; as active within itself under 
 impulses of its own order, it is supernatural. The unity 
 of the natural and the supernatural, the rationality of 
 both forms of being, is achieved by the intervention of 
 this common term. 
 
 When one is occupied with pure thought, he abides in 
 a spiritual region ; when he contemplates the conditions of 
 action under thought, or its concomitants, he enters the 
 realm of causation. 
 
 We have three things to consider: physical, causal facts ; 
 intellectual, empirical facts ; purely spiritual, supersen- 
 suous phenomena — such as we attribute to God. The 
 second term lies between the other two, — the natural and 
 the supernatural — and will be united now to the one and 
 now to the other according to the manner in which we 
 contemplate it. Intellectual activity as associated with 
 definite physical conditions is natural, a part of the 
 system of nature ; as within itself a law to itself, and so 
 

 86 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 acting from above on nature, it is supernatural. Two 
 conical hills may lie so near each other that the base of 
 the one deeply intersects the base of the other. Neither 
 can be completely constructed without including material 
 which belongs to the other. If we cut down arbitrarily 
 between them we mutilate both. It is by this constant 
 over-lap that the continuity of the world is preserved. In 
 man two kingdoms meet, and from this central position 
 we must be able to pass out either way. 
 
 The totally distinct things, on the relation of which all 
 interpretation depends, are physical facts, whose character 
 is determinate and fixed ; and pure spiritual processes, 
 ready, by a predetermination that arises within them- 
 selves, to pass into external expression. Man, as a truly 
 intellectual and free being, deals with both these elements. 
 Freedom implies both, implies the outward limitation 
 which conditions activity, and the inner intellectual life 
 which determines it. We may, for purposes of expression, 
 annex this realm of freedom, so deeply immersed in 
 physical relations, to nature ; or we may, for purposes of 
 exposition, unite it to those ever-abiding supernatural 
 energies from which it derives its pre-eminent charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 The natural and the supernatural so meet in mind, so 
 flow together in the events of a rational universe, as not 
 only to leave no conflict between them, but to make them 
 everywhere the woof and warp of one web. When we 
 reach the deepest thing in causal relations it turns out to 
 be an intellectual dependence. 
 
 It would be fortunate if we were able to give a distinct 
 designation to each of the three things with which we have 
 to deal ; events moving necessarily forward under physi- 
 cal dependencies ; the rational acts of men self-directed 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 87 
 
 under the conditions which enclose them ; and the abso- 
 lute activities of God, which assign to themselves both 
 directions and conditions. The word natural covers the 
 first ; the word supernatural applies with least confusion 
 to the third alone. We are thus left with no reciprocal 
 designation of the intermediate, uniting term, the volun- 
 tary movements of men ; coining a word, we may call 
 these internatural. They start in nature, they terminate 
 with nature ; but they themselves are not included parts 
 of it. The supernatural is thus left as the exclusive 
 designation of that which lies above nature and acts upon 
 it constructively. Whether we accept these three terms, 
 or shuffle on with a double service assigned to the super- 
 natural, we shall not clearly apprehend the subject till these 
 distinct forms of activity are perfectly before us. The true 
 connection of the natural and the supernatural is found in 
 the internatural. This alone unites them in a system. 
 
 One mystery makes all these plain, and familiar facts 
 obscure to some minds, the mystery of contact between 
 the spiritual and the physical. But this mystery — if it be 
 wise to call it one — is the exact mystery of the ultimate, 
 wherever and whenever we reach it, the mystery of gravi- 
 tation, of cohesion, of chemical affinity. It is always by 
 accepting one mystery that we make many mysteries 
 plain. Reason, insight, lie just here in accepting ulti- 
 mates wisely ; and one ultimate in itself is as plain as 
 another. When an act becomes single, it thereby be- 
 comes simple. It admits of no analysis and no explana- 
 tion. When things so distinct as spiritual phenomena 
 and physical phenomena affect each other, an intermedi- 
 ate, as a term of exposition, becomes absurd. It doubles 
 the mystery. It renews the error so long persisted in of 
 expounding vision by an emanation from the thing visible. 
 
88 
 
 THE NEW THEOLOGY 
 
 The relation of man, as a finite being, to nature, is 
 necessarily distinct from that of God as an infinite being. 
 The natural is foreign to man, something which proceeds 
 without him, and is approached by him only in narrow 
 and carefully ordered ways. This path of approach is his 
 own physical organization. Each living thing has its own 
 terms of mastery, less broad or more broad, over physical 
 forms. All lives, taken collectively, penetrate the physi- 
 cal elements in innumerable ways for innumerable uses, 
 and stand up, in and by each other, in a wide command 
 of the world. All this service, by virtue of his superior 
 and more complex endowments, culminates in man. 
 That slow, organic development, therefore, by which, as 
 the latest and highest form of life, he gathers up the 
 reins of power which have been placed in his hands, and 
 guides the world for his own spiritual purposes, is doubly 
 the condition of his control. His manifold physical en- 
 dowments are the immediate terms in this government ; 
 and like endowments, as varied and multiplied in all lives, 
 at a second remove, minister to his purposes, and rest his 
 power deeply and broadly on the soil of the earth. 
 
 This evolution, also, carries with it the ability to com- 
 prehend the world, and opens backward to him the years 
 of God. The intellectual stratum, on which his activity 
 rests, is as deep as the physical stratum, and at one with 
 it. The natural is that world of substantial, completed 
 thought with which his finite powers, in their unfolding, 
 are united, and into which they go forth. Here they find 
 both the conditions and limits of activity. The natural 
 and the supernatural are in equipoise in man, are alike 
 the terms of his life. The natural is the conduit of his 
 supernatural power which bounds it, guides it, and gives 
 way before it. The world is serviceable in the degree in 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 89 
 
 which it is intelligible. It is intelligible, when considered 
 as holding these two constituents, in a far more profound 
 and comprehensive fashion than when looked on in any 
 other manner. This is the way in which men, by the 
 growth of knowledge, have come more and more to 
 understand the dependencies of matter and mind. These 
 two terms, the natural and the supernatural, are the 
 banks between which their thoughts have always flowed, 
 and are still flowing. Efforts to lift them out of these 
 familiar channels must be unsuccessful, because they are 
 opposed to the gravitation of mind. We might as well 
 expect to turn all the waters of the world into aerial ways. 
 As mind has thus far asserted itself, so it will continue to 
 assert itself. It cannot accept, and it never will accept, 
 conclusions at war with its own processes and its own 
 powers. Knowledge with man means a certain mastery of 
 mind over matter, and this it will continue to mean. His 
 power to modify the world for future uses turns on this 
 relation. Things are changeable and lives are variable in 
 his hand, and so he multiplies the ministrations of the 
 world to himself. The sense of this control not only can 
 not depart from man, it is constantly on the increase. 
 The growth of knowledge, instead of limiting the super- 
 natural, is continually adding to its scope as rightly 
 understood. We are perpetually passing from physical 
 laws to personal powers, from personal powers to physical 
 laws, in the rhythm of intellectual and spiritual progress. 
 The natural alone is a flinty rock on which nothing can 
 be grown, out of which nothing can be cut ; the super- 
 natural alone is shifting clouds which dissolve and redis- 
 solve in meaningless forms. The natural, flexible under 
 the supernatural, is the marble chiselled into the statue, is 
 the opening flower built together by the fugitive light 
 
go THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 and brooding moisture. The natural and the supernatural 
 are different sides of the same thing, the earthward and 
 the heavenward side, the outer and the inner side. When 
 we walk in the light of our intuitions and affections, we are 
 most touched by a sense of the Divine Presence; when we 
 take counsel and put our hands to work shrewdly on 
 the things about us, we are most impressed by law, by 
 stubborn conditions, by the slowly yielding material into 
 which human and divine thoughts transform themselves. 
 God and man, if they are to meet in activity at all, and 
 the overshadowing attributes of the one feed, without 
 engulfing, the feeble faculties of the other, must find 
 a middle term which shall be the hiding of the Divine 
 Presence, on the one side, and the drawing out of human 
 powers, on the other side. Nature is such a middle term. 
 God here meets us, makes terms with us, gives us our 
 lessons, and assigns us our tasks. So disciplined there are 
 two suppositions we can make, equally false, equally pro- 
 ductive of indolence and irresponsibility. We may mag- 
 nify the natural, and say that this apparent potency of 
 ours is all deceptive. That, in some subtile way, nature 
 overrules us, and runs around us, and drives us about in a 
 meaningless manner. Or we may magnify the super- 
 natural, and regard the present terms of life as arbitrary, 
 to be shaken off, as they have been imposed, by the divine 
 will. We may thus wait for new developments, as if the 
 law of change were simply one of fortuitous connections. 
 The one is the error of an undue extension of causal rela- 
 tions, the other the error of magnifying voluntary depen- 
 dencies. They are equally opposed to that coherent 
 movement of reason by which thought, with no loss of its 
 own fluency, is forever passing into the framework of 
 things. 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 91 
 
 The natural, then, is that completed product of spiritual 
 activity which expresses itself in things, events, actions, 
 under law ; and the supernatural is that spiritual potenti- 
 ality, present both in man and God, which is the source of 
 nature. The one is form and the other is spirit. 
 
 The relation of man to nature, as enclosed in it and 
 limited by it, readily leads him to misconceive God's rela- 
 tion to it. An exterior existence and control, akin to 
 that of man, are assigned to God also. Some even ask 
 for the brain of God, the point at which his lines of power 
 converge. Such a connection of mind with matter is 
 necessarily a finite one. The world, the instrument of 
 mind, lies exterior to mind, to be subjected to such pro- 
 cesses of life as are possible to mind, by means of its own 
 physical organism. 
 
 The Infinite must act centre-wise, in a way not illus- 
 trated by man's control of nature. The thought of the 
 world is inseparable from the energies of the world, in 
 their forms, measures, and relations. The mind of God, 
 if present at all, is present in them in their very incep- 
 tion, in their every manifestation. An incomplete symbol 
 of this relation is found in the connection of the spirit 
 and body of man. The control which the mind has over 
 its own bodily organs is much more perfect and inde- 
 pendent than that which it has over other things. Will, 
 simple spiritual activity, carries with it ready responses 
 within the circuit of the body, and realizes itself at once 
 in physical results which cost the spirit nothing. A mind 
 that thus sustained and increased at pleasure all physical 
 forces in the entire compass of being would be infinite. 
 The regularity of its action would give the laws of nature, 
 and the natural would be the habitual expression of the 
 supernatural. The two would be the form and force of 
 
92 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 the same thing. They might easily fall apart in our con- 
 sideration of them, as the text of an author and the spirit 
 of an author separate themselves in criticism, but the 
 fundamental coherence of the two would still remain the 
 all inclusive and ultimate fact. 
 
 Suppose this to be the relation of the physical world 
 to God, that it is simply the Divine Mind presenting 
 itself in a legible form, would the laws of nature, the 
 causal connections of events, find place in it ? We answer 
 the question as we answer all like questions, on the basis 
 of reason. We answer it, keeping step with the naturalist, 
 when he says these laws are universal. Why ? because 
 any other supposition does not tally with the claims of 
 reason. Is then a causal dependence of physical phe- 
 nomena a rational one, if these phenomena rest back on 
 mind ? Evidently it is a rational one, as it addresses 
 itself to the mind and government of man as no other 
 connection could do. If facts are to be intelligible and 
 manageable, they must have these dependencies which 
 make them so. 
 
 Does this fact compel us to regard these connections as 
 absolute? Not in the least. We admitted them as the 
 expression of reason and in its service, and we cannot 
 allow them to shake off that service. A method that be- 
 comes absolute thereby becomes arbitrary. A rule that 
 can never be set aside brings its own distinct evils. 
 Reason, the highest reason, does not allow itself to be 
 held in subjection by its own processes, does not suffer 
 the conditions of one form of structure to rule those of 
 another. Reason is infinitely flexible and productive 
 within itself. Reason, therefore, prepares us to expect 
 more than one method, one manifestation of the super- 
 natural, that each manifestation shall be subject to its 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 93 
 
 own purposes, and that all shall be harmonized in the most 
 varied uses of mind. It is fit that the supernatural which 
 expresses itself in causal relations in the physical world 
 should, in subserving other ends, transcend these relations. 
 
 The form most conspicuous and undeniable in which 
 the supernatural manifests itself is the miracle. Much 
 is unwisely said about the miracle as a violation of natural 
 law. The word is intended to carry a sense of injury 
 done to the constructive processes of the world. In the 
 same spirit a martinet gives rightfulness to a rule aside 
 from the purposes it is subserving. If the coherence of 
 physical laws is the expression of reason, this elasticity 
 under spiritual pressure may be equally so. The additions 
 and subtractions of a miracle are not in conflict with the 
 ends of law, they simply enlarge them. Nor are these 
 additions and subtractions new in kind. They are the 
 same in kind. If the sick are healed, they are healed by 
 a reinforcement of natural forces. The Infinite is in no 
 way bound beyond his own purposes to a given, quantita- 
 tive expression. More or less rests on precisely the same 
 pow r er that rules at the familiar, medium mark. This 
 alleged conflict, either of purpose or of method, disap- 
 pears under any comprehensive reference of the world to 
 reason. If the world contains no inherent reason, then 
 reason can say nothing about it beyond vision ; but if it 
 contains reason, then reason, in its full variety of method, 
 must be conceded. 
 
 If we are to entertain the supernatural successfully, we 
 must do it broadly, freely, as fulfilling a very general, 
 harmonious, and concurrent purpose in creation. This it 
 does as now offered. The supernatural, underlying every- 
 where the natural, declares itself distinctly in the develop- 
 ment of life, and still more in rational spirits. The 
 
94 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 relation of spiritual life to physical things is one permeated 
 with a supernatural element. It rises distinctly above 
 the plane of causes. Under the guidance of these facts, 
 we are able to find The Supernatural, the centre and life 
 of all things, and are prepared for an explicit disclosure of 
 this supremacy, on fitting occasion, in the miracle. It is 
 the supposed irrationality of the miracle that precludes 
 its acceptance by many ; it is only its plain rationality 
 that can make way for it again in the thoughts of all. 
 
 Huxley says that the rationalist no longer objects to 
 the miracle as impossible, but as not sufficiently proved. 
 But the proof is rejected chiefly because of the great, 
 antecedent improbability which is supposed to attach to 
 a miracle. Allow it to be an orderly factor in the spiritual 
 world, and the historic proof, as in the narrative of our 
 Lord, is quite sufficient to sustain it. If it is a term not 
 of order but of confusion, no evidence will long avail. 
 The thoughts of men everywhere, in belief and unbelief 
 alike, set toward construction. This is the profound, the 
 ruling, force in human knowledge. 
 
 In our time it is not the miracle that establishes the 
 divine government, so much as it is the divine govern- 
 ment that establishes the miracle. The supernatural is 
 by no means that fragmentary, alien thing it is often 
 conceived to be. If it were, we could not be too quickly 
 rid of it. On the other hand, rightly understood, it is the 
 very substance and soul of spiritual life, a life which is the 
 inspiration of all being. The natural is to be swallowed 
 up in the supernatural, or rather the two are inseparably 
 to pervade each other, as the double terms of one creative 
 process. Force and form abide together in all art. 
 
 The life of Christ is a far more com'plete fact, a more 
 perfect integer, with the miracles than without them. It 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 95 
 
 is almost impossible to pluck away, thread by thread, 
 these supernatural connections and save any cohesive 
 force or beauty in the fabric. The world with the life of 
 Christ is a far more rational, afar more invigorating, thing 
 than it is without that life. The reason, moving toward 
 the higher ends of spiritual comprehension, finds need of 
 this supreme fact, and, therefore, for the deepest of all 
 reasons, gives it ready admission. Our thought, by means 
 of it, makes full the circle of its own relations. 
 
 Let us take, without resting our argument wholly on it, 
 the resurrection of our Lord as a favorable example of a 
 supernatural event. Notwithstanding the confusion of 
 the narratives, notwithstanding the greater difficulty which 
 arises from the incongruity of the recorded events, some 
 of them resting on a sensuous experience and some of 
 them transcending it, some of them amenable to touch 
 and vision and some of them not, we still believe it more 
 rational to accept the fact of a resurrection than to deny 
 it. The proof is sufficient to force the subject before the 
 mind and to render any solution of ii; on a natural basis 
 unsatisfactory. Many and momentous events seem to 
 take their origin from it, and cannot well be explained 
 without it. The highest spiritual congruity is attained 
 by means of it. However perplexed we may be by the 
 conflict of other considerations, this last consideration of 
 spiritual congruity restores the equilibrium of the mind in 
 firm belief. If we reject the event, on what ground shall 
 we do it ? Undoubtedly on the basis of the integrity of 
 nature, the rational coherence of physical events. That is 
 to say, those convictions of mind which find satisfaction 
 in the constructive relations of natural agents predetermine 
 us against this event as supernatural. But does not this 
 same concession to reason in another direction and a 
 
g6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 higher one call for the acceptance of the resurrection ? 
 If we believe in a spiritual universe, as all our most pene- 
 trative insights compel us to, then is not the integrity, the 
 inner sufficiency, of these spiritual convictions to have as 
 much power with us as like considerations in connection 
 with physical events ? Certainly we shall not do well 
 to allow one conclusion of mind to pull down others of 
 equal or greater scope. The right by which the mind 
 builds up the realm of natural law is in no way superior 
 to that by which it compacts together the spiritual uni- 
 verse. One rational process is at the bottom of both of 
 them. It is absurd for the mind to attach, by its own 
 bent, such weight to physical considerations as to break 
 down the cohesive force of its own higher movements. 
 If it is entitled to the universality of physical law in 
 a physical realm, it is equally entitled to the universality 
 of spiritual relations in a spiritual universe. 
 
 We feel, therefore, that the world as a whole is more 
 rational, more comprehensible, taken up into a higher 
 unity, with than without the resurrection. We thus 
 stand, as mind always stands, by faith, faith in its own 
 processes, faith in the inner reason of things. That 
 to which we direct attention in calling out this faith 
 is the more sufficient and comprehensive way in which 
 the universe, natural, internatural, and supernatural, is 
 bound together by the resurrection. If we lose any one 
 of these three terms, we lose a portion of the meaning of 
 the other two ; and the resurrection helps us to the mean- 
 ing of them all. The meaning of the world is what we 
 are seeking for, and if we do not know this meaning when 
 we find it, our search must necessarily be futile. 
 
 But this conclusion is not so simple, looked at from all 
 positions, as we may now seem to have made it. The 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 97 
 
 mind that is long occupied with physical inquiries derives 
 from them a tendency, very valuable and just within its 
 own limits, but one that easily leads, first to the over- 
 sight, and then to the denial, of the spiritual phenomena 
 of the world. The field of one engaged in physical 
 research is too remote from these mountain summits, 
 and, losing sight of them, he comes to disbelieve in them. 
 The things nearest him contradict the alleged freedom of 
 thought, and the continuity of the world seems at war 
 with it. 
 
 Natural laws, to those who investigate them, assume a 
 very absolute and universal form. This universality is 
 emphasized at every stage of inquiry, and comes, at 
 length, to be accepted as the primary fact in the world, 
 and the first principle in philosophy. All knowledge is 
 made to rest upon it. Certainly no man is prepared to 
 carry on physical inquiries successfully who is not thor- 
 oughly possessed of this notion of causation. This is the 
 lesson of the last hundred years. But when mind is re- 
 garded as subject to the same law, we are extending our 
 induction into a new field, and that, too, with no revision of 
 our premises, no new weighing of the facts. To assert 
 causation here because it prevails elsewhere is to fall 
 at once into a priori reasoning. To say that conclu- 
 sions, logically coherent within themselves, owe their 
 connection to certain prior physical dependencies, is to 
 do in a new form, and in an opposite direction, what was 
 so often and so unsuccessfully done in physics, when 
 physical dependencies were expounded as mental ones, 
 and nature was thought, like mind, to prefer and to abhor 
 certain states and acts. Indeed, if we are not now in 
 error in making acceptance and rejection in man the 
 result of accompanying physical facts, the naturalists of a 
 
98 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 previous time were not so very much astray in thinking 
 that a feeling, itself a phase of a physical state, might be 
 a link in material connections. 
 
 We most assuredly need to remember that when we 
 make the natural, in the form of causal relations, uni- 
 versal, we are proceeding simply on a presumption of 
 mind, and in no way on direct, perceptive knowledge. 
 The question between those who accept, and those who 
 deny, the supernatural is one simply of reasonableness in 
 method, of the soundness of that sweep of mind by which 
 we go beyond the facts before us. The strict naturalist 
 must subject all activities, even the activities on which 
 the entire explanatory process depends, to physical law. 
 Causation thus passes into mental phenomena and sub- 
 dues them to itself. This conclusion, which stands at the 
 threshold of strict naturalism, is, as already urged, one 
 absolutely impossible to sound thought, since it destroys 
 the very nature of thought. More than this, causes 
 determine the mind to their own universal extension, 
 and so the extension itself ceases to be a thing of rea- 
 son and remains simply an insoluble fact. But it is not a 
 uniform fact, since the majority of men reach no such 
 conclusion. There is thus conflict and confusion in the 
 facts, and there is no reason left us wherewith to correct 
 them, to harmonize them with each other. 
 
 The second step of strict naturalism is somewhat less 
 difficult, though still very difficult. It is the reference of 
 the relations of things, completely intelligible, to some- 
 thing less than intelligence. The wisdom of the world — 
 great as it is — is a water-mark within its own fibre. It 
 enters into the very structure of things, and so shows 
 that their putting together was a rational process. This 
 naturalism must deny. It cannot admit that construe' 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 99 
 
 tion, like significant speech, rests on a meaning beneath 
 it; that order is the product of wisdom and ruled by it; 
 that nature reposes on the supernatural, which floats 
 it as the ocean floats the vessel. 
 
 A third much easier denial of naturalism is that of 
 the present modification of physical events by a divine 
 agency. It denies the efficacy of prayer. Here unbelief 
 has to do, not with the general interpretation of facts, 
 but with the existence of certain specific facts. It seems, 
 therefore, possible, at first sight, to bring the question in 
 discussion to a practical test. Are there any answers to 
 prayer ? Many reply, Yes ; and some reply, No. Can 
 these discrepancies of opinion be brought to a rational 
 settlement ? Certainly not, if we mean by such a settle- 
 ment one independent of our varying methods of interpre- 
 tation ; one equally satisfactory to all. The answer to 
 prayer appeals to the mind of the supplicant. However 
 much beyond the simply physical forces involved the 
 answer of prayer may seem to have been, it can still be 
 referred to these forces, and will be so referred by every 
 one whose attitude of mind is such as to make such a 
 reference seem more probable than the notion of divine 
 aid. That is to say, in our explanations of the facts of 
 the world which touch our dependence on God, we are 
 merely giving a specific application of previous convic- 
 tions, and we cannot maintain special cases without the 
 general principles under which they are marshalled. It 
 is every way unreasonable to expect the particular to 
 stand up and contradict the general to which it belongs. 
 
 A belief in the answer of prayer arises in connection 
 with an interpretation of facts, very wide and varied in 
 character, and of very different degrees of force. Ante- 
 cedent reasons are present with many minds which make 
 
 PJHIVER3IT7 1 
 
IOO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 the conclusion in a high degree probable. Facts seem to 
 them to conform in a remarkable degree to this theory of 
 the universe. Extreme naturalism, on the other hand, is 
 so prepossessed against the expositions of faith, that it 
 ridicules the less obvious examples of the answer of 
 prayer, and disbelieves the more obvious ones. Affirma- 
 tion and denial, on either side, have no absolute force. 
 Proof is not a thing of vision, but turns on the construc- 
 tive ideas we have recognized in the framework of things. 
 No man can allow secondary, outstanding facts to contra- 
 dict fundamental relations. This would be to yield the 
 greater to the less, and undo all the work of thought. 
 
 If we were to establish two hospitals, as nearly as pos- 
 sible alike in their appliances and methods ; if we were 
 to govern the one by the temper of naturalism, and the 
 other by that of faith, — a thing impossible to do in this 
 predetermined fashion — doubtless the results would be 
 somewhat different in the number of cures effected. 
 Suppose this difference to lie on the side of faith, it 
 would still be quite possible to say, and from the position 
 of naturalism rational to say, that faith is itself a potent 
 natural factor ; that it gives enthusiasm and hope to those 
 who entertain it, and so, as awakened life, becomes a 
 restorative agency ; that it imparts peace and resignation 
 to those who suffer, and is thus a spiritual anodyne to 
 physical irritations that otherwise exhaust the resources 
 of life ; in short, that the mind itself is an important fac- 
 tor in critical forms of disease, and that in these, its 
 remedial relations, it is greatly strengthened by faith. 
 
 On the other hand, it would be equally possible to say 
 that these results of faith imply the validity of faith, and 
 rest upon it ; that we cannot maintain enthusiasm, hope, 
 peace, for a series of years in a series of minds, with no 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 101 
 
 sufficient foundation for them ; that this admitted efficacy 
 of faith involves a sufficient reason, and that this reason 
 is recognized by religion and denied by unbelief. These 
 responses, backward and forward, would owe their force 
 to prior principles, and would settle nothing indepen- 
 dently of them. 
 
 The notion of a sufficient test of the efficacy of prayer 
 is gross and irrational. It is gross because it implies that 
 some visible and undeniable fact can be evidence of an 
 invisible relation. We might with equal fitness demand 
 of those who accept life as a plastic power, that it should 
 be made tangible to us. It is irrational, because sound 
 thought requires that we should give any alleged phe- 
 nomena the precise conditions under which they are said 
 to occur. We cannot do this in prayer in the form of an 
 experiment. The mind cannot thus be left alone with 
 God. We are virtually trying to quiz the spirit of man 
 and the Spirit of Truth in their dealings with each other. 
 
 In the fourth place mere naturalism must deny — a 
 denial easy in itself — the miracle. The test, just referred 
 to, of visible results, should be applied to the miracle — if 
 applied at all — and not to the answer of prayer. The 
 answer of prayer always offers itself under a natural form, 
 while the miracle transcends natural law in a bold and 
 decisive way. But Hume was quite right in affirming 
 that the miracle, on the basis of mere naturalism, cannot 
 be established, even by vision. The miracle is one experi- 
 ence contradicting a thousand other experiences. There 
 must be in the mind that accepts it some prior reason 
 which reconciles the result with its previous knowledge, 
 or belief in it is irrational. If I accede to one man's 
 testimony against a thousand, there must be some other 
 reason for this concession than the mere fact that he is 
 
102 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 one of the thousand. A single circumstance cannot con- 
 tradict a hundred others resting on the same basis with it. 
 The universality of causation, the one undoubted princi- 
 ple of knowledge, compels the man who accepts natural- 
 ism to believe, in the case before him, that sufficient 
 causes are present to secure the anomalous result ; and 
 thus that result, whatever it is, ceases to be a miracle. 
 
 If miracles are rational, the historical proof is sufficient 
 to make way for them ; but if they are irrational, the his- 
 torical proof weakens at once. This evidence is also 
 further burdened by the fact that in the great majority of 
 cases the alleged miracle is irrational, and so fails. The 
 handling of proof turns constantly on intrinsic fitness. 
 
 What miracles, if any, are to be accepted, is a question 
 to which we can make answer only when we have searched 
 our philosophy through and through for the reasons of 
 miracles. Miracles, whatever else they are or are not, are 
 a supreme test of our methods of thought, the balance we 
 have instituted between spiritual and physical energies. 
 The works and words of Christ make an incomparable 
 whole, a seamless garment. For this reason we believe in 
 them with unwavering faith, but we can justify that faith 
 only as the summation of all thought, as our deepest in- 
 sight into the coherence of things. 
 
 Christ, it is said, did not many mighty works there 
 because of their unbelief. As theologians often look at 
 the miracle, this reason would seem to be unsound. The 
 purpose of the miracle is thought to be the silencing of 
 unbelief. So Elijah used it against the priests of Baal. 
 The method of Christ implies that it is primarily a revela- 
 tion of God to minds prepared to receive it. The miracle 
 is not an assault on the gates of unbelief, an effort to carry 
 the world by storm. This is profoundly impossible. It 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. IO3 
 
 is a transfiguration, a inciting of the visible before the eye 
 of faith into the invisible, an overleaping of the limits of 
 the visible with the glories of the invisible, a suffusion of 
 lines in a marvellous play of light, art transcending itself. 
 
 If we are at all 1 ight in what we have said, the usual 
 order of denial and affirmation must necessarily be barren 
 of results. The root of the supernatural is not the 
 miracle. This is at best the perfume of its topmost 
 flower. That by which it roots itself in the earth, and 
 holds it as its own, is the power of mind, the very nature 
 of spirit. Naturalism, in the limited meaning in which 
 we are now using the word, having weakened our sense of 
 our own distinctive nature, is ready to deny the miracle, 
 then to doubt the efficacy of prayer, then to swallow up 
 the thought of the world in the inherent relations of 
 material forces, and, in confirmation of all, to affirm the 
 absolute oneness of law in matter and mind. 
 
 The proper ,: ne of defence in faith is the reverse of this. 
 We must first understand the nature of spirit, human and 
 divine — the law of mind within itself. We shall then see 
 its relation to physical things, its flow through them, its 
 transcription of itself in them as a visible medium of ex- 
 pression and a determinate field of action ; the reserve of 
 itself to itself by which, on occasion given by reason, it 
 transcends the ordinary restraints of reason, and discloses 
 itself by a light that, for an instant and for an instant 
 only, darkens all other light. 
 
 If we consent to settle this question of the supernatural 
 at the point of miracles, its most remote manifestation, 
 with all the illusions against us which crowd in from the 
 manifold superstitions of men, and with an overshadowing 
 sense of the majesty of law as the full expression of the 
 Divine Mind, we shall make concessions that we cannot 
 
104 
 
 TilE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 recall, and find ourselves slowly pushed backward, till 
 we have come under that great horror, instinctive and 
 rational, life that is losing itself. 
 
 It is this faintness of the spirit within itself that, in 
 works of fiction well conceived, makes the loss of faith so 
 pathetic. The patient, under the slow inroads of unbelief, 
 yields one and another disclosure of the supernatural, 
 finds the miracle increasingly out of sorts with the his- 
 toric world, finally turns to that world as one unbroken 
 stretch of causal relations, and, if still earnest, enters on 
 the despairing effort of restoring to itself and to others a 
 spiritual presence. He inevitably fails in the effort, not 
 because it is not a most needful one, but because the 
 mind has too long been busy in chipping away every foot- 
 hold and plucking up every shrub by which it might, 
 like a wrecked mariner, mount the face of the cliff that 
 now rises a sheer precipice before it. Such a one cannot 
 fall back successfully on the inner testimony of the spirit, 
 because, in painfully discrediting each of the manifesta- 
 tions of the spiritual history of the world, he has hidden 
 much of that history from himself. Pre-eminently is this 
 true for the popular mind. The preacher who is trying 
 to persuade men to righteousness, conceiving it in its 
 most abstract form, finds himself making violent, spas- 
 modic efforts to breathe in an atmosphere too high and rare 
 for the purposes of life, too high and rare for those whom 
 he struggles to lead, by this remote and visionary path, 
 into the experiences of faith. Heroism is all that remains 
 to him. 
 
 This question of naturalism and supernaturalism can 
 be safely settled only by a wide survey of the entire field. 
 Assert distinctly the primitive powers of mind, and we are 
 borne on by them till the world is everywhere the medium 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. IO$ 
 
 and expression of thought. Deny spiritual intervention 
 in physical things, and one support after another of the 
 personal element gives way, till the weary spirit, like a 
 spent swimmer, sinks beneath the cold, restless surge of 
 material forces. We should refuse to close an argument 
 of this depth and moment until we have fully measured 
 all its implications. 
 
 A whip, skilfully constructed, is completely elastic at 
 one extremity and almost wholly inelastic at the other. 
 The quality grows in one direction and declines in the 
 opposite, and this it is which makes of it a perfect and 
 graceful instrument. Inelastic throughout, and it is a 
 cudgel, with which to bruise and to maim. The world is 
 an admirable construction for the uses of mind, because 
 inflexible physical and flexible spiritual forces interpene- 
 trate each other everywhere in it. Try to understand it 
 otherwise, make it rigid with natural law, and it becomes 
 a club with which to beat the spirit and destroy its life. 
 
 The first purpose subserved by the supernatural is that 
 of enabling us fully to understand the personifying ten- 
 dency in man. We encounter this effort to penetrate to 
 a personal core of things equally in sound thought and 
 in earnest feeling. The world constantly reflects us to 
 ourselves, and we are no longer alone in it. Face makes 
 answer to face, as in a glass, and the mind of man awakens 
 in a world of mind. There is no tendency in man more 
 universal and irresistible than this tendency to seek for 
 and find the personal in the world about him. It arises 
 in furtherance of poetic and religious sentiments alike. It 
 discloses the spiritual framework of things, and at the 
 same time seeks to adorn it with all the sprightliness of 
 art. It makes the world deeply significant in the only 
 way in which it can at once and equally address the 
 
106 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 thoughts and the affections. The spiritual and personal are 
 not the yeast of waves that have beaten themselves into 
 foam, the last, slightest, and most solitary of products ; 
 they are primordial as well as final, fundamental as well as 
 superficial, that which we are reaching as the deepest, 
 most refreshing truth in all our inquiry. The world is 
 open to art because it is animate ; it is religious because 
 it abides everywhere under supersensuous law. The en- 
 tire search of the truly devout mind is for the personal, the 
 spiritual, the divine in the world ; and for the power to 
 abide on terms of sympathy with it. Superstition is the 
 immaturity and distortion of this growth, and yet the 
 religious impulse, in the darkest periods and places, is the 
 one redemptive power, lifting men from an animal basis. 
 Here is a being who can be touched, profoundly touched, 
 by a sense of the invisible ; a being who is open to all 
 those motives which come from the spiritual world ; a 
 being, therefore, who belongs to that world, and can be 
 brought under its perfect law. This search for the per- 
 sonal, this delight in it, this free subjection in righteous- 
 ness to it, find full satisfaction only in the supernatural 
 as centred in the Divine Life. So the natural becomes 
 its instant expression. The two elements cease to be 
 estranged from each other, and go forth together as the 
 sensuous and spiritual side of the same movement, a 
 movement always more and greater than its present mani- 
 festation. Thus the supernatural loses all waywardness, 
 and the natural all deadness ; the two are blended in per- 
 fected life. 
 
 It is a matter of surprise that the evolutionist passes so 
 lightly the religious tendency in man, a tendency so pecul- 
 iar, so universal, so controlling, so aspiring. As a simple 
 fact, an actual energy, it deserves far more attention than 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 107 
 
 it receives, implies a far deeper relation than is conceded to 
 it. Instead of being an impulse that can be pushed aside, 
 as a transient, erratic energy, it offers itself as the germ of 
 all upward movement, the one spiritual term which men 
 hold in common. Sensuous motives bring to men no 
 sufficient government. They must be supplemented and 
 replaced by supersensuous ones. The first terms in this 
 advanced and advancing experience have been, and for 
 most men are, contained in the religious life. Errors and 
 failures plead nothing against it. These are a matter of 
 course, and merely mark the steps of development. That 
 faith which most fully contains this personifying tendency, 
 this search of mind for mind, this reproduction of rational 
 life in rational life, shows itself to be a stadium in the up- 
 ward march, a focus at which all forces are converging. 
 
 The natural separated from the supernatural is the 
 slow strangulation of spiritual life. Poetry is a fiction of 
 the feelings, and religion a feebleness of the thoughts ; 
 while the world, in all its glorious changes, has no more 
 life or assured promise in it than a top spinning on its 
 axis. Such a conception is too dead to be long enter- 
 tained even by naturalism, and so there begin to steal in 
 those illogical abatements and insufficient corrections of 
 which this philosophy is so full, and is becoming increas- 
 ingly full. Life is thought to have a tendency to varia- 
 tion, which can be manipulated by natural selection into 
 something very like progress ; and an Unknown is ad' 
 vanced as the ultimate term of thought — an Unknown 
 that can be nursed into a divinity not wholly remote from 
 God. And so the impoverished roots of thought are fed 
 once more by fancy. 
 
 It is certainly strange that the ripe reason of the posi- 
 tivist should be employed, in its most extreme and erratic 
 
108 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 freedom, to set aside the inherent, inevitable movement 
 of reason in the race ; and yet the gist of reason remain 
 with the positivist a causal, and not a voluntary, relation. 
 On their own basis, it is absurd for a handful of positiv- 
 ists to flatly contradict the general methods of human 
 thought. 
 
 But why should we be content to accept their feeble 
 concessions, to glean these few heads of wheat — often 
 only tares — in a field all our own? If law is that absolute 
 thing with which we start our parable, then all makeshifts 
 in satisfaction of human feeling will turn out illusions. 
 Fate is a mild word for this deadlock of eternity, and 
 human history, with its fears and hopes, and endless shifti- 
 ness to the eye, a bitter mockery, when contrasted with 
 its inner, inevitable drift toward the unknown. If this 
 causal law is allowed to break for an instant at a single 
 point, we cannot knit it a second time ; we can only 
 regain coherence by passing fully over to that higher 
 unity in spiritual life by which distinct methods are 
 resolved into one movement under the mastery of pure 
 reason. 
 
 The second purpose which the supernatural subserves, 
 is that of rest to our higher faculties ; and each purpose, 
 let us remember, is an argument in behalf of the super- 
 natural. The only right of being, is a reason for being. 
 This truth is enforced by science. Our empiricism, even, 
 has taught it us all along. We saw many things which 
 we did not understand, that seemed purposeless, or worse 
 than purposeless, in the world. They had the right of 
 being, with no reason for being. This impression, inquiry 
 has steadily dispelled ; and we have come to see — not 
 yet completely, but very fully — that a right and a reason 
 have gone together, and things have been chiefly by virtue 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. IO9 
 
 of the purposes they have subserved. The efficient 
 causes and the final causes have been blended in them as 
 in natural selection. The fittest survive, and they survive 
 because they are the fittest. That which subserves a 
 purpose, that which stands in constructive harmony with 
 other things, for that reason abides in strength. We may 
 figure this relation as an equilibrium of forces, or as an 
 inner coherence of the divine thought. In either way, the 
 right and the reason, the fact and its purpose, go together. 
 
 With this second purpose of rest comes the third pur- 
 pose, which can best be treated with it, of enlargement. 
 We cannot have spiritual rest without spiritual enlarge- 
 ment. Rest is the repose of powers in spiritual activities 
 that sufficiently employ them and reward them. The 
 intellectual constitution makes a demand, quite the 
 equivalent of that of the body, for sufficient air , it refuses 
 to be suffocated ; repression is most irksome to it. Range 
 and vitality go together. But there is no enlargement for 
 reason like that which makes reason the universal element 
 in all things. Between this conception and that of 
 universal causal relations there is no comparison in the 
 stimulus offered by them. The one contains the other 
 and much more. Order is admitted by reason up to the 
 line at which it becomes rigid, cold, and dead ; at which 
 it ceases to be artistic and spiritual. The supernatural, 
 rightly understood, is an inexhaustible wealth that lies 
 beyond the natural, a light that percolates through the 
 cloud and glorifies it, without dispersing it ; that discloses 
 its outlines in changeable interplay with the very element 
 that is streaming through it. 
 
 There are peculiarly gifted and noble natures, minds 
 whose intellectuality is of a remarkable order, that find 
 satisfaction in naturalism alone — men like Darwin, whose 
 
IIO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 activity in one direction is so great, so fascinating, so 
 successful, that it swallows up all impulses and fills the 
 entire circle of the powers. But these persons are 
 altogether exceptional ; exceptional as men of ability, 
 and exceptional among men of ability. They are not 
 more numerous than are Stoics in society. The stoical 
 attitude is genuine and one of much nobility. It owes 
 this nobility to an exaggeration of the very principle we 
 are enforcing — the power of mind. The Stoic, in assert- 
 ing; this power, finds an exhilaration which he can, in 
 some measure, mistake for satisfaction. But the rest of 
 Stoicism, in a stern defiance of fortune, is very different 
 from that insight which sees fortune forever resolving 
 itself along lines of light into divine favor. The devotee 
 of naturalism, in the enthusiasm of a study of nature, so 
 magnifies intellect, on its practical side, that he overlooks 
 the indignity and weakness he has put upon it theoreti- 
 cally. This quiet of naturalism, pursuing for a brief 
 period the paths of inquiry, is much inferior to that loving 
 faith which makes the spirit forever a denizen of a universe 
 of ideas and ideal affections. 
 
 This rest and this enlargement in reason mean every- 
 thing for the most spiritual minds, and mean very much 
 for the average mind. The impersonal is altogether too 
 cold and abstract for household warmth, for daily affec- 
 tions. The masses of men, if they are to be impelled 
 forward, must find their impulse in things that lie near 
 them, in a love that begets love, in a righteousness that 
 carries its rewards and retributions with it, and, standing 
 at the very portal of the heart, administers them as 
 immediate affections and passions. 
 
 It is not the progress of a few, nor the convictions of a 
 few, that are to measure human development, nor to fur- 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 1 1 I 
 
 nish within themselves the conditions of growth for any 
 considerable number in any given period. The leaders of 
 Israel will linger in the wilderness as long as Israel is 
 there. The real question we have always to propound is 
 not, what motives suffice in single minds for brief mo- 
 ments, but what motives are sufficient for all men in the 
 entire stage of growth. Facts answer this question much 
 more exactly than theories. Evidently nothing can be so 
 universally efficient as the expansion of the affections 
 common to us all toward God, and their return thence to 
 a more quiet and pervasive action among ourselves. 
 The love of man is a corollary of the love of God, an item 
 under it ; and the love of God keeps pace with our love of 
 men, is an aggregate of it. To expand the affections 
 outward and upward, is to make them restful on their own 
 centre of human love, is to justify universal harmony to 
 the thoughts and to develop it in the feelings at one and 
 the same time, by one and the same process. Rebel 
 against it as we please, the mind can attain to no perfect 
 ideal which is not then and there colored and made vital 
 by the feelings; and the feelings of men are not detached 
 and personal possessions, but part and portion of universal 
 humanity. The daylight that cheers my room receives its 
 quantity and quality from universal light. The universe 
 is made a universe to man's spiritual nature, and filled 
 from bound to bound with its own light by virtue of the 
 love of God, by virtue of the spiritual presence which 
 pervades it. Christ, in revealing this love, in a very direct 
 sense in reflecting it, became the light of the world. He 
 who walks without love, walks in darkness ; and love in its 
 supreme form can only belong to a Supernatural Personal 
 Presence. All love must be secondary, derived and 
 trifling compared with this love. 
 
112 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 The reasons which lead us to enforce the supernatural 
 are at one with those which urge us to insist on the natural. 
 The supernatural nourishes that sense of power to which 
 the natural gives adequate expression. The two are the 
 equilibrium of strength.. Lacking sufficient faith in the 
 natural, we miss the means of wise and successful work. 
 Lacking faith in the supernatural, we fail of the full 
 inspiration and reward of that work. In short periods and 
 with single persons faults of methods will be obscure and 
 partial ; for we are living in an atmosphere prepared for 
 us, not in one created by us. Our work, if it has the least 
 depth, must pass on to the next generation for its dis- 
 closure. In our efforts to escape the partial forms of faith, 
 we easily slip beyond the lines of growth. We do well to 
 remember that every position in progress, well taken, 
 springs directly from previous ones. The supernatural 
 has wrought in the world's history as a supreme force. 
 The next phase of thought is not its exclusion, but its 
 coalescence with the natural. Those rare manifestations 
 of the supernatural which have given so much offence to 
 the critical temper will then be lost in the pervasive 
 presence of Creative Power. The vitality of the world will 
 not be established by brilliant exceptions, but by habitual 
 on-goings. That the supernatural in the past has by a 
 little overlapped the natural in striking manifestations is 
 quite in keeping with that universal push of life, not yet 
 dominant, by which, within the limits of nature, it has 
 enlarged nature itself. Our very evolution becomes blind 
 and aimless if we undertake to dispense with the super- 
 natural. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 DOGMATISM. 
 
 DOGMA has played a very extended, and, at times, a 
 very unfortunate, part in Church history. Reformed 
 churches not less than those waiting reform, Protestants 
 even more than Catholics, have attached an importance 
 to doctrines quite beyond the part they are fitted to play 
 in a healthy spiritual life. 
 
 Dogma grows up, in the first instance, in satisfaction of 
 the mind. It is the result of an intellectual, impulse, and 
 performs, therefore, a service both legitimate and valuable. 
 It is a movement in every way, at its inception, in keeping 
 with the progress of truth. Proportion and balance men 
 always find most difficult to achieve. Not only does each 
 effort tend to excess in itself, later, it is the occasion of a 
 kindred excess in an opposite direction. Hence men are 
 now speaking contemptuously of the speculative tendency 
 of thought, as contrasted with inquiry. As a matter of 
 fact, each is equally essential, and the two supplement 
 each other. Inquiry will reach no goal without the theo- 
 retical tendency, and this tendency will exhaust itself in 
 abstractions unless given fresh, fruitful data by inquiry. 
 
 The process of deductive thought, which finds expres- 
 sion in dogma, is valid and primary. In mathematics, the 
 results of pure thought are of extended, and of complete, 
 utility. Reasoning, in this direction, is so safe and produc- 
 
 3 113 
 
I 14 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 tive because of the entire simplicity and adequacy of the 
 notions with which it sets out. Speculation so often mis- 
 carries in the wider world of facts and events because its 
 primary conceptions are inadequate or untrue. In these 
 directions empirical inquiry must enter the more con- 
 stantly to enlarge and correct its premises. Hence knowl- 
 edge, in the physical and moral world, where the data are 
 complex, obscure and changeable, must be won equally 
 by insight and observation, by exposition and an ever 
 renewed search into the facts to be expounded. 
 
 Theology has grown almost exclusively by a deductive 
 process. A few root ideas have given form to its conclu- 
 sions. It has thus, while in itself a most legitimate and 
 desirable attainment, fallen into a double error. It has 
 allowed deduction to push aside induction, while dealing 
 not with simple, abstract ideas, but with most complex 
 and obscure facts ; and, from a practical point of view, a 
 still more fatal mistake, it has allowed the speculative 
 interest of thought to take, in part, the place of interest 
 in virtue, in a life thoroughly harmonized within and 
 without with existing conditions of conduct. Thus there 
 has been not only an unwarrantable separation of the 
 two terms in the double processes of acquiring knowl- 
 edge ; there has been a kindred partition of the triple 
 process of conduct. 
 
 Thinking has been partially separated from its imme- 
 diate union with feeling and action, and that in a direction 
 in which all three are most closely affiliated. Speculation 
 has thus ceased to be sound thinking and productive think- 
 ing. It has failed from one and the same cause on the 
 theoretical and on the practical side. Its root ideas have 
 not found correction and enlargement in the facts which 
 came under them, and the fresh fruits of conduct and 
 
DOGMATISM. 115 
 
 character have been much dwarfed and diminished in 
 amount. The speculative religious life has tended to 
 lose connection with actual life, both in its comprehension 
 and in its government. 
 
 It is not strange, under these circumstances, that the 
 pursuit of dogma should have shown a temerity on the one 
 side, and an audacity on the other, equally foreign to its 
 proper intellectual and spiritual temper. Robustness and 
 good-will were both lost. Perhaps no theological discus- 
 sion ever exhibited this tendency in a more repulsive form 
 than that which attended in the fourth century — a lead- 
 ing century in religious dogma — on the development of 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. Slight, well-nigh unintelli- 
 gible, and more or less fantastic, distinctions were urged 
 with a vehemence and virulence that broke asunder all 
 the ordinary ties of good-will. The vineyard of God was 
 furiously trampled under foot by the blind rage of those 
 to whom it had been committed. 
 
 We would not, for an instant or in any degree, lose 
 sight of the wholly legitimate and very desirable character 
 of a systematic pursuit of Christian doctrine. Both the 
 terms of thought and the terms of action will be much 
 modified by it. It is the result of our general desire of 
 knowledge and safe guidance directed to the very highest 
 field of investigation. We wish, however, to insist that 
 Christian doctrine, as it has to do not with simple, pri- 
 mary conceptions, but with most complex and abstruse 
 ideas, and with an extended survey of the facts included 
 under them, must prosper, as a department of knowledge, 
 not by deduction alone, but by deduction constantly 
 sustained by induction. The speculative methods of 
 theology are neither practically safe nor theoretically justi- 
 fied when we consider the real service that falls to it. 
 
Il6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Its field of thought is the moral world — that is, the entire 
 world, looked at in its spiritual relations. No matter 
 whether the growth of knowledge, by which we come 
 increasingly to understand the world as the arena of 
 spiritual life, comes to us by Revelation or by rational 
 inquiry, as knowledge, it must, in the end, distinctly and 
 correctly cover these facts, the moral character of God, 
 the moral discipline of the world, the moral development 
 of man individually and in society. Hence there is no 
 department of thought which addresses itself more directly 
 and comprehensively to facts, near and remote, plain and 
 obscure, than this very inquiry of theology. And hence, 
 again, there is no form of inquiry which should bind 
 together more carefully and cautiously the two processes 
 of mind which we express as deduction and induction. 
 
 However we may conceive the character of God, that 
 conception, whether gathered from the Word of God or 
 from various thoughts concerning him, must conform to 
 that presentation of his being which finds expression in 
 his works. This is the truly authoritative declaration, 
 because it is the actual one, and also the very one which 
 Revelation and human thought are present to expound. 
 Our inquiries, therefore, into the nature of God, while 
 resting on the conceptions of good men concerning him, 
 must be accompanied by a constant effort to make our 
 thought of him harmonious and adequate within itself, 
 and by a desire assiduously to correct and enlarge all 
 impressions by putting them into more complete con- 
 formity with what the world offers us in a positive and 
 concrete form on the same theme. 
 
 The divine nature and the divine character, which con- 
 stitute fundamental conceptions in theology, are facts 
 which are delineated in another way in the nature and 
 
DOGMATISM. II^ 
 
 progress of the world about us. Revelation can only make 
 this their immediate relation more clear and explicit. While 
 Revelation interprets the world, the world equally, in turn, 
 interprets Revelation. The light of religious truth is only 
 satisfactory when it brings disclosure to things, and finds 
 full reflection in them. Light is revelation because all 
 objects rejoice in it, and instantly take on, by means of 
 it, their own proper form and beauty. That which waits 
 to be illuminated and habilitated by the Revelation of 
 God are the works of God. 
 
 The government of God flows directly from his charac- 
 ter ; and certainly we cannot study that government, nor 
 accept any presentation of it except in connection with 
 an inquiry into a history of the world and human history, 
 the only products of that government known to us. The 
 obscurity which rests on individual, national, and race de- 
 velopment, on the forces which initiate and sustain growth 
 in society and the ends reached by it, is that which drives 
 us to inquiry. This obscurity can only give way before a 
 presentation of the divine method which carries light and 
 guidance into all the affairs of men. We understand the 
 divine mind in and by these affairs. 
 
 The nature of man, the nature of sin, the lines and 
 methods of redemption, the spiritual history of the human 
 race, are all themes which teach facts, far and near, and 
 can only be discussed successfully by theology in connec- 
 tion with these facts. However absolute we may suppose 
 Revelation to be, it is not thereby relieved of the neces- 
 sity of conforming to the facts of which it is treating. 
 W r e are entitled to an anthropology, a psychology, a soci- 
 ology, a philosophy of development, and all these forms 
 of knowledge must give us data and principles covering at 
 least a portion of the field of theology. The true sources 
 
Il8 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 of truth must conform to each other in their results, or 
 our knowledge falls into hopeless confusion. What we 
 find the nature of man, that Revelation must declare it to 
 be ; and what Revelation declares it, that we must find it 
 to be. The two sets of conceptions teach the same facts, 
 and must be brought into harmony by them. Nothing 
 can put down the facts, be it theory or Revelation. 
 
 The moral forces which rule the world are the forces 
 which religious truth and social science are both dealing 
 with. The two — social science and theology — have pre- 
 cisely the same problem, expressed on this side as the per- 
 fection of society, and on that side as the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. Not only must there be a mutual understand- 
 ing between these two forms of effort, there must be an 
 extended, yes, a complete interlock of labor ; and a theol- 
 ogy which seeks the regeneration of society in ignorance 
 of social laws is doomed to failure, and a sociology which 
 does not place prominent among the spiritual powers, the 
 power of faith, is striving to guide men and lead them 
 into excellence without imparting the true life-giving 
 impulse. 
 
 The great danger of theology has been, and still is, that 
 it desires to become the finished product of a narrowly 
 deductive process, that it ascribes to its immediate con- 
 clusions a divine authority, and thus, in the temper of 
 dogmatism, anticipates all the instruction of scientific in- 
 quiry, human history, and God's daily providence ; and 
 struggles hard to put upon the growing products of 
 thought, as fast as they arise, a narrow construction of its 
 own. The deductive tendency naturally runs in advance 
 of the inductive, and often submits with an ill grace to its 
 ally when it arrives. Yet, if the divine mind and method 
 are to be pre-eminently associated with either of these two 
 
DOGMATISM. I 19 
 
 forms of thought, they are to be united to the inductive, 
 rather than to the deductive, process, to the child-like 
 temper rather than to the philosophic temper, to the grand 
 procession of events in which the thoughts of God are un- 
 folding themselves rather than to our curious speculations 
 concerning them, or expansion of the earlier forms of our 
 thought about them. The Messiah never meets the ex- 
 pectations of those who are waiting for him. It is the 
 mind that must ever submit itself to the divine ordination 
 of events. 
 
 A kindred difficulty has shown itself even in science. 
 Those who, in youth, have made great additions to 
 knowledge, and brought to it the light of new principles, 
 are frequently, in old age, disposed to restrain the very 
 methods of inquiry by which they have prospered, simply 
 because these methods are tending to bring further and 
 unacceptable modifications of opinion. But this slight 
 inflexibility in scientific thought, troublesome as it some- 
 times is, is nothing to the inflexibility of theological 
 conclusions, wedded to their lines of deductive reasoning, 
 and filled with a sense of divine revelation. The proper 
 relation of religious truth to practical experience is, in 
 itself, so important, and a recognition of it is so necessary 
 to any right understanding of theology, that we shall be 
 pardoned if we present it somewhat fully. 
 
 Let us take such a system of religious faith as that 
 offered by Dr. Charles Hodge, in his " Systematic The- 
 ology." This voluminous treatise may well enough stand 
 for other systems, because it is a recent one, and one not 
 very extreme in its conclusions nor unusual in its methods. 
 He starts with the assertion that the Scriptures contain 
 all the facts of theology. " Theology is the exhibition of 
 the facts of Scripture, in their proper order and relation, 
 
120 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 with the principle or general truths involved in the facts 
 themselves." The theology which follows, however, is 
 almost exclusively a discussion of the principles thought 
 to be contained in the facts and teachings of Scripture, 
 and far more in its teachings than in its facts. Its facts, 
 as facts simply, are placed at their lowest value. The 
 force and pith of them are found in the words which 
 accompany them. Inspiration is held to give exact truth, 
 and this belief lifts the burden of inquiry from the circum- 
 stances which accompany the words of the sacred writer, 
 and directs it to the words themselves. Indeed, under 
 this view of the nature of Revelation, facts lose most of 
 their significance. They are only the framework of the 
 picture. They may enhance its impression, but do not 
 determine its nature. They are occasions, but not con- 
 trolling causes. The truth has its inner perfection aside 
 from those to whom, and by whom, it was spoken. If 
 facts are to be treated as facts, they must be allowed their 
 full efficiency, and a careful, historic inquiry must unfold 
 the growth of truth under them and by them. If the de- 
 velopment of the truth is relatively independent of them, 
 by being of a divine order, most of the value of the facts 
 as interpreting terms is taken from them. Mathematical 
 truth is not dependent for its force on occasions; in an 
 important sense it has no occasions, as it is absolute within 
 itself and unaffected by any particular application. This 
 system, like most systems, is not exegetical in a historic 
 way, but regards the declarations of Scripture, at all 
 periods by all persons, as final, and simply sets itself the 
 task of a systematic statement of the truths they are sup- 
 posed to contain. Supernatural facts, indeed, receive 
 some attention ; but merely natural facts trail on in the 
 shadow of the ruling, divine manifestation that is always 
 
DOGMATISM. 12 1 
 
 rising above them. Hardly any inquiry, therefore, is 
 more thoroughly deductive, under the lead of a few initi- 
 ative ideas, than the investigation which issues in this 
 " Systematic Theology." While no objection is taken to 
 the method simply because it is deductive, the fact calls 
 for the utmost caution in attaining the data from which 
 the deduction is to proceed, and in establishing the tests 
 and the independent sources of correction by which it is 
 to be sustained and restrained at every stage of progress. 
 
 The principles which make up systematic theology are 
 not pure, mental conceptions. They are ideas which owe 
 their entire value to their perfect correspondence with 
 obscure and complex facts. They involve the relations 
 which lie between these facts in their final interpretation. 
 The definition we may frame of God must find its correct- 
 ness not merely in its logical coherence, but in its power 
 to express to us the origin and growth of the universe. 
 Our doctrine of the atonement must correspond with the 
 moral incentives we experience day by day, and disclose 
 their vital power. 
 
 This system of theology, in common with many an- 
 other, makes little provision for correct data, or for 
 testing the conclusions that are arising under them. 
 These data include two terms — the accepted powers of 
 mind and the specific affirmations of the text. The 
 powers of mind may be inferred from the text, or the 
 text, in its meaning, may be shaped to meet an ante- 
 cedent conception of the powers of mind. That is to say, 
 we may derive our philosophy from our theology, or we 
 may reach our theology through our philosophy. The 
 reverent mind, which insists on the absolute character of 
 Revelation, naturally inclines to the first method. The 
 second set of data, the inspired teachings, are regarded 
 
122 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 as complete in themselves, and carry with them, by easy 
 inference, the prior data. All things, therefore, are now 
 ready, and every truth can be wrung from the text. No 
 assumption could more simplify the process of deduction 
 and divest it of all preliminary difficulties. The supposi- 
 tion of complete inspiration greatly reduces also the need 
 of verification in the progress of the deductive process. 
 Deduction, if you have absolute premises, is one of the 
 clearest and safest movements of mind. This fact sys- 
 tematic theology is sure to remember, and it comes, there- 
 fore, with its final results, fully prepared to overbear any 
 facts which may stand in their way. Far from correcting 
 its interpretation by the facts, it corrects the facts by its 
 divinely certain rendering of them. The facts are bidden, 
 with no gentle voice, to stand one side. Nothing but the 
 plainest contradiction disturbs the dogmatic temper, and 
 even this contradiction it denies so long as it is possible 
 to do so. Thus such questions as the creation of the 
 world, the origin of man, the time of his appearance on 
 the earth, his primitive state, the form of his historic de- 
 velopment, are first pronounced upon, then discussed 
 wholly upon the defensive, and made to suffer in their 
 consideration all the distortion of an inflexible theory, a 
 theory whose inflexibility is kept constantly at a maxi- 
 mum, being that of revealed truth. Thus the worst 
 dangers of deduction are made unavoidable and are per- 
 petually recurrent. 
 
 If we were to allow the legitimacy of deduction so em- 
 ployed, — which we certainly cannot — it still remains true 
 that we do not secure the footing by means of it we are 
 thought to attain. Take the most fundamental doctrine 
 of all, the nature of God. Dr. Hodge regards — and it 
 may well be so regarded — the definition of the West- 
 
DOGMATISM. 123 
 
 minster Catechism as among the most complete — " God 
 is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, 
 wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." 
 How is a definition of this kind framed ? 
 
 It is shaped under our growing conception of the har- 
 mony of attributes in a perfect being. We cannot put it 
 together mechanically, bit by bit, its several parts being 
 taken from the Bible. We may immensely quicken the 
 mind in framing it by a study of the spirit and power of 
 the Scriptures, but the definition remains ours, remains 
 that of the Westminster Catechism, and not that of the 
 Bible. The whole formative process is one of utmost 
 delicacy and insight, and must turn, in its fulness and 
 correctness, on the intellectual development and spiritual 
 penetration of those who are at work on it. Many state- 
 ments of Scripture must receive fitting abatement in its 
 formation. The anger, jealousy, and repentance of God, 
 and his propitiation by us, must take a meaning in har- 
 mony with the conception, and must not themselves be 
 allowed to color it. That is to say, the process of inclu- 
 sion and rejection, of increase and diminution, must 
 proceed under the rational activity of the constructive 
 mind, directed toward the Scriptures, toward human 
 history, and toward all ultimate truths. This fundamen- 
 tal statement in all theology, the nature of God, is not a 
 pure, unmistakable product of Revelation, but one to be 
 attained in connection with it, with varying success, accord- 
 ing to the insight and temper brought to the undertaking. 
 We owe this particular definition to the Westminster 
 Divines. They are the lens of this light, the immediate 
 medium between us and God. Their perspicuity is our 
 insight. 
 
 Pass this point. Take the definition just as it is ; allow 
 
124 
 
 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 it the authority of Scripture, and yet it is no safe datum 
 for heroic deduction. It is not a definition — very far from 
 it — whose meaning is precise and unmistakable. The words 
 point out directions of thought rather than lay down its 
 limits. Here is a fundamental difficulty with the author- 
 ity assigned such dogmas. The Scriptures are not philo- 
 sophical in phraseology, nor would the matter be much 
 helped if they were. They give no definitions to their 
 words ; these words search our own experience for ex- 
 planation. Their meaning will be as full and correct as 
 our thinking can make it, no more so. This is a fact fatal 
 to absolute truth, when the conceptions are complex ; and 
 to the use of Biblical assertions as the unilluminated 
 premises of final conclusions. Words are the counters of 
 thought, and the word, in our use of it, can be no more 
 exact than is the thinking in which it takes part. 
 
 Return to the definition. What do we understand by 
 the words, spirit, infinite, eternal ? 
 
 It may be the slightness, rather than the exactness, of 
 our apprehension of these words that causes us to be 
 so content with our comprehension of them. Many 
 thoughtful minds are very much baffled by them, and 
 systems of philosophy turn on the intelligibility or unin- 
 telligibility of these ideas. This fact is no serious diffi- 
 culty so far as the wholesome, nutritive processes of each 
 mind are concerned, but is entirely fatal, if we undertake 
 to reach results authoritative for all minds. 
 
 When we pass on to those other words, " unchangeable 
 in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, 
 and truth," we are dealing with conceptions so rich and 
 comprehensive that while we grasp much we miss far 
 more. They are most unfit words on which to fasten a 
 deductive process in an exhaustive way. Who but the 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 25 
 
 perfectly wise can tell what wisdom involves ; who but 
 the completely good can lay down the laws of goodness ? 
 We might as well attempt to infer the next phase of 
 a sunset from the one now before us, as the succeeding 
 methods of God from previous ones. In each case, in 
 spite of all causal connections, we must sit quietly by and 
 see the vision unfold itself in its own inexhaustible glories. 
 
 In what sense is God unchangeable? If we were to say 
 that he is infinitely flexible, we should have uttered a truth 
 of equal scope. 
 
 What is meant by the unchangeableness of the divine 
 character can only be understood by seeing how far stead- 
 fastness is an element of perfection ; and this we must 
 learn from a growing knowledge of the physical and 
 spiritual conditions of our being. It need not be urged 
 further that we have no definitions of holiness, justice, 
 goodness, truth, other than those which our own experi- 
 ence supplies, and that it is the ever ripening fruit of that 
 experience to impart to these words a deeper and more 
 purified significance. There can be, then, in our knowl- 
 edge of God's moral attributes — the most essential form 
 of religious truth — nothing more final and profound than 
 our present experiences of moral qualities can furnish. 
 We readily recognize the difficulty of imparting just con- 
 ceptions of God to a barbarous people. The embarrass- 
 ment is the same in kind when the most cultivated races 
 and persons approach these ultimate problems of life, 
 these transcendent truths of being. We should see little 
 significance in immortality, if we had already penetrated 
 the revelation of God to its very core. Theology, because 
 its fundamental ideas are so profound, finds in them no 
 fitting premises for a reasoning that is to reach at once 
 finalities. 
 
126 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 This is already seen in such a doctrine as that of the 
 Trinity. The most explicit statements are the most in- 
 adequate, and are hardly intelligible, not to say con- 
 vincing. The Scriptural data on which the doctrine rests 
 are exceedingly loose and figurative, and give no premises 
 to exact statement. They cannot be subjected to the 
 pressure of a logical process without yielding absurdity 
 on this side and illusion on that. One must be left to 
 make such uses of an article of faith of this order as his 
 own thoughts call for. To break in analysis through its 
 dramatic, representative imagery is to incur the utmost 
 risk of folly, and is to carry with us no authority whatever. 
 
 No better example in the " Systematic Theology " re- 
 ferred to of unsafe deduction can be found than that 
 offered by the doctrines of regeneration, justification, and 
 sanctification. Regeneration is virtually re-creation by 
 the Divine Spirit. Justification is a forensic — forensic! — 
 act made possible by imparting to us the righteousness of 
 Christ ; and sanctification is due to the power of God 
 over and above the power of the second causes concerned. 
 Conclusions like these are derived from each other, and 
 rest on a special philosophy of human powers. If that 
 philosophy is correct they may be correct ; if it is untrue, 
 they cannot stand. If the acts of a free agent are fully 
 embraced in the decrees of God, as Dr. Hodge thinks, 
 then what we call freedom, responsibility, guilt, virtue, 
 are very different things from the conceptions we cover 
 by these words, if we believe that the human mind has 
 the power to choose between good and evil, and that the 
 problem of a moral life is wrought out at this very point 
 of choice. We are not discussing the correctness of the 
 two views , we are only insisting that each of them must 
 turn, in its authority, on a sound philosophy of human 
 
DOGMATISM. \2J 
 
 life. No theologian, in these and kindred doctrines, can 
 escape the quagmire which surrounds this question of 
 freedom. He must plunge in with the rest of us, and 
 make what strides and strokes he can for the farther 
 shore. Scripture does not help him over this obstacle. 
 Its language is popular, and, like popular language, waits 
 for philosophical interpretation. In arguing for freedom 
 we should certainly urge the considerations that this 
 belief gives a much more adequate meaning to language, 
 is a better expression of the popular thought, and cor- 
 responds more directly with the commands and exhorta- 
 tions of Scripture. We certainly should not say that we 
 were entitled to an affirmative conclusion on the ground 
 of the injunctions of the Bible. We should recognize the 
 fact that these words, and all Avords, remain to be inter- 
 preted by the very relations which they cover, and that 
 we are not safe in our conclusions till the two are brought 
 together. Certainly, then, we can concede no authority 
 whatever to the verbal inferences of Dr. Hodge beyond 
 that which attaches to the philosophy which sustains 
 them. It is a grave abuse of inspiration, even if we be- 
 lieve it to cover the very words of the text, to affirm that 
 it precludes our interpretation of the text. This, at least, 
 remains, and must stand or fall by its own wisdom. 
 
 The " Systematic Theology " sustains its dogma of sancti- 
 fication by such passages as these : " And the very God 
 of peace sanctify you wholly." l " Now the God of peace, 
 that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that 
 great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the 
 everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good 
 work, to do his will, working in you that which is well 
 pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ." 2 Words like 
 
 I Thess. v., 23. 5 Heb. xiii., 20, 21. 
 
128 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 these are to be rendered, and can only be rendered, in 
 the light of our own experience. We are to improve this 
 rendering by getting nearer and yet nearer to the very 
 facts of life, and the method of God in them. This is 
 the divine discipline of living, and a discipline often 
 grievously interrupted by theology. Its predetermined 
 temper reads into profound words like these, a narrow 
 rendering which is termed systematic merely because it 
 has forced the meaning into a logical form far too strait 
 for it. 
 
 The dogma of justification, as a forensic act, springs out 
 of the dogma of a supernatural regeneration, and from 
 the two arises the dogma of an atonement, in which the 
 sufferings and righteousness of Christ take the place 
 of our own righteousness and sufferings. Thus we build 
 up a theological block-house in defiance of ethical prin- 
 ciples, and we pass righteousness backward and forward 
 as if it were a commodity of the market. Ethics insists 
 on regeneration as a correction of the soul within the soul 
 itself. If it is not so purified it remains unregenerate. 
 The moral law pushes its way into the soul of man as the 
 form and force of its life. To have moral life is to have 
 it, is to enter by clear consciousness and well ordered 
 obedience into truth. Strangely enough, under this sys- 
 tematic view, sin and righteousness can be imputed, and 
 when so imputed they are just as potent as when real. 
 The forensic penalty cannot be overcome by forgiveness. 
 That is, the purely formal element is more unchangeable 
 than the substantial element. Sin can be gotten rid of by 
 imputation, but being imputed cannot be escaped without 
 punishment. Ethics, in the face of all these cunning ways, 
 affirms the inherent character of moral action ; that sin 
 and righteousness are states inseparable from the conduct 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 29 
 
 in which they inhere, and thus the consequences of action 
 follow on the actions themselves. Forgiveness turns on 
 repentance, and is until seventy times seven. Why? be- 
 cause true repentance begets a new life. 
 
 Our purpose, however, is not to argue these points. 
 What we wish to affirm is that they are one and all open 
 to argument, that the conclusions we reach are no sounder 
 than the premises on which they rest, and that the truth is 
 found by an explanatory process which unites the entire 
 work and the entire word of God. Whether guilt de- 
 mands a punishment definite in amount and in no way to 
 be avoided ; whether this penalty can be transferred ; 
 what are the fruits of repentance ; these and kindred 
 inquiries are to be answered by a right rendering of hu- 
 man history as well as inspired thought. The " Systematic 
 Theology ' is in no way entitled, as a sound deduction 
 from undeniable premises, to the certainty of any of its 
 conclusions. An implication of this order is simply the 
 lack of intelligence or of fairness. 
 
 Dr. Hodge, in defence of his doctrine of justification, 
 gives a few passages of Scripture, which hardly bear on 
 the subject otherwise than verbally : " I will not justify 
 the wicked," ' " Wisdom is justified of her children." 2 
 11 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And 
 who is my neighbor?' He then proceeds to put him- 
 self under the shelter of St. Paul : " Knowing that a man 
 is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith 
 of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, 
 that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and 
 not by the works of the law ; for by the works of the law 
 shall no flesh be justified." 4 " For in Christ Jesus neither 
 
 1 Ex. xxiii., 7. 2 Matt, xvi., 19. 
 
 3 Lukex., 29. 4 Gal. ii., 16. 
 
 9 
 
130 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision ; but 
 faith, which worketh by love." ' " Even as David also 
 describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God 
 imputeth righteousness without works." 2 
 
 St. Paul is the favorite apostle of the theologian. Prob- 
 ably more extreme dogmas have been extracted from the 
 epistles of St. Paul than from all the Bible besides. They 
 readily lend themselves to this use, or, as it may quite 
 as fittingly be termed, this abuse. A logical precision 
 is referred to these epistles which is very foreign to them, 
 while the exact conditions under which they were writ- 
 ten, and the immediate purposes they were intended to 
 subserve, are largely overlooked. The justness of the 
 precise criticism we are now enforcing, a neglect of facts 
 in the making up of dogma, is very conspicuous in the 
 manner in which the words of St. Paul are employed. 
 
 In the wide, changeable field of religious truth, those 
 principles will receive especial emphasis at any one time 
 by any one writer which have gotten peculiar force in his 
 own thoughts, and in the demands of his own experience. 
 They are necessarily, therefore, for the moment thrown 
 out of proportion with other principles, and may seem to 
 assume a character more fundamental than really belongs 
 to them. Even when the discussion itself does not 
 exaggerate them, the very fact of the discussion causes 
 them to fill the eye, to the exclusion of other things. 
 This partial and disproportionate presentation of truth 
 pervades human thought ; and when it appears in the 
 writings of an apostle, it becomes more than usually mis- 
 chievous, because of the assumption of the completeness 
 and symmetry of the Scriptures. Two things are over- 
 looked in the use of the writings of St. Paul which can 
 
 1 Gal. v., 6. - Rom. iv., 6. 
 
DOGMATISM. 131 
 
 never be safely neglected — the force of individual tend- 
 encies in the writer and the force of historic circumstances. 
 These two things give us the proper background for the 
 apprehension of the words of any man. If they are for- 
 gotten, and, like an ambient mist, allowed to mingle with 
 the very things affirmed, they are sure to disguise and 
 distort the truths involved. This transient force of 
 principles, due to powerful prevalent conditions, is seen 
 in the epistles of St. Paul, especially in the epistles to 
 the Romans and to the Galatians. The very form and 
 purpose of an epistle tend to give it local, personal color- 
 ing, and to separate it widely from a systematic statement 
 of truth. A doctrine of inspiration which attaches slight 
 weight to the naturalism of times, persons, and purposes, 
 exposes the theologian to great danger. This fact is 
 clearly illustrated in the uses which have been made of 
 the writings of St. Paul. They have been treated as if 
 they were a collection of aphorisms, each seen in its own 
 light, and not a glowing discussion of urgent practical 
 problems of somewhat narrow compass. The local 
 elements are not allowed their true weight. The human 
 conditions are permitted to color the divine message, 
 greatly to its limitation. Few inspired writers are more 
 stimulating than St. Paul, if we share his freedom and 
 force of movement. For this very reason his words are 
 least of all fit to be taken in a detached way and reduced 
 into dogma by forceful deduction. 
 
 St. Paul was a man of intense temper. His entire 
 experience confirmed this ardor of conviction. He did 
 not take religious truth lightly, nor urge it in a reserved 
 manner. Before his conversion, and after it, his opinions 
 pressed his own mind and brought corresponding pressure 
 to the minds of other men. He was an apostle of the 
 
I32 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 truth, in a pre-eminent sense — warm in feeling, aggressive 
 in thought, bold in action. Whatever phase his life 
 assumed, it assumed with an energy that paid little heed 
 to reservations and proportions. His description of him- 
 self is, lt As touching the law, a Pharisee ; concerning zeal, 
 persecuting the church ; touching the righteousness which 
 was in the law, blameless." ' 
 
 The circumstances of the life of St. Paul were such as 
 to give the fullest expression to this ardent, spiritual 
 habit of mind, and to involve him deeply and constantly 
 in the most circumscribed and bitter religious contro- 
 versy of his time, the relation of the Jewish law to the 
 law of Christ, the liberty of every man with the truth. 
 His own early method of thought and connection with 
 the Jewish leaders, and his later position as the apostle of 
 the Gentiles, forced him into the heat of this discussion, 
 and compelled him to bear, both on its theoretical and 
 practical side, the brunt of the conflict. There thus fell 
 to his lot the most intense personal obloquy and 
 hostility. 
 
 The law stood with the Jews and with St. Paul, not 
 for ethical law, as we understand it, but for a very com- 
 plex, extended, and vexatious set of commands, that 
 penetrated into the entire life of a devotee, and took 
 complete possession of religious action, to the exclusion 
 of anything like insight and personal liberty. A free, 
 vigorous mind must fully adopt such a system, or find 
 itself in irreconcilable hostility to it. Whatever conces- 
 sions St. Paul might have been willing, personally, to 
 make to this Jewish ritual of life, as a preacher of the 
 Gospel to the Gentiles, he was compelled to antagonize 
 it. The universal nurture of grace must not be destroyed 
 
 1 Philip, iii., 5, 6. 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 33 
 
 by the nurture of a worn-out national faith. If the 
 Gentile, in his discipleship, had been compelled to accept 
 the Jewish law, not only would it have laid on him a 
 burden impossible to be borne, the very effort to bear it 
 would at once have obscured the gift of grace, and closed 
 to the vision of the mind the true path of life. Such had 
 been its effect, in a large measure, on the Jews themselves, 
 though the law stood to them, by virtue of their history, 
 in a relation it could never sustain to another people. It 
 fell to St. Paul to discuss and re-discuss the bearings of 
 the Jewish law on the grace of Christ, and to resist the 
 insidious efforts to straiten the divine method by the 
 devices of men. This controversy involved the general 
 question, which has arisen so often and in so many forms, 
 — the connection of the inner life with the acts which 
 express it. 
 
 This discussion has widened in religious history into an 
 effort to define the relation of faith and works, and has 
 owed its extreme position, its obscurity, obstinacy, and 
 gross errors, not to its inherent difficulty, but to the want 
 of spirituality in men. A very little insight carries the 
 mind to a position from which any conflict between faith 
 and works wholly disappears. The warmth of daylight 
 dispels the mist at once. Works are the inevitable ex- 
 pression of faith, and faith is the living force of works. 
 A fact which has helped to keep this controversy alive, 
 and added so much to its confusion, has been the min- 
 gling in it of the moral and the ritual elements of law. 
 These two terms stand, in any system which embraces 
 them both, in very different relations to conduct and 
 religious nurture. The Jewish law not only embraced 
 them both, it overshadowed them both with endless tra- 
 ditions, which attached the utmost importance to multi- 
 
134 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 plied forms of action, aside from the spirit which animated 
 them. Thus an authority was attributed to the tradition 
 which belonged only to the ritual, and to the ritual which 
 properly attached only to the moral command. Confusion 
 of thought prevailed everywhere. The least and the 
 largest injunctions were made to rest on the same author, 
 ity, and an act which subserved no purpose of nurture 
 was regarded as binding as an ethical precept. The con- 
 ventional minds of men have again and again fallen into 
 a hopeless quagmire in considering the primitive laws of 
 God, and their own foolish extensions of them. They 
 have failed to vindicate the freedom of each mind with 
 the truth. In fact the freedom of the individual has not 
 been possible to him, embraced as he has been in a com- 
 munity, groping its obscure way in the most intense dark- 
 ness. Men have been compelled to take each other by 
 the hand, and stumble on as best they could together. 
 The purely moral element of the Jewish law, by its asso- 
 ciation with rites and traditions, lost very largely its moral 
 quality, and became acts to be rendered in external 
 obedience rather than with inner affections. The law was 
 thus a worthless body bereft of the inner spirit of life. 
 
 All that St. Paul has to say about the law, and the 
 works of the law, as contrasted with faith in Christ and 
 the grace of Christ, should be interpreted in view of this 
 accumulated blight of national bigotry, and the complete 
 confusion into which the Jewish mind had fallen as to the 
 law in its triple elements — eternal principle, disciplinary 
 rite, and worthless tradition. The law was treated as a 
 whole by the apostle in the manner in which it was 
 regarded by the Jews, and so condemned in the form 
 and temper of its use. The salient feature of that use 
 was observance divorced from love. 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 35 
 
 If, however, we read the epistle to the Romans with 
 that insight which should belong to us, taught by the 
 history of two thousand years ; if we make the epistle 
 thoroughly consistent with itself by subordinating it to 
 its primary purpose, we shall have no difficulty in seeing 
 that faith with the apostle means the inner hold of the 
 mind on spiritual truth ; that works, as opposed to it, 
 stand for formal obedience to the Jewish law ; and that 
 redemption, righteousness, justification, are all spiritual 
 states, and not forensic relations. Indeed, the forensic 
 temper was the very thing with which the whole epistle 
 was at strife. If Paul had recognized the work of Christ 
 as another expression of this formal method, he would 
 have been at bottom concurrent with the Jewish feeling. 
 What he was struggling for was the freedom of the soul 
 with truth, with Christ, and with God. Whatever asser- 
 tions obscure this fact arose from the great darkness 
 which had fallen on the field of human conduct, a dark- 
 ness which could not be lifted at once and equally in all 
 directions. The light was caught by snatches, and came 
 streaming in by floods, but had not become a mild, uni- 
 versal presence. Paul was simply pressing forward toward 
 the mark of his high calling. 
 
 The life-long conflict which St. Paul found occasion to 
 wage with the narrow methods of Judaism and blind 
 belief in favoritism in divine things finds freest and most 
 extended expression in the epistle to the Romans. This 
 epistle, if interpreted from the midstream of the apostolic 
 feeling, is not difficult of apprehension. If it is approached 
 with a subtile, rather than with a profound, spirit, as some- 
 thing to be verbally weighed out for the dialectic process 
 to compound, we shall meet with much confusion and 
 darkness and extreme doctrine. 
 
I36 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 The apostle first insists that all men have a measure of 
 spiritual life, and so find the conditions of obedience and 
 disobedience. He then affirms that all men are judged 
 by the manner in which they respond to these motives. 
 The advantage of the Jew lies in a larger revelation of 
 the divine mind. But no man has been faithful to the 
 truth. 
 
 All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 
 All, therefore, Jew and Gentile, call for the discipline of 
 Christ, the discipline of forgiveness and love. The point 
 is then made, which is the essential truth of the dis- 
 cussion, that redemption is inward grace and not a 
 product of obedience under the law. It is here that 
 confusion of thought so easily enters. The works of the 
 law are to be interpreted as the complex, burdensome, 
 and artificial impositions of the Jewish service, rendered 
 in a perfunctory way, and not as a loving recognition of 
 the will of God in our own moral constitution. The 
 moral element, so far as it enters into this obedience, 
 enters on the formal side, and is swallowed up in a cum- 
 bersome system of observances. That it is the Jewish 
 law, in its mixed elements and punctilious exactions, that 
 was in the mind of the apostle, is seen in the words, 
 u Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the 
 law. 1 " 
 
 The contrast which the apostle institutes, and which 
 was made plain by the gross facts with which he was 
 dealing, was precisely this between the spirit of trust, 
 issuing in real obedience to God, and a formal observance 
 of certain commands that carried with it no love of 
 righteousness. The justification of which the apostle 
 speaks is grace hidden in the heart, is a renewal of the 
 
 1 Rom. ii., 17. 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 37 
 
 entire temper, and not a formal relation to God. There 
 is in the discussion not the least separation between spirit 
 and conduct, — it was this very separation on the part of 
 the Jews that occasioned the controversy — but the affir- 
 mation rather that the spirit carries the conduct with it. 
 If we try to secure conduct independently of the temper 
 of trust, conduct becomes dead, and we are swept in 
 under a universal condemnation. If we accept the true 
 dependence of outward life on inward faith, we establish 
 both. Abraham was not justified by works, technical 
 obedience, because his acceptance preceded the law under 
 which the observance arose. It was a living trust in God 
 which gave him divine favor. So we have access by faith 
 into his grace, wherein we stand, and rejoice in the hope 
 of God. 
 
 The apostle, in the fifth chapter, dwells on the love of 
 Christ, and the sweep of its power. That this movement 
 of the soul upward in the love of Christ is to be inter- 
 preted in a spiritual way, and not in forensic fashion, is 
 abundantly shown by explicit declarations and by the 
 entire force of the argument. Sin came by the contagion 
 of sin ; disobedience followed as the entail of disobedi- 
 ence. So righteousness comes as the fruit of righteous- 
 ness, and love follows the free gift of love. The whole 
 argument is a struggle with a formal, mechanical way of 
 looking at things, a method that puts acts in the place of 
 the feelings that vitalize them, and exterior and national 
 relations for interior and personal ones. We cannot, 
 therefore, admit that justification with the apostle stands 
 for a judicial act without restoring to the heart of the 
 discussion that very thing which it was designed to expel. 
 Understand the v/ords spiritually, and the argument 
 holds throughout : understand them formally, and con- 
 
I38 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 fusion and contradiction enter everywhere. Justification 
 is a justification of life. It is not, in the attitude implied, 
 to be distinguished from righteousness. God is righteous 
 (just), and the maker righteous (the justifier) of him who 
 believeth in Jesus. To be righteous is to be just, and to 
 be just is to be justified. "The free gift is of many 
 offences unto justification." J How can we suppose that 
 the justification here intended is merely formal, and so 
 leaves the inner problem of life to still be resolved ? 
 
 The following chapter dwells at length on the living 
 character of this redemption. " How shall we, that are 
 dead to sin, live any longer therein ? " 2 We are baptized 
 into the death of Christ — his rejection of a sensuous life 
 — that we may walk with him in newness of life. We are 
 dead, indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Being made free from sin and 
 become servants to God, we have fruit unto holiness, and 
 the end everlasting life. The law is thus displaced, in 
 the deadness of its letter, by a life rendered in newness of 
 spirit, and so the righteousness of the law — righteousness 
 sought after by the law — is fulfilled in us, who walk not 
 after the flesh but after the spirit. " To be carnally 
 minded is death, to be spiritually minded is life and 
 peace." 3 " Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so 
 be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man 
 have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." 4 "As 
 many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons 
 of God." If we allow these words to be, what they seem 
 to be, the inner light of the entire topic, our interpretation 
 becomes convincing and stimulating, and we push our 
 way through the accumulated cobwebs of dogma with a 
 
 1 Rom. v., 16. 5 Rom, vi., 2. 3 Rom. viii., 6. 
 
 4 Rom. viii., 9. 6 Rom, viii., 14. 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 39 
 
 free, elastic step. We have grasped the fundamental 
 truth which the Jew would not receive — that our relation 
 to God is a personal, spiritual one. Henceforward the 
 confusion about faith and works seems to us one of those 
 blind passages into which men are constantly stumbling 
 as they grope their way upward. The righteousness 
 which is of faith does not ascend into heaven, or descend 
 into hell, in search of Christ or a way of life by him ; it 
 finds his word of truth close at hand, in the very heart of 
 the believer. This new feeling of certainty arises from a 
 strictly historical, and a collective, rendering of the epistle. 
 It is quite true that a more narrow meaning can fre- 
 quently be read into the words of the apostle, taken as 
 proof-texts ; but in the very degree in which this is done, 
 we put ourselves alongside those against whom the 
 epistle was directed. The epistle is a plea for life against 
 a dogma that, in its dry, stiff contraction, was extinguish- 
 ing life and giving occasion to the spiritual fungi of 
 division, pride, and bitterness. Some passages must be 
 interpreted more narrowly than the first force of the 
 words may seem to allow, in order to bring them into 
 harmony with the epistle as a whole. But this is a result 
 that ought not to disturb us when we are dealing with a 
 mind so fervid, so concentrate in its action, and so little 
 critical, as that of St. Paul. Thus in the ninth chapter, 
 when the apostle is asserting the freedom of God against 
 those who would bind him over under promises to the 
 Jewish nation, his words gather a scope which seems to 
 make the actions of God arbitrary. " O man, who art 
 thou that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed 
 say to him who formed it, Why hast thou made me 
 thus?" ' This is meeting a factious temper somewhat in 
 
 1 Rom. ix., 20. 
 
140 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 its own spirit. But the argument does not call for arbi- 
 trary action on the part of God ; rather the reverse. If 
 God is arbitrary in his choices, then might he accept the 
 Jew arbitrarily without any change in character; but if 
 he himself is perfectly reasonable, he must look for sound- 
 ness of life in those who are granted access to him. The 
 example of Jacob and Esau, accepted and rejected ante- 
 cedently to any manifestation of character, is entirely 
 good for the purpose of showing that the liberty of God 
 is not swallowed up in compacts ; but we use it to the 
 subversion of truth when we infer from it unreason in 
 God. We do much better to believe that the apostle 
 was looking at the history narrowly to enforce his own 
 conclusion. 
 
 There has been much, too much, weight attached to an 
 alleged discrepancy of opinion and division of policy 
 between St. Paul and St. James. St. James evidently 
 held firmly the very gist of the truth. His statement — 
 Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show 
 you my faith by my works — touches at once and un- 
 erringly the very marrow of the topic. Show me thy 
 health without strength, and I will show you my health 
 by my strength. What more remains to be said? It is 
 only by a misleading side-light that St. Paul is made to 
 attach any other office to faith than this of breathing 
 itself out as life. The entire relation is so simple and 
 unequivocal that it requires some external pressure to 
 pervert it in vision. The two things, faith and the fruits 
 of faith, like the images in the two eyes, will fall together 
 of their own accord, if no violence is used. While we 
 may be surprised at the persevering folly of men in 
 separating them, we may readily see that this division is 
 an illusion of interest or of indolence. The separation is 
 
DOGMATISM. 141 
 
 not unlike that between real value and value in use in a 
 currency. The effort to secure a permanent paper value 
 has been a persistent folly in commerce. The formal and 
 the substantial have been found indivisible. Value has 
 slipped from the promise to pay the moment a suspicion 
 of its fulfilment has overtaken it. It is not the images of 
 things, but things themselves, that men wish to deal with, 
 and any want of substance means to them want of reality. 
 We cannot turn works into a sound spiritual currency 
 otherwise than by hiding under them a living faith. 
 
 The practical relation of St. James to the Jewish law — 
 which came at once under discussion because of its burden- 
 some formal element — was very different from that of St. 
 Paul, partly because of a difference of character, and partly 
 because of the circumstances under which the two were 
 placed. The very zeal with which St. Paul devoted him- 
 self to the law in his earlier life evinced an ardor of tem- 
 perament that rendered him equally impatient of it when 
 he found it embarrassing the work he had undertaken. 
 
 St. James, trained to a quiet observance of its minute 
 regulations, not only suffered little annoyance from them, 
 he doubtless made them terms, artificial as they were, in 
 the expression of a potent and profound religious temper. 
 The law thus fulfilled in him its best possible service. 
 As he confined his labors to the vicinity of Jerusalem, his 
 acceptance of the law aided, rather than hindered, him in 
 his work. He dealt chiefly with those who could make, 
 and were disposed to make, the same use of it as himself, 
 and who found, therefore, no occasion for any violent 
 transition in the forms of piety. Such changes in the out- 
 ward conditions of life are very trying, and the demand, 
 in connection with them, was exactly reversed with the 
 disciples of St. James and those of St. Paul. The former 
 
I42 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 would seek to be excused from any unnecessary oppro- 
 brium by rejecting the religious usages about them, and 
 the latter would as earnestly desire that no unusual and 
 vexatious customs should be imposed upon them. The 
 form, therefore, which identically the same spirit would 
 assume in the two cases would be quite distinct. Faith 
 in Christ would assert, in the one instance, its liberty to 
 obey, and, in the other, its liberty to disobey. Both obe- 
 dience and disobedience were equally within the scope of 
 religious liberty. When the synod at Jerusalem adjusted 
 the question, it singled out those customs which had a 
 moral force, and enjoined them to the exclusion of all 
 indifferent rules of conduct. They thus put a marked 
 distinction between the ethical command and the tradi- 
 tional custom. 
 
 In the case of St. John we have a life which lay some- 
 what between that of St. Paul and that of St. James. He 
 dealt with both Jews and Gentiles. His own disposition 
 was of that loving, emotional order, which led him to aline 
 of conduct neither intellectually critical, on the one hand, 
 nor narrowly observant of customs, on the other. The 
 words of Christ which he treasures are those addressed to 
 spiritual insight and to the affections ; words which call for 
 a close union of the life of the disciple with that of the 
 master. This message of love is on his lips the supreme 
 one. It is a message that admits in conduct no separa- 
 tion between substance and form, and makes light in 
 theory, as it does in practice, of differences in the manner 
 of expressing an overruling sentiment. 
 
 Whenever in the history of the Church the religious life 
 has cumbered itself with much serving, a washing of pots 
 and kettles, there has come the occasion for a fresh asser- 
 tion of the doctrine of faith, and often, unfortunately, for 
 
DOGMATISM. 143 
 
 its extreme assertion. Thus when Luther found himself 
 confronted with a traffic in spiritual things, with works of 
 penance and works of merit which were not works of 
 virtue, or works of virtue thrown out of their true relation 
 to morality; when men were losing all spiritual values in 
 a surreptitious currency of empty promises, he met the 
 tendency by a renewed assertion of the fundamental 
 character of faith. In keeping with the division of 
 thought that had already taken place, he took an extreme 
 position, lost sympathy with St. James, perverted St. 
 Paul, and fell into the error of supposing that faith itself 
 might have a formal value aside from the inner and outer 
 changes it works. We rarely correct an error from the 
 midway position of truth, but more often from the ex- 
 treme position of the opposite error. Thus the error 
 itself often re-introduces itself in its very rectification. 
 
 From time to time ritualism seeks to offer a more 
 visible and decisive movement toward a religious life, and 
 men are then restored to personal freedom only by a 
 more positive affirmation of our direct union to God in 
 faith. Hardly anything discloses more completely the 
 ease with which thought becomes superficial and inconse- 
 quent than the fact that the re-assertion of faith so often 
 falls into the error it seeks to escape, and makes of itself 
 a definite act with forensic consequences. The truth 
 embarrasses us as much by its simplicity as by its 
 complexity. 
 
 The topic now considered, the relation of faith and 
 works, is to be understood, as presented by St. Paul, in 
 connection with the narrow idea of works which held pos- 
 session of the Jewish mind. The history of the Church 
 for many generations was gathered up in this monstrous 
 perversion, judged from a rational point of view, of the 
 
 ■ivbksity: 
 
144 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 religious life, which St. Paul was called upon to confront. 
 The same question may, indeed, be raised in connection 
 with pure morality, but only as that morality separates 
 itself from its inner life in the affections ; or struggles to 
 exclude one injunction by a more exact obedience to an- 
 other. Works, as faulty, are only the curdling, in one 
 fashion or another, of the milk of human kindness. 
 
 The doctrine of the atonement is especially one which 
 should be studied inductively, in a historic spirit. If we 
 look upon the Jewish sacrifices as directly ordered of God 
 for the very purpose of prefiguring the work of Christ, 
 and leading up to it, we shall give a very different place to 
 the sacrificial element in the atonement from that which 
 we shall assign it, if Jewish history rests on natural causes, 
 and is closely interlocked with the general history of the 
 world. We thus regard the sacrifices of the Jewish ritual 
 as due to the same tendencies of thought which gave 
 occasion, in other nations, to similar forms. While the 
 Jews are remarkably distinguished from other peoples by 
 a comparatively free entrance of religious truth through 
 men extraordinarily moved in their own experience by the 
 Divine Spirit, they are closely allied to the nations about 
 them, and to their own period of development, by very 
 limited conceptions of the character of God, and narrow 
 ways of approach to him. Studied historically, sacrifices 
 are at no time a luminous and sufficient form of worship, 
 a just presentation of man's relations to God, but simply 
 one of those early ways of approach which offered them- 
 selves to men in their ignorance and their fear. Sacrifices 
 are the natural output of the religious idea working its 
 way upward in darkness and doubt. Ignorance led men 
 to believe that God called for some kind of conciliation, 
 and that a sacrifice might subserve this purpose ; and fear 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 45 
 
 prompted them to be very full and circumspect in this 
 method of approach to God. The ritual of the temple 
 service was thus allied to that of many another temple, 
 appealed in the same way to prevalent notions, rooted 
 itself in the same soil of obscure thought, was open to the 
 same abuses, and transcended other forms of discipline 
 chiefly in being accompanied, in the instruction of the 
 prophets, with far more insight and spiritual life. 
 
 Sacrifices were capable, with all their misconceptions, of 
 conveying truth ; they were a religious training, though 
 an insufficient one. It was their very insufficiency which 
 made the presence and teachings of Christ so needful and 
 so revolutionary. Though God does not call for propi- 
 tiation, nor need to be turned from his anger by a gift, 
 men do need reconciliation with him. Pressed by this 
 necessity, they inevitably conceive the anger of God as the 
 difficulty to be overcome. God is angry with the wicked 
 every day. They have not reached the spiritual elevation 
 at which they can separate this assertion into its two 
 terms, righteous rejection and personal resentment, see 
 the incompatibility of the two, and at the same time 
 understand that this affirmation of anger, inadmissible in 
 its precise form, stands for the fund imental fact of the 
 moral world. A love that is abhorrent of sin and so com- 
 passionate of the sinner, that forces its way between dis- 
 obedience and the disobedient, that vanquishes transgres- 
 sion by winning the transgressor, is beyond their thought, 
 is too bright a revelation for their steady beholding. 
 This is the revelation in Christ, and the ritual prepared 
 the way for it because it stood for a sincere effort to draw 
 near to God, and because it largely failed of success. It 
 thus pushed men forward to another struggle. Paul thus 
 
 says of it, that it was a burden that neither we nor our 
 10 
 
146 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 fathers were able to bear ; and that it was a servant to 
 lead us to Christ. 
 
 If we attach full weight to the historic circumstances 
 which give occasion and coloring to the truth, our inter- 
 pretation of Scripture will be much modified. We shall 
 not look upon a sacrificial system as enclosing the very 
 work of Christ, but as giving way to it ; not as reflecting 
 the truth with precision, but as leading the mind to search 
 for it in a new direction. The transition will be a real 
 transition from a lower to a higher position, from a partial 
 to a corrected conception, from the altar to the foot of the 
 cross, from God to be conciliated to God conciliating all 
 things in his eternal love. 
 
 Thus Christ fulfils the law and the prophets in the 
 highest possible sense. He uses them as steps of ascent 
 into the presence of God ; he enables us to see the 
 crass history of the world as the rough rounds of the 
 ladder on which angels are ascending and descending 
 between us and God. When Christ came, it was inevita- 
 ble, in the great effort of making the transition from 
 ritualistic to spiritualistic worship, from our gifts to God 
 to God's gifts to us, that the very most should be made 
 of the religious ideas that had been gained in connection 
 with sacrifices, and that sacrificial forms should be stretched 
 to their utmost significance. All the light that was in the 
 relation must be diligently used to open the way into 
 perfect light, and to help the mind to discern the real 
 dependence of the two systems that sought to compass 
 the one essential thing, reconciliation. It would also as 
 inevitably happen that the old bottles would not contain 
 the new wine, and that in their unwise use they would be 
 burst and the wine spilt. The injunction of Christ was 
 very much in point, and very earnest, Put new wine in 
 
DOGMATISM. I47 
 
 new bottles. When Christ is made a sacrifice to concili- 
 ate God, we have poured the new vintage into the old 
 vessels. When Christ is a sacrifice, a sacrifice on the 
 divine side to conciliate and guide men, and draw them 
 within the bonds of his love and wisdom, we have our new 
 wine in fresh receptacles, and are rich with the gifts of 
 Heaven. It is a matter largely of the historic sense how 
 we understand the divine Revelation. Our narrow way 
 of studying the divine record hides half its light and im- 
 pedes the growing power which it is waiting to spread 
 over the whole world. We should better understand the 
 command to preach the Gospel to every creature, if we 
 better understood the fact that the whole creation groan- 
 eth and travaileth together in pain until now, waiting 
 for the adoption. The same inadequate ideas, the same 
 obscure ways, the same hesitancy, uncertainty, and doubt 
 in the presence of truth, have been and are everywhere 
 among men. Yet along this line of revelation, of pro- 
 phetic labor and constant transition, has the good seed, 
 in the fulness of growth, broken forth with new flowers 
 and new fruitage, and filled the earth with its fragrance. 
 We are the heralds of a spiritual creation, the heralds 
 of Christ. The dogmatic tendency must find correction 
 in the historic spirit, or it becomes a laborious raking 
 together of cast-off husks and empty stubble, as if these 
 still held the living germs. 
 
 There is one more consideration closely associated with 
 the inductive and historic temper which remains to be 
 enforced on those who construct systematic theology, and 
 that is the extent to which figurative language necessarily 
 enters religious truth. There is no end to the confusion 
 which has been occasioned in philosophy by the fact that 
 language, first shaped in sensuous uses, has been trans- 
 
148 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 ferred to intellectual relations only partly analogous to 
 them. Thus the activities and laws of mind have been 
 likened in inadmissible ways to those of matter. It has 
 been found a most difficult thing — much of sound philoso- 
 phy lies in it — to make a clean transition from matter to 
 mind, from mind to matter, without losing the distinctive 
 qualities of either, or breaking the union of the two. 
 Men experience a similar difficulty in grasping the 
 spiritual truth which lies enclosed in a concrete fact 
 without carrying with it more of the limitations of the 
 fact than belong to it. If they believe in spirits, they 
 believe also in ghosts, and shortly huddle together with 
 starting eyes while some horror of spiritualism passes 
 before them. As the devils of old are represented as 
 especially reluctant to leave the bodies of their victims, 
 and, when driven out, as taking refuge in a herd of 
 swine that ran down a steep place and perished in the 
 sea, so men in their spiritual blindness cling closely to 
 the familiar forms of things, and when forced loose from 
 them, accept some still more inadequate image till they 
 are swallowed up in a sea of sensuous relations. One 
 may say of this sort of offence, that it must needs come, 
 but woe unto the man by whom it cometh. We must 
 approach spiritual things through physical things, but in 
 the very instant of attaining them we must leave behind 
 us the parted simile, as the growing plant the integument 
 it has just broken. 
 
 The first example we adduce for enforcement is the 
 doctrine of covenants. The discipline of the world is 
 continuous. It cannot be otherwise. A higher stage 
 of training, unsupported by a lower one, would fail at 
 once. Transitions of any considerable importance in the 
 moral world are very difficult of accomplishment. When 
 
DOGMATISM. I49 
 
 the Jewish system and the Christian system are spoken of 
 as distinct covenants, the one of works and the other of 
 grace, we are not to understand the words in any exact 
 way. They only express a new emphasis, a change of 
 dominant idea, under which one and the same process goes 
 forward. If we dwell upon this word covenant, transfer 
 it from a broad to a narrow meaning, and assume that the 
 gifts of God turn upon a distinct contract, we shall shortly 
 find ourselves groping about among very limited and very 
 arbitrary relations in a disappointing search for the divine 
 mind. The figure is to be dealt with lightly, with delicate 
 touch, and transcended at once. Nothing can be safely 
 drawn from it as premises. We must hit away from it, 
 as the bird strikes air with his wing as he rises. 
 
 In the Scriptural presentations of our relations to Christ 
 we have a great variety of figurative expressions, all yield- 
 ing some light, none yielding complete light. In order to 
 receive what each has to impart, we must understand that 
 all are inexact and inadequate. Christ is our ransom. 
 He purchased us with his blood. We are redeemed, not 
 by silver and gold, but with his precious blood. He was 
 made a curse for us. He bore our sins on the tree. He 
 is our passover; a sacrifice to God as a sweet-smelling 
 savor. He is the lamb of God that taketh away the sins 
 of the world. He was lifted up, as the serpent in the 
 wilderness, that we might look unto him. He purges our 
 consciences from dead works. We enter by him into the 
 holiest. He is the end of the law for righteousness. To 
 these relations are to be added those in which he is wont 
 to speak of himself. He is the vine, the door, the shep- 
 herd, the light, the way, the truth, and the life. These 
 images are to be all harmonized in the doctrine of Christ, 
 and this harmony can only be secured when we make the 
 
150 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 ultimate truth, the relation of each mind to God, funda- 
 mental. This is the substance of that most compact and 
 comprehensive assertion : " I am the way and the truth 
 and the life." 
 
 Men have been very slow to see and accept the fact 
 that the form of the punishment in the divine government 
 is expressed under various figures, and declares nothing 
 beyond the simple relation of sin and suffering. The 
 tares are gathered and burned. The fishes are gathered, 
 the good into vessels, and the bad are cast away. The 
 rejected guests are cast into outer darkness, with wailing 
 and gnashing of teeth. The wicked husbandmen are 
 miserably destroyed. 
 
 The words of our Lord are especially figurative. Spirit- 
 ual ideas are boldly rendered by all the familiar images of 
 life, and the fortunes of the Kingdom of Heaven advance 
 under the form of a wavering conflict between the forces 
 of good and evil — good angels and evil angels working 
 their will in the world. When the seventy return with 
 joy, saying, " Lord, even the devils are subject unto us 
 through thy name," he makes answer, " I beheld Satan 
 as lightning fall from Heaven." When the Pharisees 
 found fault with him for healing on the Sabbath day the 
 woman who. had a spirit of infirmity, he indignantly asks: 
 " Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, 
 whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be 
 loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day ? " ' When 
 Peter undertook to rebuke Christ, as he announced his 
 coming crucifixion, he turned sharply upon his overbold 
 disciple with the words : " Get thee behind me, Satan. 
 Thou art an offence unto me." 2 Again, in anticipation 
 of his unstable temper, he says to him : " Simon, Simon, 
 
 1 Luke xiii., 16. 2 Matt, xviii., 23. 
 
DOGMATISM. I 5 I 
 
 behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift 
 you as wheat." ' The close interlock of all physical and 
 spiritual relations in the mind of Christ is seen in his 
 inquiry : " Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the 
 palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise, take 
 up thy bed, and walk." 2 
 
 The vivid and figurative character of the Scriptures, 
 springing from the double necessity of imparting clearly 
 obscure ideas, and of enforcing them, compels the wise 
 student to use the utmost caution in subjecting these 
 words of insight to verbal deductions. When Christ says 
 that he speaks to the Jews in parables, because they see- 
 ing see not, and hearing hear not, neither do understand, 
 he is emphasizing this very fact that religious ideas 
 become verbal and wholly obscure when they sink into a 
 fixed terminology, and that they gain color again only by 
 bringing them back to the events of life. Divine princi- 
 ples play, like lights and shadows, among things, and 
 must be there caught in their true significance before we 
 can safely systematize them. 
 
 Is it not, for example, more rational to suppose that 
 the doctrine of evil spirits is a figurative rendering of the 
 conflicts of sin, rather than a literal statement of facts? 
 That man is in any way subject to agents of evil, hidden 
 from him, waylaying him, and far superior to him in 
 craftiness, is a supposition wholly incongruous with a 
 sound interpretation of daily life. The possession by 
 evil spirits was a belief figuratively true and literally 
 untrue. A profitable discussion of the real nature of 
 these manifestations was not yet prepared for in the 
 experience of the Jew, or in his methods of thought. 
 The moral force of the events was more deeply felt 
 1 Luke xxii., 31, 3 Mark ii., 9. 
 
152 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 under the popular notion than it would have been under 
 a new idea inadequately imparted. Christ submitted his 
 methods to the circumstances under which the truth 
 was to be urged. A confining of attention to primary 
 principle was essential for their immediate apprehension, 
 and for the apprehension of all secondary facts in due 
 order. 
 
 We are now prepared to see both the dangers of dogma 
 and its office in Christian experience. Dogmatism claims 
 a certainty of results and an absoluteness of authority 
 quite foreign to the circumstances of the case. In doing 
 this it embarrasses the religious life, places the emphasis 
 at the wrong point, and fortifies it with a perverse temper. 
 Truth is to minister to emotion, emotion is to inform con- 
 duct, and conduct" is to reinterpret truth. Life thus be- 
 comes a circuit of living experiences. The arrest of this 
 movement in its first step checks all growth. It is flexible 
 truth which subserves the purposes of progress. Inflexible 
 truth begins at once to lose power. The human mind is 
 exceedingly limited in its attainments. This weakness 
 is to be corrected by growth ; but growth involves the 
 freedom of change. This principle prevails everywhere 
 in the world of living things. Dogmatism contravenes 
 this law, and contravenes it precisely where it should 
 have its fullest authority. The spirit of dogmatism, by 
 anticipating growth, comes to stand directly in the way 
 of it, and that in a region in which all things remain to 
 be won. 
 
 Doctrines, as the product of the reflective process, are 
 especially unfit to be made the primary centres of union 
 among men. Division, discrimination, careful emphasis, 
 belong pre-eminently to the analytic and synthetic move- 
 ment of mind. The very purpose of this systematizing 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 53 
 
 process is to give particulars their due weight ; and it 
 often results in assigning them excessive weight. Not 
 till we return to conduct and the sympathetic feelings 
 that it calls out do we find the currents of human life run- 
 ning together again and overcoming all erratic tendencies. 
 It is the union of action which corrects the division of 
 thought. If men are discriminating they cannot rally to 
 a creed as they can to an undertaking. 
 
 The creed also, as a fixed term in the life of a church, 
 has helped to deaden its activity. A decay of piety dis- 
 proportioned to the decay of doctrine is, in any long 
 series of years, so universal a fact in every religious 
 organization as to have the force of a law. This result is 
 in part due to the separation occasioned between belief 
 and conduct by a closed creed ; the failure of the former 
 to control the latter, and the failure of the latter to correct 
 the former. The living movement is arrested by dividing 
 its terms. A reform in action always means one in belief 
 also. It thus happens that, in periods of dormant faith, 
 piety passes into pietism, an artificial quickening of feel- 
 ing aside from the discipline of duties. The entire life 
 thus becomes artificial because of the remote and visionary 
 nature of its first terms in systematic faith. From this 
 feverish activity there is a slow decline under the gravita- 
 tion of sin. 
 
 Sharp theological discussion not only begets hopeless 
 division along slight lines of cleavage ; it occasions much 
 bitterness of feeling, and springs up in the practical world 
 as thorns and thistles. There is scarcely a sadder chapter 
 in human history — -one of mingled regret, disgust, and 
 despair — than that of theological discussion. The light 
 that is in these heavens serves only to make them the 
 more lurid and portentous. We restore our faith by re- 
 
154 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 membering how tentative, obscure, and partial are all the 
 stages of growth. 
 
 Yet religious doctrine expresses an inevitable tendency 
 of thought and subserves a most important and undenia- 
 ble purpose. A current so strong and deep and constant 
 as this implies a large territory back of it, which is its 
 occasion. The object subserved by dogma is a complex 
 one of life and of philosophy. All sound philosophy is a 
 philosophy of life, and all large life issues in philosophy. 
 A philosophy of some sort must be, as a conscious or a 
 latent term, back of all rational action. Our only pro- 
 tection against that which is weaker is that which is 
 stronger ; against superstition is faith, against negation is 
 affirmation, against sinking into ignorance is rising into 
 knowledge. We must do the best we can, as our only 
 safety against doing worse than we might. 
 
 The human mind, by its upward bent, pushes into the 
 light, and the highest light into which it can grow is this 
 very light of a philosophy of life, a theory of the Divine 
 Presence, a programme of the eternal procedure in the 
 moral world. To underrate the value of this work is in- 
 sensate, so insensate that no matter how wise those may 
 be who fall into this error, how great the scorn they be- 
 stow on this inquiry, men are sure to return to it, and the 
 chances are that these agnostics themselves will, in one 
 way or another, at one time or another, occupy them- 
 selves with it. They do not escape the fascination of 
 these profound questions by denying their fitness. If 
 metaphysics is a wallow in the spiritual world, it is one to 
 which men, no matter how often washed by science, are 
 ever returning. 
 
 We have no patience with the spurious knowledge — 
 spurious in this one particular — which decries the highest, 
 
DOGMATISM. 1 55 
 
 most ultimate, most inevitable form of inquiry. Systema- 
 tic theology, while it has no premises which entitle it to 
 final conclusions, has abundantly the material of search, 
 and deepens thought and enriches feelings beyond other 
 forms of investigation. It has an irresistible fascination 
 for the vigorous intellect, and draws men into its vortex 
 in the very act of turning from it. When men fully 
 apprehend that life involves a philosophy of life, and 
 that the largest, most self-conscious life involves the pres- 
 ence of this philosophy in the mind as a distinct term of 
 thought, they will understand the office of systematic 
 theology — a careful inquiry into the ultimate relations of 
 conduct. 
 
 No investigation is more important, because none covers 
 more comprehensively all the terms of experience, none 
 is more practical, because, while modified by all the con- 
 ditions of life, it brings, in turn, constant modification to 
 them. 
 
 This, indeed, is what we have been urging, that in- 
 duction should unite itself to deduction in theology, that 
 principles should interpret themselves by the facts that 
 come under them, that the events of life should contain 
 and confirm our revelation of God, and that we should 
 see that from the beginning his method of instruction 
 has been empirical and historical. We are quite right in 
 deducing great truths from that exceptionally clear and 
 significant record of facts — the Bible ; we mistake only 
 when we suppose it to be different in its truths from 
 other sources of truth, and diverse in its record from the 
 record we ourselves are making under the same over- 
 shadowing providence. The second coming of Christ, his 
 daily access to us, is not less significant than his first 
 coming. 
 
156 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Natural theology underlies revealed theology. How- 
 ever numerous and explicit the principles we trace to 
 the Scriptures, they all rest back on, and help to bring 
 to light, the truths incorporated in the constitution of 
 things. Whatever may be the source of light, that which 
 it illuminates and enlivens is the universe about us. Light 
 and the things revealed lie in the closest interaction — 
 neither is intelligible without the other. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PIETISM. 
 
 THE religious life, as a higher life, a life under a wider 
 range of motives, and motives less immediate and tangible 
 than those of the appetites and passions, seems vague and 
 remote to most men. They find difficulty in laying hold 
 of it, and turning it into palpable convictions and suit- 
 able actions. There has been, in consequence of this 
 uncertain touch in spiritual things, a constant effort to 
 give outline and definition to religious life by prescribed 
 duties, explicit professions, and strong conventional feel- 
 ings. This tendency to narrow, and at the same time to 
 intensify, religious experience, is what we understand by 
 pietism. It is piety expressed vigorously, but in a cir- 
 cumscribed form, that is deemed distinctively religious. 
 The pietist is a man of ardent devotion to distinctively 
 religious duties, with an intense form of character colored 
 by supersensuous convictions, and with a burning desire 
 to inspire his own sentiments in others. In pietism the 
 religious life is gathered, like sunlight passing through 
 a lens, into a heated centre, rather than diffused, like 
 sunlight in the atmosphere, over the entire field of action. 
 Pietism is a familiar fact in all forms of faith. It arises 
 inevitably from the narrowness of human thought in con- 
 nection with a desire more completely to express one's 
 obedience to truth. It has belonged, in a great variety 
 
 157 
 
I58 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 of forms, to the Christian Church almost from the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 The first extended and striking manifestation of it was 
 asceticism. The ascetic gave shape to his Christian expe- 
 rience in arbitrary self-denial, and with sufferings which 
 were not associated with the performance of any duty. 
 No specific good came either to himself or to others by 
 his self-imposed inflictions ; except as they were regarded 
 as the expression of religious feeling. Religious devo- 
 tion, turning aside from simple and direct labor in doing 
 good, devised for itself a severe method of discipline, 
 with no basis in nature and no merit of service to man- 
 kind. Asceticism was an irrational and melancholy per- 
 version of Christian self-denial, and yet was not wholly 
 without value, simply because it sprang from the higher 
 incentives and reacted on them. It was life, though a 
 deformed and diseased one. Asceticism, in its squalor, 
 solitude, and self-devised sufferings, was not merely a 
 failure to apprehend and perform social duties, a substi- 
 tution of meaningless inflictions for the labors of a divine 
 beneficence, it was a trespass, and often a grievous 
 trespass, on the physical, the intellectual, and the spirit- 
 ual powers. The mind was filled with visions, neither 
 pure nor peaceful, neither wholesome nor corrective. 
 The religious life suffered profound misapprehension 
 and profound perversion. This distortion belonged to 
 asceticism not merely in its extreme forms, but in its 
 entire spirit ; to all self-denial accepted for any other 
 object than real service. It misconceived the will of 
 God and our duty to him, and put in place of actions 
 spiritually beautiful, deformed and frightful ones. It is 
 a diabolical spectacle to see men inflict pain on each 
 other as a religious duty ; it is a spectacle of infatuation 
 
PIETISM. 159 
 
 and folly hardly less depressing to see them inflict suffer- 
 ings on themselves as a divine discipline. 
 
 Yet so strongly is this tendency associated with devo- 
 tion, that it is constantly reappearing, and assuming some 
 new phase. Many, especially in the Catholic Church, 
 express a temper of self-denial in needless sufferings ; as 
 if the thing called for were not a rational surrender of 
 immediate pleasure in behalf of an adequate end, but 
 simply the surrender itself. The sin against reason in 
 asceticism is complete. Wise suffering is endured for the 
 sake of limiting evil and removing pain ; ascetic inflic- 
 tions are undergone as a voluntary enlargement of pain. 
 Not only does evil carry with it pain, pain carries with it 
 evil, in wasting productive power and impoverishing the 
 spiritual affections. Although the contention against 
 pain in the world is subordinate to that against evil, the 
 two forms of strife must go on together, and share the 
 same fortunes. To introduce needless pain is to give sin 
 needless provocation. 
 
 The hold which this form of pietism retains on the 
 ardent, spiritual mind was recently illustrated in the narra- 
 tive of Clare Vaughan. Her devotion is spoken of as 
 one which gives us " a standard by which to measure the 
 Christian life and the high aspiration of Catholic faith." 
 " Even her childhood was marked by an enthusiastic love 
 of Christ — such a love that her companions discovered 
 with pain that it was really filling her mind, almost to the 
 eclipse of her devotion to them, — and also by a passion 
 for self-inflicted sufferings endured to prove this deep 
 love which seems to those who are not Roman Catholics 
 a strange form of devotion, and one that contrasts very 
 remarkably with the brightness and sweetness of Clare 
 Vaughan's disposition." " Her love of mortification was 
 
l6o THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 such that nothing she saw or came across failed to sug- 
 gest some means of torturing or annoying her unfortunate 
 body. How well I remember one day when we were 
 returning from a village in the neighborhood. We hap- 
 pened to be passing through a stubble-field, and breaking 
 off suddenly from what she had been talking about, she 
 cried, ' I have a splendid idea ! Suppose we take off our 
 shoes and stockings and walk barefoot through the 
 stubble-field ! ' It was no sooner said than done, and I 
 can see now the calm enjoyment with which Clare walked 
 up and down those cruel many-bristling thorns, followed 
 by the sympathetic shrieks of her cowardly companion, 
 who very soon resumed shoes and stockings." ' 
 
 How came asceticism to arise as a pietistic tendency in 
 the Christian Church ? and what has been its effects, good 
 and evil, on our apprehension of the spirit of Christ ? 
 Asceticism gave at once that definite, tangible expression 
 to the religious life which men desired. It satisfied the 
 wish of the devout to do something as an instant and 
 adequate outcome of feeling, and to separate themselves 
 by bold lines of division from the irreligious. The noto- 
 riety which attended on extreme asceticism carried with 
 it a mingled flavor of good and evil. The devotee, by 
 extravagant self-denial, might gratify the very pervasive 
 and subtile feeling of vanity, and might also, to his own 
 apprehension, extend religious truth. 
 
 The conditions under which Christian life was devel- 
 oped in earlier centuries were such as to favor asceti- 
 cism. It was not easy to impose religious truth in 
 wholesome forms on the minds of men. The obstruc- 
 tions to conceiving and expressing the right temper were 
 very great. It was natural, therefore, to feel, that as one 
 could not save the world, he must save himself by a sepa- 
 
 1 The Sper tutor, October 29, 1887. 
 
PIETISM. l6l 
 
 ration from it. In this isolation, the discipline of useful 
 labors being lost, its place was supplied by artificial exac- 
 tions, and these were increased with the increase of the 
 spirit of self-denial. The movement, having missed the 
 guidance of facts, found no limits within itself. The 
 desire of redeeming one's soul took the place of the 
 desire of redeeming the world. Thus the relation of 
 these two ideas, the salvation and the renovation of the 
 spirit, was hopelessly confused. The saving the soul 
 came to mean the rescuing of the man from the future 
 consequences of sin rather than immediate purification. 
 The future was to be won more or less at the cost of the 
 present, not by and with it. Asceticism favored this 
 confusion of thought, and grew up with it. The maimed 
 character of the life the devotee was at the time leading 
 was not the point of attention, but the effects of his 
 action on a future life. The moment we make this dis- 
 tinction, darkness and error enter rapidly. The con- 
 tinuity of life is lost. Our exertions are turned into a 
 kind of spiritual gymnastics of whose value we have no 
 immediate test. They are undertaken for obscure > re- 
 mote objects, and must find their justification in them. 
 Everything hinges upon our theory of salvation, and as 
 long as this holds good in the mind, we may wisely in- 
 crease our spurious acts of self-sacrifice. The man who is 
 striving to help men in the world, who is trying to improve 
 the world as the abode of men, has the present fruits of 
 his efforts to enlarge and correct his judgments; but he 
 who is struggling to save souls, in this narrow sense, 
 decides on the success of his measures under the same 
 artificial ideas that have led him to enter on them. He 
 meets, therefore, with nothing to expose his failures, for 
 his thought and method are fanciful throughout. 
 
 A very intelligent workman, whose proclivities were 
 
1 62 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 skeptical, once said to me, that if Christians would cease 
 their efforts to save the souls of men and try to save their 
 bodies, they would do much better. In this assertion we 
 have the complimentary error of the mistake of asceticism, 
 the expectation of securing physical progress in separation 
 from spiritual improvement. The two are so interwoven 
 in the divine method, that neither can be pursued success- 
 fully, for any length of time, aside from the other. Stal- 
 wart righteousness means stalwart strength, and demands, 
 in its proper expression, large physical and intellectual 
 appliances. The beauty of the world loses its most fitting 
 ministrations without righteousness, and righteousness 
 misses its ineffable perfection, if it has no mastery of the 
 means by which it is to declare itself. The Kingdom of 
 Heaven is embodied righteousness, righteousness that 
 builds up society, enriches and beautifies it. The ascetic, 
 aiming to save his own soul by self-imposed discipline, in 
 separation from the world about him, fails to understand 
 rightly in what salvation consists. The soul can only be 
 saved in connection with men, as its salvation lies in deep- 
 ened, widened, quickened affections. Love must have be- 
 fore it the field of love, or it can gain no new power. We 
 might as well expect bodily strength without bodily action, 
 as spiritual strength without contact with spiritual inter- 
 ests. A man saves himself in saving others. Inflictions 
 that subserve no purposes of reconstruction among men 
 arise from a perversion of thought and still further extend 
 it. Paul says : " I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and 
 fill up that which was wanting in the sufferings of Christ." 
 But these were sufferings in behalf of others, and made 
 necessary by the exigencies of the case. God's school is 
 one of suffering, but not one of wasted suffering. Its aim 
 is to overcome suffering in behalf of ourselves and others. 
 
PIETISM. 163 
 
 The discipline of suffering lies chiefly in the earnestness 
 and wisdom of the effort to eliminate it. Love animates 
 this effort, and all the affections gather in its path. What 
 more manifest spiritual sophism than a gratuitous inflic- 
 tion of suffering on ourselves, when it is, with us, a con- 
 stant duty to relieve the sufferings of others? While it 
 is not the very substance of righteousness to escape pain, 
 it is its manifest glory that it does escape it. We should 
 have hardly fallen so readily into this error of self-mortifi- 
 cation, if we had not become accustomed to look on the 
 sufferings of Christ as arbitrary. 
 
 Yet asceticism has played an important part in the spir- 
 itual improvement of the world. It offers another illus- 
 tration of the familiar fact, that the road to truth is always 
 one of error. A temper of abnegation may be present 
 in pietism, and help to give the spirit that mastery over 
 itself which is an essential in righteousness. Asceticism, 
 when it is associated with beneficence, makes a very strong 
 appeal to the imagination of men. Even that which is 
 preposterous in it adds to the impression. The purely 
 voluntary character of the suffering becomes its merit, and 
 enhances its force as a mastery of spiritual ideas. The 
 simplicity of truth is often less efficacious with men than 
 some striking exhibit made under an error allied to the 
 truth. 
 
 In asceticism, the spirit does itself a violence in break- 
 ing away from dominant, sensuous ideas. It treats its 
 own most needful members as if they were enemies, and 
 maims itself in seeking liberty, as the wild animal may 
 pluck itself from the trap with the loss of a limb. Nobility 
 of purpose is here united with folly of method, and often, 
 in the balance of effects, carries the day. The living plant 
 triumphs over a bleak climate. 
 
164 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Yet the error of method is here to bear with it its 
 disastrous entail. The thoughts are narrowed, the affec- 
 tions impoverished, and labor made unfruitful by a 
 procedure transverse to the grace of God, not parallel 
 with it. If one does not rise above asceticism, by asceti- 
 cism religion is slowly converted into fanaticism, ever 
 more barren, deformed, and hateful. We must expect 
 error, but we must also look for the power to shake it 
 off. The prayer and fasting of the New Testament may 
 easily be made to grow into asceticism. They need, in 
 use, the interpretation of reason under adequate ends. 
 They are good so far as they purify and strengthen the 
 mind without diverting it from its true labors or weaken- 
 ing it in them. The simple fact which remains at the 
 centre of the divine method, that body and mind can 
 only work successfully in the closest union, is a law to 
 grace as much as it is to labor. 
 
 Pietism arises very frequently in reaction against a self- 
 indulgent phase of religious life. The asceticism of St. 
 Francis and the poverty which he enjoined on his follow- 
 ers were distinguishing traits in a corrupt period. The 
 Franciscans thus drew attention and addressed the popu- 
 lar conscience in a new and direct way. The spirit of their 
 work was expressed and aided by this voluntary self-denial. 
 It is often easier, and for the moment more effective, to 
 transcend the line of wise and proportionate action than 
 it is to reach and maintain it. 
 ■ But the Franciscans did not escape the taint of thought 
 and feeling attendant on this enforced poverty. The bit- 
 ter hostility between the spirituals, who adhered to the 
 doctrine in its extreme form, and the conventuals, who 
 softened it to suit changing conditions, and the cruel 
 persecution of the former, were some of the fruits of this 
 
PIETISM. 165 
 
 early excess in the life and spirit of St. Francis. The acts 
 and garments which marked the ascetic temper became 
 with many of his disciples things of fundamental impor- 
 tance. Every irrational action helps to destroy the 
 balance of thought, and to turn the indomitable energy 
 of a devout mind into self-assertion. The stronger the 
 impulse with which we are dealing, the greater our need 
 of sober judgment. 
 
 A second form of pietism is ritualism, when pushed 
 beyond its simple disciplinary service. The need of a rite 
 arises from ignorance and weakness. It puts upon the 
 mind a method of worship, because the mind cannot 
 advantageously supply its own method. Or a system of 
 rites unites men in worship, and prevents a wasteful 
 collision of forms. Where the spirit of God is, there is 
 liberty, because there is the capacity to use liberty. Rites 
 will be gross and cumbersome in the degree in which 
 those who employ them are barren in spiritual life. The 
 complicated temple worship, the innumerable bloody 
 sacrifices of the Jewish service, were very coarse expres- 
 sions of our relations to God. The sensuous element in 
 them was large, and easily overpowered their spiritual 
 import. They were adapted to a people gross of heart 
 and stiff of neck. The first terms in the spiritual training 
 of an unspiritual people must necessarily be remote from 
 the inner life of faith. Ritualism arises in accommodation 
 to a sensuous temper. It gives an artificial approach to 
 God, when the soul is failing of ready access to him. This 
 relation of rites to religion implies a disparagement of them, 
 and yet it involves their immense value in the history of 
 the world. One can hardly use a liturgy, permeated with 
 spiritual insight, without becoming enamored of it. It 
 so touches in purity the best thoughts of men, so enriches 
 
1 66 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 itself by association, so gathers into a swift, songful stream 
 of utterance the feelings of all who unite in it, that one 
 seems to have found, having wandered in paths remote, 
 the highway to Heaven. 
 
 But the pietistic spirit, the spirit of concentration and 
 excess, easily lays hold of ritualism, as especially suited 
 to its purposes. The ritual is made minute and vigorous. 
 The religious life is sharply distinguished by means of it, 
 and duty rapidly becomes the faithful use of means, not 
 the wise winning of ends. A ritual is a ready way of 
 giving outward form to religious action, and consoling the 
 mind with results that are immediate and visible. For 
 the ultimate up-shot of the method, it can fall back on the 
 spirit of mysticism, on the inscrutable and the divine. If 
 we are to judge the world by God's declaration of it in 
 science, it is, in construction, profoundly opposed to 
 mysticism ; if we are to judge of it by man's exposition 
 of it in religion, it lapses readily, in many ways and 
 places, into obscure and fanciful connections. Man is 
 always practically struggling with the question, how to 
 satisfy the sensuous tendencies and the spiritual tenden- 
 cies of the mind without a decisive victory of either, 
 without the incorporation of both in a higher life. A 
 ritual is a short answer to this inquiry. When this answer 
 has been made, any extra pressure of the higher senti- 
 ments shows itself in pietism, in restored, enlarged, and 
 enforced rites that will retain more or less of their disci- 
 plinary character, according to the disposition of the 
 person who makes use of them. If the rite does not 
 steadily raise us above the rite, our observance of it will 
 become an increasing obstruction to vision, casting a 
 deeper and deeper shadow on the real duties of life. 
 
 The form of pietism most immediately interesting to us 
 is that which is more frequently associated with Protestant 
 
PIETISM. 167 
 
 forms of faith — the pietism of intensified, religious senti- 
 ment. We need say nothing of the pietism of rigorous 
 doctrine, for that has been sufficiently considered as 
 dogmatism. Religious feeling often leads the mind to 
 enforce a creed, aside from any intellectual apprehension 
 of it. The movement of the mind is not pure and color- 
 less, but turbid with mistaken feeling. The sentiments 
 add themselves as so much weight to the thoughts, and 
 thus enhance their momentum in a disastrous way. It is 
 this emotional element, uncontrolled of reason, that con- 
 verts belief into dogmatism, and disturbs the composure 
 of the spirit. 
 
 But there is a pietism of intensified feeling disconnected 
 from the creed. The emotions are laboriously called out 
 and carefully cherished as containing the distinguishing 
 terms of a religious experience without relation to their 
 immediate connection with well-directed effort. The 
 feelings are thus sought after and fed out of connection 
 with their vital dependencies and purposes. Our con- 
 victions of sin, our sense of the nearness of God, or of the 
 duty of prayer, or of the value of a religious experience, 
 are kept alive by constantly returning to them, and by an 
 assiduous effort to make them, in an intense form, habitual. 
 They thus become direct products of will, instead of the 
 indirect fruits of conduct. The religious life is identified 
 with these feelings, and their maintenance is made a lead- 
 ing purpose. The saints of Protestant churches are quite 
 likely to have a decisive tinge of this form of pietism. 
 Saintship is associated with the religious sentiments. 
 Devotion, consecration, separation from the world, are 
 its designations, and may cover an exalted yet an arti- 
 ficial state of mind. These experiences miss the true 
 breadth of life, the real power of the spirit. They bear a 
 narrow remedial character, rather than one of wide reno- 
 
1 68 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 vation and growth. If our bodily members are sinking 
 into torpor, if the circulation is partially checked, we may 
 restore this, certainly, by friction. But the results so se- 
 cured are quite distinct from the vigor of the entire body, 
 and are by no means to be substituted for it. Religious 
 feelings that are not the spontaneous out-flow of a noble 
 and useful life, feelings that are cherished as in them- 
 selves an experience, that special experience we term 
 spiritual, may also be the products of an intellectual 
 friction, and lead us to carry this movement cure into all 
 departments of faith. Our Christian churches are very 
 much influenced in their efforts by pietism, and religion 
 is not so much a large and wise government of life as 
 certain obscure experiences superinduced upon it. 
 
 A rare form of pietism, which one is least disposed to 
 criticise, but does well to understand, is the entire and 
 direct devotion of one's property to religious work. It 
 has offered itself in religious orders as the vow of poverty. 
 This form of pietism, while lacking that completeness and 
 breadth of motives which belong to true spirituality, may 
 very well show great moral power. A manifest and 
 absolute subordination of lower to higher motives gives 
 to the latter a sense of reality w r hich the popular mind is 
 sure to appreciate. This consecration puts that in the 
 foreground which is in the foreground, and errs only in 
 not sufficiently supporting it with all the beauty and 
 large invitation that lie in the rear of true holiness. 
 
 The motives of life are very various and very complex, 
 and should render each other, in the development of 
 virtue, constant and extended support. The best im- 
 pulses take on harsh and barren phases unless they are 
 finding their way among the manifold forms of a complete 
 life. The social and the spiritual incentives which gather 
 
PIETISM. 169 
 
 about the acquisition and expenditure of property bring 
 very extended, forceful, and needful motives to action. 
 They are wrought thoroughly into the constitution of the 
 world, of man and of society. Progress certainly needs 
 their aid, and will be found closely associated with them. 
 While it is a noble thing to push right through minor 
 interests and enter heartily into larger ones that lie 
 beyond, it is a more proportionate method and, in the 
 progress of years, effective one, to gather up in a purified 
 form all accessory incentives, and to unite, on the broad 
 basis of the actual world, those forces which must ulti- 
 mately enter into society, support, and nourish it. That 
 mastery of wealth which retains its varied uses, which 
 enables its possessor, with no separation between himself 
 and other men, no loss of sympathy with them, to work 
 effectively on every plane of effort with every worthy 
 impulse, higher and lower, to prosper the present labors 
 as well as the future hopes of life, to gather to the spiritual 
 front the pleasure and beauties of existence in their divine 
 order, to reflect with happy forecast the multiplied 
 enjoyments we bestow so lavishly on our conception of 
 Heaven — that mastery is certainly far better than an 
 abnegation which puts away effort and temptation because 
 they are too hard for us. 
 
 In the long work of redemption and construction all 
 the resources of the world must come into play, and we 
 do well to learn how to hold them together in the very 
 outset ; how to build them together in a social structure 
 well supported within and without by all modes of 
 dependence and bonds of union. This extreme consecra- 
 tion, bearing the narrow cast of pietism, in its effort to 
 win the higher in oversight of that which is lower, finds 
 really no encouragement in the example of the Master. 
 
I/O THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 The young man who came to our Lord with the inquiry, 
 " What shall I do to be saved ? ' was met with the com- 
 mand, " Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor " ; 
 because only thus could a thickly woven veil of spiritual 
 sophistries be rent through, and the light be admitted to 
 his bewildered mind. As an example, it stands quite by 
 itself, and testifies to its exceptional character. A giving 
 that overlooks in the giver the appropriate conditions of 
 economic and social progress, must always suffer abate- 
 ment in its force of example. Men instantly feel that the 
 method is not a universal one. They, therefore, are con- 
 tent to regard it as more exceptional than it really is. 
 An attitude toward the use of property, which appreciates 
 all its ministrations, — outward, inward, and upward — is 
 that more rare and noble thing — -the divine mind, in its 
 plentitude of methods and breadth of motives. To know 
 how to possess the world is to know how to possess 
 Heaven, — is to convert it into Heaven. 
 
 Pietism is closely associated with two points of belief 
 that narrow our relations to the world. The first of these 
 is that conversion involves a sudden, decisive change of 
 character, and may be present more or less aside from 
 the slow gains of obedience. Daily experience is misin- 
 terpreted in the establishment of this theory of an imme- 
 diate transformation, and sentiments — the conventional 
 sentiments of pietism — are accepted as the sound and 
 sufficient currency of a new life. In the degree in which 
 the changes of character are taken out from under the 
 ordinary laws of mind, and consequences are looked for 
 which have no sufficient antecedents in conduct, shall we 
 find ourselves afloat in thought, and ready to receive 
 mystic expressions of feeling as signs of the divine favor. 
 The seed sown on light soil, and sown among thorns 
 
PIETISM. 171 
 
 perishing by the heat or choked by the weeds, becomes a 
 type of that pietism which arises from the ready admis- 
 sion of supernaturalism into the sources of conduct. If 
 the elements of character may enter suddenly, and out of 
 relation to the bulk of action, then may we possibly be 
 able to induce fortunate sentiments by some special point 
 of view painfully maintained. If, however, we are put in 
 connection with the entire world, with its innumerable 
 wants, for the very end of giving us terms of discipline ; 
 if the breadth of sound conduct bears some proportion to 
 the breadth of these its enclosing relations ; if the solidity 
 of character is incident to firm repose on these same sup- 
 porting facts ; if favorable changes of character must arise 
 by temperate and wise action under them ; and if the 
 only sufficient proof of meeting the divine will is the 
 enlargement of the divine love among men, then this 
 pietism which gives an in-door culture to a few selected 
 and artificial sentiments is a mistake, and stands in very 
 partial harmony with the broad and patient thought of 
 God. We must understand by conversion, before we can 
 pursue it aright, a steady turning toward a larger and 
 more gracious life, a slow putting forth, under more 
 comprehensive feelings, of bud, leaf, flower, and fruit 
 in a Kingdom of Heaven, beautiful with an amplitude all 
 its own. 
 
 The second impression which leads to pietism is one 
 entertained much in the face of the words of Christ, the 
 feeling that salvation has chief reference to another life. 
 We allow the larger interests of that life to stand over 
 against the immediate interests of this life, and so put 
 the two in conflict in their action on us. These interests, 
 on either hand, are part and parcel of the same thing. 
 The salvation of another life is in continuation of the 
 
I72 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 salvation of this life, and is reached through it. It is not 
 sufficient to look upon conduct and character as means 
 to an end, salvation ; they are the very substance of 
 salvation. The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. We 
 are in the midst of God's redemptive grace, and have 
 no occasion to forecast a future in which that grace 
 shall declare itself. The Kingdom we labor for, and of 
 which by our labors we are made partakers, is a Kingdom 
 that overlaps the world. Thy will be done in earth as it 
 is in Heaven. When we strengthen ourselves against the 
 failures of well-doing by the assurance of ultimate suc- 
 cess, we do wisely ; but when we console ourselves with 
 feeble things, flattered by a promise of better ones 
 beyond the limits of our own action, we are simply 
 nursing our indolence. Spiritual life comes under the 
 conditions of all life, and we maintain our hold on the 
 future by our hold on the present. 
 
 Pietism overlooks, or underestimates, this living con- 
 tinuity, this organic character of truth, and nourishes 
 expectations in contradiction of the terms of their fulfil- 
 ment. It is thus negligent in securing these terms. Our 
 belief in the blessings of the future is superinduced on 
 the ills of the present, not to make us diligent in correct- 
 ing them, but to render us patient in tolerating them — a 
 patience that approaches contentment, when these ills are 
 spiritual, not physical, ones. Pietism often intensifies 
 feelings which divert us from the very process of their 
 realization. We misconceive the evils under which we 
 are laboring, and misconceive their remedy. We fall into 
 the very pervasive fallacy that the modification of things 
 is more significant than that of persons ; that the patient, 
 spiritualizing discipline to which we are subjected is in a 
 measure superfluous. Life is present in the degree in 
 
tietism. 173 
 
 which love is present, and in that degree only. The 
 world is the school of love. Miss the lesson, and we miss 
 the Heaven which lies in learning it. 
 
 We propose, as a theme of social worship, " God's un- 
 speakable gift, do we possess it ? ' In considering it, the 
 mind is confused between the winnings of the present life 
 and the rewards of a future life, between naturalism and 
 supernaturalism. With a pietistic temper we throw the 
 balance of hope on the least tangible term. We are to 
 have what we now have not. It is as if we should strive 
 to rest, not on the foot already planted, but on that 
 which is raised for forward movement. Our poise in the 
 spiritual world is in the present ; from this support we must 
 make our cast into the future. God's unspeakable gift is 
 the power and opportunity of immediate growth. 
 
 Pietism is sure to accompany a supernaturalism in any 
 way separated from naturalism. It is a belief, in one or 
 more particulars, in such a separation : a waiting to realize 
 results that transcend the connections of experience. It 
 is a kind of ecstasy made to take the place of sober 
 thought, and though it may not be altogether ill-placed or 
 ineffectual, it cannot, with strength and safety, attain to 
 the sufficient and peaceful fruits of righteousness. Pietism 
 contains the fallacy of a search after effects without 
 sufficient causes — after sentiments not fully sustained by 
 the circumstances which give occasion to them. It is not 
 in harmony with those many stages of growth, those 
 untiring processes of consolidation, those innumerable 
 steps of diffusion, under labor, by which God leads us 
 into a kingdom, comprehensive of all, and of all the inter- 
 ests of each. Pietism, the feverish activity of spiritual 
 life at a few points, and its strange torpor at many points, 
 is the outcome of a mode of thought that overlooks, 
 
 
^/ 
 
 174 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 somewhat, the fixed dependence of events on each other, 
 and expects, at some stage of progress, to rise suddenly, 
 like a bird in the air, and leave great spaces behind it. 
 Pietism is the intoxication of piety, and, like intoxication, 
 sf sobers down into weakness and fear. 
 
 This temper exists in every measure, from the slight 
 extravagance of healthy activity to the abnormal concep- 
 tions of extreme asceticism. While pietism finds its 
 occasion in our misapprehension of the processes of grace, 
 in our unwise understanding of the relations of the present 
 to the future and of God's gifts to our own activity, it 
 finds its incentives in desires which belong to us as mere 
 children, wayward and ignorant in spiritual things. A 
 disposition to compromise is the inevitable outcome of 
 strong, conflicting feelings. What takes place in a body 
 of men with divided interests takes place in each man 
 with divided sentiments. No far-reaching reform has 
 come to any people without passing through many phases 
 of pitiful compromise, and being pushed by means of 
 them to a final issue. Such an evil as intemperance is 
 plucked up, like a noxious, spreading plant, root by root, 
 patch by patch. Religion demands that a new centre 
 should be taken, and all thought and action be rearranged 
 from it. Man neither fully sees this demand, nor readily 
 assents to it. The alterations of character are slow and 
 partial. Attention is concentrated on single forms of 
 experience, and so we have pietism. Pietism is a com- 
 promise between sin and holiness by which something is 
 conceded and something saved, by which the religious life 
 is held bacK from the entire field of conduct, but, in 
 compensation, is allowed to rule here and there with 
 peculiar rigor. Men, in dealing with spiritual motives, 
 are encountering ideas more or less alien to their experi- 
 
PIETISM. 175 
 
 ence, and so they give them partial, distorted, and extreme 
 expression. The spiritual life is a struggle, and thus for 
 a long time a compromise, between conflictiong ten- 
 dencies. 
 
 A second occasion of pietism is the desire of men to 
 reach quickly tangible results. Pure spiritualism is too 
 remote, too broad, too supersensible for their successful 
 pursuit. A narrower difference, a more immediate dis- 
 tinction, even if it be a superficial one, pleases them 
 better. Pietism meets this feeling. The ascetic, what- 
 ever else he is or is not, is separate from the world. The 
 ritualist is at once distinguishable in his ways and his 
 worship. The pietist of sentiment is divisible immedi- 
 ately from his fellows by his strong and pungent phrase- 
 ology. These distinctions enhance the impression that 
 the children of God are, as indeed they ought to be, a 
 peculiar people. The delight, on the one side, in a visible 
 result, and the blindness, on the other, which obscures 
 the real qualities of the Kingdom of Heaven, give occa- 
 sion to pietism, as a short-hand method of recording 
 tendencies that men have not yet the grace to write at 
 large. We discern superficial differences far more quickly 
 than profound ones, and stumble on for a long time 
 among the lengthened shadow of things still remote from 
 us. We have not reached the foot of the mount of vision, 
 much less climbed its slope. 
 
 The evils of pietism are partial, open to correction, and 
 inseparably associated with many gains. Pietism is an 
 inadequate, transitional form of life, and may give way to 
 one more pervasive. It delays us in understanding the 
 religious spirit. A growing comprehension of that spirit, 
 not as one which seeks peculiar terms in experience, but 
 as one which handles familiar terms with more insight 
 
 \S 
 
176 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 will drive back pietism, point by point, and will substitute 
 for the feverish action of one set of faculties the measured 
 action of all the faculties. It is for the sake of the reli- 
 gious life, its right apprehension, its true extension, that 
 we censure pietism as an insufficient expression of the 
 divine mind. 
 
 Pietism is almost inevitable among the ignorant, and 
 yet they especially suffer from it. One approaches an 
 average man in whom the upward tendency of thought 
 has been repressed by the urgent wants, coarse desires, and 
 superficial conventionalisms of a narrow experience. He 
 is of the earth earthy. His affections are of the natural, 
 and not of the spiritual, order. The forces which con- 
 struct society are not thought of; no personal or social 
 ideal is present to the imagination. He walks by the 
 sight of the eyes, almost as much so as an animal, only 
 with a wider range of objects. One wishes to awaken 
 religious ideas in such a person, or impart to him a 
 decisive religious impulse. He finds himself at great dis- 
 advantage in attempting it. No common ground, common 
 vocabulary, common experience, lie between them. His 
 words sink into weak moral truisms, and carry no weight. 
 It is hardly possible to reach such a man without some 
 degree or form of pietism. Some impressions must be 
 thrown out of proportion in order that they may gain the 
 appearance of strength. Emphasis must be excessive, 
 that the truth may offer itself as at all emphatic. Such a 
 man identifies religion with religious professions, religious 
 actions, religious distinctions ; marks with which he is 
 familiar, and without which he misses the lessons they 
 contain. 
 
 Yet such a person suffers very much from pietism. He 
 does not comprehend the religious force of what you say 
 
tietism. 177 
 
 till you use the right phrase, and when the conventional 
 expression is employed, he readily lapses into a narrow, 
 sanctimonious form of thought which has in it very little 
 renovating power. He can recognize religion only in one 
 way, and so when the recognition comes it is of very 
 restricted value. If we believe that what God requires is 
 the blood of bulls and goats, that the pietistic sentiment 
 is the substance of piety, then the grace, naturalness, and 
 largeness of salvation will remain hidden from us. 
 
 Religion needs to renew its speech constantly ; it calls 
 for more direct forms of thought, for less conventional and ^ 
 more spiritual modes of expression. A first office of the 
 religious life is to give light, light to words, light to 
 actions, light to all the straight and winding paths that 
 lead upward, light that discloses the living gifts and mani- 
 fold beauties of the ways of God. Pietism fails in its own 
 revelation and fails as a revelation. It is a disguise and a 
 restriction, in one degree or another, of the grace of God. 
 Those who are spiritually minded are predestined of God 
 to beget a pure, bracing spiritual atmosphere, which 
 re-endows, with its vitalizing energies, all the higher 
 powers of men. The close air and mal-odors of an unven- 
 tilated room are not more hostile to robust health, than 
 are the set phrases and meagre experiences of pietism to 
 spiritual strength, and full fraternity in the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. The deep evil of pietism is that it misappre- 
 hends the religious life which it seeks to propagate. The 
 divine love struggles first with disobedience, and then 
 with the narrow forms of obedience that replace it. 
 
 As itself a restriction of life, pietism modifies all our 
 
 methods of presenting life in the household and the 
 
 Church. It is hardly necessary to say, that an effort to 
 
 correct a method does not necessarily involve an oversight 
 12 
 
178 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 of the gains that have accompanied it, or of its unav 
 able character as a transitional phase in developnv 
 Life is always busy in taking down that which it itself 
 built up. Any particular form of pietism arises from 
 defective conceptions of truth on the part of those v 
 teach and of those who are taught. It is an obscure, 
 spiritual product which can only be changed slowly as the 
 result of increasing insight. A sweeping condemnation of 
 the modes of instruction, at any one time prevalent, arises 
 from a superficial apprehension of the force of the facts 
 with which they are associated, and a presumptuous hope 
 of an easy correction of fact and theory together. Our 
 choice, in the world's progress, lies more in the rapidity of 
 changes, than it does in the steps of change. Wise criti- 
 cism is chiefly interested in the immediate possibilities of 
 improvement, and emphasizes the partial failures of the 
 past simply as giving the occasion of growth. 
 
 The instruction of the pulpit, when we consider how 
 extended, constant, and earnest it is, is less efficacious than 
 we might hope it to be. It is narrowed in its influence 
 by the dogmatic, and, still more, by the pietistic, spirit. 
 The pulpit aims at results, and produces results, far more 
 limited than the wants of men. It does not address itself 
 directly and broadly to these wants. Pietism is accepted 
 as the germ of piety, and is enforced unhesitatingly as the 
 substance of a religious life. But pietism is not piety in 
 its expansive corrective phase, but in its phase of contrac- 
 tion. It is not putting truth to new uses, but holding it 
 fast under a form of expression which is ready to be 
 superseded. It is not the life that is advancing, but the 
 life that will not give way. 
 
 When the dogmatic mind is met with the failure of 
 truth to reach the masses of men, with the defection of 
 
PIETISM. 179 
 
 the popular mind from religious ideas, it falls back at once 
 on pietism. The old truths must be preached with more 
 boldness and more conviction. Cold limbs must be 
 warmed, and stiff limbs made limber, by friction. It fails 
 to understand that this weakening of conviction is the 
 inevitable outcome of truths which are not allowed to 
 grow into and with the social activity that encloses them ; 
 that this lack of force is the very evil complained of, and 
 cannot be corrected by lung power. 
 
 Pietism asserts that simple piety is to be sought after, 
 and that it will bring with it, in due order, all moral 
 virtues. And this assertion it makes in face of the fact 
 that this very piety is pursued in separation from social, 
 reformatory effort. The dogmatic temper fails to inter- 
 pret piety in terms of human well-being, and yet affirms 
 that piety will be so rendered in due order by those who 
 possess it. Pietism lays more stress on the propagation, 
 from person to person, of a given sentiment, than on the 
 purification of that sentiment, till it becomes a medium of 
 the divine mind ; on conversion, than on the larger, more 
 transcendent life for which it stands. It lays utmost 
 emphasis on the beginnings of things, but is much less 
 anxious that these first things should ripen into the ful- 
 ness of the divine thought. 
 
 Pietism can exist, and frequently does exist, side by 
 side with heinous forms of sin, without coming into dis- /, 
 tinct conflict with them ; simply because it is substituting 
 a narrow and more or less artificial experience for one of 
 divinely ordered growth. It arrests truth, and allows the 
 transgressions of men to arrest it, in its corrective power. 
 It has not a* sufficiently instant and urgent conception 
 of the fulness of the Kingdom of Heaven to see the 
 obstacles that lie in its path. It cannot open the con- c^ 
 
i8o 
 
 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 flict with evil at all points, because it has not drawn out 
 its line of battle, and is overlapped on either hand. 
 
 Hence some great pervasive and consolidated wrong 
 may exist in the presence of the Church, with hardly a 
 perceptible power of rebuke on the part of the pulpit. 
 The pulpit is occupied with pietism and not with politics, 
 and men are busy with politics and not with pietism. 
 The current phases of devotion are the staple of the pulpit, 
 while intemperance, impurity, luxury, war, are off themes. 
 What, for example, can be more hostile to the entire 
 Christian temper than war, yet war never cost the Chris- 
 tian world more than it costs it to-day. The Church is 
 powerless in the presence of this evil. The passions of 
 men sweep by it, and overflow it, and pass through it, 
 and hardly honor it with a ripple. The Church has no 
 purchase, no leverage, against it. It nourishes pietism, 
 but loses humanity. It preaches a truth that is to over- 
 come transgression, and opens no conflict with the trans- 
 gressions nearest to it. The truth ceases to be a sword 
 and becomes a wand of office. 
 
 It will be felt at once that incessant attack on specific 
 sins is ineffectual and inadmissible. This is, in a degree, 
 true. But the difficulty does not lie so much in the 
 absence of a constant, harassing, hand-to-hand fight, as in 
 the fact that the forces of truth are not made to face the 
 right way and the right things. The secrets of life that 
 are contained in them remain hidden, and men do not 
 distrust the fact. The habitual vision of faith does not 
 lie across the plains of the Kingdom of Heaven. Men's 
 ideals are remote from the purposes of God. 
 
 Great weight is attached to revivals, but a revival may 
 easily be an objectionable phase of pietism, a new 
 contraction of things infinitely too narrow already. What 
 
PIETISM. l8l 
 
 we wish to lay down are the lines of work along which 
 the love of God is constantly passing into the lives of 
 men, and building a kingdom of grace on earth. We 
 have lost confidence in the assertion that this transition 
 is sure to be made under the old method, and that we 
 have only to abide by it. Pietism must break camp, 
 dismiss its camp followers, and carry the glad tidings of 
 a salvation that waits to sweep through every kingdom, 
 physical, economic, social, pressing up toward a spiritual 
 life that embraces them all, and redeems them all. All 
 things travail together. 
 
 Pietism is a more definite product than piety, than a 
 life enlarged through all its area to the bounds of grace. 
 The preacher loves distinct results — results that take on a 
 numerical expression. Pietism meets this desire. It lays 
 down lines of division and walks within them. It builds 
 a fence, and cultivates the enclosed area as the vineyard 
 of God. Visible landmarks are set up in all directions, 
 but the fields, white for the harvest, which Christ saw 
 from the well at Sychar, still remain ungathered. Pietism 
 is forgetful of the largest love, and hence of the fullest 
 message, of Christ. It is not a gospel for every creature 
 in every relation of life. It may be thought that we are 
 trying to replace a pietism of reflection by one of action, 
 a fanaticism of belief by one of labor, and so, like many 
 another, fall short of the reposeful strength of the King- 
 dom of Heaven. Whether this is the issue or not will 
 turn on the largeness of our discourse on truth, the num- 
 ber of the fountains of life from which we feed our life. 
 It is catholicity of life that we urge, and philanthropy is 
 only one of its modes of expression. 
 
 Pietism, by narrowing down the life of faith and weak- 
 ening its inner force, helps to justify agnosticism. The 
 
1 82 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 grace of God must chiefly express itself in the moral 
 world. If the spiritual world does not disclose a truly 
 divine presence, that presence is lost to us. Religious 
 conventionalisms, the shallowness of faith, its manifold 
 errors, the deceptive way in which it clothes human 
 passion with religious expression, the inadequacy of the 
 ends it proposes, the formality of the means it uses, all 
 help to disguise religious truth and give color to the 
 assertion that faith is a tangle of obscure thought and 
 perverted instincts, which can be unravelled into nothing 
 worth having except a growing temper of humanity. 
 This feeling is concisely, and somewhat contemptuously, 
 expressed in the memoirs of Mark Pattison. At one time 
 he was strongly influenced by the movement toward 
 Catholicism which occurred at Oxford under the lead of 
 Mr. Newman. He failed to take the decisive step, and 
 later his interest in this experience and kindred ones 
 wholly died away. He explains the fact by the " innutri- 
 tion of the religious brain and the development of the 
 rational faculties." ' 
 
 This sarcasm would be of no moment did it not pierce 
 to the quick a very weak point in religious development, 
 this of pietism. Pietism is the fruit of a religious brain, 
 crowded in development by special processes. It is op- 
 posed to the wide unfolding of rational faculties. When, 
 therefore, the prevailing type of a religious experience is 
 deeply tinctured with pietism, the rational sense of more 
 rational men takes offense. They turn from it ; they 
 weary of it ; they grow away from it. The pietist is 
 ready with the answer that Christ necessarily brings 
 offense. Is it this offense that Christ brings ? I think 
 not. It is hardness of thought and arrogance of feeling 
 
 1 Page 208. 
 

 PIETISM. 183 
 
 that he offends, not our rational sympathies, our wide- 
 ranging humanity, our inner coherence of life. The 
 agnostic will feel that, in scope of purpose, in justness 
 and philanthropy of sentiment, John Stuart Mill had 
 nothing to learn from the average Christian. Hence the 
 profoundly unfortunate conclusion that the root of 
 spiritual life lies not in religious faith, is not in a world 
 knit through and through by spiritual forecast and spir- 
 itual favor, but in a humanity that is just opening up in 
 development. Positivism is ready to steal the very office 
 of faith in society. Humanity is put with freshness of 
 power for piety, simply because piety is offered as pietism. 
 Let us profoundly regret any religious spirit that through 
 its self-imposed limitations stands rebuked in the presence 
 of a positivism that sees more and feels more of the rest- 
 less tide of human want, ebbing and flowing through this 
 one moment of time, than do the servants of Christ, 
 taught by all the centuries that come and go under the 
 eye of God. 
 
 The most radical evil in pietism — the isolation of re- 
 ligious sentiment — is that it checks the development of 
 manhood. Manhood, rightly understood, is the divine 
 ideal embraced in individual and social life. We arrive 
 at it, in the imperfect forms in which it offers itself to 
 us, by a study of the facts of conduct, character, and 
 social life. It is God's revelation in society of the beauty 
 of moral excellence. The notion we entertain of man- 
 hood expresses our penetration into the spiritual scheme 
 of things. Pietism arises from a narrow estimate of our 
 more immediately personal relations, particularly those to 
 God. These two things, manhood and piety, should con- 
 cur, and do concur, so far as both are rightly grasped. 
 The fitting expression of piety is manhood, a fulness of 
 
1 84 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 response to the duties that lie upon us and the affections 
 which surround us. The partial conceptions we are 
 forming of manly character we often designate as honor ; 
 while the correspondingly defective notions which arise 
 in connection with piety are the innumerable forms of 
 pietism. These two partial presentations more or less 
 supplement each other in their defects. Honor lacks 
 the patience and devotion of piety, and pietism misses 
 the immediate insight into secular relations which man- 
 hood enforces. While true character embraces both piety 
 and manhood, they easily antagonize each other, first, by 
 establishing different standards of excellence, and later, 
 by scorning the virtues not contained in their own ideal. 
 Hence the two tempers may settle down into mutual 
 misapprehensions and repulsions. We suffer from cross- 
 vision in the spiritual world, and have difficulty in bring- 
 ing together our images of excellence in one clearly 
 outlined object. We have been accustomed to separate 
 between our earthward and heavenward seeking. It is 
 the office of righteousness to unite the two in an ideal 
 character, commanding the whole circle of virtues ; those 
 which adjust us to the immediate conditions of conduct, 
 and those by which we understand its real trend. 
 
 The partial separation between the manly and the 
 religious type of character—a separation that is increased 
 by every phase of pietism— has brought with it con- 
 spicuous evils. The standard of honor is frequently 
 more narrow than that of pietism, and is maintained with 
 a like dogmatic temper. It leads the man of honor to 
 scorn a piety that speaks lightly of his own creed. What- 
 ever pietism gains in depth of motives, is partially lost 
 again by the unfitness and narrowness of the expression. 
 Perfect conduct, pervaded by a profound spirit, rests not 
 
PIETISM. 185 
 
 even as an ideal, with either tendency. The religious life 
 cannot fully justify itself to men till it unites honor and 
 piety in manhood, good-will and reverence in righteous- 
 ness ; till its path forward is defined by a thorough re- 
 demption of the present hour. A life that is losing itself 
 in its own pleasures, and one which lightens the labors of 
 to-day only with the promise of to-morrow, are alike dis- 
 tasteful. A life that deepens and widens itself every 
 moment, that is gaining authority, that is visibly beautiful 
 and waiting on more prolific beauty, can alone call out 
 the sustained enthusiasm of the soul. Let the beauty of 
 the Lord our God be upon us. 
 
 The sources of piety and the sources of intellectual 
 strength, the sources of religion and the sources of art, 
 have tended to separation in the world's history. The 
 humanist and the pietist have stood at opposite ex- 
 tremes. There has been much in the development of 
 religious character that has been repulsive. The Chris- 
 tian has been as a patient who wears his plasters and 
 swathing bands visibly about him, keeps an exact inven- 
 tory of his ills, and fills the air with the odor of his 
 diseases. 
 
 Grecian art and intellectuality were accompanied with 
 relatively light religious sentiments. While we may 
 thoroughly understand that the vital forces in historic life 
 were flowing in the deep, narrow channels of faith rather 
 than in those of art, that such a canon as that of Puritan- 
 ism held the sweet streams that were to refresh the gar- 
 den of God, we may still feel that these cold waters 
 must be softened by much sunshine before they can 
 quicken all living things. We may find new emphasis 
 in the prayer, Let the beauty of the Lord our God be 
 upon us. 
 
1 86 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 For a long time art found admission with difficulty into 
 the Christian Church, and when it did enter it missed, as 
 in painting, that vigor in the sensuous terms of life which 
 art must always covet. The Last Sacrament of St. 
 Jerome is so spiritualized off the plane of the senses as to 
 give but an uncertain hold to art, art that handles the 
 world, as God handles it, in and by the perfect image of 
 itself. There was a constant conflict in Christian art, as 
 it gathered strength, between classical and religious sub- 
 jects ; and the two terms were never reconciled, because 
 neither faith nor art had risen to the point of union. Our 
 piety should be like the box of precious ointment broken 
 on the feet of Christ, filling the entire house with its 
 grateful odor. Nor would Christ suffer any censure to 
 fall on the act, though it seemed so far to transcend the 
 close maxims of religious economy. 
 
 The power to penetrate the perfected forms of life with 
 the true vigor of life, or, better, to express the vigor of 
 life under its purified forms, is the real office of faith, and 
 pietism intermeddles with it in this its divine mission. Pie- 
 tism is to be corrected point by point, to be slowly widened 
 in temper, saving at each transition its spirit of consecra- 
 tion by redirecting it into more comprehensive and rational 
 forms of expression. The laws of life wait to be an- 
 nounced and enforced in all their manifold terms. We 
 have no occasion to save our precious things that we may 
 drop them later, one by one, in the endless stream of 
 poverty and vice. We may lavish them at once in the ser- 
 vice of the Master with a prodigality of faith far more 
 effective than its parsimony, with a largeness of salvation 
 preferable to every redemptive device, however just in 
 itself. It is large ways not little ones that are to knit to- 
 gether the world in strength. The last passage of life is 
 
PIETISM. 187 
 
 always union with the world, not separation from it ; is 
 setting all things at their divine service under the mind of 
 God. What we need to occupy ourselves with is the 
 wide mastery of truth, its universal redemptive power. 
 Our purpose is not so much to crowd and huddle the 
 fugitives of the world into the Church, as a place of imme- 
 diate safety, as it is to march a conquering Church into the 
 world for its instant renovation. The community is the 
 larger of the two ideas. Not till the Church is co-exten- 
 sive with the community will it be continuous with its 
 own blessings. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 The word spiritualism has sunk so ignominiously by 
 association with the bastard idea of spiritism as to require 
 a new consecration for any high calling. We mean by it 
 the predominance of those incentives which are addressed 
 to us through our spiritual nature, the fulness of that 
 rational life which judges all things by their relation to 
 righteousness, the rectitude of the soul itself. 
 
 The constitution of the human mind is such that it is 
 able to take on a later and higher growth. Without this 
 growth it is in conflict with itself, its efforts are abortive, 
 and both the motives and the means of advancement 
 slowly slip from it. With spiritual growth its purposes 
 become more comprehensive, its resources more abundant, 
 its satisfaction in its work more complete, and the subor- 
 dination of conflicting tendencies more manifest. It is a 
 simple psychological fact, involved in our original make- 
 up, that the aims of life must be continually thrown for- 
 ward, or life loses its dignity and fitness, and begins, in 
 brief periods, to perish within itself. Spiritualism, or the 
 supremacy of the higher and purer activities over the 
 lower and grosser ones, is the normal unfolding of the 
 mind of man. Without it life fails to become truly 
 rational, and rapidly falls off from its possibilities. 
 
 The appetites and passions of men, in connection with 
 
 1 88 
 

 SPIRITUALISM. 189 
 
 their power to anticipate the future and provide for it, 
 call forth the desires, and the desires become the steady 
 incentives to a large circle of activities and sensibilities 
 that are self-seeking. The refinements of civilization rest 
 chiefly on this basis of desire, intensified by the large 
 development of social life. There is another circle of 
 ideas which men win more slowly, and in connection with 
 which the affections, the disinterested feelings, are un- 
 folded. The three great lines of distinction, each capable 
 within itself of the most varied development, are the true, 
 the beautiful, and the good. If these are so united as to 
 enlarge and correct each other, a new movement of life, a 
 fresh network of relations, are brought forward for the 
 profound modification of character. This form of activity 
 is sustained by the affections ; the entire line of develop- 
 ment is lifted and becomes spiritual. New ends are 
 established, and new principles of proportion rule con- 
 duct. This is a result distinctly provided for in the 
 original powers of mind and in the growth of society. If 
 it fails of fulfilment, the mind loses impulse and its 
 resources drop off. There is a demand within the mind 
 itself for this transfer of centre. The empirical philoso- 
 phy expresses the change in a different phraseology, but 
 it recognizes it and magnifies it. With this philosophy it 
 is the repression of self-seeking tendencies and the culti- 
 vation of altruistic sentiments. The fundamental fact 
 remains, however, though the method of conceiving it is 
 diverse. Life becomes narrow, stagnant, poisonous, which 
 does not constantly renew itself along its many flowing 
 channels. It is a dead sea, made heavy and bitter by its 
 own processes of evaporation. The mind relaxes its hold 
 on spiritual relations, and tightens it on physical ones ; 
 and the more as these lose their power to bless it. The 
 
 17 B RSI T 7! 
 
190 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 pessimism of exacting desires, unable to quell their own 
 hunger, is a foregone conclusion. 
 
 It is in this field, cultivated by the lower sensibilities, 
 that the higher insights enter. Character is sturdy, 
 thrifty, and beautiful in the measure in which it gives 
 expression, in these sensuous terms, to purer incentives. 
 A truth that carries its harmony into the relations of 
 society, a beauty that asserts itself in conduct, a righteous- 
 ness that rectifies life in both its inner and outer lines of 
 movement, provide separately and collectively a feast at 
 which the soul can sit without weariness. 
 
 Precisely the same need arises in society as in the 
 individual. Society is constantly reaching a stage in 
 progress which it cannot make, a step in ascent it cannot 
 surmount. Its resources are more abundant than ever 
 before, its powers are on the increase, yet division and 
 disintegration, extreme wealth and extreme poverty, are 
 more manifest, and the general and permanent prosperity, 
 for which so much has been undergone, is missed, just as 
 men are reaching it. Discontent prevails, and counsel 
 is taken for strife and overthrow rather than for new 
 modes of advance. Why is this? Simply because men 
 will not be spiritualized, because they carry animalism 
 into a region beyond itself that it cannot cover. Under 
 these conditions poverty and wealth alike vitiate the 
 mind, enhance selfishness, and narrow tendencies already 
 too restricted. Society becomes like an endogenous 
 plant that is strangled by its own processes. Hardness 
 and inflexibility are on the increase. Each new deposit is 
 forced into position with greater and greater stress. Out- 
 ward enlargement is arrested, and there is no further room 
 for inward growth. The energy of life is consumed in 
 resisting itself. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 191 
 
 There is only one possible remedy for this suspension 
 of social growth, spiritualism, a new harmony of feelings 
 and actions on a higher plane, the substitution of pros- 
 perity expressed in terms of the affections for prosperity 
 measured by the desires and translatable into a cash 
 account. The moment men can find, truly find, their own 
 good in the common good, their own joy in the enriched 
 affections of all, they will have conquered life and discov- 
 ered the conditions of social progress. When the poor 
 are not blessed by the blessings of the rich, they think 
 themselves impoverished by them ; they certainly are 
 spiritually impoverished by them, and fall into that 
 remediless want — an envious, resentful, peevish temper. 
 If the rich are not tried by the trials of the poor, they 
 think themselves happily rid of them. But in shaking 
 them off they have shaken off all divine tenderness, 
 all breadth of emotional response, all lingering by the 
 watercourses of life, and are leaving to dry up and 
 wither those delicate fibres, that network of succulent 
 tissue, by which the spiritually disposed incorporate 
 themselves with the world, and feed upon it in its entire 
 range of joy. The rich man may wonder that his pleas- 
 ures are worth so little, fleeing so rapidly, and followed 
 by so many dreary compensations. He may try to renew 
 them by deepening the vicious taint in them ; he may 
 test the worth of the sensibility that he is wasting by 
 wasting it still more rapidly. There can be but one 
 result, darkness, made more overwhelming by a frenzied 
 effort to dispel it. On this plane of desire there is but 
 one wisdom, the wisdom of economy — slow, measured 
 expenditure and sufficient stolidity to bear the inevitable. 
 
 The poverty of the selfishly rich and the selfishly poor 
 in all life-giving pleasures ought not to surprise us. Life 
 
192 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 is a thing of wide, concurrent action, and is successful 
 according to the extent and harmony of that action. 
 Both are rejecting, over wide fields, the contributions of 
 men and of society to human happiness, and putting in 
 their place partial, divisive, and conflicting passions. Both 
 are refusing the only real possible birth of higher life — 
 that of spiritualism, aims that are as wide as truth, as 
 assured as righteousness, as comprehensive as beauty. 
 These aims, sustained in their pursuit at every step by the 
 affections, can renovate society and make it a living whole 
 whose experiences of pleasure and sorrow penetrate it in 
 all its parts. History confirms, sociology enforces, the 
 necessity of this transition in the centres of action and 
 feeling in each man and among men. It is provided for 
 in our constitution and is being made by insensible stages 
 of growth. It is also one that can be accelerated by the 
 push and elasticity of voluntary powers, and the spiritual- 
 izing vigor of truth in the free and open mind. It is to 
 this last result that all the energies of devout men are 
 directed. What we wish to point out more distinctly is 
 that what we have now defined, hastily and inadequately, 
 as a spiritualizing process, a pushing of life into its own 
 proper field, is the work of Christ, his own conception of 
 that work, the very sum and substance of that which is 
 wrought by his love. 
 
 The words of Christ, comprehensively rendered, do not 
 readily accept any other interpretation. This is their 
 inner force and outer import. It is quite admissible to 
 use some fulness of proof in establishing a point so easily 
 lost sight of as this. It is essential when a deep current 
 of obscure convictions has for a long time concealed the 
 truth, and left it but partially operative ; when the pre- 
 dominance of supernaturalism in men's thoughts has led 
 
SPIRITUALISM. I93 
 
 them to look for quite other lessons, and reluctantly to 
 accept the wise and patient ways of God ; when carefully 
 and artificially elaborated dogma and sporadic piety have 
 helped to hide the paths of progress, to emphasize anew 
 the first terms in spiritual life, and revive, in their primi- 
 tive force, the words of Christ, as he leads us forward 
 toward God. We believe that the teachings of Christ 
 tend simply and directly to carry us onward in this 
 spiritual development planted in the nature of man, and 
 in the entire growth of society ; and this lesson we desire 
 to enforce. The whole movement, indeed, centres in God, 
 in whom all truth, beauty, righteousness are gathered up 
 in personal, emotional power ; but this fact only defines 
 the form of the enforcement, and does not alter the very 
 nature of the transition. 
 
 Christ explicitly declares : " This is life eternal that 
 they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ whom thou hast sent." ' Life eternal is spiritual 
 knowledge. His declaration to the woman of Samaria 
 bears the same import : " Whosoever drinketh of the 
 water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the 
 water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
 springing up into everlasting life." 2 He gave the same 
 truth a wider proclamation on the great day of the feast : 
 " If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He 
 that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his 
 belly shall flow rivers of living water." 3 
 
 Not unlike in force was the very different image ad- 
 dressed to Nicodemus : " Except a man be born again, 
 he cannot see the kingdom of God." 4 Birth stands for a 
 higher phase of life, one disunited from a lower life ; and 
 
 'John xvii., 3. 8 John vii., 37. 
 
 2 John iv., 14. 4 John iii., 3. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 this higher life is born of water and spirit, of a purified 
 and deepened experience. This is made plainer by the 
 emphatic assertion : " Verily, verily I say unto you, He 
 that heareth my word, and believeth in him that sent me 
 hath everlasting life . . . He is passed from death 
 unto life." 1 Everlasting life is not the reward of insight; 
 it is involved in the insight itself. Thus, in Luke, it is 
 affirmed : " The kingdom of God is within you " 2 ; and 
 in Mark : " Have salt within yourselves, and have peace 
 one with another." 3 
 
 This inner life, in its own distinctness, is to have its 
 own line of development. New wine is to be put into 
 new bottles and both are to be preserved. 
 
 There is no more perfect image of inner illumination 
 than light. This is a favorite enforcement of Christ. He 
 says of himself : " I am the light of the world." 4 Again: 
 " I am the light of the world, he that followeth me shall 
 not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
 So the apostle John opens his gospel with the declaration : 
 " In him was life and the life was the light of men." 6 
 " That was the true light which lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world." But light is in perfect fellow- 
 ship with our powers. In the spiritual world we receive 
 it and reflect it, " Ye are the light of the world." " Let 
 your light so shine before men that they may see your 
 good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." 8 
 On the purity of this light personal well-being depends. 
 " The light of the body is the eye : if, therefore, thine eye 
 be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if 
 
 1 John v., 24. 5 Johnviii., 12. 
 
 2 Luke xvii., 21. 6 John i., 4. 
 
 3 Mark ix., 50. 7 John i., 9. 
 
 * John ix., 5. 8 Matt, v., 16. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 195 
 
 thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. 
 If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how 
 great is that darkness ! ' 
 
 That which specifically corresponds in the spiritual 
 world to light is truth. Christ is the way, the truth, and 
 the life. The spirit of God is the spirit of truth, that 
 guides us into all truth. Our freedom is won by the 
 truth : " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free." 2 Sanctity arises in reception of the 
 truth : " Sanctify them through the truth, thy word is 
 truth." 3 What more explicit or more comprehensive or 
 more glowing statement could be given of our relation to 
 God than this ; it is sharing with him the light and free- 
 dom of the truth. 
 
 But there remains another image which is hardly an 
 image, it so touches the very substance of things. Life, 
 that intangible something which stirs so potently among 
 sensuous facts, and at the same time lies at the very centre 
 of spiritual ones, seems, above all conceptions, to indicate 
 the invisible pathway of thought by which we penetrate 
 into the region of divine things. This is the supreme 
 image on which Christ is ever laying the burden of his 
 message. Life and death, lying at the lower and nearer 
 end of this scale of organic being, illustrate and define 
 life and death at the higher and farther extremity. Life, 
 is the expansion of power, death its overthrow. Holiness 
 is rising into life, sin is sinking into death. The resources 
 of life are gathered in Christ. " In him was life " ; and 
 to share his spirit is to enter into this life. " The hour is 
 coming, and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of 
 the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." 4 To miss 
 
 1 Matt, vi., 22. 3 John xvii., 17. 
 
 3 John viii., 32. 4 John v., 24. 
 
I96 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 his life by unbelief is to pass into the condemnation of 
 death. We live and move and have our being in God. 
 " Because I live ye shall live also," ' says Christ. " He 
 that eateth me, even he shall live by me." 2 The dead 
 hear the voice of the Son of God, and live. God is not a 
 God of the dead, but of the living. " He that believeth 
 in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." 3 " Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall 
 never see death." 4 " He that believeth not the Son, shall 
 not see life." 6 " Ye will not come to me that ye might 
 have life." 6 " I am the bread of life." 7 " I am the liv- 
 ing bread which came down from heaven ; if any man eat 
 of this bread, he shall live forever." 8 " I am the resur- 
 rection and the life." 9 We are to understand these words 
 of Christ in a profound way. The very substance of 
 spiritual life, that on which it feeds, and the power by 
 which it feeds, are held in the life of God, the life of 
 truth which we share with him. To draw forth and bring 
 forward this life is the work of Christ ; and this life, as the 
 highest term in life, rules all life. We live by it, and we 
 perish without it. All casements give admission to this 
 light of life. 
 
 This insight involves a transfer of the centre of activity 
 upward. The intentions and affections and the pro- 
 founder thoughts which sustain them must take the place 
 of the appetites and passions and desires, and the sagacity 
 which is developed in connection with them. This is 
 repeatedly affirmed by Christ, and has justly been termed 
 the secret of Christ. This subjection of the entire life to 
 the higher laws which spring up in apprehension of the 
 
 1 John xiv., 19. 4 John viii., 51. 7 John vi., 48. 
 
 2 John vi., 57. 5 John iii., 36. 8 John vi., 51. 
 
 3 John xi., 25. 6 John v., 40. 9 John xi.. 2f> 
 
SPIRITUALISM. I97 
 
 true, the beautiful, the good ; this growth of all life out of 
 these deeper impulses, this is the mind of Christ. " If any 
 man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up 
 his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life 
 shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake 
 shall find it." ' Life is here contrasted with itself, its 
 lower with its higher forms. Life in its more immediate, 
 sensuous expression must be repressed in favor of its more 
 remote and spiritual development. Thus both forms of 
 life are gained. Yielding to exorbitant desire, life is lost 
 on both sides. The desires have no sufficient law and no 
 adequate reward within themselves. They consume the 
 life which they feed ; they perish in their own excess. 
 What can it profit a man if he win all the conditions of 
 gratification — the whole world, — and sacrifice, in their pur- 
 suit, the only powers that can enable him to appropriate 
 with real pleasure these gains ? The affections are the 
 assimilating organs of the soul ; these lost, and all is lost. 
 The eye with which we see is of more moment than the 
 beauties of any one order offered to it. We can never 
 wisely sacrifice a power in behalf of things addressed to 
 that power. The insubordinate action of inferior powers 
 can never compensate us for the subordinate action of 
 the same powers ; much less for the activity of the higher 
 powers they are displacing. We truly possess the world 
 by our insights, and ownership without insights is the 
 poverty of the spirit made conspicuous. 
 
 Christ often returns to this fundamental principle, and 
 sustains it by allied truths. 2 " Take no thought for your 
 life, what ye shall eat ; neither for the body, what ye shall 
 
 1 Matt, xvi., 24. 
 
 2 Matt, x., 39 ; Mark viii., 35 ; Luke ix., 24 ; Luke xiv., 33 ; John 
 xii., 15. 
 
ig8 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more 
 than raiment." ' " He that hath, to him shall be given ; 
 and from him that hath not, shall be taken even that 
 which he hath." 9 This is the law of growth. Life sup- 
 pressed, perishes ; life nourished, rapidly gains power. Our 
 work must be done under this principle. The same truth 
 is emphasized under another form. The growth of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven is likened to seed that first yields the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. The 
 entire question is one of life, and the changing centres of 
 life. This is also shown in the subordination of the means 
 of life to life itself. The Sabbath was made for man, and 
 not man for the Sabbath. Hence also the emphasis laid by 
 Christ on a teachable spirit. The child is the most perfect 
 image of the receptive temper. " Suffer little children to 
 come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the 
 kingdom of God." 3 
 
 Closely allied with a true readiness to receive, is readi- 
 ness to give. He who is teachable is prepared to teach. 
 " If any desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, 
 and servant of all. And he took a child and set him in 
 the midst of them ; and when he had taken him in his 
 arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of 
 such children in my name, receiveth me ; and whosoever 
 shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent 
 me." 4 The essential thing in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 which is also the essential thing in the soul's insight into 
 life, is a cheerful submission to the moral conditions 
 which enclose us, and mastery under them and by them. 
 
 When we look at the work of Christ as an effort to 
 secure this second birth, this uplift of the centre of life, 
 
 1 Luke xii., 22. 3 Luke xviii., 16 ; Mark x., 14. 
 
 8 Mark iv., 25 ; Lukexix., 26, 4 Mark ix., 36 ; Mark x., 42. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. I99 
 
 we readily understand his strong language concerning 
 wealth. It is penetrating, but neither unwise nor untimely. 
 " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go 
 through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into 
 the kingdom of God." ' The desire for wealth is the 
 most central and universal of the desires. It especially 
 awakens the echoes of self-interest in every apartment of 
 the thoughts. It stands for an intense life on the level 
 of personal interests. This desire, therefore, may well 
 receive the stroke of rebuke aimed at a narrow and mis- 
 chievous type of manhood. Christ is never careful to 
 make all the corrections of thought which the truth ulti- 
 mately calls for. The immediate force of his words 
 would be much reduced by such a method. When the 
 primary principle is recognized, its qualifications come 
 readily. He speaks of the pursuit of wealth as one might 
 speak of appetite to those subject to it. It is something 
 which must be conquered at all costs. It stands for the 
 dominance of desire. The real contrast of the defective 
 and the perfect form of life needs nowhere to be drawn 
 more sharply or with a firmer hand than at this very 
 point — the pursuit of wealth. The words of Christ, 
 extreme as they seem to be, are perfectly wholesome. 
 They owe their cogency to the great danger of destroy- 
 ing life by the means of life ; to the universality and 
 persistency of the error of submitting the soul to its 
 first terms of expansion. To have qualified, then and 
 there, these words of revelation, would have been to emas- 
 culate them. 
 
 The estimate that Christ put on the living processes of 
 faith is also seen in the points of censure he makes against 
 1 Luke xviii., 24 ; Luke xvi., 13 ; Luke xii., 20. 
 
200 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 the Pharisees. " Now do ye, Pharisees, make clean the 
 outside of the cup and the platter ; but your inward part 
 is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he 
 that made that which is without, make that which is 
 within, also? But rather give alms of such things as ye 
 have ; and behold all things are clean unto you. But, 
 woe unto you, Pharisees ! for ye tithe mint and rue, and 
 all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love 
 of God : these ought ye to have done and not to leave 
 the others undone." : " Beware of the leaven of the 
 Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." 2 All turns, censure and 
 praise alike, on the inner force of the life. Note the 
 beatitudes in this particular. It is the spirit of peace, 
 purity, mercy, and meekness, the heart that hungers after 
 righteousness, that are blessed. The favor of Heaven 
 descends like dew and rain on these virtues. 
 
 Thus far we have spoken of the nature of the trans- 
 formation in the life of man sought for by Christ. We 
 turn to the lines of duty laid upon the obedient as another 
 expression of the same thing. These also look to that 
 change of intellectual and emotional centre which we are 
 trying to enforce. The two great commandments on 
 which hang all the law and the prophets are : " Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
 all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thyself." 3 Here certainly the attention 
 is carried at once over to the affections and to love, the 
 chief affection, as the fulfilling of life. These command- 
 ments are weakened in their force by regarding them 
 simply as injunctions to be met at once. They are rather 
 long lines of light, unending changes, which bear us into 
 
 1 Luke xi M 39. 2 Luke xii., 1 ; Luke xx., 4^ 
 
 * Matt, xxii., 37 ; Mark xii., 30. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 20I 
 
 the centre of the divine mind and the higher life under 
 it. We are to grow into perfect love, and this leaves 
 nothing more to be desired. We cannot direct the 
 attention too steadily to these commands as holding the 
 inner law of spiritual things. They easily enfold all 
 forms of praiseworthy action. " Therefore, all things 
 whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye 
 even so unto them." ' " Love your enemies ; do good to 
 them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray 
 for them which despitefully use you." 2 Admirable as 
 are 'hese injunctions, they are only single off-shoots of the 
 parent principle. Give us that principle, and these follow. 
 Lay down these commands without the divine impulse of 
 love to supply the spirit of obedience, and they perish 
 almost at once. 
 
 There is the favorite injunction of Christ that especially 
 indicates the complete consciousness with which the life 
 of the spirit was permeated, in his estimate of it : " If 
 any man have ears to hear let him hear " 3 ; " Take heed, 
 therefore, how ye hear." 4 All things are to proceed under 
 clear, inner light. It is a pure, intellectual atmosphere 
 that is to embrace and offer in their intrinsic beauty all 
 the conditions of spiritual conduct. The soul maintains 
 its poise within itself. The range of the life is indicated 
 in both directions. It is to possess the entire heart ; it is 
 to spread over the entire world. It looks to the highest 
 possible, personal attainments. We are to be perfect, 
 even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. And 
 this gospel of salvation is to be preached to every crea- 
 ture. The pyramid is as broad as the earth, and rises 
 as high as heaven. The tree of life grows by the river of 
 
 1 Matt, vii., 12. 3 Mark vii., 16. 
 
 2 Luke vi., 27, 35 ; Luke xiv., 13 ; Matt, v., 43. 4 Luke viii., iS. 
 
202 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 life, yields its fruits perpetually, and, with its leaves, heals 
 the nations. 
 
 A most significant thing in this higher life, enjoined 
 upon us, is its relation to God, the support it finds in him, 
 and its relation to man, its nourishment under surround- 
 ing spiritual conditions. Both serve to define its nature. 
 The relation in life that interprets to us all that is most 
 tender, truthful, and noble is transferred to God. We 
 find our way to him along a path cheered by every 
 suggestion of consolation and help. We come to him 
 as Our Father who art in heaven. All that is gathered 
 up in parenthood, on its two sides of strength and love, 
 is made to lighten the lines of approach to God. We 
 abide in his presence under the most perfect form of love 
 known to us, the fatherly and motherly affections which 
 unfold with our own being, the sepals and petals which 
 guard, nourish, and beautify the new-found life. This re- 
 lationship is further presented to us in its most patient 
 and benignant form in that gospel within a gospel, the 
 parable of the prodigal son. The all-embracing impulse 
 in the household of faith is that love of God granted 
 unto us in the first commandment, the entire life drawn 
 outward, upward tending, toward God. This carries 
 with it the opening of the mind in insight into all 
 spiritual things, the true, the beautiful, the good ; and 
 the springing up at once of those affections which are 
 nourished by and nourish this spiritual unfolding of our 
 powers. 
 
 The openness of this way is indicated in the parable of 
 the publican, whose simple petition, God be merciful to 
 me a sinner, swept aside every obstruction. It is enforced 
 by the parable of the lost sheep, and the piece of silver 
 that was lost. Man may not only return to God, he 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 203 
 
 is diligently sought after by him : " There is joy in 
 the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
 repenteth." 1 
 
 The spiritual character of our union with God is ex- 
 plicitly affirmed, and we are not allowed to search for it 
 on any lower plane than that of inner life. " God is a 
 spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in 
 spirit and in truth." 2 " Of his fulness have all we received, 
 and grace for grace." 3 
 
 The part taken by Christ in this union of our thoughts 
 with God is abundantly defined. As indicated in the 
 passage last given, we are partakers in his fulness in 
 lineal descent, virtue by virtue. No man cometh unto 
 the Father but by him, because he is the truth and the 
 life. He embraces them both. A variety of images are 
 used which unfold this thought on all sides to the light. 
 He is the door to the fold, and, in the same breath, its 
 shepherd. He is the vine of which we are the branches, 
 the bread of life on which we feed. This last image is 
 amplified and put with a literalness that compels us to 
 spiritualize it. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, except 
 ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, 
 ye have no life in you." 4 The crass character of the 
 image cuts us off from any gross use of it. We make 
 nothing of it, till we make everything of it, till it means 
 for us the appropriation and assimilation of the life of 
 Christ. 
 
 Thus are we led into the fellowship of God, and it is 
 one of light and life and love. The Comforter that is 
 sent unto us, that dwelleth in us forever, that takes of 
 the things of Christ and shows them unto us, is the 
 
 1 Luke xv., 10. 3 John i., 16. 
 
 2 John iv., 24 ; John i., 12. 4 John vii., 153. 
 
204 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 Spirit of Truth. All is love. " If a man love me he will 
 keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we 
 will come unto him and make our abode with him." 1 In 
 whatever direction we turn, there is one spiritual presence, 
 one revelation, one impulse. " When he, the Spirit of 
 Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." 2 " As 
 the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you ; con- 
 tinue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye 
 shall abide in my love ; even as I have kept my Father's 
 commandments and abide in his love." 3 " And now I 
 am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and 
 I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own 
 name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be 
 one, as we are." 4 Nor is this any idle fellowship of 
 unproductive sentiments in a mystical world of dreams. 
 It is a fellowship of labor, suffering, conquest. " Ye shall, 
 indeed, drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the 
 baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized." B 
 " Ye call me Master and Lord ; and ye say well ; for so 
 I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed 
 your feet ; ye ought also to wash one another's feet. 
 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as 
 I have done to you." ° But this service has in it no 
 element of bondage, it is wholly one of loving insight. 
 " Henceforth I call you not servants ; for the servant 
 knoweth not what his Lord doeth ; but I call you friends; 
 for all things that I have heard of my Father I have 
 made known unto you." 7 
 
 This relation of man to God contains and implies his 
 relation to his fellow-men ; and any philosophy of life will 
 
 'John vi., 23. 3 John xv., 9. B John x., 39. 
 
 2 John xvi., 13. 4 John xviii., 11. 6 John xiii., 13. 
 
 n John xv., 15. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 205 
 
 meet with great difficulty in enforcing the fellowship of 
 humanity that is not able to root it thoroughly in the very 
 constitution of the spiritual world. Out of the abundant 
 energy of the first command, the second command springs 
 readily : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Nor 
 was Christ content to leave the injunction to the render- 
 ing of men. He defined the most essential term in it, 
 and indicated the method of fulfilment in the beautiful 
 parable of the good Samaritan. The injunction of love 
 is not left by Christ as a general principle simply. He 
 returns to it constantly, with much tenderness, as the 
 true bond between his disciples. As the conditions of 
 discipleship give free play to the affections, so should 
 they knit all together in one vigorous fellowship of love. 
 "A new" — new in its vital force — " commandment I 
 give unto you, That ye love one another ; as I have 
 loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall 
 all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love 
 one for another." ' " This is my commandment, That ye 
 love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love 
 hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for 
 his friend." 2 This love is to be no unfruitful affection. 
 It is to find expression in every act of service from the 
 least to the greatest, from a cup of cold water to the 
 giving of life. Honor in this fraternity of Christ should 
 be found in following in the steps of the Master. " Ye 
 know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion 
 over them, and they that are great exercise authority 
 upon them. But it shall not be so among you ; but who- 
 soever will be great among you, let him be your minis- 
 ter; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be 
 your servant ; even as the Son of Man came not to be 
 
 1 John xiii., 34. 2 John xv., 12-15, x 7- 
 
206 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a 
 ransom for many." 1 
 
 But this temper of kindly servijce is possible among men 
 of grave faults and petty infirmities only in connection 
 with forgiveness ; and Christ lays down the law of 
 forgiveness in its most absolute form. There is to be 
 in us a divine tenderness cherishing every germ of life. 
 There is not only not the least trace of an implacable 
 temper in Christ, there is no recognition of any principle 
 of justice that stands in the way of forgiveness when 
 forgiveness is sought. " How oft," inquires Peter, " shall 
 my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? till seven 
 times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until 
 seven times ; but, Until seventy times seven." 2 This 
 forgiveness is enjoined as being at one with the divine 
 method. " And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye 
 have ought against any : that your Father also which is 
 in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." 3 No words 
 certainly can express more explicitly and in more varied 
 directions than do these words of Christ that the thing 
 sought by him was a new centre of life, planted in the 
 affections of men. 
 
 We have striven to show how Christ defines this change 
 in itself, the lines of duty which he lays down in connection 
 with it, the relations which men sustain by it to God and 
 to their fellow-men. Its nature is also involved in the tests 
 given us by which we are to judge whether this transfer of 
 life has been effected. They are of the simplest and 
 plainest order. Every good tree is to bring forth good 
 fruit. As Bacon felt that all knowledge should be fruitful, 
 so Christ would have all righteousness beneficent. " A 
 
 1 Matt, xx., 25. 2 Matt, xviii., 21 ; Luke xvii., 3. 
 
 3 Mark xi., 24. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 207 
 
 good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth 
 forth that which is good." ' Our kinship with Christ is 
 one of well-doing. " My mother and my brethren are 
 those which hear the word of God and do it." 2 When 
 John the Baptist sought evidence of the Messiahship 
 of Christ, Christ made answer, " Go your way, and tell 
 John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that 
 the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the 
 deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is 
 preached." 3 
 
 The censures of Christ involve the same criterion, " Go 
 ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not 
 sacrifice ; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sin- 
 ners to repentance." 4 " Those things which proceed out 
 of the mouth come forth from the heart ; and they defile 
 the man." There is nothing which drew so severe a 
 rebuke from Christ as a disposition to substitute traditions 
 and rites for large obedience. " Laying aside the com- 
 mandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the 
 washing of pots and cups : and many other such things ye 
 do." 6 " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! 
 for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise and cummin, and have 
 omitted the weightier matters of the law — judgment, 
 mercy, and faith ; these ought ye to have done and not to 
 leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at 
 a gnat, and swallow a camel." 7 The obedience of Christ 
 proceeds in full knowledge. Blessed are your eyes, for 
 they see ; and your ears, for they hear. The scribe, 
 taught in the things of the Kingdom of Heaven, is versa- 
 
 ' Luke vi., 45 ; xiii., 9; viii., 15. 4 Matt, ix., 13. 
 
 2 Luke viii., 21. B Matt, xv., 18. 
 
 3 Luke vii., 22. e Mark vii., 8. 
 
 ' Matt, xxiii., 23, 
 
208 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 tile in their use, and brings forth the new and the old as 
 occasion calls for them. 
 
 This life of the spirit leads one to put away all asceti- 
 cism. Christ came eating and drinking. Soundness of 
 mind and soundness of body are ultimately identical. 
 " For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee', 
 or to say, Arise, and walk." 1 
 
 A method like this of Christ is applicable to all men 
 under all circumstances, and so has found admission aside 
 from his presence. " Many shall come from the east and 
 the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven." 3 "Other sheep, I 
 have, which are not of this fold : them also I must bring, 
 and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be one fold 
 and one shepherd." 3 This divine grace proceeds always 
 under the one ethical law, " Unto whomsoever much is 
 given, of him shall much be required." 4 
 
 It is not easy to overestimate the concurrent and 
 accumulated force of these words of Christ. They all 
 look, from every variety of position, toward a life built 
 up within itself, according to its own constitution, into 
 strength, and so into the grace of God. God gives to 
 those who have. Nor are there any passages in the 
 Gospels that cast any other light on the subject. There 
 are a few, taken by themselves, as " He that believeth and 
 is baptized shall be saved," & which might perplex us, but, 
 in the general blaze of light, they also reflect the spiritu- 
 ality of the things about them. No precept in the Gos- 
 pels enforces a dogma or a rite as in itself a duty. All 
 rests on the basis of naturalism, the constitution of man, 
 
 1 Matt, ix., 5. 3 John x., 16. 
 
 2 Matt, viii., 11 ; Luke xiii., 29. 4 Luke xiv., 48. 
 
 5 Mark xvi., 16. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 209 
 
 of society, and of the Kingdom of Heaven. Beliefs and 
 duties are grounded in their spiritual occasions, and 
 enforced by them. 
 
 Even more weight than has been laid may well be laid 
 on the method of instruction by Christ. It is by illustra- 
 tions, by parables, by facts of experience. The general 
 statement, when it comes, rests back on examples. Many 
 things are gained by this manner of expounding recondite 
 truth. The disciples were not allowed to put their own 
 facile interpretations on the words of Christ, and to sup- 
 pose that they understood them, when they had but 
 begun to penetrate them. This has been a great diffi- 
 culty in religious instruction ; a superficial, conventional 
 sentiment has come to incrust the words in which it is 
 uttered, and to hide from the eye the germs of truth they 
 contain. The disciples were put to their wit's end by the 
 words of Christ, and were disposed to complain of the 
 obscurity of his parables. If we mean by clearness of 
 expression the power to convey ideas, then the instruc- 
 tions of Christ were most lucid. Ways which would have 
 seemed plainer to the disciples would have hidden from 
 them the burden of the message. Awakened attention 
 was the first condition of apprehension. 
 
 This method gave also an inductive basis to the dis- 
 courses of Christ, which quite distinguishes them from 
 current religious methods, magnifying their own verbal 
 distinctions, and leaving wholly behind them empirical 
 facts. Thus when Christ justified healing on the Sabbath 
 by the argument : " Doth not each one of you on the 
 sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead 
 him away to watering? And ought not this woman, 
 being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, 
 
 lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the 
 14 
 
2IO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 sabbath day?" 1 he was introducing a new method of 
 looking at religious truth, and one which grew directly 
 out of the facts of life. 
 
 The parable was fitted to make the impression that the 
 world, in all its details, was full of the divine mind ; full 
 of lessons designed to put us in living interchange of 
 truth with it. The remoteness and unreality which attach 
 to spiritual things were dispelled, and the physical form 
 and spiritual force of events were set at one again. 
 
 This figurative method of Christ compelled the disciples 
 to break step, to take long strides and great leaps in 
 catching up with the truth ; to overlook superficial agree- 
 ments, and seek after the profound, the real, points at 
 which the assertion and the illustration, the principle and 
 its image, coalesce. A lazy interpretation of the parables 
 without penetration lands one in absurdities, and the 
 truth must be kept aloof from the illustration at the same 
 time that it is reflected by it. The image in the mirror is 
 not more distinct from the mirror itself than is the very 
 truth from the things which unfold it. 
 
 For this reason, because the right rendering turns on 
 penetrative insight, the image has wonderful power to 
 preserve the truth and to transmit it, beyond the reach of 
 conventional perversions, from person to person and period 
 to period. That we save our lives by sacrificing them is 
 a riddle which each man must expound successfully from 
 the secrets of his own soul. The astute dialectician finds 
 difficulty in subjecting truth, put in this form, to his 
 barren processes. He must translate it into dogma before 
 he can ply it with inferences, and lead it on and on, far 
 from the corrections of experience and the government of 
 life. The words of Christ are full of an emotional ele- 
 
 1 Luke xiii., 15. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 211 
 
 ment, are penetrated by living terms, which make it 
 difficult to turn them into abstractions. 
 
 The liberty of the disciple is thus fully preserved. 
 There is a direct appeal to his own mind and heart, which 
 brings the problem of life home to him for his personal 
 solution. The thoughts are brought near the truth and 
 left alone with it as by the words of no other teacher. 
 
 We shall not understand what Christ aims to do for 
 men, the transformation he desires to work in them, till 
 we understand what he himself was. It is his own life, 
 his estimate of truth, that are the conquering powers of 
 the spiritual world. Christ was a presentation of pure and 
 patient love as a ruling force in the human soul. On this 
 basis he built his life, under this idea he ripened it to its 
 end. The love here opened for our admiration is a 
 rational affection ; a feeling that runs along the lines of 
 truth and makes them rivers of life ; a sentiment that 
 clings, with unwavering insight, to the law of righteous- 
 ness as the upward tending strength of the growing 
 spirit ; an emotion that breaks forth in scorching rebuke 
 of sin, because it would purge the soil as by fire of the 
 brambles and thorns which hold it from the uses of men. 
 Principles and precepts were in the world prior to Christ, 
 the fitting forms of life were more or less present to the 
 imagination of men, but the divine force was hardly 
 awakened in the soul by which these principles were to 
 receive power, these forms be fulfilled in living things. 
 Christ made it manifest that there were fountains of affec- 
 tion deep enough in God and in- man — in man because in 
 God — to thoroughly refresh and fertilize the world. He 
 wrought out the problem of life on the practical side. 
 Henceforth it became in order to exhort men, Be not 
 overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. 
 
212 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 The entire struggle of Christ, his bearing our infirmities 
 and carrying our sins, is found in this confronting within 
 his own spirit of every error and sin, and putting them 
 aside with a new assertion of truth and love — truth that 
 stands for love, and love that stands for truth. The 
 bruised reed was not broken, the smoking flax was not 
 quenched, his voice was not heard in the street. One 
 remedy, one only and one always, was with him, a deeper 
 assertion of the divine life of the soul. If I be lifted up, 
 I will draw all men unto me. If this victory of love, 
 binding the soul to God and to men in holiness, is made 
 complete in me, it shall be the victory of all time. Those 
 night watches upon the mountains were the bracing up 
 the spirit within itself, as it held fast to its purpose ; the 
 conquering power of spiritual purity; the giving of all, 
 and so the winning of all. The transfiguration followed 
 one of these struggles in which the soul wrestled success- 
 fully — clinging to the redemptive grace of God — against 
 all the discouragements, disappointments, delays, passions, 
 perversities, follies and foolish rhapsodies, that penetrate 
 the atmosphere of the world, like heat and cold, and make 
 it a bitter place for tender, pure, and loving spirits. The 
 transfiguration was a visible expression of a transmutation 
 which this unquenchable love shall make universal. When 
 Christ, having turned aside not one moment from the 
 simple declaration of truth, having yielded nothing and 
 precipitated nothing in the conflict of sin with holiness, 
 hatred with love, was able, on the cross — a defeat of 
 grace from which all spiritual victories take their date, a 
 victory of transgression from which the growing over- 
 throw of evil is ever proceeding — to say, Father forgive 
 them, they know not what they do, he was also able to 
 add, It is finished, into thy hands I commit my spirit. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 213 
 
 All is one, the life of Christ, the work of Christ, the sal- 
 vation of men — the soul knit together within itself in 
 pure affections, the life transferred to its eternal centre 
 in God. 
 
 The one thing which explains the world in its confusion, 
 suffering, and darkness is growth — movement forward into 
 order, life, light. This growth is at once most compre- 
 hensive and most special, most extensive and most minute. 
 It aims at the perfection of the individual as the condition 
 of perfect society, while society draws into its develop- 
 ment from above and below all spiritual and physical 
 resources. This growth of man involves a rhythmic 
 pulsation that extends through and through the world of 
 which he is a portion. Motion is a most exhilarating 
 physical experience. Motion upward, motion that dif- 
 fuses itself broadly, is, in its sense of concurrent and 
 sympathetic power, the most animating form of motion. 
 Growth, such growth as that of which we are now speak- 
 ing, involves the most extended, concurrent, upward 
 movement ; one of which physical motion is but a feeble 
 image. He who feels it, sees its conditions, experiences 
 its delight, catches sight of its implications, can scarcely 
 make any question as to the worth of life, or the wisdom 
 with which it is ordered. The discouragements of the 
 moment are revealed only by the light which lies before 
 us ; the ills that are about us are the incentives to the 
 good that is to displace them. The sense of confusion 
 arises from the scope of the movement which encloses 
 us, and its delay from the magnitude of the field it is 
 covering. We are oppressed with the weight of immeas- 
 urable things, but only thus have we the sweep of immor- 
 tality. We miss the pleasures that are near us, but only 
 because we have not yet learned how best to appropriate 
 
214 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 all pleasure. We mistake many things and pervert many, 
 because this growth is of our very substance, must be 
 self-achieved and slowly permeated by the light of our 
 own consciousness. We are held back by the faults and 
 failures and sins of others only because our supreme 
 profiting lies in the fulfilments and virtues of all men, 
 because we harvest not one pitiful field set apart as 
 our own, but the whole world ; because love — the love 
 of wisdom and the wisdom of love — pulsating with the 
 stroke of spiritual health through all rational life, throbs 
 sympathetically in our veins, and takes its measure in us 
 from the impulse of the divine mind, seeking for itself the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 We meet with difficulty in grasping this idea of growth, 
 because, by a strange perversion of ideas, things seem to 
 us coherent, involved in each other in all ways, while acts, 
 personal efforts, seem isolated, capable of sudden throes 
 of power and quick upheavals of creative energy. It is 
 thought that is, of its own nature, thoroughly and forever 
 coherent. Intellectual, spiritual creations must be tra- 
 versible in all directions along all lines of connection. 
 The cement of things is thought, but thought itself is 
 struck through with rational order in every movement. 
 Failing of this it ceases to be thought. Incoherent 
 progress in the spiritual world, a transformation not 
 known to itself, is self-contradictory. Things may be built 
 together, — they have grown together that they might be 
 in closer sympathy with mind — thoughts, spiritual affec- 
 tions, cannot be built together. They must in every 
 stage of progress pass up into the light by their own 
 movement. The spiritual pace of the universe is all that 
 we can bear. We are gathered up as rapidly as we are 
 able into the rational movement of the divine mind. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 215 
 
 This fact felt, and so accepted, and there is the came 
 open vision and delightful mystery in the progress of 
 the world that there is in the fragrant summer dawn as 
 it breaks into day. We wish not to hasten the glorious 
 disclosure. There is too much in each moment to allow 
 us to be impatient for the next. It is the child, not 
 the man, that deals so obscurely and weakly with what 
 he has as to turn hope into the fret of weariness, and 
 to make pleasure yield only a desire for the next en- 
 joyment in order. Peace, rest in motion, the power to 
 pursue good, this is the divine gift, not to be given but 
 to be won. 
 
 In this growth we need a naturalism which makes our 
 entire path coherent, interlaced each moment with one 
 rational movement ; we need a supernaturalism which 
 nourishes our sense of power, and puts us in conscious 
 fellowship with the Supreme Power that rules the current 
 of events on which we are borne. These are the conditions 
 and the motives of our spiritual manhood. We must also 
 understand that conventional forms of thought and con- 
 ventional forms of religious action, dogmatism and pie- 
 tism, are only provisional, are to be constantly reshaped 
 by more penetrative and more comprehensive vision, as 
 we move forward in personal and social attainment, as 
 we develop the spiritual life that takes to itself, and 
 harmonizes within itself, all life. We must attain that 
 spiritualism, which sees all things, understands them all, 
 and enjoys them all, from that centre of reason which 
 rests in the Divine Mind. 
 
 The New Theology is not then new, but as old as the 
 world in the inner force which brings it forward. It 
 indicates, indeed, a productive spring-tide of thought, but 
 its seeds are those of many previous seasons. It is one 
 

 2l6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 more movement, standing in file with a thousand others 
 past and to come, by which the limitations of knowledge 
 give way, and we are enabled to take another step up- 
 ward in the revelation of God, another step forward in 
 the largeness of the gospel of Christ. 
 
 Naturalism becomes to us, as it does to all true science, 
 the continuity, the omnipresence, of the divine method ; 
 supernaturalism becomes to us, as it does to all reverent, 
 loving faith, the inner force of the natural, unfolding in 
 visible forms the invisible things of the spirit. We are 
 patient with dogma, because many men are standing 
 upon it, and we too in our own way ; we are thankful 
 for pietism, because even in its more spasmodic moods 
 it is still an experience and expression of life. But we 
 wait on the efforts and aspirations of all good men, as 
 they accumulate the conditions of that sound and per- 
 vasive spirituality which is to unite the earth under us 
 and the heavens over us, according to the mind of God, 
 into the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus is nothing destroyed, 
 but all things are fulfilled. 
 
 The individual life can only express itself in terms of 
 the common life, for this is the field of the affections ; the 
 common life can only disclose its wealth in the wealth of 
 the individual, for the individual is the unit in all its 
 enumerations. Each waits on all, and all wait on each. 
 Love reveals itself to love alone. The future is obscure 
 to us, because we have not yet reached the spiritual points 
 of overlook. We move forward under a wide naturalism, 
 implanted in our own constitution, the constitution of 
 society, and in the Divine Mind. This maps for us the 
 otherwise unexplored path. The desire reverently and 
 obediently to wait on each fresh revelation in this up- 
 ward-tending way is the temper of the New Theology. 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 217 
 
 It breaks only with that scheme of theology which so 
 interpenetrates our relations to God with supernatural- 
 ism as to obscure for us human character, the laws of 
 spiritual growth, the grace of Christ, and the meaning 
 of salvation. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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► Editors. 
 
 PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 THE SCRIPTURES, 
 
 HEBREW AND CHRISTIAN. 
 
 ARRANGED AND EDITED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
 
 STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 Rev. EDWARD T. BARTLETT, D.D., 
 
 Dean of the Divinity School of the P. E. Church in Philadel- 
 phia, and Mary Wolfe, Prof, of Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 Rev JOHN P. PETERS, Ph.D., 
 
 Professor of Old Testament Literature and Language in the 
 Divinity School of the P. E. Church in Philadelphia, and 
 Professor of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 The work is to be completed in three volumes, containing each about 
 500 pages, Vols. I. and II. now ready. 
 
 Vol. I. includes Hebrew story from the Creation to the time of Nehe- 
 miah, as in the Hebrew canon. 
 
 Vol. II. is devoted to Hebrew poetry and prophecy. 
 
 Vol. III. will contain the selections from the Christian Scriptures. 
 
 The volumes are handsomely printed in i2mo form, and with an open, 
 readable page, not arranged in verses, but paragraphed according to the 
 sense of the narrative. 
 
 Each volume is complete in itself, and will be sold separately at $1.50. 
 
 The editors say in their announcement : "Our object is to remove stones 
 of stumbling from the path of young readers by presenting Scriptures to 
 them in a form as intelligible and as instructive as may be practicable. This 
 plan involves some re-arrangemenls and omissions, before which we have 
 not hesitated, inasmuch as our proposed work will not claim to be the Bible, 
 but ai introduction to it. That we may avoid imposing our own interper- 
 tation upon Holy Writ, it will be our endeavor to make Scripture serve as 
 the commentary on Scripture. In the treatment of t e Prophets of the Old 
 Testament and the Epistles of the New Testament, it will not be practica- 
 ble entirely to avoid comment, but no attempt will be macit^ to pronounce 
 upon doctrinal questions." 
 
 The first volume is divided into four parts : 
 
 Part I. — Hebrew Story, from the Beginning to the Time of Saul, 
 " II. — The Kingdom of all Israel. 
 " III. — Samaria, or the Northern Kingdom. 
 
 " IV. — JUDAH, FROM REHOBOAM TO THE EXILE. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 The second volume comprises : 
 Part I. — Hebrew History from the Exile to Nehemiah. 
 " II. — Hebrew Legislation. 
 " III. — Hebrew Tales. 
 " IV. — Hebrew Prophecy. 
 " V. — Hebrew Poetry. 
 " VI. — Hebrew Wisdom. 
 
 The third volume will comprise the selections from the New Testament, 
 arranged as follows : 
 
 I. — The Gospel according to St. Mark, Presenting the Evan- 
 gelical Story in its Simplest Form ; Supplemented by 
 Selections from St. Matthew and St. Luke. 
 II. — The Acts of the Apostles, with some Indication of the 
 
 Probable Place of the Epistles in the Narrative. 
 III. — The Epistles of St. James and the First Epistle of St. Peter. 
 IV. — The Epistles of St. Paul. 
 V. — The Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 VI. — The Revelation of St. John (A Portion). 
 VII. — The First Epistle of St. John. 
 VIII. — The Gospel of St. John. 
 
 Full details of the plan of the undertaking, and of the methods adopted 
 bv the editors in the selection and arrangement of the material, will be found 
 in the separate prospectus. 
 
 " I congratulate you on the issue of a work which, I am sure, will find a 
 wide welcome, and the excellent features of which make it of permanent 
 value." — Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, Bishop of New York. 
 
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 E. Stevens, Bishop of Pennsylvania. 
 
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 Will prove a help to Bible study." — Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D. 
 
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